With all the advances that have happened in the world of Internet, one thing is at the core of it. That is Instant Communication. And from the ages of Internet Chat Relays (IRC) to WhatsApp and everything in between is playing a pivotal role in connecting people from all corners of the globe. And if you are confused as to what Instant Messenger is right for you, here is a flowchart that lets you decide between few of them.
WhatsApp: Everyone uses it since everyone else uses it. But things such as dependency on mobile even if you want to chat on browser makes it a very poorly developed IM.
IRC (Internet Chat Relay): It’s the most powerful IM that the netizens have ever used. You can chat privately, in rooms, on PC, on your phone, use bots, leave offline messages.. really the only limit is your imagination and skills to make more functionality.
Steam: Steam being the most popular client for gaming provides a client for both Windows, Linux and Android. So if you are a gamer you would tend to use it much extensively.
Telegram: It’s currently the most versatile IM as of now. With features such as true cross platform (you can run it on command line!), ability to share self expiring secret messages, cloud storage (so that you don’t loose your chat history) and with the introduction of bots, I am in love with this IM. Also the fact that you don’t need to share your mobile number like WhatsApp makes it perfect for privacy conscious users.
So which IM you use the most and what would be your choice, if you don’t have to come under peer pressure to choose more popular Instant Messenger?
All posts by vyom
Kanatal Trip
Kanatal, a city in the state of Uttarakhand is nearly 300 km from Delhi. I made the trip there in mid December 2015 in hopes of experiencing snow. But alas all I got was this spectacular panoramas instead. I am not complaining since I did see snow, albeit it was possibly in far distance, stretching on Horizon.
In this first panorama you can see the sun about to rise. It was freezing at this time and I was waiting impatiently for little sunshine.
Click the full screen button on the down right of panorama to go Full Screen.
Continue reading Kanatal TripJaipur Trip
I went to Jaipur last year. And got these amazing Google Spheres. These are not perfect but I love the view.
Click the full screen button on the down right of panorama to go Full Screen.
Continue reading Jaipur TripLodi Garden
Lodi Garden, a city park situated in New Delhi, India is a prime destination for many joggers, developed and “developing” families for a retreat.
From Wiki:
… It contains, Mohammed Shah’s Tomb, Tomb of Sikandar Lodi, Shisha Gumbad and Bara Gumbad,architectural works of the 15th century by Lodhis, an Afghan dynasty, that ruled parts of northern India and Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of modern-day Pakistan, from 1451 to 1526…
I took these google sphere when I visited it first time. It shows the Bada Gumbad domb.
Click the full screen button on the down right of panorama to go Full Screen.
Recap: My Year in Blogging in 2015
My year in blogging in 2015 was a good one. Specially the start. I posted 2 posts every month for at least half of the year. Total of 27 posts were written in the year.
The first post, “Year 2014 at a Glance” was a good attempt in summarizing my experience gained in the previous year. I hope to write something about the year 2015 too, although not much have changed. I started to post the Google Spheres (panorama in 360 degrees) of the places I uses to visit. I found out that Google Spheres are a great way to look the places and as a evolution to traditional images. Its better than even a video, since Google Sphere is like a moment froze in time that you can view at your leisure. Only thing that supersede this are 360 degree videos that YT recently started to support.
In entertainment section, I wrote about few movies which made me awe. The Theory of Everything was a good movie on Stephen Hawking which I loved. Bajrangi Bhaijaan was a pleasant surprise from Bollywood. While the film Ugly introduced me to the direction of Anurag Kashyap in a good way. Predestination was one mind blowing film too. Since Heroes came out with a new season with Heroes Reborn, I recollected my love for the original Heroes in a blog. I felt pretty good about it too since I shared that on Reddit and got good response. I watched Star Wars in the last days of December so I may write about it soon, but only in 2016.
A lot of stuff happened on the technical side of my life. I migrated to a new host for my site. This year I created a series of posts about Ubuntu and aggregated them under a page “The Ubuntu Guide“. I felt pretty good writing about Open source and my understanding of how Linux works grew considerably. I reviewed the phone YU Yuphoria which my cousin bought. While on the other side, Microsoft also came out with a new version of its OS, Windows 10, which made up for all things wrong with Win 8. I helped my friend Ankur assembling a new desktop PC and I wrote about our experience in buying from Nehru Place and assembling it.
I wasn’t able to write about any new places that I visit, since compared to last time I only went to two places this year. Jaipur in April and Kanatal in December. But I intend to post a few Google Spheres about them soon.
Here’s the report from Jetpack summarizing my blogging in 2015. It’s certainly to see Aaruni being one of the top commenters on my blogs. I say thanks to the readers of my small but diverse blog.
Overall, leaving behind the last couple of months, where I became super busy, my year in blogging went good in 2015, and certainly a one notch up from last year. I wish I can write more blogs in the coming year.
Heroes: Ordinary People with Extraordinary Powers!
Heroes is an American series which aired during 2006-07. Each episode every week use to take my breath away. Heroes is back after nine years as Heroes Reborn. And this is when I felt nostalgic and decided to re-watch the first original season of Heroes. And damn I realized it was more awesome then I initially thought. This article is an account of my views about the breathtaking original season of the show.
Heroes Season 1 : Genesis
It is where it started it all. A group of people from all around the world started discovering that they have powers. Claire, a 16 year old girl from Odessa, Texas, could heal herself after an injury of any extent, an ability known as Rapid cellular regeneration. Matt Parkman, a man from Los Angeles could read minds. Nathan Petrelli, coming from New York could fly. Niki Sanders from Las Vegas, had Dissociative Identity Disorder, that means she was two person in one. D.L. Hawkins, husband of Niki, could pass through walls. Peter Petrelli, brother of Nathan, could absorb powers from others and could do Anything! My favorite, Hiro Nakamura, could bend Time and Space, which means he could Travel in time. And then there was… Sylar! Like Peter, Sylar could absorb power from others too, but in order to do that, he had to murder the other person and eat(?) their brain. Its as disgusting as it sounds. There were other smaller characters with powers too. And all of them together had one role, that is to stop Sylar destroying New York.
Season 1 was great. It slowly opened up the lives of people with extraordinary abilities and their reaction to it, while their lives crossed one another. And by the end each of the characters had some part to play. The story telling by the creator of the show, Tim Kring had a unique style in portraying the story and the character development. On the pretext of the power of time travel with Hiro, Kring use to take us to past and future in a blink of eye, thereby giving us glimpses of the story which would otherwise take many episodes to reach.
I can still not get over how the first episode of Season 1 of Heroes ended…
*mild spoiler begins*
Hiro is shown to have teleported to New York from within metro train in Japan. As soon as Hiro realize this and he reaches Time Square, he flung his arm in air and explains, “Yattaaaa!!!!” Everytime I see it, and in hindsight realizing what story is to be followed, sends shivers down my spine.
*mild spoiler ends*
Even watching Season 1 now, makes me think, that they had a plan. The first few episodes tells what exactly will happen. Rest of the season is just to answer, “how”. And boy does this season does that brilliantly.
In comparison to the first season I would not even want to talk about the rest of the season. So I would just summarize the rest of the season here.
Heroes Season 2: Generations
Several characters are introduced. Origins of “The Company” is revealed and something about a virus named “Shanti” threatens to kill most of human population.
Heroes Season 3: Villains and Fugitives
12 bad guys are escaped and hunt begins.. and something something.
Heroes Season 4: Redemption
Something I don’t even remember. And if I even remember somehow, I would probably want to forget.
Heroes Reborn Season 1: Awakening
Looking at the first episode of Awakening, it made me realize how great the Genesis was. So much so that I had to watch the Season one in its entirety to be dazzled again. But I am hoping later episodes can create that awe that original Heroes started. Although I am very skeptical.
What made Heroes Season 1 Special?
Coming back to Heroes first season, it seemed that it had a vision, and it had a sense of completeness. Right from episode 2, we knew how it was going to end. Every character arc was handheld maturely. Every character’s role was defined. Season one wasn’t pretentious. Every episode was allocated to unfold story arcs of a set of people. And when character used to cross paths, we knew it hold a pretty significant importance. The journey of Heroes season 1 and not just the climax was a ride into a world I can probably never forget.
Characters:
The characters in the original stories represented a wide variety of audience and was very balanced. On one end of spectrum we had a girl with dual personality – a rather dark tone, and a jolly Hiro Nakamura on the other end, with an ability that every one must have thought about when they were a child. At one end we had a man who was very doubtful about his ability to hear thoughts, and on the opposite end was a man who was confident about his ability to fly. At one end was a man who could absorb others power and still remain true by heart and on the extreme end was a man that could murder anyone for the lust of power. But midst all of these people with powers, there were people with no supernatural power at all. And what this show makes it interesting that those people are no less significant.
Storytelling:
One of the best thing about the original Heroes is the storytelling. Yes, it had flaws. But the writers knew what they were doing and Tim Kring knew how to present the story in the most enthralling manner. To show the climax of the show in just the 2nd episode, sets a standard and the show actually stays put to it. The later seasons were met with bumpy roads and bigger plot holes. Many blame the writer’s strike that happened during later seasons but we may never know the actual cause.
CGI and Visual Style:
The effects in the show were practical, short but believable, subtle yet had an impact. The focus of the show was more on story than CGI, and hence CGI used was rather sparingly and wisely. For instance, when you have to show that someone was flying, you get the shots of building, panning and going up and down the streets. It makes ‘you’ imagine that you are flying. When Hiro needed to travel in time, the character just disappears and appears where it’s supposed to. Just like it would actually be for any Time Traveler who could travel in time just by thinking. The show didn’t need some flashy effects to show that. The use of paintings to show future (and past) was another practical effect that made the show memorable. You can use a painting to show as much or as little about the things to come in the show. As a viewer whenever you saw a new painting and the revelation which it brought, you were dazzled since you knew that its about to happen in near future. And don’t even get me started with the half helix symbol that if you can notice throughout the show.
Music and Sound effects:
This is probably the MOST important thing that makes the original Heroes memorable to me. Tim Kring gave the music directors total freedom to write music. And I must say the composers did a phenomenal job. Every character have its own signature style of music. Claire have a “dreamy” cue which shows the doubts and confusion that Claire have while she explores the extent of her abilities. Sylar had this distinct sounds of clock’s ticking to show how he have a knack to understand how things work like he use to understand and fix the complicated clockwork. Niki had a soundtrack that use to change to wind and Indian voices when Jessica use to take control to make viewers believe about her being possessed. Matt, who could read minds use to be depicted by voices in reverse. Hiro had a style of music that showcased an “urgency” and a sense of “unpredictability”. So on and so forth. Combined with other soundtracks of the show, makes for a pleasant visual cues that made us more aware of the show. Needless to say Music was a very own character in the show.
Narration style:
The start of almost ever Heroes episode began with a monologue and/or end with too. And most of the monologue was done by a character on the show who had no powers. Yet he was connected to almost every other character. This is Mohinder Suresh, a genetics professor from India who wanted to carry on the work of his father, Chandra Suresh. The monologue use to raise mostly philosophical questions. It use to tie every character under common emotion and use to help them connect on a spiritual level. The narration sometimes were also done by other characters, which would play a crucial role in the respective episodes.
Heroes is a tale of Superheroes, survival, courage, and friendship.
Heroes have a grave impact on my way of thinking. And when I re-watched the original series it grew over me. I realized the depth of characters more than what I knew when I watched it almost 8 years ago. And I hope Heroes Reborn do justice with the spirit of original Heroes. There’s so much to talk about this show.. but probably later. For the time being I will end this article with this quote from Sylar… the greatest villain of all time.
Source for Sylar quote: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Sylar-at-Halloween-time-264240044
Steps to add a WordPress Site to an existing VPS
I use to have a hard time configuring a new site under a common VPS. So I decided to document the steps for easy reference in future.
Following are the steps to add a new site “site-name.com” under a new user account “username” on your Linux VPS. This is to note that this works if you have the following web service solution stack (LAMP):
Linux OS : Debian
Web server: Nginx (Not Apache)
Database: MySQL
Application Programming Language: PHP
So here we go:
1. Buy the domain. Call it site-name.com.
2. Set the nameserver of the domain to point to the IP address of your VPS under ‘A’ record which stands for ‘Address’. For reference, there are other kinds of record like ‘CNAME’ and ‘MX’, but you don’t need to set them at this point.
3. Create a new user on VPS by command by following command.
sudo adduser username
This command also creates a new home directory for the user.
Continue reading Steps to add a WordPress Site to an existing VPS
Shopping for and Assembling a new desktop PC
What’s a guitarist without his guitar? What’s a painter without his colours? What’s a sailor without a boat? What’s an IT professional without a desktop PC? Answer is common, “nothing much!”. Hence when one of my friend finally decided to get a PC assembled I was very happy for him. I thought to help him out before other priorities gets hold of him and he changes his mind.
Before, he use to work either on his age old Celeron laptop or on my computer. He use to play games and watch movies on weekends with me. But now that he finally decided to get his own PC, I had a reason to get my geeky hands dirty in assembling a new PC. There’s some kind of charm in shopping for PC components and then putting them together in one coherent piece so that we can then appreciate the modern advancement, human beings now take for granted.
The Research:
I started my research by studying many of the rig suggestions by fellow members on digit forum and also the suggestions put up in digit magazine. After analyzing my friend’s requirements and the suggestions on forum we decided to go with following components:
| Component | Model |
| Monitor | AOC 21.5 inch LED Backlit LCD – i2269Vwm Monitor / I2279VWHE / i2267Fwh |
| LG 21.5 inch LED Backlit LCD – 22MP56HQ Monitor | |
| Processor | Intel 3.4 GHz LGA 1150 i3 4130 |
| Intel 3.5 GHz LGA 1150 i3-4150 (BX80646I34150) | |
| Motherboard | MSI B85M-G43 Motherboard |
| Gigabyte GA-B85-D3H Motherboard | |
| HDD | WD Blue WD10EZEX 1 TB Internal Hard Drive |
| RAM | Corsair Vengeance DDR3 4 GB (1 x 4 GB) PC DRAM (CMZ4GX3M1A1600C9) |
| Corsair Vengeance DDR3 8 GB (1 x 8 GB) PC DRAM (CMZ8GX3M1A1600C10) | |
| Cabinet | Antec VSK 4000B U3 New Solution Series Cabinet |
| PSU | Antec VP450P I 450 Watts PSU |
| Optical Drive | Samsung DVD Combo |
| Keyboard | Logitech MK200 USB Standard Keyboard |
| UPS | APC 600VA |
| Router | TP-LINK TL-WR841N |
As can be noticed, some of the components had two or more choices in them, arranged by priority. After spending considerable amount of time in researching the prices (in offline and online markets) we finally decided to go to “Nehru Place” to see if we can get good deals in the biggest computer hardware market of Asia.
Continue reading Shopping for and Assembling a new desktop PC
Upgrading to Windows 10, the Microsoft's Comeback
Its been a few days that Windows 10 started rolling out to general public. Even people who never saw past XP seemed to be excited about the new Windows 10.
Windows 8 wasn’t a soaring success even for the fans of Windows. Though its predecessor Windows 7 was a leap ahead from the good old XP, the tile interfaced Win 8 proved to be too much of a change. Start Menu had disappeared. It took the users by storm and Windows 8 was rejected by almost everyone, including myself. That’s why Windows 10 is so important for Microsoft. And maybe that’s why Microsoft decided to roll out a free upgrade for anyone who have a genuine license of Win 7 or Win 8.1.
Now people, all over the Internet are exploding with enough queries and concerns to overwhelm Microsoft. People are perplexed, furious and amazed with their own experience of upgrading. While everyone is jumping into the bandwagon of the latest operating system, failed downloads and bugs are putting many users off.
It all began on 29th July 2015. People who had registered for the update got a prompt that Windows 10 is now available and that they can install it after Windows finishes downloading the update files. I got a prompt too and I allowed the update to download.
Continue reading Upgrading to Windows 10, the Microsoft's Comeback
Bajrangi Bhaijaan: A surprisingly feel good movie
When a group of my friend insisted me to watch a Bollywood movie I had two choices. Salman Khan’s seemingly mindless flick, “Bajrangi Bhaijaan” or an VFX intensive “Bahubali“. For my geek oriented mind the later was an obvious choice. But as it turned out choice was a myth and I was dragged to the theaters for Bajrangi Bhaijaan.
Now, I am not a Salman fan. I like him as a guy, but despise his movies a lot. At least which came out from past few years. So when I went to watch this movie I had totally zero expectations. The formulaic approach of releasing movie on festivals like Eid, I totally thought this was also going to be a mindless no-brainer and an insult-to-Physics action movie.
So believe me when I say that you have got to see this movie! It shattered most of my expectations and proved to be a game changer for his stereotypical role that had become of Salman in recent times. And I am not exaggerating.
Bajrangi Bhaijaan is a story of a Pakistani girl who gets lost in India, and later meet Salman Khan, who after some incidents makes reuniting the girl with her family his mission.
The little girl a child actress “Harshaali Malhotra” is one of the cutest I have ever seen. She is speech impaired in the story, but what she lacked makes up by her cuteness and expressions that won my heart many times over.
I was hooked right with the opening scene of the movie itself which I found commendable. When Salman is introduced in typical hero fashion (with a song) all those apprehensions about his recent kind of movie started to appear in my mind. But as the movie progressed those slowly faded away and what shaped till the end of first half was a movie I appreciated with my hands open. The character of Salman is that of the guy in Aparichit. A guy who doesn’t lie since he believes he is a true devotee of Hanuman. Little does it helps him achieving his mission.
There are many good actors who are also introduced slowly, like Nawazuddin Siddiqui, whose presence provided big comic relief to the movie in later half. Om Puri also have a small guest role.
What I loved about the movie is that there are situational comedy all over the film and yet it feels very serious. No character seems out of place or stretched. What I also loved about the film is that Salman isn’t a larger than life character and story shows him as a common man. Well mostly. It was obvious that Salman would kick some behinds of people but it’s only on one occasion in this film and if we spare some of the emotional drama that happens at the climax, this film was pure fun to watch.
On musical side, leaving couple of songs, every other song was good to hear. Song from Adnan Sami was a delight. Most of the songs was in the shape of background score which you can’t miss due to its tie up with the story. I only found one bad song about chicken but that was just an exception rather than the norm. And this is where you can take a break to have some air. But buckle up after that since rest of the movie will be some ride.
This movie on some levels made be speechless. Probably because I had some other expectations. If anyone remember the film Lucky: No Time for Love, which came out exactly ten years ago. Lucky had Sneha Ullal in lead female role and was one of the rare Bollywood movies that I totally loved. Lucky had a similar theme to that of Bajrangi Bhaijaan. Salman met Sneha in a terrible scenario of war, and made reuniting Sneha to her family his mission. The film had a heart that touch on various emotional states of human mind on many levels. Bajrangi Bhaijaan greatly made me feel the same.
But while Lucky had failed miserably, Bajrangi I feel have the potential of being a blockbuster. At least I hope so since the taste I have for movies doesn’t always appear to be a mass favorite. Not a lot of Salman movies have impressed me, yet Bajrangi felt like a blow of fresh air. Something which I would have easily missed because of my presumptions. This movie is a must watch because of its story, its music and its characters. Also because of the glimpses of Pakistan that it shows in the second half. Its a must watch for its good intentions and because of the little girl that made me smile without even a single dialogue.