Scott Yang's Playground

Here is an updated version of my PHP Syntax Hilighting script (standalone or as WordPress plugin). It fixes the issue whether <font /> tag is used by enscript which renders the whole page non-XHTML compliant. A preg_replace() call replaces them with standard compliant <span style=”…” /> XHTML code. Download syntax_hilight-1.2.php

This article on Wired.com should make you think twice before you use your Bluetooth enabled mobile phone, especially when someone can be hundreds of metres away using a directional antenna to install Trojan horse onto your phone to ear drop your conversation, steal your address book, and send SMS on your behalf.

Want a device that can jam the mobile phone frequencies to give you a peace of mind? I am not sure whether this kind of device is legal in Australia (probably not), but I would love to have all movie cinema or lecture theatres to have at least one of these to block out all [...]

I have just signed up to iSIM, a Optus GSM network reseller that’s owned by SIMplus (which is part of Optus, which is of SingTel). Who can pass on their special deal? $1 for a prepaid mobile phone start up kit that includes $20 of call credit delivered to your home. 39 cents per minute [...]

Yes, I am on another stupid social network, and this time it is called “Multiply“. However, it gives you more room to sell yourself, by integrating blogs, personal calendar, etc into social network, so that your friends (and friends of friends) can easily find out what you are up to. Doesn’t a decentralised web of [...]

Mono is working on Cocoa#, producing Mac OS X Cocoa application using .NET frame work. Looks like it is going to be an interesting project to learn, allowing you to pick up C# and Cocoa programming at the same time.

Paul Graham’s new article on how Python programmers are smarter than Java programmers, because they seek to learn a new programming language that they enjoy, rather than learning them as part of work. On the other hand, I found Java programmers more persistant and having higher tolerance. You need that with Java, right? :)

Yesterday’s national ADSL outage has cut many Australians off the net. Apparent Telstra made a big boo boo by screwing things up during an upgrade. My home server survived, and it stayed on-line through out the whole time. However, ADSL at work got cut off at 1am in the morning, and we could not connect [...]

Metasploit – point, click, and r00t! This is really exploiting made easy, and make all these dumb script kiddies too easy to crack someone else’s computer. Just don’t try it on mine.

eGroupware has hit the big one point 0. I have been running eGroupware for a while to consolidate addresses and calendar events with Vivian, and it is definitely one of the best open source web based groupware available. Only if it can run faster…

Reflection on Joshua‘s talk on Daniel 1-2 almost 2 weeks ago. Yes I know. I am slow in backlogging…

PostgreSQL 8.0 is now beta, and it surely has many new features that make it one of (if not the most) favourite relational database engine amongst open source developers. Remember the good old days when FOCUS website was powered with PostgreSQL 6.5. Well, it was not that good back then, and that was why I [...]

Prothon is an interesting language that looks like Python but classless. Instead, it uses prototype (think Javascript), and it runs on .NET platform. By browsing through the tutorial, it really looks like a weird marriage between Python and Javascript. I think I’ll pick up IronPython for .NET stuff instead.

Mark Pilgrim talks about going on vacation and spending time with his family. I especially like what he said here, after recommending his readers to use Bloglines. … But really, you should ask yourself if you need to keep up with 100 or 200 or 1400 different “sources” of “content” on an hourly basis. Shouldn’t [...]

SMH has a report on 21 y.o. Chinese star pianoist and how his parents sacrified to bring their goal to fruitation. I actually reckon it is a sad story, especially the part where the mum has to live separately from her husband and son for 9 years. I think only Chinese would sacrifice their lives [...]