Random Scribbles

Logitech M515

2011-06-05T18:46:00.008-04:00

Picked up a Logitech M515 mouse from Bureau en Gros/Staples ($40). The mouse is sealed at the bottom, except for the On/Off switch. It has one of those "unifying" receiver for the wireless function.Here the main points:Scroll-wheel does not do the middle-click: if you do the middle click, it toggles the scroll wheel to free scroll or clickity-click wheel. The middle-click is done by the [o]

Bash Programming

2011-04-29T09:10:00.002-04:00

Been reading some Bash introduction stuff and found that TLDP article contained errors right in the first couple of chapters (grammatical and programmatical both). Need to search further to find better quality stuff. This log will be updated with other links with time.

CBC covers STOP THE METER

2011-01-09T18:15:00.001-05:00

Distribute as much as possible.Stop The Meter

STOP THE METER

2011-01-09T17:56:00.001-05:00

View and repost as widely as possible.

Sony BDP-S370 and NTFS

2011-01-06T20:09:00.002-05:00

Warning: If you want to call Sony support, be very very patient. It took me 1h25m to get to a support representative!Spoke to the Sony rep on Sony support about the in ability of BDP-S370 to NTFS formatted USB disks and he said it will only read FAT32 (as I read in the manual). When I asked him if a software update would add this feature in future, he said that it won't happen as it is limited by

Seiki BD660

2011-01-03T22:48:00.003-05:00

This is an unknown brand of blu-ray player that I picked up at Walmart for the sake of testing.+ plays almost all kinds of files DIVX, XviD, MKV, MPEG2, MP3, etc from USB stick+ DVD or Blu-ray region change+ Reads NTFS formatted disks unlike Sony- ethernet port is present, but no app uses it!- no DLNA support- does not control the TV (TV does not turn on when Seiki unit does)- @ $78 it is way too

Good Bye Sony BDP-S370

2011-01-02T14:07:00.006-05:00

I bought two blu-ray players over the boxing week sales to be able to play various types of media files on the LCD TV. One was the Sony BDP-S370 and the second one was Samsung BD-C5500T. I have tested them for basic functionality. Here are my findings in brief:Both players have cheap build quality, but at about $100 each and the features they offer; I can live with that. The last DVD player I

Wikipedia Down? -- UP NOW

2010-07-04T20:25:00.006-04:00

Wikipedia.org seems to be down. No ping response and traceroute cannot proceed after 10 hops.Lots of reports on Twitter from different places about this.Update: After a few hours of downtime, it is back up @ 23:30hrs EDT.

Ironic

2010-05-17T22:24:00.002-04:00

Logged in to Flickr account to check new photos by friends and found this "suggestion" at the bottom of the main page! What are the chances of this?

Debian/KDE 4.4.3 Upgrade

2010-05-02T23:06:00.003-04:00

I did an aptitude safe-upgrade today and was pleasantly surprised to see that KDE 4.4.3 was finally in unstable. The only problem I had with the upgrade was that I got a black screen when I tried to re-login to KDE.I didn't find much on Google or Debian lists but this post on KDE gave me an indication and I checked the status of the package plasma-desktop. dpkg told it was uninstalled at some

Apple - The Gatekeeper: Bends ....once again

2010-04-17T07:46:00.006-04:00

Bad publicity forces Apple to ask Mark Fiore (Pulitzer prize winning cartoonist) to re-submit his iPhone app which was rejected four months ago. They seem to stick to their ground using whatever whimsical reasons they want unless it gets them in soup!While the iPhone app is being submitted and gets approved, you can enjoy Fiore's cartoons on his website.

Lucid > Firefox > Search Provider Confusion

2010-04-08T15:29:00.005-04:00

After all the hoopla about changing search provider, Ubuntu has changed its mind and went back with Google for the Lucid release. I don't understand why this is such a big issue. Ubuntu is open source and so is Firefox. Search feature of Firefox is well known and so is the knowledge of how to change search provider or the default one. I guess Ubuntu users are getting accustomed to being spoon fed

Lucid Lynx -- Ubuntu 10.04

2010-04-07T14:20:00.011-04:00

30.04.10 - Lucid Lynx, coming soon to a server near you. If you can't wait, you can get the beta.Just upgraded my Karmic box to Lucid and the process was very smooth. I wish Microsoft was able to give upgrades like this ;)Pros:Fast bootup.Less sluggish, faster response.......Cons:New theme has nice gradation and feels nice, but the color combination is a bit of an eye-sore. Solution: Change it

Ice Hockey: Canada v/s US

2010-02-21T19:47:00.006-05:00

Watching the first encounter of Canada against USA in Ice Hockey. The rivalry between the teams on the ice seems exactly like the India/Pakistan cricket 1 day match.Score 1st Pr (end): US 2 -- Canada 12nd Pr: US3 -- Canada 2 (3min remaining)Final: US won 5-3

Linux Wireless Access Point - v2

2010-01-25T22:36:00.006-05:00

After struggling with various networking issues with my older wireless card (the discontinued D-Link DWL-G520), I purchased a DWA-552 for $60+tx. I used the DWL-G520 for almost 2 years as my access point. But it never worked in WPA2 mode and always had problems with two (Windows) machines, iPod Touch and my Nokia trying to connect to it. I had to restart hostapd after either the iPod or the Nokia

iPod Engraving in UTF-8?

2009-08-22T14:00:00.008-04:00

When outside, I'm always afraid of my big iPod Classic (80GB) of falling on the pavement and breaking. Even though it is quite nicely protected by a fantastic wide-corduroy case by the foof-lady, there is always a chance that it will sustain serious damage if it falls. So I was thinking of getting an iPod shuffle and the iPod Classic I have is way too big to go jogging around on the streets.When

MS Excel - Shared file bug

2009-08-09T19:56:00.004-04:00

This is a note to self, plus for those who might encounter the issue. It took me about an hour to find the solution to this problem.Problem: A large Excel spreadsheet (about 3MB) which has the "Share Workbook" enabled is used by different authors and over time the file size increases enormously. In this case, the file had grown to about 90MB with only small additions of data over a period of a

F1 Barcelona and BBC Bug

2009-05-10T09:23:00.006-04:00

A fantastic F1 Spanish Grand Prix is going on and the Brawns up for a 1,2 again. F1 in 2009 has change a lot with Ferrari and McLaren both struggling to get into points finish let alone podiums. This is going to be a very interesting season.Keeping a watch on the F1 Live Spanish Grand Prix page on BBC Sport. They keep an AJAX powered leader board on the right side and it updates very nice except

On Demand CPU Frequency Scaling

2009-04-12T19:41:00.004-04:00

Results of setting up cpufreqd on my machine using the ondemand governor: idle temperatures dropped approximately by 10℃. Details to follow, enjoy the graphic results for now.

GMail Down

2009-02-24T07:09:00.005-05:00

So GMail went down at 0130AM Pacific Time. The announcement has been posted on their support page only. No reference of the down time has been posted on the GMail Blog as of yet.Even though the statement on the support page says that it went down at 0130AM PT, I noticed that the mail interface stopped loading around 10:00ET last night. I hope that they get it back up fast.PS: As of 0730 ET, GMail

Spotting Debian

2009-02-22T21:19:00.003-05:00

This post is for Debian logo spotted in daily life. This photo was take by a friend of mine in France. The place was a pottery artists gallery in St. Pere, Vezelay, France (excuse absence of accents, because of keyboard issues). You can see the swirl in the mortar bowl in white.

Art Quilts XIII: Lucky Break

2008-11-10T15:22:00.007-05:00

For those who love Debian or other open source projects: Chandler Center for Arts is hosting an exhibition titled Art Quilts XIII: Lucky Break. The highlight for the Debian or open source community is the "Debian" quilt made by Thelma Smith promoting Debian/GNU Linux and open source software in general.Below is a glimpse of the unfinished quilt along with wonderful detail of the artwork in the

New Blogger Type

2008-10-21T19:36:00.004-04:00

Usually there are people babling about weird things on their blogs like me. However, a new type of blogger caught my attention. I have to say that this is blogging with a difference.Midori-san

Teksavvy + MLPPP

2008-10-07T21:53:00.002-04:00

Just in case you are using Teksavvy and are being throttled (by Hell Sympabico) during the day, you can always use the multilink PPP feature in the operating system you use or just get a Linksys WRTG54GL router and install Tomato/MLPPP firmware on it.For more information on how to enable MLPPP on your choice of OS you can download and read the MLPP Guide.

MSI GForce 8600GTS - Noise

2008-10-07T21:44:00.003-04:00

The past weekend I said it was enough and took apart my PC to clean it up as it was making too much noise. Cleaning it up did make a difference as usual, but the noise was still a lot. So I started testing it by disconnecting all fans and powering them one at a time. Guess who was the culprit.... it was the Nvidia based MSI GForce 6800GTS PCI-E video card's cooling fan. I got this card for about

Comment Moderation

2008-07-20T19:41:00.003-04:00

FYI: due to inability to delete spam comments, I have changed settings to moderate comments before being posted publicly.

Firefox Profile Size

2008-07-15T21:27:00.004-04:00

Ever wondered why your Firefox profile is still at least a few MB even after you do a "Clean Private Data"? The culprit might be phishing filter database which helps you warn about phishing websites. I was checking my Firefox profile size and found out that it was more than 50MB even after cleaning the cache and all other private data. I went into the profile and noticed that the urlclassifier3.

Bell Representative Discussions

2008-07-12T15:46:00.010-04:00

Just returned from the sidewalk sale. Lots of people enjoying the wonderful day (although it was getting a bit hot) by shopping for items on sale. Pictures will follow soon. But the highlight of the excursion was the talk with a Bell representative.I was observing a phone+internet+cable TV offer the representative was offering to another lady. After a couple of minutes, the lady started talking

We can now eat YELLOW Margarine

2008-07-09T16:02:00.003-04:00

So the 21 year old margarine law in Quebec is all set to be changed with the provincial cabinet agreeing to change the law. Margarine in Quebec will soon be available in the same colour as it is in the rest of Canada and the World (unless someone repeals the decision!).But the important question is: Will the government be willing to educate the masses that the two yellow milk products are

Is Rogers Playing Dumb?

2008-07-08T16:25:00.005-04:00

Rogers senior VP (Regulatory Affairs) Ken Engelhart seems to think that public is dumb and will believe whatever the telecom companies say. However, little does he know that it is he who is being projected highly paid dumb management employee when he makes statements like:"Of course, because some P2P applications (BitTorrent for example) restrict download speed to the maximum upload speed

IE 5 Views the Future

2008-07-03T21:05:00.014-04:00

A friend of mine wanted me to back up her old PC and laptop so that she could discard them. She still had a few files that she wanted but hadn't used the computers in more than a couple of years. The PC was an IBM but I forget the model. It had Windows 95 on it! It wouldn't take a USB key as expected by luckily it had a LAN port. So I zipped the needed files and put them on my server. At that

Scrolling: Firefox 3 and Safari

2008-07-01T18:50:00.004-04:00

Software update started jumping up and down when I started my laptop today and I checked what it had to offer. There was this Security update and Safari 3.1.2. So I just said OK and let it work along for the 15o or so MB of data download. So after a restart, I checked the updated Safari. Is it only me or has Firefox 3 really gotten better than Safari at scrolling. It definitely is more fluid in

C-61 - Real Life Implications

2008-06-16T22:25:00.005-04:00

Michael Geist is doing a week long analysis of real life implications with examples of the recently tabled Bill C-61 aka the Canadian DMCA. The very first post shows situations of things we do in everyday life considering them as normal; although they won't be if the bill is passed. Keep reading his posts for the rest of the week to know in more detail.

The Canadian DMCA: What You Can Do

2008-06-16T06:10:00.002-04:00

Start Here

SP3 Changes Preferences

2008-05-14T20:20:00.002-04:00

Just installed Service Pack 3(SP3) on a Windows XP install. The upgrade took about half an hour in total but went fine. After the obligatory restart, I have noticed at least one annoyance: the SP3 install changes your default browser to IE7. I had it set to Firefox Beta and saw that SP3 reset it to the native browser! When will MS stop messing with user's personal settings?

Canadiens Win

2008-04-21T22:33:00.003-04:00

I confess that I don't even know the basics of Ice Hockey and just today came to know that a game consists of 3 periods at least. However, I do know for a fact that the Canadien Habs won the Easter Conference quarterfinals series tonight because their fans are honking and making all kids of noises sine the last 45minutes. Fans in cars are honking, fans on foot are shouting and drinking and all

Massa and Kubica

2008-04-05T23:21:00.002-04:00

The Bahrain Grand Prix is today and Kubica is up front on pole for the first time. Massa, who unfortunately hasn't scored a point this season, is second and has another chance to prove himself. A very interesting grid for Bahrain. Hoping for an entertaining race.Update: Woohooooo .... Massa won in Bahrain again. It was an entertaining race as I read the news report. The title hunt is getting

Adblock Plus and BBC

2008-02-10T17:22:00.000-05:00

Adblock Plus has been efficiently blocking advertisements for me in Iceweasel (Firefox). But it was today that I noticed that the ABP icon was green while reading news items on BBC. It wasn't blocking the advertisements on BBC pages. On further checking I found out that ABP has whitelisted BBC! That is what was causing the adverts to appear.A simple disabling of the whitelist entry for bbc

GMail inside and outside

2007-10-19T16:48:00.000-04:00

After the recent news of Google increasing the rate of increase of the GMail quota I noticed that the quota had indeed increased from about 2900MB to 2770MB. Today I found out something new regarding GMail quota: GMail's main page shows higher value for the quota than when you are actually logged into the system. Below are the screen captures from the two states: without login and after login

No Words Necessary

2007-09-13T11:13:00.001-04:00

Photo from BBC

Massa Drives for McLaren?

2007-09-07T22:51:00.000-04:00

Am I understanding it in a wrong way or did BBC make a mistake in the news item. The screenshot is from the first day report of the practice session at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. The relevant part is highlighted in the screenshot. Shouldn't it have been "Kimi Raikkonen pipped Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa" ?Anyway, its Monza ..... Go Ferrariiiiiiiiii

The iPodTouch

2007-09-05T22:59:00.000-04:00

Now this is something which made me drool over it. The wifi should have been there long ago. The best thing about it is that it doesn't require activation through AT&T. Does it sync with iCal, iPhoto, etc.? Also, what about its battery? Is it hard to change as it is with the iPhone?

Yahoo! Mail Storage

2007-06-25T14:26:00.000-04:00

Saw this today on Yahoo! Mail. \0/\0/\0/ No storage limits \0/\0/\0/. Take that Gmail :p

Camera RAW editors for Linux

2007-06-08T20:59:00.000-04:00

Consider this: You have a camera that can shoot in RAW format and you are a Linux user. How do you manage/edit your RAW images on your Linux machine? Below is a quick rundown of RAW editors for Linux(I have tried only a few of them yet) which I have found over the last few days (add comment if I missed any).Rawstudio is an open source software based on the GTK+ interface and reads all RAW format

state.gov oblivious of Firefox?

2007-06-02T00:14:00.000-04:00

What happens if you are a Linux user with Firefox and have scheduled a non-immigrant visa for the U.S.A? Well, you end up unable to fill up the DS-156 visa application with your computer running Linux!After you get your appointment date fixed (online) you are informed that you need to fill up the DS-156 form (no handwritten versions allowed). But if you go to evisaforms.state.gov and you are

Addon of the Week

2007-05-25T23:10:00.000-04:00

In an effort to increase the awareness of Firefox Addons, Addon of the Week has been started. There are already a couple of addons featured on AOTW. Initial plans are to have one addon of the week featured on AOTW. Smaller addons can be featured in between the regular AOTW publishing cycle. If anyone wants to write an article for AOTW, signup there and leave a comment.

Google changes search interface?

2007-05-16T16:52:00.000-04:00

Google changed its interface? The new look is only on the google.com site for now. The .ca, .fr, .co.uk, etc. are the usual blue bands. Update: The new interface is due to their combining of various search types they had e.g. web, images, news, etc. They are also supporting a toolbar at the top for various services.Its so polished that it looks too shiny to me. The shiny bar gives a very Web2.0

Digg makes HD DVD key famous

2007-05-01T21:41:00.000-04:00

Digg did something they probably thought would be a one time thing and removed some story someone submitted on their system. But hey, they kind of forgot that Digg is basically a site which is powered by user submitted content. And after a while they have every chicken raising its head and speaking out some weird number in decimal, hexadecimal, binary, and other formats. The topic has become so

09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0

2007-05-01T19:59:00.000-04:00

Is this is prime number? Looks like one.09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0Just a simple string ;)Update: this story was dugg more than 180 times and now has been axed off Digg system!! Didn't last for even a couple of hours on Digg.

Debian on MacBook Pro - Docs

2007-05-01T13:34:00.000-04:00

The first draft of the procedure for installing Debian on a USB disk connected to a MacBook Pro is up. You can find it here. Leave a comment for improvements and pointers.I haven't had the time to setup the hardware e.g. mousepad, wireless, backlight, etc. to work in Debian yet. But that information can easily be found on wiki.d.o. The page will be updated as I try the tricks.

Debian/Lenny on MacBook Pro USB

2007-04-29T01:32:00.000-04:00

I had been trying to install Linux on a 1GB USB flash drive connected to my MacBook Pro (MBP) since the past few months. Although there are several places describing how to do it using either Boot Camp or by resizing the hard disk partitions, my sole requirement was no changes to the Mac OS X installed on the hard disk.Boot Camp was out of question as its main aim is to help install Windows by

Basilica de Notre Dame

2007-04-23T22:32:00.000-04:00

Merry Springmas

2007-04-16T00:20:00.000-04:00

Current forecast shows light snow and so does the view in my window. And it is 16th of April today! Merry Springmas™ everyone.Historical data says that maximum and minimum temperatures in April are 11°C and 1°C with a mean of 6°C. The current deviation in temperature isn't huge then. However, on the snow and rain front the weatherman says that there will be around 10-15cm of snow and 10-15cm of

Checking Firefox Version

2007-04-10T14:29:00.000-04:00

I am trying to write a script in Javascript* which would inform a visitor's using Firefox if they are running an older version. Although Firefox does automatically check if there is an update and informs the user, I have seen visitors with versions like 0.8, 1.0.x, 1.5.y (y<11),>Automatic updates are helpful for home users at least as corporate users might not have the rights to upgrade their

Its Out!

2007-04-08T11:05:00.000-04:00

After a delay of about 5months, Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 codenamed Etch has finally been released. This release comes 22 months after Sarge was released. Other major happenings in the Debian world were the Sarge update 3.1r6 and electing of Sam as the new Debian Project Leader. Now the craziness begins as updates with new packages will fall in to unstable and testing branches.I will be continuing my

Colours

2007-04-08T10:58:00.000-04:00

Colours at one of the many customs preceding a traditional wedding.

"The" Butterfly

2007-03-29T23:26:00.000-04:00

I saw this on Inkscape.org where they had a news snippet about Juan Miguel Ramirez who wrote an article in the Spanish version of Linux magazine. From the GPL stick and the 4 colored butterfly I got and idea and the result was as show above, the tux trying to save Suse from the "butterfly".Original idea of artwork: Juan Miguel Ramirez

Browser Stats

2007-03-28T00:09:00.000-04:00

Glazou started this. Here are the browser statistics for 2007 (till today) on my dynamic DNS host:Gecko ----- 56.2%MSIE ------ 31.4%KHTML --- 8.1% (Safari 7.1%)Opera ----- 2.6%This just reflects the distribution of visitors on the dynamic host and should not be considered for browser popularity calculations. Higher percentage of Gecko is due to most of the stuff being about Mozilla and GNU/Linux.

Google: Canada's Not a Real Country Anyway

2007-03-27T14:01:00.000-04:00

We must blame them and cause a fussBefore somebody thinks of blaming us!Did you ever hear about the South Park song called "Blame Canada"? You can find some details about it on wikipedia or even viewtube™ the song as performed by Robin Williams during the Academy Awards ceremony.The Know All Google seems to have heard this song too and did some of its part for the blame game. If you go to Google

Halloween

2007-03-27T02:39:00.000-04:00

I know its not Halloween season, but I found this lovely picture which I took last year. This is the Halloween decorations at a bakery nearby. Enjoy.

Up, Up and Away

2007-03-26T20:16:00.000-04:00

This is a common sight when we have clouds. The building at PVM goes beyond the limits and into the clouds while the IBM, CGI, and CSC building stand there staring at it!

Typepad hinders Typing!!

2007-03-24T01:49:00.000-04:00

I usually love to rant about features in blogger making life difficult for users, but this post is different. Today I compared a feature on blogger with a similar one on typepad and guess which one sucked!In this age of spam bots find different ways to put link spam in any place they can find, one commonly used technique to avoid them is the captcha technology. With this technology, a user trying

Woolmer Update: MURDER

2007-03-22T23:48:00.000-04:00

My first instinct made me very suspicious about Bob Woolmer's death in his hotel room following Pakistan's cricket teams loss to minnows Ireland and making them impossible to go to the second round. The Jamaican police has been tight lipped about any details about his death but finally a more sinister picture is emerging. BBC is reporting that medical reports say Woolmer died due to manual

Bob Woolmer Dies following loss

2007-03-18T16:43:00.000-04:00

The very next morning after Pakistan's cricket team lost to Ireland and were ousted from ICC World Cup 2007, their coach Bob Woolmer, was found unconscious in his hotel room and was pronounced dead after an hour of attempts to revive him at the hospital. This is sad news and medical reports are awaited for the exact cause of death. Pakistan team's spokesperson Pervez Mir said that the third gave

ICC World Cup: Big Upsets

2007-03-18T00:32:00.000-04:00

So the end result of day 5 of the ICC World Cup(WC) was: 2 Big Upsets. Bangladesh played some wonderful cricket and stunned India in their WC opener. Bangladesh won by 5 wickets. While in Jamaica, it was the day of Green. Ireland not only beat Pakistan but knocked them out of the tournament no matter what the result of Pakistan's third group game.For both India and Pakistan's teams my friend had

St. Patrick's Day Possible Upset

2007-03-17T12:15:00.000-04:00

With the recent uplift of the Irish team's confidence with the tied match with Zimbabwe in the ICC World Cup being held in the Windies, they are looking for a bigger upset on St. Patrick's Day. Pakistan's team is reeling at 68 for the loss of 5 wickets after 20 overs. Update: 73/6.If the Irish follow up on this advantage and register a win, this would be the biggest upset of this World Cup and

No Water :(

2007-03-16T01:51:00.000-04:00

Unfortunately one of our building's water pumps decided to die today leaving most of the upper floor residents without any water supply. I didn't have any water stored barring two half litre water bottles which were good for drinking but nothing to wash hands or for the bathroom. Normally if they shut down the supply it is usually back on by around 5 or 6pm. However, the supply didn't return till

Dell and Linux ? Hmm...

2007-03-14T03:20:00.000-04:00

Just a quick note: Dell seems to be moving towards the idea of offering pre-installed Linux on notebooks and desktops. They are asking users interested in having Linux pre-installed to fill up a survey so that they can prioritize what they can offer. Go submit the survey and wait for Linux to be offered as a option for the installed OS on your next purchase.Dell and Linux seems to good to be true

Mac OS, SSH, Dashboad?

2007-03-07T18:35:00.000-05:00

I can't seem to figure out which part of the process is the problem. If someone has any clues as to how to go about triaging the problem, please leave a comment.When I am transferring something to the Macbook Pro from my Debian box using Konqueror (yep, with its wonderful fish:// protocol), if dashboard is enabled on the MBP, the ssh transfer comes to a halt. The problem goes away as soon as I

No Words

2007-03-06T10:03:00.000-05:00

Current weather conditions! Brrrr.....

Blogger Login

2007-03-01T03:26:00.000-05:00

Blogger, oh blogger. Please give us a better login page so that users don't have to to click twice just to bring the cursor to the username field. And it is worse for those like me who try to keep the use of the mouse to a bare minimum. To be able to get to the username field, I have to invoke the Find function of the browser to find the "New Blogger" link and then use the Tab button 3 times to

Linux for Everyone?

2007-03-01T02:35:00.000-05:00

I have a strong feeling that we are getting very close to the point where Linux can be considered desktop ready for everyone. Even though I have seen things work flawlessly with Ubuntu installs on friends' laptops, my latest experience just made me WOW Linux ;)I got a USB multimedia headset by Microsoft, the LX-3000. They are getting dirt cheap these days. I picked this one up for just $19.99+tx.

Watering the Sun

2007-02-26T02:05:00.000-05:00

Biella writes about a humourous piece from a book by John Morreal. I was reminded of a similar story from times long long ago."Nanak’s teachings are best understood against the backdrop of bhakti, the devotional movement which was then sweeping north and western India, and in the context of the ossification of both Hinduism and Islam into religious faiths which inculcated blind beliefs in their

Grip Rocks

2007-02-24T01:57:00.000-05:00

I had an old audio CD which wasn't playing too well, so I thought of ripping it and burning a new one. Yesterday I ripped tracks 1 to 7, and the 8th track took around 3hrs. I started ripping of the 9th track around 15hours ago, and it is 41% done. I am using Grip to rip the CD and it has been chugging along bit-by-bit literally. I won't mind waiting another 24hours to get the 9th track ripped.

Movie: Amu

2007-02-15T09:34:00.000-05:00

Last night I went to see the movie Amu at a special screening at the Forum. Partly due to the weather conditions, there were only about 600 people at the multiplex watching the movies; 200 of them were watching Amu!Amu is a movie[imdb.com] about a young American-Indian girl who goes to India to know about herself and her roots. She finds India very interesting but something disturbs here and she

-20°C and Fire

2007-02-13T23:17:00.000-05:00

A fire happen to break out in the adjacent block. The fire fighters spent hours trying to contain the fire. No one died but there were a couple of shops/restaurants that were completely brought to rubbles and the adjacent restaurants and businesses were damaged by water/fire.I was amazed to see the fire fighters out there with a temperature of around -20°C (would be even lower if you consider the

Windows Vista

2007-02-11T00:10:00.000-05:00

This is completely hilarious and ingenious:My father heard about Vista coming on the news. Since he was interested in getting it, he asked me to obtain it and install it on his computer and he would give some cash in return. I told him I was going to do that, but instead I burned an Ubuntu CD and installed it.Later, when he came home from work, I showed him his new "Vista" install, complete with

Invitation

2007-02-05T12:15:00.000-05:00

You are cordially invited to enjoy the sunny days we are having ;). Unfortunately one has to be brave enough to get their fingers out even to take a picture (provided the battery doesn't die in those few seconds).

Genuine Linux

2007-02-03T16:17:00.000-05:00

I run a genuine copy of Linux. Do you?

Dear Yahoo! [Mac]

2007-02-02T03:51:00.000-05:00

I wonder why doesn't your Yahoo! News item work on my Safari browser! Clicking on a video news item does indeed open a new window with a list of other news items on the bottom and a little description of the news item on the right side. However, there is no video! Also, I didn't find any indication that my browser lacks a plugin or something and I should install it to view the news item.If one

CSS Oddity

2007-01-19T09:54:00.000-05:00

Lesson: Thou shalt not use CSS to obscure unpredictable text for ye users.Skin deep advantage of CSS is that it can be used to make web pages beautiful and possibly perform some tricks without other tools like Javascript. However, when one doesn't know what the content of the page will be, CSS might actually end up obscuring that part of the page. An example is the occurence of heading tags h1,

After Effects of Snow

2007-01-17T11:56:00.000-05:00

Snow Snow Snow.... finally

2007-01-16T22:27:00.000-05:00

As promised yesterday, here are a couple of scenes from yesterday's wonderful nature show. To view larger versions of these images, click on image.

Snow Snow Snow

2007-01-16T00:55:00.000-05:00

Ahhhh.....finally. And that too several inches of it. I'm happy that winter is here.time to go to sleep now. No this isn't a dream, the snow was for real. Few pictures tomorrow if it stays.

Rules of Slashdot

2007-01-15T03:47:00.000-05:00

As read on slashdot.org:PostWe love Apple (especially when they do something just like Microsoft, and even more if their product is vaporware).We hate Microsoft (especially when they do something just like Apple, and even more when their product is vaporware). Steve Jobs can do no wrong (especially when he does the same as Bill Gates).Bill Gates can do no right (especially when he does the same

PlanetPlanet & Blogger

2007-01-11T01:22:00.000-05:00

I just noticed something and I can't find out where the fault is. Is planetplanet doing something wrong? Or does the new blogger have a bug?This installation of planetplanet says that a feed(blogger) has a new post if there is comment. For example if there was a blog posted on 8th Jan, and someone commented on it today, planetplanet reads the feeds (every hour) and shows the post made on the 8th

Etch: Two digit level RC Bugs

2007-01-10T02:12:00.000-05:00

I have been checking the number of RC bugs in Etch since Nov'06 and had expected them to fall below 100 around first week of December. But then they kept hovering around 115 and never went down till the first week of January.Hmm... it seems it was not only me who was waiting to see the RC bugs for Etch go down to two digit level i.e. <100. Sam put up the perfect picture to celebrate this. Etch

Changing the Template

2007-01-10T01:11:00.000-05:00

They said that the new blogger has new and better features, so I tried to play with the template as well. This is the template I chose to play with the new blogger template features. It is called Mr. Moto and was done by Monsieur Zeldman. I have seen and read quite a bit of his work and he is awesome.I have just played with blogger's GUI system for setting up the template and page elements. The

Fire Alarms

2007-01-08T17:44:00.000-05:00

It was surprise to me when I learned yesterday that our fire alarm was not connected to the fire station system. I would have expected that so that the fire people know automatically when there is an alarm. It doesn't happen to be the case for this building though.Details:Yesterday around 5:00pm I was feeling drowsy because of a late full lunch, so I though of taking a half-hour nap. Just after 5

Testing 1...2....3

2007-01-06T14:46:00.000-05:00

Testing the move to new blogger beta .Update: I need to redo the template to make use of features from the new version of blogger.

Saddam Hanging: (Immediate) Consequences

2007-01-04T17:19:00.000-05:00

Unfortunate consequences of the publicizing of Saddam's hanging:Girl hangs herself over Saddam's execution Boy hangs himself while re-enacting Saddam's executionBoy hangs himself after watching SaddamBlame: irresponsible authorities handling the execution, and irresponsible media people airing the video for short-time fame.

k9copy

2007-01-03T13:20:00.000-05:00

I was searching for a software to convert a DVD9 to a DVD5 just like DVDShrink does. It didn't take long before I saw k9copy which does exactly what I wanted.The idea was to backup my original DVDs which are usually DVD9 to DVD+R discs which are replaceable. I tried one of the DVD9 and the process took around half an hour or so. However, the result wasn't as fabulous as one would get with

Edgy Eft install for Friend

2007-01-02T19:30:00.000-05:00

A friend's system crashed a few days ago. He had to reinstall Windows and also resized his partitions to suit his needs.Installing Windows: 70minutesNumber of reboots for install and post-install drivers, etc : several timesReconfiguring Windows install to previous one: 120minutesInstalling Ubuntu with single reboot: 40minutesUbuntu automatically telling you your mouse needs to be recharged:

Barbara Walters: Heaven

2006-12-23T11:29:00.000-05:00

Heaven: Where is it? How do we get there? was re-telecast last night on ABC. I still remember that they showed the same program last year and that too just before Xmas or the holiday season (whatever you prefer). I don't understand why they aired the program again? It wasn't any different than the one shown before! Had they done more research in finding Heaven by traveling to a another dozen

Is Winter Here? Finally?

2006-12-19T08:48:00.000-05:00

I see a few snow flakes flying around in the wind. Looks like winter is coming here! Or is it? Will have to wait and see./me goes to get my winter jacket and boots out in anticipation :)

Bad Vista

2006-12-17T00:41:00.000-05:00

Follow the link to get enlightened Bad Vista.

Sleep Patterns

2006-12-16T12:37:00.000-05:00

I'm glad to know that its normal to have weird sleep patterns after long flights. Joey is having trouble getting back his sleep patterns after his flight back from Germany. For me the distance was almost double but I'm glad that I don't feel to sleep longer than normal.I have been going to bed early, and by early I mean really early i.e. around 2100hrs. I start feeling sleepy around 2000hrs but I

Protest: µsoft-Nowell

2006-12-15T09:50:00.000-05:00

Ken Hughes (GNU/Linux Debian): Hey guys you remember Novell. The tall leggy blonde that stayed up at the buffet in every man's face? You knew she was for sell....standing there with all her Yast hanging out! I am glad we stayed away from her! She has caught Mono from a contact with Microsoft! The payback will be greater than she can bare......she will be back to cry on each man's shoulder. Just

Beta is Beta afterall

2006-12-14T07:43:00.000-05:00

Blogger Beta has been here for some months now and users are given the option to move over to the new beta if they wish (transitions seem to come for a few users at a time and not all). I have resisted the temptation of using the new features and I think I'm glad that I have waited. I have noticed users not able to publish images sometimes, and often the result is all jumbled up because blogger

Ducklings and Right of Way

2006-11-29T23:52:00.000-05:00

Interesting. I hope other places were like this too! Where I am right now, the right of way is decided by the size of your vehicle or if same how loud your vehicle can honk!