free -m shows that its using only 3. This week I checked out a bunch of Linux distributions (like SimplyMEPIS, Fedora, Pardus and of course the new Ubuntu Lucid Lynx). Pardus was awesome but I went right back to Ubuntu anyways. So I had to reinit all of the 4gb RAM each time I went Ubuntu.

Here is what I did based on this link, I am putting it here so that I can quickly refer to it when I try out some distros again before coming back to Ubuntu. Ideally I d like to use Windows through VirtualBox on Ubuntu and have it run on its own desktop space.

So for using all of the RAM we need to install the PAE enabled kernel

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-server linux-image-server linux-server

And then reboot.

One was to be able to read the many txt and pdf files I have in a bunch of DVDs  (labeled eBook Treasure) with scores of text encompassing a wide variety of topics ranging from Philosophy to Health  and of course computer languages. It can be quite cumbersome to read txt files on a computer screen and on a phone it becomes all the more cumbersome… not to mention pdf files… adjusting the page width so that one can comfortably read takes away all the time. So I bought this iPhone app called GoodReader that lets you read big pdf files or txt files with reflow. The width of the text snugly fits across the screen. It even wraps within the screen and you can increase the font size. It costs only $0.99 and is worth it.

Second was having a GTD based system that could let me assemble new tasks in an inbox and then categorize further to projects/contexts and of course ‘next action’. There was Things for iPhone for $9.99 and I was about to buy it when I stumbled upon an app called EasyTask which did the needful. A free app with all the bells and whistles of a dedicated GTD app.

So hopefully I ll ‘get a lot of things done’ and ‘read all about it’

• the Clearlooks-LemonGraphite theme for the ‘controls’
• Alphacube 0.9b Metacity color for the ‘window border’
• Humanities-Leaf for the ‘icons’
• DMZ black for the ‘pointer’
• Lucida Grande for the system font at size 8 and Lucida MAC bold for window title again at size 8

Click on the images to see a full preview

Desktop

Padding the form on the right would render it correctly in FF but not in IE. So I used the FF specific -moz CSS extension, -moz-padding-end and that solved the problem.

Just a foot note: any CSS property preceded by a hyphen means that it is a browser specific property.
Here is the complete -moz CSS extensions reference.

1. It installed the windows versions of the software along with the mac versions… so I had .exe files in the Applications folders!
2. The common input for XLR and phono had only the microphone working with or without CueMix fired up and the phono only when CueMix was NOT fired up!
3. The multiple outs behaved weirdly… If I sent one channel (in Live) to Main 1-2 and another to 3-4, it would play out of only one pair at a time! None of the muliplte (phono) inputs worked either.

Solution (that worked for me )

Remove the installed drivers and software and reinstall, this time I did not select Easy Install and from the Custom menu I selected only the mac specific stuff… Voila, all problems solved!

Well there is one small glitch,

• Main Out (1-2) channels act as 1 and 2 (:P)
• Analog Out 1-2 act as 3-4
• Analog Out 3-4 act as 5-6
• etc.

This is applicable to Live as well as Reason

It did not mess with the swf running but it’s worthwhile to notice that it’s still like a reserved keyword despite it not being applicable to AS3. I renamed the function nevertheless so that I don’t get the annoying compiler error

So all in all I lost about $200 but I m not complaining

• To start with I installed Fring to be connected with my Google, AIM and Skype pals and people at work.
• For blogging I added Scribe and set it up with my Wordpress installation(the one I use for my son’s blog)
• I installed AccuWeather but uninstalled it later coz it was not really used though it gave a 15 day forecast in a calendar view
• Opera Mini (it has a nice bookmark that lets me choose from thousands of free apps and games!
• GMail of course!
• And then some more…

But then it still felt very incomplete without a true ’sync’ solution. I dont like to install software unless its really necessary. For example I have owned at least 4 Nokia phones till now but never installed the PC Suite… Firstly I hated its name and secondly I could transfer images and videos through a USB cable or bluetooth.

Google has created a nice solution for syncing Google contacts with your phone(which is great coz then it acts as a backup for all your phone contacts in case its lost, I ve lost 2 so far, one HTC and one Nokia) but its solution for syncing Calendar never worked! So I wanted something that could sync calendars between Google, E71 and my Mac Book Pro (iCal) I found one called GooSync which allows you to sync one Google calendar free! That was enough for me. It worked like a charm but then the iCal was still neglected. So I kept looking till I found one (to my surprise) on the Nokia Europe site. This is a 150 kb plugin for the Mac’s iSync which syncs iCal and the Address Book to the E71. Make sure you ve synced the devices first with Bluetooth. You may need to run the Bluetooth setup to discover your phone once even if you ve already set it up earlier. From there on its Cakewalk

And the last thing that was required was to share my phone’s internet connection with the Mac Book Pro, this didnt take long to search (it was on the Nokia site itself somewhere around the iSync plugin)

501 Invalid number of arguments solution

The same account worked from the Vista machine where Webroot was installed. So (in FireFTP) I selected Edit>Connection Tab and there I *checked* Passive Mode (which makes the flow of data from client side than server side for security reasons and firewall problems).

Some more info on Active and Passive FTP

A little easy to read (& understand ) info on the same is here