Daemon in Python

A daemon to download xml file and to parse it and extract some links from it. That is not something difficult or something new but it happens to be my first script in Python. Programming in python turned out to be really interesting. Amazed to see the availablity of packages in python. I have heard people saying that Python is far more better than java. I dont have enough expertise in both the languages but python looks easy to me when compared to java. Looking forward to do something good in python. So for those who want to create a daemon in python, it is simple. Everything is available in the os package. It is similar to C, a fork and a exit.

try:
pid = os.fork()
except OSError, e:
"""raise exception"""

if (pid == 0):
"""operations"""
else:
os._exit(0)

That is all u need to create a daemon. I used the sched package to schedule the download of rss file repeatedly after some time interval and xml.dom.minidom to parse the file after it is downloaded. All took just some ten lines of code. Python rocks :)

Varalaaru | Godfather: A comeback for Ajith

Varalaaru the latest box office hit in Tamilnadu may turn out to be a great comeback for Ajith. The movie is fast paced and does not disappoint anyone. I saw the film after AI exam where there was not much scope to display my own intelligence. We reached the theatre by around 2:30pm in the middle of the introduction song and were forced to sit on the fifth row. Looked to me like the theatre guys wanted to spread equality as there was not any distinction between the different tickets.

The movie sticks on firmly to the story and there was rarely a deviation from the main story line. There is not much heroism and not many unnecessary punch dialogues.  Ajith seems to have done a lot of hard work and his acting is the most impressive feature of the movie. Ajith easily scores as the father and the psychic son. Asin looks pretty, comes then and there when we are about to forget that she is the heroine, dances in songs and leaves. Kanika(Enga school ponnu) has a bit more scope compared to Asin and has used the opportunity well. Other than that it is Ajith who rules. Looks like Ajith has regained his lost glory. No need to mention ARR as the songs were a hit even before one year. Three hours flies by, thanks to the fast  paced and crisp narration by KSR.

Coming to the negatives, logics give way to actions in a number of situations. The story reminds you about some old films like theivamagan. The climax looks like something that u see in many of the tamil films. Apart from these the movie is great and is a huge entertainer. Would have enjoyed it to a greater extent if it was not for the fifth row seat.

Top ten observations about megaserials

Out of blogging for a long time due to some DNS problems with my ISP. Anyway i am back and here is my post after a long time. This is just some of the observations made by me about mega serials and it is also the opinion of most of the youths here. I never watch megaserials and i usually get a glimpse of them while having dinner . Most of the observations are made when i am in extreme moods which occurs after i see the serial. So i don't claim them to be true or false.

1) Most of them are about a woman who has nothing in her life except problems. Problems of all sort come from all directions, from her friends, foes, relatives, passer by, dog, cat, ant, shit, bullshit ...

2) The role of heroine is mostly played by a retired movie actress and a whole bunch of others whom u can find in almost every serial from morning 10 to night 10.

3) Though there exist problem in every move, the heroine remains undeterred by those. She seems to have almost all good qualities that one could think of.

4) The number of people who dance for the title song exceeds the total number of characters in the serial.

5) The director seems to concentrate only on one thing, that is creating problems.

6) No problem has a solution. The problems exist till the very end and are usually solved at the final episode when the life long enemy suddenly becomes a dear friend . The older problems are pushed down the stack when new problems arise and are later popped out when the director runs out of ideas.

7) If director could not find any problems with existing characters new characters are introduced and new problems are created.

8 ) There is only one background music, the dull music that assists the sad atmosphere and puts the viewers in deep deep distress. 90% of the episodes have someone crying for something.

9) 10 minutes ads follow two to three lines of dialogue.

10) 90% of the guys are like me who have no other option other than something like this.

Godfather | Varalaaru Storyline

After much delay and struggle the much awaited Ajith's film Godfather renamed as Varalaaru is going released for this Diwali. It has created a lot of hype and happiness among ajith fans. I got a glimpse of the storyline of the film in one of the tamil daily in barber's shop. The story is cool but also reminds us about some old movies. The story goes on like this. Ajith is a bharathanatiyam dancer and in the process he develops some characteristics like that of women. Ajith falls in love with kanika and proposes to marry her. Kanika rejects saying that she is not willing to marry ajith with all his women like characteristics. On this Ajith loses his temper, kidnaps kanika and rapes her. Kanika gives birth to two Ajiths. Two Ajiths are completely opposite in character, one good natured policeman and another a rowdy. The rest of the story continues with bad ajith trying to cause harm and the good one trying to prevent that. In between we have Asin, on whose role i have no clue. This is just an outline of the story and with all twists and turns and confusions among the two Ajiths this film may end the long long wait of ajith's fans for a good film from their thala.

The final chapter of my College life

The seventh semester classes ended last week with just exams remaining. That would take another one slow month. I backtracked a little and thought what i learnt during the whole seventh semester. A great accomplishment indeed, i have successfully completed one semester without learning anything new :) It is easy to describe what i did during the whole semester.

for (; ; )
{
sleep (21600000);
chat_with_friends ();
watch_tv();
sleep (36000000);
}

Just one more semester to finish of my college life and enter into the corporate world. Hope the semester goes fine like the seventh semester but with a little learning and little concentration on my project. I never repented for wasting time in the seventh semester. Like how Tom says to Jerry "i know what i am doing may be bad.. still i am enjoying it". I would not be getting the college atmosphere anywhere. I think it is high time that i have some fun, movies, cricket... Hope the final chapter of my college life goes good.

Signing Off in Style

Schumacher has returned to the top of form after the much dramatic Chinese grand prix. Schumacher has got it right what players like ganguly missed. Bowing out of the arena with glory at its peak. The chinese grand prix was more dramatic with fortune switching from one to another. First it was kimi who was in great form and as the track began to dry it was the great champion who returned to form. It was funny to see Fisichella protecting the defending champion during the middle of the race. At that time Alonso did not look like a world champion at all. If Fisichella has not taken up that job he would have got a better opportunity. Schumacher showed great quality through out the race and is in great form. Hope he carries the same form to the remaining two races and wins the Brazilian and Japan grand prix.

Device Driver For Goatee

That is the title of my final year project. Just started looking into the present state of goaTee. Thanks to the beautifully written docs by our seniors. We started it with just the passion for operating system development driving us into the project. My first experience with the operating system development was with AAOSK - Application adaptive operating system kernel. That was a great oppurtunity for us to get some feel of operating system development. Though our part in AAOSK is very small that gave us the oppurtunity to know about some GNU tools, difficulty in OS development and of course we listened to some beautiful lectures by our seniors. Now i am back with OS development and with greater aims and greater responsiblities. I am still reading the documents and to be more specific still searching for documents that would give some information about the device driver development, but could not get much.

Yesterday we had the zeroth review of the project and it went pretty cool. The questions were easy and the review lasted for about twenty minutes. Now it is time to do some hard work and start the implementation. For those who want to take a look at the presentation that we did for the review it is available here

xmms -> gxine -> MPlayer

Successfully installed MPlayer in my GNU/Linux box yesterday. When i first started using GNU/Linux i was using XMMS, then moved to gxine as xmms didnot have support for wma files by default. Now it is time for MPlayer. For those who do not know what MPlayer is, MPlayer is a versatile movie player in GNU/Linux and has support for most of the audio/video formats. I was searching for a command line player in GNU/Linux desparately for the sole purpose of making Emacs play songs. First i was trying to use mpg123 and mpg321. Both experienced some problem with liboss which i did not understand. Some said alsa should be configured for mpg321 to run, but i was not able to do that. So switched to MPlayer. MPlayer installation was not at all difficult and it went fine without any probs. Next task would be to configure Emacs to use MPlayer and to play songs in Emacs. I cant prevent myself from wondering what all can Emacs do. Emacs seems to do everything. Will update soon if i configure emacs to play songs.

Bye to Blogger

Now it is time to bid adieu to Blogger. I have switched from blogger to wordpress. Blogger has remained the same for almost two years and there has not been any change or innovation. Wordpress looks like a cool choice to me. Wordpress has a lot of features when compared to blogger. One more reason is restriction of blogger in college . Anyway i am switching over to wordpress and my wordpress blog is http://senthilkumaran.wordpress.com .

Sillunu Oru Kadhal : Slow Screenplay Spoils everything

SOK the last movie for surya and Jothika before their marriage has not turned out like what they might have expected. The only plus point in the movie is the music by ARR. I saw the movie after FStival along with my friends and Seniors. Surya as usual has done his role perfectly. Boomika and Baby Shreya look cute. Santhanam and Vadivelu dont have much to do. After seeing the movie my interest in SOK songs has decreased a bit. In particular the "Newyork Nagaram" song looked just like a presentation. I was trying to resist the sleep but the movie was trying the other way. In short the storyline was not impressing, screenplay is slower than the snail, Sillune oru kadhal lacks chillness.