Anand Prakash

Wallpaper Juggler: Downloads are not available from InterfaceLIFT

2009-02-22T09:28:00.000-08:00

After Wallpaper juggler was described as cool at lifehacker, there has been a lot of download activity on the project page at codeplex. It seems after getting the app, everyone started downloading high res wallpapers from InterfaceLIFT which, of course, made the guys at InterfaceLIFT mad. After downloading 10 or so wallpapers, it block access to the whole site for the IP address where wallpapers were being downloaded from and returns following message for every request:

Your access to InterfaceLIFT has temporarily been suspended do to misuse of our servers. Please review our Terms of Service for more information. Access will be restored in a couple days. To ensure that you access is not suspended again in the future, please disable any download accelerator plugins or software you may be running.

If you believe you have not violated the Terms of Service, please contact jeff [at} interfacelift {dot] com
Error code: xx.xxx.xx.xx

Ironically, even the “Terms of Service” page doesn’t come up once you are blocked. :)

Personally, I agree to this. There are costs associated to hosting a site like InterfaceLIFT and ads are one good way to support that which doesn’t happen when Juggler pulls those pretty images from the site. But hey, we still have another source right in juggler and we will find more. Only until other sources don’t treat us the same way.

Enjoy!

Anand

Enigmo : Solutions for iPhone Game - Level 11 - 20

2008-09-20T17:09:00.001-07:00

Here are the solutions for level 11 to 20. :) Click on a solution image to see in original size.

Solutions for other levels: Level 1 - 10

Enigmo : Solutions for iPhone Game - Level 1 - 10

2008-09-18T20:29:00.001-07:00

For last few days, I've been playing this amazing game all the time. It gets insanely interesting as you cruise along the levels. I took screen shots for every level I finished and sharing 'em if someone get stuck and looking for solution.

In case you are wondering how to take screen shots of iPhone display, click Home + Sleep/Wake button together and iPhone will take photo of your display and save it in camera roll.

Here are the solutions for level 1-10. I'll be posting rest of 'em pretty soon. Click on a solution image to see in original size.

Solutions for other levels: Level 11 - 20

Juggler v0.5.2: Wallpaper Changer for Windows Vista and XP (Update 6)

2008-02-22T18:32:00.004-08:00

Update 6: Wallpaper downloads are not available from InterfaceLIFT anymore. Read details here.

Update 5: Updated InterfaceLIFT downloader to work with the changed code at interfacelift.com.

Even though the first basic version of Juggler pretty much did what it was supposed to do, there were few 'nice to have' things which were missing. So I updated it as soon as I got some free time. :)

Feature set:

Here is the list of features (existing+new) which are now included.

Its coded and unit tested to work on Vista and XP SP2 with .Net 3.5. It should work (not tested though) on Server 2008/2003 as they borrow UI code base from Vista/XP. No words for any other OS.
It runs in background and can be controlled from System Tray.

It can be configured to:

You can also change wallpaper manually by clicking 'Juggle Now' menu or by double clicking the icon.
It allows only one instance at a time.
It also displays the last updated wallpaper and the time stamp when the next change will occur.
It displays a confirmation dialog before automatically changing wallpaper. Its configurable to show a confirmation dialog and for how long the message should be displayed.

"Active" option to enable/disable wallpaper juggling while program is running.
Last changed wallpaper is a clickable menu which opens the wallpaper in windows explorer.
You can download stunning wallpapers from interfaceLIFT.com and WallpaperStock.com using "Download Wallpapers" screen right within juggler.

Download:

This version uses .Net 3.5. Also, the downloads are posted at codeplex.com.

Download and install .Net framework v3.5 if its not installed already.
Navigate to Juggler release page at codeplex to download application and/or source code. The downloads are in Files section.

Implementation:

Most of the stuff is pretty straightforward. It uses Timer class to invoke code to change wallpaper. The invoked code then uses Win APIs to do the job. But there are few things which may interest you.

There are all kind of anonymous method illustrations. You can also find basic as well as complex lambda expressions which, I think, are nothing but fancy anonymous methods invented for LINQ.
It also demonstrates how to use System.Threading.Mutex to find and avoid if user is trying to run multiple instance of same application. This is the simplest and most accurate approach to create single instance application in C# (VB has some out of the box functionality). There is a catch in this approach which may disqualify this in certain cases.
While implementing single instance functionality, I needed to warn user that the application is already running. Simplest way is to just display a message box. But I thought if the already running (first) instance can get a notification from second instance then it can show a balloon tip which will tell user where exactly the application is running. This may sound simple but its not.
1. As both instance are separate processes, we are talking about inter process communication (IPC) here.
2. There is no other way than remoting in .Net 1.0-2.0 for IPC. And opening a tcp(forget about http) port seems overkill to me in this situation.
3. So I chose a self hosted simple wcf service with named pipe binding. May be I'll post about using named pipes in WCF for IPC later some time.

As always, please use it at your own risk. Feel free to rant in comments. :)

Enjoy!

Las Vegas & Grand Canyon Photos

2007-11-29T17:12:00.000-08:00

Here is the album of some photos I and friends took at our trip to Las Vegas and Grand Canyon last week. You can watch the slide show at Windows Live Spaces in full screen mode.

Windows Live is coming out really good among fierce competition. Its a full suite of Web 2.0 and desktop applications and Photo Gallery is fourth app from the collection on my PC. Messenger, Writer and Mail being other three. I have been using them for quite some time now and can comfortably recommend for home and personal use. I'm sure you'll like them. Did I say I love 'em?

Using hosts file to block Online Ads

2007-11-18T20:02:00.001-08:00

I think most of us will agree on this. Online ads make browsing a nightmare. Well, they make a lot of content free too but at times I felt like I was browsing just ads.

And that's not it. Most of the time browsers are busy downloading these ads and we think Internet is really slow. So, I thought it's time to give it a break and make Internet not suck. Read on if you find yourself in the same boat. :)

There are plug-ins for Firefox and IE to block ads but I use Opera. Opera has inbuilt content blocking but that is too much to do as there are a zillion ad servers out there. At times I have to use FF or IE too and this leaves me managing three different applications to block ads. On top of that, putting a plug-in in the pipeline is again adding one more step before you can see the content. And then you have to keep updating them for new releases. Not a good idea, I'd say.

Another way is to use hosts file. Description of hosts file from wikipedia:

The hosts file is a computer file used to store information on where to find a node on a computer network. This file maps hostnames to IP addresses. The hosts file is used as a supplement to (or instead of) the domain name system on networks of varying sizes. This file is (unlike DNS) under the control of the user who is using the computer.

There is a lot of information available on net which you can use to make it work. In a nutshell, here is what you need to do:

Download a hosts file which has updated lists of ad servers. I'm using the one from here and added few missing servers. Can you believe this list has around 6000 entries already? And if you follow the link, please don't try those shock sites. :( More hosts files can be found here.
Create a backup of your existing hosts file. (just give it an extn say .old.) On Vista, hosts file can be found in [System Drive]:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc. See this to locate on other systems.
Copy the downloaded hosts file in the etc folder. If you are using the site which I did then create another hosts file in etc folder and paste the contents from browser. See this if you are trying to edit the hosts file on Vista when UAC is enabled.
And that's pretty much it. Try some ad plagued site like engadget and you should see blank space instead of ads.
Also, don't forget to update the hosts file as frequently as you can as more and more servers will be popping out every now and then.

For those who wants to know the details and have plenty of time to spend :), here are the links:

Enjoy!

PS: The hosts file I am using and gave the link above has entries for known malware, trojans and user tracking sites too. It also has entries for ad servers like yahoo, msn and others which can make some sites behave unexpectedly. Please see inline comments on the site.

Running Ubuntu 7.10 on Vista using Virtual PC 2007

2007-10-20T00:13:00.001-07:00

For all of us (including myself) who have never seen a world outside Windows, Ubuntu is one of the ZILLION available distributions of Linux. I thought of trying Unix or Linux couple of times but every time got lost in the long list of distributions and couldn't decide where to start. But believe or it not its a pretty amazing world out there.

Canonical Ltd. released Ubuntu 7.10 a couple of days ago and I decided to install whatever the case is. I didn't want to mess up the current configuration running Vista so the obvious choice was to add one more virtual machine to the pile in Virtual PC 2007.

Step by step installation process is described here.

I did run into an issue where Virtual PC was clipping the ubuntu desktop and left me with only 30% desktop visibility. It was quick to fix though by changing "Window Resizing" options in Display tab for Machine settings in Virtual PC.

Its a long a way to go for me to learn linux and for Ubuntu to establish itself as a competitor to Windows and Mac. Wait a min...., my display is all crippled after I restarted it to make changes effective so that it can allow me to choose higher resolutions. Damn it. Now I don't know how to fix this. OK, lets start from scratch again. And this time I'm going to make a base HDD and do all the experiments in differential HDD.

I wish it was more user friendly. When you compare it with Windows and Mac, the barrier of entry is very high. And the best part is, if someone asks anything on community forums, those xorg geeks start telling them terminal commands. I think this is one major part Linux is lacking at. :)

Still, I think its fun to use Ubuntu and it has tremendous possibilities. Being free and major community involvement for localization, I think it will really help bringing people (non-IT) towards computers in countries like mine.

.NET Framework Source Code will be released with Orcas!

2007-10-04T19:02:00.001-07:00

This is huge. Actually, not huge but still. :) Scott Guthrie today posted that Microsoft will be opening up the source code of some parts of .Net framework. And the plan is to keep doing it for rest of the libraries.

Its not like we can't browse through the .Net framework source code now but the really nice thing about this move is that you can step through the actual .Net code while debugging your source code.

So, you are on a breakpoint on .Net method call in your code and if you hit F11, you will land right inside the .Net framework code. I can't remember how many times I went back to Reflector to find what exactly was going on. This is going to help everyone, big time. Even Microsoft will gain something in this. I bet they will cut a lot on support calls. :)

Now, don't confuse this with Open-Source as lots of people are. This is NOT Open-Source. The source is released under Microsoft Reference License. As the name suggests, this is just for your reference to help you understand .Net better (if you opt to) and allow to step through .Net source while debugging.

Amazing decision. Development will be fun now. I mean, more fun. :P

Enjoy!

Juggler : Automatic Wallpaper Changer for Vista

2007-09-21T23:17:00.001-07:00

By now you should already have a huge collection of wallpapers. If you don't, go to previous posts to get direct downloads and a tool to download high quality wallpapers.

Vladstudio Wallpaper Collection

Spectacular Wallpapers from InterfaceLIFT; Tool to download them all;

Now the next thing is to use these wallpapers. Going back to "Personalization" settings every time is really not something I'd prefer. So I, again, coded up a small and handy app which can do this for us.

It runs in background and can be controlled from System Tray.
It can be configured to
You can also manually change wallpaper by using Juggle menu or double clicking the icon.
You've got the source. So, change it if you want more features. :)

And that's pretty much it. I'm using it on Vista (1920x1200). It will NOT work on XP (or anything other than Vista for that matter) as XP doesn't support JPEG images as wallpapers and that's what I am using. I may update it later if I could spare some time. You can get a tool which may work with XP at Coding4Fun. And if you want you can always change the code [link below]. Updated to work with Vista and XP.

Remember, its not fully tested or final app. I just coded and left it when it started doing I wanted. So, no negative testing. :)

Juggler.exe.zip [Independent Executable]

Juggler.source.zip [Source Code, VS 2005]

Links disabled for outdated app. Follow the link below for updated links.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: I've updated this app with fixes and more features. Please navigate to the detailed post for description and download.

Spectacular Wallpapers from InterfaceLIFT; Tool to download them all;

2007-09-12T21:29:00.001-07:00

Before I say anything else, I have to admit that InterfaceLIFT has the best high resolution wallpapers. There are handful of artists who post their work on this site. Look at the fabulous samples:

There are thousands of them like these and in all possible resolutions. So the next question is how to get them. I tried the traditional way (read browsing) but it was really difficult to click on each one of them and save manually.

I though it would be really great if I can automate this or some kind of tool that can do this for me. So yesterday night, without wasting anymore time, I decided to code one up. Here is how it looks:

Its simple. Choose the resolution you want, choose the location to want to save images to and hit "Search and Download Wallpapers". You may also want to change the sorting to Ratings or Downloads to get community rated wallpapers first.

And here is how it works: On the website, interfacelift uses javascript to prepare the links for actual images. I checked the HTML source and thought I could exploit that approach.

It get the HTML markup for first page.
Search for javascript method calls and get the unique identifiers for wallpapers on current page and prepare a list of actual image names.
Loop through all images on current page.
Download one at a time and save to local disk.
Get markup for the the next page.
Go to step 2.
Keep doing this until user hits Stop or we run out of pages.

And that's it. Its pretty simple. I ran it on Vista and XP against .Net 2.0. You can download the independent executable and/or source (C#). See update below to download.

~~WallpaperCrawler.exe.zip~~ [Independent Executable]

~~WallpaperCrawler.source.zip~~ [Complete Source Code, VS 2005]

I know it can be enhanced or make more robust. But hey I just coded it in couple of hours for the functionality I needed. I haven't even tested it properly but it did what I was looking for.

Enjoy!

PS 1. If you find any issues with it, put your sleeves up and change the code. And yes, please don't forget to tell/send me the updates you made so that I can add them for others. :)

PS 2. By no means its a tested and final app. I don't take any responsibilities for the issues you may run into by using this.

Update: This program is now part of Juggler (another app I created for changing wallpapers). Please navigate to the description page to download the latest version.

Best gets Better : JavaScript Speed Tests

2007-09-07T18:24:00.001-07:00

I thought it'd be good idea to share what I meant by saying Opera is the best browser. There are lots of factors which determine the superiority of a browser (and any piece of software for that matter).

There are few benchmarks out already for Opera 9.5 and one of them pointed to the JavaScript speed tests. Try it for yourself. The script which is executing is right there so you can see what exactly is going on.

I ran these tests on Opera, Safari for Windows, Firefox and IE 10 times and put it on a graph.

Now you see what I meant, don't you? Its obvious from the results that Opera kicks IE and Firefox's butt big time. :) Surprisingly, Safari is pretty close. This is just one test out of HTML rendering, startup , network speeds et all.

Click here to open the detailed browser speed comparisons (Opera 9.5 not included).

Adding to all these goodies, Opera is always fun to use. There are lots of features which you'll just love. Like the mouse gestures. And starting to download the file while you are still thinking where to save it. And shortcut to paste and go to the URL instead of pasting it and hitting return. And allowing the User Mode view. And really useful zoom. And Feed Reader. And mail client. And Speed Dial. And Widgets. And "Speak" which reads the selected text as humanly as possible. I can keep going for quite sometime but you get the idea. :)

Happy Browsing!

Best gets Better : Opera 9.5 Alpha release

2007-09-06T18:17:00.001-07:00

On Tuesday, Opera announced alpha release of opera browser. If you read some initial posts on this blog, you already know how much I love this browser. Even though a lot has been said about browsers (and will be), this is the best browser on the planet.

Everyone, yes I said everyone including MS and Apple, copied features which opera introduced. But you know Howard Aiken once said...

Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

The best example is the zoom feature in IE which is almost useless if you compare with Opera. They totally copied it but couldn't make it as smooth as Opera. You zoom and it gets all scrollbars whereas Opera actually resizes the HTML elements to make it useful.

So, go on and follow the link. You'll never come back to IE unless the site is coded to work only with IE which, by the way, Opera takes care pretty well by allowing to open the current page in any browser on your PC.

Opera Browser 9.5 Alpha release

PS: This is still in alpha.

Vladstudio Wallpaper Collection (Updated)

2007-08-11T13:13:00.001-07:00

Ever wondered how can you get high quality wallpapers for your desktop resolution? Out of lots of sources in today's community driven web, there is this Photoshop artist named Vlad Gerasimov who posts his work at his site called Vladstudio.com where low quality wallpapers with signature are free but you need subscription (yes, paid) for quality.

Previews:

I paid (more of support for the artist) for the life time subscription and the good part is that I can share the amazing art work with friends, which by the way is totally OK as per his copyright terms.

...... By visiting Vladstudio.com you are granted a personal license to download and use the files on your personal computer and to share them with your friends and family.....

I also found these direct links for all wallpapers which you can download without subscription. Click on the links (hosted on his server) for your desktop resolution.

800x600 ZIP Pack (150.4 Mb)

1024x768 ZIP Pack (235.8 Mb)

1152x864 ZIP Pack (298.1 Mb)

1280x1024 ZIP Pack (383.1 Mb)

1600x1200 ZIP Pack #1 (248.9 Mb)
1600x1200 ZIP Pack #2 (243.0 Mb)

1280x800 ZIP Pack (265.4 Mb)

1440x900 ZIP Pack #1 (149.2 Mb)
1440x900 ZIP Pack #2 (142.2 Mb)

1680x1050 ZIP Pack #1 (198.1 Mb)
1680x1050 ZIP Pack #2 (187.5 Mb)

1920x1200 ZIP Pack #1 (250.4 Mb)
1920x1200 ZIP Pack #2 (234.5 Mb)

2560x1600 ZIP Pack #1 (328.1 Mb)
2560x1600 ZIP Pack #2 (208.9 Mb)
2560x1600 ZIP Pack #3 (249.9 Mb)

You can download all-in-one zips from Vlad's site for a lot more resolutions not listed here. Obviously, download links are only available to registered users.

More download links:

InterfaceLIFT. Or use this tool I created if you don't want to save more than a thousand images one by one.
Hamad's Vista Wallpaper Pack. Hamad was hired by Microsoft to shoot wallpapers for Windows Vista. He shot handful of 'em but only a couple made it to the final Vista installation disk. These are only available in 1900x1200.
Mike Swanson's Wallpaper Collection. Most of these are flowers and leaves. You can feel a little overwhelmed if you are not a nature freak like me. Only available in 1920x1200 and 1600x1200.

Enjoy!

YouTube - Did You Know 2.0

2007-07-26T18:24:00.001-07:00

Yes, Shift Happens. But one thing which I don't get is why all of a sudden people start panicking. What's wrong in India and China being developing exponentially. :) Isn't it the same thing happened to US? Anyway's. enjoy the video.

YouTube - Did You Know 2.0

TFS : The Real Picture

2007-07-24T19:01:00.001-07:00

I have seen books which can tell you all the theory about TFS. And yes, what will happen if you click on a button on Branching dialog....that too. But if you really want to know what exactly is TFS, don't just download and forget this guide posted on CodePlex which describes how TFS should be used in real projects. Excerpts from the site:

"This guide shows you how to make the most of Team Foundation Server. It starts with the end in mind, but shows you how to incrementally adopt TFS for your organization. It's a collaborative effort between patterns & practices, Team System team members, and industry experts"

patterns & practices: Team Development with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server - Home

Bill Gates vs. Steve Jobs

2007-07-13T22:28:00.001-07:00

I feel its really mean but still seems like the complete history is shown in this humorous clip. :)

Trigger Gotchas

2007-07-12T22:29:00.001-07:00

I found these weird behaviors in SQL Server. Well, weird because I never expected it this way. And whoever I asked, even they thought its weird.

1. Let's say you have an INSERT statement something like this:

INSERT INTO SomeTable VALUES (Col1, Col2)

SELECT Val1, Val2 FROM SourceTable WHERE 1<>1

Now, the select statement is never going to return any row due to the where clause (always false) therefore, no new row in SomeTable table. So, if there is an AFTER INSERT trigger on SomeTable, what do you think about it. Should it fire? Remember, there is not going to be any insert.

If your answer is NO ( as it was mine and few others too), think again. Because it DOES fire. And that's why I call it weird.

2. Another situation. Lets have the same INSERT statement but without any WHERE clause. So the query will be something like this:

INSERT INTO SomeTable VALUES (Col1, Col2)

SELECT Val1, Val2 FROM SourceTable

Now, if SourceTable has, say, 100 records and there is an AFTER INSERT trigger, how many times that trigger should fire. Remember, there are going to be 100 new rows in SomeTable.

If you answer is 100 (as it was mine too, again), check Books Online once more. The trigger is going to fire ONLY once.

One thing to note in both situations is that the LOGICAL tables have the correct information. That said, INSERTED logical table is going to be empty in first example and it will have 100 rows in second one. So, these logical table are your best bet. This behavior is same for DELETE and UPDATE after trigger too. Means, if you execute a delete or update statement which will not affect any row, triggers will fire regardless and it will fire once per statement NOT per affected row.

Hope this will help you to avoid this trap. :)

Enjoy!

Windows Live Writer

2007-07-06T17:41:00.001-07:00

Well, its being a long time since I posted anything here. One excuse for that can be the incompetent blogger.com UI for posting blogs. Those browser based text editors hardly work and blogger UI went one step further and provides WYSIWYG editor.

That was really an excuse. :) And reason you might be knowing already. Yeah, its the work. I really don't know where do people use those SDLC jargons in real life they used to fight on in university. I see it all the time that people just try to get things in production no matter how.

Anyway's, reason for this post is not that. You know how it feels when you see/use a piece of software that looks beautiful, integrates well and actually works. For me, it feels really good. I feel like computers are not meant just to scratch your head on crashes. Ok, the piece of software I am talking about is Windows Live Writer (like you didn't get it from post title, already).

I came across this here, downloaded, configured with blogger and that's it. I am posting from it. Hardly 3 mins to get the thing working as its suppose to work. Kudos to the team.

Give it a try. Its really good.

Enjoy!

To hell with USB! Way to go eSATA!

2007-02-14T18:49:00.000-08:00

By now, I have been struggling long enough to run a Virtual Machine whose Virtual HDD is on external drive. I really can't use the internal HDD (but had to) due to couple of reasons. First, storage limit as thats only 100 gigs (maximum available for laptops). Second, OS is running on internal disk and PC almost freezes at times. Third, I have to run minimum 2 virtual machines, one for Domain controller and another for SQL and TFS. It hardly works with one so forget about two.

But as the post title says it all, the bandwidth USB offers was an annoying bottleneck. Even though I managed an external HDD, it was useless. Theoretically, USB 2.0 supports 60 MB/s but the maximum speed I ever got is 12 MB/s.

There are a million people (at least) who have a lot to say (good and bad) about features in Vista. I really like few of them (but no praising now). The enhancements they did in file copying UI is one of them. First, it tells you the speed and second, it tells you the correct remaining time. This was something MS coudn't do right since Windows 95. It takes a while to calculate the remaining time thats different story. :)

Now back to that USB pain. Well I guess gone are the days when I had to put virtual HDD on internal drive. Few days back I found that the SATA standard is upgraded to external SATA (eSATA). Technically it means a lot but for me, it was something which could pull me out of that USB hell. Theoretically, eSATA supports 350 MB/s. This is what I got.

I have read in some reviews that people got up to 60-70 MB/s. I have no idea whats that in my PC which is reducing it to 43. But still, its not bad at all.

What do you need to get this speed? For all of you who are frustrated with USB speed, you need an external drive which supports eSATA port. There are companies (Seagate and iOmega) who are selling these out of the box. But where Seagate is a bit costly, iOmega is only SATA and not SATA-II. Be care full when you buy stuff as SATA is half at speed compared to SATA-II. So, I bought an ICY DOCK eSATA External Enclosure and Seagate 500GB HDD. It saved me around 50 bucks.

Thats for the source of the juice but to connect it to your PC, you need one more component. You have to have an Express Card slot. Then you can get a SIIG SATA II ExpressCard. I am not sure if these controller are available for any other kind of slots. Don't be sad if you have desktop. All you need is a spare SATA port on your motherboard. The eSATA drives and enclosures comes with an eSATA bracket.

Once you have these three components, you are all set to cruise.

Enjoy!

PS: The links in this post are for the components I selected. There are alternates available for all of them. Leave a comment if you have any question.

Steve Jobs announced iPhone

2007-01-09T14:24:00.000-08:00

Everyone's saying this will be revolution in consumer electronics and communication. I kind of feel of the same way. Today, in MacWorld Expo, Apple chief Steve Jobs announced iPone, due to ship in June 2007. One thing which sucks is that its coming on Cingular instead of Verizon (no doubt a verizon user is posting). One good thing in this is that its GSM quad band and I can take this Home (read India) and use happily ever after if I ever ditch Verizon and join Cingular for this. :) [I know I will. And that too on the same day Apple will release this.]

So, what is it. What's the hype all about. This device is iPod+Phone+PocketPC. It borrows its design from iPod, elegance from iPod too, sturdiness from OS X( as it runs fulls OS X), browser capabilities from Safari (as it runs Safari too) and innovations & confidence from Apple. Can you believe that Apple filed 200+ patents for this product.

Here are few links you can follow for more information and images.

Official iPhone Page
Steve Jobs Keynote : Live coverage by Engadget
Size comparison with Treo 750, Moto Q, and BB Pearl
Nice Article on Time.com

People are going crazy after this. I read this in comments posted by some user on engadget:
Holy shit! Another orgasm! F***! I'm all wet! I'll throw out the Motorola Q and embrace the iPhone.

No surprise. I had the same kind of feeling when I saw this (throwing Q and not orgasm :)). Keep following this to see how Microsoft replies to this. MS took years to make competitor (Vista) for Mac OS X. Now Apple came up with this. I pity Microsoft. :)

Update:
As per engadget, there are features which doesn't come with it. Here is the list:
1. No support for installing applications as most of the smart phones do. This means its not a smart phone by conventional terms, being that a smart phone is a platform device that allows software to be installed.
2. No 3G. We know you know, but still, it hurts man.
3. No over the air iTunes Store downloads or WiFi syncing to your host machine.
4. No expandable memory.
5. No removable battery.
5. No Exchange or Office support.

Yes! It is completed.

2006-12-30T08:50:00.000-08:00

Beautiful end to a beautiful game. I finished "Need for Speed : Most Wanted" last night. For those who don't know what finishing NFS means, NFS has this career mode game play where you have to challenge black list racers by winning qualifying races and milestones. Once you qualify to challenge, you race with the blacklist racer head-to-head. You defeat that guy and then next blacklist racer. There are 15 blacklist racers in all. For complete game story, go to Need for Speed : Most Wanted page at Wikipedia. If you are lazy enough to go there and read everything, here is the story part from there:

----------
Spoilers
----------
"In the Career mode storyline, the player is a driver who crosses a bridge into Rockport, looking to build up a reputation by winning races against local street racers, ranked according to a "Blacklist." The player character encounters several racers and beats them all, thanks to his heavily-modified BMW M3 GTR (V8), and eventually runs into a local street racing gang which turns out to be quite unfriendly to new drivers on the scene. The leader of this gang is a young man named Clarence Callahan, also known as "Razor," and he is the #15-ranked street racer on the "Blacklist"—an underground list of the top 15 street racers in Rockport. Razor is also a cheater, and he sabotages the BMW before racing the player, forcing a loss and, in accordance to Blacklist rules, the forfeit of his car. Shortly after, the police arrive as Razor and his gang flee the scene, leading to the player's arrest by Sergeant Cross, one of the most experienced police drivers on the Rockport police force, for street racing.

The player is released because he didn't have a car at the time of his arrest. He is picked up by a mysterious woman named Mia Townsend (Josie Maran), who tells him that Razor has used the player's car to make his way to #1 on the Blacklist, while two of his gang members (Bull and Ronnie) have also taken the Blacklist's two other top spots. With help from Mia, a sympathetic street racer named "Rog," and monetary winnings from his pre-Razor races, the player is able to purchase a new car and slowly work up the Blacklist, with the goal of confronting Razor and reclaiming his BMW. As the game progresses, the player beats each member of the Blacklist in one-on-one races and builds up both cash (which is needed to purchase and upgrade cars) and a sizable reputation. Upon defeating Razor and winning the car back, it is revealed that Mia is actually an undercover police officer who has, with the player character's unwitting help, been working to arrest every member of the Blacklist. Cross dispatches the police in full force in an effort to capture the player (now back behind the wheel of his BMW), but are foiled when Mia develops feelings for the player and shows him an escape route out of the city. The player leaves Rockport for good, and in the end is listed as a fugitive on the nation's most wanted list."
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Spoilers end here.
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I managed to get some screen shots while playing. Hope you will like 'em. Don't miss to click on the images for high resolution versions.

Lamborghini Gallardo. Drove this after Mitsubishi Eclipse (I am seriously thinking of buying eclipse after sometime).

Gallardo jumping within a race

Porsche Carrera. Drove after Gallardo.

I feel Carrera is the best car in Most Wanted. Yes, better than the BMW. :)

Just to begin a race.

Starting a tollbooth race. My favorite race among others like circuit, sprint, drag, lap knockout et'all.

Messing up with cops in a pursuit.

Got busted. Jumped and cops rammed into the car.

After a long pursuit, I evaded to get this screen. If you have played Most Wanted, you know what it means to achieve more than 2.6 million bounty and evade that pursuit.

After defeating 14 blacklists and all qualifying races, this happened just before the final round of races with Razor.

One of the final races.

What do you think the speed will be at this time? :)

Finally, Razor was out in the race but still wanted something. Mia gave him that.

After becoming #1 in blacklist, there is this final pursuit when complete police force is sent after you by Cross. Man, this was difficult. Took me 3 hours and countless tries to complete this. Actually, this can not be completed as all your safe houses and hiding spots are gone. Once you survive for more than 5 mins in this pursuit, Mia leaves a voice mail and tells that only way to evade this pursuit is to leave Rockport city from old bridge. This bridge is broken but the Car can jump and cross the bridge.

Map of the final pursuit. It starts at right bottom where green line starts and ends at top left where red line ends (and thats the old-bridge). Got this from some forum. People say that red boxed area is good to spend time in until Mia leaves the voice mail as in this area cops are not that aggressive. I never went there. Handling aggressive cops is fun. At times it crosses limits when the chopper comes and hits the car if you are running on highway.

Once you jump the old bridge, cops are left stunned.

Best scene of the game. After crossing the bridge, cops couldn't stop and falls into the broken bridge.

I have uploaded the completed game alias file here. Another one when I was blacklist #2 is here. Take this if you just want to enjoy the extreme of the game and that final pursuit.

What next? Already bought and installed Need for Speed : Carbon. And yes, there are other games too (AOE and Company of Heroes) which need some time. :)

Enjoy!

All your HDD needs!

2006-12-23T23:21:00.000-08:00

As I said earlier (in last post), HDD spinning speed is one of the most important factors to increase PC throughput. But I have experienced that spinning speed is not the only factor when it comes to HDD. I guess there are three most important tasks related to HDD:

1. Preparing the HDD with appropriate partitions. This can be done with windows. But there is one thing which windows cannot do. It cannot resize the partitions with data persistence. So, if you have to resize or split a partition without losing data, you need a specialized app.

2. Backing up the HDD for an unwanted situation when something got messed up and now you have to re-install OS. Believe me on this that the situation will come even if you are playing extra safe because those spy wares and Trojans are one step ahead. By backing up your HDD, you can be back with stable PC within minutes after disaster. I remember those days when every now and then I used to spend nights in re-configuring windows. :(

3. Keeping the HDD de-fragmented. I know people don’t give it a shit but I have seen the results of keeping HDD de-fragmented. The inbuilt de-fragmenting tool in windows sucks and it sucks big time. It’s no different story even in Vista.

So, what are the available options? Well, let’s keep it to the solution instead of comparing products here. Lately, I have being using three applications for each of the tasks mentioned.

1. When it comes to HDD partitioning, Partition Magic is the first thing which comes in mind as it is being used vastly. But I have been using another better app than this, named Acronis Disk Director Suite. The UI is more sophisticated and this allows you to split even the system (read OS) partition.

2. When it comes to HDD backup and imaging, Ghost is the first thing which comes in mind. Here again, Acronis has a way better software than ghost named Acronis True Image. This works seamlessly. Click here if you want see the comparison of these two posted by someone used Ghost extensively.

Both of these applications can either be used from within the Windows, or used as standalone tool without any operating system. The standalone tools are built on top of a compact Linux kernel and provides comprehensive window based UI.

3. And finally, when it comes to HDD de-fragmenting, first and only thing which comes in mind is Diskeeper. This application is amazing. It keeps your HDD healthy by scheduled and background de-fragmentation. So you don't have to remember and run the good for nothing defragmenting tool manually. Don't forget to read the myths about fragmentation on Diskeeper site if you go there.

My experience with all three is excellent. I will highly recommend these. Go grab these super star HDD apps. All of them are $50 each but Newegg will give around 40-50% cheap. Heck, go to torrent sites if you don’t want to pay. Though Acronis apps are as per your needs, Diskeeper is a must have. Your HDD will thank you every time Diskeeper will arrange bits on that platter surface.

XPS M1710 + Accessories; Perfect Gaming Setup

2006-12-02T18:43:00.000-08:00

So... the title should give you some idea about what are you going to read. I have been thinking for setting up gaming environment at the apartment for quite some time now. And guess what, this project is accomplished successfully. :)

I'll give you details (configuration + $$$) which you can use if you are going to setup the same environment. Let's start with laptop.

I had this feeling that laptop won't give performance for gaming as I see people are crazy about gaming consoles. But for me it was not only gaming, you know what am talking about here. :) And now I feel so relaxed about this dilema after buying this laptop. As far as the consoles are concerned, believe me when I am saying that you can buy 10 X-Box colsoles, yes you read is correct it's ten, in cost of the setup I have got. I'll come to this later. :)

OK, the configuration for laptop is:
Intel® Core™ Duo 2 processor T7600 (2.33GHz/667MHz/4MB L2)
17 inch UltraSharp TrueLife Wide-screen WUXGA 1920x1200
Black LCD Cover (Dell has this special cover which I guess they copied from Alienware)
2GB DDR2 SDRAM 677MHZ,2 DIMM
512MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7950 GTX
100GB 7200RPM SATA HARD DRIVE
Three year complete care warranty
Rest common stuff like 8X DVD+/-RW Drive, Vista etc.

Click here to see this at Dell's website.

Two most important thing are CPU and GPU. I think choosing best in class gives you results. Another thing you have to consider while buying a laptop is that HDD. All manufactures (especially sony) just mention the capacity and dont say a single word about spinning speed. Whatever CPU and RAM you get, if the HDD is comsuming all the time in returning data, you are not going to get any perfomamce. I pity Sony. They don't have a single model with 7200 RPM.

After playing AOE III and NFS on this beast, what all I have to say is that this thing rocks. I played these games on full settings and it gave awesome results. I mean playing NFS with all effects on 1600x1200 resolution is amazing. For example I took this screen shot. Look at the details in the game. Come on Amit (my ex-roommate), this thing is calling you out loud buddy. :)

Now the price. I configured this on dell's website and price summed upto $4300. OMG. This is huge. Now you know why I said that X-Box number for this. (basic kit for X-Box is $399).

Wait. Dont drop the idea of buying it due to this price. I didn't. I turned to online forums to see if there is anything which can drop the price. And the response was overwheling. I met couple of guys who sell these new PCs way lower than this price. They get some discount which doesn't make sense to discuss here. The fact of the matter is that I got this machine for $2900, delivered. Yes, thats $1400 saving which is gr8 as now a days you can buy a nice lappy for $1000. :)

So, if you ever think of buying this PC and want to save some big bucks, drop me a note and I can redirect you to the right person. :)

Lets see what we have got in accessories. Yes, I have some recommendations for you here too.

Speaker:

Forget Bose (Logitech and Creative are not in competition) and depending your requirement (2.1 or 5.1) bye Klipsch. You can get same performace in 1/3 of the price Bose asks for. I bought Promedia 2.1A GMX model ($140 from amazon, delivered) and you wont believe it but the bass is so strong that it hits every corner in the living room. And it hits hard. We never go beyong 10-15 % bass otherwise neighbours will start crying. And its not just bass, high and lows are so clear that I hear something in the songs I never heard before.

Mouse

I am using Logitech MX Revolution (bought for $85 but now yours for $65 on buy.com) and its turning out to be a gr8 mouse. Click here to see the thread on NBF for this.

One more thing is the Game Controller. Microsoft is releasing a wireless X-Box controller for Windows in december (wired is already there) and I am going to buy that.

Thats all I have to say now. But I will be posting some intersting game shots as I play them. As of now I am playing AOE, NFS and Company of Heroes. So keep an eye on the blog. And as always, post it in the comments if you feel like saying something. You know you do. :)

Dell's PC Production Life Cycle

2006-11-16T14:38:00.000-08:00

I saw this nice story, in fact a nice example of Supply Chain Management, about the production of dell's notebooks. I could recall the bits of functional understanding I collected about all this during development of some project for manufacturing units.

Here, one point to note is that all the hardware (almost all if not all) is manufactured in Asia (read Japan, China, Korea and Taiwan). Either its Apple, Dell or whoever for that sake. :)

Worth reading. Click Here to go to the post.

Merritt Parkway

2006-10-29T07:57:00.000-08:00

Last to last weekend we went for a drive on Merritt Parkway. You can ask, "How does that matter to me?" :) Keep going, you may find the answer....

Well, its a scenic drive which proudly enjoys the enlisting in "America's Most Scenic Drives" published by Life Books (Time Inc.). This book has pretty good details of 40 most beautiful highways and byways.

Why I am posting it here? Because, if you come to tri-state area (NY-NJ-CT) some time, you can include this drive in your itinerary. We loved this and so will you (hopefully).

As per the book mentioned earlier: "Those in hurry choose to boom along I-95 highway and other take Route 84. But the poets always opt for the Merritt Parkway. ... ... Built in the 1930s and 37.5 miles long, the Merritt - one of the few American roads listed on the National Register of Historic Places - is a classic, and ever will be."

Here is the information you can use:

Wikipedia: Merritt Parkway
America's Byways: Merritt Parkway Overview & Maps & Directions

Enjoy!!