Won a photo contest

It's amazing that for the first time in my life, won a photo contest.  Also I won in the category which was judged by a professional photographer.  Not only by the sheer number of votes.  So there were three categories...1.  Most number of votes 2.  Choice by a professional photographer 3.  Most relevant photo.  Being chosen as the best by a professional photographer was really special.  Also the contest organizers shared my photo when announcing the results.  I am really happy.  After a rejection from a conference where I was really hoping, it's good news for me :-)

Check here

Christmas season in Zurich

So I have been capturing some photos for the christmas season, which is just phenomenal in Zurich.  Here are some photos for your enjoyment!!

Weekend fun..tried my first time-lapse video

I shoot all the images for a star trail picture..with my newly bought used 5D.  Thought of making a time lapse outta it.  I love cosmic time-lapse :-D

Dual Boot Windows 8 and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS in Dell Laptop

So I was given a new laptop by Torsten yesterday because I used to use Mac that was really not a good platform of doing real *work* of a computer scientist.  And my old Ubuntu platform laptop was becoming really slow for my purposes.  As the new Dell laptop came with Windows 8, I had to install Ubuntu along with it to make my work going.  I was really having trouble installing it because recently they have updates the BIOS firmware of laptops which they call UEFI. They keep the previous setting of BIOS in a mode called Legacy.  First, as the UEFI mode was not allowing to make a choice for the boot order selection, I went to Legacy mode and installed Ubuntu under it.

But turned out that if Windows 8 is installed under UEFI mode and Ubuntu is under the Legacy mode, your laptop will not allow the enlisting of the two OS-es to make a choice.  You have to install the two OS-es under the same mode.  Thus I found out the most legit way to do it:

After installing Ubuntu,you have to update the grub to detect the installed Windows 8 as well.

For that run the commands described here from Ubuntu.

Probably you will end up having a lot more options that usual, you can delete the extra options by editing

My new website in ETHZ

I finished my first week of staying in Zurich, the country is awesome, specially the people are much better than Canada so far, only they speak Swiss German and very little English, even in Main train station or in banks.  Anyways, you can get your work done in the city area but in rural areas, you are in trouble.
Just visited Uetliberg hills and that made me feel that I am in Switzerland now! :-)  I have been thinking of writing a blog about my first experiences in Switzerland for long.  But did not get the time, Oh well, soon I can do that.  Have been really busy with the project assigned right away.

Anyway, please check out my new website in the ETHZ domain.  Please let me know what you guys think about it.  I will soon post a blog about the new experience in Europe, with possible pictures.

Here is my new website (Click here)

BTW, I just finished my dinner and made omelette in a  Microwave, without any oil and it turned out to be pretty darn good!  Here is the video on how to make that (Click here)

The LLVM demo page is currently disabled (that should not stop you)

So, there was a nice page in the LLVM website where you can try out LLVM online.  They called it the LLVM demo page (http://llvm.org/demo/).  It was really nice because not only you were able to see the generated bitcode or run your application, but also get the LLVM c++ API code necessary to generate the bitcode.  This was particularly necessary when writing a pass.  In fact I used this feature a lot while I was working on LLVM.
Apparently in ETHZ, my first project is on LLVM again and I again needed the page.  But to my surprise, the demo page was disabled.  According to Tanya Lattner, there were serious security threats with the demo and that's why they have disabled it for infinite time.  The only work around was an option of llc that you can use the C++ API code.  But for lazy persons like me, that option meant running two more command and probably creating some temporary files that need to be deleted later.  Thus I found this webpage that does the demo again, secretly! ;)  This is awesome and hope some people can benefit from it.

Click here to go the demo page

Micromax Datacard (USB Dongle) 3G connection Ubuntu

A few exciting things today:
** I successfully completed one month staying at home during my vacation. Really, time flies so fast!
** Wrote and submitted a first version of a paper, in IPDCA 2013, that too by writing in a Microsoft Word template!!
** Just checked that this blog site has been viewed from 9 countries.  Whoever is viewing the blogs, thank you!  You inspire me.  I would really appreciate if you leave a comment.

Well, the purpose of this post was definitely not mentioning these comments.  But I was so excited to share.
Now comes the sole reason of this blog.  I just bought this Micromax 3G USB modem (where you can put your 3G SIM card) that can be plugged into the computer to surf the internet.  Micromax is basically an Indian company and this blog will be mainly helpful to Indian people. Oh well, we have some billion to spread the info too.  :D
The USB modem model is MMX353G.  There is not separate device software supplied with this modem, as it has an inbuilt driver that works with PC/Mac platform.  Being mostly a Ubuntu user, I tried to find if there is a way to connect the modem in Ubuntu.  Thankfully, there was an easy solution!

1.  Download an executable called Sakis3G from here.  It's a tarball.  Inside you will get the executable "sakis3g"
2.  Unpack it to your home directory or wherever you want.
3.  Run it from bash ./sakis3g
Hopefully you will go through the following steps.  Don't forget to plug in the USB dongle before you run the executable.

Here give your mobile number (10 digit) that is given in the SIM card.  Both as UserID and password.  The same thing!

They create a nice little shortcut if you click on the create shortcut option.  Hope it helps someone!!

How to write a review for conference papers?

I am now in my hometown in India on a vacation.  It's been almost three weeks and these three weeks have been one of the most memorable times of my life.  I also did not get time to post the VLOGs of my last three days in Edmonton.  I really had some fun suff there but the internet speed in India is not letting me upload it.  Once I get some time in Zurich, I promise to upload all the good stuff.

I just reviewed a paper of PDP 2014 this morning and I thought of writing a blog post to share two documents that Dr. Amaral (my supervisor in UofAlberta) shared with me sometime back about good review writing.  Hope this post help those who are trying to find resources for how to write good reviews for conference papers.

 Paper 1

Paper 2

4 days to go...temple and a trip failure

5 days to go..Fall starts and mom's birthday..

The countdown begins...5

6 days to go..swiss visa and hallucination

7 days to go...Old streetcar and Legislature ground

The video for previous day is coming up.  It was my send-off party and there are many scattered videos in many devices.  I have to collect them before posting :D

9 days to go..campus tour groups

10 days to go..Independence Day and Wabamun Lake

Had an awesome trip to Wabamun Lake, much better beach than "Alberta Beach".  And there is also a harbour.  Yellowhead parkway was in a much better shape than Calgary Trail.  Had fun driving.  Here are some pictures from the trip!

11 days to go..crazy skateboarding and a new driver