UPC Tech Blog on Hold, New Blog Started

2007-12-27 23:35

As you most likely noticed over the past month, I have decided to put writing here at UPC Tech Blog on hold. I haven't been able to take this blog far enough beyond an experiment in blog software creation - and it really hasn't held the interest of most people, including me. My software programming here at UPC helped me get a job that has taken a lot of my focus, and I don't have the time to continue my project. I may take up posting here again in the future, but for now I am throwing my blogging focus into a new project instead.

My writing here at UPC helped me realize that I enjoy writing reviews, so I have started a new blog venture over at Review Bunker, using wordpress software. Review Bunker is my personal review blog with regular postings of new reviews on an all encompassing range of products and services. Basically, I review everything, and attempt to entertain at the same time. If this sounds interesting to you, I would love a visit, and any feedback you might have for me. Also, if you are a blog writer, make sure to check out the blog feedback section. Hope to see you over at Review Bunker.

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How do You Like My New Blog Layout?

2007-11-04 23:28

Inspired by some of the site designs I've been doing at work, I decided to do a new layout for my blog a few weeks ago. I put a few hours into it when I thought of the idea, but then I didn't have time to finish it up until now. Luckily (or rather, quite UN-luckily), I pulled a muscle in my back, and I was at home sitting in bed for a few days and was able to finish it up and implement it. So, do you like it better than what I had before? Is it hideous? Too blocky? Perfect? Tell me what you think! I imagine I'll tweak it up a bit every few months, but for now I am very happy with my new look. If you have any ideas for improvements, please share them, and if you would like, I will give you feedback in return at your blog or site. [more]

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Since When is the Video Game Industry so Huge?

2007-11-03 14:36

I'll admit it - I've been "out" of video game playing for a few years now. I only find the time and the inclination to play games maybe once a month, and they rarely hold my interest for too long. This is a big switch from when I was a teenager, and one of my biggest recreational activities was playing PC games. Back then it seemed that the big game companies weren't all that big, and the small companies were microscopic - but even so, they were able to produce some very good products. It seems a lot has changed in the industry while I wasn't paying any attention. I read at CNN.com today that Electronic Arts (EA) is going to buy a rival company for an astounding $860 million. It appears that in the last few years, the gaming industry has matured exponentially. In my distant memory, EA was a successful game company, but rarely known outside of the video... [more]

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Update on My New Web Programmer Job

2007-11-01 20:48

It seems like I only started just a few days ago, but I've already been at my new job for more than a month. Things are going great so far, I am learning a lot, doing a wide variety of different tasks and projects, and basically getting settled in. The job was billed as "web programmer" for a local search engine optimization firm, but it is turning out to be more than that as well - I am programming, mostly in PHP, I am building new sites and honing my CSS skills, helping to maintain and update sites of existing clients, learning how to manage pay-per-click campaigns professionally, and learning the SEO business. My employer gives me great feedback on my progress, and so far they think I am doing very well - I was already given a raise that goes into effect today. I am hoping that this job helps inspire some of my blogging topics, but so far I've mostly managed to neglect blogging rather than write more. My next steps as I progress into the web-world... [more]

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CSS How-To: Centering a DIV or Other Element in a Browser Window

2007-10-25 21:36

A web design/CSS question I have seen asked a lot recently is how to center a div or other element in a browser window using CSS. The most basic answer that you will run into if you do a search on google is to set the properties margin-left and margin-right to auto, and this should center the element:

#main {
margin-left:auto;
margin-right:auto;
}

This does work well for Firefox, but Internet Explorer has a bug that doesn't correctly render these properties, leaving the element on the left side of the window where it shouldn't be. The most common work around that people use is to add the text-align property to the element as well:

#main {
margin-left:auto;
margin-right:auto;
text-align:center;
}

Using the text-align property to center an element works in IE only because of another IE bug; in reality this property should only center the... [more]

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18 Ways You Can Help My Blog Revised

2007-10-21 00:40

Way back in May I wrote a blog promotion post called 18 Ways You Can Help My Blog - in this post I invited people to adopt my list of 18 blog promotion ideas as their own and expand upon the list. I know that at least one blogger took me up on the offer; Will Taft, who writes a blog about healthy living, improved upon my ideas so much that he has inspired me to use some of his improvements, and his basic idea, on my site. What Will did was take the spirit of my original list, readers helping a blog, and apply it in a new way. Instead of asking people for donations, or asking people to "buy me a beer", Will put up a "Contribute Help To This Site" page. As you may have guessed, this page is where Will outlines his list of ways that bloggers can help his blog succeed, in... [more]

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Fixed Averatec, Faulty Replacement Battery

2007-10-18 11:28

A few weeks ago I was able to successfully repair my Averatec laptop power adapter with the part I bought online, and I also ordered a replacement battery for the near-dead battery I have. I did the recommended thing with the new battery, and I charged it overnight, then I ran the "battery learning" program found in the system BIOS. The new battery worked fine for about a week, but after just a few uses it now holds no charge at all. Apparently the replacement battery market is an uncertain venture - but luckily I have a 6 month guarantee, and I will be getting a replacement. I just hope it works out better than the first try - paying the return shipping for each bad battery they send me might add up. If nothing else I will just have to use the battery I have and not plan on using my laptop for any mobile work in the future. Of course, this... [more]

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Tech Book Recommendation: "The Cuckoo's Egg"

2007-10-11 22:11

For any tech-heads out there that like to read, I have a book recommendation for you. You may have already heard of or read this book, as it is well known in the tech industry, but I will recommend it anyway, for those that haven't heard of it. It is called, "The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage". I first read it a few years ago after a professor recommended it in one of my networking classes. The weird name is what first caught my attention, and what has allowed me to remember it so well. I checked it out from the library, and because it was so engaging, I read it in just a few days. It was written by Clifford Stoll, an astronomer turned systems administrator, in 1989. "The Cuckoo's Egg" explores the world of computer networking and network security in the early days of... [more]

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Legitimate Content Scraping

2007-10-04 23:06

I know, it doesn't sound good - and usually content scraping is frowned upon, especially by bloggers, but I have found a legitimate reason to write content scraping software. If you don't know what content scraping is, it's the act of taking a web page or web feed and skimming off the content (the article, the post, the breaking news story, etc) and putting it to some other use. In most contexts, content scraping would be used in order to steal web content. There are sites built on a daily basis that do nothing but scrape fresh content from the web and pass it off as original content - sometimes causing trouble for the original author in search engine results. The scrapers are usually trying to get away with monetizing other people's hard work, and reaping the rewards of search engine traffic.

So, what legitimate purpose does content scraping hold? Retrieval of forum data. Long ago my sister started a forum on a free forum host,... [more]

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One of the More Clever Phishing Scam Emails I've Seen

2007-09-28 14:29

I get a boat load of spam email every day, and unfortunately I still manually delete most of it (although I might switch to Thunderbird sometime soon). A good percentage of the spam I get consists of phishing attempts and scams, including nigerian scams and lottery scams. If the phishing attempt isn't one I've seen before, I usually spend a few minutes and find out who to forward the email to in order to report the scam, in hopes that the banks and other services that are being targetted by these criminals take proper precautions. I don't know if it actually helps, but I like to think that I am making a little bit of a difference. Today I received one of the most clever phishing scam emails I've seen it a long time - it is from "Administration of Citizen Bank" and the subject reads, "Protect your Citizen Bank online account". This is the email contents:

"Caution: we continue to be informed that customers and non-customers are... [more]

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