geek stories and photography misadventures
Technology rocks!
Change of Hearts – Transfer Serendipity to Wordpress
Mar 31st
Yes, it was a hard decision. But its for the best.
Bye serendipity… Hello Wordpress!
Lot of issues for the change, but it just actually because of the limited plugins/widgets serendipity was offering.
Anyway good thing i found this blog to export my blog entries from serendipity to wordpress
First the idea.
1.WordPress (wp) do not have a Serendipity (s9y) import. It does have a RSS2.0 import
2.Serendipity has an full RSS feed export
So it looks like it is a simple export RSS in s9y and import RSS in wp. If only thing is so easy.
The problems:
1.Although s9y says “Export full RSS feed”, it actually export the first part of a 2 parts post.
2.s9y encode html tags < as & lt; and > as & gt;
wp however expect them to be un-encode and enclosed with CDATA[' ']
3.Time out well importing too big a rss file.
The solution:
1.Fix the full export
In the file rss.php (in the root folder), find this line serendipity_printEntries_rss($entries, $version, $comments, $metadata['fullFeed'], $metadata['showMail']);before the line add$metadata['fullFeed'] = true;Go into Serendipity admin and click on Export entries.
Save the xml file
2.Fix the encoding
Open the xml file in a text editor (Try NotePad2)
Do a search and replace
& lt; with < & gt; with >
3.Fix the time out
At the top of wp-admin/admin.php
add set_time_limit(0);
Fix AVG: Invalid Update Control CTF File
Nov 12th
Pesky error from AVG while updating says "Invalid Update Control CTF file"
Follow the instructions:
There are 2 files that can be deleted as AVG will recreate them. If they become corrupted you will have to remove them manually.
In Windows XP, go to:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Avg8\update\download
and delete
avginfoavi.ctf and avginfowin.ctf
In Windows Vista, go to:
C:\ProgramData\avg8\update\download
and delete these 2 same files.
Thanks to: http://thortweak.blogspot.com/2008/10/avg-update-control-ctf-file-fix.html
follow me, i will twit*
Sep 12th
I have seen and heard twitter a couple of times and i have absolutely no idea what it does. Well for most internet geeks, it sure is a helpful way to know what people are doing without the need to ask. Twitter is another smart way of communicating thoughts, best of all you dont need to write a whole entry like right know I'm doing on my blog, for it has a maximum of 140 characters per twit. Now i have added a nice plugin at the right frame so my fans (if there are anyone else) can know what i do.
You can follow other's twit making it more interactive. So hope you guys twit 
XSPF Web Music Player
Aug 15th
It's a nice flash mp3 player developed by Fabricio Zuardi , thanks to him we can use his opensource code and use it on our sites. You can find the sample of this on the right frame of my site, with some of the songs i've been listening to this week very intently and singing silently and with some hand movements (specially Viva La Vida by Coldplay) whenever and wherever it's playing.
It uses xspf or a "spiff file", an xml shareable playlist format. You can learn more here:
You can learn more on this web MP3 player from his site at sourceforge:
Yahoo Messenger! Power User
Aug 10th
I have been invited by Yahoo to be a power user! YaY! Yahoo is rewarding account users who has been using Yahoo! and Yahoo Messenger! for quite a while and who has been using it frequently and has huge amount of contacts on their accounts, which fortunately i am. Anyway, being a power user has privileges. Remember the old IRChatting days were you get a + or an @ sign (OP) meaning your an operator or a valued member, well it's basically like that you get a trophy or a crown or something beside your name on the contacts list so your friends will see. You get some new avatar stuff exclusively for power users. And best of all is that you get Tech support from Yahoo for free.
If you want to be one plus you want to know the other benefits of being a power user, please check this link: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/messenger/messenger9/pwrusr/pwrusr-01.html
Also they give you this nifty script on my right side plugins wherein you have an online status display whether i am online or not on Yahoo Messenger. Coolness.
Cheers!
Safari browser on Windows
Aug 5th
I don't know when did this happen, but it happened. Apple's Safari internet browser is now available on PC! Nothing really to be excited about since a browser is still a browser nothing really nifty with it but this is good for web designers and developers out there that are always checking browser compatibility. Now you don't have to buy a mac or share with someone using a mac just to see what your design, your DHTML animation or your AJAX would look on a Safari. You can download it here: http://www.apple.com/safari/download/ Cheers!
