October 4, 2009 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Computers, Fun, Internet, Life, Speakers

Going Home

Well, its that time of year again, when I have to go home. BTW I’ll be at home after skipping four Diwalis in a row. Its not that I don’t love to go home or I don’t love people back there but most of it leads to embarrassing situations in one or the other way. You can’t be a free bird as you are while in IIIT. The worst thing is you can’t use the fu**ing F word and any of its variations. Here are a few common problems I face at home

THE BIGGEST PROBLEM : I can’t remember faces 🙁 Whenever I visit some relatives, I can’t recall their names. This happens in some extraordinary manner. I went to my uncle’s (Tau Ji) house and the moment I saw his son, I forgot his name. Total WTF!!! How can you forgot the name of a person who is almost like your real brother. Last time I was at home, it happened at three different locations and drove me crazy.
Music : I can’t listen to Ear-Blowing (basically at high volume) music there because of the inherent agreement to social terms and conditions.
No Internet : My home is within the boundaries of a national park. At first it sounds super awesome because you get to live really close to nature but then you don’t get high tech facilities there. Weak mobile signals and no internet is such a turn off. Still its not as big a problem as the first one 🙂
Embarrassing Questions/Comments : Every single time you go home, there will be neighbours who don’t have any sense of what you are upto and will ask the same questions or deliver their expert comments. ‘Padhai kaisi chal rahi hai?’/’Kitna kamjor ho gaya hai?’ WTF!! If it was so, I should have disappeared in four years.
Off Topic Discussions : In four years, I (or any engg grad) have lost total sense of what typically goes or discussed in a family. Now, all we remember/know is the word “BC”, ‘THE F WORD’ and tech-discussions. The discussions/talks which are treated off-topic here are considered relevant back there. And the worst part is that I don’t have a report spam option 🙁

Leaving apart the problems, I hope I’ll have a great time at home this Diwali.

PS : Last point is a bit exaggerated 😛

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 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 😛