RBI Circular - DPSS/CO/CHD/ No. 1832/01.07.05/ 2009-10 dated 22nd February 2010 states that no changes / corrections should be carried out on the cheques (other than for date validation purposes, if required). For any change in the payee’s name, courtesy amount (amount in figures) or legal amount (amount in words), etc., fresh cheque forms should be used by customers. This would help banks to identify and control fraudulent alterations.

Based on the above guidelines branch / clearing teams can return cheques which have any alteration in the

• Payee Name
• Amount in numbers
• Amount in words

The only alteration which is allowed is the alteration in the date.

Note: The annexure to the circular can be accessed in the following link..The above said guidelines in alterations show up in section 1.8..

http://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/content/PDFs/SCFR220210.pdf

Last week I installed Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid in my laptop..I was looking for some things to install after installing ubuntu..In some webpage I saw a link to install ms-core-fonts. So, I clicked it and it started to try to connect to the net and download the ttf-fonts from microsoft..But, since we use a proxy server in IIT (atleast I think that is the reason), the download was never successful..

Then everytime, I tried to install something, by default, this retrying pops in and bugs my installation procedure. Twice I had to restart the machine so that I get out of it.

This is the error I got. The moment I enter “sudo apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer“, it prints

Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
ttf-mscorefonts-installer
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/36.7kB of archives.
After this operation, 201kB of additional disk space will be used.
Preconfiguring packages …
Selecting previously deselected package ttf-mscorefonts-installer.
(Reading database … 144733 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking ttf-mscorefonts-installer (from …/ttf-mscorefonts-installer_3.2_all.deb) …
Processing triggers for fontconfig …
Setting up ttf-mscorefonts-installer (3.2) …

These fonts were provided by Microsoft “in the interest of cross-
platform compatibility”.  This is no longer the case, but they are
still available from third parties.

You are free to download these fonts and use them for your own use,
but you may not redistribute them in modified form, including changes
to the file name or packaging format.

–2010-05-10 21:23:26–  http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/andale32.exe
Resolving downloads.sourceforge.net… 216.34.181.59
Connecting to downloads.sourceforge.net|216.34.181.59|:80… failed: Connection timed out.
Giving up.

–2010-05-10 21:23:47–  http://switch.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/corefonts/andale32.exe
Resolving switch.dl.sourceforge.net… 130.59.138.21, 2001:620:0:1b::21
Connecting to switch.dl.sourceforge.net|130.59.138.21|:80… failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to switch.dl.sourceforge.net|2001:620:0:1b::21|:80… failed: Network is unreachable.
–2010-05-10 21:24:08–  http://mesh.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/corefonts/andale32.exe
Resolving mesh.dl.sourceforge.net… 213.203.218.122
Connecting to mesh.dl.sourceforge.net|213.203.218.122|:80… failed: Connection timed out.
Giving up.

–2010-05-10 21:24:29–  http://dfn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/corefonts/andale32.exe
Resolving dfn.dl.sourceforge.net… 194.95.236.130
Connecting to dfn.dl.sourceforge.net|194.95.236.130|:80… failed: Connection timed out.
Giving up.

–2010-05-10 21:24:50–  http://heanet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/corefonts/andale32.exe
Resolving heanet.dl.sourceforge.net… 193.1.193.66, 2001:770:18:aa40::c101:c142
Connecting to heanet.dl.sourceforge.net|193.1.193.66|:80… failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to heanet.dl.sourceforge.net|2001:770:18:aa40::c101:c142|:80… failed: Network is unreachable.
–2010-05-10 21:25:11–  http://jaist.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/corefonts/andale32.exe
Resolving jaist.dl.sourceforge.net… 150.65.7.130
Connecting to jaist.dl.sourceforge.net|150.65.7.130|:80… failed: Connection timed out.
Giving up.

It kept on trying to connect like this and failed. When I tried sudo apt-get update, then it gave the error,

E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock – open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), is another process using it?

One workaround is to delete the mscore fonts installer. Firstly, kill all the apt, dpkg processes. You can do it by typing the following in the terminal.

sudo killall aptitude
sudo killall apt-get
sudo killall dpkg
sudo killall frontend

Then type these lines so as to remove the installer.

cd /var/lib/dpkg/info/
ls -l *ttf-mscore*
sudo rm *ttf-mscore*
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get remove ttf-mscorefonts-installer

By doing this, we are choosing not to install the fonts. But, there is a way to install it. It could be done by

sudo dpkg-reconfigure ttf-mscorefonts-installer

I am having some proxy issues here and I am going through it. As soon as I figure it out, I will update here.

It’s not very often that we ask why things are the way they are but here’s an answer for you, The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That is an exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates.

Why did the English build them that way? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.

Why did “they” use that gauge? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

So why did the wagons have that particular odd spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that was the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in England were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads? The ruts in the roads, which everyone had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels, were first formed by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. The US standard railroad gauge of 4 feet-8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot.

Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse’s arse came up with it, you may be exactly right.. because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back end of two war horses.   Thus we have the answer to the original question.

Now for the twist to the story. When we see a space shuttle sitting on it’s launching pad, there are two booster rockets attached to the side of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRB’s. The SRB’s are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRB’s might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRB’s had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses’ rumps. So, a major design feature of what is arguably the world’s most advanced transportation system has determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse’s arse!

Don’t you just love engineering?

The moment I read the news above, I could not control my laughing. Well, there is actually no reason to laugh the research off there, but I had atleast one silly reason to smile…

The news is this: They are going to genetically modify the male mosquitos and let them mate with the female species. Their male off-springs will be able to fly, but only their female off-springs will not be having wings, so that they won’t fly. So, if the female ones, dont fly, they wont come and bite us and because the male mosquito does not bite us, ultimately, we wont get any mosquito bites (unless ofcourse, we take the female one and allow her to walk on our body and find a place to bite and drink blood).

Well, it was definitely one step more intelligent than the previous attempt of sterlizing the males. Cos, if the males are sterlised then they wont reproduce at all..so the scientists have the toughest job of all time..catching all the male mosquitos and sterlizing them..but in here, the males reproduce, only to give walking female kids and flying male kids..so the genetic modification is transfered to the off-springs and from them to their off-springs and from them to theirs and so on..now, the scientists job is reduced to a greater extent..btw, i couldn’t stop myself from wondering abt why the scientists have decided to catch the males, sterlize and leave them back instead of killing them once they catch them..probably they have thought that, its the fundamental right of every animal in this world to find a partner, live with it fully and have a natural-death..or probably the scientists dint wanna be killers..

now, lets come to why hollywood is coming into picture here..yup, you might have rightly guessed it..well, hollywood can make a movie about it..the story may well be revolving around this genetic experiment gone wrong..i could suggest one like this… the scientists remove the chromosome that is responsible for the development of wings in the female kids successfully, but they miss to track the side effect on the other chromosome which is responsible for the max size to which the baby mosquito grows..this results in big mosquitos of the size of cockroaches or frogs or puppies or even bigger than humans..they keep on growing until they die..these new ones dont have wings but they have six legs and so they are the fastest running animals on the earth (faster even than a BMW) and when they sting, they suck all the blood of a fully grown adult male in less than 5 seconds..on top of the trouble, this mosquito reproduces without male partners and so they could very well be a dominant species in less than a month from then..finally the film may conclude by killing all of the big ones that had just hatched in the underground of the empire-state building using just one high-tech laser guided semi nuclear missile which the military has just inducted into its arms base…to increase the thrill, we can have one chasing scene where the scientist responsible for this genetically modified one, chases the last surviving mosquito in the streets of new-york and kills it when it gets stuck in some fence and there is no way to escape..aal izz wel, finally.

And, I could suggest some titles also..The Monster Mosquito or The Great Mosquito…nah..tht looks too childish.. How abt this – Mosquilla or probably Mosqonda..?

let them name it anything..well, this actually was the silly reason tht had made me smiling..

Sanjana said, “I am not able to find Tarisha”. Sanjana was supposed to go with Tarisha to her home where she will be picked up by her mom. Somehow both the kids missed each other and this girl was left behind.

Ashu – “But I saw her going back home some time back.”

Sanjana – “Oh no, I dont know how will I go home “

Ashu – “Look around and see if any of your friends are here.”

Sanjana looked around and replied she is not finding any one.

Ashu said again with her typical baby-talking, “Look around well and see if ANY of your friends are still here.” She stressed at the word ‘any’ indicating something. But Sanjana dint seem to pick up what Ashu was meaning to. (Neither did I when I first heard it from my mom.) Ashu said again, “Arre, look in front of you na, I am there na. I will take you to my home.” bringing smiles to Sanjana’s sad face.

Ashu’s mom and gran-ma stood stunned. So did I when I heard it. A kid who just entered 3rd grade was able to show so much of care and love towards her classmate. Truly, in children we see God.

Btw, Ashu’s mum picked up both the kids, dropped Sanjana and waited until she safely entered her home and came back.

So, here it goes…

Where is this T.Nagar?
Nobody knows accurately. It is just this lovely place in Chennai, which if you decide to visit for the second time, you get a free seasonal pass for a window-side bed in Kilpauk hospital.

Sounds like a holiday package..what if I manage a third visit?
You get one year free admission at Yervadi, next to Sethu Vikram. Cost of chain included in the package.

Oh! You said it’s a lovely place. Do people go there for sight-seeing?
Kinda yeah, it is Chennai’s own version of “Suicide Point”

Can we shop there?
There are just two things you can do at T.Nagar. One,shop and two,die. The former is optional though.

My wife wants some good silk sarees. Where do I take her?
Push her into Pothys and run. This is your best chance to live with some self respect in future.

What if I stay?
You automatically qualify for Bihar elections.

What if I go in too?
If you are Gopi, you’ll come out as Gopi 65.

I heard gold is pretty cheap at some place there?
Very cheap yeah, not just the rate. I guess you are talking about Ranganathan Street , Annachi shop.

Ya ya. How do I go there?
You just need to stand at the start of that street. Close your eyes. Open your eyes. You are inside Annachi shop, courtesy : fellow shoppers.

Can I take my vehicle?
Shut up! Even Laloo wouldn’t do that!

Oh is it very crowded?
Yeah, by the time you count the number of people around you, they can telecast Junoon twice.

Junoon?? What’s that?
Kadavule! Paathathu illiya Junoon neenga? Periya athu megaserial. Pesuvaanga maathi maathi thamizh athula.

Oh! By the way, do men shop in T.Nagar?
Wise men stay away. Married men do shop.

I heard there are lots of platform shops?
There is no platform. Only shops.

Whatever, how good are they?
Very good infact. You get all sortsa brands including Nykee, Ribok and Adeedas. At cheap rates that too!

Hey isn’t that phony? The spellings are all messed up!!
Naah. They have been changed according to numerology, that’s all.

Fine. Is there any good restaurant there?
Ya, Saravana Bhavan.

Wow! What would I get there for, say 50 rupees?
Quite a lot. Half a dosa, 5 ml Sambhar and some pebbles.

Pebbles? Why??
Huh, you are dumber than a crow! To raise the level of sambhar ofcourse.

That’s bad. But I heard there’s a hot chips too?
You’ll be a hot chip yourself once you step into Ranganathan Street .

How is the air pollution level in T.Nagar?
One deep breath and you’ll die on the spot, money back guarantee.

So many issues, eh? Finally, what’s the best thing about T.Nagar?
Variety. So many shops, so many dresses and so many accessories. Even if you escape death by other mean, you’ll be confused to death!

*******************

Seriously, T.Nagar isn’t that bad..is it????

Before trying to install linux by themselves, I would suggest new comers to use linux for sometime, get some feel about the directory (folder) structures and get used to running some basic programs like media players, audio players, firefox etc. I found that to be very very useful for me.

For those, who cant wait to get the feel or who dont have pals who can install it for them in their computers, I would give a brief explanation about what you need to know if you wanna install linux on your own.

What you need to know: (for a very very new user who does not know anything about linux)

1. Windows is an operating system that helps you to store, organise, view, use and operate data/files in your hard disk. Similarly there are many other operating systems available. Some are commercial (u need to pay for the operating system) and some are free (freely available on the internet for download and install)

2.(a)Structure of hard disk as you see in windows operating system:

If you are using windows, you might be familiar with the way the hard disk has been partitioned. To open your hard disk you open My computer. Inside which you find some drives like C, D, E etc. You generally install windows in C drive which is called the primary drive, and normally use the other drives to store data. Let us call this the structure of hardisk as given by the operating system (windows). These drives C, D, E etc can be assumed like individual books where you can write and all are kept inside a box called My computer. Since it is only a box you cannot write anything in My computer.

If you have used the command prompt in windows, you would have noticed that the location of a folder is represented in a single line like this.

D:/Videos/movies/

This says that there is a folder called Videos in D drive and inside that folder there is another folder called movies. In the command line if you type cd .. you go back to the previous folder Videos and once again typing the same will take you to D drive. Typing cd .. from D drive will not take you to My computer as you cannot save anything in it. (Remember, its just a box and not a book)

2.(b)Structure of hard disk as you see in linux operating system:

Similarly linux has also a structure. In your linux-desktop, you will be seeing two shortcuts – Computer and User’s home. Double clicking Computer opens an explorer window in which you will see something called Filesystem and your other external drives like dvd/cd-drive. If you open this Filesystem you will actually open the root folder. It is represented by / (a back-slash). Unlike windows, you will not be having many drives/partitions in this file system. You may still have partitions, but every thing should be inside this root folder.

So this is like, inside the box (Computer) you have only one single book (filesystem) which is actually multiple books clubbed together as single one, something like a multisubject notebook.

If you open a similar command prompt (called as Terminal) here, the root folder will be like this.

/

Folders inside the root folder are represented like this.

/home/palani

It says that inside the root folder / there is a folder called home and inside this folder there is another folder called palani. This palani folder is called as the home folder for the user palani. A similar folder will be created for every user in linux in the user’s username. That is /home/lakshmi will be the home folder for the user lakshmi, and similarly /home/veera will be the home folder for the user veera.

This home folder is where we generally store our files and use it. Now, while installing linux, we have 2 choices:

(a) Set the entire disk space available to the root folder. (This will make the home folder a part of the root folder partition. So if you format the root folder, all the contents in the root folder will also be gone)

(b) Set some space to home folder alone, apart from setting remaining to home folder. (This will make the home folder a seperate partition attached to root folder partition. So, if you format the root folder your home folder contents will not be formatted and vice versa.)

Note: I will write separately in another blog about the hard disk partition settings while explaining the installation procedure. You don’t have to worry about it now.

3. Just as there are media players like winamp, windows media player, real player and applications like internet explorer, MS Office, etc., there are players in Linux too. Most of the linux users use vlc player and real player for video, amarok for audio, firefox for browsing. There are document processing softwares like, Open office which has word processor, spreadsheet and presenter similar to word, excel and powerpoint. There is another software called Latex (pronunced as latech) which is extensively used by many students in IIT for generation of documents and Latex-Beamer for presentations. (Hey! I am also using the same for typing my thesis..!) This Latex is an installable program which you can use in Windows too.

Note: You need not know to work in Latex so that you can work in Linux. Latex is just another documentation software.

Thats it! I hope this amount of knowledge will be sufficient for getting started. I’ll keep posted in another blog in a while about installing linux (preferably ubuntu, as it will be easier to work with who has worked in windows). In the meantime, if I find anyother thing that is needed for you to get started I will update in this same blog.

Cheers,

pal..!

On that particular day, she came and asked her paati, “Paati, why have you coloured your hair with black and white??”. It took some time for gran-ma to explain her about grey hair that comes on ageing.

She replied, “I did not get a dream at all”. Paati asked, “Is it a good sleep only when a dream comes?”. She said, “Yes, if you sleep well you will get a dream.”

Grand ma wondered, “Why did you not get a dream?”

Ashu said, “I did not get a dream because I forgot to put the (dream) cd here, paati…”, pointing at her head..!

whoa..! I never thought of that..

The Atom Bomb

Ashu aka Aishani aka Sakshi, as she is officially known, is the elder kid of my sis Sharda. She was born in the year 2002. Pretty, determined, confident, fun-loving, cute, … words dont end if I start describing her. When she was about 3 years old, looking at her charisma, my brother arun called her, the atom bomb.

Before she went to kinder garten, she was able to build her vocabulary to the extent, which I had not had until my college. And more to it, she started speaking fluently in 3 languages (tamil, hindi and english) when she was 5. Her english was more perfect while the other 2 are cuter. Once, looking at her mom-dad’s marriage album, she had asked them where was she at the time of their marrige and why did they leave her and took photograph on that day.

I will be updating interesting conversations of her with people around her, in this section. Everytime I look at her, I wonder how kids in the present generation are so fabulous, so many steps ahead of us.

I am proud to say that I know Ashu and she knows me too..!