The first step is to apply for Degree Assessment by respective assessing authorities. I am going to limit it to ACS and Engineers Australia since those are the two bodies I applied to. If you have completed an Engineering degree overseas then don’t waste you time with ACS as they are either the laziest or most under-staffed organization. ACS will take their fill waiting period to send your results which is 3 months. EA waiting period according to their site is 16 weeks, but I got mine in 2 weeks that too in December. However my friends have got it within 5 weeks.  You don’t have to wait till you complete your Masters Degree to apply for EA so apply before you complete your course. It takes time to prepare documents for Engineers Australia. You will need 3 career episodes. Here is one Career Episode. Then a Professional Engineer Summary Statement. Finally the application. Now take your Engineer Degree transcript, Passport, any other certificates and got to Engineers Australia center in your city and they will xerox it and certify it. Then mail it via Express Post. As for ACS you can follow the above link and upload all the degree transcripts, passport and related certificates then certify the xerox of those in any pharmacy and post them. Double the work already by ACS, If you have only an IT degree ACS is your only option. Having work experience is good also related certified courses so you have a better opportunity for getting your nominated skill.

Next is medicals, the easiset to pass so avoid clubs for atleast 2 weeks before you take the test. There are two different types of test the expensive one around 140$ in Feb is the one required for PR so take it. Follow this link and complete Form 26 and take it to the hospital in your city. Keep the receipt as it required.

IELTS aim for 8 in all as they are changing the required score from 7 in all. Enquire in your university as they will have the study material and closest venue to take the exam.

Police Check, visit this link and fill up the forms and post. you will get the result in 2-3 weeks. You have to get a Police Clearence Certificate from your country to. Contact your embassy here on how to get it. For Indians follow this link, you will have to send your passport and print out the form and 3 2″x2″ photo.

Once you have done all this and got the results and notifications from all the above authorities. Scan all the results and you can launch the VISA.

Keep reading the latest news from here so you get updates on the latest PR rules. Also check this blog as I’ll keep updating with new info.

The simplest one that you could get are the SKYPE mobiles. Most of the networks around the world support 3G which means good transfer rates – bettter voice clarity. Then go ahead and install the skype in your mobile. Every 3G supported mobile will support the java based skype application. The only cost will be the internet usage charges. If 3G is not yet at your country or if it is way to expensive there are other ways. There are service providers like Vonage and Lingo which are the leaders in Home Based solutions for VOIP in Australia the providers  are

Pacnet
Voip Choice
IINet
MyNetFone
Primus

They also come as a replacement to Fixed Line home phone. If you are making only local calls then it might not be of much use if not then they save a huge amount of money. And you wont have to pay multiple bills for you phone and Internet. The set-up is real easy takes just a few minutes. The set up can vary depending on the service you want and you can do several hacks and tweaks with a PC connected. I’ll explain about that in my later blogs.

Most of the Items listed here are usually cheaper in other countries. But if your place has got a very good exchange rate in comparison with AUD then don’t bother bringing them from your country.

What not Carry :

• Food Items
• Drinks
• Medicines (Have a prescription If you carry any).
• Dirty Shoes or any possibly contaminated Stuff.
• Wooden articles (They are checked for in customs, but usually seen and allowed).
• Cash > 2000$

What To Carry :

• Passport
• Travelers Cheque or Credit Card or Cash less than 2001$.

There are better ways to carry money. I would advise a “Travel Currency Card”. You can get these in most of the banks and are cheap, You are only charged based on the exchange rate. You can swipe it in all the shops for NIL charges.

• Clothing – Jeans, t-shirts or suits. Sneakers or formal shoes(Clean it up before you pack or wear).

1. Winter Clothing – The temperature gets to min of 5 deg in the southern place however in the Nothern states it is a bit warm. So if you moving to Victoria or New South Wales, then I suggest you get a Woolen Clothes or jerkins, It’ll be windy too that makes the cold a bit severe. Also the cold weather is from June – August usually. But even now (September) It is pretty cold.
2. Summer Clothing  – It gets pretty hot in the summer,  You’ll find a lot of beaches here to chill off. Casual loose shirts , t-shirts khakis and jeans should do good enough.

• Any Officialy required documents.
• A Driver’s License. You can rent a car at the airport. In the airports you have shuttle services to City Center so check for them.
• Electrical Adapters. The Australian plugs are designed differently as shown in the image below.

Australian Plug

You can get the converters at about 5$ – 10$.

• A 3g mobile would be better although the older ones do work in a Vodophone connection. The prepaid cards are available in the Airport. If you are staying long, then it is better to get one here a Nokia N-95 8gb with connection will cost abot 49$ a month(1-2yr contract). Don’t forget the CHARGER.
• Dictionary
• Umbrella, It often drizzles in winter too.
• Electronic gadgets. Check for prices here - Dick Smith

1. Laptops and other electronics are cheap but not as cheap as you can get in U.S or CHINA( I don’t think any place could beat China in this.)
2. Camera.
3. Spare batteries or chargers.

• Bring you Contact Lenses. Don’t buy them here it’s pretty expensive. But the cleaning solutions are cheap so don’t carry a huge one.
• If you are staying long then cooking utensils. You can get a rice cooker for about 50$ here. Also most of the rental properties come furbished so don’t pack too much.

Hand Luggege :

• Passport
• Documents
• Credit Cards and money
• Camera
• Laptop
• Ticket
• Mobile Phone(if any)
• Medicines with prescription.

Ritz backpacker

I found Ritz Backpacker the best of the ones I stayed in. It has quite a cheap rate of about 140$ a week, wherein you get a lot out of it. The breakfast for instance is free every morning you get fresh pancakes in the kitchen, thats one thing that’s worth waking up in the morning. There something happening every night like face painting, movies, some trips around the city etc., Also its a little off the city and very close to the beach that makes it an ideal summer choice. One downside is that there is a bar down, on Friday and Saturday nights the music goes on till about 3a.m and getting sleep would be pretty tough, but if you are a party animal thats a plus.

The Victoria hall which is usually the worst has been refurbished and is in the centre of the city. Even after renewal i would not really recommend it to anyone .It not worth the money you are paying. It’s pretty boring there and also not a tidy place. But it is cheaper than the rest so if you are looking for a cheap place this would do.

The Nomads Industry backpackers hostel is the most neat place of the ones that I have seen. But it is also a bit expensive than the others. You get a free evening meal, but I don’t think anyone would be at the hotel in the evening if you are a tourist. Most of the time people tour around the city, seldom do they stay at the hotel.

If you want to stay in the city then i suggest you try The Elephant Backpacker, it is quite cheap and is at the start of the city. Traveling around via trams and trains would be easier from here as it’s a central location. And don’t forget to take a ride in the Tour Bus(Free). It’s pretty clean and well maintained. Anyways the tourists never really stay at the hotel they mostly come for the night to catch some sleep and start out with a venture in the morning.

I had booked my room via http://www.travellerspoint.com/ , but I would not suggest that It’s good to search for a hotel but most of the backpackers have their own website so you can bok via that or just call them and book the room as that would be fine for a few. And dont trust the pictures of backpackers that you see they are not always the same.

..

Skype voice chat usually consumes about 10-15 KB/s for a clear conversation and the 3G n/w provides about 2Mbit/s thats like about 256 KB/s(decreases on the roll). So the connection should be fine but Its not all the time during the night the conversation breaks possibly because of the low through-output. Guess every one in the city chats at night. Hope they integrate a low resolution video feature into it then it would become feature rich. If you have a java mobile then download the jar file from here. It would also work on most of the other platforms, but you should have a 3G network-browsing enabled (Might work on 2.5G but voice clarity would be poor).  A cheaper option would be to get the 19$ pack and subscribe to Skype + 5$ for the 4000min. Hopefully Skype rolls out more varients of Skype-exclusive mobile with more features.

• You’ll need two paper clips or some flexible metal for the job.

• Open the two clips make them kind of flat, so the edges don’t pop out too much.

• Fold one of the clip(1) in two and bend the edge so it’s “L” shaped. the point is it should work like a tong so you can insert it and rotate it easily.

• Let the second clip(2) be flat for now.

• Now inset the clip(1) into the lock’s hole(towards the place where the flat end of the key goes in). Make sure you touch the end with the clip and you get a bit of a leverage to rotate it. It would bend a bit if you try to turn but try giving a bit pressure and rotate if it opens then you door is not locked and you can stop reading this article, if not then go on.

• This is the tricky part, when you see through the hole you would find some metal hanging form the lock usually at the top(depends if the teeth of the key usually goes facing up this is UP if the key goes facing down then it’s DOWN). Try pushing it up with the other clip(2), it would go up(or down as i described above, in this post I’ll use up as that is what I did) easily. This is basically what you’ll be doing to unlock. There are several such metal rods hanging by means of spring, one has to push all of them up in a way so that you can rotate the clip(1).

• Now try slowly inserting the clip(2) making sure you are able to push all the metal rods up(if not try bending the end of the clip(2) and try pushing it up like i did cause there was a bit of a gap which my clip(2) was repelled down by the spring action of the metal rods so bending the gave it more force. Meanwhile simultaneously try turning the clip(1).

• Every rod has variable length to which it has to be pushed(Depend on the depth of teeth in your key). So keep juggling with the clip(2) while you turn the clip(1). At some point you would have pushed the rods correctly and the clip(1) will rotate with it and ‘OPEN’.

If you understand the mechanism I am quite sure it’ll be easier. Cause I knew how these basic locks work so I could work it out easier than I hoped. The main cylinder which we rotate has holes drilled into it vertically along the line. Springs are attached to the top of the lock and rods of same length are suspended from the spring attached to the lock and fall into the holes drilled into the cylinder. These block the rotation of the cylinder. Now Rods of variable length will be placed in the hole of the cylinder touching the rods of same length that were suspended via spring. Now if he correct key is inserted it will push the variable length rods there by pushing the fixed length rods out of the cylinder. Now the cylinder along with the rods rotate when the key is turned. So depending on the variable length of the rods the depth of the teeth for the key is set.

]]> http://oz.blogial.com/2008/08/07/how-to-pick-lock/feed/ 99 http://oz.blogial.com/2008/08/03/cost-variance-in-different-countries/ http://oz.blogial.com/2008/08/03/cost-variance-in-different-countries/#comments Sun, 03 Aug 2008 08:38:40 +0000 danish http://oz.blogial.com/?p=14 The prices of every product varies in every country. I decided to do a small analysis on this. It’s based on the pay an average graduate gets to the percentage of salary he spends on regular merchandise like daily or monthly supplies. I also included the price of a sedan vehicle just give a picture of how the variance is between countries. I decided to go with three countries India, U.S and Australia.

The Pay an average graduate gets in India per month – 20,000 Rs.
The Pay an average graduate gets in U.S per month – 3750 USD.
The Pay an average graduate gets in Australia per month – 3826 AUD.

I call this the Earn-n-Spend table

ESP(Earn Spend Percentile) = (Cost/Salary)*10000

The ESP will give the percentage of earnings an average per month graduate will have to spend on the listed commodities below. One can multiply the rate with quantity required in a month to find the total amount he will be spending on that item for the month. The lower the ESP the better. The rates might differ from what i have mentioned but not much(If there is a large variance let me know). All are approximate values and may change.

Seems like U.S is a cheaper place for a graduate to live. And people say U.S is expensive. I think Australia is more expensive. Ofcourse there is a money conversion between them but I only did the table for graduates living in those specific countries and earning there.

Red hat Enterprise & Fedora :

Red Hat was created by Marc Ewing in 1994 , he then partnered with Bob Young to form the Red Hat Software. The Red Hat has received several security certifications that make quite popular among the govt. Organizations.

Red Hat Enterprise Edition is Priced It has Web and Phone Support.

Red Hat has an Open Source version named Fedora , it’s community supported.

Red hat– Red Hat ‘simple guess ‘, Fedora– A soft felt hat with a crown creased lengthwise

Security :

Red Hat Enterprise Edition has received The Labeled Security Protection Profile(LSPP) and Role Based Access Control Protection making it one one the most demanding secure versions of Linux out there ,but at a cost.They research and implement several Security Tools. Red hat encloses SELinux by default as discussed earlier it is highly efficient but time consuming to set on apps but mostly it comes pre-configured along with the apps in Red Hat Enterprise. Fedora Also embeds some of the security packages that are available in Red Hat like , Exec-Shield which aids in preventing worm or automated remote attacks also Compile Time Buffer Checks(Fortify_Source) are done with it to prevent any abuse of existing source code available online which could be modified , (Executable and Linkable Format) Data Hardening,Restricted Kernel Memory Access which restricts as to of how the kernel memory is overwritten.

Red Hat Security : 4.7/5

Fedora Security Rating :4.2

Technology & Support :

Red Hat and Fedora includes support for visualization XEN where several OS can be run simultaneously with optimum mutilation of resources , Red hat also includes Conga that aids in online access and control of apps and data in cluster environment. Fedora Runs on i386, ppc, x86_64, SPARC and alpha. Red Hat supports several Server Environments and the supported architectures include Intel and AMD x86/x86-64 Intel Itanium2 IBM POWER IBM System z and S/390.

Red Hat has the best support Of all being an Enterprise Edition it is quite obvious. It is quite expensive so if money is not the main concern then Red Hat is a safe bet. Fedora being open-source does have forum support but not an official technical support like Red Hat has. Red Hat does not implement the latest packages available without testing throughly on their parameters hence some of the latest 3^rd party packages are released to Fedora.

RHEL Technology Rating : 4/5

RHEL Support Rating : 5/5

Fedora Technology Rating : 4/5

Fedora Support Rating : 3/5

Installation And Troubleshooting :

Installation is done with Anaconda which is the installation program. Anaconda is a flexible installer , it also can upgrade the existing system. It also does remote installation via NFS , HTTP , FTP. The best characteristic is the Kick-Start Installation wherein a installation script is set and multiple automatic installation can be done with no attention. This makes the setting up of systems easier.

For new softwares released they are usually put under test by Red Hat and it takes a while to get in Current trend this makes it safer but loses out on the edge of new packages whereas in Fedora they are implemented as they are released. This keeps fedora more to the Casual Desktop users and developers who seek the latest. So it is a viable candidate for the front end systems.

In Red Hat and Fedora , the package manager used is YUM (Yellow Dog Updater). This is a command line utility supported by many GUI front ends like YUM -Extender ,’pup’ &’pirut’. With YUM the required packaged can be easily retrieved from the source and installed with the required dependencies making installation of packages a pleasure. Red-Hat also includes the rpm(Red Hat package manager).Trouble shooting in RHEL is easy as you have support for it whereas in fedora it will involve some ground work before it is resolved the other distros you post and get the bug fixes in the site.

Installation Rating : 4.7/5

Red Hat Troubleshooting : 4/5

Fedora Troubleshooting :3.5/5

Performance And Reliability :
Red Hat is probably one of the most Reliable as it has been tested and tried and then released. Fedora might be unstable sometime due to certain new apps but crashes are rare. Performance of red Hat server machines are not usually great for the price one pays. But it can be tweaked for greater performance , after all the world’s fastest super computer built by IBM – Road Runner runs on Linux software developed by Red Hat.

RHEL Performance Rating : 4/5

RHEL Reliability Rating : 4.7/5

Fedora Performance Rating : 3.9/5

Fedora Reliability Rating : 3.5/5

Backup And Recovery :

Red Hat has several Backup applications and solutions offered. Net Vault : Backup provides complete control over the data backup. It comes with several Application Plugin Modules to provide continuous availability of critical apps. The other tools include Arkeia Network Backup which works on several Server architectures for backup of data. Arkeia has also developed Disaster Recovery so a complete data retrieval is possible in case of damage. Fedora has several open source tools for backup and recovery.

Red Hat Backup and Recovery : 4.5/5

Fedora Backup and Recovery : 4/5

Investment And Management :

The investment one put in For RHEL will be higher than the other this is an important consideration if the company plans to invest minimal on systems. If cost is the major factor then RHEL is not a viable option. A Workstation will cost 300$ with phone support for a year , Server OS will cost 1300$ with phone support a year. Fedora can be chosen if open source is preferred to cut down the costs , but will require a technical expertise for management.

Red Hat Investment Rating : 2/5

Red Hat Management Rating : 4.5/5

Fedora Investment Rating : 4/5

Fedora Management Rating : 3.5/5

————————————————————————————————————————

Rating Table :

O.S
Security	3.5	4.2	4.7	4.2
Technology	3	4.5	4	4
Support	3.5	3	5	3
Performance	3.5	4.7	4	3.5
Reliability	3.5	4	4.7	3.5
Investment	4	4.5	2	4
Management	3.9	3	4.5	3.5
Installation	3.5	2.5	4.7	4
Troubleshooting	3.5	3.5	4	3.5
Backup & Recovery	4	4	4.5	4

]]> http://oz.blogial.com/2008/07/29/organizational-battle-ubuntu-vs-gentoo-vs-rhel-fedora-3/feed/ 1028 http://oz.blogial.com/2008/07/28/organizational-battle-ubuntu-vs-gentoo-vs-rhel-fedora-2/ http://oz.blogial.com/2008/07/28/organizational-battle-ubuntu-vs-gentoo-vs-rhel-fedora-2/#comments Mon, 28 Jul 2008 09:18:23 +0000 danish http://oz.blogial.com/?p=8 Part 2                                                                                                                        (Read From Part -1)

Gentoo (A type of penguin) :

Gentoo , this is the fastest swimming penguin. This distro is popular for the tweaks you can perform on it making it the most customizable of all. It is maintained by Gentoo Foundation. It was created by Daniel Robbins. Designed for adaptability and performance utilizing minimal system resources. Version 1.0 was released March 31^st 2002. Latest Version is 2008.0 Code-named “It’s got what plants crave “ released on July 6 2008.

Technology & Support :

Gentoo provides a wider implementation than Ubuntu on several type of systems. It is supported on several variants , these include – alpha, amd64, hppa (hppa 1.1, hppa 2.0), ppc (G4, G5, power3, power4, power5, ppc, ppc64), SPARC (sparc32, sparc64) x86 (x86, i686). This make it a perfect choice where in different variants of system implementation. The drivers support as of now has had considerable improvement. Linux 2.6.24 kernel specific hardware drivers have been added. The forums and irc also provide excellent support. However it lacks the Official Support which is a downside form an organizational view. The hits in www.distrowatch.com is 510 as on 28-07-08.

Technology Rating : 4.5/5

Support Rating : 3/5

Security :

Gentoo is a Secure OS with minimal threats. It embeds Some of the best Security protocols in the O.S. The best part is the GLSA- Gentoo Linux Security Advisors where the bugs and patches are listed http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/index.xml. This can help the System Admin to a great extent. SELinux is present by default which make this a better chose for servers running multiple applications. Setting up SELinux could be a bit tedious which , but in the end it has a better enforced security. The Hardened-PHP secures the applications and web pages. The buffer overflow protection is given by ProPolice (SSP).

Security Rating : 4.2/5

Performance And Reliability :

Gentoo is an O.S that was created with performance in mind. The O.S is named after Gentoo the fastest swimming penguin. Gentoo is source based and is compiled with optimization for the specific architecture .This makes it faster than the other distros. Gentoo is quite reliable. No major crash occurs. Some application crash does occur but once the bug is reported the developers issue the patch soon. System hang is a rare scenario almost never occurs.

Performance Rating : 4.7/5

Reliability Rating :4/5

Installation And Troubleshooting:

Installation is the difficult part of Gentoo. It Comes with a gnome live CD installer but it is quite buggy and crashes. The best way to install is manually. GLI 0.6.6 is the Gentoo installer. In the earlier versions commands had to typed and given in the docs and download > compilation >installation had to be performed which took days. Gentoo has the Portage Package Management System similar to the BSD ports collection. The packages are built from Source code which make them optimized for the machine and hence perform faster , but this is time consuming. Trouble shooting is not tedious with log generation and bugs can be reported , which aids the developers in creating the patch. No official support is available though.

Installation Rating : 2.5/5

Troubleshooting : 3.5/5

Investment and management :

Gentoo is a free O.S which can be downloaded form the Internet http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/where.xml. Since it works on multiple platforms the organization has the flexibility to choose the Hardware. Investment has to be made for Linux Professional for maintenance since no official support is available.

Investment Rating : 4.5/5

Management : 3/5

Backup and Recovery :

Several Backup and recovery tools are present like any other distro these packages can be downloaded. Their compatibility with various architecture can be viewed in their site. http://packages/category/app-backup. This aids the Admin in using the right tool.

Backup And Recovery Rating : 4/5

I will post about Fedora in my next blog…

Continue to Fedora

Ubuntu

Red Hat Enterprise & Fedora

Gentoo

Linus Trovalds in 1991 had written a Unix-like kernel. It was at that stage of not much use with very few utilities and s/w that came along with it , and was labeled Linux. Free Software Foundation (Richard M. Stallman, founder (started 1985)and president of the FSF) had developed several tools and applications(Under the GNU Project) by this time and was embedded into Linux. From there on to now it has attained great levels of stability ,security and portability.

Requirements Of a Corporate Organization : (priority wise ordinated)

1. Security

2. Technology

3. Performance and Reliability

4. Investment and Management

5. Installation And Troubleshooting

6. Backup and Recovery

Ubuntu “humanity to others” :

Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distro. It was created by Marc Shuttleworth and sponsored by Canonical Ltd. It at present as of today Its average hits per day for the past 12 months is 2305 and in the past month as of today is 1989 – quoted from www.distrowatch.com as on 26-07-08.

There are several variants which include

Ubuntu (Desktop & Server Edition) – Gnome desktop

Kubuntu- KDE Desktop

Xubuntu , Gobuntu , Edubuntu , MID edition.

Technology & Support :

Ubuntu is primarily a Debian based OS ire it was built on the foundations of the Debian OS. It is maintained by Canonical Ltd. And is contributed by developers all over the world. It has regular patches and updates with a complete distro update of every 6 months. Even though it has a few driver issues it beats the rest in this criteria as the updates are more often and support for the new hardwares are given quicker than the other distros. Ubuntu Supports only i386 and amd 64 which is quite a downside. The Supported the Servers for few of the SUN Microsystems and System 76 has been certified by Canonical , it also is compatible with several Hp Dell and IBM. Canonical provides technical support for a nominal rate.

Technology Rating : 3/5

Support Rating : 3/5

Security :

The Security is maintained by the packages that come built in with the O.S. It often has security patches to keep up with the threats involved , updates almost everyday.

The Security packages include

Iptables 1.3 – Used to maintain network security.

AppArmor 2.1 – creates security profile and maintains access restrictions of programs.

Ufw 0.16 – (Uncomplicated Firewall) An easy to use local-host based firewall.

Even though AppArmor is easy to use , when it come to setting up profiles it will take similar time as to that of SELinux. Also If an entire Server is concerned it is not as secure as SELinux. For few applications running AppArmor will serve better. But SELinux can be installed later.

Security Rating : 3.5/5

Backup and Recovery :

Ubuntu Server Edition by default provides backup tools like Bacula 2.2 and BackupPC 3.0. With these tools Backup can be done efficiently making mobility and parallel backup possible. No client side software is necessary also compression techniques are provided.

Backup and recovery : 4/5

Investment :

The Ubuntu Distros are free hence only the hardware cost is to be considered. If Official support is required then a fee of 2750$ per year for server and 900$ per year on desktop is provided. As far as client system are concerned it supports almost all the latest hardware. Since it works fine on older system a lot can be saved.It is an ideal option for client systems. Also over 40 languages are supported which makes its mark on any country.

Investment Rating : 4/5

Installation And Troubleshooting:

The Installation is easier than any other O.S. It provides a Gui Installer with few easy steps involved.But the Installation lacks flexibility by default. Various logs created from time to time helps in making troubleshooting easy. For Software installation , The Advanced packaging tool is provided as the base , it simplifies the installation configuration of the packages with aptitude , and Synaptic acting as the GUI front end makes the installation and package retrieval a lot easier. Their site also has a very good documentation.

Installation Rating : 3.5/5

Troubleshooting : 3.5/5

Performance And Reliability:

All Linux distos work well on minimal system configurations and Ubuntu is none the less. The minimal system requirements for it has been listed as 256 MB ram with 4 GB of disk space.It is not the quickest of all distros though. Ubuntu based on Debian which is considered one of the most stable had good stability , but instabilities even though are quite rare they do occur. These crashes when reported are patched quickly.

Performance Rating : 3.5/5

Reliability Rating : 3.5/5

(In my next post i`ll write about Gentoo)….

Continue to Gentoo