raikar explores

My list of must have free & opensource softwares

2008-02-26T10:14:00.003+05:30

1)Mozilla Firefox
2)7-Zip
3)Audacity
4)Blender 2.45
5)Gimp
6)Inkscape
7)Irfanview
8)Kompozer
10)Launchy
11)Mediacoder
12)MediaMonkey
13)Mozilla sunbird
14)Notepad++
15)OpenOffice
16)Process Explorer
17)Python 2.5
18)Scribus
19)Stellarium
20)SumatraPDF
21)VideoLAN
22)GhostScript
23)Dev C++
24)Web Developer Server Suite

Mail without subject

2007-11-21T17:06:00.000+05:30

I sent a e-mail to a senior person in a company without a subject line. People will be receiving hundreds of mails and going through whole of the mail is really a difficult task. Its also rude and improper to send a mail without subject lines in a corporate world.This is really an embarrassing moment for the sender. But there is one way you can prevent sending mails without subject line in Microsoft Office Outlook.

1. Open Office outlook
2. Open Visual Basic editor by pressing Alt+F11
3. Go to “Microsoft Outlook Objects” in the Project explorer window, expand it and select “ThisOutLookSession”.
4. Paste the following code in the Code window.


Private Sub Application_ItemSend(ByVal Item As Object, Cancel As Boolean)
Dim strSubject As String
strSubject = Item.Subject
If Len(strSubject) = 0 Then
Prompt$ = "Subject is Empty. Are you sure you want to send the Mail?"
If MsgBox(Prompt$, vbYesNo + vbQuestion + vbMsgBoxSetForeground, "Check for Subject") = vbNo Then
Cancel = True
End If
End If
End Sub

Save it and close.
From now on whenever you send a mail without a subject a prompt box will appear.

Google's Indic on-screen keyboard...

2007-11-20T17:41:00.000+05:30

To write something in Indic languages, earlier I used to use Indian Language Converter. There I needed to type the desired thing in English, which the script converted to Indic languages.
But now, typing in Indic languages got simpler because of Google's On-screen keyboard. Having a keyboard on your screen is really great as you cannot have an Indic keyboard. Its basically designed for google search but you can use it for anything. B
People who prefer mouse will love it, for those who like keyboard, Indian language converter is still the best.

Recovering shift+deleted mails from Microsoft Outlook

2007-10-19T17:13:00.000+05:30

Recovering Shift+deleted mails from Microsoft Outlook.

1) First go to Start-Run and Type 'regedit'

2) Go to:
\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\EXCHANGE\CLIENT\OPTIONS
registry key.

3) Right click options and add new DWORD VALUE (data type is REG_DWORD) and
then right click and rename to DumpsterAlwaysOn. It is case sensitive.

4) Then right click and modify and make the value 1 to turn the Recover
Deleted Items menu choice on for all folders or enter 0 to turn it off.

5) Then go to Outlook , choose "Recover deleted items" option from the
Tools Menu to get back your "permanently deleted" mails!

Note : This procedure can recover mails which were deleted by pressing
shift+del in the past 30 days.

airtel.com redirects to vodafone.es

2007-10-11T08:19:00.000+05:30

"Type airtel.com in the address bar of your browser. You land up on vodafone.es website. "

Bharati Airtel happens to be one of the biggest mobile service provider in India which recently crossed Rs 2 lakh cr in market cap(ref). Another big mobile service provider Hutch was taken over by Vodafone. The competition is intense between these two companies. There are mails going about airtel.com redirecting to vodafone.es.

Back to topic, airtel.com, vodafone.es etc., are called domain names. One can register a domain name with domain registering companies for a price.

To know the reason behind why airtel.com redirects to vodafone.es we need to do a who.is

Visit these pages to know for yourselves...
http://www.who.is/whois-com/ip-address/airtel.com/ for info on airtel.com

http://who.is/whois-in/ip-address/airtel.in/ for info on airtel.in

The Admin Organization for airtel.com is Vodafone Espana S.A, and Registrant Name is AIRTEL MOVIL, S.A.

The Admin Organization for airtel.in is Bharti Airtel Limited and Registrant Organization is Bharti Airtel Limited .

This means that the domain airtel.com is owned by Vodafone whereas airtel.in is owned by Bharati Airtel.

The airtel.com domain just redirects your browser from airtel.com to vodafone.es. So you land up on vodafone.es whenever you type airtel.com in address bar.

When ntde1ect.com and avpo.exe visited my PC

2007-10-08T18:27:00.000+05:30

Got home late night on Friday. Just wanting to check my mails, I logged onto my PC. When I clicked on the local drive icon, the drive opened in a new window. Moreover I noticed that I was not able to see the hidden files on the drive. I always have these two configured in folder options. I went to folder options and tried to configure but the changes were not being reflected. Seemed that registry entries were not working. Felt something was fishy, may be an intruder... a virus. So fired up Task Manager. Found that iexplore process was running though I hadn't run it. I tried to kill the process but it wouldn't die. Also found that some avpo.exe was running. There was also some illegal memory access error with ntde1ect.com. I thought who would name an application as ntde1ect, none other than a virus creator.

Now it was time to find a solution. I fired up Firefox, googled for 'ntde1ect virus' and landed here. Followed Step 1 there and those intruders were deleted. After restarting I found that my problem of not being able to change the show hidden files still existed. Thought some registry changes had to be done, so googled once again for 'show hidden files registry'. Found this and my problem was solved.

Phew....Windows & its viruses....... It has been a long time since I wanted to switch to Linux (Ubuntu to start with) but I am scared of touching my somewhat stable PC. Planning to buy a lappy & then get started with Linux.

texts & scripts

2007-10-01T19:06:00.000+05:30

¡¡ ʇxǝʇ dılɟ ǝɥʇ
¿ ƃuıʇsǝɹǝʇuı sıɥʇ puıɟ noʎ ʇ,uop˙˙˙˙˙˙ǝɹǝɥʇ ollǝɥ

Not able to read ? just flip your screen... , this is flip text. Converter is here.

$0 (4n ¥0µ r34Ð 7h1$ 47 £34$7 ?

can't get this one too ? this one is leetspeek. Converters are here.

Creating a CON...

2007-09-20T17:09:00.000+05:30

Why can't you create a folder named 'CON', 'AUX', 'PRN', 'CLOCK$', 'COM', 'LPT1 ' , 'LPT2',
'LPT3', 'COM2' , 'COM3' , 'COM4' on Windows OS ?

Try creating a folder or a file with name 'CON' you wont be able to create it.. why ?

open command prompt and type
mem /d |more
You can see the names 'CON', 'AUX', 'PRN', 'CLOCK$'... etc, to be of type system device drivers.Windows treats these as files. These are the reserved words for the system drivers. So you cannot create file/folder with these names. This is neither a mystery nor a bug.

But there is one way you can create a 'CON'. type these on command line
mkdir \\.\d:\con
The folder you created is a network folder.(?)
You can delete this folder using command
RD \\.\d:\con

there's one another cool way... name the folder or file 'CON' followed by ALT + 255 (enter 255 with ALT pressed ). There you go...
Actually you didn't create a 'CON' but 'CON '. ALT + 255 gives ' ' character in ASCII extended code.

I also noticed that you can rename the 'my documents', 'my computer', 'Internet explorer' shortcuts to CON. These are just shortcuts and not actual files/folders. But you cannot rename other shortcuts(the ones for the softwares you installed) to CON.

And one more thing... CON stands for console, it can be either the keyboard or the display based on the situation.
Try this...
copy con mytext.txt
type your text here and press ctrl + Z
now check the mytext.txt file. It contains the text typed on console.
copy mytext.txt con this will put all the text from mytext.txt to console.
copy con con will reflect back the data entered on keyboard to display.

Email privacy & encryption using PGP

2007-09-04T18:31:00.000+05:30

Have you seen this video on youtube about how Gmail travels. Your email travels in a somewhat similar way.
Before reaching the recipient the mail is stored on numerous intermediate computers including the host mail server. The mails which are usually in either in text or HTML format can be read by anybody who has the access to these computers. How secure is communicating through mail ?

What if somebody reads your personal or some confidential business mail ?

As a remedy what you can do is encrypt your mail. But how to encrypt ? & how will the recepiet decrypt ?
There are various options for encryption, the most famous of them for mails is PGP or pretty good privacy. You can gain all the gyan about PGP here at Wikipedia.

Don't have patience to read... here it is

Just a small summary about how all this works :
1) You need to have two keys, a public & a private key. You share your public key with your friends & keep private key with you.Your friend also needs to have his keys.
2) To communicate to your friend, encrypt the message with your friends public key (which he has shared with you) and then mail the encrypted message.
3) Your friend can decrypt the encrypted message that you sent as only he has the private key (for the public key with which you encrypted the mail)

So essentially keeping your 'private key' private is really important.

The keys are generated using algorithms. The algorithms take your email ID and a pass phrase as input and generates a private and public key. When you want to encrypt a message you need to encrypt using the recipient's public key. The recipient needs to have his private key and enter the pass phrase to decrypt it.

You can find the list of softwares at wikipedia link above. I tried the one at http://www.gnupg.org . Its really nice for those on Windows as it integrates into your Microsoft Outlook.

GPRS on my mobile

2007-08-30T18:18:00.000+05:30

Few days ago my mobile service provider activated GPRS for free. With my Motorola C168 mobile, browsing isn't that cool. The screen is so small & I'm restricted to browse only WAP sites. My brother used to browse through most of the html sites using his Nokia 6630. One more reason to buy a new mobile :)

Here is the GPRS settings that I'm using for configuring wap on my handset. This works on almost every other handset.

provider	hutch
data bearer GPRS access point	portalnmms
ip address	10.10.1.100

Username and password are left blank.

I had (actually my brother) also used gprs on airtel & bsnl, the GPRS settings for airtel and bsnl are as below:

provider	airtel
data bearer GPRS access point	airtelgprs.com
ip address	202.56.231.117

provider
data bearer GPRS access point	airtelfun.com
ip address	100.1.200.99

provider	bsnl
data bearer GPRS access point	bsnlwap
ip address	10.31.54.2


provider	bsnl
data bearer GPRS access point	celloneportal
ip address	10.31.54.2

Wish me Happy WAP browsing :)

Google & internet...

2007-08-22T18:38:00.000+05:30

A couple of days ago, I had a conversation with one of my friend who happens to be a programmer.
He was telling me about how Google had helped him at work and else where.
Every time he would find a problem or get an error for which he didn’t have a solution,
he would just Google. Most of the time, the solutions were found in a minute or two. "Internet & Google have simply simplified our work" he says.

For the internet starved junta(those who don't have access to internet but have a working mail ), there is a way you can do Google search....

1) Send an email to google@capeclear.com and put the text of your query in the "Subject" line.
You will receive the search results as email to your mail id.

Once you get the result for the searches... u can get the contents of a URL using the below feature!!

2) Send email to web@pagegetter.com and subject should contain the url whose content has to be fetched.

You will get a mail with the page as a mail.

When I heard about this for the first time, I was quite apprehensive. But I tried it with my secondary mail ID, & it worked fine. And the best thing was that my mail ID wasn't spammed.

Comment in indic language...

2007-08-19T00:06:00.000+05:30

When we browse through blogs in regional (indic) languages and feel like commenting, we just comment in English or write in regional language with English script. If you really want to comment in the particular language itself, you either use transliteration softwares like baraha, nudi or use transliteration tools like Indian Language Converter.

I just thought of why not embed the Indian Language Converter(ILC) in the footer of the blog as a widget. So, here it is at http://ithinkinkannada.blogspot.com , my Kannada blog.

ILC supports Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Bengali,Punjabi,Sanskrit,Tamil,Telugu,Gujarati and is available under GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE. Just add a small widget and ther you go...

Right Click Context Menu

2007-08-13T01:34:00.000+05:30

Often we right click on files and folders to do cut, copy, rename, delete, create shortcut or see properties. There is also a long list of options if you have installed softwares like WinZip, winrar, etc.
All the Right Click Context Menu ( lets call it RCCM to make it simple) options are setup in the windows registry. If you want to do any changes on how your RCCM looks, you need to modify the registry. And before proceeding one important thing, before doing any registry changes, you must export the registry keys so that you can undo any changes.

Adding an option in context menu:

Lets try adding the command prompt in the RCCM, similarly you can add any program in the RCCM.
Open Regedit (Start-->Run & type Regedit), explore and go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\

There must be a key 'shell'. If it is not present, then create one (select HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\ then right click-->new-->key) and name it 'shell'.

Now create a key within shell (select HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\ then right click-->new-->key), give it a name which you want to see in the RCCM. Lets name it open with command prompt.

Now create another key within the new key open with command prompt in our case (select HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\open with command prompt\ then right click-->new-->key), name it command. Double click on the default value and type command.com . Here command.com is the executable file you want to execute by selecting the option in RCCM. If you want to associate any other executable file you need to give the full path of the executable file.

Because we have added the keys to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\ , all files and folders will have the newly created option in RCCM. If you specifically want some options only for particular type of files, you have to go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\filetype\shell\ where filetype is the type of the file and add keys as explained above.

For example lets take text file with .txt extension.

Now to find the right key for adding the option, browse to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.ext where .ext is the extension of that particular file. In our case, HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.txt.

Note the value data for the default key. In our case it would be something like txtfile.

Now browse to that particular key in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ . In our case, it is HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\txtfile.

You can create your key in the shell folder as explained above.

To summarize,

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\xyz\shell contains all the RCCM options for xyz filetype. The command key within shell gives the executable file.

Notepad logs the time.

2007-07-30T19:54:00.000+05:30

Open notepad and type .LOG and save it.
Next time when you open the file the time & date will be appended. This one isn't an Easter-Egg.
This is useful when you have to create a log file with the timestamp.

Also pressing F5 with notepad open inserts the current time and date.

Indian Language fonts on Firefox.

2007-07-19T19:02:00.000+05:30

I have been using Firefox for some time now & I am more than satisfied. But one thing that I wasn't happy was the Kannada language fonts would look scrambled (like pictures from here.) Though IE showed everything fine, FF failed. I had given up & was using IE for browsing Kannada websites.
Yesterday, Susam pointed out this on Wikipedia. After doing what was specified there, everything works fine.

BTW for writing in Indian languages, I use Indian Language Converter. Its simple & easy. You can download it & use it locally on your system.

Clipboard data

2007-07-18T17:48:00.000+05:30

We tend to do a lot of copy & paste. We copy email ID's, code, difficult to remember data like account numbers,phone numbers etc.
A simple javascript code can be used to copy this data. Combined with server side scripting, one can read all your confidential information on the clipboard.
Firefox, Opera doesn't support this. IE does. One more reason to avoid IE :) But you can also change the security settings in IE to prevent this.
But sometimes we come across interesting webpages that do not show up properly on Firefox, so you either use the IE tab plugin or the IE itself without considering the security issue. What if that page copies your clipboard ? As a precaution its better you change the security settings.

More info here.

Metadata and Pictures...

2007-07-16T18:00:00.000+05:30

Try this

Step - 1
Open this picture. You can see upside down image, right? OK.

Step - 2
Save this image to any folder in your PC.

Open that folder and select thumbnails from view menu.
Now what do you see?

The thumbnail has an upright image. But the actual image is upside down. Why is it showing like this ?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The reason:
The JPEG file format includes some metadata information along with the image information. Metadata includes Exif information. This metadata has information like make and model of the digital camera, time and date the picture was taken, small preview image (thumbnail) of the picture,firmware version, serial numbers, etc. ...

So when the above (JPEG file) image was saved, it was flipped and was written with the old metadata, so the thumbnail has the image of the old picture.

Generally people take images with their cam's, then edit it and upload them or share them on internet. But they never know that the image may still contain some important data.

This can be a serious security issue. If you go through this you will have some idea.

There are various softwares which allow you to see the Exif information. Most of them support editing or deleting the data. Irfanview is one of my favorite image editing tool.

Notepad and Encodings

2007-07-12T18:07:00.000+05:30

Try the following steps on Windows :

1) Open an empty notepad file

2) Type, "Bush hid the facts" (without the quotes)

3) Save it as whatever you want.

4) Close it, and re-open it.
Some strange characters appear. Is this some M$ conspiracy ?
Other sentences like "vcfg ytr bch gcnut" , "Osamabin laden leading all terrorist" too result in same problem.
Now try saving the file in 'Unicode' encoding and open it again.You don't get the strange characters.

The reason is that when notepad saves the file(which is default ANSI) it does not save the encoding information with the file. When you open the file next time, notepad tries to guess the encoding. If its guess is wrong, it shows the strange characters. IsTextUnicode function seems to be the culprit for the wrong guess.
When saved in unicode encoding, the encoding information is saved in something called as BOM. So next time when you open it, notepad knows how to read it.
Other text editors like notepad++ (which I use ) does a good job in guessing the encoding.

More info is available here and here.