All posts by Ruturaj Vartak

Fedora 29 and nostalgia

Fedora 29 has released, It had been since the Fedora-Core 2 days that I had used Fedora (rather it was my first foray in linux). We used to wait for computer magazines to deliver free OS CDs. Back then it was a Windows + Fedora. Everytime I had an issue with Fedora I had to switch back to Windows, see what is right / wrong how to go about it and fix it. We didn’t have the comfort of using Smart phones and tablets back then around 2004. Setting up eth0 was still an effort for a newbie like me.

As years moved, Fedora improved and its ability to replace my desktop’s default OS. However still we had to tweak around to make it comfortable. Codecs, font rendering, etc. However it has been one of the most comfortable environments for developers, most of the things available as rpm packages.

Maxing out only till 60%

With Fedora 29, a whole lot has improved, first and foremost, which is on everyone’s mind is GNOME 3.30. This is by far one of the most important GNOME 3x releases. WHY? Install it and you’ll see the amount of RAM that it hogs is way lesser than the earlier versions. Now my 9 yrs old laptop can effectively run GNOME, the modern RAM eating browsers and still leave me room. The new GNOME is lovely and modern yet for the nostalgia the Bluecurve theme deserves a special mention. For years as long GTK2 / GNOME2 ran on my PC, it was the de-facto choice.

The font rendering too has improved off-the-box, Now there is no need to install the freetype-freeworld package, make changes to the ~/.fonts/fonts.conf or .Xresources. I’m not sure what has really changed, whether the patent expiry has come through and we get it as-is without the patent issues.

Hope this Fedora legacy carries on for long. And finally kudos to Redhat, Fedora Team,GNOME and endless other teams for putting in effort for us to consume this beautiful lovely OS which is free!

Fedora magazine has a lovely article that has triggered these memories.

Manjha – Kai Po Che – Guitar finger picking tabs, chords

This entry is part 34 of 41 in the series Guitar

After a really long time this song came back on my ears, stuck for a long time and I had to get something beautiful for my guitar.  So here it is, Manjha by Amit Trivedi from Kai Po Che. The song is in the key of D.

Guitar Intro riff (4x)

e|-0--0------------|
B|-------3-----3---|
G|----------2------|
D|-------------0---|
A|-0--0------------|

Sarangi / Violin Intro (on Guitar, 2x)

E|--2--0--------------2--0-----------
B|--------3---2h3-----------3---2h3--
G|-----------------------------------
D|-----------------------------------
A|--0---------0h------0--------------

e|-2--0-----------------------
B|-------3---2h-3p-2h-3p-2h3--
G|----------------------------
D|----------------------------
A|-0--------------------------

Song begins…

Roothe khwaabon ko mana lenge..

E|-----0--2--0-----------------
B|--3-----------3--2---2h3--3--
G|-----------------------------
D|--0--------------------------
A|-----------------0---0-------
E|-----------------------------

Kati patango ko thaamenge…
(same as above pattern)

Haa haa hai jazba

E|--0--0--------0--
B|--------3--------
G|-----------2-----
D|-----------------
A|--0--0--------0--
E|-----------------

Ho ho hai jazba
(same as above pattern)

Suljha lenge uljhe Rishton ka Manjha

E|-----2--0--3--2--0-----------------
B|--3-----------------3---------h3--
G|-----------------------2--2--------
D|--0--------------------------------
A|-----------------------0--0--------

Ha manjha ha manjha ha manjha..

E|-----------------------------------
B|--3--3--3-----3-----3--3--3-----3--
G|-----------2-----------------2-----
D|-----------------------------------
A|--------------0-----------------0--

Soyi Taqdire… (all same pattern begining from roothe…)
Till … ha manjha

Violin part comes in again…

Rishte pankho ko hawa denge

E|--------------------------
B|--------------------------
G|--4--2--4--2--------------
D|--0-----------4---2h4--4--
A|------------------0h------

Rishte dard ko dawa denge
(above pattern continued…)

Jeet kabhi Haar kabhi

E|--------------------------
B|-----------3-----------3--
G|--0--0--0-----0--0--0-----
D|-----------2-----------0--

Ghum to yaaro honge do pal ke mehmaan

G|--------2-----------------------------
D|--2--4-----4--2--------0--0-----0--0--
A|--2--------------0-----0--0-----0--0--

Riste dehleeze … kardenge kurbaan
(follow same patter as rishte pankho … do pal ke mehmaan) Continue reading Manjha – Kai Po Che – Guitar finger picking tabs, chords

BMW G 310 GS Test Ride

I had waited for BMW 310 GS (the baby) for over a year. Yet, even after 18th July 2018 launch, the test ride schedule stalled, thanks to the heavy rains of mid July in Mumbai. But finally yesterday, 25th July, the moment arrived and I was at the showroom for the test drive. Me and few more colleagues eager to get into a BMW showroom rode to the Andheri showroom. I rode a colleague’s Hornet and another Duke 250 followed. We gawked and drooled at the massive vehicles.

First Look

On the first look, the bike does look big. It kind of reminded me of KTM 390 Duke 2017 edition when I saw it first in the showroom, however this still felt bigger. The front fairing around the tank is very GS-resembling, very typical of the Adventure bike segment with the trademark design of its beak. The Big BMW badge on the fairing is a pleasant decoration 🙂 The seat was wide enough and soft followed by a H U G E rear top-box rack, big enough for a kid to sit as a 2nd pillion (please don’t do that). The engine area houses the famous reverse-inclined 313cc cylinder, in the front it has a massive radiator and its mounted high. The switch gear was impressive, felt like it could stand an apocalypse. Big, chunky, strong plastic buttons. They weren’t the usual glossy ones, but rather a toned down matt-finished. ones. The windscreen / deflector seemed small very atypical of its segment, ie. I had test-ridden the Versys 650, which has a big one. The golden upside-down forks too look they could take any beating as opposed to typical commuter bikes. Tires are massive, specially my first encounter with that 19′ front.

The test vehicle was on a ride and we had to wait. Till then we roamed staring at the machines costing well over ₹20 lacs. One of the colleagues asked about that big box that came out of the R NineT Scrambler.

ह्याच्या वर काय पाय ठेवू ?

We laughed and I whispered in his ears, “it’s the boxer engine. If you continue with these silly questions, we’ll be pushed out of the showroom and my booking amount too would be returned.”

निकलो  !!! कहां कहां  से आ जाते है BMW लेने !

Thankfully that didn’t happen and we checked the Papa GS, 1200 GS and were amazed by its size. The tallest (5’11”) and strongest (85kg+) of our lads, DevD too looked small in front of it. Goofing around continued…

.. till luckily for the showroom owners, the test bike arrived and we headed out of the showroom.

First Hop and the ride

The bike was parked on the footpath, yes, this is INDIA! In the front buses, cars, motorbikes, cycles plied along with the divider for metro construction. Total chaos.

The test ride was the one that I had booked, Red one, officially – Racing Red. A guy handed me the keys and I put those in and hopped over.

भेंचो@#$@%#

I skipped a heartbeat as I hopped over. The bike was parked on a slight incline. And after hopping my legs barely reached the ground (I’m 5’7″), and with my inertia, the bike too moved sideways on the right and I thought I was gonna drop it! Luckily, the bike wasn’t a 200kg behemoth but no humming-bird either. Somehow I manged to strangle the drop. First lesson…

DON’T EXPECT TO RIDE A Hornet or Unicorn!

DevD too was taking a test ride with G 310 R, the showroom guy took the Duke 250 to ride along with us or rather to keep a watchful eye. The clutch was light enough, didn’t really expect it to be as soft as the Japanese commuters. I pushed the Start switch and nothing happened, I checked the key, its position was fine, tried again… Nothing.. I was about to call the showroom guy before मेरी इज़्जत was saved. I gave a look at the starter switch and observed the Ignition kill switch, which was in OFF state, duh! Again, it’s not a commuter Honda bike with no kill switch. 3rd time… and bbrrummm…..

I revved the engine and it was happy to cross over 6K RPM with one twist of the wrist, the sound was stronger from the engine compartment, from the riding position I could barely listen to the exhaust note. I was probably expecting a bassy note like 4-cylinder, but…

इतने पैसे में इतना ही मिलेगा !

Kandya, another colleague sat as a pillion behind me, DevD on the 310 R for his test ride. I shifted to the first gear released the clutch and… brrrpppp.. ! Stalled ! Again… stalled ! Me and Kandya gave out a big laugh, he asked…

डबे टाकून झालं का !! ? (done shitting !?)

OK… this is not a bike that’ll move with just the clutch release, it’ll need some throttle input, Low RPM (~1500) almost negligible torque perhaps ?

I got the knack of getting the 310 in motion and just few meters and I had to stop it again, thanks to the traffic. The showroom fellow was ahead, I screamed asked him how does BMW compare to the Duke? He put the bike on the side-stand, switched off the engine, pulled the key and walked to me and started blabbering… (THUG LIFE ! 😎)

I was in KTM first, I prefer the handle of the BMW, I love Duke 390, it has better power compared to the 250 (duh!)…

I kept worrying about the traffic, what if it moved, but that didn’t happen for the next few mins, and every passing minute made me realize again, its not a commuter. Remember the high-mounted radiator I spoke about, the heat was blasting. After a minute in the traffic, Kandya my pillion said, he thought only he got the hot draft. The heat was probably on par with a KTM Duke. I had test ridden Versys 650, which I felt was much better at heat management. But then I rode it only in the showroom complex, not in the real life with buses and cars around to bounce off the heat.

We took a U-turn and the bike just zipped passed the rickshaws, the cars and the Activas. The gear box seemed OK. The vibrations weren’t huge, but probably along the lines of Duke 390. Definitely not the smoothie like my Honda Unicorn. The roar of the engine, though subtle, did make some clearing for us on the road. The traffic caught up with us and an uncle got speaking with the 310R rider about its price, probably ubiquitous कितना देती है. I couldn’t see the USD Forks work, but my bum did feel that the forks with the cushy seat did a wonderful job at the office. The yank of the throttle wasn’t panic creating as it’s in a Duke 390, much easier over here.

Look how comfortably the legs reach terra firma.
Look how comfortably the legs reach terra firma.

The ride finished off with almost 15mins on the road but 5min+ staying put in the traffic. The U-turn was light enough didn’t feel any weight of the bike, yes, it did feel big though. Cautiously, I treaded on the footpath to park the bike (sorry!) and almost hopped to get off it. I’ll probably get better at Kung-fu kicks with mounting and unmounting on this one. I sat on the 310R which was definitely lower and probably easier to maneuver. DevD who test rode it mentioned that when he took turns on it, the bike stayed tilted unlike the Duke which kinda resisted to stay down but wanted to sit upright, perhaps a lower GC was working its physics on the R.

On my way back, the Hornet’s wide handle and stance felt puny, but the easier on the legs heat was a welcome relief. The 310GS is definitely a bike to take on long open country roads or without. It has a character and swagger that would have eyeballs transfixed.

Summary (Score out of 5)

  • Looks – 5
  • Heat Management – 3
  • Road manners – 5
  • Aspirational value – 5.5 🙂
  • Build Quality – 4
  • Cost – 3.5 (would’ve loved if 310GS was ₹3L Ex-showroom)

Off Roading around Vaitarna, Manor

Jul 21, 2018

A wet Saturday in July and an itch to roam around the Vaitarna, picking small water bodies and navigating through slushy dirt roads on foot and car both. Me and my old riding partner Manas trudged.

Offroading near Lahope

First up was Lohape Talao / lake close to the Vajereshwari town, we had made a similar trip  exactly a year back. This time we thought we’ll check smaller lakes and dams around that area.

Next up was a lake / dam called “Shelte Water Lake” as labelled by Google maps, this one was right below Kohoj fort. We stopped our car next to the highway and continued our offroading on the foot, through muck, slush, water, you name it. The rain came in hard, our foot got stuck in the soil, T-shirts sprayed and splashed with dirt. Almost 15-20 mins into the trail, but we couldn’t find it. All that we could see was lush green earth and farmers toiling on the paddy fields below a towering mountain behind half hidden above the low rain clouds. We decided to head back without having a peek of the Lake.

Amidst discussions of post-retirement life, bikes and cars we head home. The whole trip without even a single song played on the stereo!

Directions / Route

Guitar Chords: Rafu (Tumhari Sulu)

This entry is part 33 of 41 in the series Guitar

This melody sung by Ronkini Gupta is an absolute gem. Entire song is just a single guitar and vocals. And Ronkini’s classical stance adds magic.

Its in the key of B major, Add a capo on 4th fret to sound close to the original.

Intro

e|---2--3-----|
b|---------3--|

OR 

e|------3-----|
B|---------3--|
G|---0--------|

repeat...

[CHORUS]
Kaise kaise dhaagon se buni hai yeh duniya
G                      Em               C
Haan…
kaise kaise dhaagon se buni hai yeh duniya
G                      Em               C
Kabhi dhoop kabhi baadalon ki yeh ladiyaan
G                      Em               C

Kuch tune si hai maine ki hain rafu
D                              Bm
Ye doriyaan
         Em
Kuch tune si hai maine ki hain rafu
D                              Bm
Ye doriyaan
         G

[CHORUS] repeat

Haan…
teri bani raahein meri thi deewaarein
G               C       Am             G
Teri bani raahein meri thi deewaarein
G               C       Am             G
Unn deewaaron pe hi maine likh li bahaarein
G               C       Am             G

Shaam hui tu jo aaya so gayi thi kaliyan
G                      Em              C
Phir shaam hui tu jo aaya so gayi thi kaliyaan
G                         Em                  C

Kuch tune si hai maine ki hain rafu
D                              Bm
Ye doriyaan (x2)
       Em
Kuch tune si hai maine ki hain rafu
D                              Bm
Ye doriyaan (x2)
       G

(sargam)
G   Em   Bm   D
C      D       G

Yun seete seete meelon ki ban gayi kahaani
G               C            Am           G
Yun seete seete meelon ki ban gayi kahaani
G               C            Am           G
Kuch tere haathon se kuch meri zubaani
G               C            Am           G

Ab jo bhi hai ye aadha pauna
G                           Em
Hai toh rangraliyaan
                   C
(x2)

[CHORUS]

Synergy on Fedora 28 and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

I was waiting for a few years to upgrade my 16.04LTS and finally when time came I didn’t hesitate. However it created a huge problem! I wasn’t able to sync my mouse and keyboard with synergy (free).

I wondered debugged a lot, first thing I found the synergy version on Fedora was 2.x while that on Ubuntu was 1.8.8. So I downloaded same version of synergy 1.8.8 from my favorite switch mirror.

Yet the problem never got over, I tried to swap the server – client but to no avail. Almost a week got over and I was still haggling with multiple keyboards and mouse combinations. I also read posts about Scroll locks, etc… but that didn’t help either.

But today while browsing on Fedora 28, I found that Mouse movements over Firefox were very laggy (something like dropped frames while painting the mouse), I wondered why. It struck me, these days the default server is wayland server. Lemme try disabling it. Edited /etc/gdm/custom.conf, where I had to just comment-out the line WaylandEnable=false. Ensure the line stays WaylandEnable=false. Edited the Ubuntu config /etc/gdm3/custom.conf (Oh by the way I had installed the vanilla-gnome-desktop package.

Rebooted the systems… and 😎😎😎 Got it working!

Steps to get synergy running

  1. Ensure same version of synergy 1.8.8 on Fedora 28
  2. Disable Wayland on both the systems
  3. Reboot (for goodluck 😀 )

Sample synergy.conf file

section: screens
  ubuntu:
  fedora:
end

section: links
  fedora:
    right = ubuntu
  windows7:
    left = fedora
end

Synergy Command for Server (Fedora in my case)
synergys -n fedora --config /home/rutu/synergy.conf --debug WARNING

Synergy Command for Client (ubuntu in my case)
synergyc --client -d WARNING --name ubuntu 172.16.160.97

Update: I found this Wayland support for Linux client and server #4090

Nostalgia with Winamp

Today I came across a hacker news post – winamp2-js

It has taken me back to my early years of computers, music and start of programming. It was 1998, when Winamp came up and was instantly viral. I had endless songs churned through that software and was in first-sight love with it for its ease of use, features, simplicity and its light weight nature. Back then there used to be heavy-weight player called Windows Media Player which on 3rd world country desktops was too much to ask. Winamp had answered all the questions, ticked all the boxes.

A few years on … It was Winamp that had urged me to make my first contribution to the open web (github and opensource perhaps wasn’t as popular then). I had taken up a task to design a Winamp skin. I think I decided it had to be my then heart-throb Elizabeth Hurley. It turned out to be a big effort initially but post its approval on Winamp’s website and seeing the usage counters grow up by the day, I got that high that the new-age developers get looking at the green boxes glow up on github’s profile page.

This awesome find of nodejs based winamp player gave another time-travel. फुक्टे / फुकरे as we were, I had learnt HTML, some JS (which now is my bread-winner). I needed a site to display my skills, I took up to the best available then (free that is) – geocities. New age guys reading this post wouldn’t smile reading that name, however for some… “Aaah good ol’ days of geocities.com”. I had created a website on geocities with a page dedicated to all the winamp skins I manged to craft. The list had grown to 5. You’ll find them available for download at the bottom.

Sometime back I tried to find my geocities website in hope of some crawler had crawled it and hosted, and I hit oocities.org. Today I manged to find the page dedicated to Winamp, download the skins and even see them working here.

A big thanks to https://github.com/captbaritone for his project and hacker news!

Winamp Skins

Yasmin Bleeth Winamp Skin
Yasmin Bleeth Winamp Skin
Barbara Schett Winamp Skin
Barbara Schett Winamp Skin
Martina Hingis Winamp Skin
Martina Hingis Winamp Skin
Elizabeth Hurley Winamp Skin
Elizabeth Hurley Winamp Skin
Priyanka Chopra Winamp Skin
Priyanka Chopra Winamp Skin

Goa, Murudeshwar, Thoseghar Bike Ride

Ikk Kudi jiddaa naam mohabbat …

One of the many songs that I kept humming inside my balaclava. Wondering what its chords could be, as they turned out to be F# Major, B Major,  E Major. Or crooning to the base guitar in the song “Dil Se Re”… The song reminds me of the storm that we faced riding to Kankavali –

A road winding through the woods, the white borders defining a strong ardent character. As we raced ahead, the storm clouds hovered in, turning the bright sky into a obnoxious dark gray shadow. The trees rustled and the leaves fell apart, straight down the road we could see the rain closing in turning the clear sight into a hazy might. Lightning struck places a many followed by the thunder cutting through the forest. We decided not to ride our luck and rather wait it out…

Another one of my Unicorn’s 1000km+ bike rides. This one was originally spanning through Dudhsagar waterfalls, but as always rains played  spoil-sport and had to resort to Maharashtra’s tallest waterfall – Thoseghar.

Facts

  • ~ 40 hours on the saddle
  • ~ 1700 km
  • ~ 45 litres of fuel / petrol
  • Hash tag – #reachedhomewithoutbruises – ? ? ? Thanks to Kandya

Directions

Continue reading Goa, Murudeshwar, Thoseghar Bike Ride