Key Points » Computers

Website icon image favicon.ico not working in IE

lawnz — Wed, 09 May 2012 07:27:17 +0000

favicon.ico is a website icon image file, this image appears in the URL field of web browser, I found this image sometimes does not show up in IE Internet Explorer, it always works in FireFox and Chrome browsers, I did some research on Internet, and did some tests, now it seems works in IE reliably, here is what I did:

1. create png file, use a online tool to convert it into a _REAL_ ico file, upload the favicon.ico to root directory of the website, the online tool is at

http://www.favicon.cc/

2. add these two lines to header block of index file, say index.php, doesn’t have to be index.html,

3. go to Internet Options of IE, delete temporary files and browse history

I noticed after I login to my Yahoo email, there is no site icon image for Yahoo email web URL in IE, but it shows up in Chrome. again Google has better engineers, their site icon image shows up in all browsers.

Web Hosting

admin — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 23:46:35 +0000

I have been looking for web hosting companies, I found the performance data “uptime” which is from uptime command to show server load in 1, 5, 15 minutes, not the BS number 99.9999% up time, say your server is 100% up, but with overloaded application running, that up time does not do any good, read this blog about pair.com,

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=152564&highlight=pair

“This is what I’m looking for in a host. Server loads ALWAYS in the 0.00=0.x0
range. Never even hitting 1.”

updated Feb 10, 2012 – I signed up a new account with pair.com, really like their server, I run a cron job to record uptime every hour, in 24 hours uptime rarely hits over 1

updated Mar 12, 2012

I asked Bluehost support why their server uptime load hits over 1, their level 1 support engineer explains:

{{{

20 is insignificant in our environment, that is significantly under any
level that would cause concern for two reasons:

1. The load of 20 is across 24 cores, this means the actual load per core is
.83, which is under 1.

2. Our load reports very differently than other servers, due to our
proprietary throttling system. Load is the number of processes waiting for
CPU time, and our system forces any account that is using more than 7% of a
core’s CPU to waitlist processes. Again note: your server has 24 cores.

}}}

so that is not too bad, keep in mind Bluehost has couple of hosting plans, this is for pro account.

Vlan And Website Network

admin — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:05:38 +0000

I designed and implemented couple of website networks which have server systems, routers, switches, and load balancer, etc. I had to decide to have Vlan in website network or not, I decided not to, the reason is Vlan requires configurations, in case something bad happens to swtiches, I can replace the fault switches in a very short time, this is very important for website networks, CISCO switches are a little more expensive, there are many inexpensive switches such as SMC, Netgear and D-link switches, I rather buy more physical switches than setting up virtual LAN, one time I told the VP operation, if I leave the company, if switches need to be replaced, anyone can replace the switches without messing with Vlan configurations.

Text message service providers in USA

lawnz — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 23:52:16 +0000

I am working on an application software which requires SMS or MMS texting communication, It is strange that it is hard to find a good text message service provider in USA, I found some providers recommended on Internet, but they are not based in USA, Nexmo has office in Palo Alto, CA, so I gave it a try, they are ok for simple pure text messages, but inbound message with binary format just does not work, the technical support said it is network carrier limitation, I sent a picture from my Sprint HTC Android cell phone in Fremont, CA to the virtual phone number (from Nexmo) in USA, I got nothing in the inbound message, I sent it to my friend’s cheap cell phone LG Tracfone, he got it, and even replied with the picture to my cell phone. I have to try a different SMS or MMS provider, I have contacted Routo Messaging http://www.routomessaging.com/ , this company is also in UK, it is strange none of the tech supports Nexmo or Routo knows if their service or gateway supports inbound messages with binary data! I am lucky that one of the Routo support guys will forward my question to their developers, so I simplified my question as I can, the question is “can I use API to extract a picture from the message sent by a cell phone”, here is a good description on MMS, it is easier to understand the description if you have done some web application software,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Messaging_Service

updated 12/26/2012

after reading API document from Routo, I found same result, there is no support for inbound binary message in USA.

Nexmo replied there are following restrictions made by US and Canada carriers,

-Numeric sender only
-No handset delivery receipts (if we don’t reject the message at submission time it means we were able to reach the network)
-Binary, Unicode and long SMS are not supported
-Multipart (concatenated) messages are not supported

this starts making sense to me why there is no SMS MMS service providers I can find in USA, with the restrictions above developers can only create a application software with very limited features, there is much less success rate for this kind of business in USA, it also makes sense to me why there is much less spams to cell phones in USA.

updated 12/31/2011

Routo Messaging replied, they don’t even have virtual numbers in USA, I will stay with Nexmo, and the software will support inbound message for text only without binary like pictures taken on cell phones.

How to print a nice borderless picture

lawnz — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:16:07 +0000

I am an amateur phtotographer, I have a Canon PIXMA Pro9000 Mark II inkjet printer, it can print up to 13″x19″, it came with Adobe Photoshop Element 6.0, it really bothered me that I could not print borderless pictures, after google and test for hours, now I can print the perfect borderless pictures, I got some nice and cheap frames from Walmart, put the framed pictures at the bar room in my house, I look at them more than the nice paintings on the wall, now I don’t have to go to Walgreens or Costco for photo prints, just need to buy ink and papers from Amazon : )

here is the steps to print a nice borderless picture:
1. resize the original picture in Edit mode of Photoshop Element
if the picture size is not proportioanl like paper size, choose either max width or max height to fit the paper, say the picture size is 9″x15″, paper is 8.5×11, I would resize picture height 15 to 11, keep proportional resize.
2. choose printer Canon PIXMA Pro9000 Mark II
3. choose color handling by Photoshop Element (not printer to handle color)
4. choose printer profile (paper type) say Canon paper plus glossy II
5. choose rendering intent Perceptual

Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex vs Western Digital My Passport usb hard drive

lawnz — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 20:20:48 +0000

I bought a Western Digital My Passport usb hard disk 1 terabytes, I used it as an external backup hard drive, after using it for 4 months, the Clonezilla software starts showing bad sectors on hard drive when I was doing backup on my Asus Windows 7 laptop, I have spent many hours to try to recover it, there was no way to recover from physical sector damage, I was looking for another external usb 3 hard drive on Amazon, I found someone made a very good comment on portable external usb drives,

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-FreeAgent-Ultra-Portable-External-STAA1500100/dp/B00455MCRA/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1323374924&sr=8-3

the construction of the drives is very important, according to his review, Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex external usb 3 has best construction, this usb 3 drive is also backward compatible with usb 2, now I remember I dropped the Western Digital hard drive one time, that was light drop, I used other hard drives before, never seen a hard drive so fragile like Western Digital My Passport hard drive, I will get a new Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1.5 TB hard drive to replace Western Digital My Passport hard drive.

How to choose a laptop computer

lawnz — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 06:05:27 +0000

How to choose a new laptop pc? my suggestion is to buy cheap ones with a good battery, Sony has good battery, you can get a cheap Sony laptop at Fry’s Electronics or Best Buy for around $400 when it is on sale, or to buy expensive ones with full HD display resolution 1920 x 1080, you will love it when you play full HD video on your large screen HD LED TV, Asus has some nice high end models with native full HD display, I am not a big fan for Apple laptops, look at the specification of MacBook Pro

http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/specs.html

native display is 1440 x 900 which is not full HD.

Updated 2011-11-24

My friend just got a low-end Sony laptop, it even has WiDi (Wireless Display), it is nice to be able to play video to new LED TV (WiDi compatible) without a HDMI cable.

Updated 2012-01-21

Another friend’s laptop got really bad virus, nothing important is on his pc, I said you need to find someone to help to find the restore function to restore Windows 7 to original software, he restored Windows 7 software to original state, I told him he made a good choice to have a high performance pc, it takes much less time to restore software than low end pc, he feels pretty good with the money he spent on a high end pc : )

Is Steve Jobs master inventor?

lawnz — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 09:48:56 +0000

I read AP (Associated Press) article calls Steve Jobs master inventor,

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/08/24/steve-jobs-at-apple-master-inventor-marketer/

here is a list of his patents,

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/08/24/technology/steve-jobs-patents.html#patent/voicemail-manager-for-portable-multifunction-device_7996792

All his patents are about packaging, user interface of computer or device, I would not call him master inventor, that title should go to inventors like Tesla,

http://www.teslasociety.com/biography.htm

what is the difference between AP and People magazine? :)

Asus ML239H full HD LED monitor

lawnz — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 05:16:29 +0000

I had a Samsung SyncMaster T220 LCD monitor, it doesn’t support full HD 1920 x 1080 display resolution, I have seen a lot of new LED monitors at Bestbuy and Fry’s Electronics, they look really nice and sell for reasonable price, I think it is time to get a new LED monitor, I read a lot of reviews on Internet, decided to get Asus ML239H, it not only supports full HD, it is IPS panel, and has HDMI interface, response time is 5ms GTG (grey to grey), I don’t play high speed games, it is good for my application, actually even 8ms is good enough for most applications, I found a great review on this monitor:

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/asus_ml239h.htm

I paid about $200 total on Amazon, I connect this monitor as external display to Asus laptop via HDMI cable, change only Trace Free setting to 40% instead of default 60% according to above review, leave all other settings as default, display looks better than my old SyncMaster, I am sure Samsung must have some new good LED monitors, but not at this price, I am pretty happy with this purchase.

Updated 2011-11-24

I connected HDMI cable to this monitor, there is no audio sound coming out from the monitor, I found out the monitor doesn’t have built in speakers, but there is a connector in the back panel for external speakers or headphone, it works ok.

Disassemble laptop Asus N53SV-XV1 to replace wireless network card

lawnz — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 18:58:01 +0000

I opened Asus laptop N53SV-XV1 to replace wifi + bluetooth combo card with a new Intel Ultimate N 633ANHMW IEEE 802.11n (draft) Wi-Fi Adapter – Mini PCI Express – 450Mbps, the Intel wireless network card doesn’t have Bluetooth, I don’t mind lose Bluetooth. If you decide to do it, I have to warn you, this is NOT an easy job, you can break laptop very easily. the tools I used are flash light, precision screw driver set, dinner knife.