...that damn slave go?

The 2006 version of Pwop Productions Inc's website has officially been launched. Take a look at what Pwop (in my, and others, opinion, THE place to go for making podcasts) has to offer at http://www.pwop.com

The new Pwop website was created by us in record time (something under 2 hours - from pixels to code, everything!).

Vista keeps getting better! Sure, there are still many bugs and improvements to be done, but this is a very stable work, and we're doing all our WPF experiments in Vista now.

Setup still managed to erase my Windows XP from the bootloader, and had to do the same thing as with the previous CTP. But other than the experience has been very good.

There are some neat new graphics - especially the Aero cursors now on by default!

I also noticed that the performance of WPF applications is much better on this build. There is a small glitch with ExprID and Vista, tho. Unless I disabled Desktop Composition, the menus dont show or rather don't draw.

I highly recommend trying out this build!

Didn't you read the title?

Parvez Ansari, the new Chief Software Architect of Nukeation Studios, is being shown the world of Nukeation.

For those of you who don't know (seriously!?) the guy with the guitar is Carl Franklin.

Just missed him. What? No ... that's the title of his blog!

I should've blogged this days ago, but an accident (broken leg) had kept me away from the computer for some time.

Anyways, I would like to take credit (until I am served a notice) for pushing Andy to start his own blog, which was also *ahem* designed by yours truly. I seriously advise you to subscribe to his blog. Andy is kind of a guru to me (I don't call him Andy-Wan for nothing) and he will (supposedly) be posting pearls of wisdom on his blog soon.

http://blog.andyeick.com

And don't forget to check out the new gallery of cool photos (the GALLERY tab on top of the blog)!

Really, big, big, big things. Seriously, if you knew about it, your eyes and mouth would water. Your fingers would twitch.

I can't remember when I last knew something this important and mind boggling.

Do you want to know?

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Do you REALLY want to know?

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Do you REALLY REALLY want to know?

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Really?

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Can't tell you, sorry. NDA. What can I say?

Windows Vista build 5456 is just plain cool! I love the new animations and graphics, as well as all the little updates and the stability. But when I installed 5456 last night (the media wasn't corrupt, thankfully), it installed in about 40+ minutes (on a 2GB RAM / P4-HT 3GHz) and I was presented with a black blank screen with a little screwed up strip of garbled pixels at the bottom. Y'know, the kind you get if you yank the VGA cord out of the display card's port. Anyways, if I wait a minute or two, it loads ok - something with the display drivers, I guess.

So, everything is ok, but when I went to reboot into my old WinXP, I saw only one "Microsoft Windows" entry in the dual-boot window. And that led to Vista.

I panicked for 5 minutes, experimented for 20, and went online for help after that. All the info I needed was found here.

The problem is that good ol' boot.ini has been replaced by the new bootloader that ships with Vista. It controls which OS loads, and stays even if you rip out Vista.

Here's what you do. Load Vista, go to START | Programs | Accessories, right-click Command Prompt, and click RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR. Then punch in the following command lines, one by one. The italics lines are my comments.

BCDEDIT /create {legacy} /d "Windows XP SP2"

The /d is just the description, and can be anything you want. I suspect Vista overwrites your description regardless. You may also  get some message about {legacy} already existing. Ignore that, and go with the following.

BCDEDIT /set {legacy} device boot

BCDEDIT /set {legacy} path \ntldr

BCDEDIT /displayorder {legacy} /addlast

Each command should return a "operation completed successfully".

Reboot, and you will see the Legacy Windows in the boot list. You can log on to Vista, go to Control Panel | SYSTEM | Advanced Settings | Startup and Recovery, and select the legacy item as the default loader. Or enter the following in the command line as before:

BCDEDIT /default {legacy}

It wasn't too much trouble, but the boot thingie in Vista does have its problems.

Power failure. Gradual, yet instantenous power loss, caused the backup power to not hold up. System rebooted. Possible corruption of ISO of 5456. 538MB left. Integrity failure will require a re-download of the ISO. 5 gigs of bandwidth down the drain. Sithspit.

Microsoft is committed to splurging my bandwidth. ~3 hours to Vista build 5456.

With a few hundred novels and comics, the Star Wars EU (Expanded Universe) is a mess at the moment. The mess is that two-thirds of these were written before the prequel trilogy was finished. And this creates some massive gaps and inconsistencies.

The past of the Jedi being the biggest of those, and Imperial past (post-RotS, pre-ANH) as well. As a Star Wars loyalist (aka freak), it just rips me apart when I think of the whole Callista and White Current and Luke's supposed mother.

Inconsistent lines include:

• The past of the Jedi ("Children of the Jedi", for example)
• The White Current deal ("Black Fleet Crisis", I think)
• Creation of the Empire, Palpatine's rise to power
• How lightsabers work (eg, in some stories they work underwater, but not in others - "Splinter of the Mind's Eye")
• Missing Planets (Where the heck is Naboo in the new generation?)

In the more high profile works of Zahn, Denning, and Stackpole, some inconsistencies have been ironed out.

There are also many minor inconsistencies because these books are not published in a linear timeline, but more like all over the place.

As a programmer, when you're dealing with legacy code you have usually two options: Create a go-between app that acts as a liason between the old and new code, or rewrite the old stuff with new tech.

I think the latter is the answer for Star Wars books. Not EVERYTHING has to be rewritten. For example, in Star Wars X-Wing: Solo Command, there is a line: "I couldn't prevent Senator Palpatine's rise to power..." could be changed to "I couldn't preven Chancellor Palpatine's rise to power..."

Some good stuff can be rewritten if the author wishes and can, which would just give them pure new sales for a book that people like me bought. It would be much better than the mix and match efforts they are trying to put up with right now.

At the time of writing, I have read 192 novels (24+ re-read more than 3 times), and over 380 comics.

In the thick of things, I have about 4 to 8 different applications running on both my monitors and quickly opening various folders and launching applications or command lines is a pain. Using Start | Run has a peculiar problem - you can't enter too many things - the history is limited. And I hate running Start | Run everytime, its too inefficient.

So, today, while working, I quickly cobbled together a quick solution  QuickNuke. I linked to one of the MM keys on the keyboard. It sits in the systray, and does not load automatically on startup. Hit the launch key and you get this window. It's explorer powered. Drag any shortcut (or an item while holding ALT) into this window and it will make a shortcut!

Double-click the shotcut, and you're done. Hit escape to hide the window.

This is very crude at the moment, but I will whip it up into shape soon.

This application is released under the IDGAC (I-dont-give-a-crap) license, so feel free to download it from http://shrinkster.com/gbk. Suggestions and feedback are welcome.

I recently created a website for IEWatch Software LLC. www.iewatch.com - the creators of IEWatch, a cool little addin for IE. As a beta tester, I was offered a copy of the software. Initially I kept thinking, okay, might be useful in SOME situations, but why would I waste a hundred bucks on this app.

And for the first week or two I used it, I seriosly did not think it would ever be useful for me. While I was working on another project (an ecommerce asp.net 2.0 app), I kept running into a problem where the payment processor kept returning blank values. The usual debug features were not helping, and with the 48 hour deadline approaching, I was starting to panic. This is where I finally got to REALLY use IEWatch. The data being posted by the payment processor was encrypted, but IEWatch was able to quickly help me capture the data, see where my code was wrong (Hey, even *I* make mistakes, y'know!) and thankfully made the deadline.

I highly recommend anyone working with web apps to try this baby out. Hop on over to http://www.iewatch.com and try the demo. And no, I was not paid for this endorsement. It is genuine.

Here’s something I always wanted to write about – one of my favorites places in the world! I have always been a nature nut (or as some say, a nut by nature) and I relish any chance to hop on over to Solitude. Now, yesterday at dawn, June 26th, I was kinda stressed out, NukeBall had to be delayed (for the last time) to July 24th, and needed a break. I had been working all night (all through the rain and ten gazillion power failures) and suddenly I noticed it was freakin’ red outside. It was dawn and I hadn’t noticed.

For a very arid desert-like area, you don’t get too much visibility as there’s always sand blowing about. But the rain had cleared the air, and the red and blue sky was amazing! Like I mentioned, I love going to Solitude. It’s a small mountain range about 6 miles from where I live (See map below). Officially, the place has no name. It’s triangular sedimentary rock formation, probably 3 times higher than the town (from sea level), and is a very quiet place, though I’m afraid “civilization” will overrun it in a few years. Sigh. I have been going there practically all my life. I named it Solitude (though it has been called other things as well). Would’ve planted a flag there, but the rocks are too solid.

Anyway, so I’m fighting those little bugs that come out after a good rain and at 70kmph on a 150cc bike on wet roads, you hate them! Soon enough I would find out how deadly these little critters are!!

Here is a shot taken at about 5:30am, and the second at 6:10am:

I rarely go to Solitude in the mornings. Mostly coz I sleep in the mornings. Nature nut that I am, I started chasing after all these birds and small animals I never get to see at any other time. The first was this cute little brown owl. Unfortunately, it was too skittish and the only shots I got were out of focus. For the few hours I was there afterwards, it kept teasing me by calling me out from the cliff floor, and even did a couple of flybys.

While I was trying to find the perfect cam setting in the rapidly changing light, I heard a weird noise behind me. I turned around to find a pair of Mongooses (or is it Mongeese?). Apparently, it was a mating pair and I had intruded. The male was big (easily 2 feet+) and was baring his teeth and growling. I remember doing something similar when someone last interrupted me, so I quickly got away. No pictures of them, unfortunately, but I did get a quick shot of their den.

As I was trying to leave the mongoose territory, a damned bug flew right in my face, and I almost swallowed it. And in that moment I panicked for second, sadly, and stepped onto an unstable ledge right on the edge of the cliff. The ledge broke, and this nature nut almost cracked! I fell about 4 feet, right on the knees, and missed falling off the cliff by hardly 6 or 8 inches. (Note to self: lose some weight). Parts of me are still aching. Nasty fall.

Of course, the day could only get better from there. The photo you see below is of the nesting grounds (or rather small caves) of various birds, including a few small brown owls, a few dozen parrots, and a few exotic looking birds I don’t know the English (or Scientific) names of. This is a very dangerous place. The rock is very brittle, just like the ledge I stepped on. If you fall from this place, you fall on some seriously sharp rocks and cactuses! Of course, there is a still bigger danger. Look at the huge (4”-12” wide) crack in the hill. It goes on for a few hundred meters. It was caused in the 2001 quake, and keeps getting bigger with every subsequent aftershock and now new quakes (4.7 on the Richter scale, 4 days ago). While the thing is solid and stable, you never know when it will suddenly fall off. The sharp rocks I mentioned are the remnants of the adjoining huge ledge that fell in the big quake.

The photo below is of a strange moth-like insect that often likes to hang around on these black rocks. These weird creatures make for great art study.

There is something strange about me (yes, yes, ONE of the things that’s strange about me) – I never really liked mammals. Give me cold blooded animals anytime! I love reptiles and amphibians. I had three pet tortoises growing up (they all live in the wilderness now). One of them was even named Raphael! So, as I moved closer to the avian nesting grounds, I saw this big (8”+) chameleon. Now, these are a different species (or rather sub-species) of the normal chameleon found in rainforests, tropics, etc. These chameleons are more adaptive to the dry area. Usually, these lizards are very shy and run off when you approach them. But this one was amazing. I was able to get within a couple of feet of it and it didn’t move. Heck, it even posed for the camera! Check out the perfect profile shot below. I sat next to it for almost 15 minutes and took many photos. After that it got tired and moved down the cliff wall. It was a great experience! I was "One with the Reptile".

It started getting cloudy after that, and I had to split before the rain started again (digital camera, y’know).

This place is a sanctuary for me. I came here first in 1989, and have been coming here almost 4 times a week since then. It can get dangerous at times. I’ve encountered several spitting cobras (one was a giant 12 foot, red toned cobra!!) that can spray their venom 10 feet away. And they're severely venemous. Wild dogs and wolves are often a problem if you go deep into the hills. But the most fearsome thing I’ve seen here was a panther cub back in 1997 or 98. It was probably adolescent. I was alone. My old SLR had just run out of film. Thankfully it was young enough to be scared of me as much as I was scared of it. I quickly got out of there, and have not ventured that far again. I was later told that a whole pack had moved into the mountain range and were even picking off cattle from a nearby village. Thankfully, haven’t seen them since.

It’s a great place. If you’re in the Bhuj area, just head up on Mundra Road, for about 9 kilometers. Just give me a holler and I’d be glad to show you around.

I know at least one guy who is itching to roam this place again! Right, Parvez?

Now this is a welcome sight! It rained here yesterday! To most people out there this is not a big deal, but when you live in a place where it rains about every 3 (or more) years, it's very important. When it rained a LOT in 2003 and the whole region was green, that was the first time I saw so much grass here in my whole life!

Anyways, this year seems promising. Another cool thing about the rain is that brings out all these insectoids that you usually don't see. For example, I spent 20 minutes chasing this fast little bug. As a student of both nature as well as art, it pays to study these little strange creatures. Just take a look at the beautiful carapace. It is METALLIC! Of course, when I got too close, it opened up from the behind and sprung two wings, came right in my face, sprayed me with what I believe to be insect pee or something, and flew away. But not before I got some cool shots of it!

In a week or two, I'm planning on going one-on-one with some big Crocs at a sanctuary not far from where I live. Now that will be something to remember. Need to get more memory for my cam.

June is going to be big for me. More than a few notable events are just around the corner.

The first being the renaming of my blog from Digital Exile to nAesthetic. I’m going to focus more on aesthetic than clowning around on my blog. A strong purpose in life (blogging life). You, in the RSS aggregator, hop on over to www.naesthetic.com (or the old www.nukeation.net). The blog looks hotter than ever!

The second will be the revamp of Nukeation Studios site for our 8th anniversary. The new site is expected to go live on the 9th of June.

The third, which is kind of unfortunate, is my 23rd birthday on June 17th. I find solace in the fact that while I may grow old, I refuse to grow up. And inversely, as a child prodigy, I have more than two decades of programming experience now. Ah, 128BASIC on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum+ in 1987. Those were the (crappy) days.

The fourth, and perhaps most important, will be the release of NukeBall – the first in a series of products we will be releasing! As soon as NukeBall is out the door, we can focus on the WinFX tools we have been prototyping!

Focusing on client projects and NukeBall has taken up most of my time. Now with NukeBall out of the door soon, and the new nukemeister Parvez joining the gang, I will finally have some time to resume my old blog projects.

First of all I will resume the Exploring WPF series of screencasts. Carl Franklin has given me some tips on how to make it better. Secondly, some of the free dev tools like Mapee and NukeControls and all that. I also need to give a major update to Nukeation Labs’ website. I have so much content just lying around.

As the name suggests, I will be focusing a LOT on aesthetics. The new UX revolution is gonna make aesthetics a LOT more important that they have ever been.

Now this is one guy who should NOT be cloned. Ever. Why? Read on. This is part of an email conversation we had last night (reminded me of the days when IM was not yet born).

For those of joining us late, Andy Eick is a brilliant - albeit idiocyncratic - friend and client. And where the heck have you been?!

Andy, you knew I was gonna blog this. NDA me next time.

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ANDY:

got my new pen [for tablet pc, tc 1100] today -- the eraser is really cool, adds a bunch
 
i totally give, i can't believe i'm asking for support on a freakin' pen.
 
It came with a small circular band? what the heck is that for?  it looks like a ring but it isn't a full circle.
 
Plus, Is there a trick to getting the button to work?  I have the tick box "use pen button to right click' ticked, but i still have to press and hold...

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ME:

Ooooooh, I love this. I get to harpoon your ego. :D
 
The band we're talking of should have a slit in the middle with a sort of hole. Now you put your pen's nib in that hole, press the ring from the sides, and PULL. It's for pulling out the nib and replacing it. Took me a whole of 5-10 minutes to figure it out.
 
Normally, I would just assume that there is something wrong with the pen button receiver on your tablet than think you don't know how to use the freakin' right-click button. But after this ring thing, I wonder. Look, open the Tablet PC tutorial that ships by default, and see the animation that shows how to use it.
 
If you can't find the TPC tutorial and the animation, you are no longer worthy of having a tablet. Pack it in nicely and ship it to 380, Aiya Nagar, Bhuj, GUJ 370001 India. :D

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ANDY:

normally, i'd come back with something smart alecy, but you know, i deserve this one. 
 
(Didn't even occur to me that you'd replace the nibs) -- and the right click thing, you hold the button, then tap the screen -- i was just pressing the button)

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ME:

Oooooooooooooooooooooh, I KNEW IT! THINK, MAN, THINK! We can't have good, if not great, devs of our time not think of this! Seriously. I even WROTE the whole process in a previous email if you remember. I specifically said "hold button, tap screen while holding button". Sweet mother of God! Dude, c'mon!

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ANDY:

do you think i got where i'm at today by "thinking" and "reading", puuhh-lease, thinking is for chumps.

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ANDY:

btw -- let me revise that customer testimonial ---

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ME:

Threats, Mr. Eick? Really?

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ANDY:

moi?, never.  I did say this new pen has the eraser on it, no?

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ME:

Why do I feel like James Bond strapped to a table and a laser beam is coming near my special place?

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And to think I considered him sort of a mentor to me! Thankfully, I do learn from my mistakes, so after that last email, I changed the subject.

PS. the "real" (ie, less exciting) Andy can be seen at http://www.andyeick.com/professional.aspx

It's a nice evening. The sun is setting, Jeremy Soule's "Glory of Cyrodiil" is playing in the background, and I'm just plain damned excited about the positive turn this year is finally taking.

Too many things have gone not-quite-right this year, but the tide has finally turned! NukeBall is now in Beta and very soon shall be released in all its glory. We have a few more juicy products in the works. I finally got that seed out of my teeth!!! Oh, and of course, a new "Dark Lord" is joining Nukeation in about a month or so!

Parvez Ansari has been a good friend for many years. We always dreamt of working together some day. Well, it's some day now! Parvez moved away a couple of years ago when he became something or the other at CARE (I don't remember the exact title he bore, but he was like 2 inches short of being God at the IT dept in Care). Anyways, he has decided to leave his current divine job and take up the role of being my second-in-command at Nukeation Studios. Imagine that! He either truly loves Nukeation or is totally insane! Either way he's just what we need.

Parvez is a Microsoft Certified Professional, and is an expert when it comes to technology of just about any kind. He has also served as an instructor at a major national technology institute. Now he will be taking up many of my responsibilities as I move on to focus a bit more on WinFX services as well as some of the retail products we are cooking up. You can expect the creative level at Nukeation to go way up as soon as he joins!

At Nukeation, Parvez will be in-charge of planning and executing projects for our clients as well as supervising certain areas of our retail software development. While I will still take part in most of our work, Parvez will be taking over many of my previous responsibilities as I mentioned. This is very cool since I will get to do more graphics, planning, and marketing than coding. I will also be focusing more on our "n" line of products that start with NukeBall (releasing on 27th June).

We will also unveil a special online service in August/September, targetted specifically for Indian literary institutes. Parvez will be spearheading that project (Codenamed "Timberwolf").

I can't wait for him to join. I need a vacation!

The sun has set completely and the mosquitos are now attracted to my Tablet's light, time to head in.

The first big milestone for Nukeation Studios' retail effort.

NukeBall Express Edition Beta 1 is now finally available for the public. While not feature complete, NukeBall's powerful NukeWads feature is fully functional in this release.

Y'know what? I can't talk more. I'm just too damned excited. Just head on over to www.nukeball.com and check it out yourself!

Oh, we would really appreciate any feedback you can provide! Just drop us a line at beta [at] nukeation [dot] com.

I forgot to blog this. We recently did two websites for Jon "AngryCoder" Goodyear (MS RD from Florida).

www.aspsoft.com - his company's site (one of my fave designs ever)

www.email2face.com - a cool little site that lets you find the face of a person from his/her email

This is a small lizard which has taken to hanging around my window at nights. As the only (big) source of light at night in my neighbourhood, the bugs stalking my window feed Grog (that's what I've named him). Dogs may creep me out, but I like reptiles for some reason.

Now this is quite ironic. A mosquito, found up the hole of an electric mosquito repellent device. The device manufacturer is safe tho, since this guy died there.

Yes, as you can guess one becomes weird when working late nights.

For someone who has been certified an incurable obsessive compulsive site revamper, it took me almost a year to update www.digitalexile.net (my art and photography gallery). I had a cool Flash interface ready near the end of last year, but gathering and organizing and sorting my photographs (which I shoot by the dozen every day) and going through all the old paintings was too time consuming.

I was finally able to update the Flash interface with a new theme and add some other cool stuff (like the slide-menu). You can check out the result at http://www.digitalexile.net

Note: I went overboard with the graphics here. A 1024x768 display running on a 32MB AGP is the bare minimum for this baby. I recommend at least 1280x1024 running on a 64MB or 128MB AGP/PCI-E.

My article has finally been published on MSDN. Thanks to the nice people at MS for letting me write this!

...this is crazy!

NukeBall's release has been finalized. A short new feature list and release schedule has been posted at the official site.

We are still looking for beta testers. The final feature-complete internal beta will be shipped in 3 weeks.

We had a 5.5 quake here last night at 11:30. Lasted more than half a minute and came in 3 distinct tremors. This was not like one of those aftershocks. I was actualling rocking back and forth while running down the stairs and out of the house. The house got a few new cracks - superficial thankfully. No damage anywhere has been reported so far and no one has been hurt.

One of my oldest friends, Nikolai, who was at college a few hundred miles away during the first quake in 2001, called me. This was the first "real" quake he had experienced after he moved back here in 2002. He actually had half a mind (like many others) to sleep outside.

I doubt anybody got much sleep last night. There was another tremor at 2am again. A 4.2 tremor was also recorded yesterday evening, about 7 hours before the big one at late night.

After over almost a hundred tremors of various magnitudes, none has unsettled me as much as the one last night. Nasty stuff. I don't know about moving anywhere else, but I sure hope to get the Nukeation office from the 2nd floor to a ground floor office soon!

No, no - not those Flashers! I mean Macromedia Flash users.

I know many a Flashers have been annoyed (and some downright pissed) at me. One of them actually started yelling at me on Skype. I had to block him!

In any case, yes, I totally acknowledge that I am biased towards Microsoft. If not for them, I'd be a 20-something schmuck with two degrees in computing but still prefering to work at a burger joint. On top of that, I'm a Microsoft Partner (well, technically my company is, but I own my company, so shaddup!) so I've sworn my loyalty to them. But even all that aside, Microsoft provides feature-rich tools that no other competing products can stand up against.

But I think I need to re-address some things I wrote in my "Future of..." post. I wrote about the "three waves" that could potentially crush Flash. While part of me still thinks it to be totally possible, I have come to re-assess some things. Partially, this is because of a couple of discussions I had with a couple of Microsofties (I've stopped naming names. I usually get them in trouble. Sorry about last time, "Mr. X").

The more I dive deeper into WPF, the more I realize it is NOT intended to compete with Flash. Maybe it will compete with Flex. Though, I haven't seen that much adoption of Flex-based apps yet. Maybe Adobe will whip it into shape.

Seriously. If you're one of those people calling Sparkle the "Flash Killer", then I think you oughta give it a shot. It's not really "comfortable" for animation and web purposes as Flash is. And I definetely miss the in-timeline scripting facility Flash provides. You can do that in EID/WPF, but its not as simple.

I would also like to add to my previous post's tirade, that WPF/E is but a small part of WPF which is but a part (well, 1/3 at least) of WinFX. And WinFX - WPF in particular (I can imagine Michele Leroux Bustamante rolling her eyes again) - is going to be what will set Windows apart from Linux and MAC and all.

I don't imagine more than 10% of the industry actively using or trying out WPF at the moment. Y'know, for REAL projects. I'd be more than happy to be proved wrong, of course. But only after using WPF for a real project or two (and I'm not talking simple demo apps, I mean something substantial) will people REALLY appreciate WPF. It sounds good in theory, but it is even better in reality!

Btw, if you haven't noticed, this post does not revolve around a specific point. I'm just ranting. Thank you.

But if you REALLY need me to make some points...

• Flash has an enourmous market cornered that Microsoft does not have a good chance of acquiring.
• Microsoft is smart enough to realize that and is not, in fact, competing with Flash.
• WPF/E is more of a competitor for Macromedia Flex.
• WPF/E will run Flex into the ground. Or Flex will only exist like JSP does with ASP.
• Sparkle DOES NOT have enough flexibility and features required to replace Flash (which was never the point, of course).
• WPF/E is but a part of WPF which is but a part of WinFx. Developers and designers who choose to work under the Microsoft flag best focus on WPF. That's where the gold is.
• WPF will have a bigger impact on "Joe Computer User" than WCF and WWF. Which is totally unrelated to the current topic, but I have to get that in whenever I can for all the years I've spent being labelled "inferior" by developers who consider graphics in the computer world to be sub-standard to code.

Alright, Flashers. Go sleep in peace now. You are no longer under threat.

Recieved in email from Andy Eick:

A while back, Carl wrote about adopting uTorrent and throwing away Azureus. uTorrent was installed along with the PwopCatcher Alpha. Jay Franklin (Carl's brother) wrote in that post's comments about how to let uTorrent pick-up unfinished Azureus downloads.

I finally tried that today. I made a backup of my unfinished downloads (I'm a data-loss veteran. I've been through enough data-loss-hell to last me twenty lifetimes!) and let uTorrent pick 'em up. It took a while for it check the downloads, but as soon as it started the downloads, I was amazed at the massive speed it gave me. Azureus is a bonafide memory hog. And on top of that, for some files I've been trying to download for over a month now, it gave me only 2 or 3 kbps. uTorrent suddenly starts popping 'em at ~12k to ~40k.

While I'm not BitTorrent genius, I'm quite impressed with uTorrent. And its a 150k download!!! Go get PwopCatcher Alpha and let it install uTorrent for you!