Released Browser Nirvana 0.1
2Browser Nirvana is a handy, easy to use application specially designed to help web developers test browser-compatibility. It lets you view websites side-by-side on Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome / Safari.
The current version of Browser Nirvana (0.1) renders Firefox 3.6, Chrome 5.0, Safari 5.0 and the version of Internet Explorer installed on your PC. You do not need to have Firefox, Chrome or Safari installed on your PC to use this application.
Browser Nirvana is free software under GPL.
Read more and download it from http://bnirvana.sourceforge.net/
Released WELPressed 1.0
0Today, I released the first version WELPressed on SourceForge as free software under GPL.
PHP on nginx is a solid setup to serve PHP applications like WordPress in a development environment. There are many guides available that help you configure and run PHP on nginx via FastCGI on Windows. I had also discussed this configuration in my previous post on WELP. Once configured, nginx and PHP FastCGI can be started and stopped from the command line. nginx does not automatically spawn FastCGI processes; you must start them separately. Neither nginx nor PHP provides a friendly GUI through which you can start and stop these services.
WELPressed is a small Windows utility that lets you start and stop nginx and PHP FastCGI in one click. It also makes monitoring the status of these services easy. nginx and PHP FastCGI continue running even after you close WELPressed, so you do not have to keep WELPressed running. You can stop them by opening WELPressed again.
WELPressed was originally written to run WordPress on Windows, nginx, SQLite and PHP (WELP), hence the name.
Read more about WELPressed and download it at http://welpressed.sourceforge.net/
Here is a screenshot:
Install WordPress on WELP (Windows, nginx, SQLite and PHP)
4WordPress has hundreds of themes and thousands of plugins available. But, often you find that the even the theme or plugin that you like most, leave out that one feature or the other that you want dearly. The beauty of WordPress is that you can modify most of those themes or plugins yourself to make them suit your needs completely. Most of us prefer modifying and testing a theme on WordPress hosted on a home computer as working on WordPress hosted on a remote webserver can be a pain.
There are many ways to setup a server environment and install WordPress on your home computer, but most of them involve installing web and database servers which slow down your computer. And, these servers keep running on your computer even when you are not working on WordPress. There are some great tutorials out there that help you install WordPress on lightweight webservers instead of the resource-hungry Apache or IIS, but they still require you to install the MySQL database engine. The method described below lets you run WordPress on Windows with neither Apache/IIS nor MySQL.
We use nginx, which is a lightweight, high performance web server, SQLite, which is an embedded relational database management system and PHP. The total memory consumption of this setup will typically be less than 10MB.
Also, in this method, you do not have to “install” any software; you can just unzip and run all of these. So this method should work even if you do not have administrative privileges on your computer.
Please note that WordPress is designed to run on MySQL only, so some plugins may not work in this setup. I would not suggest using this in a production environment.
Windows + nginx (Engine X) + SQLite + PHP = WELP!
Released Cows ‘n Bulls 1.1
0Yesterday, I released the next version of my little game, on SourceForge as free software under GPL. This version includes multi-platform compatibility updates and some minor fixes.
This is a verbal version of the classic number guessing game Cows and Bulls. Instead of guessing four-digit numbers, you guess valid four-letter words. You have to guess the word (all words are 4 letters) in 10 tries. You would be given the number of “cows” and “bulls” on each word you enter. A “bull” is a matching letter in the correct position and a “cow” is a matching letter which is not in the correct position.
I wrote this game in 2007 for my wife (then girlfriend) but had never released it.
You can download the latest version from SourceForge – https://sourceforge.net/projects/cowsnbulls/
Here are some screen shots:
on Windows 7
Entry-level DSLR Comparison
0My old camera, a Canon PowerShot S2 IS, died on me last month and I was looking for a new one to replace it. Inspired by some DSLR-wielding friends and many a beautiful photo on Flickr, I decided to go DSLR. They are now cheaper than ever, do more stuff than ever and everybody has one these days 
. So, I thought now was the right time to take the plunge.
I knew I wanted a Nikon or Canon (dunno why, just knew ), but which one? I did some research on the interwebs and built this table with the features that may be important for a beginner. Sharing this here for the benefit of others like me.