Vikash Gounder

I have never been a big fan of Microsoft FrontPage or any of the web editing tools by Microsoft. But i had a first look at Microsoft Expression 4 and honestly it is quite impressive, it is nothing like Microsoft FrontPage, must must better and faster in lot of facts (I don’t have any benchmarking results to confirm my claims). To top it off, it has support for HTML5 and CSS3 with it’s impressive IntelliSense (Can easily be accessed by typing Ctrl+Enter on the keyboard).

Okay back to the tutorial. By default DOCTYPE for HTML5 is not enabled in Microsoft Expression 4. Here are the following steps to enable it:

1. Open up Microsoft Expression 4 or older version
2. Click on Tool on the menu and select Page Editor Options…


Access Page Editor Options on MS Expression 4

3. Once the Page Editor Options… windows has popped-up, select the following settings as shown. Select HTML5 for Document Type Declaration and XHTML 1.1 for Secondary Schema. These settings could change in the future as HTML5 becomes more stable and acceptable by most browsers.


Page Editor Options in MS Expression 4

4. Create a new HTML to see the HTML5 DOCTYPE for a HTML Document in MS Expression 4.


DOCTYPE in MS Expression 4

While using Google Desktop, i found that Search within Google Desktop indexes & caches everything, that makes search results extremely fast. Those of you who are used to using the find command on linux or unix, would really love to use that on windows too. Well there are alternatives within Windows and some of them are really good. Well the easiest way of doing

Well the easiest and to some extend practical way of doing this would be have a cache copy of file names in a file and just searching the file. Just open the command prompt and type:

dir C:\  /b /s /on > C:\CachedFileNames.txt

The following would go through Windows C:\ drive and

dir c:\ /b /s /on > c:\Dirlist.txt

Thai Baked Fish with Garlic Bread

It has been a while since i did cooking for my mum and wife. So i decided to visit Nausori Market and i managed to grab some fresh fish (Sabutu). So for lunch i decided to do my version of Thai baked Fish. And to top it off, my wife decided to make Garlic Bread.

Ingredients:

• Fish of your liking
• Tamarind or Lemon Juice
• Thai Coriander Paste
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Red Hot chillies
• Onion
• Fresh Coriander
• Salt
• Fish Sauce
• Soy Sauce
• Rice Vinegar

Preparations:

• Scale and gut the fish
• Wash the fish really well, pat dry with kitchen paper
• In a basin soak tamarind in water, leave it for 10mins. Once soft, squeeze to create thick juice.
• On a large tray pour the tamarind juice over the fish and inside the fish – the purpose is to neutralize the odor and soften the fish
• Refrigerate for 20mins

• Create a Garlic, Ginger and Chilli Paste using a mortar & pestle – or blender (quantity depends on your taste)
• Chop some chillies
• Chop some Onion
• Chop some Fresh Coriander
• To create the marinate, in a basin, pour some
  - Thai Coriander Paste
  - Garlic, Ginger & Chilli Paste
  - Chopped Onion
  - Chopped Coriander
  - 1tbsp Fish Sauce
  - Soy Sauce depending on taste & requirement
  - 2tbsp Rice Vinegar
• Take the fish from tamarind sauce and stuff the marinate inside and all over
• Garnish the fish with chopped chillies (optional) before wrapping in aluminium foil
• Heat oven 20 mins prior to baking time
• Place the wrapped fish in a baking tray and cook for 20mins at 200°C
• Serve with Munched Potatoes or Garlic Bread

Garlic Bread

Ingredients:

• Garlic
• Fresh Coriander
• Salt
• Butter
• Sliced Bread

Preparations:

• Using mortar and pestle, ground the Garlic with Fresh Coriander into a paste. Add salt to taste.
• Apply butter to the bread and lather with Garlic Paste.
• Toast it in a Toaster.
• Serve it warm with Pizza, Thai Baked Fish or just with warm milk tea

Finally got a invitation to test Google Wave and first impression of it is just awesome. It runs very smoothly via Google Chrome even on a 256KB Broadband in Fiji.

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More information coming later

These last couple of days my mum and I have been really busy running around since my grandmum who was 100+yrs old passed away on Dec 25th, 2008. It is very hard for my mother since my father passed away 4 months ago and now grandmum. Lucky she has got me here with her, otherwise it would have been very hard for her.

My grandmum has 9 children; 3 has deceased and 6 are currently alive residing in Fiji, Australia and Canada. Grandmum wasn’t a Indentured Labourer from India, she was born and raised in Nausori, Fiji. I think my Grandpa was a son of a Indentured Labourer and he was 7-10yrs old when he came to Fiji from Calcutta. For more information about Indentured Labourer in Fiji, follows these links:

• Girmitiyas: The Origins of the Fiji Indians
• Indian Indenture System
• Girmitiyas in Fiji

This year would be very memorable for me, since alot has happened in my life in the last 6months. This Christmas has been a sad one for me and same with the New Year. For all the readers, Wish u all a Prosperous 2009.

Recently I bought a new Nokia E71 and it turns out it has a really good battery lifetime. Understandably battery lifetime depends on the usage of your fone. So i decided to test how long the battery lifetime will last and had intended to monitor it too. Unfortunately I totally forgot the monitoring bit and my fone was out of juice this morning.

After charging and switching the fone on. It asked for a SIM PIN which I totally forgot and after 3 failures it asked for a PUKS code; I have no idea what my PUK code was. So I decided to visit www.vodafone.com.fj and on the lower-right is a Live Chat.

I managed to get my PUK code and able to reset my SIM PIN within less than 7mins, way faster than standing in line for a Customer Service. I have to applaud their Live Chat Customer Service and the person who chatted with me was Sailasa. Attached is the transcript of my conservation:

Vodafone_transcript

Just yesterday while trying to login to Gmail, i noticed on the Gmail Home Page on the New Feeds that Gmail Zurich office has rolled out themes which was so long overdue. Previously i used to Greasemonkey to rollout skins when login into Gmail.

This morning when i logged into one of my Gmail accounts, a popup came up mentioning the themes into my account and i used for the preset themes Gmail provides and one word to describe it “AWESOME”. The theme plugin seems to be light and hardly any overhead especially since I’m checking my email from Fiji on 256KB Broadband.

I think they are rolling out themes on the account creation time basis or maybe on the server, since i have another email account with Gmail and the themes tab doesn’t appear under Settings yet. Just looking around to find a way to port own themes and uploading to the server or maybe someone has already done.

But the new theme feature is really nice and superb way to customize your own Gmail account. Excellent Work Gmail Team.

Today is my first day at work at HRmonise in the ICT Park Campus, Statham Campus, Suva Fiji. Since I’m in fiji for the next couple of months, may as well get some work done and earn money. Well currently the company has 4 employee’s including me, 3 developers and 1 tester. Well as always first day @ work is really boring and takes time to get used to the new environment. Work hia is ok, mostly ASP.NET work, i will have to get used to the ASP.NET work, since majority of the work i have done is Open Source mostly, PHP, Perl, Mod-Perl etc etc.

Well i will be posting lot more of the programming stuff later on during Nov and Dec.

When returning from LA to Nadi on 8th, the Air Pacific route seems to be taken up by United Airlines. Review on the United Airlines especially on long flights.

• The Boeing 747 was really old and no inseat tv set.
• catering service is really crap
• especially some of the germans who were vegie’s ended up with either Beef Pasta or no meal
• and breakfast came with pork n beef which 90% of the travelers were non-pork and non-beef eaters

I think majority of the German tourists were really pissed coz of the crap catering and so much turbulence. Another major price change in baggage especially with UA flights, i remember when flying from Sacramento, LAX to Nadi n i was carrying jst 1 camping luggage bag, i was charged US$15 and this time round i was allowed 2 bags free and remaining US$25. I hope not to do anymore long distance flying with United Airlines anymore, i prefer Air Pacific over United Airlines.