aashiks'in

I lost my PAN card a few months back.

Here is how i applied for a new one.

1) Find out your nearest PAN card application center.

Go to http://www.utitsl.co.in/pan/ . Click on ‘Search For Pan Card Application center’ . You can search by state and city ( I do hope that the site is up at all times… They have a tendency to go off line/throw errors occassionally ) .

Now the thing to keep in mind is that it is best if you can find a UTITSL office .

2) Go to the office, buy the form for lost pan card. The people at UTITSL are a friendly lot , they will help you with all doubts and stuff. The application costs Rs.5 and they charge Rs.67 as processing fee. If you have forgotten your PAN number , they will retrieve it for you from their databases.

3) Take a recent passport size photograph , Address proof and ID proof . A copy of your passport is more than enough.

4) After you submit your application , they will give you a receipt which will have your coupon number . Supposedly, you can track your PAN with that coupon number via http://www.utitsl.co.in/pan/ . I didn’t get any info from the site when i tried.

5) Wait for 3-4 weeks.

Thats it. You don’t have to spent more than half an hour to apply for you lost PAN card.

It took about 3-4 weeks for the PAN card to arrive. The UTITSL guys said that it will take about 6 weeks. Anyways , it was easier than i thought.

I was editing a document today . And I needed a dictionary . At office ( where i do most of my editing ) I have to use Windows XP . I had wordweb there . Of course I can use Openoffice.org’s spell check , but then I wanted something like wordweb. I was looking around and suddenly remembered that Anoop John uses KDict to do the job. It looks kind of odd on his desktop because he uses GNOME .He had written down the instructions for setting up KDict here. The instructions are for Ubuntu – GNOME .  The following instructions are for Mandriva KDE ( Mandriva Spring 2008 ) . Actually from step 6 onwards, it should be generic and should work for any KDE system. Instructions before that simply installs dictd and Wordnet .

1. Menu-> Install Remove Software
2. Search for ‘dictd ‘ and select it
3. Now search for Wordnet ( Make sure you click the binocular icon near search box and select ‘in Descriptions’ )
4. In the results that come up select the one with description  ‘WordNet for dictd’
5. Click on Apply
6. Run KDict from Menu->Tools->Dictionary
7. Go to Settings menu and choose ‘Configure Dictionary’
8. In the dialogue that shows up , type  localhost .
9. If there is some error saying there is no server , just do a reboot or do the following CLI magic : Menu->Tools->Konsole .Type su and then your root password . Then type service dictd-server restart . Now repeat steps 6 to 8 .

10. Well KDict installation and config is finished , but now to make it act like wordweb , something more has to be done. Go to Menu->Tools . Now right click on Dictionary and choose ‘Edit Item’
11. In the dialogue that shows up , there is a field called Command. Its contents would be kdict -caption "%c" %i %m. Change it to kdict --clipboard -caption "%c" %i %m
12. Towards the bottom of that window , there is a button with description ‘Current Short Cut Key’. Click on it and then press a key combination that you would like to use to invoke KDict . I chose CTRL + ALT + W .
13. Press the save button in the window and close it. We are done.
14. Select any text in any window and press your chosen key combination to invoke KDict.
15. Get back to me if this doesn’t work

I have helped/installed GNU-Linux on a number of systems by now. I noticed a few things when it comes to the general public and Desktops ( as in the WIMP paradigm ) .

1. People want stuff (software) to work. They don’t (usually ) care about who wrote it and whats gone into creating it.

2. People also compare notes and are attracted to flashy stuff like Compiz. They are curious. They play around and they are frightened/irked when their software crashes.

3. They are all ears when you explain stuff like freedom to them , but forget it as soon as you leave the place. They are not ready to use half baked but Free software that is a bit more difficult to use than a proprietary alternative.

4. They don’t care about code, development , future versions etc. They want everything right now.

It is into this plethora of people that the Free Software evangelists must go forth and spread their message.

Now , how do we deal with people ?

You can stick to the principles. you can explain the fundas and install the Free alternatives. 98% of the times you have free alternatives. Openoffice, kopete/Pidgin , Amarok, Kaffeine/SMplayer etc.

We are stumped when it comes to Video chat / VOIP , Compiz and Gaming.

More often than not , people have an nVidia or ATI integrated graphics because they have an AMD system ( cheaper than Intel ). Playing games even like Tux racer needs hardware acceleration.

Now we can keep on arguing that we don’t need games etc. But _we_ are only a minority. The rest _needs_ the games even though they may not play more than once or twice. They _will_ go back to proprietary OS’s because of this one reason. An OS that can’t support graphics intensive game play ? It plain sucks.

Of course . We Know. We Know that GNU Supports Graphically Intensive Games. But you need proprietary drivers for that. ATI seems to be moving in the right direction , but it is not mature yet. nVidia seems to be stuck.

Same with compiz. People fall in love with the compiz desktops and are royally miffed when they are unable to run it without proprietary drivers. They simply ignore Freedom when it comes to this.

We do not have a proper Free implementation of VOIP / Video chat yet. Ekiga needs to improve a lot and the call quality plain sucks. Those implementations that seem to work using GTalk VOIP protocol needs jumping through hoops to get it running , and on top of that , there is no usable GUI. Kopete seems to handle Yahoo video , but Yahoo VOIP is not supported/doesn’t work.

Skype saves the day , but its proprietary.

I am not whining about lack of quality software in the FOSS world. I am looking for a middle ground here. I cannot force the ideals on to people. I have to provide them with a proper alternative to proprietary software they use. Otherwise they are simply going to mock us.

My idea ? Yeah use the Free alternatives as far as possible. Use proprietary stuff like skype/nVidia drivers ( if people want ) until a good Free implementation comes along , and we can then get people to make the switch. At least they will be on GNU Desktops by then.

Am I right ? Well this seems to work.I might be wrong and going against the principles , but this does bring in more people.

Why can’t I work on these things and improve them ? I think there are people who do these better than me working on it . I do what i can. I install Desktops for people. Usable ones.

I tried installing Malayalam on Mandriva Spring 2008. It turned out to be easy.

Step 1 : Install Mandriva

Step 2 : Log in and update your system from Menu->Tools->System Tools->Configure your Computer

Step 3 : From from Menu->Tools->System Tools->Configure your Computer choose ‘install & Remove Software ‘

Step 4 : There are two drop down lists on the top left , choose ‘All’ in both .

Step 5: search for scim-tables-ml and select it

Step 6: Accept the dependencies. It will also ask you to choose from scim-, scim-bridge, and skim.I chose SKIM.

Step 7 : Click on Apply .

Step 8 : After software finishes installation, search for scim-qtimm Or scim-gtk and select it

Step 9 : Accept the dependencies , click on apply and wait for software install to complete.

Step 10 : Download and install latest Meera and Rachana from http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/smc/fonts/malayalam-fonts-04/ . Installing involves right clicking on the file and choosing actions->install

Step 11: open a console . become root user by typing ‘su’ (without quotes ) , and then typing in your admin password when prompted.

Step 12 : Run the following commands one by one

echo ‘GTK_IM_MODULE=scim’ >> /etc/sysconfig/i18n
echo ‘XIM_PROGRAM=”scim -d”‘ >> /etc/sysconfig/i18n
echo ‘QT_IM_MODULE=scim’ >> /etc/sysconfig/i18n
echo ‘XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM’ >> /etc/sysconfig/i18n

Step 13: Reboot your system

Step 14: Log in . There should be a keyboard icon on the taskbar . You can click on it and choose your input method

Step 15: Send mails to friends and tell them that GNU is awesome.

Some issues :

Hitch number 1 : Firefox rendering is shit. libpango is v1.20 . How do i fix this ?
Hitch number 2 : Open office doesnt have ml language pack.

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