Archive for November, 2006
Firefox 2 built-in dictionary
Posted by Benny Chew in Firefox, Open Source, Tips & Tweaks, Web on November 26th, 2006
You probably would’ve noticed the dotted underlined red lines under misspelt words which are typed into text boxes/forms/fields. To me, it’s a rather welcomed feature since I use web applications and services quite a fair bit (I don’t misspell a lot, but automated checking is a bonus I guess ;)), but by default, the bundled dictionary is for the US locale which would complain when you spell ‘favour‘ instead of ‘favor‘.
Fortunately, it’s a rather easy to get around this, which is just to select and install the appropriate dictionary from here. Once that’s done, just right-click on any text box/field/form and you should be able to select the dictionary you want to use (screenshot below):
Once that’s done, you’re all set! :)
Miranda IM
Posted by Benny Chew in Web, Windows on November 19th, 2006
Miranda IM is a very lightweight IM client supporting multiple networks and is heavily based on the original ICQ client (which nobody uses anymore :(). I must say it brought back some memories of the days when I just got introduced to the world of IM. :D I decided to try it out as GAIM crashed on me the moment I tried connecting and I didn’t want to have multiple IMs installed on the work laptop which had limited amount of RAM.
First issue I had was the inability to connect to Google Talk, which HMMaster solved it for me by sending me this link. Next issue I had with it is the groupings I had with my contacts in MSN are not available in Miranda. According to HMMaster, he said there might be a plugin available for that as Miranda as heaps of plugins available, but I have not checked on that as yet.
Apart from those issues, it’s a rather good alternative to other multi-network IM clients such as GAIM and Trillian. :)
Plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery
Posted by Benny Chew in Web on November 19th, 2006
digg (original page):
ShoutHub:
SpyMy:
One would expect with a company like Catcha backing ShoutHub, at least some effort could’ve been spent in developing a slightly different stylesheet for something they modelled after. I guess an exception can be made for SpyMy as they did a good job at differentiating it by making it uglier.
Nothing out of the ordinary I guess.
workFRIENDLY
Posted by Benny Chew in Humour, Tips & Tweaks, Web on November 19th, 2006
If you’re in work environment which utilises Microsoft Word a lot for work, you could try workFRIENDLY. It basically allows you to surf most sites in a Word-like interface.
I’m not going to go into the ethical issues of such an application, neither am I supportive of that behaviour and I do wish to be held responsible if your superior finds out. :P
Error 1305
Posted by Benny Chew in Coding/Development, General Tech, Windows on November 19th, 2006
That was the error code which I encountered while trying to install Python on the server at work which ran on Windows Server 2003. The installer actually executed but threw that ‘setup file could not be found’ error just after selecting the destination directory for the install. Initial googling for this gave results which were along the lines of ‘clean the CD as it may be dirty’ didn’t make much sense since it was being installed from the hard disk itself!
Mr sysadmin AsenDURE didn’t have an answer for it either, so I went back to do more googling which one of them actually fixed it. Although the installer (msi) file was on the hard disk locally, it was in a network share which Windows Server 2003 disapproves of. After moving the file to an unshared directory, the install process was completed without any issues. That’s Windows I guess. ;)
Another thing which I’ve learnt after the first week is not to run services/applications which were built for *nix on Windows. I had heaps of problems in migrating CVS to SVN which would never have been an issue had it been a *nix box.
End of a chapter, and a start of another
Posted by Benny Chew in Personal Events on November 12th, 2006
Just had my last exam paper of my undergrad degree last Wednesday, which I guess, unofficially signifies the end (if all goes according to plan..).
Starting from tomorrow, I’ll be starting work at QDC as a software engineer. :D I’ll be dealing mostly with Java development stuff besides getting to play with some toys.
Unfortunately, there goes my post-exam vacation and late-waking-up schedule. :( I suppose I’ll have a short break when my parents come over for my graduation ceremony just before Christmas. That said, I guess I’m thankful that I’ve got a job before I even graduate. :D
Hmm, that’s all for this entry, I guess. Will try to keep my blog and spherebox updated with new entries/writeups when I can. ;) Hopefully I don’t get too busy. :)
Eliminating document viewing troubles
Posted by Benny Chew in Tips & Tweaks, Windows on November 4th, 2006
If you have used word processing software such as Microsoft Word long enough, you would probably know by now that all the fancy formatting and styling you have for your document on your computer may look totally horrendous on another machine, especially when viewed with other ‘compatible’ word processing software such as Open Office‘s Writer or other freely available viewers.
To avoid this problem, one easy way is to generate PDFs of your document which you can then distribute which you can be sure they would be able to view it without any issues.
Adobe‘s PDF format is probably the de facto standard when it comes to document viewing. The Adobe Reader software which is used to view PDF files is free and is installed in most computers nowadays. Another free PDF viewer which you can use instead is Foxit Reader.
So now to generating PDFs! Just follow the steps below and you should be able to start generating them real soon:
- Download PDFCreator from here (get the .msi version, i.e. zPDFCreator-0_9_3-AD_DeploymentPackage-WithoutToolbar.msi).
- Install PDFCreator by running the .msi file which you downloaded earlier. If you go to ‘Printers and Faxes’, you should see a new ‘PDFCreator’ printer installed.
- Open your document as usual, get to the print dialog, choose printing preferences and then select the PDFCreator printer.
- Hit ‘Print’ as usual and you would then be prompted on the filename of the PDF file and where you want to save it to.
With PDFCreator, you can practically generate PDFs from any application which supports printing. There are other settings you can choose from in PDFCreator such as having the PDF encrypted to prevent unauthorised copying.
Another PDF generating software which you can try out instead is CutePDF Writer which does the same thing, but requires you to download and install the Ghostscript converter separately and does not have that many features as compared to PDFCreator.
New contributor to spherebox!
Posted by Benny Chew in General Tech, Site Updates on November 1st, 2006
Books to read..
Posted by Benny Chew in Personal Events on November 1st, 2006
Ethics book for my final final exam of my undergraduate degree next week and the J2EE patterns book for my job which starts in slightly less than 2 weeks.
If you need any cure for insomnia, I strongly recommend you try to get hold of the ethics book..
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