Giveaway of the Day..
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/
this' a place where you can actually have that licensed software for free! and no strings attached.. :)
these guys really give you a licensed software free everyday!

now that is a cool idea.. and a really cool marketing strategy.. :)
hats off to the guys who thought about and actually pulled it off..

though it's not free as in freedom, but sure as in 'free beer' ;) oh yeah, that makes it only second to GNU.. but hey, I, for one, surely wouldn't mind a free beer :) particularly somethin as good as this one :)
(psst.. only metaphorically, coz I don't like beer :D )

there's a sister project called Game Giveaway of the Day.. but dint like it much.. they seem to giveaway quite a lot of the games I wouldn't wanna play :(

they've announced that they'd soon be givin out some of the popular titles for free! I sure am excited! :)

why's product development sexier?
coz of the kick you get when you see someone (apart from yourself of course ;) ) finding it useful and actually liking it :)
'tis about a plugin I wrote for IntelliJ..
[http://plugins.intellij.net/plugin/?id=1126]
someone liked it enuf to visit the page and rate it as well :) [I never told them to.. I don't even kno them.. honest!]
hmm.. feels good :)
guess 'tis motivation enuf to improve the plugin (n work on others I was too lazy to start on :D )

got a problem? find the reset button..
huh! I hate that.. why does it always have to be so?!

was downloading XNA Game Studio Express n found this instruction quite amusing..

1.1.3. Run Visual C# 2005 Express Edition at Least Once Before Installing XNA Game Studio Express

You should run Visual C# 2005 Express Edition at least once before installing XNA Game Studio Express. Otherwise, features of XNA Game Studio Express may be missing from the user interface. For example, the XNA Game Studio Xbox 360 item in Tools | Options dialog may be missing. If you encounter this issue, we recommend that you do the following:

1. Uninstall XNA Game Studio Express.
2. Run Visual C# 2005 Express Edition.
3. Exit Visual C# 2005 Express Edition.
4. Reinstall XNA Game Studio Express.

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/XNA/gse/readme/default.aspx#ID2EWC]

'm not alien to such instructions n keep seein them quite very often, with quite a lot of the products that I use.. if it screws up, find a way to reset.. but huh, why?! when'll these people understand?

this instruction in particular is way too odd.. somethin fundamentally wrong.. is VC# Express Edition architecture so flaky? or were the XNA developers way too lazy to provide a utility instead to register XNA Game Studio with VC# Express? let alone fix the bug..

I'd xpect Microsoft to have all the best guys around.. nothing personal, but did noone there ever feel that such an instruction would look bad on MS?!

Mercora - Music Search
another nice net radio :) - http://www.mercora.com

I still prefer Pandora's slick interface over this one.. but Mercora gives me what I've always missed in Pandora - searching for and listening to specific tunes :)

Mercora gives you a nice interface too :) but not as slick.. and it has a Mercora Music Matrix, which's a blogthing you can put up on your blog.. haven't explored it completely..

there sure are other music search services like SingingFish.. but I happen to prefer Mercora..

one big downer for Mercora is that it requires you to install an extra plugin which plays Mercora music on the browser.. (they want to prevent you from downloading songs :P ).. but proabably that's still kinda okay since 'tis not that heavy..

if only somone could combine Pandora and Mercora :) that'd be great..
but even now, Pandora to discover music n Mercora for specific tunes is probably okay :)

[psst.. do u think it's a coincidence that both the music services I like have rhyming names?! Pandora, Mercora.. and even the same string lengths! hmm..]

am I too fanatical?!
k.. you were supposed to say no ;)
well, the context revolves around Eclipse n IntelliJ.. and when it comes to choosing between the two, well, honestly I don't really see a choice over there :D it's just IntelliJ, IntelliJ, IntelliJ and that's about it :P

happened to stumble across this entry which tries to tell you the 10 reasons why Eclipse is better. alright dude, I'll give you all that.. but honestly, you've never used IntelliJ for pro development.. I'll avoid counter-commenting over each of your points (though it's way too tempting not to :D )..

but here's why I prefer IntelliJ over ANY other IDE on the planet (across all the languages).. all the other IDEs help me write code, but IntelliJ helps me solve problems.. IntelliJ knows what I'm thinking.. and that really makes a big difference.. with IntelliJ, my focus almost completely is taken off the nitty-gritties of code which I definitely don't have to be bothered about..

coming to Eclipse, oh I definitely don't hate it.. and honestly, I respect it over many other IDEs (xcept IntellliJ of course ;) ).. but given that, it's nothing more than an IDE.. sure it's free.. and has a very xtensible plugin architecture and everything.. but it loses because of that very point.. it's so generic that it complicates building anything specific around it..

the fundamental differentiator from my point of view is usability.. I think Eclipse has serious usability issues and it's usability sucks big time! alright, it uses SWT, but that only makes it kinda blend with other applications.. from nowhere do I see Eclipse looking pretty because of SWT! alright, I kno I might be a lil biased on that bit.. n that's xactly why it's my point of view (which's fairly twisted btw :D )..

and ah! the open architecture! can't wrap up without mentioning that.. ever tried writing an Eclipse plugin? I did.. long back.. and I gave up.. sure, there's a LOT of documentation around for Eclipse.. and very little for IntelliJ OpenAPI.. but still, I found myself writing an IntelliJ plugin without much (read: any) hassle (ignore the fact that there was a T-shirt for incentive ;) ).. oh, the Eclipse API isn't really bad, but 've said it earlier, it tries to be too generic.. too many details to pay attention to for a small task.. and too much documentation to read thru..

with IntelliJ, you won't find much documentation.. and that does become a major pain in the ass at times.. despite that, OpenAPI is pefectly usable, coz most of the things in there make perfect sense.. definitely OpenAPI isn't the best around.. I've got a 100 improvements to suggest and others'd have a lot more.. but with Eclipse, I just haven't got the time and energy it takes to explore and use it's API to do anything practical..

k.. all these mainly have to do with the power that IntelliJ gives me.. it's code browsing features are simply the best I've seen for Java.. my favourites: Ctrl+N and Ctrl+Alt+Shift+N, Ctrl+H, Ctrl+Alt+H.. with IntelliJ, I'm up for tampering around the most unfamiliar codebases in an instant :)

oh and since it's my blog, I thought I shud mention my IntelliJ plugin.. 'tis called Jump To Usage (alright, 'tis a silly name).. quite a trivial plugin.. but nicely fits into my style of coding :D

ironic..
just thinking about my next project.. and hey, howcome I dint notice it earlier?!

funny, but the fact's that I'm gonna go in as a consultant to a company that rejected me in my campus interview! and they pay my company a lot more than what they'd have otherwise paid me! :))
what's even more ironic is that my job over there's supposed to be helping out their people with XP and Coding practices, and probably refactor out their code to make it look pretty n more manageable ;)

r u wondering what's so ironic about it? well, the only reason they had for not taking me was my aggregate, coz I cant remember an interview that I dint do well.. and in fact they bagged a good number of our toppers..

hmm.. so, r u thinkin the same that I'm? LOL!!! :))
so, now they're okay with having a low aggregate to help their toppers?! oh well, probably they forgot to ask my company for my aggregate ;)

ha ha.. really can't stop laughing when I think of that.. :))

sometimes, life can be soooooooo mean, soooooooooo ironic.. ;)

UPDATE:
well, maybe someone heard me ;).. the plan's changed (for good) ;)

computing..
Heroine: Computer, show me the files with details about <blah blah blah>..
Computer: Beginning search thru One million <whatever-silly-number-after-that> files now..
Heroine: (smiles) Cancel search..

some flick I can't remember.. it's inna spacecraft and the miss is tryin to get some confidential info from the craft supercomputer.. the supercomputer of course understands natural language ;) (n divulges any kinda details to anybody who asks for it without any kinda authorization :P )
watched it when I was in college, n the thing that impressed me was the file count thrown by the computer.. it sure was impressive then..

today I'm backin up my data, n find that my recent Workspace alone has over 98000 files! n it's just supposed to be holdin my mini projects/stuff related to them!

yeah, sure my laptop's a lot better than what their conceived supercomputer then was.. but damn! what pisses me off is that it still can't understand natural language! ;) well, my point isn't to compare my laptop wit a supercomputer.. neither to complain about it's understanding capabilities :D

it's just that I always wonder why doesn't computing quality increase wit increase in computing power.. I've seen CPUs with 3 digit LEDs on them to indicate speed in MHz with a generally shorted MSD to show a decently high number! :)
it was just around my XI std. that people thought a 400 MHz Pentium III was impressive.. and a color monitor was a luxury :P

around my III sem, Sidda's Celeron of about 1GHz was better than most.. and when I bought my P4 HT with 2+GHz @ around my 5th sem, none of the systems I knew came closer! :) well, that was the closest one could go to having two processors on a desktop..
around my XI std. a dual processor machine would've been a dedicated server to be touched by the privileged few! but today I run a laptop with dual core, which's as good as two physical processors! and Intel's Quadro's about to be out!

well, it's been about 8 years, and after so many leaps in raw computing power, the softwares that I use everyday don't even come close to what I've come to expect from those of this generation.. the way I manage my data isn't drastically different, n I still feel the pain of searching thru it.. I'm still using the same kind of UI, same kind of software but only with minor visual improvements, and I've to bear with the reasoning that all my computing power goes into getting those minor visual improvements!

I definitely don't agree with Vista's ridiculous system requirements after having seen what it gives me.. oh I love Vista and it's quite jazzy UI.. but I just hate what it shamelessly demands of me for those minor touches..

I've heard stories of people who finished an entire machine simulator without a single error, that too in octal! hmm.. well, can't remember a story more impressive than that.. what happened to computer engineering?!

there're not many softwares that come close to doing what's expected of them.. two that I like the most: IntelliJ coz it knows what and how to do what I want to do.. it thinks the way I think :)
Mathematica for it's.. well, I dunno why I like it.. but I think it's a pure display of arrogance ;) [just my personal opinion] and probably that's why I like it.. or probably it's the kind of backing that Mathematica enjoys..

there're a few more that I like but can't remember, and probably a few more that're good but 've never used.. but the sad thing's that they're so very numbered.. :(

does everythin happen for good?!
that's bloody hard to believe in.. call it an attitude problem, but honestly, 'tis like tracing the silverline of the darkest cloud onna pitch dark night..