Happy New Year 2014

Happy New Year everyone!

May this year bring happiness, peace,prosperity and harmony to all of us!

TroubleMaker

I heard this song in a dance rehearsal near Esplanade, Singapore and loved it!

Wifi Disabled in my Acer laptop!

I switched on the laptop as usual after I reached home from work, only to find Wifi disabled. I clicked fn F3 to check the Wifi connection, it looked fine i.e. it was in enabled mode. However I noticed that the WiFi button had grayed out. I also noticed that there were no available connections in the networks. I found the solution after a little troubleshooting

Went to Device manager in Control Panel—> Network Adapters—>Network Adapter, which was disabled. Just enabled it.

 

 

Display version of Oracle

We can select * from v$version to obtain the current version of Oracle installed in our machine.

Dolphins at SEA Aquarium

Took this video at the Dolphin island, SEA aquarium.

Jelly Treat

We went to SEA aquarium at Singapore last Saturday. Will post videos and photos that we took there.

Were mystified with the sheer beauty of Jellies.

Singapore skyline revisited

 

..Served with chendol!

Singapore View: Marina Bay Sands

 

I took this video from Skypark, Singapore using my Nikon L310. Splendid view indeed!

How to display System variables in Linux

A simple command env will display all the system variables. A sample output is given below

 

Delta Search: The notorious malware

The “doodle” looks cool isn’t it? This is no Google, but Delta Search- a malware. I had no idea from where it got installed in my System. But it had a serious damage on my system. It would display useless ads, product promotions, and much more.

Internet Explorer:

1. Open Internet Explorer, go ‘Tools‘ -> ”Manage Add-ons’ -> ‘Toolbars and Extensions’ and uninstall Delta Search and other entries that may be unknown for you.
2. Click ''Tools' -> 'Manage addons' -> ‘Search Providers’ and choose the search engine you used before.

Mozilla Firefox:

1. Open Mozilla Firefox, go ‘Tools’ -> ‘Add-ons’ -> ‘Extensions’; find Delta Search and other unknown entries and click ‘Uninstall’.
2. Go ‘Tools’ -> ‘Options’ and reset the startup homepage to google.com, yahoo.com or similar search page.

Google Chrome:

1. Click the Chrome menu button on the Google Chrome browser, select Tools -> Extensions. Here, look for Delta Search extension and get rid of it by clicking on the Recycle Bin. 
2. Click on wench icon, go to settings and choose 'Manage search engines'. Change search engine to google or other. Then Go to section “On start” and make sure you get blank page while creating new tab

The Conjuring

A perfect recipe for making a contemporary horror movie:

1. A family: father, mother, three children (among which the last one is special: will explain later).

2. An old mansion

3. Of course the presence.

 

So the family moves to the “old mansion” – which either could be their property which they were not aware of till now but realized their forefather’s left it for them, or they were in search for a house and finally got it through some agent.

Then the events start. Their dog refuses to enter the house, it dies soon, the last one makes a friend whom others cant see, and during nights something invisible pulls the bed sheets, pulls hair, their mother gets mysterious wounds, father initially doesn’t believe all this superstition, mother then approaches tantrics (-hindi for excorcists) and finally there we go!

But the movie works wonderfully thanks to the direction and the background score. The audience were literally screaming during the ‘’hide and clap” scene and ‘hair raising’ scenes. Go for it.. and get scared for atleast a while!

Castaway on the moon

 

Castaway on the moon? Strange title isn’t it? But there is much more than the title. This has become one of my favorite Korean movies. A loose remake of Cast Away (Tom hanks), its at par with the original. While the previous movie dealt with a man gets estranged on an island due to a ship wreck and survives for several years far away from civilization.

In this movie, the theme is similar but our prodigy gets lost within the proximity of civilization itself. This might sound silly, but in fact is perfectly apt, the way its portrayed. Kim, stands on top of a bridge, ready to end up his life, as he is under dept, and has lost hope for life. He jumps,and gets washed on to a nearby island. He wakes up, and realizes that he needs to get back. He screams, write HELP on the sand, but in this busy world, no one has time to bother, except a girl (whose name is Kim as well), who is a “cyber addict”, who 24/7 spends her time in front of the computer, either ordering things, or at the window, taking photos of the moon. She is isolated from the world as well, by her own reasons. She accidentally happens to see Kim through her camera lens and find him amusing, as he is the only one on the island, like her.

On the island, Kim starts survival tactics, He feels like eating noodles once, and he practically grows corn (seeds obtained from bird droppings!) and prepares noodles from them!- This is shown wonderfully. All this is observed by Kim as well, who also

Finally cops arrive on the island, for some inspection and suddenly find a disheveled man inhabiting this piece of land. He retaliates, stating its his home. They capture him thinking he is some illegal migrant. But their officer leaves him free, understanding his condition. Meanwhile, Kim sees all this, and comes running down to the street, wanting to be with him. Finally both unite. This is the brief story.

 

Can’t become root user in Ubuntu!

I tried to login as root user but couldn’t. Root user is also referred to as Super user which has every privilege available in Linux. I thought there must be some bug in the version that I installed.

When we try to su and give the root password, it would state authentication failure. As per the Ubuntu documentation, this is because the root account is locked in Ubuntu. But we can run commands with root level privileges using sudo command.  This will prompt for a password which is nothing but your User password.

You can find the complete information on various aspects of Root user at this link. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo.

How to list Unix Signals

A very simple command to list all the available in the system

kill –l

Technorati Tags: Unix,signals

Some commands related to Process

1. nice:

It sounds nice isn’t it. This command is used to run a program with low priority

example; nice ls –l

2. nohup: (no hangup): This is used to execute the command even after logging out. We need to just prefix this command before the program to be executed.

3. Control Z: When we hit Control Z while executing any command, it will suspend the process, i.e. the process will stop temporarily. If we wish to resume the process, we can use the command fg. In case there are multiple processes suspended, we use “fg” with the PID. To find the PID, issue the command jobs

Control Z

jobs

The number in the square brackets is the PID. To retrieve the job, enter fg %1

kill.

To terminate the process issue the command kill pid. It sends the SIGTERM(15) signal.

To kill the last job, issue the command kill $!

You can even kill the login process!

kill –9 $$  (-9 is for force kill). The terminal will exit once the command is executed.

 

Technorati Tags: Unix,process,kill,suspend,jobs,nohup

Process Creation: Unix

The process creation consists of three phases:

Fork : When a process is said to be forked, it creates a copy of the process. The new process will have a new PID.

Exec:  Just creating a new process is not sufficient to execute it. The child process will require to overwrite the code and data of the parent process. This is known as ‘exec’. Note that the no new process is created here. This is just a mechanism to execute the process.

wait: The parent process would call ‘wait’ system call, which would suspend its execution and wait till the child process is complete.

One of the best example of process creation is the logging process.

In a multi user system, once system boots up, process 0 which is part of kernel process forks the init process and becomes the swapper process. The init process then spawns the getty process (which is get terminal- the terminal process). The getty process then execs the login program which waits till the user enters credentials which it validates. If login is successful, it execs the shell program else it exits and the init program again forks and creates the getty process. The below flow diagram would give a clear picture.

 

Technorati Tags: Unix,Linux,getty,process

Processes in UNIX

I would like to continue my mini tutorials in Unix/Linux. I will focus on the topic of Processes in this post. I will try to compile as many tutorials as possible in the next few posts on Unix covering basics and will move to advanced topics. This would be a learning experience for me as well.

Coming to the context..

Process is an instance of a program in execution. Its also called task or job. For example the command who would display all the users currently logged into Unix. Here the execution of the program who is a process. The actual program resides on the secondary memory (such as hard disk) while the process will be executed in the RAM. (In some cases memory may be allocated from secondary memory as well which is known as virtual memory).

Some key aspects of processes:

• Process is “born” when it starts execution and is said to “die” when it completes execution
• Kernel takes care of process management
• Process communicates with other process through system calls
• Process is created by the “fork” system call.

 

There must be some process which starts ‘fork’ as well. This is called parent process and the new process created is called child process. Each process is associated with “process_id”.  The First Process which gets created is Process 0 (called Parent process as told before), when the system boots up. After this process is ‘Forked’ for a child process, process 0 becomes ‘swapper’ process. This process is part of the kernel and will be used for scheduling other processes.

The child process is called ‘Process 1’ which is considered as ancestor of every process in UNIX and is called the ‘init’ process.

After the system gets logged in, the Kernel creates the SHELL process. Hence Shell is also a process and is associated with PID. To know PID type the below command:

echo $$

For example, in the below command:

ls –l | more

The parent process is the shell. ls-l is executed first and the output is fed to more which displays output one page at a time. Hence ls-l and more are two child processes here.

To know about the process states, issue the below command

    PID 1520 is the process id for the SHELL. PPIS is the parent id which is the process 1 (init). We can see the command ‘more’ has PPID 1520 (therefore a child process for the SHELL). We can also see the command ps –f itself. This presents a clear picture of the processes.  

In the next session we will discuss about how exactly is the process created,where fork comes into picture and so on.                           

Technorati Tags: Linux,Unix,Process,scheduling

Mysore memories

 

We went to Mysore yesterday after a long time. Some of its memories…

 

 

Mysore is developing fast, as is evident from its planning and well maintained roads. Its a clean and green city with beautiful lawns and parks.

 

                         Chamundi temple.

Money Plant!

We ‘planted’ Epipremnum aureum today. I want to observe its growth.. will post photos of its progress.

Inferno: Dan Brown’s new novel

I got my copy of Inferno from Flipkart today. Started reading, will write a post on it soon.

State Border

I never keenly observed the border between two states. I went off for a long drive today towards the outskirts of Bangalore when I suddenly landed at the border of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu! I started through the Varthur road, towards Sharjapur and found myself at the national highway (NH-207).

                           

A Roman Holiday: A Memorable Masterpiece

One upon a time, a beautiful princess ruled a kingdom..
She had everything, riches, servants, ornaments,image, everything..
But there was one thing, the most important thing that she did not have: Happiness
And this was because she was lonely..
And one fine day, she escaped from the clutches of loneliness to find the real world outside.. and she stumbled across a man of her dreams.. and then an adventure began.
This is the simple story of this timeless classic.

How to identify directories and executables in Linux

We can use the below command:

ls –Fx

The option “F” is used for segregating executables and directories and x is for multicolumn output.

 

Here / refers to directories and *refers to executables.

Connected movie: Better than the original

Whenever a movie is remade, viewers always compare it with the original and mostly understate it.This infact is true to some extent as well. I remember the remake of The Omen, how inferior it was compared to the original, though there had been such technical advancement in movies.
But here is a nice treat from the makers of the runaway hit of the 2004 movie “Cellular” starring Kim Basinger , Chris Evans and Jason Statham, a remake of the movie in cantonese aptly titled “Connected”. The movie was released in 2008. (I watched only sometime back).I expected it wouldn’t match up to the original, but surprisingly it was much better with some spectacular action scenes and some very good acting by the lead characters.
The story is mostly the same as that of the original, a woman kidnapped by gangsters and how she contacts a stranger with a broken phone that she assembles.Here the character of the stranger is replaced by a father (who is a debt collector),showing maturity in the role. Bob also has a strained family relationship which he is struggling hard to build. The rest of the story revolves around how Bob helps the woman out from the crisis also with the involvement of low ranking police officer.
Though the story line is similar, what I liked most was the presentation. The characters had more depth, and more emotions than that of the original. The antagonist also played the part very well.Overall I would rate it 3.5/5.

World Hold on

A cute song on a kid’s vision to save the world.

 

The Maltese Falcon

Started reading the book “The Maltese Falcon” by Dashiell Hammett. I will post the review soon!

My Favorite Eminem Song

The Magnificent Seven: A classic must watch movie

  

A village where people toil their sweat in the fields to get one meal a day to feed their beloved ones.

And the village being raided by bandits periodically, looting their hard earned food.

And one fine day, realization dawns them to fight the evil.

This is the backdrop of the classic movie “The magnificent Seven”. Inspired by a Japanese movie called The Seven Samurai, the movie makes us feel why we donot have such movies any more. A simple innocent story interwoven with an ensemble cast, yet proves to be one of the best action movies of the olden times. The movie was one of the starting phases of the “Sphagetti western genre” movies. We can find lot of cow boys, gun slings, good vs evil battles and so on.

As I mentioned the story is quite simple. A mexican village is constantly being troubled by a a group of bandits. They raid, loot grains and kill people who come their way. The rural police are of very less help. When the situation becomes unbearable, group of villagers decide to fight back. They approach an elderly man of the village, who advises them to go to the “border” and get weapons to fight the baddies back.

Once at the border, they happen to find a young man from the city called Chris, who happen to be a gunslinger. Observing his skills, they approach him for help. Though he denies initially, he decides to help the poor villagers. He begins a quest of finding six best men and forms a group : The magnificent seven. The rest of the movie is how the magnificent seven defend the village, finally defeating the bandits.

Finally the movie meets the moral : Unity is strength.

The music score of the movie is one of the best I ever heard and breaths life to the story.

 

Main cast

Yul Brynner as  Chris Adams

Eli Wallach as  Calvera

Steve McQueen as  Vin Tanner

Charles Bronson as  Bernardo O'Reilly

Two Best compilers for C

Borland C compiler

Despite advances in IDEs and Intelligent compilers for programming languages, the Borland C has still stood its test of time. Its simple to use but is inherently powerful. We require a DOS emulator for running it currently due to processor speed constraints.

 

For running the code, press F9. The code will get compiled, linked with the standard library and will create “.exe” file and execute, all in one go.

This is extremely useful for writing and executing code faster.

 

Bloodshed Dev C++

Dev C++ is a free IDE developed by Bloodshed Software. It has several integrated features such as code completion, syntax highlighting, tool manager, Find and replace utilities etc. It can be downloaded from the link:

http://www.bloodshed.net/dev/devcpp.html

Once the source is written, it should be saved as a C source file. We can compile the file by pressing Control F9 and run using Control F10. or else we can compile and run together by just pressing F9.

The compilation progress will be displayed in a window

 

In case of any syntactic or semantic errors, they would be displayed under the complier tab. In this case we can notice that the function “print” is not defined, hence it results in an error.

RC Helicopter

I bought RC helicopter sometime back. It’s fun to play with whenever you are bored. I will try to post a video of it in action some time later.

It’s remote control requires four pencil batteries. But the cells get discharged very fast, within 15 minutes of flight on full throttle. Hence we should go rechargeable cells. The build quality of Modelart helicopter is good, the rotors are flexible and there is no very scope of the device getting damaged even if we descend it fast. But this model is strictly for indoor. The device cant stand even a mild gust of wind.

 

Train Diaries: photos



Tracks



I always enjoy the changing scenary from the train like everyone else, standing near the doorway! Took some photos on the way to Bangalore.