Sunday, October 12, 2008

65 miles/hr on TX-71E

Yes I did it at last :-). It is a fact that, I never drove in India. I had a valid Indian License but I never gave myself a chance to test my abilities behind the wheel. When I arrived in US, I knew that I can not survive without a car. But I could survive without a car till now. Anyways I took a texas license after few days of practicing. I had to give William 240 dollars for that :-).
He is a very old man, living by helping people take driving license. In these days of economic meltdown and surprisingly huge price for gas, it was a wise decision to avoid car and rely on bike.
So I never had to use my driving license except at airports. But that day came when my room mate wanted me to drop him at the airport. It was a challenge for me because I was a stranger to US high ways. Actually Peter took a decision which could put his life at risk. It was like a dream come true for me, when I got back to my apartment without a single accident :-). I was so happy that I thanked god for not letting me down. There is a first time for everything and that was my first taste of US high ways. At last I could do something which is not part of my daily routine.

Life is interesting...

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Eclipse 3.4 on Linux 64 bit

It was a pain in the ass to install eclipse 3.4 on linux machine.
When you try to install eclipse on linux, it is always better to install the latest versions of Java, Eclipse. Do not try to mix things, it will screw your life. JRE downloaded from Sun will not work with eclipse in this case. Eclipse crashes very frequently when I used Sun JRE. This happens when build automatically is turned on or when we try to compile a file. The best option I could find was IBM Java 6. Download it and use it with eclipse 3.4.

Download IBM's Java 6
Download Eclipse 3.4 for 64 bit Linux

Modify eclipse.ini file by adding,
-vm
/users/me/jdk1.6/bin/java

Create a eclipse.sh file and export JAVA_HOME.

export PATH=/users/me/jdk1.6/bin:$PATH

Add language and encoding related informations if necessary.

Use eclipse.sh to launch eclipse.

This might solve some of your issues, but it seems that 3.4 is not working properly on Linux.
I may be missing some more information. Dialogs and Wizards does not show up most of the times. I have no clue what is going on in the background. One thing I noticed was, they removed the concept of .eclipseextension, now we have not so good option available through Software Updates. You can add a Local site and point to different plugin directories. This automatically copies the available plugins to the base eclipse installation. I do not find it good.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Xming on Vista

One way to use Xming on Vista :-
It was hard for me to set up Xming on vista owing to my lack of experience in Unix based systems. Xming is a free X windows server for Windows (Xp/2003/Vista).

Download and install Xming server, Xming fonts. Start XLaunch and connect to a Linux machine by providing the required information.

Update "X0.hosts" in your local system, add ip address of the UNIX machine where you want to connect to.

Telnet using puTTY to UNIX machine and export DISPLAY,

bash$ export DISPLAY=your windows machine ip address : 0.0
xterm &

This will export the UNIX machine display to your windows machine.

Some useful links:

http://www.straightrunning.com/XmingNotes/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System

http://xray1.physics.sunysb.edu/~micros/beamline/node47.html

Friday, July 11, 2008

Life and Death

Sometimes I think about death (The absence of life or state of being dead - from wordweb), but not for more than one minute. Some people say that they are not afraid of dying and if that is the case then I really appreciate such people. When I think about death, I become valueless and my importance in this world go below zero. It's interesting when you really imagine a world without "you". Basically I am a pessimist but when I think about death, all my worries and problems ran away like never before. Ok let me forget about death, it's been more than one minute!!!!.

I bike to my office everyday and I have to ride on the expressway for one mile. It is a risk but I do not have any other option. Today I found an animal dead near the side walk. And I always meet a wild rabit when I take a shortcut between two expressways. He/She used to ran away when I apporach but now a days I see a small change. I am happy that my rabit friend started considering me as a friend. I love children and animals. When I talk about child I should say that they are the most beautiful and pure in this world. But the same world make them less beautiful when time passes. Life sucks most of the time but it gets interesting sometimes and I always live for those moments. I always get what I wished but I always gets it late. But the important thing is that I always get it :-). I have started complaining less to God, and I have started saying thanks to him. Give me strength God, let me spend a little time in this not so bad world and come back to you. It's meaningless if I can not do what I am supposed to do here. Do or Die??????

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Use"less" - Why did I choose a strange name like this as my blog name ? Is it because so many people had used that particular word to address me ?

As usual I do not have an answer for this question too. I was always mum when questions were fired at me. I was not alone, I always had friends who could support me by not answering questions. But I still remember the day when one of my teacher used the word"useless" for addressing me. It was strange that I did not respond with a grim face, maybe because I was not aware of the meaning of that word. And It came haunting me again after few years, but "useless" brought some of his friends with him. It was "Anti Social Element". I hope that there is no chemical by that name. And this time I was trapped by few of my naughty friends. I had no clue why my professor stamped me with ASE tag. I was becoming popular by all means. When I looked back I found the real culprit smiling at me. It was not intentional but it was always there for me. It was on the cards as people say. We have an inherent ability to adapt to different conditions/situations, and that same theory proved correct by none other than myself, when I started liking the word "useless". What if "useless" had a different meaning ? I could have done a research on that, but then how will I live up to the expectations of others. I hope that I have not bored myself by writing this small piece of shit. God bless everyone especially useless people around...