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I had a training about Internet Protocol today, no wonder that i did not know every thing though i have studied, worked with it for more than 2 years now. Some thing are always fresh in your mind and some thing you come across each day in your life and yet ii seems so fresh that you wont remember what it is. May be thats why they say that LEARNING IS THE NEVER ENDING PROCESS, but i felt today that LEARNING NEVER HAS THE BEGINING TO END.

Today after few years a went back to my school, reason: admission for my uncle's daughter. It was a great feeling to walk through the same gates which i literally crossed a million times in my life. It felt like something nice while moving through the corridors which we used to stumble against each other during the breaks. Since it was summer holidays i did not meet any of my makers(teachers) around but any way i am going to have another visit in few days and hoping to meet some of them.

The school has changed a lot, all those buildings with palm leaves, cement sheets are no more all i can see was multi-storied buildings. Yeah life has changed a lot but my heart feat the same way when i was left the campus 6 years ago.

Its was amazing and easy to book ticket when they started the online movie ticket booking. It got better when they allowed to choose the seat where we will be sitting in the cinema hall. This time its one step futher, where you can pre-order your pop-corn and the cooldrinks even before you enter the cinema hall and it will be served to you in your seat. If you are living in chennai then you have to see

The Cinema In Sathyam

Mazhai, "Jayam" Ravi pairs with Shreya for this chiller ride which goes an extra mile at the climax. The story is "Boy meets Girl – Fall in Love – Villan Loves Girl – Hero Fights Villan - Hero Kill Villan – Hero Wins The Girl" if you would have thought this was the story then pat your self on your back for thinking ahead of time because the story is too old than this. Actual story is "Ram Meets Seetha – Fall in Love – Ravana Loves Seetha – Ram Fights Ravanan - Ram Kill Ravanan – Ram Wins The Girl".

Ravi plays the Ram role and of course Shreya plays the beautiful Seetha. Is there any thing interesting in this movie? If you are asking this question the answer is a big NO. Since you know the story and are able to guess what going to happen next the film becomes a formality for you to finish than to enjoy.

Is there any thing to enjoy in the movie? If you are asking this question the answer is a small yes, the condition is you should a fan of Shreya or Devi Sri Prasad (Music Dir). Devi Sri Prasad has done little work to transfer his tunes from telugu to tamil but still it was nice to hear.

I think Varsham, the template of Mazhai was better in all aspects. The on-screen chemistry of Prabhas and Trish was better than Ravi and Shreya. The performance of Prakash Raj was better than Kalabhavan Mani. One aspect that was disappointing in Mazhai was the action sequence which was superb in Varsham didn't even appear to be choreographed in Mazhai.

Gajini, Directed by A.R.Murugadhas is a action movie, this time with a story. Murugadas, RD. Rajasekar, Antony above all Kanal Kanna are the real heros of the film in Story, Camera, Editing and Stunts respectively.

The highlight of the movie is the climax stunt between Surya and the Villan – absolutely fabulous. When I saw alavandhan (movie) I thought what else can you do to beat this kind of stunt (remember kamal vs kamal) but the vision of the director, stuntman and the visual effects is really amazing and surprisingly perfect (trivia: It took 10 days to complete the climax).

Surya has performed beautifully in both the characters. Surya, Asin pair in the movie looks fresh and good. Nayanthara trying to be sexy looks ugly in her attempt but her character is the pivot in the movie. Harris Jayaraj is looking confused in many plases in the background score, he gives you a feeling as if you are seeing his earlier movie (anniyan, thotti jaya) but he has made it equal with songs specially "Sutrum Villi Sudarae" is beautifully choreographed and filmed.

A.R.Murugadhas has done the story (trivia: The knot was taken from an English film Memento), screenplay and direction very well, but the two songs (Nayantharas and the climax song) are definitely the show stoppers as they bring down the phase and the impact of the story in a descending order, must have been avoided (remember Ramana where we has effectively only 2 songs) Gajini a movie worth watching.

The Skeleton Key, the genera of the film was advertised as Horror but as usual the film turned out to be a thriller. The Director Iain Softley who lost the key throughout the movie makes it up with a fine climax.

The film is quite guessable right from the beginning except the CLIMAX (must be inspired by Manoj Night Shyamalan). You get the same wine but this time in a fresh bottle. The K(ute)ate Hudson (remember How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days) in a thriller, I thought they would have messed up with her but she along with Gena Rowlands and John Hurt has done a wonderful job.

The tag line of the movie says "It can open any door" but nothing was closed in the movie (including kate). The director should have spent some more time in making the movie more compact from the beginning.

The Skeleton Key is a nice movie for those who haven't watched many horror flicks. But for those who have seen a lot only the last 10 min of the film was different. On the whole die hard Kate Hudson fans will not be disappointed while leaving the cinema hall and that includes ME.

Maja, is a light hearted comedy movie directed by shafi (from kerela) starring Vikram, Pasupathi, Manivannan, Asin and Vadivelu. There isn’t anything special about the story to tell, the river (movie) flows through a known land (you can guess). Vikram is playing the lead role after the success of Pithamagan and Anniyan where he played different roles. He has desperately tried to move away from his previous films, but on the way has lost his concentration on story.

The movie looks good in patches. The chemistry between Vikram and Pasupathi is super, they carry along very smoothly through out the film. Pasupathi (villan in Virumandi) has played the role to perfection, his dialogue delivery (he is not shouting in the movie), body language, timing in comedy is excellent. He along with Manivannan, Vadivelu and Vikram makes you laugh.

Asin has done her part well in the songs. Vidyasagar who has scored the music, seems not to have forgotten Dhool (Vidyasagars earlier movie with Vikram) which is cleanly seen through out the movie. All the song seems alike except “Che Che.” One man who should be appreciated in the movie is the cinematographer Balasubramanian, he has done a wonderful job in composing the screen with colors.

The director seems to be a bit carried away by the Vikram factor that he has not concentrated on anything. The comedy of the movie is good, to the extent that when the film ends, instead of displaying CAST they have displayed COST (may be the producer wanted it that way). Maja doesn’t have enough to justify the title.

After the disappointing Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry's earlier version) The Goblet of fire is a welcome sign taking the fact the installment from JKR (the author) is still spending. All credit to the director for making it a perfect entertainer. The cinema hall was filled with children from all age group, one that remembered me of my school days. The 2 best in the series so far after the Sorcerer's Stone.

From the opening frame the director had made it very clear to keep it very simple and look exotic, well he has achieved it. Even though there was a lot of opportunity for making it as suspense, thriller with the (Brendan Gleeson) Alastor 'Mad-Eye' Mood character, the director has taken a safe route of comedy with all the character. Probably this version of Harry is the darkest and the funniest so far.

As far as the story is concerned (except for those who have read the book) is a mere fill in the blank till we get the final episode. This will fall in the series of The Matrix Reloaded (part 2) were every thing in the movie looks good to enjoy but ultimately they turn out to be just for making it a 2hr film (sorry for being so rude).

Three things in the movie that needs to appreciated are the cinematography and special effects as usual and the third thing is of course the dialog for keeping it simple and funny. For those who don't read the books (that's a big crime – and I am the first accused) the film will definitely be a perfect entertainer.

For past few days i am working on LFS - { Linux From Scratch (LFS) is a project that provides you with step-by-step instructions for building your own custom Linux system, entirely from source code. } this has given me a better understanding of how a OS works.

I think who ever has Questions relating to OS (specially LINUX) can just follow this doc on http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ , I am sure you can in a better position to understand how this works.

WARNING:- You need a lot of Patience to finish the entire procedure - After all you are building an Operating System :-)

Bootstrapping is a small/minimal program loaded first in the memory when the computer is booted. This program has the capacity to start other sucessive programs which are large like your boot loader in your MBR.

Why the name Bootstrapping ? I would like to quote these lines from Wikipedia for further clarity.

"Bootstrapping alludes to a German legend, who was able to lift himself out of a swamp by pulling himself up by his own hair. In later versions he was using his own boot straps to pull himself out of the sea which gave rise to the term bootstrapping.

In computers, this term refers to any process where a simple system activates a more complicated system. It is the problem of starting a certain system without the system already functioning. It seems just as impossible as "pulling oneself up by the bootstraps". However, solutions, accordingly called bootstrapping, exist; they are processes whereby a complex system emerges by starting simply and, bit by bit, developing more complex capabilities on top of the simpler ones.

Bootstrapping is generally a longer term for booting, or the process of starting up any computer. Bootstrap most commonly refers to the program that actually begins the initialization of the computer's operating system, like GRUB, LILO or NTLDR. Modern personal computers have the ability of using their network interface card (NIC) for bootstrapping".

Yum is an automatic updater and package management tool for rpm based systems. Yum automatically computes dependencies and figures out what steps need to occur in order to install packages. It makes it much easier to maintain groups of machines without having to manually update each one using rpm.

Yum can be used in place of, or in addition to the Red Hat up2date and rpm tools which also come with/from Fedora Core 1. My personal preference is to use Yum as a complete replacement for both tools as it has proven to be faster, more reliable, and also offers functionality not available when using the other tools such as;

* Multiple Repositories
* Simple Configuration File
* Correct Dependency Calculation
* rpm-consistant behavior
* comps.xml group support, including multiple repository groups
* Simple interface

Originally created by Terra Soft, "yup" (Yellow Dog Updater) was improved and is now maintained by Linux@Duke team at Duke University, becoming yum (Yellow Dog Updater, Modified). yum now ships with Red Hat and works with Fedora, Mandrake, and of course Yellow Dog Linux and Y-HPC.

Yum can not only be used to keep packages already installed on your system updated, but can also be used to install packages directly, which is awesome on those days when you can't find a cd to save your life. Yes, you could always download the sourceball, or go looking for an rpm on the net, but this is soooo much simpler. Yum is developed and maintained through the hard work of the folks at Duke University and is made available to the rest of us under the GNU GPL.

Configuring Yum -

Before using Yum we need to modify its configuration file which is called yum.conf and edit the lines which tell Yum which repository server to use. Now using your favorite text editor open the /etc/yum.conf file and edit it as follows replacing the baseurl line with the address of the repository you chose. In this example we are using the mirror site mirrors.kernel.org.

[base]
name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - Base
baseurl=http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/core/$releasever/$basearch/os

[updates-released]
name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - Released Updates
baseurl=http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/core/updates/$releasever/$basearch

Need to worry about the [updates-testing] portion of this file as it is not used for general updates and package installation. Edit the /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources file as follows, again, substitue as needed with the mirror site you have chosen.

yum fedora-core-1 http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/core/1/i386/os
yum updates-released http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/core/updates/1/i386

Cool, that change insures that the Redhat tools work as well. Thats it, save the file and close it and lets move on.

Using Yum -

Commonly used Yum commands include:

# yum check-update

Will tell you what updates are available and applicable to your system.

# yum update

To update all existing packages on your system.

# yum install

To install a package.

# yum clean all

To remove any old cached packages and headers from your system. See the yum man page for more information.