Sharma Family Journal

I wrote this paper around 5 years ago hoping to publish it at some conference. But this has been sitting around in my home directory for far too long without ever being indexed. So here it goes:

Abstract: Operating system support for multiple page sizes in the Linux kernel is not considered a high priority because of the complexity it adds to the VFS and VM layers and the perception that relatively few applications really need it and a majority of the users don’t need to pay to pay costs associated with the complexity. In this paper, we present an alternative method to support an ABI requiring a page size smaller than the default page size for the architecture on a kernel that doesn’t support multiple page sizes.

I picked up a frozen Indian curry (Rajasthani Daal) made by a company called Deep foods at the local Bharat Bazaar. While it tastes good and doesn’t look too unhealthy, I can’t seem to find an expiration date on it.

I asked the girl at the checkout counter today about it and she denies any knowledge of it. I had to say: could you please tell Deep foods to print one?

Generally, the Indian grocery stores get away with a lot (I’ve seen borderline baby food getting sold). So one has to be careful. Anyone from Deep foods?

Got a Ooma telo device yesterday. The device looks beautiful, easy to setup etc. But it’s not really free as advertised. You still pay $3.47 per month in regulatory fees, which is much worse than the $11 per year after the first year deal Ooma offered before April.

In fact they still offer the deal if you got a pre-April retail box. But it’s hard to tell. And retailers are even more slimy. All of them still advertize the “Free calls anywhere within the US” without the fine print that is on Ooma’s own website.

If you’re trying to switch from Sonic to AT&T Uverse, you’ve probably figured out that you need to switch to AT&T DSL first (so they take your order) and then to Uverse a couple of weeks later.

The problem is that the guys who write firmware for these modems stink. They make them intentionally hard to reconfigure, so its harder to switch. Here are the things that worked for me. Sonic tells you how to access the web UI. But they won’t tell you how to switch it to bridged mode. The config is in a hidden page: 10.0.0.1/brgmode.htm

Trying to use voice recognition on my android phone might make my blog exceed 140 characters.

There you have it. The app actually works. Punctuation done manually.

Motorola H15 is a headset with not so bad reviews – so I decided to get a “New OEM in bulk” piece from buy.com. It looks like motorola is dumping a bunch of refurbished headsets as “OEM in bulk” and “new”.

These things arrive in a plastic pouch, with bare minimum stuff. But they don’t really work. I’m pretty certain that these are products returned by other customers as non-working.

Motorola customer support: 1-800-331-6456 takes you to a eastern european country and the customer service rep disconnects the phone line after taking down my name and phone number.

Buy.com: Won’t return money, but is willing to send more broken bluetooth headsets.

If you’re curious about the problems:

First one: the mic would work only with the headset near my mouth. Didn’t pick up sound when it’s on my ear.

Second one: continuous beeps every second when paired. Motorola doesn’t document what this means.

I kinda like ರಾಮಾಚಾರಿ.

–Chirag after watching ನಾಗರಹಾವು

I liked the part where he breaks the pots and messes up the garden of the girl who teased him!

A Chinese official today said:

“effective guidance of public opinion on the Internet is an important way of protecting the security of online information”

I think this quote has the potential to be remembered for a long time to come.

My 1080p capable LCD monitor was not playing nicely with a netbook (Acer 1410) HDMI output when running Ubuntu 9.10.

Turns out that I had to run

xrandr --prop

Apart from telling me what X thinks about the hardware, it also gets my monitor to start working properly. Thought I’d blog it, before I forget about these useful little things.

If only I can teach my macbook to do this via the monoprice mini display port to HDMI adapter.