tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3830247254911967532024-02-11T03:19:35.550+05:30Rambunctious RamblingsAshish Vashisht (MoGlee)'s take on Life & TechnologyUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger96125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-76066702876301742762013-12-22T20:34:00.001+05:302013-12-22T20:41:40.607+05:30Networked Time Machine Backups on Mountain Lion<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I need to upgrade my Macbook Pro to Mavericks. But I need to backup my Mac before that. The best way to do that is via Time Machine. The only problem is Time Machine requires a local hard disk and the only ones I own have terabytes of data on them and are NTFS formatted.<br />
<br />
So I decided to get Time Machine running over the network.<br />
<br />
I found some guides here:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/backup-mac-homemade-time-capsule/">Make Use Of</a></li>
<li><a href="http://lifehacker.com/5685547/how-to-set-up-time-machine-to-back-up-to-a-networked-windows-or-linux-machine">Lifehacker</a></li>
</ul>
This doesn't work on Mountain Lion unfortunately - for some reason Time Machine on Mountain Lion won't show unsupported Network drives.<br />
<br />
Fortunately I found <a href="http://roadglide03.blogspot.in/2012/08/using-smb-share-in-mountain-lion-for.html">this guide</a> which led me to the tmutil utility.<br />
<br />
Also I found Time Machine was creating "snapshots" on the local hard disk which was using up hard disk space. This <a href="http://wiki.summercode.com/how_to_disable_mobile_backups_on_lion">can be disabled</a> via <span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">tmutil disablelocal</span><br />
<br />
So, from start:<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>Open Time Machine preferences, click on Options</li>
<li>Exclude everything you don't need. I excluded everything except my Home Folder. In my Home folder, I exclude ~/Library/Caches, ~/Applications, SteamApps folder and ~/Library/Developer/Shared. You should also include /.DocumentRevisions-V100 folder as this supports the Auto Save/Versions functionality. My final backup size is just 10 GB after excluding all media folders in my Home folder.</li>
<li>See the estimated size of the full backup and create a sparse disk to approximately 5 times that size</li>
<li>Copy the sparse disk to your Windows share</li>
<li>Mount the Network Drive using Samba</li>
<li>Mount the Sparse Disk using hdiutil</li>
<li>Use tmutil to set the sparse disk as a destination for backup, enable time machine and disable local snapshots</li>
<li>Use tmutil to start the backup </li>
<li>After the backup, you can show Time Machine in Menu Bar and Enter Time Machine from your Hard Drive root to see what all is being backed up.</li>
<li>Unmount the sparse disk and network share </li>
</ol>
I created a Bash shell script for all the functions, including creating the sparse bundle: <br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace; font-size: x-small;">#!/bin/bash<br />MOUNTPOINT=<yourmountpoint><br />NETWORKSHARE=//<username>@<servername>/<sharename><br />SPARSEBUNDLE=<sparsebundlename><br />if [ "$1" == mount -o "$1" == all ]; then<br /> echo "Creating mount folder"<br /> sudo mkdir $MOUNTPOINT<br /> echo "Mounting Samba"<br /> sudo mount_smbfs -o nosuid,nodev $NETWORKSHARE $MOUNTPOINT<br /> echo "Attaching Sparse Disk"<br /> sudo hdiutil attach $MOUNTPOINT/$SPARSEBUNDLE.sparsebundle/<br />fi<br />if [ "$1" == enable -o "$1" == all ]; then <br /> echo "Setting Destination..."<br /> sudo tmutil setdestination /Volumes/$SPARSEBUNDLE/<br /> sudo tmutil enable<br /> sudo tmutil disablelocal<br />fi<br />if [ "$1" == backup -o "$1" == all ]; then <br /> echo "Starting Backup..."<br /> sudo tmutil startbackup --block<br />fi<br />if [ "$1" == unmount ]; then <br /> echo "Detaching Sparse Disk"<br /> hdiutil detach /Volumes/$SPARSEBUNDLE/<br /> echo "Unmounting Samba"<br /> sudo umount $MOUNTPOINT<br />fi<br />if [ "$1" == createblankdisk ]; then <br /> echo sudo hdiutil create -size "$2"G -fs HFS+J -volname "$3" "$3".sparsebundle<br />fi<br />if [ "$1". == . -o "$1" == --help ]; then <br /> echo Time Machine Manager Script<br /> echo Options:<br /> echo all - Mount Remote HDD, Setup Time Machine, Create Backup<br /> echo mount - Mount Remote HDD<br /> echo enable - Setup Time Machine<br /> echo backup - Create Backup<br /> echo unmount - Unmount Remote HDD<br /> echo createblankdisk SIZE_IN_GB NAME - Create a blank disk with requested size in current folder. The created file has name NAME.sparsebundle<br />else<br /> echo "Done"<br />fi</sparsebundlename></sharename></servername></username></yourmountpoint></span><br />
<br />
Note normally you just have to give mount, enable and backup once. After that you just need to use mount and unmount. Time Machine should auto backup on mount, or you can run backup manually. (You can also use the Backup Now menubar entry for Time Machine)<br />
<br />
To stop OSX Auto-Save and Versions functionality, <a href="http://osxdaily.com/2012/07/11/disable-auto-save-and-versions-in-mac-os-x/">see here</a> and to disable Saved Application State <a href="http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20110918051930924">see here</a> (I don't recommend doing that though) In general you can use Grand Perspective or another <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5915508/the-best-disk-space-analyzer-for-os-x">Disk Space Visualizer</a> to see what are the large sized folders on your mac.<br />
<br />
BTW, I found <a href="http://i.vishalagarwal.com/post/30387627819/ntfs-write-on-lion-or-mountain-lion">this guide</a> on how to enable NTFS write on OSX. I havent tried it out though.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-18639845640074654102013-10-12T16:21:00.001+05:302013-10-12T16:23:00.684+05:30Even More Mac Tricks<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
So one thing I ended up doing was assigning Ctrl-T to Open New Tab and Shift Ctral T to Reopen Closed Tab - I use Ctrl-Tab to switch between tabs and it just feel strange to have to use Cmd-T to open a tab and Ctrl-Tab to switch between tabs. Anyways, here goes.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Networking, VMs and Firewalls </h3>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I use Samba to share files with my Windows Machines at home. However, for some reason, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PF_%28firewall%29">PF firewall</a> on my Mac does not allow SMB connections through. While it is possible to load custom rules into PF using <a href="http://www.hanynet.com/icefloor/index.html">Icefloor</a> or <a href="http://blog.scottlowe.org/2013/05/15/using-pf-on-os-x-mountain-lion/">manually</a>, its often simplest just to disable PF as:</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
sudo pfctl -d</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
and when you are done, re-enable it as:</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
sudo pftcl -e</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Another option: Use a VM. You can setup a Ubuntu VM with <a href="https://blogs.oracle.com/fatbloke/entry/networking_in_virtualbox1#Bridged">Bridged Networking</a>, setup <a href="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VirtualBox/SharedFolders">Shared Folders</a> between your Mac and the VM and then share things on the VM via SMB. It works out way better than Mac's SMB implementation (in Lion, Apple switched to their own SMB implementation to <a href="http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/03/24/1546205/apple-remove-samba-from-os-x-107-because-of-gplv3">avoid</a> having to comply to GPLv3) This is not recommended unless you have a Mac with at least 8 GB of RAM.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Another nice feature of bridged networking: it bypasses VPN so your VM will be outside the VPN even when your host is inside the VPN. I generally setup multiple network cards in my VM, one with NAT, one with Bridged and then connect the relevant card depending on what I want to do with the VM. Disadvantages of Bridged Networking: you will need to add your VMs MAC to any WiFI MAC filter if you have enabled it in your Router and it does not work with GSS/Cert based networks. And obviously, it doesn't work over VPNs.</div>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Other Mac Weirdness</h3>
<div style="text-align: left;">
For some reason, every time I connect to another Linux machine using NX client on my Mac, it keeps switching on the Caps-Lock of the other machine. Now since Caps-Lock is pretty much useless anyway, the cleanest fix I have found to this is to <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-deactivate-caps-lock/">disable caps lock</a> entirely on the target machine.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Then there are NTFS formatted USB HDDs - one of my friends recently gave me his USB HDD to copy some stuff. However while I could read from it, I couldn't write to it. Turns out, Mac turns off Write capability on NTFS drives by default. To get around this, you have to <a href="http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57588773-263/how-to-manually-enable-ntfs-read-and-write-in-os-x/">manually create an entry</a> for the drive in fstab. Then when you are done using the drive, you have to unmount it from the command line <a href="http://osxdaily.com/2013/05/13/mount-unmount-drives-from-the-command-line-in-mac-os-x/">using the diskutil</a> command.</div>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Final Notes</h3>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I have yet to find a good replacement for Visio on my Mac. <a href="https://www.omnigroup.com/omnigraffle">Omnigraffle</a> looks to be good - lets see, I might get it. Some other interesting stuff I found:</div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>How to use your Mac as an Alarms Clock: http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/productivity/how-to-turn-your-mac-into-an-alarm-clock/</li>
<li>How to reset your NVRAM: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379</li>
<li>How to reset your SMC: https://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964 </li>
</ul>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-25738219050594941912013-09-19T00:26:00.002+05:302013-09-19T00:26:46.459+05:30More Mac Tips and Tricks<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h3>
Google Chrome and F5</h3>
<div>
So for some reason Google Chrome in OSX does not support F5 for refresh. This is easy to fix it turns out:</div>
<div>
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>Open System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts</li>
<li>Click on Application Shortcuts in the Left Pane</li>
<li>Click the + button, select Google Chrome as the Application and enter "Reload This Page" as the menu title</li>
<li>Highlight the Keyboard Shortcut field and press F5</li>
</ol>
<div>
Source: http://productforums.google.com/d/msg/chrome/If0TdQ2m6hU/ZSrbu8BCDpwJ (Instructions for Lion are above)</div>
</div>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Games on a Mac and Hot Corners</h3>
<div>
I have Hot Corners enabled on my Mac. When I try to play a Full Screen game, the Hot Corners keep activating. I searched for some way to disable Hot Corners quickly, but none exists. However, it seems this can be done using AppleScript. What it involves is creating an AppleScript that disables and reenables your Hot Corners on the basis of your input. There are a couple of glitches with this: firstly, if you want to modify the Hot Corners configuration to be something different, you have to modify the AppleScript and if you want to setup a Hot Corner to show Notification Center, then it doesn't work via AppleScript.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Here's the AppleScript I ended up using:</div>
<div style="overflow:auto; white-space: nowrap !important; word-wrap: normal !important;">
<pre>repeat
activate
set question to display dialog "Do you Want to Enable Hot Corners?" buttons {"Yes", "No", "Cancel"} default button 3
set answer to button returned of question
if answer is equal to "No" then
tell application "System Events"
activate
if UI elements enabled then
tell expose preferences
set properties of the top left screen corner to {activity:none, modifiers:{}}
-- set properties of the top right screen corner to {activity:none, modifiers:{}}
set properties of the bottom left screen corner to {activity:none, modifiers:{}}
set properties of the bottom right screen corner to {activity:none, modifiers:{}}
end tell
else
tell application "System Preferences"
activate
set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.universalaccess"
display dialog "UI element scripting is not enabled. Check \"Enable access for assistive devices\""
end tell
end if
end tell
return
end if
if answer is equal to "Yes" then
tell application "System Events"
activate
if UI elements enabled then
tell expose preferences
set properties of the top left screen corner to {activity:all windows, modifiers:{}}
-- set properties of the top right screen corner to {activity:show desktop, modifiers:{}}
set properties of the bottom left screen corner to {activity:«constant ****lpad», modifiers:{}}
set properties of the bottom right screen corner to {activity:dashboard, modifiers:{}}
end tell
else
tell application "System Preferences"
activate
set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.universalaccess"
display dialog "UI element scripting is not enabled. Check \"Enable access for assistive devices\""
end tell
end if
end tell
return
end if
if answer is equal to "Cancel" then
return
end if
end repeat</pre>
</div>
<br />
Some useful links on the same:<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>My original inspiration: https://gist.github.com/klynch/827581</li>
<li>The repeat comes from here: http://dev.dota2.com/showthread.php?t=102450</li>
<li>General Scripting Guidelines: http://macscripter.net/viewtopic.php?id=24773</li>
<li>And some more: http://www.macosxautomation.com/applescript/features/system-prefs.html</li>
</ul>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-65691787339627590022013-09-07T22:02:00.003+05:302013-09-07T22:02:37.870+05:30Back Again - After 3 years!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Wow - its been 3 years since my last blog post. Wasn't expecting a wait this long :)<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Mostly its been a bit difficult to find things to write about and considering a lot of what you do at a big company is confidential I could use that as an excuse to say I couldn't speak - but then some of the things I worked on have gone Open Source so can't really take that excuse. I guess mostly the reason was I switced to using FB and Twitter and there just wasnt a reason to blog anymore.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
My dad recently go onto FB and I setup a blog for him. Check it out here: http://arvind.vashisht.net. For a while I had replaced the G+ comments on his blog with FB comments (so my dad is a registered developer now - Ha Ha. Stupid FB only allows FB comments on a blog if you register it as a Application) That made me think of my own long forgotten blog.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So I recently switched to a Mac at work and since I want to keep track of everything I am doing to solve issues, here goes my first entry in 3+ years :)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Getting Tata Photon Working</span></div>
<div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Download the drivers from here: http://www.tatadocomo.com/tata-photon-download-dialer.aspx</li>
<li>See this post here for more details: https://discussions.apple.com/message/18139781#18139781</li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Keyboard Shortcuts</span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Some useful links<br /><ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1343</li>
<li>http://www.danrodney.com/mac/index.html</li>
<li>http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/Site/System%20Bindings.html</li>
<li>http://guides.macrumors.com/Keyboard_shortcuts</li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Setup Windows File Transfer</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So Mac OSX Lion has replaced Samba with their own implementation. Also for some reason IT hates domain users sharing files. The solution - create a new user, with Sharing Only privileges. Add a group for the new user and add yourself and the new user to that group. Grant the new group access to your home folder (use the Gear Icon in Finder's Info box to add permissions to subfolders also) and then share away. I have found OSX is quite slow while transferring files. The solution: http://www.digitalgatehouse.com/speed-up-your-mac-os-x-with-smbwindows-servers-255</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Outlook on Mac</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Now this thing is amazingly painful. Outlook on Mac is general 70% functional. You can't insert tables in EMails - pretty much every advanced action requires you to edit in Word and then Share as HTML EMail. I also hate Outlook reminders, so I sync the Outlook calendar with the system calendar via Outlook Sync Services. One thing I found to be more powerful than Outlook on Windows is the search capability. Outlook is integrated with Spotlight search on Mac. This means you can find all sorts of useful metadata tags on messages. Open the Search Menu, select Advanced > Raw Query and you can enter all sorts of queries. For e.g this one finds all pending meeting invites:</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">com_microsoft_outlook_has_reminder = 1 && com_microsoft_outlook_author_email_addresses != *_YOUR_EXCHANGE_ID_@* && com_microsoft_outlook_recpient_email_addresses = *</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">_YOUR_EXCHANGE_ID_</span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">@* && kMDItemDisplayName != Accepted:* && kMDItemDisplayName != Declined:* && kMDItemDisplayName != *Notification:*</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Some useful links:</div>
<div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>http://verveguy.blogspot.in/2013/02/outlook-2011-mac-smart-folders.html</li>
<li>http://blog.stevex.net/2011/03/outlook-2011-smart-folder-with-raw-query/</li>
<li>http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/macoffice2011-macoutlook/outlook-2011-raw-query-syntax-question/5148b454-38d5-481f-bc6c-dbd19948c6ed?msgId=b8ee2e62-bac5-4c1d-922c-f61f4e0205c4</li>
<li>https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Carbon/Reference/MDItemRef/Reference/reference.html</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-2006712690837784242010-05-30T11:38:00.007+05:302010-12-20T09:18:50.567+05:30Disabling Message Recall in OutlookConverted from a Google Wave to normal HTML since Wave is shutting down...<br />
<br />
<b>Blog Post - 27 May 2010</b><br />
So this is a test of <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fwebelements%2Fwave%2F">embedding a Wave</a> in my blog. I have wanted to try to embed a Wave inside my blog for quite some time - lets see how it goes!<br />
<br />
Recently someone at work sent a stinker on a group with a large number of people. When he realized his mistake, he recalled it - it didn't go away from some of my friends' inboxes, but it did go away from mine. Usually, a message is recalled for one of two reasons<br />
<ul><li>Unintentional Transmission - Someone sent off a message to you when they didn't want to</li>
<li>Post-Stinker Regret - Someone sent of a stinker, then had a moment of panic when his anger subsided</li>
</ul><br />
In either case, a recall attempt is usually a source of hilarity - even if its momentary.<br />
<br />
Only thing is, if the admin has enabled recalls on the exchange server, it is not possible for you to disable recalls from inside of Outlook. This has happened to me several times and I really don't like people deleting mails that have reached my inbox without my permission - thanks for this Super Creepy "feature" M$! After a bit of research, I found this page which defines the rules of recall.<br />
<br />
What <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http%3A%2F%2Foffice.microsoft.com%2Fen-us%2Foutlook%2FHA010917601033.aspx">this page</a> basically says is that if you disable "Process Requests and Responses on Arrival", Outlook will no longer automatically delete messages on recall. If you just preview mails (in the preview pane), rather than double-clicking to open them, no deletes will happen. Recall requests will show up as a message. If you open the newer message first, the older one - the one with all the content will be deleted. However, it also says that if the recall and the original message end up in different folders, a could not recall message will be sent to the original sender. So now we just need some difference between the recall and a normal message to allow us to distinguish between them. One obvious difference is that the message begin with the String "Recall". However, a perfectly valid message may begin with that. On looking at the headers of the message however, another difference emerges: Recall messages have the phrase "iso-8859-1" in the Subject header.<br />
<br />
This gives us the basis of disabling message recall on Outlook. Follow the steps below and message recalls will no longer work:<br />
1. Inside Outlook, Go to Tools>Options. Click on the Email Options button. Click on the Tracking Options button<br />
2. Uncheck the Process Request and Respones on arrival checkbox, click on the Ok buttons till all the dialogs close<br />
3. Go to Tool>Rules and Alerts<br />
4. Create a new Rule. Select "Move messages with specific words in the Subject to a folder".<br />
5. Tick the With Specific Words in the message header checkbox. In the Subject field, add "Recall:". In the header field, add "iso-8859-1"<br />
6. Click Next, Tick the "Stop Processing more rules" checkbox. Set the "specified folder" to Deleted Items<br />
7. Click Next, Next, Finish<br />
<br />
At the end of it, the rule should look like this:<br />
Rule Screenshot<br />
<img src="http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/7146/ruleb.png"/><br />
<br />
That's it, recall will no longer work in your Oulook, even if the administrator allows it and the original sender tries it. The Recall message will end up in the deleted items folder and even if you double click it, will only send a failure message to the original sender.<br />
<br />
Wave evaluation: Still not ready for big time! No numbered lists (WTF), no "publish" option, doesn't work in IE6, I am not sure if Google indexes it - overall, useless! Also, the embed JS doesn't work Out Of the Box with Blogger - Blogger keeps inserting <br/><br />
tags for returns, so I had to convert it to a single line JS!<br />
<hr /><b>Original Post Below</b><br />
<br />
I was trying out embedding a Wave in my blog. It really sucks! If you are lucky, you should see the Wave below. If not, Google Wave Sucks! Try <a href="https://wave.google.com/wave/?nouacheck&client.type=embedded&parent=http%3A%2F%2Fashish.vashisht.net%2F2010%2F05%2Fdisabling-message-recall-in-outlook.html&wave_id=googlewave.com%21w%2BIheOhAZuA&bgcolor=white&color=black&font=Arial&fontsize=8pt&embed_header=true&embed_footer=true&embed_toolbar=true&width=500px&height=720px&anon_access=true">this link</a> instead.<div id="waveframe" style="height: 800px; width: 500px;"></div><script src="http://www.google.com/jsapi" type="text/javascript">
</script><script type="text/javascript">
google.load("wave", "1");google.setOnLoadCallback(initialize);function initialize() { var waveframe = document.getElementById("waveframe"); var embedOptions = { target: waveframe, header: true, toolbar: true, footer: true }; var wavePanel = new google.wave.WavePanel(embedOptions); wavePanel.loadWave("googlewave.com!w+IheOhAZuA");}
</script>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-75001891117795830822010-04-25T21:53:00.003+05:302010-04-25T21:55:35.311+05:30Egypt PhotosEgypt photos are <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/ashish.vashisht/Egypt2010">now up</a>.<div><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf" width="400" height="267" flashvars="host=picasaweb.google.com&captions=1&hl=en_US&feat=flashalbum&RGB=0x000000&feed=http%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2Fashish.vashisht%2Falbumid%2F5464091399526482849%3Falt%3Drss%26kind%3Dphoto%26hl%3Den_US" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed></div><div>This time I took some time properly captioning, geo-tagging and touching them up...</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-35749750005014117272010-03-30T00:14:00.002+05:302010-03-30T00:26:13.504+05:30My Final Fantasy XIII Themed PS3I was trying to buy Final Fantasy XIII for my PS3 when what should I find - a Final Fantasy XIII <a href="http://cgi.ebay.in/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemVersion&item=270526165859">skin</a> for my PS3. The seller (<a href="http://stores.ebay.in/Intencity-Gaming-1-Stop-Game-Shop">intencity.in</a>) seemed to have <a href="http://cgi6.ebay.in/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewSellersOtherItems&userid=intencity.in&completed=0&sort=3&since=-1">a lot</a> of these for sale - I confirmed that it would fit on my "phat" PS3 and placed on order. Four days later, I had a nice high resolution skin for my PS3<br /><br />Installing it was a bit more tedious - its a sticker and if you don't install it carefully, you'll end up with air bubbles. Still, I managed to get it installed and the results are pretty cool - <a href="http://s254.photobucket.com/albums/hh92/av_2_0/Final%20Fantasy%20PS3/">check out</a> the photos!<br /><br /><div style="width: 480px; text-align: center;"><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" src="http://w254.photobucket.com/pbwidget.swf?pbwurl=http://w254.photobucket.com/albums/hh92/av_2_0/Final%20Fantasy%20PS3/0bb61559.pbw" height="360" width="480"></embed></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-66852706643694337742010-03-01T02:07:00.003+05:302010-03-01T02:13:22.412+05:30Binsar PhotosPhotos from my <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binsar">Binsar</a> trip are <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/ashish.vashisht/Binsar2010">now up</a><br /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf" flashvars="host=picasaweb.google.com&captions=1&hl=en_US&feat=flashalbum&RGB=0x000000&feed=http%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2Fashish.vashisht%2Falbumid%2F5443393808885875009%3Falt%3Drss%26kind%3Dphoto%26hl%3Den_US" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" height="267" width="400"></embed><br />Not too many photos once again - the trip got cut short due to Holi. We were initially planning to return on Holi day. However, it seems <span style="font-style: italic;">pahadi </span>people like Holi a bit too much - we were warned against traveling on Holi so we ended up returning a day early. Still we managed to visit the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jageshwar">Jageshwar temples</a> at least :)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-71117824060419848902010-02-27T22:46:00.000+05:302010-02-27T22:49:03.366+05:30From BinsarDammit I wrote a longish post using Opera mini, clicked preview and its gone... Give up...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-36584425682980086642010-01-07T21:13:00.002+05:302010-01-07T21:23:35.224+05:30Ranthambore PhotosPics from my Ranthambore trip are <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/ashish.vashisht/Ranthambore09">now up</a>.<br /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf" flashvars="host=picasaweb.google.com&hl=en_US&feat=flashalbum&RGB=0x000000&feed=http%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2Fashish.vashisht%2Falbumid%2F5422521400328061073%3Falt%3Drss%26kind%3Dphoto%26hl%3Den_US" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" height="267" width="400"></embed><br />I didn't get to see much of animals - in the whole 400 km² park there are just 40 tigers. I saw some deer, some crocodiles. We took a canter tour on 30th Dec but there was a huge rush on that particular day. Each canter gets assigned to a zone - we had 2. The forest guards forced us on the route to zone 1 due to the crowding, and the canter guy just kept rushing from one place ot another without giving us a chance to even photograph a single thing - it seems he wanted to finish 2 zones in the time for 1! So you will see a lot of out of focus pictures in this one - and not too many of those in the first place!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-22856381239498390032009-12-29T00:12:00.002+05:302009-12-29T00:22:40.212+05:30Off to RanthamboreSo I am off to Ranthambore for the new year - will put up pix once I return. I have <span style="font-style: italic;">really </span>been ignoring my blog for some time - I guess its partly because of <a href="http://twitter.com/moglee">Twitter</a> and partly because of Dragon Age :) Another thing - I simply share stories via <a href="http://www.google.com/reader/shared/ashish.vashisht">Google Reader Shared Items</a> to my Twitter account using <a href="http://twitterfeed.com/">TwitterFeed</a>, so that dampens my enthusiasm to create a blog post of related links like I used to!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-23294886472415576792009-11-29T21:19:00.003+05:302009-11-29T22:58:27.234+05:30Buying Games in IndiaI have wanted to compile a list of places from where you can get games in India for quite some time.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Physical Shops</span><br /><br />If you want a physical shop, one option is your local Music World/Reliance Digital/Croma etc. This usually has the more popular titles, sold at MRP only. They stock PS3/PS2/Xbox 360 AND PC games. Then you have your shops in Pallika Bazaar - specially ones like <a href="http://www.palikabazaar.com/shop.php?Shop_No=2">Shop No. 2</a>, which are famous for stocking the most titles. These keep PS3/PS2/XBox 360 and PC games - the caveat is this market sells mostly imported (NTSC-J) XBox consoles so original XBox games will be NTSC region and PC games are mostly pirated. On the flip side, they do allow you to trade in your old games and sell titles at a hefty discount. If you want a game, these are usually the cheapest way to get it and they do deliver to your home for Rs. 100/- or so if you live in NCR<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Online - India</span><br /><br />Next lets look at options to buy games from online shops in India. Here we have the two best options - <a href="http://videogames.shop.ebay.in/Xbox-360-/112845/i.html?_npmv=3">EBay</a> and <a href="http://shopping.indiatimes.com/i/f/t/Xbox_360_Games-cat-969735-pc--ctl-20375472-&q=&sid=&bid">Indiatimes</a>. Why these two? Well EBay has an amazing Paisa Pay system that forces vendors to manage inventory properly. When buying online in India, vendors reporting an item in-stock when it actually isnt, is a rule rather than an exception. The rating system also forces the vendors to behave. Indiatimes too aggregates goods from vendors in a manner similar to EBay - it however, does NOT have the rating system and Paisa Pay protection - I have had a vendor sell me an item when he didnt have it and then I have had Indiatimes try to give me a coupon rather than refunding my money. You may think Indiatimes is a big portal - but functionally, its no different from EBay! Indiatimes is like what EBay would be if you had a site where only Power Sellers were allowed and then they removed some of the buyer protection features - better in some ways, worse in others.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Online - Abroad</span><br /><br />So here we have two basic options - <a href="http://www.shopto.net">Shop To</a> and <a href="http://www.play-asia.com/">Play-Asia</a>. Shop To usually offers better deals and lower prices. They also have PAL games so there is no region compatibility issue on your XBox 360. However, they charge you some amount of money as delivery charge and this places their prices in the same range as Play Asia (which does free delivery). Both are reliable, with a caveat - they deliver via Air Mail, meaning your local post office has the final control over delivery - and problems crop up accordingly. However, both of these are THE cheapest way to get games online in India - often offering games at half or one third prices in Indian stores.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Combined List</span><br /><br />Below I have tabulated all the places I found to buy games online in India. I havent tried all of these - rather I have tried only the four listed above. However, these are all options available to buy games.<br /><ul><li><a href="http://videogames.shop.ebay.in/Xbox-360-/112845/i.html?_npmv=3">EBay</a> - as noted above, the best option if you can find comparable prices from a Power Seller<br /></li><li><a href="http://shopping.indiatimes.com/i/f/t/Xbox_360_Games-cat-969735-pc--ctl-20375472-&q=&sid=&bid">Indiatimes</a> - also sources items from others (like Lets Buy below) Sellers occasionally report stock when they dont have it. Site tries to give you a coupon rather than a refund for items cheaper than Rs. 2000/-</li><li><a href="http://www.shopto.net">Shop To</a> - Sells PAL games, usually has cheapest prices, but charges for delivery.</li><li><a href="http://www.play-asia.com/">Play-Asia</a> - Nice site, delivers to India. Has higher prices than Shop To but free delivery. Mostly NTSC games only</li><li><a href="http://www.consoul.in">Consoul</a> - Well stocked, managed by a gamer. Has a HUGE collection and is one of the few to regularly stock XBox Live Points and Gold Memberships. Unfortunately, no credit card transactions</li><li><a href="http://www.letsbuy.com">Letsbuy</a> - M$ themselves <a href="http://forums.xbox.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=28960043">recommend</a> this one at <a href="http://www.xbox.com/hi-IN/support">multiple</a> places. Stocks <a href="http://www.letsbuy.com/xbox-live-ci-12_35.html">XBox Live Cards</a> too. Also sells via Indiatimes</li><li><a href="http://www.buyoriginalms.com/">Buy Original MS</a> - M$'s unified selling portal for all software. Currently the front page is hijacked by a stupid obnoxious Windows 7 banner (love the OS BTW). You can get in by using a <a href="http://www.buyoriginalms.com/ProductDetails.aspx?id=493">known URL</a>. Stocks live cards. The site seems just a portal (like Indiatimes) - I doubt either M$ or the sellers will accept any liability so use at your wn risk!<br /></li><li><a href="http://www.game4u.com/">Game4u</a> - M$ recommends this too. <a href="http://www.game4u.com/shop/faces/tiles/product.jsp?productID=572&catalogueID=1&categoryID=21&parentCategoryID=">Lists</a> but not stocks XBox Live Cards. Dedicated game site - havent tried it out.</li><li><a href="http://www.grooveindia.com">Groove India</a> - Another dedicated game site. Havent tried it.</li><li><a href="http://www.zook.in/wap/search.jsp?browse=game">Zook</a> - General portal to search for goods via mobile; links to consoul for games.</li><li><a href="http://www.game.co.uk/">Game UK</a> - I have seen people recommend this on forums.</li><li><a href="http://360indians.proboards.com/">Gaming Indians</a> - used to be useful - offered exclusive pre-orders etc. Now stuck in a recursive redirect</li><li><a href="http://gamegears.in/Home.aspx">Game Gears</a> - Offers exclusive deals etc. via the <a href="http://www.ggforum.in">forums</a></li></ul>I dont know anything about these ones below - they just turned up via a Google search selling XBox Games in India<br /><ul><li><a href="http://shopping.expressindia.com/index.php?page=listing&catId=1036">Express India</a></li><li><a href="http://www.shopmania.in/shopping%7Eonline-games%7Efilter-brand-microsoft.html">Shop Mania</a></li><li><a href="http://shopping.rediff.com/shop/subcategory.jsp?cgrfnbr=558&shopByBrand=&pvvrnbr=&more=0&submitted=Go">Rediff</a> - OK, I <span style="font-style: italic;">know</span> what this is. Never tried it out though!</li><li><a href="http://www.timesmultimedia.com/ism/faces/tiles/search.jsp?catalogueID=20375472&categoryID=&parentCategoryID=&sid=69&q=">Times Multimedia</a></li><li><a href="http://techshop.in/store/index.php?cPath=233_293_295">Tech Shop</a></li><li><a href="http://toyworld.in/catalog/index.php?cPath=200_191_167">Toy World</a></li><li><a href="http://buygamingstuff.com">Buy Gaming Stuff<br /></a></li></ul><span style="font-weight: bold;">Digital Services</span><br /><br />Besides the obvious options (<a href="http://store.steampowered.com/">Steam</a> etc. - I'll make a proper list one of these days!), you some companies (<a href="http://www.electronicarts.in/eastore">such as EA</a>) also maintain their own digital stores. Then there is Apple's iTunes Store (only useful if you own a iPod Touch/iPhone obviously!)<br /><br />But there are a couple of services I really want to mention - first is XBox Live <a href="http://marketplace.xbox.com/hi-IN/games/catalog.aspx?d=5">Games on Demand</a>. This has a nicely growing library of games, all at a uniform Rs. 1500/- New games are added every Tuesday US Time (Wednesday Morning IST) You can usually find these games cheaper elsewhere, but it may be the only option if you want an older game. Currently this is useless though - RBI's rules regarding credit cards broke the site and buying a card imposes an almost 50% premium on the cost of points (M$ India was ALREADY charging a premium from the 80 points to a USD rate in the US. This is 50% OVER that)<br /><br />Second, we have the <a href="http://airtel.indiagames.com">Games on Demand</a> service from Indiagames. This comes for free on many of the <a href="http://airtel.impatientones.com/experience/turbo1299.php?cid=">higher end</a> Airtel schemes - its Rs. 200/- p.m. otherwise. This offers older games and full versions of newer casual titles like World of Goo. As an added bonus, games DLed from this do not count to your limits and the connection speed goes to 2 mbps for these downloads.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Signing Off</span><br /><br />Well thats it for now, tell me your buying experiences with these sites or tell me if you have some additional ones you want added to this list!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-31922451281831996312009-10-18T20:42:00.004+05:302009-10-18T20:52:31.878+05:30Los Angeles and MAX 09 PhotosPhotos from my <a href="http://ashish.vashisht.net/2009/09/i-am-speaker-at-adobe-max.html">recent trip</a> to Los Angeles for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_MAX">Adobe MAX 2009</a> are <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/ashish.vashisht/LosAngeles09">now up</a>.<div><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf" width="400" height="267" flashvars="host=picasaweb.google.com&captions=1&hl=en_US&feat=flashalbum&RGB=0x000000&feed=http%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2Fashish.vashisht%2Falbumid%2F5393939574560278641%3Falt%3Drss%26kind%3Dphoto%26hl%3Den_US" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed><div>Half of these were taken by <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ankur-pathela/10/9ba/549">Ankur Pathela</a>, my fellow Speaker from the Adobe India team - so there are some duplicates! It was a very hectic trip - MAX has a pretty busy schedule and I had stuff to do as late at 10 PM on some days. However, we did get enough time to see (some) of Hollywood :) Overall it was a nice trip to the US - though the 23 hr flight time one way was a bit annoying!</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-90417582143005198212009-10-13T13:32:00.002+05:302009-10-13T13:42:05.986+05:30Coorg PhotosPhotos from my Coorg trip are <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/ashish.vashisht/Coorg09">now up</a>.<br /><br /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf" flashvars="host=picasaweb.google.com&captions=1&hl=en_US&feat=flashalbum&RGB=0x000000&feed=http%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2Fashish.vashisht%2Falbumid%2F5391990084819247857%3Falt%3Drss%26kind%3Dphoto%26hl%3Den_US" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" height="267" width="400"></embed><br /><br />I havent done any post processing on these - not that there are that many in the first place! This got cut short by my (then) upcoming MAX trip - also we had a disastrous trip to Calicut one day (7 hours by road one way) which exhausted me. So we didn't really visit too many places.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-72739076171643008472009-09-21T11:24:00.002+05:302009-09-21T12:43:33.920+05:30I am a Speaker at Adobe MAX<a href="http://max.adobe.com/">Adobe MAX</a> is an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_MAX">annual event</a> hosted by Adobe which showcases the latest innovations and technologies under development at Adobe. I have been working on <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/livecycle/">Adobe LiveCycle</a> <a href="http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/solution_accelerators.html">Solution Accelerators</a> for some time now and I have been selected to present them at MAX this year.<div><img style="visibility:hidden;width:0px;height:0px;" border="0" width="0" height="0" src="http://counters.gigya.com/wildfire/IMP/CXNID=2000002.0NXC/bT*xJmx*PTEyNTM1MTI4Nzc2MDkmcHQ9MTI1MzUxNDQ3MDkzNyZwPTc3NDM3MSZkPW1heDA5d2lkZ2V*Jmc9MiZvPTgzYmU4MTBiZjFkZTRjMDJiZjU*MGYwOTNjMzBiNzM*Jm9mPTA=.gif" /><object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" id="MaxWidget" width="400" height="400" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/swflash.cab"> <param name="movie" value="http://max.adobe.com/widget/MaxWidget.swf"> <param name="quality" value="high"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#869ca7"> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain"> <embed src="http://max.adobe.com/widget/MaxWidget.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#869ca7" width="400" height="400" name="MaxWidget" align="middle" play="true" loop="false" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer" flashvars="crtr=1&gig_lt=1253512877609&gig_pt=1253514470937&gig_g=2"></embed> <param name="FlashVars" value="crtr=1&gig_lt=1253512877609&gig_pt=1253514470937&gig_g=2"> </object></div><div>There are <a href="http://blogs.adobe.com/lcsolutionaccelerators/2009/06/adobe_max_2009.html">two sessions</a> scheduled - a presentation on Solutions Accelerators in general and <a href="http://forms.stefcameron.com/2009/08/24/adobe-max-2009-lab-update/">a lab</a> where you can learn how to use different solution accelerators. There is also a <a href="http://blogs.adobe.com/lcsolutionaccelerators/2009/09/how_to_get_an_exclusive_adobe.html">LC Solution Accelerator T-Shirt</a> being given away if you are interested :)</div><div><br /></div><div>You can find out more at the <a href="http://max.adobe.com/">Adobe MAX Website</a> and <a href="http://max.adobe.com/blog/">blog</a>. If you wish to know more about my session, open up <a href="http://max.adobe.com/scheduler/#view=1">the scheduler</a> and filter By Speaker name (its last name first) to view the session (and a short bio :)) </div><div><a href="http://max.adobe.com/?sdid=ERZUY"><img src="http://assets.max.adobe.com/images/MAX09_140x130_speaker.jpg" width="140" height="130" /> <img src="http://assets.max.adobe.com/images/MAX09_Grey_140x130_speaker.jpg" width="140" height="130" /></a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-74539784906699663242009-09-06T08:18:00.002+05:302009-09-06T11:24:35.996+05:30September UpdateI didnt blog much last month - I just couldnt find anything to write (or even rant) about for once! Lets hope this month will be better :)<div><br /></div><div><b>Playstation</b></div><div><br /></div><div>First off I want to talk about my favorite whipping horse - Sony. I had stopped blogging about my Playstation since Ihave basically given up on Sony. Sometime last year, I <a href="http://ashish.vashisht.net/2008/12/sony-shares-drop-outlook-bleak.html">noted</a> that Sony India is refusing to release the PSN in India as internet speeds are too low. Whats amusing is that they are still <a href="http://tech2.in.com/india/topstuff/ps3-games/an-interview-with-atindriya-bose/85452/0">toeing</a> the same line... In the face of <a href="http://www.blogger.com/www.electronicarts.in/eastore/">EA launching</a> a games download store in India, Steam, XBox Live (<i>including</i> <a href="http://marketplace.xbox.com/hi-IN/games/catalog.aspx?d=5">Games on Demand</a>) and iTunes Store ALL being available here, Sony India still feels comfortable insulting their customers' intelligence by giving the excuse of internet speed. Its like some manager thought up some BS to be told to his acolytes and then started babbling the same nonsense to customers without thinking things through... </div><div><br /></div><div><div>Sony has dropped the price of the PS3 in India to 19,990. So for now at least, the PS3 is MUCH cheaper here - an Arcade XBox costs Rs. 17000 in India, so M$ is definitely fleecing customers a bit here... A <a href="http://kotaku.com/5346777/ps3-slim-vs-xbox-360-elite-tale-of-the-tape">hardware comparison</a> seems to indicate that the PS3 is a clear winner. Alas - the truth is that people buy consoles for games and Sony is seriously deficient in that area. This time aorund Sony has dropped the ability to install Linux from the PS3. I wonder why the PS3 is the only system that keeps <i>losing </i>features as time goes on...</div><div><br /></div><div>Some good news on that front - or maybe not - having dropped backward compatibility from the PS3, Sony seems to have figured out a new business model. Since they are not getting much by the way of good games this time around, why not make people buy games they have already bought for the PS2 again - by <a href="http://blog.us.playstation.com/2009/08/god-of-war-collection-blu-ray-disc-compilation-available-this-holiday-season/">releasing them</a> as PS3 editions. This is just amazing - if you cant do backward compatibility HOW are you running these games on the PS3? What a scam!</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://img44.imageshack.us/i/26993416ddf6b7cf5b25cd8.jpg/"><img src="http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/5629/26993416ddf6b7cf5b25cd8.jpg" width="400px" /></a></div><div>The other interesting thing that has happened is the <a href="http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board?board.id=ps3updates">backlash</a> on Sony's own PS3 forums <a href="http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=ps3updates&thread.id=97735">against</a> Firmware 3.0. Not that I care - I havent updated my PS3's Firmware beyond Firmware 2.50. I dont want to risk the FW update bricking my PS3, especially when none of my games need it! However, Sony as a company seems to be out of touch with what its customers want - they certainly deserve everything thats coming to them :)</div><div><br /></div><div><b>P2P and Downloading</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Sometime back, I had <a href="http://ashish.vashisht.net/2009/07/july-update-part-ii.html">blogged</a> about Seeqpod and the <a href="http://ashish.vashisht.net/2008/01/more-pipes-songbeat-seeqpod.html">Yahoo Pipe</a> I made for it. Well, I have taken down my Yahoo Pipe, but it seems the Songbeat people are more resilient - they are back as an <a href="http://www.songbeat360.com/">Adobe AIR app</a> this time...</div><div><br /></div><div>Also, it seems the Pirate Bay will soon be dead. Not to fear - guides abound on how to <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5343260/how-to-kick-your-torrent-addiction-with-usenet">switch to Usenet</a> or use <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5342776/5-pirate-bay-bittorrent-alternatives">another tracker</a>. Someone even <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5342388/ahoy-cloned-pirate-bay-site-sets-sail">cloned</a> the entire Pirate Bay itself - pretty amazing. This is a losing proposition for MPAA/RIAA and allies - they are concentrating on shutting down means of distribution of pirated content, only to have people come up with a newer, better, technology. Instead, something is wrong with their whole business model I feel.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Signing Out</b></div><div><br /></div><div>I had <a href="http://ashish.vashisht.net/2009/07/graceful-3-column-to-2-column-to-1.html">written</a> about how people were combating the extremely slow Ff 3.5 by optimizing its SQLite DBs. It seems someone els ehas <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5344418/make-firefox-faster-by-vacuuming-your-database">figured out</a> how to do that without even requiring you to download the SQLite executable. All things said, its still amazing how much control FF gives you over itself. On the photography front, I have been <a href="http://twitpic.com/photos/moglee">taking</a> quite a few pix with my cellphone camera with fiarly average (OK - pathetic) results. There is <a href="http://www.diyphotography.net/super-macro-your-cellphone-camera-with-a-dvd-lens">an article</a> out there on how to use your DVD lens as a super macro lens for your cellphone camera. I might try that out sometime this week :) Lastly, Nokia has launched a <a href="http://music.nokia.co.in/">legal music store</a> for India. Is this the first digital music store in India? I am not sure - but still a step in the right direction :) I havent looked into this too much - its probably loaded with DRM, which means you would be well advised to steer clear of it...</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-74764123639449588982009-08-23T16:26:00.002+05:302009-08-23T16:29:55.752+05:30Kumbhalgarh Trip PhotosPhotos from my trip to Kumbhalgarh are <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/ashish.vashisht/Kumbhalgarh2009">now up</a>.<div><br /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf" width="400" height="267" flashvars="host=picasaweb.google.com&hl=en_US&feat=flashalbum&RGB=0x000000&feed=http%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2Fashish.vashisht%2Falbumid%2F5373108212424565041%3Falt%3Drss%26kind%3Dphoto%26hl%3Den_US" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed><br /></div>This time, I did some post processing of the photos so they should look a little cleaner. Also, my dad managed to figure out how to use a camera. Most of the "weather shots" are his :) (He also took a LOT of repeat shots - I deleted almost 60 photos)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-85854420417633413192009-08-04T22:36:00.002+05:302009-08-04T23:03:41.252+05:30Off To KumbalgarhI am off to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumbalgarh">Kumbalgarh</a> for a week or so - I will be back in Delhi on Monday. Before I left, I wanted to give a brief update.<div><br /></div><div><img src="http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/732/image125.jpg" width="100%" /><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>I got <a href="http://twitter.com/moglee/status/3085654987">accepted</a> into the <a href="https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=719&wa=wsignin1.0">XBox Live Update Preview</a> program. This is an update to the XBox that contains <a href="https://connect.microsoft.com/content/content.aspx?ContentID=13143&IsDraft=False&SiteID=719&wa=wsignin1.0">a bevy</a> of new features - the most important of which is Games On Demand. This allows you to download full XBox 360 games to your hard disk - meaning I no longer have to suffer the ShopTo/Play-Asia nightmare anymore.</div><div><br /></div><div>Another interesting feature - it seems M$ figured out how to <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5328336/xbox-live-nxe-beta-reveals-smaller-game-install-sizes">significantly reduce</a> game installl sizes. This will be useful- once I buy a hard disk for my XBox :) Some numbers are mentioned <a href="http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/showpost.php?s=c77afa568c30840ec8f5eced2c884994&p=6135842&postcount=712">here</a> and <a href="http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/showpost.php?s=c77afa568c30840ec8f5eced2c884994&p=6135493&postcount=704">here</a>. It seems some games may save as much as 1GB of space being installed on the new dashboard. Not bad!<br /><div><br /></div><div>My trial of XBox Live Gold ran out, I doubt I will renew it - I dont really play online. However, it seems once you hand M$ your credit card, convincing them to stop charging it is complicated enough that there are <a href="http://xbox.joystiq.com/2009/07/30/the-more-you-know-how-to-turn-off-automatic-xbox-live-renewal/">entire articles</a> on it. Wow!</div><div><br /></div><div>On the portable front, it seems Nintendo blames Apple iPhone/iPod Touch for its financials. One developer in the meantime, went <a href="http://appadvice.com/appnn/2009/07/nintendo-warns-of-profit-decline-blames-iphone/">as far</a> as to say that an iPhone is more powerful than a Wii. Amazing - which one though? The original one? 3G? 3GS? On the other side of things, Apple is evidently starting to get worried about piracy - they have put out <a href="http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3743">a statement</a> on how jailbreaking your iphone/ipod touch may cause problems for you... </div><div><br /></div><div>Nice! For some reason, I never really liked Nintendo - maybe its because they just ignore India as a market, or maybe because they keep putting out ridiculously underpowered consoles. In any case, its good that they are finally getting some competition in the handheld space...</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-79819554634586031932009-07-19T11:30:00.003+05:302009-07-19T13:10:50.613+05:30July Update Part II<span style="font-weight: bold;">XBox 360</span><br /><br />I recently bought an XBox 360 Arcade. Overall, its a pretty nice machine - the graphics quality is pretty much the same as the PS3, however, games are cheaper and M$ is actually paying attention to India as a market.<a href="http://www.xbox.com/hi-IN/default.htm"> XBox Live</a> is available, there are more legit games and older games sell for as less as Rs. 1000 each. Imported games are an issue though due to region compatibility. (The PS3 has an advantage in this regard) There are multiple region compatibility lists available online - there is <a href="http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-00-3-xbox360_compatibility_guide-49-en.html">one</a> by Play Asia which is possibly the most famous, but another one by <a href="http://forum.xbox-sky.com/xbox360_regional_compatibility_guide/">xbox-sky</a> is the most comprehensive. In general, most Western games and non-RPGs have no region locking while all JRPGs are strongly region locked.<br /><br />The console came with 5 free arcade titles (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boom_Boom_Rocket">Boom Boom Rocket</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeding_Frenzy_%28video_game%29">Feeding Frenzy</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxor_2">Luxor 2</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man_Championship_Edition">Pac-Man Championship Edition</a>, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uno_%28XBLA%29">Uno</a>) as well as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forza_Motorsport_2">Forza Motorsport 2</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viva_Pinata">Viva Pinata</a>. Unlike the PS3, the XBox 360 has <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games_compatible_with_Xbox_360">backward compatibility</a> with the original XBox, however, I havent bought a Hard Disk as yet so I am yet to try this out. What I care about the most - the XBox 360 has a relatively large library of RPG titles. This is an area they are focusing on - they even have a <a href="http://www.xbox.com/hi-IN/games/rpg/">RPG page</a> on their India site. Not all of these are available in India, but I can always order from <a href="http://www.shopto.net/">Shop-To</a> or <a href="http://www.play-asia.com/">Play-Asia</a>. (I have heard <a href="http://www.game.co.uk/">Game UK</a> also delivers to India - haven't tried it out)<br /><br />It seems it will soon be possible to <a href="http://kotaku.com/5316580/xbox-live-update-games-on-demand-netflix-movie-party--more">download full games</a> off of XBox Live so this may not be a problem after that. (I can always use Airtel's <a href="http://www.airtel.in/wps/wcm/connect/airtel.in/Airtel.In/Home/ForYou/Broadband+Internet/Value+Added+Service/Speed+On+Demand/">Speed On Demand</a> to grab the game quickly). BTW, it seems its <a href="http://www.theaveragegamer.com/2009/02/07/remove-your-credit-card-details-from-xbox-live-online/">quite hard</a> to make M$ let go of your credit card information once you provide it to them!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Seeqpod and Yahoo Pipes</span><br /><br />Quite some time back, I <a href="http://ashish.vashisht.net/2008/01/more-pipes-songbeat-seeqpod.html">published</a> a Yahoo Pipe that would allow you to grab music off of Seeqpod. Now, Seeqpod is <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/08/AR2009050803494.html">dead</a> and it seems record labels are <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/25/music-labels-reach-a-new-low-sue-developer-for-using-seeqpod-api/">suing</a> developers for using its API. I have unpublished my pipe accordingly. Yahoo Pipes, meanwhile, seem to be in a <a href="http://blog.pipes.yahoo.net/2009/06/15/update-on-yahoo-pipes/">decent shape</a> while Microsoft Popfly and Google Mashup Editor are <a href="http://blog.pipes.yahoo.net/2009/07/17/microsoft-popfly-and-google-mashup-editor-rip/">both</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Popfly#Shutdown">more</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Mashup_Editor">less</a> dead. I havent used it for quite some time - I used to use Pipes to monitor webages <a href="http://ashish.vashisht.net/2007/12/creating-feed-for-tslrp-uding-yahoo.html">without a RSS feed</a>. The <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3362">Update Scanner</a> extension put an end to that though! The last time I looked at it, for some reason, the thing was flooded with Spam/Porn sites. They seem to have cleaned that up now.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Google Reader</span><br /><br />Google Reader just introduced an extremely obnoxious <a href="http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/07/google-readers-social-evolution.html">"Like" feature</a>. It shows a "Like" button in the toolbar. If you Like something, it gets <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5317004/display-just-the-items-you-liked-in-google-reader">shared</a> and your username is broadcast to all and sundry as having like this item. What is even more annoying are the "X people liked this" links that show up on every item. Much like Google Reader's earlier shared items feature, they cant be turned off (except via a Greasemonkey/Stylish <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5317171/user-script-disables-google-readers-like-feature">User script</a>) Of course, the Shared Items feature was 10,000 times more annoying - some random guy who you mailed 3-4 times starts sharing stuff and AFTER he starts sharing, you can go uncheck his name - anyone who isnt as yet sharing stuff but is in your friends list cannot be unchecked. The Google Reader team needs to figure the market segment they are operating in - they seem to think they are building the next Digg, their users just want a new reader!<div><br /></div><div><b>Evony</b></div><div><br /></div><div>I am sure just about anyone browsing tech/gaming sites has been running into the <a href="http://gawker.com/5313579/everything-thats-wrong-with-the-internet-in-one-videogames-banner-ad-campaign/gallery/">Evony or Civony series</a> of ads. Many of them are vaguely suggestive - meaning it suddenly renders your average tech site NSFW, specially in prudish India. <a href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdSense/thread?tid=7c9ef267b8b3c01f&hl=en">Others</a> on the net are <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/meta/259228-oh-those-hilarious-evony-ads.html">also</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/meta/259228-oh-those-hilarious-evony-ads.html">complaining</a> about these ads. Still others are performing <a href="http://kevinsung.org/?p=1966">analysis</a> of the game and <a href="http://www.bruceongames.com/2009/07/15/more-about-evony/">how it is run</a> by "chinese gold farmers" (wow! borderline racist!). You can <a href="http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/request.py?display=form&contact_type=vfaff">file a complaint</a> about these ads with Google if you like.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Other Stuff</span><br /><br />The <a href="http://worldebookfair.org/Collections.htm">World eBook Fair</a> is now on. While most of it is the same Project Gutenberg and all, smaller collections (with less than 500 titles) have got newer/better books. Lastly, you can <a href="http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/submit_ap.php">submit your home WiFi Access Point</a> to SkyHook, thus allowing an iPod Touch (and ultimately Google Maps) to locate you using the AP name/MAC. There is no submission page for Google Maps Wifi based location - it works by quietly reading your location and nearby APs whenever you use the Maps App in the iPod Touch/iPhone.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-86520909034633259242009-07-10T21:46:00.007+05:302009-07-10T23:08:21.874+05:30Graceful 3 column to 2 column to 1 column degradation using CSSI have been wanting to update my blog profile from <a href="http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com/2007/07/three-columns-rounders-3-template.html">rounders3</a> to something a bit more malleable for some time now.<br /><br />This week I finally got around to it. You can see the results on this blog. It now <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=graceful+degradation">degrades gracefully</a> from 3-column to 2-column to 1-column mode.<br /><br />If you are running the latest Safari/Opera/Firefox/Chrome, you can see it in action - just resize the browser window and the layout goes from 3 column, to 2 columns (with the Twitter/Archives sections moving below the profile) to 1 column (with the footer replaced with a helpful message)<br /><br />This works on all browsers - except IE of course. Older browsers may require the page to be refreshed.<br /><br />Also, in Print mode, the columns disappear and the footer is replaced with copyright text.<br /><br />This is all done using <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/En/CSS/Media_queries">CSS 3 Media Queries</a>. These are <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc351024%28VS.85%29.aspx#media">not supported</a> in Internet Explorer - even v8. <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/get-the-facts/browser-comparison.aspx">Get The Facts</a> - "Firefox and Chrome have more support for emerging standards like HTML5 and CSS3, but Internet Explorer 8 invested heavily in having world-class, consistent support for the entire CSS2.1 specification." Remember?<br /><br />How did I actually do this? I started off with the instructions given <a href="http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-5160911.html">here</a>. They point out that you can use a CSS left and right <a href="http://www.w3schools.com/css/pr_class_float.asp">float</a> to get a three column layout. They also point out an important fact - in the absence of a float, elements will be displayed in the order they are mentioned. Also, <a href="http://www.w3schools.com/Css/pr_class_clear.asp">clear</a> can be used to ensure that there are no floating elements next to a given element.<br /><br />Besides this, we have <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/En/CSS/Media_queries">Media Queries</a>. These allow you to specify your display type (for e.g. print for a printer, handheld for a mobile device etc) as well as query on other things such as screen resolution or browser window size/aspect ratio.<br /><br />Normally you would expect the iPod to respond to handheld, but unfortunately, Apple ignores the handheld tag. In its place, <a href="http://my.opera.com/dstorey/blog/iphone-and-developing-for-mobile">they ask you</a> to query on screen resolution instead.<br /><br />Finally a couple of things: if your default specification for an object attempts to float to the left, you can override and move it to the right using the CSS <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/cascade.html#important-rules">!important</a> qualifier. Also, if two rules with !important are triggered at the same time, the one which occurs first is given priority.<br /><br />Armed with all this, I could write the following to move to two column mode if the browser Window has less than 1000px (view source on this page to see this code). Notice how I changed the margins to accommodate less space required on the right of main-wrap1 in two column mode.<br /><pre>@media only screen and (max-width: 1000px) {<br />.sidebar-wrap-left {<br />margin:15px 0px 0px 20px !important;<br />}<br />.sidebar-wrap-right {<br />clear: both !important;<br />margin:15px 0px 0px 20px !important;<br />float:left !important;<br />}<br />#main-wrap1 {<br />margin:15px 20px 0px 290px !important;<br />}<br />}</pre>This comes below the above for 600-1000 (Note the overlap):<pre>@media print, handheld, only screen and (max-width: 600px) {<br />.sidebar-wrap-left {<br />display: none !important;<br />}<br />.sidebar-wrap-right {<br />display: none !important;<br />}<br />#main-wrap1 {<br />margin:15px 20px 0px 20px !important;<br />}<br />}</pre>There were a few more tweaks required. For example, the Footer actually has three different messages inside, one each triggerring on Print, sub-600 and Everything Else. Also, the Google Search box in the header (another addition from my side) is layouted using floats - meaning it doesnt play well with the blog layout by default. I had to add the following to get it working (it had a nonsense tab bar on top that I hated)<pre>#uds-searchControl .gsc-resultsbox-visible {<br />clear:none !important;<br />}<br /><br />#uds-searchControl .gsc-tabsArea {<br />display:none !important;<br />}</pre>None of this would have been possible without the amazing <a href="http://getfirebug.com/">Firebug</a> extension - its an invaluable tool for use while designing web pages, allowing you to add/view/remove attributes from an element at the same time showing all the CSS attributes (inherited or direct) applicable to an element.<br /><br />Not surprisingly, the iPod Touch's browser supports media queries. But, it sticks to the 600-1000 rule no matter what. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my 5800's browser also supports media queries. In retrospecitve, since it does Flash too, maybe I shouldnt have been surprise. The 5800 uses sub-600 in portrait/landscape mode and 600-1000 in landscape fullscreen mode (after refresh - using Older/Newer Posts button.) The 5800's UI fails its back end engine as usual - there is no way to refresh the page while in fullscreen mode. Nokia has been taking <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5308440/nokia-n97-review-nokia-is-doomed">quite a beating</a> recently by the way. I <a href="http://ashish.vashisht.net/2009/05/nokis-5800-and-ovi.html">don't think</a> they deserve it - the 5800/N97 are pretty decent phones, it just that they suddenly have to compete in a field of handheld computers (which is essence is what the iPhone/Palm Pre etc. are - whatever you may choose to call them)<br /><br />Lastly, I <a href="http://twitter.com/moglee/status/2470407829">have</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/moglee/status/2493434283">been</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/moglee/status/2500117586">having</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/moglee/status/2517102586">a lot</a> of <a href="http://twitter.com/moglee/status/2562422571">trouble</a> with FF 3.5 - it seems VERY slow now, much slower than FF3. Most of my friends have switched to Chrome - maybe I will do so too. People are recommending unusual steps to deal with it - from <a href="http://www.gettingclever.com/2008/06/vacuum-your-firefox-3.html">optimizing</a> FF3.5's SQLite databases to <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5311669/speed-up-slow-firefox-35-windows-start+ups">clearing out</a> your Temp Folder, Recycle Bin and Temporary Internet Files - it seems <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=501605">its a bug</a>. Mozilla have to get their act together - Chrome will soon have extension support, and the plight of Nokia and Sony should teach them that people have no brand loyalty in the tech domain.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-24578619916510227232009-07-05T06:26:00.002+05:302009-07-05T09:11:08.899+05:30July Update<span style="font-weight: bold;">Nokia 5800</span><br /><br />Nokia is trying to get its act together on Symbian. Symbian is possibly one of the strangest platforms to exist - one that ensures no consistency across even devices that have the same version of the OS. Nokia also tends to release newer features on newer phones rather than adding them to older phones. While Symbian runs very lightweight and responsive, the sheer popularity and quality of the apps on the iPhone Appstore shows easily <a href="http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/johnc/recent%20updates/archive?news_id=295">the problems</a> faced by developers while trying to use Symbian. From a user POV, consider the horrible Download app used by Nokia (that till recently used to show every single apps as free - only to have the app ask for money on installation)<br /><br />Nokia is trying to improve on this - by launching the Ovi store, having more frequent firmware updates and now, by decoupling features from the OS. Adobe Flash Lite 3.1 <a href="http://nokia5800.net/2009/05/24/adobe-flash-lite-31-for-nokia-5800/">recently</a> became available for download over App Update - independently of the Firmware version. This is followed by the Java runtime <a href="http://nokia5800.net/2009/06/30/nokia-launched-java-runtime-2-0-for-symbian-s60/">being updated</a> to 2.0 again independently of the firmware. This has a frightening disclaimer though - it seems if you interrupt the update, your device may need servicing. I am not risking that on a beta version!<br /><br />Nokia still needs to work on a few things. Their customer care is one - you cant have the same people who service the 50,000 Rs. 1500 phone owners also try to service the 5000 Rs. 15000 phone owners. In India, Nokia tries to do that - and people tell horror stories of Nokia support as a result. Then there's the region coding issue - Ovi store launched months ago but I STILL don't see the Ovi app in the Download app, so officially, it hasnt hit India as yet. Similarly Firmware - Nokia it seems has 500 different Firmwares for the 5800, with minor tweaks for each country. You can easily change a phone's region code and install another firmware - the hardware is identical! But Nokia still makes you wait months for updates if you live in India.<br /><br />BTW, it seems you can <a href="http://www.tube5800.com/xpressbeer-drink-beer-on-your-nokia-5800-phone/">install Python</a> on the 5800 and then that becomes available as a platform - much like J2ME. Amazing!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Firefox</span><br /><br />I am sure many people remember M$'s much maligned <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_related_to_Microsoft#Get_the_Facts">Get The Facts</a> campaign, which somehow managed to prove that Linux was 10 times more expensive than Windows 2003 - by comparing the cost of running Windows on Intel Xeons and Linux on a hyper-expensive IBM box. Well, they recently came out with a <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/get-the-facts/browser-comparison.aspx">similar campaign</a> for IE8. IE8 somehow manages to beat Firefox on every single category - and even get a "tie" on "customizability." I don't understand why M$ does these things - surely the negative publicity and ill-will generates through this would annul any advantages. Of course, the Firefox team <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5297027/disable-firefox-35s-location+aware-browsing">occasionally does</a> annoying things too.<br /><br />In any case, I have been using FF3.5 for a week now. The only extension which is not working with it is Block Site. Unfortunately, as noted earlier, the browser offers only minimal memory usage improvements - after a week with it, I find FF3.5 using pretty much the same amount of memory of FF3.<br /><br />In the meantime, the Mozilla team is rushing ahead on the "customizability" front. They recently introduced <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5287397/mozilla-updates-jetpack-with-three-new-additions">JetPack</a> - a sort of hybrid between Greasemonkey and normal Extensions. This allows you to write Javascript/CSS that not only changes a page's look and feel (Greasemonkey) but also interacts with the browser chrome (like an extension). The other interesting thing is the ability to <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5285831/mozilla-updates-firefox-add+ons-site-with-collections">create collections</a> of addons on the Firefox site. This allows you to use the Add On Collector extension to create a set of addons which will get installed together. Check out <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5291501/lifehackers-firefox-add+on-packs">this link</a> to see some collections assembled by Lifehacker.<br /><br />Customizability is the crux of reason why I use Firefox - even if its slower, uses more memory, has less features etc, I have it customized way too much to my liking using extensions to giv eup on it. The FF team though has an uphill task - jokes aside, IE8 is the best browser by M$ ever and Chrome/Safari/Opera are definitely tough competitors.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Other Stuff</span><br /><br />Lifehacker regularly publishes a Hive Five - a comparison of various software in a category, followed by allowing users to vote on their favorite. A few months ago, they came out with a <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5052582/best-of-the-best-the-hive-five-winners">best of the best</a> post - listing the winners of past Hive Fives. This was <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5303642/best-of-the-best-hive-five-winners-march-through-june-2009">updated recently</a> with a updated list of new comparisons added since March. Note that these are not free softwares - these are just the best softwares in each cateory, whether paid or free. They recently <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5271828/lifehacker-pack-2009-our-list-of-essential-free-windows-downloads">came out</a> with a separate set 0f the essential free software which any machine needs - called the Lifehacker pack, much like the Google Pack. Of course there is another way to get all these softwares - you can use a installer app, like <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5274450/radarsync-keeps-your-programs-up-to-date">RadarSync/FileHippo</a> etc. to download and install these for you. These apps are pretty interesting - they serve the same purpose on Windows that Apt does on Linux. Not too many Windows users (even geeks) know about them though, which often leads to many of my friends claiming that there is no Apt-like option for Windows.<br /><br />It is now possible to <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5284904/google-apps-will-soon-support-outlook-sync-with-email-contacts-and-calendars">synch Outlook</a> to Google Apps, much like Exchange. This is only for the premium version of Google apps. Considering GMail's UI and feature set, one would expect it to be far more widely used than right now. The reason its not, is first and foremost because most organizations are (rightly) not comfortable having their data on the cloud. Retraining requirements for administrators is a factor too, but I feel that is easier to overcome - its a hinderance not a deal breaker. If Google comes out with a Maill Appliance like they have a Search Appliance, Google Apps would be much more popular in the enterprise.<br /><br />I downloaded M$ <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5286400/microsoft-morro-free-antivirus-service-dont-laugh-too-hard">Morro</a> - M$'s free antivirus a few days ago. For some reason, the site was non-functional (possibly due to overload) when I opened it. M$ were only going to allow 100,000 people to download Morro. For some reason, I couldn't download Morro during the timeframe allowed, but my MSN ID got registered as a valid tester and I was able to download it the next day. Not that I have installed it of course - I am fully satisfied with Avast thank you very muchUnknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-74763775448881217632009-06-30T22:01:00.005+05:302009-06-30T23:26:40.363+05:30Firefox 3.5 ReleasedFirefox 3.5 <a href="http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.5/releasenotes/">has been released</a>. It adds several new features - including private browsing and HTML5 support. One feature I disabled the moment I installed Firefox 3.5 - <a href="http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/geolocation/">Geolocation</a>. (See the link, I also updated <a href="http://ashish.vashisht.net/2008/08/ultimate-firefox-tweak-guide.html">my tweak guide</a>) The other strange thing - all the buttons in the Google Toolbar disappeared, and whenever I stop moving my mouse, an annoying small yellow box pops up under the cursor. (Update - See the last paragraph in this post)<br /><br />This time, I didn't have as many extensions die on me as for Firefox 3.0. <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4781">Automatic Save Folder </a>died, but its usable up to Firefox 3.5b4, so possibly it will be updated to fix this. <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3145">BlockSite</a> is gone too, but I only use to it block <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_%28Facebook%29">Beacon</a>, so I installed <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10497">Facebook Beacon Blocker</a> instead. This blocks Beacon, but it doesn't replace links with text or show a warning message on block via address bar. It'll do until BlockSite works again...<br /><br />Mouse Gestures Redox has an <a href="http://www.mousegestures.org/installation/">updated version</a> you can download from their site, so does <a href="http://tmp.garyr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9864&sid=4ba7c2afe5efb1be904081dd5dbbed1c">Tab Mix Plus</a>. Unfortunately, I use <a href="http://jrweare.googlepages.com/browser2.0">Widefox</a> and on installing Firefox 3.5, everything went blank. So here's how to get Widefox running on Firefox 3.5:<br /><ol><li>After installing Firefox 3.5, everything will be blank. Exit Firefox. (Use the Task Manager to make sure it REALLY exits - on my machine it has a nasty habit of running in the background while the window closes)</li><li>Go to your profile folder - %USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles</li><li>There will be a folder called <gibberish>.default. Navigate to it</li><li>Navigate to chrome.</li><li>Rename userChrome.css to _userChrome.css</li><li>Start Firefox</li><li>Install the latest <a href="http://tmp.garyr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9864">TabMixPlus Dev Build</a></li><li>Restart Firefox (make sure)</li><li>On restart, TMP will be enabled again. This is important. Do not go to next step unless TMP is enabled first</li><li>Shut down Firefox (make sure), rename _userChrome.css back to userChrome.css and follow the instructions <a href="http://ashish.vashisht.net/2008/06/firefox-3-released.html">here</a> as before.</li></ol>BTW, if you are installing Widefox for the first time with Firefox 3.5, just install TMP, follow the instructions <a href="http://ashish.vashisht.net/2008/06/firefox-3-released.html">here</a> (<span style="font-style: italic;">after</span> making sure TMP is working on restart) and then setting up Widefox as per the normal instructions <a href="http://jrweare.googlepages.com/browser2.0">here</a>.<br /><br />I am noticing Firefox 3.5 use less memory - it also seems faster. Lets see how it goes :) BTW, the Widefox pages are hosted on Googlepages - they will be <a href="http://ashish.vashisht.net/2009/05/moving-away-from-google-pages.html">gone soon</a>. Might be a good idea to copy them to your hard disk :) I have <a href="http://workspace.office.live.com/?id=qACQzMmU2NjJmNi05OGQyLTQ4OWItOTZlNC04ZmYyMTUyOTczOGEAe0znb9cs7gdJgk2xuQf1PdF9ezsyw_p71K1Kp7r25IW6Ovl9ABlhc2hpc2gudmFzaGlzaHRAZ21haWwuY29tABSqx2DBSo-RFIys3W9pJBpJpvH5uwAA&cid=40">shared them</a> on my Office Live Workspace, just in case.<br /><br />Update: I just uninstalled Google Toolbar and restarted. The small box is gone. Looks like Google Toolbar is not working well with Firefox 3.5. Lets reinstall and see what happens... Yup - that fixes it!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-6607050822267765742009-06-27T16:10:00.006+05:302009-06-27T18:15:39.404+05:30Gaming and IndiaGaming has always been an expensive hobby. More so if you live in India. The government charges exorbitant import duties, driving the price of an Arcade Xbox 360 up to Rs. 17,000 from $199.<br /><br />There are few places which sell games - online shopping is not popular in India and traditional sites' inventories are <a href="http://shopping.indiatimes.com/ism/faces/tiles/catalogue.jsp?catalogueID=20375472">woefully inadequate</a>. Thankfully there is some movement on this front - <a href="http://www.grooveindia.com/">Groove India</a> is the first Indian site I have found that specializes in selling games. Another useful site - <a href="http://consoul.in/">Consoul</a> where you can buy/sell and trade games. Unfortunately, they don't accept credit cards and require money to be tranferred to their bank account via net banking instead. Then there's the occasional discounts/schemes offered by <a href="http://www.gamingindians.com/category/get-discounts-on-gi-bulk-orders/">Gaming Indians</a> - mostly on PC games. Lastly, in Delhi at least, there's <a href="http://www.gamerdreamz.com/">Gamer Dreamz</a>, a site that offers console games on rent for charges from Rs. 1000 to Rs. 1200 per month. I am not sure if this is such a good option - I can buy one game every 2 months in place of this.<br /><br />Note that you can import games too - in the past I have bought stuff off Play-Asia and Shop To. Both are good, but my experience with Shop To was much better. Play-Asia has an advantage though - it often offers quirky JRPGs that dont get a US release but have an English translated Asian versions - consider <a href="http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-bp-49-en-70-36pw.html">Demon's Souls</a> for example.<br /><br />Also worth mentioning is <a href="http://www.electronicarts.in/eastore">Electronic Arts' India Store</a> - this offers many EA games, at good price but only for download. Of course, you can also download many of these through Steam. The only thing is, I have long ago given up gaming on my PC - I got tired of constantly having to update my PC to in the end get pathetic framerates on games. Good PC exclusives are few and far in between and publishers seem to think its OK to release PC games with huge numbers of bugs, ridiculous requirement and invasive DRM. Consider the <a href="http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2Other.Detail&id=19">list of patches</a> released for Neverwinter Nights 2. Do you know the default patcher in NWN 2 requires 10GB free hard disk space on the install hard disk? Or that patch 1.03 had <a href="http://www.penny-arcade.com/2006/12/6/">over 250 fixes</a>?<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">The other interesting thing that has been happening is the advent of free games - these are usually ad or micro-transaction supported. While earlier this would usually be casual games, of late even big publishers are getting into this. Of note are <a href="http://kotaku.com/5270010/battleforge-is-now-free">Battleforge</a> and <a href="http://kotaku.com/5302502/battlefield-heroes-performs-covert-launch">Battlefield Heroes</a> which are based on EA's play 4 Free platform. Some <a href="http://kotaku.com/5284548/dungeons-and-dragons-online-goes-free">other publishers</a> are also moving to this model.<br /></div><br />On the handheld front, Nintendo ignores India. The PSP is hugely popular here (I don't own one and never will - I have sworn never to buy another PlayStation console remember?). The interesting about the DS though is that it is thoroughly cracked - every single shop in Pallika sells a DS with a R4 or M3 or something, but I have yet to see anyone selling actual pirated DS games. You will find loads of pirated PS2 games on display, but nothing for the DS. Maybe they load ROMs if you ask them. The DS is an interesting platform - bad graphics, but popular for RPGs. There's a <a href="http://www.blackcats-games.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=30411">long list</a> of games I want to play on it when I get time (and enthusiasm to squint on a teeny screen) But my personal favorite in this category is the iPod Touch. You can get one in Pallika for just Rs. 12,000/- and its covered by Apple's worldwide warranty. Most games on the App Store are also available in India and I have bought quite a few of them over the past months - especially because many cost less than Rs. 50, which constitutes an impulse buy - even in India.<br /><br />Signing Off, Kotaku points out a list of the <a href="http://kotaku.com/5166867/edge-picks-the-100-best-games-to-play-today">100 best games to play today</a>, as well as a list of <a href="http://kotaku.com/5211094/these-games-are-hard">25 hardest games</a> of all time. Also, there's an <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5280355/guess-what-many-of-you-wasted-money-on-your-1080p-tv-but-theres-hope">interesting chart</a> of LCD screen size and Resolution vs Optimum Viewing Distance (aka Lechner Distance) linked to by Gizmodo - this shows that, for the most part people sit way too far away from their TVs to perceive the full resolution. For example, for my 32" LCD, I should not sit more than 75" away. BTW, in spite of the fact that I bought a <a href="http://www.benq.co.in/products/Projector/?product=1358">BenQ projector</a> several month ago, I have yet to play a single game on it :) The effort of dismantling my gaming setup and moving it the drawing room (which is where the projector has enough space for its screen) has proved to be too much for me to even try!<br /><a href="http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/4926/13022009050large.jpg"><img src="http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/4926/13022009050large.jpg" title="My gaming setup in my room" border="0" width="420" /></a><br />p.s. The PS2 is on a stand and the PS3 is hidden behind the monitor under a cloth - you can see the DualShock 3 thoughUnknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-42171126206614997422009-06-21T00:40:00.002+05:302009-06-21T02:02:58.763+05:30June Update<span style="font-weight: bold;">Credit Card Theft</span><br /><br />I just had a pretty exhaustive week at work - a critical performance issue somehow found its way to a client production system and I barely got a few hours of sleep last week. Then on Friday when it seemed the issue was finally solved, I thought I would get some rest and wake up late... Nope - my dad woke me up at 6:00 AM in the morning to tell me someone was using his ICICI credit card from Lucknow to recharge their Airtel account. Now here's the interesting thing - ICICI Bank has recently <a href="http://www.icicibank.com/pfsuser/cards/creditcard/imint/faq.htm">force switched</a> all their customers to <a href="https://imintpoints.com/i-mint/icici.do">iMint</a>. My dad was so upset with this that he refused to use his ICICI card for several months. Then he used it (or rather had me use it) to pay his <a href="http://www.bsesdelhi.com/paynow.asp">BSES Yamuna</a> bill online on the 9th of this month. He hasnt used it after that - but exactly 10 days after using the card for BSES Yamuna, this happens. Suspicious isnt it?<br /><br />In any case, I learnt some interesting things from that - how to <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306657">send a fax</a> via my laptop's inbuilt modem for one, how to <a href="http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/FAQFAX.htm#_Toc88835146">add a fax printer</a> and <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306661">print to it</a> from a Windows program, via the built in <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306550/">Fax service</a>. Its a good idea to wipe the CVV code from your credit card so no one can copy it when you hand it off at a restaurant. Try to set up <a href="http://visa.com/verified">Verified By Visa</a> or <a href="http://www.mastercard.com/securecode/">MasterCard SecureCode </a>for all your cards. I used to use <a href="http://www.hdfcbank.com/personal/payments/netsafe/netsafe.htm">HDFC Bank Netsafe</a> to generate temporary credit cards extensively when I started buying things online, keeping my credit card only for trusted sites that forced me to store the credit card info (like iTunes!) - I guess I got really lax on this one!<br /><br />Also, use Firefox/Chrome/Opera/Safari for all transactions - anything except IE! By the way, M$ used one of their recent security updates (!) to sneakily install a nasty little <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClickOnce">.Net Framework Assistant</a> into Firefox - which essentially allows ActiveX like code to run in Firefox - destroying the very reliability which forms one of the frameworks of Firefox. Initially, you had to do <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/963707">registry manipulations</a> to get rid of it. After a lot of people cried foul on the web, M$ <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=963707">quietly released</a> an update that allow you to uninstall it from within Firefox itself. Sigh... One last thing - I found a <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8128">nifty little extension</a> that will warn you when a password field is being submitted on a non-secure page - I wish Firefox hadn't removed the Yellow URL Field feature with 3.0. While you can bring it back (using Stylish) or make Firefox <a href="http://ashish.vashisht.net/2008/08/ultimate-firefox-tweak-guide.html">hilight secure pages</a>, it still greatly reduces the security of Firefox in my POV. The extension is still experimental though.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">iPod Touch Firmware 3.0</span><br /><br />The other big thing to happen this week was the release of <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5171796/iphone-30-os-guide-everything-you-need-to-know">Firmware 3.0</a> for the <a href="http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/softwareupdate.html">iPod Touch</a>. The three biggest features according to me? Micro-transactions, Spotlight and Bluetooth (Peer-To-Peer as well as Audio). The bluetooth thing is pretty amazing - here's some hardware that was always there in my iPod, I just had no way to access it and bang - its there, I can use it. Spotlight is nice in that I no longer have to scroll pages and pages of apps to get to what I need (I have 6 pages of Apps), thus allowing someone (who's crazy enough) to have <a href="http://appadvice.com/appnn/2009/06/no-iphone-app-limit-with-a-nifty-os-30-trick/">more than 11 pages</a> of apps if they want. Apple has added <a href="http://www.iphoneuserguide.com/apple/2009/06/12/iphone3g/top-100-new-features-in-iphone-30/">a lot of stuff</a> with this update, although some people seem to have <a href="http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=671948">gone a bit nuts</a> documenting <a href="http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=715629">every</a> <a href="http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=715629&page=24">single</a> thing.<br /><br />Of course the update didnt go completely smoothely - I (very foolishly) had ZoneAlarm Firewall and Avast! Antivirus running while updating, and the update promptly failed with "<a href="http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1275">Unknown Error 1604</a>", leaving my iPod dead and me scared for a few minutes. A bit of searching and I found someone <a href="http://forums.ilounge.com/showthread.php?t=234021">mentioning</a> turning off their Firewall/Anti-Virus and trying again. I did that, restarted iTunes and lo! it restored and updated my iPod. Luckily I had bought the update for $9.99, not grabbed it <a href="http://www.felixbruns.de/iPod/firmware/">off the internet</a>, or else I would have been twice as scared - just having successfully voided my warranty.<br /><br />I am very impressed (possibly even awed) with Apple's attention to detail. Not only did my apps, bookmarks, wireless settings get saved, but also all my app data. This was pretty significant, since I use <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexcycle_Stanza">Stanza</a> and also have a lot of save games:) The only thing it seemed to miss was Contacts <a href="http://www.google.com/mobile/apple/sync.html">synched from Google</a>, which came back the moment I opened the Contacts app. But what really took the biscuit was that they even backed up my wallpaper and the location of every single app on each page. As a fellow programmer, I understand how much hard work this would entail. Amazing! I am pretty satisfied with my iPod Touch right now - at least until <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5286263/will-future-iphone-games-run-on-your-iphone-3g">3GS exclusive</a> games start coming up (although <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5286132/ngmoco-wont-be-making-iphone+3gs+exclusive-games">hopefully</a> that wont be soon!)<br /><br />The other interesting thing I tried out was installing <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Asupport.apple.com+itunes+64+bit">iTunes 64-bit</a> on my Window 7 installation and sharing my iTunes library between the 32-bit and 64-bit versions. It seems to work, but I would still backup my ITL file before trying!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Airtel</span><br /><br />Lastly, it seems Airtel is now <a href="http://broadbandforum.in/airtel-broadband/47517-airtel-broadband-censoring-web-airtel-sucks/">censoring the internet</a> although they seem to have <a href="http://afup.broadbandforum.in/">backed off</a> from their ridiculous Fair Usage Policy a bit. Time to break out the <a href="http://www.torproject.org/easy-download.html.en">Tor Browser Bundle</a> people!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383024725491196753.post-87881489562560435782009-05-30T19:03:00.006+05:302009-05-31T16:08:26.060+05:30IM Apps on the 5800 and moreI wanted to round up a list of some IM apps for the 5800 - there are quite a few of them and its easy to forget what all they are sometimes.<br /><br />First and foremost, there is the inbuilt IMPS client on the 5800. This allows you to use push notification for chat messages. Unfortunately, it also requires you to store your Yahoo/GTalk credentials on a site such as <a href="http://nokia5800.net/2009/05/20/nokia-5800-app-review-mobjab/">Mobjab</a>. Then there are clients like <a href="http://dailymobile.se/2009/02/14/symbian-fring-for-nokia-5800-beta/">Fring</a>, which is primarily a VoIP solution, and its interface is similar to that of Fring for iPhone. Then there's flash/browser based clients such as <a href="http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/popout">Google Talkgadget</a>. However, for some reason, this does not seem to work with the 5800 - the app loads perfectly but no contacts show up. After playing around a bit I found another option - Google Talk's <a href="http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/m#Chat">iPhone website</a> works perfectly well with the 5800.<br /><br />Then there are apps such as <a href="http://nokia5800.net/2009/05/07/nokia-5800-app-review-nimbuzz/">Nimbuzz</a>, <a href="http://nokia5800.net/2009/05/22/nokia-5800-app-review-talkonaut/">Talkonaut</a> and <a href="http://nokia5800.net/2009/05/19/nokia-5800-app-review-palringo-%E2%80%93-a-multi-chat-client/">Palringo</a>. These are dedicated chatting apps for the 5800. They allow logging into multiple services such as Yahoo, GTalk and MSN. In general they provide provide great but similar features. Nimbuzz seems to be the most popular out of all these - it is available via Download! and also via Ovi Store, thus giving it something of an unfair advantage in this regard.<br /><br />One last option is to use an app <a href="http://nokia5800.net/2009/05/21/nokia-5800-app-review-free-isms/">such as iSMS</a> to turn SMSes into chat like screens. This is an interesting application - if you are into sending a lot of SMSes and have a plan, this is a good option.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">5800 and Static IP</span><br /><br />When I first got my 5800, I had quite a <a href="http://ashish.vashisht.net/2009/01/dharamsala-pix-and-nokia-5800.html">list of complaints</a>. One of the most critical was the lack of Static IP support on the 5800 - not having DHCP enabled is one of the things I consider critical to securing my home Wifi network. Besides that, my LinkSys WRT54G router doesn't support MAC based IP assignment - which could play havoc with my routing rules configuration. The router <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=ps3+upnp+linksys">constantly restarts</a> if I enable UPnP and its a v7, so DD-WRT is not supported. I was managing by running a DHCP server via <a href="http://tftpd32.jounin.net/">TFTPD32</a> on my machine, but it still required me to have my computer or laptop on to browse on my phone. With the new firmware, it is now possible to specify a static IP. A detailed guide is present on <a href="http://www.howtofixanything.co.uk/howto-322.html">this page</a>, but its wrong on one point - it asks you to set the device to Ad Hoc mode. <span style="font-style: italic;">You dont need to do this</span>. In fact, <span style="font-style: italic;">don't do this - at all</span>! Just skip steps 17 -18 and go straight to step 19. In a nutshell, while WLAN settings won't let you configure static IP, you can go into "Advanced Settings" under "Destinations" and set it up through that. Nokia need to organize their apps a bit better - it took me quite a while to find Sync too! (Settings>Connectivity>Data Transfer)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Yahoo 360 and Mail</span><br /><br />In other news, Yahoo 360 is finally closing down - <a href="http://360.yahoo.com/login.html">for real this time</a>. I have moved my blog around quite a bit - first it was on <a href="http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-Go.DE.IwbZlQkPuonb4-;_ylt=AuIdEZjZbBcKC5f55VarLCq0AOJ3?cq=1">Yahoo 360</a>, then <a href="http://jroller.com/av_2_0/">JRoller</a>, then <a href="http://rambunctiousramblings.blogspot.com/">blogspot</a> and finally I purchased <a href="http://ashish.vashisht.net/">my own domain</a>. Out of all these, Yahoo has been the weirdest experience. It was pretty easy to set up a blog, but then virtually impossible to customize it. And would you look at <a href="http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-Go.DE.IwbZlQkPuonb4-;_ylt=AuIdEZjZbBcKC5f55VarLCq0AOJ3?cq=1">the URL</a>? They wouldnt allow me to embed flash, edit HTML - nothing. And now, it seems they will be moving my blog to <a href="http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/YLOCWLSCXR3A3JX7J4Z6NI34VU">my profile</a>. Which means my Yahoo 360 blog is now moved to <a href="http://profiles.yahoo.com/blog/YLOCWLSCXR3A3JX7J4Z6NI34VU">this url</a>. Genius... pure genius. Just look at that URL! My username is unique Yahoo - you <span style="font-style: italic;">can</span> use it in place of that weird UUID or whatever it is! Also, the posts keep appearing and disappearing - I have had to <a href="http://download.360.yahoo.com/">run the migration</a> twice till now. Just to be safe, I downloaded everything too.<br /><br />BTW, as far as I am concerned, Yahoo is now officially the worst mail service out there. Its one thing to block features like POP3 available from every single other mail service. Its something else entirely to shamelessly try to scam your users outright. It seems Yahoo has struck a deal with Airtel wherein Airtel users pay Rs.10 every 7 days to access Yahoo Mail and Messenger OVER and ABOVE the normal web browsing charges(WTF!!?). So I try to access <a href="http://in.m.yahoo.com/p/mail">Yahoo Mail Mobile</a> via GPRS and it gets me to <a href="http://203.199.114.183/yahoo/WapApps/GenWap/?typxm=Yzone_offers_off&next_url=http://in.m.yahoo.com/p/mail?">this page</a>. Wow - just wow.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0