Monthly Archive for September, 2008

Page 2 of 2

Vs. Vista

Published on 3 years, 4 months ago in Anu. 0 Comments

As I had written a few days ago, for some unknown reason my Vista crashed and refused to log me in. Upon subsequent installation, the same operating system started behaving funnily. It would restart by itself while watching a video long enough, hang when no program is active and what not. I had had enough and decided to switch to Ubuntu.

Now I was quite happy with my linux operating system and never wanted to use Vista again. Everything I needed was availale in Linux (Amarok, VLC and GEdit). Happy enough not to have logged into the Microsoft operating system this whole time.

But then, yesterday, I encountered a situation wherein I would have to make the switch. I have this test today and the notes are available digitally in the format of Windows’ help files. I did not know how to open it in linux, and not having the luxury of googling around (time crunch), I decided to restart the computer and enter Vista.

No sooner had I logged on, I met the same problem again. It just woulsn’t leave me. The screen kept going blank for a few seconds roughly every ten minutes. Computer would restart every half an hour. I should be worried as the hard disks suffer in such cases. But I had no other option. I needed to read this file which would open only in windows. So I let it be. Everytime the windows would restart, prompt for a submit problem dialog and then get no solution.

The luck shined after the 5th restart. This time, Vista came up with a solution. It identified the problem as one related to a hardware or a driver (as if I had not figured it out myself by now). It identified 4 possibly corrupt components – RAM, mother-board, processing unit, or the power system. Need I point that these make up the bulk of the system. I changed a few power settings to conserve power and let the performance suffer. I could do nothing about the rest.

A few minutes later the computer restarts. Oh, by the way, did I mention that apart from having this document open, I also had my vlc running. This was the sixth restart. Another restart, another prompt for online checking of solution. A routine, boring exercise it had become by then. But hey, this time I was presented a much better solution.

You have a corrupt Graphics Driver. Please try to update the driver – was what Vista came up with this time. And I immediately knew what had to be done. Device Manager -> Display Adapter -> Update driver … The screen flickered a few times, the resolution changed from 1280×1024 to 800×600 and back again. The screen defocussed and then came ack to focus and finally the update finished with the success message. The driver was updated.

And unbelievably, I haven’t had the restart or the blanking problems since then. My computer is now running for some 10 hours on Vista now without a restart. I think I have finally put an end to the problem. But lets not be so sure. I intend to go on for atleast a day, putting the system under intense computational supervision to convince myself that the problem is indeed solved. Wish me luck !

Popularity: 1% [?]

TnP – IITKgp

Published on 3 years, 5 months ago in Miscel. 0 Comments

Intinno launches Naarad – Get Instant TnP(IIT Kgp) Notifications On GTalk, E-Mail and Mobile.

Visit http://tnp.intinno.com for more details.

Finally we have managed to roll out the first version of the planned TnP project. The first launch has pretty much limited limited features. It only shows the TnP link which lists all the companies alphabetically. When you click on any company’s name, you are presented a page which has only the Announcements tab. Also I am not sure if the notifications work currently.

But despite the limitations, there are obvious reasons for signing up. For a start, you’ll be immediately notified through your chat messenger if any notice comes up. Also sms will be sent ahead of the schedule to keep everyone updated. Clearly, you are saved the trouble of navigating to the official TnP website and open up random messages.

And this is not the end. Plenty of cool features are in store and shall be rolled out as and when their testing is completed. So happy intinnoing.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Obsessive

Published on 3 years, 5 months ago in Anu. 0 Comments

Two years at KGP, and my friends used to tell me that I had a disorder abbreviated OCD – the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I never took it seriously. A joke – I used to remind myself.

C’mon, what’s the fuss all about? Accept, I like my desktop not to be cluttered with all the ugly icons (I prefer a clean empty desktop). I always plan my daily schedule and hate it if I have to change it. If I am assigned a work, I either do it completely to perfection else just refuse to take up the job. Prefer to do all the tasks myself instead of distributing it to a team. Also I have a set of guidelines, rather a code of conduct which defines my activities, my behaviour and my decisions – yeah, they’re highly biased. And all these things do tend to have an effect on my social life – I am ungregarious, would rather have five good friends than a battalion of friends and associates, prefer low profile people over the rich and the influential. I will be the last person to ask you for a favour, and yeah I am no sycophant. Infact I hate sycophants – the boot-lickers, the pig-shovers,  look upon them as the scums lacking any self-respect, the fools always begging for favours, stooping so low that even the devil may feel ashamed of them, the unworthy mean classification of living species that can never be trusted. But then that’s a whole different side of me. Something on it later on.

Getting back to the topic, I had no reason to suspect that anything was wrong with me. I was extremely happy in my little world. But the constant bickering with friends about OCD, I decided to google it up.

The result was disturbing. A few traits did match with the profile of an OCD. However I was not content. I continued my search until I stumbled across OCPD – Obsessive Compulsory Personality Disorder. Voila! This was it. I knew it had to be.

It’s easy to confuse OCPD with OCD. Scanning the text on OCPD made me sure that nothing indeed was wrong with me. That what I have is only a personality disorder, nothing like OCD. I was at ease. This was a relief.

An year has passed since then. There has been a marked improvement in my conditions – all thanks to my friends, though they realise it not. I still do care for some perfection, rule, order, but am no longer opposed to chaos. I pay little attention to things I would have obsessed a few months ago.

But the important question is – Did I really want to change myself ? Was I really concerned about my need to have things done properly ? The answer as I have discovered is No ! The change in my personality was not prompted as a alarm. I decided to change myself for my friends. Inside, I feel no different, but I know now how to present mself to the world so that people don’t freak out. And I think this is the most important difference between an OCD and an OCPD – an OCD is afraid, alarmed, confused by his disorder and feels the need to set it right, whereas an OCPD looks upon it as being no different, he doesn’t really care. All an OCPD worries about is perfection – and that definitely is me.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Bashrc Alias

Published on 3 years, 5 months ago in Tech. 0 Comments

Using linux as a full time operating system has its own up side. I am now learning the basics of using the terminal as opposed to gui for everything. The latest thing I have learnt is to create alias for commands in terminal.

Say there is this folder hidden behind a hierarchy of folders. You access it quite often. Wouldn’t it be simple to have a simple customised command to directly jump to this folder rather than having to type the complete location everytime. Well, the alias does it.

To set an alias all you have to do is open the ~/.bashrc file. Goto the end of the file and you’ll find a section for alias. Just add a line like

alias la=”ls /etc/apt/”

That’s it and you are done. Now whenever you enter the command la in the terminal, it will list all the files of /etc/apt/.

This is a lame example, but you get the idea, don’t you.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Amarok

Published on 3 years, 5 months ago in Tech. 0 Comments

Amarok is the killer app. Its simplistic design and integration with Last.fm makes it an incredible music player. It has all the recommendations and dynamic playlists, shows lyrics and also gets the artists information from wikipedia. But an internet connection is required for all the features to work.

Now if you are running KDE, then Amarok uses the proxy settings of Konqueror. The problem comes if you use Amarok in Gnome. It fails to detect the proxy settings. But its surprisingly easy to set proxy settings.

Clean all the proxy settings in Amarok’s configuration page.

Edit ~/.kde/share/config/kioslaverc and add the following at the end of the file.

[Proxy Settings][$i]
ProxyType=1
httpProxy=http://username:password@proxyserver:port/
httpsProxy=http://username:password@proxyserver:port/
ftpProxy=http://username:password@proxyserver:port/

Save the file and restart Amarok.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Mac On Hardy

Published on 3 years, 5 months ago in Tech. 0 Comments

It has been said many times before, and I only reinforce it – Nothing can beat Apple in aesthetics. I have grown fond of the clean design of Mac. I desire to possess an iPhone, an iPod Touch and of course the collection is incomplete without the Mac Air.

But unless I have the resources to buy the coveted Mac Air, I have to do with the open source Ubuntu. The Compiz has enough eye candy effects, but I went on to customize Hardy and give it a Mac-like-appearance.

The following page has a detailed step-by-step procedure on transforming your Ubuntu 8.04 to look like a Mac.

http://maketecheasier.com/turn-your-ubuntu-hardy-to-mac-osx-leopard/2008/07/23/

I love the Mac skin. I hope you enjoy it too.

Popularity: 1% [?]

XP -> Vista -> Ubuntu

Published on 3 years, 5 months ago in Anu. 0 Comments

Well, well, well … what can I say ? The worst mistake that I could have probably ever done was to switch from XP to Vista. Things appear so deceptive until you have really experimented. Truth alludes you. Your common sense compromised. And the reason for everything – Change always feels good. Or so I thought until last week, when I truly realised why they say – If it ain’t broken don’t fix it.

It all started with a lousy afternoon. Left with nothing to do, I finally decided to give Vista a try. I had been thinking about it for some time and now was the time to go for it. I started the process. The installation went well. Colourfull, glossy, the shiny animated green ribbon like progress bar brought a smile on my face. I was praying for aero to work on my computer – no graphics card. Finally the final booking done, the system restarted and I logged into Vista.

Wonderful were my first words. I invited everyone in the wing to share the joy and exerience of a new operating system. And aero was indeed working. My hardware received a rating of 3.2 and I was overjoyed. I had already started urging everyone to make the switch to vista. I just couldn’t get ebough of its vivid presentation. The gaga continued for a week when I received my first shock.

It so happened that there was a power cut and the windows shut down after the UPS batteries ran out. Upon restarting, vista refused to let me in. It displayed an error message – An unauthorised access has modified your system. And that was it. It just would not let me in.

Now, in situations like these, it pays to be patient and to think out all the possibilities. But hasty one that I am, I went in for a format. Annoyed I was with vista for treating me so unfairly, I decided to get rid of it once and for all.

Put in the XP CD, restart the computer and start the installation. I came to the partition menu, deleted the drive which contained vista earlier, formatted it and selected it for installing XP. Done ! Click on the next button and things would be back to normal – as they were a few weeks ago. But no ! When things decide to go wrong, they do so exponentially. I was presented with an error screen saying that the drive is not suited for XP – files cannot be copied.

What the hell ! Damn it ! I’ll settle for vista if that’s what MS wants me to. I put back the vista DVD and restarted the computer. Once again on the partition menu I was confronted with an error. My charming lucky day I thought. This time vista refused to recognise the drives. Ha ! Fool ! That was your home a few hours ago – I shouted out to it.

So here I was – neither vista nor XP would install on my hard disk. I did not know what to do. Well it was some time before the idea struk me – Linux ! It has a different partitioning system.

And that is my friend how I came to install Ubuntu – the operating system of the people. Needless to say, I am delightfully happy with Ubuntu and will never again think of MS. Install compiz and you’ll have a system better than vista. Eye-candy, speed, performance and durability – I have everything I wanted – thanks to ubuntu.

Popularity: 1% [?]