Past : On a day that awaits the Next

Credits for recovery : Sanjeev (a lot of credits)

Real muscles- from the real milk Producers

Virgin Cowbiles :P

KAVVU: the aavu

The Mad Cow Disease is spreading.

Holy Cow

Disclaimer: no religious offence meant.

The cow is like a sage. Slow, steady, calm and always hungry. Craving for food on the doorsteps of houses, the cow is like a Buddhist monk. Elegant horns, and a well set face makes the cow a member of the white race of the Bovidae.

The poor buffalo provides much more tasty milk, has the horns combed back neatly and behaves like a doped monk. Slower and calmer, it is too proud to ask for food. Instead it goes and rolls in swamps.

People here show racism in bovines! Chi!
Support the Holy Buffalo campaign.

Many Happy returns of the day

What does it mean?

Hareesh made me think about it. I ended up with two cases after lots of thinking.

1. Hope that you get a lot of gifts

2. Hope that this day comes again and again very happily.

Sticking to the second one, as it makes more sense I believe.

oh, btw found this a while ago:

http://7wondersofhyderabad.com/

Time to shift

Personal and Professional blogs in the same space are annoying. Shifting in progress....

Paying Airtel bill online

The Vidya Balan, Madhavan ad which regularly comes on t.v., would make on think that paying bills is now as easy as it can be. Maybe it is. but, not for me. I boast of an AB credit card which has not worked once for billing online. Necessity , the mother of invention thus enlightened me. VBV or verified by visa is a credit card service which needs to be enabled by requesting for the same to the respective bank for activation of online services for certain cards. AB is one of the chosen few. Having done the needful, I wait for intimation now, hoping it will work soon.

mounting windows partitions on linux

/sbin/fdisk -l in the bash prompt. if it does not work for the current user, try su type the root password and then try the command.

this will show the ids of the drives against the drives.
eg.
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 892 7164958+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda2 * 893 2850 15727635 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 9146 9729 4690980 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda4 2851 9145 50564587+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 2851 4808 15727603+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda6 6898 9145 18057028+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda7 4809 5828 8193118+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 5829 6083 2048256 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda9 6084 6897 6538423+ 83 Linux


next, run:
make a directory : mkdir /win1
mount:
mount /dev/sda1 /win1

does this for all.

edit in fstab for automount at boot.

disable the bugging packagekit update applet fc9

In fedora core 9, the update software kit starts and works on its own and annoyingly refuses to stop. Hence, if not required here is a way to remove the update kit.

from here

1. Click System
2. Click Preferences
3. Click Personal
4. Click Sessions
5. This launches the Sessions Preferences window. On the Startup Programs tab scroll down the list to find PackageKit Update Applet.
6. Remove the checkbox next to it to disable PackageKit Update Applet.
7. Click Close.

helps stop it from bugging users from using yum or installing anything.

flash in fc9 x86_64 using nspluginwrapper in 64 bit firefox

to have flash working in linux, firefox 32 bit had to be installed. But, nspluginwrapper solves this problem by mapping 32-bit drivers to 64-bit ones. here is a way to install flash for fedora core 9:



# rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm
# rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux
# mkdir -p /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
# yum install nspluginwrapper.{i386,x86_64} pulseaudio-lib.i386
# yum install flash-plugin
# mozilla-plugin-config -i -g -v

credit to : www.linuxforums.org

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/redhat-fedora-linux-help/121767-solved-fedora-9-flash-plugin-wont-install-4.html

Installing Stage

Stage multiple robot simulator
Stage simulates a population of mobile robots moving in and sensing a two-dimensional bitmapped environment. Various sensor models are provided, including sonar, scanning laser rangefinder, pan-tilt-zoom camera with color blob detection and odometry.

Stage devices present a standard Player interface so few or no changes are required to move between simulation and hardware. Many controllers designed in Stage have been demonstrated to work on real robots

from : http://playerstage.sourceforge.net/

Below is what worked for me to install stage.

export CMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH=/opt/local/include
export CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/local/lib

and check this : pkg-config --modversion playercore

if the output is not a version number,try this

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/

now, it should show a version number with the pkg-config --modversion playercore
cakewalk from here:
1. cmake .
2. make
3. make install

cheers!

issues configuring Player on FC9(gcc 4.3)

errors during installation (on make install):

‘close’ was not declared in this scope
‘exit’ was not declared in this scope
and lots of other similar errors.

Reason : the gcc compiler in fc9 has changed a lot. Further info here

Solution(Atleast worked for me):

- Added #include cstring to client_libs/libplayerc++/playerc++.h
- Added #include iostream to server/drivers/laser/lms400_cola.h
- Added #include iostream to server/drivers/mixed/mricp/src/geometry2D.cpp
- Added #include iostream to server/drivers/mixed/mricp/src/map.cpp
- Added #include algorithm to examples/libplayerc++/example3.cc
- Added #include algorithm to server/drivers/mixed/mricp/src/map.cpp

add all with "<" and ">" between each arg.

"
found most of the above in the bug list at Source Forge.

Octave

Matlab's free linux brother is quite a life saver. Although it has not turned to be as fast as Matlab for me somehow.

I run a modified code borrowed originally from Tim Baileys' website for running an EKF-SLAM simulation on robot whose motion model is differential.

Mainly intended for Fedora Core users

The easiest way for installing octave would be

yum -y install octave*

although octave-forge would suffice for most common purposes.

For those who are interested in the source kindly download from here

I have had quite a number of hiccups in working with octave. GNUPlot does not live up to the front end of Matlab. Moreover, the code itself without the GUI runs much slower on octave.

However, I found that using ATLAS libraries will quicken the code. I have however not delved into the intricacies of why and how. Installing ATLAS libraries and making octave use them from yum did not work. However, downloading the source and configuring using this works for me. (this is borrowed from another site btw)

./configure --enable-shared --enable-dl --disable-static LDFLAGS="-L/usr/lib64/atlas"

where the "/usr/lib64/atlas" is the path of the installed ATLAS libraries.

It is not a long life after all

Remember those adolescence days where you could dream and dare to think that you would one day make it? Down the line, the mind just adjusts to reality. It filters out those parts of us which wanted to do something really out of the box. It tells us it is not possible. And we live on, with the hope of establishment in one stream or another.

Worth a mention here is a fungi of the cordyceps genus. It eats away the insect body and the mind just the way this society does it. the difference, cordyceps is not as subtle as our society. Or maybe a certain species can only view the destruction of another type of species.

Have a look.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCOQ0VU24xw
"Some Cordyceps species are able to affect the behavior of their insect host"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordyceps

http://ocid.nacse.org/research/cordyceps/

This was what I thought could have been a better launch pad for the movie by M.Night Shyamlan , The Happening which missed the beat with an overdose of emotional heroisms. Cordyceps, upon adapting to the human brain might end up killing people.

revelation

I am indebted beyond words after being enlightened to the truth. I had been inside a web, a web of unbelievably foolish moments. Every moment I thought and related with a certain emotion. Every conversation with a certain warmth, a feeling of complete modesty and a feeling of mutual modesty. I can now give up on everyone and everything now that I am quite certain that every but of faith is but an indulgence not just into a gamble but rather, into a gamble with a certainty to lose. Look p and see the dead heads of people you thought were with you. See them floating around with their bodies carrying them. They move and look similar. The bloated heads stand out and tell you They are no one. Looking around again, a hunt begins for a prospective temple, where faith can be stored. People forget that faith is not removable as and when required. Faith is better broken than faked. The faith is now broken and now it gives a deeper understanding of the foolishness around. The fact that people are not ready to shed a grain for a person almost dead. I do not give up my fight. I just make it a lonesome one although the path is not quite easy. Looking at people having a family, looking at people holding their family and sailing through all kinds of days, I feel a sense of deep emptiness. Filling it however would empty the essence of me. 'ME' has always been lower than anyone. Now, it needs a change. Filth takes over and convinces it is holy. Steering away is my only instinct.

Picture

A picture as they say is a thousand words. Often people look at a picture and claim that it brings out nostalgic scenes. However, whenever I look at a picture I cannot quite imagine myself in that location and assuming an unassuming pose. It does appear easy to look at a picture and drown into nostalgic depths. But, personal amnesia I feel is quite rampant and although the place might look similar, if there is someone doing right what you might be doing, it might not ring a bell. In other words, pictures are discrete memories with strict independence from the presence of the onlooker.

who will cry when I die?

I have not read the book. And no I am not talking about it. I was wondering really who would cry. If I die in the near future, my parents and a few 'friends'. Down the line, maybe really way down I would die and die hard. How would people be living when they know no one shall cry when they die? do they try to change the equation to make it look as if someone will cry? My tender ego still lingers and expects to deliver pain with my departure. The reason if wondered logically is actually -nil. Why should someone cry when I die? I would rather make a thousand enemies who would drink and toast to my dead body. Again the happiness of my exit might not be as pleasing to my enemies as my presence if I am a 'better' man. The world is too big and too busy to think about every insect. This one shall make its presence felt. By more than just passing wind spreading far and wide.