In case anyone is wondering what I was doing for last 2-3 days, here is a news for them. I slept. After that i slept more. Slept 12 hrs a day. And enjoyed it a LOT! Thats all.

I also tweaked the python scripts. They are on sourceforge now. Click here . This is like putting my name in the open source map. :) The sources are in the CVS but for some weird reason they are not visible in ViewCVS. I have contacted sourceforge support. Lets see.

This is almost the last day of the year. Tomorrow I will be going out with some of my school friends, the people I have been hanging out with since last 14 years! :) This means that I am getting old. Trying to stick to people i know rather than making efforts to make new friends.

I also have a long list of TODOs for tomorrow. I have to go to Calsoft and pickup my bike, meet Anu and pay my cell bill. Lets see if i can take some time out from sleep! :) My python project is really coming well. I am using the "ypop" utility (written by yours truly) to check and download my yahoo mails. The way I have designed it is .. ahem .. OO. So I have this yahoo_session class and you dan do login, read, get list etc. operations on it. This way the UI part is totally abstracted out. Currently I have written an interactive shell (in python ofcorse) to access it. I can easily write all the interactive commands in a text file and do "./ypopshell.py < my_command.txt" and it would work non-interactively. I am planning to put this on sourceforge . The project is due for approval. Since its Saturday, approval will come only on Monday.

Btw, this nice little utility i have written including the interactive shell is about 300 lines of code. looks clean and maintainable.

I am begining to believe in Python! Yesterday I did some python scripting. I am getting a hang of it. Not bad atall. I am trying to write a script that will connect to yahoo mail and "pop" the mails. It would be an interesting utility and I will get to learn python too. Python shell is a cool idea especially for developers who want to try out new modules. Happy Holidays to everyone! I received a greeting card from Adaptec. Its a nice feeling after working in Calsoft for almost three years :) Today I did something which I wanted to do since I was 4 or 5 years old. I am so proud of myself. I finally managed to solve the Rubik's Cube. I could do one side easily but all six was never achieved. Whole day I was doing nothing but cubing. No python, no linux, no computers, just me and the cube. All in all a day well spent :) This page is an amazing resource for cubers. It helped me a lot. Now I can solve it in about 15-20 mins. I know its slow.. but hey, not bad for the first try :) Today I went through "SoftIRQ" chapter from the Love book. Nice one. Also started with python. I have this "Dive into python" pdf which I think is a good python starters book. Python looks like a nice language (although some things like indentations are really annoying. But it looks more calm and composed kind of language compared to perl which can get wild and out of control in NO time. I still think perl-gets-your-job-done! I rewrote some of my perl scripts in python today. The python scripts look more manageable and maintainable (with doc strings and all the self documenting things) but I found that perl is faster. Maybe I am using the wrong objects in python. I never sat and studied perl, I just started. And that's the best thing about perl. I will get more comfortable with python and lets see if it kicks out perl as my favorite scripting language.
Yesterday was my last day at calsoft. I must say I got to learn a lot there. There were some problems (the most important was the lack of appreciation) and also I thought it is the right time to move on. I'll be joining adaptec in 3rd week of January. Till then am planning to read many books and start off with python.

Last few days I read 2 or 3 more chapter from the Love book. Researched about HZ. Found out that when system boots up, it programs i8253 (Programmable interval timer) to generate intervals at HZ frequency at IRQ0. This PIT is connected to i8259 (PIC). Today was a bit productive than last two days. Went home late at about 1am and started reading Rober Love book. So far so good. Scheduler chapter is very well written. Today morning I got into a discussion with people in the office regarding how user-space preemption is achieved in linux and where is the code for the same. After some googling and grepping and lxring found the code in head.S. Basically whenever kernel leaves kernelspace (system call or interrupt) schedule() is called if curret->need_resched is set.

Btw. last night's movie was as crapy as expected. I was just browsing through some site and found this cool gadget. I would buy this if the disk size was more than 20GB (atleast 10 hrs of video) AND if i had a lot of money. Today was a total "deja vu" day. Looks like everyday is a deja vu day when you have absolutely nothing to do. Today I got my hand on "Linux Kernel Developement" by Robert Love. Just went through it. Looks ok. I wonder if it has something that UTLK doesnt. None the less I will start reading it tonight if i go home early. I probably wont go home early coz we are planning to go to "Welcome to the Jungle".. I dont understand why I go for some movies when I know they are gonna be crapy. This link looks good. I should read it when am not so bored! ;) [Update: well .. this is dec 16th 9:15 pm.. I wasnt much bored.. or I was too much bored to read this link. Really nice stuff.. well explained.] I am so bored. Just went through all blogger.com knowledgebase. Picked up some good tips. What a boring day!! I think I should call someone. Surfed a littile and found this nice and simple template. Looks good. Nothing much just killing time. Ok. Here is the deal. I was searching for some info in linux O(1) scheduler and I came across a blog with some links. And I thought, Hmm.. nice idea. As it is I am in process of changing jobs and as it is I keep all my TODOs and HAVEDONEs in XFCE note applet. Why not put everything in a blog? with notes attached? something i can update as I find out more about things? Sounded ok. I am not sure if i will use this a lot. Maybe I will.. maybe i wont. Lets see. So here I am with "Some random thoughts.."
This is strange. When I edit the blog entry from Galeon, I am not able to see Bold and Italics and all those buttons. Mozilla, however, shows everything properly. Hmmm.. I am still not happy with the template. Tried all but all look equally good.. or bad. I am too lazy to do any template tweaking right now. May be later. Keeping it simple for the time being. Just created this blog entry to see how this works.