To hell with Beta Blogger

Damn...I'm hating this.The first post after holidays being a complaint.

Let me say it again. To hell with Beta Blogger.

Editing the template took so 2hrs of time.I was trying to edit the template( this was the first time though), and it took me about an hour and a half to figure out that this bloody Beta Blogger needs all the code compliant to W3C standards and uses strict DHTML 1.0 coding."All the code has to be rewritten", I thought.But then I looked for some help online.On Google.The searches proved futile.One site after another. Still no solution.

Then, looked back into Blogger's other tabs and began experimenting.

A hour and a half well spent(?), there it was .It required that I type in the code as a HTML/Javascript snippet in the Template>Page Elements.

The previous Blogger supported the code( the same code) right on the template page itself.Then why doesn't Beta Blogger do?And more important is the fact that there is no mention of such differences between the previous version and this.

And ,providing something to cheer about is the fact that now the posting is really faster than the previous version.

No posts for 13 days...

I'll be off to Hyderabad for my holidays from 29th Sept to 8th October.

So there will be no posting till the 10th of October.( one day rest ;-) )

IDF Fall 2006 Day 1....It rocked.

IDF rocks.I'm tellin u .Ill take a visit as soon as I can.It is one place where u can get a peek into the new technologies developed by Intel and some other companies.

Letz begin.

IDF Fall 2006,California.

As usual ,Paul Otellini kicked off the event.It began with the announcement of Apple's transition to Intel's processors.

Intel announced its 65nm acheivements.It had shipped 40 million CPUs fabricated using the 65nm technology while its competitors.....Zero!!!!!!!And of those only 5 million were Core 2 showing that most of the processors shipped are mostly Netburst or Yonah based.The Xeon based on 65nm is codenamed Woodcrest.

Alas with 65nm in, Intel's wasting no time on developing 45nm fabrication plants.One already up and producing test wafers while two more are nearing completion.Probably coming up in 2008, this successor to the Core architecture is called Nehalem. And looking in deeper ,the Gesher microarchitecture will be out by 2010.

Quadro (code name: Kentsfield)will be realesed in November 2006.Initially Intel will offer Core 2 Extreme QX6700 at 2.66GHz and later a Core 2 Quad Q6600 at 2.40GHz. However these will be two dies on a single package.We will have to wait for the 45nm technology for a single die-quad core processor( which will be codenamed Peryn ).

On the server side, Intel is offering the quad core Xeon 5300 in November alongside Kentsfield. Expect a low voltage version of this in Jan'07 ,the quadcore Clovertown which will consume a measly 50W.

Then Markus Maki, Founder and Chairman of Remedy came on stage to display their latest game Alan Wake on an over-clocked quadcore running at 3.73GHz. The game ran smoothly but consumed an entire core demonstrating the amount of processing power that will be needed by games in the future.

And then, a long wait came to an end: What was Intel's answer to The Cell.
The Answer: The Teraflop chip.With 80 FPUs(basically cores with a very simple Instruction set) ,this beast will be able to churn out one teraflop of number crunching power.Intel says this would debut with a clock speed of 3.1 GHz and consume 1W per core or 100W overall.

And then came Toshiba's 2nd generation HD-DVD players and another short update on Intel's Viiv which was almost nothing.

Some updates on UMPC(Ultra Mobile PC) followed showing that Intel is still committed on developing these.The interesting part was the UI which was developed by a company called Streetdeck and seemed to be far easier to navigate than the default Win XP that many of the UMPCs come out with.

Volkswagen came onstage with a demonstration of its in-car entertainment system that could easily link up with the UMPC using WiMAX.

That was Day 1....exhilarating. The new technologies left me breathless and Otelinni's face expression while displaying the wafer of The Teraflop summed up everything.

Intel seems to have enough power to once again rule over the market ...absolutely. Already, with the release of the Conroe based Core 2 Duos Intel has regained the title of manufacturing the most powerful desktop processors.Unless AMD comes out with new technologies to counter Intel, the domination will continue. Is AMD listening?

I told you to care about the blog

Something interesting.A very short but interesting article available on Extremetech.com. The article: Past,Present and Future. Please visit. I mean it is insightful. Ask urself if ur using all the technology you have at ur disposal to its best.

My Comments/Views (may be completely out of sync with the article,....may be, don't mind):
A common question:How many of us use atleast 15% of the features available in MS Word.Do you use the notepad feature in Y!mail (or in any other).Do you use the "filter" service provided?Do you customize ur login page in Google?(Dont tell me you never used this).All this is available and we dont use it.How many tweak ur systems instead of going in for upgrades,or study the user manuals?How many use the advanced options for better searches?Bookmark ur pages properly?

In todays world,time matters and these have taken hundreds of hours of coding, re-checks, optimizations,etc. .............so that you save your time.And you don't use them and simply say "It needs to get more user-friendly".

As the quest for a better world continues, we must make sure we make optimal use of everything available....in the context of this post, the technology available.

The End.

The Day has Come :The 24th of September

Alas.Here it is ,the 24th of September.The last day of our holidays...and they leave us now...back to our classes....exposed to the might of the "ill see how u'll get a 9 CGPA" profs.

In another 20-odd minutes, cometh the 25th.I think I don't should worry so much about tomorrow as I must of the day after.Tuesday is hell .And when I say it, I mean it.

Engineering drawing.To follow it, is the dreaded subject: Chemistry.And to make matters worse there will be viva on Conductometric titration, a topic which I left even for the JEE-2006.

No use worrying, my mind says.Poor mind, what does it know about the feelings of my heart.It is beating fast now.Pounding , probably.

Well, this short post will be cut short here.(Nonsense. "Short post"?"Cut short"? Superfluousness at its best.That's me.)

Need to sleep now so that I'll get up early, at least for the first post-midsem class. Bye.

PS:Actually , I personally feel, I'm losing the story by writing something unrelated to what I promised earlier.If u feel so,then comment.

And, one more point.Can anyone guess why I put up this.This is the second time I'm asking a question like this. Try.