The gist:

• 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.

I voted for the first time a few months ago to elect an MP. On Tuesday October 13th voting was for MLAs and I voted again. The first time I cast my vote for an independent which I now feel was a waste. This time around I voted for Congress. Not because I wanted to vote for the party or for the local candidate. I voted for Rahul Gandhi, son of late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

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.

I’ve previously blogged about my very brief encounters with open source development here and here.

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 :-)

Ever since Windows 7 and KDE 4.2 were available I started placing my taskbar vertically to the left of my widescreen LCD. On Windows 7 it works and looks great but on KDE 4.2 the running application icons are of a small size and the title text is hardly visible with only a couple of letters being shown as you can see in the following screenshot.

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 regularly work with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 with SP1 on my Pentium 4 single-core non-hyperthreading based PC and occasionally run some builds on an Athlon 64 X2 dual core based PC. I noticed the compiler (cl.exe) is a single process with a single thread running, even on the dual core.

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 :-)

There was an interesting show on TV’s History Channel a few days ago (which aired in March last year in the US) called “Decoding The Past – Doomsday 2012: The End Of Days”. The show was about December 21, 2012 which has been predicted to be the Apocalypse by various prophets, oracles, holy texts from different civilisations and even a computer program!

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.

It’s been a while since I visited Microsoft’s Channel 9 website and watched any of the videos. There was a recent video of Mark Russinovich which made me go back and browse for new stuff.

I just watched Mark’s interview video and it was okay. Looking around I see there are a bunch of interesting topics and I’m downloading a few to watch over the weekend and new year vacation. My favourites are mostly from the “Going Deep” and “Behind The Code” sections.

Some of the ones I’m downloading:

How Secure Is Vista part 1 and part 2,  UAC What How Why, Vista Reliability Mechanics, Vista PreOS, XBox 360 architecture, Garbage Collection, Writing better faster code, OS evolution, Mark Zbikowski, and High Performance Computing.

Go visit http://channel9.msdn.com/ yourself and browse around for some interesting information!

And, here’s wishing you all a very happy new year!

I’d been using this multi-protocol chat program called Miranda which is for Windows and is open source. It has a nice plugin called “Webaware” which allows you to store your current chat status on your website so you can display it on your webpages.

Recently another piece of open source software which is also cross platform called GAIM was renamed to Pidgin and got a lot of publicity so I thought to try it out. It’s a fun/cute program and I decided to move to it especially since the same program works on Windows as well as Linux. The only problem was that there wasn’t (or I couldn’t find) a similar plugin as Miranda’s Webaware which was a bummer for me.

So I tried to write a Pidgin plugin myself which would do the same work as the Miranda Webaware plugin. I thought why not just make it open source, and thus came about my first bit of GPL code! I’d previously never really done programming at home, just at work, and as Larry Augustin (VA Linux Systems founder) said in the movie Revolution OS I felt that tremendous sense of empowerment working with open source :-)

It feels good being able to easily download powerful software to which you have access to the source code. I started off by reading the C plugin HOWTO and using the helloworld.c plugin as a guide to write my own plugin called webaware.c. I later needed an easy way to do FTP uploads of my chat status data and someone suggested I use cURL library which I indeed found to be useful. The compilation was failing for me and I quickly realised I needed to provide double-quotes to the echo calls in the lib’s MinGW32 makefile and off it went.

I had earlier compiled the plugin on openSUSE Linux which came with all the tools already. This week I thought to try compiling on Windows to test that it worked on both platforms. This involved downloading software such as Cygwin, MinGW and a bunch of others which is really a pleasure to not be restricted by “free” versions or the prohibitive costs of commercial tools.

I get to do fun stuff at work but it’s been a blast actually working with open source at home. The plugin resides at http://lahsiv.net/code/ , and as they say, “it works for me” ™ !

Well, Happy Diwali!

Today I tried out this fun software called Synergy which is open source (GPL) and cross platform. It’s for virtual screen, keyboard and mouse sharing.

See the Synergy2 SourceForge webpage for more information about it.

It took about 15 minutes to download, install, configure and run on three devices, a Windows XP desktop as the “server” (called blackbird) placed on the left side, a tablet PC with openSUSE Linux (called silverbird) placed in the middle and an Ubuntu laptop (called vaiobird) on the right. I believe it works with Windows Vista as well. Real nifty and a cool toy to play with! :)

I just had to manually add the positioning information to the config file’s links section as follows:

section: links
blackbird:
right = silverbird
silverbird:
left = blackbird
right = vaiobird
vaiobird:
left = silverbird
end

On the slashfilm blog we have a list of the twenty most anticipated movies of next year.

They are:

1. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
2. The Dark Knight (Batman Begins 2)
3. National Treasure: Book of Secrets
4. American Gangster
5. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
6. Iron Man
7. I Am Legend
8. Get Smart
9. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
10. Charlie Wilson’s War
11. Hancock
12. Beowulf
13. His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass
14. Mamma Mia!
15. The Incredible Hulk
16. Speed Racer
17. Step Brothers
18. Bee Movie
19. Mr. Magnorium’s Wonder Emporium
20. Starship Dave

For me it’s Narnia 2 and Beowulf :-)