Sabarish

All of us will surely have a list of favourite utilities and tools that we just can’t live with out. Here I list out some of my favourite utilities, in no particular order:

1. ImgBurn: ImgBurn is a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application that everyone should have in their toolkit!

I like it because it is very simple and lightweight and does its job quickly and without too many hassles.

2. Winmerge: WinMerge is an Open Source differencing and merging tool for Windows. WinMerge can compare both folders and files.

I find this tool very useful to compare files and merge them. The tool presents the differences in a visual format that is easy to understand and handle.

3. Wordweb: WordWeb is a one-click English thesaurus and dictionary for Windows that can look up words in almost any program.

I use this extensively through the shortcut CTRL-ALT-W, which immediately opens Wordweb and gives the meaning of the highlighted text in the web browser or document or almost any other program.

4. gSyncIt: gSyncit is a Microsoft Outlook add-in that allows for synchronization of calendars and contacts between Google and Outlook.

I use this to sync my office calendar to a second calendar in my Google calendar, so I can access a combined view of my office and personal calendar anywhere and also make use of the Google Calendar features, like reminder through SMS, email, etc. gSycnIt is more advanced and stable than Google Calendar Sync, which tends to crash Outlook sometimes for some strange reason and only allows synchronisation to the default Google calendar. Next I team this up with GooSync, which I use to sync my Google calendar with my phone calendar through gprs!

5. Cute PDF Writer: Create professional quality PDF files from almost any printable document.

I find this tool very useful to create PDFs while printing. Especially useful for creating PDFS of e-tickets and other documents that can then be mailed around, instead of sending a jpg or doc. It is very simple to use and once set up, while printing *anything*, in the print options, we need to select CutePDF as the printer and click print. Next we get a prompt to save the file and we end up with a PDF of whatever we printed.

6. Virtual CloneDrive: Probably the best virtual drive software, Virtual CloneDrive allows you to enjoy the freedom of a virtual drive and is completely free. Image files can be mounted onto a virtual drive from your hard-disk or from a network drive and used in the same manner as inserting them into a normal CD/DVD drive. 

7. SyncBack: SyncBack is a freeware program that helps you easily backup and synchronise your files.

I use this mainly to back up my photographs and other documents to a USB drive. It can be configured and scheduled to run as desired.

8. Zinkmo: Sync bookmarks across computers and browsers (IE and Firefox, for now). Also the bookmarks are synced to your registered profile in Zinkmo.com, which can be accessed from anywhere. Also the Online Manager can be used to find and delete duplicate and bad links! Thus helping clean up all the junk bookmarks.

9. Windows Install Clean Up: When you are working on your computer and installing a new program, the installation suddenly fails. Now you are left with a partly installed program. You try to install the program again, but you are unsuccessful. Or, maybe you have problems trying to remove an old program because the installation files are corrupted.

You can use the utility to remove installation information for programs that were installed by using Windows Installer. Be aware that Windows Installer CleanUp Utility will not remove the actual program from your computer. However, it will remove the installation files so that you can start the installation, upgrade, or uninstall over

While trying to test out new utilities, I sometimes end up with a lot of extra junk and bad installs or uninstalls, etc. This tool helps clear up all that. It is only to be used as a last attempt at clearing an installation, since it doesnt remove the program files as such., only all references to it.

Following few are part of my photo processing workflow -

10. Camera Raw for processing all the RAW image files.

11. Neat Image, which I sometimes use to remove the noise from some of the images that I might have shot at high ISO in low light conditions.

12. Frame Fun, which I use to give my images a frame and copyright text information. One can also use custom actions in Photoshop for the same effect.

Next few are more well known and commonly used:

13. Flickr Uploadr to upload my photos to flickr

14. Opera is my default browser in my desktop and Opera Mini is what I use in my phone, which is an amazing phone browser. I also use Google Chrome in Application shortcut mode for Gmail and Google Calendar. This is mainly because my Opera browser would have multiple tabs open from different sites and from multiple sessions and the Gmail tab can get lost in there. So I like that application shortcut in Chrome to open Gmail in its own seperate window.

15. Antivirus: AVG Free edition

16. Textpad: Needs no introduction.

17. VLC Media Player: The best and most versatile media player out there.

 

This is not a complete or comprehensive list. Will add more to this as and when I find something else worth using. Do share your own lists as well, maybe we can all find some nice handy unknown tool

A post processed version of a martial arts display of Kalari Payattu in Kerala.

The original photo is here

Wow! Another year gone by!! 2008 was a very mixed year. Some highs, lots of lows and a lot of the usual.

Here are some of the highlights of every month (whatever I can remember!!):

January: The year started off in Goa listening to a fake ABBA group playing at the Butter Lounge! LOL! The otherwise awesome New Years’ Goa trip with Sanju, Adi and Sandy was just after an equally awesome 8 day trip to Sri Lanka for Christmas with Pomchi!

I also got my Digital SLR camera – the Canon EOS 400D and I freaked out with it at the Lalbagh Flower Show!!

February: We had the biggest and best Perot Systems annual day ‘Perotsav’ till date in our campus. I was part of the core committee for the event and was very happy with the final execution. Kunal Ganjawala and Anushka Manchanda performed for the event and totally rocked the evening!

My dance classes at Swingers in Indiranagar culminated with a grand show at St. John’s auditorium, which I unfortunately could not be a part of thanks to being busy with Perotsav preparations.

I went with the entire team from my previous PHH Mortgage project on a day outing to Club Cabana.

I also got to attend an all night music event called the Fireflies Festival of Music held in the outskirts of Bangalore. The ambiance was superb and the various music groups representing different genres of music from India and around the world were brilliant and I totally enjoyed the event with Tejas and Sharath.

March: Went on a trip to Dandeli and Karwar with the Microsoft “J” gang! Had awesome fun rafting on the Kali river and camping at an island resort off Karwar with Sunil, Ranga, Raghavan, Ankith and Sreenath.

April: Went on a trip with mom to Mangalore to attend a family friend’s wedding and to Kerala to meet grand parents in Pallakkad and to attend the festival at the Rama temple in Tellichery.

I also got an awesome In Car Entertainment (ICE) setup in my car with a Pioneer DEH- 6050 head unit with JBL GT5-650C Components in front and JBL GT5-963 speakers in the rear.

May: At work I got selected for a new project in the BPM team, which required me to travel to the Noida campus for a Knowledge Transfer (KT) session. I stayed in Noida for over a month and used all the free time I could get to explore Delhi and Noida and several other cities and do a lot of things, including seeing the Taj Mahal at Agra, visiting Fatehpur Sikhri, River rafting at Rishikesh, bathing in the Ganges at Haridwar, seeing the Golden Temple at Amritsar and the Flag ceremony at the Indo-Pak Wagah Border, over the weekends. I saw a lot of great places and met several old friends (Animesh, Sayor, Nethra, Shobith and others)  and made many new ones (extended farmhouse gang). I really loved Delhi and its culture and monuments and markets and would love to go back and spend more time there sometime.

June: Returned from Noida and was generally busy learning and working on the new project.

July: This was a month of weddings and two of my closest friends got married. Roohi got married in Bangalore and Mehmood’s wedding took place in Pune.

A few of us from office (Vishnu, Anil Sir, Nagaraj Bhatt and myself) went for Mehmood’s wedding in Pune and had an awesome time there with Pawan and his roommate Piyush. We explored and partied in Pune and also went to Lonavala and Khandala and just about made it to the wedding!

I also went on a day outing to Anthargange with the extended farmhouse gang that I met in May in New Delhi.

August: This was my Birthday month and I turned a quarter of a century old! The whole month was one big party! I had a whole load of friends to treat and every other day was meeting a different gang!

September: This was the month of Festivals galore! Ganesh Chaturthi, Kolu and Onam meant a lot of visitors to home and a lot of visits to other homes. Not to forget a lot of sweets and delicacies!

October: I went to Chennai to write my GRE and TOEFL and although didn’t do all that great in the GRE, it was a great learning experience. The exam was good fun and studying for an exam after so many years of working was quite a challenge!!

November: Spent a lot of time researching on universities and working on my applications for higher studies. This was also the month of the terrible terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which was the most intense attack on India in a year that was filled with bomb blasts and mindless terror.

December: Went on a religious visit to Palakkad in Kerala with parents, sister, brother-in-law and nephew. Went to a lot of temples and met grand-parents as well.

December also saw a lot of parties (birthdays and general) and an outing to Wonder La! It all culminated in a farmhouse party at a friends place on New Years eve!

To sum things up 2008 was a decent year! I continued to make a lot of new friends and got some really close ones. A lot of friends either got engaged or married. I travelled quite a bit as usual and had my fair share of fun and adventure! Financially it was not that great a year. The stock market crash and the recession that has set in all over ensured my net-worth dropped considerably in the mayhem! Gadget wise it was all about my new car music system and ofcourse the dSLR camera for which I added quite a few accessories through the year! Work-wise I got to do a lot of great stuff and hope to do better this year.

Looking forward to a different and better 2009! Although the start is not all that great with the recession affecting us all in different ways.

Nonetheless, Happy New Year!