Murtaza Ghiya . COM

2011-09-25T22:09:00.000-07:00

Business opportunity!
Yes! I am into a business :) Don't blink your eyes or clean your specs. Yes you read it right. I am into a business and am looking for Smart, Hardworking and Ambitious business partners for my million dollar project. Let me know if you'd be interested or know anyone who would be with the qualities I mentioned earlier.

Hoping to hear from the millionaires of the future :)

2011-01-11T00:15:00.000-08:00

Old Love, New Form!
For everyone wondering what the title means, this story is about my old love since childhood. Was lying with me unused since some years and it was high time I restored it. Yes, am talking about my 1991 Yamaha RX100. Bought the bike in Feb 2006 and ripped it hard all this time and finally felt that the bike was giving up. So thought of giving it a new life, a new form :)

Now, a little comparo pics:

Some in-process pics:

2010-08-31T02:14:00.000-07:00

Wassup guys!
I have been getting a lot of hits to my site recently. So thought of stopping and saying hi to all my readers :)

2010-03-02T03:39:00.000-08:00

Moving on to a PhotoBlog

Yes guys, I have started my own photoblog on shutterchance. I have been very unactive off late over here. Will try to be active on shutterchance. Here is the link http://murtaza.shutterchance.com

2010-01-24T01:16:00.000-08:00

3 Idiots: What a movie...

Saw the movie after hearing raving reviews from colleagues, friend and family. Very interesting movie indeed and as usual cinema with some message. Aamir has done a marvellous job as Phunsuk Wangdu and the same stands true for Madhavan and Sharman Joshi. Why can't we have more filmmakers like Aamir coming up with such meaningful cinema?

By the way, after seeing this film, many people have their own conclusions and the most common lesson people learnt from the film is to "not overburden your child with your own aspirations and let them do what they can do best". Some people would have taken the issue of following a certain syllabus and just studying for marks in exams as a lesson. But for me, it was a different lesson apart from what others claim to have learnt. I learnt a different thing from Aamir's character. Even though he was the university topper, the most intelligent and talented, he never took pride in himself. He was always grounded and wanted to help people no matter who they were. He never made others realise that they were inferior to him. He even went to the extent to invite "millimeter"(the helping boy) to his school for studying further. I believe such a fictional character cannot exist in this world. Why do I say so? I say so from my personal experience after meeting several learned, talented, skilled and intelligent people in my lifetime. What I have seen and felt is that more learning makes a person take pride in himself. This pride makes him believe that he/she is superior to others and they are always correct. So they become stubborn and do not share knowledge. Whereas Phunsuk Wangdu seems to have no attitude even after having hundreds of patents in his name and is still willing to help his dear enemy Mr. Chatur. This is one quality that is completely missing in today's scholars.

People who have mastered a particular subject tend to believe that they are the smartest but I believe they are the biggest fools. Let me explain, take any subject, for instance Medicine. Can any doctor claim that he knows medicine completely? Lets take computer software. Can any Software developer/Computer scientist claim to know all about software? Leave alone a single subject that one cannot master, what about knowledge of the universe? Is there any human being who claims to know everything? The answer is NO.

My heartfelt request to anyone reading this post. If you are a scholar, student or a scientist, please do not think of anyone as inferior. You never know what the person next to you might be good at. Always look up to people who are better than you rather than looking at people inferior to you. That will make you realize that much is yet to be achieved and keep you grounded.

2009-09-26T01:38:00.000-07:00

New found love :)
Yes, you read it right... I am in love with my new prized possession.. The all new Bajaj Pulsar 220 DTSi. Booked the bike on Saturday, 19th September '09 and got delivery of the bike on Friday, 25th September '09. The bike was actually home delivered a day before they had promised delivery!

Even though I was told that it would take them 25 working days to deliver me the bike since the color I chose (misty silver) was not readily available and there was already a waiting list of old booking to be finished first. The showroom guy also told me that, if I paid the amount in whole, they would prioritize my booking and deliver sooner :) Also, due to the swine flu scare in the city, most of the people who had made bookings by paying 10K had fled to their respective native homes and had no intention of coming back sooner. And to my surprise, I get a call on Tuesday, 22nd September '09 from the showroom asking me if I wanted the bike on this weekend. The answer was obvious: YES!!! And after confirming on Thursday from the delivery center, finally get to know that the bike has arrived and has gone for registration today. Then next day, i.e. on the D-day, I get a call from the delivery center informing me that the bike will be delivered home in a few hours. I started jumping on my seat and confirmed with the time of the delivery. After doing that, left from office by 3 pm to reach home in time for the bike to arrive. The bike finally arrives at 4 pm and the below pics take over from here on...

2009-09-20T00:57:00.000-07:00

New look on my Swiftie!!!

Got new alloys for my baby after a month old striping work over the whole body. Other mods include rear spoiler long back + K&N stock replacement air filter for the engine. I will let the pics do the talking.

2009-04-17T20:47:00.000-07:00

After a year... Almost!
Well, most of you who have been following my blog must be wondering where the hell I've been... To answer that, I was just too busy with personal and professional life. There's a lot that has happened over the last one year. From running around in my car to places to modifying my car (to make it look different) to getting married to working my ass out... Oooof. It was a heck of a year.

2008-06-17T21:42:00.000-07:00

1465 Kms. in 4 days!!!
Yes, thats true. I drove my Swift all the way to Ahmedabad and back covering about 1465 kms. in 4 days. The trip started on 12th June '08 at 7:00 AM from Pune and the first stop was Vapi (Gujarat) at 1:00 PM. We had lunch at a cousin's place there and decide to stop over for the night. We visited Daman (U.T.), in the evening, which is about 10 kms. from Vapi and back by night.

Then on 13th morning, we said goodbye to our cousins and left for Dandi, the famous place where Gandhiji broke the Salt act! We stayed there for an hour for a pilgirmage place and left around 8:30 from there for Surat (Gujarat). Reached Surat by 12:00 PM. What a congested city it is. Spent an hour visiting another pilgrimage there and then mom's usual shopping started which got over only by 4 PM. We left Surat at 4-4:30 PM for Baroda(Gujarat), but had to stop on the highway just outside Surat for lunch. Had lunch and started the drive towards Baroda(Gujarat). The highway between Surat and Baroda is under construction for a 6 lane, so it was all dug up and only one lane was active which was obviously congested by the trucks going towards North India. Somehow overtaking and moving slow and steady we reached Baroda by 9 PM. I was so exhausted by this drive that I just fell asleep that evening with very little food.

The next day, 14th June '08, we got up and visited another pilgrimage in Baroda and bid farewell to our cousins there and left for Ahmedabad city. The road between Baroda and Ahmedabad is an expressway which has very less traffic which made the drive smooooooth. Reached Ahmedabad by 11 AM. Were welcomed by Police waiting for their regular income. Had to give away 100 bucks for not having the co-driver's seat belt and the yellow strip on the right headlamp... Visited the much awaited pilgrimage the trip was planned for and by 12 we were all set to leave from Ahmedabad. We planned to cover up as much by evening and reach Vapi for a halt. The start was good but we got stuck up after a place called Bharuch on the highway. Its was just packed and we spent 2 hours just sitting there on the highway doing nothing but only listening to music. That was bad. And not to mention heavy rainfall that was rendering the windshield unusable. Had to turn on the A/C. to get the fog away from the glass. Then started overtaking from the left side and ended up getting off the road into the mud and what not. But it was an experience of a lifetime. Patience is really necessary on the road. Finally we crossed the bottleneck and started moving swiftly but it was already dark by that time. The problem with driving in dark is that I start getting headaches. Later realised that I could not see anything on the road since there were no light on the road and my headlamps were not effective. Then we stopped at a restaurant on the way and found that the headlamps were fully covered by mud and hence they were not effective. Cleaned the headlamps and there we go, the lights were so powerful that I did not have any problems further. Moved from there and covered the odd 400 kms by 11 PM in the night. Reached Vapi safe and sound, had dinner, one combiflam tablet and slept.

On 15th morning we started by around 10:30 AM from Vapi towards Pune and just missed an accident (touchwood) with a biker. Then just kept moving forward and reached Vasai and took a left toward the expressway. After that it was just a smooth drive back home. Reached home by 4:30 PM and had lunch and slept. Got up the next morning!

All in all a great experience on the road that taught me a lot of things. The trip covered Pune->Vapi->Daman->Vapi->Dandi->Surat->Baroda->Ahmedabad->Vapi->Pune.

DONOT FORGET TO HAVE THE YELLOW STRIP ON THE RIGHT HEADLAMP WHILE TRAVELLING TO GUJARAT... IT'S A MUST!

2008-04-28T04:26:00.000-07:00

My new addiction!

Yes, I am addicted to something these days and hang on its not a bad addiction. Well, am addicted to my new Honda DIO which I bought on 18th April '08(booked on 15th April). The bike was bought as a gift for my dad on his birthday. He is the one who uses it all the time but I am the one waiting to use it ;) I try to get my hands on this Blue-Black beauty whenever dad is not using it. The best thing I like about this piece is that you don't need to do anything except for accelerating if you have to start and braking if you have to stop. A sweet and simple bike with sporty looks. This is one babe that really turns heads...

Well for the tech specs, the bike has the same engine as the Activa (and now Aviator), a 102 cc 4-stroke air cooled engine. The bike has automatic gears and a small fuel tank of 6 litres(which could be a disappointment for people looking for a long ride). The bike has ample space under the seat and claims to have a mileage of 50-55 kms per litre, more than the Activa and Aviator. The reason is simple as quoted by Honda officials, the bike is 11 kgs lighter than the Activa. This is due to the fact that the body of DIO is all fibre and Activa is all metal. The only thing I miss on this bike from my bikes is the suspension. This beauty is not something that performs well on bad roads, could be due to the fact that it has smaller tyres...
Well after driving this bike, my Pulsar feels too heavy to drive ;) Will keep you posted about the bike later. Vrooooom...

2008-01-20T17:35:00.000-08:00

My First Car!!!
Yes, I finally got one... A Pearl White Maruti Suzuki Swift(II) Vxi. I was too excited about the car and had to wait for a long 25 days to get hold of the car! I booked the car on 26th December 2007 and the dealer told me that the car would be delivered only in 2nd week of Jan 2008, which meant I wasn't getting the old price benefit :( But for the extra 7 grands I paid, I am happy to see the 2nd generation Swift... There are quite a few small changes that have been made over the older swift. They told me that the front bumper was changed (I didn't notice any changes though) and hence getting MGA mudguards fitted would be done later, since the older mudguards did not fit due to bumper changes...

Other changes (that I could notice easily) are a Digital Clock on the dashboard, the new rear tail lamps, the wheel caps and supposedly the lights on the console (I am not sure about these as I haven't been able to compare with an older model). Here are a few pics of what it looks like:

2008-01-07T22:49:00.000-08:00

Pathetic Customer Support, courtesy TATA INDICOM BROADBAND by VSNL!

I completely agree and have been through the pains of the so called great service by VSNL, mentioned here. Do read and beware of VSNL. VSNL - Not recommended at all...

2007-08-21T05:23:00.001-07:00

Some Project Ideas for Students

1. RemoteFS:
- Ability to mount a particular filesystem over the network.
- Support for NFS, FTP, SMB/CIFS and other filesharing protocols

2. Automated Mail Generator:
- Usually marketing companies have this requirement of sending out a common mail to a large list of users. The only thing that could possibly change is the name of the person in the body of the email and the email of the person in the To field.
- Provide a way to accept a common email with the variable fields in the mail.
- Take a list of email id's and send it to individual id's.
- SMTP and POP3 support shoudl be available.
- Easily configurable based on the mail server (smtp or pop).

3. RemoteCmd Shell:
- Ability to connect to any machine (ideally running any OS).
- Ability to fire commands on the machine.
- Ability to provide a common set of commands which would be translated to the native commands on the backend OS. This would help the user in knowing just one set of commands but when the user fires a 'dir' on the command prompt and if the user is connected to a Linux/Unix machine, the command that should be fired on the backend machine should be 'ls' and not 'dir'.

4. C++ to Java code convertor or vice versa

5. Server Management Tool
- Ability to manage/monitor various server machines and do a lot of active activities
- Activities include installing a software on various machines remotely for a Master server.
- Monitor all the machines and display the status of the machines on the master Server in a nice GUI.
- Remotely manage machines i.e. should be able to shutdown, reboot a machine from the Master Server.

Will post some more if they come to my mind...

2007-06-18T03:47:00.000-07:00

SanDisk Cruzer micro 2.0 GB
I ordered a SanDisk Cruzer memory stick on www.futurebazaar.com and got this slick and smart looking memory stick.

The pen drive comes in dimensions of 2" X 1/2" (yeah its that small!) and packs in a whopping 2 GB of data. This drive comes pre-loaded with software to manage and install on your Windows 2000 or XP machine. Yeah thats the only 2 flavors of Windows supported... And that too Windows 2000 with SP4 and above :( The software included has an anti-virus and some games. On my XP machine I did not have to do anything after plugging it in! It just starts off on its own. The data transfer speed is awesome. Copied some 800 MB of data within 3 minutes! (I think thats fast) It has a slider which when pushed reveals the USB 2.0 connector.

All this for Rs. 999 with an offer where they are giving away 10 Sprint Blank CDs free with the pen drive... Happy shopping :)

2007-06-03T00:26:00.000-07:00

WMI: Windows Management Instrumentation a.k.a. WBEM
Recently, while working on an assignment to get various performance parameters from my driver, I was re-introduced to WMI (I had read about it a long time back and knew what it was but did not know how to use it) for writing performance counters for my driver.

So, I started like anyone else who has no idea about WMI, Google on the subject and read, read and read... So I came up with a few links on Microsoft, CodeProject and OSR but I must say the documentation on Microsoft was not enough for me to get started (Disclaimer: well thats what I believe). One of the best resource that I found was on OSR and can be accessed here (to access, you have to register for free). This link gives a brief explanation of how to do it but make sure you know all the WMI terms before you try reading that article. The terms that you would want to know are WMI, MOF file, WMI Provider, CIM Repository, etc.

Now, I begin with talking more about what they missed in the article on the OSR site.

1) Make sure the names of the files in front of the tag 'NTTARGETFILE0' should be exactly same as the files specified in the Makefile.inc file. This was not written anywhere and gave me nightmares to build the code.

2) Look at the .rc file, where they have mentioned about adding a line describing the MofResourceName. Remember this string very carefully. We will need this later.

3) When you look at the source code of the sample driver, they have implemented an AddDevice routine and set the callback in the DriverEntry. This routine holds only for PnP (Plug and Play) drivers. But if you are writing any non-PnP driver as in my case, a simple filter driver, this routine does not make sense, it will never be called. So, now how do we get the PhysicalDeviceObject which is the only reason to write an AddDevice routine. Don't worry, we don't need one for a non-PnP device driver.

4) The GUID List that you pass to the WMILIB_CONTEXT structure should have flags of each element in the list as 0 (zero). This flag is specifed as WMIREG_FLAG_INSTANCE_PDO which will be OR'ed with the flags specied in the WmiQueryRegInfo callback.

5) Look at the routine WmiQueryRegInfo or whatever is equivalent in the code. Here all you need to do is provide an InstanceName, MofResourceName, RegFlags which are OUT parameters to the routine. The RegFlags should not have the WMIREG_FLAG_INSTANCE_PDO set because this specifies that we will be providing a Pdo(PhysicalDeviceObject) which in our case does not exist. Just specify WMIREG_FLAG_INSTANCE_BASENAME. InstanceName could be anything your instances will be identifed as, MofResourceName should have the same string that you specified in your .rc file in point no. 2. In the sample it is "MofResourceName", so set the out param to "MofResourceName". This also was not mentioned anywhere and gave me a hell lot of troubles to make this run...

6) Thats it, if you follow each and every word of the article, your non-PnP driver should run smoothly... But one thing that I forgot to tell you is that this has been tested on Windows 2003 Server and I cannot guarantee it should work as it is on Windows 2000. Also, your driver's counters will not be visible from 'perfmon' and the reason I figured out for this was that, while you compile your MOF file, it adds the schema to the root\wmi namespace whereas perfmon expects it to be in the root\cimv2 namespace. I haven't really found a solution to this one. Will post one when I find it.

Till then HAPPY CODING :)

2007-05-15T03:40:00.000-07:00

Get paid for receiving ads on your cellphone...
There was mail from one of my previous managers about a site called mGinger which pays you for receiving ads on your cellphone and they let you decide the kind of ads you receive in a day, the time frame in which you receive those ads in a day and the content of the ads. That sounds cool. I don't know if this really works but whats the harm in giving it a try. I have registered for it to see if it actually works. What are you waiting for. Register at: mGinger.com

2007-05-06T22:20:00.000-07:00

Classification of human beings!
Recently I got a mail saying "Find out what type of a person you are, based on your blood group" and I said to myself that this was yet another mail in the series of mails floating around trying to classify people into various categories based on different parameters. ( Oooh! that was a long sentence :) )

So why do we need to classify people into 4-5 or any number of categories based on various parameters like date of birth, blood group, day of birth, sleeping posture, etc. People tend to believe in the way these mails talk about the tendencies of a group of people who are either born on the same day or a range of date or have the same blood group. Can people really be classified on this basis?

What I feel is that the reason most of us tend to believe these mails is that most of us just read the category we fall into and not others. Usually these categories are written in a generic way thus giving a person an illusion to believe in whats written out there. And most of us have some percentage of every characteristic that these mails talk about. Like for e.g. if I am a Leo and I start reading my horoscope, I feel most of it is true because I try to adjust events in my life with what has been predicted. If I assume to be an Aries and start reading the horoscope for the same, I will start feeling that whatever has been written is actually true. Its just an illusion so to say. Try doing this, whenever you get any such mail(s), try reading a category you don't fall into and I can confidently say that you will feel that you actually fall into this category by words though not by birth... Try it.

2007-05-02T22:24:00.000-07:00

Make your own Microphone in times of emergency.
I was watching this television show about gadgets and stuff and in the end they showed a crude way to build your own microphone in no time, in case of urgency. But this is not a replacement to your conventional microphone and is only meant to be used in case of an EMERGENCY.
This is how it goes:
Take your normal earphones that came with your i-Pod's or walkmans with the stereo jack or pin (whatever you wish to call it) on the other side. Attach it to your computer in the microphone's slot. And then open up Sound Recorder in Windows from Start->Programs->Accesseries->Entertainment->Sound Recorder or if you don't have it installed at this location you can search for the executable at %Windows_Installation_Directory%\system32\sndrec32.exe. e.g. on my machine it was located at c:\WINNT\system32\sndrec32.exe. Just press the record button and start speaking on each of the earphone one by one. You should see sound waves in the Sound Recorder. By speaking in the earphone one at a time you can figure out which one works best and then use it for your purpose. But this is not going to replace your microphone as the sound quality is not as good as it should be...

Now, the question that must be popping in everyone's mind (like mine) must be that how can something like that work? The answer they gave on the show was: the way these earphones and microphones are manufactured is almost same. I am NOT convinced by their answer, so am still searching for a satisfying answer. Will post it when I get one...

2007-04-12T05:42:00.000-07:00

32 bit to 64 bit Safe!
I was working on a porting task from 32 bit to 64 bit. Man, its a hell of a job to do. Loads of data types and API's change over the two variants. There is a nice article by Microsoft which can be found here. I am not an expert in doing the porting though, but have learnt one fact: Write code that is 64 bit compatible even though you are targeting 32 bit. In doing so, the code will almost be compatible with 32 bit. As the industry has been moving towards making every piece of software 64 bit, by this approach we make sure that we have a working 32 bit as well a 64 bit code base.

2007-03-27T21:50:00.000-07:00

Latest Addition to the Stable!

Hmmm... You guessed it right from the pic :) I recently (on 24th March '07) got a Pulsar 150 DTS-i for myself. Here are some pics of the cool bike. I am in awe of the design and the bike is just amazing. I can just keep going on and on about it as long possible...

The bike has a lot of cool and NEW features. The new features that come with the so called UG-III Pulsar are:

1. The engine is a 149 cc compared to the 146 cc of the older 150 versions.

2. It has a new gearbox with changed gear ratios. The gear pattern is the same as the 180 DTS-i.

3. The bike comes with the new design at the rear with new LED tail lamps. The bike is a few inches longer than the older Pulsar (thats was cool).

4. The bike also comes with a digital console, which is the selling point of the bike. The console display the speed of the bike, the total distance travelled and a trip meter to calculate distance of upto 12 trips! The display also has a digital fuel level indicator. Though the RPM meter is still analog... The orange back light looks cool.

5. The bike has one very great feature for the first time in bikes in India. It has auto-cancelling indicators for left and right indication. The moment you complete the turn the indicators go off on their own as they are in cars!

6. The typical problem with most bikes is that the indicator rubbers are hard and break off frequently. Then you need to fix them up with tape. But this bike comes with flexible indicator rubbers that make the indicator lamps flexible (you can actually turn them around) that don't break.

7. Other accessories are default as is from the previos DTS-i models like alloy wheels, NitroX suspension, front disc brake and electric starter.

8. The front of the bike has also got a bit of a change. The plastic on the previous Pulsar was flat whereas this one has an edged out sharp surface for the pilot lamps which looks cool.

9. The bike also has back lit switches which are convenient in the dark. This is also a first in Indian bikes...

The price difference between the 150 and 180 versions when I bought it was just a mere 1.5 grands. I could have gone for the 180 engine but chose the 150 for its fuel efficiency. There is very less difference between the two bikes except for the 30 cc increase in power and the black look in the 180. Apart from that everything else is the same. The other thing is, looking at the traffic in the city and the kind of roads we have in Pune, a bigger engine is hardly of any use. Where would you actually open up the throttle and race? Thats what I asked myself and the answer was the 150 cc DTS-i.

I also got a remote controlled security system fitted on the bike as an addon accessory offered by the company showroom.
On the whole a nice bike which costed me a whopping 63 grands (On road + accessories)... But I think its worth the price for all the features it has to offer.

HAPPY BIKING!!!

2007-01-25T01:21:00.000-08:00

Got a Sony Ericsson K750i :)

I recently bought a Sony Ericsson K750i. The cell is a good combination of features at that price. Well got it for ten and a half grands and additional 1 GB memory for another grand. Totals to eleven and a half grand. Thats a good price for a phone with 2 Mega-pixel camera, Radio, Media Player and Internet capabilities alongwith 1 GB of memory card... The phone sounds good and works smooth as well... The camera can take nice crisp images with 3 different image sizes. Well forgot to mention that the camera sports a 4 X digital zoom. Though not quite good at times but works fine for me. The best part about the phone is that it has a powerful flash light which can also double up as a torch. This is something very handy for taking pictures in the dark. Pictures come out really very well in the dark :) The media player plays a lot of different formats but mp3 is what is recommended. Though the phone does not play wav files and some of the midi files directly copied from the computer. The phone also is unable to play Real medi formats. Well Sony-Ericsson should do something about it... The phones memory is easily accessible once connected to the computer. The phone memory shows up as a drive in Windows and you can just drag and drop files onto the phone memory. As simple as that!

Some of the impressive features include PhotoDJ to edit your photos, MusicDJ to create own ringtones and VideoDJ to create/edit videos. The keys of the phone are sometimes annoying but they are nice. There are a hell lot of free themes available for this phone and the phones looks cool with these themes. I have got some 60+ themes on mine! There are 3 games that came with the phone which are quite amusing and entertaining...

All in all a nice package for a good price. What say?

2007-01-08T04:55:00.001-08:00

From the Penguin's to the Windows World...
I am back to the Windows world after working with the Penguin for more than a year :) There are a lot of differences in the two but I love and hate both. While on the Penguin's side, it was just a black console with lots of white characters, here the scene is different. There are a lot more colors to add to my life now :) But I love the simplicity the Penguin offers... I will surely miss it. But I promise I will be back at it soon. I am trying to find a box with the Penguin because I feel lonely without it, I am missing it seriously...

Well for now, I am learning to debug a driver in kernel mode. I say its a very different experience... But a learning one ;)

2006-12-29T01:25:00.000-08:00

Back to office after a long time!!!
I am back to a new office after about one and a half months... I had a great time in this long vacation. Travelled a lot of places, bought a lot of stuff and basically spent a lot of money ;)

I have joined Covelix Technologies here in Pune and today is my second day at work. Had a few minutes, so thought of writing on the blog...

2006-09-25T22:34:00.000-07:00

Java tops the list of popular languages!
This site here has come up with a survey of the most popular languages and Java is at the top!

Have a look at this site here.

2006-09-20T22:33:00.000-07:00

ps on Linux displaying multiple instances of a process...
I was facing a question from a customer regarding ps showing multiple instances of the process which they mistook as to be multiple processes spawned over the 16 processors on the box by the primary process. I have posted a question on linuxquestions.org regarding this long time back but have not got any reply on this. Have a look at it here.

There were several things that I figured out on my own.

1. Linux treats threads as processes. There is no concept of thread in the Linux kernel.

2. ps command has a flag '-m' which shows threads spawned by the process. But ps on some kernel versions displays threads by default. When -m option is specified for ps on those kernel versions, ps gives out a message that 'thread display not implemented'.

Any more explanations are welcome.

2006-09-19T22:31:00.000-07:00

Gokul On Storage!

This picture explains my friends noble intentions of writing a blog on Storage...

Have a look at his blog here.

2006-09-14T15:39:00.000-07:00

Hans Adventures!

The team here in Pune had a company trip to Hans Adventures, somewhere in the lush green areas of Konkan, on Friday 8th to Saturday 9th September 2006. It was a great trip at the right time. I was very frustrated and this trip just energized me. This place was just heaven with a very scenic drive to offer. Its about 105 kms from Pune towards Mulshi. I had great fun on this trip. We played football in the swimming pool! Some adventures offered here include river crossing and white water rafting. We did river crossing but missed out on water rafting :(. I have some snaps of the trip to share. Have a look.

Visit here for more info on this place

2006-09-13T22:36:00.000-07:00

Sun StorageTek Business Analytics Wins!!!
Yesterday, Byte And Switch announced Sun StorageTek Business Analytics as the award winner in the category 'Storage Management Software'. Other competing products were Brocade Tapestry File Lifecycle Manager and Kazeon Information Server IS1200. Have a look here:

For more details on awards visit the Byte And Switch site here and for Finalists visit here

2006-09-05T18:33:00.000-07:00

Linux fails to check bounds...

While I was testing a program for limiting its data segment size on a Linux box, I found something very strange. I specified the limit to the data segment size for my process by 'ulimit -d '. But to my surprise the program's behaviour was very weird, it kept on running without any problems whereas it should have failed at some point. I tried this small test wherein I typed the following commands to see if bound checking is actually done. I did this on both Linux and Solaris machines and the output is as follows:

Linux:
> ulimit -d 1
> ls -la

This seems to run fine and display contents of the directory.

Solaris:
> ulimit -d 1
> ls -la

This did not work. 'ls -la' gave out an error, "Not enough memory".

This means that the limits set through ulimit have no effect so to say on Linux. This site has more details on why such behaviour: http://isec.pl/vulnerabilities/isec-0012-do_brk.txt

2006-09-05T16:48:00.000-07:00

Finding idle CPU cycles to utilize them.

I was finding out a way to detect idle CPU cycles to process something, so that my process does not hog up the CPU. Additionally I was trying to do this on a Linux box. After a lot of searching(googling) here and there, I found a link on Google Groups that said using nice 19 to set a processes priority to the minimum would only schedule the process when the CPU is idle. Here is the link

But this was not something I was looking for. I wanted a way to do it through my program. And voila! I found an API call that sets priority of a process. Its call setpriority(). Its very simple to use. And guess what I even experimented with it to confirm it actually works...

What I did was wrote a generic program that takes the priority as an argument and starts the process with that priority. Needless to mention, this API fails to change priority if the user spawning the process is not root. I started three processes with priorities -20, 0 and +19 which translate to high, medium and low priorities respectively. I observed the behavior of the three processes using top command and what I observed was that the process that had highest priority hogged up CPU to the maximum extent and so on with the one with least priority with very less CPU utilisation. But there is still something that I keep thinking. Is it accurate? Because doesn't detecting that the CPU is idle require some CPU cycles by itself?

2006-08-21T02:12:00.000-07:00

Flirting with my new LOVE!!!

Hey don't go by the title in the exact sense. I meant I have been flirting with my new love i.e. my new bike. I recently got hold of a used Pulsar 150. Man its so smooth, its just amazing on the road. Well I also own a Yamaha RX100 and the only difference between the two according to me is engine refinement. Yamaha is a class of its own. The Yam that I own is more than 15 years old but still burns the rubber like anything. Pulsar has a much bigger engine with around 50 cc more than the Yamaha. I love both of these bikes....

Hold on for more on my bikes... Till then signing off.

2006-08-09T02:09:00.000-07:00

POSUG Launched

Recently some folks here at the IEC - Pune centre of Sun Microsystems, Inc. launched POSUG. Well if you are wondering what POSUG is, well it is Pune Open Solaris User's Group. You can have a look at it here. We are all working here to promote it to every nook and corner of the city and make people aware of what Open Solaris is all about. We have also checked out Belenix, a distro of Open Solaris from the BOSUG (Bangalore Open Source User's Group). It is really impressive with a live CD bootable that runs entirely from the CD.

I can just say one thing "Solaris Rocks!" and spread the word...

2006-07-12T10:59:00.000-07:00

Light a candle for Mumbaiites

There is this link that I was forwarded by a friend. It's a site hosted by CNN IBN where you just have to put in your name, city, phone number and e-mail address. They will put up your name on the list of people who lit a candle for Mumbaiites. They have also mentioned that they will donate Re. 1 for every candle lit, towards the relief of the victims. So why not do it?

Click here to visit the site and light a candle...

2006-06-05T12:34:00.000-07:00

Lesson of LIFE...

Well after having a bad weekend, I learnt the most basic fact of LIFE...

NEVER, NEVER trust a stranger, no matter who that person is, what that person says or what promises that person makes, DONOT TRUST anyone...

It was a lesson learnt the hard way but an experience of a lifetime...

2006-05-11T22:30:00.000-07:00

Thats called sleeping in office!
Thats me resting in peace in the office ;)

2006-05-03T22:28:00.000-07:00

After a long time (more than a month to be precise!)
April was a great month career wise. Had a lot of stuff to do. I won't speak of all the technical stuff here. So what did I do in the last month? Had a lot of fun and kicked some butt!!! Actually ;)

Well we have a company trip to a nearby hillstation, Panchgani on 21-22 April. We left the office by 3:40 pm on 21st and were back by 4:00 pm the next day. We were 24 of us packed up in 6 cars :)

Well I cannot describe the fun we had all night. But I can surely show some pics that we clicked there. Here they are...

2006-03-29T12:16:00.000-08:00

Tandoori Chicken. Ummmmm!!!

Serves 4

Preparation Time 30 minutes

Contents
Chicken

Ingredients
1 (800 gms) of chicken
1 tspn of kashmiri red chilli powder
1 tblspn of lemon juice
Salt to taste

For Marination
200 gms of yogurt
1 tspn of kashmiri red chilli powder
Salt to taste
2 tblspns of ginger paste
2 tblspns of garlic paste
2 tblspns of lemon juice
½ tspn of garam masala powder
2 tblspns of mustard oil

For basting of butter
½ tspn of chaat masala

For garnishing
Onion rings and lemon wedges

Recipe
Skin, wash and clean the chicken. Make incisions with a sharp knife on breast and leg pieces.

Apply a mixture of kashmiri red chilli powder, lemon juice and salt to the chicken and keep it aside for half an hour.

Remove whey of yogurt by hanging it in a muslin cloth for fifteen to twenty minutes. Mix Kashmiri red chilli powder, salt, ginger-garlic paste, lemon juice, garam masala powder and mustard oil to the yogurt.

Apply this marinade onto the chicken pieces and refrigerate for three to four hours.

Put the chicken onto the skewers and cook in a moderately hot tandoor or a pre-heated oven (200 degrees Celsius) for ten to twelve minutes or until almost done. Baste it with butter and cook for another four minutes.

Sprinkle chaat masala powder and serve with four onion rings and lemon wedges.

Chef’s Tip : To make Chicken tikka, use boneless chicken pieces cut into 1 ½” cubes and proceed same as Tandoori chicken.

2006-03-26T22:10:00.000-08:00

Hybrid Horsepower

Excerpts from the November 2005 issue of Digit Magazine. Liked it very much so thought of sharing it on my blog as well.

2006-03-24T22:40:00.000-08:00

Niagara doing just great!
I read this comparison on the following site. Its really impressive. Have a look at it here.

2006-03-23T21:06:00.000-08:00

Bills Bucks!

Bill Gates has said the US tax office has to store his financial data on a "special" computer. "My tax return in the United States has to be kept on a special computer because their normal computers can't deal with the numbers." he said at a Microsoft conference in Lisbon. "So I am constantly getting these notices telling me I haven't paid something when really it is just on the wrong computer." he added in comments on TV.

Gates' fortune is currently put at $47 billion (Rs. 2.2 lakh crore). But quit bragging, Mr. Gates... we all know even a 1982 computer with 48k of RAM running BASIC can handle 47*10^9!

2006-03-22T16:25:00.000-08:00

What a Comparison!
I came across this comparison test claiming the HP servers to be faster than Sun's some days back. Its very surprising that a company like HP goofed up this time. If we look closely at the comparisons made, there are some shortfalls that one can see.

1. They have not been tested for the same configurations. By configurations I mean the softwares on which the bechmarking was done and not the hardware configurations.

2. If we see the figures closely, most of them are pretty close by and Sparc even does well on the "Calculated System Power (Watts)2" parameter.

3. The clock speeds of the processors used are very different. The Sun box has a 1.2 GHz processor whereas the HP box has a 2.2 GHz processor. Oh man !

4. Also the no. of processors used on the HP box are 2 and on the Sun box is just 1.

What kind of a comparison is this??? How can u compare two hardware configurations by running Solaris on one and Windows on the other??? The SAP versions also don't match and the databases are way too different.

Is it a fair comparison?

See it for yourself :

The real story.

I am having a screenshot of the results below in case they close the site on the above link.

2006-03-19T22:26:00.000-08:00

Yet another Monday morning!
Its a pretty usual monday morning. Saw a billboard ad of Sun today. I am showcasing it here as well.

Anyone interested ???

2006-03-12T22:38:00.000-08:00

Shocking news for Monday morning
I got a really shocking news that Geoff Arnold has already left Sun. I was taken by surprise by this news. Though I have met him just twice during his visit to our centre. But there was this attachment to him that we could relate to. I had never thought of him leaving as he was a great asset. I always considered him a mentor and idol. Well, I will really miss him.

All the best Geoff for your new endeavours.

2006-03-05T05:24:00.000-08:00

Project Sushi - A great dish

We had a great lunch party on Saturday 4th March 2006 at Adeeeeetiiiii's place. It was a great experiment with guinea pigs of all sorts (Me, Vikash and Sandy alongwith his wife) ;)

A great description of the whole party can be found at Adeeeeeetiiiiii's blog

2006-02-19T22:57:00.000-08:00

A Great Barbeque Party!!!

We had a cool party on Saturday, 18th Feb 2006 at a farmhouse some 10 kms ahead of Khadakwasla dam. It was a cool place thanks to Adeeetiii. We started off on our long ride from our places at around 3:00 pm and me and Gokul reached a meeting point (which was decided long back) at 3:45 pm. After a long wait (almost 1 and half hours), Adeeetiii and Vikash appeared and it was a sight of relief. Then it was Mr. AJ and Mr. KJ's turn to have been lost in Khadakwasla. Those two guys went in the wrong direction and drove almost 22 kms. in that direction. To add to our problems the cell phones were not working in that area. Somehow these guys managed to call us up (we got some share of the network!) and figure out that they had gone to the wrong place. We managed to guide them to the place where all of us were waiting and they reached there in another 30 minutes. Finally we completed our 2 hours waiting at that spot.

Then after this long a wait we finally headed towards the Farm house. It was a great place, something that I had not imagined of. It was a luxurios bungalow with a big farm outside. There were coconut, mango, papaya and betelnut trees all around. We then started to play some music in the house and started off muching some snacks. After some time we started off the barbeque by doing all sorts of stuff ;) We got the barbeque up and running in about 30 minutes and started to cook the chicken. Then the veggie guys also started grilling their respective stuff. We were doing all this with a glass of Fruit juice and Coca Cola, courtesy AJ :). After some time everyone was busy eating their respective stuff and then we started the bonfire but nobody really enjoyed it. We went upstairs and then Mr. KJ started playing his guitar. Oh man he is an amazing guitarist. After enjoying the music for some time we started with some ghost stories. We shut off all the lights and lighted two candlles and placed them on the centre table. People were speaking of their experiences and Mr. KJ was giving all kinds off weird background music from his guitar. Then finally went off to sleep ending the day but the other guys started seeing the movie 'Madagascar'.

It was a great evening I must say...

2006-02-11T07:58:00.001-08:00

So called Credit Card courtesy C*T*B*NK

The other day I was trying to renew my internet connection with my friend's(actually his credit card) help when I noticed something very unusual. Ths friend of mine had a credit card by C*T*B*NK. First of all he had lots of problems trying to get his card. The main problem with C*T*B*NK is that they ask for debit card xerox copies for identification which is something very dubious. When my friend objected on giving his debit card details, they told him they had to ask it for verification. What kind of verification was this?

Then he finally got his card after lots of trouble. He almost got it after 2 months!!! But after he got it, he was a bit happy for all the pain.

Then one fine day I wanted to get my internet connection renewed and found there were only 2 options to do so i.e. Credit card or pay by cheque. I did not prefer to pay by cheque because I had no idea when the guy would come over at home with the renewal coupon. So I decided to pay using my friend's help. Finally after selecting the appropriate plan on the ISP's site we were redirected to C*T*B*NK's online banking site where we were supposed to enter the card no. and the password. To my surprise I found that the card no. could be entered using the keyboard but the pin no. couldn't be. It had to be entered through the online keyboard provided on the page using the mouse. What was the use? Anyone sitting next to me could see the password. This was ridiculous. The other thing was that there was an option of feeding in the ipin. That means the transaction could have gone through without an ipin. Anyone who gets the card no. can make payments at his wish. I think C*T*B*NK hired some dumbasses to design their online site. Who could think of such stupid things??? I think C*T*B*NK needs to do something about it else its a big security issue for them as well as their credit card holders.

2006-01-08T22:17:00.000-08:00

Convocation on 8th of Jan 2006

We had our convocation for our Masters degree on 8th Jan 2006. It was a great moment of joy for all of us. And to make it even more memorable, all our classmates had a get together :) It was a great time with friends reuniting after a long time.

2006-01-05T10:07:00.000-08:00

Trip to Mavalsrushti & Manas Resort on 5th of Jan 2006 ...

It was a great trip and an experience of a lifetime. I am posting some of the pics of the trip along with the blog. We left from the office at around 10:30 am and drove along some really bad roads to reach Mavalsrushti in 2 hours which is merely a half hours drive. The place is really scenic and is located 400 meters above Lonavala!!! The place had some really great flowers and plantations around. We roamed around the place for an hour or so and then had lunch. Ohhhh.... What food!!! Typical homely food. Great food I must say...

Then we were just wondering what next... and then voila Gokul (a colleague) came up with an idea to have a Table Tennis tournament between the 8 of us. Well I forgot to mention that we were a team of 8 people (7 guys and 1 gal). So we played for another hour and I tell you it was great fun. Then we had our afternoon sip of tea and left for Manas Resort.

At Manas we did boating, I, Pankaj, Vidya (team mates) and Sandy (my manager) were in one pedal boat and Vikash and Gokul were in one and Kaustubh and AJ (oops... Aniruddha Jahagirdar) on the other. It was just a dry feeling until Gokul and Vikash got really into action by throwing water on everyone and banging their boats with all of ours. It was great to be totally wet. Everyone was wet from head to toe.

Then we went on for Go-karting. That was the most ultimate exerience of a lifetime. We all just had our hearts out on those cars and drove them like there was no tomorrow. Though I must say Pankaj was the best of all of us. Gosh he seemed to drive like a pro man. His best lap was when AJ was trying to go past a slow dickhead and that guy was not letting AJ overtake and then comes Pankaj from behind in full speed overtaking both of them and leaving them in dust. That was amazing!

I guess there is nothing really special to share after that, as everyone was on the way home and some of us headed for Dr. Paul Clements seminar.

2006-01-01T03:10:00.000-08:00

Murtaza S. Ghiya

I am a Software Engineer residing in Pune and working for IzelTech. I have worked for Veritas Software (Now Symantec), StorageTek (Now Sun Microsystems) and Brocade Communications, Inc. in the past. I am a lover of new technology and speed. This blog is dedicated to my interests and you will find related articles here.