Ehsanul Haque | Welcome to my personal site & blog

iOS4 on my iPhone 3GS

Posted on July 7, 2010 by Ehsan

Recently I have upgraded my iPhone 3GS’ OS to iOS4. There are couple of new features I liked and few I did not – well actually I wish Apple had done a little more.

After iOS4 was released I read on few forums that users had issues with the upgrade; some lost their connection, some could not start their iPhone, some had to connect their iPhone to another computer to get it started etc. But for me the process was pretty smooth. I upgraded iTunes and then plugged in my iPhone with my Mac. Before doing anything I backed up my iPhone and transferred all my purchases to Mac. Then finally I hit the button to upgrade, which took about 5 minutes to finish.

iPhone restarted after upgrade and first thing I saw was the background image displayed on my home screen! Home screen background can be set with a different image than the Lock screen. Second thing I noticed is the multitasking. When you are running an App, double press the home button which will bring up the multitasking UI. This UI shows any App you’ve been using before the current App. Tapping on one of the previously running Apps will show a nice transition to switch the Apps. Multitasking allows to keep any App run in the background and kind of saving the session of the App. Many people have mentioned that app like YouTube can be used to buffer a video while using a different app. But I have not tested it yet. From the apps I use, like Facebook – after the recent update, it will remain at the state I left it and will not update anything until I go back in the app and tap on the reload option.

There is a new option that allows you to lock the portrait orientation. This is something I think Apple could have done little more. I would love to lock the landscape orientation when I am reading a news article or something. Another feature that surprised me was the zooming option given in the camera app. I took pictures after upgrading but did not notice it until after few days on my way to the US I was taking a picture and wanted to focus on the subject. As soon as I tapped on the screen it showed a new zoom bar at the bottom. Although I didn’t like the picture quality but it was okay to have. The mail app has been updated; it can now show combined inbox if you are using multiple email accounts. Mails are organised in thread, which you can turn off from settings. Then there is a spell check, so whenever there is a spelling mistake it shows with red underline.

Best feature that I think iOS4 brings is the folder option. I can now have one home screen with apps organised in folders. Folders do have limitations, i.e. it can only have 12 apps in it but that is more than enough for me. I had 3 screens of apps which I have trimmed down to 1 now.

There are more features, some are only available on iPhone 4 but I am sure I have not found all those are available on iPhone 3GS.

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Posted in Apple, Interest, Mac, iPhone | Tagged anything, App, Apple, Apps, background, button, home, Image, iOS, iOS4, iPhone, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, Mac, option, orientation, Screen, thing, upgrade, US | Leave a comment

wp-cache and sem_get issue: How to fix it

Posted on May 25, 2010 by Ehsan

I had my wp-cache disabled for a long time but when I reactivated it today I saw a PHP warning showing up:

Warning: sem_get() [function.sem-get]: failed for key 0x152b: Permission denied in ....../wp-content/plugins/wp-cache/wp-cache-phase2.php on line 98

To fix this problem, there are two ways. One is to assign a different SEM ID and second is to enable “$use_flock” variable. Both options/settings are in wp-content/wp-cache-config.php file.

To enable the variable, $use_flock, uncomment the line:

$use_flock = true;

To change the SEM ID, change the value of $sem_id variable to something different. Something like:

$sem_id = 9919222;

From the in-line comment from the author of the plug-in it seems there might be a conflict of the key used by sem_get function.

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Posted in PHP, Resources, Tips and Tricks, WordPress | Tagged flock, Function, home, html, issue, line, Permission, PHP, sem, SEM ID, semaphore, something, time, Today, use, warning, xpertzon | Leave a comment

Tricks for MS Excel: Add a frozen header row and set alternate background colors for rows

Posted on January 18, 2010 by Ehsan

Here are couple of tricks for MS Excel users.

First we take a look at how to add a “Frozen” header row. Frozen header row is the one you could have for a very long worksheet. This row will be frozen (to act as the column header) and rest of the rows will scroll. Here’s how to do this.

1. Select the row below the one you want to be the header (or be frozen)

2. From Window menu select Freeze Panes (for MS Excel 2007 click on the View tab and inside Window panel click on Freeze Panes and pick the first option which is also Freeze Panes)

The frozen row will have a border at the bottom. Simple but an essential option for MS Excel users.

Second trick is the alternate background color for rows in the MS Excel worksheet.

1. Select the rows

2. From the Format menu go to Conditional Formatting (or in MS Excel 2007 under Home tab click on Conditional Formatting from Styles panel and click on New Rule)

3. When the window appears select Formula Is… (or on MS Excel 2007 select the last option Use a Formula to Determine Which Cells to Format)

4. Add this formula: =mod(row(),2)=1

5. Then click on Format button and go to Fill tab

6. Pick the color that will be used as the alternate color

7. Hit OK and go back to the worksheet

You will see the worksheet has alternate background colors.

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Posted in Interest, Microsoft Office, Resources, Tips and Tricks, Windows | Tagged background, click, color, Excel, format, Formula, Freeze, Frozen, header, option, Panes, row, tab, window, worksheet | 1 Comment

Grab Yahoo class is in “coma”

Posted on January 12, 2010 by Ehsan

Grab Yahoo class was one of my works that has been used by many people around the world. Since I released this class I did not have a single month without comments or questions or suggestion about this class. Some people have copied the class, released it under their name (simply taking out my comments and added their own) to increase traffic to their site probably. But more importantly this class was appreciated by many. This was one of my finest contribution to the open source world.

How did I come up with this idea?

Well, I cannot remember which user group but in one of the groups I participate in had a discussion over if PHP can pull data off from places like Yahoo and use it for some purpose. Users on the group said this can be done (easily) with Java, but cannot be done with PHP. So I started researching over it. I found the cURL extension for PHP which seemed the good candidate to do the job. So I started working on it. After days of coding I finally wrote a script that will allow someone to login to their Yahoo account and fetch data from their address book. Initially I simply had a script but then I converted it to a Class allowing people to grab their address book, messenger list, number of new emails and calendar data.

What is happening now?

As per the title of this post this class is in “coma”. The reason is the update to Yahoo address book export mechanism. They have placed a CAPTCHA validation page in the export feature and, therefore, my Grab Yahoo class cannot go any further to grab the content it needs. Same thing happened with the LinkMeIn class which stopped working after LinkedIn added the CAPTCHA validation.

Why is this class in “coma”?

I have looked at the Yahoo address book export feature and found the CAPTCHA validation which will not allow the class to work. But I’ve not done my complete research on it yet, to make sure there is no other way to make this class functional. So, for the time being, this class is in “coma”. If I fail to revive this class I will probably officially pronounce it “dead”.

Can you help?

Yes, of course, you can. I hardly have time, these days, to sit with these side projects. If anyone from the community has time to research and help me revive this class it will be appreciated. Your name will go into the credit section of the class, well that is all I can offer!

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Posted in Codes, Interest, PHP, Playground, Resources | Tagged address, Book, cannot, CAPTCHA, class, coma, export, Grab, Grab Yahoo, GrabYahoo, Group, LinkedIn, LinkMeIn, name, PHP, time, validation, world, Yahoo | Leave a comment

Take a Screenshot with iPhone 3GS

Posted on December 11, 2009 by Ehsan

We are all used to taking screen shots for various purposes on a PC or Mac. In case if you’ve something on your screen you want to share with someone quickly, this is a handy feature. There are many other reasons why we would like to take a screen shot, to create a documentation or user manual for example.

As I am getting used to different features of my newly bought iPhone I discovered it also has the option to take screen shot. The process is very simple. Press the Sleep/Wake button (on top) with the Home button (at the bottom) together and your screen shot will be saved in the Camera Roll section of Photos application.