I was trying to write two friends a message on facebook, but the Ajax search was not working. Luckily when I switched back to old facebook it worked… phew!!! look at me blogging about facebook…
When I just tried publishing this I got:
Wordbook failed to communicate with Facebook for Ajax search not working on new-facebook: method = feed.publishTemplatizedAction, error_code = 100 (). Your blog is OK, but Facebook didn't get the update.
I wonder if the new facebook is to blame…
When I was in grade 11, I bought an old VW bug. Occasionally things went wrong with it. Did I complaint to VW or blog about it?
Of course not, the car was 26 years old, and there was no world-wide-web in 1989. If something went wrong with the car, I just looked for cheap solutions to fix it… Like when the gas tank rusted through, pulling a gas tank from a similar beetle in an auto-scrap yard. Or when the steering went, re-attaching it by bending and tying a coat hanger around the steering shaft.
Fast forward 7 years to 1996. When some software package wouldn’t work just right on my Mac, did I complain or blog about it? Basically same answers to the VW… On one occasion I contacted Apple Canada to mail me some printer drivers on floppy disc. The most public complaining I might have done would be at a Mac Users group.
Fast forward to the 2000s. When personal hacks, troubleshooting fail to resolve issues, where do I go?
I Google error codes/messages and find solutions other people have gone to the trouble of posting to the web.
I am grateful for this, and yet don’t take part in the online community as much as I think I should. I don’t have a high enough rank on Yahoo Answers to rate others’ answers, don’t have trackbacks linking my WordPress blog to others, and most times can’t even bother finding the right online Forum/BBS to post my questions to.
Despite that I do occasionally post technical issues, like bugs, or just usability issues with web-applications/software in my blog or some where.
Why do I do this?
I do this with the hope that someone from the company that owns that site/software will address the issue in future releases, and that people with similar issues will stumble across my posting and perhaps offer useful work-arounds. But I stress occasionally. Most times, I just look for the hack or work-around or even just giving up using the software for awhile, hoping that others will complain about it and it will get fixed the next time I come back. And I think this “pragmatic” method of letting the next person worry about an issue is how most people handle the perceived problems with computer software or life. So I guess the reason I titled this Hacking Vs. Troubleshooting was that I find myself seeing the need for more “trouble-shooting” and “fixing” in the world and yet realizing the economic realities that in 99% of the cases, I have to leave issues/pass the buck and let it be “somebody else’s problem”.
This Indian programmer friend of mine who I haven’t spoken to in ages sent this URL:
http://<my MSN log in-ID>.torrocheck.com
I clicked on it and there’s this cute screen asking me to log in with MSN messenger info. I thought it was a Flash Client for MSN Messenger. I have seen them for AOL and ICQ. But there was something odd about it. And considering I was already logged in, I thought “why bother”. The my friend logged off instantenious. Most likely it wasn’t him sending me that URL, but he had inadvertently been suckered in by it, and logged in where after the site sent out URLs to all the people on his contact list…
I Googled this morning it only to fine one German web site on it. Now I see a Hebrew page for it too.
Can’t tell yet, but I wouldn’t log into that if I where you…
I think it would be cool to have a little Facebook application which would give you key stats from your cPanel or other web-server. It could give statistics on things like: disk space, bandwidth and access hits for every day over the last week; just a basic summary. It would also of course give you links to key areas in cPanel like email management etc.
Just looking up
There is a very basic one now, called Server Monitor, but it basically just shows if your server is up/down, and some basic stats on up-time.
I’ve done some Facebook advertising for some non-profit organizations in Japan. I’
ve been impressed with it. Mind you it’s very much based on the kind of stuff that Overture (Yahoo! Search Marketing) and Google-Ad Words do. But it allows for better demographic targeting as Facebook knows so much about its members. 😉 (I’m not scared, are you?)
Actually I’m so not-scared of Facebook knowing my info, that I wish it would not show me ads for regional events, when I’ve already posted that I’m going to be out of the country…. With that said, that location stuff isn’t really working yet. Lots of third-party FB apps, but nothing that Facebook can really use to even better direct its advertising to me.
On the other hand, Gmail ads are probably the most relevant and helpful advertising I get. Like it knows I’m going to New York and Halifax soon, and recommends all kinds of helpful services for these areas. But even then Gmail can only be as relavent as the email I send and receive, and 80% of the advertising there is also un-interersting.
I think Facebook should know I’m a native speaker of English and stop advertising ESL classes, and also know I’m going to be out of the country on July 19th and not tell me about some “Elections in America” seminar in Tokyo at that time.
最近またまたちょっと日本語社会に入らなきゃ気がして、今時の社会の入り方といえば、SNSだよね。そこでMixiをやっている日本人の友達が居て、その友達はSoftbankの携帯でMixi日記を投稿したり、他の友達の日記にコメントしたりしていた。それで僕もやってみたいと思ったら、Eモバイルのスマートフォン（S11ht）でアクセスしようとしたら、「このページへは携帯電話からのみアクセスできます」と表示され、PC版へのリンクが出ます。凄く重くて、スタイルシートのフォーマットもぐじゃぐじゃ、使い物にならない。それで、Mixiを止めて、Facebookモバイルで遊んでいた。もうすぐふるさとのハリファックスに19年ぶりに遊びに行くし、カナダの学生のころの友達や幼なじみと連絡をするにはFacebookが一番だ。
しかし日本語好きや日本かぶれの僕はつい気になって、また日本のSNSを朝鮮したくなる。。。そこで昨日Googleの急上昇ワードで、無料ケータイゲーム＆SNSサイト[モバゲータウン]または（モバゲー）を見つけた。携帯小説もあるらしくて、加入しようとしたら、Eモバイルのスマートフォンが未対応ということがわかった。残念だった。
携帯小説はやっぱ、Sharpスペースタウンだ。
それとSNSはやっぱ、Facebookだ。
According to this article,
Google has started hosting news for the Associated Press and the Canadian Press.
Anyway, I was reading this Canadian Press article about a murder in Halifax, and couldn’t happen to notice that Google OS thinks it’s Halifax UK…
Here’s a link to it… be interesting to see if it gets fixed:
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5iA0gRWag8Bi2xYzl98t1-zVE8zXQ
What is Canada to America?
Recently, I think Hilary Clinton said, that if the United States doesn’t get a better deal now, that the US will “withdraw from NAFTA in six months” .
from the American perspective, is like someone threatening to change their checking-account bank, or maybe life-insurance company. For Canadians, it’s like a spouse saying to a husband/wife, that if you don’t get your act together, I’ll leave you in six months.
If you viewed them as a spouse or even partner, I think you should say “how can we work together better”, rather than saying “if we don’t figure out a better way to work together, we’re gonna need some distance”. Even if the latter is implied legally, I don’t think it needs to be said by the politicians/leaders themselves…. I think how a politician treats their “friends” Canada, during an election, shows how they will treat there own constituency after they’re voted in… It’s like the politician who ignore kids because they can’t vote yet.
On an aside, I’m also angry at the Canadian who leaked that details of the conversation Obama had with Canadian officials
I’m trying to add this cool little Facebook App called “Where am I?”, that shows you were I am and what I’m doing with a little Google Map. I think it has a problem with Japanese though, cause when I put my address in, it gives me the following error:
ERROR in /home/f8/www/geostatus/class_db.php:
Invalid SQL: SELECT id FROM locations WHERE name=_utf8’東京都品川区東五反田２丁目７－１８’ LIMIT 1
Illegal mix of collations (latin1_swedish_ci,IMPLICIT) and (utf8_general_ci,COERCIBLE) for operation ‘=’
MySQL Error 1267
Darn.
