Sarath Chandra Pandurangi's Blog

Many a time, a page you are debugging doesnot have jquery. This simple js will add(or prompt you to overwrite) jquery to any page from chrome console. javascript:if(!window.jQuery||confirm('Overwrite\x20current\x20version?\x20v'+jQuery.fn.jquery))(function(d,s){s=d.createElement('script');s.src='https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8/jquery.js';(d.head||d.documentElement).appendChild(s)})(document);

Over the last weekend, I evaluated DisQus commenting platform. I saw compelling reasons why Blogger's default commenting is primitive in comparison. Today I am launching DisQus on this blog. Here are 3 most important reasons that made this decision easy.

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.

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 .

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.

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.

Just updated the fresh-out-the-oven Google Maps. 5.0. Simply Awesome. The 3d images of NYC buildings, tilting, rotating, much smoother zoom operations, and better offline support make it a highly recommended update

The new priority Inbox in Gmail is awesome for a GTD-er. However there's a small feature that is a little confusing. Assuming the three sections, Important and unread, Important and Starred are enabled. When an important mail is received, it goes in two Important and Unread. Then let the case be that the mail in question (The Mail, from here on) is worth a Star. It gets Starred. In due course, more mail comes in - Important ones. *The Mail* is now buried under. This is where its confusing. One thought begs to assume that The Mail is now shown in Starred section. But no. It is down the pile of Important mail. And NOT shown in Starred. Is that desirable? Not really? or is it?

Yesterday, I created a public live readonly wave and posted it on my blog. Here is how you get it. You need a Wave account. You log into your wave inbox. and start a wave.   Add participant "Public". Note that "Public" is not in your address book. But shows up when start typing public. Then make the "Public" participant's Access to this wave readonly. Then get the code to insert from the *Link to wave* menu. Copy paste it on your website and You get your self a live reporter.

Gates are now open. Google voice is now open for public. No invites necessary. I am not sure how Google will be able to give a number for EVERY google account (we have two each, My wife and I), or how it will restrict NON-US users (a billion numbers? NOT possilble) - But from google - "SURPRISE, we are open." Here is what they have posted: A little over a year ago, we released an early preview of Google Voice, our web-based platform for managing your communications. We introduced one number to ring all your phones, voicemail that works like email, free calls and text messages to the U.S. and Canada, low-priced international calls and more—the only catch was you had to request and receive an invite to try it out. Today, after lots of testing and tweaking, we’re excited to open up Google Voice to the public, no invitation required.

Just back from Vinukonda, AP, India . This trip to India is taking a toll. I am moving around a lot of places and very quickly. Its a lot different from travelling in US. We have a lot more tools and *own* or rental cars. In India you typically travel in public transport (rail or road) - Not many places you want to go can be reached by flight directly. So you generally donot need directions. But once I had to travel on personal car. There are very few GPSes, let alone - their reliability. However, Google now does come handy. It not only shows directions from one city/town. But is also helpful in taking directions in Cities like Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai. The text directions may not be really as good as the *helpful* bystander - but the directions will definitely give a better picture.

This is connected to the post in Google App Engine Group .  Although Google Appengine gives out a java container, I had to roll back to the python code I used for version SarathOnline 3.1 – for a sole reason – perfromance. My (blog) site has a very low traffic (compared to what google thinks a regular traffic application). Averaging ~100 visits/day. All the css and js is dynamically generated. My current python code is doing pretty well servicing these requests @ a maximum of 2.something secs

Running Linux, ddclient is highly suggested software for updating DynamicDNS servers. It supports updating a variety of servers. Some of them are dyndns.com opendns.com and no-ip.com. ddclient supplies documentation to update multiple hostnames (on the same server) but does not have an example with multiple servers. Here is an example that covers all those combinations. ## ddclient configuration file daemon=600 # check every 600 seconds syslog=yes # log update msgs to syslog mail-failure=your@emailaddress.com # Mail failed updates to user # requires sendmail installed. pid=/var/run/ddclient.pid # record PID in file. ssl=yes #use ssl ## Detect IP with our CheckIP server use=web, web=checkip.dyndns.com/, web-skip='IP Address' protocol=dyndns2, login=user1, password=YOURPASSWORD \ some.selfip.org protocol=dyndns2, login=user2, password=ANOTHERPASS\ someother.selfip.org protocol=dyndns2, server=updates.opendns.com, login=user3, password=psswd3 \ home