Electron Monger Ants

It never occurred to me when ants were found in my roommate's laptop occasionally, that these little creatures have an attraction to electrical equipments.

Now I am facing issues with ants covering up my laptop charger node, even if there is no supply.
Also, some of the days I find ants crawling beneath my laptop, and going inside the case. These occurrences were too many that I finally decided to Google search this phenomenon.

After a couple of unsuccessful keywords, I got the answer from Wiki answers and Yahoo Answers that indeed some variety of ants are attracted to source of electricity. But it is in fact the magnetic fields surrounding these equipments that somehow simulate them.

The wiring in my building is not even earthed properly, so all devices connected to the power supply continuously emanate an AC charge, attracting huge crowds of ants to these power outlets, even when the plugs are switched off.

Now, I have no other go than cleaning up all devices before connecting to my laptop and regularly warding off the hordes of ants from my room. Sheesh, what a mess.

Datarupt

That is what a person who has lost all his data must right be called.
My dear 250GB hard disk at home got fully erased a couple of weeks back. Initially I couldn't handle the shock well,but in half an hour I managed to estimate the extent of damage and started inquiring with my friends about recovery mechanisms as well as availability of some of the data that I had.

Most of them comforted me by ensuring that its just a matter of recovery. So,this time when I was at home, I tried a pack of recovery tools on my disk,to no avail.All I managed to recover were a few random songs and some college photos.

By now I have resigned to the fact that I won't get all those data back very easily. And I have started planning on how to reclaim majority of those data. Softwares,games,movies and majority of the songs are available with the common market(i.e the average commoner also has). For the specific and rare ones, I might have to go visiting some old friends. Still there would remain a bulk of data that only I held. Those, I would either have to recreate or redownload if necessary/possible. Some(especially programs and ebooks),I have brought alongwith me to Mysore,making them the sole survivors of the loss.

Anyway,there would still be many such items which are never replaceable,the loss of which I have to accept. So anyone who wishes to contact me for any data,please know I am legally 'Datarupt'.
Living the life of a vagabond..its great fun.. adios amigos

Its not "Hard"ware..

This is not something I would have written some months ago..but as of now..my career is in close ties with hardware.

Being an embedded Product Engineer in training...my scope covers a large area consisting of software engineering,user interface design,hardware interfacing,quality engineering,testing and some research also.

Life in hardware with all the capacitors,resistors and amplifiers is fine. But with the FPGA/CPLD, protocols,controllers,processors,busses,RF,EMI/EMC, PCB design tools and God-knows-what-all coming into the picture, it becomes very interesting and challenging..though my exact area of work would just have to touch upon a little of all..

Having a majority of E&C trainees in the batch and highly experienced and passionate seniors as trainers is a great advantage for people like me.

Anyway it is not just hardware here..lot of semi hardware with a mix of low level interfacing and programming comes into the picture. This includes kernel level development and involvement with real time operating systems.

I am not writing more about these, as I have no idea of things to come...its just class room training now..once put into a team doing a product...all hell breaks loose..something you don't expect in any other field..because with a product ,the kind of accountability each individual carries is immense..and so is the pride and passion of being included in such a team.

adios...

Screen savers save nothing

"Enable screen savers to save power!"
You must have heard it a lot...but its nothing but a myth with current generation computers.

It takes more power to display graphical images on the screen,especially a CRT monitor.
So,if you want to save power, instead of enabling screen savers,configure your system to put monitor to sleep after a period of time.You can also set system to shutdown after a long period of inactivity if you want to.

Still,if you want to show a screen saver,chose one with minimum white..a complete black screen might save some power.

In Linux,you have many attractive screen savers...many of them on black themes.You may choose one of 'em or choose the first option(Blank Screen).Also remember to set your monitor to sleep after prolonged idle time.This applies to Windows also.

I used to have Linux screen savers with 10 minutes timeout,and I have enabled random screen savers.Now I changed it to Blank Screen with same timeout.Also my monitor goes to sleep after 25 minutes of inactivity.

I boot my system using BIOS RTC at night for scheduled downloading,that too with monitor and speakers off...just the cpu and router remains powered up.After 8.15 if I don't attend to system,it shuts down automatically.

I am mentioning all this,so that if someone in similar cases wants to save power,they can follow my model or use a better one.I have seen many people(even I used to) keeping system on overnight so that downloads can be done later...but most of the motherboards support Booting over RTC...use that to minimize power usage.

Wish all a happy and green computing...signing off...

My love...ma keyboard

It happened so that I was going to sleep and decided that as it was 1.30am,I should login and then put some downloads.DSP preparation is scheduled.
But what awaited me were dead keys on the keyboard,quite a lot of them.I had struggled with them earlier in the day,but now it wasn't going away,I couldn't even login....what else could be a worse situation for a terminal savvy person???Gosh...I was worried whether I would need to run to the shop tomorrow to buy a new keyboard.
I did some google search(carefully using other keys) and most sites asked me to replace keyboard if such dead keys occur frequently.
Umpgh....I had a sudden impulse and quickly shutdown the system and grabbed a screwdriver.I tried removing the dead keys,but the keys around didn't allow....so I set to remove each and everyone...anyway I hadn't cleaned it after it was bought 2 yrs back.
So I set to the task of popping out key after key without bothering to remember their positions,I was fully enjoying it.It was fun...some keys flew away and had to be picked up.Only after removing majority of the keys did I realize that I should have noticed their positions...oh well..I didnt expect the dead keys to be fixed..but then I wanted to continue with this work.Also in the process of removal,I accidentally broke the Space key partially which was working very well and the most used key.
Sigh...

Then I set to cleaning up the dirty board with some hankie..it was fun...2mins...job done.Now remained the huge task of replacing the keys to the correct position and sleep was rocking me like anything....yawn..even now...
And I put those parts back which I knew well(thats around 80%).Rest was guess work.I had to try some keys few times to get it right.I had my doubts whether the keys would respond.
So I connected the fully set keyboard and powered up to Windows.I did some type tests and found 2-3 misplacements.I was relieved only when I logged into Ubuntu,put downloads and typed this in...love u my keyboard.
I am keyboard savvy person in love with the terminal,and only when the keyboard was in a dangerous situation did I felt the real pain.I was so worried about what I would without my black beauty...the one that helps me conquer the terminal...hehe...