A Day in the Life

Resuming Transfers

2009-04-19T19:39:00.005-05:00

...at the command-line that is.

I was transferring some video files from my Linux box over to my windows machine, while logged in from my laptop via ssh and I got disconnected.

At this point I had 2 problems:
1. I didn't really want to delete the files and restart the transfers due to the size of the files.
2. The standard ftp client does not support resuming of files.

I googled and found this thread, where andrew.46 recommended NcFTP.

A minute later, I was happily smiling and typing this post :D

P.S: Don't forget to use the -z option to specify resume

A few more options that I've found useful.

If you need to transfer something and delete it when it's complete the -DD option is very useful
e.g. put -DD DSC9*.jpg
get -DD IMG7*.jpg

Back on the Air!

2009-04-18T22:32:00.003-05:00

So I got married & came back....and kinda forgot all about the writing I promised myself that I would do.

Over the course of the weekend I hopehave 3 posts.

1. About pronunciation
2. Top Gear related
3. About Top Gear

See a theme here? Anyway, let's see how it all turns out!

A Big Day In The Life

2008-12-21T23:27:00.004-06:00

Today is one of the more important days in the life of Rowan!

I am getting married in about 5 hours to Sharon :D
All the best to Us ;)

The Great American Detour

2008-11-03T19:52:00.002-06:00

I've been watching this video for the past 45 minutes and been completely absorbed. It's very well put together and is an "off the beaten path" look at the US today.

Getting Gmail Mobile going again

2008-09-09T09:09:00.002-05:00

For the past few weeks, I had noticed that the only way to check my gmail account via the phone, was to log in each time & it was getting annoying really fast.

While waiting around in airports this past weekend, I tried a few things, but none of them worked. Finally as I was going through the settings I saw a setting called "'Always use secure network connections (slower performance)" and I realized why it wasn't working anymore.

At the beginning of August, Google enabled a new feature for Gmail that allowed you to enable secure connections all the time. This setting was causing the problems, enabling has now fixed all problems.

For more details click on the title of this post & check out the post on the board for the app at Google groups.

From the Oracle of Omaha

2008-08-20T16:37:00.004-05:00

Warren Buffett addresses the investors of Berkshire Hathaway at the beginning of each year regarding the previous year's performance.

It is written in a style that is very different from most annual reports & I enjoy reading it.

The Berkshire Hathaway website provides pdf versions of the annual reports with just the text (I assume the actual reports have purdy pictures in them).

Big Ol' Top Gear Related Post

2008-08-20T11:18:00.009-05:00

Response from #10 Downing Street:
for the petition that a few thousand Brits signed to make Jeremy Clarkson Prime Minister:

Hilarious!

May in September:
May is gonna be doing on of short series in September on BBC2 called James May's Big Ideas. Looking forward to it especially cuz it's gonna have the Moller Flying Car in it.

I've really enjoyed the previous couple of short series he did, especially the Top Toys one & I hope this will be just as good.

His "other" TV series Oz and James Big Wine Adventure was also something that I thoroughly enjoyed. It was thoroughly entertaining to watch the both of them arguing and bickering & also learn something new about something that I had a mild interest in...Wine.

Season 1 in France traveling in an updated Jaguar XJS & Season 2 in California traveling around in an RV. Apparently Season 3 which is currently being produced is going to be around the UK and they've seemed to drop the wine theme and calling it "Oz and James' Big British Adventure". One highlight of the series is going to be them drive a Whisky powered SR4. Definitely sounds like there is going to be a lot less wine this series. Hopefully they will get a chance to do their Australian adventure at some point.

Compared to James May, Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond seem to be rather quiet. Richard's got his kids show & Jeremy Clarkson is I am sure sitting by the countryside, drinking his beer with twigs in it & counting the cash. :)

Finally don't forget, Top Gear's back in October with a new series consisting of 8 episodes. Maybe we'll see a little less of James doing pieces on his own & more of JC & Hamster!

Resizing issues in Ktorrent

2008-08-13T12:01:00.004-05:00

Yesterday my ktorrent window began acting weird, all of a sudden I could no longer see the status bar at the bottom or resize the window vertically.

After some googling around I found out that the issue is with the RSS Feeds plugin, apparently it causes this problem.

Unloading the plugin , resizing the window and reloading the plugin fixed my problem.

Hurray for ad-hoc community documentation!

Tech that wasn't bargained for

2008-08-06T11:47:00.007-05:00

Looks like my favorite deals website is having problems today.

I had written about having some problems on techbargains back in January of this year. That post had a few comments today indicating people were facing similar issues again.

Right now Techbargains.com looks to be down and shows the following message:

Techbargains.com is one of the oldest deals sites I know of. I have used it since around 1999 or 2000 atleast. Along with the Anandtech.com deals forum, it has been my most reliable and constant source for great deals on the internet and in stores since then.

I hope ya feel better soon techbargains.

A little extra security for Gmail

2008-08-03T18:07:00.003-05:00

For a while now I've been manually typing in "https://" instead of the usual "http://" when I log into my gmail and other related google accounts.

It seems that now you can set Gmail to automatically do this for you. Just click on the Settings (top right) once you are in your gmail account and set it to use https always as shown below.

Ubuntu MID - Mobile Internet Device Edition

2008-07-16T15:34:00.004-05:00

I was quite excited to hear about a mobile version of ubuntu that was in the works. It was mainly directed at devices which would primarily accept input via a touchscreen.

I have a Mobits A221 tablet that I have not been very happy with running any flavor of windows thus far.

It meets most of the specifications put forth by Ubuntu to qualify as an MID (Mobile Internet Device). However, the only installation images I can find for Ubuntu MID are the McCaslin & Menlow hardware based devices.

Is there no love for other potential devices? If so, could someone please point me in the right direction?

The house of Google hath failed me :(

Exciting times at NASA!

2008-05-23T11:27:00.009-05:00

Looks like it's gonna be an exciting time to be a part of NASA. Over the next 10 days, 2 significant missions will come to fruition.

First, the Phoenix Lander Mission will have it's landing tomorrow. It is significant in the fact that it is an attempt a landing without the benefit of cushioning devices as on the earlier Mars missions. Think of it as an Apollo landing, with no pilots and an 8 minute lag between mission controllers and the spacecraft.

Follow that mission & it's related activities via NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander blog.

The next mission, a week from tomorrow & the one that I am most excited about is STS-124. It is a Shuttle mission being flown to the International Space Station by the orbiter Discovery. It will be a mission to deliver the JPM module of Japan's Kibo module. The mission is scheduled for the 31st of May at 5:02 PM from Kennedy Space Center. I've got my fingers crossed that nothing will interrupt this, as I plan on being there.

If all goes well, a few (hopefully good) shots should make their way here :)

Catchin' up on Talk

2008-05-02T10:47:00.003-05:00

The Google Talk team finally released a desktop installer for the online talk gadget - Google Talk Labs Edition.

Basically what's happened is that the web client has always been ahead in terms of development and functionality and the desktop client, well...neglected.

This release is basically provides an installer for the talk gadget that some of us are used to, so we can have the same experience as the gadget on the desktop. You get your calendar notifications, mail notifications and the graphic smilies as well.

I'm glad it's here and do enjoy using the functionality outside the browser, cuz some of us do actually close down our browers...sometimes :)

Rice, it's the new Crude!

2008-04-30T13:14:00.002-05:00

That's all for now, more later.

Jump back in time

2008-04-01T09:51:00.006-05:00

Ever wish you could've finished that assignment before midnight and emailed it in on time
OR
Forgotten a birthday and wanted send an email before midnight rolled over.

Gmail has your answer: Gmail Custom Time!
But be careful how you use Gmail Custom Time, you get only 10 custom time's a year.

(This is a April Fools joke btw)

Gonna be a while

2008-03-07T10:35:00.005-06:00

Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons passed away earlier this week at 69 and everyone's been doing their tributes & memories. I've read a few, but this one is my favorite:

xkcd comes through again!

Lapfix

2008-03-02T16:57:00.005-06:00

A couple of months ago the DC jack on my Dell Inspiron 9300 began to show signs of impending failure. This was expected and I soon began to scour the internet for methods to fix the problem.

My first discovery was a bunch of mail-in places (via google and ebay) that would for a flat fee diagnose and repair the DC jack. My buddy had used one of these places in California in the summer and after 2 months was mailed back his non-charging laptop, which he ended up selling for parts (for $25 nonetheless).

Second was the big guy brick and mortar stores like Best Buy, Compusa, Circuit City and the likes. After reading the horror stories about their in-house tech departments on the Consumerist, I wasn't gonna go that route either.

Finally I decided to try out my favorite place of all, Craigslist! Initially I started looking on there for someone who'd be able to solder on a replacement jack that I had bought on ebay (the "free" instructions turned out to be not enough for my n00b skills!). Finally I just decided to search for "laptop dc jack" and came across a posting for Lapfix.

I decided to call the place up even though it was a saturday. A guy picked up the phone almost immediately and after listening to my problem, explained how their service policy worked ($110 total when problem is fixed only). I took the hard drive out and headed to Falls Church. They are located in a small building has a couple other small computer outfits like theirs. The guy there (Karim) tested it out and told me he would call me the next day when it was done!!

Got a call the next day and went picked it up, it had some problems with charging, brought it home and tried with another power brick and charged up just fine!

Overall I was very satisfied with the work and customer service, which is why I decided to write this post, just in case it helps someone else like me out there who's looking for a review of their work.

PS: If you still had any doubts, no, I am not affiliated with them!

Blog like Kuvempu!

2008-02-17T22:34:00.006-06:00

Blogger's latest updates bring me a pleasant surprise. No that line below this paragraph is not a bug, it's a feature. I can now transliterate from en into a language I've know for most of my life: Kannada

ನಮಸ್ತೆ, ರೋವನ್.ಜೋಹ್ನಸ್.ಕಂ'ಗೆ ನಿಮಗೆ ಸುಸ್ವಾಗತ!
I have no idea if the text above transliterated perfectly, but it's good enough for me (It says welcome to rowan.johnas.com) to understand!

As I've said before about transliteration, the best part is that you don't have to learn to re-type on a native keyboard, a regular qwerty will work just fine :-)

ಓ ನನ್ನ ಚೇತನ, ಆಗು ನೀ ಅನಿಕೇತನ! - Kuvempu
(Be unhoused o my soul, only the infinite is your goal)

Dell's moving to Tablets

2008-02-13T08:52:00.002-06:00

No, not the kind Moses brought down from the mountain with the 10 commandments, the notebook computer kind.

Just got an email from Dell about their exciting new product:

Introducing the Dell Latitude XT
Small tablet, big options.
Experience the first tablet PC from Dell. Your business will never be the
same.Specifically designed to take advantage of Genuine Windows Vista® graphics
and functionality, the NEW Dell Latitude™ XT™ tablet PC allows you to take work
away from the desk.

Easy to Carry
One of the thinnest and lightest 12.1"
convertible tablets on the market
12.1" display with industry-best touch
technology
Easy to Use
Battery-free pen with selectable user tips for a
customized writing experience

Dual-input design (pen and touch) with palm
rejection technology
Backed by Dell
3-Year Limited Warranty* (1-Year
Limited Warranty for pen)
Around-the-clock support via phone, e-mail and
online chat

The Law of Diminishing Returns

2008-02-04T15:47:00.001-06:00

HSBC on January 29th:

HSBC Direct has adjusted your Online Savings Account rate to 3.80% APY

HSBC today:

HSBC Direct has adjusted your Online Savings Account rate to 3.55% APY

Time to put my money in?

(Wikipedia: The Law_of_Diminishing_Returns)

Feels like 56k?

2008-02-02T19:39:00.000-06:00

If you are one of the lucky 75 million worldwide feeling like you are back in 1998 with your beloved chirpy dialup modem, here's why

A clumsy ship in the mediterranean dragged their anchor into one of the submarine cables that keeps you connected with the rest of the world, breaking it.

Here's an article about it from The Guardian (via slashdot.org)

Also, if you've been wondering why Iran's President Ahmadinjad hasn't updated his MySpace, here's why. If my interpretation of what Traffic Reports is showing, Iran's internet is completely down (100% packet loss).

What's happening on techbargains?

2008-01-31T13:04:00.001-06:00

What's the deal with this?

No page, just a download dialog. I'm not even gonna try downloading it to see what's in the file!

Fightin' Fire With Fire

2008-01-26T21:51:00.000-06:00

There are covers of songs and then there are covers that involve Tom Jones.
This one always makes me laugh:

Original Video

There snow doubt about it

2008-01-17T16:44:00.001-06:00

DSC00102
Originally uploaded by Rowan

Once a year it must happen, throwing the entire DC metropolitan into a frenzy about it.

Here is my record of today, in pictures.

Tetris Japanese style

2008-01-09T20:30:00.000-06:00

The Japanese have an uncanny knack for taking things that other people come up with and making them better (for example cars, electronics, etc. etc.). They also have a reputation for having some really quirky TV programming, especially their game shows.

I was introduced to their latest blending of the two by my friend Riaz a few months ago. It is a show called "Human Tetris". Almost all of us have played Tetris and then had dreams involving Tetris and some real life related activity for the next few weeks.

The show is kind of like those dreams, 2 teams of contestants go through a series of rounds as a fast moving wall approaches them & they arrange their bodies so as to allow the wall to pass and leave them in the play area.

I think it's just brilliant. Thanks to Youtube you can even watch an episode without even leaving this page.

Here are the previous four:
One, two, three, four.

If you like these, look around on Youtube, you will find a bunch more, like this one.

I am gonna go play some Wii Bowling now ;)