Sarath Chandra Pandurangi's Blog

I picked up my Acer Iconia. A500 tablet from BestBuy yesterday. 24hrs later, the screen looks like its been used for 6 months. It's scary how these things keep you captivated. There are thousands of reviews out there, so I am not going to bore you with another "in-depth" review. Here is short and sweet account of my rendezvous with my new found love interest.

Today is Engineer's Day in India . Happy Engineers Day..

One has to admire the relentless spirit of a nation to value the immense loss on this day ten years ago. And their courage to stand by it. Hats off to those in United 93 who chose to sacrifice thier life over thier fellow countrymen. And to the countrymen who don't forget the loved ones, and show gratitude to those who served. May the families, whose loss is immeasurable, find peace this day. May the souls rest in peace. May there be "No such day to any nation on the face of the planet, EVER again" . Today, so We pray.

Archana.. Amulya..

Here is why colbert is my source for all the "real" news. The Colbert Report Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Norwegian Muslish Gunman's Islam-Esque Atrocity www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Some times you need to copy only table structures across databases. This article describes two ways of doing it. If the whole database schema need to be exported, mysqldump is very effective. A --nodata flag will dump all tables' schema. Like this. mysqldump --nodata -p -u username databaseName But if you want to copy a specific table, individually, you could use "create table like" feature. You could create it even from a different database. However it must be on the same mysqld instance. Like this. create table newtable like oldtable; --Or from a table in other database create table mytable like otherdatabase.tablename;

To develop Chrome extensions, crx is the best way. But the user scripts that are developed in general for Greasemonkey can also be delivered for Chrome, if a few easy rules are followed. 1. @required and @resource don't work. By default, atleast for now, These two Userscript metatags donot work on Chrome. If you need to load a js file, instead of using @required - try to use document.createElement. Similarly with @resource. 2. Some GreaseMonkey helper methods don't work or are restricted. Methods with GM_ prefix from userscript api may not work. Particularly, unsafeWindow, GM_registerMenuCommand, GM_setValue, or GM_getValue are not supported. GM_xmlhttpRequest will work but not only on the same domain. 3. @include s are not shown while installing. This may not be a deal breaker for developers, but sure is for users. The patterns used in @include is not shown while installing. Instead a generic message is shown as below. This message may scare the users away. ...

Here is one company committed to Green alternative fuels and reducing carbon foot print. Google is no less a real life research lab. Plugin Electric cars are the fastest way to remove dependency on oil. They may eventually become energy hogs (if everyone will buy these), but for the moment, they are a viable solution. Advances in renewable energy may make electric even cheaper, easy to produce - until then, its only time for ideas.. like these..

Update: Yahoo mail with new layout renders this obsolete. The newer Yahoo mail beta (neo) really is a faster UI. However, The large header with room that is unused is a let down.  This one time, it appears that, Yahoo did not take into account the importance of real estate on top of the page, hitting User Experience. Reduce Yahoo mail neo header space for more room by installing SarathOnline's " Spacier Yahoo Neo " userscript below Install YNeo UserScript by SarathOnline Before: After: The user script is fairly simple. You could install it in Firefox as a Greasemonkey script. Or install it on chrome directly. If you are new to UserScripts, follow these instructions to install them on your browser. Be assured, it has no malicious code. All it does is install a correcting css to the document. The css file is located here .  And the script itself. (function(){ var d=document,sid='__sar__yneo', fn='http://www.sarathonline.com/dyn/sfs/userscripts/y...

Want to install a userscript on your browser. Go no further. Here are simple instructions and caveats for installing Userscripts in Firefox, Opera, Chrome. If you want to author your own scripts, here is a beginner's tutorial .

UserScripts are fun, useful and often productive . A lot of sites have small improvements you think could add a lot of value. And just because you are not the author of the site, you need not give up. With some basic javascript skills, you could write a userscript, install it on your browser, and make the site behave.

For a long time this was due. Here it is, finally. If you think this site has ever been helpful, please consider installing and using the Search engine from SarathOnline on your browser. This will help us offset the maintenance cost. Thank you. Updated! May 29, faster search, with more options..

The recent news about Google App Engine has taken the developer community by a surprise. There is a lot of hue and cry. Some have claimed that they have been betrayed, lost trust. Some even thought the rug got pulled out from under them. Some have even warned this as Google's biggest mistake that could cost them dearly. But is it really that big of a deal? How much of this is a concern?

They say if you don't have Firebug you are not a developer. But Chrome developer tools, is just as sweet developers in chrome. Firebug is a very powerful tool in itself. Chrome dev tools adds a few more features that make it a pleasure to develop on chrome. Here is a quick video that may have your head turn to Chrome.

Are you one of those people who don't  have Gingerbread on your captivate. Still with Éclair, because you don't want to *root* your phone or scared about voiding the warranty? You are in luck, Samsung released its AT&T stock update to froyo. You have to get this using Samsung's "Kies Mini" program. Kies is a windows application that will safely (no warranty voids here) flash your phone. You are still recommended to save ALL your data before you do anything with the phone. Unfortunately, there is no love for Linux/mac users.

మీ ఇంటిల్లిపాదికి ఈ ఉగాది సుభాకరం కావాలని, ఆరోగ్యం, సౌభాగ్యం, శాంతి, సామరస్యం మరియు ఆనందం తేవాలని ఆసిస్థూ…   ఉగాది శుభాకాంక్షలు - జ్యోత్స్న & శరత్ (చందు)

  India won the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup, beating a formidable Srilankan team by 6 wickets. It was a tribute to Indian cricket, 1.2 billion Indians and a particular one of them, Sachin Tendulkar. Sachin adds this feather to his celebrated cap after waiting 5 world cups.

IE9 has some really cool tech upgrades .Here are a few errant UI features that makes IE9 less than perfect. It almost gives the impression that the UI engineers did not do a stellar job. or IE9 UI is a half baked cake.

If you administer a bunch of identical Linux boxes, and have to run same commands on all of them, say like manual deployments, restarts etc. – you probably log in to each of them manually and run commands. Or at best you would have a script looping through them and executing an ssh on each. However there are times when you need to be interactive on each box, yet run the same and/or series of commands. In those cases, cssh on Unix (with X) and PuTTYCS on windows are a godsend for any administrator.

This tool is probably one of few which puts the power of Internet and Social Networks to the best use.

  ‘Million March' turns violent in Hyderabad Why is this happening to us? We used to pride ourselves for hosting ravindranath tagore (never thinking he is not from our state/region). We put *Cotton Dora*'s idol in our land (never considering he is not even from our country). Such were we, that MK Gandhi praised our patriotism and hospitality. It is a shame some of the most educated are have a positive side to this story. Supporting these acts of immaturity and haste in the name of a Greater cause, is disrespecting the genuine-ty of that demand, belittling the cause.  There was time when we did things differently. A different leadership, and people who really followed them religiously. The Video is a reflection of what we achieved, and how we achieved- A path is respected by the world and the humanity. The students who lost their lives never would have done it, if it were under the same path.  The people DO deserve thier voice to be heard. But they DONOT have a ...

When you suspend Windows, you expect it to live in the slumber. And only act when you command it to wake up. However, Sometimes, Windows wakes up, apparently for various reasons. And it wont tell you why, like most other things it wont tell. But if you are wearing one of those investigator hats today, get to the bottom of it. Using Windows Event Viewer. To fire up Event Viewer, available in Control Panel > Administrative tools. You can apply filters to the events displayed, by using the controls on the right. You could use Event Sources (look for power*, for spurious wake ups), and/or keywords. Or you could manually go through all of the logs.

We just came back from a beautiful vacation from India. Kerala, a state in India, is also dubbed "God's Own Country". It is rich in greenery, abundant in water bodies. Kerala should be on any tourist's list immediately after Tajmahal, Agra (although, be advised that Agra is North India and Kerala is on the extreme south). The weather was generally pleasant (Jan - Mar is considered the *season* for tourism here) We landed in Thiruvananthapuram , aka Trivandrum, Trichy. It's the capital city of Kerala. It is accessible by air, train (and also sea). It is said to have some really nice beaches – one is - Varkala Beach (we were unable to go for lack of time). Can also be used as a crashing pad. The crown jewel tourist spot near Trichy is a hill station called Ponmudi . The best experience would be to spend a night in the KTDC resort 2 KM from the summit. The sunrise and the sunset from the resort is awe inspiring. The summit is not open for either so, the resort i...

EDIT1: Mar 4 2011, 11:23 EST - At this time, This list seems to have been incorrectly credited to Bill Gates (thanks for pointing out, @Mat ). MICROSOFT’S billionaire Bill Gates recently gave a speech at an American high school at which he spoke about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world. Well looks like He copied from Mr. Sykes. To buy the book click on the image. Life is not fair — get used to it! The world doesn’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself. You will NOT make US$60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vicepresident with a car phone until you earn both. If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. they called it opportunity. If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them. Befo...

If you just updated your andriod devices to froyo, you are already one step behind in android releases. But With all the goodness in each update, why would you wait. Howver, if you are an early adopter, Google is not sleeping when you are waiting.

2010 is out the door. Personally, it was a year that ebbed out the worst period of my life. Dawning 2011, I hope things make a turn towards the good. To all the members of our extended family, friends, friends' friends, Jyothsna and I wish a very very very happy new year. It has been a fun New Years Eve, Thanks to a lot of friends. credit:btobetun Let there be Peace!