Infinite Loop

Trying New Windows Live Writer

Ashu — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 01:45:26 +0000

It looks pretty slick with its new interface and better compatibility with third party blogging system.

Hindi radio channel in Bay Area – 1170 AM

Ashu — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:57:08 +0000

Recently found out that there is a radio channel 1170 AM for Hindi songs (24 hours). Apparently it plays all kinds of songs ranging from very old to latest ones.

This is for the Silicon Valley/Bay Area only.

New India Pizza place in Sunnyvale

Ashu — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:54:14 +0000

Heard about a new India pizza place in Sunnyvale. Gotta give it a shot sometime.

Feel free to leave comment feedback here if you already have been there

New found toy: ATamp;T Tilt (HTC Kaiser or TyTN II)

Ashu — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 21:50:19 +0000

Recently I switched from Sprint to ATT. Financially it was a bad move, I was paying much less with Sprint including the unlimited data (just $5 per month). But I have been with sprint for last 7 years and kind of got bored with it. Moreover, the trend is moving towards GSM. Sprint is very slow to adopt to new phones, their phones are boring and have no statement. But their service has been wonderful all these years and I had no real reason to move other than getting into the “in” thing. I like toys, electronic toys and thats the place to be if I wanted to try new GSM phones without worrying about contacts. For long past, I have been an advocate of CDMA technology. And probably still I do, but thats not what the world wants. CDMA is not getting successful in winning markets across globe. Other than US and Canada, there are very few CDMA playres in the world.

So, here I come to the GSM world. With two fancy phones to begin with. For myself I got ATT Tilt a little modified version of HTC’s TyTN II, the best and most powerful PDA phone in the world today (some may argue in favor of Nokia N95). But I am not a Nokia fan. Never was.

For my wife I got a Pantech Duo from ATT. She is not one of those people who like to keep a Super Computer in their phones. She just wanted a simple easy to use phone. My first condition was that it should have a hard keyboard (not soft screen based like on Tilt). It should have bluetooth, music player and some customization options. I wanted to buy something Windows mobile based for her so whatever tricks I learn for my TIlt, I could pass on to her .

It’s a fancy phone with Dual sliding keyboards. One for number keys and one for text.

Will post about my experience with Tilt in next few blog entries.

The "Trade" secret

Ashu — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 16:59:47 +0000

The Denver Broncos have traded defensive tackle Gerard Warren to the Oakland Raiders, Pro Football Talk is reporting.

The deal sends an undisclosed 2008 draft pick from Oakland to Denver. Most likely, it will be a conditional pick, meaning the more production the Raiders get from Warren, the higher pick they’ll have to send to the Broncos as compensation.
There’s a lot of animosity between the Raiders’ and Broncos’ front offices, and Mile High Report notes that this is the first trade between the teams since 1993, when the Raiders sent a third-round pick to Denver for running back Gaston Green.

The 29-year-old Warren has incredible physical talent, which is why the Cleveland Browns made him the third pick in the 2001 NFL draft. But he has never quite lived up to that talent. He spent his first four seasons with the Browns and the last two with the Broncos, but the Denver coaching staff has made it clear since the start of training camp that Warren isn’t in their long-term plans.
The Broncos, who lost Ebenezer Ekuban for the season over the weekend, are completely overhauling their defensive line, with rookies Jarvis Moss, Tim Crowder and Marcus Thomas all expected to get significant playing time

DEP, SpamBayes and Outlook

Ashu — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 17:48:43 +0000

I am a fan of SpamBayes. Its one of the best anti-spam solutions on the client side. In my outlook, my primary email is Microsoft exchange, then I use my personal tewari.us domain mails using IMAP (instead of POP, so I can maintain my folders) and I see my Windows Live Hotmail account using Outlook Connector.

Problem is that Outlook 2007 works perfectly for blocking spam as far as Exchange and POP3 mails are concerned but it fails to deliver on IMAP. Solution: SpamBayes’ Outlook plugin. It works prefectly with POP3 and works perfectly with IMAP. You just need to train it once and life’s all problems are solved.

This configuration has been working prefectly on my Home Desktop with XP, Laptop with Vista, but failed to work on one of my work computers that runs Windows Server 2003. As soon as I installed SpamBayes on top of Outlook 2007, and start outlook, it would crash and blame the SpamBayes add-in for it. Problem? that I diagnosed after ignoring it for few months: Data Execution Prevention. AMD Athalon 64 bit and newer Pentium 4+ processors have the NX bit for virus protection. This had been causing the SpamBayes add-in to crash. Just go to “System Properties”->Advanced->Performance->Settings->Data Execution Prevention and add Outlook as an exception.

Things work like a charm now. Good-bye IMAP spam.

Save As PDF or XPS plugin for Office 2007

Ashu — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 12:51:17 +0000

Microsoft released a free addon for its Office 2007 suite of products which gives you an option to save a file in either Adobe’s popular PDF format or Microsoft’s new XPS format. XPS is very good and is worth a try, but it will be a tough battle with PDF. After downloading and installing this plugin for free, you get the option to choose between these two formats for exporting. No need to buy Acrobat Professional anymore for daily PDF conversion related tasks.

Bay area Indian travel agents

Ashu — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 20:13:11 +0000

From time to time I get requests at work and from friends about travel agents with good service for buying tickets to India. There are definately many more of them but these are some favorites. I co-worker compiled the list and I am putting it here for future references.

Access World Travels (206) 860-3768
Anjanaye Travels (408) 947-1209
Allstar Travels (408) 247-9743
Deepak Travels (408) 735-7849
Hari World Travel (510) 795-5000
Infinity Travel (408) 245-8444
International Travels (408) 243 5493
Legend Travels (510) 797-9010
Nagina Travels (510) 656-7280
Roy Travels (408) 578 3598
Sai Travels (510) 657-1724
Sunnyvale Travels (408) 245-5090
Super Travels (408) 321-9222
Taj Travels (650) 964-3425
Trips & Travels (415) 982-0600
United Travels (510) 794-8890
VIP Travels (510) 790-3434
Valley Travels (510) 793 5000

Hindi radio on the Internet

Ashu — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 21:43:46 +0000

My wife Parul today asked me if I knew of any decent online radio on the Internet which plays Hindi/Indian programs. I tried to find on the net but couldn’t hit a comprehensive updated colleciton.

So here starts my attempt to compile a list. I would try to keep it clean and working. Post a message for broken links, and I would update this at the earliest. As usual, all the copyrights to their original content owners, I am just providing the links.

City 101.6 FM (Dubai, UAE)
106.2 HumFM (Dubai, UAE)
Radio Tarana (New Zealand)
Radio of India Bhajans (India)
Radio of India Classicals (India)
Bombay Beats FM (India)
Apna Radio (USA)
Mast Radio (Online)
Desi Radio (USA)
Radio India (Surrey, BC, Canada)
Sangeet Radio (Houston, Texas)

Steve Ballmer at Microsoft SVC

Ashu — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 21:38:29 +0000

Today we had Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the SVC, for an all hands meeting with Microsoft employees at SVC. It was fun and at times funny too.

Listening to Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are two totally different experiences. With Gates’ presence people are generally amazed by his personality and the fact that they are actually listening to “Bill Gates”. Being a Microsoft employee one gets to see him more often than anyone else but still everytime you see him, you get mesmerized from his persona. Meetings with Bill Gates are more subtle and one worth listening to, you want to find the depth of every word that comes out of his mouth. Where as meetings with Steve Ballmer are more energetic and full of enthusiasm. Every time he speaks, there is certain drive in it, one that should come from the CEO of a company like Microsoft.