faster firefox - and stable too... in ubuntu

Make sure you visit this site http://getswiftfox.com/
Swiftfox, is running on firefox codebase, though its optimized for the processor we have. make sure you make the right choice there. If you have centrino etc .. core duo/solo choice should be fine.

Thats its pick the shell script that is closeset to your processor, then execute the shell script as root (sudo) and then it will do everything, downloading, and installation, just a single script that does everything.

enjoy !

restart alsa in ubuntu

sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils restart


if that doesnt help use this
sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils reset
sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils restart

Lack of remoting into Vista home premium

Well being a home user doesnt mean you wouldnt like to remote into your machine isnt it. Just to remote in why should i buy a business edition, thats crappy.

Anyways i googled and i was able to get a way to enable rdp on vista home prem, but i dont think that works.

ok finally released !

finally chrome is out now ...

www.google.com/chrome 

Its way way faster than IE anyways IE is nowhere close, the competition is firefox. 

Anyways chrome uses a lot of  open source components and thats why its open source itself. 

Here is what i see it uses officially at http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=100336

----------------------

Official Build 1583

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.2.149.27 Safari/525.13

--------------------

Enjoy !

Coming of google chrome !

Here comes "another" open source browser , to be released on wednesday, possibly at http://www.google.com/chrome

It has components from different places , notably a new java script engine V8 from denmark and of course it has firefox components etc and hence it will also be open source ! lets see how this goes on ...

I guess the only thing remaining is google OS, based on linux that would be the complete cycle. Anyways now i am using ubuntu with a huge success for a long time, though i guess with all those patches etc, i am keeping my vista too upto date.

And this mojahve experiment was just crap.

Do I like IE 8 Beta 2 ?

Well my answer is "NO". I will get down to the points
1. Private mode is nothing great as a technology, firefox also provides a way in which you can delete on close. But yes this will not affect history but only the browsing session, so as such i dont consider it as a great "innovation".
2. Bloated, its memory footprint is high.
3. The so called "tab isolation" is crappy, i mean its nothing great, each tab is now an iexplore.exe process, so if you have 5 tabs you will have 6 iexplore.exe processes.
4. "tab isolation" has promised to make sure that even if a tab "hangs" others will work fine and the tab will be restored or killed without affecting other tabs, but i found myself in a situation where there were lot of hangs and everytime, the whole IE processes die together.
5. There were some sites where i found the website getting into an infinite loop, where it loads the same image(s) again and again and again ... which works perfectly fine with firefox.

I never liked safari too either, i would still rate firefox as the best and no doubt IE8 offers very little advantage over firefox. I know its beta 2 lets see how the final version looks like.

Netbeans 6.5 impressive ~!

I checked the beta version for C++ development, and it is really really impressive, since it has excellent code completion, and instant error is visible for any syntax error, just like java development.

It seems impressive, frankly much better than VC 2008 that i use for c++, lets see how it performs better in the longer run !

So go ahead and start using it to see the difference. Though of course VC's have a great advantage of using lesser RAM (if you use the express editions though).

Change is good but !

Well somehow again, i feel there needs to be a lot of improvement to Blogger, since i still feel writing on a wiki is more of a fun experience.

I am starting to like visitor pattern :-)

pidgin is a better IM

well recently on linux i was using pidgin so i thought i start using it on windows too .. and boy i am more than happy, atleast its good for what it does .. just text .. no video/calls but thats fine, since most of the time in office we use it to communicate via text. 

try it .. its free at http://www.pidgin.im/

Hadoop ! Breaks records

http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/hadoop/2008/07/apache_hadoop_wins_terabyte_sort_benchmark.html

Interesting - http://hadoop.apache.org

Its an excellent software for distributed computing on the lines of map/reduce from goog. Anyways normally we wouldn't need it unless, we need to do analytics or things like indexing TB's of data.

This person works for google !

Really inspirational ... Parents illiterate and doesnt have legs , read this story , an IIT madras grad and now works for Google !

http://specials.rediff.com/news/2008/jul/28sl1.htm

Whats the next ! after web

yes web is innovating and reinnovating itself, whats the next now. I am sure its not mobile as many think, since mobile has been too much over hyped, its just a device, i want to call people thats all, nothing more, nothing less. I guess yes there is this iTablet that would be intersting to see.

Look at the difference, people wanted cellphones to get smaller and smaller sometime back now they want to watch /browse and hence small isnt cool, they would naturally want it big, but then where is the end, how big is big and how small is small. We used to ask how big is your TV and the bigger the better, isnt it .. And innovations were on making TV's bigger and bigger and at the same time there were innovations to make cellphones smaller and smaller :) so everybody has work , the ones who make things smaller and ones who make things bigger - best of both worlds.

But in the end, here is what i think will be real innovations or what i guess i will consider as the next in devices
1. Foldable laptops / Foldable displays.
2. A renewable source of energy that can be used anywhere (like what we see in iron man) , that would really change things.
3. Green revolution - Better recycling techniques, reduction of green house gasses.
4. Of course, lesser dependence on fossil fuels, that will be a power changing equation, since then mid east would be uneasy, as their monopoly would be lost, but useless ideas like corn methanol should be avoided.

What else ? I wish i have another dream ;-)

Aha here comes cuil ?

Well as usual here comes "another" search, just that this has got a lot more publicity due to the perceived capabilities of the creators. I guess this must be interesting, though i am used to the way the standard search engines return results.
www.cuil.com or www.cuill.com

This one returns results in a different way, like a newspaper layout kind of thing. It claims to index a lot of millions of pages, though google doesnt publish anymore about its index size.

I guess thats valid, since index size is no more a valid comparision of strength. Whats important is whether i get what i want. I couldnt atleast find it as useful as google, since most of my results gave me some unpopular sites with lesser information. As such this is certainly not at attempt to build another company but an open book to come and aquire. this is a nice process, like they did before, build a company, show as though you are going to attack the king. The king will buy you, or alteast someone who aspires to be a king. And in the process the creators fill their pockets with billions of dollars.

Is this good ? I mean are people starting ventures to nurture it or sell it ? Atleast i will never trust someone who starts a venture in the hope of being bought by a bigger company, well that might be good for the investors, but is that really an indication of love of their babies , will they do this to their kids, isnt a startup like a kid for the creators ?

As such i hope this doesnt turn out to be another sale story, it would suck then.

generics in java

generics in java has more to it than whats visible. what happens behind the scenes is really great to understand and know. things like type erasure and reification , pretty interesting. But its one of the most used features now, its there in almost every code that I write (though i had lived without it).

love java

recently i have started doing a lot of c++, and well yes after a long long time, and now i really appreciate how cool java is :) Java is the best language out there, and i guess its the best thing that happened to the computing industry !!! Java is great !!! (Not that i dont like c++) , c++ and Java are the two languages that i like love and appreciate.

terror attacks on india !

2 serial blasts in 2 cities lots killed and injured .. (in Bangalore and Abhmedabad) .. where has india gone wrong ? I have quite a few muslim friends, and i am sure they are good, somehow it seems a few fundamentalists are misusing religion and trying to instigate instablity.

My question to terrorists
1. Does attacks increase love towards them ? Like yes today there was an attack, i started loving muslims from today .. Is that what they want ?
2. Attacks increase hatred, its simple thing to understand if they have a brain. If they want to reduce hatred, attacks have increased it (was this what they wanted ? )
3. Avenging bad treatment with bombs ! Well interesting, they need to get a life and understand that a lot of love and appreciation comes with helping others. Why dont terrorists open shelters for poor, or donate money, or food etc. That will surely help in building bonds.
4. A lot of muslims should come out openly and condemn it (of course only if they are remorseful), and muslim leaders in india should strongly condemn it. This is really not the right solution and it will only lead to increased hatred ..

thinking of that, actually do the terrorists even know why they are doing it ? or what exactly they want ? if they tell that, atleast they can get what they want, but if their desire is playing with blood, they are surely not going to have a happy time themselves. GIVE RESPECT and TAKE RESPECT, i hope something like this was there in their holy books. Terrorists are enymies of everyone, including muslims.

India is strong and united and no terrorist can change that.

what is google doing - lively sucks and so does knol

Seems they are out of ideas ! That is what happens when "so called intelligent" people think of that as "heaven' , yes free food wow thats great isnt it - as though eating is a good thing.

Anyways here is the point
1. lively is only for windows ! well that sucks .. anyways when i tried, i would say second life is million times better , why clone second life ? Google is trying to drive other companies out of business, by bringing bad products, but they do sell, due to the brand name, anyways they are hurting their brand name.
2. I dont use lively now, but i dont use second life too :) , after all these are things which someone who has a lot of time to waste would do. Already social networking seems to be a burden ( i mean text one), why would i spend my life in virtual world, we need to get a life and visit places and not be in virtual world ! Later sell virtual gym too !
3. Yes it would be like Orkut, thats losing its shine and a low performer, so would google news.
4. I wonder people are taking social networking to too much extent, they are just adding to internet traffic. Who has time, i wonder !!!
5. Knol !!! well another great useless product, wasnt wikipedia great ? I dont know why another clone of Wikipedia, and that too a bad one ? Intelligent, they masked it in knol.google.com so that alexa cannot tell the traffic, though lively shows traffic improving and then dropping, people are attracted to it due to the fact that its goog, but unless the product is good, and innovative it will fizz out, there is nothing innovative in this.

Google, is a search engine provider, and they should stick to that, there are lot of things in search that still needs to be solved, and all these seem to be more or less ways of trying to earn more money with ads.

I hate facebook too, its again a huge waste of time, i would say linkedin is the best , they could add more features, like scraps etc, but as such it serves the purpose , being connected. everything else can be done through mails.

True good ones are like twitter, myspace, linkedin, ebay and amazon, google search, ask news according to what i feel.

Deal or No Deal is TOTAL CRAP

This is one game show, thats just nothing more than crap, actually crap also might be better.
This is the only show where you dont have anything to do, and still you are asked to think carefully on which box to choose, well isnt that funny ? Whats there to think hard and choose carefully ! Anyways the worst show , i wanted to write this for long, though i stopped seeing it long time back ..

poor twitter struggling !!!!

Here is what i see ... I guess twitter should have started using Java instead of Ruby on Rails ;-) anyways i know thats not to blame for :) but they are now doing the right things, but their messaging infrastructure seems to be really overburdened.

Here is what i see .... though it was temporary - I mean i couldnt see it later, so i thought i will capture it - >

multiply.com interesting ...

Well recently i opened an account on multiply.com , yes thats the site thats now accusing facebook of copying and facebook is busy accusing others of copying :) interesting.

Anyways this site is like one in all, everything from photos to videos to blog to calendar and yes to social networking .. everything is there , i liked it and i am sure anyways i was never a facebook fan, i would like to see it more.. It also gives option to import blog ;-) from blogger too .. so here you go .. maybe i would import it there .

my vote now goes to multiply.com - down down facebook, which is somewhat like a ms slave (well or the other way ! not sure).

orkut hacked

now orkut is down ..
someone seems to have updated my profile, with everything in brazilian and my location is brazilian .. seems a lot of others had the same problem, though i didnt click anything , it just happened behind the scenes. anyways, soon i modified it back, but within 10 mins the site was down .. whether it was brought down or it came down due to the attack, not sure. ...

Rubified

Finally over the weekend , i learnt Ruby and also Rails ;-) so now it would an interesting challenge to find someone who wants me to work on that ;-) yes ! i just found one .. otherwise i will have to create a project for myself.

wiki style blog

Am on the lookout for a wiki style blog, since somehow i feel blogger is limited. Wiki style blogs like confluence etc have changed the way in which corporates share documents/knowledge. Its like knowledge management used to be an additional activity of a company, now knowledge management is a by product of what you do.

Isnt that fun ? Lets say you write design document in word. Here you will have to worry about sharing, versioning, tracking comments and finally releasing it and maintaining it, its a bigger challenge if there are 2-3 contributors. Also if others want to see, you will have to mail it to them or share it in a file server (where its usually an obscure file path), and people need to be told where the document is and there are times you might re-write something thats already there. Wheras in a wiki style, you actually work with the presumption that document is always shared and formatting is not propretiory but globally agreed upon wiki style. Here versioning, sharing, writing and searching is more intutive and well defined, and its easy to implement corporate style conventions. Also its easy for others to peek into what other projects are doing and see if they can contribute. It increase communication across teams.

I guess it can be implemented in all companies, and its the new wave of collaboration. I guess its been 8 months since i used word :) and i love wiki style documentation.

Check out confluence at http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/ , its commerical though.
and also mediawiki, that powers wikipedia, it can be used to power any corporate intranet wiki http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki and its free.

lively ?

Well why copy second life now ? Anyways i still like second life, that has a linux viewer too ... second life is the best ... i guess google should stop trying to enter other spaces and kill others ..

Gmail - Memory killer

I have observed this quite often. In a quest to provide everything through javascript for better "speed", i think gmail does a lot of caching. So whenever i open gmail i guess i get a 50K memory jump (delta), and usually even if i close the site (tab) in either firefox or IE, the memory doesnt go down. So gmail is actually killing my browser :-(

Quota system is going to kill india ...

India now has >50% quota for (SC. ST. OBC.) well that means atleast in US they should certainly check if there is someone coming from india .. if they are any of those they shouldnt be allowed, since soon they will accumulate in US and then again they will fight for quota ..
well what is this quota after all, is it an indication that they are not intelligent ? Well certainly not , if they are not intelligent, then they would need quota all through their life .. right from school to promotions .. They are more like parasites. I would say lots of people in higher "castes" too are not intelligent .. I would say if there needs to be sincere effort in growth of a country we should have quota based on intelligence.

1. See the entrance rank.
2. If there are 200 seats, give 100 to first 100 and last 100, that would take care of both the ends of world .. no need to be creamy layer etc ... just this criteria (of course leaving blank sheets etc will be disqualification) , if there is a sincere effort to write and still you score the lowest and then your education history justifies the pattern, you are in.

Isnt this simpler ?

I guess its the volume, we have so many SC ST and OBC and they are the ones who vote, so politicians need to make them happy but 50% quota is CRAZY !!!! God save india .. Its a good motivation but its not the right thing, we need to work hard to succeed and there is no shortcut. You cannot live your life relying on quotas ...

wall-e trailers and promo

Nice onces ..

1. http://www.firstshowing.net/2008/04/22/must-watch-wall-e-meets-a-magnet/
2. http://www.firstshowing.net/2008/05/30/must-watch-wall-e-meets-bouncy-balls/
3. http://www.firstshowing.net/2008/04/29/wall-e-and-the-hula-hoop/
4. http://www.firstshowing.net/2008/02/03/must-watch-wall-e-meets-a-vacuum/

And a lot more on this site ..

Wall E ?

well i just saw this movie and it was beyond my imagination. It was truly truly wonderful !!! How cute can they make cartoons ! Animation has really come into mainstream and i guess i prefer going to a watch an animation movie to any other movie. 

Evice vs xpdf

Well Evice is supposed to be gnomes (all round viewer - its supposed to be a universal viewer). though i had issues with a large PDF, i had that open for 2-3 hours and i see memory going to 500MB !!! well then i installed xpdf, its truly light and believe me for the same file it takes <20mb>

Install like this 

$ sudo apt-get install xpdf

Firefox 3 or Opera 9.5

Well i have personally seen on my ubuntu 8.04 that FC 3 (final) sort of leaks memory. Sometimes with 10 tabs open and 2-3 windows of FF open , memory shows 90MB and sometimes with the same windows and the same sites open, it shows 250 or 300 MB. Even closing windows and tabs, does not reduce memory (not virtual or resident mem) , so it seemed irritating. I have hence started using opera (though sudo apt-get install opera  installs an older version, hence its better you go to opera.com and download the latest 9.5 version). Opera seems to be better , lemme see how it works.

Just download the latest version of opera, and download it as a .deb package. Now open nautilus and go to that .deb package, right click and open with package manager, that will allow you to install. its very very easy.

 

Pretty GNOME clock !!!!

Wow this is great , look at this and see how the clock looks .. you can modify more to suit your taste...

http://bomahy.nl/hylke/blog/pretty-gnome-clock/

Compare languages ... Ruby vs Python vs PHP vs Perl

Anyways this is an interesting topic and can go into lengths. I personally use Java and i love it. I also did Python way back, and it was interesting too, but now it seems Ruby has gained traction though it was there from 1995 but mostly in Japan. I have gone back to relearning c++ since that was something i did long time back and i really loved it .. though i worked more with c. But after Java, i would say i really like the matured IDE's that Java world has (Eclipse and Netbeans and also IntelliJ) ...

Here is a list to reduce confusion.
1. Firstly dont worry that there are so many languages out there. All have similarities and differences.
2. Fundamental is important, so as long as you have a base of c++ or java you are safe, everything else is more like extra whipped cream.
3. See what suits your needs, but make sure you have the fundamental languages in your grip, only then move to the other language - its much easier.
4. If you are aware of algorithms, conversion into programs is just a mundane task. So language is not important - algorithms are.

See these benchmarks, they might feed your appetite http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/index.php

What should bill gates do next ....

Well interesting enough, now there is a huge speculation on what he will do next. As such China will be his first stop.

Anyways i guess he will have fun, now that he is relaxed. I wonder what would happen 20 years down the line when many computer nerds will retire !!! what will happen to the world ..

Back to Ubuntu - SegoeUI on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS

Well now i am back to Ubuntu .. due to a couple of issues, and the most prominent being that vista freezes my touchpad, after it comes back from sleep (suspend) and sometimes it comes back in 3-5 seconds , sometimes a min, and sometimes it doesnt come even after 10 mins. I usually connect my wireless mouse if that happens, but this is irritating. Also had a few firefox crashes.

Now after being in vista for sometime, i somehow started liking SegoeUI. Its a good font. I have brought that into Ubuntu so now system has Segoe UI. Its a very simple process for those who wish to do the same (It might not be legal though , but since i bought vista, i think i should have the right to copy it to my own system). Its pretty similar to the way Tahoma etc are copied. There is a good document at http://www.howtoforge.com/sharp_fonts_gnome_p2 which gives the general idea. Actually i like smaller screens so i live is 72 - 80 DPI range, since for me 96 DPI seems too big and dialogs etc tend to be too huge.

Here is specific for Segoe.

1. Copy the four font files (segoeuib.ttf segoeuii.ttf segoeui.ttf segoeuiz.ttf) from c:\windows\fonts to /usr/share/fonts/truetype/custom (you need to sudo for this or open nautilus as root, if "custom" folder is not there create it).

$ cd /usr/share/fonts/truetype/custom
$ sudo nautlius .

2. Now once thats done, we need to modify a file custom.hints

$ sudo gedit /etc/defoma/hints/custom.hints

3. Put this in the file (if it already exists, append to it)
--------
begin /usr/share/fonts/truetype/custom/segoeui.ttf
Family = Segoeui
FontName = Segoeui-Regular
Encoding = Unicode
Location = Magyar Dutch Spanish Czech Russian English Catalan Slovak Italian Turkish Danish Slovenian Basque Portuguese German Polish Swedish Norwegian French Finnish Greek
Charset = ISO8859-1 ISO8859-2 ISO8859-3 ISO8859-4 ISO8859-5 ISO8859-7 ISO8859-9 ISO8859-10 ISO8859-13 ISO8859-14 ISO8859-15 KOI8-R KOI8-U CP1251 VISCII1.1-1 TCVN-5712 ISO10646-1
UniCharset = ISO8859-1 ISO8859-2 ISO8859-3 ISO8859-4 ISO8859-5 ISO8859-7 ISO8859-9 ISO8859-10 ISO8859-13 ISO8859-14 ISO8859-15 KOI8-R KOI8-U CP1251 VISCII1.1-1 TCVN-5712
GeneralFamily = SansSerif
Weight = Medium
Width = Variable
Shape = NoSerif Upright
Foundry = Microsoft
Priority = 20
end
begin /usr/share/fonts/truetype/custom/segoeuib.ttf
Family = Segoeui
FontName = Segoeui-Bold
Encoding = Unicode
Location = Magyar Dutch Spanish Czech Russian English Catalan Slovak Italian Turkish Danish Slovenian Basque Portuguese German Polish Swedish Norwegian French Finnish Greek
Charset = ISO8859-1 ISO8859-2 ISO8859-3 ISO8859-4 ISO8859-5 ISO8859-7 ISO8859-9 ISO8859-10 ISO8859-13 ISO8859-14 ISO8859-15 KOI8-R KOI8-U CP1251 VISCII1.1-1 TCVN-5712 ISO10646-1
UniCharset = ISO8859-1 ISO8859-2 ISO8859-3 ISO8859-4 ISO8859-5 ISO8859-7 ISO8859-9 ISO8859-10 ISO8859-13 ISO8859-14 ISO8859-15 KOI8-R KOI8-U CP1251 VISCII1.1-1 TCVN-5712
GeneralFamily = SansSerif
Weight = Bold
Width = Variable
Shape = NoSerif Upright
Foundry = Microsoft
Priority = 20
end
begin /usr/share/fonts/truetype/custom/segoeuii.ttf
Family = Segoeui
FontName = Segoeui-Italic
Encoding = Unicode
Location = Magyar Dutch Spanish Czech Russian English Catalan Slovak Italian Turkish Danish Slovenian Basque Portuguese German Polish Swedish Norwegian French Finnish Greek
Charset = ISO8859-1 ISO8859-2 ISO8859-3 ISO8859-4 ISO8859-5 ISO8859-7 ISO8859-9 ISO8859-10 ISO8859-13 ISO8859-14 ISO8859-15 KOI8-R KOI8-U CP1251 VISCII1.1-1 TCVN-5712 ISO10646-1
UniCharset = ISO8859-1 ISO8859-2 ISO8859-3 ISO8859-4 ISO8859-5 ISO8859-7 ISO8859-9 ISO8859-10 ISO8859-13 ISO8859-14 ISO8859-15 KOI8-R KOI8-U CP1251 VISCII1.1-1 TCVN-5712
GeneralFamily = SansSerif
Weight = Medium
Width = Variable
Shape = NoSerif Italic
Foundry = Microsoft
Priority = 20
end
begin /usr/share/fonts/truetype/custom/segoeuiz.ttf
Family = Segoeui
FontName = Segoeui-Italic-Bold
Encoding = Unicode
Location = Magyar Dutch Spanish Czech Russian English Catalan Slovak Italian Turkish Danish Slovenian Basque Portuguese German Polish Swedish Norwegian French Finnish Greek
Charset = ISO8859-1 ISO8859-2 ISO8859-3 ISO8859-4 ISO8859-5 ISO8859-7 ISO8859-9 ISO8859-10 ISO8859-13 ISO8859-14 ISO8859-15 KOI8-R KOI8-U CP1251 VISCII1.1-1 TCVN-5712 ISO10646-1
UniCharset = ISO8859-1 ISO8859-2 ISO8859-3 ISO8859-4 ISO8859-5 ISO8859-7 ISO8859-9 ISO8859-10 ISO8859-13 ISO8859-14 ISO8859-15 KOI8-R KOI8-U CP1251 VISCII1.1-1 TCVN-5712
GeneralFamily = SansSerif
Weight = Bold
Width = Variable
Shape = NoSerif Italic
Foundry = Microsoft
Priority = 20
end
--------

4. Now do this to complete the process .. this will register and refresh font cache, without this step you will not see it in fonts list.

sudo /usr/bin/defoma-font -v register-all /etc/defoma/hints/custom.hints
sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig

Thats it ... you are all set, now make sure you turn on the anti alisaing and hinting .. (as shown in the link http://www.howtoforge.com/sharp_fonts_gnome_p2 )

Happy good looking fonts :) , since fonts influence you a lot, especially if you are used to some font, it will take time to get used to another font, so why not take the font with you whereever you go, on whatever machine you are in .. though i am not sure if copyrights prevent that, so take your own risk, or atleast have a legal vista version)

I hate amitabh

At the cost of being controversial, i am openly stating that i dont like Amitabh ! yes the "Big B". I guess its time, and he should stop acting further. He still needs limelight and if you dont give him limelight he will be sad and unhappy. He should rather direct movies, instead of acting and trying to be a hero even now !

I hate valerie ...

The one who comes on Jenny craig, since she is really irritating, not just looks but the way she speaks etc .. everything is irritating. I am sure she has undergone massive reconstruction surgeries and also operations. Everything is short term, soon she will get back to her original self and then she will be silent !

Stop her ads please.

Microsoft crashes firefox 3 !!!!

I can see this consistently on my vista laptop. Visit this site http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-us and thats it ... firefox just crashes and the crash reporter opens !!!

Too bad !

Best XP theme ever ! Old Reluna with Shellystyle

I have used a lot of themes and the only theme i always liked was Reluna. It was made by Bant, though after sometime he took it out and brought another version, without the shell style etc and frankly i always liked the original (first) creation of Bant, so here is it .. i have kept it with me from 2003, and i thought it makes sense to share it. Its not my creation, its Bant's (http://bant.deviantart.com/). Here is the link to the newer version (http://bant.deviantart.com/art/Reluna-3-14801572) , though it doesnt have a shellstyle, which can be obtained/reused from the .rar file i attached.

Download from here.
( http://www.esnips.com/doc/1367844b-8606-4db0-ad91-56e92d36c984/RelunaOldFromBantXPVisualStyle )

You will love it .. thanks to bant !

ps: Bant, if you want me to remove it please let me know, i will.

I hate Nancy Grace !

she thinks of herself as god. She jumps on issues, and takes an hour of CNN's time and all she does is call, people . shout at them and scold them for what they have done. And she would talk to victims and show that she is very very very very concerned and tries to get the story , and makes the victim feel more and more victimized. Even if the victim is fine .. she would remind that he/she is a victim and very unfortunate ... She should be out .....

Moving from Visual Studio c++ 2008 Express to Eclipse C++ and Netbeans c++

Well, its been sometime, i have restarted doing c++, something i did quite a little when i completed my studies, though i wont say i was an expert, there since most of my c++ coding tried to emulate functional programming that i knew from c (that was something i did a lot during my studies), now i am getting to appreciate the OO concepts in C++ , though i love Java, its the best language.

So i downloaded VS 2008 c++ express edition, but except the fact that it is lightweight, i didnt find a huge advantage. I would say eclipse/netabeans are much more powerful and well featured. I have VS .net 2005 in office, that isnt as good too. i mean i had hopes with visual studio, but atleast it doesnt give a person enough kick :)
Yes VS is too light ! Its as light as MS word .. amazing , that really helps ..

I will see how my experience goes with netbeans (its too heavy), and eclipse (getting heavy). on Vista ... c++ here i come !!

Cisco VPN client on Vista and Ubuntu !

Well cisco has this bad product, Cisco VPN that is really really bad, it doesnt work properly with Vista, i have seen it taking about a 1-2 min to connect, that too when it does ..thats 1 out of 5 tries. Also once connected sometimes there is no traffic ! On ubuntu, it actually causes kernel panic when i try to remote into another machine .. hence i use vpnc and gnome-network-connect, and they work perfect and it takes about less than 2 seconds to connect !

Recently i saw this new software called as Juniper Network Connect (supplied by Juniper networks) , its much much better than Cisco VPN ! Here is a link on how to install on ubuntu http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=232607 , though i havent tried on that and i didnt import my pcf (cisco settings) file. Our IT supports it and hence i am able to connect, but i dont know if it supports cisco imports etc .. though yes it works great !

True solution - Making sound work on Lenovo Y410 with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS

Well i had recently struggled with making sound (audio from speakers and headphones) and mic (external and internal) work with Ubuntu.

Here are my observations, there are some sites that indicate that alsa has to be rebuilt .. here is the link which will help you start
1. http://jaux.net/2008/04/27/solution-to-lenovo-y410-sound-problem-ubuntu-804/ run the shell file thats there. (

chmod +x y410_sound-20080427.sh
sudo ./y410_sound-20080427.sh

)

2. Now that solves some problems, with people indicating adding this to the end of alsa-base file.
"options snd-hda-intel index=0 model=fujitsu"

And most people agree that this is the solution, though headphones wont work and internal mic wont work ..

3. Making internal mic and headphones work ! Ok here is the issue, adding fujitsu solves some issues but here is my solution thats probably not right but the best.
a) dont have any options (the line which indicates fujitsu) or anything ..
b) restart alsa, or restart system.
c) Now for every restart, you need to suspend and come back from suspend.
d) this will make headphones work, just that headphones wont automatically disable speakers .. for that go
to sound settings or alsamixer from shell, and mute "Front speakers" (no use of reducing to lowest volume .. mute is necessary).
e) similary select Front mic (internal mic) everywhere that asks for the source of input.

I am now in vista, so i am unable to post ubuntu screen shots, but i will certainly be looking forward to posting the screenshots.


But yes, sound does work well, with certain tweaks, and i dont like the fujitsu option, since
though that start the sound on its own .. it fully kills headphones.

Acrobat failed on me ... Linux products seem like social service !

Well after a 40 day happy uncrashed sessions on ubuntu 8.04, my ubuntu started crashing (thank god, not on its own) , but when i open a pdf and then another pdf, which is a bit large (not that much though). Yes, it kills ubuntu, and it restarts ! Too bad .. Gnome doesnt even let me save my work etc .. its just blank screen and then dead ! Anyways that made me look back to my vista partition again, though i never liked to be on vista, but thank god it hasnt as yet crashed on me while working. It did sometimes no respond, when it came back from sleep and all that .. but atleast it didnt die due to a bad application.

The problem is the fact that product companies, have considered windows as mainstream for a long time and now its osx thats also getting its share of importance, thanks to some vista issues. Linux for lack of a powerful company backing it, creates marketing issues, and product companies either dont release products for linux or even if they release, they release it as though they are doing some social service ! I guess with mainstream companies like google and amazon using linux on their desktops, its time they contribute to it .. instead of considering it as an alternative !


Anyways i was able to do everything without issue on Linux, though i think frankly its being treated wrongly ! Anyways now I am back to vista, and i am pretty much happy. I am certainly not going to use OSX, since i think apple is too closed, and they are certainly not doing the right thing forcing people to buy the over priced mac laptops !!!

I Hate - Jenny Craig Ads / valerie

i dont know why ! but i hate it ... it seems too fake. moreover they do operations and say it because of exercise. now see queen latifah is struggling, soon she will undergo a secret operation to keep up jenny's name ... its fake.

Interesting problems !

What constitute interesting problems ? Interest is relative and hence we cannot generalize interesting problems isnt it. For someone working with large data sets, interesting problem would be faster execution with multiple processors/machines. For someone working on a thick client interesting problem, could be related to UI transitions, etc. For someone working in a garbage disposal industry, interesting problem would be how to recycle efficiently.

I would say, people generally test others with problems they consider interesting to themselves, which might not be globally interesting or challenging enough.

www.glassdoor.com

interesting website ! Sort of peek into companies, something always desired but it wasnt there free anywhere. Just that such things are risky as its though to validate the information. Anyone can write bad about any other company, just for fun ! So there needs to be some validation i guess, otherwise it will be a playground of spammers !

Piclens might come for Linux !!!

Just waiting for it .. its a great way to browse through videos/images or actually it can be applied to anything . I hope its incorporated into expedia searches, so that searching is more intutive !

Well done for the tool .. but bad that its not cross platform !

Here is what i found from the FAQ, the website is www.piclens.com

Will PicLens support Linux anytime soon?

Our ideal plan is to eventually make our Firefox version work cross-platform, but its timing is not yet clear due to our current resource constraints. We're trying to make sure our currently supported platforms are fully stabilized and robust before supporting other platforms. We appreciate your support and understanding.

Netbeans 6.1 ... for linux ! Yippie

Well just installed Netbeans latest version from www.netbeans.org, and it works great ! on Linux its fast and excellent .. thats my first impression. Lemme run it for a few days and see ! Go ahead and try its a great way to do everything in Java including Java ME, J2EE , SOA and it also has embedded application server, tomcat and open ESB.


Update - IT shows 700K ram being used !!!! well is that good ? Anyways it didnt lead to any performance degradation of my linux system, so i guess its fine .. (i have 2gb ram FYI on my lappy)

Firefox plugins (addons) !

Well i was just trying to add something (better Ctrl-Tab kind of tabbing between tabs !) , i realized there are so many great addons out there ...
Website is https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/recommended

I installed some interesting ones, and they are great ! Things like an addon that changes the color of the tab based on its age.

I liked this one http://www.piclens.com , check out this website... you can also get in the addons site ( unfortunately its not available for linux, had to check it on a windows system) !

(News) iPhone 2.0 - Breaking News

Well, now the question being, whats breaking in it. It was expected though.
Here are the features worthwhile
1. App store - Interesting enough, the mantra of modern world ! Create a platform, and let others build, something Facebook started. So all you have to do is give API's and SDK and thats it, the world will do you work !
2. GPS ! Well now start wondering what will happen to Garmin, Tomtom & Magellan ? Dont worry, i am sure they are more feature oriented, since they are specific to function as a GPS device. In a phone its a nice to have feature, which will primarly be used for presence features, that will help you be more locatable, for searching directions and also, things like pizza places around you ! where you dont need to worry about defining where you are, thats almost like a GPS in hand ! But then does it reroute, does it speak out directions, does it show traffic yes it does, it does show the speeds too (by color conventions). Interestingly enough, this is possibly the best feature for a 200$ phone !
3. 3G - How does that help us ? we are tied to the useless and costly AT&T, thats bad in US, mobile companies tie you in contracts ! India is better , your device is what you buy and then you choose providers ! I am sure i wont use this feature, unless i am in europe. I guess its primarly for the european buyers.

Everything else is the same old iPhone ! Well now the question is it a worth buy ? I would say the price of 200$ for 8GB seems attractive, but i might not yet buy, since i feel it seems bulky, and we are forgetting the basic reason for the device, we wanted a decent phone, everything else is anyways portable, with smaller and better laptops !

I would say, OSX should think about opening up to PC's. Anyways i would still say Linux is the best, i am using it and i enjoy it. Its come a long way, even though its just community supported ! But if there was no Vista, i would certainly say that XP did rule for quite a long time, and it still does, dont know why package XP add crap on it and call it Vista .. anyways that going to be another post ..

Sewing Machine !!

Well my mom had bought a sewing machine (Singer) that was supposed to be refurbished and on display, that was some 4-5 years ago ! That was a nice investment, supposed to be a fashion machine, that can do embroidery etc .. well interesting enough, that was for 5000/- , and it was pretty advanced. The salesman seems to have convinced my mom, especially when we see the difference between the original price and the sale price, it seemed like a steal. She did have a decent hand sewing machine, that has been working flawlessly for the past 20 years !
Now the true woes begin, it was a huge struggle, it kept failing and failing, finally my mom spends about 1500/- per year to maintain it .. (sometimes more). Sometimes that makes me think, refurbished products, sometimes don't work well ! or is it always ?

Here is what i propose, she should buy ..its a 2200/- USHA machine ! Simple mechanical sewing machine !

(News) - The series - The introduction

Here i will be discussing about the news that i feel worth discussing (or rather news where i have viewpoints on) ...

(Greeny) - The series - Introduction

Here i will be discussing about my thoughts on how to keep the planet green !

(People & Things I hate) - Introduction

Inspite of being controversial, i have decided to start this, where, every time i hate someone (mostly popular), i will rant about him/her here ... This will hopefully be a sort of mini series.

Flash and Silverlight - kill CPU's !!!!

Recently, i have been using Linux - (Ubuntu 8.04LTS) - (Story on that later) , but i have kept some applets that sense the CPU temperature, something i never bothered on XP or Vista, but linux gets the geek in you out !
Well i observed that if the normal operating temp for both the cores is around 108 F, whenever i start a flash or silverlight app (lets say i go to youtube) and in 2-3 mins of watching the temp reaches around 131F and over an hour it reaches around 151 F ! Its pretty much similar in Silverlight.

That led me to do some more research and on Vista too, i observed the same pattern. Therby, i concluded that its the OS at fault, but its the applications and their very way of rendering that is at fault. Typically if you write a program with an infinite while loop, you end up keeping the CPU busy and a busy CPU (at around > 60-80 % usage - average), it would cause the CPU to heat up.
A Flash application renders pixel, and i guess i had my hardware acceleration off (i would have to test with that on .. ) anyways i am sure i might have had the same effect. But the way pixels are rendered, it seems it keeps the CPU very busy ! There seems to be something wrong or non optimal in the way in which Flash and Silverlight have been able to light up the web - I think in future there will be better ways of doing these. It isnt optimal to have an application try to take 100% CPU for long time, any client or server application with a greater than 60% CPU utlization is very very bad in my opinion.

ZOHO is great !

Check out www.zoho.com, have been using it for quite some time .. it beats google docs and live office .. i am impressed ...

interesting date today ! 06/07/08

Well i guess such dates (x/x+1/x+2) occurs only once a year that also till 2014 ! then a long long wait !!! interesting ...

If I were Yang !

Well thought, i would put myself in Yang's shoes and see how he feels .....
If I were yang, i would do this
1. Make yahoo shareholders happy, by selling company, and since they are forcing sale, i would sell.
2. Build another company, and of course since i am yang ! i know what yahoo did ... I will pick my top 2-300 employees and ask them if they are interested in joining.
3. Rebuild yahoo from scratch, this time much better (like no yahoo 360 etc ;-)) , and keep it private.
4. Now wait for 5 years to see shareholders red eyed and red faced !

The best way to punish the shareholders is to show huge success even without them ! Yes its possible !!! I would love to see it .. then lets see what Ica"h"n does !

Leave Yahoo Alone !!!

I never had any opinion about this, but i was recently seeing the craze. Mark any blog or article, with tags like yahoo , google and microsoft ! You will see volume increase ! Well thats why i thought why not blog on this topic !
Here are my view points
1. Yahoo has done a lot good in the past , it needs time to recover and i would say shame on all the shareholders who are showing their greed and trying to break apart a company that has built its own culture in its own way !
2. What if google starts to fall, will people ask it to be merged with microsoft ?
3. What happened to people who used to consider microsoft evil ? Are they alive ? or evilness has become relative ... any company that grows big becomes evil ?
4. Software profits are paltry and its people who make a company popular, and it takes a lot of hard work to build , ship, market and reap benefits from a product. Why dont people look at oil companies if they want profits ?
5. My viewpoint, Live is crap, Vista is Crap, There are a lots of things that are visibly wrong with Live, i would say the biggest being the fact that i dont feel being on live for more than 2 mins, dont know if its the interface or what, but the huge AD that occupies 1/5th of the screen troubles me.

In short
1. MS should innovate and leave Yahoo alone, they have a huge difference in culture and technology and its a big company, integeration challeges will kill you.
2. Yahoo, shareholders, focus on yahoo to do better and not means of squeezing the max out of it .. who knows 2 years down the line you might be richer than what you are ... If you are impatient, please sell your stocks, and shut up.
3. All i can say is now I just pity yahoo's condition, and seeing people play with yang's baby ... well if I was in Yang's position, i dont think i would bear this ... .




ps : see i cleverly added interview in my keywords, since that would lead to search engines being bombed !

Blogato !

I always wonder, how people get time to blog ! its really not an easy task. Its a choice between work or internet. Yes Internet is great, but it does make you a controlled couch potato. I mean TV was blamed in the 1990's and now its certainly computers !

Gas Prices !!!

Now in US gas prices in my area (seattle) is just a cent or few short of $4. Where are we heading to ????

I would say everything else like BioFuel etc is crap, none of them are viable. Also Gas companies are sitting on Huge Huge profits ! What is happening. We first force people to get used to something, and then deprive them of that. Biofuel is depleting food ... and it requires the same amount of energy , which naturally comes from guess what ... "the same old fossil fuel we are trying to save " !!!

I guess the day is not far when we start to drink oil (if everything is biofuelized)...

Gmail Kills History

I just stumbled upon a bug !
Just check your mails (gmail) , go to any other site using address bar.
And yes keep clicking on new links.
Now use "Back" button, to go to your older pages. It will work fine till gmail is loaded again, at which time it clears history (atleast the forward button becomes disabled) ...


Irritating ...