Through my Memory Lane...

Twitter, In short

2010-02-15T16:07:00.002+05:30

I know that i am blogging after a long time.okay anyway, I present here the details about the History of twitter and its founders which i read recently. Jack Dorsey along with two other( Evan Williams & Biz Stone) were the founders of twitter, one of the fast growing and/or Popular website for social networking. Remember Williams,the key person in the making of blogger.com (which later acquired by Google). In fact the term *blog* came into existence after this blogger.com. It was out when he was in Pyra Labs. Stone was author of : "Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content and Who Let The Blogs Out? ". Coming back about Twitter, Initially their choice of name for this micro-blogging site was twttr (inspired from the name flickr). But at-last they landed on twitter. It means burst of information or chirps from birds. When they started first Obvious Corporation was their company name. It took two week for Dorsey to develop a prototype for twitter. Twitter is popular in US and other western counties via SMS. Hence the constrain of 140 characters still exists. In India I heard only Airtel support twitter. The famous status question was changed from "What are you doing ?" to "What's Happening?" in end of 2009.

twitter was affected heavily by large number of users during this month http://status.twitter.com/post/704415654/network-maintenance-june-16th-13-00-14-30-utc
edited June 17, 2010

E: Couldn't find package on #apt-get install update

2009-11-23T02:16:00.000+05:30

warrior:/home/rajz# apt-get install

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Couldn't find package

This is may work by doing

#apt-get install update

but if the above error repeats for this command too.. then.

System>Administration>Software sources (need root password)

In third party software tab click add

deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main

In Debian software make sure download from is 'Main Server'
close it. click Reload. (This is important)
Open a new terminal window (close the existing terminal if any)
run the apt command again. It will work !

mount windows partitions on Linux (Debian)

2009-11-22T01:45:00.001+05:30

Install the necessary pakages (both are *important*)

#apt-get install libfuse2

#apt-get install ntfs-3g

to find the drive use:

#fdisk -l | grep NTFS

/dev/sda1               1        5222    41945683+   7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda5            5223        7833    20972826    7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6            7834       10444    20972826    7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda7           13056       15013    15727603+   7 HPFS/NTFS

then mount the drive using command: (assuming that /home/rajz/disk folder exists. If not create it . mkdir /home/rajz/disk )

#mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /home/rajz/disk

To unmount a drive (remember its umount & not unmount )

#umount /dev/sda1

To auto mount a dive at start up u have to edit /etc/fstab add following lines. Assuming that if i want to auto-mount /dev/sda1 on /home/rajz/disk. You have to be a root user to edit that file. Use your favorite editor. I'm using gedit for now.

#gedit /etc/fstab

make changes like:

/dev/sda1 /home/rajz/disk ntfs-3g defaults 0 2

After making changes to file (if u want mount it after unmounted ). use simply. (lengthy command is not needed now as linux knows about sda1 & its filesystem, its mount point or target)

#mount /dev/sda1

Thanks to beginlinux.wordpress.com

Install flash player 10 on Debian/Ubuntu

2009-10-08T18:48:00.002+05:30

Install Adobe flash player 10 for Firefox/Iceweasel on Debian/Ubuntu

1. Uninstall the existing plugin using

# apt-get autoremove flashplugin-nonfree

2. Close all Firefox/Iceweasel windows (must)

3. Download the flash 10 plugin from here (or try this)

4. Use this command to install

#dpkg -i install_flash_player_10_linux.deb

5. If you encounter this error

dpkg: error processing adobe-flashplugin (--install):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
adobe-flashplugin

user this to resolve the dependencies

#apt-get -f install

6.That it check whether flash player has installed correctly here. Also note your version.

Sincere thanks to cyberciti.biz.

How to install themes on Ubuntu/Debian

2009-09-23T21:01:00.000+05:30

Well well! This is my first Linux How TO.

If you get bored of looking at you default desktop theme and wallpaper then here is my suggestion. Now , I am going to demonstrate u how to change ur Linux(mostly all distros but i tried in Debian/Ubuntu) into a colorful looking one. As i have already installed my favorite collection (Slickness theme-MashupMaXo icons-minimalisticea wallpaper). I would demonstrate to you with a simple collection

For this tutorial i have used the following
Darker theme
Erectus icons
minimalisticea wallpaper

Download list
Download from here for Debian/Ubuntu (gnome-look.org/www.debian-art.org)
1.Download GTK themes (panel color & look of each window)
2.Download icons (for iconic view of folder/disks)
3.Download wallpapers (obvious)
4.Download GDM theme (for login screen)

Procedure
1.Downloaded GTK theme package.
2.Right click on desktop select change background. Select theme tab and click install select the downloaded theme pakage
3.After installation success.select the theme to visualize/apply it
4.Downloaded icon package/files
5.Extract the package you will get a folder. Copy & paste inside /home/rajz/.icons folder? (user address bar /home/user/.icons folder or else try using cp/mv command in terminal)
6.Right click on desktop select change background. Select theme tab and click customize option, icons tab then select the name of downloaded icon package
7.Similarly right click on desktop select change background. Select background tab and click image u want (even browse for your favorite image through add button)
8.Right click on desktop select change background. Select theme tab and click save as option. Give the suitable name and save it.
9.Download GDM theme
10.Now we go for login screen selection.System> Administration> Login Window. Select local tab. Click add button & select the package
11.After that select radio button of your added theme

Thats it every thing is done !
Show it t our friends and amaze them. Make them ask "Is this Linux ? Is this Debian/Ubuntu?" end of my 1st how to

Met stylesen & c0le on FStival' 09

2009-09-21T01:23:00.000+05:30

I know that I am blogging after a long period of time. There is a valid reason for it because yesterday (09/19/2009) FStival'09 was conducted by CSE department in our college. There are many situations i have felt for not being a CSE student. Because, they have sophisticated lab (practically see all the kinds of server there) more importantly labs that don't close at 4:30. Great passion developed in me due to FStival'07 which i attended during my 2nd year. That made me to use only GNU/Linux based software's for almost all my day today works. Their is no turning back from then on. I still use Hardy Heron in my Laptop.

Well Let's get to point. I had an opportunity to talk with most important and prominent persons behind TCENet project (an award winning project of our college). I found Senthil Kumaran and Joe Steeve were still (remotely) working on this TCENet project which i came to know from TCEwiki and tce's mailing list Archives (i spent a whole night reading all old mails). I have heard about the version control systems like Subversion, CVS, GIT but never used it. TCENet is maintained using Subversion (a product of CollabNet) and these people are still contributing to it remotely. Also I found that any one interested can contributed to TCENet project, for that you need not be CSE student or need not go to Unix lab even. I hope that i will contribute to it too. Also joined most of the TCE's mailing list.

I have talked with them and i also shared my interest with them. stylesen anna advised me to startup with a simple project(i.e writing docs for pidgin). I was wanting for support from the staff members which they advised me not expect such. I grasped all those ideas given by them and will act accordingly. These moments with those great people was one of the happiest moments of my life. Taking to stylesen anna was one my long term desire...I am very happy today :-).

TecUthsav '09 with seniors

2009-02-18T23:14:00.000+05:30

Yet another rememberable day ! TecUthsav’ 09 (a national level symposium) of IT department of our college (TCE) conducted on 17/02/2009

i m happy that i too was one among the panellist worked for ITunleashed event. Though I know few seniors I don’t have any kind of interaction like this before this was good. It was a very good experience working with our senior especially naga akka , head for ITunleashed event. She was very polite and very inspiring with the way she talked with contestants and with way she managed to conduct the whole event. With a smile too. :) Wonderful character! I learned a lot from her traits. Thanks to that akka (Nagalakshmi). And few other coordinator seniors like alagapan , murali, sai and many. Good cooperation given by all my friends’ ramkumar, sathes, senthil, venky, anish, dinesh & some 2year junior friends.

I thought of narrating it all the incidents but I make it short. I reached college soon went to hostel after having breakfast at canteen. Took some snaps & then with red tied ramkumar started to the department. But went to k S auditorium as sunder anna called there. The inauguration function supposed to start. After some time it started Hod , Abhai kumar sir also talked about the recession.Our chief guest was Dr.Kumar Padmanab senior research assistant of Infosys. He gave speech on his areas of wireless sensors. we ( ram & myself ) went to our dept lab in the middle for that event.

Viduran(viduka) was there and 4 contestants were there writing there round-1 (i don’t know how luckily they missed the inaugural fn) then we joined ITunleashed crew. Inauguration was too long....When the function was completed with the entire contestant our web development lab overflowed. I m sure that only our dept had most of participants (than other) nearly 100 members turn up! I helped filling some registration works and gave some instructions to the participants.

Fun starts from here on. Some participants had no pens to write the answers ....we are pulled in to situation where we have to sacrifice all our pens... Somehow managed with the spares one we have got. Of which most of them were naga akka's ! lol ! Even ram missed his sister gifted pen. At a point of time viduka too was searching his favourite pen. Thank god i didn’t miss my red tinted Reynolds Jetter pen presented by dad. That not just a pen full of ink but it was full of love and affection!

Then I helped in sending sms to selected list of candidates and preparing rank list for next round somehow prelims concluded but beyond scheduled. Our friends along with me prepared the systems for round 2. Meanwhile we (ram & me ) sneaked through to get our lunch..Ah we were lucky enough to have lunch as it was about to close. Even naga akka was come for lunch only when we were eating. I was very hungry as I missed morning refreshments’ too. Then went back to lab, meanwhile we also went to take groups photo (most of the boys were there). I don’t know what’s wrong with girls as they were not present. Left there & then joined back. Surprise final was a surprise for us as none know about that round whether offstage or onstage. It was supposed to be conducted in K.S.Auditorium but all of a sudden change in decision from onstage to off stage. It was conducted at one of the A halls and I was doing some writing work there. Then I joined to see the cultural programs as the well final round was done. As it was getting late I left in the middle.

We are planning to conduct all the competitions in cleaner manner next year with all well equipped to face any situation as everything will be computerized!!
Yet another joyful day!!

Happiest day in my college life

2009-01-25T08:06:00.000+05:30

Great day in my college life and happiest day too!! Collage one of the events for quest'09 (Event for exhibiting talents of school children). I was named one of the coordinators’ for this event.

The theme for this year Quest is Abdul kalam's PURA (Providing Urban Amenities in rural areas). I will talk about all my today activity (I have given almost care to bring a meaningful correlation.). I managed reach collage by 11 a.m IST. At first i saw ramshaker who was in the display desk editing the ppt, Later i saw prabha who was doing nothing but sitting and admiring the mistakes of students in Getha Chanting. After a small talk with him I moved to the Time management desk where I is saw pavendan(mech). After having some snack with him I moved to see the bottle filling event and their's also sack race conducted beside. Then i moved to see udhaya in Tamil elocution where i also found vijay and saravana. I was stunted by great speech of a school girl (really i don't know her name ; I felt that she would have won some prize definitely )

Then i moved to see my event coordinater head. It was said that haridass. so i called him up, talked to him very very politely (as i don't know him :)). i said to near Octagon(TCE main building) . To my surprise its Udaya-Ramkumar's roommate Hari :-). I have talked with him earlier i know him well but i don't have his no (Eventually when one is expecting an unknown person; and u see the person u know already then it’s was really a surprise). Then we meet up all the team members (myself , Hari dass, Sangli Muthu, Ellakya and Raji ). Girls went off for having lunch but I thought of going later. We got things from store room charts, papers, gums, awards 4 judges (jury) everything. We safe gauding those things in pump house, venue for collage. But there was art from waste going so we were waiting. muthu went for lunch as we (me and hari) decided to go when he returns . Meanwhile we were seeing the talents 'art from waste' contestants. By the time Muthu came we came to know that we will not be going for lunch as our event is about to start. Girls also joined later. Our event collage was supposed to start by 2 p.m(end by 3.30 pm) but there was the delay in arrival of jury. (this problem happened for us too but in different style). so eventually this delayed our start. We started a bit late (10 min) than scheduled. Hari, muthu and me were distributing the necessities to students. We then did some seating arrangements.:)

Girls done the work of registering the participants names. I was instructed the team regarding the rules. Some students were complaing about the delayed start when we asked them to complete but 3.30. so at last we convinced somehow. There came another prob. v was not informed of the jury's name. It was said that our head mahendran will take care of that. There are totally 3 judges or them 2 are student judges and 1 is faculty judge. But to our surprise there were 4 student judges present and so v wanted extra copy for faculty (later we Xeroxed it) . so two of them agreed to evaluate on same sheet as they were friends. we were asked to complete the evaluvation with student jury's itself .(relief :)) . Then after distributing the memento to jury's we all (boys and girls) averaged and prepared the winners. And v left our team saying thanks. Then later Xeroxed and gave always the attendance and winners list to the respective desks.

oh then we (boys) for cateen ( very hungry )and after having fruti took a snap (but muthu left for some work). I asked hari to drop me at bus stop (he had vignesh scooter. there was only limited petrol he said). but i didn’t leave him so agreed as expected scooter stopped at pillaiyar temple. i walked to stop after saying thanks. i got bus went standing to reach periyar. There i got bus no 70 and reached my home

And here is the funniest thing. I didn’t attend any coordinator meetings so eventually they removed my name from short-listed coordinator list which i know only any the last !! Nevertheless it was all funny today. I am really very very happy today.I have even exceeded my 100 free sms’s today for sharing my happiness. Any way I am proud of being one amoung the coordinator in contributing to college ! :).I learned my things like managing time,convincing students, coordinating judy's,etc. This is my first step !

Answer of the fourth dimension ends

2008-12-29T02:29:00.000+05:30

yeah ! back after a little gap

I recently(a bit long) watched a movie named "Horton hears the W ho!".
It is a 2008 CGI-animated film based on a book of the same name.The flims was about the creatures inside a small dust speck (a tiny dust particle) in the hands of an elephant, Horton.Horton lives in a jungle named Nool. His funny activities is always a treat to watch and laugh. And his efforts to tell about the sounds he hear from the speck and the people inside it (Mayor ,his son,etc) to his friends and others creatures will look more hilarious than any. His efforts to save the upcoming disaster to the speck and to place it in a safest place in the jungle ( top of Mt. Nool) is the climax. At last the camera zooms out, revealing that along with numerous other worlds in our universe is just one speck among numerous others like our planet.

Lets come to the point !
It was Question in my mind for a long time. The passion for this started because of my 'Aspire-maths teacher' Devarajan in XII std.The concepts of dimensions.Assuming if a all dimensional ( 1D, 2D,3D ) creatures exists in this world.One dimensional ( 1D) creatures will not be able to see the 2D creatures (may be those will be Alien as we call it now) as their body and eyes will be fixed to one dimension space. Similarly 2D creatures will not be able to see the next dimensional creatures (3D) as their body, intestine,mouth, eyes will be fixed to two dimension(2D) space.If you extend this concept i believe that there may be fourth dimensional people whom we can not see but can feel.This imagination may branch to various things like

Alien (unreasonable happening to the earth including the extinction of Dinosaurs )
God (Creation of the first living cell in Scientist perspective or Creation of human in layman perspective)
Force of Nature (Gravitational force himself or electrostatic force in the atom, whose structure still unclear or charge within an electron, proton ) etc,.

After seeing a video the search for the fourth dimension ends because its about Tenth dimension (I got it from krirthika akka'z blog)

:-)

Inspired by Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture

2008-09-24T23:08:00.000+05:30

Yeah!

I happened to see the video named “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch. He named it as a Last because he is going to die within few months. He is a cancer patient.

A Computer Science professor of Carnegie Mellon University (Virtual reality is his Interest). His speech was about “Achieving your Childhood Dreams”. It was phenomenally exceptional and inspiring speech I have ever heard next to Mr. Sivathanu pillai’s talk (Our college alumni and chief head of Brahmos & DRDO).

The first part of his speech was about his childhood dreams . How did he manage to achive all those. In the mean time he also said about what are things that he learned out of it. The top most thing that I liked in that lecture was the ‘Brick wall’. It is a methaphor which says whenever you failed to achieve something do not just stop in the middle. These brick walls are meant to break and make other feel that” How badly we want those things”.

There are several other such things also:
• Wait long enough people will surprise and impress you
• Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted
And so on…

This inspirational icon died the July 2008. But he remains as an inspiration icon for American students similar to our living Indian icon Abdul Kalam .

Links
The last Lecture Video
His website
His blog

Cars and Wall-E

2008-09-09T01:25:00.000+05:30

LOooOg after....Here i am now ....

Recently I saw two animation films ...that were really mind blowing stuffs.One was the Cars(2007) and other was the recent box office hit Wall-E. Cars.

Cars story was about the a unexpected car (Lightning McQueen) which goes to win the piston cup.yes, Mack was taking Ligtning McQueen to California to attend the Piston cup tie break.But unfortunately he lost the way, got by cop of Radiator springs. As McQueen damaged the roads of radiator springs. He was not allowed to go until he correct the road. It was a cute place once but because of the by-pass this place was not known to any one even removed from map, sally said.sally was loved by mcqueen. Mater (boom truck) becomes his best friend. He get to know that the Doc was the Fabulous Hudson Hornet, who won three piston cups When the race begun mcqueen happy to see Doc supporting him. When mcqueen was about to finish . It was that Doc tip helped to drift back to track and fast pit crew. chick crashes king. mcqueen saves king to finish second. The story ends with a message that tragedy happened to Doc should not repeated.

Next one is WALL-E(2008). The story was about wen earth becomes a garbage place to live in man becomes so lazy living outside out universe in a space ship. It contained everything that make him lazy. yes but one Next one is WALL-E(2008). The story was about wen earth becomes a garbage place to live in man becomes so robot(WALL-E) which does the clean up works on earth with his cockroach friend. Man sends a spaceship to explore earth.So EVE into the picture. Wall-e fell in love with eve. on the presence of a plant eve returned to spaceship. Wall-e goes there and help eve.and also make the captain to return to earth. It was a fight between man and machines.

No words to explain....But must say : watch the movies !

Learn(ed) from my Mistake

2008-03-07T20:36:00.000+05:30

Back again…..

Hi guys nice meeting you after a long gap…….
Oh I am so sad that I couldn’t make up to my full satisfaction.Yes! Group Discussion (GD) for professional communication was conducted (21/02/2008) and I thought that I could do something better…..but nothing worked out for me communication, fluency………what not?
The topic is “Is advertisement only for the gullible (easily deceived)?” This is the first topic on the list, a very ambiguous title. Seems to be quite arguing among the list (no many appeared to be arguing. most of them seem to one sided) given by tamilselvi mam…

we ramshanker, rahul, praba, selected to go with that topic but contradictions from pramala, ponvidya, preethi, pooja so it was left to audience to decide. They went on with this one.
As I expected Ram was the initiator, praba continued with that later pramala joined it………and discussion was really picking up momentum .Oh…….what was I doing? Oh oh I was sitting doing nothing (playing with my pen). Couldn’t say any thing because I got no good point to say and more importantly I was dilemma to support or oppose.

After along time I gave a point in fumbling tone which I know not many could understand (I wasn’t clear). As I felt that the discussion was drifting the other way, I made them come back. I did nothing more than that.I am amazed to see people like pramala, praba were very casual while taking but for me the situation is different. In fact I could hear my heartbeat!!

Why this? all because zero confidence level .

I analyzed & decided the following things:

During GD:

· Note down exact sentence of the topic

· Decide support or oppose soon.

· Decide only the points to speak

Must do:

· Fluency English - Only Practice! NO other go…(Important)

· Vocabulary - Read newspaper

· Context -know current information.

After all, one point I want to stress is that …… DO gather only the points on the GD and do not think how to talk (how to frame sentences, which word to use, etc) there. It should come out as you think.To achieve this Raise your confidence level by speaking English. If you can answer to any question in English at any time even when other people converse in Tamil then your English is good. Classroom is the best place to practice. You can also do by answering questions inside the classroom which would really keep your awake. ;)

I thought of doing this but I can’t carry on. I still try to achieve this.. Anybody interested can follow this. So let’s not wait till placement…….
We must converse in English inside the classroom. This would raise your confidence level. One more thing ,Please don’t mock at others, help them or join them else do nothing. Don’t pull them down!

Try to achieve this feel….Though I couldn’t completely give it in words. Here it is: “You should be conversing in English in such a way that you (your mind) should forget that you are actually speaking in English “ i.e it should come out, just as like your mother tongue. Let us Try together….

First Seminar

2008-02-09T23:00:00.000+05:30

19/01/2008

This day was a remarkable day of my life. Because the day I took my first seminar.

First Seminar: Topic Selection
Before seminar:
Once I was given the date schedule for it, I made up my mind to do something different and useful (for me: drive off my stage fear & for all: knowledge on any new technology).
Though I have fare enough topic for the seminar like solaris, ubuntu, opensource softwares. I choose to take UHARC because when was installing the ‘Hulk’ game during my third semester vacations made me know about a developing archive. The most important thing that triggered me was the compression ratio ( C.R.). I was astonished by the CR of 15% (I misspell this as compression during seminar) , it compressed almost 1.2 GB into just 162 MB. Then I started collecting information’s all about Uharc but to be very frank I was just gone through the documentation the day before the seminar that night for about 3 hours.
I decided not to care much about managing time, body language, spoken English because I felt that if you concentrate on this it would affect my content delivery. I did not even decide how much time to speak; in fact I leaned from my friends that I was taking for about 45 minutes.
Seminar experience:
I had a little shaky start with a bit of wobbling sentences after good salutation. Then I just gave a intro about archive, its uses and examples and some stories to calm done my raised HEART BEAT. That was for about 10 minutes. Then i got back my rhythm. I said about few things of my preparation about this UHARC archive:
1. about the author
2. about its version and development progress
3. Files presents and its uses and
4. More importantly explaining with examples of creating self-extracting archive, extraction and creation of UHARC archive.
I was very much happy to see some nodding faces in the crowd which made me very encouraging to continue my seminar. Though some were talking at the back (probably to my left) I was able to modulate my voice in order to defend them. The two things that made my seminar look bad could be my slowness of writing on the board or my interrupted speech. I would definitely rectify this along with the good eye-contact with the audience.
I was very happy that day because I was very much satisfied with my performance. I could not sleep that day because I was thinking that I could have done this/that way. Overall this seminar raised my confidence level very much. Those moments are to be remembered throughout my life time.

Thirst for knowledge...

2007-12-04T00:48:00.000+05:30

oh yes . this is the first time i am blogging.
The interest of blogging came from my seniors especially praveen, subi akka, etc.
i read , know many things what they do . For eg. any functions and programs organized by them , about the softwares they developed, about their final year project, about the new technologies the speak on...
The story said by our Geetha mam really kindled my emotions. It was a story of average (on getting marks. I don't believe people saying a person averages just because he get low marks) boy raised to height of success ahead of all competitors in their class for his "Sincerity and Hardwork". The boy is actually one of our senior. His project was awarded as the BEST PROJECT by TCS i suppose. He is now working in TCS in Research and Development Team. She concluded that he was very good in "Time management" , Sincerity and Hardwork. She also said that there were brilliant students in that class than him. But the thing made a difference is his temperament. I was very much inspired.
Its more similar to my situation here (i.e scoring marks is harder for me). She said plenty of things. I am going to follow few things as she said, to read atleast three books apart from your curriculum, to have knowledge about the new technologies,
I am on the hunt for knowledge. After reading subi akka's blog the interest in designing Operating System has tremendously increased .I could feel the Knowledge thirst in me. I believe that this is the important turning point in my learning curve.....