Reto's Weblog

Back again?

reto — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 21:59:33 +0100

Hefty! It's been quiet here for almost 2 years, which feels like 20 on the internet, but then Google still looks the same as on the 24th of April 2008, right?

Well, I've started using Google Code together with Mercurial repositories to manage some of the codings I did. Most of them are probably not very useful, but then again, they where useful for me at some point in time and could be a starting point for others. Furthermore, using a Google Code project is a great way of backing up stuff that needs no privacy ;).

My code dump has two repositories so far:

CMS Made Simple stuff (like plugins, tools etc.), my CMS of choice for small websites.
Shell Scripts I wrote. Some to integrate with Nautilus, some to be used on the command line

BTW: I'll post important updates regarding mycodedump on this blog.

Googlebot and Site Redirects

reto — Thu, 02 Oct 2003 19:45:34 +0200

At a first glance it seems like there is nothing on the web, that can hide from beeing indexed by Google. Not only html but twelve(!) other filetypes are getting indexed at the moment.
But Google is much pickier as one could assume, whereas its reasons are evident and reasonable:

1. Redirects
Googlebot (Google's Spider) doesn't follow the "http/1.1 302 Found" status code (resource temporarily moved). Instead you should use a "http/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" header to make Google follow the redirect.
To make the long story short: If you're using PHP to do the redirect (and many are using PHP these days) you should add the status code header manually because PHP sends a 302 Found status code by default.

This stops Google and therefore is only usefull if your site is really under maintenance at the moment:


<?php

    header('Location: http://www.foo.com/bar/');

?>

This makes Google follow the redirect and index the Site:


<?php

  header('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently');

  header('Location: http://www.foo.com/bar/');

?>

If you prefer to do the redirects within an .htaccess file (on Apache, of course), you could do it like this. Every Request to foo.com/ is redirected to foo.com/bar/:


 #Redirect (this will result in a 301 permanently moved status code)

 RedirectMatch permanent ^/$ http://www.foo.com/bar/

I expect it's faster and less resource intensive to set up an .htaccess file because there is no need to parse any php code at all. Though it won't matter in most cases anyway. (untested assumption)

2. Sessions
Google doesn't follow links with a session attached. If you've enabled session.use_trans_sid in your php.ini you should check if Google is requesting the page. If your site displays fine without the use of sessions simply don't start one if google is visiting. ;-)


<?php

    // session is not started to serve google

    if( stristr( $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], 'google') === false )

    {

        session_start();

    }

?>

Add as many search engine bots as you like. A more sophisticated method (like regular expressions) is not needed here, but would of course work, too.

SpamPoison

reto — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 19:27:23 +0200

SpamPoison generates virtually infinite numbers of bogus e-mail addresses to "poison" the e-mail databases of spammers using e-mail harvester tools to gather e-mails over the web.
It can be used to help reduce the problem of spam on the Internet in general, and at sites using SpamPoison in particular.

Each randomly generated website again generates random email addresses and content and links to its self with pseudo-hyperlinks, trapping badly engineered address harvesting web crawlers, and to fool them into adding enormous quantities of completely bogus e-mail addresses to the e-mail address databases of the spammers, thus polluting those databases so badly that they become essentially useless.

SpamPoison is a port of the Perl script 'Wpoison' by Ronald F. Guilmette.
~~Please visit monkeys.com/wpoison/ for detailed Informations on what SpamPoison is and why it could be usefull to you.~~
The original Wpoison site seams to have disapeared. At least I can't find anything but broken links to the original wpoison script. Well, for more information on how to use the script, please download the zipped package below. The included install.txt has some instructions on how to set up your own spam-harvester trap.

SpamPoison Demo
Download SpamPoison (zip, 759kb)

SmileWare for EPOC ER5 Devices

reto — Mon, 21 Aug 2000 19:42:31 +0200

SmileWare is freeware for EPOC32 devices. Actually, all my SmileWare is tested on a Psion S5 and on the ER5-SDK, which means that SmileWare should be compatible with all EPOC Machines. SmileWare is absolutely free, but I would like you to send me a :-) or any comments and bug-reports!

Smileware is written in OPL, which recently was opensourced! Please visit opl-dev.sourceforge.net for further information.

LinkSwitch v3.00
LinkSwitch is a very small application, which lets you switch on/off the remote link (RS232) easily.

Features:

customizable shortcuts to switch the link on or off
icon on the Extras bar indicates whether the link is on or off
switches the remote link on, when the external power ist plugged in
checks whether you want to close LinkSwitch for backup or not
simply switch the link on or off by typing the LinkSwitch icon on the Extras bar
choose whether you want to close LinkSwitch for backup or not
sis installation file
official UID
Screenshot
Download

DayCount v2.20
Ever wondered how many days remain until...
DayCount pops up at the switch on of your Psion and disappears again after a timeout of one to nine seconds.

Features:

your very own message with up to 100 characters
icon on the Extras bar indicates whether the link is on or off
countdown up to the 2100-01-01
delay after switch on
choose whether you want to close DayCount for backup or not
sis installation file
official UID
Screenshot
Download

BattWatch v1.00
As the name suggests, BattWatch keeps an eye on the batteries of your EPOC machine. It informs you when the voltage of the batteries ist too low.

Features:

nothing really special, but I think it is pretty useful
sis installation file
official UID
Screenshot
Download

Sound5 v1.00
Sound5 plays a sound file at every switch on of your EPOC device.

Features:

nothing really special, anyway...
sis installation file
official UID
Download

Mute5 v1.10
With Mute5 you can switch the sound/alarm on and off with one single click on the Mute5 icon in the Extras bar. The icon indicates whether the sound is switched on or off.
Italian version translated by Stefano Di Gregorio.

Features:

icon on the Extras bar indicates whether the sound is on or off
sis installation file
official UID
Screenshot
Download

Mute5x v1.00
Mute5x automatically turns the alarm sound off, when your machine is connected to PsiWin and on again, when the remote link is disconnected. This is usefull if you sync your agenda with a PC scheduler and don't want your Psion and the PC making noise at the same time.

Features:

icon on the Extras bar indicates whether the sound is on or off
customizeable shortcuts to switch the sound on or off
switches the sound off, when connected to the desktop and vice versa
sis installation file
official UID
Download

To install sis files from your PC using PsiWin earlier than v2.1, you have to install EPOC Install (112kb) first. This program requires Win9x.
To install sis files directly form your EPOC machine, make sure you have an Add/remove icon in the Control panel. Else download the Add/remove Control panel (25kb).