Chronicles of Gautam

Please click on the Image to enlarge it. What seems so special about the screenshot? It seems that somebody just clicked on "start" in windows. So whats the fuss and why am I writing a post about it? Well, it turns out that (surprise!) it is not windows at all, but an operating system called ReactOS . To quote the ReactOS site verbatim "ReactOS® is a free, modern operating system based on the design of Windows® XP/2003. Written completely from scratch, it aims to follow the Windows® architecture designed by Microsoft from the hardware level right through to the application level. This is not a Linux based system, and shares none of the unix architecture". ReactOS is doing something unimaginable to me till some time ago, reverse engineering the whole windows opertating system itself! . And all the while maintaining compatibility with windows. Right now it claims that it is in pre alpha stage, but already it has many features like remote desktop, e

Microsoft has finally released the much anticipated Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 today. It can be found here . Apparently it is receiving rave reviews from all around the planet. ( Review1 , Review2 ). One of the new "feature" is the " porn mode ", or so it is nicknamed. Ahem. I personally haven't tried it yet, (by "it" I mean the browser you pervs) but the reviews all say that IE8 is "catching up" and that "There is not much difference between FireFox and IE now". Some are even predicting that this might be the end of Firefox! Well, it does seem that Microsoft has done a good job, and I think the consumer is the ultimate winner here. An interesting thing to notice is that this is a major software that has been copied from the Open source world to the proprietary world. Generally it is the other way round - Open source applications aim to imitate their more established/feature full counterparts. Recently one such software was acquire

This is a screenshot of Amarok , the best music player in my opinion. How can one see the player and not fall in love with it? I just loved it from the day I saw it. Its highly customizable, plays every format once the codecs are installed, and generally does all that can be expected from a top notch media player, and then some more.I quite like the Moodbar feature- it is the colourful bar that Amarok generates for each song that corresponds to the 'mood' of the song. You can see it at the bottom right corner in the screenshot. Sadly, it is not available on Windows, though there is an official project to port it . Hope the binary for windows comes out soon. I have tried all kinds of softwares for windows, ( Windows Media Player , Winamp , Quintessential Player , Mediamonkey , Itunes ), but none of them really gives me the feel that I get from Amarok, if you know what I mean. Just for comparision's sake though, I felt Quintessential was one of the better music players. Thou

I am really proud of my laptop- I never had to format it due to a virus/spyware infection. (Though I did format it quite a few times due to my Linux addiciton). Here I would like to share some of the softwares which I use, most of which I am really fond of, and free. (I rather like to use free software unless there is a compelling reason to use a paid one.(Did I say paid ? :P) Firefox : Oh it just gets better and better. Version 3.1 has all I could ask. My fav Firefox add-ons: NoScript, flashgot, colourful tabs, google preview, cooliris, piclens, Mcafee siteadvisor, pdf download. CDBurnerXP : Its a CD/DVD burning software for Windows. And needless to say, beats Nero is every aspect. Did you know that a full installation of Nero 7 actually creates 35 entries in the Startup menu? Yeah you read it right. Thirty-five . IrfanView : Cool software for viewing/editing photos. Try it out. Google talk : I love google talk. Gmail : Best mail facility out there. Beats Yahoomail by far. 1by1 : It

The happening of the following sequence of events is why am I posting on blogger and not Wordpress: -I forgot my Wordpress password (quite rare, me forgetting passwords). -The 'forgot password' link on Wordpress mailed to my Bitsmail account. -I couldn't open my Bitsmail account on account of it being currently inaccessible from outsite BITS. BTW I am in Bangalore from 2nd July, and here are some curious details about the place I live in: 1) It is within a hundred meters from a railway line. 2) It is within a hundred meters from a National Highway. 3) It is about a kilometer from the nearest Indian Railway Station. 4) It is within a hundred meters from the nearest KSRTC bus stop. 5) It is within a hundred meters from a 5-storeyed Big Bazaar. 6) It is around 500 meters from a Cafe Coffee Day. 7) It is around 500 meters from a Food World outlet. 8) It is around 500 meters from a Reliance Fresh Outlet. 9) It is around 500 meters from a Subhiksha outlet. 10) It is within a kilo