3D effects sweet..... But......

I was very very excited when I first enabled those effects that I have described in the post below.... But as good as it gets when all correct, it's not at all good if it goes wrong....

I ignored the hardware requirements for the graphics card, required for either beryl or compiz. I just installed them on my laptop with 915GM chipset having on-board graphics. And, after I finished the last post and then woke up next morning to switch on the laptop, I found out that I was locked outside all WMs (Windows Managers). I tried Gnome, KDE, icewm, xfce, but all crashed. So, I disabled XGL from command line (thank god I payed attention to people telling me to learn the shell....). Then I logged in.

The system was behaving strange. All apps kept crashing. And windows kept switching by themselves. I didn't know what to do. I spent all the time since then trying to sort things out. But alas, I had to reinstall OpenSuSE 10.2 again on my laptop. And now the system is back in it's formal glory (whatever it had).

So, good as they are, those graphics. Unless you have a graphics card or a chipset that is supported by them, don't go for them. I thought, at most they won't run as my chipset is not supported.... but it ran, and crashed the whole system.....

Aditya Shevade

XGL + Compiz..... and the result is..... Fantastic.....

I am bored. I mean that is the only this that I do these days.... Be bored and drive other around you nuts....


I had gone to a friends' place today and saw his laptop with Ubuntu installed. He also had beryl and XGL enabled on it. It looked great (for more info visit this). So I had been wondering, if my laptop will be able to get the effects ready with OpenSuSE 10.2. And the answer was complicated.



I first installed beryl. Then enabled the 3D acceleration for the on-board graphics card. And then restarted X as usual. But it crashed. I tried again, but it again crashed. So I disabled XGL from command line and started X. It was alright. Then I reinstalled beryl... no change, then I removed it and went on with XGL-Compiz combo. And it's been working flawlessly (almost) since then. I also installed GL Desktop from OpenSuSE's XGL repository. It's a good tool to configure XGL-Compiz.



I have provided some screenshots of what you can achieve with this. If you want to see what beryl can do, then I suggest you take a look at this. For me, compiz rocks.




Another Screenshot for you......

I am back...... So is the flood.....

I am well and back from Pune.... It was a fun trip. Bought 8 books in the end. All 3 from the Bartemius trilogy, The Godfather, Couple of Tolkien books, one on the world before Tolkien and Professional C++ by Wrox.... In short, I had gone to Pune to spend a lot of my parents' money :-)

And, when I was in the train, I called my mom and she told me that it's raining.... That was 5pm and now, I am writing this post at 9:35pm, and it's still raining out there... It's close to flood already (well not really). There are a lot of trees, fallen on the roads, the railroad from Miraj to Sangli (a Junction and my home city (or town?)), is under water and all the rail traffic is jammed....And I had plans to play football tomorrow... :-(

Huh.... I am really tired right now and I cannot write much right now, cause there are 35 emails waiting for me in the mailbox. Plus many other things to take care of.... Catch you later (all those who read regularly... ;-)).

Aditya Shevade

The man with the broken neck (well... not really)....

Huh... It has been a funny period of 3-4 days since my last post....

One of the happiest incidents was that I found my football. It was lurking in an old box full of coconuts. The day before I found the ball, we (around 16 people) were playing football. My team was ahead 5-1 and then, suddenly, before anyone got hold, we were trailing 5-6.... Can you believe it? Read more, 4 goals out of our 5 were scored by single person, and an own goal. (It was not me, I am a midfielder). And I didn't even give a single assist.....

It was bad. Though we won 8-6 at the end (courtesy, 7 goals from the man who had scored 4 of the first 5 and a chip in from one more from the second attacker... I wondered when he was gonna score...).

Then I found the ball and practiced. And fell in my front-yard (well the front-yard of my house not my front-yard), on a hard surface. And hurt my neck.... It's pretty bad. Still hurting after some 30 hours.... But that day (Friday) during the game, I just rocked (again not really).

I was playing a defensive role that day, and I was taking all the goal kicks, since I was the only one with studs and I am the only one who practices free kicks (sometimes). So, I took 'em and, surprisingly, 3 of my goal kicks were the assists for the first 3 goals we scored. (It's a small ground, about 125 feet from pole to pole). And I even hit a goal kick that went directly in the net, but that was not counted. (obviously). I was happy (even though my neck was bad).

Then I rushed to my synthesizer class. Score was 3-1, and then I found out that we drew 6-6, cause my attacker friend had to play defense as I was gone. And the worst part was that my tuition was canceled. So, I missed the better part of the game for nothing.

I am still not able to turn my head completely from one side to other. It still hurts a lot :-(.... And, I am going out of the city for a week from tomorrow. Hoping to catch some good books and CDs... Seeya later (I am not sure if anyone ever reads what I write, but if you do, then seeya later....)

Aditya Shevade

My first LONGGGG drive....

It was very good.... I just sat in the car, and began to drive... It was great, I pushed it right up to 90Km/hr.... I feel good.....

About 40 Km... nice hard, and the road was almost empty throughout, so it was great....

A light... of hope... but.....

A light of hope indeed.... As I have mentioned in my last post that I am learning to play a keyboard. Today I had one more lecture. And at the end of the lecture, my sir said that I should get a new big keyboard now.

He said that he thinks that I have improved and am improving. But the only thing that is holding me back is the small keyboard that I have. It does not have a bender, a touch sensitivity, ability to change the tones (synthesis)....

So I came home and spoke with my parents. And they said no.. :-(.. According to them, I must continue learning for about 6 months and then they will buy it... Cause they think that I never stick to one thing... Well I am going to prove them wrong and going to show them that I do care about this and I WANT to learn this... So, forget 6 months, I am going to get expertise with this one that I have and then they will have to buy it.

And sir said that I 'should' get a big one, not I 'must'... So, right now, it's alright, but soon, I am going to have that big one on my doorstep.....

Aditya Shevade

Summary of the whole week...

I cannot say anything... It has been one of the best and worst weeks in my life..... First good news (good for me) is that I have finally started to learn to drive a 4 wheeled vehicle.... And I am doing pretty good.. It's been a week (as I already have written in the heading) and I have not scratched the car (that does not mean that I have crashed it, it just means that everything has been going pretty well....).

But the joys and thrills of this driving thing are not enough for me to keep enjoying what has been going on... So there were more things. I have been learning to play an electronic keyboard for a little over a month now. And there was a get together of my tuitions, and I performed in it in front of some 400 people (mostly parents of the students in the class). I played an old Hindi song, "Jeena Yahan", on a huge synthesizer... It was a big moment for me, the first time I was ever going to perform on the stage with a keyboard and that too on a synthesizer? I mean what I have got at my home is a very very small one. (half the size of what I had to play to be precise). But as I said, I did perform and it went well.... (Except for the starting music, where I was so tense that I pressed one button too lightly that no sound came out...).

In between, I went to a friend of mine and bought home a book from him, 'The Amulet of Summerkand' written by 'Jonathan Straud' (hope the spellings of the names are correct, I don't have the book with me right now). And I have been able to read only the first 60 pages of it... Had been very stressful week....

Apart from that, my laptop was behaving strange (again), so I took it to the service station, and they said that we (HP) provide support only if the laptop behaves strange on Windows XP, and not on OpenSuSE 10.2 (which I was and still am using)... So I had to install XP, and guess what, everything was OK. So I came home.

But having had enough experiences with XP, I reinstalled SuSE, but, in the midway, my father spoke with me and I dunno why, but I reinstalled XP, and was going to install Ubuntu on a pen-drive and use it with XP.... I did that in a single day.... 3 OSs installed in a day.... It was bad....

And after proudly (???) using XP for a week, I have switched back to SuSE (:-)) yesterday... And I am lovin' it...

What else?... Yeah, I also have been trying to expand my skills (Whatever I have) in C and learn C++. (We have a subject C++ in this semester for exams). And am thinking of joining the 2 games that I have so far created Tic Tac Toe and Bulls & Cows and present it as the project for the subject....

So, even if these are holidays, I have been nothing but busy... I mean I sleep around 1am or 2am and wake up at 7am... Then sometimes I sleep during the afternoon, but my friends drag me out of the home to play with them.... It's so tiring.... I just want a break... A big break from this stressed life....

Aditya Shevade