The art of writing JAVA comments

XDD9041imagelistfilename6
Originally uploaded by baadaal.

Comments form an integral part of our codes. It serves as a navigational and informational aid to understand the logic behind our methods and classes.

This is why it is important to know how intelligent comments must be written instead of just adding right-hand clicked eclipse javadocs everywhere.

Mike Clark has written a very interesting article on the subject.He writes about the best practices of comment writing , the article is not very long and easy to follow , so do spend some time on it whenver you can.

Category: JAVA,BestPractices,Comments,Review

Star wars episode III: Revenge of the Sith

star wars
Originally uploaded by baadaal.

Stars Wars episode 3 is out and playing in many theatres through out the globe ..except of course here in Mauritius.

Star Wars must have been one of the few sagas that anyone having a tv set must have seen at least once in his lifetime. Its really a big phenomenon even bigger than the Lord of the Rings , i would say.

Check out the msn.co.uk gallery for star wars episode 3 there are some very nice pics of your favorite characters , even yoda playing with his light sabre.

The offical website also has trailers of the latest and final episode.

As far as am concerned am having a blast watching all the previous episodes on M6 , every Tuesday they display an episode.

Category: StarWars, Movie, Mauritius

Choosing a Java WIKI

This week i had to find a java based wiki , i made a seach on google and a found 2 potential candidates JSPWiki and VeryQuickWiki.

Both ran on Tomcat , however i got considerable amount of pain saving wiki pages on JSPWiki as it seems that this wiki had some issues with Windows based machines as I didn't really have time to do all the tweaking , i tried VeryQuickWiki.

VeryQuickWiki as the authors describe it is supposed to install with minimal effort and this it did. Just dropping the war of VeryQuickWiki into the webapps folder of Tomcat is enough. But this option would mean that data is stored in files . If you want your wiki data to be stored in MySQL you just have to create a table for the wiki and point it to your MySQL db. Oracle also is supported.

VeryQuickWiki is also easy to use , has a nice interface and it really saves all the endless effort of trying to making something opensource work on your machine.


Category: Wiki,VeryQuickWiki,OpensourceMySql,TomcatJAVA

PMD code Analyzer

One cool little tool which i use regularly to scan my Java codes , PMD , the version 3.1 is currently available for download.

What it does is that it first scans your codes and provides a report as to whether there are:

* Empty try/catch/finally/switch blocks
* Unused local variables, parameters and private methods
* Empty if/while statements
* Overcomplicated expressions
* Classes with high Cyclomatic Complexity measurements

PMD can be installed as a plugin for Eclipse , JBuilder , NetBeans and a host of other IDEs.

I have personnally used it with Eclipse and as a task in Ant and plugin report in Maven. It does help to improve quality of codes and is very simple to use and install.

Category: PMD Eclipse Code JAVA Plugin

technicalfacilitation.com learn Websphere

technicalfacilitation.com
Originally uploaded by baadaal.

The technicalfacilitation.com site is a really down to earth site which explains what is websphere and how to integrate it in your everyday coding environment.

Whats more interesting is that it depicts everything from coding , to building an ear and deploying your J2EE app in simple words so as any beginner can clearly understand J2EE concepts.

This site is really worth a visit.

Catgegory: J2EE, Websphere, JAVA, Site, Review

Integrated Development Environment for Laszlo V2

The new version of the Integrated Development Environment for Laszlo version 2.0 is currently available for download , this version has support for OpenLaszlo3.0.

The IDE actually installs as an Eclipse plugin , so you need the following before being able to install the plugin:

* Eclipse 3.0.1 or 3.0.2
* Eclipse EMF
* Eclipse GEF
* Laszlo Presentation Server 3.0

It allows you to debug , write and configure your LZX files which ressemble a lot like XML but with Javascript also present in it.

Category: Laszlo ,IDE,Eclipse,RIA

Useful Mauritian Links as from alt.mauritius

mauritius
Originally uploaded by baadaal.

Here below are some useful mauritian links as mentioned in the alt.mauritius newsgroup:


alt.mauritius is a newsgroup devoted to anything linked to Mauritius,
or Mauritian aspects of life. This list of Web Page Links is posted
regularly to alt.mauritius .
If any of the hyper-links are outdated, feel free to
email me at m...@bow.intnet.mu

The newsgroup alt.mauritius is archived at
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=alt.mauritius&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&si...

National Anthem midi file: http://ncb.intnet.mu/pmo/images/anthem.mid

(a) Telephone/Cellular/ISP
(I)(i) Telecom Plus (http://www.telecomplus.net/)
(ii) Servihoo (http://www.servihoo.com)
(iii) Cellplus (http://www.gocellplus.com/)
(iv) Mauritius Telecom (http://mt.intnet.mu)
(v) Mauritius Telecom Directory (http://www.mtinfopages.com/)
(II) (i) DCL Internet (http://www.dcl.net)
(ii) SMARTNET (http://www.smartnet.mu/)
(III) (i) Emtel Ltd (http://www.emtel-ltd.com/)
(ii) myKwépé (http://www.mykwepe.com/)

(b) Fora
(i) Ile-Maurice.com (http://www.ile-maurice.com)
(ii) A nou cause causé (http://www.netbabbler.com/goto/?forumid=6249)
(iii) Bienvenue à l'île Maurice
(http://www.multimania.com/khistos/index2.htm)
(iv) Rish (http://www.voy.com/590/)
(v) Rentals (car, bungalow, etc.) (http://network54.com/Forum/40165)
(vi) VisionEar (http://www.theydoit.com/board/login.html)
(vii) Servihoo (http://www.servihoo.com/all_forum//display_forum.asp)
(viii) Boocoopalabre (http://www.boocoopalabre.com/index.php)
(ix) Pascalap .com (http://membres.lycos.fr/pascalap/)
(x) Yahoo groups (http://groups.yahoo.com/search?query=mauritius)

(c) Web pages
(i) Email directory (http://www.ile-maurice.com/email)
(ii) Email directory of Mauritians in the US
(http://bacon.herts.ac.uk/~catf1ba/E-REGIONS/usa.html
(iii) UK Mauritian Students' Society
(http://www.dcs.qmw.ac.uk/~jeffng/ukmss.html)
(iv) Dodo Gazette (http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/6467/)
(v) L'île Maurice - Carnet de voyage
(http://barrere.claude.free.fr/maurice/)
(vi) University of Pennsylvania (http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~mtius/)
(vii) Bienvenue chez Dom (http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/2313/)
(vii) Mauritius Australia Connection
(http://www.users.bigpond.com/clancy/mauritius.htm)
(viii) (a) University of Cambridge Mauritian Society
(http://www.cam.ac.uk/CambUniv/Societies/mauritus/index.htm)
(b) Imperial College, University of London
(http://www.su.ic.ac.uk/mauritian/)
(c) University of Warwick Mauritian Society
(d) LSE SU Mauritian Society (http://www.lse.ac.uk/clubs/mtiansoc/)
(http://www.warwick.ac.uk/~suafg/pascal/soc.htm)
(ix) Association France-Maurice-Rodrigues
(http://www.eucis.com/fmr/default.htm)
(x) Prêt pour décoller (http://www.multimania.com/khistos/)
(xi) Maurice 2000 (http://www.multimania.com/maurice2000/)
(xii) Bienvenue à l'île Maurice (http://perso.wanadoo.fr/decibon/)
(xiii) Mauritius.com Web Hosting (http://www.mauritius.com)
(xiv) Mauritian.co.uk (http://www.mauritian.co.uk)
(xv) Isle Mauritius (http://www.isle-mauritius.com/)
(xvi) PILS (Prévention Information et Lutte contre le SIDA)
(http://www.themauritiusyellowpage.com/pils/index.htm)
(xvii) Stella Clavisque Network
(http://members.tripod.com/stella-clavisque/)
(xviii) Ile Maurice (http://www.mauritius-island.com/)
(xix) Mauritius Island (http://pages.intnet.mu/ngopal/)
(xx) WELCOME TO EMP'S PERSONAL WEBPAGE (http://dreamwater.org/emp/)
(xxi) The Mauritius Turf Club (http://www.mauritiusturfclub.com/)
(xxii) Pictures of Mauritius (http://photos.moris.org/)
(xxiii) Mauritius - Not Only Stamps
(http://www.stampsmauritius.com/WhereIs.htm)
(xxiv) ASSOCIATION AMIZE KREOLE - GROUPE FOLKLORIQUE DE L'ILE MAURICE
(http://membres.lycos.fr/amizekreole2000/)
(xxv) Opinions on society, politics and technology of Mauritius
(http://opinion.moris.org/opinion/)
(xxvi) Le Club (http://www.lilemaurice.com/)
(xxvii) MauriPlus (www.mauriplus.com)
(xxviii) Mauritius Teenage Hangout (http://passeoucasse.com/)
(xxix) Australian Mauritian Association (http://www.amasydney.net/)
**NEW**
(xxx) The Voice of Mauritius
(http://www.kingseat.org.uk/html/mauritius.html) **NEW**
(xxxi) Association Québec Ile Maurice (http://aqim.org) **NEW**

(d) Mailing lists & Communities
(i) Education Reforms in Mauritius
(http://www.egroups.com/list/education-mauritius)
(ii) Mauritians (http://www.egroups.com/list/mauritians)
(iii) Ile-Maurice (http://www.onelist.com/community/Ile-Maurice)
(iv) Island of Mauritius (http://islandofmauritius.listbot.com)
(v) bann-perdi-bann (http://www.egroups.fr/invite/bann-perdi-bann)
(vi) A la découverte de l'île Maurice
(http://communities.msn.fr/nd5c)
(vii) LanArena.mu (http://lanarena.freehomepage.com/list.htm)
(viii) GENMAURICE · Genealogie_Ile_Maurice
(http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/GENMAURICE/messages)
(ix) Corruption in Mauritius
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/corruptmru)
(x) BBCWYSE · BBCWYSE.COM (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BBCWYSE/)
(xi) MMM_FANS (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MMM_FANS)

(xiii) Mauritius Philatelic Society
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Mauritius_Philatelic_Society/)
(xiv) CozerLamerik (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cozerlamerik/)
**NEW**
(xv) movalley (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/movalley/) **NEW**

(e) Stock Exchange of Mauritius (http://www.semdex.com)

(f) Business & Tourism
(i) Air Mauritius (http://www.airmauritius.com)
(ii) Information (http://www.mauritius-info.com/)
(iii) Yellow Pages (http://www.mauritiusyellowpages.com)
(iv) Public Relations Office of the Sugar Industry - Mauritius
(http://prosi.net)
(v) MAURITIUS HOLIDAY BUNGALOW (http://www.mauritius-bungalow.co.uk)
**NEW**

(h) Cyclone information
(http://www.solar.ifa.hawaii.edu/Tropical/tropical.html)
(http://wwwghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/IR/gvar.html )
(http://www.runtel.fr/mto/meteo2.htm)

(i) Internet Radio and TV
(i) NetRadio One (http://www.lexpress-net.com/radionet/index.htm)
(ii) Hello News TV (http://www.hellonewstv.com)

(j) National Computer Board (http://ncb.intnet.mu)

(k) Religious and Cultural Links
(i) Islam in Mauritius (http://www.islam-mauritius.org)
(ii) Mauritian Christian Fellowship (http://www.newlife-mauritius.org)
**NEW**
(iii) Mauritian Creole - Kreol Morisyen (http://www.kreol.mu/) **NEW**

(l) IRC and other chat channels
(i) DALnet
(1) #mauritius
(2) #moris (http://start.at/moris)
(3) #Alt_mauritius
(4) #maurice (http://Maurice.TSX.ORG)
(5) #moriz
(6) #mru
(7) #morice
(8) #morisplus
(9) #Mtius
(ii) EFnet
(1) #mauritius
(2) #maurice
(iii) CHATnet
(1) #mauritius
(iv) Austnet
(1) #mauritius
(v) Servihoo (http://chat.servihoo.com/)
(vi) GigaIRC.net
(1) #mauritius
(2) #maurice

(m) E-commerce
(i) V-Street Virtual Mauritius (http://www.v-street.com/default_n.htm)
(ii) eCADO (http://www.ecado.com/)
(iii) Mauritius Center (http://www.Mauritiuscenter.com)
(iv) My Electronic Dodo (http://www.myeldo.com/)
(v) Librairie Le Cygne (http://www.lecygne.com)
(vi) Professional Computers (http://www.professionalcomputers.net)
(vii) Tropicscope (http://tropicscope.com/)

(n) Education
(1) General
(i) (http://edutech.mu)
(ii) Virtual Centre for Innovative Learning Technologies
(http://vcampus.uom.ac.mu)
(iii) Educ@net (http://educanet.intnet.mu)
(iv) @fter School (http://afterschool.intnet.mu)
(v) (http://mokamarade.com/)
(vi) Foli Online Institute (http://www.foli.net)
(2) Schools
(i) St Joseph's College (http://saint-joseph.intnet.mu)
(ii) Imperial College (http://pages.intnet.mu/imperial/)
(iii) Brisée Verdière Govt. School (http://bvgs.intnet.mu)
(iv) Ecole De La Salle RCA (http://pages.intnet.mu/delasalle/)
(v) New Eton College (http://www.new-eton.inmauritius.net/)
(vi) London College (http://afterschool.intnet.mu/london/college/)
(vii) Prof. Hassan Raffa SSS
(http://afterschool.intnet.mu/phassan_raffa/)
(viii) Prof. Basdeo Bissoondoyal College
(http://afterschool.intnet.mu/pbbc/)
(ix) Royal College Port Louis (http://pages.intnet.mu/rcpl/)
(x) Sir Leckraz Teelock SSS (http://afterschool.intnet.mu/slt/)
(xi) Notre Dame de la Confiance RCA (http://www.ndlaconfiance.ac.mu/)
(xii) Ecole du Centre (http://ecoleducentre.intnet.mu/)
(xiii) Sookdeo Bissoondoyal SSS (http://pages.intnet.mu/mehul/sbsss)
(xiv) The Mahatma Gandhi Institute (http://mgi.intnet.mu)
(xv) Le Bocage International School (http://www.lebocage.net)
(3) Tertiary and other Institutions
(i) University of Technology (http://www.utm.ac.mu/)
(ii) Mauritius Institute of Education (http://www.mie.intnet.mu)
(iii) University of Mauritius (http://www.uom.ac.mu/)
(iv) Mauritius Examinations Syndicate (http://mes.intnet.mu/)
(v) Industrial and Vocational Training Board
(http://ncb.intnet.mu/ivtb/)

(o) Information Technology
(i) Mauritius Linux User Group (http://linux.mu)
(ii) FreeBSD in Mauritius (http://freebsd.mu)
(iii) Mauritius Java User Group (http://majug.mu)
(iv) Internet Society of Mauritius ( http://www.isoc-mu.org)

(p) Recipes
(i) Recipes from Mauritius (http://ile-maurice.tripod.com or
http://www.cjp.net/cuisine/)
(ii) (http://pommedamour.net/recipes.php)
(iii) Recipes of Mauritius (http://www.mauritius.org.uk/recipes.htm)
(iv) Recipes from Mauritius
(http://www.users.bigpond.com/clancy/halim.htm)
(v) Australian Mauritian Association
(http://www.amasydney.net/ama/recipes.html)
National Anthem midi file: http://ncb.intnet.mu/pmo/images/anthem.mid

(a) Telephone/Cellular/ISP
(I)(i) Telecom Plus (http://www.telecomplus.net/)
(ii) Servihoo (http://www.servihoo.com)
(iii) Cellplus (http://www.gocellplus.com/)
(iv) Mauritius Telecom (http://mt.intnet.mu)
(v) Mauritius Telecom Directory (http://www.mtinfopages.com/)
(II) (i) DCL Internet (http://www.dcl.net)
(ii) SMARTNET (http://www.smartnet.mu/)
(III) (i) Emtel Ltd (http://www.emtel-ltd.com/)
(ii) myKwépé (http://www.mykwepe.com/)

(b) Fora
(i) Ile-Maurice.com (http://www.ile-maurice.com)
(ii) A nou cause causé (http://www.netbabbler.com/goto/?forumid=6249)
(iii) Bienvenue à l'île Maurice
(http://www.multimania.com/khistos/index2.htm)
(iv) Rish (http://www.voy.com/590/)
(v) Rentals (car, bungalow, etc.) (http://network54.com/Forum/40165)
(vi) VisionEar (http://www.theydoit.com/board/login.html)
(vii) Servihoo (http://www.servihoo.com/all_forum//display_forum.asp)
(viii) Boocoopalabre (http://www.boocoopalabre.com/index.php)
(ix) Pascalap .com (http://membres.lycos.fr/pascalap/)
(x) Yahoo groups (http://groups.yahoo.com/search?query=mauritius)

(c) Web pages
(i) Email directory (http://www.ile-maurice.com/email)
(ii) Email directory of Mauritians in the US
(http://bacon.herts.ac.uk/~catf1ba/E-REGIONS/usa.html
(iii) UK Mauritian Students' Society
(http://www.dcs.qmw.ac.uk/~jeffng/ukmss.html)
(iv) Dodo Gazette (http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/6467/)
(v) L'île Maurice - Carnet de voyage
(http://barrere.claude.free.fr/maurice/)
(vi) University of Pennsylvania (http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~mtius/)
(vii) Bienvenue chez Dom (http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/2313/)
(vii) Mauritius Australia Connection
(http://www.users.bigpond.com/clancy/mauritius.htm)
(viii) (a) University of Cambridge Mauritian Society
(http://www.cam.ac.uk/CambUniv/Societies/mauritus/index.htm)
(b) Imperial College, University of London
(http://www.su.ic.ac.uk/mauritian/)
(c) University of Warwick Mauritian Society
(d) LSE SU Mauritian Society (http://www.lse.ac.uk/clubs/mtiansoc/)
(http://www.warwick.ac.uk/~suafg/pascal/soc.htm)
(ix) Association France-Maurice-Rodrigues
(http://www.eucis.com/fmr/default.htm)
(x) Prêt pour décoller (http://www.multimania.com/khistos/)
(xi) Maurice 2000 (http://www.multimania.com/maurice2000/)
(xii) Bienvenue à l'île Maurice (http://perso.wanadoo.fr/decibon/)
(xiii) Mauritius.com Web Hosting (http://www.mauritius.com)
(xiv) Mauritian.co.uk (http://www.mauritian.co.uk)
(xv) Isle Mauritius (http://www.isle-mauritius.com/)
(xvi) PILS (Prévention Information et Lutte contre le SIDA)
(http://www.themauritiusyellowpage.com/pils/index.htm)
(xvii) Stella Clavisque Network
(http://members.tripod.com/stella-clavisque/)
(xviii) Ile Maurice (http://www.mauritius-island.com/)
(xix) Mauritius Island (http://pages.intnet.mu/ngopal/)
(xx) WELCOME TO EMP'S PERSONAL WEBPAGE (http://dreamwater.org/emp/)
(xxi) The Mauritius Turf Club (http://www.mauritiusturfclub.com/)
(xxii) Pictures of Mauritius (http://photos.moris.org/)
(xxiii) Mauritius - Not Only Stamps
(http://www.stampsmauritius.com/WhereIs.htm)
(xxiv) ASSOCIATION AMIZE KREOLE - GROUPE FOLKLORIQUE DE L'ILE MAURICE
(http://membres.lycos.fr/amizekreole2000/)
(xxv) Opinions on society, politics and technology of Mauritius
(http://opinion.moris.org/opinion/)
(xxvi) Le Club (http://www.lilemaurice.com/)
(xxvii) MauriPlus (www.mauriplus.com)
(xxviii) Mauritius Teenage Hangout (http://passeoucasse.com/)
(xxix) Australian Mauritian Association (http://www.amasydney.net/)
**NEW**
(xxx) The Voice of Mauritius
(http://www.kingseat.org.uk/html/mauritius.html) **NEW**
(xxxi) Association Québec Ile Maurice (http://aqim.org) **NEW**

(d) Mailing lists & Communities
(i) Education Reforms in Mauritius
(http://www.egroups.com/list/education-mauritius)
(ii) Mauritians (http://www.egroups.com/list/mauritians)
(iii) Ile-Maurice (http://www.onelist.com/community/Ile-Maurice)
(iv) Island of Mauritius (http://islandofmauritius.listbot.com)
(v) bann-perdi-bann (http://www.egroups.fr/invite/bann-perdi-bann)
(vi) A la découverte de l'île Maurice
(http://communities.msn.fr/nd5c)
(vii) LanArena.mu (http://lanarena.freehomepage.com/list.htm)
(viii) GENMAURICE · Genealogie_Ile_Maurice
(http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/GENMAURICE/messages)
(ix) Corruption in Mauritius
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/corruptmru)
(x) BBCWYSE · BBCWYSE.COM (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BBCWYSE/)
(xi) MMM_FANS (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MMM_FANS)
(xii) JosephinedelileMaurice · Hairy Xstar Josephine de l ile
Maurice (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JosephinedelileMaurice/)
(ADULTS ONLY!)
(xiii) Mauritius Philatelic Society
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Mauritius_Philatelic_Society/)
(xiv) CozerLamerik (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cozerlamerik/)
**NEW**
(xv) movalley (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/movalley/) **NEW**

(e) Stock Exchange of Mauritius (http://www.semdex.com)

(f) Business & Tourism
(i) Air Mauritius (http://www.airmauritius.com)
(ii) Information (http://www.mauritius-info.com/)
(iii) Yellow Pages (http://www.mauritiusyellowpages.com)
(iv) Public Relations Office of the Sugar Industry - Mauritius
(http://prosi.net)
(v) MAURITIUS HOLIDAY BUNGALOW (http://www.mauritius-bungalow.co.uk)
**NEW**

(h) Cyclone information
(http://www.solar.ifa.hawaii.edu/Tropical/tropical.html)
(http://wwwghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/IR/gvar.html )
(http://www.runtel.fr/mto/meteo2.htm)

(i) Internet Radio and TV
(i) NetRadio One (http://www.lexpress-net.com/radionet/index.htm)
(ii) Hello News TV (http://www.hellonewstv.com)

(j) National Computer Board (http://ncb.intnet.mu)

(k) Religious and Cultural Links
(i) Islam in Mauritius (http://www.islam-mauritius.org)
(ii) Mauritian Christian Fellowship (http://www.newlife-mauritius.org)
**NEW**
(iii) Mauritian Creole - Kreol Morisyen (http://www.kreol.mu/) **NEW**

(l) IRC and other chat channels
(i) DALnet
(1) #mauritius
(2) #moris (http://start.at/moris)
(3) #Alt_mauritius
(4) #maurice (http://Maurice.TSX.ORG)
(5) #moriz
(6) #mru
(7) #morice
(8) #morisplus
(9) #Mtius
(ii) EFnet
(1) #mauritius
(2) #maurice
(iii) CHATnet
(1) #mauritius
(iv) Austnet
(1) #mauritius
(v) Servihoo (http://chat.servihoo.com/)
(vi) GigaIRC.net
(1) #mauritius
(2) #maurice

(m) E-commerce
(i) V-Street Virtual Mauritius (http://www.v-street.com/default_n.htm)
(ii) eCADO (http://www.ecado.com/)
(iii) Mauritius Center (http://www.Mauritiuscenter.com)
(iv) My Electronic Dodo (http://www.myeldo.com/)
(v) Librairie Le Cygne (http://www.lecygne.com)
(vi) Professional Computers (http://www.professionalcomputers.net)
(vii) Tropicscope (http://tropicscope.com/)

(n) Education
(1) General
(i) (http://edutech.mu)
(ii) Virtual Centre for Innovative Learning Technologies
(http://vcampus.uom.ac.mu)
(iii) Educ@net (http://educanet.intnet.mu)
(iv) @fter School (http://afterschool.intnet.mu)
(v) (http://mokamarade.com/)
(vi) Foli Online Institute (http://www.foli.net)
(2) Schools
(i) St Joseph's College (http://saint-joseph.intnet.mu)
(ii) Imperial College (http://pages.intnet.mu/imperial/)
(iii) Brisée Verdière Govt. School (http://bvgs.intnet.mu)
(iv) Ecole De La Salle RCA (http://pages.intnet.mu/delasalle/)
(v) New Eton College (http://www.new-eton.inmauritius.net/)
(vi) London College (http://afterschool.intnet.mu/london/college/)
(vii) Prof. Hassan Raffa SSS
(http://afterschool.intnet.mu/phassan_raffa/)
(viii) Prof. Basdeo Bissoondoyal College
(http://afterschool.intnet.mu/pbbc/)
(ix) Royal College Port Louis (http://pages.intnet.mu/rcpl/)
(x) Sir Leckraz Teelock SSS (http://afterschool.intnet.mu/slt/)
(xi) Notre Dame de la Confiance RCA (http://www.ndlaconfiance.ac.mu/)
(xii) Ecole du Centre (http://ecoleducentre.intnet.mu/)
(xiii) Sookdeo Bissoondoyal SSS (http://pages.intnet.mu/mehul/sbsss)
(xiv) The Mahatma Gandhi Institute (http://mgi.intnet.mu)
(xv) Le Bocage International School (http://www.lebocage.net)
(3) Tertiary and other Institutions
(i) University of Technology (http://www.utm.ac.mu/)
(ii) Mauritius Institute of Education (http://www.mie.intnet.mu)
(iii) University of Mauritius (http://www.uom.ac.mu/)
(iv) Mauritius Examinations Syndicate (http://mes.intnet.mu/)
(v) Industrial and Vocational Training Board
(http://ncb.intnet.mu/ivtb/)

(o) Information Technology
(i) Mauritius Linux User Group (http://linux.mu)
(ii) FreeBSD in Mauritius (http://freebsd.mu)
(iii) Mauritius Java User Group (http://majug.mu)
(iv) Internet Society of Mauritius ( http://www.isoc-mu.org)

(p) Recipes
(i) Recipes from Mauritius (http://ile-maurice.tripod.com or
http://www.cjp.net/cuisine/)
(ii) (http://pommedamour.net/recipes.php)
(iii) Recipes of Mauritius (http://www.mauritius.org.uk/recipes.htm)
(iv) Recipes from Mauritius
(http://www.users.bigpond.com/clancy/halim.htm)
(v) Australian Mauritian Association
(http://www.amasydney.net/ama/recipes.html)


Category: Mauritius, Link,Mauritian

Breaking news :New features in Goowy soon

Got a mail this morning from Alex Bard one of the founders of Goowy. Here is an extract:

I saw your posting about goowy mail. I am one of the founders and wanted to thank you for your support. We have a lot of really cool new features coming soon including resizing, updated UI and calendaring. Send us your thoughts and comments and they could soon become features.-Alex Bard

I personnaly beleive that Goowy could be an instant hit if properly marketed and made known , and am always 200% behind Rich Internet Applications , so lets wish Goowy developers all the best and try to give them a little help making this webmail client famous.

Category: Goowy, Flash, News

OpenLaszlo3.0 available for download

Laszlo has changed the name of the new version of its platform from Laszlo Presentation Server to OpenLaszlo 3.0 which comes with a number of new features.

OpenLaszlo allows you to develop RIA applications , based on an xml-formatted file which renders into a Flash SWF file . OpenLaszlo is in direct competition with rival Flex which is not Open Source technology.



Category: Laszlo, RIA, Flex ,Flash

JavaBlackBelt - Test your Java Skills

The JavaBlackBelt site allows you to test your EJB , Web Services , Core Java and other Java related skills online . Its a good way to prepare for your Java Certification.

The site has contributors who donate questions to it , you can register and keep tracks of your answers to these questions. The layout is simple and navigation is kind of easy. However the site might crash in the middle of your "exam" as following its announcement JavaBlackBelt is supporting between 500 and 1000 concurrent users.Still its worth the visit.

Category: JAVA , J2EE , Site

Goowy 100% Flash Mail Client Available

goowy mail 100% flash
Originally uploaded by baadaal.

Was expecting this for a while but the first 100% flash mail,Goowy, is finally out. Needless to say i jumped on the occasion and immediately created an account to review this wicked flash mail client.



So to start with goowy , offers 100MB free mail space , with cool features such as POP3 settings , junk filters and something really awesome SKINS!!! You can actually upload any image you want to serv as your skin (although there is a 100Kb restriction on size of your skin).



Whats interesting is as its flash based , once you got on the page and the flash is downloaded on you pc , everything is a breeze no need to wait for your page to load like in GMAIL , Hotmail or other web based HTML email clients. You mail client resides on your pc (unless you clear you cache), so its really very fast.



Its superbly simple to use , although i would have prefered a more elaborated GUI a la "Stargate" but well its a very good initiative and on top of that its FREE. So hurry up and signup , just like me hiihihihi.





Category: Mail,Flash,News, Review

Google Map available for UK

mapliverpool
Originally uploaded by baadaal.

The brits now got the UK version of the google map , which is absolutely awesome. I tried finding Mauritian restaurants in UK , and was really impressed that they already had it indexed.This is because apparently google has taken the addresses of local establishements from Yell.com which already had a list of restaurants , businesses , hotels,etc.. in the United Kingdom.

Try the following search string in the search box on the google map page:
liverpool street station,City Of London, Greater London, EC4N, United Kingdom
This will give you an idea of the depth of information that can be retrieved.

Do click on the Satellite link at the top left corner of the screen.This will give you a stallite image of the location which you have searched for. However there is a limitation to the level at which you can zoom. For very good zoom satellite pics do try keyhole which would make james bond blush (Keyhole is owned by Google).

Category: Google,Map,UK,Mauritius

Kelvir virus removal for msn

Had a few people sending me links over msn with the format:

Looks its you
pictures.php?email=[your e-mail]

Dont click on the link , thats the Kelvir virus , if you are the one sending these types of links over msn conversation , then you should download the Kelvir removal tool from symantec.

Category: Virus,Kelvir,MSN

MSN 7 news

MSN 7 now is in public release , so if you are still using your msn6.2 its high time your dump it away and try out the new version. There are a host of little improvements that make it an excellent IM companion.



Two or three things worth noting are :
1. Personal Message
2. Muggings or Dynamic Display pics
3. Search

What i like with the personal message is that at times you want to add a phrase or quote with your display name but when you write in conversations it becomes a real mess , this is where the personal message feature comes into play. You add your personal message , it appears next to your name in the title box of your conversation window , without appearing in your conversations. Also there is an option where you can have the song which you are playing in windows media player appearing next to your display name which is kind of neat.

The muggins are dynamic display pictures , when you place a smiley in your converstions , your display pictures change too (depending on which muggin you installed). To get a free muggin simply open a conversation box and click on packs you can select the top 4 packs each will install a different muggin. Else if you have a few spare bucks you get buy one from bluemountain.

With the search button in your conversation box you can perform searches without having to leave your conversation box.It returns the result in the conversation box itself after quering msn search

Category: MSN7 ,News , IM, Muggin

Buying a laptop - the right decision?

One day or another you will come up with this question "Should i get myself a laptop or a desktop?" . The answer usually depends on 2 factors the first being your budget and the second your performance requirements.



Budget wise unless you live in the US or in South East Asia the price of a laptop can be really exorbitant. In Mauritius for example the price of an Intel Centrino 1.5Ghz , 40GB ,DVD writer , WiFi-enabled laptop can be as much as Rs44,000 + Vat thats about 800 pounds (pound 1 = Rs 55 ).The same is for the UK were prices really put the laptop out of reach of low budget consumers which is a real shame.

Perfomance wise laptops are really not as powerful as desktops , actually the more you want your laptop to be performant the more graphic cards , chips , ram you need to add ,these does help to boost up the juice but the negative points being that your laptop becomes heavier , heats up more and uses more battery life.

Laptops are useful (if you have a low budget) when:
1. You're always on the road and away from your pc
2. You dont need heavy duty equipment , a simple Celeron laptop would do
3. You will use the laptop only as a secondary unit to your pc
4. You need to regularly visit your clients on-site.
5. Want to take your work back home.

J2EE programmers and all other performance hungry programming experts , you are all cursed!!! The laptop unless being a really mighty beast will never be able to satisfy our ram and power hungry applications unless you are willing to pay the price.Here the desktop should be reconsidered as a primary option. Who wouldn't have been happy to bring back his Eclipse-tomcat-jboss application home to work on it off office hours....sniff.

Its really sad that the prices never seem to drop for laptops because it would have been much more elegant to replace our common desktops with them.

Resource:
If you want to distinguish between a Pentium M , Celeron , Sempron laptops and get more additional information here is a google-group thread which explains what all these are and gives some interesting tips as to which laptop makes have the lowest/highest power consumption and performance.

Category: Laptop , Desktop , Centrino , Mauritius , UK

Running mutiple IE on WinXp

This is the nightmare of most web designers , you need to test your site on multiple versions of Internet Explorer. I happened that recently i got the same problem , so I had the option of either reformat my precious harddisk else find a way to run MSIE 5.5 (Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 ) on my WinXP.

So after some querying on my favorite search engine I got the answer to my problem on this blog .

If you want to get a quick answer this is what you should try:
1. Download the following zip file: http://downloads.skyzyx.net/ie/ie55sp2_nt.zip
2.Unzip the zip file anywhere on your pc
3.Find the IEXPLORE.exe and click it
4.Test your version of internet explorer by going on the following url: http://www.skyzyx.com/random/browser.php


Note:

1.Clicking on the about button in the internet explorer 5.5 will give you false information on the browser it will display 6.0 as browser information you need to go to the above stated URL

2. When checking browser information on multiple browsers don’t forget to refresh your page else you will get the cached page from your previous browser thus showing innacurrate information


Category: IE , WinXP , Explorer , Browser

Hacking Google to find people , mp3 , webcams , map

Google is really a powerful search engine ,over the years it has become a really essential tool to me as a developer and internet enthusiat. If ever I need to search for anything on the net I am 90% sure am gonna get what I want if I go to Google. But I am really suprised that many people dont know how to perform queries in google to get information that they need.This article is going to help them getting started in learning how to unleash the powers of Google.

Finding People
Finding people is quiet easy if you want to search for someone you should first know his/her full name or nickname. You go to google you type "Javed Mandary" (with the quotes)would return you all the pages having the name Javed Mandary. In my case however since am indexed a lot by Google if you simply type Javed would return you results on me (right now on the first page ..but that varies considerably). Of course you must hope that the person you are trying to find is someone who participates in forums or writes up articles or simply blogs , that person needs to have net presence to be found.

Finding files / mp3s
This is where the fun parts starts , why use illegal software to download music files (Kazaa , Sheraza , etc..) whilst you can ask google to find it for you. This is how i go about doing it. What you need to know is that many people share music publicly over the internet , google being such as powerful crawler can indentity these pages and return it back to you. Say you want a song called 'a day in paradiso' from artist 'phil' and you want the file in mp3 format. In google type the following commands and see the results that are returned:
"Index of" a day in paradiso ".mp3"
"Index of" paradiso phil ".mp3" "size"

Of course the example I gave above is fictionous , so i would doubt that you get a real result but you can change the artist and song title with real song information. If you want the song in wma or ogg format just substitute the .mp3 part with .wma or .ogg .

The same could be done to search for different types of files on the net may it be video , audio , pdf , powerpoint etc..

For more detailed information as to how to find mp3s please see the following article: http://www.i-hacked.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=128


Finding Public Webcams
Some webcams can be viewed over the internet as they are publicly available the following article shows how to find these webcams : http://www.i-hacked.com/content/view/81/42/

There are a host of other functinalites that can be obtained using google , for example using google map you can literally hack it into creating your own map with your own markings , add video , pictures and other multimedia information to your own customed made google map. Engadget has a walkthrough of how to do this and here is a wiki for those of you who really want to dig futher into it.

There is also a book which is out called Google Hacking for Penetration Testers which shows what can be done with the search engine.

Category: Google, Hack, GoogleMap, Mp3 , Search,Map

Papercasting or blogging on paper

You heard podcasting now comes the turn of papercasting. Some genius in blogsphere not very concerned about the depletion of our forests decided that he would invent a new form of blogging.

Here are the steps for papercasting or plogcasting as it is called:

1. Take a piece of paper and pencil


2. Write down what you want to blog on the piece of paper whilst holding your pencil with one hand


3. write in a neat way ...unless you are a doctor and your audience consists mainly of pharmacians


4. scan the end result of your work


5. put it as image on your blog


6. thats it ..ure officially undergoing regression..slap yourself hard

I personnally find it utterly stupid heres the link :
http://homepage.mac.com/packetrat/plog/

Category: Plog, PaperCasting , Blog , paper

Scare yourself out

Found a blog about a ghost hunter , called Charlyn, who is a travel writer.What she does is she goes about the US looking for ghost scoops and post the pics and the explanations around the extra-paranormal activities in her life.

Its kind of silly so if you wanna have a peek here is the link http://spaces.msn.com/members/ghosthunting/.

If you got scary blogs to share please add their url as comment.

Category: Ghost , Blog , Review

Shopping in duty free Mauritius

Its now official since the start of this week Mauritius is going to be a duty-free island. Everyone is excited and i personnally beleive that its going to be great to have products at a lower pricing than before ,on top of that it would be really interesting if we could have the same growth curve as Dubai , although we still lack the infrastructure in terms of big shopping malls etc..

So today i decided to have a closer look at how the prices had changed in shops around Port-Louis. First I went to Galaxee , there were many people inside although today is public holiday in Mauritius (...By the way happy Ugadi festival!). The main attraction was the TV sets , prices have dropped down a bit you could get a nice 29inch flat screen starting from rs12000 + VAT. I also had a look at gym equipments there but didn't notice any price drops.Prices on mobiles had dropped by about rs500 on almost all makes.

Then i went to Victoria Bus Station and jumped into Courts' showroom , there too a lot of people were looking and comparing the prices , i paid more attention to furniture items there for some reason , then i was told that there was no duty in the first place on these articles. Still i did notice some nice bedroom furniture , i might return there soon :) . But as far as electronic equipments are concerned i think Courts has yet to show the new pricings as everything is really still expensive , plus they dont have really big TV sets to display , the 29inch and 34 inches. I saw a DVD+Hifi at around rs20,000 + VAT , still expensive !!!

My last stop was at Cash&Carry Computer Gallery as usual it was packed full. Whats funny with the place is that there are just about as many clients as salespersons. And given that its a small shop , you kind of get pushed around which is annoying. On top of that you always have a sales guy in you back , which is something i really dont like. So i would definitively give a big zero as to customer relationship is concerned.On the other side the shop does have big tv-sets at reasonable prizes what caught my attention was a JVC 29inch flat screen TV set which was at rs17,000. Lots of mobiles too were on sale with considerable price reduction ,e.g the Samsung E800 which is being sold at rs16000 . But in the computers department , there is absolutely no change the price of an Intel Centrino 1.5 Ghz , 512 MB , 60G HD laptop is still around rs43,000. Anyways there were more people in the home electronics section than in the computer section.

I will definitively have a look around tommorrow (if i can) or latter next week to see how the prices evolve and will take some photo shots (added to TODO list).

Category: Mauritius,Duty-free, Shop

Blogging after 11th of April

Due to me undergoing a heavy training session I be able to blog only after the 11th of April but i will still give away Yahoo 360 invites , in the morning and the afternoon.

By the way those having GMail accounts , have you noticed that that GMail Space is now 2.06GB ... mondo cool!

Category: Blogging

BugMeNot.com dont register ever!

BugMeNot.com is a website that stores passwords of users to access common websites where registration is required, such as if for example on theserverside.com you need to provide a password to post a comment and you dont want to lose time registering , you just go to bugmenot.com and enter the url for theserverside.com . This will return you the password of another user who has previously stored his password on BugMeNot.com thus saving you the time of registration.

But do note that passwords for critical or sensitive information such as your email or online bank account should not be stored in BugMeNot.comelse everyone would gain access toit.

Category: Password , Review , Site

My GMail Space just Grew

Surprise Surprise! Instead of having less space on my GMail account , my mailbox size is actually growing it was at 1000MB now its at 1115 MB i.e 1.1GB . Wow the guys at google are really too generous.

Am currently using still only 7% (80MB) of my total mailbox and that too after having all my mails from several accounts (8 accounts) forwarded directly into one gmail account , it will probably take months or even a year or two to fill up my mailbox at this rate.

Plus now you can have rich formating for your gmail texts which is something which was really lacking before. So its getting better and better.

Category: Gmail, google, Mail

Google for a Taxi

The newest service from Google labs is called Google Ride Finder , basically what it does is that you seach a location where you would like to take a taxi , limousine or shuttle service and google returns back a map with the real time location of your taxi for example.

The vehicules are represented in terms of blue balloons , when you click on these balloons you get the contact information of the taxi,limousine or shuttle service. This includes phone number and name of the service. As usual , this is reserved on to 11 cities currently and needless to say that most of them are in the US.

Category: Google , Taxi , Googlelab , New

Aprils fool by Google !

Maximimse your surfing efficiency by having a fresh refreshing Google Gulp! It comes in 4 different flavours beta carrott, glutamate grape , sugar free radical and sero-tonic water.




Using Auto-Drink technology , the tip of the bottle scans your DNA to optimise your drinking efficiency.

If you want to learn more try the official Google Gulp webpage.

My advise for you guys is to enjoy it the most but still do remember that Google Gulp is still in BETA phase!!!!

Happy Aprils fool day... :) !

Category: Google,Aprilfool, Drink

Yahoo 360! Full review

Yahoo 360! start page

I finally got a Yahoo! 360 invitation yesterday. So how has my life changed since then...well not so much. The first impressions that you get when you enter your Yahoo! 360 degree homepage is that something is missing...ads! There are absolutely no ads on this service, maybe because its in beta but for the moment is completely ad free.

The inteface is a bit dull which is not going to help things i suppose. So basically this service is supposed to bring you closer to your community of friends , relatives ,etc... so to this effect there are a number of tools which are available to help you socialise.


Yahoo 360! Search

Various searches are possible from the search menu (as you can see from the picture), however when i made a search for people in mauritius i found only 2 person , me and the other one being a friend i invited to test the service, i think for the socialising part we will have to wait for Yahoo 360! to fill up a bit.


yahoo 360! blog

The blog has all the features (or most of them) for making you a happy blogger. Above is my attempt to conquer the Yahoo! blogosphere.There is a neat blogroll feature and ability for you to moblog (blog from your mobile).Your entries will be published in RSS 2.0 feeds format.


Yahoo! photo

Above is a screenshot of Yahoo!Photo , to share your photos with your friends , frankly speaking i do prefer hello over Yahoo!Photo.

To sum up Yahoo 360! does not live up to the expections what I would have had , msn spaces is definitively more interesting that Yahoo 360!. I didnt come over any new or innnovative so I'm not very impressed with it. But the service is still in beta , so maybe with more people joining and more features are added , it can be more interesting.

Win a Yahoo360! invite
If you are interested in getting a Yahoo360! invite please add a comment as to what you are going to do with it.I would like to give invites to everyone but given the rate at which people are asking me , i won't have many left (..80 invites left), so hurry.....!!

Category: Yahoo, Blog, Mauritius, Photo, Invitation

Tsunami alert in Mauritius

The news broke last night as I was watching BBC , there is a new EarthQuake off the shores of Sumatra and it seems that the risk of a new Tsunami raging its way through the indian ocean is very probable.

At this moment 2,000 people are estimated to have died on Nias an island off the shores of Indonesia and 80% of buildings have been affected in the town of Gungunsitoli.



According to French news site TF1 it is believed that there might be a risk of tsunami in the south of the indian ocean , which in this case would mean that we in Mauritius , Rodrigues and Reunion island would be directly affected.

From what i heard there are people in the north of Mauritius who fled from their houses to go in safety during the night.Although i havent any record or witness from anyone in Mauritius who have felt any quake tremor so far.

Lets wait and see what happens do stay in tune with your radio or tv set and be very careful if you are planning to go to the beach today.

I would like to thank Silflay Hraka for pointing out the danger of this new quake to me, his site has got very useful facts on the event.

Category: Mauritius , Indonesia , Tsunami

1 TB free email

After the 1GB mail offerings from GMail and soon Yahoo Mail now we are moving in the 1TB email era. One such mail service offering 1TB mail is hriders.com. I must warn you though that there are a lot of adds in this mail service.

Still on the 1GB mail offerings i have tested walla.com which is kind of nice with not too many ads and a nice simple interface.

Category: Mail, Email

JAVA GUI builder comparison

Here is a study done by Mitch Stuart on different GUI builders currently available on the market. Netbeans , JFormDesigner , FormLayoutMaker , Foam , Jigloo , JBuilder , Eclipse , Jvider are all investigated and the pricings of each tool is also provided.

The study is found at this location:
http://www.fullspan.com/articles/java-gui-builders.html

Category: JAVA

PSP review

The PSP reviews are out , check out the review by Alec Matias , complete with details the PSP hardware itself and first impressions about gaming on sony's hand held game console.



Apparently the PSP is much more powerful than the Nintendo DS although the game titles are not very interesting for the moment compared to the Nintendo which has over a decade and a half of experience in hand held consoles.

Review:
http://www.shacknews.com/extras/reviews/psp/032405_psp_2.x

Here is another review of a guy who bought 2 PSP consoles and is going to sell one of them on ebay (lots of packaging and inside packaging pics .. :P)

Dont forget the Messenger Plus World Wide contest to win a PSP console every week until April : http://www.msgplus.net/download_contest.php?id=2865

Category: Psp , Nintendo, Gaming

Mail Wars Yahoo v/s Gmail

Apparently Yahoo is planning to offer free 1GB mail storage space to all its users.So if you don't have a GMail account (which is already at 1GB) then this is really good news for you.The service is to start late in April for Yahoo Mail users whilst GMail will shed off its beta version tag to go public on April 1.


Yahoo Mail!

Lets see the good features of both the Mail systems:

Yahoo:

1. Going from 250MB to 1GB this leverages Yahoo to the same rank as GMail in terms of storage space provider.
2. Many more years of experience than GMail , the Yahool Mail system is more reliable
3. Doesnt make use of JavaScript like Google, this means that it is more compatible with most browsers
4. Free antivirus scanning of your attachements
5. SPAM blocklist , feature not availble in GMail

GMail:

1. Unlike Yahoo Mail Gmail is completely Ad Free
2. Mail forwarding allowed
3. POP3 access allowed
4. Ability to search your mail
5. Labels , allow you to monitor your mails as if they were part of a conversation
6. Automatic refresh, you dont need to refresh your page to know if you got a new mail

So from what can be seen , Yahoo Mail will give more emphasis on reliability and security whilst GMail is biding more on new features and pioneer concepts.


Category: Mail, GMail, Yahoo

Hennie does her job

Woke up this morning to find that there was a cyclone warning class 3 in Mauritius. Which means literally stay in bed no work today...so thats what i did!

There was lots of wind , some rain and lot of noise thats how i can describe the event nothing worth stating apart from that ..which is abosultey great.This is the weather the way I like it!

Category: Mauritius Cyclone

Cyclone Hennie targeting Mauritius

Currenty there is a cyclone warning class 1 in Mauritius , which means that there is a risk of cyclonic rains but no great dammage. Dont be mislead cyclones are usually welcome in Mauritius mostly by the thousands of students who dont have to go to school when there is a cylcone warning class 2. I do remember when I was one of them ..sniff..

Ok enough flashback...here is a Infrared Image of the cyclone (just look next to Madagascar):


Cyclone Hennie

This cyclone is expected to be weak so there is no major threat, but in the past we have seen much more powerful natural bulldozers crashing on the island.

For more information visit Servihoo


Category: Cyclone , Mauritius, Weather

iPod Shuffle and Mac Mini now avaible in Mauritius

LCI (Leal Communications Informatics Ltd) is commercialising the iPod shuffle and Mac Mini in Mauritius.

There is currently no crowd yet to acquire iPod goods on dodo island but I dont think this will take very long before people start buying this little goodie. The iPod shuffle as its name implies shuffles your playlist and picks out songs at random it is currently being initially prized at Rs4000 + VAT.



As for the mac mini which is really very small in size ,6.5 inches wide and 2 inches tall, it is being sold at LCI showrooms for Rs17,900 + VAT. Macs don't have a big place on the Mauritian market, I personally dont think people will prefer a MAC to a PC but the prize seems good...who knows.



Category: Mauritius , iPod, MacMini, Mac

AlienWare the review

This is what i believe are the coolest hardware on the planet, not only is the design wicked but the performance of the AlienWare desktops and notebooks are really excellent.

Check out the AlienWare desktop:

...and notebook:


I think we should all throw away those big ugly pcs and get these babies instead, although the price is a bit high i must confess. The Alienware Aurora ALX SLI for example comes at a hefty price tag of $5259.00 !! However it does have some neat features such as:

1. Dual 10,000rpm RAID 0 drives


2. DUAL 256mb top-of-the-line PCIe graphics cards


3. ATHLON 64 processor (finally, intel isn't the "gaming" processor


4. PCI Express and SLI for the graphics cards


5. PC 4400 RAM

Category: Notebook, AlienWare , Desktop , Performance

w.bloggar the blogging client

I have started using w.bloggar as a blog client for blogger to post and publish my blog entries. It is a freeware with absolutely no ads. Its got a cool UI and great authoring tools along with it. The installation takes about a few seconds and up you go blogging your contents.

Its just like writing up a word document and when you finish you just click on the Post&Publish button to publish your entry on your blog. There are numerous interesting features such as:

1. Editing of posts and templates
2. Post preview
3. Post to many blogs
4. Spell checking

A number of blogs are supported for more information visit the w.bloggar website

Category: blog,utility,freeware,Mauritius

FireFox the movie!

Last nite I watched FireFox the movie, it had nothing to do with our popular browser but was a good film nethertheless starring Clint Eastwood as a veteran top gun pilot asked to re-join the US Airforce to steal a Russian airplane able to fly at Mach 6 (wooow) and equiped with mind-guided missiles (that was a bit far-fetched) which responded only if you thought in Russian (hahahahhaha).


Firefox movie

Category: Firefox , Movie

Won PSP console from Patchou

Guess what one person from Patchou contacted me for the Messenger Plus World Wide Contest and I was not online! Imagine my disapointment of losing the chance of winning a PSP console. Am heart broken... sniff.

Well I still have a little hope , i suppose he could try to contact me again. Am online 12hours a day and it had to fall in the 12 hours where i was not online.....fate oh fate ... !

Anyways this does denote that the contest is genuine and you can all try your luck:
http://www.msgplus.net/download_contest.php?id=2865


PSP console

Category: MSN , Messenger , Patchou , PSP , Contest

Murky Monday

Its again raining a lot today in Port-Louis the weather is getting worse..so worse that the ministry of education decided that today would be holiday for school children. Rainwater is accumulating in craters on the roads and it becomes a real heachache for fellow pedestrians to try not to be splased by cars , buses and lorries.

For my part i had to take my jacket out of the closet for today. We are also apparently moving out of summer as a cold breeze is strongly being felt.

Category: Mauritius , Port-Louis, Weather

MSGPLUS 3.5 released WorldWide contest

messenger plus

The new messenger plus 3.5 is finally out and compatible with all versions of msn messenger upto version 7. It got the normal features of the previous versions plus some cool new features such as emotion sound.

I just installed my msg plus and it works pretty fine .The feature i love the most however is the dockable msn contacts , people that you want to be continously in contact with can be added directly on you desktop in dockable translucent boxes.

On top of that Patchou has organised a contest to celebrate this launch. Every week till end of April , a winner will get a PSP console and the final winner will get an AlienWare laptop , which by the way is mondo cool. This contest is held worldwide so join!

To get started please visit:
http://www.msgplus.net/download_contest.php?id=2865

Category: MSN , Prizes, MSNPLUS, Patchou, Contest, Mauritius

Record number of hits

After GoogleX was brought down following complaints from Mac Os , there was a great amount of zeal from the Genie effect enthusiats to find a screenshot of the GoogleX website. This has caused the number of visitors on my blogspot to surge from the mere 2-10 visitors to a wooping 200 visitors yesterday!


Visitors report


Category: Blog , GoogleX, Google

GoogleX

GoogleX 

Google released its portal GoogleX , which is supposed to be in "hommage" to Mac Os X. I really can't see any difference between Google portal and GoogleX except for a difference in the menu style.

Yesterday I couldn't login at all on blogger , I was only able to post the pic of GoogleX via Hello.

Category: Google

Yahoo launching blogging service

Yahoo!360

In the trend of Microsoft's msn spaces , Yahoo is to start a new service called Yahoo! 360 ° . The service will be operational on March 29. And it will have features such as sharing of photos , blog ,inviting your relatives and friends to your space on Yahoo.

You can as from now register yourself to the beta version of the service.

Category: Yahoo , Blog, Beta

Port-Louis under attack

bad weather

Outside lightning is falling like crazy every 5 minutes , its weird how this event occurs every day at 12:00 just when i need to go out to eat something.

The picture above has been taken from my office parking lot. I waited like 30 minutes to be able to take a picture of a lightning bolt but i guess it was not my day.Anyways am still hungry... grrrr.. (thats my tummy)

Category: Mauritius, Port-louis , Lightning, Weather

50 things i will do in my lifetime

my 50 things 

The brits really don't know what to do once you give them a webserver and hosting . Take a look at my50.co.uk , its a site where you post the 50 things that you would want to do before you fall stiff on your back. Man i do wonder who would want to know what i would like to do..hmmm... obviously a lot of people !!!

Well you can always check this site you will find my wishlist and a couple of other thousand of people's (only 2 people from Mauritius though).

Category: Website , Innovation , UK , Brits, Mauritius

BluggCaster - cool podcasting

bluggcaster 

Ever heard of a podcast? Well its literrally just like a blog , although its more of audio than text , people record their information in mp3 format for example and upload it on their website , so as others can listen to all the blablabla that you can possibly imagine.

I thought that podcasting was like listening to the radio until i came across BluggCaster. Man its so mondo cool , the presenters are in fact ALIEEEEEEEEEEENS yes ! They have this squeaky little voice and they analyze the news from our planet earth with their dullish eyes before recording everything and publishing their podcast... its really crazy, funny and the best part being that they have this awesome flash site ..man i feel that its christmas already.

Category: Podcast , Blog

Transfer Money on MSN

Bill Your MSN banker 

The guys in the netherlands are always a couple of decades in front of us. With the new service from snsBank called Bill, you can now transfer small amount of money to your friends or perform online shopping without leaving your msn IM.

According to mess.be no registration would be required. I checked the snsBank but the site is entirely in dutch which is not very pratical for people like me.There are offering this pioneer service the least they could do to increase the audience is to provide translations in english , french , etc..

Still its an interesting idea , hope other banks will follow.

Category: MSN ,Bank , Netherlands

Open-source projects

Java-Source.net 
One word to describe this site "awesome" . Java-Source.net is really worth the visit , it has a wide collection of open-source java projects (am i repeating myself here ... :P) ranging from blogs , code analyzers , groupware solutions , to IDEs , template engines and webservers.

Actually all the different categories are listed in alphabetical order and the easy navigation is quiet nice for a java website. Most of the java websites i've been too dont really take the aesthetics into account but this site has really good interface and no gimmicks and certainly no ads (apart from the usual Goolge adsense ads).

To sum up this is really a java developers heaven and has enough goodies to keep everyone happy.

Category: Java , Download , OpenSource

Baby Luna

I would like to welcome the youngest blogger on the planet ,baby Luna Julia Verveen , born in the Netherlands. Her blog is at http://luna.verveen.net. The blog is currently maintained by her daddy Stephan Verveen who is a collegue and friend of mine.

You can know all that the cute little baby is doing on her blog which has got uptodate news. Her parents adore her and we are all waiting for her to start her first steps on the net.

Happy Birthday Mauritius

Happy birthday to you , happy birthday to you , happy birthday dear Mauritius happy birthday to you!!!

Wishing you a very happy 37th independence day and 13th republic day. Hope now you will prosper more , have a diminished crime rates , lower inflation level and have even better standard of living for your inhabitants.

Wishing you the best that can happen..along with better broadband for the years to come.

Category: Mauritius

Creating a mailing list

Ever thought of creating your own mailing list?..obviously not... well I have! So i decided to have a look at the potential solutions available (free).

There are many advantages from having a mailing list , you can send mails to all your friends , relatives , co-workers without having to add everyone's email address each time and its just fun to spam other people's mail address with all the blabla that you can produce.

Here is some of the options i found:

1. Mailman - Written using Python , there are loads of sites which use this but for me humble XP user ,it was really a pain into understanding how it worked. So i gave up after reading the installation instructions :S .

2. James - This one is in JAVA , so i can talk a bit longer on it , so its pretty straight forward minimum requirements being JDK1.4 or above. You just have to unzip James and go to the bin directory and click on run. There are some configurations (depending on your patience) to be set for the mailing list to work. I had a few problems though with DNS addresses on some XP machines there are dummy DNS address of style fec0:0:0:ffff::1%1 which are added , this causes James to crash but on 3 other pcs i tested it worked fine. James also serves as a Mail server.

3. Coollist - If you dont require a professional mailing list with its own server running behind your firewalls do consider coollist.com which offers creation of free mailing list. You basically create an account and add your friends. An invitation mail is sent to your friends , if they accept they can start receiving mails from the mailing list.

My own mailing list is javed@coollist.com .If you want to be added just add a comment or mail me ;)

Category: Mailinglist , Mail , Apache , Ideas

ADSL by ClickPost

I almost slipped and fell down when i saw the front page news of L'express this morning, i couldn't beleive it. ClickPost ,a Mauritian internet services provider, is offering ADSL 128 kbps at Rs 899 (+ VAT) with unlimited access.

Having read that I immediately went to check the tariff details on the ClickPost website . The newspaper article also mentioned that the main leader on the Telecommunications market in Mauritius, TelecomPlus was offering ADSL 128k at Rs1000 for only 12 hours. Thats absolutely not true becomes when I checked on their site , the kit they were offering was at Rs990 and for 24hours unlimited access.

Anyways I'm very happy to see that we are finally moving out of the 56kbp dial-up era to ADSL. But i do wonder when we will be enjoying a T1 connection.

Category: Internet , ADSL , Mauritius , Telecom

Maha Shivaratree

Today our hindu friends are celebrating Maha Shivaratree.So its public holiday ,actually yesterday too was public holiday due to this festival where pilgrims in Mauritius go to Grand Bassin which is a dormant volcano..yes we are all ver brave on dodo island.. and fetch holy water from the lake which is at the center of the Grand Bassin crater.

Yesterday I went to the seaside at Mont Choisy thinking that as a lot of people will be praying I would have the beach all for myself, but i guess a couple of hundreds of people had the same idea as i did. But nethertheless I had a great time swimming through the seaweeds (yes it was low tide..).

Today after months of neglect i finally found time to remove the Sasser viruses which were feasting on my pc.Now I can surf without getting silly warning dialogs all over my screen. By the way if you do get warnings of type "Syshost.exe..." or "LSA shell" don't click on any buttons just ignore them else your pc will shut down in 60 secs.And do try Stinger from Mcafee


Category: Festival , Holiday , MahaShivratree , Mauritius , Seaside, Virus , Sasser , AntiVirus

Five Worlds

Read an interesting article about software development from Joel Spolsky .

He categorises software development into five worlds:

1. Shrinkwrap
2. Internal
3. Embedded
4. Games
5. Throwaway

and explains each category.

Here is the link to his article: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FiveWorlds.html

Category: Software , Programming

Add spice to your builds

So you are planning to setup continious integration in your project or you already have CruiseControl blasting nightly builds but you would like your team members to be a bit more interested in the whole process.The daily amount of build failed emails is spamming your mailbox well why not try adding some bubbles to the build. (no am not insane ;)) . This is something I heard from a colleague who had witnessed the event , I found the site which gave the details today.

The pragmatic programmer website gives a comprehensive explanation of how to illuminate your builds using 2 lava lamps , a transceiver and a firecracker computer interface.


This is how it works , (hope i understood it right) when your build is executed the outcome is converted through a special CruiseControl plugin to a signal sent to the firecracker computer interface which sends a wireless signal to the transceiver which in turn controls which lamp to light up (red or green).



Lava lamp: red build failed  Here you are in big trouble , the build has failed. The red light lights up slowly , the longer the time you take to fix the build the more it will glow red. Dont let it glow for too long as it gets pretty hot else you might have the whole building glowing along ;).


green bubbles, Build Successful!  Hey the build worked just fine no sweat guys this is the ideal solution now you can take a coffee break and then come back to keep it green!

Category: Build , Java, CruiseControl

Softpedia the download site

Normally when I needed a particular software , I used to run to download.com , to get all that I needed. Download.com does have a rich variety of softwares from utilities to tweak up your system to macromedia flash mx 2004 (trial :P).

However over the years I slowly started to get fed up with the never changing interface and the lack of useful information. Plus to actually download something you need to click on the download link , it redirects you to another waiting page , loads lots of useless graphics on that page and then you can download. This takes like ages for the 300Mhz prehistoric pc i have at home.

Lately I came upon softpedia which has a nicer presentation of the downloadable contents It shows related files which you would want to download depending on your search and provides you in certain cases a certificate that the software is spyware, tojan, virus free, which is mondo cool.

Its a pretty good alternative if you are fed up with download.com which is the case for me :P.

Category: Download, Review

Chatting on MIRC irc.moris.net

Yesterday nite around 11pm i finally found time to enter the chatroom for moris.net , found at irc.moris.net.You can also download their version of mirc which gives you direct connection to all the related chatrooms

Although at the time I was connected there were not many fellow chatters , I did meet some interesting people (and bloggers) namely Phi and Aadil who had previously read my blogs and we exchanged some comments and thoughts about blogging and IT in general on dodo island.

I really encourage you all to go and visit this chatroom if you are into chatting and making friends online. Its really a cozy place to chat. For my part I really loved using MIRC again after such a long break, actually I learnt the basics of programming whilst creating my custom MIRC scripts some years back.So see you all there soon.

Category: Mauritius, chat, IRC