iTerm2

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Having moved recently to Mac, less than a year now, I am still discovering what works for me and what doesn't. Frankly, I dont see whats the fuss about macs. I dont know if being a lifetime Windows user has biased me for ever or if there is really nothing appealing to me in a mac. Well, thats the topic for some other post.


One of the first things that I was not very happy about on the mac was the built in terminal. Coming from years of Linux & Solaris use, the mac terminal was just not enough. It fell short in a number of ways. It does support tabs, which is great. I am a heavy user of Ctrl+PageUp, Ctrl+home, Ctrl+arrows etc on the PC platform. As many know, the default key board on the Mac does not provide those keys. That was my first annoyance. It took a while to figure out what keys to use instead and till this day, almost a year after I started using it, I am not yet comfortable. Maybe its just me.


Another I found lacking was the support for profiles. Although the terminal does support multiple color profiles, there is no way to save multiple machine profiles.


And this is coming from someone who was very happy with Putty. Go figure.


So I was searching for a better terminal application for Mac. I came across a number of recommendations:

• Visor - A "hack" to the built in terminal.app to make it more useful
• Coda - This app is not specifically designed to be a terminal emulator. It is more directed towards a holistic web development tool.
• iTerm2 - A separate app for terminal emulation
• Terminator - JAVA based terminal emulator

The following may also be considered alternatives:

• Screen for mac - Type screen in your terminal
• Terminator - Not sure if this is available for mac

Given the choices, I decided to try iTerm2. 

It lets you create multiple login/machine profiles, multiple color profiles and lets you remap keys. To be fair, Terminal.app also lets you remap keys. 

Please note, iTerm2 is still in Alpha but do not let that scare you. It is very usable and the developers are very prompt and responsive to any issues you let them know about. I filed two issues and both were answered within a couple of hours. Being a Alpha stage code, it is surprisingly stable and slick. 

Highly recommended. 

Britney new music video Till the wold ends premiere

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Britney released her new video Till the World Ends.

Watch it right here

Britney Spears - Till The World Ends



Its pretty awesome and continues to impress just as most of Britney Spears's videos do.

I did not care much for her performance on GMA a few days ago. It was a bit lethargic and failed to impress. I did not care much for her Hold It Against Me video as well. It is such an awesome energetic beat but the video seemed like an ad for sony, perfumes, dating site and the like. The lyrics and beat should make it an awesome club scene video with her trying to woo a guy across the dance floor .. but the video turned out to be her standing in a long dress and promoting products. Or maybe I am just too dumb to understand the creativity in that video, who knows. The only upside was the Britney fights Britney clip.

But Till the World Ends, delivers and its very impressive.

First Impressions: Crackle

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Summary: Dont plan on discontinuing any of your existing services yet. Highly buggy, unpolished and very unusable.

As posted earlier, I eagerly went home and hooked up my laptop to the flat panel and fired up my browser to watch Seinfeld on Crackle.

Apart from the annoying startup clip about Crackle, it started up alright. So far so good.

Like on TV, it stopped right after the clip of Seinfeld's stand up sequence and an ad came up. Ok ... not even 30 seconds in to the playback and I am seeing two ads (Crackle, some thing else). Interesting to note, adblock plus was not able to block the ads on this site.

This episode is one of my favorites, The Chinese Restaurant. The playback continued after the ad. Went on for 15 enjoyable minutes. At that point, it stopped and played another ad. Playback resumed and abruptly stopped after few minutes and declared

"You have been watching The Chinese Restaurant". "Next up ..."

Seems to me this should show up AFTER the episode finished. Before I could act on it, it started the next episode in my queue. I attempted several times to complete the previous episode but was not successful.

The default resolution for the playback is 360p. You are offered the choice to switch to 480p. But I was not successful in watching 480p playback. The playback would just freeze when 480p is selected. I have a high speed connection from cable company (12 Mbps), so bandwidth is probably not the issue.

So, being a good user, I tried to provide a bug report of all these issues using their "Have Feedback?" link. I diligently filled up everything and hit continue. Nothing happens. I try again, nothing happens. Cool, even the bug reporting system is not working. The bug reporting system is handled by GetSatisfaction and I have had amazingly good experience with that system having used it before on other services. But apparently on Crackle, even that doesnt work.

They certainly do have a great collection of movies and TV series. But the overall user experience is terrible. Yes, the site is brand new and they need to polish it up, but this feels more like an engineering sample than something that is suitable for mass consumption by early adopters. And they definitely need to get rid of the very annoying clip at the start of the playback. I think I watch that clip more than any content.

Crackle is a direct competitor to Hulu rather than Amazon VOD or Netflix.

Here is my suspicion -  Crackle wants to make the online / streaming viewing experience so bad that customers will stick to traditional means of delivery.

Unfortunately for them, Netflix offers an amazing online viewing experience. Of course, everyone is slowly starting to choke Netflix access to content. Lets see how this plays out.

With that, I say goodbye to Crackle for at least a couple of months. Sitting back and enjoying Trial and Error on Netflix.

Google April Fool Pranks

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If you haven't noticed already, here is this years Aprils Fools Day prank from Google

Gmail Motion

And here is the one from Linkedin

• screencap 1
• screencap 2

Happy Aprils Fools everyone.

Seinfeld available on Crackle

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Crackle is a new service offering free streaming movies and TV series. However, the streams are not ad-free. Your viewing experience will be like that of TV with ads every 15 minutes or so.

However, todays announcement is that Seinfeld, the most popular show about nothing is now available on Crackle. They are starting with 10 iconic episodes that include

• The chinese restaurant
• The bubble boy
• The pick
• The junior mint
• The puffy shirt
• The marine biologist
• The hamptons
• The soup nazi
• The bizarro Jerry
• The yada yada

I love Seinfeld. And I love that it is streaming on crackle. This is probably what I will be doing this weekend. 

If you like to purchase disc versions of Seinfeld, here it is with all 180 episodes

What to watch on Netflix tonight?

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If you are looking forward to a relaxing night at home, cuddled up with some warm soup or a cold beer and enjoy something on Netflix instant, here are some recommendations:

• Old is gold (Relatively old movies)
• Drama: Leaving Las Vegas
• Thriller: Shattered
• Comedy: Risky Business
• Foregin
• No One Killed Jessica
• New Movies:
• Eat Pray Love

Grab a glass of wine or a cold one and kick back. Have fun and enjoy  your weekend! 

If you are looking for a Netflix player, Roku is a great choice. If you already own a PS3, you already have the best Netlifx player available.

Dinner and a movie

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Today we settled in for a good home cooked dinner and a relaxing movie. I love Indian dishes and today was Bisi Beli Bath, its a dish from southern India. Its made of pulses (lentils), rice and vegetables. The spice level can be customized to your taste and its packed with flavor, proteins and loads of good stuff for your body. Here is a sample recipe.

And for the movie, picked a recent romantic comedy - Life as we know it. Its a pretty light hearted movie perfect for relaxing evenings.

My rating: ***   3 stars

Here is a link if you are interested in the movie
Video on Demand
Blu-ray disc