Videoblog. Again.

With my friend, I decided to create a new videoblog. Previously, I had one at orangebox.tv, but since I was busy and almost had no time to maintain it, I left the domain expired. Now, it has a new domain name, with a new concept. I will not talk about technology or other geeky stuff. If you like technology, you should visit Webicara, Notsogeeky, or Macindos.TV. Our new videoblog will focus on daily life.

Right now, almost all videos take Jakarta as the object. But, for me personally, I see many interesting stuff here in Jakarta — I’ve been staying in this city for almost three months. Last month, we went to Kalibata and Pasar Minggu. Not only to have durian, but also witnessing another area in Jakarta, at night. Not really at night, but can I say early in the morning?

What makes this videoblog different — from my previos one — is that I do it with a partner. He’s a good friend of mine since high school. The other important thing is that we share a same concept and understanding. It makes the videoblogging process easier. We do this videoblog mostly on weekend since we’re both working.

Anyway, the videoblog is using dadio.tv as its domain name. And we put our videos on YouTube. What does it mean? It might be meaningless in English, or in Indonesian language. But, you understand Javanese language, you’ll get the meaning. Yeah, it’s not a television, anyway. :D Okey, there are already some videos to watch. We have some videos on the stock about Betawi culture, food and also train (the economy class!).

Solution: OpenX Missing Statistic Reports

Yesterday, I was a little bit panic because I couldn’t found any statistic reports in an OpenX installation. I didn’t use the latest version (2.8.0). So, I did an upgrade to 2.8.5. But still, the statistics didn’t come back.

I finally found a solution at OpenX Community Forums. Here’s the trick:

  • Go to your database management tool. I’m using phpMyAdmin.
  • Run this simple query: update ox_application_variable set value = 1 where name ='admin_account_id';
  • Voila!

When I went back to the statistic page, I had all statistics available. Great.

Automatic WordPress Backup (to Amazon S3)

Today, I tried another WordPress plugin called “Automatic WordPress Backup”. This plugin will help blog owners to create backup remotely to Amazon S3 service. Since I’m using it and pretty satisfied with the billing usage, I installed it at some WordPress-powered blogs I maintain.

I use one of the available buckets under my account. For this bucket, I set its ACL (Access Control List) to private, of course. After this plugin installed and activated, I only needed to put my Access Key ID and Secret Access Key.

I decided not to include all files for my backup. I only need the database and uploaded contents. After the settings were saved, I simply hit the backup button. The process depends on the disk and database usage. I found that it was pretty fast. One of my backup files was around 300 MB, and it only took less than 5 minutes to complete the process. Also, the backup file was compressed. This should be useful to cut the usage process as you only need to store a single file for each backup.

The backup files will be automatically delivered to my Amazon S3 bucket and when the process completed, I can see the backup history. To download the backup, I only need to click on the backup links.

The backup links are built using pre-signed URLs so that only the account holder (or someone who knows the URLs) can download them.

Amazon S3 Billing Statement Sample

In last September, I started to use Amazon S3 for some experimental purposes. And, it’s not that difficult — of course, I only use some basic action. CloudBerry Explorer and S3Fox are really helpful. Now, if you want to know the billing calculation — just in case you’re interested to try Amazon S3 (also with CloudFront), I have uploaded a sample billing statement from Amazon (click the thumbnail to enlarge).

For me, I think the price is still reasonable. Anyway, CloudFront service is optional. Of course, this billing statement is not only based on my blog usage. I have multiple sites and accounts there. Not all of my backup files are also available for public.

Capture and Share from Mobile Devices

Now, I want to introduce another Posterous-powered blog. This time, there are more than one author — well, only two anyway. It’s called Capture and Share. I created this blog as a place to put my — and Lala — mobile streams. All posts in this blog are created using mobile devices (Nokia N78 and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic). But, not all of them are directly uploaded from the devices. Why? Well, we’re not using unlimited internet package for our devices. :)

Why Posterous? Because it just works. Sending photos, videos, screenshots from email is our option. And, Posterous handles this perfectly. Here are few things about the setup:

  • We use custom domain feature. It’s mobile.orangescale.com
  • Some theme modifications. Yes, we use custom theme, only adding few lines in the stylesheet
  • Created this Posterous blog as/with Group Profile

Of course, I will not leave my own Posterous page. So, meet Capture and Share at http://mobile.orangescale.com.

Using CloudBerry Explorer to Manage Amazon S3 Account

In my previous post, I mentioned an Amazon S3 tool called CloudBerry S3 Explorer. I also have S3Fox organizer addon installed. I use them both, and I feel that I’m more comfortable with CloudBerry Explorer.

CloudBerry Explorer makes managing files in Amazon S3 storage EASY. By providing a user interface to Amazon S3 accounts, files, and buckets, CloudBerry lets you manage your files on cloud just as you would on your own local computer. (source)

Now, I want to share how I use CloudBerry S3 Explorer to manage my Amazon S3 Account.

CloudBerry Explorer is availble as a freeware software. We can download it for free. It offers many features we need to manage Amazon S3 account, from a simple to complicated tasks. After I downloaded and installed it, I can start using it. First, I need to add my Amazon S3 account into the application. Go to File > Amazon S3 Accounts.

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Getting Started with Amazon S3

Amazon Web Service Logo

After I signed up for Amazon S3 and CloudFront last week, I started to use it right away. Before that, I tried to get as many information as possible. It seemed easy. I had to deal with some new words like “bucket“, “Access Key ID“, and also “Secret Access Key“.

Amazon S3 — just like its name — is a storage service. What makes it different from “storage” in webhosting is that there is no FTP access. But, the mechanism of “moving your data to a storage server” is similar to FTP. In FTP, we will connect to your server using some basic information like hostname, username and password. In some cases, we will need an FTP port. And we can do it easily using FTP clients like Filezilla, CrossFTP,  WinSCP, etc.

amazons3_keyid

Amazon S3 uses a little bit different process. Just imagine “Access Key ID” as “username”, and “Server Access Key” as the FTP password. Both information are generated by the system and they’re not easy to remember.

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Opera Mini 5 beta and Screenshots

I just downloaded Opera Mini 5 beta for my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. This new version of Opera Mini offers many new features like Speed Dial, Tabbed browsing, Password Manager, and much more. I think, “Tabbed browsing” feature is a super feature — with other new features, of course. If you want to download, you can go directly to m.opera.com/next/ from your phone web browser, or download it to computer first. Anyway, I still keep my Opera Mini 4 installed. So far, I’m happy with this new Opera Mini 5!

Here are some screenshots (click to enlarge):

Scr000012 Scr000013 Scr000015

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WordPress, Amazon S3 and CloudFront

Amazon Web Service Logo

In the last two days, I was working on an experiment to use Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) and Amazon CloudFront together with WordPress. It’s not primary for my blog, but for my friend. There are many tutorials and good recommendation on this. Since my friend using WordPress as the publishing platform, and it is easy to integrate with S3 and CloudFront, I gave it a try. But, what is Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)?

Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. The service aims to maximize benefits of scale and to pass those benefits on to developers. (from Amazon S3 website)

Actually, using Amazon S3 might be just fine. Since I want to make experiment, I decided to subscribe to Amazon CloudFront, too.

Amazon CloudFront delivers your content using a global network of edge locations. Requests for your objects are automatically routed to the nearest edge location, so content is delivered with the best possible performance. Amazon CloudFront works seamlessly with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) which durably stores the original, definitive versions of your files. Like other Amazon Web Services, there are no contracts or monthly commitments for using Amazon CloudFront — you pay only for as much or as little content as you actually deliver through the service. (from Amazon CloudFront website)

This is my first attempt using those two service. The subscription is easy. Create an account at Amazon, fill in the billing information, and start subscribing. That’s all. After few attempts, I finally have it working. I hope it’s working without any issues. Anyway, for WordPress integration, I use Amazon S3 for WordPress plugin. Let’s wait until the end of the month to get the billing statement.

Upcoming Firefox 3.5 Logo

For the upcoming Mozilla Firefox 3.5 release, Firefox will have its new logo. The current logo is designed by Jon Hicks (see article).

Firefox 3 Logo

And, this is the new Firefox 3.5 logo.

Firefox 3.5 Logo

The new logo and other variations are available to download.

Now with more photos. And they’re bigger

When I knew about The Big Pictures, I told myself that I wanted to have one too. A place where I display some photos I took. A dedicated photoblog came into my mind. I know that it’s something I can create, technically.

But, I wasn’t sure that I maintain it well — keep it updated, upgrade, etc. Then, I was thinking of displaying photos directly into this blog. I’ve been doing this for few months actually. I put photos from my Flickr photostream here. But, I want something bigger. I want to display more photos. All photos uploaded into my Flickr collections are big enough. But, if I want to put it here, it might be “too big” or “too small”.

So, I made some adjustment here. I modify my blog stylesheet to give more space for photos. I think the photos are big enough. For some reason, I did not include the photos in RSS feed. So, you will not get photo update from RSS reader. The reason is because I have a full content in my RSS and I don’t want to flood your RSS reader and aggregator with probably-too-big picture (if you subscribe to my RSS feed, of course). I’m still finding the best solution for this.

body_class() for WordPress Theme Designer

I just upgraded my WordPress engine to the latest version. This new version offers some improved and new features. One of them is about body_class() function. Nathan Rice has a definition about this:

The body_class() function operates in nearly the exact same manner as the post_class() function that was introduced in WordPress 2.7. The only differences are the classes it generates. The body_class() function will generate the classes mostly based on where your viewer is on your site.

I used post_class() when it was introduced in WordPress 2.7. This body_class() new function is a great addition for WordPress theme designers. Well, actually it’s not only for WordPress Theme designers, but it’s more for those who want to have/do more on the template. We can have some automatically generated HTML tags like these:

  • <body class="single postid-12">, or
  • <body class="page page-id-9 parent-page-id-0 page-template-default">, or
  • <body class="page-template page-template-tutorial-php logged-in">

See the patterns? Jump to Nathan Rice’s blog posts to read more details. In short, if you want to use this function, just modify your <body> tag. Change it into <body <?php body_class(); ?>>. That’s it!

Post by Email for WordPress-powered Blog

Recently WordPress hosted service introduced a new featured call Post by Email. It’s like Posterous. This new feature is available for WordPress.com users. If you’re using WordPress.com, head to Post by Email detailed information.

But, what about self-installed WordPress? This feature is already in the distribution for long time ago. But, I think most people prefer posting in standard way. If you need to blog/post by email into your self-installed WordPress, I think you should try Postie. The feature is similar like what hosted WordPress users have, but of course, you need a little extra work. If you’re experienced with your self-installed WordPress, it should not be difficult to have this plugin work.

You are using an incompatible web browser, Facebook said

facebook-browsers

I almost have no problems accessing Facebook site using many different browsers. But, I sometime I found problems when using Opera 10 browser. It says that I’m using incompatible web browser. But, it only happens randomly, even when I do the same actions like reloading pages, clicking on the links. And so far, it only happens on Facebook-related pages.

The error page suggests me to use these browsers: Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Flock. I do using Opera, but not the latest stable release. So, is it Facebook? Or, Opera 10 doesn’t play nice with Facebook yet? I’m using Opera Version 10.00 1 Build 1355 on Windows XP when I experience this problem.

NVDA: free and open source screen reader

If you want to see — or, should I say “listen”? — your site with a screen reader, there is a free and open source screen reader called NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA). What is it?

NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) is a free and open source screen reader for the Microsoft Windows operating system. Providing feedback via synthetic speech and Braille, it enables blind or vision impaired people to access computers running Windows for no more cost than a sighted person. Major features include support for over 20 languages and the ability to run entirely from a USB drive with no installation.

Yes, right now it’s only available in Microsoft Windows platform.

Douglas Bowman’s Farewell Post

I like reading Douglas Bowman’s farewell post. He left Google after three years. Here’s a paragraph:

Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.

Other comment about this farewell post:

This is, I believe, why Google’s products (many of which are great and innovative–I remain a devoted Gmail fan, for example) will always fall short of achieving the emotional connection that people feel to an iPhone. There’s no one with real power there who has a good sense of what makes a product beautiful or when it feels “electric.” You can’t quantify that sort of thing through study or harness collective brainpower to coerce it–someone just has to know it when they see it. (source)

vBulletin Database Backup

I’m maintaining a pretty big forum. It has a great amount of traffic, AND huge database size. Right now, it has a remote backup server. The optimization is always challenging. Anyway, vBulletin upgrade process was easy. The forum I maintain used vBulletin 3.6.x when it was firstly installed. Right now, it’s using the latest stable release.

The first thing I did before upgrading is to backup its database. Using web-based database management tool like phpMyAdmin is easy. We can export and store it in minutes. BUT, in some cases, it takes more time if we have a large database. So, I use the other method: using the backup script.

When we download vBulletin, there is a backup script included in the distribution. It’s under do_not_upload directory. The file is vb_backup.sh. The first thing we need to do is to edit this script, to locate the configuration file. After that, we only need to execute this command: ./vb_backup.sh backup

It will generate a backup file using this pattern: databasename-dd-mm-yy.sql.gz. Just keep the file into the safe place (outside public directory always recommended), and start upgrading. All done.

WordPress Automatic Upgrade and Default Theme

Last few weeks, I worked on a WordPress theme design. But, it was the first time I used default as its theme folder. If you use WordPress, you might know how WordPress will deal with default theme folder. It will be used if something goes wrong with the theme. For example, you’re working on a theme file, and it’s broken, your WordPress theme will be automatically reverted to the default folder.

I chose to use default folder because I always want to have this theme loaded. But, I found that it was not the best decision to make. Why?

It’s about WordPress automatic upgrade feature. When WordPress 2.7.1 was available, I upgraded using its web-based upgrade system. Click on the automatic ugprade button, and voila! Latest version was installed. BUT, it will overwrite my theme files, which are located in the default theme folder. Luckily, I still have the backup. So, I re-uploaded the theme files into different theme folder.

Good Bye and Hello Videoblogging!

If you read my blog, you might know that I have started my videoblog few months ago. If you follow me via Twitter, yo might heard about my video-related website: orangebox.tv. So, it is time to say “good bye” and “hello”.

Good bye“… because I want to discontinue my videoblog at video.orangescale.net. I will stop posting new videos there. I might still use my Vimeo account to store my videos, but I will not post them at video.orangescale.net. I will keep them as archive.

Now, it is time to say “hello” to my new videoblog. Last week, I decided to buy a new domain name for my videoblog. It’s orangebox.tv. I did this because I want to bring this site into completely different section, not under my blog domain name. This is the first time I bought a .tv domain, too. I bought it for less than US$ 20/year. I want to join the videoblogging crowd now, especially among Indonesian videosphere. Hello Notsogeeky and Webicara!

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Troubleshooting: Can’t Login After WordPress Upgrade

Today, I was helping my client upgrading her WordPress-powered blog. He was using WordPress 2.6.x series. I upgraded using the standard procedur, and I thought the whole process was painless. But, it was not. I could not access its “Dashboard”. The login screen was there, but when I entered the username and password — I was 1,000% sure that I typed a correct combination — nothing happened.

Few months ago, I had a problem with the “Redirect Loop”. I made a speculation: removing all plugins under wp-content/plugins/ directory. Of course, after I made sure that I had the list of all active plugins. After that, I tried to login again, and voila! I continued re-installing all plugins needed. Problem solved.

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