Techno Babble

Moving on......

2005-11-21T14:03:00.001+05:30

The lack of support for categories has made it painful to use blogspot. I find it a lot easier to write when I can categorize it. Even forking is merely a workaround, not a complete solution. I dont want to maintain three different blogs.

Almost by accident, I discovered wordpress. Flock helped. And, here is the address of the new blog. Updates will be made only to the new blog, unless something drastic forces me to look for another change.

Moving on......

2005-11-21T14:03:00.000+05:30

Forking

2005-11-11T14:53:00.000+05:30

When I started this blog, the idea was to post purely technical stuff here. But, soon it became very tough to stick to that idea, and I started diverging from the main topic. Started writing about cricket, and even tried a short story !

Lack or organizing posts into categories is turning this blog into a mess. Purists would say this blog has no central theme, no character, no soul... Probably it resembles a person with multiple-personality disorder !
So, I am trying to fork this into three blogs.

1. Techno babble, this blog, will talk about technical stuff. Reading most of the posts here will give an experience not dissimilar to watching paint dry.
2. Cric Lover : Will feature my rants on Cricket.
3. Flavour of the minute : General rants. Something which wont fit into the previous blogs will be posted here.

Let me see how successful this experiment is. (Hope I dont end up with multiple blogs with multiple-personality disorder :) ).

Return of the King - Parts 2,3 and 4

2005-11-07T14:14:00.000+05:30

Lot of comebacks by batsmen in cricket in recent times.

Matty Hayden seems to be back in form. Three hundreds in as many tests indicate that. The last of them, at home against Windies, reminded of the old Hayden. It had some of the powerful shots that had been missing of late. Hope he keeps chugging like this till the next Ashes at least.

Ponting seems to have found his touch, as the hundred in each innings shows. The one in the first innings was more important, as it bailed the team out of trouble. Some magnificent pull shots and cover drives in that knock. Could not watch the second hundred on tv. Now, scoring runs seems to have boosted his confidence as well. All the nonsense of "proper behaviour" and "restraint", visible during the ashes tour, seem to have been chucked out. Good for him and for the team. And incident in the WI second innings shows this.
Brett Lee, having taken a wicket, was charging up to the batsman (Fidel Edwards I think. Do not remember who it was). The batsman seemed not to notice the bowler, and stood there with the bat in his hand. Lee had to pull out, and he went back to the start of his run up. The captain walked in the direction of the batsman, and seemed to ask politely "Where the f*(& are you looking when the bowler runs in ?". :).

Finally, to a batsman who looked like he had never been away. Scoring 93 off 96 balls to setup a good team total is a damn good way to go on your return to the team, and this is just what S R Tendulkar did. Pretty aggressive knock, with shades of the old Tendulkar (one who gives fast bowlers the charge :) ) were on display. Might not have done well in the third and fourth one-dayers, but Lanka must be wary of him the tests.

And, to finish off, the sporting moment of the week :
One over to go.
Nine runs for a Series win.
Shane Bond, one of the fastest bowlers, running in.

What do you do ?

If you are Justin Kemp , you blast the ball out of the park for a six !

The train journery

2005-10-28T08:44:00.000+05:30

Prologue
---------

The train was crowded. V and M just managed to find seats in the unreserved compartment. They kept their backpacks on the upper berth, took off the shoes and pushed them under the seat, and settled down in the seats. They looked around and noticed that all the seats were taken.
"Hmm.. looks like no one missed the train today. Seems pretty crowded", said V.
"Yup. True. Guess the journey may not be very comfy. Anyway, just a matter of 4 hours rite. Should be fine"
"Right. BTW, just keep a close eye on the backpacks, Ok ? Dont want to lose them. :) .".
"Will do. Thats right :)"
4 hours passed. Another 5 mins, and they would reach their station.
V put on his shoes. M looked under the seat.Instead of his favourite pair of Nike, he found a pair of old tattered slippers........

The Present
-------------

V and M catch the train by the skin of their teeth. The train starts to move as soon as they get in. They put the backpacks on the upper birth and get comfortable in the seats.
V removes his shoes, and pushes it under the seat, and looks at M.
"Hmm.. the train is crowded. Better watch the backpacks :). Are you not taking your shoes off ?"
"What ? Take them off ? And lose them again ? No way."
"Ok. ;) ".

An hour passes by. V stretches his legs and enjoys the scenery. M is getting a little uncomfortable with the shoes on. He decides to take them off.
"Not comfortable. I will take them off. But, me planning not to push them under this time. I will keep my feet on them and ensure no one flicks them this time :D ", says M.
"Ok."

How long can someone sit in the same position ? Not long, right ? M feels a bit cramped in his legs, and says to V.

"Bah ! sitting like this is tough. I will just keep my eye on the shoes." And he does. He stares at the shoes, refusing to look anywhere else. Surprising that he did not get a crick in his neck.
Remaining journey is uneventful. Another 5 mins, and the train would reach the station. V puts on his shoes and tells M to do the same.
"Thank god ! This time no one flicked them. I have been staring at it for hours. After losing that pair, I feel very nervous every time I take my shoes off in a public place", says M.
"Yup. I can understand the feeling. Here comes our station, lets go", says V, takes his backpack, and walks out.
M stands up, looks for his backpack, and finds a tattered black bag instead........

Update : Not a real life story... :)

Minix 3 in Qemu

2005-10-25T23:17:00.000+05:30

Saw a post in /. and in osnews about the release of Minix 3. Andy Tanenbaum first wrote Minix to teach Operating Systems to his students. Minix is a good example for a micro-kernel based OS where the nonessential components are removed from the OS and run as system-level and user-level programs. In simple terms, the drivers in the system behave like user written programs, and even if a driver crashes, the OS will not crash. (Read the slug-fest between Tanenbaum and Linus for more details on micro-kernels vs monolithic kernels).

Since I love trying different OSes (at one point of time, I had 3 different OSes in a 2.1 GB hdd, and no applications in any of those :) ), me decided to download this and give it a shot. But, instead of installing Minix in my pc, i decided to use qemu to try Minix. QEMU is a generic and open source processor emulator. Simply put, it lets you run a virtual pc in your pc.

First step was to install Qemu on my debian-sarge. This proved to be a little tricky. I tried to download and use the binaries of Qemu 0.7.2 directly, but that did not work (some crib about missing lib-sdl. Installing lib-sdl did not solve it :( ). Tried
   apt-get install qemu
and installed qemu. Surprisingly, by 0.7.2 binaries started working after this.

Second step was to download and test the Minix live cd distribution. Grabbed the compressed archive from this link (a 10 MB file), and extracted the iso image from the archive. After this, I got a file named IDE-3.1.1.iso . Renamed this file to MINIX-3.1.1.iso. To test this boot cd, I issued the command
  qemu -m 64 -boot d -cdrom MINIX-3.1.1.iso
to boot from the cdrom image. This went fine, and I was presented with the minix login screen.

Boot screen 1

Boot Screen 2

Third step was to create a hdd mage to install Minix to. Qemu provides a command to create a virtual hdd. The minix website suggested a minimum hdd partition size of 100 MB. I decided to create a 150 MB hdd image. After issuing the command
  qemu-img create minix_hdd.img 150M
I had the virtual hdd ready. (minix_hdd.img is a file which will "store" the contents of the hdd).

Step 4 was to boot into Minix with a HDD and a CDROM, and to install Minix to the virtual hdd. This proved to be a simple thing. The command
  qemu -m 64 -hda minix_hdd.img -boot d -cdrom MINIX-3.1.1.iso
booted me into Minix from the CDROM, with a raw unformatted hdd also present. This done, installing Minix was a trivial process, merely pressing the "Enter" key a lot, and answering the odd multiple-choice-question. All done, the installer gave me the instruction to reboot once. Issued the
   shutdown
command to halt Minix.

Last step, to boot from the virtual hdd into Minix. The command
  qemu -m 64 -hda minix_hdd.img -boot c
booted my Minix install from the "hdd". Neat, huh ?

Need to do some more experimentation with Minix later. Right now, gotta crash to bed.

Audio up in Debian

2005-10-13T13:43:00.000+05:30

Got audio working in Debian. It was a simple process, really.

Googling threw up a command to configure Audio. alsaconf .

ALSA is an acronym for Advanced Linux Sound Architecture. Simply put, audio drivers for Linux, something that helps to generate noise out of the speakers. Without these in place, the speakers wont even generate noise.

Installation of Alsa was pretty simple. Open up a root shell, and issued the command
apt-get install alsaconf

The name of the correct package was alsa-utils, not alsaconf as I had typed in. Apt figured this out automatically, downloaded and installed the packages alsa-base, alsa-utils and lsof.
After these packages were installed, I ran alsaconf from the root shell. My sound card was detected and configured properly. Adjusted the volume using Kmixer, and voila, my speakers came to life :).

Enjoying Spirited Away right now. A masterpiece by Hayao Miyazaki.

Back to tech

2005-10-12T08:00:00.000+05:30

Think its been a while since I wrote anything abt technology. Have to do some justice to the blog name, and hence a post about comps, software etc.

Moved over to Debian Sarge linux distro at home. Most of the things (including network, X) etc work. But no sound yet :(. Must be something minor, and plan to get it working by the end of this week. I am a n00b as far as Debian goes (me used RH distro a lot earlier). Learning quite a few things now......

First things first. Debian is "the" GNU Operating system, it's full name being Debian GNU/Linux. The main idea of Debian is to create a completely free Operating System. Right now, Debian uses the Linux kernel, but work is on to provide other kernels (like GNU Hurd). Complete Debian distro is spread over 14 cds or 2 DVDs. :-O !!. For installing Debian, its enough to download just the first CD. :).

Now onto my rants.

Apt is the package manager in Debian. If you want to install/uninstall/update packages, you will be using apt. Aptitude is a menu driven front-end for apt, and is a lot easier to use.

Apt has to know where to get packages from before installing them, right ? This info is stored in the file /etc/apt/sources.list. I installed Debian from a CD-ROM, hence, my original sources.list file looked like

    #deb file:///cdrom/ sarge main

    deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 r0a _Sarge_ - Official i386 Binary-1 (20050607)]/ unstable contrib main

After installing Debian, I wanted to install security updates and packages not present in my Debian CD. So, i edited this file, changed it to

    #deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 r0a _Sarge_ - Official i386 Binary-1 (20050607)]/ unstable contrib main

    deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib
    deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free

After doing this, I used the command
     apt-get update
and to tell apt about the new locations to get packages from.

Then, in case there were some broken packages on my pc, I issued the command
     apt-get install -f
to let apt fix them automatically.

To install new packages, just use the command
     apt-get install package_name

For example, I wanted to install yahoo messenger. One of the dependencies for yahoo messenger is the ssl library. Installing ssl was a piece of cake. Just had to issue the command
     apt-get install libssl0.9.6
and it was done ! So simple....

More later...

Trek in Concrete Jungle

2005-10-10T09:20:00.000+05:30

Lots happened this weekend. Dont know which portions to cover :).

Played cricket on saturday. As usual, we won :). I got a bit of a tap from the batsmen, but returned to usual line and length by the third over. Got one wicket, but bowling after a long break is sure tough. Was so tired, did not stir out of the house on saturday :). Read Aitihyamala (which rocks !), ate and slept through the day..Planned to go out in the evening with Arun, but rain dished it.

Sunday was a bit more eventful. A news item on Satuday mentioned a power cut from 10 am to 4 pm on Sunday. This prompted an early start. Got up at 6.00, surfed, installed Debian, and got ready by 10. No power cut !! :). Saw cricket, went out and bought a Sony DVD writer and a DLink NIC. Now my PC has 2 NICs :). Got network up in Debian. Pretty easy, and planning another post on this for those new to Debian.

Saw cricket, and was impressed by Watson. More on him in another post.

Evening just rocked. Must be one of the best Sunday evenings I've had in my life so far.

Me, Vin and AMJ started off to attend the iVolunteer meeting at 3.15. There was a bit of rain in the air. But AMJ came out with this brilliant hypothesis about how it would not rain in the direction we had to go, and self somehow ended up supporting this. We started out on our bikes, instead of taking a rick. Got sufficiently drenched (despite offering prayers to St.Murphy) after covering about 1.5 kms. Parked the bikes, got a rick, and proceeded. Torrential rain. Made me wonder if I was in Bangalore or had been transported through Space-time to New Orleans when Katrina was around. Reached the meeting. Raised a few eye-brows (rather, an eye-brow) with my hair style. Met flowerfable.

Qutie (Kiron) decided to come in his personal jet (aka pulsar). He too got drenched, went home, changed, took his monster truck and reached the meeting place after the meeting. He started at 3 and reached the meeting at 5.45, the slowest I have seen him drive :).

After the meeting, me and Vin decided to walk back from Cox town to Cambridge layout. We had a nice trek through the concrete jungle. Man made creeks and concrete rocks, wild ruthless oil-drinking animals and slippery slush, and tiredness in the limbs tried to block our paths. But we did not give up :). Reached Sharath's place after walking for about 75 mins (and covering, at least 5-6 kms, possibly more). Popped into the house of Sharath, had a couple of helpings of a beverage made by fermenting a cereal (mixture of cereals, perhaps) flavored with hops. Felt very good after the long walk. Had a nice chat about blogging, blogs etc. Sharath summed up the concept and popularity of blogs nicely in these words "Narcissistic and voyeuristic societies feeding each other". :).

Picked up the bikes and reached home around 9.45. Slept like a log till 6.00 am :).

Then it dawned, hell, monday again :(.

The Return of the King

2005-10-08T06:11:00.000+05:30

Cuts, pulls, drives to long-on and long-off, sixes over midwicket, and more importantly, runs off Freddie signalled his return to form. Who are we talking about ? One of the most destructive batsmen in the history of the game, probably the best wicket-keeper batsman ever, and , recently, Freddie's bunny. Yup, its Adam Gilchrist.
In this Ashes series, as in the tour of India before (the one in 2000-01), we saw what happens when Gilly does not score runs. Australia struggle. They rely so much on him to dig them out of a hole. He often makes the difference between a score of 400 and a score of 550. And, sometime back, cricinfo had run a story which says, if anything, he is more destructive when the top order struggles :). No wonder Aussies did so badly in the Ashes. Top order AND Gilly struggled.
Anyway, the next Ashes is going to be fun to watch. Its only about 18 months away, and in Australia, so there is going to be very very little reverese swing. Warnie and Co. would be eager to get the Ashes back. I am waiting to see Freddie and co. being tonked around the park.
Katich seems to like opening the innings. And it does suit his game as well, gives him time to settle. Tough to see Hayden coming back to the one day side. Thanks Matty for those good innings.
One more observation. The new Shane on the block, Watson, seems to have done a good job in both one-dayers. Signs of his growing up ?

Interesting weekend

2005-09-26T10:01:00.000+05:30

Had a really interesting weekend. Though the "activities" that I did were much less than what I thought I would do, time flew by, and was sad when it was time to crash to bed on sunday night.

Saturday morning dawned clear and sunny. Cricket season-2 took guard at 9.00 am, and we wrapped up our first win of season 2 about two hours after that. Muscles were rusty, and even though I got a wicket, gave away too many runs. But in the end, it was a satisfying win, and we started the season off well :).

In the evening, went for a seminar with Naveen. He answered a question and got a t-shirt as a gift, and overall it was good. Motivated me for a coupla things I had been postponing.

Sunday was relatively lazy. Went and got the KP look. Has not come out as well as I hoped it would, but not bad. And the advantage is, if I put on my cap, its hidden and I look "decent" ;).

Went to Ebony with Naveen, Vanch and CT in the evening. Ate a lot, had an interesting chat, with Vanch dishing out a few gems from Aithihyamala (sorta Mythology. Correct me, Vanch, if I am wrong :) ). On the way back, raced past Naveen and had to wait for 5 mins for him to catch up... Dude said he was enjoying the wind (surprising, since he had a helmet on..). Suggested a slow race b/w self and Naveen, but the pilions (Vanch and CT) got bored.. spoilsports..

Then we tried to go in parallel... even that was vetoed by the pilions.. Gotta choose them more carefully next time :).
Got home, read "Pelican at Blandings", crashed to bed around 0100 hours...

And, to top things off, a good friend of mine in Dalls, Texas, reported that he was safe. Phew....

Shooting the wrong man

2005-09-21T11:56:00.000+05:30

The Aussie selectors have done it again.

One of the reasons for Aussies rising to the top in cricket has been their tough selection policy. It does not matter if you are Mark Waugh, if you are not scoring runs, out you go. It does not matter if you are Steve Waugh, if your team does not make it to the finals, out you go. This time, after the first Ashes loss in 16 years, they have made some tough decisions. Like dropping Hayden from the one-day side (totally justified) and dropping Martyn from the test side (as ridiculous as it can get).

Martyn's batting has definitely seen better days. And those brainless run-outs he played a part in definitely did not help. But drop him from the team ? Thats crazy. While looking at his series returns, one *must* look at the contributions made by those "blind as a bat" and "deaf as an adder" umpires Bucknor and Aleem Dar.

It has been well documented elsewhere how Martyn has carried the Aussie batting line-up in the past series'. And his knocks, under tough conditions in India will remain in memory for a long long time. Here was a laddie brought up on hard bouncy pitches in Perth taking on a couple of good spinners in their own backyard, and coming out on top. He did well in Sri Lanka, and did well in India. Without him, the results of these two series' might have been different.

Given his age, and given the track record of the Australian selectors, we may never see him again on the field in a test match. Thanks, Marto, for the memories. I enjoyed your knocks in Chennai and in Nagpur.

Samsung support

2005-09-18T12:31:00.000+05:30

The monitor (Samsung Sync master 793 MB) which I have had for over an year started giving some trouble. While booting the pc, I could see some white lines scrolling all over the place. After that, I could see some lines scrolling from bottom to top. The scrolling was minimum at 75 Hz refresh rate. Lower and even *higher* refresh rates worsened the problem. Eye fatigue increased.

Wondering whether it would be cheaper to repair this one or buy a new monitor, I dug out the warranty card, and found that this model had a "3 year warranty". Cool ! Then found out that the dealer had not stamped the purchase date :( . Nor did I have the bill :(.

Anyway, just registered the product at Samsung site (an year after purchase :) ), and sent out a mail to them mentioning the problem. Given my past experience with some other customer support mail ids, I expected no response. I thought now I will have to make a dozen calls, take the monitor to their service centre etc etc.

I was surprised when I got a response the same day, asking me to call up some number and register a complaint. Was even more surprised when I got a *call* from them the next day, telling me that someone would pop in the same day to check the monitor :). He did come, at the right time, found the problem (something to do with a flaky UPS) and took two signatures of mine, pushed off... All this after I had sent *ONE* mail, and did not even call them up to register a complaint. Pleasantly surprised to know it works like this even in bangalore..... Good work Samsung. I am happy to have purchased a Samsung monitor.

Ashes to Ashes... Dust to Dust

2005-09-14T20:33:00.000+05:30

End of an era. The glorious days of Aussie domination are over. Now, we (meaning Aus fans) will have to suffer at the hands of gloating Poms. Even though I love KP, I could not bear to watch him bat this time, the final nail in the coffin.....

Warne must be the best captain Australia never had. Without his contributions with bat and ball, England would have steam rolled Aussies. Ponting's tactics looked extremely defensive. Aussies have a lot of work to do now ...

Final test.....

2005-09-08T07:45:00.000+05:30

Been eating for 2 days like there is no tomorrow.. First the "Avani avittom", then "Ganesh Chathurthi"... Should ease up a little bit on the food today.

Back to nervous times. The Final ashes test starts today. Glenn's cleared to play, and desperately hope Ricky calls right today. Big trouble if Aus dont win this test.

Four days of this vacation have sped past me. Only 3 full days remain :(. Should make the most of the remaining days. A vehicle bandh today has restricted my plans for today....

Sys Shock 2.

2005-09-05T12:59:00.000+05:30

Finally, got a win 98 system to play Sys shock 2 in.
Had managed to download a copy of the game after searching a lot, but my XP PC just refuses to run this game (along with quite a few other programs, so I guess its time to re-install). Anyway, the game used to crash once a few mins, and I was getting extremely frustrated.

The PC here has a working win 98 installation, and sys shock 2 runs smoothly in it. No crashes or anything. Me cleared the training levels and started a misson. Hope to see some action soon.

Have been reading a novel titled "Alien". Its based on the hit movie (or the other way around. Me not 100% sure)of the same name from Warner Bros, and so far has been a very interesting read. The Alien has just been brought into the ship, and the part where the stuff hits the fan cannot be far away now :).

A few days of idling and chomping down tonnes of food beckon.... and the reaction to my longer hair has not been negative.... looks like this will turn out to be a decent trip.....

Update :
----------
Right after this post, SS2 started crashing. Has not managed to work even once since then. :(. Looks like I will have to switch back to Diablo2.

Update 2:
---------
Got SS2 working again. Chucked out the cutscenes folder and everything ok again. Game looks really interesting. And the HL pipe-wrench and Doom3 PDA seem to have been lifted from this game !.

Also finished Alien. Awesome book. Certainly "gripped" me (pun intended). :). Bookseeker, I recommend it highly. You will enjoy it.

Reached home

2005-09-04T15:05:00.000+05:30

I think I share a special relation with rain. On every single trip home, I have been delayed by the rain. Happened this time too.. was raining all along the route, including portions of Tamil Nadu, where it rains really rarely.

Started the journey on Saturday evening at 6.15 pm. There were dark clouds overhead, and I thought, not incorrectly, that another heavy rain was to soon transform bangalore roads into rivers. It did rain rather hard, and I could see the river flowing on the sides of hosur road. "Not again", me groaned to myself. Even if I plan a journey from Sahara to kerala, I am sure it will start raining.

My usual style of travelling in a bus is to settle down in my seat, open the bottle of fanta (or mirinda, depending on availability), down one avomine, and slide into deep sleep some 30 mins later. Tried it this time too, but before sleeping, had to endure a movie called "Chathikkatha Chandu" for some time. It was a slightly tough ordeal.

Dozed pretty much throughout the journey, and woke up at 6 to see that we had passed Aleppey. A much happier sight that waking up at 6, and realizing that the bus had reached only Cochin. :). Happened to me last time :).

Anyway, reached home at 8.45. Slightly ahead of schedule. Might have reached at 8, but for two dumb passengers who took an extra long dinner break at the halt for dinner. We waited for almost 30 mins for 2 chaps, and an extra 10 mins were lost in the altercation between them and the bus staff. People should have a better sense of time.

Not a cohesive post this one.. just typing in my thoughts randomly......

Going home

2005-09-02T20:05:00.000+05:30

Opera celebrated its 10th anniversary recently, and they gave away free registration keys on that day. How cool is that !! I use Opera both at work and home, and this was something good for me. Thanks a lot Opera. You make a good browser, and keep up the good work :).

Me going on a week long trip to TVM tomorrow. Been a long time since I had been home, have not met my family for a looong time now. Wondering how hot it will be there, and how my hairstyle will trouble me back home :). Plan to take the Diablo CDs with me and get some levels done from home..... Might bring my old PC back with me and use it as a gateway here :).

Its over, Part 2

2005-09-01T09:06:00.000+05:30

And typing it in for the third time. Blast the power supply and the browser cache.

This time its not about cricket. But its rather about a few events that took place in my life recently. While the ashes-retaining dream of the aussies is still alive, one of my dreams, unfortunately, kicked the bucket at an early age.

Happened to run into this lass a few months back. Stared talking to her, and was impressed by her attitude and zest for life. Pretty soon, the initial impression I had about her, turned into admiration and soon into a crush. It was a humbling experience for me, since I thought myself immune to matters of heart, and thought it all to be hogwash. But, a little later, I knew I was in trouble. :)
Tried to muster up courage to tell her, but the words died in my throat every time :).

Finally, somehow, managed to tell her. Fortunately, she took it rather well. Maybe she was expecting me to say something of this sort, given my asinine behaviour at times in her presence. Unfortunately, she told me it wont work, and she had her own reasons for it. :(.

Sitting here all alone in the middle of nowhere
Don't know which way to go...........

So, a little despondent now. Gotta come out of this soon. Knowing me, I think I will come out of it sooner than later. Anyway, cricket starts next week, and gives me something to worry about (given how aussies play now) and my mind will be away from this.

It's over !

2005-08-27T08:45:00.000+05:30

We are witnessing cricket history being made in England right now. The current champions are being rolled over, and a new champion is all set to take the top spot in test cricket.

Australians have been but a pale shadow of their former selves all tour. Right from the first game, the "20-20" which was laughed off, the batting has struggled. Gone are the days of dominance from the top order, and the best wicket-keeper batsman in the world. Instead, the runs have come from the tail, not a good sign for any team.

Bowling has struggled (apart from Warne, of course). Add to it the extra-thick layer of butter on the hands of the fielders, and problems have been plenty. No wonder, they are right now staring at a defeat in this test, and still seeing nothing to suggest a win in the next one and a possible 2-2 result. Indeed, if the aussies manage to save this test and the series this would be an injustice to england, who simply have been superb in the field.

Aussie fans (self included) would point to the decisions that have gone against them, esp. the lbw decisions off inside edges. Why the heck can't icc let the third umpire see if there is an inside edge, and if it's there, recall the batsman ? "Glorious uncertainities of the game". Bull. I call it plain incompetence of the umpires (esp bucknor, who just cannot see or hear nicks) , and the ICC sitting on its backside doing nothing.

Still, England deserve to win this series, just for their intensity, passion and spirit. They did not lose heart after lords, and have come back strongly. Good luck pommies ! I am sure we will start beating you again pretty soon. But right now, enjoy the success.

And for the aussies, thanks a lot for all those sweet memories. The world cup win, win in India, some "attack is the best form of defense" knocks from Gilchrist, guts from Waugh, grace from Junior, magic from Warne and McGrath. Thanks guys. Its been wonderful watching you and supporting you.

Hairdo

2005-08-24T19:57:00.000+05:30

I dont think I've ever grown my hair long. As long as I can remember, I have had haircuts that would make a marine proud. There would be just enough hair on my scalp to indicate I am not bald. But otherwise, for 2 months, I would be free from the pain of having to wash my hair, dry it, comb it etc....

But then, I am beginning to get a bit bored by the routine hairstyle, and decided to grow it a tad longer. Not very long like a pony tail, but something that would definitely be classified as long. Want to see the reaction in trivandrum to the new hairdo. Mom already hinted that she is unlikely to come out with me anyplace. This tvm visit is going to be fun :). (Photo of KP on the right side. Courtsey kevinpietersen.com. KP's mom's words - "When he asked me what I thought about his hairstyle I said, no matter what happened, a mother would always love her child". Strong words :). Wonder what *my* mom would say if I turned up like this :). ).

Fourth ashes test starts today. Nervous times back again. I dont know how I am going to survive the next 5 days :(. Esp with Glenn nursing an elbow trouble. Hope he becomes fit to play in this test.

Saw the scores of the One day between NZ and Zim. NZ bat first, rake up 397. Skittle Zim for 205 to win by 192 runs. A win by 192 runs is a result that we see normally in tests.... Says a lot about the standard of the Zim team.

Got net connection

2005-08-21T21:52:00.000+05:30

Finally, got the net connection at home ! Had to shell out a bit, but, in exchange, got a 256 kbps, unlimited connection :). Downloading debian cds right now.

Also got the first taste of spyware and adware. Connected to the net without any firewall installed. Just out of curiosity, checked the list of tasks running in the pc, and was surprised to find tasks like "Internet Optimizer", "Search assistant", etc running in the pc. I fail to understand what sort of an optimization it was doing since the only effect i noticed was, ironically, a drop in the network throughput.

Spent a painful 3 hours cleaning up the pc. Started off by installing spybot and adaware. Then had to make several forays into "Safe mode", "Safe mode command prompt" and "Safe mode with networking". Finished off by installing sygate (a free personal firewall) and avg anti-virus. A virus scan revealed a few more unwelcome guests : trojans. Sigh ! And to top it off, every time I log in, I have to manually kill and restart explorer to see the start menu !!

Anyway, PC is in pretty decent shape now. Bought diablo 2 yesterday. Have to log into battlenet tonight. Gotta talk TK into joining me for a multiplayer game.

600 !

2005-08-12T10:18:00.000+05:30

Shane Warne becomes the first cricketer to take 600 test wickets. Marcus Trescothick will go down in history as the first "600th" test victim. (Photograph courtsey cricinfo) Warne took the wicket at Old Trafford, where he had delivered the "ball of the century" back in 1993 to Mike Gatting.

Aussies will be kicking themselves after play yesterday. They dropped 5 catches, took a wicket of a no-ball, and were generally ragged in the field. They were especially generous to Michael Vaughan, who had 3 lives before he was finally dismissed for 166. A good knock, but it should go down as 4 separate knocks in the same test innings :).

The dismissal of Hoggard has given Aussies a slight advantage. New ball, a bit of movement in the morning, McGrath and Lee fresh. If they can get the wickets of Bell and Flintoff quickly, they would be right back in the game. If England see them off, no reason why they cant post a colossal score and bat Aussies out of this test.

What a game !

2005-08-09T10:11:00.000+05:30

What a wonderful test match ! Runs at a brisk rate, wickets aplenty, delightful shots, amazing balls, and a thrilling finish... and played in excellent spirit. The photograph (courtsey cricinfo) sums up the nature in which the game was played.

At 175/8, the game was done and dusted... or so the majority thought. Messers Warne, Lee and Kasper had other ideas, and came pretty close to pulling off what would have been the most amazing "coming back from behind" victory ever seen in tests. Not to be, but then we did get to see a cracking game, Thanks to Aussies and Poms for giving us a memorable game.

The 5.1 surround speakers which I had have been silenced.Watched Star Wars V and VI. V was a good movie. Thought VI was a good 30 mins too long.. But then, having watched IV, V and VI, I can understand why Star Wars has such a big fan following.

Star wars Episode IV

2005-08-03T10:12:00.000+05:30

Saw Star wars Episode IV (for the first time) yesterday. Extremely interesting movie (guess I am not the first person to say this :) ).
Having seen some of the CGI action in the new hollywood flicks, I wanted to know how this movie would look like. And it did not disappoint. Its hard to imagine how this movie was shot all those years back. Routine things like funny looking creatures would have taken a lot of hard work back then, I guess.
Only disappointing part, though, was the light saber duel betwen Darth Vader and Obi-wan Kenobi. Had seen Revenge of the Sith recently, and the fight sequence in that between the same characters still lingers in my mind. However, I do not think creating a fight sequence like that would have been possible when Episode IV was made.

Have to watch Episode V tonight.....

SP2 problems

2005-07-05T12:07:00.000+05:30

The user manual of my motherboard says it needs SP2 to support USB 2.0. (I cannot really understand what the connection is). I managed to get SP2 from a friend recently and with great excitement, tried to install it.
Installation went fine. It replaced whatever files its supposed to replace. It stopped and started whatever services it is supposed to stop and start. Then, it asked the "now familiar" question: Do you want to reboot ? Of course, I responded... and the computer proceeded to boot itself into an SP2 patched XP install with all my data supposedly intact (or so i hoped).
Then, disaster.... On the boot screen, the progress bar stopped moving. Might be a temporary issue, I thought and hit the reset button. Second time, same behavior.
Well, lets try the safe mode, I thought and tried it... it stopped after agp440.sys.
I gave up after two tries, reinstalled XP from scratch, and, tried SP2. Again. Same behaviour.

Googling showed that this is a pretty common issue, something to do with processor microcode, and affects prescott and some other processors. Got the bios upgrade from intel site, and plan to upgrade the bios today.. well, if that fries, gotta think about a new motherboard :)

Desktop sidebar, and smitten by the iBook

2005-05-19T11:16:00.000+05:30

Downloaded something called the "Desktop Sidebar" yesterday. An unobtrusive bar on the edge of the monitor, which has different panels that show stuff like mem usage, cpu usage, unread mails in outlook, stocks, time, etc :). Looks useful.. trying it now to see how much it improves productivity (and, gives a chance to spend time 'researching' for 'useful' plugins :D ) .

One of my friends is getting a Powerbook.. and did some surfing, and have fallen in love with "the iBook". Gotta go and check the exact price, features etc this weekend.

Got to know DDLJ is back in theatres... one of my favourite movies.. and brings back some memories.. standing in the queue for tickets, the unexpected crowd... the scooter getting wet in rain, and having to push it for close to 4 kms, in rain...
Planning to pop in to theatre this weekend, and hope the rain stays away this time, at least till I get back home :).

And, both the movie theatre and the Mac shop are in the same complex :). Two birds in one stone....

Moved to Debian

2005-05-18T14:43:00.000+05:30

Tried a lot of linux distros, like Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Mandrake, FC2 and finally moved to Debian Sarge. From what I have seen so far, it rocks. Only a minor gripe.

For some reason, the partition tool does not behave as I would expect it to. More likely to be my mistake than those of the folks at Debian, but this is what happens.I have an 80 GB HDD with 3 primary partitions (total about 20 GB) and an extended partition which covers the remaining 60 GB. I create the debian partitions in this extended partition, and dont allocate all the space. Instead, I leave some space unallocated. Now once the install is done, and I reboot and check, I find that the extended partition is truncated, to hold only the linux partitions. And since I have reached the max number of supported partitions on the HDD, I cannot create any new partitions in the free space.

The workaround ? Allocate the linux partitions, and put all the free space remaining into one partition. That way, its "inside" the extended partition, and I can chop and change later as necessary.

2005-03-31T12:06:00.000+05:30

My Pic

Back...

2005-03-31T11:45:00.000+05:30

Me back to blogging. Been a long time since my last post, and much water has flowed under the bridge......

Anyway, latest news
*) back in India (a bit over 2 months now..)
*) Been reading "Dune" series.. reading part 6, ChapterHouse Dune now.
*) Been playing "POP: Sands of time" for a while now..
*) A PC partitioning error wiped out all data :(. Lost all save games :((
*) Got a new Nokia 6600. expect to start a photo blog soon :).

More later....

Jamaican bobsled team !

2005-01-23T18:13:00.000+05:30

Again, was busy with work.

Happened to watch some movies on TV last week. The best of them was a Disney Movie called "Cool Runnings". This is a movie about a Jamaican bobsled team participating in Calgary winter Olympics.
The theme itself was funny, coz, bobsled is some kind of a sled that goes on Ice. Where is ice and snow in Jamaica ??

The other movies were The Mighty Ducks 1,2,3. About a hockey team, and how they fight odds (and, of course, win in the end). Part 1 was good. 2 and 3 were hard to digest.

Did not read a lot this week. But managed to read bit of this article about the Cell Processor from Sony , Toshiba and IBM.

2005-01-16T12:47:00.001+05:30

Creative Zen Touch (photo courtsey pcmag)

Creative Zen Touch

2005-01-16T12:47:00.000+05:30

Feeling frustrated with work.
Today being sunday, decided to go and visit the electronics shops in Nippombashi.
Having shelved the plans to buy an ipod, decided to browse for other mp3 players. Happened to see a creative Zen touch..20GB HDD based player. Can play MP3 and WMA songs. Remember reading that ipod mini has extra applications like scheduler, calendar, games etc. This does not seem to have any such extra apps.

Cheaper that the ipod mini, more storage space. Picked it up :).
Audio is good, but need to get better headphones.

Partial answer to Which BSD

2005-01-07T19:21:00.000+05:30

Found some partial answer to the question "Which BSD? Whats the difference between them ?" at this link. It compares Net BSD and Free BSD.

In a nutshell, for normal desktop use, pick Net BSD. Net BSD performs a little better than Free BSD. And it seems, FreeBSD went in for an aggressive scheduler change, and the results are not so good.

Which BSD ?

2005-01-05T22:00:00.000+05:30

Free BSD, Net BSD, Open BSD. Can someone tell me the difference, and which one to pick for home use ?
All 3 claim to be stable open source OSes, having lots of apps. Me totally confused.

(Aside) Had some nice biriyani today in the Indian Restaurant. Eating rice after a month. Felt so good :)
(/Aside)

Linux on Ipod

2005-01-03T20:09:00.000+05:30

These amazing blokes have actually ported Linux onto Apple Ipod.
Got some screenshots at this link.

But unfortunately, ipod mini is not supported yet. I was hoping to pick up one of these. :(

2005-01-02T19:47:00.001+05:30

VPM running browser and shell

2005-01-02T19:47:00.000+05:30

Booting VPM -2

2005-01-02T19:46:00.000+05:30

Booting VPM

2005-01-02T19:30:00.000+05:30

Net BSD running under Win2K

DSL, and a PC in a USB Drive

2005-01-02T18:58:00.000+05:30

Giving in to the incessant pestering of my close friend V, I downloaded and installed the "stumble upon" plugin for firefox. It is a nifty little utility that takes you to random sites at the click of a button. A great tool for wasting time :).
"Stumbling" during lunch time one day took me to this nice little website about free operating systems. The site mentioned QEMU, a nice PC Emulator, and they also provided images for different OSes that run inside QEMU.
Right away, I downloaded QEMU, and a net bsd image from the same site, and tried it out myself. Had it up and running very quickly, and the whole thing did look impressive.
A company called Metro pipe has used QEMU and DSL (DamnSmallLinux) to create a product they call "The Portable Virtual Private Machine".
This linux distro fits on to a USB Drive and includes a browser (Firefox), a mail client (Thunderbird) , a PDF reader, etc.
Check out the screen shots.

Imagine being able to carry your private PC anywhere you go... just plug it into the USB slot of a PC, and its ready to use !!!

Techno Babble

Moving on......

Moving on......

Forking

Return of the King - Parts 2,3 and 4

The train journery

Minix 3 in Qemu

Audio up in Debian

Back to tech

Trek in Concrete Jungle

The Return of the King

Interesting weekend

Shooting the wrong man

Samsung support

Ashes to Ashes... Dust to Dust

Final test.....

Sys Shock 2.

Reached home

Going home

Its over, Part 2

It's over !

Hairdo

Got net connection

600 !

What a game !

Star wars Episode IV

SP2 problems

Desktop sidebar, and smitten by the iBook

Moved to Debian

Back...

More answers abt BSD

Jamaican bobsled team !

Creative Zen Touch

Partial answer to Which BSD

Which BSD ?

Linux on Ipod

DSL, and a PC in a USB Drive