My Snuffbox

Been working on linux systems very recently.. the system arrived with all the fun configuration that could be expected but the surprise was in store when i opened the firefox browser in the Linux OS. The browser when opened for the first time takes you to the mozilla page where it talks about the Mozilla foundation and the firefox project and stuff. And all i saw was a "Firefox could not establish a connection" page! :( Oh great! No proxies! So it was basically a known problem. Without a second's passing, i clicked on Tools in Firefox to configure the proxy settings. And this was what my reaction was when the Tools menu showed up! There was no Options at all!!! So i was under the assumption that i had to be some super user or an administrator to have the privileges to change and configure the internet settings in firefox on linux. Almost a week passed before i realised that the 'Preferences' is under Edit menu in Firefox as against Tools menu in Windows . I felt ...

We'd been to Warangal in AP, India last summer. Only when we reached there, did i realize the treasure trove that our motherland truly is. Lying in ruins in front of our eyes, were the reconstructed remains of a once flourished dynasty of kings, under whose patronage was spawned a variety of hair rising architectural concepts. Displayed here is a picture of a beautiful sculpture of an elephant giving birth to a calf and the bull helping it when its in labour. And we're talking about this detail not in a huge piece of rock, but in something that was barely 2.5 feet by 1.25 feet. In the pic, it is seen that the two elephants are standing back to back, separated by a pillar. The way the elephants are using the pillar for support is well thought of. The bull and the mother are pulling the pillar in opposite directions (towards each other) so that the mother exerts the force needed to deliver the calf by pulling the pillar, held in place by the bull. Whether the bull is using anot...

the title Problem Solving is an all encompassing concept, so all encompassing that it can never be dealt with at a comprehensive stretch in any book. Problem solving can cover anything as simple as finding out ways to solve problems in day to day life to identifying a design pattern for a big software project. Now that's a range!! Well, in my recent work experience in a maintenance portfolio, I was involved in a lot of bug fixes and debugging. I was able to find out a protocol for finding fixes. 1) Replicate the problem There's use in finding a solution only if the problem is replicable. Solving an inconsistent problem does not make any sense despite the choice of something waiting 24X7 for a trigger to happen. If the problem is happening in prod or cert, make it happen in dev. You're not just recreating the problem but are also recreating the environment in which the problem occurs. If the problem is not replicable, then may be some anomaly is missing in the environment. ...

So your bike insurance got expired just out of the corner of your eye and you're waiting for the weekend to take it to the insurance folks to get the insurance renewed? So what till the weekend? You sneak behind cops, acting normal but have the rush cos anyone may stop you anytime and ask you for your vehicle's papers... so why all the fuss? Vehicle insurance renewal has got easier like never before. Wanna know how? The answer is the nearest " Reliance Fresh " store you can locate. They have an ICICI Lombard Insurance counter where you can go and get your vehicle insurance renewed across the counter. Points to note: Right now, I am not aware if this is spread across every Reliance Fresh shopping centre. But there are two shops at my place and both have the counters. You'll need to take your vehicle to the agent for inspection in case the previous insurance cover expired. You'll need a photo copy of either your RC book or your earlier insurance. They also hand...

So bought a new system? Or a laptop? Thinking that you'll have to go through the mess of tagging all those bookmarks again in Mozilla Firefox? Well you don't have to!! These folks are amazing. They've seen through some of the most remotely visible problems and have provided fixes for them. In order to transfer bookmarks (the jargon is import bookmarks ) from a firefox running on one system to another, go to the firefox on the system where you have all the bookmarks. Click on Bookmarks -> Organize Bookmarks -> Import and Backup -> Export HTML. Save the bookmarks as a html page, say bookmarks.html. Get this to the new system or the one where you want all the bookmarks. Open Firefox. Click Bookmarks -> Organize Bookmarks -> Import and Backup -> Import HTML. Choose "From an HTML File". A dialog box opens. Select the bookmarks.html which you brought from the "other" firefox. tadaa!!!! All your bookmarks which you had on the firefox in your...

This was one of my most relished adventures and the first of its kind.. baking a cake. I am a vegetarian who stays away from cakes cos of the egg content. It so happened when i was browsing the shelves in the local supermarket, i hit upon this pack that read "Pillsbury Eggless Cooker Cake - Rich Chocolate Flavoured Mix". Hmm.. a cake mix.. wow! and eggless!!?? woooooooowww!!! Well i took the bet and i bought it. The recipe was quite simple. Did not require any special exotic ingredients. 1)Take a bowl and add the cake mix to about two tablespoons of oil and 100ml of milk. Stir well so that the consistency is that of thick paste that is viscous enough yet free to flow from one bowl to the other. Make sure all the powder is gone and batter is completely semi solid. Add some raisins to the mix. Scatter some nut bits here and there. 2) Take a relatively thick vessel that is atleast 5 inches wide. I took a 5.5 - 6 inch vessel. Worked fine. 3) Grease the pan. Now whats greasing? G...

Gone are the days when we had tag clouds that ran about in text and hyperlinks.. sad thing about technology being outdated and replaced so fast.... this had personally affected me when i prepared for the SCJP 1.4 exam from Kathy Sierra's book.. but by the time i finished the book, i heard of an SCJP 5.0 released.. and my heart crumbled when i discovered that Kathy Sierra had also written a book for the 5.0 version.... all in a month's events... well coming back to the point on simple tag clouds... So wanna jazz up your blog on Blogger by adding a flash animated tag cloud? Visit www.bloggerbuster.com .. it has the widget xml code that actually does the magic!!!! all credits to the developers..... and watch out for the tips on customizing your flash tag cloud like changing the font size, the background color or the text colour..... Note: works only for Blogger... for Wordpress blogs, try using the wp-cumulus plugin And by the way, you can also check out the implementation on th...