Moving !

I am moving all technical/geeky stuff to a much classier place : http://geek-o-pedia.blogspot.com/

Remembering Good Ol' Plum...

Some people make a difference in very subtle ways, without much glorification, without much noise. 125 years ago, a child was born prematurely somewhere in England and was called "Plum" by most family and friends. The child never bothered to correct them, he never bothered to correct anyone anyway. It amazes you when you really clear your throat and start thinking about it. I have read most of his works several times, many portions are almost verbatim. Still, I can't stop laughing, I can't stop feeling happy and relieved. Its as if some magic hand grabs you by the collar and makes you happy. Simple.

Had his only contribution to literature been Lord Emsworth and Blandings Castle, his place in history would have been assured. Had he written of none but Mike and Psmith, he would be cherished today as the best and brightest of our comic authors. If Jeeves and Wooster had been his solitary theme, still he would be hailed as the Master. If he had given us only Ukridge, or nothing but recollections of the Mulliner family, or a pure diet of golfing stories, Doctor Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse would nonetheless be considered immortal. That he gave us all those - and more - is our good fortune and a testament to the most industrious, prolific and beneficent author ever to have sat down, scratched his head and banged out a sentence.

For me, Wodehouse sort of resurrected. I read a lot of Jeeves during my teens. But, as life passed me by, the old charm of Wodehouse gotten lost in the fog. My girlfriend at that time who eventually chose to marry me, made me re-read Wodehouse and I am thankful for those wonderful evenings I spent with Wooster and PSmith (he is a startling sophisticate, an expelled old Etonian whose delicately attuned nervous system can be shocked by loud colours, celluloid cuffs and the mere mention of an inadequately pressed trouser crease.the "P" is silent - like PTennisnet in Asterix and Cleopetra).

If I were to say that the defining characteristic of Wodehouse, the man, was his professionalism, that might make him sound rather dull. We look for eccentricity, family trauma and personal demons in our great men. Wodehouse, who knew just what was expected of authors, was used to having to apologise for a childhood that was "as normal as rice-pudding" and a life that consisted of little more than "sitting in front of the typewriter and cursing a bit".

Wodehouse, like Shakespeare, created his own writing style that influenced innumerable authors in the years to come. Some of them acknowledge the legacy (read Douglas Adam's preface for 'Sunset at Blandings') and some not.

The first thing that strikes you is Wodehouse's mastery over character portrayals. There is Lord Emsworth himself, the amiable and dreamy peer, whose first love – pumpkins – is soon supplanted by the truest and greatest love of his life, the Empress of Blandings, that peerless Black Berkshire sow. Then there is Bertram Wilberforce Wooster, descendant of the Sieur de Wooster who did his bit in the Crusades, and young Bertram retains the strict code of honour handed down from his ancestor. Bertie Wooster is, of course, the employer of Jeeves, the supreme gentleman's personal gentleman. Much has been written about Jeeves. His imperturbability, his omniscience, his unruffled insight, his orotund speech, his infallible way with a quotation... in short, his perfection. It would be a pity, however, to overlook the character of Bertie Wooster, who is himself a great deal more than the silly ass or chinless wonder that people often imagine. That he is loyal, kind, chivalrous, resolute and magnificently sweet-natured is apparent. But is he stupid? Jeeves is overheard describing him once as "mentally negligible".

The next thing is the narration and Wodehouse's ability to squeeze in the last drop of humour out of a situation. No banana skins, no falling fat people. Pure humour just like the one Mom made. Here is Bertie's way with Victorian poetry:
"I once got engaged to his daughter Honoria, a ghastly dynamic exhibit who read Nietzsche and had a laugh like waves breaking on a stern and rockbound coast. "
and
"Honoria... is one of those robust, dynamic girls with the muscles of a welter-weight and a laugh like a squadron of cavalry charging on a tin bridge."

And this can go on and on with hilarious results. As they say, the proof is in the pudding, so go and read the stuff.

Although Wodehouse and his novels are considered quintessentially English, from 1924 on he lived largely in France and the United States. He was also profoundly uninterested in politics and world affairs. When World War II broke out in 1939 he remained at his seaside home in Le Touquet, France, instead of returning to England, apparently failing to recognize the seriousness of the conflict. He was subsequently taken prisoner by the Germans in 1940 and interned by them for a year, first in Belgium, then at Tost in Upper Silesia (now in Poland). (He is recorded as saying "If this is Upper Silesia, one must wonder what Lower Silesia must be like...".) While at Tost, he entertained his fellow prisoners with witty dialogues, which, after being released from internment a few months short of his 60th birthday, he used as the basis for a series of radio broadcasts aimed at America (but not England) he was persuaded by the Germans to make from Berlin. Wartime England was in no mood for light-hearted banter, however, and the broadcasts led to many accusations of collaboration and even treason. Some libraries banned his books. It was not necessary for Orwell to come in defense of Wodehouse, but he could not help himself doing so.

I am not sure how to conclude. Perhaps there is no way for me to conclude because the endless evenings will never conclude, atleast not for me. I wish the contagious bliss touches you also.

How to Tie a Tie...

If you've never been initiated into the secret society of tie-wearing, rejoice! For your ship has just come in, via this instructional tie-tying video.

How to Tie a Tie and also this, this and this.

Prevent RSI.

For once, lets digress from technical stuff and talk about something equally important.  Our 8 hours stretches on the box has some alarming affect on our physique and psyche.
Among all the adverse effects, the most painful is RSI.
I neglected the numbing feeling in my right wrist for a while but could not ignore the shooting pain. I've been too laissez-faire about it myself, and I've suffered for it.
During last two weeks, I changed my working style and would like to share some tips with you.

• Get yourself a tiny timer. Setup small timers. The timer should stop you at these small intervals and ask you to relax. The best tool I found was http://www.workrave.org/welcome/
• Follow the instructions as per the timer program and try NOT to neglect the small breaks (the usual break I keep is for 30 seconds every 5 mins)
• WorkRave also suggests exercises that you  can do during those short breaks. Follow those.
• DO NOT MULTITASK. Multitasking is good for machines, not for us.
• Stop using mouse where keyboard would do. Learn common keystroke replacement. If you are geek, use AutoHotKey

If you find some other tips ... share them.
Healthy Computing...

Managing \dllcache folder in XP

%WINDOWS%\system32\dllcache\ folder on my work machine gobbled up 500 Megs of my precious C drive and left me with a slow pathetic machine.

What on earth does it contain ? WinXP uses System File Checker to protect itself from system instability caused by 3rd party software overwriting important system files. By default, Windows File Protection is always enabled and allows Windows digitally signed files to replace existing files safely.  To do that, the Windows File Protection service constantly monitors for any changes to the main system files. Well Windows XP keeps a cache (copy) of these essential files at the following location:

C:WINDOWS\System32\Dllcache  (assuming C: is your system root which it probably is.)

Deleting this folder is easy, just say this at the command prompt:

sfc /purgecache 

But this cache will be rebuild next time you restart the machine. But, its easy to redirect this cache to a larger partition. Just do the following :

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
Modify or create a subkey as follows
SFCDllCacheDir=[Disk:\Folder]

Evolution - Finally ported to Win32

Evolution is a Personal Information Management program that has been popular in the Linux world for a few years. It looks startlingly like Microsoft Outlook, and in fact is intended as a replacement for Outlook.

Well, now Evolution has been ported to Windows. I am in process of trying out this port, and can't comment just now. Watch this space.

Microsoft finally releases Defender.

Hot on the heels of Internet Explorer 7 comes the final version of Windows Defender, the anti-spyware tool that's been in beta for nearly two years.

Windows Defender, previously known as Windows AntiSpyware, offers real-time protection from spyware threats. The big news about the final release: It's still free, and Microsoft is even offering two free phone-support calls per user.

Windows Defender [via Information Week]

Top Firefox 2 Tweaks.

In honor of the newly released FF2.0, today we'll dive deep into the bowels of the fox's config with a handful of my favorite Firefox 2 (and older) tweaks.

How to modify Firefox's configuration (about:config)

All this "advanced config" talk got you worried? Fear not, my friend. Here's the deal: Firefox's configuration is a long list of keys and values. To view this list, type about:config into the Firefox address bar. Then, enter the name of the key you want to update in the "Filter" field. The list will narrow to only the entries that match your keyword as you type, as shown.

(The key, of course, is knowing the key. More on that below.) To modify the value of a key, double-click on the value field and update the entry. To see your changes, restart your browser. Easy as pie.

Got it? Good. Let's get to tweaking.

Session restore

Fx 2.0 only: As a blogger and web mail user, it breaks my heart to recount how many times I've composed a long post or email message, then accidentally closed the tab or browser and lost all my work. No more! With Firefox 2, set the browser.startup.page key to 3 to restore your browsing session - with form entries intact! - every time you start your browser or undo close tab after a wayward click. Note: By default, Firefox 2 automatically restores your session if your browser crashes - but this does it every time you restart your browser normally. Thanks for the tip, Arun!

• Key: browser.startup.page
• Modified Value: 3
• Default: 1 (open your specified homepages)

Update: Ryan points out that doing it this way is like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer. To do it the normal person way, from the Tools menu choose Options, and in the Main area, select "Show my windows and tabs from last time" from the "When Firefox starts" dropdown. D'oh! Thanks Ryan!

Tab width before scrolling kicks in

Fx 2.0 only: The biggest interface changes in Firefox 2 involve tabbed browsing. Power surfers who open more than a dozen tabs will notice that Firefox 2 minimizes tabs to a certain width, then sets the excess to scroll off the tab bar with left and right arrows. As someone who often has more than a dozen tabs open, not being able to see them all made me crazy. One solution is to reduce the minimum tab width so that more tabs fit in the bar before the scroll kicks in. The default is 100 pixels; I found that 75 worked better for me - page titles were still readable, but more tabs could fit. Compare 100 width, which fits 7 tabs across at this size (click to enlarge):

To 75, which fits 10 across at this size (click to enlarge):

To disable tab scrolling entirely, set the value to 0.

• Key: browser.tabs.tabMinWidth
• Modified Value: 75 (fit in more tabs before overflow enables scroll)
• Alternate Modified Value: 0 (disable scroll entirely)
• Default: 100

Tab close buttons

Fx 2.0 only: Another tab interface change in Firefox 2 is the addition of a close button on each individual tab. I happen to love this, but some hate it, saying it causes them to accidentally close a tab when just trying to switch to it. If you're a hater, revert to the Firefox 1.5 behavior by changing the browser.tabs.closeButtons value to 3. This will not display close tabs on individual tabs, and turn on a single close tab button at the right end of the tab bar.

• Key: browser.tabs.closeButtons
• Modified Value: 3 (revert to Firefox 1.5 behavior)
• Alternate Modified Value: 2 (don't display any close tab buttons)
• Default: 1 (display close buttons on all tabs)

Fetch only what you click

Fx .6 and up: Firefox has this wacky little feature that downloads pages from links it thinks you may click on pages you view, like the top result on a page of Google results. This means you use up bandwidth and CPU cycles and store history for web pages you may not have ever viewed. Creepy, eh? To stop that madness, set the network.prefetch-next key to false.

• Key: network.prefetch-next
• Modified Value: false

Limit RAM usage

All versions: Goodness knows I've done a good amount of belly-aching about Firefox's voracious appetite for RAM. (It's consistently the most memory-intensive process on both my PC and Mac.) Happily a simple config tweak got Mem Use right back down to a more comfortable number. Along with the previous prefetch mod, set your browser.cache.disk.capacity to a value that fits your total RAM.

• Key: browser.cache.disk.capacity
• Modified Value: Depends on your system's total memory. According to Computerworld:

  For RAM sizes between 512BM and 1GB, start with 15000. For RAM sizes between 128MB and 512M, try 5000.

Turn off chrome tooltips

All versions: I have an irritating Firefox problem on my Mac. When I try to drag a bookmark into one of my bookmark toolbar folders, the tool tip gets in the way and prevents the drop from working. Argh! Like you, I already know what all the buttons on my browser chrome do, so the tool tips aren't necessary. To turn them off, set the browser.chrome.toolbar_tips key value to false. Bonus is, it solved my Mac's bookmark drag and drop problem.

• Key: browser.chrome.toolbar_tips
• Modified Value: false

Lastly, though 2.0's default value is a lot more reasonable than 1.5's, you can use about:config to put off that annoying Unresponsive Script dialog on Javascript-heavy web pages.

Update: From the comments, a few more good about:config tweaks:

• layout.spellcheckDefault = 2 turns on Firefox 2's spell-checking in input fields as well as textarea. (That means no more typos in Lifehacker post headlines!)
• browser.urlbar.hideGoButton=true turns off the rarely-used Go button at the end of the address bar, for more room to see long URLs. Thanks, sister-ray!

See the MozillaZine about:config wiki page for the exhaustive list of Firefox preferences keys, their possible values and effects.

Stolen from original article atLifehackerr.

Windows Live Writer Rocks !

Microsoft released a beta of Windows Live Writer. According to them...

Windows Live™ Writer is a free, downloadable program that will help you include rich content in your blog posts and know exactly what your blog will look like before you publish it to the Web.

Yeah, its all these and more. I loved the WYSIWYG editing and ability to quickly add rich content. Some features are really cool like Smart image publishing directly to your blog automatically links your thumbnails to larger images with more detail.

The catch ? the blog preview is IE based and as we all know IE hates correct CSS and my blog looks like an elephant in IE. But everything said and done, I love the tool.

Remove accidental IE Restrictions.

I just returned from a 20 day vacation to find that suddenly my IE 7 did not allow me to access the 'Internet Options'. IE spit these dirty error on me...

This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator.

I was shocked and was going to throw in the towel when something within me rebelled. I googled a lot to find the following tweak to remove the restriction.

• Open the Registry and find the following Key :
• [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Restrictions]
• Set the value of NoBrowserOptions  to 0 instead of 1.

Inshort, set the following keys and values :

User Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Restrictions]
System Key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Restrictions]
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value Data: (0 = disable restriction, 1 = enable restriction)

Save the registry and restart the browser.