Base64 image and how to save it

Almost 2 years since I put anything here. This post is as a reference if I need to convert base64 image data to an image.

I have seen the base64 encoded URI earlier and knew what it is essentially. For example:

data:image/png;base64,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

The browser does the job of displaying it seamlessly most of the time. However, today I got it as text in a email. The email client wrapped each line by = and newline character. So I got curious how to "view" the image.

I took the following steps (possibly unnecessary as base64 command can strip garbage from input*):

1. Saved the encoded data to a text file
2. Used sed with the following commands to strip unneeded characters (I'm nowhere a sed expert :( )

3. ~$&> sed 's/=$//' imagedata.txt > imagedata.txt

   (remove trailing = on each line)

4. ~$&> sed ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n//g' imagedata.txt > imagedata2.txt

   (remove newline character from each line)

5. ~$&> base64 -d -w 0 imagedata2.txt > imagedata.png

and the file imagedata.png is easily view-able in a image viewer e.g. Geeqie.
*: see base64 man page

Logitech M515

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:

1. 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] button near the wheel.
2. The specs didn't indicate if it is SFF or full sized mouse. It is a SFF or laptop mouse.
3. Unifying feature cannot be setup in Linux. As indicated in the document on Logitech Unifying Receiver, Unifying software does not support Linux. You have to setup the unifying feature separately e.g. setup on Windows and then reconnect the receiver and to Linux machine. I did it on a virtual instance but lost the cursor during the setup. Restarted VM and both worked fine.
4. M515 is designed for couch (read cloth), so it might not function on glossy surfaces. Mouse pad, sofa, table top and paper worked; blue-ray player cover (black), glass, and fridge surface did not work.
   
5. Logitech says that it is active when you hold the mouse. They don't lie and it is advised that you hold it properly as I noticed that it stopped functioning when holding lightly with two fingers. You can easily test by pushing it with one finger.
6. I like the smooth scrolling wheel, but the M510's form factor suites my hand better.
7. Works even if you are 3-4 meters away just like the M510.
8. Lacks the extra buttons on the M510.
   

One important question which comes to mind is the cover at the bottom. It consists of two parts: regular grey plastic cover on the outer side (see image) and the shiny dark translucent plate covering the laser inside. Over time, the shiny central part is going to get scratchy (it is not hardened glass) which would affect the performance of the laser. Would the scratches be enough to cause scattering of the laser so that the mouse gets confused?

Still deciding if it stays or goes back.

Bash Programming

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

Distribute as much as possible.
Stop The Meter

STOP THE METER

View and repost as widely as possible.

Sony BDP-S370 and NTFS

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 hardware.

So for now, it is the Samsung BD-C5500T which stays and Sony goes back as an open box item! Sorry Sony but you need to be more competitive in today's market. Alors tu ne me intéresses plus.

Seiki BD660

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 expensive
- front panel buttons are hard to distinguish
- no front USB port

Find more info about it here.

For now, it goes back to Walmart this weekend. Had it been $40 or so, I would have kept it as a secondary unit.

Good Bye Sony BDP-S370

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 bought was $90 without any USB port or network features!

Samsung has a touch sensitive plate on the front and it is quite sensitive. I have turned off the player by mistake while attaching the USB drive which is right under the power button! Sony on the other hand went with really tiny, hard to find buttons on the front panel. Both models disappoint for their front panels. Both of them turn the TV ON automatically though - one button to press :)

Both have wireless ready functionality (which I don't care for) as well as a real network port. Connected network cable to each of them and after basic configuration both of them upgrade to the latest firmware. Upgrade of firmware over network was a breeze.

Interface: I prefer the Sony interface as it is similar to the PS3. Samsung has too many things on the same screen and too many colours. Sony interface design simply trumps Samsung.

As far as media playing is concerened: Sony just sucks as it won't understand anything except FAT-32 formatted media. Sony does note that in the fine-print, but hey we are in 2010 and if Samsung does not have any problem in reading content from NTFS formatted USB drive and XFS formatted disc on the DLNA server (and update of the Linkstation Live firmware to 1.07 made that problem go away; Sony reads the files from the DLNA server now), why isn't Sony able to implement that! Samsung is also able to play MKV 5.1/6.0 profile video files unlike the Sony. Maybe Sony can outsource the software development of their blu-ray players (and maybe TVs too) to Samsung!

There was one thing keeping me from returning the Sony but after finding out the media playing ability of the Samsung, there is no confusion.

Update: removed DLNA issue with Sony

Wikipedia Down? -- UP NOW

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

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

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 point. I installed it using aptitude and lo-and-behold, I was able to login the new version of KDE.

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

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

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 by a beautiful looking, always working, hassle free Linux distribution.

PS: This is another example of the philosophy that Apple is leading the way to make computer users dumb rather than techsavvy. I hope Ubuntu doesn't join the bandwagon.

Lucid Lynx -- Ubuntu 10.04

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:

1. Fast bootup.
2. Less sluggish, faster response.
3. ......
   

Cons:

1. New theme has nice gradation and feels nice, but the color combination is a bit of an eye-sore. Solution: Change it from System > Preferences > Appearence
2. Window close, minimize, maximize buttons are on the left! Last time I checked, Ubuntu wasn't Apple's official distribution, so why is it trying to act like one? Solution: System > Preferences > Theme > Customize.
3. I had the idea that Gnome was simple, however take a look at the context menu for a USB flash disk; there are 16 options displayed and many of them are grayed out as they probably don't even apply. Unavailable options should be invisible and Format and Compress can be easily put in Properties window.
4. If that wasn't enough to cause confusion, the user gets two choices for the USB stick removal: Eject and Safely Remove Drive. Isn't Eject safe enough? Why not just have one option of Safely Remove Drive?
5. Default search engine changed to Yahoo! even though my earlier default was Google. Easy fix is to open about:config and change browser.search.defaultenginename property to Google

......will be updaed later though.

Ice Hockey: Canada v/s US

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 1
2nd Pr: US3 -- Canada 2 (3min remaining)
Final: US won 5-3

Linux Wireless Access Point - v2

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 tried to connect as it would stop working.

I had setup madwifi with hostapd for the DWL-G520 earlier. But as madwifi was removed from Debian repos, DWA-552 was the only PCI wireless adapter supported by the linux kernel's ath9k module. That required me to update to the the newest kernel 2.6.30. ath9k works out of the box with this kernel in master mode.

Setup was easy as most of the work was already there. I had to setup my hostapd.conf to use WPA2 and changed the network interface from ath0 to wlan0. Restarting networking and hostapd gave me the wlan0 interface and both the iPod and the Nokia were able to detect the SSID.

Last but not the least, all this was accomplished with help from Robert's post. Thanks for documenting your experience with ath9k.

The next thing to do is to see if it will work in the N-mode. That is for another day, as I'm late to go to bed (...again) by an hour.

iPod Engraving in UTF-8?

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 I went to the famous online fruit store, it said that I could request an engraving to be put on the back of the iPod. I liked the idea and quickly tested something in my mother tongue. All I got was ???? on the back of the iPod instead of ਮੇਰਾ ਸੰਗੀਤ. Has anyone tried using non-English characters? e.g. Arabic? Chinese? Japanese? etc.

It seems to be quite a trivial thing to do when all software Apple has supports UTF-8 characterset and the engraving is also done by a machine rather than a human hand (would be wonderful if it was done manually though).

MS Excel - Shared file bug

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 couple of months.

Possibility: User might have added several empty or almost empty cells to the sheet so that the whole sheet/workbook is filled up.

Interesting observation: Deleting 233 columns (and 64k rows) increased the size of the file by 2MB!

Solution: This happens when the workbook is keep a track of what is being done with it and by whom. If you don't want that information (I wonder how it is viewed), you can remove the extra tracking information by removing the Share feature by going to Tools > Share Workbook and then uncheck the option to make it shared and save it. You can check the size of the workbook after saving and it will be reduced to size needed by the data and formatting.

You can re-enable the share feature after saving if needed.

F1 Barcelona and BBC Bug

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 sometimes when it puts a retired car (MaLaren-Kovalainen) for a podium finish!

On Demand CPU Frequency Scaling

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

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 seems to be working again.

Spotting Debian

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

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 close up. More than 2years of hard work has gone into realizing the quilt. The quilt is NFS but if anyone is interested they can contact Thelma for commissioning another or maybe one with a bunch of people holding hands in a cirle ;). Dimensions of this quilt are approx. 6'x4'.

For those of you interested in Debian and art (or just open source); the exhibition runs from 7th Nov. 2008 to 31st Nov 2008. Admission is FREE.

Chandler Center for the Arts
250 N. Arizona Ave.
Chandler, 85225

New Blogger Type

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

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

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 $100 less than 6months ago and it is already driving me nuts with its fan noise. I don't even use the Nvidia card for high end graphics that it would heat up and needs the fan to run at high speeds. I'm already leaning towards buy an ATI card to replace the Nvidia card. Both of them work quite well with Linux with open source drivers if you don't play high end games like me.

Comment Moderation

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

Firefox Profile Size

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.sqlite was 58MB! I didn't know what the file did, so I went on to the knowledgebase article and learnt it was the phishing filter database file.

This database can, overtime become fragmented and be of a size much larger than its real size. An easy way to get it back to the real size is to delete it (I renamed it and later deleted after everything was fine). Shut down Firefox. Firefox should download the database file again from Google at next startup. Below are the file sizes before and after deleting.

user@localhost 21:11:34 {nzkgcf5p.default} $> du -sch urlclassifier*
5.3M urlclassifier2.sqlite
53M urlclassifier3.sqlite
4.0K urlclassifierkey3.txt
58M total

user@localhost 21:42:00 {nzkgcf5p.default} $> du -sch urlclassifier*
20M urlclassifier3.sqlite
4.0K urlclassifierkey3.txt
20.1M total

So that is more than 50% reduction in size! Is there any way to set Firefox to do this automatically? It would be really great for people using remote profiles.

Bell Representative Discussions

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 to me too along with the Bell-rep. I thought of asking details about the deal as it was a conversation of 3 now. I asked how much could I use the internet and the Bell-rep said, 1GB of bandwidth @512kbps per month. I exclaimed that it was too slow and he said he could offer a high speed connection with 100GB/month cap. I said great, but what about the throttling issue? At this point I think I pinched a sensitive nerve and he became agitated and said "We do not throttle, but reduce speeds for p2p transfers as they use a lot of bandwidth." For that I said, Bell themselves replied to CTRC and their chart does not show more than 6% of peaks due to p2p. Hence they don't use that much of the network. His face was clearly agitated and said "Let me finish with this lady first as she was here before you." I let him go hoping to continue the discussion in a nice way.

Another Bell-rep approached me and said, "May I help you?" I said "Sure". She asked me what information did I need. We started discussing about high speed DSL connection offers from Bell. She said she could offer me 100GB cap/month for high speed DSL @ $86.95/month(!). And extra bandwidth will be $2.50/GB usage. When I said, I already get 200GB/month for $27/month. She asked me "What speed do you get?". I told her that it is a 6Mbps line. She said she couldn't believe that price but cannot lower Bell's offers. She said "The company offering me such a price is not making any money with that price". She was surprised and said that the main goal of doing business is profit and that company is sure to close soon with those prices. She said that Bell spends so much in maintenance and customer support that they can't offer prices any lower than the current ones.

Another person who was standing beside us, said he has been with Bell for 10years and has had no problem. I told him, I too was with Bell till last year and had to change to a better company because Bell breached the contract without intimating me prior to the change.

I told the Bell-rep that I was expecting much more from Bell with regards to offering high speed DSL connections at prices comparable to other DSL providers in the market and not playing Big Brother with what the user downloads and uploads. Taking into consideration that they were just Bell-reps who might have been hired only for the sidewalk sale and couldn't do much about the "throttling and price problem at Bell", and that I had made 2 customers and 2 reps aware about the problem, I thanked her for the information and continued on searching for great deals on clothes.

A couple of minutes later I realized Bell was charging 10 times the cost Teksavvy charges for extra bandwidth usage per month!! $0.25 versus $2.50. Teksavvy Rock(y)s.

We can now eat YELLOW Margarine

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 different? One is their protected butter and the other is coloured margarine. One of the excuses given for non-coloured margarine was that people would be confused if margarine was of the same colour as of butter!

What I see here is either the dairy lobby noticed that colouring margarine won't affect their butter sales or that Quebec's population has matured enough to be able to distinguish between butter and yellow margarine. Either way, taste of margarine, whether coloured or not, is going to be the same and butter will always taste better than margarine :)

Is Rogers Playing Dumb?

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 provided by the user, a customer’s P2P download speed can be limited by the upstream cap, but that is a result of the business decision taken by the P2P applications provider"

Even a newly initiated person who uses a bittorrent application knows that it isn't true. Moreover, if there is an application which does that (BitTorrent for example, as he says), there are several others available freely to everyone which work as they should i.e. down and up stream bandwidths are not dependent on each other. I myself download Ubuntu every time they release a new version, and my download speed does not decrease irrespective of how low the upload I keep.

And earlier Bell was complaining that P2P users were eating up most of its bandwidth and when CRTC asked for explanations and proofs of the statement, it was just a fluke as P2P was hardly using up 5% of their bandwidth (and that is at peaks and not sustained usage).

This shows that these big telecom companies lie and mislead their consumers to achieve their ulterior motives. It is the consumer's own responsibility to stay informed and fight against unlawful rules being imposed by the big telecos. Go head over to netneutrality.ca and help keep the internet a neutral territory as it should be.

IE 5 Views the Future

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 point I noticed that it had IE 5 on it. I had an idea and thought to test how IE 5 would see these futuristic websites. Here are a few screenshots with the "About IE" as the very first.



The very first page was from Microsoft® which was offering me to update to their latest browser! As if I will be able to. Don't they do any kind of browser sniffing?

The second page I pointed it to was Firefox download page. It was able to render the page quite nicely, except the main part: the download area with the Firefox icon. Compare it with the correct rendering.





Then comes Google Maps. Tried to search for Canada and look what it gave me. Although IE5 got the XMLhttpRequest object in ActiveX in 2002, this version of IE is probably older and has lots of trouble handling AJAX.

Then I tried Digg and that was one of the worst results. It wasn't able to render almost anything as expected. Although it seems that IE5 had a built-in AdblockPlus feature ;)

Next came another community site: boingboing.net IE5 was able to handle it in a better way than Digg!



In the end are a couple of screenshots of slashdot.org. Although the complex CSS was rendered nicely but barfed when it saw the grey part. The grey part extended for about 9 page-downs after every story!





More to come: screenshots of the mess IE5 created for rendering Apple's page.

Scrolling: Firefox 3 and Safari

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 Firefox than in Safari. Another thing I noticed is that the scroll bar in Firefox goes on a bit more even after you stop scrolling (extra distance depends on its speed when you stopped scrolling). Some might think it should just stop when the scrolling stops. But that is subjective. The extra roll, if call it that, seems to be more realistic and of a more fluid and friction free environment.

Anyway, I'm enjoying both of them right now. Hope you have got your new version of Firefox too.

PS: Watched Hulk - II today and it was worth it. Good one.

C-61 - Real Life Implications

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

Start Here

SP3 Changes Preferences

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

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 traffic is almost at a halt on St. Catharine and De La Montaigne.

Good Luck to them for the semis.

Massa and Kubica

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 interesting with Kimi Räikkönen leading the points tally and Kubica and Massa being good challengers to Kimi and Hamilton. The BMWs are going to be an important force this season.

Adblock Plus and BBC

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 returned the page to its clean form. What would we do without ABP?

Update: As Wladimir pointed out, the filter list was automatically updated to solve the above quirk. So if you happen to see those adverts, update your filter.

GMail inside and outside

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 showing a difference of a full 100MB. I wonder why there exists the disparity!

No Words Necessary

Photo from BBC

Massa Drives for McLaren?

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

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

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

Camera RAW editors for Linux

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 images supported by dcraw. It can export you RAW images to TIF, PNG and JPEG formats. It also supports colour management using Little CMS. Currently available version is 0.5.1 along with nightly subversion checkouts. From the releases the project looks around year old.

blueMarine is also an open source project available under an Apache License. Requires Java 5 JDK. It supports Nikon .NEF, Canon .CRW and .CR2, Adobe .DNG, Pentax .PEF, Minolta .MRW, Olympus .ORF, Sony .SRF and support for other RAW camera formats is in the plans. The latest release is 0.9.EA9.1768 and they also warn that blueMarine is in beta status. It is not intended yet for production. Please check out the project status before proceeding. Supports OpenRaw.

Qtpfsgui is basically an HDR imaging workflow GUI software. It also supports various camera RAW formats, JPEG, PNG, TIFF and PPM formats. Qtpfsgui is an open source project made available under the GPL v2 license. Uses dcraw(?).

Raw Therapee is a freeware but is uses dcraw(OSS) in the background to read camera RAW formats. Being based on dcraw it supports all formats supported by dcraw. Although loading RAW images isn't too intuitive the first time, practice to use the software brings out its features. The best thing I like about it is that changes to the raw images are listed on the left sidebar. You can always "go" to an earlier stage of the RAW image by double clicking on one of the changes in the sidebar change list.

Bibble, the much acclaimed camera RAW editor runs on Linux too. It isn't free but you can download a demo version which is supposed to work for 30 days. Full versions costs $129 (Pro) and $69 (Lite). It supports most major camera RAW formats and features fast RAW conversion, noise removal by Noise Ninja technology, multithreaded processing support, work queues, and a whole gamut of other features. Supports OpenRAW.

Just like blueMarine, Lightzone is Java based but isn't open source. Version 2.4 is available for free (latest release is v3.0) although the company does not offer any support for Linux whatsoever. I don't know if it is the Java or my machine (PIV 2.0GHz) that Lightzone had a bit sluggish response to my actions. Loading the application takes its time and so does loading a RAW image (.crw - Canon RAW). Feature wise it offers all the basic ones available in a decent RAW editor application. It also supports various colour profiles but I wasn't able to point it to my hidden color profile folder from the preferences. Its file picker doesn't seem to have a way to see hidden folders. Seems to use dcraw to read various camera RAW formats.

There are other applications which do support reading camera RAW but are either not full featured or do not focus on the single goal - camera RAW editing.

digikam, the main KDE photo library software, supports camera RAW and also supports colour profiles using Little CMS. It is able to give fast previews of RAW images (uses dcraw) but its RAW image editor is quite basic in that one has to click on the preview button to see what the effect of the changes just made was!

f-spot also supports camera RAW images and its versioning feature makes it easy to make edits without changing the original (ala a real RAW editor application).

Google's Picasa is also known to support camera RAW formats. However, as it uses Wine and Mozilla technologies to run on Linux, I wasn't even bothered to give it a try.

krita, gimp support camera RAW formats (gimp needs dcraw plugin) but they are both more photo editing applications than RAW editors. I would place krita and gimp inbetween full featured RAW editors like RAWstudio, RawTherapee, blueMarine, Bibble, etc. and photo management applications like digikam and f-spot.

I have tried RawTherapee, Bibble Pro and Lightzone2.4. Bibble looks good and I don't know if Lightzone is offering version 3.0 for Linux users. RAWstudio seems to be developing into a decent application too. dcraw looks like the library of choice with RawTherapee, Lightzone, and RAWstudio using it for camera RAW support.

state.gov oblivious of Firefox?

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 using anything other than IE or Netscape as your browser, you are out of luck. I used Firefox (both Debian's Iceweasel and mozilla.org's Firefox) to access the page and was warned that my browser does not meet the minimum requirements. Below you can see a screenshot of the warning window.

As a matter of fact Firefox does support 128bit encryption (actually much more than that) and I also have the Acrobat Reader plugin installed (version 7.0). The problem here is the sniffing code on their website. The code just checks for IE5.0SP2 or later and for Netscape 6 or later. There is absolutely no sniffing going on for Firefox (neither Windows nor Linux) which is used by more than 10% of web surfing users (> 15% in the USA). The Acrobat plugin code is written in such a way that it will never say that your Firefox has the plugin installed.

If you carry on and fill up the DS-156 form, you will be taken back to main page without any of your form data being processed for the final pdf file. I tried to fill the form twice thinking that the first time there might be some session time limit which I over ran. Finally, I had to borrow someone's laptop with Windows OS on it and used Internet Explorer to get the form in pdf!

The result of the low quality code used for the site results in Firefox users not being able to get the .pdf for DS-156 after filling up the form. Windows users can still use Internet Explorer but Linux users are left completely helpless. How is it that US Department of State is oblivious of the existence of Firefox and that there are other operating systems than Windows too?

I wonder if Matt Frei used Firefox to setup his visa renewal appointment.

Addon of the Week

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?

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 feel than the earlier more pleasing colours. Blue band felt plain and simple.

Digg makes HD DVD key famous

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 popular on Digg that 8 of their Top 10 in Technology stories are about the hot topic. The other two are about Joost and the beautiful Posh Suicide. Screen capture added for your convenience. Update: While writing the post, Joost and dear Posh's stories have fallen from 5th and 6th to 7th and 8th position respectively. Update2: Withing half an hour after writing this post, all top 10 are about the same topic! New screen capture added.

So what I can gather from this is that Digg itself is making the HD DVD key famous. So much for taking out a story due to what ever reasons they had for doing that!

Update: Whole of front page is full of stories about the newly famous hex combination. The whole thing has snow balled into stories with header like Jesus has "the key",Digg deleted my hard drive for posting the HD-DVD KEY!, and the most hilarious one is Secret Code To Remove Lara Craft's Clothes in Tomb Radier Legends!. Very ingenious titles to get user's attention.

09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0

Is this is prime number? Looks like one.

09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0

Just 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

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

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 providing drivers for the Mac hardware. The other option was using rEFIt and resizing the hard disk. I had tried this earlier with mactel-linux patches for the kernel and was able to get a login prompt but no video. That process involved several steps using debootstrap and compiling the kernel with the patches.

However, with the release of Debian 4.0 (Etch), the debian-installer also got a lot of attention and installs a relatively new 2.6.18 kernel. So armed with a netinstall d-i CD (23 April build, 26th doesn't recognize network card) I was able to install Debian Testing (Lenny) on the USB disk with XFCE4 as the desktop environment with 130MB of swap space partition and 157MB to spare after installing dillo web browser.

The installation of Lenny on the USB flash disk has not required any change on the internal MBP hard disk and the Mac OS X installation is completely oblivious of the Debian install. If I don't press the "Option" button at boot time, Mac OS X boots up, otherwise with the USB connected it asks which OS to boot.

Next post gives the link for installation steps. The process was based on information gathered mainly from the Debian wiki's Macbook and Macbook Pro pages, and also here.

Basilica de Notre Dame

Merry Springmas

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 rain from Sunday overnight to Monday overnight! Historically, 10cm of more rain happens in April for only 2 days whereas no day sees more than 5cm of snow in April. In 2007, there will be at least 1 day recorded with around 10cm of snow.

Checking Firefox Version

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 software without administrator access. However, informing them with a visual warning on a web page could help in avoiding potential problems of using vulnerable versions.

Presently, the script checks the CVS branch tag i.e. rv: value with a hard coded value and prints a warning for users with older versions. Is there any way that the hard coded value(s) can be acquired automatically from say mozilla.org server and checked with visitor's user agent information? I don't know much about AJAX but would it be helpful in this case? No AJAX compatibility issues as the only browser we are checking is Firefox.

* - using Javascript because it runs client side, is available to all Firefox users and those who have disabled Javascript would most likely not need the warning to know it.

Its Out!

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 Debian party when this finishes.

Colours

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

"The" Butterfly

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

Glazou started this. Here are the browser statistics for 2007 (till today) on my dynamic DNS host:

1. Gecko ----- 56.2%
2. MSIE ------ 31.4%
3. KHTML --- 8.1% (Safari 7.1%)
4. 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. Safari's ratio is probably due to the a few desktop background images I put up for free download. But I noticed that IE 7 already has an update with version number 7.0.5730.11. Seems that the IE team is really working on it now ;)

Google: Canada's Not a Real Country Anyway

We must blame them and cause a fuss
Before 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 Maps and try to search for a country called Canada, all you get is a flattened out map of earth! Does Google even know where Canada is? I think it is just trying to prove the line in the lyrics that "They're not even a real country anyway" because it cannot find Canada on Earth!

It can find other regular countries like Britain, Germany, France, India, etc. So why not Canada? Is it time to blame Google instead of Canada ;)

Halloween

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

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!!

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 to fill and submit a form is asked to fill in another field in the form with characters displayed in the corresponding image. The server generates a new image every time the page is loaded and most of the spam bots are incapable of deciphering the images. So as most of the spam bots cannot read the image, they can't fill in the verification and hence the post cannot be submitted. It is a pretty simple technique and has achieved a lot of success.

However, the technology has its flaws or should I say unintended captchas. Today I set out to log a comment on a typedpad blog post. It was a simple two line response which should have taken just a minute or so. However, I ended up trying to get the response submitted for about 10minutes! Their word verification captcha asked me to fill in the characters from the image. But the person who wrote the code for their captcha implementation probably didn't know how much to obscure the characters and has several random lines on it making it really hard to read even by a human let alone a bot! It took me 6 tries to get the verification done.

Not only they have made the verification task so confusing, but they don't give the user any other choice e.g. an audio clip! Wait, the audio clip should be there regardless as a visitor could be visually impaired and might not be able to decipher even an unobscured image. Blogger is much better in this respect as their image is clean (although the characters can be a bit jagged) and they also offer audio help (hasn't worked on Linux for me though). For TypePad it is a serious accessibility problem and is a big show stopper for me at least. So from now on, typepad comments are probably not going to happen let alone getting an account on typepad!

Update: June contacted Typepad and they told her that they are working on it. I hope they get it sorted out soon.

Woolmer Update: MURDER

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 strangulation. The plot thickens as they haven't found any evidence of struggle indicating he knew the murder(s). With the scene changing from death due to a stroke to a murder, it is possible that the team's return trip might also be delayed.

Cricket is played with a passion in South Asia and there have been several matches which have been disrupted due to lackluster performance of a team inciting violent behaviour. A famous example is the India-Sri Lanka match at Eden Gardens during the 1996 World Cup which Sri Lanka won by default due the crowd's unruly behaviour. It is common for an inquiry commission to be setup after a series after one of the countries have played well below their potential. But this is a first that someone has every murdered a cricket team's coach and that too in a World Cup! I guess sending the elite commando units for the security of the Indian contingent was the right decision.

Bob Woolmer Dies following loss

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 with Zimbabwe will be played as scheduled.

Very sad to see Woolmer go like this. He had coached South Africa in the 90s and they had reached the semi finals in the World Cups.

ICC World Cup: Big Upsets

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 an advice: If you can't show consistency in your game, stay at home and just do commercials. That way you have to perform only once, and its just a reply after that.

St. Patrick's Day Possible Upset

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 definitely the best St. Patrick's Day gift for them. Pakistan on the other hand is very strong in the bowling department and do have ability to topple wickets like dominoes. It is one day cricket, one never knows what will happen, and anything can happen. We will just have to wait and see...

These two teams make the cricket ground the greenest ever! Happy St. Patrick's Day to all.

No Water :(

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 late in the evening. A call to the janitor confirmed my fears that the pump wasn't fixed and the water supply will be back to normal only tomorrow.

So down I went to the basement to fetch water with the only bucket I have. On the way back up it occurred to me that I could fill up a plastic bin that I have for clothes. That could hold around 5-6 buckets. That made all my water scarcity worries go to rest as there is now water to drink in the filter, for washing hands and for the bathroom.

I just hope that they get the pump working by tomorrow evening as if they don't, it won't be a good weekend.

Dell and Linux ? Hmm...

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. But hey, sometimes dreams come true too ;)

Mac OS, SSH, Dashboad?

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 get dashboard out of the way. The problem is reproducible using the above setup at will.

No Words

Current weather conditions! Brrrr.....

Blogger Login

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 get to the username field. If you want any ideas on how to make a login page, please check out Yahoo! Mail or even your own Google Mail where the caret lands in the username field automatically after the page loads!!

Linux for Everyone?

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. Cheap, aren't they? Back on topic: although I wanted it to work with the Macbook Pro as it does not have a jack for a microphone and only a line-in, I thought why not try it with Linux too. I plugged it a USB port of my Linux box (Debian/sid) and tried playing some audio using XMMS but the sound came through the external speakers. Next thing was to check the /var/log/messages to see if Linux detected it or not. And....it did detect it. So I went into the XMMS's preferences, and I just had to select the proper device (indicated by messages in log) and it started to blast music immediately. I was pleasantly amazed when the mic also recorded sound like a normal mic. Perfect. Linux simply ROCKS!!

Watering the Sun

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 followers. During the course of his travels, Nanak reached Hardwar, where he encountered Brahmins who, while standing in the Ganga, were throwing water towards the sun to appease the souls of their ancestors. It is reported that Nanak bent down and began throwing water in the opposite direction, and when asked what he was doing, he replied that he was watering his fields in the Punjab. When his reply was met with derision, Nanak reportedly told the Brahmins that if the water they were sprinkling could reach the sun, then doubtless the water could also reach his fields, which were merely a few hundred miles away."

c.f. http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/Religions/gurus/GNanak.html

Grip Rocks

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. Grip hasn't quit on the CD yet, so all I can say for it is that simply rocks.

Update: Finally, Grip has finished ripping the track taking about 38hours in all. I have the complete .wav file. Yippeeee :)

Movie: Amu

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 can't pinpoint the reason. But the tenacious girl keeps digging and finally ends confronting her own family about her real roots.

The director, Shonali Bose, has done a great job at portraying the what happened during the 1984 riots in Delhi, for which none of the main perpetrators has been brought to justice till now! The movie has been censored in India by the film board CBFC and also given an adult certificate (R rating). Censored dialogs can be found on Amu's website. Just like a pen can be stronger than a sword, silence can be more effective than words. Silence has been used for the censored parts and it goes great lengths into explaining the extent of the cover up even 23 years after the incident! A great effort by the director who has met with threats during the making of the movie. A must see.

The movie starts Friday, February 23 in the AMC Forum 22 in Montreal. Shonali Bose will be present during the release weekend for any questions you have about the movie. In Toronto the movie starts February 16 and Vancouver will be able to see it from February 23rd. The movie is English with a few dialogs in Bangla and Punjabi (subtitles are provided).

PS: The foreword from the report on the 1984 pogrom of Sikhs can be downloaded from here.

-20°C and Fire

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 windchill factor). My fingers were actually freezing while holding the camera and I had to put my hands in my pockets after every few pictures. Below you can see a few of the images which catch they eye and depict the extent of the fire and hard work by the firemen.

Doesn't that look like a staircase?

Brave firemen fighting the fire

Fire on back of the building and ice on the front! Isn't that an antithetical situation?

More pictures here.

Windows Vista

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 the latest Office and Solitaire.

Well, it's been a few days since that and now he says Bill Gates is better than Steve Jobs and brags about how OS X on my iMac is obsolete compared to Vista on his PC.

I will continue with the prank for some weeks, after which I'll tell him the truth and give him back his money.

ref: http://www.degredo.net.