Here's a screenshot from a minesweeper session when I think I got pretty lucky.
















And this one is where I was stuck the longest (there were others too) but I couldn't make an intelligent guess about this one! Can you? Give it a shot. Which cell would you have clicked next?

My first long car drive

Yesterday I rented a car for the first time in the USA. Apart from other things, which i will post later, I drove for about 28 miles on my own, and that too without a GPS system. I noted the route, to and back from Lenox Mall, and started. All was fine until I reached Lenox Mall; I did shopping and then wanted to buys some toys from ToysRus. And almost got lost. Here's the route that I took from my hotel, and how I drifted for about 4 miles and then got back on track!

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=16534820994343847575,33.849209,-84.363778%3B17323929787842935995,33.848564,-84.364071%3B7988691526067027193,33.848297,-84.364844%3B14734150199019791023,33.852228,-84.364254%3B17489480718304465832,33.852040,-84.369640%3B17116872190053829843,33.837085,-84.359617%3B3549952907327456441,33.825060,-84.354220%3B7168556715634942129,33.850180,-84.361690%3B9622394649371336564,33.849277,-84.371469%3B4165729506340866430,33.848790,-84.373880%3B3233069145399831493,33.831355,-84.335948%3B4749092578127957501,33.836400,-84.325380%3B7313706033106225593,33.839506,-84.312801%3B12877923977202128852,33.790552,-84.302914&saddr=2183+N+Decatur+Rd,+Decatur,+GA+30033&daddr=Peachtree+Rd+NE+%4033.849209,+-84.363778+to:Unknown+road+%4033.848564,+-84.364071+to:Unknown+road+%4033.848297,+-84.364844+to:Lenox+Rd+NE+%4033.852228,+-84.364254+to:Lenox+Rd+NE+%4033.852040,+-84.369640+to:GA-400+S+%4033.837085,+-84.359617+to:Buford+Hwy+NE+%4033.825060,+-84.354220+to:Lenox+Rd+NE+%4033.850180,+-84.361690+to:Tower+Pl+Dr+NE+%4033.849277,+-84.371469+to:Lenox+Rd+NE+%4033.848790,+-84.373880+to:Unknown+road+%4033.831355,+-84.335948+to:I-85+N+%4033.836400,+-84.325380+to:Unknown+road+%4033.839506,+-84.312801+to:33.82048,-84.304018+to:N+Decatur+Rd+%4033.790552,+-84.302914&mra=dpe&mrcr=0&mrsp=14&sz=15&via=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14&sll=33.81802,-84.301057&sspn=0.018291,0.037594&ie=UTF8&ll=33.798657,-84.317493&spn=0.018295,0.037594&z=15

I finally managed to get to ToysRus and then, after losing my way somehow managed got back to my hotel too; not by the exact route that I had noted and wanted to take.

Single Greatest Nation On EARTH that GOD has ever given to man!

I am watching 'Hannity's America: The Greatest Nation On EARTH' (with the exact capitalization) on FOX News. I have no objections, and in fact I agree, to most of the claims Americans make.

I have very good Indian friends living in America, who favour living here than in the the motherland India, and I see no wrong in that. It's their personal choice, and I respect their individuality, especially when the decisions were made on rational reasoning.

I had heard of the lows that FOX News has touched; just yesterday I heard a guy on Comedy Central who said 'If it's on FOX, you know it's not true'. But the thing that annoyed me most about this program on Fox is that this dick-head, inconsiderate nincompoop makes the claim that America is 'Greatest Nation On EARTH that GOD has ever given to man'! You STUPID MORON god did not create America! It was your ancestors, your leaders who created this country. God has nothing to do with this. Had God been involved or favouring your country, there would never have been a 9-11, or Oklahoma bombing or any such thing.

How can a rational person in his right mind associate a country's success to God!!?? It is the America's ability to keep it's population down (in control), and it's economy in shape, so much so that it affects almost the whole world's economies.

He interviewed two people, Fareed Zakaria, from Newsweek, and Newt Gingrich, FOX News contributor. If the show is ever aired again, you can clearly see how many times Zakaria's interview is snipped in between, and his lines most of the times are cut midway. Newt does make sensible statements, and his lines are not trimmed.

I respect America, but do not undermine the other countries, and for god's sake do not think God made or favours America! This guy is not ready to even accept the comments by Zakaria that other countries are rising, and that America should be even considering them equals.

Almost all the Americans I have met during my last 4 visits here have have a better understanding of other countries than this Hannity guy. They appreciate and respect other countries. That's all that Zakaria put forward and this dickhead wasn't ready to even accept that the world is changing, other countries are improving and that America should start learning to live in a world where other countries are empowered too.

I have not much more to say than that if that guy was in front of me, and if it were allowed, I would have slapped him.

DO NOT LISTEN TO FOX NEWS.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that now I consider FOX on the levels of 'AAJ TAK', an Indian news channel. Both these channels air such programs that I have no doubt that either they are stupid, or trying to stupidify us. (yes, I beat G.W.B at stupification)

ts

Just got an idea. We should have a utility that prepends a timestamp to every line that is fed to it. This can be used like the nl utility which numbers each line that is fed to it.

This utility can used to prepend timestamps to the log lines generated by a program. Like so:

my_log_generating_script | ts > log_file

[UPDATE:26 May 08] : I have posted a solution here: http://gurjeet-tech.blogspot.com/2008/05/ts-timestampimg-script.html

RNFs branched

Hi there,

It has been long-time-no-post thing with me. Well that was partially because I was a bit too busy with customer assignments, and partially because the blog became too bloated from my past experiments with template modifications, and playing with Google Search and Google Ads.

One good thing that happened as a result of those experiments with the blog template is that now my blog completely spans the browser's display area, rather than a thin vertical strip which looks too odd on wide screens, and is just a waste of screen space (btw, you can add stuff to the right hand side of your 'thin-strip' blog but not to the right hand side; too crippling I'd say).

Well, I don't remember how I made 'Blogger' display my blog in full width (remember short-of-RAM problem I mentioned in first post!), I'll try to figure it out and post here as well as apply that to my other blogs.

Now comes the news: I am writing this one to inform you that I have officially split my brain! Well, not exactly :) , but I have created another blog to post my structured thoughts on technology. It is hosted at: http://gurjeet-tech.blogspot.com/ , and it is called Tech-Me. More in that blog.

This RNFs blog will continue, but will be dedicated to truly RNFs, which are for my records only and which others may not be too inclined to read.

Hope to post more frequently here.

PS: Here's the definition of RNF:

RNF stands for Random Neuron Firing; that is activity in your head that is just random, and wasn't caused as a reaction to something else. I have too many of these, sometimes philosophical, sometimes technical.

google.5

That's the name of my folder where I keep the screenshots of the browser whenever I see that Google took more than half a second (0.5) to get the results. The screenshots are put here in the chronological order. Also, if you care, and are interested, the filename of the screenshots show the date and time when it was taken; the filename format is google.<year><month><day><hour><minute>.<100thOfASecond>.jpg

Enjoy the rare times when Google sucked at the performance :)


Update: If you wish to see these photos individually, here's the link to the album:
http://picasaweb.google.com/singh.gurjeet/Google5

Sun buys MySQL....

Well, the news is pretty old now. Everyone has had his say on the deal: How its a great deal for both the parties involved, for the competitors, and even MySQL's competitors (read my employer, EnterpriseDB (though we cater to a different market share)).

But I came across this interesting take on the deal. How Oracle might have orchestrated this deal. The claims are unsubstantiated, a good read nonetheless:

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/john-dvoraks-second-opinion-sun-mysql/story.aspx?guid=%7B88606B4A-A4AF-46FC-9C80-6B186A622456%7D&dist=hplatest

They can now track what you are thinking

It has been a research subject for many years at many places... controlling objects/actions with just your thought.

This recent one demonstrates how they have managed to track a monkey's brain activity, while he was walking, to make a robot walk in the same manner (across the globe; as if that mattered!)

Interesting read.

http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticle.jhtml?articleID=205801020

IMified test blog

Just testing IMified to create blogs... Lets see how this turns up... Her we go..

Update: It wasn't all that fun... and it didn't feel very intuitive. You'd want to come back to your blog to review your post anyway! good tool though, if you need it, that is.

Mount USB drives in Write Protect (read only) mode

Under the the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control

Create a new key called StorageDevicePolicies. In that key create a new DWORD value called WriteProtect and set it to 1.

This is known to work under Windows XP SP2, though you can try it on your other varioations of Windows.

Show difference between two Microsoft Word documents

So, you want to compare two versions of a doc (probably one circulated by you, and the other you received revised by somebody). Here's how to get it done:

1) Open the original document.
2) Go to menu 'Tools' > 'Compare and Merge Documents'
3) In the 'Open' dialog, point to the newer version of the document, and click open.
4) And you are done.

MS Word will show you the changes (like something new inserted, deleted, etc) with appropriate coloring.