Moved to WebFaction

by venukb on May 3, 2009

Moving from one web hosting to another has become one of the annual activities. However this time around, I had totally forgot about the hosting renewal; this post after 4 months would explain why I forgot about the hosting renewal :)

An automatic renewal (which I had not subscribed for) was tried by Media Temple which failed and I got an email notice of the same. 

Media Temples renewal charges of 170$/year was a bit too high this time around; the first year charges were also around the same, but only that the intention of moving to MT last year was different.

Google search for "MT Alternative" resulted in WebFaction.

Unlike MT, I

...

{ 6 comments }

Time Zone problem on Windows Mobile

by venukb on December 28, 2008

The HTC Touch phone that I have been using from 18 months had turned into a nightmare from the past 2 months.

I do use the phone extensively to synch my Outlook contacts and calendar appointments. However from the past few weeks, I was seeing that the Time Zone on the phone used to default back to GMT+1 at random times.

I am on GMT+5.30 and for some unknown reason it used to default back to GMT+1. As expected, the appointments in the calendar were popping up at the wrong time; same goes for the morning alarms.

I did observe this reset happening after disconnecting the device from an active ActiveSync session. However I used to see this behavior

...

{ 9 comments }

Where the hell am I ?

by venukb on November 10, 2008

This site saw the last post almost 3 months back and since then many have been checking with me on my well-being. Few services even banned this site for having no activity in the last 3 months. I just took a long break from blogging and hope to be back as soon as possible ! It was time at my workplace which initially (and is still) held me from being "online". Later I just felt better being "away". I also got hooked onto reading fiction novels! Currently I have these many books waiting to be finished :) On the top of these 9 books, I have an additional 7 books ...

{ 9 comments }

Validating English Word Pronunciations

by venukb on June 30, 2008

I find myself pronouncing a lot of English words differently from what my friends do. One of the reasons for this is the fact that English just happens to be one of the 5 languages that I speak.

A couple of these word pronunciations also lead to a healthy debate with neither party accepting defeat and the only way to conclude such a debate is to validate the pronunciation.

Not to boast, but most of these debates are won by me and there is no denying that I have lost a couple too ! Surprisingly there have been debates where both parties have lost :)

When you are also in a similar situation below are some of the tools

...

{ 7 comments }

Firefox 3 - What is new ?

by venukb on June 22, 2008

Firefox 3 was downloaded by more than 8 million users in 24 hours and it might well go down as the most downloaded software in 24 hours !

India's contribution in the above 8 million was 226K  and US was the highest with 4632K.

Talking of new features in FF3, Alex Faaborg, the user experience designer who worked on Firefox 3 has a very detailed post on the new UI features here

http://tinyurl.com/yv5xp4

Below are 2 unique features in FF3, which I haven't seen in hundreds of posts that cover the new FF3 features.

Scrolling using Spacebar

If you are keyboard junkie, I am sure you too will love this feature.

Till now, If you intended to scroll

...

{ 10 comments }

Download Firefox 3

by venukb on June 18, 2008

Firefox 3 intended to create a world record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours .

June 17 was fixed as the release date and when I tried to download yesterday, the servers were down.

They seem to be back online now and you can download the latest Firefox from the below link:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox?p=downloadday

At the time I downloaded, 14K people had downloaded FF3 from India compared to 1063K downloads from US :)

Also don't forget to check the "Tips and Tricks" page; it will help you to get the most out of Firefox 3

Lifehacker also has an interesting post on the history of

...

{ 9 comments }

How To: Activate or Deactivate a Service on Linux

by venukb on June 13, 2008

A service is a long running executable which does require any user intervention and is configured to start when the operating system is booted.

On Windows, the services are managed via services.msc and you can also communicate with a NT service using the SC tool.

On Linux the services can be controlled via the chkconfig command line tool.

Usage details of chkconfig  is shown below:

chkconfig --list [name] chkconfig --add <name> chkconfig --del <name> chkconfig [--level <levels>] <name> <on|off|reset>

Add and Del options are used to create or delete services for management. A service can be activated

...

{ 4 comments }

Safely Remove USB Hardware

by venukb on June 11, 2008

I have been reading in many posts which mention special tools to help in ejecting/removing a USB disk.

The Windows "Safely Remove Hardware" feature has been notorious for hiding itself after installing the new hardware.

You do have the option of Ejecting the hardware; however this becomes a pain if you are working with multiple USB devices.

Also in Windows XP, one USB device might list multiple entries in the Remove Hardware dialog. In Windows Vista there is a option to filter the device components.

Do you really need to eject the USB Hardware ?

Most of the USB Disks are optimized

...

{ 8 comments }

Woopra Web Analytics

by venukb on June 10, 2008

Web Analytic tools are must have for anybody running a website since they give interesting insight into your site’s traffic patterns.

Woopra Web Analytics was mentioned/reviewed by so many sites that I had to give it a try.

After signing up for Woopra, I immediately proceeded towards the downloads page. I installed the Desktop Client (for which I had to upgrade the JRE on my system to 1.6) and also installed the WordPress Plug-in.

Only after installing the WP Plugin did I realize that I had to have an "Invitation Code" to use Woopra !

Without an code you need to wait till Woopra inspects and

...

{ 3 comments }

Firefox World Record !

by venukb on May 30, 2008

Firefox has been the default browser on my PC's from quite some time now. Firefox for some reason has always been able make its way back every time I try to adopt a different browser !

Flock and Safari were the two browser which gave serious competition to Firefox !

From the past few weeks I have been using the RC1 release of Firefox 3. I haven't explored all the new features in FF3, but it does look faster compared to FF2 and does have a lot of UI enhancements.

The final release of FF3 is going to be some time in June and

...

{ 4 comments }