To the guys who send "pseudo - proposals" to me

An open letter to the guys who think they love me and send proposals on "Whatsapp" "Facebook"  "Hangouts" and other similar pseudo-places.

Wake up!  Stop imagining. Relationships aren't like dreams. They are true. They are real. They exist in our world.

Have you ever asked yourself the following questions.

1. Have I spoken to you in person? 
2. Did you get to know me, before you decided to send a proposal? 
3. Did we spend enough time getting to know each other?  
4. Have we gone out together on dates and do we have favourite hangout places ? 
5. At the least, did we have a couple of coffee chats together? 
6. Have we walked long paths together, without knowing where we were heading?  
7. Do you know of my likes and dislikes, though i haven't mentioned about them to you?
8. Can we complete each others sentences ? 
9. Can I predict your moves and actions ? 
10. Do you know how to turn my bad days and moodswings into a good one? 
11. Do we make up for each others shortcomings?
12. Do we acknowledge each others faults and have adjusted ourselves to deal with them? 
13. Do you know what ticks me and cracks me up ?
14. Do you know about the people in my life I care alot about? 
15. Have we met each others friends and do they seem like our immediate family? 
16. Have I introduced you to my family, or at least spoken to you about them ?
17. Do I know your deepest desires? 
18. Do you know my life aims and goals? 
19. Do you know what songs make me dance and what food I crave for ? 
20. Do you know the color of my eye? Have you taken to the time to understand my complicated being? 
21. Do you know of my adventures and were you by my side when i was at it ? 
22. Have we fought and patched up like it didnt happen at all ?
23. Did we talk about the "list"? Have we ticked off a few of them at least?
24. Are you aware of my adventurous and sporty side? 
25. Have we met without prior notice and made random plans together? 

Ask yourself, these questions, before you come to conclusions on your own. If Most of the answers are NO, don't waste your time. A word of advice to all the guys out there," Be a man, and express your emotions to a girl,  by looking her in the eyes. Tell her in person. Don't take to such pseudo-forums. They are the cowards choice. Be brave. Stand up for yourself and don't say the "L" word like wishing  "Good morning". It means more. Respect it. 

A walkthrough my days at IISc through these pictures.

SERC, IISc Bangalore - My workplace for the next few months

The hugging tree. I call it "Reverse Chipko movement"

The hugging tree - creating a natural gateway.

The quick climber. He was so pro at it.

Welcoming Modi outside the main gate.

The Flower show at IISc - Main building

Photographer capturing the flowers in minute detail.

The circle outside IISc Main Gate

The Sleeping tree. An Untold Story.

Random treks at the protected forest area inside.

HPC Lab Poster Presentation

IISc OpenDay 2015 with friends

Attending a talk by RBI Chief Dr Raghuram Rajan.

Talk by Xerox Research Director, Manish Gupta

Talk by Dr Charles Elkan, Lead of Machine Learning Division
@ Amazon, Seattle.

                                     

Yo, Bikers! 

Hack your way to learn.

"The best way to learn a new skill is to HACK - BREAK - FIX it. And fix it before you are in trouble"

These days i am busy learning and getting acquainted with new technologies and codes. I have been reading many white papers, research papers and hanging out at places like stackoverflow, stack exchange and other developer and community forums. Hanging out here is like walking into a party. There are days where you are greeted with many dazzling perfect solutions that work like a piece of cake, And then, there are the other days, the dry ones, when you are left alone to tackle the army of warnings and errors marching from your neatly maintained code.

When in this situation,

Do you feel isolated? helpless?
Do you know the solution, yet withdraw yourself?

As a newbie, one tends to be very curious and at the same time doubly cautious in working with codes and machines. I usually double check with the installation guide and read other peoples experiences with the same software/errors/solutions before i get my hands to fire the commands. It is quite a risk. I know. I have been there, Kid.

But, is it worth the risk? Is it worth breaking?

Well, what is life without risk. Jokes apart. My answer is yes.

Become Rajinikanth, take the risk. But do it with precaution. Before breaking, make sure you can reverse the effects, if it goes wrong. Keep a copy of the original files. Keep a log of our actions. Use scripts if your making an installation. Ask for expert advice from your colleagues and seniors. Do a safe trial. Make sure no one else is affected. Be cautious. But, break.

Cos only when you break and fix can you learn.

Hack-break-fix-learn is the mantra.

Happy Learning!

How to add a native user to the Xeon Phi Co-processor ?

In this post I will be discussing on how to add a new user to the Xeon Phi Co-processor. While using the offload programming model of the Xeon Phi co-processor system, a new user account is not essential for running programs. Offloaded programming model uses a default user called as micuser to execute the programs on the Xeon Phi. But, while running native programs, a programmer might have to get a new user account to do so, inorder to login/ ssh into the co-processor itself.

The  system administration guide by Intel  for Xeon Phi states that, "Users will automatically be added to the /etc/passwd file for the coprocessor if they have an entry in the host’s /etc/passwd file, the user authentication method is set to local and their user id falls in the range specified in the /etc/sysconfig/mic/default.conf file.
(See “User Access” in Intel® Manycore Platform Software Stack (Intel® MPSS) Boot Configuration Guide.)
At the same time, a home directory will be created for them in the disk image used to make the co-processor’s RAM file system"

However, in my case it was not so. And i had to try the other methods suggested.

Since the first method didnot work, i tried the second suggestion which says users can also be added to the co-processor’s /etc/passwd file using the micctrl --useradd command.

micctrl --useradd=<username> --uid=<uid> --gid=<gid> [--home=<dir>] [--comment=<string>] [--app=<exec>] [--sshkeys=<keyloc] [MIC list]

The user name, user ID and group ID must be supplied. If home is not set to the home directory of the user, then /home/<name> will be used.  If a comment is not entered then 'User Account <name>' will be entered in this field.  The default start application is /bin/sh if no other is entered.  The 'sshkeys' parameter allows the specification of a directory to find the users ssh keys.

example :  micctrl --useradd=tejeswini  --uid=10058 --gid=10058 --home=path/to/home/dir/ mic0

Note: The gid and uid can be obtained by typing "id" on the terminal. 

You ought to reboot the system by typing

service mpss stop 
micctrl --reboot mic0
service mpss start

however it didn't allow me to ssh into xeon phi after this. I, also tried micctrl --passwd=<username> mic0 to change the password and unfortunately, nothing changed.

The next method we tried was logging into xeon phi as root by

$ ssh root@mic0
password: *******
[root@<hostname>-mic0 /]# useradd tejeswini
New password : *******
Retype New password: *******
[root@<hostname>-mic0 /]# su - tejeswini
$~
[root@<hostname>-mic0 /]# exit
[tejeswini@<hostname>]$ ssh tejeswini@mic0
password for tejeswini@mic0 : *******
$~

This worked. And it was that simple!! I am still trying to figure out how to make the first two methods work. Do leave a comment if you  have any suggestions.

Breaking the fear!

I  was recently watching a Tedx Talk that discusses on how one can learn a new subject in less than a days time, well in 20 hours, he says. (Impressive isn't it?)

 One particular discussion caught my attention. The speaker emphasis that the most important aspect of learning something new is to first overcome the "fear of the unknown". I have often found myself in a situation wherein i fear and self-doubt before i get acquainted with a new skill. I bet, most of us have been in this position. Many of us get discouraged, while some of us manage to overcome the fear and move on to master the skill.


                                     


The trick is in the first 20 hours. Dedicate your time to the topic for the first 20 hours and you are good to master it in the coming days or weeks or even years, depending on what skill you wish to master. I tried this trick and it seems to be working! The fear of the unknown is what pulls us back. It is like a rock tied to your leg. Once you cut loose from the rock, you are free to run around and explore more. So guys, dont wait here. Book 20 hours on your calendar and get sailing.

 For those of you who wish to watch it, it is called  'The First 20 Hours: Mastering the Toughest Part of Learning Anything', by Josh Kaufman. I have attached the video below:

Happy Learning!

Use command line in windows 8/8.1 to create a wifi hotspot.

Hey Guys.

This post is dedicated to the girls in my hostel who asked me how to go about it. So while i was staying at the hostel i found this simple hack very useful to connect all my devices to the Internet, by creating a hotspot on my laptop. This article will save you from installing connectify and other unnecessary software  on your PC.

Steps to be followed:

1. Click windows button. Type cmd. Command Prompt will open up as a search result. Right Click on Command Prompt and select Run as administrator option.
2.  A dialog box asking permission to make changes to the computer appears. Click Yes.
3. To check if your computer supports hotspot feature or not type :
• netsh wlan show drivers 
4.  If you see Hosted Network Supported : Yes then your PC supports     hotspot and you can continue.
5. Now type 
• netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=wifiname key=typepasswordhere 
•  ssid is the name of your hotspot and key is the password for your hotspot
6. Click Enter.
7.  If you will get a message saying " The hosted network mode has been set to allow. The SSID of the  hosted network has been successfully changed. The user key passphrase of the hosted network has been successfully changed", you are good to go.
8. To turn on the hotspot anytime later, all you have to do is enter
• netsh wlan start hostednetwork
• you will get a message saying "The Hosted network started"

Thats how easy it is! 

How to Partition your Hard disk in Windows 8/8.1 ?

This post is dedicated to my cousin who asked me how to go about partitioning a hard drive for his newly bought laptop.

The prerequisites to partition a hard-disk is that you ought to be logged in as an administrator and have free space in your hard-disk.


Steps to be followed:

• Start button -> Control Panel -> System and Security ->Administrative Tools ->Computer Management
• On the left side of the window you will find Storage. Click on Disk Management under Storage. A new window will open up.
• Right click on a free unallocated-drive on your hard-disk and click new simple volume.
• Click Next.
• You can either select the default size or type the size of he volume you wish to create. It is in megabytes (MB) and not gigabytes(GB). 
• Click Next.
• A format partition dialog box appears. Click next if you wish to format with the default settings, else click on do not format option.
• Click Finish after reviewing your choices

Thats how simple it is. :)