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Apr. 4th, 2007 12:34 am shock! horror! a blog post?

In the road perpendicular to Janpath, next to Janpath Bhawan, near DePauls, there's a guy with a cart/रेढ़ी on a bicycle. He sells potato masala. Potato masala? Boiled potatoes cut into small cubes, fried then and there in ghee, doused with an incredibly tangy masala to your taste, and served on a leaf plate with toothpicks. Dead simple, dead easy. Totally unglamourous. Except for the fact that the food business among the Janpath clothes stalls is cutthroat. To survive means that you are dishing out REALLY good food. The potatoes are soft and perfectly cooked on the inside, but are crispy and tangy on the outside. the masala is a cross between what I can only describe as the fun flips masala (which has rocked for close to 20 years) and an amchoor base.

Eat at the nameless fried-potatoes cart. 15 bucks a plate. Best surprise you'll have all day.

In other news, by this time tomorrow, I will be in my second Vipassana course.

cheers,

K

Tags: janpath "street food"

Current Mood: mellow mellow

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Jan. 16th, 2007 07:21 pm

1. Bruschetta - brown bread rubbed with garlic, coated lightly with extra virgin olive oil, topped with fresh basil leaves, cherry tomatoes and parmesan cheese
2. Roasted babycorn with chilli flakes and greek spices
3. Salad - Iceberg lettuce, bell peppers, starfruit, pears, roasted almonds. Dressing: honey/mayonnaise/kashundi/ginger-honey mead/lemon
3. Pasta: spirali with olives, button mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, oregano in creamy white sauce
4. Baked Chicken with potatoes, onions and fresh green pepper
5. Baby potatoes covered in caramelised honey, garlic, cinnamon
6. King Prawns in kokum and coconut milk gravy
7. Creamy Biscuit pudding covered with hot fudge sauce and sprinkled with crushed roasted almond.

Was responsible for 1 and 6, myself, and helped with everything else :)

'nuff said.

Current Mood: jubilant

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Nov. 18th, 2006 04:31 pm 100 days t go

The deadline looms ahead, distant, yet until I get moving on the nitty gritties of the task ahead, I won't feel better.

Oh, and if people win arguments all the time, be it through superior lungs and shouting power or through logic or the clever leverage of their power, they ultimately lose. Because life seeks some sort of equilibrium.

Sometimes, stuff can refuse to work for completely mystifying reasons. And the simplest of tasks can split itself into tiny masses of subtasks and sub-problems, screaming and bitching, seemingly determined to कााम में बाधा लाना। And all you can do is grimly continue.

Current Mood: indescribable

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Oct. 15th, 2006 01:16 am How to start your broadband connection automatically on Windows XP

This howto refers to starting a PPPoE (PPP over Ethernet) connection to an ISP automatically. This is necessary because unlike saner operating systems built with a more net centric viewpoint, the net in WinXP is usually started manually, laboriously, each time the computer starts up.

The problem is that a Windows PPPoE connection is, to the user, little more than a grown-up and faster dial up connection - the user clicks on the icon, presses connect and the hardware THEN does the job. But I wanted to automate the connection so that without even logging in, the system would connect. This would allow me to share the connection by just starting the main machine connected to the net, would allow me to run servers accessible from the net, allowing me to run peer to peer applications such as Freenet and BitTorrent (distributing Linux ISOs) and would also allow me to connect to the machine from the Internet and get files.

First of all, you need to set up your PPPoE connection - and give it a name, say, airtel. To find out the name of your current connection if you don't know it, connect to the net (which you probably have, since you're reading this), run start / run... /

cmd

The cmd command opens up a bare black window, a really primitive interface. But its what everyone will have, so we go with it.

Now, run the command

 rasdial

On my computer, it shows me something like:

 Connected to
airtel

Good. So you're using a connection called airtel to log onto the net. To disconnect this connection from the command line (do it now), you need to type :

 rasdial airtel /disconnect

(assuming of course that your connection is called airtel. If it's called differently, do yourself a favour and change it appropriately)

To connect, do this

 rasdial airtel "username" "password"

(again, replace username and password with, naturally, your username and password for your PPPoE connection)

Your network connection should have started up. Assuming it has, we're now going to create a small file that will start up the connection. Let's call it dial.bat Grizzled veterans of DOS will know that a .bat file is almost always merely a list of commands typed at a shell.

Type the following commands:

 echo @echo off > c:\windows\dial.bat
echo rasdial connectionname "username" "password" >> c:\windows\dial.bat

In my case, the last line is something like :

 rasdial airtel "02281758271@toochtelbharat.net" "mera_rahasya"

Now, disconnect the net connection and verify if by just running

 dial

you can connect to the net. If you can, great.

Next.

To get around the unfortunate design constraints of winxp, we need to perform some slightly convoluted steps. There's a program called instsrv - which creates services, or programs that are usually started up by the system way before anyone gets to log on. Using instsrv, we're going to create a service that calls a program called srvany. srvany is a program that allows you to run any program (or batch file, such as dial.bat) as a service.

Working backwards:

1. We created a batch file for connecting to the net because it is less messy and more abstracted, not just in typing but also with respect to the registry
2. We need that batch file to be started up every boot.
3. Programs that start up every boot are called "services".
4. We use srvany to run the batch file as a service.
5. Srvany allows us to run the bat file as a service - but we need to create a service for it to run under
6. instsrv is used to create such a service.

Now, children, google for instsrv srvany download. For the lazy,click here.

Copy instsrv.exe and srvany.exe to c:\windows\system32 .

In the cmd window, type

 instsrv apne_aap c:\windows\system32\srvany.exe

Now, apne_aap is the name of the service that we are installing. You can call it anything you like. Note that we're not directly linking to the rasdial.exe file or dial.bat

Now, do Start/Run and type

 services.msc

That will open up the services MMC console. Look for apneaap, right click, select properties. In the Log On tab, make sure it is logging on as the Local System account and that it is permitted to interact with the desktop (checkbox). Click OK.

Now, we're going to edit the registry.

Editing the registry is dangerous. You can seriously fuck up your system. I'm not liable for any screwups you commit. Don't do this if you feel anxious and DO take responsibility if you fuck up the system anyway. Fucking up and taking responsibility's the way to learn, in any case.

Start/run/

 regedt32

1. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\apne_aap
2. On the left hand side, where you can see apne_aap in the tree display, right click on apne_aap and select New and Key. Name the key Parameters.
3. Select Parameters.
4. In the Edit Menu, click Edit / New / String Value. Name the string Application.
5. Double Click Application. Enter c:\windows\dial.bat for the Value Data.

Now, disconnect.
In the services tab, select apne_aap and click "start"

The net connection should start up. If it does, verify that all is working by restarting the computer - the net should already have started when you log in.

That's all, folks.

Current Mood: calm calm

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Jun. 29th, 2006 01:21 pm bruteforce protection

ssh bruteforce protection on the gateway

Current Mood: working working

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Jun. 28th, 2006 03:29 pm ltsp-tftpd

finally figure out where the damn tftpd server is ....
doofus.

dhcp on gateway
tftpd on bhim
nfs on bhim
swap on bhim
so except for the dhcpd server, yevrything is on bhim

Current Mood: annoyed annoyed