Scott Yang's Playground

Spotted from the WordPress “Dashboard” that WordPress 1.5.1.3 has just been released with a security fix on “xmlrpc.php“, the code that handles XML-RPC requests so you can manage your blogs using tools like w.bloggar and ecto. Currently I am managing almost 20 WordPress 1.5 installations on FOCUSer.net (still having around 6 stubborn users that are [...]

del.icio.us direc.tor: Johnvey Hwang’s high performance AJAX web service broker. This script is very neat. Setup a bookmarlet. Visit del.icio.us. Click on the bookmarklet, and it instantly transforms your ugly del.icio.us web interface into a fancy AJAX-driven DHTML interface. What stands out is this implementation does not require a middle man as service broker. It [...]

Donncha shared his simple MySQL backup script that backs up individual WordPress tables into separate .sql.gz files, and keeps a week worth of them just in case something horrible happens. This is exactly what I did this morning! Write a simple Bash script that loops through 20+ databases, and create .sql.gz files per database. I [...]

You know. Managing and providing hosting to two to three dozen websites out of your own pocket can be a costly exercise. I have been quite reluctant to do so for a while, for the fear of ‘tainting’ this blog. But I see that the dark side is greater, more powerful and more seductive, and [...]

ZDNet: Two senior system administers at Swiftel/People Telecom have been sued for alleged music piracy. Piracy is wrong – you are stealing money from the mega-supa rich in the music industry, and all stealing is wrong. However, I do not see how it is justified holding two ISP staffs accountable, when they was not involved [...]

It is not a quiz, but the Gematriculator analyses your site, and by its infallable algorithem works out how evil your website is. It claims that its result is absolutely correct, so I gave it a try… Yeah! 40% Evil! I am nearly half way there to the dark side… I guess I just had [...]

A solution to church finance or exhaustion of leaders in a student church is trying to keep the graduates. As Arie has commented on Sui’s blog, comparing with university students, a recent grad (with a job) has significantly better financial advantage, generally more mature than younger students, and will not be burdened by family matters [...]

Bob Carr says no to the religious vilification bill, as it might “potentially undermine the very freedom they seek to protect freedom of thought, conscience and belief”. Good on ya, Bob! The bill itself is stupid, as anyone with any belief can use it to persecute oppositions. Where is truth then, when you cannot even [...]

There is an interesting discussion on Slashdot, reflecting what Bennie Smith (of Double Click) has previously said, about the end of free Internet contents when advertising blocking get included in web browsers as standard feature. I used to hate banner ads, popup/pop-under ads and even Javascript text ads that I will try to avoid if [...]

What recently happened to me regarding getting my credit card renewed through ANZ has just proved that, it is just Not Good Enough!

NeoOffice/J 1.1 has just been released. Based on OpenOffice.org 1.1.4 code base, NeoOffice/J runs on Mac OS 10.2, 10.3 and 10.4. Lots of improvement since the last major release, and it has been very stable for us. Use the torrent here to grab your own copy.

New toy! While Sony has just released their new DRX-800UL double-layer external DVD burner, I have had a chance to grab a used retired model, DRX-700UL, off eBay for around one third of its retail price – delivered. It sports 8x maxiumum DVD±R write speed, 2.4x dual layer speed, USB2 and Firewire (iLINK in Sony’s [...]

Yahoo! Search Web Services. Somehow Yahoo! suddenly has became the “good guy” again, while the “do good” Google falls to the dark side. Jeremy Zawodny commented on how WordPress.org now uses Yahoo to back its site-wide search. It would be interesting to play around the API, or replace the default WP search engine with Yahoo’s [...]

UNSW according to Google Map. Awesome satellite images, and you can zoom in a bit more to see all the latest constructions going on. Moving south west a bit I can even see my little house on the Gardeners road.

So, running Mac OS 8 inside your brower is just so 90′s, ain’t we all supposed to run Mac OS X? Thus FlyakiteOSX, an “Aquafied” Mac OS X inteface implemented in Javascript and DHTML. Why wait for Mactel when you can have it now?