Celebration of Friendship - Union and next level

I dedicate this to all the friends who are still in touch or separated by distance and united by thoughts.

Friendship is a wonderful and unique relation given to mankind and it has a fusion of many emotions such as love, affection, anger, pride and what not. End of the day if you can be totally yourself and completely "non-layered" with a person, that can be with a good friend of yours. I always wonder how we can be so selfish when it comes to others and so selfless when it comes to certain set of our close friends and relatives and are we that complicated.

There are very few persons who can guide you in the crucial moments of your life and at the same time share their happiness and sorrows on an equal footing and respect your emotions as well and correct you when you take a wrong decision. There are very rare set of people who think of your upliftment on holistic scale and in an unconditional way. These kind of friends are like shooting stars. When they are with you, you should make a wish and enjoy the moments with them. Eventually, they shall transform you into a shooting star by identifying your strengths and minimizing your weakness and your wish shall also be granted.

I got these kind of friends bit late and I had a great time with them. Since we were away from our families, we had complete independence and it means more responsibility. We went out to movies, dinners  and long road trips. The friendship unfolded only after when we started sharing the same apartment. One can get to know about their friend in depth, if they stay together. Together, we faced many situations and encountered various problems and found innovative approach to face life. We could identify one anthers' strength and optimized on them. Maybe, I can safely say that I had a great bachelor life with my friends.

The next level comes when one escalates to next phase in their life, i.e marriage. But, the beauty in friendship is the pervasive care that is always shown despite of whatever stage of life you are in, as it is bit flexible and unconditional. I was very happy when the bachelor friend of mine got betrothed. The funny part is he is insisting me to get married soon so that we can relive our bachelor's life as a family.

I certainly do not know what is there in the cards for me, but at this juncture, it truly calls for a celebration of "bachelor's friendship days" as we cannot get those days of pranks, humor, fun, late night outings, family get together and most importantly, our road trip. I have decided to relive those moments with our other mutual friends and send him off as a responsible husband and of course he will be giving us a bachelor's party which is separate.

For those of you who were in this phase, reconnect with your friends and try to recollect the wonderful memories you had as a bachelor with them. For those who are still bachelors, make the most of it right now so that you can again celebrate extravagantly later.

Helly Delhi & Shameless media

Candles are lit near the India gate. Many mourn for one’s death. Many are fighting for justice. There are many protesters holding placards asking for stronger legal enforcement and others to give capital punishment for crime against women. News channels are having these protesters as an appetite for a real big time and churning money out of them by conducting debates and having question and answer sessions which is known to every individual across the nation. Few news channels have given tag names to the victim who was the reason behind the protest across the National Capital, such as “Nation’s Daughter”. I really don’t know what is actually happening.

When the victim was taken to Singapore for medical treatment, every politician tried to politicize the matter and tried to gain some leverage for their party. What a shame? It is like stealing from a house which is ablaze. Again, coming back to these protesters  all I am going to question them is where is their protest headed towards? Is it having any goal, if at all it had one?  If something bad happens or if someone calls out for a protest, everyone gather at Jantar Mantar, and then shout slogans against the Government. Few of them will get arrested and a handful amongst them will again get cheap publicity for some of their thoughtless behavior in front of media and finally everybody will mind their business waiting for another opportunity to protest.

Every Indian can proudly write in their resume that “protesting” is their extra-curricular activity or hobby.

In a day or two, all these people who were protesting are going to happily welcome 2013 by celebrating New Year. This victim is dead and gone and she is now considered as equivalent as a freedom fighter and is conveniently forgotten by people – a history. 

The main reason behind this forgetfulness attitude or selective amnesia of Indians is the Indian media. They come out with news of their whims and fancies at times, which is known to everyone. They do so because people have started liking that kind of news and all these channels have cleverly done their homework by reading the pulse of Indian Television viewers. Some of the news broadcasted will not be of much importance at all, but still they have made these monotonous people to watch them and get used to it thereby making whatever junk news or spams they show as a part of our lives. Indian media does not have any ethics, or if they are having one, it must be unfit for them.

To conclude in this case, the issue will be politicized as usual and these incidents shall continue because most of the culprits are already know to the police or a name sake law shall be enacted for consoling the protesters which will be highly inaccessible in a country where law takes its course of action in different pace for different people.

Happy (Bloody) New Year to all those who cheat themselves!! 

Health Foods - Myth or Truth

I find many sites offering advice and comprehensive plan for reducing weight through "health food" and "diet planning". There are many ads which give emphasis to food as directly related to weight and health. Many people are weight conscious or at least more worried about how they look. So whenever they come across such advertisements, people tend to change  their diet pattern and are willing to go through a course of such diet which they feel that it will reduce their fat/weight.

But, is diet planning alone sufficient? Why many people fail to realize that they have gained weight because of that diet only. Just by planning their food pattern alone won't get them a slim, sleek and robust look. Physical fitness and activities are also required. Both food and physical activities go hand in hand. But, today's media is giving more emphasis for food and lesser emphasis for physical activities and people are misguided that if they are going to follow "diet" then their body weight will reduce.Some of them realize soon, but some realize it very late.

Better wear your shoes and go for a jog, before having an oatmeal.

Chakravarthy

Hard Reality

I woke up and suddenly i came to know that I was 25 years old this day. When I looked back all these years, all I have is a glorious school life and college life. Now I am struck and unable to move ahead. When I further analysed  about myself, I found that the mistake was with me. All these years, I didn't have anything passionate in my life. I didn't stick on to any particular thing. I just did what others did and no one around me instructed or said that it is good or bad, because they let me choose my way.

Time and again, I came to cross roads of my life and become very indecisive and sometimes I laugh at myself for my "lack passion" attitude in my life. I always want to achieve something real big in my life, but I didn't know what to do. It is like taking a white canvas of largest size and having all colors and different sizes of paint brushes without knowing (what) to paint. Many friends were with me so far, and I hope at least some remembers me. Many have forgotten me, though I haven't forgotten them. I guess it is the society and their social commitments apart from their personal priorities, which has pushed me away from their mind. Or also because of my stagnancy and others' progress, due to which I may not be visible in their line of sight.

Sitting in home and trying to attain something in order make people around you happy for 3 years is difficult because I know, and that is what I am doing and unfortunately it is not synchronized with my likes and desire. But life is like that only. People around you expect you to finish certain unfinished business even though you may not like it even a single bit. At times, I also regret why the hell I am still confined inside 4 walls called home. I just feel like going out somewhere unknown and unaware and start a new life out there and I do believe in me and I have the capacity. But by doing so, I will be breaking hearts of many loved ones who were by my side during my troubled times and such an act of mine will turn out be a "real selfish act".

Come what may, I have decided to finish off the task in hand. I know it is difficult. Nothing in this world is very easy. I know, I don't like it. But now I don't have a choice because earlier it was my call and I chose this task. I know, I have to struggle and it would be very bitter. If a nation needs independence from its conquerors, it needs to put up a bitter struggle. To make my life better and not to repeat the mistakes, I have to put the same kind of struggle with myself.

Whatever that has been done, cannot be undone. But, whatever that needs to be done can be done in a better manner.

Chakravarthy
(Dedicated to people of all walks of life)

Winamp in Linux

Winamp + KDE = Qmmp

These are times of Cloud music storage and players, when one can choose to store music on the cloud and listen to it anywhere from any device, or stream it from one of the available sites out there. Having said so, I guess there are still people like me, who also like to keep a local music collection and play it using more of a good old installed player. In fact, we Linux users are fortunate, because there is a plethora of audio players available in Linux these days. From the feature-full likes of Banshee and Amarok, to others that are maybe less powerful, but in turn lighter and faster, there is something for everyone.

Back when I used Windows as my only OS, I was a big Winamp fan, so I have always enjoyed using it in Linux. Nostalgia is a part of it, but also the fact that there are few others that work as fast. I usually go back and forth between the powerful media players and Winamp clones, but at the end of the day, I usually realize that I just need something that plays the music I like to listen to.

As far as Winamp clones go in Linux, there are a few alternatives, Audacious probably being the most popular one. However, Audacious is GTK based and I have experienced issues in the past when trying to make it work under KDE. QMMP is a much better option for KDE users, for it is QT based.

Like others Winamp clones, Qmmp supports skins (unfortunately only the old .wsz ones, not .wal ones), which allow users to choose between a lot of beautiful options, as shown in these screenshot.

All the usual classic Winamp features are also there, such as EQ, playlists, etc.

(Details as shared by Mr. V Narayanan)

Scientific Linux - Detailed Review

Scientific Linux - It blinded me with science! 

The credits for the catchy title go to legendary Thomas Dolby, but the real thanks go to the team of scientists, engineers and geeks at CERN, who developed this distribution.  If you're into science, you will, sooner or later, run into Linux. Any serious mathematical, computational work is done on Linux. From amazing 3D movies to simulating the Big Bang over to crunching sparse matrices in a cloud and folding proteins at home, it all comes down to using Linux. As a single host, Linux is merely a machine, but it starts to shine in its hundreds and thousands. 

Scientific Linux is a distribution based on RedHat, designed to work out of the box and make the job of assistants and PhDs that much easier. As such, it comes with a few extras that you do not normally see in stock RedHat, without losing the heavy anchor of adamant stability that RedHat brings.

Get Scientific Linux 

The distro comes in several flavors, much like the parent distribution. You can go for the full-fledged DVD or download live CDs, running either KDE or Gnome desktop. The website is SSL-secured and is uses a rather simple wiki-style design. But you'll manage all right. The current edition is at version 5.4, just like RHEL, named Boron. 

Speaking of names ... 

Considering the fact several previous versions were already knighted the same way, it's a bit of a disappointment. There are so many cool physical terms, using Boron twice is somewhat bleak. Then again, Scientific Linux only had four names over the lifetime of no less than 22 releases. Creativity, anyone?

Using Scientific Linux 

The boot menu is spartan, old style, with a rather classic interpretation of an atom for the logo, most likely Boron. After you make the choice, a very standard RHEL boot splash follows, taking you into a very standard RHEL desktop. 

Wireless & Bluetooth 

Having tested the raw RedHat functionality in my CentOS 5.3 review, I did find some problems with Wireless connectivity. Not so in Scientific Linux. Either because of the changes in 5.4, custom additions in the distro - or both, Wireless worked perfectly out of the box. I selected one of my WPA2-encrypted routers and was on my way.

Look & feel 

While the desktop feels slightly archaic, it's very easy to make it look great in just a few short minutes. You already have a very decent theme and great fonts, you only need a small change of wallpaper to get things right.

Personally, I found the classic atom impression rather boring. For one thing, the hottest physical thing in the world now is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), so why not make it the focus of the distro? Or you can use the default RHEL5 desktop, and none's the wiser:

Multimedia 

I was not expecting anything, which made the full plethora of codecs a genuine, pleasant surprise. Flash, MP3 and DVD playback were all there, out of the box, smooth as silk. Great job...

Compiz 

Believe it or not, geeks seem to like eye candy! Scientific Linux comes with the drivers built in, waiting for you to start playing. Even on T42, everything worked out of the box, no glitches or slowdowns. The basic subset of effects is rather small, but it's still good and impressive enough.

Samba sharing 

No problems either. Worked as expected. What more, my external USB drivers, formatted both in FAT32 and NTFS connected without any problems. I did have some issues in CentOS, but not here.

Applications 

I must say I was surprised not to find any one of the free numerical computation programs included, FreeMat, Octave or Scilab. Could be the licensing issues, the packaging or just ole plain support, but there are not available, even in the extra repos. 

Not a big deal, when you really think about it, because most engineers use Matlab for their work, but if you're in a mood for some free dabbling in matrices and fancy graphs, you will have to grab the scientific programs yourself. Oh, in my Science sites articles I promised you we would talk about a science-oriented distro, so here we are. 

Still, the existing bundle of programs is quite decent. The full DVD gives you more, but you can easily replenish missing bits using the package manager. The default set includes Firefox, Thunderbird and a few interesting nerdy tools like Emacs, nedit, GhostView, and others.

But you also have X-CD-Roast CD/DVD burning software, some OpenOffice programs, Totem, a range of network tools, and other useful applications. 

Package management 

Scientific Linux uses a remixed, upgraded version of the YUM package manager, paired with the Yum Extender GUI, which does a very decent job. There was an issue with the proxy, but more about that later.

You can add extra repositories very easy, just a click of the mouse.

And then look for the cool programs you need. The package manager is simple, clean and easy to use. For example, here's the list of programs available in the Engineering and Scientific category. Most people would not want or need them, but geeks doing their Masters might.

That said, I would appreciate more geek tools. For example, some sort of LaTeX frontend, like LyX, since writing theses in an office suite is an abomination. More math tools, more graphs and plotting apps. Eclipse is available, which is good. 

Stability 

Scientific Linux is rock solid. There were no crashes or any other bugs. Laptop modes worked great. Suspend worked even in the live session, taking mere seconds to sleep and resume. Very nice. Oh, you can install the system from the live CD, unlike stock RedHat, did I mention that? 

Usability 

As you've seen so far, Scientific Linux is a very friendly distro. It offers Wireless and Bluetooth out of the box, comes with multimedia codecs, Samba sharing works, Compiz works, it's really great. Where are the problems, then? Well, there were a few, rather minor ones, I would like to say.

Conclusion 

I was tremendously pleased with Scientific Linux. First, it's a RedHat distro, which means you get the classic Linux usage model, excellent stability and many years of support. Second, it has everything you need - multimedia, desktop effects, Samba sharing, anything. A serious question I have is, who needs Fedora? 

Fedora is the new, modern experimental testbed for the RedHat family, and it has the cool and exciting technologies you want. But so does Scientific Linux, minus the stability problems of the ever-beta Fedora. 

Scientific Linux does itself a great injustice by using its name. It frightens away normal people, who think this is some geeky distro, when in fact, it's just a super-polished RedHat, with all the extras you may want. 

If I had to think of a RedHat-based distro for home use, it would be the academic geek distro called Scientific Linux. It bridges between spartan RedHat and futuristic Fedora by taking the best of both worlds and dropping away the problems. Really neat. 

If you like you distros to be super-stable, robust, fast and supported for a long time, derived from the leading giant of the Linux world, and equipped with the trove of great programs and utilities, Scientific Linux is the one you want. 

Honestly, if you ever think of recommending Scientific Linux to anyone by pointing to this article, perhaps, make sure you direct them to the Conclusion first. Let them not think for a moment that this is a geek gadget. Scientific Linux is a perfect desktop distro. Drop the nerdy wallpaper and you have a cutting-edge home system with everything you could ask for. Well, I guess, that would be all.

 

(The above is in depth review by Mr. Dina A Das, a friend of Mr. V Narayanan who is in BSD Legal Department.)

Hope you all would enjoyed this review

Get Rich Slowly - Personal Finance That Makes Cents

Get Rich Slowly - Personal Finance That Makes Cents:
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