Changing the GRUB start time.

Well, a couple of days ago I was playing around with the configuration files while trying to get a Canon camera work as a web cam on Fedora 8 ( will be posting soon as soon as I get it working ). I don’t know what went wrong where but I guess I again messed up something somewhere. I booted my machine but the GRUB screen did not show up at all. I thought I screwed up my bootloader once again but rebooting the machine the second time I observed that the bootloader appeared, but only for a fraction of a second. From there onwards, it wasn’t rocket science to figure out what was going wrong.

The start up time in the bootloader config file had changed somehow ( how I dont know ). I just opened : /boot/grub/grub.conf

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,5)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=0
timeout=.1265375487234752873524368426354987123594872135041235182053-481253784
splashimage=(hd0,5)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora (2.6.23.1-42.fc8 )
root (hd0,5)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.23.1-42.fc8 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.23.1-42.fc8.img
title Other
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
~
~


If you notice the timeout in the above file it is some decimal number.
I have absolutely no idea how it changed
I just cleared the decimal and entered the time which I wanted the GRUB screen to display at bootup.

P.S. About the canon camera. I mailed the tech support for Canon and they replied back that using your canon digital camera as a webcam is not advisable as it heats up pretty quickly within 5 to 6 minutes of continuous use. Anyways you get web cams a hell lot cheaper, so why compromise on something that cost you a fortune as compared to web cams.
By the way I am trying out the above just to see if it is possible. Will post as soon as I get it working.

What’s the grey box on the top-left corner of the Gmail Window?

Ok. I have been noticing this speck on the top left corner of the Gmail window from quite sometime now but I am at a loss of words to describe what exactly the “graphic” is supposed to be. It started appearing or rather I’d say I started noticing this graphic some 15 days back but never bothered to find out what exactly it was. It looks something like: ( image courtesy TechCrunchIT)

That was reason enough for me to google it out and I found out I was not the only one who had noticed this.

www.techcrunchit.com/2008/07/05/the-mysterious-grey-box-on-gmail

This link here has an explanation and readers have also have some real “wacky” opinions on what the graphic is. Strange as it seems it appears only in Firefox and Safari browsers not in IE.
And as mysteriously the “box” started showing up it disappeared just as mysteriously.