[:: what do i blog ::]

Moved into vinaydeep.com

2008-08-02T06:02:00.000-07:00

Vinay has now moved into vinaydeep.com which is now powered by wordpress for these reasons. ATAD will be continued in a blog of its own, atipaday.wordpress.com for which more contributors are welcome :)

I had a nice time here and will see you folks at vinaydeep.com, welcome !!

ATAD #8 - Package Management Systems

2008-07-31T08:33:00.000-07:00

A Software Package is usually a software program that provides some functionality bundled with metadata that contains information about the package. And a Package Management System as defined by wikipedia is a collection of tools to automate the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing software packages from a computer. The package management system is more common in unix and unix-like operating systems to operate with multiple packages. A few significant benefits of such a system are

- maintains a Repository of packages available for the running system (OS and Architecture specific) and resolves dependencies among various packages.
- looks up the repository and automatically downloads the requested packages and its dependencies when installation is triggered.
- can be used to easily upgrade the system to a defined release or level.
- system administrators can create repositories of packages which can be pulled by users, thus allowing easy maintenance of systems across the network and centrally stored packages to reduce memory requirements.

Common Package Management Systems are yum (Yellowdog Update Modifier) that is distributed with Fedora and apt (Advanced Packaging Tool) that's distributed with Ubuntu.

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ATAD #7 - The network administration tool

2008-07-29T11:55:00.000-07:00

If my previous post gave you an opinion that configuring networking on Linux is a head spinning task, im sorry; the Network Administraton Tool that is bundled with most of the newer linux distro is there just to make this task easy for you. You should be able to launch the GUI based tool from the 'System' drop down menu and in RedHat the system-config-network command can be used.

The following types of interfaces can be configured using the network administraton tool.
- Ethernet
- ISDN
- modem
- xDSL
- token ring
- CIPE
- wireless devices
- device aliases and profiles

Points worth a note:
- 'Export' your original networking configuration before editing them, so you can recover from a mistake by importing back the settings. Most of the network administrator tools provide this option.
- 'Save' your settings after editing and 'Activate' the interface after they are created.
- When interface aliases are configured, DHCP will not work with the interface and its aliases

__tipped__

ATAD #6 - Specifying Networking Options

2008-07-27T23:36:00.000-07:00

The /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ contains configuration scripts for each network interface, and its important not to confuse this with the /etc/sysconfig/networking/ directory that is used by the Network Administration Tool (system-config-network) whose contents should _not_ be edited manually. Each NIC has its corresponding configuration file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth(x) which allows the administrator to control the functioning of each interface individually.

Two or more network interfaces can be coupled to act as one to increase bandwidth and provide redundancy by creating a bonding interface using the bonding kernel module . Bonding options can be specified in the kernel module's configuration file /etc/modprobe.conf, but however IMHO it seems better organized to use the bonding device's own configuration file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bond(n) instead.

A nice thing to know while changing the speed or duplex settings is that it requires disabling autonegotiation. This needs to be stated first, as the option entries are order-dependent in the ETHTOOL_OPTS= configuration parameter.

ETHTOOL_OPTS="autoneg off speed 1000 duplex full"

Furthur reading: ethtool, modprobe.conf

__tipped__

ATAD #5 - What’s that SysRq key on your keyboard?

2008-07-25T03:36:00.000-07:00

The SysRq key is used to give input to the operating system without interfering with the software running (or rather hanged, which you can figure out later in the post) on your system. In essence it's a BIOS routine that triggers INIT 15, bypassing INIT 9 from reading the scan code, and thus the key pressed thereafter is not stored in the keyboard buffer, and to which the kernel will respond to. This will work unless the kernel is completely locked up, in which case you can give another try after tapping the Alt keys a couple of times or will have to head to the nearest "power" button.

In the Linux world the Alt + SysRq key is termed the Magic SysRq key that can be used to fix or debug a frozen system.

It's required to turn on SysRq in order to use it. So make sure this is done after your system installation in case you forecast (pun intended) a system hang. You can do this by setting the kernel parameter, which is in extension of my previous post on linux proc fs

# echo 1 > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq

On X86 machines you can press ALT-SysRq-(command) to send useful commands (also listed in the wiki article) to the kernel.

ALT-SysRq-C can be used to manually trigger a 'C'rashdump when the system has hanged.

ALT-SysRq-REISUB can be used to manually trigger a neat and safe reboot when your machine has hanged, instead of pounding on the power button and risking HDD problems in the event where data is being written when the system hanged. Its easier remembered as BUSIER spelled in reverse.

And here is what's happening under the hood
R turns off keyboard raw mode and sets it to XLATE / gives back control of the keyboard
E send a SIGTERM to all processes, except for init.
I send a SIGKILL to all processes, except for init
S attempt to sync all mounted filesystems
U mounts all filesystem as read-only to prevent a fsck at reboot
B reboots the system no matter what

__tipped__

ATAD #4 - Where is your OS bootable partition?

2008-07-24T04:38:00.000-07:00

The /boot/ partition (or) directory contains static files, like the kernel, that are required to boot the system properly.

The /boot/ partition _can_not_ be on a logical volume group because the boot loader can not read it. If the root / partition is on a logical volume, then its required to create a separate /boot/ partition which is not a part of a volume group. If you are making a RAID partition of /boot/, you must choose RAID level 1, and it must use one of the first two drives (IDE first, SCSI second). Source [RHEL deployment guide]

A neat description of the boot process can be found here

Btw just noticed that MS Windows does support the use of "/" and "\" to traverse across directories. neato. :)

__tipped__

ATAD #3 - linux Access Control Lists (ACLs)

2008-07-23T00:26:00.000-07:00

File permissions on linux are traditionally Read (r), Write (w), and Execute (x) permissions associated with users and groups. Providing appropriate permissions, especially as an ordinary user, is more often complicated than we think.

Let me illustrate this with an example. User "tom" creates a file named "hoohaha" and wants to give "dick" and "harry" permissions to read and execute it. Ofc this is fairly simple if dick and harry were exclusively part on one group. What if that group dosent exist? tom will have to ask the "already overloaded" system administrator to create a group consisting of just dick and harry. This, like you can see dosent sound too good.

To overcome this limitation, Linux has implemented support for Access Control Lists (ACLs). ACLs serve as an extension to traditional Unix permissions, giving end-users the ability to specify special access rights to a file and provide desired users and groups with appropriate permissions. To use ACLs you should have at least kernel version 2.6.x (some manual steps are required with older kernel versions), a filesystem that supports ACL, and additional user tools to create, view and modify ACLs. ext3 filesystems natively support ACLs, and support can be added to ext2 filesystem by performing some additional steps. ACL support is native on RHEL5, Fedora 9, Ubuntu Fiesty and SuSE 8.1 (there would be more).

The setfacl utility sets ACLs for files and directories, and getfacl can be used to determine the existing ACLs for a file or directory. The cp and mv commands do preserve the ACLs. tar and dump dont, so use star instead.

tom $ getfacl hoohaha
# file: hoohaha
# owner: tom
# group: tom
user::rwx
group::r--
other::r--

The requirement is realized when tom sets ACLs for the file hoohaha
tom $ setfacl -m user:dick:rx hoohaha
tom $ setfacl -m user:harry:rx hoohaha

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ATAD #2 - linux swap space

2008-07-21T23:58:00.000-07:00

Swap space is used when a system requires memory greater the physical memory (RAM) available. Physical memory is divided into chunks of memory called pages. When the amount of RAM is full, a page of memory which is relatively less used is moved to a preconfigured swap space on the hard drive (HDD).

Swap space can be a dedicated swap partition (recommended), a swap file, or a combination of swap partitions and swap files. The combined sizes of the physical memory and the swap space constitute the amount of virtual memory available.

RedHat recommends swap size be equal to 2x physical RAM for up to 2 GB of physical RAM, and then an additional 1x physical RAM for any amount above 2 GB, but never less than 32 MB.

So, if:

M = Amount of RAM in GB, and S = Amount of swap in GB, then

If M < 2
then
S = M * 2
else
S = M + 2
fi

However, if you think you will be upgrading the RAM sometime in the near future, consider the total amount of RAM you would be having after your upgrade and decide on the swap space during install time. swap space can also be altered post installation by

1. creating a new swap partition
# lvm lvcreate -n -L (size_in_mb)M

2. creating a new swap file
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1024 count=(size)

3. extend swap on an existing logical volume (recommended)
# lvm lvresize (lvol) -L +(size_in_mb)M

Remember to boot the system in rescue mode before altering the swap space as the swap space can not be in used when being modified.
Further reading: swapoff, mkswap, swapon

__tipped__

ATAD #1 – linux /proc filesystem

2008-07-21T01:19:00.000-07:00

It’s been a long time since i really sat down to read something, apart from what work demanded, technology round ups and reviews. Its this strange time in my life when academic acumen kicks in, and I wonder; “why not spend a few minutes each day to learn something new”.
I will log my learning’s with A Tip A Day.

Over the years I have understood that the /proc directory (also called the proc file system) contains files that store information about the state of the linux kernel and the running applications. The files can be interpreted by applications and the users (though a few are restricted only to the ‘root’ user) to gain a whole wealth of information about the running system. The contents of the files under the proc directory can be easily read using the cat program

OK, this is probably stale news for a few. But an interesting find was that a few files under /proc/sys can actually also be used to adjust settings to the kernel.

Eg, here im changing the hostname of the linux system to hoohaha

# echo hoohaha > /proc/sys/kernel/hostname

A few others store boolean information, for example the /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward when set to 1 will immediately start forwarding network packets.

# echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

__tipped__

Why we use Linux

2008-03-29T04:37:00.000-07:00

Vlad Dolezal blogs about "Why we use Linux"

We tell people we use Linux because it's secure. Or because it's free, because it's customizable, because it's free (the other meaning), because it has excellent community support...

But all of that is just marketing bullshit. We tell that to non-Linuxers because they wouldn't understand the real reason. And when we say those false reasons enough, we might even start to believe them ourselves.

But deep underneath, the real reason remains.

We use Linux because it's fun!

I can't agree any lesser.
Since the day i migrated to this brighter face of the planet, ive been spending more fun, 1 on 1 time with my computer in tweaking stuff to my likes. Of course there were the troughs with undesired effects, but recovering from them and bringing about the desired change was a cherished learning experience by itself.

Open up and live free.

Energy !!

2008-03-20T13:31:00.000-07:00

E = m c^2 ?
naaah...

_THIS_
(WARNING: dont spoil the experience by not maintaining higher decibel levels)

and then _THIS_
(volume even higher please)

ahh, those days, those days, when these were the numbers blasting in 4320!!

vinaydeep.com

2008-02-07T04:11:00.001-08:00

So finally i get my own domain. Do check out http://vinaydeep.com, you will be surprised at what you will find there ;)

There she goes ...

2008-01-12T15:22:00.001-08:00

What are we without online services?
The more we move into the virtual world, the harder it is to get back to physical reality.

Photography and Open Source

2008-01-01T12:13:00.000-08:00

Thanks to a popular photo sharing platform flickr, and the
Creative Commons license, my photography, finds its way here http://www.delivr.net/independance+day.html and http://bagel.tumblr.com/page/11

Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved."
This could well be called the GPL equivalent for creative thoughts and material. .

Open Source is here to stay.

A techshow with a twist

2008-01-01T11:45:00.000-08:00

Of the million tech shows on the internet, i happened to stumble on techsmart. Any guy who has a grey side (it would be safe to assume “all guys”) would recognize the host of this show.

More videos from the "Techsmart" channel at Heavy.com

In case you still are guessing, here is a little something to refresh your memory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Jeremy
Oh yeah, a google for “Ron Jeremy” will also give you access to a lot of in-porn-mation .

Upgrade from Vista to XP !!

2007-12-11T09:54:00.000-08:00

I honestly don't like to make my blog one of those Microsoft bashing portals for the fact that I admire what they did to the Zune; but sometimes I stumble on stuff that is so hilariously fascinating that they definitely are worth blogging. I must admit though, that I am a bit biased towards Open Source. :)

Ok. so here it goes...
This article published on the microsoft website details the advantages of XP as a superior and secure operating system (which I would agree to an extent), and then got this article (via Wired) on the same microsoft website px that gives system administrators (or related business development owners) reasons that justify the upgrade to Vista. Of the many stupid reasons mentioned there, are also the ones related to security and maintenance costs, the same ones mentioned in support of XP. Now which do I believe...!!

On the other side of the Window, the one where the frustrated Vista user is dwelling, comes rejoice where Microsoft is silently providing the possibility of downgrade (or upgrade to be precise) from Vista to XP. OEM vendors will provide XP installation media for a minimal sum (in the whereabouts of USD 10) to users who have purchased their hardware which came pre loaded with Vista :D

One of the funniest ad's ive come across

2007-11-23T04:06:00.001-08:00

*no thanks!!*

back in school we devised a foot board for the Windows m/c. Just a simple combination on three keys "Ctrl" + "Alt" + "Del"

hibernating in blogosphere

2007-10-02T12:10:00.001-07:00

// this space is intentionally left blank

Ubuntu'd and luvin it

2007-08-26T11:17:00.001-07:00

More experiments with Ubuntu are up on Gadget7 and you can check it out here

For sheer expandability and customization, im totally addicted to this OS. This is fun :)

Microsoft ZunePhone, the all new ...err!!

2007-08-26T05:34:00.000-07:00

dogs sniff out cancer

2007-08-16T10:50:00.000-07:00

As i signed outa my y! today i was struck by news which said that dogs can sniff out cancer. Now this was interesting, and a little digging around took me here

"The anatomical structures used by dogs and humans for detecting and processing odour information are not the same. Detection thresholds of dogs are many times higher than for humans. The biggest anatomical difference is the number of sensory receptor cells (Moulton et al., 1960), which is best illustrated by a comparison of the size of the scent organs. In humans, the scent organs are approximately 5 square centimetres in surface area, whereas for dogs they are 75-150 square centimetres. The cerebral cortex processes information from the olfactory sense. In dogs, about 33 per cent of the entire cortex is used for this task, whereas in humans it is only 5 per cent"

Image Source

So now that they sense cancer, how are we going to know, how do we communicate with them or vice versa? Apparently, research has proved that dogs can be trained to sniff out bladder cancer from urine. There have also been claims that a dog actually sniffed his owners' breast cancer when he started sniffing, snuffling and becoming agitated when he sat on his owners lap, which drove his owner suspicious and got a scan with a positive indication of cancer.

So the next time your dog starts acting funny around you, remember its trying to tell you something that could just save your life.
There will come a time when the nurse would say "Now the dog will see you" ;)
It also gets me wondering where the name LABrador was coined from ... hmm..

yet another battery recall

2007-08-14T12:00:00.001-07:00

After Dell, Sony and Apple its now Nokia's turn. Nokia has today announced a battery recall program for the BL-5C batteries manufactured between December 2005 and November 2006, after incidents of an overheating battery during its charging. Though Nokia claims that there have been no reports of serious injuries or property damage, it would be a good idea to replace yours if it is defective.

To know if your phone battery is one of the 46 million batteries that are part of the product advisory, check out this

Lucky guys get to replace their dying batteries ;)
I was not so lucky myself.

gadget7

2007-07-29T11:47:00.000-07:00

from this day onwards, my tech posts with *less casual* writing style will go on gadget7

all work and less play drives kiran varghese to start off such things. and am saying that in a positive, productive and industrious sence. :)

Rough tide leads to pleasant discovery

2007-07-26T07:30:00.000-07:00

The last month was a period of experiments with my computer, starting with the fact that I was running on a ‘going to break’ HDD and the DST short test was failing repeatedly. So before anything, I backed up all my data (which also includes my windows partition) after running openSUSE in recovery mode; and trust me it was quite a breeze, reinforcing my crush on Linux. Later that day I called DELL support and they promptly shipped me a replacement hard drive one working day later, but the OEM OS that id also asked them to ship was going to take a few days longer as the package which includes WinXP, device drivers, sonic, win backup and a few others were flying in from Netherlands. Nevertheless I was happy with their prompt and ‘no questions asked’ service, afterall I guess ive already paid them quite a sum when I took the 3 yr complete care support for my inspiron 6400.

A few months before this day I had installed the vista transformation pack just to see what the hype was all about. Must say, I was impressed by the freshness it gave to the aeging, yet stable XP. So I decided to head to the nearest and dearest electronics shop to get the Vista Home Premium. I like the way it installed, M$soft finaly decided to keep it simple and voila!! I also have my disk management utility inbuilt right into the installer, and without second thought retained 20gigs of free space for Linux. Two weeks passed and I liked the way vista felt, till I realized that I need more memory for what started to seem like a dying computer. I think I can quite easily point the finger at vista that required ~500 MB just to boot and get running. I ‘tried’ installing Halo for vista, and not to my surprise it didn’t quite go on well. You already get the picture, don’t you? Nevertheless 2Gigs of memory is on its way..

A jobless Sunday afternoon, and what more could I do when I find the ubuntu feisty fawn media lying around, 10GB of free space and a geeky mind. No prizes for guessing right, im now happily ubutun’d with a fresh and functional desktop. And here is a trailer of what could be done with Ubuntu and Beryl

Tell me that you still aren’t impresses by just the eye candy, and then here is more from a functionality pov. The ubuntu installation is done with a couple of user inputs that loads off a Live CD making life much easier, then comes the best part, the apt-get application is used to install any application from the command prompt, all u need to know is the name of the application and a simple `apt-get app_name` will look for the application online, download it, resolve dependencies and install the app. Ive got two words, “luvin it”

Next adventure would be tweaking and compiling the G15 drivers to get my Logitech Z10 working, and then Vmware to get virtual servers running. More later …

Live free, or die.
Linux!!

The Triangle: More to it than a polygon with three sides.

2007-07-12T10:08:00.000-07:00

The triangle is indeed fascinating for the fact that it is so simple a figure to have inexhaustible properties and theorems associated with it. Leaving the world of geometry behind, the triangle still has many mysteries and tales to tell.

The first thing that would come to my mind is the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle
"It is the greatest modern mystery of our supposedly well understood world: a region of the Atlantic Ocean between Bermuda, Miami, Florida, and San Juan, Puerto Rico, where the disappearance of ships and planes continue to defy explanation"

A complete paradigm shift into the field of Management and Organisational Behavior will lead us to what I would consider one of psychology’s best theorys’ proposed by Abraham Maslow, “Maslow's hierarchy of needs”; and is something which im more interested at this point of time. Wikipedia has a whole lot of information relating to this, the crux of the matter being: people have needs starting from the lower level deficiency needs to growth needs which they realize with time until they reach a level of self relisation/actulisation.

Image Source: http://steves.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2006/3/16

Maslow's hierarchy of needs would apply to induviduals, but there probably could exist (or coexist!!) another triangle that could represent organizational structure, the apex being the chief, and the base of the triangle being the naïve new entrants to the organization. The employees at the base are the ones who have physiological and safety needs, they probably would want to first attain a state of financial stability and responsibility, slightly sidelining the other ambitious desires and needs. Progressions up the organization however fast or slow paced it might be, would take the individual to a state where his safety needs are satiated and then would arise the previously sidelined growth needs, till superiority is attained.

The best of the organizations’ would have a common goal and its employees would work towards the same in which case these two triangles shoud coexist. This could probably also justify the base for my comparison between the triangles of an individual’s needs and an organization’s structure.

As the organization grows in terms of manpower, maintaining the linearity of the leaning sides of the triangle would be a challenge for reasons more than one that needs to be addressed. Probably with time I might be able to figure out factors that influence the linearity of the leaning sides’ or probably end up justifying that a bulge in the organisational structure is the only profitably feasible way. The bottomline is however the fact that both the employees’ needs and the organizations’ goals are to be satisfied and that is what makes a successful organization and also a great one to work for.

There are already a couple of new thoughts in my mind right now, but ill put them here later, till then, its black, white and everything in between.

And then Norway happened: In Cod we believe

2007-07-08T10:22:00.001-07:00

I'm beginning to wonder whether there is some force influencing my travel that tend to make all the planning and associated logistics start and flow right into place just a week before the real thing happens. But i must admit that i loved the way how a random take while flicking pages over this good Lonely Planet guide took us to a spectacular island in Northern Norway surrounded by mountains, fjords and islands in all directions. Tromso, is connected by picturesque roads to numerous villages with fishing being the major occupation of the yesteryears from where they coined the phrase, “In Cod we believe”. (Yes, Mr.RamantheB there was no typo there ;))

We flew in to Rovaniemi, the capital of the province of Lapland, to get closer to Santa “who really lives deep in Finnish Lapland in Korvatunturi (Ear Mountain)”, which i discovered here. But we had the privilege of meeting him at the Santa Claus village and official post office in Rovaniemmi, which made it easier for us to get started on the real adventure we were about to embark on and crossing the arctic circle and into what quite easily could be termed as “paradise land”.

To admit, i was quite nervous about the whole thing as i self assigned myself to be the one behind the wheel for this ~1500 Km drive across international borders spanning three days, considering the fact that this was my first drive over 100 kms in videsi land.
But nevertheless i always had the itch for adventure and exploration, and there i was taking delivery of our car that delivered in excess of 150 horses that empowered us to maintain an average speed in the whereabouts of early three digit figures for most of the trip. First destination was the western Finnish bordering city of Pello when we were cutting through what 'at this point of time' i would call boring lakes and countryside for the fact that what lay ahead of us was awe aspiring splendour for which two eyes were just not enough to admire.

The drive trough the snow peaked mountains, crystal clear and serene lakes alongside plush green meadows after the Finnish border, along Sweden and into Norway just took our breath away, the feeling which might be justified by the phrase, “The Journey is the Destination”
At this point i sign off leaving you to do all the imagination. Ah silly me, how can i forget to mention the whale safari where we cruised to the edge of the continental reef in the Baltic sea in search of sperm whales, seals and sea eagles.

work (un)culture!!

2007-03-13T08:39:00.000-07:00

Lets pick some lines from few techies' ~~jabberwocky~~ conversation.
“Man!! Im simply too busy for nethin right now”
“Im slogging my arse off”
“Ive got no time to do that, all i can think of is that harsh deadline”

Mr. Techie is working hard towards meeting a ~~unrealistic~~ deadline; sweat and toil, and finally with a heroic effort the target is achieved with all might and valor. Victory!! one might say. Accolades flow in from all directions and further motivate Mr. Techie to stretch. Now, people around Mr. Techie realize the magnitude of effort he put into this war against time, not to mention his ~~unique~~ ability to stretch, and motivate him to keep up the good work done. He is now considered an integral member in the team and soon becomes a ~~stimulant~~ inspiration for the new techie to follow suit.

The ~~vicious~~ glorious cycle is thriving.
All this, at the expense of what?

Merriam Webster defines “culture” as “enlightenment and excellence of taste acquired by intellectual and aesthetic training. acquaintance with and taste in fine arts, humanities, and broad aspects of science as distinguished from vocational and technical skills”

Now its up to *you* to define “unculture”.

Frozen

2007-01-23T13:32:00.000-08:00

You try to walk outa your den precariously,
You try to shield yourself,
You try to fight it off.
You try, just try and never succeed.

Its time to feel it, time to feel something that has fascinated us whenever we used to see those romantic bollywood songs with scantily dressed actors who rock and roll amidst white landscapes and snow peaked mountains.

Welcome to reality folks. Its that time of the year when you prepare to leave the cozy warmth of your home and clad yourself with numerous layers of clothing in your desperate attempt to keep your privates from getting frozen. Its that time of the year that comes after partial Polar Night (when the sun is almost below the horizon and a lingering dusk will be pretty much the best thing that can happen). Its that time of the year when you see the Midnight Sun ( the opposite phenomenon to Polar Night. A phenomenon that occurs in latitudes north of the Arctic Circle where the sun is visible at the local midnight as a result of the tilt in the Earth's axis w.r.t the ecliptic). Its that time of the year when your planning/estimation/forecasting skills are tested to its very limits while you precisely plan your bus connection to office and back.

Yes, its winter, -18 degrees centigrade, and in contradiction to what you might be thinking, “Im Enjoying It, enjoying every bit of it”. The kids, all protectively covered and playing with their sledges and shovels, building snowmen who can whether the winter. The people hurrying home to have that hot cup of chocolate. The heavy machines that clear inches of snow off the road and walkways and spread grime for grip. The pure white expanses wonderfully spoilt by those tree barks in contrast coloring. These scenes will remain fresh in my mind for many years to come. Or at least till the snow melts ;D

A Three day affair with Paris

2006-12-17T10:30:00.000-08:00

It had been just a week since i landed here in Finland and sparks were flying about a trip to Paris, quite easily one of the most beautiful and romantic cities in the world. All the initial ticketing and reservation happened in a jiffy, thanks to all those enthusiastic souls, Ramapriya, Shruthi, Preethy and Syed. As far as im concerned i really need something like this to satiate my thirst for discovery and travel.

The day had come, 7th December 2006, packed my bag and all set to go, after a quick purchase of snacks, took the taxi to Helsinki-Vantaa airport. Ah yes, remember guys, the best way to fit all those places of significant interest into a tight schedule is to squeeze out the food breaks, carry your food and eat while you shuttle between places (read Paris metro). So there we were, in the airport fiddling around with the newly acquired Euro 26 youth card that not only helped us get the air tickets at a marginally lower price but also reinforced the fact of us still being classified as youth ;)

So all said and done we were set to execute a carefully marked up plan to discover the city renowned for its neo-classical architecture and host for many museums, galleries and cathedrals. Not to mention its active night life and fine French cabarets. An airport shuttle transported us from terminal 1 of CDG airport to the nearby Metro Station. Paris has two types of underground trains, the color/numbered lines or metros that operate within city limits and the RER trains that operate even in the outskirts . The ticketing system is very good wherein you will use one ticket for one end to end transit. The RER tickets will cost around 5 to 10 euros based on the destination, and the local lines will cost you around a euro for a trip. We did not want to try the Metro at 11pm so we conveniently took the taxi to the hotel.

All the folks crashed into bed, while i still had some energy and wanted to explore the streets of Paris. End of day was at 2pm that night. Next day a quick breakfast constituting croissants, bread, butter, jam, hot chocolate and a glass of pineapple juice. We had to walk to the taxi station and a half hour wait before we got the taxi and met up with Shruthi at our hotel at Louis Michel who flew down from London. We took 10 metro tickets for 10 euros (which IMHO is more than sufficient for a three day trip like ours) and the metro map

We took the metro to Anvers and a 15 mins walk from the station to Sacré Coeur Basilica. The interior of the church contains one of the worlds largest mosaics, and depicts Christ with outstretched arms. Completed in 1914, it was not consecrated until 1919 after World War I had ended. From the top of the Dome, there is a panoramic view in all directions extending over 30 kilometers. Here we encountered strong winds which almost blew Ramapriya off the compound, the rain didn't help either. No pix of panoramic paris from here :(

Next on the itenary was Notre Dame cathedral which was seminal in the evolution of the French Gothic style. It is 110 ft high and the first cathedral built on a truly monumental scale. We took line 4 to Cite, then a 10 minutes walk past St Chappels and on the right is Notre Damm. We took the audioguides which is very informative and in my opinion an absolute must if you want to enjoy this monumet. It was late afternoon and we really wanted to spend the rest of the evening in Louvre. The pink line to Chatlet, thereon the yellow line to Royal Musee Du Louvre took us on a trail of Da Vinci code into the Lovre museum, the largest, oldest, most important and famous art gallery and museum in the world. The Pyramide Inversee got us all excited and offered a skylit though which we can see the Louvre itself.

Five hours inside the louve though all those never ending passageways cluttered with monuments from all over the globe finally brought us to Monalisa herself, our thirst was quenched!! We called it a day and exited from the Pyramid exit just to be awestruck to see the Louvre itself in all its splendor in the night, a kilometer on the right we were greeted by the charm of the Paris Opera house. But as always the night was young and so was i, Ledo was on the charts. The stage, the performers and the whole ambiance was something ill never forget and never witness anywhere else.

The day had come to an end and as one wise man said: “I have miles to go before i sleep, and miles to go before i sleep”... ah, ignorant and decided to sleep instead, and save those miles for the days to come :D.

Day 2: a bright sunny day perfect to see the glamor of Chateau De Versailles, the place for the royal family till 1789. We took the RER from Saint Lazare just to witness scenes of a lifetime starting from the expansive palace entrance to the numerous drawing rooms (the Hercules drawing room is a must see), Opera House, bedrooms to the Palace gardens. The ceiling of every room are picturesque anecdotes in time. We took the audiophones which briefed us on the history behind this lavish splendor.

We left the glamorous versailles behind us and proceeded to get a glimpse of the 81 storied, 7300 ton, 1070 ft tall iron structure built next to the River Seine, commonly known as the Eiffel Tower :) Four queues extend from each foot foundation of the Eiffel lined with folks who want to get atop this most visited monument in the world. We took the stairs to the first level and thereon took the elevator to reach the third and final platform from where we got to see the spread of nightlight Paris that extended far into the horizon. Words can not explain to sight from here. After spending two hours we moved on to the Arc of Joan, we took the green line to Charles De Gaulle. The arc is located in the near center of Paris and from the top of the arc tower we got the see the quite evident nightlife of Paris and one of the most crowded and well lit, Charles De Gaulle street. After a couple of hours here we called it a day and retired to our hotel rooms. The next day we took the RER to Disney Land, we were quite prepared to wait in long queues with waiting times that stretched to an hour and a half. But every minute of waiting only added on the anticipation of witnessing something enchanting, and trust me, we were not disappointed :)

It was around 4pm when we had to rush back to our hotel rooms, pick up our luggage and reach the airport. All the connecting trains fell right into place as we boarded them in the nick of the moment, proof enough that we mastered the Paris metro system ;) All the sights are still fresh in my mind. Im writing this trip log to make sure that some day ill relive all those moments i spent in the awe aspiring monuments in Paris and in that nostalgia of the memory lane ill ride.

linuxed !!

2006-11-30T01:10:00.000-08:00

Joblessly sittin and watchin tv post mindnight. Thought id might as well spend the sleepless night and do somethin productive. Rbered that i got the ubuntu media a few days back. Ok, good thing to start off with. did the needed partitions and linuxed the lappy. Its 2am now and all excided. It came with OpenOffice as well, neat, but missed the windows fonts, but no issues, simple solution ..
sudo apt-get install msttcorefontscd /homewget http://www.auriance.com/docs/fonts/fontconfig.tbz
tar -xvjpf fontconfig.tbz

ok.. done, and now thought id set up the networking , figgerd out that ubuntu is built on Debian. now i have no clue as to where to start fiddling arnd, so ditched that and reserved it for the last. All devices were funtioning fine and so was yappy.

remote logged into the office, xterm, clearcase, clearmake .. eyerythin works. cool.. and then ...

% make love
Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop.

crashed into bed. eod.

Da Machhi Code,

2006-06-03T07:41:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the stupid politics (stupid is an understatement), I will not get to watch the flick in the theaters. Many states including Punjab, TN and AP have banned the release of “Da Vinci Code” even though the censor board has given a go ahead after adding a disclaimer stating that the film is a work of fiction.

So now im waiting for the DVD release and in worst case for the tamil remake starring Gaptain Vijayakanth in Da Machhi Code ;-D

tagged !!

2006-05-16T05:28:00.000-07:00

I consider tagging a more criminal act than spam. The recipient of spam usually needs to take the effort of simultaneously depressing ‘cntrl + D’ (in most cases), but in tagging, the whole blo*dy subject needs to be thought over and keyed in. You must be wondering why I am writing this piece even though ive established my hate towards spam and a higher degree of hate towards tagging, its because im jobless this afternoon ;)

Wokay, here it goes.

Simble Bleasures (intentional misspell for obvious reasons understood by most cec ece junta)

1. Good sleep from 5:30 am to 7:30 am You will realize the pleasure associated with this if you went through those grueling last minute night study sessions during bachelor of engineering course.
2. Cold water tub bath/sleep during the summer.
3. A day of no work at office after a hectic month of sweat and toil.
4. Skinny dippin
5. A drive on a rainy day
6. Sleeping on my office chair during working hours ;)
7. Riding my bike on an empty well laid road after midnight.
8. Lazing around at home and listening to music.
9. Persuading folks to throw a party or treat.
10. Bird watching (u know what I mean)

I am ending this tag here. But just incase u guys are jobless do let me know, ive got free tags to give away :-D
The junta in US of A should be enjoying summer vacation after graduating, so any takers? Ah yes, those corporate benchers are also most welcome ;)

India is shining

2006-05-10T04:05:00.000-07:00

Let alone the fact the SBI ATM has serious downtime issues.
India is shining :)

January ’06 SBI ATM, Manikonda, Hyderabad

Reunion

2006-05-03T00:02:00.000-07:00

It seemed like ages had passed. Long ago, sometime around the prehistoric time, I knew a fellow dinosaur called CS. Yesterday, thanks to orkut, after ages, we got back in touch as men. It was quite a pleasant reunion and a very memorable day in my life. We did not speak for long as it was way past bed time, but caught up with most of the old times and the happenings in our lives.

Outa hibernation and posting …

2006-04-06T02:09:00.000-07:00

It has been a cold winter, but eventually im outa my 5 month blogger hibernation. The temperature outside is peaking at around 40 degrees centigrade now. It has taken its toll on the better half of my life, riding has come to end this summer with hampi and kanha tiger reserve (http://vinay.rides.fotopic.net/c850263.html) Time has come to stay indoors and experience the pleasure of the HVAC system designed by Willis Haviland Carrier, roll cold waterbottles on your face, consume a lot of fluids and also expel them …

Koshun: What will a soul like me do when confined indoors?
Anser : Movies, Music, Party and Play on the comp...
Never was a reader of books, always preferred watching the movies. You never get to hear all those SFX and see those visual masterpieces by flipping over the pages of the book.
I have to tell you guys how badly I felt missed-out when I could not read the book that was termed, as a mandatory must read, The Da Vinci Code…but viola its here on 19th of may this year (http://flash.sonypictures.com/movies/davincicode/website/home.html).

Talking about movies but on an entirely different plane compared to the above, we have our very own Captain India, Vijayakanth, the brilliant jewel of the south. His most electrifying performance is captured in the “Karent Saak” video (http://youtube.com/watch?v=7nOhiKwZWdU&search=vijayakanth). He has kept up his mind blowing image in the latest movie Sudesi where he has captivated his fans yet another time. I haven’t watched the movie but I head that people go brain dead after seeing it. Though captain is the best and famous for his visual effects and punch dialogues we can not forget out “fur”-gotten “hair”-o, TR. I happened to come across one of his all time best couplets, “Vaada Machhi… Vaalakka Bhajji” (http://youtube.com/watch?v=o4t87odQvxY&search=TR)

This much is enough for now. After seeing the above two videos you probably can not read what is written below inbetween the quotes.
" "

Photography or Photoshopy !!!

2005-11-05T08:13:00.000-08:00

Tushal had come down from Baroda, a meet was absolutely necessary. So we decided to meet/ride over some parathas.
Where?: default for our meets: Fauzi dhaba, ~50 kms from city on Nagpur highway.
When?: 7 pm
What?: Sweet milky chaai and mouth watering aloo parathas with dahi.

So apart from the usual talk we also happened to detail a lot about cameras, lenses and photography. Well I always wanted to own a Nikon F70 35 mm SLR with an ED lens or a Minolta Dynax 7D, but right now, it’s a thing of a future, considering my bank balance which dips exponentially towards the month end and rises on the last working day of the month ;)

But I have my share of 1's and 0's camera on my phone, N6230. So I decided to see what the VGA camera (<1 MPx) was capable of. First expression, bad light, but a fairly good snap. EOD, crashed into bed.

Next morning, no work, all friends outa town for Diwali and Eid… Oh yeah, wish you a happy, safe and prosperous Diwali and Eid Mubarak :) …As I booted my comp, bulbs flashed, tubelights lit bright $) So transferred the snap to the comp and clicked my way to Photoshop. Did some fiddling around, pretty good outputs.

Towards the end of the day I realized that more than the camera and the lenses, it’s the 1s and 0s that give us the power, that edge over chemicals and film. After all this, the F70 with the other gibberish has lost its importance, so now it’s a 5 MPx with a good optical zoom, somewhere around 10-12X, >1Gb memory, image stabilization and rechargeable batteries is all I need. Still sounds a bit on the higher end ;)

Photos speak louder than words, though they consume thousand times more memory and so leaving you with a few outcomes from todays experiment.
-Smile and keep clicking.

Platinum : Gold : PETROL

2005-09-13T06:43:00.000-07:00

The title says it all... but still there are finer aspects to this. The prices of fuel have now hit a mind blowing Rs 49.81 here in Hyderabad and an excess of Rs 51 in bangalore. I happened to notice the breakup of fuel prices in NIC some time back.

47.32 (petrol price in Bangalore in INR)=
19.64 (value at supply point) +
14.86 (excise duty + edu. cess - Central Govt.) +
11.91 (States sales tax) +
0.77 (dealer commission) +
0.14 (other charges)

Now i can understand the value at supply point but the other charges seem to make no sense to me. The biggest question to me is to where this money is going? I still am negotiating potholes (and all the other inherent aspects of Indian roads), i still am riding in badly lit roads w/o road dividers, I still am running on standard 87 octane fuel (sub standard in many other countries) …

I am beginning to wonder whether paying taxes is day light robbery.

I have always heard that problems need to be addressed at the grass root level. But here its way below that: HELL, I would say.

Royal Enfield's R&D is working.... FINALLY !!!

2005-09-10T22:18:00.000-07:00

After the success of the Bajaj Pulsar, R.L.Ravichandran, former marketing head of Bajaj Auto has moved in as the CEO of bike maker Royal Enfield (RE). Subsequently RE announced the launch of two new variants; Bullet Electra 5S and a new variant of its cruiser ‘Thunderbird’. The new Bullet, with gearshift on the left, comes with gas-filled shock absorbers, glass wool silencer, multi-focal reflector lamps with option of disc brakes and electric start.

Ravichandran said the company would also come out with a new integrated 500 cc engine in next six months. This is most probably gonna be the AVL 500, a definite thumping bull and my next bike upgrade (plans subject to change if a better bike is in the pipeline).

Judging by the way Ravichandran and BAL launched almost 5 variants of the Pulsar in 2 years, I wouldn’t be surprised if the existing Thunderbird is upgraded in versions 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and finally version 2.

RE is also working on a completely new engine platform. Its widely spoken that this one is gonna be more sporty (the RD 350 just crossed my mind ;) The integrated engine will give the riders the advantage of efficiency, an absolute necessity owing to the steadily rising fuel prices (currently Rs 49.81 in Hyderabad)

So its good that the R&D team has atlest woken up, and I just hope that they design bikes and not just new stickers (an inherent characteristic of a few Indian bike makers… read “Hero Honda” ;)

the future is OPEN

2005-08-31T10:08:00.000-07:00

Gone are the days of monopoly; OPEN SOURCE is in. All you have to do is to log onto the web page (which obviously will be slow if you are on IE), download the small installer, install it in a flash and live happily ever after..... story does not end here, feel bored or wanna do some fiddling, download the source code, get the compiler and an editor, all windows are broken, doors open and its a wide open world out there.

Ever since i migrated to Unix and subsequently to the flavours of Linux, life has become so easy without the need for using my microsoft leg pad (a small leg pad having the three most important keys ==> Ctrl, Alt and Delete). The first open source freeware i fell in love with is Firefox. A review called it "Best of 2003", no doubt.

FIREFOX is a free alternative web browser that is faster, safer and easier to use than Microsoft Internet Explorer. Recent security exploits make Internet Explorer unsafe. Reduce the risk of viruses, worms, spyware and other malicious software by switching to the most customizable and secure browser in the world! Enjoy features such as tabbed browsing, a popup blocker, built in search and a feed reader (RSS) to keep up with the latest news headlines.

THUNDERBIRD is the perfect companion for Firefox, featuring one of the most advanced junk mail filters available. Both Firefox and Thunderbird can be easily customized for the way you browse the web and read your e-mail.

http://www.mozilla.org/

a voice i heard on a deserted road...

2005-08-26T10:02:00.000-07:00

Treat me good, I’ll treat you better.
Treat me bad, I’ll treat you worse.

Yours faithfully,
Your VEHICLE.

Now back to the main q?

2005-08-22T08:04:00.000-07:00

What do i blog? :))

My next phone upgrade: Choice No.1

2005-08-20T02:50:00.000-07:00

The Nokia N91 is in..... With the N91 in my hand i can stand up the mast of the biggest ship and shout out "I'm the king of the World" and yet be able to click a snap of the most beautiful lady on the bottom-most deck of the ship ;)

Operating System:
Symbian OS 9.1

Developer Platform:
Series 60 3rd Edition

Java Technology:
Web Services API (JSR-172)
Security and Trust Services API (JSR-177)
Location API (JSR-179)
SIP API (JSR-180)
Wireless Messaging API (JSR-205)
Scalable 2D Vector Graphics API (JSR-226)
Advanced Multimedia Supplements (JSR-234)
Bluetooth API (JSR-82)
CLDC 1.1
Wireless Messaging API (JSR-120)
Mobile Media API (JSR-135)
Mobile 3D Graphics API (JSR-184)
JTWI (JSR-185)
FileConnection and PIM API (JSR-75)
MIDP 2.0
Nokia UI API

Browser:
HTML over TCP/IP
WAP 2.0
XHTML over TCP/IP

Sound Formats:
AAC+
eAAC+
M4A
MIDI tones (poly 64)
WMA
AAC
AMR (NB-AMR)
MIDI tones (poly 64)
MP3
RealAudio
True Tones (WB-AMR)
WAV

Band Functionality:
GSM 1800
GSM 1900
GSM 900
WCDMA 2100

Screen Display:
Color Depth: 18 bit
Resolution: 176 x 208

Memory:
Unlimited Heap size
Shared Memory for Storage: 29 MB
Unlimited Jar size

Local Connectivity:
Bluetooth
USB
WLAN

Video Support:
3GPP formats (H.263)
MPEG-4
RealVideo

Network Data Support:
HSCSD
WCDMA
CSD
EGPRS
GPRS

Extra Features:
2 megapixel camera with 20x digital zoom
4GB HDD
Music player
USB Mass Storage
Instant Messaging
IMAP4 email
POP3 email
PoC
Presence
RealOne player
SMTP email
Stereo FM radio
SyncML
Themes

need anything more ?
Not for now at least ;)

Weekend Get-away: Kuntala Falls

2005-08-20T02:43:00.000-07:00

It was Thursday (7th july), ride planning day ;) initial plan was to ride somewhere towards warangal. After taking much needed words of wisdom from GR (scientist at National Geological Research Center and fellow biker) plans shifted more northbound. Kuntala falls, Saturday, ~320 kms from Hyd on Nagpur Highway. Went early to bed to prepare for the 4 am wake up. Saturday, 4:30 am: Clueless as to why it was raining this hard, after Friday’s pleasant weather. Calls flew in and out and finally decided to care a damm about the rain and take off on my Black Hooligan (Pulsar 180 classic). Man!!! This is the first time I took off on a two wheeler in a downpour of this magnitude. Was immediately welcome by trucks splashing water off the road, which was under a foot of water. Didn’t seem very encouraging. Took a 5 minute break at an ATM. Set off to meet Pravin (P 180 DTSi) near QP, Begumpet. Pravin was cladded in all leathers, my pair of leathers was safely packed in my backpack and I was in my raincoat. We reached Runway 9 at around 8 am, still raining cats and dogs. By this time I was fully wet, neck to toe, thanks to the helmet, it kept my head dry.

So solly (Black Karizma) comes in, soon followed by GR (Royal Enfield 350 Machismo). We decided to go forward with the trip and so did we. Rode some 50 kms (rain is implicit), breakfast at Fauzi Dhaba, on the Nagpur Highway (aloo paratha and sweet milky chaai). The shelter was very welcoming and cozy, so we guys had a pretty long (45 minute) breakfast. Reluctantly took off. From there onwards there was no one stopping us. Steady 80 kmph in moderate rain and 60 kmps when the rain was almost pushing us off the bike. My rain coat was of no use and so switched to my leather gear, which was kept me dry for around an hour :). By this time all of us except GR who was in his waterproof and thermal ride gear were dripping wet.

Rode 200 kms to reach the fort (see pics), a 15 minute break there and proceed towards Kuntala falls (APs Tallest falls). Awesome, plush greenery all the way, finally led us to an uninhibited and unexplored natural falls. The sight was truly awesome. Stripped off the wet clothes let em dry on the rocks and changed to dry clothes to get wet again in the water falls ;). We could spare just an hour in the falls as it was raining and the ride back would be much slower because there would be atleast 200 kms of night riding. We planned to skip lunch and cover maximum distance when the natural light was on. Butt break for late lunch after fueling at Reliance Petrobunk at around 6:30 pm. Again it was Aloo Paratha, Egg Burgy, Dahi and Chaai (kinda becoming standard ride meal). Thereafter it was continuous riding, solly having the brightest 55/55v Headlamps took the lead, all of us trailing with his tail lamp as reference, kinda target fixation :).Finally made it back to fauzi dhaba at 9 pm. Dispersed in our own ways from there.

A good and wet way to spend a weekend.

PICS: http://vinay.rides.fotopic.net/

My first post

2005-06-12T08:47:00.000-07:00

hmmm...... now what do i write in :))

:: WHAT DO I BLOG ::