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Showing posts from June, 2012

Building a Radio Telescope : Part 1

A Project i've been putting off for quite a while is to try and build a Radio Telescope. I've been reading up about Radio Telescopes for about 2 years but i could never get my ass moving to start building one. And well, i've finally started working on one. But firstly, let me tell you what Radio Astronomy is. The  Wiki  article is pretty detailed but basically, radio astronomy is observing the skies and studying the energy earth receives in the radio spectrum. I didnt say 'observing the night skies' because radio waves can be detected day or night, unlike in visible astronomy where the sun ruins the day time observations. Listing out the process of Radio Astronomy - Radio Sources - which emit energy in the radio spectrum. Receivers - which are able to pick up these signals. Data Analysis - for you to be able to infer something about the sources from this data.  Radio Sources - The emissions from Sun, Jupiter, The Galactic Disc and a couple of cl

Installing NIS & NFS on Ubuntu 12.04 (client editions) *Updated*

In an attempt to upgrade all the systems in out computer labs to Ubuntu 12.04, we ran into a couple of problems. Inorder to be able to connect to the central department server, the systems had to have NIS and NFS installed and configured on each of the systems. This way, students would be able to login onto anyone of the systems and still be able to access their files(no matter which system it is). So, after having installed Ubuntu 12.04, and having done the usual system upgrades after configuring the system proxy (yes, we have proxy in our college, kind of makes our life difficult when we're trying to upgrade on different versions of Linux), we move on to looking up Ubuntu Manuals and start looking for setup and configuration manuals of NIS and NFS. And well, the good thing about Ubuntu is that there are a looot of installation manuals, and the best ones we found are   Ubuntu help for installing NIS   and   Ubuntu help for installing NFS . Along with installation, he also he

the invisible headphones

(this is how a lot of my blog posts will start atleast from now on. with a question!) (i think it will get you involved and make you think!)(i think!) So, how many of you travel by buses, local trains or share-autos regularly? or atleast, if you arent living in a metro and if you dont have the misery of having to travel by buses/local trains for an hour or more to reach home, i suppose you do travel by buses or trains-fairly regularly like once in a month or so-to other cities for varied purposes (personal or business) so, in these cases, have you ever talked to the another person? someone sitting next to you? someone of the same or opposite gender? someone who looks as bored as you are? im being serious! almost all of these transits will take longer than an hour, and 1 hour is a looot of time, believe me! personally, if i have an hour of time between home and college, i would read, listen to songs, chit chat with people around me. But lately, i have noticed that people, the ge

The Critic

Who is the most important person in a someone's life? his parents? his best friends? his Girlfriend / Boyfriend? or his soulmate? well after what i've seen, the one thing i realised is that the most important person in any person's life is The Critic. Yes, it is exactly what it means, the most important person in your life is the person who keeps telling you to improve and provides you with ways to improve, the one who keeps a watch on you and is mature enough to judge whether or not if what you're doing is right or if it's wrong! A person whose judgement you can trust and the gives you the wisest of choice! Not many people realise this. There is a critic in everyone's lives but not everyone is open to criticism. people are afraid! they dont want to be told that the're not doing well enough, they dont want to be told that they have scope to improve, they dont want to be told the right and wrong in their doings. and so, they shun away the critics

The Preacher

What do you think is the most preached thing in the world? Excerpts from the Bible? the Qurey? the Bhagavadgita? Nope! There are a lot of people who arent religious and there are a lot of them who aren't adult enough to understand these religious texts. but still, they've all been told one thing for sure. they've all been preached that - " the best thing to do after you fall down is pick yourselves up, dust yourselves off and move on" am i lying? isnt this true? you must've been preached or must've preached this to someone or the other in your life, haven't you? (if you haven't, then dude you seriously need to do something crazy after reading this, something adventurous, something new) and well, this isn't true. atleast a part of it isnt. People think that the only thing they can do after they falldown is to just get  up, get over it. and well they move on with their lives without having gained anything from their mistake, without