If you can't Google it, it probably doesn't exist

I for one have started viewing Google (and Wikipedia for that matter) as a source of really quick and accurate information. If I need to find out the number of meters in a light year, or convert a measurement from cm to inches, a really quick search almost always reveals the answer right away. Sometimes I even use Google for weather, movie times and other random things. Instant gratification is indeed amazing.


But today I noticed that "beyond teck" (which incidentally happens to be the name of this blog in case you didn't notice) doesn't exist on Google. Searching for the term instead shows you results for "beyond tech". Google assumes that you want to search for beyond tech, even though that's not what you typed in and shows you results for that anyway based on previous searches where people meant to search for tech, but accidentally typed teck. Although it does provide a note saying that it's showing results for beyond tech instead, it seems like you don't get to choose what you're searching for when you type it the query. While this feature is often handy, it seems like sometimes Google can lead you to the wrong results.

Beyond teck doesn't exist? Must be a secret society or something!

I can easily imagine a situation where I tell my friend to search for my blog (because it's awesome!). But if I forget to tell my friend that you're suppose to spell tech as "teck" it would be very difficult to find the blog.

Another thing that I'm worried about is my ability to spell? In fact, if it weren't for the spell checking feature provided by my operating system, this post would certainly have several spelling errors, and it probably still does. Slowly, but surely, it seems like I'm depending on Google and my computer now to do the spell checking for me. I'm no longer trying to remember that 2.52 cm is an inch, and then doing some quick mental math to convert from inches to centimetres. I just blindly type it into Google, and assume that any answer it gives must be right. Of course, when I don't have access to a computer, which is rare since I almost always have a some sort of a computer with me, I still do it the "old school" way, but it already seems like a thing of the past.

Recently, I have also been reading Jean-Jaques Rousseau's Emile (as an ebook of course) and I've started wondering what our digital lives are doing to us. Of course, I'm not pessimistic like most (old) people are about the "ruin of the younger generation" (I'm certain that previous generations have warned younger generations about similar phenomena), but wasting time on useless internet endeavours certainly seems like something all of us should try to avoid.

What should I do instead? I don't know. But it sure seems like I ought to get used to staying "offline".

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Copying an Error Message Window in Windows

So, lets face it. Sometimes Windows throws errors. And if you're like me, the first thing you probably do is Google those errors.

What do you search for while Googling those errors? The error code of course. But instead of typing it out, there is a better way to copy text from the error code window.

Although a really old way, what you can do is click in the error window, and press the Control and Insert keys together and Windows will copy the error code for you! Doing control+insert on a "Do you wish to save" message box in led to the following being copied into the clipboard:

---------------------------
Notepad
---------------------------
The text in the Untitled file has changed.
Do you want to save the changes?
---------------------------
Yes No Cancel
---------------------------


Then you can paste this into notepad, and copy the text that you'd like to search for.

Pretty handy huh? Although, I must say that the Mac way of simply selecting text on the message/warning box and copying it from there is admittedly easier.

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Converting Adobe PDF Files to Text or HTML

Chances are that you come across a lot of PDF files everyday, at work, school or home. PDF (which stands for Portable Document Format by the way) files are great as they often preserve the formatting of the text even if you don't happen to have a font installed. They also preserve the layout and images in the document. Also, it's free to create PDF files from several applications like OpenOffice, Microsoft Office and you can usually even print web pages to a PDF file.

However, one big problem with a PDF file is that you need a PDF reader to view it. Although Macs, and GNU/Linux based PCs come with individual readers, and Adobe's reader is a free download for windows users, other platforms sometimes don't have readily available or free readers.


For instance, BlackBerrys, iPhones and many other portable devices don't have a full fledged PDF reader built in. So, ironically, the PDF file isn't so portable after all, since you're out of luck when it comes to a mobile device.

However, sometimes there are files where the content is more important than the layout, and the content is mostly text (like ebooks or project instructions or a letter). In such cases it is often more desirable to just have a text file or a html file instead.

Luckily, Adobe provides some really easy ways to convert the PDF documents.

Option 1: Email To convert a PDF to text, simply email the document to pdf2txt@adobe.com! After converting the document, the service will email you back with the text file attached. Similarly, you can also email a PDF to pdf2html@adobe.com and you'll receive a html file attached in the returned email instead.

Option 2: Online Link to the document Alternatively, if the document happens to be online, you can visit Adobe's online conversion tools page, and convert the documents from there.
This way, if it's something simple like a file full of text, you wont need a PDF viewer to view the information in it. Plus, if you happen to need raw data (for a program that you may be writing, say) from a PDF file, this in a great way to convert the file!

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New Blogger Feature: Stats

If there is one thing I like about the new blogger interface (check it out yourself if you happen to have a blogger account with a blog at drafts.blogger.com) it is most likely the site stats feature.


By leveraging the power of Google Analytics, and automatically tracking your blog (without you having to do any work by adding a code to your blog or something) I think blogger has created a tool that many people will find useful.

As you can see from the screenshots below, the tool by default shows several statistics that most people would care about in a much more relevant way. For instance, instead of showing the page that gets the most hits, it shows a post that gets the most hits, and even displays the number of comments for that post. It provides an overview, a breakdown of visitors by posts, a snapshot of traffic sources, and reader statistics like browsers, countries and operating systems.

The graphs provided by the tool seem to be rather relevant to most bloggers. At least, for those bloggers that care to find out who their readers are by seeing details such as geographic locations, times with the most activity and so on.

Although Blogger Stats may provide far less statistics about your blog than a full fledged tracking service, it seems like a nice way to give casual bloggers a chance to know who's reading their blog.

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Taking notes on a BlackBerry While Calling Someone

So, you're on the phone with your friend, and your friend says "so, I'm like, so, like, hungry right now, want to meet me for lunch at this cool new place?". And then you say, "Sure, just let me know where it is". And then your friend starts telling you: "Okay, so walk 5 blocks south from King and Younge, and turn right and go down the dark alley but..."

What happens when you don't have a pen and paper handy to write down the instructions?

No worries, if you have a blackberry, you shouldn't have a problem taking notes, even while you're talking on the phone with your friend (some conditions apply since you will have to type out the notes somehow).

Here's what you do: If you're not on a headset, tell your friend to wait because you'll have to push some buttons first before you can take notes.

First, hit the blackberry home button, causing a menu to pop up. Then, click on the Notes option.

Now in the blank space start typing the notes. You might have to put your friend on speaker as you type the information, but at least this way, you won't forget it.

Once the call is done, it should save the note along with the call details, which can be accessed form the same place as your email messages. Consequently you can easily find the note just by looking at your call list, so you should have no trouble figuring out which note was for which call.

That's it. Happy note-taking!

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Staying Logged in for Two Google Accounts via Chrome

While Google Chrome may already be at version 5 (as of writing this article, version 6 seems to be in the works), I still think that it is going to be a while before I adopt it as my primary browser. I find that several add-ons such as Firebug and the like are not at par with their Firefox counter parts.

Nevertheless, one feature that I like in Chrome is the incognito mode feature. Where it essentially allows you to create a new "private browsing" window, instead of hiding your present session (like it does in Firefox) where your history and such features are not tracked.

However, apart from giving you the ability to do "certain" tasks discreetly, incognito mode is also great for another thing: logging into two Google Accounts at once, through one browser (although you'll have two windows open).

So essentially, what you need to do is log into one of your accounts through a normal Chrome window. Then open an incognito window, like so on a Mac:

And log into another Google account. Surprisingly, Incognito Mode isn't truly incognito in that it still maintains session cookies so that Google can still identify who you are once you log into a Google service like Gmail or Docs.

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Booting to a console window on a Mac

So recently I had the need to boot a mac into console mode only since it was being used as a webserver. If you too want to do the same and boot your mac into text-only mode, then read on.

A quick google search will reveal that there are sereval ways to do this. However, since I always prefer the easiest ways, I'll only post the quick and dirty way here.

First off open a terminal window or log into your computer through ssh (if you don't know what that is, I suggest that you keep graphical mode on your computer for now and think about using a text-only mode later on).

Then get root access to the computer via
$ sudo su

After this, you'll have to open up
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist
in your favourite editor
And change the default login to the following:

 <key>RetriesUntilHint</key>
        <integer>3</integer>
        <key>SHOWFULLNAME</key>
        <false/>
        <key>autoLoginUser</key>
        <string>>console</string>
        <key>lastUser</key>
        <string>loggedIn</string>
        <key>lastUserName</key>
        <string>rishi</string>
        <key>noPasswordKey</key>
        <false/>


Notice the >console

Then simply save the file and reboot.

After the login manager starts, it'll boot you right into the console window.

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