Actually I got nothing (better) to do today so I just post this random blog post. Actually, I blogged less in the past two months (well, I didn’t blog at all in the past two months!), because during that time, I felt more like coding than blogging (spent most of my time with stuff on GitHub or StepMania 5).

And also I feel like I should put up more random blog posts, like this one! ^^

You can take a look: https://github.com/dtinth

I also moved several old projects to GitHub:

• oauthdamnit
• DtBMS

This month, I’m staying at a computer camp, so I might not blog much.

#!/bin/bash
NOGZ=`wget "$1" -q -O- | wc -c`
echo "Without gzip:       $NOGZ"
YESGZ=`wget --header="Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate" "$1" -q -O- | wc -c`
echo "With gzip:          $YESGZ"
RATIO=`echo "scale=3;$YESGZ/$NOGZ" | bc`
echo "Compression ratio:  $RATIO"
if [ $YESGZ -ge $NOGZ ]; then
    echo "Gzip is not enabled for this URL. Go check."
fi

To use it, run it, passing URL as the argument

httpgztest http://dev.tw.dt.in.th/thaiWitter/js.js

and it shows the compression ratio.

Without gzip:       79851
With gzip:          20839
Compression ratio:  .260

And if the first and the second number are the same, i.e., the compression ratio is 1, then your gzip is not working.

Without gzip:       1820
With gzip:          1820
Compression ratio:  1.000

This is mainly because of the way the tapcharts are made: It plays the song, the user records the tapchart as the song plays. When the song finishes, you get a tapchart ready to play. In Tap Studio 3, it has a basic UI for editing taps, but you can’t be sure that it syncs well with the song, and it fells unresponsive too.

Few days ago, I tried making my own taps, but each song took me a lot of time, because when I record, there will be an error in some point in the song (missing taps, extra taps, offbeat taps).

StepMania is Much Better At Making Notecharts!

Making stepcharts in StepMania is much more fun. You can record notes into your stepchart, or you can choose to add notes one by one. It has a lot of tools that you can use to fine-tune and sync your stepchart.

Also, most of the already available simfiles on the Internet are pretty time-accurate.

So I made a small Python script to convert my .sm files to be playable on Tap Studio, so I can play them anywhere.

Prerequisites

To be able to convert .sm files for playing in Tap Studio, you need:

• A Mac.
• A jailbroken iDevice, with an SSH server installed.
• Tap Studio (either version 2 or version 3 will do).
• sm2tap.

Converting Stepcharts

Song Initialization

First, you need to have the song you want to convert in your device.

Then, you need to initialize a song. Open Tap Studio, then go to your song library and pick a song you want. After that, press Record. After the song starts, record only one note and save it.

Copying the Song to Your Mac

Then, SSH to your device, or run a terminal on your device as mobile user, and then issue this command:

find Applications -name '*.tapd'

This should list all the tapfiles you have and the locations where they reside in. Copy the tap file you just created (the one with the song name) to your Mac.

Converting StepMania Notes to Tap Studio Notes

On your Mac, you need to convert the .tapd file into an XML file.

Open a Terminal, and then type in

plutil -convert xml1

then press space, then drag the .tapd file into the terminal window, and then press Enter. You will see that the .tapd file will be slightly bigger.

After that, type in:

python

Press space, and drag these files into the terminal window in order:

1. My convert.py file.
2. The .sm file.
3. The .tapd file.

Then go back to terminal and press enter. You should see a list of available step types that can be converted. Type in the name of the step type and press enter. Your .tapd file should be a lot bigger by now.

Finally, to convert it back into binary format,

plutil -convert binary1

then press space, then drag the .tapd file into the terminal window, and then press Enter. The size of the .tapd file will be reduced.

Copying the Modified Notes Back to Device

Copy this file back into your device. You can now play your simfile on your device!

Enjoy!

So I opened up Opera Mobile to sign in to Facebook, but it says:

So maybe it’s eBuddy’s server accessing my Facebook account, so I just continue. The next step is pretty easy: confirm using my mobile phone.

I waited for more than 10 minutes, and no single SMS, so I left the fields blank and confirm the code. I tried this several times, but no SMS sent. I kept retrying.

…until Facebook sends me to this screen:

That looks very fun and exciting. I mean, it is just like a game. If I can remember people’s face correctly then I can get my account back. So I pressed Start and then Facebook starts showing me pictures of my friends:

Well, A Technika screen? I never have a friend as a Technika screen. I have seen many Technika screens before and they all look the same. I don’t even know their name, so who could this be? I have no other choices. I need to skip this question to get my Facebook account back.

Now a Facebook logo? Seriously what the fuck is this? I only have 2 skips, and again, I need to use it.

Then I see a photo where I can recognize the face, but…

….but look at these names! How can I know which name to choose? I also run out of skips. So I failed the tests, however, it’s good that I have unlimited retries. Just sign out and sign in again.

I keep retrying until I can get pass through it. It appears that eBuddy’s server accessed my account and Facebook never see me using eBuddy, so Facebook locked my account.

Now that my account was unlocked, I tried again, and then access to my account is blocked again and I have to through all the steps again. I forgot that eBuddy have many servers around the world. When I sign in the second time, it is from another server. I will never try it again. I will just stick with Nimbuzz.

Total time wasted: around 2 hours.

From my experience with Facebook, combined with what happened to me today, I see these things very annoying on Facebook:

Tagging People Who Has Nothing To Do With A Photo

I always remove my tag from photos that I am not in. I recommend that you do it too.

Usually when people want to share a photo with their friends, they tag their friends in this photo. To me it seems not right. I think that it’s best to tag people in a photo if he/she is actually in the photo.

So how to share your photo with your friends? I think that the best way to use the share feature in Facebook. To share it with all your friends, just click “share” on the sidebar and post it to profile.

Want to share it with only a number of friends? Click “share” on the sidebar, and then click on “send as a message instead.” You can then choose who to send to.

Using An Alias For Their Name On Facebook

Most of the time I will never accept friend requests from people who don’t use a real name. This is just my personal opinion. I am just annoyed.

On Windows Live Messenger, I can assign a personal alias to their contacts on their contact list, so I will know who is who. However on Facebook I can’t.

To me, Facebook is different from other social networks. Unlike Twitter or Windows Live Messenger, I think that Facebook is where I can get in touch with people I already know and I will only be friends with people I already know. For Twitter and Windows Live Messenger that I use to chat and meet random people.

So… that’s all for this blog post.

Sometimes the most dangerous place is the safest place!

บางที ที่ที่อันตรายที่สุดก็อาจจะเป็นที่ที่ปลอดภัยที่สุด…

Explaination: The picture above is of Thai language class, where everyone needs to remember a 20-line poem, and say it aloud to the teacher without reading it (or let the teacher see that you are reading it).

First, it was a normal chat. And then he starts out: I am a hacker, white hat hacker. I use my skill to fix others’ computer problems without letting them know. I think like… really? Let me check if you are really one.

So first, let me ask you some basic question first.

> What Windows are you using?
< No, not Windows. It's a specialized system for hacking.

So I guess he must be a Linux user. What else could it be? Mac? Specialized for hacking? No way.

> So do you know what version of Windows I'm using?
< Either Windows XP or Windows 7

Obviously, if one does not use Windows XP, they will probably use Windows 7. Vista sucks.

< So do you use XP?
> No.

Again, it’s 50% chance, and he has failed.

< So it must be Windows 7.
> Obviously, but why can't you get it right at the first place?
< It's really hard to see. I have to dig through millions of number.
  However, I can get the right answer if I want it.
  But hey, Windows 7 is a very good operating system.
  It offers good protection.

I already knew about the protection thing of Windows 7, but millions of number? Windows XP is 5.1, and Windows 7 is 6.1. Just look at this damn string, is it so hard to figure out?

> Do you know my IP?
< It will take a long time. There are billions of IP.....

While I chat with that guy, I made a page that just redirects the viewer to a Wikipedia article about TCP/IP, and gave that link to him, shortened using bit.ly.

> Well, I suggest that you read about this: http://bit.ly/.....

He clicked on it. His IP address and user agent string is recorded on the server’s log. It shows that he is using Windows XP, and not any kind of a specialized operating system.

We continued chatting for a while, then I decided to surprise him a bit.

> I will tell you something. Your IP is 124.122.___.___.

But that guy keeps “tae”ing.

< Hahaha, that was my fake IP.
> Yeah, but I can tell your "fake IP" in seconds.
  So what's your real IP?

I think that the IP I found is already a real IP. If it’s not then he must be using a proxy server.

But the next thing shocked me.

< I'm not gonna tell you my real IP. But here's a hint:
  My IP starts with 192.16

What the fuck.

< And that IP address was the IP address of my server. I put it at Korea.

That IP address comes from Thailand. Everyone knows it.

> Let me tell you something. 124.122.___.___ is a Thailand IP address and not Korea.
  And you are using (tells him his ISP).
< But the server is really located at Korea.

I then completely ignored this guy.

That was just for fun. I hope that he didn’t take it too seriously. Heheh.

We have to make a document that describes the process of placing an ads on Zone-IT.com. First we use a forum, but then I think that we should use a kind of collaborative text editors.

I have seen the new version of Google Documents. It looks very nice, so I gave it a try first.

What I see is through it offers a lot of new features, it has a problem with line spacing, especially when working with Thai text, and it has a bug where moving the cursor does not move past floating / hanging Thai vowels. It is also buggy where it sometimes does not save.

The next thing I tried is Etherpad. I tried using Piratenpad, but it also has the problem with moving cursor. The text on the screen is too hard to read.

I end up with the older version Google Documents. Well, it’s perfect. Through it does not synchronize text in really real time, but it does not have the cursor movement problem and it’s easy to make text readable by changing fonts.

So that’s about it.

While I was at the airport I decided to buy some good earphones. So here’s my new earphone.

And when I open it…

Look closely….

Ah.

But it sounds very nice anyway.

Usually I start by opening the text editor’s option, pick a syntax item and then pick a random color. Apply and see if it looks nice. But then I realize that it doesn’t work very well.

Why? Because there are no plans for what part of a syntax (number, strings, statements) belongs to what color.

So I need to plan all the color first before I can actually use it in a text editor. So I came up with this.

My Color Tester

So to use it, type in some color codes. The first color will be displayed as a background, and the rest will be displayed as text. Still don’t get it? Here’s a sample. If I typed

#ffffff
#10a520
#aab512
#984151

The result will look like this:

You can also include some text too to describe the color. So here is my color scheme.

#232323
#dadada for normal text
#80ceff for preprocessors
#80ef50 for comments
#d0f979 for characters
#f9f979 for strings
#ecb760 for keywords
#f08686 for numbers

And here’s how it looks like.

Putting it in my favorite text editor, it now looks like this.

Maybe I will use this scheme for all other codes that I may post on this blog too.

And oh, I came up with this color scheme because I have bought a black (in fact, it’s dark gray) notebook from Japan. All the pages are in dark gray and they need special pens to write on it. So I played with these colored pens and black papers and came up with this color scheme.

With this color scheme, codes will have hot colors, so yellow for strings, red for numbers and orange for keywords. Comments and pre­processors have colder colors so they stand out.

So that’s it, hope you like it.

By the way I’m going to a computer olympics camp tomorrow, so I may post some C stuff here lol.