Archive for November, 2006

Changing WindowsXP username while keeping the existing apps intact

By On Sun, Nov 26th, 2006 In Software I use With 2 Comments Permanent Link to Changing WindowsXP username while keeping the existing apps intactPermalink

…as in: still keeping as much of your settings and data as possible. When XP is installing, at one point it asks you for the name of the user(s) that should be created. What you actually type will be usernames, which I like to keep short and sweet. I typed in my full name and realized what I did after I installed most of my everyday apps. Blindly copying from the backup did not work, as they had the old path written all over the place. Time to dig…

Here is the procedure that worked for the apps I had at the time. You mileage may vary… Continue Reading →

Reinstalling Sony VAIO

By On Sat, Nov 25th, 2006 In Hardware, Software I use With 30 Comments Permanent Link to Reinstalling Sony VAIOPermalink

Initially, when you buy Sony VAIO notebook, you get things setup as Sony sees them fit. You have C and D partitions, both with 40+GB, and a hidden partition of 7GB, which is factory-restore partition. All this on 100GB disk (which is actually 93GB if you count 1024 instead of 1000 for kB).

On those partitions, there’s amazing amount of software installed, both Sony’s own and from partner deals. Adobe, Symantec, Office 2003 trial, lots of other shareware…Out of all of that, I had use for…none. I don’t need security-encrypted folders, I don’t need biometric login, I certainly don’t need Norton’s crap etc.
The only software that seemed to be of some use was Intervideo WinDVD for VAIO (v5.0). It would be useful if it wasn’t 2-speakers only edition. :( Since I have 5.1 speakers connected to VAIO over Creative Live! 24bit sound card, this was useless and I de-installed it.

It really is shame that Microsoft is not providing DVD decoder for the Windows. For all you MacOSX owners out there, if you didn’t know – Windows can’t play DVD movies on its own. You need to purchase DVD player that has the decoder: Cyberlink PowerDVD, Intervideo WinDVD and lots of others.

To cut the story short – I decided to reinstall Windows, remove the hidden partition and resize the C and D to what I like. Heh…not a small feat to do.
Continue Reading →

What good 404 page can do

By On Thu, Nov 23rd, 2006 In Web dev With No Comments Permanent Link to What good 404 page can doPermalink
Bounce rate halfed in two days

I added related posts to my 404 page along with improved detection of incoming URLs on Saturday evening.

Insert HTML page into another HTML page

By On Tue, Nov 21st, 2006 In Web dev With 84 Comments Permanent Link to Insert HTML page into another HTML pagePermalink

…or what to use instead of iframe in XHTML Strict pages.

I have added some kayak.com ads the other night, to the archive pages related to traveling. These ads are actually full-featured search snippets that allows you to directly search kayak.com database. Very handy things.

Sadly, they are written the old-fashion way, with quirks mode in mind, and worse yet – they are writing nested table tag soup directly into the page – no iframe thingie, like Google AdSense is doing. Thus, when my CSS files got applied to it, the snippet fell apart.
Luckily, the snippet always opens a new window, thus I quickly coded in an iframe in which the snippet is displayed. Which was all dandy…apart from the fact that my pages are XHTML 1.0 Strict, in which iframe is banned element. Jolly.

Correct way to include another HTML page into another is by object. The element which only purpose is to insert any foreign object into nice and structured web page. Continue Reading →

Google Analytics

By On Sun, Nov 19th, 2006 In Web dev With No Comments Permanent Link to Google AnalyticsPermalink

Hot on the hills of AWStats, I have added Google Analytics tracking code to each page on this site. With small hiccup – I added it to blog pages only, by mistake. Realized four days later. Dumb

Although Dejan told me all the good stuff about it, I did not bother to try it out until few days ago. Server-side log analysis is still needed since my feeds can’t be tracked with GA code. For other pages though, the amount of tracking options GA gives is amazing. There are some very interesting things I picked up there.

Geo-map overlay

One of the best visual goodies is this geo-map overlay display. It’s one thing to look at the list of countries from where people are coming, quite another to see it so nicely displayed. I actually hovered over each of those dots to take a look and smiled all the way.
Continue Reading →

← Older Entries