Break Design

Cyprus Delivery Guide

2009-02-10T15:16:00.000-08:00

A nice delivery guide about Cyprus.

It includes menu, prices, comments and other info. Visit the site: www.cyprus-delivery.com

Tanya Stephens - Do you still care

2008-09-26T09:05:00.000-07:00

Great song

Put your photo or text in the middle and in the center of a page

2008-09-26T08:39:00.000-07:00

Just follow this steps:

Remove the DOCTYPE Declaration from the top of your code. By removing this code you will not be able to validate your page, but who care.
Then insert one table and give it a height=100%.
Then align your text/photo in the center and in the middle of the table. How you do that? By giving to the table the following attributes: valign="middle" and align="center"

Chapter 1 homework solution from the book: Introduction to Discrete Event Systems By Christos G. Cassandras, Stephane Lafortune.

2008-09-26T08:33:00.000-07:00

As i say in the title of this post i have the solution for chapter 1 problems. The solutions are for 1.1 and 1.3 exercise.

Please click here (.doc format) to download the solutions.

Logo Collection 2: sillicon valley companies logo

2008-05-01T09:08:00.000-07:00

Logo Collection 1: car logos

2008-05-01T08:38:00.000-07:00

Oldie effect on Fireworks

2008-04-29T13:17:00.000-07:00

A nice effect using fireworks. You can use it as a banner, a photo frame and background.

You can download the .png file from here (722 Kb) if you link to see the effect in details.

Free Website Template

2008-03-13T15:22:00.000-07:00

Sorry i have so long to write, but i was really busy with my studies.

I stole little of my free time and i make a simple and nice website template. You can use this template for free but only for personal use (no commercial use is allowed).
Please leave the link on the bottom of the site.

View Demo

Download

My VHDL lab. Cadence, Simple starter examples

2008-02-29T13:22:00.000-08:00

I have used program like Max Plus, Quartus, XILINX ISE, Modelsim but none of them had such a bad interface like Cadence Nclaunch. The interface really sucks. Beside that, it is one of the best packets in the market.

Below are 2 simple exercises i had to do with Cadence Nclaunch.

Exercise 1: Write a VHDL file and a test bench for a comparator circuit. The input ports are std_logic_vectors (1 downto 0) A and B and the output ports are std_logic signals: less, equal and greater. The circuits compares the vectors A and B. If A is less than B, then less is assigned value 1 and the rest of the output ports are assigned value 0 and so on.

VHDL code

use IEEE.STD_LOGIC_1164.ALL;
use IEEE.STD_LOGIC_ARITH.ALL;
use IEEE.STD_LOGIC_UNSIGNED.ALL;

entity exc1 is
Port (A, B : in STD_LOGIC_VECTOR (1 downto 0);
less, greater, equal: out STD_LOGIC);
end exc1;

architecture Behavioral of exc1 is

signal less1, greater1, equal1 : STD_LOGIC;

begin

process(A, B, less1, greater1, equal1)
begin
if (A >B) then
less1 <= '0'; greater1 <= '1'; equal1 <='0'; elsif(A=B) then less1 <= '0'; greater1 <= 0'; equal1 <='1'; else less1 <= '1'; greater1 <= '0'; equal1 <='0'; end if; end process; less<=less1; greater<=greater1; equal<=equal1; end Behavioral;

Test bench

library IEEE;
use IEEE.std_logic_1164.all;

entity exc1_test is
end exc1_test;

architecture test of exc1_test is

component exc1
port(A, B : in STD_LOGIC_VECTOR (1 downto 0);
less, greater, equal: out STD_LOGIC );
end component;

for i1: exc1 use entity work.exc1(behavioral);
signal A, B : STD_LOGIC_VECTOR (1 downto 0);
signal less, greater, equal : std_logic;
begin
i1: exc1 port map( A,B,less, greater, equal);

simulate: process
begin

A<="00"; B<="00"; wait for 10 ns; A<="00"; B<="01"; wait for 10 ns; A<="00"; B<="10"; wait for 10 ns; A<="00"; B<="11"; wait for 10 ns; A<="01"; B<="00"; wait for 10 ns; A<="01"; B<="01"; wait for 10 ns; A<="01"; B<="10"; wait for 10 ns; A<="01"; B<="11"; wait for 10 ns; A<="10"; B<="00"; wait for 10 ns; A<="10"; B<="01"; wait for 10 ns; A<="10"; B<="10"; wait for 10 ns; A<="10"; B<="11"; wait for 10 ns; A<="11"; B<="00"; wait for 10 ns; A<="11"; B<="01"; wait for 10 ns; A<="11"; B<="10"; wait for 10 ns; A<="11"; B<="11"; wait for 10 ns; end process simulate; end test;

Exercise 2: Write a VHDL file and a test bench for a decoder circuit. The input port is a std_logic_vector (1 downto 0) I and the output port is a std_logic_vector(3 downto 0) Out. The behavior of the circuit is as follows: (Out=0001 when I = 00, Out=0010 when I = 01, Out=0100 when I = 10, Out=1000 when I = 11, otherwise, Out=XXXX) .

VHDL code

library IEEE;
use IEEE.STD_LOGIC_1164.ALL;
use IEEE.STD_LOGIC_ARITH.ALL;
use IEEE.STD_LOGIC_UNSIGNED.ALL;

entity exc2 is
Port ( I : in STD_LOGIC_VECTOR (1 downto 0);
output : out STD_LOGIC_VECTOR (3 downto 0));
end exc2;

architecture Behavioral of exc2 is
signal temp:STD_LOGIC_VECTOR (3 downto 0);
begin

process(I)
begin
if (I="00") then
temp <= "0001"; elsif(I="01") then temp <= "0010"; elsif(I="10") then temp <= "0100"; elsif(I="11") then temp <= "1000"; else temp <= "XXXX"; end if; end process; output <= temp; end Behavioral;

Test bench

library IEEE;
use IEEE.std_logic_1164.all;

entity exc2_test is
end exc2_test;

architecture test of exc2_test is
component exc2
port( I: in STD_LOGIC_VECTOR (1 downto 0);
output: out STD_LOGIC_VECTOR(3 downto 0));
end component;

for i2: exc2 use entity work.exc2(behavioral);

signal I : STD_LOGIC_VECTOR (1 downto 0);
signal output : STD_LOGIC_VECTOR (3 downto 0);

begin

i2: exc2 port map(I, output);

simulate: process
begin

I<="00"; wait for 10 ns;
I<="01"; wait for 10 ns;
I<="10"; wait for 10 ns;
I<="11"; wait for 10 ns;

end process simulate;

end test;

Few SEO Tips

2008-02-01T16:12:00.000-08:00

Few SEO tips i gather thought time that was really helpful and successful.

Few tips about your site (Internal SEO)

Good, rich and unique content.
Try not to steal from other websites, search engines can detect duplicate content after a while and then they will ban your links.
Good use of h1,h2... tags. Try to use only one h1 tag on every page. "h1" is important because it is the text that describes the content of the page. You can use h2 and h3 tags for other text. Remember h1 represents the most important text of the page and all the others the less important text.
Use good and unique titles for your page.
Use good keywords.
Give a brief and scheme description of your site.
When you use links it is better to give to them title=" .....".
When you use images use both alt="...." and title=".....", so the search engines understand what kind of image is.
Try to give a more understandable name to your images. For example it is better to name an image "my_cat_Nora.gif" instead of using the name "DC12345.gif".
Be patient, if you follow this rules the search engines will reward your effort.
if you use a link to an external source use the HTML attribute rel="nofollow". This mean that the crawlers of the search engines will not follow that link.

External SEO

List your site in directories (i recommend free ones).
Make partnership with other related sites and exchange links.
Write articles in other sites which will link and advertise your site.

I am sure that you can find more tips, but i think this are the basics ones. I hope it will help.

Install multiple versions of IE on your PC

2008-01-31T10:47:00.001-08:00

For web designers who wants to see how their site looks on multiple versions of Internet Explorer, this is a great program. It allows you to have all IE versions from IE 3.0 until version 7.0

download site

Macromedia Fireworks Free Textures (379 in total)

2008-01-30T10:55:00.000-08:00

If you like Macromedia Fireworks then you would get in love with this textures, 379 in total

Download from here

Validate your website or not?

2008-01-29T17:29:00.000-08:00

The days that IE was number one browser has gone and new players appears. Websites are not Microsoft FrontPage babies that works properly only in IE. The effort that a web designer have to make to create a well done website that follows the web standards but at the same time works on multiple browsers have increase.

I have read a lot of articles about the importance of validating the HTML and CSS code of your site and found that it is not so “important”. I don’t say that you don’t need to do it, but sometimes it’s difficult to apply the web standards to your website. The most important thing is to make your site to work on multiple browsers: Firefox and IE (at least on version 6 and 7). If you archive this it will be ok for your visitors.

But if we analyze in more depth the importance of validating your site you will have the following benefits:

Your site will be working on multiple browsers (not absolute). I found that making your site behave normally in IE you will need a little more effort. Sometimes you need to write a different CSS for it and include it in the following tags:

Internet Explorer browser display forms, text fields, buttons and some form elements a little different than Firefox. Especially you will discover the IE always put a padding to your form for no reason. To fix this you will have to write the following CSS code:

form{
margin:0px;
}

Also, if you apply border styles to your button or text field you will have to play with their height because IE displays them different than Firefox.

Fewer strange problems. Less problems with text align and padding issues. For example, if you make a page and don’t give text-align properties to it you will find that Firefox align the text on left and IE align the text on the center. So you will always have to give text-align properties in your CSS:

text-align: left; or
text-align: center; (there are more options: right, absolute…)

Search engine friendly site. If your code is clean and follows the web standards the search engine crawlers will be able to analyze in more depth your site and get more information, otherwise they will leave on the first bad code.

Discover and recover broken links. I think i don't have to analyze that point, it's obvious.

Be more professional. If you learn to write clean and validated code then you will increase your web design abilities, save a lot of time and effort from try to validated your site, use useless code will be a history and generally you will be more proud about your work.

Some useful links

HTML Validator
CSS Validator

I make a search to see which of the most popular site are HTML validated (XHTML 1.0 strict) and found the following results (Top 10 sites from Alexa.com):

Yahoo.com HTML: Failed CSS: Pass
Google.com HTML: Failed CSS: Failed
Youtube.com HTML: Failed CSS: Failed
Live.com HTML: Failed CSS: Failed
MSN.com HTML: Pass CSS: Pass
MySpace.com HTML: Failed CSS: Failed
Facebook.com HTML: Failed CSS: Failed
Hi5.com HTML: Failed CSS: Failed
Wikipedia.org HTML: Failed CSS: Pass
Orkut.com HTML: Failed CSS: Failed

Only msn.com pass both html and css validation. You can see that the big players don't care too much about the web standars. They want only to make their site works on all browser (that don't mean html&css validated) and offer their products.

It is up to you to decide what is the best.

Simple Java Chat Client-Server

2008-01-14T14:59:00.001-08:00

This is a project i had in the Computer Networks Cource in University.

Download it here

What was asked is to create a Java Chat Room application, which uses a certain protocol (given) to implement a server client functionality.

How the protocol works:

Client:

Client sends Login command. The server checks if no other person has that nickname and sends back the List command that is a list with all the other clients (explained bellow)
NewNick command. It is send by the server to the client to notify that nickname is not available.
PrivateRecieve , private message from nickname (!)
Logout: Client sends that command to logout from the server and then exists the Gui
Logout : nickname has logged out
Gui for all this, pretty simple

Server:

It opens port 9999 and wait some connection
When it get a connection waits for Login command. It then checks to see if nickname is available. If nickname is not available sends the NewNick command back to notify the client
If nick is availiable the server sends the List to all the clients
When it recieves a Post command then sends msg to all the users in the chat room
PrivatePost sends msg to the nickname
When recieves the Logout command, deletes the nickname from the clients list and resends the List command to everybody
Server is created with threads so that it can handle a large number of clients

Client Gui

Action - Connect Popups a window to select server, ip or host. If you run the server on your computer leave it to localhost
Action - Disconnect Disconects ...
When connected a second window popus to ask you for your nickname
If nickname exists the client asks you for a new one
When connected you can write your personal message down and press enter or the send button
For private message click on the nickname you want to sent it and write the message

The project is in fact simple and is based on the java tutorial http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/networking/sockets/index.html

The source code comments are in greek (since i am greek), but anything you might want to ask just leave a comment, i will answer as soon as i see it

Some images:

Create a mountain with Fireworks

2008-01-12T06:33:00.000-08:00

With the pen tool create a triangle shape

Give to the shape the following characteristics

Fill category -> Gradient -> Linear
Color -> i use #FF9900 and fading to white (#FFFFFF), you can use any color

After, with the pen tool create a shape like the below (with black color)

Now give to the new shape:
color -> #FF6600

and select the two shapes and clone them (edit -> clone) and resize (modify -> transform -> numeric transform... -> scale = 60%). Now place them behind the original shapes.

Create a beer mat with fireworks

2008-01-11T14:40:00.000-08:00

Because beer mat looks always dirty and wet we have to represent this things. We can do this using an old paper like the below.

We will use the old paper effect after. First you have to create a rectangle 350x350px and give to it the following characteristics:

color -> #663300
rectangle roundness ->20%
texture -> NN_fractal256_hline2noise

If you don't have this texture you can take it from the image below

The result will be this

Then you can make a border for the mat and write some text. For the border is a rectangle with no fill color, just border color (#FFFFFF white) and tip size 2px. Also I add to the border noise from the effect list.
Add some text also.

Finally, we will give the old paper effect to the beer mat. what we have to do is to give to the old paper from the effects list the effect Convert to Alpha.

Fix the corners with eraser tool, I do it very fast so forgive me if it is not perfect

Other colors

When you take the law in your hands

2008-01-11T14:35:00.000-08:00

Fade effect with Fireworks

2008-01-11T14:22:00.000-08:00

Select a picture

Then create a rectangle

Give to the rectangle the following effects (Properties bar at the bottom):

Blend mode -> Erase
Edge of fills -> Feather
Amount of Feather -> 40% you can play with this value

Place the rectanngle at the bottom of the picture.

Create a 404 error page

2007-12-05T07:37:00.000-08:00

Open a text editor (notepad in Windows) and write the following: ErrorDocument 404 /error-page.html
Save the file as .htaccess.txt
Create a page which will contain your error message and save it as error-page.html
Upload the 2 files you have created (.htaccess.txt and error-page.html) using an FTP program (like Filezilla) to the main directory of your site.
Rename the file .htaccess.txt to .htaccess

Thats all. You can see an example of 404 error page here.

More buttons

2007-11-30T08:38:00.000-08:00

The photo below are in .png format, so you can take it and edit it (you can change the colors,text and the size).

Distributed calculator – Socket programing in C

2007-11-28T05:28:00.000-08:00

Problem (Description)

Four researchers want to execute a series of calculations for their research. However, their systems have processors which are very fast for only specific calculations. For example, W’s computer executes addition fast but is slower when it comes to multiplications. These are the constraints:
1)W’s computer can only do addition fast
2)X’s computer can only do subtraction fast
3)Y’s computer can only do multiplication fast
4)Z’s computer can only do division fast

Therefore there is a need to create a distributed system that will utilize the optimized hardware in each computer and execute a series of calculations in the shortest possible time.

Each unique calculation takes 1 seconds to execute.

Rules

During the execution a process can only take care of the calculations that it specializes and must obtain help from other processes for other calculations. Simple mathematical rules of priority must be utilized to ensure correctness of calculations.

Solution

You can download the source code from here

And the problem report, where i explain every line of the code here
Part of the report is in Greek language, but you will find it easy to understand my code.

Remember

first, we run our 4 servers (server_add.c, server_sub.c, server_mul.c and server_div.c) :

gcc server_add.c -o add

./add

...

and then we run one by one the clients (client1.c, client2.c, client3.c and client4.c)

gcc client1.c -o c1

./c1 localhost calc.txt

...

Button with Fireworks

2007-11-23T11:40:00.001-08:00

I think video tutorials are much better way to explain your techniques and what are you doing. This is the first one i made. It is a tutorial to make a simple button with Fireworks. Basically, i made this tutorial just to see the effect of the video tutorial. I hope you like it.
I forget to tell you that i will put also the .png file of the button, so do not worry.

Watch the Video Tutorial - Click Here

I have made few buttons with differend colors. The photo below are in .png format, so you can take it and edit it (you can change the colors,text and the size).

ROCKY VII

2007-11-16T23:20:00.000-08:00

You have to see this video. Very funny.

More funny videos: http://www.nimportequi.com

Automatically tag any song

2007-11-11T23:52:00.000-08:00

Recognize song title and artist software

Does this look familiar to you: You listen to this great song on radio or you favourite online radio station. You love the song and you want to download it (legally of cource :)) or buy the CD, and you are desperate to know the artist and the song title.

What would you do ?

Try to catch some lyrics and then desperately to try to find it throught Google ...

Or

TUNATIC

Ever thought what is this song? Let Tunatic hear it and you will get the artist's name and the song's title within seconds

Tunatic is a great small free easy-to-use program. You can download it here. What it does is to automatically regognize any song from any source! It looks like this:

All you have to do is click the Search button next to "Tunatic ready" and the song title and artist will magically appear :)

Clicking on the arrow in the right you can see some links to download your song through iTunes or download a ringtone.

It can be used with microphone or directly with the pc, throught Media Player, or Winamp or whatever.

Cool huh ?

Towards an Open, Trusted Digital Rights Management Platform

2007-11-11T19:20:00.000-08:00

Today i have just finished a presentation that i had to do at the University (University of Cyprus - Course: ECE 457 Computer and Network Security). The presentation was done by me (Salameh Elias) and one of my classmate (Iacovos Ioannou).

The presentation based on a IEEE paper (Authors: Andrew Cooper and Andrew Martin from Oxford University Computing Laboratory). I think i don't have permission to upload this paper because you must be an IEEE member. I upload the presentation which cover with details the authors implementations and approaches about the Trusted Digital Rights Management Platform.

The first slide from the presentation (introduction - abstract)

This paper describes an open architecture for digital rights management (DRM-Originator access control) enforcement on trusted computing platforms that empowers the consumer to select their operating-system and applications, including open-source options, without weakening the strength of the security functions.

§Also this paper describes two uses-cases: a DRM scenario with protected media content and remote home-working on sensitive medical data

Download the presentation (power point format)

Getting Started With PHP and MySQL in Windows with EasyPHP - Part 2

2007-11-11T15:06:00.000-08:00

MySQL Tutorial - Configuring MySQL in EasyPHP for Windows

Intro

This is the second part of the tutorial Getting Started With PHP and MySQL in Windows with EasyPHP witch you can find see here. Make sure you see this first.

In this tutorial we will see:

Running MySQL server with EasyPHP
Configuring MySQL server
Adding a user in MySQL
Running queries MySQL command line interpreter

Running MySQL server with EasyPHP

Goto Start - Programs - EasyPHP and Click on EasyPHP.exe. This will start the Apache webserver, PHP and MySQL automatically

Configuring MySQL server

This is a step you do only once every installation.
Goto Start - Run - and type "C:\Program Files\EasyPHP1-8\mysql\bin\mysqladmin.exe" -uroot password secret
where secret is you password and click Run
What this command does is set the root (administrator, the guy that can do anything in the system) to have the password "secret" in this case. Make sure you note is somewhere you might need it at a later time.

To test that this is ok, start the Command interpreter:
goto Start - Run and type

"C:\Program Files\EasyPHP1-8\mysql\bin\mysql.exe" -uroot -psecret
and click Run

You should see something like "Welcome to MySQL monitor. (....)

mysql>

If you see this you are ready. You have successfully configured MySQL server.

Adding a user in MySQL

You have configured the root account, and know you are ready to start experimenting. But using the root account is not the safes way to play with you database. The coolest thing to do is add a user to every MySQL database and use that account so that you don't mess everything up when you make a mistake. The way to do this is:

Start the MySQL Command Interpreter with your root account: Start - Run -
"C:\Program Files\EasyPHP1-8\mysql\bin\mysql.exe" -uroot -psecret
Create a database: Just type "create database database_name" where database_name is the name you want. For now we will just name it "people". So you type "create database people"
Then you have to create the user and add it to the database. This is done with one command: GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON people.* TO 'my_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'my_password' WITH GRANT OPTION; - where my_user you put your user and my_password you password. For this tutorial will be user and pass. So
"GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON people.* TO 'user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password' WITH GRANT OPTION;
There is no need to explain exactly what this command does and i don't thing that you really care :). In few word that command says to the server "Hey user witch uses password pass can do anything to the people database"
To login with this user and password Start - Run -
"C:\Program Files\EasyPHP1-8\mysql\bin\mysql.exe" -uuser -ppass

This is the "official" end of this tutorial. The goal was to install PHP and MySQL to your Windows Machine, so that you can use all that beautiful tutorials you can find through Google. What's next is some simple SQL commands, only the basics without much details so you can get to the point.

Running queries and SQL commands in MySQL command line interpreter

The official definition of queries is "To interrogate a collection of data such as records in a database". This in simple words means that queries are the questions you give to the server and the response you get. An example of query is: "Give me the names of all people that live in New York and there last name is "Davis"". SQL (not MySQL) is the official language, the way to write this so that the computer understands what you want.

We will see the basics of MySQL in the next tutorial. For now i will give you just an example; Just type in the Command Line Interpreter:

use people
- This selects the database witch you are about to work with. in this case people database witch we just have created

CREATE TABLE example (
id INT,
name VARCHAR(100),
address VARCHAR(100)
);

- This creates a table witch has an integer id, a name and an address. Varchar basically means text. More on that in next Tutorials.

Now Type:

SELECT * FROM example;

- This command tell the MySQL serve to give you a list with all the entries in the example table. Since there aren't any entries you get:
"Empty Set" Respones. You can imaging what that is

Ok lets put some entries in there. The command for this is:

INSERT INTO example VALUES ('1', 'Nikos', 'New York');
INSERT INTO example VALUES ('2', 'Elias', 'Paris');
INSERT INTO example VALUES ('3', 'James', 'New York');

now run that Select command again:

SELECT * FROM example;

SELECT * FROM example WHERE address like "%New York%";

Create a night scene with Fireworks

2007-11-10T15:13:00.000-08:00

This tutorial will helps you to create a night scene. I will guide you to design the stars, the clouds, the moon and finally i will connect all these to create the night scene.

This idea is taken from here: http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/fireworks/articles/frw8at_nightscene.html

Clouds:

create with pen tool a shape like this:

now remove the white outline and add gradient fill to the shape. I use the following colours: #99CCCC and #CCCCCC

i put a live effect to the shape using the filter "Alien Skin Splat LE".

Filters > Alien Skin Splat LE > Edges

Edge mode: pixels. See the photo below for more details

The final effect with the filter is:

Now i will make the shape look like a real cloud. Make this changes:

Brightness: -53
Constant: -45

Gaussian Blur: blur Radius: 5.8

Hue: 2
Saturation: -100
Lightness: 61

Add 3-4 clouds copy's to your design and then use the subselection tool to change the shape of the others clouds, so they don't look the same, you can place them wherever you like.

With the rectangle tool make a rectangle in the size of your design. Put gradient fill, see below the details:

you will take this:

Making the Stars

You can make very easy. With the ellipse tool make an ellipse 5x5px with edge -> feather: 12

You can use white or #CCCCCC color. After on the top of the ellipse you create you will put another ellipse 1x1px wih edge -> hard

You make multiple copy's and you put it wherever you want.

Making the Moon

Withe ellipse tool create an ellipse 150x150px. give to it a white color.
Filters > Shadow and Glows > Glow: 2 and color #CCCCCC, don't change the other setting

Fix the ellipse edges:

Now, to create the moon craters you will do the following steps.

create with pen tool a shape like this:

Give to the shape the following characteristics: Pattern -> Oil Paint 1

Give to the shape this:

Hue: 51
Saturation: -46
Lightness: 21

and place the object on top of the moon. Make a copy of the shape and put it on the moon but with different size (use the subselection tool ) and different Hue/Saturation/Lightness numbers

i put a small Bat:

Download the .png file (the photo below):

With the same shapes and some more i created i make a "cemetery scene edition"

Download the .png file (the photo below):

Manage multiple fonts with "FontFrenzy"

2007-11-10T14:35:00.000-08:00

FontFrenzy is probably one of the best font application i have ever try. It gives you the ability to install/uninstall/view your fonts with simple steps. The most important thing: it is free, you need only to make a registration which can be done in 5 minutes.

One importand thing is that FontFrenzy does not consume too much memory like other programs. Remember that when viewing fonts with FontFrenzy it does not install them to the font folder of windows (if that was happened it would slow your system - we all know that windows can not handle a lot of fonts).

You can install FontFrenzy from here: Download

FontFrenzy features:

DeFrenzy - Removes all fonts except those originally shipped with Windows XP, or to a previous snapshot. You can specify a folder where all removed fonts will be stored.

FrenzySnap - Takes a snapshot of your currently installed fonts, allowing you to later ReFrenzy back to that font configuration.

ReFrenzy - Guides you through installing new fonts quickly and easily, from a previous snapshot.

FrenzyMan - A font management tool that allows you to easily install, remove, and store your fonts.

FrenzyInfo - Help file and information on how to receive a free book.

A screen shot of FontFrenzy:

SearchStaus: a cool tool that let you see the rankings of your site.

2007-11-09T15:05:00.000-08:00

SearchStatus is a toolbar extension for Firefox and Mozilla that allows you to see how any and every website in the world is performing. Designed for the highly specialised needs of search engine marketers, this toolbar provides extensive search-related information about a site, all conveniently displayed in one discreet and compact toolbar.

For every site you visit using, SearchStatus lets you view its Google PageRank, Google Category, Alexa popularity ranking, Compete.com ranking, Alexa incoming links, Alexa related links and backward links from Google, Yahoo! and MSN. This combined search-related information means you can view not only the link importance of a site (according to Google), but also its traffic importance (according to Alexa), so providing a balanced view of site efficacy.

Source: quirk.biz/searchstatus

Why my form has a space at the bottom on Internet Explorer

2007-11-09T14:54:00.000-08:00

I was trying to solve this problem for a long time, i thought it was my mistake. But i find that this problem is appear because of the "margin" of the form and how Internet Explorer realize it.

The only thing you have to do is to add on your styles this code:

form{

margin:0px;

}

In Mozilla Firefox there is not any problem.

Getting Started With PHP and MySQL in Windows with EasyPHP

2007-11-08T15:24:00.000-08:00

Intro

I'm sure you have all heart one time or another about this cool stuff called "PHP" and MySQL, and some of you have probably heart that you need Linux to use this stuff.
Well that's not true. Of course, Linux is the best operating system for hosting a website, but Linux is not ideal way for a newbie to learn PHP.
All you need for your first steps in PHP and MySQL is a cool program called EasyPHP (Free here). Basically this is a collection of programs.
More Specific,

Apache the web server, the program that is responsible for viewing you sites and working together with PHP.
PHP Module For Apache
MySQL Database Server

Installation

All you have to do is download install and run the program. I recommend using the default Directory C:\Program Files\EasyPHP1-8 so that you will follow the tutorials easily.
After installation completes goto Start - Programs - EasyPHP - EasyPHP.exe
You should see an icon in your taskbar, double click on it. you should see something like this:

This is a question, if you want to update the program. Just click OK.

Then double click on the "e" on the taskbar. You should see this window:

If the little dots beside the Apache Button and MySQL button are Green, that means that you are ok, and ready to go!

Your First PHP Program

To test this open your favourite browser (Or Internet Explorer :p) and write 127.0.0.1

You should see something like this:

You are ready to start PHP Programming. the location for the files is C:\Program Files\EasyPHP1-8\www or something like this (where you have installed EasyPHP)
Go in that folder. you should see a file "index.php". Open it. You can use notepad, WordPad or any editor you want. I use Notepad++ and PHP Expert Editor. Whatever makes you feel better.
When you open the file, you see a mixture of HTML and PHP.

All PHP code is in the php tags. That is <?php and ?>
For example, a hello world program:

<?php
echo "Hello World !!!";
?>

Create a new file, for example index2.php and write the code above and save it. Then open with your browser http://127.0.0.1/index2.php
You should see this:

To check some PHP functions and view some interesting information about you system, write this into file under hello world example:

<?php phpinfo( ); ?>

You should see this:

That's all for now. The next example will be an introduction of the MySQL basics and a simple MySQL example.

Playing with Fireworks"Hue / Saturation"

2007-11-08T11:36:00.000-08:00

Select an image.

Filters ->Adjust color -> Hue / Saturation

Original Photo

Hue: 11
Saturation: 34
Lightness: 0

Hue: -180
Saturation: -100
Lightness: 0

Hue: -120
Saturation: 100
Lightness: -15

Hue: 1
Saturation: 73
Lightness: 0

Photo Frame Effects in Fireworks

2007-11-08T11:08:00.000-08:00

Create a new document 300x284 px

We will create cool photo borders using the filter "Alien Skin Splat LE". This filter give a lot of choices. There are many edge modes. Below you can see there effect to the image.

Filters -> Alien Skin Splat LE -> Edges The Alien Skin window will be displayed. Select a mode edge. Play around with the other settings and view the result. I have used the default settings.

The option Transparent Fill makes the background of the image transparent.

Dot Edged Frame

Line Edged Frame

Pixels Frame

Lumpy Edged Frame

Rough Edged Frame

Torn Paper Frame

Fireworks color replace tool

2007-11-07T14:23:00.000-08:00

How can you change color in a photo? You can use Fireworks color replace tool.

original photo:

Using color replace tool:

Settings:

Final result:

Result with color #00FFFF:

Make web 2.0 logos with Fireworks

2007-11-07T12:24:00.000-08:00

Open Macromedia Fireworks.

Creat a new document 421x150.

Write your text. I use "Break Design logo. The font i use is "trebuchet ms", font size 50px, bold style and colour "#99CC00"

The first photo:

After i use the following styles: color -> fill options -> Texture: Line-Diag 1 50% -> Gradient: Linear (you can play how much fading is the color). The result is:

Then, i make a copy of the logo and i flip it vertical (Modify -> Transform -> Flip vertical)

Then i make a rectangle box (same size as the logo). I modify it like this -> color: white -> Blend mode: Erase -> Edge: Feather 25%. Then the box i place it on top of the vertically flip logo.

Thats is. I play with other colors. Have a look.

Color: #333333

Color: #FF6600

The .png file: