Updates

I have been attending a few interviews, and most notably the ones from Limespot LLC, yes, the guys behind LimeWire P2P client. Also from Cable and Wireless as a Tier2 tech. Well, I understood that for the past few years a lot of things has changed and a lot of new standards, applications etc came into the picture. I am getting a little rusty here feels like a mammoth in present time. So, for the past few days most of the time was spent on reading up on new technologies, and missed out parts of some industry standard applications etc.

Most notably the ones I came across are, like LVS, RedHat GFS, Bind Views and Dynamic DNS updates using ISC DHCPd. I am simply posting some links here so that you can understand where to go in case if you need help regarding this also as a future reference for me.

For a starter you can find ALL types of DNS records here. and a few additions here. I hope this will come in handy.
Here is the link to setting up a LVS cluster using CentOS or RHEL and you can find instructions for a redhat clustersuite based cluster here.
Information on setting up GFS (Global Filesystem) is available here and the process of integrating it with GNBD is here.
Information on the Views feature of Bind can be found here with easy examples.
Integrating ISC DHCPd and Bind for setting up a Dynami DNS update method could be found here. This link was especially useful because the man pages and other documents do not touch this area deeply.

So, I guess thats it for now.
Ciao!

Labels: computers, geek, guides, how to, linux, unix

Info about relationships in general

These are some websites i came across today, most of them from the digg feed. All about relationships and behavioral responses etc. Have a look. I feel they are giving quite good insight.

First one, a very hilarious post about marriage and relations in general by kids.
An excellent post of advices received by people during their wedding.
Fighting with your spouse can actually increase your lifespan!!!, Find the details here.
Views about monogamy and polygamy based on nature and evolution can be found here.
Find about what do super happy couples do most of the time.
Reasons for men going for younger women and women going for elder men can be found here, Very insightful, especially the comments.
Ahh, and finally some guides for newlyweds going at it.

Well this post was just a buncha links but be sure to read them and enjoy.

Labels: relations, women

Blind kid uses Echo Location to do just about everything!

Check this video of a kid who can use echo location, like dolphins, to avod obstacles, and even play video games. He was not born blind, his eyes were surgically removed when he was 2 years old due to cancer. An amazing accomplishment!

Labels: blind, echolocation

Back to Linux

For the past 2 years or so, I was using mostly windows for my desktop applications. In the meanwhile I had tried to switch to Linux a couple of times, and it never worked fully. Reason, I was trying to roll out a custom version for my use. Lost interest in half way. Last one i tried a couple of weeks ago was Gentoo. It was coming up nicely until my experiments with emerge finally fucked the system over to a totally unusable state. All those hours of downloading and building went out of the window by a stupid decision I made about a conflicting package.


Yesterday, I decided I need to get away from the dreaded windows platform because its been a really long while I have worked with Linux on my desktop. I am losing that experimental nature slowly. So, a switch might help me catch up on what was left out. So, I got Ubuntu Linux and installed it, So far I am feeling good about it, everything is working the way I want. All required software are there etc. Had a little trouble with flash player because I am using a 64bit system and adobe doesn't have a 64bit flash player yet. But, Ubuntu took care of it nicely, so far, I am enjoying Synaptic, the package manager. I was using Google docs for my basic word processing, spreadsheets, so no issues about it. Was using pidgin in windows, so my IM sessions are fine too. Almost all of the required software are there. As per what I am seeing now, Linux is ready for desktop use.

Now, it is just a wait and see game for me :)

Labels: computers, geek, linux

South Park to Offer All Episodes for Free Download

South Park fans will soon be able to watch any episode of the seminal animated show free online, thanks to a deal between show creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone and Comedy Central's parent company, Viacom. According to Comedy Central reps, Parker and Stone are the driving force behind South Park Studios, the series' new online HQ offering free viewing of all 12 seasons of South Park. Currently in its beta format, the site and its episodes are ad-supported, but require no additional fees to view as many episodes as a fan's heart desires. In an appropriately glib statement, Parker and Stone said they were inspired to start the site when they got "really sick of having to download our own show illegally all the time. So we gave ourselves a legal alternative." New episodes will appear on the site soon after airing on Comedy Central and will remain available for one week. After 30 days, the new episode will return to the site permanently. Parker and Stone insist that the new service won't affect DVD sales as hardcore fans of the show could still want to own the episodes in "hard copy" form. There's no word yet on whether other genre shows will follow South Park's new model.

(Article from Wired blogs, Image courtesy of South Park Studios.)

Labels: comedy, internet, tv

RHEL Vs Sun Solaris

Today, I received a mail from Sun Micro systems promoting Solaris 10. It is a web cast, and the link is here Check it out. Nicely done web cast, but i am a little skeptical about how Solaris would shine against Linux which most of us geeks are more familiar with. Yes it might work for organisations, but when individual users are taken into account, the learning curve is a little higher than learning Linux.

Labels: computers, linux, solaris

OBDII in indian cars

I was interested in an OBDII sensor for our car here and wanted do buy a ScanGuageII for it. The compatibility information available at http://www.scangauge.com/ was inadequate as it mainly dealt with cars made in USA. While searching for compatible cars in India, I came across these posts at Team-BHP and there really are a few cars with OBDII interfaces. From what I read there, it seems none of the cars made by Maruti Autos work with standard controllers even though they claim to have it and even feature a port for the same. So, in a nutshell, if you have a car from maruti autos, don't even dream about a OBD2 controller as its gonna be a waste of money. There are claims that most of the cars by GM, Honda, Ford all work with OBD II. So, choose your next car wisely if you wanna sport one of these geeky gadgets ;)

Labels: computers, electronics, geek, hardware, obd2

Taste of failure

Today, I tried to build a PCB of a programmer for PIC micro controller 16F628. I wanted to use an easy prototyping method and I decided to go for the method specified here and here.

Soon, I went out hunting for Ink jet photo quality glossy paper in a few shops, and they all were out of stock. Then i remembered a friend who owns a Image / graphics studio and he gave me 2 A4 sheets and did not take money for it even though I insisted a lot. His site is here. Those sheets were high quality Epson ones. Next trip, to my friend who has a high quality Laserjet Printer. I installed the Cadsoft Eagle software in his system and took a couple of printouts.

Once I had the printed sheets, came back home, and did the standard procedures, like cleaning the PCB, cutting it to the required size, not a clean cut, but I had a crude cut using a BIG hacksaw. I didn't have acetone (Thinner) here, so i cleaned my PCB with some Zippo Lighter fluid. Got my Clothes Iron and started ironing it, and the problems started. one layer at the back of the paper started melting, so I kept a backing paper behind it and continued ironing. And soon the backing paper got stuck to the photo sheet. First reaction was, so what?

Made a trip to the kitchen, and started boiling water for cooking my PCBs till the paper came out, but unfortunately, even after 30 minutes of continuous boiling torture, the paper wouldn't move!, and I let it stay there for another 30 minutes, and i finally removed the paper and found, that the toner did not get transfered fully. I had some partial tracks here and there. Which was not useful for me. Repeated with the other circuits and all of them failed.

I am unsure what made the process fail, was it the paper? the Zippo fluid? or an over heated Iron? I have no idea, But I guess I will try it again tomorrow. Will update this post with further findings and failure stories (hope not!) and observations about this comparatively easy trick. Making me insane thinking about what went wrong anyways.. so, lets see how it goes tomorrow.

Good night!

Labels: DIY, electronics, Etching, how to, PCB