dil's life

Only if

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 17:41:00 +0000

If I said all that I felt
If I did all that I could
If I realised all that I dreamed
If I lived all that I could experience
Only then
I'd say I lived a life
I'd be ready to leave this world
With fewer regrets
Coz there'd still be so many feelings not shared
So many things I could have done
So many dreams left I could have realised
So many experiences I could have lived

People In Trance

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:26:00 +0000

Beautiful music for beautiful people. That's my motto. It's been a while since I've been working on my musical identity and I'm pleased to announce that I'm on my way towards sharing the mixes that I've been doing as part of the People In Trance series.

I've just released a new website for the People In Trance episodes at:
http://peopleintrance.blogspot.com

I'll post all information relating to the series there. Please add the link to your bookmarks and to your blog feed reader.

I'm also using a fan page on Facebook at:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dil-Kris/127783271414
to keep in touch with my fan base.

Please do join in the fan page to support the artist.

You'll find the links to my latest mix that I've just released on the People In Trance website and on my Facebook fan page.

Happy listening :)

Musically yours,
Dil Kris

astek launches startup blog

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 06:16:00 +0000

In my on-going search for better opportunities, I have recently joined a company called astek Mauritius, which is a subsidiary of astek France. The astek group is present in over 10 countries, including France, Mauritius, UK, Tunisia, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Vietnam, China and Mexico.

Today, astek has a global workforce of 3200 people. The group works on high-end projects in the field on Information Systems involving an array of industries such as telecom, banking, health, energy, defense and aerospace, transport and automobile.

astek Mauritius was created in 2003. Today, it has over 80 employees. Its customers range from start-up to well-established companies, in diverse industries mentioned above. We work on a variety technologies such as Java and .NET, SQL Server and MySQL and Windows and Unix environments.

In order to increase awareness of the different projects that the company undertakes, a blog has recently been created. It will be updated on a regular basis to provide useful information to potential customers, prospective talents and any other stakeholder.

Thank you!

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:59:00 +0000

I would like to thank each of you who has voted for me from the bottom of my heart for having voted for me at the Franko-Elektro Competition for the French Games 2009. Thank you for your support and for believing in me. It was still more than that: believing in our country.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to make it up to the next round. But this is not the end. It has been an all great experience and I encourage each and everyone to dare to dream and dare to make it reality. Do all your best. The rest will follow. Do all that's in your capacity to make your dream come true and only then accept the results - whether good or bad, whether success and failure. And one more thing: there's no such thing as bad thing or failure. It's just the way we look at it.

Voting reloaded

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 20:12:00 +0000

In the previous post, I requested you all to please support our country, our nation, our Mauritius, for the upcoming French Games.

Unfortunately, the site was pirated a few days ago. However, this has been solved. Voting is up again. And all votes have been reset to nil.

I urge you to please vote for me once again. The steps are the same:

Visit http://www.jeux2009.org/franco-elektro-voting.aspx
Choose “Vocal Trance” in the “Type de musique” box
Click on “GO”
Cast your vote for Dil Kris and vote for Mauritius!

This time you will be asked to provide a valid email address. An email will be sent to you. Please do check your email and do click on the link to vote for me.

Thank you very much.

Truly yours,

Dilraj

Dil Kris (Dilraj) at Franko-Elektro

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 12:56:00 +0000

The Franco-Elektro competition is organised by The French Games 2009 organisation. It is the world’s largest competition for DJ’s among French-speaking countries. Six best DJ’s having the largest number of votes will be invited for a semi-final.

Dil Kris (Dilraj) represents the paradise island of Mauritius. If you want Mauritius, our country, our nation, to be represented, please do vote for him. Each vote counts.

Together, we’ll make Mauritius top on the world’s electronic music scene.
Vote for Dil Kris, vote for Mauritius!

How to vote?

Visit http://www.jeux2009.org/franco-elektro-voting.aspx
Choose “Vocal Trance” in the “Type de musique” box
Click on “GO”
Cast your vote for Dil Kris and vote for Mauritius!

To listen to the mix:
http://rapidshare.com/files/272530865/Dil_Kris_-_l_Amour_en_trance_-_Jeux_2009_demo.mp3

Please spread the word to all your contacts!

Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=121971418586

An Apple is an Apple and Apple loves Apple

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 11:29:00 +0000

A few days ago I wanted to install Mac OS X on my PC to test-drive the operating system and see for myself why there's so much hype about it. Is it because of the user-experience? Or because of the supposedly elegant metal look with some kind of blue? I somehow managed to get my hands on a version of Mac OS X and proceeded with the installation.

I was surprised to see that Mac OS X is in fact an operating system that works as follows:

it only understands Mac products
it only works with Mac products
it does not support third-party products

In other words, Mac OS locks users with Apple's products.

Let's take an example: let's suppose Apple is in the manufacturing sector - it makes screws, screwdrivers and doors. Incidentally, the screws are designed so that only an Apple screwdriver could be used to fix the screws and the screws have such a design that they would only fit in the Apple doors. The Apple screwdrivers can't be used to open other makes of screws. And the doors can only be fixed using Apple screws. The Apple doors themselves can only be mounted on an Apple wall. And the wall can be mounted only in an Apple building. And the building can only be built on Apple land and the latter can only exist in Apple world, which may only exist in Apple universe.

The latest case that's been reported is this one from the BBC. Palm's latest phone Pre was claiming seamless syncing with Apple's ~~iPhone~~ iTunes (update). Apple has updated its firmware claiming the latest version fixes a bug which allowed some non-Apple devices to be detected as Apple's. Therefore, the Palm Pre, and perhaps other devices as well, is no more compatible with ~~the iPhone~~ iTunes.

Can a company build something that's closed, the inverse of being open, as in open-connectivity? As it seems to me, Apple's way of working is more restrictive than its rival Microsoft in some way.

To complete my story, of course I've been unsuccessful at installing Mac OS X on my PC. As expected? Perhaps.

Update: The Pre was synced to iTunes, not iPhone as I mentionned.

Napster goes 10

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:11:00 +0000

Back in 1999, the Internet was just becoming popular among the Mauritian youth, especially at school. And the Internet was also the new Eldorado. Yahoo! was a leader, as well as Microsoft with MSN. And Google just made it's first appearance.

Then I discovered Napster from friends at Café National Super Cyber cybercafé. It was the program that every youth had to have if he/she were to be musically trendy. It was a very light peer-to-peer program, easy to download and install. It had very few buttons. And it was very simple to use.

I wanted to test-drive it. I wanted to download the song 'It's my life' by Doctor Alban, but ended up with that of Bon Jovi. And soon the latter became the killer song, and is still rated as such today. That song made the charts around the world, hitting 1st place.

My friends who were fans of hard-rock music used Napster to download tons of music of Metallica, Marilyn Manson and Nirvana. They used Napster to download some 5 Gigabytes of music at 128 kbps. Phew! What an astonishing amount. Undoubtedly, they did so at the cybercafé itself, enjoying some kind of broadband.

At home, I could download a song of merely 3 MB at 128 kbps over my 56.6 kbps dial-up connection in just over an hour and very often the songs were always downloaded at 90-99 percent and as a consequence I always 'missed' parts of songs. But still, I managed to download a few hundreds of megabytes of music at that speed. I always envied the Americans who had 128 kpbs ADSL, 512 ADSL and T1 connection lines at that time!

During that time, waiting for a song was of an immense pleasure. No need to buy pirated CDs. We were pirating directly from source! Metallica's, Madonna's and Britney Spears' songs were available for download weeks, even months, before official releases. To our happiness, both ears and pockets.

In around 2000, Metallica and Madonna filed lawsuits for copyright infringement and Napster was closed down to re-open later.

Today, Napster is still considered the first program to have shaken the music industry. Indeed, it has inspired many later applications like BitTorrent, iMesh, eDonkey, eMule, Morpheus and Kazaa, among others.

All other programs or protocols still pose the same 'threat' concerning copyright matters as Napster did. Or is it that the music industry has to re-invent itself and do business differently?

And even today, every mention of Napster makes the music industry tremble. Problems posed by Napster to the music industry are being spread to other media such as books and movies which are all being digitised, ready to download, with an ever-growing world population who's downloading more and more.

All in all, Napster has been revolution. And as with every revolution, there are good sides and not-so-happy consequences.

Happy birthday Napster!

Partial eclipse visible in Mauritius for Chinese New Year

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:52:00 +0000

As the Chinese community celebrates its new year according to their Calendar, a partial eclipse of the sun was visible in Mauritius! This natural event made the Spring Festival more sense to me this time since I not only got delicious cakes from my neighbours (thank you!) but I was also amazed by the sun's eclipse.

This shot is the best one which I was able to take :P

I've always been interested in the stars and the universe since I was young though I've never been able to decode any zodiac sign from maps.

Here's some fantastic things which keep me interested:

are we alone in the universe? E.T. are you here?
universe or multiverse?
moment of singularity where all laws of Physics as we know of vanish
when we look at the stars, we look at the past
universe is expanding or shrinking?
are we from the Earth itself or from another place? Mars?

These are just some of the topics that are sufficiently good to do a PhD I guess :P

I've heard of the Mauritius Astronomical Society since I was a kid but I've never managed to get into contact with one of the guys. It would have been so nice to get into contact and see how enthusiasts are doing in the paradise island.

I am an AIESECer!

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:34:00 +0000

Hooray!

After one month of probation, I'm finally confirmed as an AIESECer!!

AIESEC is the world's largest youth-run organisation, present in over 105 countries. It is present in Mauritius since June 2008 and has been officially launched in August 2008.

AIESEC is an international platform that provides a unique experience for youths in terms of leadership opportunities, international internships and developing the full potential of oneself so as to create a positive impact on society.

I own my work

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:19:00 +0000

Think of an artist, a music producer, and a designer. Their artworks are protected by what's called 'copyright'. For the computer industry, copyright is at the center of software. Companies like Microsoft know much about it.

Then comes open source-related software. The codes are available freely to anyone and anyone may modify them to adapt to a new situation or free to use them.

Based on my ethics classes, I've always thought that any new creation is automatically protected by copyright, even if that's not stated. That's because most countries have signed the Berne Convention.

But for open-source software things weren't clear up to now: does the author retain copyright even if everyone's allowed to use and modify the codes?

Not now. This story from the BBC reports that a US federal court has made a ruling where the author retains copyright, and that all works based on the author's code should respect the license.

Such protection for the merit of the original works is a good thing and will encourage more of us to publish our work as open source. The fear of losing recognition will now fade away and authors of derivative works will be forced to properly acknowledge the original works.

War of desktop managers

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 19:10:00 +0000

Linux users have for long been wondering what´s the best desktop manager to use. When I had a Debian, a few years ago, I didn´t worry much since both GNOME and Kde are installed by default. So, it was just easy to switch whenever I wanted a new ´look and feel´.

Then came Ubuntu distro. Since it´s a Live CD system, I had to choose either between Ubuntu (with GNOME) or Kubuntu (with KDE). And then very recently, Kubuntu Remix (with KDE 4).

I downloaded Kubuntu Remix and solved nearly all the ´issues´ that I considered ´annoying´. And I was happy. KDE 4, though still a beta, has great features like window animation and supports gadgets (or widgets!).

Last week, I was impressed by GNOME: so neat, so beautiful, so Mac-like. Therefore I did a small
# sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
on my machine.

Wow! So great. Apart from the great look that´s elegant, I now know what ´stable´ release means: my applications won´t crash for any reason at all. With KDE 4, they did. However, it´s understandable since the latter still in beta.

Therefore, when I boot I see the Kubuntu logo, then it´s GNOME desktop manager and GNOME look and feel.

I wanted to make a complete removal and download Ubuntu, but I would have to go through the daunting task of fixing the ´annoying issues´ once again.

Nevertheless, I love Amarok. I did uninstall all KDE applications, except KNetworkManager for WiFi and Amarok.

In the end, I´d say: let´s use whatever we want. There´s no best. Try all. And experience with them.

Looking back at the past year, or so

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:44:00 +0000

Holidays are also meant to look back at what one did during the last year. My first year at university has been a great one, with lot's of experiences that changed my life. One year at Spoon Consulting Ltd and another at Linkbynet Indian Ocean have also been great. I can't forget good times and friends at both places.

So, during the last year, here are the things that I can remember:

Think, think and think, but think differently - university has changed the way I look at things
Great friends are enriching - all moments are meant to be enjoyed and lived to the fullest
Sharing is such a pleasure
Group work is good
Hectic life, no time to relax
Playing Need for Speed from midnight to six in the morning
Concerts and concerts - house and trance music turn me up

And I also got

A notebook - Dell Latitude D630 :)
A Hercules MK2 DJ console

That's it, in simple words...

Holidays... good times

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:06:00 +0000

Hurray! Holidays are back for me!!

What this means?

More free time
More time for work
More time to do what I want
Less headaches :)
More time to spend with friends
More time to lose on facebook and hi5
More time to do to funny and silly things
More TV
More downloading of music
(More) time for blogging :P

Facebook censored! What a shame!

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 21:54:00 +0000

It's been a real buzz among the Mauritian Facebook community: yesterday Facebook was put offline in Mauritius just because the Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam wanted to remove a humorist parody of a profile bearing his name! Le Mauricien reported the news yesterday's morning. Eddy's blog entry, Pascal's blog entry and Avinash's blog entry have serious thoughts about this stupid act.

I join the cause since this is an insult to free speech, especially since Mauritius is a democratic country.

And second, what about the other humorist parodies of Paul Beranger, our President Sir Aneerood Jugnauth and the very funny minister Gawressoo? Shall they also express their concerns and shut Facebook for a while in Mauritius, while 'their' profiles are being cleaned, as expressed by Pascal?

After going against the press, the Government is now going after the online community. Are we going to see another Great Firewall of China in Mauritius, as expressed by Eddy?

The picture shows what I get when I search for 'Navin Ramgoolam' today. Of course, there are other profiles and groups that have been created in the same spirit, which I have not shown. Is it only us in Mauritius who don't have access to Navin's profile? Or has Facebook genuinely removed them? I'd love to know if we're being fooled and if there's a special Facebook page for Navin for Mauritian users generated by local ISPs...

Wikimapia describing the whole world

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 20:14:00 +0000

Last week I wanted to see what's there around me and how the things around me look like. You may not agree with me over what I did, but I think that it's a nice way to get what I wanted.

In fact, I went discovering some magnificent satellite pictures of the earth! The following sites proved to be very attractive:

But you'll agree that there aren't that so many things for a small island like Mauritius. Perhaps some user-generated content could bring some more excitement about the maps. So welcome to Web 2.0 maps: Wikimapia.

Wikimapia is based on Google Maps. But here, registered users may say "here is my home", "this is a garden", "that's a football pitch", etc. by defining areas, tagging them, and describing the places in their own words!

For the more enthusiastic, for whom 2D is not so exciting, 3D satellite images come handy. Google Earth is certainly well known. NASA World Wind is another service that's as enjoyable.

Happy discovering :)

My first report goes in style with LyX

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 05:28:00 +0000

I'm finally very happy about being able to give my first report for Software Architecture in style! In fact, I've used LyX (pronounced 'licks').

So what's LyX? It's just a simple word processor which does "What You See Is What You Want", and not "What You See Is What You Get", as with other word processors. To put it simple, it's a simple word processor with pre-defined styles for headers, footers, paper format, font size, and so on. You don't change them. You only bother about your content. And then apply the pre-defined styles to your text! After all, is it not that content is the most important thing?

LyX is a graphical front-end for LaTeX (pronounced 'la-tek'), a markup language for TeX (pronounced 'tek').

Back to school!

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 19:04:00 +0000

Photo courtesy: T.H.I.N.K.

After months of wondering about goals in my life, I've finally decided that I'm better back to school!

Yes! In fact, I've joined the University of Mauritius again, doing Computer Science...

I should say that it's an all new exciting adventure with new friends and new things to learn, share and have fun at!

Safari: exploring the net

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 12:30:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, Apple announced the public free release of Safari, it's legendary web browser. As an enthusiast, I downloaded it. And started to adventure on the Internet to see what's so amazing at it.

Safari's website claims that it's got major advantages. I do admit that Safari's indeed faster than any other web browser I've used; may it be for surfing or for downloading. Of course, it's not going to beat a download manager which supports threads!

The other feature which I think is new is the idea of 'private browsing'.

I get all the other features in my favourite Mozilla Firefox on the other hand.

But I've got a question: why has Apple made a release for Windows? And not for any distro of Linux? Well, I think it's following the same concept as it did for iTunes. Apple wants to make Windows users shift from their OS to Mac OS.

So how does it do so? Simple:

introduce some new idea
work well on the graphics part - that's what every user want nowadays
make things as simple as possible
don't give too many options that will overwhelm users
make it free!

So saying, I don't find the download rate in Safari nor the status bar to know what's happening, like a page is loading, it's fethcing some images so I should wait, etc. (Not to confuse with the percentage a page has loaded!)

NFSU2 LAN experience

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 17:16:00 +0000

Last Thursday, Yanesh, a friend, invited me to his house for a LAN party. Our plan was to connect some PC's and to play NFS Underground 2 on LAN!

That was just fantastic!

Our plan was like this:

Connect as many PC's together. However, we had no network hub. So we decided to do with only two computers.
No hub also meant to modify existing LAN cables! We had to arrange for a crossover cable. Luckily, I use one at home. So I brought it to Yanesh's.
Another friend, Kavin, brought his computer too! Great!

We started our first hour by configuring LAN (simple using Windows XP). But the great challenge was to be able to start a game on LAN! Wow, after an hour Kavin and I succeeded in finding the right sequence of buttons to push!

Here are the steps in some simple words:

Select a PC to be the server and create a game with server mode
With other computer, select "filter" and choose the right settings
Then click the game to enter
Click "Ready" on top
Click "Start" on server

And did the game start!

We were seven in all; we made three teams and each team played against each other team a few times...

We did not encounter any technical issue.... that was cool.... NFSU2 played well....

The tournament finished at three in the morning!

Yannick, a friend, had to go to an interview at eight! We accompanied him home.

As for me, I had to get to work at nine. So I went to bed at Yanesh's at four! Got up at seven-thirty.... and obviously wouldn't make it on time!

No need to say that I was a bit sleeping at work that day!

But it was all great fun! Thanks very much guys!

Next time we're planning to play with more computers and using a network hub, of course!

Open source in the news

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 10:05:00 +0000

It's good news that Click has finally talked about open-source and more specifically about Ubuntu since the last few weeks.

A few years ago, Stephen Cole (remember that Click Online presenter?) said that he did not consider Linux to be an OS since it was not enough user-friendly and many hardware wouldn't work. But nowadays, all this has changed. Most linux distros have a superb GUI (Gnome and KDE, amongst others) and many devices like printers, scanners, webcams, ADSL modems, and others, have drivers in-built in the Linux distro.

And on top of all, open-source is everywhere today!

I'm using Ubuntu Server at work and Kubuntu Desktop at home. I should say that the server is really easy to install and deploy. Apt-get is really a nice thing (thanks Debian!): installing and upgrading packages are simply a pleasing thing.

Yahoo! Mail becomes limitless

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Tue, 29 May 2007 10:22:00 +0000

When Google launched GMail, they gave us plenty of storage space - now nearing some 3 gigabytes! They told us that we'd never have to delete any of our emails... And everyone was talking about it....

GMail also introduced AJAX.

Yahoo! Mail and Windows Live Mail followed later - they too gave us a few gigs of storage space and reworked their interfaces using AJAX.

But now, Yahoo! Mail has taken a lead - they say that they're no more imposing quotas on storage!

Ya-hoo-oo-oo!

Let's now see other more innovative and mouth-watering features...

Man Utd champions once again!

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Wed, 16 May 2007 06:27:00 +0000

Despite losing 1-0 against West Ham at Old Trafford on Sunday, Man Utd are champions once again! 16 FA Premiership titles in all! That's just great!

Fans of either clubs had good reasons to celebrate - Man Utd champions and West Ham relieved from relegation!

Battle for the Macs

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 17:55:00 +0000

Photo courtesy of http://cuteproxy.wordpress.com/2006/06/18/in-review-hajime-no-ippo/

It's no secret in Mauritius:

IF you want a Mac THEN
 GOTO Leal
ENDIF

So simple as that, isn't it?

But now, it's not just Leal selling Macs. Cash & Carry also has stated to bring the powerful and pretty Mac! The piece of code is now:

IF you want a Mac THEN
 CHOOSE
   CASE1: GOTO Leal
   CASE 2: GOTO Cash & Carry
 END CHOOSE
ENDIF

The prices are a bit lower at Cash & Carry. For instance, the iMac Intel Core 2 Duo, 120 GB HD, 1 GB RAM is at R 49500 at Leal and R 45500 at Cash & Carry.

Leal's after-sale service is superb.

As with all Macs, both are offering 1 year warranty...

There's now some sort of competition between those two. Hopefully, customers like us will benefit from better services at a lower price!

Event 777 coming soon

noreply@blogger.com (Dilraj) — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 06:25:00 +0000

Liquid's bosses announced the next big clubbing event in Mauritius on last Saturday's DJ's Challenge . After Tom Snare's night, they are bringing Pakito, who's going to perform live at La Citadelle on 7 July 07 (so the name 'Event 777').

DJ Pakito made a phenomenal success with its popular track Living On Video, very famous in Mauritius, last year.

I hope to get going once again. And I hope that the event will be held at La Citadelle itself, not VIP Club at the last minute, as it has been the case for DJ Laurent Wolf, on Saturday last.