Air Travel Instructions

Instructions for air travel year 2006 and possibly beyond:

• Absolutely no liquids allowed. Better pee before you go through the security check.
• No lipsticks allowed. You can't fool anyone by putting on makeup, your age and other details are on the passport already.
• Leave laptops at home. If taken along, laptops have to be in checked-in baggage with no guarantee of being returned when you reach your destination. So much for the nights you spent preparing the presentation for the brand new product.
• DO NOT PLAY with your cellular phones. The in-flight US marshals don't like kids playing with their cell phones while they are on-duty.
• If you fit the following profile: teenager or older, male, restless/cannot sit still, like to fiddle with gadgets e.g. cell phone, ipods, camera, etc. that you have all the time, are of Asian origin, and follow a certain religion; just don't travel as you will tend to be a possible cause of flight delays and rigourous questioning/interrogation. Sample questions are: How much did you pay for your iPod? What frequencies does your cellphone use? Does your mp3 player play OGG files, etc.
• Be Alert and not paranoid about a nervous fellow passengers. Nervousness is not exclusivly demonstrated by "dangerous elements"!

Wishing you a happy and safe journey...

401 East driver

Thanks to a person for giving me company on the 401 East bound today. I don't know who the person was, but it was a brand new white Impala car going at the speed of around 140kmph (in a 120kmph zone). It was due to him/her that I enjoyed the drive cruising between 135 and 150 kmph. I seldom see people who drive that fast and still observe all the other traffic rules.

And hey, I should thank the 2-door Monte Carlo under me for the ride too. It never complains even if you floor it.

Passengers Banned from Passenger Flights

Just couldn't resist to post a link to this post. Hilarious, intersting and disturbing at the same time.

I wish it was real!

Error 404: Not found

Debugging Google Adsense CSS

Google as it turns out to be can mistakes too. These mistakes are common in the programming world and are commonly called "bugs". I ended up finding one of these so called "bugs" in Google Adsense style sheets. It is something that one won't expect from a CSS expert, but there are some days when these kind of things don't come under the radar. In order to see the buggy behaviour(if they haven't patched the system yet - not till 5Aug 12:00pm EDT) you need a google adsense account. If you don't have one, you will have to make do with the screen captures provided below.

Google Adsense control panel has a tabbed interface implemented using CSS which looks good when viewed in Firefox at default text zoom (Ctrl+Zero). But just when you increase the text zoom level even by a single step, text and other elements under the tabs are shifted to the right giving them a left margin equal to width of the tabs above it.

The problem comes from the fact that the anchor links in the inline list of the tabs are floated left and hence when we zoom in with Ctrl++, the anchor element's size increases so that it overlaps the div element under it which is in normal flow. Now as the div element under the tabs is not cleared left, its content is shifted to the right equal to the width of the tabs above it.(cf. Floats)

A quick hack to solve the problematic behaviour would be a clear: left rule added to the div element below the tabs. In the other more elegant(and longer) method, the use of the float behaviour can be dropped as the anchors are already in their list element boxes. Positioning and other properties can be applied to the list elements instread to achive a better implementation of the tabs using CSS.

Screenshots for the problem and results after adding clear property:

• Behaviour is as expected without any text zoom
• Text zoom 1 step, left size of window
• Text zoom 1 step, right size of window
• Anchor element box overlaps div box
• Our quick hack solves the problem...albeit partially
• Artifacts of the problem due to float remain and can only be removed by changing the implementation method of tabs

Google, where is my reward for the above explanation and solution?

unpredictable as the weather

Weather has been suprisingly wierd this summer. Just yesterday the temperatures were in the lower 40s with humidex (yes the units are in Centigrade). When I was coming out of a Presse Cafe, a senior lady entered the cafe along with her small dog. No sonner had they entered the cafe that she exclaimed how hot and humid it was outside. The heat and humidity not only affected the lady but also her dog who had laid on the floor seconds after then entered the control atmosphere of the cafe.

So just after a hot and humid afternoon, the gods of rain smiled on us around 21:00hrs. The rain didn't last long but there was some relief from the heat. It looked like it was going to be hot today too. But I was surprised to see incessant rain combined with high speed winds in the early afternoon. I had to run around 20meters to be sheltered from the rain, but the rain got me good even in that short span of time. I have never seen such rain and powerful winds here till today. It reminds me of the rainy season back home. It has been raining after that on and off with bright flashes and roaring thunder firing off the theft alarms of vehicles parked outside.

Lets see what the weather brings for us tomorrow.

Promotion tricks

Someone management position at apple.com has probably given orders so as to get new and flashy descriptions to basic actions available in all other OSes. I'm refering to the Apple Pro Tip about Copy and Delete at same time. As far as I understand, their "copy and delete at same time" action is basically called "move" in other OSes. C'mon apple, you can do better. Get some new tips up there and stop presenting old polished shoes as new ones.

Word Verification!!

Apparantly blogger thinks my blog is a spam blog and wants me to use word verification even to post new blog entries. Does my earlier post have anything to do with it? Have to do some research about why blogger thinks this is a spam blog. Till that time I have to go through the wretched word verification process even to post my own entries aarrrrrgghhhhhhhHHH.

Oh BTW it is not that the comments could be a cause of this as they are already protected with word verfication and a warning is there on the bottom of the page that spam comments will be deleted.

Macbookpro battery Xchange

Apple has announced a battery exchange program for the macbookpro laptops sold between February to May 2006. The affected batteries have model number A1175 and a 12-digit serial number that ends with U7SA, U7SB or U7SC. For more details go to the annoucement page and fill out the form on the right side to order an xchange.

Blogger grrrr.....

Is it only me or has blogger changed its policy of serving images to feed aggregators? I haven't been able to view any of the images of people using blogger with my feed aggregator. I have seen a couple of posts regarding the same problem on blogger help google groups. Some say this may be due to a recent maintenance. I hope this is just temporary.

Situation: a feed aggregator didn't show images for posts with blogger hosted images. Clicking on the link (every image on blogger is linked to itself or a bigger version) gave me a 404 error but typing the link addressin the URL bar shows up the image fine. Turning off http referrer in Firefox solved the problem but it is not a solution as it messes up a lot of other things and the solution is per user and not general.

C'mon google don't be so mean, you have lots and lots of bandwidth. Don't break feed aggregators reading your images.

Efficiency

High Speed Connection hardware and delivery times...

Verizon highspeed 4-6 weeks

Sympatico highspeed 3-4weeks

Dataone Broadband 24hrs: priceless

Bookmarklet pdoFoldToggle

There was some talk on planet.debian.org about long entries and how to fold them. Erich suggested using max-height for folding the longer entries and Daniel cooked up a hack for Firefox's userContent.css to achive the same.

And as Erich was also suggesting about a "one-liner" javascript, I cooked up the pdoFoldToggle bookmarklet to do the folding.

pdoFoldToggle bookmarklet can fold entries having a height more than 30em (can be changed by changing the value of maxH variable in the bookmarklet) and also undo the action. Hence the name pdoFoldToggle.

If you like folding the posts on planet debian, go get the bookmarlet and play with it.

Quicktime - sans iTunes

For myself and those people who do not want iTunes® installed along with their Quicktime® installation: Install the standalone version of Quicktime instead i.e. Quictime without iTunes.

Standalone version of Quicktime is available from Apple.com website. They try to make the standalone download link a little difficult to spot as the combined package of Quicktime+iTunes download is plastered all over the download page!

One more thing to notice on their download page is that the link for Quicktime 7 features is dead (both win & mac versions). Why? Shouldn't the obvious link to see what features Quicktime has to offer be working? I would have filed a bug report but couldn't find a BTS link on their website ;)

Google Firefox page

Isn't it a bit late to still show the Jog.com Companion extenstion for the World Cup on the Google Firefox start page?

Update: Skype Misleads

Recently I had posted about Skype home page to be a little misleading for non-windows users, espeically Linux. I don't know if they saw that post or were awaken by someone else or even just realised their own goof up but their main page now shows a link for downloading a Linux version when visiting their website using Linux. Great work, whoever did that.

That aside, they need to get their main page a little bit of more scripting to filter out information for Linux users. Why do I say this? Because the main page showed said that I could call anyone in the UK using Skype(free for the 15 and 16 July). But the Linux 1.2.0.18 version link they provide does not do that! It can't even be used to call anyone in the North America which has been free for a while and will be so till end 2006. So the kind soul who updated the main page for Linux users has some more work to do.

macbook::sleep

After reading the apple-tip about making your macbook* go to sleep the fastest way, I thought why not document the various methods of getting macbook* to sleep. They are listed below:

• Click on apple icon in menu bar, choose sleep.
• apple tip: Command+Option and hold Eject button for 2seconds.
• my tip: Control+Eject, choose Sleep (or restart or just shutdown).

Enjoy the sleeping...zzzZZZZ

PS: macbook* = macbook or macbook pro

MBP Photosession observation

I was playing with my G5 today (not the PPC G5 but the Canon G5) and thought about doing some stills to create some desktop background images for my MBP. The stills came out nice and links to clean images, without any nasty copyright text on them, for the MBP will be put here tonight. However, before I put the images on my server here is an interesting video of what I noticed when I was observing the sleeping beauty with my digicam.

When an MBP goes to sleep, the front sleep indicator light changes its intensity so as to give a feeling of breathing rythm. That is an ingenous idea for a sleeping laptop. While the light seems to go gradually brighter and then becomes dim again, the show was a little different from the view finder of my digicam. The light goes dim and bright while going through a number of brightness levels. If you watch the video, you will see the flickering of the light as it becomes dim and then bright again. The difference comes from the fact that the light is changing the levels fast enough for the human eye to not register the different levels as they pipeline from the eye to the visual cortex is saturated. While the camera's CCD running at 15fps is able to get the flickerings due to some aliasing with the flicker rate of the light.

Italiaaaaaaaaaaa

Classic display of soccer from both the French and the Italian teams. Although France's first goal lead seemed a little cheesy, but they played first class in the second half. Italy were flying in the first half after their first goal which was the first and the only "real" goal of the game. The Italians were raring to go with their headers and the French keeper Barthez did a very good job of holding them at the bay.

Both teams showed their skill with Italy more dominant in the first half and France in the second. Henry was on fire in the second half, but couldn't really convert those good moves into goals. Don't know what really prompted Zidane to butt-head Materazzi, but that was a really bad display from him considering that he is at the end of his career and is really experienced when it comes to bad mouthing/physical altercations on the field. It was bad to see him go off, but that was the right decision that the refree made. I understand that Barthez was sad at not winning the shootout and hence the cup, but he did as good a job as his Italian counterpart. It was only that David Trezuguet was unlucky to the bar instead of hitting home. Well, some days are like that.

Congrats to the Italians for the win. It was a game of wits in the end. Both the keepers were fantastic. Had not be for them, the game would have finished atleast 2-2. In the end I can say again that it was a fantastic display of soccer (sans a couple of bad events). Now the wait starts for the next World Cup in the worderful South Africa.... just 4 years to go.

PS: BTW, the match was held at Olympastadion, Berlin which was the place for the 1936 Olympics too.

France to see Italy

Just finished watching the wonderful semi-final game between France and Portugal. France won 1 - 0. Had it not been the foul inside the penalty area by Portugal the match might have gone to extra time. France now meets Italy in the final on Sunday.

Although Portugal was the losing team, France didn't win convincingly. Portugal played better than France overall. Their passing skills were great and they were able to create attacks by stealing the ball from the French. C. Ronaldo tried his best, but I don't know how much he could have done with 3 defenders on him almost all the time. Miguel's loss was bad luck for Protugal, but I think sending Simao in earlier could have helped taking off pressure and defenders off Ronaldo. I don't know how but when Ronaldo took the free kick in the second half, I had a feeling he was going to "Bend it like Beckham". It was a wonderful kick which dropped suddenly and caught Barthez with a bit of surprise.

Overall Portugal seemed to be the better side but had a unlucky day. The match was more or less a fair game with only two yellow cards. France played well but the onus goes to the defenders who kept the Portugese at a distance. Now they meet Italy in the Final on Sunday. But hey, don't forget the interesting game between Germany and Portugal for the 3rd position.

Gooooooooooooal

Watched the Germany v/s Italy semi final World Cup game. Italy won 2-0 with both goals scored in the last 2minuts of the extra time. The game was fantastic display of skill without too much of foul play. Now to see who they have to play in the final....France...or Portugal...

Skype misleads

Skype as you most probably know is a software which offers voice over IP communication along with an instant messaging feature. Skype has improved a lot with additional features such as video chat being introduced in the Windows version. However, they seem to have forgotten the Linux user base. The last public release version (1.2.0.18) was released on 25th October 2005!

That aside I was surprised to see that Skype website indicates that version 2.5 is available for download without any indication of the operating system required. Apparently, version 2.5 is only for Windows® whereas versions for OS X and Linux fall far behind. It is only when you click the "Download" button on the main page that you realise that Skype for Linux is version 1.2.0.18 (and a very late 1.3.0.30 beta) and version 1.4.0.40 for OS X.

Skype website sniffs the operating system that the visitor's computer is using and then redirects to the appropriate download page. This sniffing process should have been done on the main page so that appropriate information regarding the version available for the visitor's PC's OS is displayed. Displaying version as 2.5 without checking if that is available for that system is misleading the users. Mozilla.com website does this kind of sniffing efficiently and gives you an appropriate link for the version your OS needs. It looks like everyone at Skype is busy enhancing the application for Windows users without caring much for OSX and Linux userbase or even the website for those users!!

Mumbling....Mac OS X...grrr

Mac OS X got upgraded to 10.4.7 today. The update page starts with the text "Meet the world's most advanced operating system. Again. Instantly find what you’re looking for. Get information in an instant ....". I have been trying to get the inbuilt clock to show the time in 24hr format (in window mode and not in menubar on top right). And this most advanced OS can't do the simple job of showing me time in 24hr. If I check the Use 24hr clock option not only it continues to show time in 12hr format, but the option to show the AM/PM indicators is also available!

I don't know how they rated OS X as the most advanced OS but I do know that my Linux box has no problem showing time in 24hr format and neither does the lame Windoze XP! Apple, should I expect a 10.4.8 update to get this easy functionality in OS X?

Bell+Domain Name Registration

I stumbed upon Bell.ca domain name registration page from one of those enticing google advertisements. I was surprised to see that Bell also offered domain name registrations. So out of curiosity I went browsing around to find what they charge for the domains. I think Bell is full of surprises as the domain name pricing on their website was a huge surprised. They charge CAD30+tx (atleast 34.50) for .ca, .us, .com, .net, and .org domains! You can easily browse around for domain name registrars and find a few which will offer much better prices with some where you can buy the domain name for around 4 years with the amount you would pay Bell!

Bell does not seem to believe in bulk selling discounts. They will charge you the same CA$30*10 = CA$300 if you register your domain name through them for 10 years. The biggest surprise was that of the pricing of the .info domains. Registring a .info domain for 1 year costs CA$60! I wonder who would to and register a .info domain with them when 1&1& is giving it away for free. Go get one now, only a few days left.

Silencing your PC

Over the last few weeks I had noticed somewhat unusually loud humm coming from my desktop personal computer (PC). I thought it might due to the warm weather and the PC being running all the time. It runs 24/7 due to the fact that it also run apache and hence is my web server. As it had been more than a few months, I thought giving it a good cleaning session wouldn't hurt. After I was done, I was pleasently surprised! The loud humm was almost inaudible thanks to the cleaning routine I used. Read below how to keep your computer's temperature down and reduce the noise it creats with adding any additional hardware.

Before we start with the details of how to clean the PC, consider this as a warning that if you do not know how to open it up and dismantle its parts do seek the help of an experienced friend. You should be careful when touching different parts of the PC as there is always a change of getting an electrical shock. The most important thing to take care is that the PC should be grounded at all times as a precautionary measure in case you touch a live wire or if there is a discharge of static charge. Grounding of the PC can be achieved by keeping the power cable attached to the PC and turning the power supply switch to OFF position.

Tools Needed

• Ear buds (Qtips)
• A fat(#10 - #12) sable hair brush (for fans)
• Vacuum cleaner
• Screw driver (usually philps head)
• compressed air can (if you don't care about dust flying and settling around you)

Cleaning the Case

Open up the computer case and carefully suck the dust from the body of the case without touching the components of the computer. Most important places are the crevices besides the CD/DVD/floppy drives and any air flow vents on the front panel. Back panel vents should also be cleaned by sucking all dust from there. This cleaning is important because it helps the air flow from the inlet (usually front panel) to the outlet (back panel).

Processor Fan

The processor fan is THE fan which keeps your computer running all the time. If that dies (usually due to dust), the CPU temperature will rise as heat dissipation due to forced cooling by the fan is absent and the computer will stall when the temperature rises above a certain limit. Take out the fan by disconnecting its cable from the motherboard and clean it with the brush and keep the vacuum cleaner running near it to suck all dust. When you are done, there should be no dust sticking on the fins or the frame of the brushless DC fan. Before putting the fan and the housing back in its place, carefully suck the dust if any from the heat sink attached to the CPU. Dust is a bad conductor of heat and hence should not be left on the heat sink or for that matter anywhere on the motherboard or other devices.

Power Supply Fan

Be very careful while opening the power supply. Make sure you disconnect it from the mains when opening it up. The power supply fan should also be cleaned the same way you cleaned the CPU fan so that there is not dust on the fan. Also check the grill in front of the fan and make sure it is dust free. Suck dust if any from the power supply unit if any. Below you can see the images for the power supply fan (before and after cleaning).

Power Supply fan - Before

Power Supply fan - After

VGA Card Fan

These days the video cards usually have a fan seated on the video processor. If you see a lot of dust on the fan, think about cleaning it up but carefully. Cleaning the video card fan is the most demanding task in this routine. I say that because you will have to take the video card out and then unscrew the delicate fan from the top of the processor. As VRAM chips are present near the video processor, you might accidently hose your card if you have static charge. When you are done cleaning and remounting the fan, use the ear buds to clean the dust around the video processor carefully.

Reconnect all the components and wires that you disconnected during the cleaning process and close the PC. Boot it up after connecting the peripherals and compare the sounds the fans make after the computer runs for about an hour or so. You should also make sure that there is ample space around the PC so as to give it ample "air to breath".

What we have accomplished here is that we have made the air flow path as clear as possible by cleaning the case. The fans in the cleaned state are more efficient. Dust on the fans decrease the air flow and hence slows the cooling. As a result, the computer tries to increase the speed of the CPU fan. Increased speeds lead to more wear and tear of the fan and also produces a louder humm. Dust is also the leading cause of failing fans and hence removing it is in our favour.

CPU Heat Sink - Before

CPU Heat Sink - After

A layer of dust on the heat sink acts as an insulator and hence reduced the heat loss. Removing the dust from the heat sink as is important as from the fans. But in case you want to fry the processor, you could leave it on ;)

After following the above process, the humm created by my PC was reduced so much that I had to go and place my ear near its back panel. The cleaning process should be repeated every 3 or 4 months to keep the computer working efficiently. People do keep their places clean but forget about their PCs. PCs need cleaning as much as your household so as to keep them in proper working condition.

I wonder how I will sleep tonight will the reduced amount of humm to keep other noises masked during the night!

Wrrroooommmmmmmmm - 2

Lots of cars, people, and smell of pot.

Wrrroooommmmmmmmm

Its going to be a noisy weekend.

[Mac+Linux] Skype privacy bug

If you are a Yahoo! Messenger or MSN Messenger user (no I don't use their respective clients), what do you expect happens when you do not log-off from one machine and log-on with same username from another machine? The usual case is that the first session is broken and a new session is created with the second machine. Pretty normal behaviour as you might not want another person to read what you are talking about with your contacts and moreover you are not on that machine anymore. Guess what, it doesn't happen with Skype. Atleast not when you are behind a router and on the same network.

I noticed today that the session on my desktop (PC1->linux) did not log-off when I logged-in to Skype from another machine(PC2->mac) using the same user name. I was expecting it(PC1) to say that my session has been closed as I had logged on from another machine (PC2). Anyway, as I was just chatting with my contact sitting in the other room under the same network, I didn't pay attention. But it was when I went to PC1 to find a file that I noticed that the whole chat session was being copied on the screen of PC1 too! Imagine this if you are at a public place like a common computer lab in school. What happens if somone somehow guesses/hacks/steals your password. The person can happily logon using your username and password and sit back and see what you are typing and receiving!!

This behaviour of Skype (haven't tested on Windoze!) is critical privacy and security bug. This is a basic feature which almost all messaging clients have by default. Why can't Skype just kick off the user's first session and authenticate him again to start a new one? I don't know if Skype's Windoze version behaves like this. I hope they read this and get the so called "team" of Skype-Mac and Skype-Linux to atleast fix this bug even if they aren't coming out with new releases for Mac & Linux. With the slow development of Skype on Mac and Linux, this stupid bug and the emergence of "free" and open source Wengo(go check out their cute intro), I think I might not be using Skype for long.

Whine for Mac Whine

There has been quite a discussion about the not-so-recently released Macbook Pro laptops generating a certain whine. People are writing about various circumstances in which the whine gets louder so as to be audible and annoying at the same time. I was following this particular discussion on the so called apple discussions (more rant about them later) and found out that the an earlier discussion had already been wiped off by Apple and another was simply blocked to disallow more posts.

For those interested in knowing different situations the Macbooks are whining, please read the above links. Users have detailed the experiences in detail there. My situation? Well read on....

Apple Whine: I refuse to register for an AppleID to write on Apple Discussions. Reason? Before allowing a user to post on their super moderated user forums, they ask the user to provide them with all their personal information to create an AppleID even if the user just intends to post and ask for help for a product Apple made! I checked for newsgroups and did find a few under comp.sys.mac.* but many of them are closed and are there for archival purposes only. The few which are open, I couldn't find much discussion going on there about the latest hardware. I guess that I have been spoilt by Linux with several places to ask for help even without having to register!

MBP Whine: My Macbook Pro (MBP) has been whining since day one. I have noticed that the whine is audible when on AC power (still have to check when on battery). The whine it seems is more when I'm doing nothing e.g. reading a web page. The more things I make the MBP do, the volume of the whine decreases. This probably shows that the more busy the processor is, less is the whine. Is it the processor which is whining? I don't know. But I'm sure that it is neither the screen which is whining nor does it come from the speakers. The whine seems to come out of the top right side of the keyboard though.

One interesting point: I was able to stop the whine if I kept the trackpad button pressed! In Firefox, this gave me the context menu which was of no use to me, but it did definitely stop the whine (or atleast made it inaudible).

I'm still experimenting the scenarios when the whine is there and when not. As I find out more stuff, this post will be updated. My other whining about the Macbook Pro (for which I should call Apple Support) won't be mixed in this post but in a separate one.

MBP Details:
MBP 15"
2GHz, 1GB RAM
Serial W8612******
SMC Version: 1.2f10

The Pirates are Back

ThePirateBay.org's servers were ceased by the Swedish police on 31 May and the website along with many other small websites hosted by the hosting company PRQ went down. The raid by the Swedish police is alleged to be done on the behest of the American corporate interests (RIAA, MPAA, etc.) through government channels. The fiasco is gaining momentum with some hackers defacing Swedish police's website along with Sony Music (UK) and Time Warner (Taiwan). Even the Swedish parlimentarians are asking about why/who ordered the raid.

In the meantime, TPB is already back online. Is ThePirateBay here to stay unlike Suprnova.org? It remains to be seen how the situation unfolds next week after the 1500hrs demonstration in Stockholm today. Long live the Pirates.

Opera devs: Package Carefully!

I had to uninstall Opera 8.52 earlier because its executable was causing a problem with an X.org upgrade to 7.0. The executable was in /usr/X11R6/bin! Why would anyone need it in there? I think Opera's Linux team needs to get in touch with a DD(debian developer) and fix a time to get a crash course on how to package for Debian.

Today I installed Opera 8.54 again for some testing purposes and tried to start opera from the command line. No go! ~$ which opera tells me that there is no command available. On looking for opera in /usr/bin, I found out a wierd symbolic. Details below:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Jun 1 14:44 /usr/bin/opera -> ../../bin/opera

A symbolic link to /bin/opera ? I found a post about this on opera.com. But the post still indicates that the opera binary is in /usr/X11R6/bin! This is certainly not acceptable from Opera developers. I admire that they are packaging a wonderful product in a 4.0MB package(comparing to Firefox 1.5.0.4 8.1MB) but mistakes like the above are just not going to help their task of increasing the userbase on the Linux side.

Smoking in public enclosed places ends on 30th May 2006 in Quebec.....well the ban is already in effect for the last 70 minutes. Quebec will be a clean province now. Come, now its "Yours to Discover" ;)

Apple comes to rescue

Even though electronic devices have 110-240V chargers to work all over the world, the problem of different socket standards in different continents still remains. I got a taste of this at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam and was glad that Apple came my rescue.

My Canon G5 digital camera was indicating low battery so I thought I better charge it before I plan anything for my 11hr wait for my connection. I found power sockets at and near the communication center and took out the charger for my camera. It was then I noticed that the plug for charger's cord was a polarized one(Type A new) and the adapter I had (North American Type A -> European Type F) wouldn't take it in. The adapter was only built for a non-polarized plug(Type A old).

I thought about it for a while and then realized that my MacBook Pro's charger has a detachable plug. The detachable plug is not polarized and it easily fit the adapter plug. The charger for the camera was connected to the adapter+plug by eliminating the power cord! So thanks to Apple for coming to my Canon G5's rescue.

Firefox Alpha 2

Firefox Alpha 2 aka Bon Echo is officially out. Although the hard disk space requirements for Windows and Linux have increased over time to the present 52MB, its Mac OX X installation requires about 4 GB of space apparantly.....that is definitely a LOT! I think I can install almost any operating system today within that space requirement. Since when did Firefox becomes bigger than an OS?

Blondes

Keeping blondes busy.

growisofs & xscreensaver

It is very annoying when xscreensaver jumps in after 5minutes of non-usage of the PC when I'm writing a DVD. Usually the DVD drive takes around 10-12minutes to write a full DVD. During that time I prefer not to do any memory or CPU intensive tasks for the DVD process to continue uninterrupted. However, the xscreensaver just jumps in after 5 mintues of idle time and sometimes the screen saver uses a whopping 80% to 90% CPU which just kills the buffer and the write speed of the DVD writer. I just saw it do down from 12.1x to 0.6x in under a couple of seconds!

Wouldn't it be great that either growisofs or xscreensaver knew that a CD is being written and that the screen saver shouldn't avctivate now. I haven't used KDE in a while but it would be interesting to know if k3b can stop the screen saver while writing CDs/DVDs. I know that while I'm watching a video in full-screen mode, xine doesn't allow the screen saver to jutt in. Can't CD/DVD burning applications have that feature too?

ALSA sound: my hack

I have had problems with ALSA sound whenever I install and start using a new kernel. Here is what I do to make it work each time. It is here mainly for my records and help for others.

1. Run alsaconf to reconfigure ALSA for your soundcard and loading of appropriate kernel module.
2. Stop ALSA: ~$ /etc/init.d/alsa-utils stop
3. Delete the file asound.state: ~$ rm /var/lib/alsa/asound.state
4. Restart ALSA: ~$ /etc/init.d/alsa-utils start

This makes ALSA behave normally and sound is back again.

Best Wishes...

Couldn't get you on phone, so I thought I should document my "fecilitation" for your day. Happy anniversay Pinder and Simi. May you have a wonderful new year and enjoy the best of everything. Hugs and kisses....

Christmas Weekend

The last weekend, Christmas weekend, was the weekend of the year when you didn't have a problem finding parking spots in downtown around the place you want to go. Otherwise one usually has to drive around for about half an hour to find a parking spot on the street and it is usually far away from the place you want to go!

That was just magic...

Opera - 1

Hmmmm.....just noticed that the "News Clips" feature in Gmail does not work in Opera. Not that I use the feature that often, but if it is not present, something looks amiss on the page. Google, make it work fast with Opera too.

IE & Firefox

While browsing the net I saw this rather interesting image. The text written besides it said "changing relationships" ;)

Christmas Pics.....:(

I was ready with the first 15 pictures of christmas lightings today and by mistake I uploaded the full versions to flickr. Just uploading 5 pictures used up 90% of my allocated free bandwidth :(.

Now I have the following choices:

1. upload very small versions so as not to cross my monthly bandwidth.
2. upload tiny versions to blogger instead, with only one size and without flickr features
3. wait till Jan ....... no I can't do that.
4. ....or I can pray someone gifts me $25 for a pro membership on flickr ;)

Thinking about what to do now. Suggestions welcome.

Christmas Decorations

I will be doing a series of pictures of various decorations we have around here during the Christmas season. I was going to start on 1st of December, but could not due to some technical glitches. The ones till 3rd Dec should be coming up in the morning and after that it will be a regular feature till year end.

I hope viewers enjoy it.

Yahoo! Mail Search Bug?

I was searching my Yahoo! Mail(tm) yesterday and got a surprise as search results. Before that I want to get it in records that the search feature of yahoo mail sucks! It takes a lot of time to get back the results unlike the popular Gmail.

Back to Yahoo! Mail search results. I did a search for a string in my inbox for some messages in the last month. The results yahoo gave me looked foreign to me (see image above). On closer inspection none of the emails listed in the results belonged to me! Out of curiosity, I did another search and got the results I wanted. Attempts to recreate the original problem did not give me results from other users though. But the possibility of the mixup happening during search of yahoo mail indicates that they have a bug in their search system(atleast). I hope the performance is much better with their new email-client like interface they are developing.

10 Degrees

A friend sent me this poem when told her about the first snow of the season.

10 Degrees

How beautiful the sun as it skims
across the air in the hush of ten degrees,
disc of palest yellow hope along a sky

of circumstance; how beautifully we watch it fall,
the random tern, forgotten mole,
the infant tree inside rough winter bark.

How beautiful this frost, female fingers
tracing down the glass, how beautiful
this world too cold to criticize itself;

how beautiful Earth's creatures are, happy
and forever safe from the only perfect tragedy,
which is of course to never have been born.

A big thank you to you.

Poem: "Ten Degrees" by Tom Chandler from Sad Jazz.© Table Rock Books
2003. Lincoln, Rhode Island. Reprinted with permission.

down!

The webserver is down for maintenance. Should be up by 2300hrs ET 8 Nov.

Update: Server back up. Everything running fine and dandy!

Saving the Environment - 1 Step at a Time

With the increasing use of plastic in our daily lives and it not being bio-degradable I had an idea in my mind which could result in reducing the amount of plastic we use.

Ever wondered how many bottles of bathroom cleaner you use in an year? How many bottles of perfume are sold with the spray attachment? Most of the simple devices for spraying some liquid can be redesigned to use less amount of plastic than they currently use. All these containers consist of is a tank and a spray mechanism. The spray mechanism has a tube below it which goes to the bottom of the tank. The tube is usually made of plastic and that is what we can do away with to save plastic.

Losing the tube would require almost nil or a little redesigning of the tank in order to be easily held by our hands. Removing the tube will render the apparatus unusable in its current position. To use it without the tube all that is required is to invert the container and use the pumping action to spray the liquid. Changing the shape of the place where one holds the container so that it is easy to hold would be the only required change in order to use this design. The principal on which the spray works still works would still be valid for most of the non-viscous liquids.

Neat, isn't it? I hope people would use this idea and help save the environment.

Casio Watches

I have been using the Databank wrist watches by Casio since last few years. I have had two models and repeated the second one. The thing I liked about them was that they had telememo and schedule (50 in older model and 150 in the one I have now), world time and a timer in addition to regular features. Telememo and schedule really helps when one doesn't own a cell phone.

However there are a few things I don't like about those models especially the DBC-150 (warning: Macromedia Flash required). I have had to replace the battery after about 6months of purchasing all of them. After the change the battery runs for atleast one year. I know that the watch is there on the dealer's show case till it is bought and is always running but 6months for all three of them is a bit over the top. The second grudge is the low accuracy of time. The product page states the accuracy of the watch to be +/- 30 seconds! And that for today's standards seems to be quite a big error. I'm not that much concerned about this as I can refer to my PC's time for a more accurate estimate.

The third and the worst problem has been the wrist strap. I have had the databank model with the rasin straps but they become brittle and break after around 12-18 months of usage. This behaviour has been consistent for all three databank watches I ever bought. The interesting point about the strap problem is that no dealer carries the replacement straps. Every place I have asked has shown me options of Timex replacement straps (even they don't have one which matches the DBC-150). Why can't Casio either make better straps or provide the replacement? In case I plan to buy new one (as I did the last couple of times) there is the data problem: I have to transfer each phone entry and permanent schedules individually to the new watch.

So my advice to others is to stay away from Casio watches with rasin straps as they are going to break in around an year and a half or even earlier if you were swimming with them. What good is a watch if it not going to last for atleast 4-5 years!

</rant>

Planet Mozilla

It looks like Planet Mozilla was down today for some time. I could not access it via the browser and was getting a request timed out error. Trying to ping also resulted into a 100% data loss!

Update: It seems to be running fine now. I wonder what happened!

Update 2: More infomration: the whole mozilla.org was down for 15minutes

Install Google!

I was setting up a computer account for a new hire today and she requested me two things. The first one was to remove that Word icon from desktop and the second one was to install Google! A bit surprised, I asked her to explain what she meant by "install Google". She said "Well I use google a lot and I don't want to type in the web site address every time I want to use it."

With then I understood what she meant. She wanted me to install the Google Toolbar in IE(yuck) for her. I told her that we used a new browser and google comes in it. She could just type in her search query and the results will be displayed in the window. She was a bit surprised watching me do it, and then I also did a demo similar yahoo, and amazon searches. In the end she seemed to be pretty satisfied.

But "install google", that seems to be a really vague term taking into consideration all the things google is doing or planning to do!

OSS and L10n

I just finished updating my Debian(unstable) box and got a shiny new version of Openoffice.org 2.0. While selecting packages when updating I also noticed that various language packs were available for it, especially Hindi and Punjabi. It is getting so common these days that one gets a choice of interface in their local language. In Linux changing to your local language is as easy as logging-out and then logging-in again in your preferred locale.

Software that I use and have several localizations include but are not limited to Seamonkey(earlier Mozilla Suite), Firefox, Thunderbird, Opera (Opera Hindi & Punjabi release), etc. Opera released its browser's version in Hindi and Punjabi for about 800 million people speaking these languages.

Not only do open source softwares offer your local language but desktop suites like GNOME (l10n status 2.12) and KDE (l10n status stable version) also offer full desktop interface in several languages. Thus increasing the reach of OSS to the furthest corners of the world.

Just last week someone asked me if it was possible to have Japanese version of Windows XP on his laptop. He had only two options: buy Japanese version of Windows XP (costs around $700) or ask a friend in Japan to buy a laptop for him and courier it here! I informed him that Linux was available in most languages for FREE :) in case he wanted to use that instead of Windoze.

Article: Awstats setup on Debian

I had a bit of hard time setting up awstats on my Debain GNU/Linux box running apache. Awstats generates statistics for web server, ftp server, mail server, etc. by parsing the respective log files. The statistics can be viewed in a browser and are presented in a nicely layed out design.

For my own reference, I had documented the process of setting up awstats on a Debian box and making the process automate without the common problem of losing some statistics everytime apache rotates its log. The document is now available publicly under a GNU Free Documentation license on its own page.

Suggestions and corrections would be highly appreciated as comments to this entry.

Yahoo! Mail

Since the last 15minutes I haven't been able to send a couple of important email messages because I can't access the address book on my Yahoo! Mail account. The request for viewing the address book times out after a few minutes. I wonder what Yahoo! is doing with their email system! Is the new beta already being pushed in for general use?

FEMA in Pakistan??

Tonight on "World News Tonight", anchor Elizabeth Vargus started with There is no such thing as FEMA in Pakistan.... referring to the earthquake in Pakistan last weekend and the state of relief for the affected. Well there better not be another FEMA in any other country, becuase it is no use if it is just sitting on its a*** just watching the weather reports before, during and after a huge hurricane!

Postage Delivery

I have had a letter lost which was sent as registered post via Canada Post to Germany. Also, if you don't write the "From:" address on the top left corner of the letter, the officials point out that the from address should be above the "To:" address and on the left side of it. And you must have the PIN/ZIP code written down clearly. Some of the letter addressed to me arrive with a black mark on the bottom of my address with the "Write PIN" written below it. I know it all helps to keep the high-tech postal department work flawlessly. But wonder how they will react if they read this news!

HP Color Laser Printers

I got an HP flyer today in the newspaper. I was checking out their exhorbitantly priced laser printers with networking capability. Surprisingly all their color laser printers(in the flyer) are designed to look like the belly of an obese person. I wonder what is the reason behind that.

PS: The top 5 in the list are the ones listed in the flyer.

JHU and Nvu

JHU and Nvu. Wondering why these two names are together? Keep reading...

Johns Hopkins University's online education program website, which deals with technical topics that are required to teach and support an online class, has Nvu on the top of its list of recommended HTML editors. Nvu is the only FREE WYSIWYG HTML editor listed on their web page. They recommend it even to non-technical users! Macromedia Dreamweaver, M$ Fronptage and M$ Word are also listed with their major drawbacks of steep learning curve, IE-centric features, and limited features respectively.

They also have a brief and to the point introduction to Nvu as well.

Nvu Tutorial 0.4 available

Nvu Tutorial version 0.4 is now available from the usual location or via software update process described in the link. Please remember this is my crappy web server so in case you get some errors try again in a few minutes.

Changes for 0.4 include better explanations for generic font-family, uploading a web page, publishing a web page, etc. For complete change log, read here.

PS: If you have any problems installing ver0.4, please comment here.

HDD crash - Final

The crashed external WD USB HDD should be in transit back to Western Digital now. The new one is working fine, and I hope it doesn't crash soon!

Before packaging the bad HDD for return I wiped it clean to remove all data. Wiping process was:

• Write zeros on the whole disk: ~$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb
• Write random characters: ~$ dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sdb
• Again write zeros on the whole disk: ~$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb

Later I realized that I could have also used shred, or after writing zeros I could have written some porn for WD as a gift ;). Maybe I will do that next time for them.

CSS builder preview & new CaScadeS

After Nvu's 1.0 release a few weeks back, now it looks like CaScadeS, the Nvu CSS editor, (original project website) development is picking up steam. Daniel announced on his blog about future CaScadeS release and new features to be expected.

New features proposed for the next version of CaScadeS are:

• non-modal: that would be helpful to people who want to keep the CSS editor open all the time while editing their web page.
• simpler and smaller UI: A definite yes for that as Nvu's target audience are the masses rather than professional web developers.
• cancelable changes: didn't really feel the need for that as one can delete the selector, or remove specific declarations.
• -moz-* declarations: Wow! That would be fun when designing for Gecko based browsers or even editing Nvu Help ;)
• sidebar: having the present style sheet in the sidebar would be convenient. But does that mean with the editor being non-modal and also as a sidebar, we can have some kind of detachable/dockable CSS editor with Nvu? If yes, that would be a FIRST!
• Links to CSS reference: Ah ha! We had the similar thing in mind a few months ago for an HTML reference sidebar in Nvu Help docs. But it was never plugged into the official Help. Will this give us the final push? Maybe.....

For the curious ones: check out the selector builder (Gecko based browsers only) xul application already implemented. Selector builder helps users to create selectors for their style rules using an intuitive GUI. Although some of the selectors are not even implemented in non-modern browsers, selector builder will increase the comprehensiveness of number of CSS2.1 selectors being available to the user through the GUI.

WaltBren's Nvu Review

WaltBren has posted a review on Nvu. Because it is a pain to register to a website just to post a comment for a blog post, the comment is here rather than under the original entry.

I will touch upon a few of the review points which I think need attention. Here they are one-by-one:

Graphical Head Tag Editor

That is the beauty of using Gecko as your backend. Just as with Firefox, Nvu too is capable of having extensions to increase its functionality. And if you haven't looked around, there has been a graphical head tag editor extension for Nvu since version 0.8 or 0.7. Other extensions include Nvu configuration editor, Launchy for Nvu, Venkman, etc. all are available from Nvu website or Mozdev NvuExt project.

CSS editor

Agreed that learning the CSS editor process has a longer learning curve, but that doesn't mean that it is worthless. After all, it's CaScadeS version 0.40. What do you expect from an extension which was primarily created as a proof of concept and hasn't gone much development over the last year as Nvu was being improved upon? Even then it's capabilities are as good as any other CSS editor; check out the Nvu demo done by only using the GUI components of Nvu complete with div tags, multi-column tableless layout, and absolute positioning. Also, check out the few pages on geocities maintained by Nvu only! And to top it all, for those who feel its a bit hard to work with the CSS editor, check out the 15 minute guide to CaScadeS.

Advanced Layout Suppport (DIV)

"limited CSS support"....what else does one want than CSS2.1 support (minus a few CSS definitions)? Also, for the DIV and column layout, check out the links in the paragraph above. I think Nvu is more capable of DIVs and column layouts than FPE(waltbren.com) and don't forget that Nvu produces standards compliant HTML and CSS code. But I do have a features request for it: Capability to add comments in stylesheet.

Bugs

No, your list is not significant as it doesn't include the most important bugs.. I can cite a few of them, but then again don't all softwares have bugs?

Online Help

Could you explain a little more in detail about wasn't available in the "online help"? Here in the Nvu community we volunteers try our best to have the documentation written in such a way that users can find the solution to their problems and that the explanations are self explanatory. Nvu includes the inbuilt Help Documentation, and then there is an Nvu user guide. Which online help were you referring to?.

I agree that there are a few bugs in Nvu, CSS editor is not as user friendly as it should be, source syntax highlighting isn't rendered live, etc. but the major point here is that Nvu is open source. It fills the long gaps of a true WYSIWYG HTML editor for the masses. It sticks to standards instead of giving you the code in a garbage bag. One of Firefox's brilliant feature is the ability to add new features with extensions and hence increasing Nvu's functionality. Nvu is still being developed and at version 1.0 it is already being talked in the same breadth with Frontpage and Dreamweaver.

On the other hand, I noticed that WaltBren.com's principal services include "Web Development Consultant". But they should know better to have their own website's links working in order to offer those services. Links at the bottom of the blog are broken! Do they want help in configuring their Wordpress blog?

HDD Crash -- Followup

The replacement external USB HDD arrive yesterday. It took a tad long time for UPS to deliver taking into consideration that the package was created on 4th of August! I was expecting just the HDD with the enclosure in the package but WD sent the adaptor, USB cable, and the enclosure support blocks too!

I have the Thinkpad with me till the next couple of days so I though why not start it up with a Knoppix Live CD and partition the HDD using parted. I had the done the same with the earlier HDD. But this time when I committed the changes, it took more than 2 and a half hours for it to write the partition table and inodes on the 90GB partition. I heaved a sigh of relief when it finished. Now all that is left is to copy the configuration files for dirvish vaults and initialize the backups. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Playing with Ubuntu Linux

I'm writing this from a shiny new install of Ubuntu 5.04 release "Hoary Hedgehog". Yes, I know that Hoary was released long time back in April, but this is the first time I got a chance to install Ubuntu. This machine is an IBM X30 Thinkpad which I have just for another couple of days so I thought why not give Ubuntu a chance.

I had ordered the free Ubuntu CDs a long while ago when they were shipping them with the Warty release. Being too lazy to download the Hoary CD, I just popped the Warty CD in and rebooted the machine. Walla, after reboot the installer started and just asked a few configuration questions and went ahead with the installation. I have to admit that the last time I installed Debian, which was just 6 weeks ago, the debian-installer didn't behave as nicely!

After installing the basic packages, the system rebooted and automatically checked for any security updates and there were many. Remember, it was a warty installation! After doing all the updates, GDM started with a very welcoming drum music. I want to have that for my Debian Unstable box too :). Logging in to Gnome had an equally pleasant. At this point, I realized that almost everything had been detected by the installer; the audio, video, and even the trackball mouse of the laptop. The Ubuntu guys have done a wonderful job to make Ubuntu an out-of-the-box operating system.

As everyone knows by now, Ubuntu comes with the GNOME desktop with the default "Human" theme. Overall I liked the artwork for the theme! I'm sure it is professional enough for OEM installs too. But in case you are a KDE person (like me), you can go to the Kubuntu website and try the KDE version of Ubuntu instead.

Ubuntu default install does not allow logging in as root but advises to use sudo command for administrative tasks. At first I was a little confused at the password to type-in for the sudo command, but when I tried my own it worked. Ubuntu gives the root rights to the user created first on the system to use the sudo command. You can also go in and set root password to su and do the admin tasks the normal way.

Now it was time for updates. I used sudo to apt-get update and then did a apt-get upgrade which had several new packages as updates. After that a apt-get dist-upgrade the Warty installation was up-to-date. Then it was time for the real upgrade, i.e. to the "Hoary". Changing all instances of warty to hoary, apt-get upgrade, apt-get dist-upgrade and about an hour later I had another shiny release on the desktop: Hoary. The upgrade went without a hiccup unlike to what I had expected. Again, full marks to Ubuntu for inter-release upgrade compatibility.

The Hoary release after an upgrade has the latest versions of the commonly used softwares like Mozilla Firefox, Open Office, Gimp, Evolution email client, etc. The Synaptic package manager and Ubuntu's Update Manager are one of the most impressive administrative programs that are easy to understand. Even newbie users won't find it hard to learn how to run them to keep their systems up-to-date and install new programs or delete unwanted packages.

Problems: Firefox keeps on spitting out XML parsing error in the JavaScript console. I lost the wireless applet when I upgraded from warty to hoary. The Ubuntu About dialog comes out in the Yelp, the Gnome help browser. It would be much better if the about dialog was independent and looked more professional. Ubuntu only installs a set of basic packages for a very minimal desktop. Packages like mozilla, thunderbird, apache, mysql, php, etc need still to be installed manually. I haven't tried the server version install maybe that might address these requirements.

Even though Ubuntu seems to be so much easier to setup and maintain, I will still keep Debian GNU/Linux Unstable on my desktop PC. But testing out Ubuntu had definitely made it a highly probable Linux flavour for my laptop (when I buy it!). And the best thing is even if I use Ubuntu, I will still have all the advantages of Debian :)

Mozilla Store Reopens

Great news for Mozilla/Firefox fans: Mozilla Store has reopened!

I was almost going to buy a shirt to support the project but couldn't do that because my browser Mozilla does not recognize the security certificate of the website https://store.mozilla.org. Should I be using a different browser like IE to buy stuff from Mozilla Store?.

MS loves Linux

Check out this repot on Slashdot. I had read about the javascript hack for WGA on boingboing.net, but Wine+Linux+WGA is too much ;).

Nvu + SkyOS

Being based on Firefox, Nvu is available for various OSes like MS Windows, MacOS, Linux (different flavours like Fedora, Debian, Linspire, etc.). I just found out from the changelog of SkyOS that they have ported Nvu to SkyOS!. This just proves that Nvu (and hence mozilla based applications) is truly portable to different operating systems.

Check out their screen shots on their main page where you can see open source applications like Gimp, Firefox, Thunderbird, Nvu, etc. in action. A closed source operating system other than MS Windows running open source applications....Intersting!

QOTD

"It's all about package management."

HDD crash

It seems that my external USB hard disk drive(HDD) crashed today. It was making loud humming noise along with periodic clicks. After checking all the processes running, I noticed that the regular backups were still not finished. Normally, they take less than a minute as they are differential ones rather than full backups. The cron job had started at around 04:00hrs and was still running when I discovered the noise i.e. at around 09:00hrs.

After trying to stop the task and then kill it, the HDD was still making the noise. So I decided to reboot and check it. The PC did not shutdown as it was waiting for the USB HDD to unmount first. The USB HDD was not responding and in the end I just turned it Off.

After rebooting the system did some journal correction and said everything was fine. However, the clicking noise was still there! To test it with the Western Digital software, I had to boot in windows and did the quick test and the extended test. No error was reported, but the clicking sound was still there. So I called up WD as the disk was still under warranty. WD's 1-800 number does not have that many choices and the best one I could find was "1" = RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization). To my surprise the person at the other end just asked the serial number of the drive and said that it was still under warranty and I just needed to give my shipping information to them so that they can send me a new one.

Yippie, I will be getting a new HDD and I just hope it doesn't die on me like this one!

Hiroshima: Then and Now

A very touching presentation of comparison between Hiroshima in 1945 and now. Another fine example of the strength of mankind(esp. Japanese) to rise up after such a disaster.

MoFo Reorganization

The Mozilla Foundation (MoFo) has annouced a reorganization plan. In this reorganization Mozilla Foundation has created a wholly owned subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. The new Mozilla Corporation will focus on Firefox and Thunderbird (,etc.) branded products whereas MoFo will continue to just focus on the Mozilla project.

Read more about this: here, here, here, and here.

New Nvu Extension

I almost forgot to mention about the new Nvu extension: Site Manager Extender 0.2, but a quick glimpse on Daniel's post prompted me that it deserves an entry. The extension mainly adds (a little bit of) much needed functionality to the inbuilt site manager.

WYSIWYGly Nvu Demo

A few weeks ago Gerv had blogged about a tutorial on Nvu. On reading it in my free time I noticed the following:

Since Nvu 0.90 does not allow you to arbitrarily position text and graphics on your web page, nor does it allow you to create multiple columns using Cascading Style Sheets (...snip...) from the WYSIWYG interface, you will have to use an old webmaster trick to accomplish this.

The tutorial goes on to use tables for a multi-column layout, urgghhh. However, the truth is that Nvu has been quite capable of creating multi-column layouts using just its WYSIWYG interface i.e. just the GUI without any source-view editing.

So, to prove my claim about Nvu's capabilities I cooked up a page a few days ago which uses pure CSS for the multi-column layout. Nvu's in-build style sheet editor, CaScadeS, was used for the layout generation. At no point during the creation the of the demo was it required to edit from source-view. I know Nvu's style sheet editor has its short comings in user-friendliness, and unimplemented CSS2.1 rules, but still it is feasible to create multiple column layouts with Nvu.

The demo features on Nvu's demo repository.

Q.E.D.

Note To Self

Pineapples have a small shelf life. If a ripe one is bought, use it within 2 days or it will decay.

Lost weight

I lost about a half kilograms of my weight after I cut nails from my feet ;)

Sony CPD E-200

Once again after a long time I get a feeling that I am an engineer. I had posted about my problems with my Sony monitor earlier. Today I went to a few shops trying to get a couple of components for the monitor to change. I had to walk for about an hour and a half to go through those shops (this doesn't include the time to travel to that area from home). But patience paid and I finally got the capacitors and resistance for the monitor.

Opening the Sony monitor was a difficult process but if you do it step-by-step with some patience you do get to learn a lot. It took us around an hour and a half to dismantle it completely. See the D-board for it above. Changed the capacitor which looked faulty and built the monitor again. Connected power supply to it and carefully switched it ON. Walla! High-pitched noise is almost gone. Whatever is left was only heard for the first minute and has not come back again.

The monitor is working perfectly now although I think I might have to change a couple of more components. But I can't complain, the engineer did such a nice job!

Telemarketers!!

Today some telemarketer company called up to sell me a cellular phone. Below is how the conversation went:

• Ring Ring....
• me: Hello
• caller: Bonjour
• me: Bonjour
• caller: Mon nom est Catharine.
• me: OK!
• catharine: I'm calling from xxxxxxx communications
• me: How can I help you?
• catharine: We have selected your phone number from a list to give you a free cell phone.
• me: I can't afford one.
• catharine: Ok. Thank you and have a nice day.
• me: Thanks!

She was offering me a free cell phone and I said I couldn't afford one! Ha Haa. The surprising thing was that she believed me!

Fireworks - Canada

Allright, I confess that I missed Portugal's display on 20th July. I was feeling a bit lazy and there was no one to accompany me.

Last saturday, it was Canada. Right before 22:00hrs the countdown started, 5...4...3...2...1... and nothing happened! They took about a minute to start their thing. They had a really nice start, with an impressive commentary. I got only some parts fo the commentary as it was in French, but I got the jist. Canada had some really big, noisy and beautiful fireworks in the beginning but later it was almost routine. They did start with simple stuff for every song, but impressed just before they finished the song. Although end-of-song displays were good, they should have been much better.

The finalé wasn't that good either. They kind of elongated it a lot with very less color and sparkles. I wonder if I got any good shots that night! All in all, I wasn't impressed by their display. They had actually raised my hopes with the fantastic start but they didn't live up to my expectations.

For me its still either the Czech Republic or Argentina for the top (assuming Portugal didn't do as well). Wednesday, its the U.S.ofA. Lets see how they perform this time.

PS: Yes, uploading pics is pending for Spain, Czech Republic, and now Canada. Don't worry they will be here soon :)

Downtime expected

As detailed in the earlier post, I'm experiencing problems with my monitor. I think it is either a transformer winding or something similar which starts to resonate. I'll probably try to troubleshoot the monitor and hence the webserver on my machine will not be available for some time today.

PS:Even if I decide to not run the monitor, I will be using the other monitor and the machine should be up within an hour or so. If anything worse happens, I will have it up headless!

Bad Luck :(

Just yesterday I connected two monitors to my Nvidia FX 5700LE video card. After hacking my xorg.conf for straight 3hrs I was finally able to make both of them work on my Debian box. I was very satisfied to get two X screens in front of me with independent resolutions and more workspace.

Unfortunately, my Sony CPD E200 monitor has started acting up in a very annoying way. Randomly, some coil starts resonating at a high pitch which is very annoying when you are sitting in front of the monitor. Also, due to the resonating coil the image displayed on the screen has hundreds of horizontal lines :(

I don't want to loose my Sony monitor as its the only one which gives me a 1600x1400 resolution and I can't afford to buy a new one!! Just keeping my fingers crossed.

No Firefox 1.1; Straight to 1.5

It has been just announced that there will be no Firefox 1.1 release. The next final release will be of Firefox 1.5 with beta releases in-between. Firefox 1.5 is scheduled to be released in September 2005. So much for release numbers!

Read more here, and here

Fireworks Pictures update

Due to reasons explained in my previous post and udev playing weird tricks, I wasn't able to download the pictures of Fireworks display by Spain and the Czech Republic to my machine. Hopefully, udev will behave and I will upload the pictures soon.

Speaking about fireworks, Spain's display was OK, but Argentina was still the best. Spain actually had nicely choreographed fireworks having good synchronization. But they lacked the zing in them. Their low altitude fireworks were good, but the high altitude fireworks were almost routine except at in the last 30 seconds. So till Spain, I think it was Argentina who had the best display.

This weekend it was last year's champs, the Czech Republic. They had a brilliant display. Good choreography, good colors, good synchronization, and heart thumping sounds. The quality of their display could be judged from the cheer of the crowd too. If the Czech Republic is not on the top, I think it was atleast as good as Argentina. The are neck-and-neck. Just a few more countries to go, and we will have the winner.

Server back online

This is just to let everyone who tried reaching the few webpages on my website that the webserver is back online. The cause was an apt-get command which uninstalled several thing from my Debian box. The Unstable is in a pretty bad shape these days due to the x.org transition, and the ABI change. It may stay like this with the upgrade of KDE3.4 in next few weeks.

The result of the accidental apt-get was that I had to reinstall the system due to multiple problems which were created. The install took longer than expected due other commitments during that time. Presently, the webserver is up and running as it was earlier. Even googlebot and msnbot have visited the website atleast once after the upgrade.

It is possible that there might be some downtimes in the coming couple of weeks as there are still problems installing KDE, sound doesn't work, and can't get nvidia drivers to work with xorg.

PS: Anyway, the upgrade gave me a clean install of x.org, which looks cool and a little faster than XFree86 even if its running with nvu drivers.

Pic from last weekend

As promised, here are the pics from last weekend. The fireworks were displayed by Argentina, and the other two are from the Jazz Festival while we were walking back from the fireworks.

Saturday Night

Went to see Argentina perform at the International Fireworks Festival. They did well. Although I some more colors at the end would have been better. Yes, I took pics....maybe I will post them here tomorrow. But don't expect high-res versions ;)

On the way back, we walked through the gay village, which was in a gay mood as always. And later, it was a slow and careful walk through the Jazz festival. Will post a pic of that too tomorrow night.

At what age do you start running?

I have heard that doctors say that before you start any serious exercise schedule and if you are over 30, you should get a complete medical checkup. Well, thats allright. But I want to know what tests or precautions they recommend for someone who plans to take up a career in running at the age of 81!

Surprised! Yes, this is what Fauja Singh did. His profile:

• Profession before age 81: Farmer in Punjab India.
• Profession after age 81: Running!
• Presently: at age 94, he is still running and has ran several marathons in the UK, US, and Canada.
• Saturday, 2 July 2005 he will attempt running several lengths of track to make various records.

For more details click here and here. I feel so embarassed as I haven't ran in a while or even played soccer :(

Photo courtsey BBC

Nvu 1.0 Final

Nvu 1.0 Final is available. For downloading and the changelog go nvu.com or official mirror.

Additional Changelog:

• Linux: selecting text with mouse copies it to clipboard, and middle-click pastes

Additional Enhancement:

• Clicking "Help" button in dialog boxes like Image Properties, Table Properties, etc. opens Help at corresponding section instead of default page.

Quirks: Help window toolbar does not contain the Copy button by default. To view it, right-click on toolbar, click on "Customize...", drag the Copy button to the toolbar, and close the customize dialog box.

I Love Wine

Oh, so wonderful wine. No its not the red or white wine ;). I love this Wine. I was able to setup and run a couple of windows applications using Wine in Linux. It is a wonderful application and has freed me from rebooting into Windows to do some tasks. My machine will hardly have to process M$ code again. Yippeeee!!!

More on the process of installing, and setting up Wine on Debian soon...

Gmail grrrr.......

I was trying to send an email through my gmail account and it said that there was some error and I should try again after a while. I did try again about 3 times in the next half hour and got the same error. I cancelled the message and went in to my inbox. And I see that the discussion that I was trying to reply to, had 4 extra messages!

Gmail, you should either work or not work. It should not be that you tell the users that there is an error and still send the emails, GRRRRRRRR......

Which Linux are you?

A very nice post about proposed splash screens for different Linux distributions. I think that those could work pretty good for the "Which Linux are you?" like questions generally popping up on blog posts.

PS: The Ubuntu Linux desktop will be pretty nice to have on my desktop ;)

US-pronounciation!! Yiiiikes

The "Monkey Faced" idiot doesn't even know how to pronounce the Iraqi Prime Minister's name.

It is Ibrahim al-Jaafari, and not Ibrahim al-Jafaari.

Nvu T-Shirt

Today, I got a nice surprise in the mailbox. It was a package from "Republique Francaise". I was a little confused as I wasn't expecting anything that big in the mailbox. Curiously, I opened the package, saw something black in color and another quite familiar thing embroidered on it! All confusion was immediately cleared, just like a clear summer night.

The package contained a black Nvu T-shirt, that glazou had promised to select people. Thanks, glazou. It arrived just in time for the Nvu 1.0 release next week. Anyone up for a release party in Montreal?

Yeah, the package delivery has changed my preception of postage in Europe. Unlike my other packages sent to Europe, this one was posted from Saint Germain en Laye on 21st June 2005, and I got it on 23rd June 2005. Wow! That is fast.

PS: I will post the image of the T-shirt soon...

Phone messages

This is for my dear friend who has left me two messages on my phone and I haven't replied back:

I'm alive, and (90%) well. Sorry for not replying back earlier. I got back from London on Monday the 6th of June(but the mosquito marks are still there!). I know I still owe you a coffee and snacks.

PS: And you thought that you are the one who delays plans the most!

Batman Begins....

Finally got to see a good movie recently. And luckily I got the tickets for the IMAX version of it. I couldn't find any show in IMAX online, so I just went down to Paramount to get which ever ticket was available for a late show. Out of curiosity I asked the ticketing lady if there was a show for Batman Begins in IMAX. She said yes, but the one for 18:45hrs was too busy and that I should try the 22:00hrs one.

Got the tickets for the IMAX show @22:00hrs. and came in early at 21:00hrs because I didn't tell anyone that I finally got the IMAX tickets ;). We were lucky to get there a whole hour before the show started as the line was already about 25meters long.

Enjoyed the show. It was a good one for a Batman movies except the extra fast close-up fight scenes and the first car chase in the city. Overall I would rate it 9.0/10.0. Highly recommendable for anyone (except for underage kids).

Changing Styles

Check out the cool new style of Linuxchix Live. Pretty vibrant than the earlier simple style. The Hackergotchi is also a good take for the new style, it gives the page a more humane look. Good work whoever did that.

Sarge is out

At last, after about 3years of constant developement Debian GNU/Linux release 3.1 codename "sarge" is out. Read the news release.

Nvu Tutorial 0.3 released

After a lot of slacking and procrastinating I have finally released the 0.3 version of Nvu. It contains updated images and screenshots so as not to have any confusion as Nvu had a different theme earlier. The new version also contains updated information for publishing to a virtual server.

If you already have Nvu Tutorial installed, please update it. Otherwise you can download version 0.3 from here.

Firefox

I have a friend with whom I usually talk via an IM service or via email. Today when I was online, she suddenly came and sent me an IM with the text, "Problem!!". I wondered what problem she was having. On asking she told me that she had removed Firefox's access of internet from Norton's personal firewall just before upgrading to 1.0.4. She could not use Firefox for browsing the internet as it is blocked and was stuck with IE and "I was so used to firefox that I don't want to use IE:-(".

It just proves that Firefox is actually a better product than IE now. It also indicates that Firefox is more user friendly than IE as users don't like to go back to IE if Firefox is not available for a while. By now I mean the present version of IE, as IE7 could be a different game although they will have to work hard on it.

Anyway, I instructed her how to get Firefox internet access through the (crappy) Norton Firewall (I never liked its interface as its not that user friendly). When Firefox was able to access internet, she as happy as ever. Happy browsing NN.

Another Firefox user solidly secured!

Lunch :o)

Yesterday, I went to meet my friend over at lunch (......yeah a late lunch as I had woken up at 13:00hrs). We met at Eggspectation, and it took us about 45minutes to decide what we wanted to order as both of us were not feeling that hungry and the dishes they offer are HUGE.

I finally ordered a gilled chicken sandwich on baguette(which looked more like ciabatta bread) with fries, and as my friend wanted a small dessert she ordered a banana crepe. When the waiter finally brought us the dishes, I had a long sandwich with HUGE chicken breast stripes and veggies in it and the rest of the plate was full of fries. My friend's plate had 2 banana crepes in it and the waiter gave her a bottle of maple syrup :o).

It took us more than 2hrs to finish and still leave about 2 mouth-fulls of the banana crepes. I haven't eaten anything since then as it still feels like I just ate. I will probably only eat something at dinner time tonight.

PS: BTW, the grilled chicken sandwich was great.

Gmail & Konqueror

Yesterday, I had to boot a system with a Knoppix 3.8 Live CD for salvaging some data(more on that later...). While waiting for the data copying process, I thought about checking my e-mail. Logged into Gmail, and noticed that something was amiss.

Then I realised that it wasn't the normal interface. Gmail was being rendered in the HTML mode as opposed to the javascript hungry default mode. Apparently, Gmail does not support Konqueror and hence falls back on the HTML interface. Knoppix uses KDE as their default desktop and fires-up a Konqueror welcome page after loading the desktop.

I wonder why they wouldn't suppport Knoqueror. Afterall, it is a modern browser with close to full CSS 2.1 support!

PS: I still have several gmail invites rotting in my account. If you still don't have an account and would want one, leave a comment with your email address.