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Sunday, January 19, 2014

Course & Side effect of Antibiotics

Use: As the title says it is for people who need to know how antibiotics affect your body and possible side-effects.

PS: This post is not written by a doctor but information I gathered and I am writing this post for the reason that I could not find a direct answer to what I searching for.

People take antibiotics for various infections, mostly strep throats, acne and bacterial infections. Antibiotics help kill bacteria. While there are amazing reads for how antibiotics works such as here and here. The side effects that are caused because of the antibiotics was not found easily online. And from discussion with people, I observe that each person responds differently to antibiotics. Although this post might not give you complete information, you will get some insight and reading links from here.

The Course:
The important thing to know about taking antibiotics is to complete the course. The simplest reasoning is this, bacteria's are of different levels, the high level ones which are causing the painful symptoms such as throat irritation, high temperature etc and the low level ones which may be dormant (not causing the visible irritation) but are supporting the reproduction of bacteria. When one starts to take antibiotics, within a day or two, the symptoms are reduced, and the person starts to feel better. The reason is the high level bacteria are killed from the two-day antibiotic intake. But the low-level bacteria which are slightly more resistant to a small dose of antibiotic are not killed yet. At this point, if one stops to take antibiotics, the low-level bacteria, would reproduce new bacteria with resistance to the antibiotic sample it obtains from the two-day intake. Now the DNA for the new bacteria is antibiotic resistant and when these bacteria become active and cause infection, they would not respond to the antibiotics, one takes the next time.

For more details, you can check out information from Mayo and UK Guardian.

The Side-effects:
When antibiotics are taken over a period of time, there are some painful/not-so-painful side-effects. Some of the side-effects, I am aware of, are acne, mouth-ulcers, troubled-stomach etc. This is the reason some doctors suggest one to take antibiotics with B-Complex tablets and include lots of pasteurized yogurt/curd and reduce foods that detoxify the body (such as caffeine, oils, alcohol etc) in their diet. The reason for this is the antibiotics taken to kill the infection-causing bacteria, kills some necessary bacteria that are required for the body as well. One such reasoning (that I obtained from a post) is the good bacteria called gut microflora, which is present in the stomach is responsible for breaking-down the food consumed and detoxifying the body. The antibiotics kills this bacteria, and as a result of which the body loses its capability to detoxify the body and results in the side-effects.

Overall, it is important to know the working of a medicine before one takes it so that one regulates their diet to avoid the side-effects.

Thank you for taking time to read the post. 

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Installing CCNx on Ubuntu OS

Here I would like to share how to install CCNx step-by-step. I am referring this site, but the java implementation gave me some issues that I have added the steps here, in case you run into those issues.

1. Ubuntu 12.10/higher/lower
2. Download version ccnx-0.8.0/or higher
3. Install the following packages:

$ sudo apt-get install ant autoconf libssl-dev libexpat1-dev libpcap-dev libecryptfs0 libxml2-utils 
automake gawk gcc g++ git-core pkg-config libpcre3-dev

$ sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jdk (for Ubuntu 12.04)
               (OR)      openjdk-7-jdk (for Ubuntu 12/10)

4. (optional) Create a software link for ccnx folder and put the original file inside "src" folder

$ mkdir src
$ mv ccnx-0.8.x src/
$ ln -s src/ccnx-0.8.x ccnx

5. Go inside ccnx folder

$ cd ccnx
$ ./configure
make 
make install


This concludes the installation steps of CCNx. You can use the CCNx webpage for different experimentation. 

Thank you for taking time to read the post.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Installing OpenVSwitch in Ubuntu 12.10

USE: People who are planning to using OpenVswitch, these steps works for the latest version of OVS as of 12/16/2013

With my latest experience with OpenVSwitch, I wanted to write this blog to post all the information I was able to find and all the problems I came across while working with OVS.

The concepts I have covered here are only working with OpenVswitch. There are tons of study materials and tutorials to understand concepts of Openflow and Software Defined Networking out there.

Firstly, I would like to start off with some basic steps to install OpenVswitch and basic facts that you should be aware of:
1. There are many sources out there to help you install openvswitch, try to stick to the main openvswitch man page, they give you the most latest, the rest of the materials might not be updated to the latest one.
2. Openvswitch is Linux version sensitive. Not knowing this fact landed me with many kernel-based issues. Since OVS install some kernel modules, the compatibility of OVS with the OS version and kernel version is important to know.
3. Some of the very useful websites for OpenVSwitch are of Brent Salisbury and Scott Lowe and many others you could find by just googling OVS :)

Installation steps:
1. For latest OVS 2.0, Ubuntu 12.10 is the best performing OS. For earlier versions of OVS, earlier Ubuntu versions would work fine.
2. Following some of the directions from here. Install the following:
     
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install dkms
sudo apt-get install openvswitch-datapath-source bridge-utils
sudo module-assistant auto-install openvswitch-datapath
sudo apt-get install openvswitch-brcompat openvswitch-common openvswitch-controller


apt-get install -y git python-simplejson python-qt4 python-twisted-conch automake autoconf gcc
uml-utilities libtool build-essential git pkg-config linux-headers-uname -r
git clone git://openvswitch.org/openvswitch
cd openvswitch
./boot.sh
./configure --with-linux=/lib/modules/uname -r/build
make && make install
./boot.sh
./configure --with-linux=/lib/modules/uname -r/build
make && make install
make modules_install
/sbin/modprobe openvswitch 
touch /usr/local/etc/ovs-vswitchd.conf
mkdir -p /usr/local/etc/openvswitch
ovsdb-tool create /usr/local/etc/openvswitch/conf.db vswitchd/vswitch.ovsschema
ovsdb-server --remote=punix:/usr/local/var/run/openvswitch/db.sock \
                     --remote=db:Open_vSwitch,Open_vSwitch,manager_options \
                     --private-key=db:Open_vSwitch,SSL,private_key \
                     --certificate=db:Open_vSwitch,SSL,certificate \
                     --bootstrap-ca-cert=db:Open_vSwitch,SSL,ca_cert \
                     --pidfile --detach

ovs-vsctl --no-wait init
ovs-vswitchd --pidfile --detach

3. then bring_up_br0 using the following steps:
     - write a script file (*.sh) with the following lines and run it in command-line as root
        ovs-vsctl add-br br0
        ovs-vsctl add-port br0 eth0
        ifconfig eth0 0 && br0 192.168.1.x netmask 255.255.255.0
        route del default gw 192.168.1.1 eth0
        route add degfault gw 192.168.1.1 br0

4. Next add the controller IP Address to the switch. 

   ovs-vsctl set-controller br-int tcp:192.168.1.x:6633

5. Next you can start using OVS and Controller for any of your experimentations


Thank you for taking time to read. 

Saturday, January 4, 2014

Power of Writing on your Palm

I write this post to make a very simple point. Have you ever been offended when a person writes something you told them on their palm? Well, from personal experience, I think you should not.

When someone makes a note in their phones, notebooks etc, the number of times they are going to see it is determined by when their brain tells them to do so. But on the other hand, without any conscious effort, one sees their palm many times especially when they wash their hand. Now when there is nothing written on the palm, one doesn't make an effort to recollect as "having seen" their palm, but if something is written on the palm, one makes an effort to read it and recollect the moment they wrote it. This may happen a few times, and each time they read it, they review the note and thus memorizing it eventually and effortlessly. Considering that are brain has a huge storing capacity, it is possible that even if they forget it in the short term, the memory will pop up at some point.

Next time, make sure you make someone write that important point on their palm ;-)

Thank you for taking time to read the post!

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Happy New Year 2014

To this new year, to more posts and to simplicity and more originality.
To Family and Friends, near and dear ones. 
To Love, Peace and all amazing things.
To Hopes and Promises.
To Humanity.

Happy New Year 2014