Category Archives: Random/Personal

Random thoughts and rants

Under the cover for the next 3 weeks

Published Dec 19, 2006 | In Random/Personal

Well guys, I am going to be under the covers for the next couple of weeks. I am having a surgery in my eyes tomorrow and so will be off from computer and internet (may be) for another 2-3 weeks. 🙁

I have been advised by doctors not to look at a computer screen for at least 2 weeks. So there will not be any update on this blog and also if you are sending me an email, don’t be expecting an immediate reply now. I will be reading it only after I come back. So bear with me till then.

Mean while I will ask Yuvi to keep you guys updated about my condition. I will probably ask him to post the updates as comments for this blog entry. So keep checking it 😉

And if you want to contact me during this period either leave a comment in this blog entry or send me an email. You can get my email address from my contacts page.

I still don’t know how I am going to kill time in the coming weeks. I have collected a bunch of books to read during this time. I guess my black little cuttie will also be of some help.

I am going to miss you guys and meet you all after 3 weeks. And in the words of Arnold, I WILL BE BACK 😉

Posted in Random/Personal | Tagged , | 12 Comments

How to keep my Bookmarks in Sync?

Published Nov 25, 2006 | In Random/Personal

At last I found time to install the latest version of the major browsers (Firefox 2.0, IE 7.0 and Opera 9.02). I know I am missing Safari but I am on PC and am not talking about MAC here.

Well you may ask me why all three, but being a web developer you need to test your web pages not in your favorite browser alone but in all browsers (in major browsers at least)

Firefox was my favorite browser for at least a year now and have been using only that for my browsing. I have all my bookmarks in that. But after seeing IE 7 I have decided to use it as well. (Ok Yuvi, I could see a spark in your eyes. 😉 ) But now the real question is where should I store my bookmarks? I am not yet ready to dump Firefox totally so I need to share my bookmarks across both of them.

So right now I have two problems with my bookmarks:

First, I need a solution so that I can share my bookmarks with IE and Firefox (and with Opera if possible). Let me be clear here, I specifically don’t want to use a web based (social) book marking service like del.icio.us. What I need is a simple solution/software which runs in my local system and syncs my bookmarks with the different browser.

Second, once I find a solution to sync my bookmarks in my personal computer I then need to keep it sync with my work computer (Am I expecting too much?). I need something like Google Browser Sync, but I will be happy if I could store them in my own server instead of their servers.

So guys if you have a solution / suggestion / software to my above two problems then do let me know. I am still googling and if I come up with a solution I will share it here.

Posted in Random/Personal | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

BCC in Gmail: a feature or a bug

Published Aug 13, 2006 | In Google/Yahoo, Random/Personal

Update:(15-Aug-2006) Well, it seems that the Bcc filed is displayed only if you are the sender of the message. The confusion is because in Gmail even the sent mails are displayed in Inbox itself for conversation view. Thanks Rajiv for pointing it out.

Recently, one of my friends brought up to my notice that in Gmail even the Bcc field gets displayed. My initial reaction was “No it’s not possible!”. Then I tried to test it by sending myself a mail and to my surprise, even the Bcc field got displayed.

Here is the screen shot.

Bcc field gets displayed in Gmail

I tried Googling around but couldn’t get a satisfying answer. So can anyone throw some light on this and let me know whether it is a feature or a bug or am doing something wrong.

PS: Yuvi, can you gather any information about my browsing activities from this screenshot as you did for Aswin? 😉

Posted in Google/Yahoo, Random/Personal | Tagged , | 21 Comments

Why I (still) like Java

Published Jul 26, 2006 | In Random/Personal, Web Programming

From the day I started programming, I have been on different camps on the battle between strongly typed and weekly typed languages at different times.

For close to 2 years I was working on a java project and at that time I used to wonder why it was designed to be so strongly typed. I have to declare each and every variable, initialize them, cast them properly if I am converting their data type etc and at times I used to get frustrated at the type of errors the complier throws at me every time I try to compile them. I wished I could tell the complier to stop guessing what I was trying to do and that I am smarter than it.

But now I understand their importance. I have recently started working on an ASP project (yes it is not migrated to ASP.NET yet!) and in last week I spent around half a day trying to figure out what was wrong in my code. All I got was just a simple ‘type mismatch’ error. The same lines of code were working perfectly in another page but not on this particular page. It was just an assignment statement which was calling a method and was assigning the return value to a variable.

After hours of debugging (with lot of head banging’s and nail bytes) I found out that I have forgotten to include the file in which that method was declared. If it had been my Java dear then it wouldn’t have thrown the apt ‘Method not found’ error the very first time I complied it. And I would have saved some a couple of hours of my time (and also my head and nails) 😉

Ohh my dear Java, I miss you very much dear..

Posted in Random/Personal, Web Programming | Tagged , , | 15 Comments

Down with viral fever

Published Apr 30, 2006 | In Random/Personal

Just popped up to let you know about my viral fever. Have been under complete bed rest for the past week. No emails, no blogs and no computers either.

Fever went up to 106 F and the funny part was the temperature jammed the mercury inside the clinical thermometer that we had at home. Have to get a new one now 😉

Posted in Random/Personal | Tagged | 1 Comment

More rants on iTunes

Published Apr 22, 2006 | In Apple/Mac/iDevices, Random/Personal

This is just a continuation of my thoughts on iTunes and even now my opinion on iTunes hasn’t changed much.

ID3 Tags

Well as my quest for organizing my music continues I keep bumping on the short comings of iTunes. Recently I found that some of my files were having incorrect Meta information (ID3 tags) in my iPod. So I opened iTunes to check them and I found that they were wrong even in iTunes. But I was pretty sure that I corrected the tags of these MP3 files using a MP3 Tag Editor. I checked the tags of the original file in my hard disk and it was having the correct data. Out of frustration I clicked the file in iTunes and it started to play and the tag got automatically changed. Then only I released that there was no refresh/update option in iTunes and when you edit the ID3 tags of the files outside of iTunes it will not get reflected until you play the file in iTunes. What a great optimization design!!

In order to make my iTunes happy I started editing the ID3 tags in iTunes itself and iTunes was happy to refresh it and were updated in my iPod too. Little did I know that it was not getting changed in the original file and it was just getting updated only in the iTunes library. And I was searching for an option to write the tag information to the file only to find that even this was not present.

So the lesson learnt: update the tag information of the files using some other tag editor outside of iTunes and then double click all those files in iTunes and play them so that the correct tag information gets updated both in the library and also in the file. How user friendly!

Podcast

I bumped again on the short comings of iTunes when I was trying to download some podcast.

No resume option for downloading podcast: Some of the podcasts that I have subscribed are more than 100 MB in size and when downloading, half way through the connection gets lost or iTunes freezes and the download process start again from scratch. Bandwidth is pretty scarce here and also costly and I end up wasting my precious bandwidth (and some bucks too).

No scheduling option for downloading podcast: if it’s available then I can schedule all my downloads from 2:00 am to 8:00 am every day when my ISP gives me free bandwidth. (Those who are having BSNL Broadband could feel the pain)

No way to subscribe to more than one podcast from a search result at iTunes Music store. You have to select only one at a time and have to perform the search again if you want to subscribe to more than one.

Giving reviews about podcast on iTunes: If I have to write a review about a particular podcast then I have to have an apple id and in order to have an apple id I need to have a credit card and I don’t have a credit card (yes seriously, believe me) and so no apple id and no reviews too.

In spite of all these short comings I am still using it, just for one thing – My little cute blackie 😉

Posted in Apple/Mac/iDevices, Random/Personal | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

How to Whistle Loudly?

Published Apr 16, 2006 | In Random/Personal

The ability to whistle really loud by keeping the fingers in the mouth was considered as a great skill among my friends circle when I was studying. Every time there was a function at school (or even at college) there used to be a gang of people who will be teaching their extraordinary skill to others and there will be a lot of rehearsals. You could see most of them with their fingers in their mouth and trying to blow in as much as they can only to get a small hissing sound. Most of them will stop trying but a few will be kept on trying till they could get a decent level of sound. Hmm.. that was a short trip down the memory lane…

Well if some of you are still trying then here is an excellent write-up which teaches you how to whistle really loud by keeping your fingers in your mouth.

PS: Make sure that you don’t get into trouble by trying it in a public place. 😉

Posted in Random/Personal | Tagged , | 4 Comments

I am going naked

Published Apr 3, 2006 | In Random/Personal, Web Programming

Well don’t stare at me with that strange look 😉

My latest super hero Dustin Diaz of Web standards with Imagination is launching the first annual CSS naked day on April 05, 2006 in the spirit of promoting Web Standards along with good semantic markup and proper hierarchy structures.

If you are brave enough then you can also participate by running your sites completely CSS free for the entire day. The point is to show off the “semantic-ness” of your markup. So if you are participating then just leave a comment at the announcement page. The list of participants is maintained in the official page.

Way to go Dustin! I’m in! Any takers?

PS: I was just wondering what if the webmaster has hard coded all style information using inline style attribute and is not using any external CSS file.

PSS: BTW it’s already on Digg too.

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

I am tagged

Published Mar 7, 2006 | In Random/Personal

I was just informed by Aswin that he has tagged me. 🙂

It sounds to be little different. The rules are already established. So I am just coping them.

Rules of the Game

  1. The tagged victim has to come up with 8 different points of their perfect lover.
  2. Need to mention the sex of the person.
  3. Tag 8 (or as many as possible) victims to join this game & leave a comment on their comments saying they’ve been tagged.
  4. If tagged the 2nd time, there’s no need to post again.

My Target: Female

  • Ability to express herself (No, I can’t make out from signs left by girls 🙁 )
  • Talk Talk Talk !!! (Otherwise it will be very difficult to stop me from talking)
  • Should be able to laugh at my poor jokes (or atleast she should bear with it)
  • Be herself (at all times)
  • Should be bold (Otherwise it will be very difficult to tackle me 😉 )
  • It will be nice if she believes in God (so that I can continue with my atheist arguments all through out life.)
  • Smile .. (it ends all arguments and is the best medicine in this world)
  • And above all, to be my good friend (till the last breath)

Spread the word

I am supposed to tag 8 people. But I am falling short of people to name them here. So guys I am tagging all you people who are reading this and so do write about it in your blog.

Happy tagging 😉

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

Play a game of tennis with Sania Mirza

Published Feb 14, 2006 | In Random/Personal

Have you ever wanted to play a game of tennis with the Indian tennis star Sania, and then here is your chance to do so.

You can do it at Kingfisher Signature Tennis Centre, Cubbon Park Bangalore on 15-Feb-2006. Check out the listing from eBay and place your bid as soon as possible. Currently the highest bid is Rs. 99,000 and the bidding ends in another 2 hours.

Posted in Random/Personal | Tagged , | 2 Comments