Networked Time Machine Backups on Mountain Lion

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.

So I decided to get Time Machine running over the network.

I found some guides here:

• Make Use Of
• Lifehacker

This doesn't work on Mountain Lion unfortunately - for some reason Time Machine on Mountain Lion won't show unsupported Network drives.

Fortunately I found this guide which led me to the tmutil utility.

Also I found Time Machine was creating "snapshots" on the local hard disk which was using up hard disk space. This can be disabled via tmutil disablelocal

So, from start:

1. Open Time Machine preferences, click on Options
2. 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.
3. See the estimated size of the full backup and create a sparse disk to approximately 5 times that size
4. Copy the sparse disk to your Windows share
5. Mount the Network Drive using Samba
6. Mount the Sparse Disk using hdiutil
7. Use tmutil to set the sparse disk as a destination for backup, enable time machine and disable local snapshots
8. Use tmutil to start the backup
9. 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.
10. Unmount the sparse disk and network share

I created a Bash shell script for all the functions, including creating the sparse bundle:
#!/bin/bash
MOUNTPOINT=
NETWORKSHARE=//@/
SPARSEBUNDLE=
if [ "$1" == mount -o "$1" == all ]; then
    echo "Creating mount folder"
    sudo mkdir $MOUNTPOINT
    echo "Mounting Samba"
    sudo mount_smbfs -o nosuid,nodev $NETWORKSHARE $MOUNTPOINT
    echo "Attaching Sparse Disk"
    sudo hdiutil attach $MOUNTPOINT/$SPARSEBUNDLE.sparsebundle/
fi
if [ "$1" == enable -o "$1" == all ]; then
    echo "Setting Destination..."
    sudo tmutil setdestination /Volumes/$SPARSEBUNDLE/
    sudo tmutil enable
    sudo tmutil disablelocal
fi
if [ "$1" == backup -o "$1" == all ]; then
    echo "Starting Backup..."
    sudo tmutil startbackup --block
fi
if [ "$1" == unmount ]; then
    echo "Detaching Sparse Disk"
    hdiutil detach /Volumes/$SPARSEBUNDLE/
    echo "Unmounting Samba"
    sudo umount $MOUNTPOINT
fi
if [ "$1" == createblankdisk ]; then
    echo sudo hdiutil create -size "$2"G -fs HFS+J -volname "$3" "$3".sparsebundle
fi
if [ "$1". == . -o "$1" == --help ]; then
    echo Time Machine Manager Script
    echo Options:
    echo all - Mount Remote HDD, Setup Time Machine, Create Backup
    echo mount - Mount Remote HDD
    echo enable - Setup Time Machine
    echo backup - Create Backup
    echo unmount - Unmount Remote HDD
    echo createblankdisk SIZE_IN_GB NAME - Create a blank disk with requested size in current folder. The created file has name NAME.sparsebundle
else
    echo "Done"
fi

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)

To stop OSX Auto-Save and Versions functionality, see here and to disable Saved Application State see here (I don't recommend doing that though) In general you can use Grand Perspective or another Disk Space Visualizer to see what are the large sized folders on your mac.

BTW, I found this guide on how to enable NTFS write on OSX. I havent tried it out though.

Even More Mac Tricks

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.

Networking, VMs and Firewalls

I use Samba to share files with my Windows Machines at home. However, for some reason, the PF firewall on my Mac does not allow SMB connections through. While it is possible to load custom rules into PF using Icefloor or manually, its often simplest just to disable PF as:

sudo pfctl -d

and when you are done, re-enable it as:

sudo pftcl -e

Another option: Use a VM. You can setup a Ubuntu VM with Bridged Networking, setup Shared Folders 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 avoid having to comply to GPLv3) This is not recommended unless you have a Mac with at least 8 GB of RAM.

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.

Other Mac Weirdness

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 disable caps lock entirely on the target machine.

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 manually create an entry for the drive in fstab. Then when you are done using the drive, you have to unmount it from the command line using the diskutil command.

Final Notes

I have yet to find a good replacement for Visio on my Mac. Omnigraffle looks to be good - lets see, I might get it. Some other interesting stuff I found:

• How to use your Mac as an Alarms Clock: http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/productivity/how-to-turn-your-mac-into-an-alarm-clock/
• How to reset your NVRAM: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379
• How to reset your SMC: https://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964

More Mac Tips and Tricks

Google Chrome and F5

So for some reason Google Chrome in OSX does not support F5 for refresh. This is easy to fix it turns out:

1. Open System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts
2. Click on Application Shortcuts in the Left Pane
3. Click the + button, select Google Chrome as the Application and enter "Reload This Page" as the menu title
4. Highlight the Keyboard Shortcut field and press F5

Source: http://productforums.google.com/d/msg/chrome/If0TdQ2m6hU/ZSrbu8BCDpwJ (Instructions for Lion are above)

Games on a Mac and Hot Corners

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.

Here's the AppleScript I ended up using:

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

Some useful links on the same:

• My original inspiration: https://gist.github.com/klynch/827581
• The repeat comes from here: http://dev.dota2.com/showthread.php?t=102450
• General Scripting Guidelines: http://macscripter.net/viewtopic.php?id=24773
• And some more: http://www.macosxautomation.com/applescript/features/system-prefs.html

Back Again - After 3 years!

Wow - its been 3 years since my last blog post. Wasn't expecting a wait this long :)

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.

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.

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 :)

Getting Tata Photon Working

• Download the drivers from here: http://www.tatadocomo.com/tata-photon-download-dialer.aspx
• See this post here for more details: https://discussions.apple.com/message/18139781#18139781

Keyboard Shortcuts

Some useful links

• http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1343
• http://www.danrodney.com/mac/index.html
• http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/Site/System%20Bindings.html
• http://guides.macrumors.com/Keyboard_shortcuts

Setup Windows File Transfer

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

Outlook on Mac

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:

com_microsoft_outlook_has_reminder = 1 && com_microsoft_outlook_author_email_addresses != *_YOUR_EXCHANGE_ID_@* && com_microsoft_outlook_recpient_email_addresses = *_YOUR_EXCHANGE_ID_@* && kMDItemDisplayName != Accepted:* && kMDItemDisplayName != Declined:* && kMDItemDisplayName != *Notification:*

Some useful links:

• http://verveguy.blogspot.in/2013/02/outlook-2011-mac-smart-folders.html
• http://blog.stevex.net/2011/03/outlook-2011-smart-folder-with-raw-query/
• 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
• https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Carbon/Reference/MDItemRef/Reference/reference.html

Disabling Message Recall in Outlook

Converted from a Google Wave to normal HTML since Wave is shutting down...

Blog Post - 27 May 2010
So this is a test of embedding a Wave in my blog. I have wanted to try to embed a Wave inside my blog for quite some time - lets see how it goes!

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

• Unintentional Transmission - Someone sent off a message to you when they didn't want to
• Post-Stinker Regret - Someone sent of a stinker, then had a moment of panic when his anger subsided

In either case, a recall attempt is usually a source of hilarity - even if its momentary.

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.

What this page 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.

This gives us the basis of disabling message recall on Outlook. Follow the steps below and message recalls will no longer work:
1. Inside Outlook, Go to Tools>Options. Click on the Email Options button. Click on the Tracking Options button
2. Uncheck the Process Request and Respones on arrival checkbox, click on the Ok buttons till all the dialogs close
3. Go to Tool>Rules and Alerts
4. Create a new Rule. Select "Move messages with specific words in the Subject to a folder".
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"
6. Click Next, Tick the "Stop Processing more rules" checkbox. Set the "specified folder" to Deleted Items
7. Click Next, Next, Finish

At the end of it, the rule should look like this:
Rule Screenshot


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.

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/>
tags for returns, so I had to convert it to a single line JS!

---

Original Post Below

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 this link instead.

Egypt Photos

Egypt photos are now up.

This time I took some time properly captioning, geo-tagging and touching them up...

My Final Fantasy XIII Themed PS3

I was trying to buy Final Fantasy XIII for my PS3 when what should I find - a Final Fantasy XIII skin for my PS3. The seller (intencity.in) seemed to have a lot 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

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 - check out the photos!

Binsar Photos

Photos from my Binsar trip are now up

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 pahadi 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 Jageshwar temples at least :)

From Binsar

Dammit I wrote a longish post using Opera mini, clicked preview and its gone... Give up...

Ranthambore Photos

Pics from my Ranthambore trip are now up.

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!

Off to Ranthambore

So I am off to Ranthambore for the new year - will put up pix once I return. I have really been ignoring my blog for some time - I guess its partly because of Twitter and partly because of Dragon Age :) Another thing - I simply share stories via Google Reader Shared Items to my Twitter account using TwitterFeed, so that dampens my enthusiasm to create a blog post of related links like I used to!

Buying Games in India

I have wanted to compile a list of places from where you can get games in India for quite some time.

Physical Shops

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 Shop No. 2, 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

Online - India

Next lets look at options to buy games from online shops in India. Here we have the two best options - EBay and Indiatimes. 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.

Online - Abroad

So here we have two basic options - Shop To and Play-Asia. 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.

Combined List

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.

• EBay - as noted above, the best option if you can find comparable prices from a Power Seller
  
• Indiatimes - 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/-
• Shop To - Sells PAL games, usually has cheapest prices, but charges for delivery.
• Play-Asia - Nice site, delivers to India. Has higher prices than Shop To but free delivery. Mostly NTSC games only
• Consoul - 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
• Letsbuy - M$ themselves recommend this one at multiple places. Stocks XBox Live Cards too. Also sells via Indiatimes
• Buy Original MS - M$'s unified selling portal for all software. Currently the front page is hijacked by a stupid obnoxious Windows 7 banner (love the OS BTW). You can get in by using a known URL. Stocks live cards. The site seems just a portal (like Indiatimes) - I doubt either M$ or the sellers will accept any liability so use at your wn risk!
  
• Game4u - M$ recommends this too. Lists but not stocks XBox Live Cards. Dedicated game site - havent tried it out.
• Groove India - Another dedicated game site. Havent tried it.
• Zook - General portal to search for goods via mobile; links to consoul for games.
• Game UK - I have seen people recommend this on forums.
• Gaming Indians - used to be useful - offered exclusive pre-orders etc. Now stuck in a recursive redirect
• Game Gears - Offers exclusive deals etc. via the forums

I dont know anything about these ones below - they just turned up via a Google search selling XBox Games in India

• Express India
• Shop Mania
• Rediff - OK, I know what this is. Never tried it out though!
• Times Multimedia
• Tech Shop
• Toy World
• Buy Gaming Stuff
  

Digital Services

Besides the obvious options (Steam etc. - I'll make a proper list one of these days!), you some companies (such as EA) also maintain their own digital stores. Then there is Apple's iTunes Store (only useful if you own a iPod Touch/iPhone obviously!)

But there are a couple of services I really want to mention - first is XBox Live Games on Demand. 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)

Second, we have the Games on Demand service from Indiagames. This comes for free on many of the higher end 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.

Signing Off

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!

Los Angeles and MAX 09 Photos

Photos from my recent trip to Los Angeles for Adobe MAX 2009 are now up.

Half of these were taken by Ankur Pathela, 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!

Coorg Photos

Photos from my Coorg trip are now up.



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.

I am a Speaker at Adobe MAX

Adobe MAX is an annual event hosted by Adobe which showcases the latest innovations and technologies under development at Adobe. I have been working on Adobe LiveCycle Solution Accelerators for some time now and I have been selected to present them at MAX this year.

There are two sessions scheduled - a presentation on Solutions Accelerators in general and a lab where you can learn how to use different solution accelerators. There is also a LC Solution Accelerator T-Shirt being given away if you are interested :)

You can find out more at the Adobe MAX Website and blog. If you wish to know more about my session, open up the scheduler and filter By Speaker name (its last name first) to view the session (and a short bio :))

September Update

I 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 :)

Playstation

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 noted that Sony India is refusing to release the PSN in India as internet speeds are too low. Whats amusing is that they are still toeing the same line... In the face of EA launching a games download store in India, Steam, XBox Live (including Games on Demand) 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...

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 hardware comparison 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 losing features as time goes on...

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 releasing them 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!

The other interesting thing that has happened is the backlash on Sony's own PS3 forums against 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 :)

P2P and Downloading

Sometime back, I had blogged about Seeqpod and the Yahoo Pipe 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 Adobe AIR app this time...

Also, it seems the Pirate Bay will soon be dead. Not to fear - guides abound on how to switch to Usenet or use another tracker. Someone even cloned 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.

Signing Out

I had written about how people were combating the extremely slow Ff 3.5 by optimizing its SQLite DBs. It seems someone els ehas figured out 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 taking quite a few pix with my cellphone camera with fiarly average (OK - pathetic) results. There is an article 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 legal music store 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...

Kumbhalgarh Trip Photos

Photos from my trip to Kumbhalgarh are now up.

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)

Off To Kumbalgarh

I am off to Kumbalgarh for a week or so - I will be back in Delhi on Monday. Before I left, I wanted to give a brief update.

I got accepted into the XBox Live Update Preview program. This is an update to the XBox that contains a bevy 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.

Another interesting feature - it seems M$ figured out how to significantly reduce game installl sizes. This will be useful- once I buy a hard disk for my XBox :) Some numbers are mentioned here and here. It seems some games may save as much as 1GB of space being installed on the new dashboard. Not bad!

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 entire articles on it. Wow!

On the portable front, it seems Nintendo blames Apple iPhone/iPod Touch for its financials. One developer in the meantime, went as far 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 statement on how jailbreaking your iphone/ipod touch may cause problems for you...

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...

July Update Part II

XBox 360

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. XBox Live 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 one by Play Asia which is possibly the most famous, but another one by xbox-sky is the most comprehensive. In general, most Western games and non-RPGs have no region locking while all JRPGs are strongly region locked.

The console came with 5 free arcade titles (Boom Boom Rocket, Feeding Frenzy, Luxor 2, Pac-Man Championship Edition, and Uno) as well as Forza Motorsport 2 and Viva Pinata. Unlike the PS3, the XBox 360 has backward compatibility 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 RPG page on their India site. Not all of these are available in India, but I can always order from Shop-To or Play-Asia. (I have heard Game UK also delivers to India - haven't tried it out)

It seems it will soon be possible to download full games off of XBox Live so this may not be a problem after that. (I can always use Airtel's Speed On Demand to grab the game quickly). BTW, it seems its quite hard to make M$ let go of your credit card information once you provide it to them!

Seeqpod and Yahoo Pipes

Quite some time back, I published a Yahoo Pipe that would allow you to grab music off of Seeqpod. Now, Seeqpod is dead and it seems record labels are suing developers for using its API. I have unpublished my pipe accordingly. Yahoo Pipes, meanwhile, seem to be in a decent shape while Microsoft Popfly and Google Mashup Editor are both more or less dead. I havent used it for quite some time - I used to use Pipes to monitor webages without a RSS feed. The Update Scanner 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.

Google Reader

Google Reader just introduced an extremely obnoxious "Like" feature. It shows a "Like" button in the toolbar. If you Like something, it gets shared 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 User script) 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!

Evony

I am sure just about anyone browsing tech/gaming sites has been running into the Evony or Civony series of ads. Many of them are vaguely suggestive - meaning it suddenly renders your average tech site NSFW, specially in prudish India. Others on the net are also complaining about these ads. Still others are performing analysis of the game and how it is run by "chinese gold farmers" (wow! borderline racist!). You can file a complaint about these ads with Google if you like.

Other Stuff

The World eBook Fair 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 submit your home WiFi Access Point 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.

Graceful 3 column to 2 column to 1 column degradation using CSS

I have been wanting to update my blog profile from rounders3 to something a bit more malleable for some time now.

This week I finally got around to it. You can see the results on this blog. It now degrades gracefully from 3-column to 2-column to 1-column mode.

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)

This works on all browsers - except IE of course. Older browsers may require the page to be refreshed.

Also, in Print mode, the columns disappear and the footer is replaced with copyright text.

This is all done using CSS 3 Media Queries. These are not supported in Internet Explorer - even v8. Get The Facts - "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?

How did I actually do this? I started off with the instructions given here. They point out that you can use a CSS left and right float 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, clear can be used to ensure that there are no floating elements next to a given element.

Besides this, we have Media Queries. 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.

Normally you would expect the iPod to respond to handheld, but unfortunately, Apple ignores the handheld tag. In its place, they ask you to query on screen resolution instead.

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 !important qualifier. Also, if two rules with !important are triggered at the same time, the one which occurs first is given priority.

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.

@media only screen and (max-width: 1000px) {
.sidebar-wrap-left {
margin:15px 0px 0px 20px !important;
}
.sidebar-wrap-right {
clear: both !important;
margin:15px 0px 0px 20px !important;
float:left !important;
}
#main-wrap1 {
margin:15px 20px 0px 290px !important;
}
}

This comes below the above for 600-1000 (Note the overlap):

@media print, handheld, only screen and (max-width: 600px) {
.sidebar-wrap-left {
display: none !important;
}
.sidebar-wrap-right {
display: none !important;
}
#main-wrap1 {
margin:15px 20px 0px 20px !important;
}
}

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)

#uds-searchControl .gsc-resultsbox-visible {
clear:none !important;
}

#uds-searchControl .gsc-tabsArea {
display:none !important;
}

None of this would have been possible without the amazing Firebug 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.

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 quite a beating recently by the way. I don't think 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)

Lastly, I have been having a lot of trouble 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 optimizing FF3.5's SQLite databases to clearing out your Temp Folder, Recycle Bin and Temporary Internet Files - it seems its a bug. 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.