I move, to a new place...

Now that I have got a domain name, I have moved my blog from vinayraikar.blogspot.com to blog.vinayraikar.com .

Catch up with me there, you can now subscribe to this Rss feed.

Plus have also moved my design blog (raikardesigns.spot.com) to art.vinayraikar.com.

There will be a couple of interesting places like wg.vinayraikar.com where you'll find ( a little different ) more of me.

Sarkar Raj

After watching the movie 'SARKAR RAJ' , I just cannot resist myself from writing a review. Deeply impressed by LinuxHaters writing style, I thought of writing a buttocks-kicking blog referring to all those adored/abhorred parts of human body but na...that's not my style.
So we go to this movie called 'Sarkar Raj' directed by some Verma who last time had burnt his hands with fire. The movie has two AWESOME scenes, one... where the car-bomb explosion happens(I have a SERIOUS issue with this plot), second...where Sarkar's mentor sees his grandson's dead body. Also can add the scene where Sarkar explains the conspiracy to Aish(forgot her filmy name, memory leak...) and the one where Shankar gets sniped. Rest of the movie was just OK, nothing mentionable.

I was laughing whenever that 'Hasan Qazi' came on screen, he was a funny character.

There were moments when I felt 'Just cut the crap dude !! Give me some action' but those slow moments did blend in well into the movie.

They could have got a real-looking mustache for Sarkar's mentor, every time his close-up was shown... I was feeling like ripping it off.

Haven’t seen Sarkar so this review is not influenced by it. Friends who have watched both said the latest is better, anyways I'm thinking of watching Sarkar, anybody got a DVD rip?

People... watch it, it’s Good.

Scenes I liked...

Scene1- Car-bomb explosion: I was yawning through the first half. Almost when we are about to go into intermission, we see beautiful Tanisha & Abhishek coming out of the house, She moving towards the car and He talking on the cell. While he is talking, we get a glimpse of Tanisha asking the driver to switch on the AC and BOOM !! WTF... The most beautiful and watchable character of the movie is killed in an instant....'Put on the AC' were her last words... WTF ? Verma !! you could have killed some other dumb-ass... why Tanisha?? If I was the director, she would have been in the last frame of the movie. Clad in saree, Tanisha looks far better than Aishwarya.(These days, can see so many girls clad in those tight T&J's, somebody tell them "Girls look beautiful in Sarees") Aishwarya is seen crying a lot in second half, probably she has got an offer for remake of 'Rudali' he..he..

Scene2- Sarkar's mentor visiting Sarkar: Now that we knew what the conspiracy was and who was the conspirator, we were looking How would Verma end it. Surely not a disappointment. Sarkar pointing his hand, mentor turning to see his grandson's dead body and the reactions...awesome ! (Felt like ripping the mustache once more :p )

Scene3- Sarkar explaining the conspiracy: Just as Sarkar was explaining all about the conspirators involved in Shankar's murder... I was telling to myself 'what the crap man !! I just saw it, why the hell is he repeating it', we have a twist... the actual Conspirator is revealed. Wow... I did not see it coming...Cool!!

Scene4- Shankar gets sniped: Myself being a ‘Counter Strike' sniper, I thought that Verma could have given some more respect to the sniper by showing some skin. All we see is the sniper's gloves, pants and the bag. I was wondering how many shots from a sniper is needed to bring someone down. Probably the overpaid Sniper was not a professional sniper, Dude… how could he be so ignorant that 'Head Shot brings instant death…faster than the instant coffee' and just fire some shots at his chest... what if he had a bullet proof vest?

Haa… I’m happy…The movie was good. Hindi movies are so bad these days...I am afraid to see even those trailers...

A list of my favorite music

I am not a big follower of any particular musician or a kind of music. Its just that I happen to hear to them and move on. I'm a music lover straight from my younger days. I still remember listening to songs on Dharwad radio station every morning before going to school. Then there was a time when I could not concentrate on studies without music during the college days. I have always loved foot tapping, groovy music because I'm a dance lover. I'ts difficult to control the body when music is playing around.

I was just thinking about some English songs that I have loved. These are not the dance numbers but some heart touching, romantic songs. Here is a list of a few.

Mr lonely- Akon
If you are not the one -Daniel Bedingfield
Have you ever loved a women- Bryan Adams
Hello, is it me you looking for
I'll be missing you
Last Christmas
Nothing's Gonna Change My Love for you
Words
Every thing I do- Bryan Adams
Please forgive me- Bryan Adams
My heart will go on -Celine dion
Careless whisper-
Can i Touch You There-
re Still The One
With or Wihtout U-U2
Sacrifice
Love Hurts-Nazareth
My love (Empty street, empty house)
Still feels like first night together

PS:1)These are only the ones I have heard and remembered to mention here.
2)The ordering is random.
3)Feel free to comment about songs that fits into this list.

A ride to Haalu Raameshwara

Bored by the daily routine, I desperately wanted to explore and move outside. This Saturday was one hell of an enjoyable and refreshing ride. I reached my home town around 5 AM, my brother was waiting for me. As per our planning we were to leave for Haalu Rameshwara at 6:15 Am sharp. We have planned for numerous times to do a lot of things but without success. So this time we really did not want to screw up this plan. We both got ready and went to our cousins home. From there we went to another cousins home, collecting everybody, It was 7:30 when we all started our journey.

Totally we were 8 cousins riding on a Pulsar 150cc, Pulsar 180cc, Discover 125cc, LML Freedom and Honda Activa. Davangere, my native place is the geographical center of Karnataka,previously famous for its cotton industries. We took the by-pass and rode to holalkere. This part of the journey was enjoying because it was the first time that I saw ducks in their natural habitat at a lake on the way. There was thick mist, cold weather and we were shivering. I have never seen such thick mist ever,it made the sun look like moon. We could see the mist drops on our face. We stopped at random locations enjoying nature and taking a few snaps.

(on the way to holalkere, can see mist in the background)

After the 60KM long journey to holalkere we moved towards Hosadurga which is about 30 KMs away. We moved at almost safe speed, Activa leading the way with an average of 70KMPH. We had Idlis and pooris for breakfast at hosadurga and started towards 'Haalu rameshwara' which is about 11KMs from there.

Haalu raameshwara is famous for the the small stream which is worshiped as Ganga devi .

People believe that this place has the special powers and grants their wishes. There is a small well which has a flowing stream of water. A small housing is built for this well and the idol of goddess is placed here. People come here pray to her asking for their wishes or questions and leave some offering into the well and stand at a particular corner of the well. Due to the flowing stream, the things offered into the well float back. It is said what floats towards you gives a hint about what may happen to the wish you asked. The priest interprets and tells what different objects signify. The place became famous recently when a famous Kannada program 'heegu unte' aired an episode about this place. In front of the well, there is an Eshwara temple with a Linga in the Garbha gudi.

(the temple housing the goddess and well)

After offering our prayers, we started towards holalkere. We did not find good eateries at Hosadurga, so we decided to go to Holalkere to have our lunch. Though these places are historically prominent not much development has happened here.

(the monolithic idol of bayalu ganapathi )

After 'haalu rameshwara' we were left with some good amount of time that we had not planned how to spend, After enquiring about nearby places to visit and the large board placed by the tourist department, we learnt about 'bayalu ganapati'. Just 1KM away from holalkere, it is a monolithic statue of Ganapati. As the name 'bayalu' meaning open space suggests, it was in open space earlier. A shelter has been built some 10 years ago.

We had ample amount of time and we did not know what to do, after discussing possibilities of going to shimoga, and other places, we decided to go to Chitradurga.

Chitradurga is a famous for its fort with seven spirals. It takes almost a whole day to see the fort completely but as we did not have that much time we decided to go to Chandavalli tota (garden) in chitradurga itself. Chandavalli tota has a beautiful lake and people from nearby places frequent here as this has become a picnic spot. The main attraction of chandavalli tota is the caves & forts. The fort is known to have secret passages which were used to escape during invasions. Most of the openings to these caves are closed due to security reasons. But there is one cave which is left open for exploration. The cave is completely dark and a bit smelly. The entrance leads into a passage which has a few openings to explore. There are multiple entries and exits built for the sole purpose of confusing strangers. One has to bend,crawl to go through these passages. People advise not to adventure inside without a guide,though it doesn't seem that much a danger if you have some source of light capable of lasting for a some time. The cave also houses a big Linga and is said that seers used to stay here. There are small passages, hideouts among the big rocks. We had only our mobile phones guiding us and we also had to think about the dying batteries. We lost track of time exploring them.

(one of the exits from the cave)

We had a cup of tea outside Chandavalli tota and hoped to spend a whole day at chitradurga.
We were back on our bikes, driving back the 60KM distance back to Davangere. We stopped somewhere in the middle to see the beautiful sun set.

(the sun set on the way back to home)

It was eight when we reached our homes.
Pics are here.

Zeroing Inspiron to MediaDirect to Ubuntu...

My Dell Inspiron 1520 laptop is now a stable dual boot system. Pressing the Media direct button (AKA self-destructing button) loads Ubuntu (linux) and pressing the power button loads XP.

Earlier I had setup the dual-boot system but the problem was that if somebody pressed the media direct button, it would corrupt the MBR and partitions and the system would become unbootable. I caled up the Dell technical service but they didnot have any idea of how to disable or prevent this destruction. Googling , I found a few resources which told how to make the media direct work as I want.

This link tells how one can force the Media direct button to boot to your favorite OS(this
may also help to get a better picture). I tried this few times but the system behaved unpredictably on pressing the Media-direct button, some times working fine, sometimes corrupting the partitions. The simple reason was that the secret hidden partition containing
the destructive-software (HPA) corresponding to the Media direct was not totally wiped or over written.

Then I stumbled upon Zeroing the drive. This method will fill whole of your hard disk,
(the hidden things & everything) with zeros. It took 212 minutes to zero my 160GB hard disk. Then I finally Installed winXP and Ubuntu as mentioned here and did the changes to configure
Mediadirect to Ubuntu and WinXP to power button.

Hail Ubuntu...

I am happy today, and you know why... ?
After posting this, I went home,
* created a System rescue CD from an ISO image.
* Booted with System rescue CD and deleted all partitions.
* Booted with WinXP CD and installed it on a 25GB NTFS partition,leaving behind other part of disk as unpartitioned.
* Booted with Ubuntu 7.10 CD and installed it on a 15GB ext3 partition along with 3GB swap, leaving behind other part of disk as unpartitioned.
* Booted with System rescue CD, created one 20GB FAT32 and 3 30GB NTFS partitions from the unpartitioned space.

Now My lappy is a fully functional WinXP-Ubuntu 7.10 dual boot system. I never had thought installing a dual boot system was as easy and enjoyable as eating Hide & Seek.

I could have had installed the media direct partition but I did not want to. I also don't have the system restore partition. I don't think both media direct and Dell's System restore will work with the dual boot config. considering that MBR is written by Ubuntu.
Now I am on a hunt to find necessary drivers to make my lappy work fine.

Hail Ubuntu...

My weekend adventure....

Should I blame my itch to switch or My(monkey)Mind...
I brought home Wubi, wanting to try Ubuntu. It wouldn't install, It tried to download the Ubuntu ISO image but as I was as connected as the oasis in the Sahara..It didn't proceed. I thought of a plan, 'I can make an ISO image of the latest Ubuntu 7.10 Live CD that I have and place in the correct location.' But naa....My Dell pre-configured system does not have an ISO writer software !! I needed it badly... I went to the nearest cyber cafe, got Imgburn in a pen drive, came back and make an ISO image. Now when I tried to Install Wubi.. It wouldnt proceed, reason...The wubi was for version 7.04 and my ISO was 7.10. So I said 'Until next time when I am really desperate I will try you my dear Ubuntu Linux.'

Now comes the Interesting part. After a couple of hours when I am using my system, I notice that the drive opens in a new window, The hidden folders cannot be seen. The folder options menu is ineffective. I was sure...this was a virus that some also call as rootkit. I checked a few things and I learnt that the virus was amvo.exe. It spreads through an executable file d.com that is hidden in USB pen-drive. Whenever you access your pendrive the virus jumps into action, adds a few entries into windows registy. The pre-installed Macafee Antivirus couldn't detect it. I should have updated the antivirus with latest signatures...but shouldn't the company be providing the system with all the latest signatures?? How can you expect everybody to be connected ?
Anyways...I tried to correct the problem, booted with Ubuntu Live CD and deletedd all the suspected programs and files but still the problem persisted. The virus was not dying. I said 'Fcuk Windows...' I took backup of my data into a pendrive and thought of trying the Dell System restore which brings back the system to factory settings state wiping off every data from the disk. But...but but...that option did not work...there was some modification done to the bootsector(or whatever) so it wouldn't start. Now I decided I was going to reinstall WinXP. Prepared my system for the Dell media direct partition, booted with the WinXP CD, formatted the drives and installed both XP and Media direct.. But now when I tried to log into Media direct 'Missing NTLDR' message came, same followed with WinXP.
I was frustrated, I finally decided 'I will install Ubuntu' and I did. My system is now a working Ubuntu system with limited functionality(no sound,cannot play popular media format files & all). While installing Ubuntu, I formatted the hard disk with one 3GB swap, and others as some 30 GB ext3 partitions. Now I can access only one of those ext3 partitions which is mounted as '/'. I have to learn the basics of linux, it's file system, commands and all or else I cant live with Linux.

My lappy

This post is due for some time. There is a saying in Kannada 'ಹಲ್ಲಿದ್ದರೆ ಕಡಲೆ ಇಲ್ಲಾ,ಕಡಲೆ ಇದ್ದರೆ ಹಲ್ಲಿಲ್ಲಾ' meaning 'when you have teeth, you don't have nuts and when you have nuts you don't have teeth. I always thought once I get my laptop, I will do a lot of things..but I haven't started yet, I'm just preparing for the start.

Mine is a Dell Inspiron 1520 laptop with following config:
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T5250 @ 1.50GHz (2 CPUs), 2038MB RAM,Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2, 15'' LCD screen, bluetooth,Wifi, 1.3px integrated cam,6 cellbattery, 160GB harddisk, DVR R/W drive, Media direct and all other basic things that comes with a laptop but no extra graphics card.

This one cost me 45K but the prices fell by 2K even before I got the system in my hand. Probably I will get some extra goodies for the price change. Dell imports the systems from Malaysia, and it takes at least 3 weeks for the delivery to clear the Lakshman rekha and come out.My system got delayed a bit more because of some misplacement by the delivery person.

There is very little to complain as of now except for a bad viewing angle, irritating DVD drive and loads of Dell's system utilities. The system came with only one drive partition. When I asked the service engineer for more partitions, I learnt that at max I can get only 2 working partitions considering the previously existing recovery and media partition. Now I have a 25 GB C drive and a 121 GB D drive.

I also received the latest Ubuntu Linux CD after ordering it from shippit. Live CD was good but still I'm not convinced to switch to ubuntu. Plain and simple reason, I dont have a internet connection. If I switch to ubuntu, I wouldst be able to enjoy all kinds of media formats unless I am connected. May be I can try for a dual boot system just to get started with Linux only if I win over my laziness

The first thing I did after getting the laptop was install a few applications. Here is a long list.

1)Mozilla Firefox
2)7-Zip
3)Audacity
4)Blender 2.45
5)Gimp
6)Inkscape
7)Irfanview
8)Kompozer
10)Launchy
11)Mediacoder
12)MediaMonkey
13)Mozilla sunbird
14)Notepad++
15)OpenOffice
16)Process Explorer
17)Python 2.5
18)Scribus
19)Stellarium
20)SumatraPDF
21)VideoLAN
22)GhostScript
23)Dev C++
24)Web Developer Server Suite

Of all these softwares, the italicized ones were the ones I was trying out for the first time.
Blender is hell of a 3d modeling software. Though the learning curve is steep, I have started learning it.
Stellarium is just another cool software showing real time sky.Irfanview, Inkscape and Gimp are my dispensable tools.Seems like Scribus may join this team also. Scribus needs Ghostscript and Blender,Inkscape,Gimp need python, so had to install them also.
I used Nvu for HTML editing earlier but Kompozer has replaced it now. Mediamonkey is a nice media player. Sunbird is just an OK calendering application. I can do some screen casting using VLC. SumatraPDF is a really light PDF viewer. OpenOffice looks cool, I'm drafting my post on Openoffice writer itself. Firefox,7-zip, Launchy & notepad++ need no explanation, they are a must. I have Dev C++ installed but seems like I have forgotten all C & C++ I had learnt.

Another application that needs a mention is web Developer Server Suite. It has Apache,MySql,PHP, Perl,awstats cores and web applications (CMS) like drupal,wordpress,Joomla,mediawiki,phpBB. A really good suite for learning these all.

There is so much to do,so much to learn, wish we had 48 hours a day. Wish teleporation becomes a practical reality sooner, so that I can make better use of my commute time. When you have too much to do, you dont know what to do, where to start from, my state is somewhat similar. I need to slow down and take things one by one.