I now have a fully functional Dell Inspiron 8200. This notebook is six years old, but still works fine for VB programming, web design using Dreamweaver, MS office related work and web browsing. My seven year old uses it ocassionally to browse the internet and do his homework. Though there is a two year old desktop at home, which both my children use to do their homework, using the notebook right now seems a bit of a novelty to them.
Saturday, 27 December 2008
The Unexpected
I now have a fully functional Dell Inspiron 8200. This notebook is six years old, but still works fine for VB programming, web design using Dreamweaver, MS office related work and web browsing. My seven year old uses it ocassionally to browse the internet and do his homework. Though there is a two year old desktop at home, which both my children use to do their homework, using the notebook right now seems a bit of a novelty to them.
Tuesday, 23 December 2008
Apple MacBook
In 2006 Apple released an Intel-based Mac, which had the potential to natively run Windows-based operating systems on Apple hardware using Bootcamp. This gave the users the ability to use Windows applications on a Mac. This was the principal reason behind my purchase of the MacBook. I wanted a system, where I could use the OS X for working on digital movies and natively run Windows applications for my day to day work.
After using the MacBook for a few days I am very much impressed by it, though it took me a few hours to get used to the various keys for obvious reasons. I opted for the latest model, which has the Aluminium unibody design, LED display and a giant Trackpad. Having dismantled my Dell Inspiron 8200 a few days back to replace the palm rest assembly (and the difficulty it posed with numerous small feeble parts), I can really appreciate the advanced Aluminium unibody design of the MacBook. Both the LED display and the giant Trackpad whose functionality is quite similar to that on a iPhone/iPod Touch are worthy additions to the MacBook.
I ordered the MacBook on 16th Dec and it was delivered on 22nd Dec, which is quite quick given the fact that it was custom built and shipped from Shanghai. Here are a few photographs .....
Thursday, 18 December 2008
Lifetrons X-mini Capsule Rechargeable Speaker
Whilst on my flight to India (in KLM's inflight magazine) I came across this tiny speaker manufactured by Lifetrons of Switzerland. The product is the world’s first extendable vacuum bass speaker, utilizing the patented Bass Xpansion System™ (BXS) technology which was developed and powered by Singaporean based technology company XMI. It costed me 30 Euros, saving me an expensive motherboard replacement. I am certainly impressed with the quality of the speakers.
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
Mini Magnetosphere: An aid to Deep Space travel
Monday, 20 October 2008
Sun's heliosphere is shrinking
Saturday, 18 October 2008
Spawning error in Virtual Box
Thursday, 16 October 2008
Catching Up
Last night, I had an opportunity to catch up with my cousin Krishna Karedla, via e-mail. Krishna has co-authored books on computer programming with his wife Bharati. His business involves lot of activities other than just authoring books.The books are available through his website. In his words,
The website gives information about key aspects of building an application using asp.net, vb.net and sql server. Various topics which are useful to programmers, students and faculty alike are covered and some are listed here: connection string - how to use a connection string, connecting to server, working of a trading firm, creating and deploying a web service, web service tools, middle tier, data, object, data binding, constructors, asp net validation controls and many others.
Krishna also maintains a blog, which has some very interesting posts. By the way Krishna goes by the name Madhava on his blog. The blog has photos of some of my cousins, nieces and nephews, whom I've met ages ago and some whom I haven't met at all.
Sunday, 12 October 2008
BBC iPlayer
Before the arrival of BBC iPlayer, Sky TV had a media player named Skyplayer. It offered limited programmes, like sport highlights, which on most occasions weren't very current. I watched BBC iPlayer extensively during the Beijing 2008 olympics, to catch up with the missed action at the end of the day. I found it very convenient.
I watch very little mainstream TV. On most occasions, I watch channels between 520 and 530 on the Sky network, like Discovery, National Geographic and History channels. Last night, I went onto the BBC iPlayer homepage to see what I have been missing on mainstream TV lately. The programme that interested me was The World's Strictest Parents: India, which was about two British teenagers, Josh Breslin and Charlotte Abrahams visit India to get a first hand experience on how parenting is done in a conservative Rajasthani family. Josh mentions in a news article that the experience for the most part was positive.
Tuesday, 7 October 2008
World stock markets meltdown - Part 2
Sunday, 28 September 2008
Obesity in Britain
Googling for the articles on 'Obesity in Britain', I came across the following news articles (courtesy Daily Mail), which seem to confirm what I saw in Blackpool. However, the articles do not suggest that obesity is only restricted to middle Britain. The epidemic appears to be much more widespread.
Fat Britain: Tackling the obesity epidemic. Click here.
Overweight Britons are among the fattest in Europe. Click here.
13m obese by 2010. Click here.
Monday, 15 September 2008
World stock markets meltdown
Sunday, 14 September 2008
VirtualBox in Ubuntu
Scouring through the Google results I came across a website which showed how to install Google Chrome on Ubuntu using VirtualBox. Wow! I thought, a virtualisation software, where I could run software built for windows (which do not have a Linux equivalent) without having to leave Ubuntu. I loaded my virtual version of Windows using Virtual Box following the instructions on the above website. I then installed Google Chrome and voila. Here I am using Google Chrome browser to access my blog and write this post without having to leave Ubuntu.
I could have done the same dozen other ways, but I chose to do it this way.
Friday, 12 September 2008
Britain's Credit Crunch
I had an interesting incident that happened recently, which prompted me to come up with this post. In my earlier post I mentioned that I ordered a Seagate 1 TB Hard Disk from the BT shop. The original order was made on 20th August, scheduled to be delivered by the courier Amtrak on the 22nd. I called them up on 22nd afternoon saying that nobody would be at home and I would collect the parcel from their depot on 23rd, which happened to be a Saturday. On 23rd I was informed that due to some technical reasons they were asked not to give parcels to any customers. Only later did I come to know that Amtrak had gone into Administration on 22nd.
The latest news today is the holiday firm XL has gone into Administration. With the high fuel prices I expect a few of the low budget airlines could go into Administration.
Tuesday, 9 September 2008
Seagate 1TB hard disk
Tools needed: (1) A mini screw driver with a star head and (2) Anti static wrist strap.
The Dell manual missed out the vital point about screwing the hard disk onto the bracket. An other aspect to note is the SATA cable and the power cable in the box supplied by Seagate are too small to be of any use. It is advisable to atleast buy a SATA cable, the one with a single right angle connector for installing a hard disk in a similar Dell make PC.
Post installation, I enabled the hard disk in BIOS and then formatted it using the Seagate Discwizard software. The software had the following handy features: add new disc (which let me do my partitioning), clone disc, image backup and image restore. The software is available for download from the Seagate website. I cannot vouch for its use on non Seagate hard disks as I never had a chance to use on one.
Google Chrome
My first thoughts are the browser is definitely quick. I am a great fan of Google Maps and I always had trouble loading them in other browsers; Firefox, IE, Opera and Flock. In Chrome they loaded almost instantaneously. The picture in YouTube appeared a bit better than in the other browsers. However, it doesn’t work on music sites with embedded media players. Raaga.com is one of them, which uses an embedded Realplayer.
The feature I liked the most in Chrome is ‘One box for everything’, i.e. merging of the address and search boxes into one. ‘Incognito mode’ feature may seem new and innovative to the IE and Firefox users, but in Safari the Private browsing mode has been available since 2005.
The experts verdict is it has bugs. The foremost one is the carpetbomb bug, which for the moment has kept me away from using Chrome as my default browser. My wish is all the known bugs are removed before its final stable release.