tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42883933244711921502024-03-08T09:35:38.346+05:30Vinay's Tech StuffUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-49144732281185613862015-03-29T19:37:00.000+05:302015-03-29T21:53:09.347+05:30TRAI seeks comments on Net Neutrality in IndiaTelecom Regulatory Authority of India has published a consultation paper asking for comments from stakeholders on important questions related to net neutrality. When it comes net neutrality all of us are stakeholders as users of the open and transparent Internet. So we should all submit our views on these important questions. Please read the document (it's long but it's very informative) and sendUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-66439602936030039882012-08-22T02:18:00.001+05:302012-08-22T02:18:54.375+05:30Amazon Glacier: Archival storage that's cheap?Amazon Glacier is a new service from Amazon that offers archival/cold storage at a cheap & flexible on-demand price of $0.01/GB/month. They say this is highly durable storage with a durability of 99.999999999% (nine-nines, same as Amazon S3), but availability for retrieval is going to be delayed by several hours (as opposed to instant retrieval in S3 with availability of two-nines over aUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-68084694967505011202011-08-30T13:26:00.000+05:302011-08-30T13:26:14.989+05:30Stuff to get it right early for a startupI'll make this a short post. It takes less time to set this up initially and get all of your projects conform to it than trying to retro-fit it later. And the effort spent on this will pay for itself in saved time from increased productivity ten times over.
A source control repository
Separate binary file assets (like lots of images, videos etc) from text file assets (like source code into Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-59891841805185344362011-04-13T14:55:00.000+05:302011-04-13T14:55:12.386+05:30nginx 1.0!My favorite server, nginx has hit 1.0 release. With this release they have made public the svn repo holding the code with history all the way from 2002. The repo is at svn://svn.nginx.org.
Kudos to Igor and his team on this awesome piece of practical software. I see myself continuing to be a fan of both Apache httpd and nginx for a long time to come.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-60153579072659692292010-10-30T20:36:00.001+05:302010-11-04T19:31:47.386+05:30Thrift for serializing/deserializing objects in MembaseFirst off, if you haven't heard of Membase, you should check it out. It's an evolution of sorts from memcached.
Typically when you use memcache or membase to store/retrieve key-value data, the value part is not a simple datatype. Instead, it would most likely be a serialized representation of some complex application specific data-structure. It's great to set/get complex datastructure with a Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-63611749170153544312010-04-04T01:35:00.000+05:302010-04-04T01:35:20.843+05:30Need for service with guarantee of security and privacyCurrent Situation
With all of the online communication services like e-mail, social media sites we use today, pretty much all of them are "free" services in the sense that we don't pay them any subscription fee for using the service. And as such the "Terms of Service" are heavily tilted towards the service provider.
In most cases, the only way such free service provider makes money is by mining Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-75649508022995667182010-02-14T23:38:00.000+05:302010-02-14T23:38:38.140+05:30Flash video sucks!Summer is almost here. With the rising ambient temperature, my macbook gets hot sooner.
Especially when my browser is open it gets hotter sooner. The reason is the all pervading Adobe Flash player based ads or video players on web pages.
This has made the experience of watching videos on youtube or ted.com an unpleasant experience. If I watch the video in full-screen, I notice both cores on thisUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-21655058315613719272010-01-15T10:27:00.000+05:302010-01-15T10:27:01.466+05:30Google finally getting into data backup!?!With their latest announcement to host any type of files on Google Docs, Google is foraying into the arena of "your data in the cloud, access, organize, share - anytime from anywhere" business that we have been envisioning from a long time (over 4 years now!).
What's interesting is the approach that google has taken. Instead of traditional approach of building all the features that are geared Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-81492889450823848302010-01-09T13:59:00.001+05:302010-01-09T14:03:05.025+05:30Macbook Pro BatteryOne thing I realized with my last Macbook (White) is that putting your macbook to sleep all the time and never shutting it down (especially overnight) is not good for your battery. By doing that I've had consumed more battery cycles and now the battery discharge time has come down to just over 2 hours. Last week I got a new macbook pro. And this time I figured out how to make it hibernate (not Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-680776002538637132010-01-09T13:18:00.003+05:302010-01-09T13:25:01.314+05:30Thunderbird 3: Better search user-experience, not there yet.For my work e-mail, I've used Microsoft Outlook with Exchange server for 2 years and I liked it a lot. Especially the global address book integration, expanding distribution lists, calendar/meeting scheduling features are awesome. In my current workplace, we don't have Exchange. And I'm on a macbook. So I've a choice of Apple Mail or Thunderbird or Microsoft Entourage.
Tried Microsoft Entourage -Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-30463749420713329802009-06-28T14:34:00.003+05:302009-06-28T14:46:51.606+05:30Git: Understanding is key to using it wellI've seen many people struggling with git manpages or getting confused with myriads of commands in git. If you are one of them, I would recommend you to check out stuff done by this cool guy, Scott Chacon.Specifically check out this presentation here http://gitcasts.com/posts/railsconf-git-talkThe pdf of that presentation is also available there. Understanding the concepts of how git works Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-66559783999039575152009-02-22T18:10:00.007+05:302009-09-05T19:24:33.982+05:30Vim Cheat SheetI've been a long time Vim (not vi) user and occasionally I find people around me questioning my choice and comparing it to tools like Visual Studio. I agree Visual Studio is a great IDE. But Vim is a great editor. I would love Visual Studio editor with Vim key bindings. I came across this Vi Emulator http://www.viemu.com/ that does exactly that. Personally I have not had the opportunity to use itUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-31850968229495067392009-01-25T17:11:00.004+05:302009-01-25T17:43:56.276+05:30Encrypted storage device designFor quite sometime now I've been facing space crunch on my laptop and have been using various external storage devices. I'm reluctant to put any important piece of information on these devices due to security and privacy concerns. Unlike my laptop (and the disk within it), these devices will not be in my sight all the time and hence my reluctance to trust any confidential data with them. I've Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-83882290044973603632008-11-01T13:23:00.002+05:302008-11-01T15:44:11.076+05:30Splashtop: Solving slow boot problemsRecently someone sent me a link to splashtop, in context of some work I was doing on Asus Eeepc. Splashtop is a OEM installed OS that boots off a embedded flash/hidden-partition device on your PC. It uses Bootsplash, SquashFS, Blackbox, SCIM and Linux kernel.Splashtop's raison d'etre is to provide instant-on/off experience to PC. Since PC boot times are slow, most people don't even turn off theirUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-6475011593544430802008-07-06T18:11:00.002+05:302008-07-06T18:21:04.521+05:30Firefox 3 download World record official: 8,002,530Finally, the Guinness World Record results are out. Here's what is said on Download Day page.Thanks to the support of the always amazing Mozilla community, we now hold a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. From 18:16 UTC on June 17, 2008 to 18:16 UTC on June 18, 2008, 8,002,530 people downloaded Firefox 3 and are now enjoying a safer, smarter and better Web.I even Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-34510767350193978052008-07-06T18:04:00.003+05:302008-07-06T18:11:04.266+05:30LinkedIn has expired SSL certificate!Today www.linkedin.com HTTPS certificate expired. Seems they have forgotten to renew it. Quite shameful for a company that promises privacy and security of user’s information.Here’s what Firefox 3 told me when I visited the website and tried to sign-in.Logging in bypassing this cert security error is not an option for me. So, for all practical purposes, linkedin is down for me.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-50867773140086729042008-06-15T00:25:00.001+05:302008-06-15T00:27:12.628+05:30Tue June 17th Firefox 3 Releases!The release date for Firefox 3 has been announced. It is also the "Download Day" when Mozilla community will attempt to set a world record for most software downloads in 24 hours. You can pledge for the same here. Firefox 3 has some very good new features that makes it a compelling upgrade. Here's a field guide to FF3. Enjoy! Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-78399014143739249832008-05-02T03:57:00.003+05:302008-05-02T04:02:06.393+05:30Speed: Firefox Vs SafariThis test was done with Webkit's SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark on the latest versions of Firefox 3 and Safari available as of today.It overall the test results indicate Safari is faster. But the individual results need to be looked at and decided which tests really matter in real world and how they affect our daily browsing speed.TEST COMPARISON FROM Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-47455665518725823132008-05-01T20:19:00.001+05:302008-05-01T20:19:25.744+05:30Windows Live Writer On MacbookWindows Live writer is such a good blogging software that it alone justifies installing vmware fusion+windows on my Macbook. Apple really doesn't have any product that comes anywhere close to Windows Live Writer for blogging. For that matter nobody has. Among all products under Live brand this alone is generations ahead. Keep Rocking! Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-85793358579805688522008-04-28T01:17:00.002+05:302008-04-28T01:20:16.766+05:30Switching to OSXI've got a macbook at work. And for the last couple of days while trying to figure out how to do various simple tasks I have been thoroughly annoyed by this critically acclaimed OS.http://shiflett.org/blog/2006/feb/top-x-list-of-mac-os-x-annoyancesThis blog summarizes my annoyances very well. Is Apple listening to it's customers? If it wants to get more corporate customers or grow it's market Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-88456644083391476152008-03-23T02:15:00.001+05:302008-03-23T02:15:10.757+05:30dstat - Analyzing Linux System PerformanceKnowing the effect of your application on the system and observing system performance while your application is going thru different scenarios can give you great insight about the bottlenecks and performance ceilings in your application. Today, lets look at some of the tools on Linux that will help us understand the system performance. dstat is a tool that shows various system performance Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-38383513667207710802008-03-22T14:44:00.001+05:302008-03-22T14:44:39.124+05:30htop: more than top. pstree: ps with tree.I'm a big fan of procexp and other sysinternals tools on Windows. Many people who use those and then come to Linux complain that there are no such tools in Linux. Most people are familiar with top and ps commands. I would like to introduce you to a bunch of utilities on Linux that are very useful while debugging issues. Lets start with htop, a better alternative to top. You can install htop on a Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-31173152267947844822008-02-08T01:43:00.001+05:302008-02-08T01:43:03.860+05:30More power to OpenIDhttp://openid.net/2008/02/07/evolving-the-openid-foundation-board/ 20 million to over 250 million adoptions in a span of 12 to 18 months for a concept that was born in a small community just 2 years ago without the muscle power of any large corporation is just amazing. More power to OpenID and all open standards - those are the only ones worth calling standards. Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-32749037702047673642007-12-29T13:48:00.000+05:302007-12-29T14:12:19.118+05:30Security and technologyThe nature of the attacks will be different: the targets, tactics andresults. Security is both a trade-off and an arms race, a balance betweenattacker and defender, and changes in technology upset that balance.- Bruce Schneier, Security in Ten YearsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288393324471192150.post-82665543553826016972007-12-21T03:32:00.001+05:302007-12-21T03:32:05.327+05:30Windows Live Writer and Mail - Nice!As you can see from my previous post, Live Writer seems to be working nice with image posting. And I'm using Windows Live Mail client here to access my hotmail account (bah, a story to tell another day), my office account and my gmail account. Works well. Not bad at all. Although there are some rough edges in the settings UI, I didn't expect this good a job from Microsoft. So I'm impressed. And Unknownnoreply@blogger.com