Backup files in Emacs

This could be useful for novices in Emacs who are yet to hack the Emacs lisp like me. Users of Emacs might be aware of the backup files that are created by emacs when a file is edited.  These backup files are named with ~ following the name. These files could be a nuisance at times. Emacs can be stopped from creating the backup files by adding the following lines in .emacs

(setq make-backup-files nil)

To move the backup files to some other directory the following lines should be added .emacs file.

(setq make-backup-files t)
(make-directory "/tmp/emacsbackup" t)
(setq version-control t)
(setq backup-directory-alist (quote (("." . "/tmp/emacsbackup/"))))

(setq version-control t) will cause different versions of the backup file to be generated. Remove this line if you do not want different version of  file to be generated.

Rocking With Emacs :)

Atlast configured Emacs to play songs also. The only useful thing that myself and subramani did during this weekend might be this. We did that in Subrmani's system, a HP Laptop with Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn installed. Fortunately it had ALSA installed and configured. Yet to check whether OSS was the problem in my system. But  it was good to configure Emacs to play songs and hear songs using Emacs.

For those who are not able to understand anything from this post, Emacs is a powerfull editor in GNU/Linux with a lot of features  that makes it impossible to call it as a editor. Emacs can also be made to play songs using EMMS, Emacs Mulitmedia System.

All it required was to install emms package and other packages like emacs21-el, emacs-extra. Then we need a console media player like mplayer or mpg321. In our case, we had MPlayer installed in the laptop. Then the following lines are to be added in the .emacs file to enable Emacs to play songs,

(require 'emms-setup)
(emms-standard)
(emms-default-players)

There are a lot of options associated with EMMS and with Emacs-Lisp it is possible to fine tune it. But learning Emacs-Lisp still remains as a distant dream. Anyway check out  the EMMS homepage for more information about EMMS. Remember my guru telling me that "With Emacs nothing is possible, the next step with Emacs is making coffee with Emacs".  Who knows in the near future Emacs can do that also.

Outlook -> Thunderbird & Thunderbird -> Outlook

After many filed attempts to configure Thunderbird as the mail client for  M$ exchange server, atlast succeeded in the attempt. Will give a  brief overview of how i configured Thunderbird for MS exchange server. The process was fairly simple all you have to do is

1) Select Incoming server type as POP mail server
2) Dont forget to select "Never" in "Use Secure Connection" column.

These are the two options that need to be taken care, all other options are straight forward. The outgoing SMTP server address should also be given, which might the same as that of incoming server. With these options i was able to configure Thunderbird for M$ exchange server. One problem i encountered while using Thunderbird for M$ exchange server is that i was not able to keep track of calendars and meetings.  Found one good addon for keeping track of meetings and appointments, called as RememberFox. RememberFox is a addon for firefox and thunderbird, that is used to keep track of meetings and  appointment. RememberFox looked really cool to me.

Since i used outlook for one month was unable to keep track of the sent mails, deleted mails etc and finally decided to switch back to M$ Outlook. This is where got stuck with the format clashes. Outlook uses the proprietory .pst format to store mails while thuderbird  uses .mbox format and stores it as a separate file called Inbox. The method was to export the .mbox file into .eml file(which looked more like plain text file with all mail headers) using a tool  called IMAPSize. Then using Outlook express as an intermediate the mails can be exported to Outlook. Check out the IMAPSize home for a detailed description about the process.

My aim was to configure GNUS or Mutt and to use them as my mail clients but still i am not able to do that. Probably should try that  after bringing my system here to my new home.

Fedora 8.1 Testing Released

The alpha or testing edition of Fedora 8 has been released yesterday. It  was interesting to see the screenshots of Fedora 8. Fedora 8 comes with a  lot of features and newly released softwares. If everything  goes well we may be able to enjoy Fedora 8 with KDE4.0, Firefox 3.0 etc etc when the stable  version is released on November 8. Here are few links about Fedora 8.

Screenshots - http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensource/linux/screenshots/index.php?linux_distribution_sm=Fedora%208%20Test%201
Fedora 8 wiki - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/8/

With the gusty gibbon gearing up to be released, we could expect some healthy competition.

Bad Bad Conductors

Thought not to blog about this, still could not resist. It is about the same old thing that is quite common in banglore buses. If you cant understand anything read this first. Following is my experience with the conductors in BMTC buses.

First trip: Was going from my home along with my friend to my office. Cost of the ticket was Rs.5. Gave ten rupees and asked for two tickets, as usual the conductor gave two rupees as commission. This time i asked for the ticket and the conductor politely took back the two rupee commission and gave back the ticket.

Second trip: This time it was from my office to home. Gave 10 rupees and asked for two tickets. As usual got two rupees as commission. I asked for the ticket. The conductor thought i was trying to strike a deal and added one more rupee to the commission !!!. I refused and conductor gave a disgusting look as though i am trying to take away his hard earned money. Finally got back the ticket.

Third trip: It happened today morning. As usual gave 10 rupees for two tickets. The conductor searched for two rupees. Alas ! he could not find the change. Wondering what he did ? Gave two nine rupees tickets, that he has managed to preserve for days and walked away. Still he looked a little sad that he had to give those tickets to us. Dont know how old the tickets were. Some passenger had given the ticket to the conductor to show the amount and get back the change written on the back of the ticket and this conductor found good use for that.

Heard that this practice is in existence for a very long time. Someone told me that even Tamil super star, Rajnikanth has done this when he started his career as a conductor.

Deathly Hallows At last

At last completed Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Thanks to my friend Praveen for lending me his  book. As usual devoted one whole night for the book. Though "Deathly Hallows" was the most awaited book of the Harry Potter series, i could not quite allocate time to read the book quicky. I took more than a week to finish the book.  Anyway finally completed one of the greatest work of JKR.

"Deathly Hallow" was a little slugish in the begining. But after around 300 pages, the plot thickens and what follows is a hard core agical adventure, potrayed in JKR's style. The fan fiction books and fan's predictions before the book was released, did spoil the thrill and suspense a bit. Pottermaniacs active in the web, have predicted almost every possible way the plot of "Deathly Hallow" can be written. When i first read "Chamber of secrets" i had no clue about harry potter and the plot made me an ardent fan of Harry Potter. I read Deathly Hallows after reading a fake book, lot of reviews & plot spoilers and after seeing the ending in news channel. If not for JKR's style i would have felt little boring.

I felt more like looking through the pensieve into Harry Potter memories than reading the book. So engrossed in the plot that it was difficult to push aside the deaths of characters in the book.  Could not count how many characters JKR managed to murder in the final book but it was purely a blood bath, like she mentioned in the interviews. One good thing about the book is that JKR has tried to focus on all the characters in the book and has succeeded to a greater extent. Justification about Snape's activities and his love story was heart touching. If JKR has wished the book could have been made a little smaller. But these things dont really affect Harry Potter fans.

When i finished the book at 3.30 in the night, could not believe that  have come to the end of one of the most interesting series. Don't know why but the book aroused all hidden sentiments. The end of the book was not that important, because whether harry potter is alive or not, there is not going to be one more book about the boy wizard. Though Rowling has suggested that she might continue with the series, it was evident from the story line that there is very little probablity of her doing it. Though JKR has put an end to Harry Potter, hope harry potter continues to live on.

Winscp: Transfer with ease

Winscp, is a FTP, SFTP and SCP client for windows. It reduces the pain of transferring file and folders between windows and GNU/Linux to a greater extent. There are a lot of ways of transferring files and folders in GNU/Linux and Windows but to transfer file between a windows machine and GNU/Linux machine the only option i knew was FTP. Since FTP does not support directory structures, it was really painful to compress the directories as single file and transferring them and uncompressing them in the destination. Winscp seems to make the job a lot easier. It provides a secure and easy way to transfer file between and windows and GNU/Linux machines. For more information about winscp and to download winscp,check out Winscp's home page at http://winscp.net. The windows installer is just 1.8MB. The most
interesting feature about winscp is that it is released under GPL and is a free software.

Emacs: goto

How to go to a specified line in Emacs. Though i had this doubt for a very long time i never searched for it. Today got the answer when i was searching for some GDB stuffs. Anyway here it is. Add the following two lines in .emacs and restart emacs.

(global-unset-key [?\M-1])
(global-set-key [?\M-l] 'goto-line)

Now pressing Alt+1 or Esc+1 will prompt for the line to jump. Don't know whether there is anyother way but this is the first way i found.

A bad game

The whole indian cricket team will be in cloud nine after winning the test match against England comfortably. It was an occassion where the senior batsmen and bowlers showed their potential and helped India register a convincing win over England. This post is not about how they played but it was about something that happened during the match. England did better with the ball and with the mouth. I got the opportunity to see about one hour of India's first innings and i  happened to see Zaheer Khan giving a warning to Kevin Pieterson with his bat.  Probably England thought it was the last resort to win the game. If it was Navjot singh sidhu, he might have broken some English heads.

Sledging has long roots in the game of cricket. Its the one of the mighty tools used by Australia to get the wicket. I had the opinion  that Australia is the team best in sledging untill i saw some clips in Star sports. A lot of team seem to be enjoy sledging. Those clips showed  Flintoff and Sangakara sucessfully distracting the attention of the  batsmen and getting them out. Indians are winners in this regard. they  rarely involve in sledging. Santhakumaran Srisanth tried a bit but never sucessfull in that.

Cricket is called as gentlemen game but sledging makes it look bad.  Hope ICC comes up with some good rules or suggestion to reduce that.  The best thing would be players acting like real genttlemen. Comments  are required, but the nature of comment should be take care. But for viewers sitting in front or television, sledging gives something to munch for a while.

A difficult calculation

Set theory, Algebra, Modern Algebra, Geometry, Analytical Geometry, Trigonometry, Differential Calculus, Integral Calculus, Differential equation, Partial differential equation, Numerical Methods, Complex Numbers, Operation Research, Graph Theory, Statistics. Those were some of the difficult mathematical subjects that i studied during my college and in school. They involved a little amount of calculation and were quite easy. The most difficult calculation i encountered after entering the company was calculation and declaration of income tax. Was forced to spend two full days on this, since could not make head or tail about the process and rules. Later with the help of some senior colleagues in company was able to decipher but still i am not sure about the entire process. It was funny to find even seniors sharing the same opinion. So the tamil proverb "Aetu surakai kariku uthavathu"(book knowledge does not help much in life) seems to be true.