Live Free. Live Happy.

After trying out various screencasting applications in Linux, I figured out the below set of applications are the best for creating, modifying and editing screencasts. Kindly note that all the below mentioned software are available in the Debian main repository.

Detailed instructions for reducing a dynamic VDI size can be found at http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?p=29272 (FAQ entry "How can I reduce the size of a dynamic VDI on disk?").

Reducing the size of a dynamic VDI is mainly a two stage process:

Today, my GPG key has been added to the Debian GNU/Linux keyring maintainers package, thereby converting me from a sponsored Debian maintainer to an official Debian maintainer.

What an eventful decade this has been - Graduation, Work, Friendships, Break-Ups and Marriage. With all this experience, I do hope I've become wiser :).

Unlike every time when I'm generally not very enthusiastic about celebrating my birthday, this time I went with my family to a farm and spent the day there. Later, I met a very close friend on my way back home.

Unfortunately, my current activities is leaving me very little time to spend on my blog. I have a list of more than ten pending blog posts which I hope to publish soon.

HyderabadLaptops or HyderabadLaptops.com seems to be a division or an alias of AISS (Academy for Integrated Systems & Solutions) and deals with computer hardware. I got to know of this company while googling for laptop repair services. Generally, when writing a review of a product or a service, I tend to give an advice to my readers whether to use the product/service or not.

The first USB flash drive that I had owned, RiDATA 1 GB flash drive, had a hardware USB write protect switch. This was really cool as whenever I had to take a printout at some Internet cafe, I'd lock it and then only attach it to any computer. This way I was confident that even if the Internet Cafe's computer was infected with some virus, it would by no means affect the flash drive (which I'd later be using on my computer). However, of late, manufactures seem to have stopped putting this hardware write protect switch on USB flash drives.

We all have heard of the ISO image format which is a very popular way of backing up data CDs & DVDs. A very easy way of creating an ISO image in linux is by using the dd or dcfldd command. Similarly, in Windows, applications such as Nero have an option to save a CD as an ISO image file. However, when it comes to audio CDs it is not possible to backup them as ISO image file as they have multiple tracks. Here are two ways to create an image of audio cd for archival purposes.

1. Exact Audio Copy (EAC)
   

After a long wait, Synovel CollabSuite has finally been deployed at IIIT-H, my graduation school. Since I've graduated, I wanted to do something significant for IIIT-H and I got this opportunity through my current company, Synovel Software Technologies. This has been the largest deployment of CollabSuite to date, with about 3750 user base and more than 1000 active users. We did face a few issues in the beginning but they have all been resolved now. And now there is one more thing which has been pending from my side for IIIT-H - the alumni portal.

XEP-0136 is an XMPP protocol extension used for storing and accessing message archives. Daniel Kraic has written a Pidgin plugin for accessing these archived messages. Below are the brief instructions for installing this plugin in Debian and using it. Generic installation instructions can be found in INSTALL file.

Installation:

TekCharge MP1550 is an awesome mobile charger. I had purchased it from Amazon and got it shipped with one of my friends. Few things which I think are really cool about this charger are:

1. Charger supports 7 different connectors. Furthermore there is a USB port, which means that theoretically any portable device that could be charged via USB could be charged using this charger.