My other blog with a new look !!

Kubuntu – Ubuntu with a K !!

I  made a transition from Ubuntu to Kubuntu and trust me the extra “K” made a huge difference. its was everything i expected it to be .. 6hrs of download and I’m ready to enter the world of Kubuntu.

Why am I trying out Kubuntu ?? well, I have never been in a KDE environment b4. Enuf of Gnome I wanted to try out KDE.

Kubuntu is different, Kubuntu is all flashy .. Kubuntu has simple effects and smooth transition. The look and feel is way different from Ubuntu. And 9.04 have a lot of improvements.

I’ve always been huge fan of Ubuntu, I was using Ubuntu 8.04 LTS(Long-term-support) nick named Hardy Heron, but I call it kokare.

I also have a win XP OS and “windows XP +SP2” is pretty good OS. If you have a good anti virus running .. Then the world is a better place for you. If u have a poor Anti Virus then ur doomed. Win XP+SP2 is the most stable OS from Microsoft guys, but I’ll always love windows 98. i have windows for back up !!!

I loaded my CD, rebooted and said, “bring on the effects baby”, hmmm the installations similar to Ubuntu popped up. No trouble here .. Installation steps were same !!

Alright, here it comes, the loading menu was really cool, the icons were slowly loaded and it glowed one after the other .. My desktop was absolutely blue, I checked the theme .. it was oxygen !

“ I was walking into a dark zone .. all alone .. I could barely see .. I went door to door knocking (clicking from one application to another) .. everything had a new name .. new icons .. Firefox was konqueror now, pidgin was kopete, Kontact, kalander, ktorrent… every app’s name started with K”

And I still had 66 software updates, 55 bug fixes .. The net was automatically detected .. no surprises there !!!

Media player was weird here and I didn’t like konqueror or kopete as well so I went to snaptic manager (wait its Kpackage kit here) and installed VLC, Pidgin and Opera. Opera and me are like soul-mates, we met in the year 2005 and rest is history !! I quickly dismissed konqueror and downloaded opera. I love opera more than any other browser in this whole wide world. I like her mouse gestures a lot. She understands my every move, she is just perfect !! And since every app’s name starts with K .. from now on its Kopera, Kidgin and KLC !!!!!!

Damn there was no GIMP here and no games guys, not even mahjong . That’s a disappointment coz every Linux flavor has games, the old version of RED HAT has cooler games !!!!!!!!

Next I plugged in my Usb and dolphin file manager popped up. No mounting issues here !!!! And there are few of my friends who use Linux only to remove virus from their pen drives .. So guys tryKubuntu you can remove virus here as well ( it’s the only way to force them use Linux !!!)

You were rite hemanth, this OS is built for people like me. My desktop without any customization.

Everything is new in here .. I need more time to adjust N customize .. but so far

“Kubuntu is kool!”

Project – Lab – Fun.

I’m not writing much of worth these days .. So this is worthless too .. I’m just going to get a few things off my chest !!!!!

With less than two months left for me to finish college, life is super hectic these days. Let me throw some light on it .. **Flashhhhhh**

Our project gets jammed at all the odd spots, the very first step is kernel compilation or kernel RE-COMPILATION which is supposed to be a very simple thing to do. But trust me it was damn confusing to enable and disable the options in “Xconfig menu”, thanks to our buddy SANDEEP “Compilation Phase” is finished. We are back on the right track and now we can move forward to the next step which is physically connecting the 5 computers using cross cables. YES we need 5 computers for our project .. 8 cross cables .. 10 LAN Cards.

I just get the feeling that everyone’s suddenly far too concerned about our project, rite from the teachers to classmates everyone’s asking the million dollar question “How’s your project going ??” especially Vivek sir and somashekar ..  And this question comes with a sarcastic smile !!!

Are you waiting for me to answer that million dollar question .. Hell no, I’m not going to answer that .. I’m tired of that question .. Give me a break ..

change the question or please rephrase it !!

Watch this video and u’ll know how hard we work for our project .. this video was taken by my mobile so please watch it in small screen for better quality !!

Ethnic day !!

I hate to say it .. But the reality is we are at the end of our college days (Damn !!)

However we still have moments and events like these to enjoy ourselves, it’s been almost 4 years and we have all got to know each other quite well and when that happens “College becomes a special place, where you can have fun and enjoy each other’s company.”

The only thing we did the whole day was click photos, I don’t remember the classes being taken and by some strange effect the teachers were not interested in taking classes. Lucky us !!

Lets the pics roll,

Click on the photo for full screen effect !!

Royal Orchid Central

We went to the central park hotel to attend a seminar on “Higher Education Overseas.”

Who all: Me, narasimha, Sachin, bharath chandrashekar, rakesh.
Seminar: Overseas education – US/UK/AUS/NZ/Singapore.
Venue: Central park hotel – Manipal center – off MG road.

The hotel had a lot of exclusive suites in C floor (1st floor) which I think is built only for occasion like executive business meeting and seminars like this one. Two foreigners were there for counseling and were telling us about the countries offering higher education. Both of them were busy when we entered the room .. So we were counseled by some Tamil GUY called Rajshekar.

He is a tamilian… How do I know???

Good question, well he was continuously on his mobile … talking in Tamil… Telling people to call him later. I’ll translate it for you guys. Add a Rajinikanth slag to it

.
“Hello, Sollu (tell me)… Naan Bangalore le irunke (I’m in Bangalore)… eppo konjo busy (now I’m busy)…Aparama call panriya (can you call me later).

He got so many calls and was forced to switch off his cell.

He explained us about opportunities in Australia, Singapore and New Zealand. He was stressing more on Australian universities. Hmmm I wonder why???

Raka and BC were counseled by those two foreigners and they were stressing more on New Zealand. Hmmm I wonder why??? : P
—————————————————————-
Next stop – Bangalore central… why? Chumma.
Next stop – Garunda mall … why? Bcoz it’s nearby.
—————————————————————–

For lunch we decide to have some Chinese food, narasimha suggested a place called “Green onions” (nice name). I guess it is in residency road .. Well Mayo hall to be precise. I’ll be reviewing the food, customer service, ambience and most important part .. Is it worth the money $$ or is it a complete rip off.

“GREEN ONIONS”

Its in first floor, they have a spiral staircase to the top, but wait there’s another restaurant called Seashell which also has a similar staircase so check before you climb the stairs.

we took the seashell stairs and then got down, waste of energy.

There were a lot of people when we entered — but the place had a few empty tables, we settled down in small rectangular one and divide the table into VEG & NON-VEG territory.

Me and Sachin we on non-veg court and Raka, BC, Nara were in the opposite court.
——————————————————————————————
BC: “everyone looks like Chinese ”
Sachin: “of course they do … Otherwise this wouldn’t have been a Chinese restaurant”
BC: “But they are Tibetians not Chinese”
——————————————————————————————-
Me: “Hmmm, No Chinese babes in Chinese restaurant?? I mean where are they??
Sachin: “hahaha lol”
Me: “No, seriously. Where are theyyy ???”
———————————————————————————————
This is what we all ordered :

I dun have to say the remaining things bcoz everybody knows how a restaurant works.

• You settle down in your table.
• Server comes around and fills your glass with ice-cold water,
• Server gives you a menu and you choose from a variety of items.
• You talk crap and look around the place until your food is cooked.
• The server comes back and puts the food in front of you.
• Someone else comes to fill the glass with more water (this happens only if customer service is good in the restaurant)
• After you eat, you get a Bill, You pay & walk out.

Both veg and non-veg appetizers were delicious, Gobi was crispy and chicken was extremely soft. I loved the combo. Everything we ordered was absolutely tasty.

420 Rs for 5.    Good deal.  Great food !!

.
“Trust me, This is where you want to eat, awesome food, pleasant ambience, friendly customer service which put together is more than enough to enjoy a yummy lunch

A BIG yes for GREEN ONIONS !!!!!!!!

–
cheers

COMMENT

The FLEXPERIENCE !!

ADOBE FLEX BOOT CAMP 2008

I was sick and tired by the regular things happening in my life. I needed a change .. I wished something unexpectedly cool to happen in my life!!

People say, “Be careful what you wish for .. Because sometimes wishes come true!“

I wished for a CHANGE and that’s exactly what I got

I walked into my class on Monday morning (3rd NOV) and hemanth dragged me to the last bench. He told me about some camp being organized by a company where they’ll teach us some software in one day and we’ll have to create a web application in 8 hrs. That info was too much for me .. he didn’t make sense, my mind was not working properly in the morning, I was still sleepy. And I asked him again what was it about. That’s when he said ADOBE is organizing a competition and the grand prize is 30K !!!!!!!!! Okay now that’s a lot of money and ADOBE is a super cool company !! The next question on my mind was When and where ??? he said MSRIT and I didn’t even bother to ask for the date .. I said, “Let’s goO !!”

I went online that day and registered for the event on their website http://msritflexbootcamp.eventbrite.com I liked the whole concept of the “event brite” website, online registration for live events is a brilliant idea. I had to print the receipt (ticket for the event). we asked a couple of people in our class to join us and immediately Syril, Suhas, Monish were ready for the event !! we had the teams ready, Me and Hemanth, Syril and Suhas, Radhika and Monish !!

On November 7th we all met at Banashankri @ 7.00 .. Monish started cursing me .. WHY ?? Hemanth was late and since hemanth is in my team—monish said it was my team’s fault for the delay. I tried my best to stop him.. But the words just flew out of his mouth .. I bet no one can stop him from doing that!!! It’s a natural gift!!!!! Finally after 15-20 mins, hemanth reached and we left at 7.30 from BSK. We reached majestic and took another bus to Mattikere. Everyone were hungry so we decide to have our breakfast in some hotel. We found a good hotel and filled our tummy with some yummy poories !!!!

We still had to walk a little distance from the bus stop .. After a 5minute walk, we made it to MSRIT, The oldness of the college was definitely visible through it conventional pillars. I cud have taken the photo but the watchman was staring at us. What if he confiscates my mobile, I can’t afford to lose another mobile. The last one was the best mobile-set ever .. Anyways, after getting inside the INFORMATION science block — we were really surprised to see the breakfast being served there .. DAMN we just had those hard Pooris on the way. And now they were serving some nice food .. I was full and there was no way I could eat anymore. The others said the same thing but as always monish had to complain about this. He joined the line and had some more food lol !! We then went around the building– checking out the usual, we don’t have this and we don’t have that in our college .. One of the volunteers came to us and told us to have something and they’ll start the registration procedure @ around 9.(I guess her name was Bhavana). We told her that we finished breakfast and thanked her for asking.

Hmmm we continued our stroll, found a Chemical engineering class .. Now THIS we don’t have in our college for sure !!!!! we also found this –>The M.S.Ramaiah idol !!!!!!

We finished our little tour and came back to see a packed crowd registering their names. We found our college counter and got the registered .. they gave us a nice yellow label to stick it on us shirts, ADOBE also gave us a text pad and a pen(lol.)

APOLOGIES for tearing the label — I took this photo yesterday, while removing it from the shirt – I tried to remove it quickly and it got split into two halves Oops!!

We didn’t waste anymore time and went inside the auditorium and occupied the center seats. I had a clear view from the center. The blue window screen and linux penguin at the left .. very clear !!

Anyways, we waited and waited for more people to walk in and start the event .. we saw a lot of changes on stage, wires being dragged, mikes being verified, lamps being placed . we still had time .. I thought I should go back and have another coffee but just then our host for the day - Meghana came in and announced that the event is gonna start in a couple of minutes.

Ok the moment of truth, everybody settled down .. huge rush .. within a hour the room was filled with people, I turned around to see the crowd, the room was overflowing not able to handle the strength. Meghana asked all the MSRIT’ians to leave the room and sit in the next auditorium. They got up and left, now the situation settled to some extent. Almost everyone got seats. On a few had to sit on the steps, but they were late so it was their fault. Lol!! they were running out of time, they had to start the event 30 mins back, the event was delayed due to some technical glitch, well that’s what meghana said. Around 500 people were present for the event, that makes 250 teams and out of which only 100 will be selected!!!!

To start with we had a session on WEB2.0 — “RICH INTERNET APPLICATIONS”—By Anantharaman (IISC), now that’s a perfect start for the event. I completely Loved the way he spoke and to add to that the PowerPoint presentation on the background was rich with colors, perfect blend of photos with text. He gave us some real time internet applications, the instances were very clear and I was familiar with the example that he shared, – “Googlemaps to describe the route and use flickr or Picasa for displaying the photo of the destination.” How simpler can it get ??? he also presented the adobe version of the STOCKS called STOCKFETCHER.

He wanted to show more interact-ability of the ADOBE FLEX 3 applications, so he introduced us to Ms. Nisha who happens to be a student of Christ college. She wanted to buy a mobile fone and hate to go out and buy. She wanted to get one online. So Mr. Anantharaman suggested the flex store to buy her fone – here’s flex store for you guys — check it out – FLEXSTORE. Go to products section to experience the effects and smoothness. She also gave a demo on the insurance application of flex. This was pretty cool I must say. I couldn’t get the link to this app. But I have this that I enjoyed the most !! visit this place and select you fav apps !!

He explained further about ADOBE AIR (integrated runtime), the vector graphics in Flex due to which it has an advantage over the Ajax. He ended his session with a quote which I made a note of he said “USE THE RIGHT TOOLS FOR THE RIGHT APPLICATIONS !!” with that he wrapped up his session and we were all completely impressed with the start and he was ready for the questions. The first question came from the person sitting right next to me. Guess who it was?? Well no prize for the right guesses, Hemanth shot the first question of the day and with that he started his account and I incremented my count by 1. (HEMANTH = 1 question.) since the apps were all online .. one has to download all the required resources.. and by the look of the rich content .. there must be a lot of files to download for the grand look.. he questioned about its bandwidth consumption. And the delay for each interaction?? And due to this, are there any performance de gradations ?? Valid question!! Mr. Anantharaman answered him by splitting his questions into parts and took one at time – all the files will be downloaded at the beginning so the user have to just get the data while interacting and these values are just small nuggets of data and hence there wont be much delay in the apps. BRAVO sir !! UR flex is reasonably impressive !! a couple of other questions were fired from different parts of the rooms, well I was busy messaging on my mobile so I couldn’t catch the questions .. I continued my messaging and the questions went on for a while but just then Meghana interrupted me, “ we are really sorry for this but we have no time for anymore questions since we started late we have to reduce the time length of this session to fit our schedule, you are free to ask questions during the lunch hour……… Thank you.” That’s when I checked my watch to realize that it was still 11.00 and had loads of time for lunch and didn’t understand why she said that… just then she thanked Mr. Anantharaman and introduced ANIRUDH SASIKUMAR, Technical Evangelist, ADOBE SYSTEMS. Oh another session before lunch, I didn’t have the event list.

Introduction to flex by ANIRUDH SASIKUMAR, Technical Evangelist, ADOBE SYSTEMS. Syril and hemanth told me that they have seen the video tutorial of him on YouTube. Now this guy was so fast that we didn’t know what just hit us and passed by, he was definitely making sense but he was on fast forward mode. He was just like a Ferrari F1 car which just travels 380 kmph. I’m not exaggerating or anything but he was seriously too fast for us. He gave an insight into the frameworks, the MXML that is used in flex and the action script. If I have an option to choose a video or a live session of him. I prefer the video tutorial instead of a live session. Atleast I can go back and replay the video multiple times till I get what he’s saying Lol. And before we knew anything the show was over !!!!! And it was question time again, I heard a voice from my right and without a second thought I increment my count (Hemanth=4, yeah he asked 3 question to him.)

To be contd ..

VERY sleepy,

Prashanth P

First day in tuitions (SCT)

I recently joined one of those tuitions where u have to to get up @ 6:00 in the morning and leave the house @ 6:30 to attend the classes at exactly 7:30 AM… So basically it takes only 15 mins to reach this tuition place from my home but I took more than 25 mins to reach the spot ( u know the weather ) — it’s was extremely cold out there in the morning and I somehow managed to maintain a range between 35 kmph to 45 kmph… that’s quite slow compared to BANGALORE’S traffic , but since it was early morning there was nobody there in the main road to curse me for driving so slow =) if only there was any police uncle (traffic police) he wud have appreciated my driving skills !!

SCT = extra coaching classes!

I found a nice parking spot , parked my bike on its double stand instead of the side stand — I still had to survive for another 3 hrs of complete lecture !! This in fact is quite tuff becoz from time to time I get distracted !!

I went inside the building but didn’t bother to read the building’s layout which was displayed in the entrance !!

I simply went straight to elevator’s door and pressed the button — there was nobody inside — I was expecting the usual lift guy but he wasn’t there, I looked at the buttons — ground 1’st, 2′nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th !! Which button shud I press –which floor ???? Where exactly is my class ?? Owwwh I shud have seen that building’s design at the entrance ! shit ! NOW I was lazy to go back again and look @ the building’s design …. So I took a wild guess and pressed 5 th !! I heard some music u know the usual music that plays when u use the elevator!!

Elevator stopped, music stopped too, I stepped out and started searching around but I cudn’t find SCT !! then I went to the elevator door & pressed the lift button again, this time I pressed 3rd floor, then the usual music followed — I stepped out again and started to search for the place — bad luck wrong floor !! shit !! where is SCT ??

Then I finally decided to get back to the ground floor and have look at the building’s WORLD MAP !! “GO to the elevator prashanth !!” –- I felt like I was playing with the elevator – up and down – up and down – up and down – up , I pressed “Ground floor button” ! the usual music followed — I smiled when I heard the music — it was the same earlier music — the lift stopped at the ground floor and I went out to see the map – hmmm where is it ???? oh crap it’s in 1 st floor itself –

I checked my watch it was still 7:00 the class is at 7:30 so I decided to go outside the building to get some fresh air — I turned around and went outside — I saw someone coming — a young lady — hey wait she seems to be my age — she’s coming close , “she is pretty”, I was talking to myself

• “no00 u can’t stare at her dude – turn away !! ” – I turned away
• “oh she is going toward the elevator — run dude run ”
• “shut up , I’m not going to run ”
• “ ok walk quickly !! ”.. she got into the elevator and I followed her into it !!!! she looked @ me
• “smile dude smile “
• “ no0 I’m not going to smile ”
• “smileeee u moron !!! ”

now I had 2 choices
1) press 1st floor and simply go to the class OR–RRR
2) Press 5th floor and let’s see what happens .. !!

To be honest I wanted to go with the 1st choice but then there was this other side of prashanth saying “ shut up and press 5 idiot @#$#$” ..!! the usual music followed damn I love this elevator music now — it is soo cool !!! wait a minute I didn’t press the button – how cud the lift move ? the girl – the girl – she might have pressed the button !!!

• she had pressed the 3 rd floor button !! — oh thank god she doesn’t know where SCT is !!

I heard a female voice — “I think she is talking to me!!!” Elevator stopped !! so did my heart !!

• “excuse me — where is SCT ?”

The best answer that has always saved me from these sorts of situations suddenly popped out of my mouth —- the three best words in English language – no it’s not “ I LOVE YOU!! ” —it is— “ I DON’T KNOW…“

I said I dun no — I lied – and with that , I broke one of the new year resolutions .

I deserve to be kicked for lying to a pretty girl !!

–
Prashanth