Almost all computer users encounter times when they wish they hadn't deleted the file they just did so moments ago. Sometimes files disappear in weird program crashes - something which happened to me tonight. Sometimes it is done accidentally. Sometimes you need to spy on someone. Whatever the occasion, recovering the deleted file can be extremely handy and might save hours of work.

The good news is that deleted files CAN be easily recovered. It is possible to do so even if you deleted the file permanently, even if you emptied up the Recycle Bin and sometimes even if you formatted the disk. This applies for more or less all popular read/write storage systems with the exception of CDs and DVDs. The recovery process requires special software to accomplish the task but fortunately such software is freely available and are quite easy and straightforward to use. Usage typically follows in the form of selecting which disk to try recover files from and then letting the software do a "low level" scan of the disk. After a while, the software will list out the files on the system including any found deleted files. Files can then be selected and saved.

My particular favourite for the task is Handy Recovery 1.0. It is freeware and is available for download from the vendor's website. It has an uncluttered interface, is easy to use and did a good job of helping me recover some (accidentally :p) deleted assignment work tonight!

Candy ranks high among my staple food. Tonight, after a tiring ordeal involving the capture, torture and eventual murder of three "jumbo" flies which had harassed me and my food after managing entry into my apartment, I went out and got myself some candy along with a Red Bull and some chilli.

Eating chilli with "minicable" candy (and a bit of dried fish) reminds me of times long gone when I heartily ate scraped "kaashi" mixed with sugar and "valhoa mas". The mixture was made and eaten inside the "kaashi falhi". It was just so yummy! It's a taste I loved and miss. (Anyone ate it? It's supposed to be a traditional snack!)

I was moving the sites we had on our server when I found the tab-delimited file I used to import data into the Online Radheef I launched sometime ago. The data it contains is extracted from the original Radheef software published by the National Centre for Linguistics and Historical Research. There ARE mistakes in it contents - partly a reflection of the mistakes in the texts in the original Radheef and partly errors that had creeped in when I had extracted and formatted the data.

Anyway, I am putting up the data for grabs. It can be used for many a purpose - Dhivehi spelling checks, reverse word lookup by word definition etc. Feel inspired, make something useful and share!

- Download the Dhivehi Radheef in CSV format ( 907Kb, zip )

Have fun.

Moving is tough. Not just in the real world but also in the virtual world. Technova is currently moving our sites to a new server. The old server just couldn't handle the load it was under! I hope the new one doesn't fizzle out and die every two days...

I just finished moving my blog. I had taken it offline while I was moving the stuff around. So, viola! :p

A few weeks ago, I demoed an AJAX based widget for sending SMS intended to be used on websites and blogs. As I mentioned in that post, here is the source code to the widget ready for cannibalization. Extract the ZIP file and read the "readme.txt" for instructions. The "templates" folder contains the CSS and image files ready for customization and tweaking.

- Download the WebSMS Widget source

Enjoy

I am still laughing hours after watching the movie "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" at the cinema tonight. It definitely tops as the funniest movie I've seen. Borat, I like!

The movie "Borat" is based on the character by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, who also created the comedy character "Ali G". Borat used to feature as a minor segment called "Borat's Guide to UK/US" in the Ali G series. Borat Sagdiyev is a Kazakhstani TV reporter exploring the western world. The movie shows him tasked by the Kazakhstani government to make a documentary on the culture of the "US of A". The movie is a mix of documentary/candid-camera sort of film making. As usual, Sacha manages to provoke and piss off people with Borat's sexist, homophobic attitude and anti-Jew, anti-Christian, anti-gypsy comments. Check out the movie trailers at http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/borat/trailer/. You can view the clips of Borat appearances from Ali G episodes at http://www.boratonline.co.uk/

Ali G is an absolute favourite of mine, especially the Ali G UK series - if you haven't seen it then I highly recommend watching it. Watch this Ali G interview where he talks to Posh Spice and David Beckham for a little introduction to the Ali G series.