Blog on Vineet Kumar

Meeting Team LLA

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 19:13:31 +0000

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.

Fixing Manjaro Boot Menu

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 13:01:25 +0000

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.

My favorite Finance YouTubers

Sun, 27 Jun 2021 07:06:22 +0000

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.

How to setup WordPress on Digital Ocean (2020)

Mon, 08 Jun 2020 06:09:59 +0000

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).

So 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!

Android apps for TV

Sat, 05 Oct 2019 11:47:31 +0000

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!

Convert VBA Editor to Dark Theme

Fri, 20 Sep 2019 03:39:50 +0000

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.

Spartan Poker – Using your poker face for good

Sat, 14 Jul 2018 14:09:13 +0000

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.

But 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.
In 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.

David 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’t “intentionally” loose. The chances of you winning as well as loosing are about the same. “Each move has a similar chance”. That is not the case in poker. In Poker, a player’s decisions and the ability to make right call depends heavily on his winnings.

Suzuki Gixxer – 155cc of pure love

Sun, 24 Jun 2018 14:45:16 +0000

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.
The 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.
So 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.

How to secure your site using Lets Encrypt

Sun, 24 Jun 2018 09:59:28 +0000

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.
Here’s how you can secure your wordpress based site using certificate provide by Lets Encrypt.

Some background: #

I am quoting the following direct from the Let’s Encrypt site:

To 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.

Process: #

Assuming your wordpress site runs on nginx web server on Debian 9, here’s how to do it:
Add the repository source in your sources.list:

deb 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/)

Telegram and WhatsApp

Sun, 15 Apr 2018 07:32:51 +0000

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.
The 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?).

Netflix: A Binge Watcher’s Haven and views on Black Mirror, Stranger Things and Rick & Morty

Fri, 16 Feb 2018 17:56:25 +0000

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.

Setting up WordPress on Debian 9.3 x64 on a Virtual Machine on Windows 10

Sun, 28 Jan 2018 18:16:50 +0000

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.
This article deals with following technologies:

Windows 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

Amazon Prime Video: Update after 9 months of subscription

Sun, 24 Sep 2017 18:12:23 +0000

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.
I 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:
Brothers 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.
Censorship 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!
Extant (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.
Kommune 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!
Le 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!
Mr. 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.
People 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._
_
Person of Interest: Jim Caviezel (The Thin Red Line), Michael Emerson (Lost) and Taraji P. Henson (Hustle & 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.
Scorpion: 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.
The 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.
The 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!_
_
The 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.
To watch list:
I have these shows yet to watch. Some are from the original post and some are new:
Dexter: (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._
_
Dexter’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.
Elementary (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.
Fringe (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.
Fullmetal 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.
Startup (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.
The 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.
The 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.
V (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.
Wolverine 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.
As for Movies, I have watched only quite a few movies on Amazon in the last 9 months. Some of them are:
Batman 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.
Befikre: I wasn’t prepared for this mindless garbage too. The film that I was better not watching.
Hindi 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!
SpongeBob 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.
There 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:
Deepwater Horizon
La La Land
Sully
Parched
The Walk
Titli
Poorna
Plus following are the movies that is on my watchlist since long:
Mr. 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.
Indian Sci Fi movie from way back. I can’t miss to watch this.
Saving 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.
Sarbjit (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.
I had no idea, this list would grow so big, but Amazon Prime have been really great till now!

Upgrading my Gaming PC with a Solid State Drive (SSD)

Wed, 16 Aug 2017 03:31:04 +0000

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!
I 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&D pointed to me a very clear choice: Samsung Evo 850 250 GB.

Brand	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’s deceiving simplicity!

Year 2016 at a Glance: An year of experiences

Sun, 12 Mar 2017 07:57:25 +0000

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.

Rocket 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.

Ascension to PC Master Race: 11 years in the making

Sun, 25 Dec 2016 07:56:21 +0000

Its 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,

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.

So here’s a little back story of how I managed to pull off a Core i5 and what experiences lie behind it.
I 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.

Amazon Prime In India: My views and a Catalog of Good Content

Sat, 24 Dec 2016 09:38:56 +0000

Important Note: This is not a promotional write up. Amazon’s not paying me to write this.
I 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.
Thankfully, 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!
Welcome 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.
I 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.
I 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.
Note: 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.

Resurrecting Soft Bricked Moto E

Sat, 24 Sep 2016 18:55:43 +0000

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:

*** 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].

Commands to Analyze Space through Terminal

Wed, 06 Jul 2016 15:04:01 +0000

This article lists a few ways to analyze the usage space of the hard disk through Terminal.

Space 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.

Rocket League : Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars!!!

Mon, 18 Apr 2016 17:11:13 +0000

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.
Conceptually 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.

So how did I fare going through various levels in Rocket League?

Rookie: #

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.

The most awaited movies in 2016 : Hype is real!

Sat, 09 Jan 2016 11:47:58 +0000

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.

1. Deadpool #

(Release date: 12 Feb 2016) [Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi]
Plot: 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.
Marvel 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!

2. Triple 9 #

(Release date: 18 Feb 2016) [Crime, Drama]
Plot: 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.
Added this out of league movie, just because of the tone from the trailer.

Which Instant Messenger is best for me?

Wed, 06 Jan 2016 17:22:57 +0000

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.

WhatsApp: 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.
IRC (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.
Steam: 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.
Telegram: 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.
So 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?

Kanatal Trip

Mon, 04 Jan 2016 18:23:03 +0000

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.
In 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.

Click the full screen button on the down right of panorama to go Full Screen.

Jaipur Trip

Sun, 03 Jan 2016 18:27:46 +0000

I went to Jaipur last year. And got these amazing Google Spheres. These are not perfect but I love the view.

Click the full screen button on the down right of panorama to go Full Screen.

Lodi Garden

Sat, 02 Jan 2016 09:42:35 +0000

Lodi Garden, a city park situated in New Delhi, India is a prime destination for many joggers, developed and “developing” families for a retreat.
From Wiki:
… 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…

I took these google sphere when I visited it first time. It shows the Bada Gumbad domb.

Click the full screen button on the down right of panorama to go Full Screen.

Recap: My Year in Blogging in 2015

Fri, 01 Jan 2016 08:42:55 +0000

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.
The 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.
In 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.
A 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.
I 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.

Heroes: Ordinary People with Extraordinary Powers!

Sat, 10 Oct 2015 06:43:56 +0000

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.

Steps to add a WordPress Site to an existing VPS

Fri, 09 Oct 2015 10:48:04 +0000

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.
Following 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):
Linux OS : Debian
Web server: Nginx (Not Apache)
Database: MySQL
Application Programming Language: PHP
So here we go:

Buy 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.

Shopping for and Assembling a new desktop PC

Sun, 06 Sep 2015 07:46:37 +0000

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.
Before, 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.

The 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:

Component	Model
Monitor	AOC 21.5 inch LED Backlit LCD – i2269Vwm Monitor / I2279VWHE / i2267Fwh
	LG 21.5 inch LED Backlit LCD – 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.

Upgrading to Windows 10, the Microsoft's Comeback

Tue, 04 Aug 2015 16:52:29 +0000

[][1]

Yup. That’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’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’s why Windows 10 is so important for Microsoft. And maybe that’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

Bajrangi Bhaijaan: A surprisingly feel good movie

Sat, 18 Jul 2015 05:24:30 +0000

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.
Now, 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.
So 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.

YU Yuphoria Review

Wed, 24 Jun 2015 18:00:30 +0000

I got the opportunity to get my hands on a new YU Yuphoria phone last week. Following are my observations and review first hand.
YU 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.

Hardware #

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.

Auto Mounting Drives in Ubuntu

Sun, 17 May 2015 14:18:51 +0000

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.
As 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.
Similarly 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.
By 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.
You 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.

Find 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:

vyom@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:~$

Creating a Startup Application Script in Ubuntu

Sat, 16 May 2015 15:25:35 +0000

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.
Following 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).

Easy 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).
You 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.
If you want to start the application for every user then you would need to copy the .desktop file in /etc/xdg/autostart folder.

[][1]

Autostart Folder on the left and Startup Applications Tool on the right

How Ubuntu screwed me over and why I still love it

Fri, 17 Apr 2015 07:19:53 +0000

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.
Something 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.
When 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.
Do 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!“.
I 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.
As 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.
Anyway, 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.
This 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.
Let’s see what things I had already backed up. I had all my:

Concept of Installing Applications in Ubuntu

Sat, 11 Apr 2015 19:06:36 +0000

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.
You must be used to installing softwares in Windows by downloading .EXE files or .MSI installers. You open these files and click Next -> 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.

What 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.
In 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).
Low 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).
Packages 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.

Advanced 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.
EDX have a pdf which lists some basic commands to using package managers. Download it here.

What is Source and Binary? #

Weird thoughts on a Monday night

Mon, 30 Mar 2015 18:42:31 +0000

My dear friends,
When 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.
How 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.
I 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.
I 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.
Here 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.
Here 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?
With 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.
I 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?
What 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?
What 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?
Can 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?
I 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’.
Maybe 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?
– Your’s weird, Vineet.

The User Experience of using Ubuntu

Fri, 27 Mar 2015 16:07:41 +0000

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.

Philosophy 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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.
In 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.
Due 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.
Lastly, in Linux, file and folder names are case sensitive. So, /home/user is different from /home/User and /home/USER.

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A typical Directory Structure in Linux. Image Courtesy: edx.org

Lotus Temple

Wed, 18 Mar 2015 16:26:34 +0000

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.
I 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.

Taj Mahal

Sun, 01 Mar 2015 15:16:49 +0000

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.

How the Taj looks just entering the premises, from a distance: #

Click here to open this in Full Screen.

Pusa Hill Forest

Mon, 23 Feb 2015 17:03:16 +0000

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.

Predestination (Spoilers)

Sun, 22 Feb 2015 16:04:28 +0000

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.
Maybe 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.
The 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.

Rail Museum

Sun, 15 Feb 2015 18:34:09 +0000

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).

Model of a platform inside the museum: #

Click here to open this in Full Screen.

Park near Bhuli Bhatiyari Ka Mahal

Sun, 15 Feb 2015 17:02:01 +0000

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.

Making Ubuntu Personalized with GNOME

Sat, 31 Jan 2015 14:55:31 +0000

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.
In this guide I will install GNOME and write about how to customize it with extensions.

GNOME: #

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.
Unlike 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.
To install GNOME run following command on Terminal (again Ctrl + Shift + T) while entering password when asked:

sudo apt-get install gnome

This will install a bunch of packages (around 500 MBs) which are included in GNOME by default.

Ubuntu: Updating and Setting up Softwares

Sun, 25 Jan 2015 20:31:22 +0000

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.
Installing 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“.

Software 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…

Ubuntu: The Stage is Set

Fri, 23 Jan 2015 18:59:46 +0000

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.
I 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.
Here’s what a freshly booted Ubuntu looks like:

Freshly booted Ubuntu

We can notice a few things now:

The 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 …

Ugly – A not so ugly film

Wed, 21 Jan 2015 16:44:25 +0000

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.
I 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!
Quoting from IMDb,

Stuff I do in Windows that needs an alternative in Linux

Tue, 20 Jan 2015 06:51:30 +0000

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.

The Theory of Everything

Sun, 18 Jan 2015 19:10:12 +0000

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.
The 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.
In 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.
I 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.
Anyone 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.
In 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.
If I could reverse the time, I would still watch this film and probably love it again.
Now, here are some Fun facts which I came to know after some research (no spoilers):

Ubuntu: Beginning my Walk on Uncharted Territory

Fri, 16 Jan 2015 18:39:56 +0000

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.

I migrated to Digital Ocean

Tue, 13 Jan 2015 17:55:58 +0000

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.
What 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.

1. 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:

512MB 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.

Year 2014 at a Glance

Fri, 02 Jan 2015 17:07:06 +0000

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.
2014 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.
During 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.

Saying Adios to my first Android

Thu, 23 Oct 2014 11:31:23 +0000

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.
One 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.
O1 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.
I 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.

Bobby Jasoos

Fri, 04 Jul 2014 18:49:08 +0000

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.

How many Apps you Really use in a Regular day?

Tue, 03 Jun 2014 16:49:42 +0000

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?
I 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!
I 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.
While 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.
Now 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.
Now 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.
I 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.
Oh 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.
I 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).
While 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.
While 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.
Well, 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?
Anyway 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.

Minimalism and Memoirs of the Past

Sun, 13 Apr 2014 17:12:07 +0000

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.
But 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.

But minimalistic living is something people eventually turns to, when they finally understand that they have enough of the shenanigans of consumerism.

Installing WhatsApp on Nexus 7

Sat, 16 Nov 2013 16:48:55 +0000

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.

Install Whatsapp on N7 from market or through APK file. But don’t open the app yet.
Create backup of existing Whatsapp messages:
If 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.

Using OTG cable to access external storage and 3G dongle on Nexus 7

Mon, 11 Nov 2013 11:10:38 +0000

**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.
Why use OTG cable?
You can use an OTG cable to attach following devices to your Nexus 7:

Pen drives
Memory card readers
External Hard Drives
3G Dongle
USB Mouse and Keyboard
What is an OTG cable looks like?
Shown clockwise from top left: OTG Cable, Card Reader, Pen Drive, an Huawei 3G dongle (with Airtel connection).
Yup, OTG cable is that small. Some other variants of OTG cable also comes with no wire. Refer this.

Can any OTG cable be used with Nexus 7?
**

My Nexus 7

Sun, 27 Oct 2013 17:01:25 +0000

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.
I 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.

Images are scaled down, click the image to open the image in its original quality
The Lock screen:

**

Installing Ubuntu Touch on your rooted Nexus 7

Sun, 27 Oct 2013 11:40:42 +0000

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.
In 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!
But since we are dual booting the Ubuntu with Android, the reasons stated above won’t matter!
1. Installing Custom Recovery (Flashing TWRP Multi ROM)
Using 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.
fastboot flash recovery d:\path-to-recovery\TWRP_multirom_grouper_20131022.img
**

Rooting Nexus 7 and Unlocking Bootloader

Sun, 27 Oct 2013 11:39:11 +0000

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.
Rooting the N7:
You 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:

Ability 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!)
You 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).
Here’s How to Root the Nexus 7 – But Should You? | Android.AppStorm
Anyway, so how actually you root N7?
You 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):
**

Mawaru Penguindrum – Anime

Wed, 02 Oct 2013 17:26:18 +0000

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.

After Earth : Danger is real, Fear is a choice

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 00:42:05 +0000

*\* This review may contains Spoiler **
Genre: Action | Adventure | Mystery | Sci-Fi
After 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.
I 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.

Story 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.
But 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.
Talking 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.
One 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.
Overall, 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.
Rating: 6 / 10.

Digital Art

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 09:54:25 +0000

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.
These are what I created (click on image to enlarge):

: The Sun at its full Glory!

[][1]

Not sure what could be. Maybe a cell or a molecule.

Best Bank for Recurring Deposit

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 09:49:11 +0000

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.
Here’s what I discovered:

Nine rules for how to effectively manage an FB page

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 00:50:45 +0000

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.

1. 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.

2. Try to engage readers: #

Ask for feedback, like, ‘do you think…’, ‘will you…’ etc in the end of your posts.
Don’t post a link directly as a post. Always give a preview of what the link is about.
Instead 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…”.
Point 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.
Remember, 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!

Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 06:11:22 +0000

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.

Looper (2012)

Sun, 14 Oct 2012 22:26:00 +0000

Genre: Action | Sci-Fi | Thriller

If 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.
Rian 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:

“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 ‘close the loop’ by transporting back Joe’s future self.”

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.
What 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.

Guide to Backing Up Your Android Data

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 06:31:00 +0000

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:

The 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!

So, if you haven’t signed in, do that now. And make sure “Sync Service” is enabled. You can check that by going into, Settings -> Accounts & 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.

The Amazing Spider-man

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 15:46:00 +0000

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.

Prometheus (2012)

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 19:23:00 +0000

Plot (from IMDb): “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.”Let me begin by saying that I haven’t watched the original movies of the Alien franchise, to which Prometheus is being regarded as the prequel too. So I didn’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’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’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).
I didn’t felt the story either. And I won’t say screenplay was any good either.
Speaking 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.
The built up which is developed in the first half of the movie just doesn’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.
Something which is good and which was apparent from the trailer was the cinematography. It was good. But again not something we haven’t seen before.
Maybe these kinds of movies are just not my type. Maybe the ones who like “Alien” and its sequels may relate something to it… but for me, Prometheus was one movie I could have easily skipped if I haven’t got the chance to get the premiere passes.
Rating: 2.5/5

Mobile Internet : First Hand Experience of Me and My Dad

Fri, 18 May 2012 12:59:00 +0000

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.
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’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.

The Avengers

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:55:00 +0000

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.

Windows Phone 7 Review (on HTC 7 Mozart)

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:10:31 +0000

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:
Don’t Expect:

100% 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)
Do 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.
PS: 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.

The Must Have Android Apps

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:50:00 +0000

It’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…

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.
(Star means newly added, after writing the original article.)

Productivity

AndChat (Free) [The best IRC client]
ASTRO File Manager [The best file manager]
Camera360 Ultimate
Endomondo Sports Tracker [To track the distance or route you travel]
Dropbox [The best cross platform file sharing app]
FxCamera
Google Goggles [Best app to read those QR codes and search with images]
Hindu Calendar [Useful sometimes, when mom needs to know dates of some festival ]
iMobile [App from ICICI customers, very useful to me, I do prepaid recharge from this]
Indian Railway App – Disha [PNR check, availability checker, train schedule and more]
Opera Mobile web browser
SMS Backup + [Best app to take Backup of your SMS’s on your Google Account]
WhatsApp Messenger [Universal Bluetooth, as I like to call it Send sms, share pics etc…]
Remember The Milk [Cloud Mobile Task Management]
Pulse News* [Best news aggregator app]
Quick Boot* [Lets you reboot or shutdown, without using actual power button. For those, who fears they would break hardware button. Like me.]
Photo 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.]

My First Android

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 06:11:00 +0000

A few days back I came across a commercial from Red Hat Linux and it put forth some true facts. “Facts”, unless proven otherwise!

“The telephone has too many shortcomings, to be seriously considered as a means of communication“, “A rocket will never leave the Earth’s atmosphere“, and the most absurd one, “640k ought to be enough for anybody” 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.
The 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’s law, gadgets are all set to become smaller but smarter.
A 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’t stop growing and so people have to start somewhere.
It 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.

30+ Hollywood Movies to look forward to in 2011

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 05:25:00 +0000

(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.

Following 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.
Note: Some descriptions are from IMDB, and release dates can be tentative.So buckle up and enjoy the ride…..

1. Sanctum (4 Feb) [ Action | Adventure | Drama ]
From 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.
[Trailer]

2012 – The End – Or Just the Beginning

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 19:47:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

12th December 2012:
“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.
The 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!”
_
_
Just 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.

Buying Dilemma of a New Phone (to Talk)

Sat, 07 Aug 2010 03:46:00 +0000

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!).
Personally I don’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.

Inception – Dare to Dream

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 07:01:00 +0000

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 “Titanic” 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 – Information or secrets. “Cobb”, 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.

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:33:00 +0000

Cover of Bill & Ted’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.
BTEA 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
Joan 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!
I know, sounds a little strange, but trust me, its an epic adventure.

Napolean Dynamite – No its not a War Story

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 19:33:00 +0000

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).
To 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.“
I 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.

Clockstoppers – being Hyper

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:39:00 +0000

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?

Image 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.

The Ruins – Better not watch this!

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:26:00 +0000

I 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.

Well, 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 😉

3 Idiots – Another name for modern Geniuses

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:34:00 +0000

** Warning: This article could contain spoilers. So if you havn’t seen the movie, go see it first!” **

I 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.

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.

Horton – Hearing someone no one could hear!

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:50:00 +0000

“Horton Hears a Who!“, 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.

One Afternoon at a Pizza Hut

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 09:42:30 +0000

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!

The 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.

Today, 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.

A Beautiful Mind

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 08:48:00 +0000

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.

This 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.

AVATAR – Alien World, never felt so alien!

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 17:01:00 +0000

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.
After 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!
So 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.
Buying 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!

Where the Wild Things Are

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:54:00 +0000

“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 – 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…

My Dream Friend

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 09:34:43 +0000

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!
When I would get my dream friend
Will it be tomorrow or sometime else?
I don’t know what a best friend means
Because till date I have never seen him
Is it my ego or do I peevish
Whatever it is I can never forgive
In this world of conceitation
Coping with others become a tension
I don’t believe in to be ostentatious
‘Cause I know it cant serve any purpose
I want to be natural I want to be Instinct
As in my opinion
True satisfaction lies only in it
Sometimes I think, may be that’s the reason
For why I do not have pals even one
In the journey to find a friend
I have got many intermediate one
But whenever I tried to question the truth
I am only dragged to the dark ends
To my almighty I can only say
Give me the power, give me the sense
For I could know other’s indigence
And fulfill their demands
If it is necessary to make a best friend
After all it is not worth
To make hundreds friends a year
But to make a friend for hundred years.

FAQ about Time Travel

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 11:12:00 +0000

“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.
What 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.

Planet 51 – Dont know where other 50 Are

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:25:00 +0000

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.

Primer – Complex to Understand than even Time itself.

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 16:30:00 +0000

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!).

Back to the Future

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 17:33:00 +0000

The mind of a true Sci-Fi lover would immediately recognize the title of this article.

“Back to the Future” is a Robert Zemeckis epic movie which captured the imagination of 80’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…

My Letter to Discovery

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:54:00 +0000

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.

Hello DISCOVERY,
BEFORE YOU SEE THIS LETTER LONG ENOUGH TO WASTE TIME, I REQUEST YOU TO PLEASE GIVE IT A READ.
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.