The Lonesome Road

Well, as you all know, I have been looking for an equivalent for QuickSilver for a Windows machine. I finally found one - from a link on the QuickSilver site itself! In the process, I managed to find a launcher for Linux as well. I’m on a roll!

The models are being developed based on the QuickSilver philosophy. The products are still in the alpha stage - but I would suggest a look. If nothing else, the testing will help with future releases. Believe me - once you get used to the convenience this type of software offers - you will hate machines where it is not installed. I do

I just spoke to a friend about launcher software. He feels that their main cause of commercial failure is that they are interface minimalistic. Well, to be honest, these systems should be light on interface. A clunky and heavy handed interface would only slow things down. A launcher should act as a valet - delivering what you need so unobtrusively that you don’t even realize that the software is present. Only the result remains - the process is lost. It should be something like Jeeves (Do read some P.G Wodehouse for the reference - or click on the link for a Wikipedia reference).

So, get busy downloading. Mac users (who for I don’t know what reason) do not use QuickSilver yet, go here. Windows users can go here to try Colibri while Linux users can follow this link to get to the Gnome Launch Box.

Enjoy - and think of this as a New Year Gift.

Happy New Year!!

Hi people. Am on my winter vacation in Canada . Will try to put up something when I can get out of my gruelling daily routine of eating, sleeping, lazing, seeing TV and the beautiful expanses of Canada.

Here’s wishing everyone Happy holidays and a great new year.

Peace.

Here’s one more fan story - I seem to be doing a lot of them these days. Happens, I suppose. I’m pretty sure the trekkies who read this page have already realized the show I am talking about. For all the non-trekkies out there, I am refering to the multi-versioned serial Star Trek.

According to a story on Digg, it seems that the homepage of the Star Trek series will be shut down from Dec 31st. Coupled with the cancellation of the latest series of Star Trek: Enterprise, it almost sounds like a death knell for the venerable series.

The first Star Trek I saw was then called Star Trek (big surprise there). Now, will all the spin-offs, it’s called Star Trek : The Orginial Series, TOS for short. I was very young then and was hooked to the series. Used to stay awake till 11PM on tuesday (if I remember correctly) to catch a new episode. For a serial made in those times, the special effects were great. But to a larger extent, the show depended more on the actors - as any good show should.

I loved the opening sequence of “Space, the final frontier…” voiced by the captian James T. Kirk (William Shatner). Other major cast members were Mr.Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Dr.Leonard “Bones” McCoy (DeForest Kelley) and Scotty (James Doohan). The other main players who complemented these gentlemen were Lt.Uhura, Sulu and Chekov (season 2) and of course - the canon fodder. My choice of character was Mr.Spock - he of the catchphrase “fascinating” and of the pointed years. Oh - canon fodder? Those were the members of the Enterprise crew who were fated to die in myriad ways on missions (or even on the ship!).

I managed to catch a few episodes of TOS the other day. Now that I am older - and used to good special effects, the painted backgrounds and the scenes of the ship flying in space seem primitive. The characters also seem slightly cheesy. In spite of all this, I am still hooked to the show - the magic is still there . I suppose it’s true to say that what you see initially does affect the way you see the rest of the series. I don’t enjoy Star Trek : TNG. When I first saw it, my reaction was - who is this dude who keeps making his “Number One” do all the running around. Things just went downhill from there.

Yet, there is hope for me. I’ve been seeing Star Trek: Voyager and it has proved to be a pleasant surprise. Interesting and intelligent (though with a *lot* of emphasis on time travel), it’s brought the fun back (for me) into Star Trek once more.

I leave you with the original introduction by William Shatner (which was later modified for political correctness)

“Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Her five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

Live long and prosper.

I’m a big He-Man fan (watched it a lot as a kid and as a big kid ) - and this cartoon still cracks me up. Techie fun and cartoon fun all in one! Am I in heaven?

I’m not a big fan of the dude in blue - am more of a Batman fan. I was pretty happy with the way they handled the Dark Knight in Batman Begins. Unfortunately, there seems to be some confusion with the people making Superman Returns.

I present you with the two Supermen - old and new. You tell me the character you believe in more.

I think there is no competition - Reeve is the (Super)man - and this guy seems to agree with me

PS: The new verision of Gaim is out. Still beta though. Windows users can get it here.

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Collage, originally uploaded by shadowfall.

I wanted to show off multiple pictures on my blog from my Flick account - and didn’t know how to go about it - no fun to take an entire set of photos and just show one is there?

Last night when I was playing around with Picasa settings, I saw the collage option. Woohoo! Results can be seen right above this article - and as usual all photos that make up the collage have benn uploaded as well.

In a related article, this may be my lst set of Flickr uploads. Am reaching the limit of 200 photos and I like the existing set. Don’t want overwrites by the new photos I will upload.

As always, comments/critiques are welcome.

Enjoy!

Honest confession : I’m a big - nay huge Winamp fan. Been using it a long time - right from version 2.xx onwards. The player has definitely improved over time and as of now my favourite features are

a) the search (matches ID3 tags as well as file names)
b) single button enque. Press q on any song in the playlist and it will play next - even if shuffle is tuned on. And it can be pressed multiple times on a file for the song that’s stuck in your head!
c) global hotkeys : I cannot do without this now. No matter what I am doing, a simple Ctrl+Alt+PgDwn makes winamp play the next song on my list.

The unfortunate part about winamp though is that it’s Media Library sucks - big time. So, I was looking for an alternative solution and I was pointed towards Mediamonkey. It’s something like iTunes for windows - and does a pretty good job.

Ok. Here’s the good news :

a) Has a standard iTunes type interface
b) Press F2 (standard rename) and get happy editing. Common properties for files can be set at the same time.
c) Can transfer files to an iPod (via plugin)
d) Generates auto playlists on the basis of selected critera
e) Out of the box support for common files (including ogg, which iTunes has trouble with)
f) Supports WinAmp as a player for it’s system
g) Supports quite a few WinAmp plugins
h) Inbuilt Shoutcast and other internet radio support
i ) Good tag-and-rename tool
j) Inbuilt file converter

Whew! Pretty good stuff. There were a few things that put me off though

a) No global hotkeys - I hope they fix this soon. The only solution I found was a paid plug-in.
b) The enque option does not work if shuffle is on.
c) Slightly off on the tree structure. Library does not provide a list of all songs on the system. You have to traverse to Library->Location->All. Though this can be resolved by clicking on one of the sorting systems provided - Title, Arttist, Album - you get it.

Overall, it’s a good software to use. I’ve switched over from WinAmp - and am just hoping that they put in the global hotkeys and fix the enqueue system.

Go bananas - use the monkey!

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Ice n Snow 05, originally uploaded by shadowfall.

Well, as you can see,I am still not tired of snow. I have been assured that once it gets under my jacket and gloves and once I fall in it, the allure of the snow will be a lot less.

So far, these experiences have eluded me. Thus, I continue my photography hobby into the world of ice and snow with a smile on my lips.

This time, I concentrated a little more on the macro shots. Wanted to get the powdery quality of the snow and the crystalline structure of the ice as they play a game of thaw and freeze.

Hope you like them!

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Snow Bulb, originally uploaded by shadowfall.

It snowed here last night from around 3AM to 8AM. Put an inch of snow on the ground - which shows no sign of melting away. Naturally, it was a great photo-op. Hope you like them!

PS : Click here for the photo page.