Google Buzz - too much?

Everyone's been complaining on the internet saying Google Buzz is way too much for them to handle due to various issues such as lack of privacy, or "just too much". If it's not for you, you can try these solutions.

Drag and drop the label in to your "hidden labels category"


This will stop highlighting any unread Buzzes in your Gmail account.

Turn off Buzz Completely from the bottom of the page

This will remove the Buzz integration (not permanently). It's a quick fix, and if you ever want to check it out again, you can - by turning it on.

Delete Buzz


In Gmail's Settings, click on the Buzz tab, and you can delete the service from there altogether. Note - by doing this, you're severing any Buzz-related connections and posts.




Hide your followers from prying eyes


Everyone who has Buzz has to make some form of a profile in order to be followed or be a follower - or even Buzz. All your (public) buzzes are made available on your profile - but you can tweak some information on that.

Head over to your profile and disable the "Display the list of people I'm following and people following me" option. 



There are a few other tips that you can take note of, but for now, these four items should help you do what you want with Buzz. Stay tuned for more later on.

PTCL woes - yet again

You'd probably think I'm some retarded spaz. I'm not, just in case.

The reason I'm writing this is because I'm sick down to the butt with PTCL.

First of all, they have filtering software installed on their DSL gateways (not modems, but the machines at their end) which not only slows things down, but stalls web page loading especially at the evenings and nights.

Secondly, other ISPs are charging the same fee that PTCL is charging, except PTCL doesn't include the tax amount. For instance, all other DSL providers in Rawalpindi and Islamabad charge Rs. 1200 per month, which is already the after-tax amount. That's not the case with PTCL.

Thirdly, I was overbilled for the last month - by around Rs. 700 extra. I'm not the only person - one of the guards at the office of the customer support premises had asked me whether DSL was the issue or not, and I said it was. So I'm not alone (yaay!).

Fourthly, they make their customers run from one exchange to another, to another, to another, and eventually, you hit a dead end, only to realize that a part of the problem was fixed.

I'm seriously thinking of ditching PTCL's DSL service and opting for another company in Rawalpindi and Islamabad that has a track record of doing things right on the first go (i.e. Micronet Broadband - dsl.net.pk).

All I have to to is gather some money for the modem, then... meanwhile, wish me good luck!

DSL woes

And that's why I was unable to post for the last few days.

It so happens that I had moved the PC from one room to another, and the DSL modem refused to work in the other room. The wiring is a bit too complicated to tell, but it was a rather bizzare scenario: let's say, it was working perfectly some 3 months back, and now, it wasn't.

I'll try catching up on what I've missed, so excuse this. Meanwhile, I'll enjoy the much-needed rain in the twin cities, after Pakistan's independence day.

Oh - and Happy (belated) Independence Day! :D

Ads?

Blegh! I can't get the ads to show up properly. Before, there were an absurd number of ads everywhere - hey, I'm allowed because I'm trying to do this seriously! But - anyway, in my quest for neatness (and as you can see, the blog's gotten a fresher theme), something's not going well with the ads. I'm trying to fix it. Knock on wood.

Fedora > Fed up

I decided to download the 700MB .iso package and put it on a CD.

First of all, I made a major blunder by writing the ISO file as it is onto the CD - and well - it didn't work (I've never written ISO files before, and Windows doesn't do it natively).

After getting that done, I decided to give it a spin on my system. The desktop is all nice and blue, but I couldn't really use it.

For starters, it took me a while to figure out the network settings. Windows has this pre-configured. Not sure about Ubuntu - I'll try it out someday.

I couldn't find the application manager (or I didn't look for it hard enough).

The LiveCD for Fedora was actually slower than Ubuntu's LiveCD (strange, but true).

Fedora's file manager/explorer is clunky. Have a look at Ubuntu's, and you'll know what I mean.

I read somewhere you can run Windows programs on Fedora without having to use Wine - since Fedora has some other compiler installed. I tried running an EXE - didn't work. I'm sure I did something wrong, but well - it wasn't in the applications menu.

So back to Windows for me. I lost patience that I couldn't do anything efficiently on it - heck, I wanted to see how fast OpenOffice was, but couldn't.

The best part doesn't stop there - when I wanted to quit (shut it down), it got stuck at the blue splash screen. Brilliant, eh? I had to force-reset my PC to get back to Windows (instead of letting it restart automatically).