What the hell is BlogShares?

I did a search for "dumb web programmer" (that's me!) on Google and to my surprise I was listed as No. 1.



However it was listed indirectly thru BlogShares. What the hell is BlogShares.

It looks like a blog directory with some strange way of valuating blog sites.

Movie Review: Madagascar

Finally got some free time to go out and watch a movie!! I even missed Star Wars because of my work. You can thank my boss for the late nights...

Anyway I watched the movie below. (Forgive me as the below is the best pictures I can get - its for mobile phones wall paper !!)

Madagascar is perfectly fun and cute.

It’s definitely more entertaining than the likes of Robots or Shark Tale.

I loved the scene where Alex the Lion gets hit in the nuts.

I question some scenes where we see cute little animals get eaten though.
Is that suitable for 5 year olds :)

The Penguins are the funniest creatures IMHO.

Now, entering the wild brings out a very interesting conflict.

Alex, the lion (Ben Stiller) has to fight his natural urge to eat his friends when his steak supply is suddenly non-existent.
Poor Alex has to exile himself to keep his friends from becoming his snack.

But it comes at the end of the film and only plays out and everything is humky dory.

The holes??

1. Did you notice that they were mostly on the beach most of the time.
2. Where are the other lions? Are they no lions in Madagascar?

Hmm... can't put up pictures of the film as I'm unsure of the copyright thingy.

Anyway, I put up some 'pictures' from my affiliate membership to a mobile phone content account.

You don't have to (or under any obligation) to click anything here. I just included it here as eye candy relating
to my 'movie review' that's all.

Javascript: FrameBreaker

This is javascript to break out of a frame. Useful if some website 'wrap' your content within their own frame. Place this javascript on your first page (usually index.htm /index.html) and break out of someone else's frame!

<script language="JavaScript">  
   <!-- // auto-framebreaker
 if (top.location != self.location) {
    top.location = self.location.href
       
} //-->  
  </script>

Blogger: How to replace Blogger Favicon

You know the blogger favicon. See below:


I was tired of that Blogger favicon and was wondering if I could replace it with my own.

So I went about the net to find ways to do it. You know what? It was pretty easy.

Here are the steps:-

1. First I created a simple logo icon that contains my initials - DWP. (Dumb Web Programmer lah !!)

2. I used PaintShop Pro but you can use Windows Paint too I guess.



3. After that, I google-searched "Create Free Favicon Online" and found this great website:

http://www.chami.com/html-kit/services/favicon/

4. I just uploaded the picture I created (50x50 pixel GIF by the way) and I got my very own favicon created.

5. Next I just added the following HTML code in my Blogger template:

< rel = "shortcut icon" href="http://www.yourURL.com/favicon.ico">

6. I didn't have my webspace so I uploaded the favicon into a friend's website. You could use some free webhosting space.(Geocities doesn't work as they filter out .ico files)

That's it!!

Get rid of the boring B logo.

You can see the result above on your browser address bar.

PHP: Bad words filter

Some stupid person started posting abusive words in my company's tag box (shoutbox) recently so I had to write a simple PHP function to find and replace all the bad words.

Here it is. Not pretty or even efficient but it works!

function filter($string) {
 $badwords=array("ass","babi","asshole","fark","celaka","pantat","bastard","bitch");
 for ($i=0;$i < count($badwords);$i++){      
   $string = str_replace($badwords[$i],str_repeat("*",strlen($badwords[$i])),$string);     
 }      
 return $string; 
} 

Example usage:

$post = filter($post);

Palm iPod killer?

This is an IPOD killer!!

The first time I read it in last week's Computimes, I didn't know what to make of it. Was it a PDA ? They didn't call it a PDA. Was it a MP3 player like the iPod?

But it can view movies too.

It has an internal hard drive just like an iPod. Over 4Gb worth of space.

Then I read the specs.

Oh .... it has a Palm OS and have software like DocToGo
- so it's "just" a PDA but jam packed with features.







The very first PDA that shipped with a hard drive was thhe Sharp
Zaurus SL-C3000 but it was only available in Japan.

Then came iPod as the very first MP3 player with a internal hard drive.

My first looks: Very Impressive!!

It weighs only 6.8 ounces but jam-packed with features that include:-

• 416MHz XScale processor
  
• 65MB of RAM
  
• 4GB hard drive
  
• 480 x 320-pixel
  
• 3.9-inch TFT
  
• SD slot
  
• 802.11b
  
• Bluetooth
  
• plays MPEG and AVI video
  
• plays MP3 audio
  
• Palm OS 5.4.
  
• USB cable interface


Negatives :-


• probably the price : US 499 (Around RM2000).
  
• Battery not swappeable - that's a big boo boo in my books. Cannot change battery when in middle of listening to song.
  
  PalmOne markets this as a "notebook alternative" and it's pretty cool.
  
  Still with the shortcoming of no extra battery, the LifeDrive is now no. 1 on my wishlist. I will get it at the end of the year with my bonus (provided
  there is one :)
  
  Related reviews and links:-
  


• Mobile Tech Review
  
• CNet Review

Funny Gif

Here's a funny animated gif:



sent in by my friend Vickneswaran

Got indexed by Yahoo in 1 day!

Wow!! I got indexed by Yahoo! in less than 24 hours!!

Can you believe that??!

I didn't even submit my sites anywhere. Funny thing is Blogger is by Google but I have not been indexed yet by Google. Did Google submit my site to Yahoo! That's a strange thing to do...

Well anyway I'm proud that I'm the no.1 in Yahoo! Search for Dumb Web Programmer

How long will it last? I don't care. Took a snapshot to remember it forever :)

google-income

Ah my first 3 cents from Google Adsense. Ok. Ok.I know it's a mere 3 cents but I just have to document my first online income. I am excited!!

Wow! And all the tools I used here are free. Only real resource I've used is TIME which I've lots considering how many hours I spend in aimless browsing from site to site.

He he... from now onwards I'm going to spend more time blogging!

Thanks to Liew Cheon Fon of LiewCF.com for getting me excited in the first place.

Google trying to be like Yahoo!

google-personal
Originally uploaded by dumbwebprogrammer.

Google in an effort to make their search engine more personalised for users is shifting direction from a search engine with simple and basic bare features which made it famous (and also appealing to many users like me) to a more complex page layour. Think my.yahoo.com

You can take a look at it here. Now you can include personalisation such as GMail, Weather, Movies etc just like in Yahoo!.

LiewCF.com

liewcfweb
Originally uploaded by dumbwebprogrammer.

Now this is probably one of the best resouces I've found on the web for my web related stuff as well as online money making tips!

Hail to the master of "Making Money in your Sleep".

Just can't believe that people can really make money online just by blogging and posting some Google advertisement.

I just registered with Google Adsense and hopefuly I can earn some pennies too. Will report my earnings if any here...

Hail to the online money making guru - Liew Cheon Fong (LcF).

His describes his site as "Probably the best Malaysia tech blog of latest news, gadgets, freeware, tips and tricks…"

But I think of it is "The Best Malaysia tech blog of latest news, gadgets, freeware, tips and tricks…" !!

Though I think his grammar needs a bit of work.

It's "Malaysian tech.." not "Malaysia tech.."

But then again who am I to correct his grammer :)

flickr - Photo Tools for BlogSpot

flickr
Originally uploaded by dumbwebprogrammer.

Learning how to use free online tools to post picture on my blogger(blogspot) account.

Tried Flickr (a company by Yahoo!). It lets you uploads pictures easily for free as well as lets you include the pictures into your blog.

I see that it works well here!

Anyway, quite cool for a dumb web programmer like me. What is surprising is that BlogSpot is by Google and Flickr is by Yahoo! - two of the biggest rivals in the search engine industry having their products work hand in hand with each other!

To be fair it's Yahoo that's playing catchup in the blogging arena and it has features to update posts into Google blogger to have the pictures included.

Still, it's an irony of sorts.

Introduction

Hi. I am a dumb web programmer. I am still learning the massive amount of knowledge needed to be a good web programmer. Hence this blog. It serves as a journal for my learning experience and also reference to problems I managed to solve but most probably forget the next day :)