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Too early for tomorrow... our pet project

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Acellular

It's almost a week since I had been rendered acellular at DumDum.

Woe to the thug and may pestilence strike those hands which dared to pick my pocket. It was a span of just a few minutes during which I had been inattentive, and the job was done.

And did anyone say "Did you file an FIR?" As if the police have time for me! As if they have no better work than running after thieves who pinch cell phones from people. What did they have to do with something that didn't occur within their jurisdiction? After all, I ain't a VIP.

And I can't help a little pity on the ignorant fool who picked my cell. It was hardly a Rs. 1000/- affair: not worth the labour. It didn't have a camera, didn't play songs, nor was a Nokia. But still it was dear to my heart as the MotoYuva W180 could store 600 contacts and 600 SMSs together.

Can someone tell me how easy it is to crack a password on a mobile? Every time the cell was switched on, one had to supply a password. Can the SOB crack it? I wish his skull cracks into two thinking about it.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Bawal

Had a big bawal in college yesterday. Imagine a networking lab without the network in place! Not a big deal if one considers the case isolated. But with the students being continually deprived of the basic facilities, the war had to be taken to them. Imagine the cheek! They put floor tiles in their offices and the HODs go without a separate computer. 

There is a computer for every sundry staff in the accounts department, but only 2 for 10 teachers of the IT department! I was always against non-academicians being in administrative positions. They are there to look after their own petty comforts.

Yesterday was only a peek of what we need. The HOD, the class teacher, Pijyush Sir, about 7 students were just right to corner the Junior Administrative Officer and the System Administrator (got these posts by telofying the Principal, mind you). But then, Pijyush Sir flared up, and we got softer.

These two are experts at RedHatting (my translation for the bangla tupi porano) people. And they left no stone unturned to RedHat us pleading helplessness. Perhaps we were taken in readily. The students of our college are of the bhodro kind and believe whatever the authorities say.

But for how much longer? The message has to be carried across that the students cannot be taken for granted indefinitely, and we will go to any extent to set the irregularities right.

...How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings--
With those who shaped him to the thing he is--
When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world,
After the silence of the centuries?

-Edwin Markham, The Man With The Hoe

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Yeppeeeeeeeee

Was able to connect to the internet from both the desktop (wired) and laptop (wifi) simultaneously after two days of effort. Am using WPA2-AES and MAC authentication.

Got a D-Link DIR-300 for the purpose. The stuff's good and works out of the box in Fedora 10.

Got a Seagate 500 GB SATA HDD too. Couldn't accommodate in the 100 GB any more, so had to change. The Desktop Box now contains 2 PATA HDD (20 GB and 80 GB), one PATA DVD RW drive, and the new 500 GB SATA. (There's also a PATA CD read only drive that is unconnected because of lack of power cables from the SMPS :( ).

The next step is to set up a full fledged home LAN with file sharing, etc.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Does anybody care?

I was returning from Esplanade yesterday sitting at a window seat of a BelurMath-Esplanade (Rt. 11) mini bus. As the bus crawled beyond the erstwhile Metro Cinema, and got stuck at the S.N. Bannerjee crossing, I noticed outside the window, in the shadow of the road divider, a man lying in the most uncomfortable of positions. Very soon I noticed that he was lying in a pool of blood. I tugged at my father, "What happened?" My father shrank in fear, "He has been run over!"

I could not help staring. Here was a man lying dead in the middle of one of busiest roads in Kolkata, and no one noticed! And what a gruesome death it was! His brain had been squeezed out of his skull and pasted on the road for some distance. 

When we get a cut, signals are sent to the brain, and we feel pain. But what if the very brain has been sheared out of the body? Is pain felt? I have no idea. And the gods forbid anybody should have an idea on that. Can there be a ghastlier death?

The bus rolled on. Who cared? I found no mention of the incident in the morning papers either: it was not a bestseller after all.