I found a nifty tool to change wallpapers. This program can randomly switch wallpapers from a local directory or pick up and download wallpapers using RSS feeds or download from DeviantArt using a search query.
Add his PPA repository to your sources.list
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/doctormo/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/doctormo/ubuntu hardy main
Reload and
sudo apt-get install gnome-wallchanger
Google Talk a.k.a. GTalk is more than an Instant Messenger service. GTalk powered with some friendly bots can do some interesting stuff like subscribe and read RSS feeds, blogs, save bookmarks and translate text. Here are some useful bots:
1. imfeeds@gmail.com: Add the IM Feeds buddy to GTalk and you’ll be able to read any blog or website that syndicates content via RSS feeds. To subscribe IM ’sub xyz.com’ where xyz.com is the website you’re subscribing to. You have to verify your email address in order to use this service.
2. imified@imified.com: This turns GTalk into a personal organizer. You can schedule To-Do lists, reminders, manage calender events, send messages to Twitter, submit blog entries to WordPress or Blogger. All you have to do is add a widget in your account and start using it with GTalk.
3. inezhabot@gmail.com: Similarly to IM Feeds with a different subscription model.
4. Translation: This helps you translate words into another language. Add en2hi@bot.talk.google.com for English to Hindi translation and similarly for any other language supported by Google language translation. IM your text and it replies with the translation.
5. Transliteration: If you need to transliterate you have to add en2hi.translit@bot.talk.google.com.
For Linux/Mac users, this works with any other IM app also.
I spent 3 weeks in Kerala as my sister’s marriage took place there. My mom feared the monsoons, so I’d left for Kerala 8 days before the wedding with my Grandfather and my parents and sister following up the next day.
The first one week, I was pretty jobless. I’d my Godfather novel with me (I’d read this one before, this was the only book lying around in my cupboard). But I didn’t want to read all the time, so I turned on the TV to watch any programs whenever I could as the TV (which btw had mostly regional channels) had eyes already trained on it in the form of my grandfather. He didn’t want to miss his daily boring soaps. Next up, I thought I’d browse the internet for a while and yet again there it was, the computer out there was 10 years old and it had dial up Internet. I couldn’t bare it for long.
Things got a little interesting end of the first week, towards the 3rd or 4th day I noticed my right side of my chin had swelled up. My aunt asked if I’d a toothache or anything. Initially I suspected it some kind of a boil which had gone bad. The following morning, I got a clearer picture of what it actually was, the so-called boil was double the size and eventually it burst with pus oozing out continuously. I immediately suspected it to be an insect bite. That evening I visited the local doctor. The ‘hospital’ was a two-storey building with minimal lighting. The nurse at the reception counter, took my details in a card and gave it to me. I went in to the doctors ‘office’, he inspected me and called in the nurse to take me to the first floor. I followed the nurse with my dad behind me, she said in Malayalam to change into the hospital gown. I thought I heard it wrong, but dad confirmed it to me. I was shown a room to change, the gown was infact only a dhoti. My dad was chuckling looking at the arrangements. I waited for 5 mins and doctor came up with the same nurse and he went in to the Operation Theater and the nurse asked me to follow her. This is only my second visit to an operation theater (after the tonsils operation 14 years back). I didn’t expect this, if I’d visited my local family doctor, she would done it in a nick of time. As I was entering the operation theater, I looked up at the board, and I thought to myself if the red light would be switched on during my Operation as in the movies.
The operation is too painful for me to describe, in short the doctor punctured the wound with a needle to remove all the pus and both the nurse and doctor applied pressure from both sides to remove the pus. After 5-10 mins of excrutiating pain, the doctor finally said ‘its done’ and the nurse put a huge bandage on my chin. It didn’t end there, I was told by the doctor that for the next 3 days, I need to get anti-biotic injection shots starting that eve. I followed the nurse again to another room. As I’m accustomed to injections I didn’t worry much, I lifted the sleeve of my shirt for the injection and the nurse indicated that the injection should be taken my lower back. I twitched my eye-brow and stared at my dad. It was too much of a show for him by now. I got the shot on my back, it hurt a lot. I left the hospital holding my behind.
When I came back home, everyone was shocked with a sterotype tamil expression ‘ai-ai-yoo!’ to see me with a bandage. My aunt looking at me said, “its ok, now you can sport a white beard for the wedding”. I had 3-4 days for this to heal before the wedding. Fortunately, after all those injection shots and about a Thousand bucks down the drain, the wound had healed enough to be presentable.
With my sister’s marriage nearing, I was sending few email invitations to couple of my friends with the subject line “wedding invitation”. After sending the invites, Gmail notifies if I want to see the sent message. My usual habit is to see the sent message so I clicked on it. As I was reading along, I noticed the webclips which are shown on top of the message. This is what I got: 
This is my first real attempt using Gimp. Presenting the real “smiling-assassin” – The Joker from the upcoming movie The Dark Knight.
Much against my prediction, Spain are crowned the Euro 2008 champions after 44 years thanks to the lone goal from Fernando Torres. Torres scored at the 33rd minute as he cleverly lifted Xavi’s pass over Lehmann’s head.
Spain always labeled “under-achievers” surely proved everyone wrong.
Image details: Germany v Spain – UEFA EURO 2008 Final served by picapp.com
CLI a.k.a Command Line Interface – the pre-GUI way of computing has always remained unique to the *nix Operating Systems till today. Commands which normally administer and perform system tasks are sometimes more flexible than a ‘clickable’ interface.
MS Windows on the other hand has relied on graphical interfaces mainly to cater the needs of an everyday user. The concerning factor on the Windows side, right from Windows 95 to Vista the GUI has become an “eye-catching” hysteria: my comparison to a bug attracted to a light bulb. Not going deeper into Windows, the point I am stressing is that it makes it harder for a Win user to make the shift to an OS like Linux. While there are people who are willing to experiment and test-ride Linux, most of them are irked at seeing a CLI and pass off comments like “is he back to the stone age?”
So I’m going to give a rundown on how the terminal looks like, its functionality and how it can be a powerhouse program to control your Linux system. Normally in a Linux system, you have 7 terminals which can be accessed by shortcuts Ctrl + Alt + F1 to Ctrl + Alt + F7. Terminal F1 is the init login prompt (for runlevel 3) and Terminals F2 to F6 are the virtual terminals; F7 is graphical login for runlevel 5. Virtual terminals enable multiple users to login at the same time, so you can have about 6 users logged on at a time. Home users need not bothered about this as this is usually used in Big Organizations. The graphical login is sufficient, the terminal can be accessed from the menu usually present in Accesories in the GNOME environment and System in the KDE environment. On accessing the terminal, you will be presented with a terminal window showing a prompt which normally looks like:
user@hostname:~$
user: name of the user; hostname: name of the computer; ~: depicts the current directory normally the home directory (same as My Documents in Windows); $: shows that a user is currently logged on (# for root/admin)
Secondly to use the terminal you need to know some commands, I can’t show all the commands. As a reference you can note down this page [link] with useful linux commands. Some of the important and easy ones are (omit the $ while entering these commands):
1. ls – to list the present working directory.
Usage: $ ls or $ ls /path/to/dir
2. cd – to change to a new directory.
Usage: $ cd /path/to/dir
3. cat – to view the contents of a text file.
Usage: $ cat filename
4. cp – to copy a file or a directory to a new destination.
Usage: for file $ cp /source /destination, for a directory $ cp -r /source /destination (r for recursive)
5. mv – to move a file or a directory to a new destination
Usage: for file $ mv /source /destination, for a directory $ mv -f /source /destination (f for force)
6. mkdir – to create a new directory.
Usage $ mkdir directory
7. rm/rmdir – to delete a file/directory. rmdir works only for an empty directory
Usage: $ rm file, $ rmdir empty_directory, $ rm -rf directory
Any further help to know about these commands along with the options you can refer the manual (man) pages present in your Linux system. To read a man page of a command enter $ man command in the terminal. To read a short description of a command enter $ whatis command .
This concludes the first part of this post, the follow-up will include more details as I go in-depth to show you how to Kung-Fu with the Terminal .
The Search
I have been using Ubuntu Linux for the last one year, and any Linux user will know that there isn’t Internet Explorer (IE) in the Linux environment. Though IE clearly demolished the Netscape browser to be the most popular browser, I never liked IE especially with the click sound on every mouse clicks 
. It always gave me a feeling as if I was handling a brittle object. So I was searching for an alternative, I tried several browsers like Netscape (post version 4.x) and Mozilla but none ever impressed me.
In 2004, the Mozilla foundation was working on a fork of their Mozilla browser called Firefox (Fx). Their goal was to produce a standalone-browser which was intended to replace the Mozilla Suite. When released in November 2004, the browser was an instant success with features like Tabbed Browsing, Integrated Google Search that IE could only dream to have (then). Firefox is my primary browser ever since version 1.5 and I have never looked back.
The Test
For every modern browser today, it has become mandatory for it to follow the web-standards. Right now, you have the Acid 2 and Acid 3 tests to test the browsers if it follows the web-standards.
You can test your browser right here [link]
Safari version 3 was the first browser to pass the Acid 2 test, followed by Opera. The current development of Firefox 3 and IE 8 also passes the test. Internet Explorer never had followed the web-standards until version 8, wherein the real problem lies.
The Scratch on the Head
Firefox is clearly the #2 browser in the market headed by IE. Firefox fans always bite their tongue when they come across a site that says ‘Best viewed in Internet Explorer 5.5 and above’. I too, have such woes as many of the Indian websites aren’t standards compliant. Instead they follow another rendering mode called the “Quirks Mode”. The very idea of Quirks mode is to support older browsers and you find most of the banks, trading websites as well as Google Search in Quirks Mode. Many of these websites are poorly designed with CSS and JS errors making them unusable in non-IE browsers.
What I don’t understand are there people who use an Old Browser or why do people still use an Old Browser? Even if there are people who use an obselete OS like Windows 98, and if they can’t afford to upgrade their PC there is always an option to use Linux. Linux can run even in a 15 year old computer and currently is very user-friendly and modern with the latest FOSS.
As I currently only use Linux, I find it difficult when my Trading Website HDFCSec doesn’t work in Fx. Similarly there are other websites that really irritates me. There are options like the User-Agent Switcher and IEs4Linux but it is never good enough as the real thing. As of now, I’m virtualizing Windows XP in Ubuntu with XP occupying 1.4 GiB of my hard-disk. I know its not worth it for a browser, I’ve no other option.
I pledge all the web developers to hear all the cries of non-IE users and please make the change! I hope with IE 8, that change will come.
Timelapsed backgrounds is an amazing feature in GNOME, which many people won’t be aware of. This idea written by Soeren Sandman uses a simple XML file to gradually fade between background images over time.
You can try it out by downloading this file [link] courtesy of a Ubuntu user.
This is my first post. I remember when I was a little boy, my grand-dad had these huge Black discs and he used to often played it on his gramophone. My dad too being a music buff had a good collection (according to him) of old classics. He had many LPs ranging from ‘old’ english numbers to ‘old’ hindi hits. There were few M.S. Subhalakshmi tracks too. 
Today with the gramophone being a thing of the past, my grand-dad always mumbles when I listen to music on my iPod. And when I tend to ignore him, he utters with a sigh “Those were the days!”
Those were certainly the days at least for my parents and grand-parents along with their entire generation. With technology poking its nose in all fronts of our lives, this gen-y can’t live without it. The gadgets we use are getting smaller and compact with the storage big enough to fit an entire universe, it is obvious that today’s generation is wired up for good. Taking an example of a cellphone, its task has grown from just being a device for communication to a multi-functional device with the capability to play music, videos and several other multimedia.
With the gadgets more or less affordable to the masses, it is a common site seeing people hooked on to their iPods and Cellphones all the time. A device can store about thousands of songs and with songs being “freely available” on the internet, a music-lover is happier than ever.
All’s well always doesn’t end well, there is one fella who isn’t taking this matter lightly, the Music Industry. Before the CD cum Internet era, the music industry was a profitable industry (it still is) with music artists selling their music through LPs, and Cassettes distributed by the Music Labels they were contractually signed. Today, with the emergence of portable media along with the internet, the prime art of bootlegging rose to a new level.
As a measure, the Music Labels with their Digital Media downloads had to provide DRM-free music to entice the customers into buy legit Music. After that, it was the iTunes phenomenon, fortunately a success story in a making. Apple Inc. with their iTunes software proved to be a major hit as the software was freely available and all one needed was an account. iTunes is now the #1 music retailer in the US of A.
That was a short-term relief for the Music Industry, but then came along Trent Reznor. Trent Reznor is the founder and the lead singer of an American band named Nine Inch Nails. He has stepped forward to redefine the music business. In 2007, he scraped his contract with his Music Label ‘Interscope Records’ and decided to distribute his music by himself. In March 2008, he released an album Ghosts I-IV independently under a Creative Common license with the first volume freely available for download. The album was a huge success with 750,000 purchases amassing $1.6 mn. In May, he followed up with another album called The Slip, this album was freely available for download in various formats for the loyalty shown by his fans.
With the success of Trent Reznor and the Nine Inch Nails, it has influenced many other artists to follow suit. If this is the trend to follow, the Music Labels are as good as dead in years to come. Free Music in a sense is reborn.
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