Going Green .... My way :)

Hi , And don't be surprised if anyone of you catch me riding a bicycle lately .... No I am not broke !! and No I have not lost my job .. not yet !! :) but yes, thats one of the ways I am making an effort to go green. I have been closely following tips given by National Geographic on ways to go green and have tailored those methods to suit my lifestyle.

I think there is a need for all of us to adopt some energy saving methods in our daily life. Every body around me seems to be aware of global warming and they talk about the horrifying effects it brings upon us but when I ask what they are doing about it ... well they stay mum or change the topic or shrug their shoulders like its somebody else's business to undo this climate change :) , And now with all the head of states all over the world holding high level meetings to tackle this growing and serious environmental issue I feel its time we took an initiative to care for our mother earth in our own simple ways.

here I am presenting a few changes that I have made to go green and the pros and cons of the methods I have adopted:

1) Resource : fresh water.

Objective :To minimize usage of fresh water or to restrict wastage of fresh water.

Ideal method : use less water for bathing.

BEFORE :- I used in excess of 100 Liters for bathing( 4 buckets)

AFTER :- I use no more than one bucket of water for bathing ( ~ 25 Liters).

Pros - Precious water saved.

Cons - My mum's worried that I haven't been cleaning myself sufficiently and that I might catch fungus :P. Well not to worry I have found that one bucket is sufficient for a thorough cleaning every day.

2) Resource : electricity - using less electric power indirectly reduces the amount of resources used to produce it and also the amount of carbon pumped into the atmosphere.

Objective : use minimal electricity.

Ideal method : use energy efficient appliances, mainly :bulbs used for lighting purpose.

BEFORE: I never cared about the the usage of power.

AFTER : I use the lights only when absolutely necessary , use natural light when ever possible , replaced all the incandescent bulbs with philips tiny white tubes. My laptop is highly energy efficient hence I am not guilty about keeping my macbook powered on 24/7.

Pros - Considerable reduction in electric bills ( my dad was surprised and happy)

Cons - Your friends and siblings might call you names for being stingy about a stupid light.

3) Resource: Petroleum - A very important resource as its depleting and more importantly its the no.1 contributor for increase in carbon in the atmosphere.

Objective: to adopt alternative and greener ways to travel.

Ideal method : avoid using bike / car whenever possible.

BEFORE: Never really cared about this either.

AFTER: I always use my bicycle to get around short distances ( that is if my journey amounts to less than 10 Km). I Have been consistent and determined about this . (Venky if u reading this, do post a remark supporting my claim :P ) . Regular car pooling is another easy way you can save yourself some money and reduce your carbon foot print in the process.

Pros: You can save a lot on fuel spendings every month while being environmental friendly And you can stay healthy and fit as cycling is a great cardiovascular exercise.

Cons : While Im cycling ..I miss those looks that I usually get from girls if I was riding on my Bullet instead :)

These are a few but very efficient ways to reduce ones carbon footprint as we all indulge ourselves everyday in at least one of the acts mentioned above. I recently saw an advertisement showing how the release of animal / human gases - (human and animal fart) can hurt the environment , well that it hilariously impractical to avoid it but those days are not far away when a communist country like China would impose a rule against farting . I feel proud and happy to be an Indian when I think of it :D hehehe....

Guys, I have waited 3 months to post this as I wanted to make sure the methods I employ were practical and indeed adoptable by an average person like me.

Do suggest any other methods that you find easier and practical to follow.

Thanks for reading ... Good day.

Rejuvenating My Body , Soul and Macbook

Hi everyone , Its been over a month since I updated my blog .. thats right no FB, blogspot or Google news for me since a month or so. there are a few reasons for my absence from the cyber world -

I was terribly struck down from a reoccurring health issue. I desperately needed to rejuvenate my life .. change the way I live , had to do a complete overhaul of my lifestyle ... And I decided to bring this change starting with my physical health ...As I am restricted from doing any of the activities that I used to do a year and a half ago like swimming ,trekking or jogging I didn’t know what to take up to get in shape or feed my soul so to say ... I was in total hibernation..

Things changed a bit last week when my doctor approved me of doing a bit of Yoga , and in no time I found this place nearby my house where Yoga classes are being held ..with high hopes I went to have a look at the place and meet the Yogi himself .. I always have this presumption about any given stuff or person even before I get to meet them ..what I mean is when I said I was excited to meet the yogi I had imagined him to be lean , strong with a glowing face and hopefully a beard.

Well when I reached the place.. there were a bunch of kids playing around in the front yard of the school and the classes were held at the basement of this school building. I climbed down the stairs and took my first look at the basement .. It was huge and well ventilated and I could see around twenty or so people mostly women spread evenly across the hall and standing in a particular posture , they are in middle of a yogic posture I thought to my self, soon I saw a women letting herself lose from that yogic position and she started walking briskly across the hall towards me , As she approached nearer I could tell she was in her 40’s and petite.

I asked for the yogi and she said she was the yoga teacher .. I was stunned and a bit disappointed for a moment as the base of my whole assumption about the imaginary Yogi was blown away . I continued asking about the details of the course while my mind was thinking that it was not a good idea to learn yoga from a female teacher for two reasons , First I believe women are not as determined as men while it comes to physical coaching , secondly the room was full of females and very few males.. a ratio of 80:20 (women : men) so I assumed she would be teaching only basic or very light yoga to make it comfortable for the females.

I had no other option but to give this class a try. So I enrolled myself and committed to come the next morning for my first class. the class would start at 6 in the morning ,I had to rise up as early as 5.30 and get ready for the class .. I couldn’t believe what I had committed to, I am not used to waking up early and I couldn’t imagine the last time I woke up at 5 in the morning .. not even during the semester exams had I tried to wake up that early.

My first day and I was there in the basement on time with my mind all set to start a new lifestyle... the classes went on for over an hour and the asanas (postures) were very easy and I didn’t have to break a sweat to do it. later I learnt from a fellow student that as it was Monday the asanas were easy just like a warmup round to set our body for the whole week of yoga and it was true after day 3 I couldn’t do a single asana correctly as I couldn’t command my body to bend like the yogi did ... she could bend her body like rubber and she did yogic postures that even two of the male gym instructors (new to yoga like me) were not able to do it , It truly needs enormous strength with flexibility and stamina to sustain in those positions for over a minute. Later I learnt from my Guru that yoga was all about building the inner core strength .. the soul the body and the mind all will be toughened and relaxed for ultimate health....

Its been my third week into yoga and I am totally satisfied with the female Guru ( hell !! ,she is more flexible and stronger than any guy in that basement )..I can feel the change in me and I m on a path to a healthy lifestyle for sure...

I have spoken about rejuvenating my soul and body and you should be thinking what the hell a Macbook has to do with rejuvenation .... :) well it got a bit rejuvenated too when I installed Mac OS X 10.6 ( snow leopard ) .I can surely feel the speed bump system wide as almost all application are true-64 bit apps including the kernel except for few apps like itunes which are still 32 bit native. Its been running smooth and flawless so far except that most of the 3rd party apps still don’t have a 64-bit version of their apps .. hope this will change in coming weeks...

good day

After 5 hours in a public Library...

You guys should be thinking that I must be crazy to spend a whole afternoon in a public library ... I was in such a situation that I had no other place to go to ... well it all started one morning when mum asked me about my future plans...by future plans she only means "marriage", She absolutely knows that this particular matter triggers a nuclear chain reaction in my brain which explodes through my mouth .... I started barking mindlessly and started arguing about why cant they give some time for this matter to settle down ... and as always the next stage of this event is to listen to my mother whining and quoting examples of guys of my age who have already "settled down" - "Hell with those bastards" is how the voice inside my head reacts to such statements. Well at this moment my blood was flooding to my head and my face should have been red because I could feel the heat coming off my face and I thought the best thing to do was leave the place without continuing the argument so I grabbed my lappy and stormed out without realizing that I had no place to go and that I had not had my breakfast ..I was hungry...

Five minutes later I was on my Bullet riding her barely at 20 Km/hr thinking of a calm place where I could sit down and cool off my head. thats when I passed an old pubic building the building that I had walk passed for more that 20 years now but never bothered to go inside ..It is the public library and I felt this could be the place that could put my mood back on track. I Parked my bike a couple of blocks away and as I started walking towards the library I was doubting my decision because most of our public buildings in our city are either over crowded and noisy or is deserted as it stinks. I took my first step inside the library and noticed the huge stack of books raising from the ground up to the ceiling tidily arranged in rows of steel shelves and old wooden chairs neatly arranged around a huge reading table, how typical of any government run establishment I thought to myself where you could find only old wooden chairs and squeaking almirah doors , towards my left was the librarian a middle aged lady who was arguing with a person over an expired due date. I was now waiting for my turn to talk to the now irate librarian .. "morning ma'am" is how I started and paused for a moment for a similar reaction or a smile from her ... she didn't even care to look up -again, how typical of a government employee I thought. I continued to ask her if I could use the library to sit and read... she said " you don't have to ask".. oh yeah it is public thanks for reminding said the voice inside my head... I proceeded to walk my way towards the large reading tables which could easily accommodate at least twenty people each.. but none were sitting at the table I intended to and there were close to ten people in all in the whole library .. hmmm what if this was a public cinema hall It would have been filled with people twice the full capacity I thought.. I sat on the chair and pushed my self closer to the table. now what?.. I wondered....

I pulled my lappy out of my bag , placed it on the table and sat there for a while just staring at the people around and everyone in there looked like they had all the time in the whole world to go through the daily newspapers spread in front of them and they were all decent looking old guys , I was pleased as it was quite but I would have been pleased and happy if there was a girl around which could have helped divert my mind from the argument I had earlier :) ..anyways as I pondered on such thoughts..a guy may be in his fifties sat next to me ..by that time I had my laptop lid opened... he immediately struck a conversation with me ..Ah "macintosh" he said .. I smiled and said "yes" .. being a proud owner of a mac. "Hi I am Krishna " he introduced himself and I followed introducing myself to him .. twenty minutes into the conversation I came to know quite a few astonishing facts about this person ..he was a scientist who worked on thermodynamics and had toured the world attending and giving lectures to the scientific community on thermodynamics and currently he was doing a research in IISC and as we got comfortable talking .. I asked him "do you come here often ?" "No, only the days when I have a bad mood" he replied with a smile. Now wait a minute isn't that why I m here too .. looks like all the great minds who have bad arguments at home this morning are about to gather here. Mr.Krishna left after flipping through few magazines and wished me luck before leaving ...The rest of the morning went uneventful with me staring at the dim monitor ..

After almost five hours of reading a boring technical document It was noon and I realized I had to go back home, apologize and most importantly had to eat a hearty meal ! I left the library with content that it served the purpose to many people.. old , young , happy and the unhappy and I was a bit proud about it ... not all things are the way we assume it to be.. May be I will visit the library the next time I have an argument with mom or may be with my wife !! :)

Good Day.

Thinking of naming him "Stew"

I am thinking of naming him "Stew"... the new comer to my aquarium after the little brat "Stewie Griffin" form Family guy ... coz he is notorious in similar ways.. he chases all the tiny Guppies and drives them into exile ..well who am I talking about - He is a RES - Red Ear Slider a native of the Americas. he is still a tiny little guy ( baby RES) about 2 inches but he can grow up to lengths of 12 inches. Spends most of his time in water but shows himself up on dry surface that I have setup for him so that he could get his share of the sun for the day. Yes the turtle can outlive u and me !! and I read that they become very friendly as they grow up and can be tamed to obey your calls , I want him to grow up asap so that he could feed on chapatis and veggies rather than the expensive fish flakes that I am feeding him now. All in all I hope he is here to stay for long , when people asked me why not a dog ? I told them I wanted a silent pet who doesn't bark at strangers :)

Oh and my 4 year old nephew is not happy with the name "stew".. he wants to name him "Bala", I think a trip to the candy stop should settle this dispute between us :)

If you get excited after reading this and want a pet "Stew" of you own then make sure you go through these articles below to set up a suitable environment and most importantly be prepared to have a long term speechless companion.. :) and don't worry about the PFA guys (people for animals) raiding your house as it is perfectly legal to pet an RES according to Indian laws.

Do suggest some suitable names guys.. and please put your comments below in the comment box instead of sending me mails ... thanks one and all.

Good day

http://petturtle.htmlplanet.com/turtleworld_RES.html

http://happyturtle.ms11.net/facts.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-eared_slider

My First Apple Script SpySafari.

Since the day I bought my mac I am in love with Safari (yeah I am a mac buff :) ) The best browser around. Any ways coming to the point of this post. Last night I was searching for an option to enable the "Private browsing" option automatically and stay selected always but there is no way to do that in safari. Though we can manually select this option from the menu Safari -> "Private Browsing". We have to do this every time we open safari and have to click "OK" on the confirmation box . So I started to look for ways to automate this action thus Applescript was the answer So I started to fool around with applescript this is my first script hence had to do some learning from the apple script manual 10 minutes later I was all set to experiment and 2 hours later I had this final version running perfectly.Yeah it was that simple , I found many similar scripts already available on the internet but 99.9 % of these scripts were incomplete. what I mean is :

1. Many of the scripts never check if UI element was enable in system preferences -> universal access before running the script , this check is essential because if UI element is not enabled then this GUI based script will fail to execute and throws annoying errors.

2. Secondly, Most of the scripts just did a toggling function. i.e; if the script was run with "private Browsing" already enabled in safari then the script actually disabled it ( haha.. this was funny). almost all scripts had this issue.

3. There is only one perfectly working script by Tomx called SafariPB , but the source code is not provided along with it though the app is free.

hence for the above mentioned reasons I though of writing my own script and sharing it :)

here is how this scripts works :

1. Checks if UI element is enabled

2. If UI element is not enabled , then enable it with user's permission

3. Check if "Private browsing" is enabled in Safari

4. If not already enabled then enable it, If already enabled then do nothing or open a new Safari window if no Safari windows are open.

I am pleased to say that the prestigious www.macupdate.com has accepted SpySafari to be hosted on their site

download from macupdate Spy Safari

Download from my site( converted as a mac app and zipped) - use this to launch Safari instead of the usual Safari icon - Works on any version of mac OS (universal).

To edit the script go tot the main.scpt inside package content and edit wit script editor.

Once you save SpySafari app on your mac just open it as any other application. SpySafari opens Safari with "private Browsing" enabled and automatically quits.

P.S. I named it spy safari just for the kicks :) and can anyone tell me the best way to share it with the world ??

On her 62nd Birthday..

Its 2 am in the morning on her 62nd birthday and I am sitting in front of my computer . I have a rush.. a sudden rush of patriotism .. no its not entirely because its Independence day .. I have always had these sudden rush or rather attacks of patriotic feelings and while my mind is in this state I usually start to browse trying to pull up articles, videos, news anything that Google can find regarding the great Indian achievements, blunders and of course war to read and ponder upon , some people might argue that we have learnt enough about our county in school, I too thought so before I showed some interest to learn about our country and was amazed by how much ignorant I have been towards our history.

Out of all the topics that I found amusing and one that tickles my brain is the birth of Pakistan: The partition of Hindustan into Pakistan and India. Why did it happen? and why is that the attitude of Pakistan towards India is so bad? Do pakistani people think that Indians are just like us or do Pakistanis really hate us so much that they don't even like the idea of associating themselves with the Indians or Indian muslims ? Why there is so much hatred in Pakistan towards India and why is Pakistan getting poorer by the day ? We both had equal time and opportunity and resources to grow. In fact pakistan was in a far more better state to start with as it did not have the population and poverty issue that India had to deal with.

While all these question began to build up I was fortunate to hit a link which brought me to this book about Pakistan , This is a very well written book describing the state of Pakistan, its people, its military spending and its corrupt elite society.

The book is written by Dr.Shiv Sastry after extensive research and genuine references are given for every claim that is made by the author in this book. I recommend one and all to read this book.

Oh and this has noting to do with our Jaswanth's book. I had written this blog a week before his book was released :)

Download the book here

My experience with a Mac - So Far So Good

Model : Macbook White 2.0 GHz , 2GB RAM

OS : OSX 10.5.7

Date of Purchase : April 2009

I have been a Mac user since last three months thats not a lot of experience to say. I had googled for hours and read tons of reviews on Macs before I was convinced to buy a Macbook. Since My purchase I have to say I haven't had a single reason to regret my decision (except when I found a better Macbook being released by Apple only few days after my purchase). I find my Macbook almost perfect in every way.

Since day one of my purchase I have been googling... again but this time to find the right softwares (free-wares mostly) to accomplish my daily tasks and occasional programing on my Mac.

Below is a list of some of the softwares I found most useful and most of them are free to use.

Feel free to comment if there are better alternatives out there.

Web Browsing - Safari , Firefox

I like to use Safari almost all of the time. Its fast , Simple and the interface is unbeatable. I wish it had the add-ons and plugins that firefox has. The only add-on out of the few available that I find useful with Safari at present is Delicious-Safari.

I doubt there are any other alternative mac browsers better than these two.

Disc Burning - Burn , Toast (Roxio)

Although Toast is regarded as the best burning software among the Mac community , I found it to be bulky with a lot of features that most of the novice users like me don't need and it costs money to own a copy. hence Burn was the best free alternative I could find ,Its light and has all the basic functionality I need.

Productivity - xPad , Google Docs

There are tons of notepad like utilities out there for mac , It doesn't matter which one you chose as most of them have similar functionalities and are light. I use xPad.

I don't have much to say about iWork as I seldom use it and yet to discover the Pros and Cons of iWork, I prefer to use Google Docs its free and has more features than I ever need for the kind of Docs I prepare.

To-Do List - Check off

Check-off is a handy utility to maintain a To-Do list. It sits right on the menu bar hence easily accessible and tasks can be color coded according to ones priority and its free

Movie database and DVD cataloging - DVD Hunter

If you are a movie buff like me then this free utility is a must , DVD hunter automatically fetches information for any given movie including cover image from amazon.com and stores it in a neat user friendly manner.

Media codecs - Flip4mac

The free version of Flip4mac enables one to play windows native media like wmv in Quicktime player.

Lyrics - Get Lyrical

The one thing that Itunes lacks is an option to fetch lyrics automatically. Well I found this free alternative and it does the job quite well by fetching the lyrics from wiki-lyrics and automatically embedding it to the MP3 file

HDD defragmentation - iDefrag (trial version)

Not that I find the need to defrag my Macbook HDD often , in fact I have only used iDefrag once in the last three months just for curiosity sakes and I had a neat 99.9% defraged and compact HDD after iDefrag finished its work. If I ever need to defrag a mac HDD this will be the tool I would use. Would prefer to use a free alternative if available.

I-Explorer only Sites - Internet Explorer for Mac

Unfortunately there are some sites which are still IE only. I haven't found a plugin or add-on for Safari to open IE only sites. So I found the last working version IE 5.2.3(2001) for mac and it opens the IE only sites just fine but its sluggish and the interface sucks.

Photos - iPhoto (bundled with all Macs)

No doubt its the best thing for managing photos on a Mac. I don't have any reason to find an alternative. iphoto is sufficient.

Subtitle editor - Jubler

To synchronize and edit / create subtitles.

Clear unwanted Language packages - Monolingual

The first program I run after installing a new software package. It clears all the unwanted language packages freeing GBs of HDD space. I m an english only person.

FTP - Pure FTPd manager

An FTP server is a convenient way to share private files with your friends and family . The pure FTPd manager provides an excellent GUI interface for the FTPd server. It provides useful and powerful features like restricted access , usage statistics , virtual hosts etc.

Tweak - Tinker tool

Although OSX has a great features and Interface (one of the reasons why i bought a mac) I like to turn off a few features or change the default setting to suit my likings, for instance I prefer the 2D dock to the 3D. Tinker tool is a neat tool with moderate tweaking options.

For a clean uninstall - Appcleaner

And Finally Appcleaner is a must if you want to do a clean uninstall of any application It removes an application completely by deleting along the related files and documents of the app.

Programming - Xcode

The day I bought my Macbook I was excited to try Apple’s X-code development environment. I had to go through few posts / articles before I could get my simple "hello_world.c" program to run but as C,C++ and perl is all that I ever use for my development work I find the old-school ways much more convenient (vi and the terminal environment) may be because I have been used to it for a long time now.

With more free stuff being released every now and then I wish to keep my search on before I settle down with my favorite ones.