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 4, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on Internet, LAN, Life, Servers, Wireless

Things are moving finally

After a struggle of months if not years, I can see things moving finally. A big big credit goes to Rishabh Mukherjee, who was always there to offer his help whenever I had a problem with administration ( specific to IT infrastructure at IIIT). Yesterday, there was a meeting in which a test plan was worked out for the newly arrived access points for the OBH extension block. For a few weeks, they’ll be tested in one of the OBH wings and the performance will be logged. Also, a lot of changes will be seen in IT infrastructure at IIIT in near future. Now plans are coming out of meeting rooms and they are not limited to papers and emails anymore. A big thanks for Shatrunjay Sir for this.

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 🙂

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 22, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on Challenge, Fedora, Hacking, Internet, Programming, Success, Yum

Accepted for Google Summer of Code

Hi all!

This is my second post of the day but I can’t resit my to write it. I will just say that I am “Accepted For Google Summer of Code”. No its not something propritiery, its “Open Source”. Google Summer of Code is a program sponsored by Google where students write code for Open Source Organizations and Google funds them for the summer.To know more about GSOC, go here.

I submitted my proposal on IntelligentMirror which will be a package for Yum Local Repository Management to Fedora Project. You can browse the breif details of my project here, and for detailed proposal, go here. Seth Vidal, who originally developed Yum, will be mentoring me throughout the project. It will be a wonderful and exciting experience to work with Yum developers.

Adios,

Kulbir Saini aKa General Bordeaux 😀

April 17, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on Life, Linux, Windows

Live and Let Live

Long time no see!!! Well, I was really busy learning some new things and managing my new desktopS. Yes desktops. You read it right. Next post is going to be on my two desktops. Ok. Now I’ll concentrate on the motive of writing this post.

Three years ago, I joined IIIT with a blank mind in Computer Science. Me and few others tried to excell in using/managing/hacking/cracking/breaking computers while others tried to do their best in academics. Sounds good. By burning midnight oil almost everyday since the very first semester, I learnt a bit of tricks to fix certain hardware/software problems. People used to ask me to fix problems for them related to all this stuff. Back then it was fun and I really liked helping others. Be it a windows or a linux problem, if I knew the crack, I never denied someone asking for help.

But as time passed, more and more people started coming with more problems. Even hardware problems. And the traffic was highest in the beginning of the third semester when almost everyone bought a laptop in my batch and making wifi work in linux at that point of time was a bit tricky. Even then I never mind because I didn’t have any commitments to work on back then. I was free all the time and loved to help people.

I think I can say that buying a cellphone just with the intention that I would be in contact with my family was the biggest mistake of my life at IIIT. I have 3 freaking projects to work on and people don’t let me concentrate on them. If I don’t reply to mails or IMs, they shamelessly start calling me. I mean wtf, at times I may be trying to get the hang of something really important related to my work and the FUCKING call damages all the spirit. It still looks somewhat justified when someone asks me about some problem related to Linux. Dudes are coming with problems related to Windows Vista. I never used the fucking OS. I HATE WINDOWS. I hope you can feel the heat and my concern regarding my commitments.

Please for god sake don’t ask me for help at least related to windows. Though I would love to help you fixing any problem with your Linux system, but sometime I may be busy with other things that are more important to me. If I don’t reply to your mail or IM, please for God sake don’t call!!! And moreover, if you want to call, please don’t call between 08:00AM – 05:00PM and let me sleep peacefully. Its a request.

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 😛

March 23, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Internet, LAN, Life

Wireless Crisis

I was proud to know that IIIT was the only academic institute in India to have wifi campus when I joined IIIT. Back then wifi offered good connectivity and bandwidth on Intranet and it was a feel good that you don’t have to look for wires to go online. Sit anywhere with your laptop and you are ready to go online.

As time passed, the no. of students using wifi increased due to huge intake of students in different branches. The wifi infrastructure which provided a speed of 20MBps per user at some point of time is now like a 56kbps modem line which you won’t prefer if you are not out of options. Apart from the decreased bandwidth per user, other problems arose in course of time like the switches grew older, UPSs lost their efficiency etc.

The funniest part of wifi infrastructure currently are these UPSs. They are attached to each and every switch in hostels. Whenever power goes down, the UPS also goes down and start screaming as if they are designed to kill everyone in the vicinity. The backup they provide is hardly a minute or so (not more than two minutes surely). These UPSs are so intelligent that whenever power comes, they can’t sense it and they need to be restarted. I would like to congratulate the designer to make such high class UPSs to make our life miserable. So, we have UPSs that goes down immediately on power cut and needs to be restarted when power is back. The only advantage of having these UPSs is that our life is miserable.

Another fun part is NBH(New Boys Hostel, one of the hostels at IIIT campus) switch. This 3Com switch is too old to sustain the peak data transfers. This switch goes down every 3-4 hours and needs to be restarted manually using a hard reboot ( hard reboot means cutting the power supply and then restoring it.). This switch is kept in a locked room and whenever one has to restart it, he has to look around for the key in cellar.

I am afraid that due to the continuously increasing load, some day entire wifi will collapse and we will have serious wireless crisis at IIIT. Students Lab Committee is trying hard to convince people around to come up with alternate solutions. I hope we will have some solutions soon.

PS : No PSs this time 🙂

March 21, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Life, Linux

Panic Mode

I have been writing blog posts about linux since last two and a half years now. I wrote most of them because I faced difficulties in installing or configuring or using open source softwares and keeping in mind that others may be facing the same problems. And it has come a long way now. My linux blog gets more than 5000 hits a month and 75% of the visitors come via google search(src. google analytics) who are searching for howtos on different topics.

Sometime people write me asking questions about configurations and related things. I received a mail from a guy in uk who read some post on my linux blog and felt like helping me in some way. While I received his mail, I was in panic mode. Because I broke a module on one of my production servers and I was not able to fix it even after trying for hours continuously. IRC and google didn’t help and at the same time a guy in IRC really frustrated me with his behavior while helping. So, I didn’t care about the mail from the guy from uk and replied in really hurry and in a really bad manner. I didn’t even consider what I was writing. I usually reply to a mail whenever I get it. I don’t like to wait for replying.

After sometime I got the reply saying that he was trying to help me and I had been very rude in my reply. I just read the sent mail again and found it really hard to believe that I sent it. I replied with apologies and everything was fine after wards. It was embarrasing to know that I hurt stranger at a remote place. Now onwards, don’t reply to a mail while in panic mode 🙂

PS : Tough night. It took a really long time to fix a small problem 🙂