Hi, there

After a year of posting at ChrisMorris.co, I am finally making the move to ChrisMorris.org. The new site takes only a fraction of the time to load compared to chrismorris.co, and the design is very sleek .

Don’t worry, though. I’m moving my posts over to the new website!

Here are a list of posts currently moved to the new website:

• Pensioner Goes Gaga at The Tivoli’s Final Show!
• Passing Client IP from Nginx to Apache
• Fixing Default Javadoc Author in Eclipse
• Have You Disabled Extensions? – JavaScript Debugging

This page will be updated over the coming days as more posts are moved to the new site.

*UPDATE* (20th Aug, 2012): AMCTV.com have fixed the issue by appending random characters to the end of each filename, making them harder to discover.

Breaking Bad has to be my favourite drama of all time, I can’t think of any other show that has topped it… but does anybody remember the ending of season 4 being leaked last year? I think I may have found how that happened.

While browsing images of season 5 on AMCTV.com, I noticed that they use very predictable URL’s. For example, <http://media.amctv.com/photo-gallery/BB-S5-Episode-Photos/episode-5-walt.jpg>. So I did a little experimenting, and I’ve found six pictures from future episodes of Breaking Bad. Not just from next week, but the episode after that too!

Here are the six images I found. None of them are overly spoiler-ish if you have seen the trailer for season 5 episode 6, but the potential to land on one that does contain a spoiler could be easy. The images may be considered very spoiler-ish. Perhaps this is how season 4′s ending was leaked?

Pictures from episode 6 – “Buyout”: (Original links prior to update)

• http://media.amctv.com/photo-gallery/BB-S5-Episode-Photos/episode-6-todd.jpg
• http://media.amctv.com/photo-gallery/BB-S5-Episode-Photos/episode-6-jesse.jpg
• http://media.amctv.com/photo-gallery/BB-S5-Episode-Photos/episode-6-walt.jpg
• http://media.amctv.com/photo-gallery/BB-S5-Episode-Photos/episode-6-skyler-jesse-walt.jpg

The issue is a simple one, and nothing new. The directory itself (“BB-S5-Episode-Photos”) is off-bounds to the public, as it should be – the public cannot view a list of files within the directory when directly accessing the folder. However, the images within the directory are accessible to the public. Of course the images have to be accessible to the public. The problem is that images from future episodes have been uploaded prior to their respective broadcasts. A simple fix would be to alter the permissions of the images, or simply not to upload them until the episode has aired.

I have emailed AMC, and I’ll let you know if they reply and/or fix the problem.

As you’re well aware (unless you’ve been living under a Pluto,) Venus flew past the sun today. Although I couldn’t actually view the event, I did watch it live via NASA and found some pretty awesome clips around the net. I have listed some links below, please leave a comment if you have any other videos/photos of the transit that are worth sharing .

• [VIDEO] “NASA SDO – Transit of Venus, 304 Angstrom” (Embedded above)
• [VIDEO] ”NASA SDO – Transit of Venus, Egress, 304 Angstrom”
• [VIDEO] ”NASA SDO – Transit of Venus, 131 Angstrom”
• [VIDEO] ”NASA SDO – Transit of Venus, HMI”
• [VIDEO] ”Venus solar transit 2012 – Proba-2′s journey across the Sun”

I upgraded to Chrome 17 today. It comes with many fixes, improvements and a couple of new features, some which users may love. However, one particular feature – the preloading of websites as you type a URL in the omnibox – had me worried for a moment.

Before I talk about that, though, remember how I posted about some of the annoyances with YouTube’s HTML5 video player? Chrome 17 has introduced a fix for the screen dimming issue. Hooray!

Chrome 17 Preloads Websites

This is a really cool feature, but first impressions worried me until I found out about how the system works. Although Chrome has had this feature for over a year, it is now enabled by default. How does it work? Basically, the moment I start typing a URL, Chrome tries to auto-complete the address it thinks I’m looking for and begin to preload the website, so as to lower load times between typing the address and hitting enter.

What’s next? Preloading bookmarks on mouseover? Actually, that sounds kinda cool… and impatient. Extremely, extremely impatient .

A cool feature? Yes. However, there are several potential issues that instantly (no pun intended) came to my mind.

What if the auto-completed URL is incorrect? What if I was trying to go to ‘google.com’, for example, and made a typo? Say I type “gogg” instead of “goog”. Chrome would auto-complete my URL to goggle.com (if it didn’t know any better) and begin to preload the site.

There’s a problem here. What if goggle.com were to contain malware? The user may be infected before they even hit enter. This could be dangerous if the auto-complete feature picks the wrong URL without a safety net.

Well, thankfully Chrome only loads URL suggestions if it’s confident. The confidence of Chrome to preload a page is based on the user’s browsing history (and I suspect it may also exclude potentially harmful websites that Google knows about, just as Google Instant’s suggestions exclude vulgar words), and therefore if ‘goggle.com’ did contain malware, the user would have had to have visited that site regularly in the past in order for Chrome to preload it, and is therefore probably infected anyway.

The second potential issue I see with pre-rendering is the generation of misleading statistics. If Chrome has started preloading a page and then a user backspaces that URL to go somewhere else, the webmaster of said page will see misleading numbers in their analytics as that preload will still count as a page view – even though the user never really saw their page.

Actually, let’s extend the issue of analytics. (The following is purely an example.)
Let’s say I want to go to ‘youtube.com/movies’, I would start by typing in “you” into the omnibox. Now, let’s say that I also often visit a website called ‘yourdailymedia.com’, in fact, I visit ‘yourdailymedia.com’ more often than ‘youtube.com’. Note how both websites start with “you”. If I’m not a fast typer, the moment I type in “you”, Chrome will start loading ‘yourdailymedia.com’, as I visit that site more often that ‘youtube.com’. This counts as a page view for them. Then, after a moment, I hit “t” on my keyboard and the next closest URL in line according to auto-complete would be ‘youtube.com’. Now Chrome stops loading ‘yourdailymedia.com’ and starts preloading ‘youtube.com’. YouTube now also logs me as visiting their home page because Chrome has started preloading their homepage. I continue to add “/movies” at the end of the URL and finally, Chrome loads the third page – the one I wanted to get to originally, but wasn’t suggested because I don’t visit it as often as the previous two URL’s.

The above example would result in wasted data transfer, misleading statistics for webmasters, and a clogged network for everyone else on my Wi-Fi connection (albeit probably negligible). It’d sure suck to have a popular website have people loading two pages to get to one.

Now sure, this example wouldn’t be valid if I visit ‘youtube.com/movies’ more often than ‘youtube.com’ and ‘yourdailymedia.com’, because auto-complete should see where I go most often. The point is that there are three potential down-sides to this feature, while only one very minor speed increase. With the ability to store data locally with HTML 5, is it really necessary to have this feature enabled by default? Sure, I love a good speed increase, but not at the cost of adding more noise to my analytics.

But then again… webmasters can handle it! If you don’t want to count instant preloads in your analytics, you can disable instant loading of your website by blocking all instant headers. Besides, most browsing on a website is down with the mouse, generally users only type in a home page at most. Sure, the potential issues in my example above exist, but they’d be a rarity.

Okay, maybe Instant Pages isn’t as bad as I first thought it was. Nevertheless, if you need to conserve your transfer quota and want to disable preloading of websites, you can…

How to Disable Website Preloading

To disable preloading in Chrome, simply go to your Chrome preferences, click the “Under the Hood” and un-tick “Predict network actions to improve page load performance”.

Alternatively, you can try…

1. Type into your omnibox chrome://flags
2. Scroll down to “Prerender from omnibox” and select “disable”.
3. Restart Chrome.

The Chrome team definitely aren’t ignoring malware. In Chrome 17, when a user downloads a file, Google will check to see if it came from a website on their whitelist, and if not, the URL to the download will be sent to Google’s servers where it will be automatically analysed for malware.

YouTube has begun rolling out their HTML5 video player in order to replace Flash, and although I applaud them for pushing us to the future, I am finding it very hard to enjoy YouTube at the moment. While some of these problems are minor, others make the new player impossible to use.

Inaccurate timing

Perhaps not the worst issue, but when I want to skip into a video, it doesn’t give me an accurate measurement of time. In the pictures below, you can see that I hover over 1:20:43, however, when I click it jumps nearly a minute away to 1:21:35. YouTube’s Flash player used to have a similar problem, usually it’d be off by about two seconds max (and that was likely due to the way the video was compressed rather than a bug in the player), but nearly a minute off? I think that’s unacceptable for YouTube’s standards.

YouTube's Inaccurate Timing

Buffering?

I average around 700 KiB/s downstream on my connection, but YouTube tends to load at a far slower rate – likely due to the setup YouTube has in Australia. Nevertheless, YouTube’s HTML5 player doesn’t buffer for me. It keeps playing the video pausing and playing, pausing and playing multiple times a second – you know, that really jittery playback you get when a video loads as fast as it plays? It’s unbearable. So I pause videos at the start to let them load. Now, pausing a video to let it load isn’t a big issue, but it’s also useless because of the next issue…

Caching and Download Limits Make HD Impossible!

Whether this is a setting in my browser or something else, I don’t know, but I have tested this on all of my computers – both Windows 7 and Mac OS X Lion – using Chrome 16. Videos hardly cache for me anymore. This means that if I want to rewind more than about 20 seconds in a video, it starts loading the video again despite the fact that I just loaded it. This isn’t just bad for my transfer quota, but what about YouTube’s!? – Just imagine how many people are reloading their videos due to this issue.

What’s worse is that when I rewind, I have to pause it again to let it buffer again.

It gets even worse, though! I can’t play YouTube HD videos. Why? Because videos will only load so many seconds into the future before they stop downloading (perhaps a limitation in cache size?) In other words, if I’m watching a 10 minute video in HD, I pause the video, the video will only load X seconds ahead and no more. (X depends on the quality of the video, 1080p may only load a minute or so, whereas 360p may load the entire video.)

Here’s what happens…

I’ll give an example of me watching an 1080p video the other day, because generally watching 360p will be fine due to the often small file-size of such videos.

So, I pause the video at 0 seconds to let it buffer (because it doesn’t auto-buffer.) The video then stops loading after X seconds due to the cache limitations(?). I start playing, and so the video continues to load a bit further, while in the background the player/browser is un-caching what I had previously watched. BAM! I’m hit with the slow transfer rate that YouTube offers in Australia and so I have to pause again to let the video buffer. I hit play, but for some reason it skips ahead a second and so I missed what someone said in the video. I put my cursor on the time-bar to go back 5 seconds, but it instead decides to pull me back 30 seconds. BAM! Cache limitation! It starts loading the video again, and so I pause to let it load. It is impossible to use!

These same issues occur on all of my computers, all using Chrome 16 on both Mac OS X Lion and Windows 7.

Other Issues…

I don’t know who’s to blame here, but when watching videos via HTML5, my screen will go dark after 5 minutes, as per my computer’s energy saving settings. The computer doesn’t realise I’m watching a video, as it did with Flash, it therefore thinks I am inactive and dims the screen. This results in a bad user experience, especially if you’re watching a movie or TV show on YouTube.

Fullscreen has it’s own issues, where Chrome will continue to display my downloads panel at the bottom of the browser.

Annoyingly, the cursor never hides when in fullscreen.

If you’re wanting to skip forwards or backwards in a video while in fullscreen, hovering over the timeline won’t give you an indication of the time you’ll jump to (then again, it’d be inaccurate anyway, as mentioned at the top of this post.)

Also, weirdly, sometimes exiting fullscreen results in odd problems, as shown in my screenshot below…

YouTube's HTML5 Player Offset After Leaving Fullscreen

All in All…

I really hope YouTube fixes these issues soon. I would prefer to use HTML5 over Flash for the simple fact that I’d like to use as few plugins as possible, but these issues are making it hard. The biggest issue, in my opinion, is the cache. I simply cannot load 1080p videos. I’d love to hear if anyone else is having these issues.

Regarding the caching issue, I am unsure if this is just a default browser setting, but if it is, YouTube’s going to have a lot of issues bringing this player in.

It’s the 18th of January (and soon to be 19th in Australia) and websites across the web are down in protest of SOPA and PIPA. Some websites such as Demonoid are even protesting in style, while I’ve decided to block out my website by using this simple Javascript plugin that I found after visiting Feross’ blog. This is historic. I can’t think of another time in history where so many powerful websites have blacked out against a bill. It’s good to see this happening though, and we’re lucky that we’re able to do this. Can you imagine if SOPA had been introduced many years ago? If it had been, I could see a plethora of websites being taken down should they decide to protest against something the government wants to push/is doing. This is just one example of how the internet is bringing back democracy.

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/williamdag/372494856/

I can’t believe that we still have to protest this crap either. This isn’t the first attempt to introduce laws that hinder freedom on the internet, and it certainly won’t be the last – and don’t forget, right now we’re fighting both SOPA and Protect IP (PIPA) at the same time.

Earlier this week it was announced that SOPA had been “shelved,” however it’s already back. It’s disappointing that during the time it was shelved, people (and news organisations) took to the internet spreading around misinformation that SOPA had been “defeated.” I can see why people want to scream that they’ve defeated it, they really want it gone, but we need to be more accurate with our information. Now that it’s back, there are going to be at least a few people who think it has gone away. Today’s blackout has surely helped inform a mass audience.

The mainstream (sponsored) media can’t possibly ignore such a large online movement. Not even the ones who support SOPA. In fact, News.com.au (owned by Rupert Murdoch) has even gone so far to write a completely useless news item on the Wikipedia blackout. The majority of the article is a joke, there’s not even any information on what Wikipedia is actually protesting. When I say joke, I mean that they’re actually trying to turn this serious issue into a laughing matter. Is this really what journalism has come to? This is a perfect example as to why we need our internet to stay open. This single article highlights the “quality” of mainstream media today.

Click here for a list with screenshots of sites blacking out today.

I’ve decided to launch a new blog design that I’ve been working on and off on past the last couple of weeks. I know there are a few bugs here and there, but now that the cat’s out of the bag, I’ll make sure to jump on those issues quickly and perfect the design over the coming weeks.

One of the design features I’m proud of in this revamp is the hyperlink styling. I was playing around with CSS 3 transitions only to find I created a cool 3D illusion where the links pop off the page when you hover over them. It looks awesome if you’re using a modern browser – and I wasn’t even aiming for anything like it to begin with. I hope styles like these become standard online rather than having underline effects and whatnot – not that they don’t have a place, but having links pop off the page is pretty cool!

One concern of mine, however, is the contrast of the current layout. White links on a semi-transparent white background don’t look as good as they could. This could potentially be fixed by choosing a specific colour for links (which doesn’t work with my plans to have the background rotating different images), or with a different background choice entirely. I’ve also experimented with turning the semi-white background that you see behind this text to black, and then turning the text to white. The contrast does increase, but the 3D hyperlink effect is reduced.

By the way, the current background is a blurred picture I took in Mildura a few weeks ago, I’ll be uploading many photos soon .

So, it’s currently 6:36am and I still haven’t slept. The good news is that I found two pretty cool remixes of “Party Rock Anthem.” Check them out below! If you want to have a go at creating your own floppy drive music player, check out this article, this one, and this one too.

Floppy Drive Remix

Violin Remix

I know this isn’t a floppy drive, but I love violin, so I’m including it anyway .

January 18th, 2012 is the day that Reddit will be shutting their website down for 12 hours in protest of SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act.) I believe this makes Reddit the first major website to shut down in protest, however, websites including Google, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, and others are also considering blacking out their websites in protest of SOPA/PIPA.

Update: Boing Boing to join the blackout.

What’s so wrong with SOPA/PIPA? Although presented to stop online privacy piracy, they can (and likely will) be abused to hinder freedom of expression, while hardly preventing online piracy at all. The video below explains it quite well…

From my point of view as a developer, I can clearly see that not only will these acts completely and utterly fail to prevent online privacy piracy, but they will only help to make the internet worse. Are we really willing to give up our freedom for the sake of entertainment companies making an extra buck? US citizens need to do protest this. The future of the internet depends on you.

I don’t agree with music and movie piracy, artists definitely should be paid for their work. However, copying music and movies isn’t technically theft. Theft would be the result of someone taking the work away from another person, whereas copying creates a second piece of that work. Yes, the artist may lose a sale, but copying is not theft. I am not justifying piracy, but I do believe that most true artists care more about sharing their work than making money from it, and so I ask myself – is it really worth giving up these fundamental freedoms because of this issue?

I believe, and encourage others, to pay for the music, shows, and movies they love. Why? Because the more money that goes to the artists that you love, the more work like that will be created and flourish.

The internet is a 21st century telephone. It allows people to communicate on a scale never seen before, learn on a scale never seen before, and has brought democracy to a scale never seen before. There are terrible issues in this world that are going on right now, such as the 30,000 children that die every day due to poverty and curable diseases. Is it worth hindering our ability to communicate because entertainment companies don’t want to lose their sales? Taking away our freedom of expression… that’s the real theft.

Oh, by the way, did you know that Lamar Smith, the guy who authored SOPA, is a copyright infringer? Hilarious, I know.

Today I arrived home after a week-long family holiday at Yarrawonga, so it almost feels like my year is just starting now. In fact, it was only within half an hour of arriving home when Monash University gave me a call asking for documents in order to process my application for 2012. I was lucky that they called today, because had we arrived home half an hour later, I’d have missed the call and it would be too late to hand anything in – today was the deadline.

Last year I completed certificates III and IV in science at Swinburne University. During my time there, many issues arose with various students. I’m sure this is uncommon at Swinburne, I believe it was just a very unlucky year – a shame considering how great the teaching was. Swinburne handled the issues appropriately. Without going into detail, I was put behind 5 or 8 weeks (depending how you decide to count.) Because of this, I had to complete my work beyond the set course dates. Instead of finishing in late November or early December, I finished mid-December. In fact, there was so much work that I had to catch up on that it came down to the end of the last possible day – once I got home, I still had work I had to email in. The teachers were great, making time for me weeks after the course had ended, and in retrospect I’m still glad I was accepted into that course. Despite the bad experiences with other students (again, I was unlucky), studying science – and actually understanding it – is the most fulfilling thing I’ve done since I started coding nearly a decade ago.

Finishing in mid-December created some issues for me. The idea of completing these certificates at Swinburne last year was not only to expand my knowledge on science, but to also act as a stepping stone to university. I applied for science, computer science, and software engineering courses in various universities including Swinburne, Monash, and Deakin. Monash is probably the most appropriate university should I be accepted into software engineering or computer science due to my background with them. Swinburne is probably preferable for science, as the classes are smaller and I have science certificates from them too – there’s also some pretty cool nano stuff going on near by!

Applying for these universities through VTAC created a problem for me when I finished my course “late,” as explained above. VTAC needed the results in by the 16th of December (if I remember correctly), and my results may not have been submitted until after 5pm that day. So, as Monash were sorting through applications, they called me up. The timing was amazing. The first call was from the IT department one day before we left for Yarrawonga. I managed to get most of the documents together right before Swinburne closed, and then handed them in early next morning as we left for the trip. The remaining documents were gathered through contacting the amazing teachers I had at Swinburne, where I got emailed copies of the documents I needed to send to Monash. Once I had sent everything in to the IT department, I didn’t even think about needing to send a copy to the science department too, so you can guess what the call was about today. A last minute rush to scan the documents again (as the first time around we had brought the documents in rather than scanned and emailed) and email them in, we just made it before the absolute deadline.

I can’t wait to find out which university I’m accepted into this year – I likely find out on the 16th of January (just a few days away!) Right now I’m hoping for Monash purely because I prefer them for computer science (although, I’d still absolutely love the opportunity to study abroad.) If, for whatever reason, I’m not accepted this year, I think I’ll start a company.