Archive for November, 2006

Sunday Morning in November.mp3

A foggy morning on the last Sunday in this November, 8 AM [mp3]
Recorded with WM-61in A-B Stereo, through the window 10 meters above ground in a quiet downtown side street.

Notes:

  • The overall sound level in the recording is boosted by 10 dB to shift the sound into more manageable dynamic region
  • Highs above 8 kHz were boosted by additional 0dB@8kHz to +4dB@20kHz
  • The weather was nice and quiet, but the wind was starting to grow from the reported 3 km/h, so some parts of the recoding had to be rolled-off below 40 Hz to alleviate heavy rumble

ICA worship PRACTICE

So we've gathered for a "Super Saturday" to have some practice.

Opened with "I Want To Know You More" and some chatter. [mp3]

As people settled for their positions in the room, microphones had to be relocated.
Here's much better sounding main part [mp3] (49 minutes A-B stereo recording, here in 160 kbps VBR joint stereo)
Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t forget to “make includes”

… when you encounter nasty problems while doing a “make buildworld”, like

/usr/src/secure/lib/libcrypto/../../../crypto/openssl/crypto/dh/dh_err.c:81: error: `DH_R_MODULUS_TOO_LARGE’ undeclared here (not in a function)

annoyed me in building FreeBSD 6.1 stable…

Disabling target=”_blank” works in Opera too

This is almost invisible yet extremely helpful feature of FireFox web browser.

The two great inventions - middle button in mice and the Web - emerged virtually simultaneously (though independently). And they made a really great tandem: when you click links you control at ease whether they open in a new window by simply choosing a mouse button - left or middle. That simple.

Yet, internet tricksters turn up here and there (surprisingly or not - much more notably so in former USSR (CIS) web space) who abuse the early-internet oversighted adoption of the target attribute for the <a> anchor tag. As you know, when this attribute is set to “_blank” the linked page opens in a new window regardless of the site visitor’s choice.

That’s annoying. Just try to imagine Google SERP with ALL the links in the results page with such behavior. Unimaginable. Absolutely. Nevertheless, major search engines in Russia & Ukraine feature this. Some sites in the “developed” world unfortunately still do so too.

Now FireFox has come to get back the web. This “_blank” weirdness is easily cured in standard UI.

But what about Opera? It’s a nice browser having great deal of appeals compared even to wildly growing in popularity FireFox, and it lacks this much needed control.

There’s a solution for Opera as well. It’s through User JavaScript. Very cool.

DreamHost Suggestions Voting

DreamHost Basic FeaturesHello, Happy DreamHost Customer!

In case you didn’t pay attention yet, here’s an interesting page in DreamHost’s Web Panel:
DreamHost Suggestions

Having spent several hours wading through the complete list of registered suggestions myself I’ve compiled a set which can be (and has been by some) voted for by an individual customer.

Hope you’ll find many of the select-features useful to you too and vote for them from within your account. It’s easy to search for the suggestions by keyword or by category in the Panel to cast a vote. It will surely speed up development process at DreamHost in the right direction :-)

Thanks for collaboration!

Date Category Suggestion Cost
2006-02-03 Mail - Discussion Lists Allow spam filtering incoming mailing list messages. 5 credits
2005-09-08 Status - Statistics Install mod_cookies/mod_usertrack so cookie info shows up in log files. 4 credits
2005-07-25 Mail - MX Record Add backup MX support. 5 credits
2005-05-16 Status - Statistics Offer analog AND awstats and webalizer. 5 credits
2004-12-20 Goodies - Secure Server Set up ALL domains with a https:// version, even though the certificate would be self-signed and produce a warning in browsers. 4 credits
2004-07-12 New Features Allow for the creation of one archive of all user content, databases, and even web panel settings. 5 credits
2004-07-02 New Features Create an API interface to all web panel functions, so customers can automate things with their own scripts. 5 credits
2004-07-01 Status - Statistics Allow a daily summary email of stats to be sent. 4 credits
2004-06-30 New Features Be automatically emailed whenever our process watcher kills a process of yours. 2 credits
 

«Воля Бродбенд» отменяет бесплатное подключение

Подобные шаги обычно свидетельствуют об успешности бизнеса.

Volia-cableНапомню, с сентября 2006 компания “Воля” (ТМ «Воля Бродбенд») начала суровое наступление на мелких провайдеров скоростного домашнего интернет-доступа в Киеве. Наиболее массовый тарифный план на “Воле” традиционно охарактеризовался самой высокой ценой трафика, которая, тем не менее, оказалась ниже самых низких цен у всех конкурентов! Многие “домашние сети” может постигнуть крах уже в ближайшее время.

Volia BroadbandЧто касается новой “акции”, то с ноября уже нельзя подключиться на самый доступный тарифный план “Воли” непосредственно - теперь необходимо на первый месяц обслуживания оплатить более дорогой пакет. Для широкой публики это означает скрытую плату за подключение - ведь её вынуждают купить ненужный трафик, пусть даже только для начала. Провайдеру это, помимо слегка завышенных продаж, даёт также шанс увлечь новых клиентов на большее потребление: пользователь, который будет стараться потратить весь лишний трафик в первый месяц пользования, рискует получить дурную привычку и остаться на более дорогом плане. Что вызовет дальнейший успех продавца.

Кстати, “Воля Бродбенд” совершает большую ошибку, по старинке включая в рекламу слова “трафик по цене от …” В приёме “bait and switch” теперь нет никакой необходимости ввиду вышеупомянутого сравнения с конкурентами. Наоборот, такие слова уже стойко воспринимаются потребителем как спам. Сейчас и здесь, несомненно, просто гигантского эффекта достигло бы контрастное “трафик по цене до …