Adnan's personal blog

General Elections in Canada

nospam@example.com (Adnan Ahmed) — 2011-04-02T04:17:39Z

Election is underway in Canada ... it is a general election, so all 308 ridings are in election mode. There are plenty of opportunities for part-time or temporary employment during the election period or on election day! Its a perfect opportunity for students to earn some extra cash quickly. Find out all the requirements by clicking on the red button for "Employment".

General Elections in Canada

nospam@example.com (Adnan Ahmed) — 2011-04-02T04:17:39Z

New Car Radio - Sony MEX-BT3800U

nospam@example.com (Adnan Ahmed) — 2011-01-09T02:48:27Z

So, this boxing day i saw the new Sony MEX-BT3800U car radio on sale at Future Shop ... and so i decided to indulge myself after three years on having factory radio on my Corolla 2008 (which doesn't even play MP3s .. i had to listen to proper regular CDs and on long trips it became rather mundane listening to same thing over and over). The Sony MEX-BT3800U is quite an amazing system ... with it on board, i don't ever have to fear about never having enough music, or the appropriate adapters to listen to music from any device!

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Eid Mubarak, from Pakistan

nospam@example.com (Adnan Ahmed) — 2010-11-17T08:49:54Z

Eid Mubarak to everyone from Pakistan! So this is my first eid in Pakistan, since i was like an infant ... there is the qurbani's that happened this morning, and now plenty of dawats and a food-bonanza for the next three days. I've been only here for a few days, but its been a busy three days. Met so many people, even had a family reunion where I got to meet all the new kids for like brief amount of time. I am looking forward to everyone coming back again for Eid, or otherwise, so that we can properly meet.

So much stuff still left to do, who knows how much will actually get done ... let's cross our fingers that things work out!!!!

Cacti & Thomson ST516

nospam@example.com (Adnan Ahmed) — 2010-10-31T04:00:32Z

So I was curious to see how our internet usage was and so I started looking into the ability of my ADSL modem to enable SNMP and then use Cacti to log and graph the data. The modem provided by my ISP was a Thomson ST516, which as it turns out has a telnet connection that can be used to turn on the SNMP agent. Once I was able to turn that on, all I had to do was install Cacti on a computer to monitor the usage on a regular basis ... this proved to be much simpler than I had anticipated.
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Fall is back

nospam@example.com (Adnan Ahmed) — 2010-10-09T17:23:32Z

So fall is back, has been for some while now ... but now its back in more ways than one! Kids are back at school, the leaves are changing, the solstice passed, the air is brisk. Its a wonderful time of the year, and the new Ubuntu is out too. Haven't had much chance to play with Ubuntu 10.10 (aka Maverick Meerkat), but I did install it on my laptop. Upgrade from Lucid Lynx was a breeze, and now I do notice a few changes but a lot is in the back-end. More about that later ...

The HABS have their first game at the Bell Center tonight, should be exciting. Of course, our first team had to be the Tampa Bay Lightning, which may arguably have the most number of Quebecors on the same team in the NHL! The irony.

Switchy - Plugin not loaded!

nospam@example.com (Adnan Ahmed) — 2010-09-23T03:50:08Z

Ok, so for those who don't know Switchy! is a proxy switching gadget in Google Chrome that allows you to change proxies with the click of a button. If you are interested in trying it out, you can download it from https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/caehdcpeofiiigpdhbabniblemipncjj

The thing with Switchy, is that there was a bug that was fixed with version 1.6 so that when you actually chose a proxy it would load it properly. For those of us who looked at the error logs, we saw that the plugin wasn't loading properly, even though we had the proper version that should have fixed it. Upon googling, there was a mixture of some people who had it working and others who couldn't using the same Switchy version, and browser version. Yes, yes ... it could have been related to another dependency, but I was willing to rule that out, since I had the same problem on my Windows XP, Windows Vista, and my Ubuntu 10.04 machines!

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Mortgages

nospam@example.com (Adnan Ahmed) — 2010-09-21T01:51:12Z

I started looking for a mortgage institution with whom I would take a mortgage for a home I am looking for. I have to say, there are so many options, and yet at the same time so little choices. In some cases, I see no difference in what they are offering, or taking ... hopefully some of the face to face meetings will allow me to differentiate between them and provide myself with some choice, cause otherwise it's almost a choosing from various related shades of the same colour. Do you know what I mean?

Its as if i can choose from 10 different institutions, but there really is only two choices with a minute change between them. Talk about not judging a book by its cover ... all that's left, as far as i can tell now, is to choose by name of the institution! Hopefully a few more days of looking around, will help me settle this matter.

Tell me your thoughts and ideas about obtaining a mortgage in Canada ....

I'm back

nospam@example.com (Adnan Ahmed) — 2010-09-16T03:40:33Z

So, I'm back from Pangnirtung. The trip was quite uneventful, as compared to my other trips, except for a small mechanical failure when we first took off, and had to land in Ottawa to change planes. However, as the flights in the north go, my connecting flight was also delayed two hours and so I didn't miss it at all, how lucky! Lol. Brought back some Arctic Char from the fish plant in Pangnirtung, had some tonight. Delicious, as always.

On the flight back, in the leg from Ottawa to Montreal, I swear the crew only turned on the entertainment system after we were in the air, and then there was all those announcements about keeping your seat belt on, and no smoking, and since the air time on this leg is only like 18mins, there wasn't even enough time to finish the last 10mins of the show I was watching! So annoying. They should have it done separately so for those that sat through the first leg of the flight, don't get the same announcements at every landing and stopover, especially since we don't get off the plane!

Heading off to Pangnirtung, NU

nospam@example.com (Adnan Ahmed) — 2010-09-13T01:02:21Z

Alright, so everything is booked ... I am off to Pangnirtung, Nunavut tomorrow morning. According to Wikipedia, "Pangnirtung has achieved an international reputation for producing high-quality traditional arts, as well as printmaking and weaving", maybe a gift idea? We'll see when I get there ... the connections go via Ottawa, and Iqaluit, so even though I leave at 8:30am I don't get there till 15:30! Talk about traveller's fatigue, lol.

I'll try to take some time to go exploring, and see if I can score some good photographic opportunities!

Eid Mubarak

nospam@example.com (Adnan Ahmed) — 2010-09-10T03:23:36Z

Eid Mubarak, to everyone! The Hilal/Crescent Was Sighted On The Evening Of Thursday, September 9 2010. Therefore The First Day Of Shawwal 1431 "Eid Ul-Fitr" Is On Friday, September 10th 2010. May Allah Swt Accept Our Devotion, Worship, And All Our Deeds For His Sake.

Target filesystem doesn't have /sbin/init

nospam@example.com (Adnan Ahmed) — 2010-09-06T22:11:12Z

So I woke up this morning, and as always booted up my laptop while i was still half-awake and willing myself back into reality. Once I was fully awake, I saw to my surprise that the laptop hadn't booted up fully and was displaying a message similar to this one, (I didn't copy my message down word for word, to replicate here, but this is a similar one from a forum posting at ubuntuforums.org)

mount: mounting /dev/disk/by-uuid/267... on /root failed Invalid argument
mount: mounting /dev on /root/dev failed: No such file or directory
mount: mounting /sys on root/sys failed: No such file or directory
mount: mounting /proc on /root/proc failed: No such file or directory
Target filesystem doesn't have /sbin/init.
No init found. Try passing init = bootarg.

BusyBox v1.10.2 (Ubuntu 1:1.10.2-2ubuntu7) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

(initramfs)_

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Google Chrome, v6 stable released!

nospam@example.com (Adnan Ahmed) — 2010-09-04T02:56:58Z

So, the latest release of Google Chrome, the browser, has been sent out into the worlds ... and my initial opinion about it after upgrading was, what's changed?

Well, quite a bit has changed ... although not all of it is visual. Starting from just the visual aspect, if you thought that the Chrome browser had very little framework, well it has even less now! Honestly, how did we ever function in the time of Internet Explorer and its huge tool bars ... that's like a good 25% of screen real estate that has been freed up. Well, that number isn't totally accurate, but you get the idea.

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File Exchange Service Online

nospam@example.com (Adnan Ahmed) — 2010-09-04T02:30:06Z

So, after a bit of tweaking and coding, the file exchange service is now fully operational! The link is provided at the top, under the banner. This service will allow you to upload any file (JPG, GIF, PNG, MP3, DOC, XLS, PDF, ZIP, RAR, etc.) to the server, and then email that link to anyone you want (if you provided the email addresses, then we have already sent them an email!). Currently the maximum file size is a whooping 100MB!

The files stay on the server for upto 14 days, and can be downloaded a maximum of 10 times. I am very flexible and can extend that if there are many users who need a longer time frame, or more downloads.

For now, I am offering this completely free ... so spread the word, get sharing!
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Vacation, here I come!

nospam@example.com (Adnan Ahmed) — 2010-09-03T22:19:23Z

And so it officially starts, one whole week of pure nothingness! Let the home projects and personal projects begin! Looking forward to sleeping in ....