NetNewsWire 3.1 is now free
I’m a big fan of NetNewsWire and love its synchronization ability with NewsGator Online. Imagine my suprise when I open up NNW today and come across NewsGator’s CTO Greg Reinacker’s post that all of NewsGator desktop clients are now free and will include synchronization
Thanks to the team at NewsGator for making this decision.
Off to check out FeedDemon on a Windows box
network logging via djb's multilog
Had this recipe stuck in an old email somewhere, hope this helps someone else
The attached run files are required for the server who captures logs and the client which will send the logging data request.
Server
#!/bin/sh export PATH=”/usr/local/bin:$PATH” setuidgid remoteloguser tcpserver ip-addr-of-server listen-port-on-server multilog ./log
Client
#!/bin/sh export PATH=”/usr/local/bin:$PATH” 4>&1 | tcpclient ipaddr-of-server listen-port-on-server 6<&0
How to get PHP5 with GD enabled with JPEG/PNG on x86-64
I was trying to figure out why on CentOS 5.0 box on x86-64, I was unable to get GD support in PHP 5.2 for libjpeg and libpng. Lots of googling and looking through the PHP bug list and I finally worked out the magic invocation so for posterity (ie search engine’s sake) here it is
On an x86-64 environment ensure that you have the following configure options
-with-jpeg-dir=/usr \
–with-png-dir=/usr \
–with-libdir=lib64
Amazing song by Kailash Kher – Teri Deewani
I recently heard Kailash Kher’s phenomenal track Teri Deewani rendered by Toshi Sabri on Star Voice of India. A very moving experience. I searched for the original track at the usual places. I recommend to all my readers that they listen to this track at least once
Lyrics of Teri Deewani
Preet ki lath mohe aaisi laagi
Ho gayi main matwaali
Bal bal jaaun apane piya ko
Ke main jaaun vaari vaari
Mohe sudh budh naa rahee tan mann ki
Yeh toh jaane duniya saari
Bebas aur laachar phiru main
Haari main dil haari
Haari main dil haariTere naam se jee loon
Tere naam se marr jaaun
Tere naam se jee loon
Tere naam se marr jaaun
Teri jaan ke sadke mein kuchh aaisa kar jaaun
Tune kya kar dala marr gayi main mitt gayi main
Ho ji ha ji ho gayi main
Teri deewani deewani
Teri deewani deewani
Tune kya kar dala marr gayi main mitt gayi main
Ho ji ha ji ho gayi main
Teri deewani deewani
Teri deewani deewaniIshq junoon jab hadh se badh jaaye
Ishq junoon jab hadh se badh jaaye
Hanste hanste aashiq suli chadh jaaye
Ishq ka jaadu sar chadhkar bole
Ishq ka jaadu sar chadhkar bole
Khoob laga lo pehre raste rab khole
Yahi ishq di marzi hain
Yahi rab di marzi hain
Yahi ishq di marzi hain
Yahi rab di marzi hain
Tere bin jeena kaisa
Aagush kar di hai
Tune kya kar dala marr gayi main mitt gayi main
Ho ji ha ji ho gayi main
Teri deewani deewani
Teri deewani deewani
Teri deewani deewani
Teri deewani deewaniE main rang rangili deewani
E main rang rangili deewani
E main albeli main mastani
Gaaun bajaaun sabko rijhaaun
E main diru taraph se begaani
Ee main deewani main deewani
Tere naam se jee loon tere naam se marr jaaun
Tere jaan ke sadle mein kuchh aaisa kar jaaun
Tune kya kar dala marr gayi main mitt gayi main
Ho ji ha ji ho gayi main
Teri deewani deewani
Teri deewani deewani
Teri deewani deewani
Teri deewani deewani…
Joi Ito, Are you responsible for the HK World of Warcraft theme ?
Uber blogger and serial entrepreneur Joi Ito recently announced that he has joined the board of Sanrio Digital. Joi had visited our offices a few months ago and at my request talked about his World of Warcraft guild where he spent a lot of time along with many other CEO’s
The question for Joi is, Are you responsible for this Hello Kitty World of Warcraft theme 
Jeremiah Owyang interviews me
Jeremiah Owyang of Forrestor Research very kindly posted an interview with me on his blog a few days ago.
Jeremiah was very kind to mention on his twitter feed that he enjoyed meeting me and considers me as a ‘web strategist’.
Jeremiah, Thank you for the encouragement. I hope I can live up to it. I’d like to thank my colleagues at Outblaze for their support and the interesting discussions we have
I made a comment in that video that I considered ‘Facebook as a fad’ and there were some rejoinders to it with commentators disagreeing with me.
I’d like to respond by making a few points
- The interview was late in the afternoon and I was really hungry and thirsty , Jeremiah was visiting us during Ramadaan
- Somebody much smarter and with a killer throwing arm has also said the same thing
- Said person also dipped into the companys piggy bank to hedge his statement
What I was trying to mention to Jeremiah that based on my observations, I felt that Facebook was a fad at present “within the Hong Kong Internet userbase”. Maybe it can sustain itself but its still early days.
Hong Kong like any other place people has its fads including collective obsessive behavior!. Ask anybody if the recollect the ‘Snoppy mania of 1998′.
As the above article states
Fads are nothing new in Hong Kong, where the crowded living conditions and a gregarious population make it a hothouse for all sorts of trends.
About the 150% mobile phone penetration rate, I apologize. The latest published numbers (July 2007) from OFTA who is Hong Kong’s regulator says its 139.8%. Maybe its 145+% today but 150% gets your attention better than 145%
Some interesting Leopard links
- Apple has made major changes to iCal in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, introducing integration with its own new WebDAV-based iCal Server included in Leopard Server. Here’s a comprehensive history of software-based calendar applications and a look at what’s new in iCal 3.0.
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Apple OS X Leopard: A beautiful upgrade
Finally, a PC Unix that everyone can love. OS X Leopard is a triumph of customer-focused engineering
Spending time with Jeremiah Owyang
The last few days have been a blur organising the HK Web Community bloggers event at Prive.
From various accounts, it was a very good turnout. Jeremiah Owyang who is going to start a new career with Forrester Research as social computing senior analyst, was very gracious with his time and tried to absorb a lot of what is happening in the Hong Kong web community by meeting as many people as he could
A small sampling of the photographs taken during the event
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Afterwards we headed for dinner which involved having some authentic Szechuan cuisine. Rebbecca MacKinnon, a Professor at HKU , citizen journalist, former CNN reporter ate with great gusto whilst a few of us struggled with the lip and tounge numbing food.
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Backing up my data to Amazon S3
My current backup strategy is a hodge bodge mechanism of burning files to DVD, rsyncing files to shell accounts which I have at Dreamhost.com and cross copying files across various machines.
Recently, I decided to simplify all of this by storing data on Amazon S3 and use JungleDisk as the tool to do so.
I didn’t spend a lot of time working out if it would be financially better to run my own backup server versus relying on Amazon S3 inspite of them not offering any SLA so far. I figured that if Amazon ever decides to shutdown S3, there are quite a few people who might be inconvenienced.
Posting this via MarsEdit 2.0. Daniel Jalkut had a great upgrade price and I just jumped on it. A few hours after I purchased, I got a note from him mentioning there might be a problem with the serial number generated for me and asking if there were any issues. There were none.
Experiencing AppleCare
Recently I started having some issues with my 20″ Core 2 Duo iMac. First, my mighty mouse would only scroll up but not scroll down. I cleaned it as best as I could looking up various pages on the Internet which went into considerable details on what one could do to extract dirt without opening up the mouse (it seems impossible to me)
Having failed to coax the mouse to scroll in both directions, I just replaced with a cheap Genius mouse. Borks the white look but hey I can work.
A few days earlier, I couldn’t use my audio line-in port. I’m a heavy user of Skype and nobody could hear me. I switched multiple headsets but nothing would work. The internal microphone worked but it picked up a lot of ambient noise.
So I called into AppleCare, I called a local Hong Kong number and from the accent of the person answering it would seem that it was answered in Singapore. I was quickly registered into Applecare and described both the above problems. I then asked for on-site service and was told that Apple Hong Kong would call me and it would probably be scheduled in a couple of days.
A few hours later, Apple HK called and said they could come an hour later to my house. I was at work at that time and told them to come in the morning the next day. Score one for an uber fast response.
Next day, a technician turns up and pokes around. He determines that he has to replace both the logic board and the mouse. Both of which strangely have to ship out from Singapore even though they are made in China. The technician said he would come again next week.
Overall, very pleased with the experience.
