Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,400 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 40 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Although, I believe, like the Obama (I’m an admirer) campaign slogan read, it’s time for change.

Oh my goodness, what has happened here, you might be thinking. Nothing drastic. It was just a case of clearing my head a little thanks to some fresh air and sunshine.

One fine day a couple of weeks ago, a coworker happened to ask me if I was interested in joining him and his family for a road trip to a beach village called Diveagar which is about a 4-hour (100 mile) drive one way. Now, I had always declined participating in these kinds of outings, and had never hardly been on any of the previous group trips. Don’t know why, but I asked “is there a lot of activity involved” and my coworker replied “nope, we just plan to chill out at the beach”. I said “well, doing nothing at the beach, that I can definitely do!” and agreed to go along.

To cut a long story short I’ll just post my Picasa web album and Youtube playlist of the weekend which you can take a look if you wish here:

https://picasaweb.google.com/vishalrao/Diveagar2011BeachRoadTrip

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=61F38FADE24F791A

I had not been to a beach (or any kind of outdoorsy event) in a very long time so walking on the sand and listening to the sound of the water was a refreshing experience. Being with a couple of coworkers and chilling out, not doing anything hectic, unless you call playing Badminton after dinner hectic, quickly de-stressed me and “recharged my batteries” as they say.

After returning back home on Sunday afternoon and relaxing for the rest of the evening, I got thinking about the trip and, since my head felt clear, about life in general.

During 2011 new years time I had earlier thought what a dull year 2010 was for me both professionally and personally but did not think too much beyond that. Now, like I posted on my Facebook/Twitter feeds, I’m aiming to make 2011 much more vibrant in both areas.

I don’t want to bore y’all with the details, and it’s nothing major, just little changes here and there. Think of it as my new year’s resolutions, only a couple of months late!

I want to do much better at work without getting too stressed out. I’d like to become a little bit more personable and sociable without forcing myself to change my “quiet” (or, shall I say, “introverted” haha) personality; I like being me after all.

A few folks have been wishing me luck after I posted that one-liner on my Facebook/Twitter feeds, so if you’re still reading this blog post, wish me luck as well!

Oh, and if you happen to meet me and think of me as an “introvert”, don’t worry I won’t take it personally :-)

Edit:

Was just reading through the Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extroversion_and_introversion

Technically, I am an “introvert” and do not even want to move towards the contemporary theory of “ambiversion”. My Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) was “ISTP” or “Introvert Sensing Thinking Perceptive” based on an online test I took a while back. I’ll try to do this test again to see if anything has changed recently.

Nokia’s N900: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N900 and http://maemo.nokia.com/n900
Runs a 600 mhz ARM Cortex A8 (65 nm, 32 bit RISC TI OMAP 3430) CPU and 256 MB RAM.

After installing mmjre and bash on the N900, let its console output do the talking:


---------------------------------------------------------------------
Nokia-N900:/opt/gfe6032/product/quickstart# uname -a
Linux Nokia-N900 2.6.28.10power37 #1 PREEMPT Wed May 26 00:24:03 EEST 2010 armv7l unknown

Nokia-N900:/opt/gfe6032/product/quickstart# java -version
java version "1.6.0_10-ea"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition for Embedded (build 1.6.0_10-ea-b39)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 11.0-b15, mixed mode)
Evaluation version, 90 days remain in evaluation period

Nokia-N900:/opt/gfe6032/product/quickstart# cacheserver start cache-xml-file=xml/BenchmarkServer.xml
Starting CacheServer with pid: 0
CacheServer pid: 4291 status: running

Nokia-N900:/opt/gfe6032/product/quickstart# java -Dbenchmark.number-of-samples="15" -Dbenchmark.operations-per-sample="5000" -Dbenchmark.payload-bytes="1024" -cp /opt/gfe6032/product/lib/gemfire.jar:classes quickstart/BenchmarkClient

Client/Server benchmark example.


Benchmark configuration:
benchmark.number-of-samples = 15
benchmark.operations-per-sample = 5000
benchmark.payload-bytes = 1024
Please wait... this may take several minutes...

Finished run. Collating benchmark totals now.

Client/Server Cache Benchmark results:

Total Time = 95.082 seconds
Total Puts = 75000 put operations
Total Samples = 15 benchmark samples
Total Kilobytes = 75000 kilobytes

Average Puts Per Second = 788.7928314507478 puts
Average Kilobytes Per Second = 788.7928314507478 kilobytes of data
Average Operations Time = 1267760.0 nanoseconds per put
Average Byte Time = 0.001238046875 milliseconds per byte of data

Best Puts Per Second = 902.5270758122743 puts
Best Kilobytes Per Second = 902.5270758122743 kilobytes of data
Best Operations Time = 1108000.0 nanoseconds per put
Best Byte Time = 0.00108203125 milliseconds per byte of data
Note: Best sample is representative of performance after JVM warms up.

Closing the cache and disconnecting.

Please stop the cacheserver with 'cacheserver stop'.


Nokia-N900:/opt/gfe6032/product/quickstart# cacheserver stop
The CacheServer has stopped.
---------------------------------------------------------------------


I don’t know which is the cooler product here :)

I recently bought a Crucial branded 128 GB solid state disk (SSD) model CT128M225 of the M225 range because they’re the hot new thing to get.
See http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001304.html

The disk would work well with my copy of Windows 7 RC but to my dismay Linux would spew a lot of disk error messages as you can see here: http://pastebin.ubuntu.com/347122/

I tried the usual STFW-ing and asking around in the Linux, Crucial.com and a few tech forums but to no avail. Apparently I’m one of the first to run an SSD on Linux, no way! There was some info about SMART errors with SSDs but the suggested workaround(s) didn’t work for me.

I’d almost resigned to the fact that either my SSD model would not work with current Linux versions or *shock* perhaps my particular disk was defective but then I took another closer look at the logs.

Searched again but this time for one of the error messages “failed command READ FPDMA QUEUED” and saw references to NCQ (native command queuing). Did some more digging around and hit some info about the Linux kernel’s ATA library option ” libata.force=noncq ” which when I tried seemed to resolve these issues!

Some other users (of Kingston, OCZ and Intel SSDs) mentioned they did not face such issues and apparently Intel has a good solid NCQ implementation from online docs.

Curious as to whether the root cause of the problems was a defect in my SSD’s firmware or a bug in the Linux kernel I visited the online linux cross reference site here http://lxr.linux.no/ and did some browsing. Found the file drivers/ata/libata-core.c where I noticed a line referencing OCZ SSD and a parameter called ATA_HORKAGE_NONCQ.

It didn’t take too long to put two and two together and eventually spent the rest of the day today patching three lines of code into the kernel to automatically detect my SSD model range and disable NCQ so as to avoid these problems in the first place. Hopefully it will benefit other unsuspecting or less tech savvy users for which this could be a serious problem.

It was a coincidence that I had recently upgraded my slow 512 kbps DSL connection to 8 mbps in preparation to attend some online Ubuntu classroom sessions about bug fixing etc. called “Ubuntu Developer Week” and this allowed me to quickly download all the development tools and source code, make the patch, build the source and binary package and upload it.

I sent an email to the Linux kernel mailing list with the trivial patch – but looks like it’s going to be tough to get these hardcore developers to accept it: http://lkml.org/lkml/2010/1/26/185

Anyway, I visited my nearly 5 year old Ubuntu Launchpad account site at https://launchpad.net/~vishalrao which was gathering dust, signed the Ubuntu Code of Conduct, added my OpenPGP signing key, created a “kernels” PPA (personal package archive) and uploaded my patched kernel source. Lets see if it builds or not! Check back here: https://launchpad.net/~vishalrao/+archive/kernels

• Test driven on Sunday October 4th.

• Driven home from the dealer’s on Saturday October 17th.

Bought a new silver Honda Civic 1.8 S MT!

And like the marketing slogan claims “It drives you”, yes, it does drive me.

I also test drove the Toyota Corolla Altis a week before the Civic and even though the Altis is Rs. 1 lakh cheaper and has more stuff (better value-for-money) I got the Civic because it was more spacious inside, the ride was more comfortable (parents liked it) and, of course, it handled better and was way more fun to drive – especially the free/high revving engine.

With some post-test rumination I think the latent Honda fanboy in me started to awaken as I recalled Honda’s rich tech heritage such as ASIMO, their green initiatives and their “Big Bang” racing tech during the old days of Moto GP’s Michael Doohan on his NSR500.

It’s got an alphabet soup of technologies/features like the iVTEC engine, EPS (electrically assisted hydraulic power steering), SRS airbags, ABS/EBD/BA (electronic brake-force distribution with brake-assist), CD/MP3/AAC/WMA/USB/iPod audio input, power mirrors/windows and the fantastic instrument cluster with a digital speedometer looks not like a jet fighter cockpit as many have said but more like that of a spacecraft!

It handles well on Indian roads with low roll during moderate speed sweeping turns and the suspension soaks up rough patches for a comfortable ride while still being stiff enough to enjoy brisk driving.

The iVTEC engine gives excellent mileage (12.2 kmpl during Pune office rush hour traffic if you keep it at low RPMs (2000 plus/minus 500) on higher gears, about 14 kmpl during weekend brisk driving with less traffic) but I’ve yet to measure during the peak summer months when the AC will be on full time and will wait to take it on the highways until the engine break-in period of 1000 km is completed. Of course, jab the throttle a little more urgently and the variable valve timing kicks in for added thrust – enough to put a smile on your face. And I haven’t even started to approach the 6750 rpm redline just upto 3000 or so until the running-in is over and done with.

To get an idea of the performance during my weekend drive around the city: 3rd gear @ 2000 rpm = 45 kmph, 4th gear @ 2000 rpm = 60 kmph, 5th gear @ 2000 rpm = 80 kmph and 5th gear @ 2500 rpm = 100 kmph! Top speed must be over 200 kmph I’m guessing.

The standard music system is apparently an Alpine and has 4 speakers plus 2 tweeters and has very good clarity. I’m not an audiophile and others have said the tweeter is harsh high treble and dull bass due to the panels being plastic rather than fabric/board. But good enough for me.

It’s got a few other nifty little features like auto-lock when you cross 15 kmph, a security system with internal ultra-sonic sensors and some trippy blue ambient lighting.

Didn’t have a digital camera so rushed out and bought a Sony CyberShot DSC-WX1 to take these pics:

http://picasaweb.google.com/vishalrao/NewHondaCivic18SMT

Also check out a couple of HD videos – make sure you turn up the volume and click the HD button!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fldpFM6qXKs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpEz6DFHPxE

Here’s some notes I’d penned down about the test drive:

So, the Honda guy showed up at 10am with a silver Civic V-MT. As the car rolled up to our gate and idled I immediately noted the car had a deeper/smoother exhaust note/rumble making it *sound* more powerful than the Altis.

Getting in and out (ingress/egress) was surprisingly effortless for the driver’s and rear passengers’ seats even though I’ve heard the Civic is relatively lower slung. Confirmed with my mom n dad who complain about many cars but not about this one (phew).

First things first, adjusted the steering and driver’s seat for max space and there was way more legroom/comfort for driver and rear passenger.

Then I just sat there for a while looking around at the interiors. I’m sorry but the quality “trim level” looks and feels a significant notch above the Altis especially the steering wheel wrapping (claimed to be leather) which was a little softer (but not too soft) and had better grip although it might just be synthetic/polyeurethane/whatever.

Not to mention the instrument cluster, which, as it’s been repeated before by others, is futuristic with the digital readouts except for the tachometer which is just the way I like it! It’s been called a “cockpit” before and yes you do get that feeling and no, its not like the cockpit of a jet fighter as most of them say, its more like that of a spacecraft with that trippy blue glow!

I started to play with the electronically retractable mirrors (opening and closing them) with images of ASIMO and Kraftwerk’s “The Robots” playing in my head when the Honda guy asked whether I was going to start the test drive this year or what. Yes, I need to grow up.

Starting the engine was quicker and less “jarring” than the Altis. I revved the engine up to 4000 rpm but really could not see/judge what people mean by “Civic has a more free-revving engine”. The Altis’ engine revved just as freely (responsiveness) but then I’d tested it a week ago so no chance of a back-to-back as is usually recommended one should do. I should note that just as the car arrived it started to rain a little and by the time I started the engine and drove on it was pouring so the noise of the rain might have spoilt it for me.

I drove along the Pune-Sholapur road (near KROME mall) and also took it over the B. T. Kawade road flyover. The Honda guy was friendly and “bindaas” when I asked if I may drive it “a little fast” he smiled and said “go right ahead”. With the rains and traffic I wasn’t able to go past 60 kmph but it was more about the “ripping” (acceleration) than the top speed. That too I hesitated to take it past 4000 rpm even though I was tempted to redline it but stopped myself partially out of courtesy and partially because I was chicken. Yes, the engine note is more satisfying than the Altis but both sound like pretty much standard inline-4s, if you want smooth you need a V6. Unfortunately, try as I might I was not able to recognise the “free revving sporty engine noise” again maybe due to the rain noise. Low-end pull was “good enough for me” – again I was unable to judge what people say that the Toyota has better low-end bhp/torque – I think they’re just saying that because the printed tech specs show it to be about 300 rpm lower. I was stoked by the description of the VTEC “dual mode” blah operation I’d read on a forum/wikipedia.

Now here’s something I know the Honda guy never before in his life saw a test driver do – “pick up speed then downshift the gears to slow down” – he gave me a worried stare like I going to seize up his beloved VTEC so I told him what “engine braking” was about. Surprisingly this was more fun than trying to rev it up, at least during the test drive, especially down the flyover. I don’t plan to do this on a regular basis coz I dont know how modern engines will react over the long term.

Suspension seemed as “stiff” as the Altis, yet it seemed to soak up the bumps and vibrations much better. I don’t have too much hope that this car will be a good handler but I don’t usually drive it that way – no fast/sharp turns – for me its the grunt/overtaking that matters more – at least in a car meant to be used for daily commutes.

In comparison the Altis felt like a smaller/lighter car, almost toyish, and the engine revved more noisily and sounded plainer (like a Maruti haha) too. The Civic’s throttle is a little firmer – just enough “tension” to not make me nervous like the Altis’ feather-light pedal and I had no problem modulating the RPMs during the test drive, especially when starting off from a standstill. The Civic’s gear lever is like a stub with no grip/handle you have to pretty much use your fingers rather than grab the whole thing – it could have been more meaty. The notches were also finer/closer like a Maruti 1000 and the first few times I shifted from 2nd to 5th missing 3rd but adjusted and got a hang of it quickly during the TD itself. I was so trying to focus on the engine (and enjoying the test drive) that I forgot a few things like checking steering feedback – it’s a little heavier than the Altis’ ultra-light-and-easy steering – and the way I’d like it.

Music system is (speakers are) of a “good quality” – now let me qualify that by saying I’m no audiophile – but before listening to it I’d thought I would need to add a subwoofer but now it looks like even that’s not needed for me.

This time I didn’t allow my folks to accompany me during the main TD because they wouldn’t stop chattering the last time and let me concentrate. This time I asked the Honda guy to drive (after I’d done my TD) while my mom and I sat in the back and he took my dad for a third outing while he sat in the back. This time got the thumbs-up from them that the back was plenty spacious and the ride was comfortable.

The Honda guy was quite knowledgeable, cooperative and enthusiastic the entire time so that was another thing that impressed me and my folks and we noted that when he went on his way.

So in the end, I only took a test drive of the Altis last week because it’s “cheaper and better equipped” than the Civic and also many user reviews claim it’s as good (if not better) a car. I have to say its just plain incorrect, the Civic is well worth the extra cost, and not just from a “driving enthusiast” point of view but also from other aspects like the feel of luxury and build quality (its like a segment above) and the roomy interiors. I just remembered I didn’t open the Civic’s boot – the Altis’ was like a cargo truck – but it’s not important to me and I’m guessing it will be smaller given the longer wheelbase and roomy rear legroom. If Honda’s range and cost of vehicles were closer to Toyota’s (like if they added an Innova competitor) then they (Toyota) would have to pack up their bags and shut their India operations.

I’m now totally smitten with the Civic’s looks and performance and this is the car to get. Only if it doesn’t work out will I bother to move on to testing others like the Cedia, City and Fiesta. This would be a very nice upgrade from the dull (and sometimes painfully annoying) daily Palio ride that I’ve had to endure for a few years now.

Indelibly Inked.

I’ve decided to start voting now so that my vote contributes to the party’s strength and popularity which in turn should serve as a foundation for young Rahul if and when he chooses to run for PM. I am hoping in about ten years’ time this will become a reality. Obama’s victory in the US with his “Yes We Can” battle cry has inspired me where just a few years ago I would avoid politics like the plague. I believe since Rahul has lived and studied abroad from a very young age and has the backing of the Gandhi dynasty he has the best chance to infuse a global mindset into the current sorry political landscape, not to mention his youth icon status which could inspire more of us out there. Sure there are criticisms – there is deep corruption at all levels of public and private enterprise – but one can hope. So, ten years is what I’m going to be looking along to see how things turn out for the world’s largest (and very peaceful) democracy. Wherever you are, I hope you too will consider exercising your right to be heard via your vote, if you think like I did just a little while ago. Your vote counts and can make a difference – so please do cast your vote whenever you can.

Recently I came across the following blog posts on Planet KDE which inspired me to write this blog post:

Road to KDE devland Step 0
Road to KDE devland Step 1
Road to KDE devland Step 2

Those blog links have further links within links to various introductions and tutorials which should be very useful.

Nokia recently acquired Trolltech (the developers of the Qt toolkit used by KDE) renamed them to Qt Software and added some license options like the LGPL: http://www.qtsoftware.com/about

A while ago I’d posted a brainstorm idea in the KDE forum requesting the developers add a right-click context menu to the file manager Dolphin which performs MD5/SHA checksums on the selected file so there is no need to go into the command prompt or install additional tools/apps.

Today out of the blue it occurred to me you should be able to do it yourself! I also posted about this in a similar thread at a fun Indian technology forum.

I looked at Dolphin settings menu and saw something called “Service Menus” which listed the right-click menu items like Ark extract etc. so I searched online and found this link: http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Creating_Konqueror_Service_Menus

So I thought I would try to add the context menus myself. After some time I came up with the following quick solution:


[Desktop Entry]
Type=Service
Icon=security-high
Actions=ShowMD5Hash;ShowSHA1Hash;ShowSHA256Hash
ServiceTypes=KonqPopupMenu/Plugin
MimeType=all/allfiles

[Desktop Action ShowSHA256Hash]
Exec=sha256sum %U | xargs kdialog --title "SHA256 hash" --msgbox
Icon=security-high
Name=Show SHA256 hash


You do the following:

Some mistakes I made along the way which caused it to not work at first:

It took me a while to figure out I could use the kdialog and xargs commands and I’ve got to get better at shell scripting etc. so I can make some improvements like:

The progress dialog is needed because if I run the action on a large file, like a 700 MB iso, then it appears as if nothing is happening while the checksum is being calculated until the dialog appears after a few seconds.

Screenshot

So, I think I must spend my weekends learning more about KDE and Qt development because I think these platforms have a very bright future with lots of exciting things going on. Oh, and I need to learn Python too, since it’s all the rage these days :-)

Less than perfect

I couldn’t find a setting in KDE to change it and even posted a suggestion to the KDE Brainstorm forum section. But this was really annoying me. What if they reject the suggestion? What to do in the mean time anyway?

So I browsed the online KDE source repository and eventually found this file:

trunk/KDE/kdebase/workspace/plasma/applets/tasks/abstracttaskitem.cpp

Downloaded the Kubuntu Linux source packages and edited two functions in the said file. In the function “iconRect()” commented out the line where the icon size was being set to one-third. In the function “drawTextLayout()” simply short-circuited it by returning immediately without doing any text drawing.

And well, voila! I now have it the way I like with large icons and no text similar to the Windows 7 taskbar:

Much better now

Some icons still are of small size like for VLC and OpenOffice, but I’m hoping either the KDE developers implement my suggestion or I can continue to dig into the code!

This felt like the “tremendous sense of empowerment” one of the guests in the documentary film “Revolution OS” was talking about.

Open Source and Free software FTW!

I did some digging around to see if I could enable parallel (multi processor) builds to take advantage of the extra idle core to speed up my builds and came across the following links:

Visual Studio 2005 tour and MSDN multiprocessor project builds

I was glad to find the /Mx  option where x is the maximum number of project builds you want to run in parallel. I dug around the codebase and realised the build script already had /M8 specified as a parameter to the call to vcbuild.exe. I even opened up the project in Visual Studio 2005 and the setting was at 2 (since this is a dual core)  as expected.

But the build still seemed to be running a single thread and not using the extra core :-(

I then re-read the links above more carefully and saw that the option is for parallel project builds so it would only work for multiple projects and not for many source files in a single project.

I did the customary STFW/JFGI and found the new /MP option which is a part of the new Visual Studio 2008 and this option enables source level multiprocessor parallel builds.

But what about VS 2005? I did some more searching and, lo and behold, found this blog entry which says the /MP  option is also available, but undocumented, in Visual Studio 2005!

Adding it to the build script’s parameter list for vcbuild.exe didn’t work, but adding it in the “additional options” window in the Visual Studio 2005 project worked and now doing a build would launch three processes of cl.exe, one which had 45 threads but took very little CPU cycles, and the other two were single threaded and utilised a CPU core each to the fullest! That was my Homer Simpson “woohoo” moment of the day :-)

The one-hour programme discussed topics such as the Mayan calendar which was astrologically/astronomically accurate and seemed to have an abrupt end on the date December 21, 2012.

It also mentioned a few ancient oracles across the globe such as Mother Shipton and Merlin who have also predicted disaster for the same time.

It talks about the Book Of Revelations, Nostradamus and even the Chinese text “I Ching” or “Book Of Changes” all pointing to the same date.

There is even a computer program called the “Web Bot Project” which was originally designed to try to predict stock market movement, but has been used to see if it can predict other events. The show mentioned a researcher in June 2001 noticed the program indicated an event in 90 days which turned out to be the September 11 attacks. This program also flags the 2012 date as significant.

Even modern astronomers know that December 21, 2012 is the time when the Earth aligns with the Milky Way galaxy in such a manner as to initiate a reversal of the magnetic poles causing worldwide natural disasters.

Generally such predictions of doom are taken with a chuckle. I remember some TV shows about a decade ago which seemed to predict World War 3 some time around 2006/2007 but that hasn’t happened.

But what struck me is the fact that this 2012 date seems to be significant in so many different places, both ancient and modern.

So is this for real? As always, only time will tell.