Pehle Aap

My hopes stands in good faith and it does not take me 2 years to rite back again ....

Your blog is supposed to tell a lot abt U but mine doesnt ... infact it does not tell anything except that I njoi playing with Linux and belong 2 a class of wannabe(m not sure if this was the right word) geeks.

Well a different facet this time .... I am crazy abt renewable energy ever since I can remember ... this love has brought me back from the job of a Software Engineer to do an M.Tech in Energy Science and currently m working on Organic Solar Cells (OSC).

So back to the topic of this blog ... any1 from India can easily guess it has something to do with Lucknow ... well not exactly Lucknow but close ... its Kanpur. We dont have a lab for OSC in IITB so am here in IITK trying 2 learn the tricks of the trade.

To start with Kanpur inside the campus is an awsum place ...its infra is GOD compared 2 IITB but then there are always other things we have better there ... an obvious eg ... Their T-shirt for intercollegiate festival says "The biggest best intercollegiate festival in Asia India" ... The other being the punch line of MoodI ... IITB's fest :) ... Riting something on a T shirt does not help Kanpurities :P

OK the better things ... well there are a thousand things worth riting but let me stick to the ones that are most subtle ... the really good ones.

1. I am walking down a lane and ask some1 4 directions ... that person was not only kind enough 2 tell me the directions but offered me double seat on his cycle (they would never offer u lift on a cycle in Mumbai ... I dont :D )... but it does not end there ... We come across a turn where I had to take a different path ... now this really cool dude ... offers me 2 drop me till my hostel ... I politely refuse ... but he does not seem to budge infact when he finally agrees he has expressions on his face as being sorry abt that ... so he decides to make up for it and offers to buy me a juice in a nearby juice counter ... BOY Kanpur is cool ... isnt it ....

2. I had a broken button and away from home it can be a big problem so I tried borrowing a needle from a tailor within campus ... did not feel like shelling out money for a button ... So I go to this tailor and ask for it ... he offers me to take it away ... I insist I will fix it there and return him .... and then as soon as I take my shirt from my bag he offers to stitch it .... He not only stitches that button but almost all of them coz they were on the verge of breaking .... now how do I say thanks to this guy ... I cant offer money for his hospitality that would be gross .... "Idea !!!" So I but him a nice icecream and he is as happy with it as I am ....

A short part of my big travelogue of visit 2 Kanpur ... probably one of the best parts ... Isnt Kanpur cool ... and so is Life !!! made up of such wonderful moments

Intrepid Ibex .... Refreshing

It took me about 2 years to get back to the scene again. And the most ironical part is that I am doing this during my Mid-Sem exams .... hehe ... but then as they say ... fact it stranger than fiction .... fiction has to make sense ...

So what brings me back here .... A good internet connection and a head bored of studying and with lot 2 tell abt its expts with Intrepid Ibex .... Ubuntu's latest distro.(Yes its still the latest stable release)

So what is interesting ... firstly the graphics .... quite beautiful this time ... with some really cool workspace and window switching graphics ... Check out here

But inspite of this I still have a dual boot system with Vista Ultimate .... and its not just the MS compatible programs that are holding me back ... I still cant see the elegance of Vista in Linux ... neither Ubuntu nor any other .... Applications like Firefox or ThunderBird look so much more elegant in Vista but unfortuately not in Ibex ... but then thats OK and I can live with that .... Just a tht ... its my blog right ;)

And although almost everything worked out of the box .... 2 things caused me a lot of pain ....
1. My wifi card Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 was not detected ... Took me quite a while before I could fix it. You may find more details here and how I fixed it
I needed a firmware upgrade

2. I am behind a proxy server in my university which need authentication and the network authentication part of Ubuntu is still buggy continuing its legacy from 8.04 .... It cant handle 'dot' in login name ... and God knows may be in password also ... I have filed a bug in bugzilla ... but I dont know if they will fix it sometime soon .... Fortunately for me a friend of mine has lended me his non-dot containing login name and password for my linux use .... GOD must be in his finest mood [generally] when he decides hostel life for some1 .... May be if possible I may someday look into the code myself and try to fix it and win the coveted title of a contributer to Linux .. ;)

Well enough for today ....I have not been able to study since I have installed Linux ... (Billy u listening ... I have something against Linux u may use) ... Have been playing with it all day and nite .... personalizing it and fixing issues ....

Hope my next post will be pretty soon ... Not after another 2 years ... Kip checking

Cheers
PK

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So I have finally started all over again...Cyber space watch out for me ......he is back