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Some new additions to Google Search Syntax

Published Sep 20, 2007 | In Google/Yahoo

Google has added some new search syntax and so here is the update to my Google Search syntax tutorial.

Fetch only Fresh results

First one is to narrow down your search to only the most recent web pages. This is particularly important, since Google has started serving fresh results.

Alex Chitu from the unofficial Google Operating system blog has found that we can use as_qdr query parameter to search only for fresh pages.

In order to use this you have to add a new parameter as_qdr at the end of the url like below
http://www.google.com/search?q=ipod&as_qdr=d

The as_qdr parameter can take the following possible values.

  • d[number] – past number of days (e.g.: d5)
  • w[number] – past number of weeks (e.g: w5)
  • y[number] – past number of years (e.g: y5)

More explanations by Matt Cutts and also at Life hacker.

Cricket

Being born in India, circket is there in my blood and the same for Sadeesh Duraisamy who works in Google. Thanks to him and now we can keep an eye on the latest circket scores by just typing the word cricket in Google’s search box.

Well, it’s time for me to watch the do-or-die match with South Africa for India in the latest twenty20 tournament. 🙂

Posted in Google/Yahoo | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

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

Struck by a Lightning

Published Sep 17, 2007 | In Random/Personal

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 dad’s heart and mine skipped a beat. It struck with such a force that it shook the whole building (three floors) 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 around 2-3 minutes for both me and my dad to figure out what has actually 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 have been saved. Thank 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.

Posted in Random/Personal | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Happy Birthday Chennai

Published Aug 22, 2007 | In Random/Personal

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

Happy Birthday Chennai. 🙂

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

Posted in Random/Personal | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Harry potter and Indiaplaza.in

Published Jul 20, 2007 | In Random/Personal

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.

IndiaPlaza.in Harry Potter offer

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.

IndiaPlaza.in Delivery date

(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.

Posted in Random/Personal | Tagged | 5 Comments

My best shot ever

Published Jun 28, 2007 | In Photography

It took me 8 months to put my camera to good use and you can see the results below.

From Kodai Trip 09…
From Kodai Trip 09…

I consider these my best shots ever (at least in my opinion 😉 )

It’s been quite some time since I bought my first digital camera, but it has taken me 8 months to put it into proper use. The credit goes to lazybug 🙂

I have chosen Picasa Web Albums to upload my pictures rather than Flickr because of two reasons. First I love Picasa and it is very easy to upload the album to Picasa Web Albums rather than Flickr and the second reason is that I have more storage space. 🙂 (May be Yuvi can convince me to use Zooomr. 🙄 )

By the way these photos were taken when I was on vacation sometime back and the whole album is available in Picasa for your viewing pleasure. 😆

Posted in Photography | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Oracle query to find the server start up time

Published May 21, 2007 | In Database Programming

One of my colleagues showed me this gem in Oracle and I thought of documenting it here so that it will be useful for everyone and also I can find it next time I need it by just searching my blog instead of Google. 🙂 Using this query you can find out the start time of the Oracle database server.

SELECT * FROM V$INSTANCE

In addition to the start time the query also returns other useful information like instance name, version, hostname etc. The hostname is particularly useful when TNSNAMES.ORA is playing tricks with you.

Posted in Database Programming | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Google Search – Combining allinurl with the keyword search

Published May 16, 2007 | In Google/Yahoo

I used to get lot of emails from people asking me to help them with Google search syntax, ever since I dissected Google’s Search syntax and I used to reply them back with the correct search syntax.

Recently I received a mail from a person named Jack and I couldn’t come up with the search syntax for his query. So I am listing it here to get the help from the wisdom of crowd and here is the query.

Find all links that have ‘love‘ in the url (allinurl) AND the word ‘sweet‘ in the content of the page.

Can anyone do this? ❓

Posted in Google/Yahoo | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Is Google down?

Published May 13, 2007 | In Google/Yahoo

Is it just me who is not able to access any of the Google sites (Gmail, Google.com, Google.co.in) from India? All Google related sites are returning 404 for me from noon (13-May-07, 7:00 AM GMT, 12:30 PM IST). I could remember this happening to Gmail some time back. But now even Google Talk seems to be down.

Anyone else sharing the same plight like me?

Update: It’s 5 PM (IST) now and all Google sites are working fine.

Posted in Google/Yahoo | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Alternative for WinSCP – WinSCP

Published May 5, 2007 | In Web Programming

Some time back I asked you guys to recommend me a FTP program with the Keep remote directory up to date feature of WinSCP. Ramesh asked me write my own, but I couldn’t find time (the same lame excuse of a programmer, the truth was I was very lazy 😆 )

Well today I found an alternative to WinSCP, it’s called WinSCP. My plea is answered and WinSCP now supports FTP too. Thanks Martin and the other WinSCP guys. You rock!

And now my search for a FXP client has started. So guys, any recommendation?

Posted in Web Programming | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments