tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73648712024-03-07T09:58:42.448+05:30The Sceptic DotThis blog's a general
trash/frustration/joy/anger/boredom outlet.Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.comBlogger67125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-60035430915917552832012-05-14T20:46:00.004+05:302012-05-14T20:46:59.487+05:30It's Heroku time<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Heroku is sweet. Was super fun to build a tiny little website for my parents as a toy padrino app. So here I present <a href="http://www.snehahospital.in/">Sneha Hospital</a><br />
<br />
In case you're interested, I've also put up the source on <a href="https://github.com/kashyapp/snehahospital">my Github Repo</a>. Doesn't amount to much but anyway :D</div>Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-49827036876305513732011-10-01T11:06:00.001+05:302011-10-01T11:06:43.893+05:30Loved Linus' 3.0 announcement<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/5/29/204">https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/5/29/204</a><br />
<br />
Stale news now, but loved the email having only just read it.</div>
Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-28977610615710961122011-07-25T23:32:00.002+05:302011-07-25T23:33:33.016+05:30Meld for SubversionTo get meld to work as an external diff tool for subversion requires a tiny little hack
Create a script <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">meld.sh</span>
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">
#!/bin/sh<br/>
shift<br/>
meld "$@"<br/>
</span></blockquote>
That's it.
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">$ svn diff --diff-cmd meld.sh</span></blockquote>
Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-73480474496486005682011-07-25T23:15:00.000+05:302011-07-25T23:15:23.892+05:30Kupfer Launcher<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Having switched out my company issued <a href="http://shop.lenovo.com/us/notebooks/thinkpad/t-series/t400">Thinkpad T400</a> for a <a href="http://www.dell.com/us/enterprise/p/latitude-e6420/pd">Dell Latitude E6420</a>, I've switched Eclipse to Idea and now <a href="http://do.davebsd.com/">Gnome-Do</a> to <a href="http://kaizer.se/wiki/kupfer/">Kupfer</a>.<br />
<div>
I love gnome-do, except that it is sometimes like an <a href="https://plus.google.com/103164836273151466735/">angry wife</a> :-) . Shuts you out, pegs the cpu at 100% and makes everything a drag, all for no explicable reason. And so I decided to give Kupfer a shot having previously tried Synapse and not liking it much. And it's coming along good. Perceptibly faster than Do, hasn't hanged yet and I haven't yet missed any feature from Do.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLN6XirYnAxrGA_WgyOkWz69l7mSt2dGn9uhVudKg5aWxcniIi9SEqbsrvD-qlk2fkNczQeo6i1PtaT85EMnbD-DEeZLwP2xJ3Rt7tNk1SiGEI4FXFEWzKtmdQMxu6-1_XohnoNw/s1600/kupfer.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLN6XirYnAxrGA_WgyOkWz69l7mSt2dGn9uhVudKg5aWxcniIi9SEqbsrvD-qlk2fkNczQeo6i1PtaT85EMnbD-DEeZLwP2xJ3Rt7tNk1SiGEI4FXFEWzKtmdQMxu6-1_XohnoNw/s320/kupfer.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div>
Ah except for, I'll have to admit, Do got me to the intended application faster. Based on <i>learning</i> my frequently used apps. Hope Kupfer gets that going too.</div>
</div>
Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-60813082130616396872011-07-24T14:42:00.003+05:302011-07-24T14:43:08.947+05:30Blogger in Draft<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<blockquote>
this is a quote</blockquote>
while this is not<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>and this is <b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">more</span></b> and this is <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">less</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span><br />
posted from <a href="http://draft.blogger.com/">draft.blogger.com</a></div>
Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com02nd Cross, Domlur, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India12.9627991 77.6378391-17.2810024 37.208151599999994 43.2066006 118.0675266tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-70071381049930357742011-06-12T20:23:00.002+05:302011-07-25T23:14:37.580+05:30Bunch of packages<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<dl style="font-size: 80%;">
<dt>I don't think you should continue reading this.<br /><a name='more'></a></dt>
<dt>a2ps</dt>
<dd>GNU a2ps - 'Anything to PostScript' converter and pretty-printer</dd>
<dt>barcode</dt>
<dd>Utility and library for barcode generation</dd>
<dt>couchdb</dt>
<dd>RESTful document oriented database</dd>
<dt>dia</dt>
<dd>Diagram editor</dd>
<dt>divxenc</dt>
<dd>shell script to encode DVDs to FMP4/DivX</dd>
<dt>dwm</dt>
<dd>dynamic window manager</dd>
<dt>elinks</dt>
<dd>advanced text-mode WWW browser</dd>
<dt>emacs23</dt>
<dd>The GNU Emacs editor (with GTK+ user interface)</dd>
<dt>faenza-icon-theme</dt>
<dd>Faenza Icon Theme</dd>
<dt>ffmpeg</dt>
<dd>multimedia player</dd>
<dt>freemind</dt>
<dd>Java Program for creating and viewing Mindmaps</dd>
<dt>git-core</dt>
<dd>fast</dd>
<dt>gnome-do</dt>
<dd>Quickly perform actions on your desktop</dd>
<dt>gparted</dt>
<dd>GNOME partition editor</dd>
<dt>graphviz</dt>
<dd>rich set of graph drawing tools</dd>
<dt>groovy</dt>
<dd>Agile dynamic language for the Java Virtual Machine</dd>
<dt>gtkterm</dt>
<dd>A simple GTK+ serial port terminal</dd>
<dt>htop</dt>
<dd>interactive processes viewer</dd>
<dt>imagemagick</dt>
<dd>image manipulation programs</dd>
<dt>kvm</dt>
<dd>dummy transitional pacakge from kvm to qemu-kvm</dd>
<dt>lftp</dt>
<dd>Sophisticated command-line FTP/HTTP client programs</dd>
<dt>libboost-dev</dt>
<dd>Boost C++ Libraries development files (default version)</dd>
<dt>logrotate</dt>
<dd>Log rotation utility</dd>
<dt>lsof</dt>
<dd>List open files</dd>
<dt>mediatomb</dt>
<dd>UPnP MediaServer (main package)</dd>
<dt>meld</dt>
<dd>graphical tool to diff and merge files</dd>
<dt>memcached</dt>
<dd>A high-performance memory object caching system</dd>
<dt>mencoder</dt>
<dd>MPlayer's Movie Encoder</dd>
<dt>mercurial</dt>
<dd>scalable distributed version control system</dd>
<dt>moreutils</dt>
<dd>additional unix utilities</dd>
<dt>mtr-tiny</dt>
<dd>Full screen ncurses traceroute tool</dd>
<dt>multitail</dt>
<dd>view multiple logfiles windowed on console</dd>
<dt>mutt</dt>
<dd>text-based mailreader supporting MIME</dd>
<dt>openvpn</dt>
<dd>virtual private network daemon</dd>
<dt>optipng</dt>
<dd>advanced PNG (Portable Network Graphics) optimizer</dd>
<dt>p7zip</dt>
<dd>7zr file archiver with high compression ratio</dd>
<dt>pencil</dt>
<dd>animation/drawing software</dd>
<dt>powertop</dt>
<dd>Linux tool to find out what is using power on a laptop</dd>
<dt>rdesktop</dt>
<dd>RDP client for Windows NT/2000 Terminal Server</dd>
<dt>rxvt-unicode</dt>
<dd>RXVT-like terminal emulator with Unicode support</dd>
<dt>s3cmd</dt>
<dd>command-line Amazon S3 client</dd>
<dt>screen</dt>
<dd>terminal multiplexor with VT100/ANSI terminal emulation</dd>
<dt>sloccount</dt>
<dd>programs for counting physical source lines of code (SLOC)</dd>
<dt>sqlite3</dt>
<dd>A command line interface for SQLite 3</dd>
<dt>synapse</dt>
<dd>semantic file launcher</dd>
<dt>tmux</dt>
<dd>terminal multiplexer</dd>
<dt>tomboy</dt>
<dd>desktop note taking program using Wiki style links</dd>
<dt>transmission</dt>
<dd>lightweight BitTorrent client</dd>
<dt>ttf-dejavu</dt>
<dd>Metapackage to pull in ttf-dejavu-core and ttf-dejavu-extra</dd>
<dt>ttf-inconsolata</dt>
<dd>monospace font for pretty code listings and for the terminal</dd>
<dt>wicd</dt>
<dd>wired and wireless network manager - metapackage</dd>
<dt>xfig</dt>
<dd>Facility for Interactive Generation of figures under X11</dd>
</dl>
</div>
Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-87473032675773196642011-03-31T23:41:00.002+05:302011-03-31T23:48:05.829+05:30Document suggest goodness<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Ever felt tongue-tied and lost for words while writing something. <a href="http://scribe.googlelabs.com/">Scribe</a> (just relaunched) does document suggestions easy, intuitive and blazing fast. Ala google suggest.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWOJjLuq_U61mCjuAYYN2vN4k7Wiws0gOooYFy9xLJq6x0CDAH-yp3LPBwJ6Xql8QZB7SuP3z9cCYghcvjSYjPUcra9BzP4OC154SJqI8Nc1kSNGdDTqaCqgEBFzFWDKAvsgNn6Q/s1600/Screenshot.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWOJjLuq_U61mCjuAYYN2vN4k7Wiws0gOooYFy9xLJq6x0CDAH-yp3LPBwJ6Xql8QZB7SuP3z9cCYghcvjSYjPUcra9BzP4OC154SJqI8Nc1kSNGdDTqaCqgEBFzFWDKAvsgNn6Q/s400/Screenshot.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1qr1iGvGqcOmnqKn4GOAWB9krequYcrgAV0O8xbmI1FtyTrpPmppgDm3sSLSw_lQ6b3VP9QWOY6wXt5F37EFFU8tzqrWwQ5CmmY5509iJBwyoleI7Z-Zca7ogsNbRy9tI4u64gA/s1600/Screenshot-1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1qr1iGvGqcOmnqKn4GOAWB9krequYcrgAV0O8xbmI1FtyTrpPmppgDm3sSLSw_lQ6b3VP9QWOY6wXt5F37EFFU8tzqrWwQ5CmmY5509iJBwyoleI7Z-Zca7ogsNbRy9tI4u64gA/s400/Screenshot-1.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />
</div>Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-44585505765723497272011-03-03T23:54:00.000+05:302011-03-03T23:54:56.813+05:30Gaussian LitaniesValladium and his cronies.Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-45423898225953050592010-12-06T13:10:00.002+05:302010-12-06T13:12:59.575+05:306 monthsJune 6, 2010 to Dec 6, 2010<br /><br />Already been 6 whole months since <a href="http://www.kuntal.in">we</a> got married. Totally did not see the time going by.Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-18483186365484906702010-12-06T12:45:00.003+05:302010-12-06T13:09:08.369+05:30LivejournalI used to be on livejournal and then for no apparent reason I came over to blogspot one day. Tried out some app in between that posted to both places but can't remember what happened to that either. Either ways, both my blogs don't see any action these days but I've got to come around and write a couple of reviews of some recent buys.<br /><br />* <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0032JRRX4">Canon Powershot a3100is</a> for Kuntal's parents.<br />* <a href="http://www.samsung.com/in/consumer/tv-audio-video/television/lcd-tv/LA32C550J1RLXL/index.idx?pagetype=prd_detail">Samsung Series 5 LA 32C550</a> 32" inch LCD television for ourselves.<br /><br />Also in the backlog<br />* A review of the delightful Palace Estate homestay in Kakkabe, Coorg.Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-27571996464158370812010-11-17T21:00:00.002+05:302010-11-17T21:02:42.643+05:30Zippety zapEat the fruit of the banyan tree. Fly the flight of the honey bee. Make a sticker and stick it not. While the banyan bee becomes a bot.Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-38487653623040323832009-10-04T14:27:00.004+05:302009-10-04T14:32:08.372+05:30stop motion foo<object width="445" height="364"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/RW3JESh7C00&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/RW3JESh7C00&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="445" height="364"></embed></object><br /><br /><a href=" http://aa3d27.appspot.com">This is the proper place for this video.</a>Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-67251143930560071782009-07-18T12:24:00.003+05:302009-07-19T10:32:23.743+05:30T.V.RamanA while ago, I'd come across <a href=http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/>Emacspeak</a>, an audio desktop for emacs with serious powers, and that led me to the author of emacspeak, T.V.Raman. <br /><br />T.V.Raman's a Research Scientist at Google having previously worked at places like IBM research labs and Adobe after completing his PhD from Cornell in '94. He won the ACM Doctoral Dissertation award for his thesis. <br /><br />And all of this is underlined by the fact that this man is completely blind, from childhood. The bulk of his work is in the direction accessibility on the web, auditory interfaces and he's most well known for Emacspeak. Apart from that, he's authored a book on XForms and is a bigwig in the W3C circles. <br /><br />His home page: http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/<br /><br /><a href=http://xml-applications.blogspot.com/>This blog of his on xml applications</a> has some pretty neat entries/presentations on the web and more specifically his thoughts on the direction of the web after web 2.0. Do watch one of his talks (linked below), he has a neat sense of humour and is an excellent speaker.<br /><br />* http://emacspeak.blogspot.com/2007/10/web-way-you-want.html<br />* http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/tvr-2w-nov-2007-tp/<br /> - http://xml-applications.blogspot.com/2007/11/2w-second-coming-of-web.html<br />* http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/publications/beyond-web20-cacm-2009/Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-15525456141607703222009-07-15T03:00:00.002+05:302009-07-15T03:23:46.690+05:30Terminals and true type fontsOur desktops at Amazon still run piddly old RHEL3. Funny state of affairs that is. Given that RHEL3 is the archaeological coeval of Redhat 9, yes Redhat 9 indeed, that would place it at Circa 2002 in the linux timeline. Anyway, bottomline, RHEL3 is a dinosaur by today's standards.<br /><br />So given that I spend most of my work life staring at a full screen terminal emulator, settling upon a good one has been a fight given the resources at my disposal. Upgrading stuff is and was always hard given that RHEL3 is on a 2.4 kernel with ancient versions of glibc, gtk and so on.<br /><br />Anyway, at various points over the past 3 years I've used xterm, aterm and gnome-terminal with mixed feelings for each of them. xterm is mostly crappy and I've got not much to say about it. <a href=http://www.afterstep.org/aterm.php>Aterm</a> is an excellent and superfast terminal but I couldn't get truetype fonts to work on it and hence had to use it with bitmap fonts. And I guess, I am not geek enough to use bitmapped fonts. But anyway, aterm is what I've stuck with mostly given that speed was more important than looks. And gnome-terminal was necessary whenever there was chinese or japanese to be looked at. The default configuration has full utf-8 encoding and font support in addition to being rather pretty with proper true type and all. But then again, the gnome-terminal on rhel3 was too slow for me.<br /><br />Finally today, I got myself <a href=http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/rxvt-unicode.html>rxvt-unicode</a> (urxvt) and the <a href=http://dejavu-fonts.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page>dejavu</a> font pack and finally have a fast and pretty terminal emulator that I no longer can complain about.<br /><br />The dejavu fonts are derived from the bitstream vera family of fonts and are developed in a free-software fashion. They're such a big hit in the free-software world that this set of fonts is readily available on a bunch of distributions and is the default set of fonts on ubuntu.Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-68395645011055067832009-07-15T02:44:00.003+05:302009-07-15T03:00:14.089+05:30Meandering alongBefore I get onto the more banal stuff, Arun will be starting at MIT this September as MS/PhD student and will work with Prof.Anantha Chandrakasan. <br /><br />Getting to the more banal stuff, a quick roundup of books I've read recently<br />- The Ender Trilogy: Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide. Picked up these three books from Arjun and I seem to have a mixed opinion on them. While the science fiction itself is okay to boring, some of the larger philosophical questions and statements asked are rather neat. All in all though, I'd highly recommend everyone who enjoy's science fiction to read this series by Orson Scott Card.<br />- To Kill a Mocking Bird (Harper Lee): Since I hadn't ever read this classic, Kuntal decided to buy me a copy and I absolutely loved it. Given that there is no lack of critical material on this book, I have to admit that Scout Finch is the most awesome little lady I've ever come across :)<br />- Isaac Newton and his apple: A comic biography of Isaac Newton, from the Dead Famous series, I picked this book up from my younger cousins and liked it enough to buy a copy for meself. There's one on Einstein also which I'll buy as soon as it comes in stock at an Indian online retailer.<br />- I, Robot: Never having read much of Asimov, I finally got around to reading this. However, I can't really get myself to comment on it.<br /><br />Of the stuff that's happened of late, the slightly more significant events would include Arun finishing up at IIT Bombay on top of his entire batch, our family's trip up north to Simla, Kulu and Manali where we had to battle the hyper-active Sun and keep ourselves from getting sunburnt and of course, my finishing 3 whole and rather hurried years at Amazon. I'd have to come back to recollect these three years in a separate post though. <br /><br />That's about it for now.Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-8358203263693549152009-02-09T12:14:00.005+05:302009-05-13T12:30:22.031+05:30Gimp Pathgiri<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwOMXrKNGCVsMRDooDI-NkrBRFW6ChFWZp2uyQTki9xnh0Y8TZXYQvQjfez_mabdDpLxjw5W6Zd28q1D0V7_GQPPEm-auNg7mxRSukS1EeKq1hiJsDR8ZJMgO-xMCXMm0wyomJmg/" /><br /><br />Nothing much, was experimenting with paths in gimp yesterday. And text along path and stuff.Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-30232228614002880022009-02-07T19:11:00.005+05:302009-02-07T19:26:16.843+05:30One down, six to go!Touchwood.<br /><br />It's been a while since posts like these <a href="http://the-sceptic-dot.blogspot.com/2005/06/arun.html">2005/06/arun</a>, <a href="http://the-sceptic-dot.blogspot.com/2005/06/latest-updates.html">2005/06/latest-updates</a> appeared on my blog. Not that there hasn't been cause for celebration in between, but then Kashyap the loudspeaker was no longer necessary. In the 3 1/2 years since those posts, I've stayed mostly quiet. This time round however, my elation wants to write a little here and so I let it.<br /><br />Simbly put, Cornell Univ has granted Arun a fellowship :D This is the first university he's heard from of the seven he applied to. Yayy! Meanwhile we wait for the other biggies to state their opinion on his application.<br /><br />:D<br /><br />PS: For the electrically inclined, this is <a href="http://www.ee.iitb.ac.in/uma/%7Earunp/">Arun's Homepage</a>Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-47777831892979277572009-01-11T13:28:00.005+05:302009-01-14T09:46:35.097+05:30Book RoundupA roundup of the books I've read of late. Given that I am not a reader of any particular sophistication, I tend to read really anything I come across. So this list of books ranges from Enid Blyton's school children novels to fake science fiction right through to literary classics like 100 years of solitude.<br /><ul><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Godfather</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">****</span><span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">*</span> Mario Puzo : Brilliant classic, that I got around to read only after all these years, kept me glued to the pages until I finished it (or had to get up to go to work). Invoked the full wrath of ___ who I repeatedly kept ignoring in order to read the book.<br /></li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">100 Years of Solitude</span> <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">****</span><span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">*</span> Gabriel Garcia Marquez : Having read <span style="font-style: italic;">Love in the time of cholera</span>, I had pretty high expectations of this even more famous work by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Having read <span style="font-style: italic;">Midnight's Children</span> by Salman Rushdie too, I have come to love this genre of <span style="font-style: italic;">Magical Realism</span> where you get completely absorbed into the completely fantastic world as created by the book. These two authors spin the fantasies of the story with such skill as to bind the mind of the reader into accepting it as reality. The same feeling came over me as I read this Latin American classic and I had to repeatedly pull myself away from the book to keep the hypnotic feeling from drowning me in the troubles of the characters or the grimness of their world.<br /></li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Inimitable Jeeves</span> <span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">***</span>**</span> PG Wodehouse : Yet another Jeeves novel by the inimitable Wodehouse. The language and the comic scenes are as awesome as ever though the plot itself was a little too weak in this book. But why would you not read a Wodehouse when you saw one.<br /></li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Net Force</span> <span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">*</span>****</span> Tom Clancy : My first Tom Clancy novel this and a total disaster at that. Only later was I to learn that this was written by some other author under the Tom Clancy brandname! This book was as fake and poor as some of the Dan Brown works. Haven't read any other science fiction done so poorly. Dan Brown's Digital Fortress comes close actually.<br /></li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Five Go to Demon's Rocks</span> (Famous Five) <span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">**</span>***</span> Enid Blyton : Enid Blyton was staple food all through school. Chancing upon this book at my Aunt's home, I picked it up to give it a read. This book was pretty poor though, or maybe I've just grown up a little too much. I remember having a lot lot more fun reading Famous Five back in school.<br /></li></ul>Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-9335731950701741722008-10-31T15:03:00.001+05:302008-10-31T17:31:04.295+05:30माँ, मै भी जूनियर आर्टिस्ट रह जाऊँगा<div style="margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhESXHUFtcvQofHY5NvN5liywu95qhP1_GHU44p_bCtiPRhY8_swHNYvyUkFbrtGw6avyL553A3eRWvl0gmMMpDwnxOitHN67jodRtZeX4Lc_JoxhLhyUUh9GNvIYg87kvzf0NRFA/s1600-h/DSC00630.jpg"><img alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhESXHUFtcvQofHY5NvN5liywu95qhP1_GHU44p_bCtiPRhY8_swHNYvyUkFbrtGw6avyL553A3eRWvl0gmMMpDwnxOitHN67jodRtZeX4Lc_JoxhLhyUUh9GNvIYg87kvzf0NRFA/s400/DSC00630.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div>The passage of time seems to show scant regard for the fact that many schooltime summers were spent going to drawing classes. When you wake up one morning with the intent to put brush to paper to reproduce a color plate from a <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0955247802/artworkshwith-21">book on water-color painting</a>, you realise you're still struggling with the same demons of color and water and brush that haunted those simple summertime evenings. The picture above came out as a result of a series of well-explained steps from a book on using water colors. By myself, scarcely could I have ventured into trying to do the whole water scene. But despite my best efforts, there are mistakes aplenty, though admittedly this is resultwise very decent by my standards. So yeah, all the junior artistness in the title is simply an assertion of the fact that I need to learn more painting :D<br /><br /><div style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://picasa.google.com/blogger/" target="ext"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif" alt="Posted by Picasa" style="border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;" align="middle" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /></div>Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-44147028059482203732008-10-27T11:35:00.001+05:302008-10-27T11:39:54.941+05:30Happy Deepavali<div style="margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEherI8CCiNopL_aFOPQu7LoAfutQO2fnPt4icEXUdYRlmc3ykT8VKcTdFsQF9EMs8EI_XQ3FT1y25Pl5AwpSGRJ4jBhar6QYiGX7-4F60uQGbKvfosM7k1OvkI5xg0MIAAtodN6Tg/s1600-h/happy-diwali-kashyap.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEherI8CCiNopL_aFOPQu7LoAfutQO2fnPt4icEXUdYRlmc3ykT8VKcTdFsQF9EMs8EI_XQ3FT1y25Pl5AwpSGRJ4jBhar6QYiGX7-4F60uQGbKvfosM7k1OvkI5xg0MIAAtodN6Tg/s400/happy-diwali-kashyap.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a> </div><div style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://picasa.google.com/blogger/" target="ext"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif" alt="Posted by Picasa" style="border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;" align="middle" border="0" /></a></div><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);font-size:85%;" ><br />The origami flowers in the photo are called Kusadama flowers which I made out of sticky-notes painted over in fabric paints.</span>Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-52314640290197825512008-08-13T09:12:00.003+05:302008-08-13T09:19:19.575+05:30Indian language transliteration botsI wonder if Google needs help with pagerank :)<br />But no harm done adding another link I guess. Even if it has the tiniest weight ever.<br /><br /><a href="http://googletalk.blogspot.com/2008/08/new-transliteration-bots-make-it-easy.html"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhfzeim9a61SELnz3sIOgzUNnljT8Jrfq_emjYksdTm-LsmwFLX70q1y4XicfoVQhR7JZzWRJRCaS9WELweG9lXkHEuqyewdZigRMtqnfA1DvtTYms_Me3ycJPETLsQLJOHRG3Bw/s400/chat2.PNG"/></a><br /><br />What are friends for?Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-35736233418690478572008-06-26T00:51:00.003+05:302008-06-26T01:43:35.144+05:30Firefox addons<a href=http://www.mozilla.com/firefox>Firefox3</a> has been out for a few days now and the beta's and rc's have been out for a while now. Somewhere along, I went into a addon finding craze(nothing unusual) and now that the dust seems to have settled a little, I thought I'd document it. In between, I went ahead and created a new profile for myself (this was after firefox3 had already taken care of doing whatever it needs to go import a firefox2 profile directory_ and moved my extensions over by physically copying them (yes, that works, just copy the extensions directory). Other things I copied over were my saved passwords (key.db and signons3.txt) and my greasemonkey directory. Of my addons only tabmixplus had any real settings that I made and these I got over by using its simple export and import apparatus.<br />That's the background, not really relevant, and largely just a blob of text. Now the promised list without any more digressions. Turns out I have a lot of disabled extensions which I'll list at the end.<br />Will have to take some time and put in links to each of these. Not now though.<br /><h4>Enabled extensions:</h4><dl><dt>British English Dictionary<dd>No more color and humor, I want colour and humour<br /><dt>Download Statusbar<dd>I never anyway have the download window popup when there is an active download. This addon makes that totally irrelevant now. Simple and concise in the statusbar.<br /><dt>DownloadHelper<dd>One of the dozens of such addons for pulling stuff down from youtube and other sites for saving on your computer. Is effective, nothing else to be said.<br /><dt>dragdropupload<dd>If you have to upload/attach files somewhere, simply drag and drop from your file manager. No more painful browsing.(don't know if this works on Linux though, I guess it should)<br /><dt>FireFTP<dd>This one really shows Firefox off as a platform for applications rather than just being a web browser. A neat ftp client this is.<br /><dt>FireGPG<dd>Sign and encrypt any text box, with special integration for gmail allowing for signed and encrypted attachments and simple buttons for the actual mail. Hail privacy!<br /><dt>Flashblock<dd>Just what it says, block flash content and replaces by a button to turn on. Also supports url based whitelists. An essential addon.<br /><dt>Foxmarks<dd>Excellent bookmark synchronizing addon. Essential if you have firefox running on multiple machines. And even otherwise, bookmarks are neatly backed up and accessible on their site once you login.<br /><dt>Greasemonkey<dd>Greasemonkey scripts are awesome. And espcially within Amazon, we have loads to do neat little things the actual sites don't do. <br /><dt>IE Tab<dd>An essential addon for you to view all those sites that dont work with Firefox right from within firefox. Microsoft sharepoint portals and exchange web mail are specially made for IE.<br /><dt>Indic Input<dd>Awesome addon that lets you type in any of the Indian languages absolutely anywhere in firefox. <br /><dt>It's All Text!<dd>It is so much more convenient to do text-editing from within vim. Used to use mozex earlier, but switched to this simpler addon.<br /><dt>PicLens<dd>Another awesome cool addon. Turns firefox into an uber-cool 3d wall of images or videos when viewing picasa/flickr/youtube/google image search etc. Try it out, it will rock you.<br /><dt>Sage-Too<dd>Most of my feedreading happens on google reader. But I've been a fan of Sage since IIT times when slashdot and digg were more important to me than email(sage-too is a fork of the original sage).<br /><dt>TabMixPlus<dd>Brought the session manager to firefox ages ago and the tab and window features (and customizability) are something you can't live without after a while with this extension.<br /><dt>TinyMenu<dd>The top menu bar in firefox is largely a waste except for the tools menu. This addon folds everything into a single list and lets you keep your chosen ones behind. And I've dropped my actual bookmarks bar and moved bookmarks into the menu bar.<br /></dl><br /><h4>Disabled extensions</h4><dl><dt>All-in-one-Sidebar<dd>This one is meant to be like opera's sidebar and is a huge hit. Maybe it works for others, but I didn't find much use for it.<br /><dt>Firebug<dd>For the rainy day when I might need to do some web development. Not today though.<br /><dt>Flagfox<dd>Knowing the <i>whois</i> information of the server and seeing the flag of the hosting country sounded like a cool idea.<br /><dt>NoScript<dd>Meant to be the one-stop-shop for keeping your browser secure, and is a major hit addon. But I don't really visit too many strange sites that I don't trust. Or maybe I am not paranoid enough yet. Right now, it just seems to be a pain with having to click a button to whitelist each new site I go to.<br /><dt>SplitBrowser<dd>Neat addon that does exactly what it says. Installed it at someone's suggestion. But didn't use it for a long time, so disabled it.<br /><dt>TamperData<dd>Again for the rainy day when I might want to modify headers and data in my http or xmlhttp requests. Not today.<br /></dl>Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-86800775074527698072008-06-25T09:38:00.006+05:302008-06-25T13:20:50.810+05:30Geekdom updatesRoundup of bunch of things I've been upto in my spare time (and quite a bit of not so spare time). Almost none of this is original or ground breaking or anything like that, just a load of fun.<br /><dl><br /><dt><b>Chrooted Debian</b></dt><dd>For a long time now, I've yearned (like many others here at Amazon) for a linux distribution less older than dear old grandpa <i>Redhat Enterprise Linux 3</i>. So, ever since someone pointed me to a tutorial on setting up a chrooted installation of <i>Debian Etch</i>, I've been wanting it on my machine. So a couple of weeks ago, I went ahead and pulled Etch down with all of apt-get's greatness :)<br /><br />Works great, a chrooted install sort of gives you the advantages of a virtual host(under any of xen/virtualbox/vmware) without the additional costs incurred in virtualization and running a whole os. So if you're okay with running on the same kernel (and instance) as the host os, a chrooted install is ultra neato.<br /><br />However, one of my main motivations for finally doing this was to get firefox3 running. (it is impossible to run anything built on newer glibc2.4/kernel2.6 on the archaic rhel3)<br />However, debian etch is again an uncle among distros, but I have no other option since that's like the only one that still runs on kernel 2.4 and thus its binaries can thus run over rhel3, and the gtk+ version is about 2 minor versions less than what firefox3 needs :), and no ready backports available either :P. Back to square one. Anyway, I can live without firefox3 on my desktop for a while, as long as I have my winxp laptop for bootstrapping firefox :)<br /><br />Anyway, the internal wiki link I used is not accessible from the internet. So here are the closest links I could find (and used too)<br /><li> <a href="http://capricorn.woot.net/%7Ejdrew/debian-chroot.html">http://capricorn.woot.net/~jdrew/debian-chroot.html</a><br /></li><li> <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebootstrapChroot">https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebootstrapChroot</a><br /></li><li> <a href="https://help.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/packagingguide/C/appendix-chroot.html">https://help.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/packagingguide/C/appendix-chroot.html</a><br /><br /></li></dd><dt><b>Webserving over a Dsl with help from Dyndns</b></dt><dd>Another something that I've wanted to do for a long time now is to get the dyndns/nat/webserver setup going over my dsl connection so I can put stuff up from my laptop/desktop. And I finally did that yesterday.<br /><br />Installed <a href="http://www.lighttpd.net/">Lighttpd</a> from cygwin. Then went into my adsl router's settings and turned on the nat (my router has a very simple nat configuration where you can only specify one host where all traffic is routed to), and opened up the router's firewall to let port 80 through.<br />And i finally got myself an account on <a href="http://dyndns.org/">DynDNS</a> and registered <a href="http://kashyapp.dyndns.org/">kashyapp.dyndns.org</a> and am using their windows client right now to keep updating my dsl assigned ip on their server.<br /><br />All set :) and I am serving out a small section of my photos.</dd><br /><dt><b>Virtualbox</b></dt><dd>I tried installing <a href="http://www.virtualbox.org/">virtualbox</a> the other day on my laptop, but it would fail to install for some strange reason. Would go all the way to end and rollback silently. Poking around in the bios showed that 'intel virtualization support' was turned off and as soon as I enabled that, virtualbox installed itself. Yayy! Now, I want to try a minimal ubuntu on my virtualbox :D. And yeah, virtualbox is now The default virtualization solution on most linux distributions. Neat stuff.<br /></dd></dl><br />More to write about:<br /><ul><li>Extensions and tweaks that I have on my firefox</li><br /><li>The windows xp window manager can actually do <i>focus follows mouse</i>, no more struggling with braindead click-to-focus</li><br /><li>Opera mini is the web browser to use on your mobile phone. And if you have a poor gprs/edge connection, then it is the ONLY browser to use.</li><br /></ul>Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-1064808621892597842008-03-09T17:48:00.003+05:302008-03-09T17:59:50.189+05:30Sleepless in Seattle<table style="width: auto;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/kashyapp/SeattleRenoBayArea/photo#5169003197467819362"><img src="http://lh6.google.com/kashyapp/R7v9BYPtfWI/AAAAAAAAAeE/PVP0bnFPsb0/s400/IMG_0214.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: right;">From <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/kashyapp/SeattleRenoBayArea">Seattle-Reno-...</a></td></tr></tbody></table>Was over at Amazon's HQ in Seattle for a while in Feb. Was fun, got to meet the folks there, ran around one of Amazon's warehouses at Fernley in Nevada and met Nikhil Dasa, Rjain, Agp, Sudeep and Jha while visiting Stan, Berk and Uwash.<br /><br />And forgive me for the blatantly bad misuse of the title.Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7364871.post-53131385765243599272008-03-09T17:44:00.002+05:302008-12-09T11:49:03.672+05:30Bike-n-Bike<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqjrJcGmSu-xnN5mCgMrVi8HN_fDlWPM5ggaUqZpZx5T0iAIIl00mGX_-bq7Vew9rbho5swFJyzyjZIhYsVoFx7G8gZFN9FKMH9ZYjt81QU-DdeXflFy0yYxGLThh0AsEOZsPyBg/s1600-h/IMG_0369.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqjrJcGmSu-xnN5mCgMrVi8HN_fDlWPM5ggaUqZpZx5T0iAIIl00mGX_-bq7Vew9rbho5swFJyzyjZIhYsVoFx7G8gZFN9FKMH9ZYjt81QU-DdeXflFy0yYxGLThh0AsEOZsPyBg/s400/IMG_0369.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5175714781338834434" border="0" /></a>I have photos of my cycle and bike by themselves but none with both of them in it. The cycle's a little over an year old and the bike is a little under. But they are both a lot of fun.Kashyaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00011542493558209463noreply@blogger.com0