The Flickering tube ..

Aboard my ship

I'm in my ship .. In my cabin . Sailing in an ocean of virus. I rarely step out ... Only to fetch some essentials . I like my ship. .. And my crew :-) Have books and documentaries for relaxation. .. and music for peace ...

Simple food for nutrition .. and good friends to write to.

The biggest war

I remember my dad telling me stories of 1961 . China had attacked our northern border . The nation was in shock . The then prime minister Pundit Nehru announced the aggression on AIR and urged the nation to stand together against it. And the nation united as never before . our forces were ill equipped to combat such an aggression . people came forward with donations of whichever kind they could afford. The nation was one .. across party lines .. across cast creed religion and else.

Today we are facing another war . A different kind of war. A potent virus called covid-19 is the aggressor. and it knows no boundaries . As I type this, the country has "self imposed" a curfew called "janata curfew" . A desperate effort to keep the aggressor in check. As far as i can see out my window, the nation has united once more . We may have to take more such desperate measures to win this war. And as Winston Churchill once said, This might well be our finest hour .

December 1995

The heat and cyclone is messing the monsoons up somehow. I did not have anything to write today but remembered this old blog . its been a long time since I started writing .. Blogspot was new then . I remember teaching people to make their own blogs :) Now its out of fashion . I started writing back in December 1995 .. paper ofcourse .

Rediscovering Radio

I have been a radio listener since childhood . MW sets .. early ones .. Then an old Sanyo which had good SW reception and my home made antenna ( aluminium curtain rod ) gave me good reception of BBC world service and Voice of America. I was a child then .. the drift was heavy . swish swish crackle crackle.. I had my hand constantly on the fine tune knob :-) . I 've since always played with radio . I still have a Phillips SW/MW/FM handy when the power goes out .

Recently though I have been introduced to an excellent project called radio garden . Its wow . Gives a geo map of all listed radio stations ( streaming of course) and one can just click on any one of them .. Wow thy name is convenience . Although it lacks the old world charm of SW still, you can audio - roam the world in a jiffy .

Now listening to : http://radio.garden/live/cali/praderaonlineradio/

Santiago de Cali (Spanish pronunciation: [sanˈtjaɣo ðe ˈkali]), usually known by its short name Cali, is the capital of the Valle del Cauca department, and the most populous city in southwest Colombia, with an estimated 2,319,655 residents according to 2005-2020/DANE population projections.[2] The city spans 560.3 km2 (216.3 sq mi) with 120.9 km2 (46.7 sq mi) of urban area,[3] making Cali the third-largest city proper and metropolitan area in population and the second-largest city by area in the country. As the only major Colombian city with access to the Pacific Coast, Cali is the main urban and economic centre in southwest Colombia, and has one of the fastest-growing economies in the country.[4][5][6] The city was founded on 25 July 1536 by the Spanish conquistador Sebastián de Belalcázar.

Hey one learns with radio too :-)

Back to my fountain pens now ...

Reading glasses :-)

Hello blog .. hello again. Its been quite some time.I can feel myself getting old and a little (very little) wiser. The new (next) generation has arrived. Even the hair styles are so different . Every body has to sport a beard like Virat Kohli or face prosecution in the court of law ! I say . Its nice to see the androids and the startups though. Slackware linux looks like a 16th century holy relic from here :-) .

Giving me company right now is the afternoon heat , a cup of black coffee and a wierd radio station from Cali - Columbia called "pradera" http://radio.garden/live/cali/praderaonlineradio/ weird but beautiful in its own way . Just like my life is . I cant understand what the woman is singing .. Spanish I guess..

My new reading glasses look nice on me :-)

_________

Back to the old Blog. It's good to write here once in a while. I'm blank today . completely. The usual "wheels and gears" turning in my mind , the constant background thought is not there. Its' like a "pause" of the subconscious mind. The only "thinking" (I think) I did today was calculating ; for how long 500 liters of petrol would last on an average vehicle . That was when I was taking a shower.

Maybe it takes a blank mind to spark creativity . like it takes a true atheist to really understand divinity. Its early morning . complete silence. the world has not yet "started" running . An almost perfect silence.

I want to read a book . fill the mind with some soil and seeds . For the garden of thought to grow again . Listen to some music to sprinkle some water.

No rain/kung fu/green tea ( 3 probable titles .. )

Goa has never been this dry in June! ever! . usually its like a "car wash" this time of the year . It's kinda worrying . I'm not a met fella but this monsoon change seems to be "major" . Anyways , we haven't figured out how to control the climate ( yet) so let's leave that to the earth and the met guys.

This blog apparently has been "read" 80 times on one day of this month ( as per stats) . I wonder if those are crawlers and bots. I really wonder if anyone reads this blog anymore . Years ago comments/hits/stats would motivate me . I'd write more to be more "popular" . It's not the same now. I don't need much motivation . I write because of no reason. Because I feel like writing . Irrespective of the audience ( if any) . Perhaps now, I'm the "writer" .

There certainly is a "soul" to everything in the universe . I don't mean in a spiritual way and certainly not in a religious way . There is higher ground to be achieved in everything we do . Till we have seen that higher ground or even known that it exists, we need motivation and praise and the etc. We try to fit into some mold that we have created with the help and dictation of society. We try to be our "residual self image"

What do the words "kung fu" bring to your mind? images of Bruce Lee ? people flying through the air in cheap Chinese flicks? cats?

Intrestingly enough , In Chinese, the term kung fu (功夫) refers to any skill that is acquired through learning or practice . ( and meditation ?) hmm ... I'm off for a hot shower and a cup of green tea before I wind up for the day with a big book till I fall asleep .. Tonight its gonna be "discovery of India" by Nehru. I like that book .

A blog post :)

People still do read blogs!! :) 2005 ,I guess was the heyday of blogging in n around these places. Was something new till other things came up . Orkut was new too :) . Things have changed quite a lot since then . Thats the nature of the web . Things change. That reminds me of the matrix verse .. kinda goes like "There are somethings that change and there are some that never change" . One thing that has been around for a long long time is IRC . Relatively unchanged and vibrant as ever. And of course things like email which has hardly changed.

Phew!! enough of that talk .. Its good to know that people do drop in here . Which means people still do have time for something like "a blog" :) . Guess I'll catch some sleep now. ...

Lost In Time

Coffee .. at midnight could be a divine sensation.. but is a bad idea if you want to get up early :P . It's the midnight break .. preparing to sleep in some time .. shuffling through some radio stations .. I found an interesting one .. a 24x7 piano station .. all played by a molecular biologist called Tar Viturawong .. hmm strange .. my midnight background score .. And whats for foreground? :P .. An old favourite of mine .. in times of nostalgia ..

Did you ever wonder how the internet looked like 30 years ago? . check this archive http://textfiles.com/directory.html . it's nearing the end of my midnight break time!! .. so I'll hit the sack and hope to have some good dreams .. considering that we all spend half of our lives sleeping .. :)

It's the searing Indian summer . At times it's like a sauna. The pipe slows down during daytime .. I'd guess people are face boooking away in their offices on their "Android home" ..lame toy .. zzzz

Flashes of the last decade flash by in my mind . there was hardly any internet then .. here... I still have the old 56k (7K) dialup modem lying around in a box. That is how we'd check mail! and write it beforehand in a client (mozilla mail) and send it all together to save on telephone bills .. :) . Think I'll have a glass of cold water and get back ..

Midnight Static ....

I'm just about done for the day ... Its midnight . I switch my trusty old short-wave receiver .. Just finished updating my little radio program ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/raydio/ ) that i wrote coz i just could not find anything nice and command line to play my fav internet radio. But its midnight .. and its time to stretch that old radio antenna and catch some AIR ( all India radio aka akashwani) :P . An old bollywood number is trying to get through the static ! :) static of the cell phone towers .. wifi devices .. etc . something that the humble shortwave receiver never did encounter till now . -- goodnight --

Been a while !

Been a while .. Orkut came and went .. then came face book and looked overloaded from the start .. I'm not much of a "face booky social net-worker" . I'm more of the classic blogger to the extent that I'd write my posts on vi ! .

I still don't quite understand why people would create tons of pictures and mostly pointless info on a daily basis .. or tweet like every single thing they do ... but that's me .. It's like the classic content is a Unix manual and face book is a 1000 page windows guide including 990 pages of screen shots .. :P .. Speaking of Unix , I've started a new blog at http://nixalley.blogspot.in .. will be dropping in here occasionally but I guess I'd be more frequent in that alley :) .

semicolon ..

kinda tired of blogging for the moment .. don't think I'll write here often .. thanks for the people who've read and appreciated ... :)

Rock-Illusion

Its been a while since I've been at any serious GIG .. Well sometimes I think I'm getting old .. Last saturday good old yaminikant called up .. all charged up about the passes he had to this "rock show" . I was pretty dazed and lazed ;) till about 5:30 .. I thought of givin this "rock show" a try .. especially since I had a pass off a scrach-card during my last bottle of DSP black. We ended up at high tech city with passes to two different "rock shows" .. One of them was not really a GIG ( Strings -- that band from across the border) the other one was "battle of the bands .. or DSP Rockilution as they call it .. The choice was obvious ..

The Hyderabad Crowd is pretty sedate .. and I'd say a little on the "we want.. it's my life" types .. Anyways .. I tried to create a mosh pit with some guys .. but just didn't happen .. The bands were ok . The second performance was worth the time .. They all had pretty complex names .. like .. " righteous confessions" and stuff like that . duh! So thats that .. After Countless GIG's , and after having done a GIG myself with a "one month" band we called "paranoia" .. Here I am .. All my feelings about that show summed up in one verse "Been there .. done that ... "

Till the next time ..

Bombs and Biryani

Its been a year since I've been living in this City. I Don't really find a destructive potential in the population.. certailnly not like Mumbai or Kolkata. I just cant figure out why this sleepy little 'town' has been a terror target for the past couple of months . Now that I'm 'almost' a hyderabadi .. I have a little concern for this city .. Somebody should get there in the slums .. in the Old city and get to the root of this .. Anyways .. A flyover collapsed yesterday .. Sabotage? .. I'd rather say 'lousy civil engineering'
or 'adultrated materials' .. Life's going on quite fine .. otherwise .

I'll get back to perl and then hit some restaurant for a good fillin lunch ..

My Sacrifice

Hello my friend, we meet again
It's been awhile, where should we begin?
Feels like forever
Within my heart are memories
Of perfect love that you gave to me
Oh, I remember

When you are with me, I'm free
I'm careless, I believe
Above all the others we'll fly
This brings tears to my eyes
My sacrifice

We've seen our share of ups and downs
Oh how quickly life can turn around
In an instant
It feels so good to reunite
Within yourself and within your mind
Let's find peace there

back to the yellow

Was speeding on my 16bhp baby when i sensed something snap .. And guess what it was ! The clutch cable .. If u 've been a biker , u'd know that a clutch cable snapping in the middle of the traffic is not a very nice thing to happen .. So i made it to office on low gear .. and called up the service center .. Sometimes i tend to forget that i'm livin in India .. and There is very little/ no concept of provisioning here .. so i got a prompt reply from the other side " Sorry sir , we dont have clutch cables in stock right now .. "

So i'm basically grounded for a day .. and back to the yellow kamikaze's :) thats that ..

Is everyone Orkutized ??

Dont see much on the blog front now .. I guess people are busy on Orkut .. Talking about some (mostly pointless ) stuff .. I'm as usual ... Chilling out .. code and wiki .. one major thing is gonna happen in my life .. Well .. let it unfold .. i'll keep my fingers crossed ..

The Blog Ban by the Al Congress Qaieda has slowed down the bloggers i guess and the timely entry of orkut has contributed .. certainly ... I wonder if we can have some personal space on orkut .. that would be nice .. anyways .. gotta get back to ... what ? dunno .. gotta get back to getting back to getting back ..

hehe ..

cya

The last grain ...

I just heard the news today

It seems my life is going to change
I closed my eyes, begin to pray
Then tears of joy stream down my face

With arms wide open
Under the sunlight
Welcome to this place
I'll show you everything
With arms wide open ...

Well I don't know if I'm ready
To be the man I have to be
I'll take a breath, I'll take her by my side
We stand in awe, we've created life

With arms wide open
Under the sunlight
Welcome to this place
I'll show you everything
With arms wide open
Now everything has changed
I'll show you love
I'll show you everything
With arms wide open ....

If I had just one wish
Only one demand
I hope he's not like me
I hope he understands
That he can take this life
And hold it by the hand
And he can greet the world
With arms wide open...

Back from the ban ..

Have not been blogging these days coz my ISP had not lifted the ban on blogger untill recently .. Very strange .. and whats gonna be even stranger is that this government gets another term !!

Anyways .. Apart from many of my devices blowing up due to a short circuit at the meter , nothing major has happened .. Couple of new projects .. Webkrellm is my weekend project which aims at providing machine stats anywhere on the net .. (i.e. on port 80 )

As far as music is concerned , gotta get my guitar back from goa .. which i'm gonna .. on the 7th of september .. have been listening to a lot of joe satriani these days .. also found a stack of old CD's with a "raddiwala" and they turned out to be Yngwie Malmsteen 's hehe .. so bought them .. bulk .. :)

Thats that .. i'm diggin at www.digg.com right now ..
and listening to "The Who -- Baba O'rielly "

Joining the Flock ? ;)

Its yet another browser .. This one called Flock .. another mozilii ;) ( from the planet mozillus) . surprisingly , this one seems to be pretty stable and hype free like many other mozilii . It also has some nice features .. like integrated blogging .. i'm writin this post from within the browser :) i.e. without using the blogger editor .

life otherwise is good ... thinking of switching my ISP. Oh! and my new palm tungsten | E is the current digital darlin of mine .. Have loaded some old favourites on it .. including cashacc and space trader :) . Thinking of "flashing " the palm with linux . I'll so that someday .. Right now, i'm listening to Shoutcast radio ;) and drinking hot coffee and reading digg.com ..

later dudes ,

Testing Flock

Flock has some nice features .. including easy blogging .. now .. whats a lynx user doing with flock? well .. times change ..

Crossroads ..

Its been a long time since i've blogged .. a lot has happened .. most remarkably the protests against reservation and against an opportunist government .. Its started raining here in Hyd :-) some respite from the seating heat . And I'm moving in to a new apartment .. And , Now against all company policies, MY DEsktop RUNS SLACKWARE 10.2 .. hehe .. and i'm typin this in VI .. good ol' VI .. and thats that..

Working with XEN and OpenSolaris 10 . Doin some containers stuff .. Sometimes you seem to stand on crossroads .. When something tells you that your life is gonna change .. that u otta grow up . Finally .. Grow up .. and thats exactly what i DONT wanna do .. I wanna stay as i am.. Freakin out .. Takin every day as a new one .. squeezing the last drop from every moment .

Right now Ozzy Osbourne is blasting -Diary of a madman into my ears and it does feel good .. think i gotta go and do some kingfisher .. and hit the sack . maybe watch some discovery channel or something .. The world gets stranger each day i live .. May be Adapting to that Strange world is what they call "experience" duh ! .. screw that .. i'm hitting the next pub and unwinding .. those who wanna join can meet me at the Jubilee hills checkpost . Adeos!

natures oven ..

Its 40.5 degrees Cent. I'm feeling like i'm in the middle of the Sahara .. I've got a sore throat and the heat is not helping at all .. On the brighter side , i've been writing some good stuff , which allows me to take the day off and hit the sack . But Should I ? ..
. Anyways .. Think i should go home early and hit the sack .. The girls from mumbai have finally finished their project , which is hosted at http://grabsterz.googlepages.com ..
And thats that .. bye for now .. (i'm a little irritable today)

Zzzzzz ...

Its well past 2 in the morning .. And I'm counting sheep .. Maybe because I'm missin someone .. had been talking to olivier , my french "skype friend ".. Its getting hotter in Hyderabad , its 36 deg. cent . now !! BBC is crackling int he background and the ceiling fan is blasting hot air at full speed .

I installed Slackware Linux on Issac's machine today , boy he's thrilled with KDE . I love to give people the "red pill" of computing reality :) . morpheous eh ? .. nah! just a small time programmer .. I'm kinda running low on confidence these days .. maybe because i've been writing "not so good code" .. just a phase I guess .. That's that .. Think I gotta chit the sack now!

cya .

back to base ...

Spent the last weekend in Goa . I've started Rediscovering Goa . I'vew lived there most of my life but i've been in some kinda shell... College , small bars , the linux community , a few beaches and a few good buddies .. thats was Goa for me
.. Anywayz .. i'm back to Hyderabad .. and back to Xen and perl :) . Yesterday was kinda special .. We (Tom, Jason, Bala and me) hit "Ezee Ryder" and had a couple of pitchers .. My LIRC (http://lirc.org) project is still in the deep freeze .. just cant find all the components here .. hey did i forget to mention the "Holi" thing? .. we (both the Ram 's , kiran, etc .. ) had Tom and Jason all coloured up and they actually enjoyed being a part of it ! :)

Gotta get up and get to work .. Think i should try makin a wireless keyboard .. This cable is a pain ..

What time is it eh ?

Its 4 again! :) .. And I'm right here on the desk .. Doing the stuff I always do . Am I on a night shift? NO.. I'm on the worst schedules of all .. " Flexi Time" which means .. I don't have any fixed timings .. Which also means that I could be always "playin " or I could be always at "work" .. Anyways .. Have been reading about insomnia a lot .. Hope I don't turn out one .

The night is sweet though .. Guy de Maupassant would have enjoyed this kinda spooky atmosphere .. To keep my eyelids from huggin each other , Slayer -War Ensemble is piping through the headphones. .. and to keep my mind sane , a large mug of coffee is waiting to be devoured. Am I writing sense ? dunno .. but don't expect absolute sense at 4 in the mornin .. he he.. Think that's for now .. Andy Stern ( The CEO of my company) is on a India Visit .. And will be in Hyderabad tomorrow .. And I don't want him to suggest a lifetime supply of Deo's as my performance bonus so I'll go home and have a bath ..

Serenity at 4 AM ...

Its 4 in the morning .. Just met Vickram online .. The city is asleep .. Just the street lights and the occasional milk van or inter state truck. Jethro Tull - "Aqualung" is playing through my headphones .. The AC vent is humming overhead .. I can hear each strum of the guitar strings .. I'm sleepy as the code flickers on the screen .. Sometimes I wonder if the screen is tired of staring at me .. .. There is no concept of "Today " and "Tomorrow" .. Sometimes I start feeling like an Android .. Floating in the vast vacuum of space .. With a Slackware Linux Box and lots of code .. Like being in one of Asimov's classics .. ..

One thing which I can almost "feel" is the peace ... Like a membrane of "peace" all over my cubicle .. er .. Spaceship? .. Anyways .. Guys .. I'll get on to warp 1 now .. See ya in the periphery of "pollux" ( which is in the constellation Gemini of course ..) .. .. ... ... ... ... ... .. No its not a dream ..

Fishing in the 128k stream

I 've been listening to a lot of oldies these days .. Thanks to Radio Colorado which streams (128Kbps ) the good old 80's and 70's using a Shoutcast server .. And so my daily dose of music NOW includes Jimi Hendrix, The Beetles, Eric Clapton, Janis Joplin , Simon & Garfunkel ( Adwait and others please dont hate me ;) ..) Anyways, its good to just relax sometimes .. And focus on somethng deep and blue .. like Xen ;)

Gotta get my Guitar from goa before the strings rust out !! .. and strun om some Bob Dylan classics ...Thats all for now ..

"chicken Azkaban " .. he he

Spent a lot of good "saturday time" at office playing around with "perl-SMTP" modules and got back home kinda tired .. To unwind, we decided to cook . and cook we did!!! the recipie was as follows :

THIS RECIPIE IS LICENCED UNDER THE GPL

I) open a chilled pint of beer .. and down it .. get a little high and go to the superstore .. get godrej real good chicken , some onions... and get inspired by wandering around the pretty females at the store ( dont miss that!!)

II) get home and marinate the chicken with some lime and rum? ;) .. whilst doing that , fish for DVD's in the heap of disks .. find something strange like "harry potter and the prisoners of azkaban" and play that .. open another pint of kingfisher ...

III) after 3 pints , fry some onion' n' garlic in a pot add a bit of all masalas you can find, and simmer on low flame for another 2 pints .. then look around the place and find some remaining old monk XXX rum .. add a dash of that .. and simmer ..

IV) open the lid .. praise yourself .. and say " lets call this Azkaban" .. and eat of course ..
( calling the insurance agency wouldnt be a bad idea .. )

so long then ....

without TV for a month

Its been a month since i've shifted into my new apartment .. Has anything changed? .. Yes ofcourse .. I dont have an Idiot box here!! .. I sure miss the news and the Discovery channel .. but not having the TV has its own benefits .. You get back to that old hobby of yours called "reading" .. Right now i'm in the process of finishing two books.. one called " the dtipping point and the other called " one night at the call center" ( the Chetan Bhagat stuff) ..

Am i planning to get a TV? ... hmmm .. NO.. i guess i'll just spend time reading books , reading code and writing code .. As far as personal projects are concerned, i've put the distro thing in deep freeze for a while .. i'll thaw it on saturday maybe .. .. Back to work ;) ya lazy bums ..

A close shave ( literally) with a DVD

It's yet another monday and i drag myself out of my comfy bed. Just moved into this new place a nice studio apartment . My AMD machine is humming .. ( an extra fan ;) ) and a cool morning breeze blowing through the window .. I get to the bathroom and spalsh water on my face .. its rough .. weekeend stubs .. i need to shave .. and suddenly it dawns upoun me that i dont have a mirror .. crap..

The plumber was supposed to fix one yesterday! . So i walk around the room... foam on my face .. a dvd is laying on the cabinet .. hmm whats it .. suse 10.0 . .. i pick it up and it reflects my jaw nicely .. ( i look good in a dvd he he) .. i dont use suse anyways , so i tape the dvd above the wash basin .. and have a nice shave .. another crazy li'll thing .. then i search for all unwanted and bad disks .. and make a mirror outta them .. my 15GB mirror .. he he.. ok .. enough of crazy talk .. i'll get back to work ..

Don't blame me for 2006 .. I did nothing ;-)

Yes I did nothing .. People racing on the roads blowing their horns like its was "end of days " , all the news channels flooded with "so called" party clippings from around the country and some desperate crimes .. And every one was doing their best to bring in 2006 .. As if it were some mammoth sitting in one place , refusing to move ..

I plonked on my bed, a couple of chilled Kingfishers by my side , and tuned in to the looney tunes show on cartoon network .. It was one of the best weekends I've ever had .. Occasionally I would peep out of the window to have a look at my gleaming new blood red Avenger by midnight I was in an eternal bliss .. When the clock struck 12 people went crazy on the streets .. I could hear the soft muffle of firecrackers from my heavenly bed .. And then I just switched to VH1 and fell asleep ...

And so, I did not contribute towards dragging , towing, pushing( or whatever) 2006 .. But next morning was yet another Sunday .. and I'm still doing the same work and still drinking beer and still writing code ..

skype on slackware .. and the hungarian priest

Installed skype on my slack box on friday .I had to test it, so i ran a random search of skype users online .There was a person called gregory from hungary.. I dialled in . After a couple of rings a coarse "hello" came from the other end of the line .. " i'm gregory .. how are u " the talk continued as i asked about my voice quality and so on .. then it steered towards religion .
Gregory is a priest . Finally after about 15 minutes of taking miscellaneous things , i ended the call. My skype test was over . Strange how small the world has become . its 2:00 am now. I've become an owl :-) have been wandering around wikipedia all day . Will hit the sack now .. gn.

... and cigarette butts

On a long and lonesome highway, east of Omaha
You can listen to the engine's
moanin' out it's one old song
You can think about the woman or the girl
You knew the night before
But your thoughts will soon be wandering
The way they always do
When you're ridin' sixteen hours
And there's nothin' much to do
And you don't feel much like ridin'
You just wish the trip was through
Here I am, On the road again
There I am, Up on the stage
There I go, Playin' star again
There I go, Turn the page
So you walk into this restaurant
Strung out from the road
And you feel the eyes upon you
As you're shakin' off the cold
You pretend it doesn't bother you
But you just want to explode
Yeah, most times you can't hear 'em talk
But other times you can
All the same old cliché's:
"Is it woman? Is it man?"
And you always seem outnumbered
You don't dare make a stand
Make your stand
Here I am, On the road again
There I am, Up on the stage
Here I go, Playn' star again
There I go, Turn the page
Out there in the spotlight, you're a million miles away
Every ounce of energy, you try and give away
As the sweat pours out your body, like the music that you play
Later in the evenin' as you lie awake in bed
With the echoes of the amplifiers ringin' in your head
You smoke the day's last cigarette
Rememberin' what she said
What she said
Here I am, on the road again
There I am, up on the stage
Here I go, playn' star again
There I go, turn the page
And there I go, turn that page

FOSS.IN ... FOSS.OUT

FOSS.IN was nice .. met Alan Cox there !! man he's one heck of a guy .. not an ounce of "attitude" . There were a lot of our ilug-goan's too!! DP, Fred and others .. And i made friends with this guy called Sweekar from HP . Had lots of beer together ( wonder what beer tastes like .. i havent had beer in 2 weeks!!) he he .. and thats that ..

Right now i'm going home and building a linux system for my self .. i'm just fed up of the distro business .. except slackware , there seems nothing which is an "innocent" Linux distro .. ( should i say a "virgin" linux distro ? he he .. ) and i've started cooking .. yes i have started cooking .. i dodnt know exactly what .. but i cook and i eat .. and i'm alive and i pump iron every morning .. hmm mama's boy?

Accidentally "five point someone" :-)

It was a Wednesday evening. Somehow I had this urge to eat chicken Xacuti . Now that's a tough find in Hyderabad I guess. So I decided to go to an Andhra restro and eat some "natu kodi pulusu " .. Chaitra is one place where u get good authentic Andhra food . I reached chaitra at about 7 . The place was closed . The watchman standing outside signaled at a small sign which read 7:30-10:30 . I just strolled down road number 3 , my seemingly insatiable appetite for Xacuti (or similar) fading away.

On the left was a book shop called "akshara" . I decided to have a peek . Spent 15 minutes browsing through the biography section . Just when I was bored enough to leave the place, I saw a book in another shelf called "five point someone" . The title seemed familiar . I read a couple of pages and my xacuti dreams just shelved themselves in my mind . I had to read this one .. now! . I picked up the book and sped back home . Crashed on the bed and started reading ... a few chapters later . I found myself in the book .. All those crazy years at college just flashed in my mind .. I finished the book in the wee hours of Thursday . I spent the next couple of hours (till sunrise) on a nostalgia trip with black tea and a couple of goldflakes. Dunno why but I still can relate to my college "roller coaster" years to this book ..

Geek nursery rhyme ..

Alan Cox is coming down , coming down , coming down ..
Alan Cox is coming down so all geeks be ready .

He's gonna speak on kernel mods kernel mods .. kernel mods ,
He's gonna speak on kernel mods , so all geeks be ready ..

.. Alan is gonna be down for FOSS.IN (http://foss.in/2005) in
bangalore (29th Nov - 2nd Dec). Good time for asking those kernel module questions or things about the ac- tree or things about his beard .. :-) I wonder what happened to our Good ol Richard Stallman . He never gets the respect he really deserves i guess ..

And BTW, the old home page i mentioned is HERE

From The FOSS.IN international speakers page :

He is probably one of the most recognisable faces in the FOSS world, and at the same time one of the most respected names, as well. His contributions to Linux rank with those of all the greats out there, and that includes Linus Torvalds.

He has been the official kernel maintainer, and little happens in the Linux kernel today without him having some say in it.

He is an outspoken critic of the DMCA, and has vowed not to set a foot on the USA as long as it exists.

He is the king of his castle, and has his wife's permission to say so.

Conferences and events in India have tried for the past half decade to have him come here, but FOSS.IN/2005 is the first one he has ever agreed to come to.

He is Alan Cox.

Blopulation explosion

DP has quoted some post from puneet's blog! .. man blogs can get people together i guess .. Now that the prolific blogger Puneet 's blog is well known , i would like to call it the "Dadar station " of blogs :)) ..who's the andheri station? well Uttara's blog i guess :) anyways puneet , i feel nice to be the one who introduced you to blogger .. what happened to gogoi's ( as g[ay]? as gogoi) ??? :))
And I guess i can call myself a veteren blogger now .. because i used to maintain a "homepage" when i was in college .. u guys can find it now at (http://ajay.unsafe.net) circa 2000 .. anyways ,keep up the good work bloggers ..

DP, the picture on your blog (of yourself i guess) will fetch you a good price in the amazonian wood sculpture market .

The Newborn ...

It was raining heavily , i scrambled into a rickshaw and pushed off to paradize circle. The place in hyderabad (secundrabad) where all the computer hardware retailers seem to be concentrated .. I already had in mind what i would buy .. an hour later i was on my way home with a sparkling new AMD Sempron 2500+ processor, a new MSI K8M800 mother board , a samsung DVD combo and transcend 256 MB DDR 400 RAM .. and ofcourse an optical mouse and a keyboard and a cabinet . all on the bed .. clink clamp .. a push here .. connect the SMPS .. half an hour later .. the machine was ready .. had a copy of slackware 10 with me.. loaded that .. so right now i have a AMD Sempron machine which runs Slackware 10 .. (2.6.26) with some kewl fetures in the via K8M800 .. and BTW, the kickass graphics are provided by a s3 Unichrome IGP ... all in all , i love this new baby of mine ..

DARE TO SLACK ????

Low mans lyric?

So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have you found? The same old fears.
Wish you were here.

1600 Kilometers ...

Capitalizing on the dussera holiday, JS and other folks from office decided to hit goa. And When it's Goa , I'm the default host .. so i was in . We decided to drive the 800 odd kilometers from hyderabad. (Quite an adventurous thing to do) in the wee hours of the 12th morning we were off in an Indica . the drive was smooth leaving aside some bad stretches of road . Goa was fun as usual.. Sun Sand sea and booze ( well i missed the other S this time ;) ) .. Steaks and beer and feaking out with breezers ,Watching dolphins in the baga sea ... Before we knew it was time to go .

We set out at day break on Sunday morning. Cruising comfortably .. JS decided to take another route this time .. Somehow it felt a little longer to me . It was dark 8ish when we were deep into Karnataka . A highway bridge was out .. We were stuck in he middle of nowhere !! Tired a little high on the port wine bottle I was sipping throughout the journey .. WE inquired with the locals and traced another route .. This one was like one of NASA's mars rover test sites .. but we drove through it .. Finally reached a highway .. the most fucked up thing about Indian highways is that on a smooth stretch of a couple miles there will be a sudden death trench waiting for you .. no signals no reflecting tape .. nothing. We hit such a bump when we were about 190 KMs from Hyderabad. BOOM .. the car spun out of control .. When we were back to our senses , there was a long stretch of engine oil on the road .. and a shattered gearbox in our car . . We were stuck in the middle of nowhere!! and to make matters worse a couple of drunk bikers were hovering around . I got out of the car and just gave them a stare .. Mentally preparing myself . Wouldn't be a tough job to whack a couple of drunk freaks. At that moment i felt the need of people like manoj (the khnadola goon) and alex Had Alex been there !! ha! He'd define "beat the shit outta someone". The guys finally sensed trouble waiting on the other end and disappeared into the darkness ..

We scrambled all our luggage and waited for "any" mode of transport. Finally a AP transport bus arrived .. drunk people everywhere !! people on the bus floor !! .. made it to hyderabad somehow .. grabbed a rickshaw to banjara hills and crashed .. when I woke up it was morning .. each muscle in my body was aching .. So here i am .. on the road again . Here I am up on the stage .. Here I am playing star again .. and here i go .. Turn the Page ..

living life in "D minor"

When I look into your eyes I can see a love restrained But darlin' when I hold you Don't you know I feel the same 'Cause nothin' lasts forever And we both know hearts can change
And it's hard to hold a candle In the cold November rain We've been through this such a long long time Just tryin' to kill the pain But lovers always come and lovers always go An no one's really sure who's lettin' go today Walking away
If we could take the time to lay it on the line I could rest my head Just knowin' that you were mine All mine So if you want to love me then darlin' don't refrain
Or I'll just end up walkin' In the cold November rain

Digital Fortress .. ..duh!!

I've been reading Dan Browns "Digital Fortress" over the weekend . The book revolves around an imaginary super computer developed by the NSA called "TRANSLTR" and a unbreakable algorithm called "Digital Fortress" . Its a good read and more than the technology reflected in the book (Which has quite a few flaws) , the plot is nice. Its got all the "masala" for a Hollywood blockbuster. As far as storytelling is concerned, The author does fine but he's no match for masters like Mario Puzo.

Besides that , I really did not do much . Was just lazing around, reading the "deccan chronicle".. (the local news paper ) . These days are kindof boring :( .. Think i should get a Linux box as soon as possible .... Sometime everything seems to go wrong .. These are one of those days :) ..

For Beer Lovers ...

Modern brewing began for India in the early days of the British Empire — the mid-1700s. The demand for beer in the hot Indian climate by the British administrators and the troops was so great that it led to the creation of a completely new style of beer by George Hodgson in his London brewery — India Pale Ale. IPA is a strong, highly hopped ale designed to survive the five month ocean voyage to India without spoiling. India Pale Ale was shipped with every voyage for over a century and became very popular in Britain and North America.

In the late 1820s Edward Dyer moved from England to set up the first brewery in India at Kasauli (later incorporated as Dyer Breweries in 1855) in the Himalaya mountains, near Shimla, producing Asia's first beer called Lion. The brewery was soon shifted to nearby Solan (close to the British summer capital Shimla), as there was an abundant supply of fresh springwater there. The Kasauli brewery site was converted to a distillery which Mohan Meakin Ltd. still operates. Dyer set up more breweries at Shimla, Murree, Rawalpindi and Mandalay.

Another entrepreneur, H G Meakin, moved to India and bought the old Shimla and Solan Breweries from Edward Dyer and added more at Ranikhet, Dalhousie, Chakrata, Darjeeling and Kirkee. In 1937, when Burma was separated from India, the company was restructured with its Indian assets as Dyer Meakin Breweries, a public company on the London Stock Exchange. Following independence, in 1949 N.N. Mohan took over management of the company and the name was changed to Mohan Meakin Ltd. The company continues to produce beer across India to this day and Lion is still available in northern India. The beer had been renamed as "Golden Eagle" and is available in some parts of India.

Yesterday night I found this very brand of beer in one of the local wine shops .. I bought a couple of beers back home . The beer is very mild and smooth .. much smoother than "kingfisher mild".

Here comes the Legal "Hafta" ...

When you get that nice pristine Offer letter, you never seem to consider an element called "tax" . The tax blues strike you only when you notice it on the pay slip .. Anyways .Paying tax is not a bad thing . Paying tax in India , the land of Scams is not avery good thing either !! . So right now i have some tax blues .. enough reason to down a kingfisher on my way back home .. ;)

I've kindof started coding the google talk perl client , but since i only work on it in my spare time , i really dont know how much time its going to take me to finish it . A "beta" should come out by next month ;) . Things are fine otherwise .. I'm getting used to the "city of Navabs" . Should be assembling an AMD machine by the next month .. Just cant live without a Linux box to happily hack with .

Cooperating with Windoze XPee

Its Friday evening .. I'm one of the few people left on this floor .Have not decided what to do with the weekend .. just chilling out .. Had a nice week , doing some perl and playing with some virtual machines. I may go to "easy rider" but the music sucks before 10:00 . So i'll stay back and so some more stuff with linux. The XP allergy has reached maximum.

I t has been about a month since i've been using Windose XP and i had to get myself some Linux :) SO here i am typing away on Cooperative linux .. Running over Windows XP !! :) And guess what i'm listening too!!! U2 !! ha! there's nothing else on this hard disk .. borrowed some u2 albums(the best i could get :( ) from the guy in the next cubicle .. .. nothing much .. good bye to August ..

..oh!! and i'm using Google talk from now on (actually i'm thinking of writing a small perl client for Google talk .. any suggestions what i should call it ? ;) ) Its based on the XMPP protocol and by far the best IM i've come across .. ( i dont care for F****ng avatars and other paraphanalia)

How many humans can u spot?

a) None

b) I think they are form planet Megadeth

c) Chill man .. just have some more vodka..

If you can not view the image here, paste the following link in your browser window

http://www.ajay.o-f.com/images/bar1.jpg

This picture was taken during the annual headbangerz ball , Jan 2005 Goa

Turn the page

Its yet another Independence day ! . And this time i'm celebrating it in Hyderabad. I'm actually living the metallica number "Turn the page" . The days at Iqara are now fading away and its a new page in the book of my life . The guys here at Interpath are just KEWL . The best part was the H.R. attitude! . Its a phenominal shift from the Iqara H.R. politics. These guys really care about the employees and do stuff to boost morale . I guess Iqara H.R. needs a study tour of this place.

Anyways , My first week at Hyderabad seems good, There are no problems as such . I'm missin Mumbai though .. despite of the crowds the floods.. There is something magical about the city . And thats that.. here I am .. sitting on this neat desk , trying to work on some CPU capping kernel patches .. and the H.R. manager out here has planned for an Independence gig at his place tonight .. so .. there I go .. Turn the page

Comfortably Numb !

Adwait brought a virus along with him ;) and the virus found a nice host (me!).I coughed away most of yesterday morning.. Was so fed up that i downed a bottleof benadrly "bottoms up" !! an hour later , i was feeling light headed. .. pupils dialated.. seeing colourful trails of things going around me. I somehow dragged myself home .. at home i had yet another drag of codine!! the cough had disappeared but the codine had'nt! i was COMFORTABLY numb! :) i could "see" gunshots from the HBO movie playing although my eyes were closed.. i passed out on the bean bag. As i'm sitting here on my desk, its 11:00 in the morning.. and i'm still in the grasp of codine.. i'm still flying high! .. the Xterm on which i'm typing this is also looking a little blurred..

"Monday" - The king of Monotony

Its monday mornin .. after the repeated wails of my cell phone trying to wake me up .. i got an eye open and just slumped back in my comfy bed. when the phone wailed again it was 9:00 !! and i was in "soup" . so i rushed for a quick shave+bath+brush combo ;) . and here i am . back at office . I plan to fly to goa somewhere in the first week of june. This place is looking quite monotonous .

I think i have to do something special today evening.Adwait is suppsed to land in mumbai and that means yet another roller coaster ! . Gotta get some southpark burnt .. its my staple entertainment . The AMD i planned to assemble has to wait .. becoz the bonus does not seem to be comming this month .:(

anyways .. here i am on the road again .. here i go .. TURN THE PAGE .

A Roller Coaster Week

I'ts late evening. most have left for home .. I'm sitting here in office trying to figure out some algorithm . Its been an amazing week . All that exitement and all that fun . DP(Diabolic Preacher from Ilug Goa) was down .. and I ended spending 1000 bucks for a ticket to the Joe Satriani show .. woah! too expensive i guess .. Although the stage was too far away, we still had a good time , and i DID manage to headbang for some of the heavier tunes! . In the end we were like typical college students with 20 odd bucks of combined capital :)) .

I had my second free dominos pizza ! . this time the delivery was 5 minutes late and without garlic bread. Lucky me. And its friday again and that means hit the sack with discovery channel and some kingfisher ;)

Timeout Mumbai ;)

its the name of a magazine which bunu (my best friend) dropped at my place. I noticed it when i was laying down on the bed staring at the ceiling .. something was beneath my arm .. timeout mumbai . .It gives a glance into what mumbai hep life is going towards. Its a well organised magazine with lots of useful bits of info. I liked the TV schedules and forthcomming event listings the most . They were nicely laid out so that once can plan well in advance . A large portion of the magazine seems to be aligned towards the tastes of the upper class.. People who have more than just a bank account .. its for people who own the bank :)) .

For me the 25 rupee booklet provided some good dream material. for me to dream about those expensive restaurants and that lavish lifestyle. Afterall dreams are fuel for success .. Hardwork ofcourse is the tool . (atleast it should be!)

The Flickering tube ..

Saturday, October 31, 2020

Aboard my ship

Sunday, March 22, 2020

The biggest war

Thursday, June 20, 2019

December 1995

Saturday, December 15, 2018

Rediscovering Radio

Sunday, October 07, 2018

Reading glasses :-)

Thursday, August 21, 2014

_________

Tuesday, July 01, 2014

No rain/kung fu/green tea ( 3 probable titles .. )

Friday, October 18, 2013

A blog post :)

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Lost In Time

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Monday, April 01, 2013

Midnight Static ....

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Been a while !

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

semicolon ..

Monday, October 08, 2007

Rock-Illusion

Monday, September 10, 2007

Bombs and Biryani

Monday, February 19, 2007

My Sacrifice

Monday, October 30, 2006

back to the yellow

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Is everyone Orkutized ??

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

The last grain ...

Monday, August 28, 2006

Back from the ban ..

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Joining the Flock ? ;)

Testing Flock

Friday, June 02, 2006

Crossroads ..

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

natures oven ..

Monday, April 03, 2006

Zzzzzz ...

Friday, March 17, 2006

back to base ...

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

What time is it eh ?

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Serenity at 4 AM ...

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Fishing in the 128k stream

Monday, February 06, 2006

"chicken Azkaban " .. he he

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

without TV for a month

Monday, January 09, 2006

A close shave ( literally) with a DVD

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Don't blame me for 2006 .. I did nothing ;-)

Monday, December 19, 2005

skype on slackware .. and the hungarian priest

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

... and cigarette butts

Friday, December 09, 2005

FOSS.IN ... FOSS.OUT

Friday, November 25, 2005

Accidentally "five point someone" :-)

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Geek nursery rhyme ..

Monday, November 07, 2005

Blopulation explosion

Thursday, November 03, 2005

The Newborn ...

Monday, October 24, 2005