The Lonesome Road

Hey all.

Am planning to upload pics that I take with my digi-cam to my Flickr account every once in a while. All those interested can take a look at them in the Gallery.

Not in the mood to write more - am half asleep

C ya.

[Post Script : 1910 hrs]

Hey Arvind - if you ever get around to reading my blog - Happy Birthday!

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Kutti_krishna, originally uploaded by shadowfall.

Wanted to put this photo up on the blog a couple of days back - but then, better late than never

Well, I had a nice post to put up yesterday. Unfortunately, Blogger did not agree with me - it said posting and then kept showing me the loading icon and kept reloading the page, showing upload at 0% constantly.

I’ve was trying to put up the post since last evening and still have had no success. Thus, I have given up and trying this post now.

Was invited to sign up for an account at Flickr by a friend. Since I’d tried Hello and kept messing it up - decided to give Flickr a try - and you can see the result above

Anyway, as I said, the day before yesterday was Krishna Jayanti and I wanted to put up a photo I took. There seemed to be some technical difficulties between Blogger and Flickr so it was no-go. I wrote to their helpdesk and they said the problem should be fixed soon. And it was - the pic is up!

In other news, all the computer department computers are going to be formatted. We spent most of our lab time today uploading all the programs we had created so far. It’s going to be a fun couple of days for the dudes in charge of this project. Formatting and installing XP and Linux on over a hundred machines is… well, you imagine it

That’s all for now….Will post in the evening - Blogger willing

Today’s topic : Hindu Mythology

Legend has it that Lord Vishnu has ten avatars. Nine of them have come down to earth so far. The tenth avatar (Kalki) is the one who, when he comes, will rid the world of sinners.

Of the ten avatars, Krishna is supposed to be the most complete avatar. This was a form of Vishnu who interacted with his devotees more as a friend than as a God.

According to myth, Lord Krishna appeared over five thousand years ago in Mathura, India to Devaki and Vasudeva in the jail cell of the tyrant Kamsa. Devaki was Kamsa’s sister. After her marriage to Vasudeva, as Kamsa was driving the couple in his chariot, a voice predicted that Devaki’s eigth son would be the cause of his death. Kamsa was about to kill both of them, but refrained when Vasudeva promised to hand over every child born to them to Kamsa.

The first six children of the couple were killed by Kamsa. The seventh child, Balarama, also widely believed to be an incarnation of Vishnu, was smuggled to Vrindavan. On the night the eighth child, Krishna, was born, it was a stormy night. When the baby was delivered, the chains holding the couple came unfettered, the gates opened and the guards fell asleep. Vasudeva was told to take his child to Vrindavan. As he walked through the rain to reach Vrindavan, the baby was protected by an umbrella formed by the divine snake Adisesha. When he reached the flooded waters of the Yamuna, the river parted to give him way. He placed the child in the house of Nanda and Yasoda. the baby born to them was taken back by him to hus cell. When Kamsa awoke and found that the baby had been born - he tried to kill it. His efforts proved in vain as the baby disappeared and a voice told him that the one who would kill him still lived. Anyway, to cut a long story short, Krishna eventually came back to Mathura and killed Kamsa. He reinstated Kamsa’s father (who had been deposed by Kamsa) and freed his parents.

As a child, Krishna loved to steal butter. Today, in celebration, a rope is strung between two buildings and a pot is attached to it. A human pyramid is formed and the group tries to break the pot.

Somehow, it seems very fitting that’s is a stormy evening today and it’s been pouring rain.

A few final words - well actually a quotation from the Srimad Bhagvat-Gita : Lord Krishna promises: “Whenever and wherever there is a decline in religious practice, O descendant of Bharata, and a predominant rise of irreligion–at that time I descend Myself. To deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to reestablish the principles of religion, I Myself appear milleniumm after millenium.”

Hare Krishna!

Disclaimer : This post is more or less about cricket. Won’t make sense if you don’t follow it

Anyway, it seems that the moment we came back from the overhyped “Friendship” tour, our great Indian team went back to their old ways. We’ve gone back to the old, tried and tested method of playing as induviduals rather than a team.

There have been two tournaments we have played recently - and done badly in both. In the first tournament, we managed - I don’t know how - to reach the finals. And then we lost to Sri Lanka. I mean, why take all that effort to reach the final when all you plan to do there is lose tamely. Just gets the fans more riled. Exit early guys - then we don’t have to take time out to follow your matches.

The Indian team were playing England over the last week as part of the NatWest Trophy. It was a three match series. Well, we lost 2-1. The first match, our much vaunted batting line up collapsed for the score of 170. England cruised to victory by seven wickets. In match number 2, the Indian captain thought - well we might as well chase. Oh boy - did he get it wrong. England plied up 308. And once again - we came under pressure chasing. A run rateof over 6 an over is hard in any case - an explosive start is needed - but wickets must remain in hand to see the match through. But as Mr.Geoffery Boycott so aptly put it, we batted like millionaires and managed to lose this match as well.

Well, England were so relaxed now (they had won the series already), that they rested Andrew Flintoff for the final match in the series. This dude demolised us in the second match and picked up around five wickets totally in the first two matches. Thankfully, the team managed to do something right and won the final match.

Last year when this series was held, as far as I can remember, we beat England 2-1 and the Indian captain removed his shirt and waved it at the crowd. Looks like England managed to remove the Indian captain’s shirt this time. Well played.

All right - I need a little help here.

I have two systems at home - one’s mine and one belongs to my sis. Now, when we got our net connection, only my PC was in use. Later on, we decided to split the net connection between the two PC’s by making mine a proxy server.

Thus, I have two NIC’s on my computer. One NIC connects to my ISP. It’s configured and bound to a static IP address. The second NIC connects to my sister’s PC. The NIC’s that connect my sister’s PC and mine are both on static class C addresses.

This arrangement was working fine till I installed SP2 on my PC. Then something happened and connectivity was totally lost. The two computers cannot even ping each other. I thought it may be due to conflicting Windows, so I put SP2 on the other comp as well - but to no effect. The problem still remains.

For a while I thought there was a problem as I already had a firewall and SP2 installs Windows Firewall. I disabled the built in firewall from the connection, and then disabled both firewalls, but to no avail.

I also tried switching cables, but again it’s a no-go. I’ve also tried re-installing the NIC’s and associated services and protocols.

If anyone can give me a little help here I will be grateful.

Secondly, regarding the chat server that I am implementing - the buffer problem is a major headache as the server has top priority, but all the clients have an equal priority to send. So what happens is if multiple clients try to send data - there is usually a buffer flood problem and there are delays in messages and loss of data. I don’t want to implement a system where everyone has a turn to send data and the others have to wait. I’m not very sure on how to implement a polling process - in fact absolutely no idea - and nor does my prof. Is there a better solution?

Last two days have been peaceful and relaxed. Been going full steam on my GRE. Been scoring 780/800 in verbal adaptive tests. Need to work on math though.

Finally, today is Teacher’s Day - so, to everyone who’s taught me anything -a big Thank You

Ok, it’s official. My Gmail works. Works after a restart as well, so I think the problem is finally solved. Now that the problem is fixed, it actually runs pretty fast. Comparable to Yahoo Mail at least.

Let me know if these articles helped in any way

One final word on Gmail. Check your Internet Explorer to see what your home page is. If your homepage starts with http://www.mysearchnow and so on, there is a problem with IE. This is a software from the MySearchNow search site. It comes inbuilt with a browser enhancement - though I cannot remember the actual name of the program it is bundled with. It also introduces a toolbar called BitsCastRef - which can be disabled, but reappears the moment a new window/link is opened. It cannot be removed normally and even if registry entries are deleted, it will come back on a restart.

To remove this, you will have to use the uninstaller provided by Lop who seem to be the owners of the search site.

This is the direct link to the uninstaller. Once I used this, it removed the bar and cleared my homepage. Also, Gmail works normally now. Give it a try.

Am looking for implementation details on my project today. It deals with remote control of a device through the Internet. Looks like we will be working on J2EE and may even have to use elements of J2ME.

Nothing else for now. May post again in the evening if the mood strikes

Later..

Part 1:

As our first practical assignment in Computer Networks, we had to create a socket based system to have client-server communication over TCP. That was pretty simple. However, once that was done, we were told to modify it. Now it has to be a system where five clients can interact with a server and pass messages to each other through the server. Basically, it’s a chat server implementation. The client passes the IP address and the message to the server and the server decides which client is supposed to receive it. This requires a look-up table where the client IP addresses and the socket to which they are bound are stored. Also, the server is supposed to have a broadcast option i.e it can message all the clients connected to it. Most of the work is over - the only basic problem is of the buffer. This is where I am stuck. The messages are delayed or lost randomly, inspite of the fact that they manage to reach the server. Have to figure it out by next week.

End of Part 1.

Part 2:
Google mail! Well, there seems to be a sizeable number of users who have problems with their Gmail account. I have seen these as fixes so far.

1. Use Internet Exploror / Netscape Navigator : Browsers like Mozilla, Firefox or Opera have problems accessing Gmail.
2. Turn on ActiveX : This can be done in IE by going to Tools -> Internet Options -> Security Tab -> Internet -> Custol Level and making sure the run ActiveX controls and Plug-Ins is enabled.
3. Run Adware/Spyware checks : Gmail seems to have major issues with Adware and Spyware. You can try using these utilities :
• SpyBot : It’s free and works well. Make sure you update though. Also reports a DSO bug even after it has cleaned it.
• Spyware doctor : Paid software. Monitors cookies and other intrusions.
• NoAdware : Found a couple of entries in my registry that SpyBot missed. Please note you have to register this program for it to clean the system. Also note that SpyBot marked the uninstallation value NoAdware stores in the registry.

I did this and my Gmail seems to be up and running now. Not so sure about Javascript errors, but the latest Javascript platform for IE/Mozilla can be found here .

One last tip - if you have done all this and are still greeted by a blank screen, try pressing Refresh (F5). It seems to work - and I need to do it myself once in a while. Be patient though - Gmail can have a large loading time.

I’m cannot say for sure if these methods will get your mail to work - but they got my Gmail up and running

Happy trying and all the best!

Time,
Everflowing stream,
Wheel of change,
Keeper of secrets,
And the unseen force that guides life.

Those lines were posted by me as a comment for this post on Illusions. However, the author of the blog felt that it deserved to be more than a comment. So I have put it up as part of my post for your perusal. Opinions are welcome.

In other news, had to code a Water Jug problem in Artificial Intelligence Lab today. The water jug problem : There are two jugs, one capable of holding 5 units of liquid, and one capable of holding 3 units. Using these two jugs, 4 units of liquid have to be measured out. It’s quite simple as there are rules defined and the basic implementation is of a Breadth First Search.

Practical done, we head for lectures. It’s one on Operating Systems. We’re in, the prof starts lecturing on Semaphores - and then another prof walks in. Seems they had a lecture scheduled in the same hall - and we were evicted. To top it off, all the lecture halls on our floor were occupied. Our prof had no choice but to let us go. And my class does not need encouragement to disappear

So, came home, slept awhile. Then sat down to tackle why my Google mailbox was not opening. Seem to have found the reason - ActiveX needs to be enabled on the browser in order for google to work. Will give it a try later.

AC signing off.

Not much happening today. Went to the gym - after nearly a week of absence. Fortunately no aches or pains so far

As I’m writing this post, there are old hindi film songs playing in the backgorund - original songs. Not the remixes that seem to be flooding the market today. I’m a retro music lover - be it english or hindi. The sense of balance between lyrics and melody that the older songs achieved is an art that seems to be lost today.

Is there really no musical talent left in India? The number of good songs coming out today are decidedly few. More and more “composers” and “singers” seem to be jumping on the remix bandwagon. It’s extremely irritating to hear an old song murdered by the addition of beats and hip-hop/rap lyrics. I mean - get a life! The dudes should use their “talent” to make their own songs. and they should be forced to hear what they have composed to make them understand what they inflict on us.

Anyway, I shall cease and desist. Managed to get my camera detected and running in Linux .Interfacing and data transfer is smoother and faster than in Windows.

Later mates..