YAB: Yet Another Blog

Scrobbling now from Kobol :)

2010-11-20T23:48:00.002Z

In case you know about last.fm scrobbling and wondering what the hell is Kobol, well its a last.fm app that I created over the last weekend and named it such 'coz it just has such a nice ring to it. :) In case you are not familiar with BSG, its a planet in BSG world, so its something like saying 'scrobbling now from Krypton/Moon etc' :)

Its a rare thing for the lazy me to go create stuff like this, mainly 'coz -

I'm lazy
It should excite me a lot or should be a really very serious itch to overcome 1.

Last time it happened was while scratching my last.fm support for pidgin itch. In this case, it wasn't exactly my itch but rather my friend's itch that began it all.

Now my friend is what you call as a 'purist' and considers me as some sort of last.fm expert(mainly 'coz I introduced it to him I think). And so a month or two back he asks me -

'Playing your own library is fine but the songs get repetitive after a while, so how do I get last.fm to play more songs from the same artists and not any others'.

If you are not a last.fm subscriber, then you would know that there is very limited last.fm radios that you can listen to. You can listen to your library radio or similar artists radio etc but there is no way you can just listen to a selected artist radio i.e songs from only that artist and not from any other. And since my purist friend didn't want to corrupt his library by listening to other radios, I suggested to use we7 or spotify which have last.fm scrobbling integrated. But they turned out to be UK only services, some consolation win for us UK folks denied of Pandora! :)

Well anyway it was then that the evil idea stuck me, 'All you need to get songs in your library is to just scrobble them and to scrobble all you need is artist and track name, so effectively all you need is a program that scrobbles from such a file'. Sadly my friend didn't want to code and so I forgot all about it, as it wasn't my itch after all!

But then last weekend, I came across this in my GReader - http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/11/announcing-google-refine-20-power-tool.html

Which made me revisit that idea. One of the unpleasant tasks involved in the above idea is in creating the actual tracks file, where to get the data, who will copy paste etc. But then I saw Google Refine videos and I was like 'wow'! And I thought with the freebase integration it just takes matter of few clicks to create the artist-tracks file you want! Since I wanted to try out Google Refine, thought why not go ahead and implement that program after all, that way I too can get new artists that I wanted to listen to into my library ;) And while I was at it thought why not learn some basic python as well and thats how it started!

Soon after I started, I hit limitations in freebase, for one thing the artist names in Freebase weren't a perfect match with ones in last.fm. Also I couldn't figure out a way to get albums by an artist and tracks in that album, which was what had excited me in first place. Maybe I just needed to dig into the refine documentation a bit more but I was already bored.

So I just created a script that fetches the top tracks of a given artist from last.fm and writes to a csv. And you feed this csv to the other script which scrobbles the tracks in the csv. Now if anyone can find a good way to fetch the albums of an artist as well and the tracks in that album that will be brilliant!

If you are interested in scrobbling from a file, to listen to new artists or just to increase your scrobble count, then you can get the scripts here getTracks.py and lastfm.py . Only thing you need to do is obtain your own unique API_KEY and API_SECRET values from http://www.last.fm/api/account and replace the sample values in the script.

Since its from Kobol, this post has to end with

'so say we all'

Importance of being (Computer)Earnest

2010-09-21T18:42:00.000+01:00

Now its been more than 2yrs since i posted something on this blog and sometime since i blogged, so to say I've forgotten how to write may not be too much off the mark, not that I knew how to write/blog in first place! :)

Well the ground-moving event that made me blog is something that happened today, that made me thankful for the first time for being a slightly knowledgeable person about computers. :)

The ubiquitous net decided to make a rare disappearing act today morning. And I had somehow associated such things to happen only in Third World countries, where I had lived all my life and to find such a thing happening in the First World was very surprising indeed! It got more surprising when i saw that Skype alone seemed to work, when all else was failing. That led me to conclude the problem was with BT's DNS servers. After the quick diagnosis, i knew i could vpn and use company's DNS servers and get connected to the net. So i get the vpn ip address from colleague via 'Skype - The Life Savior!' but for some reason my ipsec vpn decides to stop working then! :( So there i was still without connection to net.

Then /me thinks, this is 1st world after all, BT customer care should resolve this soon enough, so I get google IP from colleague, search for the BT customer support number and give them a call. And then i go through the longest call I've ever been put on hold - a record 30mins! even ICICIBank never did that to me back home! Well anyways as expected the call didn't yield much results, i was told many others are also seeing the same problem and it would be resolved in 24Hrs!

So i was back to square one. Then i ping another colleague, get the DNS server's ip directly, which i put in resolv.conf and lo internet works again! Its a wonderful feeling when you know only you have the net working when others don't just because you happen to have slightly more computer knowledge than the normal people. My Doctor hubby was suitably impressed when he couldn't connect to net from his laptop, when i could from mine. :D

Anyways that led me to start wondering why we don't have a on-disk DNS cache. I know its a very remote chance of my kind of scenario happening, plus it doesn't make any sense for mobile users, where the nearest DNS keeps changing. But for a home-desktop user wouldn't this make sense? Imagine if there was some option to cache the most used DNS entries, I wouldn't even have noticed that net was down. And by the way thats what happened with my iPhone, where i could access gmail, facebook everything, as it was using the cached DNS resolutions to connect.

So thats about it, until another such ground-moving event happens,

Adios

(you)(i)

2008-07-02T17:39:00.002+01:00

UI = (you) Vs (i)

Its pretty obvious ain't it? All the times it ends up being what design 'you' the developer thinks of(if at all one bothers to think, as there are many UI examples out there pointing to the contrary) Vs what 'i' the user needs. And when both coincide, you get some amazing products. Example that immediately comes to mind when you say good UI?
Apple of course. iPod, iTouch...do you notice the 'i' there? its no coincidence, its there to show that emphasis is on 'i' the user. (Ok, i just made up that last part, but i think the Apple guys did name it, with that in mind ;) ).

Other good UI examples would be Google(gmail, gtalk, reader), Gnome's SLAB Menu, Flock Browser...et al.
And bad UI examples...well here's a nice comic which gives you an idea. :)

Beauty in simplicity. We know that. But still many of us choose to ignore the KISS principle! Why? Maybe that, all those years of education, robbed us of the ability to think simple. Or as they say, maybe its the case of being afflicted with 'improve beyond use' syndrome.

On a side note: was searching for a Blogger link in Gmail in the quick links section at top left corner in Gmail and found a 'Blogs' in the more section but surprise!surprise! it leads to Blog Search and not blogger! When Photos,Reader,Orkut links take me to my Picasa,Google Reader and Orkut page respectively, isn't it reasonable to expect Blogs to take me to my blogger page?
Wonder when Google will correct this.

Easy!

2008-06-08T21:31:00.004+01:00

He he, this basically nullifies my previous post. :)
Slam No. 4 for Rafa and man did he make it look like a cake walk! :D
Before the start of the match i was feeling sad that i wouldn't be able to watch the entire match as i had to attend 10 'o clock show of '21' @ Inox. But then quickly realized i didn't have any cause for it. Thanks to Rafa, no its more thanks to Federer for finishing it in just 108 minutes. :) So all those people who were just waiting to proclaim Federer as the greatest ever, wait for one more year at least, if not forever... :P

'21' was not as good as i thought it would be. Come on you can depict Vegas much better than that! . And you can so do away with all that hollywoodization, the cliched 'best friends ignored' track, soppy romantic track, jealousy...i mean why introduce a 5-10min plot line just for heck of it? Well don't mind, it was quite an enjoyable movie, but the problem for me was that there was no freshness about it, apart from the basic plot.

As result of watching '21', i missed F1 :( I reached home just when press conference had started and to see Kubica, Heidfield and Coultard was shocking to say the least. I did see the pit-lane mishap recap but somehow can't help feeling that i missed out on some good live action.

'n yea, now Germany beat Poland. :)

On a side-note i finally managed to read 'Hobbit' today. :) The decision to read it was rekindled by the LOTR dvds 've been watching these days. Its this boxed set, with 4 dvd's per each part so 12 in all. Any serious LoTR fan should possess this. :)
The making i.e the Appendices part though long(2 dvds per each part) is amazing. While watching that today morning, my Dad remarked if i was planning to go into film-making and man do i wish that i was part of it! :)

Anyways sleep beckons,
Adios

tough draw?

2008-05-23T15:01:00.002+01:00

Youzhny, Nalbandian, Djokovic and Federer.
Thats how Nadal's route to French Open title will look, i.e of course if others mentioned don't lose before.

But not much of that happening to Federer who has been blessed with almost a free ride to the final, with only worthwhile opponents he may meet before being David Ferrer in Semi-finals. Actually even his is slightly better compared to Djokovic, who has a walk in the park.

Contrast that with Nadal's, tough draw gets a whole new meaning. Murray, Youzhny, Nalbandian! So even if Djokovic doesn't finish him off in semi-finals, he will ensure Federer will have a complete worn-out Nadal to pick off. Unless of course Nadal plays exceptionally brilliant to win all the before matches in 3 sets. In which case one may say he still has a chance. But what are the chances of that happening? What with he not being at his physical best, suffering from a hamstring injury that he got while defeating Federer at Hamburg last week.

But wouldn't it be just brilliant if with all that somehow he manages to retain the title? And stay undefeated at the Roland Garros. That i think would be amazing, if through the entire career one can stay undefeated at a Grand Slam. I'm not aware if anyone has done it before?

Anyways thats a dream, what with fate almost conspiring that it never happens, with the draw and the injury.

few linux pains....

2008-05-16T14:46:00.006+01:00

Yesterday i was trying to get microphone working on my opensuse 10.3 box, with Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller soundcard. And this post is about the pains i encountered during it.
After running alsaconf, 'n messing around with alsamixer settings for some time, realized it wasn't going to be such an easy job. Then tried the YaST sound, but even after much permutations/combinations with soundcard parameters that google threw up, it failed to configure. So after some more googling, failed to give any concrete solution, thought let me upgrade alsa.
And thats when my troubles started or so i think it did, since 'm not still aware what is the root cause.
> downloaded all the alsa-10.6 packages from the website.
> configure, make and install goes through without an itch
> reboot
> I try logging in and lo it throws up the usual gnome error box of 'your session lasted less than 10s, if you haven't logged out yourself...blah...blah'.

Clicking on the details, gave me some sabayon failures in the log which didn't make any sense to me. So after googling and asking around few colleagues, came to know sabayon can be safely removed without doing much harm. Wait i forgot to mention, before you think that i was stuck to command line, there is a surprise, when i tried root or any other user, the log-in went through just fine. So me was left scratching my head, as what could be the problem, since if it was alsa, i think everything should've cribbed right?
Well anyways so removed sabayon 'n the gnome_admin which depended on sabayon, (btw its interesting what all you learn, 'coz of this i came to know there's something called these two, 'n they take care of user profiles 'n such). And anyone would be forgiven to think it would work after this, but life is never so simple...is it? So the sabayon errors go, but the log-in still fails. And now 'm at wits end, as it doesn't even hint at whats the problem.
And this is the account which had all my development environment, music, mail, browser, compiz fusion settings...everything. Now importing all those profiles into a new user acc...not a job one would fancy.
So was trying to think of easier way out, so then since it looked like some issue with user profile, thought if i create a new user and point the home directory to this, it should work. Wishful thinking. :( Didn't make any difference except waste my time. And all this happened yesterday night, so today morning thought no point wasting more of my time, so did what i should've done longtime back, copied the data, profiles etc.

But the issue still remains and can't even file a bug, as i don't know what to file against. Not knowing whats the issue seriously pains. So now 'm throwing it up as an open challenge, so if there is someone who can't resist such a puzzling one - solution, pointers to solution, debugging...nething is most welcome :).

'n here's the very detailed informative message i get -
/etc/X11/xim: Checking whether an input method should be started.
/etc/X11/xim: user environment variable LANG=en_US.UTF-8
sourcing /etc/sysconfig/language to get the value of INPUT_METHOD
INPUT_METHOD is not set or empty (no user selected input method).
Trying to start a default input method for the locale en_US.UTF-8 ...
There is no default input method for the current locale.
SESSION_MANAGER=local/puthali-test:/tmp/.ICE-unix/17148

'n btw before there used to be sabayon error messages between the default input and SESSION_MANAGER lines.

'n yea, the whole reason this whole thing started - microphone, i just checked it is working. But it hadn't when i checked last night, life mysteries what can i say...

Share with a note

2008-05-06T04:54:00.003+01:00

what a nice surprise i had just a few minutes back!
I finally get to see the feature i wanted since i started using google reader! :)
more specifically just beside the 'Share', you now see a 'Share with note'. Ain't that cool?
Whenever i shared an item before, I always wished there was a way to share my views/thoughts on it...ain't that the whole point of sharing? :)
But yea now you can! :D

Pls: Whats pending is the ability to have discussions, which i believe is coming soon. :)

sports,books,movies...

2008-04-13T18:23:00.003+01:00

for a lack of better title... :P
So yea, just came back up after watching the Arsenal vs Man U match. A very good match, Arsenal for da nth time conceding goals very cheaply after taking the lead. And one thing, which was hard to digest was, Adebayor claiming the hand goal. I mean thats something which one wouldn't associate with Arsenal, ok agreed its an individual issue. So thats what i don't understand, take any sport for example cricket etc how/why do players do this?

Anyways coming to books, this is long time pending. I finally finished the Dune trilogy two weeks back. This was unique in that all 3 books i read, was on different medium. The first book 'Dune' was an e-book. This i had read almost a year back. But somehow didn't fancy reading the others on comp, hence da gap. Then i got hold of the audiobook of 'Dune Messiah', which i listened to on ipod, whole of feb month during my commute to work. Having never been brought up with parents/grandparents reading me stories, this was one wonderful experience. Audiobooks have their own charm, guess 've fallen in love with them. So next one on my ipod list is the 'Chronicles of Narnia' :). Btw for all those other book/story lovers - subscribe to 'The Classic Tales Podcast', if you haven't done already.'N yes coming to the third book, i got it for only Rs 60 during this book hunting with candle. :)

'N here are the the movies i watched over the last four days, in the order i watched them-

> The Pursuit Of Happyness-
Based on a true life story, it is one inspiring movie. Watching it i realized how far along we've come in life, Chris Gardner's hardships reminded me of the hard days faced by my father, when he had only 25ps in his pocket 'n buying a single Kg of rice was difficult. But somehow he brought us up through all that, providing us with a good education 'n never making us feel deprived of anything/anyone. Yea it was one emotional watching, just making me realize how i owe so much to him and compared to the older generation how we had/have things so much easier.

> Juno
I don't think 've to say much about this, as i guess ppl shd already be knowing a lot. A fun movie, with good soundtrack.

> Into the wild
This is again based on a true-life story and once more a very inspiring movie. I guess anything is inspiring when you can relate your life with it. 'n i could relate so well to Christopher McCandless. Somehow 've always felt that 'm not a city person...hmmm....maybe everyone feels that way?

> Eternal Sunshine of a spotless mind
Well nice movie, concept, good performances but could have done with some serious editing in the middle.

> Lord of War
Another based on a true incident movie. But somehow felt it lacked the punch which 'blood diamond' had. Where blood diamond hits you in the gut, this one chills you with the cold-blooded, business view of the whole thing. And what chills you the most and makes you shiver is the 'Based on true life incident' at the end.

> Guns of Navarone
old classic, Gregory peck.

guess thats pretty much about it.
Adios.

Last.fm support for pidgin

2008-03-03T14:57:00.005Z

This Sunday, played around with musictracker plugin for pidgin to make it support Last.fm. This was one niggling requirement for some time now. Most often I end up playing songs on a diff m/c than the one i run pidgin on, for variety of reasons - 'm playing songs off of my ipod through iTunes or 'm listening to last.fm through the browser/player itself or i would feel like listening on speakers which are connected to a different m/c or particular song/album is on that m/c...
Anyways as i googled for some plugin to meet my needs, came to know that many people apart from me, were also looking for one such 'n not finding one, decided to write one myself :) 'N as a good software programmer that i am, who knows the true potential of re-usability, realized its much "easier" to just extend musictracker plugin to support this feature than write one from scratch. ;)

And thats how my journey of realizing how much i had forgotten and re-learning started. To start with, it was almost a year since i had coded in 'c'. I had/have become this eclipse-spoon-fed Java developer. The only times i use 'vi', is occasionally when i open some files to do some basic editing. So here i was doing some pretty normal coding, nothing major, 'n i had such difficulty! I'd forgotten most of the 'vi' short-cuts apart from the basic 'yy' 'dd' 'n 'p'. So that took some re-learning.

Then there was the really paining autotools problem. I add a .c file to the source project, add the corresponding entry to Makefile.am, run ./configure and it doesn't compile! It ignores it completely as though there was no change. So spend couple of minutes checking, re-checking, getting totally worked up and it still doesn't work. Then from somewhere from my long-forgotten past-life came a thought - could it be that its the bootstrap problem? which basically means you run the aclocal,autoconf...etc commands 'n most importantly run 'libtoolize --force --copy'. And this is something which i hope gets corrected - "No one looks at ./configure output" So if there's no error in bold at the end of its run, user will assume that everything went fine. So whenever there's a mismatch between autoconf versions, its not a minor warning it should be major.

Anyways writing the last.fm code itself was pretty easy. It involved downloading the recent tracks file from audioscrobbler.net and getting the first entry from that. 'n yeah since audioscrobbler places restriction on how many times you can access it in a given time, had to do a check on the last modified time of the file, and download it only if its more than 30s. Ran into couple of issues using wget, so ended up using curl. Most of the other stuff was just interfacing with musictracker code - set the artist/track/status information, support to configure/store last.fm user name in preferences...

Remaining part is 've to put up this code somewhere, but then again, right now its only for linux 'n my guess is the people who want this are mostly on windows :) But modifying this to support windows should be easy and not take more than half an hour.

Thats it from me, will update this blog when i upload the plugin code somewhere.

>>Update
You can get the plugin here.

Adiós

Bad, bad server. No donut for you.

2008-02-27T10:23:00.003Z

was on orkut after a long time, and encountered this, 'n couldn't stop chuckling to myself...whatever may change but somethings will never change... :)

girl + linux/tech + floyd/rock/metal... + football/F1... = Anomaly

2008-02-22T20:57:00.003Z

this post has genesis in the last.fm shout i received yesterday -
"u r full of anomalies.....first of all Pink Floyd is ur fav band and second u use amarok"

hmm...well this is not the first time 'm receiving such a comment, have received a fair amount of them in recent years...'n my reactions to them also have evolved over time, from initial outright denial to slow acceptance of the fact...

I would like to think there are more of my species 'n that the lesser numbers is 'coz the general male:female ratio is already so high... :) yeah i know guys out there are already saying wishful thinking...eh? :)
Well recently became a member of linuxchix, which is involved in increasing the number of girls using linux...so as an answer to one of the following shouts -
"well god should make more girls like you", i can say atleast one issue is getting addressed... :)

But as far as music is concerned 'm really not sure... :( Ofcourse i can go on 'n on abt the beauty of floydian music, but if the person doesn't like it, you can't do much about it can you...? 'coz myself have come across many guys who still listen to insipid boy/girl bands, overly commercialized, fed to masses hip-hop artists...so i don't think this can be generalized into a girls/guys thing....in a different vein, i think only a real connoisseur can appreciate the great stuff, so for other normal ppl, pink floyd will be just 'We don't need no education'....

'n sports...hmm...well honestly haven't come across many guys who follow football/tennis/F1, i think it would be fair to say cricket is pretty universally folllowed in India (i know, world famous in india types :D) regardless of asl...while trying to think of how to get women into sports, i was reminded of this sexist fark comment i had come across long time back..."Women learn to talk football so they can develop relationships with the dreamboats that populate sports bars"... :D he he...maybe thts ur solution...your propoganda may go something like imagine all da shy,good-looking,nerdy guys you can meet...darn tht previous sentence didn't come off well...infact it sounds down right crappy... :P Neways again remembered this brilliant write up i had read sometime back - The Nerd Handbook... i think you can pretty much base your stuff on that... :)

'n yea forgot 'Gaming'...that is the last frontier....as one of my friend remarked the other day - 'If only you gamed, you would be one of us!" But sadly i don't think i will ever cross it, somehow can't imagine myself sitting in front of comp and twiddling at buttons...infact when wii first came out, i thought now here's something i can start gaming with....well 'm still waiting to lay my hands on one... :(

Well on a serious note, don't think these can be generalized as a guy/girl thing...'coz among many of my male colleagues 'm the biggest tech/sports/music freak...
I feel generalizations most often give an exaggerated picture of how the things are...TOI is a classic example for this... take a topic , generalize on the extreme end to sensationalize ofcourse, there's no fun in medians is thr? and go on debating on it. Sometimes i wonder are they dumbing(i know thrz no such word) us down...or are we already so dumb?

Off topic - today just came across the new google talk gadget, you can emebed in your sites/blogs, allowing the visitors to directly chat with you, similar to meebo...but thn yea this is Google! :D :P Already embedded it in this blog but sadly it seems therez no chat log, i.e the chat session doesn't come in the gmail chat section...atleast not as yet... :)

Fat Free

2008-02-11T15:21:00.000Z

This post is about an amusing incident that happened couple of hours ago. On my way back from work, i stopped over at foodworld to buy some essentials viz. Maggi 'n some chocs ( yep! they r quintessential for me :) )
Well so, I was at the billing counter when i saw this man in front of me with a big pack of Kellogs Chocos. Usually one can reasonably identify the crowd which buys such stuff, but this person nowhere looked like he belonged to one of them. It was the typical 'Blink' moment. For people who haven't read the book 'Blink', well it essentially means that your subconscious processes and arrives at conclusions much before your conscious mind kicks in. Well so in my case, my subconscious mind had already arrived at the conclusion that somehow the person and kellogs didn't fit. So one thought went like "Not bad, If people like them are buying Kellogs!" before it was rudely interrupted by another "Shame on you puthali, Don't prejudice based on appearances, appearances don't maketh the man". And so I silently stood, awaiting my turn. When the person suddenly asks the billing lady for 'Fat Free' which was written on the carton. I was about to laugh when the billing lady, whom i thought would clear the poor chap's misconception, called out to another girl in telugu: "This guy wants some fat free, check it out". Somehow tht laughter vanished and i just stood thr speechless...

Now while writing this, i was wondering how wonderful weird this place has become due to globalization 'n everything. Some english words, have just become an inseparable part of people's lives, even of those who don't know english. So, here was this billing girl, who knew only telugu and then there was the kannadiga, both of knew what 'Free'(an english word) meant in the sense of 'free soap, free battery...' but not 'Fat free' :) Well one can't blame them also, 'm here reminded of the famous Big B's dialogue from Namak Halaal, 'n 'm gonna promptly end this post with that :)

"You see sir, I can talk English, I can walk English, I can laugh English,
because English is a very funny language."

mp3splt

2008-01-29T15:43:00.000Z

This is a real cool, nifty thing i came across yesterday. What happened was, yesterday was copying some of my muzak frm my dvd coll to HD, when i came across Johnny Cash's 'Man in Black' album and me thinks why not give it a spin, its been a long time. So i do just that, but then i see, the file is an album wrap! Now ppl will know tht its a Pain! First thing there's no easy way of jumping tracks and then couple tht with scrobbling screwups!
'M probably a bit like Monica(frm F.R.I.E.N.D.S,if you didn't get it) when it comes to ID3 tags. My fingers start itching, whenever i see a badly tagged mp3. I can't understand how some(probably most?) ppl don't seem to be bothered with badly tagged files! Correcting 'em will hardly take few minutes!
But 'm digressing here, this post is abt mp3splt. So yes, after coming across that, i started googling for some mp3 splitter. I remembered using one on windows ages back. Anyways landed up at this page. And was I in for a pleasant surprise! It fitted my requirement to a T!

-w "wrap mode" - used to split file created with mp3Wrap or AlbumWrap. This should have worked out perfectly for me but that would have been too perfect wouldn't it? It threw up some error saying the file is corrupt, /me guesses it might have been something to do with changing IDv3 tags.

Anyways later on i messed around for a lot of time with
-c "CDDB mode" - and man this would've been such an amazing feature, if only one can find proper CDDB files! And I realized what an hell CDDB file format is! Infact the first result in google tells that, type "CDDB file format" in google and check out the first result! If google doesn't revise/update its algorithm/page ranks, then you will land up here. :)

Finally i ended up using
-s "silent mode" option, which worked out pretty well.

Note: its 'mp3splt' and not 'mp3split', i wasted sometime while trying to d/w it, by overlooking this. :(

Adios

Blogger Label Search

2008-01-27T08:04:00.000Z

Yesterday was playing around with my mindtrail blog, trying to add a 'notable posts' section. The idea was to add a label to the posts and just put up a link to the label search. Everything went fine but for two issues.

> Somehow when i did a search, not all posts with the label were appearing. Totally weird i know! Seemed to me like blogger had some issue with displaying more number of results. Anyways googled it, seeing if thr is already some known issue. The nice thing abt google is, you needn't have to go thru' the links, the answer is displayed on the search page itself(depends on how good your query is ofcourse ;) ). So without delving deeper tried doing "http://yourblog/search/label/?max-results=100 Is it as simple as that?" and it worked! Now 've no clue how or why it should make any difference.

> Second was, i did not want labels to be shown for each post. But somehow couldn't figure out how to do it. Probably because i still haven't upgraded the template of that blog and most of the probable solutions were related to new template mechanism.

Anyways talking about power of google search, was reminded of a very cool query hack which i use a lot these days. With the cricket season on, all one needs to do is type 'live cricket score' in one's FF google search box, and presto you get the latest score!

No need to go to any specific site and you escape the load times, plus for any onlooker, it just looks like any other google search page. :)

Slack!!!

2007-12-26T16:48:00.000Z

yes, this post is frm my Slack 12! :D
Basically just now got two essentials working, in case you are wondering, da essentials are - Sound and Networking :)
And both required just one command to be run! :)
Well thanks to Suman, who told me to run 'alsaconf'! wonder why Slack doesn't do it by default, the way Suse does! anyways i didn't spend lot of time getting it to work, so its ok :)
'n as far as networking, well the problem was, i had skipped the networking setup during installation....yes, yes i know dumb of me, but yea after 3 installations 'n configurations, trying to resolve the lilo boot loader issue, i was bugged!
Anyways the problem, was me being brought up on suse yast, where its all just go click,click 'n you are done, i had no clue where to start in slack. Almost did Alt+F2 and Yast, before i realized 'm not on suse :) But thankfully came across 'netconfig' in some slack basics pdf, which did the trick! 'n here i am typing this post! :)
So there you go, now you know two very useful commands ! 'n btw yes 'm on KDE, will probably blog about my experiences with it soon...
until then
Adios

update -
Just now got scroll wheel working(yes, it doesn't work by default on slack), after li'l bit of googlin'. Steps to follow which i got from here -

For a 5 button mouse (2 buttons with a scroll wheel):

Option "Buttons" "5" Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"

if your mouse protocol is set to
Option "Protocol" "PS/2"
or
Option "Protocol" "auto"
You may have to change it to:
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
or
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"

In either case, once the changes are made, restart X to use your scroll wheel.

second update -
Somehow shutdown, never did a complete shutdown! So it was back to some more googlin' which landed me at the solution - adding 'acpi=force' at boot time. But then i had to hunt around for some time, trying to figure out how one makes lilo remember this option. Grub was so easy!!! it just let you add and save from boot screen itself! Anyways this is how one does it for lilo -

vi /etc/lilo.conf
go to linux section and type append = "acpi=force"
save the file
run 'lilo' as root

0096 2251 2110 8105

2007-12-20T16:56:00.000Z

It all began with this sequence of numbers - "0096 2251 2110 8105". Now very few people will get it, 'n among that who would probably see this blogpost is '0' . So what is this number sequence anyway? It befuddled many my friends when i put this up as my status message on gtalk. Some responses i got -
A: Is this your old credit card number? but in ulta? :)
B: whr are you? (yea i don't know, which country can possibly have such number :) )
C: whats with that 0096 code?

D: you started drinking?
E: is that you credit card number?

Whereas a simple google would have given one the answer. The first result in google would tell you that it is the last line of 'Even Less' song by Porcupine Tree. Though it is people 's tendency to disbelieve even when something is in front of their eyes. :)

So yes, what's the significance of those numbers? If you proceeded after the first line you would have come across this -

It's the same number (0096 2251 2110 8105) as an E05 recording on the Conet Project discs (track 3, disc 1) by Irdial, all of which you can download for free here: http://irdial.hyperreal.org/"

But it was actually the second result which made me want to dig deep. Now me too had never heard of something like E05 recording or Conet Project. So imagine my surprise when i stumble on this wonderful world of Shortwave Numbers Stations - http://www.irdial.com/conet.htm
Seems like its straight out of some Ludlum's spy thriller. :)

The website says the TCP is currently out of stock, but you can access some of the recordings at
the Internet Archive. In case you didn't know abt Internet Archive before, check it out, it is one brilliant concept!

Now 'm just waiting to catch some shows on this. 'n yes do get and listen to 'Stupid Dream' by Porcupine Tree.

Uber Cool Light-Weight Nerd

2007-12-11T05:26:00.000Z

when you have nothing else to write abt, you can always depend on above stuff to keep the blog alive :)

btw, 'Uber Cool Light-Weight Nerd', now thts a nice name, think it pretty much got-it right ;)

2007-11-11T15:03:00.000Z

oh darn, just realized i missed out oct entry.... :(

neways, came here to ramble abt a coupla movies i saw o'er this weekend....
but now tht 'm here, dont feel upto it...

sincerely hope this is a passing phase, otherwise this may end up being yet another dead blog...

2007-09-11T16:27:00.000+01:00

A very important lesson learnt today...
"Look at second page also in google search, sometime the answer is there"... :P

Google Reader finally has search!!!!

2007-09-06T07:48:00.000+01:00

yeah...you read it correctly...reader finally finally has search!!! man from how many days i have been wanting to have that...
though it still kinda looks outta place...da functionality works...thats all matters... :)

----------------
Now playing: Cream - Crossroads [Live]
via FoxyTunes
----------------
Now playing: Cream - Badge
via FoxyTunes

Blackstratblues

2007-09-05T18:33:00.000+01:00

well was writing this post, 'n wasn't sure under which blog to put it in....'n finally decided to put it in the other one and provide a link here... :)

http://mindtrail.blogspot.com/2007/09/blackstratblues.html

openSUSE 10.3

2007-08-29T08:48:00.001+01:00

two reasons why i can't wait to try out 10.3 -

One-Click Install: Hassle-Free Installation of Software

http://news.opensuse.org/?p=133

Greatly Improved Boot Time

http://news.opensuse.org/?p=104

Looks like SUSE is finally getting it's act together... 'n also i just remembered the 2007 Desktop Linux Survey...SuSE has taken a big big jump to 2nd place, with a jump of 8 percentage points!!! But it still has a long way to go before it catches up with ubuntu, as you can see from the figures...hopefully we will reach there sometime... :)

anyways that itself is a lot to cheer about... :)

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Windows Users Caused Skype Outage!!!

2007-08-20T15:25:00.000+01:00

Skype has finally explained the reasons behind the 36+ hour outage of their popular P2P VOIP service last week: Windows Users.

According to Skype the outage was caused by “a massive restart of our user’s computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine software update” which The Register points out was Microsoft’s monthly patch Tuesday. Patch Tuesday is the time of the month Windows users receive security updates that often result in widespread reboots by Thursday.

Skype said that whilst their peer-to-peer network has an inbuilt ability to self-heal, the event “revealed a previously unseen software bug within the network resource allocation algorithm which prevented the self-healing function from working quickly.”

Windows Users Caused Skype Outage

This was too good not to blog! :)

Compiz Fusion - Videos III (Switcher again)

2007-08-20T09:59:00.000+01:00

Ring Switcher and Shift Switcher(in both Flip and Cover modes)...
though shd say quality of google video is bad...if you were to watch the original ogg, you will know...

Compiz Fusion - Videos II

2007-08-20T09:28:00.000+01:00

Screen Saver Plugin: Rotating Cube

Screen Saver Plugin: Flying Windows

You can see the youtube video playing in the window as it flies around :) btw thts chax's marriage video... :)

Compiz Fusion - Videos

2007-08-19T06:15:00.000+01:00

Recorded few using recordMyDesktop, faced lots of problems...i am still unable to get videos of few effects...so right now just uploading 2, will update the post with more soon...
'n btw Google Video is awesome, just lets you upload directly in ogg format!

Compiz Fusion - Paint Fire On Screen

Compiz Fusion - Gears

Compiz Fusion - Switcher(leaves Vista way behind :) )

Compiz-Fusion 'n Awn!!!

2007-08-17T16:15:00.000+01:00

Thats "Snow" plugin - one of my faves

yep i finally finally...got 'em working!!! right now just posting some screenshots...will soon post a how-to 'n how-not-to... :)

Thats 'Gears in Cube', which keeps rotating in ur transparent cube, myself prefer this to the 'Cube Atlantis' 'n tht is ur fishes in cube(for those who aint familiar with the terminology)

'n thts 'Rotating Cube Screen Saver', another option of 'Screen Saver' is 'Flying Windows' 'n which is real time!!! but photos dont do justice...shd upload videos, prob sometime next week...

thts my skydome img in background 'n again, the beauty of skydome 'n its animation can be made out only in video... :(

'n thr r loadz of other effects....prob my next few posts will all be on this... :)

update: one more ... :)

this is using 'Paint With Fire On Screen'...

Podcast/Vodcast - best thing since sliced bread?

2007-08-06T15:23:00.000+01:00

today on my way back home, was watching series of vodcasts(Video podcast for the uninitiated) i had downloaded...'n dint realize when my one-hr journey got over! Its an amazing way to pass time...'n it needn't go waste...you have podcasts/vodcasts in almost any category you can think of! So if you are the kind of person who likes learning new languages, all you have to do is subscribe 'n you are on your way...'n if you digg NG or Discovery, you can subscribe to their informative vodcasts as well...
iTunes website does a neat job of listing the top podcasts/vodcasts...

well Novell used to have NOA, when Ted was there...hmm wonder if its still happening...

Anyways here's da list of my top podcasts/vodcasts -
BestOfYouTube ( Must have!!!)
National Geographic Video Shorts
Flight of Conchords (nice comedy series by HBO...'n u get few entire episodes for free download!)
The Classic Tales Podcast
Discovery Channel Video Podcasts
Learn Spanish With Coffee Break Spanish
Ask a Ninja - iPod
Pandora Podcast Series

'n ofcourse you have ur Techie 'n Sports sections...

Google again!!

2007-08-01T10:10:00.000+01:00

Just saw this weird behavior, when you click on 'View Online' in picasa, it automatically opens up in IE, even when you default browser is set to something else!
Can somebody plz xplain to me Y?!! 'N its not only picasa, try Google Earth too, its the same. Click on view in google maps, 'n it opens up not one but 2 IE windows!I dont want to think badly of google, but 'm getting more 'n more such instances wherein i have no option to think otherwise...

Google - you have lost that lovin' feelin'

2007-07-25T04:58:00.000+01:00

is it only me...who feels Google is losing its way...way too fast i may add. The reason for this is that out of place question which Google has taken ard to include it in all its products now. Yes, now if you are installing picasa, you will be confronted with a question as to whether you want to make Google as the default search engine in IE. Seriously what does it have to do with Picasa!!! 'n it goes for other products from Google. i forgot which one else, i think google earth was the other one i came across.

Yeah i know its all business, but seriously you should know to draw a line somewhere.

this is how vista looks on my new Dell Optiplex 745

2007-07-18T06:42:00.000+01:00

'n yeah all this thanks to a wonderful free software called VMware Server :)
'n thts SLED 10 SP1 btw...

The iPhone is a piece of shit, and so is your face.

2007-07-17T14:31:00.001+01:00

The iPhone is a piece of shit, andso is your face.No, I'm not going to get an iPhone, quit emailing me about it. I'm not getting one because I already have a phone that's better: it's called the Nokia E70, it's the pinnacle of human achievement, and I love it more than my family:

You've probably never heard of the E70 because Nokia's marketing team is busy finding every last dick in the universe to suck, so I'm going to do their job for them and tell you about this product. And no, I'm not being paid to do this. I'm just tired of the iPhone fanboys shooting huge sticky wads and high-fiving each other (literally) over their stupid cellphones.

First of all, the E70 has a full keyboard, not some shitty stripped down, tap-and-pray smudgy piece of shit. Nokia uses a technology that's even more advanced than the iPhone's tap screen, allowing you to actually feel the keys you press as you're pressing them! The technology is called "tactile response," and it allows you to do things like dial a phone number without staring at your screen like a shit-chucking ape. In fact, every other cellphone ever made has this technology, sometimes called "buttons."

The iPhone is a piece of shit, and so is your face.

This was just too good not to blog it... :)

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The Ultimate Search For Bourne With Google

2007-07-17T05:15:00.001+01:00

Sorry, butTHE ULTIMATE SEARCH FOR BOURNEcannot be undertaken in Linux

The Ultimate Search For Bourne With Google

How can they do this!!!!! its almost like Racism! why can't they support linux!!!! Google which is one of the main consumers of linux don't have all their products supported on linux! hypocrisy! unfair! blah...blah...you can add on...

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I want one of these!!!!!

2007-07-04T04:21:00.001+01:00

Fujitsu unveils the highest capacity 2.5-inch drive yet: 300GB

Posted Jul 3rd 2007 2:08AM by Nilay PatelFiled under: StorageFujitsu's been selling well-regarded hard drives in branded external enclosures for a while now, so it's no surprise the company is trumpeting the arrival of 300GB 2.5-inch drives with a new line of pocket drives. The USB-powered 4200rpm drives feature a new 16-point shock absorber and the usual array of security software that'll get wiped out during the first reformat. Expect to see these hit shelves in Q3 for $229, no word on when the bare drive will be available.

Fujitsu unveils the highest capacity 2.5-inch drive yet: 300GB - Engadget

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few updates...

2007-06-14T08:38:00.000+01:00

hmm...its been a long time....its not tht thr's nothing much happening...just tht i have become even more lazy thn da usual... :)
Neways came across these 2 sites 'flixster' 'n 'wis.dm'. Well the latter is very similar to 'Grupthink' but diff being Questions can have only two answers - 'Yes' and 'No'. 'flixster' is a nice quiz site.
Another nice site i came across was 'MusicBox' though it doesn't have large number of videos.
And if you haven't noticed it, now Orkut has feeds feature!
Now if only they could just provide search feature in Reader!!!!
neways me feelin' sleepy...so outta here...
adios

me.dium.com 'n mouse gestures...

2007-05-12T07:35:00.000+01:00

now these are 2 really cool things i came across this week, all thanks to 'Flock'... :)
Me.dium comes with this extension for 'Flock'...donno if they have for others....but wht it does is - it lets u see what other ppl(friends) are currently browsing...
neways this is what their FAQ says -

What is Me.dium?
Me.dium is a window that reveals the hidden world of people and activity behind your browser. Through Me.dium, you can see your online world for the first time.

Check out this for more...

'n the other one was 'Mouse Gestures', probably many of you, might have already come across this one...its such a gr8 extension...'m surprised as to how it aint so popular 4 me not to have come across it before...
now we all know da 'Inertia Principle'...tht applied to Comp world, will go like this -
'Human hands on key board, will continue to remain on keyboard, 'n when on mouse, wud like to remain thr...'
now mouse gestures lets u do the 2nd thing... :)

Black Amarok!

2007-05-12T07:27:00.000+01:00

Check out my new Amarok look...

now, you can see in the pic that i finally got the moodbar working! :)

VMware USB support on Open SuSE 10.2...

2007-05-12T06:42:00.000+01:00

Well past few days, was fighting ard this problem, had got windows Xp running on vmware on Open SuSE 10.2 for downloading all tht podcasts frm iTunes(yeah, it still doesnt come on linux :( )... only to realize tht USB doesn't work...'n da solution that google gave me, was 'recompile the kernel'....
'n as ne other person had hrd all these scary stories of how things can go horribly long....'n in the end, the need overcame my hesitance so i plunged in.... 'n it was so easy!!!!!
or was i just plain lucky? :)
Neways it did take lot of time on a 4G RAM m/c....so on low end m/cs you can just imagine how much longer it will take....

Well here are the steps i followed -
1. Install kernel-sources and kernel-syms
2. copy .config and Modules.symvers from /usr/src/linux-obj/ to /usr/src/linux
(Note: on my 10.2 system this was already achieved with symlinks. I simply cd to /usr/src/linux and continued with the following commands)
3. make oldconfig
4. make menuconfig, select the usbfs (found in Device Drivers > USB Support > USB device filesystem)
5. make modules && make modules_install (have a cuppa - takes a while to complete)
6. change noauto to auto for the usbfs in fstab
7. reboot
8. ta-da

courtesy:http://suseforums.net/index.php?showtopic=27788

hmm...one word to describe this?

2007-05-08T21:17:00.000+01:00

Spidey 3

2007-05-06T06:36:00.000+01:00

Free ticket to 1st day showing of SpiderMan 3, now thats how every weekend shd begin.... :)
Well as one of my colleagues put it...'Its a chick flick with guys stuff put in...' but then its spiderman.....its a kid movie...so ob it cant go overboard with ne stuff....tht said thr were still some threads in da script which were just totally unnecessary 'n poorly executed...

But i just love da black suit....looks so much better thn da red 'n blue one...I also did get to see previews of 'Pirates Of the Caribbean: At World's End', 'Shrek the 3rd' 'n 'Rush Hour 3'...
Really donno, why there had to be shrek 2 'n now shrek 3! As one of my friends says...'There's no bad movie which cant be made worse by a sequel...'

End of Pandora?

2007-05-03T07:07:00.001+01:00

If you live outside of the U.S. and enjoy listening to customized radio stations on Pandora, brace yourself for some bad news. The site will be shutting you out starting Thursday evening.

Pandora To Shut Out Non-U.S. Users Thursday Evening

Can you believe this? wht will i do once i come back? ;(

technorati tags:music

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Awesome roads...

2007-04-26T03:41:00.000+01:00

something nice i came across on scribd...

what do u know...'m a Rocker girl! :D

2007-04-25T16:49:00.000+01:00

You are a Rocker Girl!

If you don't have musical talent, you've got a talent for picking out great CD's.
Music rules your life - and you've got the best MP3 collection of anyone you know.
Many guys find you intimidating, but a select few think you're the catch of a lifetime.
Start hanging out in more used record stores, and you'll find love with a fellow rocker!

What Kind of Girl Are You?

Thou Shalt Always Kill!

2007-04-24T05:16:00.000+01:00

something i came across...'n which may very soon get very popular...check out da lyrics...

Frustration!

2007-04-19T06:46:00.000+01:00

This is such an awesome thing i came across, probably u need a new word for this, frustration just doesn't cut it...
its a tad lengthy though, ard 24 min, so guess it defines new limit of tolerance/patience under xtreme frustration... :)
anyways it may also probably be used as a material for crash course in expletives 'n their usage...:D
so you would probably like to use head phones, in case you are at work...but again WTF go play it loud 'n have some fun... :D

Want to explore the BBC archive?

2007-04-19T06:12:00.001+01:00

The BBC is looking for people to join a six-month trial in which 20,000 UK residents will get free access to hundreds of programmes from the BBC archive, including reports of historic events as they happened, ground-breaking documentaries, soaps, action-packed children's shows, sumptuous dramas, and comedy shows that thrilled the nation.

BBC Archive Trial

Darn, why couldn't i be living in UK now? :(

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Amarok Revisited... :D

2007-04-16T05:54:00.000+01:00

Its funny how in almost one year of me using Amarok, i had never explored da script manager, except to probably just run da default lyrics engine. Neways yest night clicked on da get more scripts button 'n it opened up this world of so many gr8 scripts. I especially love the "nightIMPgale", looks like its tailor made for me, now i can just put on a playlist before going to sleep and configure nightIMPgale so that it shutsdown the system after 1Hr or after the end of playlist 'n so on... :) Other ones i liked were the "AutoTorrent" and "itrans". Probably someone should write an entry of all the cool things you can do in Amarok... :D

Will the EU Make You a Copy Criminal?

2007-04-12T04:26:00.001+01:00

If IPRED2 passes in its current form, "aiding, abetting, or inciting" copyright infringement on a "commercial scale" in the EU will become a crime.

Penalties for these brand new copycrimes will include permanent bans on doing business, seizure of assets, criminal records, and fines of up to €100,000.

IPRED2's backers say these copycrimes are meant only for professional criminals selling fake merchandise. But Europe already has laws against these fraudsters. With many terms in IPRED2 left unclear or completeley undefined - including "commercial scale" and "incitement" - IPRED2 will expand police authority and make suspects out of legitimate consumers and businesses, slowing innovation and limiting your digital rights.

Tell the European Parliament to Fix IPRED2 | IPRED2: Will it Make You a Copy Criminal?

We Follow Thou America...

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Gaim IM Client Renamed to 'Pidgin'!!!!

2007-04-09T21:32:00.001+01:00

WTH?! can you imagine using pidgin in place of Gaim?!! I never even knew AIM was trademarked by AOL...but seriously how was it gonna matter to AOL, whether yu call Gaim as Gaim or something else...i just fail to see the point why they had to go sue da Gaim ppl...! more 'n more i feel we are living in a funny world...
btw recently saw this movie Idiocracy and dont think they were quite off da target...
Its a real timepass move...making a mockery of da American culture....'n da path it may lead us down on...

BetaNews | Gaim IM Client Renamed to 'Pidgin'

technorati tags:linux, movies

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there's a better way to get a job than crawling up your boss's ass...!

2007-04-09T21:16:00.001+01:00

jobsintown.de: The Ass-Kisser Project | Ads of the World

Real Genius...Words Fail me... LOL :D

technorati tags:misc

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iTunes to Offer EMI's DRM-free Music

2007-04-02T17:13:00.001+01:00

In what could be a watershed moment for the digital entertainment industry, leading music publisher EMI Group announced today it would provide most of its music catalog to listeners without any digital rights management restrictions.And making Apple CEO Steve Jobs live up to his promises from earlier this year, the two companies have reached a breakthrough agreement where DRM-free EMI music will be available on iTunes.

WOW! now thats some news...will probably update this post later on in the day...but for now just wanted to say...way to go Apple! :D

BetaNews | iTunes to Offer EMI's DRM-free Music

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Never Mention "hotmail" In Your CV

2007-03-29T03:10:00.001+01:00

Via this blog (link in spanish) a guy, who works in the department of a Human Resources consultancy company, says they made a selection process in which, among other things, they asked for a person with ample experience in using the internet (navigation, searches, formats...).
They received 50 candidacies, from which 30 came from Hotmail-directions, all of them erased as they entered.
The reason: You can't pretend being an internet expert and use a Hotmail account at the same time.
howzzat? looks like some ppl are finally gettin' it right... :D

sugiero: Never Mention "hotmail" In Your CV

technorati tags:misc

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Best one so far.... :D

2007-03-06T06:37:00.001Z

piracy2.jpg (JPEG Image, 370x522 pixels)

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New Google Cafeteria Crushes Competitors' Cafeterias

2007-02-20T14:52:00.001Z

New Google Cafeteria Crushes Competitors' Cafeterias - Grub Street - New York Magazine

now who wudn't like to have such food everyday... where is this 'n the pathetic food we get at our canteen....due to which i am forced to go out 'n eat everyday.... ;-(

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multifarious vocabulary! :D

2007-02-20T03:51:00.000Z

Your Vocabulary Score: A

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary!
You must be quite an erudite person.

How's Your Vocabulary?

yahoo pipes

2007-02-09T04:13:00.000Z

i couldn't not blog abt this... :) It is such an amazing li'l thing, 'n more surprising thing is that it is from yahoo camp! Well anyone wo knows me, knows that i am a bonafide Google girl...'n have a real low opinion abt yahoo...but when i came across this 'pipes' from yahoo, my view points took a serious damage.

"Yahoo!'s new Pipes service is a milestone in the history of the internet. It's a service that generalizes the idea of the mashup, providing a drag and drop editor that allows you to connect internet data sources, process them, and redirect the output." You can read the entire article here.

'n a friend of mine in yahoo, forwarded me this link. Yahoo! Our City looks like another good service. Google can't take it easy anymore, lest it becomes like the story of 'The Hare & The Tortoise'.

Texasisms

2007-01-31T06:42:00.001Z

"Hey!"
"Hey, thar."
"How're you and yermahmenthem?"
"Fahnez froghar. You?"
"Aw, I had to carry the pickup back to the shop. Joe's fixinta fixon the transmission again."
"Dang shame. Djeet?"
"Nope."
"Yawnna?"
"Ayt."
"Squeet."

Fixinta learn ya how to use some Texasisms

something i googled out, when searching for the meaning of squeet... :) Wonder if spanish has something like this....anyways it will be nice to know, in case i eva get to meet a Texan Cowboy... now whts da chances of tht happening? lol... :D

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Bureaucracy

2007-01-30T10:56:00.001Z

AllFreeCalls, a new service which lets people make free phone calls by first calling a phone number in Iowa and then calling to any of dozens of other countries, just added eight new countries to the permitted lists (plus Antarctica). In an email the founder also said that they handled 80,000 call minutes yesterday.The company operates under a legislative loophole that gives rural telco’s a kickback on every received call. That kickback is greater than the cost the company bears for making outbound international calls. So someone’s paying for these calls (other telecos? taxpayers?), just not the person using the service. I love bureaucracy.

AllFreeCalls (un)Surprisingly Successful

Interesting... wonder how many such loopholes exist in India... :)

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Celebrity Patents

2007-01-05T04:03:00.001Z

The following 18 patents are all by celebrities not usually known for being inventors. You can follow the link to the actual patents to learn more about each one.
1. Eddie Van Halen, Musician.Patent #4,656,917 — Musical instrument supportEddie Van Halen patent

Ironic Sans: Celebrity Patents

Good one.

pls: Trying out the just select, right-click 'n blog this option in Flock....'n am i impressed!

technorati tags:music, google, misc

Apple. DRM, Rand...

2006-12-15T06:29:00.000Z

This article is long over-due….it all started when I ‘n madcap were discussing about apple, DRM…’n I asked him…how do you think Ayn Rand’s philo will fit into all this….? ‘N the Q got redirected to me…’n due to lack of time? Said‘ll blog about it sometime…. ‘N having nothing better to do, coz of being sent home early due to ppl staging protestations in front of office, here I am inking my thoughts on the subject… 

Disclaimer…

Let me clarify, this post is just to air my views or rather my lack of views, coz ‘m still not sure where I stand on this… ‘n coz I keep seeing this, thought will put in here also, though doubt if this topic is that controversial, anyways here it is –the views are mine alone ‘n not subscribed by my employer :D And all the said things below are based on what li’l knowledge I possess, so if some things are wrong then it is due to non possession of facts rather than any intentional over-looking… 

Ok, let me begin with what started it all…iPod. Now I must confess ‘m a big-time apple fan but in this post I will try to be as un-biased as possible….  It started off with my confusion o’er what mp3 player to buy. Well I had always loved the apple’s click-wheel interface ’n the oh so classy look of ipods but they did have a major draw-back that they dint have any kinda radio support( which was a major major reqmt for me) ’n dint support that many file formats either. But even with these draw-backs I was considering iPod. At this time was asking everyone I knew about other alternatives ’n that’s where madcap came in- ’n he being my total opp. i.e. apple hater… , started off on a tirade against it. His major gripe was the ‘DRM’ of-course, well even ‘m against it but it dint bother me much coz me never plan to buy music off iTunes ’n neither am I rich enough to possess more than one player, so the Q of playing the bought music on other players doesn’t arise at all. :P Probably ‘m being selfish ‘n looking at only my needs, but if ‘m buying the player for myself, then it should follow that I should buy something which suits my needs…rite? ;)

A li’l history…

Anyways his take was ‘apple’ is evil, coz of the DRM, ‘n all that customers who bought the music have no where to go but stick to apple. I totally empathize with the ppl, it’s one sick situation to be in. But let’s start off from beginning….When iPod was launched, did any one ever (cud have) imagine (d) such a situation…? A song for 99c was such a brilliant move that it was instantly lapped up by ppl as well as by the music industry which was then fighting the ‘napster’ ‘n such p2p sharing. It was like, to quote Godfather – “I’m gonna make you an offer, you can’t refuse” ‘n to top that it was perfectly “legal” too….: D The record companies never imagined that iPod would become so bloody popular, I doubt even if Jobs himself imagined it would grow this much…  So now you have ‘Universal’ music wanting a chunk of the cut, coz it considers all music on iPod as stolen!!!

Btw here’s a nice script of a hypothetical conversation b/n Jobs ‘n Doug Morris.

DRM…

Btw why did it take so long for any decent competition to arise for iPod? 2 yrs back I doubt if any one wanted to use any player other than iPod, but that was then. ’N the fact is that now ppl don’t want DRM, they want to pay only once for their music ‘n be able to play it on iPod, zune or any player. So why it is that apple is still sticking to DRM? ‘Coz IMHO it doesn’t need it to lock customers using it, coz iPod is such a gr8 prod by itself that ppl will use it anyway. Probably that explains why there has not been a major customer cry o’er this ‘coz ppl don’t want to use anything else…?  But then as madcap was saying all these big-players ‘apple’, ‘M$’, ‘sony’… can all come up with a DRM standard which allows inter-operability. :D So then is DRM to prevent/disabuse P2P? If so, it’s a total failure coz as long as you have DRM you will get hacks to circumvent it…

Then is ‘Music Tax’ the way to go, like Peter Jenner says? ‘M not sure but what ‘m sure of is that DRM is defi not the way to go….

Artists, Record Labels, free music….

Free music…well rather music for free…are you really depriving an artist’s lively-hood when you d/w a song illegally off the net? When you d/w a metallica song, is it that they will lose one rupee, oh I mean one dollar from their millions? So you see it is really a bad thing to do…

It’s a different matter that new artists/bands don’t mind their music being distributed freely on the net, coz that’s how they will get popular but as soon as they start getting popular and get signed by record labels, there goes your free stuff…

Now record labels are painted across as the evil ppl, which is not entirely wrong considering that not much of the proceeds go to the artists who deserve it. But in this dog-eat-dog world, no one is free of blame: artists sign enormous multi-million dollar deals for a record whether they deserve it or not is another matter altogether. ‘n the consumer, of course if he is get something for free, will he pay for it else where?

Pls: On one hand you have artists like developers of ‘South Park’ whose sole aim of creating is so that people should watch their shows…’n then you have comedy central whose aim is to milk as much money as possible from the viewers…

How much greedy is greedy? Where do you stop? ‘N should you stop at all?...

Well guess this is the crux ethical Q involved in all the above.

All companies start off small; they develop one revolutionary product on top of which they start growing. So you had M$ beginning with MS-DOS, then Windows ‘n then came the Office ‘n IE. Now this is where the things got murkier. You had Netscape a pioneer in the browser ‘n Word Perfect but M$ started shipping IE ‘n Office integrated with windows. A gr8 business strategy some would say, but ethical? But then some ask what is ethics in business?

‘N then you have some companies piling upon patents on patents, which hinders the very purpose of ‘patent’. Patent concept was developed to foster innovation, but with all the patent filing by big conglomerates one never knows when one may use an idea unknowingly, which is already patented ‘n the big corporation comes knocking on your door for royalties.

Free s/w Vs Proprietary….it can be one entirely diff post altogether but for samplers -  if I want to make money off what I code is it a bad thing? ‘Coz if you release the source, any normal intelligent person can compile it himself ‘n use it for free. It seems ppl have no problem with making money but it’s only when one starts to make too much off it they start having problem. They expect you to start allowing others to compete with your own product. This was where I thought of Ayn Rand. Remember ‘Atlas shrugged’ ‘n Hank Rearden's companies? No one should make you feel guilty of being rich when others are poor, when you have earned it. But in what way you earn it is what matters. ‘N in today’s competitive business environment there’s no way you can live without stepping on someone’s toes. So you have company like ‘Google’ with motto – ‘Don't be evil’ getting increasingly into danger areas where it’s being accused of wrong-doing.

Having said so much ‘m still no where near the answer for the above question.

‘Haves’ ‘n ‘Have-nots’ ‘n ‘Doers’ ‘n ‘Non-Doers’…who is black….who is white? But ‘As it always is - there’s only grey….’

pls: tried to post this frm Google docs as the blogger keeps telling me to....but da darn thing doesnt work! hope google stops advertising stuff which dont work...

Wii-llenium?

2006-12-08T11:08:00.000Z

Quite a nice-term actually to describe the Wii wave sweeping o'er da world...Well 'm no gaming freak...actually hardly no da 'ABC' of gaming.... :) but now this is one which i just cant wait to try....it looks like pure-joy... :)
You can check out this site. for more info....Look out for the video with da girl-boxing... :)

'n this is so funny... :)

star wars

2006-11-13T15:01:00.000Z

well this weekend saw the entire star wars saga... had watched the Episodes I, II 'n III before, but it was a different thing all together to watch all six episodes @ a stretch.

Think 'revenge of the sith' will be my most fave movie of the lot....just love da way its been directed...so dark...da journey of "Anakin Skywalker' to da dark-side so perfectly captured....

All 6 movies should be on the must-watch list(collection) of any movie-lover....
'n for those who still haven't managed to watch 'em even once...thn all i can say is 'Go...Watch...Now' :)

google reader

2006-11-13T13:20:00.000Z

well...today was just telling one of my friends that i blog here whate'er i find interesting in da technology world 'n use a lot...'n realized that i hadn't put in an entry regarding 'Google Reader' to which 'm so addicted these days...

For starters Google Reader is a simple, free to use 'Feeds a.k.a RSS Reader'. You can go through this incredibly easy-to-understand 'n to-the-point FAQ. So that saves me the trouble of explaining it. :D

And now where all does it find its uses. A single place to track if there are any updates to the blogs you visit often. A great place to get all the latest news, gossip, rumours...well only if you subscribe to the right sites ofcourse. For e.g: if you are a sports freak, you can always subscribe to bbc sports or if you are a technology freak you can subscibe to the zillions of such sites out there on the net.

Now, the feature i like the most is sharing ofcourse :). Then there are tags. 'N Something which i found today, the 'Goodies' section. It has two cool goodies called 'Put Reader in the Bookmark' and 'Subscibe as You Surf' . 'N the former displays this when there are no new updates. :)

So, Njoi reading!

adiós

time-line

2006-11-08T07:52:00.000Z

well just now stumbled upon this great site, while searching for a good time-line software.

It all began when i stumbled on this sometime back. Somehow the idea seemed to remain in that mind of mine...so searched for it again yesterday. But again the complexity just to get it to work overwhelmed me.

'n today realized tht i hadn't dugg the link, which meant finding it will be tough in case i need to refer to it in future. So off i went again to the site, 'n strangely went to the bottom of the comment section, where in i found this gem. :) Though granularity of the time-line needs a lot to be desired, it makes up for it in its simplicity 'n easy-to-use interface. Perfect for lazy ppl like me. :)
so it may be some time before i spend some time figuring out 'n setting up this, as now i have a great alternative. :)

its funny how so many new 'n innovative ideas people come up with, like 'YouTube' which has been named the 'Best Invention of The Year' by the Time magazine. :)

My Dosha ... :D

2006-10-22T15:57:00.000+01:00

Your Dosha is Pitta

You have a quick mind, a gift for persuasion, and a sharp sense of humor.
You have both the drive and people skills to be a very successful leader.
Argumentative and a bit stubborn, you have been known to be a little too set in your ways.
But while you may be biased toward your own point of view, you are always honest, fair, and ethical.

With friends: You are outgoing and open to anyone who might want to talk to you

In love: You are picky but passionate

To achieve more balance: Be less judgmental of those around you, and take cool walks in the moonlight.

What's Your Dosha?

GooTube... lol

2006-10-20T17:31:00.001+01:00

NAM 3.0

2006-10-20T16:27:00.000+01:00

i.e. Novell Access Manager 3 for you, the product 'm working on or rather a very tiny part of it... :D

http://www.novell.com/podcast/Detailpage.jsp?id=103

'n now that's the podcast, explaining all about it...
Listen to the part where Lee talks about SSL VPN, now that's wht 'm working on... ;)

'n just some more info on NAM 3 :
Novell Access Manager 3.0 represents the next generation of access management and federated identity solutions. It introduces new “in-the-flow” technologies and SSLVPN functionality that broaden its access-management capabilities. It supports a broad range of platforms and directory services. Novell Access Manager provides an advanced solution to secure your infrastructure, prevent information theft and protects the privacy of people inside and outside the organization. Novell Access Manager3.0 lets you separate security from individual applications and Web servers, enabling single-point, policy-based authentication management and access privileges throughout the Net. Novell Access Manager 3.0 also includes identity-based Web security services and provides users with secure authentication and access to portals, Web-based content.

Using Novell Access Manager organizations can simplify security management, control the use of digital assets across the extended enterprise and get more from investments in eBusiness applications.

Or you can check this out -
http://www.novell.com/news/press/item.jsp?id=1155

'n yeah i know....'m blatantly marketing? for a lack of better word.... :D

Peck, Spacey 'n De Niro

2006-10-16T17:59:00.000+01:00

this weekend managed to watch 3 gr8 movies...'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'The Usual Suspects' 'n 'Taxi Driver' in that order. Well not so sure abt da 2nd one, coz u kinda guess da ending in da beginning itself... prob @ da time when da movie released it was diff... neways its a decent watch made more so by Spacey's amazing performance.

'n tht's what these 3 movies have in common...superlative performances by their lead actors...which just lift da movies to a higher level...

Peck was just perfect in his role as 'Atticus Finch'....'n till this day only other movie of his i had seen was 'Roman Holiday' 'n had loved him in tht...but he was so so much better in this.... wonder how come they dont make 'em such nemore...
neways, as i watched da movie...bits 'n pieces slowly started coming to me from da half-read book, some aeons back...which in retrospect was gud...coz so often u end up comparing da movie to da book...'n u end up disappointed....but not so this time as da pace, da charm, da telling of da story thru da kids eyes was just outstanding...

Spacey....well he was gud but felt he was better in 'American Beauty' 'n ofcourse tht movie was way way better thn this... :)

De Niro...well wht can u say...words just fail... :D Really what a performance 'n wht a movie! 'n cant believe thts Jodie Foster in da movie...u know wht i mean... :D Neways tht shd be in da must-watch movie list of neone...

adiós

Kopete 'n iChat

2006-10-11T17:48:00.000+01:00

well...after da umpteenth gaim crash today....thought enough...no more sticking to an IM client which dint support GW, doesn't support 'Now Listening' feature da way its meant to be(even for that, u gotta take so much of pains!) 'n one which just loves to crash every now 'n thn...
So even with my dislike for KDE stuff...'n da last time experience being none too gr8...thought will give 'Kopete' one more try...guess necessity does make human open to more stuff... ;)
After getting myself used to da KDE icons...UI(believe me it does take some getting used to...after da 'oh so simple, plain, uncluttered gnome UI' :) )...delved into da vast feature set which kopete offered...
> 1st thing i saw...it supports GW...not like gaim, where its broken...
> 2nd It allowed you to change the interface themes... 'n to my pleasant surprise...found 'iChat' in thr... :) It is a good 'imitation' ... but nothing more thn tht...coz though it implements da cute 'speaking-style' of iChat...its surrounded in da big ugly KDE chat window...which doesnt let u forget...not even for a moment...tht u r on linux...'n it is an imitation afterall...
But seriously i have major gripes abt tht...y do u need to have such big,ugly window , a major content of which is surrounded by unused/of-little use features...y cant it be like Mac...where chat window is just a 'chat window'...pray how many ppl actually use da drop-down menus in a chat window...file,edit,tools,settings...seriously?!
u wanna do some fancy stuff...go to da toolbar...'n another thing which i like abt da mac is da one menubar which changes depending on da application...y cant linux also have something like tht?
> neways 3rd headed straight into the 'now-listening to' plugin...it seriously da best among wht i have seen so far...da ability to configure so many things...so easily...was just too gud...'n da 'best' part was it did that for my GW IM too...so finally got da thing i wanted since da day i joined work...thnx to kopete... :)
> 4th was some 'Text Effect' plugin...'n using it was so much fun...well 'm sure in a few days da novelty will wear off...but had a blast today...playing ard with my friends...who had no idea how/what was going on... :)
well thats all i have checked out so far...it was defi worth it...even if only for da 3rd feature's last part... :)

anti-DRM Ad

2006-10-04T14:55:00.000+01:00

whose side you are on...?

2006-09-17T19:16:00.000+01:00

just something i found off da net...'n aboslutely luv those lines...

Jimmy Page @ 14! :)

2006-09-02T07:06:00.000+01:00

Amarok 'n Gaim 'n iChat

2006-08-28T15:29:00.000+01:00

Yest nite finally configured gaim to display the current playing song on Amarok as da status...but da sad part is 4 tht to happen ur stat shd be set to away...hopefully autoprofile or gaim guys will fix/provide tht soon...

Neways here's a mini How-To, rather few things which i found difficult...'n which others may do well to avoid...
> D/W gaim beta3 'n Autoprofile 2.14 source
for links...plz google
> untar gaim 'n then untar autoprofile to gaim/plugins/
> do a ./configure in gaim dir
> do make in autoprofile subdirectory
> do make 'n make install for gaim
> so far so good...'n same as wht the autoprofile website says. But next step is whr u cud waste considerable time...if you end up following wht da site says...! 'n which sadly wht i ended up doing... :(
Instead of copying da autoprofile.so to ~/.gaim/ as website says...find out the path where the other plugins are installed 'n thn copy it thr...in my case it was "/usr/local/lib/gaim/"...thnx to my friend's suggestion...you can easily do this by grep'ing for "plugin" in ~/.gaim/prefs.xml...
> now that you have da autoprofile plugin installed, all tht is needed is to configure tht to display the amarok status...thnx to some tip i came across googling, this can be easily done thru a shell script.
something on the lines of this -

while [ 1 ]
do
echo `dcop amarok player artist` '-' `dcop amarok player title` > $HOME/Currentsong
done

> In the component settings of autoprofile, for text/songs select the path for this file($HOME/Currentsong)
> thn set ur away status as %x 'n u r done... :)

You can do this by setting %e also...saves you da trouble of running a shell script...but somehow i never got it to work...

Now tht was yest nite...today morn rather noon, i 'discovered' iChat.
For some totally inexplicable reason, i had never tried out iChat before, atleast after gtalk came into existence 'n before tht it was as much use to me as binoculars to a blind man...
Neways configuring iChat for Gtalk was pretty straight forward, thnx to google... 'n it just WOWed me afterwards with its simple 'n so beautiful interface!

'n you just have to select 'Show current iTunes Track' from da drop-down menu...so unlike all da circus one has to do on gaim...'n very much similar to da 'Show current playing track' on google talk...now i know frm whr its 'inspired'... :D
yea i know iTunes is da only player on Mac...whr u have some dozen for linux...but still thts no xcuse for not providing with a gud interface to display da current playing song...

well not only this...Apple takes every small detail to another level altogether...be it changing da display pic or da cute way to show person's thinking while inputting text or da way incoming chat notifications are displayed...
think iChat's gonna be my default IM client for some days to come now... :)

EQ ... :D

2006-08-26T15:52:00.000+01:00

Your EQ is 147

50 or less: Thanks for answering honestly. Now get yourself a shrink, quick!
51-70: When it comes to understanding human emotions, you'd have better luck understanding Chinese.
71-90: You've got more emotional intelligence than the average frat boy. Barely.
91-110: You're average. It's easy to predict how you'll react to things. But anyone could have guessed that.
111-130: You usually have it going on emotionally, but roadblocks tend to land you on your butt.
131-150: You are remarkable when it comes to relating with others. Only the biggest losers get under your skin.
150+: Two possibilities - you've either out "Dr. Phil-ed" Dr. Phil... or you're a dirty liar.

What's Your EQ (Emotional Intelligence Quotient)?

Billy Joel

2006-08-18T18:45:00.000+01:00

well recently downloaded da "Piano Man : The Very Best Of Billy Joel". Its an absolute jem.
Had always loved his songs. They have such beauty abt 'em...so simple 'n yet so poignant...
This one has da name suggests has all his best songs...
My fave ones among 'em r defi - 'Piano Man', 'Goodnight Saigon', ' She's always a Woman', 'Innocent man', 'Honesty'....well u can say almost all da songs... :)

Honesty is such a lonely word....

And the waitress is practicing politics
As the businessmen slowly get stoned
Yes, they're sharing a drink they call loneliness
But its better than drinkin alone...

In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the jungle of doubt
To the river so deep
I know I'm searching for something
Something so undefined
That it can only be seen
By the eyes of the blind
In the middle of the night ...

How-to-Exaile

2006-08-16T05:57:00.000+01:00

1st Step:
go to http://exaile.org/index.rb?command=download
2nd Step:
d/w Exaile 0.2b4 Source Tarball
3rd Step:
Check if your system has all da requirements specified. You should be having most...some which i had to install were-
> upgrade python-gtk2 to 2.8.6
> install python-ogg 'n python-vorbis plugins
> install mad 'n python-mad
> gstreamer 0.10 'n gstreamer0.10-plugins-good must already be present if u r using sled 10, if not install 'em. 'n gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly for mp3 support. though hasnt worked for me so far. will update this post, if 'n when i get it to work.

Now tht you are done with da requirements, time for da final step.
> untar da source ball.
> cd to tht directory
> do ./exaile.........voila....you have exaile up 'n running :)

Blogger Beta...

2006-08-15T12:30:00.000+01:00

Well trying out da new Blogger beta...'n i must say 'm terribly disappointed.
> option to share ur blog, only with friends...
Looks like google is trying to do a yahoo in here...So now you have ur google account linked with blogger...very much like what yahoo already provides, thru Yahoo 360. So if all i wanted was a blog to share only with my close friends, thn it makes gud sense for me to use yahoo 'n save myself da additional trouble of sending out invitation mails to each one of my friends!
2nd me thinks da core user base of blogger wont care much for this feature coz their blogs r intended 4 da world. Now thts just my guess in here 've got no statistics 'n stuff, but based on what 've come across, its a very reasonable guess to make.
>Labels
Now this is a feature very late in coming...Coz you already have some hazaar hacks on how to add category support to blogger 'n not to mention that other service providers already have this feature.
>Changing da appearance
well from a totally naive user point of view, this should be a gr8 feature. I mean adding links, rss feed, embedding scripts...changing their relative positions...colors...fonts...its all automated now. As they promote "change da appearance with mouse instead of html". But think i still prefer da old classic one. Anyways da advanced raw template editing is shown as 'Coming Soon'...so guess have to just wait 'n watch.

Now, two features i wud like to see-
> a field which shows da song you were listening to while posting. Yea i know not tht much of an useful feature, but one i wud still like to have. think this feature is already thr in live journal, not sure though...
> Blogging from Google notebook @ da click of a button. yea guess this feature must go into google notebook, neways blogging it in here just da same... :)