Phoenix

I've uploaded a few pics of my travel as well as the city I live in. Head here to my public albums on Picasa . The Raleigh city pics are "Now Playing" on the right pane as slideshow. More pics in the pipeline. Boy! Its hot in here.. very very hot! We hardly step outta home these days. Its almost daylight bright till 8pm. Waiting for the Fall to completely set in.

Its back to school for me. Fall 2008 semester classes started today. Feels odd attending class after a year! The university is huge.. take my word, it is insanely huge! The campus is spread over an unimaginable area. ECE and CS departments are given step-motherly treatment by separating them from the main campus. Not that its bad or something but its away from the library which houses Xbox 360s and PS3s :D lol... Few pics of my university: Clockwise from top: 1) The ECE/CS building at Centennial Campus where my classes are conducted. 2) The famous tall Bell tower of NCSU. 3) That building is our library. Yes, you saw it right... its 7 floors tall!

Won't be online regularly for a week or so now.. at least till I settle there down. Only thing I'm worried about: non-stop 16 hours journey at a stretch :( So Mac4Lin, MS Guide and other work would be temporarily under suspension. Will get back soon. So long folks, see ya soon.....

I needed an external HDD to carry my data and was looking at the options since a week. I'd zeroed in on either Western Digital Passport or the Transcend StoreJet. Went to the electronic market to buy and saw that the WD Passport is almost on its way out. Nowhere was it available. Instead everywhere it was being replaced by WD Elements. The build quality was quite flimsy and somehow it didn't appeal to me. In the end I bought a Transcend StoreJet 25 Mobile 250GB USB 2.0. I must say that I'm pretty impressed by this device. It has the toughest protection I've ever seen for an external drive (apparently meets the US Military drop test). Speed is impressive; a sustained 28 MB/s. Phew.. Thats fffffffaaaaaaaaast! It also has one-touch backup and sync button (works only in Windows with the StoreJet Elite software). The included Windows software lets you backup, sync, encrypt data etc. Would I recommend this product? Certainly! :)

3) Post admit work to be completed This part picks up where Part TWO left off. One important information I forgot to give in the previous part was regarding the Transcripts and Degree Certificate. You will need to apply for at least 20 copies of Transcripts (considering that on an average you are applying to about 6 Universities) and about 4-5 attested copies of your degree certificate (or provisional degree certificate, if you've just completed or will be graduating soon). Your current university may charge you some fee for this. So get in touch with them and apply for your Transcripts/DC/PDC just about a fortnight before your GRE as it may take sometime for the university to process your request. The universities will mostly start informing the students about admits from mid-March. The latest by which one can afford to get the "admit" news is by mid-June. You need to login to your account on the Universities' Graduate Admissions'/Application webpage and check th...

As part of the series of articles on winning projects at FOSS India Awards 2008, Linux for You magazine published about Mac4Lin in their June 2008 issue. An excerpt: The project kicked off when Anirudh Acharya, a young open source enthusiast from Bangalore, taught himself GTK+ and decided to bring the Mac touch to the FOSS world. "A consistent, beautiful and tightly-integrated user interface is what Mac4Lin is all about", explains Acharya.... A one man army, Acharya continues to put in efforts to enhance Mac4Lin and make it compatible with other desktop systems....." The scanned article has been uploaded here . It consists of a 4.6MB .zip file with 2 image files corresponding to the 2 pages (LFY, June 2008 Page 43 and 44) in the magazine. I know its a bit late to post this news.. but oh well considering the fact that till now I have neither received the Award Certificate nor the Cheque my delay in posting about this in my blog is justifiable.

Its a well known fact that Karnataka Government slaps the highest taxes compared to any other state/UT on petroleum based fuels. Thats the reason why the people in Karnataka pay the highest for a litre of petrol/diesel throughout India. News that would bring some relief to consumers, at least for the time being: Karnataka government slashes sales tax on petroleum based fuels! Yes, thats right! The Karnataka government reduced sales tax by 3 pc on petrol and 2 pc on diesel. It has also reduced value added tax (VAT) on domestic liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from 4 pc to 1 pc. As a result of the reduction in tax on petrol from 28 to 25 pc, retail price of the fuel in Bangalore will be Rs.57.15 per litre as against Rs.58.89 and that of diesel will be Rs.39.15 per litre as against Rs.39.80 after the reduction of tax from 20 pc to 18 pc. The price of LPG has been reduced to Rs.348.08 from Rs.358.42. Time to cheer?? Its just the beginning of the BJP-led Govt. Will this tax relief hold good fo...