Displaying Amazon "iframe" Ads Without The Scroll Bar In Scribefire

As I have mentioned previously, a scroll bar will appear when I place an Amazon "iframe" ad in Scribefire Chrome for Opera, resulting in the ad not being displayed as it should while editing, and indeed after publishing, while in "Edit Visually" mode.

After having gathered enough courage to peek at Scribefire's source code, I am glad that I have found a fix to this problem (see Note 1 below on extracting the source code from the Scribefire Extension file "scribefire-4.oex").

This is what I did to remove the scroll bar. I appended additional parameters to line 964 in the file "events.js" - they are actually just parameters found in the code given by Amazon that were not defined in this line. Below is how the line looks before modification:

extended_valid_elements : "iframe[title|width|height|src|frameborder|allowfullscreen]",

My modified line now reads:

Inserting Amazon Affiliate "iframe" Ads With Scribefire

Scribefire Classic Fails With "iframe" Ads

I use Scribefire Classic (version 4.0.0.1) on Firefox (version 3.6.8) to compose my blogs. I tried inserting three Amazon affiliate "iframe" ads into my blog post last week and failed. Not only did the ads not get displayed in the Scribefire's "Rich Editing" tab, but upon publishing and accessing my blog post from Opera desktop and Opera Mini, only one ad was displayed instead of three.

When I looked at the HTML source (by selecting "source" when I right click in Opera desktop), I noticed that the "iframe" tags in my Amazon ads were modified by Scribefire upon publishing. The closing tag "</iframe>" was dropped and the opening tag was modified by making it self-terminating for each inserted ad. For example, the tag code provided by Amazon was:

My Contribution To The 2013 MY Garden Birdwatch Survey

Here is my contribution to the 2013 MYGB bird count (MY Garden Birdwatch) - an annual survey of garden birds in Malaysia, initiated by the birdwatching chapter of the Malaysian Nature Society. I did my bird counting of my front garden up on the first floor from my bedroom window on 15th June 2013, between 4:15pm and 4:45pm. This is the second year that I am participating in this survey. Participation is voluntary. I find that the count is more or less the same as last years. I did my count last year on 3rd June 2012 between 4:00pm and 4:30pm.

Revoking Picasa Access Rights From Scribefire

I do not use Scribefire, a free Mozilla Firefox add-on offline blog editor, for uploading my blog pictures to Picasa Web Albums anymore. Instead, I am now using Picasa3 Desktop. Uploading pictures via Scribefire is a little rigid and the pictures' file names do not get set upon a successfully upload. In contrast, Picasa3 Desktop has more options - like selecting a destination web album to upload to for example - and I do not lose my pictures' file names.

The right thing to do, since I do not use it anymore, is to revoke all access rights that I have granted to the website www.scribefire.com previously. After some searching, I finally found the URL for doing this - which is at the Google "Account Overview" page, and not at Picasa Web Albums website. Yes, a little misleading.

Faster Page Loading With Google+ Mobile On The Desktop

Mobile sites are websites that are designed to be viewed from a mobile device, like on a mobile phone for example. They are simpler in design and more focused. I love using mobile sites, quite simply because I can get faster page loading time on a desktop browser even though I am still using a slow 50kbps dial-up line. I am not really into those dynamic and interactive web pages. So the absence of such feature on mobiles sites is not a problem for me.

Daily Programme Summary For TV Alhijrah

I have finally found it. I have been looking for this for quite some time now. There are actually some decent shows and documentaries on TV Alhijrah. And the list of TV programmes for the day for TV Alhijrah can actually be found at their Facebook page.

Now, if only the other Malaysian TV stations would follow suit since most Malaysian newspapers have stop publishing complete daily TV programme summary for quite some time now. A bit unfortunate and unconvenient I think.


Update (4th July 2013)

TV Alhijrah has stopped posting the list of programmes for the day at their Facebook page, as mentioned above. Instead you can now find it at their website at the following URL : http://www.tvalhijrah.com/jadual-rancangan.aspx - not just for the day but for the week and with synopsis too. Yeah!

Building Up My Flock Of Bantams Again

I have to build up my flock of Bantam Chickens (or "ayam katik") again after losing 5 of them to a python last month. I have always hatched my chicks naturally. The hens always go broody after laying around 9 or 10 eggs. However, this time I have to let a first time hen sit on the eggs. My reliable hens died last month because of that python.

The picture above is the latest addition to my flock - a 5 week old baby chick. I was hoping for more but things were just not meant to be. The hen laid a total of 7 eggs, but I removed 3 as I noticed that the hen had trouble sitting on all 7 eggs. Of the 4 eggs, only 2 hatched and only 1 chick survived. The other chick had trouble breaking out from its shell. I tried helping but the chick was just too weak. The lone surviving chick actually looks a little weak too during the first 7 days. But luckily it survived.

Google+ On Opera Mini

I am now accessing Google+ on Opera Mini via the URL http://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream. This is the only URL that I know of that will give me a decent looking Google+ Stream on Opera Mini. I have tested it on a mobile phone and also on a J2ME (Java Micro Edition) emulator running under Windows XP (I am using MicroEmulator). They display perfectly, much to my satisfaction.

When accessing Google+ via the "Speed Dial" that came pre-configured with Opera Mini Version 5 and 7, most of the Google+ options will go missing. They were there previously but for some reason they have gradually disappeared over the last couple of weeks, making the Google+ page looking rather plain and uninteresting. I wonder what happened?

Turmeric Flowers

Before I started planting them, I did not know that turmeric produces flowers.

I have been fortunate enough to have some flowering turmeric during the last couple of weeks. It is not often that I get a bloom. Sometimes, I do not get any even though the plant has matured and the root is due to be dug up. One has to be patient sometimes I suppose.

Dwindling Number Of Garden Snails

Back in February and March 2013, there were a few blog postings at Ipoh Happenings talking about some extreme levels of solar UV radiation that was bombarding Ipoh back then. The weather in Ipoh has definitely been quite extreme in recent months. I can feel in it my skin while doing my gardening. The day time temperature can be quite unbearable at times. And this can drag on for a number of days, sometimes without any rain to cool us off.

I do wonder though if this excessive UV radiation and extreme heat is taking a toll on the snails in my garden. There seems to be a significant drop in their numbers, although nothing much has changed in my environment. There is still enough shady places for them to hide. I first noticed this back in January 2013. At that time, I could not find any live snail but just some empty snail shells under some shrubs and overgrown weeds. I had a peek at my garden again yesterday, and all I could find was just a single snail, measuring about 2 inches in length. Still a lot of empty snail shells, although the colour of these shells do appear to be fading.