May 19, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on Fun, Google, GSOC, Life, Programming

The first gift from Google

People were wondering about my status messages on GTalk for a few days. It took around a week to ship things. Well, finally I have recieved the first gift from Google as a part of Google Summer of Code Program. Its a beautiful book named “Beautiful Code”. For more information about the book, click here and here. A brief description of the book

How do the experts solve difficult problems in software development? In this unique and insightful book, leading computer scientists offer case studies that reveal how they found unusual, carefully designed solutions to high-profile projects. You will be able to look over the shoulder of major coding and design experts as they work through their project’s architecture, the tradeoffs made in its construction, and when it was important to break rules.

Though I don’t like books pretty much, I am looking forward to read it out of excitement and due to the fact that it has contributions from more than 30 world class programmers 😀

Thank you Google 🙂

May 14, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Fun, Hacking, Internet, Life

IRC is addictive, I am hooked

I have been spending time on IRC since a few months ( 8-9 months) now. For those who don’t know what IRC is, check wiki. This is also a kinda social network but a bit different. This is more or less like yahoo chat rooms. Freenode is one of the most famous networks on IRC. Here I am talking about the techie part of it. Almost every open source project has a development and support channel on Freenode.

I came across IRC in my first summer vacations. Back then, I used to hang out in #fedora (anything prefixed with a # denotes a channel … like a chat room) as a newbie to see what people talk about. And used to ask any questions that came my way. BTW, I use Xchat as an IRC client. I started answering to people’s questions as I gathered experience and expertise. The regular journey with IRC started in 6th sem. I came in contact with a lot of people via IRC. I came across Seth Vidal on #yum. And we discussed a lot about local yum mirror management. IntelligentMirror is an outcome of the discussions that went on for almost two months in #yum.

My activity slowed down on IRC after I got busy with projects. After the GSOC result announcement, Ajay Kumar, a GSOC participant from India, created a channel (##gsoc-india) for selected Indians for GSOC’08. I am a regular in that channel now. There are a lot of people from all over the country, from different streams (CS, ECE, Civil etc..), from different institutes (IITs, DCE, DU, NITs, IIIT, PEC etc..) and from different places 🙂 I have got a lot of new friends. We have a lot of fun doing bc, sometimes discussing issues of national interest 😛 and sometimes projects if time allows 😛 Its really addictive and I tend to respond to every single message.

BTW, it may interest you to know that India is #2 in accepted students for GSOC after US. And next time we’ll probably beat them.

PS1 : Fedora 9 is out. Bandwidth sucking big time even in vacations 🙁 It’ll take almost 15 hours for Fedora 9 to be in. I am eager to check it out.

PS2 : Getting a lot of ideas to post about.

PS3 : We are hoping have a meetup for GSOC participants at Google Delhi and Bangalore Office. It would be REAL fun if it happens 🙂

PS4 : This is probably the best blog post I have ever seen.

May 12, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on Fun, Life, Windows

A trip to Micro$oft Hyderabad campus

I hope you guyz know that Randeep Singh Banga ( my batchmate and a very good friend ) is interning at Micro$oft IDC, Hyderabad. Today, he offered all of us a visit to Micro$oft campus. I felt a bit hesitated at first, but then I thought its a good idea to go out and have fun with friends. We ( me, banga, mahaveer, deepak, kapil, sambhav) reached the campus at around 7:00PM. A lot of IIITians (visitors) were already there. I was wondering if its M$’s India Development Center or a picnic spot for IIITians 😛

Anyway after having bit of cool drinks, we started exploring the campus. The place is good. We enjoyed pool for sometime. It was the first time I played pool. In fact all of us played pool for the first time 🙂 We played really bad but its ok when everyone is equally bad 😛 Then we headed over to checkout banga’s cabin. Had more cool drinks and hot coffee. I managed to have a look at some server farms at that place. The glowing LEDs were just more than fascinating.

Then we moved on to the new building where we enjoyed foosball, table tennis. And finally the food. The food was good but limited 🙁 After having food, we had some more caffiene and cool drinks. And finally the pool for another one hour.

It was really an enjoyable trip. A lot of free cool drinks, caffiene and games. I realized that how much does it cost a company like M$ or Google to keep their employees with them.

PS1 : I am not infected. It was just a trip.

PS2 : Thanks Banga for being a wonderful guide 🙂

May 6, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on Fun, Internet, LAN, Life, Wireless

Shifted to OBH

Finally after a lot of mess and competition, I shifted to OBH yesterday. Finally, I am free from the job of a UPS restarter every few hours. And the damn job was not paid 😛 Kaidi(prisoner) number 200501043 has been shifted from NBH-C-8 to OBH-117 😀

I am expecting a lot of benefits from OBH to make my techie life easier and happier. The wireless here goes down at last after NBH and GH. And if wireless is down here, then its down everywhere 😀 There are more access points per person in OBH. The wireless works consistently. No break ups. The UPS here doesn’t suck.

Apart from technological advantages, there are other benefits as well. My room faces the newest OBH extension block and there are tress all over the place. Its cool even in the hottest part of the day. And night is a pleasure here. I wake up in the morning, open my door and what I see is really an eye candy. Only trees. Nothing else is visible here. I am loving this place.

Its a law of nature. With advantages come disavantages ( I don’t know why I suck so much in framing sentences 🙁 ). Room and bathRooms are a bit smaller here as compared to NBH and all my friends are in still NBH 🙁 I miss you guyz. Make if fast to OBH… please…

May 3, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on Challenge, Fun, Hacking, Linux, Success, Victory

Got IIIT Website Redesign Project

Hi all!

This is Kulbir Saini, back with a bang. Here is another success story. I am pleased to inform you all that we, a team of three UG3 students ( Kulbir Saini, M Bhargava, Vamshi) have been selected for IIIT Website Redesign Project. And the good thing is that its neither a summer project, nor a semester project for a few credits. Its business. On may 1st, we presented our templates and a working prototype of the new IIIT website to the concerned committee ( which consists of people from administration) along with five other companies (I don’t have details and its not even good to mention them). And finally our team has been selected for redesigning the entire website along with websites for all the research centers. Our team is basically a kind of venture with me as a technical partner and Bhargava and Vamshi as design partners. Believe me these guyz are awesome designers. They design things as if they are made for designing them. Mind blowing.

Adios,

Kulbir Saini aka General Bordeaux 🙂

May 1, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Fun, Life

Back to Life

Vacations have become much more enjoyable since a few days .. 2-3 days to be precise … atul and mahaveer is back and sambhav will be back in a few days … coffee shop @ IIIT is THE place that I’ll never forget throughout my life. there are a LOT of memories related to THE place 😀 Its one of the spots where we friends socialize 😛 Since last three days we are spending a lot of time out there … two days before yesterday 3 hours ( 9PM – 12AM)… day before yesterday 2 hours ( 10PM – 12AM) and yesterday 4 hours ( 9:30PM – 1:30AM) .. OMG .. it feels so good sitting out there and breathing fresh/cool air …

PS : Sachin is leaving today … a$$hole X-(

April 29, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Fun, Hacking, Internet, Tips n Tricks

Relax

Sometimes it happens that you get too much used to unusual things that even usual things looks madness to you. I always loved to work at night and found it much more productive as compared to working in day-time. But this crossed limits with the beginning of the 6th semester. I selected all the courses with the intention that none of them should have a class in the forenoon ( the earliest class I had was at 3:00PM 😛 ). The obvious outcome, I never slept at night and night out became as usual as a day for others. For months, I followed the same routine. I didn’t face any problems with the schedule except exam days etc. My biological clocks got synchronized to GMT+1000.

Everything was going fine until recently. I had these meetings with people in the administration who for some reasons are not used to work at night. And those meetings really destroyed my routines. Since a week or so I am feeling totally helpless. I sleep throughout the night and wake up around 8AM. And for the rest of the day, I just look at my computer screen searching for something to work on. I pick up some task and it leads nowhere due to lack of concentration.

As I am a self employed man and need not answer anyone, I have decided to chill out for a week or so. I’ll not work on anything related to hardcore computing and will NOT code even a single line. For time pass, I’ll watch movies and read Paul Graham’s essays. Those essays are a very good method to utilize your free time. Chill out!!!

April 29, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Fun, Graphics, Hardware, Internet, LAN, Life, Monitors, Motherboards, Servers, Speakers

My New Computer

I have been equally passionate about computer hardware and open source ever since I joined IIIT. Friends usually tease me by saying “Hey dude, you didn’t by any IT product this month :D”. I always keep dreaming of a better machine and a lot of machines in my room. And the worst part is that I spend whatever I earn in buying new hardware ( I hardly spend on other things like buying flashy clothes, shoes etc.. looks crap to me.. a wastage of money to be precise :P).

I bought my first personal computer in May, 2006. I used it as much as possible. Then there was a puase for a very long time because I didn’t have cash to buy new hardware. In November 2006, I got RAship in BIRC and hence I got cash 😀 I bought another 160GB hard disk in June 2007 because that was the craze at that time. And because I had to support more upload space on Bordeaux’s FTP 😀 Few months later in August 2007, I bought a new 19″ ViewSonic LCD monitor by spending all the cash I earned till then from RAship and other contract works 😀 Again it was like no cash, no new hardware.

So, by that time I had two monitors and a single cabinet which was not capable of supporting dual display 🙁 As I was out of cash, I had to work harder to get more cash. I did so. And earlier this month I bought new Altec Lancing 2.1 Speakers.

And following them, I bought this monstrous brand new computer. Here is the configuration for the new desktop.

Processor
As I am an AMD fan, so there is no question of going for Intel. I was thinking of buying Quad core initially but then gave up the idea because the cost was increasing beyond my budget. So I decided to go for AMD Athlon64 X2 5600+ (2.8GHz dual core, 2MB L2 cache). This was the first one with 2MB L2 cache with the lowest price 😀

Motherboard

Selecting the motherboard was a really tedious task. Because AMD released its latest 780G chipset recently. A few bugs were reported in forums and I was a bit paranoid while selecting this mobo. But ignoring everything, I decided to go for Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H AMD 780G chipset because this motherboard is currently carrying the best onboard graphics card in the world. ATI Radeon HD 3200 is the onboard graphics card for the mobo. The other reason for going with this mobo was the damn HDMI port 😀 May be it will come handy when I’ll have my LCD TV 😀

RAM

The easiest part to select. I went with Transcend DDR-II 800MHz 2GB x 2 ( total 4GB). I think thats enough for the coming year.

My room has become messy and its really really becoming hot due the heat emissions from the two damn processors.

BTW, the new cabinet has this awesome small LCD display for displaying temperature and other system activities.

My room now looks like this …

So, I have my own small LAN here where I do all the testing stuff with different servers and firewall configuration. I have got a new platform for exploring the world of computer networks. Its fun to work on two machines 🙂 Ok. Here is the last image with Antitrust on one machine and I Robot on the other 😀

Adios,

Kulbir Saini aka General Bordeaux 🙂

April 21, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on Challenge, Computers, Fedora, Fun, Hacking, Internet, LAN, Life, Linux, Servers, Yum

Task List this summer

Though almost 25% of vacations are already gone, I thought of writing down my task list this summer. Maybe somebody out there have any suggestions.

Squid Documentation/Tutorials – Status : DONE
IPTables Tutorial – Status : In progress.
Firewall And Proxy Server Tutorial – Status : Todo
Policy Routing with Linux – Status : Todo
IPRoute2 Howto – Status : Todo
Linux Advanced Routing and Traffic Control Howto – Status : Todo
IntelligentMirror Development – Status : In progress.

Though I didn’t opt for a project or btp in networks, I am trying to focus on real life networking which I can use to make my life easier with the damn wireless. Like learning squid was a wonderful experience and now I get 25% of the stuff I browse from my own cache 🙂

Happy Summer Vacations,

Bordeaux 😀

April 2, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Fun, Hardware, Speakers

My new Altec Lancing 2.1 Speakers

I was living without speakers since one and a half years. Actually, the speakers are not allowed in labs @ IIIT 😛 I moved to BIRC lab to work as a research associate in December 2006. After that I never enjoyed music on speaker except on my neighbors speakers. I am a hardcore fan of punjabi songs and listen to them whenever I am up and sometime I keep them on while sleeping 😛

As the speakers that I had previously (Intex 2.1) was not of any use to me, I took them home so that they can be put into use. I moved back to my room in mid February. I was missing the speakers like hell. I have small speakers in my monitor but they are not good enough. I finally bought these Altec Lancing 2.1 speakers and now my neighbors will soon run away or die of the 24×7 full volume songs in a language that they can’t even understand 😛

PS : Going to buy a monster soon 🙂 Keep checking 😛