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Movie rentals

March 12, 2008January 3, 2017 Prasad Ajinkya2 Comments

Normally I am not into this, I prefer to watch my movies on an IMAX screen, or off a .torrent. In fact, there is a VCD guy just below my flat that rents out good titles at a very affordable price. I generally do not rent out movies.

A couple of weeks back, I came across a site – 70mm. Its a portal where you can login and rent out movies, the ones which are on the catalogue. If its available, then they will contact you and deliver the DVD/VCD at your doorstep … Cash-On-Delivery (COD). How awesome is that!! I dont even have to get off my chair :-)

Since there is a dearth of marathi movies in Hyderabad, I did try ordering a DVD of a recent marathi movie – Savalee … lets see how this pans out. Will report on this further.

IE8: We are not the Devil anymore

March 8, 2008January 26, 2017 Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

Microsoft in an official release to the public has announced what features (read enhancements) they can expect from the much hyped Internet Explorer 8. This was at the MIX08 conference held at Las Vegas … you can read about the entire details here (beware, it is encoded with the usual marketing spin). Will list down some of the salient features here –

Activities – Users can add more extensions to their browser (the way Firefox does already). These activities would enable the users to do more, in short, Microsoft gets a whole new way to bundle their failed products with the new and improved browser
WebSlices – Users can subscribe to content from within a page. The moment the content is changed, the users will be notified in their Links Bar.
Automatic Crash Recovery – That’s reassuring!! This feature is being marketed actively instead of an implicit indication that it was always there. Anyways, how is this adding value over Firefox or Opera for that matter.
Safety Filter (thats Anti-Phishing) – This is to be improved and enhanced, which will block sites known to contain malicious scripts. No comments here. I am actually hoping that this works, people do not realize how important this feature is. And those who do, do not use IE :-)
Compliance – IE8 will now be more compliant to the CSS standards. Finally, some sense, these days too many sites are relying more and more on CSS instead of flash or complex javascripts for glitzing up their websites
AJAX Navigation – Hmmm … this is a nice touch I must say. In all the AJAX based portals, whenever we click the back button of the browser, the browser goes to the page which was last submitted completely and not the last AJAXed state. Having this might be a blessing for normal users, I know the techies had just learned to live without AJAX navigation
Integration – IE8 promises ready made integration with Facebook and eBay, et al. So, thats a plus for all facebook and eBay users … dunno how many of them will actually use it though.

All this and a lot more kids! These have been promised to the doe-eyed of Microsoft … you can almost see the bunch of users in the background using their respective other browsers waiting and watching to see what happens next. I am one of them.

As of now, if you do want to try out the beta, try the IE8 Readiness Toolkit and then proceed for the installation. One word. Apprehension.

Stiki! or Story 2.0

March 6, 2008January 26, 2017 Prasad Ajinkya5 Comments

I was going through IIM Indore’s placement report which was released officially a couple of days back. Eager to know what my alma matter has chalked up, I went through the report. What interested me is not the fat packages and the multi-colored graphs done on the data, but the last part of the report.

The Batch of 2008 also saw two students taking the road less traveled of initiating a business venture of their own, as part time to start with. They have founded www.ourownbook.com – an innovative website that provides visitors a chance to participate in a collaborative book writing project, and get recognized as co-authors of the final book published.

A collaborative book! That interests me … back when we were students, we often used to pass around small scraps of paper where one used to read the current contents of the paper, add some of his own and pass it further. The final outcome used to be hilarious. Many such stories and poems even had been made and fondly saved by us. This idea of Our Own Book seems to stem from such an idea. Immediately, it struck me as a Wiki way for writing your story … a Story 2.0 or a Story + wiki = Stiki!

Some concerns about this mode of writing is that all the authors should be in-sync with each other’s writing style and mentality. If this is unknown, then the story can meander into unknown … it can take a life of it’s own. And thats the exciting part … I remember reading this funny mail about how a psychologist gave couples to write similar stories, and one couple ended up fighting about the content and outcome of the story.

I just added my first entry to the already existing entries … there are simple and effective control systems to take out malicious users from the system. Thats good.

Looks like some people do remember that I is for Implementation after all. Kudos Anubhav and Dhruv … sahi concept!

Dual booting Linux with Windows

March 5, 2008March 6, 2013 Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

There would be probably zillion other pages on the blue nothing with similar instructions. Yes. But nothing beats doing these things yourselves … blundering through some and still coming out on tops and saying … whew!! I did it!! (ofcourse a little help from Google doesnt go unappreciated)

A lot of users go about the right way installing a dual boot system.

Take backup of your existing data
They will plan and create partitions
They will first install Windows (WinXP in my case) on one drive
They will then install Linux (Ubuntu here)
Then relax, and configure both the OSes as per their desires

This is the simpler version of doing it. Its the real man’s way … a no-nonsense approach to getting things done.

And now there is my way. I have been using this laptop for about 8 months now … running it on Ubuntu. So after roughly about 8 months, I have a 5Gb home folder, some customized applications, some handy scripts, an up-to-date system … and with what internet speeds are in India, I do not wish to re-update my system again. So I decided, that I will try to rescue the Linux after losing my master boot record (MBR). So this is what I did –

Installed WinXP on my 8GB FAT32 partition
Put in an Ubuntu LiveCD and booted through it to Gutsy Gibbon
Started grub and wrote that on the MBR. Now the windows was gone … sigh!

For more detailed instructions, please visit Recovering Ubuntu after installing Windows

Started my actual Linux (whew!) and edited the grub configuration file
Made a manual entry for windows in this and booted

This is not easy as it sounds
You need to know on which partition of your hard drive was windows installed (for me it was /dev/hda4) … the grub entry which corresponds to this is (hd0,3) … keep that in mind (minus 1)

This was the exact entry

title Windoze XP
rootnoverify (hd0,3)
makeactive
chainloader +1

It works!

Why did I install Windows again? … to play games :-)

IIM Jobs

February 27, 2008January 11, 2018 Prasad Ajinkya2 Comments

No, I am not job hunting. Atleast not yet :)

But I came across this great site. Its iimjobs.com

Its a portal for all job hunters or for those of us who want to know our market value, and feel good with that information. The site has a simple layout with all the recent job openings on top. Plus, if you are particular about one stream only, then you can browse through the job postings by specialty.

And the best part about the site is that you do not have to register to get to the content.

Kudos Tarun!!

Coming back to this post after a decade, and can say so much has changed about IIM Jobs. It has become one of our default sites to post jobs, and also refer to friends and family when they are hunting for opportunities.

In the start-up eco-system, I can see that founders are posting jobs for co-founders.

Firefox reaches 500 m :-)

February 22, 2008December 14, 2016 Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

Its my favorite browser. My only browser for that matter (yes, I sometimes do use Konqueror) and only use the more ubiquitous IE but only to go to Mozilla site and download the latest release of Firefox.

Its great to know that all of us have contributed to the magic number. 500,000,000. There’s hope to this world after all :-)

N3tH@c|<

February 19, 2008December 14, 2016 Prasad Ajinkya3 Comments

The mountain giant picked up a boulder and heaved it towards me. My female orc wizard ducked and narrowly missed the hulk of rock. I decided to take my Wand of striking and kill both the giant and the killer bee buzzing behind him in a single strike. The giant absorbed the magic and moved on to pick up the boulder for another shot. I smote off the killer bee with a couple of blows with my trusted +4 magic staff and turned to face the giant. The goliath had managed to pick up the boulder, now was the time … I took out another wand of magic missile and let go its fury at him. No effect. I would have to kill this one by hand-to-hand. No matter. The staff was up for the challenge and my mithril coat was unharmed. A fast flurry of blows was exchanged the giant lay bested at my feet.

No, this is not a dream. Its one of my favorite games, NetHack!! This is a single player game released in around late 1980’s … the development of this game has been completely on the net … and its a hack and slash game … hence net + hack = nethack :-)

Everytime I play the game, theres something new that happens. The maps are different, the characters are many to play with … and the game decides to behave differently on a full moon day!!

Just one more example of how a product has developed in a decentralized fashion over an open interactive medium (IRC and Usenets) to result in a customer oriented product.