BenjArriola Students

Coder's Cult and SEOContest2008

Benj Arriola — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 02:27:00 +0000

Wow this is a super oldschool blog I had super way back in the day. And the blog post before this one just said that this will be my last blog post ever. Well that is actually not the case. And there are just two small things I will bring up.

Move questions to Coder's Cult

In my previous blog post, I mentioned all tech questions of my previous students from Informatics Computer Institute can go to Kangkong.org. Unfortunately, that site is dead now. Thus I suggest you ask your questions on Coder's Cult instead. Join the forum, bookmark the blog.

SEOContest2008

This is a search engine optimization contest by the UK Webmaster World. And this ends on April 1, 2008. So far there are no indications at all that this is an April Fool's joke. The rules of the game is simple, who ever ranks highest for the keyword SEOContest2008. If you want to learn more about SEO, there are a lot of online forums and so far they have been the best teachers for me over the years. Just have patience and don't believe anything right away.

This is my last post!

Benj Arriola — Sun, 26 Jun 2005 21:12:00 +0000

This blog was made for my students when I used to teach. Even if I am no longer teaching, I still tried to keep it up-to-date. Now with my current work, I do not really have much time to post anything here and this is my last post. But if you found this site useful and wanted to learn more, you can always visit Kangkong.ORG. This is a forum I and some friends have put up that is mainly for the web people like Spiderman. But anything about computers can be discuss on the board as well.

See you all at Kangkong.ORG

Keeping a Good Safe Place for Login Info

Benj Arriola — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 00:03:00 +0000

I guess all of us have a lot of websites where we login. Our emails(and how may email addresses do we have?), Friendsters and other network websites, Online Forums, Bank websites, and a lot more. And more often than not, we sometimes forget our passwords.

So there is the retrieve or reset password facility where the password is sent to your email address. And sometimes the email address you use has been longtime cancelled already.

To keep things simple, I used to have all my passwords all the same. So I only need to memorize one password. But I know that is not secure since if someone figures out the password of any of the things I login to, they simply try the same password on other things and presto, they're in.

After two recent attacks on my server, I have been taking several security measure that made me come across this software called Personal Vault.

Personal Vault is a software that stores passwords for you. Although I have heard these types of software before, I never really tried any of them since I did not really trust them nor thing they would help.

But after reading various forums of people maintaining servers. I have seen several postings by various people who likes the software, so I checked it out as well and ended up using it too. These are the features of the software.

1. A storage place of logins and passwords.
2. Can set categories, I use it for categorizing what type of accounts are listed. Like emails, banks, etc.
3. Has a random password generator. I use it every time I replace a password on any of the places I login. They're so random, I do not memorize any of them.
4. Logging in to any of the websites, just simply requires you to open up Personal Vault, click on the account, and there are click to copy the login and the password. Then a Ctrl-V (Paste) on the boxes on the website is done after. Come to think of it, that procedure is even prevents keyloggers to trace the keystrokes of your password.
5. The Personal Vault runs it's own database and it's encrypted. Each file is also password protected, and this is the only password I memorize.
6. You never know when your hardware will crash one day, and it has an export function and can export it to a text file and you can print it out and save the hard copy underground.
7. With a single click you can lock the database file and hide it in the system tray when not in use.

Downside:

1. If you use a computer elsewhere, you do not have personal vault with you. Thus you do not know the passwords. But you can have personal vault installed there too, like at work and keep the personal vault database file in an USB flash drive. Or you ca find your own way of moving the data to your PDA if ever you have one.
2. Personal Vault uses to popular database for security reasons. And uses it's own encrypted database file. I believe it is a flat file. And there is no sorting function so when your accounts become so many, and they are not ordered alphabetically, it can be a pain searching for the account you want to go to.
3. When I downloaded mine, and used it, I was happy it works without me to pay anything. Until I reached 15 accounts, and it then said to pay $15 to use it with more accounts. It was very useful for me, so I paid $15.00 on the website and has been using the software with tons of login account information.
4. This would be very very great if they had a version of this for PalmOS that is synchronizable too via HotSync.
5. I think it only runs on Windows.

The software is made by Day Dream Software and can be downloaded from http://www.soft1st.com

2004 Year Ender - My 2004 in a Flash in the IT Scene

Benj Arriola — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 03:59:00 +0000

The IT Web Business

2004 was the first start of a new year for my new company YDS Web Solution. For a very long time I was identified as part of Action Online Co. Ltd. Too much projects, too little time, too little money. I got burned out and quit the company in 2003 and eventually closed in August 1, 2003. Being burned out, I decided to do business passively. Not really put in serious effort in running the business and just work in the IT industry instead for some company. I ended up working for Informatics Computer Institute and mid-2003 and 2004 was when I decided to leave my job there too.

Although I did not put in serious effort in YDS Web Solution during the start of 2004, everything just fell into place. New deals coming in without serious selling. I realized I was not really identified that much as part of Action Online, but was identified as myself. And clients for YDS Web Solution slowly started building up again, simply because of referrals. Lost clients started coming back without really calling them up. Only recently have I decided to call everyone up again when I noticed they were coming without effort. What more if I exerted effort.

Being a smarter businessman this time, I only took in what I can do with a lower limit on time range and price. I did not take too low prices or too short development time. If the client did not like it, I did not take it. And minimized freebies that are really hard to deliver. I believe these were three major mistakes of Action Online that caused the great burn out. Too low price, too short time and too much freebies that come with loose contracts.

With the amount of competition, and low market prices for web design, YDS Web Solution is still a SOHO (Small Office Home Office), but with a service that of a corporate giant. With connections of other SOHOs, any kind of project is attainable.

Closing more than one deal a month without selling hard is already a good feat for the company. 2004 has been very fortunate for YDS Web Solution, with clients not only in the Philippines but in the States as well.

Hosting Server Upgrade

2004, there are two new Philippine web hosting companies that started to do a massive marketing campaign to promote their drop down web hosting packages. They were killing the competition. So YDS Web Solution had a major server upgrade. Thus on the start of 2005, most accounts on my hosting server will have extra disk space and other features added with no additional charge. The trigger for the change was the two web hosting companies that offered very low prices.

Big Email Boxes

GMail, the email made by search engine giant Google offer free email with a big twist others can't even seem to offer, a 1GB email account. Still in beta period and a per invitation usage but will be offered to the public really soon. This put Yahoo and MSN up on their toes as they needed to retained their email users. So both companies increased their mailboxes to 250MB.

MSN just having the first mover advantage in email usage is trying it's best to retain all users. Yahoo being a first mover too in search engines already made a household known brand name. With tie-ups with everything, your Yahoo account can do a lot, join egroups, play Yahoo games, pay the bills, search the internet, send greetings, look for people, use their instant messenger service, there is so much convenience that comes with a single account. So I predict Yahoo not loosing much email subscribers in the presence of GMail. Also MSN accounts can do a lot, they integration does not seem that streamlined in the same way it is with Yahoo.

In the web business, where companies like mine offer email accounts that you pay for, needed to increase disk space too. Why? They are paying for your service for an email account. And here is the free GMail with 1GB! Some people are willing to sacrifice their own branded domain name email for a big email account. So email boxes of YDS will also be increased in 2005. The trigger of the events was caused by GMail.

Cheap Domain Names

When Yahoo sold domains at $9.95, I decreased my domain name prices on OmniDomain.net from $14.50 to $9.50. Actually this price does not surprise me. There are several companies selling domains this low, but Yahoo is just known so much that it will spread the word too fast. Thus my domains dropped right away to $9.50.

New Technologies and Skills Learned for Me

Being a hard core HTML tables coder, 2004 was the start of a big change. The switch to tableless HTML maximizing the use of CSS. Once I got into it, I never let go of it. For me it is the best way to make sites today. Yahoo and Red Hat switched to full CSS websites this year too. For me, CSS in combination with PHP, all my websites are now based on one HTML page calling different parameters to show dynamic content. That part may not be as easy as making plain HTML, but once applied in all your work, updating will be a breeze. Everything can be done so fast which is critical in this business.

Search Engine Optimization was a broad general topic for me before. I knew the general concept, but never really had any idea how to effective implement it. Today, I have learned so much about SEO, how search engines work and how websites should be made, but it is still a continuing learning process as life goes on. But in 2004, I got started with the dirty details of SEO.

Being a PHP user where I made serious projects starting 1999, my programming style is still evolving. With many projects made in the past, whenever I have new projects, I consult my old projects for reference. But in 2004, I started NOT to consult my old work, but simple check the latest PHP manual. And I started changing some parts of my programming style to something better. Today I can say my programming is more organized, scalable and easier to maintain. The whole story is also applicable to MySQL where I believe also improved by simply reading about new ways to do things.

I consider myself an artist by heart. I was a member of my school's art club since 4th grade, was the president in high school, won the poster making contest, won diorama competitions, won room decoration competitions where we basically painted the whole wall with some art work. Then this skill started to fade away when I started concentrating on backend jobs than frontend in web development. But this 2004, I can say my designing skills were reborn. Today I just get tons of ideas coming from nowhere but I was just exposed to so many designs that stirred up my imagination again. Aside from the artistic training, I have learned a lot more do's and don'ts in website design. Making websites more effective which is the real point in making one than making one so beautiful but does not sell at all.

Operating Systems and Other Software Preferences

Although my server runs on Red Hat Linux, my personal use computer is still pretty much on Windows. I've got a copy of Xandros Linux and will be installing it pretty soon. Although I am sold out with the power of a Mac PC for this 2004. I will not be getting one for 2004, probably in 2005.

I used IrfanView all my life as my primary image viewer. But now, I also have iBrowser installed.

Winplosion as an additional tool to the common Alt-Tab.

Trillian Pro instead of Trillian.

I now use Dreamweaver sometimes. Before I do not use it at all since I am a Homesite user. But most of the time, I am still a Homesite user. I just like Dreamweaver for fixing out sites that I didn't make.

Firefox as my primary browser of choice than MSIE. AvantGo for offline web browsing on my PDA. BitTorrent for P2P.

That is basically my 2004. I expect more of happen in 2005. I picture more XML coming into the picture and myself using multi-platform environments, using WiFi, broadband and wireless handheld devices.

Merry Christmas to all of you and a Happy New Year. If you still have questions, just ask them. Sometimes I get to reply right away, and they will be posted here on this blog. Happy Holidays!

Benj Arriola

Data Transfer Speeds

Benj Arriola — Sun, 31 Oct 2004 05:22:00 +0000

A common question most of my students ask, and just recently, by someone who is not my student, but a student of the school where I used to teach asked this: What is the speed of DSL? What is the speed of a dial-up modem? And all other speed questions. I decided to place this all into one table compiled from all these notes I have. The table below may not be complete, and if ever you know some kind of data transfer I have not metioned below, please add a comment to this page so I can add this to the table.

Data Transfer Type	Speed
POTS Plain Old Telephone System	28.8 kbps
Switched 56 Switched 56	56 kbps
SMDS Switched Multimegabit Data Service	56 kbps to 34 Mbps
ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network	64 kbps
DS0 Digital Signal Level 0	64 kbps
ISDN Dual ISDN Dual Channel	128 kbps
LocalTalk LocalTalk	230.4 kbps
ADSL Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line	640 kbps upstream, 6 Mbps downstream
Bluetooth Bluetooth wireless PAN (2.4 GHz band)	720 kbps
IEEE 802.11 Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers 802.11 wireless (2.4 GHz band)	2 Mbps
Cable Cable Modem	1 Mbps
DS1 Digital Signal Level 1	1.544 Mbps
T1 Terrestrial 1	1.544 Mbps
PCS Personal Communication System Wireless	2 Mbps
E1 European Digital Signal Level 1	2.048 Mbps
DS2 Digital Signal Level 2	6.312 Mbps
T2 Terrestrial 2	6.312 Mbps
E2 European Digital Signal Level 2	8.448 Mbps
10Base-T 10Base-T Ethernet	10 Mbps
IEEE 802.11b Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers 802.11b wireless Wi-Fi(2.4 GHz band)	11 Mbps
USB Universal Serial Bus	12 Mbps
U-NII U-NII Wireless	20 Mbps to 24 Mbps
ATM Asynchronous Transfer Mode	25.6 Mbps to 155.52 Mbps
E3 European Digital Signal Level 3	34.368 Mbps
SCSI-1 Small Computer System Interface 1	40 Mbps (5 MBps)
DS3 Digital Signal Level 3	44.736 Mbps
T3 Terrestrial 3	44.736 Mbps
OC1 Optical Carrier Level 1 - Synchronous Optical Network (SONET)	51.84 Mbps
STS-1 Synchroous Transport Signal 1 - Synchronous Optical Network (SONET)	51.84 Mbps
IEEE 802.11a Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers 802.11a wireless WLAN(5 GHz band)	54 Mbps
IEEE 802.11g Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers 802.11g wireless WLAN(2.4 GHz band)	54 Mbps / 11 Mbps
Fast SCSI Fast Small Computer System Interface	80 Mbps (10 MBps)
100Base-T 100Base-T Ethernet (Fast Ethernet)	100 Mbps
OC3 Optical Carrier Level 3 - Synchronous Optical Network (SONET)	155.52 Mbps
STM1 Synchroous Transport Mode 1	155.52 Mbps
Fast Wide SCSI Fast Wide Small Computer System Interface	160 Mbps (20 MBps)
Ultra SCSI Ultra Small Computer System Interface	160 Mbps (20 MBps)
DS4 Digital Signal Level 4	274.176 Mbps
T4 Terrestrial 4	274.176 Mbps
Wide Ultra SCSI Wide Ultra Small Computer System Interface	320 Mbps (40 MBps)
FireWire Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers 1394A	400 Mbps
OC9 Optical Carrier Level 9 - Synchronous Optical Network (SONET)	466.56 Mbps
STM3 Synchroous Transport Mode 3	466.56 Mbps
USB 2.0 Universal Serial Bus 2.0	480 Mbps
OC12 Optical Carrier Level 12 - Synchronous Optical Network (SONET)	622.08 Mbps
STM4 Synchroous Transport Mode 4	622.08 Mbps
Wide Ultra2 SCSI Wide Ultra2 Small Computer System Interface	640 (80 MBps)
FireWire 800 Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers 1394B	800 Mbps
ATA/100 Parallel Advance Transfer Adapter/100 Parallel	800 Mbps (100 MBps)
Gigabit Ethernet Gigabit Ethernet	1 Gbps
OC24 Optical Carrier Level 24 - Synchronous Optical Network (SONET)	1.244 Gbps
STM8 Synchroous Transport Mode 8	1.244 Gbps
Ultra 160 SCSI Ultra 160 Small Computer System Interface	1.280 Gbps (160 MBps)
Ultra 3 SCSI Ultra 3 Small Computer System Interface	1.280 Gbps (160 MBps)
Ultra Serial ATA 1500 Ultra Serial Advance Transfer Adapter 1500	1.5 Gbps
OC36 Optical Carrier Level 36 - Synchronous Optical Network (SONET)	1.866 Gbps
STM12 Synchroous Transport Mode 12	1.866 Gbps
OC48 Optical Carrier Level 48 - Synchronous Optical Network (SONET)	2.488 Gbps
STM16 Synchroous Transport Mode 16	2.488 Gbps
Ultra 320 SCSI Ultra 320 Small Computer System Interface	2.560 Gbps (320 MBps)
OC96 Optical Carrier Level 96 - Synchronous Optical Network (SONET)	4.976 Gbps
STM32 Synchroous Transport Mode 32	4.976 Gbps
OC192 Optical Carrier Level 192 - Synchronous Optical Network (SONET)	9.953 Gbps
STM64 Synchroous Transport Mode 64	9.953 Gbps
10G Ethernet Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers 802.3ae	10 Gbps
OC255 Optical Carrier Level 255 - Synchronous Optical Network (SONET)	13.271 Gbps
OC768 Optical Carrier Level 768 - Synchronous Optical Network (SONET)	40 Gbps

First Full CSS and SEO Website to the Max Ever!!!

Benj Arriola — Mon, 18 Oct 2004 05:42:00 +0000

I myself am new to what I am promoting. For the past few days I was starting to learn more and more about CSS and SEO. At work at Einstein Industries I have been applying a few things here and there. But I have not used it 100%.

I have been working on a website, but it is not yet completely done. But is starting it using full CSS, SEO and PHP with 2 major goals in mind...

Modularity and scalability for fast and easy website updating.
Totally optimized website for SEO.

And so far I'm happy on how I am doing. The website is for the San Diego Taekwondo Association and for HTML coders there, you can check out the site and see the source code having no table tags. Easier to maintain, smaller disk space and faster page loading. Actually there are a lot more underground secrets why this style of page building is better than the conventional table tags and transparent gif spacers, but then again, they are secrets. :P

CSS is the Future

Benj Arriola — Sat, 09 Oct 2004 03:58:00 +0000

I can say I grew up in web designing since I learned how to do this since 1996. My career in web designing and web development all started with basic HTML. HTML was still in it's early stages when I started, and the W3C was still with the HTML 2.0 standard and was working on HTML 3.0. Tags and attributes were limited then. And Microsoft Internet Explorer was inventing tags that only Internet Explorer knew and so was Netscape Navigator was also inventing tags that one Netscape knew.

Some tags became standard, others not, some tags are starting to be obsolete and were being removed from the standards made by the W3C but the major browsers still seem to know many of the old tags.

The additional languages and plug-ins started to come out since HTML is limited. Some are still used today, some died in history. Today, HTML in it's pure code form is widely used with JavaScript and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). We're not talking about plug-ins like Flash, Quicktime, MediaPlayer, Real Player, Java, or the server-side programming languages. We're just talking about HTML code and everything you type in it that will run without any other plug-in and the browser will simply understand it client-side.

When CSS came out and I even actually bought a book about CSS in it's early stages, I just read it cover to cover and said to myself, that's it? CSS is easy and why do I need it if I can do things with HTML alone?

Although I used CSS early, I used it only for links. Since there is really no way to take out the underline in text links using HTML alone. And I found it cumbersome in it's early stages figuring out how things should be done in Internet Explorer and how it should be done in Netscape.

Today CSS has evolved into the most powerful tools in web design. Once mastered you will totally forget HTML's table tags and frame tags, even iframes. Now this article is not a full fledged CSS tutorial, sorry if that's what you are expecting. Actually this article is intended for people who have been playing with HTML already since they are the main people that will appreciate all of this. What I am going to mention though is how to optimize CSS and the advantages of it and why I am starting to shift to use this so much.

A basic is as much as possible, place all styles in one CSS file and link the HTML page to it. I guess many CSS users already know this. And the advantages, many of you also know, for easy updating, change the CSS file and you change everything. If you change the font size in the CSS file, the whole website is affected.
Cleaner code without table tags. Simply using div tags and height, width, margins and padding in CSS and you're ready to go. Having div containers help a lot too. Background images in divs even have the option to be tiled or not. No need to use transparent spacer graphics as well to position things around.
Controlled padding in the p, li and heading tags. P, li and heading have large paddings and to be able to control them would be great.
Byebye to frames. Like tables, code just get so many, real long code, especially in nesting them. With CSS, it is way more simpler. Faster to implement, shorter code, more precise and accurate in positioning and sizes.
Cascade whatever you can cascade. I never really understood this before, I used CSS, but it was like I was only using the "SS" without the "C". Consolidate your elements as well in CSS file. Using it and doing it will get you a better picture of the advantages of this. Minimize ids and classes as much as possible.
Learn how to float div boxes and this makes shopping carts and picture galleries a lot more easier to implement, than having tables with repeating td tags and numerous computations and counting to determining when tr tags must come out.

Right now, if you do not know CSS, everything written here may sound nonsense. But when the days comes and you do get into CSS, remember all the tips I said above. If you know CSS but still have no idea what the real advantage is, it is a lot more easier to understand why, when you see it yourself. I hope I have time soon to type in a few CSS tutorials next time.

I'd like to thank everyone at Einstein Industries, they are giving new meaning to CSS as how the way I understood it. To my students, experience is still the best teacher. I read all about CSS before, I was even teaching it in school, but the real advantage of it, I just saw it now with the help of other people who use CSS too. CSS is the future of web design.

Unusual PC Problems...Part 2

Benj Arriola — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 00:44:00 +0000

I just finish fixing two computers of Kuya Joseph and Ate Melinda. The first one, the IBM Aptiva, since it is a branded PC and not a PC clone, opening the casing was already a mystery. But since Garry was also here, and as Marcia and Emil have mentioned to me that Garry is also one kalikutero like me too, he saw the magic switch to open the casing.

New CDs seem to always have problems with old CD ROM drives and installation of Windows 98 on their PC just would not continue. I decided to temporarily attached my own CD ROM drive to be able to install everything well. I also installed Office 2002 XP with is as well as all the essential security softwares like Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware, Search and Destroy’s Spybot, JavaCoolSoftware’s Spyware Blaster and Norton SystemWorks 2003.

On the second PC, this was really messed up. It was 100% dead and only the power supply runs. And when this happens one or more of the following could be busted:

Motherboard
Power Supply
Processor
Memory
Video Card
One of the remaining hardware parts may be in conflict with other hardware devices.

To find out which one was the reason behind it, you can do a deductive process to narrow down to pin-point the real problem.

First thing I did, when I was still at Kuya Joseph and Ate Melinda’s place was take everything off and just leave together the Power Supply, Motherboard, Processor, Memory and Video Card and everything else was taken off. This is to cross out No. 6 probably cause: "One of the remaining hardware parts may be in conflict with other hardware devices"

And after doing that, it still did not work. So we are still left with the 5 probable causes of the problem which are:

Motherboard
Power Supply
Processor
Memory
Video Card

Unusual observations were:

The power goes on once you plug in the computer. And the power switch does nothing. Then I noticed the switch was not plug in the right place on the motherboard.
The processor was a Pentium III and did not have any processor fan. This is the usual case with branded PCs but has an air tunnel going to some chassis fan. Obviously the processor came from a branded PC but since it did not have a processor fan with it but an air tunnel, when placed inside another casing, the air tunnel will not fit and it was attached only with a processor and heatsink.
The power supply was set to 220 Volts and no 110 Volts. And most probably it was not the original power supply not only because of the setting but also because it only has two screws on and were not even that tight.
The motherboard was for a dual processor type using slot 1 processors. And the plastic brace on the processor was cracked off because the heatsink was so big and seemed to be forced into the brace which was not for that heatsink.

With the limited supply of hardware testers I was not able to diagnose everything there and decided to bring it home and work on it during my free time which was basically during weekends. Since I was able to get a few parts from a garage sale recently, this gave me a test bed for the other parts on their PC.

My first best guess was really the video card and I also told Kuya Joseph and Ate Melinda that even when I was still at their place. So I took of their video card and tested in on my Motherboard and it did not work. Good I said to myself since I already knew the problem! It is the video card, so I used the video card that I got from the garage sale which is working fine and placed it on their motherboard. It did not work!

For sure their video card is not working since it does not work also on a already working computer. So this means nothing but not only the video card is broken. I was left with this list of probable defective parts.

Motherboard
Power Supply
Processor
Memory

I turned on their PC again and was touching the processor while it was on. I did not feel even a slight increase in temperature. The processor was cold which bad news, either processor or motherboard is broken. I took off the processor and placed it on the motherboard I got from the garage sale, and it worked! I tried it again this time using Kuya Joseph and Ate Melinda’s power supply and again it worked, so the power supply was also delivering the correct voltage to the motherboard.

That now just leaves me with this list of possible broken parts:

Motherboard
Memory

I tried their memory on my motherboard, it was dead. So confirmed, memory was also broken. I got an extra memory I have been using to test for so many years already so I know it is still running well and placed it in their motherboard. It worked for two restarts and on the third try, it was erratic already, sometimes working, sometimes not. I pulled the plug right away and didn’t even shut down well since I think the motherboard is screwing up my memory.

So the main culprit was the motherboard. That eventually messed up the memory, and video card. Good thing I got everything needed from the garage sale.

After taking out the motherboard, the motherboard had no insulation what so ever from the screws that normally should be insulated with a thin cork washer. Since I did not have any extra cork washers, the good old electrical tape could do the trick on the motherboard that I was going to install. So I told myself, no wonder the motherboard went berserk, there were no insulators on the screws. Although it is theoretically possible to do things without the insulators, since the contact points around the screw holes are isolated from the whole motherboard, it is still not a safe practice since any two soldered points on the motherboard, get in contact with each other through any conductor; it screws up your computer. So the lack of insulators for me is not the absolute cause of the problem but was my best guess.

Now after putting everything together, I was still cautious with the other hardware and was adding each part one by one and testing the computer every time, adding the floppy drive, the hard disk drive, the CD ROM drive, the CD/CDR/CDRW drive, the sound card, the zip drive, the LAN card and the modem.

Everything ran well except for two things, the hard disk drive and the zip drive. And they both were connected on the same IDE cable connected to the motherboard. Just when I thought my work was done, a new problem comes out.

I was able to find a 4GB hard disk from the computers for disposal that Papa got from their office, as well as a 100MB Zip Drive and everything ran well from there.

With everything running well, what parts were broken? The motherboard, the memory, video card, hard disk and zip drive. In my years of experience in fixing computers since 1996, I only had two instances in my life that had similar situations, one of them was I had an AVR that was giving of 300 Volts that burned a majority of parts and literally melted power adaptors of other hardware parts. The other situation was during a thunderstorm in the Philippines and a very bright flash of lightning outside the building of my computer shop followed by a very load thunder that followed right away busted a lot of things at my office, including the modem, telephone, and the phone line itself that the BayanTel people had to even come and fix the burned out phone line.

I think the electricity in the States is pretty stable that's why I haven't seen an AVR here, although there are power surge protectors instead. And one bad thing about Kuya Joseph's and Ate Melinda's PC was the power switch was not connected right, and whenever you plug in the computer, it turned on right away and the power switch was useless.

So now that all the test was done, this is now my final best guess of the real problem behind everything. Once the PC was plugged in, that's where the power surge comes in too since the power switch was not plugged on the motherboard correctly. And this power surge just started to burn everything up one by one. It's still a good thing though that they still have the modem, sound card, LAN card, CD and CD/CDR/CDRW drives, floppy drive, power supply and casing.

Now here are a few notes for my students and I know I said this in all my classes and will just mention them again just in case you forgot.

The power swtich, reset switch, power LED, HDD LED, keylock, and PC speaker connectors are all attached to some panel of a bunch of pins on the motherboard, and more often than not, the pins are confusing and arranged differently from one motherboard to another. And when fixing a computer playing around with these wire connections, here are the things you can do arranged from best to worse option.

Use the motherboards manual. This is the best way to figure things out. On the manual, all connections are explained well.
If the manual is not available, like if it is an old PC and the manual is in some missing in the univers, the next best thing is to go online and check the manual available at the motherboard manufacturer's website.
If you do not have an Internet connection, like you went to the barrio of barrios in the deep edge of the Philippine islands and they asked you to fix some old Pentium 166, no manual and no Internet. Just look at the pins and on the motherboard there are labels in white text and just try to understand them well. And sometimes even with the labels, you still do not know where they are pointing to, but it is worth a try. Sometimes other motherboard manufacturer also do not post manuals of older models.
If the motherboard does not have labels, this is when trial and error comes in. And making a mistake here will not do any serious damage. And if you think something is wrong with the power switch or reset switch upon turning on the power, unplug it right away and try again with the other pins. To them one by one starting with the power switch, then PC speaker (so you hear the POST), then reset switch, then hdd LED and Power LED, testing each time you plug in each one. If everything is alway working fine but the LED do seem to function right, unplug the LEDs and turn them 180o and they should work then unless you really plugged them in the wrong place.

This text was actually just intended to be part of a summary on what has happened to Kuya Joseph’s and Ate Melinda’s PC that I will email to them, and it ended up being a long article. So I decided to post in on my Students’ Blog since fixing any computer and telling the story of it will always help my PC Networks and Troubleshooting students and I know there were all waiting for the part 2 version of Unusual PC Problems. If you haven’t read Unusual PC Problems Part 1, click here.

Getting Started with PHP - Part 1: Installation.

Benj Arriola — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 02:10:00 +0000

To start learning PHP, you first need PHP running on your computer. If you totally have no idea what PHP is, you might want to read my earlier story: Why I like PHP / MySQL

Assumptions are you are a Windows user(since most Linux distributions have PHP & MySQL included), most probably why you would want to learn this is because you are a: 1) programmer that wants to program for online applications aside from desktop applications only or 2) a web designer that wants to learn programming to also get into web development.

What I am going to discuss, is how to install PHP on a Windows system. And I will tell you three different installation procedures.

1) PHP Manual Installation
2) PHP Windows Installer
3) Other PHP Packaged Installers

PHP has many extensions to the language, which is also one of the reasons why it is one of the most powerful server side programming languages. To enable all available extensions, you will need to manually install PHP that is basically done by extracting files from a compressed downloaded file, placing the files in a certain location, editing windows registry, configuring your web server and configuring the php.ini file.

Since this story is about "getting started," I do not recommend doing this. And most of the additional extensions you may use are not needed by the novice PHP programmer.

Now using the PHP installer is a lot easier, it has all the basic extension enabled already. And installs like any other software, just run setup and it’s all next, next, next.

Although, either manual or automatic, you need your web server software installed and preconfigured prior to your PHP installation, or else PHP will not work.

Windows 98 and ME comes bundled with the Personal Web Server (PWS) and Windows XP and 2000 comes bundled with the Internet Information Server (IIS) that you could add to your computer as long as you have the original Windows Installation CDs.

But being a novice PHP programmer, I highly recommend using other PHP packaged installers. There are several out there when you search sites like SourceForge or FreshMeat and part of the so many results, you'll get PHPTriad and PHPDev. These package installers are simple to install, just run setup. And when your done, you have just installed Apache web server on Windows, PHP and MySQL. And you could use it right away without any configuration whatsoever. I use PHPDev5 Beta and I do suggest you do the same.

You can download PHPDev5 Beta from FirePages, or click here to go straight to the download page.

Once downloaded, simply run the downloaded file, it is pretty straight forward, no confusing questions. And once installed, try running the program and you will see something like this:

Now since you are just starting out, you would only want to click on the Apache button and the MySQL button. You could install both Apache and MySQL as a service, but if you have a slow running computer, I suggest not installing it as a service. But you will have to always run PHPDev and start Apache and MySQL whenever you need to run them. If you have a fast computer, installing them as a service will also keep them running once you turn on your computer.

There is no PHP button since PHP starts to run whenever it is needed and called by Apache. You may also notice an Apache2 button, don’t play around with it yet. It is still kind of an experimental feature, so just use Apache alone.

Now after running PHPDev5, how do you test if apache is working?

Simply open your favorite web browser and visit http://localhost and this should display the files in the apache web root directory. If you get error 404, something is wrong. Be sure that you started Apache already before visiting http://localhost.

If you see files in the apache root web files, simply click on the start_here.htm file and it will give you a brief summary if everything is running and how can you test them further.

Now with PHP successfully installed, how do you start off learning PHP? Well that’s a long story but to get you started, let’s do a simple "Hello World".

So let’s say we are going to create a file that simply says "Hello World" using PHP. Just follow the instructions step by step below:

Create the folder c:\my_first_php_file
Open your favorite HTML editor or simply use Notepad and type in the following:

<?php echo "Hello World<br>"; ? >
Save this file in the created folder and name it hello.php
Open PHPDev, click on Apache, then Edit Config.
You can actually type this anywhere but I suggest place it somewhere by the end of the text window, so it is easier to find in the future, just go to the end and type this:

Alias /myfirst "c:/my_first_php_file /" <Directory " c:/my_first_php_file /"> Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews AllowOverride None Order allow,deny Allow from localhost 127.0.0.1 DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.php </Directory>

Please take note you are typing forward slashes, not back slashes.
Click on the Save button, then Close button. Then back at the Apache options, click on the Restart button.
Now try visting: http://localhost/myfirst/hello.php
That’s it! How boring!
Now try something else, create a new file and type the following:

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

Save it and name it index.php. Since it is the index page, this is the first page that will appear when you visit http://localhost/myfirst Check it out and see what happens. PHPInfo will show many details about the PHP configurations on the server. It does help a lot in the future when you start using the other PHP extensions and also when you use some Apache environment variables, and server environment variables, especially when uploading on a new server that you do not know how PHP is configured.

Although PHPDev5 can be used live on the Internet. As long as you know your IP address and is connected to the Internet, anyone can visit your page running Apache even on a dial-up connection. But this is not recommended at all. PHPDev is ideal for testing PHP programs offline on a local web server. And once your program is ready for uploading, you will upload your PHP program to a secure web server.

Now that you have your first PHP program running and you want to learn more, wait for my next articles, in the meantime, I suggest you download the PHP Manual, at PHP.net in the documents section. You could actually download a Windows Help File format and start learning PHP on your own. Anyway that is how I started. I downloaded the MySQL manual too.

Softwares for Accurate Time and Weather

Benj Arriola — Thu, 19 Aug 2004 06:30:00 +0000

How is time measured? For many years one second was defined as 1/86,400 of the mean solar day, thus eliminating seasonal variations. So this was based on the movement of the sun, but we all know that it is actually the movement of the earth. And we were assuming the earth moves at a very precise constant rate, which it does not. And the earths rotation is not really 24 hours. It is 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.09 seconds, that's why the leap year exist.

So given this problem, in 1956 ephemeris time (ET) was used, which is calculated from the motions of celestial bodies in accordance with the laws of motion. 1 sec is 1/31,556,925.9747 of the length of the tropical year for 1900. I can't even imagine how this is done just by looking at the stars around us. But I could imagine a lot of trigonometry and calculus is involved using telescopes in various locations and heights focusing on a single object in space and comparing the angles of the telescopes taking note of the location in three dimensional space of each telescope.

I guess this was too hard to measure that's why in 1967 the second was redefined to be 9,192,631,770 periods of vibration of the radiation emitted at a specific wavelength by an atom of cesium-133. So it this the most accurate? Actually not. Electromagnetic waves could still influence very, very small fractions of the periods of vibration in an atom. Although this is very, very small fractions of a second, as years pass by this will have a great effect.

In Greenwich, London, the Royal Observatory in Greenwich has been transmitting time and called it the GMT standard or Greenwich Mean Time which was used initially to standardize time at train stations throughout Europe. Their time was based on the celestial bodies. Since this was not accurate and the Atomic Clocks were invented, the UTC scale came out of the Coordinated Universal Time. Coordinated since as I explained above the problem with the cesium atom, there are several Atomic Clocks and each one coordinates with each other. I do not know what type of statistics they use, but I assume it is the simple average.

Now one nice thing about the Internet today is that there are Time Servers all over the world that gets updates from these Atomic Clocks, and clocks all over the world could update time from the time servers.

Well let's finish the introduction about time since you might be getting bored already. I used to use a software named Atomic Clock which was recommended by Louie Morales by the way. Then I switched to ClockG2 since it has a world time function. Now I am using WorldTime2000 by MultiSource. But I did not download mine from MultiSource. I got mine from download.com, you could go straight to the link by clicking here. I have had problems with the one downloaded from MultiSource, I do not know why, so I suggest get the one at Download.com too.

Now whenever I am connected to the Internet, I could update my PC clock connecting to the time servers and look at the time at any city around the world. Very useful for me since I am running my business in the Philippines while I am currently in San Diego, California. Now aside from that I could also see the weather at nearly any city around the world. This is powered by Weather.com and they have a software called Desktop Weather. You could download the software here.

Desktop Weather gives you temperature, humidity, UV index, wind speed and direction, atmospheric pressure, temperature highs and lows, sunrise and sunset time and a 12-hour forecast as well as a 3-day forecast. It also has coming storm warnings. So if you like to know what the time and weather is anywhere around the world, I recommend these two softwares.

The Informatics Logo

Benj Arriola — Wed, 04 Aug 2004 04:39:00 +0000

Since most of my audience of this website are from Informatics, this next story is about our logo. Many of us use the logo, but we often get a blurred one, a JPEG or GIF format we got from the web, and when we place it on our printed material, it sometimes, comes out blurry, has jagged edges, has spots all over the white space, or the lines disappear or are not clear.

I always taught in my graphics classes that vector graphics are always clearer than raster graphics when it comes to resizing. And in raster graphic softwares, generally it is best to resize from a large resolution going to a smaller resolution.

Now the best way to always have the Informatics logo as clear as possible is to make a vector graphics version. But with the so many lines, just by looking at the logo, some people do not want to do it anymore. Since you have to re-draw each one in a vector graphics software. And you'll say only crazy people would do that.

Well when I worked in Informatics, I was one crazy person. And in my first month, I already created a vector version of the Informatics logo and whenever I needed it, I had it saved in a CD that I always used.

Now if you need a clear logo of Informatics to be used on any printed material, or on a website, or powerpoint presentation, you could use the formats I made.

But do remember this is not my property, the logo design is still the intellectual property of Informatics, so if you are going to use, do not say it is yours. I just made various versions of the logo free for downloading. I didn't check each one I uploaded, so if ever there is one that got corrupted during the upload, just email me so I could re-upload it again.

Just click on the file format you need below. For the raster formats below, the resolution is 300dpi with a size just right to fit in a 8.5" x 11" letter sized paper. If you do not know what you need, generally for websites and powerpoint presentations, try the .gif and .jpg formats. The common vector graphic versions are .cdr is for CorelDraw, .swf for Flash, .FH10 for FreeHand 10, .ai for Illustrator, .dwg for AutoCAD. I did not upload these versions due to the large file size when maintaining the 300dpi resolution: .eps, .cur, .ico, .xpm, .bmp, .psd, .pp5, .tga, .ppf, .sct, fpx. Although I could make this available if someone requests for it. If ever you downloaded a raster format and it kind of has jagged edges when resizing, try changing the image mode to RGB before resizing since it may be under indexed colors which has less colors for better anti-aliasing.

Download

Unusual PC Problems…Part 1

Benj Arriola — Mon, 19 Jul 2004 05:34:00 +0000

To all my students in PC Networks and Troubleshooting, with what I taught you, and with all your questions, you should already know how to diagnose a PC problem based on underlying facts observable. But in my experience, there are still some unusual cases that you never know what the problem is, and the problem is not anywhere in what you have learned in school. I actually have several experiences like that and am going to share each one. Each problem in a series of articles, and hoping you too could also learn from them.

There was a time when I decided to reformat my PC due to a suspected virus problem. My hard disks were filled with files, but since I was running on two hard disks, my plan was to do as follows:

Move all files to my data drive, the drive that is not running my operating system and programs.
Reformat the drive with the operating system.
Reinstall the operating system; reinstall the anti-virus softwares and anti-spyware softwares.
Update security updates of the operating system, update anti-virus and anti-spyware data files online.
Connect the data drive as slave (Which may still contain the suspected virus) and scan and clean it.

Problem: Now, during the reformat, reformatting as NTFS would not continue.
Initial Assessment of Possible Causes: Hard drive busted, probably with bad sectors; IDE data cable problem; power supply connector problem; motherboard IDE port busted; or simply loose connections.
What I did: I first check the connections checking if they were loose, they were fine and the problem still existed. I next checked the power supply, then changed the IDE cable, use the other IDE port and each step along the way, I always tested the problem, and the problem still existed. For some reason I decided to format the drive as FAT32, and the problem seem to not exist! Then I decided to install Windows XP and delete partitions and create them as well and format the drive as NTFS, maybe that would do the trick to get it fixed. And after doing that, I was able to reformat as NTFS! No more problems? That’s what I thought.

Problem: Installation would not continue. Error in copying file, each time the error occurred, the file was a different file being copied.
Initial Assessment of Possible Causes: Hard drive busted, not functioning well; CD ROM drive busted, not reading well, could be dirty; CD ROM IDE data cable problem, CD ROM power cable problem.
What I did: I first checked the CD ROM drive connections, no loose connections. IDE cable was replaced. Power cable seemed to supply power well. I cleaned the CD ROM drive lens using a CD lens cleaner. Each step done, I kept testing; repeating the installation, the error always existed. This made me conclude it is the CD ROM! The CD ROM is busted! Luckily, I have a lot of computers at home; I replaced the CD ROM drive with another CD ROM drive from my other PC that I know is functioning well.

Problem: Installation would still not continue with the new CD ROM! Two CD ROMs tested. For me it was too much of a coincidence that both of my CD ROM drives would be busted at the same time.
Initial Assessment of Possible Causes: The other CD ROM drive is also busted, or the motherboard’s IDE ports are busted.
What I did: For me it was too much of a coincidence that both CD ROM drives got busted at the same time! Although that happened, I was not convinced that that was the problem; most probably it was the motherboard’s IDE ports. Now a sudden rush of grief came into me. Because it meant I have to but a new motherboard and my motherboard had a built-in video and audio chip, so it was like forcing me to change 3 products instead of one. Aside from that, I was using a Pentium III processor on a PGA370 socket, worrying that I would not find a brand new one like that and might be forced to buy a new one, with a new Pentium IV processor which is more expensive!

When I got to PC Domain, my favorite computer shop in SM Fairview, I found the motherboard I was looking for. Brand new and was the last one! Also with built in video and audio. The only problem was it only had one SDRAM slot and not two just like my old one. But I may not be able to find another board for my Pentium III processor so I bought it.

My old motherboard had two 128MB SDRAM memories and I still wanted the power of a 256MB SDRAM. I also had another computer, a Pentium IV with one 256MB SDRAM and its motherboard had two SDRAM slots. So I exchanged their memory, I took the one 256MB SDRAM for the single SDRAM slot motherboard for the Pentium III, and placed the two 128MB SDRAM on the Pentium IV motherboard that did have two SDRAM slots.

Finally! Installation of Windows XP was a success! Everything ran fine, without any problems! It took me a long time to find out that the motherboard was the problem!

Not quite yet…

Problem!

When I decided to also reformat the Pentium IV PC since I did not like the Windows 2003 and decided to go back to Windows XP, installation would not continue. Error in copying files from the CD going to the hard disk!

What’s the cause of the problem readers?

If you say the two 128MB SDRAM, you are correct! The motherboard did not have any problems at all. It was the memory right from the start! I had an old 64MB SDRAM in my PC parts junk, and used it just to verify my claim. And that was it, cause of problem verified! It was the two 128MB SDRAM, and even both of them were busted, not only one.

What do you guess I did?

Of course you’ll say I bought a new memory. But not only that, I bought the more expensive one with a more reliable known brand. What a big role the memory had in copying files from the CD ROM to the hard disk! And from what I knew in the past is that once you pass POST (Power-On-Self-Test) and see a display, nothings wrong with the memory. So if you are going to buy memory, stick with the known brands, like Kingston and Apacer. It will save you from making wrong PC trouble diagnosis.

Unusual PC Problems...Part 2 - click here

Email Client Software Problems...Part 1

Benj Arriola — Wed, 14 Jul 2004 22:59:00 +0000

Although I believe today, there are more people using free browser-based emails like Yahoo and Hotmail and less POP3 emails, I am still posting this article for the minority since my clients of my own company are part of that minority that all of them usually have the same problem when it comes to POP3 emails.

For those that use POP3 email client softwares like the following:
O Microsoft Outlook
O Microsoft Outlook Express
O Eudora
O Or any other POP3 Email Software

You usually enter the following:

Login, Password, Email, POP3 Server, SMTP Server, Your Name that the recipients see when you send them an email and a Label Name to differentiate one account from another if ever the email software supports multiple accounts.

And all of these values will be given by the company who renders the POP3 service like your ISP or hosting provider.

And most of the time here are the common problems encountered when using these softwares.:

O Virus Infection
O Unread mails because they are so many!
O Mail box gets full.
O You keep on downloading the same messages over and over again.

Now let's tackle them one by one...

Virus Infection

Most of the vulnerable people here are the Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express users since these two have been the most susceptible. Not only because Microsoft makes the worst software in the world, but maybe because it is used by the majority and this is more worth hacking into than any other software brand. The best way to be protected is (1) Always download Windows Updates at http://www.windowsupdate.com and (2) Have a good anti-virus software installed like McAfee, Norton or AVG. I personally use AVG because it is free and is as powerful as Norton and McAfee with free updates as well. Once you have this installed configure it to scan incoming and outgoing emails and that's about it.

Unread mails because they are so many!

Sometimes we receive soooooo many emails, some important, some goes straight to the trash, but since they are so many, we sometimes cannot filter out the important ones over the less important ones. And here are two solutions for that: (1) Use Folders and Inbox Rules and (2) Filter out spam automatically.

Inbox rules also called rules wizard in the newer versions of Outlook and Outlook Express. Eudora has this also along with other email softwares. This feature is good for sorting out emails so they do not become confusing due to the large amount of mail. Although other email softwares have this feature, the procedure I will give is for Outlook or Outlook Express. You might need to find out how to do it with your own email software.

In MS Outlook, click on the Tools menu then Rules Wizard

After clicking on the Rules Wizard menu, you will see something like this:

Click on the New button.

Then leave everything the same and choose Move messages based on content and click on the Next button.

You may choose your own rule, but let's just assume you want to move messages based on who it is coming from, so take out the check box on with specific words in the subject or body, scroll down a bit and place a check on with specific words in the senders address, and in the Rule Description below, click on the specific words and type in the email address of one person you know who always sends you an email, click on Add, then click on the OK button.

Now your back to the old dialog box, click on Next and keep the rule checked at move it to the specified folder and in the Rules Description, click on the word specified and navigate to where you want the emails of this person to go to. Click on New to create a new folder, and name it to the name of the people who owns the email address you typed earlier. Choose the location where you want the new folder to be made and click on OK

You should now see the created new folder, choose that and click on OK.

Back to the Rules Wizard dialog box, click on Next, you'll see the exceptions options, let's skip that first and click on Next again. You will now reach the final step. You could name the rule anything you want and place a check on Run this rule now on messages already in "Inbox". so that the existing emails you receive will already get sorted and click on the Finish button.

Once all your emails are transferred, finally click on OK on the Rules Wizard dialog box and your are done!

Now do the same for all your other friends and their email gets sorted whenever you receive them. This way it is easier to find emails and you could address to the ones that are more important than the others.

But the next problem is we all do get a fair amount of spam mail, and their email addresses change all the time, even content changes all the time and you will make rules forever to keep them out of the way. So what I use is SpamPal, which you could download for free at http://www.spampal.org. Once you download it, their website has instructions on how to install it and follow it to the letter and you'll be able to filter out spam on a folder.

SpamPal checks out IP addresses commonly used by spammers based on the spamlist databases they connect to. Now a word of caution though is not all filtered out as spam will actually be spam, but most of the time it is. And some spammers may also not be detected as spam, although they are. And to fix that, SpamPal has a Whitelist and Blacklist. For email addresses considered as spam but is not spam, add them to the Whitelist and for spam that was not considered spam, add them to the Black list and the next time you receive the emails they will now go to the right places.

Next Problem: Mail box gets full.

Email Client Software Problems...Part 2

Benj Arriola — Wed, 14 Jul 2004 01:18:00 +0000

This is now the second part of the story on email client software problems, if you haven't read the first part, you may do so by clicking here.

Mail box gets full.

Some people are wondering why their email box is full even if they check their email everyday? And whenever someone is sending them an email, they say it bounces back because the email box is filled! Actually this is how emails work. Once you receive an email it is stored on the email POP3 server. Either on your ISP (Internet Service Provider) or your hosting company. This is what has limited disk space, what ever they offered you, that usually range from 2MB to 25MB and in some cases it may even reach 100MB. Whenever you download your email on your email software, it connects to this disk space and retrieves all the messages. And once you do, they are still there. Once you delete them on your email software, that's when the email software tells the server to deleted them too on the next time you connect and retrieve your emails again.

But what if you want your emails to be deleted automatically once you receive them on your email software? To do this, you must set your email software not to leave mails on the server. Although this could be done on most email client softwares, the procedure I am going to give you is for MS Outlook and Outlook Express. Once you know this it would be a lot easier to figure this out on your own using your own email software.

First is click on Tools then Accounts or Email Accounts.

A dialog box will open and choose View or change existing e-mail accounts, then click on Next.

What will come out is a list of email accounts configured on your email software. If you see tabs there, click on the Mail tab.

Now click on the desired email account and click on Change.

Now click on the More Settings button.

Then with the new window open, go to the Advanced tab and uncheck Leave a copy of messages on the server and click on OK.

Then simply close the Email Accounts dialog box and you're done!

You keep on downloading the same messages over and over again.

Have you ever experienced, downloading all your 100+ emails until you get them all, then the next day, you start downloading 200+ including your emails yesterday! Then the next day you download 300+!

This problem occurs when your email software fails to finish deleting the emails on the server, due to a slow bandwidth connection causing connection timeouts, or unstatble connections of ISPs because of the phone, or whatever reason. Bottomline is that the deleting of emails by the email software and sending the status that emails were downloaded already was not finished.

This usually occurs when you are downloading so many emails. And this usually happens when you do not get to download your emails often. And when this happens eventually your email box gets full. And this is what to do to fix it.

1) Connect and just download all your mails and do nothing else and make it finish downloading and deleting all emails. But if it still doesn't work and for some reason it never finishes and hangs, that's when you do step 2.

2) Connect to your email using your web browsers. Some ISPs give web-based access to your POP3 accounts. Some hosting companies do to. My hosting company offers web-based email for all my clients through http://www.domainname.com/webmail whatever their domain name is. And from there, delete your unimportant emails there. If it goes to a trash folder, delete the contents of the trash folder too. Then check your email again on your email software. That should make email downloading faster and eventually finish downloading all of them on your email software. After doing this, if you still cannot completely download all your emails, I guess it is time to delete all of them. You may not be able to see read them all if you are in a hurry, but it is better than not receiving emails at all forever. If you need to do this, check the next step.

3) You can actually delete all your emails using a web-based email service, but it would be faster if you contact the ISP or hosting company to simply tell them to delete the account and create it again. Some hosting companies like my company gives the client full freedom to delete and create email accounts on their own through their web-based control panel. Once you do this, just create the account again and everything should be running fine again and just check your email more ofter to avoid this to happen all over again.

For questions of having your own POP3 accounts using your own domains like www.yourname.com, feel free to contact me so we could set this up at a very reasonable cheap price. :-) Benj Arriola

Why I like PHP / MySQL

Benj Arriola — Sun, 27 Jun 2004 16:26:00 +0000

How many of you know that Yahoo is running on PHP? They started out with a proprietary CGI (Common Gateway Interface) program, and switched to PHP, I can't remember when they did, but they did switch to PHP. DirectNIC, one of the best domain name registration companies is also running on PHP and their database is very large, and their domain linguatron runs pretty fast. Who does not have a Friendster account? If you do have one, who was not irritated by their service that sometimes testimonials are missing, messages are missing, messages cannot be read, friends are missing and even runs so slow. They were running on JSP before. Now who has noticed the faster running Friendster site today? Have you noticed the filename extensions .php on the URLs today and before it used to be .jsp? What's so nice about PHP and why they like it? Why I like it?

This article is mainly for the web developers out there. But I also know that people that visit my site are also novices in web development so I will keep my language plain and simple, easy enough for my dog to understand.

First of all I want to differentiate Web Design and Web Development. Designing is mainly for aesthetics, so you should be proficient enough in several graphic software's, at least one vector graphics software and one raster graphics software. Development is targeted more on function of a website, thus programming is needed.

And here are the different web developing programming languages commonly used:

O	Perl One of the first server-side programming languages for website development, opensource, code syntax very much like C/C++ Official Website: http://www.perl.org
O	ASP Active Server Pages, now improved to ASP.net which uses the .net technology. Since it is from Microsoft, expect work to be done real fast. Expect this to be the easiest to learn. And expect this to have the most vulnerabilities from hackers, viruses, spyware, malware, etc. And expect it to have regular downloadable patches to it. Official Website: http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/
O	JSP Java Server Pages, since it is Java, it is made by Sun Microsystems. Not opensource but openstandard. Just the same way HTML is also an open standard, and there are tons of browsers that have to comply with the standard. Which gives rise to problems that browsers do not display 100% the same. The openstadardness of JSP gives the same problems. The JSP engines I am aware of are Resin, Tomcat and JRun. Although they is a majority of code is common among them, I've experienced problems when working on a project for Studios USA / Universal in the past in code syntax in connecting to databases. When it is from Java, it is also known to be secure. Official Website: http://java.sun.com/products/jsp
O	Miva One of the first server side languages I learned and had several client websites made on Miva before like The Heritage Hotel Manila; Meganomics Specialist International, Inc.; Simon Harrison Design Corporation; CCME Homemade Foodstuff; American Home Appliances (CMTC); Kenstar Travel Corporation; Novelty Entertainment Inc.; Penguin Computing Asia; Linux Consultants Asia Support; Office of Miriam Defensor Santiago; Expocraft Industries, Inc.; Waters Philippines; HatchAsia; P & J Agricultural Trading, Inc. and Philippine Council for NGO Certification. The more I learned, the more I didn't want Miva due to it's limitations compared to it's competitors.. Official Website: http://www.miva.com
O	ColdFusion ColdFusion is one of the best products invented by Allaire Corporation, who also made my favorite HTML editor HomeSite. ColdFusion came with it's own HTML editor and IDE (Integrated Development Environment) where it's IDE look very much like their HomeSite software. It was the top competitor of Macromedia Dreamweaver in terms of market share, so Macromedia bought Allaire Corporation and ColdFusion today is now Macromedia ColdFusion MX. Official Website: http://www.macromedia.com/software/coldfusion
O	PHP PHP, an opensource server side programming language just like perl, python, tcl, and others. Its growth was relatively fast considering it is opensource, and there is no corporate advertising, marketing and promotion involved. Just word-of-click and a lot of friendly people in the opensource community promoting the language(Just as I am promoting PHP now). I'll tell you more about it later. Official Website: http://www.php.net
O	Others There are still a lot more languages out there, maybe one is being created right now. But if ever I am going to mention a few that I know, we have TCL and you could learn more about TCL at http://www.tcl.tk and Python, which you could read more about it on http://www.python.org. If you still want to work through the CGI-Bin, Aside from Perl, you could also use Java, C/C++ and even Turbo Pascal!

Now that I have mentioned all of them, why did I choose PHP over the other languages? Here are my reasons:

O	Easy to Program If you are used to Visual Basic, you still might find PHP hard to program with, but if you program in C/C++, here is where you will appreciate the easiness of PHP. No variable declarations needed, just use variables when you need them. No variable type mismatches, just use them how you want to use them, they will act as how they are being used, so integer, float, string, interchange them and you get no errors.
O	HTTP Authentication Making Login and Password scripts for various purposes is always a common task in server side programming. Making a web-based login page is always time-consuming, HTTP Authentication is always easy to work with.
O	Works with compressed files PHP can read the contents of a ZIP file (.zip extension), and it could read and compress in GZIP (.gz extension)and BZIP2 (.bz2 extension) as well. So file compression could be done on-the-fly at real-time.
O	Time and Date Functions PHP can work in Gregorian, Julian, French Republican and Jewish calendars, who knows one day we'll have the Chinese calendar as well? So conversion tools or programming is not required. Time formats can be in GMT or UMT, adjusting the timezones like using EST, MDT. Applying Daylight Savings Time. Date and time functions in PHP as so powerful, there is a pre-defined function for almost any time/date task, so there is no much conversion knowing that there are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, etc.
O	Connects to any Database on the Planet PHP supports the following databases: Adabas D, Ingres, Oracle(OCI7 and OCI8), dBase, InterBase, Ovrimos, Empress, FrontBase, PostgreSQL, FilePro(read-only), mSQL, Solid, Hyperwave, Direct MS-SQL, Sybase, IBM DB2, MySQL, Velocis, Informix, ODBC, Unix dbm. Since I listed ODBC above, so MS Access users would have no problems using it with PHP. Aside from that, there is the DBX database abstraction extension allowing you to transparently use any database supported by that extension.
O	Able to FTP PHP can connect to any FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server with its so many FTP functions, connecting, uploading, downloading, navigating, creating directories and even changing file security permissions.
O	Able to use other protocols PHP can also connect to NNTP, IMAP, POP3, SMTP, LDAP OpenSSL, SNMP servers. It can connect to IRC Gateways.
O	Integration Options with other Languages PHP integrates well with Java, Perl, XML, XLST. with specially made functions for integration alone.
O	Encryption Algoritms PHP supports the following encryption algoritms: DES, TripleDES, Blowfish (default), 3-WAY, SAFER-SK64, SAFER-SK128, TWOFISH, TEA, RC2 and GOST in CBC, OFB, CFB and ECB cipher modes.
O	On-the-fly functions Creation of Macromedia Flash, Adobe Acrobat, JPEG/GIF/PNG image files at real-time.
O	Instant Search Engine Using the free mnoGoSearch search engine software, a website search engine could be created with ease.

My PHP Prediction of the future will be having more functions. Today, support for DOM XML, .Net Functions, Lotus Notes Functions are already in experimental stages, and I believe there is more to come. It is opensource and there is always one crazy person who will add more functions to PHP and make it even more powerful. But even if PHP gets more powerful, I do not see it getting easier to use in the near future, maybe sometime but not soon. Since every programmer seems to be busy with their own business going on in their life, they do not seem to have enough time to improve the user-friendliness of PHP in terms of programming in PHP, but are more concerned on what PHP can do. So IDEs similar to ASP's .Net IDE will not come soon and these opensource programmers would rather concentrate on the functions that PHP cannot do. So people concentrated on RAD (Rapid Application Development), they might still stick with Microsoft's ASP. But PHP purist will always have saved classes in their work that they could always re-use so they will have their own version of their RAD.

If you want to learn more about PHP, you might want to check these out:

O	PHP Website
O	PHP Builder Advanced Tutorial Site
O	PHP Hosting on YDS Web Solution. They also offer custom programming in PHP.

Macromedia Flash 3rd Party Softwares

Benj Arriola — Sat, 05 Jun 2004 16:03:00 +0000

Knowing Macromedia Flash will already get you places, but if you check out sites like 2Advanced, you still keep wondering how other things were made.

Knowing Flash alone keeps your designs limited to only what Flash can do, and there are other 3rd Party softwares out there that can help you create better looking Flash projects. Here are the tools I have been using as well as the resource websites I use for creating my Flash projects.

3rd Party Softwares and Websites for Macromedia Flash

O	Glanda A software that creates Flash files for you with tons of built-in effects and templates. Official Website: http://www.sothink.com
O	SWFDecompiler A software that extracts symbols within an .swf file from any website having Flash. Where you could re-use these symbols for other Flash files you create. Official Website: http://www.sothink.com
O	Swish Softwares They have four main softwares, Max, Studio, Pix and Sites. All very powerful and if a tough competitor of Sothink. Official Website: http://www.swishzone.com
O	WildForm Softwares They have even more softwares. All very powerful and have more variety of softwares compared to Sothink and Swish. Official Website: http://www.wildform.com
O	Swift3D Probably the leader in creating 3D animations for Flash which is actually a 2D animation software. Official Website: http://www.erain.com
O	SoundForge Originally owned by SonicFoundry, is now under MediaSoft of Sony. This is a sound editing software since sound really enhances the Flash experience. A good sound editing software is needed to create the sound clips you need to edit. Official Website: http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com
O	AdobeAudition Originally owned by Syntrillium and called CoolEdit. This is now under Adobe and now called AdobeAudition. A tough competitor of SoundForge and is also a top choice of Flash animators. Official Website: http://www.adobe.com
O	Anfy Softwares Was first know for AnfyJava, that creates many visual effects for websites made in Java. They now have AnfyFlash that also creates excellent Flash presentations. Official Website: http://anfyteam.com
O	FlashKit If you are looking for a good Flash resource website, this is a one-stop shop. It also has many tutorials. I mainly use this site looking for sound effects and riffs. Official Website: http://www.flashkit.com
O	PhilWeavers The Philippines' best Flash designers are here. There is a mailing list where many Flash designers teach each other online on the mailing list. Official Website: http://www.philweavers.net
O	Webmonkey Good for beginners. Has good tutorials on anything related to web-development and designing. Official Website: http://www.webmonkey.com

Thanks to everyone that helped me learn all about Flash. I started out with a simple tutorial from Dollie, then the workshop of ICSHere, Inc. by Mitch, Eric who answer all my inquiries, and Informatics Computer Institute - Commonwealth that help me practice more through teaching, thus I also thank my students who asked some challenging questions that made me push myself a bit further in learning more about Flash.

I Resigned

Benj Arriola — Mon, 31 May 2004 20:09:00 +0000

Hello Students,

I submitted my resignation letter last May 29, 2004 since I can no longer work with so many other jobs I have been working on at my company, YDS Web Solution and OmniDomain.biz. It was a move that I am not in favor of since I do not want to go back to the heavy workload life I had before on Action Online, but I have too since I have a family that both me and my wife have to feed.

But as I promised, this website will not go away. As I have told my students already that this site will be my support to you with tips in all the subjects I teach, even if I am at Informatics or not. You could still ask me questions from time to time if you are having trouble with what you have learned at Informatics.

Now I will still continue my unfinished classes at Informatics so do not worry if we still have classes going on. But I will not accept new schedules anymore.

Now about the special cases:

Ms. Owen Igdameo: I owe you a special class in PowerPoint I believe. You were absent, I will schedule that right away.

Mrs. Rosary and Ms. Rose Quiambao: I owe you both a class in Excel. I will also schedule that right away.

Mrs. Dalisay Nazareno: All our lessons are actually done and we are visiting some useful sites. Just tell me the topics and I will look for the useful sites. Although I think we are schedule to end at June 10, but perhaps we could end the class like on June 3? I cannot come to class on June 1. Anyway I will text the website addresses to visit for the topics you mentioned. And you could also fill up the Student Feedback Form as well, which has to be submitted before the class ends. And on June 3, I will finalize everything, with a rundown of everything I have taught you Ma'am as well as answer all your questions if ever you still have any.

To the incoming students who expected me to be your teacher: I may not be your teacher, but I am sure you will have a good if not better teacher. Just keep in mind that everyday is continuous learning. And that the best investment in life is education. No one can steal it from you, and the more you know, the better future it brings you. So study hard, puhunan mo 'yan sa buhay (that's your investment in life).

Summer 2004 ST109B Project

Benj Arriola — Thu, 27 May 2004 04:31:00 +0000

Your final project is to create three graphic files with the following conditions:

1. Your work will be made with the resolution of 72dpi and size will be 640x480 pixels.
2. You may use CorelDraw or Adobe PhotoShop or any combination of the two, but the final work will be in the jpeg format. (CorelDraw can export to jpeg formats. Adobe PhotoShop can save as jpeg formats. They have the file name extention .jpg)
3. There are four groups below, choose three groups, each group corresponding to the three graphic files you will have to submit.
4. In your three chosen groups, choose only 1 graphic file in each group that you will recreate.
5. All students must have at least one chosen project that your other classmates did not choose. So discuss among each other to avoid this.
6. Graphics must be clear and not pixelated. Thus copying these files and resizing them will not work.
7. You do not have to use the exact same pictures. For example, for the Debate graphic, you could replace the pictures with Rogel and Joanne. As long as you get to copy the concept and recreate it a new graphic file.

If you have any questions about your project of get stuck in a rut and do not know where to start, just talk to me about it so I could give you some pointers or email me.

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

Group 4

Lates and Absences

Benj Arriola — Mon, 24 May 2004 16:21:00 +0000

To all my current students,

The past few days I may have been late and sometimes even absent (Was absent twice only, both were ST109B subjects), but I assure you what ever you learn, you are still learning everything 100%.

A common feedback from my students in the past is that they learn a lot more in half the time. I am not boasting about myself that I am good teacher, but I am just hoping for your understanding if ever you have experienced me being late.

The past few months has given me a lot of pressure from work, from my business, from my family, all demanding a large amount of time, when added together, is more than 24 hours. I still try to put everything in a single day and the things I have to do just do not fit in the day and some events get partially sacrificed.

Unfortunately, sometimes it is your class that is partially sacrificed since your time may be lessened, but I assure you that you're not getting the shorter end of the stick. All lessons are still 100% complete.

My job is my job and a job is a job. My job is to teach, but my teaching is not only a job. I am going the extra mile to help you learn more. This website alone is what I am offering to my students and is not a requirement of my job. But this site will be online for many years to come. This site will still serve as your teacher long after you finish your courses. And you could always ask me questions on what you have learned through this website. Just email me and I will surely help you as soon as I can, but I cannot always promise to be on time with my answers, but I'll try my best to help you at the soonest possible time.