upnishad

Moving !

2006-11-22T16:16:00.000+05:30

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

Remembering Good Ol' Plum...

2006-11-22T16:12:00.001+05:30

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...

2006-11-13T10:14:00.000+05:30

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.

2006-11-09T16:58:00.000+05:30

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

2006-11-08T18:17:00.000+05:30

%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

2006-11-07T09:51:00.000+05:30

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.

2006-10-26T09:42:00.000+05:30

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.

2006-10-26T09:40:00.000+05:30

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 !

2006-09-05T17:37:00.000+05:30

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.

2006-09-05T17:26:00.000+05:30

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.

How to delete autocomplete entries for forms in Firefox

2006-08-07T19:15:00.000+05:30

You know the scenario: You've accidentally entered some wrong username or other information into a form field and now Firefox always suggests this wrong data in the grey auto-complete dropdown too.

It's easy to delete a single entry from the grey autocomplete dropdown:

Just start to type in into the form field until the grey dropdown appears, then use the cursor keys to move to the entry to be deleted and press the SHIFT key and the delete key Voila!

Just for completeness: In IE (Internet Explorer) just press the "Del" key to clear the selected/highlighted string.

Recover corrupted/deleted LOCAL emails in Thunderbird.

2006-08-03T11:30:00.000+05:30

I have always loved Thunderbird...but my love crossed all bounds today. Somehow in the morning, somehow (dont blame the birdy) my local folders got corrputed and I missed lots of mails from a specific very dear folder...I panicked but my faith in the birdy never wavered. I remembered that birdy never actually deletes any mails until I compact the folders. I tried to google and found this superb article.. In a nutshell, you can recover those long gone mails as follows :
(Disclaimer : This will work only if you have not compacted the folder)

- Turn off Thunderbird, do not compact.

- Using your OS, locate the file without an extension and with the same name as the Thunderbird folder where the messages were last (might be Trash) in your profile folder http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder#Thunderbird
For example, the Inbox file rather than inbox.msf or inbox.sbd.

- Open this file with a simple text editor.

- Change the digits after X-Mozilla-Status all to zero for those messages you wish to undelete if they still exist.

- Save the file

- Turn off the text editor

- Delete the file of the same name with the extension .msf. Example Trash.msf. This will rebuild the message index.

- If you are religious, say a prayer to the deity or saint of your choice

- Say a prayer to Murphy

- Restart Thunderbird

This works like a charm....

Change XP Themes Without Installing 3rd Party Software

2006-07-18T19:25:00.001+05:30

Do you hate the way the default windows visual scheme looks? Do you hate the fact that you can only choose from two schemes? Well there are some solutions to fixing this problem. If your lazy and dont care about your RAM usage or other vital stuff - you can install a 3rd party style manager such as Style-XP or some Stardock product. But if you ask me those always up space, RAM, and cpu usage.
I’d rather go into display properties on my desktop and change the visual style there. However - Microsoft prevents you from adding any more visual style due to their “uxtheme.dll” file. Therefore - we must either acquire a hacked version of the file that disables the restriction of adding additional visualization themes, or we can hack it ourselves. You could of course hex edit the dll yourself, but why go through the trouble when someone has already done it for you.

Grab it here.

Now apply the patch and reboot. After that, you have to install some themes. Here are some great websites where you can get themes from:

http://www.deviantart.com/

http://www.xptheme.info

http://www.deskmod.com

http://www.winxptheme.com/

http://www.windowspro.net/

http://www.themexp.org

http://winxp.rb-338.com/

http://www.belchfire.net/

http://www.aqua-soft.org/

http://www.getskinned.org

So anyway at this point you picked out your selection of themes that you like and have the zip files and your wondering where to put them all. Well its a simple matter of extracting ALL THE FILES found in the zip files to your “c:/windows/resources/themes” directory. After you have finished extracting the files, right click on your desktop then click on “properties.” That will open the Display Properties dialog box. Then:

A. For themes with the “.msstyles” file extension: click on the “Appearance” tab then choose your desired theme from the “Windows and buttons” dialog box, then choose which color scheme you prefer from the “color scheme” dialog box (most themes only come with one color, but some come with more). You should see something like in the screenshot here:

Click “apply” then close the display properties dialog box.

B. For themes with the “.theme” file extension, make sure the open “display properties” window is the “Themes” tab (it’s the default window, so you should already be looking right at it.) Choose your theme from the “themes” dialog box like below:

Once you’re done just hit apply.

C. For themes with both the “.msstyles” and “.theme” extensions, use the “.theme” version if you want to use any included icons, wallpaper, etc. Use the “.msstyles” version to use the “visual style” only without using any of the included icons, wallpaper, etc.

You’re done! Yeah, right, wouldn’t that be nice? You only wish it was that easy, because I know I do. So keep reading.

There are certain things that must be in place in order for themes to work correctly, so I recommend you double check to make sure everything is good to go before you do any of the above. So go ahead and open the “c:/windows/resources/themes” folder, and follow the below directions:

1. “.Theme” files must be directly within the “c:/windows/resources/themes” folder, and not within individual folders. Check out the screenshot to see what I mean:

If you find any in individual sub-folders, simply move the *.theme* file directly to the “c:/windows/resources/themes” folder.

2. “.Msstyles” files *must* be within their own individual sub-folders within the “c:/windows/resources/themes” folder like in the screenshot

3. After doing the above, you will need to check each individual sub-folder within the “c:/windows/resources/themes” folder, *including* the ones you didn’t have to fix, or create yourself. Why? Because:

a. It is essential that the name of the sub-folder match the name of the “.msstyles” file exactly, and caps, lower case, spaces, underscores, etc., ALL count - i.e., the file “generic.msstyles” must be in a folder entitled “generic,” “Generic_01.msstyles” must be in a folder entitled “Generic_01,” etc.

b. Some “.zip” files will extract files into what I call a “sub-sub folder.” For example, the file “generic.msstyles” might be in a sub-folder of a sub-folder; i.e., “c:/windows/resources/themes/generic/generic.” If this is the case, you will need to move the “.msstyles” file into the first sub-folder, “c:/windows/resources/themes/generic.” Delete the “sub-sub” folder after you’ve moved the “.msstyles” file.

4. Some “.msstyles” themes include what is known as a “shellstyle” (”shellstyle.dll”.) “Shellstyle.dll” should be in its own sub-folder entitled “shell” within the “.msstyles” theme sub-folder, “c:/windows/resources/themes/generic/shell”. Sometimes, the “shell” sub-folder has its own sub-folders, for example, “c:/windows/resources/themes/generic/shell/normalcolor”. If this is the case, “shellstyle.dll” should be in the “normalcolor” sub-folder.

Phew! There you go, now you have a FREE way to making your desktop look great. Not only that, but you’re saving your RAM by keeping extra programs out. More often than not, you wont have to go through the trouble to check all of these things, usually the author organizes the files properly.

Revosoft Caché

2006-07-11T10:29:00.000+05:30

Revosoft Caché, whose tagline is "Everyone has something to hide," obscures private folders on your PC's hard drive.
Fire up Caché, set a password, and browse to the folder you want to hide from anyone else who uses the computer. Unhide the folder by launching Caché and entering the password again. Caché isn't very polished - an unattractive interface includes a banner ad and at least one typo. Plus I'm not sure how difficult it would be to unlock the "hidden" folders, say with a Linux boot CD. BUT, if you just want a casual solution for keeping some files out of your roommate or kids' sight on a shared computer, Caché's for you. Caché's a free download, Windows only.

Google Platypus Mass Storage

2006-07-11T10:27:00.000+05:30

Google PlatypusThere was talk of a Google GDrive in the works a while ago. It was said to be some kind of mass storage area for user to store whatever they wanted, and be able to access it from anywhere.
Google's Super Secret Platypus Gdrive has the tagline of "A filer for the whole world. But better." Platypus enables you to store files on your C drive of on the filer. Google claims the following features :

If your computer crashes, or you get a new one, you can reinstall this Platypus software, and you files will be automatically downloaded and synched onto your new machine.
You can Sync files across many different computers, and operating systems.
You can view your files across the web.
You can share certain files to multiple people.
If you are not able to get an internet connection, all of your files are still available.

It is also said that this new Platypus application will be available in Windows, Mac and Linux formats. Word is that Justin Rosenstein, the Product Manager for the Google Page Creator is working on this project as well.

Search History is now part of Google News

2006-07-10T17:24:00.000+05:30

Google's personalized search feature has now been added to Google News. You can sign up for it at http://www.google.com/psearch. This offers users the opportunity to get the results that mean the most to your particular search keywords.
A cool feature of the personalized search for Google News includes the ability to manage past searches for websites, images, and news headlines.
Google's personalized search feature lines up all of your searches based on previous entries, and headlines that were actually clicked on.

Find out what you need at startup with Sysinfo

2006-07-04T12:36:00.000+05:30

I always wonder what I need in my Windoze startup...there is a great resource out there which tells you exactly what you need and what you should avoid in your startup list.
You can get a list of startup applications for your operating system at Sysinfo.org.
Thousands of apps are listed here, with a handy legend that tells you what's needed and what's not: for instance, 'Y' for leave it alone, 'U' for user's choice, 'X' for need to get rid of it, etc. Word to the wise, from the site: 'It is assumed that users are familiar with the operating system they are using and comfortable with making the suggested changes.'

Cheatsheet for Thunderbird

2006-07-04T10:28:00.000+05:30

I found a similar cheatsheet for Thunderbird by Leslie Franke..

Firefox Cheat sheet

2006-06-26T10:11:00.000+05:30

Blogger Leslie Franke has put together a very nice Firefox cheat sheet for anyone out there who doesn't feel that their Firefox skills are quite up to snuff.

Like most good cheat sheets, this one is well-organized and accessible. If you don't feel like memorizing all those nasty shortcuts, print off the cheat sheet and then head over to Lifehacker's mouse-less Firefox feature to get a jump start on your keyboard skills. Then head back to the cheat sheet and really dig into some more of the nitty gritty.

PDF format

HTML format

WinXP alternative

2006-06-10T15:02:00.000+05:30

My love-hate relationship with WinXP has drifted towards hate part during last couple of weeks...and I found this article and switched to Cygwin. Its sleek.

2006-06-08T11:45:00.000+05:30

I have tried to compile the best usage of Google to get almost everything in the search results :

Basic Usage:

Use quotation marks ” “ to locate an entire string.

eg. “james gosling” will only return results with that exact string.

Mark essential words with a +

If a search term must contain certain words or phrases, mark it with a + symbol. eg: +”james gosling” books will return all results containing “james gosling” but not necessarily those pertaining to a book

Negate unwanted words with a -

You may wish to search for the term bass, pertaining to the fish and be returned a list of music links as well. To narrow down your search a bit more, try: bass -music. This will return all results with “bass” and NOT “music”.

General Tips:

site:www.microsoft.com

This will search only pages which reside on this domain.

related:www.yahoo.org

This will display all pages which Google finds to be related to your URL

link:www.digg.org

This will display a list of all pages which Google has found to be linking to your site. Useful to see how popular your site is

spell:word

Runs a spell check on your word

define:word

Returns the definition of the word

stocks: [symbol, symbol, etc]

Returns stock information. eg. stock: msft

maps:

A shortcut to Google Maps

phone: name_here

Attempts to lookup the phone number for a given name

cache:

If you include other words in the query, Google will highlight those words within the cached document. For instance, cache:www.google.org web will show the cached content with the word “web” highlighted.

info:

The query [info:] will present some information that Google has about that web page. For instance, info:www.google.org will show information about the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the “info:” and the web page url.

weather:

Used to find the weather in a particular city. eg. weather: jabalpur

Advanced Tips:

filetype:

Does a search for a specific file type, or, if you put a minus sign (-) in front of it, it won’t list any results with that filetype. Try it with .mp3, .mpg or .avi if you like.

daterange:

Is supported in Julian date format only. 2452384 is an example of a Julian date.

allinurl:

If you start a query with [allinurl:], Google will restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the url. For instance, [allinurl: google search] will return only documents that have both “google” and “search” in the url.

inurl:

If you include [inurl:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the url. For instance, [inurl:google search] will return documents that mention the word “google” in their url, and mention the word “search” anywhere in the document (url or no). Note there can be no space between the “inurl:” and the following word.

allintitle:

If you start a query with [allintitle:], Google will restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the title. For instance, [allintitle: google search] will return only documents that have both “google” and “search” in the title.

intitle:

If you include [intitle:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the title. For instance, [intitle:google search] will return documents that mention the word “google” in their title, and mention the word “search” anywhere in the document (title or no). Note there can be no space between the “intitle:” and the following word.

allinlinks:

Searches only within links, not text or title.

allintext:

Searches only within text of pages, but not in the links or page title.

bphonebook:

If you start your query with bphonebook:, Google shows U.S. business white page listings for the query terms you specify. For example, [ bphonebook: google mountain view ] will show the phonebook listing for Google in Mountain View.

phonebook:

If you start your query with phonebook:, Google shows all U.S. white page listings for the query terms you specify. For example, [ phonebook: Krispy Kreme Mountain View ] will show the phonebook listing of Krispy Kreme donut shops in Mountain View.

rphonebook:

If you start your query with rphonebook:, Google shows U.S. residential white page listings for the query terms you specify. For example, [ rphonebook: John Doe New York ] will show the phonebook listings for John Doe in New York (city or state). Abbreviations like [ rphonebook: John Doe NY ] generally also work.

Putting it all Together:

Now it’s time to start to get creative with our search terms and really narrow down our results. Now that we have the basics, let’s start to combine them all into one search term.

Example #1: Search for some MP3s

Let’s say you’re a Beatles fan and want to see if you can find some of their songs on the Internet without using Kazaa, etc. Try this query:

“index of” + “mp3″ + “beatles” -html -htm -php

or you could try this query:

* “index of/mp3″ -playlist -html -lyrics beatles

Backup FF extension on the move

2006-05-29T11:29:00.000+05:30

If you use Firefox, there's a big chance you've installed extensions. There are some extensions that change your browsing habits, so you'd like to have them with you at work, on your new computer or on just about any computer you use.

There's an easy way to backup your Firefox extensions: Firefox Extension Backup Extension. I know it has a funny name, so you can just call it FEBE. You can backup your extensions, your themes, your bookmarks and settings to a folder. Copy that folder to a CD, send it by email in an archive or just put it on an USB flash drive.

How to restore extensions?
* Open Tools/Extensions from the menu
* Drag and drop the extensions from the backup folder to the extension dialog.

You can also restore extensions one by one from Tools/FEBE/Restore Extensions.

But what about the settings for each extension? If you backup your Firefox settings, you'll also have them.

Reservations - Social and Intellectual Blasphemy.

2006-05-23T14:48:00.000+05:30

Let me begin with an antithesis. On the 27th of June 1961 Jawaharlal Nehru wrote to the Chief Ministers of the day as follows:

I dislike any kind of reservations. If we go in for any kind of reservations on communal and caste basis, we will swamp the bright and able people and remain second-rate or third-rate. The moment we encourage the second-rate, we are lost. And then he adds pointedly: This way lies not only folly, but also disaster.

Jawaharlal Nehru who introduced the first amendment regarding OBCs realized the folly and changed his mind. People who succeeded him did not. Infact, the reservation became the ugliest and the nastiest weapon in the hands of Congress Party which unfortunately ruled India for most of its post colonial governance. To understand the dynamics of Indian politics, we need to understand how deep-rooted the concept of 'Vote Bank' has penetrated its core. Congress is known for its melodrama (Remember Saint Sonia ? and mother Indira and Martyr Rajeev and Pious Priyanka and Ravishing Rahul and...ad nauseam) and its command over this elitist faculty of mathematics. Congress realized that they had found a gold mine when Nehru proposed the first draft for reservation. They have never looked back since.

Why reservation ?

Several countries have introduced procedures, either explicit quotas or forms of gerrymandering to ensure political representation of disadvantaged groups, such as women or ethnic minorities. In 2001, quotas for women in parliaments were in force in more than 30 countries. In India, seats are reserved for historically disadvantaged groups (Scheduled Castes, or SC, and Scheduled Tribes, or ST) in federal or state legislative assemblies and for both historically disadvantaged groups and women at all levels of the Panchayat system, the system of decentralized decision making.
A little bit of history can be illuminating at this point. Why and when did the concept of reservation took the ugly shape ? To answer these questions, we need to go back to August 1990, when the prime minister, V.P. Singh, announced that 27 per cent of all Central government jobs would henceforth be reserved for OBCs. Singh was here endorsing and implementing the recommendations of the Mandal commission, constituted in 1978, and which submitted its report two years later. This commission argued that caste was still the main indicator of ‘backwardness’. It identified, on the basis of state surveys, as many as 3,743 specific castes which were still ‘backward’. These collectively constituted in excess of 50 per cent of the Indian population. Now, do your math. Any political group in the race of power, needed this
huge divide to vote for them. Mandal commission effectively created the greatest divide ever created in the Indian political history. It simply divided India into two class of people : 'Reserved Class' and the Miscellany. Any party which could woo the votes from the Reserved Class could easily reach the power. The experiment was successful.

Suddenly, just before the state elections, a very old man (Aka : Arjun Singh - Gandhi) came out of his Gandhian Grave and declared that this was not enough. He wanted more...The SCs and STs already have 22.5 per cent of seats reserved for them. But the OBCs remain at a disadvantage; hence the pressure to reserve seats for them, too...Naturally ! The man mistakenly known as the Prime Minister of India mumbled a bit and was silenced by the Real Prime Minister of the Republic of India, an Italian Export as popular as Pizza. As expected, the left and the opposition is not making any correct noises this time, because they stand to lose a huge chunk of voters by opposing this circus. (OBCs constitutes around 30% of the Indian population - exact figures vary from source to source)

Why people are so angry ?
First thing, this new proposal is obscene. The youth of India has already forgotten the caste stigma. Even corporates are willing to assist the "real" backward people (not entire class) by providing them assistance and enabling them to compete. The original proposal included recommendation to exclude the 'Creamy Layer' from this reservation. Whats the use of assisting son of an IAS officer just because he was born in a so called 'backward' caste. Also, it was suggested that the assistance should be given only to ONE generation. The next generation is automatically assisted by doing this. Also, there was no consideration for the Economical Factors. But none of these logical suggestions were accepted by the Government. The intention is clear. They want a greater divide and a more clear vote bank to target.

I fear, that we may soon witness 'student suicides' the same way we witness 'farmer suicides'. There is a lot of anger...lot of anguish. This is surprising in today's languid and uninterested youth about this. But who is listening ? The old man will do the damage and return to his Gandhian Grave...Rahul Gandhi will become Indian Prime Minister and declare Italian as the National Language. The whole nation will applaud (Recent survey shows that 45% of the population thinks he is the right guy for the office). This is a slumber of fools. Yes, you and I...quiescent and utterly fool. Nobody could wake us up and nobody can. Rest in Peace....

Further Read...
Here
Here

Finally got Google Notebook access

2006-05-16T14:59:00.000+05:30

Just click here to get the Google Notebook access. Its not public yet but its cool nevertheless.

Save Pandora music - Hack

2006-05-09T18:33:00.000+05:30

I noticed how pandora doesnt actually stream the songs? There's no buffering? This is because they actually put the whole songs on your computer. I'm sure I'm not the only one who knows this... but...do this !

run-> %temp%
then open plugtmp-## whatever is the last plugtmp folder, whichever folder has a bunch of 'access' files.
Copy it. Paste it somewhere. Add .mp3 to the end and you have the songs from your pandora station.
Just a tip, the second to last access file is usually the currently playing song.

Exercise an open mind

2006-05-03T10:56:00.000+05:30

WikiHow has an article on ways to exercise an open mind, claiming that an open mind is the key to a smarter brain.

Simply put, all one needs to grow his or her brain is to do unique, random, different, and ridiculous things as often as possible. One hour of increased brain activity via thinking a lot or experiencing new stimuli can make you smarter, more energetic, more creative, and more sociable.

While I’m not sure if the science here is completely sound, it’s not a bad idea to encourage yourself to try new things; wikiHow has a lot of great suggestions for what those things could be, from listening to new music to memorizing prime numbers. You might also want to try IQ-increasing video games.

Download of the Day 2: Google SketchUp - Lifehacker

2006-04-28T10:31:00.000+05:30

Google’s gone and released a free 3D modeling solution.
Google SketchUp (free) is an easy-to-learn 3D modeling program whose few simple tools enable you to create 3D models of houses, sheds, decks, home additions, woodworking projects - even space ships. You can add details, textures and glass to your models, design with dimensional accuracy, and place your finished models in Google Earth, share them with others by posting them to the 3D Warehouse, or print hard copies. Google SketchUp (free) is a great way to discover if 3D modeling is right for you...Sounds cool right? Well, it’s a free download for Windows (Mac coming soon) so if you’ve got any interest in 3D modeling you should give it shot. Download here.

Super Windows XP Tips

2006-04-25T12:35:00.000+05:30

Yahoo! News offers up their top 10 Windows XP tips of all time. They’ve covered a wide range of topics from display tips to bits on how to increase disk space and performance. I was impressed by some very geeky tips. Check it out.

2006-04-21T17:20:00.000+05:30

This is my second year in Hyderabad and I am still awestruck by her. The reverence is absolute and divine. From the very first time I set my eyes on her, the charm of her mesmerizing beauty still enthralls me. I call her 'Bertha'..the 'Big Bertha'. I am talking about THE local bus of Hyderabad. Calling her a bus is an understatement of the highest degree. Look at her. She is the Grand Dame...resembling Judy Dench. Look at the size and the speed (or the lack of it) of this vehicle-extraordinaire. My obsession with this vehicle compelled me to do a bit of research on her origins. The story of Bertha is exciting to the last word and a curious reader can verify the authenticity of this.

Ages ago, Nizam of Hyderabad thought of providing public transport to the dwellers of this city. Naturally, he ordered his minions to rally around and dig some dirt and that sort of things. It was decided that one specific company in Germany be given the order of building this vehicle. Incidentally, the German company used to make 'Tiger' tanks for Hitler during the War.
Upon getting this very lucrative order, they made some 40 buses, all made out of the mould of Tiger Tank. The resemblance of Bertha with her surrogate parent (aka the Tiger Tank) is uncanny and so is the fear induced by her. Anyway, the shipment arrived in Hyderabad amongst great anticipation. It was observed that there was a minor technical glitch...the size of the vehicle was bigger than the roads of the city. The vehicle was put to public service and the same bunch of vehicles still serve the city.

That's not the point. I want to talk about her beauty and her grace that captivates the mind and the soul. First thing you notice about her is that she never moves. No, not even an inch. She makes herself comfortable somewhere on the road and reposes. She epitomizes the most fundamental of the Zen teachings..."Follow the middle path". I have not seen her positioned on the left or the right of the road. She is always on the middle with absolute determination for the path she has chosen. Buddha would have definitely smiled on her. She accommodates some 300 people inside her without any sense of self. I have seen people clinging to her with utmost dedication.

Some chosen ones have the privilege to drive her. Look at these elite class of humanity. Their face exudes the tranquility of Dalai Lama. The never bother what others are doing. I am almost sure that they are asleep while driving. Only thing that disturbs their peace is when someone tries to overtake them. In such an event, you can expect wrath and abuses in incomprehensible language.

I have tried several times to move past her...only to fail miserably. The roads are smaller than her and there is no space to move past her so only option left for the lesser mortals is to stare at her posterior until she decides to move a couple of inches or gracefully lets you pass.

The romance with Bertha started when I saw her for the first time, it matured over time and the feeling of absolute admiration for her deepens day after day. I hope the romance never dies.

Read another romance on the Hyderabad roads here.

Wonderful interview with Richard Feynman

2006-04-18T11:06:00.000+05:30

Excellent short 40 min documentary interview with Dr.Feynman

Here. |

Google Calendar is Live

2006-04-13T14:19:00.000+05:30

Google Calendar has officially gone live at calendar.google.com. A tour of Calendar is available here.I have been experimenting with many web-based calendaring apps lately and this is the best of the bunch. I have tried Calendar Hub, Kiko, HipCal and finally settled with 30 boxes. My overall impression: Excellent. The abilit to share via web publishing or RSS shows Google’s commitment to an open stardard. And this application is impressive in its speed and stability.

This May Help Your Firefox Memory Leak

2006-04-10T18:14:00.000+05:30

Now, this is by no means a REAL fix for the Firefox memory leak, but it certainly does appear to help it quite a bit. This little fix will move Firefox to your hard drive when you minimize it, and as a result it will take up less than 10MB of memory while minimized. So far, from my experiences with using this today, when you maximize Firefox it will obviously increase the memory usage. However, it does not seem to go back up to the insane amount that it was at before minimizing it. For example, Firefox was at 180MB of memory usage and then I minimized it and after a few seconds I maximized it. After maximizing it and continuing on my routine business it appeared to only have gone up to 60MB. This seems to be a good solution for me right now since I frequently maximize and minimize Firefox anyways.

Now I know many people will say that Firefox will take longer to maximize since it will be located on the hard drive, but I haven’t noticed ANY delays. It is able to redraw itself just as quickly as if it was located in the ram (in my experience). Okay, now here are the few simple steps:

1. Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in about:config and then press Enter.
2. Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean.
3. In the box that pops up enter config.trim_on_minimize. Press Enter.
4. Now select True and then press Enter.
5. Restart Firefox.

See how quick and painless that was? At any rate you can always go back and delete the same setting that you just created if you start to experience any issues. I have also set the browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers value to 0 because that will prevent Firefox from caching pages for the back button. This is also supposed to free up some memory that gets stolen."

How to Have a 36 Hour Day

2006-03-31T13:54:00.000+05:30

: "How to Have a 36 Hour Day

How many times do you hear someone say “I wish there were more hours in the day” or something along those lines? The fact is that all of us are only given 24 hours. Having said that, how we spend those 24 hours varies radically from person to person. It's become a bit of a cliche by now but the 24 hours we have is the same 24 hours that Thomas Edison and Mother Theresa had and that Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates currently have. As the old song goes “It's in the way that you use it.”"

Identify unknown files and processes

2006-03-28T10:31:00.000+05:30

Website WhatIsThatFile.com offers a simple, handy little interface that lets you type in an unknown filename or filetype and gives you as-you-type results.

read more | digg story

Secrets of greatness

2006-03-09T11:18:00.000+05:30

Secrets of greatness - Lifehacker: "Fortune magazine choose 12 highly successful people to share thoughts and advice on how they work and what makes them successful.

But the following 12 interviews are by no means a litany of complaints. These people, ranging from jazz maestro Wynton Marsalis to jurist Richard Posner to Goldman’s CEO, Hank Paulson, love what they do.

The challenge is to continue to do it well, when the responsibilities and complexities keep increasing. One common answer is to get up early — real early. Note to MBA students: If you can’t rise at dawn, you might just reconsider your goal of making it as a CEO.

There are some really great nuggets in there. A good read."

There is a super-silly security hole in Firefox

2006-03-07T16:37:00.000+05:30

There is a super-silly security hole in Firefox. Most of us allow FF to store our password...we think its secure to do so. But just do this....
Go to Tools -> Options -> Privacy and click on the 'View Saved Passwords' button. Then choose Show Passwords. FF shows you all your super-secret password.
So my word of advice to you is to set the "Master Password" so that this silly 'feature' won't show your password to the whole world.

Configuring Tomcat5 and Apache2 with Virtual Hosts using mod_jk

2006-03-06T16:48:00.000+05:30

While working on one problem, I found this wonderful article.

TorPark

2006-01-30T13:28:00.000+05:30

If you're serious about online privacy, you probably already anonymize your browsing sessions at home, but what about when you sit down at an Internet cafe or public terminal where your decidedly non-anonymous use could be tracked back to you? The solution, of course, is to take your privacy with you, and that's what
TorParkis here for. Download TorPark for your language, and put it on a USB Flash keychain. Plug it into any internet terminal whether at home, school, or public. Run Torpark.exe and it will launch a Tor circuit connection, which creates an encrypted tunnel from your computer indirectly to a Tor exit computer, giving the appearance of having the Tor exit computer's IP.

The Taj Mahal's Real Story

2006-01-28T15:29:00.000+05:30

I heard many times that Taj Mahal was actually a Hindu Temple and Shah-jahan converted it to the tomb of his beloved. I found several articles but do read this very authentic piece from BBC.

read more | digg story

Who built Taj Mahal ?

2006-01-28T15:19:00.000+05:30

I heard many times that Taj Mahal was actually a Hindu Temple and Shah-jahan converted it to the tomb of his beloved. I found several articles but do read this very authentic piece from BBC.

Scientists Isolate the Cute Factor

2006-01-03T17:23:00.000+05:30

Scientists have identified cuteness qualities that make good Darwinian sense. The human cuteness detector is set so low that it deems cute almost anything remotely resembling a human baby, and so includes the young of virtually every mammalian species, woolly bear caterpillars, or a colon, a hyphen and a close parenthesis typed in succession.

read more | digg story

New Scientist SPACE - Features - 13 things that do not make sense

2005-12-30T11:30:00.000+05:30

New Scientist SPACE - Features - 13 things that do not make sense--Yeah, these things dont make sense.

Best Open Source Encoder (Xvid, Divx, H264, MPEG-2) - StaxRip

2005-12-28T17:25:00.000+05:30

With StaxRip you can easily convert your DVD's, DVB or DV captures or almost any other source format. As a open source application StaxRip is completely free.

read more | digg story

Windows XP Piano Solo

2005-12-23T14:40:00.000+05:30

A Superb Piano solo inspired from Windows XP startup sound.

read more | digg story

ROTTENTOMATOES' Worst Movies of 2005!

2005-12-18T16:38:00.000+05:30

Worst Movies of 2005,

read more

How to whistle ?

2005-12-16T13:42:00.000+05:30

Check this : http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=419588
The complete guide to whistling.

Fastest Windows Password Cracker - Ophcrack 2.1

2005-12-09T18:17:00.000+05:30

A Windows password cracker based on the faster time-memory trade-off using rainbow tables. Ophrack 2.1 comes with a GTK+ and runs on Windows as well as on a Linux bootable cd.

read more | digg story

Firefox crashing ?

2005-12-04T11:34:00.000+05:30

Ok, I am a FF addict, cant help it. Surprisingly the 1.5 stable release crashes for sure if you try to open several media files in 2-3 tabs. Try it.

Firefox Hack - Make Firefox 1.5 run any extension, the easy way.

2005-12-02T11:36:00.000+05:30

At the location bar, enter: about:config. This will show you a list of Firefox internal preferences.

Right-click on the list, select New > String

Enter “app.extensions.version” (without quotes) for the preference name.

Then, enter “1.0” (without quotes) as the value for app.extensions.version.

Restart Firefox 1.5, then enable those disabled Firefox extensions.

Restart Firefox 1.5 again to active the extensions. Done.

Ubuntu / Windows Dual Boot Video Tutorial

2005-12-02T11:32:00.000+05:30

Installing a dual-boot system using Windows XP and Ubuntu . The video details the entire process, from partitioning the harddrive to walking through the install procedure.

read more | digg story

Configuring Apache 2 and Tomcat 5.5 with mod_jk

2005-11-24T13:48:00.000+05:30

1 : Download the mod_jk.so from here .
2 : Rename the downloaded .so file to mod_jk.so and copy it to
/modules folder :
Usually on Windows :C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache\modules Linux :/usr/lib/apache/
3 : Open the httpd.conf from your /conf directory
and put the following lines just after the last 'LoadModule' entry.
# Load mod_jk module
# Update this path to match your modules location
LoadModule jk_module "C:/Program Files/Apache
Group/Apache2/modules/mod_jk.so"
# Declare the module for (remove this line on Apache 2.x)
# AddModule mod_jk.c (Gotcha : Remove this is you have Apache 2.x)
# Where to find workers.properties
# Update this path to match your conf directory location (put workers.properties
# next to httpd.conf)
JkWorkersFile "D:/Tomcat 5.5/conf/workers.properties"
# Where to put jk logs
# Update this path to match your logs directory location (put mod_jk.log next to
# access_log)
JkLogFile "D:/Tomcat 5.5/logs/mod_jk.log"
# Set the jk log level [debug/error/info]
JkLogLevel info
# Select the log format
JkLogStampFormat "[%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y] "
# JkOptions indicate to send SSL KEY SIZE,
JkOptions +ForwardKeySize +ForwardURICompat -ForwardDirectories
# JkRequestLogFormat set the request format
JkRequestLogFormat "%w %V %T"
# Send everything for context /examples to worker named worker1 (ajp13)
JkMount /tomcat-docs/* worker1
Note : Change the paths according to your setup

Hack : Even in Windoze machines, we need to provide '/' for path separators
Never give patch like 'D:\Apache' it will never work. Always give path
as 'D:/Apache' in ALL the config files.

4 : Open workers.properties files from your /conf folder
and add the following lines :
# Define 1 real worker using ajp13
worker.list=worker1
# Set properties for worker1 (ajp13)
worker.worker1.type=ajp13
worker.worker1.host=localhost
worker.worker1.port=8009
worker.worker1.lbfactor=50
worker.worker1.cachesize=10
worker.worker1.cache_timeout=600
worker.worker1.socket_keepalive=1
worker.worker1.reclycle_timeout=300
5 : Save all the files.
6 : Restart Apache and Tomcat.
7 : Go to Firefox and give the following URL : http://localhost/tomcat-docs/
8 : You should be able to see the correct page from this apache URL
--Some great information is found here, here, and here.

2005-11-22T17:09:00.000+05:30

Man ! who thought of this ? We thought we got rid of IE finally...now we are opening IE tabs in Firefox ? Damn !

The new Java IDE (flash demo)

2005-11-22T17:05:00.000+05:30

Yet another IDE from Sun...free and 118MB.

read more | digg story

Singing Unlocks the Brain

2005-11-22T17:02:00.000+05:30

Singing is thought to help the brain re-learn communication skills, especially in Alzheimer's patients.

read more | digg story

How to Repartition Hard Drive without Reformatting

2005-11-17T19:01:00.000+05:30

Get the article here.

2005-11-17T18:52:00.000+05:30

Checkout the Firefox Extensions that I use and love :

About site 0.1.1

Adblock 0.5.2.039

Auto Copy 0.5.4

Bookmarks Synchronizer 1.0.1

Disable Targets For Downloads 1.0

Download Sort 2.5.3

Find in Stutesbar 0.8

Forecastfox 0.8.2.2

Google Pagerank Status 0.9.4

Greasemonkey 0.5.3

Linkification 1.1.6

ListZilla 0.5.1

Live HTTP Headers 0.11

miniT (drag+indicator) 0.5

PrefBar 3.2.0

Resizeable Textarea 0.1a

SearchStatus 1.9

SessionSaver .2 0.2.1.028

Slim Extension List 0.1

SwitchProxy Tool 1.3.2

undoclosetab 20050817
Check this for a more comprehensive list of extensions.

Evolution for Windows ? Really ?

2005-11-14T19:33:00.000+05:30

So I kept on searching for a killer that has everything and suddenly I remembered something called Evolution. Evolution is the Swiss-Army knife + Samurai Sword and hence its only for samurais (read, its a linux app.) But, its being ported to Windows. Nat Friedman announced
that Novell has hired Tor Lillqvist to port Evolution to Windows. Tor
was the one who previously ported GIMP to Windows. This is an
interesting move and should help Evolution compete with Outlook much
better. Also, if you have someone running Firefox, Evolution and
OpenOffice.org on Windows then moving them to Linux becomes much easier. The porting instruction can be found here.

2005-11-12T14:59:00.000+05:30

Read this. Seriously !

Peter Drucker, RIP

2005-11-12T14:54:00.000+05:30

Peter Drucker, management theory pioneer, business philosopher, trend forecaster, and author, has died. He was 95. Here's an interview with Drucker from Wired's third issue.

Maps Galore !

2005-11-12T14:48:00.000+05:30

Yes, I’m a self-confessed Google fan and Google Maps is a killer. Yesterday, Yahoo! released the latest beta version of their Yahoo! Maps service and all I can say is that I am blown away.Yahoo! Maps has done away with the previous AJAX interface which all other similar services use and opted for a Flash interface (so you’ll need the Flash plugin on your browser), but the interface is extremely fast and intuitive. Two new features to the service include tight integration with Yahoo! Local so you can find information on businesses and venues in your area, as well as the inclusion of mapping software which lets you find directions to and from a location. Yahoo! will also be releasing APIs for the new mapping service so you can do some pretty
cool things like outputting the information to an Excel spreadsheet, and more. Now, as a Javaphile, I was impressed with Google's work with AJAX, but Yahoo has really given me a reason for a second thought. If you forget the initial load time of Yahoo Maps, the performace is decent enough for a Flash based app. Wont you say so ?

Why don't we have great organizers...?

2005-11-11T18:28:00.000+05:30

I have always wondered...why don't we have super organizer software that can have everything bundled ... To-do list, widgets, calendars...you name it they have it. I decided to spend some time on net to find out whether I am sleeping for last 3 years or they are...First I found this very detailed study. I tried out Goovy and Airset. But both lacked SMS alerts, and I love SMS alerts...so surprisingly, I give 9/10 to Rememberthemilk.com. The name is strange, the cow in the homepage looks very familiar and so does the interface. Its sleek(the interface, not the cow) and very intuitive (the cow, not the interface), and above all, this cow sends SMS alerts on ANY mobile (use the @.com) in the world...mooo!
But at the end of the day, I agree with Gina.

Kachchh Beckons

2005-10-17T19:59:00.000+05:30

Sharadotsav (Winter Festival)-2005 is being celebrated in Kachchh, Kutch in Gujarat is one of India’s largest districts. Surrounded by the Arabian Sea and the salt-encrusted desert wilderness of the Rann of Kutch,this district is the last frontier of many crafts and traditions that have changed little over the centuries. Best described as a `Cradle of Craftsmanship', Kutch is the land of weaving, block-printing, bandhani tie-and-dye, rogan-painting, and various styles of embroidery, pottery, wood-carving, metal-crafts, shell-work and other handicrafts....Visit the site for more details.

2005-08-11T16:04:00.000+05:30

The BBC2 aired an interview with Tim Berners-Lee this evening, where TBL offers his thoughts on the Read/Write web. A transcript of the interview is a must read.

Arguably the finest graduation speech.

2005-06-16T08:37:00.000+05:30

This is one of the finest speeches I have ever read....do read it !

Finally...

2005-06-15T16:59:00.000+05:30

And Finally I cracked my First Sudoku
puzzle successfully...call me super-genius.

More musings on GMail as a IM...

2005-06-15T16:45:00.000+05:30

Well, I started thinking on this. Why do I use GMail as an IM ? First, Its damn fast. Secondly, other mails are slow. (Well, thats not very illuminating but..thats what I call Logic). And why GMail is so fast ? Sometimes the most trivial looking technology turns out to be a trump-card. The deceptively simple technology behind GMail's lightening fast responses is AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript + XML). Just look at what Google has done with AJAX in Google-Maps. The magic of AJAX is that the page is rendered partially...only the form elements that needs to be refreshed are refreshed and refreshed by good old Javascript. Browser does the dirty work without doing a costly trip to Hawaii (read, Webserver).
Read more on AJAX : Here, here, and here.

30 Things You Didn't Know You Could Do on the Internet

2005-06-14T16:14:00.000+05:30

30 Things You Didn't Know You Could Do on the Internet

GMail as Messenger !

2005-06-14T16:07:00.000+05:30

Ok...this is a gross mis-use of an Email Application like GMail and there is nothing smart in this...but I have a confession to make. I have been using GMail as an IM software...gross ! I exchange one-liners with a friend who can't logon to an IM, and this really works.

How to make a million dollars

2005-06-14T16:04:00.000+05:30

Serial entrepreneur Marshall Brain knows how you can make your first million: start a business.
Writer and founder of his own publishing company and web site How
Stuff Works, Brain publishes a great presentation on why you should
start your own company. Titles like “how to make a million dollars”
make me suspicious off the bat (obviously there’s no silver bullet
magic formula, or else you and I wouldn’t be sitting at our desks
staring at a computer screen right now) but Brain’s matter-of-fact
acknowledgement of the risks and “practice makes perfect” attitude is
down-to-earth and inspiring.
Thanks

How to Make a Million Dollars

Translate TXT lingo

2005-06-14T15:55:00.000+05:30

Web site Transl8it will convert plain English into text message
shorthand or SMS-speak into English, so it’s easy for you to figure out
wot d heck yor kid jst txted U bout.
Transl8it

Super-Email Tricks

2005-06-06T09:58:00.000+05:30

Over the last few months I’ve taken some serious
steps toward getting my e-mail under control. There are a few things
that have worked very well for me and I’d like to share them with you.

Keep your inbox empty. You may already do this, and if so, you now how hard it can be, but this is key to managing you e-mail.

Set your inbox to check for new messages only a few times a day. Those pesky notifications can really get into your focus.

Take harsh measures against spam. I had to have my host
hook me up with an agressive spam filter to actually make a significant
cut into the amount of spam I’d been getting. Sure I risk losing a few
mails, but I think it’s worth it. They also provide me with a nice
weekly (I think) summary of all the junk they blocked.

Move mailing lists, listservs and such to a new e-mail address. Gmail is very good for this.

Make liberal use of the “delete” key. Get those old, unused messages out of the way. More on deleting to get things done.

So, there you have it. 5 easy tips to being more productive with e-mail. Anyone else have any they’d like to add?

How much brain do you use ?

2005-05-13T18:12:00.000+05:30

Recently read a debate on how much brain do we use ? some say Einstein used only 10%. I was not very sure of this...so did some research on this. Golly No ! we use a lot of brain...

In arguing that current theories of brain function cast suspicion on ESP,
psychokinesis, reincarnation, and so on, I am frequently challenged with
the most popular of all neuro-mythologies -- the notion that we ordinarily
use only 10 percent of our brains...

This "cerebral spare tire" concept continues to nourish the clientele of
"pop psychologists" and their many recycling self-improvement schemes. As
a metaphor for the fact that few of us fully exploit our talents, who could
deny it? As a refuge for occultists seeking a neural basis of the miraculous,
it leaves much to be desired.

-- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Conciousness: Implications for
Psi Phenomena", The Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2, pg. 171

How to live longer

2005-04-21T19:27:00.000+05:30

Forbes lists 10 ways to live longer, including having more sex (woo), not sleeping too much (boo), getting a dog, reducing stress,eating your fruits and veggies and marrying “well.”
This entirely oversimplified list is apparently based on actual scientific research, explained beneath cutesy graphics in a slideshow that accompanies the article (click on the sidebar to see).
Ten ways to live longer [Forbes]

Another Reason to Switch to Firefox

2005-04-15T17:45:00.000+05:30

Reinstalling everything you lost is normally a major chore, especially when it comes to email, bookmarks, mail rules, RSS feeds, saved passwords, and all the zillions of little things you probably forgot about. Well, since I'm using Firefox as my browser, and Thunderbird as my email/RSS client, I was able to run a program called "MozBackup" to back up everything imaginable - even the myriad of rules I set up to organize my email. Plus it only took 10 minutes. Awesome!

How to get a better night’s sleep

2005-04-15T17:36:00.000+05:30

If you’re having trouble catching Z’s, there are a few things you can do to help the process along:

Maintain a regular bed and wake time schedule, including weekends.

Create a sleep-conducive environment that is dark, quiet, comfortable and cool.

Finish eating at least two to three hours before your regular bedtime.

Avoid alcohol close to bedtime. It can lead to disrupted sleep later in the night.

Ten Tips for Better Sleep [The Better Sleep Council]

How to get a perfect shave

2005-04-15T17:33:00.000+05:30

MSNBC’s got a fluffy yet informative piece on the “lost art” of the perfect shave, from ye olde classic non-disposable razor to wet chin method to an old-fashioned hot-towel and cut-throat barbershop jobbie. Boys, give this a read if nicks, cuts and rashes are a regular occurrence for you.
How to get that perfect shave [MSNBC]

Supercharge Firefox

2005-04-15T17:30:00.000+05:30

Firefox uber-geeks: type about:config in the address bar. Ever wonder what all those tempting, editable settings can do? Linux Journal’s got a good rundown of tweakable about:config settings that can finetune your copy of Firefox to exactly how you want it.
Ten Mysteries of about:config [Linux Journal via digg]

2005-04-08T18:06:00.000+05:30

Bill Gates in 1983 Teen Beat Magazine

2005-04-06T20:55:00.000+05:30

Today's Snoopy

Read Comics in RSS

2005-04-03T12:23:00.000+05:30

Hey...if you are also a comics freak, reading comics as RSS feeds is fun. Just checkout these sites.

Red Meat - courtesy of jwz's Cheesegrater

Perry Bible Fellowship - my scraping

Dilbert - from Tapestry

Exploding Dog - from RSSlet

Free stock photography

2005-04-03T12:10:00.000+05:30

FreePhotosBank

stock.xchng

MorgueFile

FreeFoto.com

StockVault.net

Flickr Stock repository group

2005-03-31T20:50:00.000+05:30

In 1946, Paramhansa Yogananda published his life story, Autobiography of a Yogi, which was instrumental in introducing vedic philosophy to the West. One of the most profound narration of Vedic philosophy. Autobiography of a Yogi can be downloaded from: here

The Hacker’s Diet: a problem-solving approach to losing weight

2005-03-31T18:32:00.000+05:30

I found the The Hacker’s Diet by John Walker, self-described “engineer by training, a computer programmer by avocation, and an businessman through lack of alternatives” says, “This is a diet book by somebody who spent most of his life fat.”

Get this freely-available The Hacker’s Diet

Read Yahoo & Hotmail on Thunderbird

2005-03-31T18:13:00.000+05:30

The WebMail extension lets you read both Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail in Mozilla Thunderbird. Thunderbird extension setup is a little different than Firefox: first, save the .xpi files to your computer. From the View menu -> Extensions dialog, install the files, then restart T-bird. The WebMail extension requires at least 2 XPI files, and some option setup.
WebMail
WebMail Setup

Get Thunderbird

2005-03-31T17:42:00.000+05:30

The Nvu web-authoring software is a light, free alternative to FrontPage and Dreamweaver for PC or Mac.

Nvu is best for non-HTML experts who need an easy way to create a web page. Using the WYSIWYG
(what you see is what you get) interface, drag and drop images onto the page you’re designing, set colors and fonts visually, and Nvu
will generate clean HTML understandable across modern web browsers. (HTML source view available.) Publish files to your FTP server with one
click. Work on multiple pages at once with tabbed editing. Free as in speech, and based on the Mozilla Composer application of old.

2005-03-31T17:36:00.000+05:30

Weblogger Justin Turner posted a neat “life mosaic” out of 1200 tiny tiled photos that make one big master image. Coolest part: each tile links to the full-sized photo.
See Justin’s life mosaic for yourself.

Using the free mosaic-maker Centarsia you can make your own life mosaic to post online, too.

Here’s how:

Choose the photos for your
life mosaic. Your best bet is to place them all in a particular
directory. Good photo manager software makes this easier (the free Picasa works.)

Download and install Centarsia (Windows only) to create your mosaic.

In Centarsia, from the File menu choose Open Master Image. Choose the main image that the mosaic tiles will produce.

In Centarsia, from the Tools menu, choose Open Queue Manager. Create a new 25x25 pixel image queue. (This is the size of each tile image. The smaller
the images, the more clearly the master image appears. You can try
different dimensions to fit your needs.) Click the Select Files to Add to Selected Queue
button. (If you put all your mosaic files in one directory, you can just select that directory instead.) Then click the Add Listed Files to Selected Queue.
After it’s done, press OK.

Once your queue is set up, from the Commands menu, choose Run Mosaic. This is the fun part. Sit back and watch your mosaic fill up with tiled images one by one.

In Centarsia, select the
queue you’re using, and from the Tools menu, choose Create web page. Choose a
newly-created empty directory on your computer as the Output directory for your web mosaic, and hit OK. (This’ll take some time for
a mosaic with lots of photos, even on a fast computer.)

Once all the files for your new web mosaic have been exported, upload the directory to your web site. Use the HTML in the mosaic.html
file to add your mosaic to a weblog post or web page. First, be sure to edit the image path if it’s different on your site. (In a text editor, find href=”
and replace with href=”/yourpathhere/).

Blogger
users, you can use the free, previously-mentioned Picasa and helper application
Hello to easily publish all the images in your life mosaic to Blogger.
In Picasa, select the images in your mosaic, and press the Send
Hello button (lower righthand corner). If you haven’t used Hello before, register and download the app, and choose Send Pictures to the Blogger
bot. Once that’s done, post the HTML in the mosaic.html file to your blog post.

Important: the image URL’s have to be changed to the absolute path (so
/1-1.jpg has to be http://photos1.blogger.com/###/###/###/1-1.jpg) since your posts are stored in a different location than Blogger stores
the pictures. To do this, in a text editor, find href=” and replace with href=”http://photos1.blogger.com/###/###/###/ then post the resulting HTML to your Blogger blog.

2005-03-31T17:13:00.000+05:30

Hibernate vs. Rails: The Persistence Showdown

Ruby on Rails is a
web framework but also integrates its own ORM, ActiveRecrod. Hibernate Quickly co-author Patrick Peak has written a hands-on comparison between Hibernate and Rails Active Record, concluding that while Rails is well suited for pure CRUD / smaller projects, it's ORM layer lacks a number of essential features required for larger projects. Read More
Here

2005-03-29T18:54:00.000+05:30

"Get up! Wake up! Seek the guidance of an
Illumined teacher and realize the Self.
Sharp like a razor's edge is the path,
The sages say, difficult to traverse."
--- Death Instructing Nachiketa in the Katha (Word) Upnishad