No Pandora outside US?!
visiting Pandora redirects me to this stupid page..
WTF?

soooo hate to be branded.. X-(
nope.. 'm not a .net expert.. spendin an year around a technology does not conjure an expert.. not if I choose not to.. coz I've always believed in concepts over concrete details.. I'd gladly be branded ignorant over gettin nailed over expertise.. so, please don't stamp .net on me just coz I wasn't given a chance elsewhere..

never felt so sick of XML as when workin with Biztalk.. n that probably is the least of the annoyances!!

or probably 'tis just my current project..

TiddlyWiki

http://www.tiddlywiki.com/

not often do I fall for an application.. but this one made it to my list on the first site ;)
it's a quick wiki, very usable and damn too easy to deploy..
almost puts xcopy deployment to shame :D

here's what u need to do..

• download the html page (using a link that appears on the homepage)..
• run it inna browser of ur choice..

oh well, that's all u need to do.. u can start using it straightaway, unless u don't like the way it looks n wanna do some plastic surgery, which btw u can easily achieve since all the source is in the page that u've downloaded :)

took me less than 5 minutes to get the whole thing and ftp it over to Pandela (a decent free hosting that I use).. another minute to open it from the hosted location and use it :)

haven't seen anything simpler :)

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..]