Friday, January 25, 2008

Tippoo Sultaun: A tale of mysore wars

Daria Daulat Bagh(Sea of Wealth), the place craved for attention at first sight and thus i started the journey backwards by turning the pages of history.Daria Daulat Bagh is the leisure palace of Tipu Sultan in seringapatnam.The silhoutte of the ruined fort of seringapatnam has a story which not many have penned with authenticity.

Tippoo Sultaun : A Tale of Mysore Wars by Meadows Taylor, unearthed some of the untold events in history.The book is written from the perspective of two persons Kasim Ali alias Meer Sahib and Herbert Compton.The former being a soldier among Tipu's Army who raised in rank and later jumped to the British side.The latter is a British soldier who was a POW and released after the storming of seringapatnam.

This Book is more a Love story between Kasim and Ameena & Herbert and Amy than anything about Tipu.The Book written way back in 1800's is simply marvellous in the way it was written.But it leaves a black shadow on the character of Tipo portrayed as an Tyrant and arrogant which we have not heard in India.Perhaps this could be a ploy by the colonial masters to reduce the majesty of Tipu or could they be right?. Who knows what was true!!! only the ruins of seringapatnam could tell.

The events are woven around the citiy of Coimbatoor, R.Bhowanee, R.Barauti, Seringam, Trittinopoly, Balapoor, Nundidoorg, Bangalore, Mysore,etc. The author had made reference to pillaging the temple of srirangam in 1798 by Tipu's army.I dont think this ever happened, because being a resident of trichy i have never heard of any story like this.But a rumour remains here that a tunnel between trichy rockfort and seringapatnam exists and Tipu had been in trichy for some time.Tipu could have been here to defeat the british but not to plunder is what i believe.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

go Wi-Fi easily!!!


Recently i Wi-Fi'ed my house by running Linksys WRT54G Broadband Router. We got Airtel broadband 384 kbps connection along with a Beetel BX220 Modem. Though the net is filled up with a lot of tutorials on configuring the router, a complete start to end procedure couldn't be found. hence i thought of taking a ride along this path.

The Beetel BX220 is a modem cum router.Now you can access this modem at 192.168.1.1 When you attach the Linksys router it would also take up the same IP. So there are two work-around.one is by bridging the modem or to change the IP in the Linksys router.To bridge the modem connect to it and disable the DHCP server in it and change from PPPoE to Bridging.By this the modem would act just like an relay nothing more.

Now connect the cables in the following way.from phone to modem and from modem to router.now connect the computer to the router.The router could be reached at 192.168.1.1 The configurations out there are quite simple (refer to the userguide of the router for more info) Since the modem is now no more than a dump relay the router has to dial-up and other stuffs .Hence select the PPPoE by providing the username and password provided by your ISP.Enable DHCP server in the router.


4 points are to be addressed here to ensure security.

1. Change the password of the Router.

2. setup a Security pass key .Though WEP is widely used, going for WPA is recommend as it is tough nut to crack than WEP.

3. Disable SSID broadcast.By doing so your Router connection name wont be seen at all.Only the people who know the SSID can connect to the Wi-Fi.The crackers now have another field to crack apart from the Key.

4. Enable MAC Filter.By doing so you can allow only the systems with the MAC address you have enlisted to connect the Wi-Fi.

By now you would be up and running Wi-Fi

Friday, January 04, 2008

The Motorcycle Diaries

Looks like i have hit upon a film whose lines are the same as i have in mind for quite a long time.Spare yourself from the routine life filled with monotonous happenings and start exploring life the way your heart yearns for."Diarios de motocicleta" is a true story of Che Gueveara and his friend who embarked on a 12000+ Kms across the whole of south America on their "la Poderosa(The powerful)"a Norton 500 motorbike from their hometown of Bueunos Aires, Argentina

The film is awesome in spanish and the scenary behind is breath-taking, especially when the path unfolds through chile,peru where the incas once lived unyielded.Machu picchu is also shown during his travels.Atlast both of them end up in Venezuela from where Ernest takes flight to his hometown whereas his friend lives by practicing in a hospital in venezuela.

The friends recounts with awe as how they managed to come out of many trying times during the journey which looked bleek with no escape route and always showed the path to end of life.Highly recommended film during your hearts low and it would ebb you out and bet that it would kick alive the desire to start up a motorcycle journey on your own.My Verdict: Ultimate!!!!

The Devil's Alternative

This book by Frederick Forsyth would be loved by people who like plots involving political background strewn with scandals and spies.The novel is neatly brought out from the three countries perspective(USA,Russia,Britan)With the land on either side filled up with spies deep inside the government and the satellites accessing each and every move of the soviets, the Russians have to come up to the Table for talks on reducing arms if they need the help from America for its forthcoming famine due to crop failure.The side track which emulsifies into the main part near the middle is the rising of the Ukrainians for freedom.When the Dublin treaty was about to be signed, a new twist awaits the readers and the American president faces two options both of them would lead to death of men and the situation is called the devil's alternative.Now the British spy Adam Munro comes to the forefront and clears the things out.


But The story doesn't deserve a so simple and predictive end.As already said this would entertain readers who love treading on the two 'isms' (capitalism & communalism)on a large scale not a person whose heart lies in legendary heros in historical backgrounds.After crossing Tolkien's Rowling's & Dan Brown's i am now sampling uncommon authors with one of their works, so that i could settle in for an author's full collection once i like his/her plot and narration

Sampling includes,

Stephan King's Shawshank Redemption(Nice one to read,Film - IMDB rating 9.2)
Michael Crichton's Timeline(starting looks cool,yet to cross 460 pages)

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Jab We Met

i dont have the habit of watching Hindi movies unless i get good reviews from my peers.This time my sister pursued me to watch "Jab We Met". The narration or the screenplay is the heart-throbe of the film.The incidents are neatly portrayed from the first scene which glued me to the seat till the end .Though The story is somewhat like minnalae or its hindi equivalent "Rahena hai teri dil mein" it is different in many aspects. especially the chemistry between Shahid kapoor and kareena kapoor has done the trick added to that is the childish pranks of the kareena who plays the part of a sikhni from Bhatinda.How could they break off in real life after a film like this wonders me.After watching many films in a row without logic and reason this film strikes a better note in this regard to earn itself a high rating.Not a film to be missed

Linux Internal Training

i attended a linux Internal Architecture training for a week in a training center @ 80 feet road, indira nagar.it was a informative session conducted by Venkataraman RadhaKrishnan.he covered mainly the following topics,

Linux Kernal Intro
Development Environment
Process Management
Kernel Compilation
Kernel Programming - core API's
Character Device driver with eg
Memory Management
PCI Programming Intro
USB Programming Intro

The Examples taken to illustrate helped to understand better.In Short It was a full semester OS subject neatly and clearly taken in a duration of one week.