How to Convert VHS to DVD
Converting home videos to DVD is a great way to preserve, share and enhance those old tapes that may be aging not too gracefully and “do it yourself” tape to DVD conversion can be easy and affordable.
Blog archives for June, 2005
Claria to be acquired
Dow Jones Newswires is quoting both New York Times and Wall Street Journal saying Microsoft is in talks to acquire Claria, peddler of Gator application, which, by the way, is not spyware. Google is mentioned as another possible buyer.
Health-related spam is healthy
You might want to make some tweaks to that SpamAssassin filter, as Canadian researchers say getting junk e-mail about eating right and exercising makes people eat right, exercise and subsequently lose weight. Those who filtered the spam actually gained weight.
James Gosling on Java
It’s been ten years since the official introduction of Java - a programming language combined with virtual machine and a class library. ZDNet published an interview with James Gosling, the creator of Java, who talks about the project’s past, present and future.
Tips on buying a new car
Thanks to Wealthy Blogger I came across Tommy Chang’s new car buiying guide. Good advice on negotiating with the toughest audience you can negotiate with - new car dealers.
Never tell them about your trade-in until its time to talk about it. Negotiate the price on the new car first. If they ask, tell them no you are not trading in a car. If you say yes, they will give you a good deal on the car but low ball you on the trade in. After the price is settled, then tell them oh I decided to trade in my car just now, then negotiate that. I would suggest to not trading in the old car, but sell it in the private market or sell it to CarMax. You will get more money for it.
Dealing with allow_url_fopen on DreamHost
DreamHost, a pretty popular hosting provider for high-bandwidth sites, is disabling PHP function allow_url_fopen on its servers for security reasons. The change created some disturbance in the WordPress community. So if you ever nbeed to use a PHP require with an external URL, their suggestion is to use CURL instead, wrapping CURL calls inside PHP tags.
<?php
$ch = curl_init();
$timeout = 5; // set to zero for no timeout
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, ‘http://example.com’);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, $timeout);
$file_contents = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
echo $file_contents;
?>
Building a DVR
The project of building a personal MythTV-based DVR has been on the back of my mind for a while. Lately it seems like a bunch of reminders pop up telling me to stop procrastinating, first this Systm episode, then this new O’ReillyNet article, and then of course, having co-workers who are pros at doing these things. Theoretically, of course, there’s always a TiVo and ReplayTV, which are selling cheap, but they require service to work great, and with deals like 120 GB hard drive for $20 there’s no need to limit oneself to 40-80 GB models most of the manufacturers are offering.
CSS Drop Shadows
Creating drop shadows using CSS. Good article with links to other articles on the same subject.
9 online retailers in the US sell more than $1 billion goods a year
Amazon, Dell, Office Depot and Staples are top online retailers in the US, but a total of nine companies sold more than $1 billion worth of goods in 2004.