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!!
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How to...Why is...

Google can be as enthusiastic as girl in class who knows all the answers to the teacher's questions.
Recently, Vishal discovered that in a Gmail Atom feed. I for one, found something similar. At first I thought, "Why is Google being so silly?". Take a look at the suggestions (automatically generated) given by the Google search bar in Fx3 for "How to ".

Then I tried with some other keywords, I've got a grab of that too.

This is when I realized (and with some shame, remembered), that Google gives these suggestions based on frequently searched keywords! Woah, are there really so many people who have second thoughts about their marriage?! Ask google indeed!!


Update. Seems the suggestions change with time and is also affected by what you searched. Sample, a N(a)RI-in-US's results:

~LVS
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Idiot Totalica

Well, perhaps this post ain't really got anything for you to read. The sole (there has been no typo here) purpose of these few lines are to get Technorati's (TR) spiders on to my blog. So that they can know this is really my blog.

I am supposed to post a special/unique link somewhere here, so that they can cross check. Of course, I could've given them my blog link and password, but as you might already know, am not very forthcoming in trusting someone with my passwords.

So here you go TR, Technorati Profile. As the name suggests, this leads to my profile which I haven't updated as yet. (Sorry TR the lack of trust, and thanks for this opportunity for another post!)


Ahh..I almost forgot, the name of this post comes from what a friend called me for giving her devious hints as to how to claim your blog on TR. Well actually my own Latin translation of 'complete idiot'. :-)

Have fun,

~LVS
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The Uncertainty Principle

It has been a year at Photon. During my initial training, and through my project allocations, I have been seated at 8 different places in my office. I understand that different projects are at different floors/bays; yet, I am in only my 3rd (billable) project here.

It is interesting to note that it is only my second PC. My first seat at the company was chosen by chance. Every one of the trainees was pretty excited about the brand new systems running Vista Business. OK, I confess, we did more of fooling around than learning something; played online games, chit-chat, music, remote logging into others' machines (everyone had the same username/password back then!) among other things...

Getting back to our topic, once we were told which projects we'd most likely be working in, we were moved around the floor into different bays. Seat #2. Since it was a relatively new facility, we were still organizing projects into different floors; as a result of which I got my seat #3 in a different floor. This perhaps is the coldest place in my office. One client who sat opposite me even remarked, "oh ya..its pretty cool here" in reply to my complaint that it was too "cold"! This seat also saw my second PC (which I use till now) and was the only empty place left after everyone picked theirs.

Seats #4, 5 chosen by me as a result of having an AC vent directly above my head and error in judgment on deciding on #4. Kunal who sat with his back to mine during seat #1, came to a similar position now :-)

#6 happened once my PM confirmed I'd be under him and was asked to move into his bay (so that he could watch our screens). This is where I was made a billable resource, where I did my first project that was recognized by the client (though not my best here). It is also here where I marked my seat with my name (a lot of people do that, "please don't steal this chair; back pain" are ubiquitous). Soon after this, things went bad for the client and I was moved to a new(er) project. Yes, my 7th seat!

After a month and a half there, am at typing this from my one week old seat #8. Another project, another client, another floor. Actually, this is temporary; until they empty a seat for me in another floor. Guess no one else has moved so much in so little time; anyone?

Am off to my next seat now :-) Will update once I reach my 10th! And, God forbid, it shouldn't be in my other office.

~LVS

Psst: if you're some big guy @ Photon, get me a laptop so its easier for me to move around!
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Firefox 3 - The best yet!

Update: Firefox does it! A Guinness record for most software downloaded in 24 hours! A stunning 8,002,530 downloads, verified by Guinness Book of Records over 3 weeks! Check here for more details.

Hello readers,

This is a quick post on Mozilla Firefox's latest release. To refresh Fx (or FF) users' memory and educate the ignorant IE users, that there is a better browser around; better than even Fx2!

Firefox 3, on 17th July 2008, comes with a plethora of features, many of which are simply merging Fx2 add-ons into the browser. We'll come to that later.

There was a lot of hype surrounding the release; having used it since beta 3, I thought it quite deserves it. They are even trying to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 Hrs! Going by the stats, I think they can easily create a world record. w00t!!

You can follow the count right here. I urge you to take part! You even get a certificate! Here is mine. Remember though, this is open till 2100 hrs IST only. After which of course, you will be able to download and use Fx3 but not contribute to the world record. Sad, but quite fair. My bad for not blogging this before! However, looking at the world wide stats, I feel let down that there has not been enough downloads from India. For instance, Iran and Australia have fewer Internet users than us. Yet, there have been more downloads in these countries. Although, there are a few surprising entries into this world record.

• Samoa - 6
  
• Tonga - 6
  
• The Gambia - 16
• Somalia - 7 :P
• Mauritius - 530 (I guess most of them were tourists on their laptops. hehe)
• The Chad and Western Sahara Liberia - 1 each (a friend Vishal suggested it was perhaps the President :D)
  

Coming to the features, here are some which I found absolutely cool!

• one click bookmarking! Yes, that easy!
• search bookmarks/history/RSS feeds simultaneously
• search with keyword (type anything related to the site, part of the URL, title, keywords added to bookmarks etc and get relevant results)
• multi-select. God, I've wanted this since my first computer!
• smart bookmarks
• a list of 'most visited' sites, automatically generated
• a new about:mozilla page :D
• true fullscreen exprience
• anti phishing and anti-malware
• parental control
• read here for more features
• they claim to have made more than 15,000 improvements!
  

I really did this in a hurry and didn't have time to show you enough screen grabs. I'd love to though. Still, its best you go download it yourself and try it out! Good luck, and rediscover the web, again!


Note: At 1639 hrs IST, the total downloads was at 5,910,353.


Thanks,
~LVS


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Open Sesame

Passwords. A string of case sensitive characters requiring you to type them verbatim; no typos allowed.
One needs passwords (or pass phrases) everywhere. PC, email, website, mobiles, ATM, suitcases and what not.

I decided to do a bit of a research on how people like to keep their passwords. This is what I found :

1. Mostly one password for all the accounts, sometimes with minor variations, is preferred
   
2. It might carry some information related to the account
3. It might be contain your favourite person's name/birthday/mobile number etc
4. It is preferable when its short and not alphanumeric

I'll say the best combination of "security and easy-to-remember" is when your password satisfies (2) and is alphanumeric. Personally, I like to have a different password for each account I have. Only recently, and covering most of my accounts, have I started to put some characters related to the account. My gmail and yahoo passwords are totally random. It does not even contain numbers related to me or people I like most. It was just a random word and some numbers thrown in between. Back then, when I had only these two passwords to remember (and one for my PC admin a/c: ok, my password was 'enhance'; come and screw my system!), it was easy to relate this random thought and the account. But around the time I finished college, I was having an increasing number of passwords that I considered keeping 'ishallnotremember' as a password for the next account!

My current count is 30+, some of which I confess, I rarely use; "Forgot my password" is perhaps the most clicked hyperlink on these sites! And I like to think I'm security paranoid and maintain different passwords for each account. To lay less strain on my memory, I maintain the same id for everything: lvshankar or use my gmail a/c.

Here's the list of accounts (not passwords) I use:

gmail(2), photonmail, yahoomail, skype, ubuntu (Home),XP(Office), launchpad, ubuntu counter, cooltoad, digg, ilugc, zapak, linux mint forums, geni,mayajaal, IPMS (work related), sparknotes, hotornot (my bro forced me into this), zedge, mediafire, mabango,olts (work related), axis iconnect (2+ATM PIN), hdfc(+ATM PIN, +CC PIN), bugzilla, spreadfirefox, windows live, lifehacker, irctc, mastercard securecard (?!?!), SIT Chennai... :-)

Besides the above, I remember some friends/relatives' passwords/ATM PINs.
A final tip. You might want to try L33t.

Update: A kind of universal login id is available these days. Open ID. It is similar to M$ Passport, but in a sense open. I haven't really tried this yet. One, am waiting for it to get *really* popular, and another, it dejects me to forget most of those passwords and remember just one. Just too easy for me.


Happy remembering!

~LVS

PS: If you thought this post was a show off, you are probably right!

PPS: Since I've been reading uleadin's blogs lately, I have got this PSing habit! Aarggh!
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