Night Dreaming (by Sudar)

I was searching for some good online backup solutions to store my documents, ever since I found that DocSyncer was dead. I came across a wonderful service called DropBox, which I am currently testing to find out whether it will suit my requirements or not.

DropBox is currently in private beta and I have some invites left. If you need an invite just drop a comment here with your email address. Thanks Jigar for the invites.

Tags: DocSyncer, Dropbox, Invites

DocSyncer, the service that allowed users to sync their documents with Google Docs have shut down their doors since they couldn’t find a viable business model.

The way in which they have shut down has shocked me more than the fact that they have shut down the service.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not here to criticize or accuse them for shutting down. After all they were still in beta, (which means, use at your own risk). But I was rather annoyed that they didn’t even bother to send an email to the users, so that they can be prepared. It seems that they have posted a message in their website, but the users will visit the website only when they have to recover some documents which were already synced. The majority of the work was done by the desktop client and it is still running in my system tray, without giving any clue that the service was already shutdown.

I was one of the early adopters of the service and was so pleased with the service that I even wrote some tutorials about it. I have some critical documents which I update on daily basics. I wanted a simple solution to backup these documents and retrieve them based on date. DocSyncer was the perfect solution for me. I installed and pointed it to the directory in which I kept these documents and the client automatically backed up the documents to my Google Docs account.

A couple of day’s back I wanted to retrieve the document and tried to access the DocSyncer website but found that it was down. After a quick search in Google, I found that DocSyncer was dead. Last time I received an email from them was on April 22^nd, when they announced pro account. This is not the first time I was affected because a service which I was using shutdown its doors, but I would have really appreciated if they could have sent a simple email saying that the service is going to be shut down.

Anyways, thank you Cliff Shaw and DocSyncer team for an excellent service which I was using for the past couple of months and my best wishes for your next startup.

If anyone from DocSyncer is reading this, then can you please let me know whether it is possible to opensource DocSyncer, at least the client alone?

Meanwhile my search for an online backup system continues and I am planning to have a look at Windows Mesh and Dropbox. If anyone knows a better solution, then do let me know.

Tags: backup, DocSyncer, Dropbox, Google Docs, windows Mesh

Yvui, my 17-year-old-wannabe-geek cousin has achieved something really admirable. He has become the first Indian to be on the Techmeme Leaderboard.

His stat’s blog - thestatbot which he started last month is currently at position 76 in the Techmeme Leaderboard (as I am writing this blog entry) and has already been mentioned by TechCrunch. It is a remarkable achievement for a blog which is less than 2 months old. Congrats Yuvi and all the best with thestatbot.

Tags: thestatbot, Yuvi

Even though I was not an avid reader in my childhood, I started cultivating the habit of reading books after college and one of my resolutions for 2008 is to read at least a book every month. I have successfully kept up the resolution for the past two and a half months.

I recently received a gift certificate for Rs 2000 from my office, which I can use to buy either books or cds. I am planning to spend Rs 2000 equally among technical, fiction and non-fiction books and I need your recommendation. For technical, I am planning to buy some books related to Ruby but I don’t have much idea for fiction and non-fiction books. So suggest me some books which I can buy.

Tags: Books, Reading

As you all know, recently I moved to SliceHost and these are some statistics about my site.

First is the response time graph from Site24×7, an excellent service to monitor your site’s uptime and response time.

Second is the graph from Google’s Webmaster tool, which shows the number of KB’s of data downloaded per day from my blog.

I have just 2 words to say - THANKYOU SLICEHOST

By the way I have also upgraded to a 512MB Slice

Tags: Site24x7, slicehost, Web Hosting

Well, I have just turned from “early twenties” to “late twenties” a couple of minutes back.
Eagerly waiting to face the surprises which life has for me this year.

Tags: BirthDay, wishes

Since my current computer has burned due to lightning I have decided to build a new one. I am interested in building a new one rather than buy a branded one and I need thy help. So guys give me your recommendations and let me know which one I should buy or stay away from. I will also appreciate if you could share me your experience with your PC.

Before we proceed, let me state my needs. I need a PC which I can use as my main development box. I will be running resource hungry programs like Zend, Eclipse, Visual Studio.NET, Photoshop etc. So I want it to be pretty powerful. It will be dual boot and I may also run VMware and set up parallel visual machines. I am not going to watch movies or play games and cost is not going to be much constraint.

Sorry MAC fans. It is very difficult to get a MAC here in India and is much more difficult to find service centers if I am into some trouble.

These are some of the options which I am considering now.

Processor

I am considering Intel core 2 quad or Intel core 2 quad extreme, which is by the way the most powerful processor available here. I don’t have much idea about AMD and if you have using or know about it then let me know. In particular, I have to choose from any of the following 3 processors.

• Intel core 2 quad Q6600 2.4 Ghz, 8 MB L2 Cache, 1066 Mhz FSB
• Intel core 2 quad Q6700 2.66 Ghz, 8 MB L2 Cache, 1066 Mhz FSB
• Intel core 2 quad Qx6700 2.66 Ghz, 8 MB L2 Cache, 1066 Mhz FSB

Motherboard

Since the processor is Intel core 2 quad I have to choose the motherboard beloing to the P35 chipset family. In particular I am planning to choose any one from the following. I may go in for overclocking too. So suggest me which one I have to choose.

• P5K3 Premium/WiFi-AP
• P5K3 Deluxe/WiFi-AP
• P5K64 Ws

RAM

For RAM I have to choose between DDR3 1333, DDR2 1033 or DDR2 800. I am going to buy the maximum amount of RAM that is supported by the motherboard. Let me know if there is any brand or make which I should buy or avoid.

Harddisk

Tentatively it is either Segate or Western Digital 350 GB or 750 GB HDD STA. But I am also considering STD or RAID

Monitor

It is going to be 19 inch LCD Monitor, either from Samsung or LG. Let me know if any other brand is recommened.

DVD ROM(S)

Blue Ray seems to be costly. So I am planning to get a DVD Writer combo. But let me know if there are other options.

Mouse and Keyboard

Suggest me some good ergonomics keyboards and mouse. I have already started developing numbs in my wrist

Others

This includes Cabinet, speakers, network cards etc. Let me know if you have any good suggestion for these.

My current PC

I bought the current one which I am using in the late part of 2001 and it has served me very well. I have had quite a few thrilling movements and surprises with it. But overall it has served me well and I am still waiting for the service guys to tell me what are the parts that were burned due to the lightning.

Tags: Computer, Intel, Processor

Last Thursday night, there was a mild thunder storm in my place and my house was struck by a Lightning.

Within a fraction of a second, the parapet wall on top of the third floor of my house disappeared, my computer busted and both my and my dad’s heart skipped a beat. It struck with such a force that it shook the whole building (three floor) and I could feel the vibration in my room in ground floor. I could see a huge flash of light through my glass window. It is one of those rare situations where you feel powerless in front of the mighty forces of nature. It took me and my dad around 2-3 minutes to figure out what has happened.

I have given my computer for service and so far the service guys have found out that only the power supply is working fine and the motherboard was fried. I am just hoping that my hard disk is not damaged so that I will not loose my data. Let’s see. Because of this I have limited access to Internet and if you have sent me a mail in the past week, then please note that it might take sometime for me to reply to your mail.

This is not the first time my computer is crashing but this whole thing has thought me two lessons.

• Backup Backup Backup!!!
• You are nothing in this world and anything can be changed completely within a second!

Update: I just got a call from the service guys. It seems that my motherboard has been totally fried, but the hard disk seems to be saved. Thanks god, now I can have my data back. Even though I am going to repair it instead of thrashing, I guess it is better that I have decided to get a new one. So guys don’t forget to give me your recommendations.

Tags: backup, Lightning

There is no better place than home and today my beautiful city is celebrating its 368^th birthday.

Happy Birthday Chennai.

More details about Chennai and Chennai Day is available in Wikipedia.

Tags: Chennai, Day, Madras

The final book of Harry Potter is releasing tomorrow and even though I am not a Potter Maniacs some of my friends are so crazy about the name and I thought of gifting them the book.

Being lazy to go to the local brick and mortal book shop I searched for an online book shop and found an exciting offer from IndiaPlaza. You can pre-order it and it will be shipped on 21st July, plus 35% discount in prize.

I immediately added it to my shopping cart and clicked proceed checkout. I was asked to signup and I filled the registration form and after that I logged in using the new username and password. But now the shopping cart was empty. I went to the homepage again and added it to the shopping cart. When I clicked the proceed checkout, I was logged off and asked to signin again. I was doing the same steps for quite a few times. My firebug extension showed lot of JavaScript errors and only then I realized that the site is broken in Firefox. It may be there wish not to support the second mostly used browser but they could have given a warning message when I logged it or at least given a message in their footer that the site is IE only. I may be bit overboard here, but that is the problem in being a web developer because you know that a simple browser sensing would have solved this.

I opened a new instance of IE and did the steps again and proceed to checkout. There was an option where I can select that this is a gift and can include a message. I selected it as a gift and typed in the message, but it didn’t allow me to choose July 21 as the delivery date. I badly needed it to be delivered on July 21st and so I choose it as normal shipping and paid using my credit card.

(Personal Message to my friend: If you received the book from me without the gift message then this is the message which I wanted to be delivered and don’t forget to tell me the whole story. )

At the end after confirming the order there was a feedback form and I have entered about my experience there together with my mobile number. Let’s hope that someone actually reads it. If I get a reply I will post it here.

Update (22-July-2007)

My owes with them still continues. I choose it as a non-gift only for the reason that it will be delivered on 21-July. I got an email from them yesterday (21-July) night with the consignment number and a contact number from DTDC. More over they have missed out the address2 field in the address. I called them up and gave my consignment number and he said that he is yet to receive the goods from India Plaza. I am now hoping that it gets delivered at least by Monday.

Update (30-July-2007)

At last the book has been delivered. But it has taken a couple of emails and a dozen or more calls with India Plaza. But was it worth pre-ordering the book? A big NO. I pre-ordered the book so that it will be delivered to my friend on July 21, the day it was released. But it took them nearly 10 days to deliver the book after it was released and in the mean time my friend has almost finished reading the book. Even the surprise element which I planned for my friend has gone in vain. So the very purpose of me pre-ordering the book was defeated and let me see whether someone from IndiaPlaza comes forward to take up the responsibility. I have also sent a mail to their CEO Vaithee with a link to this article.

Tags: Books, Harry, IndiaPlaza, Potter