Gmail Themes rock!

Seems like I'm one of few lucky ones (atleast for few hours/days to come perhaps). I'm getting Themes Tab under Gmail Settings and they are awesome. Currently I'm using Mountain Theme with Kathmandu as location. Sweet!

No more boring standard Gmail interface.. finally!

The init Magazine Issue #2

The second issue of The init Magazine has been released.

You can download this (and past issues) from here: http://ioefoss.ioelive.com/

Direct link: http://ioefoss.ioelive.com/theinitmagazine/theinitmag02.pdf

Mirror: http://www.meronepalma.com/initmag/ (Thanx to Dhruba Adhikari)

Facebook deactivated, i'm on Twitter

Finally i managed to gather some guts to deactivate my Facebook account. I'm most of the time infront of computer and internet is always on and I cant resist checking out the stuffs that happens there.. Not exactly a 'Facebook addict' (I've seen extremes) but it sure was wasting a lot of my time.

It's been more than a week now and I'm feeling much productive now.

However, I'm much of a Twitter user now. It's simple, short and is really effective. Aint a time waster like Facebook too.

follow jwalanta at http://twitter.com

But Facebook Deactivation aint permanent though, I'll be back on it if I get less busy. Facebook was good for killing time when I was hell free some time back.

(Psst.. this was the main reason, i felt like real unlucky.. :D)

Source: http://xkcd.com/300/

Muktinath Trek Journal

Prajwal and Mahesh have published the journal of our Muktinath - Thorang Pass Trek in D2's blog site EverestUncensored along with all the photos. Have a look..

http://www.everestuncensored.org/3351/2008/11/12/muktinath-thorang-pass-trek-journal/

PS: My Flickr gallery of the trek is here.

GNOME auto-dim timeout

Since version 2.22.2 GNOME has introduced a new feature in power management - Autodimming the screen after some inactivity. Although this feature is direct copy from MacOSX, it's a really nice one. But the default timeout of 30 sec seems too short for most cases. I was wondering how to increase it and here's how:

1. Run gconf-editor. (Press Alt+F2 and enter 'gconf-editor')
2. Go to /apps/gnome-power-manager/backlight
3. Change the value of idle_dim_time. It's in seconds, 60 seems to be reasonable.

BTW, gconf-editor is like regedit in Windows. A lot of system tweakings can be done through this.