Here's to the crazy ones

"Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful; that’s what matters to me.”

Ubuntu 11.04 with Unity and LibreOffice

This April's Ubuntu release is not just another one of Canonical’s biannual Ubuntu releases. Ubuntu 11.04, codenamed Natty Narwhal is the first desktop version to feature the Unity user interface and the Document Foundation’s LibreOffice office suite. Both the new additions are in fact forks of the two previously used technologies GNOME and OpenOffice which were last featured on the October 2010 version.

Unity made its Ubuntu debut with the Netbook version of Ubuntu 10.10 which gave a preview of what to expect out of it. It has a lot in common with the regular GNOME environment with the major deviation being the exclusion of desktop panels and the three menus at the top. The most significant addition is the Launcher + Home button + Dash combination, which all works together to give the user an experience similar to the Windows Start menu and the task bar.

 

The desktop with the Launcher on the right, Home button on the top left and the top bar

 

The launcher icons represent running programs and these can also be pinned in similar way to the Windows task bar. Mounted drives, the workspace switcher and the Trash icon are permanent on the Launcher. Also available are the Application and the Files lenses, which are two menus quite similar to the old Applications and Places menus. The Launcher being on the left needs some getting used to provided that there seems to be no setting that can change its position on the screen.

 

The home button opens the Dash, the main application and file search menu

 

The Dash is analogous to the Windows Start menu although it takes the whole screen and is more of a window than a menu. The Alt + F2 run command and the file search are also integrated with the Dash.

 

The new Workspace switcher

 

Some new minor improvements are present in the top bar, like this one where the sound indicator menu integrates with the Banshee player, the default music player and library application. Ubuntu now has a central settings page similar to the Control panel accessible through the Session indicator on the extreme right.

 

 

The top bar also inherits the menu bar when the application is maximized. The window’s control buttons are also placed in the left of the top bar. Even if the theme places them on the right or a third party tweaking application modifies the theme, it remains in the left since the indicator menus take up the right side. This needs some getting used to if you’re accustomed to them being on the right.

 

 

Apart from these changes, the scroll bars are totally reworked to take up the least amount of space as possible and has an auto hide behaviour by default. Window animation settings are not present by default but can be accessed using the third party CompizConfig Settings Manager (CCSM) which has a wealth of other interesting settings that are not easily accessible otherwise. Another useful third party tool is the Ubuntu Tweak which is simpler and easier to use.

 

Ubuntu Tweak with its own Application Center

 

During the two days I used this version of Ubuntu I came across a few minor bugs; one with the top bar crashing, another with the mouse pointer not pointing at the exact location and another one where the Banshee player doesn’t play the selected media item. Since this is the very first release it is safe to assume that these would be fixed in the updates that are to come. I am yet to find a way to create desktop shortcuts apart from specifying the path manually. Dragging icons from the Dash results in an error referring to user privileges, which could be another small bug.

Some useful tips and shortcut keys to wrap up:

• Holding down Windows/Meta/Super key will assign numbers to Launcher icons, which can then be accessed using the keyboard. (Hitting it once reveals the Dash)
• Since the Dash opens with the focus on the search box, you can start typing to narrow the number of items displayed. Hitting Enter opens the first item.
• Alt + F2 – the Run command (in the Dash)
• Windows + A – the Applications lens
• Windows + F – the Files and folders lens
• Windows + T – Trash
• Windows + F – the Workspace switcher
• Windows + T – Expo mode (all windows from all workspaces)
• Shift + Alt + Up - Expo mode (all windows from current workspace)
• Ctrl + Alt + Shift + Arrow keys - Move the current window to a different workspace
• Ctrl + Alt + T – the Terminal
• F10 – the first Indicator menu, arrow keys to scroll through menus

 

Technorati Tags: Ubuntu,Linux,Software,Unity

Browser Wars: Reloaded

 

Here we go again. Just when we thought it was a thing of the past, Microsoft and its bunch of contenders are at it again. Microsoft released its much awaited Internet Explorer 9 just a week back and Mozilla had to; yeah they seriously had to release their own Firefox 4 Release Candidate even before the IE heat ended. Take that for business competition. The end result is, no matter how much Microsoft boasted about the first day download numbers of IE 9, Firefox reached that mark on its 7th hour after launch while not even being a final stable release.

IE’s first 24-hour 2.35 million is at the moment quite humbled by a 6 million and counting number of downloads for Firefox 4 RC. Mozilla has also setup a nifty little statistic page to illustrate how fast their browser spreads through the Internet.

Firefox 4 RC is here. At first use you’ll notice that the heaviness of older versions is not there anymore, making it more akin to the likes of Google Chrome. There’s a fair deal of interface changes making it more like Opera and less like the final few releases of the Netscape Navigator. Compare it with IE 9 here and see which one suits you the best. As for me, I might still want to stick with Google Chrome just so that I have access to Google Web Apps.

So I guess since Chrome, IE and Firefox are all on par by now, it’s just a matter of secondary features that dictate which browser a user uses; Add-ons for Firefox or Web Apps for Chrome, things that add a bit of a personal touch to the browsing experience. (What’s unique in IE by the way?)

To wrap-up, there’s nothing to lose when it comes to choosing a browser these days. Times are such that all the world’s leading Internet technologies be it Java, Flash or some social networking site, everything comes free of charge. So as the guys at Microsoft say, go and unleash the beauty of the web.

Remembering Columbia

Every man dies. Some die for their own cause. Some for no cause at all. Some in the name of God or an ideal that they believed in. Yet some others die for the cause of humanity, leaving behind nothing but a memory. Those are the men we tend to forget, for the simple reason that they never made a name for themselves. Those men strived to move the human race forward, only to perish in a blink of an eye.

It’s been eight years to the day that the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry to the earth’s atmosphere on February 1st 2003. All seven astronauts onboard were killed due to the resulting damage caused to the shuttle’s orbiter. Much has been said about the disaster but it’s obvious that these men would not be the last to die in a space mission and were surely not the first. They are the last in line of a grim list of spacemen including those from the space shuttle Challenger explosion in 1986 and the Apollo-1 fire of 1967. They lived as men and died as heroes for they were the envoys of mankind in the unfathomable sea of the universe.


When you see the night sky next time, remember that some desired to reach the stars but couldn't find their way back. They were different from us. They dared to do the undoable. They were men of the stars.

The crew of the space shuttle mission STS-107 from the above image: (From left to right) David M. Brown, Commander Rick D. Husband, Laurel Clarke, Kalpana Chawla, Michael P. Anderson, William C. McCool and Ilan Ramon.


(The following is adapted from the Apollo–1 plaque)

Ad astra per aspera - A rough road leads to the stars

A tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice so that others could reach for the stars.

God speed to the crew of STS-107.

2012, the Mayans and Us

Disclaimer: I do not take any responsibility for any loss of life, injury, damage to property, the utter destruction of humanity or the planet Earth as a whole caused due to following the information that appear herewith in this blog post. Please proceed reading only if you understand the consequences of following information, that by its very nature may prove to be misleading and inaccurate. (Just in case!)

 

 

“Nothing important. That is, I heard a good deal about a ring, and a dark lord, and something about the end of the world, but please, Mr. Gandalf, sir, don't hurt me. Don't turn me into anything... unnatural.” 

– Samwise Gamgee

Yeah, we’ve all heard those stories. If you like me live most of your free time on the Internet, chances are that you’ve already bumped into a good half-a-dozen weirdos who claim to know something about an ‘apocalypse’ that you don’t know. I’m not at all concerned about the Hollywood stuff here. I’m talking about the claims of the hardcores  who’ve already started so called survival guides to help you live through the destruction; to help you live in a world where everyone else is dead in an I am Legend kind of a way.

Surprisingly, all of these claims have a common foundation. The culprit being the ancient Central American calendar, better known as the Mayan long count calendar which is said to end on the day representing the 21st of December 2012 in the Gregorian calendar. As usual Wikipedia being the wise one, has a very matured dissertation on the Mayan/Olmec calendar here, but the whole thing in a nutshell is;

1. Mayans used a base-20 numeral system (vigesimal) with values ranging from 0 to 19.
2. The calendar consisted of 5 values in the format of n.n.n.n.n with the least significant value being the rightmost n. All are base-20 values except the one which is second from the right - which is base-18.
3. The Mayan calendar was based on the number of days that passed after a fixed date, so the seventh day after the start of the calendar would be 0.0.0.0.7, the nineteenth would be 0.0.0.0.19 and being a base-20 system the 20th would be 0.0.0.1.0 and the twenty-second would be 0.0.0.1.2.
4. Remember, the second value from the right is base-18 and therefore the value after 0.0.0.17.19 is not 0.0.0.18.0 but rather 0.0.1.0.0.
5. By doing so, the total value that can be represented with the two rightmost values is 360 days, (18 x 20) which is roughly a solar year.
6. Therefore the aggregate of the first 3 values can be represented approximately in solar years. 0.0.1.0.0 is roughly one solar year while 0.1.1.0.0 is 21 solar years.
7. No, they are not as smart as you might think. Most civilizations knew the length of a year.
8. The calendar value 7.4.2.5.2 represents 7 b'ak'tuns, 4 k'atuns, 2 tuns, 5 uinals and 2 k’ins (days).
9. The value on the extreme left is the long count. For it to change it would take 144,000 days (20 x 20 x 18 x 20) or roughly 394 solar years.
10. This calendar started on the 11th of August 3114 BC (the Mayan mythical creation date). We’re currently in the 13th long count (12.19.n.n.n) with the 14th starting on the 21st of December 2012. (Coincidently the Northern hemisphere winter solstice)
11. After the 13th long count, the calendar will continue until the 20th long count gets completed after which the calendar resets to 0.0.0.0.1 – a new cycle.
12. The world supposedly ended on the 10th of August 3114 BC which was not 19.19.19.17.19 of the previous cycle. Instead it was a 12.19.19.17.19, hence all this fear about the end of the 13th long count.

I’ve seen that this whole thing is similar to time or degrees, which is sexagesimal (base-60). The end of the first hour can be denoted as 0.59.59 with the next value being 1.0.0 (start of the second hour) which goes until 23.59.59 after which it resets to denote a new day.

If the world was to end on every 13th long count, they could have easily restricted the leftmost value to 12 as they did with the 4th value. Again, If an end of a calendar means the end of the world, one of mine ended on the last 31st and I believe nothing significant happened. They had other things to worry about rather than worrying about calendars all the time.

I insist; you’ll wake up on the 22nd of December saying “Oh, boring…” as same as everybody else would do. The real world is not as cool as the movies after all.

Here we go again, another trip around the Sun

OK, 2010 is officially expired as of the moment I’m writing this. I guess it’s 2011 all over the world by now; even for those Pacific islands just east of the date-line. What can I say, it was an eventful year for me and for the world as a whole, not to forget that all years are eventful in their own right; it’s 365-odd days after all.

Talking about 2010, the first thing that comes to my mind is that Arthur C. Clarke got a lot wrong in his 2010: Odyssey Two. (Not to forget 2001: A Space Odyssey). Still it’s science-fiction and it doesn’t stop me from being a big fan of him.

Looking back, this year spawned some very interesting incidents that had environmental, cultural, political and scientific importance. The Eyjafjallajökull (yeah!) eruption, the floods in Pakistan, the Mexican Gulf oil spill, the Haiti earthquake and not to forget the numerous airline crashes around the world. Obama’s health care reform bill and the protests it caused around the US, WikiLeaks, UK elections, Moscow bombings, the Chilean miners and of course the FIFA world cup. Here’s 2010 at a glance (in my own opinion):

Song of the year – Waving Flag by K’naan

Movie of the year – Inception (Checkout all the movies that were released last year here.)

Album of the year – Alter Bridge’s AB III (I’m biased, so what?)

Breathtaking moment of the year - Andrés Iniesta’s world-cup winning goal

Day of the year – 13th October (The rescue of the Chilean miners)

Man of the year – Julian Assange of WikiLeaks

Woman of the year - Julia Gillard (Australia’s first female prime minister)

Animal of the year – Paul the Octopus

I guess that sums it all up. Then again it’s 2011; some people have already started the 2012 doomsday stories all over again since 2012 is coming ever so close around the corner. I’ve been meaning to write a post on it but the procrastinator that I am it got postponed along the way. I’m so elated that I finished writing a post for the new year somehow, seeing that I was suffering from writer’s block for the past few weeks or so. My wish for you for the New Year  – have a wonderful year, break all the rules and learn to love all the moments that pass. Cheers!

P.S – New Year greetings from me here. I put this up in half an hour so don’t complain. It might take a minute to load.

Technorati Tags: 2011,2010,2012,Year in review

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Finally a movie with some creativity! After a few weeks of boring movies I was longing for something that would keep me occupied for a good two hours full of awesomeness. Enter Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, a decent piece with a better than average storyline together with impressive post-production and casting that would propel it among the best of the year 2010.

Scott Pilgrim played by Michael Cera is your average rock star wannabe who plays guitar/bass for his band with two of his friends. The movie opens with the twenty-two year old Scott going out with a seventeen year old high schooler after a breakup that happened one year prior to the movie’s timeline. Scott eventually falls for a mysterious yet an awesomely hot Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead!) and breaks up with Knives Chau (Ellen Wong), the high schooler to make way for her.

Little did Scott know that he has to battle the seven evil exes of Ramona in order to keep on dating with her. The movie unfolds as he progresses defeating each ex-boyfriend until he manages to save the day by killing the last and the seventh ex-boyfriend (He has a cool name that I can’t remember right now). Yeah, it does sound like some action comic thingy, but then again it’s supposed to be like that.

The movie pays tribute to the Anime/Manga industries (I don’t know the difference!) from which the story originates and to the computer game industry for some gameplay elements such as countdowns, strike points and on-screen messages. The combination of all these gimmicks have resulted in an awesomely crafted movie that is like no other that came out recently. Surely Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a must watch that I would rate at an eight out of ten.

Technorati Tags: Scott Pilgrim,Movies,Reviews