Pages of INK

For various work and e-banking website compatibility reasons, I moved off Firefox about a year ago and have been using IE extensively ever since. Lately though, because of weird Facebook behaviour in IE (e.g. constantly flickering comment box anyone?), I decided to revisit an old friend and downloaded Firefox 11. The most immediately annoying thing that struck me was how Firefox decided to incorporate Ask.com as it’s default keyword search engine!

Defaut keyword search – typing search terms directly into the browser address bar rather than in the search bar. In fact, IE9 has done away with a separate search bar entirely.

In order to change the keyword search from Ask.com back to Google, this is what you need to do:
1) In the address bar, type about:config. You might get a weird warning but it is ok to proceed.
2) Search for the keyword.URL config string and change the value to http://www.google.com/search?q=
3) Done!

Being a part time photographer, it was only a matter of time when I would run out of storage space again thanks to the massive number of RAW files in my archive. So, over the weekend, I made an attempt to replace the four Western Digital 2TB Green drives (WDC WD20EARS-00S8B1 80.0) in my TS-459 Pro with four Hitachi 3TB drives (Hitachi HDS723030ALA640 MKAO). The drives were running in RAID-5 configuration meaning that I would end up with 9TB of usable space, up from 6TB.

Strangely though, after swapping a WD drive for the Hitachi one (after selecting the Expand Capacity option and clicking the Change button on one of the drives), my NAS would not recognize the 3TB drive and kept prompting me to “insert a disk”. Luckily, there is a solution thanks to this post on the QNAP forums.

For me, I didn’t have to run the Hitachi GPT Disk Manager at all. These are the steps that worked for me. Note that I’m running Windows 7 64-bit with all the latest patches.

1. Plug Hitachi 3TB drive into an external drive bay connected to my main PC via eSATA. Note: I’m sure this would work too if you connected the drive via internal SATA.
2. Go to the Disk Management tool.
3. Upon loading, a pop-up will appear prompting you to initialize the disk. Choose the GPT (GUID Partition Table) option.



4. Once done, create a New Simple Volume on the drive and do a quick NTFS format as part of the process.
5. After formatting, you can plug the 3TB HDD into the NAS. Wait for a few seconds and it will be recognised and the RAID array would start rebuilding.

I hope this post helps whoever is upgrading the drives in their NAS too.

As an aside, I happen to be one of the lucky ones who never had problems with the WD Green drives in my QNAP at all.

Update 27 Sep 2011: Ok, it looks like the above only worked with Bays 2, 3 and 4. Bay 1 just refuses to detect my 3TB drive no matter what. I have contacted QNAP via their online support form so let’s see how long they take to reply and what they say. Not feeling very optimistic now…

Update 29 Sep 2011: I totally take back what I said during my earlier update. The very next day after filling out the support form, a QNAP engineer contacted me and offered to remote desktop into my PC to troubleshoot the problem. So that’s what we did today morning using tools like TeamViewer (for remote desktop) and PuTTY (for SSH into the NAS). After running a number of commands, swapping in and out the 3TB drive, reboots, he finally managed to resolve the issue (some corruption with the partition table). The NAS has spent the whole day rebuilding the RAID, and subsequently extending the total space from 6TB to 9TB which took around 10 hours in total. Double thumbs up to the QNAP folks for their excellent level of service, technical knowledge (it’s a BIG difference getting an engineer to look into your issue vs some customer service rep over the phone who knows ziltch about the internals of their products) and quick turnaround. I know which brand I’m sticking to when I need to upgrade my NAS!

After many headaches with Brinkster over the years, I finally decided to migrate my blog to Bluehost and domain hosting to Go Daddy today. What disappointed me was the outdated version of PHP used which meant that I couldn’t upgrade to WordPress 3.2.1 and MySQL which prevented me from using MySQL Workbench. The migration took a couple of hours, involving the transfer of my domain name and blog content, themes, plug-ins and settings. So far so good and I’ll be monitoring if Bluehost is an improvement over Brinkster during the next couple of days.

One thing that I’ll miss about Brinkster though is their excellent 24×7 online chat support. Their operators are usually very responsive and helpful but often times held back by poor infrastructure. Let’s hope that I’ll not need to contact support so often at Bluehost.

Recently, I started noticing this problem when trying to sync applications from my PC (Windows 7) to my iPhone4 and iPad2 via iTunes. At the end of the sync, the following errors will appear.

Turns out that Zone Alarm doesn’t play nice with iTunes. I suspect there must be something preventing iTunes from connecting with the App Store to verify licences thus causing that application upload to fail. Here’s a discussion thread with more information.

There may be a Fix in the Next FREE version of Zone Alarm..
No ETA of when the Next version will be available other than some time in 2011..

Not holding my breath though.

It’s been awhile since my last blog update adventure and while I was expecting a smooth upgrade from version 2.2.2 to 2.5, things turned out quite differently. It’s also worth noting that I was on Brinkster’s Windows Pro hosting plan which means IIS and PHP 5.2.3.

Part 1

The first sign of something broken were the few lines of cryptic error messages appearing at the top and bottom of the upgrade.php page.

"Undefined index: PATH_INFO" in wp-settings.php

The simple fix was to comment out the lines of code in wp-settings.php (lines 71-74 if I remember correctly) that tried accessing the PATH_INFO server variable.

Now after proceeding to upgrade the database, which was successful, more cryptic error messages appeared at the top and bottom of the page:

Undefined index: REQUEST_URI in wp-settings.php

After much Googling, it finally dawned on me that Brinkster might not actually be using the PATH_INFO server variable that is used to populate the REQUEST_URI server variable. Instead, they were using ORIG_PATH_INFO, so the simple fix this time was to apply the following code over lines 71-74 of the wp-settings.php file.

I’ve also posted a solution here, which would be helpful if you want to follow a discussion on the issue and check out solutions for non-Brinkster related hosts.

Part 2

Ok, so now it seemed like everything was up and running smoothly and I was about to bask in the satisfaction of another successful, albeit long overdue, upgrade. Clicked on a link to a post, and I was hit with a 404 error. What? Clicked on some other posts, 404. My pages, 404. Categories, 404. Calendar, 404. Not only were all my permalinks were broken, everything else was too! Except, of course, the link to the Site Admin page which didn’t require any special URL rewrites.

After mucking around with permalinks and more Googling for a good 2 hours plus, it finally dawned on me that only the default yucky http://www.pagesofink.com/?p=123 style links would work. Not good, considering a lot of links to other posts in my blog and from other blogs use the http://www.pagesofink.com/index.php/archies/post-name format. No other code hacks like this one here worked and I was getting desperate to the point of considering other hosting providers like Dreamhost.

In a final last-chance attempt, I contacted Brinkster Live Support to ask if I could have my subscription migrated to an equivalent Linux package. Surprise surprise, they were very obliging and had it all done within the hour. Now, I’ve been using Brinkster for a long time now, and if there’s anything good about them, it’s their Live Support. Live Support is cool because you get to chat real-time with an operator online and they are usually very helpful and responsive. As much as I complain about Brinkster, I must admit their Live Support have pulled me out of a couple of jams in the past. Plus, it sure beats e-mail as you never know when the next response is coming.

Part 3

Now that I’m on Linux and having been given the assurances that the Linux Apache webserver comes with the necessary mod_rewrite plugin for pretty permalinks to work properly, I was full of anticipation that I would be out of the woods soon enough.

So I give my .htaccess file proper write rights using the chmod (777) command in my FTP client and browsed to the permalinks settings page (wp-admin/options-permalink.php) hoping to put my permalink misery out for good, when all of a sudden I’m faced with 500 errors. Everywhere. Even the Site Admin pages.

Argh

Now, sparing the painful details of how I narrowed this down, it appears that Brinkster does not like you to play around with the .htaccess file. Period. Contrary to what WordPress tells you, do not go and manually put the following settings into the file:

# BEGIN WordPress
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</ifmodule>
# END WordPress

The Brinkster default .htaccess file looks like this:

# -FrontPage-

#IndexIgnore .htaccess */.??* *~ *# */HEADER* */README* */_vti*

<limit GET POST>
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from all
</limit>
<limit PUT DELETE>
order deny,allow
deny from all
</limit>
AuthName inkyneil.brinkster.net
AuthUserFile /sites/blah/inkyneil/home/public_html/_vti_pvt/blah.pwd
AuthGroupFile /sites/blah/inkyneil/home/public_html/_vti_pvt/blah.grp

You simply need to change it to:

# -FrontPage-

#IndexIgnore .htaccess */.??* *~ *# */HEADER* */README* */_vti*

<limit GET POST>
order deny,allow
#deny from all
allow from all
</limit>
<limit PUT DELETE>
order deny,allow
#deny from all
allow from all
</limit>
AuthName inkyneil.brinkster.net
AuthUserFile /sites/blah/inkyneil/home/public_html/_vti_pvt/blah.pwd
AuthGroupFile /sites/blah/inkyneil/home/public_html/_vti_pvt/blah.grp

So, it’s one last trip back to the permalink admin page to update the permalink structure. Lo-and-behold, everything finally works and is back to normal.

Seriously, that was way too much work just to upgrade Wordlress. Now, to get email working (Brinkster has got certain restrictions with phpmailer), upgrade my plug-ins, find a new theme, and I’m all set!

It has been an agonizing wait – since June this year – for Nikon to release a new DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) camera body. Merv was kind enough to let me borrow his Nikon D80 on and off over the past few months (a fantastic camera no less!) but I figured it was time to get my own as he has more and more shooting assignments to do for church nowadays.

When the Nikon D300 was announced back in August, I can still remember how I rushed down to my regular camera shop – John 3:16 @ Funan – after work to place a pre-order. It seemed silly at the time, almost kiasu even, but in retrospect I’m glad I did.

The Nikon D300 finally arrived in stores island wide yesterday, and of the measly two boxes that arrived at the shop, I turned out to be 2nd on the waiting list! Samuel, the guy who tends to the shop, even told me that many people tried to cut the queue by offering more money, but God bless that man, he stands firm on his beliefs and ethics! He also shared how one rich banker tried to cut the queue but when turned down, told him he was impressed by his attitude and placed a huge deposit for a camera from the next batch. This episode reminded me on the importance of how being a good testimony can bring about blessings because people are always constantly looking at how Christians behave under temptation.

Can’t wait to take this baby out for a spin, on the real baby!

Anyway, new toy or not, I’m still going to continue documenting Ashley’s adventures like I always have. Nothing inspired me more than this quote from Australian photographer Suzette Nesire a in book by Bill Hurter titled “Children’s Portrait Photography Handbook”:

“…As a photographer I feel there is nothing more important than capturing your little ones and their early years – their faces, their expressions, their little hands and their habits that constantly change. A portrait of your young child is a priceless reminder of a time that once passed and will never return again. Choose to make an investment in a portrait of your child, as pictures convey so much more than words can ever express.”

Oh yes, here’s a tip for the husbands out there, that great quote helped made it easier for me to get approval from the home accountant, aka wifey, but don’t tell anyone I said that! Hee hee.

Time to start shooting!

INK: Today is the one year anniversary of my computer and to celebrate the occasion, here’s is Tech Baby Ashley Rei who will give us a simple lesson on how to build a computer from a scratch!

ASHLEY: Before embarking on a computer building project, make sure that you buy all the necessary parts and equipment first. Not all parts are compatible with one another, so prior research is very important. In Singapore, the best places to shop for computer parts are in malls like Sim Lim Square and Funan – The IT Mall. Bargaining also works especially if you bring along a chio-bu like me to do the talking! (~_^)

INK: Nowadays, computer parts are also very cheap compared to a 5 years ago (the last time I built a computer which has now been inherited by wifey!) so building a very souped up system with a budget of between $1K to $2K is very feasible.

ASHLEY: Once everything is ready, start with the motherboard as this is where a lot of components will be plugged into. I don’t know why it’s called motherboard, but it sure is as sexy as mummy! (♥_♥)

INK: A often overlooked component is the computer case. Working with a computer case that has a slide-out motherboard tray makes the whole assembly process much easier, especially when you accidentally drop screws when mounting components.

ASHLEY: The next important component to mount is the CPU (Central Processing Unit) which is the brain of the computer. In the past, CPUs with higher megahertz (MHz) numbers signified faster units, but with modern CPUs on the market today this no longer holds true. The trend nowadays is for smaller CPUs that consume less power but are still as efficient when it comes to crunching numbers. Like they say, good things come in small sizes! (^-^)V

INK: I couldn’t agree more! (Then turns to wifey and says he wants another one)

ZHIYI: …

ASHLEY: Once the CPU has been unpacked, gently drop it into the motherboard CPU socket and fasten the lever to secure it. This process is very delicate because if any legs or pins on the CPU gets bent, the whole chip is rendered useless. Similarly, if you’re building a computer in a carpeted room, ensure that you’ve discharged yourself by touching a conductor that is grounded (e.g. a tap) as static electricity can easily fry a CPU. All in all, these little babies must be handled with care! (OωO;)

INK: Not only that, CPUs can get very very hot so a cooling fan is a must! Without one, a CPU will easily overheat in under half a minute. As a matter of interest, some CPUs are rated to be able to go up to 90°C before fizzing out. Yikes, that’s hot enough to cook eggs!

ZHIYI: A very good reason not to use laptop computers on your lap for extended periods!

ASHLEY: Thank God I’m alive… (￣～￣;)

ASHLEY: Next up, the RAM (Random Access Memory). RAM is very important as it helps the computer remember things when it is powered up. Daddy also likes to say that I have a lot of RAM because I remember new words very well! ｢(ﾟﾍﾟ)

INK: Where possible, also install RAM in pairs as it allows the computer to remember things much faster. A bit like how having two hands helps you type faster. Of course, having 4 sticks of RAM is the best, but I’m having trouble learning how to type with my feet…

ASHLEY: What good is having a powerful computer if you’re not able to see any eye candy? That’s where a graphics card comes in. This baby is responsible for ensuring that pictures and text appear beautifully on the computer monitor. Especially pictures of meeeeeeeee! （*´▽｀*）

ASHLEY: Whereas RAM helps the computer remember things when it is on, a HDD (Hard Disk Drive) helps it remember things when it is off. HDD drives today are humongous (just like my appetite) where terabyte-sized drives can easily store hundreds of thousands of pictures. (o_O)

INK: HDDs also get very hot as they spin at speeds of up to 7200 rpm (rotations per minute) so best to secure them near a casing fan! Sidenote: It’s amazing how many components in a computer can cook eggs…

ASHLEY: DVD drives or writers are another essential component for without one, I wouldn’t be able to watch my Hello Kitty cartoons on the computer. Other times, it makes a great milk bottle holder! ヘ(^_^ヘ)

INK: (Wondering why his DVDs are so sticky…)

ASHLEY: Last but not least, all these gizmos need juice to run! In charge of delivering that energy is the PSU (power supply unit), an unassuming box with a fan and lots of wires sticking out of it. Make no mistake, this baby can easily deliver over 500W of electricity, enough shock to make you go afro for a year!
∑(O_O；)

INK: Newer PSUs allow you to disconnect the wires you are not using, thereby minimizing wire clutter. This also improves air flow inside the casing and helps to keep all components nice and cool. Remember to keep all loose wires away from babies, especially if they are teething!

ASHLEY: That’s it! The computer is now complete and ready for a test run. What remains is to connect other peripherals like the monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers. Nothing beats the thrill of seeing a new computer start up for the first time! p(^^)q

ASHLEY: Well, all good things must come to an end, and I hope you enjoyed our little adventure in electronics. The next time you happen to walk past a computer shop, stop to think of all the poor deprived babies out there who have yet to own a computer. It’s not too late to put a smile on a loved one this coming Christmas! (ノ^_^)ノ

Credits:
Starring: Ashley at 10 months old and 17 months old.
Camera Equipment: Merv.
Emoticons: Here, here and here.

Lately, my blog has been acting up and returning the following cryptic error message whenever links to post comments and categories are clicked.

CGI Error The specified CGI application misbehaved by not returning a complete set of HTTP headers.

After chatting a few times with Brinkster support and emailing them without any success, I finally got myself moved to a different server running an older version of PHP 5.1.1 and thank God everything was back to normal. According to the technical rep, they are in the midst of upgrading all servers to the latest PHP version, i.e. 5.2.3, so I’m dreading when the problem will return.

In the meantime, I’m now evaluating whether to move to a different hosting provider called Bluefish. If any other dudes/dudettes out there are running WordPress on Bluefish, let me know what you think of their service and reliability!

No, it’s not TIGER TIME! If you look closely at your digital clock right now, you just might see it.

Answer:
01:02:03 04/05/06

or

1:02:03am, 4th May 2006

Neat eh! However, before telling the whole world, note that the Americans beat us to it by a month since they put their month digit before the day digit (theirs happened on the 5th of April 2006). I’m sure it was all planned…

Was taking the elevator at my workplace today when this message flashed across the floor number screen display.

This elevator will shut off.

Imagine the thought of being in an elevator 36 floors up with no lights and no ventilation for a few hours when nobody outside can hear your cries! Haha… anyway, thank God we got out before the elevator did what it had to do.