Au revoir, Kallis

What a classic cricketer you have been. A humble servant of the game for about 18 years. Will truly miss the upcoming tests without you.

Lots of the old team is going off. Tests don't look the same anymore. What with even Swann moving out before boxing day [the fact that I took a shortish vacation made me realize that he announced his retirement only today. A shocker!]

The old guard is stepping down... another spring, another bloosoming period... except that the current lot doesn't seem up to it. Fraught with risks and opportunities.

Interesting Martin Crowe has a nice write up on Kallis

I will surely rate him on the very top... up there with Sir Garfield. Stats though make him look even better than Gary.

I see Ian Chappell's take slightly late. Here

Difficult customer to please... and those are good words from him.

 

Installing and Configuring SVN

Since I am doing a lot of work on the cloud [AWS] to be precise, I have started working a fair bit on the Open Source end [Whew, no more giant IBM products that I install, configure and deploy. Very agnostic to vendor currently.. benefits of not being an ISL'er anymore... Not that I don't like ISL mind you!]

Here is a good link that explains how SVN can be installed and configured. Seems like it can be up and running in less than 10 minutes. Boy, that's in a jiffy.

Steps roughly are like this:

a. yum install subversion mod_dav_svn
b. Configure httpd.conf for servername / other port details [if required]
c. Modify subversion.conf [under httpd/conf.d/ directory] and do the required changes.

Mine looks like this:

<Location /repos>
   DAV svn
#   SVNParentPath /var/www/svn
   SVNPath /var/www/svn/repos
#
#   # Limit write permission to list of valid users.
#   <LimitExcept GET PROPFIND OPTIONS REPORT>
#      # Require SSL connection for password protection.
#      # SSLRequireSSL
#
      AuthType Basic
#      AuthName "Authorization Realm"
     AuthName "Subversion repos"
     AuthUserFile /etc/svn-auth-conf
      Require valid-user
#   </LimitExcept>
</Location>
d. htpasswd -cm /etc/svn-auth-conf  <desiredusername>
e. For all subsequent entries into svn-auth-conf, don't use -c option. Just -m should suffice. [If required, optional step]
f. Configure repository: mkdir svn  (create a directory called svn under /var/www [or the location that you specified in the subversion.conf. Note that location and directory name should match in subversion.conf and the actual path. )
g. cd svn [or the directory that you just created]
h. svnadmin create repos
i. chown -R apache.apache repos
j. restart httpd server [apachectl -k restart or service httpd restart]

Done. Finished. Kaput.

Flanker diplomacy

thro INDRUS

"
In the past Jakarta had a pact with China to train its pilots and provide technical support for its Flanker fleet. But Jakarta has now veered round to the view that the Indian Air Force (IAF) is an ideal mentor. For, the IAF has earned a worldwide reputation as a dogfight duke after beating the powerful US Air Force in a series of Cope India air exercises. Plus, in three wars – in 1965, 1971 and 1999 – it has routed the Pakistan Air Force, which is no chump.
"
 

New beginning?

WOW. I see that Darren Bravo has made a maiden double century. Brilliant.

For someone who was dubbed to have the silken touch of the cricketing GOD himself Lara, its quite satisfying to see Darren Bravo come of age.

Pleasing to see it happen... that too in the 2nd innings. Sterling character shown when the team is down in the dumps.... following on and looking up desperately for succor and steel... and he has provided them all that. and more. For the time being, atleast.

In 45 completed innings plus the one currently, 4 hundreds and 8 fifties doesn't look like a stellar performance... but considering that he has got a score of 50+ approx 1 out of less than 4 innings makes it look very appealing.

Should be interesting to watch this guy grow!

 

For large values of 2

For large values of 2, 2 plus 2 equals 5.

Mangalyaan : Indian Mars Orbiter Mission

“In my humble opinion, what projects like India’s Mars Orbiter mean to a country’s economy has nothing to do with the actual dollars and cents, or in this case the rupees and paise, but the inspirational impact it has on students to study science, technology, engineering and math and the morale boost and general optimism such an audacious project can give to an emerging nation,” he said.  ”Such confidence to innovate and achieve can spread positively through an economy.  Becoming a major space faring nation means something and more countries seek such a status every year.  Of course, a nation can also use those funds for more shovel ready projects, but then all you get are more citizens that know how to use shovels.  What will be the key to success in this 21^st century?  More shoveling, hammering and paving? Or complex engineering, computer skills and scientific discovery?”

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