Reaper-X .:[ ID ]:. » Personal

Sourceforge SVN don’t like slow connection?

Reaper-X — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 09:35:32 +0000

I’m not sure whether anyone else who are currently stuck with a slow connection speed also get An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host message whenever you tried to retrieve a big file (svn update / checkout) from Sourceforge SVN Repository over the last few weeks or is it just me who get that message?

So far:

– I’ve tried updating the subversion client on my machine to 1.5.3 (command line version) and still i get the same message
– Change the svn address to http instead of https to get more speed and still nothing
– Doing a fresh checkout instead of upgrade just in case that’s the source of the problem and the result is still same

And finally ….

I have tried searching around the web for the solution but still haven’t found anything useful (i thought that perhaps i need to tweak something on the client side despite the error message says the connection was forcibly closed by the remote host simply because i can fetch the file to my server without problem … but well this server connection speed can’t be compared to my connection speed)

0x87485B96 | Tags : Personal

My Google Pagerank just dropped

Reaper-X — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 18:07:32 +0000

It seems that i didn’t pay enough attention at all to check the pagerank value of this site because i just noticed that this site PR (Google Pagerank) dropped from 5 to 4 today after reading various website that says their site Google Pagerank dropped, lol

Back then Google assigned a PR 5 to this site early this year in January 2007 when there was a Google Pagerank Export update going on, but it seems that this site no longer receive that PR 5 again since last month update (October 2007)

Based on what i’ve read on various web sites (such as Techcrunch and Andybeard), most of the sites that lose their pagerank usually caused by selling text link ads on their web site (via direct advertising or third party broker such as text link ads). But i’m 99% sure that this site doesn’t sell any link and all links placed on this site are genuine (back then i have 1 – 3 text link ads placed on some post but since i never earn money from it, i’ve removed it since looong time ago) and just in case you didn’t know a lot of them are complaining because of this issue, and probably because they think if they lose their pagerank they’ll lose their traffic too or my best guess is they complain that if their site pagerank dropped they can’t sell text link ads anymore because of their low pagerank value

So what might be the source of the problem that caused this site pagerank to be dropped ? the only thing i can guess is that most of the site that link to this site gets their pagerank value dropped by Google, because i never bought any link on another website, never sell links (except for once but that’s a loong time ago but i never make any money from it because i coulnd’t reach the minimum payout and that’s why i choose to removed it)

But does this site lose it’s traffic ? … Thanks God … the answer is no, in fact this site traffic for October 2007 increased by 150,183 in pageviews and also gets an increased in terms of returning visitors compared to previous month (September) ! and here’s a screenshot just in case you want to see it directly (using my Google Analytics account because Google analytics often give you the lowest results compared to other site tracking service, for example my wordpress.com stats tracking account, though there’re no big differences between it … because my wordpress.com account says this site receives 353,278 views for October 2007)

October 2007 Site Statistic :

So the question is … should you worry about your pagerank ? … the answer is of course depend on whether you are using your site pagerank to earn you some money by selling text link ads or not :) but of course if your site loses it’s traffic because of pagerank drop that’s another story, but i always believe that if you put your site visitors above anything else, eventually you’ll see the result of your hard work :)

At last just in case you didn’t know (based on what i saw that most people seems to forget about this because all they do is just blaming the recent Google Pagerank update / export) …

Actually pagerank value gets updated more often than you think before you can see the actual value / exported data in Google Toolbar (if you are using this) or in any other site that offers pagerank checking or various seo tools that is updated 3 months or probably more which mean the pagerank value you saw is different from the pagerank value that is stored in internal Google machines … just as Matt Cutts (head of Google's Webspam team) said :

I believe that I’ve said before that PageRank is computed continuously; there are machines that take inputs to the PageRank algorithm at Google and compute the resulting PageRanks. So at any given time, a url in Google’s system has up-to-date PageRank as a result of running the computation with the inputs to the algorithm. From time-to-time, that internal PageRank value is exported so that it’s visible to Google Toolbar users (see the question below for more details on the timing).

0x87485B96 | Tags : Personal, Website

Why you shouldn’t trust screenshots showing online earning report

Reaper-X — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:57:05 +0000

Wondering why you shouldn’t trust any screenshot (note: screenshot is not a photo of you with your check of course) that shows you a screenshot about someone else earning report (in this case online income report) … such as from their affiliate earnings report, adsense report, etc ? The answer is simply because they can always create a fake screenshot about their online earning report ;)

Want to see an example ? Here’s of what a perfect adsense report look like

Now if only there’s someone that could achieve that perfect score :P

The commonly used technique to create a fake screenshot is simply by saving the webpage they’re currently viewing and later they’ll edit the source code manually and then they just need to open their newly edited webpage and then fake the address bar so they’re showing the correct url for their online report and finally take a screenshot showing their big online income (in most case, i often saw people prefer not to show their address bar directly, so i don’t think it’s necessary for you to show the address bar) :P

But what if you’re using Mozilla Firefox as your primary Internet Browser ? then you can use the Firebug extension to simplify things without saving that page locally first as shown on below image, or you can also use Web Developer Toolbar for Firefox

0x87485B96 | Tags : Making Money, Personal

Microformats for casual / normal internet surfer, useful or useless ?

Reaper-X — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 18:06:24 +0000

I’ve been thinking on using Microformats on this blog for a while after reading Lorelle’s post about this topic on her blog. Although implementing microformats on wordpress theme can be considered as an easy task, but i’m just wondering whether using microformats on this blog is really that useful, considering most of this site visitors can be considered as normal internet surfer. Other than that, currently enabling microformats on your website doesn’t really give you benefit from the SEO point of view (and SEO is important to drive people to your site via search engine)

Based from what i’ve read so far, it seems that currently Search Engine doesn’t really care whether you use microformats on your site or not, and like most of you already know that most casual or normal internet users use search engine to find your site. And when i’m saying about search engine they just using normal search engine such as Google, Yahoo, Live, Ask, and some small search engine (although those big 4, plays the important part on driving traffic to your site) …

Well, I’m afraid to say that this answer is very simple. Currently microformats affect SEO the same way content on your website affects it. From a web crawlers perspective there is currently no distinguishing factor between a microformat and standard content on your website. Why is this? Well, microformats are composed of common XHTML attributes and tags of information that are used in a standardized way, therefore engines such as Google and Yahoo treat it as exactly that, standard information.

Though it may change in the future …

So the question is … do microformats useful for normal internet surfer who’s not using Del.icio.us, know nothing about Digg or similar website ? i dont think so ...

0x87485B96 | Tags : Opinion, Personal

Google slow to load …

Reaper-X — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 17:25:13 +0000

Just when i thought i’m the only person who’s experiencing this problem, someone create a new thread over at Digital Point forums saying that he’s also experiencing slow loading problem when accessing various Google services such as Adsense, GMail, Adwords or the Google Search itself

All the Google features such as GMail, Adwords, Adsense, and just plain old Google Search have been lagging a little more than usual for me. Google has something going on. I think soon Google will surprise us with a bunch of new features. Just be patient all you PR fanatics! Can you say algorythm update!

With the exception that i don’t think there’s PR Update going on … i just think that there’re some network issues somewhere. Other than that i also noticed a slow loading time when accessing my adsense account page or searching the web using Google although i don’t really have problem with the GMail or Adwords simply because i don’t use it (well i'm using Google hosted email and using POP3 to retrieve all emails)

I don’t know if it’s just me or does anyone else who visited this site also experience delay especially at the Javascript part which is comes from the Google CSE, but recently i’ve been thinking on moving the Javascript over to this site … but i’m not sure whether if it’s going to break Google rules or not (i know that this vps is nothing compared to the Google server, but it just bothering me because whenever i try to access this site, i always see some delay when loading the Google CSE Javascript code)

Forum Discussion over at DigitalPoint

0x87485B96 | Tags : Google, Journal, Personal

Indonesian paypal users now can withdraw funds too

Reaper-X — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 19:48:44 +0000

I just noticed today that paypal now allowed Indonesian paypal users to receive money using their paypal account (previously Paypal can only be used to send money only)

While this can be considered as good news especially to those who’s participating in online business (read: making money online), but if it’s for me … i’m still not sure if i can use that withdraw function yet

Based from the description on Paypal website, they says that you’ll need US Bank account in order to withdraw funds from your paypal account, and when they says a US Bank account, a bank account located in United States :(

As you can see from the above image, the country name can’t be changed … so that mean the withdraw paypal funds to US Bank option can still be considered as useless as for now (at least for me)

But what about the withdraw to credit card option ? … since i’m still not sure whether i can use my credit card to receive funds from my paypal account or not … i can’t really talk to much about it … my best option for now is to contact my local bank where i get my credit card, and ask them directly about it

0x87485B96 | Tags : Blogging, Opinion, Personal

Sorry folks … i’m back to using summary feeds …

Reaper-X — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:08:16 +0000

So today i just found out that some of my popular articles got scrapped again by other website, and what makes it worse is … that scrapper website is stealing this site article (although they put a link back to this site) but … with a nofollow tag attached to the link ! and of course they also use adsense to monetize their site

To be honest i do not have problem with automated content scrapper (read my site terms of use), as long as they give me credits and in this case by simply putting a link back here without the nofollow tag … simple isn’t it ?

Using automated scrapper tools, and combining it with the nofollow tag is just the same as stealing the article without giving the author a single credit plus without doing any work at all, if this site is at the same level as other big website then i don’t have problem with it simply because many people know the original source of the article (but most people simply won’t bother to click on it)

But things i hate most is … they try to monetize their site by placing adsense ads all over their page and don’t even bother to give the original author a credit

I guess that’s all for today rants, i’m going back to use the summary feeds only …

0x87485B96 | Tags : Journal, Opinion, Personal

What’s wrong with Akismet ?

Reaper-X — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 19:21:34 +0000

I just don’t understand … how come i’m as the owner of this blog / website get marked as spam whenever i tried to reply to the comment(s) posted by this site visitors …

Another case is … when i'm trying to test posting a comment to my own local server which is obviously can’t be accessed by anyone, by simply using Test as nickname, with test@test.com as it’s email address and http://test.com as the url address .. it’s still being marked as spam ! and with 192.168.3.1 as it’s ip address !

At first i thought that the ip address that i'm currently using (i'm on dynamic ip address) already marked as spammers ip by akismet, but if local ip address gets marked as spam, i’m sure there’s something more to it (like user agent detection, referer, etc)

I know that you can mark yourself as not spam, so that Akismet can learn to fix it’s mistake … but perhaps it’d be better if Akismet check if the user already logged-in or has administrative privilege and automatically bypassing the spam checking mechanism for that user

Perhaps … it’s just me … but after getting marked as spam and need to unmark myself for about 4 – 5 times today, and that’s not including yesterday … i feel kinda bored about it … beside when i gets marked as spam, i didn’t put any links on my comment

0x87485B96 | Tags : Opinion, Personal, Wordpress

Please Welcome … WiredTree Web Hosting

Reaper-X — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 11:29:17 +0000

So yesterday i’ve finished moving this site to a new web host named WiredTree (after doing some testing with my other domain name), and i must say although at first i want it to have no downtime at all … but it seems that’s almost impossible for me to do it, because … well … i forgot to make few changes to the .htaccess file which is previously used on my previous host Hostgator (this cause several errors), forgot to add Zones for the site feeds itself, need to reconfigure ome modules installed on the server (if you visited this site yesterday you can see it from the Server Error Message), and i’m pretty sure the DNS records may not have fully propagated yet :P

Overall … the experience has been great (Many thanks to WiredTree Zac and WiredTree Joe), every ticket responded in just less than 5 minutes (if you don’t believe me try it for yourself) because there’s no way i can call them directly (it’s really expensive to place an international call from here … but the most important thing is … well you see about that in the next paragraph)

As a side note, they really call your phone number to verify your order (at first i thought they’re not going to call me directly to verify my order) … and to be honest, i’m really nervous when answering the phone call from them because that’s my very first time ever receiving a phone call from another country … beside … they do speak fast unlike in movie (that’s how i learn english language)

Anyway, if you’re looking for a Managed VPS, i’d definitely recommend WiredTree because they offer good prices for their package with top notch support team

But just a suggestion to them, just in case they read this .. perhaps it’d be better for them to put 301 Redirect on their domain name as SEO purpose and / or offer some affiliate account :P

0x87485B96 | Tags : Journal, Personal, Web Hosting, Website

Feedburner Ad Network for me ? i’m sure there’s a mistake

Reaper-X — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:32:11 +0000

I’m not to sure why i get this message when i was looking at the monetization tab in my feedburner account today (previously it didn’t show me this message)

Although i’m interested on trying Feedburner Ad Network (FAN), but i’m sure there’s a mistake somewhere in the Feedburner system. Because based on what i read from someone else comment at Problogger, and Yugatech. You need to get at least 500 RSS Subscribers to join the Feedburner Ad Network … while in reality, this blog only has 155 Subscribers (today) … and the number usually going up and down although it usually stay in 100 – 139 area

Anyhow … eventhough there are no errors in FAN system, i still can’t join them because in order to join FAN you must have paypal account first (i do have a verified paypal account, unfortunately my paypal account can only be used to send money only) :(

0x87485B96 | Tags : Income Sources, Making Money, Personal, Website

Abit AN9-32X Disappoinment

Reaper-X — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 06:29:49 +0000

2 days ago i just bought an almost complete cpu set which is using Abit AN9–32X for the motherboard and AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ (ADO5200CZBOX) for the processor, and Corsair PC5300 for the memory … and including any other part but i think there’s no need for me to write it here

Okay … back to the story, after finished assembling every parts i turned on the new cpu and get into the bios (the usual thing to do) to adjust settings for various part such as disabling Floppy Disk Controller, disabling the Silicon SATA Controller (because i do not need it), etc. Then continue to save it and exit from the bios

But what happen next ? i get blank screen without anything else, so i tried to reset the CMOS via jumper. And i can get into the bios once again and try to configure like before … but the same problem always occurs everytime i exited from the bios menu

At first i thought it was memory problem (the post code i get is C1), so i tried replacing the RAM from PC4200, PC5300, and PC6400 memory module (and reset CMOS at every step) … but still get the same problem. Now i'm sure the problem is not because of bad memory. So i tried switching the processor used from Athlon 64 X2 5200 (low power) into Athlon 64 X2 4200 (normal) and surprisingly it works without problem. Now i know that the problem is because the motherboard does not support the new processor, and then i go to Abit website and found updated bios there, and continue with flashing the new bios. And thanks to the new bios, i can use my new processor without problem

The next day (yesterday before i wrote this post), when i turned on the computer … i get a new error message at POST … it writes, CMOS Checksum Error – Default BIOS settings loaded. At first i didnt think there’s something wrong, so i just configured everything once again and continue into windows

And the next day (today when i wrote this post), i get the same error message which writes CMOS Checksum Error … and because i found that error message is strange. I configured the bios once again and then turned off the computer and turned it back on again … but the same CMOS error message still appear

Now … this is strange because usually that error message caused because the CMOS battery already reached it’s limit / weak, but in my case i just bought this mobo 2 days ago and i do not think the CMOS Battery already weak beside i never get that message even for my previous motherboard which is already died (but that’s just my opinion)

So today i just sent an email to Abit Technical support and hope i can found the solution to this problem …

0x87485B96 | Tags : Computer, Hardware, Journal, Personal

Job interview request from Maxgain International

Reaper-X — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 03:53:43 +0000

So today i just got a phone call from Maxgain International, and they said that they would like to invite me to do some interview with them on Monday with Ms. Anggun which is quite surprising because i never tried applying with them or perhaps i’ve sent them before when i was looking for a job back then in 2003 (or below) if i remembered it correctly

Since that phone call looks suspicious (at least) for me, i tried to search for Maxgain International company using Google and found various article related to it. Unfortunately, all of them are bad experiences from someone who’s previously involved with Maxgain (directly / indirectly)

Here are some of them (written in Indonesian Language) :

Laporkan Maxgain ke Polisi by Priyadi
MaxGain Rebuttal by Ryo Saeba (Hey that nickname looks familiar) :P
Maxgain = Menjebak (discussion forum based on the author personal experiences with Maxgain)

To sum it up :

Maxgain tries to search for new victim by creating / posting various employment opportunities at various job seeker website
Maxgain call the job seeker and ask them for interview
They want you to do some training first
They ask you to deposit your money with them (or at least that’s what i thought after reading the forum discussion about maxgain)
If you do not send them your money (mark up money) after few months, you’ll lose previously deposited money

That’s it … and the conclusion is … if you got the same phone call asking for job interview (especially if it’s looks suspicious) try to do some research about the company first so you’ll not end up regretting later

0x87485B96 | Tags : Journal, Making Money, Personal

Learning to use Centos distro

Reaper-X — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 05:52:57 +0000

Previously i said that i just installed Ubuntu to run as a guest host under my Windows XP box via VMWare. Unfortunately even after i’ve updated my ubuntu system (completely) i'm not really that interested on using Ubuntu, i decided on using Centos 5 instead because i plan on setting up proxy server (using Squid), and any other server related tools

The primary reason why i choose centos instead of other linux distribution, is because centos widely used on various webhosting / server on VPS level (Just in case i want to move this website into VPS based hosting in the future) … and i take this as learning approach to make myself familiar with the Centos distro …

The installation process was running smoothly without problem at all (i choose to use GNome as desktop and later i switched into XFCE4), so after finished installing everything the next step of course updating the centos kernel by using Yum and continue by updating the other software installed and then configuring squid … unfortunately all of them are done via the Gnome desktop / XFCE desktop … and of course that’s not the way i want it to be (i'm sure most server which is using Centos does not use X Server beside using X Server means more memory used)

So the next step of course looking a documentation on disabling the x server or at least exiting from the GDM … because i’ve tried using gdm-stop but it just go back to the login screen

and after a while i found the answer to this question, you just need to use /sbin/init 3 if you’re already logged in into the GDM

of course it’s time consuming if i have to use that command everytime i start the virtual machine, because i just want it to be started as console (to reduce memory consumption because i want the virtual machine to always run even when i play game on windows because if the x server started it is using more than 512 MB of system memory) …

and once again i searched for an answer to this question and found one in short time. To disable GDM and X Server from autostarting you just need to edit /etc/inittab and replace the runlevel 5 into runlevel 3 … and to confirm this i need to reboot and it’s working as it should (of course) with the exception that squid process and bind wasnt started by default

and since its not convenience to enable / start squid and bind manually everytime the virtual machine started, of course i need to edit the service so squid and bind process are going to be started automatically when the virtual machines turned on

to do this, i just need to use ntsysv command and configure so squid and bind will be started automatically … and finished … and the results is the memory consumption reduced to 288 MB (a big improvement of course)

as a side note, i did not install the vmware-tools since it’s not compatible with the selinux on centos. And yes now i'm a big fan of this distro :P

0x87485B96 | Tags : Journal, Linux, Personal

Hostgator affiliates … i like it

Reaper-X — Thu, 31 May 2007 11:03:18 +0000

Well … 1 or 2 weeks ago i received an email from my Hostgator affiliates account and it’s said that someone just registered to Hostgator hosting under my affiliate account, and thanks to that unknown person, i finally made something from affiliate program (i made $50 from one signup, and yes this is the first time i received something from affiliate program just as i said before)

But as you can see that i only made $50 that can be considered low especially if you do not have paypal account. But in my case, i have verified paypal account but i can only use it to send money only which is sad and the other problem is if i try to cashed that check, in the end i get nothing from it because of high bank fee, and any other fee included just to cash that check

So i decided to contact hostgator, and ask if there’re any other options to choose instead of sending the checks to me and the answer i get is quite surprising. Because Hostgator staff tell me that it is possible to use Wired Transfer to transfer the money to my bank account directly (of course i'm surprised because i did not see anything related to wired transfer option on their affiliates information page or my affiliates account page or Hostgator Blog), also they (Chad B. from Hostgator) said to me all future payments will be made via Wired Transfer

Well as for now i just hope that i can bring more potential customers to Hostgator side … :P (i think i need to learn more about Marketing and Promotional stuff)

As a note, if you currently searching for a good and reliable web hosting with friendly staff (based on my own experience) I’d recommend Hostgator. And if you want my own honest review about Hostgator (unlike many other review that just want to get money from affiliates), you can read my previous post about Hostgator review or read my post at Webhostingtalk

0x87485B96 | Tags : Income Sources, Making Money, Personal, Web Hosting, Web Servers

FSP Blue Storm II 500W is still not enough for me ?

Reaper-X — Sat, 26 May 2007 11:38:51 +0000

I just do not understand, how come everytime i get new PSU with higher watts and claims to provide higher ampere at +3.3V and +5V rails than the old power supplies (even for brand name power supplies such as my previous Enermax and Enlight), the +3.3 and +5 Voltage always below the recommended area (in other words there’s no change from the previous PSU) although there’s no new peripherals added and even worse i just bought this new PSU several days ago (because i read good reviews about this psu from various website such as from here, here and here) and no this time i do not overclock anything

From BIOS i saw this new psu only provides 3.28V (it always stay in this area and never reached 3.3) for the +3.3V, and 4.89 although at first i saw 5.05 on the +5V rail. And i'm sure that value will be much lower than this after being used for about 6 months or more (which result in unexpected system crash). Other than that, i also saw the same value from Lavalyst Everest, SiSoft Sandra, and ITE Smart Guardian (although i did not check it via wire method like this guy done here)

Quoted from that page :

good because the 5 and 12 were sligtly low (4.96/11.92) but verry stable under load (voltage actualy came up about .02v) and i was able to bring them both up with the 1 pot.

the 3.3v is still allitle low (3.28 idle, 3.29 load) and i dont think there a pot for it. and all measurements are from wires not bios or a monitor.

And i agree with his words, because that’s what i experienced with this new FSP Blue Storm PSU with the exception my +12V rail is normal

I do not know if there’s anyone who’s using the same power supplies like me or not, but if you do use it … of course i’d be delighted if you can tell me your +3.3 and +5 rails (even better tell me your complete computer specification) so i can compare it to mine

0x87485B96 | Tags : Computer, Hardware, Journal, Personal