Haters gonna hate – Why do so many North Indians hate Chennai?

Posted on 01. Dec, 2011 by in Rants

I’ve had enough. I see a lot of North Indians making snide remarks about Chennai everywhere – work, Facebook, Twitter, food courts, shopping malls, trains. And today I will try to drill some sense into their heads. There is always a “Oh wait a minute, I forgot you live in Chennai!”. The next time I [...]

How to recover photos and videos from memory cards

Posted on 15. Aug, 2011 by in How To

How to recover photos and videos from memory cards

Recently, I had accidentally deleted a very important video from my camera, and was looking for ways to somehow recover it. After trying out a bunch of useless applications, I stumbled upon the misleadingly titled PhotoRec. PhotoRec comes from Christophe Grenier, the same dude behind TestDisk, which had saved my ass more than once in [...]

XSearch is a very powerful search tool for Windows

Posted on 07. May, 2011 by in Freeware

XSearch is a very powerful search tool for Windows

Hard disk prices have come down to rock bottom, owing to the consumption of digital data. Every computer contains hundreds of thousands of a variety of files, all across various locations. It is here that the user needs a good search utility. While the Search feature built into Windows is quite adequate, it needs the [...]

Add custom presence states to Microsoft Office Communicator with Communicator Custom States (CCS) Tool

Posted on 30. Apr, 2011 by in Freeware

Add custom presence states to Microsoft Office Communicator with Communicator Custom States (CCS) Tool

Next up in my series of homebrewed software is CCS — Communicator Custom States, a simple standalone tool for adding your own status messages, or, presence states to Microsoft Office Communicator. Many corporate offices use Communicator, and this is a great tool for anyone willing to get a little creative! Note: This tool needs to [...]

How to start Windows services using a batch file

Posted on 21. Apr, 2011 by in How To

Many applications install a bunch of services when installed, which in most cases, are needed to be run only when the application is run. However, these services are set to start up automatically at logon, which can significantly affect startup performance, leaving you to watch the waiting cursor while a bunch of useless (at least, [...]

Why you should go on a Turtle Walk

Posted on 17. Apr, 2011 by in Conservation

A couple of weeks ago, I was informed of the “Turtle Walk”, that has been happening for the past 20 years on the beaches of Chennai, from January to April. I was told that we’d get to release new-born turtles into the sea at midnight, and it sounded like a great experience. And I went. [...]

How to configure the NETGEAR DGN1000 wireless router for BSNL DataOne

Posted on 03. Apr, 2011 by in How To

Lazy weekends, you know how they are. Me and my equally ultra-lazy friends decided to try out Counter Strike. I had been trying to convince them to play with me over Hamachi, but they just wouldn’t listen. I had been using a NETGEAR WG111 USB adapter as a WiFi router using Connectify (if you have [...]

What’s new in Firefox 4?

Posted on 24. Mar, 2011 by in News

What’s new in Firefox 4?

Already having a market share of over 20%, the latest version of Mozilla’s web browser is touted as being “faster, easier and more awesome than ever”. Available for download right now, Firefox 4 has gone for a complete overhaul of the UI, and is also sporting a completely fresh JavaScript engine. Read on to find [...]

How to create a WiFi hotspot without a router

Posted on 20. Mar, 2011 by in How To

How to create a WiFi hotspot without a router

Windows 7 introduces a feature called Virtual WiFi that lets you create a personal WiFi network with almost any WiFi device (even a USB WiFi dongle!) on your laptop or computer, which could then be used to share your internet connection with other devices like smartphones, media players, wireless printers, netbooks, and other laptops and [...]

Disable the ‘Building font cache’ window in VLC player

Posted on 19. Mar, 2011 by in Tips

I bet you use VLC Player. VLC is often touted as the ‘swiss army-knife of media players’, and rightly so. However, one annoying feature (if you can call it that) is the “Building font cache” dialog window that pops up at times, when you start playing a video. What does it mean and why does [...]