Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

October 13, 2011

A nerdy Guide To New York City

Filed under: Interesting Sites,Tech Related — Suramya @ 6:53 PM

Are you a big movie/comic book fan? If yes then you will like this map created by users on BuzzFeed. Basically, instead of showing typical tourist landmarks like the statue of liberty etc it shows the location of famous landmarks from comics, video games, movies etc. I wish it had been created a couple of months ago while I was visiting NY. Ah well, the next time I visit I know what I will be checking out during my trip around the city.

Check it out:


A nerdy guide to New York City

Now someone should create a similar map for locations in India that were used in Movies/comics/books etc. Hmm… not a bad idea for a project. Guess it should be possible to find a list of locations in India that were used in a book/movie/comic and them map them out in Google maps. The hard part would be compiling the list of locations, mapping it out shouldn’t be that hard.

Source: Ultimate Nerd Guide to New York City

– Suramya

October 12, 2011

Virus hits US Drone Fleet: Is Skynet finally ready to take over?

Filed under: Computer Related,My Thoughts,News/Articles — Suramya @ 4:28 PM

I typed an entire post while in flight back to Bangalore and then because the wordpress app for Android requires a netconnection to work and doesn’t allow you to work offline, I lost my entire post and now have to type it all again.

Looks like we are about ready for the end of the world and the start of the robot Apocalypse. A virus has infected the US Drone fleet and so far the admins have been unable to remove the infection. Now all we need is for the US military to hand over control of its entire system to a super AI and we are ready to go. To make things even better we also have early prototypes of HK’s (HunterKillers) in testing in various labs around the world.

Its funny how real life follows fiction at times. When I used to tell people that I was interested in Artificial intelligence, the most common reaction I would get was “are you crazy? Haven’t you seen Terminator?” Now if we have a rogue AI running around its actually possible for it to cause a whole lot of damage, maybe not to the tune of ‘end of the world’ but enough to make life miserable for a whole lot of people.

Maybe its time to stock up on my tin-foil hats and MRE’s 🙂

– Suramya

October 11, 2011

A funny book for kids who are now big…

Filed under: Humor — Suramya @ 12:23 AM

Good book to read now that you are big 🙂
Since most of you reading the blog were probably confused about what this is about, here’s a bit of an explanation. Basically its a sex education book from pre-teens & early teens but its written in a very funny and interesting way which is usually not the case for these kinds of books. So wanted to share.

BTW, if you are offended by such topics then don’t visit the link. Otherwise have a laugh…

– Suramya

October 10, 2011

SSR 1.1: Students Empowering Students

Filed under: Interesting Sites,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 4:55 PM

According to some estimates, there are 200 million children in India between the ages of 6 and 14 years who have not even completed basic eight years of elementary education.

My friend Tarini Mukherji is trying to change this. In her words:

—-
This is why with the project SSR 1.1, we wish to rise and change this. Please vote for our idea and help us bring a change.

I have been teaching in a street school for more than a year now and if I do qualify in this competition, the trust would be entitled for a grant that can help my students and many other underprivileged children to get an education. All you guys need to do is vote and if possible put the link on your Facebook status / links to share with your friends. I need a mammoth 5000-6000 votes to be in the lead. Any help would be great.

SSR 1.1

Please vote, and spread the word.
——

Do vote for this. I have known Tarini for over a decade now (doesn’t that make you feel old) and would urge you guys to help her in this.

– Suramya

October 5, 2011

Facebook does not like my Blog

Filed under: Website Updates — Suramya @ 12:21 AM

Looks like the integration between Facebook (FB) and my blog is broken once again. There is a plugin for WordPress that pushes your posts to Facebook but that requires you to setup an App in Facebook. However since I am not a Developer on FB so far I need to authenticate myself by giving FB either my Credit card # (So not happening) or my cell number (not working).

I have tried both my numbers but so far haven’t received any SMS’s from FB yet. Will try some other plugins while I am waiting but am not too hopeful that I will succeed in the integrating the two today. Lets see…

Update: Looks like all of the plugins require a Facebook app to be created in order to connect. 🙁 Although the problem with me not receiving the SMS could be because Facebook is having issues. At present all profile images on Facebook are showing up as broken for me.

– Suramya

September 26, 2011

Stuff I want + Stuff I need

Filed under: Humor,My Life — Suramya @ 4:52 PM

Stuff I want:
ThinkGeek :: Wi-Fi Detector Shirt: Just for the coolness factor I would get this. A shirt with a built-in Wi-Fi signal detector How cool is that? Yes, I know… What can I say, I am a geek.

Stuff I need:

Sonic Bomb Alarm Clock with Bed Shaker: As you all know I hate getting up in the morning and have a tendency to sleep through alarms. However I don’t think even I can sleep through a 113 decibels of alarm in the morning. (Don’t think my neighbors will like it but… )

Just so that you all know, my birthday is in December 😉

– Suramya

September 25, 2011

Encyclopedia Mythica: mythology, folklore, and religion.

Filed under: Interesting Sites — Suramya @ 4:36 PM

Found this while surfing the web, basically a central location to check when you want to look up something on mythology but don’t require too much details. Think of it as fast food for research.

I think I will be using it when reading books that refer to unfamiliar religions as a basis. (e.g. Hammered by Kevin Hearne which is based on Druidism)

Source: Encyclopedia Mythica: mythology, folklore, and religion..

– Suramya

September 20, 2011

New Script Web2Email Released

Filed under: Linux/Unix Related,Software Releases,Tech Related — Suramya @ 2:47 AM

Just released Ver 0.1 of Web2Email. Web2Email is a Perl Script that allows the user to send a message with a list of URL’s to a special mail account and get back a snapshot of the websites as PDF files.

You can download it from Scripts.Suramya.com: Web2Email.

If you want a demo, send an email to: web2email@suramya.com with website URL’s in the email body (one per line) and after about 5 mins you will get an email with the snapshots of the sites listed as PDF files.

Update: The cron job running this on my machine is having issues, will fix it once I get back home and this should be back up again tonight.

Update (22nd Sep 2011): The project wasn’t the cron job, there is an issue with the version of wkhtmltopdf that is available in the Debian repo. Basically if you have both http & https images in a site it goes for a toss. The static built version should fix this issue but haven’t got the time to install and test. Till that is done the demo version will be on hold.

As always I would appreciated any feedback/suggestions you might have.

– Suramya

September 19, 2011

Trouble-Maker: Learn to fix computer issues

Filed under: Computer Software,Linux/Unix Related,Tech Related — Suramya @ 2:38 AM

This interesting app randomly breaks your system so you can learn how to fix it.

Haven’t tried it yet because as of now I only have one working Linux system at home, but as soon as I fix that I will be installing this on my secondary system. Once I do that I will log my experiences here.

You can download it from Trouble-Maker‘s site.

– Suramya

September 18, 2011

How to set different backgrounds for each desktop in KDE 4.6.5

Filed under: Computer Tips,Linux/Unix Related,Tech Related — Suramya @ 11:59 PM

I have talked about How to set different backgrounds for each desktop in KDE4 in a previous post. However in KDE 4.6.5 the previous steps no longer work, so posting the new steps to get different backgrounds in KDE:

  • Click on the ‘Start Menu’ (The K at the bottom Right of the screen)
  • Click on ‘System Settings’ under the Settings menu
  • Double Click on the ‘Workspace Behavior’ under the “Workspace Appearance and Behavior” section
  • Check the “Different widgets for each desktop”
  • Click Apply

That’s it. Now you can change the wallpaper by Right clicking on the desktop and selecting ‘Desktop Settings’. Its good to know that the KDE Developers paid attention to complaints that the users made about their software and addressed it.

– Suramya

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