Hello world! Apparently I managed to configure my email system and
Wordpress to enable posting via email… Sweet!

Check out this helpful comparison table of PHP IDEs. The comparison includes:

• Eclipse PDT 1/2
• Zend Studio 6
• Netbeans 6.5
• Aptana PHP
• Aptana Studio Pro
• Codelobster PHP Edition
• Nusphere PhpED 5.6

I have been using Eclipse for a while now, but several new IDEs are maturing to offer Eclipse a serious competition. There has been a shortage of good development environments for Web Developers, but the field seems to maturing now.

I was this close () of actually moving this blog to wordpress.com! I was constantly fearing the possibility of nasty people exploiting a security hole in the WP software, and I was fed up with the constant upgrades. I thought myself, if they only made an upgrade process, that emails me when there’s new version of the software, and the update would be one click effort. Well, it seems WP 2.7 actually does this, so to my delight I’m still hosting my blog!

A Google Maps application for calculating taxi costs and routes has been opened at Kiteentaksi (only in Finnish) pages. The idea is to enter origin and destination street addresses, and use Google Maps API to calculate the route and time it takes to drive. The cost is easily calculated based on the length of the journey. It’s a nice little application, and shows the advantages of using Ajax for interactive functionality.

I have also used Prototype Javascript framework for creating it. It’s a brilliant piece of code that makes handling various browser quirks a breeze.

I recently was able to save my Windows installation from failing hard drive to a new one by copying it. This method is simple, and might save you a trouble from doing it yourself, in case you’re thinking about using for example Gnu’s dd program (some say it will not work). So:

1. Install the new hard disk.
2. Download your copy of Acronis Migrate Easy Trial edition.
3. Answer a few questions, like source drive and destination drive (doh). If your new drive is larger than the old one, no problem; Migrate Easy is able to expand the old partition to fill the new drive.

MBR is also copied from old drive to new one. Set your new drive to be the first drive to boot from via BIOS, and you’re done!

I believe having a pleasant looking UI inspires you on your work, and by that helps you being more productive. For that, it’s a shame that Microsoft has decided to not let people skin the user interface of Windows XP desktop freely. Luckily, there’s a simple hack that enables this.

1. Download UXTheme Multi-Patcher (Neowin Edition) 4.0.
2. Unzip, run .exe, click on the ‘Patch’ button.
3. Click ‘Ok’ on the warning, click ‘Cancel’ when it asks you to insert Windows CD, and click ‘Yes’ to keep these unrecognized file versions.
4. Click ‘Ok’ when it says you to restart your computer.

You’re done. Now you can install new themes, they are usually distributed as a .zip-file. Just unzip them into the \Resources\Themes inside your Windows directory, and they become available at the ‘Appearance’ tab on Display Properties window.

Now let me show you the ones I like most. These themes are highly polished, and are very high quality, therefore any of them is highly recommended for your everyday need of eye candy.

1. Reluna. Name probably indicates a remake of the standard XP theme ‘Luna’ (or not), it is very well done and pleasant looking theme with 3 distinct variations (not just colors but overall look as well).
2. New Tiger Milk. Obvious Apple love here, theme inspired by Mac OS X Tiger. Look, it’s perfectly ok to have Macintosh theme on your Windows, as long as you don’t tell your friends. It’s that cool!
3. XPMC RC3. “A professional theme made for developers and XP users who are at their PC for long periods.” That’s quite accurately put. There’s certainly that kind of order that coherent, logical minds love. My favorite theme for programming desktop.

You probably want to also turn on ClearType font smoothing technique while you’re at it, click ‘Properties’ on Desktop, go to ‘Appearance’ -> ‘Effects’, and select ‘ClearType’ on the second drop down list. Makes reading text highly more pleasant IMHO.

And while you’re at it, grab a cool new wallpaper from Wallpaperstock. My favorite place to look for wallpapers, for example check out this with mountains and snow, or this grassy green wallpaper.

Thomas Fitzgerald writes in his blog about Apple design and why other companies refuse to understand the qualities that makes iPod and eventually iPhone successful. Electronics industry is focusing on features (this is also the case with Finnish cell phone maker Nokia), and so do most of the people that comment / analyze their products. No one does not seem to be willing to admit that huge amount of features are not what makes or breaks a gadget. Here’s my take what average people might actually care about:

1. User experience. Creating technology that doesn’t feel like technology. Most people associate with technology clumsy user experience and overall negative feelings when they remember the situation where they didn’t get things done or it was unnecessary difficult because they were not ableto understand the gadget. Stuff that Apple make, just feels like natural extension to your instincts.

When people use Apple products, and find that those actually respond to you the way you would expect, it feels like it’s a natural extension to yourself. You don’t need manual for iPod. Most importantly those gadgets don’t do anything unexpected. They start to trust those equipment, and this also brings other positive feelings towards those. They attach humane feelings with the gadgets. This is actually what people want; to feel that technology has some human qualities.

2. Harmony. Apple design has distinctive look and feel to it. When people begin to trust some technological gadget, they look for signals that really set them apart from other devices. In case of Apple, this is the simple and stylish, almost Zen feel to them. They clearly look like artifacts designed with someone with clear sense of style and harmony.

This extends also beyond shape. The marriage of software and hardware is one of the key aspects with success of Apple, as many people have noticed. I believe it is essential, that software and hardware is made by the same company. Extensible platform just complicates things, and creates an environment, where software that does not happen to possess those qualities that originally captured user might disrupt the user experience enough to shatter the “illusion”.

3. Magic. Last aspect is the most harder to describe, because it actually stems from our primitive instincts. Technology has in a way become almost religious aspect in our lives. We want to believe in things, and we want to be able to trust them. We want to have something in our possession, that seem to have some divine qualities in it; Harmonic impression created by simple, yet stylish design, and user experience, that makes it feel like extension to ourselves. We define ourselves by they things we own. The technology we choose makes us to experience the environment we live in a different way, in a way they “enhance us”. This is no different from wearing an amulet that you think will bring you fortune.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Famous words by Arthur C. Clarke. That’s the way we _want_ the gadget to appear, magical.

Two of the applications I use most are Portable Firefox and Nutty. Portable Firefox is a portable version of the popular web browser, and Nutty is an SSH client (modified Putty).

When I’m traveling, I am often using those apps from my memorystick that is plugged into a computer that I can’t trust, over a network I can’t trust. I cannot be sure whether someone is monitoring my browsing or not. With these steps, you can create an encrypted tunnel between the computer you’re using, and your home server. All the traffic goes through that tunnel, and you appear to be browsing from your home computer. Plus, you browse through proxy that does ad filtering (amongst other things).

You need to download Portable Firefox and Nutty into your memory stick. You also need a (Linux) server where you can install software and connect using SSH.

Step 1: Set up Privoxy

First, we are going to set up a proxy on the home server. On Ubuntu Linux, you can find it on repository and install it like this:

apt-get install privoxy

You can propably install it as easily on other Linux distributions as well using their package managers. Next, edit the configuration file /etc/privoxy/config with your editor of choice, and find part ‘4.1. listen address’. Set up listen address something like:

listen-address localhost:8118

Tip: If you want to play around with proxy settings later, find section ‘4.4 enable-edit-actions’, and uncomment line

enable-edit-actions 1

Step 2: Set up Nutty

Fire up Nutty, and go into Connection -> SSH -> Tunnels. Add new forwarded port with these values: Source port: 12345, Destination: localhost: 8118 and press ‘Add’. Now go into the session screen, and open an SSH connection into your home server. You need to log in for the tunnel to be created.

Step 3: Set up Firefox

Ok, so you’re ready to start Firefox. Go to Tools -> Options (this is for Windows version of the Firefox), select ‘Advanced’, and click on the ‘Network’ tab and push ‘Settings’. Now select ‘Manual proxy configuration’ and type these values: HTTP Proxy: localhost, Port: 12345.

Done! Now you’re surfing through SSH tunnel using proxy that protects your privacy, manages cookies, controls access, and removes ads, banners, pop-ups and other obnoxious Internet junk. You can be more safe that your browsing activities is not logged and your retain your privacy where ever you are.

If you want, you can also install Quickproxy Firefox Add-on for easy one click access to switch between tunneled connection, and direct connection if you should need one.

This is a guestbook for Perhosgrafiikka.fi. Please leave here your comments regarding anything that comes into your mind. Happy browsing
Yours,

Sami Tikka