Transfering Firefox Profiles - Boon or bane?

First things first! I'm back after taking a holy dip in the sacred Niagara waterfalls and it was one helluva journey! A detailed travelogue is coming soon...! :-o)

And, my good old lappy has emerged successful out of the garage after quite a bit of overhaul. New Mboard, RAM, Heat Sink and AC Adapter. On top of it, I got rid of the crapware that came with Vista and it is now clean and good...!

Everytime I perform this ritual of formatting and reinstalling the OS, the real pain in the ass is the post installation setup that needs to be done. The Drivers and the software required for day to day activities - a.k.a Firefox, Office Applications, Acrobat, MPlayer Classic and a few other tools without which Vista/Winblow$ would prove meaningless.

Ironically, out of all those listed above, Firefox is usually the most complex to install. With a couple of themes, 10+ addons and plugins and humongous sites for which firefox remembers the passwords for, it is by far most customized software that I use on my my computer. Usually, I end up doing this all over again.

This time though, I wanted to check out if there is an easier alternative for this and I was amazed to find out the simplest solution that was available.

Navigate to %APPDATA%/Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles on the Old Computer.
Copy contents of the ((xxyyzz)).default and keep it aside.
Install firefox on the new computer.
Copy whatever was inside the ((xxyyzz)).default into the ((aabbcc)).default that is created in the new computer.
Start Firefox.

Voila! You end up getting the same profile that you were using on the new computer...! Everything that you had is out there - Your bookmarks, your addons, your themes, your passwords and what not...!

Now comes the million dollar question...

How safe is all your online data?Agreed that firefox isn't the best of platforms for Saving Passwords. If you ask me, even IE does a better job. With a click of a button, Firefox shamelessly reveals all your passwords in the UI iteslf. But hey, After all that can be done (atleast that is what I thought) only if somebody gets hold of my password to my OS.




With the profile transfer happening seemlessly across Computers and Operating system, I wonder how safe my online data is? Afterall, any n00b who gets access to my computer (even as a simple user) can hack into the filesystem, copy the profile onto someother computer and use all my personal data with little hacking expertise...!

Now tell me, is such portability a boon or bane?

Off to Buffalo / Niagara Falls...

First things first. This blog has been dormant for quite some time now. I have been occupied with quite a few things - Good and bad - in the mean time that has prevented me from blogging at the pace that I would like to. :-(

Good First! Those of you who have been following me on Twitter would know that I have bought a Car! Have been quite busy doing all the paper work, registration and what not!

And, The bad is my lovely little laptop is broke. It needs new mother board, RAMs and Power Adapter to come back up!!

But all this hasn't prevented me from planning another trip. I'm off to Buffalo / Niagara Falls today. Infact, I will be starting in another half an hour from now! It's going to be fun time I guess with good old friends. Other than Gaurav and Kamal who accompanied me to NYC, we have Suresh, another College mate and Oorumate (!) with us. Also out there in Buffalo are Parthi and Madhu from CEG. Interestingly, both of them are now Masters in Engineering and I believe that we have a huge treat ahead of us!! :-D

Hopefully, the lappy will be fixed on monday and I will be able to post another travelogue and pictures from the trip soon...!

Catch ya later! :-o)

MyFirstHDR

Well, I have been doing a lot of mundane point and shoot digital photography for a long time now and finally, I have decided to get on with it.

Over the past week, I read quite a few things about CHDK and the advanced scripting that you can write in BASIC to exploit numerous things that your camera can do...!

One such thing is the avenues that it opens up to Bracketing and HDR. And it is one of the very first experiments.

So, Ladies and Gentlemen.. Presenting my very first HDR...

 

The 3 photos above which were shot continuously at Tv Bracketing, +/- Bracketing type and then merged onto this one masterpiece below...!

P.S: It's past 1AM now and I couldn't  think of a better subject than my bed! :-o)

Khel Ratna...

After seeing reports of Dhoni being conferred the Khel Ratna, I was tempted to write this post and started working on it. But after reading this trademark, comical post from greatbong, what more can I say...

Here are a few excerpts from the article.

Now I can anticipate the reaction from the perennially grumpy traditionalists. They are first going to pull down the whole concept of government-granted awards by pointing out that who gets the sarkari samman is determined more by politics, pull and regional considerations rather than by merit, conveniently forgetting contrary examples to their thesis—like Saif Ali Khan winning a National Award for the path-breaking “Hum Tum”.

--o0o--

As a result, they fail to see that Dhoni is a true “Khel” ratna where “khel” is defined purely in terms of the “paisa phenk tamsha dekh” principle. After all who is the highest paid performer in Lalita Pawar’s (Lalit Modi + Sharad Pawar)’s seven ring circus? Who dances with Shahrukh Khan? Who hits shuttlecocks with Ms. Padukone?

Just one person. Mr. Dhoni.

--o0o--

Because he is a “player” (pronounced “playah”) , a gem of a player, a Khel Ratna.

Who are we, ordinary cricket fans, to argue with that?

--o0o--

Well said, Isn't it? :-o) All I can say is Congrats, Mahi!

What do you think?

Book Review : Kite Runner

I finished reading Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini about a fortnight ago. To say in one word, the book was spellbinding. Shortly after, I made a note to self nudging myself to write a review on the book.

This has happened quite a few times in the past – I haven’t reviewed even my favorite books or movies often. Lazy me…! The truth is I have never had the patience to gather those thoughts back again to sit down and write a review. Something interesting would come up and soon the thought process would be shifted on those lines. As a matter of fact, I have seen half a dozen movies and am halfway through another book in the mean time. But, here is one book that has made me write a review even after such a long time. Therein lies the first success of the book! :-o)

The first thing that strikes even as you are only a few pages into the book is how well it is written for a first novel. Well, there can be a counter argument that the expectations are low when the author is novice. But, Hosseini has set the bar so high for himself! In fact, when the author describes the rich cultural heritage of the Afghans, I could picture how great the country would have been in those good old days…! As an after thought I exclaimed in Tamil, “Eppadi iruntha ooru, ippadi ayiduchu…” [What a sad end this city has met…].

The theme of the book is nothing new: familial relationships, particularly father and son; the price of disloyalty; the inhumanity of a rigid class system; and the horrific realities of war.

But more than being just a work of fiction, this book is intriguing and makes the reader wonder about the day to day life and sufferings of the people who live in this land. The world, the west in particular has been tricked into the notion that Muslims are terrorists’ notion big time. That is how the media showers its attention at them all the time. And unfortunately, this propaganda has gained so much momentum with most of the terror striking all around the world being linked some Jihadi group or another. But, what happens to the common man in the middle of everything? Does he approve of everything that is happening in his motherland?

It is into this dark area that Hosseini takes us for a ride. I can clearly recognize 4 different classes of people amongst the characters and what has happened to their lives over this period.

1. The wealthy – Amir and his family - who resisted to endorse the Taliban and are now scattered in all parts of the world.
2. The wealthy who tried to cash in at the moment and become the clerics - Aseef and his family. They have now become the face of Afgan and are in the middle of all the atrocities in the country.
3. The Poor – Hazaras (Hassan and family). Even when Kabul was flourishing, these people were treated only as slaves. Think of what would have happened to them in the times of war.
4. The common man – (The Taxi Driver Farid and his family). This is the en-masse whose life has been greatly affected by the military regime.

Although gore and violence is strictly not my cup of tea, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The author has captured the culture and heritage of Kabul in great detail and complete contrast. As much as you enjoy the young Amir and Hassan flying kites and playing together in the Winter, it sends nerve wracking signals when he returns back and finds the country shattered. Well, when Peshawar and Karachi which can be regarded in the list of the most violent places on earth seems heaven to these folks, you can imagine the trauma that they go through, isn’t it?

Overall, the book was a simply stunning read and I would recommend it to anyone who hasn’t read it yet.