Tildemark blogs

Leadership seminars can also be interesting

2008-09-30T14:13:46Z

some times seminars can also be interesting at least for me most of the times i find them boring and a waste of my time. A recent seminar i joined made me think twice with some of the seminars i missed before. the last task we had from the seminar which i enjoyed the most is the testing the leadership skill you have learned from the seminar. The task is to solve the puzzle called traffic jam.

Setup
2 groups of five with each team having their own uniform color. All 10 individual setting in from of each other, each team facing the other team. an extra chair placed at the center of the last two persons. See illustrations below, ill name the first team as alphabet and the other as numbers. everybody is facing the empty chair.

1 2 3 4 5
@
A B C D E

Objective
The objective of the game is to switch places with the team by following some rules.

Instructions

a person can move in a space (blank chair) beside him
a person can skip a person or move around a person
a person can only move forward
only one person can move at a time

Well after an hour, i was able to crack this game. it was very frustrating not to be able to get the solution in time because the speaker place a timer on the board and it was just 45 minutes. anyway here's my solution:

The Solution to the Traffic Jam game
Team Alphabet moves first, Person A move to the blank chair.

A12ABC1234ABCDE12345ABCDE2345CDE45E

Making simple hover image using CSS

2008-08-29T23:58:44Z

I always forget this basic image hover. Im posting it here in my blog for future referrence and for you my readers as well. Making hover images is fairly simple and very straight forward. It only needs a couple of css lines using the anchor element and its hover by manipulating the background image. Hover your mouse pointer to the image below and see a working sample of the image hover using CSS.

Home

Download image hover resources if you want to try it on your own.

Below is a simple HTML code used to display the image hover.


Home

The span tag allows us to hide its content using the display:hide; command in CSS. The nav-home value will define how our image will then be displayed. See below for the CSS code.


a#nav-home {
display: block;
text-decoration: none;
width: 120px;
height: 20px;
margin: 0 auto;
background-image:url(images/hover1.gif);
}
a#nav-home:hover {
background-image:url(images/hover2.gif);
}
.nav-hide {
display: none;
}
#nav-home img {
border: 0;
}

Rubik's cube sized PC

2008-08-27T14:59:54Z

I have seen tiny sized pc but the Space Cube tops them all. Its dimension is 52mm x 52mm x 55mm, very close to the size of a rubik's cube, smaller than the size of my palm. Its Compact Flash Card allows the installation of the Redhat Linux as its operating system aside from its builtin 16MB internal space. Processor speed is clocked at 300MHz maximum with an 16MB DDRSDRAM memory. The space cube include a USB port which maybe used to attach a hub for keyboard and mouse installation and other USB 1.1 enabled devices. A DB15 port for display, a RS232 port and an ethernet port for network access. It also has a builtin phone jack, Speaker out and Mic in for audio. This is obviously a desktop pc that could be used mobile aside from a laptop. Its price is around $300, not bad for a portable computer. This pc is very good for my interfacing expirements which would allow me to do testing outdoors. More info about the space cube on their website at the maker homepage Shimafuji Electric Incorporated.

Browser Based Games

2008-08-20T09:24:58Z

While looking unto my blogs categories, i have noticed the browser based category to be empty. I guess, i just can't update my blog about the event on the games i play. When i play, i usually spend all of my time on it, that's also the reason i may not be able to blog often. There are a couple of browser based games i have enjoyed playing, in fact i prefer them to those installed versions whereby we could check my mails, chat, and at the same time surf the web while playing.

Blogshares - I played blogs shares for more than a year, got myself into the top 50 rich players but stopped then they changed some rules in the game which i think they made it to gain more money than by making the players enjoy. there was also a bug on the game which made a major roll back. that was enough to convince to stop playing. i still have my account though i think my chips are gone, i lost the interest in playing so every blog i moderated is approved.

Neopets - I still play neopets from time to time. I dont find it boring, even if the target audience are supposed to be elementary kids but i think alot are adult players. Lots of built in games to choose from not to mention the battle dome wherein you could challenge neopets players to fight against your neopet.

Adventure Quest - Its been almost 3 years since i last played Adventure Quest. I only played this game in about 4 months. the free version is very hard to login. it made me decide not to continue playing. My character just reached level 40 when i stopped playing.

Tribal Wars - I was addicted to this game. it made me stop working, blogging, even skip meals, and other online activities. it was almost a year when i realised how i became and eventually stopped. i missed playing TW. I cant go back anymore probably because my villages may already be overruned. I managed to raise my points to 400k when i stopped playing. If i were to recommend which game i like the most, my answer would be tribal wars.

Unification Wars - Its a game similar to tribal wars but its setting is in space. The reason i stopped playing unification wars is that its too hard to comprehend and is very hard to manage. I mean we could read the documentation but i cant bear its complexity as i could compare it to tribal wars.

Adding captcha to comments in Movable type 4

2008-08-14T07:33:57Z

When i disabled the anonymous comment on my blog, people also stopped placing their comments. It might be because the people who commented were actually bots? Maybe or maybe not. Now, i got freaked because people really stopped commenting, as in zero comments. So, i started to look for ways to make post some comments again. I tried installing some plugin that allow users from other blogs like WordPress or other sites to use their login to comment on my blog using the OpenID technology.

Here's the list of plugin that i have installed in addition to the builtin options:
AOL/AIM
Yahoo
WordPress

But still, only a few commented. Now, I'm trying to enable reCaptcha hopefully people might come back and start to comment. If you are using MT4.1, you might need this. Otherwise, if you are using an older version then visit josh carter's blog for a workaround.

Enable reCaptcha on your Movable Type 4.1 blog

Get a public and a private key from the reCaptcha website
Get copy of the reCaptcha plugin from your mt4 installation folder. Its located at /extras/examples/plugins/reCaptcha from your mt4 folder
Paste them to the plugins folder at /plugins/reCaptcha inside your mt4 folder
There is a README file read it for instructions.
On your blog go to Preferences > Plugins
Click on the the reCaptcha and enter your Public and Private keys you had when you registered at their website
Click on Save Changes
Go to your blog Preferences > Blog Settings > Comment
Scroll dow below to the Comment Display Options
Change the Captcha Provider from None to reCaptcha
Save Settings
Go to your blog Preferences > Blog Settings > Spam
Check if the spam slider is at zero. If its not return it to zero, otherwise you will have to moderate all the comments again.
Go to Design > Templates
Click on Template Modules
From the README file: Edit Comment Form template, so it renders MTCaptchaFields unconditionally. In practice, this means replacing these lines

    <$MTCaptchaFields$>





to these lines:



    <$MTCaptchaFields$>
Click on Index Templates
From the README file, Edit Javascipt index template, to remove these lines of code which calls delayShowCaptcha:

    captcha_timer = setInterval('delayShowCaptcha()', 1000);
Save and Rebuild you blog.

Thats it you have enabled reCaptcha on your blog.

Setting up Virtual Hosts with XAMPP running on Windows XP

2008-07-30T01:58:47Z

Setting up virtual hosts with XAMPP is very straight forward and could be done in less than 5 minutes. Although, your local XAMPP server will still work even if virtual hosts are not configured. You might want to ask, is there a need for my local XAMPP setup to configure virtual hosts? Apparently, virtual hosts are needed when

your on multiple domains
your need to test your projects with same configuration with the server
test your projects without touching your public server
your just organizing your projects into groups
or setup a local copy of your blog or website

What do we need?
This document assumes that you are working with Windows XP with XAMPP. If you don't have XAMPP, get it at their XAMPP for Windows download page. Just execute the exe file and follow the onscreen instructions.

Configuring Windows XP to accept hosts
Hosts is a file under Windows XP that is used to map IP addresses to a custom list of hosts or maybe domain names. The IP address should be placed in one line. The first column should contain the IP address and on the second column its corresponding hostname. The IP address may be separated by a space or by a tab. You can place comments by prepending your line this symbol '#' (pound sign). Initially the first line is added. Now lets add our domain tildemark.com


127.0.0.1       localhost
127.0.0.1       www.tildemark.com
127.0.0.1       tildemark.com

you can check your work by doing a ping to your configured host.

Configuring XAMPP to accecpt Virtual Hosts

Got to your Apache folder in XAMPP and locate the conf files. The are usually located at <>\xampp\apache\conf\extra
Open the file named httpd-vhosts.conf with a text editor
If posible read the instructions so may have the idea on what you are doing
Now paste the following code at the bottom of the file without touching the document.

NameVirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80 DocumentRoot E:/xampp/htdocs/ # change this line with your htdocs folder ServerName localhost
Edit the line DocumentRoot with your own document root folder
For each domain you are to configure paste the following lines below, just replace my domain name your corresponding domain:



  DocumentRoot "E:\www\www.tildemark.com"
  ServerName www.tildemark.com
  ServerAlias www.tildemark.com

  CustomLog "E:\www\www.tildemark.com\www.tildemark.com-access_log" combined
  ErrorLog "E:\www\www.tildemark.com\www.tildemark.com-error_log"

  
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all

What is RSS?

2008-07-21T23:30:44Z

What is RSS?
RSS is a document format for reading frequently updated websites in the internet. Similar to other document format like the MS Word documents or the PDF documents, the RSS also needs an interpreter called the "RSS Reader" as the MS Word Application for your MS Word documents and acrobat reader for your PDF documents. Each RSS document is called a "feed" or commonly as RSS Feed. RSS feeds are seen with the icon having an orange background with arcs usually found on the side bar of a blog.

How can RSS feed help me?
RSS are designed to help us read frequently updated websites in just one neat and simple application called the "RSS Reader". I use these programs at home to read my favorite blogs or forum and at work to read the messages from my projects. With this, i do not need to go to each of the websites i often visit just to check for any update but instead the RSS Reader does this for me. RSS Readers really made my life more easier as RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication

How do i get RSS?
You will need an RSS Reader, there are lots of applications that enables you to read RSS documents. Personally, I use the Google Reader but you might prefer some other applications. Lets just use it because it the only reader use for now. If you have a Google account then you can use it to read RSS feeds from there. Just click on the "add subscription" link and paste in your RSS feed. Now on the blogs that you read look for the RSS Logo, copy and paste the URL to your favorite RSS Reader in my case its Google Reader. Some feeds are marked private meaning you will need a password before we could read the contents. Some readers accepts authentication, at the office is use Sharp Reader Software.

How do I know the link I got is RSS?
The RSS reader is written in plain text, if you will try to open an RSS document with a text editor, you can actually read it but you might have a little more time understanding because of the way its written. The format the RSS document is written is called XML. XML is like an older brother of the other common technical word called HTML. XML and HTML are not the topic here so lets just ignore them for now. You will know its RSS because every RSS feed has this somewhere at the beginning of the document: and it has an orange icon with a arcs in it. You can try using Tildemark Blogs RSS feed to use is as a sample or maybe subscribe to it.

Palit 7300GT Sonic is my new video card

2008-07-21T08:43:10Z

Its been months since I had my PC with a video card. I got my old GeForce 7300 GT removed and placed on a PC without a video card. I tried to tweak the PC and ended up messing its video capabilities. So, since my PC works without a card, I did a generous donation and give away my only graphics card. Now, imagine me with my PC without a video card. Finally, after 6 months, I was able to buy the Palit GeForce 7300 GT Sonic video card. It's actually an old card considering I was once using 7300 GT but I'm out of budget and I really need a video card. GeForce 7300 GT Sonic still is using Direct X 9c shader, so no Windows Vista games for me since Windows Vista is using the new Direct X 10, but I don't like Windows Vista yet so i guess its ok for now. Maybe next year I'll upgrade my OS then I'll upgrade my video card. Anyway, GeForce 7300 GT Sonic is the overclocked version of the GeForce 7300 GT Card its a bit faster with a core speed up to 500MHz and memory speed up to 1000MHz at 256MB. The GeForce 7300 GT Sonic comes equipped with DDR3 instead of the DDR2 from the 7300 GT version. All the speed I need to max out the graphics quality of the games I play right now. Not really bad for a $50 video card, I wish I had some more and I could have bought the GeForce 8 series video card.

I reinstalled the game Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars and started playing it the whole day. I wasn't able to finish playing the game before because of the video card experiment I did. So, this time I'm going to finish the game with maximum graphics quality. I'm now playing the Normal mode but after i finish this I'll start again with the hard mode. I just love the Mammoth Tank with its Rail Gun Upgrade its almost unstoppable in the battle field. With this tank, you only need about 3 or 4 to finish a mission. Its very powerful and its huge, just don't get hit by an EMP or they just be sitting ducks. I also like the dig skill for the Rifflemen but it costs 300 credits and the Shadow soldiers could easily kill them in one shot even if their rank is already star.

Every time I get to the mission briefing, I have noticed that GDI Lt. Kirce James is so familar to me. I tried replaying the mission briefing just to recall her. Then i realized she was Jennifer Morrison or Doctor Allison Cameron from the TV series House. Why didn't I noticed her before, I was really surprised to see her doing the mission briefing. Well, she didn't have that military look but I like her being a doctor.

prevent email spam be using an image email address

2008-07-18T04:28:02Z

I hate spam and its everywhere, in the forums, in my comments, emails, and even in blog posts. Email spam is so hard to stop if you don't have a good spam blocker. Once your in, there's no going back. I don't recommend you clicking on the link that says 'click here to unsubscribe' because it only confirms that the email address you are using is indeed active which results to more spam.

The most efficient way to battle spam is to avoid them. Don't got to p0rn site, sites that offer pirated software or any illegal stuff. another way is to change your email link into an image. In that way automated programs that harvests email address may not be able to pick it up. A web site that provides an image for your email address called email icon generator might be useful for you. See some samples below

writing accessibility CSS code for the color blind

2008-07-14T01:58:21Z

Not being able to see the differences between colors is a bit trouble some. Imagine yourself looking at the traffic light and not seeing and red color. These people will see yellowish brown color instead of the red color. Red-green color blind is also called Protanopia, people that are less sensitive to red light and Deuteranopia for people who are less sensitive to the green light. Some study determined that about 10% of the male population are color blind. I am happy I do not belong to those 10%.

That is why link urls should stay underlined to help people with color blindness see it immediately. since we are not able to adjust CSS being used on the website we browse, we will just instead use our own CSS page by specifying it on our browser. if you are color blind, this page will help you a lot. If you are not color blind, i don't recommend you using it because it would be weird.

First lets create our own CSS file and specify it via our browser settings later.


* {
  color: #000 !important;
  background: #fff !important;
}

a {
  text-decoration: underline !important;
  color: #fff !important;
  background: #000 !important;
}

the !important specifier must be present on your CSS codes to tell the browser its important and must override the other CSS codes.

Using Internet Explorer navigate to

Tools -> Internet Options
Click on the Accessibility button
Place a check on the 'Format documents using my style sheet' option
Browse to the location where you saved your CSS file above.
then click OK

If you are using Firefox go to your profile folder and edit your userCrome.css file of your userContent.css file. just copy-paste the CSS code above to the bottom portion of the file.

Keyword competition tool called Stomper Ranker

2008-06-30T05:03:55Z

Stompernet just released a firefox extension that displays the rank of a site on the top 3 search engines namely, Google, Yahoo and Live. I'm a fan of the StomperNet videos myself and i believe this tool is a good addition to most seo professionals. Stomper Ranker tool allows you to easily see your competitors in ranks in a graphical view based on the search keyword we use. The green represents Google, Red is Yahoo and Blue is Live. Just hover your mouse pointer to each dot to see which site is currently performing well on the ranks. The line denotes the same site url.

You may download the Stomper Ranker extension at the StomperNet site.

Raining ang running without shoes

2008-06-18T08:36:31Z

Its rainy season here and it rains everyday. Downtown is flooded, i guess Davao needs a better sewer system. Yesterday, i wasn't able to go to the office on time due to the flood.

Anyway, i was in the office when the rain came. it was hard and noisy so took a glance unto the office window to see if its starting to flood.

Across the building i noticed 2 female high school students at Ateneo de Davao removing their shoes (still on uniforms). Then suddenly, they ran into the rain towards a nearby shelter. At first, i thought, they were just happy it rained and they try to take bath. But they were still carrying their shoes?

How come you are more concerned about your shoes than what could possibly happen to your feet? Getting hit by something sharp or maybe something dull with tetanus is much more costly compared to a wet shoe. I really doubt if those girls only have 1 pair of shoe considering they are enrolled in an expensive school. In the end, i closed the windows and said to myself, "those girls are just plain dumb".

Go Zip Line at Eden Nature Park in Davao

2008-06-12T01:36:56Z

Sky Rider! That's what they call it.

When i first tried it, i must admit it's kinda scary. I mean, you can see tall pine trees below you and all the people as tiny as ants as you make your way across. If you'll try to shout, you will find yourself running out of voice for the distance between the two towers is i think equivalent to 200 meters long.

The Sky Rider! zip line is situated outside the Eden Nature Park opposite of the main gate just beside the soccer field. It has two 60 foot tower facing each other with two suspension cables mounted on the top of each tower going to the other.

Each ride costs PhP150, that is a ride from one tower to the other and back. Each ride is an approximately 20 seconds of heart pounding and a breath taking adventure. For safety reasons, you will be equipped with a helmet and a set of body straps that is then attached to the cable. As you make your way down going to the other side of the tower, you will hear the rolling and the ripping sound of the cable as you move along the line.

For a more enjoyable ride, try not to close your eyes. If you can stretch your arms wide, then do it. Just try not to touch the cables.

Removing google public service ads on adsense

2008-05-01T01:22:01Z

You usually get this when you first added your adsense codes to your site. Its alright to get this during this time as adsense wasn't able to get a cache of your keywords yet. It may take some time to get revenue generating ads on your site specially if your content has less meaningful keywords in it. According to the google help center, it would take approximately 48 hours to remove the Gulf Hurricane Relief ad on your site. If its been there for weeks then your copy might have some problems in it.

Editing robots.txt
There are several ways to remove the PSA from appearing on your site, but the most efficient way is to change your content. First things first, your robots.txt might have been configured to disallow adsense crawlers from visiting your site. If you are able to edit your robots.txt file, you may add the following code below:

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
Disallow:

Avoid iFrames or Frames
If you have placed your adsense code in an iFrame then the crawler will have no way of getting relevant keywords thus displaying in the Public Service Ads. Google crawlers will have a hard time figuring out which content to get for the ads inside frames so its best not to place your ads in a separate frame or simply avoid using frames on your site just to be safe.

Choose your content wisely
Content is the most important factor in determining the adsense ads that is displayed on your website. the more content you the greater chances of getting a relevant ad. Make sure you have enough content for the crawler to read. Also, the google crawler can't read images, audio files, flash content, java applets or anything except plain text. If you have a small amount of content and you have set your ads to display only images then this might be the reason for displaying only PSA ads. Try changing your adsense codes to display text and images ads.

Negative Keywords
Avoid negative keywords, this includes anything that is related to d%ath, sickness, p%rnography, dr%gs, etc. At anytime avoid mentioning these words on all of your content, but opps there you go i have just listed them here anyway.

Avoid automatic refresh
If yous page contains the HTML auto refresh code, it might also be the reason why your site is displaying public service ads. Remove the meta refresh code from your page and observe if the PSA ads have been removed. The meta refresh code looks like this one below, remove them:

Adsense ad in a login page
Placing ads on a page that requires user access does not allow the google crawler to visit the page to get the relevant keywords therefore displaying public service ads instead. Avoid placing adsense code behind a login page.

Avoid Session Ids on URLs
Adsense also relies heavily on the URL to display relevant ads. Having a session id on the url confuses the crawler to ad a relevant keyword because your URL keeps on changing. You may use the input type hidden HTML attribute instead of placing the session id in the urls

Unsupported localization
If you site is displaying other language aside from English then this might be the reason why its displaying public service ads. Here's a list of country currently supported by adsense.
Arabic
Bulgarian
Chinese (simplified)
Chinese (traditional)
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English
Finnish
French
German
Greek
Hebrew
Hungarian
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Serbian
Slovak
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish

Formating messages in Basecamp using textile

2008-04-29T00:55:13Z

Basecamp is using textile to format and display its messages. The following is a list of codes used to modify the look of your messages inside basecamp.

You can format the messages in basecamp using the following codes below:

Paragraph Codes
The following codes are commonly used in composing paragraphs in basecamp, adding in the following codes helps you convey the message you wish to tell and makes it easier to read and understand the context.

Header: hn.
h1. Header 1 is equivalent to Header 1

Blockquote: bq.
bq. A block quotation. is equivalent to bq. A block quotation.

Footnote: fn1.
fn1. Footnote text. is equivalent to ¹ Footnote text.

Example:
This text has a footnote below[1].
fn1. This is the footnote of the text above.

Text Alignments
p<. align left
p>. align right
p=. centered
p<>. justified
p(., p((. left indent 1em, 2em, etc.
p). right indent 1em

Example:
p=. This text is centered is equivalent to This text is centered

Phrase Codes
These codes below allows us to importance to a portion of our text in basecamp and adding some emphasis to it. We can use either the emphasis or the boldface HTML code when adding some importance to the message we have written. Other HTML code can also be used.

Emphasis
Prepend and append underscores to the text you wish to be emphasized.
_text on emphasis_ is equivalent to text on emphasis

To make italics text we use double underscores
__text on italics__ is equivalent to text on italics

Strong emphasis
Use asterisk to make text appear with strong emphasis
*text on strong emphasis* is equivalent to text on strong emphasis

And, use double asterisk to make them apear as boldface
**text on boldface** is equivalent to text on boldface

Citations
Enclose citation text with double question marks
??cited text?? is equivalent to cited text

Mark as deleted
Also called overstrike. Useful in editing copy with multiple versions.
-text to be deleted- is equivalent to ~~text to be deleted~~

Mark as inserted
Used mutually with the overstrike tag. Marks the text as newly inserted text.
+inserted text+ is equivalent to inserted text

Span
Allows us to customize out text based on color or formating using the CSS standard code. Use the percent symbol to start a span tag.
%{color:red}text in red color% is equivalent to text in red color

Lists
Precede each line with pound sign to make an ordered list like this:

# line 1
# line 2
# line 3

Which becomes,

1 line 1

2 line 2

3 line 3

To make a bulleted list, use the asterisk instead like this:

* line 1
* line 2
* line 3

Which becomes,

1 line 1

2 line 2

3 line 3

To add a nested list or increase the list indention we add another asterisk link this:

* line 1
** line 1.1
** line 1.2
* line 2
* line 3

Which becomes

line 1

line 1.1

line 1.2

line 2

line 3

Creating Tables
Use the pipe symbol to make tables

|This|is|a|table|
|with|two|rows|inside|

is equivalent to

Inserting Links
Inserting hyperlinks in basecamp is similar to inserting text in wikipedia, just enclose the anchor text with double quotation marks followed by a colon and the url
"Tildemark blogs":http://www.tildemark.com is equivalent to Inserting Images
Use the exclamation symbol to insert an image into basecamp.
!http://www.basecamphq.com/images/basecamplogo-small.png! is equivalent to

Image Links
To make the image clickable we add the link code adding in a colon and the corresponding link.
!http://www.basecamphq.com/images/basecamplogo-small.png!:"http://www.basecamphq.com" is equivalent to

Superscripts
Use caret symbol to make superscripts
e = m * c ^2^ is equivalent to e = m * c ²

Subscripts
Use the tildemark to make subscripts
log ~b~ (x) = y is equivalent to log _b (x) = y

Source Codes
To add source code listing we use the @ symbol
@print "hello world";@ is equivalent to print "hello world";
More examples with textile code for basecamp here.

This is a table
with two rows inside