Innovative Microsoft
21/08/2008
Yea I know what you are thinking, Microsoft isnt really known for innovation but rather for immitation. Anyways I think they are taking a lead with a new technology called PhotoSynth, which ties together photos from different users and helps create a 3D view of the location. Take a look at the demo here, really cool stuff !!
India for the first time EVER in its history will win 3 medals at one Olympics. This will bring our total individual olympic medal tally to .. wait for it .. 9, thats right 9, Michael Phelps alone won 8 this year. We won 9 individual medals in 108 years of participation. Oh and the first two medals won for India was by Norman Gilbert Pritchard who was british.
Only if people in India would stop obsessing with cricket and play other sports we might win more medals .. Not to mention the lack of any money, government support or infrastructure for anything except cricket .
Save your money, buy from the US of A
20/08/2008
I needed a set of winter tires and I was contemplating which ones to buy or where to buy etc etc .. I had a set of Bridgestone Blizzaks for last 2 seasons and they were very good for Ottawa winters .. Turns out they are expensive too ($120 a tire), last owner had bought them .
My friend alexei pointed out to me that Tirerack was having a clearance sale and my tire was going for $44 each ! I bought them at Tirerack, got them to ship it to an installer in Ogdensburg, which is an hour drive from Ottawa. Drove down to Ogdensburg, got the tires mounted and balanced on my winter rims, drove back and paid the GST/PST at the border.
My total was $225 for tires, $75 for install, $25 taxes, $30 gas = $355. This compared to $480 ($120 x 4) + taxes ($62) + install ($75) = $617 if I had bought them here in Canada.
India is 61 today
15/08/2008
61 years of independence ? but its only been the last 15 years that India has gotten rid of the socialist tag and opened up to the rest of the world.
It was 11 years ago when we reached the 50 year mark and we had huge celebrations at school and outside. A.R.Rahman released his rendition of Vande Mataram, its a great great composition and I cant believe 11 years have gone by so fast. India has grown by leaps and bounds in the last 10 years and never before have I seen such a buzz in the country.
I LOVE my country and cant wait to go back in December for New Year’s celebrations !!
If you are getting the error below:
The procedure entry point mysql_stmt_row_tell could not be located in the dynamic link library libmysql.dll
You have to copy the libmysql.dll from your mysql/bin directory to ruby/bin directory. I found this solution here.
Upgrading to Rails 2.1.0
12/08/2008
I tried to update to the latest Rails 2.1.0 version but got an error when trying to update the activesupport gem. So I decided to update each module manually and still got an error when updating activesupport
C:\InstantRails>gem update activesupport -y
Updating installed gems…
Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
Updating metadata for 13 gems from http://gems.rubyonrails.org
………….
complete
Attempting remote update of activesupport
INFO: `gem install -y` is now default and will be removed
INFO: use –ignore-dependencies to install only the gems you list
ERROR: Error installing activesupport:
invalid gem format for C:/InstantRails/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/cache/activesupport-2.1.0.gem
The fix is to download the gem manually from here, save it and run gem install activesupport-2.1.0.gem.
Getting older does pay off …
05/08/2008
I turned 25 on the 1st of August and although everyone was consoling me for hitting the quarter century mark, but I was looking forward to cheaper insurance rates and car rentals. So I decided to call Belairdirect to update my policy and my monthly payments went down by a healthy $35/month ..
Coincidentally I had my 6 month review at work and judging by the fact that I still have a job, I did pretty good.
Maybe I can finally afford that iPhone .. nah, still a rip-off ..
