juillet 25, 2011
Comment déjouer les frais de courtage d'UPS
Si vous achetez de vendeurs situés aux États-Unis, vous avez surement déjà eu la mauvaise surprise de voir le livreur d'UPS cogner à votre porte et demander une soixantaine de dollars de frais de courtage (quand votre paquet ne vous a coûté qu'une centaine de dollars!)
Cette pratique d'UPS, bien que malhonnête, est légale. En fait, tous les transporteurs qui traversent la frontière doivent effectuer le dédouanage de vos paquets (appelé courtage). Les autres transporteurs chargent de 5$ à 10$ pour effectuer cette tâche, tandis qu'UPS charge près d'une quarantaine de dollars (plus les taxes).
Heureusement, il est possible de déjouer cette pratique, ce n'est pas simple, mais ça fonctionne!
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Par gfk à 11:15 AM | Commentaires (0) | TrackBack (0)
juin 16, 2011
OBDC connections with perl on 64 bits IIS7
This one is quite confusing... to use perl on IIS7 on a 64 bit machine, you need to install the 32 bit (x86) version of ActivePerl (the 64 bit version won't work) and follow these instructions.
If you want to connect to a database using ODBC, you can't use the ODBC manager available in the Start menu since it's the 64 bits version, you need to use the one hidden in %systemdrive%\Windows\SysWoW64\Odbcad32.exe
Check out the KB 942976 article for the details.
Par gfk à 1:41 PM | Commentaires (0) | TrackBack (0)
mars 16, 2011
LWP giving Crypt::SSLeay not installed when run as CGI in IIS
This wasn't terribly easy to find, so hopefully it will help some Googler:
LWP will support https URLs if the Crypt::SSLeay module is installed.
501 Protocol scheme 'https' is not supported (Crypt::SSLeay not installed). it is required that the IIS internet guest account (iusr) has 'Read and Execute' permissions set on the Crypt-SSLeay dlls, namely, ssleay32.dll and libeay32.dll. to set permissions, locate these files, choose properties from the context menu, and under the security tab, add the iuser account to the user names menu with 'Read and Execute' permissions checked.
Source: http://luci.sourceforge.net/
Par gfk à 2:28 PM | Commentaires (0) | TrackBack (0)
octobre 20, 2010
Some fun with SMS from Twilio
My favorite radio station is Radio X2. Many many times, I'm listening to the radio and asking myself "What's the name of that song?" When I'm near a computer I just look at their What's playing widget, but most of the times I'm in my car and I can't access the web...
Then it hit me, why not make a SMS bridge using Twilio?
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Par gfk à 10:23 AM | Commentaires (0) | TrackBack (0)
août 12, 2010
Thoughts about the Personally Encrypted IMAP Storage proposal
When reading the Personally Encrypted IMAP Storage proposal, a couple of things came to my mind.
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Par gfk à 12:28 PM | Commentaires (1) | TrackBack (0)
mars 10, 2010
UTF8 with Perl CGI.pm and Ajax
It took me about three hours to figure out something this simple, so I'm posting this here!
If you're doing ajax stuff with CGI.pm in perl, you'll want to exchange your data in UTF8, to do so you need only one special line of code*:
my $json = decode utf8=>$q->param('json');
This will make perl work natively in UTF8 with $json.
If you want to put this (or part of it) in a database, you don't need to do anything special because the DBD driver will convert your string from UTF8 to the database encoding (UCS-2 in my case).
*Of course, you'll also need to use Encode;.
Par gfk à 1:55 PM | Commentaires (0) | TrackBack (0)
février 11, 2010
I just ditched Mail.app for Postbox
I finally had enough of enduring Mail.app odd behavior.
I host my own IMAP server at home and I keep every email I ever received since 2002. My INBOX has ~43 000 messages in it and I have almost 200 000 messages from various mailing lists I subscribe to. In total, I have 10GB of email.
Without a doubt, Mail.app isn't able to handle that. I decided to look for something better.
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Par gfk à 6:48 PM | Commentaires (0) | TrackBack (0)
mai 26, 2009
Idéalisation
Le printemps dernier j'ai vu la fille de mes rêves* courir sur le tapis roulant au gym. Mais bon sens, elle courrait à une vitesse telle, je n'avais jamais vu ça. Le gars sur le tapis roulant à côté d'elle s'est arrêté pour la regarder, l'air incrédule.
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Par gfk à 9:06 PM | Commentaires (0) | TrackBack (0)
novembre 8, 2008
I had a dream...
J'ai fais un rêve... Je suis sur mon patio à faire de l'ordinateur quand je vois la plus belle serveuse du StarBar qui est en train de cueillir des champignons sur mon terrain. Je la regarde en me disant que je la vois bien souvent s'adonner à cette activité. Elle m'aperçoit la regardant et se tourne vers moi. Gêné, je plonge le nez dans mon écran.
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Par gfk à 9:23 AM | Commentaires (0) | TrackBack (1)
juillet 24, 2008
Firefox History URL Auto-Completion
Damn, this URL Auto-Completion based on visit history in FireFox makes me look like some sick pervert...
Par gfk à 11:08 AM | Commentaires (0) | TrackBack (0)
mai 15, 2008
I love EC2 and RightScale!
Monday morning, one of our web sites got infected by a javascript virus that spreads through SQL Injection. I don't work on mondays (good life) so I wasn't there to see the chaos but I eared that it was quite bad: customers complaining that our web site infected them for example.
The people working that day took the server offline, restored the infected DB from a clean backup and all was good (temporarily).
I got a couple phone calls, we talked about installing a reverse proxy to catch these kinds of attacks. It would take a few days to set this up.
They looked for the piece of code where the injection occurred, but missed one (or many) because the day after the server got infected again.
Continue reading "I love EC2 and RightScale!"
Par gfk à 3:09 PM | Commentaires (0) | TrackBack (0)
avril 6, 2008
Plainte contre l'émission Découverte du 6 avril 2008
Madame l'ombudsman de Radio-Canada,
Je voudrais porter plainte contre le reportage sur les "effets indésirables des micro-ondes qui nous envahissent" diffusé à l'émission Découverte du 6 avril 2008. J'ai trouvé cette émission alarmiste et biaisée sur plusieurs points, en voici quelques uns:
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Par gfk à 8:11 PM | Commentaires (0) | TrackBack (0)
mars 25, 2008
Bernstein's comment about third-party DNS and the reality with qmail
In a document written a couple years ago, Dan Bernstein describes the costs and benefits of third-party DNS services.
In his document, he states that:
``Third-party DNS means the difference between email being requeued and email bouncing.'' No, it doesn't. Mail transfer agents defer delivery attempts when DNS servers are unreachable, just as they defer delivery attempts when SMTP servers are unreachable.
This is simply not true.
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Par gfk à 11:21 AM | Commentaires (0) | TrackBack (0)
mars 11, 2008
Latency?
Oh my God, I'm installing Debian inside a Virtual PC using VNC inside Windows Remote Desktop from my PowerBook G4. Geez, I wonder why it's so slow...
Par gfk à 9:32 PM | Commentaires (0) | TrackBack (0)
février 5, 2008
Yes we can
Lyrics
It was a creed written into the founding documents
that declared the destiny of a nation.
Yes we can.
It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists
as they blazed a trail toward freedom.
Yes we can.
Par gfk à 8:31 PM | Commentaires (0) | TrackBack (0)
