[* This is not an ads.]

Recently, I have created a mobile application to allow readers to read this blog easily.  It runs on Symbian OS, and I have submitted it to Ovi store.

It has been approved.

It is now available for download (free) at http://store.ovi.com/content/76510.

It works like the feed reader, where you can read the most recent posts in ColinJong.com.  For each post, there is a main menu with title, picture thumbnail, or short description.  You can click on them to read the details.

I have made the theme in mobile application looks similar to this website.  I used brown / orange  color and I have added the same header picture too.

This is how the icon looks like after this application is installed in my mobile phone.

Dear readers, if you have a mobile phone running on Symbian OS, please give me support by downloading and using this mobile application.  :D

November 2010 has just gone and become history in our life.  It was one of the busiest month in a year, however I managed to reach my target to produce a blog post entry every day.

Sometimes, I wrote more on the weekend and make them into scheduled posts.

I also have some tips to process, upload and insert photo quickly:-

1.  All of my photos are resized and added with watermark using batch processing.

2.  The files are named properly (same prefix) and with a unique number in sequence.

3.  I only insert one photo and edit the HTML codes for the rest of the photos by copy and paste the <a> tag, and then change the files’ names which have different numbers.

This is how I can upload many photos without taking me too much time.

:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

Scroll down and look at the footer of this blog!!!

“8” is a lucky number for Chinese, it represents rich and prosperity.  Before this blog has reached 1 million visitor’s hit, it will reach 888888 first.  Yes, it is almost there, and I estimate it will happen tomorrow.

Don’t be misunderstood:-  Visitors hits is not the same as visitor count.  A visitor can have more than one hit when he / she has viewed more than one page.  Frankly speaking, I did not exclude my own hits therefore this count also includes my own click (when I preview my pages and read older posts).  Sometimes, it might also includes the hits from hackers who inject spams into the comments section, but didn’t really load the whole page.  Therefore, the number here is only a reference for me to tell that my website is up, and I roughly estimate how fast the traffic goes.

I have written this part of the php code on my own when this blog was launched (3 years ago), just to show how many pages have loaded.  At that time, I planned for a long term running number, and I used 12 digit.  It supports 200 clicks per second for 120 years.  :P  I have not reached that level of traffic yet, but who knows in the future?

Please tell me if you have arrived at the 888888’s hit.  You are really lucky.

Yes, ColinJong.com is 3 years old now.  The traffic has increased 200% since 12 months ago.

Thanks to our loyal readers who always support this blog and thanks to the search engines that have been bringing new visitors to us.

Actually, SiewPeng and I have written less posts this years but luckily the growth of the traffic can still be maintained.  It reminds me a chat with my ex-colleague sometime ago said that having a real baby is not easy, but it would be easier after 3 years.  Yes, this blog is the “virtual baby” of SiewPeng and me on the Internet.  We hope it grows healthily, fast and most importantly it can give meaningful contribution to every corner of the world as its title says - “Peace and Harmony are Our Ultimate Dreams“.

Recently, I have added a new category - “Astronomy”.  Besides sharing the interesting part of the astronomy, we also hope that our earth is peaceful from the outer space attack such as collision of HUGE meteor.  When a meteor is small, it create a line of firework on the night sky and many people make wishes to it, but when a meteor is huge it would be a disaster.  At that time, everyone will pray so that our earth is safe.

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Planning for the Coming Year

1.  Update the almost abandoned section of this blog - “Gallery” more frequently (every month).
2.  Design new theme for important festivals, such as Chinese New Year, Gawai, Christmas, Hari Raya and Deepavali etc.

We hope that you continue to support us and enjoy reading this blog.  :)

A serious technical issue occurred to this website weeks ago has reminded me about the word that one of my lecturers likes to use, “bullet proved“.  Years ago, when I was studying in the university, I could hear this word from his mouth very frequently (almost every lecture and tutorial for the first few weeks of the semester.).  He was teaching us how to make the software as “bullet proved” as possible!!!

However, there is no software with 100% bullet proved in the real world.

“Bullet proved” here means a software which is secure from any attack, or can handle any input properly even the human has intentionally taken over the control from the normal software operation.

A standalone computer without external storage or networking might be safe from virus, but certain human input might be harmful especially to its data.  Furthermore, it might not be practical nowadays to isolate a computer from accessing external media or to prevent it from connecting to a network.

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Without any sign,  I got the following when I tried to load my blog into a browser…

First thing to do was to complain to the hosting provider, but it was still not solved after a few hours.

The database had corrupted, and I was not able to recover it with the backup that I had.  Finally, without the help from the hosting provider, I have successfully restored the database by creating a new database.

The hosting provider said that my account might have been compromised, but I think it was more likely that someone has injected some commands into the database.  The old database has just gone like that, and the hosting provider was not able to find it out.  I believe it is still hiding somewhere in the server, and they were not putting effort in recovering it.  What I might have lost was only some comments from the readers but they wanted to backdate my database for a few weeks by their outdated backup.  No way!!! I think it was better to restore it myself with my latest backup.

I have gained some experience in rescuing a website, and I will make it more “bullet-proved” too.