Education!

Arun, I disagree with you! You can tell your cop about it and make him happy!

The Indian education system rocks! The purpose of education is to get one geared up to face the problems of day-to-day life!

I realized this today after I fixed my wardrobe. Since the recent rains, the drawers in them had gone a bit moist (No. My house ain't leaking, it was general moisture in the corner of my room) and the screws came loose. I had to spend more time pushing the drawer back in the right direction than doing what it was opened for! This is when my carpentry skills kicked in!! Thanks to the esteemed Anna University and its prescribed syllabus for the first semester, I could easily wield the hammer, nails, screws and screwdrivers!

The thought that my education had helped me had come afterwards. Immediately after this, I had visual recollections of my first semester Workshop lab viva voce. Mr.Muniraj (name changed for my privacy), gently took the steel ruler from my hands and checked if I had ever bothered reading the backside. He asked me, "How many centimetres to an inch?" "2.54 sir" "sure? 2.54 or 2.5400?" (because that how it was printed on the ruler) "they're the same sir (smile)" "good good. tell me, why are you doing carpentry and welding? you are a computer science student no?" "[er because AU made my dad spend so that I could make a living] because, sir, I am an engineer and an engineer should have knowledge of everything [,even clean drainages perhaps?]" "ver-ry good!! you can go".

Now I regret having had thoughts like that. Atleast I didn't speak them...
Now that carpentry proved useful, how else was education useful?
Back in school, my cousin was taught how to use Star Office. Now, he's using the skills he developed from school, to help his professor type of lectures, documents etc and he's making a living! (I guess many of the MS in US people are doing much the same)

And then, it was at school where we learnt to do C++ program for Fibonacci series program, it helped me clear my job interview!
Happy learning!

PS: Do share any such experiences in the comments!
Read more…

Intrepid Ibex

in·trep·id ɪnˈtrɛpɪd/ - [in-trep-id] :

–adjective
resolutely fearless; dauntless: an intrepid explorer.

-synonyms
brave, courageous, bold.

i·bex [ahy-beks]:

–noun, plural i·bex·es, ib·i·ces [ib-uh-seez, ahy-buh-]
any of several wild goats of the genus Capra, inhabiting mountainous regions of Eurasia and North Africa, having long, recurved horns.

Ubuntu has always followed this naming scheme; adjective followed by some animal. The past releases, in reverse order, were Hardy Heron, Gutsy Gibbon, Feisty Fawn, Edgy Eft, Dapper Drake. Each release has a gap of approximately 6 months between them. The version numbers are, derived from the year and the month of release. For example, Ibex will be 2008.10.30.


Intrepid is officially releasing on 30th Oct 2008. Below is a count(down)er (and the primary purpose of this post)



I've been using Ubuntu since Dapper and have found it a more than satisfactory substitute OS to M$'s windoz. And its always got better since then. Do give it a shot. You can even pre-order a free CD here. (Please. Please. Don't make an order unless you know what you're going to do with it or not going to do anything at all. But it is worth a try)

The naming is quite appropriate. Especially, comparing it with an Ibex. These are Mark Shuttleworth's own words:

During the 8.10 cycle we will be venturing into interesting new
territory, and we'll need the rugged adventurousness of a mountain
goat to navigate tricky terrain. Our desktop offering will once
again be a focal point as we re-engineer the user interaction model
so that Ubuntu works as well on a high-end workstation as it does on
a feisty little subnotebook. We'll also be reaching new peaks of
performance - aiming to make the mobile desktop as productive as
possible.

A notable improvement will be pervasive internet access. Wherein you can roam(like a goat does) while Ubuntu automatically hooks onto whatever bandwidth is available across different wireless technologies. Also, what's special about this release is that a developer conference played a key role in drawings its blue print; There has been a sudden burst of contribution through this conference, from artists and developers to translators and advocates.

On why this release is important to me. I currently have Hardy, incrementally upgraded from Feisty. There have been too many packages installed, improperly removed, broken etc in them. I've been waiting for this release to start anew with Ubuntu. I'm planning a minimal install which will help my box's humble computing power. :-)

My friend Vishal, who's been trying Ubuntu beta releases for the past two, says he's pretty happy with what he sees and recommends it for people switching to GNU/Linux.

I welcome Ibex!

PS: The next release Jaunty Jackalope is expected to give Ubuntu users a jaunty boot up experience! w00t!!
Read more…

Not guilty!

To hell with Uleadin and his post!

I spent half an hour going through my comments; counting them.

This is what I've found,

Post	Female : Male commentators
Its a dog's life	3:2
Early Bird Gets the Worm	2:1
How to...Why is...	4:3
Petrol - The Elixir of Life!	2:3
Idiot Totalica	4:1
The Uncertainty Principle	3:6
Firefox 3 - The best yet!	3:4
False fueling	2:4
Open Sesame	3:3
A New Unit of Fuel Efficiency	4:3
Orion	1:2
A collage of phrases and idioms	1:2
A trip down the IT high(and low) way...	1:2
ATM - Automatic Turn-off by Microsoft	3:11

That totals to 36:47. 36 females to 47 males commenting on my blog! Hail statistics!

Looking at them however, I haven't got too many comments per post. Sigh.
Read more…

Its a dog's life

I used to drive to work on OMR daily. Often, I find a stubborn pile of rubbish in the middle of the road; on closer inspection it invariably turned out to be a dog. Run over. Squashed. Dead.

Its quite a gory sight, mind. Many a times you'd find their guts pushed out or even massacred beyond recognition. I have never seen it actually happen, though am sure it would have been terrible for them. The thing is, I have been taking the OMR for over 4 years now and have noticed such accidents only since they started with the new road. It was quite understandable when only one side of the road was usable, but on a road broader than ECR...that's bad!

Whom do we blame? Drunk drivers? Sleepless cleaners driving? Racing enthusiasts? Or the dogs?

What's worse is, I don't see the Corporation or Municipality removing the carcass. Even the scavenging crows don't get a chance with vehicles zipping past every second. Wonder what diseases it can spread....Of what I've noticed, the body is run over and over by vehicles, until its totally worn off and vanishes from the road...uuggghh...however, a few days later, the spot is spot-less!

I have never seen anyone hit-and-run a dog, neither do I want to. But lets be safe on the road, its not just humans who are involved in accidents. After all, its a dog's life...
Read more…