[{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/posts/","section":"Blog","summary":"","title":"Blog"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/categories/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Categories"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/labor-law-advisor/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Labor Law Advisor"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/lla/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"LLA"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/meet-up/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Meet Up"},{"content":" It was an ordinary weekend like any other weekend. I was caught up in putting my new born baby to sleep, when student suddenly my phone vibrated to show a notification which I found quite interesting. It was RJ on the Jagruk Journal community intimating that they were in Delhi hosting a meet and greet event in collaboration with Stable Money team and that if we were interested, we can come.\nRJ, aka Rishabh Jain, CEO of a famous Youtube channel, Labor Law Advisor and also the host to many videos and shorts, is someone I had greatly come to appreciate over past few years. I also wrote about LLA being one of my favourite YT channel few years back! I find their videos on finance highly educational and greatly unbiased, and together with Mandeep made me along with millions highly informed.\nSo it was very unexpected that I was given the chance to meet them. But was as I reading it right? Was I dreaming? Was it a scam?\nIt wasn’t! It was actually RJ posting himself! While I knew about the event, but I was not formally invited. Apparently, it was a wild card entry! One last chance to attend the event!\nFirst, I hesitated. Had doubts to go due to family commitments. But an opportunity knocked on my door and I wasn’t going to miss it. So I discussed it with my partner, packed my JJ Journal to get them signed and got ready to go. Event was in Crown Plaza, an hour away from my home but I was determined to meet the LLA team!\nReached an hour late, but better late than never I thought. I was surprised to see that there were more than 400 people at the event (Yes I counted the chairs afterwards). First, I was impressed at the gathering and soon a bit sad. I thought that no chance I am going to meet team LLA in person with so many people around!\nI saw Harish on the big stage, one of the co-founders of Stable Money on the stage. And while I invested in FDs for my father through their app, I had no idea about the person behind the recent start-up. So it was fascinating to hear his story and they have come up with more products like bonds with a clean UI and fresh approach for next gen investors!\nBut then Mandeep announced that RJ and Andy were about to perform a skit and I was excited to finally be able to see them. Entry of RJ and Andy was something out of a movie. Great ramp walk! And the skit was great. Especially about the bit where we personal finance guys loves sharing our gyan and making an excel sheet before deciding everything!\nAfter the event, I was totally surprised to see how RJ, Mandeep and Andy stood with the crowd to let people have selfies with them. They made sure no one goes disappointed.\nRJ, the Man Himself! RJ kept asking the community who they were, what do they do, and having lovely exchanges with them. He even took selfies himself and videos for those who came in groups. It was totally different and surreal watching him online. His voice sounded more commanding in person and aura more real. I felt special when he took out time to sign my copy of the Jagruk Journal, mentioning that we were on the same boat, as we both became recent parent.\nMandeep kept discussing personal finance queries from the crowd while taking selfies. He was also more grounded, was making everyone jealous sporting great hair but not shying away from anyone who wanted to interact with him. His signature was short and sweet to keep learning, which I greatly admire.\nMoney Minded Mandeep And Andy was every bit straight out of his shorts! An appearance everyone was waiting for, after his apparent lack of performance in new shorts. A little secret, he did whisper that he’ll “be back”!\nAndy, even when he was getting late to catch his flight to Jaipur, took out time for signing my copy or JJ and write a lovely message!\nAnari Andy! Overall it was fascinating to meet everyone standing just inches away and talking to the “fans” face to face. In never felt that they were a personality. As RJ said in one of the skits, being “kinda famous” has its ups and down.\nI remained in the hall right to the end, till RJ had to literally step down from the podium as stage was started to get dismantled by staff. Shook hands with RJ for one last time as he departed, and I exited from Crown Plaza, with a big fulfilling grin over my face.\nI had taken a metro on the way to the event, but took a cab on the way back. Not because it was the best financial decision, but I had to just sit for a while and contemplate my amazing experience meeting the team LLA and what I can do in my life further to make me and my family more happy.\nAlso honourable mention to an acquaintance I made with one of the community member, with whom I got a chance to sign the copy with RJ! (Name withheld for privacy reason).\nTo conclude, I am taking a big inspiration from team LLA, after meeting them in person, and hoping to meet them again and have more conversation than remain star struck!\nBig thanks to the staff of Jarguk team LLA and the chance to meet them in person! Until next time…. Be Jagruk!\n","date":"8 February 2026","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2026/02/meeting-team-lla/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/20260111_1701285347147024554326061-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4739\" srcset=\"/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/20260111_1701285347147024554326061-1024x768.jpg 1024w, /wp-content/uploads/2026/02/20260111_1701285347147024554326061-300x225.jpg 300w, /wp-content/uploads/2026/02/20260111_1701285347147024554326061-768x576.jpg 768w, /wp-content/uploads/2026/02/20260111_1701285347147024554326061-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, /wp-content/uploads/2026/02/20260111_1701285347147024554326061.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" /\u003e\u003c/figure\u003e \n\u003cp\u003eIt was an ordinary weekend like any other weekend. I was caught up in putting my new born baby to sleep, when student suddenly my phone vibrated to show a notification which I found quite interesting. It was RJ on the Jagruk Journal community intimating that they were in Delhi hosting a meet and greet event in collaboration with Stable Money team and that if we were interested, we can come.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Meeting Team LLA"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/category/personal/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Personal"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tags/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Tags"},{"content":"Hi there. I am Vineet, and I am an Astronaut, drifting across in the space watching the view from within ISS over one of many oceans, and trying to find the boundaries which every nation so proudly draws over a map.\nWell I can only wish! Read about me here\u0026hellip;\nMore about me →\nA few handpicked articles # Riding with Suzuki Gixxer Rocket League: Game that took over my life Ascension to PC Master Race in 11 years Amazon Prime Video: Update after 9 months of subscription Netflix: A Binge Watcher\u0026rsquo;s Haven Year 2014 at a Glance Taj Mahal \u0026mdash; A 360\u0026deg; Panorama Decoding Predestination The Newbies Guide To Ubuntu ","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/","section":"Vineet Kumar","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHi there. I am Vineet, and I am an Astronaut, drifting across in the space watching the view from within ISS over one of many oceans, and trying to find the boundaries which every nation so proudly draws over a map.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Vineet Kumar"},{"content":"I was fed up of Windows update erasing my grub entries. So I have documented the steps to fix it, the steps which works for me. I hope it helps me when I lost my grub bootloader again.\nTo fix the bootloader, follow the below steps:\nBoot from a Manjaro Live USB Open Terminal Type below command:\nsudo manjaro-chroot -a grub-install /dev/sda grub-install --recheck /dev/sda update-grub Source: https://gist.github.com/dianjuar/a6e0d801a9f71f8edc06321178390320 ","date":"1 January 2023","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2023/01/fixing-manjaro-boot-menu/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI was fed up of Windows update erasing my grub entries. So I have documented the steps to fix it, the steps which works for me. I hope it helps me when I lost my grub bootloader again.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fixing Manjaro Boot Menu"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/grub/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Grub"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/category/technology/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Technology"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/category/finance/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Finance"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/finance/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Finance"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/finance-youtubers/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Finance Youtubers"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/financial-literacy/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Financial Literacy"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/investing/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Investing"},{"content":"Indian economy have a bright future. It have come a long way since the Harshad Mehta times where loopholes could be use to become millionaires. The market have matured a lot since then and there are plenty of opportunity for becoming winners, if you have the discipline to follow the rules of the game. My Finance Journey #My financial journey took a long time to start. Although I started investing in tax saver mutual funds probably since 2016, I never actually set foot in actively trading or investing. The equity market always fascinated me. But before I jumped onboard, I knew the horror stories of people loosing their entire savings in few days. So I was always keen on learning to swim before I set foot in the uncharted water. Then the covid-19 happened.\nImpact of Covid-19 {.wp-block-heading} #Impact of COVID-19 on NIFTY 50 (Source: Wikipedia)\nWhile the virus had a devastating impact on millions of life, world got into lock-down and the market plunged to 4 year low, it also gave opportunity to those investors who knew, “Corrections Are Temporary, Growth Is Permanent”.\nSo it was in the summer of 2020 that I got myself a demat account along with millions of people who did, making 2020 the record breaking year for most demat accounts opened. I then started to learn the intricacies of trading and investing myself with a small capital of 10k in each trading and Mutual funds. While I lost a lot of money in trading I also made money in MF due to market rallying post crash. So it was time for myself to learn why was it like that. In my journey over the last one year I got to learn an incredible amount of learning from YouTube, from some of the experts in the field who know what they are talking about. This article is the list of such mentors, that I wish a lot more people follow.\nPranjal Kamra (Link) # Pranjal Kamra He\u0026#8217;s what I like to call, an optimistic investor. His investing style is for the long term, in quality value stocks and mostly in Mutual Funds. It\u0026#8217;s akin Warren Buffet style who made his fortune, investing in quality stocks and sitting on it for decades. I really like the way Pranjal explains things. He comes across as a very calm, confident, clear and someone who likes to plan things for the long term. One of this video on financial planning is so basic, it should be taught in schools. But alas maybe Personal Finance isn\u0026#8217;t in the scope of our education. Labour Law Advisor (Link) {.wp-block-heading} # The two duos of this channel, Rishabh Jain and Mandeep Gill are one of the most chill financial personalities you may ever get to see on screen. They produce one of the most thorough videos on various aspects of finance so that we can save the most amount of money while being actively aware about it. I give kudos to the efforts and appreciate the stuff they bring out. While they don’t talk about shares and mutual funds for the most part, their videos are more on the side of general financial and laws awareness that probably no financial institution wants you to know about.\nInvestAajForKal (Link) # Anant Ladda who\u0026#8217;s the founder of this channel, is one of the most knowledgeable and experienced person in \u0026#8220;trading\u0026#8221;. He knows how the market cycle works, he\u0026#8217;s aware about the trading psychology, the opportunities in the market on a daily basis, in short he\u0026#8217;s basically is the master of whether he would get snakes or ladders in every trade he\u0026#8217;s going to execute. While he acknowledges that no one in the market can be 100% right, he is most of the time right, and when he\u0026#8217;s not he does acknowledge it and learns from it. There it is, the most important word he focus on, \u0026#8220;learning\u0026#8221;. Anant Ladda Although to get access to his most valuable he have affiliate programs, where we can get access to his private channel, it’s well worth to join one. He also have a paid YouTube membership and paid seminars, but the videos and series he releases freely are no less than gold! He makes a video on the market on a “DAILY” basis. He even made one when he was on his first anniversary engagement. That’s some dedication. Recently he have started to create a series on 8 trading strategies and I am looking forward for it.\nRachna Ranade (Link) # Rachna Ranade Her middle name is \u0026#8220;Phadke\u0026#8221; (blast). What more shall I say about her? She also makes videos about financial literacy, investing and trading. What I like the most in her videos are they are filled with visual effects to accompany the content and a lot of humor is sprinkled over it, so learning becomes entertaining. VRDNation (Link) # The founder of VRDNation, VRD Rao, is mind bogglingly gold! He\u0026#8217;s a very active trader who mainly trades in Bank Nifty, and while he\u0026#8217;s trading he would actually go around showing his trades and where he got it right and even when he got it wrong. He would actually show his trading sessions on zerodha and explain his trading psylosophies, which not a lot of traders do. He made a lot of money by investing huge amount when the market dip in pandemic and even made videos to show how much he made exactly with the stock list and all. Mad respect for being so transparent with traders. Some of his videos give such a huge practical insight that sometimes it feels \u0026#8220;illegal\u0026#8221; to watch! VRD Rao Asset Yogi (Link) # A very humble and genuine guy who gives lessons about everything related to finance. Granted I haven\u0026#8217;t watched enough of his videos to make a judgement but his library of videos is worth going over. P R Sundar (Link) # While his about me page on YouTube doesn\u0026#8217;t even have a description, all his videos will always start with the intro, \u0026#8220;Hi, This is PR Sundar\u0026#8221;. And a lot of viewers love him for that. A truly humble and real, most successful Options trader from the south, he deals with a sum of money that a common man might not be able to achieve, but his learning and stories makes it well worth following him. I follow him for the experience and a bit of market updates from her perspective. He also is a very subtle way of humor that gets lots of praise. Yadnya Investment Academy (Link) # He makes videos on current market affairs and decoding the market on regular basis in small and sweet videos that are easily digestible at the end of the day. He has a no beating around the bushes philosophy and get straight in and out of the point. Siddharth Bhanushali (Link) # Relatively new channel, but the founder isn\u0026#8217;t new to the market. Sid is actually on a mission to impact 1 crore family\u0026#8217;s financial life before 31st December 2025. And how does he plan to do it? By actually teaching a strategy and encouraging to take the trades, practically and with discipline. This is the word you will hear at the end of EVERY of this videos, \u0026#8220;Discipline\u0026#8221;, and for a good reason. But be aware, his videos will be like a punch in the gut. He\u0026#8217;s too real and is akin your big brother who wants to see you succeed and isn\u0026#8217;t afraid to tell you how much you suck, if you do indeed suck. I love the energy he brings onto the table and his videos are regular doses of motivation I need to follow my own dreams of being \u0026#8220;disciplined\u0026#8221;. Ankur Warikoo (Link) # If you are in your late teens or 20s, he\u0026#8217;s a must to follow. Actually make it compulsory. Cause the things he teaches will have the most profound impact if you are in that age bracket. However I am in my 30s and still love to watch his videos. He\u0026#8217;s the founder of nearbuy.com and have a wealth of experience as an entrepreneur. He\u0026#8217;s a ray of sunshine and a compass for the new generation and admire him for that. He even have a podcast where he talks about his life experiences and it\u0026#8217;s almost compulsory to hear. He have a lot to share! Honestly by Tanmay Bhat (Link) # A lot of you would know Tanmay for being a comedian. Well what would he do when pandemic stuck? He opened a second channel for personal financial literacy. Now, imagine what happens when comedy meets financial literally? Well financial education becomes fun! And so are his videos. I was introduced to his channel with the series \u0026#8220;Clueless with Tanmay\u0026#8221; where he talked about how clueless we actually are when it comes to finance which was very entertaining. Lately he have started to make a series on Trading with Prateek Singh (another good human and founder of learnapp.co) and it\u0026#8217;s good for beginners. I feel I have got a lot of help in my financial journey from the guys and gals mentioned above and I hope this list helps someone like me who was as clueless as me in the finance world!\n","date":"27 June 2021","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2021/06/my-favorite-finance-youtubers/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIndian economy have a bright future. It have come a long way since the Harshad Mehta times where loopholes could be use to become millionaires. The market have matured a lot since then and there are plenty of opportunity for becoming winners, if you have the discipline to follow the rules of the game.\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/AttractMoney-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3069\" width=\"631\" height=\"340\" srcset=\"/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/AttractMoney-1.png 631w, /wp-content/uploads/2021/06/AttractMoney-1-300x162.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 631px) 100vw, 631px\" /\u003e \u003c/figure\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"my-finance-journey\" class=\"relative group\"\u003eMy Finance Journey \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#my-finance-journey\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eMy financial journey took a long time to start. Although I started investing in tax saver mutual funds probably since 2016, I never actually set foot in actively trading or investing. The equity market always fascinated me. But before I jumped onboard, I knew the horror stories of people loosing their entire savings in few days. So I was always keen on learning to swim before I set foot in the uncharted water. Then the covid-19 happened.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My favorite Finance YouTubers"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/stocks/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Stocks"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/trading/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Trading"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/youtube/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Youtube"},{"content":"step1: make the disk as GPT\nstep2: make 512 MB fat32 partition as first partition\nstep3: make 4096MB fat32 partition as second partition\nstep4: make partition of desired size for linux as third partition\nstep5: make swap partition\nstep6: leave the reast as unallocated space for linux\nif you have multi disk, I recommend having a separate /home partition on the second disk\nif you have a single disk, it is still a good idea to have a separate /home partition, but you’ll have to change the above scheme accordingly\nimportant thing to remember is whatever you want windows to use should be as unallocated space at the end of the drive\nI like to put swap between linux and windows as a logical separator, so something like\n|ESP|Linux Recovery|Linux active partition(s)|SWAP|Empty space then open up pop installer\nI recommend using btrfs for both / and /home, but you can use what you want\nYou can follow this guide for the btrfs steps (for POP OS) : https://mutschler.eu/linux/install-guides/pop-os-btrfs/\nFor Manjaro:\nbut make sure to properly adapt it to your setup\nimportant things to note are\n-\u0026gt; subvolume creation\n-\u0026gt; changing UUID and mount options in fstab\n-\u0026gt; changing mount options in /etc/kernelstub and /boot/efi/\n","date":"22 January 2021","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/btrfs/","section":"Vineet Kumar","summary":"\u003cp\u003estep1: make the disk as GPT\u003cbr\u003e\nstep2: make 512 MB fat32 partition as first partition\u003cbr\u003e\nstep3: make 4096MB fat32 partition as second partition\u003cbr\u003e\nstep4: make partition of desired size for linux as third partition\u003cbr\u003e\nstep5: make swap partition\u003cbr\u003e\nstep6: leave the reast as unallocated space for linux\u003c/p\u003e","title":"btrfs"},{"content":"With incidents such as Australian bush fire, Covid-19 Pandemic and civil unrest in many countries over one reason or the other, 2020 is basically proving to be one long nightmare. To make it worse for me, my server got hacked, majorly due to lack of proper security or a bad WordPress vulnerability (To put it in the words of Einstein, mildly, human stupidity has no limit).\nSo I decided to migrate the server to a new one and this time decided to invest some time in making it more secure. This guide is basically a document to setup such a server to host WordPress sites with as much security hardening as I possibly can do. 2020, bring it on!\nSetting up Server and Hostname # Create account on Digital Ocean. (My referral). Create a Droplet in Digital Ocean. Choose latest Debian version. Enter the Server IP address into Domain\u0026#8217;s Advance DNS which can be find on site where domain is registered. Host Value TTL Comment @ Server IP Automatic www Server IP Automatic srv Server IP Automatic (may not be required) Host Name Settings Type Value MXE Record Server IP Mail Settings : MXE Record After this everything is done on Domain side. Now we have to configure the server.\nLogin with root from terminal (on Linux) or PuTTY (from Windows) with below command: ssh root@ServerIPAddress -enter password -change password for root //terminal will ask to set new password Now install the firewall on server. sudo apt-get update //update the newest version of packages sudo apt upgrade\t//upgrade the packages (if any) sudo apt-get install ufw //install ufw firewall sudo ufw status verbose\t//check status of firewall if active or inactive (should be inactive at this point) sudo ufw default deny incoming\t//deny incoming connections sudo ufw default allow outgoing\t//allow outgoing connections Enable IPv6 with UFW sudo nano /etc/default/ufw //open ufw file in nano editor and check if \"IPV6=yes\", if not, then set \"IPV6=yes\", save (Ctrl + X) and exit Allow connections on UFW: sudo ufw allow 22 //to allow SSH (like connecting from Terminal) sudo ufw allow 25 //to allow SMTP connections (Used in sending emails) sudo ufw allow 80 //to allow HTTP connections (Normal web traffic) sudo ufw allow 443 //to allow HTTPS connections (Secure channel) Optional: //Optional sudo ufw allow 2222/tcp //to allow custom ssh if using it sudo ufw allow 5000:5003/tcp //to allow specific ports tcp sudo ufw allow 5000:5003/udp //to allow specific ports udp Note: in order to deny any connection, replace “allow” with “deny” in above commands.\nRestart ufw firewall using below commands: sudo ufw disable //disable ufw sudo ufw enable //enable ufw (make sure port 22 was enabled before prompting Yes to confirmation) Create user on server with below command: sudo adduser username //create new user sudo usermod -aG sudo username //add user to sudo group su - username //login as the user just created (Or optionally use below step) Login, In Terminal using new user with below command: ssh username@DomainName enter user's password Disable root on debian in order to provide more security to server: sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config //edit \"sshd_config\" file in nano editor Make following changes in file: PermitRootLogin no\t//remove # from \"#PermitRootLogin yes\" and make the line as \"PermitRootLogin no\" AllowUsers username\t//in the end of the file add \"AllowUsers username\", save and exit (ctrl+X and then Y) sudo systemctl restart sshd\t//Restart SSH service Try logging in with `root@ServerIPAddress`, it should deny login due to permission denied. Now only those users will be able to login using SSH which were set in \u0026#8220;`AllowUsers username`\u0026#8221; command. Install nginx on server using below command: sudo apt install nginx\t//install Nginx Now test if nginx is install by checking ServerIPAddress in URL on browser. It should show \u0026#8220;Welcome to nginx\u0026#8221; page if correctly installed. Install Mariadb (MySql) on server using below command: sudo apt install mariadb-server mariadb-client\t//install MariaDB server and MariaDb Client sudo systemctl start mariadb\t//start MariaDb server sudo systemctl status mariadb //verify if MariaDb service is running --Optional sudo mysql_secure_installation\t//Secure Database installation -current password for root : (just press enter here) -Change the root password? : y\t// Enter a secure password for root -Remove anonymous users? : y -Disallow root login remotely? : y -Remove test database and access to it? : y -Reload privilege tables now? : y sudo mysql -u root -p\t//login to MariDB shell GRANT ALL ON *.* TO 'username'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'NewPwdForUser';\t//This 'Username' will be created in MariaDb as new user with the new pwd entered in 'NewPwdForUser' FLUSH PRIVILEGES;\t//for the changes to take effect \\q\t//to exit fom MaiaDb shell Install PHP for processing using below command: sudo apt install php-fpm php-mysql\t//install php-fpm and php-mysql packages Download, Install and configure PhpMyAdmin (be sure to find link to latest PhpMyAdmin from https://www.phpmyadmin.net/files/): wget https://files.phpmyadmin.net/phpMyAdmin/5.0.2/phpMyAdmin-5.0.2-all-languages.zip sudo apt install unzip unzip phpMyAdmin-5.0.2-all-languages.zip rm phpMyAdmin-5.0.2-all-languages.zip sudo mv /home/vyom/phpMyAdmin-5.0.2-all-languages/ /opt/ sudo mv /opt/phpMyAdmin-5.0.2-all-languages /opt/phpMyAdmin\tsudo ln -s /opt/phpMyAdmin/ /srv/phpmyadmin\tThe last command creates a link for `/opt/phpMyAdmin` as `/srv/phpmyadmin` Install certbot so that SSL certificates can be installed for every domain: sudo apt install certbot cd /etc/letsencrypt sudo openssl dhparam -out dhparams.pem 2048 The last command generates dhparams file. It will take about a min or two depending on server speed. Create certificate for the server phpmyadmin page we are trying to host sudo service nginx stop sudo certbot certonly --standalone --preferred-challenges http -d srv.DomainName -Agree -Yes -No sudo service nginx restart Configure nginx configuration to serve server page cd /etc/nginx/sites-available/ sudo nano srv.DomainName.conf\t//create a new file \"srv.DomainName.conf\" as per requirement to enable nginx and ssl etc. Enter a proper nginx config like below: server { listen 1111 ssl; ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/srv.sitename.tld/fullchain.pem; ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/srv.sitename.tld/privkey.pem; ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on; ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/dhparams.pem; ssl_ciphers '\u0026lt;the long SSL cipher string\u003e'; root /srv/phpmyadmin; error_page 404 /404.html; index index.html index.php; server_name srv.sitename.tld; location / { try_files $uri $uri/ index.php?$args =404; } location ~ \\.php$ { include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf; fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.3-fpm.sock; } }\nAllow the port number specified in the configuration file in firewall sudo ufw allow 1111 Make symlink of the nginx config file in sites-enabled folder sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/srv.sitename.tld.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/srv.sitename.tld.conf Restart nginx service sudo service nginx restart If there are no error till now, then you have successfully setup nginx and certbot The phpmyadmin page should be available at the URL: srv.sitename.tld:1111 ## Configure the WordPress site {.wp-block-heading} Now we can host one or more WordPress based sites on the server. Below are the steps to host one WordPress site (DomainName.tld): Create directory structure for WordPress cd /home/username mkdir www cd www mkdir DomainName.tld cd DomainName.tld Now download WordPress tar file wget https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz Extract the tar file tar -xzvf latest.tar.gz Rename the wordpress folder (just extracted) to public_html sudo mv wordpress public_html Open the URL srv.sitename.tld:1111 and create the database with following name username_sitename Encoding: utf8mb4_general_ci Create the site\u0026#8217;s nginx config: sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/DomainName.tld.conf Enter a proper config like below (php version might need to be modified depending on the version installed on your server): server { listen 80 ; server_name DomainName.tld www.DomainName.tld; return 301 https://$server_name/$request_uri; } server { listen 443 ssl; ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/DomainName.tld/fullchain.pem; ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/DomainName.tld/privkey.pem; ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on; ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/dhparams.pem; ssl_ciphers \u0026lsquo;\u0026lt;the long SSL cipher string\u0026gt;\u0026rsquo;;\nroot /home/user/www/DomainName.tld/public_html; error_page 404 /404.html; index index.html index.php; server_name DomainName.tld www.DomainName.tld; location / { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args; } location ~ \\.php$ { include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf; fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.3-fpm.sock; } }\nCreate a symlink of the config in sites-enabled folder: sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/DomainName.tld.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/DomainName.tld.conf Create SSL certificate for the site: sudo service nginx stop sudo certbot certonly --standalone --preferred-challenges http -d DomainName.tld sudo service nginx start If there are no error in the above step, then proceed to provide to change permissions to WordPress folder: cd /home/user/www/ sudo chown www-data:www-data -R * // Let Apache be owner sudo find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \\; sudo find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \\; If there is no error in above step, then proceed to open the URL: DomainName.tld in the browser and setup WordPress. At this moment, you can restore the WordPress site from a backup taken by backup plugins like UpDraft, which restores your blog posts and SQL database. Follow this guide to setup more than one WordPress sites too. ## Configure Email Configuration {.wp-block-heading} Install postfix (let default values be there in prompts): sudo apt-get install postfix Check if postfix service is enabled: sudo service postfix status Open this file using nano: sudo nano /etc/postfix/main.cf Write following lines in the end of file: virtual_alias_domains = mydomain.com myanotherdomain.com virtual_alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/virtual Create a database like file out of it: postmap /etc/postfix/virtual Create virtual file: sudo nano /etc/postfix/virtual Add entries of email addresses which you want to forward: postmaster info@example.com abuse info@example.com Restart postfix: sudo service postfix reload ## WordPress Security {.wp-block-heading} After the setup you should tighten the access rights, according to Hardening WordPress all files except for wp-content should be writable by your user account only. wp-content must be writable by www-data too. chown \u0026lt;user\u003e:\u0026lt;user\u003e -R *\t// Let your useraccount be owner chown www-data:www-data wp-content // Let apache be owner of wp-content Maybe you want to change the contents in wp-content later on. In this case you could \u003e temporarily change to the user to www-data with su, \u003e give wp-content group write access 775 and join the group www-data \u003e OR mention the following line in end of wp-config.php define('FS_METHOD', 'direct'); Following are some of the steps taken from WordPress Security guide at WPBeginner: Disable File Editing Add following lines in wp-config.php in end: // Disallow File Edit (disabled ability to edit theme from WP GUI define( 'DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT', true ); Disable PHP File Execution in Certain WordPress Directories Create the file wp-content/uploads/.htaccess and write following in it deny from all Limit Login Attempts Install plugin https://wordpress.org/plugins/login-lockdown and limit login: Add Two Factor Authentication Install plugin https://wordpress.org/plugins/two-factor-authentication and enable dual authentication Disable Directory Indexing and Browsing Follow this guide and disable directory indexing and browsing: [https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/why-you-cant-find-htaccess-file-on-your-wordpress-site][1]. And for nginx, from this guide, make changes in nginx.conf similar to following where autoindex is off: server { listen 80; server_name domain.com www.domain.com; access_log /var/...........................; root /path/to/root; location / { index index.php index.html index.htm; } location /somedir { autoindex off; } } Disable XML-RPC in WordPress Follow the guide here (https://www.maketecheasier.com/disable-xml-rpc-wordpress) and disable XML-RPC. For Nginx paste following code in server block: # nginx block xmlrpc.php requests location /xmlrpc.php { deny all; } Scanning WordPress for Malware and Vulnerabilities Use this list to find one an online scanner and scan the site for potential vulnerabilities: https://www.wpbeginner.com/showcase/best-wordpress-vulnerability-scanners-online Making changes in the File Permissions the hard way: You can follow this guide from the horse\u0026#8217;s mouth, to set the correct permissions for WordPress files: ## Configure fail2ban {.wp-block-heading} Server security is of the utmost importance when you are hosting on your own VPS. Since a VPS is just another computer albeit running on some other part of the World, you would need to manage it like so. You would need to regularly keep it updated, review logs and also setup fail2ban, which I had previously not done. (Biggest mistake!) Below are steps to configure fail2ban on the debian server we just configured: Install fail2ban: sudo apt-get install fail2ban To make modifications in fail2ban config, we need to copy a file to /etc/fail2ban/jail.local. This will prevent our changes from being overwritten if a package update provides a new default file: sudo cp /etc/fail2ban/jail.conf /etc/fail2ban/jail.local Open the jail.local file: sudo nano /etc/fail2ban/jail.local It\u0026#8217;s a good idea to add your own IP address or network to the list of exceptions to avoid locking yourself out: ignoreip = 127.0.0.1/8 your_home_IP Increase bantime: bantime = 3600 The findtime specifies an amount of time in seconds and the maxretry directive indicates the number of attempts to be tolerated within that time. If a client makes more than maxretry attempts within the amount of time set by findtime, they will be banned: findtime = 3600 # These lines combine to ban clients that fail maxretry = 6 # to authenticate 6 times within a half hour. You can go in more detail to configure more nginx settings, to make it more secure at this guide. ## Troubleshooting tips {.wp-block-heading} If you need to import an SQL dump on WordPress and error comes up as, \u0026#8220;413 Request Entity Too Large\u0026#8221; then follow these steps: sudo nano /etc/nginx/nginx.conf Add the following line to http or server or location context to increase the size limit in nginx.conf, enter: # set client body size to 5M # client_max_body_size 5M; Then restart nginx: sudo service nginx restart Open php config file: sudo nano /etc/php… Change following line: upload_max_filesize = 5M Restart php: sudo systemctl restart phhttps://wordpress.org/plugins/two-factor-authenticationp7.3-fpm.service To delete empty folders following command can be used: sudo find uploads/ -empty -type d -delete To copy files from local computer to droplet: sudo rsync -zarvh /home/user/desktop/ user@DomainName.tld:/home/user/www/ To copy files from remote to local droplet: sudo rsync -zarvh user@DomainName.tld:/home/user/www/ /home/user/Downloads/MySitesBackup/ ## Conclusion {.wp-block-heading} I think I have barely scratched the surface when it comes to the \u0026#8220;secure\u0026#8221; part of setting up the server, but I think it\u0026#8217;s possibly the best starting ground. I hope to learn and add more tips in this blog as I go along figuring out myself. With the way 2020 is going, no amount of security is going to be enough, but it\u0026#8217;s the \u0026#8220;hope\u0026#8221; that this world is built upon and will truly be the defining part of rest of the year! ## Sources {.wp-block-heading} Initial Server Setup: `https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/initial-server-setup-with-ubuntu-18-04` Setup a Firewall using ufw: `https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-a-firewall-with-ufw-on-ubuntu-18-04` `https://www.tecmint.com/setup-ufw-firewall-on-ubuntu-and-debian` Disable root on debian: `https://linuxhint.com/disable_root_ssh_debian` Installing MariaDB on server: `https://linuxhint.com/install_phpmyadmin_debian_10` Configuring phpMyAdmin: `https://linuxhint.com/install_phpmyadmin_debian_10` Setting up postfix: `https://www.binarytides.com/postfix-mail-forwarding-debian` StackOverflow replies on WordPress File Permission: `https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18352682/correct-file-permissions-for-wordpress` Hardening WordPress Security: `https://wordpress.org/support/article/hardening-wordpress` Increase nginx and PHP limits: `https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-unix-bsd-nginx-413-request-entity-too-large` Setting up fail2ban: `https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-protect-an-nginx-server-with-fail2ban-on-ubuntu-14-04` [1]: https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/why-you-cant-find-htaccess-file-on-your-wordpress-site/","date":"8 June 2020","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2020/06/how-to-setup-wordpress-server-2020/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWith incidents such as Australian bush fire, Covid-19 Pandemic and civil unrest in many countries over one reason or the other, 2020 is basically proving to be one long nightmare. To make it worse for me, my server got hacked, majorly due to lack of proper security or a bad WordPress vulnerability (To put it in the words of Einstein, mildly, human stupidity has no limit).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo I decided to migrate the server to a new one and this time decided to invest some time in making it more secure. This guide is basically a document to setup such a server to host WordPress sites with as much security hardening as I possibly can do. 2020, bring it on!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How to setup WordPress on Digital Ocean (2020)"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/technical/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Technical"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/terminal/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Terminal"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/wordpress/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Wordpress"},{"content":"https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.amazonvideo.livingroom\n","date":"3 December 2019","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/apk/","section":"Vineet Kumar","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.amazonvideo.livingroom\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003ehttps://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.amazonvideo.livingroom\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Apk"},{"content":"Android on TV has a long way to go. There is no clear guide on which apps to use or how to use it when it comes to having the most of Android on a TV. This article is for those who want to claim their Android TV as their own!\nList of apps\nAmazon\nCCleaner\nChrome\n[CPU Identifier][3]\n[Firefox][4]\n[Foxit PDF Reader][5]\n[FTP Server][6]\n[IMDB][7]\n[Internet Speed Meter lite][8]\n[List my apps][9]\n[Google Maps][10]\n[Prime Now][11]\n[Prime Video][12]\n[Steam][13]\nhttps://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.amazonvideo.livingroom\n[3]: /static/apk/CPU Identifier Pro_xsoftstudio.cpu.identifier.pro.apk [4]: /static/apk/Firefox_org.mozilla.firefox.apk [5]: /static/apk/Foxit PDF_com.foxit.mobile.pdf.lite.apk [6]: /static/apk/FTP Server_net.xnano.android.ftpserver.apk [7]: /static/apk/IMDb_com.imdb.mobile.apk [8]: /static/apk/Internet Speed Meter Lite_com.internet.speed.meter.lite.apk [9]: /static/apk/List My Apps_de.onyxbits.listmyapps.apk [10]: /static/apk/Maps_com.google.android.apps.maps.apk [11]: /static/apk/Prime Now_com.amazon.anow.apk [12]: /static/apk/Prime Video_com.amazon.avod.thirdpartyclient.apk [13]: /static/apk/Steam_com.valvesoftware.android.steam.community.apk\n","date":"5 October 2019","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2019/10/android-apps-for-tv/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAndroid on TV has a long way to go. There is no clear guide on which apps to use or how to use it when it comes to having the most of Android on a TV. This article is for those who want to claim their Android TV as their own!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Android apps for TV"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/android-tv/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Android Tv"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/apk/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Apk"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/category/uncategorized/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Uncategorized"},{"content":"So there I was, trying to find best color combination for making my VBA editor in dark theme. While I did find an open source utility on GitHub to hack the VBE.dll and then replace it in the system, I simply wanted to know a color combination that I can quickly set in the built in VBA color palette editor so that I can make the editor dark.\nSo I made this guide for myself to do just that, a quick 2 min will give you dark theme!\nTo set these, in the VBA editor, goto Tools -\u0026gt; Options -\u0026gt; Editor Format. Then refer below table to set the colors.\nNow set the colors to below:\nField Foreground Background Normal Text White Black Comment Text Dark Grey Black Keyword Text Light Green Black Identifier Text Sky Blue Black Bookmark Text Dark Green Black Call Return Text Blue Black And there, in 2 min now your VBA editor looks something like below. You can tweak it to your liking.\nFinal result ","date":"20 September 2019","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2019/09/changing-vba-editor-theme/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo there I was, trying to find best color combination for making my VBA editor in dark theme. While I did find \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/gallaux/VBEThemeColorEditor/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003ean open source utility\u003c/a\u003e on GitHub to hack the VBE.dll and then replace it in the system, I simply wanted to know a color combination that I can quickly set in the built in VBA color palette editor so that I can make the editor dark.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Convert VBA Editor to Dark Theme"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/excel/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Excel"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/vba/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"VBA"},{"content":"Quickly, and honestly, tell me what’s the first word that you think of when I say the word, “Poker”? Is it “Gambling” or “Luck”? Whatever is that I bet you didn’t think of the word, “Skill”. Yes my friends, let me give you a Red pill and tell you that for the most part the game Poker is actually based on skill.\nBut how? #A big difference between poker and gambling games is when gambling you are playing against “the house.” The Casino have a huge upper hand to all their games which means in the long term you will lose.\nIn poker, the casino has no interest in the outcome, as they are just the facilitators, and are providing a platform for players to play against each other for a fee. One player will win at the expense of others. The rules of real money poker accord every player a statistically equal chance to win, unlike gambling.\nDavid Sklansky, a professional poker player from America gives a thought exercise. He says to think of the game and try to loose the game. In pure gambling games, you can\u0026#8217;t \u0026#8220;intentionally\u0026#8221; loose. The chances of you winning as well as loosing are about the same. \u0026#8220;Each move has a similar chance\u0026#8221;. That is not the case in poker. In Poker, a player\u0026#8217;s decisions and the ability to make right call depends heavily on his winnings. Why is Poker so popular? I quote from this great article, \u0026#8220;Much of the popularity of poker is due to the wonderful combination of luck and skill. If it were solely a game of skill, the inexperienced wouldn’t play because they would lose every time. If it were too much about luck, the professional players would give up. With the current balance of luck and skill in poker, on any given day anyone can win a tournament, but over time the skillful players will come out on top. Over time luck evens out and the skill difference will prevail. It is the psychological ramifications of how we deal with the skill and luck components that can prove challenging for many players.\u0026#8221; [][1]Hey hey hey\u0026#8230; Types of Poker Games: #Now, poker isn’t a single game. It have a wide variety of sub genres to choose from. The games which the Spartan Poker provides are following:\nTexas Hold’em Omaha Hi Omaha Hi-Lo Americana 32 Card Draw 7 Stud Hi 7 Stud Hi-Lo Reverse Hold’em Badugi Razz Texas 6+ Pineapple Rummy Rummy 500 Gin Rummy Indian Rummy While the rules of all the types of Poker games varies, the most popular Poker game played online is Texas Hold’em. This page (https://www.thespartanpoker.com/help/texas-holdem/rules.html) from Spartan Poker website gives a good overview of the rules of different types of poker games.\nFor a basic video tutorial of how to play Texas Hold’em I suggest to watch this video, which explains the rules of the game, as well as some basic concepts which will help you learn poker lingo.\nFor a text version of the basic terms of Poker, I suggest reading this guide. Also you would like to see the ranking of the set of cards you got here.\n[][4]Poker hands ranking About TheSpartanPoker portal: #Launched by 6 poker enthusiasts in March 2005, TheSpartanPoker.com is an online poker gaming website based in India. With the ever increasing e-sports industry in India, The Spartan Poker site hosted 20-25 live tournaments each day, as of February 2017, with the numbers ever increasing since then.\n[][5]Rannvijay Singh Singha as its brand ambassador, is said to be a poker enthusiast himself. As of [this article][6] dated Aug 2017 TheSpartanPoker.com has over 1.5 lakh users in its database and they aim to have half a million players in our database by the end of 2018. The software on which TheSpartanPoker.com runs is leased from Russia and over 40 people monitor it at any point of time. IOPC #The online portal to play TheSpartanPoker.com is organizing a tournament “India Online Poker Championship (IOPC)” from 13th July to 22nd July 2018. This tournament is the India’s Biggest Online Tournaments series.\nIOPC boasts of an incredible 55 events spanning across 10 days and the series features a prize pool of Rs 7+ Crores, and a Leaderboard worth INR 30+ Lakhs, including the Jeep Compass, the Bajaj Dominar, etc. If that was not enough, an individual can also win upto 25 Lakhs in this IOPC tournament series.\n[][7]This made me chuckle Tournaments: #There are many tournaments that you need to keep an eye out for:\nThe Millionaire (1 CR GTD) – 15th July, 4:30 PM Super High Roller (50 Lakhs GTD) – 19th July, 9 PM The Elite High Roller (40 Lakhs GTD) – 20th July, 7:30 PM PLO High Roller (20 Lakhs GTD) – 21st July, 9 PM Main Event (1 CR GTD) – 22nd July, 4:30 PM Closing thoughts #While poker is more of a skill based game, it can be really hard to see it as a game away from “gambling”. But if you look at the game with an open mind and objectively keeping aside the primitive beliefs you can see past for what the game really has to offer.\nSo what are you waiting for? Register now by clicking this link and be sure to enter “VyomK3” in the referred by section. If you do that we both get Rs 1000 as free bonus money and it will give you a good head start.\nI wish you good luck, and see you on the other side!\nTournament link: https://www.thespartanpoker.com/online-poker/tournaments/IOPC-July-2018.html.\nI would leave you with this funny video:\nFull discloser: I am not an experienced poker player and while this is a promotional article written as part of the Indiblogger platform, I have tried to provide an unbiased view about poker and whatever I wrote in this article is true to my belief, knowledge and article sources cited.","date":"14 July 2018","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2018/07/spartan-poker-using-your-poker-face-for-good/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eQuickly, and honestly, tell me what’s the first word that you think of when I say the word, “Poker”? Is it “Gambling” or “Luck”? Whatever is that I bet you didn’t think of the word, “Skill”. Yes my friends, let me give you a Red pill and tell you that for the most part the game Poker is actually based on skill.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"but-how\" class=\"relative group\"\u003eBut how? \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#but-how\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eA big difference between poker and gambling games is when gambling you are playing against “the house.” The Casino have a huge upper hand to all their games which means in the long term you \u003cstrong\u003ewill\u003c/strong\u003e lose.\u003cbr\u003e\nIn poker, the casino has no interest in the outcome, as they are just the facilitators, and are providing a platform for players to play against each other for a fee. One player will win at the expense of others. The rules of real money poker accord every player a statistically equal chance to win, unlike gambling.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp id=\"firstHeading\" class=\"firstHeading\" lang=\"en\"\u003e\nDavid Sklansky, a professional poker player from America gives a thought exercise. He says to think of the game and try to loose the game. In pure gambling games, you can\u0026#8217;t \u0026#8220;intentionally\u0026#8221; loose. The chances of you winning as well as loosing are about the same. \u0026#8220;Each move has a similar chance\u0026#8221;. That is not the case in poker. In Poker, a player\u0026#8217;s decisions and the ability to make right call depends heavily on his winnings.","title":"Spartan Poker – Using your poker face for good"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/automobile/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Automobile"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/bike/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Bike"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/journeys/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Journeys"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/riding/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Riding"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/suzuki-gixxer/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Suzuki Gixxer"},{"content":"Story of the day I bought the Gixxer #Years of wishing, months of making up my mind and weeks of planning, the day had finally arrived. A day in September 2017, when I will buy my first ever motorbike.\nThe day was exciting for me. I had a plan. I had a shortlist of bikes that I wanted to try. I went to a showroom of Yamaha to try Yamaha SS RR, a bike which I found to be good. Alas, it was a bit over my height and so I dropped the idea of buying it. Next I moved on to a showroom of Suzuki, where I was about to test ride Suzuki Gixxer. My friend was also with me to test ride with me and to help me find my perfect bike.\nSo I did a test ride. I was a bit apprehensive since I was about to test ride a completely new bike on a busy road of Delhi. But as soon as I started the bike and hear the engine road I felt an ecstasy. I throttled a bit and felt a sudden rush of air on my cheeks. I felt good. The throttle was very powerful and the bike snappy to my commands. I was happy that all went according to plan. I returned the bike back to the showroom. I knew this was a perfect bike for me. Talking over the price details, I found that they were not really ready to give any sort of discounts. So I went to another showroom of Suzuki.\nWe talked about the price and discounts. The guy at the showroom agreed to provide a discount of Rs 5k if I buy from PayTM and also to equip the bike with a passenger foot rest. There, we had a deal. I was finally ready to purchase the bike. It was a very powerful moment for me. I was happy but I was a bit unsure on what to do. In a panicked but subtle voice I moved towards my friend and asked, “dude… Do I really buy this? Like, really?” He saw me with an expression of, “Seriously? Are you still ‘thinking’ about it?”. He knew that I knew what to do. It was just a matter of pulling the trigger.\nSo I did. I finally pulled the trigger. After some paperwork the bike was mine. I went upstairs to select my bike and I choose the burning Red color. She was waiting for me, wanting to wrap my hands around her, start the ignition, drop down the gear and take her away from the showroom. That was it. That was the event that transpired on that day of September 2017.\n[][1]The stunning curves and color! But how did I reach here? Time for a flashback. Flashback… #Up until last year, I never felt the need of a bike. Living in a metropolitan city I had access to all sorts of transport medium. For short distances, walking was the de facto option. To goto another part of the city, buses was the default and the price made it the only option until I started to earn my own dough. Then came metro and it was also the proudest way to travel living in this city.\nFinally when I started to work there came a tsunami of Uber and Ola offers. I had no real reason to own a private vehicle. There were occasions though where I did acknowledge a requirement of a bike but those were few and far in between. Until recently when my workplace decided to allow us an option to leave company cab and use private transport, that is.\nThat was it. That was the chance. I could make myself free from the shackles of cabs and take this opportunity to own a bike of my own. I needed a reason and I got one. But was it that only bikes crossed my mind and why not a car? That is indeed a curious question, the answer of which lies in my teenage years.\nSo let’s go further back…\nMy bike without an engine: #Long long time ago, I use to own a Hero Devil bike, erm, a bicycle. So technically I had experience with bikes. The non engine kind. It was my favorite “gadget” back in the day. It was a proud way to ride to my school. Students use to be jealous of me. Or at-least it did look to me. It was a gorgeous blue colour and I use to love it. I had my fair share of accidents on that bike but I always got back on my feet and walk away like nothing happened. My Hero Devil was the way I use to chase winds and maintain my health while I was at it.\n[][2]Back then I didn\u0026#8217;t have a camera. So I drew this myself back in the day. But the feeling didn\u0026#8217;t last too long. One bad day when I went to study tuition at first floor someone stole my bike by brute forcing the number lock that I used to lock it. The lock only had a 3 digits so the encryption wasn\u0026#8217;t that hard to crack. The thief left the lock for me as a souvenir, like that would make me feel any better. There are a few days of my childhood that I remember more vividly then a 4k display. And the day I had to tell my dad how my bike was stolen was one of them. He didn\u0026#8217;t seem to give me any emotion at that moment but I knew he was sad too, cause he didn\u0026#8217;t say anything. I was back on foot. Present Day: #So when I was in the showroom, all that repressed feeling overshadowed me and I couldn’t resist pushing the button to finalize the deal. It was one of the most ecstatic moment of my life. I was the proud owner of a bike. After a very long time at that. It was the time to chase the winds again!\nResearch that went in: #I created a thread on the forum and discussed for 2 weeks before I finalized Suzuki Gixxer. I saw the discussion involving following bikes:\nYamaha SZRR v2.0 Hero Glamor FI Honda CBF Stunner CB Shine 125 SP CB Unicorn 160 Bajaj Avenger Street 150 Bajaj Avenger Cruise 220 Honda Shine But ultimately Gixxer stole my heart due to her curves and features. This is the thread where I discussed with fellow members and this is the thread where I documented my final experience of riding the bike after 2 weeks.\nSpecification: #Knowing me, you would have already saw it coming. Talking about numbers is part of the game. So the specs of this bike is as follows:\n[spoiler title=’Click to see the specs of Suzuki Gixxer I bought’ style=’default’ collapse_link=’true’][/spoiler]\nThe things which sold me are following:\n155cc bike Street bike with less height than most other 100 or 125cc bikes like Discover. Disc brakes both in front and rear (for all the goodness of braking power) Tubeless Tires (for being safe even after puncture) Features like clock and Gear indicator (that isn’t even in more priced Yamaha FZ 2 sold me) Sporty look to die for! It has a personality! Album of pics: #My experience so far: #As of writing this article, I have completed around 10 months riding this bike. Since April, I have been riding it daily as part of the commute to my workplace. It’s been nothing short of amazing taking this bike for a spin everyday. No longer was I bound to the shackles of riding it only on weekends, as I was previously doing. I have also bought a camera setup that can be attached to my helmet. I record my journey. It helps me to analyze later my own riding style, and also to share incidents that I find interesting.\nWhile I was proud not to have dropped my bike in the first 8 months, in the last 2 months I have managed to do that 3 times. The first time was a bit of a serious accident when a car came rushing to merge with oncoming traffic from right side (from under a newly built tunnel under a highway). I was in quite a speed and wasn’t expecting the car. I hit the car (almost T-boned). The right side of the bike took heavy damage as the rear brake was completely broken. But I got away quite unscathed, thanks to my gloves and helmet.\nThe next time the bike skid as I used the front brakes a bit too hard while trying to avoid a car which appeared from left side turn unexpectedly. It was then when I felt the need to keep a record of the rides that I took in order to prove that it was mostly the car being the reason for my accidents. But I also knew my fault for I was not riding ‘defensively’ which is important for every rider.\nThe next time I made my bike fall, it was just the wet roads, and I skid as I tried to stop the bike using front brake, as the scooter ahead of me braked hard when there was not even a red light. Thankfully I had this documented. Following clip shows what happened. I hope riders take notes from it on how to ride defensively and how not to use brakes!\nThe Timeline \u0026amp; Milestones: # 03-Sep-2017: Bought the bike 01-Apr-2018: Started to commute to workplace. So started to ride it daily. 07-Apr-2018: My first big accident, rear brake gone. Cost Rs 1100 to fix the damages. 25-May-2018: Skid while avoiding a car. Minor damages. 27-May-2018: I got the leg guard installed. 02-Jun-2018: Started to record my journeys using an action camera mounted on helmet. Camera bought from Chopra Automobiles, Karol bagh. 11-Jun-2018: Skid while panic braking. Combined the last time, cost me Rs 1100 again to fix all damages. I will continue this timeline to update events related to my bike. To any riders around reading this blog, ride safe and chase the winds!\nTo end this article I would like to leave this video here of one of MotoVLoggers that I have come to appreciate, on why we ride bikes?\nAlso this:\n","date":"24 June 2018","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2018/06/suzuki-gixxer/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003ch3 id=\"story-of-the-day-i-bought-the-gixxer\" class=\"relative group\"\u003eStory of the day I bought the Gixxer \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#story-of-the-day-i-bought-the-gixxer\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eYears of wishing, months of making up my mind and weeks of planning, the day had finally arrived. A day in September 2017, when I will buy my first ever motorbike.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe day was exciting for me. I had a plan. I had a shortlist of bikes that I wanted to try. I went to a showroom of Yamaha to try Yamaha SS RR, a bike which I found to be good. Alas, it was a bit over my height and so I dropped the idea of buying it. Next I moved on to a showroom of Suzuki, where I was about to test ride Suzuki Gixxer. My friend was also with me to test ride with me and to help me find my perfect bike.\u003cbr\u003e\nSo I did a test ride. I was a bit apprehensive since I was about to test ride a completely new bike on a busy road of Delhi. But as soon as I started the bike and hear the engine road I felt an ecstasy. I throttled a bit and felt a sudden rush of air on my cheeks. I felt good. The throttle was very powerful and the bike snappy to my commands. I was happy that all went according to plan. I returned the bike back to the showroom. I knew this was a perfect bike for me. Talking over the price details, I found that they were not really ready to give any sort of discounts. So I went to another showroom of Suzuki.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Suzuki Gixxer – 155cc of pure love"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/travel/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Travel"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/encrypt/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Encrypt"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/encryption/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Encryption"},{"content":"If you have your own site, encrypting is something that should be mandatory. Not only does it makes your site secure against hackers/crackers but also google rank those sites higher who serve their site on https.\nHere’s how you can secure your wordpress based site using certificate provide by Lets Encrypt.\nSome background: #I am quoting the following direct from the Let’s Encrypt site:\nTo enable HTTPS on your website, you need to get a certificate (a type of file) from a Certificate Authority (CA). Let’s Encrypt is one such CA. In order to get a certificate for your website’s domain from Let’s Encrypt, you have to demonstrate control over the domain. With Let’s Encrypt, you do this using software that uses the ACME protocol, which typically runs on your web host. If you have shell access (that is if you can connect to your host using PuTTY), you can follow the instructions provided here to install certbot.\nProcess: #Assuming your wordpress site runs on nginx web server on Debian 9, here’s how to do it:\nAdd the repository source in your sources.list:\ndeb http://ftp.debian.org/debian stretch-backports main to your /etc/apt/sources.list (or add a new file with the “.list” extension to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/)\nThen run:\nsudo apt-get update After that run following command to install the cerbot:\nsudo apt-get install python-certbot-nginx -t stretch-backports Press Y when a confirmation is asked to install the certbot.\nAfter the installation complete, a setup process will begun, which will ask you details about the certificate. It will ask for an email address and to agree to the Terms and condition.\nThen it will ask if you want them to share the email address with EEE (Electronic Frontier Foundation).\nNow it should work, but if it doesn’t you will see an error like this:\nIf that’s the case, follow these steps:\nNow run following command to start activating https:\nsudo certbot --nginx Then it will ask in what domain hosted on your server you want to activate the https for. You can just press enter to activate it for all domains or enter the number corresponding to the domain on which you want to activate https.\nThen it will ask if you want to redirect all traffic to the site to https. Selecting this option will make changes to your nginx configuration to redirect any web requests to https.\nYou should get a confirmation that your site is being served via https.\nNow your browser should show a padlock icon and it should be completely green.\nBut if in case it shows a warning like this:\nThen just install a plugin called, “Realy Simple SSL” and activate it. After which you should get complete SSL:\nNow you are all set. Congrats!\nHTTPS Maintainence: #Once you have successfully installed certificates and activated it, you can refer this page to get the documentation required to maintain the certificate. You would also need to renew the certificates every 90 days if you are not setting up automation to do the same.\nSome basic commands are:\nList of All Certificates #certbot certificates Use this command to see the list of all certificates installed on your server and to see when is their expiry dates.\nRevoke a Certificate #certbot revoke --cert-path /etc/letsencrypt/live/CERTNAME/cert.pem Use the command to revoke a certificate. It takes the path to the certificate file as parameter.\nOr to remove a particular website’s certificate by specifying it’s domain name:\ncertbot delete --cert-name example.com Renew a certificate #certbot renew Use that command to renew a certificate.\n","date":"24 June 2018","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2018/06/how-to-secure-your-site-using-lets-encrypt/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIf you have your own site, encrypting is something that should be mandatory. Not only does it makes your site secure against hackers/crackers but also google rank those sites higher who serve their site on https.\u003cbr\u003e\nHere’s how you can secure your wordpress based site using certificate provide by Lets Encrypt.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"some-background\" class=\"relative group\"\u003eSome background: \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#some-background\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eI am quoting the following direct from the \u003ca href=\"https://letsencrypt.org/getting-started/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eLet’s Encrypt\u003c/a\u003e site:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cpre\u003eTo enable HTTPS on your website, you need to get a certificate (a type of file) from a Certificate Authority (CA). Let’s Encrypt is one such CA. In order to get a certificate for your website’s domain from Let’s Encrypt, you have to demonstrate control over the domain. With Let’s Encrypt, you do this using software that uses the ACME protocol, which typically runs on your web host.\u003c/pre\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you have shell access (that is if you can connect to your host using PuTTY), you can follow the instructions provided \u003ca href=\"https://certbot.eff.org/lets-encrypt/debianstretch-nginx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e to install certbot.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"process\" class=\"relative group\"\u003eProcess: \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#process\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eAssuming your wordpress site runs on nginx web server on Debian 9, here’s how to do it:\u003cbr\u003e\nAdd the repository source in your sources.list:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cpre\u003edeb http://ftp.debian.org/debian stretch-backports main\u003c/pre\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eto your /etc/apt/sources.list (or add a new file with the “.list” extension to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How to secure your site using Lets Encrypt"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/https/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Https"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/lets-encrypt/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Lets Encrypt"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/ssl/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Ssl"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/android/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Android"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/instant-messaging-app/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Instant Messaging App"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/security/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Security"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/telegram/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Telegram"},{"content":"WhatsApp #If I remember correctly I was first introduced to WhatsApp as early as 2012 by one of my IRL friend. It was the thing which was “in” at the time. But it wasn’t that well known. Adoption of WhatsApp spread like wildfire since then, and now in 2018, it’s like everyone who have a smartphone have WhatsApp on their phone. Heck, even the non smartphone, like Symbian have a WhatsApp client now. What started of as a small project in 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum, both former employees of Yahoo, in Mountain View, California, soon grew to be a company worthy to be acquired by the Facebook giant in 2014. The acquisition took just US $19 billion out of Facebook’s pockets, but Zuckerberg knew it was a bargain.\nThe USP of WhatsApp was it’s simplicity and ad free experience. The founders promised that it will remain ad free for eternity but never promised anything about simplicity. After being bought by Facebook, WhatsApp went numerous changes which traded the simplicity to introduce features like Instagram, which was another social network app company acquired by Facebook in 2012 earlier for mere 1 billion (sounds like a steal in comparison to WhatsApp deal now, isn’t it?).\nTelegram #Telegram on the other hand was developed by two Russian brothers, Nikolai and Pavel Durov who had previously founded the Russian social network VK, but had to leave the company after it was taken over by the Mail.ru Group (credit: Wikipedia). From it’s initial release in 2012, it have grown to become a great alternative to WhatsApp and currently is struggling to keep it out of grips of influential like big corporations and government scrutiny.\nWhen I first stumbled on Telegram in October 2015, I confused it with a copy of the app WhatsApp but digging deeper I realized it offered something to the table which WhatsApp couldn’t especially after it’s acquisition by Zuckerburg. I soon began to love Telegram for what it offered and the convenience it bought with it. In those times I use to be a frequent user of IRC and use a channel to communicate most of my online friends. But Telegram changed that. Now I have almost left IRC for Telegram and use it for a lot more reasons then just communication with online friends. I use it as a pastebin, a medium to transfer files, a way to get updates on cryptocurrency and also to chat secretly, if needed.\nDifference between WhatsApp and Telegram #I have tired to compare both of the social network app on features and technical factors.\n[table “4” not found /]\nWhile there are numerous things which are great on Telegram, I haven’t even mentioned that most of the security features were first added on Telegram and later came out with WhatsApp. But the most important thing is the commitment of Telegram founders which are making efforts to make it more secure and not to let big corporate giants controlling them, thereby it promises more security and privacy. For me though, the most important thing is feature and convenience and for that Telegram is perfect. No wonder more and more companies are choosing Telegram for it’s ability to connect to masses.\n","date":"15 April 2018","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2018/04/telegram-and-whatsapp/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003ch3 id=\"whatsapp\" class=\"relative group\"\u003eWhatsApp \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#whatsapp\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eIf I remember correctly I was first introduced to WhatsApp as early as 2012 by one of my IRL friend. It was the thing which was “in” at the time. But it wasn’t that well known. Adoption of WhatsApp spread like wildfire since then, and now in 2018, it’s like everyone who have a smartphone have WhatsApp on their phone. Heck, even the non smartphone, like Symbian have a WhatsApp client now. What started of as a small project in 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum, both former employees of Yahoo, in Mountain View, California, soon grew to be a company worthy to be acquired by the Facebook giant in 2014. The acquisition took just US $19 billion out of Facebook’s pockets, but Zuckerberg knew it was a bargain.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe USP of WhatsApp was it’s simplicity and ad free experience. The founders promised that it will remain ad free for eternity but never promised anything about simplicity. After being bought by Facebook, WhatsApp went numerous changes which traded the simplicity to introduce features like Instagram, which was another social network app company acquired by Facebook in 2012 earlier for mere 1 billion (sounds like a steal in comparison to WhatsApp deal now, isn’t it?).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Telegram and WhatsApp"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/whatsapp/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"WhatsApp"},{"content":"Unlisted video playlist:\nhttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGw-7VaGqT-lufpolBUjOQTetbZJUNeHt\nDomkachh play:\nBike and Car race/stunts in Budda International Circuit, Greater Noida\nTeam Outing Camp Wild Dhauj\nCPA Annual Party 2017\nPankaj (Babloo) Weds Priya\nHow to make Green Tea?\nAlok weds Manisha\nVaibhav Farewell\nJammu and Katra Visit\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmFLVAZ0QJs\nSITI Team Movie: Tarun Farewell\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ8N0XIm-b4\nJaipur Trip with Friends\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL-lWbE1bQg\nAnkur Dhampur Road Trip\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX55YnXiqEg\nNokia Siemens Networks – SLA Movie\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_YO4ZomQDw\n","date":"9 March 2018","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/link/","section":"Vineet Kumar","summary":"\u003cp\u003eUnlisted video playlist:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGw-7VaGqT-lufpolBUjOQTetbZJUNeHt\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGw-7VaGqT-lufpolBUjOQTetbZJUNeHt\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003ehttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGw-7VaGqT-lufpolBUjOQTetbZJUNeHt\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDomkachh play:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBike and Car race/stunts in Budda International Circuit, Greater Noida\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTeam Outing Camp Wild Dhauj\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCPA Annual Party 2017\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePankaj (Babloo) Weds Priya\u003c/p\u003e","title":"link"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/black-mirror/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Black Mirror"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/netflix/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Netflix"},{"content":"Recently I got access to Netflix (courtesy of one of my friend) and I was propelled towards the sunshine it threw at me. I was caught off guard by the sheer content of Netflix, especially after I had used Amazon’s Prime for quite some time. While I still think Netflix’s subscription plan of Rs 800 per month is a wee too much in Indian context (compared to Rs 999 for a YEAR of Amazon Prime) we can get around that by sharing it with friends. So as of now lets talk about the shows that I watched in a month and my views about it.\nBlack Mirror: # I happened to start my Netflix affliction with Black Mirror and I was in for a ride. Perfect mixture of Sci Fi, thriller and a bit of horror that this show comes with, some of the episode were just simply crazy. This show is a collection of episodes totally different from each other. While it’s an anthology series, there are theories that they are somehow in a shared “not so far future” universe. The show tries to predict life as it could be, with the evolution of technology. Spoiler Alert, it’s not pretty. The show is dark and almost all episodes ends in a grim way. This show ain’t for the faint of heart and poses more questions then it answers. But it’s painfully beautiful. The Christmas special episode “White Christmas” is a pinnacle of Black Mirror at it’s finest. Needless to say, I would need to pay some of the episodes, a re-watch.\nStranger Things: # I was introduced to this show by my colleague. Yet another Netflix\u0026#8217;s original series, the show is a good watch for taking a break from grim shows like Black Mirror, while retaining the thrill that came with it. Without delving into details, the show is a great if you can dig the 1980\u0026#8217;s era it portrayed. It might also be nostalgic to you, for the lead characters in the show are 4 little children, best friends playing some of the classic 1980s games like D\u0026D and taking a hike on bikes. While I didn\u0026#8217;t play D\u0026D, the friendship between the 4 friends portrays a chemistry, not easy to stop yourself from falling in. Add to it \u0026#8220;monsters form the dark\u0026#8221;, and things get spicy very quickly. I was introduced to this show by my colleague. Yet another Netflix\u0026#8217;s original series, the show is a good watch for taking a break from grim shows like Black Mirror, while retaining the thrill that came with it. Without delving into details, the show is a great if you can dig the 1980\u0026#8217;s era it portrayed. It might also be nostalgic to you, for the lead characters in the show are 4 little children, best friends playing some of the classic 1980s games like D\u0026D and taking a hike on bikes. While I didn\u0026#8217;t play D\u0026D, the friendship between the 4 friends portrays a chemistry, not easy to stop yourself from falling in. Add to it \u0026#8220;monsters form the dark\u0026#8221;, and things get spicy very quickly. Rick and Morty: #I had my doubts when I saw first 4 episodes of this show. I started to compare it with Futurama, which I found to be very interesting and became a fan very soon. But the show started to appeal to my senses, once I got use to it. This animated show is about a boy named Morty and his grandfather Rick, who is also a scientist with crazy speech patterns and over excitement issues. Sounds a bit familiar? Back to the Future maybe? Yes. The inspiration of Rick and Morty does seems to be come from BTTF. The similarity between the name Marty and Morty isn’t just a coincidence. Rick and Morty, is a show with very dark humor, difficult to follow if you are not at certain IQ level (to digest all that is offered), and throws you for a spin with every episode. The grand scheme of things in Rick’s universe is everything and nothing at the same time. You tend to feel nothing is of consequence in one episode while the next makes you question reality. Rick and Morty is a show that can make you laugh, gives you an existential crisis, makes you care about its characters, while provide you an underlying story slowly building between episodes. One episode in season 3 especially, made me feel like I watched an entire movie in the span of 20 minutes. So I can safely say that the show did have an impact on me, provided I had to get past the initial few episodes of first season, where it felt quite intimidating.\nHere is the list of shows that I have found to be interesting on Netflix (watched and planning to watch), including direct links to them for reference and documentation. Note that the links will only open if you are signed out of Netflix or if you have a working subscription. I have also written my comments on few of them. Netflix Originals: #The End of the F***ing world\nDark\nSense 8 : It’s from the makers of Matrix. It was bound to be on my list.\nAltered Carbon: It’s a Blade Runner-esque styled thriller. Slow in pace in start, but takes you on a ride to solve a murder mystery, thousands of years in the future.\nThe Mist\nThe OA\nA Series of Unfortunate Events\nI loved the movie version of it enough to keep this series based on the movie in my list. As a bonus, the Count Olaf is played by Neil Patrick Harris from How I Met Your Mother! Whoa!\n3%\nTravelers : I am simple man. I see Time Travel, I add it to my list.\nMarvel’s Daredevil : A blind superhero from DC comics. I need to watch this.\nMarvel’s Jessica Jones : The show is very dark (should simply be termed Netflix style). Female with some super abilities and a psychological villain. This show is great.\nErased\nBetween\nStranger Things : Already explained above.\nGerald’s Game: (movie)\nSERIES: #Breaking Bad\nThe IT Crowd\nThe 100\nThe Cosmos\nDoctor Who\nUnder the Dome\nElementary\nDarknet\nGenius : A friend told me about this show. Couldn’t pass on series based on conflicts between scientists like Edison vs Tesla!\nBlack Mirror : Already explained above.\nRick and Morty : Already explained above.\nSex: My British Job\n12 Monkeys\nHow the Universe Works : I am a sucker when it comes to things related to Cosmos!\nContinuum\nAscension\nHelix\nSteve Jobs\nVideo Game Highschool\nGenius of the Modern World\nVery British Problems\nFrequency\nEdge of the Universe\nIt happens only in India\nThe Code\nThe most beautiful hands of Delhi\nIndia’s Frontier Trains\nIndia Bike Week\nMumbai Railway\nWhat’s with Indian men\nAmerican Experience: War of the Worlds\nIT Champions\nI would be updating this list with synopses for the shows that I complete watching.\n","date":"16 February 2018","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2018/02/netflix-a-binge-watchers-haven/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRecently I got access to Netflix (courtesy of one of my friend) and I was propelled towards the sunshine it threw at me. I was caught off guard by the sheer content of Netflix, especially after I had used Amazon’s Prime for quite some time. While I still think Netflix’s subscription plan of Rs 800 per month is a wee too much in Indian context (compared to Rs 999 for a YEAR of Amazon Prime) we can get around that by sharing it with friends. So as of now lets talk about the shows that I watched in a month and my views about it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Netflix: A Binge Watcher’s Haven and views on Black Mirror, Stranger Things and Rick \u0026 Morty"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/category/pop-culture/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Pop Culture"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/rick-and-morty/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Rick and Morty"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/stranger-things/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Stranger Things"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/article/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Article"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/debian/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Debian"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/nginx/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Nginx"},{"content":"In this article I am documenting the exact steps that one needs to host a wordpress based site on a Debian based virtual machine (VM). I choose debian since that’s one of the preferred distro based on it’s stability and smaller footprint on resources compared to Ubuntu. But you may very well choose Ubuntu, only some steps in below documentation would differ.\nThis article deals with following technologies:\nWindows 10: The host operating system Oracle VirtualBox: The Virtual Machine software Debian 9.3 x64: The distro which we will install on the VM nginx: The web server mariadb: MySQL database solutions php: The package which installs on Debian automatically as a dependency phpMyAdmin: Administration tool for MariaDB Preparation: #You need to downloaded the latest version of Debian x64 from here: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/\nIn my case I happen to download the iso image “debian-9.3.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso” from https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/9.3.0/amd64/iso-dvd/.\nNote that I didn’t need the other two ISO image since you can always choose to install additional packages via Internet (if you have good fast broadband).\nThen I downloaded and installed the latest version of VirtualBox from here: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads\nNext thing is to install Debian OS on the virtualbox. This was done by creating a new virtual machine. I made sure to give it 2 GB or memory and 20 GB of space and 2 cores of processor and 64 MB of video memory for speedy and responsive virtual machine performance. You can provide resources depending on how much you want to allocate.\nThe VirtualBox and the virtual machine setting I choose The settings of virtual hard disk I setup I also added an additional IDE drive since it makes it easier to have reference to two different ISO images. On one of the IDE I gave it the reference of the Debian ISO image we downloaded earlier since we would need it to install debian on the virtual machine. The settings page of the storage solution of VM showin debian ISO attached with one of the IDE Lastly it\u0026#8217;s important to set the network adapter as \u0026#8220;Bridged Adapter\u0026#8221;. It\u0026#8217;s required to have the virtual machine access to Internet while also retaining an IP address that we can use to browse the wordpress site that will be hosted on the debian VM. Bridged Adapter is required for Internet and Intranet to work optimally Installing Debian 9.3 on VirtualBox: #Now I started the virtual machine and since we had already setup the debian ISO image as primary bootable disk, I was greeted by the installation screen. Here I installed the debian like I would on a normal machine.\nThe Debian installer menu when VM is started for the first time During the installation it would ask for a hostname. Enter something sensible. I entered debian.win. Later we will do something that would let us visit the sites hosted on this VM, using browser from host machine, through this hostname, \u0026#8220;debian.win\u0026#8221;. You can enter anything here. Whatever you enter needs to be updated in host file as described later After some time the installation also ask to insert 2nd ISO. If you haven\u0026#8217;t downloaded the other two ISO images you may skip this step. Once the installation reaches a certain step you should also select a desktop environment. I selected GNOME, since that\u0026#8217;s the desktop environment I like. You can also choose multiple desktop environments and toggle between them at the login screen After debian installation completes, the VM will ask for a reboot. Do it, and you should be greeted with following grub bootloader screen: The GRUB bootloader menu. Selecting first option boots into Debian homescreen Debian\u0026#8217;s Login Screen. You can toggle desktop environment by clicking the gear icon on left of \u0026#8220;Sign In\u0026#8221; button Once the debian desktop is loaded, you might want to add \u0026#8220;Terminal\u0026#8221; to favorites since we would need to launch it a lot of times. At this point when you launch Terminal, you will be greeted by a black text on white background terminal window. I like to change it to white on black from preferences. I like it that way. When you click Activities (top left) and enter term in the search box, you can see the terminal icon, which you can then right click and add to favorites I like my terminal colour scheme to be jassy! Now, if you notice even if you notice the resolution of the desktop will be limited to 1024 x 768 and you can\u0026#8217;t use copy paste text from machine or to your host OS. We would need to do perform certain steps in order for the VM to function optimally. So low resolution! **A. Install Sudo:** By default sudo is not installed. So it\u0026#8217;s important to install sudo before we do anything. To do this run following commands on terminal: su root apt-get install sudo -y If you get the message “please insert the disc labelled, Debian…” make sure you have the debian ISO loaded on IDE (Devices -\u0026gt; Optical drive -\u0026gt; Debian ISO).\nSelecting debian ISO image on secondary IDE drive Installing SUDO! **B. Add yourself in sudoer list:** If you don\u0026#8217;t do that you will encounter following error message if you try to run a command in sudo mode: I have SUDO, but no love from SUDO for me! 🙁 To add yourself in sudoer list run following command: su root sudo adduser username sudo exit Added myself to Sudoer list. Still no love. :/ Wait, you machine, lemme reboot! Now you need to reboot the VM, else the command won\u0026#8217;t take into effect. (Sidenote: I don\u0026#8217;t know how many times have I missed rebooting at this point, and wondering why sudo isn\u0026#8217;t working even after I granted it SUDO rights.) **C. Install build essentials:** Now that you have SUDO, just run following commands to install build essentials. sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install build-essential Above command required 137 MB of space to install and finished in about 15 seconds. **D. Install Linux Kernal headers:** Run following commands to install linux kernel headers. I don\u0026#8217;t know why it\u0026#8217;s requird but just bear with me: sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r) sudo apt-get update \u0026\u0026 sudo apt-get upgrade sudo apt-get install linux-headers-amd64 Above set of commands requires about 100 MB in total of space and finished in a minute. **E. Install Virtual guest add-on:** Finally we need to install the VM\u0026#8217;s guest addon, which you guessed it right we didn\u0026#8217;t need to do if this wasn\u0026#8217;t a VM. But since it is, just run following command after clicking Devices -\u003e \u0026#8216;Install Guest Additions CD image\u0026#8217; option. sudo sh /media/cdrom/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run Installing Guest additions. It\u0026#8217;s a VM requirement. You don\u0026#8217;t need to do that if you are setting up wordpress on actual Debian. If you are using two IDE drives, then you may need to change cdrom to cdrom1, since if debian\u0026#8217;s ISO is attached with first IDE, then the guest additions image would be mounted on second IDE. Once Guest additions are installed, reboot the VM. Once you do that you will notice that more solutions are supported. In fact the resolution will change (resize) depending on how large of the VM window you open. Now just select Devices -\u003e Shared clipboard -\u003e Bidirectional, so that you can easily copy paste commands from clipboard. Doing this will let you copy pasta! At this point, the VM is ready for us to install next step of LAMP setup, which is installing applications on the debian OS to enable us to host a wordpress website. Run the following commands on the console to install nginx, mariadb and phpmyadmin etc: sudo apt-get install nginx sudo apt-get install mariadb-server sudo apt-get update \u0026\u0026 sudo apt-get dist-upgrade sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin If you get error finding the phpmyadmin package, make sure to choose \u0026#8220;Main\u0026#8221; under software sources and again trying both commands: Installing phpMyAdmin Select Main, if you get errors. Press escape when it asks for configure at below screen: PRESS ESCAPE! ABORT! On below screen, press Yes, and it\u0026#8217;s when it will ask for a password to be setup. Enter the password which you want to keep for SQL: Press Yes. If not you won\u0026#8217;t be able to set root password. Not that you need it anyway later. Now we are done installing nginx, mariadb and phpmyadmin. To confirm if nginx server is running, use following command: sudo service nginx status Oh my.. look nginx running smoothly! To know the IP address of your VM, enter following command: hostname -I You know, there\u0026#8217;s an easier way to find IP address. Just mouse over the network icon in bottom right of VM. I couldn\u0026#8217;t take a screenshot of it, so I choose to find a terminal way for the same. On my VM, it\u0026#8217;s IP address was: 192.168.0.103. On your host windows machine, open the file \u0026#8220;C:\\Windows\\System32\\drivers\\etc\\hosts\u0026#8221;: Add following lines in the end and save it. It will resolve the debian.win address to the IP address of your VM: 192.168.0.103 debian.win 192.168.0.103 srv.debian.win Yea, you need to run Notepad++ in administrative mode to save changes to this host file. But Notepad++ can also start in admin mode if it requires to. Pretty neat! Now flush DNS by running following command on windows command prompt: ipconfig /flushdns You need to flush every time, when your job is done. Learning life lessons, from this article. Now open a browser and enter following address to open it: debian.win Why this comes is a mystery to me! :/ For some reason we need to purge Apache before we see nginx page. So to purge apache run following command in debian\u0026#8217;s terminal: sudo apt-get purge *apache* Once the above command finishes purging apache, now refresh debian.win on browser. You should see following screen: Much better. If you get this, give yourself a pat in the back. Now we will setup a URL to access the phpmyadmin page. To do this, run following commands to create a symlink to /usr/share/phpmyadmin to a file in /srv/web/public_html: cd /srv sudo mkdir web cd web sudo mkdir public_html cd public_html/ sudo ln -s /usr/share/phpmyadmin phpmyadmin [][1]sudo !! repeat the previous command which you entered. Pretty good for forcing linux it to work for you. I only wish I can do that for some \\*non PC related tasks\\*. Now we will create an nginx configuration such that srv.debian.win points to phpmyadmin page (but only on port 2626. You may change this port for security measure): cd /etc/nginx/sites-available/ sudo nano srv.debian.win.conf Paste following lines in the text editor which opens on terminal: server { listen 2626 ; root /srv/web/public_html ; # Add index.php to the list if you are using PHP index index.php index.html ; server_name srv.debian.win ; location / { try_files $uri $uri/ =404; autoindex on; } location ~ \\.php$ { include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf; fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock; } } Once the file is sucessfully saved, create a symlink with below command: sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/srv.debian.win.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/srv.debian.win.conf Lastly, reload nginx: sudo service nginx reload Now try to open the URL, \u0026#8220;srv.debian.win:2626/phpmyadmin/index.php\u0026#8221; from the browser. If you have followed every step correctly, you should be greeted with this beautiful screen of phpmyadmin console: Aren\u0026#8217;t you feeling accomplished? You may be tempted to login to this admin using the root password we entered while installing phpmyadmin, but hold your horses, cause due to some security measure, it won\u0026#8217;t allow you to do that. So now we need to create a new mySQL user and use it to access the phpmyadmin. sudo mysql -u root CREATE USER 'vyom'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'MySQLPass'; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `vyom\\_%`.* TO 'vyom'@'localhost'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; quit So easy to work on SQL from terminal, innit? Now on this phpMyAdmin console you can create a database for wordpress, and proceed to install wordpress. phpMyAdmin console. Power of SQL in your hands. Use it responsibly! ### Installing WordPress: To install wordpress, you just need to follow the guide [I wrote earlier][2], and access it via browser like you would normally do. For completion sake, I would document rest of the steps too: Run following command on terminal to download wordpress and install it in respective directory: cd /home/vyom mkdir www cd www mkdir debian.win cd debian.win wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz tar -xzvf latest.tar.gz mv wordpress/ public_html/ Don\u0026#8217;t forget to chown the www directory so that all the fils are owned by www-data. This step is important so that wordpress don\u0026#8217;t face permission issue later: sudo chown -R www-data /home/vyom/www Now create an nginx config so that debian.win points to this wordpress installation: cd /etc/nginx/sites-available/ sudo nano debian.win.conf Enter following configuration into the text editor which opens in terminal: server { listen 80; root /home/vyom/www/debian.win/public_html; index index.php index.html index.htm; server_name debian.win; location / { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html /index.php; } # enforce NO www if ($host ~* ^www\\.(.*)) { set $host_without_www $1; rewrite ^/(.*)$ $scheme://$host_without_www/$1 permanent; } # unless the request is for a valid file, send to bootstrap if (!-e $request_filename) { rewrite ^(.+)$ /index.php?q=$1 last; } error_page 404 /404.html; # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html # error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html; location = /50x.html { root /usr/share/nginx/html; } # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000 # location ~ \\.php$ { include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf; #fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\\.php)(/.+)$; # NOTE: You should have \"cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;\" in php.ini # With php5-cgi alone: fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; With php5-fpm: fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock; #fastcgi_index index.php; include fastcgi_params; } # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root concurs with nginx's one # location ~ /\\.ht { deny all; } location = /favicon.ico { log_not_found off; access_log off; } location = /robots.txt { allow all; log_not_found off; access_log off; } # Deny all attempts to access hidden files such as .htaccess, .htpasswd, .DS_Store (Mac). Keep # logging the requests to parse later (or to pass to firewall utilities such as fail2ban) location ~ /\\. { deny all; } # Deny access to any files with a .php extension in the uploads directory Works in sub-directory # installs and also in multisite network Keep logging the requests to parse later (or to pass to # firewall utilities such as fail2ban) location ~* /(?:uploads|files)/.*\\.php$ { deny all; } } Run following command to symlink the nginx config: sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/debian.win.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/debian.win.conf Reload nginx: sudo service nginx reload Now open debian.win on the browser, and if everything is ok, you will be greeted with wordpress setup screen: 1st ever wordpress setting page 2nd every wordpress settings page. Enter it carefully. Enter database name which you created earlier and credential of the sql user which you created, and hit, \u0026#8220;Submit\u0026#8221;. If you have done everything alright, you will be greeted with this welcome screen: Final wordpress setup page. Enter details, and hit \u0026#8220;Install WordPress\u0026#8221; and viola, you have now configured wordpress on your virual debian machine, and can access it from your host machine! If you are able to follow this article successfully till the end, do yourself a favour. Do a Rick and Morty dance! 😀 [1]: /wp-content/uploads/2018/01/DebianWP_30th.jpg [2]: /2015/10/steps-to-add-a-wordpress-site-to-an-existing-vps/","date":"28 January 2018","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2018/01/installing-wordpress-debian-virtual-machine/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn this article I am documenting the exact steps that one needs to host a wordpress based site on a Debian based virtual machine (VM). I choose debian since that’s one of the preferred distro based on it’s stability and smaller footprint on resources compared to Ubuntu. But you may very well choose Ubuntu, only some steps in below documentation would differ.\u003cbr\u003e\nThis article deals with following technologies:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWindows 10:\u003c/strong\u003e The host operating system\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOracle VirtualBox:\u003c/strong\u003e The Virtual Machine software\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDebian 9.3 x64:\u003c/strong\u003e The distro which we will install on the VM\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003enginx\u003c/strong\u003e: The web server\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003emariadb\u003c/strong\u003e: MySQL database solutions\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ephp\u003c/strong\u003e: The package which installs on Debian automatically as a dependency\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ephpMyAdmin\u003c/strong\u003e: Administration tool for MariaDB\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e","title":"Setting up WordPress on Debian 9.3 x64 on a Virtual Machine on Windows 10"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/amazon-prime/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Amazon Prime"},{"content":"I subscribed to Amazon Prime on December 2016 with the free trial. Paid Rs 500 for an year from Feb 2017, and ever since enjoying it. Prime has been my goto almost every night for a dose of entertainment. I have watched so much content in the last 9 months that I think I can now separate the wheat from the chaff and suggest shows better.\nI will start with a small review of the shows that I completed and then will add the shows which I intend to watch next. I will go alphabetically:\nBrothers Conflict is an anime series about a girl who moves in with his 13 step brothers, each having a unique personality. The story then progresses where every one is trying to get a piece of her affection. This was a weird show and I am glad it doesn’t have a second season. I have seen good animes, and this was not one of them. I wouldn’t recommend.\nCensorship In The Future is a 5 min short and is a great mock of how censorship would look like in future if it’s going to continue at the current pace. And it’s hilarious at best. Must watch!\nExtant (Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller): a mystery thriller about a female astronaut trying to reconnect with her family when she returns after a year in outer space. I admit this show isn’t that bad. I enjoyed the show with it’s alien abduction and sci fi elements. An AI robot reminded of David from the Steven Spielberg’s movie AI. It isn’t the best show on planets, but it’s worth for it’s story arc and thematic elements.\nKommune presents The Storytellers: (Drama: Plays/Performance, World Cinema: Indian): Remember the good old days of sitting around a campfire sharing stories? The Storytellers is a modern day take on that. At a time when interactions primarily take place across screens, The Storytellers encourages people to look up and connect with one another by sharing their personal life experiences face to face, without inhibitions and with honesty. I watched all stories featured on the show. I liked every bit of it. These were under 10 min six stories that were nice to hear. Must watch!\nLe Mans: If it hadn’t for Prime, I probably would have not discovered that a race happens in France that stretches for 24 hours straight and is a true test for endurance and efficiency. This show was a breath of fresh air for sports and absolutely loves every minute of it. Watching how the drivers and there crew battle to finish the race (and not just coming in top 3), was an enchanting experience. If you are thrill seeker and love speed, this documentary is a Must Watch!\nMr. Robot (Crime, Drama, Thriller): Follows Elliot, a young programmer working as a cyber-security engineer by day, and a vigilante hacker by night. I have watched the show before it came on Prime. But haven’t got a rerun of it on Prime. The 1st episode I watched didn’t have any censorship on it. This show is ab absolutely must watch if you haven’t already.\nPeople of Earth (Comedy): Damn, this show was good. There aren’t much shows that blend comedy with Sci Fi with such finesse. The main character of the show is mundane yet so likable. This is also a much watch on this list._\n_\nPerson of Interest: Jim Caviezel (The Thin Red Line), Michael Emerson (Lost) and Taraji P. Henson (Hustle \u0026amp; Flow) team up in this thought-provoking crime action drama from The Dark Knight’s Jonathan Nolan and J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions (Fringe, Lost, Alias). Set in New York City, this procedural centers on an ex-CIA agent, presumed dead, who partners with a mysterious billionaire to prevent violent crimes. This show was not originally on my list. But then I started watching it trusting the IMDb rating of 8.5. I was glad I did that, cause right now I have just finished season 3 and god damn, it just goes on keeping interesting. A super computer (maybe sentient, we don’t know) helps a group of people saving lives, the show takes you on a ride. It keeps you on the edge and never makes a moment dull. The show moves too fast for it’s own advantage, cause we get to see so many angles to the premise. Just when you think you had enough, it punches your gut and makes you realize, the story have just started! The mid of season seems like season finale and you can’t stop binge watching the next season after one ends. I could write so much about the show. Despite this show being too much violent for my taste I still love it. This show is an emotional coaster of emotions and views. Absolutely must watch.\nScorpion: Scorpion is based on the true story of Walter O’Brien, an eccentric genius with the world’s fourth-highest I.Q. and the creator of a company of brilliant misfits who use their mental muscle to defend the planet against complex high-tech threats of the modern age. Another show that was added after I made the initial list, I had already watched the first season of this earlier last year. So I knew what I was getting into. This show about a few people with high IQ, is inspired from a self proclaimed genius Walter O’Brien. I can’t say anything about the real Walter, but this show is an ingenious attempt to entertain, as well as inspiring students to take up science. This show also have a side that attempts to show how difficult is for people with high IQ (Intelligent Quotient) to maintain their EQ (Emotional Quotient) levels. I loved the show to the very end of season 3. Must watch for sure.\nThe Last Ship: Navy Captain Tom Chandler (Eric Dane) and his crew must find a cure after a pandemic wipes out billions of people worldwide. Scientist Rachel Scott is assigned to the U.S.S. Nathan James to investigate the cause of the rapidly spreading virus. Chandler and his crew may be humanity’s last hope in the wake of a worldwide catastrophe. Again a show that was not in my original list but which have become a must watch. This show isn’t science fiction (although does deal with an apocalyptic world). The show seems a propaganda for endorsing Navy for US, but grows on to be much more than that. The story is good. The action scenes on par, and the execution just phenomenal. The navy captain Tom Chandler is like a super hero in the series and for good reasons. This series is quite a different kind of action show, since it’s basically about war on ocean, something new from all the hoards of crime series out there.\nThe Man in the High Castle (Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller): A glimpse into an alternate history of North America. What life after WWII may have been like if the Nazis had won the war. This show is phenomenal. It’s like an alternate reality where Germany have won the war and along with Japan rule US. The attention to detail is breathtaking, story just epic and execution worthy of Oscar. The show have a bit of sci fi element that I wouldn’t want to spoil. The show deserves every bit of appreciation. It’s the series like this which makes me believe that Hollywood creates entire world!_\n_\nThe Tick: In a world where superheroes have been real for decades, an accountant with mental health issues and zero powers comes to suspect his city is owned by a global super villain long-thought dead. This new show as Amazon original is a comedy superhero that doesn’t take itself seriously. The show was good to watch, but didn’t leave any lasting impressions. It’s not on my must watch list.\nTo watch list:\nI have these shows yet to watch. Some are from the original post and some are new:\nDexter: (Crime, Drama, Mystery): When blood spatter analyst Dexter Morgan is not out solving murders, he spends his time as a serial killer who eliminates those who do bad things. I initially watched a couple of episodes and thought the show might be censored. So stopped watching. But it seems the show isn’t censored after all. I might resume watching it soon._\n_\nDexter’s Laboratory: This cartoon show was a riot in my childhood days. It was a perfect example of how cool the cartoon shows of late 90’s were! There are tons of episodes of Dexter’s Laboratory and alas the Prime contains only a handful of it. The season 1 of Dexter’s Laboratory on Prime starts from someone mid of actual season 2 and ends with somewhat mid of season 3. I would love to see all episodes of Dexter’s Laboratory but I am not hopeful of it.\nElementary (Crime, Drama, Mystery): A modern take on the cases of Sherlock Holmes, with the detective now living in New York City. I just never got around to start watching this.\nFringe (Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi): An FBI agent is forced to work with an institutionalized scientist and his son in order to rationalize a brewing storm of unexplained phenomena. I started watching this series, but it couldn’t hold my interest. The story seemed too convenient. It has a rating of 8.4 on IMDb. I may pick this up later.\nFullmetal Alchemist (Anime): On one fateful night, Edward loses an arm and a leg, and Alphonse losing his entire body in an alchemy experiment gone awry. From this point, Edward’s only concern is finding a way to return his brother to his body. He soon finds himself in the service of the government as a State Alchemist. It is here the amazing story of the youngest State Alchemist in history begins. Haven’t got around to start watching this. Maybe soon.\nStartup (Crime, Thriller): Nick Capelli emerges from prison into a world where his once strong mafia family has eroded, leaving him with no direction, but an uncontrollable need to try to recreate his past criminal life. In the modern world where the mafia doesn’t command respect like it used to, this series takes a look at what it would take for a modern crime organization to rise today. Haven’t picked up the show.\nThe New Archie’s: An updated version of the animated version of the classic comic book series. I have read a comic of Archie. That’s what I know it from. I would like to watch this one season animated Archie.\nThe World’s War (Documentary, History): British historian David Olusoga, along with other historians, narrates the story of millions of Indian, African and Asian troops who fought and died alongside French and British troops to help win the war against Germany, Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.\nV (Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller): Elizabeth Mitchell (Lost) stars in this reimagining of the hit miniseries from Scott Peters, creator of The 4400. “Visitors” appear in every major city in the world, promoting a message of peace … but could they be a threat to our existence? I would probably start watching this soon.\nWolverine and the X-Men (Animation, Action, Adventure ): The story picks up one year after the attack on Xavier Institute that caused the disbanding of X-Men and the mysterious disappearance of Professor X and Jean Grey. Wolverine must reunite his team to find out what happened that fateful night. Their position as mutants doesn’t make things any easier as the MRD (Mutant Response Division) is hunting down and exterminating them.\nAs for Movies, I have watched only quite a few movies on Amazon in the last 9 months. Some of them are:\nBatman v Superman: Dawn of Justice_:_ Found the movie absolutely slow and boring. But a few must have liked it. Or it was a very dark movie that I was not prepared for.\nBefikre: I wasn’t prepared for this mindless garbage too. The film that I was better not watching.\nHindi Medium: Absolutely gem of a film. Irfan does a great job again with this really great film that is a must watch. The song by those children on stage absolutely blew me away. I had watched this film on theater and I will watch it again anytime!\nSpongeBob SquarePants: Sponge Out Of Water: Well, I wanted to watch the film since I love SpongeBob the original animated series. I must say movie was a roller coaster ride too.\nThere are a lot movies in my backlog now, then when I started with Prime. Almost all of below movies have been added in the last 9 months:\nDeepwater Horizon\nLa La Land\nSully\nParched\nThe Walk\nTitli\nPoorna\nPlus following are the movies that is on my watchlist since long:\nMr. X in Bombay (1964): Shobha’s dad who is a scientist gets into a difficult situation after an experiment he was conducting goes wrong and kills his employee Manohar.\nIndian Sci Fi movie from way back. I can’t miss to watch this.\nSaving Private Ryan (Action, Drama, War): Following the Normandy Landings, a group of U.S. soldiers go behind enemy lines to retrieve a paratrooper whose brothers have been killed in action.\nSarbjit (Biography, Drama, History): Biopic of Sarabjit Singh, a farmer residing at Bhikiwind, Punjab, near the Indo-Pak border, crossed the border after having a couple of drinks. However, he was mistaken to be an Indian spy and was sentenced to capital punishment.\nI had no idea, this list would grow so big, but Amazon Prime have been really great till now!\n","date":"24 September 2017","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2017/09/amazon-prime-update-after-9-months-of-subscription/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI subscribed to \u003ca href=\"/2016/12/amazon-prime-in-india-my-views-and-a-catalog-of-good-content/\"\u003eAmazon Prime on December 2016\u003c/a\u003e with the free trial. Paid Rs 500 for an year from Feb 2017, and ever since enjoying it. Prime has been my goto almost every night for a dose of entertainment. I have watched so much content in the last 9 months that I think I can now separate the wheat from the chaff and suggest shows better.\u003cbr\u003e\nI will start with a small review of the shows that I completed and then will add the shows which I intend to watch next. I will go alphabetically:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0R5K89FLB69VT3S5W5GP6AU6H0/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eBrothers Conflict\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e is an anime series about a girl who moves in with his 13 step brothers, each having a unique personality. The story then progresses where every one is trying to get a piece of her affection. This was a weird show and I am glad it doesn’t have a second season. I have seen good animes, and this was not one of them. I wouldn’t recommend.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0M29VC4W8OH1XYOITJ7I93645X/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCensorship In The Future\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/a\u003e is a 5 min short and is a great mock of how censorship would look like in future if it’s going to continue at the current pace. And it’s hilarious at best. Must watch!\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/region/eu/detail/0PUO7S9285KKS77S82X2HX7K4H/ref=dv_web_wtls_list_pr_2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\"\u003eExtant\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e (Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller): a \u003cem\u003emystery thriller about a female astronaut trying to reconnect with her family when she returns after a year in outer space.\u003c/em\u003e I admit this show isn’t that bad. I enjoyed the show with it’s alien abduction and sci fi elements. An AI robot reminded of David from the Steven Spielberg’s movie AI. It isn’t the best show on planets, but it’s worth for it’s story arc and thematic elements.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/region/eu/detail/0JTAAREZD9IFGO2JCZRA0BANKZ/ref=dv_web_wtls_list_pr_9\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\"\u003eKommune presents The Storytellers: \u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e (Drama: Plays/Performance, World Cinema: Indian): \u003cem\u003eRemember the good old days of sitting around a campfire sharing stories? The Storytellers is a modern day take on that. At a time when interactions primarily take place across screens, The Storytellers encourages people to look up and connect with one another by sharing their personal life experiences face to face, without inhibitions and with honesty.\u003c/em\u003e I watched all stories featured on the show. I liked every bit of it. These were under 10 min six stories that were nice to hear. Must watch!\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0FFL218WF7DUG7BWMD7PS2SWWU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLe Mans\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/a\u003e: If it hadn’t for Prime, I probably would have not discovered that a race happens in France that stretches for 24 hours straight and is a true test for endurance and efficiency. This show was a breath of fresh air for sports and absolutely loves every minute of it. Watching how the drivers and there crew battle to finish the race (and not just coming in top 3), was an enchanting experience. If you are thrill seeker and love speed, this documentary is a Must Watch!\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/region/eu/detail/0LL805LRLJUMK1H89CP0LFLBL5/ref=dv_web_wtls_list_pr_13\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\"\u003eMr. Robot\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e (Crime, Drama, Thriller): \u003cem\u003eFollows Elliot, a young programmer working as a cyber-security engineer by day, and a vigilante hacker by night.\u003c/em\u003e I have watched the show before it came on Prime. But haven’t got a rerun of it on Prime. The 1st episode I watched didn’t have any censorship on it. This show is ab absolutely must watch if you haven’t already.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/region/eu/detail/0FO3EWHKOFG94EDQ0P2QCJOT1R/ref=dv_web_wtls_list_pr_12\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\"\u003ePeople of Earth\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e (Comedy): Damn, this show was good. There aren’t much shows that blend comedy with Sci Fi with such finesse. The main character of the show is mundane yet so likable. This is also a much watch on this list._\u003cbr\u003e\n_\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/gp/video/detail/0TEJVMKVVTN398Y9L7FI31XXKQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePerson of Interest\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/a\u003e: \u003cem\u003eJim Caviezel (The Thin Red Line), Michael Emerson (Lost) and Taraji P. Henson (Hustle \u0026amp; Flow) team up in this thought-provoking crime action drama from The Dark Knight’s Jonathan Nolan and J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions (Fringe, Lost, Alias). Set in New York City, this procedural centers on an ex-CIA agent, presumed dead, who partners with a mysterious billionaire to prevent violent crimes.\u003c/em\u003e This show was not originally on my list. But then I started watching it trusting the IMDb rating of 8.5. I was glad I did that, cause right now I have just finished season 3 and god damn, it just goes on keeping interesting. A super computer (maybe sentient, we don’t know) helps a group of people saving lives, the show takes you on a ride. It keeps you on the edge and never makes a moment dull. The show moves too fast for it’s own advantage, cause we get to see so many angles to the premise. Just when you think you had enough, it punches your gut and makes you realize, the story have just started! The mid of season seems like season finale and you can’t stop binge watching the next season after one ends. I could write so much about the show. Despite this show being too much violent for my taste I still love it. This show is an emotional coaster of emotions and views. Absolutely must watch.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/gp/video/detail/0IV7AYYQY0EKGKM3MGJ5SS9NMM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eScorpion\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/a\u003e: \u003cem\u003eScorpion is based on the true story of Walter O’Brien, an eccentric genius with the world’s fourth-highest I.Q. and the creator of a company of brilliant misfits who use their mental muscle to defend the planet against complex high-tech threats of the modern age.\u003c/em\u003e Another show that was added after I made the initial list, I had already watched the first season of this earlier last year. So I knew what I was getting into. This show about a few people with high IQ, is inspired from a self proclaimed genius Walter O’Brien. I can’t say anything about the real Walter, but this show is an ingenious attempt to entertain, as well as inspiring students to take up science. This show also have a side that attempts to show how difficult is for people with high IQ (Intelligent Quotient) to maintain their EQ (Emotional Quotient) levels. I loved the show to the very end of season 3. Must watch for sure.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0KVNAEODNAJ00NGI9BP0FSDAOE/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Last Ship\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/a\u003e: \u003cem\u003eNavy Captain Tom Chandler (Eric Dane) and his crew must find a cure after a pandemic wipes out billions of people worldwide. Scientist Rachel Scott is assigned to the U.S.S. Nathan James to investigate the cause of the rapidly spreading virus. Chandler and his crew may be humanity’s last hope in the wake of a worldwide catastrophe.\u003c/em\u003e Again a show that was not in my original list but which have become a must watch. This show isn’t science fiction (although does deal with an apocalyptic world). The show seems a propaganda for endorsing Navy for US, but grows on to be much more than that. The story is good. The action scenes on par, and the execution just phenomenal. The navy captain Tom Chandler is like a super hero in the series and for good reasons. This series is quite a different kind of action show, since it’s basically about war on ocean, something new from all the hoards of crime series out there.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0MRUJ9E7CS9UEP3WXNPPG2N5TE/ref=sr_hom_c_unkc_1_2?sr=1-2\u0026qid=1481821388\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Man in the High Castle\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller): \u003cem\u003eA glimpse into an alternate history of North America. What life after WWII may have been like if the Nazis had won the war.\u003c/em\u003e This show is phenomenal. It’s like an alternate reality where Germany have won the war and along with Japan rule US. The attention to detail is breathtaking, story just epic and execution worthy of Oscar. The show have a bit of sci fi element that I wouldn’t want to spoil. The show deserves every bit of appreciation. It’s the series like this which makes me believe that Hollywood creates entire world!_\u003cbr\u003e\n_\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0GHY923HNJOPL6V72PO5NSHN9G\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tick\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/a\u003e: \u003cem\u003eIn a world where superheroes have been real for decades, an accountant with mental health issues and zero powers comes to suspect his city is owned by a global super villain long-thought dead\u003c/em\u003e. This new show as Amazon original is a comedy superhero that doesn’t take itself seriously. The show was good to watch, but didn’t leave any lasting impressions. It’s not on my must watch list.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eTo watch list:\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nI have these shows yet to watch. Some are from the original post and some are new:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/region/eu/detail/0GQGCZ210WB9P5IX51HNSQWZE8/ref=dv_web_wtls_list_pr_14\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\"\u003eDexter\u003c/a\u003e:\u003c/strong\u003e (Crime, Drama, Mystery): \u003cem\u003eWhen blood spatter analyst Dexter Morgan is not out solving murders, he spends his time as a serial killer who eliminates those who do bad things.\u003c/em\u003e I initially watched a couple of episodes and thought the show might be censored. So stopped watching. But it seems the show isn’t censored after all. I might resume watching it soon._\u003cbr\u003e\n_\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0FWN0FPZXQTFLFF8DOIJEIUV0C\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDexter’s Laboratory\u003c/strong\u003e:\u003c/a\u003e This cartoon show was a riot in my childhood days. It was a perfect example of how cool the cartoon shows of late 90’s were! There are tons of episodes of Dexter’s Laboratory and alas the Prime contains only a handful of it. The season 1 of Dexter’s Laboratory on Prime starts from someone mid of actual season 2 and ends with somewhat mid of season 3. I would love to see all episodes of Dexter’s Laboratory but I am not hopeful of it.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/region/eu/detail/0GHXFYFOWVYFE0YG07CZ08TQ78/ref=dv_web_wtls_list_pr_18\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\"\u003eElementary\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e (Crime, Drama, Mystery): \u003cem\u003eA modern take on the cases of Sherlock Holmes, with the detective now living in New York City.\u003c/em\u003e I just never got around to start watching this.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/region/eu/detail/0HG15ONX4QGC7IEFJCRU7Q18WP/ref=dv_web_wtls_list_pr_7\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\"\u003eFringe\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e (Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi): \u003cem\u003eAn FBI agent is forced to work with an institutionalized scientist and his son in order to rationalize a brewing storm of unexplained phenomena.\u003c/em\u003e I started watching this series, but it couldn’t hold my interest. The story seemed too convenient. It has a rating of 8.4 on IMDb. I may pick this up later.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/region/eu/detail/0TVLN2P5T8G9DE9GD0O5MHUJYF/ref=dv_web_wtls_list_pr_10\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\"\u003eFullmetal Alchemist\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e (Anime): \u003cem\u003eOn one fateful night, Edward loses an arm and a leg, and Alphonse losing his entire body in an alchemy experiment gone awry. From this point, Edward’s only concern is finding a way to return his brother to his body. He soon finds himself in the service of the government as a State Alchemist. It is here the amazing story of the youngest State Alchemist in history begins.\u003c/em\u003e Haven’t got around to start watching this. Maybe soon.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/region/eu/detail/0P0U4N2VPV0GJX006JMXI60LGB/ref=dv_web_wtls_list_pr_4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\"\u003eStartup\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e (Crime, Thriller): \u003cem\u003eNick Capelli emerges from prison into a world where his once strong mafia family has eroded, leaving him with no direction, but an uncontrollable need to try to recreate his past criminal life. In the modern world where the mafia doesn’t command respect like it used to, this series takes a look at what it would take for a modern crime organization to rise today.\u003c/em\u003e Haven’t picked up the show.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0IV6VSH6Q3O94YKYDHV5O29KIQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe New Archie’s\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/a\u003e: \u003cem\u003eAn updated version of the animated version of the classic comic book series.\u003c/em\u003e I have read a comic of Archie. That’s what I know it from. I would like to watch this one season animated Archie.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/region/eu/detail/0GM71H4SKJRAV27BCYABXFC4DS/ref=dv_web_wtls_list_pr_3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\"\u003eThe World’s War\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e (Documentary, History): \u003cem\u003eBritish historian David Olusoga, along with other historians, narrates the story of millions of Indian, African and Asian troops who fought and died alongside French and British troops to help win the war against Germany, Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/region/eu/detail/0FJTX2WUILN317OMRADQB9N6KC/ref=dv_web_wtls_list_pr_5\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\"\u003eV\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e (Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller): \u003cem\u003eElizabeth Mitchell (Lost) stars in this reimagining of the hit miniseries from Scott Peters, creator of The 4400. “Visitors” appear in every major city in the world, promoting a message of peace … but could they be a threat to our existence?\u003c/em\u003e I would probably start watching this soon.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/region/eu/detail/0FSCQANDHUW6GQEH33HVEGPAIA/ref=dv_web_wtls_list_pr_16\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\"\u003eWolverine and the X-Men\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e (Animation, Action, Adventure ): \u003cem\u003eThe story picks up one year after the attack on Xavier Institute that caused the disbanding of X-Men and the mysterious disappearance of Professor X and Jean Grey. Wolverine must reunite his team to find out what happened that fateful night. Their position as mutants doesn’t make things any easier as the MRD (Mutant Response Division) is hunting down and exterminating them.\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nAs for Movies, I have watched only quite a few movies on Amazon in the last 9 months. Some of them are:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0MJBRQ95DKKF19QQLDC9GB7A5X/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBatman v Superman: Dawn of Justice_:_\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/a\u003e Found the movie absolutely slow and boring. But a few must have liked it. Or it was a very dark movie that I was not prepared for.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0FSD6HHS6HH8MFH6QJ8IOURL0V\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBefikre:\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/a\u003e I wasn’t prepared for this mindless garbage too. The film that I was better not watching.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0T1S47OPGV756O4CNNY6SEN9II\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHindi Medium:\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/a\u003e Absolutely gem of a film. Irfan does a great job again with this really great film that is a must watch. The song by those children on stage absolutely blew me away. I had watched this film on theater and I will watch it again anytime!\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0GYZDZ7VW82JHYOPYHGYC9OF2B/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSpongeBob SquarePants: Sponge Out Of Water:\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/a\u003e Well, I wanted to watch the film since I love SpongeBob the original animated series. I must say movie was a roller coaster ride too.\u003cbr\u003e\nThere are a lot movies in my backlog now, then when I started with Prime. Almost all of below movies have been added in the last 9 months:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0HKAY9MJ7DUBHL4BA13F35TUDZ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eDeepwater Horizon\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0RV5C1FQ5E2HCQ7SYIY5E61BUC/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eLa La Land\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0HBS95GS6AU2YJFA3D7VBNX951/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eSully\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0HX3D3LEJK2NO46F31M9RZBSWC\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eParched\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0NLP71L70L79SCFQC9AEOESPJY/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eThe Walk\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0P0U1F2XL44I3QYECQ1INZGAYS\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eTitli\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0KN4T3G9SEYJ5GHILR84WMXCLU/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePoorna\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nPlus following are the movies that is on my watchlist since long:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/region/eu/detail/0NLON1FOFMGK7GAQ86XR8G0DGH/ref=dv_web_wtls_list_pr_1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\"\u003eMr. X in Bombay\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e (1964): \u003cem\u003eShobha’s dad who is a scientist gets into a difficult situation after an experiment he was conducting goes wrong and kills his employee Manohar.\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eIndian Sci Fi movie from way back. I can’t miss to watch this.\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/region/eu/detail/0NHF6AZZ0NMPVZ4HOPWOC69EEG/ref=dv_web_wtls_list_pr_4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\"\u003eSaving Private Ryan\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e (Action, Drama, War): \u003cem\u003eFollowing the Normandy Landings, a group of U.S. soldiers go behind enemy lines to retrieve a paratrooper whose brothers have been killed in action.\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.primevideo.com/region/eu/detail/0I1CGJEFXAXCYAY09G090B3WP3/ref=dv_web_wtls_list_pr_6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\"\u003eSarbjit \u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e (Biography, Drama, History): \u003cem\u003eBiopic of Sarabjit Singh, a farmer residing at Bhikiwind, Punjab, near the Indo-Pak border, crossed the border after having a couple of drinks. However, he was mistaken to be an Indian spy and was sentenced to capital punishment.\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nI had no idea, this list would grow so big, but Amazon Prime have been really great till now!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Amazon Prime Video: Update after 9 months of subscription"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/movie-list/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Movie List"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/shows/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Shows"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/category/gaming/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Gaming"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/pcmr/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"PCMR"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/samsung/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Samsung"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/samsung-evo-850/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Samsung Evo 850"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/solid-state-drive/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Solid State Drive"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/ssd/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"SSD"},{"content":"It took me years to catch up to the PC Master race when I first started upgrading my PC around 4 years ago. With the recent upgrade to RX 480 GPU my PC stepped into an uncharted territory. But there was still a final piece of puzzle that wasn’t in it’s place but which had the potential to make my PCMR journey to it’s final conclusion. Combine this with the fact that India was about to see a revolution in terms of economy with the new implementation of taxation, that is GST (Goods and Services Tax), I had to act fast. So I finally decided to bite the bullet and finally buy the last piece of the puzzle, an SSD!\nI did my research on the forums. I studied the technologies provided by different companies, benchmarks and various kinds of SSD that was available. I studied the price to performance metrics, and price per GB of disk. I watched various youtube videos on YT, including the all too popular channel Linus Tech Tips. All that R\u0026amp;D pointed to me a very clear choice: Samsung Evo 850 250 GB.\nBrand Model Capacity (GB) Price Price per GB Link Samsung 750 EVO 120 4499 37 Link Samsung 750 EVO 250 7499 30 Link Samsung 850 EVO 250 7600 30 Link WD Green 120 3999 33 Link WD Green 240 6151 26 Link WD Blue 250 6700 27 Link Kingston SSDNow UV400 120 3949 33 Link Kingston SSDNow UV400 240 6499 27 Link Kingston SSDNow V300 120 4149 35 Link Kingston SSDNow V300 240 9179 38 Link Kingston SSDNow A400 120 4200 35 Link Kingston SSDNow A400 240 6499 27 Link Crucial MX300 275 7150 26 Link [][1]Damn, it\u0026#8217;s deceiving simplicity! This SSD was one of the most technology superior SSD only below the Pro series of SSDs by Samsung. Unlike the Pro series though, Evo series was way better in terms of Price to performance ratio. But what sold me to finally go with Samsung Evo was the fact that it came with the software Samsung Magician. It has a feature which they call Rapid Mode, which when turned on, uses a portion of RAM (about 1 GB at the moment) as an SSD cache to better utilize the resources that we have, and also to increase the longevity of the SSD which is already very good than other competing drive. No this is not a promoted post, rather I am genuinely impressed by the features of Samsung’s Evo SSD.\nI choose 250 GB since I needed to install two OS on the drive: Windows 10 and Ubuntu. I needed ample space on Windows 10 to install various big editing tools like Premiere and development IDEs like Visual Studio. With a 250 GB drive (which actually means 232 GB of usable space) I could use both OSes and even leave 20% of the drive empty (which is recommended to have the drive function optimally).\nI waited for few days to see if the price of Samsung Evo 250 GB could go down (from Rs 7599), but eventually bought the drive from eBay where I managed to get the same for around Rs 6700. I think it was a great deal considering the fact that GST was about to kick in, and prices could go high soon.\nThe day I got my SSD, my happiness knew no bounds. I was surprized by the fact that the drive was so tiny and so light that it was baffling to imagine the power it actually hold. I installed the SSD as soon as I could reach home from my workplace and started to install the operating systems. I didn’t have any spare SATA cables lying around so I just borrowed the SATA cable of my optical drive. (At this moment, I was glad I had an optical drive, and didn’t fall in the suggestion from my online friend to do away with it when I was building my PC).\nI faced numerous problems making my PC dual boot with Windows 10 and Ubuntu. I could manage to install both the OS on it, but the Ubuntu bootloader (GRUB) didn’t work. After various trial and error, I realized I accidentally made my SSD an MBR disk (when I first launched the Disk Management in windows). So I turned the SSD into a GPT drive (from Disk Management) and this time around after I installed both the OSes, the GRUB menu worked perfectly. I also did have to make a change in the BIOS boot meny, to allow the GRUB to take priority over Windows Boot Manager.\nI ended up making following partitions on the SSD:\n/sda1 (150 GB for Windows 10) /sda2 (30 GB for Ubuntu) /sda3 (NTFS drive without assigning a drive letter and configured later to have Over Provisioning explained below). And of course there are other partitions made by Windows which it creates before installing.\nOver Provisioning is a feature which you can set using Samsung Magician and which allows to set aside a portion of the SSD which will be kept free, since SSDs work best when there is less data on it. After installing the OSes on SSD, setting up over provisioning and running the standard benchmark I was all set to compare some application launch times. Following table shows the comparison of time taken by various activities on my PC before and after installing the SSD.\nActivity HDD Time SSD Time Comment Windows 10 Install 8:00 6:00 From Install start to first Reboot Ubuntu 16.04 Install 8:00 7:00 From ubuntu installation beginning to first Reboot Win 10 cold boot to desktop 0:45 0:23 Time from pressing the power switch to desktop. It includes time to select Windows 10 (which is 3rd option on GRUB menu) and login password prompt. So can be made faster. Boot time to Windows including startup apps 2:14 0:50 Including various applications loading in background (Dropbox, steam, discord, telegram, IDM and more) and till Firefox\u0026#8217;s speed dial tab loads. Boot time of Ubuntu 0:40 0:30 Time from pressing the power switch to desktop. It includes time of GRUB menu and password prompt. So can be made faster. Applications launch time on cold reboot: Adobe Photoshop CS4 0:11 0:06 Premiere Pro CC 2014 0:17 0:08 VS Studio Community 2017 0:07 0:03 Rocket League first time 0:14 0:10 Time from launching app till 1st car appears skipping the cutscenes Note following points regarding above timings:\nThese are no way very scientific in numbers. Actual time can be decreased, like boot time, by removing the boot menu and password logins. Here is the Crystal Disk Mark report of the SSD (which is more scientific):\nIn comparison following are the result of the benchmark on my HDD (WD 1 TB Blue):\nAfter I enabled the Rapid mode, the results showed around 5X improvements:\nThis experience of upgrading to SSD has been really fruitful. Not only I was able to give my PC a big boost in disk performance, but also managed to beat the GST (applicable in India from July 1) due to which (or coincidentally) prices of SSD is now Rs 8295 (up from Rs 7500) on Amazon.in and even better, on eBay.in, from where the original listings have ended and now lowest price is Rs 7699.\nAll I now need is a new monitor to make a dual monitor setup, a 1 TB HDD to make a RAID array of disk, another GPU to Crossfire for mining cryptocurrency… Oh, the need never ends. 😉\n","date":"16 August 2017","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2017/08/upgrading-my-gaming-pc-with-a-solid-state-drive-ssd/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt took me years to catch up to the PC Master race when I first started upgrading my PC around 4 years ago. With the recent upgrade to RX 480 GPU my PC stepped into an uncharted territory. But there was still a final piece of puzzle that wasn’t in it’s place but which had the potential to make my PCMR journey to it’s final conclusion. Combine this with the fact that India was about to see a revolution in terms of economy with the new implementation of taxation, that is GST (Goods and Services Tax), I had to act fast. So I finally decided to bite the bullet and finally buy the last piece of the puzzle, an SSD!\u003cbr\u003e\nI did my research on the forums. I studied the technologies provided by different companies, benchmarks and various kinds of SSD that was available. I studied the price to performance metrics, and price per GB of disk. I watched various youtube videos on YT, including the all too popular channel Linus Tech Tips. All that R\u0026amp;D pointed to me a very clear choice: Samsung Evo 850 250 GB.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ctable\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"69\"\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eBrand\u003c/strong\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"126\"\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eModel\u003c/strong\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"96\"\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eCapacity (GB)\u003c/strong\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePrice\u003c/strong\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"60\"\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePrice per GB\u003c/strong\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eLink\u003c/strong\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"69\"\u003e\nSamsung\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"126\"\u003e\n750 EVO\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"96\"\u003e\n120\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n4499\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"60\"\u003e\n37\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.in/Samsung-750-EVO-120GB-Drive/dp/B01AAKZRPW\"\u003eLink\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"69\"\u003e\nSamsung\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"126\"\u003e\n750 EVO\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"96\"\u003e\n250\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n7499\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"60\"\u003e\n30\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.in/Samsung-750-EVO-MZ-750250BW-Packaging/dp/B01JSTB4WG\"\u003eLink\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"69\"\u003e\nSamsung\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"126\"\u003e\n850 EVO\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"96\"\u003e\n250\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n7600\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"60\"\u003e\n30\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.in/Samsung-250GB-2-5-Inch-Internal-MZ-75E250BW/dp/B00SXK3OCU\"\u003eLink\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"69\"\u003e\nWD\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"126\"\u003e\nGreen\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"96\"\u003e\n120\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n3999\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"60\"\u003e\n33\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.in/WD-Green-120GB-Internal-WDS120G1G0A/dp/B01M8HPL6Q\"\u003eLink\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"69\"\u003e\nWD\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"126\"\u003e\nGreen\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"96\"\u003e\n240\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n6151\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"60\"\u003e\n26\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.in/WD-Green-240GB-Internal-WDS240G1G0A/dp/B01MDM3WI5\"\u003eLink\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"69\"\u003e\nWD\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"126\"\u003e\nBlue\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"96\"\u003e\n250\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n6700\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"60\"\u003e\n27\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.in/WD-250GB-Internal-Solid-WDS250G1B0A/dp/B01LXDQX35\"\u003eLink\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"69\"\u003e\nKingston\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"126\"\u003e\nSSDNow UV400\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"96\"\u003e\n120\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n3949\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"60\"\u003e\n33\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.in/dp/B01FJ4UN76\"\u003eLink\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"69\"\u003e\nKingston\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"126\"\u003e\nSSDNow UV400\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"96\"\u003e\n240\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n6499\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"60\"\u003e\n27\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.in/dp/B01FJ4UL2S\"\u003eLink\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"69\"\u003e\nKingston\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"126\"\u003e\nSSDNow V300\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"96\"\u003e\n120\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n4149\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"60\"\u003e\n35\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.in/Kingston-SSDNow-120GB-Solid-State/dp/B00A1ZTZOG\"\u003eLink\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"69\"\u003e\nKingston\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"126\"\u003e\nSSDNow V300\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"96\"\u003e\n240\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n9179\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"60\"\u003e\n38\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.in/dp/B00A1ZTZNM/\"\u003eLink\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"69\"\u003e\nKingston\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"126\"\u003e\nSSDNow A400\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"96\"\u003e\n120\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n4200\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"60\"\u003e\n35\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.in/Kingston-SSDNow-120GB-SA400S37-120G/dp/B01N6JQS8C\"\u003eLink\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"69\"\u003e\nKingston\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"126\"\u003e\nSSDNow A400\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"96\"\u003e\n240\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n6499\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"60\"\u003e\n27\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.in/Kingston-SSDNow-120GB-SA400S37-120G/dp/B01N5IB20Q\"\u003eLink\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"69\"\u003e\nCrucial\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"126\"\u003e\nMX300\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"96\"\u003e\n275\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n7150\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"60\"\u003e\n26\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd width=\"54\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.in/Crucial-MX300-CT275MX300SSD1-Internal-Metallic/dp/B01IAGSD5O\"\u003eLink\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003c/table\u003e\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1495\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1495\" style=\"width: 1280px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"\u003e[\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1495\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/photo_2017-07-02_17-52-24.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\" /\u003e][1]\u003cfigcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1495\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"\u003eDamn, it\u0026#8217;s deceiving simplicity!\u003c/figcaption\u003e\u003c/figure\u003e","title":"Upgrading my Gaming PC with a Solid State Drive (SSD)"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/2016/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"2016"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/radeon-rx-480/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Radeon RX 480"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/rocket-league/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Rocket League"},{"content":"So Year 2016 proved to be a year I saw snow peaks for the first time in my life, went to a road trip, ascended to PC Master race and also went on to be a gamer, full throttle. This article is an account of things that shaped the year 2016 for me and the places I traveled to.\nRocket League became Life! #Right of the bat in Jan 2016, I was introduced to this game that was about to take my life by storm. I have wrote about Rocket League earlier. The most played game I played was Burnout Paradise which clocked around 137 hours. But as the year ended I reached a bit shy of 1000 hours playing this mother of a game. This game is the single most constant thing that happened to me in the year 2016. This was the game I looked out to play almost every night after I returned from a busy day at work. This was the game that taught me competing. This was the game with a steep learning curve, that made the wins deserving and the losses feel bad. It’s easy to get carried away, but I can’t ignore my experience of around 1000 hours that I poured in this game. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that this game ignited the real gamer out of me.\nAscension to PC Master Race with Radeon RX 480 GPU #During the end of year, when I was completely hooked into Rocket League, I realize the one thing that was holding my experience of the game was that I didn’t have a dedicated GPU to handle the video graphic processing that my PC wanted to do. At this time, AMD came up with its new series of Radeon Graphics chips known as Polaris using the new 14 nm FinFET manufacturing process. It blew Nvidia’s technology and gave it a solid competition. It was here that I finally decided to spend my Amazon’s $90 credit to use and ordered the MSI’s rendition of RX 480 which I fall in love when I saw it the first time. I have wrote about my ascension in this blog. With this new GPU, I could now also play games like Quantum Break, with its time bending premise sure got me dazzled when I first played it.\nAmazon’s Prime Video Streaming service: #In December, I came to know about the Amazon’s prime video service, which they launched for India. At an introductory offer of Rs 500 for a year I was lured in to try that. First month was even free. I wrote about Amazon Prime in this post and started with the series “Man in High Castle” and boy did it blew me away. What if Russian had won the world war 2 was an interesting premise and with the hint of Sci Fi, this easily got me hooked. It was a great way to end the year.\nTweasure Hunt in March: #On the evening of 11th Marc, when my friend Ankur told me about an activity being happening on weekend in Hauz Khas village, named “Tweasure Hunt”, sponsored by “So Delhi”. On 12th March, we convinced my former colleague Nasir (with whom I went to a trip to Kasauli last year) and Ankur’s friend Rahul to be a part of. What went on 12th of March was a trip I can’t really forget. The name of “Tweasure” hunt isn’t a typo since it was aptly named due to the fact that Twitter and Instagram was involved in the hunt and to score points. Running around in the market of Hauz Khas village, the four of us went on a trip to explore restaurants and shops and to try to complete activities for most scores. You can read more about the Tweasure Hunt in this blog and watch a video, where sadly we didn’t appear despite the fact that we were interviewed at the end of the day. :'(\nManali Trip in May #Then in May, Me, Ankur and Nasir decided to team up again for a trip to Manali. I just wanted to experience one thing that I didn’t do in my sane life before. That was to experience snow fall in first person. Was my dream going to be true? We had the weekends to find out. So out we went on the Manali trip via an AC bus booked by Nasir on a Friday night, and reached Manali the morning of Saturday. That day we booked a room in a hotel, wandered Manali and the market. The Mall road was a pretty busy street where we got to see a lot of crowd from all over India and even outside India. On this day we also went to Beas river, crossing a park.\nRohtang Pass The next day we went to where I was suppose to go, \u0026#8220;Rohtang Pass\u0026#8221;. At around 13k feet, we reached there in a local bus and was astounded to see the peaks of snow covered peaks even before we reached the stop for Rohtang Pass. We had forgotten to rent snow boots and snow protective gear thinking we will be able to get that in the Pass. But we were wrong and no gear was available to rent on top of the mountain. There were no snow sports, or eatable stalls either. We learned that those were removed to make the Pass cleaner. But this disappointment didn\u0026#8217;t stop us from making our way to the top of a peak. In our sports shows and no gloves, Ankur and me climbed to the top of a mountain, slowly and steadily. We were holding snow and climbing with our bare hands while taking enough breaks to let it warm. I knew the dangers of Hypothermia and didn\u0026#8217;t want to be a victim of the same, hence precautions were necessary. While the excitement was trying to get the best of us, still we manged to safely climb to the top and take amazing pictures. The 3rd and final day of Manali trip we made our way to Solang Valley, which is popular for various activities like Paragliding. We didn\u0026#8217;t actually did paragliding since the price was not worth the 5 min flies they were providing. Yet we enjoyed wandering and posing for weird pictures that will be remembered forever. Overall our trip of Manali was a great trip and a good weekend getaway. Dhampur Road Trip in October #My friend Ankur decided to celebrate his birthday in his hometown Dhampur, where a Ramayan path was also scheduled. So we went to Dhampur on the weekend on Ankur’s Yamaha FZS v2 bike. This was a road trip one of its kind, since I hadn’t traveled on bike with him for such distance of about 173 km. It was a fun trip. I recorded our journey throughout. We ate in dhabbas and took breaks for photography in between. Ankur’s family welcomed this seemingly alien looking me and I participated in reciting Ramayan’s verses. Together with Ankur we also went to wander the streets of Dhampur and visit temples. I got to eat some famous Dhampur food like, “singade ki kachri” and “moong ki daal“. This trip was such a humbling experience that I am glad I took part in. On our return trip we also made our way to Ganga ghat and we did a ride on a boat.\nRoad Trip to Dhampur Dalhousie Team outing in November #This time, as part of the team outing at my workplace we went to the team outing of Dalhousie. Traveling together in a Bus we reached Dalhousie in an overnight. And while we stayed in Snow Valley Resort, we didn’t actually was able to experience snow. The place had a cool temperature though, enough to give chills at night. But that didn’t stop us from taking a stroll in the market in evenings. We visited Kalatop Khajjiar Sanctuary, which was nothing but a fancy park, no sight of animals at all. We also went to Khajjiar Lake and the sight of it was amazing. It was here that we did horse riding. It was my first time feeling like a rodeo. Riding on a horse’s back wasn’t the most comforting things I did while on the trip. Shopping at Gandhi Chowk Shopping Plaza was also a fun experience. I collected some samples of the taste of Dalhousie like pickles and chutney. Our journey back to Delhi was via train, which if you me at all must know that I loved every bit of it.\nKhajjiar Lake Trip to Nani’s village in early December #The year was about to end with a something unforgettable. The journey to my Nani’s home in a remote village of Bihar. (Nani = My mother’s mother). I took a long leave from my workplace to participate in the marriage ceremony of Alok, my cousin from maternal side in early December. My Nani is one of the coolest person on earth, who is still more active than me and loves to eat and talk. She was a very active participant in all the marriage ceremonies and put everyone to shame when it comes to get their chores done.\n[][5]My Nani village \u0026#8211; Fish Eye Lens The marriage ceremony lasted for days, where I got to travel to Patna and back and danced to the beats of Dholak and got to eat delicacies enough to make me reach to ninth cloud. I also payed a visit to Darbhanga with my dad to take care of some personal matters. Together it was an amazing experience that lasted a little too long when our return train got cancelled due to unexpected fog, and we had to book another train which also got delayed by a day. Needless to say, the manager at my workplace wasn\u0026#8217;t happy. In the end, not much changed in my life except that I gave my PC a new breath and got myself new experiences and memories that will a part of me for forever.","date":"12 March 2017","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2017/03/year-2016-at-a-glance-an-year-of-experiences/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo Year 2016 proved to be a year I saw snow peaks for the first time in my life, went to a road trip, ascended to PC Master race and also went on to be a gamer, full throttle. This article is an account of things that shaped the year 2016 for me and the places I traveled to.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"rocket-league-became-life\" class=\"relative group\"\u003eRocket League became Life! \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#rocket-league-became-life\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eRight of the bat in Jan 2016, I was introduced to this game that was about to take my life by storm. I have wrote about \u003ca href=\"/2016/04/rocket-league/\"\u003eRocket League earlier\u003c/a\u003e. The most played game I played was Burnout Paradise which clocked around 137 hours. But as the year ended I reached a bit shy of 1000 hours playing this mother of a game. This game is the single most constant thing that happened to me in the year 2016. This was the game I looked out to play almost every night after I returned from a busy day at work. This was the game that taught me competing. This was the game with a steep learning curve, that made the wins deserving and the losses feel bad. It’s easy to get carried away, but I can’t ignore my experience of around 1000 hours that I poured in this game. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that this game ignited the real gamer out of me.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Year 2016 at a Glance: An year of experiences"},{"content":"\nIts a dream of every PC geek out there to have a PC that they can treat it as their own personal super computer. It took me just south of 11 years to reach from a Pen 3 PC to now a Core i5, RX 480 rig. Two years ago I wrote about how I started working on PC from a Pen 3 PC. I quote here,\nIt was in my college that my father was able to buy for me a Pen 4 PC in 2005, Internet connection 3 yrs after that, and recently I upgraded to a Core i5 PC after more than 7 yrs. So here’s a little back story of how I managed to pull off a Core i5 and what experiences lie behind it.\nI started with a PC when I was in school that I didn’t own. I owe it to my relative, the PC of which included a configuration of Pen 3, 20 gigs of HDD and a 15″ CRT monitor, on which I use to play Carmageddon Apocalypse and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets; and learn to program in C++ by building a program as my hobby.\nLater in 2005 when I entered college, my dad bought for me a Pen 4 rig. It included a 512 MB of RAM stick and a 17″ CRT monitor. It was an exciting time. Steam, a much loved gaming platform from Valve had managed to reduce piracy in games and people started to buy genuine games legally. It was that time when I managed to build a good collection of games in steam sales. But the Pen 4 chip started to hinder my gaming abilities and motivated me to upgrade. So in 2012 I finally decided to upgrade my Pen 4 rig. But I didn’t reach to my Core i5 built until now. I didn’t use to earn much. So I assembled a very budget friendly following APU built:\nSerial Component Model 1 Mobo+CPU Gigabyte E350N Motherboard 2 Cabinet Cooler Master Elite 310 Cabinet 3 SMPS Corsair CMPSU-430CXV2UK 430 Watts PSU 4 HDD 500 GB WD Cavier Blue 5 RAM Kingston ValueRAM DDR3 2 GB (KVR1333D3N9/2G) x2 6 ODD Samsung DVD Writer [I used components of this PC to make my Core i5 PC later, but the heart, APU remains the same].\nBut this APU machine could only do so much. Sure it was a perfect blend of processing and graphics capabilities but playing a game on decent quality was still a dream. I managed to play less resource intensive games like Trackmania, Burnout Paradise, Portal, Grid 1 (on low setting) and multi player game like Teeworlds (which frankly could also be run from a Raspberry Pi).\nI had a long term plan when I built an APU machine. I was saving up for something big. I got lucky to win a contest from Microsoft and got some voucher on Amazon.com. Bought the Core i5 processor from US in 2013 and assembled my primary PC which you can see the specs of below.\nSerial Component Model 1 Monitor HP Pavillion 22XW Monitor (1080p) 2 Cabinet Cooler Master Elite 310 3 HDD WD 1 TB WD Blue 4 PSU Corsair CMPSU-430CXV2UK 430 Watts PSU 5 Processor Intel 3.2 GHz LGA 1150 4570 i5 4th Gen 6 RAM G.Skill DDR3 4 GB X 1 and\\nG.Skill DDR3 8 GB X 1 7 Motherboard MSI H87M-G43 8 Headphone Philips SHP 2000 9 Graphics Card MSI RX 480 4 GB 10 UPS Luminous LB1000UNO UPS 11 Keyboard TVS-E Gold Bharat Mechanical Keyboard 12 Mouse Logitech G90 Gaming mouse 13 Optical Drive Samsung DVD Combo 14 Controller XBox 360 Wired Controller 15 MFD HP Deskjet Ink Advantage 3545 printer 16 Router TP-LINK TL-WR840N (V2) 300 Mbps But it was not until I got myself the beast RX 480 graphics card that my gaming PC was completed in true sense. It was a long journey to reach here. And members from digit forum needs a special mention which helped me to take decisions and assisted with the troubleshooting many nights.\nFollowing is the Timeline for some of the stories from the forum worth documenting, so that it would be easier for me to be nostalgic towards the incidents:\nFebruary 2011: I bought got a new Monitor for my Pen 4 PC, but I was having driver problem. Forum members came together and solved it. November 2012: I moved from my Pen 4 to built a AMD APU PC. July 2013: Bought Core i5 processor as a first step to build my gaming PC. August 2013: Bought motherboard as a second step for my gaming PC. June 2014: My research on buying a MFD (printer, copier and scanner) documented in this thread. February 2015: Got myself a treat with a new and beautiful fHD monitor. August 2016: Upgraded the RAM of my PC here. October 2016: As a possibly last step towards my Gaming PC I got myself the most VFM Graphics card, RX 480. When I look back now, connecting the dots backward, each year have been leading me to the moment when I could be playing fHD games on my fHD monitor. And with RX 480 graphics card its been a giant leap forward. In Reddit lingo, I have ascended to PC masters race. But this is just the beginning as 144Hz monitor will soon join my PC. This will be followed by SSD upgradation and a multi monitor setup. Things will only get better I assure to my little ‘Super-Computer’.\nI would leave you with this imgur album of the unboxing of RX 480 that I did a while ago:\nMSI RX 480 4 GB Edit: Upgraded to an SSD: \u0026lt;/2017/08/upgrading-my-gaming-pc-with-a-solid-state-drive-ssd/\u0026gt;\n","date":"25 December 2016","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2016/12/ascension-to-pc-master-race-11-years-in-the-making/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/IMG_20161225_130314236.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1433\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/IMG_20161225_130314236.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1728\" height=\"973\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nIts a dream of every PC geek out there to have a PC that they can treat it as their own personal super computer. It took me just south of 11 years to reach from a Pen 3 PC to now a Core i5, RX 480 rig. Two years ago \u003ca href=\"/2014/04/minimalism-and-memoirs-past/\"\u003eI wrote about\u003c/a\u003e how I started working on PC from a Pen 3 PC. I quote here,\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cpre\u003eIt was in my college that my father was able to buy for me a Pen 4 PC in 2005, Internet connection 3 yrs after that, and recently I upgraded to a Core i5 PC after more than 7 yrs.\u003c/pre\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo here’s a little back story of how I managed to pull off a Core i5 and what experiences lie behind it.\u003cbr\u003e\nI started with a PC when I was in school that I didn’t own. I owe it to my relative, the PC of which included a configuration of Pen 3, 20 gigs of HDD and a 15″ CRT monitor, on which I use to play \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmageddon_II:_Carpocalypse_Now\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eCarmageddon Apocalypse\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_and_the_Chamber_of_Secrets_%28video_game%29\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eHarry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets;\u003c/a\u003e and learn to program in C++ by building a program as my hobby.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ascension to PC Master Race: 11 years in the making"},{"content":"My current primary configuration is following:\nSerial Component Model 1 Monitor HP Pavillion 22XW Monitor (1080p) 2 Cabinet Cooler Master Elite 310 3 HDD WD 1 TB WD Blue 4 SSD Samsung Evo 850 250 GB 5 PSU Corsair CMPSU-430CXV2UK 430 Watts PSU 6 Processor Intel 3.2 GHz LGA 1150 4570 i5 4th Gen 7 RAM G.Skill DDR3 4 GB X 1 and\\nG.Skill DDR3 8 GB X 1 8 Motherboard MSI H87M-G43 9 Headphone Philips SHP 2000 10 Graphics Card MSI RX 480 4 GB 11 UPS Luminous LB1000UNO UPS 12 Keyboard TVS-E Gold Bharat Mechanical Keyboard 13 Mouse Logitech G102 Gaming mouse 14 Optical Drive Samsung DVD Combo 15 Controller XBox One Controller 16 MFD HP Deskjet Ink Advantage 3545 printer 17 Router TP-LINK TL-WR840N (V2) 300 Mbps Rig as of: 29th Mar 2018.\nCPU Z Validation: ","date":"24 December 2016","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/myspec/","section":"Vineet Kumar","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy current primary configuration is following:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ctable id=\"tablepress-1\" class=\"tablepress tablepress-id-1\"\u003e\n\u003ctr class=\"row-1\"\u003e\n\u003cth class=\"column-1\"\u003e\nSerial\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth class=\"column-2\"\u003e\nComponent\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth class=\"column-3\"\u003e\nModel\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr class=\"row-2\"\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-1\"\u003e\n1\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-2\"\u003e\nMonitor\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-3\"\u003e\nHP Pavillion 22XW Monitor (1080p)\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr class=\"row-3\"\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-1\"\u003e\n2\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-2\"\u003e\nCabinet\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-3\"\u003e\nCooler Master Elite 310\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr class=\"row-4\"\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-1\"\u003e\n3\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-2\"\u003e\nHDD\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-3\"\u003e\nWD 1 TB WD Blue\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr class=\"row-5\"\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-1\"\u003e\n4\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-2\"\u003e\nSSD\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-3\"\u003e\nSamsung Evo 850 250 GB\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr class=\"row-6\"\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-1\"\u003e\n5\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-2\"\u003e\nPSU\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-3\"\u003e\nCorsair CMPSU-430CXV2UK 430 Watts PSU\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr class=\"row-7\"\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-1\"\u003e\n6\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-2\"\u003e\nProcessor\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-3\"\u003e\nIntel 3.2 GHz LGA 1150 4570 i5 4th Gen\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr class=\"row-8\"\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-1\"\u003e\n7\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-2\"\u003e\nRAM\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-3\"\u003e\nG.Skill DDR3 4 GB X 1 and\\nG.Skill DDR3 8 GB X 1\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr class=\"row-9\"\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-1\"\u003e\n8\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-2\"\u003e\nMotherboard\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-3\"\u003e\nMSI H87M-G43\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr class=\"row-10\"\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-1\"\u003e\n9\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-2\"\u003e\nHeadphone\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-3\"\u003e\nPhilips SHP 2000\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr class=\"row-11\"\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-1\"\u003e\n10\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-2\"\u003e\nGraphics Card\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-3\"\u003e\nMSI RX 480 4 GB\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr class=\"row-12\"\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-1\"\u003e\n11\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-2\"\u003e\nUPS\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-3\"\u003e\nLuminous LB1000UNO UPS\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr class=\"row-13\"\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-1\"\u003e\n12\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-2\"\u003e\nKeyboard\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-3\"\u003e\nTVS-E Gold Bharat Mechanical Keyboard\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr class=\"row-14\"\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-1\"\u003e\n13\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-2\"\u003e\nMouse\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-3\"\u003e\nLogitech G102 Gaming mouse\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr class=\"row-15\"\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-1\"\u003e\n14\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-2\"\u003e\nOptical Drive\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-3\"\u003e\nSamsung DVD Combo\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr class=\"row-16\"\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-1\"\u003e\n15\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-2\"\u003e\nController\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-3\"\u003e\nXBox One Controller\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr class=\"row-17\"\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-1\"\u003e\n16\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-2\"\u003e\nMFD\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-3\"\u003e\nHP Deskjet Ink Advantage 3545 printer\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr class=\"row-18\"\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-1\"\u003e\n17\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-2\"\u003e\nRouter\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"column-3\"\u003e\nTP-LINK TL-WR840N (V2) 300 Mbps\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003c/table\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRig as of: 29th Mar 2018.\u003cbr\u003e\nCPU Z Validation: \u003ca href=\"https://valid.x86.fr/yftf2q\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://valid.x86.fr/cache/banner/yftf2q-6.png\" alt=\"\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My Gaming PC Configuration"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/amazon/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Amazon"},{"content":"Important Note: This is not a promotional write up. Amazon’s not paying me to write this.\nI always believed Traditional TV to be a very poor medium of entertainment. We want to choose what ‘we’ want to watch and ‘when’ to watch them, instead of letting the TV decide for us. With the pace of modern life, we want greater control on the content and timing.\nThankfully, traditional TV is now officially dead. Before we continue to the rest of the article let us take a moment of silence for the Traditional TV as our parents knew it!\nWelcome Amazon Prime Video in India. With all the contents and shortcomings of it (coming below), I think the wishful thinking of a good and legal streaming service isn’t just a wish anymore. The introductory price of the subscription too, Rs 499 for a year comes to around Rs 41 a month, is highly welcoming indeed. Compare it with the most basic plan Netflix provides which is Rs 500 PER MONTH, and you can see why the price provided by Amazon seems surprising.\nI have managed to start with the 30 day trial first, just to test the features of this streaming option Amazon Prime is providing. I did hear about some content being censored on Amazon Prime, but I can easily check the length of the video on IMDb, before deciding to add it to my watchlist. So far content wise its a bit of a let down, still I managed to shortlist various good stuff on my watchlist. I certainly hope new content will be added, and also browsing of content would be a bit better in future.\nI tried to analyze the content provided under Amazon’s Prime Video. Here’s some from my shortlist. Do note that the genre I like to watch, which will heavily influence my opinion on the content provided by Amazon are: Sci Fi, Action, Thriller, Cyberpunk, Fantasy. I dislike Horror and (only) Drama shows in general.\nNote: The direct links to the Amazon Prime website won’t work if you aren’t login to Amazon prime service. I intend to mention IMDb link in future if there’s demand.\nAmazon Original Series: #This section contains few shows that I never heard. Some shows which I added under watchlist are following:\nThe Man in the High Castle (Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller): A glimpse into an alternate history of North America. What life after WWII may have been like if the Nazis had won the war.\nI didn’t add anymore shows from amazon original list, just due to my taste. But worthy mentions in Amazon Original series include, The Grand Tour, Hand of God and Bosch. Do consider that the 4th episode of “The Grand Tour” is highly censored.\nTV Shows: #There are many TV shows on Amazon, thought I couldn’t find popular shows like Flash, Arrow or Legends of Tomorrow. But I found these good ones (with description from either Amazon Prime or IMDb:\nExtant (Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller): a mystery thriller about a female astronaut trying to reconnect with her family when she returns after a year in outer space. Her experiences lead to events that ultimately will change the course of human history.\nThe World’s War (Documentary, History): British historian David Olusoga, along with other historians, narrates the story of millions of Indian, African and Asian troops who fought and died alongside French and British troops to help win the war against Germany, Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.\nStartup (Crime, Thriller): Nick Capelli emerges from prison into a world where his once strong mafia family has eroded, leaving him with no direction, but an uncontrollable need to try to recreate his past criminal life. In the modern world where the mafia doesn’t command respect like it used to, this series takes a look at what it would take for a modern crime organization to rise today. [I JUST ADDED THIS FOR Martin Freeman!]\nV (Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller): Elizabeth Mitchell (Lost) stars in this reimagining of the hit miniseries from Scott Peters, creator of The 4400. “Visitors” appear in every major city in the world, promoting a message of peace … but could they be a threat to our existence?\nBritain’s Greatest Generation (Documentary): Documentary series on the generation who fought or lived through World War II.\nFringe (Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi): An FBI agent is forced to work with an institutionalized scientist and his son in order to rationalize a brewing storm of unexplained phenomena.\nBest of AIB (Comedy, World Cinema: Indian): Do they need a description?\nThe Storytellers (Drama: Plays/Performance, World Cinema: Indian): Remember the good old days of sitting around a campfire sharing stories? The Storytellers is a modern day take on that. At a time when interactions primarily take place across screens, The Storytellers encourages people to look up and connect with one another by sharing their personal life experiences face to face, without inhibitions and with honesty.\nFullmetal Alchemist (Anime): On one fateful night, Edward loses an arm and a leg, and Alphonse losing his entire body in an alchemy experiment gone awry. From this point, Edward’s only concern is finding a way to return his brother to his body. He soon finds himself in the service of the government as a State Alchemist. It is here the amazing story of the youngest State Alchemist in history begins.\nChi’s Sweet Adventure (Anime, Subbed): Cause, Cats!.\nPeople of Earth (Comedy): In this half-hour comedy about a support group for alien abductees, a skeptical journalist investigates their supposed alien encounters. The more he digs into their oddball claims, however, the more he realizes signs that point to his own alien abduction. The onetime outsider now finds himself part of this eclectic group of misfits, while struggling with the idea of life beyond our world.\nMr. Robot (Crime, Drama, Thriller): Follows Elliot, a young programmer working as a cyber-security engineer by day, and a vigilante hacker by night.\nI guess Cyberpunk isn’t a genre anymore, but I was pleasantly surprised to have this show on Amazon prime. Although I am sure there will be censorship in this.\nDexter (Crime, Drama, Mystery): When blood spatter analyst Dexter Morgan is not out solving murders, he spends his time as a serial killer who eliminates those who do bad things.\nConstantine (Drama, Fantasy, Horror): Seasoned demon hunter and master of the occult John Constantine is armed with a ferocious knowledge of the dark arts and a wicked wit. With the balance of good and evil on the line, Constantine uses his skills to find the supernatural terrors that threaten our world and send them back where they belong.\nWolverine and the X-Men (Animation, Action, Adventure ): The story picks up one year after the attack on Xavier Institute that caused the disbanding of X-Men and the mysterious disappearance of Professor X and Jean Grey. Wolverine must reunite his team to find out what happened that fateful night. Their position as mutants doesn’t make things any easier as the MRD (Mutant Response Division) is hunting down and exterminating them.\nThe Girlfriend Experience (Drama) : Christine Reade is a second year law student and a new intern at a prestigious law firm. Her focus quickly shifts when a classmate introduces her to the world of transactional relationships.\nI don’t need to explain why I added this show.\nElementary (Crime, Drama, Mystery): A modern take on the cases of Sherlock Holmes, with the detective now living in New York City.\nMovies: #I am surprised by the fact that I could shortlist only a few movies from the below list, but it goes on to show that movies catalogue is really small. I have added some worthy mentions below my watchlist.\nMr. X in Bombay (1964): Shobha’s dad who is a scientist gets into a difficult situation after an experiment he was conducting goes wrong and kills his employee Manohar.\nIndian Sci Fi movie from way back. I can’t miss to watch this.\nA.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001): In a future world, humans share aspects of their lives with companion robots called Mechas. But when an advanced prototype robot child named David is programmed to show unconditional love, his human family isn’t prepared for the consequences.\nOne of my all time favorite from Spielberg. Will watch this again and again until my last breath!\nSaving Private Ryan (Action, Drama, War): Following the Normandy Landings, a group of U.S. soldiers go behind enemy lines to retrieve a paratrooper whose brothers have been killed in action.\nSpongeBob SquarePants: Sponge Out Of Water (Comedy, Animated): On a mission to save his world, SpongeBob SquarePants is headed to ours for the first time ever! When pirate Burger Beard steals the Krabby Patties recipe, SpongeBob and friends must unleash their inner superheroes in order to defeat a super-villian.\nSarbjit (Biography, Drama, History): Biopic of Sarabjit Singh, a farmer residing at Bhikiwind, Punjab, near the Indo-Pak border, crossed the border after having a couple of drinks. However, he was mistaken to be an Indian spy and was sentenced to capital punishment.\nWorthy mentions for movies (which I have already watched): War of the Worlds (2005), The Godfather, Lemony Snicket’s Series Of Unfortunate Events, Forrest Gump, Cast Away, The Dictator, Into The Wild, Watchmen, Finding Neverland, Stardust, Paycheck, World War Z, Minority Report and Star Trek series.\nBonus: #The worst movie I could find on Prime: Journey to the Center of the Earth. Just watch the rating and review on IMDb. I do intend to TRY to watch this.\nConclusion: #I always thought how a Steam like model can be implemented for video industry, and how I would support it if the price is justified. Amazon’s Prime video seems like a good direction to go into and definitely the one streaming service subscribing is required to.\n","date":"24 December 2016","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2016/12/amazon-prime-in-india-my-views-and-a-catalog-of-good-content/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eImportant Note: This is not a promotional write up. Amazon’s not paying me to write this.\u003cbr\u003e\nI always believed Traditional TV to be a very poor medium of entertainment. We want to choose what ‘we’ want to watch and ‘when’ to watch them, instead of letting the TV decide for us. With the pace of modern life, we want greater control on the content and timing.\u003cbr\u003e\nThankfully, traditional TV is now officially dead. Before we continue to the rest of the article let us take a moment of silence for the Traditional TV as our parents knew it!\u003cbr\u003e\nWelcome Amazon Prime Video in India. With all the contents and shortcomings of it (coming below), I think the wishful thinking of a good and legal streaming service isn’t just a wish anymore. The introductory price of the subscription too, Rs 499 for a year comes to around Rs 41 a month, is highly welcoming indeed. Compare it with the most basic plan Netflix provides which is Rs 500 PER MONTH, and you can see why the price provided by Amazon seems surprising.\u003cbr\u003e\nI have managed to start with the 30 day trial first, just to test the features of this streaming option Amazon Prime is providing. I did hear about \u003ca href=\"http://mashable.com/2016/12/16/amazon-prime-video-india-censorship-debate/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003esome content being censored on Amazon Prime\u003c/a\u003e, but I can easily check the length of the video on IMDb, before deciding to add it to my watchlist. So far content wise its a bit of a let down, still I managed to shortlist various good stuff on my watchlist. I certainly hope new content will be added, and also browsing of content would be a bit better in future.\u003cbr\u003e\nI tried to analyze the content provided under Amazon’s Prime Video. Here’s some from my shortlist. Do note that the genre I like to watch, which will heavily influence my opinion on the content provided by Amazon are: Sci Fi, Action, Thriller, Cyberpunk, Fantasy. I dislike Horror and (only) Drama shows in general.\u003cbr\u003e\nNote: The direct links to the Amazon Prime website won’t work if you aren’t login to Amazon prime service. I intend to mention IMDb link in future if there’s demand.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Amazon Prime In India: My views and a Catalog of Good Content"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/prime/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Prime"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/primevideo/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Primevideo"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/video-streaming/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Video Streaming"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/custom-rom/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Custom Rom"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/flash/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Flash"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/moto-e/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Moto E"},{"content":"So I had a Moto E that was showing weird issues. Sometimes when it’s rebooted it stucks in bootloop and fails to finish the boot sequence. The home screen just doesn’t appear. I manage to flash a fresh ROM on it and after which it starts to work. I haven’t been able to identify the problem yet, but the turnaround is working good as of now. So I just want to document the process of fixing the soft bricked Moto E:\n*** DISCLAIMER *** Please note that this is just a documentation of the process I followed to fix my Moto E. This is by no means an accurate or official guide to fix your Moto E. If you do mess up your phone trying to follow this documentation, you can't blame me. The simple procedure for a fresh Moto E is to first unlock the bootloader of Moto E. Which is a simple one time process which includes using the following command in fastboot mode: fastboot oem get_unlock_data. The unlock is complete when you enter a code on Motorola website and they give you a return string to unlock it. The guide is [here][1].\nOnce the phone is unlocked its time to flash a custom recovery. This is done by downloading the TWRP recovery for Moto E here: [http://d-h.st/1Zp.][2]\nAnd then booting the phone in fastboot mode and sending following command:\nfastboot flash recovery moto_e_twrp2.7.0.0_v1.2.img Once the recovery is flashed you can reboot in recovery mode manually or by following command:\nfastboot reboot From recovery mode you can do all sorts of things like clearing out the cache (which sometimes fixes issues), and going into adb sideload mode. From this sideload mode, you can send sideload commands which can be used to install a custom ROM. The custom ROM for Moto E can be downloaded from below link: [http://forum.xda-developers.com/moto-e/development/rom-stock-motorola-lollipop-rom-t3167111.][3] (The one which worked for me was: Retail Dual-SIM (Asia | World) 5.1 ROM (Optimized) v1.1 (287mb) Deodexed).\nThis ROM can be sideloaded by going into the sideload mode and sending following command:\nadb sideload \"I:\\Moto E\\XT1022_Retail_DualSim_51_Optimized_v1.1.zip\" After the above command, it will take some time and progress can be viewed on phone. Once that’s done you can reboot the device and the phone should start. First run takes a lot of times since it “optimizes” the app etc.\nThis ends the procedure. If you want to recreate all partitions from scratch, you may try to follow the following guide of flashing the stock firmware: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2759495.\nThe above guide tells to download the stock firmware from following location:\nhttp://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2755857 (I choose XT1022_CONDOR_RETAILDSDS_5.1_LPCS23.13-34.8-3_cid7 (Newer Build))\nTo flash the stock firmware the above guide says to follow the below series of commands:\nfastboot flash partition gpt.bin fastboot flash motoboot motoboot.img fastboot flash logo logo.bin fastboot flash boot boot.img fastboot flash recovery recovery.img fastboot.exe flash system system.img_sparsechunk.0 fastboot.exe flash system system.img_sparsechunk.1 fastboot.exe flash system system.img_sparsechunk.2 fastboot.exe flash system system.img_sparsechunk.3 fastboot flash modem NON-HLOS.bin fastboot erase modemst1 fastboot erase modemst2 fastboot flash fsg fsg.mbn fastboot erase cache fastboot erase userdata fastboot reboot I had to still try to flash the custom ROM instead of stock firmware to get my Moto E to successfully boot. [1]: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2753110 [2]: http://d-h.st/1Zp [3]: http://forum.xda-developers.com/moto-e/development/rom-stock-motorola-lollipop-rom-t3167111\n","date":"24 September 2016","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2016/09/resurrecting-soft-bricked-moto-e/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo I had a Moto E that was showing weird issues. Sometimes when it’s rebooted it stucks in bootloop and fails to finish the boot sequence. The home screen just doesn’t appear. I manage to flash a fresh ROM on it and after which it starts to work. I haven’t been able to identify the problem yet, but the turnaround is working good as of now. So I just want to document the process of fixing the soft bricked Moto E:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cpre\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e*** DISCLAIMER ***\nPlease note that this is just a documentation of the process I followed to fix my Moto E. This is by no means an accurate or official guide to fix your Moto E. If you do mess up your phone trying to follow this documentation, you can't blame me.\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/pre\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe simple procedure for a fresh Moto E is to first unlock the bootloader of Moto E. Which is a simple one time process which includes using the following command in fastboot mode: \u003cstrong\u003efastboot oem get_unlock_data\u003c/strong\u003e. The unlock is complete when you enter a code on Motorola website and they give you a return string to unlock it. The guide is [here][1].\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Resurrecting Soft Bricked Moto E"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/soft-brick/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Soft Brick"},{"content":"This article lists a few ways to analyze the usage space of the hard disk through Terminal.\nSpace occupied by all folder sorted ascending order: #sudo du -h * | sort -h The command ‘du’ is used in terminal which stands for disk usage. But the command alone gives listing of all files along with their size. The above command sorts the list, so that the highest space folder appears in bottom of the list. SUDO added since if you want it to run in root folder, normal command won’t have access to system folders.\nSpace on disk: #df -h Above command is not path sensitive, which means you can run it from anywhere and also don’t require sudo.\nDisk space usage per user: #sudo find . -printf \"%u %s\\n\" | awk '{user[$1]+=$2}; END{ for( i in user) print i \" \" user[i]}' Above script (combination of commands) prints disk usage per user and is not path sensitive. The script uses find and awk (extraction command) to give a list of users along with the space they are consuming in bytes.\nViewing first top directories taking space #du --max-depth=1 2\u0026gt; /dev/null | sort -n -r | head -n20 The above command would list top few directories along with their size, sorted in descending order.\nThird Party Utility: #On debian, install ncdu by following command:\nsudo apt-get install ncdu -s Once install, you can use the utility ncdu to easily see the size of various folders through a friendly user interface right within Terminal. Here’s the ncdu manual: https://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdu/man\nIf above command don’t install ncdu try forcing the install by following command:\nsudo apt-get install -f -y ncdu With above command you can pin point the folder which is taking up space in little time. Also note that the sometimes you need to go deeper by using the command, sudo su, to view space of files taken up by say, /var directory.\n","date":"6 July 2016","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2016/07/commands-to-analyze-space-through-terminal/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis article lists a few ways to analyze the usage space of the hard disk through Terminal.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"space-occupied-by-all-folder-sorted-ascending-order\" class=\"relative group\"\u003eSpace occupied by all folder sorted ascending order: \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#space-occupied-by-all-folder-sorted-ascending-order\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cpre\u003esudo du -h * | sort -h\u003c/pre\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe command ‘du’ is used in terminal which stands for disk usage. But the command alone gives listing of all files along with their size. The above command sorts the list, so that the highest space folder appears in bottom of the list. SUDO added since if you want it to run in root folder, normal command won’t have access to system folders.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Commands to Analyze Space through Terminal"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/psyonix/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Psyonix"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/racing/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Racing"},{"content":"Rocket League, by Psyonix is a game every racer probably desired, but didn’t even know that they do. If you are also a football player too, this game could be your love you were destined to meet. What’s surprising though, is that even if you are not a fan of sports game, this game will blow your mind.\nConceptually simple and hard to master, there is just one objective of the game. Use your rocket powered cars to kick the ball inside the net of opposite team. The way you do it is what separates the rookies from the pros and the pros from the masters. You can either play as solo, or in teams of 2, 3 or 4. There are quite few training to get your feet wet and to learn some skills and you can even play with bots before you attempt to face online players.\nSo how did I fare going through various levels in Rocket League?\nRookie: #I still remember the first day I fired up Rocket League In January 2016, I was blown away by the amount of detail in the city around the arena where I spawned. Being a BTTF fan, I had started the game with my DeLorean. I didn’t have a controller. I steered the DeLorean with my keyboard. Boosting the car, kicking the ball in goal. “BOOM”, the ball exploded into a zillion pieces once it crossed the goal line. Little did I knew that it was start of a long journey stretching 4 months and counting. In these 4 months I have had a range of emotions I didn’t express in a long time. Rocket League was about to change my life.\nIt took me quite a few days before I started to use boost effectively. I just used to keep one of my fingers on boost button all the time and used to ran out of it before I could say “I have boost”. I played with few online friends, who were newbies like me. Together we played possibly the noobiest matches, which in hindsight now looks as if the buttons on the keyboard were being pushed by a cat. Jumping ever so often and getting my car out of position seemed to the best way to approach incoming ball. You can watch that gameplay for your amusement. Spoiler though, it will be painful to watch if you have any idea of how pros play.\nSemi Pro: #As I started to play more and more of Rocket League I understood the depth of the game. The layers of skills it offered were stunning. Boost management, defending, and even passes contributed much to the success rate of winning. Slowly and steadily I climbed up the levels and became a Semi Pro from Rookie. I could now play significantly better. No longer did I miss ball by arms length. I thought I am getting good. Boy, I was wrong.\nThen I saw players who could just hit the ball in mid air. While my eyes was fixated on the ball and used to stop my car under it like it was a parking spot, someone would just steal the ball away from above and sometimes even made a goal. What I experienced was called, “Aerials”. It was an ecstatic moment. I could Fly! I didn’t just have to believe that I could fly, I could actually do it! It was then that I started the Aerial training. With the DeLorean, flying was eventual. When I first flew, the voices of Dr Emmet Brown echoed my ears. Where I was going, I didn’t need, Roads!\nWhat came later was nothing short of compilation of epic fail montages. Flying was difficult. Making contact with a moving ball on ground was difficult enough. Add to it the axis of height and things just grew out of control. I used to try and try and miss every shot. So I tried and tried more. Watched online tutorials. Read articles on Reddit. Put on everything I learned into practice. It was around this time that I decided to finally buy a controller. Keyboard was not a viable option anymore. And then I faced the worst period as a player.\nPro: #The 100 hours I spent in Rocket League all seemed to go down the drain, once I started using controller. I just couldn’t manage to remember the buttons. I dropped controller multiple times and started to play with keyboard. But online friends encouraged me. Watching Kronovi flying effortlessly encouraged me. And I thought to myself if I want to become any good in Aerials I just can’t do that from Keyboard. Finally after countless hours and many losses I became used to the controller.\nVeteran: #I was now 200 hours in the game. It was then that I reached the level of “Veteran”. It seemed a big title and I didn’t feel I was doing justice to it. So I hid my level. I couldn’t boast of being a Vet and keep making own goals. Something was missing. I could defend good, make some shots on goal too, but I couldn’t manage to make actual goals. My passes weren’t that effective and mostly my passes used to be more advantageous to opponent team players.\nI started to watch gameplays more rigorously. Followed the Playing with Potatoes series by Gibbs. Whatever free time I had after I returned from my job, before I start the game, I used to spend on watching clips on the Rocket League sub-reddit. Watching amazing gif on the sub always used to amaze me. It introduced me the moves I never thought were possible. Though actually trying those moves mostly proved fatal to my games.\nExpert: #I then completed 300 hours. I started to play mostly with an online friend who had helped me initially to migrate to controller. But he was not happy. I used to miss shots a lot. Even when ball was rolling on ground, I used to miss shots by hair length resulting in goals for other team. I used to get disappointed and heart broken when that used to happen. Again I felt something was wrong.\nHe invited me to 1×1 one day. And then the reality hit me. I was a terrible solo player. I used to take many risky shots. In the solo game mode, that was not acceptable. I used to take every chance to hit the ball, try to take impossible aerials. I became very sad. I realized that in team play my misses didn’t really effect that much but in solo it resulted in epic failures.\nI decided to stop playing Rocket League. And I left the game entirely. I started playing some indie and racing games. But my habit of checking out incredible shots on Reddit was not gone. Eventually after a whole 3 days I fired up the game again. But this time I started playing with bots. Unfair match with bots seemed to be a fair way to become good in the game. But more often than not the bots used to give me a field trip, literally.\nPlaying with bots proved tougher than playing with actual people online. Since unlike online players bots made less mistakes. The penalty for being impatient or a miss, or a bad play used to be instant. This made me learn to play more patiently than before. And once I started to stop and think, I didn’t try to hit the ball at every occasion. This made me slightly better. But even now my biggest weakness is dribbling. These days I am trying to improve on that in free play. I seem to be going backward, since dribbling is such an elementary skill for this game. With dribbling comes mind games. So, once I become good in dribbling and ball control I am sure I could play more patiently.\nAfter around 400 hours, I think I have just begun to understand the basics about the game. Such are the layers of skill required in this game. After 400 hours, where do I stand? I can’t dribble properly, miss easy shots sometimes, can’t make good aerial shots, can’t give good passes to team mates, and its still hard for me to predict where the ball is going to deflect. The only thing I think I am good at seems to be defending and now I could score by hitting the ball by jumping and double jumping.\nBy the time I reach to Master, Legend and then eventually Rocketeer (the last level), I would be at-least a bit better, but I hope I could make it there despite the overwhelming emotions Rocket League makes me go through.\nCommunity: #The community of Rocket League players is a mixed race just like with every other online multiplayer game. But so far the players I have played with are mostly at the brighter side. People respond with “gg” (good game) even after loosing. There are occasional sour grapes but they are in minority. There are quick chat options to say things like, “What a Save!” and “Nice Shot!” and are the mostly used phrases in game. Sometimes people tend to use it to sarcasm, and those proves funny too a lot of times.\nIt have been said that the players are divided as per the rank where they belong. Players at the lower most and upper most tiers are generally good, while in the middle ranks are where the most frustrated player resides. So generally a player encounters players who flame, mostly in the middle ranks. I am not entirely sure if that’s true but it does make the most sense.\nReddit Community: #Significant number of hours I have spent just dazzling over the GIF’s posted by Redditors. The incredible goals, saves and aerials posted on the Rocket League made me motivated to keep trying. When I took hiatus from the game for 3 days I couldn’t stop surfing and I can give credit to these GIF’s for my comeback in the game.\nThe sub is active with tons of players who post in additions to GIF, their experiences, rants and suggestions on the game. Developers are Psyonix do browse the sub and notice them first hand. Even top players like Kronovi and Gibbs are part of the active members in the sub, and mostly can be seen trolling their own friends. You know devs love the community when they fix even minor issues and incorporate features like Replay name, after discussion on Reddit.\nThe Rocket League Reddit sub also have been a great part in the form of guides and tutorials that it contains from amazing players. One such post is the compilation of such useful guides.\nCar Customization #One of the best thing about Rocket League is the amount of sheer customizations you can do to your car. All of the changes are cosmetics though, so tweaking any of them wouldn’t give anyone an unfair advantage. The variety of cars are less, but with DLC you can choose some of the more amazing cars like, DeLorean, Dominus, Takumi and recently Batmobile. While top speed, boost power are all same for all the cars, the only slight difference is the hit box and turning radius, which a player can choose as per their style of playing. As for the customization you could choose colors (from predefined template of colors), toppers (hat), flags and boost trail. Some of the toppers are quit funny like chick-magnet, which puts a chick on top of a magnet on your car (just as you would expect).\n[][11]Rocket League Car Customization A word on Wasteland: #Wasteland is the most popular map in Rocket League. RL players have extreme views about this map depending on either they love it or hate. This map was plagued with weird ball deflection bugs and being laggy in nature due to it containing a huge amount of artifacts. But even on my iGPU HD4600 the map never let me face any issues. Personally I really like the change of pace this map provides. Part of the likeness of Wasteland I would admit was due to the fact that due to unpredictable bounces it gave me an opportunity to score against the mistakes of other pro players. With the recent patch though I think Wasteland would be more fixed, but still it would have a good place in my heart for it being the most challenging. Psyonix also released a set of 4 maps seemingly inspired from TRON movie, and those are good to play, but it failed to create a space which other standard maps have done.\nThis article: #I wrote first draft of this article on 28 Feb. And it took me more than 2 months to get it completed. I have started a new section on my blog for Gaming, and this is the first game which provoked me to do that.\nI originally intended to write this guide to have a repository of everything awesome about this game. Tutorials, Guides, Videos montages and a collection of awesome stuff from Reddit. But I will be doing that in an another post. And I will try not to delay it much.\nYou know a game is good when you don’t get time to write about it because of the game itself. You know a game is good when people keep coming back even after severe server downtimes. There’s a lot to be said about this game and I believe I have just scratched the surface.\nIn the end I would leave you with a video that shows how players who played the Rocket League beta when it came out for PS, took the server hostage when the server was about to shut down! (It begins at 05:17, but this whole video is worth watching).\n","date":"18 April 2016","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2016/04/rocket-league/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://store.steampowered.com/app/252950/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eRocket League, by Psyonix\u003c/a\u003e is a game every racer probably desired, but didn’t even know that they do. If you are also a football player too, this game could be your love you were destined to meet. What’s surprising though, is that even if you are not a fan of sports game, this game will blow your mind.\u003cbr\u003e\nConceptually simple and hard to master, there is just one objective of the game. Use your rocket powered cars to kick the ball inside the net of opposite team. The way you do it is what separates the rookies from the pros and the pros from the masters. You can either play as solo, or in teams of 2, 3 or 4. There are quite few training to get your feet wet and to learn some skills and you can even play with bots before you attempt to face online players.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/maxresdefault.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1259\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/maxresdefault.jpg\" alt=\"Rocket League Poster\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nSo how did I fare going through various levels in Rocket League?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"rookie\" class=\"relative group\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRookie:\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#rookie\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eI still remember the first day I fired up Rocket League In January 2016, I was blown away by the amount of detail in the city around the arena where I spawned. Being a BTTF fan, I had started the game with my \u003ca href=\"http://store.steampowered.com/app/405170/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eDeLorean\u003c/a\u003e. I didn’t have a controller. I steered the DeLorean with my keyboard. Boosting the car, kicking the ball in goal. “BOOM”, the ball exploded into a zillion pieces once it crossed the goal line. Little did I knew that it was start of a long journey stretching 4 months and counting. In these 4 months I have had a range of emotions I didn’t express in a long time. Rocket League was about to change my life.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rocket League : Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars!!!"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/soccer/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Soccer"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/video-games/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Video Games"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/hollywood/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Hollywood"},{"content":"Below is a list of 21 movies to be released in 2016 that are most hyped. If you love Sci-Fi, Superhero, Adventure, Action, Fantasy and Thriller then this list should be on your IMDb watchlist. The list is arranged as per the US release date.\n1. Deadpool #(Release date: 12 Feb 2016) [Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi]\nPlot: A former Special Forces operative turned mercenary is subjected to a rogue experiment that leaves him with accelerated healing powers and adopts the alter ego Deadpool.\nMarvel had a field trip with this character since months now, put in place excellent PR campaigns and been preparing for this movie since they got the Deadpool wrong in Wolverine movie. The hype can’t be more real than this and perfect to start the year!\n2. Triple 9 #(Release date: 18 Feb 2016) [Crime, Drama]\nPlot: A gang of criminals and corrupt cops plan the murder of a police officer in order to pull off their biggest heist yet across town.\nAdded this out of league movie, just because of the tone from the trailer.\n3. Eddie the Eagle #(Release date: 26 Feb 2016) [Biography, Drama, History]\nPlot: The story of Great Britain’s first ski jumper to enter the Winter Olympics.\nWhen Hugh Jackman is the mentor you NEED to watch it nevertheless anything.\n4. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice #(Release date: 23 Mar 2016) [Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Sci Fi]\nPlot: Fearing the actions of Superman left unchecked, Batman takes on Superman, while the world wrestles with what kind of a hero the world really needs. With Batman and Superman fighting each other, a new threat Doomsday created by Lex Luthor. Its up to Superman and Batman to set aside their difference along with Wonder Woman to stop Lex Luthor and Doomsday from destroying Metropolis.\n5. The Jungle Book #(Release date: 07 Apr 2016) [Adventure, Drama, Fantasy]\nPlot: An orphan boy is raised in the jungle with the help of a pack of wolves, a bear, and a black panther.\nJungle jungle baat chali hai… Mougli phir se chaddi me aa raha hai! 🙂\n6. Captain America: Civil War #(Release date: 27 Apr 2016) [Action, Sci Fi, Thriller]\nPlot: Political interference in the Avengers’ activities causes a rift between former allies Captain America and Iron Man.\n7. Snowden #(Release date: 04 May 2016) [Biography, Drama, Thriller]\nPlot: CIA employee Edward Snowden leaks thousands of classified documents to the press.\nSeriously must watch for its actual story on how Snowden uncovered secrets like NSA spying American citizens!\n8. X-Men: Apocalypse #(Release date: 27 May 2016 – USA) [Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi]\nPlot: With the emergence of the world’s first mutant, Apocalypse, the X-Men must unite to defeat his extinction level plan.\nWolverine or not its a movie you can’t miss.\n9. Warcraft #(Release date: 25 May 2016) [Action, Adventure, Fantasy]\nPlot: An epic fantasy/adventure based on the popular video game series.\n10. Independence Day: Resurgence #(Release date: 22 Jun 2016) [Action, Adventure, Sci Fi]\nPlot: Two decades after the first Independence Day invasion, Earth is faced with a new extra-Solar threat. But will mankind’s new space defenses be enough?\nThe “Independence Day” was excellent. Will this be even half as good as the original?\n11. The BFG #(Release date: 22 Jun 2016) [Family, Fantasy]\nPlot: A girl named Sophie encounters the Big Friendly Giant who, despite his intimidating appearance, turns out to be a kindhearted soul who is considered an outcast by the other giants because unlike his peers refuses to eat boys and girls.\nWith the director being none other than Steven Spielberg it have high anticipations.\n12. Star Trek Beyond #(Release date: 07 Jul 2016) [Action, Adventure, Sci Fi, Thriller]\nContinuing the Star Trek legacy! No plot revealed as of writing of this article.\n13. Ghostbusters #(Release date: 14 Jul 2016) [Action, comedy, Sci Fi]\nPlot: No plot revealed, but needless to say its about busting ghosts. The series is returning after a long time.\n14. Suicide Squad #(Release date: 03 Aug 2016) [Action]\nPlot: A secret government agency recruits imprisoned supervillains to execute dangerous black ops missions in exchange for clemency.\nHarley Quinn. Enough said!\n15. Kubo and the Two Strings #(Release date: 18 Aug 2016) [Animation]\nPlot: Kubo lives a quiet, normal life in a small shoreside village until a spirit from the past turns his life upside down by re-igniting an age-old vendetta. This causes all sorts of havoc as gods and monsters chase Kubo who, in order to survive, must locate a magical suit of armor once worn by his late father, a legendary Samurai warrior.\n16. Doctor Strange #(Release date: 26 Oct 2016) [Action, Adventure, Fantasy]\nPlot: After his career is destroyed, a brilliant but arrogant surgeon gets a new lease on life when a sorcerer takes him under his wing and trains him to defend the world against evil.\nThe actor from Sherlock Holmes and “The Imitation Game”, Doctor Strange is none other than, Benedict Cumberbatch!!\n17. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them #(Release date: 11 Nov 2016) [Adventure, Family, Fantasy]\nPlot: The adventures of writer Newt Scamander in New York’s secret community of witches and wizards seventy years before Harry Potter reads his book in school.\nSo its kinda prequel to all those Harry Potter series?!\n18. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story #(Release date: 14 Dec 2016) [Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Sci Fi]\nPlot: Rebels set out on a mission to steal the plans for the Death Star.\nNo trailer out yet, but its the most anticipated movie of 2016! Force will only go more powerful here!\n19. Passengers #(Release date: 21 Dec 2016) [Adventure, Sci Fi]\nPlot: A spacecraft traveling to a distant colony planet and transporting thousands of people has a malfunction in one of its sleep chambers. As a result, a single passenger is awakened 60 years early. Faced with the prospect of growing old and dying alone, he eventually decides to wake up a second passenger.\n20. Beta Test #(Release date: Not Announced) [Action, Sci Fi, Thriller]\nPlot: Champion gamer Max Troy discovers events in a new video game are being mirrored in the real world, and must join forces with the game’s protagonist, Orson Creed, to unravel the conspiracy before the game’s sinister plot overwhelms the city.\n21. Story of Your Life #(Release date: Not Announced) [Sci Fi]\nPlot: Taking place after alien crafts land around the world, an expert linguist is recruited by the military to determine whether they come in peace or are a threat.\nYou can watch this list on IMDb. Which movie have got YOU hyped?\n","date":"9 January 2016","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2016/01/the-most-awaited-movies-in-2016-hype-is-real/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBelow is a list of 21 movies to be released in 2016 that are most hyped. If you love Sci-Fi, Superhero, Adventure, Action, Fantasy and Thriller then this list should be on your \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/list/ls031475386/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eIMDb watchlist\u003c/a\u003e. The list is arranged as per the US release date.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"1\" class=\"relative group\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e1. \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1431045/?ref_=ttrel_rel_tt\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eDeadpool\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#1\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e(\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1431045/releaseinfo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eRelease date:\u003c/a\u003e 12 Feb 2016) \u003cem\u003e[Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi]\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nPlot: A former Special Forces operative turned mercenary is subjected to a rogue experiment that leaves him with accelerated healing powers and adopts the alter ego Deadpool.\u003cbr\u003e\nMarvel had a field trip with this character since months now, put in place excellent PR campaigns and been preparing for this movie since they got the Deadpool wrong in Wolverine movie. The hype can’t be more real than this and perfect to start the year!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"2\" class=\"relative group\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e2. \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1712261/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eTriple 9\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#2\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e(\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1712261/releaseinfo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eRelease date:\u003c/a\u003e 18 Feb 2016) \u003cem\u003e[Crime, Drama]\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nPlot: A gang of criminals and corrupt cops plan the murder of a police officer in order to pull off their biggest heist yet across town.\u003cbr\u003e\nAdded this out of league movie, just because of the tone from the trailer.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e","title":"The most awaited movies in 2016 : Hype is real!"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/year-2016/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Year 2016"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/chat/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Chat"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/im/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"IM"},{"content":"With all the advances that have happened in the world of Internet, one thing is at the core of it. That is Instant Communication. And from the ages of Internet Chat Relays (IRC) to WhatsApp and everything in between is playing a pivotal role in connecting people from all corners of the globe. And if you are confused as to what Instant Messenger is right for you, here is a flowchart that lets you decide between few of them.\nWhatsApp: Everyone uses it since everyone else uses it. But things such as dependency on mobile even if you want to chat on browser makes it a very poorly developed IM.\nIRC (Internet Chat Relay): It’s the most powerful IM that the netizens have ever used. You can chat privately, in rooms, on PC, on your phone, use bots, leave offline messages.. really the only limit is your imagination and skills to make more functionality.\nSteam: Steam being the most popular client for gaming provides a client for both Windows, Linux and Android. So if you are a gamer you would tend to use it much extensively.\nTelegram: It’s currently the most versatile IM as of now. With features such as true cross platform (you can run it on command line!), ability to share self expiring secret messages, cloud storage (so that you don’t loose your chat history) and with the introduction of bots, I am in love with this IM. Also the fact that you don’t need to share your mobile number like WhatsApp makes it perfect for privacy conscious users.\nSo which IM you use the most and what would be your choice, if you don’t have to come under peer pressure to choose more popular Instant Messenger?\n","date":"6 January 2016","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2016/01/which-instant-messenger-is-best-for-me/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWith all the advances that have happened in the world of Internet, one thing is at the core of it. That is Instant Communication. And from the ages of Internet Chat Relays (IRC) to WhatsApp and everything in between is playing a pivotal role in connecting people from all corners of the globe. And if you are confused as to what Instant Messenger is right for you, here is a flowchart that lets you decide between few of them.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/IM_Flowchart.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1213\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1213 size-full\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/IM_Flowchart.png\" alt=\"IM_Flowchart\" width=\"749\" height=\"834\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eWhatsApp\u003c/strong\u003e: Everyone uses it since everyone else uses it. But things such as dependency on mobile even if you want to chat on browser makes it a very poorly developed IM.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eIRC (Internet Chat Relay)\u003c/strong\u003e: It’s the most powerful IM that the netizens have ever used. You can chat privately, in rooms, on PC, on your phone, use bots, leave offline messages.. really the only limit is your imagination and skills to make more functionality.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eSteam\u003c/strong\u003e: Steam being the most popular client for gaming provides a client for both Windows, Linux and Android. So if you are a gamer you would tend to use it much extensively.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eTelegram\u003c/strong\u003e: It’s currently the most versatile IM as of now. With features such as true cross platform (you can run it on command line!), ability to share self expiring secret messages, cloud storage (so that you don’t loose your chat history) and with the introduction of bots, I am in love with this IM. Also the fact that you don’t need to share your mobile number like WhatsApp makes it perfect for privacy conscious users.\u003cbr\u003e\nSo which IM you use the most and what would be your choice, if you don’t have to come under peer pressure to choose more popular Instant Messenger?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Which Instant Messenger is best for me?"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/google-sphere/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Google Sphere"},{"content":"Kanatal, a city in the state of Uttarakhand is nearly 300 km from Delhi. I made the trip there in mid December 2015 in hopes of experiencing snow. But alas all I got was this spectacular panoramas instead. I am not complaining since I did see snow, albeit it was possibly in far distance, stretching on Horizon.\nIn this first panorama you can see the sun about to rise. It was freezing at this time and I was waiting impatiently for little sunshine.\nClick the full screen button on the down right of panorama to go Full Screen.\nFinally the sun rose a little more and illuminated the distant mountains in its captivating sunshine.\nClick the full screen button on the down right of panorama to go Full Screen.\nThis is just enthralling.\nClick the full screen button on the down right of panorama to go Full Screen.\nWe also went to Har Ki Pauri in Haridwar on the way back. Ganga river flowing with all its almighty.\nClick the full screen button on the down right of panorama to go Full Screen.\n","date":"4 January 2016","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2016/01/kanatal-trip/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eKanatal, a city in the state of Uttarakhand is nearly 300 km from Delhi. I made the trip there in mid December 2015 in hopes of experiencing snow. But alas all I got was this spectacular panoramas instead. I am not complaining since I did see snow, albeit it was possibly in far distance, stretching on Horizon.\u003cbr\u003e\nIn this first panorama you can see the sun about to rise. It was freezing at this time and I was waiting impatiently for little sunshine.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"spscontent-2847\" style=\"padding:10px\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"img-2847\" style=\"width:100%;max-width:800px;height:vh;max-height:600px;\"\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eClick the full screen button on the down right of panorama to go Full Screen.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kanatal Trip"},{"content":"I went to Jaipur last year. And got these amazing Google Spheres. These are not perfect but I love the view.\nClick the full screen button on the down right of panorama to go Full Screen.\nClick the full screen button on the down right of panorama to go Full Screen.\nClick the full screen button on the down right of panorama to go Full Screen.\nClick the full screen button on the down right of panorama to go Full Screen.\n","date":"3 January 2016","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2016/01/jaipur-trip/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI went to Jaipur last year. And got these amazing Google Spheres. These are not perfect but I love the view.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"spscontent-2842\" style=\"padding:10px\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"img-2842\" style=\"width:100%;max-width:800px;height:vh;max-height:600px;\"\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eClick the full screen button on the down right of panorama to go Full Screen.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jaipur Trip"},{"content":"Lodi Garden, a city park situated in New Delhi, India is a prime destination for many joggers, developed and “developing” families for a retreat.\nFrom Wiki:\n… It contains, Mohammed Shah’s Tomb, Tomb of Sikandar Lodi, Shisha Gumbad and Bara Gumbad,architectural works of the 15th century by Lodhis, an Afghan dynasty, that ruled parts of northern India and Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of modern-day Pakistan, from 1451 to 1526…\nI took these google sphere when I visited it first time. It shows the Bada Gumbad domb.\nClick the full screen button on the down right of panorama to go Full Screen.\nClick the full screen button on the down right of panorama to go Full Screen.\nClick the full screen button on the down right of panorama to go Full Screen.\n","date":"2 January 2016","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2016/01/lodi-garden/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLodi Garden, a city park situated in New Delhi, India is a prime destination for many joggers, developed and “developing” families for a retreat.\u003cbr\u003e\nFrom Wiki:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cem\u003e… It contains, Mohammed Shah’s Tomb, Tomb of Sikandar Lodi, Shisha Gumbad and Bara Gumbad,architectural works of the 15th century by Lodhis, an Afghan dynasty, that ruled parts of northern India and Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of modern-day Pakistan, from 1451 to 1526…\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI took these google sphere when I visited it first time. It shows the Bada Gumbad domb.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"spscontent-2839\" style=\"padding:10px\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"img-2839\" style=\"width:100%;max-width:800px;height:vh;max-height:600px;\"\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eClick the full screen button on the down right of panorama to go Full Screen.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lodi Garden"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/blogging/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Blogging"},{"content":"My year in blogging in 2015 was a good one. Specially the start. I posted 2 posts every month for at least half of the year. Total of 27 posts were written in the year.\nThe first post, “Year 2014 at a Glance” was a good attempt in summarizing my experience gained in the previous year. I hope to write something about the year 2015 too, although not much have changed. I started to post the Google Spheres (panorama in 360 degrees) of the places I uses to visit. I found out that Google Spheres are a great way to look the places and as a evolution to traditional images. Its better than even a video, since Google Sphere is like a moment froze in time that you can view at your leisure. Only thing that supersede this are 360 degree videos that YT recently started to support.\nIn entertainment section, I wrote about few movies which made me awe. The Theory of Everything was a good movie on Stephen Hawking which I loved. Bajrangi Bhaijaan was a pleasant surprise from Bollywood. While the film Ugly introduced me to the direction of Anurag Kashyap in a good way. Predestination was one mind blowing film too. Since Heroes came out with a new season with Heroes Reborn, I recollected my love for the original Heroes in a blog. I felt pretty good about it too since I shared that on Reddit and got good response. I watched Star Wars in the last days of December so I may write about it soon, but only in 2016.\nA lot of stuff happened on the technical side of my life. I migrated to a new host for my site. This year I created a series of posts about Ubuntu and aggregated them under a page “The Ubuntu Guide“. I felt pretty good writing about Open source and my understanding of how Linux works grew considerably. I reviewed the phone YU Yuphoria which my cousin bought. While on the other side, Microsoft also came out with a new version of its OS, Windows 10, which made up for all things wrong with Win 8. I helped my friend Ankur assembling a new desktop PC and I wrote about our experience in buying from Nehru Place and assembling it.\nI wasn’t able to write about any new places that I visit, since compared to last time I only went to two places this year. Jaipur in April and Kanatal in December. But I intend to post a few Google Spheres about them soon.\nYear 2015 in Blogging: A Report Here\u0026#8217;s the report from Jetpack summarizing my blogging in 2015. It\u0026#8217;s certainly to see Aaruni being one of the top commenters on my blogs. I say thanks to the readers of my small but diverse blog. Overall, leaving behind the last couple of months, where I became super busy, my year in blogging went good in 2015, and certainly a one notch up from last year. I wish I can write more blogs in the coming year. ","date":"1 January 2016","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2016/01/recap-my-year-in-blogging-in-2015/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy year in blogging in 2015 was a good one. Specially the start. I posted 2 posts every month for at least half of the year. Total of 27 posts were written in the year.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe first post, “\u003ca href=\"/2015/01/year-2014-at-a-glance/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eYear 2014 at a Glance\u003c/a\u003e” was a good attempt in summarizing my experience gained in the previous year. I hope to write something about the year 2015 too, although not much have changed. I started to post the \u003ca href=\"/tag/google-sphere/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eGoogle Spheres\u003c/a\u003e (panorama in 360 degrees) of the places I uses to visit. I found out that Google Spheres are a great way to look the places and as a evolution to traditional images. Its better than even a video, since Google Sphere is like a moment froze in time that you can view at your leisure. Only thing that supersede this are \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzuqhhs6NWbgTzMuM09WKDQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003e360 degree videos\u003c/a\u003e that YT recently started to support.\u003cbr\u003e\nIn entertainment section, I wrote about few movies which made me awe. \u003ca href=\"/2015/01/the-theory-of-everything/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eThe Theory of Everything \u003c/a\u003ewas a good movie on Stephen Hawking which I loved. \u003ca href=\"/2015/07/bajrangi-bhaijaan-a-surprisingly-feel-good-movie/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eBajrangi Bhaijaan\u003c/a\u003e was a pleasant surprise from Bollywood. While the film \u003ca href=\"/2015/01/ugly-a-not-so-ugly-film/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eUgly \u003c/a\u003eintroduced me to the direction of Anurag Kashyap in a good way. \u003ca href=\"/2015/02/predestination/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003ePredestination \u003c/a\u003ewas one mind blowing film too. Since Heroes came out with a new season with Heroes Reborn, I recollected my love for the \u003ca href=\"/2015/10/heroes-ordinary-people-with-extraordinary-powers/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eoriginal Heroes\u003c/a\u003e in a blog. I felt pretty good about it too since I shared that on Reddit and got good response. I watched Star Wars in the last days of December so I may write about it soon, but only in 2016.\u003cbr\u003e\nA lot of stuff happened on the technical side of my life. I \u003ca href=\"/2015/01/migration-to-digital-ocean/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003emigrated to a new host\u003c/a\u003e for my site. This year I created a series of posts about Ubuntu and aggregated them under a page “\u003ca href=\"/technology/ubuntu/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eThe Ubuntu Guide\u003c/a\u003e“. I felt pretty good writing about Open source and my understanding of how Linux works grew considerably. I reviewed the phone \u003ca href=\"/2015/06/yu-yuphoria-review/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eYU Yuphoria\u003c/a\u003e which my cousin bought. While on the other side, Microsoft also came out with a new version of its OS, \u003ca href=\"/2015/08/upgrading-to-windows-10-the-microsofts-comeback/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eWindows 10\u003c/a\u003e, which made up for all things wrong with Win 8. I helped my friend Ankur \u003ca href=\"/2015/09/shopping-for-and-assembling-a-new-desktop-pc/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eassembling a new desktop PC\u003c/a\u003e and I wrote about our experience in buying from Nehru Place and assembling it.\u003cbr\u003e\nI wasn’t able to write about any new places that I visit, since compared to last time I only went to two places this year. Jaipur in April and Kanatal in December. But I intend to post a few Google Spheres about them soon.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Recap: My Year in Blogging in 2015"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/heroes/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Heroes"},{"content":"Heroes is an American series which aired during 2006-07. Each episode every week use to take my breath away. Heroes is back after nine years as Heroes Reborn. And this is when I felt nostalgic and decided to re-watch the first original season of Heroes. And damn I realized it was more awesome then I initially thought. This article is an account of my views about the breathtaking original season of the show.\nHeroes Season 1 : Genesis #It is where it started it all. A group of people from all around the world started discovering that they have powers. Claire, a 16 year old girl from Odessa, Texas, could heal herself after an injury of any extent, an ability known as Rapid cellular regeneration. Matt Parkman, a man from Los Angeles could read minds. Nathan Petrelli, coming from New York could fly. Niki Sanders from Las Vegas, had Dissociative Identity Disorder, that means she was two person in one. D.L. Hawkins, husband of Niki, could pass through walls. Peter Petrelli, brother of Nathan, could absorb powers from others and could do Anything! My favorite, Hiro Nakamura, could bend Time and Space, which means he could Travel in time. And then there was… Sylar! Like Peter, Sylar could absorb power from others too, but in order to do that, he had to murder the other person and eat(?) their brain. Its as disgusting as it sounds. There were other smaller characters with powers too. And all of them together had one role, that is to stop Sylar destroying New York.\n(Clockwise from Top) Peter, Claire, Ando, Sylar, Nathan, Noah, Mohinder, Matt, Maya (not in first season), Hiro, Niki (or Jessica) and Angela Season 1 was great. It slowly opened up the lives of people with extraordinary abilities and their reaction to it, while their lives crossed one another. And by the end each of the characters had some part to play. The story telling by the creator of the show, Tim Kring had a unique style in portraying the story and the character development. On the pretext of the power of time travel with Hiro, Kring use to take us to past and future in a blink of eye, thereby giving us glimpses of the story which would otherwise take many episodes to reach.\nI can still not get over how the first episode of Season 1 of Heroes ended…\n*mild spoiler begins*\nHiro is shown to have teleported to New York from within metro train in Japan. As soon as Hiro realize this and he reaches Time Square, he flung his arm in air and explains, “Yattaaaa!!!!” Everytime I see it, and in hindsight realizing what story is to be followed, sends shivers down my spine.\n*mild spoiler ends*\nEven watching Season 1 now, makes me think, that they had a plan. The first few episodes tells what exactly will happen. Rest of the season is just to answer, \u0026#8220;how\u0026#8221;. And boy does this season does that brilliantly. In comparison to the first season I would not even want to talk about the rest of the season. So I would just summarize the rest of the season here.\nHeroes Season 2: Generations\nSeveral characters are introduced. Origins of “The Company” is revealed and something about a virus named “Shanti” threatens to kill most of human population.\nHeroes Season 3: Villains and Fugitives\n12 bad guys are escaped and hunt begins.. and something something.\nHeroes Season 4: Redemption\nSomething I don’t even remember. And if I even remember somehow, I would probably want to forget.\nHeroes Reborn Season 1: Awakening #Looking at the first episode of Awakening, it made me realize how great the Genesis was. So much so that I had to watch the Season one in its entirety to be dazzled again. But I am hoping later episodes can create that awe that original Heroes started. Although I am very skeptical.\nSave the Cheerleader, Save the world! What made Heroes Season 1 Special? #Coming back to Heroes first season, it seemed that it had a vision, and it had a sense of completeness. Right from episode 2, we knew how it was going to end. Every character arc was handheld maturely. Every character’s role was defined. Season one wasn’t pretentious. Every episode was allocated to unfold story arcs of a set of people. And when character used to cross paths, we knew it hold a pretty significant importance. The journey of Heroes season 1 and not just the climax was a ride into a world I can probably never forget.\nCharacters: #The characters in the original stories represented a wide variety of audience and was very balanced. On one end of spectrum we had a girl with dual personality – a rather dark tone, and a jolly Hiro Nakamura on the other end, with an ability that every one must have thought about when they were a child. At one end we had a man who was very doubtful about his ability to hear thoughts, and on the opposite end was a man who was confident about his ability to fly. At one end was a man who could absorb others power and still remain true by heart and on the extreme end was a man that could murder anyone for the lust of power. But midst all of these people with powers, there were people with no supernatural power at all. And what this show makes it interesting that those people are no less significant.\nHiro: The one who can bend time and space Storytelling: #One of the best thing about the original Heroes is the storytelling. Yes, it had flaws. But the writers knew what they were doing and Tim Kring knew how to present the story in the most enthralling manner. To show the climax of the show in just the 2nd episode, sets a standard and the show actually stays put to it. The later seasons were met with bumpy roads and bigger plot holes. Many blame the writer’s strike that happened during later seasons but we may never know the actual cause.\nCGI and Visual Style: # Half Helix Symbol The effects in the show were practical, short but believable, subtle yet had an impact. The focus of the show was more on story than CGI, and hence CGI used was rather sparingly and wisely. For instance, when you have to show that someone was flying, you get the shots of building, panning and going up and down the streets. It makes ‘you’ imagine that you are flying. When Hiro needed to travel in time, the character just disappears and appears where it’s supposed to. Just like it would actually be for any Time Traveler who could travel in time just by thinking. The show didn’t need some flashy effects to show that. The use of paintings to show future (and past) was another practical effect that made the show memorable. You can use a painting to show as much or as little about the things to come in the show. As a viewer whenever you saw a new painting and the revelation which it brought, you were dazzled since you knew that its about to happen in near future. And don’t even get me started with the half helix symbol that if you can notice throughout the show.\nMusic and Sound effects: #This is probably the MOST important thing that makes the original Heroes memorable to me. Tim Kring gave the music directors total freedom to write music. And I must say the composers did a phenomenal job. Every character have its own signature style of music. Claire have a “dreamy” cue which shows the doubts and confusion that Claire have while she explores the extent of her abilities. Sylar had this distinct sounds of clock’s ticking to show how he have a knack to understand how things work like he use to understand and fix the complicated clockwork. Niki had a soundtrack that use to change to wind and Indian voices when Jessica use to take control to make viewers believe about her being possessed. Matt, who could read minds use to be depicted by voices in reverse. Hiro had a style of music that showcased an “urgency” and a sense of “unpredictability”. So on and so forth. Combined with other soundtracks of the show, makes for a pleasant visual cues that made us more aware of the show. Needless to say Music was a very own character in the show.\nPeter Petrelli: The man who can do everything Narration style: #The start of almost ever Heroes episode began with a monologue and/or end with too. And most of the monologue was done by a character on the show who had no powers. Yet he was connected to almost every other character. This is Mohinder Suresh, a genetics professor from India who wanted to carry on the work of his father, Chandra Suresh. The monologue use to raise mostly philosophical questions. It use to tie every character under common emotion and use to help them connect on a spiritual level. The narration sometimes were also done by other characters, which would play a crucial role in the respective episodes.\nHeroes is a tale of Superheroes, survival, courage, and friendship. Heroes have a grave impact on my way of thinking. And when I re-watched the original series it grew over me. I realized the depth of characters more than what I knew when I watched it almost 8 years ago. And I hope Heroes Reborn do justice with the spirit of original Heroes. There’s so much to talk about this show.. but probably later. For the time being I will end this article with this quote from Sylar… the greatest villain of all time.\nTick tock \u0026#8230; Source for Sylar quote: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Sylar-at-Halloween-time-264240044\n","date":"10 October 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/10/heroes-ordinary-people-with-extraordinary-powers/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHeroes is an American series which aired during 2006-07. Each episode every week use to take my breath away. Heroes is back after nine years as Heroes Reborn. And this is when I felt nostalgic and decided to re-watch the first original season of Heroes. And damn I realized it was more awesome then I initially thought. This article is an account of my views about the breathtaking original season of the show.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Heroes: Ordinary People with Extraordinary Powers!"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/series/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Series"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/time-travel/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Time Travel"},{"content":"I use to have a hard time configuring a new site under a common VPS. So I decided to document the steps for easy reference in future.\nFollowing are the steps to add a new site “site-name.com” under a new user account “username” on your Linux VPS. This is to note that this works if you have the following web service solution stack (LAMP):\nLinux OS : Debian\nWeb server: Nginx (Not Apache)\nDatabase: MySQL\nApplication Programming Language: PHP\nSo here we go:\nBuy the domain. Call it site-name.com. Set the nameserver of the domain to point to the IP address of your VPS under ‘A’ record which stands for ‘Address’. For reference, there are other kinds of record like ‘CNAME’ and ‘MX’, but you don’t need to set them at this point. Create a new user on VPS by command by following command. sudo adduser username This command also creates a new home directory for the user.\nCreate following directory structure under the home directory: /home/username/www/site-name.com/public_html/ Make a testfile index.html with some content under the above directory “public_html“. Create a new nginx .conf file on your VPS to route incoming request from the new domain to a file which you will host somewhere.\nSo the file /etc/nginx/sites-available should contain a new file, site-name.com.conf with settings configured to point to correct file. In this example it should point to: /home/username/www/site-name.com/public_html/index.html. Add a symlink of the .conf file from sites-available directory in sites-enabled directory. Command will be something like: sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/site-name.com.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/site-name.com.conf Now reload nginx by the following command (you could also use reboot instead of reload, but reload does the work fine): sudo service nginx reload After this try to open the URL site-name.com in browser. It should display the content of index.html file. Now if WordPress is to be installed: # Download the latest version of WordPress in public_html directory: wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz Extract the content of this compressed file: tar -xzvf latest.tar.gz The content should be dumped to public_html directory. Now create a new database user from phymyadmin page. You don’t need to manually edit the wp-config.php file under public_html directory. Now open the URL site-name from the browser, and it should ask to setup. The wp-config.php file will be setup in this step.\nYou should now have yourself a nice wordpress site hosted under a new user account under your VPS. Congrats! ","date":"9 October 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/10/steps-to-add-a-wordpress-site-to-an-existing-vps/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI use to have a hard time configuring a new site under a common VPS. So I decided to document the steps for easy reference in future.\u003cbr\u003e\nFollowing are the steps to add a new site “site-name.com” under a new user account “username” on your Linux VPS. This is to note that this works if you have the following web service solution stack (LAMP):\u003cbr\u003e\nLinux OS : \u003cstrong\u003eDebian\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nWeb server: \u003cstrong\u003eNginx\u003c/strong\u003e (Not Apache)\u003cbr\u003e\nDatabase: \u003cstrong\u003eMySQL\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nApplication Programming Language: \u003cstrong\u003ePHP\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eSo here we go:\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBuy the domain. Call it \u003cstrong\u003esite-name.com\u003c/strong\u003e.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSet the nameserver of the domain to point to the IP address of your VPS under ‘A’ record which stands for ‘Address’. For reference, there are other kinds of record like ‘CNAME’ and ‘MX’, but you don’t need to set them at this point.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCreate a new user on VPS by command by following command.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cpre\u003esudo adduser username\u003c/pre\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis command also creates a new home directory for the user.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Steps to add a WordPress Site to an existing VPS"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/vps/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"VPS"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/website/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Website"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/computer-empire/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Computer Empire"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/cost-to-cost/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Cost to Cost"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/nehru-place/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Nehru Place"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/pc-assembling/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"PC Assembling"},{"content":"What’s a guitarist without his guitar? What’s a painter without his colours? What’s a sailor without a boat? What’s an IT professional without a desktop PC? Answer is common, “nothing much!”. Hence when one of my friend finally decided to get a PC assembled I was very happy for him. I thought to help him out before other priorities gets hold of him and he changes his mind.\nBefore, he use to work either on his age old Celeron laptop or on my computer. He use to play games and watch movies on weekends with me. But now that he finally decided to get his own PC, I had a reason to get my geeky hands dirty in assembling a new PC. There’s some kind of charm in shopping for PC components and then putting them together in one coherent piece so that we can then appreciate the modern advancement, human beings now take for granted.\nThe Research: #I started my research by studying many of the rig suggestions by fellow members on digit forum and also the suggestions put up in digit magazine. After analyzing my friend’s requirements and the suggestions on forum we decided to go with following components:\nComponent Model Monitor AOC 21.5 inch LED Backlit LCD \u0026#8211; i2269Vwm Monitor / I2279VWHE / i2267Fwh LG 21.5 inch LED Backlit LCD \u0026#8211; 22MP56HQ Monitor Processor Intel 3.4 GHz LGA 1150 i3 4130 Intel 3.5 GHz LGA 1150 i3-4150 (BX80646I34150) Motherboard MSI B85M-G43 Motherboard Gigabyte GA-B85-D3H Motherboard HDD WD Blue WD10EZEX 1 TB Internal Hard Drive RAM Corsair Vengeance DDR3 4 GB (1 x 4 GB) PC DRAM (CMZ4GX3M1A1600C9) Corsair Vengeance DDR3 8 GB (1 x 8 GB) PC DRAM (CMZ8GX3M1A1600C10) Cabinet Antec VSK 4000B U3 New Solution Series Cabinet PSU Antec VP450P I 450 Watts PSU Optical Drive Samsung DVD Combo Keyboard Logitech MK200 USB Standard Keyboard UPS APC 600VA Router TP-LINK TL-WR841N As can be noticed, some of the components had two or more choices in them, arranged by priority. After spending considerable amount of time in researching the prices (in offline and online markets) we finally decided to go to “Nehru Place” to see if we can get good deals in the biggest computer hardware market of Asia.\nThe Shopping: #Due to past experiences of me and others, I knew I just had to look at three places for the prices of all the components:\nCost To Cost SMC International Computer Empire I started with Cost To Cost (CTC) which is hosted in a very large area at first floor of Farm Bhavan building. They put up print outs of the pricelist for everyone to see, which is also available publicly online. So that does help a little. A little since there are some problems with their method. First they use abbreviations to overcome the space limitation. Secondly, they seem to have limited stuff, so you won’t be able to find anything which is not in that pricelist. Lastly, the prices are without the VAT, so it confuses you and more so if you don’t know the exact tax rate. VAT in our case was 5% and it made us do additional calculations while documenting the prices. Fortunately in CTC, there are also guys at the counter who create quotes for whatever things you want to buy, no matter if you are going to buy them or not.\nAfter we got a quote from CTC, we moved on to Computer Empire (CE) which is just a small distance from CTC on the same floor, but in Meghdoot Building, which is connected to Farm Bhavan. Computer Empire seems to be having a small footprint where land area is concerned, which barely have enough space for half a dozen people to stand at once. But since they (probably) have a big godown nearby, and also since they provide good prices, CE is a choice among many tech enthusiasts for shopping. Getting a quote from them was a daunting task. Due to a small space and the crowd it wasn’t much appealing.\nFinally we went to SMC International, which is on the backside of the same building where CE was there. We went down the stairs and to the back. Now my experience with them about taking quotes wasn’t all that great. The guys at SMC seemed to be apprehensive about whom we buy stuff from, which I don’t particularly find inviting. Still we went there and shared with them the parts we desired to buy. But taking a quote from them wasn’t that bad an experience and despite the time they took to do that, I felt ok since there was no crowd and we didn’t have to stand. One thing that bugged me though is that their site is down for maintenance since a month now and it slipped my mind to ask them about it. :/\nOnce we got the quotes from all three shops it was time to tally and to compare the differences. Some didn’t have the exact component that we wanted and other tried to pass on Green WD HDD saying that it’s better than Blue HDD. It reminded me of the last time when Cost to cost literally gave me the Green WD HDD instead of Blue one and quoted on my face that both are the same thing and that colour doesn’t make a difference. I had to return the Green HDD to them and buy a blue one from another place since they didn’t have it in stock.\nAfter tallying the cost we figured out that we didn’t actually had to buy anything from CTC since CE and SMC together were the cheapest. We ended up buying following components at these prices (including taxes):\nComponent Model SMC International Computer Empire Monitor AOC i2279VWHE 21.5 inch IPS Monitor 8350 Processor Intel 3.4 GHz LGA 1150 i3 4150 8365 Motherboard MSI B85M-G43 Motherboard 4800 HDD WD Blue WD10EZEX 1 TB Internal Hard Drive 3500 RAM G.Skill RipjawsX DDR3 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) 3600 Cabinet Antec VSK 4000B U3 New Solution Series Cabinet 1650 PSU Antec BP450S I 450 Watts PSU 1900 Optical Drive ASUS DVD Writer 1000 Keyboard Logitech MK200 USB Standard Keyboard 800 UPS APC 600VA 2250 Router TP-LINK TL-WR841ND 1050 Total 23715 13550 Final Cost Rs. 37,265 We originally intend to buy RAM and HDD from CE since prices were lower there, but since SMC are a little apprehensive of losing customer (as I talked earlier), they lowered the price of HDD from 3600 to 3500 and also gave a good deal on G.Skill RipjawsX RAM. However I did have to ask them to replace the C10 latency RAM with C9 one, since I had to.\nI wasn’t able to get Antec VP450P and ended up buying BP450S, which cost a few hundred less than the former and I saw no significant difference in specs. Further analysis revealed later that the only advantage of VP450P over BP450S is that the former one have APFC (Active Power Factor Correction) which would provides a better efficiency and that Antec’s warranty is 2 years compared to the Corsair PSUs. But we do have a program that allows us to extend the warranty by one year officially. So the warranty is not a con now. (Thanks to this thread).\nIn the end all the components combined along with UPS and Router cost us Rs 37,265. Had I purchased everything online it would have cost me upwards of Rs 43K, though not all components could be bought online, like the monitor.\nAfter bringing all the components at home we also had to go a furniture shop to buy a computer table and a chair. Once that was installed my work began to finally assemble the PC.\n[][6]The Components The Assembling: #Assembling the PC proved to be a task of much patience. Since I was doing it after about a year. Plus I didn’t want to rush and do something wrong with the components. My friend was watching the process with gleaming eyes. After all he had spend considerable amount of hard earned money to get his first PC.\nFirst I opened the processor and installed it on motherboard. Then I mount the mount screws inside the cabinet where motherboard would be fixed later. MSI B85M was then mounted over those screws and tightened. After which I installed the heatsink and fan over the processor. Did I forget anything? Yes, indeed. I forgot to attach the back panel of motherboard like I always do. So I had to reopen the motherboard, then attach the back panel in place, after which the motherboard was reseated on the mount screws.\nThe power supply was the next thing to be fixed. Antex BP450S isn’t a modular PSU, neither are any of the wires sleeved, so there were bound to remain a mess of wires but I tried to manage the cables as neatly as possible. Bigger problem I faced was installing the hard drive. I wasn’t able to find a suitable position for installing it without it protruding towards motherboard. The screw holes on the hard drive wasn’t aligning completely with the holes in the space in the Antec chassis where I was trying to install it. It did feel weird since Antec is a good brand, I don’t think they messed up with this cabinet. Hence I may need to reinstall the hard drive later when I realize what am I missing.\nAfter DVD drive was installed it was time to attach all the wires to the motherboard. First I decided to attach the front USB headers and other cables running from cabinet since those are very small and tends to get difficult to attach the more the clutter. It took a considerable amount of time since I was being careful and trusting the motherboard manual, not to make any mistake.\nInstalling the monitor was fairly easy and once we joined the UPS with the monitor and attached power cables to the SMPS, we were set. As soon as I pressed the power button the PC booted up. Watching the PC fired up in first attempt our joy seemed no bounds. But there was no OS. Owing to the front USB being USB 3.0, Windows 7 got installed in under 10 min from my USB 3.0 pen drive. I was amazed at the speed and the 1080p awesomeness of the monitor. I had never used a 1080p monitor before, which made me realize I need a new 1080p monitor myself. Soon enough I did buy myself a new monitor, but now I am running ahead of myself.\nThe Caveats: #I had finished assembling a brand new PC. And to commemorate the event my friend had planned to get a broadband connection of Excitel which I myself am very happy to a customer of. That was start of a problem. When the broadband connection was installed, we figured out that the LAN card was not working. I tried testing it on SuperX (a Linux distro) and indeed the ifconfig command didn’t show the eth0 interface, which confirmed that ethernet was not working. Apart from it there was also another strange problem. The input hardware (the keyboard and mouse) doesn’t work the first time we boot into Windows. But when the PC is restarted using the power button, those tends to work again. This problem was repeatable every time the PC was booted. While the later issue was annoying it wasn’t a show stopper like Ethernet not working. So my friend bought a Wifi dongle in the meantime. We plan to goto Nehru place again and to claim warranty on the motherboard. Will keep posted whatever happens next, and a little heads up, it isn’t pretty.\n","date":"6 September 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/09/shopping-for-and-assembling-a-new-desktop-pc/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhat’s a guitarist without his guitar? What’s a painter without his colours? What’s a sailor without a boat? What’s an IT professional without a desktop PC? Answer is common,  “nothing much!”. Hence when one of my friend finally decided to get a PC assembled I was very happy for him. I thought to help him out before other priorities gets hold of him and he changes his mind.\u003cbr\u003e\nBefore, he use to work either on his age old Celeron laptop or on my computer. He use to play games and watch movies on weekends with me. But now that he finally decided to get his own PC, I had a reason to get my geeky hands dirty in assembling a new PC. There’s some kind of charm in shopping for PC components and then putting them together in one coherent piece so that we can then appreciate the modern advancement, human beings now take for granted.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"the-research\" class=\"relative group\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Research:\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#the-research\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eI started my research by studying many of the rig suggestions by fellow members on digit forum and also the suggestions put up in digit magazine. After analyzing my friend’s requirements and the suggestions on forum we decided to go with following components:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ctable\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eComponent\u003c/b\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eModel\u003c/b\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eMonitor\u003c/strong\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\nAOC 21.5 inch LED Backlit LCD \u0026#8211; i2269Vwm Monitor / I2279VWHE / i2267Fwh\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\nLG 21.5 inch LED Backlit LCD \u0026#8211; 22MP56HQ Monitor\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eProcessor\u003c/strong\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\nIntel 3.4 GHz LGA 1150 i3 4130\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\nIntel 3.5 GHz LGA 1150 i3-4150 (BX80646I34150)\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eMotherboard\u003c/strong\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\nMSI B85M-G43 Motherboard\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\nGigabyte GA-B85-D3H Motherboard\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eHDD\u003c/strong\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\nWD Blue WD10EZEX 1 TB Internal Hard Drive\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eRAM\u003c/strong\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\nCorsair Vengeance DDR3 4 GB (1 x 4 GB) PC DRAM (CMZ4GX3M1A1600C9)\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\nCorsair Vengeance DDR3 8 GB (1 x 8 GB) PC DRAM (CMZ8GX3M1A1600C10)\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eCabinet\u003c/strong\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\nAntec VSK 4000B U3 New Solution Series Cabinet\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePSU\u003c/strong\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\nAntec VP450P I 450 Watts PSU\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eOptical Drive\u003c/strong\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\nSamsung DVD Combo\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eKeyboard\u003c/strong\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\nLogitech MK200 USB Standard Keyboard\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eUPS\u003c/strong\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\nAPC 600VA\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eRouter\u003c/strong\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\nTP-LINK TL-WR841N\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003c/table\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs can be noticed, some of the components had two or more choices in them, arranged by priority. After spending considerable amount of time in researching the prices (in offline and online markets) we finally decided to go to “Nehru Place” to see if we can get good deals in the biggest computer hardware market of Asia.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Shopping for and Assembling a new desktop PC"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/smc-international/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"SMC International"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/microsoft/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Microsoft"},{"content":"[][1]Yup. That\u0026#8217;s what happens, when something happens. Classic Microsoft Its been a few days that Windows 10 started rolling out to general public. Even people who never saw past XP seemed to be excited about the new Windows 10. Windows 8 wasn\u0026#8217;t a soaring success even for the fans of Windows. Though its predecessor Windows 7 was a leap ahead from the good old XP, the tile interfaced Win 8 proved to be too much of a change. Start Menu had disappeared. It took the users by storm and Windows 8 was rejected by almost everyone, including myself. That\u0026#8217;s why Windows 10 is so important for Microsoft. And maybe that\u0026#8217;s why Microsoft decided to roll out a free upgrade for anyone who have a genuine license of Win 7 or Win 8.1. Now people, all over the Internet are exploding with enough queries and concerns to overwhelm Microsoft. People are perplexed, furious and amazed with their own experience of upgrading. While everyone is jumping into the bandwagon of the latest operating system, failed downloads and bugs are putting many users off. It all began on 29th July 2015. People who had registered for the update got a prompt that Windows 10 is now available and that they can install it after Windows finishes downloading the update files. I got a prompt too and I allowed the update to download. Windows 10 downloading With the Start Menu coming back, and due to what seems to be a good balance of Windows 7, 8 and even Windows Mobile, I had finally decided to migrate from Windows 7. But there were many ways to upgrade to Win 10.\nNormal Upgrade via Windows Update: #If you were on genuine Win 7 or Win 8.1 (by being genuine, its meant that your Windows is activated and your license is valid), you could update in a very simple way. If you allow, Windows update would download the necessary files and once you approve, it would upgrade your OS to a fully functional, genuine copy of Windows 10. This method keeps your old OS in a folder named “Windows.old”. This is done so that if you decide you don’t like 10, you can revert back to your old OS. But you can do so only for one month, since after one month, that folder will automatically removed. Though later experiments proved that reverting back to Old OS wasn’t a totally bug free activity.\nUsing the Media Creation Tool: #This page documents the steps required to use the Media Creation tool to download the version of Windows 10 anyone can download. After the ISO image is downloaded, one can use that to upgrade to Windows 10 from their existing licensed copy of Windows OS. This method was the best, but it was buggy. Few times it use to fail the download possibly due to the loads at Microsoft’s servers.\nMedia Creation Tool: Using this tool you could download Windows 10 Downloading the ESD files and making an ISO out of it: #This method was one for those little technically inclined people who wanted Windows 10 by any (legal) means. The Reddit thread lists the links to the ESD files that you could download depending on the current version of OS. There are also the steps documented below, which one has to use to convert this ESD file to an ISO image. After that one can upgrade Windows 10 anytime they want.\nI tried to upgrade using the first method. It seemed pure and simple. But don’t know what happened, the download started again. So later I had to resort to downloading the ESD file from Microsoft’s server. After decrypting the ESD file using ESD decrypter I was ready with the ISO image to finally upgrade.\nBefore proceeding with the upgrade though, I took care of all the backups. My documents were already on cloud service. Copied the files on desktop and the operating system drive on other partitions. Also made sure I copy the important stuff (pictures and stuff) to an external drive, so that I can be prepared for any worse scenario.\nFor the first time in my life, I also used the Windows backup feature to take a backup of the entire OS (Windows 7) on the external HDD and also copied the Firefox’s profile to a safe location. I didn’t want to loose my Firefox personalizations. Those things take time to rebuilt.\nBacking up System Image. It pays to be prepared. I started the installation from within Windows 7 using the pen drive I built from Rufus. Windows 10 installation began. It took it\u0026#8217;s time. Around 30 min. I felt the installation was pretty slow compared to the installations of Win XP and Win 7. But then again, Win 10 seems mighty on feature too, so the installation time was excusable. Circle progress \u0026#8211; Windows 10 installing They weren\u0026#8217;t kidding when the setup warned that there will be many reboots while upgradation. So after waiting for what seemed like an eternity, when it was finally done I was greeted by the familiar GRUB menu which was originally installed. I was glad that Windows didn\u0026#8217;t mess up the GRUB. After I choose Windows 10 from the menu the new shiny OS started with a familiar wallpaper. It have taken my personalization settings from old OS and all softwares that was previously installed were already there. It was good since I didn\u0026#8217;t had to spend hours setting up things like it was before. Though I did change wallpaper so that I get a feel of being brand new. There it was. The much rumored Windows 10, in all its glory. Windows 10 desktop. The calendar looks really nice (Click image to open in new tab) The new OS really just seems to be a combination of best things from Windows 7 and the tiled Windows 8. Yet 10 do have a signature of its own. I loved the all dark tone of the OS and the subtle animations. Windows 10 comes with a new redesign of Start Menu, have support for multiple desktops, comes with Cortana (from windows phone) and also comes with a notification panel. Overall I am liking what I am being presented. The drivers got updated through automatic updates. So far I am liking the new look, but a lot is yet to be discovered.","date":"4 August 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/08/upgrading-to-windows-10-the-microsofts-comeback/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1084\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1084\" style=\"width: 716px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"\u003e[\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1084\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/4rrjP0P.jpg\" alt=\"Something Happened.. Classic Microsoft\" width=\"716\" height=\"561\" /\u003e][1]\u003cfigcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1084\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"\u003eYup. That\u0026#8217;s what happens, when something happens. Classic Microsoft\u003c/figcaption\u003e\u003c/figure\u003e  \nIts been a few days that Windows 10 started rolling out to general public. Even people who never saw past XP seemed to be excited about the new Windows 10.  \nWindows 8 wasn\u0026#8217;t a soaring success even for the fans of Windows. Though its predecessor Windows 7 was a leap ahead from the good old XP, the tile interfaced Win 8 proved to be too much of a change. Start Menu had disappeared. It took the users by storm and Windows 8 was rejected by almost everyone, including myself. That\u0026#8217;s why Windows 10 is so important for Microsoft. And maybe that\u0026#8217;s why Microsoft decided to roll out a free upgrade for anyone who have a genuine license of Win 7 or Win 8.1.  \nNow people, all over the Internet are exploding with enough queries and concerns to overwhelm Microsoft. People are perplexed, furious and amazed with their own experience of upgrading. While everyone is jumping into the bandwagon of the latest operating system, failed downloads and bugs are putting many users off.  \nIt all began on 29th July 2015. People who had registered for the update got a prompt that Windows 10 is now available and that they can install it after Windows finishes downloading the update files. I got a prompt too and I allowed the update to download.  \n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1068\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1068\" style=\"width: 604px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/2YthRZY.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1068\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/2YthRZY.jpg\" alt=\"Windows 10 downloading\" width=\"604\" height=\"257\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cfigcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1068\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"\u003eWindows 10 downloading\u003c/figcaption\u003e\u003c/figure\u003e","title":"Upgrading to Windows 10, the Microsoft's Comeback"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/windows-10/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Windows 10"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/2015/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"2015"},{"content":" When a group of my friend insisted me to watch a Bollywood movie I had two choices. Salman Khan’s seemingly mindless flick, “Bajrangi Bhaijaan” or an VFX intensive “Bahubali“. For my geek oriented mind the later was an obvious choice. But as it turned out choice was a myth and I was dragged to the theaters for Bajrangi Bhaijaan.\nNow, I am not a Salman fan. I like him as a guy, but despise his movies a lot. At least which came out from past few years. So when I went to watch this movie I had totally zero expectations. The formulaic approach of releasing movie on festivals like Eid, I totally thought this was also going to be a mindless no-brainer and an insult-to-Physics action movie.\nSo believe me when I say that you have got to see this movie! It shattered most of my expectations and proved to be a game changer for his stereotypical role that had become of Salman in recent times. And I am not exaggerating.\nBajrangi Bhaijaan is a story of a Pakistani girl who gets lost in India, and later meet Salman Khan, who after some incidents makes reuniting the girl with her family his mission.\nThe little girl a child actress “Harshaali Malhotra” is one of the cutest I have ever seen. She is speech impaired in the story, but what she lacked makes up by her cuteness and expressions that won my heart many times over.\nI was hooked right with the opening scene of the movie itself which I found commendable. When Salman is introduced in typical hero fashion (with a song) all those apprehensions about his recent kind of movie started to appear in my mind. But as the movie progressed those slowly faded away and what shaped till the end of first half was a movie I appreciated with my hands open. The character of Salman is that of the guy in Aparichit. A guy who doesn’t lie since he believes he is a true devotee of Hanuman. Little does it helps him achieving his mission.\nThere are many good actors who are also introduced slowly, like Nawazuddin Siddiqui, whose presence provided big comic relief to the movie in later half. Om Puri also have a small guest role.\nWhat I loved about the movie is that there are situational comedy all over the film and yet it feels very serious. No character seems out of place or stretched. What I also loved about the film is that Salman isn’t a larger than life character and story shows him as a common man. Well mostly. It was obvious that Salman would kick some behinds of people but it’s only on one occasion in this film and if we spare some of the emotional drama that happens at the climax, this film was pure fun to watch.\nOne of the shots with Salman, the girl and Nawazuddin On musical side, leaving couple of songs, every other song was good to hear. Song from Adnan Sami was a delight. Most of the songs was in the shape of background score which you can’t miss due to its tie up with the story. I only found one bad song about chicken but that was just an exception rather than the norm. And this is where you can take a break to have some air. But buckle up after that since rest of the movie will be some ride.\nThis movie on some levels made be speechless. Probably because I had some other expectations. If anyone remember the film Lucky: No Time for Love, which came out exactly ten years ago. Lucky had Sneha Ullal in lead female role and was one of the rare Bollywood movies that I totally loved. Lucky had a similar theme to that of Bajrangi Bhaijaan. Salman met Sneha in a terrible scenario of war, and made reuniting Sneha to her family his mission. The film had a heart that touch on various emotional states of human mind on many levels. Bajrangi Bhaijaan greatly made me feel the same.\nHarshaali is a delight to watch But while Lucky had failed miserably, Bajrangi I feel have the potential of being a blockbuster. At least I hope so since the taste I have for movies doesn’t always appear to be a mass favorite. Not a lot of Salman movies have impressed me, yet Bajrangi felt like a blow of fresh air. Something which I would have easily missed because of my presumptions. This movie is a must watch because of its story, its music and its characters. Also because of the glimpses of Pakistan that it shows in the second half. Its a must watch for its good intentions and because of the little girl that made me smile without even a single dialogue.\n","date":"18 July 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/07/bajrangi-bhaijaan-a-surprisingly-feel-good-movie/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"580\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Bajrangi_Poster-1024x580.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2792\" srcset=\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Bajrangi_Poster-1024x580.jpg 1024w, /wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Bajrangi_Poster-300x170.jpg 300w, /wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Bajrangi_Poster-768x435.jpg 768w, /wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Bajrangi_Poster-1536x870.jpg 1536w, /wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Bajrangi_Poster.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" /\u003e\u003c/figure\u003e \n\u003cp\u003eWhen a group of my friend insisted me to watch a Bollywood movie I had two choices. Salman Khan’s seemingly mindless flick, “\u003ca rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3863552/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eBajrangi Bhaijaan\u003c/a\u003e” or an VFX intensive “\u003ca rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2631186/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eBahubali\u003c/a\u003e“. For my geek oriented mind the later was an obvious choice. But as it turned out choice was a myth and I was dragged to the theaters for Bajrangi Bhaijaan.\u003cbr\u003e\nNow, I am not a Salman fan. I like him as a guy, but despise his movies a lot. At least which came out from past few years. So when I went to watch this movie I had totally zero expectations. The formulaic approach of releasing movie on festivals like Eid, I totally thought this was also going to be a mindless no-brainer and an insult-to-Physics action movie.\u003cbr\u003e\nSo believe me when I say that you have got to see this movie! It shattered most of my expectations and proved to be a game changer for his stereotypical role that had become of Salman in recent times. And I am not exaggerating.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bajrangi Bhaijaan: A surprisingly feel good movie"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/bollywood/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Bollywood"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/salman-khan/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Salman Khan"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/cyanogenmod/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Cyanogenmod"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/yu-yuphoria/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"YU Yuphoria"},{"content":"I got the opportunity to get my hands on a new YU Yuphoria phone last week. Following are my observations and review first hand.\nYU Yuphoria released in the May 2015 as a successor to the phone Yu Yureka which was released in Jan 2015 by Micromax. YU Yureka was the first phone released under the YU tag. At the price point of Rs 8,999, Yureka provided many features to be found in only high end phones. Yuphoria, released after a few months is kind of a down scaled version of the Yureka but have its own strengths to boast on.\nHardware #YU Yuphoria As a owner of Moto X (1st gen), the specs of Yuphoria baffled me initially. Yuphoria had similar specs as that of Moto X 1s gen but cost only Rs 6,999. That’s 3.5 times less price than that of Moto X 1st gen with similar features. Lets see the specs at a glance. Yuphoria is a 4G phone with 5 inch screen size, have a layer of Gorilla glass 3 and sports a pixel density of 294 ppi with its 720p resolution. It’s powered with Snapdragon 410, Quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A53 chipset which contains graphics capability of Adreno 306. Snapdragon is Qualcomm’s first 64 bit SOC. In terms of storage it comes with an internal memory of 16 GB (of course less for actual use) but is expandable to 32 GB. The phone contains 2 gigs of RAM enough to never let you go out of memory when playing high end games (for a couple of years at least). Yuphoria Back It’s 8 mp primary camera have autofocus, flash and can shoot up to 1080p video. It can snap upto 3264 x 2448 pixels in image resolution. The front cam is 5 mp and seems impressive. The phone is supplied power through a 2230 mAh Li-Ion battery, which boasts of upto 160 hr of standby time on 3G, and 7 hrs of talktime. Body #Now that the specs have been discussed lets discuss the body of the phone which many people are wary of. The shape of the Yuphoria is rectangle with metallic strips on the side. Previously I thought it was plastic but I was wrong. It does look elegant. The phone’s back contains a camera with circular ring surrounding it, which houses the flash. Being used to the curves of Moto X, I felt the phone doesn’t offer a good grip and sure enough the phone dropped once while picking it up. (For the overly cautious, it dropped on carpet from a height of not more than than 2 feet).\nYuphoria\u0026#8217;s Speaker Grill The power button on this phone is at an unusual location, between volume rockers. So while holding the phone with your right hand, your thumb can press volume up, volume down as well as power button at equal ease. This can demand some getting use to, since you may accidentally lock the device while raising or lowering the volume. Yuphoria\u0026#8217;s 8 mp Back Camera with Flash Software #The software for YU Yuphoria is something that most people are truly excited for. Micromax decided to pack the phone with a popular Android Custom ROM community, Cyanogenmod (CM hereon). CM is an open source group of android developers who maintain custom ROMs for various devices based on the Stock Android that Google releases each year. But for anyone to migrate from stock to Custom ROM, they usually have to root their device, void the warranty and then flash CM through some techniques that makes you feel like a hacker if nothing else.\nBut not with Yuphoria. With the presence of CM 12 that is based on Android 5 users can enjoy Lollipop (code name of Android 5) right out of the box. CM 12 (Lollipop) have many features including advanced notification bar, which includes compass inside it as a widget. CM 12 allows for a ton of customizability that could otherwise not be possible on the stock ROM. Apart from this Micromax claims that rooting the device won’t void its warranty. Now that is something!\nWith CM 12, Yuphoria comes with a bundle of apps but nothing with excessive bloat.\nCamera #I tested the stock camera of the phone by taking snaps of objects at the same time and angle along with Moto X. Comparing the cameras of the two phones isn’t exactly fair but I wanted to see how does the picture differ on default settings and stock camera. The difference were much. I observed that the pics taken from Yuphoria lacked details and artifacts were clearly visible when zoomed enough. The colours also doesn’t look natural and were more saturated. You can compare the pics taken from my Moto X and Yuphoria in these Imgur albums:\nYuphoria’s Pics: http://imgur.com/a/VJKEf\nMoto X’s Pics: http://imgur.com/a/9Nu2Y\nThe interface of the camera is good. It have the ability to take snaps while taking videos and one can also toggle among available presets by swiping down on the camera UI. This is a handy way to toggle modes, since users doesn’t have to fiddle in settings. Video recording also have the pause button, which is missing from say CM 12 for Moto X.\nVideo and other Software Issues: #I have made this a separate topic since I wanted to write some things which I have observed while playing videos on it. When this phone was unpacked I copied on it some HD videos to play along with a movie in .AVI format. VLC app wasn’t installed on the phone but it sure was able to play the .MP4 HD clips smoothly. But when I tried to play the 700 MB .AVI file phone rebooted on its own. Next time while recreating the issue, it just showed an error “can’t play this format”. But it easily got rebooted in 4th attempt. The .AVI might be corrupted but that shouldn’t crash complete OS.\nI also faced some random pop ups informing about an app which suddenly force closes. Moving along I saw that even after I turned the “Auto Update Apps” off, it still started to update the apps on its own on Wi-Fi. I think most of this bug is due to the Cyanogenmod ROM and not due to hardware, which can be fixed in updates.\nBenchmarks #Following are some benchmarks of the phone:\nQuadrant #Quadrant Score Antutu and Antutu HTML5 Test #\nNenamark #\nFinal thoughts: #Yuphoria is a great phone. It have a good screen, good hardware and custom ROM support out of the box. At 6,999 you probably can’t ask for more than what already this phone is packed with. Sure there are some bugs but it mostly deals with Software and I am sure with future updates and refinements this phone can become more stable. So if you are planning to buy your first Android Yuphoria is something you should definitely consider.\nBonus**:** Phone’s Unboxing Video: #I created this unboxing video along with TechGlobule.com. Video also features first reboot of the device.\nFor more technical review you can read this review from TechGlobule.\n","date":"24 June 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/06/yu-yuphoria-review/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI got the opportunity to get my hands on a new YU Yuphoria phone last week. Following are my observations and review first hand.\u003cbr\u003e\nYU Yuphoria released in the May 2015 as a successor to the phone Yu Yureka which was released in Jan 2015 by Micromax. YU Yureka was the first phone released under the YU tag. At the price point of Rs 8,999, Yureka provided many features to be found in only high end phones. Yuphoria, released after a few months is kind of a down scaled version of the Yureka but have its own strengths to boast on.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"hardware\" class=\"relative group\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHardware\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#hardware\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1021\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1021\" style=\"width: 604px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Body-1.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1021 size-large\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Body-1.jpg\" alt=\"YU Yuphoria\" width=\"604\" height=\"255\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cfigcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1021\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"\u003eYU Yuphoria\u003c/figcaption\u003e\u003c/figure\u003e  \nAs a owner of Moto X (1st gen), the specs of Yuphoria baffled me initially. Yuphoria had similar specs as that of Moto X 1s gen but cost only Rs 6,999. That’s 3.5 times less price than that of Moto X 1st gen with similar features. Lets see the specs at a glance.  \nYuphoria is a 4G phone with 5 inch screen size, have a layer of Gorilla glass 3 and sports a pixel density of 294 ppi with its 720p resolution. It’s powered with Snapdragon 410, Quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A53 chipset which contains graphics capability of Adreno 306. Snapdragon is Qualcomm’s first 64 bit SOC. In terms of storage it comes with an internal memory of 16 GB (of course less for actual use) but is expandable to 32 GB. The phone contains 2 gigs of RAM enough to never let you go out of memory when playing high end games (for a couple of years at least).  \n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1022\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1022\" style=\"width: 604px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Body-2.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1022 size-large\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Body-2.jpg\" alt=\"Yuphoria Back\" width=\"604\" height=\"247\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cfigcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1022\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"\u003eYuphoria Back\u003c/figcaption\u003e\u003c/figure\u003e  \nIt’s 8 mp primary camera have autofocus, flash and can shoot up to 1080p video. It can snap upto 3264 x 2448 pixels in image resolution. The front cam is 5 mp and seems impressive. The phone is supplied power through a 2230 mAh Li-Ion battery, which boasts of upto 160 hr of standby time on 3G, and 7 hrs of talktime.","title":"YU Yuphoria Review"},{"content":"If you are using Ubuntu in dual mode with Windows you must be having a few partition that are NTFS. By default these NTFS drives are not auto mounted. So while you have the partitions, you won’t be able to access them if you don’t mount it.\nAs you already may know that in Ubuntu (and Linux in general) there are no drives. Combine it with the fact that the root directory starts from a forward slash (/). Every drive in Linux is ‘mounted‘. So when you insert a DVD disk the content of the disk may be mounted to a directory /media/username/DvdLabel. Here DvdLabel is the name of the mounted directory which was taken from the label of the disk.\nSimilarly if you have a partition with the label, say, Documents when you click the Documents partition, it is then that the Documents partition (or drive) is mounted to /media/Documents.\nBy default Ubuntu doesn’t mount the partitions when it starts. You have to click the partition in Nautilus (or Files, the file explorer) once so that it can be mounted. This can be irritating since when an application starts which requires a partition they will result in error. Eg, if you have set dropbox to sync to files to Documents drive or Transmission to download files to Multimedia drive.\nYou can make these NTFS drives automount with Ubuntu by various method as described in this page. But its a long and complicated read. So here is the method explained simply.\nFind out Label and UUID #First you need to know the exact Labels and UUID of the drives. Consider UUID (Universally Unique Identifier) as a unique identifier for the drive which will never change (unless you format the drive, re-partition it, or manually change it). To know the Label and UUID you need to use the command blkid command. This command when used with sudo will give you a list of all the partitions along with its Label and UUID. Like below:\nvyom@VyomNix:~$ sudo blkid [sudo] password for vyom: /dev/sr0: LABEL=\"Alpha_0515\" TYPE=\"udf\" /dev/sda1: UUID=\"30986b83-1234-4eeb-a30a-482223df145f\" TYPE=\"ext4\" /dev/sda2: LABEL=\"WinServer\" UUID=\"3F1234AB1233423C\" TYPE=\"ntfs\" /dev/sda3: LABEL=\"Recovery\" UUID=\"A12345E12345AF1B\" TYPE=\"ntfs\" /dev/sda4: UUID=\"0659-9A568\" TYPE=\"vfat\" /dev/sda6: UUID=\"b1234321-ad5f-4ddd-89ac-eed1234c56c7\" TYPE=\"swap\" /dev/sda7: LABEL=\"Digital\" UUID=\"33FA6E12GA6DF687\" TYPE=\"ntfs\" /dev/sda9: LABEL=\"Entertainment\" UUID=\"123FHE3E3N98BF65\" TYPE=\"ntfs\" /dev/sda10: LABEL=\"Documents\" UUID=\"37MME50B21B7C65B\" TYPE=\"ntfs\" /dev/sda11: LABEL=\"Spare1\" UUID=\"654EF123456CAF7E\" TYPE=\"ntfs\" /dev/sda12: LABEL=\"Spare2\" UUID=\"68D774EB5DBFPOOI\" TYPE=\"ntfs\" vyom@VyomNix:~$ Edit the fstab file #Now we need to edit the /etc/fstab file. Before doing so its a good idea to make a copy of the file. Below I have used the Terminal to first copy and then open the file in gedit text editor:\nsudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak sudo gedit /etc/fstab Once the file opens you can see that few partitions (Ubuntu partition and swap) must already be having entries. You can add the entries for NTFS drives at the end of this file. Here is what my file looked like after I added the entries.\n# /etc/fstab: static file system information. # # Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a # device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices # that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5). # # \u0026lt;file system\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mount point\u0026gt; \u0026lt;type\u0026gt; \u0026lt;options\u0026gt; \u0026lt;dump\u0026gt; \u0026lt;pass\u0026gt; # / was on /dev/sda1 during installation UUID=30986b83-1234-4eeb-a30a-482223df145f / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1 # /boot/efi was on /dev/sda4 during installation UUID=0659-9A568 /boot/efi vfat defaults 0 1 # swap was on /dev/sda6 during installation UUID=b1234321-ad5f-4ddd-89ac-eed1234c56c7 none swap sw 0 0 #These lines added later #Mounting WinServer which was /dev/sda2 BUT in Read-Only mode UUID=3F1234AB1233423C /media/WinServer ntfs defaults,umask=222 0 0 #Mounting Digital which was /dev/sda7 in Read-Write mode UUID=33FA6E12GA6DF687 /media/Digital ntfs-3g defaults,windows_names,locale=en_IN 0 0 #Mounting Entertainment which was /dev/sda9 in Read-Write mode UUID=123FHE3E3N98BF65 /media/Entertainment ntfs-3g defaults,windows_names,locale=en_IN 0 0 #Mounting Documents which was /dev/sda10 in Read-Write mode UUID=37MME50B21B7C65B /media/Documents ntfs-3g defaults,windows_names,locale=en_IN 0 0 #Mounting Spare1 which was /dev/sda11 in Read-Write mode UUID=654EF123456CAF7E /media/Spare1 ntfs-3g defaults,windows_names,locale=en_IN 0 0 #Mounting Spare1 which was /dev/sda12 in Read-Write mode UUID=68D774EB5DBFPOOI /media/Spare2 ntfs-3g defaults,windows_names,locale=en_IN 0 0 #Making Recovery partition NOT TO MOUNT, since I don't require it which was /dev/sda3 UUID=A12345E12345AF1B /mnt/Data ntfs noauto,umask=222 0 0 Following points are to be noted here:\nLines beginning with # are comments, which are ignored. So you can use it to write your own descriptions or link to this article for future reference. I have taken the UUID of every drive I needed to automount and put that in a separate line along with other parameters (explained below). Second parameter (after UUID) is the path where I want the drive to be mounted. You can choose any name for the directory under /media. I have chosen the label names. The first drive WinServer is mounted as Read-Only by adding the following parameter. This will mount the drive in read-only mode and won’t allow modification of any file in any manner. You can use this to avoid accidental modification of the files of other OS drives. I consider this as one of the most useful feature of using automounting. ntfs defaults,umask=222 0 0 The second drive Digital is added as Read-Write partition which is like a normal drive, by adding following parameter: ntfs-3g defaults,windows_names,locale=en_IN 0 0 I have prevented the partition Recovery to mount by adding following parameters. This even prevents it from appearing in Nautilus so you can’t mount it even accidentally. ntfs noauto,umask=222 0 0 The locale information in my case is en_IN. In your case you can find out the exact locale by locale command in a separate Terminal window, like such: vyom@VyomNix:~$ locale LANG=en_IN Summary and Conclusion #In Ubuntu each disk is mounted to a subdirectory of /media and the name of that subdirectory depends on the label of the disk which is being mounted. You can automount the partitions when Ubuntu boots by adding entries for each partition in file /etc/fstab. For this you would need UUID for the partition which you can get using the blkid command. You can make the partitions mount in Read-Only by specific parameters as explained above. At first this Automounting exercise may seem extra work, but its not considering the freedom that Ubuntu gives you in mounting a drive as per your own requirements.\n","date":"17 May 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/05/auto-mounting-drives-in-ubuntu/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIf you are using Ubuntu in dual mode with Windows you must be having a few partition that are NTFS. By default these NTFS drives are not auto mounted. So while you have the partitions, you won’t be able to access them if you don’t mount it.\u003cbr\u003e\nAs you already may know that in Ubuntu (and Linux in general) there are no drives. Combine it with the fact that the root directory starts from a forward slash (\u003cstrong\u003e/\u003c/strong\u003e). Every drive in Linux is ‘\u003cstrong\u003emounted\u003c/strong\u003e‘. So when you insert a DVD disk the content of the disk may be mounted to a directory \u003cstrong\u003e/media/username/DvdLabel\u003c/strong\u003e. Here \u003cstrong\u003eDvdLabel\u003c/strong\u003e is the name of the mounted directory which was taken from the label of the disk.\u003cbr\u003e\nSimilarly if you have a partition with the label, say, \u003cstrong\u003eDocuments\u003c/strong\u003e when you click the Documents partition, it is then that the \u003cstrong\u003eDocuments\u003c/strong\u003e partition (or drive) is mounted to \u003cstrong\u003e/media/Documents\u003c/strong\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\nBy default Ubuntu doesn’t mount the partitions when it starts. You have to click the partition in Nautilus (or \u003cstrong\u003eFiles\u003c/strong\u003e, the file explorer) once so that it can be mounted. This can be irritating since when an application starts which requires a partition they will result in error. Eg, if you have set dropbox to sync to files to Documents drive or Transmission to download files to Multimedia drive.\u003cbr\u003e\nYou can make these NTFS drives automount with Ubuntu by various method as described in \u003ca href=\"https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MountingWindowsPartitions\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003ethis page\u003c/a\u003e. But its a long and complicated read. So here is the method explained simply.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"find-out-label-and-uuid\" class=\"relative group\"\u003eFind out Label and UUID \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#find-out-label-and-uuid\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eFirst you need to know the exact Labels and UUID of the drives. Consider UUID (\u003cem\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eUniversally Unique Identifier\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/em\u003e) as a unique identifier for the drive which will never change (unless you format the drive, re-partition it, or manually change it). To know the Label and UUID you need to use the command blkid command. This command when used with sudo will give you a list of all the partitions along with its Label and UUID. Like below:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cpre\u003evyom@VyomNix:~$ \u003cstrong\u003esudo blkid\u003c/strong\u003e\n[sudo] password for vyom:\n/dev/sr0: LABEL=\"Alpha_0515\" TYPE=\"udf\"\n/dev/sda1: UUID=\"30986b83-1234-4eeb-a30a-482223df145f\" TYPE=\"ext4\"\n/dev/sda2: LABEL=\"WinServer\" UUID=\"3F1234AB1233423C\" TYPE=\"ntfs\"\n/dev/sda3: LABEL=\"Recovery\" UUID=\"A12345E12345AF1B\" TYPE=\"ntfs\"\n/dev/sda4: UUID=\"0659-9A568\" TYPE=\"vfat\"\n/dev/sda6: UUID=\"b1234321-ad5f-4ddd-89ac-eed1234c56c7\" TYPE=\"swap\"\n/dev/sda7: LABEL=\"Digital\" UUID=\"33FA6E12GA6DF687\" TYPE=\"ntfs\"\n/dev/sda9: LABEL=\"Entertainment\" UUID=\"123FHE3E3N98BF65\" TYPE=\"ntfs\"\n/dev/sda10: LABEL=\"Documents\" UUID=\"37MME50B21B7C65B\" TYPE=\"ntfs\"\n/dev/sda11: LABEL=\"Spare1\" UUID=\"654EF123456CAF7E\" TYPE=\"ntfs\"\n/dev/sda12: LABEL=\"Spare2\" UUID=\"68D774EB5DBFPOOI\" TYPE=\"ntfs\"\nvyom@VyomNix:~$\u003c/pre\u003e","title":"Auto Mounting Drives in Ubuntu"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/automounting-drives/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Automounting Drives"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/ubuntu/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Ubuntu"},{"content":"If you are new to Ubuntu and have installed various softwares, eventually there comes a time when you want the applications to start automatically just after the system boots.\nFollowing are two ways to add applications to startup list. First is Windows method, while the second method is geeky way (as you must have guessed, it’s my favourite).\nEasy method #Just like Windows have a startup folder where you can place shortcut files and which would let you start the applications when user logs in, in Ubuntu there is a ~/.config/autostart folder where you can place the shortcut files. (Just to recall / is your home folder. So **/.config** = /home/username/.config).\nYou can also use the Startup Applications tool (ships inbuilt with Ubuntu) which lets you add startup applications to that folder. Shortcut files in Ubuntu are files which ends with .desktop. The folder where you can find most of the .desktop files is /usr/share/applications. So you can just find the desktop file related to the particular application and copy the .desktop file into the ~/.config/autostart folder.\nIf you want to start the application for every user then you would need to copy the .desktop file in /etc/xdg/autostart folder.\n[][1]Autostart Folder on the left and Startup Applications Tool on the right Script Method #You can also create a .sh script file containing the commands to start the applications and then add this script in the “Startup Applications” tool. I prefer this method since I can easily modify the .sh script using a text editor and also easily make a backup of it, should I need to re-install Ubuntu in any case. This would also let me add the same script file to another copy of Ubuntu running on different PC.\nTo add a command to a script file you have to make sure that the command is correct. You can test the command by trying to execute it on Terminal. So for example if we want to start the browser Firefox in Startup we can first try to execute the firefox command from terminal, and make sure whether it really opens the Firefox browser.\nSometimes to start an application command wouldn’t be that straight-forward. Take an example of Transmission (Ubuntu’s torrent client). If you try to start the application using transmission command, you would receive a “command not found” error. To start Transmission following command is used:\ntransmission-gtk To find the exact command that you need to put in the script file you can try to find the desktop file of the application and then find the line in it which begins with Exec. What follows is the command to start the application. So if you goto the directory /usr/share/applications/, navigate to Transmission and open this file in gedit, you can see that the Exec line is followed by transmission-gtk. That is your command to start the transmission application.\n[][2]Exec line from .desktop file If you can\u0026#8217;t find the .desktop file for a particular application you can search the .desktop file using the command locate. And then finding the lines beginning with Exec. cat /usr/share/applications/transmission-gtk.desktop | grep Exec [][3]Cat and Grep command to locate the Exec line Once you find the commands for all the applications you want to start when Ubuntu boots up you can list them in a single .sh file. To do this create a Text file and save it as **StartUpApps.sh**. Then open this file in gedit and write the commands in it with **disown** command. Below is my script file containing all the applications I want to start. #!/bin/bash #StartUpItems.sh : A list of all applications I need to startup when Ubuntu boots. echo \"\u0026gt;\u0026gt;\u0026gt;\u0026gt; Hello, Vyom. Starting up your programs... \u0026lt;\u0026lt;\u0026lt;\u0026lt;\" echo \"\" echo \"\u0026gt;\u0026gt;\u0026gt; Starting firefox...\" firefox -new-window \u0026 disown echo \"\u0026gt;\u0026gt;\u0026gt; Starting thunderbird...\" thunderbird \u0026 disown echo \"\u0026gt;\u0026gt;\u0026gt; Starting telegram...\" /home/vyom/Telegram/Telegram \u0026 disown echo \"\u0026gt;\u0026gt;\u0026gt; Starting steam...\" steam \u0026 disown echo \"\u0026gt;\u0026gt;\u0026gt; Starting transmission...\" transmission-gtk \u0026 disown echo \"\u0026gt;\u0026gt;\u0026gt; Starting dictionary...\" gnome-dictionary \u0026 disown echo \"\u0026gt;\u0026gt;\u0026gt; Starting uget...\" uget-gtk %u \u0026 disown echo \"\u0026gt;\u0026gt;\u0026gt; Starting Dropbox Daemon...\" dropbox start -i \u0026 disown echo \"\" echo \"\u0026gt;\u0026gt;\u0026gt;\u0026gt; ALL PROGRAMS LOADED \u0026lt;\u0026lt;\u0026lt;\u0026lt;\" Lines starting with # are ignored by Terminal. Lines beginning with echo statements are not required, but I have included them to troubleshoot if execution of the script stops at some point. Every command is suffixed with \u0026amp; disown command, which releases Terminal and get it ready to execute the next command. Without the disown suffix script would halt at the execution of very first command where it doesn’t encounter disown. After this script file is prepared you can keep this file or it’s shortcut to the folder ~/.config/autostart. Now when you login to Ubuntu, this script file will get executed, and all the applications listed in them will be executed one by one.\nBonus: #You can use the Auto Move Windows Gnome extension to automatically move a particular application to a different workspace. This is useful if you don’t want to be disturbed by the front end of a program that should actually be running in background. Examples include Steam and Transmission application.\n[][4]Auto Move Application extension moves applications to a different workspace **References** (for further reading): http://askubuntu.com/questions/107187/how-to-launch-gui-app-with-upstart-script http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5681010/stop-an-application-through-terminal http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/3886/difference-between-nohup-disown-and [1]: /wp-content/uploads/2015/05/StarupApplications.png [2]: /wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Screenshot-from-2015-05-16-195348.png [3]: /wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Screenshot-from-2015-05-16-200751.png [4]: /wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Screenshot-from-2015-05-16-204754.png","date":"16 May 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/05/creating-a-startup-application-script-in-ubuntu/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIf you are new to Ubuntu and have installed various softwares, eventually there comes a time when you want the applications to start automatically just after the system boots.\u003cbr\u003e\nFollowing are two ways to add applications to startup list. First is Windows method, while the second method is geeky way (as you must have guessed, it’s my favourite).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"easy-method\" class=\"relative group\"\u003eEasy method \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#easy-method\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eJust like Windows have a startup folder where you can place shortcut files and which would let you start the applications when user logs in, in Ubuntu there is a \u003cstrong\u003e\u003ccode\u003e~/.config/autostart\u003c/code\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e folder where you can place the shortcut files. (Just to recall \u003cdel\u003e/ is your home folder. So **\u003c/del\u003e/.config** = \u003cstrong\u003e/home/username/.config\u003c/strong\u003e).\u003cbr\u003e\nYou can also use the \u003cstrong\u003eStartup Applications\u003c/strong\u003e tool (ships inbuilt with Ubuntu) which lets you add startup applications to that folder. Shortcut files in Ubuntu are files which ends with \u003cstrong\u003e.desktop\u003c/strong\u003e. The folder where you can find most of the .desktop files is \u003cstrong\u003e/usr/share/applications\u003c/strong\u003e. So you can just find the desktop file related to the particular application and copy the .desktop file into the \u003cstrong\u003e\u003ccode\u003e~/.config/autostart\u003c/code\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e folder.\u003cbr\u003e\nIf you want to start the application for \u003cstrong\u003eevery user\u003c/strong\u003e then you would need to copy the .desktop file in \u003cstrong\u003e\u003ccode\u003e/etc/xdg/autostart\u003c/code\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e folder.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_991\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-991\" style=\"width: 1010px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"\u003e[\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-991\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/StarupApplications.png\" alt=\"Starup Applications Folder and Tool\" width=\"1010\" height=\"452\" /\u003e][1]\u003cfigcaption id=\"caption-attachment-991\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"\u003eAutostart Folder on the left and Startup Applications Tool on the right\u003c/figcaption\u003e\u003c/figure\u003e","title":"Creating a Startup Application Script in Ubuntu"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/startup/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Startup"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/backup/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Backup"},{"content":"As humans, memories have a special place in our heart. Nothing can prepare us if something goes wrong and god forbid you lose them. It’s hard but imagine losing months of snaps that you shot over the trips you made across city or continent, documents accumulated over the course of your research on some project, also those rare songs and movies you got your hands on. It could be a frustrating experience if you didn’t have a backup of the data you lost.\nSomething like that happened with me over the last week. I was playing with Ubuntu Operating System from last few months but in a virtual environment. On one fine weekend I thought I am ready to finally install Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on a dedicated partition and to use it as my primary OS. I created a bootable USB and rebooted PC. Ubuntu asked me if I want to “Replace the OLD Ubuntu” with the new one. I thought, “Ok, Cool, sure do. I don’t need old Ubuntu”. And it did remove old Ubuntu and nicely completed the rest of the installation.\nWhen the Unity desktop showed up, it was all too familiar since I have been working on it for quite some time. Except when I tried to watch an episode of “The Flash” kept on my Multimedia drive. I couldn’t find it. I was like, “Why isn’t my other drives showing up? Are those not mounted?”. I was use to unusual things over my time with playing Ubuntu in virtual environment. But nothing could prepare me for what lay ahead. It was when I opened the “Disks” application that the reality hit me hard. Ubuntu had not only replaced old Ubuntu, but it had also wiped the existence of every other partition and the data along with it while installing itself.\nDo you know that feeling? At first you feel numb. You think, “WTH just happened?“. The denial phase, “No, it can’t be happening”. Then the shock overtakes you. “NOOO, MY DATA!”. It soon turns into rage, “WTF Ubuntu, HOW CAN YOU DO THIS?”. You try to remember,“Did I do something wrong?”. Then you realize you didn’t. You just selected the automated install as opposed to let you choose your own partition. It’s then when you realize you DID made a huge mistake by choosing the automated install. Finally, you try to remember when was the last time you did a backup. Eyes wide open, “It was long time ago!“.\nI had backed up my data about 3-4 months before. 3-4 months was a long time. A lot had happened since then. “I must have my data back”, I thought with a determined look in my face. The following week I used my secondary PC to recover the data back from the HDD using application known as MiniTool Power Recovery. It took it’s time. Juggling day job in the morning I only had nights to work on the recovery. Complete night to scan for partitions and data. Next two nights to actually recover the data. Another night to make sure I had not left anything else.\nAs I found out later that Ubuntu wiping out whole of the physical HDD and all its partitions without so much so as a warning “You are going to loose ALL YOUR DATA”, was actually a bug in the version I was using: 14.04**.1**. This bug was discovered about a year ago and all it required to fix it was probably just to reword the statement “Replace Old Ubuntu” with something like, “All your disk is going to be wiped out. Please make sure you are not installing this OS while drunk”. Let me tell you, that would have made a lot of difference. Had Ubuntu said something like that, I could have chosen the custom install instead. This bug was recently fixed in the update 14.04**.2** but only after making a lot of people who trusted “automated install” to get pissed in the process.\nAnyway, what happened couldn’t be roll backed. But I did manage to recover all my data. Though all the software that I had accumulated as giveaways were lost, along with all the customization that I had on my Windows Server 2008 R2 OS, but those can be acquired again.\nThis incident taught me quite a few important lessons. Of course the first one is not to trust “Automated installations”, especially when it comes to installing a complete OS. Other was to keep regular backups. Importance of cloud backup is especially important considering that it happens automatically once you set it up.\nLet’s see what things I had already backed up. I had all my:\nDocuments backed up to Dropbox, Firefox Add-Ons/Passwords backed up via Firefox Cloud, Firefox Speed Dials backed by via EverSync cloud backup, Other Multimedia related stuff like, Movies and Pictures (until last year) backed up to external HDD. So, the recovery program allowed me to recover all the data that was not synced to the cloud, and which probably couldn’t be synced either since those were very large files (especially with the kind of quality of Internet that we get in our country).\nWith recent accident of unlocking my phone’s bootloader without taking backup, this incident of wiping my PC off, April has been one hell of a month. And it’s not over yet. So I will try not to bite more than I could chew for the rest of the month.\nIn the end, Ubuntu did screw me over but it was mostly my fault. I takeaway a lot from this experience. Had I not faced it, I would probably be less careful while experimenting on Ubuntu. And that’s why I have started to like Ubuntu even more for it taught me that software isn’t perfect. To always have a backup plan is probably the best way to keep yourself and your data, out of harm’s way.\n","date":"17 April 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/04/how-ubuntu-screwed-me-over-and-why-i-still-love-it/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs humans, memories have a special place in our heart. Nothing can prepare us if something goes wrong and god forbid you lose them. It’s hard but imagine losing months of snaps that you shot over the trips you made across city or continent, documents accumulated over the course of your research on some project, also those rare songs and movies you got your hands on. It could be a frustrating experience if you didn’t have a backup of the data you lost.\u003cbr\u003e\nSomething like that happened with me over the last week. I was playing with Ubuntu Operating System from last few months but in a virtual environment. On one fine weekend I thought I am ready to finally install Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on a dedicated partition and to use it as my primary OS. I created a bootable USB and rebooted PC. Ubuntu asked me if I want to “\u003cstrong\u003eReplace the OLD Ubuntu\u003c/strong\u003e” with the new one. I thought, “\u003cem\u003eOk, Cool, sure do. I don’t need old Ubuntu\u003c/em\u003e”. And it did remove old Ubuntu and nicely completed the rest of the installation.\u003cbr\u003e\nWhen the Unity desktop showed up, it was all too familiar since I have been working on it for quite some time. Except when I tried to watch an episode of “The Flash” kept on my Multimedia drive. I couldn’t find it. I was like, “\u003cem\u003eWhy isn’t my other drives showing up? Are those not mounted?\u003c/em\u003e”. I was use to unusual things over my time with playing Ubuntu in virtual environment. But nothing could prepare me for what lay ahead. It was when I opened the “Disks” application that the reality hit me hard. Ubuntu had not only replaced old Ubuntu, but it had also wiped the existence of every other partition and the data along with it while installing itself.\u003cbr\u003e\nDo you know that feeling? At first you feel numb. You think, “\u003cem\u003eWTH just happened?\u003c/em\u003e“. The denial phase, “\u003cem\u003eNo, it can’t be happening\u003c/em\u003e”. Then the shock overtakes you. “\u003cem\u003eNOOO, MY DATA!\u003c/em\u003e”. It soon turns into rage, “\u003cem\u003eWTF Ubuntu, HOW CAN YOU DO THIS?\u003c/em\u003e”. You try to remember,“\u003cem\u003eDid I do something wrong?\u003c/em\u003e”. Then you realize you didn’t. You just selected the automated install as opposed to let you choose your own partition. It’s then when you realize you DID made a huge mistake by choosing the automated install. Finally, you try to remember when was the last time you did a backup. Eyes wide open, “\u003cem\u003eIt was long time ago!\u003c/em\u003e“.\u003cbr\u003e\nI had backed up my data about 3-4 months before. 3-4 months was a long time. A lot had happened since then. “\u003cem\u003eI must have my data back\u003c/em\u003e”, I thought with a determined look in my face. The following week I used my secondary PC to recover the data back from the HDD using application known as \u003cstrong\u003eMiniTool Power Recovery\u003c/strong\u003e. It took it’s time. Juggling day job in the morning I only had nights to work on the recovery. Complete night to scan for partitions and data. Next two nights to actually recover the data. Another night to make sure I had not left anything else.\u003cbr\u003e\nAs I found out later that Ubuntu wiping out whole of the physical HDD and all its partitions without so much so as a warning “\u003cstrong\u003eYou are going to loose ALL YOUR DATA\u003c/strong\u003e”, was actually a bug in the version I was using: 14.04**.1**. This bug was discovered about \u003ca href=\"https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/1265192\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003ea year ago\u003c/a\u003e and all it required to fix it was probably just to reword the statement “Replace Old Ubuntu” with something like, “\u003cem\u003eAll your disk is going to be wiped out. Please make sure you are not installing this OS while drunk\u003c/em\u003e”. Let me tell you, that would have made a lot of difference. Had Ubuntu said something like that, I could have chosen the custom install instead. This bug was recently fixed in the update 14.04**.2** but only after making a lot of people who trusted “automated install” to get pissed in the process.\u003cbr\u003e\nAnyway, what happened couldn’t be roll backed. But I did manage to recover all my data. Though all the software that I had accumulated as giveaways were lost, along with all the customization that I had on my Windows Server 2008 R2 OS, but those can be acquired again.\u003cbr\u003e\nThis incident taught me quite a few important lessons. Of course the first one is not to trust “Automated installations”, especially when it comes to installing a complete OS. Other was to keep regular backups. Importance of cloud backup is especially important considering that it happens automatically once you set it up.\u003cbr\u003e\nLet’s see what things I had already backed up. I had all my:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How Ubuntu screwed me over and why I still love it"},{"content":"Until now we have discussed how to install Ubuntu, concepts around files, keyboard shortcuts to navigate easily and various ways to customize Ubuntu with Gnome shell. Today I am going to discuss how to install applications in Linux along with the various ways to do them, and will end with a special note that would explain how “running” applications in Ubuntu is fundamentally different than Windows.\nYou must be used to installing softwares in Windows by downloading .EXE files or .MSI installers. You open these files and click Next -\u0026gt; Next and viola. Installing applications in Ubuntu is a bit different and safer than Windows in some cases. But before we get into the steps its important to understand the concept of Packages in Ubuntu.\nWhat is a Package? #A package can be considered a collection of files bundled into a single file. Package contains among other things, the installation script which tells where the files will be copied and what settings needs to be changed once the package is installed.\nIn essence, the output of a package is equivalent to .exe or .msi installers, that is they install a software on the OS. There are many ways to install a package on Linux. You can install a package using Package manager which itself are categorized in Low-Level and High-Level package managers. You can also download packages over the Internet and use it to install it on the system (more on this later in this article).\nLow level package managers are dpkg (for Debian based Linux like Ubuntu) and rpm (for SUSE and Fedora). While high level package managers are apt-get (for Debian), zypper (for SUSE) and yum (for Fedora).\nPackages can depend on other package to be installed first. Say if you want to install some software which was written in PHP, you may need to install the PHP package first. This concept is called dependency and is usually taken care of itself if you are using a high level package managers.\nAdvanced Packaging Tool (APT) #The underlying package manager in Ubuntu (or any Debian based Linux) is APT. You can use the command apt to install or remove packages on your system. APT is also used in background in GUI based package managers like Ubuntu Software Center and synaptic.\nEDX have a pdf which lists some basic commands to using package managers. Download it here.\nWhat is Source and Binary? #Source refers to the source code of a software which you can compile and build on your own PC and then use it. Binary refers to the compiled code and which can be straightaway installed on your PC. While the Source is machine independent, Binary is not. Two binaries can be different depending on which PC it was compiled on. Binary is akin to .EXE files in Windows. So wherever you read “binary” in context to Ubuntu, it’s talking about the ‘compiled code‘ which can be ‘installed‘.\nSoftware Channels/Repositories #When we say we can install packages from the Terminal using command like apt-get we mean software can be installed by fetching files over the Internet. So where does these files reside? What is the source of these packages? Excellent question.\nUbuntu stores all of its packages in locations called software channels or repositories. A software channel is simply a location which holds packages of similar types, which can be downloaded and installed using a package manager. A package manager will store an index of all of the packages available from a software channel. You can update this index using command apt-get update. There are four Ubuntu software channels \u0026#8211; Main, Restricted, Universe and Multiverse. Each has a different purpose. By default, only packages from Main and Restricted can be installed. To use packages from Universe or Multiverse, you just need to put a tick against the options in Software and Updates settings (as shown in the screenshot below). Installing downloaded packages #It’s one of the most confusing aspects that I faced while doing. I knew how to install applications from terminal using apt-get. But once I downloaded a .deb package from Internet, I wasn’t able to install it by just double clicking and expecting a wizard to click “Next” in hopes to get it installed. The way installing packages works on Ubuntu is a bit different, and I would be trying to explain it here by discussion various ways to install a package.\nLets see an example of a .deb package of Chromium, an open source browser which forms the basis of other browsers like Chrome and Opera. You can get the .deb package for Chromium from here. (Direct link for Chromium 64 bit for Ubuntu).\nMethod 0: Using Terminal #If you wanted to install Chromium using terminal you could have used following command, which also requires you to be online:\nsudo apt-get install chromium-browser Method 1: Using Software Center #Double click the .deb file and it should open in “Ubuntu Software Center”. Here on, you can just click “Install” and the software will be installed in a jiff.\nMethod 2: Using GDebi #GDebi is a package installer that can be used to install .deb packages. Open Terminal, type gdebi and press enter. If GDebi is installed you will see a bunch of options to use it or else you will get “command not found“.\nOpen Terminal and enter following command to install GDebi. If it’s already installed it will say, “gdebi is already the newest version” and if it’s not it will install it for you.\nsudo apt-get install gdebi Now we are ready to use GDebi to install Chromium. Which again has two ways:\nA. Using Terminal: Open terminal and go to location where you downloaded the Chromium .deb package. By default it should be your downloads folder.\ncd ~/Downloads Now use the command to install Chromium using GDebi:\nsudo gdebi my_package_name.deb B. Using GUI version of GDebi: Right click the .deb package and select, Open with -\u0026gt; “GDebi Package Manager“. As soon as you do that, GDebi will be open in the form of GUI and the chromium package will be opened for your analysis. You can see the files inside the package and the instructions that are written inside it. If you click “Details” button you can also see the dependency of the package, which would be required before you can install this package. In our case, since we are trying to install Chromium, its package will show “chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra” as the dependency.\nNow to install the Chromium just press “Install Package” button. A progress bar will be shown during the install. You can also click “Terminal” arrow to see what is happening in the background. Here you will notice that the “chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra” dependency was installed before Chromium package was installed.\n[][1]Installation finished for Chromium through GDebi Other ways to Install Packages: #There are many other and geeky ways to install an application in Linux. Then there are “.tar.gz” packages which is just a compressed file like .zip or .rar and which can contain binary file or source code. You can use this source code to compile and create your own binary, which is of course advanced stuff. Checkout links at bottom for guides to learn more.\na). https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SynapticHowto\nSynaptic Package Manager, which is a UI based manager that can be used to install various packages. Synaptic can also be used to convert .rpm package (which are package for other linux distribution) to .deb and then install it, which may not work for every .deb package though.\nb). http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/ubuntu-ppa-technology-explained/\nHere you can learn about Personal Package Archives (PPAs) and how to install packages using it.\nc). https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AptURL\nThere is a way to install applications right from your browser. Why? Cause it’s simple.\nd). http://askubuntu.com/questions/25961/how-do-i-install-a-tar-gz-or-tar-bz2-file\nCompiling Source code itself and creating your own binary. Why? Cause it’s uber cool.\ne). https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InstallingSoftware\nAlong with other things the article talks about how to backup your packages, in case you want to install same packages on other PC without the need to download them again, or if you just want to keep the list of installed packages for backup purpose.\nFinding Softwares (Packages) #There will be scenarios where you would like to find the locations where the files related to packages you installed are kept. In general, executable programs should live in the /bin, /usr/bin, /sbin, /usr/sbin directories or under /opt. But which, whereis and locate commands is all you need most of the time to search precisely the location of a package or files across any location and works faster than find feature in Windows.\nLet’s see how you can Ctrl + F anything right from the Terminal!\n1. which command #One way to locate programs is to use the which command. For example, to find out exactly where the firefox program is on your PC:\n$ which firefox /usr/bin/firefox 2. whereis command #If which does not find the program, whereis is a good alternative because it looks for packages in a broader range of system directories:\n$ whereis firefox firefox: /usr/bin/firefox /etc/firefox /usr/lib/firefox /usr/bin/X11/firefox /usr/share/man/man1/firefox.1.gz 3. locate command #This command not only finds package locations, but it can find any file based on the file name and supports wildcards. An example would be:\n$ locate *.sys /home/vyom/.config/teamviewer10/drive_c/windows/system32/drivers/mountmgr.sys /lib/firmware/slicoss/gbdownload.sys /lib/firmware/slicoss/gbrcvucode.sys /lib/firmware/slicoss/oasisdownload.sys /lib/firmware/slicoss/oasisrcvucode.sys /usr/lib/syslinux/dosutil/eltorito.sys Uninstalling Packages #Yea, so you have installed many packages then you initially intended. Now how to get rid of some? In Windows you are familiar with the “Add/Remove Programs” or “Programs and Features” if you have decided to upgrade from XP. But how to remove packages from Ubuntu and making sure you don’t mess up? Fortunately uninstalling software (or removing packages) is easy.\n1. Using Ubuntu Software Center #Just open Ubuntu Software Center, navigate to the software which you want to install OR search for it in the search box. Then click “Remove” and after asking from you the password, the package will be removed.\n2. Using Terminal #You would have to know the name of the package which you want to remove from your system. To remove Chromium from terminal we would use following command:\nsudo apt-get remove chromium-browser 3. Purge it! #sudo apt-get purge chromium-browser The purge command is used instead of remove if you want to remove the config files associated with the package. remove command only removes the binary. So if you are sure you won’t re-install the package again and want to remove the config files as well (usually stored in your home directory) you can purge it.\nSpecial Note: #As promised, I would like to end this article by an observations, which have to be taken care of if you are dealing with installing and uninstalling packages in Ubuntu (or generally in Linux).\nDo this: Install Chromium again (if you have removed it). Now open Chromium from applications list. Keeping the browser open, go to Terminal and remove the package though “sudo apt-get remove chromium-browser” command. You can also try to remove it from “Ubuntu Software Center”. Did you notice something? The Chromium browser you kept open isn’t close. In fact Ubuntu didn’t even show a warning about the browser being open. It just removed the package from existence.\nIn Windows, to uninstall an application, you first have to close the process. This is fundamental to Windows, since it keeps the executable file locked. After this observation I came to realize Ubuntu works differently. In Ubuntu running process is in memory and it doesn’t lock the executable file locked. Some argue that it’s the feature of Ubuntu. I think it’s by design. In Linux, executable files are not defined by “extensions”. It’s defined by permissions and the executable flag. If I have a permission to execute a file, the file’s content is loaded into memory and file is kept free for other user to use. I think due to very nature of Ubuntu to allow multiuser capability, the file is not kept locked after it’s content is loaded into memory and instructions are executed.\nIf you guys have any other theory or fact, do post it in comments. I would like to know if my observations are different. [1]: /wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Screenshot-from-2015-04-10-211747.png\n","date":"11 April 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/04/concept-of-installing-applications-in-ubuntu/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eUntil now we have discussed how to install Ubuntu, \u003ca href=\"/2015/03/the-user-experience-of-using-ubuntu/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003econcepts around files\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2015/03/the-user-experience-of-using-ubuntu/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003ekeyboard shortcuts\u003c/a\u003e to navigate easily and various ways to customize Ubuntu with \u003ca href=\"/2015/01/making-ubuntu-personalized-gnome/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eGnome shell\u003c/a\u003e. Today I am going to discuss how to install applications in Linux along with the various ways to do them, and will end with a special note that would explain how “running” applications in Ubuntu is fundamentally different than Windows.\u003cbr\u003e\nYou must be used to installing softwares in Windows by downloading .EXE files or .MSI installers. You open these files and click Next -\u0026gt; Next and viola. Installing applications in Ubuntu is a bit different and safer than Windows in some cases. But before we get into the steps its important to understand the concept of Packages in Ubuntu.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"what-is-a-package\" class=\"relative group\"\u003eWhat is a Package? \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#what-is-a-package\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eA package can be considered a collection of files bundled into a single file. Package contains among other things, the installation script which tells where the files will be copied and what settings needs to be changed once the package is installed.\u003cbr\u003e\nIn essence, the output of a package is equivalent to .exe or .msi installers, that is they install a software on the OS. There are many ways to install a package on Linux. You can install a package using Package manager which itself are categorized in Low-Level and High-Level package managers. You can also download packages over the Internet and use it to install it on the system (more on this later in this article).\u003cbr\u003e\nLow level package managers are \u003cstrong\u003edpkg\u003c/strong\u003e (for Debian based Linux like Ubuntu) and \u003cstrong\u003erpm\u003c/strong\u003e (for SUSE and Fedora). While high level package managers are \u003cstrong\u003eapt-get\u003c/strong\u003e (for Debian), \u003cstrong\u003ezypper\u003c/strong\u003e (for SUSE) and \u003cstrong\u003eyum\u003c/strong\u003e (for Fedora).\u003cbr\u003e\nPackages can depend on other package to be installed first. Say if you want to install some software which was written in PHP, you may need to install the PHP package first. This concept is called \u003cstrong\u003edependency\u003c/strong\u003e and is usually taken care of itself if you are using a high level package managers.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"advanced-packaging-tool-apt\" class=\"relative group\"\u003eAdvanced Packaging Tool (APT) \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#advanced-packaging-tool-apt\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe underlying package manager in Ubuntu (or any Debian based Linux) is APT. You can use the command \u003cstrong\u003eapt\u003c/strong\u003e to install or remove packages on your system. APT is also used in background in GUI based package managers like \u003cstrong\u003eUbuntu Software Center\u003c/strong\u003e and \u003cstrong\u003esynaptic\u003c/strong\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\nEDX have a pdf which lists some basic commands to using package managers. Download it \u003ca href=\"https://courses.edx.org/asset-v1:LinuxFoundationX+LFS101x.2+1T2015+type@asset+block@Basic_Packagaing_Commands.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ehere\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"what-is-source-and-binary\" class=\"relative group\"\u003eWhat is Source and Binary? \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#what-is-source-and-binary\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e","title":"Concept of Installing Applications in Ubuntu"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/packages/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Packages"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/thoughts/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Thoughts"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/weird/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Weird"},{"content":"My dear friends,\nWhen the clock struck 23:23 today on the 2nd last day of March of the 15th year of 21st century since the time we started to measure time in positive numbers, I started to have these weird thoughts. I started to think how I am inside this box made up of concrete and mortar, and sitting on top of an industrial plastic moulded in the shape of a chair.\nHow am I pushing my fingers on buttons made of plastic which is passing signals to a box built with metal and semiconductors, which is translating electrons to photons on screen and being represented as a character.\nI am not really sure why am I here on this 3rd rock orbiting around the sun also rotating around on its own axis, in this milky way of millions of bodies like our own sun, which itself is among millions of similar kind of galaxies, separated only by time.\nI am a product of a countless number of impossibilities, few among which are the impossibility of life, impossibility of my parents being met, impossibility of my selection among thousands of sperms, and impossibility of me being conceived successfully in the womb of my mother.\nHere am I wondering what is the purpose of such a product of life, which statistically doesn’t even exist in all it’s form, like so many things which doesn’t exist, like straight circle, or colorless red orange, or Mobius road on a 2D plane.\nHere am I wondering what is the purpose of Time? Is it really to prevent happening of everything all at once, or for us to make sense of the only constant in our life, the change. Just like it’s hard for an ant to think about 5th dimension, can Humans really think about higher dimensions, dimensions that we can’t even think of? For us, to be a part of a simulation is a highly probable scenario statistically, but can we even think of the possibility of something we can’t even fathom to think of?\nWith all these thoughts in my mind today I can safely conclude that I haven’t even begin my journey towards understanding the rationale behind trying to understand the fact that I can probably never truly decide whether I have started my journey.\nI probably don’t even exist, which begs the question, does my creator feels the same way, that ‘it’ can’t really ever know, whether his creator feels the same way about it’s creator?\nWhat if I have lived this life, sat in this exact box made of exact same concrete and mortar, sat on this exact chair made of this exact industrial plastic, pressing the exact same keyboard buttons, and thinking these exact thoughts before?\nWhat if this continuum of time is repeating itself again, and again and again.. like a pendulum moving to and fro in vacuum so that no single continuum can know what was it’s origin, and when would be it’s end? What if the big bang and big crunch were to be the two ends hanging at the either side of that pendulum motion?\nCan we ever escape this reality? Or simulation? Can we ever be ‘free’ in the truest sense? Can we celebrate ‘Independence day’ where we would have achieved the freedom from motion of this cosmic pendulum?\nI probably will never know and will probably write these exact things again after the big crunch, and the big bang, and even after that. I don’t know if whatever I said, make sense, but I do know, it must make sense to ‘something’.\nMaybe if we can just find a way to pass information during two cosmic pendulum swings, after the end of one ‘period’? I will be searching for a way to do that. Would you?\n– Your’s weird, Vineet.\n","date":"30 March 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/03/weird-thoughts-on-a-monday-night/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy dear friends,\u003cbr\u003e\nWhen the clock struck 23:23 today on the 2nd last day of March of the 15th year of 21st century since the time we started to measure time in positive numbers, I started to have these weird thoughts. I started to think how I am inside this box made up of concrete and mortar, and sitting on top of an industrial plastic moulded in the shape of a chair.\u003cbr\u003e\nHow am I pushing my fingers on buttons made of plastic which is passing signals to a box built with metal and semiconductors, which is translating electrons to photons on screen and being represented as a character.\u003cbr\u003e\nI am not really sure why am I here on this 3rd rock orbiting around the sun also rotating around on its own axis, in this milky way of millions of bodies like our own sun, which itself is among millions of similar kind of galaxies, separated only by time.\u003cbr\u003e\nI am a product of a countless number of impossibilities, few among which are the impossibility of life, impossibility of my parents being met, impossibility of my selection among thousands of sperms, and impossibility of me being conceived successfully in the womb of my mother.\u003cbr\u003e\nHere am I wondering what is the purpose of such a product of life, which statistically doesn’t even exist in all it’s form, like so many things which doesn’t exist, like straight circle, or colorless red orange, or Mobius road on a 2D plane.\u003cbr\u003e\nHere am I wondering what is the purpose of Time? Is it really to prevent happening of everything all at once, or for us to make sense of the only constant in our life, the change. Just like it’s hard for an ant to think about 5th dimension, can Humans really think about higher dimensions, dimensions that we can’t even think of? For us, to be a part of a simulation is a highly probable scenario statistically, but can we even think of the possibility of something we can’t even fathom to think of?\u003cbr\u003e\nWith all these thoughts in my mind today I can safely conclude that I haven’t even begin my journey towards understanding the rationale behind trying to understand the fact that I can probably never truly decide whether I have started my journey.\u003cbr\u003e\nI probably don’t even exist, which begs the question, does my creator feels the same way, that ‘it’ can’t really ever know, whether his creator feels the same way about it’s creator?\u003cbr\u003e\nWhat if I have lived this life, sat in this exact box made of exact same concrete and mortar, sat on this exact chair made of this exact industrial plastic, pressing the exact same keyboard buttons, and thinking these exact thoughts before?\u003cbr\u003e\nWhat if this continuum of time is repeating itself again, and again and again.. like a pendulum moving to and fro in vacuum so that no single continuum can know what was it’s origin, and when would be it’s end? What if the big bang and big crunch were to be the two ends hanging at the either side of that pendulum motion?\u003cbr\u003e\nCan we ever escape this reality? Or simulation? Can we ever be ‘free’ in the truest sense? Can we celebrate ‘Independence day’ where we would have achieved the freedom from motion of this cosmic pendulum?\u003cbr\u003e\nI probably will never know and will probably write these exact things again after the big crunch, and the big bang, and even after that. I don’t know if whatever I said, make sense, but I do know, it must make sense to ‘something’.\u003cbr\u003e\nMaybe if we can just find a way to pass information during two cosmic pendulum swings, after the end of one ‘period’? I will be searching for a way to do that. Would you?\u003cbr\u003e\n– Your’s weird, Vineet.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Weird thoughts on a Monday night"},{"content":"In previous articles we installed Ubuntu, learned how to use Gnome shell on Ubuntu and customize it as per needs. In this article I would be dealing on some more points which makes it easier to understand the aspects of Ubuntu for those who are still deeply wrapped up in the world of Windows. Then we will learn how you can use keyboard shortcuts to improve the User Experience of using Ubuntu. In the end we will see how you can use built in ways to help yourself if you ever needed to learn more about Ubuntu and Terminal commands.\nPhilosophy of Linux over Windows #There are a few structural changes one notices when they migrate to Linux based OS like Ubuntu as compared to Windows. Following is a list that explains some of them:\n1. Disk System #In Windows each partition of the HDD is referred as Disk1, Disk2 etc. While in Ubuntu it is termed as sda1, sda2. Here sda stands for one physical hard disk. And sda1 stands for Storage Device “A” partition 1 on a single physical HDD.\n2. File System Type: #Filesystem is a way for the OS to keep the data on the HDD and a way to access it. Windows user would be familiar with NTFS and FAT32 but on Ubuntu, EXT3 or EXT4 is used primarily while EXT2 and XFS are also common.\n3. Drive Naming Convention: #In Windows people are too familiar with drives named on alphabet like C, D, E and F. It’s the C: drive which is the root drive and where OS is installed. Ubuntu is radically different where the naming convention is considered.\nIn Ubuntu, root is a single forward slash. That is, “/“. So suppose I create a directory (another term for “folders”) called home in the root folder. The path for that would be /home.\nDue to this convention, the way removable drives are handled is also different in Linux. A CD you insert with label projectone in the CD drive will be “mounted” and can be accessed from say, /media/username/projectone.\nLastly, in Linux, file and folder names are case sensitive. So, /home/user is different from /home/User and /home/USER.\n[][1]A typical Directory Structure in Linux. Image Courtesy: edx.org 4. Absolute and Relative Paths #Absolute path name starts with / and always begins from root. Relative path names never begins from root. Following shortcuts can be used while navigating in terminal:\n. (present directory) .. (parent directory) ~ (your home directory). So if you are in /home/vyom/folder then to goto /home/abhi/music we can use the following command:\nAbsolute path command: cd /home/abhi/music Relative path command: cd ../../abhi/music In relative path command, the first .. takes you to /home/vyom then the second .. takes you to /home now from here /abhi/music takes you to /home/abhi/music. Similarly you could have used the command: cd ~/music to reach to your music folder. If you are vyom this command would take you to /home/vyom/music and if you were abhi it would take you to /home/abhi/music. This video from edx shows example of these command.\nDefault Directories #Each user who is setup on Ubuntu will have it’s own directory in /home directory. A user Abhi could have /home/abhi and a user Atul could have it’s /home/atul. All personal settings and files are stored in their own individual home directories.\nJust like in Windows, the user folder is C:\\Users\\User_Name and other user specific folders are allocated in the folders inside that, in Ubuntu everything related to the user like Desktop, Documents, Pictures and Music etc are stored in /home/user/. The file manager nautilus (named Files in Ubuntu) which you can access from Dash, will open the /home/username folder by default.\nUbuntu is suddenly not ‘that’ different now eh?\nSymbolic Links #This is something which is very useful to manage files and is even used in nginx, a web server (which is beyond the scope of this article). Consider symlinks as a shortcut to a file. You can create one using following example:\nln -s file1 file4 Above command creates a symlink file4 which points to file1.\nSuper Key: #On a standard PC keyboard, Super Key is the key with Windows logo on it (I think you can paste a Ubuntu logo sticker on it to honor Linux, but that’s just personal preference). This key is called Super Key Ubuntu wide, not just in Gnome. So when I say press, “Super + S” that would mean to press “Windows key + S“.\nMigrating to Ubuntu can be tough for the touch typists and keyboard shortcut freaks, and is probably the thing which can be learned only with practice. With that in mind, let’s see how we can control the OS and applications with keyboard shortcuts.\nUsing Keyboard to… #Navigating Around #In Windows, you press Win + D to minimize all apps and reach to Desktop, then Alt + Tab to switch between windows. You press Windows key and start typing the application name to search for the application you want to open and then press enter to open it. Let’s see how we do that in Ubuntu:\nMinimize/Maximize all windows (like Win + D in Windows): Ctrl + Super + D Switch Windows: Alt + Tab or Super + Tab Press Super Key and start typing the name of app to search and press enter to open (same as in windows) Controlling Applications: # Activate Window Menu: Alt + Space (same as in Windows, and also where you can see below shortcuts) Maximize window: Ctrl + Super + Up Restore window: Ctrl + Super + Down Move window: Alt + F7 (then use arrow keys) Resize window: Alt + F8 (then use arrow keys) Controlling OS: # Logging off: Ctrl + Alt + Del\nLocking screen: Ctrl + Alt + L\nShutdown: Ctrl + Alt + T (will open Terminal). Type command: sudo poweroff\nThis is where a custom shortcut can make life easier. To create a shortcut to shutdown, open from Dash, System Settings -\u0026gt; Keyboard -\u0026gt; Shortcuts -\u0026gt; Custom Shortcuts. Here type “Shutdown” in name section and type following command in command section:\ngnome-session-quit \u0026ndash;power-off\nNow you need to assign a shortcut. Click the newly created shortcut and when it says “New accelerator…” type a shortcut which you want to assign. I prefer Shift + Ctrl + Alt + S, which is not assigned by default to any other action.\n[][2]Keyboard Shortcuts Window The \u0026#8220;Shortcuts\u0026#8221; section is also where you can see all the shortcut that is assigned to all the actions within Ubuntu. There are shortcuts to things you can\u0026#8217;t even do in Windows through GUI, like **Toggle Shaded State** (Ctrl + Alt + S) which rolls the window to only in its title bar. You can even assign new shortcut by clicking the existing shortcut. Miscellaneous Shortcuts: #To View hidden files: CTRL + H\nBy default files starting with a dot (period) are hidden in Linux. But you can press Ctrl + H to temporarily view the hidden files. Which is a very handy shortcut since you don’t need to go to settings each time you want to view hidden files and want to toggle it back again.\nRun any program shortcut: ALT + F2\nThis is the equivalent to Win + R run box in windows. Just press Alt + F2, enter the name of any application and the program will open it for you. For instance, entering firefox in the dialog box which opens after you press this shortcut will open Firefox browser. Enter a path to a folder say, “/home/folder” and it will open the path in the file explorer. Enter xkill command in it, which would bring a cross cursor to your disposal, that you can use to kill any application instantly by clicking on it. For more such commands, refer this page.\n**Edit Address bar: No shortcut!\n**\nIn Windows you can edit the address bar and type in the address (path) to a folder to navigate to it directly. In Ubuntu (or Gnome) you can press “/” and then proceed typing the path if file explorer (Files) is open and you will be typing on the address bar which will suddenly be visible to edit for you. No shortcut needed at all.\nGetting Help: #As a newbie you will need help whenever you want to try something new, or to see what a particular command does, or sometimes just to refer the syntax of a particular command in Terminal. You don’t need to use Google everytime you get stuck in such situation. Following are the ways to get help in Ubuntu without Internet:\nman command: #Short for “Manual”, man command can be used to view how to use a particular command. Just type Man followed by a command and a manual will open to brief you about what does that particular command does and how to use it. Example: Man ls will show you all the ways you can use the command ls to view list of files in a directory.\ninfo command: #info like man command can be used to see details about any particular command and is usually a lot more detailed than the man command. If info is not available about particular command, it will instead open the manual by default. For important distinction between man and info command refer this.\nhelp command: #help command can be used to get a comprehensive list of all the command you can use on the Terminal screen. Using help along with the command name will give a shorter description of the command than what man gives.\ngnome-help: #The command gnome-help will open the help documentation but in GUI mode, where you can click any of the topics to study it further. It’s recommended to go through it once for anyone migrating to Ubuntu.\nGNOME Cheat Sheet: #There is a comprehensive guide available on the Internet which list all the shortcuts available on Gnome shell of Ubuntu. Refer the Cheat Sheet whenever you need help. And to get more comprehensive help on any aspect of Ubuntu just go to the Online help section.\nIn this article I dealt with how you can use keyboard shortcuts in Ubuntu to your advantage and to quickly get the work done. Once you get hang of the keyboard shortcuts, navigating in Ubuntu becomes as familiar as Windows. And once you learn the hidden shortcuts you will realize the just how powerful Ubuntu can be.\n","date":"27 March 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/03/the-user-experience-of-using-ubuntu/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ca href=\"/technology/ubuntu/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eprevious articles\u003c/a\u003e we installed Ubuntu, learned how to use Gnome shell on Ubuntu and customize it as per needs. In this article I would be dealing on some more points which makes it easier to understand the aspects of Ubuntu for those who are still deeply wrapped up in the world of Windows. Then we will learn how you can use keyboard shortcuts to improve the User Experience of using Ubuntu. In the end we will see how you can use built in ways to help yourself if you ever needed to learn more about Ubuntu and Terminal commands.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"philosophy-of-linux-over-windows\" class=\"relative group\"\u003ePhilosophy of Linux over Windows \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#philosophy-of-linux-over-windows\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eThere are a few structural changes one notices when they migrate to Linux based OS like Ubuntu as compared to Windows. Following is a list that explains some of them:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"1-disk-system\" class=\"relative group\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e1. Disk System\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#1-disk-system\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn Windows each partition of the HDD is referred as Disk1, Disk2 etc. While in Ubuntu it is termed as sda1, sda2. Here sda stands for one physical hard disk. And sda1 stands for Storage Device “A” partition 1 on a single physical HDD.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"2-file-system-type\" class=\"relative group\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e2. File System Type:\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#2-file-system-type\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eFilesystem is a way for the OS to keep the data on the HDD and a way to access it. Windows user would be familiar with NTFS and FAT32 but on Ubuntu, EXT3 or EXT4 is used primarily while EXT2 and XFS are also common.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"3-drive-naming-convention\" class=\"relative group\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e3. Drive Naming Convention:\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#3-drive-naming-convention\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn  Windows people are too familiar with drives named on alphabet like C, D, E and F. It’s the C: drive which is the root drive and where OS is installed. Ubuntu is radically different  where the naming convention is considered.\u003cbr\u003e\nIn Ubuntu, root is a single forward slash. That is, “\u003cstrong\u003e/\u003c/strong\u003e“. So suppose I create a directory (another term for “folders”) called \u003cstrong\u003ehome\u003c/strong\u003e in the root folder. The path for that would be \u003cstrong\u003e/home\u003c/strong\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\nDue to this convention, the way removable drives are handled is also different in Linux. A CD you insert with label \u003cstrong\u003eprojectone\u003c/strong\u003e in the CD drive will be “mounted” and can be accessed from say, \u003cstrong\u003e/media/username/projectone\u003c/strong\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\nLastly, in Linux, file and folder names are case sensitive. So, \u003cstrong\u003e/home/user\u003c/strong\u003e is different from \u003cstrong\u003e/home/User\u003c/strong\u003e and \u003cstrong\u003e/home/USER\u003c/strong\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_815\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-815\" style=\"width: 672px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"\u003e[\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-815 size-full\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Nix-File-System.jpg\" alt=\"A typical Directory Structure in Linux\" width=\"672\" height=\"464\" /\u003e][1]\u003cfigcaption id=\"caption-attachment-815\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"\u003eA typical Directory Structure in Linux. Image Courtesy: edx.org\u003c/figcaption\u003e\u003c/figure\u003e","title":"The User Experience of using Ubuntu"},{"content":"Lotus Temple, also called Bahá’í House of Worship is a construction which is famous for its architectural design which is in the shape of a Lotus flower. It’s located near Nehru Place, in South Delhi, which is widely considered as major information technology hub of South Asia.\nI have visited Lotus Temple many times before, but this I was able to capture this 360 degree sphere, under cloudy sky. Caution: A few legs would be missing in the panorama. As it turns out I am still a newbie when taking a Google Sphere is considered.\nClick here to open this in Full Screen.\n","date":"18 March 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/03/lotus-temple/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLotus Temple, also called \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bah%C3%A1%27%C3%AD_Faith\" title=\"Bahá\u0026#39;í Faith\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eBahá’í\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bah%C3%A1%27%C3%AD_House_of_Worship\" title=\"Bahá\u0026#39;í House of Worship\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eHouse of Worship\u003c/a\u003e is a construction which is famous for its architectural design which is in the shape of a Lotus flower. It’s located near Nehru Place, in South Delhi, which is widely considered as major information technology hub of South Asia.\u003cbr\u003e\nI have visited Lotus Temple many times before, but this I was able to capture this 360 degree sphere, under cloudy sky. Caution: A few legs would be missing in the panorama. As it turns out I am still a newbie when taking a Google Sphere is considered.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lotus Temple"},{"content":"Yesterday I went to Agra to see Taj Mahal with 4 of my friends. I did go before but then I was a just small kid and didn’t quite recollect how it looked in person. Here are 3 Google Spheres to have an idea how it felt being there.\nHow the Taj looks just entering the premises, from a distance: #Click here to open this in Full Screen.\nUp close and personal: #Click here to open this in Full Screen.\nRelaxing by the sides: #Click here to open this in Full Screen.\n","date":"1 March 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/03/taj-mahal/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYesterday I went to Agra to see Taj Mahal with 4 of my friends. I did go before but then I was a just small kid and didn’t quite recollect how it looked in person. Here are 3 Google Spheres to have an idea how it felt being there.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch4 id=\"how-the-taj-looks-just-entering-the-premises-from-a-distance\" class=\"relative group\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHow the Taj looks just entering the premises, from a distance:\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#how-the-taj-looks-just-entering-the-premises-from-a-distance\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h4\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"http://vineetkumar.me/wp-content/pano/28-Feb-2015/TajMahal1.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eClick here to open this in Full Screen.\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Taj Mahal"},{"content":"Last weekend my friend Ankur wanted to pay Pusa Hill Forest a visit. This is located at little far from the nearest Metro station of Jhandewalan. The forest is spread along the Vandematram road. Here’s the 360º Panorama taken from Google Camera taken in the forest.\nClick here to open this in Full Screen.\n","date":"23 February 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/02/pusa-hill-forest/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLast weekend my friend Ankur wanted to pay Pusa Hill Forest a visit. This is located at little far from the nearest Metro station of Jhandewalan. The forest is spread along the Vandematram road. Here’s the 360\u003cspan class=\"_Tgc\"\u003eº \u003c/span\u003ePanorama taken from Google Camera taken in the forest.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Pusa Hill Forest"},{"content":"I was able to watch Predestination few days ago and the movie was every bit I was expecting. I started to draft this blog, but it took me a while to complete.\nMaybe the cause of my fixation with Time Travel and having been read a lot about Time Paradoxes, I understood the “main plot” in one shot. Heck, I would even say that the movie felt a little slow even if it was clocked around 90 min, for what was it worth. But the reason why I put “main plot” in quotes is that while the plot is crystal clear in my mind, to be able to write this post, I watched it again just so to note more details that I may have missed the first time.\nThe least you know about Predestination more you will enjoy it. Hence this article isn’t actually a review but an analysis of the movie’s plot. Needless to say, if you are into Time Travel movies, it’s best to watch the movie first and then come back here in case you need to know what actually happened in the movie.\nSpoilers from here: # Predestination is a movie that will be a cult classic for those who want to study about \u0026#8220;Predestination paradox\u0026#8221;, \u0026#8220;Novikov self-consistency principle\u0026#8221; and \u0026#8220;Bootstrap paradox\u0026#8221;.\nThe events in the movie have no origin, no middle and no end in terms of causality. But instead is filled with loops that have to be followed in the order it is to be performed. A girl is dropped to an orphanage, raised to become a women, had a sex change into a man, time travels into the past, falls in love with his female version, gives birth to a baby girl, and then turns into someone who becomes totally unrecognisable, who then takes the baby girl back to the orphanage, there by closing one of the loops the movie had. But the movie have so many such loops that it easily gets viewers confused.\nI am wondering about the prowess of writers who manages to write such a plot. If we write the movie chronologically of how she grew up, the involvement of her future self makes it complex. If we try to write about it in chronologically of Time it will be more challenging since causality will be very difficult to explain. Hence for me to be able to decipher all the loops I will need some terminology to setup.\nA = Jane \u0026#8211; The baby girl.\nB = Jane \u0026#8211; The women\nC = John \u0026#8211; After sex change, Jane becomes a man.\nD = Ethan \u0026#8211; When John\u0026#8217;s face is burned he becomes Ethan.\nE = Old Ethan \u0026#8211; When Ethan becomes the Fizzle bomber.\nR = Robertson, the person representing SpaceCorp\nKeeping in mind above terminologies here\u0026#8217;s what happened in the movie, plot wise:\n1. The film starts in 2-Mar-1970, with C. When he\u0026#8217;s at the location of the bomb trying to defuse it. But E tries to shoot C. (6 shots are fired from both sides in total). C while defusing the bomb burns gets his face burnt in the process. D comes into picture here and helps C escape the scene by sliding the time machine to him. C escapes to 0900, 21-Feb-1992.\n2. In the next shot we see D (who have just transformed from C) in the medical room. (BTW, here he says, \u0026#8220;I doubt my own mother will recognize me\u0026#8221;, which is foreshadowing the event when D meets A and B :D)\n3. D starts with a job at the bar as a bartender (in unknown time). This is where C arrives in the bar and D was waiting for him. It is also here where C tells D his life till now. (BTW, at this point D tells him the joke about, \u0026#8220;What comes first, the chicken or the egg?\u0026#8221;, again foreshadowing the story).\nC narrates D his story. And following events occur:\n4. D drops A to the doorstep of an orphanage (0945, 13-Sep-1945).\n5. A grows up into a girl. And she is confused about her gender since she knows there is something wrong about her. We will know soon what that is. She also wanted that when she would have a child, the child would have both a father and a mother, and so she vowed to be a virgin.\n6. A grows up to B and is invited by R to join some kind of space program. (which we later comes to know that is actually not a space program but a way to recruit people who can travel in time).\n7. But here B was rejected from the program since R found out that she had a two full set of organs: Male and Female. (We would know why later).\n8. B then stumbles with C and since C is just a male version of B, C is captivated by her own beauty.\n9. B gets pregnant from C.\n10. C left B letting her sit on a park bench. (24-Jun-1963)\n11. R shows up at B\u0026#8217;s residence but founds out that she was pregnant, and again rejects B for SpaceCorp.\n12. B comes to know about her weird body structure.\n13. B gave birth to A, but someone steals the baby. (Later we come to know it was D).\n14. And now, after some 3 major operations and many months later, B changes to C.\n15. C now have a hatred for the one who ruined her life by making her pregnant.\n16. C tried again to get enlist into SpaceCorp, but he was unsuccessfully.\n17. C came to New York and started working as a chef but then she came up with the idea to publish articles under the pen name \u0026#8220;The Unmarried Mother\u0026#8221;. Reason that C was first a women, made her able to write so good with \u0026#8220;women\u0026#8217;s angle\u0026#8221;.\n18. D now opens up and says C that he can get him to meet the man who ruined her life, and \u0026#8220;guarantee\u0026#8217;s that he would get away with it\u0026#8221;. (It is here that he asks \u0026#8220;what if I am Fizzle Bomber, then proceeds to ask C if he\u0026#8217;s a Fizzle Bomber, foreshadowing that Both are infact the Fizzle Bomber).\n19. D time travels with C and brings him to 1705, 3-Apr-1963, gives him money and a gun and asks him to change clothes.\n20. D also tells C to make the conversation to this time period, to its absolute minimum.\n21. C then stumbles with B and realizes that it was himself who she met with in 1963. [Connected to point 8]\n22. D goes to 1970 (0845, 2-Mar-1970), to stop E, the Fizzle Bomber. [Connected to point 1]\n23. C is also there trying to defuse the bomb which E planted and while he tries to do it, he burns his face, (who then converts to D). (Exactly 6 shots are fired here, just like before). [Connected to point 1]\n24. D travels to 2-Mar-1964, the time when B gives birth to A. [Connected to point 13]\n25. D steals A, the baby, and take her to start of the story (0945, 13-Sep-1945) and drops A to the doorstep of an orphanage. [Connected to point 4]\n26. D travels to 24-Jun-1963 when C is talking with B sitting on a park\u0026#8217;s bench. D tells C that he would have to leave B. [Connected to point 10]\n27. D takes him to 12-Aug-1985 and leaves him with the Tape Recorder where he have recorded instructions throughout his journey which would help C perform his work.\n28. D would not retire and he wants to do that by going to 1975. R tells D that after he reaches to 1975, his field kit (time machine) would get decommission. D then travels to 1200, 7-Jan-1975 (date near to the blast by Fizzle Bomber) in preparation of his retirement.\n29. The Time machine though, doesn\u0026#8217;t get decommission depicting that he have a fully working time machine at it\u0026#8217;s disposable.\n30. D researches a lot on locating E, the Fizzle bomber and traces him in a Laundromat.\n31. D recognizes E that he is \u0026#8220;himself\u0026#8221; but now aged.\n32. E starts the conversation by saying \u0026#8220;he missed D\u0026#8221;.\n33. E then tells D that he is not actually a Fizzle Bomber, but he have actually saved many lives using the Time Machine.\n34. But all the persuasion proves futile, and D kills E.\n35. The movie ends with a montage of all the phases of the protagonist\u0026#8217;s life from, A -\u003e B -\u003e C -\u003e D -\u003e E.\n36. In the very last shot before credits roll, D says \u0026#8220;he misses C\u0026#8221; like he mentioned before (or after) when he becomes E and meets D in Laundromat. [Connected to point 32]\nTimeline Chronology: Finally, taking into account all that that happened in the movie, here\u0026#8217;s the actual timeline chronology: \u0026lt;div\u0026gt; 13-Sep-1945 - Assumed birth-date of Jane (as per city records). 03-Apr-1963 - Ethan brings John to past in order for him to kill \"the person who ruined his life\") 24-Jun-1963 - When John leaves Jane on the park bench. 02-Mar-1964 - Real birth-date of Jane (as per the person's chronology). 02-Mar-1970 - Old Ethan plants bomb, John tries to defuse the bomb and Ethan tries to kill Old Ethan. 07-Jan-1975 - The date Ethan chooses to get retire xx-Mar-1975 - The Main Bomb that the Fizzle Bomber manages to blast in New York. xx-xxx-1981 - Invention of the Time Machine 12-Aug-1985 - Ethan have brought John to the 'facility' where he would get trained for 'the job'. 21-Feb-1992 - John traveled from 1970 after he gets his face burnt and becomes Ethan. Predestination is an incredible and an excellent movie. It have got breathtaking attention to details and amazing execution of the paradoxes. ","date":"22 February 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/02/predestination/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI was able to watch \u003cstrong\u003ePredestination\u003c/strong\u003e few days ago and the movie was every bit I was expecting. I started to draft this blog, but it took me a while to complete.\u003cbr\u003e\nMaybe the cause of my fixation with Time Travel and having been read a lot about Time Paradoxes, I understood the “main plot” in one shot. Heck, I would even say that the movie felt a little slow even if it was clocked around 90 min, for what was it worth. But the reason why I put “main plot” in quotes is that while the plot is crystal clear in my mind, to be able to write this post, I watched it again just so to note more details that I may have missed the first time.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe least you know about Predestination more you will enjoy it. Hence this article isn’t actually a review but an analysis of the movie’s plot. Needless to say, if you are into Time Travel movies, it’s best to watch the movie first and then come back here in case you need to know what actually happened in the movie.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Predestination (Spoilers)"},{"content":"Few days back I went to the Rail Museum in Delhi. It has a collection of many models of the rain engine that use to run on Indian rail platforms. Following are some 360º panorama from Google Camera. (Best enjoyed in Full Screen mode, click the Full Screen icon from within the Panorama).\nModel of a platform inside the museum: #Click here to open this in Full Screen.\nThe garden:\nClick here to open this in Full Screen. The Powerful Engine:\nClick here to open this in Full Screen. ","date":"15 February 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/02/rail-museum/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFew days back I went to the Rail Museum in Delhi. It has a collection of many models of the rain engine that use to run on Indian rail platforms. Following are some 360\u003cspan class=\"_Tgc\"\u003eº \u003c/span\u003e panorama from Google Camera. (Best enjoyed in Full Screen mode, click the Full Screen icon from within the Panorama).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch4 id=\"model-of-a-platform-inside-the-museum\" class=\"relative group\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eModel of a platform inside the museum:\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#model-of-a-platform-inside-the-museum\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h4\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://vineetkumar.me/wp-content/pano/15-Feb-2015/RailMuseum1.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"\u003eClick here to open this in Full Screen.\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rail Museum"},{"content":"Recently I went to a location called “Bhuli Bhatiyari ka Mahal”. This is located in Central Ridge Reserve Forest, walking distance from the nearest Metro station of Jhandewalan. Here’s the 360º Panorama taken from Google Camera.\nClick here to open this in Full Screen.\n","date":"15 February 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/02/bhuli-bhatiyari-ka-mahal/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRecently I went to a location called “Bhuli Bhatiyari ka Mahal”. This is located in Central Ridge Reserve Forest, walking distance from the nearest Metro station of Jhandewalan. Here’s the 360\u003cspan class=\"_Tgc\"\u003eº \u003c/span\u003ePanorama taken from Google Camera.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Park near Bhuli Bhatiyari Ka Mahal"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/gnome/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"GNOME"},{"content":"Until now we got familiar with Ubuntu and know how to install updates and softwares, as well as know how to use a few commands using Terminal. And now that we know what is Unity and the Unity bar, it’s time to dump it! Seriously, there are cooler alternatives out there. One such alternative is GNOME. GNOME was native part of Ubuntu until a few versions ago. But Canonical switched it for Unity later. And while Unity may provide a very good shell I don’t think it’s on par with modern era.\nIn this guide I will install GNOME and write about how to customize it with extensions.\nGNOME: #GNOME shell provides a fully customized UI on top of Ubuntu. Consider a shell akin to a completely new theme in Windows, except, shell is much more than just a theme. It actually is a complete Desktop Environment (DE) and contains completely different and sometimes a unique set of features which other shell lacks.\nUnlike Windows, you can choose to use any DE right before you login from the login page. So while one user might be using Unity, you on the same Ubuntu can use GNOME. I should warn though that GNOME is a little heavy on resources than Unity, but it’s beautiful and that there are some sacrifices which have to be made for “elegance”. Without wasting more time lets just install GNOME and see it in action.\nTo install GNOME run following command on Terminal (again Ctrl + Shift + T) while entering password when asked:\nsudo apt-get install gnome This will install a bunch of packages (around 500 MBs) which are included in GNOME by default.\nGNOME Home Screen #Once the installation is finished, you can log out and re-login after changing the shell to GNOME. Following should be the desktop after you re-login:\nSimple no fuss GNOME Home Screen Nothing at first. No application icons. No side bars. Two small icon for volume and power in extreme right. And a simple clock in the middle. Don’t be fooled since the best is yet to come. Just take the mouse to upper left corner and do a left click. Screen should be like this now:\nGNOME Hotcorner Click the down-most icon with icon which looks like it have 9 dots in grid. And viola you get:\nGNOME App Drawer Ain’t that a beauty? Such elegance! There is something about GNOME which catches your attention. The fluidity of working on GNOME can only be felt once you use it. So why do I actually love it? Well lets see how a GNOME interface actually works:\nIt’s minimal as default screen without any intrusive icons on your face. It have a hot corner at top-left corner of the screen, which you can never miss to click to get to the Activities Overview mode. App Drawer itself is full-screen, with a shade of black and neatly organized in multiple sections (5 of them in above screenshot). A workspace is a virtual desktop where you can group different applications. Switching and transferring windows to another workspace is one of another cool points about GNOME. When you have the hot-corner clicked, you can see at the right side of the window where all the workspaces are there. You can easily switch to another workspace and drag the applications between different workspace. If you missed, there is a Search bar on the top of Appdrawer where you can just start typing and search anything from Applications, Files and even Internet. (Citation needed). Window Switcher The Extensions: #The extendability with extensions on GNOME is very good. You have a dedicated page for GNOME extensions which you can install to extend the functionality of GNOME shell (the part of GNOME which provides you things which you can see).\nOpen this website and install any extension. You might get a message that says, “We cannot detect a running copy of GNOME on this system, so some parts of the interface may be disabled”. Well just click the lego icon beside the address bar and select, “Allow and Remember”.\n[][1]Enable Extension And now you have a list of extensions sorted by Popularity that you can “Turn ON” (install) to customize GNOME. Following is a list of a few extensions which I found useful:\nApplications Menu{.title-link} AlternateTab{.title-link} Native Window Placement{.title-link} Removable Drive Menu{.title-link} SystemMonitor{.title-link} Window List{.title-link} windowNavigator{.title-link} Workspace Indicator{.title-link} Applications Menu Extension, for Window Start Menu fans There are a lot of extensions in GNOME and I suggest readers to try to find some of them which they find useful and put them in comments, so we too become aware about them.\nTweak Tool: #Tweak Tool comes bundled with GNOME and using it you can go beyond the extensions to customize the User Interface.\nUsing Tweak tool you can:\nChange the global theme to dark Control Desktop Icons Enable/Disable installed extensions Change System Fonts Control number of Workspaces, and a lot more… Screenshots: #Ubuntu have a handy way to take screenshots. Just press Print+Screen and a window opens where you can select where to save the screenshot. The usual shortcut works too, like Alt + PrnScreen to take only current window screenshot and Shift + PrnScreen to take screenshot of a custom area. But GNOME have taken to a step further. When you use PrnScreen to take screenshots in GNOME the screenshot is automatically saved in Pictures folder, where it should go.\nScreen Recording: #This is something I think most of us will find extremely useful. GNOME comes with a built-in Screen Recording feature. To start recording press, “Ctrl + Shift + Alt + R”. Recording will start automatically with an Red circle as an indicator on the top right of the screen. Press the same shortcut again and recording will stop and completed video will be saved in Videos folder.\nAs per my testing, a video of resolution 1440 x 806 of duration 4 min and 35 sec took just 13.9 MB and stores it in webm format. Truly surprised!\nI will end this guide by showcasing the video which I created using above feature. This video will showcase everything I wrote about till now, from using Terminal to features of GNOME shell.\n","date":"31 January 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/01/making-ubuntu-personalized-gnome/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eUntil now we got familiar with Ubuntu and know \u003ca href=\"/2015/01/ubuntu-updating-and-setting-up-softwares/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003ehow to install updates and softwares\u003c/a\u003e, as well as know how to use a few commands using Terminal. And now that we know what is Unity and the Unity bar, it’s time to dump it! Seriously, there are cooler alternatives out there. One such alternative is GNOME. GNOME was native part of Ubuntu until a few versions ago. But Canonical switched it for Unity later. And while Unity may provide a very good shell I don’t think it’s on par with modern era.\u003cbr\u003e\nIn this guide I will install GNOME  and write about how to customize it with extensions.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"gnome\" class=\"relative group\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGNOME:\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#gnome\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eGNOME shell provides a fully customized UI on top of Ubuntu. Consider a shell akin to a completely new theme in Windows, except, shell is much more than \u003cem\u003ejust a theme\u003c/em\u003e. It actually is a complete \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_environment\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDesktop Environment\u003c/strong\u003e (DE)\u003c/a\u003e and contains completely different and sometimes a unique set of features which other shell lacks.\u003cbr\u003e\nUnlike Windows, you can  choose to use any DE right before you login from the login page. So while one user might be using Unity, you on the same Ubuntu can use GNOME. I should warn though that GNOME is a little heavy on resources than Unity, but it’s beautiful and that there are some sacrifices which have to be made for “elegance”. Without wasting more time lets just install GNOME and see it in action.\u003cbr\u003e\nTo install GNOME run following command on Terminal (again Ctrl + Shift + T) while entering password when asked:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cpre\u003esudo apt-get install gnome\u003c/pre\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis will install \u003ca href=\"https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003ea bunch of packages\u003c/a\u003e (around 500 MBs) which are included in GNOME by default.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Making Ubuntu Personalized with GNOME"},{"content":" All you need to know while Migrating to Ubuntu from Windows # When Windows users try Linux for the first time they are overwhelmed by the changes. Change in UI, change in the way filesystem works and change in the overall procedure of doing things. Windows makes user too much dependent on UI\u0026#8217;s and \u0026#8220;click to install\u0026#8221; kind of things that it becomes too much for anyone trying Linux the first time with the sheer possibilities of customizations and openness it provides. I have chosen Ubuntu since it is the first choice for any newbie who wants to step into the world of Linux. With the features it provides and the level of support which a user can get in Ubuntu is unparalleled. Usually users who try Linux tend to get a perception that things seems to be overly complicated. Suggestions of using Terminal and various long commands doesn\u0026#8217;t help in understanding the logic of Linux at all. People tend to try to find C and D drives, and due to different terminologies they tend to feel like a person on some Alien planet. I intend to change that. **I intend to write guides from the perspective of a Windows user, with as much explanation and least jargons as possible.** These guides are a sort of walkthrough written by and written for someone who tries to migrate from Windows. Hence I would be making comparisons with Windows very often so that new users grasps the concepts of Linux easily and then would try to tell about things they never thought were possible before.** ** So put on your geeky glasses and dive in to this lists of all the articles you will ever need to understand Linux in the most Windows-friendly way possible. I will keep this page updated with more info as I find them, so do subscribe to the RSS feed. Day 0: Installing Ubuntu on VirtualBox #Follow the above guide if you want to try Ubuntu first in a Virtual environment and which would be more sensible thing to do than jumping in the ocean right away.\nDay 1: Ubuntu: Beginning my Walk on Uncharted Territory #Here I talk about the Introduction and inspiration of making these guides.\nDay 2: Stuff I do in Windows that needs an alternative in Linux #What makes me want to stick to Windows? Creating a list of softwares which have made me dependent on Windows and finding their alternatives in Ubuntu.\nDay 3: Ubuntu: The Stage is Set #Introduction to Ubuntu’s Desktop and what is this “Unity Interface”?\nDay 4: Ubuntu: Updating and Setting up Software #Introduction to The Terminal and using it to update Ubuntu and installing some softwares.\nDay 5: Making Ubuntu Personalized with GNOME #Changing the Shell from Unity to GNOME Shell and introduction to GNOME extensions.\nDay 6: The User Experience of using Ubuntu #The philosophy of Ubuntu, about how it’s different from Windows, using Keyboard Shortcuts and getting the help from within Ubuntu.\nDay 7: Concept of Installing Applications in Ubuntu #A detailed look on how the installation of softwares work on Ubuntu and ways to install them, via Terminal and other ways (like .exe and .msi installers in Windows).\nBonus #Creating a Startup Application Script in Ubuntu #So how do you make the applications start automatically when you boot into Ubuntu.\nAuto Mounting Drives in Ubuntu #A way to show the NTFS drives automatically and with more control on whether you want to make it read only. For eg, you may want to make the Windows bootable drive read only.\nKeep checking for updates to this list and always remember…\nTrust our beloved Marvin! ","date":"26 January 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/ubuntu/","section":"Vineet Kumar","summary":"\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"all-you-need-to-know-while-migrating-to-ubuntu-from-windows\" class=\"relative group\"\u003eAll you need to know while Migrating to Ubuntu from Windows \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#all-you-need-to-know-while-migrating-to-ubuntu-from-windows\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-765\" src=\"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/66/TUX_G2.svg/1024px-TUX_G2.svg.png\" alt=\"Tux\" width=\"200\" height=\"170 378\" /\u003e  \nWhen Windows users try Linux for the first time they are overwhelmed by the changes. Change in UI, change in the way filesystem works and change in the overall procedure of doing things. Windows makes user too much dependent on UI\u0026#8217;s and \u0026#8220;click to install\u0026#8221; kind of things that it becomes too much for anyone trying Linux the first time with the sheer possibilities of customizations and openness it provides.  \nI have chosen Ubuntu since it is the first choice for any newbie who wants to step into the world of Linux. With the features it provides and the level of support which a user can get in Ubuntu is unparalleled.  \nUsually users who try Linux tend to get a perception that things seems to be overly complicated. Suggestions of using Terminal and various long commands doesn\u0026#8217;t help in understanding the logic of Linux at all. People tend to try to find C and D drives, and due to different terminologies they tend to feel like a person on some Alien planet.  \nI intend to change that. **I intend to write guides from the perspective of a Windows user, with as much explanation and least jargons as possible.** These guides are a sort of walkthrough written by and written for someone who tries to migrate from Windows. Hence I would be making comparisons with Windows very often so that new users grasps the concepts of Linux easily and then would try to tell about things they never thought were possible before.**  \n**  \nSo put on your geeky glasses and dive in to this lists of all the articles you will ever need to understand Linux in the most Windows-friendly way possible. I will keep this page updated with more info as I find them, so do subscribe to the \u003ca href=\"/feed/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eRSS feed\u003c/a\u003e.\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch4 id=\"day-0-installing-ubuntu-on-virtualbox\" class=\"relative group\"\u003eDay 0: \u003ca href=\"https://gadgetliv.com/install-ubuntu-on-virtualbox-in-windows/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eInstalling Ubuntu on VirtualBox\u003c/a\u003e \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#day-0-installing-ubuntu-on-virtualbox\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h4\u003e\u003cp\u003eFollow the above guide if you want to try Ubuntu first in a Virtual environment and which would be more sensible thing to do than jumping in the ocean right away.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Ubuntu Guide"},{"content":"In my last article I wrote about my first impressions of freshly installed Ubuntu 14.04 and shared what I knew about Unity interface which Ubuntu comes bundled with. Today I am going to update the OS and install various softwares. You can follow the steps to replicate the same on your copy of the OS or skip a few steps as per your requirements.\nInstalling updates is the first thing which one should do after installing a fresh copy of Ubuntu. Updates may include feature enhancement or security bugs. There are two methods to update Ubuntu. For first you can press “Dash Home” button on top of the Unity bar and type update, then select “Software Updater“.\nSoftware Updater [][1]Software Updater Checking for Updates This would check for updates and give you an option to install the updates right away. But there’s no fun in that. And I on the other hand will use more traditional way to update my OS…\nThe Terminal! #No, I am not talking about the Tom Hanks starred 2004 movie (even though it was awesome). Shortcut to open an instance of the Terminal is Ctrl + Alt + T. Pressing the 3 combo keys will fire up this ultimate weapon of mass destruction! Or not. Well The Terminal can be mistaken as just a command line replacement of Windows, but I won’t blame you for that cause it looks deceptively simple. And therein lies the power of the terminal: simplicity. You can do almost everything from the Terminal. From the list that we made before we can see that the Terminal can be used to do following things (but not limited to):\nUpdating software File Editor SSH Terminal to connect to remote VPS FTP Client IRC Client sudo !! #Terminal is simple. You type in the commands on it and press enter to execute the command. But some commands which require admin privileges won’t execute. Sudo, which stands for Super user do is a command which you can prefix before any command you want to run in privileged mode. If the command you run requires privilege mode and you forget to use sudo, terminal will greet you with “Permission Denied” error. It is then when you can order Ubuntu to run the previous command again but this time with sudo. Example:\n$ apt-get install vlc Permission Denied. $ sudo !! sudo apt-get install vlc Yes sir, installing. In the above example, line beginning with $ is where I entered my commands. But you have to be extra careful in using sudo since as I said earlier, Terminal can be a real weapon of mass destruction if you keyed in wrong command with sudo.\nSudo is equivalent to “Run As” option in Windows.\nNow that we know about the implications of sudo, lets see how to update Ubuntu using the Terminal:\nUpdating Ubuntu #Open up Terminal and type:\nsudo apt-get update sudo apt-get dist-upgrade You will be asked for the root password in the first command. You will need to enter the second command after first one finishes. You may need to confirm updating by pressing “Y” while the update is being installed. As you type these commands, you will see wall of texts suddenly scrolling on the screen. This is the Terminal updating Ubuntu, my friend. That’s all it took. Just a couple of quick commands. No clicks. And the system is now updated with the latest security updates. That’s the beauty of the Terminal. To know more about what each of these commands do, you can read about this in this thread.\n[][2]Installing Updates After about few minutes (depending on the speed of your Internet connection) the updates would complete and you will be ready to install softwares that you require. Note that if you are running Ubuntu on VirtualBox, you might need to run GuestAdditions again to fix the resolution of the display. ### Installing Software Ubuntu comes with an App market called, \u0026#8220;**Ubuntu Software Center**\u0026#8221; and the icon of which is right on the Unity bar. You can open it up and search for any software you want to install from the UI. But where\u0026#8217;s the fun doc? I am glad you asked. We will again use The Terminal to install these softwares. I would be putting up a table now which would list all the softwares that are required to be in Ubuntu that I used to use in Windows and also be mentioning which of the softwares are factory shipped and which would I be installing. Softwares in Windows Ubuntu Alternative Pre-shipped Firefox Firefox Microsoft Office Picture Manager Shotwell Everything Locate command in Terminal Google Talk EmpathyIM Winamp Rhythmbox MS Office LibreOffice or Wine BullZip PDF Printer PuTTY Terminal FileZilla Terminal uTorrent Transmission To Install Nettalk XChat VLC Player VLC Steam Steam Telegram Telegram Dropbox Dropbox F.lux F.lux Microsoft Office Picture Manager GIMP Wordweb GoldenDict Netmeter Conky comes closest IDM uGet Winamp Banshee Code::Blocks Emacs MinGW (C Compiler) GCC Future Additions Teamviewer Teamviewer To install any application in Ubuntu from terminal, we use following command: sudo apt-get install package_Name Here, **sudo :** Tells Terminal to run the command in Privileged mode (admin mode), **apt-get :** APT stands for Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) and is a powerful command-line tool which is used to among other things, installation and up-gradation of software packages, **install:** This command tells Ubuntu to install a new software package. This command could have been replaced with \u0026#8220;remove\u0026#8221;, \u0026#8220;update\u0026#8221; and \u0026#8220;upgrade\u0026#8221;, **package_Name:** Packages is a terminology of Linux and its just a fancy name for softwares. It is the actual name of the software which you would need to specify for that software to get installed/removed or update. A good thing is that you don\u0026#8217;t need to know the exact name of the package. Just enter for eg, **sudo apt-get install vlc** and press tab twice, and a complete list of all the package which begins with VLC will be given to you as options. [][3]Package Tab Auto Complete To learn more about apt-get refer this article. Hence I used following commands to install the list of softwares that I needed to install: sudo apt-get install xchat-gnome sudo apt-get install vlc sudo apt-get install transmission sudo apt-get install gimp sudo apt-get install goldendict sudo apt-get install conky sudo apt-get install uget sudo apt-get install banshee sudo apt-get install emacs sudo apt-get install gcc But there are some softwares which you can\u0026#8217;t install from apt-get command since you won\u0026#8217;t find the required package in the repository. In our case those are: Telegram, Dropbox and F.lux. You can install these apps by following commands: #### **Dropbox (source):** For 32-bit OS: cd ~ \u0026\u0026 wget -O - \"https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86\" | tar xzf - For 64-bit OS: cd ~ \u0026\u0026 wget -O - \"https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86_64\" | tar xzf - Then following command to start the dropbox daemon: ~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd #### **F.lux (source):** Installing f.lux is pretty straightforward. Just enter following 3 commands: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nathan-renniewaldock/flux sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install fluxgui First command adds information about f.lux package in the repository, second command updates the list of packages and the final command actually installs it. #### **Telegram:** Installing Telegram is the most tricky part. Since Telegram doesn\u0026#8217;t provide any installable package. Hence you can follow this guide to do that.\nBut you can install using unofficial repository of Telegram, using following commands: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/telegram sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install telegram Now that we have installed all the softwares we needed we are ready to get into the nitty gritty of personalization, which I would write about in next article. #### **Teamviewer:** Teamviewer is not maintained in any of the apt repositories. So it have to installed via a .deb file. Here\u0026#8217;s how to do it. 1. Get the .deb file from here: http://www.teamviewer.com/en/download/linux.aspx (always get 32 bit) and save it in Downloads directory. 2. Open a Terminal and write following commands. cd Downloads sudo dpkg -i teamviewer_linux.deb It is to note that the name teamviewer_linux.deb is the name of the .deb file you downloaded and can be anything else too. If you face an error like following then some dependency have to be resolved: dpkg: error processing package teamviewer (--install): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Errors were encountered while processing: teamviewer Run following command to resolve the dependencies and execute the sudo dpkg command again. sudo apt-get install -f Note that running above command the package (teamviewer) and it\u0026#8217;s dependencies will be installed and there\u0026#8217;s no need to run the dpkg command again. There are ways to download a file from Terminal itself using wget but more on that in later articles. In the end here\u0026#8217;s the customary inclusion of the following xkcd comic: Source: http://xkcd.com/149/ _Article last updated on 06th Jul 2017 when I started using Ubuntu 16.04._ [1]: /wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Software-Updater-Checking-for-Updates.png [2]: /wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Installing-Updates.png [3]: /wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Package-Tab-Auto-Complete.png","date":"25 January 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/01/ubuntu-updating-and-setting-up-softwares/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn my \u003ca href=\"/2015/01/ubuntu-the-stage-is-set/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003elast article\u003c/a\u003e I wrote about my first impressions of freshly installed Ubuntu 14.04 and shared what I knew about Unity interface which Ubuntu comes bundled with. Today I am going to update the OS and install various softwares. You can follow the steps to replicate the same on your copy of the OS or skip a few steps as per your requirements.\u003cbr\u003e\nInstalling updates is the first thing which one should do after installing a fresh copy of Ubuntu. Updates may include feature enhancement or security bugs. There are two methods to update Ubuntu. For first you can press “\u003cstrong\u003eDash Home\u003c/strong\u003e” button on top of the Unity bar and type update, then select “\u003cstrong\u003eSoftware Updater\u003c/strong\u003e“.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cfigure style=\"width: 1036px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Software-Updater.png\" alt=\"Software Updater\" width=\"1036\" height=\"686\" /\u003e\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"\u003eSoftware Updater\u003c/figcaption\u003e\u003c/figure\u003e\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_643\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-643\" style=\"width: 486px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"\u003e[\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-643\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Software-Updater-Checking-for-Updates.png\" alt=\"Software Updater Checking for Updates\" width=\"486\" height=\"134\" /\u003e][1]\u003cfigcaption id=\"caption-attachment-643\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"\u003eSoftware Updater Checking for Updates\u003c/figcaption\u003e\u003c/figure\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis would check for updates and give you an option to install the updates right away. But there’s no fun in that. And I on the other hand will use more traditional way to update my OS…\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ubuntu: Updating and Setting up Softwares"},{"content":"So we have installed Ubuntu in a Virtual Environment and know that some (or a lot) of the things in Ubuntu differs from windows, like filesystem and how removable drive works. In this article I will be starting from a fresh install of Ubuntu and try to get familiar with the User Interface. In the upcoming post I will proceed to set it up with softwares and settings.\nI will literally be writing this article “while” I am using my PC, so this is not just a guide but more of a walk-through. Hence, please excuse my remarks which I sometimes make to emphasize my excitement (or disappointment) when I discover something.\nHere’s what a freshly booted Ubuntu looks like: Freshly booted Ubuntu\nWe can notice a few things now:\nThe taskbar is above the screen. It have the text “Ubuntu Desktop” written in right side of the taskbar. It also includes some icons on the top right corner including a clock and an icon on extreme right which looks like “Settings” icon. Unity bar which runs across the left side of the desktop, containing some icons of softwares like Firefox, Libre Office and System Settings. You will also notice an icon of Recycle bin down below. Rest of the screen is just plain desktop with no other stuff than default Orange wallpaper. Now that we know about these three things, we would like to know how does these differ in functionality. Nice! Now we are getting into the good stuff …\nTaskbar: #Open Firefox from Unity bar and maximize it. Noticed something? Well you will see that the text “Ubuntu Desktop” written in the taskbar have now been changed to “Mozilla Firefox”. The first thing to note here is that the title bar of the application you open in Ubuntu is merged with the taskbar seamlessly. When you now hover your mouse on taskbar the Menu bar will suddenly appear out of nowhere. That is the dynamically changing taskbar for you, not visible when you don’t need it, but there when you want it. Neat!\nNext thing to note is that and which can bug someone coming from Windows background is that Application control buttons, i.e., Close, Minimize and Maximize buttons are on left side of the menu bar. So it might take some getting use to. You can close the applications now.\nThe Taskbar also contains other icons which are for: Network, Language, Empathy and Volume control. The last icon is used to Lock, Reboot or Shutdown the PC.\nUnity bar: #Unity bar is launcher and part of the Unity shell interface which Ubuntu comes with (since version 11.04). Let me first start with criticism about the Unity bar. The Unity bar is always in your face, consume screen’s real estate and tends to become cluttered with the increase in number of open applications. I hate it. I have worked on Ubuntu before where default interface was GNOME and the sheer elegance of it surpasses Unity in every way.\nNow that is out of the way we can discuss some good things about this ‘strange’ thing. On top of this bar is something called, “Dash Home”. Clicking this icon (or pressing Windows key on your keyboard) opens up “Dash”, where you can search for any application (or files, music, videos etc) from the search bar. The bar also contains various Docks for various applications. A little white arrow on the left of the dock indicates that the application is currently open. The dock also groups multiple instances of the applications, allowing us to quickly click the dock and switch to another instance of the same application. Launcher and Dash\nApplication Grouping\nAnother very less known feature about Unity bar is the Head-up display (HUD). With this you can press and release Alt key and then start typing for keywords to look for any options under the Menu bar of the currently opened application. This allows for easy searching of any item buried under any levels of menu in seconds. It looks pretty nifty though have little idea about how useful it will be in regular use. Head Up Display\nDesktop: #Right clicking on the desktop can make a Windows user uneasy because of the absence of Refresh option that we are so accustomed to. Despite of the fact that the Refresh option use to do nothing except redrawing the icons, it use to give us peace at psychological level that nothing else could do. Well, you can “Refresh” in Ubuntu too for your peace of mind but by keyboard shortcut, “F5”.\nThen there are usual options to new folder, new document and changing background among others. Here you can click “Change Desktop Background” to change “Look” of Unity bar. You can lower the size of Launcher icons which would help Unity bar containing more icons before it starts to clutter. You may also want to “Enable workspaces” from “Behavior” tab which allows to have multiple desktops to separate your geeky life from other time wasting activities like browsing facebook. (Btw, Multiple desktops is one feature Windows is still struggling to provide natively in Windows 10, as far as technical preview is concerned). Workspaces in Ubuntu\nMiscellaneous: #Apart from the Unity interface rest of the UI stuff is pretty much standard. You have “Files” in place of Windows explorer, “Trash” in place of Recycle bin, “Terminal” in place of Command Prompt and “System Settings” for Control Panel. But there is no Start Menu here, hence to see all installed programs at one place you would have to click “A” symbol in Dash (second pic in this article).\nSo terminology is all we have to take care about. In the next article I will discuss about the almighty Terminal, central to every Nix OS and where most of the magic happens. We will also update Ubuntu and install all the softwares we need to make our Ubuntu personal.\n","date":"23 January 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/01/ubuntu-the-stage-is-set/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo we have installed \u003ca href=\"/2015/01/ubuntu-beginning-to-walk-on-unchartered-territory/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eUbuntu in a Virtual Environment\u003c/a\u003e and know that some (or a lot) of the things in Ubuntu differs from windows, like filesystem and how removable drive works. In this article I will be starting from a fresh install of Ubuntu and try to get familiar with the User Interface. In the upcoming post I will proceed to set it up with softwares and settings.\u003cbr\u003e\nI will literally be writing this article “while” I am using my PC, so this is not just a guide but more of a walk-through. Hence, please excuse my remarks which I sometimes make to emphasize my excitement (or disappointment) when I discover something.\u003cbr\u003e\nHere’s what a freshly booted Ubuntu looks like:\u003cfigure style=\"width: 1440px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/001-Freshly-booted-Ubuntu-Lavels1.jpg\" alt=\"Freshly booted Ubuntu\" width=\"1440\" height=\"805\" /\u003e \u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"\u003eFreshly booted Ubuntu\u003c/figcaption\u003e\u003c/figure\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe can notice a few things now:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe \u003cstrong\u003etaskbar\u003c/strong\u003e is above the screen. It have the text “Ubuntu Desktop” written in right side of the taskbar. It also includes some icons on the top right corner including a clock and an icon on extreme right which looks like “Settings” icon.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eUnity bar\u003c/strong\u003e which runs across the left side of the desktop, containing some icons of softwares like Firefox, Libre Office and System Settings. You will also notice an icon of Recycle bin down below.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRest of the screen is just \u003cstrong\u003eplain desktop\u003c/strong\u003e with no other stuff than default Orange wallpaper.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow that we know about these three things, we would like to know how does these differ in functionality. Nice! Now we are getting into the good stuff …\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ubuntu: The Stage is Set"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/unity-shell/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Unity Shell"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/anurag-kashyap/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Anurag Kashyap"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/ugly/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Ugly"},{"content":"I use to watch a few Bollywood movies. And then I saw Ugly from Anurag Kashyap. What followed next were a lot of surprises and regrets.\nI was surprised since I never expected such a movie to be coming out from today’s Indian cinemas, and regret since I have seen very few movies of Kashyap’s movie before and none from the recent times!\nQuoting from IMDb,\nUgly is a terrible tale of corruption, indifference, and systemic violence which starts when 10 year old daughter of an aspiring actor disappears.\nYes, the film’s as dark as it sounds. Just eleven minutes into the film the daughter disappears. What happens next is a reflection of the sheer terror of our own society. The film takes you on a spin ride that feels so real that you start to think you are a part of the film. The actors did such a phenomenal job that it surmounts the very definition of what acting means. You feel as if the story is being broadcast Live on your screen.\nThe dialogues of the Ugly doesn’t feel scripted out. In fact I would not be surprised if Kashyap didn’t give the actors any script at all. At some places it felt as if maybe he just explained the plot to the actors and let them speak their own dialogues.\nEven though the theme of the film is dark it also have a lots of Humour, which gives the film a much needed comic relief. There are a lot of moments in the film which makes you chuckle so hard that you almost forget the dark premise. Special mention have to be given to the policeman in the film, Jadhav played by Girish Kulkarni. When he sings the Item number, “Tu mujhe nichor le”, I just burst out laughing.\nAnd yes, the film does go in length to feature a fictional item number complete with a scene from the dance itself!\nUgly, doesn’t shy away from scenes which might make the viewers uneasy and dares to be different and while if it’s Kashyap’s signature is yet to be judged. Hence my next set of movies will be what I heard are best from Anurag Kashyap’s contribution to Hindi cinema, Gangs of Wasseypur{.mw-redirect}, Bombay Talkies and That Girl in Yellow Boots.\nWhile the title of the movie is “Ugly” the film is a beautifully directed by Kashyap. There maybe other interpretations of the title of the film, but I think it refers to the ugly side of humanity which always resides within us, lurking and trying to find any opportunity to show it’s ugly face, no matter how much we try to ignore it.\nIn a nutshell, Ugly is a break from the normal rom-com films that Bollywood makes today, it dares to do what most other directors gets apprehended of.\nIt’s a dark movie at its finest.\nBollywood is filled with so much crap today that films like Ugly gets lost amidst the noise and fails to get the recognition it deserves among masses. Needless to say, we need more of these. Anurag just made a new fan following here.\nEnd note: If anyone tried to spot cameo of Alia Bhatt in Ugly, she’s at around 42:31 but you may miss her in the blink of the eyes!\n","date":"21 January 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/01/ugly-a-not-so-ugly-film/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI use to watch a few Bollywood movies. And then I saw \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2882328\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eUgly \u003c/a\u003efrom \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anurag_Kashyap\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eAnurag Kashyap\u003c/a\u003e. What followed next were a lot of surprises and regrets.\u003cbr\u003e\nI was surprised since I never expected such a movie to be coming out from today’s Indian cinemas, and regret since I have seen very few movies of Kashyap’s movie before and none from the recent times!\u003cbr\u003e\nQuoting from IMDb,\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ugly – A not so ugly film"},{"content":"In my previous post I said I would be looking an alternative in Linux for everything I do in Windows. Here’s an initial list of the applications that I am finding an alternative to. I would be updating this post fairly regularly, adding more things to the list and their alternatives, until I am confident that I can plan to make Ubuntu as my primary OS.\nSoftwares Type Alternative in Linux Which have Nix versions Firefox Browser Firefox F.lux Screen Dimming app F.lux Dropbox File sharing Dropbox Telegram Chat application Telegram VLC Player Video Player VLC Steam Gaming software Steam Which have no Nix Versions Garena Gaming LAN client NA Raptr Gaming Client NA Which have good alternatives uTorrent Bit torrent application Transmission Everything Real time file search Locate command in Terminal Nettalk IRC Client XChat Microsoft Office Picture Manager Picture editor Shotwell or GIMP Wordweb Dictionary GoldenDict Netmeter Record of consumed bandwidth Conky comes closest IDM Download manager uGet Google Talk Google chat application EmpathyIM Winamp Music Player Rhythmbox or Banshee MS Office Office Suite LibreOffice or Wine Where no alternative is needed BullZip PDF Printer Not Needed since ubuntu have built-in PDF Printer PuTTY SSH and Telnet Client ssh and telnet command on Terminal FileZilla FTP Client ftp command in Terminal Code::Blocks C, C++ Programming IDE Use GCC from Terminal or Emacs To Be Decided MS-Paint Pixel level bitmap picture editor Apart from the applications, there are other things which a particular Windows user gets adapt to:\nCustom Keyboard Shortcuts: As per current info it’s possible to set custom Keyboard Shortcuts in Nix easily. Ability to create apps shortcuts: Background apps and a System Tray: Window Switching: From what I know now, switching in Nix is cooler and more functional than windows. Shortcut to use it is “Home key” + “W”. Autostart Apps: Ability to let the apps start automatically when OS boots by putting the app in something called as StartUp folder. When the softwares and UX is sorted out next thing which comes is understanding some lingo of Nix which might be totally unfamiliar to newbies in Linux:\nFilesystem: Nix don’t have the concept of Drives like C, D or E. Rather everything in Nix starts from the root. “\u0026amp;#8221; is root folder. Hence path to your home folder can be, “\\home\\vyom” which means “vyom folder inside home folder of root folder”. Mounting of drives: Any DVD or removable USB drive you insert is mounted to some folder inside root folder. . Installing Apps: Nix don’t have .EXE files rather it have various ways to install apps. apt-get install TAR Packages Expect revision to this post to reflect new information soon.\n","date":"20 January 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/01/stuff-i-do-in-windows-that-needs-an-alternative-in-linux/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn my \u003ca href=\"/2015/01/ubuntu-beginning-to-walk-on-unchartered-territory\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eprevious post\u003c/a\u003e I said I would be looking an alternative in Linux for everything I do in Windows. Here’s an initial list of the applications that I am finding an alternative to. I would be updating this post fairly regularly, adding more things to the list and their alternatives, until I am confident that I can plan to make Ubuntu as my primary OS.\u003cbr\u003e\n \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Stuff I do in Windows that needs an alternative in Linux"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/biographical/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Biographical"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/eddie-redmayne/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Eddie Redmayne"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/felicity-jones/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Felicity Jones"},{"content":"A lot of time have passed since I last wrote a good movie review and after I watched Theory of Everything, I had this urge to write that I couldn’t contain.\nThe Theory of Everything is a biographical movie which tells the story about the romantic side of Stephen Hawking and his relationship with his first wife, mostly unknown to the general public including me. Movies like this (based on some living legendary person) always feels a little diplomatic (like The Social Network) but are still, for the lack of a better word, interesting and also motivational.\nIn my teenage years I use to love all those documentaries on Discovery about theories with mind bending possibilities. It always use to take me to amazing realm of a world that remains invisible to the naked eye. Hence it was natural that I was expecting to be dazzled yet again and experience that once again on big screen. But what I saw actually was the story of him before he become a successful physicist. The movie is a story not about his professional work rather it’s solely focused on the personal life of Stephen Hawking. We got to know about how incredibly nice Jane (his first wife) was with Stephen. She was an incredible woman to sacrifice so much of her life for the love she had for Stephen. Her devotion towards Hawking for so many years was rather unparalleled.\nI was expecting a cameo of real Stephen Hawking in the movie, but Eddie Redmayne, the actor who played Stephen did such an incredible job that the cameo wasn’t really missed. I haven’t watched other works of Redmayne but the portrayal of him as Hawking really transpired my imagination and felt like it was the real Hawking himself on the screen. The wife of Hawking was acted by Felicity Jones who was also good. Involvement of David Thewlis was a little distracting at first since I was used to see him as Lupin in Harry Potter movies. Guess what, he is a professor in this movie too and hence I didn’t find it out of character.\nAnyone who have read the Marriages subsection on Wikipedia had already read the whole plot of this movie, since the story is consistent with what was shown on screen.\nIn a nutshell, The Theory of Everything is a Romantic and emotional film that grips you till the end, except when in second half you realize it’s not just a romantic film, but a Biography first. Even though having interest in Cosmology and Physics, I enjoyed the film very much. I got to know the personal side of his personality, about the man I have always adored as a cosmologist.\nIf I could reverse the time, I would still watch this film and probably love it again.\nNow, here are some Fun facts which I came to know after some research (no spoilers):\nStephen Hawking is English, not American, as I discovered from this movie! What!?! At the end credits of the movie, the name of the casts which are credited are in the reverse order of appearance since “reversing the time” is the theme of the movie. So if you are watching this movie you may observe it first hand. Stephen Hawking owns the copyright to the “electronic voice” that he speaks through the computer! Lastly, even though real Stephen Hawking doesn’t have a cameo in the film, he does lends his voice in the end of the movie reciting one of his most famous quotes. And while the quote ended on screen I could hear claps from some people in the audience. I gladly joined them with few claps myself. The quote was so overwhelming and profound that I think I felt the impact it created on my perception towards life. I would end this post with the same quote,\nThere should be no boundaries to human endeavor. We are all different. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there\u0026#8217;s life, there is hope.\n\u0026#8211;\u0026nbsp;Stephen Hawking ","date":"18 January 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/01/the-theory-of-everything/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eA lot of time have passed since I last wrote a good movie review and after I watched Theory of Everything, I had this urge to write that I couldn’t contain.\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2980516/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eThe Theory of Everything\u003c/a\u003e is a biographical  movie which tells the story about the romantic side of Stephen Hawking and his relationship with his first wife, mostly unknown to the general public including me. Movies like this (based on some living legendary person) always feels a little diplomatic (like The Social Network) but are still, for the lack of a better word, interesting and also motivational.\u003cbr\u003e\nIn my teenage years I use to love all those documentaries on Discovery about theories with mind bending possibilities. It always use to take me to amazing realm of a world that remains invisible to the naked eye. Hence it was natural that I was expecting to be dazzled yet again and experience that once again on big screen. But what I saw actually was the story of him before he become a successful physicist. The movie is a story not about his professional work rather it’s solely focused on the personal life of Stephen Hawking. We got to know about how incredibly nice Jane (his first wife) was with Stephen. She was an incredible woman to sacrifice so much of her life for the love she had for Stephen. Her devotion towards Hawking for so many years was rather unparalleled.\u003cbr\u003e\nI was expecting a cameo of real Stephen Hawking in the movie, but \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1519666/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eEddie Redmayne\u003c/a\u003e, the actor who played Stephen did such an incredible job that the cameo wasn’t really missed. I haven’t watched other works of Redmayne but the portrayal of him as Hawking really transpired my imagination and felt like it was the real Hawking himself on the screen. The wife of Hawking was acted by \u003cspan class=\"itemprop\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0428065/?ref_=tt_cl_t2\"\u003eFelicity Jones\u003c/a\u003e who was also good. Involvement of \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000667/?ref_=tt_cl_t8\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"itemprop\"\u003eDavid Thewlis\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e was a little distracting at first since I was used to see him as Lupin in Harry Potter movies. Guess what, he is a professor in this movie too and hence I didn’t find it out of character.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nAnyone who have read the \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking#Marriages\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eMarriages\u003c/a\u003e subsection on Wikipedia had already read the whole plot of this movie, since the story is consistent with what was shown on screen.\u003cbr\u003e\nIn a nutshell, The Theory of Everything is a Romantic and emotional film that grips you till the end, except when in second half you realize it’s not just a romantic film, but a Biography first. Even though having interest in Cosmology and Physics, I enjoyed the film very much. I got to know the personal side of his personality, about the man I have always adored as a cosmologist.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eIf I could reverse the time, I would still watch this film  and probably love it again.\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nNow, here are some \u003cstrong\u003eFun facts\u003c/strong\u003e which I came to know after some research (no spoilers):\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Theory of Everything"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/theory-of-everything/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Theory of Everything"},{"content":"I had a long awaited dream of migrating from Windows to Linux. I was exposed to Windows since more than a decade and made aware of Linux a lot later. But when I did, sheer glimpse of Linux use to make me feel all geeky inside, but I never really gave Linux a chance. I was too engrossed by the ease of use of Windows and just-reinstall-windows as the default option to get out of any misery I face in Windows. Till the time I get to know the real power of Linux in the form of Ubuntu and the general open source nature of it it was very late. I had become so dependent on Windows for my daily tasks that I started to avoid Nix for all the reasons.\nNow I have finally decided to give Linux (in form of Ubuntu) a fair trial. But instead of installing it on a dedicated drive I decided to virtualize it so that I can use both Windows and Linux till the time I become proficient in Ubuntu.\nInstalling Ubuntu on VirtualBox would have been a breeze had I followed this guide (created by my friend Aaruni, which I had to recover from archive. Or this for an updated article). But alas I came across his walk through a bit late and also came across this problem of not getting to install 64 bit Ubuntu on VirtualBox. But thanks to the suggestion provided here, I managed to solve it without spending hours. The summary of the problem was that I had to disable “Virtualization” from “Turn Windows Features On or Off” since it conflicts with the “Enable Virtualization Tech” turned ON in BIOS.\nSo now, here I am publishing this post from within Ubuntu 14.04 and exploring the world of Linux without completely abandoning my comfort zone of Windows. But I Intend to make Ubuntu my primary OS in a few months until I can learn every nooks and cranny of this seemingly giant but not completely unknown territory that is Ubuntu.\nI also intend to document my journey of using Ubuntu from a perspective of “oh-I-am-a-Windows-guy-and-I-want-to-work-on-Nix-but-not-sure-of-how-to-do-certain-things-that-I-use-to-do-in-Windows!” kind of guy. Hence I would be looking for “every” alternative of things in Ubuntu that I am so use-to in Windows from tools to shortcuts to the whole User Experience. It will be an exciting journey and something to look forward to but in the end worth doing.\n","date":"16 January 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/01/ubuntu-beginning-to-walk-on-uncharted-territory/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI had a long awaited dream of migrating from Windows to Linux. I was exposed to Windows since more than a decade and made aware of Linux a lot later. But when I did, sheer glimpse of Linux use to make me feel all geeky inside, but I never really gave Linux a chance. I was too engrossed by the ease of use of Windows and just-reinstall-windows as the default option to get out of any misery I face in Windows. Till the time I get to know the real power of Linux in the form of Ubuntu and the general open source nature of it it was very late. I had become so dependent on Windows for my daily tasks that I started to avoid Nix for all the reasons.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ubuntu: Beginning my Walk on Uncharted Territory"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/digitalocean/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"DigitalOcean"},{"content":"It was about one year that this site was hosted on a VPS server of Leaseweb. They provided a good set of specs but had some amount of unreliability when it came to providing 24×7 up-time. Also it once had a service outage that resulted in the loss of our data. Thanks to offline backups and Google cache I was able to restore all my posts. So it was high time before we moved onto something more trustworthy. It was then when I came to know about Digital Ocean, an SSD only VPS hosting provider. After a lot of geeky research I realized how quickly they grew their scope to provide a quality platform for VPS.\nWhat follows next in this article is the story of how I migrated to DigitalOcean with help from my friends. Be warned that this article is fairly technical and can also serve to anyone who wants to migrate to DigitalOcean. I wholeheartedly thank Aaruni for his help on setting up the server, without his help it could have taken me days to do the same.\n1. New Server on DigitalOcean (DO) VPS #There are numerous VPS providers but none at the feature to price ratio which DO provides. Hence me and my online friends decided to go for the most basic plan of $5 per month, which provided us with following features:\n512MB Memory 1 Core Processor 20 GB SSD Disk Space 1TB Transfer Bandwidth This configuration is modest to run a Unreal Tournament (UrT) gaming server and to host numerous small websites which were our requirements. Plus its easy to upscale so starting from the smallest option seemed to be a wise decision.\n2. Creating a Droplet #Each private virtual server in DigitalOcean terminology is said as a “droplet”. And one can create any number of droplets with any configuration and plan. I created one droplet and with little help with friends decided to install Debian 32 bit OS on it since Debian is lighter than Ubuntu and on 512 MB RAM it was the only good choice.\n3. Backup of Old VPS Data #First and the foremost thing which was required to migrate from krow.me to my own server was the backups of old server. Now that I had another VPS I could simply copy files from krow.me server to my own. I did that via rsync command:\nrsync -azvv -e ssh username@hostname:~/ ~/destination_path After old file dump was backed up on my droplet I took a dump of the old SQL database. This database dump would be required later to restore the articles, posts and comments on my site at new host.\n4. Setting up LAMP Stack on droplet: #Next thing was a tedious job of installing LAMP on the droplet I created on DO. As per Aaruni’s suggestion I hadn’t installed any application while creating the droplet since [DIY][1] is apparently more fun.\nLAMP is a software bundle which stands for:\nLinux Apache MySQL PHP Now the L part was completed by creating droplet and installing Debian on it. The A part stands for Apache, but we went with nginx which is an alternative to Apache. We choose nginx since it runs faster than Apache and is best if the content it serves is mostly static (great for WP based sites). We installed and started nginx by following commands:\nsudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install nginx sudo service nginx start MySQL database was the next thing which was to be installed. We instead installed MariaDB (alternative to MySQL) and then PHP through following commands.\nMariadb:\nsudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install mariadb-server PHP:\nsudo apt-get install php5-fpm We also installed PHPMyAdmin which provides a front-end to MySQL and can be used via browser:\nsudo apt-get install phpmyadmin But the main and most important thing was to configure nginx. Aaruni set it up like it was setup on krow.me. The main domain points to a static HTML page where we can host any content. (In fact, anything pointing to the VPS points to the static HTML page.) It will probably be use to host maps for UrT by ico, another member sharing my VPS, while the domain vineetkumar.me points to my site.\n5. Configuring WordPress #I had two options. I could have installed WordPress again and then restore the database, but I decided to simply copy the existing WordPress installation to my new VPS since the directory structure was exactly the same. After copying the files I just had to restore the SQL database and my site was up and running in no time.\nI am not sure whether it’s just placebo but I already feel the new site is faster than before. I hope DigitalOcean will prove to be a good experience and I can use it to host many more sites in the future. Meanwhile if you want to give DigitalOcean a shot you can do so by using my referral link to get $10 credit. Using this free credits you can use the $5 plan for two months, while I would be getting some credits myself if you continue with DigitalOcean. So a win-win scenario for both. Even if you don’t continue you can still try DigitalOcean free of cost.\nThe hopefully friendly shark of DigitalOcean [1]: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-linux-nginx-mysql-php-lemp-stack-on-debian-7","date":"13 January 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/01/migration-to-digital-ocean/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt was about one year that this site was hosted on a VPS server of Leaseweb. They provided a good set of specs but had some amount of unreliability when it came to providing 24×7 up-time. Also it once had a service outage that resulted in the loss of our data. Thanks to offline backups and Google cache I was able to restore all my posts. So it was high time before we moved onto something more trustworthy. It was then when I came to know about Digital Ocean, an SSD only VPS hosting provider. After a lot of geeky research I realized how \u003ca href=\"https://www.digitalocean.com/company/blog/digitalocean-closes-37-2-million-series-a-led-by-andreessen-horowitz/droplet-growth-chart-b55ef979.png\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003equickly\u003c/a\u003e they grew their scope to provide a quality platform for VPS.\u003cbr\u003e\nWhat follows next in this article is the story of how I migrated to DigitalOcean with help from my friends. Be warned that this article is fairly technical and can also serve to anyone who wants to migrate to DigitalOcean. I wholeheartedly thank \u003ca href=\"http://u.krow.me/1197\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eAaruni\u003c/a\u003e for his help on setting up the server, without his help it could have taken me days to do the same.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"1-new-server-on-digitalocean-do-vps\" class=\"relative group\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e1. New Server on DigitalOcean (DO) VPS\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#1-new-server-on-digitalocean-do-vps\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eThere are numerous VPS providers but none at the feature to price ratio which DO provides. Hence me and my online friends decided to go for the most basic plan of $5 per month, which provided us with following features:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e512MB Memory\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e1 Core Processor\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e20 GB SSD Disk Space\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e1TB Transfer Bandwidth\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis configuration is modest to run a Unreal Tournament (UrT) gaming server and to host numerous small websites which were our requirements. Plus its easy to upscale so starting from the smallest option seemed to be a wise decision.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I migrated to Digital Ocean"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/year-2014/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Year 2014"},{"content":"Year 2014 was one of the busiest year so far. And while my friends are busy posting what made their past year so happening on Facebook I thought I shall not rely on some artificial algorithm to tell my story of the year 2014. Hence what follows next are some of my real life experiences with lots of personal touch.\n2014 proved to be a very important year for personal growth, learning and getting new experiences. I worked on many projects at job, revived old technologies and learned new ones. 2014 was a sad year for a lot of people but it also proved historical one for Indian political system.\nDuring the first quarter of 2014, I caught myself in a situation where two of my immediate seniors at job left almost simultaneously leaving me in charge of a whole new set of responsibilities. That was a sudden change in the pace of my life but nothing which I couldn’t handle if I followed what my peers had taught me.\nNasir Akhtar is one of those good colleague/friend/peer who have the most impact on my way of doing things, atleast since last couple of years. He is one of the guy who have a clear vision about everything. He use to imagine something in his mind and do it ten times better on paper. He also have the charm to impress someone by his wits and convince anyone with his intellect. He had a sense of business little people have at his age, yet he was the most humble where he needed to be. A Software Engineer needs such person so that they can understand the client’s requirement to the core and can give solutions no matter how out of the box it were. When such person leave a corporation nothing can prepare you for the future. One can only hope that he can carry the legacy that the person built with such passion.\nMoving on, there were lots of experiences about the job that I can share but largely it involves with meeting new colleagues and learning from them. But one thing which I really enjoyed at my workplace was Team Outings. I went to 2 places outside Delhi as part of the team outing. First of them being a trip to Lansdowne, a town in Garhwal district in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. It was a breathtaking trip that our team planned in April of 2014. With hoards of fresh air in the valley, enough to quench the thirst of freshness that people like you living in metro cities like Delhi, long for! We went to places like Bhulla Taal, a park; Tip-In-Top point (one of the highest places of mountain, with an incredible view); and Jai Tarkheshwar Dham temple.\nThat was only the beginning. After a while on 4-Oct some friends including Ankur, Nasir and Ashutosh, planned to make a trip to Kasauli, a cantonment and town, located in Solan district in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, to take a breather from the daily routine of work. But this trip proved nothing to be a breather and instead was one heck of a ride. We only had 2 weekend days to spare and with no proper planning we booked tickets to Kalka. After reaching Kalka we took a bus to Kausauli and wandered in what seemed to be a location straight out of heaven. Streets were made of stones and had an inclination so steep that if you lie horizontally it would be nice game of rolling down the street (with possibly sad ending where you fall in some deep valley). We didn’t have a hotel room booked which implied we either book a room costing upwards of Rs 4 thousand or spend night down-town in Kalka and came back to Kasauli the next morning. Being on a budget trip we eventually choose the later. After spending night back in Kalka we also had to reach Kasauli for the Sunrise. So next day, (very) early at 3:30 am, we headed to the station took Toy Train and reached Dharampur from where after taking a Taxi we finally reached Sunshine point just a little after sun rise and managed to take following pic:\n[][1]Sunrise in Kasauli We also went to see Manki point (where cameras are not allowed), Kasauli Church and also spent time in one of the local dharamshala in Kasauli (which very less people would know is very affordable if you are traveling in a budget). I would remember Kasauli trip for a long time since it was a tip where little to no planning was done and still it wasn\u0026#8217;t half as bad an experience. Next trip I had was to Katra and Vaishno Devi on 6th November. No, I wasn\u0026#8217;t in some spiritual intervention or in need of some divine enlightenment but I went there with my sister for an exam which she had to give. Since the exam got delayed we made a plan to go to Vaishno Devi. And even though I didn\u0026#8217;t have any initial plan to go there the experience was both tiring as well as pleasant. Walking to the top of the mountain let me judge my inner limits and each milestone proved to be a new emotional barrier. The only encouragement for me to climb to the top was the excitement of my sis who seem to have little to no impact of the potential energy that the height imposed on her. Slowly and steadily like the tortoise I did climb to the top and witnessed the glory of Mataji in all her eternal beauty and took her blessings. Ever so slowly I walked down from the mountain but this time using stairs which provided a quicker way to the valley. Overall it was a journey my legs won\u0026#8217;t easily forget for next few weeks. Following is an enthralling beauty of Katra valley as seen from the top of Vaishno Devi mountain: [][2]View of Katra Valley from Top The last trip I made outside Delhi was of Jaipur as yet again with my Team on 21 November. My legs were still echoing the pains of the Vaishno Devi trip but at-least this time we weren\u0026#8217;t going to climb any mountain in Jaipur. What followed was another enchanting journey to a place I had only imagined in likes of Delhi Trade Fairs. But a Pavilion of a city can\u0026#8217;t be compared to the actual experience of being in the city, especially with so many other people. The thing I found myself doing the most in Jaipur was counting how many stuff in Jaipur are Pink! I found that it\u0026#8217;s said to be \u0026#8220;Pink City\u0026#8221; for a reason. Most of the things in Jaipur are actually Pink. From forts to walls, and from hotels to buses. You will find a flair of Pink in almost every street. We saw Hawa Mahal, did shopping in the shops behind the Mahal, and went to \u0026#8220;Chokhi Dhani\u0026#8221; a place where everything good about Jaipur and Rajasthan were curated at a single place. We drank the milk, saw folk dance, played some games, saw flame throwers and rope walkers and it ended with us being filled by the popular dinner where local people try to stuff every bit of your stomach with some flavour of Jaipur. We also went to Jantar Mantar which puts the one in Delhi to shame. Since as per the story the one in Delhi was only built as a test ground by Jai Singh, who was a Rajput king. But the Jantar Mantar in Jaipur was kind of a final version and which still can be used to calculate time with great precision. Overall the trip of Jaipur was one of the most fascinating journey and which marked a good end of 2014 when it comes to Incredible India! [][3]Choki Dhani in Jaipur [][4]Jantar Mantar in Jaipur And before I forget I must also add that we also went to Amer Fort which is one of the coolest forts I ever saw in my own city, with lots of places to hide, there by making it the most awesome place to play Hide n\u0026#8217; Seek! Following is some of its magnificence, as it looks from the outside: [][5]Amer Fort in Jaipur Well, apart from places above I also went to see many places in Delhi itself like Agrasen Ki Baoli and Humayun\u0026#8217;s Tomb. On a personal development curve I started to work on projects which allowed me to revive my SQL Server skills and I also got introduced to new and developing technology called, \u0026#8220;Salesforce\u0026#8221;. I also did a lot of shopping in 2014, including a new phone for my sis: Moto E and a Moto X for myself. Well, Moto X warrants for another dedicated post so I would be writing about this revolutionizing piece of tech in detail later. Lastly, I would also like to mention about one of my school friend, \u0026#8220;Atul Jain\u0026#8221; which got married on 7 December. Atul together with Abhishek, we use to compare ourselves to the 3 friends of _Dil Chahta Hai_. Hence his marriage was surely a shocker to me. Almost 9 years after departing from school and now his life have changed for forever. Just one day changes everything. My blessings will always be with him. 2014 proved to be a year with lots of experiences in my personal life, just like our nation went through the experience of change in government. With Mr. Narender Modi (NaMo) becoming Prime Minister of India from May, India is on a verge of so many change with the biggest change according to me is \u0026#8220;hope\u0026#8221;. Now the people of the nation have \u0026#8220;hope\u0026#8221; that our country can excel in the markets of the world and that India can be a synonymous of everything positive. I feel that this \u0026#8220;new found hope\u0026#8221; have become part of me somehow. Some of the atoms inside me have chosen to absorb the energies imparted by the new positivity of the nation itself. Well speaking of which it would be ironical to say that during the end of year my health took a bad curve. I had to make the transition of new year lying in bed in fever. So I hope I get fixed soon and can return to my full potential for 2015, for it will be a year of change. There\u0026#8217;s lot of changes to be seen, many things to complete and much greater stuff to learn. _**It\u0026#8217;s time to switch from the Mega lane to the Giga one and with full throttle.**_","date":"2 January 2015","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2015/01/year-2014-at-a-glance/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYear 2014 was one of the busiest year so far. And while my friends are busy posting what made their past year so happening on Facebook I thought I shall not rely on some artificial algorithm to tell my story of the year 2014. Hence what follows next are some of my real life experiences with lots of personal touch.\u003cbr\u003e\n2014 proved to be a very important year for personal growth, learning and getting new experiences. I worked on many projects at job, revived old technologies and learned new ones. 2014 was a sad year for a lot of people but it also proved historical one for Indian political system.\u003cbr\u003e\nDuring the first quarter of 2014, I caught myself in a situation where two of my immediate seniors at job left almost simultaneously leaving me in charge of a whole new set of responsibilities. That was a sudden change in the pace of my life but nothing which I couldn’t handle if I followed what my peers had taught me.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Year 2014 at a Glance"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/lg-p500/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"LG P500"},{"content":"Every once in a while a piece of technology sets it’s foot from inception to reality, that is perceived ahead of its time. It features tech which makes people awe in wonder. People dream of owning such a piece of technology that catapults them into the future.\nOne such device was my Optimus One P500 (O1 in short), an Android device manufactured by LG which featured specs which were uncommon at its price point. Granted it was not supposed to “take you to the future”, but it was as close as you get if you were under a budget. The device had 512 MB of Random Access Memory, which none of the branded manufactures at the time managed to pull it of in a sub 10k phone. Quickly it became the most loved gadget by amass and also among the developers at XDA, a place where developers collaborated for the greater good.\nO1 came with Froyo (Android ver 2.2) when it was launched in October 2010. With the curves and specs it had it looked a neat little Android gadget to admire. It was after 9 months of the launch that I came to know about O1, took me one month time to research, write a blog about it and to finalize that my next smartphone can only be “the One”. After that it still took me 2 months to save money from teaching programming classes to school students, apart from doing 9-5 regular job. But it was a good phone and a gadget worth the hard work to own.\nI remember when the delivery boy from “LetsBuy.com” came to my home and handed me over the phone while I was fiddling with my wallet to make it lighter. My dad was surprised by the way I handed hard cash to some stranger who just arrived at the doorstep. That was my first experience in online shopping but I trusted it. And it payed off well over the years.\nAs I unpacked my first Android phone, a rush of excitement was flowing through my body. I could hardly control my mental level which were overloaded from thinking about all the possibilities that the little gadget lay upon me. The phone also came with a good Leather pouch with “Google” label on it, a set of headphones and a charger with a long one meter detachable USB cable. I even created a video of the unpacking of O1. But partly due to the fact that I was doing that for the first time and partly because I was so choking up in excitement, the video came out pretty bad. I never uploaded it on Youtube. But now that I am sharing my experience I am prepared for a little embarrassment. Below is the video for your pleasure (along with soft coded subtitles). Apologies in advance for the out of focus video feed and terrible audio, but it does document how fluid the UI was when the O1 was running Froyo, and a thing which I solely started to miss when I upgraded it to advance versions. But I am getting ahead of time.\nMy experience of using O1 stretches to a long 3 years. Here’s what happened in excruciating detail.\nThe stock Android “Froyo” was very fast and responsive. And I could have upgraded to “Gingerbread” easily. Yet their was something about being stock that didn’t appeal to me. Getting on the O1 bandwagon later than most gave me an advantage of the cumulative experiences of various forum members who went through trial and error while experimenting on their devices. So I had plethora of options to choose from Custom ROMs, Kernels, Basebands and Recoveries. But using any of those customization meant I first had to root the device. Rooting the device for the uninitiated, means taking full administrative rights. I wholeheartedly thank @Sam from digit forum in this regard since he was the one who saved me from drowning myself in the ocean of perplexity that came along with experimenting. Even when you have the plethora of experience from other members, when it comes to messing with your own device nothing can prepare you from the nerve wrecking moments that comes with them.\nThe phone was among the best in hardware but was filled with bloatware apps. Apps such as “Bollywoodji” were not only unnecessary but also made the phone a bit slow. So one fine day I decided that I must root my phone.\nIt was the start of new year, 2012. After a lot of research on XDA forums and (Think)digit forum I sat down to unleash true powers of my phone. I took a deep breath and installed an app which was supposed to root the device. Something was not right, and the process was taking too much time. I started to become nervous and thought I might not survive if anything happened to the phone. It was then when I saw sam online on Facebook. He talked me through the process. He cracked jokes to help me ease by eagerness to finish the process of rooting and installing custom ROM over the next several days.\nFollowing in the spoiler are some of my conversations with him that I am glad to share today. It feels amazing to look back now and read them again:\n13/01/2012 00:01 —\nVyom: I dont understand… if Android is open source, why we have to take so much pains!\nSam: so what do you get by open source? does it mean less pain? or it means free to use \u0026amp; brick your mobile?\nVyom: From open source, I mean, why we have to take risks.. why can’t be there full proof method, since every code is so clear… why patches are needed… such as gingerbreak..\nto root.. why can’t their be inbuilt mechanism to allow rooting…\nSam: well open source mean free to use \u0026amp; free to share. but safe or not. its something else. gingerbreak? ask LG.\nVyom: so even if Android is open source, LG don’t want people to take full utilization of their handsets? isnt it?\nSam: actually if you are given root on a stock mobile, most will get access to system files, fiddle with it \u0026amp; then brick, crash, etc\nyup. kind of like that.\n04/02/2012 18:15 —\nSam: when optimus one started coming with Android 2.2.1 or 2.2.2, many ppls at XDA downgraded android. more than half of them bricked mobile.\nVyom: Lolwut!\nSam: downgraded to Android 2.2.0 as it was the only rootable android. i half bricked my mobile but successfully flashed second time. a big relief that everything went fine.\ni was literally shaking when i clicked proceed button. even if PC shuts off for some reason, mobile will be dead\nthen I didn’t have UPS in my PC\nVyom: O.O\nYou are a gambler my friend!\n05/02/2012 16:44\nVyom: Hi… Help me! Stuck at Oxygen logo! 🙁\nSam: oops. so ur mobile is bricked?\nVyom: NOOO. its not bricked!\nSam: lol i know. just kidding\nVyom: see what happened.. It took just 2 min.. to flash\nSam: ok…. so tell me what u have done till now. step by step. everything.\n05/02/2012 17:14 —\nVyom: MAN! I got scared a little… when I saw that even after removing battery… Oxygen logo was still there!\nSam: !!!\nVyom: Then I realized, that it (my phone) was connected to USB! 😛\nSam: ghost\nrofl\nVyom: My phone RUNS W/O battery TOO!!! Just like LAPTOPS!\nO.O\nSam: i’ll try that too with my mobile\nmobile runs on electricity, not battery. lol\nAnyone seen new Android (Lollipop) adverts where they advertise Android as AND-riod? Well look who coined this term first:\n05/02/2012 17:26 —\nVyom: Btw.. Arc retaines the ANDROID logo…\nSam: haven’t used arc yet\nAND DROID logo sounds better\nPhone was the same. Hardware was the same. And it was not supposed to run “ICS”. But it was running it quite fluidly. A generation passed and then came “Jellybean”. We thought we might not be able to enjoy the advantages of “Project Butter”. But we were simply wrong. Due to efforts of developers at XDA we got a brand new ROM that was based on Jellybean. Our happiness knew no bound back then.\nIn the spring of 2014, “Kitkat” arrived. I remember how I started to eat Kitkat chocolates since I thought we can’t have the flavor of Kitkat on our legendary P500. But destiny had something else in mind. Mukulsoni, a teenage developer had done the seemingly impossible thing. He ported Kitkat on our age old but smartest smartphone. Our devices had unofficially started to take advantage of “Project Svelte”! We were on ninth cloud.\nKudos to developers like Mukulsoni and hephappy and lupohirp and franciscofranco and fserve and more! Thanks to them we could enjoy things never in our life we had imagined. In total Optimus One saw five generations of Android development (and still counting).\nBut the 4 year old hardware can only bear so much. ROM’s which were ported by extremely talented developers worked flawlessly. But the app industry doesn’t have a generous bunch of people. Apps get bigger as time progresses. Be it feature addition or bug fixing, an app never stops to grow. Demands of requirement for playing games also kept on increasing. Due to this our beloved Optimus One had more and more bloated apps to run. But in the limited internal memory which it had it was becoming increasingly difficult to house. So as time went by we started to feel that the age of Optimus Prime is nearing its end. It was not due to any shortcomings of the device itself, but to the fact that app industry had grew up to a point that even basic applications needed a plethora of space to install.\nThe start of year 2014 marked a turning point for Android devices. Motorola’s Moto G with its budget friendly but feature rich phone shook the mobile market for good. Devices with better specs and designs under 10k stared to emerge. Even companies never heard of before like Oppo, Gionee and Xiaomi started to bring out economical devices. Hence many of the people who originally bought P500 started to upgrade. Almost everyone upgraded to devices with higher specs and more features. In our very own forum, sam moved onto Moto G 2nd generation.\nBut there are people who are still using O1 and some who still want to use it for coming years. On the digit forum for example, Kaz wants to upgrade to Mi4 when it arrives but happy17292 still wish to use his O1 for next 2-3 years. I for one decided to move onto Moto X, not because O1 wasn’t a good phone, but because app industry needs people to upgrade their phone so that they can push more feature rich apps and games.\nWhatever phone we use in future, one thing is for sure, I can never forget the importance that it had in my life. The immersion it gave to me. I would never forget the thrill of trying out new ROM’s and the risk that came along with it. LG’s P500 was my first smartphone and it gave me a chance to see how software can have no boundaries. The device also brought many people together, from digit forum members to developers at XDA, we came together to explore new horizons and uncharted territories. No matter if LG’s P500 was your first smartphone or second, one thing is for sure, we can never forget the things it taught us.\nOn a personal note, even after I have bought Moto X, the P500 won’t just fade away from my memory any time soon, and will still be a secondary phone to which I can rely on. But when it comes to daily driver now, I say my adios to the almighty legend. And hope the best for many other people who still would be using the Optimus One, a gadget one of its kind!\nHere are some of my initial posts on digit forum. Reading myself back when I first got my O1 makes me feel nostalgic!\nOriginally Posted by tmanikandan Our thread crossed 1 lakh views . Kudos to everyone who visited and posted in this thread @krishnandhu \u0026#8211; Thanks once again for the screenshots and hope u r enjoying a good battery life . Originally Posted by Vyom Kudos to persons like me, who just visits to see updates since he doesn\u0026#8217;t have an O1 now, but know it will be useful in the future! Originally Posted by Vyom Looks like you are desperate for the prices of O1 to be reduced.\nI am too. Don\u0026#8217;t know what\u0026#8217;s the motive behind LG for not reducing the price is. But I am guessing it has got something to do with it\u0026#8217;s undeniable success.\nBtw, if O1 doesn\u0026#8217;t reduce it\u0026#8217;s price, I think I am gonna buy a dual sim phone along with Aakash Android Tablet. Originally Posted by Vyom Well, at the moment, the cheapest rate on which you can get O1 is Letsbuy. The current cost if Rs 8999 including a bluetooth. Trust me, I just placed an order for the same, after two months of planning. Although Flipkart is more reliable but they are selling it for Rs. 9700, and that too w/o Bluetooth. But their service rocks. So decision is yours.\nAlso, can\u0026#8217;t say about others, but sellers like Flipkart and Letsbuy usually sell for free shipping. Which means, you would have to pay the exact amount as quoted in final transaction, and not a single rupee more. Originally Posted by Vyom You can try. Although AMEXLB is \u0026#8220;supposed\u0026#8221; to work with only American Express Card, many claims it worked on other cards too.\nBut, it didn\u0026#8217;t for my ICICI Net banking, when I had tried.\nEdit:\nI am now a proud owner of an O1 !\nAnd I am on ninth cloud! Now, I wish my name must be included in the Current O1 users, in 1st post!! ","date":"23 October 2014","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2014/10/saying-adios-to-my-first-android/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEvery once in a while a piece of technology sets it’s foot from inception to reality, that is perceived ahead of its time. It features tech which makes people awe in wonder. People dream of owning such a piece of technology that catapults them into the future.\u003cbr\u003e\nOne such device was my Optimus One P500 (O1 in short), an Android device manufactured by LG which featured specs which were uncommon at its price point. Granted it was not supposed to “take you to the future”, but it was as close as you get if you were under a budget. The device had 512 MB of Random Access Memory, which none of the branded manufactures at the time managed to pull it of in a sub 10k phone. Quickly it became the most loved gadget by amass and also among the developers at XDA, a place where developers collaborated for the greater good.\u003cbr\u003e\nO1 came with Froyo (Android ver 2.2) when it was launched in October 2010. With the curves and specs it had it looked a neat little Android gadget to admire. It was after 9 months of the launch that I came to know about O1, took me one month time to research, write a blog about it and to finalize that my next smartphone can only be “the One”. After that it still took me 2 months to save money from teaching programming classes to school students, apart from doing 9-5 regular job. But it was a good phone and a gadget worth the hard work to own.\u003cbr\u003e\nI remember when the delivery boy from “LetsBuy.com” came to my home and handed me over the phone while I was fiddling with my wallet to make it lighter. My dad was surprised by the way I handed hard cash to some stranger who just arrived at the doorstep. That was my first experience in online shopping but I trusted it. And it payed off well over the years.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Saying Adios to my first Android"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/unboxing/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Unboxing"},{"content":"While my choice of genre doesn’t really allow me to digest modern popcorn blockbuster Bollywood movies, I often tend to enjoy them occasionally if served with a good story and execution. I will have to say that Bobby Jasoos was not one of them.\nBobby Jasoos seems to be a half baked, self pretentious attempt in directing by Samar Shaikh and endorsed by Diya Mirza as a Producer, whose skills could have been better utilized as an actress to save this movie a little. The story of Bobby Jasoos is about a 30 year old Muslim girl named Bobby, residing in the heart of Hyderabad city near the iconic Charminar. While she keeps herself involved in investigating cases in night and trying to get a proper detective job in daytime. She is having a rough time in securing clients as a detective, but luck takes a big turn as she receives an assignment that pushes her to her limits. Rest of the film is a riot as she tries to struggle her career as a detective and manage her family emotionally who doesn’t seem to be in favor of what Bobby does.\nWhile the film seems to have so much potential what makes it fail is the treatment. The film starts of in a humorous tone and actually seems like to begin with the right foot. But as it picks up pace we are introduced some of the people that seems like a cliche examples of typical characters from all of the Bollywood movies I detest watching. Slowly the viewer is faced with slapstick humor, family drama and been-there-done-that events that feels like Deja Vu in the course of a family drama movie.\nSongs don’t help either. Neither of the songs in the film leaves an impression on the viewers mind, rather give them a chance to take a break and catch up on sleep while they are at it. There is one particular song in the movie which I won’t specify to stay away from spoilers, and which I personally think was totally uncalled for in the situation. Perhaps the pacing or editing could have been a lot better, so as to give the movie a coherent flow.\nIn this movie Vidya Balan in the role of Bobby gets to change in a lot of getup (around 12) but most of them doesn’t help the story in much ways. It looks as if she was made to change just for the sake of humor. While the film can be considered short at just 121 minutes, it feels somewhat dragged occasionally, and fails to let viewers invest their emotions into any of the characters except of the lead character.\nThat being said, the film does have its moments but those are just a few. I would also say it was a daring attempt to try to execute a movie with only a female lead, who for the most part remains out of glamor, and where she is also shown to break free from many of the stereotypical role a women is portrayed in Indian movies. I would also have to admire Vidya Balan for her acting skills as she was very convincing in all of those getup she did onscreen. I would not blame the execution of the movie on her since the onus of the complete movie lied on her shoulders alone. And she did her role perfectly.\nIt would be fair to say that while the first half of Bobby Jasoos, raises viewers interest a little, second half helps it raise even further, but the final twist fails to live up to the expectation.\nOne more movie “Queen” was also released recently where the story was about a female lead who is shown to break free from various stereotypical roles, but it would be unfair to compare both of them, because while Queen was set up in vibrant and colorful foreign cities like Paris and Amsterdam and was more closer to today’s generation, Bobby Jasoos relates more to India and typical Indian family drama, and was filmed totally in the streets of semi urban parts of Hyderabad which gave the movie a special flavor of India, more closer to most of the people of the country.\nCombined with all other things I would rate the film a 6 out of 10. Extra 1 to give Bollywood a break from the male dominant masala movie and an attempt to create India’s own Sherlock Holmes.\n","date":"4 July 2014","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2014/07/bobby-jasoos/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhile my choice of genre doesn’t really allow me to digest modern popcorn blockbuster Bollywood movies, I often tend to enjoy them occasionally if served with a good story and execution. I will have to say that \u003cem\u003eBobby Jasoos\u003c/em\u003e was not one of them.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bobby Jasoos"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/apps/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Apps"},{"content":"Recently I came about a thread on a tech forum I regularly visit, which asked a question about how many apps one uses in a day. Surely there are a lot of apps. Thousands and thousands of them in the apps market. I even made a list about the must have apps. But does one really use a lot of apps on a regular day?\nI guess, apps like Launcher, Dialer, Messaging, People (contacts) and Gallery (includes camera app) need not even be mentioned. Since those are by default used by everyone. So what other apps…? I tried to write a story based on actual events to see where I judge myself in this regard. Results were pretty revealing!\nI can’t wake up in the morning unless the Alarm plays a random song from my list of my favourite songs. So that’s one. Then I need to watch what time it is when I *finally* wake up. Clock and weather widget it is. That counts as an app too.\nWhile traveling to office I would listen to my songs on TTPod and chat with friends on WhatsApp and Telegram. I would also surf some forum on Tapatalk since it’s just unavoidable.\nNow I am in office. I pretend to work for sometime. Then I would need some break and I would goto breakout area where I see one of my colleague have this amazing trailer of a latest movie, “Edge of Tomorrow”. I just need to watch this and have it on my phone too. I would use ShareIt app to transfer the video to my phone in seconds (it uses wireless tethering to do that and is a great app btw). I would view the video using MXPlayer on my phone. Wow the trailer is amazing and I need to make a post about it on my FB Page. So I use Pages manager to do that. I don’t use Twitter or I could have used Hootsuite to update on FB and Twitter together.\nNow its lunch time. And I would have forgotten to check whether I published that article on my website which I was drafting the previous night. I would use WordPress app to do final touches and “publish” the article. I could have also uploaded any media on the web server using ConnectBot if its needed.\nI will now view how my recent blog looks like on any browser like Opera or Chrome. I can also use Chrome to read articles which arrives via RSS feed like Flipboard or Appy Geek when I am on the loose after lunch.\nOh dear, its month end! Did my salary came? I would quicky check it from my bank’s app. Be it ICICI or Citibank. Even government bank like Canara Bank have an app now. I would leave for home early that day since I would remember I had some shopping to do. I would refer the list I made using ColorNote or a task application like Astrid to remind me of the list of things my sister wanted me to buy for her too.\nI am on the Metro platform now and want to goto a market very far. An app of DMRC Metro would guide me before I get lost. (Yea, asking from people would help too, but I have been taught not to talk to strangers, unless it’s urgent).\nWhile I am traveling to the market I would play some games on my mobile. Anything like Asphalt 8 or a quick race of Subway Surfer could help me avoid the strangers I was talking about earlier. Oh wait.. did I see someone playing this good looking puzzle game I haven’t seen earlier? Lets just download it through Play store and get started to shatter his record.\nWhile shopping I can use my Barcode application to quickly scan and get to know the exact date of manufacture so that I don’t pickup old stuff. (Mom would have loved a portable Barcode scanner when she shops. But, I could be a barcode scanner for her anytime now.) But I consider myself a smart shopper, ain’t I am? So while shopping I would compare the prices of different stuff available online. Flipkart app it is.\nWell, its about time now. Time to return home. I don’t really know I have the energy to catch another metro in the rush hour of evening. Lets just call a cab using an app I still have to find on Google play (cause I know there is one) and reach to my home keeping an eye on the driver, meter and Google maps. I don’t want him to drive me home using the longest route, do I?\nAnyway I reached home. Now which app? Well, at home I would keep my phone in one corner. I won’t use any other app now since I don’t need them to talk with family. Enough apps for today. Maybe I would need to use more apps like Dropbox when I need to share some documents with my friend tomorrow, or Endomondo, when I need to track how much calorie I burn after a quick jog in one hypothetical but possible morning, or AndChat to chat on IRC with online friends. For now… its the end of the day and I need some rest. Screen locked.\n","date":"3 June 2014","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2014/06/how-many-apps-you-really-use-in-a-regular-day/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eRecently I came about \u003ca href=\"http://www.digit.in/forum/mobiles-tablets/184331-how-many-apps-do-you-actually-use.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003ea thread\u003c/a\u003e on a tech forum I regularly visit, which asked a question about how many apps one uses in a day. Surely there are a lot of apps. Thousands and thousands of them in the apps market. I even made \u003ca href=\"vineetkumar.me/2012/01/the-must-have-android-apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003ea list\u003c/a\u003e about the must have apps. But does one really use a lot of apps on a regular day?\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eI guess, apps like \u003cstrong\u003eLauncher\u003c/strong\u003e, \u003cstrong\u003eDialer\u003c/strong\u003e, \u003cstrong\u003eMessaging\u003c/strong\u003e, \u003cstrong\u003ePeople\u003c/strong\u003e (contacts) and \u003cstrong\u003eGallery\u003c/strong\u003e (includes camera app) need not even be mentioned. Since those are by default used by everyone. So what other apps…? I tried to write a story based on actual events to see where I judge myself in this regard. Results were pretty revealing!\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nI can’t wake up in the morning unless the \u003cstrong\u003eAlarm\u003c/strong\u003e plays a random song from my list of my favourite songs. So that’s one. Then I need to watch what time it is when I *finally* wake up. \u003cstrong\u003eClock and weather\u003c/strong\u003e widget it is. That counts as an app too.\u003cbr\u003e\nWhile traveling to office I would listen to my songs on \u003cstrong\u003eTTPod\u003c/strong\u003e and chat with friends on \u003cstrong\u003eWhatsApp\u003c/strong\u003e and \u003cstrong\u003eTelegram\u003c/strong\u003e. I would also surf some forum on \u003cstrong\u003eTapatalk\u003c/strong\u003e since it’s just unavoidable.\u003cbr\u003e\nNow I am in office. I pretend to work for sometime. Then I would need some break and I would goto breakout area where I see one of my colleague have this amazing trailer of a latest movie, “Edge of Tomorrow”. I just need to watch this and have it on my phone too. I would use \u003cstrong\u003eShareIt\u003c/strong\u003e app to transfer the video to my phone in seconds (it uses wireless tethering to do that and is a great app btw). I would view the video using \u003cstrong\u003eMXPlayer\u003c/strong\u003e on my phone. Wow the trailer is amazing and I need to make a post about it on my FB Page. So I use \u003cstrong\u003ePages manager\u003c/strong\u003e to do that. I don’t use Twitter or I could have used \u003cstrong\u003eHootsuite\u003c/strong\u003e to update on FB and Twitter together.\u003cbr\u003e\nNow its lunch time. And I would have forgotten to check whether I published that article on my website which I was drafting the previous night. I would use \u003cstrong\u003eWordPress\u003c/strong\u003e app to do final touches and “publish” the article. I could have also uploaded any media on the web server using \u003cstrong\u003eConnectBot\u003c/strong\u003e if its needed.\u003cbr\u003e\nI will now view how my recent blog looks like on any browser like \u003cstrong\u003eOpera\u003c/strong\u003e or \u003cstrong\u003eChrome\u003c/strong\u003e. I can also use Chrome to read articles which arrives via RSS feed like \u003cstrong\u003eFlipboard\u003c/strong\u003e or \u003cstrong\u003eAppy Geek\u003c/strong\u003e when I am on the loose after lunch.\u003cbr\u003e\nOh dear, its month end! Did my salary came? I would quicky check it from my bank’s app. Be it \u003cstrong\u003eICICI\u003c/strong\u003e or \u003cstrong\u003eCitibank\u003c/strong\u003e. Even government bank like \u003cstrong\u003eCanara Bank\u003c/strong\u003e have an app now. I would leave for home early that day since I would remember I had some shopping to do. I would refer the list I made using \u003cstrong\u003eColorNote\u003c/strong\u003e or a task application like \u003cstrong\u003eAstrid\u003c/strong\u003e to remind me of the list of things my sister wanted me to buy for her too.\u003cbr\u003e\nI am on the Metro platform now and want to goto a market very far. An app of \u003cstrong\u003eDMRC Metro\u003c/strong\u003e would guide me before I get lost. (Yea, asking from people would help too, but I have been taught not to talk to strangers, unless it’s urgent).\u003cbr\u003e\nWhile I am traveling to the market I would play some games on my mobile. Anything like \u003cstrong\u003eAsphalt 8\u003c/strong\u003e or a quick race of \u003cstrong\u003eSubway Surfer\u003c/strong\u003e could help me avoid the strangers I was talking about earlier. Oh wait.. did I see someone playing this good looking puzzle game I haven’t seen earlier? Lets just download it through \u003cstrong\u003ePlay store\u003c/strong\u003e and get started to shatter his record.\u003cbr\u003e\nWhile shopping I can use my \u003cstrong\u003eBarcode application\u003c/strong\u003e to quickly scan and get to know the exact date of manufacture so that I don’t pickup old stuff. (Mom would have loved a portable Barcode scanner when she shops. But, I could be a barcode scanner for her anytime now.) But I consider myself a smart shopper, ain’t I am? So while shopping I would  compare the prices of different stuff available online. \u003cstrong\u003eFlipkart\u003c/strong\u003e app it is.\u003cbr\u003e\nWell, its about time now. Time to return home. I don’t really know I have the energy to catch another metro in the rush hour of evening. Lets just call a cab using an \u003cstrong\u003eapp I still have to find on Google play\u003c/strong\u003e (cause I know there is one) and reach to my home keeping an eye on the driver, meter and \u003cstrong\u003eGoogle maps\u003c/strong\u003e. I don’t want him to drive me home using the longest route, do I?\u003cbr\u003e\nAnyway I reached home. Now which app? Well, at home I would keep my phone in one corner. I won’t use any other app now since I don’t need them to talk with family. Enough apps for today. Maybe I would need to use more apps like \u003cstrong\u003eDropbox\u003c/strong\u003e when I need to share some documents with my friend tomorrow, or \u003cstrong\u003eEndomondo\u003c/strong\u003e, when I need to track how much calorie I burn after a quick jog in one hypothetical but possible morning, or \u003cstrong\u003eAndChat\u003c/strong\u003e to chat on IRC with online friends. For now… its the end of the day and I need some rest. \u003cem\u003eScreen locked.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How many Apps you *Really* use in a Regular day?"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/mobile-apps/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Mobile Apps"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/life/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Life"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/minimalism/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Minimalism"},{"content":"Before life used to be in fast lanes, people were minimalist. They used to work hard in the day, earn enough to eat two times, sleep peacefully over the night, and start all over again the next day. They used to respect each other, celebrated, mourned and participated in any events happening in their neighbors together.\nBut over the years life has not been the same. As the industrial revolution evolved, people turned to cities. They started to face competition and they needed to fight in order to be heard and get what they deserved. We earned. We bought stuff. We felt happy buying stuff. So we earn more to buy more stuff. Slowly we became so habituated with the cycle that we started to drift from what once mattered to us more than anything. We started accumulating things we may not even need. Suddenly a new kind of competition was there. Competition to look more smart. More trendy. More fashionable. Something more to boast about. It never end.\nBut minimalistic living is something people eventually turns to, when they finally understand that they have enough of the shenanigans of consumerism.\nI think choosing where to spend money is something that every teenager/younger generation take granted now a days. Eating at Dominos and CCD have risen from just on occasions to daily affair and worse so when they do it just so as to look “cool”. While I think globalization is bringing with it some amazing progress to our country, I also think its the generation of ours and younger that needs to draw a line. Trend of making easy money from part times and then spending it frivolously on things that is far from “need” than “want” is something most of the young minds are plagued with.\nPersonally I never spent a dime on things I “want” till I started earning my own dough. I come from a lower middle class family, where we used to face scarcity of all kinds. Our house is built in parts as and when my dad could accumulate money to built something. Broken things used to remain broken until we could accumulate money to fix it. Fortunately my dad is an electrical engineer, and he doesn’t lack tinkering around. So most of the stuff from home wiring, to laying basic water pipelines, fixing Television sets (CRT ones), cleaning engine of our scooter to fixing kitchen appliances were all done by himself, while I used to be his assistant in bringing the tools he needed. I have rarely seen any specialized fix-it guy being called for fixing any stuff listed above.\nFranky I used to hate being with my dad when he was repairing things. He used to loose his cool easily. I would struggle to bring to him the exact tools he require from what I see as a treasure of tools kept in the store room. But now that I think about it, my dad was only trying to save some money, so that I can study in a private school and keep up with the extravagant fees, prices of clothes and books.\nMaybe the reason why I choose to study “Software” Engineering was because of the struggle I used to see my dad having with trying to fix all those hardware all by himself, becoming the one man army of all the Dr. Fix-it guys out there, and slowly resenting the hands and face getting dirty by the dirt and grease it attracted. But I did understand the money it use to save to us in the long run and that’s why never use to complain about it to my dad.\nI even made a list of the things I could never afford but badly “wished” for when I was in school, like my own PC. I used to draw layout of keyboards in a diary and try to memorize the placements of alphabets since I didn’t have my own PC. Sometimes, I used to work on a Pentium 3 PC at my Mausi’s house. But it didn’t have internet access. So I used to make a list of web links, write long emails in text files and save them in 3.5″ floopy disks so that I save time when I used to access Internet at a local cyber cafe each Sunday for not more than an hour. It was in my college that my father was able to buy for me a Pen 4 PC in 2005, Internet connection 3 yrs after that, and recently I upgraded to a Core i5 PC after more than 7 yrs. Even after these many years, I still can’t say I am satisfied by our living standards. But that is a different story.\nThe fact of the matter is that while I was crying over my not being uber-rich, I am thankful for my past that it taught me the value of money. While I was sad since I didn’t have my own PC in my school, there are people in worse conditions than I am. As said profoundly by someone,\n“If you have a family that loves you, A few good friends, Food on the table , And a roof over your head, You are richer than you think..!!”\nThe line between “necessity” and “desires” depends on the person and that’s why it have to be drawn by the person themselves. Its not about how much money you can afford but how much money you need to be “happy”.\nAs a technologist it would be difficult for me to draw a line between things I need and things which I am passionate about. But I am aware of the value of money that my dad knew and taught me since I was a child. Now that I think about my recent past I think I am guilty of a little over-spending but hey, you can hardly complain if I “invest” in a few things I love!\n","date":"13 April 2014","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2014/04/minimalism-and-memoirs-past/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBefore life used to be in fast lanes, people were minimalist. They used to work hard in the day, earn enough to eat two times, sleep peacefully over the night, and start all over again the next day. They used to respect each other, celebrated, mourned and participated in any events happening in their neighbors together.\u003cbr\u003e\nBut over the years life has not been the same. As the industrial revolution evolved, people turned to cities. They started to face competition and they needed to fight in order to be heard and get what they deserved. We earned. We bought stuff. We felt happy buying stuff. So we earn more to buy more stuff. Slowly we became so habituated with the cycle that we started to drift from what once mattered to us more than anything. We started accumulating things we may not even need. Suddenly a new kind of competition was there. Competition to look more smart. More trendy. More fashionable. Something more to boast about. It never end.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut minimalistic living is something people eventually turns to, when they finally understand that they have enough of the shenanigans of consumerism.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e","title":"Minimalism and Memoirs of the Past"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/minimalist/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Minimalist"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/struggles/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Struggles"},{"content":"Nexus 7 doesn’t have GSM facility. So that means installing Whatsapp on N7 shouldn’t be possible. But in my experience despite of it giving warning it installs straightforwardly. Here’s my exprience on how I migrated WhatsApp from my phone to Nexus 7.\nInstall Whatsapp on N7 from market or through APK file. But don’t open the app yet. Create backup of existing Whatsapp messages:\nIf you don’t want to migrate existing messages then you can skip this step. Of course, there is no reason why you should skip, since its pretty easy. Just transfer the file: “msgstore.db.crypt” from phone to tablet, which resides at “/sdcard/WhatsApp/Databases/”. And keep the file in the same folder in N7. Create the folder database if it doesn’t exist.\n3. Now open WhatsApp on N7. Following screen should popup: 4. Enter the phone number of you phone with which WhatsApp was configured previously. 5. Since tablet don\u0026#8217;t have messaging facility, wait for following screen to over. After which you should receive a WhatsApp numerical code on your phone. Should be 6 digit. 6. Enter the 6 digit code which you receive on your phone to following screen: 7. As soon as you enter correct code, activation should began and should be activated within seconds. After which WhatsApp will pickup the database file which you kept at Databases location. 8. Click Restore. And all the messages from backup will be restored and you will get a confirmation message: 9. Tap continue, and voila, you just finished installing and activating WhatsApp on your N7: 10. Enjoy. And oh btw, Whatsapp activated with same number can only work on one device at one time. So you will have to re-verify if you want to use it again from phone: \u0026nbsp; **Bonus: You can even install Windows XP on N7.** **_But\u0026#8230;_** its so slow that its completely useless. Slowness is not due to the device but the limitation of the virtual machine on which it will run. But if you really want to make iOS users jelly, you can head over to this thread to do that. Its pretty much simple, but requires you to have a WinXP ISO image, preferably made light by nLite.","date":"16 November 2013","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2013/11/installing-whatsapp-on-nexus-7/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNexus 7 doesn’t have GSM facility. So that means installing Whatsapp on N7 shouldn’t be possible. But in my experience despite of it giving warning it installs straightforwardly. Here’s my exprience on how I migrated WhatsApp from my phone to Nexus 7.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eInstall Whatsapp on N7 from market or through APK file. But don’t open the app yet.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCreate backup of existing Whatsapp messages:\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nIf you don’t want to migrate existing messages then you can skip this step. Of course, there is no reason why you should skip, since its pretty easy. Just transfer the file: “msgstore.db.crypt” from phone to tablet, which resides at “/sdcard/WhatsApp/Databases/”. And keep the file in the same folder in N7. Create the folder database if it doesn’t exist.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://i.minus.com/ibvbxlFkW7GLOS.png\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e","title":"Installing WhatsApp on Nexus 7"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/nexus/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Nexus"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/nexus-7/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Nexus 7"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/3g-dongle/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"3G Dongle"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/otg-cable/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"OTG Cable"},{"content":"**In my last posts, I wrote **about how to root your Nexus 7 and install Ubuntu Touch. Today I am going to write about how to use an OTG cable to access pen drives and External Hard drives. Also one of the most awesome thing you can do is to use 3G dongle on the Nexus 7. And I am doing it in questionnaire style.\nWhy use OTG cable?\nYou can use an OTG cable to attach following devices to your Nexus 7:\nPen drives Memory card readers External Hard Drives 3G Dongle USB Mouse and Keyboard\nWhat is an OTG cable looks like?\nShown clockwise from top left: OTG Cable, Card Reader, Pen Drive, an Huawei 3G dongle (with Airtel connection).\nYup, OTG cable is that small. Some other variants of OTG cable also comes with no wire. Refer this.\nCan any OTG cable be used with Nexus 7?\n** **I had some worries about this. So I thought to buy\nthis OTG cable from flipkart. Some reviews says it works while others stated it doesn’t. So I went to a local market. Bought the cheapest OTG cable in just Rs 50. And it worked flawlessly.\nRequirement of using an OTG cable:\nNexus 7 should be rooted and SU installed. If you don’t want to root your device, there is an alternative available. Goto Alternative.\nSo, after rooting, just install the following app: StickMount\nThere, now you are ready to use the features bestowed by a rooted device and an OTG cable. Yes, it was that simple.\nJust attach the OTG cable with Nexus 7, and attach a pen drive or external storage to the other end. You should see a pop up about granting SU access to StickMount. Just grant it access, and the external storage should mount, on the location: /SDCard/usbstorage. You can open this folder to view all the files on your external storage, and use them just like it were on your tab.\nUsing 3G Dongle with Nexus 7:\nTo use a dongle with the tab requirements are:\nRooted with SU app installed This app: PPP Widget A compatible 3G dongle.\nAs per this post on XDA forum, following devices are confirmed as compatible to N7: Confirmed Devices Huawei\nE1750\nE1752Cu\nE173s-1\nE173-u2\nE367\nE3131s-2 GSM/HSPA+\nEC156 CDMA with a couple of tweaks see this post\nE160E ZTE\nMF190J**\nMF190**\nMF636**\nMF626** But if you already have a 3G dongle then just test if it works on a desktop Linux OS. And if it works then it should work with N7 too.\nI was able to get my hands on a dongle model: Huawei E1731. It took a week to activate the 3G sim to start (due to my laziness).\nWhen you have the OTG cable and a working 3G dongle, just attach the dongle to N7 using the cable. PPP Widget should detect it and show you the option to “connect it”. But before connecting I had to set APN. So I went to Settings (from the widget itself). And set airtelgprs.com as the APN. Your APN vary and you may need to ask the correct APN from customer care. Thats it. I didn’t have to set any other thing.\nAfter that I just tapped, “Connect”, and voila I could surf Internet through the dongle. Click Spoiler to see some states of PPP Widget:\nAnd oh btw, about the last use of OTG cable. I tested a desktop USB mouse and a desktop USB keyboard with the tab. Both worked flawlessly. Using mouse I could click any app using a mouse cursor that pops up. And through keyboard, I could use Alt + Tab to navigate recent application list, Escape to go back and close any app and of course type to type anywhere where a Text field is there. It’s Amazing!\nAlternative of rooting and still be able to use a Pen drive:\nYou can use this paid app (Rs 216): Nexus Media Importer to browse multimedia content from your Pen drive. But it doesn’t give the freedom of using the external drive like it does by accessing it “directly” from a file manager. Plus you may not use a 3G dongle without rooting. As per this page you *can* use mouse and keyboard without rooting. However it doesn’t mention an OTG cable. So I can’t be sure.\nOnly thing now remain is to buy a USB hub, and I could then use multiple devices, cause you know, there is just one MicroUSB on the device. I would soon update the post to let my readers know if that’s possible.\n","date":"11 November 2013","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2013/11/using-otg-cable-to-access-external-storage-and-3g-dongle-on-nexus-7/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003e**\u003cspan style=\"font-size: medium;\"\u003eIn my \u003ca href=\"/tag/nexus-7/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003elast posts\u003c/a\u003e, I wrote \u003c/span\u003e**about how to root your Nexus 7 and install Ubuntu Touch. Today I am going to write about how to use an OTG cable to access pen drives and External Hard drives. Also one of the most awesome thing you can do is to use 3G dongle on the Nexus 7. And I am doing it in questionnaire style.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eWhy use OTG cable?\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nYou can use an OTG cable to attach following devices to your Nexus 7:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePen drives\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMemory card readers\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eExternal Hard Drives\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e3G Dongle\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eUSB Mouse and Keyboard\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eWhat is an OTG cable looks like?\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nShown clockwise from top left: OTG Cable, Card Reader, Pen Drive, an Huawei 3G dongle (with Airtel connection).\u003cbr\u003e\nYup, OTG cable is that small. Some other variants of OTG cable also comes with no wire. \u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://lh3.ggpht.com/ZGPaoTllZdSiudDyBsUwDV1OBKwsRC13wAP2RgU-8fEI1NrNsByqW0ENHkvFNKDCIOcy=h900\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\"\u003eRefer this.\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://i.minus.com/iAiFCL1Q4DEwP.jpg\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eCan any OTG cable be used with Nexus 7?\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n**\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e","title":"Using OTG cable to access external storage and 3G dongle on Nexus 7"},{"content":"I bought Nexus 7, 16 GB, 2012 Wifi model from Flipkart a week ago. And I have to say, it is one of my most awesome investment that I ever did. I immediately started my research on rooting it so that I can unlock the true potential of this beast. Now I have installed Ubuntu Touch on N7 and its dual boot with Android. But I faced numerous challenges in doing so, due to lack of experience in this regard. I decided to document my research and finding so that other who may want to unlock the bootloader of N7 and want to flash Ubuntu Touch can do so easily.\nI am going to post this guide in three part post. In this first part I am presenting unboxing video and some screenshots of the N7 running Jelly Bean.\nImages are scaled down, click the image to open the image in its original quality\nThe Lock screen:\n**\nHome screen:**\nHome screen in Portrait:\nNotifications drop down:\nSettings drop down:\nRunning Jelly Bean:\nApp drawer:\nData Usage Screen:\nTerminal and Stock Keyboard:\nAbout screen:\nSpecs:\nA few benchmarks on stock:\nAnTuTu:\nQuadrant:\nNenamark 2.4:\nNeocore showed following error:\n3D Mark scores:\nFollow the second part of the post, where I write about how to unlock the bootloader.\n","date":"27 October 2013","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2013/10/my-nexus-7/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI bought Nexus 7, 16 GB, 2012 Wifi model from Flipkart a week ago. And I have to say, it is one of my most awesome investment that I ever did. I immediately started my research on rooting it so that I can unlock the true potential of this beast. Now I have installed Ubuntu Touch on N7 and its dual boot with Android. But I faced numerous challenges in doing so, due to lack of experience in this regard. I decided to document my research and finding so that other who may want to unlock the bootloader of N7 and want to flash Ubuntu Touch can do so easily.\u003cbr\u003e\nI am going to post this guide in three part post. In this first part I am presenting unboxing video and some screenshots of the N7 running Jelly Bean.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\nImages are scaled down, click the image to open the image in its original quality\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe Lock screen:\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://i.minus.com/j0XCyqNpUbBn5.png\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://i.minus.com/iZs63m3oyfVua.png\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n**\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My Nexus 7"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/screenshots/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Screenshots"},{"content":"If you haven’t rooted your Nexus 7 yet, you can follow my previous post and do that easily. This guide assumes you have connected your device with your PC and can use ADB to push commands over to your device. If this doesn’t make any sense, read my previous guide.\nIn this post I am about to write how can you easily install Ubuntu Touch on your Nexus 7. Before we do that, you can read this article on why shouldn’t install Ubuntu Touch: 4 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Install Ubuntu Touch on Your Nexus | OMG! Ubuntu!\nBut since we are dual booting the Ubuntu with Android, the reasons stated above won’t matter!\n1. Installing Custom Recovery (Flashing TWRP Multi ROM)\nUsing adb commands the next you need to do is to flash a version of TWRP recovery which is tweaked for MultiROM support. The file I downloaded was “TWRP_multirom_grouper_20131022.img” from here: [MOD][OCT 22] MultiROM v16a (fix SuperSU for secondary ROMs) – xda-developers, and used following command to flash it.\nfastboot flash recovery d:\\path-to-recovery\\TWRP_multirom_grouper_20131022.img\n**\n**\n2. Flash Kernel with kexec-hardboot patch (We are getting closer)\nThe next thing which is required to dual boot is to flash a Kernel with kexec-hardboot patch and the file varies by the version of Android you have installed on your N7. I flashed, “kernel_kexec_430.zip” (get from above link) from TWRP recovery’s “Flash ZIP” option (not using adb).\n3. Download Ubuntu Touch image (The Ubuntu Goodness!)\nThe final step is to flash the Ubuntu image from MultiROM, so that we can have dual boot. Latest built of Ubuntu Touch can be found here: Index of /ubuntu-touch/daily-preinstalled.\nThis steps requires to download two files and flashing them together from the Recovery. So I downloaded following two files:\ntrusty-preinstalled-touch-armel+grouper.zip, and\ntrusty-preinstalled-touch-armhf.zip.\n(grouper is a code name for Nexus 7)\n4. Copy the above files to device:\nNext thing is to push these two files using adb commands:\nadb push D:\\path-to-first-file\\trusty-preinstalled-touch-armel+grouper.zip /sdcard/\u0026lt;br /\u0026gt; adb push D:\\path-to-second-file\\trusty-preinstalled-touch-armhf.zip /sdcard/\n5. Flashing Ubuntu Touch (take a deep breath):\nTo flash these two files you will need to goto Recovery -\u0026gt; Advanced -\u0026gt; Multirom -\u0026gt; Flash files. And select both the above files. Flashing it takes a few seconds. And once its done, reboot the device from options.\nCongratulations. If you have done everything correctly, you should have a multi boot menu when you reboot the device, from where you can select which OS to boot into. There should be two options, “Internal” which will open Android and other with the name of the file you flashed, which will boot into Ubuntu Touch. You can even rename these from the recovery and multi ROM menu.\nFollowing are some images of Ubuntu Touch on my N7:\n","date":"27 October 2013","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2013/10/installing-ubuntu-touch-on-your-rooted-nexus-7/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIf you haven’t rooted your Nexus 7 yet, you can follow my previous post and do that easily. This guide assumes you have connected your device with your PC and can use ADB to push commands over to your device. If this doesn’t make any sense, read my \u003ca title=\"Rooting Nexus 7\" href=\"/2013/10/rooting-nexus-7-unlocking-bootloader/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eprevious guide.\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nIn this post I am about to write how can you easily install Ubuntu Touch on your Nexus 7. Before we do that, you can read this article on why \u003cstrong\u003eshouldn’t\u003c/strong\u003e install Ubuntu Touch: \u003ca href=\"http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/10/4-reasons-why-you-shouldnt-install-ubuntu-touch-1-0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003e4 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Install Ubuntu Touch on Your Nexus | OMG! Ubuntu!\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nBut since we are dual booting the Ubuntu with Android, the reasons stated above won’t matter!\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" title=\"Wink\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e1. Installing Custom Recovery (Flashing TWRP Multi ROM)\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nUsing adb commands the next you need to do is to flash a version of TWRP recovery which is tweaked for MultiROM support. The file I downloaded was “TWRP_multirom_grouper_20131022.img” from here: \u003ca href=\"http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2011403\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003e[MOD][OCT 22] MultiROM v16a (fix SuperSU for secondary ROMs) – xda-developers\u003c/a\u003e, and used following command to flash it.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ccode\u003efastboot flash recovery d:\\path-to-recovery\\TWRP_multirom_grouper_20131022.img\u003c/code\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n**\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Installing Ubuntu Touch on your rooted Nexus 7"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/ubuntu-touch/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Ubuntu Touch"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/rooting/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Rooting"},{"content":"In my previous post I posted a few screenshots of my new Nexus 7 which I bought recently. In this post I am going to write about how you can unlock the bootloader of your Nexus 7. This process can be basically done in 5 steps.\nRooting the N7:\nYou can live your life with N7 without rooting it. But as one of the Android Commandments say: “Thou shalt not use thine nexus unrooted” I think you need to be awesome instead and do unlock it to get these features to work:\nAbility to use an OTG cable to connect pen drives to the device, thereby overcoming the 16 GB (13 GB available actually) limitation. Using a 3G dongle to let your device take advantage of 3G (which by default this device don’t have) Take advantage of apps that only works when device is rooted, like Titanium Backup and Cache Cleaner Flash custom ROM’s and/or Install Ubuntu Touch on your device (and be a part of an OS in the making!)\nYou can read this article that echoes my thoughts, until the part where he used a toolkit to root (I rooted the old fashioned adb way).\nHere’s How to Root the Nexus 7 – But Should You? | Android.AppStorm\nAnyway, so how actually you root N7?\nYou can use the most popular Nexus Rootkit to do all kinds of stuff to your N7 including Rooting, flashing zips etc, but if you are geek like me, here is how to do it manually (and its way easier than you think):\n** **\n1. First enable “USB debugging” on N7:\nGoto settings -\u0026gt; About Tablet, and tap Built Number several times, until a message pops up below with the Google sense of humor: “Congratulations, You are not a developer.” You have just enabled a menu option, “Developer Options” in settings. tap Developer Options, and then check mark “USB Debugging”.\n2. Disable MTP:\nNow open Settings -\u0026gt; Storage. And find the option to go into “USB computer connection”, and uncheck “Media Device (MTP)”. This is necessary so that adb discovers the device (explained later).\nPS: As I came to know later, for some MTP needs to be enabled. If you are not able to successful your device to PC then you can try again enabling MTP.\n3. Get Android Debug Bridge utility (ADB):\nThere are several methods to get ADB.\n-\u0026gt; You can download it from here: Android SDK | Android Developers. Its a big download.\n-\u0026gt; Or you can download the Nexus Toolkit from here: Nexus Root Toolkit v1.7.2 | WugFresh (file: NRT_v1.7.2.sfx.exe) and use the adb which the toolkit uses. (its a smaller download than downloading complete SDK).\n-\u0026gt; Or you can simply get the SDK from the Omega DVD of Jan 2013 (its rare times like these that a digit DVD really helps!)\n4. Install the Nexus 7 drivers on your PC:\nI tried to install the drivers from the toolkit, and had a hard time doing that. The toolkit just wasn’t able to help me install the right drivers, and I tried installing the alternate driver from the choices. It wasn’t after a long R\u0026amp;D and many reboots of the N7, that a dialog box prompt on the device (shown in below screenshot). Once I allowed it, rest was easy.\n5. Use ADB to Unlock Bootloader: (FINALLY)\nOpen command prompt with platform-tools as directory on prompt. And type the following commands to test if ADB is able to communicate with your device.\nF:\\Android\\adt-bundle-windows\\sdk\\platform-tools\u0026gt;adb devices\nAbove command should result something like this:\nF:\\Android\\adt-bundle-windows\\sdk\\platform-tools\u0026gt;adb devices\u0026lt;br /\u0026gt; List of devices attached\u0026lt;br /\u0026gt; 015d8b3b4558260b device\nIf you can’t see above output, then you have to try installing the drivers again. Which you can do so from SDK Manager. Try selecting Google drivers from there. Once you *can* see it as a device, you would need to enter these commands from adb.\nFollowing command will reboot your N7 to bootloader.\nF:\\Android\\adt-bundle-windows\\sdk\\platform-tools\u0026gt;adb reboot bootloader\nFollowing command will actually unlock the bootloader. You will encounter a confirmation message on the device before its committed.\nF:\\Android\\adt-bundle-windows\\sdk\\platform-tools\u0026gt;fastboot oem unlock\u0026lt;br /\u0026gt; \u0026hellip;\u0026lt;br /\u0026gt; (bootloader) erasing userdata\u0026hellip;\u0026lt;br /\u0026gt; (bootloader) erasing userdata done\u0026lt;br /\u0026gt; (bootloader) erasing cache\u0026hellip;\u0026lt;br /\u0026gt; (bootloader) erasing cache done\u0026lt;br /\u0026gt; (bootloader) unlocking\u0026hellip;\u0026lt;br /\u0026gt; (bootloader) Bootloader is unlocked now.\u0026lt;br /\u0026gt; OKAY [104.112s]\u0026lt;br /\u0026gt; finished. total time: 104.112s\nAfter you unlocking the bootloader you will also need to install Super SU app, so that your device is rooted and the apps can actually use the root status. Which you can install from the Play market.\nNow you have your device rooted, and all the data from it should be erased and Nexus 7 set to factory setting. You can now use apps to use Pen drives and 3G dongles on it. But if you want to dual boot N7 with Ubuntu Touch, then continue further.\nRead in my third post about how to install Ubuntu Touch on your rooted Nexus 7.\nPS: Thanks to Aaruni for pointing out the mistakes. You can read a more recent article about unlocking bootloader and rooting of Nexus 7 along with commands on Linux here.\n","date":"27 October 2013","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2013/10/rooting-nexus-7-unlocking-bootloader/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn my \u003ca title=\"My Nexus 7\" href=\"/2013/10/my-nexus-7/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eprevious post\u003c/a\u003e I posted a few screenshots of my new Nexus 7 which I bought recently. In this post I am going to write about how you can unlock the bootloader of your Nexus 7. This process can be basically done in 5 steps.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eRooting the N7:\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nYou can live your life with N7 without rooting it. But as one of the Android Commandments say: \u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: medium;\"\u003e“Thou shalt not use thine nexus unrooted”\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e I think you need to be awesome instead and do unlock it to get these features to work:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAbility to use an OTG cable to connect pen drives to the device, thereby overcoming the 16 GB (13 GB available actually) limitation.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eUsing a 3G dongle to let your device take advantage of 3G (which by default this device don’t have)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTake advantage of apps that only works when device is rooted, like Titanium Backup and Cache Cleaner\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFlash custom ROM’s and/or Install Ubuntu Touch on your device (and be a part of an OS in the making!)\u003cbr\u003e\nYou can read this article that echoes my thoughts, until the part where he used a toolkit to root (I rooted the old fashioned adb way).\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://android.appstorm.net/how-to/rooting-and-roms/heres-how-to-root-the-nexus-7-but-should-you/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eHere’s How to Root the Nexus 7 – But Should You? | Android.AppStorm\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eAnyway, so how actually you root N7?\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nYou can use the most popular Nexus Rootkit to do all kinds of stuff to your N7 including Rooting, flashing zips etc, but if you are geek like me, here is how to do it manually (and its way easier than you think):\u003cbr\u003e\n**\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e","title":"Rooting Nexus 7 and Unlocking Bootloader"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/anime/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Anime"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/mawaru-penguindrum/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Mawaru Penguindrum"},{"content":"I have watched a few Animes over the duration of a couple of years. I have watched Clannad, a beautiful comedy drama that make me cry many times over the course of two seasons. And I have watched Steins;Gate a science fiction anime which haunted me for days with its creepy “time travel gone wrong” images. But I have never watched an anime like Mawaru Penguindrum which was confusing yet engrossing with each passing episode, although after a period of time.\nMawaru Penguindrum is a story of three main characters: brothers Shouma and Kanba and their sister, Himari. The girl Himari has a terminal illness that causes her death just as the series begins. But a magical penguin spirit revives her from death on a condition that the brothers must find a secret stuff called, “Penguindrum” which would give her sister’s life for forever.\nWhat follows is a strange tale of complex story, subtle humor and dark pasts of the characters involved. What makes this anime unlike any other is the extensive use of Symbolism. Most of the flashbacks and even the climax are mere representations. This makes the series hard to understand since its difficult to decipher whats real and what’s not. But that is also what makes the series worth the watch. Since it relies on viewers to decipher the hidden meanings that it bestow.\nOne more contrasting thing about the series is its weird mix of childish humor with mature themes. The significance of the sexuality theme is once again left for viewers to decode and the one thing which have left me in awe.\nComing to music, there are a fair number of different compositions spread across the series. Two different opening theme songs, and nine ending songs. It also has three insert songs (the songs played in the middle). And all of the soundtrack are excellent, with my favorite being, “The Children of Fruit and Destiny” which I think is the crux of the series. Music amply complements the comedic nature of about first 12 episodes and the sudden pace of the tone and speed of the second half of the season.\nYou need to have watched a fair amount of anime to get used to the tone of Mawaru Penguindrum and to truly appreciate the genius behind it. This series is must watch for those who like to watch something different and not something clichés and formulated and its for those who like to figure things out rather than being spoon fed.\nIf you ever decide to watch Mawaru Penguindrum then one thing have to be kept in mind that the first half may deceive you. And you should hold on until the real plot starts to kick in. But be warned that when it comes it may catch you unguarded, while you frantically search for the answers, buried deep inside the minds of the characters.\nI for one will need to watch the series again, cause I myself am not sure what actually happened with Himari and their brothers and how to interpret the climax. After all, the Penguindrum is not an easy thing to find!\n","date":"2 October 2013","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2013/10/mawaru-penguindrum-anime/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI have watched a few Animes over the duration of a couple of years. I have watched \u003ca rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1118804/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eClannad\u003c/a\u003e, a beautiful comedy drama that make me cry many times over the course of two seasons. And I have watched \u003ca rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1910272\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eSteins;Gate\u003c/a\u003e a science fiction anime which haunted me for days with its creepy “time travel gone wrong” images. But I have never watched an anime like \u003ca rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2017925\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eMawaru Penguindrum\u003c/a\u003e which was confusing yet engrossing with each passing episode, although after a period of time.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mawaru Penguindrum – Anime"},{"content":"Here I will bookmark some of the most important links I find on the web. Some would be obvious while others could be handpicked from the obscure parts of the web.\nTechGlobule\nYour gateway to technology. This website publishes many useful tips and tricks articles that will help you making the most of technology. Do subscribe so that you don’t miss something useful.\ndigit forum:\nA forum where you can discuss any aspect of technology, news or random chit chat, get help from many members and get trolled from many wannabe but innocent trolls.\nGive Away of the Day:\nA site where you get daily dose of free software. Granted most of the time it’s a miss. But you do get occasional gems!\nIt’s sister site, game.giveawayoftheday.com gives away weekly games.\nio9:\n“WE COME FROM THE FUTURE”, is what they say. Hard to believe. But they do seem to have some of the coolest articles! Worth a daily check.\nTechrepublic:\nThe link is about 7 traits of Effective Programmer. Website is must keep track for people related to Technology. Indiblogger:\nA portal for bloggers, by bloggers. Where one can share their blogs and read others. And then some more…\nLast Updated: 24-Feb-2015.\n","date":"2 October 2013","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/bookmarks/","section":"Vineet Kumar","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere I will bookmark some of the most important links I find on the web. Some would be obvious while others could be handpicked from the obscure parts of the web.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://techglobule.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eTechGlobule\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nYour gateway to technology. This website publishes many useful tips and tricks articles that will help you making the most of technology. Do subscribe so that you don’t miss something useful.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://geek.digit.in/community/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003edigit forum:\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nA forum where you can discuss any aspect of technology, news or random chit chat, get help from many members and get trolled from many wannabe but innocent trolls.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://giveawayoftheday.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eGive Away of the Day:\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nA site where you get daily dose of free software. Granted most of the time it’s a miss. But you do get occasional gems!\u003cbr\u003e\nIt’s sister site, \u003ca href=\"http://game.giveawayoftheday.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003egame.giveawayoftheday.com\u003c/a\u003e gives away weekly games.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.io9.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eio9:\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n“WE COME FROM THE FUTURE”, is what they say. Hard to believe. But they do seem to have some of the coolest articles! Worth a daily check.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/programming-and-development/seven-traits-of-effective-programmers/6750?tag=nl.e055\u0026s_cid=e055\u0026ttag=e055\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eTechrepublic\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\nThe link is about 7 traits of Effective Programmer. Website is must keep track for people related to Technology.\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.indiblogger.in/vyom\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eIndiblogger\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\nA portal for bloggers, by bloggers. Where one can share their blogs and read others. And then some more…\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eLast Updated: 24-Feb-2015.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bookmarks"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/after-earth/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"After Earth"},{"content":"*\\* This review may contains Spoiler **\nGenre: Action | Adventure | Mystery | Sci-Fi\nAfter Earth is a Sci Fi survival story of a boy named, “Kitai Raige” (Jaden Smith) who crash landed on a planet along with his father “Cypher Raige” (Will Smith), and have to survive various kinds of dangers that Earth greets the crash landers with.\nI have to admit that the trailer when I saw it months ago, did get me excited. But fortunately I saw today that it was directed by M. Night Shyamalan, and all my hopes were out. It was this low expectation that made the movie worth a watch. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Mr. Night, but he have a knack of making movies too boring sometimes. But fortunately his last movie “The Last Airbender” wasn’t his last movie as a director. So when I say After Earth wasn’t a total disappointment, I mean it.\nStory wise movie doesn’t give much to offer. Except the basic premise of survival and some flashbacks there isn’t much to say. Visual effects were also just acceptable. Certainly not that what is expected of this age. The pace of movie was rather acceptable, and father son combo was the selling point.\nBut what I think lacked much in After Earth, was the fact that Earth didn’t seem much dangerous to me. Mr. Night failed to get more dangers for the actor to fight against. And it felt like movie was cut short due to budget constraints at a later stage of production. This is why the time is took to built the pace seemed long, but the actual time devoted to Earth felt short and rushed.\nTalking about performance of Jaden, real son of Will Smith, I have to say he needs much to learn. He is shown to be a boy who gets scared easily. But is later shown to gather courage to do what he sought out to. Its not like this is his fist cameo with Will Smith. He first worked with his father in “The Pursuit of Happyness”. But unlike that film After Earth wasn’t a Will Smith movie. After Earth can be said as Jaden’s role as a first billed star cast.\nOne thing I liked about this movie was the Soundtrack. It felt immersive enough. After all the music was created by James Newton, the man behind soundtrack of Batman Begins, along with Hans Zimmer.\nOverall, movie didn’t feel something to drool over. But is worth a watch. Maybe when it comes out on DVD, or TV. But I liked it. It’s not a lot of times when you get to see a father and son movie that are father and son in real life.\nRating: 6 / 10.\n","date":"9 June 2013","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2013/06/after-earth-danger-is-real-fear-is-a-choice/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003e*\\\u003cem\u003e* This review may contains Spoiler **\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nGenre: \u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eAction | Adventure | Mystery | Sci-Fi\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nAfter Earth is a Sci Fi survival story of a boy named, “Kitai Raige” (Jaden Smith) who crash landed on a planet along with his father “Cypher Raige” (Will Smith), and have to survive various kinds of dangers that Earth greets the crash landers with.\u003cbr\u003e\nI have to admit that the trailer when I saw it months ago, did get me excited. But fortunately I saw today that it was directed by M. Night Shyamalan, and all my hopes were out. It was this low expectation that made the movie worth a watch.\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"640\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/After-Earth-1024x640.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2779\" srcset=\"/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/After-Earth-1024x640.jpg 1024w, /wp-content/uploads/2013/06/After-Earth-300x188.jpg 300w, /wp-content/uploads/2013/06/After-Earth-768x480.jpg 768w, /wp-content/uploads/2013/06/After-Earth.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" /\u003e \u003c/figure\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDon’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Mr. Night, but he have a knack of making movies too boring sometimes. But fortunately his last movie “The Last Airbender” wasn’t his last movie as a director. So when I say After Earth wasn’t a total disappointment, I mean it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStory wise movie doesn’t give much to offer. Except the basic premise of survival and some flashbacks there isn’t much to say. Visual effects were also just acceptable. Certainly not that what is expected of this age. The pace of movie was rather acceptable, and father son combo was the selling point.\u003cbr\u003e\nBut what I think lacked much in After Earth, was the fact that Earth didn’t seem much dangerous to me. Mr. Night failed to get more dangers for the actor to fight against. And it felt like movie was cut short due to budget constraints at a later stage of production. This is why the time is took to built the pace seemed long, but the actual time devoted to Earth felt short and rushed.\u003cbr\u003e\nTalking about performance of Jaden, real son of Will Smith, I have to say he needs much to learn. He is shown to be a boy who gets scared easily. But is later shown to gather courage to do what he sought out to. Its not like this is his fist cameo with Will Smith. He first worked with his father in “The Pursuit of Happyness”. But unlike that film After Earth wasn’t a Will Smith movie. After Earth can be said as Jaden’s role as a first billed star cast.\u003cbr\u003e\nOne thing I liked about this movie was the Soundtrack. It felt immersive enough. After all the music was created by James Newton, the man behind soundtrack of Batman Begins, along with Hans Zimmer.\u003cbr\u003e\nOverall, movie didn’t feel something to drool over. But is worth a watch. Maybe when it comes out on DVD, or TV. But I liked it. It’s not a lot of times when you get to see a father and son movie that are father and son in real life.\u003cbr\u003e\nRating: 6 / 10.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"After Earth : Danger is real, Fear is a choice"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/wil-smith/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Wil Smith"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/art/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Art"},{"content":"I was on IRC when someone posted about weavesilk.com that lets user draw digital art using symmetrical strokes of brush with varied colors. It was a matter of time before the site engulfed me. I tried to create some drawings taking inspiration from real world.\nThese are what I created (click on image to enlarge):\nThe Sun at its full Glory! [][1]Not sure what could be. Maybe a cell or a molecule. [][2]Oh the Symmetry! [][3]A Nuclear Bomb!. [][4]Just something I tried to make for Geeks for my FB page, fb.com/geeksworld. \u0026nbsp;","date":"29 March 2013","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2013/03/digital-art/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI was on IRC when someone posted about \u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://weavesilk.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eweavesilk.com\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e that lets user draw digital art using symmetrical strokes of brush with varied colors. It was a matter of time before the site engulfed me. I tried to create some drawings taking inspiration from real world.\u003cbr\u003e\nThese are what I created (click on image to enlarge):\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdl class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" id=\"attachment_192\" style=\"width: 614px;\"\u003e\n\u003cdt class=\"wp-caption-dt\"\u003e\n\u003c/dt\u003e\n\u003cdd class=\"wp-caption-dd\"\u003e\nThe Sun at its full Glory!\n\u003c/dd\u003e\n\u003c/dl\u003e\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_193\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-193\" style=\"width: 604px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"\u003e[\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-193\" alt=\"Cell Art\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Cell.png\" width=\"604\" height=\"377\" /\u003e][1]\u003cfigcaption id=\"caption-attachment-193\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"\u003eNot sure what could be. Maybe a cell or a molecule.\u003c/figcaption\u003e\u003c/figure\u003e","title":"Digital Art"},{"content":"I intent to open a recurring account so that I can accumulate some amount by saving a little each month to be payed later after a year as an LIC policy installment. I scoured over 3 banks to look for which of them provide the best interest rates.\nHere’s what I discovered:\nICICI Bank (http://www.icicibank.com/interest-rates.html) :\nRates of Interest (% p.a.) w.e.f January 26, 2013 Maturity Period General Senior Citizen** 6 months 7.00 7.50 9 months 7.00 7.50 12 months 7.50 8.00 15 months 9.00 9.50 18 months 9.00 9.50 21 months 9.00 9.50 24 months 8.75 9.50 27 months 8.75 9.50 30 months 8.75 9.50 33 months 8.75 9.50 3 years to less than 5 years 8.75 9.50 5 years upto 10 years 8.50 9.25 Citibank (https://www.citibank.co.in/servlets/DCGOutputServlet?txRx=txRx) :\nRecurring Deposits These rates are updated as of 16-MAR-2013 Tenure In Months 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 For amount \u003c15 lakh* 7.25% 7.25% 7.25% 7.25% 7.25% 7.25% 7.25% 7.25% 7.25% 7.25% 7.25% 7.25% 7.25% Canara Bank (http://www.canarabank.com/English/Scripts/DepositAccounts.aspx) :\n2. TERM DEPOSITS A. Domestic Rate of Interest (%) p.a. For Deposits less than Rs.15 lakh\nw.e.f. 08.03.2013 Term Deposits (All Maturities) General Public Senior Citizen Rate of\nInterest (% p.a) Annualised\nInterest yield ** Rate of\nInterest (% p.a) Annualised\nInterest yield ** 7 days to 14 days * 4.00 4.00 4.50 4.50 15 days to 30 days 4.50 4.50 5.00 5.00 31 days to 45 days 7.00 7.00 7.50 7.50 46 days to 90 days 7.50 7.50 8.00 8.00 91 days to 179 days 8.00 8.00 8.50 8.50 180 days to 269 days 7.25 7.32 7.75 7.83 270 days to less than 1 year 9.00 9.20 9.50 9.73 1 year \u0026 above to less than 2 years 9.05 9.36 9.55 9.90 2 years \u0026 above to less than 3 years 9.05 9.80 9.55 10.39 3 years \u0026 above to less than 5 years 9.05 10.27 9.55 10.91 5 years \u0026 above to less than 8 years 9.05 11.29 9.55 12.06 8 years \u0026 above to 10 years 9.05 13.08 9.55 14.10 Now I am confused between because of following points:\nWhy is there so much disparities between rates? Does “Term deposit” a term used by Canara Bank for “Recurring deposit”? What is Annualised Interest yield?\nSo far, ICICI bank is luring me to open a recurring account with them because of their high interest rate of 9% on 15 month term. But I don’t know if there’s a catch if any. Since I am not sure about if the interest rates described above is for recurring account or not. Further investigation is under the way. ","date":"16 March 2013","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2013/03/best-bank-for-recurring-deposit/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI intent to open a recurring account so that I can accumulate some amount by saving a little each month to be payed later after a year as an LIC policy installment. I scoured over 3 banks to look for which of them provide the best interest rates.\u003cbr\u003e\nHere’s what I discovered:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/huge.49.248446.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-187\" alt=\"huge.49.248446\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/huge.49.248446.jpg\" width=\"450\" height=\"326\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Best Bank for Recurring Deposit"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/planning/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Planning"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/facebook-page/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Facebook Page"},{"content":"I have been an admin of a page for quite a while now. I wanted to document some points that one have to take in mind while posting on pages. Cause with greater power comes greater responsibility.\n1. Don’t Spam: #A page should have interval between posts. No one likes an endless stream of posts consecutively over a short period of time. You can use apps such as Hootsuite to schedule posts over optimal intervals of time for a greater impact.\n2. Try to engage readers: #Ask for feedback, like, ‘do you think…’, ‘will you…’ etc in the end of your posts.\nDon’t post a link directly as a post. Always give a preview of what the link is about.\nInstead of “Checkout this link for new Samsung S4″, you can post something like this, “Samsung S4 seems a really cool gadget that have taken us for a ride ever since we have got our hands on it. It has this and that feature. You can checkout this link for a hands on review…”.\nPoint is to make a user “engage” and get their attention and if you get successful in doing that, your reader will automatically want to read more.\nRemember, readers don’t like posts to which they can’t connect to. While on the other hand they don’t like posts which sounds too artificial too. So, try not to overdo it!\n3. Your posts on a page is not personal: #Remember on a page, you are not posting personally, but you are representing a page. People don’t know the admin behind a page, but they do know the “personality” of the one behind it. So, instead of “I think” you should post in a passive voice. Like, “We think”, or “(page name) think”, or “admin of (page name) thinks” sounds more professional.\n4. Don’t use flaming language: #As an extension to the above point, it’s not a good idea to flame user.\nSince you are representing an “entity”, you can’t really take sides. You can’t flame a reader, even if they are incorrect. Its like, instead of telling “they are wrong”\ntell them what is right. That means, no pointing fingers personally.\nSay, someone posted, “windows rocks, Linux sucks”, you can reply, “well, Linux have many useful features which Windows is far away from. Try this, this and that… we are sure you will like it.”\nPoint is not to reach to conclusion, and let user decide whats best.\n5. Less tl;dr posts, more images: #Try to post images more than long text based posts, that readers might find it too long to invest their time in. A sweet image with a catchy caption have higher rate of shares and more potential of becoming a viral material.\n6. Its OK to share stuff from other sources if credit is given: #Facebook, or Internet in its entirety have one thing at its core: “Sharing”. So sharing someone else’s content is acceptable as long as credit is given where it’s due.\nOf course, this all comes down to personal ethics (next point) and whether your page is commercial or not (in which case sharing other’s content would be plagiarism). So, discretion is advised.\nOf course, original content has its own unique value.\n7. Ethics #There are some ethics that every page should have. For eg, Don’t like your own posts as a page owner. You may like comments though, as long as it’s genuinely good, since that may be a subject of jealously among other fans who comment.\nAlso, as an extension to the 2nd point, to engage users you should also reply to queries that fans have asked. It’s not a good ethic to leave your fans starved for a query, specially if it related to the post you made. This is good as long as comments don’t run out in hundreds (or thousands), in which case it’s not even remotely possible to answer all of the queries.\n8. Treat your fans with dignity: #Nothing is more precious than someone giving you time. But it’s possible that sometimes fans don’t respond well to your posts, like you expected. Even when that happens you have to understand that likes and/or comments are not the only important factors.\nRemember, if the page is not commercial, it pays to see those likes and comments. And it gives a warm feeling to see you made someone aware of cool stuff!\nThat’s enough for some.\nAnd lastly the most important point is,\n9. Don’t forget to Enjoy #After all if your page is not (yet for) commercial, the only reason you are posting is because you enjoy doing so! 🙂\n","date":"9 March 2013","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2013/03/nine-rules-for-how-to-effectively-manage-an-fb-page/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI have been an admin of a page for quite a while now. I wanted to document some points that one have to take in mind while posting on pages. Cause with greater power comes greater responsibility.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"1-dont-spam\" class=\"relative group\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e1. Don’t Spam:\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#1-dont-spam\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eA page should have interval between posts. No one likes an endless stream of posts consecutively over a short period of time. You can use apps such as Hootsuite to schedule posts over optimal intervals of time for a greater impact.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"2-try-to-engage-readers\" class=\"relative group\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e2. Try to engage readers:\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#2-try-to-engage-readers\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eAsk for feedback, like, ‘do you think…’, ‘will you…’ etc in the end of your posts.\u003cbr\u003e\nDon’t post a link directly as a post. Always give a preview of what the link is about.\u003cbr\u003e\nInstead of “Checkout this link for new Samsung S4″, you can post something like this, “Samsung S4 seems a really cool gadget that have taken us for a ride ever since we have got our hands on it. It has this and that feature. You can checkout this link for a hands on review…”.\u003cbr\u003e\nPoint is to make a user “engage” and get their attention and if you get successful in doing that, your reader will automatically want to read more.\u003cbr\u003e\nRemember, readers don’t like posts to which they can’t connect to. While on the other hand they don’t like posts which sounds too artificial too. So, try not to overdo it!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Nine rules for how to effectively manage an FB page"},{"content":"I had low expectations from the movie before I went to watch it on Friday night with 3 of my friends. Owning to the title of the movie and Bunny (Ranbir), I thought this will be another cheesy bollywood rom-com film. First half of the film was right upto what I was expecting. Typical masala type movie with a dance number and awesome larger than life “Hero” character. But the humor didn’t disappointed, and there were many instances were we got the opportunity to laugh. Specially the tomboyish character Aditi (Kalki Koechlin, I like her), and his dialogues.\nSecond part of the movie is where the movie changed its pace a bit. And we get to see some of the emotional side of Bunny and his friend Avi (Aditya Roy Kapoor), his battle for Naina (Deepika Padukone) against his dreams, and even his discombobulation for his family. Second part is also where we get to see some good songs like, “ilahi mera jee aaye” and Ranbir’s dance on “Badtameez Dil”.\nWell, to me who don’t usually watch Bollywood, it was a movie which entertained me and my friends a lot. One good thing about the movie was spectacular locations, and cinematography. To an extent that it can be fairly compared to Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara.\nWhat I liked:\nCinematography at spectacular locations\nSongs and Music (specially, “Illahi”)\nKalki Koechlin :p\nRanbir’s dance\nClimax which (and I don’t get a chance to say it much) didn’t feel over dramatic.\nIn fact, whole second part felt much grounded to reality.\nWhat I didn’t like so much:\nNon existent story\nStereotyped characters\nWatch this movie with friends or family for its entertainment value. Watch this movie for songs and for its youthful energy. But don’t expect to be awe with story or hidden meanings.\n","date":"1 January 2013","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2013/01/yeh-jawaani-hai-deewani/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI had low expectations from the movie before I went to watch it on Friday night with 3 of my friends. Owning to the title of the movie and Bunny (Ranbir), I thought this will be another cheesy bollywood rom-com film. First half of the film was right upto what I was expecting. Typical masala type movie with a dance number and awesome larger than life “Hero” character. But the humor didn’t disappointed, and there were many instances were we got the opportunity to laugh. Specially the tomboyish character Aditi (Kalki Koechlin, I like her), and his dialogues.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Yeh-Jawaani-Hai-Deewani-31.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-206 aligncenter\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Yeh-Jawaani-Hai-Deewani-31.jpg\" alt=\"Yeh-Jawaani-Hai-Deewani-3\" width=\"1024\" height=\"680\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/2012-movies/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"2012 Movies"},{"content":"Genre: Action | Sci-Fi | Thriller\nIf you know me any better you would know that I love Science Fiction. And Time Travel stories is what I live for. Maybe that’s why I was excited beyond my wits when I went to watch Looper.\nRian Johnson‘s Looper is a Sci Fi thriller based on the aspects of Time Travel. I won’t reveal the plot apart from quoting IMDb:\n\u0026#8220;In 2074, when the mob wants to get rid of someone, the target is sent 30 years into the past, where a hired gun awaits. Someone like Joe, who one day learns the mob wants to \u0026#8216;close the loop\u0026#8217; by transporting back Joe\u0026#8217;s future self.\u0026#8221; You get to know the plot in the first 10 min itself as a self narration by Joe played by “Joseph Gordon-Levitt” as a lead role. And then begins a story set 32 years into the future. It doesn’t take long before we encounter “Bruce Willis” played as the future Joe, which sets the story in true motion.\nWhat strikes the most is the low budget of the movie. With less than half of the budget of Unbreakable (another Bruce Willis movie from 2000 and the closest movie with which I can compare the two in terms of production value) I did feel it lacked the glam of Hollywood. But that doesn’t mean movie is bad. In fact story of Looper is quite original and which stands it out from the crowd of sequels/prequels that have engulfed Hollywood today.\nThat being said, Looper have it’s share of loop holes which for any time travel movie is hard to escape and does take theories such as grand father paradox for granted. So you will have to suspend your beliefs and knowledge about time travel a bit. Also, its not the kind of movie that lets say, you go out with “a group of friends to enjoy”! It’s a story which has character development in its heart. And Time travel is just a part of the story not the other way around.\nBut, personally I expected a bit more from the movie. I expected a lot of questions to be answered. I wished to see a bit of more future, circa year 2074. And I wanted more on the background of the organization which was leading the people called loopers. But that’s just me. Maybe like many other vague films out there, those were left unanswered on purpose.\nI would say a good one time watch if you are not high on expectations.\nRating: 7/10. (O.5 extra for Bruce Willis) 😛\n","date":"14 October 2012","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2012/10/looper-2012/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eGenre: \u003cstrong\u003eAction | Sci-Fi | Thriller\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-60\" title=\"Looper-Trailer-Previews\" alt=\"Looper\" src=\"https://moviemindblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/looper-trailer-previews1.jpg\" width=\"545\" height=\"296\" /\u003e\n\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you know me any better you would know that I love Science Fiction. And Time Travel stories is what I live for. Maybe that’s why I was excited beyond my wits when I went to watch \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1276104/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eLooper\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0426059/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eRian Johnson\u003c/a\u003e‘s Looper is a Sci Fi thriller based on the aspects of Time Travel. I won’t reveal the plot apart from quoting IMDb:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003cem\u003e\u0026#8220;In 2074, when the mob wants to get rid of someone, the target is sent 30 years into the past, where a hired gun awaits. Someone like Joe, who one day learns the mob wants to \u0026#8216;close the loop\u0026#8217; by transporting back Joe\u0026#8217;s future self.\u0026#8221;\u003c/em\u003e\n\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou get to know the plot in the first 10 min itself as a self narration by Joe played by “\u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0330687/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eJoseph Gordon-Levitt\u003c/a\u003e” as a lead role. And then begins a story set 32 years into the future. It doesn’t take long before we encounter “\u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000246/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eBruce Willis\u003c/a\u003e” played as the future Joe, which sets the  story in true motion.\u003cbr\u003e\nWhat strikes the most is the low budget of the movie. With less than half of the budget of Unbreakable (another Bruce Willis movie from 2000 and the closest movie with which I can compare the two in terms of production value) I did feel it lacked the glam of Hollywood. But that doesn’t mean movie is bad. In fact story of Looper is quite original and which stands it out from the crowd of sequels/prequels that have engulfed Hollywood today.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Looper (2012)"},{"content":"There are some rules, or as I say, 7 Commandments which I follow while watching a movie. It is my courtesy towards the movie.\n1. I watch any movie from the very first second of its beginning, until the very last moment until its credits get over. Leaving the movie when credit BEGIN to roll, can also be allowed, but is not preferred.\n2. I never multitask, while watching a movie. Thats because I have to catch every frame of it. Technically its not possible (cause we have to blink!), but virtually it is.\n3. I remain far away from Spoilers as much as possible until I watch the movie. And I hate when someone spoils it for me. (Then I become angry!)\n4. I may read about the plot, and watch its trailer before I go for a watch, but that’s only to maintain the excitement and enthusiasm. And so that I may understand the story better. But to the extent that it doesn’t violate Rule No. 3. (Read above.)\n5. I prefer to watch any movie in its native language with subtitles, rather than dubbed. Reason is simple – to listen to the original sound, it contains the level of enthusiasm, which can’t be replicated in the dubbed version.\nBut this rule is not strict. And I sometime break it, when I sense that movie is going to be complex, and more verbal.\n6. I hate when someone breaks the aura of moment between a sensational movie scene, with the ring tone of his mobile, or to explain his theory over what just happened, or to predict what IS going to happen, in an attempt to show his smartness!\n7. Rules 1 and 2 are of utmost importance, and shall never be broken by me, nor do I expect anyone else to break when the one is watching a movie with me.\n","date":"10 October 2012","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/7-commandments/","section":"Vineet Kumar","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere are some rules, or as I say, 7 Commandments which I follow while watching a movie. It is my courtesy towards the movie.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: x-large;\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e. I watch any movie from the very first second of its beginning, until the very last moment until its credits get over. Leaving the movie when credit BEGIN to roll, can also be allowed, but is not preferred.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: x-large;\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e. I never multitask, while watching a movie. Thats because I have to catch every frame of  it. Technically its not possible (cause we have to blink!), but virtually it is.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: x-large;\"\u003e3\u003c/span\u003e. I remain far away from Spoilers as much as possible until I watch the movie. And I hate when someone spoils it for me. (Then I become angry!)\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: x-large;\"\u003e4\u003c/span\u003e. I may read about the plot, and watch its trailer before I go for a watch, but that’s only to maintain the excitement and enthusiasm. And so that I may understand the story better. But to the extent that it doesn’t violate Rule No. 3. (Read above.)\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: x-large;\"\u003e5\u003c/span\u003e. I prefer to watch any movie in its native language with subtitles, rather than dubbed. Reason is simple – to listen to the original sound, it contains the level of enthusiasm, which can’t be replicated in the dubbed version.\u003cbr\u003e\nBut this rule is not strict. And I sometime break it, when I sense that movie is going to be complex, and more verbal.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: x-large;\"\u003e6\u003c/span\u003e. I hate when someone breaks the aura of moment between a sensational movie scene, with the ring tone of his mobile, or to explain his theory over what just happened, or to predict what IS going to happen, in an attempt to show his smartness!\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-size: x-large;\"\u003e7\u003c/span\u003e. Rules 1 and 2 are of utmost importance, and shall never be broken by me, nor do I expect anyone else to break when the one is watching a movie with me.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"7 Commandments"},{"content":"The old contact form ran on a WordPress plugin, which a static site can\u0026rsquo;t host. Email works just as well:\ncontact@vineetkumar.me vyom@mail.edufor.me\n","date":"10 October 2012","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/contact/","section":"Vineet Kumar","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe old contact form ran on a WordPress plugin, which a static site can\u0026rsquo;t host.\nEmail works just as well:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"mailto:contact@vineetkumar.me\"\u003econtact@vineetkumar.me\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"mailto:vyom@mail.edufor.me\"\u003evyom@mail.edufor.me\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca title=\"IndiBlogger - The Largest Indian Blogger Community\" href=\"https://www.indiblogger.in/vyom\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.indiblogger.in/badges/medium_orange.png\" alt=\"IndiBlogger - The Largest Indian Blogger Community\" width=\"147\" height=\"62\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Contact Me"},{"content":"Here is the list of links and stuffs that I compiled for convenience:\nThe most important link, to get technical information about any movies, and to read love-hate reviews, (which I enjoy very much): IMDb\nGoogle listings of the movies which are on the Celluloid screens across the place you live: Google Movies. (Google Showtimes was discontinued on November 1, 2016.)\nCINEMA HALL (THEATERS) WEBSITES: #Nothing beats visiting the sites of the respective Cinema Halls, to get hands on information. So here is the website links, hall-wise:\nBig Cinemas (www.bigcinemas.com/in now not functional)* Wave Cinemas PVR Cinemas (www.pvrcinemas.com/home now returns gateway timeout) DT Cinemas (www.dt-cinemas.com now not functional) Fun Cinemas (www.funcinemas.com doesn\u0026#8217;t load now) Spice Cinemas (www.spicecinemas.com now a blog) Single website to book shows: Book My Show\nMOVIE CATALOGING APPS #If you are anything like me, and keep a collection of a lot of movies with yourself, then a Movie Cataloging software is an urgent need, to make you life a little simpler, and fun. So here is the link to the best Movie Cataloging applications from lifehacker you can try: Five Movie Catalog Application.\nAn awesome online catalog, to keep track of all the movies you watch. And it’s more than that, it’s social network for the movie buffs: icheckmovies. Add me here: My profile.\nFORUM DISCUSSIONS ON MOVIES #Forum links to discuss latest movies or, to give your own opinions on movies you would like others to watch: (Of course you have to have a forum account, which you can easily register get by registering).\nMovie Discussion Thread. Upcoming Movies Discussion Thread. It’s sad to see so many theaters going shut, due to lockdown imposed due to coronavirus or otherwise. This article last updated: 27-May-2020\n","date":"10 October 2012","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/important-links-stuffs/","section":"Vineet Kumar","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere is the list of links and stuffs that I compiled for convenience:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe most important link, to get technical information about any movies, and to read love-hate reviews, (which I enjoy very much): \u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"\u003eIMDb\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Important Links \u0026 Stuffs"},{"content":"I like to call myself a Technologist. I love technology and the way it can be used to solve almost any problem. Next thing which I love is the movie world. If given a choice to live in the real world or in any virtual world of a movie, I would choose the world of Back to the Future (BTTF).\nI am a fan of Spielberg. I love his creations. Robert Zemeckis is great for he had written the epic story of BTTF. The Legacy: # Watching movies is in all it\u0026#8217;s glory, like living another life, or at the very least experience it. The world which a movie brings to our mind, while we try to comprehend what and how the story unfolds, is no way less thrilling than a detective trying to solve a murder mystery. Some movies bring about every emotion from our faces, which we try to hide in these days of robotic life. Some movies make you cry, some make you aghast, while others make you Laugh Out Loud! Not really sure how it makes you feel fear, cause I rarely experience horror movies. I keep a distance from it since I think, there’s already a plethora of things to fear from our real lives! The Imagination: # God have given each human have a gift. To Imagine. That\u0026#8217;s the fuel for the movies. We can conceive of almost everything and anything with the help of our mind. You can live in any life that you can imagine. You can love anyone. You can die for your passion. You can be a hero. You can be a villain. You can be a superstar. Or you can just be a part of someone who have just witnessed a story and learned something from it. You can be inspired or you can inspire someone. And all of the magic happens in about a couple of hours, when you are lost in a world far far away. The Achievement: # I think the biggest achievement happened when Movies met Technology. Now directors can do the job of bringing their Imagination to Celluloid in a more fluid manner. For movies, that means more freedom of expression. More unseen places and with more creative visualization and VFX that was never possible before. Technology have given wings to our imagination and when both of them blend almost the result is surreal.\nIn the Movie review section of this website I try to write reviews on some of the movies I watch from the perspective of a Technologist and I hope I do justice. ","date":"10 October 2012","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/prologue/","section":"Vineet Kumar","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\"\u003eI like to call myself a Technologist. I love technology and the way it can be used to solve almost any problem. Next thing which I love is the movie world. If given a choice to live in the real world or in any virtual world of a movie, I would choose the world of \u003ca href=\"http://themoviemind.blogspot.com/2010/01/back-to-future_01.html\"\u003eBack to the Future\u003c/a\u003e (BTTF).\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Prologue"},{"content":"Well, I can only wish to be an astronaut! I am actually a day-dreamer/husband/dad of two kids, working on some random projects, trying to find solutions to the equations of life using technology. Few years ago, I bought myself a bike and love riding all over the town. Read about it here.\nI love Science Fiction stories, believe that Earth is not the only planet which has life and know for a fact that \u0026lsquo;Back to the Future\u0026rsquo; is the greatest trilogy of all times!\nI like to help people and share my knowledge in best ways possible. World is filled with some amazing stuff. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter how much I discover, it never seizes to surprise. This place on the web is just a medium to express some of my discoveries and an attempt to consolidate and share my views and knowledge with the world. I hope you will find it useful.\nYou can also call me Vyom. The name\u0026rsquo;s inspired from a science fiction show that use to air on TV in 1990s, about someone who use to capture the prisoners and flying across the whole Universe, to do so. As a child I was always fascinated by the vast and limitless expanse which the universe always seemed for. And then, the theory of Multiverse came along, and my life was never the same. But more on that later.\nI like to help people and share my knowledge in best ways possible. So social communities provided by forums are the best place to hangout for me. I like creative things and like to make myself busy writing, reading and watching things that surprises me.\nHere on this page I have documented some of the excerpts from my life:\nMy areas of Interests: #Non technical: #Reading: #I love reading. But lately I have doing most of the reading online and PDFs. But I also have a collection of books that I love. Stories from HG Wells, Jules Verne and Issac Asimov are my favorites. But lately I have got myself a Kindle and have vastly more collection in the form of ebooks.\nWatching Movies: #My favorite director while growing up was Steven Spielberg. is movies like Artificial Intelligence, Jurassic Park and Minority Report have made me fall in love with Hollywood. While later I found respect in the works of directors like Stanley Kubrick, Robert Zemeckis and Christopher Nolan. You can have a taste of the movies I recommend in this list.\nRiding: #Recently when I bought my first bike, I realized that I love riding. I think I don’t need therapy when I just need to feel the wind to calm down. It’s absolutely enthralling.\nTechnical: #Writing: #I love to write articles and blogs about the things I love to do. So I mostly end up writing technical articles about Android, WordPress and also reviews of movies and show that I would like to discuss my views on. Writing is a very technical process and hence it’s under the Technical section.\nPainting/Photographing: #I use to love painting when I was a child, and if given the chance I would absolutely love to pick it up again. Alas, didn’t paint for a very long time now. The love for painting have been overshadows by the hobby of photography. Needless to say that taking a good photograph requires immense amount of technical skills, something I am still trying to learn.\nVideo editing: #I love to edit videos. Since I have appreciated the art of movie making since the time I first lay my eyes on TV, I have been constantly investing time to learn Adobe Premiere and love to upload random videos on my Youtube channel. Well, editing is a very time consuming process. Something that has a very steep learning curve, and which I can never have enough of it.\nProgramming: #It’s something I knew I always meant to do. Even before I learnt my hobby of photography and video editing. I use to love studying C++ in school. Making something out of nothing and watching it executing, taking inputs from user and performing actions that was intended successfully was always a rewarding experience. Of course when it didn’t perform actions that was intended, it was equally frustrating, but then there are only two kinds of code in the world. One that starts pathetic and remains pathetic, while the other starts pathetic and grows better as time progresses. It’s the persistence and patience that is needed to achieve what you require, is what makes programming a rewarding experience.\nHere are some of the experience in programming that I have had over the course of years:\nProgramming Languages #C and C++: #I thought I could take over the world using C++ at the time I was studying it in school. I created a whole project as a hobby and when it was time to submit a project for the boards I just submitted that hobby project and it got me a distinction. C++ is what triggered the love of programming inside me. Later I studied C and came to appreciate the roots of the language even better.\nI learned the basics of programming with C++, including command line parameters, learning to use libraries, making graphics in BGI and the basics of OpenGL. It was fun while it lasted.\n","date":"8 October 2012","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/about/","section":"Vineet Kumar","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, I can only wish to be an astronaut! I am actually a day-dreamer/husband/dad of two kids, working on some random projects, trying to find solutions to the  equations of life using technology. Few years ago, I bought myself a bike and love riding all over the town. Read about it \u003ca href=\"/2018/06/suzuki-gixxer/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"About"},{"content":" Cause data = “My Precious”! Little did the founders of Android know that this Linux based Operating System would become the world’s leading smartphone platform when the first Android-powered phone was sold in October 2008. When compared with the now legacy OS like Nokia’s Symbian, BlackBerry OS and iOS, Android was able to dent the mobile OS market rapidly and with a greater success than others that came before it. Being an open source OS helped Android and as it’s approaching to Jelly Bean it’s becoming more stable, reliable and fluid like never before. But as of ICS, there are a few nooks and crannies that a user experience over the course of using it. And as such Google have make sure all the data is safely backed up on clouds of their servers a user has to make sure it’s working like it’s supposed to. In this guide I am going to mention some steps that you can take in order to make sure majority of data is backed up or the clouds or on the card, since precaution is always better. And in case you are doing hard reset or just plunging into the rooting and custom ROM’s venture, backing up data is and should be at the first priority. So here we go: 1. Contacts backup:\nThe first time a user starts his Android phone he is greeted with a Google Sign-in screen. And although the phone can be used without signing into your Google account, it’s a great step to make sure your contacts are not backed up!\nSo, if you haven’t signed in, do that now. And make sure “Sync Service” is enabled. You can check that by going into, Settings -\u003e Accounts \u0026 Sync and making sure your Google ID is listed on the page and Sync is turned on. This will make sure all your contacts are backed up, which you can check by going to Gmail and observing the “Contacts” page.\n2. SMS backup:\nYou can take the backup of all the messages in your phone through a nifty app called, SMS Backup+(Link). Just install this app, check the “Connect”checkbox, let it connect to your Gmail, and finally use “Backup” and “Restore”buttons to backup or restore all your messages in one tap. You can check if your messages are backed up by logging onto your Gmail account and browsing to the “SMS” label on the pane to the left side. If it’s of any consolation this app also backs up your call log details on Google account and is kept under a separate label “Call Logs”. 3. Application backup:\nAll the application which is installed on your phone such as “Talking Tom” is called an App. And in case you don’t want to re-download all the apps once you reset your phone/install a custom ROM, the easiest way to do so is a file manager “Astro” (Link). Astro is a pretty robust app that also allows you to backup all the apps installed on your phone in .apk files, which are .exe equivalent in Windows OS but for Android.\nInstall Astro. Open the app. Select “Application Backup”. Checkmark the checkbox beside “Backup”button and tap the button. There you go. Once the backup completes in a minute you can browse through the .apk files which would be kept in “backups” folder on your SD card. Later you can use the same “Application Backup” feature of Astro to restore the apps easily one by one. 4. Application Data backup:\nBacking up application is one thing, and the data associated with it is something other and more critical then the former. It can also be the most tedious task, but definitely worth it. This step can vary with each app. But majority of apps should have a setting which allows you to backup its associated data easily. Like: i) AndChat (IRC Client): You goto “Settings”-\u003e “Data Backup” -\u003e “Export Data”. And it will save the server settings onto card, from which you can import once you re-install the app. Also to take backup of Chats just make sure checkmark of “Enable Chat Logs” is enabled under Chat Logs setting. ii) Astrid Task: This app provides multiple ways to backup. Just open the app, goto settings menu and select “Accounts \u0026 Settings” -\u003e “Sync \u0026 backup”, and select backup of your choice. I would recommend “Google tasks”.\niii) ColorNote: Goto “Settings” -\u003e “Online Sync”. And click sync button.\niv) Opera Browser: Opera has a special feature to make sure all your bookmarks are backed up. Open Opera, goto Settings -\u003e “Opera Link” and create an account if you haven’t done it before. Next time you install Opera you just have to login to this Opera Link and all your bookmarks will be backed up. Note: Opera Link also works on Desktop version of the browser. So using “Opera Link” you are making sure all your bookmarks will be synchronized over mobile as well as desktop PC!\nv) WhatsApp: Little do everyone know that all the chat logs of WhatsApp can be backed up too! Just open the app. Goto Settings -\u003e “Chat Preferences” -\u003e “Chat history backup”. And all your WhatsApp messages will be backed up on the SD card. Next time you install WhatsApp, it will automatically ask from you, if you want to recover chats from these logs. Smooth eh?!\nvi) Final word: Is you need to take backup of data from an app not listed above, fret not. Because you just need to search for the setting which lets you do it. Having said that, not all data from the apps needs to be backed up. For eg: Email apps like Gmail and Yahoo, GTalk, Facebook are all the kinds of apps that re-fetch the data from servers when you use them. Pics in your Gallery need not be backed up since those are already in your card. Even Dropbox keeps all data to cloud, so you don’t need to worry about it. Other thing is to consider are Games. I am not sure if many games allow the player data to be backed up. But if you ever need to do so, you can use Titanium backup app, the explanation of which isn’t in the scope of this article! 😛 5. Complete OS backup:\nCall yourself paranoid, or being extra cautious, but there can be good reasons for the desire to backup the “Entire OS” of your phone. Just like taking an image of the OS and restoring it if needed. But to do that your phone needs to be rooted and a custom recovery needs to be flashed. Then you can take a Nandroid backup. There are many guides available to do that. But for the sake of brevity I want to mention that if you just want to reset your phone and don’t want to root it (since it voids warranty), you won’t need to back up the entire OS. Now you are equip with enough knowledge to backup your Android device. Reset it or not, play with custom ROM or not, it’s always help to have your device backed up. Good luck and Godspeed! 😉 ","date":"7 October 2012","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2012/10/guide-to-backing-up-your-android-data/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cdiv dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \n  \u003cdiv class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;\"\u003eCause data =\u003ci\u003e “My Precious”!\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;\"\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left; text-indent: 0;\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;\"\u003eLittle did the founders of Android know that this Linux based Operating System would become the world’s leading smartphone platform when the first Android-powered phone was sold in October 2008. When compared with the now legacy OS like Nokia’s Symbian, BlackBerry OS and iOS, Android was able to dent the mobile OS market rapidly and with a greater success than others that came before it.\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left; text-indent: 0;\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;\"\u003eBeing an open source OS helped Android and as it’s approaching to Jelly Bean it’s becoming more stable, reliable and fluid like never before. But as of ICS, there are a few nooks and crannies that a user experience over the course of using it. And as such Google have make sure all the data is safely backed up on clouds of their servers a user has to make sure it’s working like it’s supposed to. \u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left; text-indent: 0;\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;\"\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left; text-indent: 0;\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;\"\u003eIn this guide I am going to mention some steps that you can take in order to make sure majority of data is backed up or the clouds or on the card, since precaution is always better. And in case you are doing hard reset or just plunging into the rooting and custom ROM’s venture, backing up data is and should be at the first priority. So here we go:\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left; text-indent: 0;\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;\"\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-indent: 0;\"\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class=\"MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst\" style=\"text-align: left; text-indent: -.25in;\"\u003e\n\u003c!--[if !supportLists]--\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 16pt; line-height: 130%;\"\u003e1.\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 7pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;\"\u003e  \u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 16pt; line-height: 130%;\"\u003eContacts backup:\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 16pt; line-height: 130%;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class=\"MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle\" style=\"text-align: left; text-indent: 0;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003ca style=\"clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;\" href=\"http://i.imgur.com/3zBY1.png\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://i.imgur.com/3zBY1.png\" width=\"213\" height=\"320\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;\"\u003eThe first time a user starts his Android phone he is greeted with a Google Sign-in screen. And although the phone can be used without signing into your Google account, it’s a great step to make sure your contacts are \u003cb\u003enot\u003c/b\u003e backed up!\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;\"\u003e\u003cspan id=\"goog_1213096234\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan id=\"goog_1213096235\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e \u003c/span\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \n\u003cdiv class=\"MsoListParagraphCxSpLast\" style=\"text-align: left; text-indent: 0;\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;\"\u003eSo, if you haven’t signed in, do that \u003cb\u003enow\u003c/b\u003e. And make sure \u003cb\u003e“Sync Service”\u003c/b\u003e is enabled. You can check that by going into, \u003cb\u003eSettings -\u003e Accounts \u0026 Syn\u003c/b\u003ec and making sure your Google ID is listed on the page and Sync is turned on. This will make sure all your contacts are backed up, which you can check by going to Gmail and observing the \u003cb\u003e“Contacts”\u003c/b\u003e page.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 130%;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"MsoListParagraphCxSpLast\" style=\"text-indent: 0;\"\u003e","title":"Guide to Backing Up Your Android Data"},{"content":"Watched The Amazing Spider-Man today morning. It was amazing. Despite that it was a reboot, I thoroughly enjoyed it. There were various aspects which made this movie less dramatic but more closer to reality. I got to know a lot about Spiderman then the previous franchise ever told. Since the movie covered some aspects of the Peter Parker’s parents, it felt more involving. From the childhood to how he managed to become Spiderman, the character development seemed phenomenal. But the role of Irrfan Khan totally looked like it was for namesake.\nWhoever saying it contains less action is disillusioned, or maybe skipped some scenes while buying popcorn or something I think the action was justified. Granted not a lot of action sequences were done in broad day light like it did in the former trilogy, but that played a little role in making the movie a little dark and grim.\nOne of the things that I missed in this version of the Spiderman was the quote, “With great power, comes great responsibility”. But I totally loved the humorous side of Peter Parker. The appearance of Stan Lee was also funny! And Gwen Stacy (played by Emma Stone) was a welcome change. She was cute!\nAlso, I would like to say that it’s better not to compare it with the original Spiderman. Both have their places. Personally I won’t be able to tell which of them is better until the end of the trilogy (if it’s done). But the after credit scenes guaranteed a sequel that seems worth waiting for.\nTotally worth the watch for me. Might also go for a second time, with a friend. Rating: 4/5.\n","date":"5 July 2012","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2012/07/the-amazing-spiderman/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWatched The Amazing Spider-Man today morning.\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1018\" height=\"636\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/the_amazing_spider_man_2012-wide1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2526\" /\u003e \u003c/figure\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was amazing. Despite that it was a reboot, I thoroughly enjoyed it. There were various aspects which made this movie less dramatic but more closer to reality. I got to know a lot about Spiderman then the previous franchise ever told. Since the movie covered some aspects of the Peter Parker’s parents, it felt more involving. From the childhood to how he managed to become Spiderman, the character development seemed phenomenal. But the role of Irrfan Khan totally looked like it was for namesake.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Amazing Spider-man"},{"content":" Plot (from IMDb): \u0026#8220;A team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.\u0026#8221;Let me begin by saying that I haven\u0026#8217;t watched the original movies of the Alien franchise, to which Prometheus is being regarded as the prequel too. So I didn\u0026#8217;t have any expectations or pre notions about the movie. But I was aware of the basic plot of the previous movies, which involved gruesome ways of their attacks.The genre of the movie says, it\u0026#8217;s an Action, Sci-fi and Horror. Sadly to me, it seemed to fit in neither of the three perfectly.The movie begins slowly. Too slowly. And it\u0026#8217;s not a complaint. I have seen good movies with slow start. But this one just keeps on dragging. There was no character development so to speak. Except that of Noomi Rapace (Elizabeth Shaw, in movie) and maybe of Michael Fassbender (David, in movie).\nI didn\u0026#8217;t felt the story either. And I won\u0026#8217;t say screenplay was any good either.\nSpeaking of horror, there was maybe just a couple of time where I was spooked but overall, saying Prometheus a horror movie will be injustice. And that is coming from someone who is not a fan of horror movies just because they scare the sh!t out of me.\nThe built up which is developed in the first half of the movie just doesn\u0026#8217;t justify the climax. Almost everyone who will watch the movie will agree that the climax could have been a lot better. The way it ended it looked like I was watching the first episode of a series.\nSomething which is good and which was apparent from the trailer was the cinematography. It was good. But again not something we haven\u0026#8217;t seen before.\nMaybe these kinds of movies are just not my type. Maybe the ones who like \u0026#8220;Alien\u0026#8221; and its sequels may relate something to it\u0026#8230; but for me, Prometheus was one movie I could have easily skipped if I haven\u0026#8217;t got the chance to get the premiere passes.\nRating: 2.5/5 ","date":"8 June 2012","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2012/06/prometheus-2012/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cdiv dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePlot (from IMDb): \u003c/strong\u003e\u0026#8220;A team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.\u0026#8221;\u003c/em\u003eLet me begin by saying that I haven\u0026#8217;t watched the original movies of the Alien franchise, to which Prometheus is being regarded as the prequel too. So I didn\u0026#8217;t have any expectations or pre notions about the movie. But I was aware of the basic plot of the previous movies, which involved gruesome ways of their attacks.The genre of the movie says, it\u0026#8217;s an Action, Sci-fi and Horror. Sadly to me, it seemed to fit in neither of the three perfectly.The movie begins slowly. Too slowly. And it\u0026#8217;s not a complaint. I have seen good movies with slow start. But this one just keeps on dragging.\n\u003c/div\u003e\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1500\" height=\"937\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/prometheus_banner1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2524\" /\u003e \u003c/figure\u003e \n\u003cdiv dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003eThere was no character development so to speak. Except that of Noomi Rapace (Elizabeth Shaw, in movie) and maybe of Michael Fassbender (David, in movie).\u003cbr /\u003eI didn\u0026#8217;t felt the story either. And I won\u0026#8217;t say screenplay was any good either.\u003cbr /\u003eSpeaking of horror, there was maybe just a couple of time where I was spooked but overall, saying Prometheus a horror movie will be injustice. And that is coming from someone who is not a fan of horror movies just because they scare the sh!t out of me.\u003cbr /\u003eThe built up which is developed in the first half of the movie just doesn\u0026#8217;t justify the climax. Almost everyone who will watch the movie will agree that the climax could have been a lot better. The way it ended it looked like I was watching the first episode of a series.\u003cbr /\u003eSomething which is good and which was apparent from the trailer was the cinematography. It was good. But again not something we haven\u0026#8217;t seen before.\u003cbr /\u003eMaybe these kinds of movies are just not my type. Maybe the ones who like \u0026#8220;Alien\u0026#8221; and its sequels may relate something to it\u0026#8230; but for me, Prometheus was one movie I could have easily skipped if I haven\u0026#8217;t got the chance to get the premiere passes.\u003cbr /\u003eRating: 2.5/5\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Prometheus (2012)"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/internet/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Internet"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/mobile/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Mobile"},{"content":" I am sitting on my berth in a compartment of a train which is scheduled to take me to my village. In my hands is my smartphone which have become the best companion of my life. And with me is my dad who is traveling along with me and who is familiar with the power of the little gadget I was holding in my hand.Suddenly my gaze took me outside the window to the crowd on the station. Almost everyone could be seen with a phone in their hands. Some talking, some looking at the little screens while other busy passing time tapping their phones in the waiting area.\nIt was then when it struck me something. There used to be a time when people used to buy phones to talk and talk, and just talk. Phones were practically no other purpose. And they used to pay large amount of money just for that. Well, life have changed today. Changed to an extent that it\u0026#8217;s nothing short of a miracle. Today talking is just one of the thing we can do with our smartphones. Today we have the kind of power that one could never imagine just a decade ago. Thanks to smartphones, we now have the power of Internet in our pockets, palms or wherever it could be carried.\nI am a geek. One of it’s definition goes something like this, “A knowledgeable and obsessive computer enthusiast”. Well, I am not sure about the knowledgeable part but I sure am an enthusiast. I like to make the most of the power which the world of Internet has vested in us. But that means I am as good as I am near an Internet enabled computer. That’s where the power of Smartphone truly comes into play, and the “fun” really starts to kick in. It’s just been a few months until I migrated from a basic “just-talk” phone to a smartphone, and since then I have never looked back. My smart phone coupled with Internet on-the-go have provided me the possibilities that was previously unheard of!\nLet’s start with the most fundamental aspect of the existence of human, “Communication”. My phone provides me emails right where I need them. My friends can be in touch with me wherever I go and whatever I do. The other day, mom sent me to take some vegetables. I being not so fond of cooking, got confused between the some items. All I had to do was to take a snapshot of them and email them to my mom’s email. She immediately recommended me which of the two options to take, and I was happy as a guy ever be when his phone helps him to buy veggies!\nWith a feature known as instant photo upload, every snaps that I ever take is backed up securely to the cloud using Internet and which makes sure none of them ever get lost.\nWith this Internet service called, “Foursquare”, discovering new places have never been more fun. I can tag a place and write my review about it. When one of my friend goes to the same place, he can see my review and can know in advance about what I liked about the place! This is awesome!\nWhat’s best about Internet is that physical boundaries doesn’t matter! I can talk to someone from different city just like I can from my friends overseas! And when I let my dad video conference with my brother in England he can’t resist that smile which makes me feel proud of the power I hold because of Internet.\nSuddenly, a sizzling sound brought me back to the train compartment. I observed a kid who was playing Angry birds on his father’s iPad. That reminded me of the most fundamental aspect of mobile devices, “Entertainment”.\nWhat makes Internet on my phone most exciting is the amount of entertainment that it provides. I can listen to my favorite music streaming live from Shoutcast. I can record, edit and upload how my little cousin learns to walk and share directly with my friends all through my mobile! Instantly I receive comments from all of my relatives who are amazed by the improvement of my little cousin because they are also always within my reach from the palm of their hands.\nNothing can beat the sheer excitement which I get from online games. Competing with friends across the globe was never possible without the Internet. And my smartphone just makes it accessible from wherever I am. I don’t have to wait to get to the theater before watching a movie. I can schedule my plans right on my phone while I am traveling! This makes entertainment so much fun, that sometimes I feel blessed for having my phone with me!\nMy mom would agree that I maybe have got the worst memory of the lot. I forget so many things. Like the items of the list which I have to shop for. I tend to forget about the assignment that I had to complete for my college. But I rarely forget things now. Reason? My smart phone. The best companion for people today is their smart phone. It’s with them all 24 hours of the day and every day of the month. And my smartphone is too smart to let me forget anything! All I have to do is to set a reminder. And it automatically synchronize the reminders with my online account. So when my phone is lying somewhere else I get a notification on my PC about the task which is too important to let go by. And hence I rarely forget anything!\n(Keeping aside writing this article, since I forgot to add a reminder for it :P)\nAnyway, back in the train my dad was lost in their own thoughts. I asked him to share what he was thinking. And he shared with me the little story which happened just one day before.\nI was with my dad at my home. And we had to urgently book a couple of tickets to our village. But thanks to the power cuts we had no way to do it! Time was running out. Seats were filling up. It was then when something hit me and I flipped my phone out of the pocket. Fired the mobile browser and quickly booked the tickets for me any my dad. But all was not good.Tickets were in waiting!\nToday morning I helped my parents pack the luggage and headed to the station. My dad was worried about whether we would get the seats. But I was trying to make him feel good since I was constantly keeping a tab on the status. And just about few minutes until we had to reach the station, I told him the good news. Tickets got confirmed. He smiled and together we went to board the train without any worries.\n“Well dad”, I said to him “You already know how can I go on and on about the fun that I always seem to have from my little phone. But I think we should just enjoy the ride for now”. He nodded with affirmation, and with this train started to hit steam. Slowly and slowly train began to pick up pace.\nWatching the face of my dad once again reminded me of how he always becomes amazed by the amount of power that Internet gives me. Cause in his time nothing of this magnitude was even remotely possible. I remember the first time I showed him our house from satellite picture. He was elated! And I told him we can trace entire world from the screen in front of him. We can never get lost because of GPS. And we don’t have to unroll heaps of maps just to find a particular place! All we now have to do it to click a button and just “search” for it! And “zap” within a few seconds we can get any information right under our thumbs.\nMobile Internet is a rebirth for me and my dad. And exploring it together with my dad is the biggest fun of my life!\nAs the train was picking up pace I exclaimed to my dad once again… “Here dad,” pointing to my phone, “We can see which station will come next before even we reach there as well as I can tell approximately ‘when’ we would reach there, and what is the best thing of that place… …”\nMy dad took the phone from me and kept it inside his pockets. He told me, “Just be quiet son. Somethings are better to explore watching outside the window…”\nThis time I had no choice but to agree!!\nThis blog was primarily written for the contest on IndiBlogger named, “Internet is Fun”. My Entry: http://www.indiblogger.in/indipost.php?post=140876. For information on how Vodafone can provide the best ingredients for Fun through Internet visit, www.vodafone.in/fun.\n","date":"18 May 2012","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2012/05/mobile-internet-first-hand-experience-of-me-and-my-dad/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cdiv dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cspan\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e I am sitting on my berth in a compartment of a train which is scheduled to take me to my village. In my hands is my smartphone which have become the best companion of my life. And with me is my dad who is traveling along with me and who is familiar with the power of the little gadget I was holding in my hand.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003eSuddenly my gaze took me outside the window to the crowd on the station. Almost everyone could be seen with a phone in their hands. Some talking, some looking at the little screens while other busy passing time tapping their phones in the waiting area.\u003cbr /\u003e It was then when it struck me something. There used to be a time when people used to buy phones to talk and talk, and just talk. Phones were practically no other purpose. And they used to pay large amount of money just for that. Well, life have changed today. Changed to an extent that it\u0026#8217;s nothing short of a miracle. Today talking is just one of the thing we can do with our smartphones. Today we have the kind of power that one could never imagine just a decade ago. Thanks to smartphones, we now have the power of Internet in our pockets, palms or wherever it could be carried.\u003cbr /\u003e","title":"Mobile Internet : First Hand Experience of Me and My Dad"},{"content":"Plot: (from IMDb) #Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. brings together a team of super humans to form The Avengers to help save the Earth from Loki and his army. My experience: #“The Avenger” as I expected was an amazing ride into the awesomeness that the best of Hollywood can offer.\nThe moment I saw the trailer of Avenger I knew it was going to be a unique experience. Fortunately I got a chance to catch its premiere in PVR Plaza today. Not many movies are built up on the foundations of movies from about 9 years into the past. And not many movies do it as successfully as The Avenger did.\nMovie starts quite slow and begins from where it left in Captain America. But it soon gain pace once our heroes are introduced. And from then on, it only gets better.\nMy biggest concern from the movie was how will the screen time be divided in all those super heroes. But the movie uses it for the advantage and tells us an incredible story.\nThere are many references in the Avengers that alludes to movies which were a stepping stone to it. So the knowledge of all the characters will of course help to understand some of the subtle humor in the movie. Most of the humor was, as you could have expected, from Tony Stark aka the Iron Man. And many other are from the Hulk. And the rest was because of the cultural differences between the characters and was a bit foreseeable.\nVisual effects was as expected mind numbing. Hulk showed a greater range of emotions due to the motion capture tech been implemented I presume first time in Hulk series. And we see Iron Man new ways to “Suit Up”! Speaking of Suit up.. we also have a character which was nice to have: Cobie Smulders (or Robin Scherbatsky) from “How I met your mother”! One sequence which send the shivers down the spine was when all the superheroes were shown one after another in once coherence fighting against the army of Loki. It was Epic! (and this is not a spoiler).\nAnd one thing more. My 3D experience was not good. The active shutter glasses kinda felt like it absorbed all the colors from the movie. So I watched most of the movies without 3D and it was quite good. AFAIK, this movie was not meant to be 3D, and was converted later into one. So I felt it kinda ruined the movie for me.\nI think it goes without saying that The Avengers is a must watch for all Marvel fans and anyone who have an appetite for a little super heroes! As for me, I am going to watch it again and this time in 2D since I feel it deserves a re-watch!\n","date":"26 April 2012","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2012/04/the-avengers/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003ch2 id=\"plot-from-imdb\" class=\"relative group\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePlot: (from IMDb)\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#plot-from-imdb\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eNick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. brings together a team of super humans to form The Avengers to help save the Earth from Loki and his army.\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"627\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/The-Avengers-2012-1024x627.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2803\" srcset=\"/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/The-Avengers-2012-1024x627.jpg 1024w, /wp-content/uploads/2012/04/The-Avengers-2012-300x184.jpg 300w, /wp-content/uploads/2012/04/The-Avengers-2012-768x470.jpg 768w, /wp-content/uploads/2012/04/The-Avengers-2012.jpg 1182w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" /\u003e \u003c/figure\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Avengers"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/htc-mozart/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"HTC Mozart"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/windows-phone/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Windows Phone"},{"content":"This is my first full length review here, of something I am really passionate about, OSes. But before I start lets see what you should expect and not expect from this review:\nDon’t Expect:\n100% accuracy (I can be factually wrong somewhere, and you can help me finding those out) Detailed hardware review (Since HTC Mozart is already an obsolete product, I wont go in detail in it) Grammatical correctness (I am weak in that so, pardon me please)\nDo Expect: A detailed opinion on software issues, the pros and cons of WP7 at this version (Mango). Screenshots (Many are in spoilers) Future additions of features in this review on request.\nPS: I don’t own the device currently, so might not be able to entertain requests immediately. Let’s begun: HTC 7 Mozart # The Hardware #The very first thing which you will notice with HTC Mozart is its 3.7” glossy screen on a body made from brushed aluminium with curved edges. It sports a big speaker on the top and 3 touch buttons on the bottom. The buttons namely Back, Start and Search, follows the standard specified by Microsoft across all Windows Phone devices and so would be your navigation partners in exploring the world of mobile windows.\nView from the back\nThe flat volume control:\nBack side resides the 8 MP camera, xenon flash, speaker, and HTC logo:\nThe three buttons and camera shutter button:\nBenchmark Score:\nThe Software #Coming back to the software part, which is what I am really trying to review here, I have got to tell this has been a totally new experience for me. Being an Android user I am used to customization and menu’s and settings. But the tile UI of WP7 has really been a revamping change in the history of mobile OSes.\nthe new home screen \u0026amp; the start menu\nEverything in WP7 begins from the Start button. Pressing it takes the user to the home screen which can be best described by a collection of square tiles of equal sizes (and some double), each representing an application or service. There’s an arrow to the top right of the home screen, pressing which a user is taken to a full fledge menu. A user can create a shorcut tile for any of the menu item by long pressing it and selecting “pin to start”. The unique thing about the tiles is that they are dynamic. Dynamic in the sense that some of the tiles are active and shows things like a number to represent if there is any miss call or message. Tile acts as two things here. It functions just like a status bar and a widget functions of Android.\nthe user interface #Microsoft have daringly created a totally different User Interface called, Metro UI, that is simple, different, minimal yet effective and functional. The degree of minimalism can be measured from the fact that even the status bar which shows the date, the signal tower, battery level and the WiFi status is automatically made hidden from the view, and can only be shown back if the screen is swiped from top a little.\nOne of the neat things about WP7 is that many of the applications have been given a uniform and standard UI. Almost every app follows the Panorama standard. Where the name of the application encompass across multiple screens and sub categories of options emerges with each swipe to either left or right.\nLet’s take Hotmail and GMail as an example. Both of them have the same interface, Folder title on top with small font, and then labels like, all, unread, flagged etc. below with big fonts which is followed by the actual mails. The mail UI is significantly different then it’s counterpart in Android app. WP7 shows a list of mails through the contact name from which it has arrived, followed by a little snippet of the actual content of the mail. Neat.\nThe use of large fonts for the title of menus looks contrasting to the background, and lets users focus on important parts of the UI at first glance. I appreciated this design.\nOne major factor to personalize the mobile experience are themes. Although WP7 doesn’t provide a lot of customization in this regard, it does provide a choice from 11 accent colours. Changing the colors has an effect in the colours of the tiles which is a dominant part of the home screen. Along with the option to change Accent colours, a user can also choose from two types of backgrounds, “light” or “dark”. I prefer dark, and all the pics shot for this review is in dark theme.\nIn any app clicking the ellipses sign (…) gives access to settings pertaining to the app. So it’s the right click -\u0026gt; settings equivalent for WP7.\nThe UI of WP7 also takes help of the 3 buttons, on which I will get back later.\nThe list of apps when the arrow of the side of Start Menu is pressed Contact list alphabet selection (yeah, I just made it up). Alphabets for which no contact is there is blacked out: When a call arrives, the mechanical female voice recites the name and number! Loved it Messaging system, where messages are listed in threads, (same thing which Android follows) And the message is read like this: (this actually is whats app) The Hotmail Interface Calender (pretty decent) WP7 comes with a Bing map interface: Theme selection menu and choices of colors: This is what the home screen looks like (after we select Red colour as theme) WP7 comes with the manual (help) interface (needs Internet to use this) the apps #The WP7 comes with a bare bone apps pre-bundled which includes, Office, Maps, Messaging, Hotmail and the likes, but doesn’t include any of the games along with it. This is where market comes in.\n“Marketplace” is the app store for Windows phone apps, which is a collection of various apps although not anything like a vast treasure trove of apps that Android market boasts of, but it’s certainly catching up.\nWP7 has a special category of apps and is maintained in a special tile dedicated to gaming apps by the name of “XBox Live”. One can browse through the gaming apps in various categories like, Action, Adventure, Puzzles, Racing etc.\nSome of the games I really enjoyed were: Shuffle Party (Bowling ball), 3D Boat Race, 3D Marble Tracks, Physi Bricks, Shoot Bubble. There also are all types of classical games like Carrom, Ludo and Snakes \u0026amp; Ladders, which I downloaded to keep in the collection.\nBeing a Microsoft product, WP7 has a full-fledged mobile Office suite built in. With the ability to create a word file (.docx), and an Excel file. It also can be used to create PowerPoint presentations, although I didn’t tested how well that works! (Maybe just to view the slides).\nThe Office Suite The Excel FM Radio Stock Exchange app, its pretty cool Temperature conversion app Games in section of XBox live: Games in marketplace Racing game The Bowling Ball: Need for Nitro, the troll game!(It sucked!) Photo Enhancer app, provides various kinds of effects to pictures: the keyboard # Everything in WP7 mimics the tile interface, and the virtual Qwerty keyboard is no exception. The chances of pressing wrong keys is there, although no virtual keyboard can provide 100% accuracy, still the inclusion for Swype keyboard can be a great addition to WP. (Well, Sliding Keyboard can provide this functionality, but it’s not a free app. Read about it here: Sliding Keyboard: it\u0026#8217;s like Swype, but for Windows Phone 7 \u0026#8212; Engadget) One of my major concern with this stock keyboard is that it doesn’t stretch to the sides, while in landscape mode. Well, maybe it doesn’t need to. But it seems a little waste of space. integration with cloud #To make things simple, WP7 provides no alternative to Astro, the most popular file manager in Android. Instead it provides 25 GB of free cloud storage called, “Skydrive”, which lets user save their documents, pictures and videos etc.. on Microsoft Live servers.\nEvery picture you take or videos you shoot can be set up to be uploaded to Skydrive instantly. Problem comes when you have to send just a “few” of them through email. There is probably no easy way to just check mark a few photos and then send them through mail. The turnaround I have found is to first select a single pic to send via mail, and then using the attach files option to attach more pics one by one. Which by the way is PITA if you have many pictures to select.\nOne more point to be noted is that pictures which are uploaded to skydrive are heavily compressed. In my experiment a picture which had a dimension of 1632 x 1224 (331 KB) was compressed to just 718 x 538 (81.4 KB). So it’s better NOT to rely on Skydrive for backup purpose. But you can always take a backup of the pics at original quality through ZUNE.\nAlso, one funny thing is that despite of Skydrive being such an integral part of WP7, the Skydrive app doesn’t come pre-bundled, and has to be download via marketplace!\nthe 3 buttons (in terms of software) #Back buttons #Pressing back button takes the app back one level in menu, or either exits the application. But pressing it long enough causes the Application Switcher to appear. It’s the Alt+tab equivalent of Windows desktop OS but provides full preview of each application as we scroll to select the app we want to jump to. I really liked the fluid interface of app switcher.\nApplication Switcher:\nStart button #Start button will probably be the most useful button that you will always find yourself using. No matter wherever you are, touching this button takes you to the tiled home screen. Contrary to the back button, this doesn’t closes the app, rather puts all the apps in the background. So, if you ever decide to switch back to the app on which you were on… just press back button for long!\nSo what does long pressing the Start button does? Well, it activates voice command, powered by TellMe. It’s like Siri of iPhone, with almost the same mechanical female voice, but its accompanied by a nice futuristic tones of sound which is pleasing to hear and helps you to wait if you have a slow connection like 2G. Here you can speak of commands like, “Call ”, “Open ” and it will call the person or open the app for you. Or if you just say some thing and it will search it on Bing.\nI haven’t explored this feature, so I leave it to existing WP7 users to tell how accurate that is with Indian accents.\nSearch button\nIf you are old fashioned like me, you will want to search something from a dedicated button like this one. Pressing this button will take you to Bing search page and will not open Bing.com in the browser. One thing to note here is that this button search on Bing, universally and is not application specific. For eg, in my Optimus One, the search button behaves specific to the app which currently is open. So, pressing the search button in O1 when GMail app is active will lead to me to search in GMail and not the Internet.\n(Other members can confirm this since I didn’t try it on many apps.)\nOther aspects #I found a strange bug in connecting the phone with WiFi. Once the WiFi is detected, it opens a page in IE where we need to enter login ID and password. But I never used to encounter a submit button after entering that. After whole lot of trial and error, I finally found out that, refreshing the page solves it. It was strange. Sadly there is no other browser available for WP7 right now, so couldn’t test on those.\nAlso, one irritating thing about WP7 that I found out was inability to send files through Bluetooth. The phone does support bluetooth, but OS does not.\nIn the spoiler below are some pics that I shoot with the phone to check the image quality. You can see them in it’s original form and no compression:\n(I have to check why the dimension seems less than the phone boasted to shoot).\nZUNE #How the phone got updated:\nConnecting the phone to PC:\nZune downloading and installing update:\nUpdated in about 15 min:\nNew updated version of WP7: conclusion: #The period of 7 days in which I tried HTC Mozart was really a good experience. The new tile interface is very appealing and refreshing. I learned many things. Found turnarounds for some problems which seemed unsolvable at first. And tried to cover many aspects of my discoveries in this review. While it seemed to me that Microsoft is going on the tracks of Apple by making a dumb version of the OS, and which was evident too with the lack of many customization options. But it looks like Microsoft is trying to find the perfect balance between the stability, functionality and the user experience. And so far its looking that it’s headed in the right direction.\nMicrosoft have come up with a really good OS here. And although its not open source, we are already witnessing extensive app support. With the tile interface already being a significant part of Windows 8 and XBox, Microsoft is really serious about giving the user a unified experience across all its devices. I hope the little bugs would be ironed out in future updates (next being Tango), and they provide some way to access the hidden settings to the users who want them!\nPS: This article was originally published by me at here. I copied it to my blog later.\n","date":"22 February 2012","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2012/02/windows-phone-7-review-on-htc-7-mozart/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is my first full length review here, of something I am really passionate about, OSes. But before I start lets see what you should expect and not expect from this review:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDon’t Expect:\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e100% accuracy (I can be factually wrong somewhere, and you can help me finding those out)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDetailed hardware review (Since HTC Mozart is already an obsolete product, I wont go in detail in it)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGrammatical correctness (I am weak in that so, pardon me please)\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDo Expect:\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eA detailed opinion on software issues, the pros and cons of WP7 at this version (\u003cstrong\u003eMango\u003c/strong\u003e).\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eScreenshots (Many are in spoilers)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFuture additions of features in this review on request.\u003cbr\u003e\nPS: I don’t own the device currently, so might not be able to entertain requests immediately.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" title=\"Laugh\" src=\"http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e Let’s begun:\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"htc-7-mozart\" class=\"relative group\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 300%;\"\u003eHTC 7 Mozart\u003c/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#htc-7-mozart\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://st2.gsmarena.com/vv/pics/htc/htc-7-mozart-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e \n\u003ch3 id=\"the-hardware\" class=\"relative group\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: large;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"\u003eThe Hardware\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"absolute top-0 w-6 transition-opacity opacity-0 -start-6 not-prose group-hover:opacity-100\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"group-hover:text-primary-300 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-700\" style=\"text-decoration-line: none !important;\" href=\"#the-hardware\" aria-label=\"Anchor\"\u003e#\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe very first thing which you will notice with HTC Mozart is its 3.7” glossy screen on a body made from brushed aluminium with curved edges. It sports a big speaker on the top and 3 touch buttons on the bottom. The buttons namely Back, Start and Search, follows the standard specified by Microsoft across all Windows Phone devices and so would be your navigation partners in exploring the world of mobile windows.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Windows Phone 7 Review (on HTC 7 Mozart)"},{"content":" It\u0026#8217;s been exact two months since I made a decision to buy LG Optimus One as my first smartphone. And I fulfilled the promise. I bought O1 from Letsbuy.com, and which was also one of the first online shopping experience for me. My heart beats were racing on high rates while I was unboxing the package. Along came out the shiniest piece of gadget my eyes has ever experienced live. And the rest is history\u0026#8230; While I would save the story for my feelings for the gadget for some other time this article is an attempt to list all the android apps that I have discovered over the 54 days of my use of the phone. The list is not in any particular order, and the apps listed with the word [root] requires root privilege to work.\n(Star means newly added, after writing the original article.) \u0026nbsp; Productivity AndChat (Free) [The best IRC client]\nASTRO File Manager [The best file manager]\nCamera360 Ultimate Endomondo Sports Tracker [To track the distance or route you travel]\nDropbox [The best cross platform file sharing app]\nFxCamera\nGoogle Goggles [Best app to read those QR codes and search with images]\nHindu Calendar [Useful sometimes, when mom needs to know dates of some festival ]\niMobile [App from ICICI customers, very useful to me, I do prepaid recharge from this]\nIndian Railway App – Disha [PNR check, availability checker, train schedule and more]\nOpera Mobile web browser\nSMS Backup + [Best app to take Backup of your SMS\u0026#8217;s on your Google Account]\nWhatsApp Messenger [Universal Bluetooth, as I like to call it Send sms, share pics etc\u0026#8230;]\nRemember The Milk [Cloud Mobile Task Management]\nPulse News* [Best news aggregator app]\nQuick Boot* [Lets you reboot or shutdown, without using actual power button. For those, who fears they would break hardware button. Like me.]\nPhoto Resizer* [Does what it says]Astrid [Homage to this little To Do and Reminder app that was at pinnacle of its service, until it decided to shut down on 5th of August 2013. I will miss you.] Multimedia Mobo Player* [A must have video player]\nMX Player* [Together with Mobo player, this gives you all the power you need to play whatever format of video you trying to play]\nTTPod Music Player* [Most awesome music player. Fetches lyrics automatically and sync with your song, as one of its unique feature. Screenshots] \u0026nbsp; Social networking Facebook for Android\nGoogle+ [Also helps to sync photos with your google account]\nYahoo! Mail\nXDA-Developers\nTapatalk (paid app, to browse TDF)\nAnomo [Social Networking for Introverts, where you choose what to reveal about yourself and when] Games and Fun (these are all I have tried and I loved it)\nSpeedX 3D [One of the most awesome game!]\naTilt 3D Labyrinth Free [Nice demonstration of the accelerometer in your phone]\nChess Free\nFriction Mobile\nLight Racer 3D Basic [Best 3D TRON game]\nShoot Bubble Deluxe [Quite Addictive]\nSpeedCar [Nice time pass for a while]\nAsphalt 8: Airborne [Best racing game I ever played. I play this even when I have best racing games installed on PC :P]\nComiXology [COMICS! Best for tablets]\nQuizUp [Quiz On! This app provides an easy multiplayer rounds of quiz from ever increasing topics. Quite get very addictive if you love the challenge. You have been warned.] Tools Android Assistant [provides many tools to manage your Android]\nAuto Rotate Widget [Nifty app to toggle auto-rotate setting]\nBattery Solo Widget [Nifty app to demonstrate battery remaining in number on home screen]\nBrightness Control\nConnectBot [Terminal for your Linux (Andriod)]\nFast Reboot [Just tap and it terminates every app]\nROM Manager [root]\nTitanium Backup [root]\nApps 2 SD [Move app 2 SD]\nCacheCleaner NG [root] [Cleans up the cache, providing some free memory]\nScreen Filter* [Lets you set brightness lower than default, when you need it, like at night]\nSet DNS* [root] [To change default DNS in your Android]\nAppLock [To lock specific apps with a passcode]\nGravityScreen [So this app knows when to turn the phone on and lock it back on its own. Magic? Not quite. But using sensors. You can also pause it for a while when you don\u0026#8217;t want to automatically lock your device]\nBootManager* [root] [Lets you disable start up items. You will need this if you are like me and install tons of app]\nPushbullet [root] [Its an app thats a MUST. Share stuff from your PC to your phone/tablet. Get phone notifications on your PC. As the app describes, \u0026#8220;No more eMailing to yourself\u0026#8221;!] Special Mention XPosed Installer* [root] [This app is not for the faint of heart. If you like to mod the ROM beyond your imaginations you might want to get this framework. After you install this framework, you can choose from many Modules available online that would let you mod your ROM anyway you want.]\nBenchmark and Test apps Neocore\nQuadrant Standard Edition\nSD Tools [To bench mark your SD Card]\nMultitouch Visible Test [To demonstrate Axis Inversion bug, if your phone have it]\nRoot Checker Basic\n3D Mark [To bench mark your SD Card]\nAnTuTu Others Metal Detector [Sometimes works, sometimes don\u0026#8217;t. You tell me.]\nGuitar : Solo Lite [lol]\nPerfect Piano [double lol]\nTalking Cat 2 [Must have to awe people]\nAmazon Appstore [Amazon provides an App for free each day]\nThis is of course not an exhaustive list in any way. I will add more apps in the list as and when I would discover it!\nLast updated: 25th March 2014. ","date":"17 January 2012","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2012/01/the-must-have-android-apps/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cdiv dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-size: small;\"\u003eIt\u0026#8217;s been \u003cb\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://thewindingmind.blogspot.com/2011/11/my-first-android.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eexact two months\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/b\u003e since I made a decision to buy LG Optimus One as my first smartphone. And I fulfilled the promise. I bought O1 from Letsbuy.com, and which was also one of the first online shopping experience for me.\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-size: small;\"\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-size: small;\"\u003eMy heart beats were racing on high rates while I was unboxing the package. Along came out the shiniest piece of gadget my eyes has ever experienced live.\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-size: small;\"\u003eAnd the rest is history\u0026#8230;\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-size: small;\"\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-size: small;\"\u003eWhile I would save the story for my feelings for the gadget for some other time this article is an attempt to list all the android apps that I have discovered over the 54 days of my use of the phone.\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-size: small;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e The list is not in any particular order, and the apps listed with the word [root] requires root privilege to work.\u003cbr /\u003e (Star means newly added, after writing the original article.)\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u0026nbsp;\n\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eProductivity\u003c/b\u003e\n\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://market.android.com/details?id=net.andchat\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eAndChat (Free)\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e [The best IRC client]\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://market.android.com/details?id=com.metago.astro\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eASTRO File Manager\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e [The best file manager]\u003cbr /\u003e \u003ca href=\"https://market.android.com/details?id=vStudio.Android.Camera360\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCamera360 Ultimate\u003c/strong\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://market.android.com/details?id=com.endomondo.android\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eEndomondo Sports Tracker\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e [To track the distance or route you travel]\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://market.android.com/details?id=com.dropbox.android\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eDropbox\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e [The best cross platform file sharing app]\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://market.android.com/details?id=ymst.android.fxcamera\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eFxCamera\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.apps.unveil\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eGoogle Goggles\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e [Best app to read those QR codes and search with images]\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://market.android.com/details?id=com.alokmandavgane.hinducalendar\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eHindu Calendar\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e [Useful sometimes, when mom needs to know dates of some festival \u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_razz.gif\" alt=\":P\" /\u003e ]\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://market.android.com/details?id=com.csam.icici.bank.imobile\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eiMobile\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e [App from ICICI customers, very useful to me, I do prepaid recharge from this]\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://market.android.com/details?id=com.rails\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eIndian Railway App – Disha\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e [PNR check, availability checker, train schedule and more]\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://market.android.com/details?id=com.opera.browser\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eOpera Mobile web browser\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://market.android.com/details?id=com.zegoggles.smssync\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eSMS Backup +\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e [Best app to take Backup of your SMS\u0026#8217;s on your Google Account]\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://market.android.com/details?id=com.whatsapp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eWhatsApp Messenger\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e [Universal Bluetooth, as I like to call it Send sms, share pics etc\u0026#8230;]\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://market.android.com/details?id=com.rememberthemilk.MobileRTM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eRemember The Milk\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e [Cloud Mobile Task Management]\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://market.android.com/details?id=com.alphonso.pulse\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003ePulse News\u003c/a\u003e*\u003c/strong\u003e [Best news aggregator app]\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca title=\"Quick Boot\" href=\"https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.siriusapplications.quickboot\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eQuick Boot*\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e [Lets you reboot or shutdown, without using actual power button. For those, who fears they would break hardware button. Like me.]\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca title=\"Photo Resizer\" href=\"https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xllusion.app.photoresizer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003ePhoto Resizer*\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e [Does what it says]\u003ca title=\"Astrid\" href=\"https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.timsu.astrid\u0026hl=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eAstrid\u003c/a\u003e [Homage to this little To Do and Reminder app that was at pinnacle of its service, until it decided to shut down on 5th of August 2013. I will miss you.]","title":"The Must Have Android Apps"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/lg-optimus-one/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"LG Optimus One"},{"content":" A few days back I came across a commercial from Red Hat Linux and it put forth some true facts. “Facts”, unless proven otherwise! \u0026#8220;The telephone has too many shortcomings, to be seriously considered as a means of communication\u0026#8220;, \u0026#8220;A rocket will never leave the Earth\u0026#8217;s atmosphere\u0026#8220;, and the most absurd one, \u0026#8220;640k ought to be enough for anybody\u0026#8221; as populated to be said by Bill Gates, were some of the predictions done in the last century. The beliefs that shattered to the ground in later years, spectacularly.\nThe appetite for power never stops. People want to be more efficient everyday. The processing power is increasing, whereas the size of silicon chips is reducing. Thanks to Moore\u0026#8217;s law, gadgets are all set to become smaller but smarter.\nA smartphone is a perfect example of something which could never have been conceived of, say, 20 years ago. Yet the future looks promising for this category of phones. It would not be long before we see phones surpassing speeds more than 2.4 GHz, due to the developments in processors like the next gen Qualcomm. But as they say, technology won\u0026#8217;t stop growing and so people have to start somewhere.\nIt was many years ago, that I had tried a phone that was smart. I had a Sony Walkman, aka, w550i which was basically a feature phone, with multimedia features, to be precise. It used to take good pics with its 1.3 megapixel camera, and could also sync contacts with a PC. But, today, I need something better than a feature phone. Precisely, an Entry Level Android.\nAndroid today has become synonymous to be “the best mobile OS” today. With the biggest Internet company Google, backing up the OS, it has grown to be the second most used mobile OS today, and that too in a very short period of time. The main reason for the popularity of Android is the fact that it’s based on Linux Kernel with libraries and API’s written in one of the most popular languages, C, C++ and Java, and because most of the codes of the OS is Free and Open Source.\nMy budget for the phone was Rs. 10,000. With this budget I didn’t have a lot of options including non-Android ones. Some of them were,\nMotorola EX109 Motorola EX115 Nokia C2-03 Nokia C2-06 Samsung Chat 350 LG X 330 Samsung Star II S5263 Micromax Q6 Sony Ericsson txt pro LG Vortex I consider myself a geek, and I do my research extensively, even if it means putting up few people off. Since I believe it is better to be safe than sorrow. So after spending considerable amount of time and effort asking fellow geeks from tech forum and reading reviews from shopping sites, I came to a conclusion that I will have to add a smartphone to the list, which is better than any other in this price range. The phone is, LG Optimus One P500. I like to call it O1, since it is short, sweet, and more geeky! O1 has an impressive list of features. The prominent one are listed below: Android v2.2 (Froyo), Upgradeable to v2.3 Gingerbread Capacitive screen 600 MHz ARM 11 processor Adreno 200 graphics 3 mega-pixel camera with the ability to shoot videos at 640 x 480 @ 18 fps Accelerometer, Proximity Sensor and so on\u0026#8230;. In a very short amount of time that I gave to the research of O1. I fell in love with it. It\u0026#8217;s amazing at the budget I have, and a cool smartphone to title as \u0026#8220;My First Android\u0026#8221;. The sheer beauty of O1 from any angle has captured my imagination. It\u0026#8217;s 3.2\u0026#8243; capacitive touch screen coupled with state of the art design makes it look classy. Processing speed of 600 Mhz, and graphics capability provided by Adreno GPU, makes sure games can be played at decent frame rates. Overall LG have developed a gem of a product. A product so great that various communities have sprung up just to discuss the intricacies behind this phone. Geeks today want to know, how they can make O1 unleash its true power even if it means rooting the phone. So my eventual next smartphone is decided. It would be the LG O1, even if it means cutting down every other expenses. If it can\u0026#8217;t be an O1, it just won\u0026#8217;t be any other.\n","date":"17 November 2011","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2011/11/my-first-android/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cdiv dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"\u003e\n\u003cspan id=\"internal-source-marker_0.38794189086183906\"\u003eA few days back I came across a commercial from Red Hat Linux and it put forth some true facts. “Facts”, unless proven otherwise!\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cspan\u003e\u0026#8220;\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe telephone has too many shortcomings, to be seriously considered as a means of communication\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u0026#8220;, \u0026#8220;\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eA rocket will never leave the Earth\u0026#8217;s atmosphere\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u0026#8220;, and the most absurd one, \u0026#8220;\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e640k ought to be enough for anybody\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u0026#8221; as populated to be said by Bill Gates, were some of the predictions done in the last century. The beliefs that shattered to the ground in later years, spectacularly.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cspan\u003eThe appetite for power never stops. People want to be more efficient everyday. The processing power is increasing, whereas the size of silicon chips is reducing. Thanks to Moore\u0026#8217;s law, gadgets are all set to become smaller but smarter.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cspan\u003eA smartphone is a perfect example of something which could never have been conceived of, say, 20 years ago. Yet the future looks promising for this category of phones. It would not be long before we see phones surpassing speeds more than 2.4 GHz, due to the developments in processors like the \u003ca class=\"vt-p\" href=\"http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/42053/qualcomm-snapdragon-getting-faster-now\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003enext gen Qualcomm\u003c/a\u003e. But as they say, technology won\u0026#8217;t stop growing and so people have to start somewhere.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cspan\u003eIt was many years ago, that I had tried a phone that was smart. I had a Sony Walkman, aka, w550i which was basically a feature phone, with multimedia features, to be precise. It used to take good pics with its 1.3 megapixel camera, and could also sync contacts with a PC. But, today, I need something better than a feature phone. Precisely, an Entry Level Android.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e","title":"My First Android"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/p500/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"P500"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/2011-movies/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"2011 Movies"},{"content":" (Read the original article at Techrepublic.) Last year has been an awesome thrill ride into the world of unknown and visits to the places, not even conceivable by human mind before. The Lovely Bones, took us in the life after death; Alice in wonderful took us to the aftermath of the original; Prince of Persia, took the game to reality; Inception took us on a ride inside dreams and the sequel of Tron, abducted us inside the digital world. While the past year did all that without even a slightest of hesitation, this year, 2011, the excitement is only going to rise.\nFollowing is a list of 30 movies which any self-respected geek must make sure to watch at any cost in the year 2011, along with its storyline and the time of release.\nNote: Some descriptions are from IMDB, and release dates can be tentative.So buckle up and enjoy the ride\u0026#8230;.. 1. Sanctum (4 Feb) [ Action | Adventure | Drama ]\nFrom James Cameroncomes another movie, that it bound to get all the attention it needs. This time, Cameron is going under water, and exploring maybe the only place left to explore on earth. While Sanctum was inspired from a real story, of survival of a crew of divers, from the underwater caves, James had informed, that it is purely a fiction. Sanctum is going to be 3D, a trend which has become popular with the success of Avatar in 3D.\n[Trailer] 2. I Am Number Four (18 Feb) [ Action | Sci-Fi | Thriller ]\nStory of a teenage boy, who is not like any other. He has a power. And someone is after killing him. Sounds like a good, night flick. [Trailer] [Trailer2] 3. Battle: Los Angeles (11 March) [ Action | Sci-Fi ]\nI will keep it simple. The ones who loved the end of the world in 2012, this is going to be Awesome, and with an Alien take. Greatly looking forward for this date.\n[Trailer]\n4. Mars Needs Moms (11 March) [ Animation | Adventure | Comedy ]\nAn animated movie, where a boy named Milo, is surprised when Aliens kidnapped (sorry, mom-napped) his mom, there by beginning a quest to save her. A good watch with my small cousin.\n[Trailer] 5. Paul (18 Mar) [ Comedy | Sci-Fi ]\nTwo british guys (read Geeks) meets an alien near Area 51. And the fun begins. Yeah, for a change, its comedy.\n[Trailer]\n6. Sucker Punch (25 March) [ Action | Fantasy | Thriller ]\nAmazing fantasy movie from Jack Snyder the Director of Watchmen. Cant say anything more!\n[Trailer]\n7. Source Code (1 April) [ Action | Sci-Fi | Thriller ]\nAn action thriller centered on a soldier who wakes up in the body of an unknown man and discovers he’s part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train\nI have a hunch that this is going to be one of my favorite Time Travel movies.\n[Trailer]\n8. Apollo 18 (22 April)\n[ Horror | Sci-Fi | Thriller ]\nA film about the real mission to space in the 1970’s that was canceled by NASA.\n9. Thor (29 April) [ Action | Adventure | Drama ]\nThe powerful but arrogant warrior Thor is cast out of the fantastic realm of Asgard and sent to live amongst humans on Earth, where he soon becomes one of their finest defenders.\n10. Priest (13 May) [ Action | Horror | Sci-Fi ]\nA priest disobeys church law to track down the vampires who kidnapped his niece.\nA must watch because of some of its dazzling visual effects.\n11. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (20 May) [ Action | Adventure | Fantasy ]\nThe saga of the pirates continues.\n12. X-Men: First Class (3 June) [ Action| Sci-Fi | Drama ]\nThis is the Prequel to the First three movie. Even before when events of Wolverine took place.\nIt looks like story of X-Men is racing backwards.\n[Trailer]\n13. Super 8 (10 June) [ Sci-Fi expected ]\nNobody know about this fillm, from the Producer, Steven Spielberg, more than the fact that, “IT” is arriving next summer.\nI have a great expectation from this movie.\n14. Green Lantern (17 June) [ Action | Sci-Fi ]\nA test pilot is granted a mystical green ring that bestows him with otherworldly powers, as well as membership into an intergalactic squadron tasked with keeping peace within the universe.\nSounds synical enough, and something other than Batman and Superman!\n[Trailer] [A Fan based Trailer, of what should be it like]\n15. Transformers: Dark of the Moon (1 July) [ Action | Adventure | Sci-Fi ]\nThe whole moon twist has given Transformers a new angle. Why July 1st is sounding like a distant future?\n[Trailer]\n16. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (15 July) [ Adventure | Fantasy | Mystery ]\nThe final chapter in the Harry Potter saga, and the one I am looking with great expectation, since the part 1, and forgive me for saying this, sucked. [Official Epic Finale Featurette (Part1) ] 17. Captain America: The First Avenger (22 July) [ Action | Adventure | Sci-Fi ]\nA man who is unfit for military service becomes a super soldier with the aid of science.\n[Trailer]\n18. Cowboys and Aliens (19 Aug) [ Action | Sci-Fi | Thriller]\nDon\u0026#8217;t be fooled by the title. This is not a comedy as it sounds. From the director of Iron Man, and produced by Steven Spielberg himself, this is a story set in 1873, where all that stands between aliens and the conquest of Earth is a group of cowboys. [Trailer]\n19. The Darkest Hour (5 Aug) [ Action | Horror | Sci-Fi ]\nA group of Russian teenagers try to survive an alien invasion.\n20. Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World (19 Aug) [ Action | Adventure | Comedy ]\nAlmost eight years after the 3rd, this would be the fourth installment to Disney’s young spy series and the one which I am looking forward to the most. Since the Spy Kids is one of the earliest visual effects movie which I admired a lot. The characters are just lovable. Another thing that will make this movie great would be the advent of time travel in this part of the sequel!\n[Daryl Sabara (Spy Kids 4) Interview at 2nd Annual STREAMY AWARDS]\n21. Real Steel (7 Oct)\n[ Action | Drama | Sci-Fi ]\nA vision of a future where humanoid robots battle in the boxing ring. Pretty interesting take on Robots!\n[Trailer]\n22. The Thing (14 Oct) [ Horror | Mystery | Sci-Fi ]\nThe story of a group of Norwegian scientists in Antarctica who discover an alien spacecraft buried in the ice. The mix of Horror with Sci-Fi, always results in pure thrill!\n23. The Three Musketeers (14 Oct) [ Action | Adventure | Romance ]\nRemember the last question on Slumdog Millionaire? It was from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, named \u0026#8220;The Three Musketeers\u0026#8221;. Numerous remakes in movies, serials and animation have been made on the same novel and as far as since the dawn of the 20th century!\nAnd this time, I would not want to miss the 2011 iteration.\n24. Now (28 Oct) [ Action | Adventure | Sci-Fi ]\nIn a future where the genetic cause of aging is turned off, time has become currency.\nSounds, too awesome to miss.\n25. 11-11-11 (11-Nov, when else?) [ Horror | Thriller ]\nOn the eleventh day of the eleventh month, an otherworldly entity arrives on Earth.\n[Trailer]\n26. The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (11 Nov) [ Animation | Adventure | Family ] The young reporter from the Belgian comic finally comes to the big screen in this Spielberg directed motion picture, and, you can guess, in 3D.\nI liked Tintin as a cartoon series and his dug snowy, and now eager to catch it on the silver screen.\n[First Look] The Motion Capture film by Spielberg: Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn 27. Rise of the Apes (23 Nov) [ Action | Adventure | Sci-Fi ]\nGenetic experiments create intelligent apes and cause a war for supremacy.\n28. Untitled Sherlock Holmes sequel (16 Dec) [ Action | Mystery ]\nSherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson match wits with Professor Moriarty. Need I say more?\n29. Mission: Impossible \u0026#8211; Ghost Protocol (16 Dec) [ Action ]\nThe fourth in this classic spy series.\n30. Cloud Atlas (No release date, but expected in 2011) [ Sci-Fi ]\nSix interconnected stories each set in a different time and place. This Tom Hanks starring movie, is going to be awe-inspiring!\nHonorable mentions (which I liked, but may not catch in a theater)\n31. The Green Hornet(14 Jan) [ Action | Comedy | Crime ]\nFollowing the death of his father, Britt Reid, heir to his father\u0026#8217;s large company, teams up with his late dad\u0026#8217;s assistant Kato to become a masked crime fighting team. [Trailer] 32. Beastly (4 Mar) [ Drama | Fantasy | Romance ] A modern-day take on the \u0026#8220;Beauty and the Beast\u0026#8221; tale where a New York teen is transformed into a hideous monster in order to find true love.\n[Trailer] Modern take on Red Riding Hood 33. Red Riding Hood (18 Mar) [ Drama | Fantasy | Romance ]\nSet in a medieval village that is haunted by a werewolf, a young girl falls for an orphaned woodcutter, much to her family\u0026#8217;s displeasure.\n[Trailer]\n34. Limitless (18 Mar) [ Thriller ]\nA drug, which makes a man able to use full mental potential. But as always, not everything goes well, when he attracts unwanted attention.\n[Trailer]\n35. Conan the Barbarian (19 Aug) [ Action | Fantasy | Adventure]\nDuring the Hyborian Age, Conan seeks revenge for the destruction of his people.\n36. Contagion (21 Oct) [ Action | Sci-Fi | Thriller]\nAll that stands between a disease and the human race is a group of international team of doctors.\n37. Immortals (11 Nov) [ Action | Fantasy | Drama ]\nChosen by Zeus, Theseus must battle the legendary Titans to save the human race.\nEach year brings with it, a series of stories which promises to blow your mind away, and this year is no exception. 2011 is going to be a good year for Aliens too, since many of the movies on the list pays tribute to those extra-terrestrial creatures, which can make your life a living hell.\nOnly time will tell, how many of them becomes a box office hit. But the reality is that we would have no shortage of entertainment.\nSo let the curtain rise, and take a dip into the ocean of imagination to discover the worlds unknown, and to watch new stories unfold\u0026#8230;. ","date":"7 February 2011","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2011/02/30-hollywood-movies-to-look-forward-to-in-2011/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cdiv dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"\u003e(Read the original article at \u003ca href=\"http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/geekend/56-geek-movies-of-2011/6597?tag=mantle_skin%3Bcontent\"\u003eTechrepublic.\u003c/a\u003e) \u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"\u003eLast year has been an awesome thrill ride into the world of unknown and visits to the places, not even conceivable by human mind before. \u003ca class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"The Lovely Bones (film)\" href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0380510/\" rel=\"imdb\"\u003eThe Lovely Bones\u003c/a\u003e, took us in the life after death; \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1014759/\"\u003eAlice in wonderful\u003c/a\u003e took us to the aftermath of the original\u003ci\u003e;\u003c/i\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473075/\"\u003ePrince of Persia\u003c/a\u003e, took the game to reality; \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/\"\u003eInception\u003c/a\u003e took us on a ride inside dreams and the sequel of \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104001/\"\u003eTron\u003c/a\u003e, abducted us inside the digital world. While the past year did all that without even a slightest of hesitation, this year, 2011, the excitement is only going to rise.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"\u003eFollowing is a list of 30 movies which any self-respected geek must make sure to watch at any cost in the year 2011, along with its storyline and the time of release.\u003cbr /\u003e Note: Some descriptions are from IMDB, and release dates can be tentative.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003eSo buckle up and enjoy the ride\u0026#8230;..\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0881320/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003e1. Sanctum\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/b\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e(4 Feb) \u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;\"\u003e[ Action | Adventure | Drama ]\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"\u003eFrom \u003ca class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"James Cameron\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cameron\" rel=\"wikipedia\"\u003eJames Cameron\u003c/a\u003ecomes another movie, that it bound to get all the attention it needs. This time, Cameron is going under water, and exploring maybe the only place left to explore on earth. While Sanctum was inspired from a real story, of survival of a crew of divers, from the underwater caves, James had informed, that it is purely a fiction. Sanctum is going to be 3D, a trend which has become popular with the success of \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/\"\u003eAvatar\u003c/a\u003e in 3D.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sPMSiyLRDk\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e[Trailer] \u003c/b\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e","title":"30+ Hollywood Movies to look forward to in 2011"},{"content":" Image via Wikipedia 12th December 2012:\n“Water came rushing in from all sides of the island and submerged the complete city in one sweep. Huge rocks were falling from the skies and blasting like Atom bombs all over the mountains. Rocks started to melt like wax does in the coal and houses began to vaporize in seconds.\nThe minute longs earthquakes were shattering the landscapes, and buildings were collapsing like when a tower of cards crash when even one card is pushed from its base. Bridges were collapsing, trucks blasting and there was havoc everywhere!”\n_\n_\nJust the words above can generate chills in the spine. Now imagine watching the destruction on 30 by 70 feet screen size and dolby digital surround sound. Oh, it has GOT TO BE one of the most Amazing Experience ever. And it was. So much so, that I had to watch it two times to get it through.\nThe apocalypse of 2012 is based on the myth (or perhaps the truth) of Mayan calender’s predicting the end of human civilization to be on the 12th day of 12th Month of the year 2012. Nobody can prove the authenticity of the prediction (unless and otherwise they use a Time machine, of course!), but they can at least create a thrill ride of the events, in a circumstance that it might go true.\nStory is the (now) stereotypical, “peoples trying to save themselves from destruction of the earth”, type of movies, but its hell of a thrill ride. It was the most anticipated movie for me, when I had watched its trailer, months ago. Many people have criticized 2012 for the lack of its imaginative plot, but I dont think you need more! With the Earth coming to an end, who cares about the story; the people would wonder more, if anybody could survive the apocalyptic date.\nPlane escaping the falling building is one of the shots you may forget to breath Never before I have witnessed the CGI so spectacular in the destruction, that I was having a guilty conscious of actually ‘Liking’ the Earth getting destroyed. But it was Spectacular, Beautiful, Splendid and Magnificent. The way the world was being furious on mankind, was like the Nature’s way of taking revenge, for treating her so badly. Lets face the fact – Yes, we do.\nAfter “The Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow“, Roland Emmerich has done it again, with might be the shortest title ever (just 4 numerals), but with more impact this time. As I said, visually the film is a treat and which is why I had to experience it again.\nThere is no science in the movie, except probably the fact, that it follows gravity! With every escape of the protagonists at just the precise moments, 2012 did felt over dramatic. But thats why I loved it. Many times did I anticipated whats coming, but that didn’t stopped the excitement from reaching the spine, and it did created chills many times.\nMorgan Lily\u0026#8217;s innocence takes my breath away in this still shot of 2012 2012 was my first movie to watch John Cusack on screen, and I have got to tell, he looked charming. (The next would be Hot Tub Time Machine, for which I am pretty excited.) Morgan Lily is amazingly cute girl and it was good to have her in 2012, as it just made the shots more beautiful. I cannot say much for a large number of other characters, but I don’t think, 2012 wasn’t even relying on casts to work, so cast doesn’t matter. The selling point of 2012 was CGI, and there’s no shortage of it. Without spoiling, I would just want to say that the visual effects were mind-numbing awesome. The crash and blasts and disasters makes full use of every inch of the screen, and which makes it perfect to be watched in hall, in front of largest screen possible.\n2012 is a thrill ride, but is best to watch it with your brains on a shutdown mode. Don’t expect 2012 to give you any information about what’s the real prophesy about Mayan’s, which led to the creation of 2012, in the first place. Nor expect 2012 to have a story. If you want a good story, its time you look for something else. 2012 is a movie, which truly shows what can be achieved with today’s CGI, and to what extent of realism could be expect in future. And with 2012 I can be sure that its going in a right direction.\n","date":"14 August 2010","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2010/08/2012-the-end-or-just-the-beginning/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cdiv class=\"zemanta-img separator\" style=\"clear: right;\"\u003e\n\u003ca style=\"clear: right; display: block; float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\" href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2012_Poster.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/dd/2012_Poster.jpg\" alt=\"2012 (film)\" width=\"269\" height=\"400\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cspan class=\"zemanta-img-attribution\" style=\"clear: both; float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003eImage via \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2012_Poster.jpg\"\u003eWikipedia\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e12th December 2012:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cem\u003e“Water came rushing in from all sides of the island and submerged the complete city in one sweep. Huge rocks were falling from the skies and blasting like Atom bombs all over the mountains. Rocks started to melt like wax does in the coal and houses began to vaporize in seconds.\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eThe minute longs earthquakes were shattering the landscapes, and buildings were collapsing like when a tower of cards crash when even one card is pushed from its base. Bridges were collapsing, trucks blasting and there was havoc everywhere!”\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n_\u003cbr\u003e\n_\u003cbr\u003e\nJust the words above can generate chills in the spine. Now imagine watching the destruction on 30 by 70 feet screen size and dolby digital surround sound. Oh, it has GOT TO BE one of the most Amazing Experience ever. And it was. So much so, that I had to watch it two times to get it through.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"2012 – The End – Or Just the Beginning"},{"content":" So, its one of those time of the year, when you feel your (old) phone is getting too old to handle, and there could be many reasons for feeling so, depending on the type of consumer you are. For me, I am now looking for a new phone, since its giving me a few troubles (which translates to MANY, in my case!).\nPersonally I don\u0026#8217;t want to leave my Sony Ericsson W550i (Walkman), which was a present to me 2 yrs ago from my dad on my birthday and since then, I have built a relationship with this phone. This phone is amazing. Without getting too emotional, I just want to tell that its dedicated keys for Multimedia, Camera, Lock and Video Player is awesome, but also it has so much of features, that just makes it too cool to handle. But the features didn’t began to give me troubles, if that’s what you have started to speculate. In reality, the phone was getting old. Due to my bad handling (I can be pretty rough at times), a few buttons started deminish and finally stopped working. Call started to get dropped, and people wasn’t able to hear me, even if I screamed!\nSo as I said earlier, I am looking for a new phone. And this time, I just have One prority: Talk!\nIts amazing to think that an idea of a mobile phone, began with just a basic principle, which was to “talk”, but soon extended to Instant Messaging and then to MMS, then multimedia, browsing… and the rest is history.\nFor my current need I just want a phone with the most basic necessity in mind, that is be able to talk without interruption, and with long talk time. BUT my winding mind, could not have been so perplexed if that was the only case. The other requirement which is now also important to me is radio. After all, a radio is the only piece of technology that even father of my grandpa also used to operate!\nAfter a long research over the price and design, I have selected these mobiles, for they each have two things in common, they can be used to talk, and listen radio.\nNokia 5030 (Link2)\nMicromax X100\nNokia 1616\nNokia 1661\nNokia 1280\nNokia 2630 List of Phones with Prices (may be Outdated, but gives an upper bound)The only thing which I need now is a premonition, about which to really use to make those calls.\nAny help? ","date":"7 August 2010","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2010/08/buying-dilemma-of-a-new-phone-to-talk/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cdiv dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"zemanta-img separator\" style=\"clear: right;\"\u003e\nSo, its one of those time of the year, when you feel your (old) phone is getting too old to handle, and there could be many reasons for feeling so, depending on the type of consumer you are.\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"zemanta-img separator\" style=\"clear: right;\"\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003ca style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\" href=\"http://www.mobilegazette.com/images/sony-ericsson/sony-ericsson-w550-combo.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://www.mobilegazette.com/images/sony-ericsson/sony-ericsson-w550-combo.jpg\" width=\"216\" height=\"320\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003eFor me, I am now looking for a new phone, since its giving me a few troubles (which translates to MANY, in my case!).\u003cbr /\u003e Personally I don\u0026#8217;t want to leave my Sony Ericsson W550i (Walkman), which was a present to me 2 yrs ago from my dad on my birthday and since then, I have built a relationship with this phone. This phone is amazing. Without getting too emotional, I just want to tell that its dedicated keys for Multimedia, Camera, Lock and Video Player is awesome, but also it has so much of features, that just makes it too cool to handle.","title":"Buying Dilemma of a New Phone (to Talk)"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/phones/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Phones"},{"content":" Image via Wikipedia The first thing which comes to mind after you have watched the trailorof Inception, is that you will see Leonardo DiCaprio on the Big screen! It’s a known fact, about him being a good actor, and its hard to imagine him without getting the record-setting \u0026#8220;Titanic\u0026#8221; in mind. But I am glad to say that Inception may have broken this cliché, and instead many people would now remember him for Inception instead! Although its very difficult to write a review of Inception, after just a single watch (ya, its that obscure), but this is just an account of my experience and knowledge while doing so. Plot: Inception is all about dreams, and its invasion. Few people, has the technology to go inside someone’s dream, and steal what is called the most important thing in the modern world \u0026#8211; Information or secrets. \u0026#8220;Cobb\u0026#8221;, the main protagonist of the story (of course Leo), has a job to use their dreams to extract the information, and hence he is called, “extractor”. As the story progresses we watch Cobb and his team playing with the minds of people that they target, while Cobb trying to deal with his own secrets of his memories. That’s all is needed to Incept the idea of Inception in your minds. World of the Inception: “Your mind is the scene of the crime.” \u0026#8211; That’s the tag line which Inception has used for its promotion. And quite effortlessly, its justified. The world of Inception is the dream.\nCobb (in the center) with his Team\nA dream may just be limited by your imagination, and physics sometimes go for a toss. Anything can happen in a dream. But as in the case of dreams we experience ourselves, any event happening in there, comes to effect because of its some kind of relation to the reality. And any event happening in the real world of the dreamer, may fall an effect in the dream, the dreamer is watching. (Quiet compelling, isn’t it?) The connection may seem to be burrowed by the favorite film of all time, \u0026#8220;The Matrix\u0026#8220;, but is far more complicated then that, as you may had or would experience yourself. But more on that later. \u0026nbsp; VFX: What surprised me was the fact that despite being heavy on Visual Effects, their are barely any sequence where you would actually notice it. Ok, you will notice it, but you wont be dazzled by it. Christopher Nolanhas purposely avoided using VFX as much as possible, and even than he has done an excellent job, bringing the story out very effectively. [][1]A popular Physics bending VFX He has so beautifully used the technique of slow motion, most profoundly in the scene when Cobb explains Ariadne(the beautiful Ellen Page), the Architect of the dream world, about her being in a dream. In Inception, slow-mo is used to depict the flow of time, and I must say, I loved this new way of imparting a sense of time in the different layers of dream. (Layers of dream would make sense after you watch the movie.) Direction: # The direction of the movie, for the lack of better word can only be said, “awe-inspiring” and brilliant. It takes a lot of hard work, directing and editing to explain the concept so complicated as shown in the Inception. But in true manner, Chris Nolan has successfully achieved this seemingly impossible feat.\nChristopher Nolan Christopher Nolan is one talented director, the direction of which I was watching for the first time. He is in on my watch list from now, and would certainly like to see more from him. Depiction of dreams in Inception, is done to keep the viewer hard to guess what they are watching, the fact or the dream. While the course of the movie, you would always have to wear your thinking cap, and you keep questioning yourself about the happenings and its reason. The physics of the world inside the dreams change so radically and dramatically that at the start it fascinates you, and is so beautifully done that a mathematician mind would truly admire the genius behind the direction. Every scene and plot is like it’s crafted by hands. Every frame well calculated, and each cuts done at the precise moments. Connection with The Matrix: # One of the things that made Inception so familiar with The Matrix was the world of virtuality. In The Matrix it was evinced that the world which people lived was unreal and that it is just a simulation of a computer program. Which only meant, that only their mind was inside the delusive world, but their physical existence was in the \u0026#8216;veridical\u0026#8217; one. Inception burrowed the idea of Matrix and puts that in a more acceptable perception \u0026#8211; that of the dream. But despite the familiarity, Inception is unique in its own way, due to the fact, that it is closer to reality. The use of the dreams makes it more haunting! The Music: # Finally, the one thing which accelerated the excitement of Inception to incredible height was the power of music.(Listen Here) Without the adequate knowledge of the subject, I can only describe its music, as being transcendent, and which makes you reach the higher state of cognition. In one word, it’s ‘EPIC’. Epic in the sense that you may never be bored listening it, and the effect that it actually enhances the plot, by imparting a sense of thrill to the story.\nI found this video on youtube, and I think it could have been used perfectly when the end credit rolls. Conclusion: # The Maze Logo Lovers say that the movie has set new standards of perfection. Haters munch that its overrated. But I personally, loved it, because it made me think. Not much of the movie is able to do so. Surely I will watch Inception again, (and again), to witness the sheer brilliance of the direction, and the immersive world that it presents. But thats what I admire about such movies. You can never have it enough. If you have watched Inception, you would know what I am talking about. And if are planning to watch it, then you can try these links in the meantime.\nIMDB Reviews: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/usercomments\nTrailors: First Second Third\nOfficial Website: http://inceptionmovie.warnerbros.com/\nThe Mind Crime game: http://www.mind-crime.com/ (I have played it, its truly nerve-wrecking at first)\nThe real science of dream research: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38266663/\n","date":"31 July 2010","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2010/07/inception-dare-to-dream/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cdiv dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"zemanta-img separator\" style=\"clear: right;\"\u003e\n\u003ca style=\"clear: right; display: block; float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\" href=\"http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LeonardoDiCaprioNov08.jpg\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"color: black;\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8f/LeonardoDiCaprioNov08.jpg/300px-LeonardoDiCaprioNov08.jpg\" alt=\"Leonardo DiCaprio at the Body of Lies film pre...\" width=\"128\" height=\"200\" /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cspan class=\"zemanta-img-attribution\" style=\"clear: both; float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003eImage via \u003c/span\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LeonardoDiCaprioNov08.jpg\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"color: black;\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003eWikipedia\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0;\"\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003eThe first thing which comes to mind after you have watched the \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Sd0ff1sbJU\"\u003etrailor\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003eof \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/\"\u003eInception\u003c/a\u003e, is that you will see \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000138/\"\u003eLeonardo DiCaprio\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003e on the Big screen! It’s a known fact, about him being a good actor, and its hard to imagine him without getting the record-setting \u0026#8220;\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanic_%281997_film%29\"\u003eTitanic\u003c/a\u003e\u0026#8221; \u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003ein mind. But I am glad to say that Inception may have broken this cliché, and instead many people would now remember him for Inception instead!\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0;\"\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0;\"\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003eAlthough its very difficult to write a review of Inception, after just a single watch (ya, its that obscure), but this is just an account of my experience and knowledge while doing so.\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0;\"\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-size: large;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003ePlot\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: large;\"\u003e:\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0;\"\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003eInception is all about dreams, and its invasion. Few people, has the technology to go inside someone’s dream, and steal what is called the most important thing in the modern world \u0026#8211; Information or secrets. \u0026#8220;Cobb\u0026#8221;, the main protagonist of the story (of course Leo), has a job to use their dreams to extract the information, and hence he is called, “extractor”. As the story progresses we watch Cobb and his team  playing with the minds of people that they target, while Cobb trying to deal with his own secrets of his memories. That’s all is needed to Incept the idea of Inception in your minds.\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e","title":"Inception – Dare to Dream"},{"content":" Cover of Bill \u0026 Ted\u0026#8217;s Excellent Adventure Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (BTEA hereon), is an adventure which must have been the envy of every student who ever wished to make a history project in there school times.\nBTEA is a story of two friends, Bill and Ted, and there journey through time, collecting many historical figures, in real person, like the Greek Philosopher – Socrates from about 410 BC, and\nJoan of Arc from about 1430 AD to the 16th President of US, and most popular among them, Mr. Abrahim Lincoln. They all are literally captured by the duo in an attempt to pass in their History report!\nI know, sounds a little strange, but trust me, its an epic adventure.\nReleased just about 10 months before second part of Back to the Future Trilogy, BTEA makes little or no attempt to face the paradoxes of time travel. And the way which story goes, kinda looks childish, but who’s complaining? Its quiet an adventure and visually good for its time. The best part: you get to travel in a tunnel of time and can actually “see” the time flowing, and going to a particular time is as convenient as dialling a number in the booth, literally!\nIf you have seen The Matrix, you would be amazed by the teen look of Keanu Reeves. I mean, I recognized much later in the movie that he was the Matrix superstar! What can I tell you about Matrix? I believe it was a landmark in the history of Hollywood. And there are just two kinds of movies, those made before the Matix and those after. But thats another story.\nBTEA definitely comes among the tops in my list of must see time travel movies.\nJust for the record, these are some of the people you can expect to meet in BTEA.\n(From Left to Right) Socrates, John Or Arc, Abrahim Lincoln, Genghis Khan, Beethoven.\nRelated articles by Zemanta Why We Love Bill and Ted\u0026#8217;s Excellent Adventure (.media.gunaxin.com) ","date":"7 March 2010","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2010/03/bill-teds-excellent-adventure/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cdiv class=\"zemanta-img\" style=\"display: block; float: right; margin: 1em; width: 219px;\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/51NPPFB60BL.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-260\" alt=\"51NPPFB60BL\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/51NPPFB60BL.jpg\" width=\"331\" height=\"475\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cspan class=\"zemanta-img-attribution\"\u003eCover of \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Bill-Excellent-Adventure-Keanu-Reeves/dp/B00005PJ6N%3FSubscriptionId%3D0G81C5DAZ03ZR9WH9X82%26tag%3Dzemanta-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3DB00005PJ6N\"\u003eBill \u0026 Ted\u0026#8217;s Excellent Adventure\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Bill \u0026 Ted's Excellent Adventure\" href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096928/\" rel=\"imdb\"\u003eBill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure\u003c/a\u003e (BTEA hereon), is an adventure which must have been the envy of every student who ever wished to make a history project in there school times.\u003cbr\u003e\nBTEA is a story of two friends, Bill and Ted, and there journey through time, collecting many historical figures, in real person, like the Greek Philosopher – \u003ca class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Socrates\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates\" rel=\"wikipedia\"\u003eSocrates\u003c/a\u003e from about 410 BC, and\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Joan of Arc\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_of_Arc\" rel=\"wikipedia\"\u003eJoan of Arc\u003c/a\u003e from about 1430 AD to the 16th President of US, and most popular among them, Mr. Abrahim Lincoln. They all are literally captured by the duo in an attempt to pass in their History report!\u003cbr\u003e\nI know, sounds a little strange, but trust me, its an epic adventure.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bill \u0026 Ted's Excellent Adventure"},{"content":" Image via Wikipedia The first thing that may come to mind after reading the title “Napolean Dynamite“, would either be that this is some kind of a Historical story or a historical War movie. But let me tell you that it is infact neither of the two! Its a name of the guy, played by Jon Heder. He may be a nerd or having some kind of Mental disorder, the clarity of which is not clear in the story. (Do let me know, if it clears to you).\nTo quote IMDB, this movie is about “A listless and alienated teenager, (who) decides to help his new friend win the class presidency in their small western high school, while he must deal with his bizarre family life back home.“\nI watched this movie, just for the sake of curiosity, cause I had heard many opinions about it. Dont remember, if it was positive or not, but I certainly fell in love with the characters. There’s something about him, that makes him familiar. His geekiness, maybe, or the way he says, :Gosh! There’s a kind of innocence, a child inside him, which I think prevails inside me too.\nThe actors are brilliant, but the pace is rather slow. So much slow, that I think a few people might have dozed off in the middle while catching it in theater! It looks like, Napolean and his friend were portraying robots, cause they hardly show any emotion while conversing. But I think, this was the major factor, which made the whole experience so humorous. This was different then any movie I have ever seen, and so gives it the title of originality in my book of honor.\nThe one liners of this movie became so popular, that it became the parody for gen X of America for a long time. Its funny the way he says things, so much so that a prankster made a soundcard of Napolean to a good use! As you can hear from this video. For those of you who want to see what happened when Dynamite met the Software giant, Mr. Bill Gates, then following video is a treat!\n","date":"7 February 2010","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2010/02/napolean-dynamite-no-its-not-a-war-story/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cdiv class=\"zemanta-img\" style=\"display: block; float: right; width: 277px; margin: 1em;\"\u003e\n\u003ca style=\"clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Napoleon_dynamite_post.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Kevin Rion, actor of Napoleon Dynamite\" src=\"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/87/Napoleon_dynamite_post.jpg\" width=\"267\" height=\"400\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cspan class=\"zemanta-img-attribution\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"\u003eImage via \u003c/span\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Napoleon_dynamite_post.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"\u003eWikipedia\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"\u003eThe first thing that may come to mind after reading the title “\u003c/span\u003e\u003ca class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Napoleon Dynamite\" href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0374900/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"imdb noopener noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"\u003eNapolean Dynamite\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"\u003e“, would either be that this is some kind of a Historical story or a historical War movie. But let me tell you that it is infact neither of the two! Its a name of the guy, played by \u003ca class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Jon Heder\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Heder\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia noopener noreferrer\"\u003eJon Heder\u003c/a\u003e. \u003c/span\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-weight: normal;\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"\u003eHe may be a nerd or having some kind of \u003c/span\u003e\u003ca class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Mental disorder\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_disorder\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia noopener noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"\u003eMental disorder\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"\u003e, the clarity of which is not clear in the story. (Do let me know, if it clears to you).\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman';\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"\u003eTo quote IMDB, this movie is about “\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"\u003eA listless and alienated teenager, (who) decides to help his new friend win the class presidency in their small western high school, while he must deal with his bizarre family life back home.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: medium; line-height: normal;\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"\u003e“\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"\u003eI watched this movie, just for the sake of curiosity, cause I had heard many opinions about it. Dont remember, if it was positive or not, but I certainly fell in love with the characters. There’s something about him, that makes him familiar. His geekiness, maybe, or the way he says, :Gosh! There’s a kind of innocence, a child inside him, which I think prevails inside me too.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Napolean Dynamite – No its not a War Story"},{"content":" Have you ever wished you had more time, when all of your friends are shouting at you, for being late to the party, and you are struggling with your dress, which is failing to put on the right place, just at the right time. Or have you ever being frustrated for being late at the class or at the office, afraid of how might your boss react?\nImage via Wikipedia Almost everyone of us, have demanded more time then we get. And its the only thing that instead flies, with the promise that it would never return…. Okay, I sometimes carry away, when I talk about “Time”. So I was saying that if you ever had the shortage of seconds, then the Clock from the movie, Clockstoppers is a gadget you will have to dream of. “Dream” because it would take extreme luck for you to acquire such a device, on which there would be the eyes of some of the villians, who will try to snatch it from you, at every tick of the second you proceed with the clock.\nWell, in the story of Clockstopper, the lead role, gets his hand on such a watch, which on the press of a button makes you so fast, that everything around seems to be so slow, that you get the illusion of time being stopped, when actually time IS flying like it always does, but with an extremely slow rate! (Umm.. good physics, isn’t it?) And now you can do whatever you can imagine in, what is called as “Hypertime”. Now any verb, prefixed with Hyper, is bound to sound cool, and this is no exception!\nWhat makes this story interesting, other than the fact, that it uses Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, is the adventure with which the boy is accompanied with that clock. And the best part is he gets to know about that time stopping; okay, time slowing gadget with her girlfriend, and together they try to make full use of it! Hey, don’t get bad ideas in you mind! They are children for god’s sake. They use this power to… well, I don’t want to write a spoiler.\nThe fact is, they don’t get to use its power, cause as in a typical Hollywood movie, there are bad guys, who is trying to get that gadget, for some evil intentions! And that’s when the adventure comes, and the survival race begins.\nClockstoppers, is quite a nice movie, nice for kids, cause in terms of the story, it doesn’t qualify for big guys. But still, a fun movie to watch, cause it shows, the hidden desire among all of us – to stop time.\nKeep an eye on this gadget. You may not go back in time, with that clock, but you sure can go Hyper!\n","date":"4 February 2010","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2010/02/clockstoppers-being-hyper/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHave you ever wished you had more time, when all of your friends are shouting at you, for being late to the party, and you are struggling with your dress, which is failing to put on the right place, just at the right time. Or have you ever being frustrated for being late at the class or at the office, afraid of how might your boss react?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"zemanta-img zemanta-action-dragged\" style=\"display: block; float: right; width: 225px; margin: 1em;\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Clockstoppers.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Clockstoppers\" src=\"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/77/Clockstoppers.jpg\" width=\"215\" height=\"320\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cspan class=\"zemanta-img-attribution\"\u003eImage via \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Clockstoppers.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eWikipedia\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlmost everyone of us, have demanded more time then we get. And its the only thing that instead flies, with the promise that it would never return…. Okay, I sometimes carry away, when I talk about “Time”. So I was saying that if you ever had the shortage of seconds, then the Clock from the movie, \u003ca class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Clockstoppers\" href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0157472/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"imdb noopener noreferrer\"\u003eClockstoppers\u003c/a\u003e is a gadget you will have to dream of. “Dream” because it would take extreme luck for you to acquire such a device, on which there would be the eyes of some of the villians, who will try to snatch it from you, at every tick of the second you proceed with the clock.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Clockstoppers – being Hyper"},{"content":"\nI saw this movie by chance, when I cached its beginning, on TV at night. And I think, I would have been better, without it. The movie is so gross; I get goose bumps whenever I remember those scenes. Those horrible situations! “The Ruins” is a horror movie, although not the best in its genre, but still a great deal to follow for someone like me! The plot involves a few tourists travelling to an ancient Mayan temple of Mexican Jungle, where they became the target of carnivorous plants, ready to eat them alive! Yes you read it right, and it does sound creepy.\nWell, I have nothing to write more. If you do want to watch this; then let me warn you – this movie is not for the faint of hearts. And I am sure, even strong hearts would want to skip this one. It contains every thing that makes it irresistible to avoid. And I am glad I saw it on TV, cause most of the horror was censored. Sometimes censoring is good 😉\n","date":"2 February 2010","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2010/02/the-ruins-better-not-watch-this/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear:both;text-align:center;\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://lh6.ggpht.com/_0nghcE4fpu8/SSHJ3J1U1_I/AAAAAAAAALk/lC6ST0_eDNk/s1600/Mayan-Temples.jpg\" style=\"clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"212\" src=\"http://lh6.ggpht.com/_0nghcE4fpu8/SSHJ3J1U1_I/AAAAAAAAALk/lC6ST0_eDNk/s320/Mayan-Temples.jpg\" width=\"320\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eI saw this movie by chance, when I cached its beginning, on TV at night. And I think, I would have been better, without it. The movie is so gross; I get goose bumps whenever I remember those scenes. Those horrible situations! \u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cspan\u003e“\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0963794/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eThe Ruins\u003c/a\u003e” is a horror movie, although not the best in its genre, but still a great deal to follow for someone like me! The plot involves a few tourists travelling to an ancient Mayan temple of Mexican Jungle, where they became the target of carnivorous plants, ready to eat them alive! Yes you read it right, and it does sound creepy.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cspan\u003eWell, I have nothing to write more. If you do want to watch this; then let me warn you – this movie is not for the faint of hearts. And I am sure, even strong hearts would want to skip this one. It contains \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0963794/parentalguide\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eevery thing that makes it irresistible to avoid\u003c/a\u003e. And I am glad I saw it on TV, cause most of the horror was censored. Sometimes censoring is good 😉\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cspan\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Ruins – Better not watch this!"},{"content":"** Warning: This article could contain spoilers. So if you havn’t seen the movie, go see it first!” **\nI am an Idiot. And I am accepting this fact, not to follow the trend of today’s youngsters, but because I really am! And I am putting this assertion on the fact that I waited for so long to watch it.\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; 3 Idiots is the story of the guys, who are facing the most difficult times of their lives which is, to make a life! The students who face various kinds of tortures when getting admission to a renowned college, in the form of ragging, as well as the pressures of dealing with studies, and the expectations of their parents, these all are aptly shown in the film. There are moments of joy, sad and of course, love, throughout the film. But what is prevalent, is the awesomeness of friendship, and the bonding which the trio shows and which could have been the reason alone, for proving it to be a hit. I found the title of the film, to be quiet Ironic.If, having a super charged brain and a unique sense of social skills along with the ability to invent and create are the signs of an Idiot, then he definitely was one! There was no doubt of the entertainment this film provided. Entire film is a roller coaster ride in humour, and one can easily forgets the misery of their lives, amidst the fun they have in the campus. But not All iss welll! There are critics who believed that this film lacked in practicality.There are many examples, as explained in A Cynical Engineering Take on 3 Idiots Movie, which questions its implications, and points out that they were far from realistic. \u0026nbsp; And I am surprised by such quotes, and sometimes get cynical myself, to know the ambitions people have from a Bollywood film. I mean, what do people expected from 3 Idiots, which is tailored to be a blockbuster. Not many would want a documentary like in Discovery Channel, preaching about the loopholes in higher education colleges now, wouldn\u0026#8217;t it? But whatever be the motives behind making 3 Idiots and whatever be its effect on the masses, one thing is for sure, this film does points out to many of the most crucial aspects or flaws in today\u0026#8217;s educational system. The most important being the fact that not everyone is given a chance to pursue\u0026nbsp;their interest as their studies. The parents try \u0026nbsp;to achieve their dreams through the eyes of their children and in the process lost many of them, when the students starts to think that the only way to get rid of the trouble is by putting their life to an end. \u0026nbsp; To conclude I would just like to say that the mind of a student is not the place for pressure, and it\u0026#8217;s best left for a pressure cooker. Albeit, it wont burst, but it sure would sound so loud that its echo would be unbearable to handle. \u0026nbsp; So in my opinion, 3 Idiots is a story not about their idiocy,\u0026nbsp; but about the genius that prevalent in each one of us. What matters is the direction we apply it to. And even if you think that you don\u0026#8217;t, then fool your heart, cause \u0026#8220;dil to bevakoof hota hai\u0026#8221;. \u0026#8220;Chase Excellence and success will follow\u0026#8221;! ","date":"28 January 2010","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2010/01/3-idiots-another-name-for-modern-geniuses/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;\"\u003e** Warning: This article could contain spoilers. So if you havn’t seen the movie, go see it first!” **\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: medium;\"\u003eI am an Idiot. And I am accepting this fact, not to follow the trend of today’s youngsters, but because I really am! And I am putting this assertion on the fact that I waited for so long to watch it.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u0026nbsp;\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003ca style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\" href=\"https://makingahero.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/3-idiots01.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://makingahero.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/3-idiots01.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u0026nbsp;\n\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003ca class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Three Idiots\" href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Idiots\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia noopener noreferrer\"\u003e3 Idiots\u003c/a\u003e is the story of the guys, who are facing the most difficult times of their lives which is, to make a life! The students who face various kinds of tortures when getting admission to a renowned college, in the form of ragging, as well as the pressures of dealing with studies, and the expectations of their parents, these all are aptly shown in the film.\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\nThere are moments of joy, sad and of course, love, throughout the film. But what is prevalent, is the awesomeness of friendship, and the bonding which the trio shows and which could have been the reason alone, for proving it to be a hit.\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003ca name=\"more\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e","title":"3 Idiots – Another name for modern Geniuses"},{"content":" \u0026#8220;Horton Hears a Who!\u0026#8220;, takes us inside to a world living on a spec of dust, where no one could believe that life can exist. Its a testimony of how incredible, the idea of microscopic life can be instilled with adventure, comedy and horror in an animation of not more than one and a half hour. Comedy when we see the child like innocence of Horton, adventure for those who involved in, or against the elephant, and horror for the Whoville, whose town could be destroyed even if the dust falls in a drop of water.\nIts later that I came to know that the voice of Horton, the elephant, was of Jim Carrey, one of my favorite actors of Hollywood. No wonder I loved the elephant and besides, he was way too cute! I also loved Morton, the rat who is Horton’s best friend, and always tried to bring him down to earth whenever he flies too high in his dreams, which he see mostly in the daylight.\nThe idea of beings so microscopic that its unimaginable to even think is not a new one. I recall, watching Men in Black many years ago, which too showed this idea in a fashion only Hollywood can do. The end shot of Men in Black where, our whole universe, is zoomed out of a marble, which a giant creature (for us) is playing with, just took my breath away the first time I watched it.\nIn the end, I could conclude, that this fun-packed family movie, is as well as entertaining, as its educational, and definitely imparts us the wisdom, to never see the world with the same eyes again!\n","date":"18 January 2010","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2010/01/horton-hearing-someone-no-one-could-hear/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003ca style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\" href=\"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/33/Horton_a_who.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/33/Horton_a_who.jpg\" width=\"216\" height=\"320\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0;\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;\"\u003e\u0026#8220;\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0451079/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eHorton Hears a Who!\u003c/a\u003e\u0026#8220;, takes us inside to a world living on a spec of dust, where no one could believe that life can exist.\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;\"\u003eIts a testimony of how incredible, the idea of microscopic life can be instilled with adventure, comedy and horror in an animation of not more than one and a half hour. Comedy when we see the child like innocence of Horton, adventure for those who involved in, or against the elephant, and horror for the Whoville, whose town could be destroyed even if the dust falls in a drop of water.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;\"\u003e \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Horton – Hearing someone no one could hear!"},{"content":"One thing in my life, which I hated when I ate it the first time, is the most popular food in the western countries – Pizza! I guess much time had passed between its cooking and the time I began to put that in my mouth!\nThe next time was all the way in my birthday, when I enjoyed it in a shop, along with a friend of mine, and you guessed right, it was for my birthday treat. The shop was Unique Cafe, situated in a famous location of East Delhi – Madhu Vihar Market. And this happened nearly four months ago.\nToday, on the 16th day of 2010, I experienced, may be for a little while, what might eating in an expensive food joint feels. And believe me it feels good and may be a little awkward.\nMy friend Ankur and me, never know of where we would head, when we decide to go somewhere. What we know, is one thing for sure, that the journey would definetely include some kind of new food to eat. Whether its Gol-Gappe of Madhu Vihar, or burgur of Caunaught Place, whether its McPuff of Mac Donalds, or kulfi-faluda of Laxmi Nagar market, we always have to try new things. Cause we both are a big foody, and just when we think we have eaten much, more room gets vacant inside our cryptic stomachs!\nThis time we were at East Delhi Mall at Anand Vihar, which is the most happening mall according to me, at this side of Delhi. Today we decided to give the Pizza Hut a try for a food I still fantasize much about, and to know whats the big deal in eating in a joint like this.\nImparting ourselves with great grits, we headed inside the hut. The view looked liked a room coming straight from a diner of an american show. With waiters roaming around in comprehensive uniforms, tables decorated in a groovy manner and the feel with an aura of richness, maybe of all those money people were flaunting, was very new for me.\nI asked the lady on the reception about our choice of food, but she instead told us to take a seat and not to worry about the order. I was skeptical at first, but later tried to grab one sofa, just to be stopped by a waiter, informing us about that being booked. So we headed in other direction, saw one bench and asked to confirm if that isn’t already reserved!\nA waiter came and gave us the menu, and recited, “Welcome to Pizza hut, here’s the menus, what would you like to order?”. It was hard for my friend to digest that the waiter’s english was better than himself! And I on the other hand was trying hard, not to show my smile.\nNot sure about the size of pizzas being offered we relied on a safe bet and ordered a medium Kadai Paneer Pizza, for the last thing I would want was a pizza of a size of a donut or pizza so large, we couldn’t have dinner at the night! That went along with a drink, only to be advised about another one, which was a lime, for which we agreed on. Then he went telling us that the lime would come in few minutes and pizza would take atleast 15 minutes. Whoa, that felt long to listen, but who was complaining? I could wait, so long, as not to eat those cool ones, I hated the first time!\nLater, I noticed a set of fork and a knife placed courteously along the right side of plates, which marked Pizza hut’s logo on every opposite sides of it. After the limes came, I was surprized to the fact that it tasted exactly like the lime I used to make in summers. Well, I expected something different! The moment, we were resolving the issue, of which hand to hold the fork and the knife, waiter brought the pizza in a cooking pan. Now, that was something different!\nWith a high appetite we broked to grab a piece of pie, in which the cheeze was melting like butter. It tasted so delicious, that I was getting a fair idea of why is it like a staple food in America. We were eating the pizza with those forks and knife and the noise when those was making in contact with the ceramic plates was I think must have been audible to the ones outside the hut! To top on that, the knife was slipping from our hands too often, that we thought, it would be best if we eat Desi Style, from our own hands!\nSo we picked the piece and dipped it in the tomato sauce, and ate it just like I had seen in those TV commercials. In order to gain taste, we were sipping the lime in between. One time, I closed my eyes and it was easy to imagine, like I was some sort of king, cause the richness of cheese dipped in that sauce was making the experience, to say the least, unforgettable.\nAfter finishing half of the pizza, I suddenly realized that we hadn’t used any seasoning on top of them, and so hurridly turned the seasoning sprinkler, only to find out that the holes were too big. With one sprinkle so much seasoning came out on one piece of pizza, that was enough to be applied on the whole of that. Our laughs were hard to control, and we managed to stop only for the sake of place we were eating.\nAfter we finished the pizza a final surprize was yet to come, the bill shock. The cost which we had calculated for the pizza and the drinks, were excluded of the various taxes. So after the waiter tax, the frying pan tax, and god knows what tax, the bill was enough to put off any future plans to visit the hut again. But thanks to the corporate discount I availed due to working in a multinational company, I was given 25% off! Now, thats what I call an happy ending.\nThat’s how we spend one afternoon at Pizza hut, in a mall, thinking that we could have end up whole dinner for four, in that amount we had spend for a pizza for two. But the experience was incredible. Its not always everywhere, the waiters take your orders in English, and you pay the bills keeping money inside a file and never see how the food is cooking. And in the end are greeted by one of the staff, to come again, and decrease the amount of our wallet by fractions!\nWe couldn’t have asked for more, now, could we?\n","date":"16 January 2010","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2010/01/one-afternoon-at-a-pizza-hut/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOne thing in my life, which I hated when I ate it the first time, is the most popular food in the western countries – Pizza! I guess much time had passed between its cooking and the time I began to put that in my mouth!\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d2/Pizza_Hut_logo.svg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e \u003c/a\u003eThe next time was all the way in my birthday, when I enjoyed it in a shop, along with a friend of mine, and you guessed right, it was for my birthday treat. The shop was Unique Cafe, situated in a famous location of East Delhi – Madhu Vihar Market. And this happened nearly four months ago.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/cba98c9e8ab145e9_Pizza-Hut-Viral-Video.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-183 aligncenter\" alt=\"cba98c9e8ab145e9_Pizza-Hut-Viral-Video\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/cba98c9e8ab145e9_Pizza-Hut-Viral-Video.jpg\" width=\"440\" height=\"330\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, on the 16th day of 2010, I experienced, may be for a little while, what might eating in an expensive food joint feels. And believe me it feels good and may be a little awkward.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"One Afternoon at a Pizza Hut"},{"content":" I saw this intriguing movie last night. A Beautiful Mind, based on the Nobel Prize winner in Economic Sciences, is the story of John Nash, about how he cope up with his brilliant mind, and his veridical friends.\nThis movie, takes us to a journey of his entire life, and we witness the world through the eyes of a mathematician, breaking some of the very complex encryptions, that would otherwise take too much resources to solve. Also what made me enjoy this movie, was the sheer depiction of the flow of time. Which was like when The Time Traveler of H.G. Wells novel, flies to the future, in its movie version. Its is just fascinating to see the time scaled up to an extent, where winters to spring happens in a few seconds, and we could see the transformations, which is otherwise too slow to notice for an average Joe.\n[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS_d0Ayjw4o]\nI think one of the justifications for this movie to be awarded with four Oscars, can be given by the fact that not a single moment did I feel that Russell Crowe was an actor. He was so unbelievably more believable.\nA beautiful mind, is a beautiful movie, the beauty of which lies in the mind of the character, and the technique he uses to find the solutions of the problems, which itself takes a shape of an art, very few is able to materialize.\nAnd I could go on and on, writing about this art which almost all of us have inside us somewhere. But may be next time.\nHaving done the graduation in Maths, I am repenting just one thing. “Why wasn’t I recommended this movie, a couple of years ago!”\n","date":"14 January 2010","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2010/01/a-beautiful-mind/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cdiv dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\nI saw this intriguing movie last night. \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0268978/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eA Beautiful Mind\u003c/a\u003e, based on the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Economic_Sciences\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eNobel Prize winner in Economic\u003c/a\u003e Sciences, is the story of \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash,_Jr.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eJohn Nash\u003c/a\u003e, about how he cope up with his brilliant mind, and his veridical friends.\u003c/p\u003e \n  \u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003ca style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\" href=\"http://www.sfrevu.com/ISSUES/2002/0201/Film%20-%20A%20Beautiful%20Mind/beautiful%20mind.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://www.sfrevu.com/ISSUES/2002/0201/Film%20-%20A%20Beautiful%20Mind/beautiful%20mind.jpg\" width=\"400\" height=\"255\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003e\nThis movie, takes us to a journey of his entire life, and we witness the world through the eyes of a mathematician, breaking some of the very complex encryptions, that would otherwise take too much resources to solve.","title":"A Beautiful Mind"},{"content":" If you want to know, what happens, when the maker of Titanic meets with the modern technological advancements, then Avatar is the movie you would want to see. With the glory of 3D, it is supposed to dazzle the audience with the brilliance of a world, which is part impossible to cease (like, floating mountains). And with the box office collections, it sure have managed to do so.\nAfter many unsuccessful attempts to go to the theater, (juggling my job and personal life,) I finally made a plan to go for it, even if it meant, watching it alone!\nSo on the afternoon of a day when it was so freezing, feeling like I was in the north pole, I headed for V3S, Laxmi Nagar, where I had planned to watch it.\nBuying the ticket was a big hole in the wallet, but worth it. I mean imagine, this is the only movie after Titanic, in which James Cameron is the Director, Writer as well as Producer!\nI think its in my genes, that I become overly excited when the movie is about to start, and wait impatiently for the time, when advertisement stops and movie begins. The most proud moment I feel after that, is when a message pops up on the screen, for the request for audience to stand, as the music of National Anthem fills the hall with a aura, that is hard to describe. I love the subtle remembrance about us being an Indian, despite that we are watching a movie, which is foreign.\nAnd there it was, the movie begin, and soon I was on Pandora, living with the aliens. But after the movie I was wondering, who the real aliens were, them or us humans!\nAs the time flew, the spectacular world unfolded its hidden secrets, and I was lost in the so unbelievable world which was seeming more real than the bus or auto we take in order to reach our home.\nIn the end I was happy that I didn’t missed Avatar, and despite the fact that I couldn’t enjoy the movie in 3D, I was still enchanted by the magic, I experienced.\nTo conclude, following is an excerpt from my own dialogue with a friend, “Its true, that Hollywood just doesn’t create a story, but an entire Universe…”\n","date":"10 January 2010","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2010/01/avatar-alien-world-never-felt-so-alien/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003ca style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\" href=\"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b0/Avatar-Teaser-Poster.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b0/Avatar-Teaser-Poster.jpg\" width=\"214\" height=\"320\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you want to know, what happens, when the maker of \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanic_%281997_film%29\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eTitanic\u003c/a\u003e meets with the modern technological advancements, then \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_%282009_film%29\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eAvatar\u003c/a\u003e is the movie you would want to see. With the glory of 3D, it is supposed to dazzle the audience with the brilliance of a world, which is part impossible to cease (like, \u003ca href=\"http://images.hitfix.com/photos/255922/AvatarFlying_gallery_primary.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003efloating mountains\u003c/a\u003e). And with the \u003ca href=\"http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/2009/AVATR.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003ebox office collections\u003c/a\u003e, it sure have managed to do so.\u003cbr\u003e\nAfter many unsuccessful attempts to go to the theater, (juggling my job and personal life,) I finally made a plan to go for it, even if it meant, watching it alone!\u003cbr\u003e\nSo on the afternoon of a day when it was so freezing, feeling like I was in the north pole, I headed for V3S, Laxmi Nagar, where I had planned to watch it.\u003cbr\u003e\nBuying the ticket was a big hole in the wallet, but worth it. I mean imagine, this is the only movie after Titanic, in which \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cameron\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eJames Cameron\u003c/a\u003e is the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cameron#Films\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eDirector, Writer as well as Producer\u003c/a\u003e!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"AVATAR – Alien World, never felt so alien!"},{"content":" “A boy living in his own fantasy land, feels ignorant when none of the fellow being give him attention. He runs of the house, and spends the most exciting time, probably of his entire life.” Sounds just like I wanted to do when I was a kid. Dammit, I want to do that even now! This movie probably shows the physic state of a mind of a child, who has no friends in real world, or might be not able to get along, even if they exist. The wild things are actually one of the prettiest creatures I have seen onscreen. This movie is a great story of the relationships between him and those “wild things”. If you are watching it, there’s a warning \u0026#8211; Its pretty wild! and do justice for the title. Soundtracks and songs are perfect. I enjoyed it till the end and wish I met those for at least once, cause then I will able to show my wild side… ","date":"7 January 2010","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2010/01/where-the-wild-things-are/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cdiv class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear:both;text-align:center;\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7b/Wherethewildthingsare.jpg\" style=\"clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em;\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"320\" src=\"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7b/Wherethewildthingsare.jpg\" width=\"214\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"line-height:115%;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"line-height:115%;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;\"\u003e“A boy living in his own fantasy land, feels ignorant when none of the fellow being give him attention. He runs of the house, and spends the most exciting time, probably of his entire life.” Sounds just like I wanted to do when I was a kid. Dammit, I want to do that even now!\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \n\u003cdiv class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"line-height:115%;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"line-height:115%;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;\"\u003eThis movie probably shows the physic state of a mind of a child, who has no friends in real world, or might be not able to get along, even if they exist. The wild things are actually one of the prettiest creatures I have seen onscreen. This movie is a great story of the relationships between him and those “wild things”.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"line-height:115%;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;\"\u003eIf you are watching it, there’s a warning \u0026#8211; Its pretty wild! and do justice for the title. Soundtracks and songs are perfect. I enjoyed it till the end and wish I met those for at least once, cause then I will able to show \u003c/span\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;\"\u003emy wild side…\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Where the Wild Things Are"},{"content":"The poem, which I had written when I was in 11th Standard, for “Just Teens”, a section of the Hindustan Times newspaper. This poem got published, in the Write-In section!\nWhen I would get my dream friend\nWill it be tomorrow or sometime else?\nI don’t know what a best friend means\nBecause till date I have never seen him\nIs it my ego or do I peevish\nWhatever it is I can never forgive\nIn this world of conceitation\nCoping with others become a tension\nI don’t believe in to be ostentatious\n‘Cause I know it cant serve any purpose\nI want to be natural I want to be Instinct\nAs in my opinion\nTrue satisfaction lies only in it\nSometimes I think, may be that’s the reason\nFor why I do not have pals even one\nIn the journey to find a friend\nI have got many intermediate one\nBut whenever I tried to question the truth\nI am only dragged to the dark ends\nTo my almighty I can only say\nGive me the power, give me the sense\nFor I could know other’s indigence\nAnd fulfill their demands\nIf it is necessary to make a best friend\nAfter all it is not worth\nTo make hundreds friends a year\nBut to make a friend for hundred years.\nVineet kumar\nClass XI\nNovember 2nd, 2003 ","date":"7 January 2010","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2010/01/my-dream-friend/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe poem, which I had written when I was in 11th Standard, for “Just Teens”, a section of the Hindustan Times newspaper. This poem got published, in the Write-In section!\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nWhen I would get my dream friend\u003cbr\u003e\nWill it be tomorrow or sometime else?\u003cbr\u003e\nI don’t know what a best friend means\u003cbr\u003e\nBecause till date I have never seen him\u003cbr\u003e\nIs it my ego or do I peevish\u003cbr\u003e\nWhatever it is I can never forgive\u003cbr\u003e\nIn this world of conceitation\u003cbr\u003e\nCoping with others become a tension\u003cbr\u003e\nI don’t believe in to be ostentatious\u003cbr\u003e\n‘Cause I know it cant serve any purpose\u003cbr\u003e\nI want to be natural I want to be Instinct\u003cbr\u003e\nAs in my opinion\u003cbr\u003e\nTrue satisfaction lies only in it\u003cbr\u003e\nSometimes I think, may be that’s the reason\u003cbr\u003e\nFor why I do not have pals even one\u003cbr\u003e\nIn the journey to find a friend\u003cbr\u003e\nI have got many intermediate one\u003cbr\u003e\nBut whenever I tried to question the truth\u003cbr\u003e\nI am only dragged to the dark ends\u003cbr\u003e\nTo my almighty I can only say\u003cbr\u003e\nGive me the power, give me the sense\u003cbr\u003e\nFor I could know other’s indigence\u003cbr\u003e\nAnd fulfill their demands\u003cbr\u003e\nIf it is necessary to make a best friend\u003cbr\u003e\nAfter all it is not worth\u003cbr\u003e\nTo make hundreds friends a year\u003cbr\u003e\nBut to make a friend for hundred years.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My Dream Friend"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/poem/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Poem"},{"content":"“Frequently Asked Questions about Time Travel” sounds like a kind of documentary. But on the contrary, its one of those jewel, which adds a sparkling touch to my personal “must watch movies on time travel” list.\nWhat starts with a boring conversation, soon turns out to be the most adventurous night the trio friend would ever have. And with an attempt not to disclose any spoiler, my review for this movie ends here.\nActually this movie can be watched as a guide to the ones who are newbie to the idea of traveling in time, and the paradoxes it involves.\nOne thing’s for sure, that after this movie, I am a fan of Chris O’Dowd. I also watched the series, The IT Crowd, which featured Chris, as a geek, having a seat in basement of an IT building, serving them, and getting nothing than ignorance in return.\nI loved the series, cause I could sometimes identify with him. His ascent (probably Irish) made the dialogues even fumier. “Have you tried turning it off an’ on again“, oh boy, how I used to recite it like a mantra after him. Just seems yesterday.\nOn closing note, remember, not to perceive a nerd as a nerd, rather, call him an imagineer!\n","date":"6 January 2010","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2010/01/faq-about-time-travel/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003e“\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0910554/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eFrequently Asked Questions about Time Travel\u003c/a\u003e” sounds like a kind of documentary. But on the contrary, its one of those jewel, which adds a sparkling touch to my personal “must watch movies on time travel” list.\u003cbr\u003e\nWhat starts with a boring conversation, soon turns out to be the most adventurous night the trio friend would ever have. And with an attempt not to disclose any spoiler, my review for this movie ends here.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"FAQ about Time Travel"},{"content":"I decided to watch Planet 51, cause it had a word “planet” in it and it was an Animation, enough to fetish my childhood desires. Despite the green look of the characters (Aliens, to us), which resembled “The Shrek‘s” Ogre, I fairly enjoyed the movie. But the most lovable character was Skiff, whose cute innocent talks never seized to spread a smile on my face.\nPlanet 51, too had its emotional moments, and I totally enjoyed every bit of it. The question of “Are we alone in the Universe” was raised again; and again, we were, left to ponder upon. Overall its a good, cute, children movie, that an adult (or so called), too would not regret watching.\n","date":"4 January 2010","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2010/01/planet-51-dont-know-where-other-50-are/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI decided to watch \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0762125/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003ePlanet 51\u003c/a\u003e, cause it had a word “planet” in it and it was an Animation, enough to fetish my childhood desires. Despite the green look of the characters (Aliens, to us), which resembled “\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0126029/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eThe Shrek\u003c/a\u003e‘s” \u003ca href=\"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/99/Shreky.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eOgre\u003c/a\u003e, I fairly enjoyed the movie. But the most lovable character was Skiff, whose cute innocent talks never seized to spread a smile on my face.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Planet 51 – Dont know where other 50 Are"},{"content":"Before I begin, I must say, that I love Time Travel movies. The journey of a man to the 4th dimension, and the probability of meeting with one’s own self is itself the most incredible idea that is enough to distill a world of possibilities (other than the probability that the Universe would collapse!).\nImage Licensed Under: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported But, I can claim one thing, that I have understood more of the story of Primer, after reading it on wikipedia, rather than watching the actual movie. I think, it would require a couple of watches more before I can fully understand the technicality of the story.\nI would recommend this movie, for anyone with a high appetite for technical dialogue overdose or someone who wants to have a good night sleep!\nBut seriously its a must watch for a die hard lover of time travel concept, as it bring with it the most original and innovative method to travel back in time that I have witnessed the night of 1st Jan 2010… (albeit not so exciting, as to travel flying in DeLorean!).\n","date":"2 January 2010","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2010/01/primer-complex-to-understand-than-even-time-itself/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBefore I begin, I must say, that I love Time Travel movies. The journey of a man to the \u003ca href=\"http://www.jimloy.com/physics/4d.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003e4th dimension\u003c/a\u003e, and the probability of meeting with one’s own self is itself the most incredible idea that is enough to distill a world of possibilities (other than the probability that the Universe would collapse!).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Primer – Complex to Understand than even Time itself."},{"content":" The mind of a true Sci-Fi lover would immediately recognize the title of this article. \u0026#8220;Back to the Future\u0026#8221; is a Robert Zemeckis epic movie which captured the imagination of 80\u0026#8217;s. With a mind blowing story of a boy getting in trouble even before he was born and the special effects so great for the time, this movie was produced, it truly and literally justifies the title. And yes, the eve of the new year, on Thursday, 31st December 2009, I was celebrating with my friend Ankur, watching the 2nd part of this incredible trilogy. Memories came flooding back and each hair on my body was feeling the excitement as I was following the story. No matter how many times do I see it, it always feels the same, as it had when I first watched it years ago on AXN. My only wish would be to watch this movie on the big screen. But for that I may need the DeLorean, for the first part was released one year before I was born. Time to go back in time\u0026#8230; Image Source: © Universal Studios. All rights Reserved. ","date":"1 January 2010","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2010/01/back-to-the-future/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear:both;text-align:center;margin:0;\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/52/Back_to_the_future.jpg\" style=\"clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"320\" src=\"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/52/Back_to_the_future.jpg\" width=\"218\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin:0;\"\u003e\nThe mind of a true Sci-Fi lover would immediately recognize the title of this article.\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin:0;\"\u003e\n\u0026#8220;\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future\"\u003eBack to the Future\u003c/a\u003e\u0026#8221; is a \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000709/\"\u003eRobert Zemeckis\u003c/a\u003e epic movie which captured the imagination of 80\u0026#8217;s. With a mind blowing story of a boy \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088763/taglines\"\u003egetting in trouble even before he was born\u003c/a\u003e and the special effects so great for the time, this movie was produced, it truly and literally justifies the title.\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin:0;\"\u003e\nAnd yes, the eve of the new year, on Thursday, 31st December 2009, I was celebrating with my friend Ankur, watching the 2nd part of this incredible \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future_(film_series)\"\u003etrilogy\u003c/a\u003e.\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin:0;\"\u003e\nMemories came flooding back and each hair on my body was feeling the excitement as I was following the story. No matter how many times do I see it, it always feels the same, as it had when I first watched it years ago on AXN.\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin:0;\"\u003e\nMy only wish would be to watch this movie on the big screen. But for that I may need the  \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeLorean_time_machine\"\u003eDeLorean\u003c/a\u003e, for the first part was released one year before I was born.\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin:0;\"\u003e\nTime to go \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0BOjWZu4_0\"\u003eback in time\u0026#8230;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin:0;\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19px;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:x-small;\"\u003eImage Source:\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:x-small;\"\u003e © Universal Studios. All rights Reserved.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Back to the Future"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/tag/discovery/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Discovery"},{"content":"As my First official blog, I want to quote following letter which I wrote almost, 5 years ago to discovery channel. I am sharing this letter, in order to explain my philosophy towards life, which I think still persists today.\nHello DISCOVERY,\nBEFORE YOU SEE THIS LETTER LONG ENOUGH TO WASTE TIME, I REQUEST YOU TO PLEASE GIVE IT A READ.\nAllow me to introduce myself. I am ‘Vineet Kumar’; an 18-year boy completed my senior secondary education. I live in the capital city of India, Delhi. I am a strange child but having ordinary abilities, having my father full of expectations for me to come to a higher post. My hobby includes writing, listening music and making creative things. My interest includes gaining knowledge about anything related to physics, human body, different places, universe etc. I love computers as I get the chance to show my creativity by making different programs on it. The topics, which I look forward to see on educational channels like\nDiscovery: Time Travel, Facts about Space, Supernatural powers, Extra-Terrestrial Life, Robotics, Technology and anything that gives me the chance to discover something new about the world.\nDiscovery has fascinated me since my childhood. Whenever I see any program on it, I get to know a lot about above-mentioned interests. In addition to this, there are many instances, when during the show, I got to listen about various experiences of daily life, that I first used to think that it happens only with me, like: ‘Deja-vu’- a state of mind, when we feel that we are familiar with the incident happening at present. And also the program of discovery gives me an educated and calculated perspective of life, which includes every possibility and dimensions.\nTogether with NGC and America’s high concept movies, I now have become very contemplative in nature. Every course of action and each scenario before my eyes, take me to a world where I am a doctor and with the tool of my mind I examine the situation very minutely and sometimes murder it in the procedure and the condition becomes more worse.\nIn simple words – I think a lot, more than enough. Like the movie by Steven Spielberg – AI (Artificial Intelligence) has an everlasting impact on me. After watching the movie I could hardly speak or think, as I was not in front of the TV set that time, I was in the future with the Aliens and a boy who is not real, but a robot, willing to go to any extent to get a mom, which would love him the same way as to his son. Now after that, I couldn’t possibly stop me from thinking about my mom, because now I know how lucky I am to have her. This was not the end. It transformed me from head to toe and stand out to be the boy of completely variant perspective of thinking.\nSo what’s the problem, that’s good, you must be thinking so. I also wanted this to be true. But that’s not the case.\nI do appreciate nature and all that which makes us so distinct specie and our planet so unique. But this makes me different from others around me. And might be so I have no friends. My thinking doesn’t match anyone. Whenever I put my idea in front of someone, they find it hard to swallow, and thus thwart me out. This makes me more frustrate and I keep me limit to myself, which also breaks my confidence. The result: the boy who never cared about his looks is now trying to be fashioned and to keep me away from the deepness of life. But still I do not want to live in the world of hypocrisy, as talked in the poem ‘Once Upon a Time’ by ‘Gabriel Okara’. I want to explore life, but it can’t happen in my world where I live.\nSo this is my dilemma. I don’t know which way to go, because both have its pros and cons.\nThank you to give this letter some of your precious time. I know I am strange, but I hope you have understood me, and would be so kind to pass your suggestion to me. You may ask my opinion on any of my interests, I will love to write my ideas to you.\nThank you again,\nVineet Kumar (A science lover and admirer)\nAge 18,\nDelhi, India.\n","date":"4 December 2009","permalink":"https://new.vineetkumar.me/2009/12/my-letter-to-discovery/","section":"Blog","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs my First official blog, I want to quote following letter which I wrote almost, 5 years ago to discovery channel. I am sharing this letter, in order to explain my philosophy towards life, which I think still persists today.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n  Hello DISCOVERY,\u003cbr /\u003e BEFORE YOU SEE THIS LETTER LONG ENOUGH TO WASTE TIME, I REQUEST YOU TO PLEASE GIVE IT A READ.\u003cbr /\u003e Allow me to introduce myself. I am ‘Vineet Kumar’; an 18-year boy completed my senior secondary education. I live in the capital city of India, Delhi. I am a strange child but having ordinary abilities, having my father full of expectations for me to come to a higher post.\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e","title":"My Letter to Discovery"}]