szehau's weblog » programming

Monthly Repayment for Housing Loan

szehau — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 17:23:21 +0000

Every time when I reading newspaper or websites and come across advertisement about properties (e.g. houses or shops), I always think how much I will need to pay monthly if after I got a loan from bank. And also what if I put more down payments, what would be my monthly repayment? Will it be much different?

So I decide to write myself a simple program. It is based on fixed rate mortgage. This simple program gives me a brief idea on the monthly repayment I will need to make if I take a loan from bank. Simple key in the total property price, down payment, annual interest rate and terms of loan, then the program will calculate the monthly payment for you.

Your can put the little program at your website too. Simple get the code at Mortgage Payment Calculator.

Blogs Updates for February 2009

szehau — Sun, 03 May 2009 06:22:31 +0000

Below are the updates from my other blogs:

It seem's a lot but it is actually not much for one month :)

Wordpress Plugin – Default Trackbacks – Reborn

szehau — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 05:31:56 +0000

Finally Default Trackbacks is reborn. It is the newer version of my old Default Trackbacks Wordpress plugin that I wrote 4 years ago.

The main changes in the new plugin is that now you can save trackback URLs in Worpdress administration page instead of text file and also improvement in prevention of sending double trackbacks to the same URL.

You can download the new plugin here or Wordpress Plugin website or alternately download directly from your Wordpress admin page by searching the keywords “default trackbacks”.

PPS Unbanned My Blog

szehau — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 08:18:41 +0000

After 3 years, finally PPS has unbanned my blog. 3 years ago the owner of PPS banned my blog due to the reason my blog was sending multiple pings to PPS at the same time. As I had explained in my previous post, that was not my fault. Due the behaviour of web, you can get duplicate pings at anytime.

Now PPS has a new owner. Hopefully the new PPS and the new owner will have better handling on duplicate pings and also better ping mechanism. Now anyone who know the PPS public ping URL can actually send anonymous pings to PPS.

I have a blog portal project which handles duplicate trackbacks pretty well and until now I still haven't encountered any serious bugs or problem. I'm now working and testing on my old default trackbacks plugin to make it more user friendly in Wordpress enviroment and also to enhance the plugin to prevent sending multiple trackback for a post.

A Wordpress Plugin for Blogtal

szehau — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:37:42 +0000

Finally have some free time to do something for my websites. I have just wrote a Wordpress plugin for Blogtal. It is a plugin to send trackback of a newly published post in Wordpress to www.blogtal.com. I called the plugin "Blogtal Trackback".

Unlike the older version of my plugin, Default Trackback, Blogtal Trackback will not send trackback to Blogtal when you are saving a published post. You also can configure the trackback settings inside Wordpress' admin page.

For those who has registered with Blogtal, using Wordpress as their blog platform and still using manual trackback at www.blogtal.com or not sending trackback at all, you can try installing this plugin.

If you have any comment/question about the plugin, please do not hesitate to leave a message here.

How to map a long URL to a shorter one?

szehau — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 03:59:38 +0000

I have just wrote an article about mapping a long URL with a shorted URL. It works like tinyurl.com but this is my own implementation. There is no source code available and it is simple an idea how I will do it.

http://www.snippetit.com/2008/10/implement-your-own-short-url/

Have a look!

New theme on the blog

szehau — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:02:22 +0000

I have just created a new theme for szehau.com as it is running in these site now. The is widget-able theme. I think I will be using this for my blogs in future. If you see a blog with theme similar to this one, it may be my blog :)

Summarily, the theme has the following features:

optimized for search engines (hopefully).
configurable Adsense codes at a separate PHP files so that you won't need to modify each PHP file everytime you do an update to the Adsense code (e.g. change layout and channel).
automated insertion of adsense code in the post. it detects the >!--more< code and replace it with Adsense code
widget-able. you are allowed to add any widget to the sidebar from the administrative page
a special page for Google Adsense search result

Actually the coding work is pretty simple. I just need to modify the default theme came with Wordpress to apply my design. I hope my blog readers will find these theme is more pleasant to read :)

Setup Multiple Virtual Host in Apache (Windows)

szehau — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 12:52:33 +0000

Recently I need to maintain multiple websites' source code (PHP) at the same time at local host. Every time I need test another website, I need to modify the httpd.conf configuration file and restart the Apache server. After some researches on the internet, I manage to find a way to setup multiple virtual host.

Modify httpd.conf to add in the following code after the "LoadModule xxx" lines:
NameVirtualHost 127.0.0.1 DocumentRoot "C:\php\site1" ServerName site1 DocumentRoot "C:\php\site2" ServerName site2
Where "C:\php\site1" and "C:\php\site2" is the path to files for virtual host "site1" and "site2" respectively.
Restart Apache Httpd service.
Edit the file in "C:\[Windows]\System32\drivers\etc\hosts and add in the following lines:
127.0.0.1 site2 127.0.0.1 site1
Point your browser to "http://site1/" or "http://site2" and will be execute to both site1 and site2 code.

Hope this bookmark help you too.

Install Apache Httpd in Windows Vista

szehau — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 11:55:25 +0000

Just bought a Dell notebook installed with Windows Vista recently. I tried to install the Apache Httpd web server in Windows Vista but failed and keep getting "error" box every time the computer is started up.

Finally I found a way to install the latest Apache Httpd in my notebook:

Uninstall any previous Apache Httpd.
Turn off your firewall and User Account Control (UAC) in Control Panel.
Download the latest version of Apache Httpd from http://httpd.apache.org/.
Click Start > All Programs > Accessories and right click on Command Prompt and choose "Run as Administrator".
Change to folder where you put the installation file.
Type "msiexec/i installation_filename" at the command prompt.
Run through the installation. Type in everything (even though you running as localhost) else you will not be able to start the apache service.
After the installation is completed, reboot your computer.
To remove the"error" box on Windows Vista startup, goto Start > All Programs > Startup and remove the Apache Httpd's link.
Browse to http://localhost and it should show "It's work" message.
Turn on back your firewall and User Account Control if you want.
Done.

Hope this information will help you to save time on installing Apache Httpd in Windows Vista.

Enhanced WordPress DB class

szehau — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 04:17:47 +0000

I frequently see WordPress blogs encounter mysql connection lost or exceeded user connections limit error when I'm browsing their websites. This problem normally happens on a WordPress blog that hosts on a shared hosting, especially those busy server where too many users sit on the same server.

I have modified the WordPress's DB class to put in some enhancements to reduce the occurrence of the error.

Retry to open mysql connection when the connection is failed to open at the first time.
Reopen the connection during failure (on connection lost error) when calling mysql_query() (for SELECT statements only).
Currently the code will retry for 5 times and interval for next retry is 200 milliseconds.

To modify the number of retries and interval, you simply need to modify the following lines of code:
$this->retry_max = 5; // Maximum retry 5 times $this->retry_interval = 200; // 200 miliseconds

I have installed this script on my blog and so far don't see any problem. If you are interested to have this code, you can download it from here:

Enhanced WordPress DB class

Do let me know if you found any bug in the code.

Notes:

Use this script at your own risk!
The WordPress DB class is from WordPress version 2.2.1. I'm not sure if it is compatible with the older versions.
Remember to backup your original source file.

It is not recommended to tweak the total retry time to more than 5 seconds (current setting is 5 x 200ms = 1 second). If you still owest getting the connection lost or exceeded maximum user connections limit (User xxx already has more than 'max_user_connections' active connections) error, you might need to ask you web hosting company to change the connection limit or consider to host your website on a better server.

szehau's weblog » programming

Monthly Repayment for Housing Loan

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