I went into past  whilst watching Pardesh yesterday. I was straight out of  my Class X with astound results  when movie was released. I was full of enthusiasm like a baby bird, who has just got its wing. High on confidence with like minded friends around , who believe that they can detect rules of the game. In other words, I was just another spoilt brat. Here I share two experience of my teen-age.

One of the most striking thing about  the movie was, this Song - Yeh Dil Deewana. The songs opens with camera panning to SRK riding a sleek silver sporty convertible with catchy music on 70mm screen- that whole scene was awe-inspiring.  I'd seen car posters / videos before  but this one had different appeal. Add that to a newly bought car at that time. As song played on the screen, I told myself - man this is it. I wanted to learn driving. Dad was not going allow this chap on driving seat for next two years.  Adamant that I was, I stole car keys, got hold of an elder friend who can give me few first lessons of driving. On the first day things went quite well. I was entirely overwhelmed by that experience, so next day I went all on my own. I continued the same drill over a period of a week. I would not go  much into how Dad learnt about my driving desire - that would be a different story. Since then Cars and driving became  major passion of life, Gradually I developed interest for  motor-sports. Moreover I built up high regards for traffic rules and road-safety. My driving is one of thing I'm proud about. Getting behind steering wheels at an early age was one of the best thing happened to life at that time. And It all started with one song.

But not all pictures were rosy at that age, I did crappy things too and landed myself  in big hassles.  I've had unprecedented fascination for science, I used to take up interesting hobby projects in Summer vacations. It was quite natural for me to opt for Science - stream as major after Class X. But I never put efforts that were demanded  by being  a Student of Science. I was at rebellion age where - bunking school, hanging out with friends and indulging into nasty things were considered to be more cool. A part of its blame also goes to the Education system, where scoring the marks was the ultimate goal. School failed to make subject interesting. For me, learning the concept right way were and are of more importance than mugging up notes.  Nevertheless, I take full blame for being totally irresponsible and ignorant at the such an important juncture of my life.  As the final board exams approached , I was up against the daunting tasks. I literally had sleepless nights.  With fear gripping in - a lot of hard work was put in just last one month. That part of life was full of struggle, of different kind.  I learnt the lesson harder way. I realized importance of time in life, I realized not be ignorant of what lies ahead, I realized to never shy away from the responsibilities and I realized what difference hard work can make in whatever little time is left. I was also glad that I stuck by my principles of mastering the concepts, learning the things right way - these helped in later part of my life.

 To sum up my early life experience - I would say  Passion , principles, determination and desire can take you to great distance.

All it takes is an old movie / song / picture / Story book / article  / friend / place or  a restaurant to remind you what  Life had been few  years ago.  What you guys relate to , what reminds you of your past ? Game to share  here ?

Would like to share some text I received from my Manager on the eve of Independence Day.

"A few months ago, I was not particularly happy about the negative portrayal of our country in a movie which got global recognition … yes "Slumdog Millionaire". Later in Munich as well, over beer people used to discuss the topic. Everybody was curious as how can such things exist in an exciting country like India. My sense of disgust had calmed down and I was taking a more balanced approach towards the situation.

A couple of days ago, I saw a Spanish band trying to sing "Jai Ho" in Hindi in Spain to an audience of Europeans. Somewhere deep down I felt proud everytime they said "Jai Ho". Who could imagine a bunch of Europeans chanting the same words for which millions risk their lives at our porous borders. Who could imagine a world curious about a country which is still considered to be a third world developing nation. Who could have imagined the military powers of the world, vying with each other to grab the contracts of our Armed Forces. Who would have imagined that the world would look at us for our skills rather than our cost.
Somewhere, somehow together as a nation, we have risen above dirty roads, poverty, communalism, diseases etc to become a formidable market.

Reflecting back, if our forefathers had not risked their present, we would not be enjoying ours. If we could, we should all check as how we can make our community, our nation a better place to live in. Even though in drops, what can we contribute towards nation building without becoming a great leader.

Enjoy your moment of Independence. "

I share similar opinions about SDM, but well its not time for bitching about the sick movie. Instead It's time to respect and  value the freedom,be proud of being part of  one the most rapidly developing nation of the world. I happened to spend a considerable amount of time in the most successful communist nation, China.  In spite of being a very developed nation compared to India, what is missing is freedom of access to Information. Isn't it disturbing when government ascertains what  information should be available to its Citizens. Internet and Media is regulated by "Great firewall of China".   Here people leave their entire life under delusion without ever knowing facts.  Knowing the truth, facts and having access to abundant information without anyone micro-managing is a BIG deal for me.  And it was at that time I realized, what It means to be part of  Democracy, a free nation. I could not be prouder being an Indian. 

Every now and then life teaches you respect what you have, not taking things for granted. That was my actualization of freedom.  What was yours ?

Jai Ho.

The frequency at which I blog, my most of the entries can have title updates. I come here, post some random stuff I had been doing past two months,saying I've been extremely busy and then disappear. So monotonous.

As usual, I've been busy since past one month. I achieved a rare feat of working for three continuous weekends before being deported to China from Bangalore on the shortest possible notice. I was in office the day I left and the first thing I did after reaching to Shenzhen, China, was to visit the office. Of course, Not the best way to start the first overseas travel. I was traveling lighter than I had ever traveled. The Best thing about these days was - Murphy's law had always been on my side, consistently. He never left me alone. I shall post more about it later. Then Chinese luck smiled on me, it kicked out Work and Murphy both from my life. Work load has eased up, I got 3 consecutive holidays, the week I reached here. This is my third and hopefully the last week in China land before I head back.

I've been to a lot many places during these days, observed a lot stuff, acquired basic skill of having Rice and noodles with chopsticks (!!), taken some awesome pictures. A good habit of scribbling unusual stuff I experience, amounts to plenty of leaflets with me. Hope I get enough energy/motivation to put those scribble into LJ entries.

What one would on a rather long weekend and when most of friends are out of the town ? Get up early - take out bike for a real long rider. Reach to the place you like most. Seat on the rocks, under the serene sky, enjoy the sunrise in far horizon and capture vivid cloud colors in DSLR while breathing pure Oxygen. All these while feed ears with your favorite music. Guitar tickles my neuron than any other musical instruments. I got fairly good collection of awesome guitar songs. twas *the* refreshing experience. Must do it again.

It 4 and i'm sleepless after the rest of few hours!! Watching August Rush music videos - It's Music everywhere.

When feeling lazy to put in a passage, write a poem !!

Everyday I see as life goes by
I wanna chase my dream
I wanna catch my dream

My mind bound by past,
full of doubts,
Don't know why I feel this way
Why I see past in the future
Why my hopes looks for explanations

I wanna break free trapping chains
cause I wanna chase my dream
cause I wanna catch my dream

Now every time I look in mirror
future looks clearer
Heart says its now or never
Suddenly past is gone forever.

I'm chasing an unreachable dream
like chasing water in desert
But I'm determined more than ever

I'm chasing
cause I desire
cause Its real
cause I wanna be alive
cause It'll complete me.

Jaunty Jackalope is on its way.

A simple question by a friends on Friday night, and it  determined what I would  upto on weekend.  My roomie's friend had dropped in from Pune, got the signal of my WiFi network, proudly broadcasting its SSID, OldTrafford. He requested for the access. And I was baffled for sometime, as It  had been months, key was referred. Not that I was hesitant, but I could not recall that tricky hex key, so I had go thro' some older documents to share.   It reminded me, of very well known fact that, WEP is vulnerable and can easily be cracked.   An article published in Linux-For-You  (Jan 09), was the last thing i could recall, which explained about the tools to stimulate the attack.  So before I re-configure the router to more secure algorithm, I though of hacking my own wireless network. Nuts .

My work requires me to use  Wireshark sniffer regularly, but all these time I had been capturing LAN traffic.  But when it comes to wlan sniffing  a certain set of tools and support from driver is needed. Most of the time stock driver needs to be patched for sniffing and particularly for packet injections.  Once the driver is patched, a right  sniffer is required to get started.  Air-crack is the first choice among hackrs.  If one does not want to go thro'  fun of  finding the right driver patch and then compiling it,  he can go for Backtrack Linux distribution.  BackTrack is the most widely used  Linux live distribution, focused on network penetration testing.  Its readily available with patched driver and  Air-crack installed.  So just boot from the disk and start hacking.

Since I'm running Ubuntu 8.10 on my Lenovo, I tried to patch my wlan drivers. The getting started section of Air-crack explains everything, you dont need to wander around anywhere for more info. The first step was to determine the chipset,  there could be plenty of way to get it done, but the easiest  way could be "lspci --vv" utility, which provides detailed info.   My Centrino a/b/g chipset was using driver:- iwlan3945.  Once chipset and drivers were identified,  select the right patch from the list. Alas, here I ended up downloading a different version of patch.  Build started throwing a lot compilation errors.  And I conscientiously started fixing all errors one by one.  After an hour or so I got it compiled successfully, never knowing that I'm using the wrong patch version.  So when I did modprobe,  I *realized* that I just screwed up my native driver. So forget about the sniffing but my wireless interface wont come up.  Voila, I learnt another way of  how  it does not work, a la  Thomas Edison style.

I switched to plan B,as it often happens in Hollywood movies, ownloaded Backtrack,  burn it on the CD.  Setup my  Toshiba lappie to download heavily over Wi-Fi interface. Lenovo was running AIr-crack on BackTrack.  After capturing around 45000 packets, I could actually cracked the encryption key. Ahh,  so much, for cracking my own  router key :).  Crazy me.

Then it was time to fix my Ubuntu drivers.  Its up and running fine, so i'll try again to patch this driver.

Observation: 
 1)  The reason most  ppl use 64 bit WEP at home is,  it is the first security choice presented to users by router configuration tools,
 2)  Probably the installation guy does not  know any other means router configuration for secure access. 
 3)  Even after knowing, user is least concern about it.

You may wish to switch to 128 /256 bit encryption, even this version of keys are also breakable, it just takes longer to break in. Sometimes you dont even need any sniffer, cause most of the people uses  their mobile number as the key. If you fall in this category, I immediately suggest  you to change your key.  People serious about beating your router can easily get your mobile number. The better thing would be switching to more secure algorithms like WPA.

WEP loopholes are well known for many years, I *felt*  it now.

Give it a listen.  It belongs to  the category : *Song-I-Cannot-Get-Out-Of-My-Head*. Brilliantly composed  by Rehman,giving  touch of Rap to a folk song. Straight off, the lyrics caught my attention . While most of  the words are easy to comprehend for the person with decent understanding of Hindi, the analogy of Sasuraal to Genda Phool ( Marigold) took some time to agnize.  I belive, this is what  lyricist is trying to convey :-   A marigold flower looks colorful , attractive with  plenty of palattes, but it does not have smell. Simlarly  in-law's place  brings a number of new relations to the newly wed bride, but they  lack warmth and love, the very essential element of any relationship.

Guys, what do you think ?

 

( Here is the lyrcis )

 

"Where does it come from? This quest... this need to solve life's mysteries for the simplest of questions can never be answered. Why are we here? What is the soul? Why do we dream? Perhaps we would be better off not looking at all. Not delving, not yearning. That's not human nature, not the human heart. That is not why we are here." - Heroes.

Its been long time since I came here. At least, till last year I had been scribbling in a lot many private entries. Then came 2009, let  alone private updates, I did not even logged in for months. Work and personal life had been too demanding during in past months. A lot many things have gone haywire.  I missed some soccer matches this season (unforgivable sin) ,  wall climbing sessions and Nike training run.  Ohh I have not used my Nikon D80 either for quite a long time.  Though I'm quite relaxed -n- satisfied with marathon task that's been accomplished in time. Its *Hard-work* has paid off.  Now it's time to get back to normalcy.  

I'm all exited as F1 starts in a week's time. Looking forward to see ferrari putting up some good show. A lot of recent developments gonna make it interesting and controversial. FIA please dont kill sports out of the game. Godspeed.

I'm on twitter. A recent post by premkudva is amusing.  Had a great hacking  weekend but goofed a bit in the end. Gotta fix it.

Recently started watching Heroes, the title of this post inspired from the first episode of this awesome TV serial. It's time to start all over again this LJ affair.

"This quest... this need to solve life's mysteries. In the end what does it matter when the human heart can only find meaning in the smallest of moments? They're here... among us... in the shadows, in the light, everywhere. Do they even know yet?"

I had been waiting for this to arrive for an eternity.  It finally has arrived.  I'm happy, a bit exited and completely satisfied. At times I feel, i spent too much of money, but what is the hobby and more importantly life is, if I don't indulge in what I like.

Yes I'm an extremist. I really care for things I like most.

Everytime I'm closing-in to accomplish my long desired aspiration, it conks out in the penultimate stage. Alas, It flunks away due to the circumstances beyond my control. At times its frustrating, disappointing. Since nothing I can do about it, I got to hang in there with patience of saint and wait for things to fall in place.

Last week, I began to looking for my college notes, which i prepared over period of months during MS programme. It was LMR (last moment revision) for crucial interviews. As luck had it, I required to use it only once. This time i'm again at it. No i'm not looking for change, but the role has changed. Now I'm on the other side of table. Less than two years into the job, and things has changed, a lot.

Here at Infineon, BLR, we're working on VoIP technologies, Router / ADSL packages. We're looking for fresher / 1 yr experienced candidates, having good C programming skills, familar with Linux and fair amount of OS knoweldge. Knowledge of network programming would be an added advantage. If you like to be part of the team , fire your resume at profiles.sep2008@gmail.com

It's everywhere, even in newspaers,  Chrome is out. My ethusiatsic hacker soul urged me to try new browser.  At first my reaction was,  Would it be just another browser, or a browser loaded with lot of  google features ? And as always Google has answers!! Here's breif overview of motivation behind coming up new broswer.  All hackers out there read thier desing architecture here, idea of treating each tab as process, memory leak issues, the V8 engine, webkit and much more.

I'm still waiting for Chrome release. Cause when I visited the download page, i got following messge.
"Google Chrome for Linux is in development and a team of engineers is working hard to bring it to you as soon as possible."  So that's no doghnut for me.


I might get involved.

Wishing deanna_tyler , an uber - die-hard  ManUtd fan I've ever known, a very very happy birthday.

( Here's a B'day cake for u )

I don't know how many of you suffer from same decease as I do. I've calvinomyosis.  One of the major symptom is, Patient would have significantly higher energy level on weekend than on weekdays. It may sound very normal, but believe me , it's different.

Running
I'm into running.  On normal days, my mind refuses to bulge my-physical-self till 7.30- 8.00 AM. On weekend I would promptly get up by 5 AM to attend my Nike Run training.

The fracture on my right wrist on the very first day of this year hampered my Gym routine. Since then I had nice lazy life of almost three months. Once cast was removed, I was advised not to lift weights for couple of months. I resumed  Gyming , concentrating only on stamina building. So I started running,  running for 2 km, then 3 and in few weeks I started running almost 5km every alternate day.  Later, I took it easy on running, indulging not so rigorously.

As fate would  have it,  my favorite sportswear brand Nike started "Nike Run Club"  in the city. As part of their agenda to promote their products and to create fitness awareness, they organize training run on every Saturday 6 o'clk  at Cubbon Park.  It starts with all kind of stretching and warm up  exercises necessary for long running, followed by run on circuit of 2.5km in the park. I run a lap , clocking time of 13min. So that's 2.5km in 13mins.  Not bad, but I'm aiming to be faster and then I would aim for 2 laps.

What motivates me to RUN?.  I always like to challenge myself,  this what keeps me going.  My  passion for football is also another reason I run. I could easily be the worst footballer, but what I admire most about footballers is their ability to run for hours.

Biking
I'm into biking also. Occasionally I sneak out for long /short (relative term) ride.  Last Saturday, around 4.30 we started for breakfast ride. We rode 80Km+ , on B'lore - Mysore express way.   There's nothing more soothing than riding lovely favorite bike on chilling -drizzling early morning after 5 hectic weekdays. The world was asleep when we're cruising into serenity of wide  expressways. We had some nice Idly -Vadas accompanied by hot cup of coffee. Then it was time to head back to Bangalore.  What was conceived as a breakfast ride, which essentially means to have breakfast and comeback -:),  turned into a picnic,  cause it was too early to return!!

We headed for Shiva Samudram,  Cauvery River waterfalls, 50 km from the place where we're having breakfast.  The road to this place is discouraging, a patch of 15km is pathetic. You man need lot of passions, good breaks and shock absorber to negotiate thro' it.  But once we reached there,this is what we saw,

I wish i had better camera to capture the moment. The more pics are at  my flickr stream.  Breathed much needed fresh Oxygen, very rare to get in city space. Headed back to home promising myself  I'll be  for another ride very soon.  In an all, I rode more than 300km in 7 hours.  Riders on the storm , that is what I was playing on my mind.

Weather is really great here, perfect for bike rides. In fact b'lore can boast of it's  weather. Of all the places I've been, I feel bangalore has got the most pleasant weather. Pune has equally good climate.  Last month I been to Chennai and Pondi, It was nightmare.

I've Kick-ass weekends.

India wins First Gold Medal.

Abhinav Bindra clinches the first place in 10m  rifle shooting.  Here is *teh* result .
Read the complete story here.



It's GOLD. It's GOLD for India.


Hats off to you.
 

You deserve the Heroic welcome.

Update: This guy is a CEO of  Abhinav Futuristics. Hmm, A Gold medal  winner and CEO too, this is very rare combination.   He blogs too!!

May 13, 2008: Seven blasts tear through crowed markets places in the Pink City, leave 68 dead and more then 150 injured

An hour later,

 

Is it ok to lie to  Friend/GF/anybody so that you can catch your favorite football match / formula 1 race at home, rather than hanging  out  with them? 

Who cares ?

I'm loving it.

The stage is all set for grand finale  Germany vs Spain. Spain would be favorite for this title race.  Here I jot down  EURO 2008 journey so far.

Spain - Russia,  Group D's first league match is by far the best league match. The pace of both team impressed me. The victory of turkey from the jaw of defeat in league match against Czech would remain as one the most dramatic come back in history of EURO cup. Turkey managed to achieve same feat  again against one the most fav team, Croatia in quarters.  Croatia won all of their league matches, they were looking quite a strong team, but could not hold it in the final moments,  and allowed  Turkey to score equalizer in dying moments and then loosing into the penalties. Croatians crying on field was disturbing sight.

The Netherlands played like  Champions in league matches, they were clearly looking the most favorite title contenders, but  Russian aborted  Dutch demolition in quarters. This was another major upset. It's hard to see a team like that, exiting at such early stage. I guess it was just one bad day for the Dutch, or may be an extra-ordinary day for the Russians. The Russians were up against the best team of the tournament, and they delivered better than the best. No doubt, Guss Hiddinik is proud man. Hats off this guy, he deserves standing ovation. A beautiful mind of football.  Russia could not continue their magical performance in semis but they 'velot of positive things to take home. Of course who can forget the rising of the start Andrei Arshavin. Boy, you've great future ahead waiting for you!! Play on.

I would not want to dig more into German journey, yeah they stumbled to qualify in quaters, then a win over  better looking team, Portugal. Ballack produced some inspiring stuff.  In the fist semifinal, Germany vs Turkey, Turkey's  rather inexperienced team, defied all expectations to produce, what I would term as  an outstanding performance.  When it was looking certain that game is headed for extra time,  Philipp Lahm's last-minute  strike booked EURO cup final berth for Germany.  And Turkey's campaign ended in the style it started, it was payback time for them, they  managed to win in dying moments twice in the tournament, and they lost in similar fashion.  Turkey  thank you very much for proving again and again that  Game is not over until final whistle blows!!

Glad to see, Italy at loosing side. The fourth quarter, Italy-Spain was anything but interesting, with all 11 Italian players playing defensive game.  Italians were somehow convinced that they're master of Penalties with Buffon on their side and they played the game to take it to penalty stage. But it back fired as Spanish keeper Iker Casillas emerged as has hero by saving two penalty shots.

It's been quite some time since I logged into LJ, so lot  to catch up. My visit to  Kadkani was just perfect. I got much needed refreshing break after long time. The Resort is located amidst of  coffee plantation, place is so remote that you hardly get cellular connectivity. It felt like a total cut off from the outside world.  Weather was icing on the cake - rainy and cloudy, no sing of sun, just exactly what like, it breathes life into me.

Rowing into river was the best part. The banks were covered with  dens trees. Though it was not forest  exactly.  Sailed our raft for an hour or so into serenity of nature and spotted few  Blue Shining Kingfisher. Have not been such quite place recently. On our way back, lifeguard advised us to jump into the river. I'm an average swimmer, but I swear I would never really try anything stupid in river. But with life jacked tightly tied and assurance from  lifegurad,  I jumped in. At places, this rivers 20 feet deep.  Floating on back with arms wide stretched into drizzle was soothing. Then swam back to starting point.   Most of the time spent in swimming pool and then Golfing.  River crossing with hanging on the the rope was challenging.

Most of the time spent in swimming and attended two sessions of Golf. Got some good tips from coach.  I was at ease in putting than driving the ball.