Carthik Sharma

I got Redhat Linux 8.0 (psyche), an alternate Operating System running on my system.
Redhat Linux 8.0 is the latest from Redhat , and is the best Operating System I have seen yet. So now my computer has two operating systems – Windows XP and Redhat Linux 8.0
It is so beautiful, I mean beautiful!! I had Redhat 7.2 running on the PC before, but 8.0 is much, much better.
For one it comes with OpenOffice which allows me to open, edit, create and save powerpoint presentations, MS Word , MS Excel documents, which can be opened by Microsoft Office products.
Yet another attracive feature is that this edition of RedHat linux displays fonts in a much better fashion. I dont have to go on the web, search how to set the fonts directories/settings properly etc.
Also, the BlueCurve graphical user interface is much better , since it serves up the most beautiful , smooth, 3D icons, and gives a very SMOOTH look to the desktop and all objects.
I am thoroughly satisfied with the quality with which i can view video and listen to music on my PC when its running on Linux.
Who needs Windows XP? I have lately found Xp to be very strange. True the computer doesnt hang anymore, but I keep getting “ERROR : This program MUST die now!” messages all the time. I wish I had not installed the free Win XP Pro copy that I got at the career fair. I could have sold it at half-price and yet made a LOT of money, for something which is worse than a free-product (see RedHat Linux 8.0 in action) (Redhat Linux 8.0)

Everything about this is perfect. As RedHat says : You never saw Linux looking this good!

This is my first post using Drivel, an LJ client for Linux systems. Drivel is a very useful tool. i dont have to open the LJ page to post comments, I can do it from my desktop, and it automatically detects the music thats playing. Wish it could automatically detect my mood too It makes it easier to add links to posts. Usually i have trouble with the “autoformatting” option on LiveJournal.

Thank you!!

The Pioneer 10 space probe, launched to study Jupiter, is free. NASA will no longer receive any signals from it. It is the first man-made object to leave the solar system. It bears a plaque describing Earth, and Humans. This story describes how the plaque came into being. I dread the day some extra-terrestrial will see it

This material is quoted from NASA SP-446

When signals from the two Pioneers can no longer be received at Earth, they will have another mission as they continue into interstellar space. This final mission began when, in a high vacuum, Pioneer 10 gleamed under the harsh lights of an artificial sun in the space simulator at TRW Systems, California. The final test was underway before the spacecraft was to be shipped to Kennedy Space Center. A group of science correspondents from the national press were at TRW Systems for a briefing on Pioneer and had been invited to see the spacecraft under test.

Looking at Pioneer through the portholes of the simulator, one of the correspondents, Eric Burgess, then with The Christian Science Monitor, visualized Pioneer IO as mankind’s first emissary beyond our Solar System. This spacecraft should carry a special message from mankind, he thought, a message that would tell any finder of the spacecraft a million or even a billion years hence that planet Earth had evolved an intelligent species that could think beyond its own time and beyond its own Solar System.

He mentioned this idea to Richard Hoagland, a freelance writer, and to Don Bane, then with the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, and they enthusiastically agreed. The result was that Burgess and Hoagland approached Dr. Carl Sagan, Director of the Laboratory of Planetary Studies, Cornell University, who was then visiting the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, in connection with Mariner 9’s mission to Mars. A short while earlier, Dr. Sagan had been involved in a conference in the Crimea devoted to the problems of communicating with extraterrestrial intelligences and, together with Dr. Frank Drake, who is famous for the Drake Equation , Director of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, Cornell University, had designed one type of message that might be used to communicate with an alien intelligence.

Dr. Sagan was enthusiastic about the idea of a message on the Pioneer spacecraft. He and Dr. Drake designed a plaque, and Linda Salzman Sagan prepared the artwork. The design was presented to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; they accepted it for this first Pioneer from our Solar System into the Galaxy.

The plaque design was etched into a gold- anodized aluminum plate 15.25 by 22.8 cm (6 by 9 in.) and 0.127 cm (0.05 in.) thick. This plate was attached to the antenna support struts of the spacecraft in a position where it would be shielded from erosion by interstellar dust [illustration].

When Pioneer 10 flew by Jupiter, the spacecraft acquired sufficient kinetic energy to carry it completely out of our Solar System. In about 100,000 years, it will have coasted to the distance of the nearest star, in the direction of the constellation Taurus. Sometime, perhaps many billions of years from now, it may pass through the planetary system of a remote stellar neighbor, one of whose planets may have evolved intelligent life.

If that life possesses sufficient capability to detect the Pioneer spacecraft – needing a higher technology than mankind possesses today – it may also have the curiosity and the technical ability to pick up the spacecraft and take it into a laboratory to inspect it. Then the plaque with its message from Earth should be found and possibly deciphered.

Richard O. Fimmel, James Van Allen, Eric Burgess

PIONEER: First to Jupiter, Saturn, and Beyond

NASA SP-446, Scientific and Technical Information Office, NASA, Washington, D. C., 1980, pp. 247-249

This is way too good. I got the address carthik.tk registered for free. So henceforth, I am the proud owner of a unique domain name!! I had been to blogchalking in the course of my netwalk, and bingo! , I have my own domain name, absolutely free. Way to go!

I added a page to my website with links to websites that have LiveJournal Icons for the taking, as also the links to the LiveJournal Communities interested in icons.

SO if you are bored / dissatisfied with your present icon (or the lack thereof) you could use these links.

Free users can’t do a directory search. That’s what I did to get the list of LJ communities interested in “Icon”.

Hope this is helpful.

Carthik’s Livejournal Icons Archive – Feel free to fool around

Bing-O!

This is getting childish
I added a image header to my LJ page, You should check it out at and tell me what you think of the page now. Comments/suggestions are always welcome. Gracias!

I got an email from the professor at the university I had applied to, and talked about in an earlier post. He says I am good, but not good enough. I am on the waiting list, and if any of the 4 applicants who have been made offers choose to turn it down, I will be offered admission.
I am getting inured to downturns in life. I guess that now my life has more or less decided its course. The options as to what I can do with my life grow fewer as each year passes.
“And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind
you, no one told you when to run,
You missed the starting gun.”
Which just goes to say that you should wait for someone to tell you when to run.
As my friend said, “Today is another day. Live to see its end.” A day at a time – I would love to live life that way, but every day alters how the next can be, and thats what makes the days overflow into each other.
There is a Bangladeshi/Nepali girl who shares my office room. She does’nt smile, and behaves like a total snob. She vitiates the environment in the room. I get _very_ putoff when she averts her glance as I enter the room, and the seating arrangement is such that I cant see her, but she can me. I cant help overhearing her loud conversations and man, at times I feel like giving her a piece of my mind. What makes people so bitter and terrible, I wonder!

UPDATE : points out that this is _not true_!! Thanks for pointing that out!!

This is the transcript of the ACTUAL radio conversation of a US naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October 1995. Radio conversation released by the Chief of Naval Operations 10-10-95.
Canadians: Please divert your course 15 degrees the South to avoid a collision.
Americans: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees the North to avoid a collision.
Canadians: Negative. You will have to divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.
Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.
Canadians: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course.
Americans: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS LINCOLN, THE SECOND LARGEST SHIP IN THE UNITED STATES’ ATLANTIC FLEET. WE ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THREE DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS AND NUMEROUS SUPPORT VESSELS. I DEMAND THAT YOU CHANGE YOUR COURSE 15 DEGREES NORTH, I SAY AGAIN, THAT’S ONE FIVE DEGREES NORTH, OR COUNTER-MEASURES WILL BE UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP.

Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call!

Went to Walmart today. totally unremarkable day, I should say.

Please welcome Shashidhar, the day-scholar friend of mine, who likes sipping tea at the Hanamkonda bus station (as opposed to the Kazipet railway station) at 2 in the morning! I have fond memories of the Bajaj scooter, which is his father’s of course, which must be about the first vehicle with gears that I ever drove.

It turns out that it is _not_ the first motorcycle with gears that I rode on public roads, because that honor goes to his (yeah, this time it is his own bike, if you neglect his brother, that is..) Hero Honda. One fine day in November, me and my princess were sitting under the lamp post in the lawns outside the ladies hostel at R.E.C.W. and along came Shashi, to meet another girl. He saw us sitting there, and said that the two of us could go somewhere on his honda, if we wanted to. I took the keys, and off we went to Hotel Ratna, the Hilton of Hanamkonda. I had trouble shifting gears, and I think it was on our way out that she caught on and asked me how many times I had ridden a motorcycle on public roads before. I told her that this was the first time, and she trusted me. So did Shashi, in giving me the bike.

Oh, this is just one incident! Shashi has given me so many memorable incidents that I will be ever-indebted to him, to say the least..
So friends, Welcome to our midst…

I finally got my LJ to look the way I wanted to. Changed the page layout and all that. Check it out now at . My obsession with dark webpages continues.

It has been raining on and off for the past three days. This reminds me so much of India. I become very introspective and more susceptible to nostalgic thoughts when the weather is like this. I love to look out of the window, with a cup of coffee and a book in my hands, stare at the grey clouds and the grey light that fills the world, and think. Think about nothing in particular, just let my thoughts run their course. Sometimes at the end of it, I feel happy, contented, and at other times, somewhat depressed. So what? This is all so normal, you might say, but I love when all this happens to me, and life is worthwhile for these moments…
The right pedal of my faithful Schwinn bicycle came off. I learnt that the bike was made in 1987! There is an inscription on the rim that says so! 16 years is a long time, and the bike is still smooth and runs beautiful. When it comes to certain things, I prefer old over new. Bicycles for example. Given a choice between the old bike I have, and a new bike at the same price, I would buy the old, used bike. It has character, and time increases the uniqueness of the bike. I dont like used computers though.
I have a list of things to do. I was supposed to go orange picking with voluteers from volunteer-UCF. The idea is to pick oranges from the groves around orlando and pack them in crates for the homeless and deprived. I could not wake up in time and so I did not go. They should have scheduled it for the afternoon, or early evening, instead of at 8 in the morning.
Loneliness – coming to think of it, we all should have gotten used to being lonely, since that is the only feeling that keeps coming back. Why then do we behave like we are used to being loved? That it becomes natural to expect the company of people you love, and miss it so much when its not around, as though we are used to the love of people who love us?