Blogs
Can an iPod break your jaw?
Sat, 09/27/2008 - 00:52 — Alexis Wilke
Also I have an iPod, I won it (Yes. I did not buy it!) And I rather rarely listen to music in general anyway. In other words, I think I’m not at risk! However… Many people have their iPod on their ears while running outside. Nothing wrong with that until… lightning strikes. I’m not too sure why people would be running outside when there is a lightning storm, but the fact is that happens.
Hacking, Good or Bad?
Tue, 09/16/2008 - 13:06 — Alexis WilkeI already mentioned the American Government as being a target of many hackers.
You may also remember that in 1998, the Department of Defense was hacked by someone named Ehud Tenenbau. He was arrested at the time. He was still a teenager then.
Once back on the streets, he decided to wear a white hat and helped companies, many in Israel, to enhance their defenses. But that was only his day time job!
I guess that once you had a taste for a bad behavior, you just go on with it.
Testing PHP properly...
Mon, 09/15/2008 - 12:31 — Alexis WilkeI have been wondering, for a little while, how can I properly test my PHP code?! Only my server can run it, right? Well, no, there is CLI. Okay, but how can I make that work in there?
The best answer I’ve got so far: simpletest. This PHP library let you write a test a la C++. You simply create a class derived from a SimpleTest class, and voilà. You are done. Well… you still have to implement test functions. But that is still a breeze.
I used this library to test the PHP eFax classes and got about 4 bugs out (not too bad, considering I wrote over 1,000 lines of code and ...
Change the encoding of a Postgres database
Mon, 09/15/2008 - 12:15 — Alexis WilkeEver wondered how you could change the encoding of one of your Postgres database?
I have had that problem several times, and in most cases people tell you to:
- Dump your database, may have to use –encoding on the command line
- Drop the existing database (or rename it)
- Create a new database with the proper encoding
- Restore the database
The problem is that there is no support for altering the encoding of a database. The ALTER DATABASE does not include that option. And since it should be really rare, it makes sense.
Now, there is an easier way ...
Internet Explorer “Save As …”
Wed, 08/27/2008 - 14:25 — Alexis WilkeToday, I found a good one. Internet Explorer has a “Save As …” feature that let you save a page that you are visiting.
The page I have includes a table with a cell that has the align and valign attributes set to center and middle respectively. Once saved with Internet Explorer, these change to vAlign and align and center and middle respectively. Yes. Meaning that the values are swapped. Now the valign says center instead of middle, which will work with most browsers, but the worst is the align that is set to middle. That should never happen.
Drop the cords!
Sun, 08/24/2008 - 13:38 — Alexis Wilke
No more cords for your computers to run? Is that a joke? Not really. All these cords to get electricity to our computers and other gadgets are annoyingly in our way.
One document with all translations
Sat, 08/23/2008 - 20:26 — Alexis Wilke
Have you ever thought that it would be great to write one document including all the translations in a single file? Outside of the fact that this makes the document relatively large, it makes the translation really fast, the translator can see the sentence in all the other languages and translate from that. I actually wrote an HTML test file with two styles. One is named English and the other is named Français. And since a style entry can depend on the currently selected language, you can write style entries that get hidden when on or the other language is selected. So, if you ...
Order Made!® version 1.10
Fri, 08/15/2008 - 22:54 — Alexis WilkeWe have finally published version 1.10 of Order Made!®
This version include one important change: the ® after Order Made!. Made to Order Software now owns the Order Made!® trademark.
We also included a few bug fixes, mostly transparent to our users.
Free Speech on the Internet
Fri, 08/15/2008 - 22:24 — Alexis Wilke
Many people think of the Internet as an incredible system that let people of all nations communicate without a problem.
The fact is that governments are in control, as always.
The Internet was born in 1995 and, with it, cheap worldwide communications. The truth is that the Internet, very early, was used as much by programmers as it was by marketers and political minorities. This is where the problem started.
In 1997, France arrested 3 business men of a newly formed Internet company. The charges were: your website is displaying discriminatory information about Jews. They were ...
LinuxWorld Conference & Expo 2008
Thu, 08/07/2008 - 01:06 — Alexis WilkeThis year, 2008, I decided to register and go to LinuxWorld. It is in August and my kids are not at school so it was easy to manage. Also, I had to go to the French consulate to get a birth certificate for my daughter. In other words, I had the chance to do two things at once!
I found it quite interesting to hear that many people were not too excited about the event. Many of the people walking around are like me: they themselves sell their own Linux solution. In other words, they are not going to be customers. I had the chance to talk with Roger Levi, the Vice President of the Open Platform ...
