Elias Saba’s Blog

So you connected a hard drive to Windows XP, you right-clicked on the drive inside “My Computer”, you selected “Format…”, you went to change the “File system” option from NTFS to FAT32, and finally you mashed your head into your monitor because windows is not giving you the option to select FAT32 even though you know you’ve seen it there before.

Don’t fret. I just went through this process moments ago and here is how I got around it:

NOTE: This process will delete all data on your drive!

1. Download fat32format.exe (zip)
Don’t worry, you don’t have to install anything. It’s just a single file standalone utility you’ll use once and delete.
2. Place fat32format.exe in your C:\ folder
3. Right-click on “My Computer” and select “Manage”
4. Click “Disk Management” on the left under “Storage”
5. Right-click on the drive you want formated to FAT32 and select “Delete Partition…”
6. Click “Yes” to delete all partitions
7. Right-click on the same drive and select “New Partition”
8. A wizard will open up, click “Next” to continue
9. Select “Primary Partition”
10. Enter the partition size
11. Choose a drive letter and remember it (for example: “F”)
12. Select “Do not Format this partition”
13. Click finish
14. Open a command prompt (Start menu -> Run… -> type: “cmd” -> Click OK)
15. Type “C:\fat32format F:” and hit enter (where “C” is the drive you placed fat32format.exe in step 2, and “F” is the drive letter you selected in step 11)
16. Type “y” and hit enter
17. Close everything and enjoy your FAT32 drive.

This is just an ongoing list of Linux commands I keep having to lookup. I’ll be updating this list as things come up.

Compress & uncompress (tar.gz) a directory
Compress: tar -zcvf archive-name.tar.gz directory-name
Uncompress: tar -zxvf archive-name.tar.gz

Return Path for all directories of a given name (directory search)
find / -type d -name ‘DIRECTORYNAME’ -ls

File which specifies a servers root http path
/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
Restart after making changes by running: /etc/init.d/httpd restart

Count number of files in a directory
cd to the directory
ls -1U */ | wc -l

Check directory size
du DIRECTORY
result is in KB

Copy a file from one machine to another
scp -P MACHINE_PORT_NUMBER -p FILE_TO_BE_COPIED USERNAME@MACHINE_IP:NEW_LOACTION
example: scp -P 22 -p file.php admin@255.255.255.255:/home/admin

Change file owner
chown NEWOWNER FILENAME
example:  chown nobody index.php

Firefox is by far the best web browser available. Here are five features I use daily that you may not know about that will turn you into a lean, mean, browsing machine.

1. “Ctrl+F” is so last year. All the cool kids are using “/”.
If you hold “Ctrl” and press “F” you’ll bring up the standard find bar in Firefox. Boring. This is fairly common knowledge. What most people don’t know is that if you press “/” (slash) you’ll bring up the quick find bar. The difference with the quick find bar is that it clears and closes itself once you click anywhere or stop typing for a few seconds, leaving you to continue on your merry browsing way.

Time saved by not having to: Close the find bar when you’re done using it.

2. Make searches come to you.
How often do you load a website and immediately use their search box? Well, you can make the search box come to you. If you right click on the search field of any website you’ll see the option to “Add a Keyword for this Search…”. When selected, you’ll bring up an option box that looks a lot like the one used to bookmark a site with the exception of the extra “Keyword” field. This essentially allows you to bookmark a search. Typing “KEYWORD+SPACE+QUERY” will bring up the search results for the search field you bookmark as if you typed your query directly into the sites search box. For example, if you bookmark dictionary.com’s search with the keyword “define”, simply typing “define chide” would bring up the definition of “chide” on dictionary.com.

Time saved by not having to: Load a website’s front page when you just want to use their search.

3. Acknowledge your mouse’s bastard child; the Middle-Click.
Firefox utilizes your mouse’s middle click (i.e., pressing the scroll wheel down), so you should too. You likely already know that middle-clicking a link will open that link in a new tab, but did you know middle-clicking anywhere on a tab will close that tab? This comes in especially handy when closing multiple tabs because you don’t have to keep moving the mouse to the next tab’s “X” icon as the tab sizes keep changing with every tab you close.
Time saved by not having to: Use that pesky hand-eye coordination.

4. Copy&Paste into Google no more!
Highlight any text on a website and then right-click on it. What do you know, there’s an option to “Search Google for…” the text you have highlighted. Well I’ll be a copy and pasting monkey’s uncle!
[UPDATE] - Jeff G, from the comments, pointed out that this feature does not always use Google, but instead uses the default search engine you’ve selected in Firefox.

Time saved by not having to: Ctrl+C, Ctrl+T, type google.com, hit enter, Ctrl+P, hit enter.

5. Show your Auto-Complete who’s boss.
Using auto-complete is a great way to be more efficient. That is, unless your auto-complete brings up dozens of junk-complete options for you to choose from. Next time in the email field of a web form and Firefox brings up a mile long list of all those bogus emails you’ve used in the past to avoid spam, just press the down arrow once and hold down the delete key to remove all those useless “suggestions”. You can also use the up and down arrows to pick and choose which items you want to remove.
Time saved by not having to: Fish through a list of junk.

Since people commented about my cat page on my first introductory post, I created a post about a cat page and figured out how to move the cat page comments from my first post to the new cat page post.

For those wanting to know how to move a comment from one entry in WordPress to another entry, here is how to do it.

These instructions work for version 2.3.3 of WordPress. Depending on how much WordPress has changed over the years, this method may or may not work on different versions. You can find out which version of WordPress you have by looking in the footer at the bottom of your admin interface.

First you need access to your WordPress MySQL database. The easiest way is to use MySQL’s web interface, phpMyAdmin. To get to phpMyAdmin, enter your database hostname into the URL field of your browser and press enter. If you happen to be using Dreamhost as your webhost, you can login to their control panel, click “Goodies” from the left side bar, click”Manage MySQL”, locate your WordPress database, and click the phpMyAdmin link under the “Web Administrator” column associated with your WordPress database. You will need to login to phpMyAdmin to access your database. The database username and password you entered when setting up WordPress should work.

If you forgot your WordPress hostname, database username, or database password, you can find them at the top of the file “wp-config.php” in your WordPress directory.

1. Once you’re in phpMyAdmin, select your WordPress database from the database drop down menu on the left.
2. Enter the post table by clicking the link from the left which ends in “_posts”.
3. Click the “Browse” tab at the top of the page that loaded to view the table with all your posts.
4. Locate the post you want the comment moved to and take note of the number in the “ID” column associated with that post.
5. Click the edit icon (looks like a pencil) associated with the post you just found.
6. Scroll down to the bottom and find the field labeled “comment_count”.
7. Increase the number in the field by how many comments you will be moving to that post. For example, if the comment count of that field is “5″ and you will be moving two comments to that post, then change the comment count to “7″.
8. Click the “Go” button at the bottom of the page to save your changes.
9. Now locate the table entry for the post you are removing the comment from.
10. Click the edit button associated with that post.
11. Decrease the number in the “comment_count” field by the number of comments you are removing from that post.
12. Click the “Go” button at the bottom of the page to save your changes.
13. Now click the link that ends in “_comments” from the list of database tables on the left.
14. Click “Browse” to bring up the table holding all your comments.
15. Locate the comment you want to move.
16. Click the edit icon associated with that comment.
17. Find the “comment_post_ID” field and change the value in that field with the post ID of the comments new home which I told you to take note of earlier.
18. Click the “Go” button at the bottom of the page to save your changes and you’re done.

This post is for all Cat Photo related topics. If you have questions or comments regarding the cat photo page, please post them below in the comments section and I will try to address them here.

Cat Photos Page? Huh?
A while back I created a Random Cat Photo Page and a Random Cat Photo Google Gadget. Both have become very popular.

Can I add/submit my own cat pictures?
I am working on a way for everyone and anyone to add/submit their own photos to the page/gadget. If you’d like to be notified when the feature is ready, you can send an email to catphotos at esaba.com and I’ll add you to the notify list. Please do not email me your photos. I will not add any photos I get through email.

My name is Elias Saba and this is my blog. I have tried starting a blog several times in the past but, for one reason or anothe, I deserted the blog and then eventually took it down. I’ve done this so many times I’ve lost track. (I think it’s 3 or 4.) Well, this time is different. I’ve decided regardless of what happens with this blog I will not take it down. And that’s the only promise I will make. I have no clue if I will be adding to it regularly or not.

Right now I’m thinking this blog will act as my “internet junk drawer”. This blog will be a place for all the things I want to put online but don’t have a place for. Each entry will likely act as it’s own entity with little to no relation to the entries before or after it.

This blog uses the content management system (CMS) WordPress and a modified version of the theme Fluid Blue and is hosted on Dreamhost.

If you’re wondering why I chose such a plain and boring theme, it’s because I think the content of a blog (and any website for that matter) is most important. If a site offers good content, it doesn’t matter what it looks like. People put too much time into how a site looks and not enough into making the site worth visiting. I feel a site needs to prove itself worthy of a good design before it should get one. A plain design will help readers and myself focus on content.