I am tired of hearing about the incident at Malegaon.  How about more relavent (and life-threatening) issues of greater concern get more airtime?

For those short on imagination...here is a short list (this list covers a random subset of things that happened in the last month).

• Weekly stone throwing at police incidents in Kashmir
  
• Maoist Violence (killing of police, people, economy (regular bandhs)).  They operate in 182 districts of India!
• Roadside blockades: Lalgarh area in West Bengal by a "resistence" group in support by naxalites
• government control of temples in a secular india?!
• a rape of a 2 year old! (what kind of mentally broken man rapes a toddler?!)

Are these things not deserving of media attention?  They are all likely to get them the attention of viewers and are equally (if not more) sensational?

I propose that everytime some stupid news item happens and gets reported on, we blast the media outlets with requests for coverage on other more relavant and interesting (and equally sensational) topics...

DIY: Digital Photo Frame

I decided to convert my old Compaq Evo N610c into a digital photo frame as it hasn't been used in over a year...and the battery died a long time ago. I bought a D-Link AirPlus wireless card since it seems to be using the Atheros chipset which is well supported by DSL (using the madwifi driver).

The first & most important part was setting up the software. This post will discuss the software in detail and future posts will document the hardware transformation.

After exploring for a bit, I decided to use the McDPF package (it is the most complete package I found) which installs over Linux...and hence, there are no software costs as well. In addition, I didn't like the fact that McDPF can either display photos off of the harddrive or through frame channel but not both at the same time. Thus, I encorporated a script named 'picasaweb-download' which I found online so that the photos can be downloaded and displayed in line with the rest of the photos. I also extended the web interface so that the picasaweb-download script can be run and configured through the web interface.

The problem, is that it did not work out of the box by following all the install instructions. After debugging for a while, I finally got it to work.

The first step is to install "Damn Small Linux" (I used version DSL v. 4.4.10) as per McDPF installation page. DSL v 4.2.5 does not support WPA out of the box.

Once I rebooted and had the restored files from the USB stick, I needed to change quite a few files to get McDPF to install for me and than to add the options that I needed. I couldn't find a way to check in my changes on source forge...so you can download them here. These changes are described below.

To make this all work, download the files in the link to the following locations:

replace mcdpf_setup.sh (in /home/dsl)
upload picasaweb-download to /home/dsl/frame/scripts/
upload run_picasa.pl to /home/dsl/frame/scripts/
replace process_commands.php (in /opt/lampp/htdocs/frame/)
replace basics.php (in /opt/lampp/htdocs/frame/)
upload picasa logo to /opt/lampp/htdocs/frame/images/logos/picasalogo.jpg
upload picasa.php (in /opt/lampp/htdocs/frame/)

My Changes (in detail)

I had to comment out lines 181 & 182
search for the line that had 'Dir::Etc::SourceList' . There should be two of them on lines 181 and 182.
comment them out (put a # in front of them)
and insert the following below them

apt-get -qq -y update
apt-get -qq -y install feh

the first time I ran mcpdf_setup.sh, I got a few errors...so I said 'n' to the reboot question. It did, however, setup my wireless networking, which let me fix the errors.

search for the line referring to pear (there should be two of them for installing Weather Services and a XML Serializer). insert the following line before them:

/opt/lampp/bin/pear channel-update pear.php.net

on line 192, there is a line wget ... for xampp. prior to that line, insert

rm xampp*

edit /etc/apt/sources.list
delete its contents and insert the line

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/debian woody main contrib non-free

right click / tools / enable apt

run mcdpf_setup.sh

change hostname to what you want (default is box)
edit the file /etc/hostname (as root) and change the hostname to whatever you want

Change the lampp settings so that it is more secure--and the lampp documentation doesn't show up when you go to the frame via a web-browser.

run: /opt/lampp/lampp security
(use the following options: no password, disable mysql, disable xampp pages)

than restart lampp via: /opt/lampp/lampp restart

Download URI-1.37.tar.gz from http://search.cpan.org/~gaas/URI-1.37/URI/Escape.pm
tar -xvzf URI-1.37.tar.gz
sudo mv URI-1.37/URI /usr/lib/perl/5.8.0

Lastly, I needed to edit the crontab in order to make it download photos from picasa every day. The lines I added were:

# Download pictures from picasa
00 7 * * * /home/dsl/frame/scripts/run_picasa.pl

Finally, the files

upload picasaweb-download to /home/dsl/frame/scripts/
edit process_commands.php (in /opt/lampp/htdocs/frame/) to add commands for picasaweb-download
edit basics.php (in /opt/lampp/htdocs/frame/) to add page for picasaweb-download
upload picasa logo to /opt/lampp/htdocs/frame/images/logos/picasalogo.jpg so that the picasa page looks consistant
create picasa.php (in /opt/lampp/htdocs/frame/) so that the picasa page actually works
upload run_picasa.pl to /home/dsl/frame/scripts/ (this is a wrapper script around picasaweb-download that parses multiple user names from the preferences file and than calls picasaweb-download for all of them)

download these modified files from here.

Getting the Powerbutton to work
My laptop has 2 power buttons. A push button and a slider button. By default, neither button does anything...

It turns out that you need to start the acpi daemon in order to receive these events.

sudo /etc/init.d/acpid start

That enabled the sliding switch to reboot the computer and the push button still did nothing.

I saw the following entries in my /var/log/acpid

[Sat Nov 29 14:38:16 2008] starting up

[Sat Nov 29 14:38:16 2008] 4 rules loaded

[Sat Nov 29 14:39:13 2008] received event "button/sleep C19B 00000080 00000004"

[Sat Nov 29 14:39:13 2008] completed event "button/sleep C19B 00000080 00000004"

[Sat Nov 29 14:39:37 2008] received event "button/power PWRF 00000080 00000002"

[Sat Nov 29 14:39:37 2008] executing action "/opt/acpi/actions/powerbtn.sh"

[Sat Nov 29 14:39:37 2008] BEGIN HANDLER MESSAGES

Saved mixer settings to '/home/dsl/.umix'



Broadcast message from root Sat Nov 29 14:39:38 2008...



The system is going down for reboot NOW !!

MurgaLua Version 0.6.8 (http://www.murga-projects.com/murgaLua/

MurgaLua FLTK bindings: Copyright 2006-8 John Murga, GPL license.

Warning: FLTK bindings is a subset of the full MurgaLua environment.

ls: .xtdesktop/*.lnk: No such file or directory

No Icons Found.

[Sat Nov 29 14:39:38 2008] END HANDLER MESSAGES

[Sat Nov 29 14:39:38 2008] action exited with status 0

[Sat Nov 29 14:39:38 2008] completed event "button/power PWRF 00000080 00000002"

Which is good progress. After the reboot, I created /opt/bootcustom.sh with the following entry

#!/bin/bash

# start acpid
/etc/init.d/acpid start

this makes acpid start automatically at boot

Instead of rebooting, I wanted the powerbutton to do a clean shutdown. To do this, edit /opt/acpi/actions/powerbtn.sh and change the last line from

/usr/local/bin/exitcheck.sh reboot to

/usr/local/bin/exitcheck.sh shutdown


Sleep Button
Create /etc/acpi/events/sleepbtn with the following contents:

# /etc/acpi/events/sleepbtn

# This is called when the user presses the sleep button and calls

# /etc/acpi/sleepbtn.sh for further processing.



# Optionally you can specify the placeholder %e. It will pass

# through the whole kernel event message to the program you've

# specified.



# We need to react on "button power.*" and "button/power.*" because

# of kernel changes.



event=button[ /]sleep

action=/opt/acpi/actions/powerbtn.sh

so that it will work like the power button does.

Reduce Power Consumption
I edited /opt/acpi/actions ac_adapter.sh and made it the same as battery.sh since a 2 Pentium 4 is overkill for a DPF...we can step down the CPU and it will still be fine...and will save some electricity.


Disclaimer
I have tried to write about all the steps I took to get this to work. In the progress of getting this up and running, i had to try many different things and sometimes go backwords...so if I have gotten anything wrong...feel free to comment and I will help as best as I can.

I am working on building a Hindu Encyclopedia since this type of resource doesn't exist today. The ambition for this is quite large--to cover everything w.r.t. Sanatana Dharma from philosophy to history to culture to engineering. If you would like to help in any way, please reach out to me.

Sri Sathya Sai Baba meets TN CM M. Karunanidhi

This is great news. By joining hands with a known Hindu-baiter and Hindu-basher, Sri Sathya Sai Baba has forced the other to make a public statement to the fact that Sri Sathya Sai Baba is to be respected and indirectly showed respect to all Hindus. I believe that Sri Sathya Sai Baba has decided that a change of strategy was needed in engaging with these Hindu baiters and hence this new form of engagement.

Over the last few decades, Hindu swamis and mahatmas have decided that politics is not something they should be involved with. They wanted to focus on saving Hindus through spiritual and social work. However, at every step, politicians with their anti-Hindu (and often pro-Christian and pro-Muslim) stances have tried to stop them. Everything ranging cease and desist orders to arrests has been tried. Muslim and Christian groups however have a very pro-politics stance and are not afraid to manipulate our politicians to get their way. We can see the impact of that with the pro-minority, anti-majority stance politicians in India take today.

Sri Sathya Sai Baba has taken the first step to engaging with this group in order to manage them and to change this trend. Further, this type of engagement and mutual endorsement will slowly lead to the creation of the concept of a Hindu votebank organized by Hindu sect. What would Karunanidhi do to get the votes of all of Sri Sathya Sai Baba's followers in Tamil Nadu? Further, it now becomes more difficult for Karunanidhi to bash Hindus if he says that he respects Sri Sathya Sai Baba since he would be indirectly bashing Sri Sathya Sai Baba.

If our other leaders follow up with more engagements, we may be able to change the anti-Hindu stance of Indian politics.

Article on Money Control
Article on Chennai Online

Indians make one major human race: US study



This article provides yet another nail in the coffin for Aryan Migration Theory (or its current variant).



Now, with so many arguments against Aryan Invasion/Migration/Immigration related theories, I wish some people would get to generating new theories as to the origin of Indian civilization.



My understanding is that Indian's were one of the early waves out of Africa when Homosapians started migrating out of Africa into the rest of the world. If that is the case and if the Vedas and Puranas are assumed to provide some view into Indian history -- the question to ask is how did Indian civilization technologically as advanced as it did so much faster than the rest of the world? And also how/why did we forget all of this scientific learning.

On Liberation

Give up all your doubts. Resort to moral courage. Be a supreme doer of actions, supreme enjoyer of delight and supreme renouncer of all!

7 Stages on the path to Liberation

1. Study the scriptures and keep company with holy men (satsang)
2. Spend time in reflection and internal inquiry on things learned on part 1 and on yourself
3. Non-attachment or psychological freedom from the material world and its objects
4. Process of gaining freedom from conditioning and tendencies (vasanas)
5. State of bliss resulting from freedom from vasanas
6. Realization of self-knowledge
7. Turiya (Liberation)
8. Turiyatita (beyond liberation)

Individuality (jivahood) exists only as long as desire for pleasure lasts. After you have gotten over your vasanas, the term individuality loses its meaning as it is commonly defined since your perspective and point of reference both change.

Reference: Vashishta’s Yoga, The Story of Bhrngisa

Branding as applied to Social Organizations

During the branding review on Friday I had an insight into what is happening with several of the organizations I am involved with outside of school. One of these organizations is the Hindu Students Council (HSC). HSC is a nation wide organization (with chapters in over 80 universities) that focuses on trying to unite and educate Hindu students as they attempt to learn about themselves and understand their own identity in college.

HSC brands itself as a very mainstream brand and tries very hard to appeal to everyone and makes many statements to that regard. It wants to build consensus on every issue both within its leadership team, the larger member base, and do nothing that could conceivably offend anyone in the larger public. This brand positioning was not something that was consciously thought about and strategically created…it is a result of the fact that these are things that are deeply ingrained in the psyche of its leadership team. While the positioning is actively managed, no one things of this as brand positioning and so, the organization is a bit hap-hazard in its approach to the issues it tries to tackle and is surprised to not find a great deal of support from its members.

One of the results of this branding is the fact that its member base is fairly apathetic to the causes it picks up. Very few people are willing to get up and be an activist. However, this is something that the leadership team struggles with on a regular basis. How do they motivate and get their members more involved while maintaining the friendly, non-hostile environment. While they don’t think about it this way, in essence, the problem is how to they get HSC to go from a mainstream brand (and apathetic membership) to a brand that has a very enthusiastic, activist member base (with energy similar to that of followers of hostile brands).

We normally think of branding as something that companies do with products and product portfolios. However, the concept is equally applicable to non-profit & social organizations. In this case the customers are really an organization’s members. By mapping these concepts onto this world, we gain a new way to analyze organizational problems and find solutions. For example, to make members less apathetic, we can change an organization’s branding to be less main-stream. This action, involves a trade-off however, reduced membership count, but increased number of active members instead of a larger membership count, but fewer number of active members.

There is a continuum between extreme hostility and mainstream. By understanding where the organization positions itself, it can explore where it can move. It might even be possible to move a little bit on the continuum without loosing any of the current members. In short, for an organization that hasn’t thought of itself in these terms, it is very important for it to understand where on the continuum it positions itself in order to understand what its options are. Also, by knowing where the organization is, the leadership team can predict what will happen based on actions that move the group along that continuum.

During a marketing class review on Branding, I had an insight into how branding can effect how organization's members behave. Below are my notes from that class.