Category: Internet Page 1 of 20

Switching host: Update 1

I have been using open-source web-based photo album organiser Gallery for a long time, starting (around 2003) with Version 2 and now on (the final) Version 3. In fact it’s been so long ago that I have forgotten why I made the decision initially, except vaguely recalling something along the lines that I was looking an application based around PHP and MySQL (around the time the term LAMP stack was coined) photo gallery software Gallery, and there wasn’t anything else as feature-rich and user friendly at the time. My needs are fairly basic so I have not re-evaluated other choices since upgrading to Gallery 3.

Now, due to the recent decision to move host, I discovered two things while attempting to migrate Gallery. One is that Gallery has not been actively maintained since 2014. The second thing is that the MySQL dump from Gallery apparently exceeded the file size limit (50MB) for uploading to my new host using phpMyAdmin and the command line route is also out (certain errors during importing that I could not track down). This led to the slightly annoying situation of needing to find a new photo album software. By the way, although briefly experimenting with Flickr (which has also become history, as they say), I am more for keeping content on my own server.

A quick Google search showed I was not the only one having the same predicament. Taking the easy (ie. lazy) route I decided to follow the advice of more knowledgeable users such as the below and migrated to Piwigo. I must say, it’s been good after a week’s use. read more

Switching host yet again

A couple of months ago, I was informed that my current web hosting company Webfaction was merging with GoDaddy, although it sounded more like a take-over frankly hosting issues would be handled by GoDaddy since moving forward. The whole process was set to be finalised in a month or two. Since GoDaddy has never been high on my list of web hosting companies, I started to shop around for a new home for the few domains that I own.

The final decision was reached after reading these few articles:

  • https://justfreethemes.com/best-hosting-services/
  • https://winningwp.com/shared-vs-managed-wordpress-hosting/
  • https://www.codeinwp.com/blog/best-wordpress-hosting/
  • https://www.codeinwp.com/blog/shared-vs-managed-wordpress-hosting/
  • https://hostingfacts.com/hosting-reviews/siteground/
  • https://www.shivarweb.com/7970/siteground-hosting-review/
  • https://www.websitehostingrating.com/siteground-vs-bluehost/

I guess it’s kind of obvious that SiteGround was ranked highly but I still had some reservations about the renewal price, seeing that I am mostly dealing with WordPress sites plus the occasional trials of other software.

More tech updates

I am currently exploring “new media” options, namely online streaming from sites like Hulu and Netflix. Being outside of USA, this also means dabbling in the use of VPN or equivalent services.

By the way, streaming of movies and TV this is of course nothing new to me since there are already numerous ways of obtaining the same content, either via torrents or the many existing apps for iPad/Android tables which can stream movies/TV shows over the internet, regardless of the legality of the actual content. It’s more of a personal interest to see if a paid service is in any more superior than the free alternatives.

Doctor Who novels app

After quite a bit of manual data entry (and also thanks to the fans who painstakingly collected all the information prior), I have finally completed the spreadsheet for the list of Doctor Who novels. This forms the backend to Google Visualisation APIs which in turn drives an application running on App Engine.

Well, this is the end result, a list of Doctor Who novels. Next step is to introduce some HTML5 formatting to beautify this list.

http://doctorwhobooks.yyquest.net/
http://doctorwhobooks.yyquest.net/missingyears.html
http://doctorwhobooks.yyquest.net/newseries.html read more

How to retract a message in Gmail

I guess at some point in time everyone’s wished that they can retract some emails they’d accidentally sent to the wrong person or perhaps with incorrect spelling or incomplete information? Well, it just happened to me a few minutes ago. Really wish that I’d remember about this setting before sending the email!

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