Archive for June, 2009

Beginning the ATmega8

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

ATmega8The other day, I decided it was time enough that I loitered around, doing nothing to improve my knowledge or skills at what I am supposed to be good at, Electronics. Oh, well, thats what the world supposes you to be, right ? You know, after getting a B.Tech degree in Electronics, you should at the very least be able to implement a comparator properly. I can, and I have. But thats not the point. I’ve done nothing related to electronics after I completed my degree. So, on the day of WordPress disaster, I bought all the components required to make my perfect dream.

Read the full content

A Day without WordPress

Sunday, June 21st, 2009

Blank DocumentSometimes the most unfortunate of the events fall upon at the most ill deserved of the times. Frustrated with the waiting, I set out on a maiden voyage to brush up my skills as an Electronics Engineer and pick up quite a few new things along the way. Except for the fact that I had to wait at Kerala Electronics, Trichur for almost a full hour to buy the components during which time, I heard enough of the old Trichur slang, the purchase was fruitful. I even got to spend some quality time over a juice of fresh pineapple with an old, close friend of mine.

Read the full content

Packing and Unpacking in Perl

Friday, June 19th, 2009

This post is more to serve as a reminder to myself. Perl has a handy keyword called pack which helps to store a variable in the template specified. pack thus takes two arguments. The first argument is the template and the second argument is the string to be packed according to the template.

Read the full content

How Rowling killed Harry

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

I was a great fan of Harry Potter once it came out, way back in 1997. I was mesmerized by the style of writing, the depth of characters and subtle hints of back stories that J. K. Rowling provided in each of her books. It was like a jigsaw puzzle. I devoured each books on the day they came out.

Read the full content

The Palm Gamble

Sunday, June 14th, 2009

What does it take to go up against something that has a solid market, a fanatic following and a brilliant strategist? An excellent foresight and the ability to make the possible out of the impossible. Who else would dare to take on something like the iPhone, that literally marked the era of touch-phones? None other than Jon Rubinstein, CEO, Palm Inc.Known better as the “guy who invented iPod”, Rubinstein worked as the Senior Vice President of Apple’s iPod Division till 2006.

Read the full content

Bash YouTube Downloader

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

Here is a simple bash script to download YouTube Videos in mp4 via command line.

Read the full content

IP from Command Line

Friday, June 5th, 2009

This is a quick post. I was wondering how to get my IP Address without going to popular sites. I came up with this bash script

Read the full content

Making twitter useful

Friday, June 5th, 2009

Twitter, the microblogging service, has taken over its users like a rage. Apart from being the “sms of the internet”, one can find awesome and extremely useful applications for twitter once you let go the reins of creativity. I don’t want to ramble out on twitter, the service, but thought of some interesting uses for twitter. Here are they.

Read the full content

The Clash of the Titans

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

No, I’m not going to review bing or write a bing vs. Google article.There are numerous articles and even sites doing it justice. Google is an established player in the search business, with a 64% share in the market. Google grew out of search and has always tried its best for the betterment of the search algorithms involved and the results produced. Microsoft, on the other hand had been bleeding market share over its products to Google for a long time. Ever since Google began releasing its free resources to the general public, starting with gmail, the war had begun. And it was almost always a one sided win, with Google generally taking advantage of its famed simplicity and efficiency combined with funny and humerous ways of introducing products.

Microsoft finally seems to have caught up on what it was lacking a long time. It had atlast begun to listen to its users. Eversince the much hyped Microsoft Windows Vista failed to make any noise, Microsoft have been careful of its products and the general market. Majority of the products that the evil from Redmond had been releasing ever since are quality products, reminiscent of the times that Micro-soft was formed. The new Internet Explorer, Office Suite and the unexpected free software, Windows Live Writer and above all, the latest Windows, Windows 7 have garnered hugely positive reviews and recommendations.


Read the full content

Mastering those awks, greps and seds

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

What makes a GNU/Linux system infinitely useful and productive than a Windows system ? I would say, it is the countless utility programs available as part of the GNU Program. These nifty little demons are both a blessing and curse. A blessing in the sense that, almost all your text processing capabilities are handled smoothly and efficiently by these tools. On the other hand, knowing very little about one tool also has its disadvantages.

Read the full content