Category Archives: tech

The constant conflict between the Maker’s Schedule and Manager’s Schedule

Posted on July 22, 2010 by Sandip Bhattacharya

This is something that has bothered me always for the past several years, especially in the period when I was working on my own. Paul Graham has managed to put this so eloquently into words: … There are two types … Continue reading →

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Quick local DNS caching for your workstation in Ubuntu

Posted on June 14, 2010 by Sandip Bhattacharya

The latest Ubuntu releases makes it real easy to set up a local DNS cache for your workstation using dnscache from the well-known djbdns software by D. J. Bernstein. For those who have historically installed djbdns/ucspi-tcp/daemontools from source because of … Continue reading →

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The magical moment that made me a FOSS guy forever

Posted on May 12, 2010 by Sandip Bhattacharya

11 years back, I was just yet another guy out of college with a background of Turbo C/C++ and Pascal as most other batchmates of mine. My software career could have gone anywhere. PC Quest Linux was just a toy … Continue reading →

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Quick tip: Merging photos from two different cameras

Posted on January 14, 2010 by Sandip Bhattacharya

This time when we went to Pondicherry on the year end, we took two cameras – I took my Rebel XTi and my wife the LX3. While uploading our photos to Flickr, we had a problem. We wanted to merge … Continue reading →

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Adding new CA certificates in Ubuntu (Jaunty)

Posted on August 8, 2009 by Sandip Bhattacharya

A quick tip. I couldn’t find this from a quick search when I really needed it. The problem – command line programs like fetchmail use the system wide openssl CA certificates to verify the authenticity of the server certificates they … Continue reading →

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Using the official Flickr uploadr on Ubuntu

Posted on July 6, 2009 by Sandip Bhattacharya

I normally use jUploader for uploading photos to Flickr from my Ubuntu Jaunty box. However, since I got the amazing Panasonic DMC-LX3 compact camera, I have been uploading HD videos too to Flickr. Now none of the FOSS tools that … Continue reading →

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Akamai awesomeness and Opendns lameness

Posted on April 23, 2009 by Sandip Bhattacharya

Akamai footprint awesomeness. My IP address. sandipb@pluto:~$ wget -O – -q http://www.whatismyip.com/automation/n09230945.asp;echo 122.167.0.79 sandipb@pluto:~$ host 122.167.0.79 79.0.167.122.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer ABTS-KK-Dynamic-079.0.167.122.airtelbroadband.in. Akamai CDN for downloading Adobe AIR. sandipb@pluto:~$ host airdownload.adobe.com airdownload.adobe.com is an alias for airdownload.wip3.adobe.com. airdownload.wip3.adobe.com is an alias … Continue reading →

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Getting more printable PDFs from texinfo manuals

Posted on February 12, 2009 by Sandip Bhattacharya

Texinfo manuals are used primarily by various GNU projects like Glibc, gcc, gdb, etc. Texinfo is an extremely powerful format for writing high quality professional documentation and can be easily converted to HTML, PDF, Docbook XML and various other formats. … Continue reading →

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Removing encryption from (legitimate!) PDF files on Ubuntu

Posted on January 10, 2009 by Sandip Bhattacharya

Many service providers have started encrypting the statements that they send you. While at some level, it does add some amount of security when the path to your inbox is not very secure. However, it is sometimes a major pain … Continue reading →

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Paying credit card from your bank electronically

Posted on August 23, 2008 by Sandip Bhattacharya

(If you want to skip all this background, and go directly to the steps to make card payments through ICICI Infinity, click here) With Indian banks making life worse for customers using their credit cards, especially while paying their dues, … Continue reading →

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