The Broken Window

If u think this has got any analogy to the movie secret window i watched recently, u r wrong except tht i am as crazy as jhonny depp in tht movie..

I ll keep it short and simple. It was the day i went thropugh this torment of lehman brothers interview ,tht i settled to watch Batman Begins( for the third time).I was totally into the movie and was having an ear phone so i could practically hear nothing but the movie sound. All of a sudden i hear the noise of glass splattering tht for an instance i wondered if batman had jumped out of my monitor screen. No he didnt .

(Now before i proceed i need to give the description of the secnario. I am in Garnet B 44 which happens to be in the first floor). So i put my head out side window and see kra and vsp at the ground floor waving at me “Macha coming to mess ?”

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.. Do these guys have to break my window pane to just ask me if i am coming for tht stupid mess .

PS 1:Me and Bur(my room mate) have planned for a revenge ..surprised revenge for kra and vsp. any suggestions or strategies welcomed..:P

PS 2: My blog is in the list of growing blogs yippeeee

OMG how can i forget this :P

Yeah i did forget this and hope tht i dont get kicked off for this… it was an important day , the day we got together and i pledged to remember the day in my heart and thought would throw off a small celebration somehwhere and yet i some how forgot .I had been harsh to the earlier ones but to her , i took so much care tht i didnt have a single day whn i wasnt with her. And here i am pleading before her because she refused to open up for my mistake.. …

“I am really sorry for doing this and i promise i ll make up for it next year. I ll give u a week off and celebrate with u .”

Well yeah after i said this she seems to have understood me and opened up.. here is the pic … Belated Happy birthday to my laptop

PS : i do love ppl

Easy command line solution to the docx problem in Linux

Till yesterday , i was ignorant of the following command line tool called Odfconverter for converting docx to odt. And much to the relief it works fine and does the job pretty well so i guess it would be a part of the next open office release. The procedure was simple.The point is tht microsoft had switched from the binary format to the Open XML format with their new word 2007 and they now released the details of doc format.

This works fine in fedora and i guess it should in ubuntu as well..

1. For fedora make sure u have the rpm2cpio using

sudo yum -y install cpio rpm ( for configuring sudo on fedora refer here or use su -c or login as root )

For ubuntu users

sudo apt-get install rpm libgif4

Fedora users can even skip this step and directly proceed to installing the following rpm odf-converter-1.1-7.i586.rpm.

But the general idea is the same no matter which Linux distribution you use. You are basically copying one file out of the RPM as if it were a tarball or a zip file. You are not installing the RPM in the traditional sense, so don’t worry if you run a non-RPM-based system such as Ubuntu, Debian. After downloading the OdfConverter

• Open a console.
• Change directory to your download directory. Depending on your setup, it may be: cd ~/Desktop

• To unpackage the rpm, run this command: rpm2cpio odf-converter*rpm | cpio -ivd
• To copy the binary run this command: sudo mv usr/lib/ooo-2.0/program/OdfConverter /usr/bin

The usage is simple. To convert a .docx file (Word 2007) to a .odt (OpenDocument Format) file, just run:

OdfConverter /i example.docx

and you will find the odt file in the same folder… Bingo .. u got it done

Any problems or better ways to do please do mention it in comments..

All credits to google .:P

The Linux naming strategy :)

I had always wondered why ppl keep wierd names for the linux distros and it turns out tht they are not indeed wierd and i googled for the naming strategy of fedora and Ubuntu and here are the results…

Fedora Version Numbers and Release names :

Name n and n+1 must share an is-a (not a has-a) relationship, but n and n+2 must not share the same is-a relationship as n and n+1.

Fedora 10 (Cambridge)

• Cambridge is a city in the United States, as well as being original code name of Red Hat Linux 10 (before it became Fedora Core 1).

Fedora 9 (Sulphur)

• Sulphur is an element that causes an adverse reaction (tarnishing) when it contacts silver. In mythology, it is an element used to drive away werewolves. Sulphur is also a city in the United States.

Fedora 8 (Werewolf)

• Werewolf is the name of a movie about a dude who turns into a werewolf. A werewolf also has an adverse reaction (death) when it comes into contact with silver.

Fedora 7 (Moonshine)

• Moonshine is an independent record label, and also the name of a movie.

Fedora Core 6 (Zod)

• General Zod is a character in the DC Comics universe, as well as an independent record label.

Fedora Core 5 (Bordeaux)

• Bordeaux is a wine-producing region in France, as well as a comic book character.

Fedora Core 4 (Stentz)

• Andre Stentz is a French winery. As such, both Heidelberg and Stentz are distributors of alcoholic beverages.

Fedora Core 3 (Heidelberg)

• Heidelberg is a city in Germany, and also a brand/distributor of beer.

Fedora Core 2 (Tettnang)

• Tettnang is a city in Germany that is a producer of hops.

Fedora Core 1 (Yarrow)

• Yarrow is a plant with many uses. Prior to the use of hops in the flavoring of beer, yarrow was used for this purpose.

The names are selected using a voting procedure ( yeah they are democratic)

Ubuntu Version Numbers and Release names :

The version numbers are easy to comment on its the year followed by the month of release.. like say hardy heron was released in 08 in april so it goes out as 8.04 and the next one is due at october so tht would be 8.10

• Warty Warthog was released in October 2004, release number 4.10.
• Hoary Hedgehog was released in April 2005, release number 5.04.
• Breezy Badger was released in October 2005, release number 5.10.
• Dapper Drake was released in June 2006, release number 6.06 LTS
• Edgy Eft was released in October 2006, release number 6.10.
• Feisty Fawn was released in April 2007, release number 7.04.
• Gutsy Gibson was released in October 2007, release number 7.10.
• Hardy Heron was released in April 2008, release number 8.04
• Itrepid Ibexwill be released in October 2008, release number 8.10
• Jaunty Jackalope will be released in April 2009, release number 9.04

The names are all based on animals and the devs are looking for making sure the characteristics of the animals are into the OS like The Jackalope is known for being so fast that it’s extremely hard to catch, and breeds only when lightning flashes . So they are planning to make the booting or resuming Ubuntu blindingly quick.

I am not sure of the other distros naming. Havent used them much. so if any one has any pointers to them please do share…

Lehman Brothers Interview

This yr Lehman Brothers was here in NIT -Trichy not for placement bt for internships.. And i had registered for the interns and sent my cv and was having the thought tht i might not even go for it.And finally whn the probable date was announced to be 12 sep, which happened to ruin my 3 day trip to home tht i had in mind , i made up my mind tht i am gonna bid bye bye for the intern… But there was this statuatory warning tht i didnot heed saying tht ” there is no backing out once u r registered”. so i postponed my trip and thought i wud attend the ppt and leave as i wasnt in the top 3 from my dept . Unfortunately fate struck me in the form of getting shortlisted for the Interview process( yeah there was no written, it was CV shortlisting) and there was no GD. So, there i was waiting in the TP office with an unshaved face, the usual slippers tht i wear, and a decent enough dress.. Then came the other guys all suited up for the occasion. Me and rk ,who was sitting next to me , had a nice time making fun of each and every one.. especially kidambi who seemed to have taken a print out of his intro and the DO s and DONT s of interview.. After a gruelling wait of 2 hrs, i was called upon in… and below is the conv… (“blah blah blah” indicates i was giving a piece of my mind to him)

Notations : Me- myself and Int- Interviewer(s)

Me : May i come in ..

I: Yeah sure sure ( as if he is gonna hug me the next moment). So u r sathya naran.. no Sathya Narayanan .

Me: yes sir u gt it right..

He galnces at my cv and finally nods his head and says

I: Looking at ur CV i think u have a good chance for Higher Studies …

Me : Yes sir , i do have higher studies in my mind.

I: Wht are ur dream univs …

Me: Blah Blah Blah

I:So it looks like ur areas of interest doesnt match the profile we are here for.

Ironical tht they shortlist based on CV and say the above statement  after looking at the CV.

Me: Yes sir, i would like to knw if i can anyway relate it to my area of interest and work on it..

I: No actually we dont have any programming or algorithmic work.

Me: ( Thinking wht am i supposed to say for this) Sorry sir in tht case i guess i cant be of much help..

After this point i think it was clear to both of us tht i am OUT. so we had a friendly chat.One of the guys was a linux user( gentoo user) so was chatting with him on linux and then they came up with this wierd smile saying

I: Ok so see you..

Me: Thank you…

So i was out of my first interview in my coll life without even being asked a single tech question.. In the process i was hinting him to ask me some ques on algos… bt he was hell determined tht he is not gonna test me on any of those…

Well even worse was one of my chem guys , for whom the only tech ques asked was ” how do u determine the amnt of oxygen in this aquafina bottle(half empty bottle) lying on the table ” . Yeah and he wanted to knw the quantity of diff forms of oxygen present in the bottle .Now can some one tell me why an investment bank is in anyway bothered abt the oxygen content in aquafina bottle.So the final conlcusion .. never sit for something tht is not in ur area of interest even if they offer u lots of money

cat .bash_history

Yeah i am gonna recollect wht all i have been doing since i last remember. And yeah statuatory warning : U might feel like kicking me after reading the following lines. So be kind and rewind if u are not for it.

MGL went of well . The first batch was great and the second batch , was like telling the same stuff to diff ppl tht it was not tht great as the first batch . The first experience always rocks and i pity all the lecturers and teachers how they manage to teach the same thing again and again . ( Not the comp sci dept ppl.. They never teach in the first place ) and i got to knw from hari tht whn he took the classes, they had 4 batches . But still it was a great MGL and i owe it to all those guys who took the classes.And it was really senti for me on the last day whn it all came to an end.

Right after MGL i went to bur house. Me venki , rishi and rk had a nice time and roaming in chennai with friends is fun but i really missed it as i stayed only a day in chennai and left the next day back to home…

Back to coll, CTs were eagerly waiting for me. And i watched fewer movies a day . One tht caught my attention was machinist where Chirstian Bale looked so thin that he even ceased to exist. I could just not beleive my eyes . I wanna meet this guy some day and ask him how he made it.. There was one scene where his whole skeleton system was visible and i could count his bones.. I finished watching all three seasons of “How i Met your mother ” series.Season one was interesting . Season two was awesome and season three was ok.. I liked the barney character especially his ” awesome “ness and “legen……. dary” thing…