The latest version (5.0) sports a brand new UI, light engine, Intel i5 and i7 core optimizations for optimum performance, faster service start times for Vista and Win 7, NO SKINS and FEMALE voice over and sounds. The voice overs also have changed (The infamous “A virus has been detected” has been changed to “A threat has been detected” and the hysteric siren in the background is no more)

However, it reports a number of false positives, ex: If you are using Realtek AC97 on board sound card (if you are using P4 Intel 845/865 chipset, yes you have this) then your sound manager was most likely detected as malware and put into chest. (hopefully it will be corrected by next update).

Note that your Avast 4.8 registration key is valid for Avast 5.0

My take: Please continue to use Avast 4.8 for sometime and then migrate to Avast 5.0

Really? You know what, so many things in life will be simplified if latter happens… Each person will know for sure not only what he or she wants, but also, what the other person wants. People will articulate much more clearly and unambiguously. It would be much more easier to understand and to be understood.Who knows, one might even find the answer to the question which has always trouble all men, “what women want”. All this because there wont be any shades of grey.. only binary logic. only bits, no qubits (quantum bits)..

Also, pscyhiatrists and family counsellors will lose their jobs.

The world…, however, it will be tricky to draft a set of rules saying what is correct and what is not (basically some group has to draft this), and more tricky to balance the political situation, you can get a majority on anyside and the power will shift to that side. Non-alignment doesn’t work anymore. You have to have a stance and be prepared for consequences. A war can break out anytime in such a world.

To think of it, as personal lives will become simpler and better, humanity will come on a brink of apocalypse. Will the machines save us if this happens? or will they decide to exterminate us? Who will be a messiah in such times? A man, a humanoid, or a machine?

1. Search for a song in your library in WMP12. Dont type in the entire name, but only a few words so that more than one results are returned.

2. Select anyone song randomly from middle of list and play it.

3. Now drag this song to the top of your Now Playing list and Voila.

You will see that the time duration stamp of the top song in the list is changed to the time duration of this song which is playing. The time duration stamp will change only when this song starts playing.

So that is how this post took its shape. Rather than writing about what was the latest thing on my radar, I am writing about the various roles that I have played, simultaneously, in the last couple of months. That I enjoyed all of them is no overstatement. I have a regular job. I work as a developer in a mobile firm and my work involves me in conceptualizing and implementing new offerings on a humble hand held device. One of the most rewarding moments came when my work helped us to seal the deal with a major Fortune 50 company. That this is of major strategic advantage to us is implicit.

I also started teaching at my college along with my regular job at the mobile firm. The enthusiasm and energy of the pupils continuously boosts my confidence and acts as a motivating force. These are some of the finest pupils of the current junior year at the department of computer science in the college where I teach and I’m glad I’m teaching them.

A few months back, I experienced the joy of becoming an uncle. My niece, she is the most beautiful and cutest baby ever. The little bundle of joy suddenly made me feel much more responsible towards my family. I’ve a little brother, five years old. He adores me and wants to follow me in my footsteps. Around the big Indian festival of Diwali, I ended up being a fatherly figure to him. My little cousin bonded so closely with me, it redefined our relationship.

During this period, I also visited a number of places around the Cauvery river bank including some spectacular waterfalls. I went on a mini-trek and boated in the river. It was an eventful quarter of the year during which I wrote about a lot of topics and erased them all. Nonetheless, one of the most satisfying periods of time I have experienced.

In order to pursue my interest in photography, I’ve decided to launch a photo blog (or perhaps just convert this into one). It may take some time, but then again, that’s an ordeal for another post.

…You search for backspace when you write on a paper, since you don’t have one, put // (or /* … */ if multiline) to tell the reader that this part should be ignored;
…Closing the window in a room, you look its upper-right corner for “X”;
…You don’t calculate 2 power of 32, you just know the result;
…You write your shopping list in a XML;
…You start using “true” and “false”, instead of “yes” or “no”;
…You want to save what you wrote on paper and are looking for Ctrl+S;
…You accidentally enter your pin on the microwave;
…You did not find it weird that I have ended each line with a semicolon here;
…You notice that now and are smiling;
…You haven’t played solitaire with real cards in years;
…You have a list of 12 phone numbers to reach your family of 4;
…You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you;
…You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries;
…Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn’t have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it;
…You get up in the morning and go on line before getting your coffee;
…You find yourself staring at the keyboard not knowing what to do next;

I have experienced most of the above. Few of them are common to few around me. Please write comments sharing when you think you need a break.

Anyways, this post is about the bike ride and not about metro expansion, so lets get back to track. So it was hot that day and it was a delight  when the evening turned cooler. Cool breeze started to blow and it was little cloudy but not humid. The kind of weather that can drive you crazy and make you go nuts. In such a weather,  you want to stretch in an armchair in your balcony and sip coffee; you want to go on a long walk along a lake;

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The post has been in my draft box for a very long time now. And I dint have the heart to delete it and neither I have the enthusiasm to complete it. This is gonna be one of the most badly written posts. In bullet points, here are the events that happened.

10.10 left college, headed for mysore road.

10.45 pit stop for petrol, pratik’s bike low on fuel -  52 kms from home.

10.50  nitish and I are travelling on one bike and pratik’s on his. We sight a Barista board and wait for pratik who is trailing behind to check if we must sip coffee there.

11.06 pm barista rejected – 64 kms  on road.

11.21 pm sighted a ccd. We decide to make a stop.

12.30 exit ccd . The meter reads 1338. We are 70 kms from BSK.

At 1345.7 and 12.37 am pratik sees heated engine again. My bike is on reserve.

12.40 We resume towards Mysore. At 12.43 I refuel for 100.

At 12.50 reach Maddu ccd at 1357 km.  A brief stop here and at 1.18 exit.

At 1.30 stop at Mudigere CCD waitin for prateek.We have been riding at 95-100 kmph while pratik’s bike has been overheating again and again forcing him to trail us at 75.

At 1.40 , we are 62 kms from city. While waiting for pratik here, Nitish and I plan for next week.

2 am , we are crossing Ramnagar and decide to climb ramnagar hill. The odometer reads 1387 km.

After five minutes and about 3 kms of winding road, at 2.05 am we have climbed the hill to find a temple on the top of the hill. We need to  park here and climb on foot. The odometer reads 1390.

so thats me and Nitish climbing the hill. It was pity that I wasn’t carrying my camera with me. These pics were taken on Nitish’s mobile.

30 minutes of climbing and at 2.38 am we are resting on top of hill. Its cold here and so much silent too. I want to spend my lifetime here.

At 3.13 we begin the descent and at 3.19 I get a call

(I dint want this here, but Nitish wanted it to be here. He even clicked a snap and insisted I put it here)

At 3.30 pratik’s bike overheated again… Aargh!!!

At 1399kms and 3.55 am, we sight the ccd closest to the city. Meet some friends here who have are waiting until dawn due to flat tyre and then carry on towards the ccd.

Its hardly five minutes of driving and at 4 am we witnessed 3 truck crashed into each other. Horrible sight. Wanted to click pics but couldnt.

At 4.15 am, 20 km from ccd and pratik’s bike stopped again. He calls this piece of shit a bike and himself a mechanical engineer. Anyways, at 4.30 we enter the city. By the time its 4.32, I have dropped Nitish at his home and I am headed towards mine, to crash on the bed.

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Special Thanks:

Nitish for all the photographs

Pratik and his bike for giving us all those breaks..

And most importantly you all who read this post. Its nothing like what I wanted it to be. Still its a journal.

MS has been trying to make its browser more efficient and popular for a while now, and it continues to lose in front of FF or Opera. However, seldom has it acknowledged the fact. However, recently, I was working on something and it required me to download some of the content from maps.live.com .

As usual, out of curiosity, I went around tinkering with the scripts and the content and voila here’s what I found. Hidden between all the super duper code that makes this website jazzy, are some of the comments written by MS programmers themselves. Check it out:

html
{
overflow: auto;                /* for IE, so it doesn’t show disabled scrollbars.  FF (of course) doesn’t have this problem */
}

#pageContext
{
position: relative;
width: 75%;                /* some width is necessary in order for IE6 to honor the overflow and text-overflow declarations */
padding: 8px;
z-index: 100;
color: #444;
white-space: nowrap;
overflow: hidden;
text-overflow: ellipsis;
font-size: 1.1em;
min-height: 1.3em;
float: left;
}

#msve_ScratchPad .collectionList
{
position: relative;
min-height: 200px;
max-height: 280px;
height: auto;
width: 258px;   /* This really shouldn’t be necessary, but unfortunately, becuase of IE’s lack of standards support, it is. */
overflow-y: auto;
overflow-x: hidden;
}

These are just some of the comments I found. MS knows that its  browser is sub-standard, but has too much pride to acknowledge it publically.

I am a die-hard user of FF anyway. Hope you migrate there soon.

Peek

It has already been voted Best Invention of Year 2008 by Time magazine, Wired Magazine’s Favourite Product of the year 2008 (Check the december issue) and is already on the top list of Amazon and the like. Peek has been received warmly by US and now it is ready to make an impact in India as well.

Peek in India has its operations in Bangalore where we have a small team working its ass off, day and night, preparing for a launch in India. Meanwhile, there is something else that has been keeping me busy. Enterprise customers are requesting for presonalization and I have been trying to do just that. As a part of this, one of things that Peek has to offer is form filling application for medical representatives for pharmaceutical companies. Take a look at the snapshot below.

Its nifty. All that the user has to do is to fill in a form and it appears right in the company’s mailbox. Then there’s a .Net app, that retrieves the email, processes it, and voila there you have the data you sent in the format that can seamlessly attach with your db.

Check out for the next post that has the video of the system. Also shall be available onYoutube soon.

P.S. Be on the lookout for Peek. The device is gonna change the way you email.

I am a novice in the field of web designing and I have been developing some websites using ASP.Net recently. The environment was working fine for a few months when all of a sudden one fine day, I get this error when I try to run my solution: Internet Explorer can not display page. I tried everything under the roof that a novice can be expected of doing viz. re-installing VS 2008, re-starting the IIS and ASP services a couple of times, etc. I also started to dig into online forums and tried everything but in vain.

During one of my fruitless online searches, I stumbled upon this page: http://forums.asp.net/p/1235447/2247054.aspx

The page displays a lot of solutions and sadly none of them worked for me, but one posted by Arien. The solution was removing the next line in the windows host file C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

::1  localhost

This being a IPv6 entry, when commented works wonders..

My ASP.Net is working fine again. How on earth in the first place this problem started I don’t know, but it is solved now and I am again enjoying working with ASP.

Hope this blog helps all those who have been facing similar problems.