Phoenix

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.

I guess this is the quickest follow-up in the series. But if this part is not up at the right time it loses its relevancy! The previous part covered packing your bags. This part [the last in the series] will cover all about traveling to the US and how to survive during the initial days of your stay. 6) Traveling to the US and initial days of stay The first thing to do is to get a good document folder, large enough to house all the documents you wish to take. Make a list of the documents that you may ever need while you are in the US. Some generic things which come to the mind are: 1) Passport 2) I-20 3) SEVIS Fee receipt 4) Graduate School Admission letter 5) GRE, TOEFL score cards 6) Bachelors degree [or provisional] certificate and copies 7) Extra copies of your transcripts 8) Certificate of financial responsibility [the letters from your bank & CA validating the 'moolah' you showed to the VISA officer] 9) Any certificates you may wish to carry in order to support your st...

Its the time of the year when students aspiring to pursue Masters in the US are in a dilemma in finalizing a university. Some may haf finalized the university. Whether you belong to the former or the latter, you are sure to haf many Qs racing in your mind. I've been getting a lot of emails, wall posts, messages etc. regarding information about North Carolina State University (NCSU). The questions are all the same. Hence I decided to write a FAQ which will answer most of the Qs. Hope you find this blog post useful. Q. Are there any chances of financial aid at NCSU for international students (Masters Students)? [This is the most popular Q] A. NO. You need to be born with a golden spoon in your mouth to be funded at NCSU; be it in the CS or ECE department. There is almost absolutely NO funding at NCSU. If you are banking on funding for your MS then just forget about this university! [Update] This was not to discourage anybody. The point is that nobody can guarantee your funding/schol...