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Showing posts from 2010

Google Chrome Standalone Setup

Google Chrome Standalone setup link:  Bookmark it and download latest version monthly. http://www.google.com/support/installer/bin/answer.py?answer=126299&&hl=en

Singularity OS : Microsoft's OS Prototype

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http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/singularity/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_(operating_system) Microsoft is working on a research OS for quite some time. Since it's research project there's a small team of developers plus a number of interns who work on this project. The project seems to be testing ground for Ground breaking technologies that will influence windows of the future.

The Cutting Edge

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What is it? Staying at the top with the best in the class, with the latest of the breed? Perhaps not best but certainly latest. Now comest the tricky question. Are you at the cutting edge? Oh My God! Me? Man! Are you... Naah not me. It's simple actually - it costs too much for what it's worth. The latest is very costly - and so many reasons. Most of us have all these reasons and we are not supermen to fly the sky and have X-Ray eyes. So what do we do? We try to stay updated on what is latest. And we can definitely look forward to have the opportunity to bag something which was latest not far back. We usually have our budget rigs with not so latest software. E.g. I have a Win7 machine which haven't seen a single update. Why? because I end up installing the OSES on regular basis. Let me put the Installs and Deaths of various OS'es on it below. 1. Win XP SP3 32-bit Install 2. Ubuntu 10.04 LTS 32-bit Install 3. Win7 Ultimate 32-bit Install 4. KUbuntu 10.04 LTS 32-bit

The Commodore is Back!!!

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C64x: A Commodore 64 with Blu-Ray, Dual-Core Processors, and More The commodore is back. And this time it's going to kick some serious ass!

Memory Usage - DistroWatch.com

SOURCE: DistroWatch.com Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) Memory usage One of our readers asked about programs which display memory usage, what to use and what the different types of memory (shared, virtual, swapped, cached) mean. Furthermore, what fields are important to look at when comparing different systems? First let's talk about programs to use when monitoring memory usage. When in doubt, I generally fall back to basics and use "top". It runs everywhere and shows you most of the information you should need, both in regards to memory usage and CPU usage. If you're just concerned with how much memory is being used by the system and uninterested in CPU usage then "free" is also a good command to run as it'll show you usage information for shared memory, cache and swap. When looking at GUI applications, I like KDE's System Monitor. The default layout looks a lot like top's, but it's easy to configure System Monitor with differ

Slax - still alive in the Slax Community remix - DistroWatch.com

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SOURCE:DistroWatch.com  Feature Story (by Bernard Hoffmann) Slax - still alive in the Slax Community remix Once upon a time  Slax  and  KNOPPIX  were the de facto Linux live CD distributions. Dating back to 2003 Slax was certainly one of the first, and its creator, widely known as Tomas M, gave the community the Linux-live scripts and pioneered modules instead of packages for an easy install of additional programs. The main edition CD image was around 200 MB and featured only the necessary base and a light KDE 3 desktop to allow customizing from there. Slax is, as the name might suggest, based off  Slackware  Linux, or perhaps better, a repackaging of the Slackware base and certain applications into Slax's module format LZM. The  module section  hosted is vast and many are user-contributed which makes this way of operating a security concern. However, a system of approval is in place which warns you when downloading one that has not been approved and, of course, you can always

It's mint - Linux Mint 10

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I didn't know it would affect me so much. But Linux Mint is something - perhaps its mint fresh! I came across Linux Mint through a few reviews/ posts about it, and thought to try it. It's one of remasters of Ubuntu/ Debian (There's a debian edition too), containing many everyday utilities/ Packages that don't  make to Ubuntu's standard distro. Mostly it's because we need alternatives for many programs we use for everyday tasks and the many missing packages necessary for everyday use like codecs/ compression programs/ media players etc. So I installed Linux Mint 10, and the first thing I noticed was the interface. It's kinda sober looking. Not much flashy, not much glittering, but it's like a mid-range Bajaj bike that gets all the work done and doesn't costs (and looks) much. I liked their menu. The arrangement is very good. And it's one of the reasons I haven't yet touched anything of the interface. Not even the wallpaper.

Image Software Review on Toms Hardware

Here's a great review of Image/Photo related software on Toms Hardware:  http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/image-software-linux-gimp,2801.html

List of Books Available in Genre Sci-Fi and Fantasy

Hello All, Here's the list of all eBooks I have. List of E-Books Available with Me in Sci-Fi and Fantasy Genre. You can drop me a mail requesting any of these and I'll be delighted to help you: vaibhav[dot]dlv[at]gmail[dot]com .

Mercedese Lackey E-Books Available

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Mercedes Lackey Collection Available: Mercedes Lackey On GDocs Keep Visiting for Many More...

BitTorrent Magnet Links Explained

SOURCE : SOFTPEDIA NEWS. Link to Original Article:  http://news.softpedia.com/news/BitTorrent-Magnet-Links-Explained-132536.shtml Anyone following the BitTorrent scene has been noticing some interesting developments lately and three new technologies in particular have stood out. A couple of them, DHT, PEX, are new ways of finding peers (users with copies of the file you want to download) without relying on the old BitTorrent tracker system. These are very important to the actual downloads but work mostly hidden from the user who may not even now when they kick in. Magnet links, on the other hand, are a different story. They have been around for quite a few years now, yet most people have started noticing them only recently, notably since the Pirate Bay implemented them. And now that the world's first BitTorrent indexer, which relies solely on magnet links, has  showed up , more and more people may find themselves wondering how these links work and what are their advantages ove

TRAI issues new regulations for telemarketing

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We are getting tighter controls on Tele marketing calls and SMS's, so can we say it's end to those pesky SMS's? I don't know. I don't receive as much calls for Credit Cards/ insurance/ Investment.Usually I politely say that I'm not interested. Sometimes when I'm in a mood I take them for a ride worse than imaginable and in the end they end up with wasted time and efforts. Well, that's the way it's going to be. They're paid to do the efforts.

My current Desktop

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Hi, After so many days, I got bored of conky, changed the wallpaper, changed the AWN theme, plugin set and now I've a new desktop. 

Pope John Paul Quotes

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An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded. Pope John Paul II   As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live. Pope John Paul II   Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song. Pope John Paul II   Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having

Mega Letter Pack

This is something I worked on few years ago. It's actually a pack of PDF's containing a number of  letter samples. Yeah, we don't write any letters these days, thanks to mobiles, and partly Internet. But in official conversations (even through e-mail), we need to be aware of the language. I hope these help. Mega Letter Pack (Google Docs Folder)

What Hardwarwe Do I Have

Source : http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/what-hardware-do-i-have Nov 18, 2010  By  Joey Bernard Often you may not necessarily know what kind of hardware you have—you may have a no-name box from a smaller company or a used machine. This month, I present the tools you can use to find out what you have installed. First up is lshw. This utility LiSts HardWare (lshw). If you run it as a regular user, it actually warns you to run it as root. So go ahead and run sudo lshw . You should see screens of information for your system. The first section will be general information and should look something like this: jbernard-eeepc description: Notebook product: 700 vendor: ASUSTeK Computer INC.

solipskier - This Game is Addictive!!!

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 SOLIPSKIER http://mikengreg.com/solipskier/

Make Your Own Fake Virus with Notepad

Open Notepad and Copy-Paste foll. line: X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H* Then save it as a txt file. If your AntiVirus is not sleeping/ not configured to scan txt files you should get a Virus warning.  If you can save it and later open it again, perhaps your AntiVirus is sleeping. Then save this file as an 'exe'. If even now your AntiVirus is sleeping, you need to boot out the Lazy Tom of your AntiVirus.

Fwd: Dangerous virus.. fwd to all your friends..

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http://www.hoax-slayer.com/black-in-white-house-virus-hoax.shtml BEWARE OF SUCH MESSAGES in "SERIF" FONT AND IN RED/BLUE FONT COLOR -

php files opening in browser as phtml files

I was having this strange issue where in firefox was showing me phtml files to be saved instead of web pages. I had reconfigured apache, php and every other package. I had also checked all the config files which were fine. I was very troubled and I tried a number of other things. But none of them worked. Then at some thread I read: "Firefox may have developed some problem in it's profile. Delete current profile and restart it. " I did it and behold - the phpmyadmin and my local sites started working fine. Sometimes the wheels are faulty not the engine!!!

Distribution Upgrade Botched

Hah! This is not funny!!! I changed the icon theme (from Human to Humility) in Ubuntu ??.?? (Hey it's a bit of mess here! The sources are maverick, the machine says it's Lucid and the upgrades are multiply botched!) I had Distribution Upgrade running in background (Downloading some new packages) and as soon as I changed the Icons, The distribution Upgrade window vanished. Just restarted it again. Now it's downloading things. God! I always prefer a fresh install. But I've messed up things so badly here that Dist-Upgrade is the only quick and dirty option I'm left. (Mostly because I'm lazy enough to have a cripple system running rather than doing clean install and installing the hundreds of apps later...)

SOMETHING WIKED INDEED

Need to get 1,206MB/1,563MB of archives. After this operation, 25.6MB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y Err http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/main language-pack-kde-gl-base all 1:10.10+20100930   Something wicked happened resolving 'in.archive.ubuntu.com:http' (-5 - No address associated with hostname) Err http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ maverick/partner adobe-flashplugin i386 10.1.85.3-1maverick1   Something wicked happened resolving 'archive.canonical.com:http' (-5 - No address associated with hostname) Err http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/main language-pack-kde-he all 1:10.10+20100930   Something wicked happened resolving 'in.archive.ubuntu.com:http' (-5 - No address associated with hostname)

It's Festival Time

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Yes Folks!!! It's Diwali. So Happy Diwali to You All!!! And Since I'm off on a small vacation from Tomorrow (About a Week), I'll summarize things in last few days and few happening things too. I just finished with The Home Grown series - Tutorial for LAMP. And I also exhausted my knowledge of LAMP there. So I'm working on getting some new things in my small head.

Some Regular spam e-mails

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from to date Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 7:29 AM hide details 7:29 AM (3 hours ago) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- from Online TV < reply@newsletterdescriptions.com > reply-to reply@newsletterdescriptions.com to -----------------@ gmail.com date Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 10:40 PM subject HDTV on your PC: No Monthly Bills mailed-by m125.xoopa.net signed-by m125.xoopa.net hide details 10:40 PM (11 hours ago) Images are not displayed. Display images below Watch Over 4500 Channels in High Quality Enjoy your favorite movies, TV shows, sporting events and more TV Unlock Code: 5015

More Eye Candy

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    Even better! Added AWN. Removed the Analog Clock Widget on Desktop. Got the System Tray back with AWN's Systray applet. (You would notice there wasn't a system tray in last build!!!) Kudos To AWN Developers!!!

ext2Read : A tool to access Linux Ext2/3/4 File Systems from windows

Here's a nice post about ext2Read http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/33387/how-to-browse-your-linux-partition-from-windows/ And here's the link to download: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2read/files/

a nice KUbuntu Desktop

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Ingredients: Widgets on Desktop : Analog Clock Widgets on Panel : Menu and Show Desktop Wallpaper: Abstract-RayOfLight. Desktop Theme : Air No System Tray or Any Annoying Notifications. Extremely clean.

Home Grown : 11. PHP Session Management

You must know about PHP's session management. This demo lets you to see how the authentication is done in conjunction with PHP's session management. Look how we have used AJAX to minimize the number of pages and ease up the process flow. We can add SSL for securely sending password to server. We can declare user's profile and accordingly set UI using his Preferences. This way we can provide a personalized experience to users. I'll round up things with this. There are still a number of things that we can do by combining PHP and JavaScript through AJAX. So there'll be more here, just as soon as I stumble upon them... Download the Project from HERE .

Home Grown : 10. Listing files in a folder on Server

This page will help you list the files in a directory in appropriate way. I've coded a function that will give back appropriate file Size. Also I'm listing them according to their creation date so latest files will be on top. Download the Project from HERE .

Home Grown : 9. Database backup with php

Why would we need a Mysql Backup tool using PHP? Well there may be many reasons, when you don't have access to the Database through cpanel/the hosting provider's phpmyadmin panel (Usually admins have them, so they might not give you the full access to the hosting account). All you're concerned is with data in the database. So you can use this php code to backup the database as a SQL file. This is very handy when you want to manually sync the online database with your local database. In out Tutorial project you have this as Page 7. The code is really simple. We make a connection to the database in question. Then we get table structure and later we fetch the data in tables and add it to querystrings to be added to the sql file. Download the Project from HERE .

Home Grown : 8. DataGridView like View

We have reached easily to the paginated view of the data. Now we are going editability to this form. It's really simple. We use JavaScript to modify the DOM and and when editing is done we save the modified data to the database. We have following files: 1. phpDataGrid.php and 2. saveDataGrid.php I made sure that I have unique id for each element of the row and somehow I got hold of that id in the JavaScript. So I pass the row no to my AJAX function. I have a button which performs two tasks depending what we want it to do. One is in edit mode it replaces the text of required fields with input boxes. And in save mode it saves modified data and replaces the input boxes with the modified data. Really it's simple juggling of data around. I have spans for all editable elements so that I can modify their innerHTML easily. I also use labels to get hold of and set the text very easily. I have used the value of button edit (edit and save respectively) to determine modes. After save

Home Grown : 7. AJAX AutoSuggest

There are many JavaScript libraries out there that provide autosuggest/autocomplete functionality. I stumbled upon the prototype Library that provides autosuggest functionality in a quite easy way. We need following: 1. Prototype JavaScript Library: http://prototype.conio.net/ 2. A frontend page: Here you can find page phpAutoSuggest.php to be that frontend. We need the id of the field for which we want autoSuggest. Also we need to create a span and pass its Id to the Prototype Javascript. Also needed is a backend page that will give us the set of values that we want displayed as options. That is hintURL.php. Once again we are using help_topic table in mysql database on our local Mysql server. We search for the URL. After creating all above we simple create a new autocompleter as new Ajax.autocompleter() to which we pass the id of field, id of span and the name of backend page. When we type something in URL field we get a list of matching options. The trick here is in coding th

Home Grown : 6. Pagination with page jump

Today we're going to add a small snippet of code to our previous paginate example and we're going to get page Jump functionality. Now you may ask why is this important? Simply when you have a large number of records arranged sequentially and the user has some general idea where he wants to go so he can just enter an approximate page number and jump there thus saving him so many scrolls through records of literally no importance to him. How do we implement this? It's really simple as we can see that the pagination PHP code passes the page number as a GET parameter in the URL. So we code a small form for user to enter the page number to and we name the input field as page and set the request method as GET. So when this form is submitted the page value that the user has entered will be available to the PAGINATE script in the form of Page parameter. Now this example just stirs the surface, and there are so many things that we can add here. Like automatically taking current

Home Grown : 5. Pagination with PHP

This might not be that important topic from a web designer's point of view, but when we design an online system concerning data, the presentation of the data becomes very important. Usually the database contains hundreds of entries. And we would be hard pressed to write appropriate queries to retrieve the exact amount of data and to represent it as such. So here we take a look at a small solution that needs us to define What Data, How Much data per page & How to represent that data and then takes care of everything. First lets create a database that will hold our hundreds of entries. Okay lets use mysql database (on your mysql server) itself. We'll create a page to paginate help_topic table. We'll use ps_pagination.php from PHPSense. We have placed ps_paginate file in scripts. We include it in our PHP Page. After we create a connetion to database and fetch required data using a suitable query. Next we create a PS_Pagination object with the required parameters and rec

Home Grown : 4. NetBeans IDE for PHP development

I'm using the Netbeans IDE for PHP development for last 3-4 Months. There might be something better but for now Netbeans suffices my needs. Still I encourage you to seek alternatives. Perhaps you might get something better. Now you must question : NetBeans is a Java IDE. So why use it for PHP? Well all I can say is that, because it supports PHP. And whatever support it provides is more than enough for me - at least as of now. So we install NetBeans Full Version which comes with all the goodies and also it has PHP support. It supports syntax highlighting for PHP, HTML, JavaScript and CSS. Intelligent autoSuggest is also provided. AutoSuggest works great with HTML and PHP. It's a bit shaky with JavaScript mostly due to JavaScript's loosely typed nature. But then I'm not much good with JavaScript either - hmmm I was doing a joke, serious. Anyway but what little highliting etc works that should be more than enough. Actually I use Mozilla Firefox's FireBug extension t

Home Grown : 3. A simple AJAX Example

For AJAX you need two things - Some JavaScript on the frontend to make an Asynchronous Request and Something on the Server side to handle that request. We create a XMLHttpRequest object and send a request to the server. When we receive the response, we use JavaScript to modify the page according to the server response. I hope you've gotten and installed the tutorial project and have it working proper. So here we have a button which calls a JavaScript function to make the xmlhttprequest. On server side we have a simple PHP page that replies with some text. Our JavaScript then modifies the page(Or in this case the text input field). That's all AJAX. How can this small technique help us? Well, if you're good with JavaScript and have some innovative mind you can make magic with AJAX. Have you seen the so called infolinks? These are double underlined words on some websites that open a small pop-up (Usually an advertisement) related to that word. See how beautiful this is. Y

Home Grown : 2. LAMP - modelling a website

Here we'll take a look at how a website looks from a programmers perspectives. We'll take a look at what constitutes it and what should we use for which purpose. 1. HTML: A website has the HTML pages which constitute the look and feel or in other words The Front-end. Plain text files with embedded tags that dictate the Presentation of Information. 2. CSS: We use Cascaded Style Sheets to enhance the looks. We can design colour themes and appearance of text and various page elements. CSS styling thus is a very important part of our exercises. Every HTML tag has some standard attributes which we can manipulate through CSS for streamlined look. We can also define various styling for different portions of our website. 3. JavaScript: JavaScript is the client-side script. We use JavaScript to perform certain operations at client-side that can ease processing of request on Server. E.g. Form Validation. With introduction of technologies like AJAX JavaScript's use has increased

Home Grown : 1. AJAX-LAMP Introduction

What is AJAX? What is LAMP? LAMP-> Linux Apache Mysql PHP. The acronym stands for the powerful applications we can build by using these four components. Linux is the OS. Apache is the Web Server. Mysql is the Database. And PHP is the language of choice for Server Programming. Thus these four together make for a powerful combination. AJAX means Asynchronous Javascript And XML. AJAX is not a language but a technology which allows us to make server requests using Javascript without leaving current page and depending on the response we can Modify current page's content with the help of Javascript. One simple example would be user enter something in one part of our page and he wants some operation done on that data without leaving the page. Lets say user has a form where he enters his ID and he wants to check whether he's there in the database or not, before filling a lengthy form. Here AJAX comes handy. Using AJAX we can send a request to server as soon he's entered his

Linux is not Windows

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Original Article : http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm In the following article, I refer to the GNU/Linux OS and various Free & Open-Source Software (FOSS) projects under the catch-all name of "Linux". It scans better. != (Linux is Not Windows) Derived works If you've been pointed at this page, then the chances are you're a relatively new Linux user who's having some problems making the switch from Windows to Linux. This causes many problems for many people, hence this article was written. Many individual issues arise from this single problem, so the page is broken down into multiple problem areas. Problem #1: Linux isn't exactly the same as Windows. You'd be amazed how many people make this complaint. They come to Linux, expecting to find essentially a free, open-source version of Windows. Quite often, this is what they've been told to expect by over-zealous Linux users. However, it's a paradoxical hope. The specific reaso

Ubuntu 10.10 Review

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Well, I went through a number of reviews so I had a basic idea what to expect. And after going through the install and an hour's session I did found out most similar things. Although I had some novel experiences as well. So lets start with the start. 1. Installation: I put my freshly burned CD into the drive and restarted the Machine. It took quite a while to get to the Try/Install ubuntu screen. And in between the drive slept. By slept I mean really went to sleep. I was at splash screen. The dots were moving on and on. And then they just stopped moving. The drive stopped spinning and even harddisk also became idle. I waited for a while but nothing. So I had to press [space bar] a number of times to get it started again. Weird. But slowly though, I got to the Try/Install Ubuntu Screen. I wanted to reboot and check for the weird behaviour but I wanted to get to the OS asap. So I moved on to Install Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 10.10 Release

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Yesterday Ubuntu 10.10 was released. Following are some early reviews: http://techhaze.com/2010/10/ubuntu-10-10-maverick-meerkat-review/ http://www.besttechie.net/2010/10/10/ubuntu-10-10-review/ http://desktoplinuxreviews.com/2010/10/10/ubuntu-10-10-maverick-meerkat-2/ http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2370515,00.asp http://www.itworld.com/operating-systems/122710/itworld-review-ubuntu-1010-scores-close-a-ten http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/?p=2936 OR http://lunduke.com/?p=1578 http://www.ubuntuvibes.com/2010/10/ubuntu-1010-maverick-meerkat-released.html My own Review is coming in couple of days.

IBus for marathi input

Start IBus: Navigate to the menu: System >> Preferences >> IBus Preferences You will see a message which reads: IBus daemon is not started. Do you want to start it now? Click, "Yes"

Customization Freeze

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I'm freezing my Ubuntu Customization and Beautification Project today. I've done many interesting things to my Ubuntu Distro to get this beautiful desktop. I've obtained the optimum setting. Whatever I do forward from this point of time would probably mess up this. So I'm calling it a day. The only feel I have right now is AWE at how Linux lets us customize everything. And trust me you can't do this kind of thing with other Proprietary software. Here I'll summarize the customizations. Many of these we have already covered before in this post.

Multiple signatures in GMAIL

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These days I;m not writing much but once in a while I come upon something which is simply great and very helpful to all of us. Well that must go here (With credits of course!) ******************************************************************************* Source: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/manage-multiple-signatures-gmail-browser-plugins/ By Justin Pot Gmail is superior to desktop clients like Outlook or Thunderbird in almost every way. It’s faster, accessible from any browser and (being from Google) includes amazing search capabilities. I’ve given up email clients altogether in favor of Gmail, and I don’t think I’m alone. One shortcoming of Gmail, or so I’m told by people

Translating Ubuntu in Marathi

Hey everybody! Just joined launchpad last week. Was very busy - what with Sunday's trip to Ranjangaon, Endless episodes of Prison Break, scheduling for this week, and so many pending tasks. I wanted to write something here this Monday itself, but because all of this I felt like having a massive hangover right from Monday through Wednesday i.e. yesterday. Well, anyway I wanted to do something for Ubuntu. So I looked up around. Found out that I can't take any big programs(<laughs> frag big! I can't even get any time to code a small utility...). So I wanted to do something that'll not be trivial, and I could slack off whenever I wanted. So the translation thing looked good and I jumped on the Wagon.

[Updated]Accessing a Database on Server

Let's consider a scenario where I have a database on a Server. I want to process the data in database from client. What are the possible solutions? 1. I can write a web application and upload it to the server and use server side scripting to process the data in Database. 2. I write a client application to my taste and use it to access server database remotely. 3. Lets say I'm a security freak and I don't mind writing tons and tons of code and I'm perfectly content in doing things in the complex manner, so I write a client server application where my client is with me. My server is with the database. My client connects to my Server through an encrypted tunnel and sends requests and gets reports. My server can directly access my database and processes my client's requests. Can there be any other scenario? P.S.: Don't tell me you also have your server and both our server can talk to each other and we can have fun! 25Sep2010: Yeah I've reached another ar

How To: Customize your desktop

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Hello Folks, You can see how the above desktop looks. Well, getting there is not difficult. Let's see what do we need and what steps to follow. Ingredients: 1. Avant Window Navigator, With all extra plugins. 2. Emerald and some emerald themes. 3. Conky and conky script to get this particular look.

Modding your OS UI

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Yes! They say there's no end to modding and you can get to some very interesting ends if you're the wanderer of the crypts. Geez! That's some term! Wanderer of the Crypts. Anyway, I went on experimenting with Ubuntu's look and feel and within couple of weeks I have a fully functional "AWN" on. I've switched from Gnome-Panel. Also I've switched to "emerald" for window decoration. The GTK theme New Wave remains my favorite. Oh yeah, and I stumbled upon a great wallpaper pack for ubuntu. Used it generously. About AWN, it took me quite a while to set it up. Simply the number of applets available are so many and it takes time to get to the right combination. And sometimes even the stock applets doesn't satisfy your need. You need to apply some creativity to your use. E.g. I've two cpu frequency controllers present for my Dual Core Processor. Also your usage pattern decides what you want on AWN's Task Manager space. I've Google Chr

Installing Ubuntu 10.04 on Acer e-machines e-727

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 *Update: Finally after going through tens of webpages and trying out a number of things, I've a solution to display brightness problem on my e-machine e-727. Apparently all I was needed was: 1. Edit /etc/default/grub file. $sudo gedit /etc/default/grub 2. Change GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="acpi_osi=Linux" 3. Save and close the file. And update grub. $sudo update-grub

Adding an Extra Layer of Protection - Sunbelt Security News

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 Published by Sunbelt Software FORUMS | BLOG | RSS | MY PROFILE | PRIVACY    Vol. 3, #78 - September 1, 2010 - Issue #78 Adding an Extra Layer of Protection This issue of SunbeltSecurityNews contains: 1. Editor's Dossier       - Adding an Extra Layer of Protection

Internet from my time

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It might feel ominous coming from the mouth of a twenty-three year old guy. Yeah, Internet is been from before me and will be after I'm gone. But I'm not concerned about that. It's a part of my life - an inevitable part considering I'm a Software guy. I want to talk about speed of Internet - here in India. My first experience of Internet was when I was 12Yrs old - about 11years ago. I was a village kid and a proper village kid without a touch of tech. I visited one of my uncles in Mumbai that May - the school vacation. They had a computer, perhaps a Pentium III or sum such. But he needed Internet for work. So my cousins were casual with it. I on the other side didn't knew 'C' of Computers. I just watched on while my cousins interacted with weird looking wired accessories connected to a Big Box set Vertically and twice the size of a VCR. I knew VCR - we used to bring Video Cassettes from Kankavli to watch movies once in a while. There was a guy couple of w

A stint with customizing GUI's

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Hi, Here's some screen-shots of my current operating systems: 1. Win XP:

One week of Laptop Pt. 2

Hi everybody, After an exhausting weekend I'm back here to tell you the remaining tale of the day. Yeah, so we took a look at the Win XP and Ubuntu Lucid installationa on my e-machines e727. The remaining two OSes are Windows 7 and Kubuntu. Obviously these are hobby installs I don't need any more than two OSes at once. 3. Windows 7:  Windows 7 has come to be a very good OS when compared to the junk that was Vista. Well there are things that windows can't do - like shutting down in 4 seconds like Ubuntu or starting up in about 10 seconds which again Lucid manages effortlessly. But still windows 7 is far better OS in windows stable. The install went smooth. And the OS booted with most of the things working. I needed the Video, LAN and Wireless drivers to be installed using the Resource CD that I got with my Laptop.

One week of Laptop Pt. 1

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Wow! I didn't even noticed how this week flew by. Yeah, I was busy. Too much work. Too much hassle around. So many meetings, new schedules. And I am not even getting this Sunday off. Well, this got to suck, but yeah this is time I did something and I'm doing it. I didn't go into high gear with my 727 though(that's my acer e-machine e727). I went on to install WinXP followed by Ubuntu 10.04, Kubuntu 10.04 and later (Just for the sake of it) Windows 7. And everything is running smooth as ever.  1. WinXP SP2: The installation was as boring as usual. Took about half-an-hour and later a hour to install drivers and various essential apps. I had everything working fine and the RAM utilization was just 148MB/~980MB. That's definitely cool, except WinXP takes longest to boot up and shutdown. So just okay experience. 2. Ubuntu 10.04: This was also as boring as usual. (I've done a no of Ubuntu installations since this Jan'2010). Took about 20Mins and I had it up.

some discussions worth noting on UUC

Ubuntu Users List is the mailing list where Ubuntu Users can post about their problems, discussions, ideas etc. Now I had to add that the etc because from following discussions you can see the etc stretching too far.  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ric Moore On Mon, 2010-08-23 at 08:19 -0700, Johnneylee Rollins wrote: > On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 6:19 AM, Basil Chupin wrote: > > > > Because the word contained "rape". > > > > Don't want to read something? Simply hit the NEXT button... > You know, of all the things that's okay to joke about, you've hit one > of the things that really really isn't? > Kindly don't use rape as a tool to make some inane point, it's > entirely inappropriate. Especially here.

Words Meaning Something

It's difficult any way I say it. And I know there are many more from where I come who frown on me. But I made myself not care. I just moved ahead leaving behind a wake which contained all that I had discarded. It contained things, memories and people. I set myself these impossible goals and I labored to make them come true. I wend on and on not caring those who needed me, who cared for me. I was selfish. Selfish for my goals. And I didn’t even blink an eyelid when I was questioned. I had a purpose. And I expended enormous amount of myself to achieve something.

Debian Binary Package Building HOWTO by Chr. Clemens Lee

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2002-11-30, $Date: 2005/08/09 20:49:46 $ Revision History Revision 4.0 2005-08-09 Revised by: ccl updated email address and added link to Turkish translation by Oguz Yarimtepe Revision 3.0 2003-12-19 Revised by: ccl fixed two typos reported by Claudio Cattazzo Revision 2.0 2003-12-13 Revised by: ccl applying Frank Lichtenheld's feedback Revision 1.0 2003-11-08 Revised by: ccl first version This mini-HOWTO shows how to build a minimal Debian .deb package.

83 Ways to Trash Your School

Liberate your life! Smash your school! The public schools are slowly killing every kid in them, stifling their creativity and individuality and making them into non-persons. If you are a victim of this one of the things you can do is fight back. This chapter is not written for people who are not yet sure whether school is good or bad. It is written for students that realize the way that compulsory education and grades destroy the natural curiosity so many children feel... Who realize how the tracking system keeps the poor people and minorities in our society on the bottom while keeping the rich and powerful on the top... Who realize the danger of teaching complete obedience to authority and who are fed

20 WAYS TO SABOTAGE YOUR SCHOOL

WHAT FOLLOWS IS THE MOST IRRESPONSIBLE EXERCISES IN FREE SPEECH I HAVE EVER SEEN. IT WAS FIRST PRINTED IN 1968 BY SOME HIGH SCHOOL KIDS IN AMERICA'S INDUSTRIAL HARTLAND AND MOST RECENTLY (IN ENGLISH AT ANY RATE) IN ENGLAND AFTER THE RIOTS THERE IN 1982. OF COURSE I REPRINTED IT FOR PURELY  EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES - JUST TO SHOW YOU HOW IRRESOPNSIBLE FREE SPEECH  CAN GET. I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ACTIONS OF INDIVIDUALS WHO USE  THIS TEXT. NOW THAT WE GOT ALL THE BULLSHIT OUT OF THE WAY HERE ARE THE 20 WAYS I'VE BEEN TELLING YOU ABOUT.

50 Fun things to do in a final

50 Fun things to do in a final that does not matter (i.e. you are going to fail the class completely no matter what you get on the final exam) 1.Bring a pillow. Fall asleep (or pretend to) until the last 15 minutes. Wake up, say "oh geez, better get cracking" and do some gibberish work. Turn it in a few minutes early. 2.Get a copy of the exam, run out screaming "Andre, Andre, I've got the secret documents!!"

Three guys die and go to heaven

Once three guys die and go to heaven. God welcomes them to heaven and says "People, you'll get a car while you're in heaven. Tell me whether you were faithful to your wife or not and I'll give you a car accordingly." First guy looks up and says "Dear god, I've never cheated on my wife." God smiles and says "I know. Here's a Rolls Royce for you." Second guy smiles nervously and says "Dear God, I've cheated on my wife couple of times. But I always took care of her." God smiles and says "It's okay. Here's your Ford. " Third guy doesn't look up. God looks at him and says "I know you were not at all faithful with your wife. You'll get this shaggy buggy of your grandma's time." The guys leave. After 3-4 weeks, last two guys meet up near a bar and find the first guy's rolls Royce in the parking. They decide to move in and check on him. But to their surprise they find him complete

DTE.ORG.IN and Open Source

* Hi,    Engineering, Diploma etc. admissions processes are online. The website for it is dte.org.in . Unfortunately Technical board doesn't seems to care about users who don't use IE. When you go to http://www.dte.org.in/FE2010/ StaticPages/Default.aspx , this is what it says: "Sorry, this Application is Supported only on IE6, IE7 & IE8" . Same applies when Diploma admission link is visited. I think this is clear case of vendor locking. Is there any way to protest?

What you can't take away from me

You can't take away my smile You can't take away my music You can't take away my spirit You can't take away my happiness You can't take away my pride You can't take away my kindness You can't take away my honesty You can't take away my love You can't take away my peace 'Cause I've found all these things inside me!!! But if you want all of these, You can have them all.

Setting Up Virtual Hosts on Apache for Linux

Dear All, I was needed to set up a virtual host for an older LAMP application and the developers had worked with a different serer. So it used fixed directories and hardlinks. Sufferance. And the developers are long vanished from our horizon. So what to do to make it run again - Either edit the 40-50 pages and change the links or create a Virtual Host. I chose easy looking way of creating a virtual host. How was I to know I've stepped into a mire and all that remained is sinking down in confusion. I went through 40-50 webpages for information and things got more confusing. So I went ahead and tried a number of solutions. I was about to give up when one combination worked. (Not perfectly though, I was stuck at not able to get host but it got solved within next 10 pages).

Browsers and browsers

Browser wars are far from over. I'm gonna tell a small story of which browsers have influenced my life. It was windows 98, and we had IE5.5. I was a novice then, and didn't know world beyond IE. The Windows98 was something to remember with it's unpolished GUI, blue screens and many hidden features. But that was all the windows we had back then. Next came Windows XP and more hardware requirement. Well it also gave us IE6 n 7 recently. After fumbling around for couple of years, I learned about better alternatives, about Mozilla, safari, opera and many more. I moved away from IE. Its 6 years since I first used Mozilla's Firefox. I'm still using Firefox but I also use chromium once in a while. It's also 6 years since I touched IE. From then Firefox have reached FF4beta, IE9's in the works and Opera n others are moving ahead as of Aug'2010. Google's Chrome n chromium are giving tough competition to settled players. But one thing I noticed about chro

Lucid Lynx and Me

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Hmmm, I'm a skeptic and paranoid guy when it comes to new things. And when you think about OS'es yeah all my paranoia is aptly justified. We see newer releases filled with bloatware, demanding more and more resources, and looking flashier, and sometimes so hi-fi that we cannot help but feel blinded in all the eye-candy. Thank god, I don't have any kind'a computing device at home so I'm spared with testing and making myself a believer in Win 7. But at my workplace I had Ubuntu 9.01 for 4-Months and it's worked cool n quiet and I'd a nice setup without much experimentation. (I did mess up one installation - n learned my lesson that never experiment on workstation. So now I've couple of partitions exclusively given to trying out different OS'es.)

Something of Music

I've a songs collection of approx 45GB. It's not much when compared with many of you who'd have terabytes of Music sitting on your disks. I listen to Marathi songs, Hindi songs from oldies to latest Bollywood hits. In English it goes from pop to rock to party hits to Remixes. I like all kinda songs. I listen to Linkin Park, Creed, Shakira, Trapt, Hoobastank, Nickelback,Bob Sinclar, Korn, The Rasmus, Rohanna, Akon and many more. And it's not like I favour any single artist. It depends on mood. Sometimes I feel like listening to 'Kande Pohe' from Sanai Choughade and next I'm listening to Papa Roach's 'Getting away with Murder'. There's something about music. Just last night I put some random songs in My MP3 Player (I'm one of many people who don't are for iMP3's). BTW it's just 1GB thing, takes in about 150 songs, and I keep on changing the content weekly. So I came across 'Chaiya Chaiya' from 'Dil Se' and I re

Apt Cacher: A local APT Server

APT-CACHER apt-cacher is a program to set up an apt cache server from which a number of other computer can download packages. Apt-cacher reduces network bandwidth used while downloading similar packages on a number of computers over LAN. Tutorial to Setup Apt-Cacher How To Set up a repository cache with apt-cacher

A Scratchbox Tutorial

Scratchbox is a tool that aims to provide chrooted crosscompilation environment and manages to hide the complexity in crosscompiling any app for a target platform. 1. Installing scratchbox : Add following line to apt sources.list deb http://scratchbox.org/debian stable main Update repository of host machine, #sudo apt-get update Install following packages:

थोडा मराठी input

गेल्या शनिवारी मी अणि माझा सहकारी सिद्धार्थ, टेक मराठीच्या सभेला गेलो होतो. About ५० लोक आले होते. बरीच नवी माहिती मिळाली. पण सगळ्यात मोठे असे की काही लोक मराठीसाठी कम करतायत हे बघून बरे वाटले. Anyway's back to the base of it all. Right now I did try to get some marathi/hindi input on my desktop(My Company-provided Desktop). I'm using Ubuntu 9.10. Unfortunately I didn't get marathi support for input. Hindi support is available but I'm still searching for guide/Documentation for the proper input and getting complex input right. The one software that looked very promising is Baraha. But sadly it's not available for Linux. So we inter net junkies are left with google's transliteration, which is more than sufficient for guys like me that do most of the writing in English. But occasionally we would also like to write some matter in our mother tongue. But it looks we'll have to be very determined to get something out. जसे की मी आत्ता म्हणतो आहे - माका माझ्या

A new name

Today I wanted to change the name of my blog to something good. I tried many names and at last I've found point element as my blog's new name. Point element is the point man in a recon group. He's the most alert guy scanning terrain before him. And usually the petrol changes point regularly so that the guy who's on point is fresh and always most alert.

Audacious

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I  was looking for a good winamp like Audio player for my Ubuntu. I hate rhythmbox for it's interface. And so the journey began to find a good Audio player that'll give me good enough sound and ease of use so that I won't miss my winamp. After going through a lot of crap, blogs, posts and all I settled on Audacious. It gives me everything that I need and I didn't need to learn something new because things were not as I wanted them to be. And those are some crystals for desktop background. Naah, I just crammed them in the LCD.

Documentation

You might wonder what the heck is a post doing with a title of documentation. And rightfully so. Even I also wondered what the heck am I going to write here. But then I blanked my mind for couple of minutes and thoughts started crowding about in my mind. various thoughts. I remembered various documentations I've done in my life. all those private diaries. Those unreleased private transcripts. The assignments, notes, project documentations. Lots of writing. I felt proud. Yes, I've written so much and today also I'm writing. Well right now I'm working on some documentation too. I'm working on my company's flagship product's documentation. Well, rightfully though it's not my job. My job is to write code. But small company, limited horsepower...(horse??? Oops manpower). And so you need to put on a number of hats, do a number of jobs. So anyway the joy of creation is still there, and the doc's coming nicely. I'll post it somewhere when the said pr

card Tickets Vs E-Tickets

Today's 20 Min's journey from home to office was a little more than interesting. The bus was full as usual. I stood hanging at the back. The conductor looked cheering than normal. I thought - must've been bored to death with crowded buses and endless ticketing. But what the heck. Anyway it all didn't make much sense till last ten min's when the good fellow reached the back of the bus. He was frustrated with the e-ticketing machine and he did get couple of wrong tickets. Once he got out a ticket of Rs. 10 for one asked of Rs. 6. And another time he got similarly wrong ticket.

A twist with gnome, KDE, LXDE and OpenBox

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Hi all, Today I'm on a different plane. So last week I was flying(metaphorically) around the world wide web. And I came across a number of websites/forums/blogs where people have published really eye-catching desktops using various utilities/programs etc. I went through it and as a hardcore Linux User and Developer I know how slow a system becomes when you try out all those swanky things. Sure try them if you have a Quad core monster and oodles of ram, but I came across a number of posts where people have achieved lightweight desktops with great eye candy. Many used Openbox, others LXDE, not many for xfce.

Going deeper in Linux

I started with Linux as an amateur. I was interested in options (I always am and I believe in multiple backups BTW), and I was tired of Windows 98. It was back in 2002. I started on a P4 1.8GHz. Wait a minute, I've used a 486 before that but I just played doom on that at my cousin's home back in my village. So I started with the 1.8GHz Pentium 4 and 128 MB Ram on a i845 mainboard. It was okay machine, I could play some games too. But windows 98 was hell of unstable. Win2k was coming around to stability but it was too much effort to go at it. Anyway I was too much into Magazines then and so I came to know about Linux. As one self declared geek I attacked with greed. (We all geeks are just like that!) So I tried a few Live CD's like knoppix, slackware. It was good trying out new things. jumping around obstacles. Way more geeky.

The time passing by...

We believe that we are great time managers. At least I firmly believe the said thing. And yet there's a book sitting on my table for last 3 weeks waiting to be read. And every morning I wake up look at it and promise myself that I'll finish it in few days. The few days of mine are more than three weeks. Life's that. So where are we moving? This is another question I seem to be asking myself many times these days and frankly I don't have any answer. Things are boring around as usual. There's hardly any excitement, rush or pure, clouding fun. But once again I'm alone and hardly in any mood to give a damn for all these things that are - around me. Again a looooooooong Sighhhhhh. And Life's that. Goals. Yes there are goals. But they don't feel fresh. It's as if life needs a fresh breath and this stagnency need to be removed. Time is passing by and besides jumping at some unknown thing and invite chaos (Read: Wonderful Chaos) in this peaceful life, I'

Work piled up...

Monali's singin Ishq Mein... I got 10 windows open in front of me.. In one i'm formatting a SD Card Running QEMU in other Analysing qemu output in another Putting the O/P in another txt file Installing some packages in Device copying couple of files to PenDrive PDF reader is open with an E-Book One browser window One file Managerwindow In last one I'm looking for packages of a decent audio player for linux.. It's called Life in fast lane..

Digging up the Past

one more weekend behind me, and some productive work there... I was going through some junk in my baggage. BTW I live in a rented place and so I routinely go through my things and try to keep them as few as possible. So I'd some pages(Not some, actually lot's of ) put in folders, packets, and even in carrybags. Most were two to six yrs old. As I went through (SYSTEMATICALLY of course), I understood that these are actually relics from my past. There was so much info about myself that most of what I'd forgotten. There were things about my junior college, then engineering, then a month full of anxiety just before I moved to Pune. Then last couple years again everything's blank. No not that blank except I closed that account and started noting things somewhere else. So I recalled some insane adventures that I was part of during my college days. Our calculated bunks in engineering. Our final year project. The one full semester when I debunked college and yet cleared all damn