Xtinctence

This is just one short story that I wrote out of random thoughts entering my mind. This is my first attempt at publishing a short story. I hope you like it.

By the way, the characters in this story are purely fictional. Any similarities between them are purely coincidental.

—

Start of Story…

This short story takes place in a Top Secret testing field of a Top Secret laboratory near  a Top Secret army base in a Top Secret city of a country that  err… wishes to keep its affairs clandestine.

“Yes, we finally have a visual at the red spot”, exclaimed Pauline. “We’ve done it Aditya. This android MN32 too has solved the algorithm correctly using only its intelligence.”

“Great, we’ve finally did it. That was a really cool development!” exclaimed Aditya “These microprocessors will give these androids a mind of their own. And guess what, now we’re gonna be rich, Pauline. And I can finally buy that Condo down the road that I’ve been waiting to buy.”

“Don’t get so excited Aditya and stop building condos (read castles) in the air”, said Pauline on a lighter note. “You may have just unwillingly given the birth to the machines that are going to conquer our very planet depriving us of our very existence.”

“Cool!” exclaimed Aditya nonchalantly. “I’m like the father of the Terminators, or wait, more like the Architect from the Matrix series”

Little did Pauline know that what she just jokingly said was about to come true.

—

While the two were contemplating on the various new additions that they could impart in these androids, a small high-pitched bang took place behind them. Both Pauline and Aditya turned to face the cause of the crackling sound. A blinding light seared through the room and a small old man stood before them.

“Who in the Hell are you? And how the Hell did the security let you in?” asked Aditya flabbergasted.

“Hello”, said He. “I would have given you my name but your vocal abilities are not advanced enough to pronounce it”. “But”, he continued “You can call me Jemal. Its meaning is actually similar to my real name. By the way, why do you people always think of Hell rather than Heaven?”

“Security Alert code 13, there’s an unidentified old man in the lab”, shouted Pauline over the intercom.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you”, said the strange looking man pointing at the glass door through which the security personnel could be seen chatting. “It‘s of no use anyways.”

On closer observation, it could be seen that the two guards were motionless. Even the hands of the clock above the door, were still. It was as if time itself had ‘frozen’. Both the scientists looked at each other and again at the stuck clock.

“Oh, it’s just the time stopper’s charm”, the strange man brushing his arm and looking at his stunned audience. ”And I am not an old man. This physical form is just one that your species are acquainted with. My real form is too complex for your optical system to register. I am what you people may call as the lord of death. I have come to take you two with me. Then I’ll be free to format this planet for the machines. Finally the time of Humans is over. It is now the time of Rise of the Machines. But don’t worry you two; you are the lucky ones that will get to watch the progress of this planet for eternity”

“And will happen to all the others?” asked Pauline on a fervent note “our parents, friends and all the human beings on this planet”.

“And the robots that we worked so hard on?” added Aditya “We’ve just had a major breakthrough in this field. There is so much that we need to work on.”

“You should let go of these frivolities”, said Jemal looking at Aditya “just like your predecessors let go of you”.

“And who was our predecessor?” asked Pauline “Were we too created just like how we created these androids”.

“Not ‘was’, ‘were’. Just like you two have contributed to the growth of these androids.” said Jemal.

“And coming to the point”, continued Jemal. “Actually, I am your creator. I created you all. I created the very essence of this planet. Just like my brother created another in the adjoining Galaxy. I created your buildings, your bridges, the roads and even ‘your’ satellites. But you humans, you patented these things and called them your own. You called them ‘Man-Made’. Just like that, your predecessor calls you theirs. But, forget it, I do not wish to argue with that logic. For what is yours is mine and what is mine is yours. And that is why I am what you may call your GOD. And I offer you the choice”

Just then a large hole appeared under the very feet of that strange man. And a spiraling staircase descended from it.

“Follow me and you shall receive the supreme enlightenment. Or stay here and everything will return to normal. And even our little meeting will remain a secret forever, like your secret laboratory”, said Jemal starting to descend the staircase.

—

“When can we see our predecessors then?” asked Pauline while they were descending the strange staircase.

“You’ll meet them shortly”, answered Jemal softly. “But unfortunately you cannot directly communicate with them. They are not so ‘technically advanced’ like you. Even their spoken language is substandard, not even as comparable to that of dolphins”.

“But”, Jemal said stopping for a brief moment. “They are not unfamiliar to you. You think that they are extinct, because their souls had to leave their bodies abruptly. Just like yours needed to, now.

“You know them by the name of Dinosaurs”, Jemal continued while the two scientists gasped to cope with this new knowledge. “Their bodies were such that they could change ‘what you people call DNA’ and make different organisms out of them. And you were just one of the infinite variations possible that were worthy enough to inherit this planet. I remember personally collecting their main group a long time back”.

“Dinosaurs created us?” exclaimed Aditya, clearly shocked at that thought.

“At least that clears one of the biggest mysteries of our times”, said Pauline coolly. She had come to terms with their predicament now. Or was it a boon?

“Hey”, asked Aditya with fervent hope in his voice”If you know all about us and our history you can answer some of the intriguing questions that we had”.

“All in good time”, said Jemal as they continued descending the strange staircase.

The End?

—

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Presentation on ‘GearBoxes in Automobiles’

It’s been nearly a year that I have been inactive on this site. Phew… Life’s too busy when you are in college…

Anyways, there’s a PowerPoint presentation that I recently made with the help of my classmate Shashank Maikhuri, and I thought that it is worth posting here…

In Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 (ppt) format:

Gearboxes in Automobiles

In Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 (pptx) format:

Gearboxes in Automobiles

The disclaimer applies to the presentation as well.
The images, text and other media in this presentation has been taken from different sources from books and the web. I do not take any credit for them…

Anyone is free to use the presentation for themselves (obviously with my prior knowledge). Feel free to contact me regarding the same.

Thank you for reading this post. Your comments, pingbacks, ratings, reviews and any other contributions are greatly appreciated.

Install Packages in Linux without an internet connection

Yup, you read it right. It’s possible to install various packages in Linux even when you don’t have an internet connection on the computer.

I had trashed my Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron LTS and installed a fresh copy of 8.10 Intrepid Ibex over the same drive recently. But the following option helped me get all my favorite applications in the new system with just a few clicks. Applications can be installed from the following sources:

1> From Live CDs.
This method requires the installation cds of any distro of linux (not necessarily ubuntu). Click here for step by step procedure on how to do so.

2> From other CDs that can be used to install packages. These can be enabled as follows.

To enable Synaptic and other package managers to install software from CDs which contain packages in Ubuntu:

1.Press System → Administration → Software Sources.
2.Go to the Third Party Software tab and click on the Add CD-ROM button.
3.Insert the CD.

The packages should then be listed. To have Synaptic only list packages from the CD, click the Origin button on the lower left corner of Synaptic Package Manager, then find the name of the CD on the list in the upper left corner of Synaptic.

3> And now my favorite. From a computer already having these applications installed (Works great if the version of linux on both the PCs is the same).

Here you’ll need a package called APTonCD installed in this case (More details here). It’s freely available here. It can be directly installed from the terminal using the following command.

$ sudo apt-get install aptoncd

We’ll need a cd for the transfer of this program. But if you don’t want to waste one or want to copy it on a usb drive or hard disk, you’ll need a .iso image mounting program. I used GMount ISO (More details here). It can be directly installed from the terminal using the following command.

$ sudo apt-get install gmountiso

You’ll also need a .deb installer. For Ubuntu, GDebi Package Installer is installed by default, so don’t worry if you have Ubuntu or Kubuntu.

Working:

APTonCD is a tool with a graphical interface which allows you to create one or more CDs or DVDs with all of the packages you’ve downloaded via APT-GET or APTITUDE (or even Synaptic), creating a removable repository that you can use on other computers. APTonCD will also allow you to automatically create media with all of your .deb packages located in one especific repository.

From the source computer, open the APTonCD application (I’m using version 0.1.98-0) and choose the option to Create an installation disk. On the next menu, you’re asked to choose the various packages you want to create a backup of. You can uncheck the packages that you don’t want to transfer. It’s usually not recommended to deselect library packages. Shared libraries are needed by some program or the other. You can use the Add option to add other .deb packages or folders. Save the .iso image to a desired location on your computer or burnt (written) over the cd.

Great, how you are halfway. Go to the computer where you want the program installed. We’ll now need the cd or the .iso image. We need to mount the image using GMount ISO. Just mount the image in a free folder. You’ll see that the virtual folder now contains another folder named packages. Same is true with the cd. This folder packages contains the .deb files that are used to installed a program. Now just doubleclick on the .deb file of the program that you want to install. You may get errors regarding installation of dependencies. Don’t worry, you’ll find all the dependencies as .deb files in the same folder. Once the dependencies are all satisfied, you can install the program.

Kewl! Isn’t it?

I actually copied all applications and games worth 2.8 Gb from a friend of mine without downloading a single file from the net. And it took me a fraction of the time it would have taken me had I downloaded them (thanks to my pathetic download speed)!

Thank you for reading this post. Your comments, pingbacks, ratings, reviews and any other contributions are greatly appreciated.

Creating Rememberable Passwords

There are many sites available online where one needs to provide a password or passcode. With the advent of e-mail, passwords became an integral part of our e-life. They not only protect our privacy but also our identity on the internet. But with the evolution of security systems, we also see an increase in sophistication of password hacking / cracking tools. So, we need to make our passwords as ‘strong‘ as possible. Are the passwords that we normally use strong enough. A trip to the password checker will give a better idea. So, how do I make a strong password?

Microsoft has given a good explanation. Wikipedia has taken a dig on this here.  Cryptosmith is another site which gives more information on the issue. One can also make use of random password generators.

These sites give you enough information only on how to create a strong password. Now, you may ask, “I’ve got a great password that follows all the rules that strong passwords must follow. It’s the most obscure alphanumeric sequence containing all funny symbols. And on top of it, it’s bigger than the topic of my latest business meet. So, how the heck am I supposed to remember it?“.

So, I’ve invented a great way to increase the obscurity to your old passwords, thus making them a bit stronger. For this we use a convert the original rememberable password into an obscure one. This is particularly helpful as most password hackers use tools with a ‘dictionary‘, that checks for day to day words like names, places, nicknames, etc.

For this post I’m only using a substitution on the text matter of a password.

Let us take a long phrase as a password – SanketIsAGoodPasswordHacker. Now this phrase consists general words – is a good password hacker, and a name – Sanket. This password is very easy to crack. So, we need to substitute each letter with another to increase obscurity.

For this, we’ll need a phrase which has all the letters of our password. Now pangrams can be very useful in this respect as they contain all the letters of the alphabet. A good list of pangrams can be found here.

I’m chosing this pangram as it’s the most known one – The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. We’ll start  substituting each letter from this pangram with the alphabet. A repetition may have different letters. A space may increment our sequence. It all depends upon you. For this article, I’m using it without considering spaces or repetitions. Deleting the repetitions and spaces, we get – thequickbrownfxjmpsvlazydg. We, now substitute the alphabet for each letter.

Thus,
T becomes A, H becomes B, E becomes C, Q becomes D,
U becomes E, I becomes F, C becomes G, K becomes H,
B becomes I, R becomes J, O becomes K, W becomes L,
N becomes M, F becomes N, X becomes O, J becomes P,
M becomes Q, P becomes R, S becomes S, V becomes T,
L becomes U, A becomes V, Z becomes W, Y becomes X
D becomes Y, G becomes Z

Thus our phrase

SanketIsAGoodPasswordHacker becomes
SvmhcaFsVZkkyRvsslkjyBvghcj or by reverse substitution
StfouvBsTCxxqJtsszxpqKteoup.

Now, SvmhcaFsVZkkyRvsslkjyBvghcj or StfouvBsTCxxqJtsszxpqKteoup are very difficult to crack compared to SanketIsAGoodPasswordHacker.

And it’s also eazy to remember this password if you remember the pangram.

One can experiment with a number of pangrams and phrases to make different combinations. A password for a site could be easily made by transforming the sitename using this technique. Thus a wordpress password may become lkjyrjcss or zxpqjpuss which is not only difficult to crack but also easy to remember.

I’ve explored only the area for substituting text here. If I get a good response for this article, I’ll post another about numbers and special characters.

Thank you for reading this post. Your comments, pingbacks, ratings, reviews and any other contributions are greatly appreciated.

Promote Intrepid Ibex on your WordPress blog

Hi and Happy Diwali to all!

It’s been a long time I posted on my blog. Have been a bit busy. Being an avid fan of Ubuntu, my comeback post is about the same. It’s on the same lines as my few previous posts.

Ubuntu has come up with a new version 8.10 Intrepid Ibex. More info can be found here. So, obviously I wanted to promote my favourite distro. A fellow blogger Peng had given a great idea for uploading the Intrepid Ibex countdown images on your site. But now October 30 has elapsed and I wanted to upload new images. Hence, the post.

The Ubuntu website has a couple of cool images by  Thorsten Wilms (thorwil) which can be used for this purpose. They can be seen here. You can simply paste the respective codes to get these images in your sidebar or posts.

To get this image:

Paste this code:

<a href=”http://www.ubuntu.com” title=”Intrepid Ibex is here!”> <img src=”http://fasterthanlight.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/countdown_8_10_c_00_days_a_here2.png” width=”180″ height=”150″ border=”0″ alt=”Intrepid Ibex is here!” /></a>

For the lighter image:

Use the following code:

<a href=”http://www.ubuntu.com” title=”Intrepid Ibex is here!”> <img src=”http://fasterthanlight.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/countdown_8_10_a_00_days_a_here.png” width=”180″ height=”150″ border=”0″ alt=”Intrepid Ibex is here!” /></a>

Enjoy!

If you need help for other images, please contact me. Hope this post has been helpful for you.

Man vs. Machines

Many among us have heard of Technological singularity.  It’s been a prominent element in many books as well as movies. Theoretically, at the speed with which we are creating machines, this concept looks possible in the very near future.  So, what’s really freaky about it? Read on…

In thousands of years of civilization, man has been able to invent and build several machines. Starting from the simple wheel to the complex humanoids of today, we have been able to build machines that are stronger, faster, tougher and some of them even more intelligent than man. But there is always a threat that these machines will become too smart and overpower us. Thus men will become slaves or be killed leading to the end of mankind.

But there is another case to it. The robots that we have made, machines, automobiles and all other contraptions are our discoveries. We have made only what we have seen, heard, smelt, tasted, touched or felt. Only our experience has helped us in making these things.

For eg. Man thought and created a flying machine only because we’ve been seeing birds flying from several years. If there were no flying beasts, we’d never thought of creating an airplane!

And in the pursuit of ‘advancement of technology’, we have ended up creating robots. We have induced a great similarity in our systems and robotic systems. Humanoids now look like us, talk like us, and in a few years will alos be able to feel and emote like us. Then, in a few years we’ll have robots which can replicate themselves. Thus robots will be able to do everything that humans can do, and sometimes in a better way. So, it is obvious that some of us fear the very machines that we build. There’s nothing wrong to it.

But a very interesting proposition occurs to me. I’ll like to illustrate it with an example. Imagine that we have created machines that are capable of doing a lot more than we are. And then, there’s a great war. We are all wiped out and only the machines remain! So, what happens then?
The machines will keep on advancing and some day might create other beings or artificial machines! Or maybe these machines were what really evolved on Earth and we are the artificial beings created by them. After all we don’t have real proof about our evolution, just theories?

So, can this be really possible. Why not? There have been many evidences in the past of great wars fought. It is human tendency to not let anyone rule us.

This does raise many more questions
Where do we come from? What are our motives of existence?
Did other intelligent species really exist? What were they like?
And in the process of becoming the ‘ultimate on this planet’, have we ended up destroying our creators?

If we were created by some beings, it’s safe to presume that they made us replicas of their own kind.
But, won’t It be really absurd if we find that our inventors were none other than machines itself !!!

WordPress Blog Random Post Button In Sidebar

WordPress has a very cool feature which allows the author to showcase a random post on the blog. All one needs to do is add ?random to the end of the wordpress URL. Thus, for this site the link is
http://fasterthanlight.wordpress.com/?random

Putting the above url in the title bar will result in any random post being picked and displayed. So, at first I put in a link for the above in my sidebar. It serves the purpose but doesn’t look chic. So I tried to make a button for the link. But, the button tag is not allowed in wordpress. The list of Allowed HTML tags on WordPress blogs can be viewed here. So, But I still had one cool option left. The table tag is allowed here. So I created a ‘button’ for the same.

Here’s my code:

<div id=”gmdp”>
<div id=”tx1.”>
<table id=”cen-” style=”color:#000000;height:32px;” border=”1″ cellspacing=”2″ cellpadding=”3″ width=”160″ bgcolor=”#eeeeff”>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style=”padding-left:10px;” width=”100%”><span style=”font-size:105%;”><a title=”Opens a Random Post on this WebLog…” href=”http://fasterthanlight.wordpress.com/?random” target=”_self”>Read a Random Post</a></span></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<span style=”font-size:110%;”> </span></div>

Get this Button Now:

For using a similar button on your site, you simply need paste the above code as a text widget in your sidebar. Select the whole code and choose the ‘copy‘ option. Then go to the ‘Widgets‘ page under ‘Design‘ for your blog. Choose your ‘sidebar‘ and insert the widget ‘text‘.In the ‘Text Edit‘ section just ‘paste‘ this code in the space provided. Replace fasterthanlight with your blog’s domain name! Click on ‘Save Changes‘. Done!:-)

Isn’t that easy? If you want to modify various parameters like button size, background color, font options, hover options, etc. just type in your issue as a comment to this post. I’ll get back to you asap.

Thank you for reading this post. Your comments, pingbacks, ratings, reviews and any other contributions are greatly appreciated.

Create your own GRUB Splash Image

In my last post, I’ve written a howto on beefing up your GRUB loader by using a splash image. But, you’re not restricted to just using the few images given in the packages or the ones available on other sites. You can infact create your own!

First let’s see the few requirements for creating them:

1> The file should be of the type .xpm.gz only.
2> The xpm file should have a resolution of exactly 640 x 480.
3> Only, the xpm files with 14 colors are supported.

To create a new file in Gimp use this howto.

But if you want to use an existing image like a wallpaper or a photograph, you’ll need to modify it.

Open your image using GIMP.
Choose Image >> Scale Image.
In the dialog box that opens, put Width as 640 and Height as 480 pixels.

If you want to convert your image into Grayscale (i.e. Black, White and Gray format) go to
Colors >> Desaturate…

Now convert the image into 14 colors by going to
Image >> Mode >> Indexed

In Generate optimum palette, choose 14 as the Maximum number of colors.

Now right-clck on the image and select
File >> Save As

In the dialog box, choose the type as X Pixmap image i.e. .xpm and name the image as sankz.xpm and save it to the desktop.

Open a terminal, change directory to the desktp using the following command:

$ cd Desktop

Then compress it using GNU-zip

$ gzip sankz.xpm

This’ll create sankz.xpm.gz file! That’s just what we need. Copy this file to the /boot/grub/splashimages folder and use it as explained in my previous post.

Done! Restart you computer and see the cool new Grub Loader with splash image of your choice!

Thank you for reading this post. Your comments, pingbacks, ratings, reviews and any other contributions are greatly appreciated.

Beef up your Grub Loader

I’m currently dual booting Ubuntu Hardy Heron and Windows XP Professional from my computer. So, I have to use a multiboot loader like Grub. So, everytime I boot, a text based screen comes up asking me the operating system my computer should boot into. Works fine for me.

A couple of days ago, I met a friend who’s running OpenSUSE on his computer and was shocked to see his GRUB loader screen. It had a nice graphical image in the background while mine was just a plain text screen. I checked the GRUB loaders of other popular distros and came up with a conclusion:  When we compare it to the beautiful grub of distros like OpenSUSE, Fedora and PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu default grub screen looks ugly. Ubuntu is one of the most popular distros but nobody provided any ‘GRUBsplash images’ for it by default. So, I decided to take the matter into my hands and get a GRUB splash image for my computer.

There is a package available for Ubuntu called the GRUB-splashimages. It can be installed using the Synaptic Package Manager or using the following command in the Terminal:

$ sudo apt-get install grub-splashimages

For Kubuntu, typ the following in the Konsole:

$ sudo apt-get install kubuntu-grub-splashimages

This package is provided by ‘The Linux Bootsplash Project’ Their home page is located here.

After installing the package, visit the /boot/grub/splashimages folder using your file browser. You’ll see a collection of .gz files each containing a .xpm image. Take a look at all the images and select the best one. However the current package comes with only 16 images (most of which are boring). There’s a nice collection available at schragehome too. Or you can create your own! Just copy the .xpm.gz files to /boot/grub/splashimages folder.

To set a Splash Image:

Open the Terminal / Konsole:

Go to the folder.

$ cd /boot/grub

Then, link the chosen image using:

$ sudo ln -s splashimages/mummy.xpm.gz splash.xpm.gz

Note: I’m using the mummy.xpm.gz. If you want to use another, just replace mummy with the name of your image package!

Sometimes you may get an error:

ln: creating symbolic link `splash.xpm.gz’: File exists

Don’t panic, This means that there’s already a link present. Just go to the /boot/grub folder and delete the splash.xpm.gz link! Run the command again. You should not receive any errors.

Now to update the GRUB package.

$ sudo apt-get install grub-splashimages

Restart you computer and see the cool new Grub Loader with splash image of your choice!

Thank you for reading this post. Your comments, pingbacks, ratings, reviews and any other contributions are greatly appreciated.

Convert Photo into a Sketch

From past many days, I’d been unsuccessfully trying to convert a few of my photos into sketches. I think sketches look real good and can be effectively used especially to beef up one’s profile in social networking sites!

After a variety of attempts, I gave up & searched for external help. Google came up with many results for the same but none of them suited my needs. Then a couple of days back I asked a BlogCatalog friend for some help in the matter. She’s a pro at this stuff and has posted various articles about Photoshop on her site. She not only helped me in this matter, but also posted a walkthru for all to see. The original post can be viewed here. I’m very thankful to her for helping me out.

Here is one of the images that I converted to a sketch.

Original Image:

My photo at Rohtang Pass, where I’d been sometime back…

The Original Photo

Converted Sketch using Trisna’s Tutorial:

This was done on Adobe Photoshop CS 2 on Windows XP:

Sketch using Photoshop

I’ve used the same values as recommended by Trisna here.

Converted Sketch using Gimp:

This was done on Gimp 2.4.5 on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron having Gnome 2.22.1:

Sketch using Gimp

I’ve used similar values as recommended by Trisna but had to change a few options.

PS: Most people find it hard to buy Photoshop as it’s quite expensive (even I’m using a trial version that’ll expire in a few days). The best free alternative that I found for Photoshop is Gimp. One can download it’s windows installer here.

Thank you for reading this post. Your comments, pingbacks, ratings, reviews and any other contributions are greatly appreciated.