The IB.in Bangalore Bloggers Meet!

A bright sunny day it was, with something stirring in my mind saying that its gonna be a helluva experience – The IndiBlogger.in Bloggers Meet in Bangalore. The threat of traffic jam due to a HUGE ANTI TERRORISM RALLY notwithstanding, I set out on an early summer’s Saturday’s afternoon, towards a destination 20km away on my ‘Feel like GOD’ bike.

The Microsoft Signature Building, located on a fantastic campus appeared as if it was made for events such as these. The seating and setting was neat, as if a high level conference were to happen there! Before long, pleasantries were exchanged and people got started.

Anwin Joselyn was the first person I greeted and immediately I lost the nauseating feeling which you get when you’re visiting a place for the first time! Thanks to him. Later he took me to Renie and as he has put it in IndiBlogger blog, it felt like de-ja-vu, as if we knew each other by minds before, and the faces got their chance now! Not to miss at all, the man whose face can show a million expressions – Anoop! He kept the event rolling with a lot of zeal and energy. Its hard to miss what he says, even if says one thing with his mouth and means something else too, by his expression! The man behind the scenes most of the time, Karthik a.k.a Zeon, did his best to avoid any glitches at all, in the running of the event! Well, thats about the IB.in team!

The first event ‘1 Minute to Fame’ gave a chance to every blogger present, to express himself. The excitement of having such a good opportunity was evident in every speaker’s eyes. The amount of humor and quality-talk exchange is hard to be surpassed.

BizSpark – A software support for start-ups from Microsoft, was introduced in a short, yet informative manner by Girish, from Microsoft.

The major issue a blogger can face is fighting for his rights. This topic was well-handled and eloquently presented by Sandil from Mutiny.in. The discussion would have lasted longer if not for the Windows 7 beta demo and the hot-n-spicy Pizzas.

The Windows 7 beta demo was the show stopper of the day. What with the V-squared duo – Vic and Vijay presenting the New OS in all its glitter and showing how it has over-shadowed the problems its predecessor, MS Vista had. They’re interrupted by the Pizza session (yum! yum!), but soon got back their audience for the live demos. (It is a different matter that I’ll continue to use Ubuntu )

After the demo of out-of-the-box features embedded in Win7, we moved on to the Offline Forum – A non formal discussion by the bloggers present. Clearly, the star of the day was a self-proclaimed Money Maniac – Shirin! His tips on SEO and Monetization was indeed, enlightening! He makes a good tutor for making money from ur blog!

The later part consisted of Anwin, Jerry, Nischal, and a couple of others speaking about self hosting and its cost, efficiency, reach-out, status and the like. I sure am tempted to buy a domain for myself, but lemme count my pocket money first! Finally, Arif Ali Saiyed presented a tool which can be a breather for Windows users. Check out his own explanation first for better understanding. Guys, it rocks! Trust me!

By the time I finished with Arif’s demo and playing with Win7 a li’l, the hall was pretty empty and i started back. The 20km drive back was tiresome to the body, but my mind was all fuelled up. Thanks to the IndiBlogger.in Bangalore Bloggers Meet!

Dont Miss : The Flickr Photo Gallery of the meet.

PS : I’ve tried the new theme from WP – Vigilance. Loved it very much! However, plz provide feedback.

Added later.

My 1 min to fame :

Hello, My name is Sriharsha and I blog at harshasrisri@WP. I started blogging an year ago with a rant post about not having a girlfriend. Its a different matter that I do not have one even now . Coming to my blog, the topic diversity is quite vast. I write about anything that catches my attention and triggers interest. So, u can say the topics are random. But, only the topics are random and not the content. You can see pretty good content in quite a few posts. Finally, about what I’m doing – I’m a final yr Engg Student in E&C branch. Thank you!

How to go about with an Engineering Project

Its funny actually, to talk about this topic. One reason because, I’m in a state trying to find an answer to the above question, all by myself. Another reason because, even my classmates are, but not necessarily independently. However, the final destination is the same. Scoring something around 240+ marks out of 250. Well… Yeah, that is the idea!

I’m amused and envious of my friends who manage to get their project ready by going to a few institutes (read : Tuitions for projects). Envious because, they’re always in a state of inertial comfort backed by the guarantee of a successful project. The institute provides them this guarantee at a nominal price and at a cost of 2 sessions per week.

Now, coming to the more interesting part, I’m amused because, the nominal price is not so nominal afterall; the 2 sessions per week spent there are probably worth it, but I don’t care to estimate how much; the time and money, if well spent, would aid in so much practical exposure, that if people realised it, the institutes would run out of business!

Before anyone calls me a hypocrite, I’ll clear the dust around ‘my choice’. I tried to do something of my own. Succeeded in bits and pieces at most times. But flopped when it came to the big picture. Very recently, I took part in a competition and thought of presenting whatever I do for this, as my Engineering project. After more than a fortnight’s toil (the reason behind my absence in the blog-o-sphere,) it was time for me to face my first biggest technical failure.

The feeling was bad. Worse, actually. At that moment I thought about my classmates’ comfort and why people choose institutes over the toil and adventure spirit of experimentation. It was for marks. Those bloody God-damned 240+ marks, which speak little about a student’s quality; which speak highly about the institutes’s ability of having a good business; which speak of the sad story that this is an Artificial Life, and make one wonder if this is an Education Boom or an Education Doom!

Whatever happens, I wont give up. Nor shall I give in. Atleast, I’ll try not to feel bad further.

[How To:] Fix the problem when XP doesn’t boot from GRUB

Intro : First, GRUB was erased. After fixing it, XP did not boot from GRUB owing to ‘ERROR 12′. Lastly, How I could fix both, rather discovered work-around for some part.

Recently I faced the first battle arising from the conflict between Windows and Linux. Thanks to Linux, I won it .Let me give you a brief history of the problem.

I had to format my friend’s hard disk for some reason and connected it to my comp. Here, the sane me should have relied upon Ubuntu Live CD and formatted the whole thing. But the insane me chose to rely upon Windows. So, I used Partition Magic ver 7.0 and tried to do the job, but failed miserably. After a few more futile attempts, the Insane me decided to rely upon Windows again. I used the WinXP Pro installer CD and wished to format the slave drive through DOS. Voila! It worked. My friend was too happy and left my place cheerfully!

Now, I switched ON my PC after sometime and to my horror, didn’t find the GRUB. (GRUB – GRand Unified Bootloader; somewhat similar in concept to the OS-selection menu in Windows) WTF!!! What did Windows do to my GRUB? Being a newbie to Ubuntu, I was clueless. I tried hopelessly to somehow fix it up by using the live CD. FUCK! No success. Then, I browsed through the web from the Live CD itself and found this link which was very helpful. (Plz go through the link to understand what is written further)

Assuming that u’ve gone through the link I’ve given above, I’ll use a few terms without any explanation. I created the GRUB diskette as described in the above link. After leaving the diskette in the floppy drive, I rebooted the PC.

Run the system BIOS. Make sure you’ve specified the boot device priority in this order : 1st – Floppy drive, 2nd/3rd – CD Drive/Hard disk. Save changes and exit. Now, the PC reboots again and something like this appears.

[ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported.   For
the   first   word,  TAB  lists  possible  command
completions.  Anywhere else TAB lists the possible
completions of a device/filename. ]

grub>

First, I specified the root drive where GRUB has to be installed, by this command

grub> root (hd0,4)

hd0 – My 1st hard disk.
4 – the partition number on the first hard disk where GRUB is to be installed.
Generally speaking, the ‘n’th partition of the ‘m’the hard disk is written as (hd[m-1],[n-1]).

Next, I’d to setup the GRUB, and this command did the job.

grub> setup (hd0)

This command sets up the GRUB on the root drive specified. Simple enough right? Now, remove the floppy diskette, change the 1st boot device priority to hard disk and reboot. A round of applause ladies and gentlemen, a novice just meddled successfully with GRUB, MBR (Master Boot Register) and a few alien things, of whose importance I know little about!

But my sigh of relief was shortened when booting into XP was not possible . Ubuntu could not mount the XP drive even at startup and I was left clueless again. Fuck! I thought about it for a while and tried out something which would turn out successful. Here is what I did.

• Make the 1st boot device as CD-ROM by following the procedure mentioned earlier.
• Insert XP installation Disc into the tray.
• Let it do all the pre-install-setup-bullshit.
• When it asks if you wish to install XP or repair using Recovery console, press ‘R’ which means the latter option.
• It scans your hard disk for available XP installation and asks you to select the one you choose to repair.
• Enter the Number specified against the Installation you wish to repair and press ‘Enter/Return’ key.
• Type this command and press ‘Enter’  key.

C:\WINDOWS>CHKDSK C:

• This thing checks the apparently inconsistent FAT/FAT32/NTFS/NTFS-3g disk drive for volume errors and fixes them.
• Now boot into Ubuntu or any other distro and go to the drive where you’ve an installation of XP.
• Copy the files “AUTOEXEC.BAT”, “boot.ini”, “CONFIG.SYS”, “IO.SYS”, and “MSDOS.SYS” into some other drive. Congrats! You’ve just made an alternate “boot sector” for WinXP . Please note the partition number of the destination drive.
• Now, to edit the GRUB menu : open the all powerful ‘Terminal’ and type the following command

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

• Provide your password. The window opening now is the ‘menu.lst’ file which determines which OS boots from which partition. scroll down to last to find something like this :

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian
# ones.
title        Other operating systems:
root

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sda1
title        MS WinXP Pro
root        (hd0,1)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader    +1

• I’ve ‘bold’ed the parameter to be changed in the above sequence.
• Primarily, my XP partition was (hd0,0). But, in the above visual, it shows (hd0,1). That means, I’ve changed the drive, which XP seacrhes for the boot sector to exist.
• In your case, If the files you’ve to move are in the 1st partition of your first hard disk then it should be as (hd0,0) in the GRUB menu file, initially. If you are copying the files to the 2nd partition of the first hard disk, then change the ‘bold’ part to (hd0,1) as in my case. As said earlier, the ‘n’th partition of the ‘m’the hard disk is written as (hd[m-1],[n-1]). Save the file and close.
• That said, make the change only in the ‘bold’ed part and NOT anywhere else, because, I CANNOT help you with the problems arising out from that.
• Reboot your PC and you should be able to boot int XP. (Atleast, I could do it in my case, and so, since there is nothing much to meddle with the hardware, your problem should be solved too.)

Important part : Disclaimer : I’m a novice and did many things (esp the latter half) according to my instinct/intuition and was not guided by any tutorial either on the WEB or on paper. So, it is up to you to believe in me and perform all these, the proof of whose working is the successful re-birth of my PC without any damage, and through which I’ve written this post .

I do not know the persom whose link I’ve provided here. Whoever you are, thank you very much, man. You revived my hopes .

If anyone else faced the same problem and solved it in a different way, Please let me know. If any pro’s or Ubuntu/Linux Gurus find this stupid, please educate me further.

And so ended my first adventure in Ubuntu . Hope I see much more and learn much much more! Thank you for being here.

7th Semester Nostalgia!

The 7th semester exams have started from today. What better way to pass time between the dozing study-schedules and flipping pages, than to recall and live in the moments enjoyed in college! Here I am, relaxed after giving my first paper for this sem, and tension-free because I’ve 4 more days between today and next paper . To give a you a one line summary, I’d say that this sem has been the most exciting part of my Life.

To start with, I, along with a handful others, organised a Robotics Workshop in my college, where propaganda, fee collection, enlightening minds, speaking a lot, working a lot too, and conducting the workshop while actually participating in it, will pass down my memory with all glitter, and especially the night when we packed all gadgets and materials into individual packages without sleeping for a second, and working for the whole of next day at the college.

Just after this, it was Internal assessment time. I was summoned by the HOD for having shortage of attendance (49%). I signed some green paper stating I was aware of it and resumed my bunking spree .

So, wassup next? It was the trip to Chennai! 3 ppl including me, went to IIT, Chennai. Not just to take part in Shaastra ‘08 – their tech fest, but to feel what it’d be like, to be an IITian. It was an exhilarating experience. 6 days passed out in a jiffy and Chennai was a fun place to be, except for the scorching heat. ‘Memorable’ would be too small to describe the times we spent roaming around the campus at midnight, dining at a restaurant inside the campus at 2am, and lying on the lawn till the dew on the grass tickled me and drove us away, at 3am.

Sunset at Mahabalipuram beach, midnight ice-cream party, night walk at the Marina beach, dining at ‘Velu Military Hotel’ and ‘Anjappar’ were a glossy set of add-ons to the blessed getaway! All thanks to Pavan’s bro, for accomodating us and more importantly, being there for us.

Again, Internals time and again the same attendance procedure. But this time, the HOD had done some magic and provided me with a relief. The shortage margin was reduced even if my ass wasn’t there in the class! .

As if this wasn’t enough, our juniors went on a one day trip and triggerred a rage in me for not being able to do so. This sparked off the aggressive souls in my classmates as well, and what started as a mere jealousy culminated as the longest class trip in the 8yrs of our college history! . As many of you know already about the trip, I’ll refrain myself from talking further about this, even though I’d love to go through the memories again! (Those who haven’t seen the posts already, you can have a virtual trip yourself. Presenting to you : The Trip Series! )

After coming back from the trip, the class was never the same as before. Almost everyone greeted eachother with a lot more glee in their eyes, thereafter. Whatta way to end the semester. The attendance dwindled after that and the last days of partying in the semester continued (for me) till yesterday, before I sat with the books. Signing off for now, feeling sick about the next two weeks – Exam Time!

Trip – Munnar, Nature Revisited!

Prequels to this post :

• Summary of my trip
• The Train Journey

After the aching early-morning adventure at the train garage, we were happy to be in the bus, starting off towards Munnar. The sensation of traveling in the train was still fresh in my nerves and it sort of made me drowsy as soon as i got into the bus. I thought that the lack of sleep experienced can be covered up to some extent in the bus-ride. Its a pity that i was proved wrong and how! Due to a weak claustrophobic trait, I was feeling uncomfortable inside the apparently cramped bus. I was dying for fresh air to hit my face, but the cold ghat winds were playing spoilsport outside.

Ah! At last, there was a respite! On the way to Munnar, the healing effect of nature showed on all the faces, when everyone were admiring the beauty of the landscapes ! The photo session started again. let me provide you a few visual excerpts.

Driving into what?

That was taken from inside the bus and so appears a little bit hazy. But i don’t think it diminishes the purpose of signifying the weather.

First rays of the sun from atop the canopy!

I was left speechless! Are you?

This is one pic which makes me regret living in a concrete jungle!

After being introduced to bliss, or heaven, or whatever!, there was a pit stop. All were wondering about the unexpected halt, and before long, we got the answer! There was a waterfall beside the road, and a wonderful one at that! Traveling without anyone to command us, the child out of every person came to the fore and the blank stares of appreciating God’s taste of sculpting landscapes was evident in everyone’s eyes!

This was my wallpaper for almost a fortnight!

A worthy attempt to quench my thirst

The fatigue of the train journey and the sickness of traveling in a bus had their effects. We reached the hotel at Munnar by late morning and had less than 20 hrs to hop around the place. Everyone had forgotten that breakfast time had passed long before. Within an hour, we were ready to be going out for lunch and then for sight-seeing. A guide was arranged and we set off after havin lunch.

(Searching for food made with refined oil and NOT COCONUT OIL was the first job at hand. This prolly is the only thing we have to be annoyed of while traveling through Kerala)

The places we visited were a Tea Estate view-point (my header image), Munnar Dam, Lake beside the dam and Echo Point. Not much to write about them because, its best seen than being explained about.

Tata Tea company owns almost all the hills of Munnar. Here is a part.

The tea estate Crusader!

Next up is the visit to the Dam and lake.

This lake is on one side of the dam.

Shout from this side and u'll be able to hear voice ringing through the hills!

Like all good things, the wonderful day came to an end. On the way back, we shopped for spices, tea and home-made chocolates, the specialties of Munnar. All had dinner according to their need and taste. I settled with parottas at a roadside stall and some biryani. All were ready to call it a night.

If you’re thinking that not sleeping properly for the previous night had taken its toll, then think again! The spirits were high and a small group decided to go on a midnight walk. Leaving the room by 11 in the night, we braved through the cold and returned to bed by 1.30 am.

My close friend had a function at his place and couldn’t make it to Munnar on the first day. But he joined us by reaching the room early next morning, at around 3.30 am. So, my <i>Long</i> sleep was over. 3.30 in the morning is not a time for roaming. But, we were back to the roads. After a walk for half an hour and covering about 2kms, we found a tea stall. To our amazement, it was busy with packed crowd at such early hours!!

In the Early Morning, after tea

This pic was taken when we were enacting a virtual camp-fire scenario

We could have made a camp-fire, but it was late in the evening when the idea actually hit the brain. So, tht was missed, dearly!

The time scheduled for the bus to leave to leave for Allepey was 6.30 am. The promptness of the group was such that, we left Munnar only at 8 am . So, See you people at Allepey

Catch the rest of the story here :

Trip – Allepey and Trivandrum

Forbiddden Fruit

Whoever devised this phrase, deserves an applause for thinking high. It was a very good foresight on his/her part to have valuable insights into the future generation. I’m grateful to the serpent in the story to have played a very important role and for helping start off a race, which otherwise would have ended up with just two dumb humans. And in today’s world, i believe there are more serpents than one .

By the way, how many of you think that the the Forbidden fruit is actually being considered Forbidden nowadays? By the time a guy or a girl steps into adolescence (much earlier in a few miserable cases), there are close to infinite factors acting as baits for the fresh innocent preys. It is a noteworthy factor that people whom the young ones hold as idols, portray themselves as a bunch of perverts most of the times.

My experiments with myself have been enlightening not just to me, but a few of my close friends too . Seriously speaking, I felt a distinct change in the way I viewed the world, during my late (sweet)16s and early (sexy)17s. The excitement of people telling that I’ve grown up, was dying down and i longed going back to the days when I could play or be with anyone, anytime to my hearts content. (This is reflected in My Blogosphere). Digesting the fact that i can never, ever grow younger, there was no other choice but to have fun, however it may fit in.

It was an illusion of open secret in the society that “fun” in today’s world meant “girls”, if it was not alcohol, smoking and, indecent in common. What made it even more tempting to lay hands upon the forbidden fruit was that everybody were curious – Adam, Eve, Snake and the fruit also, wondering if the old story repeats. As for the answer to this curiosity, the current affairs, movies, media, Internet, email-forwards and sheer imagination should provide interesting answers.

Now, why am I beating up this topic when i too have experienced it? The answer is simple. I strongly feel that people are exposed to the concept of copulation in an unreasonable manner, which makes the very process appear sinful and forbidden to the immature mind. Where as, rationally speaking, it should have been every dutiful parent’s job to make the younger, ignorant generation think logically and understand that everything in life has a proper timing to occur. This probably was the part to be played by the much-disputed ‘Sex Education’. Unfortunately, due to illogical fears of perverting the young minds, the idea met its grave.

Nevertheless, in blogosphere, I suppose we are free to discuss this sensitive matter without bothering about any social hurdle. I wrote this post not to condemn the way this society is, but to look for remedies from my blog-companions, which could solve the problem efficiently and avoid sexual frustration (at least) early in Life. I believe that the remedies-to-be-stated will help anyone who wishes to be a worthy parent.

The Celebration Continues…

Well, I was extremely happy to celebrate my first birthday in WordPress last week, which marked completion of two decades of my ass moving onto Earth. After one week, the celebration continued, rather resumed . Taking up coaching for GATE from past two days sickened me because of 10 hrs of classes in Linear Algebra. But, the silver lining was unexpected and wonderful.

Today, exactly one week later, its one of my closest friend Pavan’s birthday. I was lazy yesternight and missed out on giving the first birthday wish. However, i wished him in the morning and resumed my daily chores. The class-time between morning 9 and evening 4 passed like a millennium, because, we planned to treat our friends together, and the treat was scheduled at 4:30 pm. The story common to all teachers continued today too. Their love for the subject is so immense that even after standing in the class for the whole day (barring a break of one hour,) and having to put up with the sleepy faces of students desperate to leave, the class was extended by 15 minutes . In spite of the loss in time, a break-neck-speed drive for around 10 kms, helped me reach promptly .

The initial greetings between friends viz, “Yeno macha isht latoo, bereavru ella yelli?” was very refreshing to my geek-ified mind . Shortly later, the “gang” assembled. I almost forgot to mention about the venue! Its a good hangout for a couple or a gang. Its called Lumbini Gardens – a lakeside place with some cool eat outs and some fun-filled atmosphere. The cake was ordered – i don’t know what it’s called, but it was a full chocolate – iced base one having a load of cream and cherries .

Me and Pavan cut it together amidst the ever famous song, but we sang it to each other like – “Happy Birthday to us” . All the pomp that a celebration deserves was present and it ended with painting our faces with snow-white cream (hmmm…, my cheek still smells of the butter! ). Light was fading and the curtain-time approached because the girls were eager to sign off for obvious reasons. A part of the gang left and only two were remaining. Me and another close friend of mine – Anupam.

The two of us roamed about the place and came to the entertainment arena. We went for a bull ride which simulates riding an arrogant and powerful bull bent upon throwing you down. Later, we went into a Twister Vortex which, again is a simulator for a gyrator or a rotating chamber. We were about to leave the place when another friend who was supposed to be at the party, called up and said that he’d be joining us in 15 minutes. So, the party extended in low profile for some more time, after which i had a zooming drive back home on a superb road with music thumping from my W810i .

Cast : Me (Su), Pavan, Sharan (Shar), Namitha (Nami), Apoorva (Appu), Anupam Biswas (Anupam ‘Boli’ Bakwas), Ramesh (Rummi, the last person).

Celebration extended

The cards were from Pavan and Apoorva. Namitha did the sweetest thing possible, by adding cake to the party! (Pavan is the taller one)

All Happies!