Lens

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Sometime back this site got installed Gallery 2 which is much different and advanced photo management system than the one I had earlier.There is better integration with WP via a plugin. This also required me to look out for few WP-G2 themes so that the themes look similar to both on WP and Gallery.
Thus I had to move away from my favorite “Fast Track” theme. I tried with few other themes and I disliked some that were liked by the visitors. Thus after much deliberation I put up the theme switcher plugin that will allow the visitors to change the look of the theme on the client side.
It is a very beautiful thing I have seen and had instantly liked it long back but the reluctance to use it comes only from the repeated customisations that I need to make on all themes and of course I had wished to retain to right to decide the way my site looks for everyone. However, since multiple themes would make my site look different and better on each other’s system, I gave it a nod. However as usual, the ignorant visitors to my site never made use of it (and came up with complaints). As usual, what the heck, I will continue it running.

My favorite themes are
Falling Leaves,Express Yourself and
the older one Fast Track (waiting for WP-G2 theme of this).Infact I like almost all themes from wpthemes.info.
Let me know your favorite. Also, let me know if you come across good WP-G2 themes.

So now, I have a not-very-easy task of tidying up things to make certain things look similar on all my plugins.(Let me know if you have any opinions or suggestions). But the work requires certain patience and certain time. When I do have time I became lazy and just end up reading stuff on net rather than cleaning up things back home.

Meanwhile I jumped to buy a domain for myself (took suggestions about where,what,how from Pradeep and Anil). Some small work has to be done after which it would be completely operational. This blog continues to host on Negimaki. Steve has been of great help and support everytime I have faced issues and Negimaki offers more than I need for hosting.

Now, due to some unavoidable reasons I am not getting access to the internet which has put all the work on hold. Hope to fix up things soon.
Update: The new url related work is all done. So please update your bookmark and RSS feed. Do visit the blog at least few times at least to value the time and effort of themes and plugin developers. And before I forget, since all the themes are borrowed from professional designers, if you see (I have seen) something not working on IE it is probably a browser related issue and so please use Firefox

I had been searching for a single user CVS tool for personal usage from a long long time. Finally I seem to have got a just right kind of software for me.

Requirements : Single User CVS tool; For Windows; No client-server hassles; FREEWARE.

I met these in RCS Pro. I just installed it. Its easy to use though the usage is little different from the all powerful Clearcase that I use at work. There I checkout-edit-checkin, here I edit-checkin and checkout is required only if I have to undo the changes. Of course branching, graphical version tree are absent in RCS but that would be asking for too much for personal usage.

There is a good integration (menu item and differences) for Word,Excel etc!

Download Software

While browsing when I find something interesting to share with people it is always difficult task to copy the hyperlink, paste that in an email and then sending those to the friends. I often forget that I would have copied some link earlier.

Of course there is del.icio.us (and a simple firefox plugin) through which not only can I bookmark for myself for the later use, I could ask my friends to keep a tab on that so that they would know what am I finding interesting. But there is a problem here. Unless they check out what have I bookmarked, not only will they not know about it, and also I never get to know whether they did see it or not. Also I feel the need of sharing particular links with specific people. Not all links would be relevant to all. Few days ago I had asked Pradeep about the possibility of such a topping/plug-in for del.icio.us. To see my exact requirement being answered by another software is a relief and a good feeling!

Here comes Stumble Upon (via Nbk). I reluctantly started using it but am happy with it now. The features are all simple. It adds a toolbar on the firefox using which it is easy to send the link via email in one simple step. Along with an addition of the comment. Of course for my bookmarking I can mention that “I like it” and it gets recorded.

There is also networking in the form of friends and fans. The preferences/settings/profile user interface is simple and easy, thanks to javascripts.

Whats more..there is a Stumble button which keeps taking you to different pages of your interest (which you can choose from a number of groups like the communities in orkut) and it can get addictive! I found few repeat pages, but I guess that will improve over time. I know few people, who wonder about my addiction to browsing and tell me that they do not know what to see on the net. We are from different worlds. Parallel lines. They never see what I see and I can never see what they do not see!! They do not know how to spend time on internet and I get news ways to keep myself glued!

As with any software, my needs would never get complete. And here I would have liked maintaining mailing lists (to ease sending links).

And finally here is my page of it.

It is too late to speak about it, but let me do my bit.

In its new avatar, google desktop search has become google desktop and packs some stuff in the sidebar. Of which I like photo slideshow just too much. I keep reading some stuff and doing some stuff on the comp and suddenly my eye would have had a glance of a pic and after sufficient delay, the mind [in its multiprocessing mode], gives some time and recollects some information about the photo. I suddenly stop doing whatever I was doing and go and see that entire folder and sway back in the time for sometime. And then get back to work, fresh. It feels so good. I would have forgotten some photos, I might have never seen some. Usually photos do not convey much information (unless it is from a professional photographer) but the persons present in the photo, the events related to the photo give some good feeling about it. And it is such a boring exercise to go and see the slideshow of each photo I have. It is always better when someone comes after you rather than you go after them. [And for this same reason - things coming to me- do I like and use POP3, Bloglines, Rssfwd/Feedreader etc]

Then there is Google Earth. What do I say about this. People who know me well also know very well, how “geographically challenged” I am Unless I frequent a place a minimum number of times, no matter what, I will not be able to locate the place on my own. Does it have to do with memory or something else, let me analyse during some other time. But the fact/conclusion is I get terrified at the idea of going to new location in the city on my own. And with the updated Bangalore in the software I guess now I can set things straight. Even before Bangalore’s update I had spent hours together on the software and this time when I had been to home, it occupied 90% of the computer usage time! I located my house, the college (wow, it really looks beautiful from the top), the path I used to take to home(2) from college, the travelling path to my offices, locating friends’ houses and what not.(One requirement I have from the software: A way to “mark (and send) the route” and not just put the placemarks) And with each path would be associated some incidents and some memories [Considering that I have not been in Bangalore for long, I have very limited incidents to recollect at any given part of the city. ] and what easier way than this to get lost in the past ?!

Another software I used and liked was Picasa. I did not know that it was so rich in features! Good, my photos look much better than what I was capable of clicking!

Some other links that would have taken up my free time were: 1, 2,3,4,5,6
Update Feedreader from Google

And finally some complaints. Did not hear good reviews about this I could not use/test/try google talk as none of my friends are using it or are available online when I am online. But with the invisible mode off, I would not use it much. Talking of invisible mode, I am usually in invisible mode in Yahoo messenger and I have always felt the need of another option in yahoo along with these three (in stealth settings):
1) Online
2) Offline
3) Permanently offline
The other option I wanted was “Permanently online ” to selected people. Sriram too had the same thought when it struct to both of us that, Permanently offline itself is to be used for what we are in need of. Usually we both will be invisible mode to each other and unless he sees me online he would not go and change his stealth settings for me (and same here). So it would result in neither of us seeing and starting the conversation. Instead, he should make the stealth settings as permanently offline to all others except me (for eg) and he should never use invisible mode (and same setting on my messenger). After realising the solution, it seems so obvious and trivial, but actually I had never given a thought about it.

Update: Evaluated and using Google talk. It is good, better than yahoo talk. Clarity is great and delay is not noticeable. I speak to my brother(teach him C++, debug his programs!) and talk with parents as if I am at home (for 2 hours at stretch, sometimes).

KannadaAudio has some wonderful collection of audio. Apart from film songs, there are other collections like - devotional songs, folk songs, Yakshagana, Harikathe, Drama, Vrathas, Discourses etc. Whats more there is also 24 hour radio channel ! It is a good site to be bookmarked for Kannada Music. My downloading like there is no tommorrow costed me a whopping bill (though it is another matter that they messed up with the calculation and I was within limits.)

I searched for freeware recorders to record/rip those .ra files, so that I can play them on my Music system. But none of the freewares are good. They either record while playing (which would take a hell lot of time and sometimes end up in error), also I can not time division multiplex those recordings. Without any option I had to look at shareware. A peek at the shareware gave me a good software which is primarily a downloader - HiDownload. One useful feature was it could download the multiple links in the playlist/script. It came with a ra2mp3 converter (again a shareware) but does the job well.
Two bugs I noticed: The converter to mp3 would delete the earlier mp3 present at that path before it starts new conversion (which meant I had to constantly move files to other folder). HiDownload while downloading the links, does not put the corresponding files into the folder specified but puts in the default location.