The Catch

It's funny when everything is not really specified even in fine print. Guess that pretty much describes me and my experience in using the basic hosting package of Netfirms, and moral of the story? Things doesn't come cheap without a catch... well, in some cases, anyway.

Anyway, let me just elaborate what made me make the above statement, there's a Netfirms ad banner on top of every single HTML page being served by Netfirms basic hosting package. Guess that's the price of getting the domain name+hosting for cheap :p.

But nevertheless, it's still a good deal for the domain name itself (although another catch is that I have no way of knowing the username and password of OpenSRS.net to manage my domain name. Currently the only way I can manage my DNS settings is through Netfirms's own control panel).

I'm planning to buy a hosting package soon for my own personal website, probably by year end or so, hopefully there won't be much of a problem during that time. (which might be a BIG hopefully on my part :p).

[p/s: I have just bought another domain for my Parapara community site :), Malaysian Parapara Fantasy. I have been experiencing some minor hiccups due to my own carelessness, but luckily that the billing department of Netfirms ironed everything out quickly.]

Birth of A Small Plan

It's been quite a chore yesterday trying to set up the necessary server stuff over my ol' 200MMX Linux machine :). Been spending an hour or two just to make sure that the server can be FTP'd and Telnet'd, and, of course, serve PHP pages to my machine :).

Probably some of you might have guessed, I'm now working on my website to fill in the space that I have just bought. Although reading all the manuals and man pages isn't really something you can associate the word "fun" with, but it's really exciting when I tried to imagine how the outcome will be: A full-furnished, beautifully designed personal website :).

There's still a long way for me to go though, as I still have yet to set up MySQL database server, testing whether PHP pages can talk with it, and most important of them all, learning PHP itself! Woa... that's going to be a big task!

FelixLeong.com Bought :D

Just out of some sort of excitement I finally get to realize one of my smaller dreams of commitment: getting a .com for myself :). So now I have just paid for felixleong.com from NetFirms (the domain is still in the process of registration, BTW), it will take around 24-72 hours before it gets live, but then again I have nothing to post on that site just yet, so it wasn't much of my concern :p.

Honestly speaking I only get it because US$4.95 per year (or around RM19) is really tempting, not to mention that NetFirms throw in a basic hosting package with 25MB and 1GB of traffic, which is really good for my experimentation purposes.

This should give me enough motivation to start my own web project that I always wanted to expand :). (my manga drawing tutorial site, Felix Leong:PEDAGOGIES, being part of that big project) I'm currently thinking of learning up PHP and get my website architecture idea brewing.

Geek Joke: Awful Math Joke :LOL:

Thanks to Captain Vittle's sense of math humour, I just can't stop the urge to share this math joke:

A snake breeder was having trouble getting his newest snakes to mate. He tried every trick of the trade, but to no avail. With all his options exhausted, he decided to get some help, so he contacted a local zoologist. He explained the problem to her, but she said she'd have to see the snakes before she could offer practical advice.

When she got to the snake breeder's ranch and saw the snakes, she immediately knew what to do. "Cut down that big tree over there," she said. "Cut the tree in half, then use the pieces to make two sturdy tables. Put the tables and the snakes into a cage, and they should be mating very soon." The snake breeder thought that was the stupidest thing he had ever heard, but he was out of options so he decided to give it a shot.

Sure enough, the snakes mated! He was astounded that this actually worked, and he called the zoologist to get an explanation. "It's really quite simple," she said. "As soon as I saw the snakes were actually adders, I knew what had to be done. It's common knowledge that to get adders to multiply, you need to use log tables!"

[p/s: Cap. Vittle is a fellow member in the RPGamer boards, where I get to know my initial batch of cool netpals]

[TechTalk] Great Reading Materials on HTTP

Currently the research project that I have to conduct on my job requires me to understand a bit about the specifications of HTTPS and XML, since I would need to do a short commentary about the possible obstacles replacing the existing network architecture using TCP (with application depended message data constructs) to HTTPS and XML.

However, considering the lack of understanding of these technologies, I do have to do my own research. And technical specifications in any RFC is not a joke: They are almost close to completely cryptic without any basic understanding on the what's, why's and how's. So obviously I have to look for some much introductory text to get myself accustomed first.

So here's a few weblinks that I have found that I find really useful.

First off, the RFCs (that I'm reading... or I believe that I need to read, at least):
(* from RFC-Editor)
RFC793 -- Transmission Control Protocol
RFC2616 -- Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1
RFC2246 -- The TLS Protocol, Version 1.0
RFC2818 -- HTTP over TLS (*Considered as an implementation of HTTPS)
RFC3470 -- Guidelines for the Use of Extensible Markup Language (XML) within IETF Protocols

Now the useful weblinks:
XML in 10 Points
HTTP Made Really Easy
The TCP/IP Guide
Beej's Guide to Network Programming (*Gosh I never knew that socket programming is actually a requirement ^^")

Trying New Things Out

OK, probably the changes is so obvious that some might have screamed because of it. For those who didn't notice, I have just added a Google search at the sidebar on the side panel and... *gasp!* Adsense?! (OK, that's why I said some people might have screamed murder for that :p)

But anyway, honestly I just wanted to try it out a little, consider the attention it has get in the recent past. Personally I believe that a search bar by the side would be useful to those who just want to get info on the go (well... thoughts and ideas does come and go only within a few mouse clicks ;) ).

As for the ad, well, let's just put it that it is indeed tempting to get that extra cash, if that's actually possible ;). Anyway, I do try to put it as unintrusive as humanly possible so I hope it wouldn't disrupt your reading interest towards what I really wanted to share later on.

Anyway, on the technical side of things, I have been pretty busy lately. But the only thing is that it has nothing to do with anything hands-on, as I found myself doing more technical writing than anything else (which includes a specification required for my research project given at my day job, as well as a paper which is basically a summary of my own final year project thesis). But currently I'm going to kickstart with some small projects on my own to explore some PHP, C# and simple Win32 API stuff. Will post thoughts, lessons learnt and ideas then ;).

[P/S: Anyone has good sites which gives technical writing tips and general tips on how to understand RFC documents?]