It was unfortunate when Sony decided to pull out the Other OS support from PS3. One of the reasons of convincing myself to buy it was this feature. With that feature gone, the PS3 stood as nothing much but mostly a media center and an occasional game box.
But with the Move, I think they have compensated it. It is a greatly engineered product with very good accuracy. It has been a week and I've been thoroughly enjoying it. I liked the packaging too. One single compilation of Sports Center contains like 5 games in it. Just the Table Tennis alone is worth it. But there are more that I need to try.
Another surprising factor was pricing. United States pricing for the starter pack is expensive than at what I got here. This was something I didn't expect at all.
So this past weekend, me and my friend, went on a drive to Yellagiri Hills. It was exciting driving on the highway in an entry level Indian car, Maruti Suzuki Alto.
Unfortunately, we couldn't make it to the destination. 5 kilometers before the destination, while we were uphill, the car b0rke down. On one of the hair-pin bends where we had to cut down the speed to zero, switch to the 1st and 2nd gear failed. Hmmm!! At that point, we were on a very steep road, with the car stalled and the gear box (for 1st and 2nd) broken down. Nice!!
Somehow we did manage to turn the car back (Don't ask me how) and reach down the hill with the slope. That's when we started "thinking". Now what. Still another 200+ kilometers to go.
Called up the Maruti "On the Road" pick-up service. Being Sunday, the contact was unavailable. Nice!!
We took the plunge and drove the broken car. How ?? The 3rd, 4th, 5th and Reverse gears still work. So we somehow managed to reach near to "Vanyan Badi" at a restaurant and asked for help. Luckily we did get a resource to help us out. Unfortunately, the resource was not resourceful enough. He recommended us drive down the b0rken car all the way back home. Nice!!
With not much choice left, and with all the Cats & Dogs rain (ah!! Yes. I will talk more about it in a while), we decided to move on with the b0rken car. Plan was: worst case, we dump the car and catch a cab (hopefully).
As soon as we started, we were welcomed with a very nice and heavy rainfall. Heavy enough that the water was near to on the road, the speed breakers were not visible and a very good amount of water was clogged at the sides of the road. Well! Fuck happens. We continue.
We did hit a big breaker which went unnoticed because of the water clog. Apart from that, otherwise, there weren't any issues. We covered 3 toll gates full of traffic with out b0rken car and reached back home safely. Then hunted down for food/booze, ate/drank and CRASHED.
So, when your car goes b0rke and you are just a bunch of dudes stuck, don't worry. Fuck it. It ain't gonna screw you that bad. ;-)
Most people who've bought laptops, would see a pre-installed version of Windows, for which they'd have already paid. Recently things have changed but still for the majority of the laptop models available, Windows is the most commonly used option.
I own a Dell XPS M1210 which too came pre-installed with Microsoft Windows XP. Since the machine was low on hard-drive space, I had to eventually knock-off all Non-Linux partitions to make more space. Recently I was able to swap my Seagate SATA Laptop Drive (160 GB) with the one that was shipped with the Laptop. This made me rich in disk space. So, being a small PC gamer, I decided that I do want to have a copy of Windows XP installed on my machine. And why not, I already have paid for it and own a license.
Here's where the fun started. Over the years, my laptop's CD/DVD drive had been mal-functioning. I seldom used it. For installing Linux, I never had issue because most Linux Distributions support installation off the USB Stick. But to install Windows XP using the USB Stick was a very tough time. I had to dig up a lot of docs on the internet, most of which were very particular (to EEEPC) and never worked. The only article that I came across, that worked, was this.
After having the USB Stick WIndows XP Bootable, I ran into a new problem. The copy of Windows XP Installer didn't accept my License Key. This started a whole new set of problems. It led me to suspect that something must be flawed in the USB Installation method, especially that it uses the ramdisk image from WIndows Server 2003.
Left with not much choices, I was disappointed. I wanted to install XP on my laptop but was not able to. Last night I tried a Desi thing. I wiped the CD/DVD Drive's lense with my shirt and gave the Windows XP Installer CD another try. And Bingo, It booted off it. Sometimes Lord Mahadev just want the Sweet Time be taken. Now with the Installer CD working, I hoped things would work. But it came to the same License key problem. My license key didn't work. I had to struggle a lot in getting it to work.
Two things here:
WIndows licenses for the installation media are lot based. Keys from one lot will not work with the other lot.
Overall now I'm done with the Windows XP re-incarnation on my laptop.
There's just one glitch remaining to solve. My HDD's partition layout is this:
rrs@learner:~$ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for rrs:
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x1d05272a
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 255 2048256 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 * 256 4143 31230360 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 4144 5359 9767520 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 5360 19457 113242185 8e Linux LVM
sda4 is the LVM partiton where my root and swap partitions reside. Under Windows XP, sda4 is listed as a "Windows XP Fault Tolerant Partition". I'm not touching it at all when in Windows, but its mere presence makes my mood go bad. I'd rather preferred if Windows XP was completely unknown about this partition type (8e)
Many must be aware of the older Need For Speed games that EA produced. One among them was High Stakes. IMHO, the uniqueness of High Stakes was its Damage Mode feature which could be very well felt in the game. The more the car's engine/steering/suspension got damaged, the more difficult it was to handle the car then. I could never find the same game play in the later versions of EA's NFS.
Looks like I wasn't the only one that admired High Stakes. Thanks to people on the internet, even though EA has completely discontinued High Stakes, High Stakes is still available. And it has been hacked upon to run on Windows XP. It is a good old 1999 game and I am still enjoying it now (2008).
I think now is the time most of the KDE users are going to migrate to KDE 4.1. KDE 4.1 looks so tempting that I really can't wait. So while I compose this blog post, apt is doing all the needful to download the KDE4.1 packages from Debian Experimental. That doesn't mean I wasn't following KDE 4.x. While, becuasae of resource constraints, Debian made a wise choice of sticking to just a single KDE version (i.e. KDE3 in testing and KDE4 in unstable/experimental), there still are many ways to be able to test KDE 4.x. And by ways, I don't mean a VM or a Live CD. You can definitely do a much better and realistic testing of KDE4 on your production box without fearing of screwing your current KDE 3.x installation. At Debian Wiki, there's a cool howto describing how to do it. If you follow the wiki howto properly, you should even be able to test bling features like KWin's Composite and Plasma.
For me, I've been a native KDE user. I try to stick as much to KDE as possible, for all my application needs. While my workplace depends on MS Exchange for Calendaring, they're pretty open and have provided all the standard access to exchange, i.e. Webdav, IMAP, POP et cetera. With kdepim returning with KDE 4.1, I hoped I'd finally be able to do a complete switch to KDE 4. But that wasn't the case when I did a KDE 4.x testing during RC/Beta using the above mentioned cool howto. Thus this KDE Bugzilla entry. I was very happy to hear that we'd soon be having an akonadi native exchange resource.
But still KDE 4.1 looks very tempting and I can't wait. So here's a small howto on how to sync your exchange calendar while using KDE 4.1 (which doesn't have any of the exchange resources)
On your KDE4 host, install an IMAP server. I use it for my personal mails that I sync to my hard drive. Using IMAP is good because that way I reliably store the Personal - Contacts/Calendar/Birthdays/Journals/ToDo and more on my laptop
Setup a Debian chroot of lenny. Follow the Cool HOWTO
Install the kdepim suite into the lenny chrooted installation
Use sux on the host and fire up kontact. You should be able to see your chrooted kontact show up in the current X server desktop
Configure kmail to use the IMAP server. Make sure you don't subscribe any folder apart from INBOX which contains the PIM resource folders.
Under Configuration => Miscellaneous, Enable IMAP Groupware Resource Functionality. Make sure to use the KOLAB Format. Resource folders should be in your local IMAP account.
Now sync your account. Done.
Now switch to Korganizer of the same chrooted installation.
Go to its plugins page and enable Exchange 2000 plugin.
Now, first, add a resource. Calendar of IMAP server. Make it the default resource.
Now configure your Exchange 2000 Plugin.
Now Download your Calendar data. This data should now automatically be saved to the IMAP Calendar resource.
Just do a mail sync and quit from the chrooted environment.
..........................
Now in KDE4 Host installation, fire KDE4's kdepim.
Do similar configs as above except, subscribe to all folders that you need.
For Korganizer, enable the Calendar on IMAP Server resource.
Bingo, You should be able to see your Exchange Calendar requests in KDE4.1 KDEPIM Calendar.
If all works, send me a Thank You email :-P
Some other things to keep in mind. If you are a Debian User like me, you'll need to do some tweakings because the current KDE4 packages are modified to store all settings in the ~/.kde4/ separately. With this, you'll end up having 2 separate configs. One option I think of is to create a .kde4/ symlink to .kde/ . I believe that should work and inherit most of your settings. I'm yet to try because my installation is still going on.
Last weekend I went to a pub here (In Bangalore). Boozed a llittle.
Two things to think about
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.
When returning from the restroom, the waiter told me that I had broke-in into a Ladies Room. :-P Unfortunately no lady was there.
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.
Martintxo: Mani thanks again Ricky!!. Now I have clear all the process. Ricky Goldsmith: The 7 steps have to be followed. The first 3 steps update the apt database. Then on invocation of ste… Martintxo.: Many thanks, Ritesh, for the quick response . But I still have a problem: In my squeeze box I upgrade… munkyu: please show me the kernel source munkyu: show me the kernel source Ricky Goldsmith: TO: Martintxo
Your understanding is right. On a freshly installed Lenny box, which has never had its… Martintxo: Hello:
I read the guide for apt-offline in www.debian-administration. org/art.. and I think t… Krunch: Despair not, you can now run any software on the PS3 again:
events.ccc.de/congr ess/2010/Fahrplan/even…
