Wow..what a life!!!

I just bagged myself a job in the .net domain... I landed a job in a company called Asclepius (name of the greek god of medicine) consulting. And I must say I was very overwhelmed by the work environment. Everyones very friendly, and people dont make a fuss of everything. This actually goes against conventional corporate culture where you are just a sheep in the crowd, and thus, no one knows you. When you enter a big company, chances are you would be oblivious as to what to do, or whom to ask...

That is just not the case with Asclepius. The timings are very flexible, and all the bosses(YES, there are three founders) are asking is for me to do my job and go home. Currently, the companies is expanding rigorously, so theres no doubt about job guarantee and some such thing. The bosses said they wanted me to be with the company for atleast 2 years. There is no concept of control at all in the company. All in all, Im very happy that the tech lead knows my name and is happy everytime I speak...

What more would you ask in a company when its your first job?

Alternatives to resource hungry programs

Who better at a job, to use a tool, than a man who created the tool right? WRONG! I have seen many cases of this.

>First off, is Adobe's acrobat reader. The resource hungry proggie does little to enhance readability, and takes long times to load images within a PDF file. Moreover, the reader doesnt even provide a PDF "document printer", that other open source proggies provide, which enable users to "print" into PDF files from any other format. I stumbled on a software called "Foxit Reader". Better than Acrobat Id say...

>This isnt an isolated case. I have found OpenOffice .org to be much more flexible than MS office, simply because it is free, and platform independent. So, I dont have to use an emulator on a virtual machine within my linux box to get the same environment.

>Adobes' Photoshop finds a worthy alternative in Gimp, which comes bundled with most Linux distros these days. Its free, as in freedom :) in addition to being very fast, and responsive..


So, tell me brothers and sisters of cyberspace, would you go about using a proggie that hogs up all of your memory, and is not free, as opposed to open source, FREE alternatives that are both fast, and compatible with their paid rivals' file formats?

Googles Chrome

Chrome? Nice nomencleature for a sub-standard browser Id say. What do you want in a browser? Not a funky GUI, not a browser integrated with an advertising campaign, to make the parent company richer by a million dollars, and certainly not a DOM inspector! Googles chrome is less of a browser and more of an advertising campaign if you ask me! It has Googles search engine built-in, and you get to search and type in URLs in the same bar, but whats the use? Its like re-inventing the wheel... Chrome doesnt have what firefox and IE or even Opera for that matter, havent had yet.. Google claims its faster than all other browsers, and even goes onto give a "task manager" option which shows the memory consumption, possibly per tab of both Chrome, and all other browsers that are open. But I could SWEAR that the chrome was a lot slower than Opera. Im not an opera fanatic or something like that, but yeah, Opera is simply THE BEST window to the world wide web around. It uses full bandwidth when browsing, and even has a built in download manager, and adding to this, is its bit torrent protocol support ! Opera even has an option to pause downloads, even though, rarely, the downloads dont resume properly, but a decent attempt has been made! Now, what would you equate Chrome to? Show of hands kids?? "JUNK".. very good!!

Just got myself a job in the Java/J2EE, AJAX domain!

I am elated that I found a job in a company called kingslake. Its based out of Sri Lanka and is looking for a foothold in India. It has major clients in Malaysiya and Singapore...

The US recession is nothing but hypothetical in a sense that not all software firms have run out of business, and not everyone is asking their employees to leave. I was appaled at the fact that Sapient didnt even ask us to go in for training, as it was running out of projects. And to think, I hadnt been recruited through some walk in interview. I had been recruited on campus. I didnt go to them, they came to me. This further testifies the appaling conditions of jobs in India, especially jobs in the software domain. BPO s have been the major winners in this race because a majority of people who find it hard to get into a software firm would get into the BPO jobs. Thanks a lot America!

My base salary might not be THAT good, but I have some hopes pinned on the future. I enjoy working with AJAX and this will provide me with an excellent opportunity to work with it, adding some weightage to my resume/ CV.

Time Scale theory: Are software companies producing obselete software?

First of all, I would like to thank IOLO for making a wonderful software (System Mechanic). But with new versions getting released everyday you have GOT to ask yourself. Is the software you're buying worth the money? Sure, you get future upgrades for free. Im not denying that. But what is it about the future upgrades that makes you WANT to buy the software so much? Possibilities:

> Better user interfaces

> Better functionality

> Faster (?) than previous versions

> Supposed "overall" upgrades

Personally, I just stick to the first version of any software I use (that is barring windows of course!). Similarly, I was very impressed with System Mechanic 6.0 when it first came out. Even though IOLO came out with System Mechanic 7.0 and version 8 is on the docks, I still love the UI in System Mechanic 6.0 . Why? Due to the simple fact that I found this software worthwhile, unlike its
successors. This isnt just the case of IOLO and System Mechanic. Its the same with Nero 8. The software is jam packed with features that I dont use, and these end up hogging memory, installing shell extensions that I dont use, and in turn, I have to labor hard to uninstall these to keep my installations to the bare minimum. So, Why not just stick to the previous versions?This goes for each and every software I have used.
There is a theory I recently made up. Its called the "Time Scale Theory".It goes something like this:

"There is a peak in every software company's production cycle. At this peak, the software company has built up enough reputation to sell its most endorsed product in quantities of millions. It makes a lot of money and repute. After this peak time is over, the company merely survives on its earlier reputation. Any software produced henceforth will be completely obselete and will add features to make users' experiences worse than the previous versions."

The same thing goes for IOLO(System Mechanic 6.0), MicroSoft(Windows XP-Current, excluding windows Vista), IBM(The peak time seems to be neverending!, but it will end nonetheless!), Google(In its peak right now).

Google? Hell NO!!!

I am sick and tired of using Google as my search engine. If you use it at all, I suggest you check out the others available on the net. Many of these are free services which will provide you with higher quality search results.

General
Alexa Internet
Ask.com (formerly Ask Jeeves)
Baidu (Chinese)
Cuil
Exalead (French)
Google
Live Search (formerly MSN Search)
Sogou (Chinese)
Sohu (Chinese)
Wikia Search
Yahoo! Search

Geographical limited scope
Accoona, China/US
Alleba, Philippines
Ansearch, Australia/US/UK/NZ
Araby, Middle East
Baidu, China
Daum, Korea
Guruji.com, India
Goo (search engine), Japan
Leit.is, Iceland
Miner.hu, Hungary
Najdi.si, Slovenia
Naver, Korea
Onkosh, Middle East
Rambler, Russia
Rediff, India
SAPO, Portugal
Search.ch, Switzerland
Sesam, Norway, Sweden
Walla!, Israel
Yandex, Russia
ZipLocal, Canada/US

Accountancy
IFACnet

Business
Business.com
Nexis (Lexis Nexis)
Thomasnet (United States)

Enterprise
See also: Enterprise search
AskMeNow: S3 - Semantic Search Solution
Dieselpoint: Search & Navigation
dtSearch: dtSearch Engine(SDK), dtSearch Web
Endeca: Information Access Platform
Exalead: exalead one:enterprise
Expert System S.p.A.: Cogito
Fast Search & Transfer: Enterprise Search Platform (ESP), RetrievalWare (formerly Convera)
Funnelback: Funnelback Search
ISYS Search Software: ISYS:web, ISYS:sdk
Microsoft: SharePoint Search Services
Northern Light
Open Text: Hummingbird Search Server, Livelink Search
Oracle Corporation: Secure Enterprise Search 10g
SAP: TREX
TeraText: TeraText Suite
Vivisimo: Vivisimo Clustering Engine
ZyLAB Technologies: ZyIMAGE Information Access Platform

Job
Main articles: Job search engine and Employment website
See also: Category:Job search engines
Bixee.com (India)
CareerBuilder.com (USA)
Craigslist (by city)
Eluta.ca (Canada)
Hotjobs.com (USA)
Incruit (Korea)
Indeed.com (USA)
Monster.com (USA)
Recruit.net (International)
SimplyHired.com (USA)
TheLadders.com (USA)

Legal
WestLaw
Lexis (Lexis Nexis)
Quicklaw

Medical
Bioinformatic Harvester
Entrez (includes Pubmed)
EB-eye EBI's Search Engine EMBL-EBI's Search engine
GenieKnows
GoPubMed (knowledge-based: GO - GeneOntology and MeSH - Medical Subject Headings)
Healia
Searchmedica
WebMD
PubGene
Nextbio (Life Science Search Engine)

News
Daylife
MagPortal
Newslookup
Nexis (Lexis Nexis)
Topix.net
Yahoo! News

People
PeekYou
Ex.plode.us
InfoSpace
Spock (website)
Spokeo
Wink
Zabasearch.com
ZoomInfo

Real property
Fizber.com
Home.co.uk
HotPads.com
Properazzi
Rightmove
Zillow.com

Video Games
GenieKnows
Wazap

By information type

Search engines dedicated to a specific kind of information

Forum
Omgili

Blog
Amatomu
Bloglines
BlogScope
IceRocket
Sphere
Technorati

Multimedia
blinkx
FindSounds
Picsearch
Podscope
SeeqPod
Veveo
YouTube
Pixsta

Source code
JExamples
Koders
Krugle

BitTorrent
These search engines work across the BitTorrent protocol.
Btjunkie
Demonoid
FlixFlux
Isohunt
Mininova
The Pirate Bay
TorrentSpy

Email
Nicado
TEK

Maps
Géoportail
MapQuest
Live Search Maps
Yahoo! Maps

Price
Kelkoo
MSN Shopping
MySimon
PriceGrabber
PriceRunner
Shopping.com
ShopWiki
Shopzilla (also operates Bizrate)
TheFind.com

Question and answer
Answers.com
AskMeNow
BrainBoost
eHow
hakia
Lexxe
Lycos iQ
Powerset
Live Search QnA
Uclue
Yahoo! Answers

By model
Open source search engines
DataparkSearch
Egothor
Gonzui
Grub
Ht://dig
Isearch
Lucene
Lemur Toolkit & Indri Search Engine
mnoGoSearch
Namazu
Nutch
OpenFTS
Sciencenet (for scientific knowledge, based on YaCy technology)
Sphinx
SWISH-E
Terrier Search Engine
Wikia Search
Xapian
YaCy
Zettair

Social search engines
ChaCha Search
Eurekster
Mahalo.com
Rollyo
Trexy
Wink provides web search by analyzing user contributions such as bookmarks and feedback

Metasearch engines
Brainboost
ChunkIt!
Clusty
Dogpile
Excite
HotBot
Info.com
Ixquick
Kayak
Mamma
Metacrawler
MetaLib
Mobissimo
Myriad Search
SideStep
Turbo10
WebCrawler

Visual search engines
ChunkIt!
Grokker
Kartoo
Pixsta
PubGene

Based on

Google
AOL Search
CompuServe Search
MySpace Search
Netscape
Ripple

Yahoo!
AltaVista
AlltheWeb
GoodSearch
Rectifi

Live Search
A9.com
Tafiti
Ms. Dewey

Ask.com
Hakia (semantic search)
iWon
Lycos

Defunct search engines
BRS/Search (now OpenText Livelink ECM Discovery Server)
Google Answers
Infoseek
Inktomi
Lotus Magellan
Overture.com (formerly GoTo.com, now Yahoo! Search Marketing)
PubSub
Singingfish
Teoma
WiseNut
World Wide Web Worm
Excite (now a metasearch)
WebCrawler (now a metasearch)


And you say you dont have a choice when it comes to GOOGLE?? WAKE UP!!!

Alt3rn4t|v3 s comment on Bux is scam post

I got a mail from blogger telling me that someone left me a comment on this post. I came to check it out, and found this, and the reference was with respect to a post I made earlier.
This post has "Alt3rn4t|v3"s comments in quotes and my comments in ">>>>"...Lets answer some questions.

"Hi.

Before I start, let me be clear on something - although I'm a staff at Bux.to, it doesn't stop me from being objective."

>>>>"Well ofcourse it doesnt...you, unlike the rest of us, are paid to scam others"

"As both a staff and a normal member, I do not condone the excessive waiting times nor the irresponsibility displayed now and then, but there's nothing I can do about it."

>>>>How can a staff be a normal member? Im willing to ignore that fact...for now. Of course you, being a bux.to staff member cant do "anything" about it. Who else were you expecting to make a change?...Pink Panther? Oh, did I forget?? BUX pays its employees to do NOTHING about complaints...We cant blame you,you poor thing.

"Having said that, I can only say that your post is filled with biased dejectiveness and dosen't serve as an objective (or even correct) understanding of your own situation."

>>>>"biased dejectiveness" ? YES, 'cause I had half the people I know joined Bux.to and they'r probably cursing me thinking I scammed them. Pardon me, but we are all simple minded citizens, who fail to understand how bux.to or any other company can refuse to pay, when we havent use autoclickers or used our technical mindset to scam them! (I run a technology blog afterall, and Im more than certain, I could up my earnings if I even tried!)

You make accusations like "though I cant imagine what that could be, other than PayPal refusing to support scam sites!", which is not true. Since you seem to have checked the forums before, you should probably do some searching before posting. That's the rule of the thumb for a blogger.

>>>>Yes, Paypal DID refuse to support scam sites and Pay per clickers such as BUX! Being a staff member YOU of all people should know that! Besides I just think you're playing naive though I cant think of a better explanation of what you have said. Thanks for the advise BUB!! But I think I have scanned the forums for possible explanations, and Im much more thorough with the forums than some admins....EXACTLY the reason I run a BLOG!!! DUH!!!

Now tell me, when was - "Next, they tell me they have a 'MAJOR' problem with the sites' script" - said?

>>>>The question is "When was it NOT said!!!". I hear that they were changing their scripts 3 times in a row over the span of a month. Their website went down, and some of the clickers found that their balances had MYSTERIOUSLY reduced to nothing..It doesnt take einstein to put 2 and 2 together.

"they even have a calculator for that, for crying out loud!!!" - For crying out loud, Bux.to doesn't have a calculator. Your post was made in late July. We abandoned the "calculator" (which wasn't even official in the first place) MONTHS ago.

>>>>IF you have visited the forums atleast once, you will find the admins "recommending" the calculator even TODAY!! This generally happens when some non-premium member asks when he's gonna get paid, and loads of "have patience" posts later.

"On top of that, they post fake success stories every now and then." is probably one of the worst accusations you made, though.

Oh? Then why would you be responding if I faked the fact that you were faking fake posts? :)

Don't be surprised if they manage to find this post that you made, see the fake accusations that you've made about them and use their "freedom to remove you at the outset of any circumstance" clause to deny you your payment. You don't have any reason to call Bux.to a scam then, because by then, it's self-pwn - no one's fault but yours.

>>>>This is exactly why I wrote this post...only one word describes it best....."hippocracy" !

To "Alt3rn4t|v3"...

> You're handle is lame.

> You stink.

> insert derogatory term here: _______________________

> Thank you as always for a patient read.

Opera 9 rocks!

I have been using Opera 9 since my last windows installation, and I must say, Im very impressed.Here are the features and why I liked them :

> The toolbar is better than menus in most browsers.

> Integrated email reader : You get to compose mail and send it, or read other mail without waiting for minutes to login to your inbox. This comes as a boon to many of us Gmail users, as it takes a long time to login. Whats more? You can specify multiple mail accounts to draw your mail from, all within your browser. You will be instantly alerted to any mail in your inbox.

> Opera uses full bandwidth : I have a dial-up connection. Surfing the web was a pain until opera came by. Unlike Internet Explorer, Opera uses my full bandwidth, and thus makes surfing a breeze.

> Built in bit torrent client, download accelerator : Opera can handle downloads and file transfers with ease. whats more? Forget your port forwarding worries if Utorrent conflicts with your firewall, cause opera identifies itself as a browser and thus doesnt get blocked.

> Lots of widgets to choose from.

> Write notes within your browser and set times to get alerted!

> And now, the greatest advantage of all : ITS FREE!!!

Get it here http://opera.com

Are older softwares better than newer ones?

with new versions of photoshop and flash coming out every 2 months, you have got to ask yourself, "Are the newer versions worth my money? Do I really need the newer versions when I have got used to the older ones?".

I recently switched back to photoshop 7 and I must say I have been very efficient with it.I found myself at home with photoshop with 7. The UI is simple and intuitive, and it doesnt take a genius to make out what the "accented edges" filter does.

I have always been a critic of new software, and have always advocated the older ones. Photoshop 7 continues to be the most productive tool in Adobes galleria, as I am told. This goes for windows XP too! How many times have you thought "Man, it really sucks that vista is running so slow on my 2 week old PC" ?

What is the need for you to use newer software when you're god darned efficient with the previous one?

Western Digitals 500GB external drive

I just brought a new external hard drive(Western Digitals 500GB external drive),and I must say, Im quite impressed! The drive doesnt make a noise, the transfer speeds are neat, and to top all that, its got a shiny blue LED lighting to show when the drive is working and when its not.

I think the external hard disk is an internal hard disk in a USB casing, or so it seems. I could be wrong. The coolant does its job flawlessly. There was barely any heat after 4 hours of data transfer and over 148 GB was downloaded into the drive. That makes it 37 GB per hour! Quite impressive!

Im completely impressed with the drives functioning, and would gladly recommend it to all my friends in need of a drive space. It provides 500 GB of space. And, believe me, its not as small as it sounds. You'll start running out of things to fill it with, but its only a matter of time before I get that filled up too.

WWW = World Wide Wait?

I have been working with the internet for a few years now..maybe 6 years or so. In all these years, I have seen the internet evolve from the equivalent of a fish to the equivalent of a whale in terms of speed and reliability. These days, the speeds that computers households get are in the average of 2-3 Mbps worldwide.

But in all the hurry to increase the speeds are we forgetting some of the basic concepts which were the founding principle of the internet?

The internet was born out of necessity. The US military was the first organized network. But why do we find people still connecting to the internet through 56k modems?why doesnt everyone have broadband? Even though broadband is affordable these days, there are millions who are still using dial up connections. I would say this is mainly due to corporate incompetence.

The "big" companies such as AT&T want to make profits by giving the customers nothing but crappy speeds. Until and unless there is a revolution in the way companies think, the equivalent of a 56k modem will always be around.

And, to add to all this, the service providers have started providing internet connectivity to mobile systems, whose speeds are even more pathetic. Suddenly, there seems to be a big leap of faith towards the mobile computing platform.

Internet downloads remain pretty much a dream to people such as myself. It takes a lot of time to download even an Mb...

Bangalore bomb blasts

I would like to take a moment off my busy schedule of writing about technology and condemn the blasts in bangalore, India. I am a resident of bangalore, and I must say, this day shall go down as one of the darkest days in bangalores glorious history.

Over the years, Bangalore has been giving entrepreneurs and politicians major boosts in terms of infrastructure. IT industries flourished in what was once a deserted and barren city. I am put up in the outskirts of the city right now. But this fateful day, I happened to commute through 4 of the 6 blast sites. And I must say, the scene was horrible. I wanted to play hero, and go help with some of the rescue work. But the cops wouldnt let me, nor the others who wanted to help. They were busy chasing off people.

I saw a city weep today. I stopped at a restaurant on my way home, and I heard an old timer say, "These terrorists wont let us live in peace". How true. What a statement. This city, which has inspired millions upon millions to take up careers in the IT industry has suffered a fatal blow, in that, all these days, one could roam around in Bangalore like a free bird. This will no longer be so.

North India was the only place where the terrorists let their kind flourish. Such barbarism, and malice was unknown to us South Indians. Yet, terrorists have spread their fatal roots in Bangalore, and if you ask me, it will take all our efforts to weed it out.

Ive seen this city smile.Ive seen it weep. Ive walked with gods, and wept with angels. Rock on Bangalore city.

Social bookmarking in opera: A dream?

Hey guys.I use StumbleUpon for bookmarking my sites, and must say that the service and the quality of sites bookmarked have been very good. Except for one thing- There are no social bookmarking toolbars available for opera 9.5 !

Now, I know Opera might be a little low on plugins unlike your Firefox, but still, I felt that the opera developers left out this major chunk of my internet experience!

I have been told that social bookmarking sites take up almost 2% of the internets total traffic. At first glance, 2% is not such a big deal. But then, do you realise how many websites and URLs this may run into. Heck, this may run into billions for all I know!

So, a question to all you opera developers out there: Why no support for plugins?

And a warning to all you social bookmarking addicts out there: This is just not the right time to switch to opera!

Update: There is one method by which you can do this in opera. Goto OperaStumbler.com

Is Bux.to scam? well of course it is!!

What else were you expecting from a site which runs in a foreign country, doesnt respond to its own ticket system, AND ignores users' grieviences??

Yes, I was a kid with dollar signs flashing in my eyes. Not until BUX.to burst my bubble. Now, I have around 194 dollars in my BUX.to account. All for what? What use is money that you cant withdraw?

First I was told that they had a major problem with PayPal (though I cant imagine what that could be, other than PayPal refusing to support scam sites!). Thus, I got myself an AlertPay account. Now, the site wont let me login! Next, they tell me they have a "MAJOR" problem with the sites' script (can't Imagine what that would be!!), and thus ALL payments are delayed! Recently they tell us, they're gonna clear it all within 4 WEEKS. Are these people kidding me??!!

On top of that, my requested amount of $10 hasn't yet arrived(after 4 months)! The moderators at the forum said that the payments would arrive for non-premium members after 2 months, and they even have a calculator for that, for crying out loud!!!

On top of that, they post fake success stories every now and then. Old members and new apply the theory stated below, and they keep clicking, thus making HUGE profits for the people at BUX.to.

We are the sort of people that say "Aw look honey, there are mangy looking aliens in the front yard. Hope they're here for the neighbors!!Lets all pray they really are here for the neighbors!". This continues until the aliens themselves catch you by the throat and then you try to warn your neighbors who are gonna say the same thing. So, Im telling you now, stay away from this site! Its a total scam!

What a novel way to run a scam! On top of all this, the moderators at the forum, have the audacity to tell me that no lawsuit can reach them because they're in another country.

SCREW YOU BUX!!

Common Firefox myths

Firefox is faster than IE:
WRONG!! Firefox is in fact slower than IE. The fastest browser in loading and in performance is Opera 9.5 !

Firefox is a non-profit organisation:

WRONG!! Firefox has a tie in with google refferals. Thats why you see so many websites supporting firefox.

Firefox's plugins dont slow my pc :

WRONG!! Firefox slows down with the first plugin you install. Overall, for a simple HTML page, it consumes about 20 MB of memory as opposed to 15 by IE and just over 7 MB by Opera!!

Firefox is very safe:

WRONG!! There have been many security loopholes detected over the years in Firefox. They(Mozilla foundation) dont release patches very often. Now which browser is safer IE(which gets constant updates and patches) or Firefox? I would say Firefox is just as vulnerable as any other browser is!

Firefox is open source:

WRONG!! Do your own research as to why this is not so.

Firefox is the only browser available for Linux:

WRONG!! Konquerer is an excellent browser available on all flavors of Linux.

Record movies in HL2/CS:S efficiently?

Ok, it seems many people don't know how to do this, so I will explain how this is done. All you need are the game itself, VirtualDub , and the trial of DivX Pro, which can be downloaded. NOTE: When I say to type something such as "record [filename]" in the instructions, I mean type it without the quotes. When I say click 'File > Open video file', I mean click the File menu, then the next option, which would be 'Open Video File' in that case.

Step 1: Recording the Movie in Half-Life 2 / Counter-Strike : Source as a Demo
(If you already have the demo file you want, skip to Step 2)

Open the game, and when it's time to record, open the console by pressing the tilde (~) key. Type "record [filename]" and press 'Enter'. Replace '[filename]' with whatever you want the demo to be titled. When you're done recording, open the console again and type "stop".

When you're ready to leave the server and start Step 2, read on.

Step 2: Converting the Demo to TGA Files

Change your video resolution in-game to whatever size movie you'd like. I use 640x480 since no larger is really necessary, and a single 640x480 frame is 900KB, which means 1/3 of a second of a 30FPS movie is 9MB. 1 second = 27MB. Huge, huh?

Then change your audio (if you want the audio to be recorded at all) to 2 speaker, and not headphones or 5.1 or whatever. You can leave the Options window open if you'd like.

Open the console. Type "host_framerate #" and press 'Enter'. Replace '#' with however many FPS you want the movie to be. I suggest 30 - it's rare any higher is necessary, and again, 1 second @ 30FPS = 27MB. Higher FPS = higher movie size.

Then in the console, type "startmovie [filename]", and hit 'Enter'. Replace '[filename]' with whatever you want the movie files to be called. This can be the same as the demo name, it doesn't matter.

While still in console, type "playdemo [filename]", and hit 'Enter'. Replace '[filename]' with the name of the demo you want converted. At this point, the demo will start, the frames will be rendered slowly (you'll experience 5 to 20 FPS most likely), and will be saved off as TGA images (many of them... host_framerate X length of demo in seconds).

When the demo is done and you're back at the menu, open console and type "endmovie", and hit 'Enter'. This will end the capture. If you don't enter this command, the menu of CS:S or HL2 will be recorded as additional 900KB+ frames. We don't want that, now do we?

Close the game. Go to Step 3.

Step 3: Putting the TGAs Together into an AVI

At this point, I'm assuming you downloaded and extracted VirtualDub. If not, go back to the top of this page.

Open VirtualDub, and click 'File > Open video file'. Navigate to the folder of the game (in CS:S, this will be the cstrike folder). Make sure 'Image Sequence (*.bmp, *.tga)' is selected in the 'Files of Type' drop down menu. Double-click the first image of the record sequence. There will be HUNDREDS (maybe thousands) of these images, double-click the first one.

VirtualDub will read them and begin piecing together a movie. We're not done yet, though!

Choose 'Audio > WAV Audio...'. If you can't select it, choose 'Audio > Full processing mode' first, then 'WAV Audio...'. In the same folder as the TGA image sequence, there will be a WAV file titled similarly to the images. Double-click this WAV file. VirtualDub will attach it to the movie.

Now, if you want to chop out parts of the movie, do so by finding the beginning frame of the part you want chopped and press 'Home'. Then find the last frame of that part and press 'End'. Then press 'Delete'. Do this with all useless / pointless parts of the movie. The WAV will also be chopped up, which is why it is important that the WAV be inserted before chopping!

Once you're done editing, it's time to set compression. If you don't want to compress, or want to use another program to do it (WM Encoder, for example), just click 'File > Save as AVI' and you're done. But if you want it to be small, and not the 500MB+ file an AVI itself is, you need compression. So, make sure DivX is installed, then continue.

Choose 'Video > Compression'. Choose the DivX codec, and click 'Configure'. Select 'Slow' from 'Encode Performance' - this will yield a slower processing time, but a better quality video with better compression, which means a smaller file to download. Click 'OK', then 'OK' again to leave the VDub compression dialog box.

Now choose 'Audio > Compression'. Choose 'MPEG Layer-3' from the list on the left, and a bitrate (preferrably stereo of some sort) from the right and click 'OK'.

Choose 'File > Save as AVI'. Locate where you want it saved, and what you want it called, and click 'Save'. VirtualDub will now work on compressing the video into a nice little DivX-based AVI file. Enjoy!

How to remove worm/autorun.blw virus?

First of all, update your antivirus

If say, the drive d has the virus, open notepad, goto open and type d:\autorun.inf

If there is a text block displayed then your system has an autorun virus, removing which is simple.

Open notepad,Create a blank file as autorun.inf. just drag and drop this file into the drive d, after opening my computer. DO NOT COPY AND PASTE!!

As the trojan depends on autorun.inf to do its job, a blank autorun.inf will disable it!

Why dont HCL and HP give you backups of your device drivers?

I have had many friends asking me to search for them, device drivers for their newly purchased desktops/laptops. What I dont understand is the fact that HP and HCL (2 of the major computer assemblers in the US) dont provide device driver CD's / DVD's with the computers that they sell. I understand that these PC's have genuine windows versions installed on them, but why not provide drivers?

Some of my friends wanted me to bring this up on my blog, cause this might serve as an early warning system to all of you people considering to buy a previously assembled PC.

One of my friends ran into a certain trojan problem on his HCL PC, and wanted me to re install his windows (since Im the guy in the know-how). I tried formatting the disk, and re-installing windows on it, but guess what! It simply refused to install on his PC. Thats when I threw in the towel and told him to call up the HCL guys, and ask them for help. Three frustrating hours of troubleshooting later, they decided to send one of their own to look into the problem. And guess what he does, after he gets there! He takes out a windows XP CD out of his backpack, and it installs like nothings been wrong with the PC! I was surprised to find out that even the drivers come bundled with his version of windows XP so he doesnt have to install it seperately.

Asked if we could have a copy of his disc in case there was a future failure, we were told his boss would have his head if he found out, but the nice guy agreed anyway! I got into all the technical details of the CD copy, and found out that HCL has a special windows disc, licensed exclusively to them (of course!!!) by Microsoft.

Now, what this disc did was, it read the hardware device configurations from the ROM, and only upon finding that this was a genuine HCL PC, and not a lookalike, did it start installing windows.

No wonder the HCL, HP guys wouldnt give you the discs!

Trojan in DotaKeys !

If you are an avid fan of DotA AllStars, you'd probably know that farming is one of the most important parts of the game, other than pwning other heroes' heads. But farming is difficult for newbies. I hit upon this software called "DotaKeys" made by a guy who called himself "Fucko". I didnt have any problem with this guy, until I updated his software. The software downloads a backdoor trojan which might compromise your computers' security to this guys whims. I googled the problem and I came upon this post. Here, this "Fucko" dude goes about bashing anyone who tells him hes given them a program with a trojan. 

He argues its open source, and even provides a link for its source. SURE its open source, who denied it!! All Im saying is that the program itself doesnt contain malicious trojans. These appear once you update the program.

And just for all of you people who are thinking how he made this program, there is a software called Autohotkey. A pretty nifty program that has its own language, a compiler, and what not, all under 2 MB !

Im working on an alternative to this program, and am going to release it maybe by this months' end. Thanks as always for a patient read

Blogger is behaving strangely these days!

Yeah, I just wanted to add some more content to my other blog, and I clicked on the add html/javascript link in my blogger accounts' "Add new page content". Blogger came up with a "ERROR 404 Page cannot be found". The main cause of this problem is that blogger uses redirection to take you to different pages. 404 occurs on web pages that do not exist on servers. Yet, if you try after a minute or two, it will show up with the content. How can a page, non existant 2 minutes ago appear all of a sudden? Thats because, the server to which it redirected is probably under heavy load, because of bloggers like you and me, clicking the same link. There is no other solution other than waiting for sometime and clicking the link again.

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This is another one of those errors that I keep getting these days. If you're getting this error too,I recommend you do the following :

> Turn off any download accelerators and stop ALL downloads

>Do not load other sites when saving

Google runs on AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and so does Blogger. It doesnt need to refresh the whole page. Doing so would take up bandwidh, and is reliable, but AJAX involves making a "non-interrupting" call to the server. Thus, only a single fragment of a message needs to be sent to the server. If the call to the server times out, the message will not reach it, and thus the message. That was why I recommended having enough bandwidth availableto let that "small fragment of a message" through.