Phoenix

It's been a long time since I've updated my blog; four and a half months to be exact! A lot has changed. I left Raleigh, NC; moved to San Diego, CA; joined Qualcomm as a full time employee; Schumacher joined McLaren; Sania wed Shoaib (not that I care!); Facebook suddenly became the new bad-guy-on-the-block... Boy! So much has changed since I last blogged. It seems like a whole new world! Summers will be here in San Diego in a couple of days. The weather is beautiful now. Long weekend's round the corner. Aaah... I admit it. I have nothing to post. This is probably the most "scattered-idea" post of mine, ever! This marks the birth of a new tag for my posts - 'Bullshit'! PS: How can I miss this! Lucid Lynx was released recently and it broke some parts of Mac4Lin. I am working on the fixes, albeit slowly. I don't find much time due to my full-time job; but I am trying my best!

Another year has gone by. 2009 sped away; like the gusty winds of North Carolina! As with every year, here's a new year quote: May all your troubles last as long as your New Year's resolutions! -- Joey Adams That is one more reason NOT to make a new year resolution! The year started with my second semester at NC State, then an internship at Qualcomm in San Diego and then a feverish third semester. Of course with four courses in the last semester, it was bound to be meteoric! After a laborious one-and-half years, here I am with a Master's degree in Computer Engineering. It is so satisfying to see the hard work reflected on the degree :) It really feels strange though, when I think that I no longer have projects, assignments, exams! The very next day after my exams ended I followed the routine to check the course webpage for any new projects/assignments. It was then that I realized that my MS is over and I've graduated! It's a strange feeling... no project deadlines, ...

Mac4Lin is one of Lifehacker's "Most Popular Linux Posts of 2009"! The article author writes: Mac4Lin Gives Linux Desktops the Complete Mac Look It really, really does. If you don't mind the obvious break in your your free-as-in-speech fidelity, it's a pretty nice setup. Read the full story here . (Mac4Lin is listed just above Jolicloud and Chrome OS) A big "THANK YOU" for all the support and appreciation :)

To satisfy my itching hands I finally pulled Chrome OS sources and compiled them, made a VMWare disk and installed it. I must say I'm not at all impressed by it. The first thing I said was: "WTH! It lacks a Shutdown/Reboot button!" Agreed, it's a developer build, but no shutdown/reboot?? Come on... you must be kidding! Not everybody can drop to the terminal to reboot or shutdown. Yes, to get to the terminal (a geek's haven!) you need to press the key combo: Ctrl + Alt + T . Once there, you find Chrome OS familiar :) As of now, there aren't many options to fiddle with and many features are incomplete. You can close all the tabs in Chrome and lock yourself out. It's as though everything got sucked by the black-hole and now you are there staring at your monitor, looking helpless! You cannot change the system-wide volume. To log on to the system, you need to be connected to the internet - True cloud computing! You login using your Google/Gmail ID and password...

Yes, "long time no see". I've been way too busy with my final semester of Master's. Projects, exams, assignments and sometimes classes... I'm stuck in this infinite loop! I wish like running away. Sigh! I have no choice but to endure these. After all, there's this consolation that I'll be earning my Master's degree in a month from now. So, with those elements in the infinite loop, what's the one thing that's "loop invariant"? Music , of course! I've been hooked to The Fray's How to save a life since quite sometime now. Not a new song (released sometime around September 2006, first version), but the lyrics are touching. The lead singer, Isaac Slade, (though has some vocabulary problems :D... weird pronunciation I must say!), says he was influenced by his experience while working as a mentor at a camp for troubled teens . You can listen to this song here . But the song that gets to be the cherry on the cake is " Iktara ...

To start with, let me clarify that this post is not meant to be a job search guide! It is intended to only give some pointers in choosing the right courses. If you are in the field of computing, you would know that these days the mantra is Multi-core CPUs rather than Blazingly fast single-core CPUs. Gone are the days of clock-cranking where you would see a jump in the CPU clock speed every fortnight or so. In a way, the computing industry has reached a theoretical barrier of cranking the clock speed. The focus is now on inclusion of multiple cores on the same die. No wonder you see the "dual-core, tri-core, quad-core and soon octa-core CPU" ads. Unless there is a breakthrough in the field of microelectronics and cooling solutions, this "stuffing-of-more-cores-on-the-same-die" will continue. From a normal computer user's perspective, it may seem like "Wow! Two cores, double performance!". Nope...Thats not entirely true, in fact not even half true! The...

I'm very happy to inform you all that Mac4Lin has been featured in the current issue of CompterWorld. I'd like to thank Howard Wen for penning down the article. The topic of the article was Transformation Packs. It can be read here .

Summer full of enjoyment and a trip back to India. What more could one want??? Studies and Classes??? Its the same ol' routine again - class, home, cooking, projects, assignments! Well, hopefully this will be my last semester at Graduate School. Will "try" to enjoy my time! The palatial home at San Diego, the work at Qualcomm, the beautiful San Diego, my home in Bangalore, Mum's delicious dishes - I waved a bye bye to all that for the time being and am back to being a student at the hot-and-humid Raleigh. I'm eagerly waiting for winters. I hate summer in Raleigh. My trip to India was really good. Its always nice to see your near and dear ones :) Most of the time I was home, helping my family pack as they are moving to a different place. Met friends, family. Had a nice time. About the travel, I'd like to caution people traveling on Lufthansa. The journey wasn't particularly a pleasant one. Especially my last leg of journey Frankfurt to Bangalore. It was an...

Thanks to everybody who voted for Mac4Lin. Xbox Media Center and Mac4Lin were hot favorite contenders for Sourceforge.net Community Choice Awards 2009. But there was an unexpected winner in the "Best Visual Design" category - PortableApps!!! I congratulate the PortableApps team for winning the award :) Mac4Lin was a finalist at CCA 09, being 1 in 85 amongst more than 47,000 Opensource projects worldwide. That is a big achievement for me. I thank you all once again. The other news is that my internship at GPU division of Qualcomm, San Diego is almost over. I'm looking forward to my India trip but definitely NOT looking forward to going back to school again [for at least one semester!].

I'm very happy to announce that Mac4Lin has been declared as one of the finalists at Sourceforge.net Community Awards 2009 in the Best Visual Design category. The final phase of voting began today and will run till July 20th 2009. Please vote for Mac4Lin, if you feel it deserves to be voted. To vote click on this image: Optionally, you can also click on the first box in the right frame on my blog. You do not need to Sourceforge.net login id. All you need is a valid email id. Each vote is associated with an email id, which needs confirmation that you actually voted (you will get an email giving a confirmation link, so all you need to do is click it). The whole voting process takes just 3 clicks. I urge patrons to vote for Mac4Lin if they feel it should win. Mac4Lin is completing with projects like Xbox Media Center (XBMC) etc. I once again thank everyone for their continued support, feedback and appreciation. Mac4Lin exists today because of you all :) Do spread the word around abou...

I am happy to release Mac4Lin ver.1.0. I know it was long due. Was held up with my graduate school and work. Version 1.0 finally sees light! :) Changes: * Fully supports GNOME 2.26 and backwards compatible * Improved support for GlobalMenu, support integrated in the default GTK theme * Better native Xfce support * Icon additions * Statusbar is now fixed * New progress bars * New tabs * Improved installation and uninstallation scripts * Integrates well with Gloobus * Finer UI refinements * Metacity theme now supports different button sizes * Firefox 3 themes are now updated * Songbird plugins included * Pidgin AWN 64bit plugin now included * Fonts are now consolidated * Transparent top panel * GDM theme is now in-line with Mac OS X login window * Cairo dock is the default recommended dock Issues: * Usplash is still buggy * Thunderbird theme is still buggy * GDM theme is not automatically set by the script Screenshots: 1) Mac4Lin Desktop, NOTE:Apple logo is NOT bundled with Mac4Lin Quic...

I am elated to announce that Mac4Lin is one of the finalists at the Sourceforge.net Community Choice Awards 2009 :) I'm very optimistic about Mac4Lin being one of the winners. I do understand that being nominated and ending up as one of the finalists is in itself a big achievement! I thank you all for your continued support, appreciation and comments which have helped me make Mac4Lin better and better with every release. Thank you all again :) I will keep you all posted about the results.