Yeah, as planned earlier, I nuked my Slackware partition last night.

I don't see myself re-installing it anytime soon either. There's just too much work that needs to go into it (new kernel compile, compiling apps, UI customization, security, tweaking etc.), and I don't have that much time at the moment.
I'll definitely be getting it back up sometime in the future though. Hopefully, Slackware 9.2 (or 10.0?) should be out by the time I decide to dive in again.

Until then, it's back to XP 24/7...

While on the topic of Linux, I thought I'd mention something else. Everyone has probably already heard about the "Expocity" patch for the Metacity WM by now, which basically aims to mimic the Exposé effect from Mac OS X.
So I got around to compiling it some days ago, and it actually looks quite nice. It even has the animated gliding-in effect. Only problem is, since it's still an unofficial hack, it seems to cause quite a slowdown to the entire desktop, even when the actual effect isn't being executed. It's a known problem that's found it's way on several forums since the initial release.
Well, so it's back to the unpatched version of Metacity for me. Granted, Expocity does look nice...but I think functionality comes before looks in this case. Besides, Alt-Tab is much quicker anyway.

Here's a screenshot of four Firebird windows exposéd to show the four themes of this site.


Meanwhile, siwu from Aqua-Soft is working on the next version of iEx for Windows. It's going to be rendered using DirectX, and it looks very promising. Let's hope it comes out nicely...

Finally, the desktop section has also been updated with the latest Linux screenshot.

I've decided I want to nuke my Slackware partition and start from scratch...again.
Everything is, in fact, running smoothly right now, even with a custom-compiled 2.6.1 kernel, but I've experimented a little too much on this current installation, and I think I've made it get a little too bloated...which basically defeats the purpose of using Slackware rather than any other distro in the first place.
My plan when I start over is to use Acronis TrueImage to create regular images of the partition (it supports ReiserFS!), and then experiment with stuff I know I'm not going to use for long, so that I can revert to a nice, clean system whenever I feel the need to, without starting over each time.

Too bad time is an issue at the moment, though. There's a heap of work piling on, and as I mentioned in an earlier post, it will probably continue this way for a while. But hopefully, I'll find time within the next few weeks to get this thing going...
The more I use this OS, the more I come to love it's flexibility and customizability.

This is one amazing app!

My dad accidently deleted a partition containing about 5 GB of critical data on an external firewire hard drive at work, when upgrading a 98SE machine to XP last week.
Now, I've tested a whole lot of data recovery tools in the past, from freeware ones to commercial trialware. Each one of them would either not find any useful data to recover, or if they did, would recover corrupted versions of the files.
This time, I came across GetDataBack. It was able to recover pretty much every single file, and even old ones that had been deleted prior to the partition nuking. Well worth the $70 price tag, for sure. After all, the only other option was to go to data recovery professionals, who were asking for as much as $750 for the process.

Good stuff. Now I know what to suggest when someone else accidently deletes important files/partitions, formats a drive etc. The trial version even lets you see exactly what data can be recovered from the drive, before you decide to buy the full product.

Yeah, unfortunately I've barely had any time to do anything other than study during the past few days. The weekend (and almost everything after that, for that matter) doesn't look too pleasant either, considering I have to get a heap of work done for every single one of my classes by this Wednesday.
Then just as light becomes visible at the end of the tunnel, a giant boulder will drop from the sky and block my only exit (the boulder referring to a conglomerate of projects, homeworks, and a physics midterm next Monday).

Not fun...but it has to be done, and so it shall be.

Ah, and here's a word of advise...if you live in Southern California (I speak for Los Angeles), and you want to travel to a destination more than about 5-10 miles away, don't even think about using public transport. This is not New York City. Heck, this is not even Bombay, for that matter. You will undoubtedly waste your day. You will be delayed beyond your wildest imagination. It took me five (yes, five) flipping hours by Metro Bus (two buses actually...there's no direct one) to get back home from university on Friday...and 25% of that time was spent waiting for the buses to actually arrive. At least I now know that it's the last time I'm ever going to even attempt such a thing.
Ridiculous...

Added more pictures from the India trip to the picture gallery, as promised. The new ones start at #21, and these are the resized pictures from the digital camera, so the quality should be better than the earlier camera-phone ones.
Go check them out.

We should really have more of them. I envy some of those Letters and Sciences majors who have no classes on Fridays and Mondays, effectively giving them four day weekends all year round.

Had a great time this weekend. My parents, my brother, my mom's cousin, and I went to San Diego and Coronado for a one-day trip. The beach and the pier at Coronado were really beautiful, and the sunset against the downtown sky-scrapers was one amazing sight. Here's a glimpse:



I also happened to spot a Ferrari showroom before dinner. I've seen a couple of these cars in the Hollywood and Beverly Hills area before, but this is the first whole showroom I've seen.
Check out this US$ 150,000 uber-spiffy Ferrari 360!





For more pics, head over to the full mini-gallery on the pictures page.
I will also update the India trip gallery with more pictures when I find some time.

My brother just left for New York a few hours ago. Probably won't see him again until summer now. Had a good time with him though...playing multiplayer NFS, FIFA 2003, Freespace 2 etc, and just hanging around campus for a couple of days. He should have his site up soon, and I will continue to prod him until he does.

The move is complete.
e-piphany is now being hosted by 1and1.com, with my own domain name. I will be leaving the redirection page on the e-mpyrean server for a few weeks.
To all those who have links to this site - please update the URL as soon as possible. Thanks.
And to all the frequent visitors - if you find any bugs (possibly arising due to incorrect permissions etc.) or dead links, please let me know through the shoutbox or e-mail form.

Yup. The site will be moving within the next couple of days. The new domain has been paid for, and should be activated within 24 hours. I'll be getting rid of the free "e-piphany.tk" re-direction completely, since the frames just mess up the multiple themes feature of the site.
The new URL should be http://kunal.kundaje.net or something similar.

Remember the old Star Wars Gangsta Rap? Yeah, that was a classic.
Well, here's another one following the release of Return of the King:
Gollum Gangsta Rap

Feel the urge to sing along? Here are the lyrics too.

*Cough* Dave *cough*

Yes, it's Orange...the new site theme based on a wallpaper by "Artenman." I needed a warm color scheme, so here it is. It's one of those themes that will poke some people's eyes out. I actually quite liked it though, especially since it's so striking, and different from the others.
With that said, you still have the option to switch to any of the others, if this one's too "hot" for you.

I've been waiting for ages to be able to do this, and I've finally found a way.
It's not as simple as installing the SongWriter plugin for WMP9 was. Nor is it real-time, in that if I change a song before the polling interval, it won't be updated until the next time the server is polled. The interval is controlled by XP's Task Scheduler.

But since it's the only way I've figured out how to do this, and it works quite the way I want it to, I'm happy.
If you're interested in getting this script for your site, check out the tutorial I posted on the NTFS forums a few minutes ago:

iTunes for Windows - "Now Playing" script

Well, I think it's about time I post some pictures of my trip in December.
As I said before, I don't have them all with me since the digital camera is at home, and a lot of pictures were taken with that as well. So until I go back home and get those transfered, at least the pics I took with my Nokia 3650 are up in the pictures section. Go check them out if you've been waiting to see them.

Mmm...just custom-compiled the latest stable kernel version for my Slackware installation, and it sure is a speed demon.
It took quite a number of tries before I could get everything working the way I wanted it to. Kept making some careless errors in the configuration process a few times. But it was definitely worth it in the end, especially for the performance difference and OpenGL/DRI support for my Radeon GPU that I didn't have with the stock 2.4.22 kernel from the Slack CD. Flurry and GLMatrix look awesome now.

I realize I haven't posted anything about the trip to India all this while. In fact, I haven't transfered the pictures from the digital camera yet, and it's at home right now. Will have to wait to get that done before I can post the whole set of pics. Probably later this week...let's see.

What a brilliant finale to the trilogy! An absolutely stunning movie. Loved every bit of it...the plot and acting was unquestionably superb, the photography and landscape was breathtaking, the soundtrack was beautiful, and the war scenes were just amazingly well done. I'd love to watch it again if I could. Going to have to wait for the DVD now.

I can't believe that there are people in this world who haven't even watched the first two parts yet. If you fall into that pool of people, you're missing a masterpiece of cinema, and you should go out and watch them all right now.

Ahh, I'm back in uni with this uber-fast connection. Life is good again.

Yup, I'm baaaack
People have been wondering where I disappeared off too. Well, as scheduled, I did in fact land at LAX on the evening of Jan 5th. Didn't feel like touching the computer when I got back though...traveling by air when you have a cold/sore throat really makes you feel miserable at the end of it.

I had some time to sign on yesterday, but the problem was the lack of an internet connection. The thing is, we got the cable connection disconnected before we left, and it takes about 3 days to get it reconnected. Trouble is, those AOL CDs are shoved down your throat when you don't want them, and when you have no other choice and you need one, they're nowhere in sight.
Finally found some odd baseball CD in my box of cereal this morning, and as luck would have it, it contained AOL 8.0
So I'm connected using AOL at the moment. How shamefully, pathetically, disgraceful. But knowing me, you might have already realized that I would never, never install AOL on my own computer. I'd sit for a day or two without a connection, but I won't install that load of crap. So here's how it's set up now...AOL is installed on another computer, along with the AnalogX proxy server. All the machines at home are then connected to the LAN, so we can all use the connection at the same time. Had to do that when I realized AOL's proprietary crapware doesn't even create a connection that one can enable ICS on.

Well, onto other things. I got the shock of my life this morning. Headed to NTFS to see what I had missed while I was gone, and found out that the whole database got b0rked a couple of days ago by accident...two years worth of invaluable posts gone because of one small failure. Very, very sad. It's nice to see the pace of recovery though. Most regulars have already re-joined and the forums are active as they have ever been. Hope everything smoothens out soon.

My brother's come back from New York for about a fortnight. Too bad I'm leaving for uni tonight. I'll be back for the weekend though. And then he plans to come and stay with me there for a couple of days later next week. Should be fun.
Classes technically start tomorrow, but like last quarter, nothing significant is probably going to start until Monday anyway. Looking forward to the new quarter. Hoping everything goes well.

I have no patience to post pictures and such on a dialup connection, so stuff from the India trip will come up later. Until then, I'm off to pack up my stuff to take back to uni tonight.