George's blog

Apple Stores in GTA

George — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:00:37 +0000

It’s ridiculous, Apple still can’t provide a proper supply of iPhones. I’m trying to buy the iPhone 4 and even now Apple can’t keep up with demand and I have to call each store (every night) to ask if they’re getting a new shipment soon.

– EATON Toronto

220 Yonge Street, Toronto, Ontario M5B 2H1

(647) 258-0801

Mon – Fri:10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.Sat:9:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.Sun:11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

– FAIRVIEW Toronto

1800 Sheppard Avenue East, Toronto , Ontario M2J 5A7

(416) 646 4412

Mon – Fri:10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.Sat:9:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.Sun:11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

– SHERWAY GARDENS Toronto

Space #1801A, 25 The West Mall, Toronto, Ontario M9C 1B8

(416) 646-8489

Mon – Fri:10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.Sat:9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.Sun:11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

– YORKDALE Toronto

3401 Dufferin Street, Toronto, Ontario M6A 3A1

(416) 785-1776

Mon – Fri:10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.Sat:9:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.Sun:11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

– UPPER CANADA MALL Newmarket

17600 Yonge Street, Newmarket, Ontario L3Y 4Z1

(905) 952-3400

Mon – Fri:9:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.Sat:9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.Sun:11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

– SQUARE ONE Mississauga

100 City Centre Drive, Mississauga, ON, Ontario L5B 2C9

905-366-0580

Mon – Fri:10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.Sat:9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.Sun:11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Batch Crop with IrfanView

George — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:51:57 +0000

This post will help you batch crop photos/images with IrfanView. I have IrfanView installed (or should I say copied) on all computers I use – it’s the most light-weight image viewer AND processor with a gazillion features. I even use it to view my RAW photos (with the CRW/CR2 plugin).

OK, back to our topic. I had to crop a whole lot of images and I obviously didn’t want to do it manually. The problem was that the stuff I needed was right in the middle of the image:

figure 1 - Batch cropping with IrfanView - Word doc screenshot

OK, so here’s how you batch crop images:

Press “B” to open the “Batch conversion” window and “Add all” of your images
Click on “Set advanced options” and select “CROP” (please see figure 2).
You need to put in the the X, Y coordinates and the width and height of your crop
Click OK and then “Start”

figure 2 - IrfanView (batch processing) - "Set advanced options" window

Aquatecture

George — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:13:15 +0000

I’m always learning new things/concepts, always reading about new ideas… and of course sharing them

Aquatecture is architecture on water and it refers mainly to floating constructions. This design concept just blew me away:

This structure is very cool, it looks like the damn thing is floating But nowadays being cool is not enough anymore, is it? “The project is an alternative for the man-made islands” but with lower costs and it preserves the sea ecosystem.

So, I just learned about aquatecture!

More information and pictures about the concept above on the designer’s website.

Blogging from my iPod…

George — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:41:02 +0000

It’s not that bad really. I’m using the wordpress app, which is very minimalistic and intuitive.

Edit: now with photos edited with photoshop.com app

Meet Sebastian, one of my youngest buddies )

mozgilla hack – index.* files corrupted

George — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:28:39 +0000

This just recently happened to me (last night actually), I think my host got hacked. I have no idea why or how.

OK, so straight to the point. This morning my blog – a wordpress installation – was dead. I was getting whether an “access denied” or “you don’t have permission to access…”. First I thought that the blog got screwed somehow and I tried to go into the admin panel (e.g. georgezamfir.com/wp-admin/)… aaand I got the same error code. Crap. At this point I was clueless, I searched online for any netfirms issues, I thought they messed up something, nothing.

All right, back to basics, I FTP-ed to my host to take a look at the files and this is when I realized that all my index.* (index.php, index.html, index.htm, etc) files were screwed. There were no permissions set and they all contained some code linking to mozgilla.ru – that code was not familiar to me. Duh, I don’t use iframes. There isn’t much online on this thing except for this page: badwarebusters.org/main/itemview/11308.

I was having the exact same code in my files:
klsgawbozfesywooikgbcetdnwaubys
However, in the .php files the code above was at the very end of the files but in the .html files the code was right after the tag.

Now, as mentioned in the article above the code could be “injected by script” directly inside the files or through .htacess when the pages are requested. In my case the code was injected directly in the files (thank god) and I manually removed the code.

For wordpress installations/blogs, the following files (remember to set the permissions first, otherwise you won’t be able to edit the files) are being affected:
/index.php
/wp-admin/index-extra.php
/wp-admin/index.php
/wp-content/index.php
/wp-content/themes/index.php
/wp-content/themes/{all themes folders}/index.php (I simply removed the themes I didn’t need
/wp-includes/default-filters.php
/wp-includes/default-widgets.php

Also, in my case I didn’t have to change the .htaccess (in the wordpress folder) as it should look something like the below code. You need these lines for the permalinks, don’t delete them.

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

# END WordPress

So, this is the (manual) way of saving your website from the pesky mozgilla hack:

find the “corrupted” files (easy, sort by date – recently modified files have the code),

set the right permissions (chmod 644 index.php) and

manually remove the code from the files.

I hope this helps others as I was going nuts trying to find the solution. And btw, I found the solution but I still don’t know what the problem is. However, here are some tips from Google on this subject.

Desperate times…

George — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:30:41 +0000

me : Are you looking for a job or smth?
him: dude like crazy, I actually have a little bit of experience in variety of field
– by any chance, is there a slightest window of opportunity at the company where you work?
– Yeah, they hire for this position, www…
– so can i give you my resume or cover letter?
– lol, I’m not HR, but sure you can — you think i can come and meet in person?
– lol, meet who?
– ok i’ll just give you my resume… just look over it if you get the time…
– I will but I can’t really send your credentials personally to HR as that would mean recommendation
– and I can’t recommend you if I don’t know you professionally
– we worked together tho, for 2 years…
– lol dude we worked at ISS helping students, that doesn’t qualify as programming
– i do programming where i volunteer now too, i like it very much, but i am good at other stuff too
– like sales , marketting
– sure, but they are not looking for sales or marketing
– here’s the position, energy market software analyst?
– unless you want to be an office admin (secretara)
– i can be an office admin too…
– hahahaha, dude, u got a degree in engineering
– desperate times call for desperate measures my friend… im really multi faceted tho, not many people know that
– lol, you’re too desperate

Back… again

George — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 05:52:46 +0000

Welcome… you (you have to tell me your name you know ).

While this is not a “new” blog, it is new at this address. I’m moving a lot of stuff over here and I’m still working through my previous articles – that export feature in wordpress is not really working that well; some of the links/images/posts/attachments have not been updated properly and are still pointing to the “old” blog.

I’m slowly bringing those other things online including the photo gallery and the infamous “about” page. Did I mention slowly? I AM working full-time, you know. But to keep me happy, they sometimes let me blog

All right, off I go now.