Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

January 8, 2015

Microsoft Office now available for Android tablets

Filed under: Computer Software,Tech Related — Suramya @ 11:35 PM

MS is spending a lot of time and effort trying to overcome the cloud of their previous actions where they did their level best to eradicate their competitors by any means necessary, even if they were morally in a grey area. The latest volley in this effort is their move to make MS Office available on the Android tablets for free. They have MS Word, MS Excel and MS Powerpoint available and the reviews so have have been very good even though the apps are technically still in Preview mode.

Today, we are excited to announce that we are further expanding the preview. We want more feedback from more users to ensure that Office apps work well on a range of different Android tablets before launching the official apps. To participate in the preview, you can use an ARM-based Android tablet running KitKat or Lollipop, with a screen size between 7″ and 10.1″. Starting today, anyone can go to Google Play and download the Word, Excel and PowerPoint preview apps. No waitlist. No requesting access. Just go and download the apps!

Office apps are one of the apps that need to be there on every OS. I have tried a lot of the alternatives like OpenOffice and other clones but I keep coming back to MS Office because of the stability and compatibility that it gives me with other Office users. On my Linux machine I use Crossover to have a native install of Office and it works great. When I get some time and restore Android to my Tablet (I am trying to install Kali Linux on it) I will try Office out on it even though I don’t see myself editing a lot of documents on the tablet.

Well this is all for now. Will write more later.

– Suramya

Source: androidcentral.com and Microsoft Blog Announcement

January 7, 2015

Over 2,400 classic DOS games now playable in your web browser for free

Filed under: Computer Software,Interesting Sites,Tech Related — Suramya @ 11:28 PM

Last year the Internet arcade released over 900 classic arcade games playable in a browser to the public. Not satisfied with that accomplishment they topped it by releasing the over 2400 classic DOS games to the public and as before they are all playable in your web browser. The list of games include classics like Prince of Persia, The Oregon Trail, Castle Wolfenstein and many many more. This collection sure brings back a lot of memories for me.

If you’re a PC gamer of a certain age (cough), you’ve probably lamented that many of the titles you played as a kid are hard to use on modern systems without downloading emulators or waiting for special re-releases. Well, it just got a lot easier to relive your gaming glory days. The Internet Archive’s growing collection of web-based retro games now includes roughly 2,400 MS-DOS classics

I think I am going to be spending some time ensuring that the games function correctly in a browser. Purely for verification of the work done here of-course 🙂

– Suramya

Source: engadget.com

January 6, 2015

Welcoming 2015 with camping and live music

Filed under: My Life,Travel/Trips — Suramya @ 8:18 PM

This year I decided to do something different for New Years and instead of the usual club/house party I went for a 48 hour camping event with live music. Think of it as a music festival with camping. The event is called Chasing Storm and it happened near Coorg which is about 270 km from Bangalore.

I Left for the event at 5am on the 31st and got there by 9:30am, unfortunately the entry for the camping area wasn’t opened up till 12:30pm because they were still in the process of setting up the tents and ensuring that folks didn’t get any reptilian visitor’s at night by spraying stuff to subdue snakes. Once we were in there wasn’t a lot to do till evening so we just hung around and chatted with other folks attending the festival. In the evening the live bands started playing and some of them were really good. I specially liked Swarathma and Solder.

The highlight of the event for me was getting to listen to Usha Uthup live. She is one of my all time favourite singers and hearing her in person was an awesome experience. It made the entire trip worth it. Even though the lady is 67 years old (she announced it on stage) the energy she has is amazing. I wanted to take a photo with her and get her autograph but wasn’t able to as she was swamped and then left before I got the chance.

In any case I was busy chasing the other star who was also in attendance, ‘Rajit Kapur’ who played ‘Byomkesh Bakshi’ in the early 90’s TV series. The series is one my favourite Indian detective shows. So meeting him was a great pleasure. I did manage to get a photo with him (see below) and talk to him for a few mins. And before you ask; No I did not tell him that my sister named her dog after him (Vyomkesh) as I didn’t want him to beat me to death. 😉



Me and Rajit Kapur (Byomkesh Bakshi) at Chasing Storm

Here are some pics (A lot of the night photos didn’t come out too well because of the disco lights) I took during the performances at Chasing Storm .



Usha Uthup performing live at Chasing Storm


Solder live at Chasing Storm


Swarathma taking a bow

Finally here’s a photo of the camping area where we spent two days. Well, sort of… didn’t really get that much sleep over the two days because of the sheer no of things going on at the time.


The Camping ground

The drive back was a bit painful because at 5am the visibility was down to maybe 2 mtrs and it took me about an hour to cover 10kms. Once the sun came out around 6 am the visibility improved and I was able to pick up a bit of speed but it wasn’t till about 7-7:30 that I was able to drive at a speed higher than crawling. Finally made it to Bangalore at 11am and went straight to work so that was fun. Survived that day mostly on Red bull and Coffee.

Over all it was a good experience and I had fun so it was worth the 500+ Kms drive. Well this is all for now. Will write more later.

– Suramya

PS: This was supposed to be posted last week but didn’t really have the energy required to write/think so kept pushing it out. But better late than never right?

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