Me, Myself and Technology » Personal http://www.kalpik.com/blog Kalpik Nigam Tue, 06 Sep 2011 09:14:40 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Im back! http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2008/08/31/im-back/ http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2008/08/31/im-back/#comments Sun, 31 Aug 2008 17:42:33 +0000 kalpik http://www.kalpiknigam.com/blog/?p=134 Hmm.. So i’ve been out of the blogging scene for quite sometime now. Mostly, i’ve been busy with work, and yeah, i’ve been spending all my free time watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S, just like Nidhi :) Now that i’m finished with all 10 seasons, i think ill get some time to post here :)

So lets see.. What all is new.. On the linux front, i’ve migrated from Ubuntu to Arch Linux, which according to me, is the BEST distro out there! I love the fact how everything “just works” and how i have the latest software all the time. The best part is that its a rolling release, meaning no more waiting for updates or adding third party repos for new stuff. I evaluated Debian and Gentoo, before moving to Arch. Debian always had some or the other problem. It wasnt just stable enough for me. And Gentoo on the other hand was too time consuming and crude. Arch is gonna stay on my PC for a long, long time! :)

Also, i got a new phone. The Nokia N82, which again, is an awesome phone, but since im sure you might have heard a lot about it already, ill not talk about it here :P

Other than that, my life’s been pretty much the same.. (Yeah, i know im boring :P )

On the work front, im getting to work on some awesome stuff, so am pretty much satisfied there.

So that’s pretty much it! Ill try to be regular here, and post any interesting stuff that i come across :)

]]> http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2008/08/31/im-back/feed/ 3 My New Rig http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2008/03/16/my-new-rig/ http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2008/03/16/my-new-rig/#comments Sun, 16 Mar 2008 05:31:32 +0000 kalpik http://www.kalpiknigam.com/blog/2008/03/16/my-new-rig/ Well.. Not exactly *new*, its about a month old now :) I still have my old pc, and have set up a LAN :) Here’s the configuration:

Processor: Core2Quad Q6600 @2.4Ghz
Motherboard: MSI P35 Platinum
GFX Card: MSI 8600 GT (512MB)
RAM: Patriot 2x1GB DDR2 800 Mhz (matched pairs)
HDD: Western Digital 400GB HDD (16MB buffer)
SMPS: Cooler Master Real Power 550W
Cabinet: Cooler Master Elite
Screen: Viewsonic VX922 (19″)
DVD Writer: Samsung SH-S203D

Hope this one lasts for 2-3 years without any major upgrade (i know its hoping against hope) :P

Here are some pics, if you wanna have a look :)

]]> http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2008/03/16/my-new-rig/feed/ 8 My First BarCamp! BarCampDelhi3: AWESOME! http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2007/12/10/my-first-barcamp-barcampdelhi3-awesome/ http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2007/12/10/my-first-barcamp-barcampdelhi3-awesome/#comments Sun, 09 Dec 2007 19:44:41 +0000 kalpik http://www.kalpiknigam.com/blog/2007/12/10/my-first-barcamp-barcampdelhi3-awesome/ So.. I had wanted to attend un-conferences since a long time now, but didn’t really get to know the events on time, or the events were outside of Delhi/NCR. So this even was the perfect opportunity for me to explore! The even was held at the Noida Sector 59 office of Impetus Software, which was quite close to my own office, so i kinda knew the area a bit. The event was scheduled to start at 9:30 AM. I, along with Deepak, Prateek and Apoorv reached the venue around 9:15 AM. We did all the registration formalities, and then proceeded to the conference room. We were one of the first few people to arrive there. The first “known” person we met there was Amit. He greeted us with his usual smile (dunno whether he recognized me and Apoorv or not though :P ). Then we met this really friendly guy named Ankit, who had come with his baby daughter, who was later declared as the youngest attendee of the BarCamp :D

So the sessions started with all of us introducing ourselves, along with tagging the event with 3 tags each :) The event started with Navjot’s presentation about GuruGeeks. The presentation was enjoyable, and i appreciate all the effort he’s putting into it! Next up were Manik and Akhil of the Vinsol team with a presentation on deploying rails apps on Amazon’s EC2, again being a very interesting presentation, it captured the attention of all present there. They even showed us a live demo of how to go about it! I just LOVED their sweatshirts! It had “Ruby makes me happy” with a cute ruby thingy on them. Check them out in one of the pics below. Next up was Vineet of Impetus presenting on “Planning Poker – Agile Estimation for Dummies”. After this presentation, the organizers decided to make two batches and proceed with 2 sessions simultaneously. So 2 groups were formed, one was the technical group and the other was the social group (which had presentations related to blogging and social networking). I remained with the technical group. Next up was Jignesh of Amazon with his highly informative and impressive session on Amazon’s EC2 and S3 web services. This was the best session of the entire event (i hope those who attended would agree with me :P ). We had to break in between for lunch. Jignesh completed his session after lunch. We had Abhishek with his session “Everyday Productivity with Windows Live Tools”. I personally didn’t like this session at all. It was more like a marketing attempt from Microsoft. I mean the guy was showing off windows live mail (outlook express replacement for vista) as if it was the ONLY email client on earth! Guys from ThinkDigit would know how i felt (this dude was like gx_saurav and iMav amalgamated into one life form :P ) Anyway, i think such sessions should not be allowed on events such as BarCamp. There was another “marketing” session by some company offering free server hosting for 3 months to budding startups (sorry, forgot their name). In the meantime, Kapil also joined us. The Vinsol team took the stage once more with Sur giving a session on “Ruby Insights – Some unsaid things about Ruby Programming Language”. Once again, the session was very informative, with him giving some tips and tricks for Ruby programming. He even gave some live demos of small code snippets. I moved from the conference room to the Networking room, where Akhil was giving a live demo of deploying rails apps on EC2. Jignesh was also there to answer our questions concerning EC2. After this, the sessions were over, and people were just interacting with each other. We clicked some pics, and then, were invited by Kapil to Ruby Tuesday for some snacks and beer, all sponsored by Opera Software! Me and Apoorv decided to accept the invite, while Deepak and Prateek decided to call it a day. We had a lot of fun (and beer :P ) there and interacted a lot with all present there. We were there until the very end when Navjot (representing Opera Software) paid the bill :)

So that was it! Now you’ve got a first hand experience of the entire event! But be sure to actually be there next time! I REALLY enjoyed the entire experience. Im now looking forward to attending such events, and ill be attending OSS CampDelhi 2 next week :)

Pics:

P.S. Ill be updating this post as and when i remember stuff :P

]]> http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2007/12/10/my-first-barcamp-barcampdelhi3-awesome/feed/ 12 WordPress 2.3 Released! http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2007/09/25/wordpress-23-released/ http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2007/09/25/wordpress-23-released/#comments Tue, 25 Sep 2007 03:35:36 +0000 kalpik http://www.kalpiknigam.com/blog/2007/09/25/wordpress-23-released/ And i’ve already upgraded! :D

On Monday, September 24, 2007, WordPress version 2.3 was released to the public. For information on the changes and improvements in this new version, see Changelog for 2.3.

For Version 2.2, the database version (db_version in wp_option) is 6124.

Two of the top five ideas are implemented in this release: Plugin Update Notification (http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/topic.php?id=30&page) and Tags! (http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/topic.php?id=59), and another with very high rating Revamp the default blogroll (http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/topic.php?id=560).

See WordPress 2.3 Theme Compatibility and Plugin Compatibility to confirm the theme and plugins you’re using are compatible.

]]> http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2007/09/25/wordpress-23-released/feed/ 0 Frustrated with Hutch http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2007/01/21/frustrated-with-hutch/ http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2007/01/21/frustrated-with-hutch/#comments Sun, 21 Jan 2007 06:47:05 +0000 kalpik http://www.kalpiknigam.com/blog/2007/01/21/frustrated-with-hutch/ My hutch connection was disconnected yesterday without prior notification on the basis of “verification”. I cannot make any outgoing calls and SMSs even though i have a balance of around 1800 Rs. Incoming calls do not show the caller ID. Now even though i have submitted the required documents (not that i didn’t submit them when i bought the connection, i did submit a photocopy of my Driver’s License!), my connection has not been activated. There are problems with the network too. Calls get dropped, network congestion. I cannot dial Hutch Care “111″ from my mobile. It always shows network busy. So if i need to talk to customer care, i need to dial “9811098110″ from my landline and pay for it while i listen to “you and i” for an hour!

What kind of service is this? Im am extremely dissatisfied, and would NOT recommend hutch to anyone. I myself cannot shift cause i have an OLD number, otherwise i would have shifted to another provider.

In Short: Do yourself a favour and dont buy Hutch..

]]> http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2007/01/21/frustrated-with-hutch/feed/ 12 5 things about me! http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2006/12/28/5-things-about-me/ http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2006/12/28/5-things-about-me/#comments Thu, 28 Dec 2006 15:30:16 +0000 kalpik http://www.kalpiknigam.com/blog/2006/12/28/5-things-about-me/ Ok.. So i was tagged by my friend Manas. So here are 5 things about me:

1. Love technology and gadgets: Im the kinda guy who’d like to own the latest hardware/mobile phones, but alas my budget does not permit :p

2. Im an introvert: I get like at least 20-25 genuine emails a day (naah, not spam). And im a very busy person. The internet is my connection to the world. Im not the outgoing and mixing types :) And i wont bug someone unless i really need some help from him. Live and let live :)
3. I dont keep people close to me: Hehe.. Its just that i dont keep anyone “that” close to me. And no one is that important for me. This is due to some past bad experiences i had with people really close to me. I have that “i dont care” attitude.

4. Love driving: Im a driving FREAK! I can drive for kilometers! I’ve driven everywhere: highways, mountains, beaches, you name it, i’ve driven there. Once went to Nainitaal from delhi in my Maruti Esteem. Was a pleasure driving in the hills!

5. My ambition: I want to take part in a rally race, and i really really wanna own a decent sports car. Lets see if my fate takes me to it!

Now my turn to tag people muaahhahaha :D

I tag Mayank, Harsh, Ankur, Ashish and Sathya!

]]> http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2006/12/28/5-things-about-me/feed/ 10 Hosting Upgrade http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2006/12/14/hosting-upgrade/ http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2006/12/14/hosting-upgrade/#comments Thu, 14 Dec 2006 17:04:20 +0000 kalpik http://www.kalpiknigam.com/blog/2006/12/14/hosting-upgrade/ From my inbox:

Hello!

I am glad to inform you that we are going for a hosting server upgrade.

The new servers have a Downtime Redundancy Mechanism (DRM) alongwith improved performance due to processing load sharing over a cluster.

We are expecting to start transferring the site from 15 December 2006 8 PM IST. You are requested not to make any changes to your site after 15 December 7 PM IST. A complete transfer is likely to take about 48 hours, mainly due to DNS propogation.
Quick FAQ

Q. What is Downtime Redundancy Mechanism?

A. Usually sites are hosted on one server. If there is some problem (hardware failure, etc.) the site goes down till the problem is fixed. However, in DRM the load is shared by more than one server. So if one of the servers is down, the other one takes over the entire load. This setup is usually used for mission critical sites.

Q. Any other benefit of DRM?

A. Yes. MySQL is one of the most processor hungry application. So all the MySQL databases and its processing is done on another machine thereby freeing the resources on the main server. This load sharing results in quicker processing.
So.. expect some downtime tomorrow :) Good things to come!
Hosting provided by mailNspace Services.
]]> http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2006/12/14/hosting-upgrade/feed/ 4 New phone Nokia N70 http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2006/11/03/new-phone-nokia-n70/ http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2006/11/03/new-phone-nokia-n70/#comments Fri, 03 Nov 2006 16:11:48 +0000 kalpik http://www.kalpiknigam.com/blog/2006/11/03/new-phone-nokia-n70/ Finally after a month of planning, i bought the Nokia N70! Im *very* happy with it! The sound quality in the headphones is simply amazing! The camera is also of amazing quality! Hopefully this phone should satisfy my appetite for another 2-3 years :)

Tech Specs of Nokia N70

]]> http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2006/11/03/new-phone-nokia-n70/feed/ 20 Blog hozed! http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2006/10/29/blog-hozed/ http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2006/10/29/blog-hozed/#comments Sun, 29 Oct 2006 15:30:34 +0000 kalpik http://www.mailnspace.com/~knigam/blog/2006/10/29/blog-hozed/ Hi everyone!

As many of you know, i was hosting my blog from Zeeblo, and it has been down since the past 4 days now! I think its gone for good. So anyways, i’ve taken hosting and a brand new domain name http://www.kalpiknigam.com from Ashish. I know i’ve lost a LOT of data due to my carelessness (was too lazy to backup). Anyway i hope now since im on a paid hosting, ill have 99.9% uptime with regular backups. Inconvenience to everyone is deeply regretted and if anyone of you finds that a link to your blog is missing from my linkroll, do notify me and ill update it ASAP.

Thanks!

]]> http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2006/10/29/blog-hozed/feed/ 7 My New DVD Writer! http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2006/05/06/my-new-dvd-writer/ http://www.kalpik.com/blog/2006/05/06/my-new-dvd-writer/#comments Sat, 06 May 2006 05:07:46 +0000 kalpik http://kalpik.5gigs.com/?p=53 Just bought a brand new BenQ DW1650! Its an amazing DVD writer. Im getting a Quality Score of 97 in Nero CD/DVD Speed! Im now sooo close to fulfillment. Hope this one lasts long (unlike my Sony CRX320A :P ). Got an amazing deal Rs 2470/- inclusive of taxes from Mr. Anish Soni of Mass Computers Limited, 102 Manjusha, Nehru Place, Delhi. nevada corporation Now im thinking of joining some call center services to make up for the money :P

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