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Best of Year 2010

Ashfame — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 02:30:38 +0000

A very happy new year to all of my readers! It’s never late, moreover its the first day when I am working on my desk in this year. Being to the point, this post is a compilation of our best posts for the year 2010 written chronologically.

Import Delicious bookmarks & tags

Delicious’s future is uncertain and here are 13 solutions for backing up your bookmarks and saving them elsewhere. Which one is for you?

Upcoming Facebook features exposed accidentally

Some of the upcoming features were pushed live accidentally last month which are surely uber cool. Check them out so as to know what Facebook will roll out this year.

Google Nexus S released with Android 2.3 Gingerbread

One of the best competitor if you are looking for a high end top class android phone. Its simply, purely, insanely awesome. Couldn’t stress the fact enough!

Dropbox – Best backup, sync, sharing app

If you don’t know about Dropbox, chances are you must be living under a rock. Get Dropbox to get 250 MB space free with 2 GB free account with possibility to take that to 8 GB free space easily.

TeuxDeux – Best To-do manager

Its awesomely productive and will take care of your preference of using pencil paper to make a to do list any day. It has been my homepage since it was reviewed.

Tunngle – Play games online

One of the best (and free too) solution to play around the globe and that too for free. It couldn’t be easier than this and moreover it works for so many popular titles. If you are into gaming, then this is a must!

How to switch torrents between different torrent clients

Ever switched to a different torrent client in between for downloading the rest of the file? Here is what you need to know. This is a handy platform independent guide to do the same.

Check HTML Headers in Firefox and Chrome

Bloggers and developers, here is something for you guys to check out the HTML headers of a page or that of its resources in Firefox & Chrome in case you want to view the status code like 200 or 404 for a page or of resources on that page.

6 Free Data Recovery Softwares

Recover those accidentally deleted files quickly and easily. 6 tools at one place saves your time & make your chances very good.

Rest of it

Quickly read how to search on a website where onsite search sucks. It will come handy someday for sure! Or how about a web suicide machine?

Other than these, I wrote several articles about WordPress and bbPress since I am involved in freelancing development.

I also gave two presentations last year on Handling Web Servers of High Traffic Websites and Internet Web Technology.

This year I intent to dive more in code, learn more on entrepreneurship and prepare for doing a startup. See you around!

Presentation on Handling Web Servers of High Traffic Websites

Ashfame — Sun, 02 May 2010 18:31:45 +0000

Yesterday I published a presentation on Internet Web Technology and today I am going to another presentation of mine which was on the topic “Handling Web Servers of High Traffic Websites“. I chose the topic as the one on which I will give my final semester seminar and prepared this presentation.

I had hard luck last semester as there was no projector and this time again we had no projector on our turn but I convinced our faculty to use a laptop for the presentation. Then out of no where, a guy came and start setting up the projector and while it was being setup, I was called for questions without my turn and again the seminar ended over with no presentation like last semester.

No worries again! I am sharing it to the world here on my blog and I am glad that I can do it. Let me know what you think of the presentation.

You can also have a copy of it in Ms Office 2007 format – Download Presentation

Presentation on Internet Web Technology

Ashfame — Sat, 01 May 2010 18:31:31 +0000

I am busy with a friend to get on with bbPress development so to take the advantage of my tight schedule, I would post my presentation on “Internet Web Technology” which I promised earlier to post on blog but never did. I prepared this presentation for Practical Training Seminar under Infosys Campus Connect Programme a few months back.

It took me a whole evening to prepare this presentation and then it ended with me just speaking it as a debate. There was no projector at our turn. Worthless college – JEC.

No worries till I have a medium to share my work with the world. I would love to know your thoughts on this.

You can also have a copy of it in Ms Office 2007 format - Download Presentation

Cancel pending printing jobs with a simple batch file

Ashfame — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:29:30 +0000

If you have ever used printers (most of you will obviously have), you must be knowing that it can be a real pain when we want to cancel a print job but it will just not go away.

Why it takes so long to cancel print job?

This occurs because the temporary file created for printing the job can’t be deleted because it is being continuously accessed by windows. One solution is to kill the spoolsv.exe service using Task Manager and delete all jobs present in C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS and then either restart the spoolsv.exe service or restart the computer so that the service is restarted by itself. But we can do all these steps by automating the work with batch files.

Download batch file

This batch file will quickly cancel print queue so that you can now continue with printing more jobs.

Flush printing job queue (Batch file)

The content of the batch file is as follows

@echo off
echo Stopping print spooler.
echo.
net stop spooler
echo deleting stuff... where? I'm not sure. Just deleting stuff.
echo.
del %systemroot%\system32\spool\printers\*.shd
del %systemroot%\system32\spool\printers\*.spl
echo Starting print spooler.
echo.
net start spooler

Now whenever you need to instantly cancel print queue, just double click on the batch file and it will delete the pending jobs. A very good piece of advice by Pallav is to be careful while using this batch file in a work environment as if you are on a print server, it would cancel printing jobs of all connected printers.

Thanks to Pallab for bringing my attention and to Lifehacker for the code.

You can also make a custom command which you can type in Run (Win + R) to execute the batch file. Read Creating Custom Run Commands

How to earn quick 100 US dollars from facebook before December 31

Ashfame — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:53:41 +0000

This is not a scam, it looks like that Paypal wishlist application is actually giving 1 dollar to each user who adds the application and 1 dollar to the person who refers him. So you just need to add this application through this link and share the offer with your friends and when they add the application you will earn 1$ for each friend referred by you.

You can share your wishlist by clicking on SHARE THIS WISHLIST.

Then right click on Create your wishlist and copy your link from homepage (live feed).

You can also invite your friends by clicking on Invite friends.

You can make upto 100$ with this offer. I have already made 11$ in a matter of minutes while writing this post. After the promotion ends, the money will be transferred to the paypal address registered with the offer. The offer is only valid till December 31. So, act fast, join now and make your quick 100$ from facebook. Let me know if you need any help. Leave a comment below.

The offer has ended and I made 79$. The offer actually paid the users. I got the payment in my Paypal account earlier than I expected.

Blog Redesigned & Life Reloaded

Ashfame — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 08:19:47 +0000

I know, I am a little late in making this announcement but I will do it for the sake of my feed readers who might not have got a chance to visit my blog recently.

On this 200th post, I would like to inform you that I have reloaded the blog with a new custom theme coded by myself. I took a minimalist semantic approach & I ended up with this theme. The homepage is my favorite. Did you like it? Comments are welcome. Infact, I would love them.

Take a look!

If you want to ask anything about the implementation in WordPress, then feel free to ask me.

Now, something about life.

I have changed my working space a little bit. I run Windows 7 on my machine. Many have requested about my configuration so the specifications are as follows :

Core2Duo 2.0Ghz
2 X 1GB OCZ matched pair RAM
160GB SATA 2 HDD
ATI HD 4850
LG L226WTQ 22” Widescreen LCD
Microtek 800VA Double battery UPS
No speakers. I use earplugs that came with my Nokia N86.

Its an old monster which still runs on the road. However, my N86 is less than 2 months old.

Well, That’s all for now. Feel free to connect with me.

Back to business

Ashfame — Fri, 22 May 2009 08:32:04 +0000

Hello everybody!

After a long gap of 5 months, I am back to blogging. I was not out of business but I was in a small shell where I was living my life and learning a great deal of things which will reflect now.

I have started freelancing as a web designer focused on WP based sites. As a part of designing static websites, I have given my homepage a new look (which is temporary till I get it match with my blog theme) I learned many things like maintaining Virtual Private Server (VPS), designing WordPress themes, experience with bbPress (upcoming great forum script from Automattic), experience in designing logos and setting up ideas for my upcoming projects.

My Portfolio is online too, although the latest work is not live yet. I would also like to let all of you know that now I am available for hire and offer a array of services.

I would also like to thank a lot of readers who subscribed after October. Now I have 500+ readers, but the traffic remains the same. I also apologize for not replying to comments. I did reply on some of the posts but most of them were buried unanswered

At present I am focused on learning PHP after which I will dive into WordPress and bbPress deeply because I want to be a part of open source community as being an active contributor.

I would also like to make a announcement that Rishi is designing a theme for this blog. Earlier I was designing a theme myself but I came up with something other than what I expect my blog to reflect, so I pumped it out of schedule because I have got other things to do having a strict deadline and meanwhile Rishi offered a theme design so I was convinced that he could come up with something better than the current theme which will be live for a few months and then I will pimp my whole portal to have an aesthetic look.

If by chance, any one of you have good experience in CSS, WordPress, PHP, Web Server Administration and if you would like to be friends, then please reach for me on GTalk – ashishsainiashfame or leave a comment here with details and I will get in touch with you.

Any more questions regarding where I was, which gal I was hanging out with or anything that you would like to know, just leave a comment on get in touch through the contact form.

See ya around.

Fraps – Know how much FPS your computer is able to render

Ashfame — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 15:55:28 +0000

Today I am writing about a cool software that is used to benchmark FPS in games. Being rhyming with frags, its name is Fraps. It can display current frames per second (FPS) on your screen and save detailed benchmark statistics in a file that you can peek in to see max FPS, min FPS and and average FPS. Apart from benchmarking stuff, you can use Fraps to capture screenshots and for recording videos too.

Measuring FPS

Run Fraps and minimize it.
Run the game you want and FPS will be displayed near the screen corner.

Capturing Screenshots

You can use the specified shortcut to take a screenshot or even set it to take screenshots after a specified interval of time.
Unregistered version saves the screenshot only in BMP format (uncompressed).
Almost every game offers a option for capturing screenshots but with the help of Fraps you can capture screenshots of any full screen application like Window Media Player Screen (Visualization or Movies). You must be knowing that taking screenshot of videos played in media players by the “Print Screen” method doesn’t work. Fraps is the way to go, capture exactly what is being rendered on the monitor.

Recording Videos

You can use the specified shortcut for recording video. You have the option of recording the video either at half size or full size and the fps of the recorded video. Unregistered version records the video in uncompressed format and that too for just 30 seconds. A 30second video recorded by Fraps takes up about 230MB of space.

To control the audio of the video recorded, lower the system audio volume else the sound recorded will be too loud for pleasant listening.

Performance Effect

Using Fraps other than video recording purposes have a minimal impact on the performance but when it is used to record video, its performance is degraded to a much level.

Moreover the help file has detailed information on what each setting do. Do have a look at it if you want to know more about Fraps. And since I am a proud owner of ATI HD 4850 graphics card, I love playing with FRAPS + games combination. Have you used Fraps before? Do you know of any other similar software used for benchmarking purposes than do share with us in the comments.

Blog Statistics For July 2008

Ashfame — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:11:50 +0000

Hello everyone!
Its time for me to publish July’08 stats as this month saw the highest number of visits. Earlier I was away so didn’t publish stats for 3 months but now I can and here it is :

July 2008 Blog Statistics

Visits: 23,357
Pageviews: 35,376
Pages per Visit: 1.51
Bounce Rate: 62.11%
Avg. Time on Blog: 1 minutes 17 seconds
% New Visits: 93.49%

The reason for the highest traffic was SU spike on a post about linux 3D effects.

Favorite Posts of July’08

The feed count touch a maximum of 148 subscribers (So, people are finally subscribing! heh). If you want to keep yourself updated with what I write here, then go ahead and subscribe via RSS or get to know RSS. You can even opt for email updates (look in sidebar).

Godaddy Discount Coupon Codes page is updated regularly, so if you are about to buy domain with Godaddy then you can save some bucks by using the coupon code mentioned over that page.

Youtube Downloader will be fixed soon! Thanks to one of our reader for reminding me about it.

And if you are wondering why I am blogging less or why I am less online, then you need to know I am trying to be more human as human is a social animal.

Keep visiting and thanks for your support. I am all open for suggestions.

I am back and good to do the job

Ashfame — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:00:26 +0000

After a long time (2 months), I am finally back to business. Earlier I was busy with my University Exams and then went on a lil vacation and when I came back I decided to start blogging right on the 7^th of this month because my last post was on April 7. Makes sense? Well! It doesn’t even make to me. Its just a excuse of not blogging even when I was back as I was learning html + css. I still need more practice to be a good coder. You can soon expect what earlier you was not expecting.

Now some updates:

I got a brand new look for my blog which I will be customizing over time according to my needs and will post about more WordPress How-To Stuff. If you are reading this in your feed reader or email, then you might give it a look and tell me how you find it.
A brand new banner. Wanna know how I designed it? Read this article : Design a banner for every need
Feed chicklet is ON as its 100+ now. If you haven’t subscribed, then make the move now. Ashfame | Tech Blog Feeds
Got My First AdSense Cheque too
Upgrading my Desktop PC, so you can also expect some hardware reviews and hardware buying guide.
A big sorry for replying late to the comments.
Also, Youtube Downloader is not working for now. Will fix it. Its just that I don’t have time right now.
Lastly, Godaddy Coupon pages is updated and Dell Coupon pages will be updated soon.

Expected future updates (Not too far) :

Ashfame.com will be designed to act as a homepage for all my online activity and show the best of my stuff.
A Portfolio on Ashfame.com soon
Freelancing: You will soon be able to hire me for designing, modding & doing technical stuff. (More info soon)
I will start working on a new project once I am all settled in hostel with my rig. (Yes, this time I am taking my desktop with me)

Keep visiting and reading. Any suggestions?

Blog Statistics For March 2008

Ashfame — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:47:41 +0000

Another month is over and I am ready to publish my stats for the month of march. I was to publish it yesterday but I didn’t as I have something serious to say and that should not be taken as a April Fool Prank. So I am going to say it today. Before that here are the stats and I encourage you all to subscribe to me feeds if you like the content of this blog.

March 2008 Blog Statistics

Visits: 7,999
Pageviews: 10,576
Pages per Visit: 1.32
Bounce Rate: 82.04%
Avg. Time on Blog: 52 seconds
%New Visits: 93.30%

Traffic Sources

Referring Sites: 49.72% (3,977)
Search Engines: 42.92% (3,433)
Direct Traffic: 7.36% (589)

March 2008 Most Popular Posts

March 2008 Favorite Posts

New Pages

Dell Discount Coupons (HOT)
Godaddy Discount Coupon Codes

Feed Statistics

Feed Subscribers reached a maximum limit of 90 Subscribers. Am I too techie in my posts that people are scared to subscribe?

What’s Next?

As many of you already know that I am engineering student and my 4 SEM examinations are coming, I can’t afford to compute all day long. I feel like blogging all the time but I have decided that I will only blog after I have studied enough in a day. And after all this, I am going to learn html + css + php and I am looking forward to design templates, themes and plugins. So you can expect things like as I said above in coming months and I am sorry to inform you all that I won’t be updating my blog on a regular basis as I have some academic responsibilities (believe me, its more than just scoring well).

Sify servers providing high speed internet (17Mbps/4Mbps)

Ashfame — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:55:46 +0000

Every internet user has a unstable download speed to uplaod speed ratio. The ratio always being greater than one. Although connections with stable ratio do exist but they are very rare and atleast not in India.

I am on a 64 Kbps (150MB day time limit and night unlimited) internet connection and usually gets 60-62 Kbps as download speed and 50-60 Kbps as upload speed. What happened with me yesterday made me wondering. I was downloading a small file (~4 MB) and before I can see the download starting, it was completed. I thought of it to be a browser issue, I ignored it and tried downloading the file again just to find that it has again completed in no time. Out of curiosity, I checked my speed and was surprised to see the results and I bet you will be surprised too.

I was getting ~17 Mbps as download speed and ~4 Mbps as upload speed.
I thought of downloading movies but then the day time limit shatters my excitement but still browsing heavy pages and downloading small files was a cool experience.

I was excited to know what could be the reason that Sify servers were so kind to me. I tried googling around but didn’t found any reason regarding what can cause the servers to leak bandwidth to random connections.

Has it ever happened to you with your ISP? What did you do downloaded in such a case? Do you have any idea what can be the reason for getting such enormous speeds?

Blog Statistics For February 2008

Ashfame — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:33:42 +0000

I know I am 10 days late in publishing the stats for the month of February, I was busy in inter college dance competition but still I am going to publish it as I got the highest hits in this month. If you like the content of this blog, donâ€™t forget to subscribe to the feeds to get updates.

February 2008 Blog Statistics

Visits: 17,773
Pageviews: 29,175
Pages per Visit: 1.64
Bounce Rate: 53.96%
Avg. Time on Blog: 1 minutes 9 seconds
%New Visits: 92.87%

Traffic Sources

Referring Sites: 79.92% (14,205)
Search Engines: 13.68% (2,431)
Direct Traffic: 6.4% (1,137)

Feed Statistics

Feed Subscribers reached a maximum limit of 79 Subscribers

Other Facts

I wrote only 7 posts in the last month and I got the highest hits so far.
Average number of comments per post is 4.75.

February 2008 Most Popular Posts

If you want to advertise on this site, you can contact me.

Where was the author? I am here.

Ashfame — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 09:38:34 +0000

Where was the author? errâ€¦ Who is the author?
Hello, I am the author of this blog. Head over to the About Me page to know more about me.

Coming back to the question, Where I was in February? I was damn busy. No I wasnâ€™t helping Intel to develop a gigacore processor (heh), I was busy with other stuff.

This month has been a rollercoaster ride for me. I was preparing for two Paper Presentations, Inter-College LAN gaming and my 4SEM Exams. I with my team member gave a presentation on â€œTechniques used by hackers to gain access to a computerâ€ in my own college i.e. Jaipur Engineering College, India. After giving it a shot, I gave another presentation with my team member on â€œArtificial Intelligenceâ€ in Global Institute of Technology, India. I will be writing on both the topics soon.

I rocked the first presentation on Hacking but the other one on Artificial Intelligence donâ€™t turned out to be good. Well, Mistakes are the best teachers. Right? I assembled a Unreal Team (NFL- No Frags Limit) for the Unreal Tournament but that again was messed up. This time GIT is to be blamed. They provided us with crap hardware. Consider playing Unreal Gold on 640 X 480 resolution on a 256MB RAM computer and fragging with a crawling ball mouse. What a waste of money? Never Mind.

As soon as I was done with the paper presentation stuff and fragging spree, I found myself standing before exams. Just 3 days to go. Ah man.. I again ~~get back to~~ searched for books without complaining and I got high temperature (fever). No how can I study when I am capable of cooking meals on my forehead? I got my exams done and I am expecting a terribly low score this time. I am getting used to it.

And at last, a good news. Being the CE Branch topper of 1st year, I am getting a prize on March 5, 2008. Now this again will be screwed up if they are not going to give any cash prize (heh).

Till now you must agree with me that I was on a rollercoaster ride this month. Well, I am fastly recovering from fever and I am gonna rock my blog again. You can expect posts from today itself. Keep commenting to motivate me in my work.

3 creative ways of showcasing your best content on sidebar

Blog Statistics For January 2008

Ashfame — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 11:52:21 +0000

First month of this year is over and I am ready to present my stats for January. I got the highest traffic for this month than ever. I am not able to promote my blog much because of time restrictions. I will take care of that soon. If you like our content, don’t forget to subscribe to our feeds to get updates.

January 2008 Blog Statistics

Visits: 6107
Pageviews: 9,895
Pages per Visit: 1.62
Bounce Rate: 60.93%
Avg. Time on Blog: 1 minutes 31 seconds
%New Visits: 92.55%

Traffic Sources

Referring Sites: 64.91% (3,964)
Search Engines: 25.86% (1,579 )
Direct Traffic: 9.24% (564)

Feed Statistics

Feed Subscribers reached a maximum limit of 62+ Subscribers

Yesterday I published popular posts of January. Do check them out if you are new here.

January 2008 Most Popular Posts