Older blog entries for robocoder (starting at number 305)

Taking a page from the domain cybersquatter playbook, I registered typos of my name, Anthon -- because the 'h' is silent. But rather than a simple redirect or creating a CNAME, I threw up some single page web sites, ala Wikipedia dab pages: Anton Pang.com and Anton Pang.ca. I also embedded a little analytics tracking code, so I could gauge the utility (or futility, as the case may be) of this exercise. (The self-deprecating reference to typo-squatting is in jest.)

I can't say this was a welcome/needed distraction, given everything else on my plate, but this was "low hanging fruit", so to speak, and I needed to feel like I accomplished something today.

Just shortly after I put our family tree online, I discover the 4.1.4 update of PhpGedView still packages an outdated (and vulnerable) version of PunBB. (A slightly newer version of PunBB is in the PhpGedView repository head.) Granted this is a contributed module, but this is a nuisance.

In this case, it's easier to apply the changes between 1.2.12 and 1.2.17, to the version of 1.2.12 included with PGV. (The patchfile is 66K in size. In contrast, the diff file between vanilla 1.2.12 and the hacked version included with PGV was over 1M in size, and touched nearly twice as many files.)

RSS/Atom kept it simple (and for the most part, kept it small). But Holy Hijack! News feeds (like the Big-G's) are pushing the limits by embedding oodles of HTML (table, divs, images, links, ...) ... blurring the boundary between RSS reader and browser. As an example, the Sci/Tech news is 150+K, while the RSS feed is a little over 90K ... for little more than the teaser text on just 10 stories? WTF?!

Obligatory AppEngine blurb: on the first day, the Big-G received registrations from its requisite 10,000 beta developers; other applicants are now being on put on a wait list.

Argh! I hate DNS update propagation delays! I hate browser incompatibilities! I...I...I give up!

I need a distraction. Perhaps I'll look at the Prado and CakePHP frameworks...

*yawn* Couldn't sleep, so I whipped up a vanity web site (Robocoder Web Design). As such, there are absolutely no assurances that it's HTML/XHTML compliant. =P

On the topic of web sites, we keep pushing off the launch of ici.ca because we haven't reached consensus on how to monetize it. Two of the leading & competing ideas are an Industrial, Commercial and Investment Real Estate web site vs a domain auction with proceeds going to the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

I'm back from Hong Kong -- my family and I were there for CNY, our anniversary, and Valentine's day. A few days more, and we'd celebrate our daughter's birthday there too.

Anyway, back to the grindstone. I hope to finish a number of things that I started before I went on vacation. On the technical side, I've pushed out the initial makings of a web hosting site (on hostgator, and in turn, theplanet) which will host our internal projects. The migration from self-hosting will take some time, but it'll be more reliable and cost effective (for example, we'll be able to eliminate the dedicated line to host our own web servers).

On the non-technical side, I've made a contribution to CarbonFund (i.e., offsetting our business' carbon footprint), filed a tax return (just one of many more to come), requested quotes for E&O insurance (unfortunately, there aren't many insurers, and IT firms are considered high risk), and looked into local computer/office equipment recycling (and hard drive destruction).

Now that some sense of order has returned to my desk, I can start prioritizing the TODO list for the week ahead.

Yay ... the ghostscript update from gutsy-backports fixed printing (although I'm not sure if it was a QuarkExpress quirk or the secure document rights). In the meantime, I'll hold off on the updates to hplip and cupsys from gutsy-proposed.

So, Acrobat Reader 8.x isn't supported on Ubuntu 7.10. Unfortunately, none of the open source pdf viewers support fillable forms (which I need). However, certain pdf files won't print -- they spool/queue and then disappear into the ether without warning. Troubleshooting this has been educational...

Hopping over to a Windows box would be less effort/risk/masochistic, but I'm opening up my system to gutsy-proposed and gutsy-backports in hopes there's already an upstream fix...

I was looking forward to using the Dojo toolkit on one of my revamped web sites, but my excitement dwindled when a simple web page (the contact form) using Dijit validated fields was agonizingly slow to load (e.g., 14 seconds on a wireless connection). If I had more time, I'd spend it tuning, but I promised myself to get this done yesteryear. And with a company-wide rebranding effort underway, it just makes sense to do it now and just get it done.

BTW my dream of going Windows-less continues to fade. Joining the REALTORS Association of Hamilton-Burlington, I found their MLS system required IE6. (My two Linux boxes are now outnumbered by 3 running XP and 1 on Vista.) There is at least one vendor with a system that claims cross browser support, but it's unlikely the respective boards (which I'm a member of) will entertain switching. But I'm glad to see the introduction of two-factor authenticators and single sign on.

Also, I don't know what the underlying causes are but my impression of Gutsy is less than stellar, based on my expectations from previous upgrades. Firefox has lost some of its robustness, i.e., when clicking on a link, it sporadically segfaults or spins at 100% cpu for a while before it closes. Printing is wonky -- a queued job from Acrobat Reader may disappear into the ether; a print preview from Firefox may show only 1 page, but when you go to actually print it, you get 6 pages (many of them blank).

Depsite all my complaining about wine bugs, it's nice to see Windows isn't without its own hiccups. I downloaded an XP printer driver onto an XP box, and the self- extracting .exe aborted, complaining about a corrupt header. But, use Run As to put it into Win95 compatible environment, and the same .exe extracts successfully. ;)