BurningDogBlog

This took me a while to figure out when I first tried to do it because it's so "simple" that no-one bothers to write any documentation for it. Take the component you're trying to install and make sure it's in a folder. For instance, I'm installing "mamblog" onto the IASYM site. So, copy the folder into: mambo_root_dir/administrator/components/com_installer/ Then log into your admin backend, go to Components -> Install/Uninstall. In the Install Directory, leave whatever is in there as is, just go to the end and replace "component" with "mamblog" (or whatever your folder name is - case sensitive). Then hit "enter" or click "install" (for some reason, in Firefox, it didn't work the first two times when I clicked "install" - but hitting "enter" did...odd). It should say "Upload new component - Success" if it worked ok, and there might be some other stuff, like a readme. You should be able to access your new component in the "Components" menu.

Technorati Tags: component, install, joomla, mambo

I got a request today from Lenard about how to set up Mambo-phpshop to work with Virtual Card Services as a payment gateway. The instructions below should work with phpShop as well.

Open the phpshop admin console, click on "list payment methods" and create a new one - "Virtual Card Services." Make sure it's a "Paypal-related" one. In "configuration" paste the following code:

<?php
 //generate a unique transaction number
 $unique_transaction_number = date("Y.m.d.G.i.s");
 ?>
<form method="post" action="https://www.vcs.co.za/vvonline/ccform.asp">
  <input name="p1" value="AJR3" type="hidden">
  <input name="p2" value="<?php echo $unique_transaction_number; //unique transaction number - eg. 2004.05.21.15.31.45 ?>" type="hidden">
  <input name="p3" value="<?php $db->p("order_id") ?>" type="hidden">
  <input name="p4" value="<?php printf("%.2f", $db->f("order_total"))?>" type="hidden">
  <!--<input name="Cell phone Number" value="h" type="hidden">
   <input name="Message for SMS" value="i" type="hidden">-->
  <input value="Pay by Credit Card" type="submit">
</form>

I've just archived last year's Summer Camp site. They turned down my suggestion to set up a wiki, ostensibly because they were afraid of what content could be posted there and it would be "too chaotic." *sigh* That's the *point* of a wiki - to allow people to post stuff (photos, reviews, questions etc etc etc) online. Only people really interested in Summer Camp would visit the site anyway and if anything nAsty is put there it can easily be taken off. The point is that a wiki allows a community to develop a site and not just a few people at the top. It allows anyone to have their say and sure, while this can be chaotic there's some great stuff which can come out of that.

Technorati Tags: summer camp, wiki, church, baptist, South Africa, christian

Not the easiest. Found a page on the Drupal site talking about how to do this, but it doesn't work. *sigh* This is what I want to do... I have this blog sitting at www.burningdog.co.za/blog and a fresh Drupal install at www.burnindog.co.za. I've turned url aliasing on which means *everything* at burningdog.co.za is passed through Drupal...including my /blog folder, which is then process and Drupal says "page not found." So I need to reconfigure my .htaccess file for it to still work with the url aliasing in Drupal, but to ignore that when I hit the /blog folder. This is the code that finally worked:

  RewriteEngine on
  
  # ignore the blog subfolder
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !blog/
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1
  DirectoryIndex index.html [L]

I'm waiting for my Drupal login details to arrive and then I'll post it on their site. But for now, I'll continue reading Harry Potter. Btw, I found that unless that last line (with the index.html) was added in, it wouldn't work. As long as this is your default file then you're fine. Otherwise change it to index.php or whatever you need it to be. Other links I came across: The official mod_rewrite site. A bit friendlier version, also at the apache site. Although, if you ask me, the code looks like frikking assembler. I spent the best part of an hour and a half trying to get the exact right syntax. And there's no way of debugging the code either - it either works or it doesn't...no wonder it's voodoo! [UPDATE]: the above code worked, all right, but it broke my Drupal comments. Have NO idea why! So I disabled it and went hunting around for code that does. Here it is:

  RewriteEngine on
  
  # ignore the blog subfolder
  RewriteRule /blog/ blog/index.html 
  DirectoryIndex index.html [L]

The last line needs to be there for the same reasons as above. I got most of the code from The Art of Web and just needed a minor rewrite.

Technorati Tags: apache, drupal, htaccess, mod_rewrite

The browser I'm using now is Flock (well, in combination with Firefox and Safari since I tend to have about 20 websites open at the same time). It's based on the Mozilla source code and is rather cool. It's in alpha stage, meaning there are some bugs, but I'm liking it. I've used it to do all of my customisation at my new Burning Dog site.

Technorati Tags: flock

According to PC Magazine, “For Apple, in both the desktop and notebook sections of the survey, every single score is significantly better than the industry average for Windows machines. No exceptions.” [source: Lockergnome [UPDATE] I liked this paragraph from the survey:

The company's scores are so high there's some concern that they can't be completely trusted: that Apple users are so passionate — almost fanatic — about the company and its products, they're not quite as objective as other computer owners.

How does Apple get such passionate (fanatic) users?! They continue:

Still, there's solid evidence that Apple computers may actually be worthy of devotion. There's little doubt, for instance, that the company builds unusually reliable products. On the desktop side, readers say that Apple systems needed repairs only 11 percent of the time, an astonishing number when you consider that the closest competing score is Sony's at 16 percent. Just 17 percent of Apple notebooks needed repair—second to Averatec's 14 percent—but this is still amazingly low considering that no one else is under 20 percent. Tempting as it may be to suspect that Apple owners are prone to exaggerate when asked subjective questions, they are much less likely to exaggerate the number of times a system needs repairs.

Hmmm...I don't mind paying for quality.

Technorati Tags: review, computers, apple, good design, quality

"Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, or Ajax, is a web development technique for creating interactive web applications." [Wikipedia] AJAX is the technology behind the cool pages making their way onto the net recently which fetch and submit data without needing to refresh the whole page. AJAX isn't a technology itself, but rather a combination of HTML (and CSS), Javascript and XML. I'm looking into it...

Technorati Tags: ajax, javascript, web2.0, xml

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/. Ubuntu is still the most popular linux distro with Mandriva coming in 2nd. The local ISO is at Internet Solutions.

Technorati Tags: download, linux, ubuntu

I love Apple. But not the Apple setup in SA. It's quite simple: on Wednesday Apple announced their new Powerbook line. Very nice - they all now come standard with DVD writers. Skip over to the Apple SA website and compare prices:

12" Powerbook: America - $1,499 =	R9,893
South Africa =	R13,695
15" Powerbook: America - $1,999 =	R13,201
South Africa =	R18,586

(that's at today's exchange rate of $1 = R6,60).

Apple SA (i.e. Core), please explain why you're R3,802 more expensive on the 12" and R5,385 on the 15"?

That's a 40% markup!

Technorati Tags: apple, expensive, South Africa, rip off

Why? Because I spent 6 hours looking for a bug in it when there isn't one. The only bug is that somehow it caches output, so that even when something is changed in the backend it doesn't show in the frontend, leading me to the conclusion that something is buggy. i.e. a product is downloadable so it doesn't need a shipping rate. However, due to selling products alongside it which *do* have shipping rates I can't disable shipping rates. Ok. So, make a shipping rate for all downloads as weight "0" and give all other products a weight. Configure shipping rates so that weight "0" = free, and anything larger than that costs R50. Fine. But in testing this is doesn't work. My download which used to be (wrongly) configured as a product with shipping is now assigned a weight of 0. Great. Test it through the frontend - and it still picks it up as a product which I need to pay R50 shipping on. So I play with backend configuration etc etc etc, change shipping rates, change product weights...and nothing works. In fact, there's no consistent error either (the worst kind of bug) which means I can't re-create the error and hence track down the bug. Before leaving work I download the database, install it locally and once I've eaten supper at home, attack it again. Same thing. This time on a local copy of mambo-phpshop. I'm beginning to hate it. Whenever I change shipping rates the change is instantaneous, but if I change product weights there's no change...and yet sometime there is. ::time passes:: Eventually I find the problem (kinda): mambo-phpshop is somehow caching *some* of the content - at least it's doing that with the product weight. So after turning on site-debug on the live site (never a good idea) and doing all of this bug tracking stuff over the last 6 hours, it turns out that I simply have to change the value and ignore the fact it doesn't show through the frontend. It'll sort itself out (or, it works if I log out and back in again). This p*sses me off. Even though this entry will bore the hell out of you and I'd be surprised if you're still reading, but I needed to vent. [Venting done]

Technorati Tags: bad design, mambo, phpshop

I've been using Mambo as my content manager (CMS) for many websites, from TomorrowToday.biz to TEXit.net. I've hacked some of the code (especially the phpShop plug-in - it has a display bug in it which I've fixed), customised many of the templates and showed others how to do it too. Mambo has an interesting history as an open source project. Miro International - an Australian-based company - started Mambo as open source and then re-packaged it as Jango which they sell hosting, installation and maintenance for. They initially did a whole bunch of development on it and got the open source community to take it forward. Everyone wins. Except when the corporation tries to grab it back. Miro set up the Mambo Foundation - a community responsible for for controlling the roadmap of Mambo. Not a bad idea. Until...to have a say in the future of Mambo you'll need to fork out AUS$50,000 (£21,000) per annum and commit what appears to be four full-time developers to the project. So, according to the no. 1 Mambo support site, all of the core developers have left the project due to disagreements about keeping the code open source (read their resignation letter). They've taken the Mambo code and formed Joomla! - the future of what Mambo could have been. They've launched a Sorceforge-powered site to keep track of the code - as well as setting up a new website to protect Joomla! - Open Source Matters. The roadmap, is something like this:

The Joomla developers released a schedule of planned improvements to the software. Version 1.1, scheduled for release by the end of the year, will have user interface improvements; versions 1.2 and 1.3 will get new features for governing who has permission to see and modify Joomla-published content; and version 2.0, scheduled for release in 2006, will be overhauled to use version 5 of the PHP software for computer-generated Web sites.

Now it's competition time. Mambo Love.com has been launched to create a community loyal to Mambo. The question I'm faced with is - keep Mambo for my existing Mambo-powered sites? Or migrate to Joomla? Will 3rd party components plug in to both CMS's?

Technorati Tags: mambo, open source, joomla

Open source software is an idea whose time has finally come. For twenty years it has been building momentum in the technical cultures that built the Internet and the World Wide Web. Now it's breaking out into the commercial world, and that's changing all the rules. Are you ready? http://www.opensource.org

Technorati Tags: open source

Append your associate code to the link, like this: link: http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684868768/ code: http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684868768/0sil8 Thanks to http://www.kottke.org/03/02/amazon-associates-beware

Technorati Tags: amazon

Currently installing the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designmistakes.html

Technorati Tags: bad design

honeynet.org is a site which gives info about protecting your computers from automated and black hat attacks. They've written a book called "Know your enemy" - grab the "Profiling" chapter, which attempts to get into the minds and motives of many of today's threats. Bruce Schneier (from Counterpane) writes the foreword. Roo is their cd - containing all of the cool open source tools, as well as a Fedora core. Check out Sebek which is a data capture tool designed to capture the attackers activities on a honeypot, without the attacker (hopefully) knowing it. See how it works (in one easy picture).

Technorati Tags: hacking, honeypot, security

If I have a graphically-intensive site to do (like the under-development site of "The 1000 Words Project") I'll do it in Photoshop then prepare it for web in Imageready - both great programs. Recently, however, I was pulled in to do the web preparation for a site designed in Freehand. Not difficult - just export from Freehand to Fireworks, slice it up and export to web - just like the Adobe workflow, but in Macromedia. Simple? I found out NOT.

Copy/paste from Freehand to Fireworks worked. Kinda. The buttons came out darker, and fuzzy. The point of intersection of a vector with a bitmap screwed up. Ungrouping and re-grouping buttons didn't work. *sigh* Otherwise everything was fine. It seems that since Freehand is for "print" and Fireworks is for "web" it's ok that the applications aren't really compatible with each other. (Adobe doesn't seem to have that problem...)

Luckily there's a nice guy called Ron Rockwell who's written a 4 page article called The Flow between Fireworks and Freehand which explains a bit of the differences between the programs. Hopefully I can finish the Natsure site now...

Technorati Tags: bad design, fireworks, freehand

It's been _interesting_ getting Jenny's computer back up. She's running Win2000 which is good (better than XP imho) and I've got all the data (except for her "sent items") back up. The screen is ghosting, but it's a screen issue, not a driver issue (plugged it into my iBook and it still looked bad). Installed Firefox and wiped as much of IE as I could. Installed Acrobat Reader. Got her email back up and running. Did the Norton AV Liveupdate - it needed to reboot. Installed an HP printer - Windows needed to reboot. Installed something else - and Windows needed to reboot. Why?! Why this pathological need to reboot every time something changes?! Windows users - please explain that to me! (especially since I've been installing stuff on my Mac a lot recently - and have been running uninterrupted for...well - check my uptime stats below)

[composed and posted with ecto]
[iBook uptime: 18 days 15:23]

Technorati Tags: bad design, windows

Jenny from Angela Day is recovering from a hard drive crash. I'm heading across to their kitchen at Lifestyle Nursery this morning to help her set everything back up - as long as she gets her emails back and is able to connect to the internet, she's happy. She's just got DSL (hooray!) but unfortunately will be connected to it almost continuously through her XP machine. Which opens her up to hackers...I'm not sure the XP firewall is going to solve that...but it's better than nothing. Do any computer types know about automated off-site backups which can be done with the important stuff (i.e. email and documents) that runs under Windows? I'm looking for an online service (maybe free?!) which can do this...just so she knows her stuff is safe.

[composed and posted with ecto] [Listening to: Joy by Newsboys] [iBook Uptime: 18 days 12:22]

Technorati Tags: backups, computers, crash, internet

I've been wondering how to do cool javascript stuff ever since I saw it at Feedburner and Web Collaborator. Click on a button, and instead of opening a new page, it just loads a new section into the browser - kinda like an iFrame, but not. See what I mean by having a look at this. The Dojo Toolkit offers a way! My best attempt so far is a clunky "show/hide" interface at TomorrowToday.biz which I wrote myself - but I guess I'll soon be upping that...to something waaaay better. Probably using some of the html effects. [Posted with ecto] [Listening to: He Reigns from the album "Adoration" by Newsboys]

Technorati Tags: dojo, good design, hacking, javascript, website

Just got off the phone with Brian Helsby from The Edge. He does a lot of presentations around the country and loves his funny video clips. He just upgraded to a new laptop - with a stunning screen. But it has problems. Powerpoint crashes whenever he imports a video clip. Sometimes it just crashes but mostly it crashes his machine and he has to reboot. (Sorry, did I mention I've been working on my iBook for 17 days without needing to reboot it or turn it off?) He phoned Microsoft and they said he needs to download a codec pack (even though the video clips play fine in Windows Media Player). Incredible Corruption said he needed to reinstall Powerpoint (which he's done - twice). Translation? They don't have a clue. Solutions? Anyone? He has an older version of Office lying around, so I've asked him to uninstall Powerpoint 2003 and install Powerpoint 2000 and see if *that* works. If not...??? my only suggestion is to reinstall Windows. Interestingly enough, the first time this Powerpoint/video crash thing happened, he used System Restore to roll back his system 2 days - and then it worked fine. Reason? I have no idea. Luckily on my Mac if a video clip plays in Quicktime, it'll play in Powerpoint (yes, Microsoft have made Powerpoint for Mac ever since it was released).

Technorati Tags: bad design, crash, microsoft, powerpoint

Steve Jobs unveiled the new iMac G5 on Wednesday. Nice! I'm thinking more and more about upgrading my iBook: listen to these specs: iMac G5 17" screen 1.9GHz PowerPC G5 512MB memory (533MHz DDR2 SDRAM) <- That's cool! 160GB Serial ATA hard drive Slot-load 8x double-layer SuperDrive <- mmmm...write DVD's! ATI Radeon X600 Pro with 128MB DDR video memory Built-in iSight camera Plus it comes with a remote control for playing music, photos, DVD's, TV shows etc. Decent! It's going for $1300. Which is around R8,500 at todays exchange rate...someone buy me one, please!

Technorati Tags: apple, imac

I'm downloading it now...go and get it!

Technorati Tags: apple, itunes

Too many windows open in Safari - time to shut it down - so here's the sites I was looking at: http://perrymarshall.com/renaissance/dilbertcubeanniversray.htm http://org.za/ORG.ZA-template http://www.tagcloud.com/ http://getoutfoxed.com/ http://www.bugzapper.co.za/about.htm http://www.cerebra.co.za/ http://www.blinklist.com/ http://www.cre-fashion.co.za/ Damn expensive shopping cart. R350/month and R100/month per 20 products. No ways! http://www.ideate.co.za/extremebusiness_pressrelease.htm Guys who are building a genuine space elevator! Movie illustration ideas for speakers. http://www.pandora.com/ - social networking around music. If you like [this music type] you'll probably like [these bands]. Nice. Addictive. http://how2.za.net/index.php?title=Main_Page Interesting pottery site - local The Gospel (a movie) Interview with some top guy involved in The Chronicles of Narnia Free music - legal! The band published their entire new cd online. Being irritated with Telkom stuff: http://www.mybroadband.co.za/nephp/? http://www.antitrust.co.za/beta/ http://www.adslpetition.co.za/ Telkom now charging extra on people exceeding caps. The Helkom flyer How to cut down on your communications bill ICASA findings about Telkom

Technorati Tags: sites, South Africa

I often use Mambo for my websites - open source php software that runs on a mysql database. This runs great on my Mac - apache, php, mysql - close to the LAMPstand (haha). A guy at work has also just converted to Mambo, except he's running it on Windows. No problem - except the Windows install for php and mysql under IIS is a mission. I gave up last time I tried it. Luckily he has a free app called "XAMP" which automates this for you and installs apache too. Great! So he's got this huge work deadline for 10:30 today and suddenly his webserver and database stop working. And he can't resurrect them. Reboot doesn't work. Installing the XAMP software on TWO other Windows computers doesn't work. Copying the database folder onto a Unix-based mysql install doesn't work (different character sets). So in other words, his demo fails. What amuses me is that this software didn't start on it's own, didn't start when manually started, didn't start when started as a Windows service - and all it would say is that it couldn't open port 11016. So, reboot, do it all again, check firewalls, disable anti-spyware etc etc. Still no luck. There was no way to get at the database which he'd spent ages getting right. And all I'm thinking is: "Drop Windows, install Linux, or get a Mac."

Technorati Tags: mysql, windows, bad design, php, mambo

I typed in "China" and then it loaded all of the tags associated with China and the 15 most recent images. Very, very funky. Check it out.

The nice people at Unsanity.org are offering a 50% discount on all their products to celebrate 5 years of business. But only on October 12 and 13th! Use coupon code UNSANITYFIVE. I've bought ShapeShifter from them to customise my Mac interface - very cool and a worthwhile buy for $20.

Technorati Tags: apple, good design, unsanity, shapeshifter

These guys were part of a competition to create a ad campaign for Adobe CS...in 24 hours. No pressure. They did it - and won. Their idea? Using photoshop menu's pasted over pics. Like a picture of Brad and Jennifer (no surnames necessary) with the "crop" menu highlighted. The funny one was with Kristie Alley's face and the menu highlighted was "Fit on screen." Haha!

Technorati Tags: good design, video, apple

What if it promised to deliver music that you liked - all the time? That's the premise behind Pandora, a new application which gives you 10 hours for free to try it. Basically, lots of people who use it give feedback along the lines of their favourite artists and songs which are then collated and suggested to others who like similar music...who in turn give feedback and so on and so on. It costs $36 a year, is completely legal (they do all the right copyright royalty stuff) and will give you the chance to listen to a bunch of music you'd probably never hear otherwise (from all around the world too). Question is - is this worth $36 a year? You're simply listening to music which other people who like the same music as you have suggested. Or is there a way to get around the 10 free hours? (I don't know the answer to that, btw!). Hmmm...I think I'll give it a try - especially since I was listening to the radio today, flicking through 6 stations (Radio Jacaranda, Highveld Stereo, 5fm, Radio Metro, YFM and Classic FM) and there was a shocking selection.

Technorati Tags: entertainment, internet, multimedia, music, pandora

Since the court ruling in the US in September making Grokster illegal, The Register reports that peer-2-peer programmes are in trouble. The US Supreme Court said that P2P companies are in breach of existing laws by encouraging the infringement of copyright. Which means that any US-based P2P software is in for a fight with the RIAA - and will lose. I don't know why they don't move out of the States and run their programmes under new names in obscure places. The death of P2P? Maybe some of the larger ones. But the show will go on (sic).

Technorati Tags: internet, multimedia, music, networking, P2P, technology

A comment on the Drupal site:

Title.module accomplishes many functions of wiki engine. The most important thing is that it allows internal link with wiki syntax (e.g. []). With this and the bbcode.module, it is relatively easy to build a wiki site.

This leads me to believe it's possible...

Technorati Tags: blog, drupal, wiki

I'm sure my Dad would like these!

Technorati Tags: internet, murphy, technology

4.2: My hacker makes obscure, meaningless jokes.
If you feel brave, ask for an explanation. Most of them can be explained. It may take a while, but it may prove interesting.

4.3: My hacker counts from zero.
So does the computer. You can hide it, but computers count from zero. Most hackers do by habit, also.

From the "What does that mean?" section in The Hacker FAQ.

Technorati Tags: computers, hacking, internet, joke

Won't my hacker break into my computer and steal my trade secrets?

No. Hackers aren't, contrary to media reporting, the people who break into computers. Those are crackers. Hackers are people who enjoy playing with computers. Your hacker may occasionally circumvent security measures, but this is not malicious; she just does it when the security is in her way, or because she's curious.

My hacker seems to dress funny. Is there any way to impress upon him the importance of corporate appearance?

Your hacker has a very good understanding of the importance of corporate appearance. It doesn't help you get your job done. IBM, Ford, and Microsoft have all realized that people work better when they can dress however they want. Your hacker is dressed comfortably. A polite request to dress up some for special occasions may well be honored, and most hackers will cheerfully wear clothes without (unintentional) holes in them if specifically asked.

Hee hee - these both describe me fairly well. At a recent weekend at the Berg I wore one of my favourite t-shirts - and yes, it has a hole in it :)

[Source]

Technorati Tags: hacking

I got this email from my webhost today:

Dear Roger, For the past two days we have been receiving an inordinate number of support emails from customers ranging from: "I can't connect to my website..." "I can't send email..." "Email is being bounced back to people sending me me email ..." "I can't receive email ..." "I can't FTP to my site..." ... you name it. This has been across ALL our servers. We performed every conceivable test but were unable to verify a single issue. Needless to say, we have been pretty concerned! I am very pleased to announce that we have discovered the problem and that it has nothing to do with our network or servers. The problem is a legal battle between two of the global heavyweight bandwidth providers - Cogent and Level 3. Apparently, in the past two days, Level 3 Communications Inc. refused to accept traffic from rival Cogent Communications Group Inc., rendering large portions of the Internet unreachable. This story has been published by Reuters. Here are a few places you can read the full version online: At REUTERS Links from Google From the news articles, it appears the issue between Level 3 and Cogent has been resolved. However, we also know not to believe everything we read in the news. Therefore, if you have problems connecting with your site in the next few days (whether it be email, uploads or just access), please check with your local ISP first on the status of their network before submitting a support email. If it is a problem with your ISP, we will not be able to assist you anyway. Let's hope these two internet Goliath's can bury the hatchet and play nice!

Dumbasses! It might explain why I've been unable to ftp to a few of my sites.

Scoble goes to Google.

Here's a document that defines internet networking etiquette. It was, however, written in October 1995 - but a lot of it is still valid. My comments below in red: - Never send chain letters via electronic mail. Chain letters are forbidden on the Internet. Your network privileges will be revoked. Notify your local system administrator. Imagine that. For 10 years now, chain letters have been discouraged. Maybe use a nail gun to paste this printout to your newbie's head. - Be careful when addressing mail. There are addresses which may go to a group but the address looks like it is just one person. Know to whom you are sending. Yes, please. Stop sending ME requests to subscribe to Angela Day. Visit the website. Fill in your email address yourself. Read the freaking email you get - the unsubscribe information is at the bottom ("Click this link to unsubscribe"). How hard is that?! - Verify all addresses before initiating long or personal discourse. It's also a good practice to include the word "Long" in the subject header so the recipient knows the message will take time to read and respond to. Over 100 lines is considered "long". Hey, I didn't know that...maybe I'll try it sometime... - Use mixed case. UPPER CASE LOOKS AS IF YOU'RE SHOUTING. MOST PEOPLE KNOW THIS NOW...*MOST* PEOPLE... - Use symbols for emphasis. That *is* what I meant. Use underscores for underlining. _War and Peace_ is my favorite book. Cool. - If you include a signature keep it short. Rule of thumb is no longer than 4 lines. Remember that many people pay for connectivity by the minute, and the longer your message is, the more they pay. Hmmm...this *was* written in '95...the next point is more relevant... - Know how large a message you are sending. Including large files such as Postscript files or programs may make your message so large that it cannot be delivered or at least consumes excessive resources. A good rule of thumb would be not to send a file larger than 50 Kilobytes. Consider file transfer as an alternative, or cutting the file into smaller chunks and sending each as a separate message. Yes, Adrian - STOP sending me those 4MB video files that you find funny... - Don't send large amounts of unsolicited information to people. Yes, Adrian - STOP sending me those 4MB video files that you find funny...

It's great to come in to work on Monday after a weekend away. It's great to know I'm alive by virtue of all those emails in my inbox. *sigh* This brings up the total of emails sent/received this year to round about 15,000... Nonetheless, this blog is now set up and gives me a place to muse on all things technical.