Gmail by Microsoft

Someone really got time for this. What If Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft?
Well just go through the pics. You will definitely agree with this someone.

Finally I get my machine running Linux

I never dreamt I could ever install linux in my rather old laptop - considering my several attempts at installing susu, ubuntu, fedora causing berserk screen. My good pal suggested me "try Wolvix". Guess what - it just worked out of the box without any manual work - I am even writing this post from my freshly installed Wolvix Cub 1.1.0. I was not expecting my internet to work so easily in linux box - having heard bad and harsh experiences of friends in installing modem. My case may be different - i am using a router and cable internet.

I must say Catilyn Martin beautifully articulated review on Wolvix inspired me to write one. As I am writing this, I miss something from my not-so-beloved-yet-attached Windows XP. There are several applications I would love to have them in my Wolvix. Wordweb, notepad++, FoxitReader, just to name a few. There must be alternatives to all these - just need some exploration. That does explain I am a newbie linux user - desktop one - if I must say.

I even compared the boot time for both my XP and Wolvix. Well it took 30 seconds to get Windows logon screen while Wolvix took 56 seconds. Not bad. I should also inform you that my Windows XP is also freshly installed in my freshly plugged Hard disk; this may also have credited to the rather fast load time of XP.

I am a bit disappointed with the GRUB screen of Wolvix. Looks like few others are also sharing the same view as mine and it seems that I will always have to look at this shabby looking GRUB screen until the patch is available or the next version is released.

The other interesting thing is the constant watch on Memory and CPU usage right on the desktop. One can also turn it off if necessary. I don't think I will be able to use my other beloved app "ProcessExplorer".

For all those out there, wanting to use linux but never got guts to do so, should definitely try Wolvix. It's for the users. Just download the iso file from the site, burn it to CD, run as a live CD, use it/see the features and install it if it pleases you. If you are installing Linux for the first time, be sure to backup all your important data to the external storage. Be careful and read doc if you are installing on your own and for the first time.

nepali speakers count...

Kudos to the NepaLinux Team for grabbing "APC Chris Nicol FOSS Prize" Award.

In Himalayan Nepal: Where language can propel FOSS

I was interrupted to see the number of nepali speakers - native and worldwide.

[...]The initiative began as an attempt to find makeshift solutions for electronically cataloguing books in the Nepali language (which has seventeen million native speakers, and an estimated 40 million worldwide).[...]

Wow where did this journalist Frederick Noronha find this number? I remember being told to be questionable whenever we see any numbers. On my quest to this uneasy and strange number, this wikipedia page on Nepali Language does infact have the same number

Total speakers: native - 17 million
total-appr. 40 million

What does this total mean - does that mean all the nepali speakers including natives or excluding?

Isn't it exciting to have such a larger user base. Indeed.
17 million at Wikipedia seems to be referenced from this site Omniglot.com, which has no references as such.

[...]Nepali is an Indo-Aryan language with around 17 million speakers in Nepal, Bhutan, Burma and India.[...]

Noticed "around"!!

Sometimes this does question the credibility of Wikipedia. Infact it does; even Jimmy Wales, the creator of Wikipedia, said "For god sake, you are in college, don't cite Wikipedia." in response to the complaints from the students, who emailed Jimmy, saying "Please help me. I got an F on my paper because I cited Wikipedia".

Ok still on my tiny quest and hanging within Wikipedia, I saw another page

[...]According to the 2001 national census, .... The major languages of Nepal (percent spoken as mother tongue) are Nepali (49%),[...]

Still from Wikipedia
Population: July 2005 27,133,000

Which means that native nepali speakers would be 13 million. Note the year difference. Granted for now.

We are still in deficit of 4 million native Nepali speakers. Maybe this number have been covered by now, as of today. And now I can't go on with my quest for another 40 million. Let it be for now.

happy me...

Sometimes Worldlink makes me happy - 24 hours internet during Dashain since the eighth day.

Dashain or Dasa (misfortune)

"Dashain ho ki, yo mero dasa, kati aayeko" meaning "Is this Dashain or is it misfortune (dasa), why does it come so many times?".

I wonder what percentage of Nepalese actually celebrate Dashain with new clothes, good food. For a country like ours with such high poverty rate, it's very unlikely that people actually take Dashain as a celebration but rather as a misfortune. Why won't they? Even if you take a walk around the city, you would see people laughing, carrying big smiles with heavy loads for dashain; and on the other side, you would see another group of people confused with what to buy, whether to buy or not, busy calculating in their head. You can actually read their faces, especially children. There are stories of people getting bankrupt during dashain - mostly in villages; this is the only time, children get to wear new clothes. I just wish every nepali may celebrate Dashain equally.

facebook... addiction... solution

I can't believe that the first thing I did in this morning hour is to peek into facebook. I understand it's absolutely of no use at all and yet... what do you think is the solution to this addiction?

Delete your account? Man... I can't do that.
Ask your ISP to block facebook. Others won't tolerate that.
Block facebook in your browser. Possible... but I can also unblock it.
Unsubscribe internet account. Maybe... but I don't want to do that.

I think I should design an app that would crash my browser everytime I try facebook. That would make me hate facebook so much that I would probably lessen it.

runner's high.... after a loong time

After almost 4 months break, I made my run back to-fro Budhanilkantha. Yup I enjoyed runner's high again; to my dismay i hurt my legs. Asim, Prasun, Prawesh, and Suprit... don't think I am crazy. You do remember Pokhara?

I was not surprised to see the fuel queue as early as 6 in the misty, cold morning. I ran observing the standing faces, on the seventh day of Dashain. Some must be getting fuels to get home, away from Kathmandu. Around the midway, the misty environment turned to clear, blue sky, however there was a clear demarcation between the two - conveying the message that darkness will definitely be followed by prosperous light. I wait for that day in Nepal.

I still remember there used to very less runners just 3/4 months back Today I saw hordes of runners - must be looking for the fresh morning air, though the road is not free of micro-buses and other vehicles. However their number does not seem to affect the air, though it won't take time to corrode. I am being realistic if some of you happen to take it as pessimist view.

The final day at Social Science Baha

Finally 13 rigorous weeks at Social Science Baha came to an end, though research is still on the way - but not more morning class at 6:30AM. However this marks the beginning of our thinking in contemporary issues - we have been introduced to lots and lots of topics in this short period. Economy and Society, Media, Society and Culture, Development and Society, History and Society, Research Methodologies, Politics and Society to name a few. Besides the content, the moderators were equally of highest quality. And of course the wonderful and intellectual colleagues.

Helambu Trip

Fours days/three nights trek around the Helambu region is the longest and the most delightful one I have done so far. We stayed at three different villages - Upper Timbu on the first night, TarkeGyang on the second and Dhuba Chour on the third. The first two nights were chilling - it was raining throughout but I couldn't differentiate it from the flowing river (Melamchi river I suppose). One could hear the soothing sound of the river throughout the night at Upper Timbu.


On the way to Upper Timbu
Upper Timbu as seen on the way up. There were only two lodges. Fortunately we didn't have problems with stay throughout the hike.


Upper Timbu Village
The second day hike from Upper Timbu to Tarke Gyang via Kakani was almost 6-7 hours plus. Man... I have never seen so many leeches clinging to my pants as on this day - the tiny one even managed to get to my leg. You can imagine how much psyched out we were... almost more than half the time, we would be looking at our legs to find at least one leech and even pull up our pants to see if some bloody leech is enjoying our blood. You should see the abundance of water in this region - you can't hide away from water - it's just everywhere you gaze - not just raining :)

It was raining throughout second day at Tarke Gyang. But the third day we were
blessed with beautiful mountains right from our room's window.

The view from Tarke Gyang


The mountains - I don't remember the name:(


We stayed at this point for almost an hour - really mesmerizing
The third day stay was not inviting at Dhuba Chour - the comparatively hot night, with bedbugs and scratching a lot. But again the other final day was bright, sunny and warm, and ofcourse the beautiful mountains.


The mountains as seen from Dhuba Chour


Stone throwing game at Melamchi River
PS:nobody was hurt during the photo shoot :)

I am stupidly :( happy :)

I was smiling and elated, just like winning some kind of competition. The thing is I managed to get fuel worth Rs.500 for my bike. Really it was a competition that costed me one and half hour. I was awarded finally. There had been cases when I got knocked out of the competition even after queuing for hours - making me gloomy as if I lost the race.

Doesn't that sound stupid? Really we are stupid bunch of people - not in a position to do anything despite such perpetuating problems. If I am not mistaken, it's been almost 6 months that we are having fuel shortage. People have to take leave from their work to queue up for fuel, have to get up at midnight....

Celebration for Prashant Tamang

Prashant Tamang just won the Indian Idol 3. Now at 1AM I can hear people celebrating here in Kathmandu; I just saw some people dancing on their rooftops, firecrackers can be heard, whistles from far way, people cheering, shouting. The city suddenly goes lively. It seems that people are rallying in the street at this hour.

Prashant Tamang, an Indian but from Nepali origin, suddenly seems to be a very important figure for us and has created nationalism among Nepalese people. I think many of us are still furious with the fact that Nepal had to lose almost 1/3 of its land to India in Sugauli Treaty in 1816. Lots of Nepalese are now living in our used-to-be land holding Indian passport; Prashant being one of them.

Updates:
I can't believe I actually went out to take photographs at 1:30AM. People, mostly youths, were chanting slogans like "Yo jit kasko, Prashant ko (whose win is this, it's Prashant)", there were even girls, women in the crowd. People were also shouting from taxis. Finally the crowd moved towards the Maharajgung from Narayangopal Chowk. People are certainly overwhelmed and excited but how valid is such excitement.

really concerned about Nepal?

I had to walk all the way to Lagankhel from Patan Dhoka because of blockade by cabbies. That was no wonder... I was expecting it sooner or later. I would say this is the test of tolerance of Nepalese people.

Now this PM officer is concerned not about the citizens of Nepal and their rights to live but Nepal's image before the international community. Gosh! There are already lots of other things that has done enough for our notoriety.

[..]the Prime Minister’s Officer raised concern over the serpentine queue in front of the Singha Durbar stating such queue could present a bad image before the international community[...]

Govt decision fuels ire, cabbies disrupt traffic

Nepal Engineering Association election: a mess

I queued up in a line for more than 2 hours to cast a vote. There were lots of engineers lining up and herding - just to vote for an association - the purpose of which is unknown to me and lots of other engineers I approached. I realized that most of them were there for the sake of their boss, friends, relatives, some good and useful contacts. If you ask me, I am there for my friend's father. If it were not for him, I would have left or most possibly wouldn't have come at all. It was a total waste of time - atleast to me. I was really frustrated to see the unmanaged and disorganized engineers of Nepal (Remember I stood in that heated low-ceiling hall for two hours plus with god knows how much CO2). What else shall we expect from others?

And I met this water guy around mid 40s and a PhD, who boasted that he was there for the sake of his voting rights and nothing else. Then he bragged that he won't never do anything dishonest to earn money, he had no greeds for money, fame, position and blah blah.. At first I was kind of impressed with him. Later he sounded more extravagant with his words - the thing I hated most about him is he mentioned about some design, some new technology and he would whisper in my ear "That was my design" and that was not just once. Crazy? Later I just hinted him that I was not interested - guess what... I looked outside the window :). Then he went and sat a little ahead of me. Then another person who's standing infront of me, said sarcastically "You had a good talk with him. I know this guy.". I felt that maybe that PhD was trying to convey his message to someone else through me.

I was wondering how much money our country lost in that election - if we analyze from hour-rate calculation and again for engineers. But that hardly matters. The good news is we don't have such hour-rate system. We can definitely afford hours of mess.

FOSS: How much difference can it make?

foss solidarity candle illumination at Maitighar to mark SFD tomorrow
Illuminated FOSS indeed looked exotic. But can it exotic to other people besides those involved and those aware of FOSS. I myself am a sort of fan and user of FOSS and look for FOSS softwares whenever possible. I use GIMP occasionally but again happen to use photoshop. I use Firefox excessively but again test applications in IE to make sure that the firefox-ignorants can also use the web-apps. I use Microsoft office though I have installed Open-office. I am still using Winamp; I am happy with pidgin (IM replacement of gtalk, msn, yahoo and lot others), VLC Player or MPlayer. Despite all these love-hate for FOSS-proprietary softwares, I am still using Windows XP at home as well as office. I could have used different distributions of Linux but I can't at office and my home computer doesn't support so far - the screen goes berserk. I remember finally having suse installed but resulting in much slower pace compared to XP - it seemed to be hardware problem. I have no choice than to continue with XP :(

Long time.... who cares anyway?

Well it's been more than a month. I wonder why do people write post like this after taking breaks for long time - including me. I have noticed several of my friends who posted after a long time apologizing, promising to write again and blah blah... Who cares anyway?

But my problem is i am supposed to be busy; though I don't get busy reading my to-be-read stuffs for Social Science Baha Immersion Course; but rather busy with surfing internet. Really there have been so many happenings within the last month that I would definitely not want to forget.

Just listing for my own memory.
--
Met Ross , a developer from Italy, who contacted me through my blog just for some developers' talk. He also gave presentation on Ruby on Rails at FKK (FOSS ka Kura at Yala Maya Kendra)

Met Lawrence, an old man :) from US and my pal, who is here to help the street children, yet to be started. He is working on it.

Took a session on GIMP and Audacity on FOSS training organized by Bellasap.

Had an interesting talk with journalist from Pokhara at Bellasap Party at Hotel Radison.

Went to Nala at Banepa from Ason Baja Guthi. Well i can also play the traditional baja (drums).

Played dare or truth with friends at Hots and really made fool out of ourselves. Enjoyed anyway.

Lots of late-nights with friends.

Still going to Social science baha for Immersion course on Contemporary Social Issues.

Watched few movies at Cinema hall, which I normally don't do. That doesn't mean I am abnormal ;)

Still waking up at 5:30 in the morning 5 days a week. Really something not to be forgotten.

Well my supposed-to-go yet still-unconfirmed trip:( I am still waiting.

Created a profile in Facebook and met lots of friends.


That's all I can remember so far.

Foreign aid in nepal

I used to wonder how foreign aid starts to proliferate in Nepal. Well Nepal received aid for the first time from US in 1950s, when China invaded Tibet - a gesture to ensure that communism didn't penetrate Nepal. Similarly India also started development programs in Nepal - building Tribhuvan highway and Tribhuvan International Airport - to make Nepal more and more dependent on them. See everyone has a motive - "money for nothing" doesn't apply in this practical world.

It's been more than 50 years and still aid is coming. People argue that aid is an attempt to influence the receiver - us in our case. Maybe a bit of truth. There's also an argument that foreign aid is creating jobs for the donor countries. More than 60% of total aid is taken back by themselves in the form of salary, travel and god knows what else. And yes there will also be local employees and another 20% goes to them. Now the remaining less than 20% goes to the actual development work. This may not be true in all the cases. People again justify that something is better than nothing - atleast 20% goes to development work. They are also right.

There's also a lot of debates on "Whether foreign aid is doing more harm than good in Africa". They are saying that they need capital and investments, not foreign aid.

I wonder if there's going to be any similar debate in Nepal where foreign aid fills large percentage of annual budget. I hardly see any.

big blunder from the leading bank: US$ at whopping Rs. 95.35 selling price

"We started banking in Nepal...
still we are leading way"

The slogan at the banner of Nepal Bank Ltd's website is very inspiring, despite the fact that foreign management team of ICC are looking after the bank's management for the past 5 years and God knows at what cost. Now ICC team is withdrawing.

Another interesting happening at the website is the exchange rate of US$ at Rs. 64.35 buying price and whopping Rs. 95.35 selling price. I did not recreate the image below but just took screenshot of the exchange rate page.

I hope the rate is amended by the time you look there. Who's to blame here? The leaving ICC management team or just ignorance from the web people or we take it as a typo or we look 9 upside-down. Big blunder from the so-called banking leaders, starters or whatever...

Mind game with time

Since starting 4 weeks course on Immersion course at Social Science Baha last week, I thought that I wouldn't get time to update my blogs; guess what? I was right. My mind was filled with the no-time trivia. But today I told myself that I would write no matter what and I managed time. Mind game is very interesting to play. Try with yours too but positively; it's not to be messed with.

maoists have become a joke

Everyday I skimmed through online news to find atleast one ridiculous news on maoists. Some of my past posts on them -
How do we define terrorists?
'Crime against Humanity': Are there still humans?
Can I also get nominated for the ambassador?

And another joke of the day: Include YCL in polls security plan: Prachanda - security plan for CA election. Huh!! If that is allowed, then all the parties will also ask for their student league or newly formed league for the security purpose. I wonder if Prachanda means security of their win in CA election.

"[...]The Maoist supremo also claimed that the former US president Jimmy Carter had given a written suggestion to them that the elections was not possible without the coordination between the YCL and the Police administration.[..]"

I am sure coordination doesn't mean including YCL in the security plan, even if Carter had said or written that. Com'on Prachanda, YCL threw stones at US Ambassador's vehicle.

I have no doubt that they did spend their 10 years in the jungle.

How do we define terrorists?

There's a funny opinion from the maoist leader.

"The government should not hold dialogue with parties that want to split the country. They should be termed terrorists and strong action taken against them"

Terai extremists are terrorists: Maoist leader

Terrorists = those who want to split the country

Didn't he mean that?

According to Wikipedia, terroists or terrorism has the following key criteria

• Violence
• Psychological impact and fear
• Perpetrated for a Political Goal
• Unlawfulness or illegitimacy

Following that criteria, can somebody tell me why maoists shouldn't be put in that category? Or else we redefine the terrorist and terrorism, in Nepal's context. Why do people give their opinions without even going through the dictionary? Maybe they were never taught to.