My new XPS1330. Its here!!

Okay, one item from my wishlist has a tick against it now. I have made this XPS1330 mine.

Here is the detailed configuration
My XPS

Germany, Misys and memories

It was after i posted my chicago pics on flickr, i realised that i never published my Germany/Dresden pictures. Germany was quick and fun. Dresden, the city i visited, was re-built after it was destroyed more or less completely in world war 2. A part of the city - called old city - was resurrected and built to match the looks of buildings that existed there before fighter planes took them. The mix of old and new city views next to each other gives a nice historic charm to this tourist town.

 
 
 
 

...contd on flickr...

Chicago sights

 
 
 
 

I've got more of 'em at Chicago pics on flickr

Making it to a project through recession

The timing when i got off my last project was terribly bad. The worst time to think of a job switch. However, i had my reasons and was on the look for a new project in October. Recession was bleeding from all veins of the economy all across the world. I could not find a serious opening for the first one month at all. All the job applications that i was sending made their ways to recruiter's inboxes and client's deleted folders.

It is really hard to keep yourself relaxed while all this is happening around you. So, what is it that you can really do to help!? Nothing really, as long as you are not a politician or an economist. In fact i am not sure if even they have a real concrete plan about what next. I was seeing comments by a great Harvard economist on CNN the other day and what he suggested was to wait till markets and businesses get better in its own cycles. All the bailouts and rescue plans will only add chaos to the current situation, if the expectation is they alone can pull the situation up. That, sounded like the most acceptable view to me so far.

However, i can do many things to help myself and keep myself alive. Some of them..

# Started blogging. Yess! This is the first time i am trying it. I have managed to put my experiences with some linux experiments into words and on to blogger.

# Got more serious about my RSS feeds on google reader. Reader 'trends' started showing some serious sine waves.

# Take a trip. Chicago is a nice city on a sunny day. Take your camera, jacket and hit the road!!

# EJB3. I've been hearing good things about it on the web a lot. This is a good time to catch up and see what the Sun engineers have been upto. I must admit i like the way they have been expected to work with this release. More like a spring application context than a framework that Java engineers normally use to do the show off in their resumes. EJBs now look like they are going to be useful by all means.

# My mp3 collection was in a complete mess. Took days of manual effort and mp3 taggers work to get them into some shape. I use MusicBrainz Picard (http://musicbrainz.org) for tagging my files.

# Catch up with friends.

# A new linux flavor was something i've been missing for some action. And then there was Gentoo and Sabayon. For those linux lovers who haven't seen them, i recommend it; worth a try, for sure.

# Prepared my next gadget wishlist. I am going to get a 13.3' laptop, a Nikon D80 and a Sony HD camcoder. Yp, that's next in chart.

# Trying my hands on some Indian style cooking. I am not that bad at all..it turned out.

# Of course, keep my eyes open looking for a new project. How can i miss that!

While i have been into all of these, (of course) i have been doing interviews as well! So, here i am. After 1.5 months of recession trouble and 3 interviews, i have 2 offers in hand this week. I am joining my new project next week. New city, new work; i am excited.

Sabayon = Gentoo + Entropy

The main difference between Gentoo and Sabayon linux distros? Answer is Entropy. Entropy is the package management software from Sabayon which deals with the sbayon repository. This repository is much stable than the normal Gentoo repository and with Entropy, installations are pretty straight forward. Some installations, that failed for me on Gentoo worked on Sabayon and i am very happy with the default XFCE desktop that comes with Sabayon.

Other difference is the philosophy with which Sabayon is built. Sabayon is a linux flavor which has not compromised on the unix features with the addition of a nice desktop management system (for which linux originally became famous). Good thing about Sabayon is that most of the stuff just works out of the box. This list includes mp3s to youtube flash videos. They have chosen the must to have and packaged it so that you dont have to install them when you get stuck.

Overall, i liked Sabayon for what it is..and what it does..! an overall good linux experience for a serious user.

Gentoo linux

After a long break, my linux passion has forced me to dirty my hands on newer (new for me! of course) distros again. My current linux box runs on Ubuntu and i am pretty happy with the Ubuntu UI and wide base of applications Ubuntu repository has. I do everything from developing my Java apps to video chatting on Yahoo to playing mp3s on my box and it takes all of 'em happily.

My goal this time was to get a good linux installation that can work on a minimal hardware without loosing much of the X features and good number of applications for everyday computing. After a lot of reading on forums and disros requirements pages, i picked 2 of them- Gentoo and Sabayon. Because i was only trying out a new linux, i preferred doing it on virtual machine. VBox from Sun is the best (freeware) i have ever tried out yet.

Gentoo worked pretty well on live CD on my VBox with 128MB RAM pretty smoothly. I really mean smooth performance because i've had the same experiments on Fedora, Ubuntu and Xubuntu also and compared to those heavy distros, applications did run faster on Gentoo with XFCE.

So, if you are looking for a smaller installation and ready to come out of the comfort of Xubuntu and do some learning, i stringly recommend Gentoo.