December 30, 2010

Hi guys! After a harsh couple of days, I decided to come back here again; to my own piece of web space. In the recent days, I got myself completely entangled due to an abrupt set of technical difficulties pertaining to my computer. Its doing a Sicily on me with its constant and intermittent disruptions about what not.

P.S. Let the grammar be. Its not inadvertent.

Anyway, regarding my computer, don't even get me started there. There I was on the night of December 29th, minding my own business, writing some super cool C++ programs, eating chocolate cookies and shaking my feet from time to time; but that was not to be. By the way, all the aforesaid in Windows 7 (except the cookie eating part and one more). It was then that my programs won't get build and obviously won't run, all that due to Signor 'ERROR 0*80070571'. Apparently, either my disk were unreadable and corrupted, or a raccoon got inside my CPU cabinet, successfully identified and scratched the clusters belonging to my Windows 7 root volume. As the chances of later were more likely (I'm being sarcastic), I decided to give up a good night of sleep and venture on to save my volume from further mishappenings. I never had a penchant for unforseen ramifications, so I did a little here, a little there and at 6 p.m. IST today, I got the better of previously alluded Signor.

<-Me

Signor 0*80070571->

My Windows 7 is ruuning (almost) perfectly, yet again beside the others.

Before I conclude, I would like to state that I'm open to presents if anyone is planning to gift me a 4 GB DDR2 RAM. Its New Year's, remember!



December 29, 2010

Its 4 o' clock in the morning, just the time when my powers of thinking culminate, and I'm struck by the idea to etch something on my blogpage. I haven't been writing lately; now I am. There's too much going on in my mind right now. As one of my handful of friends aptly put it a few days back, there's far too much in the offing. I kind of wished that came out of my mouth. Anyway, among those imminent, one is the forthcoming placement day. It's supposed to be CTS, and I can't believe that someone has put up a RSVP on facebook for that. They intend to make you nervous in case you are thinking you're strong enough not to be sidelined by trepidation. I know it is indeed a great deal, you just don't need to make a big deal out of the great deal. It reminds me that while watching the Manchester United v Birmingham city match tonight, I came up with a proverb. In most likeliness, it was Jon Champion who elicited Birmingham city as the team 'in need' during the match, and that led me to the following- "A team in need is in need indeed". I know its great, apt and cheeky. The first one is me, the last two is as per the words of another one of my handful of friends. Another thing that bothers me is that its been 10 years since I laid my hands on my first computer, yet to the present day I cannot type from the keyboard for a reasonable duration without looking at it. I loved it during my very early days when I saw this guy at a local cafe type relentlessly without even a peek. Then there's J2ME left to be mastered. Huh! The impending revision of C++ and Java. Once again, too much in the offing.

I learnt a nice word today- 'Ostensibly'; by the way, the day wasn't bad at all except for the thinking. I'll come back to that later. I was up by 10.30, I showered, blah'd, blah'd some more and then I started with STAR WARS- The Jedi Academy Trilogy Part 1. I read a 100 pages of the same before moving on and watching 'The Godfather 2' by Mario Puzo and I loved Al Pacino; seriously, a memorable performance indeed; and by corollary of my earlier proverb, to put to rest this excruciatingly exasperating sentence, "A  memorable performance in need is a memorable performance indeed. 

Finally, I had a time watching the football fixture I alluded to earlier and now I'm blogging,

Now I'm not.

Availing SUCK minimize effect in Mac OS X

There are 3 minimize effects in Mac OS X, out of which 2 are given as a standard choice. They are:

1. Scale effect (default), and

2. Genie effect

The third effect is hidden and can be enabled by means of a terminal command.

Without further ado, here it is:

"defaults write com.apple.dock mineffect suck" [Enter]

Try it out by double clicking on the title bar of any window or by clicking on the minimize button. The suck effect is one of the many ways to add a hint of customization to one's Macintosh.

Mac OS X Leopard first login

Mac OS X Leopard X86 setup video

Installation of Mac OS X Leopard on a X86 based PC (featuring iATKOS 1.0 R2 installer)

Requisites:

1. A X86  based PC with sound specs (preferably atleast a GB of memory)

2. iATKOS 1.0 R2 installation DVD

3. A minimum of 10 GB hard disk space to spare

4. Processor: Intel Core 2 duo upwards

5. Windows 7 / Vista

6. Acronis Disk Director suite

7. Acronis bootable disk

8. Your lucky day (or night)

Deliberation:

1. Before venturing into anything, one would be required of to make an appropriately sized HFS parition on which OSX Leopard is to be installed.

2. Open Acronis Disk Director suite, pick the drive from which you intend to scrap the needed space, right click on the same, click RESIZE and let the dialog box appear.

3. Resize the disk size using the slider until one has the free space one was hoping for. OKay it. The freed space should appear as UNALLOCATED. If I were you, I'd commit now.

4. Boot into Windows installation and open Command Prompt { Start < All Program < Accessories < Command prompt } With Administrative Privillage and run following commands.

5. In command prompt type DISKPART and press enter . Here we are using DISKPART for making HFS compatible Partition.

Command Preface

DISKPART> list disk // This will show you a list of selectable disks

DISKPART> select disk n

/*[where n = the disk number]

This will specify which disk to create a new partition on.*/

DISKPART> create partition primary size=n id=af

/*[where n = the size in MB of the partition, For 20 gb space n will be 20000 ]

[where af = hfs+ compatible]

Will proceed to create a bootable primary partition

for the Mac*/

DISKPART> list partition /* This command will show you the partitions on your selected disk */

DISKPART> select partition n

/*[where n = the newly created OSX partition]

This will specify the partition*/

DISKPART> active  /* This will make your OS X partition the first-boot active partition */

DISKPART> Exit //Exit from DiskPart………..

6. In Windows Vista you must disable User Account Control [UAC].

7. Put your DVD in rom and restart your computer with the DVD in Drive, now you should see Darwin load screen.

8. As the countdown begins, press any key other than F8, or for that matter, exempting any function keys.

9. If everything goes fine after 15-30 minutes, installation screen appears. Hold your breath, we are not quit yet.

10. On the top, a menu bar appears click Utilities >> Disk Utility.

11. Here select the destination drive where you want to install MAC OS X.

12. Now click on ERASE on right hand side and under the format option select ” MAC OS X Journaled (Extended) ” and click Erase. Now the disk will be erased and mounted. Once this is done, you are very near to your destination.

13. Now close the disk utility and click on the partition which you created in the previous step.

14. One has arrived at the most important step of the way, the CUSTOMIZE option. Click on that and a dialog with myriad options appear. Choose wisely. Besides the ‘picked by default’ iATKOS loader, I’d suggest to pick the STOCK KERNEL only, which is the one just after DARWIN X86 BOOTLOADER and the former with three sub-options. Once you’ve picked as I told, the three sub-options shall be picked too. Let that be and click on Okay.

Note: For most of the INTEL based systems Vanilla Kernel works very smoothly & for AMD system try Voodoo kernel. It is also recommended to remove all the extra unnecessary languages as they take up about 2 gigs.

15. Now your disk will be checked for consistency; that set and done, installation begins. It will take 30-45 minutes, depending on one’s hardware.
This may take a while in case of non-optimal processors; ergo I would suggest that you get yourself a haircut or a quick nap in the time. I personally, chose to pet my neighbor’s dog.

16. Once the installation finishes, reboot with the DVD in the drive. Press F8 at Darwin Boot Loader and type –s (indicative of single user mode) and press enter.

Execute the following commands :

a. fdisk –e /dev/rdisk0 [Enter]
b. print [Enter]
The previous command will list the drives on your computer’s disk, with an asterisk to the  left of only one of those. Note the one which is marked with a “*”.
c. flag n [Enter] //(where n= marked drive number)
d. update [Enter]
e. write [Enter]
f. quit [Enter]
g. reboot [Enter]

17. Now before the PC restarts remove the DVD. At this point you should be able to boot into 7 normally.

Now you have two options, either boot with Darwin Bootloader or use Windows 7 bootloader.

18. I picked the latter, therefore we’ll be tackling to let one boot through Windows 7 bootloader.

19. Restart your computer with ACRONIS bootable disk in your drive.

20. Wait for ACRONIS DISK DIRECTOR to show itself.

21. Set the drive with Microsoft Windows 7 installed on it as ACTIVE.

22. COMMIT and restart with WINDOWS 7 DVD in your computer’s drive. One is required to repair their windows using the dvd at hand (or rather in the drive).

23. Once repaired, the computer is restarted without the 7 dvd inside.

24. At this point, you should be able to see the normal WINDOWS boot screen, without an option to boot into MAC OSX Leopard.

25. Log into 7, switch on the internet and download EasyBCD 2.0 (whichever the latest version).

26. Open it once installed, click on ADD NEW ENTRY, pick the MAC tab, supply the name, pick MBR as mode, and click on ADD ENTRY. With all this done, close it and restart your PC.

27. The updated OS selection screen should display an option by your given name to boot into MAC OSX Leopard.

28. Voila! The caprice of fate and the valor of thee has fetched you a running MAC OSX Leopard. Enjoy it; though remember, it has all been made possible due to one's friendly neighborhood MICROSOFT WINDOWS 7 ULTIMATE and of course, yours truly.

29. I may guide you on how to update yours to MAC OSX 10.5.8 and furthermore, installing appropriate graphics card and Ethernet drivers, but I would leave that to some other time.

30. Adios muchacha!

The worldly things that define me...

In course of time, there are certain things that have come to the foreground in defining who I am; so much so that I'd consider them as the worldly things that define my personality and character. I have a very strong inclination towards J.R.R.Tolkien's legendary tale, THE LORD OF THE RINGS and its prequel, THE HOBBIT. I intend to buy the original text pretty soon; henceforth you'll get to know when I do. I have seen the movie based on it a great number of times, and everytime I've had the same fervour, if not more.

Moving on, music  for me is defined by the songs of heavy metal band DREAM THEATER, the far greater LED ZEPPELIN, also GNR and U2 (many others implicit). Among my favourite songs would be 'ONE LAST TIME' by Dream Theater and 'STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN' by Led Zeppelin.

A mention of my penchants would be far too incomplete without FUTBOL CLUB BARCELONA. I never miss their fixtures and am very fond of people who have the same love for them as I do. The guys that have got me into football would have to be LIONEL MESSI, XAVI HERNANDEZ, GERRARD PIQUE, and CARLES PUYOL among many others (mostly from ESPANA). Its not a pickle to guess that SPAIN is the team for me. According to me, FCB and ESPANA have epitomized the passing style which is no less than ART IN MOTION. I can go on and on, but I surmise I've made my point.

Now, over to the intellectual realm, and by that I intend to allude to my two favorite books, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austen and THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D.Salinger. The former being an all-time classic and the latter is a perfect representation of my 'piece of mind'. It goes without saying that I'm yearning to read the epic by Tolkien as soon as I may get the opportunity to lay my hands on it.

Also, I cannot help but mention that Jean Paul Levesque aka TRIPLE H is my all time highest-rated wrestler and one of the most impressive personalities, atleast as far as I'm considered.

Last and least (just for the pun of it), I have a special something (as in a soft corner) for technology. The company I look up to is APPLE, I yearn to hopefully possess a 27" iMAC someday very soon. Man! that sure would be a heck of a gift if you decide to give me one. Anyway, as slim is the likeliness of that happening, I quench my thirst by reading about it day and night. From what I've read, I wish and crave to work on and cherish MAC OS X SNOW LEOPARD. I can't stop thinking about it.

Let's see (what else...), the game I've enjoyed the most playing in recent times would be NEED FOR SPEED SHIFT; an all-time best game in perspective is going to be HALO: COMBAT EVOLVED (after all, 'tis the first edition that lays the foundation).

That is most of the stuff which I love and rejoice; I may write about all the things that repulse and vex me, then again, I can just say cya ('til I come up with a newer and fresher post).

The Coterie, Dreamer and ramifications

(The best I've heard, the best I'll manage to hear)

Once more was the occasion when he dreamt of

the land of Hector, the men who tamed the horses, the best of those;

the best of any. This was his land now. No more could he 

belong to any other realm. The kings were his benefactor, 

and he was their preferred subject.

His chest replete with pride and his mind with wisdom, 

that man set sail to defend his country, salvage the spotlight

which illuminated thousands of his brothers who stood by him in thick

and thin. He perpetually honoured the Gods, loved his woman

and stood apothegmatic on the reason and consequence of divinity.

Perhaps, his beauty lay in the fact that he too, was doomed.

Kept still on a frozen white night

The dew wet his lips 

And at that wonderous moment

It felt to him

as nothing short of a spark of light

The gift of game

that ressurected the man in him

A fearful man

with a heart turned to stone

Long long ago

The dew only fetched his senses aback

The tale never goes on

To dictate a change of heart

Or prophesize a restoration of peace

For he was a soldier

Much too used to wars

So much so

That peace confused him

and made him question his own reasoning