Book Review: 20000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

Get your self ready to dive in to the ocean with Captain Nemo and his electrical submarine Nautilus. It is a wonderful science fiction novel by French author Jules Verne. The story was narrated to me by my dad when I was a child. Later I got a paperback of the book. It was awesome and at one point, I was saying everyone that one day I will become a marine engineer [that didn't happen ;-) ].

The book opens with widespread fear about a sea monster. Professor Aronnax and his companions take up the task to solve the mystery. But they are captured by the crew of an electrical submarine (which was mistaken for a monster) headed by captain Nemo. The story is packed with adventures under the sea. From south pole to Mannar gulf near Tamil Nadu, the travel covers wide variety of locations and events.

Electric submarine may sound so common and you may wonder why this is called a science fiction. But this book was released even before electric bulbs became common. Written in 1870, the book has references to lot of technical advances which were still under research or not yet invented back then.

 There are hints in the book that point that Captain Nemo may be an Indian. But his crew consists of men from many other nationalities, who all are against oppressive regimes all over the world. In this aspect, Jules Verne touches the colonial oppression and imperialistic occupation prevalent those days.

In today's context, we can match this to corporates conquering our life and trying to control every aspect of our life. So, it is still relevant and you will surely love it.

The book is in public domain as the copyright has expired. So usually it is available for lesser price. You can also read it in Wikisource website for free, but I prefer printed books so that I can collect them after reading. Moreover, you can read them laying down, sitting at dining table or during travel without much strain.

February 23rd 2014 - Pulse Polio Immunisation Campaign

India is proudly Polio free for three years now. But the battle has just begun. With neighbouring Pakistan and Afghanistan still registering Polio cases, it is our duty to fight against Polio as Indian citizens. So, if you or anyone in your circle have a child below 5 years, please take them to nearest Polio vaccination centre set-up by government.

Vaccination @ a railway station

Points to note:

When? February 23rd, 2014. It is a Sunday, and no silly excuses!

Where? Nearby railway stations, bus stands, airports, primary health centers, Government hospitals, Government Schools and other places like places of worship, libraries, shopping malls. Check your local administrative office for more information.

Who? Children below age 5.

How? Take them to the center. Tell the medical staff/doctor there about your baby's current health, age, previous vaccination date and other details you feel important in this regards. They will decide whether to give vaccine or not (in some rare cases, it may be advised against giving, such as a very high fever or taking any other medication) The vaccine is offered free of cost by Indian government. So make use of it.

Trivia:

Jonas Salk - Inventor of Polio Vaccine

When Jonas Salk (inventor of Polio vaccine) was asked in a televised interview who owned the patent to the vaccine, Salk replied: "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"

Jallikattu

Jallikattu:

First, let me make it clear that I don't support or oppose Jallikattu. My opinion on it is neutral. I don't watch it and I don't participate in it. But still, I have some opinions on the same because it is singled out and criticized for no good reasons.

"Jallikattu", for those who are not familiar, is a traditional Tamilian sport where bulls are fought by young men. This is much similar to the bull fights of Spain (only foreign imports are "great" for our people). It is conducted in days following to Pongal celebrations (harvest festival of Tamils). These type of tradtions exists in almost all cultures.

But in recent years, there are voices against Jallikattu, and I also support some of the opposing views. For example, drugging the bull to increase it ferociousness, conducting the competition without safety measures and thus resulting in injury of audience. But none of these reasons can be used to stop the event itself. We can just regulate the practice. A government representative can inspect the bulls and other safety measures taken and give approval for Jallikattu.

But the other reasons these people give are silly and sometimes outrageous. Below are some of the claims and my refutation to the same.

1. Bulls are hurt in the sport
My Response: How many other animals are injured and killed everyday for various reasons? As far as I know, many other animals are treated worse. Example from lovebirds in your backyard to elephants in temples. These bulls are cared and maintained in good conditions and they live a better life compared to other bulls. I have personally seen the special treatment they receive.

2. Bull is an endangered species
My Response: This is also a lie. And even if there is a grain of truth, then stopping Jallikattu will result in extinction of bulls. As tractors had replaced the plowing and cars had replaced bullock carts, the need for bulls are just to impregnate cows. Only some bulls used in Jallikattu and bullock cart races are the only remaining bulls apart from those farm bulls. How can stopping Jallikattu increase the number of bulls?

3. Bull is a wild animal
My Response: Bull is a domestic animal. Even wild animals like elephants, birds like peacock are kept in temples. None is opposing those things. But when it comes to bulls, they claim that bulls are wild animals. Does that mean we all are drinking milk from forest?

4. Jallikattu results in death/injuries
My Response: So is the F1, bike races, martial arts etc also results in deaths and injuries. Indian government spent billions in F1 race but deny Tamils to conduct Jallikattu. Why? Where those protests against F1 and other races? I don't support people dying. But we have to ban all such sports. We should not single out Tamils and common people while allowing rich corporate sports like F1.

5. It is very old sport, time to move ahead
My Response: I don't have any problem in this view. But this not only applies to this sport. Some games like running race and swimming are even older. Don't we have them in Olympics now?

So in my view, there is no need to ban Jallikattu. Regulating the sport is sufficient. But the calls to ban Jallikattu seems to be plain discrimination towards Tamils.

Lenovo S210T - Brightness Control Keys Under Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

!!!Update!!! Upgrading to 14.04 LTS needs a small change to make the brightness control work perfectly. Read the update section below.

With the default Ubuntu 12.04 installation brightness control keys won't work. To fix this follow the steps below:

1. Open terminal (press Win key and type "terminal" and choose terminal)

2. Type the below code (you may be prompted to enter password)

gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub

3. In the grub file, edit the following line

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

to

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_backlight=vendor"

4. Make sure you have not done any other change by mistake as it will mess up your booting. Save and close the file.

5. Then execute below command

sudo update-grub

6. Restart your PC

Brightness Control working after ACPI change in GRUB command line

For me this fix works well. My model is the one with CDC processor, 2GB RAM,  500GB HDD. The brightness keys work most of the times, but in some sporadic cases, it won't. It happens very rarely (may be once in 20 boots). There may be some problem with drivers or something. I will update if I find out why.(see update) For Unity 3D/Unity 2D, the keyboard brightness control works flawlessly. For LXDE, the keys won't work. But alternatively you can use the xbacklight command. Follow the below steps after doing above changes.

1. To install xbacklight

sudo apt-get install xbacklight

2. To decrease brightness

xbacklight -dec 5

3. and to increase brightness

xbacklight -inc 7

The numbers can be anything But be extra careful as it may fully reduce brightness if you give large numbers.

Update: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (April 26th 2014)

I recently updated my laptop with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, after which the brightness control stopped working permanently. But it just needed a small change to work. Here it is.

1. Edit black list file for modprobe

gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

2. Add the following lines to it

# Added to make brightness control work
blacklist ideapad_laptop

3. Reboot

That's it! Now brightness control works perfectly every times :)

Any other comments/feedbacks/improvements are welcome! Thanks for reading.

Site Suggestions for Techies

Here I will give few site suggestions for those who have interest in technology and computers. These are my personal suggestions as of now. The list may change/evolve with time :)

So I will give 2 tech news sites, 2 tech message feed sites, 2 tech forums, 2 tech fun stuff sites and 2 tech political sites.

1. Ars Technica

The site has a title that reminds us the famous Greek phrase "Ars longa, vita brevis" meaning, "Art is long, life is short". The site gives various RSS feeds covering various topics. The site has a good look and it is easy to get what you want.

URL: http://arstechnica.com/

2. Tech Crunch

This is one of the sites that fuels my tech quest on daily basis. Their way of covering things often resemble conventional media. But still, they live up to the name. New time-line like interface is cool.

URL: http://techcrunch.com/

3. Slashdot

This is one of the best tech blog feed site. The main attraction of the site is not the content but the comments by the user community. They are very informative with a touch of wit that is typical to nerds. The site's recent takeover by Dice Holdings and major change in interface (in beta mode) is receiving lot of negative criticism. Some people are moving to Soylent News, which is much like classic Slashdot. But still, Slashdot worth mention.

URL: http://slashdot.org/
For those who like classic version: http://soylentnews.org/

4. Hacker News

This is run by a geek from India, Mohit Kumar. The site reports news that others try to silence. The site's feed UI is very simple and easy to use. You can subscribe to its feed to get updates right on your browser too...

URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/

5. Stack Exchange

The largest democratic QA forum. It has lot of "sub-sites" which many of us assume separate sites. For example, Ask Ubuntu, Super User, Stack Overflow etc are from Stack Exchange family. So this is much like one point access for all your tech forums.

URL: http://stackexchange.com/

6. Linux Questions

This site specializes in addressing your questions about Linux. This site has a very active community that will help you readily with their technical expertise. They also send daily and weekly digests to your mail, so that you can get an outlook on what is going on.

URL: http://www.linuxquestions.org/

7. XKCD

The ultimate fun for all techies. If you show some of these cartoons to non-technical people, they will find them uninteresting at best and meaningless at worst. But for us, this site gives a relaxing fun filled pastime.

URL: http://xkcd.com/

8. The Joy of Tech

This is for those who don't like the monochromatic stick people of XKCD, The Joy of Tech provides colorful, life like cartoons but with good wit weaved together.

URL: http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/

9. Richard Stallman's Political Notes

This is a daily update feed of political articles compiled by The Father of Free Software Movement, Dr. Richard Stallman himself. Though the site have frequent links about American politics, those links are equally valid for anyone living under globalized/privatized market. The site lacks any fancy interface. But the stuff matters a lot more.

URL: http://stallman.org/archives/polnotes.html

10. Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

This site covers political activism and technological battles happening around the world. They are non-profit organization that fights legal battles against corporate monopolies and bending of law by the rich.

URL: https://www.eff.org/

Movie Review: Gravity

I watched Gravity movie last week. It was amazing with all those good visual effects, music and the actors had done a very good job. I can say compared to usual Hollywood movies that portray violence and sex, this is 100 times better and a must see for everyone.

Even people without English knowledge can understand. This will trigger interest about astronomy and science among children. Also, the movie has no unwanted scenes and very short, yet delivered the content what they wanted to deliver the audience.

But movies are not textbooks. So we should not assume whatever they show in that movie are 100% real. So there are many inaccuracies in the movie. Let me tell you some.
1. Russians never struck their own satellites with missiles, but Americans did in past.
2. Not all space-stations/satellites orbit in same altitude. So the chances for the events shown in the movie are very remote.
3. It is quite impossible to navigate large distances using MMUs. They were not in use for more than two decades. There is no need to separately say that fire-extinguishers can't do the job any better.
4. Where are the crew of Chinese space station?

These are all really minor errors or details overlooked explicitly to spice-up the movie. But the movie is so good. I have some friends who deny moon landing and say they are all made up videos. If they watch this movie, they will conclude men never traveled to space and everything about space is just computer generated effects! :)

Songs Review: En Kaathal Puthithu

Disclosure: The music director (Sathya Dev) of this movie is my friend

I have purchased the audio CD of "En Kathal Puthithu" upcoming Tamil movie. Here is my short review of the songs.

1. Chinna Chinna Kannathula - This is a peppy song with folk touch. A song that you can enjoy while chilling out with friends, in a crowded town-bus, or in a loud speaker at a wedding hall or a village festival event. Catchy song!

2. Vizhi Aruge - This a very melodious and heart soothing song. The lyrics and music blend seamlessly to treat your ears and heart. Especially the clock sound effect and rain sound effect used for lyrics are awesome. Usually these are included in rerecording and only comes with the video. But as a bonus, we have it in audio CD itself! This song is suitable for hearing in silent nights and lonely hours.

3. Kanavoduthaan - This is also a melody but with some melancholic touch. This too has good lyrics, but not up to Vizhi Aruge level.

4. Oru Vathai - A melody again. But not so soft. With a bright tempo and good beats, the song is nice. Vijay Jesudas' voice is awesome. This song is suitable to hear during morning times.

5. Kaathal Kaamam - This is song is bit different. I don't say it is bad. But it doesn't match with my taste. But still, one of my friend said the song is good. Taste differs right?

I have tried my best to honestly review the songs. Sathya Dev has done a great job to prove himself in his first movie. I am about to hear the songs of his next movie. Will share the feedback once I hear. Overall the songs are good and worth the money you spend on the CD. If you wish, you can buy the audio CD from shop near you!