Rimpy Garg

Speak about an equipment of your household.

• what is it?
• What are its features?
• How did you get it?
• How do you use it?
• How do others in your family use it?

People these days are allured by fancy and attractive household equipments. In this fast moving life these gadgets are very helpful to save time and energy. I also use many kinds of equipments in my house like microwave, refrigerator, washing machine etc. But here I would like to talk about a refrigerator which I bought last year.

The refrigerator is of LG company with various unique features. It has smart Inverter Compressor. It has inbuilt stabilizer which provides protections against fluctuations. It has special refrigerator compartment for cosmetics and medicines. An antibacterial gasket is also provided to prevent bacterial growth. LG’s patented Ice Tray which is fastest in ice making. It has a moist balance crisper which can hold moisture hence prevents the vegetables and fruits from getting rotten.

I bought this refrigerator last year on the occasion of independence day. At that time companies were giving heavy discounts, attractive gifts and various exchange offers. So, I bought it on cash payment.

I use it regularly in day to day life. I keep fruits, cooked as well as raw vegetables and other eatables which are to be preserved in cool place in my refrigerator. In summer season, the equipment is really helpful to me to prepare ice-creams and puddings.

All other family members also use it for various purposes of storage. Sometimes on special occasions it is not possible to prepare the food and desserts on the spot, so we prepare them early and place them in the fridge. In this way this gadget saves our time and energy. I really feel comfortable with this equipment in this fast moving life.

To get the app :
You will have to make this package available about any linux distribution. Ubuntu users can find it in Software Center or from the command line with

sudo apt-get install mpg123

During installation you may get the following resolution error:

Run following command in console window to solve the problem:

sudo apt-get update

After running this command, your installation will get completed and audio files are ready to run through command line.

To play mp3 file use command:

mpg123 file_name.mp3

Your are now able to listen desired song through CLI

enjoy 🙂

Life in this modern world is full of problems and tensions.

The best solution to these tensions is turn towards God in prayer. The Hindu method of prayer is “meditation” (dhyana) and “repetition of divine name” (japa).

Here is the earnest attempt to present this subject, including some practical hints, in as simple a manner as possible.

1. Introduction:

Since a human being wants complete cessation of all kinds of sufferings and a continuous enjoyment of bliss, all scriptures proclaim that spiritual life is the sole means of  attaining it.

Spiritual life, in primary sense, is rooted in the spirit, the Atman or God residing in one’s own heart, who is also all pervading and transcendent. That means only a muktapurusa , a saint who has realized God, can lead such a life. However, in a secondary sense, a way of life that helps us to realize God, can also be termed as spiritual life.

 2. God :

God is described as responsible for creation(srsti), preservation(sthiti) and dissolution(pralaya) of this world. He is also the law-giver, the Supreme ruler , who metes out punishment to the wicked and rewards the virtuous.

3. Istadevata:

Spiritual life that leads one to God-experience and hence gives moksa can be called “yoga“.

According to meditation on any one of these various aspects of God, will also lead to same God-experience or realization, ultimately resulting in moksa.

That form or aspect of God, which one likes to meditate upon , is called ‘Ista‘ or ‘Istadevata‘ (chosen deity). This Istadevata may be the traditional family deity or any other aspect, to which the spiritual aspirant is naturally drawn.

In cases where the aspirant is unable to decide the Istadevata, the issue can be left to the guru or spiritual teacher.

For practising meditation and japa(repetition of the divine name of the chosen deity) it is necessary that the aspirant takes mantradiksa (Spiritual Initiation) from a qualified guru.

4. Intitation or Mantradiksa:

Mantra or the divine name is that which protects the disciple when he repeats it and reflects on it. Diksa is the process of giving mantra to the disciple by the guru by which the sins of the disciple are destroyed or attenuated.

In Mantradiksa, the guru generally imparts the sacred mantra(divine name) to the disciple and also instructs him in detail about the step-be-step process of meditation.

5. Meditation:

Now a simple process of meditation may be described for the sake of who have not had the benefit of mantradiksa :

• Choose your Istadevata. It can be your family deity or any other aspect of God which appeals to you most.
• Choose two times in a day which are convenient to you for meditation. Once you choose the timings, try to stick to them as far as possible.
• Choose a place for meditation in your home. It can be your puja-room or a corner of your living room.
• Spread the asana or meditation-seat in the place of meditation and sit upon it with folded legs. Keep the backbone, neck and head erect. Let your hands rest on your lap. Close your eyes.
• Think of the vast infinite sky without sun, moon, stars and also clouds, but filled with dim light, for a couple of minutes. This will help you to relax your mind and body.
• Now, withdraw the consciousness into the region of your heart. Imagine that there is a beautiful 12 petalled red lotus there. Also imagine that your Istadevata is sitting on the same, fully living and conscious.
• Mentally offer your prayer to the Istadevata. Pray for good health, peace of mind, faith and devotion.
• Try to meditate for sometime, say 5 to 10 minutes. Eventhough the mind may run away from the Istadevata during this meditation, try to bring it back again and again and fix it on the deity.
• Then do japa or repetition of the divine name of the Istadevata. Suppose the Istadevata is  Rama, you can simply repeat “Rama…..“. The minimum number of repetitions of the divine name should be 108. If you want to do more, it should be multiples of 108.

Do not immediately get up from the seat after meditation. Continue to sit there for some more timeamd do some chanting.

6. Significance of Mantrajapa:

A mantra becomes effective only when its japa is done. That is, it should be repeated a prescribed number of times as per the directions of the guru.

During japa, the counting can be done either by hand or by rosary(japamala).

7. Conclusion:

Meditation and japa help the spiritual aspirant to gain greater control over the mind and  concentration.

Generally they go together. However, id meditation deepens, japa may automatically stop.

If there is not much concentration, mere japa, especially if done in large numbers, can help one to get greater concentration and peace.

Hence all the spiritual aspirants are advised to take mantradiksa from a qualified guru and then practise spiritual disciplines as per his instructions.

This post is only like an appetizer that may increase one’s spiritual hunger.

“Continuous meditation will make mind so steady that you will not feel inclined to give up.”

* SchemaSpy is a Java-based tool (requires Java 5 or higher) that analyzes the metadata of a schema in a database and generates a visual representation of it in a browser-displayable format. It lets you click through the hierarchy of database tables via child and parent table relationships as represented by both HTML links and entity-relationship diagrams. It’s also designed to help resolve the obtuse errors that a database sometimes gives related to failures due to constraints.

* It is free software that is distributed under the terms of the Lesser GNU Public License 2.1.

* Install Graphviz by running following command in terminal(Alt+Ctrl+T):

sudo apt-get install graphviz

* SchemaSpy uses the dot executable from Graphviz to generate graphical representations of the table/view relationships.

* Run the following command in terminal:

sudo apt-get install libmysql-java

* After thet download the SchemaSpy Software from the following link:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/schemaspy/files/schemaspy/SchemaSpy%205

* Rename the downloaded package to your suitable name (say SchemaSpy).

* Now run the SchemaSpy with the following given command.Make appropriate changes in below command before running, like :

java -jar schemaSpy.jar -t mysql -o library -host localhost -db db_name   -u user -p password -dp /usr/share/java/mysql-connector-java.jar

Description of parameters used in above command:

    -t databaseType: Type of Database(e.g ora,db2 etc.)
-db db_name: Name of the Database to connect to.
-u user: Valid database user id with read access.
-s schema: Database schema.
-p password: Password associated with that user.
-o output Directory: Directory to write the generated HTML/graphs to.
-dp path/T/oDrivers: Looks for drivers here before looking in driverPath in [databaseType].properties. The drivers are usually contained in .jar or .zip files and are typically provided by your database vendor.

* Your Library folder has been created in /home/downloads , open the library folder and you can run any of the files in browser and understand relationships among different tables in database.

Note: In some cases,  it gives following error after running the above command :

The program ‘java’ can be found in the following packages:
 * default-jre
 * gcj-4.6-jre-headless
 * openjdk-6-jre-headless
 * gcj-4.5-jre-headless
 * openjdk-7-jre-headless
Try: sudo apt-get install <selected package>

* Run following commands to satisfy all the needs :

apt-cache search jdk

sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk openjdk-7-jre

* Now again run the SchemaSpy with the above given command.It wll work.

Thats all 🙂

Blender is a popular 3D graphics tool that’s often used for modeling, texturing, UV unwrapping, rigging, smoke and water simulation, rendering, animating, and skinning. It is also used for simulating, editing non-linear work, compositing and for the making of 3D applications including visual effects, video games, and animated film.

Features

Features of Blender include simulation tools that are very advanced, such as realistic body simulators, cloth, fluid, dynamics for soft body rendering, animation tools for creating powerful bodies, node based materials, and script embedding technology. Blender has a feature set that is robust, and is comparable to high-end software such as Maya Cinema 4D, LightWave, and 3ds Max.

Download Blender

You can download the latest version of blender from the following link :

http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/

Now install blender through terminal (command line tool) with the following command:

sudo apt-get install blender

To work on blender , type blender in terminal and you will get the following screen:

Your blender is ready to work 🙂

Introduction to Yii

Yii is a high-performance PHP framework best for developing Web 2.0 applications.Yii is pronounced as Yee or [ji:], and is an acroynym for “Yes It Is!”.

Yii is a free, open-source Web application development framework written in PHP5 that promotes clean, DRY design and encourages rapid development. It works to streamline your application development and helps to ensure an extremely efficient, extensible, and maintainable end product.

Steps to install Yii

• Download the latest Yii package and unpack it in your web accessible directory (/var/www).
• Make sure that the unpacked Yii folder should have following files/directories:

demos/                 demos      

framework/           framework source files      

requirements/        requirement checker      

CHANGELOG      describing changes in every Yii release      

LICENSE              license of Yii      

README              this file      

UPGRADE            upgrading instructions

Requirements

The minimum requirements by Yii is that your Web server supports
PHP 5.1.0 or above. Yii has been tested with Apache HTTP server Linux operating systems.
Please access the following URL to check if your Web server reaches
the requirements by Yii, assuming “YiiPath” is where Yii is installed:

http://hostname/YiiPath/requirements/index.php
Example : http://localhost/Yii/requirements/index.php
It will show the following screen if it is satisfied with requirements.

Quick Start

• On command line , type in the following commands :

                       $ cd YiiPath/framework

 $ ./yiic webapp ../testdrive 

Yii comes with a command line tool called “yiic” that can create
a skeleton Yii application for you to start with.

The new Yii application will be created at “YiiPath/testdrive”.
You can access it with the following URL:

http://hostname/YiiPath/testdrive/index.php

That all 🙂

This version of limesurvey has released but it is not stable because it is under development not completely developed. I installed it to test it & to report the bugs in it.

Follow the steps to install the Limesurvey 2.0 RC2:

• Go to the following link to download the limesurvey version 2(not yet released) and click on the suitable package.

                        http://www.limesurvey.org/en/unstable-release

• After downloading it , extract it and then upload this extracted folder on server by using following command in terminal (alt+ctrl+T):

$scp -r /path/to/extracted folder folder_name username@server IP address:~/home_directory

         For Example :

$  scp -r /Desktop limesurvey2RC2 rimpy@202.164.53.122:~/public_html

Note: This package is not having complete files and folders as were in the limesurvey 1.92+ (released version).

• Copy the files and folders from the limesurvey folder which you have installed earlier  & paste those files/folders in your new limesurvey folder.
• Go the config.php file and make the changes as follows:

1. $databaselocation   =   ‘localhost’;
2. $databasename       =   ‘ ‘;
3. $databaseuser       =   ‘root’;
4. $databasepass       =   ‘ ‘;
5. $dbprefix           =   ‘lime_’;
6. $rooturl            =   “http://{$_SERVER[‘HTTP_HOST’]}/path/to/limesurvey2RC2”;
7. //Installation Set up
8. $defaultuser  = ‘admin’;
9. //This is the username when Limesurvey is installed and the administration user is created on installation
10. $defaultpass  = ‘password’;

• In the above url, if your limesurvey folder is different than “limesurvey2RC2” then you also have to reflect that changes in $rooturl variable. To do that simply replace the name folder at the end of the $rooturl variable with newer one. See the line 6 in above code.
• Now go to your server link (e.g 202.53.164.122/~rimpy) and click on the uploaded folder as in my case it is limesurvey2RC2.
• Then it will start actual installation steps.
• First it will ask you about default language selection that will be used throughout the whole installation process.Screenshot is shown below:

• After selecting the language click on the start installation button.
• In next step , it will ask you about the agreement with GNU General Public License.

• Click on the “I accept” button .
• After doing agreement, it will check for the requirements for your Limesurvey2.0RC2 & also report the permission errors if any.

• After setting permissions, click on the try again button it will show the following screen with next button.

• Click on the next button & it will then ask for database configuration as in following screen.

• Giving the  suitable information in mandatory fields & click on the next button.
• Then it will ask you to populate your database which you have created.

• Click on the populate database button.
• Then it will ask for the optional settings as shown in below screen.

• Click on the next button & it will show the screen of successful  installation with username & password.

• Click on the administration button & it will show the first login screen as below.

• Give your username (in most of cases it is “admin“) & password & after login it will show the following Limesurvey screen.

• Your Limesurvey tool is ready to create surveys .

Thats all . Enjoy with different surveys 🙂

Limesurvey supports Google Map Service in questions. It will ask the user to point out the location with balloon and it will automatically give values of latitude/longitude in the text box.

To insert Google map in any survey , you need to get an API key .Using an API key enables you to monitor your application’s Maps API usage, and ensures that Google can contact you about your application if necessary.

How to get Google Maps API:

• Create your Google account.
• Visit the APIs Console at https://code.google.com/apis/console and log in with your Google Account.
• Click the Services link from the left-hand menu.
• Activate the Google Maps API v3 service.
• Click the API Access link from the left-hand menu.
• Your API key is available from the API Access page, in the Simple API Access section.

How to use Google API key in Limesurvey to use Gmap service :

• Create the question in which you want to use Google Map Service.
• Choose the question type “Short free text“.
• Go to advance settings & choose “Google Maps” in “Use mapping service” option.
• Set “default position” option to “Yes” if you want to set any default position on map.
• Set “zoom level” to appropriate value. (say 20).
• Give latitude/longitude values of the default position in Default Position text box if you set it to yes earlier.
• Give settings of map width & height according to your wish.
• Save the question.

Global Settings :

• In the main administration toolbar , click on the global settings icon as shown below:

• In Global Settings , go to the General Settings  & give the Google API Key in “Google Maps API Key“.(which you got in Simple API Access section).

• Click on the save settings & your map service is ready to use.

Enjoy different locations on map 🙂