You know what I hate? New Year’s resolutions. I make them every year and repent making them throughout the year; not because it’s hard to stick by them but because it pisses me off that I never follow them. You know what I hate more? New Decade’s resolutions. It’s a whole decade of hell.
I decided not to make any this time and I hope to be a happy person throughout. BUT..
You know what I hate even more? No, not New Century’s resolutions; but challenges from friends, to make a resolution and stick with it. There were many really, however there was one which I thought I really should look into. This blog. I somehow get the sense that I am falling into the ‘resolution hell’ again but my friend who requested to be left anonymous and insisted I called him the G-Man, said he would help me out with this. He also insisted I publicly announce this challenge.
I keep learning and discovering new stuff every day, and I used to share some of the stuff here and they got a decent response from the web. One thing that really got me to consider was the number of hits this blog still gets everyday even though the last post was in February 2010. I am learning a lot more nowadays so I won’t be running out of content; I just need to get it up as soon as possible before it goes stale.
Traffic in the last 24 hours
The G-Man’s challenge was easy; or so I thought. We all know how big of an asshole the real G-Man is, this G-Man is no exception. He had a couple of clauses. First, the obvious one, I need to keep writing on a regular basis. The second one on the other hand still confuses me. I have to take the geekiest experience in the past decade and write it in a completely different context while maintaining the main storyline intact. Huh? I assume something on these lines: If I have to say “My computer’s processor died”, I should say “My friend is brain dead now.” He says it will improve my writing skills. Really?
Anyway, if you have gone through my posts in the past, you know what the story is. I just have to add spice to it. I am usually too lazy to accept such a challenge but let’s just say the stakes are really high and I have to.
Alright, it is time to sleep and I have till this weekend to finish this. If someone is reading this, I would appreciate some suggestions/tips.
If you are wondering why your friends list in GMail chat is suddenly showing friends’ status messages, wonder no longer! You are not alone. With Google concentrating on useless new stuff like buzz, wave etc, they seem to have forgotten what the users really want.
As I value screen space more than gold, I hate it when status messages show up and bloat my list size to twice its original size. Most people think that this is the aftermath of Google’s new Buzz. Well, no actually, this happens because the setting to hide the statuses isn’t an inbuilt feature in Google Chat, but is a Google Labs feature. Its called Muzzle and Google have silently removed it from the Labs database, along with it some other features listed here [Gmail Labs graduation and retirement]. I can understand when they say they want to clean up, but keeping the Back to Beta feature which just adds a beta label to GMail and eliminating Muzzle seems utterly stupid.
The only solution that I have found so far is to use a greasemonkey script which will hide the statuses and make it behave normally. You can find it here [GMail Muzzle Lab Reviving]. If you are not familiar with scripts read this [Installing Scripts]. I will update this post when there is a better alternative to this.
I am in the middle of an ongoing experiment, where in I am trying to get a Bluetooth headset to work simultaneously with my windows mobile phone and also my PC. I recently got my hands on a Nokia BH-209 headset, I tested the audio quality on the and its amazing! I tested it with skype by pairing it with my PC and the voice clarity is brilliant. I have always been searching for a good reason to ditch my table Mic and this headset maybe the one.
Right now, I am still unable to make it work with both the PC and the phone at the same time, so I need to pair it to the device every time I need to use it. Although pairing is not a tedious process, it still needs some manual labour, like deleting existing devices, adding and re-pairing. Almost a 5 minute task every time I want to use it. I want to avoid this hassle. Yes I am lazy. Read the rest of this entry »
Well, no game seems to come out all ready to play these days. Something has to be done to get it working always. The latest game Mirror’s Edge is no exception. The game seems to lock up after playing for a couple of minutes, usually 5-10 mins. This happens to people with the new nVidia 8000+ cards / all cards which are Physx capable show this symptom. The problem is because Mirror’s Edge’s handing of Physx is like a baby handing a sniper rifle. A lot of people contacted me for a possible fix. Well, there is good news.
The fix is the new patch (Mirrors Edge v1.01) that EA released a couple of days ago which deals with the lockup issue. Download it here. Install and play. If it still locks up, disable Physx and then restart. Read the rest of this entry »
We were just roaming around trying to find a fuel station near the Golkonda fort and we found this nice stretch of STRAIGHT road and decided to give it a go. You will see this road on the way to ocean park. BTW its VXi (petrol). Read the rest of this entry »
WordPress 2.7 is out! Here is the way to upgrade from any of the previous versions of wordpress ( 2.6.* / 2.6.5) to the latest version i.e. 2.7. The process is very simple, involves only a few steps and I assure you the upgrade is worth the effort. WordPress 2.7 was released to wordpress.com users earlier but for individual sites it is out now! Lets get started. Read the rest of this entry »
It has been almost a full year since I made the shift to Vista from the trusty old XP. I am now officially bored of Vista’s default aero scheme. After an hour of googling and testing various themes and skins, here is my new desktop.
Clean Desktop
Desktop with Start Menu
Desktop with windows
Winamp Skin
Desktop with reflexion winamp skin - Check the top!
VistaGlazz, for patching Vista theme files which enables custom themes.
SimpleX 0.33, Winamp skin. (“Wow! Its really dark!” Color theme)
Also if you are feeling “I want something more sexier!”, you can try this winamp skin, just make sure you enable Desktop Alpha Bending in Winamp reflexion by ~sXnc | See the Last 2 images in the gallery.
When you start a new solo game in COD-World at War, it refuses to start, especially with the RELOADED version. It doesn’t start even if you go via the missions menu, it just stays idle. If you are facing this issue, there is a simple fix thankfully. Follow these simple steps. EDIT : FIXED VISTA PATH
Navigate to the folder :
XP users :C:Documents and Settings\USER_NAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Activision\CoDWaW\players\profiles\
Vista users : C:Users\USER_NAME\AppData\Local\Activision\CoDWaW\players\profiles\
Delete all the folders in there.
Create a new folder with the name of the Profile ex: tHeSiD (folder remains empty)
Create text file: active.txt (must NOT be readonly)
Open active.txt and type in your profile folder name (tHeSiD)
I had the All-in-one SEO package installed and I thought it took care of the titles but it didn’t. The only thing in the title tag was the blogs name/title. Even though the settings in the SEO plugin were set properly, it just refused to show the post title in the main title. I even tried setting the custom title for a post individually and that didnt work either. Sucks really coz all the pages in google had only one title, the title of the blog.
I eventually disabled the plugin and the titles were reverted back to WordPress default. Blog name – Post title. I didnt want that either. I want Post title | Blog name. I checked the template header file and rearranged the wp_title() function and the bloginfo(‘name’) variable. There was still a problem with that, the separator was still on the left side. The title looked like this ” » Post title | Blog name “.
I went on to codex and researched a bit, unlike the older versions wp_title() does take parameters. Setting the right parameters can help customize the way the title of the post is displayed. Here is an example, one I used for this blog.
Originally
1
<?php bloginfo('name');?><?php wp_title();?>
This resulted in a Title of this format. “Blogname » Post title”
Siddharth is a 25 year old web developer, programmer, designer and a college student from Hyderabad, India. Aside from being a freelance web developer, he is also an avid gamer.
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