Daily Musings

My experiments with Android app development (cont.)

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 07:42:00 +0000

After creating my first Android app (Bajrang Baan), I decided to create another app on the same lines. This time around I felt the need to develop Brahespati-vaar vrat katha which is mostly read on Thursdays by Hindu devotees.

This app too follows the same pattern as that of Bajrang Baan. Here is the link to Brahespati-vaar vrat katha.

I hope people will use this app and like it.

Bajrang Baan - My experiments with Android App Development

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 12:21:00 +0000

After trying a lot for over a month, today I finally completed and packaged my very first Android App - Bajrang Baan (बजरंग बाण). Its a basic app which allows users to read the complete Bajrang Baan on their Android-enabled phones.

The link to the app is here. I wish to get some feedback from the users so that I may improve upon it. I hope the users will find this app useful.

Life Change, Job Change, Place Change and more

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 11:23:00 +0000

I haven't been able to write since long. This has mostly been due to the fact that I moved to other platforms to write out my rants. Also, I experienced a huge change in my life in this absence...I got married :)

Life was moving steadily since then..until I decided to switch my job and that I did in April this year. Along with job change came the decision to move out of my hometown (Lucknow) to Mohali. And hence started my new journey..here I am in Mohali.

I came here alone. Had to manage all things by myself including the usual household chores. During this time I even learnt how to cook (not that I was illiterate earlier; but still I learnt something I had not done before). Over the past six months I learnt and cooked a lot of dishes. Some were good, some just okay and some were really bad. Will try to upload some pics some time later. I developed a habit of taking photographs of the food I cooked and sending them over to my wife.

Then, in August 2011, I fulfilled my long-cherished dream of buying a touch-based mobile phone in the form of Samsung's Galaxy Ace. Actually, I didn't buy it but rather it was gifted to me. All in all its a decent phone for its price but there are better options available too. I wanted to get LG's Optimus One but none of the shopkeepers had it and everyone pushed for a Samsung phone (Galaxy Fit). I settled for Galaxy Ace because of its better configuration. Its been 2 and a half months now and it works fine. The only place where it lacks is its internal memory. It is a paltry ~200 MB considering the fact that all the apps are installed on internal memory by default. It took me a hack to get it to install apps on the memory card but still it would have been better if it had more internal memory (because the app data still get stored on internal memory) or if it had an inbuilt option to store applications on memory card. I know there is a hack available which enables the phone to install the apps on the memory card along with their data but it requires us to 'ROOT' the phone which essentially voids the warranty.

One fine day, I installed an app on my phone which inspired me to think of developing apps for Android platform. After much research and downloads, I was able to develop a Hello World! app and was able to run it successfully on my phone. After that I started work on a full fledged app. I have completed the app today and will write another post describing the app and provide a download link for it too.

After the Diwali celebrations at home, I got back to Mohali with my wife :) and so now I am relieved from the work of cooking although I do try to help her whenever possible.

This was a very brief description of the changes that I have experienced over time (mostly while I was absent from this platform). I am looking forward to staying in touch more often now.

Linux Comes to the Rescue

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 10:51:00 +0000

After my earlier rants about my usage pattern of OS's, I tried to remove the bad sectors of my hard drive (80GB capacity). This required my taking bakup of some 60 GB of data. This created a new problem as I had never thought of a backup plan for myself. But then I got the timely help from one of my friends who agreed to lend me her HDD.

The HDD's capacity was 40 GB which required me to plan my backup accordingly. I have another HDD of 20GB (courtesy my old PC ;) ). After a few rounds of calculations I had planned the backup procedure. Then I went on to copy my data to my friends disk and then the rest of the data to the other 20GB that I have (NOTE: OS was installed on the 20 GB drive..and it still is). After that I formatted my 80 GB HDD (This was the second time in 4 years; first one being when I bought it) and then repartitioned the drive as per my choice which involved a 65 GB partition and another partition with the rest of the space left. Then the last step included copying the data back to the HDD. Everything went with the breeze as I did everything using my Linux OS of choice (which happens to be Ubuntu at present). The only thing that bugged me was finding a disk for backing up my data to.

So, now I am (finally) using Ubuntu 9.04 and won't be using a dual boot (for the time being) as I had planned earlier. From this incident, I decided upon two things; first one: I should keep my data on a seperate physical drive from that used for OS, secondly, I should always be prepared for an eventuality (which involves a robust backup plan or a spare HDD in layman's terms).

I learnt another thing a few days later (when I had to return the friend's HDD in the same condition that I brought it). The thing was that I formatted the HDD into 2 NTFS partitions using GParted in Ubuntu. But when I tried to install Windows XP on this drive, the windows setup could not detect the partitions and displayed a single unpartitioned space. Then I ran the Ubuntu Live CD which showed the partitions in place and eventually I had to partition the drive using Windows CD. From this I learnt that there is some problem in using Linux to partition a drive as NTFS, as it won't be recognized under Windows. I will have to study a bit more to get to the root-cause of this problem. But as of now I am happily using Ubuntu as it has helped me a lot in doing various tasks which required me to install various paid softwares in Windows. YES!! I am a happy Linux user.

Tasty Flavors of Linux

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:50:00 +0000

For the past few days, I have been busy trying out different Linux Distros. As a matter of fact, I have been using Linux since early 2006, my first fav. being Kubuntu. Then, I switched to Ubuntu later that year.

Although I liked the overall experience very much (Ubuntu is a very friendly OS for newbies), I could not use Ubuntu as my primary OS (for daily use) and kept it as an alternative to Windows XP. I used to log into Ubuntu just for the fun of it and didn't use it seriously for quite some time. But still, I managed to learn a trick or two during this period which helped me getting to the next step of computing using Linux.

Then, sometime around last year, I started using Ubuntu as my primary (and only) OS. I was astonished to find that I could do anything and everything that I wanted to do and used to do using XP. The fun part is always that one gets to learn a lot of stuff.

After using it for some time and trying each and every new version of Ubuntu, I felt the need for more which led me to install Kubuntu once again. This time around Kubuntu was very sleek (with the new KDE 4). Look-wise its a good distro, but, problems crop up soon enough to drop it off the shelf (for me, atleast). Now I wanted a distro which could things done and that too without hogging the system resources. After clouting for long hours, I decided to use Zenwalk (some people claimed it to be the fastest around). It was a very good experience as the distro was really fast. I removed it only because it looked aged at times (just looks-wise).

I wanted to try Arch-Linux after that but could not as I was not patient enough to learn the process of installing a Desktop Manager from command line. Actually I was able to install the Desktop manager, but I was not able to run it :P.

Then I thought of trying OpenSuse, but, I was not able to install it properly..I kept getting errors which frustrated me and I switched back to Ubuntu (for a little while). Then I installed Windows 7 as its RC was available for general public and I had read about it alot which was enough for me to give it a shot.

Then I installed Kubuntu again. This time around I found it much better. I used it for quite a while and installed Fedora as my secondary OS. Fedora deserves a mention here as I found it to be rock-solid as is promised on various web-forums. Very useful, easy as Ubuntu and stable too. My problem with it was that it had too many softwares which I didn't require (and never may). At a point of time I thought of removing the softwares I didn't require, but then gave it a harder thought (how many softwares will I remove?) and decided not to use Fedora. By this time, Kubuntu had started acting up and crashed often (Partly due to the fact that I had installed KDE 4.3 on it).

Hence, arose the need of a complete over-haul and so I did. This time I thought of dual booting Windows XP with Ubuntu (my tried and tested config). Installed XP without any glitches, but, when I hooked up the other HDD (to install Ubuntu on it), I started facing a strange problem. When the PC started to boot into XP, the system restarted. After trying and testing various ways to sort it out, I was left with a restarting system. This problem propped-up only when I plugged in the other disk and not when only the XP disk was connected. As most of my data is present on 'THE OTHER' disk, I decided to install and keep only Ubuntu, giving XP a miss. Since then I have tried many ways to install and use the two OS, but haven't succeeded in it and so now I use Ubuntu (only) and have formatted the disk containing XP as an additional drive.

So here I am, back to square-one..using Ubuntu after getting my hands wet with various 'TASTY' flavors of Linux and still searching for ways to boot both of them together (which I have successfully done in the past without any hitch).

I know that I would keep trying other flavors and I may like some and may dislike some. One thing is for sure..Linux has come a long way baby!

MTV - Used To Be MUSIC Television

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:42:00 +0000

Then, there were days when MTV was an acronym for Music Television. Come the age of Reality TV, and the 'MUSIC' element of MTV is no where to be seen. The channel is loaded with loads of programs based on 'Reality' which is meant to evoke people's senses and thereby increase its TRP.

Initially I used to enjoy the show 'Roadies'. Now I don't.. And this change is due to the overdose. More amount of drama has been thrown into it. Then there are shows which give us more insight into the lives of Roadies and the making of the show. Who needs all this 'awe-inspiring' insight for that matter? I don't, for sure.

It would have been OK if it was just Roadies, but now there's a whole new breed of Reality-based programs thrown in. Whenever I switch to MTV, hoping to find some good music playing there...I am disappointed to find yet another show of some 'Fast N Gorgeous' or 'SplitsVilla' or the 'Teen Diva'.

In a way, its not MTV's fault, after all they show it because people like such shows which evident from the fact that every other channel is showing atleast one Reality-based show.

Anyways, this has made me move away farther from TV...Yes, Internet is my saviour.

Firefox 3.5 is BORN!!

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:20:00 +0000

Yes!! The highly-awaited, browser from the Mozilla stable is here. Mozilla has released Firefox 3.5 to the general public. It features a faster FF with a reworked Javascript engine which tries to match-up the speed of Chrome, if not better it. Nonetheless, its worth trying out for the heck of it.

And yes...this post was in accordance with the requirement...FF 3.5 at 3:50 PM

Steal-proof Bike

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:56:00 +0000

Can U Steal this bike??

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 06:49:00 +0000

My sudden absence from the blog-scene has a very unpleasent reason. My home PC's got some problem. If my Optical drive problem was not enough; there came another one to bug me. This time its the graphics solution thats causing the problem. There is no display on the monitor, though it boots properly. At first, I thought it was a problem with the monitor, but after checking it, I found out that its not the monitor but the video-out connector that is causing the problem.

This might be a minor problem, and may get repaired easily, but, I am in a mood to replace my motherboard and get more RAM and a new graphics card. I hope I will be able to get these things soon. Until then, am left with no other choice but to blog from office.

At office front, I have got a new project to work on. It has been a good experience working on it and looking forward to meet the deadline.

Sys Admin Comes Calling..

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:11:00 +0000

Alas! The Block-bug has bitten our System Administrator finally.. and so, we are left with no ‘Socializing’ options. All of the social-networking websites have been blocked at my work place. No Orkut, No Facebook. It’s been a tough time for us since then

Initially, I felt it would be very hard to survive, but as the time passed (2-3 days), I have been able to settle down and have read the wrinting on the wall – NO ORKUT. It’s not that difficult after all, because as it is, I was increasingly getting disenchanted by this social-interaction thing anyways.

The good part is that GMail has been spared the hammer and we are allowed to access our beloved email service. This can partly b attributed to the fact that GMail has the word ‘google’ in its domain name, which could, in turn, not be blocked for obvious reasons. For long, GMail has been the main interaction tool for me and many others like me. It’s inbuilt chat feature allows instant chat which is more than we could ask for. Most of the mail services are allowed, so there won’t be a problem for others too.

Still, it remains to be seen how effective this is going to be and how the efficiency increases in our work-place. As for other people, some have even found out ways to bypass the blockings, to access the social networking site of their choice.

It has almost been a fortnight since my last writeup, which was due to the fact that I was too busy to write. A few dinner parties, loads of work in office and yes! the blog site too has been blocked . Also, I didn’t have much to write. Lastly, I forgot to write about the winner of the IPL2; its Deccan Chargers this time, the minnows of last year have risen to the occasion and have left everyone else biting the dust. Kudos to them…

Sad Ouster of Rajasthan Royals from IPL2

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Wed, 20 May 2009 16:04:00 +0000

Just read the news of Rajasthan Royals from IPL2 after having blast of a season last year and their event-full winning of the championship. This time around, they didn't seem to be in their earlier form and lost a match every-now-and-then, which was in strike contrast to last year when they didn't loose a single match.

Still I think they played well enough. Even Shane Warne had this to say after losing their deciding match: "We played Great Cricket."

There has been sudden change in fortunes of Kolkata Knight Riders, who, after loosing almost all of their matches, were able to spring two surprises. One was their game with Chennai Super Kings, where they beat them Hands-down while chasing a massive score of 188. The second game was this one, where they were able to shatter the IPL dreams of Rajasthan Royals. Although this ain't going to get them through to semi-finals, yet they spoiled the party of Rajasthan Royals.

Cricket has always been a strange game with strange outcomes; IPL2 surely is one such example of the same. Lets see who's the champ this time.

Windows 7: Day Two

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:30:00 +0000

After Day one, I was ready to install and softwares and start using the OS. As my system's configuration ain't enough for all the eye-candy of Windows 7, I settled for the Windows 7-on-diet. Here's the look of my desktop.

I even tried to change the theme (there are laods of of them), but only the desktop background changed and rest remained the same. This happened because of the scarcity of the resources, out of which, main problem was very less physical memory.

Now comes the interesting part... I downloaded and installed latest versions of the regular softwares I use. As of now, none of them have a version for Windows 7 (quite rightly so, because the OS has not released as yet). The regular versions for Xp/Vista worked fine with Windows 7 and I had no problems in installing and using them.

The list of softwares that I use are: Avira AV Personal Edition, Foobar2000 (for music), uTorrent for torrent downloads, Firefox 3.5 beta 4 for browsing, Irfan View for images, 7Zip for archives, Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger. There some more softwares, which I use, and hence, will install during the course of time. All the softwares I installed, worked perfectly. There was no problem what-so-ever. I haven't installed Visual Studio, which I will have to, very soon, as my work depends on it. Installing and using VS would be the real challenge for the OS. Lets see whats in store for me....

Windows 7: Day One

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Wed, 13 May 2009 16:30:00 +0000

My first day with Windows 7 was a mixed bag of emotions filled mostly with awe. Yes!! I was awe-struck with the look, feel and performance of Windows 7.

The good things about Windows 7 are:

Streamlined interface. Better navigation capabilities.
Automatic Performance adjustments according to user's system configuration.
Very Good Looks and capability to change themes (I remember the good old days of Windows 98.)
Addition of Sticky Notes (Can come handy at times).

Certain problems that I faced with it were (yes..were...coz I have solved them now):

The sound card driver was not detected initially and I have to use the "update driver" option from "Device Manager" to get the driver. But the good thing was that the driver was detected and downloaded automatically. No manual download and installation was required from my part.
The other problem was with graphics. In XP, although my graphics solution was not detected, still I didn't need to install graphics drivers seperately. Here, the OS set the graphics to be "Standard VGA". And although this setup had set the required resolution of "1024x768" and color depth of 32bit, but the refresh rate was very low which caused a strain to my eye. And, there was no option to change the refresh rate. Then I downloaded the latest graphics drivers for windows (no drivers for windows 7 as yet) from the manufacturer's site and tried to install it. At first, it gave an error during installation that its not meant for this version of OS. But then, it provided an option to install the software with recommended settings, and I did the same, which gave the required results i.e. the drivers were installed finally and I was able to change the refresh rate.

Below is the video of the first run of Windows 7 on my machine (Again with FM as background music ):

Windows 7…Here I Am..

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Wed, 13 May 2009 15:30:00 +0000

After Days of agony, I successfully installed Windows 7 yesterday with much-needed help from our-very-own Google . I take it as an achievement because of the fact that I didn’t use my DVD drive to install it and instead, I used my new USB Flash drive to do the same.

After many tries, I had almost given up, as I was not able to boot my PC with the USB drive. I had tried many a methods given on the internet. The problem with all those methods was that they were meant to be acted upon in Vista; and I wanted to use my XP machine for it. Finally I found a article which was yet another article about the doing the specified task in Vista. But, thanks to a person who had commented in that article, I got what I was looking for. After that I mingled all the steps to boot and install from my USB drive.

As daunting a task it was for me, it might be for others too. Hence, I decided to bring together and filter all those steps to present a short-yet-working step-by-step solution of installing “Windows 7 from a USB Drive using Windows XP“. Here is the solution:

Download Windows 7 RC iso file from here (Remember it’s a 2.39GB of download, so it will take time…Have Patience ).
Make sure your USB drive and motherboard support booting from a USB Drive.
Prepare your USB drive by- (1) Formatting it (Go to My Computer and right-click on your USB Drive. Then left-click on “Format”). (2) Making it “Active” by going to “Computer Management” under “Administrative Tools” in Control Panel. Then click on “Disk Management” in the left-hand panel. Then select your USB drive in the right-hand panel and make it active by right-clicking it and then selecting the appropriate action.
Now comes the part which made me tear my hair out..Making the USB drive bootable..The simplest solution is to download an ISO utility called UltraISO and installing it on your system. Then run UltraISO and open the Windows 7 RC iso file which you downloaded in the first step. Then click on the “Bootable” option in the top menu. Then select “Write To Disk”. Now make sure your USB drive is selected as the destination and click on the “Write” button. Your drive is bootable when it shows “Burn Successful”.
Now You can restart your system and change your BIOS settings to boot from the USB drive. The setup starts automatically and is easy to perform.

Hope the above solution will help those who need a solution for installing Windows 7 from a USB drive. This method might be workable for other OS’s too if someone has a bootable iso file of the OS to install.

Here is a video of my installation experience:

Of Cool Weather, erring monitor and Windows 7

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Tue, 12 May 2009 05:51:00 +0000

After days of facing the Heat-Wave, yesterday brought some relief in the form of thunder-showers. A super-cool weather followed and still remains to sooth our lives :D. A welcome respite from the burning-Sunny days it has been.

A day before, my 3 year-old CRT monitor started giving me jitters. The display would go blank (No Display Signal) any moment and then get back after a slap or two. Sometimes even these slaps didn't work and I got so frustrated with it that I decided to replace it with my 11 year-old CRT monitor (I haven't changed it as yet, though). It was happening so randomly that I could not complete my work and hence decided to leave it as is. Then yesterday, I was not able to switch my monitor and get my work done because of the power-cut which, in turn, was due the bad (or should I say, Good :)) weather.

..After anxiously waiting for a week or so, I finally got my hands on the RC of Windows 7 this sunday. As my DVD-Writer is at fault (yes..DVD-Writer too :(), I searched for ways to install Windows 7 from my USB drive. After hours of Research and work, I finally got a bootable USB drive with W7 setup ready to be installed. Then I took a backup of my music library and the moment I wanted to start the installation process; BLANK!!...uuurrrrgggghhhh...the monitor... What happened next has been described above.

And so, here I am waiting for my turn to get down-and-dirty with W7. I hope today would be THEE day of reckoning for me(Let's pray to the rain-gods...Amen).

Magic Trick

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Sat, 09 May 2009 12:06:00 +0000

Amazing Magic Trick and illustration of how it has been done..

Good Head-start for web-designers

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:17:00 +0000

More often than not, a web-designer comes face-to-face with problem of finding the right tool for a typical kind of work he has to do. This is where a few freeware tools as mentioned below might come in handy. Some of these are already being used by most of the desingers, while others are crooning for attention. So lets delve into the sea of free web-designer tools available today:

Editing, Uploading, Downloading

7-Zip : 7-zip is a zip utility that completely replaces stalwarts like WinZip. It handles numerous compression file formats: arj, cab, gz, iso, lzh, rar, tar and zip to name a few. It also has its own proprietary format, 7z, which can squeeze a little extra out of a file when set to the “ultra” setting.
CSE HTML Validator Lite: Use this tool to create hand-coded pages and to catch coding errors before you publish. This validator will catch open tags and misspellings and it also will place quotation marks around attribute values as well as change all tags and attributes to lower case. If you don’t like to use it for coding, use it to save time on validation.
FileZilla : One of the best free FTP tools around. FileZilla provides unlimited uploads and downloads and supports resumption of transfers when your connection is broken. FileZilla comes in two flavors - full-featured FTP client, and FTP server. Both support FTP over open connections, SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH FTP.
KompoZer: KompoZer is a WYSIWYG Web-authoring system with built-in site management tools and CSS management system.
Texter: If you want a tool that can provide HTML tag shortcuts, you’ve found it. For example, tap “p” and hit Tab to open up a set of HTML paragraph tags. You also can develop your own shortcuts.

Graphics

FontForge: An outline font editor that lets you create and edit your own postscript, truetype, opentype, cid-keyed, multi-master, cff, svg and bitmap (bdf, FON, NFNT) fonts, or edit existing ones. Also lets you convert one format to another
Gimp: While not as powerful as Photoshop, Gimp is coming close. Gimp supports layers, filters, effects, brushes and textures and can handle any image file type imaginable.
Inkscape: This tool only gets better as the years go by. Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand and CorelDraw. It uses the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.
Serif Draw Plus: Use this tool to create vector drawings and smooth animations. Their DrawPlus 4 is completely free, and it allows text manipulation, fill tools and is filled with filter effects. For personal use only.
uMark: If you sell your images online, use this tool to create a watermark. You can protect your images with a copyright notice or logo, and add this visible watermark to hundreds of images at one time.

Photographs

Easy Thumbnails: How many times have you searched for a way to scale images in batches? This tool provides eleven re-sampling filters, real-time previews and quality results.
Gallery: Manage your photos, including automatic thumbnail resizing, rotation and other tools with this free download.
JAlbum: Do you need a photo gallery? JAlbum consists of free album software, free hosting (or upload to your own site), skins, ability to customize and a creative community.
Picasa: You don’t need Photoshop’s Bridge to organize your images. Keep images private or use one gigabyte free storage for albums - enough space for 4,000 wallpaper-size photos.
Picnik: Tweak photos online, create galleries and use special effects. This app works with photos at various online venues such as Flickr, Facebook, Photobucket and more.

EZ-Design

If you’re creating a Web site, where do you begin? If you’re an HTML pro, you can use the editing resources listed above. But, if you want to create heavy-duty Web designs without hiring a full staff, then the following free apps may help.

Webs: Choose from one of 300+ templates to get started. You can change your template at any time. And, you can use advanced HTML mode to modify your site. You also can integrate Paypal or Google Checkout.
Wix: Create Flash Websites, design a MySpace page, control your portfolios and add widgets. Start with a blank page or choose among various designs and go to it.

Project Management

Web designers usually know that they work long hours and that they don’t keep track of their time and that they don’t get paid for that lost time. While some might consider this problem a ‘labor of love,’ others might take advantage of the tools below to streamline productivity.

Clocking It: Prove to your clients that you’ve spent ‘that much time’ on their projects. Time tracking can be simple or detailed. Enjoy flexible reporting, multiple ways to communication and an interactive gantt chart and scheduling.
DimDim: Dimdim lets anyone deliver synchronized live presentations, whiteboards and web pages and share their voice and video over the Internet - with no download required.
Google Calendar Invoice Creator: Use a Google Calendar to create appointments and this tool will read the RSS feed from that calendar, calculate the total hours and create an invoice. You will need to install Adobe AIR first.
Google Docs: We’ve met folks who still haven’t tried the Google Doc applications, and we don’t know why. Use their documents, spreadsheets, presentation and PDF utilities and organize them by user or topic. You can share everything or nothing with your team. Also integrates a chat feature.
Klok: You could purchase a chess timer to keep track of how much time you spend on a project (good for when you have constant interruptions), but why? Especially when Klok is free. Track time and clients accurately. You will need to install Adobe AIR first.
ProjectPier: Very similar to the popular Basecamp, this free, open source and self-hosted PHP application is perfect for managing tasks, projects and teams.

Miscellaneous

These two apps are great management flow tools…

Premier Survey: This survey tool requires a web browser and an Internet connection to manage surveys from anywhere in the world.
File Dropper: FileDropper.com was created as a fresh and fast alternative for file sharing up to five GB. Files are kept forever as long as they are being downloaded.

Original Source: Best Web-Design Tools

Victory!! at Wordpress

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Wed, 06 May 2009 16:16:00 +0000

Phew..finally I have learnt how to stylize my posts at Wordpress and so here I am..at wordpress too...After many edits, drafts, previews, HTML changes and hard-work of two days..am off to a start on Wordpress too..

Hurray!!

After many failed attempts to change the theme on my blogger posts, I settled down with just another variant of what I was using before.

I ordered a 16GB pen drive yesterday. Lets see if I get or have to do with a 8GB one. Am planning to buy a HDD too..(Birthday Blessings kab kaam ayengi ?? ;) )

Living Statues

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Tue, 05 May 2009 10:44:00 +0000

Believe me..these aren't statues but real-livin people..

Source: http://englishrussia.com/?p=2672real

Windows 7

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Tue, 05 May 2009 10:23:00 +0000

I missed the bus to download the beta of Windows 7 which was available for download in January this year. But this time around, Microsoft has listened to my prayers and its Release Candidate 1 (which is available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/) will be available all through July, 2009. Finally I too might get the chance to get my hands dirty with this latest installment of the ever-so-popular, our very own WINDOWS.

Now that I am talking about Windows, I wanted to say something about Vista too. Although I know that a majority of people using it, find it to be one of the worst OS to come out of MS' stable, but I don't hate it as much. Or, should I say, I love it. Actually, I like it a lot. This might be attributed to the fact that I didn't face any driver-related issues which many a notebook owners face.
Also, I am happy using Vista because I readily disabled its UAC (I took gr8 pains to actually do that ;) ) at the very instant it surfaced its ugly head. The reason of my liking might also be attributed to the fact that I liked its visual appearence a lot (until I saw the KDE 4).

One problem that really annoys me about Vista is its slow transfer speeds, between various storage mediums. All in all it has been a good experience for me (for me atleast). Last but definitely not the I would like to mention that my journey with Vista has been a pleasent one because I used it for just a
MONTH!! :P. Now, I am happily using the latest version of my fav. Linux distro.

Coming back to Windows 7, I have read many good reviews of its beta on various online forums and reputed tech-magazines. But am yet to try it out myself and man!! I can't wait to try it - RIGHT NOW!!

P.S. I have kept my fingers crossed :)

Sighs And Solace

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Tue, 05 May 2009 05:33:00 +0000

An unabloomed bud,
devoured by crafty societal bugs,
Yet the core is left,
screened due to fear of theft.
Replenish with feelings concealed
and wrath unrevealed.
where lights the hope
A man from the mob will cope.
Grant her solace,
And, Abet to avenge
for her wounds and griefs,
With, determination and courge.
People with golden hearts are rare,
still there are many
To nurture her with love and care.
shall there be one,
Who could,
rebloom her-with
essences of life, and
give her none, cries and sighs.

-Padmaja Mishra

The wave of Blogging!

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Mon, 04 May 2009 07:16:00 +0000

Finally, I am back in office after four days of homely-bliss ;)

Office seems to be usual (No work :P for me) so here I am back with my blog. Yesterday, it struck me that I have an account at Wordpress too which has been left idle since long. I thought I should give it a go and so I headed to the site to get going, only to realize in a few minutes that it was too complicated for a simple blogger(pun intended) like me. I did replicate my blog entries there too but I dont like to have so-much "POWER" in my hands..thats why I am back to my good-ol' blogger. As it is, I like everything Google :P

I recently added RSS feed(after the idea caught me, due to a colleague's query) for this blog which others may subscribe to by clicking on the link given at the bottom of this page or here. I have started following 2 blogs here but haven't subscribed to their feeds as I like to subscribe for news feeds only (Read: I want to keep my Google Reader clean, by subscribing to news only). Anyways, I have subscribed to them using email, which I found to be a much better way of following others' blogs.

Now comes the important part, this "wave of blogging" has swept our office; with more and more people joining it (including me). Watch-Out UPTEC, here comes the Blog-Revolution!!

Adeus..

Essence of Hope

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Sun, 03 May 2009 07:23:00 +0000

In a cloudy night
i saw a plane
makin its way through,
the shady lane.
It swing a little high,
then swing a little low,
and looked like a swinging bird.
The show was a glimpse of an eye,
and after that it was seen no more,
but that very day i came to know,
where there is hope, there's scope.
Never do kneel infront of plights,
the dawn prevails even upon the,
deadliest night.
The feeling throve in my heart,
never deflect from thy path,
trials and tribulations are,
for a while,
sucess is for the whole life.

-By Padmaja Mishra.

NOTE: Original post at http://tinyurl.com/essenceofhope

Hang-Over of the Teetotallers..

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Sat, 02 May 2009 06:50:00 +0000

OK...so it was my B'Day yesterday :) and I enjoyed it to the hilt. The day went by in a swish and I was left satiated. Long-drive with cake-cutting, lunch at Nawabs, another long-drive...then another cake-cutting followed by dinner at a dhabha pretty much explains what I did yesterday.

A fast-n-furious drive back home with a hammering head-ache marked the end of the day. The hang-over still remains (of Love, ofcourse)...which has left a tired me...resting at home..so no office today :D

Edited: My birthday was on 1st of May and not 30th April as this blog entry would suggest..Just trying to figure out how to correct the date of publishing..

Hello World!!

noreply@blogger.com (rOcKy) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:00:00 +0000

शायद पहले ब्लॉग में हेल्लो वर्ल्ड कहना बहुत ज़रूरी है..इसीलिए मैंने सोचा मैं भी कह दूँ :P

After writing a few foolish (one named nonsense :P) blogs, I have finally got down to write a serious one. Got inspiration from one of my colleagues, who in turn, got inspiration from someone else.

Today is the proud moment when I have cast my very first vote and am anxiously waiting for the results as it would decide the future course of our Country.

Hope I would take out some time to write more often now...