The day started when mom woke me up at 4 ‘O’ clock. I had to be ready by 5 so that I can go to Kadampuzha temple with my cousine. I prepared tea and had break fast with beaten rice (Avil) and banana chips. But there was a misunderstanding as I didn’t turn up the day before and he thought I was not going with him ! So he didn’t stop for me and it was disappointing to wake up at 4′O clock during vacation and for nothing Anyway I had ‘Lord of the rings’ to read again at an unexpected time. (I always read books at these irregular hours like once I ventured to read Harry Poter 5 during my sessional exams during 5th semester, a night-out to read ‘Five point someone- what not to do in IITs’, ‘Dance Dance’ (Complete novel – highly recommended ! but you may find something not fiting into the scheme — because it is a sequel) of Haruki Murakami when everyone in the campus was deep in RS agarwal and Sakunthala Devi for campus placement preparations, ‘Sea Leopard’ during s8 exams and ‘Da Vinci code’ within a week before the s8 exams, to point out some )

From Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami

«Tell me, Kiki, are you dead?» I ask.

She spins around in the light to face me.

«Gotanda thinks he killed me,» says Kiki.

«Yes, he does. Or he did.»

Anyway it was great time for reading. Now I got hooked to the novel (though I started it two-three days back I didn’t feel the thrill as the pace of the novel is very slow and you take time to get to know the plot and characters and it is also a sequel to ‘The Hobbit’).

By 7.30 I left for Sabeel’s home after extended breakfast with Upma – or Salt Mango tree as one of the Mohanlal‘s teacher characters translates it and ‘Onion Rice’. He was not yet up and when I woke him up he was astonished to see me that early. I am famous (notorious ?) for my early morining sleeps (extended sleeps). I explained to him my situation and watched TV till he was ready for yet another adventure.

World Environment day

As it was the world environment day there was a live (over phone) discussion on Kiran TV ( a malayalam channel from Sun Network) about the environment. One participant from Mumbai urged the government to make sure the pollution control measures are taken before granting permission when starting industries. She pointed out that there are strict rules in Mumbai for getting license for new ventures. Another participant was talking about the sound pollution from bike horns and need for strict law and fine should be increased to prevent violation of such laws.

Another day of GNU/Linux Hacks

At about 9 we left for Rauf’s home for another day of GNU/Linux hacks. We booted into the GNU/Linux box and examined the xorg.conf file and found out what the problem was — virtual resolution. We commented out the virtual resolution stuff and the desktop looked even nicer. Then we moved to the text console ( CTRL+ALT+F2 ) and tried different commands. Sabeel had gone through the book and had an idea of the commands. We tried in detail how to add new users first. Since Suse does not come with adduser command which is an easier edition of the useradd command which is available with most of the Linux-based GNU distros. We tried adding users with different uids and many other options like home dirctory and default shell. Then I showed them /etc/passwd file and how to use finger. The I told them about the .plan file that contains more info about a user and which will be used by finger. [We changed the contents of /etc/default/useradd that contained the default values for useradd - we made zsh as the default shell instead of bash ]. We moved on with ls,pwd,cat,more etc and pipes and input/output redirection.

Recovering Windows

Then we had to recover windows for him. We tried to boot it by adding it to grub menu but without success. We tried to see if editing C:\boot.ini file will get the thing working. boot.ini is the configuration file for Windows’ default boot loader. We had no other option left but to re-install the windows OS. We tried to rescue it but the dir command gave error for C and D drives which were affected by Partition Magic, but E and F was healthy. So went on with installation. When we tried to format D it showed us C as FAT32 which was unknown(to windows installer) till then when we formated D!! (later we knew that it formated C not D to show it as FAT32) It made a mess with the partiotions (It is not at all staright forward). Its userfriendliness was even made clearer when we splitted a 10 GB partition (D) which previously had XP and formated K drive, it went on with installing it on K (we wanted it on D). Anyway it got installed in K with two free partitions C and D. The default boot loader (NTLDR) over wrote grub and we inserted Suse 9.3 CD 1 to recover Suse by installing Grub.

Update: Now I know how to install grub in Windows and add it to c:\boot.ini (I found out it when I was struggling with GNU slash Hurd installation).

We expected an easier way to install grub like in mandrake (with just an enter) but got a root rescue shell (Now I think Mandrake – now Mandriva is recommended for newbies).
So we entered grub shell and setup the suse images and installed it in MBR. Now Rauf’s system happily dual boots betweenMicrosoft Windows XP and Suse GNU slash Linux – once we thought impossible – we did it !!

Then we rebooted to Suseand took a copy of Slackware for Sabeel using k3b (The CD burner software for KDE which we use extensively in NITC Main CC). Now we had to leave as Sabeel had to leave for Trivandrum for s7 registration.

Notes: The problem was with the partitions (Windows XP made it a mess so that even Partition Magic and GNU Parted failed to resize a partition).

After reading
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince I was discussing the possibilities now with VR after Dumbledore’s death. It seems really imposible to beat Voledmort now after losing Dumbledore and Snape going to the Dark side. The only one in the order after Dumbledore who could possibly stand up against You-know-who was Snape (Even Dumbledore counted on Snape when he was coming back from the Cave. Now who can we count on in the order to look face to face with Voldemort. Well now the only hope is R.A.B, but we are yet to know who this guy is or what are his credentials.

VR read the book before me and was very enthusiastic before he read the climax but after he climax he was abusing Rowling. The same case was with me also. I was reading it the whole weekend at home with high interrest but when I came back to Bangalore are read the climax I was very disappointed (but not as disappointed as VR because I was prepared to face something very bad after VR’s reaction to it)

So now let us wait for the last book of the series and see what Rowling has got.

Update: Wikipedia gives more about the possibility of R.A.B. It says Regulus Black, Sirus’s brother is a likely to be R.A.B.

Regulus was a Death Eater who tried to disassociate himself from Voldemort. He was killed by Voldemort or on Voldemort’s orders. The note left by R.A.B. addresses Voldemort as “The Dark Lord”, and Death Eaters are the only group who customarily refer to him thus. Regulus’ second initial is unknown. However, he had a rich uncle whose first name was Alphard.

I’ve been able to engage myself in ‘something or other’ for the last 3 weeks since I left NITC, like
Changathikkoottam,
IT@School training,
Movies (Akkareyakkare Akkare, Ninathen vanthai),
Sleeping
Reading [K.L. Mohanavarma's 'Settlement', News papers -- almost complete!! ]
or ‘Bakar’ (Kathi) with sabeel (he left for exams on 14th).
Update: He is placed in HCL Infosystems through Campus Recruitment
I went to rauf’s home to demeonstrate GNU/Lnux as Sabeel got really exited as I kept on telling him about my hacks. Well, it seems his interest has gone as he saw it as a simple thing !!! [It was Suse 9.3 Professional and I could not go into much of the commands and configuration files and options ]. To some it is interesting when it is not common or not challenging.

We both share many interests and one thng we got in common is ‘the standard book/foreign author syndrome’. Those who suffers from it can be found with standard/foreign authored text book on the eve of any exams. Suresh Kumar told us that he also used to have this syndrome when he was in IITM. He used to study the subject after the exams if it is interesting [You know it is interesting when you read a good book] !! But clearly we lack this second characteristic of this particular syndrome!!!

I’ve been telling him colourfully how I hacked the boot.ini file when Windows XP in Manjunath’s computer stopped working when we partitioned it for Suse [Suse is trying to be more like Windows and so it choses the partions on its own and messes it up wholly at times like windows!!] and got XP back for him. It was a simple increment in the partition index as one partition was splitted for installing Suse and the absolute partition index [number of the partition with XP in it from the starting] was increased by 2 [one for the root partition and one for swap from the existing C drive], the problem wouldn’t have arised had XP been installed on the C drive. I could diagnose the root cause of the problem that it is boot.ini that is to be edited when it is saying HAL.DLL is missing error!!! because we solved exactly the same problem at Dilpu’s home at Harippad in Alleppey when I was there with Shankar for our IT (Industrial Training) at PGCL (Power Grid Corporation of India Limited).
….I had 3 IT during the 4 year period at NITC, during first year in Lower Periyar power House in Idukkki, during second year in TELK [Transformer & Electricals Kerala] in Ankamali and in the third year at PGCL Kayamkulam…

There we searched the net for solution to HAL.DLL missing problem through the newly installed Redhat GNU/Linux system.

At Rauf’s home Sabeel had to satisfie with a “Rauf’s XP” in place of “Microsoft XP Professional” [anyone can do it yaar -- as simple as it open the text file C:\boot.ini in notepad and change the quotes sya from "Microsoft XP Professional" to "Microsoft XP Pirated Edition"]
Update: We had longer and intense sessions after that

As GNU Partition editor (Qtparted -qt gui front end for GNU parted) couldnot resize the partitions. It was XP corrupting the partition table.
Update: It was proved correct when Partition manger “successfully” [It gave an output 'Successfully completed all operations!] messed up the partitions and lost both 98 and XP [If you believe this GNU/Linux could mount those partitions and Windows Installed failed to recognise the partitions]

We got a similar problem when we tried to install EduMorphix on KSTA computer at Palakkad. Arun of FSF India told us thet it was XP corrupting the partition table. I guess newer editions of partition editor might tackle it.

He had 4 partitions of 10GB each and almost complete and freeing a partition by copying was not an option. Another option we had was formatting C drive and divide it into two partitions – anyway 98 does not need 10GB and reinstall XP and install GNU/Linux into the newly freed space of C. As we didn’t have an XP CD we couldn’t go forward. [I didn't take a copy from college as I was sure that I wouldn't need it as I'm not going to use it nor I'm not going to give it to anyone. Now I guess Sabeel has a "copy" and we are gonna experiment at manjeri when he come back after exams. If Rauf is willing we can have it there too
Update: Infact we did go forward (both places too)!

I successfully installed Xandros for Chandramohan sir Freeing one partition for GNU/Linux after copying contents of it to another partition and deleting it. I also installed smoothly Photoshop 6 and 7 with Cross Over Office4.1 that comes with Xandros (30 day evaluation version).

Cross Over Office Really rocks!!!
It smoothly run Photoshop 6,7 (probably latest edition too, which I didn't try), Microsoft Office, Windows Media Player, Dreamweaver MX, iTunes, Quicken ... and the list is ever increasing. Previously I saw Cedega successfully playing Half Life 2 and Quake like graphics intensive games smoothly in Shyam's computer and he asserts it is only better in the Free OS [No hangs, crash...]. And it plays in native speed too. Now yet another argument is made invalid — “I have spents lots of money of software already and if I switch to GNU/linux how am I gonna use these softwares ?” Also some say “I am so familiar with Photoshop and Microsoft Office and it is tough to move to Gimp and Open Office”. Well now you can use your favorite apps in GNU/Linux as you would in Windows thanks to the wine [Wine Is Not and Emulator] hackers.

Ofcourse this is not a permanent solution to the problem but only an interim solution to the age old chicken and egg problem. “I’ll use Free Software when there is enough softwares and we will develop Free Software when there are a lot of people using it”. Well I don’t support non-free software bundled with the Free Distros. All the above was just to show how powerful and superb is wine.

Adobe has released two of its softwares under open source licenses recently and Macromedia (now owned by Adobe) had plans to release GNU/Linux versions of its popular offerings like DreamWeaver that run with wine.

Within two days of coming here I saw two movies ‘Lakshya’ a Hindi film starring Hrithik Roshan and Preity Zinta also the first installment of Matrix trilogy, ‘The Matrix’. I was not interested in that movie when everyone went to see that. But after hearing the story I wanted badly to see that. Now I’ll see the remaining parts soon.

Gotta go now

Its Placement time and everyone is anxious about a job.