Giving your Windows Computer a Tune-up

Has your Windows 7 computer been running slower lately?  Do you think that it's not running as fast as it was when you just got it?  Here are some tips to make it run a little faster, and to help you tweak your system so that you can get the best performance out of it.

1. Delete or move any unused large files and applications, particularly if you're running out of disk space: You can also use Disk Cleanup or CCleaner to help with deleting old temporary files, and remove old applications by searching for Uninstall a Program in the start menu. One thing that happens when you use your computer a lot is that you tend to load more and more files on it, particularly if you like taking videos and listen to a lot of music. It's good practice to store such files on a hard drive that is not your main 'C:' system hard drive so that the operating system has enough room for system files like the page file which is used by your system to store temporary information while your computer is running.
2. Defragment your hard drive (skip this if you have a SSD, since it probably won't make much of a difference: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Improve-performance-by-defragmenting-your-hard-disk. You can also use third party programs like Degraggler that accomplish the same thing.
3. Run the Windows Troubleshooter to check if all is well with your computer. Simply search for Troubleshoot in the start menu
4. Keep your computer up to date. Run Windows Update from the start menu once in a while at least to make sure that you have the latest performance fixes. Performance updates for application suites like the Windows Live Suite (messenger, live mail and so on) and Microsoft Office are also often pushed through Windows Updates
5. Make sure that your computer is not infected with malware. Reducing your computer's speed is one of the features of most viruses and worms out there, so it would be a good idea to run Malwarebytes, Spybot or even just Microsoft's Security Essentials suite if you don't already have any anti-virus installed or use one of those antivirus programs from your ISP. This step is especially necessary if you happen to use some of those nasty file sharing programs, or may be even happen to plug in a USB from some who uses such programs.


Doing the above steps (mostly steps 1 - 4) every month end or so should make sure that your computer is fast enough.

Bonus: If you'd like to add a little more speed to your computer, you can try plugging a USB drive and setting a ready boost volume on it. Simply right click the USB drive on My Computer, click properties, and browse to the ReadyBoost tab to use the device for ready boost.

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How to make OS X Snow Leopard look and feel like Lion

To be honest, I don't intend on upgrading to Lion until it works seamlessly with my current setup. From what I can tell for now, with a visit to roaringapps.com, it seems like there quite a few kinks to iron out with third party apps. I'm sure many things work, but why take the chance when most of the 250 new things seem to be UI elements and other "frivolous things". Don't get me wrong, I think Lion is cool, but there's nothing exceptional it has to offer when I compare it with Snow Leopard, which is probably why Apple decided on the $29.99 price tag (although I reckon that they could have priced it at $99.99, and I'm sure people would have still bought it...). So, I figured, why not make my Snow Leopard install look a little like Lion, while I wait for things to get a little more stable. As it turns out, it's not too hard to put some lion skin on a leopard for some temporary coolness.



Step 1: Skin the UI and Grab the Wallpapers

To make the the Leopard's skin look like a Lion, all you need to do is grab a copy of ThemePark, and install a Lion theme (like this one) from deviant art. This will change the default widgets (buttons, progress bars, dropdown menus etc. to make it more lion like). One thing you'll notice though is that the scrollbars may look a little out of place, since they can't really be "hidden".

Also, you can find a ton of OS X lion wallpapers on the net. Grab one that you like, and set it as your wallpaper, if you really want to copy the default look of Lion.

Step 2: Tweak the apps

Apple Mail
One of the newly touted features in Apple Mail is the (dare I say "Outlook" like) column on the left hand side. You can somewhat emulate this using Dane Harnett's Widemail plugin.

Also, you can turn on message threading (View > Organize by thread) which also groups together messages that have the same subject lines, although not quite as elegantly as the new mail.

Finally, if you want something that looks a little more like the new mail and you tend to mainly use IMAP, you may want to give Sparrow a try.


Step 3: Mouse/Multitouch and Keyboard Settings
Who says Snow Leopard can't have the Multitouch pizzazz of Lion? Just grab BetterTouchTool and you'll find that it's powerful enough to emulate quite a few features like going back and forth in Safari, activating Expose or Spaces and much more (you can even do things like Play/Pause!). Yes, there is quite a bit of configuration to do, but just follow Apple's footsteps on the actions they've mapped to certain gestures and I'm sure you'll have most of the multitouch features down in no time. As an added bonus, you can also turn on Windows Snap like features, which is quite awesome IMHO.

Also, one of the "new" (if not cool) things about Lion is that up is down, and down is up, when it comes to scrolling, when you compare it to the usual way of scrolling anyway. You can emulate this using Scroll Reverser.  While this works great with the iPhone and iPad because there is a "direct relationship" between the content and your finger, I don't think it works all too well when you're using a mouse/trackpad mainly because most people have associated scrolling with scrollbars. When you scroll down, the content goes up. But since Apple has hidden the scrollbars in Lion, it's probably easier to switch your normal ways. I haven't figured out how to make them disappear on Snow Leopard though, so you can only switch scroll directions for now. However, by the looks of it Google Chrome does seem to have this trick up it's sleeve, because when I try to use the new blogger UI, it show me scroll bars that look much like Lion's. Interesting.

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3 things to give your Mac a Tune-up

One of the great things I like about having Macs is the fact that you rarely have to worry as much about system slowdowns as long as you have adequate RAM and enough processing power to do what you need.  But sometimes it does help to reclaim some hard drive space, delete some system files and tweak you system settings to make you Mac feel like new.  Here are somethings you can do to give your Mac a quick tune-up.

Note: While many people will probably be switching to OS X Lion right now, I for one am not going to be switching for at least a few more months, mainly because I'm absolutely positive that a lot of application makers are still scrambling to make their apps compatible with lion. And of course, if you do an upgrade, you'll still be left with some cruft from the older system, so these tips may still be helpful (provided the apps below are compatible with Lion ;)

Delete Unused Apps with AppCleaner

While you can easily delete unused apps by dragging the apps from your applications folder to the trash, the apps often leave behind preference files and other system files all around your system. To get rid of these files, you're better off using an app called AppCleaner, which seems to be a free version of AppZapper that does the job quite well. Especially if you tend to install a lot of apps, this should help you reclaim some valuable disk space.

Delete Unused Logs and Change System Preferences To Your Liking with Onyx

While your Mac does its job, it often stores a lot of files and logs that may be helpful for reporting and so on. Such logs may take up valuable space. Furthermore, the cached information on your mac's system cache as well as the permissions for the files on your mac may be out of date, so it may be helpful to run a tool called Onyx to sort things out. Finally, I think that it's a good idea to make sure that the permissions and such are all fine on your hard drive so the necessary files can be accessed by your system.

Organize Your Files with the terminal

One of the great things about a new computer that it's not as cluttered. It's sort of like the "tabula rasa", if you will. If you're anything like me, then chances are that within a few days of use, you'll have files all over the place, but also will have customized a ton of settings. If you reinstall from scratch, you'll be losing all these settings, so it's best to just reorganize your files instead.

While you could just drag and drop things, I find that the terminal is a much more powerful tool (located in Applications > Terminal) that allows you to do things like wildcard moves and other fun stuff.

For example, let's say that I have to move all the PDF's from my download folder that are work related to my documents folder. I could command click each of these PDF's individually, and drag and drop them. Except, with the terminal, there's an easier command:

mv Downloads/WORK*.pdf Documents/Work/

Which essentially says move (that's the mv) anything from the downloads folder that starts with WORK has whatever (that's the *), and ends with a pdf to the documents/Work folder. You'll need to do some more reading on how to use these commands if you're not sure about them, but once you master these, you'll find that dragging and dropping is just a big pain. Here's a cool command line tutorial to get you started.

You may also find it rather helpful to search for those large files on your hard drive and delete them to reclaim some hard drive space.


And this is all I usually use on a regular basis. I don't every defrag my mac, because I've never found the need to (and also because I'm on a SSD...), and, of course, I don't use any fancy registry cleaners because macs don't have a registry.

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Make your caps lock key do something useful

I think that I use the the capslock key about 3 times a year - accidently that is. Having it on my keyboard all the time is just taking up valuable home-row space that can be used for something else. I'm certainly not the first to propose the idea of repurposing the key for a better use, but after seeing Google's chromebook notebook without a caps lock key (well, without a capslock key by default it seems) really motivated me to do something similar.

Here's how you can remap that key to something more useful on a Mac:

1. Click the Apple icon on the menubar at the top left hand side of your screen
2. System Preferences
3. Click the Keyboard icon
4. Modifier Keys...
5. Map the capslock key to something more useful using the dropdown menu!

On Windows, follow the instructions here: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/map-any-key-to-any-key-on-windows-xp-vista/

If you're using GNU/Linux, your best bet would probably be: http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2007/08/02/remapping-the-caps-lock-key/

Now that you've remapped that key to something else, you have no excuse to "accidentally use it" anymore!

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Enable "Instant Search" like behaviour for websites in Google Chrome

When I was snooping around under the hood of chrome, I noticed this cool setting that pretty much enables "instant" for websites.

That's right. Instead of typing in the whole URL, all you need to is type in a few letters of the URL and chrome will automatically load the website. This works amazingly well (although there are a few times when it loads the wrong website, and may not be great when you're doing demos), and does a great job of loading websites even before you press the enter button.

To enable this, all you need to do is click on the wrench icon, and click preferences.

Under, search, you need to Enable Instant for searching and browsing.

That's it.

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Switch to 2G mode on your Samsung Galaxy S/Captivate/Vibrant

So apart from switching to HSDPA to 3G mode, you can actually go another step down to EDGE (or 2G) only mode on your Samsung Galaxy S phone.

Unlike other phones, however, the switch to 2G mode is somewhat sneaky on Samsung's phone, and I decided to make a note about it here.

To switch to 2G (well 2.5G theoretically) only mode for data do the following:

1. Press Menu Button on home screen
2. Settings
3. Wireless and Network
4. Mobile Networks
5. Network Mode
6. Choose GSM Only (i.e. only use Edge Speeds... without using HSPA (3G)).

This tweak will slow down your data connection a lot (making web browsing almost useless, and you can forget about using that flash player on the phone), but you may be able to almost double the standby battery life of your phone even when auto-sync is turned on.

Hope this helps the Galaxy S users out there!

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Quick Tip: Creating Equations faster in Microsoft Word

While Microsoft Word wasn't really built to write equations (if you really want to do equations, look up LaTeX (not to be confused with latex)), recent editions of Word for windows have added features from LaTeX to help write up equations more easily.

If you're on Windows, and have Word 2007 or 2010, then try this:
Press Alt and = to quickly place an equation the document.

Then start typing your equations. If you have a greek letter to put in there type it like this: \alpha or \beta or \gamma. Also, you can create fractions by simply putting in equations in the right brackets like (\alpha + \beta)/(\gamma).

Also you can use ^ to do a superscript, like x^2 to make x². To do a subscript use _ like x_0 to make x₀.

As far as I know, there's no way of making this work as well on Microsoft Word for mac, but if someone has any tips on how to do this, I'm all ears.

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Make your android phone's battery life better!

While many iPhone users will brag that their phone has better life than (most) android devices, if you own a 'droid phone, you'll agree that there is some truth to the statement. Android has a lot of features that, when enabled, will eat up your battery life quickly. A quick search on the web will lead you to a lot of articles (like the one from the HowtoGeek for example) that will tell you how you can get more battery life. Some of these tips are good to know but I've found that they do very little to actually save your battery.

Here's what probably won't help you much:

• Switching to a black background for your main app screen - Doesn't help much unless of course you plan on staring only at the app screen all day. Turning off live wallpapers may actually help (very little though), as it'll prevent the unnecessary CPU usage required to run them.
• Task killers - This is probably if you have a ton of apps running and want to kill them all once in a while, but running them too often, or having them set to autokill may probably not help much. YMMV on this one, but you most probably won't be seeing a ton of increase in the battery life.
• Turning off your phone - This tip actually works, but you probably won't be able to make any phone calls :(

Here's what most likely will have some effect (I've tested this mostly on the Samsung Captivate -- may be this guide should be called How to improve battery life on the "Samsung Captivate", but I'm sure there are ways of doing the same on other phones as well):

• Switching to 3G only instead of HSDPA or LTE or 4G etc.. Many phones have the feature to disable HSPDA or 4G and run purely on 3G only. Here's how you can do this for the Samsung Galaxy S/Captivate/Vibrant etc.. The downside to this is, of course, the fact that you probably won't be getting the fast access to data that your phone is capable off. On the other hand you'll certainly get a better battery life. As an added bonus, you can also simply disable data altogether (a quick google search for your phone should tell you how) if you know for sure that you're not going to need it. In the case of my phone, it's simply doing a long press on the power button and disabling data. For example, if you're going in an hour long meeting, or about to begin an hour long phone call, just turn of the data before you do so. You'll still get texts and such, but your email won't be synced, and you obviously won't be able to browse the net.
• Turn off stuff that you don't need (Bluetooth, GPS, Wi-fi etc.) as  - Obvious tip here, but I do admit that I'm sometimes guilty of keeping bluetooth/wifi/GPS on even after I've finished using it. This is more of a habit thing really, so I'm not too big on this tip. I do turn off stuff that I don't need though, but I'm sure my phone is smart enough not to use the GPS radio when I clearly don't need it. Also, I should probably add that turning off your phone, or at least putting it in airplane mode when you're in the subway/airplane/boat etc.would certainly help as well. Just sayin'
• Turning off the wireless radio when your screen is off - Apps like JuiceDefender or Green Energy out there will do just this. They usually work on a schedule basis, where the phone turns on every x minutes to sync any email, and then will only turn on if your screen is on. Having this app running in the background will have some energy cost, but you'll save a lot by keeping your data radio disabled for 80% of the day (if you sync every 1 in five minutes).
• Turn off auto sync for push email. This definitely works because your data radio doesn't ping the mail server every 2 minutes to keep the push connection alive. However, the battery savings most definitely are not worth it considering the fact that you may think that you have no new email (but in reality you just forgot to refresh the email manually) and miss a lot of important email. This has happened to me on several occasions, since I've gotten used to the BlackBerry delivering all the mail to me right when it arrives.
• If you're like me and don't want to turn off auto sync: Don't use polling, but use push email instead (particularly if you have a Gmail account) as much as possible - Interestingly enough, I've found in my completely random and unscientific tests that if you use the default email client that comes in your phone and most likely support polling intervals of 5 mins, 10 minutes etc. that if you have it set to something like 10 minutes even, you will use about the same battery as using push email that probably gets any new email within a minute. Particularly, if you have something like 5 emails being polled even at the times of something like 30 minutes, then you may even experience a larger battery drain. Of course, you need to check your exchange account or something then you'll have to use an app that has exchange support, but may not have push. Also, people have commented that if you use the Gmail app for all your Gmail accounts, it'll maintain only 1 connection with the server even if you have several accounts, thus saving battery life. Not too sure about that one though.
• Use Wireless-Fidelity instead of 3G - If you know you're in a wi-fi spot (at work or home or something) and have a relatively good connection, then turn on your wifi radio instead of keeping data on. Wi-fi is a much shorter range communication protocol, and as such requires less energy to process, so you may save up to 25% by not using 3G/Data (that number is just a rough guesstimate though... this is clearly not AnandTech where benchmarks are done with up to the millisecond results). Of course, you should turn off wireless when you're outside a Wi-Fi zone, because you're phone will probably die searching for a wi-fi connection. If you have an app like JuiceDefender ultimate then such apps will automatically switch to wifi for you when there is a connection available. Also, you may want to set you Wi-fi sleep policy to never (google should help with this)
• Lower the haptic feedback - If you have that motor buzzing a lot every time you type a letter, then you're definitely going to kill your battery writing up a blog post as long as this one. I do like the haptic feedback though, but I keep it down to the lowest level so that I can still feel it, but not a lot. If you're phone comes with Swype, then you should probably use that too... doesn't save battery life or anything, but at least it looks cool ;)
• Underclock/Undervolt your processor - If you're savvy enough (or have a lot of time on your hands), or just really need the battery life, you should look into this. The XDA forums will most likely have ~847 articles describing how you can do this. Doing so often requires you to install a custom rom and do a whole bunch of other things, but the process is usually documented quite well. I personally haven't bothered to get into this business because I don't really want to invest a lot of time into this just for getting an extra hour or so of battery life.

Bonus: If your phone has an AMOLED display then try out ScreenFilter. It'll reduce the brightness of your screen more so than the lowest brightness setting on your screen, saving some battery life. Also, if you're reading and replying to emails in the middle of the night, you won't be blinded by your flashlight like cell screen.

Ultimately though, although it doesn't seem like it, we all have to accept the fact that battery technology has still come a long way to power the computers/radios in our pocket. Transporting that data through the air isn't cheap when it comes to energy costs (or monetary costs for that matter). Even though you probably won't be able to last a week without recharging, you'll most likely make it through the day, which is probably good enough for most people, myself included.

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Cool browser extensions that you've gotta have!

I remember the days when Firefox was pretty much the only browser that had this thing called "extensions" only about 4 years ago. But now it seems like every browser out there -- Chrome, Safari, IE, Opera (the list goes on), all of them have extensions. So I decided that I should write a post about the cool addons I've found for many of the browsers out there that save time and make web browsing a cooler experience. Here are the top extensions that I currently use on my browsers (Note: I haven't provided a link to download the extensions since they'll differ from browser to browser, but a quick search would help with that):

1. Mouse Gestures: If you don't have this installed then you should certainly give this a try. I only use it to right click on my mouse and swipe backwards. It already saves me a ton of time by not having to right click and click again to go back! I also use it to reload the page and switch tabs. You might think that not moving your mouse to the back button is lazy, but trust me, you'll love the efficiency you'll get.

2. A password manager: There are billions of websites out there and it seems like 98% of those websites require to register just so that you can view their "about us" page! If I'd generate a new password for these websites every time, I honestly wouldn't remember them all. Okay, may be I would, but I'd rather not bother myself with remembering unnecessary passwords. The solution: LastPass. While I would most certainly recommend that you don't store any "precious" passwords on there, it works like a charm for forums and other websites that often require to register.

3. Session saver: While most browsers automatically save your browser session when they crash, sometimes you may just want to save a session intentionally so that you can go back to it later. I usually do this when I'm doing research and want to get back to the 786 tabs I opened after a system update. On Safari you can go to Windows > Reopen windows from last session and it'll restore the windows from the previous session, but it's only good for one session, so you're better off with a browser that has an extension which ca save multiple sessions.

4. FlashBlock - While many savvy users may use things like AdBlock Plus to disable every single ad out there on the internet, I think this is a bad idea because some of the ads out there may actually be relevant. However, more often than not, the flash ads are just annoying. So what I usually do is disable the flash ads, and keep the other text-based/image ads on.

5. A tasks plugin - Many who will be reading this (that's you!) most certainly will be spending a lot of time in a browser (admit it!), so why not have a tasks list that will remind you what you actually need to do, may be you'll stop wasting your time browsing youtube and facebook?

6. A dictionary/Spell check - No matter which browser you are using, you should certainly enable spell check. Or esle teh wrods mya get a litttle mesed up. Many browsers also have a dictionary add-on that you can use to find the right word (particularly if you're on Windows where you don't have the advantage of a dictionary application like Mac and GNU/Linux users do)

7. Email count checker - While Chrome actually has a email notifier for Gmail, having a little icon that'll tell you your email count is always handy on any browser. If you use a mail client though, this may not be particularly helpful. But I know many people who exclusively use webmail for all email communications.

That's all I have for now, but I'm sure this list will grow as people create more cool extensions for their favourite browsers! What extensions do you use on a regular basis?

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Unlock your Galaxy S Phone for free?

Warning: Check with your service provider and manufacturer before you unlock your phone. Unlocking your phone will most certainly void your warranty, and may lead to connection problems with your original service provider or your new service provider.

Note: Sometimes, asking your cell phone provider for an unlock code may work as well, so you should certainly look this up and see what your provider tells you.

With that said, if you're out of warranty, or want a quick way to unlock (and relock too!) your Samsung Galaxy S (has to be a Galaxy S phone (so it'll work on Captivate, Vibrant and so on)... as I've not tried this on any other phone. Chances are good that it may not work), here's what you can do:

First, root your phone. Here's an app: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=803682 to do so if you haven't already. Follow the instructions on the page, and you should be able to root your phone in a few clicks. Again, this will void your warranty, may kill your phone etc.

Second, install the Galaxy S Unlock App from http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=906255. And try to follow the instructions (first try Step 1, then Step 2 etc.) on the Unlock Tab (namely Step 2, where a configuration file gets overwritten to disable network lock..) to unlock your phone. Note that if you do step 2, the phone may appear to be unresponsive for quite a few seconds before it reboots to freedom.

That was easy. And free too (you should definitely donate to those people though!).

If you're having any trouble, don't post comments here (no one will likely read them). Head on over to the XDA forums linked above, and try searching for answers. If that doesn't work then make a quick post there and someone will definitely reply.

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How to find the biggest files on Mac or Windows

After a large amount of time, chances are that your hard drive will be cluttered with large files that you don't really need or use anymore. Or, it may just be the case that you need some extra hard/ss (solid state) drive space. Often times people use applications to find out which files are taking up the most space on your computer so that you can delete them. However, here are some tricks that you can use on the fly (sort of) to find the biggest files that are taking up the most space on your computer and delete them.

How to find big files on a Mac:

The trick on a mac is to use the command line application called find, in conjunction with the sort application to sort the largest files on your hard drive.

1. First, open Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal)
2. Type in the following command (note, change 10 to the number of largest files you wish to see, changing it to a smaller number may give faster results depending on how much stuff you have on your hard/ssd drive)
find . -type f -exec du {} \; | sort -nr | head -10
3. Wait for a few minutes while your Mac scours your hard drive for large files

After a while, the terminal window will display the largest files on your mac.

On Windows, the trick that you can use is to search (Start Butt for files that are of a large size in your personal folders (My Documents, My Music, My Pictures and so on). Just select the size option to search for the largest files on your computer like so:

Hope this helps!

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4 Ways to Collaborate Online on Group Documents

One of the great things about writing group documents today, as opposed to writing group documents 5 years ago is the advent of online "colloborative editing environments". Instead of sending files back and forth through email, here are few services you can take advantage of to make collaboration with your team on written documents much easier.
1. Google Docs

If you haven't heard of Google Docs yet, then you've probably been living under a rock for the last few years. But if you have heard of google docs and still resort to using email to send files back and forth, then you should really think about using a better system. Simply create a document on Google docs and share it with all your friends. 

Some great features that Google Docs offers are:

1. True colloborative editing - Multiple people can edit the file at the same time
2. Version control - You can view multiple versions of the document
3. Works for Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents, but doesn't really support things like captions, references and so on.
4. No registration required if you make the document public.

Some disadvantages:

1. No support for editing documents offline
2. Support for .docx/.xlsx/.pptx files is sketchy and features such as table of contents, captions and bibliographies are not available
3. Doesn't have as many features as Microsoft Office, or even iWork and some other competitors like SlideRocket

2. Microsoft Office Live Sky Drive

This alternative is great if you are planning on using Microsoft Word to write up your report or document. While Sky Drive acts as a great way to store you're documents to avoid emailing it every time there is an update, it doesn't work so well for collaborating in real time.
Advantages:

1. Can upload .docx type newer file formats, and save features such as references, table captions and so on.
2. Can do some basic editing in browser, but open it up in Word/Excel/PowerPoint to do more editing
3. Supports versioning and ability to share files

Disadvantages:

1. Need to have a windows live account to use the service
2. Can't edit the document at the same time. In fact, only one person can edit the document at the same time, so if one of your team members have the document open, you'll have to tell them to close the document.

3. Git

While Git is really meant for programmers, I think that it works great if you plan on using it to keep track of text based documents like LaTeX documents or plain old text files. While getting used to Git may take a while as it is built mostly for programmers who deal with tons of code and like to stare at terminal windows, it should provide a great way of keeping track of progress and merging changes to text based documents.

4. Dropbox

While Dropbox may not be the best alternative if a lot of editing is required, it can be a great way to share files between teams as long as only one person works on the file at one time. If two people upload changes to the same file, Dropbox will just create two versions of the file, which will then have to be merged manually. Nevertheless, Dropbox has some great versioning features, is easy to use and provides quite a bit of storage for free. Plus, it's great for sharing files that won't be edited like pictures and videos, and syncs with the latest versions of the folders automatically instead of you having to get the content yourself.

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Watch Cricket Online for Free

So if you live in any country that is not a test-cricket playing nation, chances are good that international cricket games are not shown on your local sports channel. But fear not, thanks to the advent of the internet, there seem to be plenty of places where you can watch cricket online, for free that too!

Here's a list of three websites that seem to be working for the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 that seems to be going on now:

1. Cric365.info and Cric365.us -- Seems like this website has several channels so you can watch the same game on different channels and watch it on one that you prefer. I find the ads on this website a little annoying, especially since it often refreshes the page so it starts showing the ads again.
2. Cricvid.com -- This seems to be the best site to watch a particular game, since it only shows one game at a time as far as I know. But the ads on it are far less annoying than the ones on cric365
3. ESPNStar site -- Doesn't seem to work in North America though,  but if you're elsewhere (in a test cricket playing nation) then it may probably work

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How to Stop Yourself From Getting Distracted/Procrastination

For me, procrastination often occurs as a result of distraction. Although, the distraction is often a byproduct of the difficulty of a task (such as homework/projects), distraction is still the main reason why a lot of work is often left undone. If you're like me and need a little help to keep yourself away from lifesucking websites such as digg.com, xkcd.com and so on... you'll love these little apps which I'm about to mention here. What they do is fairly basic: block the internet. Of course, you could just disable your internet connection yourself, but who has the will power to do that?


Selfcontrol (free; Mac only, Linux alternative here): This app pretty much only does one thing. Prevent you from accessing the internet for a set period of time without allowing you to overrider the disconnect. Essentially, if you have to reconnect before the timer runs out you'll have to change around some system config files. While I've only tried this a handful of times, I'm surprised to say that it does work... but it takes a lot of willpower to click on the start button. Also, it might be a good idea to turn off the iPhone/BlackBerry/other Smart Phone as well, incase you get tempted to use that instead.

Freedom ($10; Mac and Windows): Like Selfcontrol Freedom offers similar abilities of being able to disconnect yourself without an option to reconnect before the timer is done.

While I think that these applications alone may not help you get rid of your habit of browsing youtube videos or checking Facebook videos, they may prove to be helpful when you're really under a deadline and can't afford getting side tracked even for a few minutes.

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Using Google Squared to shop online

Google squared is a service that has been online for the past few years. The service allows you to compare several different alternatives for a particular product by showing you the prices and details for a particular product or a range of products.


I find this service to be quite helpful when searching for a particular class of products.  For instance, if I want to check out the latest Android phones all I need to do is visit the site and search for Android phones. Like so: http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=android+phone

Google Squared showing a list of 3 android phones.

The site then shows options for three different phones and allows you to search for more phones that are similar.  You can also add different criteria to the colums and Google would try to find the information for you. For example you can add carriers, or colours or other attributes of the phones you would like to compare like battery life.

While the search feature is not perfect, it serves as a great starting point to get an idea of the different alternatives available to you. Next time you're in the market for new product, particularly a technological product, I suggest you try out Google Squared and see if it can you with helpful information.

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Fixing Time Machine Backup Errors

Recently, I had been getting an error from my Mac's Time Machine as follows:

That pretty much kept telling me that it couldn't perform the back up.

At first I thought it was a problem with my back up disk as Time Machine had mentioned. So I did the following:

1. Deleted the Time Machine partition on my back up disk through Disk Utility
2. Repaired the back up disk

I tried the process again, but it still gave me an error. 

After searching for similar problem, I came across some posts that advised to disable spotlight indexing, but that didn't seem to help. Finally, I stumbled across a post that mentioned the use of the OS X console application to see what was wrong. 

Through the help of the Console application (which can be found in Applications > Utilities > Console), I was able to determine that what happened whenever I started a back up was that it would give me a error message whenever it tried to back up a particular file. Turns out that the file was locked, and could not be copied by Time Machine, so it kept saying that there was a problem with the back up disk.  Deleting this file fixed the problem, and it seems like Time Machine is backing up things just fine right now.

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Dvorak typing tutors for Programmers

So, chances are that you have been trying to learn the wonderful dvorak layout, and have found your way to this page. Great!

This "tutor" does not teach you how to type English using the dvorak layout, but rather focus on special characters instead. The sort of special characters that come up often during programming. If you want to get started with typing normal words and letters, you're better off with ABCD or some of the other websites/applications out there. If you don't happen to know what (or who) Dvorak (the scientist, not the composer or ) or the Dvorak layout is, head over to the Dvorak Zine site to find out.

Why use a tutorial when you can learn this by doing some actual programming/designing?
Good question. The answer is because this reduces unavoidable frustration.

Often times when you are programming, its no so much a matter of syntax but rather a matter of algorithms. As a programmer, you tend to focus more on the results rather than the way you get there, and typing then (like syntax) just becomes an intermediary step on the way to the final program (or web-page).



But switching from one keyboard layout to another means that the certain special characters (particularly the semi-colon and the dash) will not be in the same place that they used to be, a problematic side effect for programmers. And when you are trying to program, your fingers will tend to reach for the old locations. Then, you'll have to press the backspace key (or some other key if you happen to be a vi or emacs user) and try again. Needless to say, this whole process gets annoying very quickly, not to mention the fact that it results in a huge productivity drop.

And hence is my reason for creating a dvorak tutorial for programmers. So, it would be wise to only completely switch to dvorak, after you are certain that your hands will go to the right place when you need to type a curly brace.

About the "tutor":
This tutor thing, in reality, nothing but plain ol' HTML page. You can download it to your hard drive and start typing till your get the hang of it. All I have really done is tried to formulate some patterns that come up often, to help your hands get used to reaching the right keys.

Download DVtutor.html (or view it in your browser).

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Why should you switch to OpenOffice?

I have always been a Microsoft Word user for a long time, and have used it for almost all assignments and projects (except for the longer ones where using LaTeX was more helpful). But I think now is probably a good time to switch to OpenOffice for personal projects and smaller collaborative projects.

Why so? Recently, I was mailing out some .xlsx files (that is Microsoft Excel 2007 files) to a few people, and wanted them to give me some feedback regarding the contents of the file (the file had nothing special in it, just some numbers and text). But, I soon started getting replies from people saying: "I can't seem to open the file, can you please send me the older version?" Of course! How could I forget that some people were actually still using Excel 2003, and that the 2007 version files won't work for them?

This made me think about the reasons why Microsoft decided to switch file formats. The main reason, I suppose, was to improve the way information was stored in a file. Instead of dumping all the things in one file, it makes sense to separate textual data from graphical data. To see what I mean, rename a .docx file as a .zip file and have a look at its contents. This allows for smaller file sizes, faster loading times and perhaps some other things. The more recent 2010 format is also different from the 2007 one, possibly due to the lawsuit by i4i against some IP infringement.

Another just as important reason for a corporation like Microsoft is revenue. If Microsoft stops innovating, well then they'll go broke pretty soon. More importantly though, with no way of convincing consumers (more so than corporations) to purchase the newer version of the software, profits would slowly, but surely, decrease. One effective way to convince consumers, it seems to me, is forcing file format changes.

One little problem while adding these features is compatibility. First off, if you happen to be using, say, Ubuntu, you won't be able to open any doc/docx files. Sure, OpenOffice tries to open docx files, but the support for this is sketchy at best, after all, only Microsoft (and the Office team specifically) knows how to read the .doc and .docx format. Others can only reverse engineer the format, and figure out a few parts of the puzzle. A bigger problem is compatibility between versions. If I have some conditional formatting (say if the text meets a specific condition it gets highlighted in a specific colour) in an excel spreadsheet on Office 2008 (the latest version available), and I send it over to someone who is using Windows 2007, the conditionally formatting doesn't always work! Sometimes the colours don't work correctly, and sometimes there are other problems.

On the contrary, cross OS compatibility seems to be much less of a problem in OpenOffice, and most bugs (as well as features) are usually well documented. If you need help, or have an issue, you're usually a quick google search away (or sometimes may be a forum question) away from finding the solution. Compatibility isn't much of an issue, because most people running OO.o will likely have the latest software installed (all upgrades/updates are free!), and be able to access the latest file formats. Plus, the files look and work the same regardless of which platform you use!

It seems to me like OpenOffice tries to accommodate users of all operating systems, and has a great community and user base to help you out if you run into problems. Of course, it isn't as full featured as Microsoft Office, or even Apple's iWork, yet, but if many start caring about the software they use I'm sure the project will get there sooner.

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Mail Merge on a Mac

I've been wanting to do Mail merge on a Mac for a while now, but until now Google seemed to have failed me. I realize that mail merges are probaby easy enough to do with Outlook (or may be even Entourage), but unless you have the latest version of Outlook installed on your Mac, you won't be able to do much. Another alternative I've come across is using Thunderbird, and an addon called mailmerge to do something similar, but that too would involve downloading/installing/setting up Thunderbird and therefore would not be the optimal choice. I also came across a shareware app called Emailmerge that claims to send out mail merged emails, but it seems like the free version can only send out 20 mails at a time.

Finally, I came across this idea that was mentioned in Mac Forums (with a video that nicely explains how you do it!) where it talked about using Automator and Mail.app, both of which come installed by default on every Mac to do automatic mail merges... or at least semi-automatic mail merges since I have only figure out how to get Automator to open the mail merged content in a new window.

Apart from the Automator + Mail.app combo, I think that this solution of using AppleScripts for merges is also worth a shot, although I think it takes too much configuration time and may be a little more complicated to do.

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