In between some very important things, my mind kind of wandered off online in search of some authentic mallu blogs...(no discrimination)..It's only because I wanted to see the prevalence of blogging among the Keralite Next-Gen folks.
Surprisingly, I found some very hilarious and interesting blogs. (note: I have not asked their permission for blogroll). Warning: Reading these blogs can invoke a mixed feelings of laughter, nostalgia and sarcasm.
1. Silverine & MyThinkpad: extremely funny and typical mallu view on ordinary situations.
2. Nariyalchutney: again funny and interesting piece by a "Fraud-Mallu"
3. Save-Kerala: Ohhhh..Man I liked MindCurry's blog on typical Fat Mallu Weddings..worth a read anytime..[:P]
4. BinnyVA: ROFL after reading about feline Toxoplasmosis
Enjoy reading these blogs.
PS: I have not yet asked permission for blogrolling them.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Wow...Excellent stuff for iphone
I am working on the evaluation perspective of my proposal due in a long time. This has driven me to do some more MPI parallel programming to produce my benchmark values that can be compared with my final values later (after about 6 months). So I take a 10 min break between 1-2 hours and read up on the Mac sites such as TUAW, hints, rumors, etc. I know, I know..what a fanatic...heard that before too...
Today's news caught my eye, VOIP over iphone brought to you by Fring. What is Fring? So Fring is an app that can be installed on jailbroken iphones and this allows you to voice chat on Skype, Gtalk, AIM, wow. Surprisingly this is a pre-release version and is kind of slow. Erica from TUAW had these problems as per her LiveBlog. I waited till the end of the day to test this app. My guinea pig..oops test case was Neeraj (he regularly uses a bluetooth headset to chat with folks on Gtalk, and therefore he qualifies as the perfect test case. No harm Neeraj [:P]). I did talk to him on Gtalk and Skype. I have to mention that the voice quality was perfect. Only the thing that needs to be rectified is : if you click on Communities and click on any of the services with a tick, you get unsubscribed and then you have to enter your id and password all over again.
Overall an excellent application...Cheers to Fring and iPhone.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Converted one more from Windoze to Mac
So yeah...as the title suggests, I converted one more person in the family from the dark side a.k.a Windows to the good side a.k.a Mac OSX. Apparently it all started with my SIL's emails asking me for an opinion about the HP laptop selections made by her brother.
Now that's one of the perks for being the "in house-techie" (that's better than being called a nerdie). Pros: you get to wag your tongue on all the pros and cons and then conveniently force your selection on the unsuspecting audience. Cons: If the gadget goes bad, you get flak for suggesting the product, everyone loses trust in your reviews and also stand a chance of losing your coveted position as the "Mr./Ms. Tech-Reviewer". OK that's a nightmare and I don't want to go that path.
So I looked at the not so attractive bulky HP laptops and then told my SIL's bro abt my perspective on the sleek and efficient MacBook. Apparently Mac users qualify among 10% of OSes used worldwide. Getting people over is a huge task but then the crossover is alluring due to programs such as Parallels, VMWare, etc.
All the MS Office programs are available on Macs excluding Visio and MS Project. Alternatives include OmniGraffle and OmniPlan (I use both and like their excellent User Interface). Quick note: I installed Office 2008 on my Macs and I was prompted for updates and security fixes the next minute. Typical Windows Application behavior.
Climax scene: SIL's bro has successfully migrated to the good side. My faltu ka prediction: He will become more efficient and his productivity will increase exponentially.
Moral of story: I am the official Mac/Apple preacher/Minister. LOL
Now that's one of the perks for being the "in house-techie" (that's better than being called a nerdie). Pros: you get to wag your tongue on all the pros and cons and then conveniently force your selection on the unsuspecting audience. Cons: If the gadget goes bad, you get flak for suggesting the product, everyone loses trust in your reviews and also stand a chance of losing your coveted position as the "Mr./Ms. Tech-Reviewer". OK that's a nightmare and I don't want to go that path.
So I looked at the not so attractive bulky HP laptops and then told my SIL's bro abt my perspective on the sleek and efficient MacBook. Apparently Mac users qualify among 10% of OSes used worldwide. Getting people over is a huge task but then the crossover is alluring due to programs such as Parallels, VMWare, etc.
All the MS Office programs are available on Macs excluding Visio and MS Project. Alternatives include OmniGraffle and OmniPlan (I use both and like their excellent User Interface). Quick note: I installed Office 2008 on my Macs and I was prompted for updates and security fixes the next minute. Typical Windows Application behavior.
Climax scene: SIL's bro has successfully migrated to the good side. My faltu ka prediction: He will become more efficient and his productivity will increase exponentially.
Moral of story: I am the official Mac/Apple preacher/Minister. LOL
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Online radio stations--iTunes
Hmmm..belonging to the software profesion is not bad unless you have some sort of escapism in the form of online music/radio stations. There have been many countless ocassions when my mood has been buoyed (read code/program started working after countless hours of debugging) by some good song playing on some online music channel.
As a service to the other folks out there, I decided to post info about some of the online radio stations:
1. City 1016 is a radio station broadcast from Dubai, UAE and features the latest hindi, pop songs. It's fun listening to their most famous RJs Abhijeet and Gaurav.
2. Pulse 95.3 is another radio station from Dubai, UAE and features old classics and ghazals.
3. For the Malayalam and Tamil aficionados, listen to Hit 96.7
All the above three stations require Windows Media Player as they are encoded WMV streams.
The next few stations can be played from iTunes.
4. RadioTeenTaal --Station from Paris
5. RadioNimbooda --Station from Paris again. Plays both latest hindi and tamil songs.
6. Bollywoodradio -- Station broadcast from Deutschland a.k.a Germany
7. Mastradio -- Listen to devotional songs plus hindustani classical music plus the regular hindi masala songs.
8. Bollywoodmusicradio -- entertaining playlists...
So usually, I surf between the iTunes stations and enjoy working on my code.
As a sidethought, some more info on Malayalam radio online stations can be found at Malluradio. But I was not able to play any of these streams on my Mac..[:(]
Enjoy....!!!
As a service to the other folks out there, I decided to post info about some of the online radio stations:
1. City 1016 is a radio station broadcast from Dubai, UAE and features the latest hindi, pop songs. It's fun listening to their most famous RJs Abhijeet and Gaurav.
2. Pulse 95.3 is another radio station from Dubai, UAE and features old classics and ghazals.
3. For the Malayalam and Tamil aficionados, listen to Hit 96.7
All the above three stations require Windows Media Player as they are encoded WMV streams.
The next few stations can be played from iTunes.
4. RadioTeenTaal --Station from Paris
5. RadioNimbooda --Station from Paris again. Plays both latest hindi and tamil songs.
6. Bollywoodradio -- Station broadcast from Deutschland a.k.a Germany
7. Mastradio -- Listen to devotional songs plus hindustani classical music plus the regular hindi masala songs.
8. Bollywoodmusicradio -- entertaining playlists...
So usually, I surf between the iTunes stations and enjoy working on my code.
As a sidethought, some more info on Malayalam radio online stations can be found at Malluradio. But I was not able to play any of these streams on my Mac..[:(]
Enjoy....!!!
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