S.M.Mahesh's home page

Captain's Log

Weblog

[2003-10-14] Firebird v0.7 has been released. I am liking this software better and better with each version. Since it is a pre-1.0 release, expect some issues - but I have not encountered any. Users upgrading from previous users should delete their old profiles and create a new profile. I had issues with the upgrade if the old profile still existed.

[2003-10-11] Went to Lake George, New York to see the fall colors. Good weather, but a little disappointed that only 30% of the foliage was colorful. I expected more like 80%.

[2003-08-26] I have come back from a three week vacation in India. Bangalore has very pleasant weather in August. Also, India has developed a lot since I visited last. This is the only country in the world where you pay airtime charges of Rs. 0.40/min (about 1 cent/min) on your cell.

[2003-07-20] Went to Walmart in Centereach to buy a bag for my camera. I saw a couple of guys plastering a Volkswagen with lots of post-it notes. A picture of the car is in the photos page.

[2003-07-19] I went to Edison for some shopping. Locked myself out of the car - keys in the trunk. Had to call AAA for assistance. Btw, if you are wondering, it is very easy to open the doors of a car - you just need a clothes hanger.

[2003-07-07] My computer is up!!! All systems go. Both the hard disks have been replaced. Also, T-mobile unlocked my cellphone. I tested with an AT&T sim-card.

[2003-07-01] I just got my new Kodak DX6340 digital camera. Can't wait to try it out and get some photos for the photos page. Meanwhile, I got one of my replacement hard disks. Reinstalling all the software to get the system back to a working state is a PITA.

[2003-06-24] Both the hard disk drives on my PC died. Possibly due to a power surge?? Had to call tech support to get replacement drives. Thankfully, My Knoppix CD came to the rescue. I can browse the internet and check my email running linux from the cd.

[2003-06-06] Noticed that with OUTPOST firewall running, the tripod web pages do not render with cascading style sheets. This effect is noticable for other tripod member pages too.

[2003-06-01] Finally managed to get a web host with Perl CGI support. Web page is online.

Recent Updates

[2004-12-28] Changed look and feel of the website - newer CSS styles added. Also, removed use of tables for page layout - that was a BAD page design concept. This change reduced the size of the html pages reduced by a third. Updated all the pages - lots of pending changes since the last update. All the pages except for the feedback page are now valid XHTML complaint.

[2004-06-13] Removed the "photos" section. Added a few more quotes with attributions.

[2003-10-18] Updated "How to avoid spam" page to the random thoughts section.

[2003-09-27] Added "writing solid code" and " how to avoid spam" to the random thoughts section. Edwin Britto's homepage makes it to the links page.

[2003-07-29] Big update to the site. Added quotes pages and a harry potter page to random thoughts section. Finally, Akshat has revealed his home page address - added the URL and updated the links page.

[2003-07-01] Added the random thoughts and photos section.

[2003-06-05] Added the links section. Added Sridev Raghavan's and K.K.Suresh's homepages to the links section.

[2003-06-01] Finally the web site is online. More pages will be added later. Ported the feedback script to use Tripod's mail libraries.