vsbabu.org

Buchanan reveals Australian secrets

Report from rediff.com.

I provided (Flower) with some of my thoughts. I’ve been keeping a bit of a gaze on the Ashes build-up from a far and passed on a few things I’ve picked up as an observer now removed from the team

My advise to England. You want to win Ashes, just ignore secrets from that particular source. Still in doubt? Just ask Kolkata Knightriders.

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June 15, 2009

Outlook 2003 + Flags = todo list

Microsoft Outlook 2003 has a very irritating system for adding reminders to messages. For example, I want to add a flag to remind me about the mail next day, it involves right clicking and choosing reminder options. Also, this never works on a selection of mails. You have to do it one at a time. Newer versions of Outlook apparently handles this fairly well. I searched the web for ideas on how to ease the pain and got some VB macros. Got those, modified them to suite my needs (original source information is available within the code) and now life is fun.

I needed ability to quickly mark one or more mails for action. Action could be within 2 hours, next day or within 2 days. Similarly, some of the mails are what I sent to my team for followup. Again that is within 2 hours, next day or within 2 days. When things are getting into waiting mode, I need to quickly defer action or followup by a week, 2 weeks or a month. Here’s how my custom toolbar looks now!

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June 14, 2009

Sample Source : Watij and easyb

Watij is a slick automation library to automate Internet Explorer. easyb is a good tool for behaviour driven development - BDD. Didn’t feel like going out on Sunday afternoon - decided to explore both.

Download a sample project that illustrates how to use both of these to automate testing of web sites. It has testing code as both easyb and junit tests. Unzip the file into a folder and read README.txt on how to use it. The project opens Google, searches for my name and verifies the search results.

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January 14, 2009

Prime Minister sends a greeting card to Pak Prez

News item on rediff.com. Here is my take on news items that may appear in the next two weeks - these are heavily influenced by the news since 26/11 attacks on Mumbai.

• 2009.01.14 - Pakistan denies receiving any card.
• 2009.01.16 - Pakistan acknowledges receipt of a card and says a formal reply will be sent.
• 2009.01.18 - Formal reply concludes that the graphic of the dove in the card is inconclusive evidence. It also raises suspicions of the bird being a non-state actor of India. If a correct dove is available and if there is proof of New Year, will surely act on it.
• 2009.01.19 - Pakistan Army assures readiness to counter any pressure in enforcing New Year.
• 2009.01.20 - Unconfirmed reports from NWFP and Swat regions about several banned outfits trying to eliminate all doves.
• 2009.01.21 - Pakistan Foreign Minister proposes celebrating New Year by a joint team.
• 2009.01.22 - An Indian minister who claims impeccable secular credentials demands probe on whether the graphic is that of a dove or of a eagle (called "garud" around here!). Quickly some other so called secularists jump to support him.
• 2009.01.23 - Bunch of artists and ornithologists study the card and certify it is a dove. The said minister claims he is happy that the confusion is over and looks relieved that he is still a minister.
• 2009.01.24 - US confirms new aid of $1 billion to Pakistan so that they can focus back on US' war on terror. Pakistan acknowledges this but still raises concerns about mounting tensions over the dove with India.
• 2009.01.25 - Things go into relatively calm mode...

What will happen on next New Year? Anybody’s guess. Only thing I can be sure is that majority of Indian citizens between ages 20 and 40 would’ve become more cynical.

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December 30, 2008

It is not funny anymore!

Peter English opines that following Australia’s series defeat today, rebuilding is not funny anymore. However, since I’ve already spent a good part of my week long vacation watching the test match on TV, I think it is way too funny - no need to explain why, but just read the opening paragraph of the article!

To shamelessly quote a famous ad, watching Ricky Ponting’s expression during the post-match ceremonies - priceless. Even better, his claims of still being No. 1! In India, Ponting chose not to bowl Brett Lee (overrate is better than loosing a series?), but in this test, even his deputy couldn’t explain why a limping Lee was bowling when Johnson was not.

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December 27, 2008

Annotating photos with date

With Imagemagick, you can easily annotate your digital photographs with the date. This assumes that the date information is captured within the photograph - most digital cameras do this (and most common mistake I do is to remember to set the date when I insert the battery back after charging!). Here is a small shell script to do this. Save it as an executable file and then run it with all files you want to convert. The annotated files have a prefix of ts_.

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