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

AT&T Text-to-Speech Engine

While searching for a nice attendant voice generator software for making some good IVR prompts for my voice mail, I came across the test to speech engine from AT&T. Its named AT&T Natural Voices. And I found its capabilities are quite good to some of the other Text to Speech APIs I came across. And I made the required voice sample using their demo interface too. A very nice site if you like to use the same for your IVR prompts etc. Make sure that those voice clips are used for personal purposes only as they have explicitly prohibited the use of any sample made from that site in any commercial applications.

Labels: computers, grandcentral, telephone

Grandcentral closes user invites

Not sure if this is old news, But when I checked today, my Grandcentral account had the entire user invitation area removed. To any of you who don't have an account yet, use this link to get an account. I had it tested by a couple of friends in USA and it worked fine. So go ahead and give yourself some Grandcentral love :) Btw, if you are in USA / Canada, click on the Call me link at the bottom of this page to call me for free.

Labels: cell phone, computers, free number, google, grandcentral, telephone, usa number

Boycott Trend Micro

Join FSF and the ScriptumLibre.org Foundation in boycotting all products and services sold by Trend Micro.

The proprietary software company Trend Micro has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Barracuda Networks. They claim that Barracuda is violating their patent by distributing the free software antivirus program ClamAV.

We should avoid using any proprietary software, but companies that use software patents for aggression are the lowest of the low.

Lawsuits like this are a threat to the entire IT community, and to free software programmers in particular. There is little that can be done to stop patent trolls from exploiting the patent and legal system for financial gain, until we put a stop to the patenting of software altogether. But there is an immediate opportunity to punish and deter trolls like Trend Micro.

Let all of Trend Micro's potential customers know that by doing business with Trend Micro, they are supporting this attack on all creators of software works, including the entire free software community, and that the strongest message they can send to Trend Micro is to publicly boycott all of their products and services.

Labels: computers, FSF, linux, opensource, unix

Parents punk kid into thinking he got an Xbox 360

This sucks, poor kid got scammed by his parents... You can find the videos of the kid unwrapping his present here. Engadget has a story on this. Check it out here.

Labels: computers, console, games, x-box

Views about Pakistan, More Bombers!!

In another news, Suicide bomb in Pakistan kills at least 35, A suicide attacker blew himself at a funeral Friday for a slain policeman in Pakistan's volatile Swat Valley, killing at least 35 people including the officer's 16-year-old son.

These people has to learn a lesson, oh wait, I think they have already learned it, these people were originally programmed to create uncertainty in India, to spread terrorism in India and now they are getting back at the masterminds of all these. I would drink to a day when all these guys would burn to dust by some one's nuke!! What i don't get is that what why would they kill their own people, time to think eh? Does Allah reward you for killing other Muslims?

Labels: India, Pakistan, Terrorism

Kashmir walks free on Monday

Here is some new I came across today... they think they did a great thing by releasing him, but did they? the truth is, they took 35 years off some one's life... Those bastards!!!

Islamabad, February 29

Indian prisoner Kashmir Singh, who had spent 35 years on death row in Pakistani jails, is expected to walk free on Monday following the approval of his mercy petition by President Pervez Musharraf.

After the approval of the petition of Singh, who was arrested in Rawalpindi on espionage charges in 1973 and sentenced to death by an army court, by Musharraf yesterday, it was processed by the Prime Minister’s secretariat today, caretaker human rights minister Ansar Burney said.

“The matter is now with the interior ministry and all the paperwork related to Kashmir Singh’s release is expected to be completed by Monday. I will also get in touch with the Indian High Commission to get his travel documents prepared so that he can go home expeditiously,” Burney said.

He revealed that Musharraf was initially not convinced that Singh, now in his sixties, had spent so long on death row but readily agreed to consider the mercy petition after he was presented with the facts of the case. — PTI

Labels: India, Pakistan, Prisoner

IrDA interface for your mainboard

Many modern main boards have an IrDA connector on board, but the required transceiver is often missing. if you can't find the exactly fitting module for your main board, you can probably use a module from another main board if you connect it in the right way. just see the main board documentations (or search the web) and compare the pinouts. irda modules normally need 4 signals: gnd, +5v, rxd and txd.

or you can build your own IrDA module! All you need is a IrDA transceiver and some resistors and capacitors.

The original article could be found here.

There is also a Silicon Chip Australia project on the same topic, using the same components. Their PCB layout surely looks better too.

Images below.













PCB Layout is here.

Have fun building it.

Labels: computers, DIY, electronics, guides, infrared