I, MMXI

MMXI and I Are In Harmony.

Read a lovely blog post by Antonio Cangiano.

+1 to my RSS feeds.

All in all an enjoyable evening hacking and reading tech-posts.

Nothing much to talk about otherwise, cuz my work is giving me a lisp.

Ohh btw, Content Farm? I like ContentVille Better, FB $uck yeah!

Cheers,
Sifar.

Heal your VPN client (Mac)

Today the Cisco VPN client on the Mac cra##%d out on me right in the middle of a VPN connection. When I tried to reconnect it kept on failing with the error:

“A configuration error occurred. Verify your settings”

Several retries later, I was positive it wasn't the VPN server itself that was the problem.

Although I had to leave the error at that for the time-being, come evening when I got back home, I stumbled upon this link. Bottom line, if you ever see this error on OSX, you may want to try to restart the racoon service using something to the effect of:

sudo service com.apple.racoon stop

sudo service com.apple.racoon start

Note that the OSX recommends you to use launchctl instead of service, so that would mean you do this:

sudo launchctl stop com.apple.racoon

sudo launchctl start com.apple.racoon

That did the trick for me. Hope it does for you.

-- Sifar

Area 51

For all of you who use/are aware of Stack Overflow, presenting serendipitously found, flaunting huge potentiality, please welcome with a huge round of applause - Area 51.

Its basically a conception website that spawns off other stack exchange sites if the site topic generates enough traction via a plebiscite.

Another cool website suggested by a friend over the weekend - Cooking For Engineers.

I am going to start posting these websites so they don't get veiled up behind my browser bookmarks.

Enjoy!

-- Sifar.

आशुफ्तः

ऎसे पिला दी साकी ने ना हमको ऎतबार अपना,

कभी साकी से इश्क अपना, कभी मय से इश्क अपना

कश-म-कश-ए-ज़िंदगी की तहरीर ऎसी रही,

कभी जल गया मकां अपना, कभी बुझ गया चराघ अपना

तकदीर ने दो-राह पर खडा कर दीया यक-ब-यक,

कभी मंझीले थी अपनी, कभी रास्ता था अपना

"सिफर" ज़िंदगी ने ऊलझा दीया है ज़ालिम,

अरबों सवाल ऊसके, अौर ना इक जवाब अपना

--सिफर

End of Hiatus

It's a beautiful Sunday evening on Father's Day and Sifar is back from a 2 month hiatus; back to his blogics (that is a neologistical portmanteau for blog antics). Sitting by the pool side at this Summer (yeah its summer already!!!) twilight hour sipping my favorite white chocolate mocha frap from SitarBaksh, this happy soul cannot ask for more.

The last couple of months have been really busy at work and I haven't really had the chance or the mind-set to write anything. Even though there have been a few times in these two months that I have had something to write about, my protocol-fried brains didn't want to engage in blogging. Understandably so now that work has eased off a little, Sifar is back and reminiscent of his blogging habits, promises to put posts out there more regularly.

A few things to report, whether it be bachelor parties for a co-worker, or him and his girl friend leaving the States for good to graze greener pastures, or a couple of other close friends getting hitched; while life has been drub on the work front, it has been decently happening on the personal front. Amid all the mounting work, I also made a weekend trip to Boston early May and spent an awesome weekend among some old and new friends and family.

I am hoping that the summer ahead would be more action-packed and without too much work-load. In terms of pursuing hobbies, I want to kick-start learning music; that has been a new year's resolution and I haven't done anything about it yet. Also want to get back to running and training, all of which had pretty much taken a back-seat with work dominating most of my weekdays and weekend schedules in the recent past.

Anyhow, after that lackadaisical rant about my two months full of crap-load of work, I have two completely disconnected things to talk about in today's post.

Let me start off by adding some color to this post by providing a beautiful video about some Tibetan monks creating the Buddha Mandala (sand mandala really), meticulously putting together grains of colored sand to a precise design of sorts, conforming to Buddhist spiritual symbols and shapes. What struck me after watching the video was the fact that these monks took six whole days to put together the sand mandala, but only an hour after the last grain of sand was put in place, the sand mandala was swept off in a ritualistic ceremony. The news post mentions that according to Buddhist philosophy this symbolizes the impermanence of life. I paraphrase that half of this sand was given away to the audience as blessings and half of it was poured into a nearby river.

It's such a simple symbolism, but a powerful idea. The sand mandala was representative of all the events in the Universe? Nothing is permanent but change. As our life unfolds before us, it also folds inwards making us aware of the involution and evolution that happens cyclically. The impermanence of life is one notion, re-incarnation other. Most oriental philosophies have both the notions prevalently expressed in their scriptures and to tie them together requires some mental weight-lifting. In the so-called spiritual quest, Sifar hopes to put in an effort to bring these two ideas to harmony.

After I was sucked in to the vortex of harmonizing these two ideas, I had an epiphany of sorts. During the past few years, seemingly my analytical skills have given way to a completely new philosophical tool-kit. While I struggle these days to put two and two together, I seem to do OK on weaving intricate tapestries of spiritual nay philosophical notions. What has happened? Does math and science as we traditionally know cease to exist when a human mind becomes open to religious and spiritual frontiers?

Alright alright, let's lighten up. The other thing that the world is under the grips of these days is Copa Mundial De La Fifa 2010. And for a change this time around, the Americans seem to have gotten lucky drawing against the English in their first world-cup tie of 2010. Go States! c'mon guys they deserve a cheer. While the first week of the world-cup has seen some completely un-expected results be it England drawing with US or Spain losing to Switzerland, what has left me completely petrified is the sub-par refereeing during the world cup games. Be it hand-balls that are let go unseen during Fabiano's second goal today or high profile players like Kaka and Klose being sent off for seemingly innocuous on-field fouls, I think its high-time FIFA makes video replays available to fourth officials for adjudicating on-field calls.

On the positive side, Argentina and my idol for this year's world-cup, Lionel Messi seem to be doing well after the first week. Argentina is sitting comfortable with 6 points from 2 games and look in good touch to take on the heavy-weights during the knock-outs. While my heart roots for Messi and Argentina, I also want to see Germany and Italy do well. Both these teams are facing possible eliminations after the group stage and have one game left to reconcile their positions as serious potential contenders for the title. Italy is going into the cup as defending champions, I hope they don't succumb to expectations. Germany has a few good players and never a side to be taken lightly. Let's all hope the rest of the cup is full of fair officiating and wonderful football and that alone.

Signing off in-sync with the setting Sun....Viva Football.

--Sifar.