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Dreaming

James Cameron successfully completed a deep dive into the deepest part of the ocean today. And with it, he repeated a feat that was tried 50 years ago. I cannot wait for the documentary he is going to make out of this dive. I put this on the same scale as someone flying to the moon and back. Yes, I know it was done before. But it has never been repeated again.

By doing this, Mr. Cameron has inspired to start dreaming again. That we can still fly to the moon.. that we can one day travel beyond the boundaries of our solar system

Thank you Mr. Cameron, for letting us dream again.

Driving in Texas

If you are ever driving in the country of Texas (yes, for the uninitiated, Texas is a country by itself 🙂 ), drive in the left most lane if you don’t want to get off the highway and drive in the rightmost lane if you want to get off the highway. Even the folks that only drive at 55 and are always in the right lane need to heed this advice..

Or you will be getting off and on the never ending “frontage” roads 🙂

I shared by two cents!!

DID YOU KNOW : Windows mobile and wildcard certs don't work together

Wildcard SSL certificates allow you to use one certificate for all sub domains (up to one level) of a host. Say I got a wildcard SSL certificate for *.kudithipudi.org, I would be able to use it to provide SSL on blah.kudithipudi.org, ssltest.kudithipudi.org, youcannotbeserious.kudithipudi.org and the clients won’t complaint about it.

For some reason though, Windows Mobile phones don’t like wildcard certs. So if you are ever scratching your head, why every other client works, but windows mobile devices don’t..stop scratching and get a regular SSL certificate for your website/application.

Apparently, this is the case with

  • Windows CE
  • Windows Mobile 5.0
  • Windows Mobile 6.0
  • Windows Mobile 7.0

Don’t you get the feeling that someone keeps using the same library and never bothered to check/fix it? And searching on MSDN or any other Microsoft resource won’t provide you this information. This is my own deduction after beating my head against the wall for more than 3 days :).

Stay Hungry.. Stay Foolish

Just read a really nice article on the Harvard Business Review by Walter Isaacson on leadership lessons of Steve Jobs at http://hbr.org/2012/04/the-real-leadership-lessons-of-steve-jobs/ar/pr .  There were a lot of points that Walter makes in the article, but the one that resonated a lot with me was the need to “Stay Hungy.. Stay Foolish“. This is similar to having a “hacker mentality”, which I believe is one of the key ingredient for a person to be successful (professionally and personally).

Being a hacker means..

  • being inquisitive about how things work.
  • always being a student
  • being able to challenge “this is how we always did things”
  • never stop perfecting
  • remembering that one can (and used to) survive on ramen  noodles 🙂

Project Uptime : Progress Report – 2

After I installed the new kernel as mentioned in this update, I was still seeing the server booting up with the older version. I tried to have the kernel install option (apt-get install linux-image-VERSION) to overwrite the grub config, but the server wouldn’t boot up after that.

So after a lot of head scratching and googling, I found the solution. Rather than have the install program automatically update the grub config file, you have to manually edit it.

So install the latest kernel using the commands as mentioned in my previous post (https://kudithipudi.org/2012/03/07/project-uptime-progress-report-1/) and when prompted about the having an existing grub menu and if you want to overwrite it, just say no. Then do the following

  • Check the new kernel image filename by running [code] ll /boot/vmlinuz* [/code]
  • Edit the grub boot menu by editing the file /boot/grub/menu.1st and add a section for the new kernel image.
  • Edit the default boot option to the new kernel image (NOTE.. the sequence starts from 0)
  • Reboot the server and enjoy the new kernel

Here’s my before and after comparisons for the server I am building

BEFORE  (this is after the line ## End Default Options ##)

[code]

title Ubuntu 11.10, kernel 3.0.0-12-virtual
root (hd0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-12-virtual root=/dev/xvda1 console=hvc0 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-12-virtual

title Ubuntu 11.10, kernel 3.0.0-12-virtual (recovery mode)
root (hd0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-12-virtual root=/dev/xvda1 console=hvc0 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-12-virtual

title Ubuntu 11.10, kernel 3.0.0-16-virtual
root (hd0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-16-virtual root=/dev/xvda1 console=hvc0 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-16-virtual
title Chainload into GRUB 2
root (hd0)
kernel /boot/grub/core.img

title Ubuntu 11.10, memtest86+
root (hd0)

[/code]

AFTER

[code]

title Ubuntu 11.10, kernel 3.0.0-12-virtual
root (hd0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-12-virtual root=/dev/xvda1 console=hvc0 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-12-virtual

title Ubuntu 11.10, kernel 3.0.0-12-virtual (recovery mode)
root (hd0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-12-virtual root=/dev/xvda1 console=hvc0 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-12-virtual

title Ubuntu 11.10, kernel 3.0.0-16-virtual
root (hd0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-16-virtual root=/dev/xvda1 console=hvc0 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-16-virtual
title Chainload into GRUB 2
root (hd0)
kernel /boot/grub/core.img

title Ubuntu 11.10, memtest86+
root (hd0)

[/code]

BTW.. Grub is the boot manager (and a lot more) in Linux.

Love kids..

We spent the weekend with Sri and family and I got a chance to capture some nice shots of Sindhu and Virat. Kids are such a pleasure to take pictures of.. innocent, dont_care_how_I_look..giggly 🙂

Sindhu gazing at Virat

Virat loving the attention
Do you want my balloons?

Are you looking at me?

One happy family.. aren’t they beautiful??