Cyber Drop

I been very busy with my MBA exams and Official Projects. That is why, I could not post anything much on my blog these days. Well, I am so happy today! I always am, anyways :) Coming to what is so special today, I bought my Guitar this noon. It is an Acoustic Guitar and not an Electric Guitar but still it has the Pick up box in it. So it is almost equivalent to an Electric Guitar minus the looks :) I been wanting to learn how to play Guitar for the last 2 months and this day it is... I decided to take my dad in my Wagon R and get one. I ended up buying this one.. It's cute, isn't it? :) It sure is :-D


I have also joined for Guitar classes and it starts from tomorrow onwards... I am too excited and just can't wait for it to start :) My parents were asking, "why all of a sudden you want to learn Guitar? You could learn Keyboard rather." I really had no answer to tell them but I knew, deep down somewhere inside my heart, I have a thing for Guitar and Western Pop. Out of over exictement, I am now practising to flick each of them strings without touching the adjacent one... Think I am getting better at it Lol Just thought I would share this happy news with you all...

So, now I have a new buddy to sit on my desk along with my Fire Nooks and Andromeda :) And oh.. I almost forgot to tell you... I have named my gorgeous Guitar as, "VEGA" which rhymes well with the word RAGA (meaning music). I chose the name VEGA because it means the brightest star in the constellation Lyra :) It's something to do with the space again, I know :)

I normally don’t suggest anyone to join an online community for serious learning rather I would ask people to search for the material they are looking for and read it themselves or join a formal class for it. It is not that I do not believe in learning over Online Web Meetings; it is just that I personally feel learning this way wastes most of our time… I mean, I could have learnt it by myself in just 30 minutes for which I would have spent an hour or so over the net listening to someone talking/tutoring about it. To be precise, it is something like someone trying to master Japanese just by watching Anime or Someone trying to learn proper English just by watching Bob the Builder or Miffy & friends! There really is nothing wrong in it but there sure is something wrong in the way you are learning!


I know about this EduFire site for quite some time but I have never bothered trying them out. Yesterday I signed up for some reason (for Japanese courses if you are curious about the reasonJ) and so pleased. Those guys are awesome! Many other such online video learning sites are up coming in the Internet like Live mocha, Mingle, etc. I also have a membership at Livemocha but I never found them to be as useful as EduFire!

EduFire takes free classes for all languages, SAT, GMAT, Cooking, Computer Security, Networking, Mathematics and almost everything. If you feel you are good at something you can also be a tutor and make profit out of it or even conduct free classes to gain attention. As of now, I am just a student there learning Japanese but very sooner I am planning to become a tutor for Mathematics and Computers. Those courses really lack tutors there. One however needs a webcam (not mandatory though but preferable to have one) and microphone to become a tutor. To be just a student, only microphones will do. Some classes don’t even require the students to have a microphone. You can just type in your questions and watch the tutors answer it.

Every student joining EduFire has to attend (not compulsory though but it is advisable to attend) the “New Student Orientation” class. I attended it yesterday and it was on par! I initially felt, it is going to be a waste of time as co-coordinating and managing a class over the Internet or Live Conferencing (that too including people from different backgrounds, different countries, different culture, etc) sounded quite hard for me but the way those guys run the show was really amazing. It was at 9.30 PM IST I logged onto the virtual classroom. There were almost 15 students along with me in the class. The students were allowed to use only Text chat and we were able to see and hear the tutor speaking via web cam! Nothing new or exciting about this as we all would have experienced Live Chat or Live meeting. It’s the way they organized and coordinated that got me excited!

As I said before, there are many FREE classes and a few paid classes. Couple of the upcoming classes can be found at:

http://edufire.com/classes

I suggest you all to join EduFire and make the most out of online video learning!

Hope you all had a great Valentines Day celebration :) Don't ask me how did mine go because I am about to say anyways Lol

I went out with my parents to Thiruvannaamalai temple and got my feet burnt! Yeah, it was a sunny day and we were traveling from my home to Thiruvannaamalai on our gorgeous Wagon R. It took 4 complete hours to reach the destination. The temple will be shut by 1 PM sharp and we were there by 12.35 PM. So, we rushed into the temple with bare foot. The sun was so mad that day and the foot steps were all as hot as red iron bars. Not exaggerating but it really was that hot! I managed to walk till the 'Moola sthaanam' (the primary place where God Annamalai was situated) but I had real tough time when getting back from the temple to our car. I have been asking my parents, “Are you guys feeling anything happening to your feet at all?"! My dad had no response and I got the hint that he is suffering too Lol and my mom was too busy chanting, "Om Namashivaya". I even thought may be chanting that would stop hurting my feet Lol Okay not trying to tease God!

Finally, when I somehow managed to get back to our Car, I realized my feet are totally burnt and I could not even wear my floaters :( Don't you worry, I am alright now :) (As if you are worried for me Lol). On our way back to home, my mom bugged my dad to take her to the Pondicherry 's Annai Ashramam as well. I was like, "GRRR! What are you on about, mom? I got Japanese class tomorrow and this Pondicherry stuff is not on our plan! Well, I am not coming. We need to reach home early". She was requesting a lot and we had to visit Ponddicherry's Manakkula Vinayagar temple and Annai Ashramam. I am not much of a spiritual kind of woman and hence I did not have any fun there. Yet, I was glad my mom is happy! For me, servicing GOD is nothing but giving the poor, needy and orphans. By giving I mean not only the money or things but spending time with them, talking to them, playing with them. I personally enjoy spending time with such little kids every time when I go to Sivananda Ashramam & Udhavum karangal.

At last, we then started from there by 7 PM and reached home exactly at 11 PM. As a result, I could not attend my Japanese class the next day. Never mind! Our loved ones worth such sacrifices.

On the other hand, there was a huge celebration happening in my company on 13th February. Singing contest, Gifts & Flowers stall, Love letter writing Competitions, etc. I did not participate in any of them. The appropriate word would be I “couldn’t” rather I “didn’t”. I had client meeting that day for almost am hours when all these events happened. The height of all these was teasing everyone by the color of dress they wore that day. Knowingly or unknowingly I was in black salwar. I don't give a damn about what does that color signify anyways it's fun watching people being teased Lol To be frank, I never seen people celebrating Valentines day this grandly in an IT Company. Oh well, the European Companies do, probably!

Well, No! It is nothing technical but about the crap network connection I been having for the last three complete days. Every human has some means of addiction and I am no exception! I am so addicted to my Fire Nooks that I can not survive a day without it; but for me, my Fire Nooks is a just a box with out the internet connection. With no internet, I would use my Fire Nooks only for learning Japanese and practicing for my RHCE. However, I can not survive with out Internet Connection at any cost. That is why I opted BSNL unlimited plan even though it is a bit costly. To add to the merry, not only the Broadband service but also our Landline connection was completed dead for the last 15 days.

We have raised a complaint and all the stuff as per the formality but none turned up to address this bloody damn issue. I finally somehow managed to get the contact number of my division customer service head's number and requested him to fix it up. I would have to switch over to Airtel otherwise. Finally, I got everything done today :) Now you see me smiling, yes I am :)

It p1$$3$ me off every time when my network ever gives up on me :( I can now browse again as usual :)

Addicted to Internet for life!

These tips are awesome and would definitely come handy!

1. To bring out the Shortcuts on your Screen/Desktop-> Settings/Personal/Home Screen/Home Screen Theme and select Shortcut bar, you can then select which shortcut to display if goto "Shortcuts". This will also bring out the "Track" playing being displayed when you open the Music Player.
2. Tap the Clock to bring out the Clock menu and make your alarm, alarm repeat is now built-in.
3. Tap the "General" or Date (the set Profile besides the clock) and the Profile selection menu pops out, almost similar to pressing the "Power" button in all S60, but here the Remove memory is not shown, but "Calendar" shortcut is included and the other profiles as well.
4. If you are on the Numeric Keypad, pressing the [#] key alternately will toggle the General and Silent Profiles, same as before, which means long press on zero [0] will bring out bookmarks for the Web.
5. Tapping on the displayed To do or Calendar entry will bring you immediately to that particular item.
6. Tapping the Active Icon on the Top Left (near the battery indicator) will give you shortcuts for any of the active icons.
7. Long press on the Green Call Button will still activate the Voice Command Prompt
8. Long press on the center button is similar to the Long press on the "Menu" key (the yin-yang key on most S60) which will bring out the menu for all the active applications.
9. Go to Applications/File Manager and setup "Backup" for automated backup schedule of your phone data.
10. How to update your Nokia 5800 firmware using your phone. Presss *#0000# to display phone factory information and firmware. Now press options and select check for updates. The newest update is sent to your phone from nokia. Download and install updates. This is done using GPRS or WIFI Connectivity.

This trick will hold good for any version of the Acrobat Reader. *nix users excuse me :)

Here's how to do it:

Go to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Reader (replace the C: if you installed the Adobe Acrobat reader on some other drive). The path would be like C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader if it's version 9.

Inside the Reader folder, you will find a lot of folders. What we concerned about are the two folders - Plus-ins and Optional.
Inside Plug-ins folder, you will find hell a lot of plug-ins which you really won't ever be using at all. For example,

• Accessibility.api - Acrobat Accessibility
• Annots.api - Comments
• AcroForm.api - Forms
• MakeAccessible.api - MakeAccessible
• Spelling.api - Spelling
• soap.api - soap
• Sendmail.api - Send Mail
• reflow.api - Reflow
• LegalPDF.api - Legal PDF
• DigSig.api - Digital Signature
• Multimedia.api - Multimedia
• PPKLite.api - PPKLite
• Updater.api - Updater
• eBook.api - Adobe DRM
• PDDom.api - PDCom
• SaveAsRTF.api - Save as RTF
• Checkers.api - Checkers

You can see these options via the menu options Help -> Adobe Help Plug-ins as shown below:











Now, as the final step, cut all the unneeded plug-ins from the Plug-ins folder and paste them to the Optional folder. You're done!

Try opening your Acrobat Reader now to experience it's performance :)

PS: For the ones using Acrobat Reader 9.0, please don't bother CUT-ting and PASTING the contents of plug_ins3d folder to Optional. I did try that, it did really not have much notable difference in the performance. Besides, this plus_ins3d folder seems only to have .x3d format files which mean Extensible 3D. X3D is actually a file format specification with requirements on how that file is to be displayed. It will be the ISO standard for 3D graphics. So, even if you cut and paste the contents of plug_ins3d folder to Optional, it will not have any impact.

Finally, something free from M$ :) yeah, Microsoft is offering free Domain Name and Hosting for one year!

You can host both business and personal sites. The freebie account includes not only the domain (any available .com, .net, .org, or .info address), but also site-building tools, reporting tools, project and document managers, 100 e-mail addresses, and collaboration-minded online workspaces. You get 500MB of storage, too. Too less yeah? Shut it, It’s free mind you! :)

By the way, there really isn't any catch, though the free domain hosting expires after one year. After that, it'll run you a very reasonable $14.95 annually.

If you never had a website for you, then this is the right time to give it a try. It’s all free for the next one complete year. Discontinue it, if you don’t like it or move over to other free hosting companies :)

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