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Images of the West Kimberley by Michael Fletcher
2009-09-22 17:45:00
Loving this piece of production by Michael Fletcher who is showing the ability of the 5D Mk2 by putting together work of his brother Christian Absolutely breathtaking! Images of the West Kimberley from Michael Fletcher on Vimeo.

Hohner 21 Tremolo Deluxe
2009-07-28 17:53:00
Today I bought a Hohner 21 Tremolo Deluxe (Harmonica) for myself. Its a Silver body, 21 Notes (3 Octaves) Harmonica. It has two Reeds for each Note and is precisely tuned by hand, slightly apart from each other. Although I don’t know how to play a MouthOrgan, this tuning difference between reeds produce a Tremolo Sound which in this case is very pleasant. With its complete scale tuning over three octaves, it is possible to easily play beautiful melodies in pop, folk, country and many traditional styles. And one more thing it is tuned in C Major Scale. Hopefully, I will find someone who can teach me “How to play a Harmonica”. If you have link to a good online tutorial, please let me know.

How to Create IM BOT in Minutes
2009-07-27 10:21:00
Recently I created an IM BOT that works with GTalk, Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live and other popular instant messaging clients. To create your own IM Bot you need to have some very basic programming skills. You can use any programming language, I prefer PHP. You also need to have web space to host your bot. For example, I have created a Twitter Bot that can be used to tweet in your twitter account using any IM client. If you like to write a personal IM bot, just follow these simple steps: Step 1: Register at Imified Step 2: Create your Bot which is just a simple script which resides on your webserver. It can be in any programming language. Step 3: Copy the path of your script in the clipboard shown below. Your Bot is ready to serve now. The script I wrote is self-explanatory. Just Add Tweetbot@bot.im in your IM client to try it. //Twitter.PHP require('TwitterAPI.php'); if($_REQUEST[('value'.($_REQUEST['step']- 1))]=="reset") { echo " start all over again now "; } else if($_R...
More About: Minutes

A Simple Silverlight Application
2009-04-13 06:42:00
This post is about a simple application that I’ve created to get my hands on Silverlight 2. It is simple Digital Clock which shows local time using custom fonts and updates itself every second. My few observations that I would like to share with you: Custom Font Embedding in Silverlight Data Binding Modes and using INotifyPropertyChanged Using Dispatcher.BeginInvoke() Before we start digging each of above topics lets first have a look at the application in running condition. I have named it SilverTimer. Download: SilverTimer Source (C#/VS 2008) Custom Font Embedding in Silverlight I have used custom fonts (courtesy: DS-DIGI.TTF) in my SilverTimer application. These fonts are first downloaded automatically by the Silverlight Runtime. Here is excerpt showing how to embedd custom fonts - FontFamily is comprise of this format – FONT_FILE#FONT_NAME. Having said that font file is “DS-DIGI.TTF� and the font named “DS-Digital� and are separated by‘#’. The real beaut...
More About: Simple , Application

Coffee’s For Closers Only…….
2009-04-10 12:11:00
This is one of my favourite monologue in movie history by Alec Baldwin from the movie ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’. In this scene, Alec Baldwin is confronting the employees of a tough Chicago real-estate office. Alec Baldwin plays a perfect Hitler in this performance. The look on Jack Lemon’s face when Alec Baldwin pulls out the brass balls says it all.
More About: Coffee

IBM Rational User Group Launch
2009-04-08 20:13:00
IBM is presenting Rational User Group Launh on 21st April, 2009 at Hotel Taj Mahal, Delhi. Here is the excerpt of the mail I received… It is our pleasure to invite you to Rational User Group meeting in Delhi on 21st April, 2009. You are cordially invited to attend the launch and join the community of Rational users in Delhi. The Rational User group will provide a platform for discussions with like minded people, share best practices and have some fun while we are at it. The agenda will cover latest topics from Rational Software. Please mark your calendars for the 21st April, 2009 from 5.00p.m onwards at Taj Mahal. Do join us for dinner thereafter. Thank you and look forward to meeting with you. Agenda Topics: * What is Jazz and Change Management using Rational Team Concert * Quality Driven Software Delivery through Rational Quality Manager * Secure Web Applications using Rational AppScan Date: 21st April, 2009 Venue: Taj Mahal, Delhi Click here to register
More About: Launch

Microsoft Launched 92 Megapixel Camera
2009-04-08 15:38:00
Microsoft has announced a new camera for aerial photography. It is a 92 megapixel camera that they used for Bird’s Eye view on Live Maps. Did you know that Microsoft makes camera?
More About: Microsoft , Camera , Launched

Facebook Funny things
2009-04-05 09:02:00
A really cool funny video on Youtube by Julian Smith.
More About: Funny , Facebook , Things

10 Cyber Threats to Look for in 2009
2009-04-01 19:59:00
1. Collaboration Tools Tools that help people collaborate i.e. IM, IRC, Social Networking Sites, Video Conferencing, and White Boards. Users can expect to see a surge of attacks through collaboration tools, as membership continues to increase. These tools will help cyber criminals in stepping up to hit interactive social networking site with unsolicited e-mail and malicious links. Ignorance about clicking on an ‘interesting link’ will be exploited by the bad guys on internet.  The cases of identity theft, cyber-stalking, cyber-bullying and cyber-extortion are expected to rise. At the corporate level, this may give rise to increase data theft from corporate databases. 2. Virtualization Now a day’s companies are using virtual environments to reduce cost, save space and to increase convenience for their employees. Virtualization includes running a platform (Linux) on a different platform (Windows). But virtualization makes the security more complicated as it introduces an extra ...
More About: Cyber , Threats

Google to invest in StartUps.
2009-03-31 20:35:00
If you have an outstanding idea for a StartUp and worrying from where all the money required would flow in. DON’T WORRY. World’s largest search engine Google is ready to help you with your startup. Under the management of Rich Miner and Bill Maris google announces Google Ventures. Google Venture is a effort to use google’s resources to encourage entrepreneurs and new companies. For Entire Story visit www.google.com/ventures
More About: Invest , Startups

Foil the spam robots with SpamPoison
2008-05-30 11:57:00
SpamPoison is a small but useful utility to fight against spammers. It won?t directly help you in bringing down spam in your blog/Inbox but will stop spammers harvesting information which they can use for sending spam emails. Spammers usually get email addresses with the help of Bots. Bots (also known as wanderers, spiders or crawlers) crawls a web page and continually retrieving linked pages for extracting any email like string and store it in a database. Certainly this database is further used for sending spam emails using mass mailer software. Spam poison identifies these spammer?s crawlers and feed them through an infinite loop of dynamically generated fake email addresses. All you have to do is link back this page so that whenever a spammer's robot scans your page, it will be sucked into this one. To link to this page, just use this simple code: <a href="http://english-130430879095.spampoi son.com">Fight Spam! Click Here!</a>
More About: Spam , Robots , Misc

Microsoft Research launched WorldWide Telescope
2008-05-28 17:03:00
Microsoft launched its WorldWide Telescope , bringing the free Web-based program for zooming around the universe to a broad audience. The image above shows how the Earth looks like at night,  taken from this utility. visit here
More About: Microsoft , Research , Microsoft Research , Worldwide

Trip to Central London
2008-04-05 17:29:00
Today is the day when I first visited Central London and also the day when I landed at London Heathrow Airport one month back. It was a strange feeling touching down UK as this is my first time in Great Britain. Here for a business assignment, I received a wonderful experience so far and I am happy having accepted this assignment from my company. Here at workplace in London, there are peoples from about 140 different nations. That?s really excites and never to forget experience to work with so many different people from different culture. Today, In Central London I was able to see Westminster, London Bridge, Parliament and London Eye. I?ve see few monuments here but Big Ben is the one that I really wanted to view in life. One just can't forget the experience of viewing London from London Eye. It is simply spectacular.
More About: Personal , Trip

Gmail CAPTCHA cracked
2008-02-27 08:28:00
Gmail CAPTCHA is cracked by a group of spammers, first reported by a security firm ?Websense?. The firm believes that this attack is carried out by the same group behind the cracking of Windows Live mail CAPTCHA?s earlier this month. Here is full story on blog of this security firm.
More About: Google , Gmail , Captcha , Cracked

Logo: XIX Commonwealth Games Delhi 2010
2008-02-20 17:07:00
I just checked out new logo of Commonwealth Games Delhi 2010 that looks much better (see on the left). I didn?t like the logo that was suggested earlier and I have pointed it out in my previous post that India need a better logo. This logo seems decent to me and I personally feel that it is worth being official logo for this Commonwealth games. Here is a nice writing (about logo and what it depicts) on this game?s official website. " The Logo for the XIX Commonwealth Games Delhi 2010 is inspired by the Chakra, The National Symbol of Freedom, of Unity and Power. Spiraling Upwards, it depicts the Growth of India into a Proud, vibrant nation, her billion people coming together to fulfill their true destinies. India's journey from tradition to modernity, her economic transformation into a super power ... Reaching out to the world and leading the way, even as she enthusiastically embraces all the 71 CCGA nations and territories of the commonwealth to become one and host the best ever ...
More About: Musings

Few More dasblog Macro
2008-02-09 16:39:00
Completed my next dasBlog macro (LastFm Recent Tracks) and just uploaded a new page dedicated to dasBlog macro. Here are the list of dasblog macros that I have developed so far - List of Last.Fm Recent Tracks This macro will show a list of recent tracks that was listened by you and scrobbled by Last.fm. This macro is for only who have signed up at last.fm. List of Last.Fm Top Artist This macro will show the list of Top Artist that you listened to this week. Again, this macro is for only who have signed up at last.fm. Show a Shoutbox This macro will add a shoutbox to dasBlog. Features included- XML Database - (All entries are stored in XML File. It can be kept under the content directory of blog) Ajax Enabled ? No Iframe or refreshing of whole page. Update shoutbox silently and regularly after specified interval. Customizable CSS ? I tried to make it very customizable. It can gel with any theme perfectly. Visit http://www.aakashjain.com/stuff/dasblog+m acr...
More About: Macro

MTNL Broadband Speed Problem
2008-02-04 18:20:00
Lately, I have upgraded my broadband connection from 590 NU (256 kbps) to 749 NU (2 mbps). I presumed that I?ll be able to access podcasts and watch videos available without having waited for buffering. But I am feeling like being cheated after this decision. I have always praise MTNL for their Broadband Services, low downtime and good connection. But this time they have proven me wrong. Though speed is formally upgraded (in my account) but I don?t see my internet speed going up. Here is the result of speed test on internetfrog.com Download: 214,600 bps Upload: 90,936 bps QOS: 96% Quality Round Trip Time: 2 ms MaxPause (longest pause recorded during the data download): 141 ms I have contacted with MTNL Customer support on 1500 regarding this issue. They show confident that it will be corrected within 24 hrs. Heck! It?s been two days now and I don?t know what to do. To make the matter worst they have closed the registration and migration to my previous plan (590 NU - 256k kbps)...
More About: Personal , Problem , Speed

Busting Spam in My dasBlog
2008-01-30 12:33:00
SPAM. Every one hate it and Why not? No one wish to waste his/her time in searching through all messages for a few legitimate messages. I have been receiving lot of SPAM comments before I find an effective way to stop it. (God knows why they were trying to sell Viagra and what not on my blog) To fight it, I have had enabled CAPTCHA for comments on my blog. Enabling the CAPTCHA discouraged SPAM and amount of SPAM goes down significantly, but the genuine posts were also reduced. I believe that visitors don?t want to bear the pain of entering the security words while posting comments. I can understand this because even I feel discouraged leaving comment where someone has enabled CAPTCHA on their blogs. I really wanted to stop SPAM but not at the cost of comments of my dear readers. Other possible way to spam is to blacklist IPs responsible for SPAM messages. However, you just can?t create a list of black listed IPs and keep adding as you encounter the new one. They are very clever and ...
More About: Spam , Musings , Blog

Free up RAM by Disabling Useless Windows Services
2008-01-28 09:31:00
All windows services under Windows Os run for a specific purpose and are essential. But these services don?t run free of cost. Any service that runs on your computer requires space in memory and some processor time. By default there are some services that run and not required by all users. This is not a good idea having these turned on if you are not using them and especially if you are low at RAM (say 256 or even less). So it?s better to turn off them. Disabling the useless services will free up some amount of RAM for other applications and for security purpose also. Here I have compiled a list of services that can be disabled without affecting your normal working. Please note that these simple tweaks are most suitable for home users. (If you are using your system at office and have all those server and intranet setup, please stop here.) Let?s go to services panel, go to Start -> Run -> and type "services.msc" and hit Enter. Computer Browser What it does: Maint...
More About: Services , Free , Useless , Tweaking

Tweak: Google Talk Multiple Instance
2008-01-07 18:49:00
Default Installation of Google Talk doesn?t allow you to login with two different Ids from a single computer. But you can run two different instance of Google Talk at same time on a single computer after tweaking it a little. Just locate the Google Talk shortcut in Start -> Programs -> Google Talk -> Google Talk. Right click on the shortcut and go to properties. A dialog box will open as shown in the image below. Add ?/nomutex? at the end of Target string, it should look like as shown in the image and click ok. That?s all now every time when you want an extra instance of Google Talk, click on this shortcut. Easy!
More About: Tweak

Drivers: HP Compaq Presario 707TU
2007-12-24 20:42:00
I bought a new HP Compaq Presario 707TU Notebook few days back. To my surprise there was no driver CD comes with it. I installed Windows XP Professional Edition in it and couldn?t find the driver on HP?s website.  They have only provided the drivers for Windows Vista Operation System. Later, I found that there are so many people having the same issue. Now the best part is that, today, I got all drivers for it. Thanks to HP Technical help desk. Here are the links to download the drivers. Please remember that these drivers are for window XP OS. You can find the driver for windows Vista on the HP website. Video driver: http://downloadmirror.intel.com/14388/a08 /win2k_xp14311.exe Chipset driver: http://downloadmirror.intel.com/13799/eng /ChipUtil.exe Realtek RTL8100CL/RTL8110Sb NIC Driver: ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp30001-3050 0/sp30156.exe Realtek RTL8139/810x Family Fast Ethernet NIC Driver: ftp://210.51.181.211/cn/nic/Driver_5671_X P_0703.zip Intel Pro Wireless: ft...
More About: Personal , Drivers , Misc

Shoutbox: my first macro for dasBlog
2007-12-23 10:01:00
I have just finished modifications in my first dasBlog macro. This macro will add a shout-box to the dasBlog. You can see it on the right side of this blog. I have tested it successfully with Firefox an IE 5.5+. This macro is written for new dasBlog v2.0 (runs on .Net framework 2.0). If you want to add this custom macro to your dasBlog, make sure you are using new version dasBlog 2.0. On the best part of it, macro uses Ajax calls to update the shout-box. You can disable this behavior, if you don?t want to update it silently. To make the configuration easy I didn?t want to use any database to store the shout-box entries. It will store entries in a XML file on web-server. Apart, it is very customizable with the help of a CSS. To add it to your dasBlog, all you need to download macro. Then make some configuration settings given below. 1. Copy aakashjain.dll into the bin directory of your blog. 2. Edit the web.config file to make the following changes.     a) ...
More About: Technical , Macro , Shoutbox , Acro

Open Mind Index
2007-12-22 15:02:00
OMI stands for ?Open mind Index ?, as they said it. Here this utility can actually help you to calculate your openness for the variety of music.  All you need to enter your last.fm username to generate this graphical statistic given below. For this, of course you need to have a profile on last.fm, those who don?t know what last.fm is, it?s a social music site where you send data of about whatever you listen on your computer. This is done with the help of a small plug-in available for download after you sign up for service.  When you enter the username, your music data (most specifically, top artist of last 12 months) is downloaded from the last.fm site and used for calculation. The following table lists the OMI values and there corresponding description. (Mine is 119) Below 20:        an extremely small bandwidth of tags; a faker or fanatic of an artist 20 - 39:          a small bandwidth of tags; a fan...
More About: Personal , Misc , Mind

Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 Released
2007-11-22 08:25:00
Visual Studio 2008 with .Net 3.5 has been released on November 19, 2007 and available for download at Microsoft ?s Website. It is not an ordinary release with some common updates and extensions. VS2008 comes up with lots of exciting features for developers. Some of the main features are: VS 2008 Multi-Targeting Support. ASP.NET AJAX and JavaScript Support. VS 2008 Web Designer and CSS Support. Language Improvements and LINQ. Data Access Improvements with LINQ to SQL. Browsing the .NET Framework Library Source using Visual Studio. You can find the detail explanation of above features at ScottGu?s Blog.
More About: News , Visual Studio , Visual , Released

dasBlog Shoutbox Macro Testing
2007-11-18 19:57:00
I?ve finished my first dasblog macro that was created by me. It?s an Ajax enabled Shout -box. Still it is under testing and enhancement. Let me tell you it took me two full weekends to get this done. It was quite a good work behind this. But I am happy that I am seeing it running and working perfectly. Initially, I have added it on my blog (see the right navigation) for testing purpose only. Some of the main features are:- a) XML Database (All entries are stored in XML File. It can be kept under the content directory of blog) b) Ajax Enabled ? No Iframe or refreshing of whole page. Update shoutbox silently and regularly after specified interval. c) Customizable CSS ? I tried to make it very customizable. It can gel with any theme perfectly. d) Support New dasBlog version 2.0 (with Asp.net 2.0) I?d appreciate any feedback, comments or error from you. It will be available for download, once I make necessary changes on the basis of feedback received.
More About: Testing , Macro , Shoutbox

My First Dasblog Theme and Macros
2007-11-16 07:39:00
I have created my first dasblog theme. I am using the same at the time of writing this post. Theme : Geeks This theme contains single style-sheet. You can download it here. Apart, I am creating some macros for dasBlog . Few of them are listed below. LastFm Recent Tracks List - This macro will display the last n tracks played by you. LastFm Top Artist - This macro will display a list of top artists played by you in last few days. dasBlog Shoutbox - A AJAX enabled shout-box for dasblog. This will allow the visitors of your web-blog to directly chat with you.
More About: Macros , Acro

Diwali Greetings to all of you
2007-11-08 14:46:00
H a p p y   D i w a l i May the Festival of Lights - Diwali Dispel Darkness, Ignorance and Evil from the World.
More About: Personal , Misc , Ali G

Error: Failed to access IIS metabase
2007-10-30 18:07:00
If you install IIS after .Net 2.0 or Visual studio 2005, you may receive ?Failed to access IIS metabase? error. To resolve this issue either you need to install .Net framework again after IIS or you can do the following... You can use the aspnet_regiis utility comes with .Net framework 2.0. This is an administrator utility to install or uninstall Asp.Net on local server/machine. To run this utility through command prompt move to C:WindowsMicrosoft.NetFrameworkv2.0.50727 and type (without quotes) ?aspnet_regiis -i ? This will install the ASP.Net and update and upgrade the scriptmaps at the IIS metabase root and in below the root. In certain cases, a particular user account doesn?t have access to IIS metabase. Such condition will result the same error. However, in this case you can simply grant access to user account using? ?aspnet_regiis ?ga (user_account_name)"
More About: Access , Error

Resolution: Failed to access IIS metabase
2007-10-30 18:07:00
If you install IIS after .Net 2.0 or Visual studio 2005, you may receive ?Failed to access IIS metabase? error. To resolve this issue either you need to install .Net framework again after IIS or you can do the following... You can use the aspnet_regiis utility comes with .Net framework 2.0. This is an administrator utility to install or uninstall Asp.Net on local server/machine. To run this utility through command prompt move to C:WindowsMicrosoft.NetFrameworkv2.0.50727 and type (without quotes) ?aspnet_regiis -i ? This will install the ASP.Net and update and upgrade the scriptmaps at the IIS metabase root and in below the root. In certain cases, a particular user account doesn?t have access to IIS metabase. Such condition will result the same error. However, in this case you can simply grant access to user account using? ?aspnet_regiis ?ga (user_account_name)"
More About: Access , Resolution

My new Intel DG965WH Motherboard with 8-channel (7.1) audio subsystem
2007-10-27 19:04:00
Few weeks ago, I bought new DG965WH (Media series) Intel Motherboard . It?s an ultimate piece when power, performance and media are taken in account. I?m not listing the full specification but you can find them here. The most tempting is its 7.1 Audio Output support. I?ve been using a number of Intel motherboards, i.e. 810e, 845, 945 GNT, 965 RY. I can comfortably say this have the best audio output quality with Dolby Home Theater certification and based on Intel® Viiv? technology. Intel DG965WH Motherboard (Media Series) Yes, one this to note here is that this motherboard doesn?t support Windows 2003 server Ent. Ed. It?s mean some of driver may fail to install with this OS. Like in my case I am not able to install display driver.
More About: Personal , Channel