I’ve moved to a new ‘wordpress’ blog on my own site. The new url is http://www.anuragsinghrana.com/blog. Actually, I’ve set up a new website of my own at http://www.anuragsinghrana.com which will be up and running soon. Please update your bookmarks in your browser, del.icio.us, blogroll and minds!

Adios,

Anurag.

Paralysis

I am paralyzed by the emotional overload which this movie has given me. It ‘pings’ so many ‘ports’ of my conscience, so very effectively and deeply. And this song is the representative of the whole package. It goes like this,

Main kabhee batlata nahi, par andhere se darta hoon main maa,

Yoon to main dikhlata nahi, teri parwaah karta hoon main maa,

Tujhe sab hai pata hai na maa, Tujhe sab hai pata meri maa.

(English literal translation :

I never tell you this, but I am scared of the darkness, oh mother,

Generally I don’t show it, but I care for you, oh mother,

Do you know it all, oh mother? You know it all, oh my mother. )

Thoughts
I was thinking how emotions can paralyze a person, both mentally and physically. The first symptoms of this can be seen in the eyes, where you can’t control your muscles to stop the salty fluid from flowing out of the tear bags.

A greater impact can be seen mentally, when all day you just keep swinging here and there, and are not able to concentrate on your work, or do something else except being in that pathetic mental state.

If emotions are so harmful, then why do we need them anyway? If through evolution, only the best traits of all living beings get boosted and the useless ones get deprecated, how have we, humans, supposedly the most developed species on earth, retained this ‘defect’?

What good do emotions do to us that their shortcomings can be ignored as minor round-off errors? When a person is acting emotionally, it is less likely that he/she is doing things practically or rationally.

But if we look deeper, emotions can create revolutions, emotions can boost the morale of an entire army by a thousand times in magnitude, emotions can help people keep going on even when its gets tough, emotions can make someone achieve that practically and rationally seems impossible.

Conclusion

Emotions are a reason for misery and sadness in the world,

Emotions are behind revolutions, discoveries and inventions,

Emotions make us behave worse than animals sometimes,

Emotions are what makes us human.

I feel that my brain is heating up from inside, too much thinking going on lately! I wish there was an ‘off’ switch which I could press so that I leave all worries and thoughts. Well, there is this ‘die’ option, or ‘drugs/drinking’ option, but then I prefer neither. The first option, well, of course is like a permanent solution, but there is no ’switch on’ after it. The second option … well I decided to never use it.

I am going home on this 31st evening. A lot of wrapping up to do, I want to buy presents for my family members as a token for the first money I’ve earned (that comes under ‘taxable’ income ;)). And then, I’ve this OS thought process going on, and I need to plan in advance for the coming holiday, how will I utilize the time as well as give enough time to people there.

Office work is going on as usual, but the workload since TODAY has been unusually low. So, all day I’ve been reading articles about operating systems. Most of which say that Linux is a clone of a 30 year old system, UNIX. And a lot of them say that most OSes are based on the three tier thing, kernel, files/folders and processes. We must change this to something that is shown in hollywood, no windows nothing, just some vague interface to get the information we want. This thought is influencing me a lot.

Another thought that comes to me is the ease of use of the existing systems. If we were to shift to a vague system with no “Firefox”, no “Windows Media Player” (eh, “MPlayer”), no “Start menu” (eh eh, “K Menu” (eh eh eh “Gnome’s whatever menu”)), and whatever application you used to like! Well, it might take a decade for people to finally accept (if ever) such a thing.

Then there are people who ask to ‘do-away’ with GCC. Does that mean we need to implement another compiler? How can anyone not port ‘GCC’ to their OS (except Microsoft)? And people ask us to do-away with C! Imagine coding a new OS with D, and writing a compiler for it along with the OS! If we do port GCC, then how will GCC run if we’re not basing upon ‘kernel, files and processes’? Yeah, the C code we write can work the way we want, but GCC needs to run on ‘files’ and write ‘compiled binary files’. Also, the gcc executable and shared libraries are also ‘files’ stored in a specific ‘directory structure’. And all the C code which we write is ‘files’. How can the compiler survive in an environment that gives up this basic structure?

A way of doing it would be to create ‘emulation of kernel/files/processes’ in the new OS. The compiler will run in this emulated environment and spit out binary ‘files’. There should be some way of running ‘files’ created by GCC on the new OS, which supposedly wont support ‘files’?  The idea seems wierd, apart from creating an overhead of an emulator for the existing structure of computer systems. Maybe a little more pondering on it can give some clearer picture. Rather, the method should be, what will be the new structure? And then later we can answer other questions of compatibility with existing structures and porting applications.

I know I am talking really wierdly these days, but then, my knee injury has really damaged my ‘brain’ (My wound has fully recovered now!). Anyways, I’ll keep posting more on this. For the ‘conventional’ OS development talks, which I keep writing as and when I read more and more, I’ve created a wiki, http://myos.scribblewiki.com/Main_Page. Do visit to read more, and all wierd thoughts will find place in this blog, hehe.

Ciao.

Anyone who is remotely related to programming, internet and such has a dream to create something of his own. Often this dream is of creating a new Operating System of their own. An operating system that will be faster than any other, will support everything and will have so many features that it’ll outnumber Windows XP in its user-base!

Yes, its close to impossible to outnumber Windows XP user-base or even Free BSD for that matter ;). Yes, its close to impossible to make something faster than them and still support as much as they do! Yeah, you can make a ‘hello world OS’ which is zillion times faster than any other, but whats the use?

Ok, all this was to build up a platform to talk to you. Well, just like ‘everyone’, even I have dreams. And they never become concrete, only day-dreams of all that I said before :D. But then, I realized that I wasted some 8 years in just dreaming! I didn’t take the next step which generally ‘human beings’ take. Thats how the human race has progressed from apes to what we are now, ‘mobile apes’ :D.

Anyways, so basically, till now I was a dumb day-dreamer like a couple of million more, when this angel came and told the golden words in my ear, … “IDIOT! START TOH KAR” (means, Idiot! Stop dreaming and start something). And then, me, following her words began to look in the world around me.

Coming to the point directly after all this drama, the straightforward deal is Tanu asked me to do something in this regard, and I began reading about OS development, and trying out ’something’ ;).

Ok so the next FAQ looks to be, ‘So have you begun your own OS?’. Dude, chill, Microsoft Inc. took five whole years before they could change these lines

printf (”Welcome to Windows XP\n”); to printf (”Welcome to Windows Vista\n”);

So, its not that simple as it sounds in the dream world. At least the 80X86 processor is not as simple as it should have been. And then there are other mental blockages for me. Here is a list,

1. Why make another *nix clone? Why not something new?

2. Everything is a file, umm.. *nix concept, I want something original, WHAT?

3. Copy windows? Uh, not even in my dreams

4. Why C? Why not my own D or E or F or G? Do I need to write another compiler :O

5. Why OS? What happened to web-dev and python scripting? And eh, computer vision?

6. My own filesystem or new? Why old? Why not be ‘readable’ by others? Linux also did ext2, why not me do my own AFS or something?

7. Ok, so if I use C, how do I write my kernel? I don’t even know much about it!

8. Uh, all this GDT, IVT, IDT, Page table, Multitasking, PCI, A20 line, and every damn thing has a hundred configuration settings. Am I enough or I need help?

So, basically I didn’t reach all this just by beginning. First I encountered Viral Patel (http://www.viralpatel.net), who is a anti-ME. He actually made a fully functional ‘CLOSED SOURCE’ OS, called Taj OS (named after Taj Mahal).

Then I reached www.osdev.org, which is a whole portal dedicated to help people like me try their hands on some OS development. It lists more than hundred hobby operating systems developed by people, many of which are open source and closely resemble *nix or DOS. The site has extensive tutorials for all aspects of OS development, with some holes left, which I might fill up one day.

I started using ‘nasm’ compiler to write initial bootable code in assembly. Using ‘vmware’ to keep it ’safe’, I booted the first few experiments, and with the help of Fedora Core 7 rescue DVD, I installed the bootloader onto the ‘virtual vmware hard disk’. So, now my small bootable assembly program can boot from a disk, read the keyboard and display messages! Cool for a start, at least I can feel that :D. Ofcourse, that hard disk will be able to boot my OS (rather boot code) and nothing else, even if we try GRUB.

Now, my next tasks are to read this book, THE INTEL MICROPROCESSORS (750 pages :() by BARRY B. BREY and C. R. SARMA (Rs. 299 only :D). And then I’ll have a better clue of the things that are happening. Then I might decide to begin some design of an OS, if I still have interest left. I also read the source-code of Ace OS (1.0 and 2.0), DEX OS 1.1, which are small operating systems, written in C and are somewhat understandable. Viral’s OS doesn’t run on my vmware and I don’t have a floppy drive, :D.

Ok, maybe I am thinking too high, but if I make one, I won’t make a ‘floppy OS’ for some DOS work, I’ll make a real installable OS with a CD setup and a hard-disk GRUB compatible install. I might not remain compatible with *nix, so maybe it’d be difficult to port Linux applications to it, but I’ll maybe write some of my own!

Right now, all this is a distant dream, but gladly the first bricks have been laid. And soon, when I am on the same level as other OSdevers (term for OS developers), I’ll come up with some concrete thing to write here.

Created a new page to log my knowledge and status on this issue.

Any comments are welcome. Any people interested in development can discuss with me, learn and share. But right now, as there is no ‘development plan’, there is no ‘development team’. Though, I will need more people by my side when I really go into doing it. And as you know, that there is no plan, YOU can affect the plan, and YOU can make it your plan. So, like me, you wont have hesitation in joining me when we actually begin work, because it’ll be YOUR OS too!

More information soon. Cheers!

PS: I fell from the bike, injured my knee, so maybe some cells in my ‘brain’ have been killed or altered, so I am thinking wierdly these days. Operating system and me, really huh?

PS2: Am perfectly fine guys, just an injury on the knee, so thanks for being concerned, but don’t worry, I’ll be ok.

PS3: HA HA HA, ok fine so you are not concerned, neither am I concerned about your concern ;).

PS4: Someone ask me to shut-up yaar!

Ok bye then. Take care.

Oh god, why am I getting so tensed about writing a blog entry? I already have a ‘rejected draft’ for this post! Well well well, just that I saw some ‘readers’. And more readers means more expectations. And more expectations mean more fear. More fear means hesitation. More hesitation means more mistakes. More mistakes means bad output. Bad output means less readers. And so it keeps getting balanced.

Lately, nothing much on my end. We changed the ‘cyber layout’ of our home. Now we have a central internet server, and all computers connect to it using ad-hoc wireless. This means better coverage and connectivity. Speaking of which, I am thinking to change my mobile phone connection. It seems that Reliance Postpaid offers a much better deal that any other postpaid mobile phone at least for STD calls. Hence, I will switch.

Tanu has been keeping ill these days and has been admitted to CHL Apollo. Shes having jaundice, with some index value being 5. She hasn’t been eating much these days, and vomiting since 3 days. Hope she recovers and feels better. Please pray for her.

Nothing much in my life these days. The salary is still ‘un-used’. I am seriously thinking of doing some expenditure planning, so that I can manage my money well. Maybe Sumeet G and Sheharwasi can be of assistance as they have been through it  since a couple of months now.

Ok so readers, this is not a bad post, so keep reading. I will get back soon with more updates. Ciao.

PS: @ Nikhil. Where are you? No information about you. Are you coming to Bangalore or not?

‘Ramu ki aag’ …. bujh gayi

“Humko bhi AAG ne mara, tumko bhi AAG ne mara,  is AAG ko band karwaado.”
When we try to make tea at home, though its not a very big or significant task, still we take care to put the water first, then the tea leaves, then sugar, then milk and then pour it in cups and serve it while its hot. And yeah, kind of measure each thing before using it. The total cost of making a cup of tea doesn’t exceed like Rs. 20, thats also an exaggerated estimate. Ramu (aka Ram Gopal Varma) made a remake of Sholay. Assuming it costs at least a million times more than a cup of tea, couldn’t he have thought about the whole thing at least ten times more cautiously? At least should have seen how the songs begin in the movie. The scene is going on, and suddenly you see Devagan jumping around Ms. Kothari and woah, did a song just begin out of the blue?

And that new Thakur, even I can rate myself better in dialogue delivery. Comedy sucks, picturization, flow, connectivity.. and so on. There are a few good scenes worth appreciating, like the one when Thakur gets his palm cut, the climax scene, the jay-veeru-ko-gabbar-ke-hawale-kar-do scene. One more thing Ramu could have possibly done was thinking of changing something in the script. Like the new Don movie. That small punch at the end could have made the movie better.

Anyways, still WE SURVIVED IT through and through, lol.

Hey babyy

Nice movie. Good light comedy. Strong impacting emotion. Bearable storyline for a fun based movie. Good picturization. One item number. What else do we need to make an evening with friends lively and happening? Yesterday, we all got this DVD of Hey Babyy and saw it at home. And then a round of BC till 3:30 am. Oh god, I was so sleepy in the morning, got up at 8:30 and reached office only by 10:30, thanks to the great traffic of our new city.

Tanu is a little ill, and I am very very worried for her. Hope she gets better soon. Please pray for her.

I am still sitting in office, working a bit. Though a bit distracted too. Have a nice day. Ciao.

It has been several months since this blog got an entry. And well, I guess there are no readers left either. But alas, I will still write to ressurrect this blog from the ashes.

Changes in life

My life has changed dramatically since May 2007. The biggest change being in my identity, from a student to an employee. From being dependent to being self-sustaining. Rather ’self-sustaining’ is a weaker word, I could as well have dependents now, ;).

BTech Achieved

The biggest achievement in the past few months has been completing my BTech. Honors degree, which was looking unachievable in April. Though I could not finish the project I was working on, in its totality. Not even to my content or even Jawahar sirs content, or for that matter, even Pramod Sankar content :). It was getting unbearable after May start. First, I was tied down to the legacy of the existing system, which I thought, a re-design would make things better. And then the problem is ‘not having enough power to take major decisions’. This made me drift from the main project to others like iYum, iChat, tv.iiit.ac.in and so on.

Anyways, lets not drift further from the topic. So, finally I achieved the degree, with all requirements met. And an extra topping of 8 extra credits completed apart from the ‘BTech Honors’ degree with a 8.57/10 CGPA. Not really very impressive like IV or Nikita, but still a respectable total for a player like me. Yeah, I could have got into 9+ if I was more focussed on ’scoring’ rather than doing all random stuff. Or if I have ‘real talent’ like IV, no study all fun but still manages an outstanding CG. (CGPA = Cumulative Grade Point Average).

The Yahoo! experience

Thanks to Yahoo!, my life has changed now. The Yahoo! experience has changed a lot of things in me. Now, at lot of the times, I ’search.yahoo.com’ instead of ‘Google’ for things. And well, it turns out, its just ‘cult branding’ that keeps Google above Yahoo! (at least in search services).

The atmosphere in the Yahoo! EGL office is nice and cool. People talk to each other casually, and I haven’t heard anyone raise voices, yet! My work is pretty less these days as I am just getting to know the old system and so on. Though my honeymoon (training period) is over, but I am still on vacation, lol.

Old friends parting

Well, for the first time Indore feels viraan. My dear buddy Tapan left Indore some days back. So, the central headquarters of our group has been relocated to USA, ;). Rahul is also in Indore till September something. And Anni is enjoying ‘his’ kind of life in college. He has been facing hard times since his breakup, but now his life is beginning to stabilize again. But you can’t be sure when its Anni, hehe.

Tanu as usual has been there. She keeps getting angry with me sometimes, but thats ok. What option do I have, I am an employee now, and need to answer to my manager and not Pramod, hehe. She will be looking for internship soon. Hope she gets a nice opportunity in some reputed agency.

Riya. This word has been like stuck with me since we ever talked. I really really wish someone just goes and stabs her or something, or comes and tells me that she is gone forever. She is wierd, she doesn’t need me. She still wants to hold on to me, just a hook around my neck, so she can pull it whenever she finds time out of her friends, colleagues, best friends, family, Glenn and so on. But I wish to be free, and so I have decided to cut her out of my life. I hope she just lets go and I am set free.

New friends at Yahoo!

Its not all sad sad in here. This new place has a lot of scope for new people to jump into my life. And well some of them have already come in. The most prominent ones being Deepak and Rishu. Oh come on, why do you keep cribbing that you got to have some ‘girl friends’? Well, I don’t generally discriminate much, a good understanding companion is all I need, how does their gender matter? Though we haven’t hung out as such, but spending 9 hours every day 5 days a week together at office is a huge thing. More than I would get to spend time with my girlfriend if I had one in Bangalore.

Deepak is a cool guy, more like me. Always having fun, talking in a desi tone, though he is responsible and hard working too. He keeps working in the ops team for like hours, even after work. Rishu is a ’sophisticated guy’, thats what I could infer. He is good at technology and fashion and pubs and stuff. We’re planning to create some cool things in our free time, apart from work. Lets see how it turns out. Well, I am not the dancing-drinking-going-to-pubs-n-discs kind of a guy, but still I am looking forward to a good friend in Rishu.

There are other colleagues in my office like Rahul, Puneet, Vinod, Amar, Santosh, Poonam, Mangesh, Abhishek and so on. And some others in MG road like Rohan, Smita and Sravanti. These people are good too, and I keep talking to them when life permits and when they feel like giving me time.

I noticed an air of ‘informality’ in Yahoo! life, people talk casually and generally have low ego, or at least potray to have it such. But, in terms of what to create and all, they focus more on ‘planning, reviewing, computing the revenue and the risk’ rather than just listening to instincts and making things. Maybe its right too. If its for one person, he/she can listen to ‘instinctive decisions’, but for a big company like Yahoo!, this is the right way. But it conflicts with my way of thinking, just a personal opinion.

And the old buggers still there

Well, thats not all, the old buggers from IIIT still haunting my life, :). I got a home with Bhavik and Sumeet. Well, as Neeraj puts it, friendship is another thing and becoming someone roomie is another. Its fun to live in the new home, but sometimes it feels irritating to hear about ‘this is your house too, so you should also do this do that’. Sometimes I wish I tell them that if its my house too, then let me live a little in my own way too. At weekends, its a fun place. All the friends from IIIT and beyond gather at a place and have a blast.

Sheharwasi aka Neeraj has also joined me in this new city. This guy has shared the same city with me all his life, be it Indore, Hyderabad or Bangalore. And well, he is a good friend, fun loving and easy going. And sometimes I hang out at his place for dominos and related issues. Rahul Mangla also lives with him, but you must be knowing how these Delhites are. Ravindranath Thakur aka Bokaro also keep visiting sometimes. Other frequent buggers include Sukesh, Amit, Gopal and friends.

Loneliness

Well, Aquarians are supposed to be deep thinkers, so I tend to be one. This new city Bangalore has so many people, almost over-crowded. I have almost the biggest circle of friends one could expect to have in a city in this short span on one month. But still, it feels a bit lonely here. There is no one here to speak my heart out to. I wish Tanu or Tapan or Ullu or someone was here. Yeah, Tanu keeps talking on phone, but no one can actually see me, and understand how I feel.

At times my personality splits into two. When someone talks to me, I am two people there. One is the guy ‘Anurag’ listening to that person, looking straight into the eye. Another is this second ‘Anurag’ who is looking at both of us, and smiling that what the hell is Anurag doing. He is smiling about the fact that how Anurag has changed. How he has grown into someone who can listen to such people like a credit card marketing person explaining details or a team leader explaining the details of the project. The second Anurag feels ‘Anurag’ is not eligible to be a part of all this. He is a simple sweet child, who wants to fly and play around, and not get involved in serious stuff like this. But then, I try hard to keep myself confined to the first Anurag that people know. The Anurag who has been good at work, who has passed a BTech degree, who can do wonders, who can take up responsibility and so on. There is no place for the innocent second Anurag, who is hesitant, who is not perfect at anything, who is introverted and shy, who is just a small child. But still, he keeps showing up.

Conclusion

Well, thats pretty much it from my side. This weekend hasn’t been much fun except the pizzas and movies and BC and driving. Lets see how the coming days look like. I am planning a home visit on Diwali, in November. And yeah, I got my first salary too, so its party time in Bangalore. Take care. Ciao.

Disclaimer : The facts, opinions and ideas expressed in this post are completely my personal. They don’t represent any organisation, group of individuals or any individual other than me. 

Hi people,

Tanu is conducting a small survey for some advertising thing. And I request you all to go and fill it up as a favor to me. This will help her get a grade, and I know people at IIIT know what ‘getting a grade’ means! Thanks in anticipation!

Here is the link …. http://196.12.53.39/~tanu/questionaire/index2.php

Ciao.

I was installing Java Development Toolkit 1.5.0 on Fedora Core 6. And I got an error saying.
The installer is unable to run in graphical mode. Try running the installer with the -console or -silent flag.

I thought it was a usual error because ‘root’ couldn’t connect to X. I did

ssh -X root@localhost

or ssh -Y root@localhost

I also tried,

xhost +

su - root

export DISPLAY=:0.0

setenforce 0

service iptables stop

Nothing worked! I tried and tried and tried. Finally I got an answer. Fedora Core 4 onwards a package called ‘openmotif’ has been removed from Fedora Core. Hence, the installer doesn’t start. Another replacement of the same package that now comes with Fedora Core is lesstif.

Hence I installed lesstif and libXp. After that, the installer just worked fine. So anyone facing the same problem, check if you have openmotif or lesstif installed. If not, do so, and then try out the installer.

Cheers!!