Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

November 28, 2008

Recharge Batteries using wind power

Filed under: Tech Related — Suramya @ 11:55 PM

I want one… This is such a cool idea. One way to recharge would be to put the battery in the charger and stick it on the windshield of a car when you are driving somewhere so that by the time you reach your destination your batteries are all charged and ready to use.

Check it out: Febot Recharges Batteries

November 26, 2008

How many books do I read per year/I have read so far?

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 11:24 PM

A while ago someone asked me: “How many books do you read till now?” and my answer was: a lot. So last year I decided to start counting the no of books I read by keeping a list of all the books I read starting on 26th Nov 2007.

Now one year later the book count is: 304 books read. (This doesn’t include the books that I started to read and then stopped. Though there aren’t a lot of them). I wanted to cross 365 but… I guess that’s a goal for next year.

If I wanted to calculate the aprox no of books I have read so far, I can do it. I started reading novels in 4th class and by the 5th I was going through the school library and the local library like crazy. Lets say that the year I started reading was 1991. That means that I have been reading for aprox 17 years. (Its a bit more but lets use this as the start because that was when I started reading regularly)

17*304 =5408

Its very likely that I have read more books than that because there have been months where I have read multiple books each day. (These were mostly during the school vacations.)

Thought I should share that with you… How many books do you read each year?

– Suramya

November 25, 2008

Watch This After Your Next Blue Screen

Filed under: Humor — Suramya @ 9:01 PM

What if the Matrix ran on Windows XP?

Watch This After Your Next Blue Screen

– Suramya

November 18, 2008

My Week/Weekend

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 11:56 PM

This week was interesting. Had a couple of deliveries at work (software. Not pregnancy related) so had to put in some long hours. The projects I am working on are really interesting and I am having a lot of fun. For obvious reasons I won’t be talking about the specifics of the projects but they are fun 🙂

Over the weekend I watched a lot of movies. Some were good, a few I didn’t like that much. Quantum of Solace is a movie that falls into the second category. It felt like the movie had a lot of plot holes and it didn’t feel like a bond movie. The title song was really good and some of the fight scenes were decent but it wasn’t up to the usual bond movie mark esp. Casino Royale.

In addition I also saw the following:

1. Death Race: Loved the movie. Its a total switch your brain off action movie with lots of explosions/crashes and I loved it.

2. Mostly Ghostly” Its a kids movie by the Author of the Goosebumps series (R. L. Stine) about this kid who is trying to perfect a magic act and finds a piece of paper that has a catchy rhyme so he starts using it as a chant for his show. What he didn’t know was this chant was part of an actual magic incantation. He then meets the ghosts of two kids who help him wth his show in return of his help in getting rid of an evil ghoul.

3. Madagascar Escape 2 Africa: Its a good movie. A fun watch.

Other than this the week was pretty uneventful. Busy but uneventful.

– Suramya

November 11, 2008

Fix Unresponsive or Frozen Linux Computers

Filed under: Knowledgebase,Linux/Unix Related — Suramya @ 4:43 PM

If you are ever stuck on a Linux system that is completely unresponsive try the following key combination to get access back:

Alt PrintScreen r s e i u b.

When you type the command the system executes the following commands:

* r – takes the control of the keyboard back from X.
* s – writes the data from the disc cache to the hard disk.
* e – sends SIGTERM to all processes except init.
* i – sends SIGKILL to all processes except init
* u – remounts all the filesystems readonly (basically a measure to help you reboot safely)
* b – reboots the system

Please keep in mind that this is a last ditch method, that is to be used only when everything else has failed to get you access to the system. Normally you should be able to switch to a virtual terminal (F1-F6) and kill the offending application.

Source: Fix Unresponsive or Frozen Linux Computers using Shortcuts | MakeUseOf.com

– Suramya

Sandwich

Filed under: Humor — Suramya @ 12:01 AM

You have to be a Unix/Linux nerd to appreciate this one…


Make me a Sandwich

Source: xkcd – A Webcomic – Sandwich

– Suramya

November 10, 2008

Hug a developer today

Filed under: Humor — Suramya @ 8:30 PM

Feel the pain that a developer goes through everyday:

http://blip.tv/file/1061088

(Caution, the clip has sound so if you are at work I suggest you turn off your speakers or use a headphone)

Thanks to Shipra for the link. I guess she must be pretty bored/jobless if she is spending her time searching for stuff like this 😉

– Suramya

November 6, 2008

‘Jurassic Park’ author Michael Crichton dies at 66

Filed under: My Thoughts — Suramya @ 11:31 PM

Its a big loss to the literary world. Michael Crichton died on Tuesday, November 4th from a lung cancer at the age of 66. He was a great author and I loved all his books. He will be missed.

RIP Michael Crichton.

The Associated Press: ‘Jurassic Park’ author Michael Crichton dies at 66

– Suramya

November 5, 2008

Another Interesting Advertisement

Filed under: Humor — Tags: , — Suramya @ 3:59 AM

Saw this one when driving into the parking at Great India Place Mall in Noida. Found it funny.


– Suramya

November 4, 2008

Open Library

Filed under: Interesting Sites — Suramya @ 9:50 PM

OpenLibrary is a really cool site that has just been launched in collaboration with Boston Public Library, Internet Archive and OpenLibrary.org.

Basically it is allows you to search for a public domain book on OpenLibrary.org and, if the book hasn’t been scanned yet and is available at the Boston Public Library, the system gives you an option to request the book to be scanned. Once you confirm your request someone from Boston Library will scan the book and within 3-5 days you will receive an email follow-up with a link to the newly-digitized copy, complete with PDF, online flip book, full text and more.

I personally think that this is a great idea and allows knowledge to be shared across the world and not limited to people who can physically access the Boston Library. Its too much right now to expect non-public domain books to be available in the service but I think a sort of pay per download scheme or something similar would be a great addition to the service in the near future.

Check it out over here: Open Library

Thanks to ‘Jimmy O’Regan’ for the heads up.

– Suramya

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