Test blog post from blogger app for Android.

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GRE, Publications, CGPA - to have or not to have

I am a student of the Computer Science & Engineering department in BRAC University - actually i have graduated a few months ago :D. In one of our student forums that we are still very active with, we had an interesting conversation between the students and the faculties about the requirements, impact, necessities of GRE, SAT, CGPA, Publications etc in order to enroll for masters programs in foreign universities. Some of these students and faculties have gone for masters in such universities after going through the extensive application process. So their feedbacks and their input in the conversation was really beneficial and relevant for everyone.

I compiled a little log of the whole conversation, which i am sure is of great relevance for many students around. Thus, I thought of putting up the conversation on my blog - well, not the whole conversation; just the output of the conversation. Here it goes.

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Sarwar Sir: Ok about the GRE. Here is the deal ... GRE isn't the only or the main factor for getting admitted to a foreign university. In fact, there are universities who don't even look at them (for example, UBC, where I am currently in). So to devote such a lot of time in one factor isn't worth it. However, having a good score is definitely a plus. 

So the advice will be, to practice ALL the factors including the GRE. And also to make a list of requirements of at least 10 universities you might want to go in the future. 

The other important factors are: (not in any order, random)

• CGPA, 
• PUBLICATIONS (Most important) [but I didn't have one] 
• STATEMENT OF PURPOSE (an essay about you, where you want to be, etc) 
• LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATIONS (at least three, should be good, position of recommender isn't important) 
• CV (work experience counts well) 
• TOEFL/IELTS score (this is just a pre-requisite, will not affect chances if you have, but will be rejected if you don't have!) 
• GRE (same as TOEFL, but only if asked for) 
• TRANSCRIPTS In any case, there are three parts of the GRE. One is Verbal, one is Quantitative, and the other is Analytic Writing. 

We (the men) love to love you (the women)

To all the loving wives out there.

I have seen several women sharing stories about how loving Hazrat Muhammad (PBUH) was towards his youngest wife Hazrat Ayesha Radiallahuta'Ala'Anhu. I have seen several women sharing these stories to their husbands about how to be a loving man or a loving husband like our prophet Mohummad (PBUH). They would even gift these books of Hadiths etc where beautiful descriptions has been made about how a man and a wife can be very loving towards each other. And, most of the times, these women intend to share these stories with their husbands for the purpose of letting their man know how to be a loving husband towards their wives - something for the boys to learn from. And surely, the men of today need to learn a lot from these stories because the men of today are disgusting and unloyal.

Tweaks & Apps to pump up your Ubuntu

Some nice little tweaks and apps for your ubuntu. For some of the apps you might have to add the PPA via the apt lines into your ubuntu repository before you can download & install them. For others, you can just use apt-get install to get going :)

Clipgrab - an app to download videos with original (or your desired) encoding from popular video sharing sites like youtube, vimeo, dailymotion etc. 
- Launchpad
- Review
Enter the following in terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:clipgrab-team/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install clipgrab

SysPeek - a system monitor indicator that displays CPU usage, memory usage, swap usage, disk usage and network traffic.
- Launchpad
- Review
Enter the following in terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:vicox/syspeek 
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install syspeek
Seems to be discontinued since Precise

"This PPA currently publishes packages for Oneiric and Natty" - [source]

Zeitgeist Activity-Log-Manager - (now included in Ubuntu 12.04) - If you want certain files or filetypes from a certain location or application not to appear in Ubuntu dash history, then go with this.
- Launchpad
- Review
Enter the following in terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:zeitgeist/ppa
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
zeitgeist-daemon --replace
sudo apt-get install zeitgeist activity-log-manager

Ejecter - an app indicator that gives you nice little EJECT button whenever there is an external mountable device attached to your ubuntu machine (mainly via USB)
- Launchpad
- Review
Enter the following in terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fredp/ppa
sudo apt-get update
# now included in apt-get since 12.04
sudo apt-get install ejecter

Shutter - one of the best screenshot tool for Ubuntu. Grab a region, section, window, popup, context menu or the entire screen as you choose. And then annotate, blur, add markers, objects, paint & draw on it as you like.
- Launchpad
- Review
Enter the following in terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:shutter/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install shutter

Gnome-Shell - an alternative to the Unity desktop environment which most of us are familiar with since Ubuntu 11.04. Gnome-shell is made from the new Gnome3 which is based on GTK3.0. Gnome3 has been rebuilt ground-up from scratch instead of adding new features to the Gnome2, thus, giving a very new, sleek and fast user experience. And it's really pretty too.
- Launchpad
- Review
Enter the following in terminal:
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell

Unsettings - is a GUI based Unity tweak tool that comes with some unique features, like: disable the global menu and overlay scrollbars or easily add applications to the systray whitelist.
- Launchpad
- Review
Enter the following in terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:diesch/testing
sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get install unsettings

LightDM-Manager - Want to change the default background picture and logo of the ubuntu login screen? You gotta have lightDM-Manager.
- Launchpad
- Review
Enter the following in terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:claudiocn/slm
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install simple-lightdm-manager

PySDM - Storage Device Manager is what you need if you want to automount partitions at system startup. You get to customize a lot of partition related matters in a nice & easy graphical interface.
- Launchpad
- Review
Enter the following in terminal:
sudo apt-get install pysdm
It's also available in synaptic package manager

GRUB-Customizer - a nice bitmap as the background of GRUB Boot Loader, 3 seconds custom timeout, set default OS and normal/highlighting colors - previously I used startupmanager for all this. But i find GRUB Customizer does a way better job in terms of results & comfort.
- Launchpad
- Review
Enter the following in terminal
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:danielrichter2007/grub-customizer
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install grub-customizer


Oracle Java JDK - I suddenly noticed JDK is not available in Synaptic anymore. Here is a workaround for getting started with Java Development Kit. This package provides full Oracle Java JDK 7 (which includes JRE and the Java browser plugin) - [caution: might not be updated with oracle's latest release]
- Launchpad
- Review
Enter the following in terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install oracle-java7-installer
For removal:
sudo apt-get remove oracle-java7-installer

Ubuntu Tweak - Perhaps the BEST (in capitals) ubuntu configuration manager tool ever made. It's hectic to configure ubuntu behaviors by editing config files or text files. From cleaning up obsolete packages to pimping the visuals of your ubuntu, with ubuntu tweak you get to do all that in a nice and intuitive Graphical User Interface. In my experience, I got a nice Mac OSX like behaviors on my ubuntu by using ubuntu tweak.
- Launchpad
- Review
Enter the following in terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tualatrix/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-tweak

How to partition for dual-booting Windows and Linux

ALWAYS INSTALL WINDOWS FIRST - this is the most important and most common suggestion everywhere. It's not like you cannot install windows AFTER you have installed linux. But installing windows BEFORE installing linux saves you from a lot of sweat while configuring the GRUB boot loader as linux installer takes care of that part quite effectively by itself.

Now the following is the recommended way to partition your hard drive if you are planning to dual boot linux with windows.