preloading pages

For a long time, I have always wondered why my download managers always pops up dialog boxes to download files when I visit certain pages in chrome. I have always attributed it to false positives or buggy software. I stumbled upon the answer just a few days ago. Apparently, google decided it ...

mysql optimization

Recently did quite a lot of mysql related administration. Found quite a few ways to optimise that may make future administration easier. 1) If you are going to add/drop databases very frequently, you might want to add innodb_file_per_table=1 into your my.cnf config file. This will allow mysql ...

private TLDs

Well, this is pretty old news but here are my views on ICANN allowing organisations to buy out an entire TLD. For those not in the loop, basically, in addition to .com, .net, .org and others, ICANN will be releasing lots of new TLDs so we could have stuff like .blog, .cloud or even .google. ...

URL shortening services

I have never liked nor seen the point of using URL shortening services such as bit.ly, is.gd . The only time I have used it is during lectures or talks when links are shared by copying them directly off the whiteboard or slides. Even then, there are probably better ways to share the links such ...

windows file metadata

Windows seems to keep a very poor record of file attributes such as date created, date modified and date accessed. These attributes are important especially for audit purposes. My profs are even using these dates (in UNIX fortunately) as submission dates. Furthermore, I believe that these dates ...

Layered security

The unfortunate happened to me a few days back. While pushing a project onto a github public repo, I had forgotten to replace my mysql password with a dummy one. So, it was out there in the open for almost 1 entire day before I noticed it. Fortunately for me though, I had an additional layer of ...

Web = public

A very timely reminder that nothing on the web is private. Having just stumbled upon the awstats page for comp.nus, I have just unlocked a whole treasure trove of information. Among the most useful would be the list of 20000+ URLs generating most traffic, would be very interesting to poke in ...

Continuity plan

Having a good continuity plan is important in case of unexpected incidents. Today, I brought my tablet in for servicing as the touch screen got a little wonky. It started exhibiting "phantom touches" and was bordering on unusable as it would cause foreground applications to go out of focus, ...