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, ...

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 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.

This is a song from Enrique's album - Seven. The song is apt for this post. Landed in San Diego, California yesterday. San Diego is the second largest city in CA and rated as the finest city of the US. Well, I could see that yesterday, why! The San Diego International Airport is located just by the bay. So when the flight lands or takes off you can see the harbor along the side. Magnificent view! The photo expresses the details stronger than words (Click to enlarge. Photo courtesy: Google) I wasn't able to click any pics as it was just too cloudy yesterday. This airport is the busiest single runway airport in the US. Its astonishing to see how every take-off and landing is managed in this single-runway airport. Flights are seldom delayed. The city is beautiful with palm trees all over the sides on every road. High rise buildings dot the city. The place I live in is called La Jolla. Its a suburb of San Diego. The place is pronounced 'lə-HOY-ə'. This place has a lot of Sp...

Its election time in India and polls are held state-wise. Being in the US I neither had the opportunity to vote nor to nullify my vote (well, if not for me I'm sure noticing my absence at the polling booth some smart@ss must've cast a vote in my name!). I remember the last time I got my finger 'inked'. I'd voted when in Bangalore just a month before I left for Raleigh. This time I'm eager to see what the results would be since its a 'bigger' poll. Did you cast your vote? If yes, then what was the scene like at the polling booth? If not, then what was the reason for the abstinence? Did you not wanna vote or were you unable to? If you didn't wanna vote, did you know that you could nullify your vote? You can leave your comments to this post :) On a lighter note, here is something which I couldn't resist posting. Haf a look at the Bachchan family in the pic... I fell off my chair when I first saw it! :P Source: The Hindu

Since the past couple of days I've been wondering about the '0 comments' phenomenon on my blog. It didn't strike to me till date that the recent posts were starving for comments. I guess many of you must've noticed that the ability to leave comments on my blog was completely non-functional since sometime. I dug into the template code and could find absolutely nothing. After much head-breaking, it hit on me that I'd enabled the option to embed comments in the posts which was causing the 'kirik' (Bangaloreans will understand this :P) Finally its back to normal. You can now leave your comments on my blog. A handy pop-up window will help you abuse me now :)

I'm sure everyone of you must've noticed the 'new, improved' TwitterBook, err... I mean Facebook. I personally do not like Twitter and keep away from it. Facebook is a nice platform (for the public as well as the web developers, I'm sure the latter will in no way disagree with me!). But the new Facebook is bad, really bad. A complete Twitter rip off and also tries to act smart by integrating Twitter. Why, oh Why did you haf to do this, Facebook? The main interface is a complete mess now, worser than my trash can. The Wall is hidden behind another 'wall', all the 'cool and innovative' Facebook features are now lost in the oblivion and all I can see on the homepage is now garbage! What do you all think? Do you like the new Facebook?

Holi, also known as the Festival of colors is celebrated by Indians on the full moon day of the Phalguna month (usually falls in the month of March in Georgian calender). People put colors on each other to celebrate holi. While there are about 2 theories behind the origin of the festival, it is best known as the 'Spring Festival' to all. Interested in knowing more about Holi? Head here . We, at NC State are celebrating Holi on 15th March, 2009. Here's wishing everybody a Happy and Safe Holi :)

Its been movie time for me surrounded by exams. Saw Billu Barber last week. An average movie I must say. But Irrfan Khan has acted well. Lara Dutta was hopeless! This week (actually just back sometime ago) I saw Delhi-6. Now I'm assuming (in fact, sure) that everyone reading this would haf seen Rang de Basanti. After such a movie the expectations from Rakeysh Mehra would surely be high. Delhi-6 falls in a different category. While its not a nation-awakening movie or such its like any other videsh-se-returned-love-your-country kind of movie. The plot is good. But I think the picturization could've been better. The movie has so many "cut-to"s that one may lose track of whats happening ( a la Ghajni, eh? :D ). Oh one interesting snippet: The movie is called Delhi-6 because it is picturized in Chandi Chowk, Delhi whose postal code is 110 006; hence the name Delhi - 6. I guess its become a fad these days in Bollywood movies to include a couple of Hindi abuses and Delhi-6 ...

Its been about 4 days since I'm back from my New York trip. Still gotta get out of the "vacation mood". But the sad part is that today is the last day of my vacations and classes begin from tomorrow; more accurately the "Spring 2009" semester beings at NC State University. This time I've enrolled for 4 courses which includes an MBA course. I'm either too brave or too foolish to do so. Time will tell :D This is the time when everyone starts applying for internships and so haf I. Nobody is hiring though, everybody is firing! :P Stuff in the US is just unpredictable. The stock market, the job scenario, the weather, the fuel prices.. just about everything! Analysts say the market will stabilize in an year. Its just wait and watch for everybody. The weather is kind of depressing and will be the same all through the month. Hafn't seen the sun since days. Its been raining continuously since the past few days. Get quite cold and may snow this month. The only...

Goodbye 2008, Welcome 2009! A year has gone by. Things moved fast for me in 2008. Some good events, some heartening... Graduate Studies, gOS, Mac4Lin, Linux Magazine and some more exciting things in the pipeline :) Semester has ended and I'm getting my much needed break. "Chilling" out in Connecticut. Mind you, its really chilling. Snowing since quite sometime here. Will be getting back to Raleigh tomorrow. A week more of vacations and the usual life starts again. We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day. -- Edith Lovejoy Pierce Here's wishing everybody a Happy and Exciting New Year ahead! :) EDIT: I'm back home. The New York/Connecticut trip was great. The photos are in "Now Playing" widget at the top right of my blog.

Being away from home you mostly don't feel like celebrating (unless of corz, you were "caged" at home! :P ), but then birthdays are something which get you in the mood; especially after getting your face painted with the cream! About 10 of my friends were part of my birthday celebrations this year. Very thoughtfully they'd got a chocolate cake with my name "engraved" on it! The cake was looking just yummy. Poor cake.. if only it'd know its fate ;) After cutting the cake my face was "decorated" with the delicious cream, smeared all over! We all had a ball on my birthday. The photos, as usual, are on my Picasa Album. Being away from home I couldn't visit the orphanage this time on my birthday, unlike last year. But my wonderful mum went to the orphanage and spent time with the kids. Some simple things in life sure give us a lot of satisfaction :)