Vivek live and kickin'

With the news of GSuite legacy being discontinued I needed a way to manage the personal family email accounts. Everyone was in any case using it as a forwarding email address so had to figure out a way to continue using it that way without moving to a paid version as none of these accounts are business critical accounts. The first thing was to move the domain control to CloudFlare. Then in the cloudflare dashboard selected the email setting and requested for access. It took me 2-3 days to get access so not exactly sure how long it will take you or if its out of beta by now. Once you have access to email routing you can forward mails which is the easy part . In this case I'm forwarding the emails to my gmail account. Now the problem is how do you reply or compose mails with your custom email address.  Step 1: Add the following line to the DNS TXT record " include: _spf.google.com" . This will allow google to send emails on your behalf.  Earlier it was:  v=spf1 include:_sp...

I normally know about conditional compilation of JS in IE using <!--[if gt IE 6] --> but here is something new I figured out today. var IE; //@cc_on IE = parseFloat(navigator.appVersion); The best part here is that the JS code stays in your JS files and does not uglify the HTML if you ever have to use conditional compilation. Here is some more information about it from MSDN article Conditional Compilation (Windows Scripting - JScript) .

This post is just for my own reference. Here are the slides and the video of the presentation by Nicholas Zakas. Goes into great detail in ways to improve the speed of your javascript code. Speed Up Your JavaScript View more presentations from Nicholas Zakas The article summarizes most of the points in the slides and video http://james.padolsey.com/javascript/zakas-javascript-performance-tips/

If I have a new system the only things I install are a browser, IM clients and some development environment. But the thing that has really changed now is that I can do the same thing on Linux without thinking too much. I can install Chrome/Firefox, the IM's are pre-installed and most of the development environments are available on Linux. You could do that earlier as well but now the main thing that has changed is that there are new tools that are only available on Linux or Mac. The main softwares coming to mind are GIT and node.js . They are available on Windows but often seem crippled. If you really want to use them you will move to Linux or Mac. That is where things have really shifted. There are half a dozen twitter clients for Mac and quite a few for Linux but have a look around the only twitter clients you will find on Windows are Adobe Air based clients. No one seems to be writing native or .net based clients. To be fair there are some obscure .net based clients which no on...

The previous theme was supposed to be there for a few months but it ended up being there for years. In this new theme I got rid of all the junk that had ended up in the sidebars. There are no advertisements as those were just distractions and since its a personal blog there was no real need to put them in. Also removed the twitter, soup and the other blog feeds. They were adding too much distractions to the content. Have got rid of search, rss feeds and a dozen other distractions that were coming in the way of the main content. This new theme is supposed to be a little better as it puts focus on the content. And hopefully with twitter going towards the dark side I just might end up blogging again. There are so many topics that are in the drafts mode. Whenever I get sometime to polish them a little I will do that. Overtime this blog has turned from being about technology to being about me. All the unpublished posts are about technology so lets see when they finally go public. Had plann...

The best mobile development platform for hobbyist programmer - I The best mobile development platform for hobbyist programmer - II The best mobile development platform for hobbyist programmer - III Over the last few years the whole mobile landscape has completely changed. Now the contenders have also changed. When I last wrote about the topic there was no SDK for the iPhone and Android had not launched. Since then the whole landscape has changed. iPhone is the king amongst the platforms. Android is a close second. J2ME is a platform which still goes unnoticed since its just not part of most new smartphones. The process to develop Windows Mobile apps has gone a complete transformation with a completely brand new way of developing apps. Symbian is in its last leg, Nokia will be moving to MeeGo soon enough. Palm development also changed completely with the launch of Web OS. If you plan to develop today here is how you can go about it. 1) iOS Development - SDK for iDevices 2) Android 3) P...

Am surprised that I have not heard about it on any of the tech blogs. Every other day I get a mail from facebook from one of my friends to see this amazing picture or solve a riddle. Since the mail is coming directly from your friends its difficult to ignore it as spam. It is the perfect example of social engineering to get information from users and spread it further. The scam starts with an email from your friend with the link to a facebook page ( Do not open it before you've read the whole post and understand the consequences ). When you open the page you see the wizard with the following steps. Step #1: Press and HOLD CTRL AND press the letter C The step is nice and animated so that you know what you are doing. When you have clicked it takes you to step 2. Which shows that you have "Successfully Copied Code To Your Clipboard!". It does not tell you what code but just that some code has been copied. Step #2: Press and HOLD ALT AND press the letter D Even in this step ...

Its been two weeks since I started with it. Have not done any real programming lately just been busy with the UI of the application. Tested out the API's and they seem to work. Most of the ground work has been done. The basic prototyping is done and things seem to work. The best part is that till now the size of the final executable is less than 50 kilobytes. Also have been looking at ways to make sure that the application auto updates with almost zero effort on the users part. For now I have decided to use the basic authentication instead of using oAuth. With oAuth it will be difficult to log into twitpic and bit.ly . These are two basic services that I want in the pre-alpha release. The UI has been quite challenging. The main thing is that it should look and feel like a windows application while having all the features of the AIR based Twitter clients. This is important as most of the users are used to these applications. Still quite a long way to go before I can release anythin...

I have been searching for a good Twitter client for Windows for a couple of months now. All the Air apps just seem so bloated and the rest are made in .net which also seem to take some time to start. Keeping that in mind I've finally started off with a Twitter client for Windows. Not sure till when I will complete it or if I ever release it. Was playing with Python, C and EzBasic last weekend. After making a prototype in Python finally decided on plain old C. The main goal of making the application is that it should be Win32 native application. Should be less than 500KB. When it runs should not consume insane amount of memory. Just some goals to achieve if I finally continue with the project. Lets see if I can get something working this weekend. If you want to alpha or beta test it leave a comment and I will keep you posted.

If you like Linux applications but don't want to install Linux, Portable Ubuntu is the perfect application for you. Once you start using it you might feel that all the Linux applications feel out of place with the Theme and fonts. That is where this quick tutorial comes into play. Download the XPLuna theme if you are on XP or one of the Aero themes for GTK 2. You can look at all the available options and keep the one that looks identical to your windows theme. The controls might look familiar but till you change the fonts it is almost like a waste. Copy the fonts from your windows installation. Open the terminal window in PUbuntu and then follow these steps. cd /mnt/C/WINDOWS/Fonts Here I am taking for granted that your Windows folder is in C: . Then make a new directory mkdir ~/.fonts . Copy Segoe fonts incase you are on Vista. cp Segoe*.* ~/.fonts . If you have Windows XP copy Tahoma fonts. cp Tahoma*.* ~/.fonts . Open System / Preference / Appearance . Select the font tab ...

I had bought an Acer AspireOne around 6 months back. I've used it for less than 3 months and the network drivers have been deleted like twice. And both the times the reason was a Live-Update . I went online and checked that the only way to bring back the thing to life was to reinstall everything. I want to believe that I know a thing or two about Linux, my first distro was Slackware in 1998. Its been a while and won't consider myself to be a linux noob. Given the fact that I know a thing of two about Linux and I was still frustrated. I could have spent 2-3 hours and somehow got the whole thing to life again, but I am just thinking about people who don't know thing about Linux. For them its just an OS that runs and they don't even have to bother about it. But when you laptop stops working what do you do? This is a laptop without a CDROM drive and the only way to reinstall is to use the recovery DVD. I am just thinking about all the people who got the update around two d...

If you want anonymous results from Google you can use this simple DNS hack to get the results from Google. Since you will never be logged in you will always get clean results and also no searchwiki results. Never realized how much cleaner the results are if you are not logged in. To get the cleaner results add the engine to Opera, Firefox, IE and Google Chrome. Its just a DNS hack so you still get all the results from Google. But its all anonymous since you never log in. All the traffic is sent to Google but the cookies are not set as you can never log in so more or less you can be anonymous. Its still a hack so it can be turned off by Google anytime. But its good while it lasts. This is what you see once you use Google Clean . You are never logged in so the results are anonymous and you will never get any SearchWiki results. You can always go back with a single click incase you want the SearchWiki results. Here is how you add it to Firefox. The search box should be a little blu...

Before leaving for Oslo I had updated my laptop and the update screwed up the WiFi drivers and it was impossible to get online. I had to completely reinstall everything. I ended up spending the whole night trying to fix it. If you want to use anything besides the default settings you need to know a few shortcuts Alt + F2 is a life saver to start with. This will popup the run dialog and you can start bash in a terminal and move forward from there. Everything on Linux seems to be super sized. The default font size is 12px  nd that seems so weird. The next thing I do is do bring down the size to 8px and change the font to closely match Tahoma 8px. I am so used to it that anything other than this seems so ugly. Also not to forget the command " xfce-setting-show " which will enable the menu when you right click on the desktop. It will give you a menu like the start menu. You can also add/remove programs in the setting menu. For me the main application that I have to install is rd...

I hate calling up the Airtel customer care and I try to find a solution online if I can. I've found two solutions to my problem but none of them seem to be working so I will have to call and spend the next half hour to get this information from a customer care executive. Anyhow these are the solutions I've found online. 1) Rs. 20 per day send GPRS to 56789 2) Rs. 75 per week send GPRS7 to 56789 3) Rs. 15 per day send GPRSACT to 511 to deactivate this service send GPRSDEACT to 511 4) Write MO and send to 52696 to activate n DMO @ same no. for de-activation I've tried all the solutions but without results. Let me know if you have a better way. Anyhow I better start calling, its going to take a while to get through. UPDATE : Anyhow I called them up and this is what I got. 1) SMS NOP to 52696 to activate the service. 2) SMS NOP to 52567 to get the settings 3) SMS DNOP to 52696 to deactivate the service. 4) Call 121443 and you will directly talk to the customer care ex...

Just checking with AutoRuns for Windows and Google Update almost feels like a spyware in every possible place. It acts as a service so when you turn on your computer it will make sure that its always on. If you somehow remove it as a service, it also acts like a BHO . The next time you start IE it will start. If for some weird reason these two failed its also in the scheduled tasks. Just waiting till it installs itself as a driver as well.

Mygazines is like the youtube of magazines. It allows you to read and store your magazines online. But they are in a little bit of trouble with the copyright infringement notices flying across it right left and center. Its a really neat concept, as you can read magazines that you would not get in your local store. They post the complete magazine with all the adverts intact so that should in a way be good for the publishing house. In the long run if they survive they should only be like a repository of old magazines. In any case most magazines have a shelf life of no more than a month. If they start storing older magazines with all the adverts intact it should work in the favor of the publishers. Also people would be able to sample magazines which they would not otherwise. Its almost like online music. If someone likes the music they will pay for it. Same goes for a magazine. I loved reading the magazines online but for most other times I would like a physical copy, and I won't mi...

I still use the classic version of the Yahoo! Mail interface. Today I wanted to try out the new interface and I could not find the link that would allow me to switch. So just as a reminder in case I plan to switch again. Try it now!

Here are a few links to get you to install the latest and greatest version of Adobe PDF Reader . Incase you are still not using Foxit PDF Reader you need to read these reviews of the Adobe PDF Reader 9 . http://gusmueller.com/blog/archives/2008/07/adobe_reader_9_is_out!.html http://diveintomark.org/archives/2008/07/04/adobe-9 http://blog.micropledge.com/2008/07/adobe-reader-9/

I have got 5 invitations for dreamhost . If you use any of the invites you get will get the following benefits. * You will get four (4) times the normal disk and bandwidth! * If you choose the five-year plan, you will get $150 off! * If you choose the ten-year plan, you will get $200 off! You need to use the 12-digit code and use it in the "Promo Code" field when you sign up at dreamhost . Use one of the following codes when you sign up. 044477421482 , 168640837302 , 076190151113 , 744781327000 and 503827675414 .

Its been a while since I blogged, I was out of town last week and have been a little busy lately. Its just one of those spur of moment topics that comes up in my head. I think one of the reason why Vista is failing is 'cause of piracy. Not 'cause its being pirated but due to the lack of piracy :) All of the older Microsoft products earlier were easy to pirate so not only legit users, but also users who did not pay could use them. But as Microsoft started adding more and more weird ways of copy protection the users who could easily pirate are unable to do so. Since there is low penetration in the legit world no one even bothers to pirate it. If nothing else Microsoft should remove the strict copy protection from Windows 7 and they will see a good enough reception, not only from the pirates but also legit users who in any case would pay for it. Just read somewhere that they might be soon demoing windows 7, here is hoping that they remove the copy protection and also reduce the mi...