Bark.com appears to have set up in Australia and are sending out leads.

Yesterday I started to receive "leads" from Bark.com. Now as a business leads are good, but in this case I'm concerned about the approach. I never contacted or had even heard of Bark.com and then out of the blue I start getting leads.

The first problem is my business appears to have been included as a supplier/member without my permission or knowledge.

The second is the leads aren't particularly well targeted. The leads have mostly been for physically damaged computers (broken screens) and that's not the type of service I offer. Leads are also mostly much further than I'd consider in terms of travel.

This looks like another company that just sets up and grabs some list of suppliers and then starts promoting themselves. People will think I've signed up with them and I haven't. The old fake it til you make approach. Seems to be the way businesses work now and that's their choice. It isn't the way I like to do business. Before a company promotes my services I'd prefer the company first get my permission. People don't know I haven't signed or joined the service. I have no track record with bark.com so potential customers have no assurance I'm a quality supplier or not. Doesm't give me confidence.

Interestingly the first review I read of bark.com was a supplier who felt most leads were tyre kickers. Looks like an opportunity I'm happy to pass on and leave for others.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au

Interesting feature in PHP where if you do a $_GET on a variable that has a zero (0) value the result is empty and not zero.

Today I noticed a divide by zero error in the error log for my Voltage Drop Calculator. That didn't make sense to me because I test to see if a value is being divided by zero before doing a divide. That's pretty basic computer programming logic.

 However the test to see if the variable was zero wasn't working. If I put a number in the Cross Section field the calculation works perfectly. When I put a zero in the Cross Section field the zero was effectively being ignored. This didn't make sense to me.

I'll admit this is a limitation of my knowledge of PHP. Each programming language has it's quirks (features) and this is one of PHP's that I missed and to be fair, it was bad programming on my part.

When receiving the variable in the URL I would then use if ( $_GET['variable']) to test to see if the variable had a value. What I didn't know was a zero value is treated as being empty. Thus when I later tested the value of the variable against zero the test was false and a divide by zero would occur because the calculation would be performed.

What I really should have done (and have now done) in the code is to test if the variable was set. I've now updated the code to be, if ( isset($_GET['variable']) ) and the code works as it should.

I'm sure if I've made this simple mistake others may also fall into this trap. Hopefully others can learn from my mistake.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au

Recovering files from a corrupted SD card and an SD card Windows suggested needed formatting. The SD cards were used in a Canon camera.

A family member gave me a couple of SD cards which had become corrupted. One was not able to be read, but the other one had three folders and one very big file which had non-English characters in the file name. A good sign of corruption.

The first SD card gave the following message.

The second SD card's file directory looked like the following.

Over the years I tried a few programs so like most people I tend to go back to what I know that what's worked in the past, plus I tried Microsoft's new Windows File Recovery tool. You would think Microsoft could produce the best tools, but in this case the Windows File Recovery tool was a waste of time.

I also tried a product called RECUVA, but the product was not able to recover anything.

Another company that has produced results in the past is called EaseUS and they have a product called EaseUS Partition Master, but that product didn't help. However in the menu of this product I was able to download their EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard and with this product I was able to find 751 files I could recover from the SD card with the corruption.

I started the recovery process for a subset of the files as the website said the free version can recover up to 2GB of data. Whilst true I found it would only recover 500MB. I then checked the website again and found the 2GB feature is unlocked if you share a post on Facebook or Twitter. For a moment I thought I perhaps should have tried their free trial on their pro version. I decided to test the free trial. No help as it only scans and displays the files found. No ability to recover.

In total there was around 3GB of data that could be recovered. With a 2GB limit it meant I need to find out more information about what the family member already had and what they didn't have. It turned out they didn't need the RAW files taken by the camera. Once that information was available I was able to complete the recovery of the photos.

Full credit to EaseUS for providing the ability to recover the person's photos for them.

Now for the SD card that just gave the message it needed to be formatted, I decided to search for another program since EaseUS couldn't help. I found an open source program called PhotoRec and tried the program on both SD cards. PhotoRec was able to recover most of the photos from the corrupted SD card, and also recovered a large number of files for the SD card that gave the prompt the card needed to be formatted. The only real issue is PhotoRec does not use the original file names, but instead gives them the next sequential number. Although to be fair, having photos even if the file names don't match isn't as big an issue as not photos at all.

Both EaseUS and PhotoRec produced results, although you can never be sure of what files were missed. EaseUS was able to identify three video files that PhotoRec did not detect.

One tip I'd like to share is if your SD card gives you issues, put it aside immediately and then use a recovery program. Don't keep using the SD card otherwise files may not be able to be recovered.

Another tip is don't use your computer to format the SD cards or delete or edit files on the SD card. To use and work on the photo files copy the files to your computer. To format the card or delete files use the camera. There's a feeling that incompatibility between devices may lead to corruption.

Finally don't just keep taking photos and videos on the SD card and think they're safe. Everyone now and then take a backup copy of the SD card. One day you'll be glad you did.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au

Quick method on Windows 10 to make thumbnail for YouTube video.

When I upload videos to YouTube, a number of thumbnails are created for you to select from. Unfortunately, often the thumbnails don't highlight anything of particular interest in the video. For some time I've simply left the thumbnail as the default that was selected by YouTube. However, I thought there has to be a better way as I can't help thinking the thumbnail is an important bit of information that helps people to select a video.

Since most YouTube videos don't make much money if you're monetising them (I haven't currently reached that level), you really can't justify putting a lot of time into a thumbnail. Then the idea came to me. If I can watch the video and find the highlight, I can capture that highlight using the PrintScreen key, open Paint and paste the picture into Paint and save as a jpeg image. The saved image is perfect for YouTube and now you have a thumbnail you can upload that's much more interesting for viewers.

Kelvin Eldridge
YouTube channel

Hostgator warning message: Imagick was compiled against Image Magick version 1654 but version 1650 is loaded

On Hostgator I noticed in my site logs the following error message.

PHP Warning:  Version warning: Imagick was compiled against Image Magick version 1654 but version 1650 is loaded. Imagick will run but may behave surprisingly in Unknown on line 0

I don't know what Image Magick is and I don't think I've done anything to invoke Image Magick. I can only think this is something that's been done on Hostgator's end and may fix itself over time.

I regularly check for error logs in case something I didn't expect/plan for, is occurring on my site. The error.log file only occurs if there's an error, so usually I just have to check for the existence of the file. Once checked I can delete the file. The error.log file then doesn't exist until another unexpected error occurs. Having an error like this means there's always an error.log file and checking every error.log file on every site I maintain, potentially every day, isn't practical.

A bit of research revealed Hostgator support for one person made the following change to their system to suppress the error message. Of course this shouldn't be necessary, but may be required as a short term fix.

https://forums.cpanel.net/threads/getting-an-imagick-error-after-update-to-php-7-3.672365/

The solution according to this post is:

Create a file called .user.ini

Type the following into the file.

 imagick.skip_version_check=true

Save the file in the top level folder for the site.

I ran this suggestion on my site www.5kmradius.com.au and it worked to remove the warning message for Imagick.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au

How to redirect Hostgator site requests for http to https

One of the things that bothers me every now and then is that when I create a new site and enter www.SiteName.com.au it goes to the http site instead of the https site and that may cause some features to fail, such as location features. Then my browser remembers the http site and I end up at the site that doesn't work property, having to re-enter the site using https. For me that's an inconvenience, but for uses of my site the real concern is they'll move on thinking the site doesn't work.

To fix this issue I need to automatically redirect people to the https address if they enter the http address.

Let's use an example.

Right now I find if I type www.JustLocal.com.au (one of my sites) I end up going to http://www.justlocal.com.au and the site comes up as not secure. The site still works, but a person seeing that message may not feel comfortable. So I want to redirect a user to use https.

If you have a site on Hostgator that does this, the following is what you can do to automatically redirect users.

Log into your cPanel
Select Files
Open the folder for the site - Previously the site was under the public_html folder, but more recently sites will be found in the folder you start at in Files.
Select the file .htaccess and click Edit (always a good a good idea of taking a copy of what is already there if something goes wrong you can paste it back. A photo using you mobile phone makes a quick image copy.)
Now paste in the following lines. I paste this at the start of the .htaccess file. The first line is usually blank so I enter this starting on the second line. I don't know if the blank line makes any difference.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

Save the changes and Close

Now test to see if using http in the URL is automatically redirected to https. I did this edit as I wrote this post and it worked perfectly for me. I hope this post helps you solve this issue.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au

PS. Performed the same change on the site www.CoronavirusVictoria.com.au and it worked perfectly. The .htaccess file did contain lines I'd not seen before so it's important not to touch any lines in the .htaccess file that are already there.

YouTube VR/360 doesn't work with Samsung Galaxy S7. Images too far apart with Cardboard type viewer.

 I must admit getting a cheap (around $10-$12) VR viewer from Big W felt like a great bargain. I could check out VR/360 videos and see what I thought. Whilst I didn't expect the quality to be perfect, at least I didn't have to spend hundreds of dollars.

For a while this seemed to work well. Then I change to a Samsung Galaxy S7 and nothing seem to work. The images just didn't line up so I ended up with two distance images and not the two images merged into one. Something didn't seem right so today I decided to investigate.

At first I started to look for apps that could play YouTube videos in stereoscopic and after a little hunting realised this feature is actually built into YouTube. One path led to another and eventually I found a site which enabled me to set up my own QR Code for Google Cardboard.

My gut feeling was telling me the two images were too far apart. I wanted to make a QR Code for Google Cardboard (an app you can install) so I could get the two images lined up better. You can find the facility to build you own QR Code for Google Cardboard at https://arvr.google.com/cardboard/viewerprofilegenerator/.

Completing the form based on my measurements produced the same two images that were too far apart. My two lens have inter-lens measure of 65mm. I built a number of profiles and found if I had the inter-lens gap of 40, this would produce what I wanted. There may be an even better size but this was good enough for me.

Now I can watch 360VR movies using YouTube using the Samsung Galaxy S7 using my VR Viewer from Big W. I can also watch normal movies in stereoscopic which makes the movies look like they on the big screen. Pretty cool.

The following is the QR Code to set the inter-lens gap to 40.

Kelvin Eldridge
360 VR videos

Formatting comments in YouTube.

Every day I learn something new from others. Today I learnt that you could put a line through text (known as strikethrough), which is something I didn't know.

It turns out you can do strikethrough, italic and bold formatting, using a specific character placed before and after the text you wish to format. The format characters are the following.

Strikethrough: -

Italic: _

Bold: *

You can also combine multiple format options.

Kelvin Eldridge

Real-time drive videos

Red light camera/Speed camera locations

 

YouTube Video Editor is still available via a URL.

Recently I uploaded video to YouTube but after decided I wanted to trim the beginning of the video. Uploading the video took a while and I knew I could trim the video and then upload the video again, but I wondered if I could use YouTube's video editor instead. 

I'd not used YouTube's video editor before so I went looking for the video edit option and there wasn't one. A bit of searching on the internet revealed the YouTube video editor appears to have been removed in 2017. That's a pity I thought. Now don't ask me why, but I wondered if the video editor still existed and worked, but just not shown in the menus.

As it turned out the YouTube video editor still lives. You just have to access the video editor using a URL. The format of the URL is as followings.

https://studio.youtube.com/video/your video ID/editor

You can find "your video ID" in the video details or as part of the shareable link. In my case the video ID was gsTZzvCP2NA and the resulting URL was the following. The video is a real time drive from Kingsbury to Templestowe. I felt the initial section through the back streets wasn't needed.

https://studio.youtube.com/video/gsTZzvCP2NA/editor

The final video is located at https://youtu.be/gsTZzvCP2NA.

Once I had learnt what I need to use the editor through trial and error (each editor has their quirks), I trimmed the video and saved. I don't know how long it took for the trimmed video to be processed, but it was some time. Once the video was processed viewers of the video would now see the trimmed version of the video.

Knowing the URL for the video editor is still available certainly saved some data by not having to upload the video again.

Kelvin Eldridge

Real-time drive videos

Backspace in Microsoft Outlook appeared to delete files from inbox.

Ever had something that happened in your computer that freaked you out? We've all been there. Today was one of those moments.

I was looking for a contacts email address so I did a search of their name for messages in the inbox. I must have clicked on one of the messages. Thinking I was still in the search field I pressed the backspace key a number of times to change the search criteria. You know, you tap a key fast because who backspaces slowly. But just as I was hitting the backspace I noticed a number of message in my inbox disappeared. What the heck just happened I thought. How will I ever find those emails.

I checked the trash folder but there was nothing there that looked like something I'd keep in the inbox., just trash. Now I couldn't help feel who in the world would make the backspace key delete mail items. REALLY!!!!

As it turns out it wasn't as bad as I thought, actually it could be considered a feature. The backspace key sends the mail items to the Archive folder. So there all the mail items were sitting in the Archive folder.

I don't use the Archive folder as I store messages I want to keep in folders I've created. However using the backspace key on mail items I'm not 100% sure I want to delete, may be a good way to send the files to Archive as a temporary location for me to later delete. In any case I had accidentally stimbled on a feature of Microsoft Outlook that I never knew existed. I'm sure others will probably do the same and freak out when they think they've deleted their mail items. Now at least you'll know to check the Archive folder.

Kelvin Eldridge

www.OnlineConnections.com.au

VentraIP refer a friend offer.

When I sign on to VentraIP I keep seeing the offer to refer and friend and earn a $50 MasterCard gift card. My link is the following.

https://getonline.vip/6gL1IjAX

For me to get the $50 gift card someone has to use the link and purchase a domain name and hosting. But the question is, what's in it for the person I refer. There's no additional advantage for them. Many referral systems offer both the referrer and the referee a benefit, but VentraIP doesn't.

To me whether a person uses the link or not is up to them. I have no problem with referring people to VentraIP as I have many domains with them and their pricing is reasonable. I did have a hosting service with them and found it quite good, however in the end I merged all my sites to my main hosting company. There really wans't any any advantage of having a second hosting service. The second hosting service cost money whereas merging them back to my main hosting service meant I'd save that money.

One thing I did like about VentraIP is since they've based in Australia and hosting was in Australia, performance was better in Australia. For me I've found for me own reasons hosting in America is better for me. The one shortcoming I did find was when using PHP includes I couldn't use two levels of redirection but my current hosting company did allow that feature. Two levels of redirection helps me maintain my code.  That might not be required for many people but it is for me. Other than that I found VentraIP's hosting service to be reasonable value and a good service. Their support was also good.

Why I'm mentioning the refer offer is this could enable someone who wants to set up a domain and hosting for themselves, to help offset the cost of their own services by referring others. As long as people refer and are transparent with what's in it for them and do it for the right reasons (not just in the own interest) then I'm OK with referring. If a service works for you and you're happy with it, why not tell others. If there's something in it for you and you let the other person know, you've been transparent and then the other person has all the information they need to make a better decision.

Kelvin Eldridge

www.OnlineConnections.com.au

Dear Vodafone customer: Congratulations. You are one of 100 users we have selected......

A couple of times recently an unusual page has popped up in my browser (using Microsoft Edge) with the following message.

Dear Vodafone customer:

Congratulations. You are one of 100 users we have selected as a part of our reward program. You can win the Samsung S10, iPhone XS or iPad Pro.

I thought it was interesting because I do use Vodafone.

Of course this is a scam. You should ignore these.

The fact that I am a Vodafone user is easy to determine via my IP address.

The first time I got one I didn't quite see where it came from. The second time I clicked on the back button which took me back to the Oxford Dictionary's site www.lexico.com. I've used this site many, many times, so there's nothing suspect about the site. The problem is the site uses Google's AdSense advertising and I'd be fairly sure a malicious ad has crept through. The means potentially any site that uses advertising (and that's probably hundreds of millions) could be carrying nasties.

If something pops up unexpectedly when using your browser don't trust it. Close the tab and move on.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au

IP address 207.241.232.233 scanning website.

I noticed the IP address 207.241.232.233 was scanning my site and generating a considerable number of hits. I decided to check if I could out out more about who was behind the IP address.

It turns out this robot was the scanner for the Internet Archive. Over the years I found the Internet Archive to be quite useful, in particular the waybackmachine. Whilst the hits I saw were links to external sites and fairly pointless, I'm happy to accept the hits as I'm sure the Internet Archive helps many, many people.

Kelvin Eldridge

South Australia speed camera locations and red light camera locations now live.

Some time ago I developed an interest in red light cameras and speed cameras. This started because the yellow light timing was set incorrectly on a number of red light speed cameras around Melbourne. I took a video of the timing when it was wrong and the timing after the lights were fixed. These videos are available on my YouTube channel.

One thing led to another and I combined code from a site I'd developed, with red light speed camera location and fine information and www.SpeedCameraLocations.com.au was born. The site has been running for a number of years and I'm pleased when I see people using the site to help them understand their fine with a range of information including satellite view, street view and often a dashcam video.

I'd recently extended the site to cover New South Wales and now I've extended the site to cover South Australia and Adelaide. For the South Australia red light locations and speed camera locations I still need to collate the number and value of fines, but I felt even without this information, the location information can be very useful and thus the South Australian section of www.SpeedCameraLocations.com.au/sa/ is now live.

I hope others find this information useful.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.SpeedCameraLocations.com.au/sa/

IP address 136.243.212.93 scanning website.

I noticed in my logs today a lot of activity from the IP address 136.243.212.93. A check of the internet just gave me reports of spam but I couldn't help feel I should dig a little deeper.

First I checked the IP address 136.243.212.93. This IP address is based in Germany.

Next I checked my website logs to find the User Agent String. A bot scanner will let you know more about itself by providing information in the User Agent String. The User Agent String is also used in browser software to let a site know the browser the person is using. If the User Agent String is faked or disguised it may or may not be malicious. A reason you may disguise the user agent string is if you write a bot to collect information but the site only allows browsers. For example you may wish to automate a process that accesses web pages but the site stops you unless you provide a browser User Agent String. Depending on your point of view you're still doing something the site doesn't want you to do so it could be considered inappropriate.

In this case my logs for the IP address showed the following User Agent String.

serpstatbot/1.0 (advanced backlink tracking bot; curl/7.58.0; http://serpstatbot.com/; abuse@serpstatbot.com)

Whilst I may not be entirely pleased my site's being scanned, at least this bot lets me know everything I need to know, including where I can find out more information about the bot and it's purpose.

At this point I can make a decision as to do nothing, block the bot using an entry in the robots.txt file, or block the IP address. In this case I decided that I could reduce unproductive traffic by blocking the IP address. I could have just as easily done nothing and let the bot scan my site/s. A considerable percentage of web traffic really is just automated bots and this is just another one.

It should also be kept in mind that companies often use scanners to get their information into site logs. Then when people check out where the traffic is coming from they've advertised their company to another person as relatively low cost. The one's I'm concerned about are the IP addresses that if you want to directly end up being malicious and could damage your computer. It's a good idea not to visit unknown IP addresses without using a tool to check the address out first.

Kelvin Eldridge
IT support.
www.OnlineConnections.com.au

Scam calls from 0268540287, 0268504751, 0263140111, 0264130111, 0264133171, 0262836675, 0267660319

A contact has received six calls today from the following numbers.

0268540287, 0268504751, 0263140111, 0264130111, 0264133171, 0262836675, 0267660319
02 6854 0287, 02 6850 4751, 02 6314 0111, 02 6413 0111, 02 6413 3171, 02 6283 6675, 02 6766 0319

Most of the calls were hang ups. The latest one provided the information needed.

The telephone call using a recording stated the IP address was being used and most likely the person had been hacked. They haven't, it's just a scam.

The call goes on to say press 1 for technical support. Not pressing anything means nothing else happens and the caller hangs up.

Unfortunately these calls are annoying but since they appear to come from different numbers there's nothing that can be done to block a call.

There's a couple of things I suggest people can do to limit the annoyance of such calls.

1. Set up your phone so that all your contacts cause the phone to ring with one tone, and those that you don't know to ring with another tone. That way you instantly know legitimate calls from people you know, and can ignore the calls from people you don't know.

2. You can send all message from people you don't know to voice mail using the Hiya app.

3. You can use Hiya (which is built into Samsung S8 and above) but this phone already has the Hiya app and the calls aren't being marked as bad. It's pretty hard to mark phone numbers as bad if different numbers are used for every call. Keep in mind phone numbers can be faked so the number displayed is not likely to be the actual number.

The main thing is if anyone else gets a call from one of the numbers we've already received calls from, they'll know the calls are most likely scam calls.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
IT support

ING - Looks like you're using an unsupported browser.

A person recently contacted me about the message they'd received when using ING's online service. They'd called ING support and were reportedly told they probably needed a new computer.

The real problem is without any warning ING has stopped supporting Internet Explorer. To suggest a new computer is required is very poor advice and quite concerning that any such advice would be given. This sets up the user for potentially being sold a computer when no computer is required. ING should take better care of their customers than to offer such advice.

First ING could have issued a warning to all users using an older browser, that they would stop supporting the browser, rather than just presenting the user with an unexpected message. Second the ING support person is probably under pressure to maintain their support quota so may not be able to provide the level of support the user requires.

Most like the user has been using a shortcut to ING for some years. The person is using Windows 10 and could easily use one of the alternate browsers. However there's always the risk they'll use the shortcut which uses Internet Explorer. That shortcut needs to be removed. The default browser setting in Windows 10 also needs to be checked that it is an acceptable browser. Any shortcuts or bookmarks the person uses need to be set up for use a more modern browser.

No new computer is required.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
IT support.