Multiple MySQL Service conflict

Hi there,

At beginning of programming life, I installed MySQL 5 by downloading it directly from their website. I was using it with IIS (installed PHP) and it worked fine.

Later, I decided to not use IIS because my office programming interface was using Xampp and I was given no option because I need the Xampp to run Apache. I disabled my IIS and installed Xampp. All worked fine.

Until one fine day, I accidentally "Stop" and "Start" the MySQL service provided in Xampp Control Panel. As result of it, all my database went missing (no such DB anymore). I went panic until I understood that Xampp has its own MySQL Service offered in the bundle. In this case, when I clicked "Stop", it had actually stop my original MySQL service. And when I clicked "Start", it started the Xampp's bundled MySQL service. They both are 2 different service and has 2 different data folder.

Basically, the original MySQL service name would be "MySQL" and the Xampp bundled service name would be "mysql" (only the letter case are different).

The problem is, once the "mysql" service has been started (and stopped), the "MySQL" service cannot be started. It would show "Service unable to start. Error 0".

Googling further helped me to solve this issue with little trick of commenting out (disabling) a single line in the my.ini (MySQL's configuration file).
Reference: http://www.experts-exchange.com/Database/MySQL/Q_24356864.html

I comment out this line,
default-storage-engine=INNODB    (add # at beginning of line to comment out)
in the configuration file stored at this path,
C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.0\my.ini   (your config file may be different depend on where you installed the original MySQL)

And then, start the "MySQL" service like this,
Run "SERVICES.MSC", look for "MySQL", right-click on it and select "Start".

Done, the service runs again like charm and I can access my databases again without crashing them ;)

Have fun guys!

Aayirathil Oruvan - 2010

I watched this movie this cinema today after seeing the trailer yesterday night. I booked the ticket after watching the trailer and "Trailer Launch Video" which stars like Surya, Kamal Haasan, Parthiban, KS Ravikumar and others had comment the trailer.

It had pull my interest to spend my money and time on this movie. It is totally worth it! I enjoyed the movie as it is presented for "grown-ups" only because it contain adult language.

I do not want to tell you the story because I do not wish to break the suspense. If you haven't watch the movie, I suggest you should because I consider the movie as one of "must watch movie" for 2010!

The first-half of the story was full of comedy while second half of it was dragging me back in history and I went so blur. I am saying blur because the language that they used in the second-half is totally super-classical Tamil until I do not understand it. It is Tamil but I don't understand it. Kinda embarrassing to say that but hey, trust me, at least I understood 20% to 30% but there was people who did not understand at all! Because only I laughed most for the jokes mentioned in the classic-Tamil.

It might look rude for some people but it is a grown-ups movie and no problem with the movie. I enjoyed the "Oh Eesa." The camera and scenes was visuallized for fake as it has no relation with the movie. Especially showing the "Shivan" lord picture in the song was absolutely ridiculous! But do not bother much about the song as it is intended to treat you and cool off your mood from seriousness. Reema Sen was shown with full glamour and she really smokes me away!

The scene that I enjoyed most in the first-half is where Karthi would get on top of Reema and freeze seeing Reema's boobs and Reema will ask "semme kette ille?" Then Andrea gives the look of Jesus and it is damn funny! The following scene of the girls scolding each other using rude english as shown in the trailer was great as well!
Reema: You shut up, you b*tch
Andrea: Who are you calling b*tch. You are the biggest f*cking b*tch I ever seen
Reema: Yea rite, at least I am not romancing as some back here
Andrea: Yea rite, you rather let him have a peek at your b**bs
Reema: Shut up you b*tch otherwise I will blow your f*cking brains off
Karthi: ~Stand blur~enjoy cat-fight!

On the second-half, I enjoyed the scene of climax which they showed the mixture/clash of classic warriors (sword) with the modern soldier (gun). It was realistic whereas they win the gun fight and lose-out the boom fight. In that moment, Parthiban will as (in Tamil); "What kind weapon attack is this, you never warn me about it, you worried that we will be scared? Hahahaha". Wonderful script.

Although the movie is totally out of logic and such, but it is what we can expect from Adventure movie and well shown in the movie. Overall, they done a great job. The visual computer graphic was poor but at certain parts, they used the graphic very well, such as the snake scene, the graphic was rich for the scene. I guess the producer was not interested to spend much on graphics.

The movie also has been an issue on budget since the movie was proposed for 6 Crores but the movie had whopped to 30+ Crores and no wonder they finished the movie in little rush and the ending of the story was incomplete but did meet the purpose. Some in the cinema complain and argue that the ending is ridiculous and they can't understand it. But I think, it is a grown-ups movie and you need extra brain to understand it. If they had put attention to the movie and story line that the director had proposed, they would have understand the ending and that is what the story is all about. If you also watched the movie and do not understand the ending, just buzz me and I would tell you why the ending is like that and how does it makes a good sense for the movie.

One thing disappointed me is the use of "Shivan" lord in the trailer without any reason. That is kinda lame. The trailer actually made me to expect the Lord Shivan to appear at the end and safe the people. But no such thing happen and I was so blur. They used the Lord picture in the trailer without any reason. The trailer can be claimed misleading for showing Lord Shivan picture.

Take a look at this trailer
(which really made me book the ticket)

Rating:9/10 (could have been 'best' if graphic was emphasized with real-good-ending)

Class: Adventure
Mood: Thrill

Catchy Conclusions; classic, legend, history, archeologist, early 19th century

Using Unicode UTF8 for Webpages (PHP & MySQL)

Hi there,

Another adventure of mine; making the webpage support Unicode characters.

As you guys already know, I developed my own CMS and commercialized it as Digital Paper. Last time my client asked me either it support chinese characters or not? In that time, I was lack of answer as I never get chance to test it with chinese characters. But the day finally came whereas another client of mine gave me the opportunity to provide him the website with chinese character support.

And my adventure of tuning my pages started like this;

Basically I found that when I am submitting a form with unicode character (chinese characters), the php receives the unicode character as numeric character references (NCR) and it works great! The exact NCR being saved into the database.

But that wasn't ideal because my CMS is also developed using AJAX which enables the values to be saved without submitting the form. The AJAX will grab the value from the text-box and input direct to database. In this case, it did not work.

At first, I suspected the AJAX. But then I found the AJAX has full-unicode support and I tested it as well. Then I tried to modify function to convert the data to NCR before saving to database. For this purpose, I failed to write and failed to find a good function to do what I wanted. Then I studied further through googling and found advise that using NCR could be temporary solution only and not absolute because it is converting each characters rather than preparing the whole website for unicode support.

I finally decided to follow the classic way that I know which is making the whole website to be UTF8 character-set. Only 3 step, and my work was done. Seriously.

Step 1:
add the appropriate meta and make sure all the pages does load this meta (this is for the browser to understand and extract UTF8)
<meta content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" http-equiv="Content-Type"></meta>
Reference: http://webcollab.sourceforge.net/unicode.html

Step 2:
add the appropriate character set to php.ini (this is for the web-server to understand and output UTF8)
default_charset = "utf-8"
Reference:http://htmlpurifier.org/docs/enduser-utf8.html

Step 3:
change the mysql table to appropriate encoding by executing this kind of command line for every table (this is for the database server to understand and accept UTF8)
ALTER TABLE tbl_name CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;
Reference: http://wolfram.kriesing.de/blog/index.php/2007/convert-mysql-db-to-utf8

Finally, enjoy the show!
(the website works with Chinese characters)

Have fun guys!

 

Digi Wireless Broadband full with virus!

Hi there...

Either you guys believe the statement or not, i am pretty sure you had experienced some wireless network and you could have heard that Wifi that is not password protected is not safe as it tend to be open for virus attack by hackers. But you would have not experience such virus attack when you using KFC, McD, or A&W free wifi. It is because you are in a small network, LAN which is connected to the net. So what ever attack that might reach ur pc must be done through LAN, and it cannot pass through WAN(internet) because only the internet router would be attacked and it has build-in firewall which can ignore the attack. In most cases, the router will run Linux engine in it and clearly those virus intended for windows PC wont able to threat the router.

But, the things (the virus attack by hacker through WAN) becomes visible when you are connected directly to the net. Yes, direct connection example is Streamyx, Celcom Wireless Broadband, Maxis, and the newly introduced Digi broadband.

Virus attack to your pc is possible because you are connected to WAN and assigned dynamic IP. The hackers will attack the same WAN you connected and simply attack the IP range and if your IP is one of the range, then sure it attacks your pc as well.

In most cases, people do not see this virus attacked clearly because they do not have a strong antivirus that keeping on eye on everything from files, downloads, emails, and even webpages that you surf. If you have such strong antivirus, you can notice the antivirus is warning you about the attack in real-time. The antivirus that I always recommend to my clients is Avast. The home edition is free and it is very strong to monitor the network and activity of your PC to ensure it is free from all attacks. Even i remember PC-cillin is also capable of detacting attacks in real-time.

So what's wrong? The problem is, the WAN network that our telco provide is not strongly monitored and not easy to detact the hackers on network. When you connect your PC to internet, if the you have direct IP address, then your PC is highly in threat.

I never notice the hackers attack much on Streamyx network because the IP address range is a lot and low probably for the hackers to choose your network to attack.

But small and new telco such as Maxis, Digi and Celcom uses only small IP address range as thats how their net infrastructure is been setup. Leaving you behind with high probably for hackers to attack your IP address.

From my own experience, Celcom is open to the attack and very active/often attacked. When I surfing the net, Avast will alert me about the attack being performed by the WAN through different ports and different ways. Avast able to kick it all out and keep the PC calm. But the annoying part is the attack is active and I would see the alert like every 10 minutes. Really annoying. This is still in OK kinda range because the virus is not very strong and Antivirus still can deal it.

Recently, just 2 days ago, I bought Digi Wireless Broadband as they promise speed of 700kbps for RM58 a month and that is lowest in Malaysia. Today when I use the network for about 1 hour, avast warned me about virus attack and the virus is 'wlcomm.exe' or something. The messy part is, Avast was not able to get rid of it because it get into the memory so fast. Then when i restart the PC, avast keep warning me about the virus being active in memory and it is force-shuting-down avast related files. The system also started to lag and I seriously know that this is how things will be if the virus trying to take over the PC. Therefore, Avast itself has a build-in on boot scanner which is really powerful and will help to kill the virus by scanning the virus without starting the normal windows. Avast suggested that option as default for the current situation of my PC and i am proceeding with it. I have alot of files and my on-boot scanning would take at least 1 day. In conclusion, my 1 day of work is affected just because Digi broadband is so in hackers attack. That shows that digi need to way-improve their network security. Although they are front in speed and features, they still out-dated in term of stability, reliability and security.

That do not conclude that I would hate Digi. I still like Digi for providing wireless broadband at more reasonable price for Malaysian. And I would tight-up my antivirus when using Digi broadband.

The motive of writing this blog is to alert you that 'virus sure exist in any WAN' and especially in Malaysia where our network infrastructure is still out-dated on security issues. Therefore, alway have a strong antivirus to help you combat with those virus attacks while you surfing the net and remember to regularly scan your PC if you are active internet user like me. I strongly recommend Avast Antivirus Home Edition which is free and strong to help you combat the virus. Do install it if you are newbie or not really sure which Antivirus to go for.

Do take note that virus attack through web is different from virus attack through IP. The web virus attack is where they would load the virus in the webpage's html content and your browser would accidentally download the virus and be victim. This web virus can be avoided by using Firefox which is strong to block indirect virus downloads. On the other hand, IP address virus attacks happen without involving the webpages or browser. It direct to your computer's opened port. Eventually you cannot keep all port close and you would happen to have certain ports open for software like torrent, remote desktop or even messenger software. At the same time, virus attack by hackers do not mean the hackers need to be present all the time while performing the attack. Because Virus itself would able to spread by its own. For example, when the hacker managed to plant the virus in any of the PC in the network, from there on, that particular itself would start attacking other PC in the network and makes the whole network to be further mess. The more PC infected in the network, the more often the attack would be performed to hijack your PC. That is what happening to Celcom wireless broadband. And soon we can expect to see the Digi network also similarly contaminated because the virus on Digi is more powerful and the network would grow largest very soon (due to very competitive pricing).

Bottom line; Keep your PC safe all the time ~ use safe browser ~ use strong antivirus with regular scan.

Have fun!

Vettaikaran - 2009

The movie released near to Christmas 2009 and many Vijay fans was excited about it. I was not interested to watch Vijay's movie as his previous movie was a total turn-off for me. But some how, my friends (Vijay's fans) managed to influence me to watch the movie.

I end up watching the movie alone (my style, alone the better) 2 days before Christmas. I get out of the hall with just disappointed. I am not concluding that the movie was bad, but just that my have set my expectation higher and they failed me.

I prefer commercial Tamil movie to fulfill all aspects such as; family-touch, friendship, comedy, action, expenditure/spending, music, and famous-characters. The movie has all that but limited on certain things such as family-touch and comedy.

When I see his acting on the screen, I don't feel like I am being in the scene because his acting makes me feel that the camera exist in-between and Vijay is much interested on the camera itself. In plain, you can say this as "over-acting" whereas the actor is doing such thing merely for the camera and not because he is in the character.

Lets go to the bright side of the movie; famous-characters like Vijay and Anushka; good expenditure on the setups; and nice to listen songs. The dance of the songs was still not up to my expectation. Anushka was not utilized on the screen as she given not much of script to make me admire her. I only enjoyed her glamour-exposure rather than admire her character in the movie.

The only reason for the movie to be extremely rated high is; Sun Pictures!

They are bad. They own large entertainment network and therefore they advertised the movie pretty well, from TV Channels to Movie Magazines rating the movie as number 1 and making people fooled-out when word-of-mouth is weak. They rounded the movie as best in everything although the story plot itself was an average. Its again a young man want to be police but end up doing rowdyism to survive and protect others. Where is the "Niche" or unique-touch of the story be remain unique in your mind?

Rating:6/10 (could have been far better if story was unique)

Class: Action
Mood: Boring

Catchy Conclusions; police-ambition, rowdyism in town, become rowdy, protect others

Whats new for 2010? Else than just "Happy New Year" wishes?

Hi,

That is a question you should ask to yourself. What exactly you want to do new for this "New" year? My advise, don't target the sky and be practical.

For me, I want to back blogging actively because I have found that this blog do help some people to figure some of their puzzles based on my previous experience. Helping people is not my motive, but sharing idea is the motive.

I also tuning this blog to be mixture of my IT experience and movie experience because I love to share both of that with you guys. So from now on, you can see active blog with messy information. I suggest you use the "Articles Categories" menu on the right side of this blog to navigate around based on your interest. Or if you looking for something specifically, make use of the search tool on the right as well.

My life been "excellent" on 2008. But I was merely an average on 2009 as the start of the year itself begun my hard-adventures leaving me to work hard to survive my time.

For 2010, I can predict this year going to be another remarkable year of my life with new happy stuffs happening from middle of the year. Beginning of the year would be slightly hard but middle of year would be "interesting" once again. I look at everything that happen in my life as "luck" and "adventure". When good comes, it comes because luck. When bad comes, it is an adventure for us to overcome it. My adventure haven't stop and my luck is looking forward for me. I am excited about 2010 and interested to know what twist is waiting for me throughout this year.

Time to move forward together.

Happy New Year 2010!

Complex Process Viewer

Hi,

Have your operating system been suddenly slow down and later it back to normal speed? Something like lagging?

Well, it is mainly because of the background applications which runs tiny processes. And those processes will use your CPU speed as well as your physical memory (RAM). When any of the process suddenly uses high CPU power or bite high memory, it would lag the system. This would merely be temporary because when high memory being used by a process, the operating system would try to allocate more memory for the process by killing previous unused memory.

But in some cases, you will see the system is lagging for long and I bet this is due to the high CPU usage by the process. You need to terminate the process to continue using the PC. The problem is, when you use Windows' Task Manager (ctrl+shift+esc), you will only see the process filename, such as this:

In that case, how would you know what process you need and what process you do not need? It would be confusing to decide based on just the process name. You can see the CPU and memory usage but before ending a process, you must know how much the system needs the process. For example, if you accidentally ended "explorer.exe" process then your system would reset all process which will close all your opened software and start again the explorer.exe because it is the most important process for Windows operating systems.

And, some processes would not be shown in that Task Manager because one process filename can host more than one process which the Task Manager would not show. What I am trying to conclude is, the Windows' Task Manager is not at all useful when you have issue with some 'unknown' processes.

Recently, when I was helping my friend to clean spyware on his notebook(laptop), I found "Process Explorer" software was really handy. It is just doing the task of Task Manager but instead it is more powerful in term of showing you the real-time report and advise on the critical-level of the process as well as show all hidden or sub-processes with details grabbed from the process filename itself.

The Process Explorer looks like this:

That software totally helped me to catch the unwanted process and kill them.

I suggest you to use this software or at least keep it in your machine, it would be useful one fine day when you came across some funny malware/spyware attack. You cannot run away from them if you are using lots of pirated softwares because the hackers who crack the original software and give you the pirated "patch", they would include their spyware in it which makes money for them. Otherwise, why on earth must some computer genius help you to crack cost software and give it to you to use for free?

Take my word, "Free" always comes with hidden cost and "Cracks" always comes with hidden malwares.

This is the reason why when you install some crack patches, your Antivirus software would block them. Antivirus do know how this hackers make money and the Antivirus company would not take risk on the Hackers, so they would attempt to block all the crack patches regardless they got virus/spyware or not.

Good example would be Avast Antivirus which always block hacker's patches. When you see those "Virus" warning on the patches, don't get panic and don't believe your Antivirus blindly! Just go ahead and shut-down/pause the Antivirus, then run the patches to crack your software. After installing/applying patch, immediately enable your Antivirus and when the Virus warning pops-up, proceed to let the Antivirus delete the patch file (why you need a patch file after patching/cracking your software?)

If you are someone who is damn worried about your computer's safety, then run the antivirus scan through your hard disk, run the anti-malware and check your system process. In my own experience, I suggest you to don't be freaked out about your computer safety until scanning your PC everyday after completing your work. Its lame.

Would you wash your car everyday although its not dirty? Exactly, don't keep scanning your hard disk files although its not attacked by virus or malware.
Would you wash your car periodically when you do not know either its dirty or not? Exactly, so just scan your hard disk and keep it clean periodically like monthly one or weekly once (if you download and install lots of stuffs on Internet).

You can download the software here:
http://reganrajan.com/useruploads/files/system_process_explorer.zip

I would write another blog on how I managed to clean my friend's notebook as well as my notebook more in detail.

Have fun!