Just a quick courtesy call

On Wednesday I went to an All You Can Eat Curry night at a local restaurant in Albert Road Southsea. I wasn't massively hungry so only had a starter, salad, and Chicken Tikka Massala (CTM) Britain's most popular food. There was a lot of tasty looking food that I had paid to try but just didn't want. My mobile provider called me the following day to see how I was enjoying my contract. Later that day in the office we were discussing the texts that we pay for but just don't use. It occurs to me that the mobile companies have managed to get us used to an All You Can Eat business model where we are not actually that hungry. So here I am on a train bound for London thinking of all the different business models I pay into but don't actually make the most of. My electricity supplier, for example, gets me to pay a large sum every month irrespective of my usage but an assumption that I will use more in the Winter without any clear understanding or estimate of how much I will actually use. Your thoughts?

Making the most of now

Following yesterday's successful test to make the most of the capabilities of my current mobile despite being tempted to get a new one, today I have decided to try to publish to my blog directly from my mobile. So far it is turning out OK. It is handy to blog when I have more than 140 characters to say that won't fit into a twitter post. However, it is annoying trying to write significant musings into a blog when you only have a telephone keypad and predictive text, which cannot spell blog or twitter. All the more reason to get the new x10 you might think but... Sony are bringing out the new Vivaz pro with keyboard. It's also got the Symbian operating system so it should be similar to my current w960. I'll have to check the spec more closely. In the comments to this blog post, please tell me your thoughts on Symbian vs Android.

upgrading mobile handsets

Thursday morning's commute
Originally uploaded by maakusan

OK, so I've had my eye on the new Sony Ercisson Xperia X10 for quite sometime. Great phone and it comes with Android operating system, 8megapixel camera that does automatic face recognitions so you don't need to tag people in your photos it does it itself, oh and it's also got a 1Ghz snapdragon processor so it's fast as the proverbial.

but...

a friend of mine
http://www.myspace.com/162940578
when i got my current phone out he asked if it was mine. you see, it's black and he remembers me with my old white mobile.

the x10 comes in white

but...

only on Orange and they don't like me and I don't like them.

so while I am looking to import a white x10 handset from Japan I am trying to make the most of the phone that I have, my black sone ericsson w960i.

and i am actually really satisfied with how it is performing. this photo is A-MA-ZING! i took it with my phone while i was still sleepy on my commute to work. and it came out this good and i posted it straight online from the phone!

true, the x10 would have made it even easier for me to do all of this, would have automatically geo-tagged the photo too...
but look what my w960 managed! i'm chuffed to bits. it is making me think twice about forking out £500 for the new x10 in white. however, i am always reminded to get a new handset each time my w960 needs recharging, which is about 2, nearly 3, times a day now :(

could get a new battery instead but the new x10 is tempting.

in the comments to this blog post, please tell me of any experiences you may have had ever importing a handset from japan to the UK?

Yahoo! Webhosting limitations for CMS

If you are trying to use Drupal on Yahoo! Webhosting, then I have some bad news for you.

The current versions of PHP and MySQL on Yahoo! Webhosting do not meet the required specification for many CMS.

I have checked the version information for MySQL and PHP on my maakusan.com domain on Yahoo! Webhosting :
PHP version 4.3.11
MySQL version 4.1.14

Drupal recommend :
PHP 5.2 or higher
MySQL 4.1 or higher for Drupal 6
MySQL 5.0 or higher for Drupal 7

Joomla recommend :
PHP
minimum version 4.3.x for Joomla v1.5
recommended version 4.4.7 for Joomla v1.5
optimum version 5.0.x series for Joomla v1.5

MySQL
minimum version 3.23.x or above for Joomla v1.5
recommended version 4.1.22 for Joomla v1.5
optimum version 5.0.x series for Joomla v1.5

CMSMadeSimple recommend :
PHP version 4.3+ (version 4.3.3+ required for pretty URL's)
MySQL versions 3.23 or higher

Yahoo! Small Business Support have informed me that they have no intention of upgrading the installations of PHP and MySQL on the server that hosts my domain. In addition, all of their servers are on the same versions of PHP and MySQL and therefore this problem cannot be overcome by moving my domain onto another server.

I also noted some key settings of the current PHP configuration directives on my Yahoo! Webhosting PHP installation :
register_globals: on;
session.save_handler: files
error_reporting set to 2036

This conflicts with the Drupal requirements :
register_globals: off;
session.save_handler: user
error_reporting set to E_ALL

Yahoo! Small Business Support have informed me that they cannot change these PHP configuration directive settings for individual accounts, which conflicts with some reports from other users.

In summary, you can bypass the Drupal 6 install script by resetting the register_globals directive but Yahoo! Webhosting does not meet the minimum requirements for Drupal 6 and above.

You can get Joomla v1.5 to run on Yahoo! Webhosting but it runs slow because Yahoo! Webhosting does not meet the recommended specification.

You can get CMSMadeSimple to run on Yahoo! Webhosting but only without pretty URL's.

I have been checking the requirements between Drupal, Joomla, and CMSMadeSimple because of the recent CMS Awards '08. I have been using CMSMadeSimple but I would like some additional features that means I need some quality hardcopy documentation, which is not available for CMSMadeSimple.

All of this means that I will now have to look into moving my domain from Yahoo! Webhosting onto a Drupal webhosting solution that will support the current and future versions of Drupal. I have already blogged further information about my experience installing CMSMadeSimple and trying to get it to use pretty URL's.

One final thing to mention is that Yahoo! Webhosting does not currently allow you to upload .htaccess files to your account, which unfortunately is one of the requirements of installing Drupal.

CMS Made Simple (CMSms) Pretty URLs

I've finished and submitted my dissertation, completed my temporary contract at work, and started to set myself up as self-employed. All of these things mean that I have some time available to actually get to grips with CMSms and improve my online presence. Understandably this is a high priority for me now that I am self-employed. I will be able to use the Web as a marketing tool to potential clients.

Having successfully installed CMSms on my webhost's server there was some configuring that needed doing before I can get it going. Just like the installation process caused me problems on my Yahoo! server, so has the configuration steps.

All I wanted to do was have nice clean Web addresses (URL) for my pages. My dissertation project homepage should logically be
maakusan.com/msc
but the content management system that I have chosen turns out to churn out ugly URL. This is understandable given that it works from a MySQL database. If I create a new page, the database stores it away. When a Web browser goes for the page it has to wade through the database to find the page.
http://www.maakusan.com/index.php?page=msc

CMSms has two ways to clean the URL as explained in both the Installation/Optional Settings instructions and the Pretty URLs FAQ. mod_rewrite will make it look like
http://www.maakusan.com/msc/
BUT mod_rewrite requires the htaccess file to be edited on the web server. Yahoo does not allow clients to upload or edit their own htaccess file (Yahoo Small Business Help). So I can't use mod_rewrite.

The alternative way to clean up URL in CMSms is to use its internal mechanism. This does not need me to play with the htaccess file but only tidies the URL to look like
http://www.maakusan.com/index.php/msc

which is just not clean enough.

I have resolved to try to create redirect pages at clean URL that will point to the dirty URL.

In the meantime, if anybody does use CMSms on a Yahoo webhost package and they wish to try to have clean URL then you HAVE TO use the CMSms internal mechanism. Here are some steps to follow to make it happen.

1. Log into Yahoo Small Business.
2. Go to the Web Hosting Control Panel.
3. Go to the Manage tab.
4. Go to the File Manager.
5. Click on the edit button for the config.php file.
6. Scroll down the file to the URL Settings.
7. Change $config['internal_pretty_urls'] = false;
   to read $config['internal_pretty_urls'] = true;
8. Press Save.
9. Log into your CMSms admin pages for your domain.
   http://www.example.com/admin/
10. Go to Site Admin.
11. Go to Global Settings.
12. Next to Clear Cache:
    press Clear.

That's it.

These 'simple' twelve steps took me too long to work out. I've spent three days trying to get this sorted. One major stumbling block was the fact that I deleted the index.php file.
DO NOT DELETE IT. You MUST KEEP the index.php provided with the CMSms installation. Otherwise none of your pages will be found. Dunno how it works. Don't ask. Just know that it will not work if you delete it. You can edit it from the original, but don't delete it. Even if you already have an index.html file setup and want to use that to start with... DON'T! Edit the DEFAULT Home page within CMSms to look like your index.html file.

In the meantime I did find out about Joomla and Drupal. These are two competitors to CMSms and to be honest I was very close to uninstalling the three installations that I have for CMSms and moving over to Joomla only because of the number of Joomla books that I found on Amazon.

If the redirect page idea does not work, then my last resort will have to be moving to Joomla.

Battlestar Galactica Card Game

I had the bright idea of getting a Colonial deck of hexagonal cards as a Christmas present for a friend of mine. He's a fan of the latest Battlestar Galactica re-imagining (BSG-RDM) where the Viper pilot characters play a betting card game and it seemed like the perfect gift. However, it turns out there is no official product and the show's production team have not come up with any official rules for it. So I have done some research and have to blog it here before I forget. It is important to note that the card game in the original series (BSG-TOS) was called Pyramid but BSG-RDM has called it Triad. The names have been reversed with that of the basketball/rugby sport in the show.

There are two decks that purport to be Colonial cards. One of them is a replica of a licensed product and indicates the denominations of cards using the ancient Mayan numbering system with dots representing 1 and bars representing 5, as shown at Katarra8's ebay store. The other uses triangles only to indicate a hierarchy of cards, as shown on neweyestudio item BG-19. However, I have found evidence on Battlestar Wiki that the deck with Mayan numbering was actually used in a BSG-TOS Pyramid game. I have not found any evidence that the deck using the triangle numbering system is used in the show, BSG-TOS or BSG-RDM; again Battlestar Wiki has a screen capture of Helo, Starbuck, and Boomer playing Triad in BSG-RDM but this does not show the faces of the cards.

There are some rules online for the triangle numbering deck at battlestargalactica.com and wikipedia but the lack of hand possibilities does not correlate with the hands named in the show. The Mayan numbering deck comes with 5 card draw poker rules for use with the deck but 5 card does not sit well with the Colonial Battlestar Galactica atmosphere. 5 is a pentagon and the cards are hexagon, there are 12 colonies, pyramids and triangles - not base 5.

In conclusion, it is clear that the Battlestar Galactica card game, played by Starbuck, uses a Mayan numbering deck but it is not a variant of 5 card draw poker. Therefore it must be a variant of single deck six card one draw poker with 4 jokers and hands including straights of 3 and 5 cards, called '3 on a run' and '5 on a run'. I have taken the information about hand possibilities from BSG-TOS, BSG-RDM, battlestargalactica.com, wikipedia, and Katarra8 together with the probabilities of hand combinations from a Michael Keller review of Jeff Cross' six-card draw poker and applied them to a single Colonial deck of Mayan numbering hexagonal cards to come up with 'Rules For Triad: a re-imagining'.

I printed off a batch on 90gsm paper and cut the corners off and it looks great! Hopefully it plays well too, but the inclusion of '3 on a run' increases the hand possibilities and could make it daunting and cumbersome. However, I feel that herein lies the skill of a game requiring the nerves of steel that only Colonial Viper pilots have. Comments on these rules are always welcome, email me. I have noticed a few extra points that could do with adding, like the hand summary doesn't show those that are all the same Color, but such matters can be included in rule revisions as and when new features arise during the course of the show. Here's hoping that the BSG-RDM production team come up with some official rules and a licensed product (deck, cubits, glossy fan material) becomes available soon.

Screen-scraping vs Information Extraction

There are many possible methods of text conversion and one such technique is screen-scraping. The primary use of screen-scraping software is migrating information from one computer system onto another by reading data from specific fields in the legacy system’s user interface and making the data available as objects.

It is possible to apply screen-scraping to Web documents, however its disadvantages make it useful only under specific circumstances. Screen-scraping techniques identify specific sections within single documents and extract the data contained within each section.

This is useful when the documents’ structure and layout are uniform and formally controlled, i.e. the sections are structured very clearly in a table, for example, and the layout of the table is controlled by a content management system that ensures each page is presented in a uniform style.

Cases where this would be of use are; extracting article headlines from a single newspaper’s homepage, or extracting book titles from individual item pages on a Web based bookstore, like Amazon.co.uk, because each item page is presented in a controlled uniform layout. However, the same techniques will not be portable onto another newspaper’s homepage where the headline sections may be structured differently and nor will they be applicable to any other online bookstore because the layout of item descriptions will not be the same as Amazon’s style.

This makes screen-scraping software portability more difficult because it necessitates modification for use with any documents other than the original design. Screen-scraping is also a high maintenance approach because it requires modification to cope with any changes to the original documents; if Amazon changes their presentation style then screen-scrapers targeting the original interface will have to be updated.

Although the content of academic staff homepages appears to be similar, and therefore must be governed by departmental guidelines, nevertheless it is empirically evident that their structure and layout is not uniform or formally controlled in the same way as the Web pages of their home institution. It is clear then that the domain of your project will affect your choice to implement a screen-scraping approach.

In addition, screen-scraping software does not include tasks such as co-reference recognition (CORC) that involves more sophisticated programming techniques, which make use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) practices to analyse document content and extract relevant information. CORC determines whether a piece of data refers to an item that has already been extracted. For example, screen-scraping software would not be able to determine that a professor named on his homepage is the same professor named on the homepage of a project that he is involved with. Such AI techniques are covered by Information Extraction (IE) that includes two traditions; Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Wrapper Induction (WI).

Example NLP approaches; GATE and Monrai Cypher.

Example WI approaches; WIEN, Stalker, RoadRunner, and BWI