A "Bugs" Life

Bugs are a part and parcel of software development. They are there for us to remind that we need to improve the software all the time. Theoretically, critical and security bugs should be taken care of as soon as possible. Other bugs e.g. normal and feature requests are resolved as the developers get round finding time for them. But there are some bugs which live for a long long time. By long I mean really long! Check out the brief details of the top three (age wise) bugs for the Debian GNU/Linux system on this page. The oldest one is going to be 10 in a few days!

I wonder if there are bugs older than those!!

Gmail's ongoing improvement

I just noticed that Gmail reverts to basic HTML for older browsers rather than the normal heavy JS stuff. This makes a few of the features unavailable, but could be really helpful at times. Users can also use Picasa to send images directly to friends. The next big feature I'm waiting for is IMAP access. That would allow me to use a client or web seemlessly without having to remember if an email is already read or not (POP).

:)

I finally LANDED!!

Cell Phone rates!

Today, I talked to a friend of mine after a long long time. Actually, it was after 2years and 2months. I asked him questions about other batchmates and he refreshed my information about all the ones he had been in contact with.

Then he gave me his cellphone number and asked for mine. In this world of ever enhancing technology, I still do not own a cell phone. I told him that it was too expensive for me. He said that his cellphone plan is such that if he just wants to stay connected and receive calls he would be only charged Rs. 54 (i.e. about CAD 1.54 or US$1.28) for a month. And all SMS, sending and receiving, is FREE. He can send SMS to anywhere in the world for free.

I'm sure if someone does a survey about cell phone plans and their costs, the cheapest ones would be the ones in India.

PS: I do not own a cell phone but this is for another friend :

Fido Sucks!

Query about religion

Last weekend, I was visiting my relatives and a close friend. It was a lot of fun and good eating except for one occurence.I was amazed by the architecture of St. Peter's Cathedral Basilica and was just attracted by it to go inside. There were beautiful stained glass windows and looked perfect with the Sun shinning outside. There was also a place near the entrance which had pictures of all the Pope's since 33A.D. right to Pope John Paul II!

I stayed there for about half an hour amazed by the artwork and the design of the building. The feeling inside the basilica was the same that one gets when one is sitting in a Gurdwara. It was really peaceful and calm inside.

On my way out, a person stopped me and asked me if I got good pictures. He is also asked me about my religion and about any conditions necessary to go and visit "your Gurdwara"(thats not correct, but we can give him the the benefit of ignorance!). I said all that was needed was to cover your head and take off your shoes. Then he said that to enter a Catholic church it was mandatory for the males to take off their "caps". And as I was a visitor and didn't know about that fact (I was wearing my turban as always), I apologized and thanked him for the information, but doubts still remained.

Does Catholicism not distinguish between a cap/hat and a Sikh wearing a turban? It seemed odd that nobody had said anything to us when me and my friends go to St. Josephs's Oratory where other officials were present everytime we went there (the person at St. Peter's was an usher).

Styled.... Hendrix

I had tried to style the Hendrix page just for fun a few months earlier. It was accepted and is online at hendrix.mozilla.org. Its based on the Planet Mozilla design, and includes enhancements of it own like: mozilla.org head section, highlighted form sections, framed image of Jimi Hendrix, etc. :)

Its fun using CSS for creating HTML designs.

First Spam Mail

Today, I got the first spam email in my gmail.com account. Its the first one since I started using gmail about 8months ago. Good work Google. Just for the records, below the the spam email info:

From: "Neateye" < NitaiGouranga@aol.com >
Subject: Gouranga
Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2005 05:57:49 -0000

Call out Gouranga be happy!!!
Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga ....
That which brings the highest happiness!!

In case you are curious, the email was sent by Outlook Express :)). If the above email address looks familiar to you, please let the person know that he does not own his PC ;). Its time he made better chioces about which softwares to use.

Smoke - II

Smoke 1.5.1 for Nvu.
Changelog:
-- enabled feature to use small icons, icons only or text only.

Get it!

Google Maps

Google Maps is out. Try it at maps.google.com. You can search cities, get driving directions, etc. The search also show important landmarks with icons on the map and details on the right. My only complaints: They say that Consulate General of Honduras is 7.7km from my place :(, its in the same building. They could have made the marker pins of different color. Sample marker pin...

Go ahead find your paths with Google :)

Smoke

Smoke for Nvu. Download

Around the World!

Who: Ellen MacAurthur
Time: 71 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes and 33 seconds
For Real? Yes. This is not a writer's imagination.

Ellen MacAurthur has made a world record by going around the world in just over 71 days, eclipsing Francis Joyon's earlier record of 72 days, 22 hours, 54 minutes and 22 seconds set in Feb 2004.

That is a highly commendable feat which requires a lot of courage and wants you to be really tough. Congratulations.

Read More:
Daily Mail
In Forum

Web Standards

Just came to know about the site mininova (does the name look familiar? Yeah, you guessed it). When I looked at the website it gave me a feeling of being clean....and indeed the index page was XHTML1.0 and CSS2.0 compliant! Its good to see more and more websites adhering to W3C standards rather than just to be compliant with the most poplular browser.

Gmail Invites

Got lots of 'em. If you want a gmail account, leave a comment with your name and email address.

Kudos to Firefox

I had found a pair of EDO RAM modules(yeah, I know its old!) and thought of testing them on my old, yet working, Win98SE box. I had shut down the machine a few months ago and I was too lazy to boot it back up. So tonight I finally hooked up the machine and added the newly found old RAM modules to it. With 64MB RAM it booted much faster than earlier.In the process of testing its performance, I thought of firing up Firefox. It took around 30-45 seconds to start Firefox, but it was much faster than when it had only 32MB RAM.

After a few seconds after Firefox started I saw the pending updates icons (red arrow) on top right of Firefox window. Just to check if everything worked allright, I went into Preferences and clicked the "Check Update Now" button. Firefox's auto updater started and showed 3 updates were available for downloading. They were Firefox1.0, DOM Inspector, and Feedback Client. I selected all of them and to my surprise it downloaded all of them. I did not have to do anything else till it finished downloading and installing the updates. Finally, it gave me the following message:

Firefox successfully downloaded and installed updates. You will have to restart Firefox to complete the operation.

That is perfect as far as normal user is concerned. The update system worked seemlessly with minimum user interference. Had I not shutdown my machine for this long, I would have never known how nicely the updater works as I normally downloaded the nightlies weekly.

Congrats to the Mozilla community for such a professional product.

Full Circle!

I came across the following image while reading a forum. It reminded me of the Mozilla stomps IE incident that happened on IE4.0 release in Oct.'97. Although IE still maintains a clear lead in the size of its user base, Mozilla/Firefox and friends are getting a bite out of IE's share slowly.

Musique de Paris!

I just discovered this shoutcast channel. Its straight from Paris with all commentary in French and music is all Indian (the last few songs were Punjabi :) ). I'm sure one of my friends will be happy that this will help improve my French.

Boring??

Thats why I didn't switch on the TV today.

O' Canada

Go Canada Go.

Amrish Puri is no more :(

Just read the news that Amrish Puri(June 22, 1932 - January 12, 2005) died at Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai on Wednesday morning following brain haemorrhage. His passing away has left a big hole in the Indian film industry, which will be hard to fulfill. He gave a great performance in his recent movie Hulchul. Anyone who has heard his voice would rate him with the best there are.

Read more:

• Bollywood actor Amrish Puri dies
• Bollywood star Amrish Puri dies
• The noblest villain

WoW :O)

These stars are HUGE. No wonder they are called "Red GIANTS". Our good'ol Sun would look like a mouse in front of an elephant. Wonder how much stuff in the universe is still unknown to Man!