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Recently I came across possibly the best tech job posting ever on Craiglist(via @psam). Its geeky, smart and humorous (again in a geeky way).

I am quoting portions of it below :

To all who Think Themselves a Programmer
We don’t like you. You are a weak, oblong programmer.
We only like amazing, bad ass programmers.
You, dude, are not bad ass.
Just try to implode our faces, and show us your bad-assness. Oblong.
Let us see if you are a programmer worthy of existence…

…Constant Civilization Annihilation Action with an all technical team.
We are ready to hire the next bad ass super ninja in our 3+ year old company of 5+ ninjas….

…You must understand that “Web 2.0” is a facade along with the other weak terms that exist.
If you have a Computer Degree of any variety and think it is worth anything, then go away and don’t waste our time…

Include your Reaction to the list below in E-mail Cover Letter
Hack the ______.
Answer to Life.
LEET

Continue reading “The Best Job Posting Ever”

Adobe Photoshop is a behemoth. It’s an industry standard setting software that is widely considered to be head and shoulders ahead of its competition. However, not everyone needs all the features offered by Photoshop. In fact many people who have Photoshop installed on their computers use it merely as a more sophisticated version of Paint. While Paint is too basic, Photoshop (and even GIMP) is too advanced for most people. There is a demand for something in between.

Paint.Net is one software that has filled the void quite effectively. Recently, I found another nice alternative – FotoGrafix. FotoGrafix is a light weight free Photoshop alternative. It supports all popular image formats including jpeg, png, gif, bmp, psd, ico, tiff, xcf and raw. Basic tools like Marquee (rectangular and elliptical), Brush (including some fancy ones like Lens Glare and Sparkle), Fill, Transform, Text and Gradient. The biggest strength of Fotografix is the Layers feature. Layers is an essential feature that I simply can’t do without. Fotografix also includes other features which Photoshop users will immediately recognise – Magic Wand, Clone Stamp and Dropper. Some of the more commonly used Layer Blending modes like Screen, Linear Dodge, Overlay, Multiply, Hard Light and Linear Burn are available along with basic filters like Blur, Emboss and Diffuse.
Continue reading “FotoGrafix – A Free Photoshop Alternative For The Masses”

People have been speculating about a Google Operating System ever since Google released Gmail. And the rumours about Google OS grew even stronger after they announced Android in late 2007. However, all these speculations about Google’s own operating system were just that – speculation. Today Google changed all that. Earlier today they dropped a bomb through an innocuous looking announcement on their official blog.

Google’s new operating system is going to be called Chrome. It will be an open source product that Google is said to be building from scratch based on the Linux kernel. Like all Google products the focus is going to be on simplicity, elegance and utility. Speed and security are expected to be two hallmarks of the Operating System.
Continue reading “Google OS is Here and It’s Called Chrome”

Registry Cleaners are the topic of intense discussion among tech gurus. Do we need a Registry Cleaner? The opinion is certainly divided. While many Windows Gurus dismiss Registry Cleaners as unnecessary and dangerous, there are others who swear by it. I would probably fall in the later camp. I am a huge fan of TuneUp Utilities and its built in registry cleaner. I have seen it work wonders. Its registry cleaner once repaired an un-bootable system (after Windows Startup Recovery had failed) and on another instance fixed my friends frequent system freeze-ups at startup. Uniblue Registry Cleaner first attracted my attention when I chanced upon a review by WhatTheTech. They went from criticising Registry Cleaners for being fickle natured and dangerous to recommending Uniblue Registry Cleaner.
Continue reading “Uniblue Registry Booster 2009 – Review and Benchmark”

I started using Songbird when I began using Linux (again). I wanted something with a powerful library and an intuitive user-interface. Amarok just didn’t feel right on GNOME and although Exaile was pretty brilliant I still felt something was missing. That was till I tried Songbird. I had last tried it on windows a long time back (when it was initially released). But Songbird had improved vastly since then. Songbird isn’t perfect but combined with the awesome add-ons – it soon became the media powerhouse that I was looking for. In fact now Songbird is my default media player even on Windows (replacing Windows Media Player).

Songbird is a great media player in itself and the latest release adds a few much needed (equaliser) and much requested (library management) features. However, what makes Songbird really stand out from the crowd are its add-ons and web-integration. Songbird makes use of the Gecko (Firefox) engine to allow tabbed web browsing right inside the player. Without much ado here are ten add-ons you must install if you are a Songbird user.

1. mashTape – This is one of the first things that made me fall in love with Songbird and remains one of my favourite add-ons. mashTape fetches relevant information about the currently playing track from the web. The main pane shows artist biography, members of the band, discography, and related links fetched from last.fm. It also displays album reviews from Amazon and latest info related to the singer fetched from a number of sources including Google News, Yahoo! News, Google Blogsearch, HypeMachine and Digg. But my favourite feature is the cool slideshow composed of related photos from flickr. And oh yeah, before I forget mashTape also fetches relevant videos from YouTube and Yahoo! Music.

2. Now Playing List – Songbird doesn’t contain a Now Playing list (like Windows Media Player or Winamp) that allows you to quickly drag and drop songs and create custom temporary playlists on the fly. This can be a deal breaker for some (including me). Thankfully, there is an add-on that allows you to add a Now Playing List pane.

3. MediaFlow – I love the iTunes like Filter View present in Songbird. However, if you prefer the flashier Coverflow then MediaFlow is the add-on you are looking for. However, this plug-in does have some performance issues.
Continue reading “Ten Add-ons That Will Make Songbird Rock”