The history of English-classes has been splattered with mysterious and "symbolic" poems. When Mr. Poet was writing his new unpublished poem, he wasn’t thinking "Hmm, If i use "casket" instead of "helmet", people will pick up on the deep symbolism and underlying meanings!". But rather, "I wonder how much I can sell this for.."

Even the most casual remarks can hold meaning if you look too deeply.

Random poem: (No deep meanings, so don’t even try to look)

OnTopic - I remodeled RogerHub’s nighttime theme. The background was shaded a bit and there’s some nice JavaScript eye candy in the background. You’ll see what I mean.

source

Standard Theme (7AM to 5PM Pacific Time)
http://www.rogerhub.com/?day=true

Nighttime Theme (5PM to 7AM Pacific Time)
http://www.rogerhub.com/?night=true

-Roger

EDIT:
Snowstorm removed because of excessive CPU usage.
If you wanna see how it looked like, you can see it here:
http://www.rogerhub.com/?snow=true

If you get these jokes, you’ve been on the computer for far too long.

As a Web-Programmer, your biggest obstacle is cross-browser support. Making sure that everything looks the same across different browsers is tricky, especially with Internet Explorer.

For some reason, IE seems to be the source of all problems. Whether its expanding-select inputs or JavaScript action calls, IE just can’t keep up with web standards.

My theory: In the beginning, IE dominated the browser market because Internet Explorer came bundled with Windows. This made Microsoft lazy and now (web designers) are taking the consequences.

If you haven’t already, visit www.gefirefox.com to Get FireFox. FireFox is faster, easier to use, and comes with addon-support like no other browser.

I’m glad that over 80% of my visitors use Firefox compared to around 40% of all users. Support the transition away from Internet Explorer and switch today.

For further reference, my first priority is making sure that RogerHub works fine on FireFox. (Which it does at the moment) If I feel like it, IE support will come next. For now, the Mooosic player is having alignment troubles with IE and I already had to do some JS Hacks to get the select form wider.

-Roger

Summary: If you’re using Internet Explorer, use Firefox instead.

I added a RSS feed to RogerHub. If you don’t know what it is, you should watch this:

There’s a link on the sidebar and also one that’s embedded in this HTML page. So, subscribe :D

-Roger

EDIT: Fixed time stamp on posts.

So, after about two months, someone else figured out that Confiker had infected our school computers. Sadly, it wasn’t Walnut...

In their post about Confiker, they mentioned some security packages from Microsoft and AVG. Yes, these are free and will work to protect your computer, but that’s not what most people are looking for.

If you look at any FRY’s or Best Buy commercial, you’ll see that Norton and Kaspersky dominates most of the commercial market with their ties to major manufacturing companies. If you buy a pre-built computer, chances are it’ll have a 60 day trial of some sort of security suite. It’s great that OEM’s are trying to protect you from viruses, but hard-to-uninstall trial programs do more harm than good.

IMO, ESET Smart Security 4 is one of the latest and greatest security suites available. When I look for computer antiviruses, I go through my unwritten (until now) list of key features:

• It has to has to has to have good real-time protection. That’s the entire point of having an antivirus.
  

• Firewall configurations should be unintrusive, yet easy to change. This is a must if you’re a gamer.
  

• Processor and memory usage should be kept to a minimum. With today’s machines, this shouldn’t be that much of a problem.
  

• An antivirus’ commercial says a lot about the quality of the product (not really). If the commercial looks awesome, the product is probably top-notch.

Now, on to ESET.

First off, ESET’s detection is really top-notch. I have ESET running on 6 computer now and none of them have gotten a virus. ESET has caught over thirty attacks though.

I had expected ESET to bog down my new computer. However, I have never noticed any performance difference. I don’t know why, but ESET just feels faster than any other AV that I’ve used before.

Technical version: ESET runs two processes. egui.exe (the frontend) and ekrn.exe (the backend). On my Windows 7 x64, they add up to a total of 0% CPU and 50000K Memory while idle. (Compared to an average of 10% with Norton) Under full load (system scanning) the CPU usage jumps to 48% but memory stays around 53000K. The scanner is single-threaded, but the performance and speed are great.

ESET’s firewall options are more geared towards the power user, but you should find it simple none-the-less. ESET is already familiar with a lot of games and applications so you shouldn’t have to toy around with it too much. Unless you’re running a server app or use a lot of P2P programs, you wont have a problem.

The last thing is ESET’s firewall comericial, and I must say, it looks a lot like a movie trailer. You can watch it below:

Yeah, so that’s it. Normally, I wouldn’t talk about ESET on RogerHub because it’s not available for free, but seriously, if you’re considering Norton or Kaspersky, ESET is a install-and-forget AntiVirus that you won’t regret buying.

-Roger

In other news, I just implemented BBCode for YouTube players in posts. :)

Today, I saw this random guy go up to a girl and pop one of the balloons that was tied to her backpack. How sad

In memory of the lost balloon, here’s an awesome red-orange one.

I also switched out my wireless mouse today. It kept freezing for some reason, so I’m using a wired one now.

Even though my wired mouse is optical and my wireless is laser, they feel exactly the same. In a mouse, I’m only looking for looks and design. Any modern mouse probably has more accuracy than you can feel. Mechanical ball mice are an exception, but they aren’t exactly modern.

Macintosh mice look awesome. I’d get one if it had a right-click button.

Alright

-Roger

I added some new songs to the Moosic thing on the side. I hope you like em.

I don’t like how Nickelback named their song "If Today was Your Last Day". It should be "If Today were Your Last Day".

-Roger

Speaking of naziis, Happy Armistice day.
Wait, that was WWI wasn’t it?
Nevermind..

When you right click something, whether it be a game, a Word Document, your new harddrive, or your boring-looking desktop, a menu pops out. This fact has been hard-wired into the brains of all the world’s Windows-slaves.

Located inside the fancy menu that pops up, are myriads of choices, collectively called Context Menus. As a rule of thumb, every program that weighs more than a hundred megabytes must carry its own Context Menu. (Not really) These shortcuts are handy for getting things done faster, but often times, they can pile up and transform a simple right-click-menu into a junkyard of unwanted options.

Not only is a clutter of context menus visually distracting, but performance can suffer greatly as well.

So, what’s the point of telling you all this? Well there’s a solution, obviously.

There’s a great freeware called ShellExView. ShellExView will generate a list of all the Shell Extensions that are installed on your PC. (Context Menus are a type of Shell Extension) From there, you can choose to disable them.

First, go to ShellExView’s download page and scroll down (its a really far scroll) to the downloads area. Select the first option (Download ShellExView in Zip file) and extract the contents of the ZIP file to your desktop.

Then, open the ShellExView program (circled in blue) and wait for the list of Shell Extensions to populate. The controls should be similar to those that you’ve seen in the past. The red button at the top can be used to disable Shell Extensions.

The Shell Extensions are listed by their names initially. Look through the list and disable whichever Shell Extensions that you don’t want. Make sure that the type of the Shell Extension says "Context Menu".

If the Company of the shell extension is Microsoft, it might be a bad idea to disable it. Anyhow, exercise caution when disabling things.

Yeahh.. thats it.

-Roger

I added a music player to the sidebar. It’s just a cutdown version of Youtube’s video player. If you have any songs that you think should go there, leave a comment.

-Roger

EDIT:
Edited song list.
Added playlist options.
Added song-repeating.

More edits:
Alphabetized song list.
Added a link to this thread.
Added some full IE support for the Mooosic player

More and more edits:
Switched from YouTube Player to JWPlayer.. still based off of YouTube though

More Edits:
-Mooosic HD Impelented.

AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) has always been notorious for bundling ads and unwanted programs with their instant messaging program, AIM. Because AIM is so widely used and accepted today, most people just ignore the ads, but I find it very annoying to have all of AIM’s bloatware installed on my computer.

Cuban-Aftermath Software has released a program (AIM Ad Hack) to remove ads and bloatware from AIM. Instead of acting as an AIM add-on, AIM Ad Hack gets rid of ads and bloatware when you initially install AIM on your computer.

AIM Ad Hack Homepage
AIM Ad Hack Downloads

-Roger

My computer’s power supply has been down lately. Once I get it fixed, I will be adding a "Latest Comments" section to the sidebar on the right.

EDITT::
I got my new PSU and I put in the "Recent Comments" section. Orion, stop leaving retarded comments.

I’ve replaced the header image with some winter-related ones. Tell me what you think . There’s one for daytime and one for nighttime. They change at 7:00AM and 5:00PM PST respectively.

If you haven’t noticed already, I also put in comments. Click the "X Comments" thing at the bottom of each post to go to the comment page.

-Roger

Windows 7 was released this past Thursday (Oct22). There’s been alot of hype about windows 7 because of the bad reception that Windows Vista got. Personally, I don’t think vista was that bad.

Vista’s look and feel was much better than that of all the previous versions of Windows. There were alot of new features like Windows DreamScene and Aero that made the overall experience of using a computer more enjoyable.

Most people think that Vista’s main fault was the fact that it ran slower than Windows XP. Even before Vista was introduced by Microsoft, I didn’t expect Vista to run faster than XP benchmark-wise. This is absolutely normal. As technology advances and yesterday’s servers are now found in today’s homes, Operating Systems are supposed to take advantage of the extra resources that are provided to them. XP had support for window transparency, but not in the same way that Vista does. Vista actively incorporates your Graphics Card’s abilities to display nice smooth Aero’ed windows.

Well, enough about Vista and on to Windows 7. Windows 7’s exterior looks alot like Windows Vista. Microsoft only had three years to churn out a new OS, so that should be expected.

There was wayyy too much hype about how Windows 7 runs "faster" than Vista. benchmarks show that 7 can perform media encoding and some other hardware-demanding tasks faster than Vista and/or XP, but the improvements were marginal. Ultimately, Microsoft had to create a balance between graphical effects and pure performance.

One thing that I was really impressed with is how Windows 7 handles hardware. With both XP and Vista, my wireless card had to be cofigured with a separate driver. If you didn’t have a spare computer with access to the Internet, you couldn’t get the driver and therefore the wireless card wouldn’t work. When I installed 7 on my computer, I expected the same procedure, but 7 detected the card and installed Microsoft’s generic driver for me.

Windows 7 has some new features that are aimed towards heavy multitaskers. If you move your mouse to the lower right corner of your screen, you get a quick peek at your desktop. This is called Aero Peek.

(Before)

(After)

Aero Flip is also in Windows 7. This feature deserves more attention than the morsel that it received with Vista. The classic Alt-Tab still works, but Aero Flip still looks nicer. Alt-Tab now shows a thumbnail of each window and even lets you preview the window itself.

(Aero flip!!)

There’s also a new taskbar in Windows 7. It’s much wider (vertically), but if you like the skinny Vista taskbar, you can switch between the two. The quick launch area and the open programs area have been merged. If you click an unopen program, it will start. If you hover over an open program, it will show you thumbnails of all windows that belong to that particular program. Right clicking a program icon will give you a Jump List. These little menus can let you find your most recently opened documents quickly, granted that the program you’re using supports them.

(Jumplists)

By default, Windows of the same application are grouped together on the taskbar. This keeps the taskbar clean, but it can also be a hassle to get a specific window. For example, when I’m testing web applications, I often have the "View Source" window open on Mozilla Firefox. When I switch between editing my files and reviewing the page source, a few seconds are lost while selecting the correct Firefox window. Of course, window grouping can always be disabled from the control panel.

Libraries are another new feature in Windows 7. Instead of managing separate folders for documents, photos, videos and music, 7 lets you gather them in virtual folders called libraries. You can create your own libraries and manage the folders that each library includes. Applications see your virtual libraries as normal folders, letting you use them just as you would, a folder.

Gadgets no longer appear as a separate program, but are fully integrated into the Windows 7 desktop. Sidebar gadgets can be added by right clicking the desktop and selecting "Gadgets".

The sticky note gadget has been removed and turned into a separate program.

A really neat program called "Snipping Tool" makes Screenshots easy for anyone. Just open up Snipping Tool from StartMenu>Accessories and select the area of your desktop to convert to an image. (The introduction picture at the top of this post was made using Snipping Tool)

If you have alot of removable drives (SD cards, flash drives, MMC’s, MS Pro), you’ll like the modifications that 7 has for these devices. In Windows Vista, a drive couldn’t be "Safely Removed" if a Windows Explorer window was currently browsing it. In 7, all Windows Explorer windows will be closed when the device is removed.

Windows handles the driver installation much quickly and efficiently now with no interaction required from the user. In My Computer, empty drives are no longer displayed by default. This cleans up the extra drives that are shown as a result of your computer’s card reader.

Window’s Device Stage organizes all your peripheral devices into a nice, convenient window. Here, you can access all the settings for your devices as well as browse the files within.

Starting from Vista, Windows no longer runs the autorun files automatically. This is done to prevent potential viruses from removable drives and CD’s. You might not notice this happening, but it’s already saved me twice.

Not many people use Windows Media Center because of its complicity and lack of practical use. The number of devices that can fully support Window’s media functions are in the single digits at the moment. Nonetheless, when the world decides to make use of Window’s nice media functional, Windows 7 will be ready for it.

You can play a song or movie to a networked device directly from Windows Media Player. Speaking of Windows Media Player, Windows 7 comes with the brand-new Windows Media Player 12.

WMP 12 has a bluish-white interface that makes WMP 11 look old. It has a simplified mode that can be comparable to WMP11’s skins. WMP12 is on par with Windows Media Center’s abilities with recorded TV and whatnot. Music, Videos, Pictures and other media are all organized in this handy program.

(Windows Media Player 12)

Windows Media Player still doesn’t come with many codecs, but that can be solved easily. WMP12 is much more refined and clean than its predecessors. It’s just one of the reason that 7 is better than Vista.

Up to this point, everything about Windows 7 seems great, but Microsoft’s new version of their flagship product isn’t without its faults.

After installing Windows 7, some shell extensions (like the extra icons that appear when you right click something) caused Windows Explorer to crash incessantly. Because I never use explorer extensions anyways, I just got rid of them all and Explorer hasn’t crashed for days now.

(The explorer error!)

While looking at pictures, sometimes a process known as "COM Surrogate" would crash. I’ve only gotten this error once or twice.

Compared to the good points, 7’s faults are minimal. With many service packs to come, we can rest assured that Windows 7 will be successful. (Crappy ending ><)

(Wow.. that was really long)
-Roger

Site updates:
-Fixed Database Caching
-Added automatic link parsing to comments :)

(This post is for computer-literate people.)

Originally, Boggert would load everything (blog posts, blog design, gadgets on the side) from the database and display it dynamically. This worked for a while, but the constant database activity was really killing the site’s speed.

So, I have implemented SQL caching for Boggert. Basically, this feature memorizes what’s in the database so that all the posts,design,etc.. can be loaded locally from the web server.

Of course, a cache isn’t meant to last forever. Boggert is a dynamic web application because it runs on a database, and not on static files. Therefore, every time a comment is posted, a file is uploaded, or a new post is posted, the cache has to be cleared and recreated.

To make the cache for Boggert, I created two cache files for the two main parts of Boggert. I store these in a password-protected directory because they hold sensitive information.

At the beginning of each PHP file, I initialize a variable called $dbcache and use it to store cache information. It starts by loading the database cache from the appropriate cache file. Afterwards, each database query will check the cache for a response before contacting the database.

I use the built-in PHP serialize function for this. Serialize() converts data (integers, arrays, strings) into a string that can be stored. The good thing about this is that file structure and special characters are all kept in their original state.

Unserialize() converts the encoded string back into data that Boggert can use.

Using this method, page loading has improved dramatically. Most of the time, all required information is stored locally. If the database is down, RogerHub will still be available.

-Roger