I have recently upgraded from Internet Explorer 8 to 9. Unfortunately, I am now unable view my British Gas online account because, I’m told, its website is not compatible with IE9. Do you have any suggestions?

Such problems are seldom due to a genuine incompatibility between a certain version of a web browser and a website. Much more likely is that the website is performing a check and has failed to recognise the new version of the browser you’re using.

If this check can be bypassed, the site usually works perfectly well. To this end, some web browsers offer the ability to change something known as the ‘user agent string’ – this is a little bit of code that identifies the web browser to visited websites. It’s presented to any website you visit, whether it’s http://www.redenvelope.com/personalized-gifts-rprsl or British Gas.

Unfortunately, Internet Explorer does not – at least not by default. There are ways to change IE’s user agent string by editing the Windows Registry, but I wouldn’t recommend messing with this unless you knew what you were doing.

My main recommendation would be to contact the owner of the website. As more and more people start using a new browser, this problem will need to be corrected and the more pressure clients put on them, the quicker they will get their web team to resolve the issue. In the meantime, there are a number of alternative browser, like Firefox or Chrome that can tide you over.

I’ve been working on a manuscript for a novel for some time and would love to know if there’s any way to publish my book online. Any recommendations?

Hi there. I’ve just been through the process recently for my father, who writes books in Maltese and has been wanting to turn his work into eBooks. One thing that is not clear in your question is whether you want to publish an eBook or a printed book; but I have a solution for you that enables you to do both (or either if you prefer).

The platform I used is called Lulu and here’s a short video about what it does:

The process is pretty simple and the site will walk you through it. You upload your manuscript, design your cover and pick a number of options along the way. Publishing is free, with Lulu collecting a commission on any sales. The end result is a printed book or one you can load in your favourite ebook reader. I’ve found it quite intuitive and would recommend you give it a try!

I know that you can stuff cheaper online and I’m looking around for a pair of glasses. I’ve looked around and came across a whole bunch of websites. Is there any one you recommend?

As you say, there are a number of sites out there offering good prices for specs. There is one that keeps popping out at me though, a site called Zenni Optical where you can get a great selection of prescription eye glasses for a pretty good price. For example, check out this pair which cost less than $10:

Now that’s a pretty awesome price for a pair of specs and I think they look quite good, don’t you? Well, I like them, but if you don’t there are a whole selection of different prescription glasses to choose from.

Even though the specs above cost under $10, this includes anti-scratch coating, thin lenses and UV protection. They even come with a free case and a microfibre cleaning cloth. Shipping to the U.S. will be under $5 or $10 for International Shipping. Which means that you can get your specs for next to nothing.

The website also has this really cool feature where you can upload your photo and try on different specs to see what they look like. It’s called Zenni Frame Fit and lets you virtually try on all the glasses you want. Pretty neat I thought.

My cousin’s been talking about a poker game called Texas Holdem. He’s watching a lot of poker on TV and would really like to learn how to play so he can take part in tournaments (like he’s going to retire off his winnings right?). Where can he learn more about it?

First of all, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that very few people actually play poker professionally and you really should make sure your cousin gets that message. Sure, there are a few people who excel at the game, but for most of us it’s just a pastime.

Obviously, the first thing he would need to do is learn the ins and out of the game. There’s a great page on PokerStar’s website that explains the ins and outs of the game as well as how different variations on the game work. For example, there’s Limit Texas Hold’em, No Limit Texas Hold’em, Pot Limit Texas Hold’em and Mixed Texas Hold’em; all variations which are explained on the page.

Now, here’s the great bit. Once he’s got his head around the rules, he can actually play for free on the site until he’s familiar with the rules and is ready for a real game. The site works with a download that provides a great experience, and he’ll to play with people from around the world. It’s a great way to learn all the different innuendoes of the game, learn from experience and also pick up some tips from people who have been playing the game for some time. Poker is very much like everything else, it takes knowing the rules and gaining as much experience as you can get to get as good as you can ever be. All you need is some information and a place to stretch your wings.

Hi there. I’m a bit fan of poker and organise a weekly tournament at my house with some friends. My French cousin is coming to visit and I’d like him to join us but I’m not sure how skilful is is. I know that there are poker tutorials on the Poker Stars website, but his English isn’t all that great. Is there anywhere you can recommend where he could learn?

Poker isn’t one of my strong points, but the Internet is. I had a quick look around at the Poker Stars website and found that they have a French site which your cousin could use to learn how to play. I didn’t realise, but poker is perfectly legal in France, which is probably why Poker Stars have a regional site where it’s all in French.

Besides tutorials, I found out that Poker Stars also lets you play as much as you like using Play Money. So, not only can he learn how to play, but he can also play with different people around the world. If he’s playing with play money then he has nothing to lose and he can play as much as he likes. I know that playing with real money is more exciting, but if he’s not that familiar with the game it makes sense to play as much as he can before he puts real money on the table.

So, that’s the plan then. Introduce him to the French site, get him to go through all the tutorials they have available there, and then tell him to play as much as he can without spending any cash. He probably wants to try and play with real money before playing with the lot of you; but at least he can get his act together to provide you with a real challenge. Wish him luck from me!

My web server has been throwing “Internal Error 500″s and “Premature end of script”s. What does this mean and how do I resolve it?

The “Premature end of script headers” error message is probably the most loathed and common error message you’ll find in the Apache world. What the error actually means, is that the script stopped for whatever reason before it returned any output to the web server. You can get this regardless of the type of website you’re running, whether you’re selling apidexin, ballet shoes or just have a personal blog.

A common cause of this for script writers is to fail to set a content type before printing output code. In Perl for example, before printing any HTML it is necessary to tell the Perl script to set the content type to text/html, this is done by sending a header, like so:

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

If you don’t do that, Perl will try to output to STDOUT (Standard Output, or the servers terminal) instead of through the web server to your browser.
The same applies to any CGI script of any language.

The problem might be the script itself, for example, say you have a formmail type script that is trying to send an e-mail to sendmail on the server, but the path to sendmail in the script is wrong or has passed bad parameters. The script should die at this stage and print an error message to the server error log, saying that it was “unable to open sendmail” or some such error, but you will see an error like “Internal Server error” or “Premature end of script headers” because printing detailed error messages to an unknown users browser is giving to much potentially damaging information away to possibly untrustworthy people.

With Perl there is something you can try that will attempt to redirect error messages to the browser so you can attempt to diagnose the problem.
Open the script in your text editor, and under the path to Perl on the first line, place this:

use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);

Then upload the script again, set it to executable and point your browser at it. If all goes according to plan, the error message will now be printed to the browser for all to see. Fix the error it details, and then comment out (or remove) that line because its never a good idea to give server settings out.

I keep losing auctions in the last few seconds and want to know if there’s something i’m doing wrong. How do other bidders do it?

You’re referring to a technique called sniping: which is placing a bid on an auction in the last few seconds before it closes. It can be a bit risky doing this, as if you have technical problems you may not be able to place the bid, but in most cases it does mean that you manage to get your auction for a better price, as your opponents may not have chance to outbid you.

Whether you’re bidding on ballet shoes or sterling silver jewelry, what you need is JustSnipe. This is the sniper I use and I find it pretty useful. All you have to do is give it the auction number and the maximum you’re ready to bid and just let it take care of business. A few seconds before the auction closes it will place a bid for you and more often than not the auction will be yours!

I regularly send emails to multiple recipients with Windows Live Mail and it’s tiresome to have to manually select their email addresses from the contacts database each time. Is there any way I can add their details to a group, which can be used to contact them each time?

This can be easily done in Windows Live Mail, although the software calls groups ‘categories’. Click on Contacts in the bottom left of the main Live Mail window to bring up the Windows Live Contacts. It can also download your contacts list from Windows Live Messenger or Hotmail.

Click the arrow next to New, then from the dropdown menu, click Category. In the window that appears, give the category a name and choose which people in your contacts list you would like to add to it. People can belong to more than one category. Their names will appear at the bottom. Click on Save when you’re happy with the selection.
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Now close the contacts list and return to the main Windows Live Mail screen. Click New to begin writing a new email. Either type the category name in the box labelled ‘To:’ or click the ‘To:’ icon and select the category from your contacts list.

Email addresses can be added and removed from the category as needed. Open the contacts list in the same way as before, right-click on the category and click edit category.

Be careful though, as any changes you make in Live Mail will be carried over into Messenger and Hotmail, including deleting a contact and creating a group. If you create a group in Windows Live Mail, it will also appear in Messenger. You probably won’t be able to get an insurance quote to protect you from that sort of thing

I followed a link to a download a site called Sourceforge and saw a message about mirrors. The download seemed to arrive normally but what did the message mean?

A mirror is a different website that has offered to make a download available, sharing the work of transferring the file. The idea behind calling it a mirror is that it should be a perfect reproduction of the first site.
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As long as the link to the mirror is from a reputable site such as Sourceforge then there is no need to fire up your radar detector and start worrying. If you are given a choice it is a good idea to pick a mirror as close to you as possible but, as the difference in speed is negligible, don’t worry too much about making the decision.

Recently, whenever I’ve been sending email to a HotMail account, they’ve been bouncing back after being reported as spam. How can I resolve this?

That’s a very good question, and one I’ve been fighting with for the last few week. I have a couple of email addresses that come from trusted domains (none of them are on any black lists), just Hotmail and Live keep bouncing them back. Turns out that Microsoft have their own spam filter systems which don’t seem to follow any industry standards, and once you’re on their bad boy list, it seems to be pretty hard to get off.

There are a few things you can look at though, which are described in their Guidelines page. Don’t expect to get off the list any time soon though, they seem to be quite slow when it comes to doing anything about this issue. If you’re a smoker, stock up for the long haul, if not, you might want to get an electric cigarette of the sort that doesn’t run out!