Just saw on the mailing list that cygwin 1.7 has been released. For people who have to work on Windows, Cygwin provides an Unix like emulation on Windows.
Just in time for Xmas and the new year.
Season's greetings to all and best wishes for the new year.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Offtopic Observations
After a bit of travel to Europe, am back.
Welsh signboards make me giggle like a retard. It looks like whatever letters crop ups when a cat sits on your English keyboard.
And it is indeed news to me, that whole swathes of people in the East (Chinese especially) sign off their IM or Yahoo chat with 88. Yep, the number 88.
That is all.
Welsh signboards make me giggle like a retard. It looks like whatever letters crop ups when a cat sits on your English keyboard.
And it is indeed news to me, that whole swathes of people in the East (Chinese especially) sign off their IM or Yahoo chat with 88. Yep, the number 88.
That is all.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Churn baby, Churn
Rs 19.
That's the fee for number portability. Less than a half pack of ciggies cost. With a purported 400 million user base, it's going to be one massive headache for the operator. Much of the problem is one of their own making. Increasing the subscribers without attendant increase in cell phone towers. Dropped calls and no connectivity, with people on prepaid watching their precious talk time go down without a word being spoken, they're going to get socked like crazy by the prepaid crowd.
Everyone of my friends and colleagues are just waiting for this to get rolled out and then, they'd hit the phones and switch. I believe the salesmen who work on commission to close out on subscribers for each operator will make a killing in the first few months.
Though, I'm pretty sure, the operators will find a way to make it a disincentive to switch. One rumour I heard was that it might take as long as 4 or 6 weeks for the switch to be complete. If the US experience is considered when portability was introduced, I'd wait a good 6-8 months before switching.
If it comes to that. I'll take a lower bill and other extra minutes thrown in, anytime rather than switch. Since I have my broadband and mobile from the same operator, hopefully I have some leverage.
Hopefully.
That's the fee for number portability. Less than a half pack of ciggies cost. With a purported 400 million user base, it's going to be one massive headache for the operator. Much of the problem is one of their own making. Increasing the subscribers without attendant increase in cell phone towers. Dropped calls and no connectivity, with people on prepaid watching their precious talk time go down without a word being spoken, they're going to get socked like crazy by the prepaid crowd.
Everyone of my friends and colleagues are just waiting for this to get rolled out and then, they'd hit the phones and switch. I believe the salesmen who work on commission to close out on subscribers for each operator will make a killing in the first few months.
Though, I'm pretty sure, the operators will find a way to make it a disincentive to switch. One rumour I heard was that it might take as long as 4 or 6 weeks for the switch to be complete. If the US experience is considered when portability was introduced, I'd wait a good 6-8 months before switching.
If it comes to that. I'll take a lower bill and other extra minutes thrown in, anytime rather than switch. Since I have my broadband and mobile from the same operator, hopefully I have some leverage.
Hopefully.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Another Day, Another Language: Go: From Google
From LWN, I learnt that Google has released a new systems language because....nothing had been done in that area for some time.
So, we have Go.
After you've gone through the FAQs, which I strongly suggest you do, as it contains interesting pointers on the whys and whats of this language, one has this nagging feeling ....
Exactly what issue are they addressing and for whom? It's there in the FAQ but are YOU convinced?
So, we have Go.
After you've gone through the FAQs, which I strongly suggest you do, as it contains interesting pointers on the whys and whats of this language, one has this nagging feeling ....
Exactly what issue are they addressing and for whom? It's there in the FAQ but are YOU convinced?
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
MobileOrg 1.0 for iPhone/iPod Touch now available
I've been meaning to post this for sometime but I kept forgetting. Well, the title says it all, from the org-mode mailing list on the announce.
Read the post for the features and links for downloading it. There's even a screencast here.
Read the post for the features and links for downloading it. There's even a screencast here.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
A quick way of looking up colours in LaTeX
While making beamer presentations, I generally use dvipsnames or svgnames as an option to beamer. This allows me to use named colours instead of giving some RGB numbers to get the colour I want.
Well, sort of.
I mean you still have to figure out what HoneyDew looks like. I used to google it up and check how the colours actually looked. Now, I've got a simpler way to do it. Just do, M-x list-colors-display in Emacs and it shows about the same list as that of svgnam.def with the visual colours. Saves you a few keystrokes and clickies.
You of course, are using Emacs and AucTeX aren't you? :-)
Well, sort of.
I mean you still have to figure out what HoneyDew looks like. I used to google it up and check how the colours actually looked. Now, I've got a simpler way to do it. Just do, M-x list-colors-display in Emacs and it shows about the same list as that of svgnam.def with the visual colours. Saves you a few keystrokes and clickies.
You of course, are using Emacs and AucTeX aren't you? :-)
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Carnatic Music Internet Radio/streaming stations?
If anyone knows of a working internet radio station focused on Carnatic Music, could you let me know of them in the comments? My searches have lead to me only one and the rest seems to be pretty dead.
And the one I found is pretty simple to use too, I have to just plug the url into Windows Media Player and it works.
And the one I found is pretty simple to use too, I have to just plug the url into Windows Media Player and it works.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
JTikZ: A Java library that produces TikZ code
From an email to the pgf mailing list, Evan Sultanik has written a Java Library to create TikZ code. If you code in Java, then it might be useful even if the code is in early stages of development. The library can be found here.
Instructions on using the Library can be found in the email.
Instructions on using the Library can be found in the email.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Using Emacs Regular Expression Builder
Sometimes it's worth using or getting help on the work you're trying to do. For example, in the Unix world, regular expressions are powerful tools to match,print, find or delete text strings. While mostly the regular expressions achieve what we want, it might be good to get some help in identifying whether the regex is doing what we intend it to do.
In Emacs, there is such a feature called re-builder, invoked as M-x re-builder. As you type the regular expression in the minibuffer like prompt within the double quotes, the text buffer gets highlighted with the current regex that has been typed so far. As you keep modifying the regex, the buffer too is highlighted dynamically on what that regex will match. Once you're satisfied with the regex C-c C-w will copy it to the kill ring and use it in, say C-M % which is generally bound to query-replace-regexp.
The following screenshot shows the matched text and the regex entered. I was trying to delete off everything after the 2nd semicolon.
The highlighted portion is due to the regex shown below
Give it a shot. It saves you a lot of time figuring out the correct regex.
In Emacs, there is such a feature called re-builder, invoked as M-x re-builder. As you type the regular expression in the minibuffer like prompt within the double quotes, the text buffer gets highlighted with the current regex that has been typed so far. As you keep modifying the regex, the buffer too is highlighted dynamically on what that regex will match. Once you're satisfied with the regex C-c C-w will copy it to the kill ring and use it in, say C-M % which is generally bound to query-replace-regexp.
The following screenshot shows the matched text and the regex entered. I was trying to delete off everything after the 2nd semicolon.
The highlighted portion is due to the regex shown below
Give it a shot. It saves you a lot of time figuring out the correct regex.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Gnuplot tricks blog
If you've done any kind of plotting on the Unix side, you probably would have heard of gnuplot. I've been using it for years on and off and all my learning has been to cadge off the demo scripts on the home page. Those are excellent of and by themselves. To complement that, I saw a post on the gnuplot newsgroup about a blog http://gnuplot-tricks.blogspot.com/ by Zoltán. As mentioned in the post, he also maintains the same examples at this site.
I must say, it is an excellent blog on using gnuplot and I confess, that it does make me want to learn gnuplot to the extent the blog author has done.
Go take a look for the fantastic quality of the graphs.
I must say, it is an excellent blog on using gnuplot and I confess, that it does make me want to learn gnuplot to the extent the blog author has done.
Go take a look for the fantastic quality of the graphs.
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