Category Archives: Random/Personal

Random thoughts and rants

Year End Stats for 2008

Published Feb 26, 2009 | In Random/Personal

Well guys, I just realized that I didn’t publish my year end stats for 2008, like how I did for 2007. So without much dealy (just after two months 😉 ), here is my year end stats for 2008.

Number of posts

number-of-posts

When number of posts is concerned, you could see that when compared with 2007, I have improved. Thanks to the pledge that I took in 2008, the number of posts has increased. This is one area where I should improve a lot more. So guys expect more mosts in 2009 😉

Number of comments

number-of-comments

When compared with 2007, the number of comments has increased slightly. It was 220 in 2007 and in 2008 it is 267. But it does not include the comments I get in Twitter or FriendFeed. (I should find some way to include them too). I should also start engaging the readers more. So my dear readers, start talking more and you could make me happy 😉

Average number of characters in posts

avg-length-of-posts

For the past three years I am pretty much consistent in the length of my blog posts, which is around 2000 characters per post. This suits the style of my posts and I guess I will stick with this for 2009 too.

Total number of characters in posts

total-length-of-posts

This represents the total number of characters that I have typed in this blog(except those removed by backspace 😉 ). Compared with 2007, I have typed more. If I succeed in my aim to write more posts in 2009, with still keeping the average length consistent, then in 2009 I will type more. Let’s see what I achieve at the end of 2009. 🙂

And this sums up my year end stats for 2008. In a nutshell, I want to

  • Write more posts
  • Engage users more
  • Keep the average lenght of posts consistent.

Let’s see how I keep it up in 2009. 🙂

<shameless self promotion>I have created these wonderful graphs using my year end stats WordPress Plugin. If you run a WordPress blog then you can also generate these graphs by downloading my year end stats WordPress Plugin.</shameless self promotion>

Posted in Random/Personal | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Turning 26 today

Published Feb 3, 2009 | In Random/Personal

Well guys, I am turning 26 today (but will still continue to be a kid at heart). 🙂

Like last year, I am eagerly waiting to face the surprises which life has for me this year 😉 Let’s see how life treats me this year 🙂

Posted in Random/Personal | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Loosing weight without any exercise or diet

Published Jan 29, 2009 | In Photography, Random/Personal

Just now I realised that this is my first post in 2009. So Happy New Year guys (for both English and Tamil new year)

It’s hardly a month since New Year eve and I have already faced both sides of life 🙂 . 2009 started with a very high note for me and I was entirely occupied for the first three weeks, both due to work as well as due to hobby. (In fact I even planned to write a post titled Jam-paced Jan 🙂 )

Things started off well with Chennai Tweetup at Broken Bridge (Pictures) , FoodWalk at Mint Street (Yet to upload pictures) and then Chennai Sangamam (pictures)

On 16th Jan, I went to the grand finale of Chennai Sangamam at Besant Nagar with Aswin and Yuvi. It was damn good and as usual I started taking photos. It was too crowded and we were not able to get near to the stage. I started using Aswin’s head as a tripod. Seeing this, a shop keeper gave me a chair and I continued to take photos by standing on this chair. When Drums Mani was performing, people standing in the back started to push and someone knocked the chair in which I was standing. After a few second this is how the chair looked like 🙂

Chair on which I was standing

I got up and after laughing at myself, checked my cam and myself. There were only some minor Scratches and I started to enjoy the event and then the fireworks.

It was only after a couple of days later, I came to know that my heroics efforts have caused some internal injury and have ruptured my appendix. I had severe pain in my abdomen and got admitted to the hospital on 21st Jan. After two hours of surgery doctors removed my appendix and now I am back at home after losing 30 grams of weight. 🙂

I went to hospital again today to get my stitches removed. It seems that the Wounds have healed and I should get back to normal life style in a week or two.

At last I succeeded in reducing my weight without any diet or exercise 😉

Posted in Photography, Random/Personal | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

Webbynode – A new VPS hosting service in beta

Published Nov 10, 2008 | In Random/Personal

Webbynode is a new Xen based VPS hosting service, which targets developers who want to have control over every aspect of their server. This means you can have a single server where you can run your Ruby on Rails application in parallel with a Django application.

The service is currently in beta and you can register your email address in their registration page to get an invite. The advantage of testing the service during the beta period is that you can use the service free right now and once the service is out of beta, you will get discount over the regular price and if you are lucky you can even get lifetime memberships. 🙂

I am still waiting for an invite and once I get to try this service, I will write a detailed review comparing its feature with slicehost, which is my current hosting service.

More details about Webbynode can be found below.

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Dropbox Invites available

Published Jul 13, 2008 | In Random/Personal

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.

Posted in Random/Personal | Tagged , , | 18 Comments

DocSyncer is dead, can you trust your data with beta services

Published Jun 27, 2008 | In Random/Personal

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 22nd, 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.

Posted in Random/Personal | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

First Indian on the Techmeme Leaderboard

Published Jun 6, 2008 | In Random/Personal

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.

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Thankyou Slicehost

Published Feb 8, 2008 | In Random/Personal

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

First is the response time graph from Site24x7, an excellent service to monitor your site’s uptime and response time.

Response Time Graph

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

Google Webmaster Tool Graph

I have just 2 words to say – THANKYOU SLICEHOST

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

Posted in Random/Personal | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Turning 25 today, Happy Birthday to me

Published Feb 3, 2008 | In Random/Personal

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. 😉

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Recommendations for my next computer

Published Sep 20, 2007 | In Gadgets, Random/Personal

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. 🙁

Posted in Gadgets, Random/Personal | Tagged , | 11 Comments