Back to college and busy

July 22nd, 2010 by Naman Bagga | No Comments | Filed in General, MANIT Bhopal

I'm back in Bhopal and my 5th semester is well on course. I've been here for the past 15 days and these days have been really busy. Settling in my hostel room took quite some time as expected. Also, I've been learning to ride bikes these days. I've managed to learn to ride thanks to all my friends. I even happen to have video evidence for it-

I'll be getting my own bike very soon now, more on it later. I've been very busy lately because being a member of 3 college societies, I need to work for each of them. The day since I've entered 3rd year, there seems to be some reason to be busy everyday. Today, I was busy with design work for ED-search, the test to get into the college's Editorial Board. I'll be conducting a short workshop on Linux tomorrow evening after college. I'm down with a bit of a cold too so need to get some sleep now. More posts and updates to follow soon.

WeReward | Earn with your iPhone

June 5th, 2010 by Naman Bagga | 2 Comments | Filed in Reviews

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of IZEA. All opinions are 100% mine.

Chops
Social media has gained immense popularity over the last few years. Services like Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare have become so popular that they have become a great way to promote your businesses. Smartphones have contributed significantly to the popularity of social media. IZEA, the creator of popular services like Social Spark, Sponsored Tweets has launched a service called WeReward which rewards you for completing tasks and checkins in the real world. All you need is-

1. An iPhone
2. A Twitter, Facebook or Foursquare account
3. A Paypal account

The only part that costs is buying an iPhone in case you don't have one. Rest of the requirements are basic. Have a look at this video to understand how WeReward works-

Its simple, iPhone owners first need to Download the App. Then link it with your social networking account. You can then look at opportunities like checkins and tasks for which you will be awarded reward points. You can also earn reward points by referring other users to WeReward through the referral program. Once you've accumulated 10,000 reward points, you can cash them out to your Paypal account at the rate of 1 penny per reward point. The minimum payout amount is thus $10 which is pretty low. IZEA services usually have low or reasonable minimum payout amounts so the services will work for you even if you don't use them too frequently.

If you are a business owner, you can visit WeReward.com to know more about what the service has to offer and to sign up with WeReward.

Visit my sponsor: WeReward for iPhone

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Clearing the Pipeline

June 3rd, 2010 by Naman Bagga | No Comments | Filed in General, MANIT Bhopal

I'm right in the middle of my semester break right now. So here's a personal post for my followers who are wondering what I'm up to these days. I came back to Delhi on 13th May and am here till the end of June. 5th semester starts from July. My 4th semester result was out yesterday. I managed to get a SGPA of 7.78 and a CGPA of 7.82 and am fairly satisfied with it considering that I was expecting it to be lower. So its official now, 50% of my engineering is over.

The post frequency on my blog has been low in the last few months. At times, when I'm in college, the circumstances just don't allow me to make a blog post at the right time and thus some posts end up lying in the pipeline forever. So, over the next few days, before the start of the next semester, I plan to clear the post pipeline and publish all pending posts. So you might find posts related to occurrences of the past in the next few days. Hopefully, I'll be able to clear the pipeline soon and get geared up for 5th sem.

Changing Bootup Resolution (Plymouth) in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

May 26th, 2010 by Naman Bagga | 2 Comments | Filed in Linux, Tech Talk

I've written a post on adjusting the bootup resolution i.e. the resolution of the splash screen that shows up when you start Ubuntu. Lots of things have changed since then. GRUB2 has replaced GRUB as the default bootloader and Plymouth has replaced Usplash so although changing the bootup resolution has a similar procedure, its a bit more complicated with GRUB2 and Plymouth.

Why would you want to change the bootup resolution? People are complaining that the ubuntu logo in the startup splash screen has turned large and ugly after installing ATI or Nvidia propitiatory divers. That is because the bootup resolution is too low. Other people might not be able to see the splash screen at all. In short, if you have any issue related to the splash screen not showing up properly, you are recommended to try this procedure. This is what the splash screen would normally look like(click to view full size)-

Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Splash Screen

Nice and Purple: The Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Splash Screen


Note- In this procedure, I've assumed that your monitor supports a resolution of 1280x1024 and used this resolution in the steps. If you have an old monitor, it is possible that it might support a maximum resolution of 1024x768. You are free to try any resolution your monitor supports. If its a widescreen, you might want to try widescreen resolutions as well. Any resolution would work as long as your monitor supports it. And for those who think its not obvious, when I write 'run ' it means you need to run it in a terminal.

Here's how to change the bootup resolution and fix the big, low-res Plymouth logo-

1. First of all, run sudo apt-get install v86d in a terminal to install the v86d package.

2. Now you need to edit the resolutions in the GRUB2 files so run sudo gedit /etc/default/grub and look for the line-

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

and replace it with-

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset video=uvesafb:mode_option=1280x1024-24,mtrr=3,scroll=ywrap"

Then look for-

#GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480

and replace it with-

GRUB_GFXMODE=1280x1024

Note that you need to remove the # from the beginning of the GRUB_GFXMODE line else it will be commented out. Also, I repeat, you may use any resolution you wish to use in place of 1280x1024 as long as your monitor supports it. Save the file and close the text editor.

3. Now you need to edit another file, so run sudo gedit /etc/initramfs-tools/modules and add the following line at the end of the file-

uvesafb mode_option=1280x1024-24 mtrr=3 scroll=ywrap

Don't forget you need to replace 1280x1024 if you used some other resolution in the last step. Save the file and close the text editor.

4. Now run echo FRAMEBUFFER=y | sudo tee /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/splash
You'll get FRAMEBUFFER=y as output.

5. Now run sudo update-grub2
This will generate the updated grub.cfg file.

6. The last step is generating the new splash screen. To do that, just run sudo update-initramfs -u

Now reboot Ubuntu and you should see a much better looking, high resolution splash screen and GRUB menu. If you see nothing at all, it might be because your monitor does not support the resolution you set. Try a lower resolution in that case.

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