Non sequitur?

Selected for Google Summer of Code

2006-05-28T01:54:00.000-07:00

My only application to Google Summer of Code has been accepted. So for the next 3 motnhs, I will be working on Kamaelia project (http://kamaelia.sf.net) developing a security framework, yay !!

Michael Sparks, the lead developer has been very supporting, and I would have perhaps not applied if he had not given me encouragement.

Difference between hard mounting and soft mounting in NFS

2006-04-24T10:11:00.000-07:00

Here is a small piece of code that I used to check out hard mounting and soft mounting NFS. Output at the end.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <unistd.h>

#define NUM_SEC 60
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
FILE *fp;
int i, sav_err;

if(argc < 2)
{
printf("Please enter file name. Usage %s \n", argv[1]);
return 1;
}


for(i = 0; i < NUM_SEC; i++)
{
fp = fopen(argv[1], "r");
sav_err = errno;

if(fp == NULL)
{
printf("\nAn error occured for file %s \n", argv[1]);
printf("\nError : %s\n", strerror(sav_err));
return 1;
}
else
{
printf("Successfully opened file : ");
system("date");
fclose(fp);
fflush(stdout);
}
sleep(1);
}
return 0;
}

Output :

-----------------Hard Mounting-----------------

devendra@l:~/hda5/devendra$ sudo mount 10.1.30.2:/mnt/hda5 hda5 -o hard
devendra@l:~$ cd hda5/devendra

devendra@l:~/hda5/devendra$ ~/mit/ds/a.out music
Mon Apr 24 23:16:48 EDT 2006
Successfully opened file : Mon Apr 24 23:16:49 EDT 2006
Successfully opened file : Mon Apr 24 23:16:50 EDT 2006
Successfully opened file : Mon Apr 24 23:16:51 EDT 2006
Successfully opened file : Mon Apr 24 23:16:52 EDT 2006
Successfully opened file : Mon Apr 24 23:16:53 EDT 2006 (Link goes down, program waits till link comes back again)
Successfully opened file : Mon Apr 24 23:17:22 EDT 2006 (Link goes up)
Successfully opened file : Mon Apr 24 23:17:23 EDT 2006
Successfully opened file : Mon Apr 24 23:17:24 EDT 2006
Successfully opened file : Mon Apr 24 23:17:25 EDT 2006
Successfully opened file : Mon Apr 24 23:17:26 EDT 2006
Successfully opened file : Mon Apr 24 23:17:27 EDT 2006
Successfully opened file : Mon Apr 24 23:17:28 EDT 2006

devendra@l:~/hda5/devendra$ cd ..
devendra@l:~/hda5$ cd ..
devendra@l:~$ sudo umount hda5

-----------------Soft Mounting-----------------

devendra@l:~$ sudo mount 10.1.30.2:/mnt/hda5 hda5 -o soft
devendra@l:~$ cd hda5/devendra/

devendra@l:~/hda5/devendra$ ~/mit/ds/a.out music
Mon Apr 24 23:19:44 EDT 2006
Successfully opened file : Mon Apr 24 23:19:45 EDT 2006
Successfully opened file : Mon Apr 24 23:19:46 EDT 2006
Successfully opened file : Mon Apr 24 23:19:47 EDT 2006
Successfully opened file : Mon Apr 24 23:19:48 EDT 2006
Successfully opened file : Mon Apr 24 23:19:49 EDT 2006
Successfully opened file : Mon Apr 24 23:19:50 EDT 2006
Successfully opened file : Mon Apr 24 23:19:51 EDT 2006
Successfully opened file : Mon Apr 24 23:19:52 EDT 2006
Successfully opened file :                             (Link goes down, after few seconds, timeout occurs...)
An error occured for file music

Error : Input/output error
devendra@l:~/hda5/devendra$

It has finally arrived!

2005-12-23T10:27:00.000-08:00

Acer 5002, Amd64 Turion 1.6Gig, 256 MB RAM, DVD writer.

Currently downloading Suse 10.0 OSS for AMD64.

The Old Book Shop

2005-12-23T09:39:00.000-08:00

A antique book shop in the heart of bustling bazaar... It is still there. I happened to take a peek at it. And the old guy was still there.

Usually in my summer holidays I used to go to my grandmother's place, which is the heart of Kolhapur city. And I used to get pretty bored, especially in the afternoons, when everybody used to go to sleep. I used to check out the creaky and dusty old attic in the house, checking out dusty old books, mostly my grandfather's who was a professor in Botany.

The wada is very near to MahaLaxmi temple, which is bang in the center of the city. There is a mandai, a bazaar, typical Indian style nearby, where one gets everything ranging from utensils, common household items to foodgrains and vegetables.

In the middle of all this is an old raddi ka dukaan. Sandwiched right in between two open air foodgrain shops, there sits an old guy, who is surrounded by books from all sides.

The old guy is an interesting fellow. He is not much interested in his business, he typically engrossed in reading some book. He buys books at radii rate, sells them at marginally higher costs.

I used to frequent his place. I would buy any books lying around. Most would cost something like 2-3 rupees. This was some 8-10 years back. And pretty soon I had collected a horde of books. Some fine books, Reader's digest short stories collections. Reader's digest issues from the 1950's - 1980's. In a span of a year and a half I had collected something like eighty ninety issues of RD. I still remember the old guy diligently searching for RD's in his pile of books.

I checked up on the old guy few days back. He was still there. Nothing has changed.

Gaim 2.0b1 released

2005-12-19T09:10:00.000-08:00

Gaim 2.0b is released. Check out news here

Check out the change log. Stealth stuff has been implemented for Yahoo! it seems.

The Semester That Was

2005-12-19T08:22:00.000-08:00

Lots of interesting events have taken place this semester.

Things started with the campus placements. Suddenly everyone stopped reading Jigar, and started reading Shakunta Devi etc for the Placements.

It was actually quite funny with people taking the placements as just another exam.

The problem in front of me was to sit for which company and leave others. Once I am placed in a copmany, I am out of the Campus Placements process, so I had to take the decision bit carefully. The lineup started with Infosys followed by Wipro, TCS, IBM and Amdocs.

I passed the first four. Perhaps the toughest decision I had to take was to leave IBM. My mom started getting a bit tense, c'mon the first four have lot of brand recognition. But my dad supported me throughout.

I checked out Amdocs. It seemed to be a good place to work in. I love telecommunications anyways, so I decided to appear for the apti's.

The test was a breeze, nothing difficult. It was a CBT of around 3-4 hours, covered a lot of sections, but surprisingly there was no verbal section.

The interview was held next day in Amdocs office. I was a bit tensed. I can handle any number of Apit's, but I was giving an interview for the first time.

Well, the interview turned out to be a breeze too. The interview lasted exactly half an hour; it was a combined HR+Tech interview. I must admit that I screwed up badly on some points, but otherwise it was a okey interview. I think the outcome of the interview was decided in the first five minutes. The first question put to me was what I had done since morning, to which I replied that I had gone through your website and read your financial report for previous year.

Overall, the entire process seemed to be very professionally handled by people from Amdocs, a quality that I admire.

Moving onwards, college started of pretty well, it was back to routine. I choose Mobile Computing as my elective.

I started another club in college, the "MIT Amateur Radio Club". I tried to do some activity regarding this in SE, but I couldn't find the time. The electronics people in our college seemed to be mildly interested, esp my peers. I had to literally do marketing of ham radio to teachers and in classes. Things have been set in motion, I hope this club remains active for times to come.

The second activity is of MIT Linux Users Group. I used to take up meeting on Saturdays after college, it started off as usual with what linux is all about, installation etc.

For both these activities, a lot of SE ppl turned up, and a bunch of them are enthusiastic enough. Hopefully they will keep on doing some activities in future.

I finally understood how the college network has been configured; the windows gateway was creating problems, which was replace by Linux one. So, now I have a machine in Server room :)

On the academic front, I was at odds with one of the proff's, I avoided the proff, and there was minimum interaction.

Project took up some of the time. TRDDC is one bureaucratic place.

PL was like any other winter PL. The papers kept getting progressively crazier, it is a never ending study. Sometimes I wonder f studying stuff in PL's actually help or not.

Well I guess 7 gone, 1 left.

A state of mind

2005-12-07T08:34:00.000-08:00

Stress can be really a wonderful thing in mild quantities. It enables a person to focus the mind on some task, block away all other thoughts and sort of energize a person.

Once in a while, I reach a state of absolute concentration. It is difficult to describe this state, it gives a sort of exhilaration or *kick* to the mind. Things that are earlier considered to be *impossible* to understand are crystal clear on a single reading.

Everything else is filtered out by my brain subconsciously. It is as if I am one with the book. A sort of short circuit takes place, and I am placed in the same state of understanding as the author meant in his/her writing.

I am in total command. Knowledge is Power. I feel like God!

The Victims and the Victor

2005-11-24T22:25:00.000-08:00

A man is found guilty of raping his daughter and convicted for life, and now apparently the daughter is claiming that all the charges are baseless and her father is innocent and he is being framed by his wife. The story is hereand the original conviction story is here

Firstly, what were the press thinking when they were covering the trial of the case? The accused has always been maintaining that he is being framed by his wife. Yet these views were *not* presented to the public by the press.
Instead, the prosecution allegations were potrayed as to be true, and further reports of increasing crime against women, children were put forward (I am not disputing the reports, but the context)

The Himachal Pradesh HC was (in words of the honourable SC) "swayed by sheer insensitivity" and hurled a bunch of other expletives in legal parlance.

If the person in question is indeed innocent then the SC and TOI have made a grave mistake. The man in question and the Himachal HC are the victims.

A fortune -
"Of what you see in books, believe 75%. Of newspapers, believe 50%. And of TV news, believe 25% -- make that 5% if the anchorman wears a blazer."

Vertical Horizon

2005-11-21T13:01:00.000-08:00

The music rocks... also the animation of Final Fantasy is cool.....

Somewhere there's speaking
It's already coming in
Oh and it's rising at the back of your mind
You never could get it
Unless you were fed it
Now you're here and you don't know why

But under skinned knees and the skid marks
Past the places where you used to learn
You howl and listen
Listen and wait for the
Echoes of angels who won't return

Chorus
He's everything you want
He's everything you need
He's everything inside of you
That you wish you could be
He says all the right things
At exactly the right time
But he means nothing to you
And you don't know why

You're waiting for someone
To put you together
You're waiting for someone to push you away
There's always another wound to discover
There's always something more you wish he'd say

Chorus

But you'll just sit tight
And watch it unwind
It's only what you're asking for
And you'll be just fine
With all of your time
It's only what you're waiting for

Out of the island
Into the highway
Past the places where you might have turned
You never did notice
But you still hide away
The anger of angels who won't return

Chorus
I am everything you want
I am everything you need
I am everything inside of you
That you wish you could be
I say all the right things
At exactly the right time
But I mean nothing to you and I don't know why
And I don't know why
Why
I don't know ....

tis cold and wintry

2005-10-10T07:52:00.000-07:00

Winter is here.

Its the time of the year in Pune where cold slowly starts to creep in, especially in the morning. The afternoons are still hot, the evenings starting to chill.

Sweets for my Sweet

2005-10-05T11:46:00.000-07:00

Sweets for my sweet, sugar for my honey
Your first sweet kiss thrilled me so
Sweets for my sweet, sugar for my honey
I'll never ever let you go

If you wanted that star that shines so brightly
To match the stardust in your eye
Darling, I would chase that bright star nightly
And try to steal it from the sky
And I would bring

Sweets for my sweet, sugar for my honey
Your first sweet kiss thrilled me so
Sweets for my sweet, sugar for my honey
I'll never ever let you go

If you wanted a king to keep you smilin'
I'd tell the sandman you were blue
And I'd ask him to keep that sand a-pilin'
Until your dreams had all come true
And I would bring

Sweets for my sweet, sugar for my honey
Your first sweet kiss thrilled me so
Sweets for my sweet, sugar for my honey
I'll never ever let you go

And if you wanted a love to last forever
Darlin' I would send my love your way
And my love'd not only last forever
But forever and a day
And I would bring

Sweets for my sweet, sugar for my honey
Your first sweet kiss thrilled me so
Sweets for my sweet, sugar for my honey
I'll never ever let you go
---------------

I have a faint idea of this song being played on TV (BBC perhaps)... Looking for MP3...

Two beauties

2005-09-27T06:28:00.000-07:00

Well the two Linux servers in the Server room in Lab. Ok, the pics are not so great....

The machine on the right acts as an gateway for Internet access. Net access of all computer labs , VLSI Lab, Mechanical Lab etc goes through this machine.

The machine on the left is a new Debian machine which has to be configured using NIS and NFS.

GnuJagruti Workshop

2005-09-25T04:10:00.000-07:00

I conducted a workshop in an event called as GnuJagruti in VIT Pune on 20th if this month. The workshop was on Programming in Linux, was attended by around 20 students from various colleges.

Inspite of being present in he lab one hour before the presentation, things still went wrong. The lab was in the making, so eletricians were screwing up tubelights etc. Arrangement for the projector were made last minute. The PC that was to be used for the presentation did not have Open Office installed and did not have a working cdrom drive too.

So there I was, 20 odd faces looking to me, with no presentation slides to show. The workshop was already delayed by an hour or so because of the entire schedule being revamped.

Fortunately, I had taken such sessions in my college earlier. Once things got started, they kept on moving pretty fine. In the end, it was an ok workshop.

Debian Server up

2005-09-06T11:38:00.000-07:00

OK, so am messing around in the server room... But hey, this maybe the last time I may be able to mess around with servers.

Existing Redhat server got the jinx and a new HP machine is in its place. It was going to be Rh 9.0 as usual, but the installation kept on messing up, maining due to corrupt cd's I guess.

So, got the Deb Netinstall cd, burned a copy of it. Did initial stuff, partitioning etc. Setup network parameters, selected Desktop Environment, File servers and some other options, next next next, and done.

The installation was surprisingly smooth. It did not have a fancy GUI, but things were pretty self explanatory.

Setup of NFS is done. Now have to setup NIS and reconfigure the clients. Am trying to setup a local Debian repository, maybe can change the entire lab from RH 9 to deb.

Road Trip

2005-08-22T09:10:00.000-07:00

Beautiful roads where one can go at 100 kmph, without worry, without tension, without fear.... That's all. 230 kms in four and a half hours, which included a break btw.

NH4 is turning out to be an excellent highway after all. I half expected the highway to be problem free after the recent floods, but barring few potholes on some stretches, it was smooth sailing all the way.

The economics also turn out to be favorable. Firstly, one saves atleast 20-30% of time, and for businesses time is money I guess. Secondly, I am sure that the mileage would definitely increase. Assume that for every 100-150 km, one saves a litre of petrol. Won't mind paying toll of 20-30 Rs then. And with crude oil prices rocketing, the economics will look still rosier. Toll collection would also ensure maintenance of the roads.

Now if they just put up proper sign boards......

Penguin 1 Win 0

2005-08-11T11:10:00.000-07:00

The gateway in my department has been shifted from Win to Linux. The documentation with windows is patheric, configuring the routes is a hellish job (I couldn't find good info on the web too). Too much traffic was being dumped on the backbone and from the backbone onto the network. This resulted in problems with existing Novell Servers.

With the Tux server in place, all problems have been solved. Network traffic has gone down 70%.

USB Wireless working

2005-07-19T11:51:00.000-07:00

Got a USB Wireless LAN stick. No Linux drivers as usual.

A bit of googling revelead that it is indeed supported. Downloaded drivers, downloaded kernel source, installed firmware. Compiled drivers and installed them, voila , the drive was up and ready.

KWifiManager providing the works in graphics departement.

enthusiastic

2005-07-19T11:08:00.000-07:00

Enthusiasm (from Gr. enthousiasmos possession by a god) originally means inspiration by a divine afflatus or by the presence of a god. Today it simply means intense enjoyment, interest or approval.

Originally an enthusiast is a person possessed by a god. Applied by the Greeks to manifestations of divine possession, by Apollo, as in the case of the Pythia, or by Dionysus, as in the case of the Bacchantes and Maenads, the term enthusiasm was also used in a transferred or figurative sense.

Jive messenger up and running

2005-07-08T11:22:00.000-07:00

Finally set up a Jabber server on a "majboot" server in the lab. Hopefully this will make the lab sessions more bearable.

Have to still find a decent console based jabber client though. Centericq and cabber had problems. Couple a good client and elinks, enough to keep me busy in console mode :)

Converting strings to ints

2005-07-03T10:57:00.000-07:00

The problem is to convert the random string data obtained from os.urandom() in Python to an integer.
os.urandom() returns specified number of bytes of random data. This data is to be interpreted as an integer, because we need large 512 bit or above random prime numbers to generate keys in RSA.

Python being a high level language, one cannot just typecast a pointer.

Well after googling and popping the question at PLUG meeting, the conlusion was that there is no inbuilt function that just interprets the returned bytes as ints.

So here is the function:

def getint(randomstring):

exp = len(randomstring) - 1
sum = 0

for a in randomstring:
sum = sum + ord(a) * 256 ** exp
exp = exp - 1
return sum

Python gives unlimited precision with longs.

Google Summer of Code

2005-06-28T11:00:00.000-07:00

Well this is a bit late, but Google Summer of Code has started.

Lots of ideas for projects can be found at : http://code.google.com/summerofcode.html

Out of the many excellent projects and ideas, the Jabber foundation and Gaim has excellent ones on Instant Messenging.

Shoutcast

2005-05-15T00:29:00.000-07:00

With the advent of (so called) broadband and always on connections, radio streaming will catch on.
I don't know why ppl at University of Pune are haggling over FM radio, when they have WiFi connectivity et al.

People can listen to thousands of stations at Shoutcast. And they can even setup their own Internet radio stations. Of course you require bandwidth to support all the streams, but we have experimented a bit and even 32 kbps does not sound bad.

Check out some of the low bandwidth stations at shoutcast.

Fergusson Linux

2005-05-12T07:11:00.000-07:00

Well, CS people from Fergi have made a live CD by hacking Fedora core (argh!).
It in the initial stages of development but there seem to be very motivated developers behind this distro.

Their website : http://fergilinux.tripod.com/ (which is sometimes *very* slow)

SMS

2005-05-01T11:04:00.000-07:00

SMS - Saree Mgmt System
The ultimate is clothes mgmt.

The female species has literally trillions of cloth articles. SMS will ease the burden on users by helping them in searching (where is the white cotton saree), classfying (peacock blue, navy blue and dark blue), maintanence (interface with dry cleaners system), buying (interface with garment manufacturers).

All sarees are intended to be photographed and RFID tagged. They will be then added to database along with some descriptive keywords. Search facility must automatically detect colour and search on descriptive attributes. Selected sarees must be automatically searched and location told to user.

Sarees marked for cleaning should automatically despatch a request to dry cleaners with the operations to be performed (starch, dryclean, press etc) depending upon the type of material.

The system must periodically connect to a portal for updating its database on types of materials, latest fashions and garments available in the market.

The user can optionally opt for remote interface through the web portal for small fee.

The product should be fully extensible for all cloth items (although male users would fall in minority). The product must be fully extensible to support future products of company like automated saree cupboard (Just insert saree, m/c auto detect colour, type of material etc. Would also detect need for maintenance etc).

Fight Club - This is your life - lyrics

2005-04-29T12:11:00.000-07:00

and you open the door and you step inside
we're inside our hearts.
now imagine your pain is a white ball of healing light.
that's right, feel your pain, the pain itself, it's a
white ball of healing light.

I don't think so.
this is your life.
good to the last drop, doesn't get any better than this.
this is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.
this isn't a seminar and this isn't a weekend retreat.

where you are now you can't even imagine what the
bottom will be like.
only after disaster can we be resurrected.
it's only after you have lost everything that you are
free to do anything.

nothing is static, everything is appalling, everything
is falling apart.

this is your life it doesn't get any better than this.
this is your life and it's ending one minute at a time.

you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.
you are the same decaying organic matter as everything else.
we are all a part of the same compost heap, we are the
all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.
you are not your bank account, you are not the clothes you wear.
you are not the contents of your wallet.
you are not your bowel cancer.
you are not your Grande Latte.
you are not the car you drive.
you are not your fucking khakis.

you have to give up, you have to give up.
you have to realize that someday you will die, until
you know that you are useless.

I say let me never be complete.
I say may I never be content.
I say deliver me from Swedish furniture!
I say deliver me from clever art.
I say deliver me from clear skin and perfect teeth.
I say you have to give up.
I say evolve, and let the chips fall where they may.

this is your life it doesn't get any better than this.
this is your life and it's ending one minute at a time.
you have to give up. you have to give up.
I want you to hit me as hard as you can!

welcome to fight club, if this is your first night, you have to fight.

gentlemen, welcome to fight club

1st rule of fight club: you don't talk about fight club
2nd rule of fight club: you do not talk about fight club
3rd rule of fight club: when someone say stop or goes limp, the fight is over.
4th rule of fight club: only two guys to a fight.
5th rule of fight club: one fight at a time.
6th rule of fight club: no shirts. no shoes.
7th rule of fight club: fights go on as long as they have to.
8th and final rule: if this is your first night at fight club, you have to fight.

This is your life.
good to the last drop.
it doesn't get any better than this.
this is your life and it's ending one minute at a time.
you thought you had it all figured out.
you bought furniture.
you told yourself, this is the last sofa ill ever need.
No matter what else happens, I've got that sofa issue handled.
then the right set of dishes, the right dinette.
Your window treatment, your duvet, your dust ruffle.
I say a chair is not an insight into a better
understanding of it's owner, a chair is a place to put your ass.
I say may I never be complete.
I say evolve and let the chips fall where they may.

You are not a unique and individual snowflake.
We are all part of the same compost heap.
We are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.
You are not your bank account, you are not the clothes you wear.
You are not the contents of your wallet.

Self-improvement is masturbation.
Now self-destruction is...

In cultures without soap, they use their urine, and
the urine of their dogs to wash their clothes and
hair, because of the uric acid and ammonia.
And we just piss our fancy American piss, rich and
yellow from too many vitamins.
Rich and expensive and thrown away.
could be worse.
A woman could cut off your penis and throw it out the
window of a moving car.
You could be hit by lightening and your head could
burn down to a smoldering baseball.
you could be wading in a river in south America while
tiny fish with barbed wire spines swim up your urethra
and set up housekeeping.

I want you to start a fight with a total stranger.
I want you to start a fight, and I want you to lose.
Take some joe off the street and recruit him.
let him experience winning for the first time in his
miserable life.
Give him permission to beat the crap out of you.
get him to explode.

this isn't a seminar.
this isn't a weekend retreat.
where you are now, you cant even
imagine what the bottom will be like.
if you don't fall all the way, you cant be saved.
it's only after you've lost everything that you are
free to do anything.

Nothing is static.
Everything is changing.
Everything is falling apart.

There are only two constants in this life; chaos and pandemonium.

FreeCycle Community

2005-04-24T11:02:00.000-07:00

Well check out www.freecycle.org

From their website:
When you want to find a new home for something -- whether it's a chair, a fax machine, piano, or an old door -- you simply send an e-mail offering it to members of your Freecycle group.

Or, maybe you're looking to acquire something yourself. Simply respond to a member's offer, and you just might get it. After that, it's up to the giver to decide who receives the gift and to set up a pickup time for passing on the treasure.

One main rule: Everything posted must be free, legal, and appropriate for all ages.

It never rains.... It pours

2005-04-16T11:24:00.000-07:00

Submissions, orals and frigging onlines with absolutely no idea of stuff. UML diagrams of a GSM network? bah. Oh yeah plus interviews and tests for projects.

Analysis of board games - Monopoly vs Business.

2005-03-24T09:08:00.000-08:00

It all began when I started arranging a set of Business that a friend had got (A activity that I enjoy). Started thinking as to why monopoly is more fun than Business. I don't ever remember playing Business once we had a set of Monopoly in our society. Cricket, board games and computer games were the standard in holidays, with gaming sessions lasting until dinner time under a tube light on the terrace (I miss those days...)

Anyways, Monopoly is more fun because some thought has been given over the game play in general. Business seems to be a very poor copy in contrast. The fundamental problem is that the cost of a house and a hotel is same. A ticket reads

"Cost of House - 7500"
"Cost of Hotel - 7500"

which basically does not make any sense with the rent on a hotel being much higher than that on a hotel.
While Monopoly explicitly states that Cost of a hotel is cost of four houses plus 1 house.

Also, there needs to be rent rationalization. It doesn't make sense to invest Rs.7500 in a house and earn paltry 1500. The salary of 1500 in Business in negligible. On other hand, 200 pounds is a healthy salary in Monopoly(half of the costliest site ie Mayfair).

All this leads to complicated and fuzzy rules in Business to make the game playable.

Spring in the air

2005-03-24T05:42:00.000-08:00

Spring is definately here. Nature took a very rude way of its presensce by setting one of our computer labs ablaze. Barring this incident, life is pleasent. Its the time of the year when one starts dreaming about future plans.

In a few days the slogging for submissions will begin. And after that practicals exams, PL's, more exams, placements and the freaky chakra continues.

Had a chance to play a couple of games of Monopoly, which was fun. One can really see the traits of people when you play with a group. I am a board game freak to some extent. One of my favourite sites Board Game Geek

Page 3

2005-03-12T09:46:00.000-08:00

Saw the movie finally. Well the story is bit different. But the film degenerates into a typical Hindi film in the middle. Maybe the first half an hour or so and the last few minutes. Page 3 has its moments though.

Insanity

2005-02-18T10:02:00.000-08:00

My friend, "The Stableboy" in a fit of insanity has deleted the blog Pkscarpbuk.

"You know, the way love can change a fellow is really frightful to contemplate"
- Bertie Wooster, Inimitable Jeeves (P.G. Wodehouse)

Crisis at hand

2005-02-13T09:09:00.000-08:00

crisis n. 1 a decisive moment 2 a time of danger or great difficulty
From Greek krino - decide

It is time of crisis. Next two weeks are important. Things have not gone out of hand, but steps need to be taken now to prevent state of utter chaos and confusion. Coming months are hard, forces unprepared and the generals inexperienced.

The Tricolour

2005-01-26T07:15:00.000-08:00

It surprises me that in India we don't have the practice of hoisting the National flag in private residences, window sills, factories and all.

Lots of thoughts flashed by today during the flag hoisting ceremony today. I remembered a scene in Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 where a woman in US places a large flag in her window sill. Her son had lost his life in Iraq. I also remembered a Popeye cartoon that I had seen long time back, where Popeye is cleaning windows, and some fight going on the flag pole. Some Archie comic strip.

Tried to see if any movement or something was going on in regards to this.
I came across the Flag Code of India

It does allow public to display the flag. On window sills too. Although I disagree with some conditions like not displaying it on vehicles, ships and railways and the ban on printing it on dresses and stuff. Also the compulsion of use of hand spun cloth seems unreasonable.

The code does not mention any method of storage of flag in some specific manner.

So, anybody game to displaying the tricolour on their window sills?

IT Expo 2005

2005-01-24T09:28:00.000-08:00

Promoting Linux at the PLUG(Pune Linux Users Group) in IT Expo 2005 was an experience.

Got to saw all kinds of janta, ranging from people asking "How much is this monitor" to "Your course is of no use, it does not include Database concepts" (in a basic awareness course).

Linux is catching on for sure, from business organisations to students and casual home users, people want to try out Linux.

People need support and help in trying out Linux. Maybe a couple of install fests in and around the city will create a base of users.

"PLUG does not have any kind of office. We don't have any business card. We only have a website. Yes, we do sell CD's at 25 Rs. per CD. No, they are not available right noow. You have to book them now by paying the full amount."
And atleast 100 people believed us and parted with their money. Which is astonishing considering the fact that only gurantee of getting the CD's is our word.

Inviting Ideas

2005-01-17T09:35:00.000-08:00

College has started just a forthnight ago, and already the lectures seem to sap away the energy. Some are good, some are bad, some are cruel. They kill you step by step, methodically at each second. One thing that engineering develops is the ability to withstand really long and boring lectures.

Well to make life bearable, I am inviting (the very few) readers to contribute ways to while away time in a lecture. They can be constructive or destructive. The only restriction is that the
lecturer must not be able to know the proceeding of the activity.

Traditional ways like sleeping, drawing, playing BINGO, cross and naughts, learning word lists etc. are common. Lecturers can generally guess these. Looking for something innovative. Any ideas?

Moviees to collect this year

2005-01-16T05:33:00.000-08:00

I wanted to create a collection of movies as some of my friends do. Bollywood movies bore me to some extent due to the same Masala Remix. The last Bollywood movie that I remembered watching at the theatre is Aankhe(which is truly original).

Well, as usual I used google to find out top American flicks. My search soon yielded AFI, American Film Institute. They have created a 100 years

Some of the movies that I am trying to collect right know :

Cassablanca
Breakfast at Tiffany's
When Harry met Sally
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Notting Hill
Doctor Zivago
Out of Africa
Sabrina
Roxanne
Gone with the Wind
Roman Holiday
As good as it Gets
Pay it Forward
Citizen Kane

I have not seen these movies except Pay it Forward. I have seen an film on the making of Citizen Kane. I have got bored of Action Films. One of the movies that I really like was Fight Club.

Well, time to visit local video store and check out things. I doubt if they are available. Online I couldn't find the titles.

Things up and running

2004-12-23T10:24:00.000-08:00

Finally got things working. A chat server is up and running. Also, an audio streaming server is up. Its giving problems due to the proxy server, but once the audio is up and running, it streams like a sailboat at 64 kbps.

Next up is a video stream server. (Maybe we could feed it the security camera feeds that my college 'apparently' has).

In other news, the dollar has hit a new low against the euro BBC Link , and

SCO shares plunge

Things to do

2004-12-21T10:29:00.000-08:00

Well, since the holidays have started, not much has been achieved. Partying almost everyday. Things started with a LAN party at friends place, where they installed windoze on my machine.

Trying to install a jabber IM server in the college, but it just won't start. I fooled around with the manuals with 3 hours and installed the server(jabberd2) and it fails to start. So, I have to start all over again tomorrow. Testing my patience...

Its damn peaceful in the lab now a days, with nobody around and full freedom.

Oh well, another day at the college lab.

How to become a hacker

2004-12-15T09:47:00.000-08:00

First and foremost, differentiating between a 'hacker' and a 'cracker' is important :

A 'hacker' is a person who loves to 'hack' code. Here, 'hack' is to be taken into sense of 'hacking wood'. This has nothing to do with computer security.

Here is an excerpt from a hacker (ESR) :
[QUOTE]
There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term ‘hacker’. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you're a hacker.
[UNQUOTE]

Then, there are 'crackers' who break into computers, usually illegally. These people most of the time don't know much, or are 'script kiddies.'
Unfortunately, the media didn't distinguish between the two, and labelled crackers as hackers.

Here is the howto :
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

and A brief History of Hackerdom :

http://catb.org/~esr/writings/hacker-history/hacker-history.html

The above document has been written by Eric S. Raymond, who is the president of OSI. His site is interesting, and his blog is even more interesting, lots of subjects, some better left unmentioned.

FreeBSD

2004-12-10T09:41:00.000-08:00

Well, just completed installation of FreeBSD 5.2.1 on my computers, and it rocks...

It boots in quarter of time required to start Mandrake. System shutdown is even faster. The installation is text based, but if you have installed Debian or Slackware before, it will be a breeze.

There is some things with partitioning though. fdisk only showed my primary partition of 10 GB and the rest of the block as extended of 27GB. So, I had to transfer everything from my primary partition to other partitions. I had done this a couple of days ago, but I didn't want to unnecessarily mess up my system.

Today, I downloaded its full manual, and went through its installation procedure. Basically one has to allocate a full partition to FreeBSD, and then create multiple partitions within that partition. Also, there is an option of not installing the boot record, which meant that I could do installation without worry. I also had for backup MDK Cd's, and I wasn't going to touch the extended partitions.

After answering millions of questions from package management to X11 configuration, the installation was finally complete. Onto configuration of LILO. Added 'other=/dev/hda1 label="freebsd"' crossed my fingers and restarted.

And FreeBSD started with a snap. Some problems with graphics card and monitor. KDE was running fine, but the refresh rate was to low. Changing the settings from the Control Center had no effect. Then, after changing the monitor type, the refresh rate was correctly set, although the resolution is still wrong(even when I set 800x600, it still uses 1024x768). I think that maybe the problem with the graphics card driver, as I had used generic i810 driver.

Armies and War

2004-12-08T09:56:00.000-08:00

I like history about the Great Wars. I watch films and read books whenever I find time. I have read Winston Churchill's three volumes, starting from the events that led to the Second World War, the political climate in England which led to his appointment as the Prime Minister and Naval Chief. The steps that he took are explained elaborately, along with all the official letters that he sent to other member of the Cabinet and to the armed forces with detailed maps. After the third volume, I started losing track of things... There are six volumes I think. On each volume, his famous quote:

In War: Resolution
In Defeat: Defiance
In Victory: Magnanimity
In Peace: Good Will

Well, now a days wars are fought on the economic battleground. Even the 'real' wars have some political twist. Many believe that the war in Iraq is just a spoof. Those who have watched Moore's documentary (Fahrenheit 9/11) may probably agree.

In films, I cannot understand the American forces. Here you are in a gunfight, bullets zipping by, with American soldiers advancing. Some of them get shot at and fall down. And almost immediately someone goes to help this wounded guy. There are calls for evacuation. Its almost
like the priority is not fighting, but saving lives of the wounded. Well, this goes on in films, I don't know how actually troops fight.

America has never actually seen a war homeland(9/11 was nothing as compared to wars in Europe) , unlike European countries, which were tremendously scarred by the Great Wars. Especially France,
which had to suffer in both the wars. So, it was not surprising that they vehemently opposed war in Iraq. Well, only time will tell which side was correct, but time seems to be running out for America, and personally I think that the post-war Iraq is going to be a big burden on America.

Exams

2004-12-07T09:59:00.000-08:00

Well, blogging after a long time now. Since my exams are going on I was reading stuff.

Well nothing much to do. I find exams one of the most boring time of the year. For one month or so, I am cooped up in my home, no interaction with people, surrounded by books, trying to mug things up(at which I am very bad....)

Well, this PL's(Preparatory Leave) are like a vacation for me. No boring college. I can do what I want. No sleeping early in order to attend practicals in the morning. I sleep almost all day morning, evening and night. Exercise the brain a bit and try to understand things.

I have stopped expecting good marks in my exams. There is no point in raising expectations. I have given four exams, and I absolutely believe that they just don't look at the papers. The subjects in which I have the minimum knowledge I get maximum marks. This started from my
Civil paper. I asked a friend from TE Computer, how was his TOS paper. HE replied that it was ok, but not scoring , he would not get 70-80 marks, only around 60. I laughed out aloud. 70-80 marks? Not a chance in IT. Not unless you had insider information or you have a very good memory. And believe me, people do have insider information.

But what are exams for? They are to show one has not learned anything rather than to show that one has learned something. Things that seem impossible before get cleared by just one reading in the exams.

I want to do a tons of things. One of the thing that puzzles me is that during exam times, I feel like doing a million things, but during college time, somehow the brain just freezes...

P.S. Thanks to Dinesh for asking me to blog again.

Europe of Asia

2004-11-26T09:47:00.000-08:00

India, the Europe of Asia.

Europe is a mixture of different countries, each with its own different culture, language and history. The Great Roman Empire was the last big unified state dominating all over Europe. But since then, all of the states are divided into nations, each fighting over trivial
matters, which led to the great two wars. So we have nations ranging from Spain, France, Belgium all the way to Russia.

Now, compare Europe with India. We had a very similar type of system, with hundreds of princely states all bickering over with petty wars. Every once in a while, a central authority used to get created, like the Gupta's or the Mauyran's, but never dominating over the whole country. Then there were the Moguls and finally the British. Perhaps, the British were the only ones who had some sort of control over entire old India ranging from Pakistan to Burma.

We still have states divided on basis of languages. Each state is like a nation within itself. It is amazing how we all get together. Of course, regionalism still exists. But imagine the scenario after independence if each of the state was declared a different country. So, Maharashtra, AP, TN, Kerala and all different countries. With no central authority whatsoever, chaos would have
reigned. Here, we must recognize the efforts of the great Sardar Vallabhai Patel who effectively tackled many outstanding issues and merged all the states into one big undivided India.

Democracy has survived for more than 50 years and perhaps no other system will unite such diverse people under a single country.

Perhaps after another century, India will gelled into one big homogeneous mass. The process has already started... The challenge is to gel into the nation while still preserving our individual cultural identities.

Fermi Mathematics

2004-11-22T07:58:00.000-08:00

This is a really intersting branch of Mathematics.

Fermi Enrico was a great physicist. He won the Nobel prize for physics in 1938. He directed the first controlled chain nuclear reaction in US.

He liked to solve problems which apparently didn't have enough given information. Problems like : "How many strands of hair are there on the head"
He of course solved such problems related to physics.
He estimated the strength of an atomic bomb tested by dropping few pieces of paper on the ground and observing how much distance they travelled!!
See http://www2.vo.lu/homepages/geko/atom/report.htm

The trick is to estimate the unknowns and to make calculated guesses. I you over estimate in one calculation, you will make it up by underestimating some other value, provided of course that you have a large number of estimations to make.

Here is a good link for more resources:
http://www.int287.k12.mn.us/gifted/fermitips.html

We should have Fermi maths in engineering. It would help us at making better estimates than becoming Formuholics.

Please Do Not Touc Sham's Pet Appu

2004-11-21T09:58:00.000-08:00

Before you say wtf, this is a crappy line from my Computer Networks Text book.

Why can't Indian professors write good books. Most of the so called textbooks are total crap. And they cost no less than the reference books. There are hundreds of errors. I have lost count of the typos and technical errors abound.

But even what is more pathetic about these books is that they take no pain whatsoever in imparting any knowledge of any kind. These books are meant to read, fit into memory and then reproduced in exams.

Fortunately Pune University doesn't has some standards set. From what I have observed, paper setters are really good professors, at least most of the time. They ask questions which really test the basics. When they ask specific things, which are not in the so called "textbooks" people cry foul saying its out of syllabus and what not.

On the other hand we have It's, where a professor once put a ongoing research problem into a paper. When the students later went and complained to him, he just said, "Oh I knew that. Since there are very bright fellows here, I thought someone would probably solve it"

We also have sometimes manic professors, who just seem to like to set a very difficult paper, just for the fun of it. Personally I doubt if they really know anything. They just pick up the odd nuances from these "textbooks" and put it in the paper. Which are also most of the times really wrong.

We have also the Jigar's, which is a solved question paper set, even worse than the text books. If the authors don't know the run-of-the-mill answer, they just say the question is out of syllabus or else "The author couldn't find the solution to this problem" or words to that effect. Pathetic.

Sadly, most of us use the textbooks and Jigar. Although I have given up Jigar, I do still refer to textbooks for some of the subjects.

From 2005, foreign universities will be allowed to setup colleges in India. I do hope that they do and force other people to raise the standards.

P.S. The topic is a mnemonic given to remeber the OSI layers. Physical, Data Link, Network, etc.

I am going to be an Engineer...

2004-11-19T09:38:00.000-08:00

I am depressed. Deeply distressed.Totally helpless.

The more I study, I get a feeling that less I know. A distinct feeling goes through my heart that in my two years of engineering, I have learned absolutely nothing. I cannot apply the mathematics that I have learned. Physics, the mother of all sciences, seems like a distant bad dream. Integration and differentiation are alien to me. Electronics transistors, capacitors I know nothing. Although I must have studied them in 11th, 12th, FE and SE.

What am I turning into? Just learn everything for six months and then start afresh every six months? Give exams which check your memory and presentation skills?

Mathematics was my favorite subject. I used to love doing arithmetic. Enter 11th and 12th. All you had to do was to learn formulae and solve as many examples as possible on those. Learn 50 differentiation formulae, solve 1000 problems on those, few of them will come in exam and get marks. No practical problems were solved. Ditto for physics.

Engineering further aggravated this. M1, M2 and M3 we had to do the same thing, just mug up formulae and get marks.

The nightmare has come true. I know absolutely nothing of Fourier transforms. Sure, if I looked into a book I can remember back the formulae, even solve examples that are given in the book. But can I apply them? How the hell are things done in Video Encoding, JPEG encoding? What does "actually" happen?

We are all become Formuloholics. Know a formula, apply the formula, substitute values, take out the calculator and calculate the answer to the last decimal point.
Practically most of times we want to know just the estimates. A branch of mathematics called as Fermi Mathematics just deals with this. Problems like "How many strands of hair are there on the head."

Today, I make a resolve. And I do this in writing. I am not going to be an "dumb engineer" anymore. I don't want to face it again. It is time to wake up and take things in one's hand. Stop blaming anyone. Don't even think of blaming the education system or the syllabus. These are just excuses.

The foundation has grown rickety. Time to fix it now. Back to the basics. Bake to square one and build back things step by step. There is no other alternative.

So, the Duke kicks of the "Back to the Basics" campaign.

Sweat

2004-11-17T06:44:00.000-08:00

I am generally a lazy person. Programmers are supposed to be lazy, and apparently hackers are the laziest of the lot.

But once in a while I get a real urge to do some exercise and stuff,
and hence I decided to take up running as a way to exercise.

So, everyday I got to sweat out in the evening and believe me, its an
exhilarating exercise. You hear the heart racing thud thud and as you
pick up pace, you are gasping for air. Crazy thoughts flash through the
mind... Why am I doing this? Thats it, I can't move a step further,
Come'on keep going, only a few more steps...
Thoughts flash back, ranging from stupid ideas, something someone said
long ago.

Sweat runs through the forehead, through your hair and wets the
T-shirt. The coolness when you stop. The body relaxing, your heart
slowly coming back to normal. The cool breeze as you ride back home
lightly lifting the body to an peaceful state.

The bed looks softer than before, the hot tea is amrut, the shower
massaging body like an expert masseur. Peace. Heaven.

Falling in Love... literarily

2004-11-16T06:24:00.000-08:00

I have fallen in love with you. You come with me where ever I go. You sleep beside me every day. I think of you day and night. Your crisp language has capturered my imagination beyond understanding. Your laughter, sadness, joy, sorrow, humour touch me deep inside. I feel as if I have become a part of you.

Before you entered my life, I had a fling with many. I couldn't understand their ways at all. The more I went out with them, the more I got confused. My life was full of darkness and confusion. You came, and my understanding became crystal clear. My senses regained, blood fills through my heart and mind as I spend more and more time with you.

You have been my best friend and much more. Your unconditional love has besieged me. I could ask for no more, I hope we stay together till death unto us apart...

Linux

2004-11-15T19:54:00.000-08:00

Its been a month and half since I have completely switched over to Linux.

It all started when I installed Fedora Core 2. There is bug in FC2 which destroys the Windows boot loader. The timing of this was critical, our submissions were going on and we had to show our project. And most of the project development was done at my computer, so everything was set up.
I tried to re-install, but to no avail. I couldn't even boot into old Windows 98.

We managed somehow in the end, not without some headache. Since then I installed Mandrake 10, and did not look back since then. I can do all my activities, connect to Internet, chat, IM, e-mail, write Cd's, use usb drives. Play MP3's, watch VCD's and all. And, the system has not crashed even once, no questions about worms or viruses. Plus, it has detected my HT processor and boots into the 2.6.7 smp kernel. Cool.

I didn't realize how much I had got used to Mandrake until I sat on a Windows desktop a few days back, and it felt really strange clicking the start button. And I really missed the terminal.

With Mandrake, now I can say with confidence that not a single pirated program runs on my system. How many of you can say that?

The art of Kissing

2004-11-14T07:21:00.000-08:00

Love

What does "love" mean to you?

The first thing that comes to my mind is "passion". And why not?

But then on contemplation, love is something much more than passion. It can manifest itself in many ways... You love your parents, your brothers, sisters and your family and yes your friends too. At a higher level, you love your country and (increasing) humanity in general(global citizens).

Kissing is considered an very intimate in India. You can't just kiss a friend for being happy, and no, you cannot kiss in public. Even if both of you are married. And how many of you last kissed your mother or father?

Calcutta(now Kolkota) is a strange city. I have never visited the city, and whatever that I have heard about it, the pollution, the traffic, the people, all created a very ugly picture of the city.
But it also surprises me that many movements and bright people come from the same city. I remembered a newflash few years ago, and google came to my rescue.

Apparently the Bengali's held a kiss and hug protest in the city, with over 100 people coming together and kissing in front of the mayor's office, under the organization of Lover's Organization of Voluntary Exhibition; aptly acronym-ed LOVE.

You can visit their website : http://www.loversrupak.com/
and the news item here : http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/03/06/india.love/

I think a kiss club would be famous, if someone started one.......

Why Sales tax?

2004-11-12T10:37:00.000-08:00

Why do we need sales taxes?

The Middle East countries have almost no taxation. Was watching the BBC Middle East Business report. btw, I love BBC, its programs are fantastic, although their favourite news item is "Middle East peace/war" which gets repeatative and boring. Also, cool music.

Anyways, getting back to the topic, the Middle east countries don't have income tax, sales tax, octroi et al and some even don't have corporate tax. No wonder things from Dubai are cheap. The government sells all the oil and gets the money.

And here we are. Poor fellow has to work damn hard to earn salary, which after paying income tax, decides to buy a car. Don't forget the sales tax + road tax. Oh yeah, also petrol comes with sales tax from the state government, octroi from the city council, and other taxes ranging from education cess to Kargil fund. Don't forget property tax, water tax and a host of taxes(you would know if you have ever gone to pay the tax)

And all this money is used to do what? Our roads remain poor. I still get water every alternate day. The education system remains rotten.

And why sales tax? If a make a sale to a customer, damn it, why should I pa to the government? What has the government done to help me in making my sale?