What Wizard Colour Are You ?

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

warning : Don't take such things seriously ;)

Daddyhood

So, finally my relatives heaved a sigh of relief. I became a daddy.

Its strange, relatives have an insatiable hunger for fiddling with other people's lives. First they hound you to death for getting married, then they keep asking .. "when will you become 3", and now that I finally have a kid, they want to know when is the 2nd one coming ! WTF ! People ! If you have messed with your life, don't go and mess with mine !

Anyways, rant over, back to the topic.

So, finally I became a dad. Kid is doing fine. a pic on facebook. People/Relatives decreeing that I should not be posting up more pics as they will catch the evil eye. gah !

Mixed emotions really. At first its unbelievable - not like 'it cant be happening' but more like 'has it really happened?' No matter how much people tell you about the 'miracle of life' you don't realize what they mean till it happens to you. So much for learning from history. I guess thats why we keep making the same mistakes ... we dont learn from others mistakes.. but I am digressing.

I was called in first to see the kid in the Infant ICU. He was sleeping peacefully on one side, legs crossed. took a pic to show to my in-laws as they were not allowed inside. Took another pic the next day which I uploaded on FB. Thanks for the wonderful comments folks ! :)

Wifey and baby got discharged after a couple of days at the office. She felt great coming back home. Hospitals kind of freak her out.

The next night was the 'i will keep you awake' night. The kid started crying at 3 am till about 7am. I had slept at 1am. Only 2 hrs sleep. Took to doctor as soon as we could. He checked and said everything is ok - just some gas.

Also he said that kids are usually active at night, and the patterns change after 2-3 months.

/sigh

so, as of now, more sleepless nights. Getting to know the kid. Sometimes he frowns in his sleep. Sometimes he smiles , then wakes up, realizes he is not where he was dreaming, and starts to cry. sometimes he just wakes up, makes a slight sound - making us think he is getting up, and then calmly sleeps for another hour. sometimes we think he is sleeping when he gets up. Somehow he knows when we are getting ready to sleep, and he gets ready to wake up !

a new experience. its a 'wow' experience.

Different Perspectives

Today, while working on my laptop I realized that it is becoming more and more irritating to work with Windows. Its the simple things that get your goat. E.g. extra confirmations for everything (Windows Vista). Un-accessible software (e.g. visio drawings) which you cannot view till you have expensive software installed.

As a good regular twitter user I twitted this:

"At one time Windows was the easiest to use. Now it is a lesson in frustration."

The responses were quite interesting :
From a friend from darjeeling, who is a non-techie user of the PC :

"its still the easiest for me, coz i never had a chance to try the rest hehe! but lots of problems i agree"

From a friend who is quite into tech:

"for me its always frustration, most things r non-intuitive & when things dont work, its difficult to figure out why, no logs :|"

I think this quite goes to show that most of the users are not worried about the technical aspects of the software we use on a day to day basis. They are quite ok working with familiar software and yeah, some issues are there, but they take it in their stride.

The tech junta on the other hand, who work quite a lot with the softwares are tuned to the nuances of the stuff, and quite know what works and what doesn't. They are the ones who give the reviews about stuff which works and which doesn't. But does that really matter ? Cause most of the persons using the software are ok with what they have. Does it really matter to have intellectual discussions dissecting the software when the regular user is ok with it ? I still know people who are running windows 98 and are quite happy with it.

Just going to the ATM

Thats what I told my parents.

Thats what I did.

But took a slightly longer route.

And man, it felt so good !

at around 10pm, I had to go out to the ATM to get some money. You know us geeks, always empty pocket. I was to initially go with my sis and bro-in-law, but they got delayed. I did not want to take out the car. So, in the ultra warm air of the evening, I decided to use the natural evaporation of sweat to keep me cool, and started Tweety.

Rode to the ATM, in the nearby sector. Took out cash. Went to the paan stall and had a meetha paan. Enjoyed the sweet taste, and then took off in the direction opposite to home. Unfortunately, with parents at home, I could not afford to go on a long ride, so after some time of aimless riding, took a U turn, a pic and headed for home.

Aaah ! this feels nice, even though the weather was doing the utmost to slow roast it even without the Sun out.

Impersonation round 2

A year back I had written about some loser impersonating as me.

Well, he and his crones are back again. Here's mails that some of my friends have recieved.

From: Vibhu Rishi <rishi.vibhu@gmail.com>

Date: Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 8:06 PM

Subject: BN is shutting down.

Yes guys, you read it right, we are shutting down. Will keep you all posted on future updates.

The email id is the dead giveaway. Its the wrong way round.

So, if you get a mail from this A*****E, ignore it. If you do reply , make sure that you change the reply to address to rishi.vibhu , as this loser has set the reply to address to my original id.

Howto install Bugzilla on Ubuntu 11.04

Update : 1st may 2011 : Updated the installation for Ubuntu 11.04 and Bugzilla 4.0

I was trying out bugzilla installation on Ubuntu. Although there is a bugzilla3 package I never was able to properly configure it. Today, decided to look at this issue again and googled for any HOWTOs. I got this sweet piece of setup at : Handyowner . There are some formatting issues which made me struggle a bit - so here is the reformated installation guide.

Assumptions:
Ubuntu is already installed and configured on your target machine.
The machine is connected to the Internet you can browse the World Wide Web.
Here are the main steps:

1. Install Per l(5.8.1 or above)
2. Install MySQL
3. Install Apache2
4. Install Bugzilla 3.2
5. Install Perl modules
6. Bugzilla using apache

1. Perl
Verify if Perl is installed:

$ perl -v

If not installed :

$ sudo apt-get install perl

2. MySQL
Verify if MySQL is installed:

$ mysql --version

If not installed :

$ sudo apt-get install mysql-client mysql-server mysql-admin

Create “bugzilla” user with a strong password:

$ sudo useradd -d /home/bugzilla -m bugzilla
$ sudo passwd bugzilla

Tip! Here is what makes a password strong: make it lengthy, combine letters, numbers and symbols, use words and phrases that are easy for you to remember, but difficult for others to guess.

Create a database ‘bugzilla’ and grant privileges to ‘bugzilla’ database to ‘bugzilla’ user:

Tip! I usually set the bugzilla user password through the mysql admin interface ( Application -> Programming -> MySql Adminstrator).

$ mysql -u root -p
mysql> create database bugzilla;

mysql> show databases;
+--------------------+
| Database |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| bugzilla |
+--------------------+

2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> grant all privileges on bugzilla.* to bugzilla@localhost;

3. Apache2
Verify if Apache is installed:

$ apache2 -v

You can also view in a web browser the default welcome page at http://localhost
If not installed :

$ sudo apt-get install apache2

4. Bugzilla 3.2.2
Download Bugzilla from the site “ http://www.bugzilla.org/”.

Tip! Download a stable release, unless (1) you would like to go bleeding edge, (2) you do not care about spending time with your girlfriend, your wife, your kids or your buddies, (3) your boss said so and you couldn’t say no.

Untar the downloaded file to your download folder

$sudo tar -xvf bugzilla-3.2.2.tar

Move bugzilla dirrectory to /usr/local/

$ sudo mv /download/bugzilla-3.2.2 /usr/local/

Make a symbolic link from /usr/local/bugzilla3.x to /var/www/bugzilla

$ sudo ln -s /usr/local/bugzilla3.x /var/www/bugzilla

5. Perl Modules
Bugzilla’s installation process is based on a script called checksetup.pl. The first thing it checks is whether you have appropriate versions of all the required Perl modules. The aim of this section is to pass this check.

Verify if Perl modules are installed

$:/usr/local/bugzilla-3.2.2$ sudo ./checksetup.pl --check-modules

If not installed:

$:/usr/local/bugzilla-3.2.2$ sudo perl -MCPAN -e install

Edit the ‘localconfig’ file

$:/usr/local/bugzilla-3.2.2$ sudo gedit localconfig

Change the $db_name, $db_pass and $db_user value to the correct values. Here's how it looks like in my localconfig (replace the password with your actual password, this is just a placeholder here)

# The name of the database
$db_name = 'bugzilla';

# Who we connect to the database as.
$db_user = 'bugzilla';

# Enter your database password here.
$db_pass = 'bugzilla@123';

Run the checksetup.pl again. This will add a whole lot of tables for bugzilla, and you can verify that by looking at the tables in the 'bugzilla' database.

$:/usr/local/bugzilla-3.2.2$ sudo ./checksetup.pl

6. Configure Apache2 for Bugzilla
Add the following directives to /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

$sudo gedit /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

*Note : Since the brackets give problem with blogger, added pic for the relevant code changes. All the non commented lines are what you have to type in.

7. Additional security
create user “apache2″

$ sudo useradd -d /home/apache2 -m apache2
$ sudo passwd apache2

Edit /etc/apache2/envvars to add. This is how my config looks

export APACHE_RUN_USER=apache2
export APACHE_RUN_GROUP=apache2

Note : The default user and group is www-data. I don't really know how to setup the export to use both the www-data and the apache2 user simultaneously. If anyone can help with the syntax, it will be great ! 

Edit /usr/local/bugzilla-3.2.2/localconfig to add

$webservergroup = ‘apache2′;

Rerun checksetup.pl

$:/usr/local/bugzilla-3.2.2$ sudo ./checksetup.pl

This will ask you to setup your administrator for bugzilla. Go ahead and enter the password and email ids.


8. Check the Installation
Restart the apache server using the command

$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Type the in your browser http://localhost/bugzilla/ . You should be getting the bugzilla login page. Login using the email and password you did at end of pt 7.

Commandline Twitter

Got this idea about seeing if I can make a command line app for Twitter. I just don't want the full fledged thing, just the basic latest updates. Since I am also interested in learning python ( call it a geek itch), I decided to take it as a sample app for my foray.

It took me about 1 hour from setting out to finding the library to use and to write the code, and put in some text beautification. Nothing fancy, but does the job.

for those interested the code is as follows :

import twitter
api = twitter.Api(username='username', password ='password')
statuses = api.GetFriendsTimeline()
for s in statuses:
print "%s \t: %s" % (s.user.name , s.text)

An IDEA can change ur Life ... But, a Girl Can change Ur IDEA

Heat is On : Fire Blooms

Just another day's drive to the office.. or was it ? Yesterday evening's rain had made the temperature bearable. Also, this time I was with my camera looking for an opportunity to take a pic.

Its not easy though.

The traffic is the slow stop and go types. There is no place where you can pull over and get out of the car without the cars piling up behind you and blaring their horns. At a traffic light ( I was trying a new route through RK Puram), I saw a flash of yellow. Took out the camera from my bag and took a couple of pics. The gulmohar trees ( I hope I have identified the tree correctly) bloom in the summers , painting the treelines in reds and yellows.

The Heat is On : Its a dogs life

I have got a lot of suggestions about the 'Heat is On' photography project I am doing. I am still to start taking around my camera for the pics, so all the shots till now are from the iPhone's camera - not too great quality. This weekend I was moving around , shifting to Dwarka, so did not get much pics.

Blazing Hot Evening

The sun setting on a very hot Delhi evening. Unfortunately the pic does not bring out the riot of colours that were painting the sky. And since I was in peak traffic times, I did not stop the car to take a pic from a good place. Next time for sure. :)

Glucose Drip for the Dog

On Saturday I had to go to the Sanjay Gandhi Memorial Animal Hospital , taking the Dog along. He had not eaten for 2 days and was flopping around , hardly moving. Sunday morning, I took him to the hospital, and he was put on the glucose drip. After him a few more dogs were put on glucose.

The trees are now coming in colour, and I will try to get those pics. I also need to start travelling with my camera always in my bag, else I miss some neat shots.

The Heat is On

Its HOT.

Let me repeat that.

Its HOT. Really HOT. And its gonna get Hotter!

The screenshot shows the temperature today. The wind blows - hot. Its called लू (loo) in Hindi. It sucks you of energy, makes you want to find shelter out of the sun as soon as you can. The sweat dries off as soon as it forms, hardly giving any respite.

However, I have decided to figure out what can I do about it all. I am planning to start photographing the heat. What I want from you is ... give me your thoughts on what the heat brings to your mind. I will try to find those subjects and take pics and see how it goes.