Random Bits

GTKPod provides a Cross-platform multilingual interface to Apple’s ipod. With gtkpod it is very easy to use ipod on linux:-

1. Create a directory /mnt/ipod
2. Mount ipod into this directory
3. Read from ipod using gtkpod
4. Add / Remove songs from the file / directory listing in gtkpod
5. Sync the new contents into the ipod
6. Unmount ipod and start listening to your favourite music

If your music is in audio cds, then all you need is Grip to rip and encode it into mp3 format. Simple steps to rip a cd using grip:-

1. In Grip select the tracks to be ripped from the cd
2. In Config/Rip/Ripper tab you may choose [ grip (cdparanoia) ] as the ripper and provide suitable location and rip file format [ like ~/Music/Album/%n.wav ]
3. In Config/Encode/Encoder choose a suitable encoder

4. You can also choose suitable location and Encode file format [ like ~/Music/Album/%n.mp3 ]
5. In Config/Encode/Options tab you can also give Location and M3U file format [ like ~/Music/Album.m3u ]
6. With all these settings done, from the Rip tab you can either

From the ipod you can play .wav files or .mp3 files. To play .ogg vorbis files you have to choose other portable music players like iRiver…

Some useful links:-

Yesterday i attended Aero Sports Jamboree held at the Jakkur airfield in the outskirts of Bengalooru. As part of the event, joyrides were offered in Microlight aircrafts like zenair, x-air and power glidders. For the sake of getting a feel of the cockpit i decided to go for a joy ride. I wanted to go on a power glidders but because of huge demand for these glidders, i was put on zenair - a two-seater microlight aircraft . The pilot was Capt Arvind Sharma, director of Agni Aero Sports, a really cool guy. I started the aircraft just like starting a car using an ignition key, but with my left hand. It was a great feeling to start a plane. After a series of acknowledgements from the command post, the Capt steered the aircraft to the run-way. Then we did a quick take-off. For the first time in my life i felt like literally flying on my own. Once in the air, the pilot let me handle the plane closely. We shared a common handle ( like a driving school car having two steerings ) to control the aircraft, but the throtle was fully under his control. After a small circuit in the air over the Jakkur village, getting a birds eye view of Bangalore city, we lined the aircraft to the runway and made a smooth landing. After landing i expected the aircraft to cruise along the runway and slowly come to halt. But to my surprise, soon after landing, the pilot did a U-turn, like going around in a Maruti car on an empty road. When i was taking leave, the Capt said - “Never let computer fly a plane“. This remark of his has left me pondering over the issues of “Our dependence on computers” and “Where should we stop with computerisation of things?“. Even if it is easy to replace a human with a computer for doing a certain task, we should deliberate on the issue, because in many cases there is more to “human touch” than to “mechanical accuracy“.

Last week i got my IPod Shuffle. Its has 512MB storage space - thats about 100 songs capacity. After installing the s/w ( itunes player ) which ships with it, i started looking for some stuff to play on my new Shuffle. Browsing through the itunes music stores, looking for some free stuff, i ended up in the podcast section. There is a good collection of podcasts listed here. I subscribed for a few ITC( IT Conversation ) feeds. Some of the podcasts listed in the ITC Open source channel interested me. Of the few i listened to i particularly liked the talks of Paul Graham, the co-founder of Viaweb, the first Application service provider. I listened to his talk, titled “Great Hackers“, delivered during O’Reilly Open Source Convention (2004). Paul Graham is a very opinionated person. In this speech he makes fun of IBM by saying, ” .. no startup can think of being the next Microsoft unless there is another IBM which will be ready to bend over at the right moment… “. Seeing the way things have come along over the past few decades, this makes sense. Paul Graham looks down upon people programming in Java when compared to those working with languages like python or C. Being a java programmer myself, i don’t completely agree with this. It is one thing to get the desired output and another to think of the programming language to use. I feel the choice of programming language not just depends upon personal expertise or liking but more on situational requirements.

Yesterday i went on a bike ride to Nandi hills. It was a nice experience. I pushed my bike to its full limit, sometimes wishing it was more powerfull. On a good highway strech I managed to almost touch 100kph. The trip was marred by a freaky accident. While coming back to bangalore, I lost balance and my fierro sliped off the road. It was again due to my crazy braking, applying only front disk brakes. First time when i slipped, when in college, it was Katte who was sitting behind me, and now it was Kojesh’s turn. This was his first accident on road. Probably when Katte fell it was his first accident too. So I seem to be building a great reputation here. Its only matter of days before my mom finds out about this incident, when she sees my torn pants. But for now, I have managed to keep it under covers, and hope to get their nod for my future bike trips around the city.

FOSS.in 2005 concluded yesterday. This event was previously called Linux Bangalore. It was great to see the open source gurus in person. Events like these are surely a source of inspiration. The event ended with a Rock show by the band Phenom. The FOSS.in 2005 had a record number of talks & BOFs, second only to OReilly’s open source conference. The event was studded by people like Adrew Cowie, Alan Cox, Rasmus Lerdof, Harald Welte, Jonathan Corbet etc. In this event, which was spread over 4 days, one speaker who caught by imagination was Adrew Cowie. His casual and open style of putting things was really cool. Only other person whom i have seen with such a distinctive style is Miguel De Icaza. Having attended all four days of the event, i fully enjoyed the conference and am looking forward for its next edition.

After attending the FOSS.in convention i have decided not to - steal s/w & music. So, i deleted the pirated proprietary s/w and songs from my PC, and now have only free and open source software running on my box. It really feels good.

National Informatics Center(NIC) has recently released india.gov.in - the official site of government of India. Unlike other sites of NIC this one is very refreshing. It has a very good, easy to navigate template. It is no IE specific crappy asp coded pages. It is built using php and is probably running on a GNU/Linux server. Most of the pages load quickly.
The site has tons of information and surely is serving its purpose of being a one-stop place for things related to India. It has links for official documents like budget, five year plan, Constitution of India etc. The “Know India” section is the one i liked the most. This has subsections like the Profile of India, National symbols, Culture/Heritege, States, Photo Gallery and also a kids section( not joking ). Going through these pages it was like reading history and geography books during school days. Reading about the history of India ( from Indus Valley Civilisation to partition of India ) and about the various geographic features of the country, brought back the memories of the good old school days. As they say “Those were the days”. Apart from these educative things the portal has other useful links like directory, maps, photo gallery, who’s who and also a e-greeting facility. The site has seperate section for citizens of India.
This site is worth exploring.

Google Adsense has added a new referrals feature. This allows website publishers to increase their adsense revenue by referring more people to Google Adsense. Thats the button you see at the top right corner of this page. What are you waiting for? Click the button and start making some money

The interesting part of the Google Referral scheme is that it is also encouraging people to refer others to use “Firefox browser with google toolbar“. Google will pay 1 USD for every such referral. This feature is currently available only for web publishers who reside in US, but it will soon be open for others as well. With Microsoft and Yahoo showing their intentions of having a tieup to counter Google’s recent successes in the webservices domain, Google is trying to take both its rivals in one shot with this new referral campaign. Google’s support for Firefox will go a long way in popularising the browser. Its not long before Firefox challenges Microsoft IE as the leading browser. How i am waiting for this to happen???

I’m loving it. Having weekends off, after a long time, i have taken to cooking. Last weekend i was on a role and prepared Mutton Masala. Suprisingly it was awesome and we managed to finish it. This has given me enough courage to go on with my new found passion. Tonight i was looking for some recipes online. Karthik suggested me sanjeevkapoor.com. On this site you can find recipes prepared by Sanjeev Kapoor. Unfortunately access to most of these require annual subscription, which costs 750Rs but comes with 3 best selling books of sanjeev kumar, which actually cost 750Rs when bought. However there are around 38 free recipes to try out. I will be having a shot at Mahorba Mushroom tommorow. It looks good, let me see how i end up doing it.

Apart from these recipes the site also has some interesting sections:-

With Windows Live MS is venturing into the online services sector in a big way. Though Windows live.com is not a novel idea it comes in a good package. With efforts like these they are directly competing with the Google, claiming their share in the pie. One thing Microsoft is trying to do with this is to build a “community” of users, like its rival Google. According to Microsoft the launch of live.com doesnot come in the way of its existing msn.com and its services.

Windows Live.com is a site into which user can login with their microsoft .net passport. The page can be customised by adding various gadgets like Mail previewer, Horoscopes, Stock Quotes, Clock, Shopping tool etc. There are many more cool gadgets available at microsoftgadgets.com.
Some of the things i have on my page are:-

Apart from the live.com the Windows Live includes

• Windows Live Mail
• Windows Live Messenger
• Windows Live Care , etc..

To know more about these services check the site ideas.live.com.

sandbox.msn.com is the MSN equivalent of Google labs. It is a place where all the cool ideas of MSN are put on display. Start.com is one such cool idea.

ICICI Direct University gives insight into various investment options. It gives gyan on things like Equities, Futures, Options and Mutual Funds. There are many sites in the internet describing these topics in much detail. But good thing about this site is that all the explanation is done in an Indian context. ICICI direct is a mechanism for online trading. An account in ICICI direct comes with an embedded demat account which enables trading of stocks in electronic format. The site is still not mature with some broken links and missing information. However the demos present here are encouraging.