Science

  • My backup solution

    I have been hosting my web site since Dec 2000. I have a huge collection of photos. Photos scanned from film before 2002 and photos from digital camera since September 2002. I also have a huge collection of MP3s ripped from my collection of CDs (3500+ songs). All this data is stored on my home…

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  • Media Monkey

    I found a new media player/manager today. MediaMonkey. For a few years MusicMatch has been my media player of choice. But Media Monkey is far superior with far more features and performance than MusicMatch. Sometime around MusicMatch 8, I had bought MusicMatch Plus (with all future versions for life time). But Media Monkey offers all the features and…

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  • Zimbra

    I installed Zimbra as my mail server a couple of days ago. Zimbra is still in beta but I am impressed. They also provide ‘Outlook Connector’ in their ‘paid-for-support’ version for corporate environments. The amazing thing is they just popped out on the scene some 6 months ago. At the heart of Zimbra are all popular open…

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  • Bluetooth GPS Receiver

    I bought a new GPS Receiver (NAVMAN 4410) to use with my iPAQ 2215 PDA. This is an exciting device. It’s very small and can easiliy fit on the palm of my hand. It came with various mounting options and navigation software SmartST. No wires required: Both iPAQ and GPS receiver are equipped with a Bluetooth wireless…

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  • Transition to Gentoo

    Transition to Gentoo has been very smooth without any major issues. I like Gentoo. It is designed with developers and system admins in mind. The community is very much like Debian. If you patiently ask sensible questions on their IRC channel (freenode.net #gentoo) or post questions to their mailing list people answer them. After compiling…

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  • Mandrake, Fedora and Gentoo

    After getting my machine up and running a couple of weeks back, I created many partitions on my 80GB harddisk to install various Linux distros and compare them. I want a distro that is user friendly and easy to use as a desktop. Since this machine is going to be used primarily as a desktop…

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  • Writing in Devnagari

    In a comment to my blog Vikram asked what’s the best way to write in Devnagari? The best way to write in Hindi/Marathi (Devnagari) on a Windows 2000 or newer systems is to install the Indic Support. Then learn to use the Devnagari Inscript Keyboard. It takes some time to learn but make it a point to type…

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  • Tired of compiling

    I am getting tired of compiling and recompiling lots of packages over and over to keep my system up-to-date. Because there are no binary packages (except for openoffice, mozilla and a few others) in Gentoo with every update you end up compiling the whole thing again and again. The compiling and installing of packages is…

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  • Gentoo for server

    I have used various Linuxes for my home server. This home server hosts my bapat.net web site, my @bapat.net mail server and our intranet (yes! I have 5 computers at home, 6 if you count the office laptop) file server. I have almost always stuck with RedHat (and now a days Fedora) with the exception…

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  • New PC (Athlon XP)

    I assembled a new PC last weekend. Surprise! Surprise!! It’s doesn’t have Intel processor. I chose AMD Athlon XP 2600+. Because I didn’t want to spend a bundle on a Pentium 4. I was looking for a processor under $100, to keep cost of my PC down. The idea was to buy a motherboard with…

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