Manish’s Scribble Board

After 3 days filled head-banging feeling,tension and utter chaos, those bad days are now over. Yes! Am talking of the mid-sem exams or Sessionals which are taken to make the student’s mind sharp. I am still wondering about the usefulness of these papers. We have been given a month to study but who cares!

Today was only one paper-Networks! God save! Everything term looked like I have heard before, and I was unable to recall anything. Sitting in exam hall with nothing coming mind is the worst feeling. Attempted 4 marks question in some 15-20 mins and then gave up. Even if I had attempted all that I knew even partially I would not have scored more than 8. I was intelligent to leave early. Anybody got more intellect and guts of course?

I was foolish on my part to give all papers, some papers not only got spoiled but even affected the other papers which I thought of getting good marks. Summing up, it was an utter chaos and I dont expect to get a nine-pt this time. Now my aim would be to get 40 internals in each paper by hook or crook.

Moving over, even though sessionals finished I still have loads of pending work, I hope to finish them by Monday. Additionally I want to take up a project so that I can make myself busy. Really fed up with books and need a change!

Looks like I have started experimenting too much with my system. On 18th of this month was the release date of the most awaited Linux distribution, that too its most hyped version. Set the hot-cake to download on the same day in the afternoon and voila! Its done by next day. Now it was the time for experimenting this hot-hot thing.

The install went off properly,it detected all my hardware devices, my wi-fi, network card and all the stuffs. I found NTFS-3g driver running properly since I was able to write to my window’s NTFS partitions properly. So called New Technology File System of Microsoft is cracked!

Software installation has been made very easy, looks like Synaptics has become more intelligent. I installed some 300MB+ softwares, all of them configured themselves properly during installation itself.

The most awaited feature of this release was desktop effects. Under Restricted Drivers Manager I found the driver for my Intel 945GM graphics chipset. Took less than a second to enable it and then Compiz Fusion was running at its height of glory. I got 128MB of video memory on my chipset. Got some very cool effects such that it can even make Vista user blush. Have taken lots of screen shots, look at it and do comment

I have a habit of blogging late. This occasion is no exception except that this occasion has got to do very much with me.

Yes! This event was my Bday party at 18 Pub at Thaloor. Around 45 guests turned up. The food was excellent, a perfect time spent at the disk from 8 at night to 11:30 at night. Guests enjoyed themselves. One of the most important thing in this party was that all gals took their chance to shake the dance floor. This includes those gals whom I didnt expect to come front.

Another noting fact in this party was the participation of Mrinal. Who would think about this guy whom all think as a nerd to show up an excellent performance in dance to such an extent that all guests would be awe-struck.

Well the party concluded peacefully and finally leaving behind a my pocket too light.

Hope most of you might have heard the name of VMware. Its a pioneer company in the field of vistualization concepts research. They have lots of excellent products which can be used to improve the efficiency of your work.

Well getting to the point, on 11th and 12th our Dept of Computer Science had organised a workshop on Server Virtualiation Technology and Latest Trends in Virtualization Industry. It was a two day workshop with hands on experience with their latest software -VMware Server Console which is a free product. The workshop was excellent! Superb! I liked it a lot. Got to learn many things. The thing which i experimented the most was networking over Virtual Machine. This was due to the fact that I didnt want to fiddle with my physical machine to learn about the networks concepts. Over an operating system running over Virtual Machine in a sandbox like approach, experiment as much as you like. I added 3 network cards, 2 hard disks, 4 CD-ROM devices and many more without the dearth of ruining my system.

The workshop fee was just 300 bucks but what we got in return was immense. Over all other things was the knowledge which cannot be bought. We were given suitcases which surely costs a lot, complete breakfast,tea,lunch, supper and dinner for two days.

One more important thing that I want to tell you is that I won the competition which was held at the closing of the worshop. We were given to create a virtual machine with required specifications and use them as given especially using the networking concepts. At the closing ceremony all the dignified people were on the stage to give us some important tips

Lastly the most important and cherished gift which we all got from VMware was VMware Workstation 6.0 license which costs $190. This is my first original software but as usual I didnt have to pay for it.

Getting a passport in “Republic of India” is not so easy,  you have to toil a lot and run desk to desk to get your work done.  Its a natural scenario in all government offices. The passport office is not less. Last week the police officials came to my hostel for the verification. I was very pleased, now i didnt have to ferry witnesses to police station. All work were easy, but suddenly!

One of the officers called me and said lightly-”You have to atleast bear the expenses of the the verification and the transportation costs”. What was this? Clearly-They were asking for bribes. I had to shell out 150 bucks out of my pockets and passed it in the hands of those public servants. Just see the switness after being bribed. My appication moved on so swiftly that I cant even believe myself.

Yesterday I got a call for the photo verification at 8PM. As usual I hurried up to their den in bad weather, it took 15 mins for all the formalities, said “Thanks You!” to the Inspector and its all done. Just observe the swiftness. Bribing is against my belief, but no other option was left, if I had denied I would had to run pillar to pillar for this great document. After all this is India, my Motherland.

So finally we returned from Gokarna, the beautiful town in north Karnataka known for its beautiful and well managed beaches. Its a famous tourist destination known especially for the foreign tourists who throng this place at spring season. This was a class trip to the God’s home-Gokarna and Murdeshwar.

We left on saturday midnight and returned on Sunday 11PM, in less than 24 hrs. What more to tell-I loved the place save the highway which we chose to get there. We all together were 23 people, booked a 50 seater bus (too much! isnt it?). The journey was too tiresome-7 hrs! Three beaches were our destination-Gokarna beach, Kundle beach and Om beach. The latter was the most beautiful and populated. The beach is so called due to the coastline looks like “OM” sign. The water on all the three beaches were utterly dirty. Some places water was really BLACK!!

The place is really very beautiful. We felt as if we were in nature’s lap, it was God’s own place. (Pics attached, have a look!)

The return trip started at 5PM and we stopped at Murdeshwar to worship the Almighty God- Lord Shiv. The skyhigh statue of the Lord is a center of attraction. We had our dinner was headed straight back to our place of residence-Manipal.

SOME MEMORIES NEVER DIE!!

A BIT CLOSER TO HEAVEN!