IRCTC charges flat Rs 10 on each ticket as their service charge. But why? Cards payment industry has a painful clause that merchants has to bear any fraud. For example, if a fraudster books a ticket with stolen card and later the card owner files a chargeback, IRCTC has to pay the amount back. But the fraudster has finished enjoying travel before owner files a chargeback! So how to does they deal with this? IRCTC decided (like what other merchants do) to take this from consumers as an insurance money. And that’s how an honest poor Indian suffers!

Let’s get back to the business of this post. Apart for typical IRCTC charges, the consumer has to beer additional bank charges too. Refer the list of transaction service fees charged by various banks at IRCTC. All credit card payment gateways charge 1.65-1.8% of transaction amount, Debit cards are charged at flat Rs 10 while net-banking transactions are charged a little more (Rs 10 + Service Tax).

If you want to save a few bucks while booking small tickets (up to Rs 600) use credit cards and debit cards if they are enabled. ICICI has enabled use of Visa debit-cards at credit-card gateways. I typically select Axis PG and use ICICI debit card. As a result I pay Rs 10 + 1.65% additionally.

- ankit

Once installed, you will see IITK’s Proxy Switcher in Tools menu. This extension switches between direct connection, bsnlproxy and vsnlproxy. It only modifies server-address and leaves PORT number as it is.

* This software/extension is provided “as is” and without any warranty or support. The author will not be liable for data loss, damages or any other kind of loss while using or misusing this software. The extension is FREE and copy left.

Problem: While surfing around, I came across a website whose content encoding is not being supported with my latest Firefox v3.5.4 showed me unsupported compression error.

Content Encoding Error
The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because it uses an invalid or unsupported form of compression.
* Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem.

Solution: As per my knowledge web-servers generally use GZ compression and Firefox well supports that. Then what’s wrong here? Digging a bit into Firefox’s ‘about:config‘, I did a search for ‘gz’. The setting network.http.accept-encoding was set to gzip,deflate. What’s wrong? Let’s try setting it gzip,deflate,gz. And it worked!. The catch here is gzip and gz are two different extensions used for the same gzip compression. Eventually, the questions is who’s in fault, Firefox or the website?

- ankit

It’s really a weird behavior and that’s one more reason why I hate Ubuntu (but unfortunately I have to work on Linux box and Ubuntu seems to be the best of all distros). Read on..

Problem: When I connect to wireless network and give it wireless network password, it asks me for default keyring password.
Solution: Pointed out by Ivan Torres. This all starts the moment you change your first Ubuntu password (the one you have set at the time of installation) as it does not change keyring password. So, if your user password is changed, every time you log in Keyring Manager will ask for the password you supplied during Ubuntu’s installation. To fix this go to Applications -> Accessories -> Passwords and Encryption Keys), and then go to Edit -> Preferences menu. Select GNOME Keyring tab and change the password to match your actual Linux user password. Now one you use your

For example, you may have GNU Java as well as Sun Java. (frankly saying, I hate GNU Java, aka gcj)

sudo update-alternatives --config java

[ Where can I see all installed JVM?
On Ubuntu, Java Virtual Machines are installed in /usr/lib/jvm. You can see java-gcj here which comes by default with Ubuntu.
]
- ankit

1. Add caption to your photo
2. Match the background with your Orkut profile’s theme color. This gives stunning effect right into your photo album.
3. And it’s free, even without any watermarks
4. Jpeg/Png/Gif files supported.

-ankit

1. Did you ever wish to run two instances for GTalk? This is possible and plain simple. Navigate to the shortcut that launches Google Talk (if not available, right click on C:\Program Files\Google\Google Talk\googletalk.exe and select Create Shortcut). Open properties. Add /nomutex in the target textbox.
2. To keep GoogleTalk always on top: Go to the registry entry HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Google Talk\Options, create a new DWORD show_pin and set its value to 1. Restart GTalk and you will see a pin near the minimize button.
3. To bring all GTalk windows in front press [Win] + [Esc] keys on keyboard.
4. To write in bold use *this text is bold* and for italic _this is italic_.
5. Coping someone’s avatar: Navigate to %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Google\google talk\avatars\. This directory contains all avatars cached in PNG format (rename them). Search by email in avatar.txt to find your friends avatar.

- ankit

<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
src="http://beemp3.com/player/player.swf" style="width: 290px;" id="126954385" name="126954385" bgcolor="#ffffff"
quality="autohigh" wmode="transparent"
flashvars="playerID=1&amp;bg=0xCDDFF3&amp;soundFile=http://www.tdfast.com/mfiles/headroom-Happy_Birthday_.mp3&amp;autostart=yes"
allownetworking="internal" allowscriptaccess="never" width="290" height="24">


You should replace the mp3 file mentioned under soundFile variable. The autostart=yes variable causes the player to play mp3 immediately (it can be removed).

You can follow this to add jingles on your friend’s scrap book. Here is an example of a Birthday jingle

For more information about customizing refer http://www.1pixelout.net/code/audio-player-wordpress-plugin/

- ankit

[Edited: this one for Happy New Year

<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
src="http://beemp3.com/player/player.swf" style="width: 290px;" id="126954385" name="126954385" bgcolor="#ffffff"
quality="autohigh" wmode="transparent"
flashvars="playerID=1&amp;bg=0xCDDFF3&amp;soundFile=http://www.electricpocket.com/ringtones/Xmas/HappyNewYear.mp3&amp;autostart=yes"
allownetworking="internal" allowscriptaccess="never" width="290" height="24">


This one is a complete hidden (prefect for a Horror show):
<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
src="http://beemp3.com/player/player.swf" style="width: 290px;" id="126954385" name="126954385" bgcolor="#ff0000" border="#H000HH"
quality="autohigh" wmode="transparent"
flashvars="playerID=1&bg=0xFFFFFF&border=0xFFFFFF&text=0xFFFFFF&slider=0xFFFFFF&loader=0xFFFFFF&lefticon=0xFFFFFF&righticon=0xFFFFFF&track=0xFFFFFF&leftbg=0xFFFFFF&rightbg=0xFFFFFF&rightbghover=0xFFFFFF&righticonhover=0xFFFFFF&soundFile=http://www.make4fun.com/download/ringtones/scary/Womans%20Scream%20Of%20Horror.mp3&autostart=yes"
allownetworking="internal" allowscriptaccess="never" width="290" height="24">

]

1. Visual Studio Add-Ins Every Developer Should Download Now, SmartPaster is very handful
2. Create a Debugger Visualizer in 10 Lines of Code: Explains writing debug visualizer. If you cannot read article, downloading binaries and installing the image visualizer would be surely helpful.
3. Line Counter
4. Opening solution folder, See class definition on MSDN2, Search in Google – All of these available at single right click,
5. Visual Studio IDE enhancements: Switch between C/CPP and H files, find document in the Solution Explorer, Cut and copy (plain text only)
6. Free SlickEdit® Gadgets: Auto-copy selection, Line ruler, Indentation guide
7. ZipStudio: Create Zip of you solution with single right click
8. Visual Studio 2005 add-in for sorting imports/using blocks
9. Resource Refactoring Tool: provides developers an easy way to extract hard coded strings from the code to resource files (donkey work )
10. Refactor! for ASP.NET 2.0 : 25 advanced refactoring tools in one package.

- Ankit

A: Almost 2-5 items a day, as I’m an avid Internet user. Let me list down where Acrobat Reader sucks:

1. The Adobe Reader 8 installer a massive 20.8MB setup to download and time consuming setup.
2. Version 5 was roughly fast whereas new versions are becoming more memory hungry and CPU intensive and version 7 is damn hungry. It takes almost 10-15 seconds to load!
3. Frankly speaking, I hate their patents listed in splash screen.
4. If a PDF file has high graphics it sucks further and application hangs for few seconds.
5. Seriously I’m looking for a replacement!

Hmmm! a serious problem that affects my efficiency directly. Let’s search for a better solution. Wow I got it as first result!

Foxit v3.0 is the answer to all my worries. It’s a free light-weight (only 2.98 MB) and amazingly fast PDF viewer and printer. A 19 MB PDF file when opened, virtual memory required by Foxit was just 10 MB against massive 23 MB for Acrobat Reader.

Even the installer is just an extractor and does not require specific permissions to install. Quite handy in cybercafe. Its user interface is same as Acrobat Reader and you won’t feel using a different viewer.

- Ankit