I wish to update this list as and when I remember with the list of movies that I have seen in the past before I took to blogging or missed to blog. This serves no useful purpose other than as a note to myself.
Hollywood Movies
- The Associate by Whoopi Goldberg
- Erin Brockovich starring Julia Roberts
- Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
- The Full Monty (1997)
- Gandhi (1982)
- A Beautiful Mind (2001)
- Titanic (1997)
- Gladiator (2000)
- Home Alone (1990)
- Catch Me If You Can (2002)
- Die Hard (1988)
- Back to the Future (1985)
- Back to the Future Part II (1989)
- Back to the Future Part III (1990)
- Planet of the Apes (1968)
English TV Shows
(These are shows that I have watched more than few episodes and I liked them, I may not have watched all episodes)
- The Wonder Years
- Doogie Howser, M.D.
- Ally McBeal
- Moonlighting
- Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990–2000)
- 3rd Rock from the Sun
- Xena: Warrior Princess ( 1995–2001)
- Home Improvement
- Everybody Loves Raymond
- Frasier
- Friends
- Seinfeld (1990–1998)
- Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994)
- Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001)
- The King of Queens
- That ’70s Show
- Mr. Bean (1990–1995)
- Will & Grace (1998–2006)
- Sex and the City (1998–2004)
- Joey (2004–2006)
- Two and a Half Men
Watching – English TV Shows
Cartoons
- Giant Robo (tokusatsu)
- Spider-Man (1967–1970). (The great theme music of this is here)
- The Flintstones (1959–1966)
- The Jetsons (1962–1988)
- Ri¢hie Ri¢h (1982–1984)
- The Simpsons
- Family Guy
Indian Movies
Tamil Movies
When reading mails in Hotmail, I dislike the idea of hyperlinks in the message opening up in a framed browser window. One problem is that it eats up browser space and the other being I cannot add it to my favourties or email the URL. Look at this, a simple hyperlink to www.venkatarangan.com in a hotmail message, is turned into a URL beast: http://64.4.16.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=09127ba509d5e08eae29a46ded62cadd&lat=1075044828&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fwww%2evenkatarangan%2ecom%2f On an evening where I had nothing else to do, no India Cricket Match, no calls, no reading; I sat down to write this tiny program that solves this problem. Just right click and copy shortcut on the Hyperlink in Hotmail, switch to this application, press Decode button. The decoded (Simple) URL is copied into your clipboard. Now you can launch IE and paste the simple URL. Download v1.0.0.1: The application is written using Microsoft Visual Studio 2003 and requires Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 to execute. If you wish to run this with .NET Framework 1.0, then download this Configuration Zip file and unzip it into the same folder as the main application. I have been always curious on how these IM’s work. My favourite IM being MSN Messenger. I was searching for documentation and code-snippets to understand on what goes back and forth over the wire when we use Messenger. I came across the following The official documentation from Microsoft for Windows Messenger (the poor cousin of MSN Messenger) is found here. This lists the Messenger Client APIs, the Service APIs and more. Though not updated recently it is the only official source. The most active, single source of information about MSN Messenger is the site appropriately called MSNFanatics. The site has discussion forums about the Messenger API, security concerns, add-ons and more. Recently it has a tool called TabMgr that allows you to write your own Tabs in MSN Messenger. The website that I found with well written documentation and example sessions for a developer is from Mike Mintz. Check this out at http://www.hypothetic.org/docs/msn/index.php, you will love it. If you like Java (I like the coffee) then you can get the JMSN client source from Sourceforge, that shows a working Java client that uses MSN Messenger protocol. As usual, this post comes with the disclaimer that I don’t support or endorse in any way, any of the above sites and you are on your own; your individual mileages may vary :-) . MSN, MSN Messenger are copyright and/or Trademark of Microsoft Corporation. I always believed if not for sweeping waves of HTML in mid 90′s, the document management world today will only be of Adobe Acrobat (PDF). PDF supports lots of interesting features, but not limited to Cross-Platform, wide availability, Ability to Embed Fonts (People who view the document need not have the fonts in their machines), Hyperlink, Form Input, Accurate Layout/Alignment (Unlike HTML), Zooming, Index, Search, OCR and more. PDF viewers (Software like your browser that is needed to open PDF files) is available on all major Operating Systems and Platforms. This includes official Acrobat Reader from Adobe for free in Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Solaris, HP Unix, IBM AIX & OS/2 (do you remember this) . Adobe also has free pocket viewers for Pocket PC, Palm & now Symbian OS (your right, it is the OS that powers you new Nokia phones like 3650, 7650s and Sony Ericsson Phones like P800/900) . Of course there are tons of open source/third party viewers as well. There are scores of components (ActiveX, Java) from 3rd parties that allow you to create PDF files from your applications natively. Most popular is ActivePDF, though I feel theIr pricing is high for independent developers and Small & Medium ISVs. I am searching for a good free/affordable component that supports creation of PDF files. Let me come back and post here, once I find one. Till then happy PDFing. About 6 months during a chat with my mobile Project Manager I was predicting that the days of proprietory Ringtones formats in Mobile phones are ending. Phones will become smarter, powerful and start supporting WAV files. Once WAV files are supported by phones, I can convert few seconds of my favourite movie song from a CD into WAV and move it to my phone. I don’t need to pay exorbitant Ringtone download charges. Though this seemed very distanced at that time as Nokia always favored a locked-in approach. Today with the new Nokia 3660 phone, it has come true. This beauty now supports WAV Ringtone format, apart from Bluetooth and other goodies. Check it out. Microsoft Smartphones and Microsoft Pocket PC phone editions, have always supported WAV formats. This is natural for them as they have their parentage in the Windows world where WAV originated Yesterday and today we are celebrating Pongal, the harvest festival in Tamil Nadu with traditional gaiety. Will write more about this.
Encoded URL Decoder
MSN Messenger Protocol
World of PDF
PDF Creators (Software like your MS Word to create the PDF files in the first place). Officially (i.e. Adobe) Adobe Acrobat is the way to create PDF files. This is a commerical software that allows you create intelligent PDF files that have content stored in their native formats of text, images, tables, etc. This allows you to search the document, index them and zoom to near infinite levels. MS Office is yet to support export/save as to PDF (as of version 2003). Though the latest versions of Star Office 7.0 and the Open Office 1.1 support export to PDF.
3rd Party PDF Creators, if you just want to create PDF files on the fly for simple sharing with friends and collegues, then you can turn to the scores of free PDF creators. Most of them install a printer driver in Windows. Then from any Windows Application that supports printing (are there apps that don’t???) , you can print into this driver. This driver captures the input binary print stream and saves it as a PDF file. My favourite out of these free PDF creators is PDF 995 from www.pdf995.com.
Nokia phones support WAV Ringtones
Welcome
Welcome to Venkatarangan’s Blog site. Here I plan to write about my experiences with Indic Language Computing, .NET, the events I present and more…
