+ 1 - 1 | § ¶Boston, MA

I'm currently in Boston, MA to attend the Red Hat Summit.

Boston is awesome. This city has beauty embedded to its roots. Historical, Natural and Charming.

Used tags: boston_ma, red_hat_summit

Keywords: boston_ma,red_hat_summit

+ 1 - 1 | § ¶Beauty in Debian

While this is not really specific to Debian, but somehow it does contribute to it.

One of the reasons why I like Debian a lot is because of its package organization and availability. I take full leverage of the good work the Debian Developers have done packaging various dictionary packages in Debian.

While recently doing a re-installation (Don't ask me why , searching back for the Debian dict packages, yielded in the following:

rrs@learner:~$ apt-cache search dict | grep dict

dict-freedict-hin-eng

This is something really nice in Debian. Searching through the large amount of packages is just plain easy. I wasn't aware of this package at all.

Here's what it turned out to be:

rrs@learner:~$ apt-cache show dict-freedict-hin-eng
Package: dict-freedict-hin-eng
Priority: optional
Section: text
Installed-Size: 2316
Maintainer: Kęstutis Biliūnas <kebil@kaunas.init.lt>
Architecture: all
Source: freedict
Version: 1.3-4
Provides: dictd-dictionary
Suggests: dict | opendict | kdict, dictd | serpento
Filename: pool/main/f/freedict/dict-freedict-hin-eng_1.3-4_all.deb
Size: 1473648
MD5sum: 1c698c7ef611d7c5cd878bb785b00ae8
SHA1: 697b9d904b990640ba98dd9499522f989570627e
SHA256: 64988f08b0b1bf0cc19d4cbefd0939ecc978ad79d7ce7d471ebdf7b22a82e213
Description: Dict package for Hindi-English Freedict dictionary
 This is a package of the Hindi-English Freedict dictionary, formatted
 for the dictionary server and client which uses the DICT Protocol.
Homepage: http://freedict.org/
Tag: culture::hindi, made-of::data:dictionary, role::app-data

Amazing! And the results

rrs@learner:~$ mydict limousine

From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]:

  limousine
      n 1: large luxurious car; usually driven by a chauffeur [syn:
           {limousine}, {limo}]

From English-Hindi Freedict Dictionary [fd-eng-hin]:

  limousine <N.>

  1. लिमोजीन
       "She called a limousine to go to the ball."

And then back from Hindi->English

rrs@learner:~$ dict लिमोजीन
1 definition found

From English-Hindi Freedict Dictionary [reverse index] [fd-hin-eng]:

  limousine <N.>

  1. लिमोजीन
       "She called a limousine to go to the ball."

 Sweet!

Used tags: apt, debian, dict, hindi

Keywords: apt,debian,dict,hindi

+ 2 - 0 | § ¶KMail HAM Handling

I have been a long time KMail user and love this email client. It has most of the features that I care about, like Message Threading, Spam Filtering, Disconnected IMAP et cetera.

KMail has good integration with SPAM Handling softwares like spamassassin and bogofilter. The KMail wizard will autoconfigure spamassassin, bogofilter and others (as detected from your installation). The default settings were a little annoying because messages detected as SPAM were re-written with the SPAM Heading. The problem was when spamassassin mis-judged a genuine message as SPAM. Well, we could mark it as HAM, but the added heading never went off.

To revert back the message to its original state, do the following:

1. Select the Classify as Not Spam filter 
2. Add a new filter action

• Pipe Through
• Add the following command in the text box, spamassassin -d

That's it. Now when you click on Not SPAM, the database gets updated and the email message is restored back to its original format.

Used tags: kde, kmail, spam, spamassassin

Keywords: kde,kmail,spam,spamassassin

+ 0 - 2 | § ¶Lambroghini Drink

Last weekend I went to a pub here (In Bangalore). Boozed a llittle.

Two things to think about

1. A unique drink that I had, Lambroghini. Lambroghini was a special drink served with flames. Had to sip the liquor from the flames while the liquid was on file.
2. When returning from the restroom, the waiter told me that I had broke-in into a Ladies Room. Unfortunately no lady was there.

Used tags: bangalore, lambroghini_drink, pub

Keywords: bangalore,lambroghini_drink,pub

+ 2 - 0 | § ¶Amarok Magnatune Last.FM

I'm not a music fanatic. While I see many of my friends and colleagues working, with their headphone on and music playing, for me, it is not at all possible. It is just the opposite. I can't work with music (or any kind of distracting sound) on.

So when I sometimes run Amarok, I used to think what a pile of crap it really is. I mean, look at the resource consumption. Amarok alone took around 20% of CPU cycles when just playing music. This was disappointing as I am a KDE addict and prefer KDE applications over any other. Trying to run other applications led to additional libraries being installed/loaded.

But last night when I was bored and was just running through some of Amarok's features after reading an article about Amarok and Magnatune, I was surprised. Amarok is a music beast. It is a massive wolf. It rocks........ Along with the superb services provided by the folks at Magnatune and Last.FM, Amarok is a wonderful music player to use. I have always advocated about software and related services being tightly integrated. Amarok + Magnatune + Last.FM is just that.

 

Magnatune, what to say about it. It is just awesome. You want to buy an album of a band but aren't sure if the album is good enough. Magnatune is the answer. Magnatune allows you to listen to the music online (using Amarok) and then purchase at a nominal price in all major formats (ogg, mp3, flac et cetera). You can also order a CD to be delivered to you if you don't prefer to download the music. This is awesome. Wonderful. Sweet.

Last.FM. Another wonderful service. Last.FM is an online community of music listeners. You create an account with Last.FM and then feed the credentials to Amarok. Then, as you keep playing your collection in Amarok, Amarok keeps updating the details at Last.FM. This has many benefits. It helps you find people and music, like-minded. You can then listen to music from your Neighbours (Last.FM) which would be similar to what you've been listening. This is again awesome. Wonderful. Sweet.

Podcasts. Another thing I wasn't much aware of. I said it, I'm not a music fanatic. So that led me to not even explore features in Amarok which are beyond music. Amarok is awesome in tracking Podcasts and playing them for you. Now I have my KDE Radio and Linux-Foundation podcast added to Amarok. Amarok informs me of new podcasts, when released. Simple. Wonderful. Sweet.

There must be many more features in Amarok that I've yet not explored. But the above mentioned features alone make Amarok a great player for me.  Thank you Markey and the team. Amarok Rocks.

Used tags: amarok, last.fm, magnatune

Keywords: amarok,last.fm,magnatune

+ 2 - 2 | § ¶Random Thoughts.....

Sometimes things can be so interesting.

Yesterday midnight, after my colleague finished dinner from my place, immediately called me back that he was:
* Hit by an Auto-wallah
And
* The Auto-wallah was drunk
* Didn't have any identification in the auto.
* Instread was demanding money from my colleague.

So trying to sort out matters we moved to the near by police station and let the police-Gentle-man know that he was hit by a drunk auto-wallah.
The actions of the police-Gentle-man are what were more interesting than anything else. It really shows how much of faith one can have in our legal system.
And how much of value do people like us have, here, when our law makers and law-care-takers act such..

BTW, the response was,"There's nothing wrong in being drunk and driving at night".
So that's a new law I've been aware of; and one that can be leveraged. Used tags: bangalore, legal_system_india

Keywords: bangalore,legal_system_india

+ 0 - 2 | § ¶distcc

When Rusty was here during FOSS.IN, he mentioned about utilities without which how difficult life would be.

• Mercurial
• distcc
• ccache

I have been using Mercurial and really love it. It is wonderful. I always thought of spending some time with distcc and see what all it can help.

I am amazed. distcc is exactly what it says. And the setup is so much simple.

I had been fucking my laptop by building KDE4 on it every week. Now I can give her some time to soothe and cool down. She'd gone very hot when building on her

BTW, KDE4 + distcc doesn't require much effort. Just modify the cmakekde() as mentioned on Techbase and customize it to include CC=distcc CPP=distcc CXX=distcc just before the keyword cmake

Used tags: distcc, kde4

Keywords: distcc,kde4

+ 1 - 3 | § ¶ZippoBlu Butane Gas Ligher

I received my ZippoBlu Butane Gas Lighter yesterday. And today, I'm using it.

I had ordered it through eBay. Initially I was worried about the delivery of the item as it might get damaged during shipping to India.  But  the seller (123khaly)is awesome.  He did a good packing before the shipping and the lighter reached safely to me. Keep in mind that the gas cannot be shipped because it is flammable. These are international regulations. So I inquired with Zippo India if they have imported Butane Gas or not. Unfortunately they haven't. This got me disappointed. It was like I have a Plasma TV with no Cable connection. So I moved down to M.G Road, Bangalore and was able to find Chinese Butane Gas. While Zippo doesn't recommend non-Zippo Butane, I didn't have a choice.

But he lighter is awesome. It has some of the innovative Zippo technologies. And also the infamous Zippo Click sound. The Blue Flame is awesome.

This lighter is a must-have..

Used tags: butane_gas, zippo, zippoblu

Keywords: butane_gas,zippo,zippoblu