Sriram's Blog

The Secret by Rhonda Byrne

2011-12-22T12:29:00.044-06:00

My 28th birthday anniversary was marked with lots of joy, happiness, gifts and surprises. Of all the gifts, the best one was a Harmonica from my fiancé. This post is not about that harmonica but rather about a nice gift from my uncle. It’s a book called “The Secret by Rhonda Byrne”.

First of all, I never have or had the habit of reading books. So to a person like me, if you ask something about spiritual books, I would scream a big NO. I’m just a null pointer having /dev/zero opinions about spirituality”. I always presume that books of that sort are never going to tickle any of my numb nerves. After reading this book, I should say that I didn’t feel anything great about it. But i would accept the fact that the author had made many good points. Sometimes while reading, I felt a bit bored because the author was trying to stress the same point over and over. But on another note, whatever statements the author was trying to emphasize were good. To speak from the heart, after reading this book, I was able to realize and understand the mistakes that i’m doing in my day-to-day life. I can easily consent with anyone that I need to fundamentally shift the way I see and face things in life. I felt its good to bullet out the most important points presented in this book so that it might be useful for others too.

Humans are like a transmission tower emitting a wave of a specific frequency whenever they think. Their thoughts could be a good one or a bad one. In either case, a wave is transmitted. Thoughts are basically magnetic and according to the universal law of attraction - That single thought of yours in turn attracts more and more of similar thoughts and swamps your mind. The final state of your mind and body are determined by those thoughts that you received. Good and healthy thoughts are going to provide you a happy state of mind while the negative or unhealthy thoughts lead you to a bad state of mind. And that’s why its always important to think good and positively in life.
Given a situation in life, its impossible to completely avoid thinking negatively. Negative thoughts might come but don’t drown yourself completely with those. Don’t even try to think too much about “what is wrong or what you should not do”. Rather try to think only about “what is good and what you have to do”. The author quotes an example that Mother Teresa once said that she will never participate in an anti-war rally but she said she will be ready to join if it’s a "peace rally". Don’t let the negative thoughts dominate you and make the law of attraction send you more of negative thoughts. If you want to stop the negative thoughts try to meditate for few minutes or try to do some secret shifters like listening to your favorite music, thinking about some pleasant memories. In short, take control of your mind and think only the good ones.
When you want to reach a goal or when you want to become something in life, always firmly believe that you will reach it and you will get it. Visualize and dream that you are already there and you have already become what you want to. Start loving it. Start visioning it. Start seeing them with your own eyes. A shortcut to manifesting your desires is to see what you want as real. Actions will automatically follow those thoughts and will drive you to success.
Be thankful for what you are and never complain about your current position. If you complain, remember you are talking about a negative thing, you are thinking a negative thought and you are calling the law of attraction to bring in more complaints about yourself into you. Learn to be happy with what you are. Try to help others in need. Always remember to show your gratitude to others.
If you don't know anything that your colleagues and friends are discussing about, be ready to accept the fact. Its always nice to be open and accept the not-known things as you don’t know.. instead of trying to put a fake-show. Its better not to speak up if you don't know 100% about the topic in discussion or question. Exhibiting this character reflects a positive opinion about you and makes everyone feel good about you.
Don’t be over-confident about yourself for everything. But at the same time when you think about yourself, try to feel good and treat yourself with respect and love. If you do so, the law of attraction will show you great things about yourself. Focus on what you appreciate about your friends, colleagues and partner. Learn to love them instead of blaming and complaining. Appreciate and talk only about the goods and strengths. Don’t let your mind to even think about the DON'Ts, When you think good thoughts, talk good things, radiate good energy and reflect good feelings, you become a good person.

The secret behind anything in life is “The law of attraction”. When you understand the behavior of this law and take control of your mind and body, you win your life.

OS X Lion

2011-07-28T00:56:00.091-05:00

Amid all the hype and expectations, OS X Lion was released on July 20th 2011. Though Apple website dropped the "Mac" branding from the OS name starting from this version, I was still able to see the "Mac" word inside the downloaded dmg package under /Applications folder. Even during installation, I could see the word "Mac" everywhere alongside "OS X". Hopefully Apple will take a clear stance in the next versions.

As Apple is not providing any optical media installation source from this version but provides only digital download, i had to burn the installation DMG to a DVD. I agree that this is not needed because even in case your computer crashes, Apple provides recovery mode and Internet recovery modes to fix your dead computer. No need of using optical media to recover from a crash. So i would say, burning install disk is really not needed. But curious minds, don't stop yourself :)

On another note, there were a couple of computer concepts that happily lived with us right from the dawn of personal computing age until the release of Lion. Apple reworked on some of the concepts and sent a bold statement to the computing world "We were all wrong. This is how it should be!!".

And before getting into the details, please note that this post will not talk about all the new features that were introduced in Lion. This just briefs about the changes that I noticed and the ones that I liked or disliked. By doing this task, it provided me an opportunity to explore the applications that i commonly use and to know more about what has changed. Hopefully this might be useful to one or two in internet.

Air Drop
[Bluetooth is dead]
Air Drop is a new feature using which users can send and receive files to other Macs that are in the same WiFi network. No special settings are needed to configure. It just works right out of the box. Apple calls this as "Send it via Air". Gone are the days of Bluetooth. Gone are the days where all communications in a WiFi network has to route via the wireless access point or Hotspot or Wireless Router. This is the age of WiFi Direct where in any two devices that have soft AP can directly communicate between themselves instead going via the wireless access point. Sounds interesting? This is the same technology that is used to perform wireless printing from your iPad.

The cool thing about AirDrop is - it appears in the side bar of finder and when you click it, finder automatically shows all the computers that are WiFi Direct capable. I dragged and dropped a file over another device that showed up in AirDrop. Instantly, i received a popup in the other device that a file is being sent. Once accepted, the transfer happened immediately. Transfer was quick and instant.

Network Sharing
I tried out Network sharing between Macs (using AFP) and it worked like a charm. Apple provides multiple file sharing services using different types of protocols like Apple Filing Protocol (AFP), Server Message Block (SMB) and Network File System (NFS).

Finder

Finder is the default file manager in OS X. There were a couple of improvements that were done in finder. It now includes a new option called “All My files” in Favorites side bar. “All My files” groups & lists all files in your computer based on the file type. It organizes & presents all your files as flow covers which was fantastic and appealing. By default, Finder opens “All my files” which was sort of annoying to me. Instead, I configured Finder preferences to Open “Macintosh HD” (root folder) by default. I had to also enable Status bar and Path bar which were disabled by default.
I wanted to add Pictures and Downloads folder to the favorites side bar as I use them frequently. Adding to side bar is as easy as dragging and dropping the folders to the sidebar.
One more important point to note is: Finder will not show “Library” folder (under your home directory) by default. As you know, Library folder is where all user selected settings live. To temporarily navigate to the "hidden" Library folder, press Option key and the GO menu from the menu bar. Instead if you want to permanently show the library folder, run chflags nohidden ~/Library in Terminal.
If you drag and drop a file with a file name that already exists in the directory where you are dropping, then Finder provides you with an option of merge alongside Replace.

FaceTime
[If i'm ok to just receive calls, why do i need to login in a chat app?]
FaceTime is Apple’s video calling software application that first appeared in iOS4 and then it was inherited into OS X 10.6.6. I did not try out the FaceTime version in 10.6.6 but had a chance to use it in Lion. Before getting into the marvels of FaceTime, I would like to remind that the web camera which comes with MacBook Pro is a 720p camera. By that I mean, it has a resolution of 1024x720 which is 0.92 M pixels. Opening FaceTime will start the webcam as well. It will also recognize your Apple ID and will pull all your contacts from the Address Book application. FaceTime can make calls to other iOS users (who have FaceTime feature) if their phone numbers are present in your Address Book. If the called party doesn’t have a phone number but uses a Mac and you know their Apple ID, then too you can call them using FaceTime. To accomplish this, Apple ties all your Apple device IDs with your Apple IDs and stores in their servers. When you make a call through FaceTime, the request goes to the Apple Servers and from there it is redirected to the called party’s device. The beauty is that the called person need not have their FaceTime application opened in their Mac. The calling request automatically opens the FaceTime application in the called party's Mac and provides the option of Accepting or Ignoring the call.

I wonder why the desktop versions of Skype, Yahoo or GTalk services never got this idea!!

Auto-Correction
OS X Lion imported the text auto-correction feature from iOS. And yes, auto-correction is terrible. It has to be improved, actually has to be improved a lot.

Full Screen Apps
Full Screen Application is a nice feature introduced in OS X Lion. Combined with “Places” (virtual desktop), full screen apps becomes an excellent feature. You can have multiple virtual desktops and have your frequently used apps placed in every desktops. You can even loop around the desktops easily with finger gestures. But at present, only very few number of apps support this full screen app feature. And the shortcut keys to toggle to full screen mode are not the same in all apps. For example, Option Shift F is the shortcut in Chrome, Option Command f in Terminal and Control Command f in Safari. Its different for every application which is kind of frustrating to me!

But, one thing is sure - You know what? I love working in the Terminal app switching it to full-screen mode. It reminds me of the shell consoles seen widely in Linux and Unix systems.

Mission Control
Mission Control & Launch Pad apps are present in the dock and they can also be invoked using gestures. Swiping all four fingers up opens mission control. Mission Control shows dashboard and all the virtual desktops that you are using. Swiping Left and Right using all four fingers iterates through the virtual desktops. You can push any running application to any of the virtual desktops and organize for better working. There is no “Send to Desktop” feature for applications. Had it been, things would have been much easier to organize the applications into the desktops rather than dragging and dropping. This “Send to Desktop” is commonly seen in GNOME desktops.

Launchpad
[No more start menus. Just Pinch & Launch]
Launchpad is the new application launcher in Lion. It displays iOS like icon grid of all installed apps. It has multiple pages and can group apps into folders like in iOS. You can open Launchpad if you pinch with your thumb and three fingers. I don't normally use Launchpad. Instead I open spotlight (Command + SpaceBar) and type the app name that i need to open.

Aqua, Scrolling & Gestures
[Rebirth of Scrolling, Death of Keyboard Shortcuts]

The famous Aqua color was removed and the menu selections are now in dark blue color. Bulged aqua scroll bars are replaced with overlay scroll bar as seen in iOS. The concept of scrolling is now reversed. This took a while for me to adapt but it surely brings me even closer to the screen and content. The bold move of reversing the scroll concept made me to give a deep thought about the concept of scrolling that existed with us all these days. What does the user want? He wants to scroll the content up so that he can look at the content in the bottom of the app window. To do that, he deviated from the content and focused on pulling down the scroll bar which in turn moved the content up. So the old scrolling concept aimed on moving the scroll bar instead of the content. Why didn't we keep it simple? And here comes Apple.. It re-thought about this scrolling action and redesigned it to show "this is how it should be". In Lion, you just need to pull the scroll bar down to move the content down and push the scroll bar up, to move the content up. The presence of overlay scroll bar indicates to the user that there are more contents in the page that can be seen by scrolling. Yes, this type of scrolling is already there in iOS and it was spawned to Lion from there
As like iOS, now all windows have rubber band scrolling enabled. If you move the scroll bar to the top of window and still try to scroll up further, the content of the window is pulled down a bit like pulling a rubber band. Another new feature to notice is to make a fast scrolling action and take your fingers off the track pad. This will scroll the active window for a while and then it slowly decelerates to finally come to a stop.
If there are multiple windows (e.g. window1 and window2 - can belong to different apps) opened and placed one over another. If you move your trackpad pointer over the active window (window1) and scroll, it scrolls the content of window1. That's expected. But, without making window2 as active (or bringing to the front) just move the pointer over window2 and try to scroll again. Hurrah! It scrolls the content of window2!!
The old three finger left and right swiping was replaced by 2 finger left and right swiping. The 2 finger swipe is not supported by Chrome browser and so i had to fall back to 3 finger action in System Preferences. Until the gestures were introduced in Macs, I always felt that Keyboard shortcuts are the quickest way to perform an action. But after gestures were introduced, my usage of keyboard shortcuts has reduced a lot but i strongly feel, they will still co-exist.

Phew! Lots of new features and lots of changes to know! The performance of old Snow Leopard was good enough to a low end user like me. Even after adding a number of new features in Lion, I did not notice any degrade in the operating system performance. It is quick and glitch-less.

And at last, this long post comes to an end. I will keep updating here if i'm wow-ed with any other features!!

iPhone Code Samples

2011-03-26T17:31:00.047-05:00

I decided to host all my sample iPhone code somewhere in the web. I believe by doing this way i wont lose them and they might also be helpful to other developers. Tried out a couple of project hosting sites and finally boiled down to either Google Code (svn) or GitHub (git). After getting a feel of both, i decided to go for GitHub. Currently this project " iPhoneCodeSamples " contains a handful of programs that can be used to learn about views, view controllers, basic interactions, events, actions, controls, ActionSheets, Alerts, screen orientation using autosizing and autorotation. There are also programs that use content views, multiview architecture, picker components, tab bars, navigation controllers and tableviews. I have decided to keep adding more sample code to this project as and when i write something useful. This project can be downloaded for your use or you can even browse code snippets using GitHub's inline viewer too. Feel free to modify and use at your own ease and risk :)

Project repository can be accessed from iPhoneCodeSamples - GitHub.

LRButtonClick
LRButtonClick is the simplest of all examples. It presents two buttons and a label. Based on the button that was tapped by the user, it changes the text in the label.

MultiControlExample
This example introduces various controls like buttons, segments, switch, sliders and passive controls like labels, image views and static controls like text fields. It pops with a number or alphabetic keyboard according to the type of text field and resigns the keyboard when the user taps anywhere else. The slider control changes the number value as per the slided control. This example also hides the unneeded controls and is capable of detecting which segment was tapped. It makes use of Action sheets, alerts and demonstrates how to use a custom image for a button and to switch the image based on the state of the button that changes again based on the user action.

Autorotate
This example shows how to make use of the autorotation feature. The screen size of iPhone is 320x480 (widthxheight) in which 20 pixels will be taken by top status bar. So effectively it is 320x460 (in portrait mode) and becomes 480x300 (in landscape mode) when the phone is tilted by 90 degrees. Accordingly the view of your app should be rearranged to present the contents better. There are various ways to do this task but this example takes the route of having two pre-constructed views - one for portrait mode and the other for landscape mode. It shows how to detect the rotation and animate the view rotation accordingly.

SwitchView
SwitchView has a Root Controller with two different view nibs and a controller for each of those views. It shows how to make use of the root controller and switch the views determining the tap action if performed by the user on the button provided in the app. While doing so it animates the view transition with a flip and curl up effect. This is accomplished by using animation blocks and view transition effects. Switching is done by detecting whether they are already associated with their superview, inserting if not and removing the previous view from the view hierarchy. The views also have a center button that when tapped, pops up with an alert (yes, the same type of alert that pops when your battery is low).

Single Component Picker
This sample program dictates how to make use of a picker component and tie it up with a datasource and delegate. The datasource will be needed by the picker to show the information to the user and the delegate will be used to draw the title and to respond to the actions performed by the user as well.

Dependent Component Picker
This sample takes us to the next level of showing how to use a dependent picker. By that i mean, when the user has to select a date, say we can show 3 pickers - one each for Year, month and date or when the user has to choose zip code, we can show 3 pickers state, city, zip. These pickers are called dependent pickers because the data that needs to be shown in any of the child pickers is dependent on the selection of data in the parent pickers. The source of data is a plist file and a set of array and dictionary data structures are used to accomplish this.

Custom Picker
Custom picker can be visualized something similar to a slot machine that is commonly found in casinos. It dictates how to create a picker component and use image views on it. It also uses a "spin" button with which you can make the picker wheels to rotate randomly. If the images in the picker wheels become the same after you spin the wheels, then it displays that you won a jackpot! Not really though :) But to speak technically, the spin method involves looping through all the components in the picker, generate a random number and then selecting a row in the component based on the generated random number. Sounds tricky?! huh?

Simple TableView
Tableviews (UITableView) and tableview controllers (UITableViewController) are some of the most important concepts. Almost every app in your mobile uses them. This example code incorporates a simple tableview and demonstrates the usage of UITableViewDelegate and UITableViewDataSource protocols to tie the tableview with the data structures (model) using the controller. It takes advantage of dequeued cells and thereby handles memory efficiently. It explores the different elements (Image, TextLabel and Detail Text Label) that are available in every table view cell and shows how to use them.

Section
Tableviews come in two flavors - Plain & Grouped. While the above example shows how to create a plain tableview, this example depicts how to create a grouped tableview. Grouped tableview (similar to settings in every app) can be created by configuring the datasource methods that correspond to sections - like number of sections, number of rows and title name for every section. We can retain the same configuration and switch back the tableview mode to plain style to get an indexed tableview with sections (similar to contacts app).

Nav
Nav sample is all about navigation controller. Without navigation controller, things would have been much more difficult in the app world. This sample comprises a rootview controller and a number of sub controllers. The root controller is the parent controller that presents with a broad level of categories for the user to select. Based on the selection of the tableview cell, the root controller dynamically creates and pushes the corresponding subcontroller to the navigation stack! Again the sub controllers or first level controllers have subcontrollers or second level controllers. All the views for the child controllers are managed dynamically based on the user selection.

This sample shows the categories using the rootview controller.
If the movies cell is selected, the movielistcontroller is pushed onto the navigation controller stack. The movie list controller has an accessory button for every cell. If the accessory button was pressed, that in turn pushes the moviedetail controller to stack.
If the directors cell is selected, the DirectorsCheckList controller is pushed from the rootview controller. This tableview is unique in the way that the user can enable only one of the check marks from the list of cells that are provided. It remembers the cell's indexpath of old selection and the cell's index path of the new selection to accomplish this.

Its GOK's day!!

2010-12-10T02:57:00.025-06:00

Today became a special day when 3 of my close friends announced that they are getting married very soon. These 3 call themselves as GOKs - Group of Karthiks. I know them right from day one of my college. 10 years have passed from then. All 3 of these guys are very best in their own ways. I always have had high opinion about them. They have inspired me so much and I have always looked up to them in everything. Have spent so many good and sad moments of my life with them. They have helped and guided me in countless things. I don't have even a small meaning if these 3 had not featured in my life.

After seeing their emails today, I was thinking about them for some time. I recalled some of the funny moments that I had with these 3 and was bursting to laughter. There is a saying that college friendships are the best friendships one can ever have. These friendships will last until the end of our lives. I wish I could continue to keep in touch with these 3 and with their future families for the rest of my life. Replying to their emails with just a congratz is not going to suffice. I'm really clueless how to react and how to express. But i'm very happy for them and will surely pray for their good living!!

Chidren of Heaven

2010-08-25T22:17:00.025-05:00

Coming september 2nd, Mohana will be 12 years old. At that age of mine, I always had only one thought continuously lingering in my mind. Once I return back to home from school, I always wanted to play cricket with my friends for a longer time. My parents would never agree to that and will forcefully make me to come home as early as possible to make me focus on studies. Sometimes, when i'm studying, I used to think about how well I played on that day and would be smiling within myself. Playing every evening was the one and only essential need of mine that time. I wanted nothing else. Well, I can say, I had everything else. My studies were monitored and taken care, my daily food was taken care, my schooling was taken care, my homework was taken care, my 'everything else' was provided and taken care by my family. I had to think about nothing other than playing street cricket.

I could not imagine myself how I would have been without any of those carings. Without that, you sure need a very strong heart. A very determined heart. A heart full of hopes and confidence. Such is Mohana's and every other child living like her. I always want to look up to them, when i need encouragement. They are definitely the children of heaven. May god bless them. Happy Birthday Mohana!!

Cricket Season 2010

2010-04-13T01:00:00.008-05:00

This year's cricket season started with the Ohio State University's (OSU) Buckeyes Cricket Tournament that usually happens in the eve of New Year. We (Polaris Cricket Club and shortly call ourselves as PoKri) were the winners of 2009(Article about our win in OSU website). I travelled from Chicago to Columbus to participate in this year's tournament. As we were the inaugural winners, we were given a red carpet welcome at OSU. This time, my guys were not geared up for the tournament. They were dull and not much determined to win. Still, we went ahead to participate and drove ourselves until semi-finals where we lost to an excellently-playing Pakistani team :(

The next tournament is Twenty 20 Cricket ball tournament that started this April. We faced Avengers in the first match and registered our first cricket ball match win for this season. I'm happy that I did score an accountable score and played a good role in the first match. Here is the Scorecard of first match. I missed the second match (against Cuyahoga) due to work. Our team won that one too. Hoping that i would be playing in the forthcoming matches and contribute much more.

Emacs

2010-02-07T15:33:00.007-06:00

I use windows port of GNU emacs (23.1.1) in my work windows PC for most of the programming. Some of the common commands that everyone would tend to use

C-v Move forward one screenful
M-v Move backward one screenful
C-l Redisplay all text and center the text on the cursor to the center of screen
C-p Previous Line
C-n Next Line
C-b Move backward by one character
C-f Move forward by one character
M-b Move backward by a word
M-f Move forward by a word
C-a Move to the beginning of a line
C-e Move to the end of a line
M-a Move to the beginning of a sentence
M-e Move to the end of a sentence
M-<> Move to the end of file
C-d Delete a character
M-d Kill the next word
C-k Kill from cursor to the end of line
M-k Kill from cursor to the end of sentence
C- C-w Kill text between two positions
C- M-w Copy text between two positions
C-y Yank killed text
C-y M-y Yank the text that was killed before the last one
C-x u Undo (C-x u 5 Undoes 5 times)
C-x C-f Find a file
C-x C-s Save file
C-x C-w Save as file
C-s Incremental search
C-r Reverse search
C-x C-b List of buffers
C-x b foo Open foo buffer
C-x b Shift between buffers
C-x s Save a buffer staying in a different buffer
C-x k Kill a buffer
M-x replace string Replace a string
M-x text mode Applies text mode
C-x 2 Split window into 2
C-x o Loop through windows
C-x 1 Delete all but one window
C-u 50 # Inserts # 50 times (C-u is repeat command)
C-u 50 C-f Moves forward by 50 characters

Note: C - Control key, M - Meta key (Alt)

Download my .emacs file. It has most of the customizations and features enabled. The other win ports that are extremely useful are diff and aspell (that i use through emacs). GIMP is one more.

TCS Top 100 Shell Scripters

2009-12-02T16:21:00.006-06:00

From this year my employer, TCS, started conducting programming contests round the year. They call it as TCS Top 10 programming contest. These contests range from programming languages to scripting languages and to even complex SQL queries. Though the goal of the contest is to select top 10 coders in every programming language, they do select top 100 coders and publish their names in TCS website. The only difference between an employee who featured in top 10 and an employee who featured between 11 to 100 is just the TCS gems points. Yes, thats too bad.

Recently they had a shell scripting contest. TCS Employees from round the world participated. It was a two level contest. The first level which is a screening contest had 30 scripting questions.

The second level was the actual programming contest. TCS has an internal platform called Mooksha in their website where the coder has to submit his code/script. Mooksha will automatically compile/interpret and input your code with all possible test cases. It wouldn't give a detailed description if your code runs into issues. It would just say Yes or No indicating whether your code runs as expected or not. As it throws very little information, it puzzles the programmers to find out where actually the issue is. And only after that, it is possible to troubleshoot the issue.

TCS contest had two scripting questions that need to be coded in shell script and the time allotted was 4 hours. I have had glanced at questions that figured in Google programming contest in the past. Though no contest can be compared with Google's, i was surprised to see the tcs questions framed in a similar way. The questions explained a real time situation in a very detailed manner and provoked the coder's logical brains. He has to transform those logics into programs. Though, i should scream a bit because Mooksha didnt work as expected. Overall, it was a nice experience and i was rated in the top 100 out of 4000.

Oracle Server Architecture

2009-09-10T23:15:00.007-05:00

Yesterday, I gave another presentation at my work place. This time, it was about Oracle Server Architecture. The presentation explains about internals of Oracle. Everyone came up with questions and doubts. I was very happy that we had a very nice discussion. Even though the slides aren't very explanatory, I'm hosting it here.

Data modeling Presentation

2009-09-03T19:04:00.009-05:00

Datamodeling is one of the first and foremost steps in evolving a good database design. It sometimes becomes a continual process in projects where feature enhancements happen frequently. Believe me, most of the projects run without having this phase at all. This is entirely because the team is ignorant enough to not to understand the significance of datamodeling. I gave a presentation today at office to my rest of team aiming to educate everyone with the basic concepts of datamodeling.

Much of the information in my presentation was collected from random websites in Internet, copied and modified. Anyone is free to download/use/modify this presentation according to their need. Free the knowledge.

Note: Some of the slide title alignments' went off after i uploaded to Google docs. Download and scan through if you wish to.

My Guitar melodies

2009-08-31T22:07:00.052-05:00

This page lists some of my buzzing bits. I dedicate this page to my master Shireesh and his Zeppelin riffs.

I own a Ibanez V200S solid top acoustic guitar at present and have owned Takamine S35 spruce top acoustic in the past. Both are sturdy and sound sweet in standard tuning. I'm just a novice who comes home after having a frustrated day at work and plays some random cacaphonic notes to chill myself.

On a day before one of my birthdays, I tried a couple of shots with a "sort of" clean configuration. Though the ambience was not perfect, these snaps turned out to be acceptable by the society :)

VirtualBox

2009-08-13T14:52:00.000-05:00

Last night, I tried installing Sun's Virtualbox in Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope. Virtual box was very similar to VMWARE in its configuration. I installed Windows Vista in Virtualbox and wanted to check its performance. I allocated 20GB dynamic diskspace for the VDI (virtual disk image) file, 700 MB for RAM and the installation of Vista went without even a single glitch.

All my hardware devices (including Audio) worked perfectly. Initially USB didn't work as Virtualbox 2.2 (that comes with Ubuntu) didn't have USB support. I then downloaded Virtualbox 3.0 from their website. After installing it, all my USB devices started working. Internet connection was automatically configured using NAT placing my Ubuntu's ethernet IP as Gateway. I did nothing!! I remember i was able to copy text back and forth between the native OS and virtual OS in VMWare. I wasn't able to do that in Virtualbox.

I started my career installing and configuring VMWare workstation. I felt its a superb piece of software that time. But after using Sun's Virtualbox, I couldn't stop my excitement. Performance of both the native OS and virtual OS was wonderful. Its much much much better than VMWare. Its so good to see the rapid development of free software and the shape its taking these days. It feels much better to live with it.

How it would be?

2009-04-28T20:39:00.000-05:00

How it would be if a music player application has a mini-embedded web browser (Context view)?
How it would be if such a dream music player connects through the mini browser to one of the open online lyric source and show the lyrics of the track that is being played?
How it would be if it pops up a notification automatically with the track's album art cover, track name and album name "whenever the playing track changes"?
How it would be if it shows the tablature of the song while playing the track?
How it would be if you can configure it to any of the zillion online radios and can switch the application to radio mode from player mode?
How it would be if there is an option given in the player which when you select, it connects to wikipedia to show the Album information of the playing track? Can i not read more about the album and artist of the playing track in just one click?

How it would be if there are applications called "Amarok" for KDE and another called "Exaile" for GNOME desktop already present with all these geek features? Dudes, you are wonderful ;)

I tweet!!

2009-04-09T21:00:00.000-05:00

I tweet via twidge.

[metallicatony @ Dexter /home/metallicatony]$ twidge lsrecent
|kprav33n| The rain is here!
|metallicatony| Personas addon beautified my firefox! Themes for a
browser.. couldn't imagine!!
|kprav33n| 3G issues on my iPhone almost everywhere in the Bay
Area today. I had to turn off 3G to get any signal.
Battery is burning out too.
|atvelu| Web Trend Map
http://www.flickr.com/photos/formforce/3409362834/sizes/o/
|kprav33n| If I run packet capture to know more about a problem on
a host, the problem doesn't occur. If I don't, then the
problem occurs. What a fun!

[metallicatony @ Dexter /home/metallicatony]$ twidge update "@kprav33n, Skipping Gym?? Another Happy day for you! :D"

Its neat, fast and command driven! Script and play with twidge! :D

O! Thats my 3D Gnome desktop..

2009-03-30T03:17:00.001-05:00

Debian 5.0 "Lenny" GNU/Linux - Kernel 2.6.26

id3v2 vs iTunes

2009-03-23T19:33:00.001-05:00

I had a bunch of mp3 files from various artists whose id3 tags were not properly set. Read again, the mp3 files are lying in the same folder. They belong to different artists and come from different albums. The only advantage i had was the file name of every mp3 file had the Artist name followed by - and followed by Title name followed by .mp3. There was no way i can find a GUI tool (lame closed source iTunes! Don't hide! Reveal yourself!) using which i can easily pick the artist name & album name from the file name and set it in the id3 tag of that file. I had to do this manually scrolling through every single file to set the tags in iTunes or in any other tag editing tool. That was time drenching. I had a long way to go too - because i had 500 such untagged mp3s. So, i dropped this boring work and started thinking to write a script to do this.

After exploring various id3 libraries available under Linux, I decided that MP3::Tag CPAN Perl module will suit my need. As Perl is good at text manipulation, its easy to use regex and cut the artist names and title names of every file from its file name. And MP3::Tag module (supports both id3v1 and id3v2) can be used to set the cut values into the tag of mp3 file. Perl did its job perfectly. Hurray!

Only after completing, I realized there is a command line tool called id3v2 in Linux which i could have incorporated in my script instead of using MP3::Tag library for reading and setting tag values. Things would have been much easier if i had used id3v2 tool. id3v2 is such a swift command line tool that operates with so ease. No need of right clicking a bunch of files in iTunes and waiting for the window to pop up. Then editing and saving. Phew! I would say that's a novice way.

Use id3v2 and tag all mp3s at one strike of your enter key! Be happy!

iTunes SDK with its documentation is given for free download in Apple site. (I will never ever suggest anyone to try to use it). Because see here. This is from my iPod. This is how iTunes stores mp3s and related information in iPod with a hidden format under hidden directories.

Apple calls it as "Protecting DRM"! Its just a way to convince and tie up with major music distributors (causing incovenience to users like me without having open standards) so that Apple can earn more.

Favorite Music

2009-01-01T18:04:00.041-06:00

If you have a similar music taste, please follow and subscribe to my music feed in Pandora - My Pandora Music Feed

Below are some of my all time favourites. They aren't in any sequence :)

AC/DC
Thunderstruck
You shook me all night long
TNT
Back to Black
Hard as Rock
Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
Shake your foundations
Rock n Roll Damnation
Whole Lotta Rosie
Who Made Who

Beatles
Hey Jude
A day in the life
Ticket to ride
Let it be
While my Guitar gently sleeps
Blackbird
Eleanor Rigby
Hey Jude
Iam the Walrus
Yesterday
Norwegian Wood
A hard days night
Twist and Shout
Glass Onion

The Rolling Stones
Gimme shelter
It's only Rock 'N' Roll
Satisfaction
Jumping Jack Flash

Led Zeppelin
Over the Hills and Far away
Blackdog
Ramble On
Stairway to heaven
Communication Breakdown
Immigrant Song
Rock and Roll
Going to California
When the Levee breaks
The Song remains the same
Kashmir
Babe I'm gonna leave you

The Who
Baba O'Riley
Won't Get fooled again
Behind the Blue Eyes
Lets see Action
My Generation

Pink Floyd
Time
Comfortably Numb
Money
Wish you were here
Hey you
High Hopes
Another Brick in the wall II
Shine on you Crazy diamond
Us and Them
Coming back to Life
Learning to fly
Careful with that Axe, Eugene
When the Tigers broke free
The Fletcher memorial Home

Foo Fighters
Come Alive
Let it die
The Pretender
Erase/Replace

Metallica
One
Harvester of Sorrow
Enter Sandman
Nothing else matters
Of Wolf and man
The Unforgiven
The Unforgiven II
Wherever I may roam
The day that never comes
That was just your life
Astronomy
Die Die my darling
Fixxer
Loverman
Tuesdays gone
Turn the page
King Nothing
Hero of the day
Mama said
Master of puppets
Sanitarium
Carpie diem Baby
Fuel
Low man's Lyric
The memory remains
From whom the bell tolls
Frantic
All within my hands
Shoot me again
St Anger
No leaf clover
The call of Ktulu
The Ecstasy of Gold

Nirvana
Smells Like Teen Spirit
Sliver
Rape Me
Lake of Fire
You Know You're Right
Moist Vagina
Where Did You Sleep Last Night
Aero Zeppelin
All Apologies
About A Girl
Breed
Come As You Are
Floyd The Barber
Heart Shaped Box
In Bloom
Lithium
Love Buzz
Oh, The Guilt
Polly
The Man Who Sold The World
Tourette's

Favorite Movies

2009-01-01T18:04:00.025-06:00

These are some of my favorite movies and the shots that i loved. The list below is in random order :)

The Good, the bad, the Ugly - Sergio Leone
The intro of Ugly and bad without any dialogues was wonderful. Eli Wallach's (Tuco) script, expressions and acting was unrivaled. No one could have done better than him (Joe Pesci??). Tuco running in search of Arch Stanton grave while the camera focuses just him was nicely taken. Ennio Morricone's Ecstasy of Gold soundtrack in that scene was simply superb. Metallica & SF Symphony played cover for the same in their S&M album. Tuco's revolver buying scene, intro of the good, main theme and Mexican standoff scene were some of them that i can never forget.

Raging Bull - Martin Scorsese
This is a film that changed my impression about Robert De Niro. Martin Scorsese's innovative way of filming was evident right from the first scene where De Niro(Jake) shadow boxes in the boxing ring while the cast runs. Interestingly the last scene of the film also ends with De Niro shadow boxing. The final fight with Sugar Ray Robinson where De Niro punishes himself without fighting was excellently taken allowing me to watch De Niro's reactions staying from Sugar ray's side. At the end of that fight, when De Niro walks towards Sugar Ray and says "You never got me down". I liked the aggression and the violent attitude that was shown! I can never forget the scenes that showed blood dripping from the ring ropes and the wiping of wet sponges over the boxers' chest. The finest details were captured in such an elegant way. Martin Scorsese's father Charles Scorsese appears in this film. Both De Niro and Joe Pesci's acting was wonderful.

Pulp Fiction - Quentin Tarantino
The out of sequence story telling was very creative and made me to think much to order the events. The tense situation coupled with comedy while giving Adrenaline shot to Uma Thurman was the one i liked the most. The vulgar script through out the movie was simply awesome. The diner scene from Tim Roth and Amandas point of view continues with showing the cast. Later, the end of the movie again comes to the diner scene and was shown in Samuel Jackson and John Travolta's point of view in a very nice way. Connecting and relating all the scenes and characters together in the movie without any error was superb. [During the adrenaline shot scene, Travolta asks for a black marker but he will be given a red marker pen. That's the only smallest error i found in the movie]. Samuel Jackson's cool way of handling Tim Roth in the end, his recite from bible, his outlook and his dialogues were all beyond any comparison. I loved this movie very much. Creativity was at its best.

Godfather I, II, III - Francis Ford Coppola
If I have to write what did I like about Godfather, this space wouldn't suffice at all. Italian-American directors and Italian-American actors are the best of creative people. This is quite obvious through this movie. I will make him an offer that he can't refuse :)

Taxi Driver - Martin Scorsese
This is one of the very haunting movies that I have ever seen. Specifically, the "You talking to me" menacing speech that De Niro practices standing before the mirror. Jodie Foster was confident and marvellous. After getting a Mohawk haircut, De Niro attempts to kill the presidential candidate. John Hinckley Junior was so impressed with this movie, that he tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan to impress Jodie Foster in real. Unbelievable. Because of this incident, Scorsese's other film "Raging Bull" missed its chances to win Oscar. In one way or the other, John Hinckley made the right decision - Jodie Foster is much worthier than Ronald Reagan. Isn't she? :)

Goodfellas - Martin Scorsese
Another true gangster movie by the Italian-Americans. The one odd man out was Ray Liotta. I was surprised how an American was given a primary role in a movie that was directed by an Italian American :) Joe Pesci.. Joe Pesci.. Joe Pesci.. He is an incredible guy. I always wondered how his personality in real life is.

American History X - Tony Kaye
Is that Edward Norton? Look at his physique. Right from the very first scene (where two black guys come to steal Edward's father's truck) this movie was impressive. After Derek kills the guy by curb stomping his jaw and head, he kneels and surrenders to cops with a wily grin in his face. That was way awesome. The basketball game he plays to send the blacks off the court was another one that was simply beyond any comparison. Neonazi.. Mein Kampf.. Hate.. Violence.. Vulgar script.. Screenplay.. were all amazing.

Jackie Brown - Quentin Tarantino
A very realistic-like story. Without Samuel Jackson this movie would have been nothing. I never expected that he would kill Beaumont and the way he killed him.. lol.. I liked most of his 'bad' quotes. One such quote that i can still remember is "My ass may be dumb but I aint no dumbass" :) All in all, the storyline was exemplary and Quentin's way of telling was as-always impressive.

King Of Comedy - Martin Scoresese
This movie is very discrete in the way it shows the story of Rupert Pupkin (De Niro) who aspires to become a comedical talk show host. De Niro's never-say-die attitude looks stupid in one way but it shows his high level of energy. His determination to become the next Jerry Langford makes him to do crazy things. Scenes where De Niro imagines himself that he is the most famous host.. bigger than what Jerry is.. and Jerry envying him are outstanding. Scorsese tells through this movie that if you dream big, its not enough if you just work for it. You gotta have something more in you that holds and drives you to the end of road.

Rocky - Sylvester Stallone, Frank Avildeson
I didnt choose to watch an Italian American movie but it happened to be so. Another set of mafia people who have grouped to film a non-mafia masterpiece. Rocky sequel beautifully mixes love, life and friendship with the Italion Stallion's boxing life. Talia Shire does the best as an innocent reserved girl. The way she reacts when Rocky says Yo Adrien, I did it (in Rocky II) was her best shot. Carl weathers and Rocky's trainer Burgess Meredith were inspiring through out. Could anyone become tired of hearing Bill Conti's Rocky theme songs Gonna fly now and Eye of the tiger? I found in internet that these songs are even listened by battalions in Iraq and Afghanistan to inspire themselves. Take you back is another song that features in this movie which was written and sung by Sylvester's brother Frank Stallone. He acts as Rocky's neighbourhood singer in the movie. Every star in life cannot become so without determination, hardwork and dedication. So is Sylvester in his real life too.

World Magnetic Tour

2008-11-12T02:08:00.007-06:00

Rock and Heavy metal fans always scuffle among themselves trying to prove their favorite band as the best ones. Though its not a comfy task to pick a band/song as the best one, I can filter out a handful of bands that suit my taste and thinking. Among all, Metallica stands atop my list. Its not only because I started with theirs, its also because of their lusty lyrics... They sing more about war, Corruption, Environmental pollution, Death, Suicide, Pain, strippers, prostitutes and Drug addicts and make me think about them...Rarely, do they sing about LOVE. The best thing about their songs is.. they make me feel as depressed as possible.. showing me how useless im.. then they go on to cut the 'cannot-be-done-in-life' misbeliefs within me.. slowly throttling me towards aggression.. making me to gush out my complete inner energy and finally flashing before me the ecstasy of winning in life.. No other band has ever done this to me until now. They truly transcend my awful way of explaining about their music. Thats why they are called as "Metal Gods".

Its been more than 8 years, I have been following them. To correctly say, its since the gigantic kid, KK, introduced the world of metal with the thrashing "Die, Die, Die my darling" song of Metallica. From then on, the thirst to follow Metallica has never ever quenched not only in me but not among my friends too. For long, I even had a blind concept in me that hearing anything other than Metallica is a sin. Believe me!

I read the news that Metallica is coming for a concert tour in support of their new album release "Death Magnetic". I bought the tickets for General Admission floor (which is right before the stage) while LK bought the close gallery one. We waited for the D-Day to arrive with no patience. Then came the Day, the minute and the second..

The mighty metal heads crashed into the stage at no time with a glittering green streak of light focussed all over them. I saw them. I saw my heroes. I saw my masters. I saw James. I saw Kirk. I saw Lars. I saw Robert. Oh my god.. at just a 5 foot distance from me. Oh my god. I can't believe this. I was like.. What to do now? What should i do now.. I couldn't control myself. Jump, headbang, shout, scream.. Very Soon, they started playing the opening song - "That was just your life" from Death Magnetic. 7 minutes of frenzy-ness adorned with the deadly snare drumbeats of Lars Ulrich ended with James shrieking - Almost like your life. That was just your life..

They continued the first song with their biggest hit from Death Magnetic - "The day that never comes". I was feeling quite ok for the first 4 minutes of this song. After which, i slowly started loosing my control. Once the song reached its 5th minute, there came their rough riffs along with a furious bass progression that lasted until the last minute of the song. Huh! I died there.

With all lights in the arena turned off.. and when there was complete darkness, the pyrotechnic pillars blew flame from all corners of the stage suddenly. There were explosive sounds simulating a war field ambience. Thats how they started one of my favorite song - "One". Robert's rough bass rocked the stage. Kirk's rhythmic grooves around the 6th minute of this song drove me crazy. The resonance never came down and finally ended with a high note.

What happened? What the fuck happened suddenly? They ended the show.. They ended the show with just 3 songs. What happened? Oh no.. This can never happen.. I was saying so and I woke up suddenly from my bed. Am i in the concert? Was Metallica playing? Huh! That was my damn dream on the night I bought my ticket for the weekend's concert. HUH! Such was my craziness about Metallica..

Like in my dream and as expected, Metallica rocked the Quad city arena with a number of heavies. They proved why they are still the best heavy metal band. The stylish James Hetfield's vocals was unrivaled. Robert Trujillo was a perfect fit for the rumbling bass space left by Jason Newsted. Kirk Hammett, with his not-like-a-rockstar body-language made everyone WOW at his solo notes that smoothed out of his greenish Dracula guitar. Lars Ulrich left everyone stunned with his unstoppable steelish drum beats. The best part was when they played "Enter Sandman". Just when it seemed that they have ended the song and have given a big pause before starting the next track, the roaring riff of "Enter Sandman" was repeated again leaving the crowd electrified!! That was unbelievable!!

This was the complete set list played..

That Was Just Your Life
The End Of The Line
Harvester Of Sorrow
For Whom the Bell Tolls
One
Broken, Beat And Scarred
Cyanide
Sad But True
Wherever I May Roam
The Four Horsemen
The Day That Never Comes
Master Of Puppets
Blackened
Nothing Else Matters
Enter Sandman
Seek and Destroy

During the end of the show, Kirk and Robert threw guitar picks towards the crowd. I was lucky to grab one of their picks. Here on the RHS is the snap of the cover of a local magazine and the guitar pick that i grabbed. I never thought in life that, One day, I would be able to go for Metallica's Concert and I would return back with one of their guitar picks. Totally, it was dream-come-true experience for me. After coming outside the arena, LK told me - "This was the one biggest event, I was craving to watch. I have done that today. After this, I don't wish anything else to experience here in United States.."

Chicago Linux User Group

2008-09-21T02:53:00.000-05:00

I used to participate in Chennai LUGs way back in India. We used to have LUG meetings either @ IIT, Chennai or MIT, Chennai.

For quite a few months, I was watching the activities in Chicago Linux User Group (LUG) community http://www.chicagolug.org/. (On to the right is my blacky glossy GNOME desktop in my Zion (my laptop) :D)

A decent number of GNU/Linux fans gather @ Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago every two weeks to discuss about a couple of technical topics based on GNU/Linux. This time, here @ Chicago LUG, it was Gabriel Burt (Novell employee) who gave the speech.

It was about Banshee (http://banshee-project.org/) the music management and play back application for GNOME. He is one of the main developers of it and he has been employed by Novell for that! He was cool, calm and modest. Banshee was even cooler with a plethora of features. The way they have designed is by placing all the core features with Banshee and all the extra features come as modules/plugins. Some of the coolest features worth mentioning are

Search feature - Fast and Furious! It even supports searching audio files using expressions based on the rating (rating > "2") or played time (played < "2 hours")!!
Manage ipod WITHOUT iTunes
Mirage - Music recommendations of new artist, album & genre based on the playing track's artist :)
Internet Radio
ShowtrackonChange - Displays a configurable pop-up above all your windows when a new track begins playing. The popup then disappears after a while automatically.

The next seminar was on RockBox which is an open source firmware for a variety of mp3 players including iPod. That presentation was good too.

One thing I noticed in everyone there was - Everyone blamed and yelled on Steve Jobs though the rest of the world praises him for his ipod, itouch, iphone, iTunes and blah blah. I will sooner let you all know (what & how Steve has done) in my forthcoming posts. But, to tell the fact, he is simply a bastard!

I liked the way the Linux meetup happened. Everyone was jovial and everyone was a huge fan of Rock and metal music. Here, I have a question.. What is the relation between GNU/Linux & Rock? I don't know :) But most of the GNU/Linux fans I have met, are rock/metal fans. Everyone had their laptop connected in the nicely designed seminar hall. Wi-Fi too was there. Some took notes, some took videos, some took photos, some were drinking Sam Adams. Totally, the meetup was hi-fi and informative. Also, I happened to meet quite a few US GNU/Linux fans :)

I met a Mallu guy (the only other Indian guy @ Chicago LUG) there. Learnt that he is one of the main developers involved in the translation of GNOME & KDE to Malayalam language project. We both went for a lunch after the LUG meet. The surprising thing he revealed was that he knows well about Anna University KB Chandrasekhar research Center (AU-KBC) @ Madras Institute of Technology, Chennai though he never worked or involved with any of the activities running there. KBC is so much popular :)

Here are a few snaps of the Chicago LUG meet..

1) Rockbox Lecture 2) Complete Seminar hall view 3) Other GNU/Linux Evangelists.

Mohana's Birthday

2008-08-25T01:01:00.000-05:00

Today, I was astonished to see my mailbox. I got a mail from Mohana! This is her first mail to me. Her birthday is nearing and she has mailed me to remind about that. I was like WOW.. after reading her mail..

from Udavum Karangal
to xxx@gmail.com
date Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 3:53 PM
subject BIRTHDAY

Dear Uncle

I am.Mohana Vidyaakar Hope this letter finds you in good health and cheer. I will be celebrating my 11th Birthday on 2nd Sept. I seek your blessings on this auspicious occasion. Your generous support is helping me progress in life.

I have many friends and all are fine. Please visit me when time permits.

Your’s Loving
Mohana Vidyaakar

To say the truth, I was so excited to see her mail. My next action was giving a big reply to her mail :D And the next thing in my TODO list is - to contact the concerned authorities in her organisation to make arrangements so that I can call and talk to her on her birthday. And the final action is to make them get her new clothes for her Birthday.

Today, I really felt - I got the answer for the question that reflects in my Orkut profile.

Though I have everything in my life currently, I really would be too down if no one wished me on my birthday. I just imagined.. What would be the case of mine and how i would feel, if im Mohana and if im mailing my (unknown) supporter to remind him that he should wish me on my birthday :( I don't have an iron-heart to bear & munch out such a situation in my life. But, Mohana is.. She is Simply Superb!!

PS: On seeing my earlier post - Mohana Vidyaakar, I got calls from many of my friends to know the procedure on how to help. Only then, I got to know that many were willing to help less fortunate but as they stay in US, they were not knowing on how to do that. I guided them. That post did its job.
And this post too will..

TSB's B'day Celebration

2008-07-10T14:54:00.001-05:00

This was the invite mail which i sent to all my Columbus friends on the eve of TSB's last B'day (2008). Everyone of us wanted to give an awful bums to TSB on his B'day and everyone erupted after this invite mail. Really! We had such a good party that night at our home, I can never forget in my life! TSB was beaten to death that day! :D

Here is the B'day party invite mail!!

Sriram X Kanniah
04/25/2008 03:05 PM
To: Abdul R Rasheed/C/OH/ONE@JPMCHASE, Arun Kumar Courtalingam/JPMCHASE@JPMCHASE, Brenesh Stanslas Flowermary/JPMCHASE@JPMCHASE, Chidambara Natarajan X Gopal/JPMCHASE@JPMCHASE, Deepak Kumar Madhavan/JPMCHASE@JPMCHASE, Dev Kumar X S/JPMCHASE@JPMCHASE, Dhandayuthapani X Jaganathan/JPMCHASE@JPMCHASE, Karthik Bhavani Shankar/JPMCHASE@JPMCHASE, Krishnakumar X Rajagopal/JPMCHASE@JPMCHASE, Madan P Muthuswamy/JPMCHASE@JPMCHASE, Madan X Mahato/JPMCHASE@JPMCHASE, Neaz A Kishore/C/OH/ONE@JPMCHASE, Rohit Unnithan/C/OH/ONE@JPMCHASE, Sabarish X Chandrasekaran/JPMCHASE@JPMCHASE, Sankara X Vedam/JPMCHASE@JPMCHASE, Sundar X Ganesan/JPMCHASE@JPMCHASE, Varadarajulu X Ravichandran/JPMCHASE@JPMCHASE, Ramakrishnan X Vedanarayanan/JPMCHASE@JPMCHASE, Prasanna X Venkatesh/JPMCHASE@JPMCHASE, Selva Y Kumar/JPMCHASE@JPMCHASE, Karthik S Subramanian/JPMCHASE@JPMCHASE, thesabfactor@gmail.com, shabbu007@gmail.com, metallicatony@gmail.com
cc:
Subject: Die, Die, Die my Darling!

Jigsaw killer loves to have deadly traps and cut pieces of his victim's skin into a Jigsaw Puzzle.
Leather face always wants to slash his saw to slaughter his victims and serve his cannibal family.
Dr.Lecter likes to kill and tickle the taste of human flesh in his tongue.

They are just fictional characters to throttle a hefty hit movie! Here are the real ones doing a real scene!!

Starring Star Studs

Maams as 10 catch looser!
Shabbu as Mallu accent Mental!
Neaz as the Bulb Dancer!
Bruni as Iyira meen p**dai!
Sundy as Vayakaattu paya!
Krishna as Kozhi Kaal Krishna!
Chida as The Palam!
Shankar Vedam as Psycho & Air***! (Double Act)
Dev as Old Fella!
Sriram as Hanu!
Dhandu as Yerumai!

Maams clamps TSB's head dead-hard in between the the wooden staircases of Polaris. Shabbu comes running with a sledge-hammer and slams TSB in the hardest possible way. Oops! TSB's head was torn off like a ham! Here is our gentleman Neaz who throws a necktie on TSB graciously and breaks TSB's esophagus elegantly. Bruni now comes with his brimming bust to fall on TSB's chest and chokes him to death. Sundy wears his sharp clawed glove and butchers a bloody pattern on TSB's spine. Krishna has a rusty sharp hook with him and jams it into the mangled hunk of lying TSB's flesh. Nasty! Chida walks with a scary scythe and his sick smile... to slice TSB's flesh into ribbons! Shankar starts his motorized chainsaw (his last b'day gift from his dad) and sinks it into TSB's Skull. Awww!!!... Dev brings Stella's sharp giant rock dil*o and nails into TSB's hairy hole. Here comes Sriram "flying" & ringing a bell ting ting ting... and c*str*tes TSB caressingly.
Then comes the big one! Dhandu with a Barbwire club! Now, he gives his wide heinous laugh... bashes with his wily mace and screams - Dinner is ready!!

Drinks, Snacks & Damages served!!
Live: 23:30 @ 8298 Polaris Parkway
Gear up for the Gruesome Gore!

E-World Tip-Off - The Hindu Business Line

2008-03-09T15:41:00.000-05:00

Last week's Hindu Business line weekly Tip-off column discussed about the reasons of frequent computer hang-ups. Though it discussed some possible causes, it left out to explain few more reasons. I quickly listed them and sent the write-up to Hindu which fortunately appeared in this week's column.
Here's the link to it - The Hindu Business Line E-World Tip Off - Why System Hangs

Selvaraj Duraiswamy

2008-02-09T12:04:00.000-06:00

When I went to India last time, I traveled via Dubai. After reaching Dubai, I realized much difference in the way people behave and in the way people were treated while in the airport & flight. The reason is: Most of them were low-wage-class people working in a mass and most of them were ‘imported’ from India. Some slept in the airport floor, some roamed endlessly which was irritating to others (not leaving any way for the ones who come behind) and ‘many’ smoked blocking the pathway before smoking zone. Even between this, the airport had good looks and maintenance. Somehow, I managed to reach my Chennai bound flight staying among the crowd who were gushing out once the terminal gate was opened. Nasty!!

I went looking for my seat (window side) but found somebody else was sitting in that. I asked him in tamil (I can see that he is a worker) whether that was his seat and asked him to show his ticket. It was not his seat. Even after I told the same to him, I didn’t see any movement from him. So, I told him – Ok, neenga aen seatliye ukkarunga, naan pakkuthula ukkandukkuraen (you be seated in mine, I will sit besides that). He said ‘ok’ and I went ahead to sit.

Emirates airlines had some good in-flight entertainment – a good interactive software system to track the current place, position, altitude, wind speed, temperature, local time etc., a good collection of Hollywood movies, Wi-fi and good food too. The software was very interactive, catchy and responsive which grabbed my attention. I was getting to see at the various options provided in it. All the time, I was being watched what I was doing by the ‘unknown’ who was sitting in my seat. I realized that he was not knowing to operate the in-flight personal computer system and that made him to watch what I was doing. He never spoke with me and I too didn’t. In between there was some heavy wobbling due to turbulence. It was announced that we must have seat belts fastened due to the turbulence. Even then, some guy who was sitting some 3 seats before me.. stood in the pathway leisurely, raised his hands and was relaxing! A flight attendant came running towards him and made him to sit after having a talk. It’s because most of the passengers were workers and they didn’t understand English. Emirates should know to make the announcements in local languages – maybe Tamil or Hindi.

An hour before landing they gave us the immigration form to fill. The ‘unknown’ sitting in my seat gave his passport & unfilled form to me (signaling me to fill it for him). I readily accepted that and started filling. While doing it, I got to know that his name was Selvaraj Duraiswamy and I thought of giving a talk with him

Me : Selva, Neenga aenna.. Chennai-ah?
Him : Illanga cuddalore-uh.. Neenga?
Me : Naan trichyla porandu valandaen, appa amma vellorela ippo irukkaanga, but most-ah Chennaila daan iruppaen..
Him : Oh ok..

Between I gave his filled form to him.. He got that and continued..

Him : Aenna panna, English Aeluda padikka theriyaadu..
Me : English padikkuradu periya vishayam illanga.. Sila book irukku.. atha neenga vaangi dinamum konja neram padicha podum.. kathukkalaam.. officela vela ungalukku romba illana neenga panlaam..
Him : Hmmm.. Aana pasangala, oru nalla English conventla sethu padikka vaechuttu irukkaen.. Oru vela patni kooda irunda parava illa thambi.. nalla padichidanum..
Me : Oh, ungalukku kalyanam aageeducha?
Him : Rendu kulandainga.. Varushathukku 10,000 rooba kuduthu oorla English mediumla padikka vaechuttu irukkaen..
Me : Nalla padikraangala?
Him : Hmmm, nalla padikkraanga thambi..
Me : Neenga aenna vela paakreenga dubaila?
Him : Naana.. paint vela pa.. konja naalu kadal-la vela irundadu.. apram paint thayaar panra vela..
Me : Oh..
Him : Periya periya paintuh boxah anda aeriyra veyil-la aeduthu vaekkavum vendi irukkum.. Apdiya aellam karinju poiruvom anda veyil-la vela senju.. Mela irundu verthu.. kaal nananjurum.. anda veyil-la vela paakanum.. (a small sad grin)..
Me : Ungala aenna consultancy moolama aalu aeduthu anuppunaangala?
Him : Aamam thambi.. Oru latcham rooba kattunaen anuppuradukku..
Me : Ohhhh.. Aematheettaana aenna panni iruppeenga????
Him : Theriyla pa.. Anda timela aedo thonuchu.. pannanumnu pannaen.. aepdiyo ippo naanum aen kudumbamum nallaah munnaadi vida vasadiya irukkom.. adu podum..
Me : Aeppo neenga dubaikku poneenga.. aethana naala vela paakureenga?
Him : Naanaaah.. kitta thatta naalra varusham aachu..
Me : Oh.. Ponadula irundu ippo thaan India vareengala? 4 ½ varushama.. hayyo..
Him : Aamam pa.. Aen kooda veetla thangi irukravununga aellam, aenna thitteetu irundanunga.. aenna loosu pudichuducha da unakku apdinnu..
Me : Aen, aenna aachu?
Him : Oru kadasi 15 naala naan sariya saapudala.. thoongala.. thaniya sirichuttey irundaen..
Me : Aen, aenna aachu?
Him : Aamam.. aevlo naal kalichu aen pasangala paaka poraen.. thookamey varala.. adaan.. ‘pongada naan oorukku poraen innum konja naal-la’ apdinnu solleetu naan paatukku loosu maadiri sirichuttu iruppaen.. ippo aellarum aenna paakurathukku airport vandu iruppaanga.. (a big smile)
Me : Inimey oorla thaan iruppeengala? Dubai poga maatteengala??
Him : Illa pa.. innum 3 maasam inga iruppaen.. aprom marupadiyum poganum..
Me : Aeengaaaaa.. anga poi kashtap padrathukku ingiye unga kudambathoda irukkalaam illa? Aedavudu chinna businessah aarambichudlaam illa..
Him : Aenakku aeduvum business theriyada thambi..
Me : Aellamae therinjuh porakkuradu illa illa.. therinjukka vendiyadu thaan..
Him : Hmm.. Kadavul puniyathula oru alavukku aen kudambatha mela kondu vanduttaen pa.. illaina romba kashtap patruppaen.. marupadiyum dubai povaen.. innum oru pathu varusham angiye irundu.. sambarikkanum.. aen pasangala nalla padikka vaechu mela kondavarradukkaagavavudu naan poganum thambi..

Me : (was surprised at his words.. the pace at which he told.. the way he told.. his thinking.. moreover the dedication and focus he has got to bring his family up.. though he works in such hot conditions in dubai.. he was wanting to go back and work endlessly to earn for his family.. even at the cost of leaving his family in india.. was really astounding.. pulluh arichuduchu aennakku appo)..

For a while, I was dumb.. thinking his words.. recalling everything whatever he said.. I stood up to go to the restroom. I was able to get a complete view of all passengers. Most of them were low-class workers. It made me think that ‘a whole bunch Selvaraj Duraiswamys are sitting in the flight’ and I’m the one ODD person sitting among them. I’m nowhere near Selvaraj in terms of ‘perspiration, the way to live & urge-to-do-more mentality'.

That’s how the low wage workers from India in dubai are.. Away from India without knowing much about the foreign land.. Working in horrible conditions of dubai.. extended work timings.. family pressure.. kids.. wife.. parents.. separation.. without able to go back and see them.. Shrugging off all these things, they want to work even for many years to bring their family up.. that makes them really great!!

After the flight landed, Selvaraj helped me in pulling my luggage out of the conveyor belt. Then, he suddenly disappeared. Hope he should have seen his family eagerly waiting outside and went running towards them.

The whole incident put me in shame showing me that I’m nowhere near Selvaraj and the whole bunch of low-wage Indian workers in Dubai.

Brother's Marriage

2008-01-31T22:12:00.000-06:00

Last month, I went for a short trip to India for attending my brother's marriage. I didn't want to miss that because my brother is the one who is very close to me in my family. Right from schooling, he always guided/guides me in such a way that I won't miss the chances/opportunities which he missed in his career. I was very happy to see all my family members. I'm not sure how many years it will take for us to gather again like that. My parents were very proud of having me and my brother there before everyone. I was convinced that I gave them what they needed all these days. After this, even if I die.. that wont poke my heart too much.

Google Reader

2008-01-06T14:18:00.001-06:00

Lately, I found the number of bookmarks in my firefox was growing more in the number of categories as well as the blog/site links under them. The sites where I’m particularly interested about some specific sections were more than those sites which I try to read completely. For example, I manage to read Linux and Hardware sections in http://slashdot.org/ but I seldom read its other sections. For daily news, I was completely depending on my personalized Google news http://news.google.com/. I try not to miss out giving a glance of Hindu headlines & Sports page http://hindu.com/ and the topstories of Business week http://businessweek.com/ . Likewise, the list of mine was increasing as the things which I wanted to read were scattered in many sites over the web. I was wasting much of the very-less-free-time in landing to the needed links and trying to find out whether any good article has came for the day. Sometimes, I used to forget which sites I went and which articles I read. And, there are some of the blogs which I don’t regularly follow but even then I had to step into those blogs to see whether a new post has been published or not. The other biggest difficulty I had is: Whenever I found some good article/site, I had to bookmark it in both of my computers – Office & Personal.

I had always heard about RSS – Really Simple Syndication, an xml format feed using which you can subscribe to the information that is changing in frequently updated sites and read it through your news reader application. I used RSS feeds via the glossy Google desktop reader gadget. But, I realized that I was not able to follow all my sites through it. After all, Google’s desktop reader gadget is not a full-fledged reader application.

Then, it was only few days before I planned to give a try to Google Reader. Now, you know what I’m gonna say.. It’s the same thing which everyone else has told. “Google Reader is awesome!” The first good impression which I felt about it was – I’m not needed to adapt to some other new window, new buttons or new looks. It’s the same uncluttered, simple looks with a fast response as like Gmail. After subscribing to the feeds from all my favorite sites, I was able to realise, how fastly I can scan & read in Google Reader. There are some articles which you don’t know whether to read or not. But, you will be able to decide that only after reading the first 5 or 6 lines. Had it been reading directly visiting the site, I would be needed to follow the link of that article, closing all the irritating popup ads and then proceed to read the 5 or 6 lines but to finally find that the article is no lesser than a junk. In Google reader, I was able to accomplish this task in a fantastic way. I was able to get the gist of the article through the first few lines which were shown in the expanded view. After reading that, I was able to conclude whether it’s of-no-interest article or not. If yes, I will skip it. If not, I went ahead and read the complete article. Now, it has turned so easy and quick to skip the junk news items and read the ones which are of my interest.

Additionally, I saw a feature where I can manage my friend’s list and share my articles with them. But, I never used this feature as I don’t know whether any of my friends is using google reader. In this too, we have got the “starred” feature. The articles which I want to read again can be starred and followed at any time later. Gone are the days, I bookmark the links of such articles. Also, I can have a look at the reading & subscription trends under the trends link. There, I can know what I normally read and what I don’t.

The superb thing which I like in Google reader is its keyboard shortcuts similar to *nix environment. It is so fast and easy to use keyboard shortcuts to read rather than using a mouse. Why most of the Google’s products are winning the world is: They always follow the UNIX philosophy (Keep it Simple but perform the task at your best) because most of its apps are developed by UNIX geeks. Unlike UNIX apps, Google’s apps have a web interface (a simple one) and so people like them.

Here is what a glimpse of how I use Google reader to read the news

I open up the reader and I’m finding 15 unread items – all in my ‘personalized Google news’ subscription. I always prefer to use the list view rather than the expanded view. (Please note that the characters in between double quotes are keyboard shortcuts and within single quotes are from the news article from here after).

I press “n” to select the first article – ‘CIA in 2003 planned destruction of Tapes – Washington Post’. Ok, what is it all about. Let me have a read at it. I press “Enter”. Only that article is shown in the expanded view now. After reading through the first few lines, I got to know it’s related to the destruction of video tapes on harsh interrogations of suspects. Huh! I have no interest in this. I don’t want to read the complete article. Skip. I press “Enter” to switch the article back to list view and press “n” to move on to the second one. Now the second one is about – ‘Mean rain, winds slam Southern California - CNN’. Oh no! I want to read this. I press “v” and the article opens up a new tab in my Firefox. After reading it, I want to switch back to the tab of Google reader. I pressed “Ctrl W” to close the tab and then “Ctrl Pageup” or “Alt ” (say, Alt 1 or Alt 2). Ok, now I want to move on to the third news item. I pressed “n”. It says ‘Conflict in East Congo – Reuters’. I don’t even want to look what it’s all about. So, I press “m” to mark it as read. Oops! Somehow I passed this article without reading ‘Xbox 360 Ultimate Rumours Unsound – NewYork times’. I need to go back and read that now. I pressed “p” which took me back to the actual third news item. I read that. So now, I want to continue my reading from the 5^th news item. I need to move two steps ahead. I press “n” two times. I need to search for what happened to ‘India vs Australia 2^nd Border Gavaskar trophy Cricket test match’. I pressed “/” which left me in the search box where I typed the needed words and pressed “enter”. It listed me with the news items about the match. Shame! India has lost the test match after fighting a very close battle to draw it.

I felt so easy using Google reader because I’m used to these shortcuts in *nix. Now, I’m not needed to maintain my office and personal lappy’s bookmarks in sync. Thanks to Google reader ‘Web’ application.

When you start using Google reader, you will know how much time you can save in skimming through the news articles. Maybe, it takes few days for you to adapt to the keyboard shortcuts, but once done then you will know how Simple, Fast & Superb Google reader is.

n = n + 3

2007-09-29T15:39:00.000-05:00

Its during the same month, I started to blog 3 years before! In this time, my life has changed a lot (atleast more than the number of changes Google has done to blogspot! This is one area where Google is not showing enough focus. Particularly the HTML editor is buggy!) To tell truly, I can see that in the past 3 years I was driving my life in the way I wanted to. I had a good control of it. And no way, I will tell that - life took me somewhere and i just went by that way.

All these 3 years, I have had used my blog for
1) Expressing my view on some crap thing
2) Posting something which I have done in my life

Now, when i had a look at my posts, I found that I have made a total of 22 posts in 3 years (23, if you include this too). The number of posts in a year was indirectly proportional to my idling days. Its was in 2006, I had a huge workload in office, more mental/personal tensions, extreme frustrations, no-clear-goal-on-what-to-do-in-life etc etc. This reflected in the statistics - mere 2 posts in 2006!

Lets see where i'm going to stand in the next 3 years - :( or :) ??

Mohana Vidyakaar

2007-09-27T05:32:00.000-05:00

I was dreaming (maybe, like many others) while i was in college like this - "One day, when i get a job and when i start earning nicely, I should start helping some less fortunate in some way." That day came after 3 years of me getting a job which includes nearly a 6 month internet research on the non-profit organizations which are present in and around Chennai. Finally, I decided to go for Udavum Karangal. This organization is really doing a good work! Though, a bit delayed, they are prompt in their responses to our queries.

Mohana is the small primary school going girl whom I started supporting for education in the name of my appa & amma. The nice thing was - Udavum Karangal sent me the photo of hers and they have assured me that they would send even her report card every 6 months!

Here comes the objective of this post - This was posted not to boast about my doing. Because, my doing was nothing big or great to boast. I have seen so many others helping so much for the less fortunate. Mine was a minuscule. I would tell you that, its the duty & responsibility of every human to help the less fortunates. At least, the guys who think that they are quite well settled in life should start doing if they haven't. Moreover, it should be continued for long. Even, I should!

The thing which you reap back after starting off your support is "the extremely-elated-great feeling which one and only you can feel inside. You can never get such a feeling by doing any other great thing in life. I bet you! You can die for that!"

Oracle - First Level Exam

2007-09-25T05:06:00.001-05:00

As evident from the title of this post, I'm writing here to tell that I have done a thing which so many others have already done in this world! I mean - I have just passed a mean first level exam of Oracle. Whatever maybe the case - I would say, its worth preparing & taking the exam instead of sitting idle @ home(as i was). Its even more worth if you are gonna face the exam without even looking at the dump questions, not even once! Brave you!

Oracle 10g is available for a free download in oracle website. The highlight is - its available in all major Linux packaging formats. 2 years before, I have seen that daunting task of installing Oracle in Linux. So many manual things were needed to be done in Linux before, during & after installation of oracle. But now, things have changed! I found that this Oracle 10g package comes with a nice "Sit back & relax" GUI installation. Wonderful improvement! ;)

My Recents

2007-07-04T17:50:00.001-05:00

I have added a new column called as "My Recents" in the right side of my Blog. This will list down some of the recent things which I did and which I'm currently involved and enjoying with. I will try to refresh this list atleast once in two weeks. It includes the updated date too. By this way, I thought that I can encourage me to do things and give an idea to viewers about my activities.

Though it was not a great idea, I liked it.

LPI

2007-04-22T09:12:00.000-05:00

I wanted to trigger myself so that I can get rid of the discouraging thoughts which have swollen within myself. I decided that the best way is to get into something which I will automatically do without forcing or pushing myself to do. A thing, that I can do with a flow. I wanted to gain some confidence which my inner heart is saying that I have lost them. Confidence can be gained only when I’m tested.

So, I decided to go for some certification. I always thought that software certifications are not a way to test a software engineer. But, I went for it because I wanted to trash all my low-feelings within me. Three weeks back, without thinking twice, I went and registered for the first level exam of Linux Professional Institute (www.lpi.org). Even the NIIT center guy was not aware of such an exam. When I told him that I want to register for LPI exam, he just gave a weird look at me. Only after repeating its name thrice, he was able to search for such an exam in his database. As everyone register only for Oracle or Sun Java or .NET exams, he was aware of only such things. And, I don’t think anybody else have ever taken such an exam there. I considered taking RHCE or RHCT earlier. But I dropped them because of two reasons

1) They are very much distribution based. I’m not a full-fledged redhat/fedora user though I started everything with the official black labeled one-cd Redhat 7.0 during 2001. Thereafter I tried out a couple of distros and finally settled permanently with Debian by the end of 2002.

2) RHCE and RHCT are very good exams which really test your brains by presenting a troubled system which you have to troubleshoot. I don’t want to be a full-fledged System/Network administrator because I don’t want to make my career in it.

These things made me to choose LPI which can be passed by a candidate who knows atleast the basics of debian & redhat distros. After registering for it, I came to home atonce and took an online mock exam to just test myself. I passed it very narrowly! Second time when I took, I failed!! Third time, again I passed very narrowly!!!

Earlier I thought that I should take the exam without any preparation. But after taking the mock exam, I decided that I should prepare for it else I might fail :)

Two weeks before, I took the first level exam and completed it. The exam was a bit tough. Had I taken the exam lightly, there are many chances that I might have failed. I was posed with 98 objective questions (Choose the best answer and Fill in the blank) and I got 12 of them wrong. Personally, I felt that the exam questions were good but while answering some of the questions in the exam, I was feeling that the question should have been framed in an even better way. Answered all the questions half-an-hour before the allotted 120 minutes for the exam.

Overall, I would rate, it is worth preparing and taking LPI though the exam questions could have been even better.

Zion - The Artificially created Reality

2007-03-30T16:40:00.001-05:00

So many days.. After so many fucking days Im posting in my blog. Just now I had a look at my blog. The last post which I made was on April 2006. Today is March 31, 2007. Oh my God! It’s a complete one year. I thought of posting many times in these days but I couldn’t. This life really kills me. Overcoming all my grievances and concentrating on what I need itself is really becoming hard. I may jump here and there in this post. Don’t mind that because Im boozed. Japan’s Socho drink is ruling my senses now. After we sat to drink only, we found that we had no mixing.. I mean pepsi or some other soft drink for to mix with liquor. So we were bound to take it raw and with some amount of H2O. My stupid friend Vignesh Pandi poured nearly half a glass of Socho for the last round and that’s doing its job inside me.

In the last post I had mentioned that Im working in Verizon. But im no more there. Im with a damn service company of India which is widely called as “The Government Company”. This is the 3^rd company in my three years of IT experience. I believe that the list will grow grow forever because Im not fucking satisfied with any company. When I went to home last time, my mom told that some astrologist had pointed out to her that I will not be stable in my career and I will keep on jumping. When my mom told this to me, I thought inside “Surely mom, I will make that astrologer’s words true”. But, I didn’t utter a single word out. Because, if I do so, she would start crying. She would be crying without knowing what I feel inside me. Ok no sentis. Lets come to the topic of this post. Zion..

Zion is the latest member added to my family of three members (me – metallicatony, Dexter – My 400 MHz old PC, Zippy – My Nokia 6630). Zion is my laptop which I recently bought 3 weeks back through the help of one of my onsite friend TSB. Its a dream which came true. While in college I would be dreaming the days I would be owning a laptop and carrying it everywhere (as if I would be needing it every single minute). I felt great, when I bought it using my own money. I felt even great when I had a smoke after touching my laptop for the first time. From then, Im sleeping with it.

The main theme of this posting is why I named my laptop as Zion. I thought a lot before naming it [I have the usual habit of naming the things which I like the most]. Then finally I decided that it should be named as “Zion” for the following two reasons.

# The name of my college senior - Praveen’s PC was named Zion that time (I don’t know whether its still referred so). Even, I found that some of my juniors had used that name for their PCs in college while my PC was named as Dexter. Praveen’s system was the real machine which inspired many that time. Mainly he was inspired, which in turn inspired a whole lot of people out there in college. Without that there is no Praveen which means there are no followers. Thats why the name for my laptop is the same. Let this be my dedication for the great work Praveen’s PC did that time.

# The Matrix is one of the ever best films I like because of the concept of the film. It’s a lifetime achievement for Wachowski brothers though the last part of the sequel was a total flop. In Matrix, the only real world is called Zion which poses threat to the artificial Matrix world. Zion is otherwise called as “The artificially created reality”. This applies to my laptop too. This is really a wonder. An artificially created wonder. An artificially created real world for the true lovers of computers.

Snap of my Linux desktop will follow in the successive posts. At present I wont be able to take it coz im feeling very high. Understand :)
Here is a snap cap of my windows desktop. Windows XP with Vista transformation pack. I had installed Vista but i didnt find any good reason to keep it.

Udavum Karangal

2006-04-14T17:02:00.000-05:00

/* Hope everyone in this world knows that Im working in Verizon at Chennai's Tidel Park. Earlier I was working in HCL Technologies. One fine day, I fled away from HCL like lovers escaping from their arrogant parents' shackles ;)I was so much frustrated that time. That happened, an year before. Ok, leave it... Its been very long, I updated here. Nowadays, Im so busy @ office that I couldnt spare time for my personal interests. Anyway, I did nothing useful these days to update here... I bought an house here at Chennai in my name with some support from my parents and family. I dont know whether I ll have a family for myself in future. Until now, I dont have big plans. But my parents thought that it is their duty to help their son in having his own house. So I fullfilled that. Also, Some time before I visited an orphanage "Udavum Karangal" which is why Im posting here */

The organization - UDAVUM KARANGAL is a non-governmental, non-political and non-profit one and it lays emphasis on involving the community in supporting the less fortunate. It gives residential care to not only the abandoned children but also to mentally challenged persons, HIV positive children, discarded aged people and AIDS afflicted persons who have been picked up from streets and garbage dumps.

Udavum Karangal currently takes care of around 1800 less fortunate people. Have a look at their website http://www.udavumkarangal.org/ Looks nice. Isnt it? You ll automatically say w-o-w, if you again remind yourself that its a non-profit organisation. This website itself reflects the amount of neat and great work Udavum Karangal is doing in other areas too.

Dont miss to have a look at the photo-gallery http://www.udavumkarangal.org/photo-gallery.htm Particularly you should not miss to view the 9th photo in the second row of Children's section.

A Question from your fan !!!

2006-01-10T15:44:00.000-06:00

/* This happened when RMS visited my college - Madras Institute Of Technology, Anna University on February 7, 2005. I was invited by my juniors for having lunch along with him. After meeting him, I mailed him seeking something from him. For long, I didnt want to reveal this mail to anyone (I dont know why!!). Perhaps, I think I wanted to treasure it. But now, I have changed my mind. */

Hello Sir,

Today I was with you in AUKBC Research Centre, Madras Institute of Technology, Anna University, India and I was having lunch along with you!!! To tell exactly, two guys were standing and talking with you about HCL Technologies (we did the Indian pronounciation!!!). In that one guy was telling about ATM networks (in which he works) and another guy was standing near him hearing your words. That another guy is me, named Sriram. That time I was about to ask you a question which I was thinking to ask you from long ago itself. I thought that today was the time to ask you but I didn't ask at that time, as you were too busy talking with ILUGC and FSF people over there. About me : Iam just a simple dude hanging around and benefited (knowledgewise) with Free software ( GNU/Linux, Emacs, GCC and other GNU tools….) for the past 3 years.

Now, at this time you will be delivering a speech in IIT Chennai about Software patents.

So I think, I can ask you now so that you can leisurely reply me. This question is something more personal about you and your thoughts. I even thought that you may bang me down, if I ask this question in person today. Luckily I didn't :).

While you were working in Massachussetts Institute of Technology… At that time only, you started to think that we have no rights or control over the software that we use and this in turn led to the start of GNU… Now forget everything about GNU, FSF blah blah blah. Why didn't you take the other path that time. I mean, the path which everyone else has taken. I mean, striving very hard and earning lots and lots of money. You could have started some software company and "naturally" as you are very good programmer, I believe that u might have created some very good software. If you had sold the software, you could have been one of the richest now. With that money, you may be having lots of fun and frolic in life and by the way you could have led your Free Software Revolution.

Don't tell that "I thought of doing for the society alone and so I chose this path."

You could have earned and along with that you could have served the world with FSF. But you didn't do like that.You chose a very different path (not to earn much money for self and serving only for the society) which completely contrasts with others' thoughts.

What made you to lead a life like this ? and How you are able to do this ? and How you are able to convince yourself with this ???

With this I finish my question. I think you can understand what I think now.

Eagerly waiting for your reply !!! Thanks !!!

---------------------------------------------------------
Fed through the tube that sticks in me
Just like a wartime novelty
Tied to machines that make me be
Cut this life off from me, God hold my breath as i wish for death
Oh, Please God help me.
--- One, Metallica.

Registered GNU/Linux User #346087
Free(dom) Software - For the people, by the people, to the people.
---------------------------------------------------------

*** Reply from RMS ***

[This message was generated by an automated system.]

I am not on vacation, but I am at the end of a long time delay. I am
located somewhere on Earth, but as far as responding to email is concerned,
I appear to be well outside the solar system.

After your message arrives at gnu.org, I will collect it in my next batch of
incoming mail, some time within the following 24 hours. I will spend much
of the following day reading that batch of mail and will come across your
message at some point. If I can write a response for it immediately, the
response will go out in the next outgoing batch--typically around 24 hours
after I collected your message, but occasionally sooner or later than that.
As a result, you should expect a minimum delay of between 24 and 48 hours in
seeing any response to your mail to me.

If you are having a conversation with me, please keep in mind that each message you receive from me is probably a response to the mail you sent 24 to 48 hours earlier, and any subsequent mail you sent has not yet been seen by me.

If you are in a hurry to speak with me, try sending mail to<rms-assist@gnu.org> saying what you would like to talk with me about, and giving your telephone number.

Another option to reach me urgently is to call the Free Software Foundation office at 617-542-5942 and ask them to contact me on your behalf.

If you aren't in an immediate hurry, there is no need to contact rms-assist@gnu.org or the Free Software Foundation office. I will get back to you as soon as I possibly can.

If you do not wish to receive this message ever again, please send a message to rms-autoreply-control@gnu.org with the subject "OFF". Otherwise, you might receive a reply like this one up to once a month.

On Feb 8, 2005 5:16 PM he replied me

Why
didn't you take the other path that time. I mean, the path which
everyone has taken.

Please don't exaggerate. It is not "everyone".

I mean, striving very hard and earning lots and
lots of money.

I was not interested in having lots of money. I still am not.
Why break my back for something that couldn't make me happy?

Many people in the US place other values above having lots of money. And many people in India do it too.

Zippy - The New Entry

2005-11-18T11:10:00.000-06:00

It has been almost 2 months, my anna gave me a gift which he bought from US. He told me that he will get me a Laptop. But, as I told NO, he wanted me to tell anything else which I need. I wanted him to buy a mobile as well as an iPod Nano for me. But later, I thought that I shouldnt trouble him and so I decided to ask only a mobile. After doing a small research, I came down for asking him to get Nokia 6630 [I eliminated the option of Sony Ericsson - Poor battery performance, Failure to give more freedom to its mobile users. I mean, the software platform of SE is not open.]

My Nokia 6630 smartphone, nicknamed Zippy is powered by a 220 MHz ARM processor with 7 MB Ram. Below are some of its other specifications.
Phone Memory - 10 MB, External MMC - 64 MB, Camera - 1.3 MP 1280x960 pixels 6x Zoom, EDGE connectivity, USB-Bluetooth Support, Dimensions - 110x60x21 mm, Weight - 127 g, Display - TFT 65k Colors 176x208 pixels, OS - Symbian OS v8.0 Series 60 Platform v2.0 UI.

Upto my knowledge, almost everything is good with this model. The best thing I liked with this model is - its keypad (smooth and good), camera, sound quality and the software platform is open. Until now, I didnt identify even a single bug with its software.

The thing which I felt bad with this mobile is - I noticed that sometimes there is a huge delay between the time when I pressed the capture key (aiming to capture a particular position of an object) and the time, the mobile prepares itself to capture the target. Because of this, sometimes It captures the succeeding position of the object. This happens only sometimes and not all the times. The other thing is : its very hard to open the back cover of the mobile due to its complicated design. Its not a big problem to me as I wont be frequently opening the back cover.

Also another point worth mentioning is : Its good and easy to transfer mp3s and pictures between my Zippy and Dexter :)

Sarge Installation

2005-08-14T06:36:00.001-05:00

Two weeks back I installed Sarge [ Debian GNU/Linux 3.1r0a ] in my Dexter. Upgraded Woody to Sarge. Before one month itself, I got the installation DVD's from Mumbai which I ordered through internet. As my poor dexter doesnt hold a DVD drive, things got delayed. The DVD's contained 14 CD images totalling to 16000 packages! GNOME 2.8 look 'n' feel has improved a lot particulary with the menu structure. But, still a lot has to be done particularly with the video and audio players. Totem has improved a lot but it is still heavy. Xine, as usual supports a wide variety of video formats but I dont know why its developers are not concentrating much on its windows which are used for adding files to be played. The same thing exists for Xmms. The Xmms windows which are used for adding the mp3 files to the player are the same and they exist as the same right from the oldest redhat 7.0. This is too bad. I didnt find time to tweak other packages. I ll update once if i find something interesting.

Ubuntu Installation

2005-07-22T08:28:00.001-05:00

Last week, I installed Ubuntu Linux 4.1 code named "Warty Warthog" in my Dexter. The installation was neat and clean as was the Desktop. Ubuntu is a distribution done from Debian [which is my favorite Distro]. The menu system in Ubuntu made me to remember about Linare Linux for which I worked, while I was in college. I was responsible for Linare KDE theme creation, desktop looks and menu system in Linare.
I have bought Debian Sarge 3.1 DVDs. Expecting it to install this weekend. Debian is my favorite Linux for various reasons. Some of them are : its the biggest, stable-est and slowest distribution. Slowest in the sense, the gap in between two releases is very large, coz its creators concentrate more on stability and wide availability. A full installation comes in a 16 CD pack !! covering many architectures and contains almost all the packages. Not everything is fine tuned for the end user in debian and so the user has to sit and customise whatever he needs. And lastly, Its the favorite distro of Stallman, which he revealed when he came to my college during 2nd year.

GNU, Stallman and me

2005-07-11T10:07:00.000-05:00

Stallman, widely hailed as RMS in the internet world is the founder of GNU (Gnu is Not Unix) project, which aimed at developing GNU system, a complete free operating system. He is the founder of FSF (Free Software Foundation) too. He is a guy who values “Software freedom” more than anyone. He graduated from Harvard with BA Physics and worked in MIT Artificial Intelligence lab as a research staff. Then, he resigned from there to start his Software Freedom Struggle. He is the creator of GNU Emacs, GNU Debugger (gdb), GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) and various other programs for the GNU System. Refer http://www.stallman.org http://www.gnu.org http://fsf.org to know more about him.

I was doing my 3rd semester during which RMS came to give a lecture about “Free Software” in my college. I wanted to see him. But as usual, I slept. Suddenly by 4 PM, I woke up and started running towards Rajam Hall, alone. A hell of crowd was there hearing the speech of an old, long bearded man. I searched for a seat to sit. Only few ppl were from my college inside the hall. The others were outsiders. Atlast, I found a seat and started listening to his speech more keenly. There stood a guy called MKS senior who came all the way from Singapore to attend his lecture. He played the main role in arranging the lecture and he was standing before the speaker with a tape recorder in hand. I didn’t figure out where Fatso Praveen senior was sitting, that time. But surely he would have present there. Suddenly, some guy started giving some GNU stickers and RMS was saying “stick it in some permanent place. Don’t waste it”. I ran atonce, stood in a queue and somehow got those two useless stickers. But, I had the satisfaction that I got Stallman’s stickers which I bet you, is worth than anything else. The lecture ended after the question and answer session. Finally, I could remember Sriram Senior going near MKS and introducing himself. Still I have the sticker pasted in my Dexter’s Cabinet. Dexter is my damn slow 400 MHZ Celeron system for which I had changed four 40 GB harddisks in the last 3 years of my college! But, still I love my Dexter.

I really liked RMS’s way of life, his principles and thoughts (Surely every GNU Linux lover will). All those things, always, made me to think “Is RMS really a human ?”. Believe me. I really wondered at him. You know, when I was reading about History of GNU in Emacs (an extensible editor. Type C-h C-p in emacs) during 2nd year of my college in Hellkay’s (he loves ppl calling him so) room, I figured out that RMS was in one sided love with a girl called Alix and he named some portion of Hurd kernel so! But, unfortunately that part of Hurd got screwed up and the design was completely changed. I wondered, why does he wants to spoil the life of a girl?! I bet you, no girl can live happily with him. Trust me, what I am saying is practical. Girls may praise Stallman more than the Richie Rich Gates. But when it comes to life, girls will surely prefer to stay along with Gates, which is the safest side. What I mean is, they will ignore RMS. I dreamt about such crap things but wanted to stay by RMS’s side.

It was the second time, RMS came to my college to give a lecture about Software Patents. But this time, I passed out of my college and was working with HCL. Somehow, I managed to get an off day to attend that lecture. But, my good luck, me and Praveen were invited to have a lunch along with RMS at AU-KBC by our CS and IT juniors . Myself and Praveen went there, had lunch along with RMS and some FSF people. Praveen, myself with some juniors stood before RMS and were hearing his golden words. I stood still, trying to keenly understand whatever RMS spoke. RMS enquired about our jobs. When Praveen was explaining about his job, which was based on ATM networks, RMS stopped and wanted him to explain about ATM networks, as he was not familiar with the term ATM!

I gave a top to bottom look at RMS. He had multi-colored hair (mostly black, brown and white) and he was wearing a maroon colored dirty Tshirt with grey colored full trousers (which had a big hole near his thighs!) and some scrap sandals. I wondered that time, “Hey, what the hell is this man ….”. Then, I stood still, gazing at his flute in his pant pocket. After he explained about BSD and GPL licenses, he atonce ran towards Rajam Hall to give his shortest lecture. You know one thing, he tenses like hell, even for small things. When he was done with the lecture, he asked everyone to contribute some useful programs (not money) for free software foundation. Everyone stood up to give him a big applause. But, he told “Sit down, Don’t stand for me. Stand for free software”. Those words must have surely touched the hearts of everyone who were there. One thing was sure in me about him, “He valued money very less than Freedom, software, technology and people”. Later, I even mailed him asking more about him, his work and his thoughts. To my surprise he replied atonce to me. His reply was very brief but it communicated whatever he thought.

But I had something else too in my mind, which I wanted to tell him, but I couldnt. “Stallman, you don’t value money. Thats ok. But it’s not the same for everybody in world (doesn’t mean that I value money more). Your principles and licenses will never fit for a business model. No business person (who values money more) will be ready to adopt free software license for all his products even if you fine-tune it. So, completely eradicating proprietary licenses from this world is not possible as you cant eliminate all the people who are in greed of money. Finally, what I say is “Both must exist”. Free Software paves way for more development of knowledge, technology and freedom in society but proprietary software makes way to earn more money and do some good business satisfying the customers needs. So, in the future, what I believe and what I hope is : Both will exist and both must exist."

Program to Google the Internet

2005-02-16T05:39:00.001-06:00

Imagine your own program querying billions of web pages!!! Believe me. Its possible. Its real. With Googles’s Web API (Beta) Service, its possible. Just over a year ago, Google began to provide access to its Web API for developers. From then, a lot of applications have been developed using it. But the developed applications can’t be used for commercial use without obtaining prior grant from Google.

The sweetest thing is : You can use any programming language ( with WebServices support ) and use this API. So you can write programs using your favourite language and use Google’s service with its API. The communication between the two end programs is performed using SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) which is an XML based protocol for exchanging structured information in a decentralized and distributed environment.

For to start your adventure, visit http://www.google.co.in/apis/. Download the kit, create a google account and get the license key. This license key should be used in your program to get service. You are allowed to make only 1000 queries per day.

I used Java for this and my program worked. If you have a direct internet connection, things will be working fine. But if you have a proxy with NTLM authentication, then the problem starts here. Your program wont work i.e you wont be allowed to connect to Google’s service. In most of the companies, a proxy ( mostly Windows Server ) will be there for to restrict WWW connections. You will be challenged for user credentials, if you have to surf Internet. The authentication protocol used for this is NTLM ( Windows NT Lan Manager protocol ). As browsers know about this protocol, the authentication info gets exchanged properly and you are able to browse net. But your program does not know anything about this NTLM protocol and so you will not be able to make the connection. As NTLM is a proprietary protocol, there are no official specifications for it. (But some geeks have reverse engineered it and found its working!). Therefore NTLM cant be implemented in our program. So how can we get Google’s Service?

Here comes my solution. Download some free proxy server having NTLM support and install it. Hack its config file and enter your credentials which you will use for surfing in your company. Run the proxy software in your local machine. Use this ( your local machine’s IP and port ) in your program which needs google’s service. Now run your program. It will work. What actually happened is : Your program will go and contact your local proxy first. As your local proxy has NTLM support, it does the authentication part successfully with your company’s main proxy server using the credentials that you entered in its config file. This works as

YOUR SEARCH PROGRAM -> LOCAL PROXY -> MAIN PROXY -> GOOGLE’s SERVICE.

DONE !!!

Here is the snapshot of my program in action :)

Download program : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/powerelex_53/files/MyGoogleSearch.java

HAPPY GOOGLING !!!

Outsourcing and the Indian Economy

2004-12-02T01:31:00.000-06:00

The buzz word of today's IT world is outsourcing. My article gives an overall view and idea of outsourcing. Remember, it can be totally meaningless!

Outsourcing can be shortly told as the transfer of ownership of a process to some other organization. Thereby an organization can concentrate on its core products without deviation over others. The supplier will provide strict guidelines regarding requirements and specifications. This is where, outsourcing differs from business relationships coz in business relationship, the buyer retains the full control and instructs the supplier, how to do the work. This outsourcing process will be beneficial as the outsourcer can reduce his costs by giving the work to places where wages are cheaper and quality is high (like India). Thereby he can concentrate in his core area of business and utilize his expertise to the maximum.

A baker in NewYork makes very good hand made cakes and people prefer his handmade cakes than the machine made ones there. So more and more people started buying his cakes and he was very happy. As his business went fine and started expanding, he thinks of giving the cakes to customers in a colorful box. To make those colorful boxes there, in NewYork, is costly. He thought of making them, himself but he couldn’t as he wanted to concentrate more on his core of business in which he is an expert i.e making handmade cakes. So what he thought was giving the work of making those colorful boxes to some company XYZ in India where the making of those boxes is very cheap and good. This is how the need for Outsourcing arises.

It all started with globalization. Big companies started to expand their operations all over the world. And when they came to India, they were attracted by the resources available here and the low cost. What I mean as the resources is the human power mainly. The quality of education imparted to Indians is far better when compared with the US peers. I accept that a lot of very good universities are there in US than in India. But if we consider the education system overall, India is the better one. Good techied English speaking people are available here willing to work for less wages. As the cost of living is low in India compared to US, employees in India could easily afford with those salaries. So, slowly the companies started to expand their operations in India by getting done more of their work here. On the other end, i.e in US, unemployment started to bud. Also the Indian government constructed Software Technology Parks offering world class infrastructure and encouraging foreign investment and promoting software development. India now possesses more number of companies which have obtained the SEI-CMM level 5 than any other country in the world.

The biggest hurdle that outsourcing companies are facing now is the method in which the work is managed once it has been sent offshore. Once the work has been sent offshore, it will be tedious for to schedule meetings with the offshore employees because of the time zone differences. So it is not very easy to schedule meetings and to interact with the offshore employees. The one who guides you in your work may be there in US. There is no possibility of having inperson meetings. So as the communication link is weak, automatically team work will get affected. Eventhough technology has improved a lot, for many things, we need inperson meetings. Also following process based work or proper security will be hard. Project managing technical IT work is more complicated even if it is in the same building. So how can we expect it to be easy after moving the work it to some remote location ?

So, what companies do is they don’t outsource the core of their business. For example if you take Norton Antivirus, they can outsource everything other than their virus definition files and the engine which works around them. Because, they wont like to let their products code appearing in someones website! So normally companies wont outsource their strategic planning, design and development of their architecture. That’s why companies, keep more of their development work in-house and outsource the maintainence work.

BPO, business process outsourcing is the outsourcing of a business process or function of a company to specialized service providers. This includes functions such as payroll, accounting, billing, finance, Human resources and other non-core business activities. It is done by creatively examining the process and re-engineering the way it is completely done. This re-engineering will include putting in new technology to accomplish or modifying the existing technology in a new way to improve the process followed. Also IT enabled services such as Helpdesk support, call centres etc are also being largely outsourced. It is obvious to all that outsourcing creates unemployment in US as most of the jobs are shifted to India. But there are some reports telling that outsourcing saves overall spent money, boosts economy and which in turn is used to create jobs in US !

My Ever Best Post

2004-09-23T07:45:00.000-05:00

I have participated in some mailing lists and forums. But the ever best post that I have made, till now is to my powerelex_53 group.
One of my friend, once posted to our group, introducing himself, and felt a lot in his mail that he got dropped out from college and he has to do his remaining one year along with Juniors. For that, I "tried" to convince him by sending this following stuff:

Eric, do u know one thing: Steve Jobs [Founder of Apple Corporation] is a drop out from Reed College. He discontinued after his first semester itself. But he became a multimillionare even before the age of 30. Larry Ellison [Founder of Oracle] is a drop out from Univ. of Illinois. Gates [Founder of Microsoft] is a drop out from Harvard. Steve Ballmer [CEO, Microsoft] is a drop out from Stanford, Michael Dell [Founder of Dell] is too a drop out from Univ. of Texas. And now, Iam thinking, What eric ll be in his future, as he too is a drop out ?

I dont know whether he got consoled after reading the above thing. But it is my ever best post.

The Power War

2004-09-23T07:09:00.000-05:00

Recently there were some hot arguments in our group "powerelex_53" saying that "Powerelex Girls are not participating in our group". This is what boys ask and girls say ...

Powerelex Guys : Our girls are not at all participating in our group. They just get attached to our group, listen and get all information from us, but they have never posted, not even forwards. But the irritating point is, they all, participate actively in "their" girls group. They can just put a CC to our powerelex_53 group while they post to their girls' group. They dont do, even that. We, boys, take a lot of pain and post to the group, whenever we have leisure time in our company. But these girls dont even care for that. According to us, We want to keep in touch with all [boys & girls], atleast through emails.

Powerelex_Girlz : Our Boys have no rights to talk about our participation. Have they mingled nicely with us in College? Then why do they bother about our participation now. Yah, We accept that we participate actively in our girls group. We think of posting to our powerelex_53 groups but something is stopping us from doing that, maybe the mingling factor...

In between, some macho hacker has cracked into girlz group. The Girls' FBI squad did some tedious, brain cracking investigations on this issue. Finally, Trinity has explicitly stated that the macho hacker is "me".

Great!!! Thanks a lot. You have shown great respect towards me!!! Keep Going...

College Life

2004-09-21T05:32:00.000-05:00

These days I feel a lot horrible as I have to get up early, get ready and come to office. Life has became Mechanical. Iam now made to follow some rules. But in College, I was like a free bird. I did whatever I like coz, there were no rules there for me, even for attending my classes.
So nowadays I even think that it will be very nice if I once again go there and study once again. If I had a Time Machine, I might have tried to adjust it to take me once again to the past.

I guess nothing could last forever, forever...
- Summer of '69, Bryan Adams.

But to tell the truth, If I think of studying once again from SKM, CNK, Nagarajan, Kannan, IG, the GREAT VV [Did I miss anyone ?]. Oh there is nothing horrible more than that. Thank God, I just came out of that hell [Department].

So Iam now feeling very comfortable with what Iam now...

All about Google

2004-09-17T10:05:00.000-05:00

From now on, I have decided to make my blog to contain some interesting techie articles, which, I will write whenever I have leisure time. If this blog contains only about me, then it will be boring for the readers. So I have decided to update my blog with info about me, what all, I do these days and some good stuff (hope so) that I write…

I had and have a great passion for Google and its products. When they first introduced Gmail, I atonce created an account ( during May ), and announced to our powerelex group that iam proud to have an account there. I thought that many will ask more about that and they will be eager to get an account there. But, unfortunately no one cared about that. I was badly disappointed then. But only some few weeks back, many guys in our group were hunting like anything for getting a Gmail ID. Atleast for to boast to others that “ I too have a Gmail ID”, people are creating a Gmail ID. Hahahah. Already there are a lot of reviews done regarding Gmail and is readily available in the net.

If you have a good internet connection speed, don’t miss to view this one hour lecture about Google by Mr.Urs Hoelzle, Google Inc @ University of Washington. You really miss a lot in life, if you fail to listen to this lecture.

Click Here for Lecture

Google is a play on the word googol, which was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was popularized in the book, "Mathematics and the Imagination". It actually refers to the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. Google's use of the term reflects the company's mission to organize the immense, seemingly infinite amount of information available on the web.

The computing engine that powers Google is one of the largest cluster of Linux Servers in the History of world. Nearly they are using some 15000 machines. The power of all these machines are put together to give the end users that much lightning speed. If u happen to have a chat with some computer geek, he will talk more about the number of machines Google is using rather than the number of web pages it has indexed. Nearly every web page in the world is indexed and cached by Google. Also they have multiple copies of them.

It’s a great challenge for them, if they decide to change something in the cluster, or if they plan to do software or hardware upgradation without disruption of service. Yet they achieve 100 % uptime. This is a serious stuff to consider. The software and hardware architecture that Google follows is as simple and as elegant as its site.

Google was founded some 4 years ago and now it handles nearly 150 Million Queries a day with a peak load of 1000 per second! It was actually founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin both Stanford University Graduates. First, they worked together and wrote a search engine called BackRub, which had the unique ability to analyze the back links pointing to a given site. This is still used in the present Google search engine and is buzzed around as one of the supercapabilities of Google.

Page Ranking :

The much talked thing about Google is its Page Ranking technique. There is a reason why they have incorporated this, in their engine. Suppose, if you are searching for Emacs Manual, there are a lot of such docs available in the Internet. If the engine is going to fetch the document, which contains a large number of occurrences of the words Emacs and Manual, then the search result will be useless. Even some scrap, might have kept a document in his site with name Emacs Manual and containing the word Emacs for some 1000 times in it. It should not fetch this page and give as a result. So the engine must have some capability to analyse the pages and info in them. Accordingly Ranking is provided to each page, and accordingly the search result appears.

The thing which Google considers mostly is the number of links pointing to a particular page on a particular info. The quality of the referring page is also taken into account. Suppose if my page has been pointed for a particular info by some 5 outside sites, and if another guy, say X’s page is pointed by Yahoo for the same info, then the weightage is given to X’s page coz Yahoo is a world renowned site. So, the number of pointers doesn’t matter. The quality of the referring site matters. Who is pointing is more important than how many are pointing.

Page rank is just a query independent measure of goodness of each page available in the Internet.

( Iam bad at drawing, Sorry !)

So, if there is a page P which is pointed by A and B, then the weightage of P will be 1/3 of A + 1/4 of B. This is how Google calculates the rank of each page.

SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE :

As said previously, Google’s software architecture is very simple and more efficient. Just an overview of its architecture is shown below. Each server shown in the diagram is not a single machine… Some thousands of machines are present in each block to handle all the traffic…

In the Index Servers, the words are mapped to documents according to the rank assigned. In the document servers, almost all web pages are cached. Multiple copies are kept, so that the high traffic can be handled. If there is only a single copy, many queries cant be looked up at a particular time. So from above figure, word1 and word2 are searched. Word1 is there in page1, page3 and page4. Word2 is there in page2 and page4. As the user has searched for both the words, ANDing the results of word1 and word2 yields page4 as the first result. Also according to word searched, Ads are introduced from the Ad Servers. For to lookup from Index to documents, Google doesn’t use any lookup tables, simply they involve some mathematical modulo operations.

HARDWARE ARCHITECTURE :

Some hundreds and hundreds of such racks are present. TCP/UDP is used mostly for intercommunication. So the real challenge of Google is the upgradation, maintenance of systems. As the websize grows, the number of machines required to cache them grows, the replicas of data grows, Indexing becomes large and the number of document servers needed to cache grows. Inspite of these things, Google has a very good throughput and efficiency which is achieved by using very cheap computers!

GOOGLE WEB SEARCH FEATURES :

Calculator: Google web search has an inbuilt calculator function. Try giving some expressions. Don’t get astonished. Example : 4^4, 10*10, sqrt (2).

Definition : To get a definition of a word search as define word that u want.

Froogle: Use froogle for product based search.

I’m Feeling Lucky Button : The "I'm Feeling Lucky™" button takes you directly to the first web page Google returned for your query. Have u ever tried this while searching ???

Site Search : To restrict your search in a particular site use the keyword site. For example, to find admission information in Stanford’s site, use Admission site:www.stannford.edu

Who links to you : To find the pages that point to a particular site use link:www.google.com

Google Compute : If u want to help Google someway, you can do that. You can donate your computers idle time for scientific research ! Visit http://toolbar.google.com/dc/offerdc.html

Like this, a lot and lot of Google services are there like Blog, Picassa photo Organiser, Desktop Search, Translate tool.

And don’t forget about the Google Web API (SOAP and WSDL Standards) which is available for free download. With this API, you can query more than 4 million web pages directly from your own computer programs. If you are curious, try it out. For to program, first, you have to register and get a license key.

Happy Hacking with Google !

Copyright (c)  2004  Sriram.K
 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;

Knoppix Linux Inside Windows VMWare

2004-09-16T10:00:00.001-05:00

Recently I asked the authorities here in my office that I want a dual boot system with both Linux and Windows. But, as there was no need of having a dual boot system for my project going here, they denied to offer me. But anyhow I wanted Linux in my system.
Then, I got an idea : Try Virtual Machine, so that I can have multiple OS without even installing the OS in my system. Using this, I can have multiple OSs parallely. i.e at a particular time, I can work with multiple Operating Systems.
So I downloaded the 700 MB Knoppix version 3.6 iso file. Why I preferred Knoppix is, it’s a “live” Linux i.e you can boot it directly without installing that in your system. Then I installed VMWare Workstation 4.5.2 in my system. After some configurations, I was able to boot Knoppix without installing [ Normally, u have to install the OS inside VMWare to use it] in my Windows 2000 using VMWare 4.5.2.
VMWare is actually a virtual machine which enables multiple operating systems to run concurrently in the same system. It actually translates the calls made by different operating systems. Every Virtual machine has its own “Virtual” CPU, memory, disks, I/O devices. These virtual devices are mapped to the actual devices.
So, totally, if you see, it will be the sharing of system resources by all your virtual machines.
Also I was able to browse internet in my Knoppix within my Windows.

Gmail Bug

2004-09-15T03:06:00.001-05:00

Recently I found a bug [not a serious bug] in Gmail and I filed it to Gmail Site. The bug is related to "Archiving Conversations" and it was filed as Bug #14306483. If you are interested in knowing about the bug, follow the steps that I have furnished below to reproduce it.

Steps to reproduce the Bug :

1. Archive a mail that you have in INBOX
2. Move to ALL MAILS
3. Select the checkbox of the mail that you now archived.
4. In MORE ACTIONS, Choose Archive.

Actual Result obtained : The Conversation is archived.
Expected result : The Conversation is already archived or You cant archive a conversation which is already archived.

Also, I checked out that Gmail is currently, not working in Firefox 1.0 preview release and Mozilla 1.7.3.