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Posting from Windows Live Writer!

I must say, Microsoft is improving its tools! this one is posted from Windows Live Writer available for download from here:

http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/

New Laptop

I finally purchased the iBall laptop. After extensive market research for features/price/performance, I bought the Emperor High end model. The configuration of the laptop is :

• 1.7GHz Pentium M Centrino Processor.
• 1 GB DDR RAM.
• 80 GB Harddisk.
• DVD Plus Writer.
• ATI Mobility Radeon 256bMB Graphics Card.
• 15.4" Wide WXGA Screen - Resolution upto 1680 X 1050.
• Builty-in Sub woofer, Mic, Bluetooth, Wireless Networking.

The laptop simply rocks. I've installed Windows XP Home Edition, Windows LongHorn 4051 PDC and Ubuntu Linux. Surprisingly Ubuntu has detected all the hardware except bluetooth and TV tuner. And with Oracle 10g Server, Thunerbird, Eclipse, JBoss running, the system still runs as a cool breeze.

And the widescreen is simply amazing. Now I can look into serious development anywhere. And the connectivity to internet is via bluetooth phone Nokia 3230. All in all, a very good deal. I just started with writing articles on my laptop about Eclipse-Jboss development. Check them out at http://vijaykiran.com

Better late than never.

It's been a while I posted something onto my blog. Things are moving fast at my end. I couldn't really keep track of them :)

Okay here's what happened during these days of no-posting:

1. I got the Personal loan to centralize all my inherited-debts. Its 2.5Lac loan from HSBC.
2. I am on a look out for a good laptop, Finally decided to buy an iBall laptop costing 81K, if I'm going to buy Intel+Windows laptops.
3. After our CEO's resignation, now my HOD left the company. So all in all, things seems completely out of direction as far as my career is concerned.
4. Started working on XUL/FireFox application development.
5. Because of having lots and lots of boring time to spend, I subscribed to Unlimited DVD rental. So I can watch movies at home.
6. Started reading Zen and Art of Motorcycle maintenance.
   

After 5 long years of waiting, my parents finally got rid of the loans they made. I am in the process of sending money to them, to clear the debts. It's a good achievement, eventhough little late. I wanted them to worry less about the money matters.

Buying a laptop has always been a dream for me. But I guess I'm into a situation where I can afford it now. After extensive market analysis, I was able to get the best deal from iBall laptops, They have 15.4" WXGA with 1GB RAM, DVD Writer, and 256MB Graphics Card, and 80GB HDD, and built-in TV Tuner card. All for Rs.81,000/- (Emperor Model). So I was prepared to buy that one.

My primary purpose in buying the laptop is for software development. Suddenly I stumbled upon the Apple Notebooks, which are pricey, but excellent for development. Incidentally, Apple has got a dealer here in chandigarh, after calling him, I found out that, Apple is going to give some discounts for Quark Employees. And advised me to wait till the end of this month. So, my laptop purchase now stalled till end of the month.

Things are not certainly good at workplace now a days, besides from not having good work to do, there are lot of turbulence following my HOD's resignation and extremely high rate of attrition. I'm seriously thinking of my career, and planning for a change. May be i'll look for a job in Delhi, partly due to personal reasons.

Mozilla has always been a good choice for developing cross-platform applications. I'm always wanted to develop some application using that technology. The time has come now. I'm currently learning XUL and Mozilla platform, I'm amazed by the overwhelming components available under the Mozilla platform. Hats off guys! I've just started and preparing some small prototypes for XUL+Firefox applications. I'll be writing tutorials at my DevCenter.

About movies Madhouse gave me the best deal ... Rs500/- a month for unlimited DVDs on rent. I got A Beautiful Mind, A Bug's Life and Aladdin Special Edition DVDs for the first set. The latter two discs didn't play on my DVD player, there was some problem with the region, I had to hack my Samsung HT-DS100 Home Theatre system to play them. They are wonderful.

I've finished watching A Beautiful Mind, excellent movie. It's the story of John Nash, a genius mathematician, portrayed by Russell Crowe. This movies falls under must-see list.

Zen and Art of Motorcycle repairing is a wonderful book, I've not yet read half of it, I am eager to complete the book ASAP. Very interesting and excellent book that speaks about life's value and quality. As Amazon.com review says

Arguably one of the most profoundly important essays ever written on the nature and significance of "quality" and definitely a necessary anodyne to the consequences of a modern world pathologically obsessed with quantity. Although set as a story of a cross-country trip on a motorcycle by a father and son, it is more nearly a journey through 2,000 years of Western philosophy. For some people, this has been a truly life-changing book.

And finally, I subscribed to Safari bookshelf form orielly network, so that I can keep my self updated with latest technologies.

Our First Masterpiece

Created with Yahoo! Messenger's Doodle IMVironment.

Yahoo launches MyWeb2.0 beta

Similar to del.icio.us Yahoo launched its new MyWeb2 service. Now you can save your bookmarks or links and tag them. And the links can be shared with users in your network. And even the shared links can be searched using the tags as well.

Yahoo is integrating its services one-by-one, buit around the Yahoo 360.

I am famous!

Saw this image anywhere?

This was created by me last year for a colleague's blog, When I was working for ESN Technologies, Hyderabad.

One of my friends, sent me this recently via some junk mail, I just looked at the image, and how strange internet is! When I look at the image I feel like its my own hand writing .. I still rememeber the layers the Arrow creation I've done using photoshop.. really Internet is a strage place.

So finally I am famous .. anonymously!

Google vs Yahoo

Of late I am thinking about google .. I am now almost convinced that Google is going to hit a wall eventually.And I am not into Search-Research related software development, instead I am focusing on Enterprise Software (Small-Medium) .. I think more IT penetration is needed in that sector. Innovation was the major reason of google success till now and it will continue to be.

Google is very geeky and developer-centric.The culture google created has certainly been impressive and brought so many changes in the industry.
Its competittor Yahoo! is trying to be a Media company rather than fully-innovation driven company.

The asset of google is that its still in control of Larry and Brain for now .. but after some-time the control might not be in their hands .. down the lane that is bound to happen for a IPO'd company. Google is different from them when you compare with Oracle, M$FT and oracle and the only company I believe that has very high level of IP is Sun and you know where sun is right now. Google's strength and problem is innovation .. oracle doesn't invent anything new ..
they just provide the services,Unlike Sun which has one of the most advanced research projects going on even right now,that every one needs every day .. and they survive and even make profits on them .. and the google's very existence is based on their innovations.

Being just a bunch of innovative engineers doesn't make anyone win the software market. That's why I am expecting the fall of google .. not pretty soon by the way .. :). Google's life depends on Yahoo & Amazon's innovation as well.

Windows Installer XML

WIX is Opensource tool to create Windows Installer packages .. might be useful for people who are developing Software for windows. It helps in creating/compiling the MSI packages.

Dev, Thanks for the link!

Old but Funny

YOU ARE ATTEMPTING TO INSTALL WINDOWS 2000, ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO CONTINUE?

- Yes.

ARE YOU REALLY SURE?

- Yes.

ARE YOU REALLY REALLY SURE?

- YES!

OK, THEN. JUST SO YOU KNOW, WE'RE REQUIRED TO ASK YOU THAT NOW. IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT FOR BEING A PICKY CONSUMER AND SUPPORTING THAT WHOLE "ANTI-TRUST" NONSENSE. INGRATE.

- Just get on with it.

ATTEMPTING TO INSTALL WINDOWS 2000. FIRST WE NEED TO CHECK YOUR SYSTEM FOR COMPATIBILITY. THIS COULD TAKE SEVERAL DAYS.

- Groan.

THE INSTALL PROGRAM HAS DETECTED SEVERAL POSSIBLE PROBLEMS AND WILL NOT LET YOU INSTALL ME.

- Problems? What problems?

THE VIDEO CARD YOU ARE USING APPARENTLY DOES NOT WORK WITH THE MOTHERBOARD.

- But I'm using it at this very moment.

THAT IS IRRELEVANT.

-But if the video card isn't working with the mother board then I can't very well see this warning message telling me that the video card wasn't...

DO NOT ATTEMPT TO FOOL ME WITH LOGIC, I AM A MICROSOFT PRODUCT. LOGIC DOES NOT WORK ON ME. I HAVE ALSO FOUND THE FOLLOWING MINOR ERRORS: WINDOWS 2000 IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH THE FOLLOWING HARDWARE - MONITOR, KEYBOARD, MEMORY CHIPS, MOTHERBOARD BIOS, WEB CAM, SCANNER, SOUND CARD, USB CONTROLLER, CD/R DRIVE, MICROPHONE, AND FLIGHT STICK.

- All that?

YES. AND THE HARDDRIVE IS RIGHT OUT TOO. WE DON'T LIKE THE MANUFACTURER.

- Well what *DOES* work?

THE MOUSE.

- The mouse?

YES. AND THE 5 1/4 DRIVE.

- I don't have a 5 1/4 drive.

YES YOU DO.

- No I don't.

WHAT'S THAT THEN?

- It's a 3 1/2 drive.

NO IT ISN'T.

- Yes it is.

.. HEY, WHAT IS THAT? WHAT ARE YOU DOING? IS THAT A DISK? WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH THAT DISK? YOU'RE NOT PUTTING IT IN THE DRIVE ARE YOU? YOU ARE! WHAT'S ON THAT DISK. IS THAT LINUX? YOU'RE INSTALLING LINUX?? WHY WOULD YOU INSTALL DOS WHEN I AM INFINITELY MORE POWE..........

KeyHole is now Google Earth

I used Keyhole - a 3D - Satellite-World Viewer software, after it has been acquired by google. It was the trail edition then. Now its been rebranded to Google Earth and like all other google tools its FREE! You can download it from here.

Its one of the most interesting software I've ever seen. You can view the satellite images to the finest detail available using this. There's one more software that does the same: NASA's Worldwind.

Download Google Earth and check for yourself. One of the most beautiful software evermade, of course only for geeks! :)

The Flower Blog

Here is one of the nice blogs I found on random blogspotting... luz e cor

Rain Rain Come Again!

Seems like summer is over here in chandigarh. It was a rainy day till now. Clouded and very nice weather after a long time, although little humid. Temperature is down to 29Degrees and the Humidity is 85%. The temperatures during the summers have been 44Degrees+. The forecast for the next four days shows thunderstorms, so the rainy days are here finally .. Another summer ends on a rainy note!

XAMPP

From the site

XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use - just download, extract and start.

I know the amount of time and understanding neded to install all the OpenSource Apps, and then make them work properly with each other. The configuration does take time. I stumbled upon this peice of software just now. I downloaded the windows installer version and installed it. There's an integrated control panel for starting/stopping Apache, MySQL, FileZilla FTP server and Mercury Mail server. It's fairly straight forward.

The StartMenu programs for XAMPP are start/stop XAMPP Services and also a link to the Apache htdocs folder. MySQL 4.1.12 is already started without any worries. Wow! Great work.
And after installation and starting the XAMPP services through control panel, there's also a home page with great tools like: phpMyAdmin(for MySQL administration), Webalizer (Webtraffic analysis), PHP Switch ( for switching betwenn PHP 4 / PHP 5).

All in all a very good tool.

LAMP has always been one of the best platform for web-application development, other than Java. And major websites like Yahoo!(PHP) and Google(mostly Python) use this as the preferred platform.

Chandigarh - Topview

The Google Map's view of The City Beautiful. On the top-right corner you can see a large waterbody. Its the sukhna lake near sector one of chandigarh. Here's the link.