Just Another Blog

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Sunday, May 30, 2004

Introducing the "new" Wikipedia

Wikipedia got a brand new look! Probably the webmaster finally feel boring about the old ugly theme and changed the CSS?

Wikipedia, in simple terms, in an open-content encyclopedia built with Wiki. I've been visiting it quite often because it provides me better understanding for things, e.g. the really confusing RSS.

Sometimes the Wikipedia site is very slow. You may like to visit WordIQ instead, which is actually using data from Wikipedia.

Saturday, May 29, 2004

The Day After Tomorrow

Posted by Hello.
Edited with Blogger.

The Hello client is quite... RealPrayer-like... And the post it made is too simple - just a photo with caption... I want my "Title" back... And I want to type some descriptions about it...

Anyway, the cool thing is that it hosts my photo.. Ha ha...

P.S. I've just watched this firm at 29 May. Not bad.

Hello!

Blogger has launched yet another service: Photoblogging.

By installing a Blogger's IM client called Hello (Windows only), one can quickly create a photo blog post by chatting with the BloggerBot. Simply drag and drop your image to post and it will get it and host it for you.

Sound interesting! Maybe I'll give it a try tomorrow... n__n

Wednesday, May 26, 2004

Tiny Fox

The next version of Firefox (0.9) is going to have a MUCH smaller file size (25% drop of installer size). It will be just 4.6 MB. Cool man~!

I got referer spammed...

Poor me... I knew referer spamming is not something new. Now I got spammed by:

  • www dot keywordmaster dot de
  • www dot topspiele24 dot de
  • www dot atomicvoid dot net
  • www dot eurowins dot de
  • www dot single66 dot com
  • www dot superface dot net
  • www dot heil-fasten dot com
  • www dot superface dot de

But "fortunately" I don't list out any referers in my Wiki and Blog (except RecentChanges in Wiki, which has IPs of authors listed). Then how did I know I was spammed? Again, from AWStats, which is labelled as "NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW". n___n

Friday, May 21, 2004

Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 1 is out

For those who can't wait for the new version, Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 1 is out. Yup, I know that the 1.7 Final is not yet released, but it looks like that the Mozilla folks are lengthening the Alpha and Beta periods and pushing more people to use nightly builds... @__@|||

You may be more interesting in the new features and fixes, but don't forget to talkback when your browser crashes!

Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Mozilla 1.7 RC 2 is out

It is quite interesting that one can now use BitTorrent to download this new Application Suite, which is only around 12-15MB (depending on your OS)...

Will the next version of Firefox and Thunderbird be distributed in BitTorrent? Who knows...

P.S. Camino 0.8 Beta is also out shortly after Mozilla 1.7 RC 2. Grab it while it is hot!

Sunday, May 16, 2004

The Moz Is Not Enough

Attention Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird lovers, Gemal has made a post about Mozilla wallpapers! Be quick and grab them all! ^^

Hmm... Normal Reaction

Look like Saru found my post about his wiki and did a reply:

オネーチャン画像への反応は万国共通な様子。

A friend of mine (Tony) helped me to translate it:

對該圖畫的反應是各國相通的情況。

Saturday, May 15, 2004

Firebird is... hmm... semi-semantic...

I'm trying out the string processing of Firebird database. Unicode and character semantics are what I am looking out. Firebird handles unicode very well, but for characters semantics, hmm.. it doesn't really have... Let me explain:

Firebird only have one character set for unicode code: "UNICODE_FSS". It is variable-length, ranging from 1 byte (e.g. ASCII) to 3 bytes (e.g. Asian characters). Assume your database default character set is UNICODE_FSS, what Firebird does when you said "char (3)" is: allocates 9 bytes of space. So if you enter English characters, you can enter at most 9 characters! Kinda weird... But at least, any text you entered won't get truncated. So that's the good thing...

So, what character semantics is? From my understand, it is about measuring string in characters, not bytes. e.g. in JavaScript, try window.alert("abc".length); and window.alert("一二三".length);. Both returns you the number 3. If you are using Mozilla, you can do that simply by opening the JavaScript console, entering the code and clicking [evaluate].

In Oracle, you can do something like char(3 char), which allocate a space for 3 characters, no matter what your charset is. For more, see the article Globalize with Character Semantics.

Another cool thing is that Firebird won't waste you much space when your fixed-length columns are not fulled filled, e.g. entering "abc" to a column of char(10). The padding spaces after the strings are compressed! So actually char is no different to varchar in Firebird. (Of course, it is a good practice to use varchar when your strings are not fixed in length, as other DBMS may not do such compression.)

Friday, May 14, 2004

Firebird is just so cool...

No, I'm not talking about Mozilla Firebird (although it IS a cool browser), but Firebird database. It was formerly known as InterBase.

Some of the most impressive features:

  • Similar to PostgreSQL, it is Oracle-like.
  • Like MySQL, it is open-source and available to Linux, Windows, and UNIX.
  • Extremely easy to install.
  • Like Access, the database file is very portable (only a single .fdb file).
  • It can run in 3 modes: classic mode (dedicated server), super server mode (shared server) and embedded mode (for desktop applications, like Access).
  • Support most subset of ANSI SQL-92.
  • Support of unicode (UTF-8 I think...).
  • Everything you expected to see in a serious DBMS: ACID, subqueries, views, triggers, stored procedures, domains, system tables, and some Firebird-specific objects.

I've tested it under windows and it works very well. There are many contributed freeware. I have only tried one: MiTeC InterBase Query, which is so lean that it fits into a floppy! No need to install... Cool~

If interested, download and install it so as to experience how easy it is. Just follow this quickstart guide.

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

A Strange... and Pretty Girl

This little blog got linked again! The webmaster seems to be a pretty girl from Singapore... Ha, I wonder why she linked to here...

@__@

Monday, May 10, 2004

Check this out - New Blogger!

The Great Blogger Relaunch! Beside the new interfaces, there are tons of new features, including the most-wanted commenting feature!

=^__^=

P.S. I've configured the template so that for the posts older than this post, the original Haloscan commenting system can still be used.

Saturday, May 08, 2004

M$ Offers Advice To Mozilla

An interesting article from mozillanews.org...

... Microsoft's Technology Evangelist, Robert Scoble... He sees that mozilla.org could benefit by implementing features of WinFS... creating a better UI by making use of Avalon/XAML features... and other Longhorn specific features. Scoble seems genuine in his feeling that Longhorn can be a promised land, but he admits he uses Firefox on his longhorn installation, so one must wonder how little IE has advanced in Microsoft's next generation OS...

I agree that some of the OS-specific features like WinFS can be used to speed up the application and make the app more native... But XAML... Why bother to use? LOL... We already have the wonderful XUL that is used by tons of developers and users.

>u<

Wednesday, May 05, 2004

Wow~ Wiki...

I found a very hot Wiki about Mozilla and Linux: SaruPuki. Warning: Parental guidance may be required.

Tuesday, May 04, 2004

Netscape Toolbar for IE

I really can't stand this "joke": Netscape Toolbar for IE.

Someone... somebody help me please...

Monday, May 03, 2004

Try the new bird now!

After 3 months, the new Mozilla Thunderbird 0.6 is released.

Before upgrading, remember to uninstall the previous thunderbird and delete the "chrome" directory under your thunderbird profile. For Windows, it should be something like "C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Thunderbird".