I am planning to delve into an unfamiliar technology now to solve a familiar old problem that I’ve been facing for a long time.

Maybe in some time, I will be able to do something useful. For some simple enough reasons, I won’t be telling what I am working on right now.

If things turn out well, I will publish here what I was working on…

Hey all,

          My website is ready with hosting and everything and now I am designing the layout of the website. My friends think that I need a new domain name for the community website and do something else in my website.

Personally I disagree as I intended my website to be a group project. But as my friends insist that I should be going this way, I think I will. We are still deciding the name of the company and once we finalize on a name, we will launch it immediately.

Hey all,

         I’m currently designing my own website and will launch it soon. Me and a group of my friends are currently working on the designs and articles. And soon, we will launch the website and hopefully, it will become popular among the visitors.

On an unrelated note, today is the last day of my semester. YIPEE!

Hi all,

       I’ve successfully compiled the Linux kernel code. I downloaded the stable version of the kernel (the linux-3.x.x.tar.bz model instead of the linux-3.x.y.tar.bz model) since I did not want to be faced with the hassle of upgrading and patching the development version.

These are the things I did and in that order:

1. Install the development toolkit which includes the GCC compiler, linker set.

sudo apt-get install build-essential

2. Install Flex and Bison

sudo apt-get install flex

sudo apt-get install bison

3. Install Make file utility

sudo apt-get install make

4. Install Grep and Sed for making searches in tables

sudo apt-get install grep

sudo apt-get install sed

5. Install binutils and diffutils for utility management of object files

sudo apt-get install binutils

sudo apt-get install diffutils

6. Install Vim editor or KDevelop IDE for coding and project management

sudo apt-get install vim

sudo apt-get install kdevelop

7. Install Netwide Assembler for assembling my bootloader code

sudo apt-get install nasm

8. Install Virtualbox for emulating my operating system

follow the instructions given in http://www.virtualbox.org

9. Extract, configure and compile the kernel code

bzip2 -dc linux-3.X.tar.bz2 | tar xvf -

cd linux-3.x.x

make mrproper

make defconfig //for making the config file with the default options

make V=1 all //for compiling the code with the verbose options

Thats it! thats all I’ve done for now.

I have always had the dream of making a kernel all by myself. Some people say that it is madness to make one when there are so many around us and some say that I am simply wasting my time doing so when I can actually be utilizing it by learning a new programming language or searching for a job.

But, as you all probably know, I’m different from the masses. I like to do things at my own pace and style. And I’m a bit slower than the rest of you programmers out there. I love programming so I take my time to type it. *yeah* I know it sounds stupid, but thats me.

Anyway, I’ve decided that the time is right for starting my dream project. The first thing I need for making a kernel is the right hardware. And fortunate for me, that is quite light in specs than my laptop. So, I have the hardware with me. What next?

I need an operating system that supports and is easy to deal with in regards to programming with C and C++. A flavor of *nix should do it. Not my favorite, but I guess Ubuntu should do the trick. I just chose Ubuntu because I’m used to it. I’d go with the latest stable version of the OS available in the market that is 11.10. For these kind of work, never choose an Operating system that is in Beta stage as you will have to deal with the internal bugs of your development along with bugs of the operating system.

After installing Ubuntu in my 1TB harddisk as a Windows alongside, I have to install a few more things in it to make it useful. I need to have a C,C++ compiler, preferably GCC and a Makefile utility. Fortunately again, all these are almost in-built on all the versions of Linux and Unix.

One more personal preference of mine, I’ll go with the Install inside Windows option in Ubuntu so as not to make any accidental change to data in my hard disk. And I am actually installing the OS in an external 3.5” hard disk connected via an External Harddisk case’s USB cable. Good thing it is actually read as an internal drive rather than as an external drive. Sometimes, I just thank the heavens for making Windows so naive. ;-)

So, thats it for this post. As I finish installing all these base software into my test hard drive, I start wondering whether I’ll actually be able to pull this one off. But, as they say, “What should happen, Will happen.”

Well, to answer that, I need a lot of posts and a lot of paragraphs in each post. But then, you will start sleeping and so will I.

So, long story short, learning. I’m learning a lot here. From the first day that I set foot in Dubai, it has been a different experience for me. I expected nothing less than this but at the same time nothing quite similar to this. :D

I quickly found out that IT jobs here are quite few in number but they do exist but it takes a little more digging out and time to land in on one. Apart from jobs, the culture that is prevalent in Dubai, nothing matches it as far as my knowledge goes.

In one extreme there are the people who are ultra modern in their daily works and day to day activities; using gadgets and applications that haven’t even cropped up in most metropolitan cities of India. And in the other hand, there are the people themselves; lazy, foolish, slow, careless and downright dumb (no offense meant and surely no one country in general).

The expatriates who come here and start living change their ways of education, learning and knowledge acquisition to such an extent that their off springs have no idea of the level of mathematical and analytic knowledge they are missing. Most of the children here are having iPhones, BlackBerrys and ultra high-end Android mobile phones and that is something really nice to see.

But, to see them using those mobile phones for doing grocery bill calculations, current date, simple class calculations is really telling a lot about their calculative abilities. Let alone the children; I’ve personally seen some of my Post Graduate classmates use iPhones as calculators for some simple arithmetic such as 500 - 183.

It creates a sad impression to those coming directly from the suburbs of countries like India or Pakistan where the average third grade student does these calculations almost accurately in their mind. And that was one of the things I learnt after coming here - People go blunt in face of extreme technological advancement and in the presence of large sums of money to splurge on electronics.

The other things I learnt were the most significant things of my life. I learnt about people, their way of making you feel inferior to them in one way or the other, their approaches toward you create the impression that they are better experienced or have seen more than you have.

Do not try to correct every thing that one tries to do. Without real experience, no man can actually say that he has learnt anything. I am sure that every one of you have met people who have tried to impose on you this kind of feeling in some part of your life. To these people I say, really get some other work to do. Surely you must have something else to do than lecture people around.

:) On a lighter note, I have found out how things work in the areas that concern me. So, I can tread with more ease from here on. I am planning to start working on  my novel again soon. Hopefully I will be working on my next year ImagineCup submission by the end of July. The registration usually start in September first week (remember Hogwarts? ;-)). So, I will have to look at creating a team and an idea before July.

And lastly, I hope to post more often in my blog. Like at least once a week. And the future posts will be more oriented toward my projects and experiments and a very little on my personal life. :) This is to not waste your time and make it more worthwhile. 

Well, its been long since I last had an idea to host a private Ragnarok server. Last time I tried it, I was overwhelmed by the fact that I need a dedicated system, a dedicated broadband line and so on. But, now, I have those but still, I feel like I’m missing on something somewhere.

I started working on configuring the private server a couple of days back and all I have now is a fresh server configured with the basic settings and a client that goes halfway into connecting and then just… stops.

I don’t know the exact mistake that I did. But I guess the old “Data Folder way” won’t work for me. I need some days to study and learn the GRF and DIFFing methods of creating a cutom GRF file for my server and then connect the client through that GRF.

I’ll probably be working on this server for the next week. So, I can have a working server by the end of this month. Hopefully, the server will work by the end of this week. And I’ll start working on the next step of improving the maps, making custom maps and custom NPCs and maybe even a custom quest or two.

And for all those people who have read till here, I express my hearty thanks as I know you would not have understood anything that I said above unless you know what a private server is or you’ve played in more than ten Ragnarok servers. Its your constant readership that makes me want to write more and more.

Yesterday was the last day of my graduate foundation course in my university… :) It was fun and the exam was easy to an extent. (I might have made a few mistakes here and there…) Otherwise, it was a sad day too cause I’d not be able to my friends after this since we have different PGs and might not have classes on the same day.

Hi all,

I got busy coming to Dubai, registering with the University, attending my first classes and learning the routes to and from my place to the university and so I couldn’t post anything. But the main reason I did not post is that I didn’t have a system till yesterday. I was using my uncle’s lap and only when it was free.

I bought this laptop yesterday and its cool. Will post the specs tonight. I’ve installed Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and SQL Server 2008 R2 today along with Code::Blocks for good old-school C++ GNU compiling… :P

The lap is powerful and comes along with an i5 2410 and a Geforce 540 card and has enough juice for probably 3 hours of compiling. :)

Thats enough for me anyway…