Category Archives: computer

computer related stuff.

Cambio Pagina Inicial

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Ya que ultimamente mi blog ha estado practicamente sin actividad debido a que dedico la mayoria de mi tiempo libre a un “pet project” con el que estoy teniendo algo de diversion voy a cambiar a partir de hoy la pagina inicial al “lifestream” donde esta mi feed de twitter y algunas otras cosas de lo que estoy haciendo.

El proyecto en el que trabajo es relacionado con el ciclismo, buddypress se llama http://mibici.mx y es acerca de tratar de formar una comunidad al rededor del bello deporte del ciclismo y jugar con algo de datos de GPS que ultimamente me he involucrado, he aprendido bastante de JavaScript y a usar algunas de las apis de mapas de google.

Ciclismo – Semana 27

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Este fin de semana por un problema de comunicacion no pudimos ir a rodar el sabado, y para no faltar el domingo fuimos de nuevo a recorrer la mosca y la glorieta en la primavera, el bosque esta en uno de los momentos mas bonitos desde que comence a visitarlo en bicicleta, las lluvias han sido generosas y los colores verdes se asoman asi como los nuevos retoños.

20090705_082954

Aprovechando, dejo una fotografia que tome el dia de hoy en un bonito atardecer con algunas nubes interesantes, la imagen fue tratada en gimp para el procesamiento.

Atardecer en B/N

Atardecer en B/N

New Agregado Theme

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I’m really exited with the new agregado theme provided by Smashingmagazine and just changed my theme, I’ve detected and corrected a couple of issues:

1. There’s a typo in the audioscrobber feed:

On the functions.php line 499 says:
$simple_url .= ‘/recentracks.rss’;
And should be:
$simple_url .= ‘/recenttracks.rss’;

2. I saw my flickr pictures being resized and comment two lines (103 annd 104) in the query-carousel.css:

#mycarousel img {
padding:3px;
border:1px solid #4f383d;
margin:0 13px 7px 0;
/*
height:40px;
width:40px;
*/
display:block;
}

This display the correct size of the flickr images, please let me know your comments on this new theme.

User Centered Usability Design

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This week I’ve learned about usability design centered on the users’ perspective, here are my favorites quotes from the book I’m reading:

“include in the definition of ’users’ those who manage direct users, those who receive products from the system, those who test the system, those who make the purchase decision and those who use competitive products”.

“When we talk about identifying needs, therefore, it is not simply a question of asking people, ‘what do you need?’ and then supply it, because people doesn’t necessary know what is possible” … “Instead, we have to approach it by understanding the characteristics and capabilities of the users, what they are trying to achieve, how they achieve it currently, and whether they would achieve their goals more effectively and have a more enjoyable experience if they were supported differently”.

“it is always tempting for developers to create products they would want to use or similar to what they have done before”.

Pay attention to your users. :)

Zend Debugger + Eclipse + Apache

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I wanted to install the zend debugger with eclipse and apache, and found this spanish tutorial, and want to resume the steps I followed:

I assume you have already installed eclipse 3.3 + pdt.

1. Download the corresponding debugger from: http://downloads.zend.com/pdt/server-debugger/, I use amd64 so I got ZendDebugger-5.2.12-linux-glibc23-x86_64.tar.gz.

2. Untar the file in a directory in your home, I used /home/user/Bin/ZendDebugger.

3. Edit your php.ini file and add the following directives:
zend_extension=/home/<user>/Bin/ZendDebigger/5_2_x_comp/ZendDebugger.so
zend_debugger.allow_hosts=127.0.0.1
zend_debugger.expose_remotely=always

4. Verify that the extension is loaded with the simple function:
<?php phpinfo(); ?>

5. Restart eclipse and start debugging!
screenshot-eclipse.png

Site Revamped

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Today finished the first part of my site update, that consist on an upgrade of the original hemingway theme to support wordpress 2.3.3, and the new widget functionality, also added some slick mini icons; removed the old code for the legacy hemingway bar.

On the photo side installed the excellent NextGen Gallery plugin, and I’m in the process to update my pictures.

PHP MSSQL 2005 Problem – Solved

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Trying to make a connection to a MS SQL Server 2005 database from PHP, I always got an error message using the mssql_connect saying:

Warning: mssql_connect() [function.mssql-connect]: Unable to connect to server: {servername}.

I tried several solutions like, updating the ntwdblib.dll (on windows; I had the same error on linux) library, configuring the tcp/ip properties on sqlexpress but nothing I still having the same error.

At the end I changed the ip address on the server name by the respective server name and finally worked!.

So instead of:


$server = 192.168.50.1;
$user = 'sa';
$password = 'sapassword';
$conn = mssql_connect($server, $user, $password);

Changed for:

$server = cmanonserver;

Transfer DVD to iPod Classic

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After several attempts to transfer some of my concert dvds to my ipod, finally got them working, here is how:

I first update the ffmpeg packages from medibuntu, after this install dvd::rip package from multiverse, once I had dvd::rip opened a new project, and select the option to “Encode DVD on the fly” in order to save some space in my disc, here is an screenshot about the settings I used to encode:

dvd::rip encode options

Once I had the .avi file I execute the following command to convert the file to a .mov:

ffmpeg -i 24_1_001.avi -f mov -b 1800 -maxrate 2500 -vcodec xvid -qmin 3 -qmax 5 -s 640×360 -padtop 30 -padbottom 30 -acodec aac -ab 128 24_1_001.ipod.mov

The result is a good quality video to enjoy it in your ipod.

OpenSuse 10.3

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This post is not a review of openSuse 10.3.

I downloaded the DVD for my AMD64 bits computer and it is one of the most buggy installation I’ve tried in the Linux world, I were not able to install it on my computer, all the times I tried it always get stuck installing the grub package, I checked the media to know if there was a problem with it, but the installer told it was ok, I tried to repair the install once it was started and when I chose the repair option and click next, the computer just restarted.

I will stick to Ubuntu and will wait patient for the next (Gutsy) release.

Eclipse

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I’m trying to setup my development platform for PHP on Linux, I chose eclipse PDT, to complete this task with PDT version 1.0 need to download and install eclipse 3.3 RC1, to make it work per the module requirements, after a download of 250 mb approximately, it didn’t work.

I’m trying to install the old PHPEclipse plugin. Wish me good luck!

UPDATE: I just downloaded the old PHPEclipse plugin and it worked with the Eclipse 3.2.2 IDE.

UPDATE: I just noticed that for the new version of PDT tools you need to run Eclipse with Java 5 JDK.