Unknown Unknowns

Found this nice saying from Donald Rumsfeld in LSST web site, highlighting our knowledge on universes.

 "As we know, there are known knowns.
   There are things we know we know.
   We also know there are known unknowns.
   That is to say we know there are
   some things we do not know.
   But there are also unknown unknowns,
   the ones we don't know we don't know."
                         

Lord Buddha said; " The subject of universe is infinite and only a Buddha can understand"
With unknown unknowns this is very true.

Need to check the speed of your internet connection ?

The following link will estimate the upload and download speed of your internet connection and it is nice to see that I am getting the exact speed that I pay for.
http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

Fedora 7 Installation with a SATA Drive

I tried to install Fedora 7 on a Dell machine with a SATA hard drive and it hangs after initrd just showing "Ready"

Tried both live CD and the DVD but both gave the same problem. Google search shows that the problem is a common one and there are many suggested solutions. I tried few, but this one got it working.
[when the computer has booted from the Fedora 7 DVD and "Welcome to Fedora 7" screen displays.
Press TAB and add edd=skipmbr at the tail of the line.Then it's OK.] link

After installing it successfully I got to know that IU students can install Redhat OS. Another linux installation, but I decided to go for it and it simply handled the SATA and everything is working fine.
IU also have a RHN Satellite update site for RedHat as well.
http://www.ussg.iu.edu/linux/rhel/

TSUNAMI Again??

It has started again and my parents had to move to a higher grounds for one more night. USGS now offers this really useful service, SMS alerts. Please have a look.
http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/subscribe.php
http://www.lifehacker.com/software/cell-phones/send-sms-from-email-127033.php

Atlantium - Very Interesting Blog

http://atlantium.blogspot.com/2006/11/atlantium-episode-ii_08.html

No Sound Flash Player - Firefox

I recently updated my flash player and found that sound is not working after that for the flash movies. I tried reinstalling, upgrading Firefox abut non of them was able to get it working. Then I found this link from Adobe explaining a fix to the problem and my flash player can talk :)

Adobe Link 1
Adobe Link 2

Configuring ATI Radeon for Ubuntu

I installed Ubuntu in my desktop machine and found that it has not picked up the correct driver for my ATI RADEON graphics card. So tried few links but could not get it working correctly. Then I found this page and it simply did the trick. So simple steps are:

Start Ubuntu in the command line
Install the diver
Backup the /ect/X11/xorg.conf
Modify it as shown
Restart :)

Lexus - Automatic Parallel Parking

The can park itself and see the vedio, it park really well.
http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2006/09/ls_460_parking.html

Beautiful IU

Last weekend me and my wife took some photos of Indiana University. No question why it is one of the most beautiful universities in USA.

Sample Gates

Student Building and the Clock Tower

Another Beautiful Building

Flowers

Free Sticky Notes

Found a nice free sticky note tool + a calendar
http://atnotes.free.fr/

Trip to Champaign

Yesterday we went to see a one of our friend who came to the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. Trip was about 165 miles (one way) and had to drive in few interstate roads. We were able to see one side of Indiana border as well.

And also I was able to break my land speed limit and the new record is 160 kmph. (My wife realized the speed after she took the photo and had to reduce immediately though :) )

More cores more power

Mac Pro is coming with two Intel Xeons each with 2 cores. The next few years will be the time for cores.
http://news.com.com/1606-2_3-6102921.html?tag=ne.vid

Recently I tested Axis2 performance on a similar HP machine with two dual core processors and it could handle up to 3000 msg/second. (I tested this with simple echo test where the Web Service has minimum processing) Some more results after my qualifying examination which is on August 22nd :)

Bindings and Channels

A nice explanation of the Bindings and Channels
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdntv/episode.aspx?xml=episodes/en/20060615wcfcv/manifest.xml

A Trip to 19th Century - America

Today we went to the “Corner Prairie” a living museum that resembles the lives of people lived in early 19^th century in the central part of the USA. I have never been to a live museum where people actually show the events of the day today life by living that life in the olden days rather than dummies or photos. It was a one day tour and just thought of highlighting few interesting incidents.

A preserved house from mid 19^th century.

Getting ready for the independence day ceremony. They are celebrating 60^th Independence day in 1837. They have never heard of the new world that we are seen today.

Doing carpentry in old way.

Look at the pots created by this lady at the left most corner.

Parade to celebrate the independence.

Some Interesting Dialogues:

A Villager: What do you study?
Me: Computer Science?
I have never heard about it, may be some complicated subject.
(I forgot that they are in 19th century and no computers at that time)

A Villager: Where are you from?
We: From Sri Lanka
He: Oh, how long did it take to come to America? probably few months?
(By that time no there were no planes and according to them we should have come by sea)

We: What are you going to cook tonight.
The Villager: My brother and father went to hunt something, probably we will have potatoes, peas and some meat.

A Villager: The slavery should be stopped in America.
We: Hope it will end soon.
(Now we also know how to act according to their behavior :))

There are many more incidents that we all remember and never forget during our trip to Corner Prairie and it is truly a history lesson with time traveling.

btw; One our way we saw this as well. (This is the first time I have seen this many Hummers - The photo captures only a few of them on sale)

Driving in US

Just started driving in US after about 9 months break! Initially I thought getting used to driving in the "right" side (are we driving in the wrong side back home? ;) ) will be a problem but for my amazement it was not a big issue; mind switched fast. Still turn wiper on for the signals though :)

One interesting thing I noticed in my few weeks of driving experience is the role of "right-of-the-way". Back home we never cross a signal (even it is green for us) without looking both sides, but here people just assume that everybody obeys the rules (I am not certain about this assumption though) I am still scared to think what if some one just cross the signal when it is red. It will end up in multiple collisions as nobody is expecting it.

Anyway, having fun with missing exit points and coming back after a long way, turning around blocks to find roads and driving without touching the horn (it was an essential tool in the vehicle back home); a different experience after all.

BitchX - Command line IRC Chat Client

http://bitchx.org/download.php

At last I found a command line IRC chat client that works without any installation and works on Linux. I missed Sandesha chat today since I was connecting through a proxy. BitchX simply works in a ssh shell(in a server which allows IRC) and looking forward to tomorrow's Synapse chat :)

Axis2 1.0 Released

It is a great achievement for everybody involved in Aixs2 project and now we have a “true open source” web services substrate for the next generation web services.
http://ws.apache.org/axis2/

Dr. Sanjiva’s blog has a really nice description of the path of the project from its inception.
http://www.bloglines.com/blog/sanjiva?id=128

Windows on Mac!

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/265676_applewindows06.html
May be we will endup with Linux and Windows or only "Windows" ??

CenSEARCHip

Censorship at work! This is from Indiana University
http://homer.informatics.indiana.edu/censearchip/

What it means to be British

This is interesting :)

" What it means to be British

Being British is about driving in a German car to an Irish pub for a
Belgian beer, then travelling home, grabbing an Indian curry or a Turkish
kebab on the way, to sit on Swedish furniture and watch American shows on a
Japanese TV.

And the most British thing of all?

Suspicion of anything foreign."