Sourabh’s blog

Its been 90+ days since I got my second laptop. Everything was going just great until the day I started running out of free space on the HDD. It was just a matter of time on the 80GB hard drive. And now it has. So, what follows next are the cleaning, dumping and burning sessions. This whole thing is something very new to me. Previously, I just used to reinstall Windows after taking backup of data. This time, however, I decided to try out the whole ‘clean and make-it-fresh’ approach. And I must admit, it’s very irritating. The biggest annoyance is getting those apps to work default just like they did on first install.

Segregating your files and deleting the useless stuff is quite a task in itself. Thinking twice before every folder is shift-deleted adds to the pain. You don’t want like to delete some important stuff by your own fingers due to a mistake. Had it been the ‘format and reinstall Windows method’, what’s lost will remain lost. Atleast, you don’t feel that bad when you recollect you didn’t backup some files coz the system formats it for you.

So, while I was doing all this stuff, I realized the magnitude of the junk created by these .torrent files. I was shocked to see a number as big as 326. We all are torrent junkies, agreed, but having them in such huge numbers on your desktop, default download folders and ‘precious-collection-folders amidst the important stuff’ was shocking. Actually, it’s very stupid. So, I think one needs to be a bit more disciplined before hitting ‘Download .torrent’ link. That would be note to self from my next download. Ultimately, it will lead to less clutter.

How many .torrents have ya got?

Here’s a screenshot of Windows Task Manager showing CPU utilization and Memory usage for both Firefox and Opera.

Both the browsers were started at the same time. Exact same websites have been fired in the 8 tabs of each browser window. Default themes, no plugins/extensions. Both the browsers used are in their latest release.

Makes you wonder what’s big deal about firefox. I accept it’s ten times better than plain IE6/7. But these figures do suggest something. That something, in my opinion, is that Firefox is a lot about hype. If there was any other program with such insane memory usage or CPU utilization (11-percent!), it would have been bashed beyond limits.

Opera continues to be my preferred choice of browser. It offers a lot more than just web-browsing and fetches better returns for your 4MB of download still. So, Opera does everything and I should stick to it. Only if life was so simple. But you need more than 1 browser, and firefox is the next best. So, you need it too. But this thing has some serious flaws (continued memory leaks in every other version to name one) and incapabilites. Mozilla, fix something!

Not again. My hotmail inbox goes blank again. This sucks. I have no idea about the criterion for Microsoft to disable an account on grounds of inactivity. But inactivity should be measured in years, certainly not in months! At present, I use gmail primarily. But losing your old emails and contact info hurts a lot.

Woohooo! No ads. You can thank Tyroo for that. Seriously, this is one f-ed up service. Nothing was ever right about them. Their site sucks - no real attempt to simply their interface for generating codes. I’ve found some serious irregularities in their reports. To verify this, I asked a few people to intentionally click the ads. Three intentional clicks(all from different IPs & ISPs) on the same day were totally unaccounted for in reports. This makes me doubt their credibility. The only reason why I tried out their service was because it was Indian. Using the same code on other website has issues too. Could be they have issues in their server’s tracking abilities.

Tyroo doesn’t even care about what you have to say. They don’t respond to your doubts.

It’s not like they give better returns to web publishers either. Using Tyroo was a mistake in the first place. Google Adsense fetches great returns, I should’ve used it entirely.

What pissed me off completely is that for the past couple of weeks, all their generates ads in ‘Technology’ category were their own. No other ads, whatsoever! That is just plain retarded.

So, there you have it, my experience with Tyroo. Stay away from it. If you’re already using it, I’d like to hear your experience on the same.

It just seems that whenever guys from Tata Indicom Broadband call me for ’settling the account’, my net connection goes awry. If this is not curse, I don’t know what is.

So, now…I’m just gonna sit back and finish CSI Season 5 - one episode followed by another.

The last few days have been very busy. Everything will finally fall in place from Monday(!). Well, hopefully. Getting back to college after a three-month long vacation is very difficult. It’s not the going which kills, the getting up early (sleeping early?) part does.

So today, for your viewing pleasure only, I will dump some random pics from my digicam to flickr. For those unaware, I got myself a modest little sucker called Nikon L11. I found out yesterday, the 2GB memory card couldn’t hold on to any more pics. At 3MB per pic, I’m looking at approx 700 pics to separate the good, the bad and the ugly before I go shooting again. Almost done deleting the useless ones and could-do-without shots. Unfortunately, the L11 doesn’t offer much to tinker around with. Whatever it does, I fiddle around to find the best settings for a given condition. I will post some of the better pics which will make some sense for others. Just to state the obvious, no people, just the its and thats can be seen below. Beginning with the best shot I’ve managed to take so far.

Doesn’t it look just awesome?
(more…)

iPhone is the most expensive phone known to me. I’ve never been into cellphones and iPhone is something which I don’t really care about. For those interested, here is something you’d be interested in.

India to Get Unlocked iPhones via the Gray Market

If you’re poking around the city of Mumbai, you may be able to enjoy the Apple iPhone sooner than the official launch in the area next year. It seems that the gray market has completely opened up shop, providing celebrities and other well-to-do folks with unlocked Apple cell phones, but it’ll cost them a premium, of course.

I’ve seen unlocked iPhones already showing up at online stores in Canada and the United States, so I don’t see why they can’t do the exact same thing and ship the glossy musical handsets across the pond. Naturally, users in India may not get the full functionality of the iPhone, because many of the features may be AT&T specific, like visual voicemail.

Gray market dealers are offering to SIM unlock the iPhone for as little as Rs 1,000 (US$25), but that’s assuming that you can get your hands on an iPhone in the first place. Alternatively, they are also selling pre-unlocked units for Rs 30,000 (US$700). That’s for the 4-gigger.

Source

If this is indeed true, I may get lucky to see the iPhone in person very soon.

Before I’m too late to mention this here, let me do the needful. It has been exactly a month, since the Acer laptop died on me. After some frustrating weeks to find the best deal in the market, I’ve finally decided and ordered the Dell Inspiron 640m notebook. So far the Dell experience has been nice with minimum of fuss but the 15-days wait to get the laptop at your doorstep hurts. Really. The wait kills and I’m just beginning to experience it first hand.

I will try not to get into the specifics of the new laptop. I decided to go in for Dell because it offers 3 years on-site warranty. I really want this shit to last 3 years. I really do. I hope it does. It better does, otherwise 1800-425-4006 is just a call away. So, here are THE specs:

Dell Inspiron 640m

14.1-inch WXGA+ Screen (1440×900 resolution)
Intel T2350 Core Duo Processor 1.86GHz
80GB 7200rpm HDD
8x DVD Writer
512MB DDR2 667MHz RAM
… and the usual
DOS
3-year warranty

I’m really excited about the 1440×900 resolution screen in the 14-inch wide display! In other things, would get another gigabyte of RAM loaded on the notebook after a few weeks. Finding the DOS option on Dell systems was quite a task. It saves a lot of my dad’s money and gives me the convenience. The convenience of not to format the hard drive, not to be stuck to the OS they give and more importantly not to waste time. Dell is known to offer good amount of bloatware with their systems, so that is another reason.

I’m happy with it. That is what matters in the end. Just hoping that something doesn’t crop up and screw the plans. Until, I get the laptop on my desk - the laptop pic stays in X-ray vision….lol

Edit: I knew there was something missing to be mentioned. Damage - 43k INR

Demonoid blacklisted Indian IPs. May be some Indian ISPs banned demonoid. Fine!

Now isoHunt says:

You have been banned from this forum.
Please contact the webmaster or board administrator for more information.

WTF is happening…

I hope this is a mistake, a very bad one. isoHunt cannot ban Indians users. Block mininova and eztvefnet too, and torrents would be a thing of the past.

“Nothing lasts forever,
Dinosaurs didn’t, Torrents won’t”

Perfect World.

Edit: isoHunt is back to normal.