FSMK Road Show on 13th of March:)

We’ve done Technical workshops, Philosophy sessions, Candle held parades, and even Rock shows! Why?

The only motive behind all these activities has been, to reach out to as many people as possible with the message of Freedom in Software. We are the Free Software Movement- Karnataka: Enthusiasts,propagandists and activists of Swatantra Software.

And now, the students, who are the vibrant dynamics of our movement have come up with yet another off-beat means to spread the word about Free Software and the National Conference on Free Software in particluar.
We are planning to hold road-walks with a flashy parade and perform Swatantra Software street-plays.
The road-walks will have the famous mascots of the movement- The GNU and The Tux, along with catchy banners and hoardings. Train of students and enthusiasts will walk along the roads (without disrupting the already disrupted traffic!) trying to grab attention of as many people as we can.
The street plays will not be performed exactly on streets,but in the nodal points of the city like in the Forum Mall,MG road……… This struggle for digital freedom has been going on for 25 years and does have a long history and epochal events to be remembered. We intend to portray these to the audience in short skits and dance-acts.
With the National Conference in the horizon, we are leaving no stone unturned to attract a huge audience and to put a small but important message of Freedom in Software and Computing into their heads.
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God,Men and Godmen ;)

God: An effigy,symbolizing all the aspirations of every individual’s ultimate fantasies,like omnipotence,omnipresence and omniscience. 
God has been,and still grows to be an insignia,which we weaklings want to look up to, and feel assured that there’s an invisible divine power taking care of us, so that we can happily  shrug away from the responsibilities of our own.


Men: By men, here, i include all humans, including the better half of the world πŸ˜‰ We,the people, are the puppets with consciousness, who till our end do not realize the purpose of life, and spend lives chasing futility wrapped and presented to us in the name of God, religion and hollow spirituality.


Godmen: Shrewed opportunists, who take advantage of an advantageous situation offered to them. They are not to be blamed at all,these are the people who are enlightened. Yes, they are enlightened about the stupidity of people, and, they proceed to do the appropriate.


The interactions between the above three,in today’s world is the farthest digression from the natural and instinctual cravings of humans in all ways.
It professes irony, and practices paradoxical perturbations, to push people into delusion and an almost ubiquitous paranoia, which ultimately people fail to recognize.

Conclusion, with a caption:

Is it,
“God save the world of men!”
or,should it be 
“Save the world from God, men and Godmen :P”


(Can be a good T-shirt quote!!!)

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Breakthroughs to break through….

Breakthroughs, at personal and professional levels, and at regular intervals are quintessential for us as individuals to fare better in our roles.

Breakthroughs occuring to individuals are ephemeral in nature. The positive impact of such occurrences doesn’t last long,it is impulsive. We need to experience them regularly to keep ourselves focussed and confined to deliver our best,and also to push ourselves beyond what we see as the horizon at those epochal points of time in our lives. It also becomes a motivator of the purest form, which keeps us driving to do more instigated by the sheer proven ability of us.

On the other hand,lack of breakthroughs can cause a dip in confidence levels. This leads the mind to go sway in search of alternatives to unworthy accomplishments. A complex complex takes form within us, which confuses the self and derails the thought-action train of activities.

Antidote to such drought hit state of breakthroughs is – either to grow numb towards these lacunae, or to aspire for a personality which would converge to that of a highfaluting poltroon!

Again, to reiterate the point of the post, breakthroughs in one’s life are like hopping stones, where every subsequent stone is to be laid by us. We can either choose to rest on any of these stones without knowing what awaits us at the end, or to continue hopping over these breakthroughs to rendezvous the purpose of one’s life πŸ™‚

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When memories seep through the carapace of oblivion….

Although,to some, I might seem a hermit-like specimen who doesn’t show unusual attachment towards people, I treasure my own small section of people, who carry utmost beautiful personalities.

I’m lucky to be a part of this extraordinary system between us, a system with no false pretensions but with genuine affection, care and admiration as the bond. We know each other in certain ways that no one else who claims to know us individually would know about. There is no question of trust amongst us, for, trust seeps in where there is doubt. But, this almost Utopian entourage of ours is doubtless

Off late,we do not interact as much as we used to,nevertheless,the warmth between us still remains the same.

I deeply miss those times,which, without warning have passed by and, today these memories have softened the carapace of the voluntary oblivion which I had pulled over myself,revealing my yearnings of what I will, at any point of time in my life call β™« The best days of my life β™«

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Non Conformities to Standards and its genealogy

Rules and regulations, law and order, another ‘n’ number of standards and all the other collectively denominating factors seeking to bring order amidst the natural chaos in society are, by virtue of their existence ineffective and irrelevant. There can be nothing on this earth that can be imposed absolutely on people by people, and further seeking their compliance to it is absurd.

All the uniformities observed amongst us is instilled in our nature by Mother Nature. One such important trait present in our nature is the definite tendency not to conform to any artificially induced attempts of collective and common groundings.

Yet, another irony of the system called civilized society is, it incessantly is engaged in a counter-effective manner trying to bring repelling dissimilarities of individuals together.

Chaos is the only Universal law, and we being a part of this chaos, cannot strive against the ‘whole’ of which we are a part of. And,if we do try bringing together people of varied levels of skills and talents to conform and comply with a common axiom, it is similar to the net effect of resistances in parallel: The effective quality of such a herd would be lesser than the least;)

We are at full throttle of our potentials when left untamed and uninfluenced by the frivolous etiquette of the society…

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Comfortable confusions…

Okay !!!

Don’t worry people, you can relax and mellow down, let those frowns on your forehead go.This ain’t another deep analysis post, or a post hoping for reformation in society(although those are the ones which naturally emanate out of me;)

This post is about the sudden periods of euphoria around me because of chaotic confusions…

Off late, things are getting worse in a small way, ultimately yielding bigger benefits. There’s a lot of confusion in and around me. 

An air of inordinance incessantly keeps me adhered to intimate incoherence 
(Don’t ask me what I meant here, but, it some what expresses what i am going through!)
Sometimes,being happy, ignoring the causes behind it, is the best way to savor the surprises in life. Consequently, me and myself are already busily engaged in practicing the principles preached by a pragmatist I know called ‘me‘. 
Feeling comfortable on a Cloud of Confusions πŸ™‚
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Getting Reliance Netconnect USB modem on Ubuntu

Finally,the first Technical post on my blog, for, there seems to be lot of demand for this particular tweak.

Reliance Netconnect CDMA1x USB modems – ZTE MG880, manufactured by ZTE, “supposedly” come supported only for M$ Windows , but, I have got it working on GNU/Linux OS – Ubuntu with help from various online forums.


Additional Prerequisites in Ubuntu (I’m running 9.04):

  • modprobe – program which intelligently adds and removes modules from the Linux Kernel. To get this program,generic kernel modules have to be added to the kernel by running the following command in the terminal.

          sudo apt-get install linux-generic

  •  wvdial -It is a PPP dialer with built-in intelligence (Previous distros of Ubuntu used to have this packaged). To get this program do an apt-get
          sudo apt-get install wvdial

The following steps will help you get connected to internet using a ZTE mg880 USB modem. 

1. Plug in the USB modem, and manually mount it

$mount -t usbfs usbmodem /proc/bus/usb
2. Run a dmesg (dmesg is used to examine the kernel ring buffer,here, we check if the modem has been detected by the kernel)

$dmesg (don’t bother about the elaborate o/p after executing this command)
3.Now, execute the next command and look for ZTE and the corresponding device id and vendor id.
$cat /proc/bus/usb/devices
I found these for my modem(it’s the same for most ZTE mg880) -vendor id:0x19d2; product id: 0xfffd
4. Next, perform a modprobe to make the kernel aware of the modem
$sudo modprobe usbserial vendor=0x19d2 product=0xfffd
5. After modprobe, run a dmesg again,and if  the modem has been detected there will be a message saying that the USB core driver has been registered
6.Next, comes configuring the wvdial. To do this, run the following command
$sudo wvdialconf
To detect the modem wvdial will scan through all the serial ports, check the baud rates and give a message with the optimum baud rate and the port on which modem has been detected.
7. Now comes editing the wvdial config. 
$sudo gedit /etc/wvdial.conf
Edit the contents to:


[Dialer zte]
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Modem Type = Analog Modem
Phone = #777
Username =
Password =
#username and password is your modem’s phone number
ISDN = 0
SetVolume = 0
FlowControl = Hardware (CRTSCTS)
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
Dial Command = ATDT
Baud = 9600
#Baud rate might vary
Stupid Mode = 1 

8. Finally, run the following command to set up the ppp connection. You are connected if the prompt acquires Local IP, remote IP, primary and secondary DNS. 
$sudo wvdial zte
Firefox will be in Offline mode, uncheck the option in the File menu,and happy browsing πŸ™‚

wvdial.conf configuration is lost after reboot. A simple shell script can automate the process, which I leave it to you to work on πŸ˜‰

PS: I tried the same on Fedora 11, but could not connect to the internet even after acquiring IP and DNS. I read in a forum that the ppp daemon was bugged. So, I tried compiling older ppp daemons from FC6 through to FC10,but with no use. 
Anyways, I’m more of a debian guy than an ‘rpm-er’ πŸ˜‰
So, happy that it’s up and running on Ubuntu. 

Happy Hacking πŸ˜‰
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Keep it Obscure Stupid>>>>

If I were to tell you, when things are told in a simple manner they actually lose out the aura they deserve, and are perceived to be something mediocre. And if the same presented in a manner which people would remotely understand, the content is considered to be of high intellectual caliber.Wouldn’t you agree with me?

The natural tendency of our minds is to believe that complicated is clever and simple is stupid!
‘Complicated is Clever’ might be true only when done intentionally, and not to mention that it takes immense effort to keep things plain simple, and it is the anything but being stupid.

Complications,when voluntarily invoked to make things seem obscure by the presenter to manipulate the naive receptors is ‘simply’ effective. This is the best possible manner to convey a thing,but at the same time not conveying it πŸ˜‰
Having experimented this successfully many times in several sensitive situations, I seem to be getting cleverer (at least in this regard;)

Obscurity is a skill; As in,not about being lost in the obscurity of ignorance,but to draw the required into your realm in a convincing but obscure manner to make things go favorable to you….It does take skill….

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Obsessions:A Human privilege

Like intellect and thought, another privilege bestowed on us by Nature is the ability to get obsessed with few special things. Obsession is the deepest human trait, and is one of the most intriguing attributes of us.

I believe that, being able to get inspired by any special thing, and to pursue it with immense passion is a privilege. Obsession is one of the things which has driven people to create history and make a mark on all our lives.

At personal levels, each one of us would definitely have few precious things to be obsessed about, and which would channelize our thoughts, efforts and actions converge to the perpetuation of these obsessions. And, this is is one of the most basic traits we as humans should exhibit.

But, while conversing with people, regularly and quite often, I get to hear almost a remorseful confession-

I don’t remember anything that I have been deeply passionate about in my life…


This is a ubiquitous scenario in today’s world of haste and hate, where people seldom find time or the patience to pursue something they really love. This is unnatural and by the virtue of this anomaly it deteriorates the quality of life we live….

So,
Find time, inculcate patience and grow passion to do what you really want to do.

And, this is the only thing you are obliged to do for being born as a human πŸ™‚

PS: The image above- The Old Guitarist is one of my favorite paintings by Pablo Picasso. A legend, obsessed by his creativity pursued the same. Look at the mark he’s left behind on all of us πŸ™‚

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"The Surpise Politics": A book review

Politics by Adam Thirlwell is the latest book I have completed reading. It has been a surprise read for me, all the way starting from why I bought it, to how it culminated into one intriguing but entertaining novel.

I was at the Book Festival for the second consecutive day in Bangalore, and was looking for some political literature. Then I spotted this book – β€œPolitics”. I was in a hurry then, so I quickly read the cover page reviews and the gist, which had mentions of Stalin, Lenin, Mao and Hitler. Then I thought, it must be a political comedy. So, I bought it.
When I started reading the novel, I was taken aback by the first chapter with its meticulous details of the complex sexual act two of the protagonists were engaged in. But, what surprised me more was the minds of the persons involved in the act, which the author effortlessly and convincingly projects to the readers.
The novel is like watching a Woodey Allen type MΓ©nage Γ  trios, with certain extra details πŸ˜‰ It is an interesting read, for, the author also brings out the most subtle and most deeply hidden emotions onto paper by his witty articulation. I liked the book for its freshness and innovative writing, apart from feeling that all the three characters are bits and pieces of us, which each of us can relate to.

 The title if interpreted after reading the book would be “Politics of Love and the intricate dependencies”

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