Krishnan's Blog

I first heard the word blog in 2007. It did not make any sense to me then. the curiosity drove me to Google.com and I learnt what a blog is followed by the temporary adrenaline rush to post lots of articles. Stuff slowed down and my blog almost went dead. The recent bucketlist bootcamp that I attended rekindled my desire to write for my blog. Hence I have made up my mind to stick to the guns this time. Let's wait and see. :)

Email is a major means of communication today. Everyone has an email address. Every communication today be it professional or personal happens through email.  With all possible communication taking through email we might at times feel overwhelmed by the amount of email coming into our inbox. This greatly affects our ability to reply or act based on an email and decreases our productivity. Most of has have tons of email in our inbox and no time to read. Important emails are buried deep inside the pile of unwanted emails. Do we work that hard, that we do not have time to check, respond to our emails? I don't think so. So what really happens? The problem lies on the fact that we only use our mailbox to send and receive emails. Yes I'm serious. To be efficient and productive we first need to have the best tools of the trade. You cannot create a green revolution by using ploughing your field using bulls. I use Gmail for personal use and Google Apps for official us...

In the past I have gone to the Police station to file a complaint, have gone to the court to file a case. In all these instances I did not get justice, they only added on to my problems. These experiences have taught me that in India (my country) it is easier to solve problems on our own than going to the police station or court. Which means a common man like me does not get free quality education, free quality medical facilities, and easy justice in this country despite paying taxes. The recent brutal gang rape has compelled me to write something about it. The protest is result of the above mentioned situation faced by the entire nation. Its clear everyone is totally upset about the current situation of the state and the government's zero effort to improve it. Every case (including rape cases) take ages in the court and it takes almost a decade for conviction. Above all the conviction rates are low as well. The police has the duty of putting culprits behind bars but it totally...

I recently watched a video " The Beautiful Truth " which emphasized the importance consuming organic food. It is indeed good health. I live in a rented apartment in the city and consuming organic food is not easy as it sounds to be. The only way to consume organic in a city was to start growing your own plants. Well I have done it. I kick started my garden by sowing coriander seeds (dhaniya/kothamali) for the coriander plant and mint twigs for the mint plant (pudhina) and curry stems for curry tree (kari pata/karuvepilai) . I have also started a blog where I will be talking about my new found passion Gardening and also the growth of my organic garden. You can find the blog here  http://krish-organicgarden.blogspot.com/ . Meanwhile you can watch this interesting video.

Blogging is an art and to blog regularly is a talent coupled with the desire to write. I have always loved to write about random stuff but my inconsistency has been a big drawback in my writing endeavors. I get a spark every now and then to write about various stuff but the desire runs down after some time and of course there is professional and personal life which eats up all your time. I feel that every human being should have some time alone, because that is when one can understand their own inner soul and what they are capable of achieving in the real world. I recently read an article written by the founder of Gmail, Paul Buchheit . I loved the article. That kind of an article could only come when one is alone. The world indeed is running towards material wealth and money takes the center stage. A man's worth is directly proportional to his net worth. I live in this world and I follow the rules and of course run behind money and do every bit of an effort to increase my net...

In this post I am not going to talk about setting up your LDAP using OpenLDAP. There are lots of websites explaining that. However when I tried to upload users in bulk into the directory I was not able to do the same. The reason there was not even a single article which could give me some information on the same. So here is how to do it. Environment: Ubuntu 10.04 Server OS, OpenLDAP with phpldapadmin. I had the user list with the first name and the last name and the email address. I converted this spreadsheet into a .CSV file. # sudo su - (only for convenience)   # cat user-file.csv Krishnan, Sethuraman, krishnan@mydomain.com Anidha, Krishnan, anidha@mydomain.com Tanya, Krishnan, tanya@mydomain.com My requirement was to populate the following attributes in the LDAP. dn: uid=krishnan,ou=people,o=mycompany changetype: add objectClass: inetOrgPerson objectclass: top cn: Krishnan Sethuraman sn: Sethuraman uid: krishnan mail: krishnan@mydomain.com userPassword:...

I read a few blog posts on people describing the content of their wallets. I was pretty impressed by it and wanted to do the same. Well here it is, the contents of my wallet. Money Some coins for  Election ID Card Postal ID Card Driving Licence PAN Card Apollo Advantage Card My Business Card Debit Card Lord Vinayagar's Photo My Wife's Photo (want to replace include a full family pic) Hospital ID Card Eye Hospital ID Card My lucky Re1 coin So what do you have in your wallet? ;)

Bought this book today through Flipkart. WIll write a review once I finish reading it.  Blead for me by Michael Robotham .

What is Zabbix? Zabbix is a network management system created by Alexei Vladishev. It is designed to monitor and track the status of various network services, servers, and other network hardware. (Courtesy Wikipedia). I wanted to learn Zabbix as it is a very important tool to monitor servers and hence decided to install it and practice. To install and use Zabbix you must first install LAMP on your machine. I followed the following steps to install Zabbix on my machine. Install the server: sudo apt-get install zabbix-server-mysql Install the agent   sudo apt-get install zabbix-agent Install the front end   sudo apt-get install zabbix-frontend-php Browse to http://localhost/zabbix Login as admin with a password of zabbix Change your password immediately by clicking on the profile link to the top right and clicking the Change Password button. Follow the Zabbix QuickStart Guide .

Will post soon.

I decided to write a blog post today. Clicked on the new blog post link and for a moment I was thinking on what the title should be. I then decided to concentrate less on the title and more on the post. This post is about what happened to me on 29-Sep-2011. 6:45 a.m: Quick wake up! A lady shouted and shaking me violently.  I woke up to find my wife waking me up. Before I could open my mouth she said that my sister has met with an accident. I jumped out of bed grabbed my wallet and rushed to the Government hospital in an auto. The auto had just entered the hospital premises and it started raining.As I entered the emergency room I could see my one and a half year old niece bleeding from the mouth and both my brother-in-law and sister unconscious. That particular moment I felt a pain in my heart which numbed my senses and my feelings, but I had to do something and the doctors in the GH did not start the treatment and where waiting for the Police to come. We blasted the docs and pick...

I have just installed Virtualbox on my desktop running Ubuntu 10.04. I will using Virtualbox to try and study Fedora and Ubuntu server edition.

I have just read a few chapters in Jeff Jarvis' book "What Would Google Do?" and I have already started to love him. Will write a detailed post once I finish the entire book and I think I am going to buy his new book too. 

Today there was no power supply at my home due to which my wife was not able to cook. She cooks using electronic appliances. Hence we decided to order Pizza. We since mid 2010 regularly order Pizza at Dominos  and did the same this afternoon too. Today the pizza was delivered very hot and tasted the better than our previous orders. In short I can say that today I had the best dominos pizza. I was extremely excited and decided to blog about the same in my free time. After finishing the Pizzas I fed my dog took her out for a walk. I then got a call from the Dominos customer support team asking about my experience and any suggestions I had. Man! I was surprised and felt like a king. This does not happen to Indian customers every day. There is a company out there which really cares about its customers. I don't know if they called me out of the blue or if this is a new practice but any way it felt good. I am currently reading Jeff Jarvis' book "What Would Google Do?" ...

I tried using Puppy Linux for quite some time. I was pretty much impressed by it. It enabled me to work with Linux without the need to install. I need Windows XP to test a lot of software and also to duplicate and troubleshoot client problems. Puppy Linux is a very thin software and it was fun to use it from USB stick. I used the 4GB HP drive for the purpose. However the version of puppy linux that I was using had some serious bugs. I was using puppy linux 5.2. It recognized my laptop's wlan card but the drive was not good. With WPA connection type I faced frequent disconnections. My laptop has Broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN card. Connecting to wi-fi during meetings and all was becoming very difficult and hence I had two choices. 1. Moving to WIndows XP. 2. Moving to a stabler version of Linux. I decided to go with the later. As Ubuntu is my favorite Linux distro and I have been using Ubuntu from 2008 on my home PC I decided to go with it. I had a Ubuntu 10.10 CD but I needed a USB stick ...

Today is teacher's day. I do not go to school anymore and hence cannot wish my teachers. Yet I wish them in my heart and they are very much with me in my memories. I wish all my teachers a very happy teacher's day. To the ones who made me what I am today and also to the assholes who made tried to make my life a hell. I shall leave the assholes as they do not deserve a mention on my blog. I would love to mention the teachers who like angels in my life, made me what I am today. Ms.Susan - English teacher, K.V Gill nagar, Chennai. Ms. Alamelu - Science teacher, K.V Gill nagar, Chennai. Ms. Nowshad Feroz - Hindi teacher, K.V Gill nagar, Chennai. Mr. Palanivelu - English teacher, Amalorpavam HSS, Pondicherry. Mr. Paneerselvam - French teacher, Amalorpavam HSS, Pondicherry. Ms.Deepa George - Physics lecturer, RGCET, Pondicherry. Ms. Punitha Devi - System software, RGCET, Pondicherry. Ms. Vasanthi - RDBMS, RGCET, Pondicherry. Mr. Venkatesh - HOD CSE Dept, RGCET, Pondicherr...

My dog has now crossed the age of 5. 5 years in a dog's life cycle is like 50years in human life cycle. It recently all of a stopped eating food. I took it to the doctor and the doctor informed that there is a mild infection and gave some antibiotics. We also performed deworming. She still did not eat even some of her favorite food. I started worrying because this kind of a behavior will only make her a lot more week. After further analyzing the situation the doctor confirmed that she is becoming old and is getting bored with her regular food. She needs more variety in her daily food. Well after much trial and error I derived at the best food plan that my dog will enjoy eating. The list is mentioned below. Morning: 50gm pedigree with chicken flavor Mid day snack: Chew bone Afternoon: Chicken rice / Beaf rice Evening snack: Beaf flavored chew sticks Dinner: 100gm to 150gm of Pedigree mixed with beaf liver and eggs. With all this food I can see my dog's health picking up...

Linux operating systems come in different flavors and size. Every linux distro that is available or comes out into the market are unique and are accepted by a wide variety of people. I basically love Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu is robust and at the same time is light and easy to use. It is also a very stable operating system and doesn't crash or hang. In the past I have used Fedora 2 and Knoppix 3.2. I felt that Fedora is a very very heavy operating system. Knoppix was a revolution as it brought the live CD concept into the market. Still it was not up to the mark for me. It has been years since I have started using Ubuntu. Recently I came into a situation where I had to have windows on my laptop to test windows based softwares. But I wanted to have Linux as my operating system. The only option was to have a live USB stick. Hence I did a google search to see which Linux OS would be suitable for me. I came across, DSL(Damn Small Linux), Puppy Linux and a few more. Some time in the past I ha...

I was placed in one of the leading MNCs in India and I was totally excited. I was told that I would have to undergo a two month training (damn the boring part of work). The training hall had a big auditorium kind of a setup and it could easily accommodate 100+ plus people. As usual I chose to sit at the last, a habit I had right from my school days. After settling myself down I had a look around and I noticed a very energetic girl towards the extreme right side of the hall. She had occupied the first row. I thought boy she must be really some egoistic nerdy girl. Please do not ask me why I thought so, but if you are a person who falls into my category then you might understand. The training started. We all were immersed in it. Some slept, some listened, some acted as they listened. This girl that I previously noticed was indeed listening. She was also actively participating in all the question and answering session. This went on for a couple of days in a row. By th...