Miscellaneous Postings - alphabetical order
The miscellaneous postings section is where I put stuff that doesn't categorise well anywhere else.
Post sort order: Post Date (Newest First) | Post Date (Oldest First) | Alphabetical | Date Updated
50th Consecutive Post
Posted December 4th, 2007 in Miscellaneous Postings
This post marks the 50th consecutive post on my LAMP Blog. I first set this website up in late 2003 to publish useful articles for solving problems etc and had intended to add new content every day. However other work kept me busy, and when I moved the site to a new server I never got around to making the admin functionality work again.
Earlier this year I decided I should get back into posting articles and turn this into a blog site. So I redeveloped the database structure, the admin and the frontend and re-skinned the website and turned it into a blog. I've only just added an RSS feed and will add some more "bloggy" things to it, such as user commenting etc shortly.
Blogging Resumed
Posted January 30th, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
It's been two weeks since I last posted - extremely poor performance considering it was my intention to post something new every day. I've been pretty busy with work and it's so easy to slip behind. It only seems to take one or two days to slip behind and then it becomes easier to not do a post that day. Anyway, I am resolving to get back to posting once per day, andalready have a number of posts all ready to roll out over the next week. Blogging resumed!
Don't forget to backup before messing around with hard drives
Posted January 6th, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
My primary desktop computer has 4 x 320GB hard drives. The first hard drive is partitioned into an operating system drive with partitions for Windows XP, Linux (currently Fedora) and a dedicated partition for my VMWare virtual machines. The second one contained my /home partition and the third and fourth were combined into a single LVM (Logical Volume Management) partition containing Linux ISO images, backup files and so on.
The LVM volume was nearly full, and I'd been wanting to merge the 2nd disk into the volume for a while now, so I copied some files around the place and got ready to add it to the LVM. I used a graphical tool for managing LVM partitions and was easily able to add the drive to the LVM.
eBay "Internal error to the application" RSS feed error
Posted April 3rd, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
As an affiliate of eBay it is possible to do an advanced search on the eBay site and create custom RSS feeds which contain the search data and your affiliate information. On April 1st 2008 eBay have changed from using Commission Junction for their affiliate program to their own system. When testing out generating RSS feeds I got the error message "Internal error to the application" instead of the feed that I was expecting. This post looks at why I got the error and how to fix it.
Google corrects incorrect payment amount
Posted January 8th, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
Last week I posted how Google had used the wrong exchange rates when calculating their payment to me as a Google Adsense advertiser and paying by EFT or electronic funds transfer. As it turned out, this affected all of Google's Adsense advertisers in Australia and New Zealand who are paid using EFT.
Google recalculated what the payment should have been and then paid the difference to me on January 7th, so it has all ended well, although I would have like to have received the full payment at the start. It's a real wonder that they managed toget it wrong in the first place though.
Holiday March 2008
Posted March 23rd, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
I am currently on holiday. This post (and the last three ones and the next one too) were written before I went away. I had intended to have posts written for every day that I was away to keep up the "one post per day" thing I have going on but I simply ran out of time. My next post after tomorrow's weekly round up will be on March 31st.
Incorrect exchange rates used in Google EFT Payments December 2007
Posted January 2nd, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
I use Google's Adsense program for serving ads on a number of sites I own. I don't earn a particularly large amount of money from this but it's a nice passive revenue stream from those sites. My monthly Google payments are done by EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer) and are converted from United States Dollars into New Zealand Dollars before the EFT is done. Unfortunately this month they managed to get the exchange rates the wrong way around.
Merry Christmas 2007
Posted December 25th, 2007 in Miscellaneous Postings
I would like to wish all my readers a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year (or a Happy Holidays if you don't celebrate Christmas). As this posting goes live I will be enjoying a beautiful Christmas lunch with my family on what is hopefully a nice sunny Christmas day.
Network Solutions Steals Domain Ideas
Posted January 12th, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings (Updated January 17th, 2008)
Network Solutions had the monoploy for domain name registrations for .com, .org and .net domains for many years before the market was opened up. They are always been much more expensive than the competition and now it turns out that they have been taking advantage of ICANN's 5 day domain refund rule to hold onto all domains that are searched on on their site, therefore preventing them from being registered through another domain name registrar.
Network Solutions Steals Domain Ideas - Follow Up
Posted January 31st, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
About three weeks ago a number of articles and blog posts talked about how Network Solutions Steals Domain Ideas, so natually I had to add my own post about the issue. This is a short follow-up post to confirm that Network Solutions drops the registration of the domain a few days later.
RSS Feed Launched
Posted December 5th, 2007 in Miscellaneous Postings
Finally I have added an RSS feed to the site, using Feedburner to host the feed so I can get an idea of the number of people using it.
Use of www in website addresses - follow up
Posted February 3rd, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
Back in October 2007 I posted about the use of www in website addresses. There was a bit of talk about this recently in the NZ PHP Users Group's Mailing List (you can browse the discussion here in the thread "Is WWW still relevant") and I posted a link to my article so thought I should do a quick follow up about this.
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