Dgplug

This post is squarely aimed at my younger colleagues on the student planet. While all of us will definitely benefit, this is for them. Update: The planet strips video embeds. So, please read it on the blog to get the right flow. Links to the videos also at end of post if you do not wish to leave the planet window Mamata Venkat1 set out to be a doctor (her passion; or so she thought), started out as pre-med and got halfway through her freshman year (first year) of college before she realised medicine wasn’t for her. She went on to switch majors about four times before finally landing on international studies and eventually choosing public health. ...

 I’ve found it difficult to figure out why I did not make money (or at least intentionally make money, not counting my lucky breaks) as I expected to, in the old consulting gig. This, despite the fact, that I knew I was smarter than the average bear when it came to my field of work. And that same fear still remains1 as I pivot careers. I know I’ll pick up stuff with programming. I know I’ll get fluent. But will I be able to make a comfortable living? ...

Ok, now that I’ve installed CentOS, I decided to install X Windows. And like Rip Van Winkle, I learnt that a lot has changed in 20 years :) A windowing environment was easy to install … sudo yum groupinstall "Gnome Desktop" and the trusty old startx & gave me a Windowing Environment (which I have yet to explore) However, switching permanantly to graphics mode (or vice versa) wasn’t so easy. I wanted to set my command line as the default startup environment and so I went to look for the default runlevel. I coudn’t find it. That’s because they don’t exist anymore. No inittab of old, nothing. ...

I got myself a new pc to learn Linux and do all my crazy experimenting on. What’d I use as my primary OS? Why CentOS, ofcourse. Two reasons … These are long term, slow stable releases, just the way I like my software to be. My last exposure to Linux was Red Hat Linux v5 & 6 way back when1. CentOS looks familiar enough to ease my apprehensions. First step on the way, was getting the OS installed on the machine. Slight hiccup though. I had the ISO and no optical drive! ...

1 Started: 2018-01-27 Finished: 2018-01-28 I started my modern non-fiction journey only a couple of years back, with Antifragile and Thinking Fast & Slow. (I’d only read older, motivational self help before then, Ziglar, Carnegie etc) I made the mistake of thinking everything was as wonderfully dense, yet rambling and well written. I was sadly mistaken. I realised that just like fiction, most non-fiction wasn’t worth my time and that just like most fiction, non-fiction followed a beat; a predictable path. ...

Started: 2018-01-24 Finished: 2018-01-24 The book had so many parallels to what I’ve learnt at DGPLUG that I decided to do this book’s notes here, instead of over at the home blog. I want to grow and become known enough to find my thousand true fans. I was lucky then, to find this book that has the exact same premise. You don’t really find an audience for your work; they find you. But it’s not enough to be good. In order to be found, you have to be findable. ...