Regular, Expressions !

11:41am: Alright looks like something is coming!


More later!™

-V

11:43am: PHP programmer wanted.
Subject says it all!

If you are a (budding) PHP programmer and are looking for an opening please get in touch with me.

Compensation depends on your profile so it is certainly negotiable.

Please leave a comment if you are interested.

-nerdy

12:50am: APIC woes!
Yet again on a fresh compile of Gentoo more coz I upgraded my harddrive to 120 GB. Finally! a few GBs available. :-)

Surprisingly, I get a Seagate drive. I was expecting a Hitachi though.

Never mind. The next irritant I found was some error on APIC in my /var/log/messages like this:

Nov 26 17:13:02 killernerd APIC error on CPU0: 00(40)

And used to repeat endlessly.

To fix that I passed a kernel option 'noapic' in my grub.conf

Guess what? That stopped my SiS900 ethernet card to stop working with the following error in /var/log/messages

Nov 28 13:39:25 killernerd kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
Nov 28 13:39:26 killernerd kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth1: transmit timed out
Nov 28 13:39:26 killernerd kernel: eth1: Transmit timeout, status 00000004 00000249
Nov 28 13:39:34 killernerd kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth1: transmit timed out
Nov 28 13:39:34 killernerd kernel: eth1: Transmit timeout, status 00000004 00000241
Nov 28 13:39:42 killernerd kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth1: transmit timed out
Nov 28 13:39:42 killernerd kernel: eth1: Transmit timeout, status 00000004 00000240


Now I have removed the 'noapic' kernel option. And so ... so ... so ... my Sis900 is back in business (and the earlier errors have also disappeared! :O )

Ah! (auto)Goodie.

More later!™

-Nerdy

PS: Wikipedia APIC page.

2:20pm: Post India Project - intends to publish a book, please contribute.


PostIndia is an experiment in collective writing. We wish to write a book that would delve more into the Indian psyche and find of the common threads the runs through the diversity of this magnificent nation. It seeks to tell the story of contemporary India, its bustling cities, its myriad by lanes and of the people that inhabit it.

A lot has been written about India, and a lot more will be, but we wish to explore what it means for you to be part of this country and some place you call home. Tell us about the place you come from, the place you go to work and the people you meet along the way. What you feel is good about the place where you live, what about the country appalls you.

In a place as diverse as ours one could not help but be daubed with colors, black and white, saffron and green, and a multitude of colors along the way. Share some of those shades with us.

You can visit the project at http://postindia.blogspot.com/

Do write back with your views, experiences, photographs and grandmother tales. Spread the word to people who would appreciate the spirit of this project and would like to contribute. You can send in your entries to:

Email:
vibhanshu@gmail.com

Blog:
http://postindia.blogspot.com/

4:52pm: Looks like iPhone apps would be coming faster! :-)
http://barcamp.org/iPhoneDevCamp

-N

8:05pm: Rain! or Wheeeeee! Rain! ?
* I have now contracted *cough* from my room mate! I am generally a healthy person and pretty resistant to menace like this!

* There is no power - implies my laptop may die any time on me!

* Its raining cat dogs and mouse - I got a an early morning flight to catch. First of all, rickshaws are no longer visible, then rickshaws don’t wanna come to the airport, if they want to come then its at a huge price. Thinking of spending the night at airport itself.

More later!™

-N

PS: All those who yay’d for me on becoming famous. Thanky! :-)

1:13am: BarCampPune - A geek's day well spent socialising!
And so the day came to be well spent thus ......

The morning alarm at 6 came in real handy, I actually opened my eyes and shut it off **before** my room mate (who sleeps at the other end of the world in the same house) woke up and did the honours of shutting off! A miracle indeed. I have been a good boy today mommy.

After the geek in me was ready, by ready I mean, laptop, charger, GPRS capable phone and extension cord packed for action. I set out only to be fleeced by the auto guy :( After that I felt I am taking a journey to the ‘other world’. Travelling from Koregaon Park thru Aundh thru Hinjewadi Tech Park seemed like it was taking forever.

I’d like to draw a parallel of Pune with Bangalore of 1998. Pune, as I see, will being to lose the IT players just like Bangalore has coz of infrastructure related problems. The only achievement seems to be the Mumbai Pune Expressway. The road parallel to Yerwada jail leading to Pune Airport is still being made, for the record I recently completed an year in Pune. Pune still has its chance of retaining IT businesses if it acts now.

Ok back to today.

Nevertheless reached that place a bit poorer thankfully not in enthusiasm. The initial minutes were spent photographing the SCIT (wikipedia) campus, which is opposite to the IIIT campus. While IIIT and Symbiosis are no competitors but ‘somehow’ that reminded me of Google opening its offices next to Microsoft. :-) Surprisingly, there was a lot of *professional grade video* converage. Something close to unheard of at BarCamps. Good thing.

Proceeded to the registration. The process essentially was to collect the right size of the T-shirt and some stationary. And then write a banner with your name - meaningless. I immediately made a point with a ‘why’, they wanted to take mug-shots of people, which never happened or I missed it ? Never mind. I think the turn out was great with the numbers being ~200.

The intro-session was nice with opening address by Tarun and his companion. BarCamps have never had that. It made the interaction a nicer experience. Also, people got a chance to ‘broadcast their packets’ and campaign for talks and announce their interests. Pretty cool.

The talks started as per ‘Indian Standard Time’ pretty much inline with BarCamps and Foss.in :-) The first talk I attended was Sulekha.com‘s. It started with a typical ’what is web 2.0‘ and proceeded to how Sulekha was trying to facilitate the same. Good attempt, needs to gain momentum. There were lots of suggestions and ideas gathered and a healthy discussion ensued. Good stuff :-)

The talk that followed that was by Melody. Melodious name! :-) So it has a focus on the downsides to information being available so freely (as both beer as well as freedom). Good case studies, safe language ;-) and presented nicely.

The lunch (menu) was good and just right. A little less spicy would be perfect. :-) Also, a beer would have been appreciated for obvious reasons. I know, I know its NOT a *Bar*Camp! :P

Chatted with Tushar and fixed his Ubuntu laptop. Nice meaningful exchanges.

Then came the smsGupshup.com folks. This is what I would suggest as a product demo. This totally rawked! People registered and created their blogs on gupshup.com all by means of a mobilephone. And yes It worked!™ The product did the talking. All the speakers essentially said were the ’smsGupShup.com n00b HOWTO’. That was it. Great show folks.

Just as I was taking some time off and re-charging my laptop. The Pune LUG folks turned up and gave me PLUG sticker which now my laptop adorns and an OpenSUSE CD. Thanky. :-) I like the gesture.

Then I attended the podcast talk. It was from the publishers of Pune’s first youth magazine. It was a good talk on podcasting for newbies.

And then there were many responses to hire me. Thanks to all who pinged me. Will get in touch soon / wait for your e-mail. :-) It may be important to mention that previously at BarCamps as well I have ended up with *good* job offers. the crowd actually went abuzz when I announced the same. There were many who came to hear my experiences about ‘how to land a job at WhateverCampCity’. I hope it enriched you and opened up possibilities.

Then I had a impromptu chat with Tarun and others. There was this lady I talked to who was a journalist covering the event and she talked to me about the job offers I got. Tarun was interested in ‘what sucked’ today. Guess what sucked? The WiFi. People spent more time fixing WiFi rather than Blog about. And WTH a ***Blog***CampPune without WiFi? So how do you expect them to blog? So not much blogging. Period.

That apart there is an icing on the cake too! Just like the intro session, there was a consensus session at the end. Awesome! The newbies got a general set of action items. I believe there is a follow-up meet as well being planned. I wish people did this at BarCamps as well!

And then there were buses organised. Good thing. Imagine another auto experience ! :( Came back in the company of Anil and another guy (unable to recollect his name :-( ).

Hit back home after being hijacked by my room-mate at Aundh and ended up roaming the *rest of the city*! :(

So one clear chicken soup later I am here fighting (still) Flickr to let me upload my photos! WTF! :( Photos mostly tomorrow.

Ah! Done. I feared that this would also become like my birthday report! :|

Alright. Good night.

-N

1:02pm: WTH! Pictures just not happening! :(
Subject says it all ! :(

Hang around!

-N

11:53am: BlogCampPune
The thaw / intro session was pretty good. I ended up giving a talk ...er ... taking a laaarge amount of time to introduce myself. I ended up cutting my listed points. The ‘whoa’ factor came when I stood up with the points listed on my laptop! :-)

My *all* points are here for people who came looking for them:

[emacs_buffer]

Vikrant aka nerdy generally found near a plug-point and in a geek t-shirt with gadgets.

Many blogs, pseudo auto biography, photo-blog, mobile-blog using gadgets not including laptop, tech-work blog. Blogging since 2003.

I try to cover *events live* like currently going on.

Until recently was with Mixercast now looking for a job and currently filling the void by blogging.

Currently, researching various methods of blogging.

My contribution to blogosphere are:

* My own writings.

* Motivated people to blog.

* Motivated people to guest blog on my blogs.

* Organized blogger meets so that people have a face associated with the blog.

Questions:

How many Vikrants do we have here!

[/emacs_buffer]

Just now at the Sulekha talk.

Links:

http://www.sulekha.com

[hint]

I really think I am gonna end up with a job offer! :-)

[/hint]

Hang around for more!

-N

PS: Missing Freeman Murray! :-( Where are you ?

10:17am: BlogCampPune has kicked off!
So like the subject says BlogCampPune has just begun!

More coming up!

-N

11:28pm: BlogCampPune tomorrow!
Catch me tomorrow all day at:



-N

3:14pm: Firefox obsession!
Somebody is really obsessed with Firefox.

-N

8:46pm: Right! They have elected the right people! WoW!
This sux!

Australian man handed over to the US of A. I find this totally shocking.

* The software was American. => Agreed.

* The crime was committed in Australia => Agreed.

* The criminal (who is now pleading guilty ) is an Australian. => Agreed.

So, the Australian is handed over to the US for serving a sentence even though he has never been to the US.



The incident in itself is not as horrible, what is even more horrible is that the article mentions that ‘this sets the example’ to follow for the next crime.

The least I expect is that a criminal will be tried in his home country against a complaint from a ‘representing agency’ from any country, unless the crime was committed in the said another country.

Okie. Said and done. Lets look at the flipside.


Assume it is an American who violated the Australian laws. I am not a lawyer nor have taken keen interest in the Australian laws. Let the US deport *at least one* American to any of the countries. :-)

That is as possible as George Bush standing for a trial at the war crimes tribunal for a hearing! Go figure.

I personally think this incident is more important than some ‘popular HEX digits’. Please digg it here.

Back to work.

-Nerdy

5:31pm: The next Orkut scam!
By far I guess I am the owner of the India’s largest moderated Orkut community. Today I received some ‘scam-mail’. It looked really really legitimate. It was a call for participating in a survey. I am not the survey types still decided to check it out.

One look at ‘view original’ told me it was a fake. Still ‘copy-paste’d the included URL and whoa! if you are not careful you’ll actually get mistaken for real Orkut page. Of course, the content differs totally. You should be in an absurd state of mind to actually go further on that page.

How many more scams before they safeguard Orkuteers ?

Those of you who have told me to be careful will generally know how many crack attempts to take over the community have happened.

Orkut, by many, is seen as a major time waster. True or False ? Thankfully, mine is not exactly a time-waster! :-)

More info on the scam here.

And .... oh yeah, Stay Beautiful! :-)

-N

11:01am: And then one for my CEO! :-)
The real blah! \m/

-N

10:39pm: New company coming up on the block ?


-Nerdy

4:24pm: And one for achitnis!
Here.

-N

6:42pm: Digg competitor - coming tomorrow!
Ironically, Digg reports that Digg killer may launch tomorrow.

Also. read / heard this somewhere:

-N

2:02am: Absolutely cool, totally useless - but fun!
OSs comparison with Airlines.

Dugg here.

-nerdy

6:07pm: Urgent requirement: Perl or PHP!
My company needs a Perl or PHP coder ASAP.

* Requirement is in Pune.

* The requirement is just for 5 days.

Wanna jump in? Jump! Wanna refer somebody you know is good refer!

mobile://+91-9960-471-471

I am sure the candidate is going to enjoy the 5 days! :-)

-nerdy

1:24am: Totally confused on what to use!
First points first:

• My Palm Zire 72 is in ICU.


• I recently bought a Nokia E50.


• About a month ago I bought an Acer Aspire 5000 laptop.


• My current work place is 5 mins walk.


• No internet at my $HOME save for GPRS, which is OK for now.

As I mentioned that my Zire 72 is in the ICU, I figured that since I am addicted to it I desperately needed a replacement. Zire 72 was the best mix one could (read:can, coz there is not replacement model, even now!) get at its time. I meant a decent camera for photo-blogging + PDA. Photo bloggin (a.k.a clixonerdy) never took off big time. :-( It has bluetooth but I have started to miss WiFi on account that I am a poweruser of Avantgo (and alike)!

Following is the chat script at irc.freenode.net on #palm:

I have removed it for now as LJ-cut doesn't work on syndication! :-( But this post is cross posted and is available in full here. Apologies for spamming your RSS!

So despite arriving at a decision on chat to get a Lifedrive. I am still stopped cold by atulchitnis and ti22. atulchitnis's arguement is Lifedrive has been stopped and is no longer available from Palm. ti22's argument is Lifedrive is old.

I find that E50 is highly usable and a great business phone. So the big question is do I still need to get a Palm whatever! :-|

Answer will come along eventually in a short time.

More later!™

-nerdy

PS: Totally lost for now! :-(

2:21am: President Kalam for second term!
F/L/OSSy folks,

Its time to speak and get our F/L/OSSy prezident for a second term!

Hit right here!

And *this* time go and *vote!

-nerdy

3:21pm: Thanks for screwing me Flickr!
Read this mail Flickr sent me:

Dear Old Skool Account-Holding Flickr Member,

On March 15th we'll be discontinuing the old email-based
Flickr sign in system.  From that point on, everyone will
have to use a Yahoo! ID to sign in to Flickr.

We're making this change now to simplify the sign in
process in advance of several large projects launching this
year, but some Flickr features and tools already require
Yahoo! IDs for sign in -- like the mobile site at
m.flickr.com or the new Yahoo! Go program for mobiles,
available at: http://go.yahoo.com.

95% of your fellow Flickrites already use this system and
their experience is just the same as yours is now, except
they sign in on a different page.  It's easy to switch: it
takes about a minute if you already have a Yahoo! ID and
about five minutes if you don't.

You can make the switch at any time in the next few months,
from today till the 15th. (After that day, you'll be
required to merge before you continue using your account.)
To switch, start at this page:

http://flickr.com/account/associate/

Nothing else on your account or experience of Flickr
changes: you can continue to have your FlickrMail and
notifications sent to any email address at any domain and
your screenname will remain the same.

Complete details and answers to most common questions are
available here:

http://flickr.com/help/signin/

Thanks for your patience and understanding - and even
bigger thanks for your continued support of Flickr: if
you're reading this, you've been around for a while and
that means a lot to us!

Warmest regards,

- The Flickreenos

Remember I lost my personal Y! ID a while back ? Yeah the bottom line of this mail for me is that till now I was able to access my photos despite losing my Y! ID after March 15th I wont be.

*BEEEEEP* off Flickr - I'll probably delete my account!

Mebbe, you are a great web-site, got bought over, whatever. I'll make sure I'll have nothing o do with you.

Bye!

-nerdy

5:30pm: Remote Systems Administrator required.
Job Description:

* Working with ssh, NFS, Tomcat, J2SDK, Ant, DNS, and PostgreSQL

* Work in storage technology(SAN, RAID), High Availability, Load Balancing and high bandwidth operations.

* Data Center management and maintenance

* Ability to manage and troubleshoot large Linux operation remotely.

* Scripting routine tasks with discoverability and documentation of processes

Experience Requirements:

* 3+ years of current Linux Systems Administration experience including 24/7/365 environments and remote management.
* Perl or Shell scripting knowledge is a definite plus.

Location:
Pune

Interested ? or referring someone ?

Do leave a comment!

More later.

-nerdy

PS: Comments screened! :-)

2:07pm: I looove this concept.
Lunch is deffered! Bleh!

Never mind its probably worth it. So just now there is the brave, rare, hacky attempt to *participate* in BarcampPune2 from a remote location. Way to go Rahul.

What we have here is a the moderator / hall marshall holding a speakerphone. Ok, the first phone didnt work all great, coz of low volume. So someone voluntereed. Great! What is going on currently is that at the Moderator holding up the phone in the center of the audience and there is a conversation going on complete with 'status reports'.

The videos shown were using YouTube and the rest too using a browser. Awesome!

Congratulations! Rahul, I loved your novel concept.

More later!™

-Nerdy

Rahul, moderator, slides and the crowd: