Firefox 2.0 Alpha is here!

Firefox 2.0 Alpha codenamed "Bon Echo" is out! Just found these links to the downloads of the variants!

Windows EXE - firefox-2.0a1.en-US.win32.installer.exe
Windows ZIP - firefox-2.0a1.en-US.win32.zip
Mac - firefox-2.0a1.en-US.mac.dmg
Linux - firefox-2.0a1.en-US.linux-i686.installer.tar.gz
Linux - firefox-2.0a1.en-US.linux-i686.tar.gz

Try Netjaxer!

Netjaxer is an easy way to integrate your favorite web apps into Windows. Create a desktop or quick launch icon. Load any web page when Windows starts and run it as a tray icon.

Why did Windows evolve into Windoze?

Ever wondered why each version of windows/doze got slower and bulkier than the previous? Just read an interesting article on /. , check it out here, read the full article from New York Times here.

JAnimationShop website uploaded!

Finally uploaded the latest version of the JanimationShop website just an hour ago... Everything is done except for actual content in some (most ;-) ) DIVs! The site is AJAX driven for most content. Pending is the creation of a static page to be displayed for users who don't have a browser that supports XmlHttpRequest. The new site has very minimalist looks on the homepage, just a header image, and about a dozen image buttons! All else is loaded dynamically when the user clicks on some relevant button! AJAX Rulez! Given below is a screenshot of the Homepage.



The screenshot below shows a some dynamically loaded content on the same page.

:-((

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Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2006 19:01:25 -0500 (EST)
From: Google Code Jam India
To: ranganath . p @ gmail . com
Subject: Google(TM) Code Jam India Results
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Hello just_codes,

The results are in for Round 1 of Google Code Jam India and, unfortunately, your score does not advance you to the Championship Round.

Congratulations on making it as far as you did in this intense competition. We hope you found the Code Jam enjoyable and educational. You are welcome to watch the Championship Round online, which takes place on Friday, April 7, 2006. Simply login to the arena from www.google.com/indiacodejam prior to the match.

We appreciate your participation and encourage you to take part in future Google coding events. Best of luck to you.

- The Google Code Jam Team

www.topcoder.com, TopCoder, Inc., 703 Hebron Avenue, Glastonbury, CT 06033, Phone: 1-866-867-2633

184/500 In CodeJam India

Got the result data from TopCoder and did a sort on that... I am ranked 184 of the total 500 qualified for Round 1 which happens at 5:00PM today...

Google CodeJam India Round 1 today at 5:00pm

Round 1 of Google Code Jam India takes place today (Friday, March 24th) at 5:00PM IST(Indian Standard Time) (GMT +5:30). I am anxious as usual! In this round the contestants are expected to solve 3 problems in 75 minutes which is really tough. There is also a Challenge Phase for 15 minutes after the Coding Phase is over. In Challenge Phase, we can pass testcases to others' code and try to break it +50 for a successful challenge and -25 for an unsuccessful one!

Of those who participate in Round 1, the top 250 scores will receive a "Google Code Jam India" t-shirt and up to 50 competitors will be invited to compete in the Championship Round onsite in Bangalore, India on Friday, April 7th, 2006(the location of is yet to be decided).

Hope i reach top 50! :D

Made it to Round 1 of Google CodeJam India

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Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 11:41:40 -0500 (EST)
From: The Google Code Jam India Team
To: ranganath . p @ gmail . com
Subject: Google(TM) Code Jam India Results
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Hello just_codes,

Congratulations: The results of Google Code Jam India Qualification Round have been officially tabulated, and we're happy to announce that you have advanced to Round 1. This is a great accomplishment.

Round 1 of Google Code Jam India takes place online at 5:00PM IST (GMT +5:30) on Friday, March 24th. Registration is required for this round and will be open from 2:00PM IST (GMT +5:30) to 4:55PM IST (GMT +5:30) on the day of the event. In order to register for the round: Login to the competition arena, click on the 'Active Contests' menu item, select Round One, and select 'Register'. http://www.topcoder.com/pl/?module=Static&d1=gicj06&d2=arena

Of those who participate in Round 1, the top 250 scores will receive a Google Code Jam India t-shirt, and up to 50 competitors will be invited to compete in the Championship Round onsite in Bangalore, India on Friday, April 7th.

Congratulations again on making it through the qualification round.

- The Google Code Jam Team

www.topcoder.com, TopCoder, Inc., 703 Hebron Avenue, Glastonbury, CT 06033, Phone: 1-866-867-2633


PS: just_codes is my member handle in TopCoder

Tattooed...

Out of the three objects in the image above, the first one is the Chakram and the last one is the Shankham the middle one is worn at the center of forehead.

Done! and the process was not that painful as i expected! It was hell for a moment when the hot die touched the skin but cooled down immediately after a special coolant was applied... Now i bear the Shankham on my upper left arm and Chakram on my upper right arm! The wound caused due to the burn heals in a couple of days and only the mark of the sacred emblems remain thereafter... Will post the snaps in a couple of days... off to sleep now, it's already 11:37PM.


PS : The post may show earlier time since i had saved it as a draft at around 9:50PM when i was interrupted to have dinner which i could no way refuse ;-).

Threaded...

It's been very hectic day today (actually yesterday, it's already 12AM)! Got up at 4:30Am in the morning and not yet slept! will probably sleep in about 45 minutes from now... I sat in front of "Homakundam", the fire altar which is the symbol of ancient Vedic rites, continuously from 6:00AM till 12:00PM ! It had been very hectic on the previous day (sunday) also :-(. Finally, my "Upanayanam" is done! Just now i almost got a shock when my father told me that i have to get "ChakrAngitham" done after sunrise!

ChakrAngitham is essential for performing all rituals dear to Lord Vishnu as his disciples. Chakrangitham is Bearing on our upper arms , the imprint of holy chakraa (Sudarshanam ) , (the imprint) caused by the special consecrated instrument with the red-hot-wheel emblem , which is blazing more fiercely than fire! Along with the Chakram, the Shankham(the divine conch shell) will also be imprinted! Lord Vishnu bears both of these instruments in his hands.

The process of imprinting these is very painful as i have heard from my elders... The die containing these symbols will be heated up in fire and will be pressed aginst the upper arms! The skin burns off and the tattoo remains for at least 10 years! My sleep swept away just listening to these explanations! Off to bed now...

Geting Threaded!

Finally after long long [or long double, or unsigned long.. whatever ;-)] delay and several times of postponing, i am going to get Threaded tomorrow!

I mean, my "Sacred Thread Ceremony" is scheduled for tomorrow... check information on what it is here and here.

I am going to be qualified for life as a student or Brahmacharya.

The Sanskrit word Upanayanam is believed to be derived from the word nayanam meaning "eye", prefixed with upa- ("auxiliary"), making for the interpretative meaning: bringing (the ultimate truth nearer in sight)

Will post the snaps sometime later this week, as i am totally tied up today, tomorrow and next two days!

PS : Now, please don't start questioning me about why it got so delayed, after all it should have been done almost 14 years back!

PPS : I am going to be actually single threaded!(one more thread will be added at the time of marriage... ;-)) , Now, c'mon i am famous for my multithreaded way of working after all!

Mukthi 6.03

6.03 was Awesome! Could not attend the first day of the event, managed to go in on morning of 18th March 2006 and stayed till end of day and witnessed all the talks and events.

The event was a great success and had more than 250 participants from around Bangalore! Some people had even come from Mysore!

Liked Atul Chitnis' talk and Shanker Balan's talk, both were cool, the latter somehow managed to rekindle my long dead interest to try out a BSD system. Srichand's talk was fun! He almost took my head off with a CD when he threw it at me as a a gift for answering a question!

I got a Tee which has the mukthi logo printed on it. I am more than happy to wear it since it looks great and of course i designed the Logo ;-)

Lack of sleep... yet again...

Today, i have a strong feeling of lack of sleep again... even after sleeping(or rather just lying down on my bed) for 12 continuous hours yesterday... but this time the reason for losing sleep is very different from the reasons i mentioned in this post.

I also don't get proper sleep in cases where my thought process starts on some personal issues, which hurt the most, as soon as i hit the bed. For example, in yesterday's case, what would someone feel if a person at office whom you consider a good friend for almost a year, says to your face that "You are Just another colleague"!

In the course of conversation, a chat window opens up on their monitor,
Me : "Whose that?",
Colleague : "That's my friend, my ex-colleague!"
Me : "So your ex-colleagues at least graduate as your friends?"
Colleague : "Not All!"

If my thoughts wake up on some issue like this, I'm done, such thoughts definitely kill my sleep... I still don't understand where/why should me/someone draw a line in between the terms friend and colleague. Till now, i used to consider all my colleagues are my friends... probably i was right, probably i was wrong! i have thought too much on this the whole previous night! but still on an undecided phase... i still don't have an idea how long these thoughts are gonna kill my sleep!

I still don't know why i consider whomever i meet, and whomever i talk to, as good friends immaterial of whether or not they are my schoolmates/collegemates or for the matter of fact, colleagues!

I will definitely quit the company i am working, if any of my colleagues whom i always considered a good friend says, "All my ex-colleagues graduate as my friends!" - Ranganath Prasannakumar(1983- )

Modified Graffiti...

Posted this again after some modification in the Graffitti... I found the bottle, it was stolen by one of my friends who is a prankster ;-)

| @ VRLINUG

Mukthi is a Free and Open Source event, for students, by the student community. This event is facilitated by vrlinug@msrit, the official linux user's group at MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology. It is the crown jewel of VRLINUG(yes, we got a website for vrlinug!). Mukthi is intended as a student platform for discussing and exploring the world of free and open source software. It seeks to inspire budding innovators while maintaining a large base of user of free and open source software. Mukthi is targeted mainly at students, in engineering colleges and otherwise although working professionals may attend the same. The numbers after the name indicate the year and month of the event. "6.03" indicates March of 2006. The previous event was labeled "Mukthi 5.11". Click here to see Images from Mukthi 5.11.

Here are some buttons and banners i designed for the event(including the logo on top ;-)), i am posting them now since the event dates are announced, and we have got some good sponsors also ;-)

Graffiti...

Had to scribble some Graffiti in the noon on the writing board in my cubicle since my water bottle was missing ;-)



Also made a mod on this picture using GIMP, which is shown below...



PS: These pics are almost similar to how my water bottle looks ;-)

Two of my favorite Harley Davidson bikes...

More insight on Google Mars...

Given below is an Excerpt from "Mars Odyssey Mission THEMIS: Projects: Google Mars"

In 1895, Percival Lowell published his map of Mars. He spent many years of his life exploring Mars through his telescope. Now you can explore Mars too, through your browser. Google Mars is the result of collaborations between Google and us. With it, you can explore some of the most detailed scientific maps of Mars ever made.

At the heart of Google Mars is a gigantic mosaic image of Mars. Using over 17,000 individual infrared photos, we assembled the mosaic at a scale that resolves features as small as 230 meters (750 feet) across. The images come from THEMIS, the Thermal Emission Imaging System, a camera that takes photos in 5 visible and 10 infrared bands. It is or
biting Mars aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey.

Google finally launches "Google Mars"

Google has finally launced the much awaited Google Mars, With an AJAX-driven interface based on Google Maps (and Google Moon). This looks awesome, as you can see from the screenshots above!

Orkut Down???

Tried to login to Orkut just now and the site is down for Maintenance without any prior notice to the users! I can't believe this... i still have a strong doubt whether orkut is really down or maybe, just maybe... some Script Kiddies have played it down!

The question remains unanswered till orkut comes up again or some site like Slashdot or NewsForge releases an update on this...

One more old graphic...

Digging thru some junk folders in my system, i found one more image which i designed long ago! This one dates back to Tuesday, April 17, 2001, 5:54:36 PM, I know the image sucks but this was created using an image editor that indeed sucks and lacks all the features needed to create some great graphic, Microsoft Paint which comes with Windows 98 and it took me more than 2 continious hours to get it into this shape :-(


PS : Back in 2001 used to have a very bad color taste, time has not changed it doh ;-)

Old one but Killer...

"When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows," people just stare at you blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, for free."" - Linus Torvalds

Cherished memories...

Shown below are a couple of animations/graphics from my collection that i created long time ago!

The birth ;-) of the animation below dates back to Wednesday, November 27, 2002, 7:29:30 PM it was created using AnimationShop, hope someday i would create something similar using my dream project JAnimationShop.



One more image below shows my stickering skills ;-) on a Kawasaki



PS : BTW, I switched on those lights using an image editor ;-)

One of the best Fortune Cookies i have ever seen!

The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next!

BSOD Woes!

The very (un)popular "Blue Screen of Death"(BSOD) which Windows users are most familiar with has reigned over the Windows Operating System for a couple of decades now! An average Windows user will see BSOD more times in his life than he sees his wallpaper! This has started hitting time critical systems such as railway reservations, and train schedule displays!


The picture above was taken today by my online buddy "Tommy Quist" at his local train station! The "Centraal Station" (Central Station) of Dordrecht, Netherlands! He sent it to me just now, and i posted it here ;-)

He also sent me a link which shows many pictures of BSOD in most needed informational applications like the above. Check it here.

PS : "Vertrekkende treinen" means "Departing trains" :-o

Finally Updated!

Finally updated the "About me" section of my blogger profile, and hope to keep it updated as and when i get some time to do it. ;-)

Lack of sleep...

From almost past two weeks i have started losing track of time if i sit in front of a Computer! It's immaterial whether it's office or home, if i am in front of my comp, i don't see time blazing away... And this is causing serious problems!

In the recent times, most days when i sleep late, i feel very uncomfortable the next day, lack of sleep leads to headache due to avoiding sleep at office followed by a strong sensation of nausea... due to which i have to avoid my lunch and sometimes have to avoid even any beverages also.

This reminds me of my past... when i got my first computer, i used to start playing Wolfenstein 3D when i come back from college at 2:30PM and continue till over 3:00AM or even 5:00AM sometimes!

For most of day and night time... I would either be in college or be in front of my Comp! like there was no other place on earth that i knew! But i never used to feel dizzy the next day!

The following are/were the main causes for my legendary stamina for surviving in front of a computer screen!

• All those late night Fragging sessions on Wolfenstein 3D, Quake, QuakeII, QuakeIII and other FPS games!
• All those JAVA coding marathons!
• Long racing sessions on NFS
• All my experiments with most of the Programming Languages.
• And finally... a never quenching thirst to always learn something new!

Ok now... time to sleep! Going to Hibernate mode!


>>>Ranga blazes towards his bed... oops comes back to press the "Publish Post" button ;-)

JAnimationShop website screenshot.

JAnimationShop website almost done!

The screenshot above shows the almost completed JAnimationShop website! The layout is almost done except for resizing of internal content windows which will be done once the content is ready! And of course cross-browser testing is yet to be done!

First Visitor From South Africa!

All these days, my ClustrMaps statistics showed that i had visitors from all the continents but South Africa!

I checked the latest ClustrMaps stats for today, and Hurray! i have my first visitor from South Africa! Check the map below!

Can Your Mailbox Store 30GB of Mails???

Surprised? or rather Shocked? Even i went through the same emotions when i came across this site called 30Gigs which offers 30 Gigabytes of storage space just for your mails, and it's free!

I went ahead and created an account for myself, ranganathp @ 30gigs.com ! The interface also is pretty simple and loads faster, and it displays ads as with any other free webmail service.


PS : Some people i know don't even have a 30GB HDD for their PC's!!!

My latest photo(taken today!) and My Avatar!!!

-------------------------------------------------------
________

AJAX is Cool!!!

Thats my profile in all its glory on the "About the Author" window, loaded dynamically![stole it from my blogger profile ;-)]

That's the latest updated screenshot of JAnimationShop site! AJAX is really cool, easy to learn for beginners(doh, as long as you are not a beginner in Javascript ;-)) and easy to implement! I have almost finished hacking on the AJAX functionalities for the site, planning to bring the site up within 2 or 3 days atmost since all the windows(DIVs actually :-D) are ready, and only thing to be put in is content and some eye-candy stuff as usual!

New Looks decided for JAnimationShop site...

Finally started doing more design work for the homepage of JAnimationShop web site! If the link already shows something similar to what is shown above, at least in terms of color :-; , look here for the initial version(this link won't be up until the new design is uploaded to the site) which i uploaded some days ago(read this, this, this and this post!).

The new design i am working on is very Conceptual and Graphical ;-)

The homepage is intended to contain only some Icons(ofcourse with tool tips for the lesser mortals!) and very little text! Clicking on any of these would probably bring up a draggable (if possible, resizable), minimizable/restorable/detachable! (within the page) window with the contents of being fetched on the fly using AJAX(Asynchronous JavaScript And XML)!

This would help in keeping the homepage light on first load since the whole site is more oriented towards images! So the user will only see the content on demand, and also once the content is loaded, it is cached for further uses if it is static! (this is actually not needed if the user uses minimize to throw the window out of view and uses restore to see it again, anyhow i am planning to restore them on click if they are minimized and actually just display them if they contain static content and are closed, just an issue of DIV visibility)

This design is finalized and being worked upon! Any suggestions to improve it will also be considered.

Also in the new site, i have planned to add a Java Web Start version of JAnimationShop and the old version will serve as a lightweight non-interactive(except for few things like move/minimize/restore/close etc.) demo for the application features!

PS : The screenshot shows the ClustrMaps statistics for JAnimationShop web site, which was loaded using AJAX calls when i clicked on an icon in the page! I have just started on AJAX, and it may take a while for the new version to be up.

Protopage!!! AJAX in Action!

Protopage gives you the full experience of Web 2.0. Check my protopage here.

PS: Still under development! just created it!
PPS: Create one for yourself!!!

IceBreaker for Linux Desktop Adoption Barriers!

People often find faults in OpenSource office suites like OpenOffice.org (OOo) for not having all the features in Microsoft Windows Office, even though few of them actually use all of the Microsoft stuff. Essentially, they're saying they want desktops cluttered with unnecessary features.

Most people still don't realize the fact that 80% of office suite users use only 20% of the features provided by any such suite!

MiMi Yeh, Assistant Editor of SearchOpenSource.com has written a beautiful article on how to overcome these barriers, read it here.

AJAX is supposed to be the new Battle Cry! And it's quite rightly so!!!

@assert com.zdnet.blogs.Hinchcliffe.getP(8) : true;

One major factor is that we are struggling with attention scarcity; finding enough time to digest the proliferating sources of information we need to track on a daily basis. I don't need to tell you that the sheer variety can be daunting and now usually includes e-mail, calendars, contacts, to do lists, news, weather, school closings, blogs and work documents like spreadsheets, presentations, and more.

@assert com.zdnet.blogs.Hinchcliffe.getP(8) : false;


Finally whats known as Web 2.0 is becoming a reality with AJAX playing a major role in it. Read the complete article here.


*com.zdnet.blogs.Hinchcliffe.getP(8) is a geeky way of mentioning http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=8