On Windows XP and other variants of Windows , you can get rid of double clicking .By default when you want to execute an application by clicking on the desktop or in Windows explorer you have to double click it.
But if you want to reduce the number of times you click  your mouse , you can change this default behaviour by Enabling single click in Windows Explorer.
Here are the instructions to Enable single click.

1. Open Windows Explorer(Not internet Explorer) by pressing the Win+E key or by typing explorer in Start->Run
2. Click on Tools in the menu
3. Click on Folder Options
4. Check the radio button "Single Click to open am item(point to select)"
5. Then check the radio button "Underline icon titles only when I point at them"

This will significantly reduce your double clicks.This option is applicable to the Windows Desktop also.

posted at: 18:35 | category: /windows | permanent link to this entry

Over a period of time i have collected some tweaks which really speed up firefox.
Here are the tweaks.If you want to just copy paste in your prefs.js you can scroll to the bottom of this post and copy paste it.
Various config options with description

user_pref("browser.cache.disk_cache_ssl", true);//Enable Disk cache for SSL.Be careful if you are on a public computer don't use.
user_pref("browser.chrome.favicons", false);//Disable Favicons.They are fancy initially but unnecessarily increases requests on the server
user_pref("browser.chrome.site_icons", false);//Disable Favicons.They are fancy initially but unnecessarily increases requests on the server
user_pref("network.dns.disableIPv6", true);//If you don't use firefox on a ipv6 network disable it as it will increase your browsing speed as it will not wait for Ipv6 dns requests.
user_pref("network.dnsCacheEntries", 120);//Number of DNS entries to keep in memory.
user_pref("network.dnsCacheExpiration", 600);//Number of seconds DNS entries are cached.
user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true);//Enable pipelining
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.maxrequests", 8);//Max requests for pipelining
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.ssl", true);//enable pipelining for SSL that is HTTPS
user_pref("network.http.proxy.pipelining", true);//Enable pipelining for Proxy
user_pref("network.prefetch-next", false);//Disable fetching all links on a given page.This is useless and wastes precious internet bandwidth by downloading each and every link on any page you search

Code to copy paste in prefs.js in your profile directory.

posted at: 16:21 | category: /firefox | permanent link to this entry

After I installed Virtual Box guest additions  , i expected that the guest will sync up the time automatically with the host.
But it never happened.
Anyways , you need to execute the following command as root everytime you reboot the guest unix os.

#vboxadd-timesync --daemonize

This will run in background and will sync up the time with the host OS.

posted at: 03:49 | category: /virtualization | permanent link to this entry

After I installed Virtual Box guest additions on my debian lenny guest , shared folders just won't work.
No matter what  i did i kept on getting the following error

/sbin/mount.vboxsf: mounting failed with the error: No such device

Finally after spending a couple of days figured  out how to resolve this.

You need to execute the following command as root everytime  you reboot your debian guest os

#modprobe vboxvfs

Another , thing to remember that you cannot mount a drive like C:\ as a shared folder or you will get the following error

/sbin/mount.vboxsf: mounting failed with the error: Protocol error

So make sure that your shared folder is a directory on the host OS.

posted at: 03:46 | category: /virtualization | permanent link to this entry