Speaking of sunsets , here’s a nice sunset picture that I took from our college hostel a few weeks back.

The new laptop has finally arrived, exactly 50 days after I placed my order. It was delivered to my house on the 20th, but I could only get it on Saturday since I was at college. The build quality seems to be solid, and performance is superb (that is, unless I try to run Vista on it, which seems to choke in certain circumstances even with 2GB of RAM). My Flickr page has more pictures of the laptop.

Dell is beginning to piss me off. I ordered the Dell XPS M1330 on the 31st of July (order number 2231338), and till date, I have not even got a estimated date of delivery, and apparently, the build has not been started yet.

After placing my order, I emailed them on the 3rd of August, and a CSR called me back, promising to give me a ESD by the 6th. There was no updates on the 6th, and after not getting any response from another follow up mail that I sent, I called up their customer service department. The CSR told me that there would be a delay of around fifteen days for the build process to start. She also told me that it would take around 3/4 days to complete the build and testing processes, and then it would take upto another 10 days for the shipping, primarily because of duty and customs clearance delays at the Indian airports. The next day (or probably on the day after), another lady called up, and told me the same thing, and promised me that I would definitely get my machine by the end of August. After that, there has been complete silence from the Dell side. Right now, assuming that the build hasn’t started yet, I don’t think I’ll be getting my notebook before mid September. Moreover, to make things worse, the price of the configuration that I ordered has gone down by nearly 6000 rupees (around 150 US dollars) in the last (almost) one month.
I was thinking of cancelling my order, since the new semester has started at college and I badly need a notebook to do all my work, but people tell me that getting a refund going to be a major PITA, as I ordered via a pre-paid card. Right now I don’t know what to do. I’ll try calling up Dell India again on Monday, and I guess the only thing that I can do right now is hope that my system will go into build stage next week :-(.

[Update]:: Called up Dell today, and the CSR told me that a new batch of parts is expected at the Malaysia factory (where all Dell India notebook orders are assembled) on the 7th of September. The build process for my notebook would start only after all the parts are in place, and so it seems that I will not receive the notebook before the 20th of September. That makes it 50 days of waiting :-(. After the conversation, I sent a mail to the customer care email address, asking for an acknowledgement/confirmation on the info that I had received, but till now, I have not got any reply.

[Update 2]:: Got the following reply via email for my request for confirmation:

Dear Sir,

As confirmed by our customer care dept., we are currently facing a
worldwide shortage on some parts & hence the delivery is held up,
however our customer care will give you regular updates on the status.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

XXXXX XXXX

—–Original Message—–
From: Sayamindu Dasgupta [mailto:XXXXXX@XXXXXXX]
Sent: Monday, August 27, 2007 4:27 PM
To: Online India
Subject: [Order number 2231338] Request for confirmation

Hello,

I called up your customer service department regarding the status of
my order (XPS M1330, order number 2231338), and I was informed that
the missing parts holding up the order would arrive on the 7th of
September at Malaysia, and hopefully after that the system will be
shipped out on the 9th and then it will probably reach my place after
7-10 days (due to customs clearance issues at Kolkata).

Could you kindly confirm this ?

My order details are as follows:

Online reference number: XXXXXXX
Order number: 2231338
Customer number: XXXXXX

Thank you,
Sayamindu Dasgupta

[Update 3]: The laptop seems to have shipped finally. The shipping date is 30th August, and initially the estimated delivery date was showing as 18th September, but from yesterday, it has been showing 7th September.

[Update 4]: Delivered - finally the thing was delivered to my address on the 20th - a 50days wait altogether. However, build quality seems to be solid, and performance is superb.

I use a 7 year old CRT monitor at home for my primary desktop (which is also my main “work” machine). After coming back from the UK, I found that it was refusing to work (and was making some really nasty crackling noise). However, it seemed to fix itself yesterday, so things are normal once again, though I guess I should buy a new one asap.

In SoC related stuff, I have created a seperate branch for Nautilus (nautilus-lockdown) for the deployment and lockdown related code I’m adding to it.

I also managed to upload some of my pictures of London yesterday. Will be uploading the rest of the pictures (football match, Diego being carried off the field, etc) by this weekend.


I finally ordered a laptop for myself - a Dell XPS M1330. Hopefully this will arrive before September, since there seems to be some major delays with this particular system. The config I ordered though is pretty sweet (2 Ghz Core2 Duo processor, 160 GB hard disk, 2 GB RAM, Geforce 8400GS, LED backlit screen, etc), so I think it will be worth the wait.

I’m at London now, staying with my friend Progga who has been working with us for the AnkurBangla project for the past five years. It’s the first time that we are meeting in person, and it really feels wonderful :-).

Finally arrived at GUADEC after a 13 hour flight from Kolkata (excluding a 3 hour break at the Dubai airport). I don’t know if it will help, but here are the directions I followed to go from the airport (BHX) to the Etap hotel.

• Get the connecting Rail Link to the rail station near the airport (it’s a free service)
• Buy a ticket to the New Street Station and ask for the platform number
• Get down at New Street Station and get out via the main exits
• Follow the taxi line (I didn’t get a taxi though)
• Once you reach the intersection, turn right
• Keep walking till you reach a roundabout with a Chinese looking structure in the middle
• Turn left
• You’ll be able to see the Etap Hotel on the other side of the road after walking for a few minutes - use the subway to cross the street

If you get lost, ask for the Etap hotel - people did not seem to know Great Colmore Street - and apparently there’s a Colmore Row somewhere in the other end of the city, as Shreyas found out the hard way.

This applies to my Indian readers only, apologies to everyone else.

ECNR stands for “Emigration Check Not Required”, a stamp that you need to have in your passport if you want to leave the country (even temporarily). However, if you apply for your passport before you pass your higher secondary examinations (I hear that the new regulations have lowered the limit to the secondary, ie class 10 level), your passport will have a stamp saying “Emigration Check Required”. From what I could understand, it is a ministry of labour requirement which says that all who do not meet certain criteria and want to go abroad should first obtain an “Emigration Clearance” from the office of Protector of Emigrants (a list of offices is available at this web site). However, this clearance is temporary, and valid for one journey only.

In order to get a proper ECNR stamp, (assuming that you meet the criteria), here are the steps that I followed:

• Got a visa
• Went to the regional passport office at the city (Kolkata). It was crowded like anything, with a long queue (around 200 people) in front of the main gate. However, I told the police officer at the gate that I needed an ECNR stamp, and he let me through.
• Managed to wriggle through the crowd (studying at a school which once held the world record for having the highest number of students has its own advantages, it seems) and found out where counter number 8 was. It was a special counter, marked “Miscellaneous Services”, with only three people standing in front of it.
• I gave the gentleman behind the counter a filled out copy of Form number 2, along with photocopies (attested) of my Higher Secondary marksheet and certificate and Rupees 300 (in cash). I also mentioned that the passport had a valid visa
• In return he gave me a receipt and told me to come back on the next day, at 5:00 PM
• I went to the office again on the next day, at around 4:30PM. The passports were being issued from counter number 3. I sat down for a while and after around 20 minutes they called my name. I had to sign some documents, and they gave me back my passport, with the Emigration Check Required stamp cancelled, and a new ECNR stamp in one of the visa pages.

..and if you are wondering, the reason I posted this in my blog was, there’s absolutely no clear instructions anywhere on how to get an ECNR stamp, and it actually took 3 trips for me to the passport office before I could figure things out. And another word of advice - do not pay any attention to the touts/agents standing in front of the passport office, willing to do a same day service for Rs 1000 and above. They might say that it will take 12 days for the passport to be processed in the normal way - do not believe them. However, I did hear from some people that if in case you do not have a valid visa, the process does take around seven days, and the passport office may actually send back the passport by speed post in such a situation. Hope this helps someone from extra trouble :-).

Finally got my visa for the UK (it was pretty smooth, contrary to my expectations). I had heard a number of horror stories on visa interviews, but I wasn’t even called for an interview. I simply dropped off my application (with my passport and a lot of accompanying documents) at the VFS office in Kolkata and collected a sealed envelope containing my passport on the next day. Pretty smooth process, I would say.
As per my plans (to be confirmed by Monday) I’ll be arriving at Birmingham on the 13th evening. I plan to stay during the entire GUADEC, then maybe visit London (or some other interesting place) for a day or two, and then finally, I leave on the 26th afternoon.

As far as my SoC work, things have been progressing at a somewhat slow (mainly due to my impending exams), but steady pace. I have already created a working patch for global desktop items (I had some initial trouble understanding Nautilus code, but in the end managed to figure it out, thanks to Federico and some nice documentation that comes with the Nautilus source). The patch allows Nautilus to show the files in a given directory (specified via Gconf) as read only icons on the Desktop (similar to Trash, Computer, etc). And in case you are getting worried about desktop clutter, don’t worry, it is turned off by default :-). And if you are still worried, you can go through this post that I made at the nautilus mailing list. The original proposal can be found here.

Here’s a Theora video of the patched Nautilus in action. The global items directory is set to /var/lib/gnome/desktop in Gconf, and all the files in that directory are being displayed as read only links on the user Desktop.


Next in line is to polish up the patch, and simultaneously work on the enhancement to Sabayon that would make the management of these global items easier.

I have been toying with the idea of buying a new notebook for sometime, and my main criteria are the following:

• Lightweight (I have to travel a lot, and I get intermittent back pains at times)
• Small (12.1 inch would be ideal)
• As much RAM and hard disk space as possible
• In the INR 80K-90K range

..and of course, the things should be easily available in India. I don’t want a “desktop replacement”, as they call it. However, ability to run jhbuild occasionally in the background while I do my daily work (Exaile, Gmail, Xchat, Vim) would be nice.

The two main candidates atm are Dell XPS M1210 (Core 2 duo processor, Intel graphics/wifi, 2 GB RAM, 120 GB hdd, etc) and the HP tx1000 (Turion X2 processor, Nvidia graphics, Broadcom wifi, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB hdd). Presently I am leaning more towards the tx1000 due to

• Tablet features
• Cheaper and lighter than the XPS
• Comes with two batteries included in the package, a 4 cell one and a 6 cell one, so I can choose which one to carry with me

However, the main drawbacks of the tx1000 are

• Nvidia graphics (non free drivers, and I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to get suspend/resume working properly with this)
• Broadcom wifi (according to Ubuntu forums, bcm43xx works, but this can differ from model to model)

Moreover, since this is newer machine (compared to the XPS M1210), there’s not much information that Google throws up when I search for HP tx1000 Linux. The only source of useful information seems to be this thread at Ubuntu Forums. The XPS M1210 on the other hand, is a tried and tested machine, and it seems to work nicely with Linux no matter what the distro is.

Does anyone have any experience with trying to run Linux on the tx1000 ? Moreover, I could find very little information on the Turion X2 TL 60 processor - how significant is the difference in performance between a Core 2 duo processor (say, a T7200) and this one ? Comments/suggestions would be very helpful :-).

After behaving weirdly for almost a month, my BSNL broadband connection finally died today. And while trying to switch to my backup, I discovered that I have left my Reliance CDMA mobile’s data cable at college. So right now I am only left with a very slow GPRS connection from Airtel (though thankfully it’s unlimited),ie no bar on data transfer. Reply to mails, messages, etc will be slow till BSNL restores my broadband connection.

Today is পয়লা বৈশাখ, or the first day of the Bengali year 1414. সবাইকে জানাই শুভ নববর্ষ। (a very happy new year to everyone).

..and in SoC related stuff, I have HTML-ified my proposal, and uploaded it here. Comments/suggestions/brickbats are welcome :-).

Planet FLOSS India was down for the past one day due to some configuration file related goof ups. Things should be running normally now. If you see something odd, or if your blog has vanished from the subscription list, or if you want to get into the planet, please mail me at sayamindu at randomink org.

Debarshi posts about FC 6 DVDs on sale on the pavement near the Mumbai CST railway station. I’ll just copy paste the conversation with the shopkeeper (with added translations):

BG: “CD ka key kaha se milega?” Where do I get the CD key/license?
Man: “Puch ke ata hun…” (goes away) “Andhar sare chiz milega, crack kiya hua hai.” Let me find out…(goes away) You’ll get all the stuff inside, it’s already cracked.
DR: “Yeh kya cheez ka DVD hai? Movie?” What’s inside the DVD - movie ?
Man: “Ekdam latest hai.” It’s the latest stuff
DR: “Lekin hai kya?”But what’s inside ?
Man: “Linux hai.” It’s Linux
BG: “XP me chalega?” Will it run on (Windows) XP
Man: “Bilkul chalega.” Yes of course

In other news, the work on equalizer support in Exaile is progressing nicely, and here’s a screenshot. Expect a patch by the end of this weekend.

I’m back at Kolkata after almost a eight from Jakarta to Kolkata (including a 2 hour break at Singapore). In the flight watched A Good Year and played Dr Mario (but mostly slept).

Came up with a patch for Sabayon issue 397742 - next job is to figure out how to move Pessulus into the same tree as Sabayon and merge the two.

Will start uploading the photos tonight (unless I fall asleep - still pretty sleepy).

Just wanted to mention that I’m back from a volcano/tropical rainforest trip (still in Indonesia though), and will be back in India on the 31st. Internet connection here is not very good (too many people on a slow link), and will be posting photos, etc once I’m back at Kolkata. There’s a nice picture of the forest at WikiTravel though…