Prakash Advani's Blog

How a chef made the move to Linux

Prakash — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 02:41:01 +0000

Chef Yash Amin, is our guest blogger today. He is greatest chef I have known and has moved to Ubuntu, here is his experience.

Why i made the move from being a slave to windows to open source and Linux.

For years since I’ve been using computers, windows has been the mainstay of things and although I had heard about Linux, was hesistant to try it because for a non-technical person like me. I dabble a lot with computers, but at the end of the day I’m a chef and the maximum that I’m able to do with a laptop is add more RAM. (in terms of hardware). The biggest reason, not to change was quite simple really, noone likes too much of a change in lifestyle / clothes or even their OS.
But with the hundreds upon hundreds of security patches, updates, slow working systems being tied down to paying for new software, was gettting to be too much. After i have switched to Ubuntu/Linux working on the laptop just seems easier, it boots ups faster, the updates are seamless and take a few minutes at the most. it has a graphic user interface (GUI) so theres easy to click on icons for everything to do and best of all, my favourite open source game nethack is now made for Linux too, so I can play with it as much as I can.
even though 12 years after first starting to play nethack, have still to crack the game and ascend as a demi god!!
Switch to Linux, now and save yourselves endless frustration, virus updates, security patches upon more and more and all in one package. Just download and your good to go.

after so much tech or not so much tech talk, i need to talk something about food.

The art of making a great tasting chocolate mousse

This assumes a few things and is not a DIY for dummies chocolate mousse recipe, but rather aimed at a few people who are passionate about dark chocolate. Dark chocolate is a sinful thing almost and most people will enjoy it as a guilty pleasure. A well made mousse takes that to even more dizzying heights and can be really delicious and smooth and creamy. Enough talking, now lets walk the talk.

For a family sized portion or if you are particularly greedy this is how much you would need.

Dark chocolate broken into small pieces- 200 gms(if you can get one with 50 percent+ cocoa solids then even better). Even Cadbury’s make one called old gold. If not then use Cadbury’s dairy milk and add about 30 gms of the darkest cocoa powder that you can find.

Butter – 30 gms
Eggs – 3 numbers
Sugar- between 60-100 gms (if you want it more or less sweet)
Cream – 250 ml
Alcohol-(rum/ whisky/ or a liqueur (baileys, kahlua, cointreau or similar)- optional, but adds another hint of wickedness to the final product.- about 20 ml

Process

Beat the eggs and sugar over a double boiler (pot with hot water over a low heat). The water should not touch the eggs but just be lightly simmering otherwise you will get sweet scrambled eggs. The consistency to try and achieve is very very fluffy and creamy and when stirred leaves a trail or when poured is ribbony.
Melt the chocolate and butter together, just melted about 40 seconds in a microwave is generally enough. This should be done while the eggs are getting beaten. If you are using milk chocolate then add cocoa after the mix is well melted. Add in the alcohol if you like and mix well.
Whisk the cream till its almost double in volume and forms soft peaks. Keep chilled. Do not over beat otherwise will split and turn into butter.
Mix in the chocolate mixture gently into the eggs and sugar mix.
Take of the heat and allow to cool down slightly.
Fold in the whipped cream. ie. gently mix it in trying not to lose all the air which has been incorporated while whisking. Taste the mix by dipping in finger and licking clean. Yes this essential quality control measure
Put into individual glass bowls and refrigerate until set – about 2-3 hours. It can even be frozen quite successfully and eaten frozen like a rich ice cream or used a filling for a cake/ tart.
Enjoy your chocolate mousse and Linux with family and friends.

For more recipes see Yash Amin’s blog.

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MIT Genius Stuffs 100 Processors Into Single Chip

Prakash — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 02:30:30 +0000

Anand Agarwal directs the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s vaunted Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, or CSAIL. His company Tilera sells chips with 16, 32, and 64 cores, and it’s scheduled to ship a CPU with 100 cores.

It is green cause its power efficient. A 400-watt Tilera server provides as much processing power as eight x86 servers that draw 2,000 watts.

Dropping the “L” Word

Prakash — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:56:14 +0000

The root cause is branding. “Linux” (the brand) is muddy, confusing, and unfriendly to the mainstream computer user: those on the other side of the chasm. They are the exact people that we need to embrace Ubuntu and they don’t *get* “Linux”. They don’t know what it is. They get a negative connotation when they hear the word. Don’t believe me? Ask your non-techie friend or loved one. (I just asked the person beside me and the response I got was less than flattering.)

The Ultrabooks are here

Prakash — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 02:48:00 +0000

Ultrabooks are thin and light weight Notebooks which has similar look and feel to Apple MacBook Air. Many vendors have started offering these at competitive pricing.

These use standard Intel Core i5 or i7 processor, SSD and 12″ or 13″ Display.

Advantages:

Standard ports:

Many of them have USB 3.0 ports, which are much faster than USB 2.0
HDMI and some may have Display ports as well.

You can load your choice of OS such as Ubuntu.
Light weight around 1 KG

Disadvantages:

No Optical Drive (The mac book air also doesn’t have one and who uses them anyways these days ? If you do you can get an external one.

Only Windows pre-load currently, we need choice of Ubuntu atleast! If you are still using Windows, time to give Ubuntu a try.

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HTC Inspire 4G a good budget phone

Prakash — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 03:02:16 +0000

HTC Inspire is a good budget phone, however I don’t know when HTC will launch this in India. It’s currently available in US from AT&T.

Here is what is cool.

4G Capable HSPA+
Android 2.2 upgradable to 2.3
4.3″ Display
8 Megapixel Camera, 720p video recording.
Dolby Surround sound
Scratch proof, Gorilla Glass screen
4 GB Built in with expandable microSD memory card slot.
1 GHz processor

Whats the limitations

1 GHz processor sounds a little low as compared to the new generation dual and quad core phones. However for people just wanting to use the phone features this is enough unless you want to play games. By choosing a single core processor, HTC is able to keep the price affordable for this phone. Unlocked phones are available for around $300 on Amazon.

No Front facing camera, this in my opinion is a need for people wanting to do video calling over 3G or skype.

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Desktop Linux gains market share

Prakash — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 07:31:15 +0000

As per PC World, Desktop Linux gains market share of more than 1 percent.

After dipping to 0.97 percent in July, Linux rose to 1.07 percent in August, 1.11 percent in September, 1.19 percent in October, and 1.31 percent in November, Net Applications reports, followed by the new high of 1.41 percent last month.

W3Counter, for instance, puts non-Android Linux at 1.64 percent in December.

Wikimedia’s Traffic Analysis Report for last October pegged Linux at 3.48 percent, while news site The H-online which also reported on the new Net Applications data–noted that Linux users now account for 25.36 percent of its own traffic.

Our own stats shows 34 percent of users coming to Cityblogger are using Linux. I am glad people are finally realising the benefits of Linux on the Desktop.

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Cloud Demystified

Prakash — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 02:00:28 +0000

Cloud is the buzz of today and many people are getting very confused on what is the cloud. To put is in simple way, Cloud is any service delivered on the Internet. Cloud based hosted services have been around for 10 years however now people are calling it Cloud.

Lets take an example, if a university offers it courses only in the class room, and now wants to offer online classes, then it is the Cloud. Similarly if you are running a business and you want to start selling online then you are moving into the Cloud.

Once you have decided to move your business online, you can select some of the current Cloud technologies which will allow you to scale very well such that your website/webstore will be able to handle high traffic very well at the same time optimise your resources when the traffic is low. These are Cloud technologies or building blocks which is not be confused by Cloud services. You could still offer your services in the Cloud without using any Cloud Technology. However if you use Cloud Technologies you can scale well and optimise your resources well.

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Open Source solution to Microsoft Azure

Prakash — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 01:52:02 +0000

Build on VMWare CloudFoundry, IronFoundry offers .NET support in the Cloud. Cloud Foundry is VMWare’s PaaS solution which is open sourced. Tier 3 (the company behind IronFoundry) has take the code and added support for .NET. Related posts: 50 Open Source Applications for Sci-Tech Education This article has a nice list of 50 [...] Related posts:

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Why OpenStack is important

Prakash — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 02:25:09 +0000

OpenStack is the future of Cloud computing. Founded by NASA and Rackspace it aims to provide a fully scalable open source cloud infrastructure. This can be deployed to build a public cloud or your own private cloud.

Here are the reasons why I believe OpenStack will be successful.

Its completely Open Source, hence it is continuing to develop at a rapid space. Being open in nature, the project will never die down.
It is designed to scale up very well.
Its highly flexible you have a choice of Hypervisers including ESX, Hyper-V, KVM, LXC, QEMU, UML, Xen, and XenServer.
Over 2000 Developers and 144 companies are behind OpenStack making it an Industry Standard.
This includes the who’s who of Cloud computing:

Cloud Vendors: Citrix, Cloud.com, Nebula
OEMS: Dell, HP, NEC
Chip makers: Intel and AMD, Broadcom
Storage: Netapp
OS Vendors: Canonical (Ubuntu), SUSE
Telco: NTT Docomo
Networking vendor: Cisco
Service Provider: L&T Infotech

Some website stats shared by OpenStack.

People in over 13,000 cities from over 200 countries visited OpenStack.org in 2011
Ttotal of 750k+ visits from 430k+ unique visitors.
The most popular city was Beijing, followed by Seoul, London, and Bangalore
China was #2 after the U.S. as a source of visitors to openstack.org

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After free online courseware now MIT is offering free online leaning

Prakash — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 03:05:09 +0000

After the success of Open Courseware, MIT is planning to launch free online learning courses. MIT Open Courseware is now 10 years old, wow! The online course will be called MITx. It will not earn you an MIT degree however it will still give you a certificate of completion. The course will be free, the certificate will attract a small fee which is yet to be determined.

It will be built on Open Source and the technology developed for this will also be Open Source.

Time to learn something new ?

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