Why I love Linux

It's been a month since I am here and for a month I have been working on Win2K at my office. Haven't seen Linux in loooong time. Missing it, especially today.

Today I needed to do some scripting in Windows, for some personal work. Due to inefficiency in finding some advanced features for wget and in the presence any good download manager, I needed to shift towards this scripting. Oh God, What an unfortunate soul. Need to work in windows and that too with scripting. After coming to real world (read industry) I started loving linux more, you know why? because here you can't use pirated softwares any more and this is not IITK, where you just switch on your DC++ and download any bloody software within seconds. Thought, Let's take a dive and at unfortunate moment started scripting.

Now, I needed to make a FOR loop. After trying out different keywords found out following command

FOR %%e IN (1 2 3 4 5 6) DO ...

Now why would you need to type two '%' to mark a variable?? Anyways, this command will run for six time take value from 1 to 6. Now what would you do if you need to run loop for say 100 times are you going to write (1 2 3 ... 100). Well, you have to, I couldn't find any other technique. So thought let's try some another technique, something similar to while loop, implement using notorious GOTO. Now the question was how to set a variable and use it. tried out various combination

i=100
%i=100
%%i=100
...

Neither worked and suddenly remembered good old days where somehow I studied AUTOEXEC.BAT and they used something like SET for setting a variable. %$@@#$%%@$#. What the hell? why to type something extra as SET, I bet even Bill Gates won't be able to tell you that. Don't lose the spirit, go ahead. I thought. Now, came the next ultimate question, how to increment a variable? again combinations...

i=%i+1
i=%%i+1
%%i=%i%+1
...

Again, no luck. There exists something like INCR in dos, but for some reason that won't work in Win2K, so here is where I am stuck up. No clue to get out of this. Don't think I didn't Google for any of this stuff. After hard work on Google, I am pouring out my frustration here. Should get back to search now I guess. God bless me!!

Recent breakthrough : Finally managed to find out the way to increment a variable. it goes

SET /A i += 1

Now don't ask me why to put extra /A for doing so, in one other achievement, I found out that IF syntax would be like

IF NOT "i"="100"

but I am still unaware about use of < or > in IF, because if I use those, it says unexpected end of statement or something like that. Let it be whatsoever it is, I am done with my job. After I was done with my download thing, I am enjoying the geeky strips I downloaded and sharing one which is very pertinent with this one.

Google Talk

Big G has struck again and this time it's Instant Messenger Service. After rounds of rumours and denials, it's finally there and it's called, Google Talk. Agent Kujan was right. "Rumour is not a rumour that doesn't die" :-)

As Google's trademark, it's just beta as of now. Official google client is available only for windows, but as it supports jabber protocol you can use iChat for MAC and Gaim for linux. As of now, it doesn't have many features. Only basic text chatting and voice chatting, not even emoticons and no audibles, nicknames... NOTHING. Owing to which client is very light and easy to use. It has raised lots of criticism for Google, because when Google launches something, people expect it to be out-of-the-box thing. Take for example, Gmail, which forced email market leaders like Yahoo! and hotmail to increase the mailbox size. Similarly, Google Earth. Where in the case of GTalk, there is nothing new, infact much less than state-of-the-art IM services.

BUT, look at it from this point of view. Google is just trying to add a dimension to its Google Universe. It's a universe. A universe where user can avail all the facilities and don't have to switch between providers. (Much more coming up, rumours say that Google is also coming up with Paypal like system) Everything in just one login and one account, so this is just another dimension, which doesn't deny the scope of lots of development before official release. Imagine the future (I bet it won't be too far) where in all you need to do is just say few words and Google will do rest of the job for you. One point I noticed especially is the voice chat GTalk provides. Quality of voice is really good and is almost real time. First day feedback has been satisfactory as per my survey goes (Launched before less than 24 hours could be the reason, which results in lesser initial traffic as compared to Y! or MSN, but just wait-and-watch). The buzz is also that Google may extend voice chat to phone lines. Yes, you would be actually able to make a call to landline phones through GTalk. BTW, it's official announcement has not been done yet on Google Blog, which may solve lots of puzzles and may reveal some of the Google's plan for improvement in GTalk. Hold your breaths till then...

Quote of the day :- A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.

Link of the day :- So who cares about pennies huh?

Jugaad

I learned this word during my stay at Kanpur, only to realize that I was Jugaading all along my life although I didn't know the word ;-) Jugaad is formally defined as follows:

Jugaad n. An improvised or jury-rigged solution; inventiveness, ingenuity, cleverness.

well, this formal definition is too small to define the actualy depth and greatness of the word. It'd be impossible to visualize anything running smoothly without this powerful Jugaad. Starting from the national government to Laxman's common man won't survivie in India without this Jugaad. Mind you, Jugaad is not to be taken in the negative sense. Jugaad is an essential part of every thing which needs to run on time. Today read an interesting article about (link) fabulous Mumbai suburban railway network, lifeline of mumbai. Scheduling and management of suburban railway can be best exercise in contraint satisfaction for hardcore mathematician and practially it really has been nightmare to theoretically come up with the solution, where a train arrives every 3 minutes on all the stations between Churchgate and Virar, the tracks run for 60 kilometres. Over 3.1 million people use 1,007 services on this network every day to get to their places of work and back home. That translates to 50,000 people for every kilometre, making it the densest suburban rail network anywhere in the world. But since 80 years (1925-2005) this is running perfect without glitches, owing to omnipotent JUGAAD. Here is Google's tribute to Jugaad :

• Definition : Jugaad
  
• Management by Jugaad
  
• Jugaad... the new buzz word
  

Parineeta

Bollywood these days is experimenting with all sorts of techniques. One of them is trying to recreate magic of old work. After success of Devdas with Grand sets and wonderful music, now it's Parineeta. No this is not going to be another review of movie, but what made me come here is the music of the movie. Managed to watch movie last month and must say I liked and it was treated well with maintaining proper backdrop of '60s.

I heard this album first time when I was working on my thesis report at 3 am and it really moved me. I could feel the music deep within my soul. Only few albums/tracks have managed this. Again, today I am sitting in my office and it's 8-15 in the evening and it's time to leave, but after long time I have managed headphones and can't hold myself back from completing this whole sound track second time before I leave for home. (Anyway, I haven't got anything to do when I reach home ;-) )

Album starts with Piyu Bole by Sonu Nigam and Shreya Ghoshal. I feel this song is dear to more after I watched the movie, because the chemistry between Saif and Vidya Balan is very well depicted in the video and song seems natural and not forced in the movie. Kasto Mazza includes superb use of the sound of a chugging locomotive like some '60-'70 movie.

Soona Mann Ka Aangan is the paragon of the album. Sonu Nigam manages to fetch millions accolades from me for this one. He managed to put in all the dard required and wonderfully accompanied by my favourite new age singer Shreya Ghoshal.

Kaisi Paheli Zindgani by Sunidhi is on the lines of dil ko hazaar baar of Murder, but once again consistent with backdrop of the movie. Raat hamari toh is melodious solo by Chitra. Dhinak Dhinak Dha is nasty song and typical wedding song. OK types.

Album ends with title track, Sonu Nigam-Shreya Ghoshal duet Hui Main Parineeta. A romantic and sensual song to fit wedding of Shekhar and Lolita. Both Sonu Nigam and Shreya Ghoshal are going up and up in my favourite singers. Cheers for both of them.

PS:- You can listen songs on Raaga.com Here is the link.

Pune says welcome Nishit...

Away from blog for a long time, and back to blog now...well, almost...

Landed here in Pune, two days back. It was wonderful scene from window of my plane and made me feel that stay here is gonna be wonderful and added to it just started raining making the atmosphere cool... reached the office and whole day went in formality stuff. Filled up some forms and became employee of Veritas now Symantec and reached to friend's house. Well, this was just starting. "Real" life began then. It was raining through out the day and the rain continued, when we reach the flat basement was already in the water and water level was rising and lo! no electricity (which is not restored even after 3 days, may be because of water in the basement, it has been switched off intensionally and hope to get it restored when I go back home in the evening). Water was upto knee-level. Next day I was supposed to report to my office in IT Park - A, which is just walking distance and building 'A' is closed and we have holiday \:D/, albeit we enjoyed wonderful breafast in other office at IT Park -B :-) As reviews have come, best thing about Veritas is its FOOD :D and I agree after having a lunch and a breakfast. so, me and Gopal went around for some shopping and after roaming around when we reached home road was blocked due to water!!!! and we had to take another route to reach home and after seeing water level there, we were sure that we won't be able to come out until the water drys out, but had to take the plunge and this time water was waist high. Worries didn't end there. Took bread-butter and bananas for dinner and not to add the darkness.

Well, God has already warned us now. My dear son, your days are different now. Gone are the days when you had no power-cut, 24 hour water supply and nice drainage system. you are in REAL world now. Accepted my lord. We enjoyed all the "candle-light talks" and "daily bread". No complaints my lord.

Today began on good note. When my eyes opened at 0600 hrs in the morning and opened the windows. All the water was gone and for the first time after arriving here I saw the actual terrain around the building. Went for a morning walk and finally saw sunlight in 3 days. Phew... and back to office now, hopefully today I'll get my cabin and will get all the things done. Till then good bye. Well, lot more things to come on my blog from my one week mini vacation, but till then Adios...