Bobby

Virgle, Custom Time, gDay – April Fool’s Day from Google

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Google always has provided a April Fool’s Day practical joke on its main page. This time however, there are many more – on different Google products like Gmail, Orkut, YouTube and Google Docs. I came across 3 of them.

If you want to see the entire list (15 total) including the ones from previous years, you can check out the Google’s Hoaxes page at Wikipedia. I feel that there are too many this year. In fact, too many that it is a crowd. They should have stuck to the hoax on the main page and maybe a few more.

Protecting a folder in Unix/Linux using .htaccess and .htpasswd

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To protect a folder in Unix/Linux using .htaccess and .htpasswd, use the following steps:
[1] Go to folder you wish to protect and create a file called .htaccess with the following info:

AuthUserFile /home/your_username/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName “Restricted Area”
AuthType Basic
<Limit GET POST PUT>
require user admin
</Limit>

[2] Go to the location for your .htpasswd file (typically should be in your home area outside of the public_html folder). If the .htpasswd file does not exist, create it using the following syntax. Enter the password when asked for.
> cd /home/your_username/
> htpasswd -c .htpasswd admin
[3] Make sure your .htpasswd file is readable from the web – chmod it to 644.
> chmod 644 .htpasswd
[4] If additional users need to be allowed access to the same folder,
[4.1] add the users to the .htaccess file (edit the file mentioned in step 1):
require user admin user2 user3
[4.2] add the users to the .htpasswd file (update the file mentioned in step 3). Note that the “-c” option in step 3 is not used here. The “-c” is only used when creating the .htaccess file:
> htpasswd .htpasswd user2
> htpasswd .htpasswd user3
An excellent and easy tutorial is at: http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/docs/tutorials/user.html. A cached copy is here.

fungible

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I heard this word a couple of days back and I was wondering what it is. So, I finally googled for it. It means “interchangeable”.
Definition in Finance:
Interchangeable. The term is often used to apply to financial instruments which are identical in specifications. For example, options and futures contracts are highly fungible, since they are highly standardized arrangements. On the other hand, forwards and swaps are not, since they are customized arrangements. Instruments that are highly fungible tend to be very liquid, and so transaction costs tend to be low.
www.investorwords.com/2132/fungible.html
Definition in the Oil Industry:
Literally means “interchangeable in trade.” Commonly used to denote products which are suitable for transmission by pipeline. Ethanol is not considered fungible in this sense, in that it would absorb any water accumulating in pockets in a pipeline.
www.ethanol-gec.org/clean/cf13.htm
Related links:
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungibility
– www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define:fungible

Excel does not allow more than 15 digits

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I noticed today that Excel does not allow more than 15 digits in a cell. If you a type a number with more than 15 digits into an excel cell, the digits after the first 15 get replaced by zeroes. I had a hard time trying to figure out how to fix this. You can make the cell accept more than 15 digits by:
[1] pre-formatting the cells as text fields BEFORE pasting the values
or
[2] by start the number with an apostrophe i.e. ‘
From Microsoft Knowledge Base 269370:

“CAUSE
Excel follows the IEEE 754 specification on how to store and calculate floating-point numbers. Excel therefore stores only 15 significant digits in a number, and changes digits after the fifteenth place to zeroes.
WORKAROUND
To work around this behavior, format the cell as text. The cell can then display up to 1,024 characters.”

Related Links:
– http://support.microsoft.com/kb/269370

– http://www.mrexcel.com/archive/Formatting/20648.html

Blair joins Chase

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“LONDON, England (CNN) — Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, who left office last June, has taken up a part-time job with a Wall Street bank on an estimated $1 million salary.
Blair will work with JP Morgan Chase, a firm with assets of $1.5 trillion and operations in more than 50 countries. He will advise the bank on global political and strategic issues, a company statement said.”
Read the full article at CNN.com

12/12: Label “important” not allowed in Gmail

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I figured out today that the label “important” is not allowed in Gmail. I thought it was a problem only with my account. But then I tried in some other gmail accounts that I have and I found that you cannot name a label “important”. I get the error message: The label name “important” is invalid. I did have a label named “important” a couple of weeks back and one fine day it stopped working and I had to rename it to “important2” :).
Label important not allowed in Gmail
I wonder if it is a Gmail bug or if it is on purpose. If it is on purpose/by design, the only reason I can think of is privacy issues. If you flag emails with the “important” label, most probably it is important and might contain banking or other sensitive information, maybe that’s why Gmail does not allow its labels to be named “important” to avoid potential privacy issues.
Let me know if anybody else has the same issue.
Related links:
– Gmail Help – Using labels
p.s. Today is Dec 12, hence the 12/12 in the blog post title 🙂

Black Friday Deals websites

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The Black Friday Deals for major stores are available at the following links:

  1. http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com/
  2. http://www.theblackfriday.com/
  3. http://www.blackfridayads.com/

This year, I don’t plan to wait from 4 am outside a store to get a good Black Friday deal. I will pay a couple of dollars more and instead buy it online.
And if you do not know what Black Friday is, it is the day after Thanksgiving (Nov 22 this year) when all major stores have major sales and discounts. This is when the shopping season actually starts and the shopping season continues till Christmas upto the New Year. The “black” part comes from the fact that companies went into the black (i.e. profitable) after being red (i.e. not profitable) due to the large Black Friday sales. More info about Black Friday is available on this Wikipedia page.

Convert pps to ppt (PowerPoint SlideShow to regular PowerPoint)

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To convert a PowerPoint SlideShow file (.pps) to a regular PowerPoint file, just rename the file extension from .pps to .ppt. That’s it! This works the other way round too i.e. from .ppt to .pps.
I checked with multiple .pps and .ppt files and they were exactly the same after conversion, even the file size. I did not realize that it was this simple. I thought PowerPoint does some kind of conversion when saving a .ppt file as .pps. But apparently, it just renames/changes the file extension.
More info: http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00185.htm

Fax It Nice – Review

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Update 2/14/2017: The www.faxitnice.com website is no longer working. I use www.ringplus.com now for occasional faxes (they can give you a $9.99 pay per use plan if you call them)

Original post (9/5/2007) below:

I had to send an urgent fax today and did not have access to a fax machine. I signed up first for eFax. Then I realized that I could not send faxes without paying a monthly subscription. I then went to this Wikipedia page and looked at the list of online fax providers. I finally decided on FaxItNice.
Fax It Nice - Visit Website
The nice part about FaxItNice is that you have the option of not paying a monthly fee. And the credits do not expire. This served me well because I do not send faxes regularly. And I do not want to pay a monthly fee for something I will not use regularly. I uploaded 2 word files and 1 excel file and there were no issues sending them. I went for their Sending Only Plan which costs 18 cents per page to send faxes to the US.
Bottomline: Definitely recommended for people who want to have the ability to send faxes online.
Link: www.FaxItNice.com