This is a follow-up to the previous post on Diwali. I enjoyed it well. Lots of crackers and fireworks to play with, lots of new dresses so that I could change every one hour, lots of TV programs to watch, lots of friends to greet and share the joy of the occasion.

But, I missed out one major thing that completes the festivity. The snacks. My mom had prepared Vadai, Suliyan, Somasa, Murukku, Mixture, Ola pakoda. She had ordered for other sweets like Jilebi (Jangiri), Baadhusha etc., The day I left to my hometown, I ate at a road side shop, that left me with food poisoning of the worst degree. I could just watch everyone eating. I was on just Idli‘s and Rasam.

Waiting for it to get over soon, so that I can feast.

Happy Deepavali!

I am leaving to my hometown to celebrate Deepavali with my family and friends. Happy Deepavali to all netizens. 

Diwali Lights

Let Light destroy all the darkness out of your lives.

Yesterday, I was in those slog moments (when you feel to do nothing).

I just swithced on my PC to hear some songs. Keeping the volume full on my 5.1 speaker set, (not bothering the neighbours of course), I was just lying there on the bed hearing.

The song was ”Malarodu Malar ingu magilnthadum pothu”‘ from the film, Bombay by A.R.Rahman. Simply superb. It can only composed by such a genius like him.

The music, the voice and the lyrics… Soothing, insiring and comforting all at once. I was lost. Next song on the list was “Yenmel Vizhuntha Panithuliye”‘ from ‘May Madham” againg by A.R.Rahman. Stupendous! No words to describe the feel.

What could have been running in A R R’s mind when he was composing the songs. How did he choose on what instrument should be played when (I really could not guess a lot of instruments played over in it) but it was a great arrangement. How comes he chose the right person to render the vocals. Simply A Genius is what I can say.

These two songs changed the mood of the day. I followed it by hearing to ‘En Kaadhale’ and ‘Vennilavin Theril’ from ‘Duet’ .

Geniuses are born! Not made!

As a part of my recent Cardio routine at the gym, I noticed a lot of difference in the units used in a lot of the machines. Being an instrumentation engineer by the degree I hold, it disturbed me a lot and I wanted to know actually what the units used indicate.

The treadmill read the unit in kCal (kilo calorie). The cycle read the unit in Cal (Calorie).

A unit of energy is calorie. This is what is used in physics and sciences. In nutrition, food and exercises, it is quite different. The unit of enery is measured in kCal or Calorie.

1 kCal = 1 Calorie = 1000 calorie.

So the next time you notice Cal in the gym, remember this!

Here goes  my geek code as from www.geekcode.com

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS/IT/S d+()@>- s:+ a----- C++$ UL P L+ E--- W++ N- !o-- K- w++$ O-- M- !V-- PS PE Y PGP+ t !5-- !X !R tv+ b++ DI D G e++ h-- r-- y--
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK-----

Edit: I found a site where you can generate it easier without a hazzle, the Code of the Geek Generator. Hope you get it!

Starting out on the Open Source fever, I installed Mandriva, Suse and finally have settled with Ubuntu after two days of fighting over which distribution to go with. But Ubuntu doesn’t ask a lot of questions during install, about what to install and where to install grub etc.

After installing Ubuntu, I saw that it had not even install gcc libraries but had installed the gcc compiler. Also, the default operating system to boot into was ‘Ubuntu’ instead of Windows XP. As I and my friends use the same machine and they have no liking to Linux, I needed Windows to boot first. During the installation, I was not provided the option to choose.

I wanted to change the default boot option in grub. I had to edit the ‘menu.lst’ file located in /boot/grub manually. It does not allow to edit as the permissions for the only user was denied. The concept of ‘root’ user was not there, as I was not requested for the creation of a root user. I just created a user, and ubuntu assigns super user privilege to this user.

To switch users, the ‘sudo’ command was to be used instead of ‘su’.

Finally, all set and working. Still to install ruby, mysql, python, vlc.