What can go wrong with your wonderfully running website / blog? Everything..

Your online abode is so difficult to keep secured. It can get hacked, you may install something wrong, a wrong configuration can wreak havoc, the server hard disk might crash, natural calamities, and what not. Your best option to secure yourself against all this is summarized in just one word “BACKUP”.

Now, a backup involves two most important things: “Database Backup” and “Files Backup”. Most webhosts give you the options to back these up for you but with a few catches:

Came across this funny, but still thought provoking, definition of an engineer.

(Taken from “The Embedded Muse”, a useful embedded stuff related newsletter published by Jack Ganssel.)

“An engineer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on the basis of being able to turn out with prolific fortitude infinite strings of incomprehensible formulas calculated with micrometric precision from vague assumptions which are based on debatable figures taken from inconclusive experiments carried out with instruments of problematical accuracy by persons of questionable mentality and doubtful reliability for the avowed purpose of annoying and confusing a hopelessly chimerical group of esoteric fanatics referred to altogether too frequently as technicians.”

Just wanted to share some pieces that generated a variety of “hmmm”, “ahaa” and “wow” from me:

China Mobile set to trial LTE:

China Mobile said it will join Vodafone Group plc and Verizon Wireless in an ongoing trial of LTE technology…….The trials – which include three powerhouse network operators – underscore the momentum LTE is gaining as a leading 4G technology possibility vs. WiMAX and Ultra Mobile Broadband.

“HMMM” - U go LTE!!

If you have multiple soundcards in your system and have to switch between them regularly (e.g. laptop owners like me, who use an external soundcard while being docked to groove to the highest and the lowest of frequencies through those 7.1 channels and use the in-built sound card while on the move) you would definitely be under-whelmed by the less-than-stellar performance of ubuntu in switching between the sound cards. For me at least, ubuntu (fiesty 7.04 amd64) never seems to recognize that I’ve connected the speakers to my Audigy 2 ZS Notebook PCMCIA card, and merrily continues to huff-puff through the tinny laptop speakers until I manually go into the sound preferences, switch over to multichannel playback and vice versa. Well, I still haven’t found an automated solution for the switching, but here is a little cli-magic to do this in a click.

Motivated by Ronald’s ultimate wordpress plugin tutorial at devlounge, I decided that the best way to learn something is to use it in a live project. Armed with my laptop and multiple flasks of coffee, the marathon began on Friday night. My only experience with web-related development so far had been around 8–10 years ago as a kid when, just like everybody else at that time, I was fascinated by HTML and did a “read-through” of HTML 4.0. But I have always been a believer of the theory that a C programmer can program in any language quickly without having to go through the whole manuals. Thus that night bore fruit for me, and by 5:30 in the morning I had a working “Quote of The Day” plugin at my hand with all the features I wanted it to have in its first avatar. Did a bit of polishing last night, fixed a few bugs, and created a readme, and here it is, Mr. shantz-wp-qotd “1.0”, in all its glory, ready for general consumption.