Karun AB

Adding Search Engines

1. Custom Search Engine: Right click the address bar and click Edit search engine. Click add, fill in a name and a keyword followed by the search query.
   For adding the Messenger Plus Forum Search engine I used the name as “Messenger Plus! Forum Search” (doesn’t really matter what you use here), the keyword as “mpf” and the url as “http://msghelp.net/basicsearch.php?do=search&keywords=%s” where %s represents the search query entered. As a result of adding this, I can now search the MP!F simply by typing “mpf “. I love search shortcuts :)
2. Searching Google.com instead of your local (regional) google site: This is really a continuation of the previous tip but I just felt it was worthy of being here :P There is a fault (imo) with the default google search engine in Chrome. The keyword is set to “google.com”. Why type all that when you could simply use “g” ;) Also, if you have a look at the google search url in chrome, it uses a base query identifier to redirect to your local google. I just changed mine to “http://google.com/search?q=%s” because while posting google links (especially on irc) to have to remove my browser info every time and sometimes even my country tld in the google domain. This way, it makes it easier for me to paste links though I do realise that google might lose out on accurate statistics of its users because of this but I don’t think it’d mind a handful of users changing their queries when it has billions of searches everyday ;) I’ve also changed my wiki keyword to “w” and urbandictionary.com keyword to “ud“
3. Memory stats for nerds: Well I am a geek/nerd who likes his stats, memory or otherwise ;) Typing about:memory in your url bar ought to take you to some stats while you can do the same by clicking Shift+Esc for basic stats and then clicking “Stats for nerds“. The advanced stats also shows details of Chrome vs other browsers (which should be running at the same time). So you can run Chrome,  Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and Safari at the same time and compare statistics if you wish ;) Having it update live would have been cooler but that might take up a lot of resources in itself :P Maybe it should auto refresh when someone’s watching but if you go switch to another tab/application or are idle you could stop refreshing it automatically. :)
4. Resizing Textboxes: You can now resize textboxes by holding down the left mouse button at the bottom right corner and dragging it. And here’s poor dt who wrote a ton of javascript to do the same in dtblog.
5. Check Loadtimes: Want to know what took the page so long to load? Do you want to know how long it took your javascript code to execute? Chrome is here to help! Right click anywhere on the page and select “Inspect Element”. Just move on over to the resources tab and analyse away :)
6. Detaching and reattaching tabs: Tired of having so many tabs in one single window? Want to sort tabs according to what kind of work you’re doing? Sure that’s possible! Drag a tab outside the tab area and drop it. Voila! Brand new chrome window. Each tab in Chrome is a new process anyway so it doesn’t really matter ;)
7. Private Browsing: You could need to browse privately either to not tell the world of your searches on medical histories, viewing porn (:P) or planning that secret trip for your significant other, who cares? Incognito to the rescue! Press ”Ctrl+Shift+N” or just click the new page icon followed by “New Incognito Window”. Incognito is basically opens a private browsing session for you where no traces of what you were doing show up thus maintaining full privacy.
8. Easter Eggs: Lets end with something fun! Hopefully most of you already know of the about:mozilla easter egg in Mozilla Firefox which pulls out a quote from The Book of Mozilla. Here’s one for Chrome that doesn’t work on Vista. Type in about:internets in the chrome window and you’ll see sspipes.scr run with the title “Don’t clog the tubes”. Doing so on Vista will show a gray tab with the title “The Tubes are Clogged!” since it doesn’t have sspipes.scr. If you don’t get why this screen saver was used, you should know that the Internet is a “Series of Tubes” ;) Don’t clog them with your p0rnz! :P

Google Chrome: The Next Gen Open Source Web Browser

Having heard all the rage about Google Chrome, I decided to try it out this Friday morning before leaving for college. What’s this I see? An online install? Of course it doesn’t mean much to people who have connections which can download the 7.3MB installer in a few seconds but for others, its a bit more arduous. Here’s a direct download link to the Google Chrome installer for others like me who have connections which are as slow as if not slower than broadbad ;) To download the full Google Chrome Installer (7.3 MB) click here.

Chrome is Google’s Next Generation browser and I must say, it does feel good :) (This post is being written in Chrome :P). It did take some time to load up the page but I suspect that’s because of the page not being cached yet and that Chrome doesn’t seem to have Google Gears. O.o I distinctly remember reading that Chrome has the Gears engine in the Chrome Web Comic but when I tried enabling Turbo in the Wordpress panel for Chrome it said that I didn’t have Gears installed. So it sent me to the Gears webpage which said my browser wasn’t supported. :P Seems like I’m not the only one who noticed ;)

Like most other Google products, Chrome has a simplistic yet powerful UI which puts UX above everything. Its technical specs are pretty impressive too. The process isolation for tabs, sandboxing them for extra security and omnibox are things that almost every experienced internet user would want. Moving from Firefox to Chrome would be easy considering that all the shortcuts remain the same :P Ctrl+J opens the downloads window in Chrome, Ctrl+T for tabs (pretty standard), Ctrl+Shift+T for opening recently closed tabs etc. If you don’t already know about memory fragmentation and how Google Chrome deals with it, you should read Page 6-7 of the Google Chrome Web Comic.

You can right click any web page in Chrome and click “Inspect Element” and this would take you to the page source. Viewing page source in a browser was never so awesome. Chrome highlights and formats the code beautifully but I can’t get it to search through the source for some reason. Also the resources tab allows you to “put the blame where it rightfully belongs” when it comes to memory leaks ;) But the Firefox addons development community is huge and the 3 addons that are going to keep me using Firefox are delicious bookmarks synchronisation (for access to bookmarks across multiple computers), FlashBlock and the almighty AdBlock! :) Also, having individual processes for each tab is a neat thing when it comes to functionality but for someone like me who lives half his life in the processes tab of Windows Task Manager, seeing all those chrome.exe processes does get a tad bit annoying :)

Chrome is an excellent start and I’d say, with a few tweaks and changes its going to be a great browser. I’ll just wait a few builds (or at least till I have ports of AdBlock and del.icio.us bookmark syncing) and then use Chrome a bit more regularly.

PS: Why do I have the feeling that the age of the browser war threads on forums across the intarwebs are back? :P

Update: Oh I knew this would happen!

iPod 30GB (5.5 Generation; Black)

Every gadget I’ve owned to this day has been personalised. Its just something I have to do (if the hacks make the device better). I’ve done it so far with my i-Mate KJAM (custom ROMs for WM5 and WM6 and even cooking some up once in a while), my brother’s PSP and my computer (that counts too, doesn’t it? :P) among others.But when my brother came home last month, he exchanged the 2nd hand 30 GB iPod (5.5 Generation; Black) that he had.

I had always heard of the legend that is the iPod but never actually used it, believe it or not. I did like my Sony NW-A608 because of its size and battery life but after testing the iPod out for a few days, I decided to keep it because the 2GB Network walk man was no longer enough for me, it was when I got it 3 years ago but not any more.

Knowing that the iPod was so famous, searching for any softwares for it would be nearly impossible. Most content was replicated from one site to another. So I decided to go through most things out there and make a definitive list (for myself, if not anyone else :P). This post is not meant to only have info on iPod tools. This is a post to get the most out of your iPod and customise it in whatever way possible. So shall we get started?

First things first. You’d need a software to manage your connection with the iPod. There are quite a few out there that do the job quite well. This list would include foobar2000 and WinAmp. Despite using the latter as my daily mp3 player on my pc, I decided to go with (don’t frown..) iTunes :P I do know that iTunes has a reputation of being called “bloatware” but I use it for a different reason. I give you iArt. It took me a really long time to find an application which would go through the thousands of songs I have on my hard disk and add not only album art but also lyrics all with little or no human interaction if necessary. Yes, it can go through your entire iTunes library and add album art and lyrics in automatic mode :o Asking me to do those things manually is insane and anyone who knows me, knows full well that I organise my files perfectly and always have them ID3 tagged (even before last.fm came along :P). iArt will automatically go through your entire iTunes library (or selectively through playlists/song lists you want) and find album art/lyrics from various sources for you. You can select album arts and lyrics manually or set iArt to do them automatically for you. So get iTunes and iArt and you can be sure that the music on your iPod has album art and lyrics. In case you need a portable manager, you could use YamIpod.

Now that you’ve got music that’s well tagged with its art and lyrics, you can start thinking about how to make it look good because face it, you want your iPod to look hot. Never fear, iPod themes are here! All you need to do is download iPodWizard from its official website, then go to the iPodWizard forums and go over to the Themes subforum where you should select your iPod version. In my case, this was the 5th generation subforum. Now you can download the themes you want and apply them. Info on how to do so is available on the forum and their wiki as well but I’m going to write an article on that soon with my experiences in this field.

Till now, we’ve spoken about how handle your iPod with different managers and how to theme it. But what if you are tired of the way the in built firmware for the iPod works? You could always change it. RockBox, an Open Source Jukebox Firmware is an excellent alternative to the in built firmware for not only the iPod but a lot of other portable music players. If you’ve not checked it out already, I seriously suggest you do that now. It is pretty good and supports a wide range of file formats unlike the default firmware in iPod. It can even be themed among other things. Is your life dependent on the linux prompt? Well then Linux on iPod is for you! Why do it? Because you can ;) Now the question that everyone wants to ask, which one should I run? RockBox is pretty awesome but has a few issues and so does Linux on iPod (freezing while playing high bitrate songs and browsing through large file lists at the same time). Other than the pretty major issue of having videos to be in mp4s (though even RockBox doesn’t support xvid and there are a ton of videos out there, I just don’t wish to keep my TV shows, movies and Music Videos in formats that the iPod likes. I prefer them to be in xvid which is a standard for me) to work on the default iPod firmware, I find that it works the best. And with theme-ability (as talked about in the previous paragraph), things look well for it.
There is one thing I had hoped someone would have told me (which would have made me move to these alternate firmwares quicker for tests). Installing these firmwares (it seems) gives you a boot up option to select which firmware you want to load so you don’t lose your original iPod firmware.

If you’ve not thought of ever using your iPod as a hard disk, shame on you! You should slap yourself right now! I personally have a ton of portable applications that allow me to do almost everything I do on my home desktop on computers in college. I use portable versions of 7-Zip (for access to archives), Firefox (web browser), FireFTP (Firefox addon for FTP), Floola-win (portable iPod manager), Notepad++ (text editor with syntax highlighting), Portable OSK (just in case ;)), pdfProducer, Pidgin (multi platform chat client), PlainEdit.NET (another text editor with syntax highlighting), PuTTY (ssh access to server), Autoruns, Process Explorer and uTorrent. If you have any suggestions for good portable applications or need help with (getting) any of the ones I have then do let me know :)

This was some of the more general things that you could do. The next few posts will contain information specific to certain feilds and which will talk in detail about iPod 5.5G based hacks. Now you could do it with other iPods but then you’d have to figure out equivalents or get me one of those iPods :P

Its been a long road going through the SDI National Finals where we came second, going to IIM-A where we got project incubation and then finally to the World Finals where we won the interoperability award. Along the way, we made lots of new friends and learned a whole lot more.

Here are a few related posts on my blog: Imagine Cup 2008 World Finals and Imagine Cup 2008 Gallery. Be sure to check out the latter post which has never before seen footage.

Another announcement to be made is that the development for my custom CMS j@x has been put to halt indefinitely due to shortage of time. As have a few other projects like Scribble Scrabble. Some of them, I’ve signed over control to other AXIS members while others (like PHPIRCBot) shall be released in their current state. This decision had to be made considering my schedule over the past year only keeps getting busier and busier.

Next month, I’ll make sure I tell the world about a few products I have under development and others I have ready in my garage ;) The releases include DarkLight, PHPIRCBot and a brand new CountPrime.

So welcome to the new home of j@x, the minimalistic CMS made by.. well me :-)

Lets clear up a few things. I was supposed to release the new version of j@x with the arrival of this domain, this didn’t happen.
The new version will have quite a few improvements along with an alternate theme and may be even AJAX. Who knows? :P One thing it won’t have a set of emotes. In true j@x fashion, this site has to remain geeky and ASCII emotes are certainly the way ;)

Moving on, why this domain name? For those who don’t know, I, John Anderton/JAnderton am known in the real world (IRL) as Karun AB.

So why did I get this domain? Jatonian Life has always been and will always be a blog. This on the other hand is far more technical (a bit too technical I’ve been told :P) so I decided to maintain it separately.
Basically karunab.com will act as my

1. Place for putting out my technical writings
2. List of all my projects and works (ie. the ones available to the public :P)
3. Sort of an online resume for me.

Not to mention I can now have an awesome email address on my domain :P
I wish I could have more time to develop j@x to the fullest extents of my imagination. Every time I sit with it, I get new ideas so its really fun. I’d like to take this site a long way.. so it can represent me electronically or at least attempt to come as close to it as possible.

Do stick around and show your appreciation. It only urges me to move forward quicker with my work :)

PS: I’d just like all of you to know that team SKAN has made it to the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2008 India Finals! You can read about it on the AXIS forum. Hurrah!
Also, you can have a look at a related post on Jatonian Life (named Day of Reckoning approaches)

On 10th of December, 2008, 2 days before my Computer Networks paper I made a WhatPulse class in php to get data from the WhatPulse WebAPI for you to work with. With the information at your finger tips make a forum signature, why don’t you? ;)
I’ve added a few functions to the class and written a small example for people to use. Most people must have it already because the WebAPI came out around 2 years ago but in case there is someone who doesn’t have caching of the WhatPulse data then this is useful.

Caching of data means lesser resources used by your php script to
a) Read from the WhatPulse server.
b) Write to the server’s hard-disk.
c) Use the server’s tubes (even though the xml is less than a kilobyte).

So what are you waiting for? Go have a look ;)
WhatPulse.class.php on svn
WhatPulse_example.php on svn

My WhatPulse profile

PS: This whole thing started with me updating to WhatPulse 1.5b1 after noticing that the WhatPulse team wasn’t going to release any more betas any time soon and the fact that I am currently 18th in the world :-o! (in keystrokes)
More such releases to come soon. I’m planning to have a collection in the dev section. I make tons of useless scripts in php. Might as well put them up just in case someone finds them useful ;)

Everything written in this post except this line and the first line were written 2 months ago. I just didn’t put it up for so long :-(

Ever wanted to send a quick email but then though, “nah.. cba to open my inbox right now”?

Now you can send emails via command line! It doesn’t have to be installed though you could do so if you please. I give you Blat!

Here is a simple example from the documentation:

@echo off
:::::::::::::: Lets set some variables ::::::::::::::
set eMail=tim@blat.tld
set subj=-s “Test Blat”
set server=-server localhost
set x=-x “X-Header-Test: Can Blat do it? Yes it Can!”
set debug=-debug -log blat.log -timestamp
::::::::::::::::: Now we run Blat! :::::::::::::::::
blat %0 -to %eMail% -f %eMail% %subj% %server% %debug% %x%

I should officially be named the PPC hack king when it comes down to recovering them from positions where it seems they might be bricked :P

I installed a custom cooked WM6 ROM for my Wizard (I-Mate K-JAM) and then moved to a second custom ROM, which quite sadly, crashed. This time it got stuck in the IPL/SPL load screen so here is what you do when you’re in such a dilemma.

Remove your battery and then insert it again so now your device is off. Then press the power button + camera button and the phone will start off in boot loader mode. Then get an official ROM and install it. A custom one should too assuming it has the ability to talk to phones in the boot loader (which almost all of the ROMs should imo).

Have a good night ya’ll ;)

The term “Wizard” refers to the HTC Wizard which is a Windows Mobile sold by companies like I-Mate and O2.

Now the manual simply states that one should press the communications and voice buttons simultaneously and then press the reset key with your stylus. Well I can say honestly, that didn’t work for me.

Here is how you can really hard reset your HTC Wizard. I personally was using my I-Mate K-JAM. Before reading the following, make sure you read the warnings given below and the disclaimer while you’re at it.
1) Take your stylus and press and hold the reset key that you use for soft resetting. Don’t press the key. Hold it, as in keep it pressed.
2) Then press the voice and comm buttons simultaneously and keep them pressed.
3) You can let go of the (soft) reset key now. Wait for the confirmation message on the screen which will instruct you to press the send key (left soft key) to reset.

That’s it! You just successfully hard resetted your Windows Mobile 5.0 device.

Now you ask, why? Why would I want to hard reset my device? Hmm.. Maybe you’re selling off your device and don’t want to give the person any of your data. A hard reset puts everything back to the factory settings. Alternately, maybe you just forgot your phone password and can’t find a way in. You never know :P

Warning: Hard resetting leads to deleting of all data on the main memory in devices running on windows mobile 5.0 and even the data on the memory card for windows mobile 6.0
I didn’t risk it. I removed my mini-SD card while doing so :P

Disclaimer: Though this method does only what I told you it does (hard resets your devideAs usual, I am not responsible for any kind of harm, damage or loss that might arise out of using this information. Use it at your own risk

So finally I got bugged with UAC enough to switch it off a few weeks back. Not all of it though. Just the module for approval from an admin and the elevation without prompting. Here is how you can do it.

Click Start > Type “local” and enter (to open Local Security Policy) > Local Policies > Security Options > Browse down to the set of UAC controls.

Now I disabled the “User Account Control: Admin Approval Mode for the Built-in Administrator account” and set the “User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode” to “Elevate without prompting”

So far, everything is going quite smoothly. Then to disable the irritating red icon in your task bar open Windows Security Center (again start > type it out and select. Don’t you just love Windows Vista’s new search? ;)) then on the left side, select “Change the way Security Center alerts me.”
Now select “Don’t notify me and not show me the icon (not recommended)” I would have honestly liked an option saying, “Notify me (once) but don’t show me the icon.” Too bad we can’t do that.

And that is it. No more UAC asking you to accept every action you make. Yay for power users ;)