SANYALNET Free Public Services

SANYALCRAFT - SANYALNET Minecraft Server

Join our Minecraft server for simple clean fun, for builders to build.

SanyalCraft Minecraft server IP: sanyal.duckdns.org (on default Minecraft Port 25565).

The Enjin page is at sanyalcraft.enjin.com. Here is the first of a series of tours of the SANYALCRAFT Minecraft Server:

SANYALNET Public NTP Time Server

Synhronize your clock to our public NTP time server at sanyalnet-ntp.freeddns.org

Sanyalnet free public NTP time server info: 

server=sanyalnet-ntp.freeddns.org associd=0 status=0615 leap_none, sync_ntp, 1 event, clock_sync,
version="ntpd 4.2.8p7@1.3265-o Fri Apr 29 10:57:58 UTC 2016 (1)",
processor="amd64", system="FreeBSD/10.3-RELEASE-p3", leap=00, stratum=2,
precision=-18, rootdelay=11.254, rootdisp=16.688, refid=192.5.41.40,
reftime=dafedbcd.5c3c58f6 Sun, Jun 5 2016 17:11:41.360,
clock=dafedd7f.e324fa0f Sun, Jun 5 2016 17:18:55.887, peer=27003, tc=6,
mintc=3, offset=1.667, frequency=-0.823, sys_jitter=5.717486,
clk_jitter=0.578, clk_wander=0.040

OpenVMS/VAX SANYALNET Hobbyist VAXServer

As a proud alumnus of Digital Equipment Corporation, and thanks to the HP OpenVMS Hobbyist Program, I run a Hobbyist OpenVMS 7.3 VAX Server for fun and experemintation with DCL and other stuff - this server is always changing as I keep playing with it.

You can check it out via telnet to sanyal.duckdns.org.

If you are looking for a good VT-100 emulator for Windows, try Dave's Telnet (also mirrored here) .

SANYALNET Public FTP Server: Download Public-Domain Digital OpenVMS Freeware for DEC VAX & Alpha Servers, and PC (DOS, WINDOWS) Freeware and Shareware

Visit our free public Anonymous FTP server and download what you want from our (unofficial!) mirrors of OpenVMS Freeware and DOS/WINDOWS PC Freeware and Shareware.

You can search for what you are looking for,


Free Public Anonymous FTP Download  Access: point your FTP client to sanyal.duckdns.org.

A (sort of) index is also available.

No FTP authentication - i.e. username or password is required. Use the username "anonymous" and any password that looks like an email address (a simple "@" character works fine) to log in.

No copyright infringement is intended - this is just another mirror of existing publicly available freeware and shareware software downloads from digiater.nl, GARBO Shareware Archive, and SIMTELNET Mirror (from BU.EDU) (April 2013). If the owners of any of these publicly available archives feels it is inappropriate for me to mirror them, please send me a email to ask me to take my mirror down.

What is SANYALNET?

SANYALNET, inspired from Skynet, is just a generic name for all my projects involving hobby electronics, computing, emulation, simulation, hacking, gaming, cyber-security and retro-gaming type of experiments. In addition to what is documented here, I keep playing with an array of stuff, and am currently running a triple-layer home internet security gateway featuring dual-WAN (Comcast XFinity and Verizon FiOS) internet pipes feeding into pfSense, Sophos and ClearOS before being distributed over two LANs to the rest of my family; features include Suricata IDS/IPS, Snort IDS/IPS, domain and IP filtering using a bunch of publicly available blacklists including DNSBL, DNS security via dynamic IP update enabled OpenDNS and SafeDNS, real-time network traffic antivirus, caching web proxy (Squid) paired with Privoxy, with access to the Onion ring dark net (TOR), and much more.

Other projects include my south-Asia focused entertainment portal www.washingtonbanglaradio.com including a shoutcast-2 based internet radio stream; a family-use only proxy server for use by family members living elsewhere and when we are traveling, wireless network security auditing (mainly using tools built into Kali linux), etc. I also play with the AdTrap unit and DD-WRT open source router firmware, and run five wireless networks at home with carefully tuned channels and power levels, for no real reason. In fact, most of the stuff I spend on has no rational reason other than having fun.

Convincing others I can architect a system - a memorable job interview

I am on the current job for slightly under six years, and lately it has become a terrible experience.


In the last couple of months, my manager has started leaving empty voice messages on my desk phone, even before 11 AM – the time that I usually reach work. To make matters worse, I am being held back at work till as late at 7:30 PM some days, mainly by folks working on one of the projects I ostensibly am the “Lead” of, these folks running on Schwarzenegger time in a test site in California. Combined with two other projects under my “Lead”-ership – one in inception and one threatening to go into Factory Acceptance, I am faced with a ginormous Schwarzschild vacuum in my space-time continuum.


You will greatly appreciate the degree of damage caused to my well being by this current job of mine when I tell you that there actually have been days in the recent past where I did not even get a chance to visit the Google adsense publisher site to check on how many cents I earned that day!


Obviously, as the right thing to do, I decided to take stalk of the situation, and find a new job.


Anyone who has tried “floating” a resume on the internet knows the amount of effort required to configure “job search agents” in various websites, deal with the flood of resulting e-mails every week, and then manually selecting some positions to apply to and spend weeks trying to guess what the employer is thinking before realizing nothing ever will come off that effort.


Luckily, I found a commercial service which, for the sum of 50 bucks, promised to submit my resume to 679 recruiters, thus achieving the “flood” effect with minimal effort.


Sure enough, within a couple of weeks, a recruiter called me, and after an initial “phone screening”, sent me an address and a time to go and meet some folks for a “face-to-face” – a commonly used term in the job-hunting world which, fortunately, does not reflect a true physical interpretation of the phrase.


I looked the address up, and was glad to find I knew the indicated building on 2/7 Sarat Bose Road (aka Lansdowne). As part of getting hired for my first job, I had been asked to get a “medical certificate” from a clinic in this building. The facility was run by Dr Paes, father of Leander Paes - the great tennis player from Kolkata. In fact, I had been personally examined by Dr. Paes, and had performed the stripping-and-coughing routine familiar to all males who ever had a “physical” done.


I rose early on the appointed day, took great time and care to perform the four S’, and put on the suit that my wonderful father-in-law had presented me along with his daughter the day of my marriage. Being married for 11 years, I was greatly happy that I still fit the suit. Then I got on Executive-2 (popularly known as E-2) bus from 3 No. Tank Island, Salt Lake to Mintoo Park, and shedding the composite cologne fragrance that had clung onto my suit from inside the bus, walked to the impressive building, right next to the architecturally awesome Central Plaza where I had been initiated into working for multi-national corporations.


After explaining the purpose of my visit to the receptionist, I was shown into a room, and left to myself. This room was pretty much sterile white all over, with couches along three walls and the little door (which I was shown and got in by) adjacent to a large open counter on the fourth. There was a painting hung almost apologetically on one wall, with many faces that looked liked climbing out of the background, with expressions somewhere in between of those on the dolls carried by ventriloquists and the caricatures in Pink Floyd’s The Wall video. I had surely seen that picture before, it was a replica of some great artistic artifact, but I am culturally dysfunctional enough to completely fail to identify the painter, my sense of art being limited to the comic strip at userfriendly.org.


In fact, this room looked identical to the waiting room at my dentist.


I chose the furthest corner away and diagonally opposite the single door to sit and wait, and started singing “I have confidence in me” in my mind – particularly soothing in anticipatory situations like these.


After some time, Raima Sen came through that door, wearing some very loud, but no doubt expensive designer, fragrance. Black slacks, tight white top, hair, lips, eye lashes all a peculiar brown that kind of merged with her skin. The stereotypical look that every fashionable Indian woman has these days, with disturbing uniformity.


A quick smile, a nod, and a hello.


More time passed. And then the door opened again, and Konkona Sen Sharma was shown in. Apparently Konkona and Raima knew each other, and disregarding the inherent friction of being competitors for the same job, a lot of conversation, essentially going like this, followed:


“Hiiiiiiiiiii”

“Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!”

“Tui-o ekhane !”

“Aar bolo na – ja dinkal poreche!”

….

….


Konkona was wearing a black saree, an orange blouse – of course with a deep – really deep – cut neck and no sleeves, a golden / tan pair of slippers that had sparkly stuff in it, and had her hair open, and of course, more of the ubiquitous brown stuff on lips and hair and eyes.


Eventually, Nandana Sen also came in, and – well – she fit into the surroundings easily as well. The onslaught of a combination of designer perfumes is unforgettable, and was far worse than anything I have ever faced (or smelt) on the E-2 bus.


I was, of course, completely ignored all this while, and occupied myself in the game of looking-but-not looking and keeping my eyes level and admonishing my poor eyeballs whenever they tended to drop downwards while looking (or not-looking).


The wide counter next to the door must have a 2nd access door from somewhere inside the building. Presently, and quite suddenly, Prosenjit Chattopadhyay – our favorite Bumba-da – appeared on the other side, and started to drum his fingers on the counter-top while inspecting the four of us on the other side.


Prosenjit eventually called out my name – and I realized I was the first to be called – a good thing because I remembered a FIFO queue, and then also realized I was the only one on this side of the counter with an obviously male name, so he could have just identified me and not call my name and look for who responds.


So I walked up to the counter, and there were bar stools on my side, which I sat on. Prosenjit sat down on a chair on the other side, and inspected me for a few minutes while a big non-descript circular black clock on the wall behind him counted seconds with black arms.


Eventually, he spoke up. After the usual and proper pleasantries regarding the goodness of the morning and my journey on a hot day, he asked me the first of many questions that day that made up the meat of the interview:


“What design pattern do you use when you architect a system ?”


I do not remember the rest of the questions, and just have a vague notion of having to try to explain abstract classes, inheritance, polymorphism and core dumps. And even if I did, it would not be ethical of me to write them down here – you would have an unfair advantage if you applied for a similar opening at that place.


I did not get that job. But, I have always wondered how Raima, Konkona and Nandana fared.

Well - I have been waiting for a long long time for someone put up a web-site called Dhoper Chop ... the wait is over, and looks like someone finally did register that domain - www.DhoperChop.com now lives in the ether network !

It does not matter what that site has ... it's all good old fashioned Dhop, anyway !

Looks like we can sign up and post as well - it's a forum about movies and music and cooking and travelling and stuff that are *really* important to the dhopbaj's of this world.

I met Abraham Lincoln yesterday.

I was visiting my sister in the County of Morris in New Jersey, and it turned out Abe lived around 2 hours drive west, quietly in retirement. After having successfully laid the foundation of the country and such things, Abe was spending a leisurely retired life, much like Bilbo Baggins in Rivendell, just entertaining any visitors who happened to knock his door.

So off I go to say "Hi", with my wife, two kids, and my mother.

The house was a "rambler" - Americanism for a one-level house that the elderly often move into to avoid climbing stairs. It was situated on a plot of land around a quarter of an acre, with a solid red brick wall fence around it, and a nice little iron gate, painted white, in the center of the street-facing side. The house itself was at the rear of the plot, in the middle, with the fence continuing from either side of the back of the house. A green lawn, with bushes in a rectangle around it, and a red brick walkway from the gate to the door, completes the portrait of simple elegance that one is impressed with.

There were a couple of electric porch lights hanging from iron poles perhaps seven feet tall on either side of the walkway leading to the door. I was amazed to see these hanging lights moving to-and-fro in a regular motion, much like a slow pendulum, and guessed there were little electric motors in the housing of the lights to give the impression of candle lanterns swinging in the wind. It struck me as very interesting, and I wondered why Abe had not patented that idea yet.

Well - Abe opened the door himself, and we smiled and said "Hi" and "It's an honor to meet you, Sir" and such things as seemed appropriate for the occasion. On realizing that we were not making any moves that might indicate our departure, he invited us in.

The room immediately across the door was a cozy and very normal room with couches, chairs, a card table and a fireplace crackling away keeping everything crispy. Abe and I eventually settled down on couches and started a conversation of national import from his side, and a lot of head-nodding on mine. My wife, kids and mother went to the kitchen to the right of this room, and could be heard happily chatting away as well.

Oh - I forgot to mention that Mary Todd Lincoln looked amazingly similar to an artist's impression of Martha Washington in her twenties - as published in The Washington Post on February 2, 2009.

Anyway - going back to the story, it chanced that the doorbell rang again (the same kind of "ding-dong" sound that is heard in millions of American homes), and three neighbor-buddies of Abe had arrived.

Then I got the first shock of my life - Abe opened the door and said "Arey ashen ashen - kemon asen ?" ("Please do come in - how are you ?")

It turned out that the three buddies of Abe were originally from Bangladesh, and Abe had over the years of association with them, picked up a fair amount of crisp Sylheti Bangal language, some of which I could understand, having been born and grown up in the neighboring Kolkata, West Bengal. I do admit that I did not understand all of it, though, much to the surprise of Abe.

As you can understand, we had a great time.

We eventually got hungry, and I got up to check the going-ons in the kitchen.

Somehow, I was not very surprised to see my wife, mother, Mary Todd Lincoln, and my 7-year old daughter sitting on the floor, with pages of newspaper spread out in front of them, with quite a few Hilsa fish in various stages of being cut down into pieces. My wife, mother and Mary even had a "bonti" - a kind of butcher's knife bolted into a wooden base, each in front of them.

The ilish macher jhol at Abe's house was surely going to be a hit!

(NOTE: I dream rarely, and remember my dreams vividly when I do - I had the above dream last night.)

This is my first post in the ঢপের চপ blog - a small step for me and computer engineering, but something like a giant step for men-like-me kind. ঢপের চপ - pronounced "Dhaw-pyer" chop - is a slang in the tongue my mother inherited from HER mother and so on for 26 documented generations: Bengali; the phrase loosely means one or more claims, which are - to put it mildly - of doubtful accuracy. Like for example, after working for around five years for my boss and coming in late every day, suddenly one day my boss actually notices I am not here on time and asks me why, and my excuse is I was coming to work but suddenly a black panther started to chase me away in the other direction.

I have this urge now to write down my views of the really important matters of the world, and this blog will be continued, if I do not lose the urge in the next couple of hours, for maybe many years while we are all living forever happily after ...