Planet dgplug

Courage

2008-08-19T21:07:00+00:00

There is no greater courage to be witnessed
Than that of a man who has faced himself
His weakness and his failures
His lack of understanding
And who has acknowledged these
For only he who has faced himself
Can face the world without fear of harm
To himself or his own

Wings through inkscape

2008-08-19T19:59:54+00:00

MH - 12 DS 228 , the drunk driver who hit my bike

2008-08-19T19:59:51+00:00

First of all, I am safe. Front part of the bike broke. I was coming back home from office , around 11:50pm, in front of Koregaon park chouki, a whitish car in front of me slowed down and stopped, so I also stopped more than a feet behind. Suddenly that car started coming back in reverse, and it’s behind portion came on top of my bike’s front tire. I was using my bike’s horn at full , but he never listened , and then I understood that he was drunk. He came out of car with 1 male friend and girl. The driver was drunk , aged less than 40 started shouting at me, twice I went back few steps as he was almost in a mood to hit me. He threatened me of police, when I said lets go to police station he suddenly ran to the car, his friend followed him and the girl went to some other car in different direction. The number of the car which hit my bike is MH-12 DS 228 .

I tried to do an F.I.R. to the police station nearby but no one was there. So I went to Shrasti nagar police station, they asked me to go to Koregaon park police chouki , so I went back again. There they just took the details in a white paper and asked me to go home, they said they will check later in the morning.

Yes, I am a bit upset with the police’s behaviour. But more than to that drunk driver, he looked like some manager kind of guy (from clothing) , and he thinks as he is having money he owns the road. I am lucky nothing happened to me physically but things might went different. In newspapers we regulary read how people are getting killed by drunk drivers.

My kind request to the responsible people don’t drink and drive. And also please help me to find this person, if you are in Pune, try to see if you know this car or ask your friends if they know anything. Give them the car’s number.

…

2008-08-19T03:15:03+00:00

From here:

[…]

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

[…]

todo item ticked off!

2008-08-18T20:03:55+00:00

The place was different, it wasn't coffee that we were sipping, and we had some company too!

the first

2008-08-18T02:42:06+00:00

Good to be the first in anything. Although I was not the first to map Ooty, I can claim Ichalkaranji, Madikere and Mangalore. And, of course, Coonoor. Places like Ooty are the biggest challenge since the Yahoo satellite image is so poor that it is unuseable and all mapping has to be done by gps. A lot to be done, but here it is:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=11.4127&lon=76.7031&zoom=14&layers=B00FTFT

toolz rides again

2008-08-17T08:35:08+00:00

do a whois on nrcfoss.in - looks like toolz is up to his domain squatting tricks again.

Of many things and one

2008-08-15T19:04:29+00:00

Long time since this page saw some activity. *sigh*. This could have been a post of many things, like:

How stress induced fatigue (my dad's words not mine) caused me to sleep for nearly 36 hours at a stretch

The updates to the Gnome Mango system done by Olav Vitters and account system documentation done by Christian Rose has made things so easy for us translators

The mad rush for KDE 4.1 Translations

The LC Python workshop conducted by ramkrsna, at our office in Pune. Rahul Sundaram followed up with a talk on contributing opportunities in Fedora

Our new car

The huge power and water shortage that happened in Pune and messed up our daily schedules

The much-delayed fun trip to Mumbai and about the time spent with Barkha and her family, the ride on the deccan queen, boat ride to elephanta, visit to mahesh lunch home, getting soaked in the rain at Juhu beach, riding back to Pune in an ambassador taxi amidst pouring rain

My views on why overt channel admins (the pronounced green medals, not the access lists) on irc channels in some open-source projects creates unwanted hierarchical levels.

Mozilla 3.0.2 translation sprint. Am waiting for a few bug responses at the moment, but hopefully that should not stop the inclusion of bn-IN this time.

But then let me talk about something thats really much more important. The other day Ani showed me the search feature on the KDE Translation Project website, that allows searching of a term/string in translated content. The setup in this case gets the content from a selected directory of the svn, runs a query for the search string and presents the output results (string and its translated version) with direct link to the source documents. A database is also involved somewhere in between the process.

So a few of us were talking about having a similar tool that would allow us to search strings on user-defined content locations and present the strings with the search items, corresponding translated content and pointers to the source document. And so evolved Translation-Filter, by Kushal. A nifty little tool, that does just what we need. Its still being worked upon, but at the moment what you can do with it is:

Define a custom location with multiple .po files

Provide a string to search in the defined location

Get an output with the original english string containing the search item,corresponding translated string and the source file name

Provide a list of strings to search via a plain text file

Save search results as .html pages

Use the tool from the command line and a basic GUI dialog box

The project is a part of Fedora already and Kushal has packaged it.

At this moment the benefits look huge. Primarily it will allow us to ensure consistency of bn-IN translated content across projects (the ones using .po files at the very least). Perhaps (as Sayam thinks) very soon we can make a web-based version of it too. So right now... kushal++ :D

Quote of the Year (still now)

2008-08-15T01:39:01+00:00

<tibbs|h> Mother of god, the reviews just don’t stop coming in.

mapping spree

2008-08-14T04:31:55+00:00

did a thousand km of mapping. Ooty to Mangalore and back. Went via Gudalur (tea 3.50), Mysore and Madikere. Stayed overnight in Madikere and then on the Mangalore. Returned via BC Road (tea 4.00), Sakhleshpur, Hasan, billikere, Nanjangud, Masinagudi (tea 3.00). Roads were either state-of-art beauties or a string of potholes.

How to create a liveusb key using liveusb-creator ?

2008-08-13T19:17:20+00:00

Here is a video to demonstrate the above.

liveusb-creator version 2.7 is released for Linux

2008-08-13T18:00:09+00:00

liveusb-creator version 2.7 for Linux is released. You can grab the source or a rpm. Now feel free to create liveusb images for your friends and for the special one

Introduction to Fedora, part 1

2008-08-12T15:52:44+00:00

I just made a video on “Introduction to Fedora”. You can find it here. This is for the starters. I also tried to show how to use a pastebin kind of service, in this case fpaste.

Congrats Abhinav Bindra!!

2008-08-12T14:07:34+00:00

I just loved the Indian national anthem “Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka Jaya He….” orchestrate loud and ever-inspiring as it’s always on that moment of golden triumph of this young shooter. They say that it’s an individual gold for India in olympics after 3 decades. Everyone knows its’ far more credible than a team effort. I [...]

Blue flame through inkscape

2008-08-11T20:03:26+00:00

ComboBox and Statusbar, how to use them in PyQt4

2008-08-11T17:09:43+00:00

Here is another small example based tutorial to show how you can use ComboBox and StatusBar in PyQt. You can see it here.

Finally I own one

2008-08-10T20:00:18+00:00

It has been quite a while since i was longing for a lappy . Looked through dell , lenovo and all major brands until gsoc arrived . Since my budget limiter is gone with it , I finally got it one i never thought off . An Apple MacBook . I never considered a macbook since [...]

Creating a small image viewer using PyQt4

2008-08-10T19:14:59+00:00

I just added another video on creating a very small and stupid image viewer using PyQt4. You can see or download it from here. Please comment on what else you want to see.

Python list

2008-08-10T13:46:06+00:00

I added a new video on python list in dgplug tv.

Why the newbies are asking such lame questions ?

2008-08-10T09:32:33+00:00

This is a big question going on IRC last few days in channels like #fedora-india or in #dgplug. Here is the WBUT CSE syllabus and my points. You can listen me ogg, mp3.

Please comment what you think on this whole issue.

Rahul Bhalerao, Fedora Contributor from India speaks on his experience

2008-08-09T11:44:58+00:00

Today we have Rahul Bhalerao , Fedora Contributor from India with us. We asked him to about how he started his adventure in GNU/Linux and on Fedora planet. He also spoke on his current works. Listen to him

Ogg, Mp3

Mintos , the new Fedora India Contributor

2008-08-08T15:13:43+00:00

In this episode of Open Interview Session, we have Mintos who started contributing to Fedora recently. We asked him about his experience on process how he started working as a packager. Listen to him Ogg, Mp3.

Mether on Fedora India community

2008-08-08T14:21:35+00:00

Our next rockstar in the Open Interview Session is mether. We asked him about the Fedora India community and how things are going. Listen to him Ogg, Mp3.

Who called my constructor?

2008-08-08T13:22:00+00:00

I was itching to write this a couple of days back, but a daily routine which consists of sleeping at 03:00hrs and getting up at 07:30hrs got in the way. I apologize for the delay.

Let's take a simple C++ program: constructor.cpp.

After compiling with a C++ compiler [1], with all optimizations turned off, we can look at the symbols in the object file: nm constructor.o. Its quite obvious that _ZN3FooC1Ev corresponds to our constructor for class Foo.

Now we have enough information to delve into the generated assembly code and look at the mechanisms of the constructor call. Grepping for _ZN3FooC1Ev will reveal some interesting bits:
...
.type _ZN3FooC1Ev, @function
...
call _ZN3FooC1Ev

This is proof of the fact that internally the constructor is just a function, but a special one because it does not have a return value.

If you poke around a bit and ask some knowledgeable characters (not morons), you will also come to know that whenever an object instantiation is fo...

Venkatesh Hariharan, the co founder of Indlinux project speaks on Open standards and software patents in India

2008-08-08T13:20:05+00:00

Today I took interview of Venkatesh Hariharan, the co founder of Indlinux project, on Open standards and software patents in India. He clearly showcased why the open-standard is necessary , specially for a country like India. He also spoke on the current issue of software patent in India and open source model in general.

Ogg, Mp3

A tutorial series on PyQt programming

2008-08-08T07:05:31+00:00

I started a tutorial series on PyQt4 programming. You can see them here. Not ready for download yet, will do that within few days. To know more on Qt visit this trolltech docs.

Using GNU Autotools

2008-08-08T01:38:42+00:00

A nice and comprehensive presentation on GNU Autotools by Alexandre Duret-Lutz

New videos

2008-08-07T11:17:15+00:00

I just uploaded couple of new videos at dgplug tv. You can find ogg links in the right hand side. Videos include:

How to upload files to your fedorapeople account (asked by mether :p)
os.uname demo
Tab completion in Python

Many many thanks to stickster, gregdek for the nice headphone

C your types (part 2)

2008-08-06T20:08:00+00:00

Thanks to Alfred M. Szmidt and Alex Hudson on #gnu, I was able to locate the C89 standard. To cut a long story short it reaffirms my earlier conclusions about C's basic types.

Frankly, people who don't know what they are talking about should not be judging (read interviewing) others.

For the curious, article 3.1.2.5 named "Types" is the relevant portion of the standard that deals with this issue.

orphans & zombies

2008-08-06T18:56:00+00:00

In my mind I have always pictured a so-called Unix or "system programming" guru as someone who prides himself or herself on his or her knowledge of orphaned and zombie processes. No particular reason for me to imagine such things, except probably for the fact that I used to get confused about them every alternate day and re-read the documentation till I got a few paragraphs etched in my memory. With every such bout of confusion would come the scary thought that the proverbial guru lurking in the dark corners would pounce on me some day for my lack of understanding.

But then I had never factored in the souls who think of themselves as gurus, but are not really one. Souls who refuse to realize that an orphan process is not the same as a zombie process. Atleast not in Unix. Souls like these will keep on trying to avoid accepting this fact and try every possible tactic to confuse the other person. Accepting their own mistake is probably not a part of their instruction set.

So if you ever c...

Does it exist … ?

2008-08-06T10:52:10+00:00

I generally do Trac content generation offline using something as simple as Leafpad. Since I don’t use too much fancy formatting the workflow does work (usually) when pasted back on to Trac. Much Trac chewage today left me wondering if there was on OpenOffice.org extension that allows me to save into a Trac formatted file. Does such a thing actually exist ?

Favorite photo of the week:

from here

''I can, and I will'' (and you did)!

2008-08-06T07:36:42+00:00

Congratulations, Kartik Mistry, for becoming India's 6th Debian Developer!

The Indian FOSS Community is proud of you!

C your types

2008-08-06T03:49:00+00:00

Someone was asking me about the basic types in C yesterday. Pity I gave away my K&R to my friend a few years back, and had to turn to the Internet in search of the correct answer. After encountering confusing information from several resources, I landed up with the current C99 standard.

Here are a few quotes from article 6.2.5 named "Types".

There are five standard signed integer types, designated as signed char, short int, int, long int, and long long int. (These and other types may be designated in several additional ways, as described in 6.7.2.) There may also be implementation-defined extended signed integer types. The standard and extended signed integer types are collectively called signed integer types.

...

For each of the signed integer types, there is a corresponding (but different) unsigned integer type (designated with the keyword unsigned) that uses the same amount of storage (including sign information) and has the same alignment requirements. The type _Bool and the unsig...

Tata Indicom wireless data card (Huawei EC321 CDMA card)

2008-08-05T20:33:08+00:00

Tata indicom Vdata card

I've been using Tata Indicom's data card based internet services for the past 2 years or so. and my experience about the internet service quality has been above satisfaction so far. After filling up the application form, and paying 4990 INR upfront for the data card, i got the card delivered at home in 2 days. Pretty fast indeed.

Data card connectivity speed: The Huawei EC321 CDMA card is rated for about 156Kbps. Initially at the place where i used to live, i used to get about 140 Kbps speed without fiddling too much with the antenna and direction. At my current residence too, i manage about the same speeds, which is more than enough for my email and IRC applications

Setup and installation: The data card comes as a PCMCIA device which can be plugged onto the PCMCIA slot of your laptop. Its probably straightforward to install it in Windows. There's a desktop manager application included in the installation CD with puts a dialer-cum-sms inbox checking app shortcut on the desktop. Getting the internet working on linux is even easier. Check how to get the data card running with wvdial here.

Tariff plans: The data card costed me around 4990 INR some 2 years back. It should be cheaper now. The USB pen drive shaped Plug2Surf ones are definitely cheaper. I am under 1GB plan which costs me less than 800 INR per month with taxes included, as i never cross my 1GB limit.

Network coverage and roaming: Its based on Tata Indicom's CDMA network, so internet services work wherever there's tata indicom's mobile phone network. So far, it has worked for me in all the cities i've traveled in india. There are no charges on national roaming if you are using the data card only for internet services.

Verdict?: Its a good gadget to keep along if you are traveling. Internet works just out of the box, without having to ask anyone for network access or proxy authentications. I haven't used data card services from Reliance or Airtel, but i dont really have a reason to switch services as yet. Lately there have been days when the internet is pathetically slow but then it comes back again.

Where to buy?: You can visit their website ichoose.in and place an order. If you are in Mumbai then let me know, i can pass over the contact information of their sales representative and he'll take care of the rest.

More digging into physical memory layout

2008-08-05T12:02:35+00:00

Well, we have discussed the physical memory layout in my last blog.We have understood that among the first 640KB some areas are not usable. Lets try to find out the exact memory count which is not usable by the operating system, rather, that area is used by ROM and IVT (interrupt vector table).

Lets try to find out the first 31kb of memory. We know the memory layout is something as follows.
....
31Kb 0x07c0:0000 |-->>07C0:0 Boot code is loaded here.
0 Kb 0x0000:0000 | Working RAM LIMIT start +System information like
(Interrupt vector table)

If you tried to find out the exact memory usage by the BIOS, we will find that
the data is allocated at the maximum of segment number 0x0070:00 which is less than 1K.
[REF]
http://www.frontiernet.net/~fys/rombios.htm
http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~stanisls/helppc/bios_data_area.html

Hence rest of the memory up to 640KB can be used by the Operating system. In fact DOS2+ used that area.

!!! Lets find out how Linux treats those memory !!!

Linux always believes in cooperative environment. It's does not try to eat
market share of other. So what does the Linux do in case of memory
utilization?

As we all know that the physical memory is logically divided into chunks
called "page frame". 1 page frame == 4KB . As all system data require
approximately 1KB, Linux tried to mark the first page frame as not usable.
The rest of the pages upto the page frame number 0x9f(i.e. 640 KB) is
marked as "usable" and page frames from 0x9f to 0x100 (UMA, 1MB) are
marked as "not usable". Then the kernel code is loaded in the first byte of the
second megabyte of the physical memory. The starting of the kernel code is
identified by the symbol "_text" and the end of the kernel code identified by
the symbol "_etext". All these symbols can be found in Symbols.map file after
compiling the kernel.

Lets try to visualize the memory layout from the point of view of Linux 2.4 OS.
[REF: "Understanding Linux kernel."]

Birthday Boys!

2008-08-04T17:20:00+00:00

Wishing three good friends many happy returns of the day....

All Photos by ramkrsna

New house and new city

2008-08-04T14:07:34+00:00

New house

Opposite to my house

Outside office

Physical memory layout when the processor is in REAL MODE

2008-08-03T13:08:12+00:00

As i promised earlier we will discuss the pictorial view of the physical memory layout in real mode. We need to keep in mind that this physical memory layout is totally different from the virtual/linear memory layout either in kernel mode or user mode processes.

The linear address space of a process is divided into two parts:
Linear addresses from 0x00000000 to 0xbfffffff can be addressed when the
process is in either User or Kernel Mode.

Linear addresses from 0xc0000000 to 0xffffffff can be addressed only when
the process is in Kernel Mode.

-- We will discuss on this topic later in details.--

Lets try to visualize the physical memory layout:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 Mb = 0x10000:0000

1 Mb-1 = 0xFFFF:000F End System BIOS area
960 Kb 0xF000:0000 | = 128 Kb
896 Kb 0xE000:0000 Start System BIOS area

896 Kb-1 = 0xDFFF:000F End Expansion card BIOS area
832 Kb 0xD000:0000 | = 128 Kb
768 Kb 0xC000:0000 Start Expansion card BIOS area

768 Kb-1 = 0xBFFF:000F End Video RAM
704 Kb 0xB000:0000 | = 128 Kb
640 Kb 0xA000:0000 Start Video RAM

640 Kb-1 = 0x9FFF:000F| Working RAM LIMIT ENDS
576 Kb 0x9000:0000 |
512 Kb 0x8000:0000 |
448 Kb 0x7000:0000 |
384 Kb 0x6000:0000 |
320 Kb 0x5000:0000 | = 640 Kb
256 Kb 0x4000:0000 |
192 Kb 0x3000:0000 |
128 Kb 0x2000:0000 |
64 Kb 0x1000:0000 |
31Kb 0x07c0:0000 |-->>07C0:0 Boot code is loaded here.
0 Kb 0x0000:0000 | Working RAM LIMIT start +System information like
(Interrupt vector table)

To know more about BIOS service routine table(i.e. Interrupt vector table) click on the following link.
!!URL!!
http://bioscentral.com/misc/biosservices.htm

If you guys have any queries do let me know , else i will think more on this memory layout and if i found something interesting i will discuss it here.

Good night to all of you.. Going to sleep now ....

Find hard to understand the BIOS call sequnce during Booting a PC

2008-08-03T07:01:37+00:00

Hum .. Today is 3rd August 2008, My last blog was 19th July, was trying to build custom kernel without success. Then i thought of making some documentation on Linux system call sequence. I started and confused in understanding the protocol initialization during startup time. Hence i jumped from system call sequence to system booting up process and decided to create documentation on PC boot up sequence.

This time i am strongly determined of doing the documentation. I downloaded the Linux kernel code 2.4.19 and started looking into it.Soon i learned that "I am very confuse guy who didn't understand anything except computer/linux assembly and machine code." -- Got depressed very much(Probably no one will dream me as BF ;-))

Meantime 7 bomb blast rocked the city of Bangalore, and i got depressed again feeling the insecurity.Then i don't know , all of a sudden again i got interested in browsing Linux kernel code.

-- Ha, haha this time success smiles on my face.I was able to understand the majority of the bootsect.S code, but still there was something missing.After some time i realized that it was the concept of memory management. I started looking into the memory layout during the PC bots up and finally came up with the following concept.

As the system boots up the real mode addressing works, thus specifying all address in seg:off format. The seg:off format can be converted into linear address by the rule (seg*16+off) == Linuear address.

Memory Layout overview:
------------------------------------------
1) Conventional Memory:
2) Upper Memory Area(UMA)
3) High Memory Area (HMA)
4) Extented Memory Area (EMA)

1) Convetional Memory:
-----------------------------------
The first 640KB of system memory is known as "convetional memory".In the historic age DOS and some it's driver code used to run in this memory region, thus the naming convention.
Linear address range : 0x00000 to 0x9FFFF
Segmented address : 0x0000:0 to 0x90000:FFFF

For more infos: Please read
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/ram/logicConventional-c.html

... Feeling sleeping today, leaving right now, tomorrow we will discuss rest of the memory layout. :-)

After 12 hrs of rest in the evening of a friendship day, i woke up to complete the blog ;-).

Ok last, we have discussed about the convetional memory layout. Lets talk about the "Upper Memory Area" or (UMA)

2) Upper Memory Area:
-------------------------------------
The next 384 KB starting from the address 0xa000:0 to 0xFFFF:000F(or 0xA0000 to 0xFFFFF in linear address format) are supposed to be UMA. These memory range has been used for VIDEO RAM/ SYSTEM BIOS AREA/ Other Expansion CARD BIOS area. Remember when the machine is switched on the IP is set to the address as
CS:IP = 0xF000:FFF0
(Don't get confused 0xF000:FFF0 and 0xFFFF:000F --> Limit of UMA)
Means when the machine switched on the first instruction it tried to read from UMA.
More over we need to keep in mind that in UMA area some ROM addresses were being mapped in to the RAM and thus those addresses are READ ONLY.
We will talk about later while discussing the overall memory layout.

With the end of UMA the first megabyte of the memory layout ends here.

3) High Memory Area (HMA)
--------------------------------------------
The first 64KB(less than 16 bytes) of the second megabyte of the sytem memory. Technically this 64KB of memory is part of "Extended Memory Area"(EMA), though the difference it this part of memory range can be addressed when the processor is in real mode which makes it different from the rest of the extended momory.

Wait a minute....

Lets think about "How this memory range can be addressed by real mode??"

yes.. Any one ?? Besically i am a dummy guy.. never understand anything in a single shot...

Proof of Thinking 1 :
----------------------------------
We have 16 bits for SEGMENT addressing and another 16 bits for OFFSET addressing while the processor is in REAL MODE. Hence all possible combination are 2^16 x 2^16 = 2^32
As we know 2^20 == 1MB (First megabyte of the physical RAM ) the rest of the address i.e. 2^12 should be available as "High Memory Area"(HMA).
... Wait wait...
2^12 is 4KB but we were talking ablout 64KB as HMA?
?????????????????? What happend wrong ?????????????????????

Proof of Thinking 2 :
----------------------------------
Lets think in different manner. We know that Upper memory area ends at the address 0xFFFF:000F(Upto this address we already covered 1MB of the physical RAM). Now consider the address range 0xFFFF:000F to 0xFFFF:FFFF.
All possible combination is (2^16 -16) as we have started from 000F.
2^16 == 64KB. Finally got it.

4) Extented Memory Area (EMA):
---------------------------------------------------
This is the memory region above the High Memory Area until the end of the system memory.To use this memory region OS needs to be boots up in protected mode as no real mode addressing can access the memory region.
Extended memory is found from address 10FFF0h to the last address of system memory. (Technically, the high memory area is part of extended memory, it all depends on how you are looking at things).

We will talk about the memory layout in the pictorial manner in the next blog.
Good bye for now.

That’s an affirmative my love!

2008-07-28T07:35:42+00:00

My dear Stephie… to your question, here is my answer

mysql>	USE life;
mysql>	SELECT (*) FROM indranil WHERE love=true \
	UNION \
	SELECT (*) FROM stephanie WHERE love=true \
	ORDER BY love, happiness, ups_n_downs;

Educational resources … from azimpremjifoundation.org

2008-07-28T04:38:20+00:00

Sukumar Anikar <anikar@azimpremjifoundation.org> [1] and Prasad <prasad@azimpremjifoundation.org> managed to get across to me a copy of a [...]

openSUSE 11 installation from hard disk

2008-07-28T03:33:12+00:00

openSUSE 11 was released during vacations. So I was waiting anxiously to download and use it. The day I came to college put my luggage in the room, managed to get the LAN wire patch ( I did not know where mine was) and checked for the internet. To my amazement the connection was proper and I was getting a download speed of around 1Mbps, it may be very commoin to you but in my college where we rarely get a speed of 50 kbps. I was thrilled. I started to download the iso which was around 4.2 GB. I managed to download it in 2 hours. I had gone mad. I told about this to every one I met.

Then I knew that I did not have a DVD to burn it. So what if I had managed to download the iso I must install it. I searched for a balank DVD but nobody had it. And it was a hot afternoon, I knew that i college shops would not be open. So I opened the iso with File Roller (it is a archive utility on Linux, which lets you extract iso images also). Thanks to Debayan, he had told me about this during Mukti ‘08 when he extracted the iso and then installed it using LAN on several computers simultaneosly.

So i extracted the iso in a FAT drive. I had always known that installtion could be done directly from the hard disk. But i had never done this. So I started Windows mounted the iso using Daemon Tool (a utility on windows which lets you mount images iso, mdf etc). The SUSE installer poped up. I breezed through it and restarted my laptop. Then booted up the installer. Then it came to a halt saying no repositories found or something of that sort, which happens when you dont use the DVD or CD as a medium for installtion. Then I selected the hard disk as the installtion media. Located the partition. Then it asked for the folder. I had the extracted iso in the folder “suse”. Then i typed “suse” but nothing happened giving error “No repositories found” (i remember this error parcticularly). Then I tried “/suse” and it worked. I was so excited but there was nobody near me whom I could tell this.

There was one more surprise inside. openSUSE 11 is shipped with KDE 4, this was what I wanted. If you haven’t seen KDE 4, just take a look at it. You will jsut love it. KDE 4 has an improved Kget, the download manager which gives you a speed equivalent to IDM on windows. So why use windows. The only reason I switch to windows is Counter Strike. I hope that some day it will be available.

How to become an Open Source Contributor ?

2008-07-27T15:44:37+00:00

As a response to a question (on a mailing list) “How to become an Open Source Contributor“, Philip had this awesome response. Quoted here in the entire form.

Hi ,

Each person has their own way of contributing, so I won’t tell you
what you should do, I’ll only recount my own experience in becoming a
FOSS developer.

Back in 1999, someone sent a mail to the ilug-bom mailing list asking
how to find out which web server was running on a given host, eg, was
it Apache, IIS, Netscape, etc.  I sent in instructions to find this
out using telnet, but then I also realised that it would take not more
than 30 minutes to write a small program to do it, so I wrote a 10
line perl script to do it (I was learning perl at the time, so it was
a good excercise), and called it httptype.  I mailed it to the list,
and uploaded it to my free web hosting account.  Within a few hours,
people were giving me suggestions and reporting bugs, so I released a
new version the next day, and announced it on freshmeat.net.  In a few
days I was getting patches, and then another person on the list showed
me how to use sourceforge and CVS (I did not know any of these things
before), so I did that, and I started getting more patches and feature
requests and downloads.  It was a lot of fun, but ultimately there’s a
limit to how many useful features you can add to this kind of simple
program, and it’s officially been in a stable and complete state for
about five years now (ie, no bugs, no maintenance required).  I had
been bitten by the FOSS development bug (my code was released under
the GNU GPL), and I started looking for more to do.

In 2001, I started using instant messaging, and was looking for a
client on linux.  I found something called everybuddy, downloaded the
tarball, built it and started using it.  I also joined the mailing
list, and started reporting issues that I found.  The developers were
very friendly, and explained things to me, but for bugs related to the
Yahoo! library, I wasn’t getting any responses.  So I started reading
the source code, and using gdb (again, one of the developers showed me
how to do this), and figured out how to fix some of the smaller bugs
(1-2 line changes), and I sent in a patch (I learnt how to make
patches on httptype).  But no one was commenting on the patches or
merging them into the project.  So one day I just got annoyed and
asked the project maintainer who the maintainer of the Yahoo! module
was, and he replied saying, as far as he knew, I was now the
maintainer.  This was a surprise to me, since I did not even have CVS
access, so I harassed him a little more and he gave me write access
(the project was hosted on his personal machine), and I became the
maintainer of the Yahoo! library of everybuddy.  About a year later I
was one of the primary developers, and when the team decided to split
the project into two sub projects, one of the devs from France, and I
became the lead developers of Ayttm.  During this time, I started many
more projects of my own, and kept submitting small one or two line
patches to many more projects (Zope, Squishdot, automake, to name a
few).

I’m not saying that you need to do the same thing, but maybe it will
give you an idea of what you can do.  At no point of time was I
developing open source software as part of my job, this was all stuff
I did in my free time during my lunch break, or in the evenings, or on
weekends, or while I was “waiting for my code to compile”.

My advice would be, look for one of these two things:
- Has someone asked a question that you think you can answer through code?
- Is there a tool that you really like using, but have a few minor
bugs you would like fixed?
Ideally, in the latter case, it should be a simple project.  Things
like Firefox, Thuderbird and Evolution are massive projects that it’s
pretty hard to get into, but there will also be many mentors to show
you the way.

HTH,

Philip

visited countries

2008-07-27T09:01:35+00:00

visited 1 states (0.44%)
Create your own visited map of The World or determine the next president

visited states

2008-07-27T08:57:29+00:00

visited 10 states (28.5%)
Create your own visited map of India or determine the next president

food

2008-07-27T08:45:17+00:00

the people of Coimbatore live for food. At Annapoorna opposite the court complex you have to Q for a table at 6 am. But tea is 4 rupees. FOUR RUPEES???? Absurd as a surd once remarked.

Relax, you’ve just been Google Mapped.

2008-07-27T06:11:25+00:00

At Clover Centre on Moledina Road, Pune, stickers like these were slapped next to nearly every shop.

A Prayer

2008-07-26T17:53:09+00:00

Where the mind is without fear
and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out
from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms
towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom,
My Father
Let my country awake.

-- From Rabindranath Tagore's "Geetanjali"

SCHOOL DAYS

2008-07-26T17:07:30+00:00

Today I had a grand meeting with my school friends (of Carmel) @ City Centre at 11 a.m. This time it was something special as I got to see some of my friends after four years and friends from Bangalore and Kolkata were also present to fully enjoy the time. We first went to Suhatta ,had a round throughout the building. A competition was going on there where people had to simply make fun of themselves (rather fool of themselves ). We simply laughed (actually everyone was laughing) at the participants who had to tell the word “TATA” in one breath in their own style. Then we went to FOOD MART and had our lunch there. One funny thing was that we discovered a new item there ” chicken ghandari” but our luck was not good to taste it. We were total nine (many missed due to previously planned schedules) and the whole time was spent on laughing and cracking jokes one after the other. Its always nice to share some old memories of our school days and specially the pranks we made there and the punishments we got. I don’t know when we will meet again and how but I will always cherish those days and wish if we could study together in the near future.

Trek to Kalavantin durg-fort

2008-07-26T10:38:18+00:00

Monsoon treks for the year 2008 started with a rather exciting trek to Kalavantin durg(pinnacle). Kalavantin durg, located very close to Panvel, is a medium difficulty trek, but the rains make it more challenging. After the first rains fell in Mumbai, we planned to trek Kalavantin durg on 8th June 2008. We all gathered at Panvel bus depot to take the 7AM bus to the base village of Thakurwadi. Since it was getting late, we then decided to take six seater auto rickshaws to Thakurwadi instead. After negotiating with the autorickshaw drivers they agreed to take us there for Rs. 200 per SixSeater rickshaw. The distance is about 17Kms form Panvel.

While reaching Thakurwadi village, look out for Zoia resort, there's a road which goes left from there, and after walking about 1 hour on it one can reach the base village, which is very close to Kalvantin hill. We however went a little ahead and took some other route and got lost. After a little help(paid) from local kids, we managed to find the actual broad village road which led us to the village at the foot of Kalavantin pinnacle. From here we found our own way through the jungle. One thing to make sure is that the shoes are good, since the jungle path becomes extremely muddy and slippery because of several groups who might be ahead of you.

After climbing for an hour more, we reached the notch from where there are steps dug out in the rocks to climb the pinnacle from its southern end. The force of wind is freaking awesome at this notch, and throughout the climb. After a while, it started raining and the whole scenery was covered with mist and fog. Really awesome view, but photographing it was rather difficult. After climbing the topmost pinnacle of Kalavantin durg, we climbed down. Several people slipped and fell since the entire route was made muddy and slippery due to a rather large group which came and returned before us.

We had lunch at the base village, and returned to the ST bus stop at Thakurwadi village, after dumping the plans to visit Prabalgad.

Pictures from trek to Kalavantin durg are available here.
Continue reading "Trek to Kalavantin durg-fort"

Microsoft dives into opensource (finally…)

2008-07-26T10:01:44+00:00

Well this had to happen. You cant ingnore the world forever. Microsoft is a great company because they pay more importance to keeping their ideals abreast with time, instead of staying loyal to outdated ideals(which is something that CPI(M) does). Microsoft has finally promised to become a major opensource contributor.

The last lecture

2008-07-26T10:01:25+00:00

I havent blogged in a long time. I guess i was waiting for something special to come by. I read a slashdot.org story and followed the links and watched the video series at http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/LastLecture/. Nothing else has ever inspired me more. Randy Pausch, you will be remembered forever.

Trek to Sagargad and Siddheshwar temple

2008-07-26T09:40:27+00:00

After a break of 4 weeks, and having done Kalvantin, Mahuli and Avchitgad, it was time to go for another place we hadn't covered. Jagdish planned a trek for Sagargad and Siddheshwar temple on 20th July. Sagargad is a hill fort located in Alibag region, 1 hour walk from the popular Siddheshwar temple and math. As usual, we all gathered at Panvel ST bus depot and took a bus to Alibaug. Siddheshwar temple is about 2 hour walk from the base village of Khandale.

After taking some rest at Siddheshwar temple we moved forward towards Sagargad fort, eagerly waiting for rains showers. And it did, just around the entrance of the fort which is now in ruins. In its time, this fort could have been a prominent center of power, as can be seen from the strong walls built over a rather larger area of the flat mountain surface. Apart from a ganesh temple, there are a few man made ponds with water and green sprawling gardens on the flat mountain surface.

A rather fascinating sharp and pointed rock structure named Vanartok lies at the edge of Sagargad's hill. Vanartok, or Monkey point is a popular destination with professional rock climbers. After drenching in rains and taking several photographs of lush green scenery, we all had lunch. The usual theplas, murabbas cakes and ladoos followed.

And since it was Jagdish's birthday, a round of gifts, and photographs with him holding the gifts followed We had planned to visit the waterfall on the return journey, but didnt know the route to the waterfall. Nevertheless, we walked back to the base village Khandale and took ST buses back to Mumbai. All in all, a weekend well spent.

Pictures from trek to Sagargad and Siddheshwar temple

Trip to Goa - Devaaya resort!

2008-07-26T09:12:00+00:00

End of May, the long pending get together happened. On 29th May evening we left for Goa in a Volvo. Night was spent sleeping and singing. After the long journey on Mumbai - Goa national highway we reached Goa next morning and headed towards Diwar Island. Checked in Devaaya Resort and relaxed. Had party whole night, with lots of chicken and booze.

Panjim, the capital city, is a city of churches and beaches and there are ample opportunities of photographing both. Next day a couple of us hired a few bikes and went off on a beach visiting spree.

All in all, a trip well spent. Goa is fun place to be at.

Fedora Announce list is in Planet

2008-07-25T15:14:43+00:00

As Max asked, it is up. You can find the code here.

why do we need to attend classes

2008-07-25T06:40:44+00:00

Last night after a lot of counter strike and a LDTP installation, my back said, “i wont let you sit more”. Then I went to bed and started to think about the classes. Yeah ! I some times also think about my classes.

When it had not started I thought it is high time why the hell it is not starting and now after it has started I think why has it started. Well, it was yet another boring day. I can remember a class all the time I was gazing on the board as if I was the most attentive person in the class and god only knows that i had visited several places thought about several people around me within that one hour. Indus who was sitting just beside me had similar experience and I can say that rest of the sixty odd people in the class must have had similar experiences. Well it is not that we feel like this in only that period. The situation is same for other periods.

Then why do we attend classes. Why aren’t we left to do whatever we want to do. It appears to me as if attending classes has become a synonym for wasting time.

Radio stations on the phone

2008-07-23T11:11:15+00:00

Since I’d promised a certain gentleman that given the phone I’ll try out Mundu Radio, I went ahead and downloaded it yesterday. Without wasting too many words - it is a cool application to have. The UI was a little bit klunky for me, but got used to it pretty fast. Now if only they had one for the n810 that’d be nice

If you want to listen to nice music on your phone, go ahead and get your account now.

What in hell’s name was it all about ?

2008-07-22T16:20:55+00:00

I watched with increasing amount of cringing the spectacle that has been unravelling in the Parliament for nearly 2 days now. The build up to this mega event was beyond doubt - gathering of forces, trading of charges, wild swings of opinion and of course the spectacular display of unbridled opportunism. A long long time back, a friend had commented that in a democracy we get the rascals we deserve. In more ways than one, it proved itself today. The final score isn’t what it is about. Nor is it about rhetoric. To me it is about the fact that on national television elected leaders made jackasses of themselves in more ways than one. And that is unpardonable.

It could be about idli, sambar and chutney. It may be about the negotiations with IAEA. But when one observes oodles of taxpayer monies being wasted in just tokenism, there’s nothing more humiliating. Inflation is touching ~12%, industrial growth is all over the park, the central bank seems to be getting it all wrong in its fiscal policy and yet for two days the nation is compelled to be glued to a single channel watching with unabashed glee the way their elected leaders make a mockery of the system of Parliament. Not a single shred of discipline or deceny permeated the debate.

And we take pride in calling ourselves the largest democracy. Kakistocracy is what it resembles most today.

svn stat

2008-07-22T04:46:02+00:00

A New House
A Road Tax

Now whoever told me that Pune is cheap, forgot to inform that new parts of Pune is costlier than Bangalore

Yipee its working again

2008-07-20T10:24:17+00:00

My Wireless started working again . I am really elated that though this initial kernel update( 2.6.25.10-86.fc9.i686 ) didn’t allow the wireless samely, but I thought of again enabling the livna-testing repo and whaO it worked

Hopefully any other new update of F9 kernel doesn’t take a toll on my wifi connection.