A Decade and Two tags

Come 2010, and it will be a decade since humankind last wrote a date that contained a year beginning with a 1. Funny how fast things seem to move ahead. Time, they say, flies, but flying again is pretty subjective, I mean, whoever coined that phrase, should have at least bothered to mention, how fast it exactly flies! There I was, in 1999, a microscopic entity, an insignificant conglomerate of living cells, a little kid clad in shorts and T-shirts, running about the house and ... er ... man, I do have a horrible memory!!! And here I am in end-2009, a macroscopic entity, a slightly more significant accolade of living cells, and still wondering what I was then. The interim seems to be a haze, an obscure blurred motion. Queerly, it reminds me of state-functions in thermodynamics, where the path between two states has no meaning!

Whatever, what it has all boiled down into, is ... the present scenario. Nothing more, nothing less. And as this year draws to a close, I feel like holding a mirror in my hand, a shining sheet of crystal ... and I feel like staring long and staring straight at it, staring into it, till the lost memories surrender themselves to my penetrating gaze, till the memories invade me once again and make me an object of their folly. So that I may be able to contemplate. So that I may be able to to analyse the events that have taken place, that have shaped the “microscopic entity” into what it is today.

So much for my thoughts! To quote one good blogger friend of mine ... not a penny for them! (I know you are reading this, Roshmi) What I really want to do on this auspicious occasision ... the end of the first decade of years-not-begginning-with-one, is forge a reconnection. (By the way, here's a small clarification. I refrain from using the phrase the second millenium AD, because the millenium started in 2001, and the first decade ends with the termination of 2010) So a reconnection ... of what with what, of whom with whom, you may ask. Well, frankly speaking, I miss my friends, friends bole toh my good ol' blogger friends from around this country, and ... abroad (Avada, you're still abroad right?) ... and I use this post to reconnect ... with them all.

Here are two tags for all of them:

10 things I've learnt/gained in 10 years:

The list I must confess, is pretty long, since the last ten years actually encompass the bulk of my growing-up days ... not that I am any more grown up now, but just that I should have grown up in them!

1. First, the technical knowlegde that I have gained :D ... a pretty meagre list, which includes, well ... tying my shoelaces, using day to day tools like screwdrivers and nail-cutters, and scissors and ... the sort. Playing the keyboard, a wee bit of computer programming, and ... of course, driving ... amongst other things.
2. A lot of musical knowledge, from basic chords of the piano and reading the staff notation, to the electrodynamic principles of a distortion guitar and names of every drum in a drum-kit, plus a hell lot of songs ... from Indian classical to Western death metal and everything in between!
3. A lot of bookish knowledge thanks to my school, from the entire Indian history and geography, to a lot of physics, chemistry, and mathematics ... the last three, basically owing to my preparation for the competitive examinations that I wrote. However I must confess, I remember the least of the stuff mentioned in this point!
4. A certain level of knowledge of the English language, and yet another certain level of Bengali. The latter level is ... ahem ... fathoms below the former.
5. I learnt about blogging from my wonderful father, one thing that I am glad I did learn.
6. I learnt a lot of morals from my ever enlightening family ... some of which I adhere to religiously, and the others which I wish I could. Examples of the former include a strict no-no policy to piracy, and a strict no-no to littering, amongst other things. Laugh at me, jeer me, but I give a damn. Although, following the no-piracy path is difficult in a world of DC and Bluetooth. I try my best to tread on it. Being a Microsoft hater does NOT deter me from paying for Windows. I have not yet worked on a pirated Windows machine in my house. Go ahead ... call me a fool! Now that I have the wonderful Linux in my laptop, I really don't care. Amongst things that I have not managed to learn, is ... controlling my temper, and in a heightened state of rage ... being rude to my elders. I am ashamed of that, sorry for that, and I wish I get to learn that fast!
7. I learnt the Gayatri mantra ... following my upanayan in 2003 ... the greatest bit of knowledge that I have accquired in all my life. Everyone should.
8. I got to understand a lot of human nature.
9. I learnt about people who give a damn to this world, and who blow up buildings and places and historical landmarks for no reason ... who kill other people, without a whimper ... and who aren't ashamed of it. I even had a term to describe them when I learnt about them ... circa September 2001 ... “LOSERS”
10. I also learnt about people who do not give a damn to the world, and who fight in the toughest of conditions, so that we may sleep peacefully in our beds. I had a term for them too ... “HEROES”.

The next tag ... a much lighter one ... 10 things I never had or used 10 years back, which I cannot do without/use a lot today:

1. The first one is pretty obvious ... my cell-phone. I will probably go hysterical if that ceases to exist! I have palpitions when it encounters the tiniest of problems.
2. A laptop ... my father had one since 1997 ... a black IBM thinkpad ... just couldn't call it, and the others that followed right upto 2007, mine own. Got my very own laptop recently.
3. An internet connection. We had it ten years back ... those where the days when connecting to the internet involved a set of chee-whee-crrrrk-whree noises and then five whole minutes to load a page called Google. Considered it then as something to stay away from. Quite the opposite now.
4. A pair of spectatcles ... thought that blurred distant visison was natural, till my parents forced me to an optician who said that my eyes were powerful ... with power -3.5 in one eye, and -2 in the other. Have specs ever since ... that was 2004.
5. An ATM card ... accquired that pretty recently though. Post college admission.
6. size 11 shoes ... or for that matter, the largest in the store. My feet grew a bit too fast perhaps.
7. A proper synthesizer ... the one I had then was a hilarious toy. The one now is a true blue synth. (OK, it isn't blue ... silver infact)
8. Okay ... this is an exception. I had it then, don't have it anymore ... thankfully. Still wondering what? My appendicitis ... left it in an OT in a certain Calcutta nursing home in 2002.
9. Another exception. Few (the last few) ...milk teeth! Had them then, don't have them anymore. Blimey ... I hope this doesn't become like chemistry where the exceptions outnumber the normal cases!
10. Umm ... what else ... nothing much really ... o well .. if you press ... a college life ... which I knew then that I would have in the future ... which I do have now!

Now comes the tagging part. All my wonderful blogsville friends ... Roshmi, Shilpa, Arvee, Ashwini(Avada), Amrit, Shankar, Vipul, Pawan, Miss Kido, Sugandha, theIshu, Sid and Dhiman. Anjan and Debi have stopped blogging ... poor souls, so wouldn't press on them. All of you wonderful fellas and everybody else reading this... do take up this tag, and let me know! Cheers.

Chrome, Cloud and Avatar

After a pretty long and boring previous post, well ... here's another for all of you to think twice before stepping onto my blog!



Now as all technogeeks will be aware of, the next big thing to watch out for on the technology front in 2010 is ... amongst other things ... the much awaited Google Chrome OS. Hopefully, it will join forces with all things bright and beautiful to deal irreversible damage to current segment leaders Microsoft and its minions. So what is actually so great about this OS? Apart from being free and open-source, the Google Chrome OS will be a completely browser based operating system.

Bemused? Here's a simple explanation.

Consider your daily computer usage now. You load your operating system,and then you want to check your mail, your facebook account etc... so you connect to the internet, and ... accomplish your tasks. Infact, in today's world, there is very little we do on our machines apart from watching movies, playing games, listening to music, and/or opening Office for managing our documnets/spreadsheets/presentations ... which we do OFF the net. Most things require us to connect to the net and then proceed with whatever tasks we have at our hands. The Google Chrome OS plans to take this idea another step ahead. How? By making the entire OS load from the net through a browser! So your computer remains eternally connected to the web, and “boot”ing would refer to loading the operating system from the web iteself. Once loaded, you can access your document, games, files ... whatever you need from the web.

Google has infact, already made advances in this direction by their Google Docs service which allows you to store your Office work on the net instead of your own hard drive. This not only minimises the need of big MBs of disk spaces but also protects your files from system crashes ... becuse you can always access your files using a different system! What you use to access your files is immaterial ... it is how you access it! Anoher service that Google, and others have started is online storage and sharing of your photos and videos. We have today services like, Picasa Web Albums, Flickr, Photobucket, You Tube, Metacafe for these purposes.

This fascinating concept is called “Cloud Computing” ... computing not on your machine, but accessing the “Cloud” somewhere up there (referring to the net) and then doing whatever you want. Cloud Computing today is getting much acclaim and recognition as a viable alternative to, and as a viable upgrade from our current computing methods.

So what actually happens in Cloud Computing is that you log in to the Cloud and accomplish your tasks. Say, now, you have an account in Facebook, or Google, and once you log in, you get “onto” the cloud to interact with people, in an essentially same yet different manner! With the advent of faster net-connections, even voice-chatting and video-chatting will become all the more common in the future, and the “virtual” cloud life will become increasingly real and merge with our real life.

What am I heading at?
Simply the fantastic concept utilised in the latest Hollywood thriller, Avatar, the story of a man leading two parallel lives simultaneously, one, his real life, and the other his Avatar's life!

Avatar is not a new story! The same old story-line of land accqusition by a powerful race from tribals has been used in various movies and novels before and, if you are aware of poltical incidences in and around Lalgarh, West Bengal, you can actually see striking similarities of fiction with fact! What is essentially different is the setting more so than the story. It is indeed the setting of the story that makes Avatar so fascinating.

Coming back to the the two-lives concept. When Jake Sully's mind enters his Avatar's body, it is akin to you logging into Google/Facebook, and interacting with people there! Just as Jake enters his Avatar's body and interacts with the natives! The moment he leaves his Avatar's body, that life temporarily stops. Here's an analogy.

You are not logged into Gtalk. Your friends, who are logged in, don't see you on their lists, or they see your name in gray signifying offline. Similarly, when Jake is not logged into his Avatar, the natives cannot interact with him. Suppose they move his senseless body to a different location, so when he now logs in he is aware of the changes in the from of change in his geographical position. Coming back to the Gtalk analogy, your friends may send messasges to you when you are offline, but it is only when you log in that you get to see the changes in the form of new messages!

So it is akin to one person living two lives simulatenously! OK, not simultaneously but having two forms of existence at an instant to choose from!

This is exactly the thing Cloud Computing also brings about. One life of yours is the “online” one and the, other the “offline” one. And today, one cannot deny that the entire humankind is headed that way! As these two lives continue to exist, it is possible that the separation between “online” and “offline” will cease to exist. To put it in Jake's words “Everything is backwards now, like out there is the true world and in here is the dream”!!!

PS: the concept of two-lives also draws upon the ancient Vedic concept of the atman or the soul of a person residing in different bodies ... (though not at the same time!)

PPS: do check out the short movie that follows, developed by my father, and his colleagues three years back. An apt summarisation of the aforementioned idea.

PPPS: also read this previous post of mine.

Finally, an environment free of doors, Windows, and Gates

I have a very ill-reputation in my hostel, for being an evangelist for open-source software and OSes – so much in-fact, that my wingies actually use my preferance for Open-source over “normal”ware to my disadvantage. While the entire world goes gaga over Bill Gates and his Microsoft products and of course Windows, I choose to be a passive spectator to all these phenomena and maintain my indifferent attitude to the same with a certain degree of nonchalance. For example, when the latest sensation hit the computer industry in the form of Windows 7, I was, to say the least, thoroughly annoyed. Why? Because it was sensational, for the wrong reasons. It was sensational because it was good. Now seriously, after the hugely disastrous failure of Microsoft Corporation in the earlier Windows Vista, you cannot actually expect them to come up with a poor OS again, and still charge a hefty amount for it! It's got to be good. Or to rephrase it, it better be good! MS had to ensure that Windows 7 did not turn out to be a let-down, like its precursor had, and hence they had to take that extra step to ensure that this one was indeed of top-notch quality. And so Windows 7 was born: a very good, capable, and quality OS from the overlords of the OS industry: Microsoft Corporation. I have used it, though not on my machine, and have found it very good indeed.

You must be wondering by now about my allegiance: whether I am a Winboy or an Openboy. You'll get the answer soon enough.

While on one hand, we have Windows and Gates and doors and latches and ... other objects associated with civil engineering ... on another hand we have a completely different set of tools and gadgets which are radically different from the aforementioned category. This is openware, an alternative set of tools and devices that are built upon the spirit that “that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language, and that people should have the freedom to customize and alter their software in whatever way they need.”

In this world, things are quite different. Windows 7 (or XP or Vista for that matter) ceases to exist. In comes Linux with it's wide range of Operating systems: Ubuntu, Fedora, Red Hat, OpenSUSE etc. Windows Media Player has no significance in this world. On the contrary we have Rythmbox, VLC, Totem, Sound Juicer and other marvellous freeware. Microsoft Internet Explorer loses all ground (if it hasn't already on Windows itself :D ) to be replaced by Mozilla Firefox and Opera and Google Chrome. There is nothing called MS Office here, and all Office work is brilliantly handled by the radical Open Office. This is, in short a completely new and different environment, and once you've used it, I can guarantee, you will think twice before reverting to Windows.

My new laptop, a Dell Inspiron 15.5'' 3 GB machine, which I got yesterday, I am proud to say, has been perfectly configured with this new environment ... Open and free and totaly legal. I have used Linux before on a tiny HCL netbook (or as the HCL guys put it, a myleap) and liked it a lot. The only glitch there had been the hardware shortcomings (a nearly negligible quanitity of RAM and hard drive memory, no CD drive, a tiny screen and other failings), and a very primitive version of the Ubuntu OS (7.10), which I must say is not one of the best OSes around.

The new one however, is properly equipped and makes up for the previous shortcomings, and loaded with the latest version of Ubunbu (Ubuntu 9.10) it sure means business. Here's a brief walkthrough:
You press the boot button on the laptop, and in 15 seconds the splash screen followed by the login screen comes up. You give your password, and the desktop appears. The machine is fully operational within 20 seconds ... provided of course you are snappy at entering your password :D. This after all uses only 256 MB of RAM to load as opposed to Windows 7 that uses all of 1 GB. The desktop is pretty neat, with two panels: one on the top (by default) and one at the bottom. The one on the top has the Ubuntu equivalent of the 'Start' button on Windows, and other system indicators and appliction shortcuts. The one on the bottom is the taskbar where you can see all your running applications. You can add as many panels as you want on the desktop, place them wherever you want, and have whatever you want on them at the click of a mouse button, but I am satisfied with the two default ones, and shall stick to those.

The top left corner of the screen is adorned by the Ubuntu icon, which comes as a breath of fresh air from the traditional blue Windows icon on the bottom left. Several other things catch your eye the moment you look about. One is the multiple workbench icon on the bottom right, beside the trash icon (the equivalent of a Recycle Bin). The multiple workbench feature is a rather smart and chic feature of this OS. Workbench basically refers to desktop, and in all versions of Ubuntu, you can actually maintain multiple desktops at the same time. Advantages? Suppose you have too many applications running on one desktop. To reduce the clutter, you can just shift a few to another desktop, and make the place look cleaner. The “shifting” part is real fun ... :D shall come to that later. You can have as many desktops as you want in a tabular manner and can shift between them by clicking on the desired compartment in the workbench icon or by using Ctrl+Alt+arrow keys.

Now comes opening and running applications. The Applications button hides all the programs and executable applications installed on the machine, categorised as Accessories, Games, Graphics, Internet, Office, Sound and Video, System Tools and Wine. Let us try the Open Office Writer (the Open Office equivalent of MS Office Word). As the screen comes up, you look at it and can't help feeling good. It has everything that Word has and that too in a fresh new interface, while retaining the basic navigability and get-up.
But I am not going to describe every application because I don't really want to. They are all best experienced than heard or read about. But the striking feature that I want to mention is the amazing graphics and visual effects. The different windows, (note: not Windows) can be maximised or restored by just dragging the top panel of each window to the top of the workbench, and believe you WILL love the amazing rubbery/bubbly motion as you drag the windows from here to there. You click twice on a maximised/minimised window it gets restored in a remarkably bouncy and hilarious manner, which you can't help adoring. And as for shifting from one workbench to another just grapple one window with your mouse and drag it out of the screen and it enters the next workbench. The motion of the windows on and between the workbenches are so awesome that you actually need to see it to believe it. Moreover, the workbench theme, appliction window, fonts are all customisable via system>preferences>appear on the top panel.

So much for visual effects. What else is cool on Ubuntu? Everything. There is/are alternative(s) available for every Windows application one uses for use on Linux Ubuntu. And the best part is all of these applications are free and open source, so you don't really need to think twice before using it or bothering about piracy issues. Also, legally free and open source drivers exist for all hardware devices ... webcam, bluetooth, external hard drive, pen drives ... you name it, it has it. The next remarkable feature about Ubuntu are the software updates and installation. The Applications tab on the top panel has another option in the drop down menu called the Ubuntu Software Centre … which is essentially your portal to all software available around the globe for use on your Ubuntu machine. You double click on it, and you are pleasantly surprised at the sheer number (hundreds and hundreds) of software which you can install at the click of a button. There are tens of free and snazzy media players, hundreds of educational software, Programing IDEs, graphical software, Internet applications, Accessory software, games and loads and loads of other amazingly varied applications. Be it CD burners, rippers, format converters, graphing, mathematical, E-mail utilities, chat/messengers, image editors, photo managers, animation software, Gmail notifiers, more free browsers, blogging clients , PDF readers, text editors, Prism for every Google service, clients for DC++ … even obtusely far-fetched software like satellite trackers, weather trackers, chemical element analysers, algebra solving programs, PDF readers devoted to E-books, formula editors, dictionaries, thesauruses, character maps, virtual keyboards, gaming packages, alarm clocks, personal diary managers, time-table generators, notifiers, translators even mouse-clickers!!! That was just a teeeny weeny glimpse of what is actually in that Ubuntu Software Centre … believe me, it's truly fascinating.

Select the application you want and just click install … and it's done. No setup wizards, no clicking on 'I Agree', no clicking on 'Next' or 'Finish' … no notices which say 'your so and so was successfully installed.' … because very simply, nothing can go wrong while installing a software from Ubuntu Software Centre onto an Ubuntu machine. Even better is the fact that the Ubuntu Software centre is updated daily with the latest free and open source software from all around the world and you are kept updated with the latest and the best freeware from around the planet.

Next we come to the directory structure and file manger, which works like a breeze. The Places tab on the top panel gives you a drop down menu. The Places tab is analogous to the My Computer/Explorer on Windows machines. There is absolutely no clutter in the menu and no additional partitions into C drive/ D drive and so on. Just the 'Home Folder'. This home folder does not encroach into the system's executable files/software region etc. It just gives access to your documents, pictures, music, videos, and downloads. It creates a level of abstraction and hides all the installed applications from your view, letting you access them only through shortcuts on the Applications tab. If you really want to access them/uninstall them, click on the Computer option in the Places drop down menu. There, you'll find other directories and folders that hide these details. Your Home Folder, you'll see is actually one such folder, directly accessible through Places>Home Folder via the top panel. Call it user-friendliness to the maximum!

This extremely fun-to-work-with OS has the additional benefit of completely free online support and help should you need it. Added to this is the additional security you get from 99.9% of viruses around the planet, solely because all viruses/trojan horses and elephants and other malware are designed specifically for Windows owing to its popularity. Inspite of all this protection the Ubuntu Software Center has loads of Ubuntu specific anti-viruses which you can install. Small additional perks that come along with the OS include a pair of “eyes” which you can keep on your top panel that follows your cursor movement by rolling its eyeballs, and a tiny Fortune telling applet called Wanda the Fish that keeps ranting out funny quotes when you click on it. Yet another advantage is that, being open-source and being completely customisable by local users it has all resources necessary to cater to all communitites. The wireless Broadband modem setup specifically shows just the three services available when you specify your country as India, ie Reliance Netconnect, Tata Indicom Photon, and Tata Indicom Photon+ ... this portion I presume, having being developed by Indians themselves. Not surprisingly the regional font range on Ubuntu is way more comprehensive than Windows because of the same region. Fonts for Indian scripts like Bengali, Telegu, Tamil were developed much earlier on Ubuntu than on Windows.

And yes, finally an OS that does NOT consider Subhayan Mukerjee to be a spelling error because it's the name of the user, and doen't give suggestions like Subhuman Mockeries!

Whatever. All done, and you click on the Shut Down option. In less than 5 seconds, your laptop screen darkens and the Ubuntu icon fades away … call that snappy.

Believe me, you really need to experience Ubuntu. It's more than just an OS. Its a way of life.