Sunday, October 30, 2011

how to get Russian in kodo epub ebook

The best solution is to simply search google the name (title) of the book plus add the keyword "epub" and download the epub which will have the best results.


[if it cannot be found and still need to convert This is a copy from http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=99820&page=4 with the purpose to archive it since this might be important.]

How to embed fonts in ePub after Calibre
This is my simple step by step guide how to embed fonts in epub files after Calibre convertion. For me the most important advantage is that ADE and my reader device finally show readable Cyrillic letters instead of ???.

1. EPUB Output> check: "No default cover"

2. Right click and open .

3. Add the following Serif fonts to the epub file. Fonts are available at C:\Program Files\Calibre2\resources\fonts\liberation:
---------------
LiberationSerif-Regular.ttf
LiberationSerif-Italic.ttf
LiberationSerif-BoldItalic.ttf
LiberationSerif-Bold.ttf

4. content.opf - insert the <item... > lines after the <manifest> :
---------------

<item href="LiberationSerif-Regular.ttf" media-type="application/octet-stream" id="id1"/>
<item href="LiberationSerif-Italic.ttf" media-type="application/octet-stream" id="id2"/>
<item href="LiberationSerif-BoldItalic.ttf" media-type="application/octet-stream" id="id3"/>
<item href="LiberationSerif-Bold.ttf" media-type="application/octet-stream" id="id4"/>

5. stylesheet.css - insert the following text after the first line:
@namespace h "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml";
---------------
@font-face {
font-style: italic;
font-family: 'Liberation', serif, sans-serif;
font-weight: normal;
src: url(LiberationSerif-Italic.ttf);
}
@font-face {
font-style: normal;
font-family: 'Liberation', serif, sans-serif;
font-weight: normal;
src: url(LiberationSerif-Regular.ttf);
}
@font-face {
font-style: italic;
font-family: 'Liberation', serif, sans-serif;
font-weight: bold;
src: url(LiberationSerif-BoldItalic.ttf);
}
@font-face {
font-style: normal;
font-family: 'Liberation', serif, sans-serif;
font-weight: bold;
src: url(LiberationSerif-Bold.ttf);
}

Tried that the following way
1) Convert book with calibre
2) load it up to Kobo SD card
3) open epub in WinRAR 
4) opened files in Notepad++ (using it as an external editor for WinRAR)
5) added fonts and edited css file, closed the epub
6) disconnect Kobo, 
7) read book in Russian





Sunday, October 23, 2011

3 Trends that Apple (Steve Jobs) Started

1. Portable MP3 player
The first popular product that put Apple on the map of the mainstream media - or technology world  was the iPod. The first generation was much simpler than the second, third and fourth etc. naturally but they were certainly not the first MP3 player on the market, so why was their success so much better than their competition? I guess there could be many factors and depending on who you ask it's a different answer - I think it's interface is/was not great and the restriction of the music sucked! but they seemed to have much more space in terms of GB than anyone else and thanks to using hard drive technology, yes that's right and you can actually feel the platter spin up if you have the older ones!
This was the case even up to the 4th generation ipod video which now had a color screen (never before seen) and could play videos (formated to their desire of mp4 of course). Now with the newer touch making the ipod simply an older iPhone minus the phone. ipod touch can install apps and make skype or gmail phone calls (with video whichnNorth America seems slow to adopt) but we still require wifi for that which is no good if you have a data plan. Which brings us to the next trend.

2. Touch Screen Mobile Phones
In the case of the iPhone it started with 2G and went to 3G, later 3GS. S is for speed I guess being a faster processor as it is with the 4 and the new 4S being faster then the last. There were not many phones that had a great touch screen ability before the iPhone and this is where blackberry hoped they would remain key competitor but touch is so simple and fun that it seemed to have cought on and most modern phones have this capability. Android is now a serious competitor as the hardware gets better the OS is also great from the search engine giant Google.
And with this new touch screen technology as it was adopted in iPods it is also made into the larger screen of the tablet bringing us to the next trend.

3. Tablets (touch screen too)
Ah the tablets, this old friend to many designers and artists of all sorts, even laptops with touch screens are not uncommon before the iPad came out. But once the iPad came out suddenly there appeared to double the amount of competition for this market of tablets from HP to Acer all the computer manufacturers started producing direct and indirect (different specs and price ranges) competitors. Of course with new android OS it became clear that Google has something great going on with their software. Remember though that the first iPad was actually lacking many of the new features iPad 2 has such as two cameras (back and front), speed and apps which didn't work well (if you remember other features comment below).

This is why Apple was important in the technology industry, even going back to the first computer - the macintosh which was the competitor to the first PCs, later the mac and macbook to compete with laptops which are in fact very popular with certain people such as designers and DJs seem to have as well.

It's clear that whatever Apple does, the rest of technology companies will follow but the fact that they make the trends does not mean they have the best products for me. In fact I can't wait for the next OS from Google which is supposed to be called Chrome OS but is yet to be made available.

Apple's success is directly related to the marketing of their products and in fact the brand which Steve Jobs helped build. They focus on the non-technical, regular people middle to higher middle class people that would find the ease-of-use and fun factor of the products. But this is where technical people are not benefited from their products and to me, being tech-savvy I find their products lack the flexibly I require and the restrictive nature is always a huge turn down problem that I tend to not like about them and I have never owned any of their products nor will I feel the need to get it. Of course I was always able to use their products when friends and family have them so the ease of use is a plus.

Do you own Apple products?
What do you like/dislike about Apple products?
Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

How to find out legitimate website from fake one

I saw someone post a facebook link with timhortonsgiveaway.org and checked it out.
There's nothing phishy about it but it claims to give away $25 gift cards if you share the link on facebook.
How would they know you shared it to even give you the gift card? this got me a little suspicious and I decided to check if it's real by doing the usual investigation as follows.

Step 1: Check the who is records (there's at least hundreds of them - my favourite is who.is)
1. Registrar: eNom, Inc. while timhortons.com appears to be NAMESCOUT CORP
2. Contact Information: WhoisGuard Protected while timhortons.com has the full information [ The TDL Marks Corp. Chris De Jaham and TDL Group Corp Tim Davidson ]

Step 2: Google search
So it's clear there isn't anything about this website anywhere, those links are older and include nothing about it. Trying site:timhortonsgiveaway.org - just add the "site:" has 0 results meaning this site is not yet on google also seeing that it was recently registered from the who is info (Creation Date: 2011-10-15 22:16:31).

Finally a quick check on timhortons.com shows nothing of this deal at all, so either this is a super secret and super recent deal which leaves no trace back to Tim Horton's itself or it's a fake. Most likley the latter but I will update if I see anything new or unusual about it. Leave a comment below if you have any information or if you are indeed from Tim Horton's or even this promotional website to confirm or deny the website claim of giving away $25 gift card.

Thanks for visiting!

Thursday, October 13, 2011

restart apache and mysql linux

Just had some issues with services stopping in my virtual private server (vps) of godaddy (strange) but those two commands get it up and running again:

apache - http (httpd)
/etc/init.d/httpd restart

mysql (mysqld)
/etc/init.d/mysqld restart

First you must ssh into the server (I prefer putty), second you escalate your privilege with "su" command

If you have any host suggestions leave them in the comments below and I will post here - I require a powerful virtual private server that can match the performance (or outperform) godaddy, that means to have a powerful processor for plenty of requests and queries and at least 100Mb/s up/down connection and 100GB transfer per month should suffice.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Occupy Wall Street (and other cities) Zeitgeist

This is great to see the progress Occupy wall st has achieved in the last few weeks. This finally seems like the people there are awaking and protesting for much more. They understand that corporate greed is what runs this society and they want to make a revolution. This is Zeitgeist in that it is a time of new era and things are changing, but also in connection to the zeitgeist movement in that it is what seeded the beginings of this types of movements. Amazing to see that it's growing all over the US and moving to Canada as well!

Glad this is happaning, and specially now at a time when we see problems are just piling up and we are here to solve them.

I was always sure this will happened after watching the Zeitgeist moving forward movie and now more then ever. One day in the near future things will change to the 99% benefit and there will only be 1% (or hopefully not even that) suffering - unlike the way it is today. This is why there are movements and this is why it's happening.

Makes me very happy that the changes are starting as soon as I expected and there will be a great and positive future in the time we all have left on this planet. One day we can look back in our history books (probably digital) and teach our kids: "the world was once ran by *greed* and *fear*, there was a population of over 6 billion controlled by a few hundred or less people with a huge amount of currency we called money. These people had no souls because they didn't care about suffering and dying or dead people, they only cared for themselves. The rest (99%) of the people were oppressed and human rights were stricken, but they rose up and fought for the world you have today. They may have not had the combined money or perceived power but they had the numbers because everyone was there and this is how we got to where we are now." And we can watch the movie wall street to site the greedy corporations and the famous line: "Greed is good" which is total fiction. Along with the rest of the Free Education our children will be given.

Watching the true democracy unfold before our eyes, because we all know what is now a time of change from the past ways of thinking where inherited billionaires control too much for their own good.

Let me know what you think!