Firefox - Blinking Cursor

I am annoyed for the past one week due to the blinking cursor on firefox. I was about to uninstall firefox until I googled for this post.

http://beyondteck.blogspot.com/2006/05/firefox-blinking-cursor-problem.html

This solved my problem.
It was a Caret browsing feature which I somehow enabled and then thought it was a firefox bug.
To disable this annoying caret, just Press F7 and press "No".

Hope this helps someone.

When you say nothing at all

"When you say nothing at all" has been one of my favorite song of all time. But today I discovered that it has been sung by 3 three different singers in a span of 10 years. And each one brings his/her own charm into the song.
Interesting, So check all three out here.
Keith Whitley - 1988
Alison Krauss - 1995
Ronan Keating - 1999

Keith Whitley



Alison Krauss



Ronan Keating



Enjoy!

The Indian Underdog

It was quite a usually morning today until I heard some interesting conversation. As soon as I boarded the jam packed E subway to 7th Avenue, I unwilling started hearing a conversation between a man and a woman. I tried my best not to hear it, but still couldn't help courtesy the packed train and the way I was positioned.
Enough of excuses, let me get to the talk now! Initially they bored me, talking about a person who was now deep into drugs and almost ruined his life. (Not a good thing to hear early in the morning though). As soon as the train left the 50th Street Station, the words Slumdog Millionaire fell onto my ears. The initially boring conversation now attracted my attention. "Slumdog won 4 awards(Golden Globe), seems to be a good film" and I whispered in my mind "wow!" I am here in the middle of a overcrowded, early-morning subway and two Americans talking about Slumdog Millionaire. What a start!
Before I could to continue overhearing their conversation, I had to get off at 7th Avenue. I couldn't wait to google up for this update as I reached work. Indeed I was happy as I had seen this movie just a day before and had loved it. Excellently directed film with a great script and music, truly deserved recognization. Worth a watch!

My first Pav Bhaji

A have been cooking regularly now. It is a great feeling to cook and more than that cook good food. Fortunately, i can cook good food. That may be because my mom is a good cook and I love food.

A December Snowy Morning

Its December and it has started snowing. The train is passing through the snow covered tracks. Small shrubs trying to peep out through the snow covered blanket. Its the first snow this winter and the first snow I have ever experienced. I am familiar with heavy rains and always wondered how it would feel being under a snowfall. It is a vast difference. Snow is so soft that you hardly realize that its falling. So light to feel. (There may be hailstorms and blizzards too, but I don't want to spoil my party so soon :P). And when it covers all the ground, it looks very pure and quiet. That can be attributed to the color white as a symbol of peace and purity.
I am gazing outside window as soft white cotton flakes fall from the invisible clouds. Such a serene feeling. But as soon as they touch my window they disappear and instead small droplets of water trickle through the window glass. I can see cars covered with snow rushing past traffic lights. People under their umbrella and snow coats walking pass the rail station. It is such a calm environment and you would want to bury yourself deep into thoughts admiring this beautiful phenomenon of nature.
The train continues to speed on. Soon I will reach New York City to start another exciting day at work and will have to leave behind my admiration for this heavenly phenomenon for some other time.

First American Hair cut: A Realization

Today, I went for my first hair cut in America.. not a big deal though.. But the conversation I had with my hair setter was a kind of realization which once again confirmed Indian Culture's roots are so strong in America too..

So it started with a common Salon talk from the hair to the politics and breaking news(even braking news suits here) of the Hurricane. However, the turn that the conversation took was interesting. We were discussing how unpredictable the world had become with the recent Hurricane in Texas and other recent events(And I was mapping to the serial blasts in Delhi in India) The Hairsetter, she must in her early 40s'(and didn't know that I came to US only a few months back), started pointing me to how many times do you(she meant my generation) open a door for a lady, or help an elderly person or give a pregnant woman a seat in the bus or train. And I always feel uncomfortable with such questions since I do help a majority times. But I got her point.

And then she told me a story about an elderly American woman(in her early 80s' and her customer) who once fell off and needed help during winter. She lay there for 2 hours just seeing people passing by and avoiding to help her. She was hardly able to speak till she saw a group of 3 Indians approaching her. She was scared what will this foreigners to do her. Elderly Americans are skeptical about the change America is going with the growing number of immigrants. These Indians guys, as my hair setter narrated to me, actually took her to her place and called up someone who she knew. All the way while these Indians were taking her back home, she prayed God that they won't harm her or rob her. From that day she had a different perspective of Indians and its culture. As my American hair dresser quoted, "Its the Indian culture, under which you young kids are raised makes a difference." "Respecting elders, reaching out to them for help and service are few of the important aspects that Indian culture teaches", I added.

What I would reiterate from this is that I am proud that I belong to such a culture whose followers leave behind such a mark which is not possible to erase from one's memoirs. Right from the Vivekanand(thats my knowledge limitations, I am not sure who left a mark earlier than him) to any common Indian today, An Indian leaves a unique identity through his work, teaching and practice.

Google Chrome: The Bigger Picture

I am back to blogging and what better to restart with other than Google's new Web Browser, Google Chrome . Touted as a competitor to IE 8 and firefox, but its more than that. You can obtain a first hand information about why this browser was built from these videos posted by the Google Engineers themselves. An Open Source product with a new dedicated JavaScript engine called V8, chrome is potrayed as a browser for "running the application" and not for displaying pages. Google developers are correct when they say that Internet and related web apps have come a long way but there hasn't been a significant change in the browser. 

And be careful when Google says "browser for applications". It throws open a new realm of discussion. So now Google has a browser, web based apps for Spread sheets, Powerpoint Viewer(an option for Gmail users) and Google docs are already there. Picasaweb is a hit with its recently released new features. Blogger,  Google Maps, Google Notebook, Google Reader are a few more popular products not forgetting the search engine itself. Also an array of google products are available at Google Labs. 

So what does all these signify. Did Google want to get into the browser race as it didn't have one? I think no. It has a bigger vision. With data speeds speculated to cross across 7.67 Gb/s in near future, Google may be aiming for a complete web based environment for computers. Imagine your computer just running the "web browser"(I guess there will be a better term for that soon) and all your applications inside it. Something similar to Sun's caption, the Network is the Computer. Will you need the Operating System anymore? Hmm, a tough one. But may be Google is looking forward in that direction. How am I able to reach such conclusions? Yes, there is more than specualation. 

1.) If you carefully hear the engineers explaining the design of Chrome, you will learn that each tab has its own sand box and doesn't interfere with the other. So if one tab fails other will continue.  They are thinking applications.

2.) Google Chrome is built on a completely new JavaScript engine V8. May be this could be the foundation for a another platform on which the browser may run.

3.) Who would give a Task Manager in a browser with all the statistics that a nerd would need?(Check this option by pressing Shift + Esc)

4.) Mozilla, whose major income is from Google, its equations would definitely change if Google touts this as a browser.

5.) Google Chrome doesn't exceed the expectations of a Google product. A Google product has always been different. Chrome as a browser doesn't do that. Now change your perspective and see Chrome as a "Browser for Applications". It will exceed your expectations.

 

Having said all these, only time can verify it. If Google is able to achieve the "browser for apps" sometime soon, its going to change the perspectives in the way computers will be looked at.

Here are the list of features I liked about the Chrome

Hits

* Relatively less memory usage & seems light weight.

* in built java script inspector.

* no useless wastage of spaces.

Misses

* Bad Pop-Up blocker management.

* Cntrl + F search may sometimes skip the embedded Text Area (not in cases of gmail and blogger, Happens with the proprietry platform I work on)

* Need Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 to build for the latest windows version(Linux/Mac versions soon).

But there are no Misses if you see it as a "Browser for apps". Its an ideal stepping stone. And since Chrome is built on an open source project called Chromium , it could be an innovative and visionary development team who could do it before Google does it.

What next? Get Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and start exploring Google Chrome.

Related posts soon. Keep watching