Retselmal Vainyard: computers

2010-01-16

2006-09-25

Create PDF Online

Nowaday, you probably know how to create pdf from your personal PC for free. (If not, you can try google "CutePDF Writer") Ever wanna to do it without installing another piece of software on your computer?

Easy PDF Online - support many document formats including doc, xls, rtf, htm, jpg, tiff, etc. Support Unicode, meaning chinese characters will not be a problem. You simply upload the document to the web service and a finished PDF document will be emailed to you.

Limitation: 2M is the limited upload file size, and it does not support non-common fonts.

2006-09-19

OpenDNS - Recommended

My company internet experienced a number of down time in the past few years. Among them, DNS issue was the most popular one to have. The same happens to my stupid Sympatico connection at home. It was damn slow if it was not total down. In general, I got the feeling that ISP does not care about optimizing DNS.

I surfed by a online service called OpenDNS today. After spending a few minutes to understand the design of service, I can say that I am going to give it a try and recommend it to the others. Why? The simple reason is followed. I always keep my company ISP DNS in my mind just in case my home internet is down due to the DNS error. Occasionally, when I have to fix someone's connection, which happen to be DNS problem as well, I have to put in the DNS server IP manually. Now, instead of remembering a DNS IP that may also have problem, which I have already mentioned above, why not simply remember a DNS IP that's running for business?

Rather than just a replacement, it comes with features like guessing your domain name if you have mistyped it. For example, if you enter "www.google.cmo" instead of "www.google.com", with your current ISP's DNS, you will get to an error page after a long wait. With OpenDNS, it guesses and corrects the domain name for you. If you are like me, enjoying the way to type URL manually, you will be very much beneficial from its service.

Also, it protects you. Once in a while, you would receive junk email from bank institute asking you to confirm your login information. To make it simple, they provides you a link to get to their site. If you click it, it takes you to a site with the same look as your online bank service. In fact, if you pay attention to the domain name, it is not the usual address that you use to access your online bank account. What's going on? Simple. They are stealing your banking information by putting up a name tag that you are familiar with. With OpenDNS, according to what they say, it filters those suspicious URL and block you from getting there. It is no way to be 100% secure, but at least it protects you from the popular ones.

So, what do they do for profit? They have an interesting idea. Once in a while, you may try going to a site that does not exist. Some of these sites have not renew their domain name, and some are simply because you have a wrong URL. In cases like this, OpenDNS, instead of sending back an error response, it turns to its search site which contains advertisements. Since it looks up possible site that you may be looking for, in one way it is a feature. At the same time, they maintain the business by showing you the advertisements. You do not like the ad? Fine. Type the URL correctly and you will never see them. In general, if the advertisements are not slowing down the performance, I would say it is a possible and profitable approach.

Vim v.7 Tour

To show my support to vi (yes, over Emacs. and yes, I do not know anything about Emacs, but so what?), I post this new version of Vim Tour in my blog.

New features in Vim v.7

It does not do much having it on my blog. It does not change the fact that I am a newbie in vi neither. It simply fulfill my desire to show that I am different from the general public, like saying "You see? I am unpluged."