| Back! |
[Jun. 17th, 2008|05:13 pm] |
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After a break of almost 2 years, I've decided to re-start updating this blog. The older content will remain. There is a lot to say, lot to blog. Will see how it goes! |
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| Waypoint Display |
[Jul. 23rd, 2006|01:06 am] |
Do you have a set of co-ordinates that you noted on your GPS receiver and you now want to see the satellite map of the path that you took ?
Head to http://sumedhaswamy.in/map.php . Simply enter your co-ordinates in the XML format that is explained on the page and click "Plot". See that path drawn immediately!
There is an example there if you dont yet have any co-ordinates to plot.
Now, this application works on Firefox, Opera, Konqueror and Epiphany! (Latest versions)
Enjoy plotting. Send me your feedback. |
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TrustFlow results for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) sumedha |
[Jul. 22nd, 2006|11:49 pm] |
Thanks aivalli for the link!
I tried out TrustFlow II for LiveJournal. The following people not on the friends list for sumedha are close by:
- mannu, premshree, fugney, brainz, rashmiprasad (50 - 100)
- bluesmoon, balaji, fox2mike, noelladsa, kalyan, jace, fatmuttony, teemus, nash_da_basher, notanangel78, freegeek, sharat, ravi, kaustubhhere, prady, mrinal, sampada, mrsgollum (100 - 150)
- dhempe, angiasaa, pinak, pratibha75, subtle_blues, vandyvandana, crabbycool, namus, sriramb, al_lude, latelyontime, sumit_mittal, amitng, hariputtar, yellosonja, kewldeaf, shortindiangirl, rfc9000, yathin, luv_serendipity, vyshnavi, urmila (150 - 200)
( More results below the cut... )
Created by ciphergoth; hosted by LShift.
TrustFlow II: Who is closest to your friends
list?
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| /drivers/usb/storage/unusual_devs.h |
[Jul. 8th, 2006|01:02 am] |
Index: usb-2.6/drivers/usb/storage/unusual_devs.h
===================================================================
--- usb-2.6.orig/drivers/usb/storage/unusual_devs.h
+++ usb-2.6/drivers/usb/storage/unusual_devs.h
@@ -139,6 +139,14 @@ UNUSUAL_DEV( 0x0420, 0x0001, 0x0100, 0x
US_SC_DEVICE, US_PR_DEVICE, NULL,
US_FL_IGNORE_RESIDUE ),
+/* Reported by Sumedha Swamy <sumedhaswamy@gmail.com> and
+ * Einar Th. Einarsson <einarthered@gmail.com> */
+UNUSUAL_DEV( 0x0421, 0x0444, 0x0100, 0x0100,
+ "Nokia",
+ "N91",
+ US_SC_DEVICE, US_PR_DEVICE, NULL,
+ US_FL_IGNORE_RESIDUE | US_FL_FIX_CAPACITY ),
+
And waiting for my kernel compilation to complete .... |
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| My Google Maps Application |
[May. 8th, 2006|12:11 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  sleepy | ] |
First, I'm the owner of http://sumedhaswamy.in :)
Head to http://sumedhaswamy.in/bababudan.html : This is the first application that I've written using Google Maps API. It is still in a very rough state. But, I'll try and add some features soon. I'm very new to XML-DOM and Javascript. So, if there are any suggestions, I'm waiting to here them. I was inspired to create this app, on using "Map Generator" that Praveen and Sonal have created.
BTW, I learnt more Javascript today than I had in the past 22 years of my life( Which was close to zero ). "Function Objects" is a good concept. The speed at which I could get results was amazing. There is a lot more to explore. So, until next weekend, goodbye Javascript! |
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| Stock market analysis and speculation |
[Apr. 28th, 2006|12:26 am] |
I regularly track a few stocks and almost all news associated with those companies. Not that I have a billion dollars to invest , but just out of the curiosity about what these companies are doing and also because I find this very exciting. Exciting, partly because of the well spiced up news that I read.
I recently got to witness one such news material from the inside ( The event is irrelevant for this blog ) and compare that with what my trusted news sites report.
Its interesting how the specialists and analysts write their guidance. At best , I must say they are merely good story writers who get bits of news from here and there ( Could be genuine news) and weave an interesting story by putting the companies as characters. Some of the news clips speak of company as an emotional character with qualities like self-esteem, revenge and what not. Not that these are totally irrelvant, but most companies today (Atleast those who have been burned almost to death before they started breathing again) are not human characters. The are run by sane people who make decisions that make business sense. It doesn't make sense thinking of a company as a character and speculate emotionally about what could be the next move.
In a fairly big organization, most employees are barely aware about what is going on in another office location, let alone analysts knowing it. Even if the analysts happen to know something, it is foggy at best. So, speculating based on such information, and people actually taking that seriously is a scary situation.
I wonder how people could make up news and boldly publish it. Maybe it is the hope that the prediction comes true ( and the extremely positive outcome of that), that keeps these people writing such stories. But, what a sad thing to do for a living! |
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| Linux 3D Desktop |
[Mar. 17th, 2006|10:39 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | 3d, linux, suse | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  happy | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Louis Armstrong - What a wonderful world | ] |
I tried Kororaa last morning and I must say I was very impressed. I have used Project Looking Glass before and I thought it totally rocked, but is quite resource hungry. XGL on the other hand is so snappy that you'll get used to using those super eye-candy features, without even bothering about system resources or actually making an effort to use those features. If you can not relate to what I'm saying, download Project Looking Glass and use it. The sluggishness comes very much in the way while you use its 3D features.
But I must admit, there are not as many "coolness factor increasing" features yet in the XGL/Compiz (like for example, the wonderful minimization effect or stacking of windows in Looking Glass) I'm sure they'll come shortly. The best part is that it will all come without any effort with SUSE 10.1! How much easier could that get ?
If you can't wait until then, get a copy of Kororaa Live CD now! Or if downloading that is too much of a hassle, just leave a comment here or send me a mail. If you are at Bangalore, I'll burn a copy for you! |
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| Totally Wired! |
[Mar. 10th, 2006|03:09 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | internet | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | hopeful | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Prayers for a quick recovery of del.icio.us | ] |
You'll only know how unimaginably dependent you are upon online services when *any* one of them goes offline , planned or not! |
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| March of the Penguins |
[Feb. 20th, 2006|02:20 pm] |
March of the Penguins is a must watch. Morgan Freeman's narration is outstanding. I hope a movie is made about how this documentary was shot. I really want to know how people got so close to penguins. After watching the documentary, tell me if you are not moved!
Note : I did not say port 6346 anywhere in this post. |
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| Localization |
[Nov. 9th, 2005|08:54 pm] |
If all portuguese suddenly stop supporting portuguese software localization, some guys in Brazil would probably take up that job. If the powerful Brazil also shows its back to localization, some guys at Guinea-Bissau would probably take up that job. But what happens if Kannada speaking people do not contribute to kannada software localization ? Will somebody in Tamil Nadu take up that job ? Will somebody at France take up that job? The reality is that about 50 million people will be deprived of software in their native language. This is a scary situation of a language being the cause for the isolation of a large population. It is ofen seen that when Indian language support is spoken about in softwares, the main emphasis seems to be on tamil and hindi. This may be because of the developers being comfortable with those languges because of those languages being their native languages. But very rearely have I seen heart-felt support for Kannada. Bangalore, the hub of most software activities seems to have forgotten that if it does not contribute to promoting kannada software (localization) ,no one will. There are some efforts. But I do not see anything that is close to the scale that it must be. I guess some of us "techies" must start contributing in the localization of some important applications like :
1. Openoffice Writer
2. GAIM
3. Firefox
When I used to assist some elder people at a computer institute to use a computer to get their jobs done, I realized that most elder people do not use softwares inspite of access to a computer because,
1. They are scared that something could go "wrong" and that they must be really careful in using this machine. So, the amount of content that elder people explore is exponentially lesser that that a young college under grad would.
2. Softwares do not have very intuitive GUI that actually lead them to use them.
3. Language barrier.
It is therefore imperetive that the "fear factor" first be expelled. Next, there must be emphasis on pictures rather than text. (Pictures that peole are used to). Lastly, if text is to be used ( for help or for description of a feature) it must be in a local language.
Let me briefly describe an incident that happened a few day back :
My dad recently wanted to record some audio content and transfer that to a relative. My music system was broken at that time. So, I thought Audacity would be a perfect solution, because the recorded content could eaily be transferred onto a CD. But that catch was that my dad is not very confortable using a computer.( With barriers 1 , 2 and 3 as stated above).
This meant that I had to be present to operate the software (Audacity in this case) while my dad recorded the content. This is fine, but was not acceptable to me as I felt that I must do something to get my dad to see the computer as a useful tool rather than a geek box.
So, I took about an hour and a half to create a simple tutorial with screen shots illustrating how audacity is used to do a simple recording. The tutorial had clear instructions in Kannada about what had to be clicked and what was to be done. I printed the sheets and left them on the table and told my dad to follow the sheets and that nothing could possibly go "wrong" and if he felt something really went "wrong" he could simply shutdown the computer or if that would not work, I told him to press the power button to put the computer off.
When I was back from work, and turned my desktop ON, I was pleasantly surprised that my dad had actually recorded the content following my tutorial!
When I asked him how he felt the whole operation, he told me that the buttons were very familiar , as they were the ones used on a tape recorder. So, it was an "easy" task!
Therefore, I feel , armed with localized language softwares and a good user manual combined with a good GUI, computers could certainly reach the common man. |
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| Open Suse 10! |
[Oct. 29th, 2005|10:45 pm] |
I'm now on Open Suse 10, and I love the look and feel. Its a relief to know that 2 days of download has not gone a waste. YaST just works!
I had a bit of a problem in getting GRUB to boot Windows.
Windows is on an IDE drive and SUSE is on a SATA drive. The new boot loader is on the SATA drive. So, I edited the Windows part of the entry in /boot/grub/menu.lst as follows :
title Windows
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader (hd1,0)+1
And Windows is loaded without any issues.
There is one problem though :
There is no x86_64 version of banshee-helix plugin. So, I'm unable to play MP3 files on banshee. Ofcourse there is Amarok , Real Player and others. But it seems to be a strange inconsistency in the released versions of helix plugins. Hopefully a package will be released soon.
Need I say anything about beagle? |
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| Random thoughts |
[Sep. 25th, 2005|10:14 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | thoughts | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  contemplative | ] |
There is so much that this world has to offer. Little could I understand this a few months back. I am now slowly assimilating this fact. It seems to be a very positive thing, that there is so much that could be done. But the problem is that there is so very much that the world has to offer, that I guess one lifetime is certainly insufficient. So there comes the painful problem of "prioritizing".
Coming out of under graduate college is like looking at a thick beam of light diverging through a concave lens. Try as hard as you want, but some beams will go away forever. The mammoth task is to choose the "right" beam. I guess "right" is not the right word. I must probably say the mammoth task is to place as many convex lenses at the right places, as required, to get one final desired beam out (or atleast a part of it).
One damn lie that is taught at school is that academic success brings every other success along with it. God save those who actually are gullible enough to believe this. I have realized this after a bit of thought : Academic success brings academic success. Period. For everything else, you've got to work for it just like you worked for academic success. I choose to leave financial success out here. Financial success has no logic and even if it does have some logic, it means very little to me to actually deliberate about.
My thoughts are getting way too random to even put them under the subject "Random Thoughts", so I'll stop for now. Probably I'll continue the flow in another post. |
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| Netscape Innovtion |
[Sep. 9th, 2005|12:39 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | excited | ] |
I wouldn't understand what it meant when I used to hear people remark that Netscape was a real innovator, and that innovation has almost died in browsers after the death of netscape. That was because I found Mozilla ( and now Firefox) , and Netscape 6 & 7 series adding so much functionality with every release, that I could barely imagine what Netscape in the early days of version 3 was like.
Until now ....
I just installed Netscape 3.0 ( Yes 3.0 , Not 8.0 ). To put it in short, I'm stunned. I can't believe that there was so much functionality packed in a 3.4 MB executable that too almost a decade ago. What I see now as modern browsers are merely netscape enhancements. Netscape 3.0 rocks now just as it did then( for an entirely different reason, though ). I wonder what browsers would have been if the original developers had stayed on and continued development!
I wonder what the "Netscape" of this decade is!
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| JAVA is not sucky! |
[Jul. 2nd, 2005|11:58 pm] |
I totally fail to understand why many people fail to appreciate JAVA on the desktop. I've heard many top developers comment about how sucky JAVA UI is and how it "fails" to fit into the desktop.
JAVA was the first OO language that I learnt. I was, and still am impressed by how amazing this language is, how easily I get results. The UI was and is perfectly fine with me. I am among those who appreciate SWING.
But why am I writing all this ?
I just installed Limewire on my Fedora Core 4 machine now. And the first window that popped up was a ZeroG JAVA based installer. I am really happy with the way the ZeroG guys have developed the installer. This just brought the JAVA thought back on my mind. So, I still am where I started .... why not JAVA ? |
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| Drive! |
[Jun. 18th, 2005|02:49 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | contemplative | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Jasmine Flower - Kenny G | ] |
Not once did I think I'd be in the world of automobiles. I have always been fascinated by flight, but I never dreamt that I'd be in the automotive domain. I now know that they are domains that benefit from each other's research and are increasingly similar by the day.
I embrace this with open arms. Hope to have a memorable experience as I drive through this. |
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| Law of Absorption |
[Jun. 7th, 2005|07:50 pm] |
Sumedha's Law of Absorption :
For any member of the genus Homo and especially of the species Homo sapiens , involved in the application of scientific and mathematical principles to practical ends such as the design, manufacture, and operation of efficient and economical structures, machines, processes, and systems , the academic absorption index of the brain is a quantity that varies almost randomly most of the time, but has a defined behaviour about the regions of the time axis that are periods when examinations prevail. Around this region, it increases in an exponential manner with respect to time as it reaches the points of presence of examinations and it tends to infinity just before the start of an exam. There is a discontinuity at this point, in that, Left Hand Limit of this point tends towards infinity, where as the Right Hand Limit tends towards zero. From this point on, the academic absorption index continues its random behaviour, until the region of the next examination is reached. |
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| Beagle! |
[Apr. 15th, 2005|08:49 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | amused | ] |
So what if I dont have a Tiger? So what if I cant use Spotlight?
I have an amazing OS and can use this amazing tool! |
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| Why does it always rain on me? |
[Apr. 14th, 2005|10:55 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  blah | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Why does it always rain on me? | ] |
Why does it always rain on me?
I can’t sleep tonight
Everybody saying everything’s alright
Still I can’t close my eyes
I’m seeing a tunnel at the end of all these lights
Sunny days
Where have you gone?
I get the strangest feeling you belong
Why does it always rain on me?
Is it because I lied when I was seventeen?
Why does it always rain on me?
Even when the sun is shining
I can’t avoid the lightning
I can’t stand myself
I’m being held up by invisible men
Still life on a shelf when
I got my mind on something else
Sunny days
Where have you gone?
I get the strangest feeling you belong
Why does it always rain on me?
Is it because I lied when I was seventeen?
Why does it always rain on me?
Even when the sun is shining
I can’t avoid the lightning
Oh, where did the blue skies go?
And why is it raining so?
It’s so cold
I can’t sleep tonight
Everybody saying everything’s alright
Still I can’t close my eyes
I’m seeing a tunnel at the end of all these lights
Sunny days
Where have you gone?
I get the strangest feeling you belong
Why does it always rain on me?
Is it because I lied when I was seventeen?
Why does it always rain on me?
Even when the sun is shining
I can’t avoid the lightning
Oh, where did the blue skies go?
And why is it raining so?
It’s so cold
Why does it always rain on me?
Why does it always rain...
-Travis |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 13th, 2005|12:30 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | hopeful | ] |
I don't know who would like to use Windows if the following programs run well on Linux :
- Windows Media Player 9/10 with SRS WOW Effects
- Microsoft Clip Organizer
- Yahoo! Messenger with LaunchCast
- QuickTime Player
- RealOne Player(Windows Like , Not Helix)
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