Electrons, Here I Arrive…
Its a long long long……. story.. short: One of my school friend became school teacher. As he was new, silently forced to take responsibility of arranging a science fair. He have to arrange few projects, make them successful and show to the students… you know, our the usual other way round thingy.
So, me to the rescue.. arranged a small project with an electronics person. I talked with him and finalized the delivery date and price. But at the day before deadline I called him to know the status, he replied: “Apne to amake ovabe bolen nai. Ei kaj korte gale keu nijer poisay kore. Amake jinish kine dite hobe. bla bla bla “. In short, as I took the responsibility, I am F… up (too usual in here).
I said, “Grrrr” and “Ok lets see whats so special about it”. I have strong interest in electronics, specially the fusion of hardware and software part (low level programming, it’s low man 
) ). But never ventured the electronics part before (though did some digital logic way back in undergrad).
Started searching and learning. Gathered design and basic behind the “Light Sensitive Switch” used for nightlights.
Why am I writing this post again? Yah, right… I want share with newbies or the beginners our there with same interest to get out and get started.
Like Phil Collins say,
Don’t be scared, don’t be shy
Lift your head it’s gonna be alright
Stuffs bought, we started with diagram and nothing worked 
. We were in tense situation, whats wrong? Later we got the idea, there were some damaged components. In the process we forgot which Resistor in what ohm. Searched and found this site for easy calculation. Just remember the first band is other side of golder band.
Also checkout these fine sites to support you with some weird ideas on tech thingy.
One is instructables. Excellent design and detailed step by step instructions. You can find what i have worked on in here. Also more detailed diagram in here.
Another, Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. I like it for simple and weird ideas. I have done this project.
In final word, price of components are not that high. Above two project components in two sets each was around 200TK. Try it out if you have interest. Be careful with hot rods 
(The Soldering Iron). Tryout the project in a breadboard before fixing/finalizing it on board. Bread board is a bit costly but its worth it if you are planning to venture these sort of stuff often. Some of our work picture is posted at the end.
Enjoy…. ppl.
Back to the game board (The point click Adventure games revisited :-)
Who were you? Are you the person who used to dream about games? Always thinking what might be the reason for game state isn’t moving forward? Wondering all the time, “what am I missing? what mystery I have to unveil to move forward?”. Then you are that point click adventure game freak.
My experience with this sorts of game were started with The Full Throttle when i was in school. It was 1997 or 1998 maybe. It was just initial PC time when most people i know were happy with Doom or Duke Nukem 3D. At that time Computer was not so common in Bangladesh. All the games were original copy and worst of all, almost no cd burner available. You had to literally borrow these games like a paperback book. Another game I can recall of that time was Crusader: No Regret. I still remember its title: No pity. No mercy. No regret. You can checkout the Crusader video from youtube. but that’s another story.
The fun part of these sorts of game is you have to think like the character. You will get into the environment and solve the problem. By solving a puzzle or tackling a situation with pieces of information you gathered will move the main character to final goal.
With The Full Throttle, it just opened a new genre of games to me. These games gave me some taste to the RPG (Role Playing Game). So i played some great RPGs like Final Fantasy series, The Blade Runner, Monkey Island series and many more.
I think the early age of adventure genre was ruled mainly by Lucas Arts and Sierra. But where were others in focus as well. Some of the popular titles of early time were:
- Full Throttle
- The Dig
- Monkey Island series
- Indiana Jones series
- Day of the Tentacle
- Sam & Max
- The Gobliiins series
- King’s Quest series
- Leisure Suit Larry series
- Broken Sword series
OK, I have bored you enough. Now lets get to the point of posting this article. Recently I came across playing The Dig. Long story short, some villain showed me that game but never let me borrow 
. Suddenly i got it over torrent and tried to play. But most of you tried to play old dos based games already know, starting from windows xp you do not have the actual dos present in you OS anymore. Its a virtual environment for dos you see, not the real one which is required for these games to play. You will face many problems like, screen screwed up or sound card problem or controlling problem or game runs in super man speed 
.
There there.. don’t be sad. There are much freakier people out there. Who actually think for freak like us and gave us a gift to overcome these problem. They are the knight in shining armor to save these games from the cruel hands of latest OS. Its the ScummVM. You can check their Compatibility list for your favorite game or check out the FAQ page for general info.
There is another link for your pleasure, where you will get all the latest news about your oldest games . The MOJO site. No, its not the cold drinks mojo or ppg (power puff girls) mojo jo jo . Don’t forget to visit bottom right links some game dedicated sites hosted by mixmojo. Also if you love to extract you fav game music or dialogs or BG, you will get those and some other tools from Quick n Easy Software link of mixmojo.
PS: i can’t recall now, will try to add later. But i have used another emulation tool for old dos programs. Can’t remember.. damn i m getting old, loosing memories… Wait, I do that all the time. Ooops, sorry. I m getting old …… NOT.
CodeIgniter vs Godaddy Problems
Hello every one. I’ve been planning for this post long. But couldn’t manage time. This is about a problem i have faced during my freelance work on mid August for a client in Bosnia. My web application was built with CI and was working fine in local as well as remote server. But was causing problem on clients Godaddy server.
Problems were:
- It was giving problem ‘404 Page Not Found’ when requesting default route.
- Request with full url with controller was giving ‘No input file specified’. Which was solved by putting ‘index.php?’ in the config file. But i want to remove the index.php from the url. Have tried all the .htaccess settings suggested in the forum.
- All the database transaction gives a error like below:
A PHP Error was encountered
Severity: Warning
Message: mysql_real_escape_string() expects parameter 2 to be resource, boolean given
Filename: mysql/mysql_driver.php
Line Number: 227
After that i tried some suggestions from this user guide page. Which actually solved my problem No. 1 with changes in config.php like below:
$config['uri_protocol'] = "QUERY_STRING";
and
$config['uri_protocol'] = "ORIG_PATH_INFO";
Other settings were either failing or was giving me the default controller for all the url i request for. But my problem No 2 and 3 was still on loose.
Then again i’ve started to investigate and found a problem of database connection. Actually i was so sure that DB connection settings problem will show me an error on initial stage that i’ve never double checked the DB settings. But for some weired reason, CI doesn’t show any error on DB connection problem over Godaddy. So beware of it.
So after rechecking the DB settings my problem No 3 was gone. Now lets see the .htaccess settings for problem No 3 which works under Godaddy server:
Options +FollowSymLinks
Options -Indexes
DirectoryIndex index.php
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|img|css|js|robots\.txt|favicon\.ico)
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L,QSA]
Additional to the solutions above, also try to re ftping your scripts. Just in case. Also some others suggested me to avoid this host to save time .
Whole thing was done with suggestions and help of great CodeIgniter forum. You can get further help and old discussions over there.
You can also visit my clients site here. Which (thanks God) is running smoothly ever since.
Thank you all.
Another Mysql Enemy (ERROR-2003)
Once again, the mysql problem halted my work for several hours. This is the first time it showed me error in this manner. Then again this wasted my hours of work. So what was its behavior? It was refusing all the connections to the server. But server is running smoothly. So, i went for ultimate solution, the Google. Finally found out it was a problem due to some blockade in the system or firewall level. Then again, there was a work around. You can use the pc ip instade of pc name. Like for my case, `localhost` became `127.0.0.1` and it was working fine. But i wanted to solve the problem so i opened the configure of my firewall and re adjusted the permission for the mysql. Fixed………….
problem: server not responding, error:2003
solve: workaround, change connection pc name to ip. or reconfigure the firewall for mysql.
route to H……
It was another hot, humid, sunny day. While going to a certain path, it was way too long to cover with the energy at stock. Almost at end point of energy when the horrible state arrives. Facing road with a confused look. Its a forked road ahead. As far i know a fork has four parts at split end. But now facing five ways to choose from. Damn its tough to say which way to go. Also at the end of energy. Almost dying. But its too late already……
Well, it’s the scenario of my connections. Ever tried to connect with a specific path while you have more then one lan in pc? May be you tried with 2-3. But i was trying with 2+3=5 Lan connections. Man it was making me crazy, was going nuts. Some times one connection connects ok, but the other one keeps wondering where to go, which path to take. After few days of search and try… Came to a solution. Windows route command. It has a table of ips, gateways and lans. You can specify which route to take and by which lan and blah.
Solution: Windows Route table.
route add ip gateway
route -p add ip gateway
ip:connect to this ip.
gateway: through this gateway.
-p: to make it in reg, so it stays even after you restart.
*you can also mention lan card to use in this connection to be more specific and sure shot .
Details can be found here.
System: SMS Server system with java.
The butt shop
Window shopping is not so popular in our country, yet. So i guess seller in the shops don’t bother much of displaying their product in front windows. But while i was returning home from a friends house suddenly this shops window caught my attention. It’s quite popular shop among young stars. I am not mentioning the name. but just a clue, you can find this shop around `eastern plaza`. You can get the idea of what i am talking about from the picture.
hope you will enjoy it. sorry for the low quality pic. i managed it on request by someones mobile picture. was planning to write this blog for long, but it was lagging for unavailable picture and busyness. I’ll try to get a better one in the near future. hope the shop owners do not read blogs and caught me while i m getting new one .
take care all.
mysql Error-1067 damn
Picture this, almost 1 AM, almost done with the job. you just wanna get done with it and return home. At this point suddenly you sql server starts giving damn error-1067. How would you feel? after restarting the server, no luck. Ok lets restart the OS, still no luck. Then back to the old but effective solution, google it. finally found the solution. There was some problem with the log file. While i was trying to fix the server my data got corrupted. So after i fix the server i had to re-populate the server with data and start the system. Finally i was done with the system and testing at 3 AM.
solution: delete the logfiles and restart the server.
system: it was a java coded, mysql backed SMS server solution for a renowned TV channel in Bangladesh.
you can get more details on this error in here.
Death of another simplicity
Ever wondered how to get a high paid job? From one of my teachers comment, it comes out to be a simple way. Never thing easy, kill the simplicity. You will end up with a big paid job . This reminds me one of our keyword `therap`. I guess my friends will get the idea of this keyword and remembers that, the keyword holder finally got a high paid job . Anyway lets start with the main topic. I was working with the mssql and stuck with a problem. i wanted to do something like:
select a,b from table limit 10
select a,b from table limit 20,10
But i end up with only one keyword top. which will give you first n rows, no way you can get the second query. so the final work around is this:
select * from (
select top 10 * from (
select top 30 a,b
from table
order by id asc
) as newtbl order by id desc
) as newtbl2 order by id asc
If you want to get more idea of this type of query you can visit these addresses:
http://www.planet-source-code.com
http://www.thescripts.com
Finally i am thinking…..
i should move to more MS developments, learn some work around of simplicity and end up with a high paid job . Simple equation huh!?
Its wapy wap web out there
When ever you what to make a wap site, do care for tags. Its really nasty to work in wap environment. Its so sensitive even a single character mistake will return parse error. So do check in the www.w3schools.com.
If you are working with dynamic site, then be careful with the `&` sign. Where ever it is, in url or in body text. It will kill your page and you will end up with a eagerness of ripping your hair . If you are importing your data from DB, do replace all `&` with `&` at the end. There are other exceptions as well but `&` is the cause of most choked pages.
You can check all the characters representation in here for help.
You can use this online validator for help.
Just another cronjob in the tab
Today, i made some shell scripts to automate some repeating job for freeBSD server i maintain. Jobs like, maintaining database backup for security reason. Also placed one for checking if apache tomcat is up and running. Take necessary steps and notify by email if not. Also one for checking and generating some useful listing from DB for company’s weekly work process.
Finally placed all the script in crontab to work in timely manner. In this process some useful handy dandy sites were: crontab, shell script and tools.
Hope these will be helpful to some one out there.
