Replacing Adobe PDF Reader

Adobe Reader has been giving problems for last few months in printing PDF documents. This wasn't any installation issue since it gave problems on multiple computers and multiple OSs. Instead of printing the document, it was printing this:

ERROR: undefined
OFFENDING COMMAND: eexec
STACK:
/quit
-dictionary-
-mark

After searching on net, I found that it is a problem with the newer version of Adobe Reader. So finally, I decided to get rid of this bloated software which Adobe anyway has been abusing to push other things on my computer.

I checked portableApps.com and found Sumatra PDF Portable. I tried this software for a few days. This is not a very slow and processor-intensive software and printing is not good. In fact, when I tried to print a document with 120 pages, it froze my computer for a few hours. Currently, I am back to Adobe Reader.

How to have peace of mind working on a computer?

With so many scams going on Internet and so many virus/spyware/malware floating around, it's hard to feel safe.

Here are a few things you can do to have peace of mind

1. Always work in a low privilege account. This will assure that even if you did something terrible by mistake, only your account will get affected and your system will be safe. This will avoid all kinds of rootkit attacks, keyboard logging, and operating system corruption. I create an "Admin" account and a "user" account for myself. "Admin" account has administrative privilege and I do all administrative work like software installation and tweaking the OS from that account. For my day to day working I use "user" account. If something requires administrative privilege and I am working in "user" account, the UAC will pop for "Admin" password.
2. Keep your operating system and browsers up to date. Automatic update of Windows and automatic update of Firefox both can be irritating. But this little irritation is worth.
   
3. Install an antivirus software. Gone are the days when you need to pay for anti-virus software and the anti-virus software were irritating and resource hungry. Get Microsoft Security Essentials - it is free, light, no hassle easy to use, it is fast and well integrated with Windows.
   

Other tips:

1. For highly critical sensitive things like banking, use a browser that does not allow add-ons like Google Chrome, Internet Explorer in No-Addons mode.

In Windows XP, working in non-admin account was a pain, but with Windows 7, working in non-admin is expected. With Windows 7, there is no reason, all the above process is totally frictionless.

WinSCP Portable and PuTTYPortable integration is half baked

WinSCP and PuTTY integration is quite good. WinSCP can launch PuTTY automatically and interactively both. Not so with WinSCPPortable.

WinSCPPortable integration with PuttyPortable is messy. It wouldn't launch putty automatically or interactively and will ask you to manually launch it. Everytime I set the settings in WinSCP to point to the PuttyPortable.exe file, WinSCPPortable.exe overwrites the settings with path to "PortableApps\WinSCPPortable\App\winscp\PuTTYPortableLinker.EXE." There are two ways to fix this:

1. Change WinSCPPortable.exe
2. Change PuTTYPortableLinker.exe

I chose option 2 as it was easy. Here are the steps:

1. Rename "PortableApps\WinSCPPortable\App\winscp\PuTTYPortableLinker.EXE" to "PortableApps\WinSCPPortable\App\winscp\PuTTYPortableLinker1.EXE."
2. Copy "PortableApps\PuTTYPortable\App\putty\PUTTY.EXE" to "PortableApps\WinSCPPortable\App\winscp\PuTTYPortableLinker.EXE."

This will launch putty right from winSCP automatically.

This does come with a price - the settings for Putty will be stored in the registry. Since I use portable apps on only few computers, this is OK for me, much better than launching putty manually every time. In fact, I renamed "PortableApps\PuTTYPortable\PuTTYPortable.exe" to "PortableApps\PuTTYPortable\PuTTYPortable.exe1" so that I don't have two different set of settings.

Here is something I did more to make my life easier:

1. After running this setup for first time, launch "PortableApps\WinSCPPortable\App\winscp\PuTTYPortableLinker.EXE" and set the options for "WinSCP Portable Temporary Session"

I hope in the future WinSCPPortable and PuTTYPortable integration will be much better.

Windows Server 2008 / R2

Windows Server 2008 <=> Windows Vista
Windows Server 2008 R2 <=> Windows 7

I wanted to install Windows Server 2008 R2, but oooops it is available only 64 bits. And I wanted to put a server on my one of the old boxes.

So I have to settle for Windows Server 2008 Standard. Got it from DreamSpark website.

nenasysguard.exe osguard wornv: virus/malware

This is a malware or virus. Here are some details:

nenasysguard.exe
http://osguard-pro2009.com/purchase?r=57.1
Local Settings\Application Data\wkornv\nenasysguard.exe

"Google Update" firefox plugin: Google's first malware

I was just looking into options to chat or do more through browser. I didn't want to install anything on my computer. So I went to this website: http://www.google.com/talk/. I clicked on the video chat link thinking if it opens in the browser then awesome or else if it asks for download, I will cancel it. Guess what, it actually started installing on my computer without any download pop-up. Well, I didn't feel immediately threatened as the website was a google website, but it did took me with a big surprise.

How can Firefox download and install something without explicitly showing the download popup? I was puzzled for a few seconds. And then it occurred to me that Extensions and Plugins can change Firefox's behavior. And there it was - "Google Update" plugin. I disabled it and tried the same thing, this time Firefox did show the download dialog popup.

Google sneaked in this plugin without my knowledge!!! I think it did when I installed Google chrome. You never know when this plugin will install application on your machine - clicking on a link could take you to a new page or directly install an application bypassing any Firefox security. Uninstall/Disable this plugin ASAP.

Google - the malware provider!

VLC: best video player || WMP: best music player

WMP 12 - It is lightweight, fast and has everything for my music and video needs except space bar wouldn't do pause/resume in the "Now Playing" window. How do you pause/resume when you are watching a video - either point to the play/pause button or press CTRL+P. Here is a nice comment - Cntr+P requires two hands, is buried among other keys, and as such probably requires the light on because it cannot be found blindfolded. And are you going to point to that little button when you are watching video? HERE is a shitty explanation for why space bar is not the shortcut for pause/resume. This is a BIG BIG inconvenience for me for watching video, so no no to WMP for video. Space bar does work in the library window which is good for listening for music. Here is the keyboard shortcut for WMP 12:
Keyboard shortcut for Windows Media Player 12

iTunes - This is the worse option on Windows. It can't play most popular formats. It is a bulky shit and it has its own way of doing things and not a flexible application. Before you can play anything you have to add it to its library. It does not even have "Open file" option. Launching takes for ever and it is slower than a hippo. Drag and drop does not work. There is a big bug in iTunes - there is no way to do auto cleanup its library. For managing and playing video, there can't be any worse options. The only good use is if you want to play music which are already in its library. If you don't have an iPod and iPhone, don't bother, this shit will install a bunch of services, unnecssary applications and do its best to corrupt your system.

Quicktime - good for playing online videos. Not good for playing 5 videos in a row. Anyway, it can't play most formats. My recommendation: install it for the codecs, but never use it, its menu is polluted with "Buy Pro." One of the ugliest software on a Windows machine.

Realplayer - I had some pretty bad experiences with it in the past.

iTunes, Quicktime, Realplayer and many of these commercial media players are a kind of malware since they install bunch of other garbage things during installation, and are very irritating because of putting themselves everywhere in the system. They even set the system to automatically start a bunch of junk apps and services.

VLC - plays all audio and video formats I can think of. Space bar is for pause/resume. It beats WMP in other keyboard shortcuts too. All WMP shortcuts require two keys. In VLC, most shortcuts require one key and are very intuitive - F for forward, P for previous, S for stop, etc.
When you are watching a video, last thing you want to do is fumble around the keyboard.

The only thing which I didn't like about is its UI. WMP and iTunes both have got some coolness, but the UI of VLC is very simplistic. I hope going forward these guys will add some shading, transparency and texture in their player.

It's not that uncool actually. There are skins available for VLC which look pretty cool. Here are dozens of skins to chose from:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/skins.php

I really didn't want to spend time experimenting with different skins, so I chose the familiar ones:

• WMP11 - this seems very promising
  
• iTunes - the familiar itunes
  
• MediaPlayer - like WMP 8 or 9
  

You can play the audio and video as fast or as slow you want. Nice feature!

Looks like I have finally found my dream media player.

There is a feature called "Customize interface..." where you can customize everything about the interface.


Now all I have to find a way to associate all media formats with VLC.

Actually I tried all three skins mentioned above, but I didn't like them; I used the default skin which sounded better than the above three skins. But right now I am going for the native interface. I will experiment with different skins later, or may be need to tweak one of them.

Here is the keyboard shortuct for VLC:
http://www.jaystech.com/2007/12/vlc-media-players-keyboard-shortcuts.html
http://shortcut-keys.net/vlc-media-player-shortcut-keys-complete-list/


VLC - simple and simply best!!!

Conclusion: VLC for video, WMP for music

Gnome still lacking and probably heading in wrong direction

Gnome has copied lot of things from KDE and Windows, but in an effort to be different, it has done many wrong things. Many of the changes were unnecessary, many of them create confusion, many of them are annoying, and many of them hampers your productivity and fun.

What is the need for two bars - one up and one down? It's a just waste of costly screen real state.

In the most recent one, the shutdown, restart etc was put in a different menu and put on the right corner. What is the point of doing this? Just to be different? What is the keyboard shortcut for this menu? Can you execute these commands without touching a mouse?

I have found many applications in Gnome which does not have keyboard shortcuts and can't be used without a mouse. That is the beauty of KDE and Windows, you can do everything without a mouse, just by using keyboard shortcuts and it increases your productivity by many folds.

There is a menu for Preferences and many of the items in the list are confusing. You click on an item, explore the application, find that the settings you were looking for is not there, so you close it and repeat the whole thing in the hope that this time you don't have to repeat the whole thing. How irritating!!! There is no reason why all the items in the Preference menu can't be put in a single application like KDE Control Center or Windows Control Panel. Same is applicable to Administration Menu.

Gnome just sux!!!
Nowhere close to KDE!!!

GIMP: Remove background

This is a nice article on how to use GIMP to remove background from a photo:

http://alaynacreations.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-to-remove-background-from-your.html

Windows: Symbolic links and mount

Here is a link on how to create symbolic links and hard links in Windows:

Command: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/using-symlinks-in-windows-vista/
Concept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_symbolic_link

Here is an article on how to mount a drive or CD-ROM to a blank directory:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307889

Setting up Subversion Versioning System

Finally, I was able to setup a subversion system to track the my programs and other files. Now I can go back in different versions of all the files which is great!!!

Setting up a subversion system was easy, must easier than I thought.

[In Progress]

Download YouTube Videos for iPhone, and Computer

Use this website:
http://www.savevid.com/

Download video in mp4 format, that way it can be played on iPhone also in addition to your computer.

I use this one:
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/04/download-youtube-videos-as-mp4-files.html

How to install an application on Windows without admin privilege

How to install an application on Windows without admin privilege?

In a corporate or university or school environment, it will be many times the case that users don't have admin access. And there are lot of application (mostly free and/or open-source) which are "just" applications and don't need admin privilege, but when you click on the setup file (exe or msi), it will pop up UAC dialog. I remember I was able to install these applications in Windows XP without admin privilege.

I noticed that when I try to install Microsoft Live Mesh or Google Chrome Browser, they don't pop-up UAC.

Here is my conclusion based on these observations:
The installer for Microsoft Live Mesh and Google Chrome Browser were updated for Windows 7 (or may be Vista) and the installer for other "non-admin" applications were not. Windows 7 detects that these installers were written for Windows XP and older, so it pops up UAC. Although Microsoft implemented a feature but it is broken. In a nutshell, a user should be able to do non-admin stuffs from non-admin account if she was able to do in Windows XP.

Update:

I found it:

"Local Policies -> Security Options -> User Account Control: Detect application installations and prompt for elevation" -> Disabled

Now it will not prompt UAC for installers. So when installing application if you want to give admin access to an installer, right click and select "Run as administrator."

Mounting a home directory of Linux on Windows through SSH

You have an account on a remote Linux machine and you work on a Windows machine. How do you mount the remote machine file system on the local machine so that you can access all your files on the remote machine as if they are on the local machine. This is very convenient compared to file transfer if you edit files on the remote machine regularly.

Approach# 1
There are two commercial solutions:

1. SFTDrive or ExpanDrive
2. Webdrive

But unfortunately, there are no free solutions for mounting through SSH.

Approach# 2
There is a free (for home use) software which allows for mounting through FTP and WebDAV.

• http://www.netdrive.net./

You can install a ftp server or webDAV server in your account, and use this client. You may need to forward some ports. I don't know how hard will it be to configure and run a ftp server or webDAV server from a user account and the security implications of this.

Approach# 3
Install samba server in your account, and use Windows SMB client. You may need to do some port forwarding and probably disable SMB server on the Windows machine. I don't know how hard will it be to configure and run samba server from a user account and the security implications of this.

Approach# 4
Install sshfs in the Ubuntu in virtual box on the local machine, export the file system as SMB share and mount on Windows. This is my preferred approach as I don't have to worry about security and server configurations. The Ubuntu is behind Windows network, so it can connect to outside world, but only my Windows box can connect to it.


Update

I have tried a couple of things from above.

My use case: I edit files on Windows, but run my scripts and experiments on Linux which generate lot of other files and graphs which I open on Windows for viewing.

Approach#1 is easiest. I tried both WebDrive and Expandrive.

Webdrive: It has caching which was a big problem for me because my files get changed on both sides. And if caching is disabled, it is slower than a tortoise. After looking into log file, I discovered that it was running dozens of commands for simple things like saving a file. In one word: Webdrive sux.

Expandrive/Sftpdrive: It has no caching and is superfast. The only problem is that it will change the permissions on the files. When I edited some executable perl script files, it removed the executable bit from the file permission which was kind of irritating. So I have to say good-bye to expandrive, although I might consider this software in future since more or less it is an excellent software.

Approach# 4: This has lot of technologies involved: Virtualbox, Ubuntu, sshfs, samba. This is as fast as Expandrive and it keeps the permissions of the files. So this is my preferred setup. The only problem is I need to keep VirtualBox+Ubuntu running.

In the end, both Expandrive and Approach#4 are good. But I prefer Approach#4.

Update 3/26/2010

I found FUSE and sshfs equivalents for Windows:
http://code.google.com/p/dokan/
http://dokan-dev.net/en/
I haven't tried it, but looks OK.

Math facility in Word 2007

Microsoft provides free of cost an add-in for Word 2007 which seems useful for writing Math equations and plotting graphs - Word 2007 Add-in: Microsoft Math [download] [MSDN blog].

How to get Equation Tool:
Press in sequence: ALT,N,E,I
Or click: Insert->Equation->Insert New Equation


I have used MathType add-on for MS Word in the past, and it was excellent. I don't know how it compares with Microsoft Math.


For office 2003 and earlier, see here:
http://math-editor.sourceforge.net/

MS Office 2007 SP2

I upgraded MS Office 2007 to MS Office 2007 SP2. You can download the upgrade from here.

It has some new features. The most of all features which intrigued me was - native support for ODF and PDF file formats.

I use PDFCreator which does an excellent job of generating PDF file from any Windows application. I wish MS would have invested in making a PDF print driver and shipping with Windows instead of making PDF generator only for Office products.

"About Word" Dialog in Word 2007

"Office button" (top left corner) -> Word options -> Resources -> About

Macro Security Warning in a Word document even when there are no macros

I was getting Macro Security Warning in a word document everytime I opened it, and there was no macros in the document. After doing some investigation, here is what I found:

The Macro Security Warning can be because of two reasons:

1. Third party components are interfering with MS Word. In this case you should get macro security warning in each of the word document. Try uninstalling some applications which provide add-in support to MS Word like "Microsoft office live add-in" or any add-in which supports printing to PDF.

2. Macros were added and removed from the document. It has been explained here with solutions - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290960 .

I used a variation of Method 3 explained in the KB article mentioned in option 2 above. I saved the ".doc" file in ".docx" format, and the security warning is gone. I again saved ".docx" back to ".doc" and there is no more security warning.

Subversion GUI client for Linux

After reading for many posts on looking for a GUI subversion client for Linux, I decided to try "rapidsvn" (rapidsvn.tigris.org) because it is from the same domain as of subversion (subversion.tigris.org).

On the website, there is a exe installed for Windows, dmg insaller for Mac, but no installer for Linux - just the source code. How pathetic!!

I downloaded and tried to install.
It asked for APR - I compiled and installed it.
It then asked for APR-util - I compiled and installed this too.
It then asked for subversion headers - after spending a few hours, I gave up on this.

Finally, I gave up on rapidsvn. I wish the scenario in Linux was better, but even after so many years of evolution, it is still pathetic.

Next, I went for kdesvn. Could not compile.

Next, I went for eSVN. Could not compile.

Finally, I gave up on getting a Subversion GUI. What's the use of these software, if they are useless?

After spending many hours, net productivity was 0, a big zero. This is very normal in Linux environment.

All I can say is although Linux core operating system has moved way ahead, but the Linux environment remains pathetic and far from a productive environment.

There are definitely some good applications on Linux, but overall it wastes lot of time. As a rule of thumb - avoid compiling applications on your own unless that is your work or you enjoy it (I used to enjoy it when some how installing software used to give a sense of power).

One way to avoid this kind of waste of time is to use Ubuntu and use its 'agt-get' to get all the apps. Unfortunately, I can't use that because I don't have admin control over these machines where I do most of research work.

The Fox With His Tail Cut Off

[In Progress]

Once a fox was caught in a trap by his tail. He struggled and struggled and managed to get free, but he left his tail in the trap.

Knowing that he might be laughed at for having no tail, he decided to try to get the other foxes to part with their tails, too. So at the next meeting of the foxes, he made a speech. He said that tails were inconvenient and unattractive, and that he'd never felt so good since giving up his own tail. He finished his speech and sat down.

Windows 7: Open command window in the current directory

To open command window in the current directory when browsing file system through windows explorer:

Press SHIFT + right click, you will get "Open command window here" in the context menu.

Windows Powershell

Commands:
ise - launch Windows PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment
man man - see help on help

Laptop Heating Problem

My laptop shuts down automatically when I run it on 100% cpu for 30 minutes or so. It comes up after I leave it 5 minutes to cool down. Since it is five years old, I guess cooling system is not working properly because of the dust accumulated in these years.

Is there any software to monitor temperature of the CPU and motherboard?

Resources for GIMP

• http://www.tigert.com/gimp/tutorials/
• 
  

Windows 7 Download directory

Windows 7 treats %HOME%\Download directory special and Windows Explorer takes ages to load this directory. Created a new directory - %HOME%\Download1. Changed settings in Firefox to point to the new Download1 directory.

Widows error dialog - how to get rid of this

Inkscape crashed and I got this message:


"Inkscape has stopped working. Windows is checking for a solution to the problem..."










Obviously, Windows could not find any solution and finally it reported this.







While this feature might be useful sometimes, but mostly it is useless and waste of time. In fact this dialog freezes my computer for at least a few minutes.

Here is solution to this:

Open "regedit" and change the value of the following registry key to 1.

 HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\DontShowUI 

If you want, you can disable ErrorReporting completely by setting "Disabled" to 1.

PortableApps.com: Integrating with the Windows System

I didn't like the idea of having a separate menu for PortableApps. I would like to integrate it with the start menu, so I have everything at one place and I can search through it. I will also like to have these apps accessible through the Quick Launch menu or through a separate menu which has list of all apps without any scrollbar.

Here are the scripts which do that:

createShortcut.pl

use strict; use Cwd; mkdir "PortableAppsShortcuts"; my $currDir = getcwd(); my @files = <PortableApps\\*\\*.exe>; my $file; foreach $file (@files) {     my $program = "none";     if( $file =~ m/([a-zA-Z0-9_\- ]+)Portable\.exe/ )     {         $program = $1;     }     elsif ( $file =~ m/([a-zA-Z0-9_\- ]+)\.exe/ )     {         $program = $1;     }     my $link = "$currDir\\PortableAppsShortcuts\\$program.lnk";     my $source = "$currDir\\$file";          &createLink( $link, $source );     print "Shortcut Created: $program\n"; } exit 0; #============================================================================== # Creates a shortcut for a file #------------------------------------------------------------------------------ use Win32::OLE; sub createLink  {     my ($link, $source) = @_;     my $shell = Win32::OLE->CreateObject("WScript.Shell");     my $oShellLink = $shell->CreateShortcut("$link" );     $oShellLink->{TargetPath} = "$source" ;     $oShellLink->{WindowStyle} = 1;     $oShellLink->Save; }

copyShortcuts.cmd

xcopy /E /I /F PortableAppsShortcuts  "%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\PortableAppsShortcuts" xcopy /E /I /F PortableAppsShortcuts  "%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\PortableAppsShortcuts"

setEnv.cmd

PATH=%PATH%;%CD%\PortableApps\XAMPP\App\xampp\perl\bin\;%CD%\PortableApps\gVimPortable\App\vim\vim72

PortableApps.com Apps

These are the apps I downloaded from PortableApps.com:

1. GIMP
2. PuTTY
3. WinSCP
4. KompoZer
5. gVim
6. FileZilla
7. Skype
8. Firefox
9. winWGet
10. Audacity
11. SeaMonkey
12. BonkEnc
13. PDFTKBuilder
14. VLCPortable
15. CommandPrompt
16. FreeCommander
17. Google Chrome
18. InfraRecorder
19. KeePass
20. XenonFileManager
21. WinMerge
22. XAMPP and XAMPP Launcher
    

Firefox - the most bloated, memory hogging software

Firefox is no more the thin and fast browser it used to be.

It is the most memory hogging software on my computer.

It is buggy too - sometimes, even if I close Firefox, it keeps running sometimes at 50% cpu, and sometimes at 100% cpu.

It is annoying too - when you start Firefox, it will show a blinking cursor in the address bar, but when you start typing, you will realize that that's not the cursor and you need to click on the address bar to get the focus there.

Another annoying thing is that it will try to access hard disk randomly and will get stuck there. I think Firefox spends more time accessing hard disk than Internet. And the annoying part is it will not respond while it is doing some crap with the hard disk.

At last, I have to confess Firefox is my primary browser. I use it for everything. I can't browse Internet without 'Flashblock' add-on. 'Dictionary tooltip' and 'Tab Mix Plus' add-ons improve my experience. If it wasn't for these extensions, I would have discarded Firefox long back.

Mozilla Corp. has over 250 employees and has revenue of $75 million dollars. The whole company is devoted towards making Firefox the best browser. The extensions are developed by individual developers. How ironic is this that Firefox's main strength comes from the extensions and not from the browser it is.

Another ironic thing about Firefox is that it was targeted for Linux as main platform, but the Firefox experience on Linux is sub par. The Firefox on Linux is even more slower and does not have many features and coolness of the Firefox on Windows.

Working with Inkscape

[This is a work in progress]

Here I am going to list some tips and tricks for my reference.

• To edit existing text, select it and then press Shift+Ctrl+T. As the dialog is popped up, you can select other existing texts to change their settings.
• Horizontal and Vertical lines - The angle of the next node on the path can be constrained, relative to its preceding node, by holding the Ctrl key. This is the method to use for creating straight horizontal and vertical lines. How do I make sure horizontal and vertical lines when editing paths by nodes?
  

Graphviz and Inkscape for vector drawings

I have been using xfig for years for drawing vector drawings. Recently, I got interested in two software for my drawing needs - Graphviz and Inkscape.

Graphviz is awesome when it comes to generating graphs from a program. An awesome tool for automation. I found Graphviz also useful when you want a quick graph, you don't have much time and you don't care about the exact layout. Being a lazy person I am, Graphviz adds nicely to my toolkits for lazy person - Perl, Gnuplot, Image Magick, and Graphviz. Write a quick text file describing the graph, run the 'dot' command of Graphviz package and you get a nice graph.

Inkscape looks good, but it is giving me some tough time. When I compare it with xfig, I can say that although xfig is less ambitious, but it is complete and stable. Inkscape is neither complete nor stable. But it is very ambitious and has lot of features. I am still learning my way around in Inkscape. Here are some resources:

1. Tutorials
2. A Quick Guide to Inkscape - this is really a very good guide.
3. Inkscape: A guide to a vector drawing program (html version of the book)

Inkscape seems to be quite popular, so I am going to stick with it for a while and hopefully I don't have to go back to xfig. As I can envision, my main use of Inkscape would be to use it to create technical drawings for publishing, because for everything else GIMP is there. In the worst case, probably I have to edit the SVG file manually if I couldn't find a way to do something in Inkscape.

The reason I like Inkscape over xfig is because

• it does not introduce any new format and uses existing SVG format which seems a better choice in long term - more compatibility with other apps.
• it has much more updated UI which is easier on eyes.
• it has lot of features and many more things can be done.

Windows 7 Tools

Here are some tools and resources which are available from Microsoft for Windows. I am keeping them here for my reference since I forget them when I need them.

1. Windows SDK
2. Windows Sysinternals
3. Debugging Tools for Windows
4. Windows Driver Kit
5. Interoperability @ Microsoft
6. Microsoft Windows Services for Unix, Subsystem for Unix-based Applications
   
7. Microsoft DreamSpark
8. Microsoft Download Center
   

Windows 7 Internals

I found following resources on Windows 7 Internals:

Windows Sysinternal Tools

These are great tools to look under the hood.

- Run these tools online from http://live.sysinternals.com/
- Download
- Website


Video Resources

- A video of a presentation explaining Windows Vista Kernel changes [ An article on the same ]
- A video of a presentation explaining Windows Vista UAC Internals [ An article on the same ]


Reading Resources

- Widows Internal Book 5th Edition

- Article: Inside Windows Vista Kernel

1. Part 1
   
2. Part 2
3. Part 3

PortableApps.com is awesome

I have been using PortableApps.com on and off for last few years. But now I have decided to use as many apps from PortableApps.com as possible.

With Portable apps, switching machines is so easy.

Sometimes I use my laptop as primary machine, sometimes my desktop in the lab/office. And it is really cumbersome to keep both machines in sync in terms of applications, settings and data. Even if you don't want to use usb flash drive all the time, install Portable Apps on the hard disk.

Recently I decided to make a new Windows 7 machine as my primary desktop, it was a pain installing all the apps, copying files, and setting all the settings. Had it been Portable Apps, all I needed was to copy the folder and done!

For multiple users case: When there are multiple users working on the same computer, then every user has his own copy of Portable Apps and there is no conflict.

Few minutes back I installed GIMP, I am going to uninstall it and get it from PortablApps.com! Done! There are other candidates too for a move to Portable Apps start menu like Gvim, I will do them later.

Installing and uninstalling software can give you a perception of having power and it can be fun. But after a while (actually may be a few years), you get tired. Or, you just don't have time for the stupid computer. PortableApps.com is your friend.

I hope somebody comes with PortableApps for Linux/Ubuntu too.

Opening ".iso" files on Windows 7

Windows 7 can burn ".iso" file on a disk if there is a disk burner on the computer. But unfortunately, it can't open/mount ".iso" file for browsing. Microsoft missed it again.

In any modern OS today, I would expect out of the box support for ".iso" file format. It is a very popular and non-proprietary format. Strangely, I needed "iso" reader/mounter because when I downloaded Microsoft Expression Studio from Microsoft's DreamSpark website, it came in ".iso" format.

Here is a free software I found which does the job quite nicely - Virtual CloneDrive from SlySoft. So far this has been working well for me.

Just now I found that 7-zip supports reading ISO files. Download it from http://portableapps.com/ or http://www.7-zip.org/.

LatexEditor DVI viewer not working

I have installed LatexEditor (LEd) on Windows 7 and its in-built DVI viewer does not work. I uninstalled LEd, ghosscript, and MikTex and reinstalled them, but that didn't help.

I tried suggestions from the following links:
http://www.latexeditor.org/download_main.html
http://www.latexeditor.org/how_to_start.html

but couldn't make DVI viewer working. There does not seem to be much information on Internet about LEd.

The cross-jumping between TEX file and the DVI file is the coolest feature of LEd, and it is not working.

I don't have time to do any more investigations, but I might try on my Windows XP box.

Update:
It worked for me!!!

Here is what I did:
After suggestion from ImAn, I went to the LED forum and checked the DVI Viewer section. This post helped me:
LEd 0.52/MikTeX 2.7-I still can't see anything in DVI previe

1. I copied "dvi_miktex27.dll" in "miktex\bin" directory

C:\Program Files>copy LEd\dvi_miktex27.dll "MiKTeX 2.8\miktex\bin"
1 file(s) copied.

2. I put "dvi_miktex27.dll" in "font searching library"