I wish you a Merry X’mas and a happy new year!
We wish you a merry Christmas..
We wish you a merry Christmas..
We wish you a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
That is how the song goes..(not really sure.. I mean I’ve never been around carols..not really big in the middle east.. ;) ) well..I wish you all a merry Christmas and a very happy new year! :)
Yes Haris already gave you a Xmas gift and all that..while I type this, he’s forgotten that my name starts with a “M”..So, i have completely boycotted that post of his and invite you to read this..(though at this point, Im every-one, we will just carry on here…)
Bit late am I not? Its just me and my hesitation ruling me. Better late than never! But I hope it really is. I mean I don’t want that to change after you read this post. :)
What is all this going to be about? Well, it’s been about 3 years, 3 months and 8 days from the first day that I walked in into the class and did a “I don’t know anything about me more than my name and where I’m from” act in front of everyone. And its 3 years since I got something wonderful from my class. Nothing time can’t heal eh..? Well never mind all that..
I plan on writing about everyone in my class. Yes I don’t know about most of you, and I don’t remember stuff like No-One. Let me revisit my past years in college. Read through if you can, don’t have to, but I would really like it if you did. :) I’ve scrolled back up to add this following line, now that I’ve met the first person whom I’ve nothing to write about. Please help me fill up my memories. Comment, I’ll add it in.
Statutory Warning: This could be extremely boring and extremely how i picture you in my mind!
Oh and there is an easy way to go to your name or to the name of a friend.. Read below:
Cool stuff to try! ;)
See that address on top, add to the end a “#” to the end to jump to your needed part of the post. Check it out “#howto” will get you here. You could try with #jinu or #chellan etc. if you don’t get your name at first, try your nick names.
Alright..here goes..
I’ll start with my first bench mate then on the first day at college.
Sharat
MR as you all know him. First day in college. I went straight to the last bench asked some guy to move over to park my extremely tired legs and then we were all sitting and listening to Anoop sirs graphics class. All of a sudden I hear a “BUHUHUHAHAHAHA..”. I’m like “what the !” I then see my neighbor scream out to himself “s*** sh**” and pull out with difficulty his Nokia 3110c and put it into silent mode. This was Sharat.
I told to myself. “This wont be so bad after all”. My hostel mate, ex room-mate, one among us 4 certain latecomers to class, programmer knows the syntax of like 7 or 8 different programming languages and knows nothing about the human ones at all. He’s amazing at learning almost anything off the Internet (he learned to play guitar from the net!). I think he’s the first guy to get a laptop in out class and to bring it to his hostel and let the seniors ruin it for him :). And maaan, its hard to argue with him. He has this totally different idea of what we are trying to tell him. I often have to end up asking him “what are we arguing about again?”. We believe he was born with his blanket and his towel. Poor guy has a bad bad nose.
I have not met a more helpful man in my life. I’ve seen him fix up projects and get project ideas for people he has hardly talked to. I mean how does he know so much stuff about stuff that no-one else knows about. :) Laziness can give a good competition for his helpfulness though.
He will be the last person who will read up this stuff.
We will leave him there. Lazy helpful knowledgeable friend.
Sriram
The second guy in that last bench in the middle row. I didn’t know much about him back then. He did seem really reserved. And now I understand how stupid I was! Nobody hates college more than he does. Not even me. I honestly do believe that had he gone off on his own, coding and sitting at home, I’m pretty sure he would be coming to our college to recruit some of us by now. Excellent programmer, guitarist, vocalist and the holder of the only Windows Phone 7 in our college. Oh and he loves coffee if you negate how much he hate Zanadu food, you will get exactly how much he loves coffee. My caffeine high post was due to him.
His major advantage would be his body clock, it doesn’t exist. He walks around at 2 am wide awake and is back in college in the morning because he has to cover up his attendance shortage, ’cause he went trekking and on an internship. His application has been downloaded like 40K+ times. I mean 40K+ computers have his name somewhere in it! Now that’s something. Yes he’s lazy, takes bath only once every full moon (just kidding) and his hair does scare kids. He doesn’t give a damn any way. I hate the fact that he gets away with it.
Oh and lot of people don’t know this, he is not Sreeram. He will literally strangle you for it.
I’m going to talk about my new bench mates now. We moved from that last bench in the middle row to the second last bench in the first row! (do not tell me its a column and not a row. I know!)
Don
Tall lean guy from Trivandrum. It was him, me Sharat and Manu in that second last bench. About don, short-tempered is what you might all feel. He isn’t really all that short-tempered. May be a little bit, he’s just holding strong on his point. Why would you argue with him anyway? Kick boxing champion, football player (even though not so much after he’s come here) and has a brilliant “kadalppuram” that will come down on you all on his command. :)
Good friend, biologist among us and mostly my source of new information. He’s like the radio I mean don’t have to read the paper everyday to get any information, just talk to him. Anything from the neutrino being faster to the two-headed snake at Malampuzha, hes got a bit of news for you all. He loves sports, would love to learn some new sport if you can tell him its name. Definitely competitive, like what am i talking about right?
We’ve two teams coming up for Sevens Samba and Super 8. Lets see what happens huh?
Manu
Of-course the other Manu. Govindan as I call him. First guy with the same name as mine, in my class. 14 years and there has not been a single Manu in my class (obviously apart from me) and there he was stealing all my glory. From Kottayam Junction he hails and brings along his endless array of medical emergencies. Seriously there wont be another guy in college with his medical record! He was along with me in most of the labs and workshops. Nah that wont do it justice. Lets see…
Civil, Mechanical, Electrical Workshops, Electrical and Electronics, Digital Electronics and Systems lab. Yes most of this involved Jiji and Jinu and Kannan as well. But hey, none of their names are Manu! He is a good guy really. Of-course his reputation is not quite where you would like it.
First Android holder in class, participated in the mass bunk coordination of ’08 Dec along with me, great at mobile phone hacking and fixing up cool stuff with laptops like fishes for an active desktop. Another guy I could count on.
Kannan
Once Sharat went back to irritate Renjith and Rahul to their wit’s ends, Kannan joined us. The 3rd in our gang for the labs and stuff. It was fun to call 24 25 and 26 in a row when ma’am calls for attendance. He literally turns bright red when most would want people to not know about it. :) Accompanied me in taking down the mountain behind MH. Haris has blogged about it a while back. well..Thats all I do know about him. Help me fill it up.
Alright now to the rest of the class. I’ll go with the order of seating I suppose. Or I might not. May be I will. argh!!
Jinu
First guy I talked to at lunch time in class. I sat with him in the front bench with all the seniors snooping around and he came to know that I’m an NRI and all that. True fun was all the labs and workshops that we had together. Having to control Manu, Jiji and Kannan, and to make them do something, Jinu was my right hand man. :) could count on him to write the materials required and I’m always late for Civil just by 2 mins and that is a big deal. The labs, I generally don’t have a clue what we are going to do, and he would magically bring out the materials required list and get them. Submitting records and stuff on time happened only because of him.
Facebook addict and proud, I would say. Every 10,15 mins he takes out his 5800 and flips through the Facebook. I have made some deep scratches on his screen guard. :) oops! I really didnt mean to bro. Just couldnt find my nail cutters that morning. I’ve cut them now :).
Haris
I refuse to talk about “Harish”! ;)
Usbu
I do know how how got the name Usbumon. I pray to those who know the whole thing to share it. As I know it, he read those processes running in ubuntu and found……..usbmon……he asked out loud “Eda usbumon enthada?”
You know what, this might not be remotely close to the real story. Im not doing it justice :)
He is the one who faced BOSE’s question. We shall come to him soon. :) I don’t have many moments to share about with Dileep. I suppose that happens when you aren’t in the MH. Really. Nothing at all! The thing I do remember from first year, I would not like to put it here. Other than that..hmm…
The first guy, who I’ve met, apart from Sai to be using a hero pen. We were crazy about ink pens from 9th till 12th. Seeing him use it does bring back memories. The dedication that he does put into college does make me jealous. I mean I’ve never out that much dedication into anything. I see him now building his cloud up with Sunil and the rest. I wish him luck.
I guess im going to have trouble writing about people at MH.
Putz
I think I know why he doesn’t respond to all the people who hit him and scribble over his books and stuff. Do you shout at kids who hit you? Don’t you just take it all in? :)
Silent guy, witty dialogues and man the timing with which he gives them. Like this one time when Rahul (thadiyan) held him around his shoulders and was giving him a bone cracking hug, he speaks nothing and then he tells with a smile.
“aanede thumbikaiyyilu panampatta kittiya pole ayirunnello”
I suppose hes one person who knows programming and has no one pestering him with flash drive requests. Really, take the first few guys who walk out of a lab exam, he would be among the top few.
Bose
Yes the legendary Bose! The one who asked USBU “What is your view about ***?” with arms wide open and face fixed with a great philosophical look. I had stood up at the same time to ask about his green T-Shirt. Ignoring all the weird looks, he blasted of in front of all those girls and guys!
Samskarashoonyan! :)
Yes, he wrote a compiler and made a new programming language, the latter coming first. Hes like Dennis Ritchie while Sharat is Neil Armstrong (correction, hes the guy who put Neil Armstrong in that space cruiser!), and Sriram possibly Steve Jobs. First guy to actually do something useful with his laptop. His 6GB beast sees mostly just command line and that is super cool. How often do you get to say I studied in the same class as Sutheesh. I’m pretty sure he will do us all proud.
Now, his name. I believe he got it from signing all those forwarded poems. For once i know where these originated from. Those were beautiful lines now that you look back. Dude, we were a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of poems that you sent us. We liked them.
struct bose
{
int name;
char num[9];
}
If you see the above code anywhere, run away. Run as far away as possible :)
Haresh
Again, I don’t have much to write about him. I do remember walking along with him from Daffodils till Akathethara to get bus to go home. I believe its during the time when he used to come from Thrichur. I didn’t think i was possible. Get up in the morning and get a bus to college. Its just 2 and half hours away.
Yes I’ve ignored an entire bench. Till I get more stuff to write about the third bench, I shall leave Ajith to take their place.
Ajith
Always surprises me with what he manages to churn out. Loves to play racing games on his lap and if it demands much more performance or if he cant be bothered to install in his, plays on mine. Frequent visitor to my hostel for some download or the other. Yes the founding member of Abacus. If it had a mastiff, he would be on it. :) I do think he keeps Harish in track of when to meet our HOD for permissions to conduct stuff in Abacus’s name. He is our sponsor hunter even for DreamSpark Yatra, it was him who accompanied us. Amazing guy, good programmer, knows about the happenings of the world, I’ve no clue what goes on around me really.
Chellan!!
Now that is one guy who I will have a lot to talk about. Hes our opposing team’s captain when playing at Palazhi (Don’s Hostel). Fun guy shouting “Shaanthar gendbaaz” every time me or Rhithwik throw what most would call an “aana wide” :) Seriously fun, handsome, friendly, home brewed slapstick that brought along a real stick with him. We will come to the stick shortly.
He is my medicine man every time I need some tablet that you will never get anywhere, I always manage to find him to look for it in Olavakkode and of-course he doesn’t find it. I don’t think his bike likes him. Shhh..!! Don’t tell him. It has tried to take his life a couple of times and yet he gives it to Sharat to try out. That guy has no clue how geared bikes work and it was scary when it took him about 15 mins to go around LH through Manjula and come back through Zanadu.
Haven’t seen him tensed except for that one day. The TCS placement day. How dare they not call him for the second interview? In the midst of all that tension, he joined me and Varun to form the ‘T’ of TCS. Hes totally cool about anything else that goes around in this world. Nothing can take that chill out of him. And placement day, I believe its just out of frustration of keeping him waiting and not not getting the job or what ever. Him and Ponnan would be the link between us from Ambadi and the rest of the world.
What is unbearable about him? Nothing really, he knows when to stop his shower of lame jokes unlike Harish who keeps it coming irrespective of the nasty glares from everyone around him. Accompanied me to my home, 3rd guy from college to ever see my house. We reached here at 3am i guess and left at 5am. :) yeah..Good programmer, helpful and responsible friend.
Renjith is his name.
The rest shall soon follow. Just 13 guys so far and im running out of words.
I shall make amends with my blogging alter ego to not spell Haris as Harish. :) Lets resume now. 12.10 am on the 2nd of Jan seems about the right time to continue this.
Thadiyan!
Well, lets put it like this. He is the one who you will see giving Sriram a good work out. Sriram would go around attacking people. Most would run away and we see Rahul weighing in at 220 Pounds, hailing from Alappuzha, standing in Sriram’s Path of destruction. He comes from a banking family. No really! His generation how ever is into IT. (What ever gets good money eh? So, is that still banking? hmm..) A big pillow thats what hes been on those 7hr long bus journey back home.
Hes targeted by Sriram, Pretty, Sharat, Renjith, me, erm..pretty much everyone really. He inspires me in cases where he manages to stay within a 100kgs. Never went over it on average. Also when it comes to solving programming related problems. He just doesn’t quit (like I always do). Hes gone on to AI and machine learning from blue-tooth mouse and keyboard with your Nokia mobile phones.
So, in short, hes a really sweet, friendly pillow to fight with who is good with programming :)
Ponnan!!
I cant remember anything about him in 1st year. But man did he give a truck load each semester from then compensating for it. Another of my medical representatives, I mean he would represent me to the medical shops. :) (that was a joke, really!, I swear I’m not pulling your leg… Ah..! Never-mind!). Hes the stick that came along with our slap stick. Hes been living on “thairsadam” from the day I can remember. But it seems its true for Renjith’s memory too. :)
I was there in the green room when he got a beard and a mustache and man that was a transformation! Saw their play and to think i was going to get that role of his is scary. Wouldve lost my marbles under all that pressure. I suppose hes used to pressure being a KOPITE. ;)
Man I’m using too many smileys!
Volley hes known among the girls, Ponnan among guys and Don had asked me this before “He is a Ko-Ko player and yet hes called volley..” (not a question is it? I did think about it but my alter ego wont let me change it. So, who is typing this now? Dont even ask!). Should be fun calling him Ko-Ko.
Amazed at how he keeps his balance between the teachers’ wishes and his classmate’s kshama’s nellipalaka. Sharat couldn’t and look where he is now. ;) Every single announcement of his makes me think he was a priest of some sort from last life. Seen how he tells you to keep quiet and tells you that Crypto exam is tomorrow? The same “ayushman bahava” right hand motion.
A man who sticks up for Facebook against Harish on his blog! In his turf! Some top dog eh? Of-course I don’t have to explicitly mention that he will make a good diplomat (or a technocrat). I mean how many times has he gone to the teachers to postpone the test thats about to happen today or even the next hour? We all owe him a bit i suppose.
To us, Ambadi-Palazhi boys, Captain to the team opposing Chellan and mostly always wins (No its never uneven distribution of players. Its always been a player more than Chellans team. You can’t call that unfair! Blasphemy! (I always wanted to use that word) I should stop with him now, I’m using brackets inside brackets).
Valsan
Our own Hit man! No, he doesn’t want to kill anyone (or does he?aha…something to think about!), most people want to kill him though. The guy who I’ve lend my net-setter to and has gone to Bombay, hence you see me (do you?) right now plugging my dad’s phone in to access net, after several inquiries into the where abouts of the afore mentioned article from my dad. Well, its the least i could do after having sold my phone to him and broke its LCD, and then made him use it like a blind man would. I suppose im paying my dues, my C6 has had its LCD go to heaven. With his 41 virgins :)
He is the guy who was trying to gain the attention of all the teachers in first year. He wanted to get a transfer to Thrichur. But as fate has it, we wound up with him. Yes he hates you all. Like you give a damn when you didn’t know. Hes now weird, hes different from the rest of us (thats what weird is isnt it?). One guy, who isn’t afraid of telling his mind out. Friend or not, he will tell you what he wants to tell you to your face, if he wants to. Most of the time he would think “Ah whats the point”. Bro, I’m stopping now before i do any more damage.
In a nut shell, hes Valsan, Kelu, Varun, or what ever you choose to call him. Oh and he wont read this blog! Now, that I’m certain about!
Palappuli
Yes kunjunju to you all. But to us, me and Don, hes palappuli. He has a solution to every damn problem of yours. “athinu pakaram ingane cheythappore?” if you hear that anywhere around you, don’t even bother to look around. Call out loud kunjunje and he will come from behind you and poke you in your ribs with his finger.
Yes we have a lefty here. I mean he has a good left arm when throwing stuff. Be it a chalk, ball of paper, or even a fast ball to Ponnan’s team. His Hawk beak nose has been ridiculed about a bit. It doesn’t look all that odd on him though. First man whom i saw, (he is definitely going to kill me for this) wear a T – shirt proper for a couple of days, and turn it inside out and wear it another couple of days. :)
Kunjunje, Ill take that down if you want. (all of you guys read it and share it before i have to take it down. :))
Ivan njangade puli. Garjikkunna puli. Palappuli.
Im gonna take a break now. like you can stop me! ha! Oh and for the recent ones i havnt done the cool # thingy (its actually called inter-segment linking, and its back up on the new update). Shall soon.
Ive taken a long enough break i suppose. Lets push on ahead. I still dont have my laptop around, its still at home. This here is Rhithwik’s laptop and avan kaninju anugrahichu thannathanu ithu. :)
Rhithwik
Kannettan as he and many others call him, is my room mate. He is the one responsible for the death of our Governor! True Story!
The night before ADBMS exam, got food from zanadu and got back home around 6-30 ish. It was then that Sriram stumbled out of his planet half asleep, brain definitely asleep. And we set up on doing this. This took around 2 hours and he was still not awake!
Well, around 8, we had food and decided to study after that. At around 9, when we had finished dinner and an episode of How I met your mother, started off and he found out that there is no way hes going to finish off 4 modules of boring theory with in the next 10 hours. Many desperate prayers to his acquaintances, Gods, it was Pretty rang me up and said our Governor has passed away. Rhithwik’s facial expression was something i had never seen. He was happy, but couldnt be sure if the exam was postponed. Then till around 11.30, he would come out of the room out to the sit out and shout “please please please let it be…” And then he shouted out a couple of “All hail Oommen Chandi” after he had declared holiday for all educational institutions.
The story of the being from far far away will be narrated by Rhithwik and leave it to him.
So, about how Rhithwik fits in. First time i saw him was while we were walking back to Chithra. He used to live there and by chance i found him walking back home at 4 with his Cool Dog bag. He still has that bag and it has a moldy treasure in it! It is for those who dare to look for it. Me, Don, Sharat and Rhithwik we were the ones who would walk down from college to wards chithra and split our separate ways. Don would part us around our Aalthara. I would take a left from the end of the road and Rhithwik and Sharat would walk till chithra. That was us then and this is us now.
The guy loves reading, watching series (he has his own TV schedule, which will resume once i give this back to him), random paging wiki, stumble upon, all the crazy stuff that has no responsibilities attached to it. You could trust him to deliver someones life saving drug on time and that is his limit. nothing below it hardly ever works. It works for him. I mean he is still alive and well, nothing badly screwed up, nothing that we cant have a laugh about after a week. I would say it is because of him that I’ve started reading again.
Imma stop now. His is becoming the longest one here. Well, no other guys has a being from far far away land home the day before his entry was made in to the post. :)
Sinto
Pakka thrissurkkaran. Had our differences in first year but all cleared up the moment he was added into the list of perpetrators on that December. The funniest thing was while writing out apology letter to Sushama ma’am, he had made a slight mistake of missing a ‘n’.
“……I will repeat this never. …..” went my apology.
“……I will repeat this ever. …..” went his. It couldve happened to anyone. :)
I just got home from playing cricket with him. After the first few battles against Kannettan and team, he retired to just bowling. Me and don went on to making Rahul bowl for both of us. Roomies with Rahul from first year and Pachalam from the year after. Rahul calls him by a nick that seldom we hear, and i cant mention. :) Fun guy to hang out with. He is the one who I’ve been out with most, after my immediate gang people. I havnt seen him take offense on anything anyone says and that is something. Sinto vs Don is a match up we dont want. All of us have seen it, havnt we. But that ended that day, that hour. No sorry no hard feelings, no emotional crap.
Pachalam
One among the few of the guys who make the class lively. Even if its with his facts noone dares speak, or with his singing, or with his irritating the girls around him, or his argument with the guests head on. The first time i talked to him, i think was in our civil lab introduction. We were in charge of doing nothing or in charge of pulling the chain around and stuff. It being the first day, we dint have groups or anything. The second time around it was walking out of electrical and electronics workshop and there were chilli plants around. Me trying to be macho guy plucked one of those kantharis and bit in. The dialogue he said is still in my head. Few know about it.
“innu mele kavile devi kopichu…..nale..” (hey, i dint tell anything, it was all you. You guessed the rest of it!)
:) Our new class rep got belted in front of our HOD for asking her why we were paying 75 for the projector. She made it clear to him that it has to be Ponnan who goes to her to talk about anything related to our class.
He is our king without his empire. :)
Ive left out the biker boys and cool gang of guys from mh out. I will fill it up soon. Oh and ive loads of pictures to put up, memories and it will not be all just me posing on the malampuzha dam. :). But all of them are in my hard disk at home,:( you guys have to wait for it. Similar ones to the being from far far away.
Well, girls up next.
Treat!
Yup just had a treat from No-one on getting placed in Sourcebits. 20 guys and 2000 bucks from his wallet later, im left to think about the whole idea of giving treats an stuff. I mean he had asked in class to give a combined treat to all of us. i mean we would be paying for our own food and to have the fun/privilege/honor of eating it with everyone. Last year in college and everything, i would expect everyone of us to jump up to give it off. Well, it seems we aren’t all that happy. I mean the whole idea of giving treat is to share the happiness that we have attained from something. I mean why would you want to have it all alone? Share it, its better that way. I hate the attitude of giving a treat because you HAVE to, and not because you WANT to. Ofcourse attending the treat too is for both the hosts’ and our happiness. I mean, I came for the treat and it cost me 115 bucks just before the treat and i ate for less than that. The idea “want to not have to” works here too. Besides, if i hadnt come for his treat, i would have been at home, in bed and sleeping like a hog till the next day. Because i came for it, i went later to the A – Zone competitions accompanying Sunil and Valsan, I still could’ve gone straight home. I enjoyed it there. Running around, helping my friends out, getting them oranges from my fly infested wallet. Most of it is just me i suppose. Isnt the category “Piece of my mind” ?
I believe the first people you should invite are those who stepped down so that you may attain your happiness. All those who almost got it, but thought better of it and let you have it. :) ofcourse there will be those who arent among your favorites list, but why would that get in your way of giving away your happiness? Again, its just me I suppose. I would do this, probably. I wouldnt insist on doing this on your birthday treats because you probably just want those who you are close with. Any other treat, send out a mega invite. Treat all those who come. Money is a problem aint it? i dont think people will not chip in just for you arranging the place and reason for everyone to get together. I certainly would’ve. Again its just me.
Its all me i suppose. Well, thanks to No-one. I enjoyed it.
Ubuntu: Make an iso of your mmc
Well, it doesnt have to be your mmc. It could be anything thats connected to your system.
How to: Make an .iso file from the terminal
Stuff I did:
Ubuntu software center, Google etc. to find a terminal application that would let me do it. Found “cat” from ubuntuforums. Well, i tried it out. Didnt know what it did exactly and i thought i just wrote everything in a file to another file
sudo cat /dev/mmcblk0 > my-iso.iso
This will create an .iso for all practical purposes i suppose. But for a normal user like me, i dont suppose you can transfer it to another os and use it for anything. the default archive manager doesnt open it either.
Found out about “dd” while Google-ing.
sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=my-iso.iso
This does the exact thing as cat. But dd is the way everyone does it i suppose.
Solution: mkisofs
mkisofs is what came to myhelp at long last.
mkisofs -0 my-iso.iso /media/mmcname/
This did the trick. It created an iso of all the contents of “mmcname”. The only thing is however, it works only for directories i believe.
printf(“We Had One Heck of a Day”)
Yes time for another fun and amazing trip to the print out functions..
The reason for the journey.. Of-course we have a reason.. The whole reason for it is a seminar report which I was supposed to prepare like 3 months back.. No.. What do you mean “Then what is the problem??”.. I started yesterday didn’t i? To be submitted today.. Did i finish it before the rise of the sun today? Of-course not. What is the fun in doing everything on time..?
10.50 am
Sit in the upstairs class and start typing up the remaining 15 pages of my seminar report. I mean why does it have to be at least 40 pages? I’ve a good 20 pages now. Thinking along these lines, I started the copy-past scenario all over again. Of-course nothing comes easy… My life. the indenting goes wrong or the margin is messed up or something along those lines.
12.00 pm
Continue sitting there and copy-pasting my seminar paper.
1.00 pm
Finish it just as Economics sir comes in to the class. Certain that I am going to miss it, I decide to take print outs of it and submit it to Ambika ma’am. I hear that she is in a good mood today and believed that my under achieving report will make it through if I gave it today.
1.10 pm
Here starts my journey. We need print outs and Roja is the nearest place to get them from. The guy there how ever starts to pull out his hair if ive 33000 files in my .Trash folder as he’s very sure that my flash drive will contain VIRUS! So, having formatted my flashy and put my files in, I leave for Roja with an extremely irritated Hawkeye with me. What do you know.. Its closed! :) I know I know.. You think Im just making this up.. Believe me im not.
1.15 pm
Get to Zanadu and buy a Coke and veg puff. walk to Daffodils about half a km away from Zanadu (the nearby source of recharge cards and most edible stuff). Daffodils is lifeline no. 2 for print outs and stuff. not very efficient there. Guess what? Its closed too!!
1.30 pm
We walk back towards the bus stop near Zanadu, and see the bus arriving in the distance. Hawkeye says let’s go to Olavakkod. I tell him lets got to Colony and of we went. We ran to make it to the bus and barely did. 1.45 was the time and it was boiling hot.
1.55pm
We reached colony or the stop before the stop that we actually wanted to get down at. Why you ask? Well, on any other given day, the bus would’ve halted there for 5 minutes and then gone on. But today, (yes) it left as soon as we got down.
2.00 pm
Walking towards the place where me and Clawber-man took our mini project print outs from, me and Hawkeye kept looking at the closed shops and wrote our destiny. “We are not going to be able to submit these today” thought us. And yes Bamboo Cafe was closed, the one just before it is closed, the cafe a little further away is closed. Some day huh? We gave up. Tired and sweaty, we got into an auto and decided to go back to hostel.
2.20 pm
It was like the auto had some magical maniacal powers to give to me that made me fixate on giving the report today itself. Having made up my mind, i ask the auto guy to stop near Roja. I decide to got to the guys house and make him take it for us. He knew better and didn’t come out of his house at all.
2.35 pm
Went to Zanadu, bought 70 A4 Sheets and thought i would take print outs form College labs. I go to the one with the Laser printer. :)
Mrs. Usha K
Asst. Professor
was sitting at the system on to which it was connected and told me “Not now.”
“I will not give up.” told to Hawkeye. I waited for a while to think about what to do next. Went to the next lab adjacent to it. Saw Shibu sir and told him the thing. His colleague wasnt interested in helping us out. I kept at it and finally they cracked. Sir told me that there is a Dot matrix next door and we shall see..
2.45 pm
He set it up there and we turned on the system. I realized that the system did not have Office (good thing we dint install it, which would only have wasted another half an hour). He gave a test print from the terminal and guess what? Out of toner!! :)
2.55 pm
Gave up on our departments labs, I went to the cafe and decided to convert my documents from .docx to .pdf. Well, what if it helps. (we shall soon see). I ask the cafe guy to help me out, let us print it. “Rs 3 per page” told him without the slightest hint of helpful good nature that i expected from him.
3.05 pm
Hawkeye goes home. He has had enough. He had prepared his report 4 days ahead. The only problem was he didn’t get the formats. Now, people who got the format the day before submitted and he couldn’t even though most of them started way after him. I decide to stick around Roja and give it one last shot.
3.10 pm
Roja is a mysterious place with many characteristics. They have a board advertising what all they do do and always keeps it outside the fence if they are open. I mean if he is open, it’s just a guy. It wasnt there when I walked to it. Disheartened and having nothing to do, I decide to walk to it anyway… Yaaaaaaay…! Its open..!!! Can you believe it?? I couldn’t. I messaged Hawkeye that its open.
3.15 pm
I see the guy fiddling with the machine, my divine machine that can produce print outs and photostats of anything. My Lord, the Holy Canon. After giving him my pleasantries, i gave my flashy to the guy. He looks at my rusty old Transcend, 7-year-old beauty and asked “what the hell is this!!”. I ignored his ignorance and incapability to understand the emotional attachment i had to it. :)
3.20 pm
I see that the message i send to Hawkeye was not sent. I resend it and called him soon after. He told he has almost reached his hostel and shall come back soon. So i return to see My Lord at work. The guy asked me what to print, i told him the smallest among the multiple files.
He gives it for print. Finally! We both looked at the machine for a while nothing happens.
He removes it from the queue and give the .pdf for print. This is it! We both look at it for a while again (oh not again!!!). Nothing happens.
“Ah man. Not now. Not after all this” thought poor ol’ me. Hawkeye arrives and I think about what to tell him. he just walked around 1 km for no reason at all if this doesn’t work.
3.25 pm
He decides to switch it off and on and then try to do it. He gave the pdf for print again.
Please let this work. Nothing happens even now.
He gives it one more time. The machine whirred into action. “Yes!” i almost screamed out loud. Guess what? Those print outs where not mine, and they were queued long before.
He gives the pdf again. I knew it would happen this time. And it did. Warm printed paper landed on to the landing bay! “yooouhooooo!”
3.35 pm
Me and Hawkeye having our print outs taken walk towards the department to get the thing over with, and when she was going through it, I realized the grave grave thing that had happened. The converter had removed most of my formatting, transfigured my figures and made my table illegible. “I will have to go over this all over again.” Thinking along these lines, i explained to her what had happened. But, I swear man, she was a changed woman. Such kindness such amazing understanding peaceful forgiving vibes that were coming from her. I thought I had travelled to another realm!
3.45 pm
Yes..Done! almost 6 hours of tedious running around and typing up random BS, I completed my seminar report. Accepted without major modifications by my guide and I had good fun looking back at it.
Ubuntu: Make a swap file.
The main question why would you need a swap file when you can opt for a swap partition while installing…? Well people like me who normally screw up their hard disks with multiple partitions and formats normally end up not being able to create any more primary or logical extensions to the existing partitions and hence is unable to make a dedicated swap partition. This, or you forgot to set it up. Having a swap is good even when you are not going to use even half your RAM. You might never need it, but if you need it, this is how you do it.
Any way, we at hirir, have solution!!
Problem: Need swap space but cant (dont want to) make a swap partition.
Solution: Make a swap file.
Step 1: Decide location
Well, decide on a location to fix your swap partition. Ive decided on “/home/swap“
Step 2: Become root!
This is becoming a habit now.
Step 3: Type into terminal: fallocate -l 4g /home/swap/4g.swap
This will create a file by the name 4g.swap in /home/swap. The file name is immaterial. Im just trying to indicate that Im making a 4GB swap. -l 4g specifies the length of the file 4g.swap. Suffixes like m g t p e are also possible. ie, mb,gb,tb and so on.
Step 4: Type into terminal: chmod 600 /home/swap/4g.swap
Here we are making it non world readable. Just to make sure no-one reads stuff from it.
Step 5: Type into terminal all over:
mkswap /home/swap/4g.swap
swapon /home/swap/4g.swap
Type into terminal: cat /proc/meminfo and see the swap there and cry out “Yippeee”
Step 6: Make it all permanent
To make it all permanent, we edit /etc/fstab
To do that type into terminal
gksudo gedit /etc/fstab
And add into it, at the end, the following line:
/home/swap/4g.swap none swap sw 0 0
All done!!
Type “free” into terminal and you will see swap space that you’ve just allocated.
Reboot and from then on you may hibernate your system. :) which is why I did all this.
Ubuntu: Terminal transparency issue
Upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10 last month. And i intended to post this back then. But of-course time got the better of me. I kept thinking yesterday was tomorrow. Anyway, lets get on to the issue.
Issue: Transparency in terminal shows the desktop background rather than the window underneath.
The image above was found in a post by SoulMazer in UbuntuForums.
What i did: Endless Googling for it and looking around in Ubuntu forums is what i did. I even asked the tech guru here for a solution. Tech guru seemed to think it was the Nvidia driver problem. I didnt know where to get it from, so left if for a week. Ubuntu forums kept telling me its the compiz problem.
Finally found my solution at askubuntu.com. Man, i thanked Jonathan a million times(in my mind).
Solution: Paste in terminal: gconftool-2 -s ‘/apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager’ –type bool true
What you have done is enable composting in metacity. This worked for me after the first restart. Hope it does for you too!
Caffeine high..
Just had super strong coffee.
I mean super super strong.
Not the one that get out of your cup and walks away. That’s just strong coffee.
The kind that jumps out of your cup, fires a 100 rounds of Machine Gun, fires a bazooka and chases down the rocket before it hits the house that it is about to demolish and demolishes it before the shell reaches there, and then moving on to kill all inhabitants of Tea World after burning down tea plantations, conquering the British Isles for loving Tea too much, granting sleepless nights for all his minions and caffeine withdrawals for his prisoners. The kind that could take over the world before you can say “Caffeine High”.
Dedicated to his Caffeiness. And all his followers, of which I’m already one.
Forgotten
Among the meadows he ran
Little did he know, as he ran
He was losing what he loved,
Joy fully speaking to his beloved
Butterflies, he failed to notice
Distant sobs, he alone could miss.
Too late it was when, finally he did
Of-course he had it misdid.
He didn’t know,did he?, the reason
Too busy he was enjoying the season
What could he do?
What should he do?
He prayed for the sadness to lift.
But like rain clouds, it wouldn’t shift.
He wouldn’t talk to the butterflies anymore
They didn’t tell him about those tears..
“Thay couldve!” thought he “Had thay no ears?”
He wanted the sadness to be seen nevermore.
As he ran in to the meadows,
He had forgotten a lot in the shadows.
Bill Watterson, creator of beloved ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ comic strip looks back with no regrets
You all probably already read this..well its an interview of our dear Mr Watterson.
This marks the 15th year since “Calvin and Hobbes” said goodbye to the comics pages. Creator Bill Watterson, who grew up in Chagrin Falls and still makes Greater Cleveland his home, recently answered some questions via e-mail from Plain Dealer reporter John Campanelli. It’s believed to be the first interview with the reclusive artist since 1989.
With almost 15 years of separation and reflection, what do you think it was about “Calvin and Hobbes” that went beyond just capturing readers’ attention, but their hearts as well?
The only part I understand is what went into the creation of the strip. What readers take away from it is up to them. Once the strip is published, readers bring their own experiences to it, and the work takes on a life of its own. Everyone responds differently to different parts.
I just tried to write honestly, and I tried to make this little world fun to look at, so people would take the time to read it. That was the full extent of my concern. You mix a bunch of ingredients, and once in a great while, chemistry happens. I can’t explain why the strip caught on the way it did, and I don’t think I could ever duplicate it. A lot of things have to go right all at once.
What are your thoughts about the legacy of your strip?
Well, it’s not a subject that keeps me up at night. Readers will always decide if the work is meaningful and relevant to them, and I can live with whatever conclusion they come to. Again, my part in all this largely ended as the ink dried.
Readers became friends with your characters, so understandably, they grieved — and are still grieving — when the strip ended. What would you like to tell them?
This isn’t as hard to understand as people try to make it. By the end of 10 years, I’d said pretty much everything I had come there to say.
It’s always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip’s popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now “grieving” for “Calvin and Hobbes” would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I’d be agreeing with them.
I think some of the reason “Calvin and Hobbes” still finds an audience today is because I chose not to run the wheels off it.
I’ve never regretted stopping when I did.
Because your work touched so many people, fans feel a connection to you, like they know you. They want more of your work, more Calvin, another strip, anything. It really is a sort of rock star/fan relationship. Because of your aversion to attention, how do you deal with that even today? And how do you deal with knowing that it’s going to follow you for the rest of your days?
Ah, the life of a newspaper cartoonist — how I miss the groupies, drugs and trashed hotel rooms!
But since my “rock star” days, the public attention has faded a lot. In Pop Culture Time, the 1990s were eons ago. There are occasional flare-ups of weirdness, but mostly I just go about my quiet life and do my best to ignore the rest. I’m proud of the strip, enormously grateful for its success, and truly flattered that people still read it, but I wrote “Calvin and Hobbes” in my 30s, and I’m many miles from there.
An artwork can stay frozen in time, but I stumble through the years like everyone else. I think the deeper fans understand that, and are willing to give me some room to go on with my life.
How soon after the U.S. Postal Service issues the Calvin stamp will you send a letter with one on the envelope?
Immediately. I’m going to get in my horse and buggy and snail-mail a check for my newspaper subscription.
How do you want people to remember that 6-year-old and his tiger?
I vote for “Calvin and Hobbes, Eighth Wonder of the World.”
Thank you Bill, for giving us Calvin and Hobbes.
