Anil's Technica

How to connect a network drive at startup easily

2008-11-16T07:30:00.000-08:00

Recently I added an Ubuntu server at home so I can wirelessly store my data on a large hard drive. I configured Samba server in Ubuntu and the Mac would connect to it using Finder's "Connect to" menu.

However, once I reboot, the drive is gone, and I have to use the Finder again to connect the drive.

There is a very easy way Macs can connect a network drive at startup, just follow these steps:

Mount the drive
Open "Accounts" in system preferences
Drag the mounted drive's icon from the desktop to the login items.

Done! It's that simple!

Windows XP home does not save network passwords

2008-11-04T05:34:00.000-08:00

I can connect to a network drive using Windows XP home edition fine.

But I have to enter a password after each reboot.

However, there is a nifty "Remember Password" option in XP Pro.

Now where did the little checkbox go in XP home?

Apparently M$ didn't include the ability to save network passwords on Windows XP Home edition. They want me to buy XP Pro version so I can save my passwords.

And oh, the official explanation given by M$ is "XP home lacks security features for retained passwords" - therefore they chucked out the "remember password" button altogether.

Great way to build a home OS!

My iPhone dreams are shattered

2008-07-01T09:04:00.000-07:00

Just like the majority of students, I'm poor, but I have dreams.

My latest dream was to get an iPhone.

Why I want iPhone? Because it has many features not found in other commonly available/commonly known phones. It's more like a fashion statement than a machine of need. That makes it hot for any student.

The only thing that was preventing me from buying it was a prohibitive price tag of $400. It's now been taken off, and it's down to $200, though it continues to be advertised as $199 by the respective companies in hopes that many will not feel the pinch by seeing the number start with 1 rather than 2.

But I do feel the pinch, and I have decided not to buy an iPhone despite waiting for it for a long time. Here's why:

I worked out the total yearly cost of ownership of iPhone:

Item

One-time cost

1-year cost

iPhone handset	199	199
Tax	16.4175	16.4175
Minimum monthly rental	69.99	839.88
"Activation" fee	36	36
SMS	5	60
Total		1151.2975

Total cost of ownership of an iPhone is $1151.30.

I'd rather invest that money in books, food, rent, and paying other bills.

I'm sorry Apple and AT&T but you have disappointed me by first showing me a glimpse of reduced cost, but eventually not doing it at all.

No iPhone for me.

Edit: I'm deviating from my usual policy of including pictures in posts, because I don't want to see an iPhone pic now.

The longest Firefox 3 error message!

2008-06-30T10:55:00.000-07:00

Another site that forces users into Internet Explorer, and how to bypass it

2008-06-24T17:17:00.000-07:00

Update: After numerous customer complaints, Airtel's website now works with Safari.

I'm an Indian living in USA, and I use Airtel's calling card service to make phone calls to India. All was well until two weeks back when I ran out of my balance and wanted to fill dollars into my account as usual. I was horrified to see the message "Please use Internet Explorer" when I tried to login to their website using Safari or Firefox 3!

A quick call to their "customer care" tells me the reason:

"Sir we have performed some upgrades to our website and you can use only IE at this time".

I asked:
"There is no IE for Mac users, so does it mean Mac users can't use your service anymore?"

Answer was quick:
"I'm afraid yes sir, you will have to use Internet Explorer from some other computer to recharge your balance".

What a great business idea - the customer wants to give your company his money, but the company has an upgraded website that won't let him login!

Here's how I bypassed the IE enforcement:

1. Launch Safari on your Mac and open its preferences (command and , keys at the same time)
2. Go to the last tab of Preferences and check "Show develop menu in menu bar"
3. Click the Develop menu in the Safari menu bar, and choose Develop -> User Agent -> Internet Explorer 7.0
4. Now you can login to the Airtel website!

Note: If you keep seeing a Verisign image after logging in, check the "remember me" option when logging in, and then go back to their homepage. You'll log right in without any problem!

IE enforcers, I have pwned you!

Getting MacFUSE to work on Leopard: The twists and turns

2008-06-22T02:18:00.000-07:00

I finally got MacFUSE working on my Leopard installation. Total time taken = a little more than one hour. I feel like I'm using Windows again :(

I grabbed the dmg of MacFUSE from Amit's page here and installed the kernel extension of MacFUSE. Rebooted.

Installed SSHFS from the same site.

When I ran sshfs.app from Applications folder, it seemed to accept the server address and my username, but whenever I entered my password, it kept asking me to enter password again. I checked using Little Snitch - the app was not trying to make any connection at all to my server!

I spent a good one hour trying to figure out what's wrong and here it is:

First I had to connect to that server using terminal's ssh command. When you do it for the first time, the RSA fingerprint is displayed and you type "yes" to accept it. It is then added to the list of known hosts, which is essential for SSHFS.app to function.

But this was not as simple. Running the ssh command in Terminal gave me a "bus error".

Now go figure!

I spent another 15 minutes trying to find out what's wrong again, and here it is:

Rogue Amoeba's software "Audio Hijack Pro" contains an "extra" called "Instant Hijack". I had earlier enabled this, but this is interfering with ssh. So I disabled the Instant Hijack feature, connected to the server using terminal ssh for the first time, added server RSA fingerprint to the list of known hosts, and finally...

I can now use MacFUSE!

Birth pangs of Firefox 3

2008-06-17T19:52:00.000-07:00

The world record that Mozilla foundation is heading towards sounds ambitious, and I am confident they will get it. Firefox is going to become the most popular browser ever, no doubt about it - it's now only a matter of time.

I downloaded Firefox 3 today for Mac, and I'm impressed with many new features. However, after using it for 4 hours, I already see a couple of areas for improvement:

1. Mac specific problems (as always): Websites created with iWeb '08 won't show the photo pages at all! However, websites created with previous versions of iWeb work well. There is a solution from an enthusiastic Apple user, but looks like Mozilla will take some time to listen.

2. 1 Billion people ignored: I'm an Indian, and want to use Firefox in my language. But that's my own selfish demand. Let's say that in another way: "If you make a Hindi language pack for Firefox, you will be able to reach 1 billion people directly". You heard it right, 1 billion - one sixth of world population.

3. Imperfect anti-phishing mechanisms: I also noticed that the anti-phishing system relies on reporting by suspecting users rather than a built-in algorithm. This has two flaws: 1. Not all phishing websites can be reported, 2. Not all can be reported in time - the reporting then just serves as a "damage control" mechanism rather than a method of prevention. I think it'd be great if Firefox can scan a link's text if it's made to look like a link, and alert the user if the link points to some other website. For example:

http://getfirefox.com

But it takes them to www.randomwebsite.com

4. In-browser PDF display: Just like the previous versions, you must download a PDF and open it with a different application - Firefox 3 cannot display PDF files inside the browser. The solution came rather quickly from Google. I haven't tested it, but it's reported to work well.

How to take a screenshot in Mac with mouse pointer included

2008-06-13T13:03:00.000-07:00

I am making a few design instruction tutorials these days, and I was looking for a way to include the mouse pointer with my screenshots. I started off with superimposing the picture of a mouse pointer on the screenshot using a graphic editing tool using layers. However, that's not the best way.

The best way is this:

1. Start "Grab" from your "Utilities" folder in "Applications"

2. Open Grab's preferences by pressing command and , together or using the menu item.

3. Select the mouse pointer of your choice to be included when taking screenshots.

4. Use Grab to take as many screenshots as you like - your mouse pointer will always be included as long as you take shots with Grab.

Please note that if you set the preferences in Grab, but take a screenshot by pressing Command+Shift+3 or Command+Shift+4, the mouse pointer will not be included. You must take a shot with Grab itself to include the mouse pointer in your screenshots.

Complex language support in Firefox 3

2008-06-12T15:12:00.000-07:00

Hindi is a language spoken by a little less than one billion people worldwide. One out of every six people in the world speak this language. However it is severely neglected in computing so far, despite being very scientific in grammatical structure.

In Firefox 2 for Mac, hindi language display support was entirely lacking so far, and here is what I used to see when I opened a webpage made in Hindi:

To be frank, seeing all question marks in the browser main window is not a pleasant sight. It's a big warning signal for any multilingual person, leading to abandonment of either the browser or the website.

Interestingly enough, the text in title bar of Firefox 2 for Mac displayed correctly!

Clearly, complex language support was build into Firefox, but it was not being implemented well.

Firefox 2 for windows was able to show some support - it showed the hindi glyphs and many of their combinations well, but display of "matras" (vowel symbols) was inconsistent.

However Safari rendered the entire text beautifully, both in browser window as well as title bar:

I am pleased to report that things are looking very well in the new Firefox 3 release candidate:

In fact, I couldn't tell a difference between the text rendering in Safari vs. Firefox 3.

Firefox3 for windows rendered complex text flawlessly too:

However you can see a noticeable difference in font smoothing and anti-aliasing capability of Windows which is inferior to Mac as usual.

A solid build-in Hindi support in major operating systems today will enable the vast majority of population in India to use computers for their daily use - a huge market that no one can ignore.

Firefox listened, but are others listening?

Related: Learn Hindi Podcast

How to change your home directory in Mac OS X easily

2008-06-10T02:21:00.001-07:00

First up, there should be no need for an average user to change their home directory for casual use. This option is only for geeks, please do not try just for the sake of trying.

1. Login as a user with administrator privileges and open System Preferences.

2. Click on "Accounts" under "System" section

3. Make sure the "lock" symbol in the bottom of System Preferences window is open. If not, click the lock, enter your password and it'll open up.

4. Ctrl+click (or right click with mouse) the username whose home directory you wish to change.

5. Click on "Advanced options..."

6. Enter a desired home directory location in the appropriate field and hit OK.

Related post on changing home directory in linux/unix can be found here.

Have you tried the new "group chat" in Gmail?

2008-06-09T05:25:00.000-07:00

Gmail now includes group chat, and few people have noticed.

To use group chat, just start a conversation like usual. To add more people to the chat, click on "options" in the existing chat window and you can then invite other people in the same chat.

Can't see animated buddy profile pics in iChat? Try this!

2008-06-08T22:12:00.001-07:00

Sometimes your friend finds a fancy animated gif off the web, and he assigns that as his profile picture in iChat. But you can't see the animation, rather the picture remains static. Here's an easy way to see the animated version:

1. Open iChat

2. Open iChat preferences from menu (or press command and , together)

3. Go to "General" tab

4. Select the checkbox against "Animate buddy pictures".

You can now see the animation in your buddy pictures!

How to play a sound when an iChat buddy comes online

2008-06-08T21:39:00.001-07:00

I was thinking if there is a way iChat could play a sound file of my choice when my sister comes online. I thought it'd require some scripting, so I spent an hour searching for some applescript. But eventually I was able to do this without any scripting at all. This is something built right into iChat!

Here's how:

1. Open iChat and locate your buddy that you want to set a sound for. If your buddy is offline right now, you can locate him/her in the offline group.

2. Right click on their name, and select "Show Info"

3. In the next window that comes up, choose "Alerts" tab.

4. In "Event", choose "When buddy becomes available"

5. Choose a sound

6. Set other options in the same screen to your liking. Make sure the last checkbox "Perform alerts only next time this event occurs" is not checked.

Done!

Has Yahoo made POP access free for all?

2008-04-09T20:07:00.000-07:00

I heard one can't use Yahoo's free email with POP clients like Outlook, Thunderbird or Apple Mail without upgrading to their premium service. At least this was the case last year when I tried accessing my Yahoo emails with Apple Mail and it simply refused.

Yesterday I tried it again, and now it works.

I have not purchased any Yahoo Premium Services. This is how my "premium services" look like:

All I did was to enter my Yahoo email ID and password when I opened Apple Mail for the first time, and used the "automatic setup" option. It did everything, no need to type in pop or smtp servers.

At first, I thought some software like yahoopops might be built-into OS X, or I may have installed one inadvertently. So I tried sending a mail, and it worked like a charm!

So now I have Yahoo's premium service for free. Do you?

How to test sound in Skype

2008-04-07T10:14:00.000-07:00

One of my friends wanted to test if his microphone is working alright with Skype, but he doesn't have anyone in his contact list as yet. He wanted to know how he can test sound. Here's how:

Simply add a user named echo123 to your address book. Then make a call to this user. This user is actually an automated sound testing service by Skype. When you make a call, a voice will greet you, and you can record your sound after a beep. After 10 seconds, the sound it recorded will play back, so you can make adjustments in your settings accordingly.

Update: Just found out this one while scouring through Skype help pages: If you're having problems with any Skype feature, and you think the "server is down" or the problem is on Skype's side rather than yours, just go to http://heartbeat.skype.com . It'll tell you if all Skype components are working alright on their server side.

How to change iPhoto's default folder location easily

2008-03-08T13:55:00.001-08:00

My iPhoto library is getting bigger and bigger, and it is now consuming 20GB of my 60GB Macbook hard drive. Now is a good time to relocate the photos to an external storage location in such a way that iPhoto is still able to recognize them. There are many ways to change iPhoto's default folder location, but this is the easiest:

1. Make a backup of your current iPhoto library (/Users/yourname/Pictures/iPhoto Library/)

2. Delete the original iPhoto Library folder.

3. Launch iPhoto

4. iPhoto will not be able to find it's library, so it'll present with this dialog box:

5. Using the above dialog box, click "Choose Library" and locate your alternate iPhoto Library location.

Now that was easy!

Top 20 Mario facts

2007-07-09T12:24:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm on a break from technology days. So let me post something about another of my long time passions - video games! This post is all about top 20 facts about Mario! Hope you enjoy reading it.

1. How old is Mario?
Answer: 26 years now (First game "Donkey Kong" released in 1981). He was then known as "Jumpman".

2. What is Mario's last name (surname)?
Answer: Mario does not have a last name!

3. Where was Mario created?
Answer: Japan

4. Who created Mario?
Answer: Shigeru Miyamoto

5. Where does Mario live?
Answer: Mushroom Kingdom

6. What is Mario's occupation?
Answer: He's a plumber.

7. What is Mario's nationality?
Answer: He is Italian.

8. Why does Mario wear a cap?
Answer: Because his designer found it difficult to draw hair. So he gave Mario a cap to wear. Smart!

9. What happens when Mario loses his cap?
Answer: He is more vulnerable to damage by enemies. Watch a video of Mario losing his cap.

10. Which weapons does Mario use?
Answer: Mario is so powerful that he doesn't need to use any weapons. However, he sometimes uses a hammer. He also throws fireballs after eating a Fire Flower but that's not considered to be a weapon. Rather it's an "ability".

11. Is Mario fat?
Answer: Yes, of course. He was created to be short, fat but agile and kind.

12. What is Mario's favorite food?
Answer: Mario's most favorite food is pasta. He also likes pizza.

13. Who does Mario rescue?
Answer: Princess Peach

14. What reward does Mario receive after rescuing the princess?
Answer: A kiss.

15. Who is Mario's twin brother?
Answer: Luigi

16. Who is Mario's enemy?
Answer: Bowser

17. Who is Mario's lookalike bad guy?
Answer: "Wario"

18. Does the baby Mario have a mustache?
Answer: Yes, Mario has a mustache ever since he was born!

19. Name the only three human inhabitants of the Mushroom Kingdom
Answer: Mario, Luigi and Princess Peach

20. How many Mario games have been sold so far?
Answer: Mario games are THE bestsellers in the history of video games so far. The Super Mario series alone has sold about 70 million copies!

How to backup iCal calendars in OS X

2007-06-26T23:36:00.001-07:00

I was looking for a way to backup and restore iCal calendars on my MacBook running OS X. A quick Google search took me to a page on Apple's website. I tried to follow the instructions but it appears the page is outdated. Here is the correct information:

iCal saves your calendars as .ics files in this folder: ~/Library/Application Support/iCal/Sources/. There should be some folders in the Sources folder - each one corresponds to a particular calendar in your iCal (e.g. home, office etc). I have no idea why their names appear so funny - lots of alphabets just jumbled up together. Anyhow, you can back up your calendars by copying this folder to your backup location (file server, external hard drive, CD-ROM, and so forth).

Quickest way to spell in OS X

2007-06-25T13:29:00.000-07:00

I just discovered this:

If you're typing a word in Mac OS X, and are stuck midway because you don't know how to spell the rest of it, OS X can offer you suggestions based on its built-in dictionary. To evoke the suggestions, just press "escape" key on the keyboard while the cursor is at the end of incomplete word. It's ultra-handy!

Note: The same feature could also be accessed by pressing F5, but I feel escape button is a lot more easy to press. That's why it's called "escape" key :P

Five days without a computer

2007-06-18T12:30:00.000-07:00

My mac was refusing to sleep, and I decided to take it to the Apple store for diagnostics as the 1 year warranty is ending next month. The Apple Genius decided it needs surgery, so he kept it there. He told me I can get my computer back after five days. I said "O.K." and came back.

After coming back, the first thing I did was to rush for my desk and check my email.

But look, there's no computer! Oh stupid me! I just sent it for repairs! How can I forget? A sudden feeling of handicap grasps me. I am restless for half an hour, and then decide to sleep because I can't find a keyboard or a mouse to place my restless fingers! I wake up after two hours and suddenly discover how refreshing a daytime nap can be! I never had any afternoon naps in the last ten years, I think because I had a computer all this while!

Day passes, evening comes. I wasn't finding enough time to study for physician licensing exam over the last month or so. But that evening, I just sit in the living room couch with the book, and I spent five hours there at one stretch! Perhaps that is my longest uninterrupted time with books in the last ten years!

I get fidgety in the night because I want to chat with my sister in India, just like every other day. By now I have understood that I actually do not have any working computer, so I call her on phone. She's very pleasantly surprised to receive my phone call, and we chat for two hours. I just made her day!

Next morning, I have more time for my girlfriend, she's happy as well. I also finish several incomplete tasks in "real world" like fixing the sandwich maker and tidying up the kitchen shelves. After that I take some extra time to cook a delicious Indian curry. Post prandium, I also have the desire to take out that food processor from its box (for the first time ever I bought it last year) and actually place some litchi shake with coconut water. Man that was awesome!

I didn't have any computer for five days straight, and boy, life was fun! I pampered myself so much, like never before!

And damn! My masters' thesis topic is "Determinants of Internet Addiction".

I am sure gonna write my own experience somewhere in the introduction to my thesis!!!

And now that my computer is back, I am rediscovering "how to use a computer". What I know so far - "use it sparingly, like a medicine".

How to change your OS X drive icons to any picture of your choice

2007-06-17T13:55:00.000-07:00

I want to place my picture as my Macintosh hard drive icon. This is pretty easy to do.

Software required:

OS X (obviously)
An advanced image editor like GIMP/GIMPshop or Photoshop

Methodology:

Open the picture you want to convert in your favorite image editor. Make a square selection of what you want to convert into an icon. The length should be exactly equal to the width. (Press Shift key when dragging your selection in GIMPshop)
Crop the picture and save a copy somewhere.
Resize the image to 128x128 pixels.
Adjust the brightness, contrast and colors to your liking. You should adjust these values after resizing the image because some images lose their "shine" when you make them small. You might also want to sharpen the image a bit to compensate for this. Using GIMPshop, I use a sharpness level of 60.

Before -------------- After
When you're done, save the file again, and close GIMPshop.
Now open the same file you saved, with "Preview". Start dragging a rectangle in preview, and make sure you select all of the file.
Now hit "Command+C" to copy the contents of the file.
Click on the drive icon you want to change, and press "Command+I". This will get info for that drive.
In the info pane, there will be a small icon for the drive on the top. Click on this icon, and then press "Command+V".
Viola! You now have the picture you wanted as your drive icon! :)

She lost her job because she used openoffice

2007-06-15T14:23:00.000-07:00

One of my friends (let's call her Alice) got her first computer recently. She had just joined a interior design company, and wanted to make her life easy by learning "office software". I asked her to be specific. She said she wants to learn "Microsoft".

"She wants to learn Microsoft"?

I made some alphabetical calculations in my mind and came up with "Do you mean Microsoft Office? Like Word, PowerPoint, Excel etc?". She promptly nodded in affirmative.

I asked her budget, and quickly came the answer "Can I get it for free?"

Being an open source enthusiast, I said "Well, if you don't mind using office software by another company, you can get it for free".

I wanted to tell her what open source is, and how can she benefit from it. But it appeared that she was just itching to get the download link. I downloaded openoffice.org, and burned a CD for her.

She went back and installed her brand new "office software", and started learning on her own. Smart lady!

After about 10 days, she calls me, crying on the phone "You know what... (sob) these damned people (sob)... they took my job (sob)... I'm fired (sob)... because my presentation didn't open (sob)..."

It took me some time to calm her down, and soon figured out what happened:

She had to work on an important presentation due on Monday. So she thought she'd work on it during the weekend at home. She used openoffice to make the presentation, saved it with her name (alice.odp), and took it along on Monday. She arrives in the office at 9am and everyone is waiting for her to make the presentation. She plugs in her USB drive in the computer confidently, double clicks the file, and the computer says "Windows doesn't know how to open this file. Choose another program from the list".

She chose Microsoft PowerPoint from the list, but the presentation won't open. PowerPoint says it's not a presentation at all! Her technical superviser tried to help, but even he had no idea how to open .odp files. Smarty also tried changing the extension to .ppt but it didn't work.

Her boss was infuriated because it was a very very important business presentation, it wasn't working, and the client left. Alice was fired immediately.

Now I'll think not twice, but thrice before advocating open source software to noobs like Alice.

I still feel confused, shocked, and guilty.

Who is to blame for this?

Myself?
Alice?
Openoffice.org?
Her boss?
Microsoft??

I think all of the above.

When you take your Mac to an Apple Genius

2007-06-10T15:08:00.000-07:00

My MacBook hasn't slept for six months now, and its warranty will be expiring soon. Therefore I thought I should have it checked by an Apple Genius. I took it to the nearest Apple Store, and there are a few things I would like to share with every Mac user.

BEFORE THE VISIT

1. Perform a full system backup
If he finds there is a problem with your Mac and it needs to be fixed in their workshop, you will get your Mac back after 3-5 working days. It is advisable to make a full system backup just in case something goes bad during repair.

2. Print out all the contacts from Address Book
If you're like me, you like to access all your contacts phones, emails and addresses from your Mac's Address Book application. Quicksilver makes things so easy, doesn't it? But now you don't have your Mac because the Apple Genius is taking it apart for repairs, and you need to call or email someone urgently, and you're frantically looking for your paper address book which you stopped updating years back anyway. A printed list of contacts is very handy in such a case.

3. Deauthorize your computer for iTunes account
You can play the items you bought from iTunes online store on upto five computers. If the hard drive dies or is erased during repairs, you lose one of those five golden chances. To prevent this from happening, deauthorize your computer to play iTunes content before every possible hard disk erasure.

4. If you installed third party RAM, also take your original Apple RAM
If the problem is due to third party RAM, the Genius will want to replace that with the original RAM that came with your Mac. In most cases they should have spare RAM to test with (as they did in my case) but I had to wait for 5 minutes before he could find it in his tool box. Therefore it's a good idea to take your original Apple RAM with you to the Apple Genius.

5. Remove any disks in the drive.

6. What if you need an alternative computer to with with as your Mac is out for repairs?
Call Apple beforehand and let them know. There is someone who badly needed to work as his Mac was gone for repairs, and Apple was kind enough to send him another Mac to work with temporarily.

IN THE STORE

7. Look for your name on the screen
In the store, the Apple folks display a neat list of people who are waiting to see the Apple Genius. So you can see your name in the queue on the screen. Also, they'll call out your name when they're ready to see you. So keep your ears alert.

8. Remember to get a printed receipt from the Genius.
The receipt is a proof that your Mac is with them for repairs, and it contains additional information about what kind of repairs might be needed, and if you need to pay anything (if you ran out of warranty or AppleCare protection plan). Do not lose it.

AFTER THE VISIT

9. Check the status of repairs
Click here to check the repair status (sign in with your apple ID - easiest way)

10. Check your phone voicemail.
They'll call you when your Mac is ready to be picked up.

Visual anatomy of Blogger CSS

2007-06-02T23:47:00.001-07:00

Click this image to see an overview of the gross visual anatomy of blogger css code. This image will tell you which code goes where:

What's up with Mac OS X mouse cursor?

2007-05-27T06:48:00.000-07:00

Almost everyone who owns a Mac believes it's not only the most advanced operating system, it's also graphically superior. The Apple Human Interface Guidelines indeed lay out a comprehensive set of rules to follow. True indeed, I've seen the same program for windows and Mac, and the Mac version looks far superior.

"We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them."

Despite its aesthetic graphic appeal, there is one weak area which Apple remains to work upon.

Let's face it, all Mac users: It's the OS X mouse pointer.

It's primitive, way too small, and looks like a destitute orphan when compared to other parts of OS X interface. In other words, the default pointer in Mac OS X is ugggggggly.

Windows --- |---Ubuntu--- | ---Mac OS X

Not only the graphic appearance is ugly and not user-friendly, also the display is buggy at times. When typing my documents in NeoOffice, sometimes the cursor just vanishes, only to come back after I scribble on the trackpad frantically. Sometimes the cursor is just there, but it's so beautifully camoflauged in its black color that I'm not able to see it at all!

There are ways to make it look bigger, and I tried one of them. I thought that a bigger pointer will be easier to see. But the result was disappointing, it now looks ugggggglier.

What the heck? Reminds me of a 80's arcade blip-blop game.

In my opinion, the default mouse cursor in Mac OS X needs some work - at least make it look like the default one in Windows. That will save my eyes some diopters (- and some money to my pocket because I won't be forced to buy that $10 software to change my default mouse pointer).

For those who do want to spend money to customize the pointer, check these out:

1. Pinpoint

2. Mightymouse

Also see iCursor

Mac OS X: "Airport" process using more than 99% CPU

2007-05-23T17:00:00.000-07:00

I don't remember when it started, but I noticed my MacBook is running hotter these days, and the fan switches on to full speed after few minutes of login. iStat Pro, the dashboard widget, tells me that the process "airport" has very high CPU (about 99-100%). There is no application named airport in my system, so it's a child process of some other application.

After much tinkering around, I found the solution. The culprit was Vine Server, a VNC server application. I had deleted the application from my applications folder earlier, but apparently it left something behind. What did it leave? Spotlight didn't show any results for "VNC", but Quicksilver showed this:

So I deleted this app from my hard drive (I had to enter password), rebooted, and now everything works fine.

Lesson for Mac Users: If "airport" shows very high CPU usage, remove everything related to VNC.
Lesson for Apple: Please include a clean uninstaller with OS X.

How to easily switch between different language input methods in OS X

2007-05-22T12:34:00.000-07:00

I'm a trilingual person, and need to change frequently between different input methods. Sometimes I use all the three languages in the same email message.

OS X provides a tool to change language input methods in International preference pane. But it's a pain to evoke that each time I want to change the input method. So I have come up with a shortcut to accomplish the same task, but in a more convenient way.

Follow these steps to create a convenient keyboard shortcut for changing input language in OS X:

1. Open System Preferences and go to "International".

2. Go to "Input Menu" tab and make sure the languages you want are checked.

3. Click the "keyboard shortcuts" button at the buttom of Input Menu tab of International.

4. Search for "Input Menu" in the list of applications registered with Keyboard Shortcuts.

5. Check the "Select Previous input menu", click the "Shortcut" box next to it, and press Command and [ key at the same time.

6. Check the "Select Next input menu", click the "Shortcut" box next to it, and press Command and ] key at the same time.

7. Close the keyboard shortcuts preferences pane.

Start any application (e.g. TextEdit) and type a sentence. Now press command and [ and type another sentence. If all goes well, congratulations! You are now able to switch between different language input methods using a simple keyboard shortcut!

Quicksilver for slow typists

2007-05-18T17:38:00.000-07:00

Quicksilver is a great tool for all Mac users. I use it all the times.

The problem arises when one of my friends wants to use quicksilver, and she's a damn slow typist. She presses one key per second. And Quicksilver resets the search being typed after a short interval (less than a second). A quick fix to this is the following:

1. Invoke quicksilver by pressing ctrl+space or whatever key you have set it up to.
2. Open Quicksilver preferences by pressing command+, while Quicksilver search interface is still open.
3. Go to the Preferences tab, if it's not already selected.
4. Click on Command in the left side pane.
5. In the bottom, there is a little slider named "Reset search after". Make sure it's checked, and slide it towards right and make it 2.00 seconds.

6. Now close the preferences, and try Quicksilver again, but type real slow. It'll now work for slow typists! :)

Google adds graphical usage indicator in Gmail

2007-05-15T09:59:00.000-07:00

I signed in to my Gmail account today, and noticed that in addition to text-based usage notification ("You are currently using 1726 MB (60%) of your 2852 MB"), there is a graphic bar to indicate that too:

Interestingly enough, I could make this show up only on Firefox! IE doesn't display this as yet!

Steve Jobs' 20 rules of success

2007-05-14T13:38:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs' rules for success:

First thing: As soon as you join/start a company, make a list of strengths and weaknesses of yourself and your company on a piece of paper.

Don't hesitate in throwing bad apples out of the company.

Don't worry about too many things at once. Take a handful of simple things to begin with, and then progress to more complex ones.

People judge you by your performance, so focus on the outcome.

Success generates more success. So be hungry for it. "I've always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do."

Ask for feedback, from people with diverse backgrounds. Each one will tell you one useful thing.

If you're at the top of the chain, sometimes people won't give you honest feedback because they're afraid. In this case, disguise yourself, or get feedback from other sources (Steve Jobs actually called Apple Customer Care disguising himself as a customer, just to check on them).

Focus on those who will use your product - listen to your customers first.

Advertise. If they don't know it, they won't buy your product.

Pay attention to design. "We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them." "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."

"Innovation distinguishes a leader from a follower." If there's a better technology available, use it no matter if anyone else is not using it. Be the first, and make it an industry standard. “I think this is the start of something really big. Sometimes that first step is the hardest one, and we've just taken it.”

“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.”

Learn to criticize your enemies openly, but honestly.

If you partner someone whom you don't like, learn to like them - praise them and benefit from them - "Ecosystem approach"

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.

Do your best at every job. No sleep!

Think about not just tomorrow, but the future. “I want to put a ding in the universe.”

There's always "one more thing" to learn!

"Better be a pirate than to join the navy"

"Think different"

How (and why) to disable apache server signature on your web pages

2007-05-11T08:34:00.000-07:00

In the default configuration of Apache, any error pages will contain the full signature of the server (version number) which could be exploited by hackers. Each version has some deficiencies that could be exploited, and a hacker who knows your version number may benefit from it by focused attacks.

To disable server signature, you will need to edit your /etc/apache2/apache2.conf file.

sudo nano /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

Press Ctrl+w to search for "ServerSignature" and press return. If you find it, edit it to:

ServerSignature Off
ServerTokens Prod

If you don't find it, just scroll to the end of the file and add these two lines.

Then, we need to reload apache configuration to put this new change in effect:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

Check the new configuration by entering an invalid address on your server URL (e.g. www.server.com/invalidpage.html). You should not see the server signature now, just the server name.

Mac OS X: Show hidden files and folders in Finder

2007-05-05T15:02:00.000-07:00

1. The easy way:

To show hidden files, just download and run this app.
To hide them again, download and run this app.
(Word of warning: Both these applications relaunch the Finder. So make sure you don't have any applications running, otherwise everything works just fine)

2. A little more geeky way:

To show hidden files and folders in Finder, open a terminal window and type this:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

(the above sentence is all in one line), press return, and then type:

killall Finder
(and press return)

Finder will relaunch and you will be able to see hidden files and folders.

To revert (hide hidden items), type this in terminal:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE

(all in one line again), press return, and then this:

killall Finder
(and press return)
That's it!

Control fan speed in your macbook

2007-05-04T14:43:00.000-07:00

iStat Pro widget tells me that my CPU temperature is in excess of 50 degrees celsius while doing casual work, and it's not good. I want a cool laptop so that it doesn't burn my lap. I was thinking of buying a laptop cooler, but Google directed me to some other place.

There is this little program "smc fan control" which lets you adjust your minimum fan speed. The default is 1500rpm, but you can adjust the minimum speed to anything between 1500 and 6000 rpm. I find that setting the minimum fan speed to 3000rpm keeps the macbook cooler, and does not produce much fan-sound either.

Download here: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/23049

Deny.hosts file

2007-05-03T10:50:00.000-07:00

I described last week how many (zombie) computers are attempting to gain anauthorized access to my server via open SSH port. Though I haven't been able to configure my iptables firewall as per my wishes, here's a temporary fix:

This guy has released his hosts.deny file to the public, so that we can ban these bad guys. Just copy it to your /etc/ directory (overwriting existing deny.hosts file) and restart your network or computer. It'll start working straightaway.

Additionally, here is a very nice and easy tutorial about installing denyhosts, an automated program which scans your logs for multiple unauthorized login attempts, and bans those hosts from accessing your computer।

To install Denyhosts on Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install denyhosts

The default installation of Denyhosts in Ubuntu comes with reasonably secure default settings. It also adds a daemon at startup! Being a zero-configuration daemon, I recommend it over fail2ban (which does require configuration by hand in Ubuntu).

How to backup iWeb sites in Mac OSX

2007-05-01T13:55:00.000-07:00

iWeb is an incredibly simple application to make web-pages. I have made websites for myself and a few friends using iWeb, and now it's time for a system reinstall. Now, how do I backup (and restore) those websites? Here's the answer:

1. Open finder and go to the folder: /%username%/Library/Application Support/iWeb/
2. There will be a file named "Domain.sites" there - this is the file you want to backup. (If you have chosen to hide file extensions, this file will just be visible as "Domain"). Copy this file to a flash-drive or any other external location.
3. Reinstall the system, and then place this file in the same directory back again!

That's it! You can now make backups of your iWeb sites! :-)

Ubuntu votes for people's favorite packages automatically

2007-04-27T08:46:00.000-07:00

While ransacking the system files to look for logs and other things, I noticed that cron runs an application called "popularity-contest" every month.

user@ubuntu:/etc$ ls cron*
crontab

cron.d:
php5

cron.daily:
apt find man-db samba sysklogd
bsdmainutils logrotate mysql-server standard

cron.hourly:

cron.monthly:
standard

cron.weekly:
man-db popularity-contest sysklogd

I was curious as to what is "popularity-contest"! The name is interesting! So I ran this application from CLI, and it spitted out a list of packages in Terminal. A quick google search revealed the following:

The popularity-contest package sets up a cron job that will periodically anonymously submit to the Debian developers statistics about the most used Debian packages on this system.
This information helps Debian making decisions such as which packages should go on the first CD. It also lets Debian improve future versions of the distribution so that the most popular packages are the ones which are installed automatically for new users.

This is a nice and democratic way, but a little creepy for the unsuspecting and new users like me.

Hack attempts at my server

2007-04-26T09:39:00.000-07:00

I really love the ease of setting up a web server with Ubuntu - I set it up months back, and just forgot about it. Today morning I noticed some suspicious hard disk activity on my server, and I decided to check what's happening.

Someone might have been trying to hack into my box!!!

I got suspicious.

A common hacking technique in Linux involves dictionary based attacks on ssh (port 22), which is open on many servers for remote management. I have this port open too, because I love to connect to my server and administer it from my office etc. So, how do I know if someone is trying to hack my server by logging in via port 22?

Well, I read the SSH Daemon (sshd) log entries. By default, the sshd dumps its log in /var/log/auth.log . So I open that file in nano (command: nano /var/log/auth.log) and I see numerous failed login attempts through ssh. The log also contains their IP addresses, so I check their websites by entering their IP address in my browser. Many of such sites are actually running on commercial web servers, that have been hacked by exploiters. One such site is this:

203.86.101.123

This unsuspecting person has her website hacked, and there is an automated hacking tool installed there, which looks for more computers and hacks them. Thus, the hacker could soon control an army of hacked servers! This can be used very effectively for a DOS ("Denial of Service") attack on an enemy server to knock it down. I immediately wrote an email to this person to check the security of their server.

So, the SSH attack has been performed. Was it successful? The auth.log file will tell you if it accepted the password for a given user.

Also, you can use the last command to view the last few users who logged in (latest on the top) - this will also show the domain from which they logged in, the date and time, and also the length of time they stayed logged in. If you see any users logging in from any domains that you don't know of, they probably hacked your password! You might want to change the username and password (both) immediately, and please make a stronger password this time. Also check any suspicious modifications in the /etc/sudoers file (command: sudo nano /etc/sudoers), and check if any new users have been added to any groups (command: sudo groups root username)

A potential failure of this diagnostic process can be when the hacker clears the auth.log entries. I will explore more about this and update this post later.

Still, I am greatly amazed by the rock-solid security of Ubuntu - I just have the default system install and have not configured any firewall or anything, and my box is wide open to the internet, and still I'm not hacked! Extremely impressive!

How to change your home directory in linux/unix

2007-04-25T01:23:00.000-07:00

How do you modify a user's home directory in Unix/Linux?

1. Login as a user with sudo privileges.
2. Enter this command:

sudo nano /etc/passwd

3. Nano text editor opens up. Locate the username you would like to change the home directory of (the last added user is in the end), and just enter whatever directory you would like. For example, the home directory for the user jack is set to /home/jack in this file:

jack:x:1000:1000:Jack,,,:/home/jack:/bin/bash

But I want him to use a home directory of /home/whatever. So I just change the above line to:

jack:x:1000:1000:Jack,,,:/home/whatever:/bin/bash

Now when the user jack logs in, his home directory would be /home/whatever.

Related post for changing home directory in Mac OS X can be found here.

How to add blogger RSS to yahoo 360

2007-04-24T23:05:00.000-07:00

I have a yahoo 360 page, and was wondering if there is a way I can add RSS of this blog of mine to yahoo 360. Here is how I did it:

1. Open your blogger page.

2. Click the little orange RSS icon in the address bar, and it will display the full RSS.

3. Copy the address URL of this RSS. The link will be like:
http://yourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
4. Now open your yahoo 360
5. Click "My Page" link
6. Scroll down to the "feeds" section, click "Edit Feeds"
7. Paste the URL in one of the empty text-fields in the next page, and make sure the "can be seen by" is set to "public"
8. Click "Save".
Done!

Note: Following these steps gave me a nasty error message every time I clicked on the save button. But my blog is now showing up on my 360 despite the error message! Let me know if this worked for you. Thanks to Neetesh for assistance!

Funny: Pistachio Laptop Cooler

2007-04-11T17:35:00.000-07:00

My roommate's Sony Vaio was running exceptionally hot during one of his extended cyberchatting sessions. He's too lazy to go out and buy a laptop cooler, and can't afford to shut the machine down for a few minutes. So this is his innovative way to cool his laptop: Place it on a bowl of Pistachios. The pistachios are a very effective cooling agent for laptops - please call a computer researcher to confirm this :)

(As a side effect, the pistachios will last longer too)

Linux: The non-stop performer

2007-04-10T12:00:00.000-07:00

I am hosting five websites from my home server using Linux. This "server" is a very old computer barely capable of running modern operating systems, but is running Apache web server on Ubuntu Linux successfully. I had configured this as a server many months back, and then just forgot about it. I never had any downtime problems so far (except once when I filled up the entire 1GB HDD by installing some updates leading to a kernel panic), and no crashes!

Yesterday, I just remembered I have a web-server which has been running all day and all night, and I became curious how many days it has been up. I checked, and here is what I saw:

The server was up for 91 days non-stop! I didn't have to worry about it at all! This is truly great, and I can now feel why the Linux community is so enthusiastic about their software!

Thank you Linus!

MacBook insomnia

2007-03-15T08:58:00.000-07:00

My MacBook bought 7 months back was working flawlessly until recently, when it started failing to sleep when I close the lid. This used to happen once in a while, and I had to reboot it to fix it. But the problem returned after some time of use.

The failure to go into sleep mode took some serious turns two weeks back when the MacBook would never go to sleep whatsoever, reboots after reboots. I didn't install any new applications as far as I remember, nor did I change any hardware in the MacBook.

I repaired permissions, repaired the disk, to no avail! I even reinstalled the entire Mac OS X and updated it completely, didn't work either. I reset the PRAM etc. as described on Apple support website, even that didn't solve the problem.

Now the status is, the MacBook can go to sleep if it's rebooted freshly. But as I keep using it, it fails to go to sleep, and the only way I can transport my MacBook to school is by turning it off completely, which is quite like a Dell notebook (in fact, worse) and I don't like it.

The Apple website doesn't mention anything about MacBooks failing to sleep. Searching on other Mac help sites has revealed that several people have this problem, but there is no solid solution.

Can someone help me?

My first experience with Linux kernel panic

2007-01-08T10:42:00.000-08:00

I was running a web server from my apartment using Ubuntu Linux. During vacations, I traveled to Washington DC and was managing the server by SSH. I installed a kernel update, and then the server wanted restart. After restart, I couldn't login!

Sending a (-technologically challenged) friend for investigation revealed that the server now has a kernel panic each time it boots up. This was because I filled up its capacious 1GB hard drive by installing the update, and that led to kernel panic.

I agree not many people are running Linux on a 1GB hard disk. Still it has ruined my server in no time at all! My suggestion to the Linux developers is to have an intelligent software updater that can recognize updates that will fill up the entire HD. It should be pretty simple to do, just takes some thought.

Socrates and his teachings

2006-11-05T14:14:00.000-08:00

Socrates was a Greek philosopher who remains an enigma to the world. He never wrote a book, but still influenced the philosophical and political realms of his times significantly.

Socrates said that good looks and proper bearing pave way for a man's political prospects. Though originally stated in the context of contemporary politics, the statement stands true when generalized to the social setup of current times. Simply stating, good looks and proper bearing pave way for a man's social prospects in current times.

Socrates taught by asking a series of questions - one question leading to another. This is branded as "Socratic method of teaching". Some people also call it the "Didactic" method of teaching. The questions asked cause one to explore his beliefs and knowledge, thereby eliminating doubts in small steps. This is a negative method of hypothesis elimination where you strive to gain knowledge by removing your doubts, rather than gaining "knowledge" as it is. The latter could be equivalent to spoon-feeding sometimes.

Socrates said that wisdom is limited to our own ignorance - the more we learn about ignorance, the more knowledgeable we will be. This again propounds the philosophy of learning by elimination of doubts.

Socrates was against the pursuit of material wealth (e.g. money and leisurely comforts) and spent his life like an ascetic - though sometimes he was mistaken for a madman. This "renunciation" of worldly pleasures goes in line with some of the Oriental philosophies, but renunciation in the West was perhaps never popular, other than Socrates.

We should concentrate more on "friendship" and "community" rather than pursuit of material wealth. Friends and family are our real bank-balance.

Socrates could feel a "daemonic" voice inside him whenever he was about to make mistakes. He was able to recognize this voice, and take necessary actions to prevent himself from making mistakes. This is sometimes described as a synonym of "intuition", but some of Plato's writings suggest it's a slightly different form of intuition in the sense that Socratic Daemonic Voice principle incorporates more spirituality and philosophy than simply acting on natural patterns. It is possible to cultivate your skills to listen to the Daemonic Voice, so that you can reduce the chances of making a mistake, or perhaps eliminate them altogether.

Socrates considered "creativity" a form of "divine insanity" which is a gift from God, that makes us to write poetry, fall in love, and think about the meaning of life. This is in line with one of Gandhi's sayings that "Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes." In fact, making mistakes is sometimes deemed essential so that you can identify the factors that caused the mistakes, learn from them, and thereby move one step closer to knowledge.

Socrates placed heavy reliance on remembering as a method of learning, in addition to thinking and analysis.

Summary: It is important for a man to have good looks and proper bearing to succeed in his social-political ambitions. One can improve himself by making mistakes, and learning from his mistakes. The lessons learnt must be remembered for a long time. The best way to live is to pursue knowledge rather than material comforts. In order to reduce mistakes, one must learn to listen to the Daemonic Voice that propels us to make mistakes. Your people around you are your real strength. There's nothing wrong in being wrong as long as you're able to correct yourself next time. Asking questions is an integral component of learning, and one must never be afraid of asking questions.

www.43things.com

2006-10-22T14:39:00.000-07:00

There is a Chinese saying:

I hear, I forget
I see, I remember
I do, I understand

This emphasizes learning by doing (or "service learning" jargonically), a very effective way of learning. Watching someone else do something looks too easy, until you actually get your hands on the job. The key to learning, therefore, is to just do it.

There's one more step, however. Time and again, I have amazed myself with the ability with which I forget things. I forget even those things that I discovered for myself in the first place! This undoes the learning I've earned, and something must be done to "retain" it.

Repetitions help in retention of learned material. For example, revising a book, writing the same paper again with a new viewpoint after a gap, trying to play an old song from college days on guitar, etc. Sometimes, even email reminders can do the trick for simple things (e.g. remembering events or facts like birthdays, tax submission dates etc).

Memory of learning gets consolidated by repetitions. Each new repetition adds to the previous, but permanence will still not be achieved. To keep the material in the memory, we have to keep practicing it. To keep practicing, we can join that profession, make a hobby out of it, or tie it to something else that is part of our routine. Different approaches work for different needs.

In this context, I remember a website www.43things.com, where you can know other people who want to do the same thing as you. The site can also send you reminders to help you "get started" on your work. 43things is just one part of a bigger theme of social collaboration, which you'll find by exploring the site a little bit more.

I shall explore memorization and learning in more details later... perhaps after this holiday season as school is keeping me too busy.

Official Google Mac Blog: Google and your Mac

2006-10-10T11:45:00.000-07:00

Official Google Mac Blog: Google and your Mac

Google has now started a brand new blog focusing on Macs, another step forward in their embracement of the Mac.

The page has links to mac software developed by Google, Dashboard widgets for Mac OS X, a mini tutorial on Picasa Web Albums, and some more information. Check it out!

How I fooled Digg and made it to the frontpage

2006-10-02T04:51:00.000-07:00

Introduction (please skip)

On March 6, 2006, a Google search directed me to a page at Digg.com. The content of the page was relevant to what I was searching for, and it was provocative enough to make me write a comment. Since anonymous comments are not allowed at Digg, I had to register. However, I did not follow up after that... until a time came when a fan submitted my site to Digg and it won the day. Shortly thereafter, I just had "too much time at my hand". And since the last two months or so, I find myself taking excessive interest in the activities at digg.com, sometimes spending almost the entire day there.

My first look at Digg.com

Being new to the Digg community, I was noticing what experienced diggers may miss. Sometimes I noticed honest content getting buried, and lame or fraudulent stories being promoted to the frontpage.

But how could that be? I believe "50 people cannot be wrong, the fault lies in you". Was I wrong? How could I tell?

I saw perfect stage for an experiment here.

My Digg Experiment: Part One

I was analyzing the traffic data for my dugg website, and was noticing some interesting patterns. Initially, I was tempted to generalize those findings (e.g. 60% of us use Firefox), but then realized that it was lame, as most of the hits were coming from Digg.com and Firefox is more popular among tech-savvy users. Everyone knows that.

Does everyone know that, really? I decided to present the results of my traffic analysis in a wrong way to Digg.com, and see if the story still makes it to the frontpage.

So I committed the act. I edited the original draft to insert misleading information. I then submitted this misleading and inaccurate story to Digg early morning on Sunday (when people are least likely to notice).

So my story doesn't have quality, has fraudulent information, and is submitted at a time when it's least likely to be noticed. Right?

Yes alright, but let's take a look at what happened.

The Experiment Begins

After submission to Digg.com, the fraudulent story kept quiet for about 10 hours (mere 35 diggs in first 10 hours). But then, the diggers "woke up" (4pm Sunday) and began taking interest in my story. In less than two hours, the story had 150+ diggs and was on frontpage! That was easy, and interesting!

I watched on, and more interesting developments took place.

I was keeping a close watch on the comments page at Digg, and the 4th commentator marked my story as inaccurate. Actually the first commentator had pointed out the inaccuracy, but in a blurred fashion. The story is on the frontpage now, and more people visited the story, and said it's inaccurate (and I presume marked it as such). Nothing interesting about it, right?

Wrong.

The negative comments were increasing in number as expected, but the number of diggs were increasing as well! What's going on here??? How can the diggers digg an inaccurate story? They are the best critics of technology related articles, right?

Umm... maybe.

What was happening here???

Many people who dugg the story did not read it thoroughly. They just "liked the idea" of my story that Apple and Linux are eating Microsoft away, and dugg this in its face value. They dugg what they like. They dugg what they want the reality to be, without knowing the reality at all.

Now comes part two of my experiment.

My Digg Experiment : Part Two

Okay, so my story is now on digg frontpage, despite most people actually agreeing that it is misleading. Here, I try to do a "fixing" act. I logged on to blogger.com and silently made two "little" changes to my story. I appended "for diggers" to the title and "by diggers" to the first paragraph. This makes the the story's first few lines look more authentic. However, I did not make any changes to the rest of the story, so the rest of it was still biased and misleading. Now, we have a story of "mosaic quality" where some parts say the truth, and some do not.

It's like half truth.

Or half lie, if you will.

As soon as I corrected the first few lines of my story, some digg users suddenly started evangelizing me. They commented on Digg that others did not read the story correctly, and are falsely blaming nixdoctor (me!). Just as one person said this, others joined the brigade, and there was a small group coming to my rescue. Heated discussions ensued over "reading skills", and difference between "listening and just hearing". While diggers were digging each other down, I sat at rest, watching them.

I also wanted to see how many people post on my blog (apart from posting at digg.com) and many people did that (I had enabled anonymous comments to make life easier for diggers). Many comments were constructive, offering me advice. Four were simple insults (deleted).

My experiment is over.

Results

It is easy to fool Digg and its community, at least in the short run
This happens because not all Digg users read the posts thoroughly
Carefully crafted stories that are far from truth, but appease the tastes of diggers can make it to the frontpage, before being buried finally.
Good content can be buried because it has no entertainment value.
Good comments can be modded down if they do not have entertainment value.
Some diggers will simply abuse others, while others will offer constructive suggestions for the same story. (Tip: If you can stand criticism, Digg can be a good resource to improve, because others will offer you suggestions, bundled with sarcasm, of course)
Webmasters can click quickly too. (In this case, not even a single Digger noticed that I have changed the title of the story on the original page later - they could have easily compared via duggmirror.com)

My Comments

Digg is an excellent source for sharing entertaining information about technology and current affairs. I use it for pure entertainment. Digg needs more tools in its box to thwart bad stories making it to frontpage.

More to come...

My next story concerning Digg is a short, correct, quality story, and will make it to the ftontpage. Why? Because I'll make sure it entertains us diggers. And it'll be on this blog.

Market share of Operating Systems & Browsers for diggers

2006-10-01T02:06:00.000-07:00

One of my websites was dugg recently, and I collected a lot of data using google analytics. Considering the large amount of data I collected is representative of current trends in technology usage by diggers, here are the results:

(Click on the pictures to enlarge)

Market share of Apple and Linux is cutting into Microsoft among Diggers

Apple's market share used to be 5% as declared by Steve Jobs in a keynote last year. Around the same time, they introduced the new intel-based computers, and they've been selling like hot cakes ever since. Apple has 10% of market share among Diggers!

The growth of Linux is also commendable. Linux doesn't enjoy the power of being an organized company, but the power of community is benefitting it.

Firefox is the most popular internet browser among Diggers

This one should be a no-brainer to everyone. Firefox is the leader in browser market. 70% of us use Firefox. But what about the others?

Internet Explorer is a distant second. I wonder why does IE still survive with millions of bugs found and exploited successfully before being repaired. Most probably because it comes pre-installed with the most popular operating system. Or because of higher percentage of masochism in humans than previously thought.

Safari is a good browser too, but loses out in market share because it's Mac only. Now market share of Mac is 11%, and 5% use Safari = half of all Mac users browse the internet via Safari.

The figures for Opera are difficult to explain though...! I have used Opera and found it to be an extremely good browser. I think more people abandoned it in favor of Firefox two years back. Firefox trounced not only IE's market share, but also Opera's.

Related link: http://nixtechnica.blogspot.com/2006/10/how-i-fooled-digg-and-made-it-to.html

Death of a medical student

2006-09-29T12:09:00.000-07:00

I am shocked at the recent death of a medical student at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. Kamalla Raj Kiran was training to be a doctor at AIIMS, where he contracted a disease called "Dengue" and died in the same hospital where he was aspiring to be a doctor.

For those who don't know, Dengue is a viral disease spread by mosquitoes. Where there are no mosquitoes, there is no dengue (except by transfusion of infected blood). Dengue is a preventable disease.

This story essentially highlights the sad state of sanitation at the apex body of health in India. While AIIMS boasts of being the best medical training and research institute in the entire Asian continent, it has failed miserably at more steps than it has succeeded. It can be labeled only as an "irony" that the medical students are asked questions about transmission of Dengue in their professional examinations, but the sanitation authorities at the same place are blind to the answers. Such deaths could be prevented only if there is basic sanitation at AIIMS.

Interestingly, this is not the first time when AIIMS is spreading dengue. Is it about time AIIMS did something about itself?

Yes it is time! But given the current state of politics at AIIMS, where people worry more about themselves rather than the nation itself, I do not expect anything to be done. Especially not when I have seen many doctors committing suicides because of workplace harrassment - harrassments that were prevented from being released in the media or the public. In fact, AIIMS thinks that avian flu is more important than other diseases of national interest, perhaps driven only by the buzzword about avian flu in the west.

I urge the people to do something about such a basic necessity as improving sanitation at AIIMS. Will they do it?

The answer is: No.

They will do it only when they themselves catch Dengue. They will do it only when it benefits only them, and not everyone. Hard to digest? Look at the past.

Long live humanity! Long live health! Long live AIIMS!

Duh!

P.S.: Here's a first person account about this death: (an email from someone at AIIMS)

Today was a very tragic day for all of us. Do you know Kamalla Raj Kiran, currently he was in 7 th Sem... He got Dengue. I went to see him in the morning when B***** told me that platelets are going out of stock in our blood bank. He was taken to Casualty yday night where he deteriorated very rapidly and his disorientation was not taken care of in the casualty. There was a delay of few hours in getting his CT done. That too was done after he passed stools in bed that they suspected CNS involvement. When I went in the morning to C2 ICU, He was on ventilator and all the brain stem reflexes were gone.. I saw the CT... It was pretty bad...
He was brain dead. He is still being supported cardiovascularly in CT2 ICU. I don't know when they will declare him..
And some more students from BSc and MBBS are being admitted in the casualty and ward suspecting of Dengue..
Really bad times at AIIMS!

Update:
I publicized the news across medical schools in India, and also involved one of my friends who works for an Indian TV channel. Finally, media was interested, and the news was covered widely by TV channels in India and BBC 10 hours later. Here's a screenshot from BBC news site: (Click to enlarge)

11 Rules of Blog Hygiene

2006-09-28T01:40:00.001-07:00

How to make a good blog

Have a well-defined purpose

Your blog must serve a well-defined purpose, and declare it in the title of your blog. Nonspecific blogs do not attract visitors. A blog that is focused on a particular theme is appreciated more than a loosely-woven one. Many people write blogs as if they were their daily journals, and that is fine too. That is a purpose in itself, at least for the author.

Write descriptive headlines

When people reach your blog, they'll look at the headline first. The headline for your posts should be descriptive of the content. Otherwise it becomes confusing for the readers. For example, if you are writing about the visit of Gandhi to South Africa and how it changed his life, then the title could well be "Gandhi's visit to South Africa: How it changed his life".

Focus on quality

Having quality content on your blog will produce the urge to be read. Most people should be able to generate quality content by themselves, as long as they do enough research or brainstorming on the topic. Make sure to cover as many aspects of the topic as possible. For example, if you are blogging about your shopping experience in the grocery market today, you could describe what all you bought, what you left out, any interesting people you met/saw at the grocery store, any price changes since last time, and so on. The idea is to cover as much of the topic as possible.

Blogs with poor/no content in them are not liked by many. I saw a blog for the first time about 4 years back. It looked like a diary of random events from a real person's life. Many of the posts were one-liners, and it seemed that the author was focusing on quantity rather than quality. My fears were confirmed when I saw one of her posts - "Yay! It's my 200th post on my blog! Oh my God!"

Include pictures

A picture is worth a thousand words - it has been said, and rightly so. Pictures make our world colorful. Pictures attract attention. Picture want to be looked at. Whenever possible, try to post a picture on your blog entries. The picture must match the content of your post, and also the overall color scheme of the page if possible. For example, when blogging about my recent visit to a pig farm, it is an interesting (but often forgotten) idea to post those pictures I snapped at the pig farm. If you can't think of a picture to place in your blog, forget it then.

Also, try to include your own picture on the blog. It makes the blog lok a lot more personal.

Use consistent and relevant color schemes

There should be ample white space in the blog for easy readability, and a light background. If you keep your fancy pictures as the blog background, it's very difficult to read. Just take a look at any random profile at myspace.com and you see what I mean.

The color should reflect the nature of your content (e.g. a young girl's emotional blog may have a pink color, a technology blog may have a blue color), but there are no well-defined rules here. Most likely, you shall follow some preset schemes given by the blogging system, but you can always customize the template to suit your needs.

Place links and references

Whenever possible, try to include links to other sources of information about the content of your blog post. This ensures that the readers know you're open to others' ideas, and are ready to give your readers a broad point of view. You may consider linking not only blogs that support your point of view, but also pages that are opposite to your point of view. For example, if your blog is describing the capitalist economic practices, you might also want to give a link in the end to communist economy. If you have

Respect copyright

Stealing content is an extremely bad idea, because it doesn't benefit anyone. How would you feel if you discover that someone has copied your blog without your permission, and is getting applauded for the stolen content? If you must use content from others, make sure you post a link to their text rather than copying and pasting it altogether. After all, it is your blog, not theirs! If you must copy and paste content from other sites, make sure you have the author's permission, enclose the copied text within quotes, and always give a reference to the original website.

Organize and reorganize before hitting submit button

All the paragraphs in a blog should "flow" logically from top to bottom. However, not everyone can write all the paragraphs in a logical sequence in the first go. I can't do it myself. When I start writing the blog, first I tend to write the content that appeals to me, and then I write somethinng that doesn't appeal to me that much. This is quite natural, and happens with everyone. But when I start reading my own blog just before I post it, I discover that some paragraphs should be promoted to the top, whereas others serve better as footnotes. Also, when you rearrange your paragraphs, you may have to add connecting sentences to the end of previous paragraph or the beginning of next paragraph so the "flow of logic" stays smooth.

Correct mistakes

There's nothing wrong in making mistakes as long as you're willing to correct them, and learn from them. If someone points out an error in your blog (factual, grammatical, or otherwise), promptly correct it, and thank him/her. Most blogging systems have a spellchecker built into them (if you haven't noticed). It is a good idea to spellcheck your document before posting.

Track your visitors

You can track your visitors by Google analytics or a similar service. This will let you know which pages are more popular, and which ones are least so. Knowing this, you can improve upon your weak areas, and attract more traffic.

Invite feedback/comments

It is a bad idea to disable comments/feedback on your blog. Comments enable others to be part of your blog, and other people will tell you what they think about your blog. There are times when people email me directly because they want to differ with some of my ideas, and there are times when people share my ideas. Nonetheless, it is good to keep in touch with your readers, so enable comments now if you haven't done so already.

Reality Distortion Field

2006-09-27T08:15:00.000-07:00

Reality Distortion Field (abbr: RDF) is a term first heard in the Star Trek series. This term referred to optimism being taken to great heights, so that mere mortals could do things way beyond their reach. But this term went almost unnoticed, unpopularized, until Budd Tribble used this term again. Budd Tribble was an MD, PhD working at Apple Computer as a manager of the development team. Being a trained physiologist, he noted Steve Jobs' ability in keeping his team highly motivated by an intriguing mixture of his charisma, charm, exaggeration and clever marketing.

Steve Jobs made his programmers believe that they could "just do it", and his team then put in enormous amounts of effort in their work, leading to heightened productivity and efficiency. The result was Apple Computer passing milestones of success, non-stop.

How to create Reality Distortion Field:

Be optimistic yourself.
Present small achievements as "breakthroughs", interesting developments as "turning points" and "huge leaps forward".
Use your personality and charisma effectively for convincing others "you can do it"
Be funny about your ideas.
Be ready to bend the facts to fit the purpose at hand.
Make others follow you, and then make them dream of success.

Notes:

The effect of RDF is quite volatile. It stays only as long as the initiating force (Steve Jobs in this example) is around the subject, and withers off in his absence.
RDF works effectively even when the subject knows about it.

How to synchronize firefox bookmarks over any number of computers

2006-09-26T12:26:00.000-07:00

Note: This article was written about Google Browser Sync, a product that has been discontinued as of today. The same purpose can now be achieved by installing "Weave" add-on for Firefox.

I have been using the internet since 10 years now, and have noticed one thing. Time and again, I visit few sites that I like so much. I bookmark them, for easy return later. But then, I lose the bookmarks because I erased the hard disk, and never remembered to backup bookmarks. There have been times when I backed up bookmarks, but never cared to restore them. Things get more complicated given I want to use the same bookmarks at home and office.

Hmm... I wish there was a way I could store the bookmarks on an internet server, and my browser could synchronize it automatically from there.

Few people know that Google (yes, again!) has a easy solution to this. This service is called Google Browser Sync, and it works with Firefox only at the moment.

What it does: Automatically backs up your Firefox bookmarks, cookies, saved passwords, history, and last tabs/windows you opened... and then restores it when you use a different computer (or the same computer after you format your hard drive, for example).

How it works: Google simply backs up your browser information on its servers, and then restores it whenever required (e.g. if your browser crashes, your hard disk dies, or you simply switch off your home computer and move to office computer).

How to do it:
1. Requirements: Firefox and a Google account (e.g. a working gmail account).
2. First open Firefox, and download Google Browser Sync extension for Firefox from this page.
3. Exit firefox, and relaunch it.
4. Google Browser Sync will launch automatically, and ask you for your Google account and password. If you have a Gmail account, supply those username and password here. It'll also ask you to set a PIN number as additional measure of security.
5. Next, it will ask which all settings you need to synchronize. I selected everything except stored passwords.
6. Done!

Google Browser Sync will display as this:

To check this, exit firefox with 4-5 windows/tabs open. Now restart firefox (from some other computer if you can), and you'll be prompted to restore your last session. If you choose to restore it, Firefox will spring back to life exactly in the same condition as it was last time. This includes any sessions you may have logged in (cookies).

That was neat! Forget backing up bookmarks manually... Let Google do it for you!

If you don't want to use Google Browser Sync anymore, you can uninstall it. To do this, open firefox, click Tools --> Extensions. Now select Google Browser Sync extension from this list, and click on the Uninstall button.

Perhaps a very innocent question!

2006-09-25T22:52:00.000-07:00

A picture is worth a 1000 words :

How to change desktops on a macbook/pro by slapping it

2006-09-24T00:52:00.000-07:00

Recently I saw an interesting video on youtube where the person was changing desktops on a macbook pro by slapping its screen edges.

That was cool... and I was on my way to do it. In the absence of any instructions on youtube, I asked my best friend for help. His name is Google.

Principle: Macbook and Macbook Pro has a sudden motion sensor that switches the hard disk off temporarily in case of a fall from height. VirtueDesktops takes input from this motion sensor, and then outputs it to changing desktops. Simple in principle. Simple to do if you follow the steps below.

I have done it, in three ways. I'm posting the easiest way here:

HOW TO CHANGE DESKTOPS ON A MACBOOK/PRO BY SLAPPING IT

1. Install VirtueDesktops from this page.
2. Run it from the applications folder in finder.
3. When it runs, open its preferences by clicking its icon on tray, and then selecting preferences.
4. In the Application tab, click the little checkmark against "Enable Motion Sensor switching".

5. Now start slapping the macbook/pro

It should work out of the box, but if it doesn't, you can logout and relogin to your account.

Tips:

We call this thing a "smackbook" :)
Sliding the motion sensor to right reduces sensivity (quite opposite of what is expected usually).
The "light sensor switching" works with a macbook pro only (not with regular macbooks). The reason is that the light sensors are present only in the macbook pro models (for controlling the backlit keyboard).
You could change the desktop switching effect to "cube" and it's the coolest thing!
When you type on the macbook/pro, the pressure on the keypboard may cause the desktops to change. This is extremely annoying, and in such an event you should reduce the sensitivity of motion sensor switching by sliding the arrow towards right.
If you want different wallpapers for different desktops, you can do so by opening the preferences of VirtueDesktops --> selecting the "Desktop Template" section from list on the left --> selecting the checkmark against "Use template for new desktops"--> clicking the little plus sign in the bottom of that screen --> selecting "image overlay"--> clicking the little "i" near the plus sign to set the image.

Let me know how it went!

Google suggest: What is it, and how to use it.

2006-09-23T03:07:00.000-07:00

Part 1: What is Google Suggest?

Google suggest looks like the usual google homepage only, but it tries to "guess" what you are typing, and autocompletes your entries based on the number of search results. A screenshot:

In this example, when I type "All India", google tries to suggest that the most popular search phrase beginning with "All India" is "All India Radio" with over 8 million results. Second in rank is "All India Institue of Medical Sciences" (which I was searching for) with about 1 million results.

Part 2: How to use it?

Change your browser homepage to this:
http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en
(If you use a language other than English, change the last two letters of this link to a language of your choice, e.g. replace en with hi for Hindi, de for German, fr for French etc. On testing, I found that suggest does not work with most non-English languages.

Note that when you typing something, Google automatically guesses what you want, and tries to fill up the search field with the top result. If you like the first phrase, simply press Enter / Return on your keyboard to search for that. If you like the other search phrases, you can use the arrow keys on the keyboard to select them, and then press enter to activate. You can also use a mouse for this if you like.

Concept: eBytes cybercafe

2006-09-19T13:14:00.000-07:00

The following few paragraphs describe a cafetaria from a dream I had on 22nd July 2006, while I was still in jetlag after traveling from United States to India:

The name of this cafetaria is E-bytes. The logo looks like coffee-cup from sun's Java. There are no waiters who come to take the order. Every table is fitted with a computer with TFT screen and a mouse. Users are presented with a flash-based menu! Users simply point and click what they want, and even pay by their credit card right from their table. The orders are taken by the networked computer by the chef manager who is completely out of sight from the customers. The order is completed, and I get to see it.

I ordered 1GB RAM for myself. It's basically a rectangular wafer with golden yellow base and greenish toppings (maybe cilantro) - looks just like computer RAM. My petite friend gets 512 MB RAM which is a thinner version. We dip it in some kind of sauce and taste it - very tasty! And crisp! :)

Other things on menu:

Hard disk donuts: Comes in 80 GB and 160 GB sizes. This donut however doesn't have a hole in its center! You can order Sweet Seagate or Salty Samsung.

Hotmouse: A mouse-shaped hotdog. It's cordless. Children would like to have a corded Hotmouse that is also available on the house.

The dream ends... prematurely.

Will someone actually materialize this dream, some day? Or is it there already?

Ubuntu and Vista: Trends by Google

2006-09-19T13:12:00.000-07:00

Google Trends is a unique service aimed at studying the trends in online google searches. It compares keywords you supply based on the volume of Google searches as well as volume of news reporting on the keywords. I saw the trend for ubuntu vs. vista, and the results are here.

Some comments:

1. Vista has shown dramatic ups and downs, whereas Ubuntu continues its steady rise. The tremulousness of vista graph may in part be due to the Microsoft vs. EU court rows, as well as the continued delays in shipping of vista. However, Ubuntu has continued to rise up, despite the fact it's a two year old baby.

2. Ubuntu has come up with four major releases in the last two years, whereas Windows has struggled to release Vista after about five years of effort. There could be several reasons Windows is lagging behind:

(i) Microsoft is trying to drag XP as long as it can. Thus, by releasing Vista late, it's buying time to develop the next release (Vienna).
(ii) Microsoft servers were hacked few years down the lane. So they are trying to patch up any security holes the hacker community may exploit.
(iii) Microsoft is trying to build "curiosity" among its users for Vista by delaying its release
There could be more reasons... but it appears that the delay will ultimately benefit Microsoft more than what earlier versions of windows did.

2. Somehow all the trends searches are from major cities in the Europe. In fact, more people are searching for Ubuntu rather than Vista in Norway, Finland and Spain. I think I can explain Finland by the fact that Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, hails from Finland.

3. The regionwise trends show that South Africa is the second most popular region for Ubuntu rather than Vista. I can explain this because Mark Shuttleworth, the creator of Canonical Foundation for Ubuntu, hails from South Africa. I have an african friend who says that South Africa is perhaps the most developed country in the entire Africa.

4. When it comes to Ubuntu, it appears that more searches are done on Ubuntu than it appearing in the news. This is very typical of any linux related news - many people are interested in it but somehow that doesn't make headline on any major news site (leaving out technical news agencies).

5. Despite whatever Ubuntu fans might say, I'd contend that Ubuntu is in no way a competitor to Vista... at least not in the first few months. I remember somewhat similar speculations were circulating when XP was in the coming... people used to post fervently in forums "Apple and Red Hat will kill XP" and things like that. But that did not happen. People are resistant to change - they're more likely to continue with doing whatever they are doing. And they're doing Windows. You know what I mean.

6.

eXpression

2006-09-19T11:02:00.000-07:00

I coin new usage: eXpression

Definition: The process of externalizing ideas through online electronic media.

Components of eXpression:

Website
Blog
Forums/bulletin boards
Emails
Text chats
Voice/video chats
Social networking

Could well be another name for a cyber company! :)

What is bicycle-repair?

2006-09-18T10:00:00.000-07:00

The process of installing Linux is quite boring, just as installing any other OS. Some of you, who keep awake and sit near the computer while it's installing Linux must have noticed that it installs thousands of packages. Have you noticed that it also installs "bicycle repair" as one of the packages?

Does this mean that you can repair your broken bicycle by hooking it up with your linux computer?

"Eh.. Comeon! You must be kidding!"

Well yeah. I am kidding.

When I saw this "bicycle repair" package for the first time, I was curious, so set out to know what exactly is this. And I found the answer.

Bicycle Repair Man is a refactoring utility for Python. Basically, it manipulates the code of a program without changing input or output. The aim is to make the code more readable for the programmer.

But still, I wish my computer could repair my bicycle for me! :)

How to synchronize time with NTP servers on an ubuntu machine

2006-09-18T00:54:00.000-07:00

Update: Thanks to Ben Dodd for pointing this out, this blog post is now obsolete. NTP synchronization is now built into Ubuntu. Just install ntp using the command:

sudo apt-get install ntp

and you're done.

After the last two power failures in my area, I realized that the server loses its time after every hard restart. Its BIOS battery is totally exhausted. The time is now erroneous, systemwide! I remember Ubuntu includes a tool with which it can (and does, by default) synchronize time with its NTP servers. In my case, it isn't working well. So here's how I made it work:

1. First, make sure NTP is intstalled.

sudo apt-get install ntpdate

2. Then, run ntpdate, specifying an NTP server:

sudo ntpdate ntp.ubuntulinux.org

This should set the time correctly for that session. Note that superuser previleges are necessary to set the time, because setting time is really an "administrative task".

3. Now you shall want this to run this regularly, right? Since it's a server, I'd prefer to run it at startup. To do this, we shall add a little script to the startup.

First, open a terminal, and pass this command:

sudo nano /etc/init.d/ntpdate

In the blank file that comes up, copy and paste this:

#! /bin/sh
echo "Synchronizing system time with Ubuntu Servers..."
ntpdate ntp.ubuntu.com
echo "Setting hardware clock to updated time..."
hwclock --systohc

Note the last line: It resets the hardware time ("BIOS time") to the system time. Press Ctrl+O to write out this file, and Ctrl+X to quit nano. Now we shall make this little script executable. To do this,

sudo chmod 700 /etc/init.d/ntpdate

And finally, let's inform the system about this new startup script we just added:

sudo update-rc.d ntpdate defaults 90

And you're done.

To test this, you must restart your system, and keep a close watch on the messages being shown on the system. Alternatively, you could also read the system log files later (/var/log/syslog)

Free "Parallels" for Mac OS X

2006-09-17T18:13:00.000-07:00

I want to run Ubuntu virtual machine on OS X, but don't want to pay for Parallels Desktop. So I was searching for few alternatives, and stumbled across one such tool. This one is called "Q" (pronounced "kju"). I installed it, and was able to create an Ubuntu virtual machine effortlessly. Even easier than VMware Workstation.

So I now have Ubuntu running under Mac OS X, with the help of Q.

Then I also tried Ubuntu and Kanotix Live CDs in Q - Both of which worked flawlessly. I tried installing Windows 98 SE in Q just for the sake of experimenting, but it wouldn't boot from a bootable CD! Don't know why!

In a nutshell, If you want to run another OS on your Mac without rebooting, Q is a formidable candidate.

Identify this operating system

2006-09-17T02:58:00.000-07:00

All these OS's running are real, there is no "background jpg" or something like that!

Ubuntu Server: CDROM problem

2006-09-17T00:44:00.000-07:00

My server, a 1997 old desktop, has Ubuntu Server Edition running on it. I had inserted my Ubuntu CDROM in its drive, and kept it over there ever since. But now, I needed to take the CD out, for installing an Ubuntu virtual machine on my laptop.

Okay, so I sit in front of my server, and press the eject button of CDROM. Nothing happens. Did that again - nothing yet. I pressed the button really hard one more time. But the machine won't budge.

I thought that the old CDROM drive is dead for good.

But wait... I just remembered: I couldn't eject CDs by pressing the eject button on my previous linux laptop! What is going on here?

Lacking a GUI, I decide to do something from CLI (command line interface) to eject the CD. So I type this:

eject

and press enter.

Viola...!!!! The CD is out now! :)

MacBook Smart Sound Volume

2006-09-11T22:13:00.000-07:00

I just discovered this. First, set the macbook volume to a level when you can barely hear it (about 50-60%). Now plug in a headphone jack in the headphone socket in the macbook, but don't wear it in your ears... just let it lie besides the macbook.

And now, increase the volume to maximum... you shall hear the sounds from the headphones, right? Yes you do. And then, remove the headphones from the macbook.

You would expect that the macbook will keep playing sound at maximum volume. But you're wrong.... MacBook remembers your sound volume settings for the macbook internal speakers and the headphones plugged in.

You discovered something!

And last, but not the least, plug the headhphones back into the macbook, and reduce the volume... so your eardrum stays safe the next time you wear them. :)

Google products - now you can touch and feel them!

2006-09-07T09:26:00.000-07:00

Google Notebook

Google T-shirt for pets

Google Car License Plate

Google Chewing Gum

And Google Clothes store!

Empty iptables in Ubuntu default installation

2006-09-04T23:31:00.000-07:00

Now that my site is famous (almost), I'm beginning to think about security. Actually I should have thought about it even before opening the site to the public. So here I am, sitting in front of my black box, thinking about security.

Googling around for some time revealed more details about a word I happened to know previously - "iptables". A quick check at my iptables configuration in default ubuntu installation revealed that I do not have any firewall rules set at all! Now, this makes me think twice about my server security. How then, no one was able to hack the site?

The answer is my router. It has an in-built firewall, which I had configured to allow only ports 80 (HTTP) and 22 (SSH). I would just have port 80 open, but I needed remote management. So I opened port 22 as well.

I'll find more details about server security, and post them here.

The Digg Effect on my site

2006-09-03T15:47:00.000-07:00

My site was posted by someone at Digg.com recently, and experienced a heavy traffic. It survived the onslaught, but was crawling painfully. It could have done better if

I was informed before posting at digg.com
I had faster internet connection (currently 64kBps upload DSL)

Apache and Ubuntu survived the onslaught, and the site remains up. I had set up a mirror earlier... and it proved handy in these times.

Thank you all for digging/undigging the story!