Friday April 11
 
10:01
 
Korean Space Priorities

Jon has a piece about the blast off of The First Korean In Space, Yi So-yeong. He comments:

Arirang mentions her plans to introduce her country’s traditional food and beverages such as kimchi specially developed and packaged for space to the crew aboard the ISS.

I once worked as a consultant for a Korean film producer wanting to film in Scotland.

Of all the things he could have been worried about - weather, permission for filming, getting the crew and equipment there, grants - the thing that most concerned him was: How can I get Kimchi for my crew? Koreans need their Kimchi for work.

It made me laugh that the same dialema also faced the organisers of this space mission. I imagine the list of priorities was:

1. Kimchi
2. Allowing smoking in the toilets
3. Soju
4. DMB TV reception in the shuttle
5. Enabling MSN messenger so that So-yeong can chat when she is supposed to be working

;)

Thursday April 10
 
18:55
 
Arrrgh! Databases Screwed Up

Lately I’ve been moving my websites over to my new webhost, Cirtex. I’m doing the process myself rather than getting Cirtex to do it because, basically, I only trust myself to do it. I want to make sure every last thing is tested and working. I have a lot of history tied up in my websites..

Today, when testing one of my sites, I discovered that some of my databases got screwed up on the move over. The cause? Character set and collation options. My previous webhost uses a version of MySQL which is pre-”character set and collation options”, Cirtex uses a later version.

I knew that, and I thought I’d caught every possible snag related to collation options in this post but I hadn’t. Despite using phpMyAdmin for both the export and the import, today I found some text fields had been chopped. It seems that the export from the old MySQL server contained characters such as the accented ‘e’ in cafe and other control characters. When imported into the new server, phpMyAdmin didn’t like those characters and chopped the text without warning. The solution seems to be to open the exported file in Editpad Lite, convert to UTF8, and then upload that file.

It is very annoying - and scary, because I only found it by accident. I was testing something else at the time when I noticed a truncated value. I was already very wary that after I finish the move and cancel the old webhosting package, I’d suddenly find something wrong - not I’m VERY VERY wary that will happen. I’ll need to go through extensive testing.

Luckily there has been no damage to The Korean Blog List, but some of my other sites will need their entire databases redoing - and retesting, of course. Thankfully, in the end there will me more benefits than just having moved webhosts - I’ll have tidied up my sites, have verified copies that I know I can restore, and I’ll be on servers that handle character sets correctly - so I shouldn’t have this problem again. If I stayed with my current webhost, I might suddenly find a new server thrust upon me and not have the leisure to get things right.

Tuesday March 25
 
17:53
 
Moving Domains Between Webhosting Companies

Yesterday I moved The Korean Blog List to a new hosting company. I faced some technical challenges during the transfer, so to remind me of the solutions to them and the tools I used, I’ve written this: Moving Hosting Companies - Solving Technical Issues.

It’s primarily aimed at me - for when I’m moving domains in the future - but hopefully the page will help anyone else faced with similar site-move problems. Some of the solutions were difficult to track down.

Note: It is not a document about choosing a web host company, though obviously I’d recommend the company I’m using for that. I’ve included details on how to get half price hosting with that company at the bottom of the page.

Friday March 21
 
15:02
 
Scary Stuff

I realised today that my Gmail account is no longer just an email account, it is slowly becoming a record of my life, every bit as important as a diary or a blog. It records who I’m talking to, what I’m talking about. I can go back to any point in time and see what I was thinking and feeling, from the emails written to and from friends.

I’m very careful about protecting my Gmail password, which is why I wrote QG to allow me to safely read Gmail on a public computer. It may seem paranoid - but this piece from Gizmo highlights just how easy it is for a password to be snatched in ways you wouldn’t expect:

3.2 Malware Disguised as Freeware
Subscribers to this newsletter know I love freeware. They also know that I advise users to only download freeware from trusted sites such as download.com and majorgeeks.com, or from sites recommended by trusted sources. This article, sent to me by regular contributor JW, illustrates some of the dangers. The author downloaded a freeware Gmail accessory only to discover that the program emailed his Gmail username and password to the author. Read the gory details here.

You can see the latest Gizmo newsletter here. It’s pretty good for highlighting useful and free utilities.

Wednesday March 19
 
17:54
 
QG - Gmail Without Gmail.com

Trouble getting to the Gmail website? On a dodgy internet connection and wish you could quickly see your email inbox without having to navigate the Gmail website? Concerned about entering your Gmail password on a shared computer?

I have a little script that might help you out..