Travelling morocco - Part 1

It's been quite some time since I last wrote a blog post. Between work, family commitments, stress, various issues, life changes, illnesses, and the usual unpredictabilities of life, I just couldn't find the time to pen even a few lines. However, a few months ago, I realized that I still had the ability to write. I engaged in chat-style writing and received feedback that I was quite talkative—or should I say, 'chattative'? This both boosted my confidence and piqued my curiosity. So I said myself, .. lets try. 

 

So, here we are. My current plan is to create a photo blog post. Generally, taking photos is one of my least favorite tasks when traveling. I tend to be lazy; my brain doesn't work quickly, and the process of taking out my phone, activating it, focusing, and capturing the moment seemed quite tedious to me. But this time, I tried—I had my reasons, but let's not get into that. After all, this is a travel blog, (not digging behind ha ha) i mean, not an excavation of motives. 

 

Traveling with my two sons requires meticulous planning well in advance to ensure things are affordable, "things to do" are available, and safe both in-control(law and order) and beyond-control(weather etc) meaning and so on. 

 

April is an ideal time to travel from Germany. Schools are closed for Osterferien, the days are longer with more sunlight, and it's comfortably warm—plus, it's much cheaper compared to the summer holidays. 

 

Unlike last time(Turkey), this year we choose Morocco. Why? Its near to Europe (within 3 hours for flight), weather is good, secure, Muslim country, with ancient sights to see, lots of activities, and a chance to experience a rich, medieval culture. However, for my sons, the real draws were the aqua parks, jet skiing, and swimming in the Atlantic—oh, and the abundance of sweets. Although it seems attractive and we encounter many German tourists in Morocco, found very few flights travel directly from Northern Germany to Morocco. Those that do are priced at two to three times more than we were willing to spend. Somewhere, I've read while traveling, either you consider time or consider money. You all, who is reading this, get it clearly what I considered. :-D 

 

Booked a train to Paris, as its 1/4 price to fly from Paris to Rabat, Morocco, than directly from Germany. But, as always (wie immer, this sounds more appropriate than "as always"), Deutsche Bahn, changed the schedule, train cancelled, but only half (that's not good, if you know), and I can and also cannot take the train. Start getting email that, "my train is cancelled, however I can take any train I wish". As bought the plane ticket at the same day from Paris to Rabat, such freedom of choosing train actually didn't helping me. Few times consulting with the Reisezentrum (Train Travel Center), I've finally took decision as, We'd drive (with car) till Hamburg (A family friend would come with us and drive our car back to home), and took the train from Hamburg to Paris. So we started in a very early morning at 5:00 o'clock to drive to Hamburg. Until then kids didn't knew where we are going. ;-) 

 

Got the train at right time, hop-on. And in few minutes, I went to sleep. Around 12:00 O'clock, we reached in Frankfurt. Here we'd have some break.

Kids made a beeline for McDonald's, which I jokingly refer to as "MacDoof" (though not invented by myself). I was searching for a supermarket, to buy some water. Didn't found. Somehow in Train-Station they hide the supermarket (or simply doesn't exist). Regardless, I bought few croissants, and in about 50 mins we were aboard the TGV to Paris. This wasn't my first ride on the TGV, and just like the last time, I found myself wondering about this luggage racks? What is the concept behind to make this such small? to keep what?

Whatever, time is tight, we've to reach in CDG within an hour from Paris EST.

Got the boarding pass, .. now running for security check

After security check, searched for some food, found Starbucks(definitely not my choice, but nothing else was present), we quickly ate some cheese bread and, after completing the usual procedures, found ourselves airborne. Its a night flight, so no picture. Just my both kids were bored and very upset, as the plane doesn't had entertainment system, which they were expecting and planning ever since they've got the info that we are now going flying in the Paris Est train station. C'est la vie, I said to my Sons and they gave me a rough look, don't know why?🤷. 

Well, reached in Rabat, its near 23:00 of local time.

I'm a valued member of Booking.com 😎, and they offered me a complimentary taxi from the airport to the hotel. It felt great to be treated like a VIP, seeing someone waiting for me with a name-shield. After exchanging some money, I pointed out the name-shield to my sons. Unfortunately, the taxi driver didn't hold it up for long. Before I could fully recognize him, he spotted us, made eye contact, signaled with his eyes for us to follow, and then quickly set off at a brisk pace. My VIP feelings lasted just only few seconds. :-( 

 

After checking into the hotel and getting everything settled, it was nearly 01:00 O'clock (AM), and we rushed to eat something. There was a restaurant nearby, and since it was Ramadan, the streets were bustling with people of all ages - young, old, girls, boys - seems everybody enjoying the night. I later learned that people typically go to bed after having Suhur (the pre-dawn meal during Ramadan) and often sleep until noon. School (which still open) adjust their schedules accordingly, starting classes anywhere between 11:00 AM and 2:00 PM depends on which class or number of lessons planned, and ending at 6:00 PM. 

 

Anyway, entering in to a Syrian Restaurant, the Supervisor greeted us with English and introduce him as Malik. I responded, "Nice to meet you, Abdul Malik,", he replied, "Just Malik, my friend". The quoted text quickly became our daily inside joke, shared with smiles all around 😄. But the food was absolutely fantastic. Someone may argue that, we were very hungry, but i bet, if you give me the same food just after i finished my full meal, you'd see my ear-splitting smile on my face. Two examples --

Its very late, we were tired, successfully finished out first leg of our travel (reaching in destination), belly is full, happy and satisfied mind, we did what anyone would naturally do next — we slept. And so, here ends Part 1 of our travels to Morocco. 

 

Part - 2 would start after we awake.

Mentoring Eudyptula Challenge - 3 & 4

It is a long delay of writing this part of Eudyptula challenge of 3 and 4.

But I would like to continue this series till the end (upto 20th of challenge).

Today, I'll project two challenge together, as they ain't long or big and not really a part of programming or really working with kernel space. As it is task of 3 & 4, the task number 1 & 2, specially 2 is a pre-requisite. So, my assumption is, you have already finished the task 1 & 2 and now pursuing this task number 3 & 4.
As you've done the task 2, i.e., you've just build the custom kernel, you've sent your work, and received this line -  Congratulations on passing this task!

Gold as Money with some scientific chatter

It was a medium quality evening, and as usual we were killing kings and lords* {all queens ain't Eli-II }(common task of every rendezvous).

Well, one of them - in zufall (accidentally!!!) got some good amount of money,
and worried (as we equally poor always do) whether will these money stay or even grow with its same buying capacity as now.
Usually due to read some of "conspiracy" theory and bit of a fan of anti-establishment, however also likes of bit of these and that - I'm for gold by far, and argue that nothing can replace gold against its buying power.

But one of us not agreeing and he put the stuff in scientific manner, as gold can be collected from everywhere, even it is possible to convert some other metal to gold through fusion technology. He put the example of ITER, where they are doing something like this. His example was, you can take a nearer metal of gold from periodic table and convert it with enough heat, pressure and some other stuff that you need to change the atomic form of that matter to gold.

Adding customer code/module in Kernel source tree

For an embedded system, there's actually little or almost no reason to use loadable Kernel modules. On the other hand, it may turn insecure, if the system is a protected one, using encrypted data & key while live. Then a custom loadable module can dump the memory to grab the secret data/key from runtime environment.

Other than all these, probably, you wish to see something while booting your own custom Kernel. For example, you want - that well known hello_world program should print something on console while kernel is booting.

A simple google search for "hello_world kernel space program" will point you a lot of examples to preparation, write, linking, compiling, loading, checking and unloading that hello_world program as a module for Kernel.

An interesting scanf() skipping behavior

It is very interesting and quite important to notice scanf() behavior in C programming,

While you are writing a code for example,

 int x; char y;  
 scanf ("%d", &x);  
 scanf ("%c", &y);  

    -- the second scanf() will not hit while you run the program. But if you reverse,

 scanf ("%c", &y);  
 scanf ("%d", &x);  

                -- it will work. But WHY ???
               
Because scanf() function reads new line character from Return key, so while something Integer has been read into a variable and then pressed Return, a New Line created due to Return key is staying in buffer and the next scanf(), which is ready to take a character variable took that New Line as character value and as it filled with a character, it automatically skip.

But on other case, as the second scanf is as integer, it does not effect with above cause.

Because, scanf() function removes whitespace automatically before trying to parse, except - again EXCEPT,

 %c, %n, %[] these three cases.  

A MQTT application with QR code and OpenCV

Once a cake sent to us, bought back to package-center and next 2 days, as we were not able to pick it.
However at the same day we were rounding near by package-center for few times.

While get back home, it was late and 2 days later we'd a cake with feet-smell.

It often happen with us, delivery package from DHL/Post or others arrive, while nobody is at home. So at the evening, while back home, found the note from postman - either collect it from neighbour or report to postoffice / collection center.

However, it would be nice to know, as well saves time and effort, that a package was at my door. So, I can pick it while coming back home, if time allows.

For such scenario let me to grab the idea of building an automated system, so absent of recipient, postman will scan a QR code, with the camera attached with doorbell and bring the packet back to package collection center.

So how does it will work ?

Mentoring Eudyptula Challenge - 2

Eudyptula Challenge is started in end of 2014 and getting very popular among linux enthusiast. A lot of people registered, or by mean of join-in with Little Penguin, but about half of them didn't submit the first task.

Some important notes and comments you can find about eduptula in this link https://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/ec.pdf.

This time, I'm going to discuss about Task-02. This one is a very little task about building customer kernel.

Your task will start from downloading the kernel source, you can download it as .zip, but best and most recommended option is using git. Figure out how you can get link for latest version of kernel. One of the example could be -

git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git