Planet Manipal

Quadrocopter - Part 10 - I find your lack of faith disturbing.

2012-02-07T22:56:58+00:00

It is possible i might be overdoing it with the Star Wars references. If you find a better name for the next post (which will probably be the first flight) let me know.

I worked the whole of last Sunday and finally got the model now ready. So here it is. This time the whole model weighs only 1396 grams. A 19% improvement on the old model.

The motor (EMAX CF2822) along with the propeller (8"x4") and the bullet connectors (3.5 mm)

The Quad Control Board - http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbycity/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=19534

Luke !!!

Battery - Tied down with Velcro.

Pictures by Rahul Krishna Upadhayaya.

Link to more posts on the Quadrocopter.

Quadrocopter - Part 9 - A New Hope

2012-02-07T22:53:41+00:00

There have not been any updates from my side on the quadrocopter for the past 6 months. This is partly because i was working on other stuff but mainly because i got lazy (really really lazy). So one fine day about 2 weeks ago i decided that i have to finish this project. I ordered a quadrocopter control board as i was getting one at a very reasonable price (details later) and i did not have the time to build one for myself (as earlier planned - i might do this sometime later). I did make some changes to the design changes.

Firstly this time i went for an entirely wood construction instead of the aluminium and acrylic combination(what the hell was i thinking??). There are a few reasons for this. It is easier to work with than aluminium. Wood reduces the vibrations of the motors. Wood is cheaper (was able to get material for building 4 quadrocopter for 280 bucks !!!!) and most importantly it available near my house unlike aluminum rods (laziness FTW).

Secondly i purchased some matching clockwise and anti-clockwise propellers hence i will not have to work at compensating for the angular momentum by tilting the motors.

Finally i decided to do away with the nuts and bolts that hold the main structure and go for screws. This was easier as i was going for wood instead of aluminium. This also helped reduce the weight.

The quadrocopter control board - Ordered from www.rchobbyaddict.com ..... More info on the board at http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=19534.

The materials

Plywood (1/4"x6"x6" pieces).

Birch wood (1/2"x3/4"x13").

The completed assembly.

I also used a lot of bullet connectors while building the model and they require a lot of soldering (which im not very good at - mainly because i keep on burning my finger and at times my eyebrows) so i decided to make a bullet connector soldering stand. I was later told by my friend Mudit Gupta that people have already though of this.So i looked it up and people had indeed thought of this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnldHRtjre8 (There goes my patent). Anyway here is my attempt:

Link to more posts on the Quadrocopter.

Privacy and Activity Manager (Zeitgeist) Release

2012-02-07T17:58:19+00:00

We all love privacy and we take it seriously. Most of the people whom I have met are pretty much vigilant about their data and which makes complete sense to have a tool which can you can use to fine tune your privacy settings. Till now most of our experience with Privacy Settings are related to Facebook which makes me feel like

Layman control center?

If you are a Zeitgeist user, it is pretty expected to expect a Privacy application. Yes, we have it. Today we are releasing it. The first release was a hastily assembled up together application using pygtk (gtk2) which served it’s purpose well for the time being.

Older version of Activity Log Manager

Soon it was decided in Ubuntu Developer Summit in Orlando that Activity Log Manager will be included in Ubuntu Precise to provide greater privacy controls to user. We improved the looks based on the design provided by the Canonical Design Team.

The interface was kept as simple as possible. This first release lacks a few things as of now and some more UI polish is pending including localization support. Both of them will land sooner.

It has been integrated in Gnome Control Panel (which works only on Ubuntu). In distributions where it cannot integrate in Control Panel, it runs as a standalone application.

Here is how it looks

Entry in GNOME Control Center

Blacklisting Applications

Files and Folder blacklisting

Activity Log Manager History tab with the Icon

The Zeitgeist Team worked on it and ported the application to gtk3 and vala in a few weeks which was a pleasure (and I finally learnt vala. Finally!)

Geeky Juice:

The release is named “Friendly Dolphin” 0.9.0 and can be downloaded from here.

This application would be made available in Ubuntu Precise soon.

If you are building it yourself and want Control Center integration, then pass –with-ccpanel to the configure script.

./configure --with-ccpanel

This would work on all the Linux distributions which derive from Ubuntu and don’t change the gnome-control-center packaging since this integration relies on a Ubuntu specific patch for control center.

Please log any bugs which you come across. To make sure that we are able to help you, please provide detailed explanation of what led to the issue. You can file your bugs here

The Lohri Experience

2012-01-22T04:37:06+00:00

So often have we said or heard that it is from the simplest of things that we derive pleasure from the simplest of things in life. Listening to the birds chirping or the fragrance of the first rain or having a beer with your friends or taking a walk in a windy wintry weather and I can a zillion of more ors to the list. These things at times are so obvious to us that we tend to undermine the importance of these very simple things in our life.

One such experience was the Lohri experience for me. Being a student and staying away from home, I never had time to enjoy a festival. However, back in Delhi NCR the heart of India, I had my chance to celebrate Lohri. A few things that I noticed

Families coming together and meeting each other
Kids playing in the lawn
Meeting the knowns and unknowns and wishing each other
My WARMEST winter experience
The beautiful bonfire
The Ladies

These are a few things that are right at the top of my head but then it was an awesome experience to remind me of the old age phrase “In Simplicity Lies Beauty”

Pearl EPO Glider 800 - First Flight / Crash

2012-01-10T23:21:15+00:00

For my 50th blog post i decided to post videos of the crash of the Pearl EPO Glider 800. The crash happened on our first try on the 18th of December. I would have posted the videos on that date but we had recorded the videos using a sony handycam and it took some time to extract the videos (I hate sony handycams and their non standard USB's and Memory Cards). Anyway i did manage to get the videos and here they are. Enjoy

First TrySecond Try

Ill fix it up and have it up as soon as i have some free time.In the mean while enjoy he pics of the broken plane:

Perl EPO Glider 800

2012-01-03T22:06:54+00:00

Recently (by that i mean about 2 months ago) brought a glider from www.rchobbyaddict.com. Have finally managed to assemble it. Here are some pics and a video of the glider. It uses a brush-less DC motor, 4 servo motors, and a 2S1P 800mah battery. Will give detailed specs in a post in one or 2 days after the flight.

Simple MVC implementation for PHP

2012-01-01T18:20:56+00:00

It has been some time since i have worked on a ‘significant’ side project, i have started to feel a slow down in the number of side projects i do not because of my full time work at Zynga but because i have become too lazy, to break this chain and to make sure i at least work on some project i have decided to work on a side project at least once in 2 weeks, i hope i will be able to keep this new year resolution.
Few weeks ago i tried my hands on Yii i really liked it, its simple, easy and efficient !! which made me wonder how much effort is there in writing a MVC framework in PHP, few hours work and the result was mvc-php (ya i suck at giving names to projects), i have used mod_rewrite and got basic controllers working, now working on getting Smarty integrated but still cant decide on what to use for models, was thinking about doctrine but it looks bulky, i still have no particular use case for mvc-php, i hope it gets some where

Back to Linux

2011-12-14T19:51:11+00:00

After being in an open source exile for almost a year, I finally could not resist any longer and I installed Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) on my laptop.

Did a Wubi install directly from the website, simple enough and hardly took an hour.

And then , my system reboots and viola!

And then…WHOA! I have missed a lot of action in this 1 year!

The look and feel are completely different from what I was used to and it took me 2 whole minutes to figure out how to open the good ol’ terminal!

The side bar is pretyy need and handy.

It’s hardly been 10 minutes since I installed and will be exploring further in the coming days…might be posting updates soon, if I manage to get my lazy ass up to it!

Good times…good times…

P.S. A lot of things have happened to me in the last one year, like getting a job, etc…but that’s past and gone. Won’t be updating my blog with all that shit.

Filed under: Random blabbering

Huh? What happened? :O

2011-12-14T19:09:26+00:00

Hello folks,

Major overhaul of the blog going on!

People who have visited this place earlier would have know this to be a blog of a n00b geek, teenaged and wanting to show the world that he is a hacker…

Times have changed and things have definitely changed! Things will be changing EVEN more!

Statutory Advisory: You might turn crazy trying to make sense out of the random stuff….

Oh, and I am still very busy these days, so this zombie blog will keep dying from time to time…

Filed under: Random blabbering

Google Code-in Update

2011-12-04T13:28:44+00:00

For the first half of Google Code-in, we have more than 94 tasks for the students. Already over 53 have been done and around 12 are work in progress. By the end of the first phase, I really hope to see all these tasks done. Some of the most interesting tasks that have been done by our students are
1. Design of openSUSE Magazine ( This can be used for attracting sponsors and is a work in progress )
2. Porting Bento Theme to Tumblr ( http://safe.tumblr.com/theme/preview/33069# )
3. Several Tutorial Videos
4. Loads and Loads of Translation tasks specially in Romanian, Turkish and Greek.
5. Concept artworks for our wallpapers. login screen etc.
6. Cleaning up our wiki
7. Lots of testing done for GNOME3 specially

These are things that we have done already and during the process I have come to meet lots of interesting people during the whole process. All in all GCI is a fun thing and I again call everyone to become a mentor or help us in suggesting tasks for GCI as this is very much required to get the program running. So if you have something interesting in mind and if you want to get something done but do not have enough time to work or if you want to interact with some of the most brilliant kids around the world, its time for you to sign up as a mentor. Every little bit of help is appreciated.

If you have a task in mind and do not have a lot of time, please add it as a comment below.
If you want to mentor, its the most awesome thing and we will have more helping hands please register at http://www.google-melange.com/gci/profile/mentor/google/gci2011 and mail your user id at manugupt1[at]opensuse[dot]org so that I can invite you.

Command Line Fu

2011-11-14T07:21:47+00:00

http://xkcd.com/196/

A few weeks back i bought a new monitor Dell U2312HM, its a brilliant monitor with support for portrait/landscape switching.
so as it always happens after buying a new monitor i planned a movie night and ran into the screen lock problem, i have set 2 minute timeout for screen lock and some why changing screen settings didn’t work, i knew i had to find a solution and fast or the above xkcd might actually happen with me

so this is what i came up with, having worked with X bindings before for Game-on this was done in under 5 mins (after reading some docs) , another day saved all thanks to Linux, X11 and previous X11 binding experience

This code moves the mouse pointer back and forth every few seconds, which is defined in DURATION

Life is short – Live it to the fullest

2011-11-06T22:04:21+00:00

Disclaimer: Another random musing. Proceed with extreme caution. I am sure that all of us have heard this. What does it actually mean ? Does it mean that we should enjoy and party ? Does it mean that we should study hard towards a successful career ? Or Does it mean that we should be [...]

Ferrari Italia 458

2011-11-06T12:50:22+00:00

Undoubtedly the best looking Ferrari in the world. Made in 3Ds Max 2011. Rendering time: 55 mins/per frame @1080p

Update : Last 3 images took 9 Hours at 3840x2160 ..

Ubuntu Power Users reorganization – An advice to our new roletaker

2011-11-04T15:36:27+00:00

Jono founded Ubuntu Power Users group a few months back. Since then lot many things were discussed but due to being a bit late in the cycle.

Power Users Group got a fresh new start and it was advised to hand over the bigger responsibilities to James Gifford. If any of you don’t know him, he a a very young yet highly energetic community member and an active member on AskUbuntu.

James, every initiative has it’s high and low in activity. When Power Users was started there was many good discussions but now it looks like the team really needs a strong leadership. Do not be demoralized if you find that you are the only person who is working under power-users banner. There might be other people interested in contributing, but they might not feel like contributing when they find themselves alone. It is always more encouraging and consoling to find that the project you are contributing to has an active leader and your work is actually going to make a significant impact. When there is a leader who is working tirelessly, I feel more confident because even if I am not able to contribute, still there is someone who is making sure that my work will reach the wider audience.

Being a leader is tough. Being a maintainer of a software project is also very tough. It is sometimes easier to be a person who just commits code than being a maintainer. You have to make sure that all the nuts and bolts are assembled together in the correct order. Contributors might only make separate pieces, but you have the responsibly to assemble them together and make a working product. Sometimes you even have to make sure that your assembled piece works properly when it itself has to act like a nut to an even bigger piece of software.

I admit having the feeling of “Why? Why am I the only person who is working on it? Does it mean no one else is interested?”. The answer is that probably many other people might be interested, but they are just too busy in another piece of software or community which they maintain. They might be not getting enough time to contribute to the project in which I or you work.

That said, James please make sure that atleast Ubuntu Tweak is included in Ubuntu archives starting Precise. The Ubuntu developers had their own valid share of criticisms for this product, hence it is time to address the issues. I can help you in support and documentation part (on AskUbuntu).

Best of Luck

Open Talks

2011-10-26T08:41:35+00:00

LUG Manipal presents Open Talks in the 1st week of November 2011 on interesting topics covering Perl, Hadoop and Lucene (technologies essential to Yahoo, Facebook and Twitter), Version control using GIT and Google Summer of Code (GSoC). The talks are absolutely free. For more details, keep checking your hostel notice board.

LUG Manipal

Google Code-in and openSUSE

2011-10-25T17:55:33+00:00

After Google Summer Of Code 2011, openSUSE plans to participate in Google Code-in. It is an excellent opportunity for openSUSE to meet young talents and introduce them to the ways of open source.

What is Google Code-in?
It is a contest hosted by Google for pre university students every year where they are encouraged to participate in open source projects and are awarded cash prizes for their contributions from Google. Various open source organizations participate in it and mentors from every organizations help these students to get up to speed and advice them on how to complete the challenge. The contest period is from November 21st to January 16th 2012

What are tasks?
Every open source organization has a lot of cool ideas in mind and likewise every member of the community has some ideas in his minds. These ideas are collated and put together and are categorized into three levels of difficulty – Easy, Medium and Difficult. Students are rewarded points as to what task they complete.

Deciding the tasks
The mentors decide the task, off -course community can suggest but at the end of the day it is the mentor’s discretion on what task they want to work on. Tasks can be anything and for a more accurate description of the tasks visit here.
Note that not all tasks will be code related, so even a non-technical guy with enough experience with other skills can participate in Google Code-in as mentors. Tasks can range from Documentation to translation, artwork to marketing and off course what is a code-in without code related tasks like code refracting, testing, finding and squashing bugs and a lot more things.

Preps for Code-in
openSUSE has already started preparations vigorously and is already coming up with a list of tasks and is looking for mentors. While lots of us have already signed, we are looking for lots more to sign up as mentors and see more interesting tasks ahead.
More information can be found at en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:GCI
and http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:GCI_Tasks

Along with the above 2 links, make sure to have a look at http://google-melange.com/

Thanks to Jos for reminding the links do not work

Weekend Project IV Part 2

2011-10-15T13:03:33+00:00

In continuation of Weekend Project IV, i have updated the code to work with the a graphics LCD, i am using JHD 12864e it works on Ks0108 driver, earlier i was writing my own driver for this graphic LCD but i found that Arduino already has support for the LCD using the GLCD library and its pretty awesome.

here is the working

The Art of Software Maintenance

2011-10-12T06:43:15+00:00

Yesterday, I gave a presentation to team of young and enthusiastic software developers on processes and practices that they must adopt as their team grows and matures.

The presentation tried to use Robert M. Pirsig’s philosophical exploration of quality in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as a basis to explore — what is good quality software and things you should do as teams and individuals when trying to produce good quality software.

“What’s new?” is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow.

I would like, instead, to be concerned with the question “What is best?” a question which cuts deeply rather than broadly, a question whose answers tend to move the silt downstream.

Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

We discussed how I agree with Andrew Hunt and David Thomas, that all programming is maintenance programming and other fundamental ideas that good software teams should be concerned with, like how to strike a balance between Featuritis vs. the Happy User Peak

Other approaches, ideas, and practices that we discussed and those that I’ve learned to embrace over the years are discussed in some of the following articles and books that I highly recommend to anyone who is involved with building and/or delivering software in any role.

Articles
All Programming is Maintenance Programming
The Noble Art of Maintenance Programming
12 Steps to Better Code
Don’t Live with Broken Windows
Technical Debt
Technical Debt
Paying Down Your Technical Debt
Featuritis vs. the Happy User Peak
The First Rule of Programming: It’s Always Your Fault
Painless Bug Tracking
The F5 Key Is Not a Build Process
The Road To Build Enlightenment
Daily Builds Are Your Friend
The Build Server: Your Project’s Heart Monitor
The “Works on My Machine” Syndrome
I Pity The Fool Who Doesn’t Write Unit Tests
Twelve Benefits of Writing Unit Tests First
Code Tells You How, Comments Tell You Why
Discipline Makes Strong Developers
The Law of Leaky Abstractions
Programming by Coincidence
Coding: It’s Just Writing

Books
The Pragmatic Programer
Code Complete
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering
Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams
Software Conflict 2.0: The Art and Science of Software Engineering
Head First Software Development
Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
The Design of Design: Essays from a Computer Scientist
Test Driven Development: By Example

If you have other similar recommendations, please do share.

An year in life.....

2011-10-09T06:46:08+00:00

An year in life, 2010-2011. One of the mysterious years. Summer of 2010 itself was so gloomy with Intel internship not starting, which wasn't a big deal once you know you did your best to do find an internship, got it but didn't start due to some strangest reasons,as they say "Man proposes God disposes". Summer at New Media innovation lab was quite interesting with work varying from Wordpress learning to Mobile web stuff. Summer ended with even stranger void in life, 6 August 2010 Nanuji (my father) winked at me on some joke (man's joke :) and I thought your father becomes a friend the day when he is comfortable winking at you at that time and even you are comfortable. That friendship wasn't meant to be long at least physically. 8 August to 8 October, 2 months of living in a hell. Seeing someone die everyday is like some part of you dying every second. 8 October was the day he left us physically, in those 2 months I came to know what it meant to be "man of family", and my life changed forever. Next 10 months were like I was doing things for which I was too young. Everyday was like a test, sometimes I had the answers sometimes or rather most of the days I failed miserably.

Learning from your mistakes is best way of learning new things. I found "you can be as mad as a mad dog but then you have to let it go".

I talked with several different people with completely different background. I found people shouldn't be judged by their appearance, wealth or any materialistic things. A person can be your Krishna, your Bhagwat and you should respect everyone and anyone. A person who isn't nice to you, try forgiving him/her and those who love you try to be with them forever.

Saw days where I just couldn't answer why? I found that people have come up with there struggle phase and that is unavoidable, you can only make it easier by "never giving up" and always carrying a smile on your face would do 90% job.

People change drastically at some point of time. I found that having expectation from anyone is like expecting sun would rise from west.

You never know the future and probability. I found that you haven't seen the future so don't think you can do this thing in future. Do it today and plan for tomorrow too, because someone else might rely on your planning.

Money is one thing which is always scarce. I found that more you run behind money the more you will run, it is necessity but you shouldn't make it your obsession. You won't have time for others than to use that money fruitfully.

Success is a parameter set by you. I found that for someone success is being on top of world and while, for someone else its earning a piece of bread for his children everyday. Life is a strange after all.

You can do anything. I found that result is not in your hand, but you can try everything. If its meant to work it will and if not you won't be able to make it happen anyhow. Yes but try your very best so that you won't be sorry afterwards.

Never run from your responsibilities. I found that running away from things is worst decision in life, and taking help of materialistic things like alcohol is even worse. Satisfaction is in your brain not in things.

These were some of the things I saw too closely, I feel I was lucky to have a person like him in my life who trained me for everything in life. The Guru I could have asked for was my own Nanuji.

Binary Programming in JavaScript

2011-10-02T23:26:16+00:00

I presented at jsFoo this Saturday on working with binary data in JavaScript, here are the slides …

Thank you, to every one who came, I would love to know your feedback.

Zeitgeist User Survey 2011 Fall Results

2011-10-02T19:36:52+00:00

Hello everyone,

As I announced earlier we had opened User Survey for Zeitgeist for general feedback and assessment of our own work. It was also to help us understand what are the user requirements.

After 5 days, we have received 261 responses. Instead of going in details and boring you, I would like to keep the post as short as possible and provide detailed analysis in the next post.

Our survey contained questions related to general Zeitgeist questions, Activity Journal, Activity Log Manager, Datasources and Community aspects. Users were also asked about their distro of choice and optional name, age and Country.

Distribution demographics

The biggest share of responders were using Ubuntu – 136. 30 of them were using derivatives. I am also happy to see Fedora and Gentoo in the list.

The other 10 distros included Mandriva, Chakra, Kubuntu (which could be part of Ubuntu and it’s derivatives)

How did you come to know about Zeitgeist

Online blog/news-outlet and Planet make up a huge percent of users. It is evident that people do follow these two very closely. Notice that total does not add up to 100% as just hearing the name might not be sufficient for someone to figure out what it is.

How much do you know about Zeitgeist

Pretty much obvious conclusion. The user know what it is but most of them are not geeky. Looks like those 6 “I hacked on the codebase” was selected by contributors.

Do you know what is Zeitgeist Datasources

One half of my brain says “Teach them what it is” and the other side says “No. Not everyone is very interested in being force taught”. Guess what? I take the central stand and will publish a short article on what all components of Zeitgeist do.

Which of these Datasources do you use?

This is a VERY VERY important chart. This tells us the adoption of datasources esp when datasources are not present in Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and openSUSE (AFAIK for last two). I think they are present in Gentoo and Arch.

I am really humbled that so many people like Firefox datasource even though it had suffered so much with regular xulrunner API breakage. With our new datasource which uses js-ctypes, all the API headache is gone. Gedit. Banshee and Chrome too score pretty high

Which datasources would you like to see in the near future?

I never thought Thunderbird would come out as first. My expectations were with Gnome-0shell which is actually second.

Good news is that Thunderbird datasource is in progress. Mark Jtully is working on it. Gnome-shell would is also in progress.

Since other were 76, I would like to name a few, though I would prefer a separate post for this. The number 76 has led me to make up my mind for a special treatment.

Let me list a few:

Novacut

Jason. Is that you? If yes, then contact me on IRC

git-repos

Personally my favourite too

Pidgin

Work in progress

Empathy

Telepathy plugin already present

Clementine

Even I am excited about it

KDE

Work in progress. Stay tuned for the next blog post

Heard about Activity Log Manager

Activity Log Manager is Administrative tool for Zeitgeist. You can temporarily stop logging, blacklisting certain applications from logging information, blacklisting certain mimetypes, clearing all history between time range etc. It is a handy tool. A new version is going to be out soon.

It is really sad that half of the people never heard about it. Looks like we failed at spreading the word. By the way there has only been a single release.

How much are you involved with the community?

40% of the people are users. “Nor am I interested” is not a harsh phrase. It simply means “I use so many applications and it is not possible for me to be involved in each and every community”.

15% of the respondents are eager to join the community. Probably you all can help us in testing. This is where most of the manpower is needed.

In case you have problems, where do you ask your questions?

Two-third of the people do prefer forums. Mailing lists and IRC still trump over Q&A sites. I think many people have answered this not only for problems but also for general questions.

In case you are an Ubuntu user, you can ask your question on Ask Ubuntu and tag the question with zeitgeist tag.

Are your problems related to Zeitgeist solved?

Did I tell you that this chart has boosted my morale? 70% of the people didn’t have problems with Zeitgeist. I now really guess that these people were asking general questions or discussing about zeitgeist and replied to the above question.

Whatever be the case, we still have 10% unsatisfied users from the samplespace. 10% is a significant number. Hope we can bring it down by the next survey.

Few interesting comments we received

More focus on the related items of Zeitgeist

Looks like we really lacking here. Thanks for reminding

The ability to put zeitgeist in private-mode

It is already present in Activity Log Manager

I’m a software developer and do lots of testing every day. I need a way of blocking activity from my development/testing trees

There is a “Logging Active” toggle button in Activity Log Manager

It[Activity Journal] needs to be abstracted into Unity

Isn’t it already? Probably the implementation is different. There is no journal view in Unity

It doesnt show all my files

You need more datasources. In other words we need to provide more datasources which you need to install.

It’s [Activity Journal] good, but shouldn’t we be providing this information through the UIs made available by the host OS?

It is somewhat done for Unity. Next up in Shell and Plasma. In any case none of them show the Journal view as Activity Journal

I really like being able to see what I did, and when I did it. The thumbnails for code snippets, videos, and pictures are also rather nice. Congrats on making a easy-to-use computer journal

All I can do is smile

Please integrate it into Gnome Shell if it light enough.

This is also my personal wish. It might take some time

It would be nice if these datsource plugins are included by default without the user having to do it manually. This way it just works.

This has to be done at distro level. This is something even I would love to see

A ppa would be nice.

A you wish, but remember there can be dragons

Mobivision Workshop 2011

2011-09-26T12:49:30+00:00

Mobivision workshop has always been one of the top workshops by LUG. Unlike every year this year workshop was conducted on Android. Previously the workshop used to be on Symbian (Using Python for S60) .

Day1 – Installation of eclipse and android SDK was done. Everyone installed and started there emulator successful. Hello World program was explained properly. Making UI through XML and through java file was explained. Then App inventor tool of google was shown.

Day2 – Basics of java and then android overview (activities, intents, widget…) was covered first. Then Lab1 was done which was hands-on-session . Everyone used Linear Layout, Button, EditText, Checkbox , etc… through dynamic programming and made a simple app. How to use LogCat to debug code was also taught.

Day3- Different Example codes were explained and distributed. Lab2 was done which was hand on session. Same layout which was made in day2 was now made through xml. It covered different layout, widget most importantly listview, adapter, layout inflator, etc.

Lastly there was discussion on ideation as well. How to generate ideas for an mobile application. What all thing we should look for when we go for making an mobile application, etc.

All files are attached (Lab1, Lab2 complete, examples and slides)

http://www.slideshare.net/sritolia/android-workshday1

http://www.slideshare.net/sritolia/android-workshobasic-java

http://www.slideshare.net/sritolia/android-workshop-day3

http://www.lugmanipal.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/lugmanipal.zip

Weekend Project IV

2011-09-25T10:08:11+00:00

Few days back i bought an Arduino UNO board, this is my first Arduino Project and it was damn easy!! I can see the power that Arduino has to offer for hobbyist, i have worked on 8051 and few avr (without Arduino) before, doing stuff with an arduino is pretty easy and straightforward.

In this weekend project i am using a JHD162a (16×2 LCD) connected with Arduino UNO to display the name of the current song being played, i am running mpd on my machine so have used python-mpd to retrieve song info and pyserial to transfer the data over UART to UNO, the UNO just spits out the data received over UART to the LCD.
This is a copy of my earlier project which i did in my third year in college, but that was using a 8051 and i wrote a library (code available here) to control the LCD, currently i am using the LiquidCrystal Arduino library for that.

here is the demonstration

UPDATE -> song name, artist and time also added, video here

PS – you might also want to see the extremely cheap CNC machine being made by one of my friend

Confessions of a Final Year Confused Mind

2011-09-23T18:42:46+00:00

What ? Me and confused ? These were the questions that came to my mind when I first realized that I’m confused I always had a clear path once I wrote my first program in class 9th when the love for Computers was born Then, I took CS in 11th and it developed from a [...]

Installing the Android SDK

2011-09-22T09:24:58+00:00

1) System Requirement – Check whether your operating system supports for developing Android applications using the Android SDK.
http://developer.android.com/sdk/requirements.html

2) JDK- Download and install the Java JDK depending upon the OS and processor (32bit or 64 bit) you have. http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp
JDK 7 is recommended.

3) Eclipse – Download eclipse zip file and extract it. – http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ .The “Eclipse Classic” version is recommended. Otherwise, a Java or RCP version of Eclipse is recommended.

4) Download Android SDK – download and extract the android sdk depending upon the OS you have. http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

5) ADT Plugin – Install the ADT Plugin

Start Eclipse, then select Help > Install New Software….
Click Add, in the top-right corner.
In the Add Repository dialog that appears, enter “ADT Plugin” for the Name and the following URL for the Location:
```
https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/
```
Click OKNote: If you have trouble acquiring the plugin, try using “http” in the Location URL, instead of “https” (https is preferred for security reasons).
In the Available Software dialog, select the checkbox next to Developer Tools and click Next.
In the next window, you’ll see a list of the tools to be downloaded. Click Next.
Read and accept the license agreements, then click Finish.Note: If you get a security warning saying that the authenticity or validity of the software can’t be established, click OK.
When the installation completes, restart Eclipse.

6) Configuring ADT Plugin – go to Window=>Preferences=>Android and change the build path to
wherever you put the android-sdk folder.(the sdk you downloaded in step 4) .

7) Try the hello world program from here – http://developer.android.com/resources/tutorials/hello-world.html .

(You may follow the detailed instructions from the official web site – http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing.html )

openSUSE & India

2011-09-19T13:52:03+00:00

Well recently we had a huge discussions at the conference about how openSUSE was faring in India and it seemed that India was not faring well. I must say it seemed. So I think I must reput everything what we have done from last December so that we all know that we are doind saw g well despite of the huge geographical differences we have in India itself.

FOSS.in
This was the first time I met a lot of other openSUSE people like Bharath Acharya, Akhil Ladha, Vibha Yadav, Punit Jain, Suresh Jayaram ( we met agian at oSC 11 and we did not recognize each other while at oSC 11) and saw a very vibrant community of openSUSE.

KDE Conf
Here also the amazing team from Bangalore did an excellent job. Will came down to India and did an excellent job. Here we found Akash who was already doing an excellent job in promoting openSUSE and sadly we did not know about him.

GNOME Asia
This was the time when I had the chance to meet Vincent and Sankar P. Both of whom I wanted to meet for a long time specially Sankar at that time who has helped me a lot while in openSUSE. Yes the rest of the crew, Bharath, Akhil who were organizing the whole event along with Punit, Sridhar and Vibha and if I guess correctly srags ( his irc nick ) were there too. A whole new number of faces like our star from KDE Conf Akash and also Vikash who helped a lot at the openSUSE booth were present during the conference. We distributed a whole bunch of gnome and openSUSE dvds and at the end of the day we had to do with SLES since we had no more of openSUSE. It was great. Forgetting Max , oh how could I do that.. He had come all the way down from Taiwan to India to attend the conference.

PyCON India
Well, Saurabh Sood he is one of the best friends I have found in the community. He studies at the same place where I do. He could not get into GSoC sadly his application was rejected but he continued to work on the project he applied for. This goes on to show how in our community passion and people matter such a lot. He went for it and he got a lightning talk about developing osc plugins without even applying for it at PyCON India

Manipal
Yeah, this is the place where I live and I think this deserves a bit of attention. We have come up with excellent contributors from this place like Prashanth and Saurabh who work tremendously hard to make the openSUSE Project a big success. They really understand the value of people and what makes a community in real.

Gujarat
Jigish Sir, the one man army he is been working a lot with openSUSE Edu-L-i-f-e and is one of the major contributors to the education project uses openSUSE at a lot of places like in schools and universities. Also he is very active on the opensuse-india google group where I believe he is the one of the very few people who provide support to it.

Assam
Neel Kamal Kalita, is a professor at Guwahati ( I dont remember the university sorry Neel ) but has regularly distributed DVDs among his students for a long time. He is aone great guy who I had a chance to meet in person.

Hong Kong
I know it is not in India but still I must mention Koushik Kumar Nundy who is becoming the local ambassador there after he moved to HK from India and is doing a great job there too. Its a lot more difficult for him as he is the only ambassador in Hong Kong

Unknowns
I believe since such a lot was going on in India and no one really had an idea I can presume a bit more of stuff going in other parts of India too.

Thats all folks, I guess by the time I finish it I must add up to say we are not that inactive but we do not like lime light or let others know what we are doing. Pleasemake sure to add a comment to praise these hardworking ambassadors in India.

My Setup

2011-09-01T05:38:08+00:00

Hello! I tink it is time to Update on my setup. I have an HP6515b Laptop and very few brains… With these limited resources i spend time having fun with my computer and enjoying life in general. My comp. is a real problem though.. Half the things on it were not supported on Linux, my favorite OS until recently leading to myself spending a lot of time thinking of workarounds to get simple stuff like internet working… All that has changed with the latest and (arguably) best from linux’s stable of OSes Hardy Heron. It brings integrated hardware support to my computer making it easy to setup and fun to use.

SaX3 – Status

2011-08-28T12:08:19+00:00

The changes I have made in SaX3 in the following week

1. Fixed a few nasty bugs.
2. The monitor module does not work which works now ( I need to be more careful the future)
3. Tried porting to openSUSE 11.3 ( Testers Required)
4. Pushed to factory, but it is hghly recommended to add X11:sax as your project repository for sax until 12.1

10 Things the Laptop Specs won’t tell you

2011-08-25T20:11:38+00:00

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Considering to buy a new Laptop? Which one to choose? Thanks to the Internet, you have easy access to almost all the details you need to look into before finalizing your buy (technical specifications of a laptop, features, its cost, comparison between models). Well, not entirely. Most of the websites that you’ll refer before buying a new laptop (or any electronic device) will give you technical specifications, features and reviews about the product. But, they don’t really give all that you might be looking for.

So what do they miss out?

Here’s a list of the 10 things that the laptop specifications are least likely to tell you.

(I have composed this list after my experience of purchasing a Dell Inspiron N5010 based solely on its technical specifications and features . In the past 5 years I have used HP6515b, Compaq 510, Dell Inspiron N5010, Lenovo G460)

1. Quality of the Touchpad

One of the primary input devices of of your laptop, a touchpad must have almost negligible friction when you glide your finger. That is, your finger must not stick to the touchpad when you use it. Plus, the left and right click buttons must require minimum effort to get pressed. Some of the newer laptops, do not have a good touchpad.

(The touchpad click buttons of Lenovo G460 are not very click-friendly. In case you happen to buy a laptop with a similar touchpad, you will always want to use a USB mouse instead of the stock touchpad.)

2. The Quality of the Screen

While you might be thinking about LCD or LED or OLED, here, I’ll focus on a much basic characteristics of the screen – its finish. You have two choices – Matte or Glossy. Most of the new laptops have a glossy laptop screen. The picture quality is good and the brightness is also better than the Matte screens. But, glossy screens can be very annoying since strong lighting causes glare on the screen which may cause eye-irritation as well. So, I suggest you decide whether you want the richness of the display or ease of reading.

(My Dell Inspiron N5010 has an irritating glossy screen whereas my HP 6515b has a very comfortable-to-read matte display.)

The next two are related to the cooling system of your laptop.

3. The Placement of the cooling vents and fan

The heat produced in your laptop is dissipated to the surroundings using a fan and cooling vents. Basically, the fan pushes the air out through the cooling vents. If the cooling vents are placed on the bottom side of your laptop, the vents will be covered when you place the laptop on a table or your lap. This will lead to inefficient cooling and hence, overheating. To avoid this, always make sure that the vents are on the sides and not on the bottom of the laptop.

(My Dell Inspiron N1510 has cooling vents on the bottom as well which makes it very hot while using on a table. Hence, I had to buy an additional laptop cooling fan to cool my laptop effectively.)

4. Is the Cooling system good enough?

These days, most of the laptops come with dedicated graphics memory. This creates an illusion in the buyer’s mind that he will be able to play graphics intensive games/applications on the laptop. While it may be true according to the technical specifications, the performance is not guaranteed. If the laptop does not have a good cooling system with adequate cooling vents (and positioned correctly), the laptop will end up getting overheated almost every time you play a graphics intensive game. That means no Call of Duty or GTA IV on your new laptop.

(My Dell N5010 used to shut down every time I played GTA 4 even though the specs were sufficient. I had to get the heat sink and fan replaced along with a better thermal paste to allow proper cooling of the laptop. )

Others things that the manufacturers are known to neglect:

5. The number and location of USB ports

USB Ports – One of the most commonly used feature of Laptops. Some of the laptops have only 2 or 3 USB ports. As I have found from experience, I make use of 3-4 USB ports most of the times. Plus, I find it more convenient to have the USB ports on the sides (as in most of the properly designed laptops) instead of having them behind the screen (as in my Dell N5010).

(e.g. HP6515b, Compaq 510 and Lenovo G460 have USB ports on the left. Don’t know what the Dell guys were thinking when they positioned the USB ports on the back side.)

6. The quality of charger wire ends

Most of the Chargers malfunction because of damage to the wires at the connector end. Hence, ensure that your laptop’s charger wire does not have inadequate protection at the connector end.

The Lenovo G460 has a decent L-joint connector end which eliminates most chances of damaged wire.

7. Primary functions of the Fn keys

The people who have always used F2 key to rename and F5 key to reload/refresh find it very irritating when those keys are given some other primary function, like “WiFi” or “Presentation Mode”. So in these laptops, by default, an F2 results in Wifi On/off instead of the Rename function. (For renaming on a Dell Inspiron N5010, you have to press (fn) + F2 which I find very stupid.) Similarly, some of the new laptops try to merge multimedia functions with the Fn keys in the process of which they assign different primary functions to F1, F2, F3 and F5 which some users may find very irritating.

8. The extent to which the monitor can be tilted.

There are a lot of people who like using their laptop by attaching it to their workstations. Restricting the tilt of the screen makes it very uncomfortable to view the screen when the laptop is attached to a workstation.

9. Ease of Removal of Hard Disk

There might be some (experienced) users who like the freedom of being able to replace the laptop’s stock hard disk with their old laptop hard disk or self-upgrade their laptop to one with a higher-capacity harddisk. In these cases, it is always better to be able to remove the harddisk without dismantling any other part of the laptop. (My HP6515b has a externally replaceable harddisk whereas my dell N5010′s harddisk is buried deep below the keyboard and can be removed only after dismantling the keyboard.)

10. The after-sales service

Each Laptop seller will pronounce his brand’s after-sales service to be the best. But, it is always better to check out reviews for that brand and closely examine the services they offer. (I always look for the availability of on-site warranty and replacements along with accidental damage protection.)

To save yourself from getting trapped with a laptop having one or more of these problems, I suggest that you always physically check out the Laptop you intend to buy. That will give you a better idea about it. Plus, check out reviews to make sure the laptop does not have any other problems.

These are among the most annoying things I have discovered after buying a new laptop.

Have you come across a similar situation when you neglected a feature while buying and later regretted it? Or Do you know other things which are important but the specifications don’t mention them? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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Filed under: BlogPost, Ideas' Central Tagged: Buying a Laptop, Compaq 510, Dell N5010, HP 6515b, Lenovo G460, List, Purchase

MS | MNC | Startup

2011-08-25T16:25:27+00:00

Well, the title clearly describes what the post is about. This is yet another confusion going in my mind currently. I am in my fourth year right now and am faced with three dissimilar choices. Most of my batchmates must be contemplating between MS and a job in a MNC but as usual I create [...]

About JanLokpal, Anna and misinformation

2011-08-17T23:19:29+00:00

A lot of shoddy articles are doing the rounds on Anna Hazare and his motives. A case in point is this article

1. That the Lokpal, as envisioned by the civil society team, will have para-judicial powers of all 3 arms of the govt. This is misleading as the Lokpal will have the same powers as the CBI does in bringing the case to court. If you have differences with the version produced by Mr. Hazare’s team then you have been given the opportunity and the means to read the proposed bill and give feedback and suggestions. I doubt you have used the means at your disposal and yet you questions and level allegations without having the decency to do you bit to stop corruption. Instead what you seem to suggest it do nothing and let the situation be. Inaction this time around would be akin to treason and in clear violation of our Fundamental Duties as citizens of India (yes, there is something called Fundamental duties).

2. Also that Hazare expressed support for Narendra Modi and Nitish Kumar. I take offence when you club Mr. Kumar with Mr. Modi. It is an insult to use their names in the same breath. I respect Mr. Modi as he is a Chief Minister of a state and has done admirable work in governance and development of his state. People continue to hark on Godhra and the Gujarat riots but they forget the good that has been happening after it. They prevent the Muslims of Gujarat from becoming part of the mainstream and keep them solid as a vote-bank for so-called secular parties. We are supposed to be a socialist, secular democratic republic. This implies that no party and govt organ should invoke caste and religion for votes. Yet governments and parties openly woo vote banks of caste and religion, either in the form of reservations or in the form of the fear of the hated enemy. In this case, the very enemy of the minority in Gujarat is their friend who is bringing about development and reducing corruption. It is time we let the minorities develop a free and open mindset devoid of fear and propaganda.

It is foolish to say that when Anna commended Mr. Kumar and Mr. Modi on their governance, he also supported Mr. Modi’s non-governmental deeds. I have seen the news clip in question and it is a sad commentary on your skills as an articulate citizen. Whoever does good governance should be applauded and feted in a time of mis- and non-governance in India. Granted that the way Mr. Modi came into power was controversial but what he has done since is nothing short of commendable. Whom would you prefer, someone with a murky background yet committed to development and clean governance or the current dispensation who do exactly the same things or even worse in the garb of secularism but never deliver anything substantial?

Mr.Nitish Kumar is the most respected and clean politician in India who has changed Bihar from the mess of Congress-RJD. We always blame Mr. Lalu Prasad for the mess that was Bihar but we always forget that Congress supported all his policies throughout his tenure. Mr. Kumar is a politician whom India would be lucky to have as our leader. He has initiated reforms at the grass-roots level, streamlined the police, reduced political interference, locked up criminals and created an enabling environment for Bihar to rise fast. He does not indulge in religious and casteist politics, uses development as the barometer for the voters to judge his government. His government has pioneered in the use of technology for efficient delivery of services to the poor and by connecting all district HQs to report to the CM directly each day. He has pioneered a bill to seize the property of corrupt officials so as to deny them the unfair lure of money that often influences investigations and courts judgments. This has broken an important link in the chain of corruption. There is lot to be learnt from his methods and ideas.

3. People all around say repeatedly that ‘an overhaul of the system‘ is required. This is just the sort of shoddy fence sitting that has led to our current corruption malaise. You only identify the symptom and say that the symptom must go but never bother to point out the how and wherefore. JP proposed a solution but no one followed it. Now Anna is doing something and instead of joining in a constructive debate, you are resorting to character assassination. I had hope to read a well researched article on the nexus between Anna and the ruling class but have ended up reading lame-ass shit that only points fingers. Please get your facts right assuming that you are an affected member of the general public and not an ass-licking stooge like Mr. Digvijay Singh, Mrs. Ambika Soni, Mr. Chidambaram and PM Singh.

4. I do not know about Anna’s exploits in Ralegaon-Siddhi, what I have read in various articles is what you have stated so I will not dispute this point, but I have sufficient faith in the people and myself to not support Mr. Hazare in case we see the ‘casteist, communal and patriarchal‘ policies emerging out in the open.

BMW Themes for Windows 7

2011-08-17T18:23:19+00:00

Alternate title : BMW Theme and Wallpapers for Windows 7 which was originally published on July 19, 2010. This is an updated version of the same post.

Just as I had updated the Arsenal Themepack for Season 2011/12, I thought of updating the BMW themepack as well. Hence, I looked over the Internet for some decent Wallpapers and turned them into a theme Compatible with Windows 7. Here, have a look:
(Download the themes by clicking on the corresponding thumbnails.).

However, I would recommend you to download the following theme which consists of the best backgrounds taken from the above four themes plus some more backgrounds.

Features:

Slideshow desktop
Picture position = Fill
Wallpaper changes every 10 seconds.
Shuffle = yes
Theme colour is Black. (Can be changed upon installation)

In case you are unable to download from the above links, you can download from the following links:

[Alternate Download Links]

BMW Recommended Edition

BMW 5 Series Official

BMW 7 Series, Z4, M3 Official

BMW Fans Collection of 21 Backgrounds

BMW Sedans

Other Information

BMW-5Series-Official consists of 21 High Quality Backgrounds (1920×1200) available for download from BMW.com official website.

BMW-7-Z4-M3-Official consists of 19 BMW Backgrounds in 1024×768 Resolution available for download from BMW.com Official website

BMW-Fans21 is composed of some of the best BMW wallpapers available. It is a collection of 21 Wallpapersin varying resolutions. If a background appears as stretched when applied, you can un-select it from Personalize> Desktop Backgrounds

BMW-Sedans is the old theme shared by me. It is composed of 38 Wallpapers with a mix of 5Series and 7Series Sedans.

BMW-Recommended is composed of 35 High Quality Wallpapers composed out of the above three themes. This is the best of the five themes mentioned here.

(To download the themes, click on the thumbnails of the themes )

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Click here to view more Themes and Desktop Backgrounds from the same blog.
Liked a theme? Wanna give your own recommendation? or Simply share your thoughts. Leave a comment below.

BMW Themes for Windows 7 featuring BMW M3, Z4, 5 Series Sedans & 7 Series Sedans. Grab them here! : http://t.co/BEJQlfD—
(@genobz) June 13, 2011

Filed under: Automobiles, Themes & Backgrounds, Windows Tagged: 5 series, 7 series, bmw, BMW M3, BMW Z4, Desktop Backgrounds, HIgh Quality, sedan, Themepack, Themes, wallpapers, Windows 7

SaX3 – Touchpad module

2011-08-17T13:08:58+00:00

Hi All,

Actually this report is 2 days late, those who have already added my repository and updated it should have the sax3-touchpad module.

For others, you can get it here

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/manugupt1/

From now on, I will focus a lot on fixing issues and polishing the UI, specially the touchpad one and yes offcourse clean some code.

I have moved to code.google.com but the transition is not complete yet

SaX3 – Monitor Module completed

2011-08-17T13:05:32+00:00

As part of GSoC Project, I am working on SaX3 and I have completed the monitor module.

You can get the latest repo from my home repository
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/manugupt1/

Please test it thoroughly,and let me know if common troubleshooting use cases for a single monitor is supported. If there is anything missing let me know. Xinerama is not supported
For both factory and 11.4.

Next up is touchpad, which I will finish by this thursday. And will begin pencil downs the following week onwards.

global warming and bollywood!!

2011-08-07T06:01:53+00:00

The iifa awards held at yorkshire this year was as usual grand and full of starry glitz.After all our bollywood was there in full force.ya, i watched the event on tv.It certainly feels great when you see that our bollywood flew all the way to yorkshire to give and take awards.and yes the iifa viz bollywood chose to attach itself to one of the most sensitive issues in the world today-GLOBAL WARMING.three cheers.and they even had to offer suggestions about how we can stop global warming. But someone has to ask all our filmstars if they can live a day without AIR CONDITIONERS?? I think that they need to be told how much CFC their ac's working day and night pump into the atmosphere? well, they also asked us to 'save electricity'. I was like.., is it some kind of a joke? Cant they lift up their heads and look around to see how much electricity they were wasting on putting all those stage lightings and to boast off their popularity!! They all claim to be bringing pride to India by putting up such shows in other nations! Another suggestion- 'CAR POOLING'...well I guess our beloved film stars forgot about it when they all arrived by their individual limos!! Imagine shahrukh,amitabh,salman,hritik,abhishek pooling a car..the thought is indeed amusing but not the reality..Why preach something they themselves cant practise??
Recently I read somewhere that the amount of water that is used for shooting a rain dance sequence in bollywood can meet the needs of water requirement for a colony of people for 30 days or so...
what else can I say..I was really outraged at this display of hypocrisy..I bet half of them sitting there didnt even know what 'global warming' means..Does the burden of curbing global warming lie only on the common man??Well, the day this planet yields to global warming,destruction wont see the faces of people it engulfs..star or no star!!

And this too shall pass

2011-08-07T02:09:18+00:00

(Writing after years.... but i wrote this a long time ago and publishing it now after making a few changes... it may not make sense to many.... but i hope you like it this way...)

This may not be the most original line

But whoever wrote it had alot in their mind

as it does sum up everything that comes into our lives

and we have to keep going, thinking

this too shall pass

When someone comes storming into your life

just after you thought that all is well, the way it is now....

but they come and hit you like a lightning bolt, that shakes you up

and despite everything, how much ever you wanted otherwise,

you do the right thing... and then hold on to it and think

this too shall pass

When the person you loved the most at one point

Has almost gone away from your life

but still a shadow sits there... somehow calling you back

but you harden your will power

tell yourself that once you're busy all over again, maybe

this too shall pass...

When nostalgia hits

When you would give anything to go back to old times
Where people knew you, where you meant something to some
and where, despite the problems you were in your comfort zone
But you do know that the bubble you are in, has to burst
That you have to move on to the next chapter in life
In the world where change is the only constant thing

We move on... hoping against hope that things will be good ahead
And the nostalgia will go back to its corner in your mind
and this too shall pass...

And then there are times when the happiness settles in
When we hope that none of it goes away
When "forever" does not seem absurd..
But as the good times roll, we wonder if they will last.. or like the bad times..
This too shall pass...

cisco CDO Written/Technical questions

2011-08-03T13:59:24+00:00

Recently, I had my Pre Placement Interviews for cisco after my internship. There were four rounds : Written round – 50 questions, 1 hour – 1 mark each, no negative marking. Aptitude, C, Electronics, Micro processors and Networking. Easy to score, cutoff was around 25 Technical interview- around 1 hour, questions from CV, OS, networking, [...]

Movies watched in June-July

2011-08-03T13:53:17+00:00

I watched a lot of movies ( 17 AFAIK) in June-Jul, perhaps more than any single year. Well, I had a nice theatre nearby and some great friends. X Men- First Class Ready Always Kabhi Kabhi Pyaar ka Punchnama Harry Potter Green Lantern Pirates of the Caribbean Transformers 3 Murder 2 Chillar Party Singham Shaitan [...]

The 10 Superstars of this Blog

2011-08-02T21:47:35+00:00

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In an attempt to introduce you to my blog, I thought of presenting to you some of the special posts/articles from this blog. Although this post should feature only 10 such posts, but I cheated and added another 1 to do complete justice to the award titles. Without wasting much precious time, here are the 6 titles which represent these posts:

and here are the 11 special posts according to the above titles:

The posts I enjoyed writing the most

Unlocking Tomorrow’s Traffic Gridlock

This was a post which was written by me after being inspired by a TED Talk from Bill Ford and an article from the NY times followed by reading several articles related to this in local newspapers. What I enjoyed most while writing this post was the sheer fact that my view of possible solutions changed as I read those articles and that helped me understand the problem in a better way. Although, this post does not answer what the ideal solution would be but it attempts to analyse the current systems in place and which ones would actually be feasible and successful in a developing country.

This IS how we study – The 5 Phase Study Cycle

This stick figured comic was sketched in a tribute to the college days. This comic illustrates how an average college student studies during his/her exams. Might remind you of your college days.

Achieving the best fuel economy from your vehicle

In this era when oil prices are beating all previous highs, I wonder why no one spreads awareness about the simple ways in which we can get the maximum mileage from our vehicle. In this post, I have put together a few things to keep in mind, while driving, which would ensure that you get maximum fuel economy from you vehicle enabling you to save more money and lower your carbon footprint. When I applied these things to my driving, I improved my car’s mileage by as much as 30%. Surprised?

My Most Helpful post

Remove Radio files from GTA San Andreas

This one has been, undoubtedly, the most helpful post for most readers. Not only because of the number of people benefited but because this provided a solution which was available nowhere else on the internet. If you go through the comments on this post, you will notice how glad some of the readers were. Though this post was written about 2 years ago, it continues to get some traffic from GTA forums which have linked to this post. and I must admit, that finding the solution to this problem wasn’t easy at all. It took me months to finally get a solution. But in the end, I was glad that I was able to cook up a solution for it.

The Posts with the maximum number of visits

HP Battery Check for Windows 7

When I wrote this post, I never expected it to get 34000 visitors to my blog (June09-Jul11). In fact, I had published this post without giving much thought. But as it turned out, this post was the only one which provided the solution to successfully install and run HP Battery check on Windows 7. As a result, HP support forums (plus some other forums) were linking to this post and sending a lot of traffic here. Two years from then, it still continues to get some visits (about 33% of its peak traffic) but, I believe it will die out in another year. Anyway, it has contributed well enough to this blog.

BMW Themes for Windows 7

Since I like BMWs, I compiled a theme comprising of BMWs for my laptop. I thought, ‘Why not share it?’ and I published a post featuring this. Over a period of 1 year (Jul10-May11), it managed to get 6300 visits. Decent. So in June11 when I updated my BMW theme with better backgrounds and reshared it on the post, something went wrong and the traffic has tripled since then. I still can’t figure out what I did differently this time which triggered this (except the number and quality of themes). Anyway, I have no complaints.

A Post with a Title I am proud of

How to remember a Billion Passwords

Well, there’s nothing to be ‘proud’ of this title except that I was trying to be creative about the post’s title. In this post, I have discussed a methodology which would help you remember the infinite number of passwords you have for your online and offline accounts. and yeah, this will be achieved without using any software or diary or similar things. The only place where you will store all of these will be your brain.

The posts I wish more people had read

10 Major Challenges that the Republic of India Faces today

Since we, the youth, are the architects of India’s future. I feel each one of us should know what problems our country faces so that we can actively work towards finding a solution for them. This post attempts to put together a few challenges that our country faces.

How to Recycle WordPress.com Blogs

Being a blogger on WordPress.com, I have faced moments when I could not get suitable easy-to-remember subdomain names for my secondary blogs since they were already taken by someone else. The irritating part was that these ‘someone else’ had merely abandoned the blog and rendered that subdomain useless when it could have been put to better use by someone else. But since even Regular bloggers can’t recycle a blog by default, a lot of WP.com blogs end up abandoned. This post has made an attempt to spread awareness about the Recycling of the blogs, provided the current owner of abandoned blogs takes a few simple actions.

The posts which ended up teaching me something

The two posts mentioned under this category were not written by me. I received these as forward mails and thought of sharing these on this blog.

The Mayonnaise Jar and 2 Cups of Coffee
When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee.

Carrot, Egg or Coffee??
When the hour is the darkest and trials are their greatest, do you elevate yourself to another level? How do you handle adversity? How do you handle yourself?? Are you a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean?

Do you feel any other posts deserves a mention as well? What do you think about these posts?

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Featured Image is a modified version of this image. This post was inspired from the 7 Links Challenge

Filed under: BlogPost Tagged: Annual, blog, Carnival, inspiration

Unlocking Tomorrow’s Traffic Gridlock

2011-07-28T11:57:01+00:00

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Alternate title : How to effectively solve the problem of ever growing traffic?

There is one thing which I have noticed while driving around in Kolkata – Most of the Privately owned cars are driven by hired-drivers instead of the car owners. This applies to people owning Audi Q7 as well as Tata Nano. May sound unbelievable, but a good number of low-end cars are driven by hired drivers while the owners prefer to sit comfortably on the back seat. Why? Ask a person who owns a vehicle and he would not hesitate to blame it on the pathetic state of roads and disgusting traffic. And this isn’t false.

But if we try to look at the bigger picture here, to identify the root of the problem, it is not difficult to rule out bad roads and bad driving sense as the major culprits of strenuous driving experience that the drivers face today. The actual culprit is the ever increasing number of privately owned cars.

According to an estimate, there are around 6 billion people worldwide today and the number of cars on our planet is around 800 Million. By 2050, the population is expected to rise to 9 billion people whereas the number of cars on the planet are expected to double. Considering the present scenario, when traffic management is becoming increasingly difficult worldwide, it is quite unimaginable as to how our present traffic management tools will be able to cope up with that much traffic. What is demanded is a Revolution and a change in the way how things work today in the transport industry.

Even though different people will suggest different solutions, the most successful solution is bound to be based on public transportation. As everyone knows, public transportation brings down the vehicle-to-passenger ratio hence reducing the number of vehicles on road. But, the present public transport system isn’t capable enough to cater to the current needs of commuters, let alone the increased requirements of the future. Hence, this calls for an innovative solution with public transportation at its heart.

In one of the recent TED talks by Bill Ford, who is the Executive chair of the Ford Motor Company, shared the same concern. In his talk, he demonstrated how we are addressing the problem of ever increasing cars in the wrong way. He calls for the development of technology which will enable inter-vehicle communication which will lead to a more uniformly distributed traffic along all routes.

At the very same time, when Americans suggest to solve this problem with better navigation and smart vehicle networks, the Europeans have chosen a different way to control this. In London , each car driver is required to pay a ‘congestion tax’ which is very much like the Toll tax except that there is no toll booth. Elsewhere, government regulations have put the maximum speed limit to around 10-20mph in city while completely restricting cars from entering several roads. All of this has been done to promote public transport and to prioritize the pedestrians. (Read – Across Europe, Irking Drivers is Urban Policy)

While the western world is busy devising their ways to tackle the imminent traffic gridlock, our country is cherishing the prospect of a proposed Metro Rail Project in some XYZ city. This is when, Metro Rail Projects are very expensive, can never recover the initial capital costs from their incomes, and are capable of serving only a fraction of the population since they are not well spread out in the city. The attached link (Bangalore – Metro is not a solution) explains why Metro Rail is not as successful as it is in cities like London. This document also compares the effectiveness of Metro Rails with that of expansion of Bus Networks. Further, as the effectiveness of Metro Rail was criticized and was considered too expensive and time-taking to setup, the possibility of setting up Monorails came into picture. As of now, Mumbai will be the first Indian city to test the concept of Monorails in the Indian Scenario. Chennai, where the construction of Metro Rails is still on, seems to be next Indian city where Monorails will be constructed. ( Read - Monorail or Metro Rail: the pros and cons )

In my opinion, I feel that using BRT (Bus Rapid Transport) systems is the best solution at hand for the developing nations. In India, this system was tested in Delhi where it has gained appreciation as well as criticism from the public. The reactions are obvious. People who travel by buses on BRT corridors appreciate the service whereas the car owners, travelling on the same route, criticize it for reducing the space available to them for driving hence causing even worse traffic jams. But the idea is simple. The ultimate objective is to benefit maximum people, which is being done as more people are transported by buses on these routes as compared to cars, and to prioritize public transport. The latter is very important since it provides an incentive to the public travelling by private vehicles to switch to public transport. BRT is also a more viable solution since it can be brought into existence with minimum gestation period and less amount of capital involvement as compared to the Metro Rails and Monorails. Plus, BRT corridors offer flexibility since a normal vehicle can also run on that track, when required, hence can be helpful in providing a faster track to Ambulances, Fire trucks and School Buses. But I will also state that the current BRT system has some faults which need to be worked upon before this system is applied elsewhere in the country.

What do you have to say?

(For more links on the same topic, check here)

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TED.com - View the TED discussion on this topic

This post features in the categories – [ Featured Posts | Opinion | Automobiles | Economics ]

Featured Images : Getting tired in jam | Traffic Kolkata | Delhi Metro | BRT Delhi

Do share your views on the same and suggestions if you have any.

Filed under: Automobiles, Business / Economics, Featured, Opinion Tagged: Bangalore, Bill Ford, Bus rapid transit, Chennai, Delhi, Developing Countries, Discussion, Economics, Europe, India, inspiration, leadership, Metro Rails, Monorail, Pedestrians, Population, Public Transportation, Tata Nano, Traffic congestion, Transportation and Logistics, Urban planning, World

How to Recycle WordPress.com blogs?

2011-07-27T18:17:48+00:00

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Alternate title : How to save abandoned WordPress.com blogs?

If you didn’t join WP.com early enough (by 2005 or 2006) even you might have faced something similar when registering your blog’s address. You must have noticed that almost all good and easy-to-remember blog names were already taken by someone else. This would not have been irritating if those blogs were being used. The problem was that most of these blogs had not been touched for years! Some of them, amazingly, still have their only post as ‘Hello World!’.

Ever since I tried to get my second blog on WordPress, I have found this idea especially ridiculous that even unused WordPress.com blogs cannot be recycled automatically according to the T&C of WordPress.com. I checked up the WordPress Support Forums and found nothing which could help me. Anyway, when I had finally managed to start my second and third blog, I realized that even I had committed the same mistakes! In my attempt to find suitable, easy-to-remember names for my blogs, I had managed to abandon 2 blogs. (What!!?). Plus, I had stopped updating another 3 blogs completely. Yes, I was one of those who had made it difficult for new-bloggers to find a suitable blog name by consuming 5 viable options.

In my bid to fix this, I ended up coming across the “Transfer Blog” option in “Dashboard >>My Blogs“. Making use of this, I laid out a plan that would fix it all. Here’s what is needed to be done,

1. Open the dashboard of the abandoned blog.

2. Create a new Page with an advertisement to “Adopt the abandoned blog”.

Name this page – “Adopt this Abandoned Blog!” and the page template as “Full Width”.

Then put an eye-catching graphic centred on the page,

(actual size 806×401 px)

and then follow it up with the text,

“This blog has been Abandoned. If you are interested in adopting this WordPress address, leave a comment below giving the reasons for acquiring this WordPress address. If found genuine, the blog will be transferred to the blogger. Cheers!“

(Alternatively, you can copy the following code and paste it in your post-body in the HTML mode.)

<p style="text-align:center;"><img class="aligncenter" src="http://genobz.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/adopt-abandoned-blog.png" alt="This blog has been Abandoned. But you can adopt it!" /></p>
<strong><p>This blog has been Abandoned. If you are interested in adopting this WordPress address, leave a comment below giving the reasons for acquiring this WordPress address. If found genuine, the blog will be transferred to the blogger. Cheers!</p>
<p>If you have an abandoned or unused blog that you want to put up for adoption, <a href="http://wp.me/pinhe-mB" title="Save WP blogs! Recycle them!" target="_blank">check this link -  bit.ly/saveWPblogs</a></p></strong>

Since, the ability to post comments on this page is a necessity, Enable comments for this page.

Now, it is essential that this is the first page that a blogger, who is looking for a suitable blog name, comes across. Hence, make this page the blog’s homepage. To do this,

3. On the Dashboard, Settings >> Reading.

Change the Front Displays to a static page – “Adopt this abandoned blog”.

Now, assuming that a blogger might be interested in adopting it and hence, leaves a comment on the page. After verifying that the comment is not from a spammer, the blog can be transferred.

4. Dashboard >> My Blogs. Upon hovering over the address of the blog, the option of Transfer blog is displayed. Click on “Transfer Blog”.

5. A “Big Important Warning” comes up. Select “I understand, now let me continue”. Then, Enter the username or email address of the blogger who is interested in adopting that blog.

6. Upon receiving the confirmation email in the registered email inbox (your’s), click on the confirmation id.

The Blog will then be transferred (Non-reversible) to the new blogger. This will be confirmed by a mail received by the new owner of the blog which looks something like this -

Pls remember that this confirmation will be received by the new owner of the blog. The old owner of the blog will then have no right or access to the blog.

As a fair warning, I suggest you use this only for blogs which were not used at all. This would make sure there are no misunderstandings from your blog followers (as mentioned in the T&C).

If, in case, you intend to transfer a used (but abandoned) blog, then delete all posts, pages and content before transferring. This would make sure your data (posts/pages) doesn’t end up in the wrong hands.

Good Luck!

Here are the abandoned blogs which i have put up for adoption. You can check them out and if interested you can adopt them as well.

group blogger .WP.com

catalytic thoughts .WP.com

made me mad .WP.com

streaming lyf .WP.com

jagarati .WP.com

red catalyst .WP.com

If you have abandoned any blog, you can do this as well. This will help in reclaiming unused or abandoned blogs and make them available to other bloggers who can put it to a better use.

If you do follow this approach to find a new blogger for your abandoned blog, I suggest that you share the links to the abandoned blogs in the comments below. Additionally, you can link back to this post (bit.ly/saveWPblogs)to help in the adoption of the above WP.com blog addresses.

Thanks so much for reading! I hope this helps in saving a few abandoned blogs.

What do you think about this? What else can be done to rehabilitate abandoned blogs?

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This post features in the category – [ WordPress Blogging Solutions ]

Filed under: Ideas' Central, Wordpress Tagged: Abandoned blogs, adopt, claim, Community, save, subdomain, unupdated, unused

New Blog

2011-07-13T19:26:09+00:00

Stuff moved people! Be kind and follow my new blog at saahil.posterous.com.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Quadrocopter - Part 8 - Failure

2011-07-12T01:56:30+00:00

The quadrocopter project was going fine till i decided to start soldering the circuit for the flight controller. I've burnt my hand countless times while soldering - frankly speaking im lousy at it - but this was worse.

I was powering the circuit from the BEC (Battery Elimination Circuit) on one of my ESCs. As it happens due to the genius of my soldering technique i accidentally shorted the GND and the VCC of the BEC together and as soon as i connected the battery there was a crack sound and the inevitable distruction of the ESC. Thankfully we did have a spare ESC at home that was being used in a hovercraft project that my flatmate was working on so that got sorted.

The Burnt-Up ESC.

After that things got worse. The maiden test flight - not conducted by me - of the quadrocopter (done just by connecting the ESC's to the RF receiver with no gyros and no control circuitry) did not go well - as expected - and the entire thing just flipped over after going about 8-10 feet in the air and came down in a less than controlled fashion (Damn gravity). The damage was minimalist - the lower acrylic sheet got a crack on it and 2 of the propellers had light scratches on them. After this i decided to replace the acrylic sheets with something less brittle some time later decided to make the entire structure - this time with a few changes.

Then that someone accidentally sat on the flight controller board for the quadrocopter (also called Luke) and broke it into 2 pieces. Thankfully i had spares for all the components for the board so i will be re-soldering it and this time i will be careful.

I will write a post as soon as im done with the new structure and the new board but that could be some time.

Quadrocopter - Part 7 - Updates

2011-07-12T01:56:23+00:00

Its been about 2 months since I've written about anything on the blog. This was mainly because i got lazy and partly because i had nothing new to report. So now for the updates on the quadrocopter project.

Firstly i got the pyramid ready and fixed on top of the quadrocopter.This is how it looks:

Note:The RF Remote in the pic is not the one im using now. This was just a temporary 9ch radio that the people at RCHobbyAddict.com sent me until the ones i ordered arrived. It was freaking awesome though.

I also added some acrylic sheet pieces to be used as landing gear which was not a very good idea so i replaced them with some foam pieces - they work extremely well.

I also measured the weight of the quadrocopter and it was about 1.7Kg (including 2 batteries).

I then finally received the the RF transmitter and receiver that i ordered (Hobby-King 2.4GHz FHSS 6Ch Tx-Rx - Mode 2) from RCHobbyAddict.com at a reasonable price.This worked rite out of the box and all i had to do was plug it in. I've done some testing and was able to get about 600 meters range (Line of Sight) after which the limitations of my testing area came into play and so i left it as it is.

PS: I just bought an apple keyboard and by-jove its comfortable to type on so i hope there will be a lot more blogging.

Wish your fans automatically – AutoBudder

2011-07-11T11:37:43+00:00

Want to wish your fans automatically on their birthday ? Want to send Discount vouchers on birthdays ? Birthday marketing ? Want to increase business of your restaurant ? Now, you can wish FANS of your Facebook Fan Page automatically by using AutoBudder for Fan Pages. Just install the app and you are done !!! [...]

First month at cisco, Bangalore

2011-07-11T11:24:14+00:00

Its been almost a month since I started my internship in cisco, Bangalore. By far, its been the best month of my life. New work environment, new place, new home, new flat mates and new friends While I am writing this post, I remember the movie Wake up Sid and the feature by Konkona Sen [...]

The Transition

2011-07-10T19:58:34+00:00

Well to start with I would like to say that, don't let the title fool you at all!!! I have already written a couple of blogs about the change from college life to the "professional" one and as I sit down to write this one, my intentions are totally different (WARNING: I may end up saying the same thing). As I sit here, at my home today, jobless and useless for past couple of months, I have had the time to think, which by the way few people complain that I do a lot! I have the benefit of hindsight.

Most of us have already received our final semester mark sheet and the others are in the process of getting theirs. Soon the university will have a convocation and we will be officially declared as "engineers". This thought has unsettled me.

One day, I was just sitting at my home, lazing around, no worries, not tension and then some one asked me when will I come back to Patna next. I did not know how to answer that question because I din't have an answer. Earlier it was so easy to say summer/winter vacation but it struck me then that there are going to be no more summer/winter vacations. I would not say that its a bad felling all together, on one hand I am happy that I am going to be earning now, the whole idea of being independent is fantastic while on the other hand the idea of things changing so drastically is little frightening. So I though and I looked back and this blog is the result of that process.

First year of college is always accompanied with excitement. There is a transition from school to college. In your school you were the senior most and now all of a sudden you are like a puppy lost in the crowd, left out there to fend for himself. I am sure college life is one thing which everyone looks forward too. First year was filled with getting used to the place and meeting new people. You had to brave the rains and then sit and listen to the lectures and also get used to the accent. I remember how everything sounded Greek initially, well not that we were not interested but how to you cope up when "M" is pronounced as Yuuummmm and "N" as Yeeenn. You make loads of friends in your initial days, some stay with you while you just move a little away from few. First year went in no time and before I realized I had loads on my hand.

Second year was the time when we moved into our respective branches. Our one big section was divided into smaller ones. It was this year that we cemented the relations we had formed and made a few new ones. You don't have any kind of tension in the second year, placements are still couple of years away and MBA is just a word that sounds good in news. Two of my friends, Rahul Sharma a.k.a Lallu and Jerry had already shifted out and it was at their place that we had the first house party. One hell of a night of which i still have some vivid recollection. Sidharth Singh a.k.a Sid (though my personal favorite is honey singh) graduating from boy to man and Mohit Morarka a.k.a Muru dancing like a fool with his broken arm (he always had one part of his body in plaster at all times) were the high points of the night. There was also this event of Abhishek Roy a.k.a Roy leaving us in the middle of the road and taking lift in a "shared" auto to get some stuff and never returning back. I remember how much Rohit Pandey a.k.a RP cursed him that day. So second year went in exploration which also included a couple of road trips. I say only couple of road trips cause at that time only Rohit Kumar (Roh) had a bike. So every time we planned something, we had to make like hundred phone calls to arrange for transportation. In class, Piyush (Poppa), Sid, Sarthak (Sexy), Divya, Saumya, Madi ensured that there was never a dull moment but then they were in a different section, in our section we had Mayur (MJ), Toshu, Roh to ensure we had all the entertainment required to cope up with the "difficult and tiring (read: boring)" course. Lot of times it used to end up on MJ, Toshu and me being on one side and taking Roh's case.

Third year was the time when all of us moved out from hostel into "our own" place. We even got more vehicles and naturally the road trips increased. Personally for me it will always be a big year as I got a car, thanks to Papa and Kushal. Parents generally have this apprehension that once their kids leave hostel they are bound to get "spoilt". This made me laugh cause I seriously could not figure out how much more can we be possibly be spoilt. Jokes apart most of us did better academically once we shifted out. It was also the time when we had more number of parties and the secretary of our building was a constant nuisance. Third year was marked by people doing all sort of things. The definition of fun was changed and just when you thought this is it, everyone said, "bring it on". People throwing up in bathrooms, dancing till late, laughing for no reason.

The beginning of the final year was a very unusual one. My brother, Abhinav, had decided to join MIT and I was to come with him to Manipal, full twenty days before my course was scheduled to start. To my relief I had MJ and Poppa for company there besides RP, Jong and Roy. Till date when Poppa and me sit together we end up talking about "those twenty days" at least once! Well I am sure Poppa would agree that this is not an appropriate forum to discuss those days. Final year saw us touching new heights in every aspect. We did all that one could possibly think of and before we realised placement season was upon us! The first company to visit the campus was Delloite. Only a few of us got into that! The placement season for us, "less intelligent" ones, opened with EMC. Morarka, got into it and gave us a reason to be happy! It was followed by Sid's Citrix! I remember us shouting "Sidhhhhaaarth Singh Sidddhhhhaaarth Singh" at KC! Soon all of us were placed and we then realised that what every any one might say, we did everything possible there and still ended up with a job in our hand.

In the middle there were those random/planned trips to Goa. The number of road trips rose. We even played kabbadi at one of the beaches. Saraf's one liners kept us going even on the worst possible days.

Today, when I pick up my phone to call any one I have to ask my self if he will be in office or not? The transition, so far, has been a smooth one. People have more or less settled down and have become comfortable with their new life. I just hope this is not the silence before the storm and that we continue to be what we have been!

Cheers and Good luck!

SaX3 – Get your hands dirty

2011-07-07T21:06:59+00:00

Its been a long time I posted anything, but things look promising now, SaX3 is moving forward and 2 of its module have been completed, the keyboard module and the mouse module, so please test it and give me your feedbacks and if there are any bugs. BUGS will certainly be squashed, I dont know about UI changes. Suggestions are welcome. I plan to work on touchpads next.

For factory users

For 11.4 users

Otherwise, you can all use my home repositories too http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/manugupt1 for the more connvinient zypper way

Feedbacks and comments are most most welcome.

6 months in Citrix / Bangalore

2011-07-05T03:02:48+00:00

Lot of time has passed since i last updated my blog, i have finished the 7th Semester of my engineering and just one step from my degree, i have moved from Manipal to Bangalore for my last (8th) semester and I was interning at Citrix Systems, working with NetScaler Tools team. The last few days as a college student have turned out to be awesome, living in Bangalore with friends is fun (except for Bangalore’s night life which sucks big time). During the last 6 months i have learned at lot about life, universe and everything :p .

The experience at Citrix was great mostly because of the kind of work and guidance i was given, we arrived in Bangalore on 3rd Jan, it was weird that no accommodation was provided to us for the initial weeks, but since manipal is one night journey away from bangalore, we came here after our exams and searched for a flat, we finally decided on a flat in Cambridge Layout (near Indiarnagar) since it was pretty close to our work place which was near brigade road !! I was working with the NetScaler Tools team on a internal stress testing tool called BlackWidow, the best thing about my work at citrix was that i had to work with FreeBSD kernel, which meant i had to use *NIX development tools (cscope/vim/kgdb which is what i am pretty comfortable with) and not some bloated IDE (for me Vim + cscope > any IDE) which i had to learn for my last internship at microsoft, this helped me get started pretty quickly which surprised my mentor, although i was not assigned the feature i wanted to implement still my work was pretty interesting.

I found Citrix to be a really awesome company to work at, it has a lot of interesting products, the people are friendly and helpful and the work culture is great, ohh and not to forget the facilities they provide to employees, but one thing that I noticed during my internship is that the work can become monotonous, so you really need to pitch in and get some interesting work or one might end up doing similar work again and again, but then i think thats the case with most of the places.

The main motive behind me coming to bangalore was meeting interesting people, not that people in Manipal were less interesting, i wanted to meet with some ‘similar’ minded people. I had hardly talked to other people from my college who interned with me, but they turned out be interesting, also interns from other colleges like PeeShit (read PESIT) were interesting. I didnt actually went out to meet people, but then i guess i can do that now as i am going to stay in bangalore. A few days back i met folks at Artoo on their Demo Day, they are doing some really interesting work.

My internship is over but I will be staying in Bangalore for my first full time job, i have a few on campus and off campus offers but more on that some time later, Thanks to my flat mates Mikhail Jacob, Sohil Himanish and Tushar Dadlani for making my stay in Bangalore awesome and Thanks to my mentor, manager, all fellow interns and everyone else at citrix for making my work awesome, you people rock !!

This is how we study – The 5-Phase Study Cycle

2011-06-25T13:52:51+00:00

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This IS how we study : The 5-Phase Study Cycle wp.me/pinhe-kp #college #exams #comic #hostel—
Pr J (@genobz) June 25, 2011

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Filed under: Stick Figure Comics Tagged: College, Comfort, Comics, Examinations, Hostel, Stick Figures, Student, Study

10 Major Challenges that the Republic of India faces today

2011-06-24T12:34:02+00:00

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Today, India possesses the fourth largest economy in the world and her prominence in the global economy is increasing even further. If predictions are to be believed, the PRC (People’s Republic of China) will surpass the US economy by 2020 even as India overtakes Japan to become #3. It goes further, with predications that India will overtake the US by 2050. It is only natural that we, being Indians, will approve these predictions. After all, these are in our favour. The experts, from around the world, have given obvious reasons – Second Largest Population, Increasing Business Opportunities, High Economic Growth, Power of Democracy (to overtake China)… and the list continues. The experts, from India, sing on the same tunes, though some of them also highlight the biggest challenges that India faces. Obviously, we prefer to hear people praising our country and hence, Indian media shows the same picture.

However, I believe that we, the youth, are the architects of the India as we see it 30 years from now. Yes, we have to our advantage those points, which were pointed out by experts worldwide, which will help us in achieving that. But, these favourable points are not enough. As architects of Modern India, we need to know and address the grave problems that our motherland faces today.

To Help us understand and address these problems, Ramachandra Guha, a historian and biographer based in Bangalore, listed the 10 major challenges that the Republic of India faces today, which should be overcome if we want the above predictions to hold true. Though this list is not exhaustive, it still states some of the serious problems.

The entire talk given by him can be accessed here,

In case you intend to watch the video, which I strongly recommend, here is some info which might come handy:

The video is 1 hour 23 mins long
Ramachandra Guha starts explaining the 10 major challenges from 12 min 30 secs onwards.
After he finishes explaining them, he lists them again. (at 1 hour 2 mins 20 secs)
The Round of Queries begins at 1 hour 8 mins

But since the talk is quite long, I will give you a brief highlight of the same below. There is also a brief description for the points which may not be entirely clear by the headlines itself.

1. Left Wing Maoist Insurgency (includes tribals, naxalites etc.)

2. Currently recessive but ever present Right Wing Religious Fundamentalists (includes BJP, the RSS etc)

3. Decline and corruption of democratic centre and Conversion of Political parties into family firms.

No person in our country is a stranger to the corruption that prevails in our country today. We may be trying to set everything right using tools like LokPal but the required efforts go much beyond that. At the same time, everyone is familiar with the family business called ‘Political Party‘. While, these Parties were born with genuine problems to be addressed, their heirs seem to have somewhat lost track. (e.g. Kanimozhi, suspect in 2G Scam, is the daughter of DMK supremo M. Karunanidhi)

(Interesting Read : The Curious Case of Rahul Gandhi )

4. Degradation of Public Institutions

5. Growing gap between the Rich and Poor

6. Rapid pace of Domestic Environmental Degradation

Some of which include

Rates of pollution in Indian Cities amongst the highest in the world
Major Rivers are dead
Short Sighted agricultural policies which have led to groundwater level depletion below safe limits.
Waste disposal (which includes Nuclear Disposal)

7. Apathy of the Media

The Indian media, which had a major role in nurturing nationalism during the time of Independence and in furthering the idols of Indian Democracy post-independence, plays a less than optimal role in addressing the present day issues. Media is more concerned about readership, TRP and wealth and concentrates unnecessarily on Celebrities and Superstardom.

8. Political Defragmentation & Policy Incoherence

Though, it is justified to say that two party or three party system cannot take care of each community and represent each problem effectively. But today, because of the huge number of such parties, at the time of election, it is very unlikely that a single party will form a clear majority. Hence, the parties require coalition with smaller parties. These small parties tend to ask for most profitable ministries in return of the coalition. The Multiparty coalition is a constraint against rational far sighted policy making. It merely becomes the gateway to corruption in the government.

9. Unreconciled Border lands

While the majority of Indians are proud to call themselves Indian, there are few people from states like Kashmir, Nagaland and Manipur, who are more inclined towards converting these states into independent nations.

10. Extremely Unstable Neighbourhood

It is natural that quite a lot of us will tend to disagree with these problems classifying them as not-important or not-critical or an exaggeration of a nominal issue. But, Mr Guha is not the sole person to believe that the road to superstardom for India faces these many challenges. There are many other notable figures, like Amartya Sen, who have stated similar problems.

(Read Amartya Sen questions India’s title as “knowledge superpower” | Financial Times)

Similarly, an interesting perspective has been presented in the Economist, where the GDP of Indian states are compared with GDP of nations.

(Check it out here - Comparing Indian states and territories with countries | The Economist)

Hence, addressing these problems is the first step towards building the Modern India that we dream of. Since, most of these problems can only be addressed by the state, the role of the citizens is to choose the right people to represent them i.e. the right politicians. Additionally, The citizens and the media need to create awareness about the same and ensure that due attention is given to it by the state.

Do what you can to contribute.

Help spread the words.

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10 Major Challenges that the Republic of India faces today http://wp.me/pinhe-ka—
Pr J (@genobz) June 24, 2011

This post features in the categories – [ All Featured Posts | Life in India | Opinion ]

Do share your views on the same and suggestions if you have any.

Featured Image – A day in photos (Aug 9, 2009) Slide 28 | Washingtonpost.com

Filed under: Featured, Life In India, Opinion Tagged: 2G spectrum scam, Corruption, Environment, Fundamentalists, India, inspiration, Insurgency, leadership, Media of India, Neighbourhood, Politics, Poverty, Ramachandra Guha

A Random Evening in the Life of Kolkata

2011-06-22T12:34:15+00:00

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Calcutta, West Bengal

7PM. It had just stopped raining and I was driving towards the Vegetable shop with my mom. Just as I dropped her off in front of the shop, I drove off to look for a parking spot. Unusually, there was hardly any place to park my car, so, I stopped by a spot which was occupied by two (Cycle) Rickshaws parked next to each other. While still in the car, I called out to the Rickshaw driver,

(The conversation was partly in Hindi and partly in my pathetic Bengali, but for the sake of respect for Bengali, I’ll use English)

‘Dada (Bengali for Elder Brother), Can you please move your rickshaws a bit so that I can park my car here…’

The young rickshaw driver resisted and called the older rickshaw driver, who was even more stubborn, to convince me to drive away. But, as the younger guy got a customer, he cycled away on his rickshaw, which gave me enough space to park my car. It took me about 5 minutes to reach the shop, from the time I had dropped off my mom there. By the time I reached the shop, my mom had already purchased the vegetables. As she moved towards the Fruit shop, I stood there in front of the fruit shop with the vegetable packets.

About a minute later, I see a man, in his fifties, walking through the mud pool which was in front of the shop. He stopped by the carton which had Litchis in it and picked up around 5 of them. He looked around and found that I was looking at him. He removed the skin of one of the litchis, those that he had picked up, and started eating it while walking towards the shop. With his casual attitude and walk, one would say that he part-owned that shop. My mom stood in front of the fruit shop with a lady standing close to her. The fruit seller was engaged in calculating the amount of money that my mom was supposed to pay for those fruits. The old guy stopped when he was just behind my mom. I looked away to keep a check on my car, which was parked some distance away. When I looked back, towards my mom, she was handing over the cash to the fruit seller. The old guy, as he ate the last litchi he had picked up, walked back towards the litchi carton and picked up 3 more, keeping 2 of them in his pocket. He looked up, and saw me looking at him again. Still confident, he simply walked away in the opposite direction as he ate the last litchi.

As I walked back towards our car, with my mom, I pointed towards the Cycle Rickshaw which was still parked behind my car.

‘Mom, The driver of that rickshaw just came to the fruit shop and took away more than a hundred grams of Litchi without paying for them..!’

*****

and you thought that every person pays for what they consume??

Poverty, as seen above, is one of the main reasons of corruption at the grass root level.

( 1kg litchi = 100 Rupees (as of now) = 35 Litchis. You can do the rest of the Maths.)

Featured Images – Rickshaw

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A Random evening in the Life of Kolkata #poverty #dishonesty #corruption http://t.co/dEL9cnw—
(@genobz) June 22, 2011

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Filed under: Featured, Life In India Tagged: Corruption, Cycle rickshaw, Dada, Dishonesty, Fruit, India, Kolkata, Litchi, Math

Travelling in Bangalore: A few things to help you out

2011-06-21T13:49:28+00:00

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Alternate title : Few things to keep in mind while getting around in Bangalore

Hi! I have been in Bangalore for almost 5 months now, and I felt like contributing in some way for the benefit of the people who have arrived in Bangalore for the first time or who will be coming here in the near future.

Here are a few things I have learnt about getting around in Bangalore:

Just arrived!

If you have just arrived in Bangalore, try and go for a prepaid Taxi or Auto. Avoid random Taxis and Autos at all cost, unless of course, you are ready to shell out up to 2 or 3 times the actual travelling fare. If you do not have a lot of luggage, you can also use the BMTC (Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation) buses.

[@ The Airport] Take either Prepaid Taxi or a BIA(S) bus. If you are looking for a cheap way out, use the BIA(S) bus service. If you are unsure which bus to take, just talk to a conductor and he will be glad to help you out. Do NOT fall prey to those Cab Drivers who might try and lure you for a City drop at 200 or 300 rupees. Those are shared Taxis and you never get to know before hand who will be travelling with you. So, Avoid it.

You can also pre-book a Taxi from one of these Tele-booking Services.

Meru Cabs ( Online Booking | 080 – 44 22 44 22 )

Just Dial ( Online Contact | 080 – 69 99 99 99 )

Commuting around the City

If you are going to a place for the first time, I suggest you look up the route beforehand on Google Maps and decide the best mode of transportation accordingly.

(Bangalore is the one of the few Indian Cities to have bus routes available on Google maps)

Own a smartphone?? Use it!!

If you own one, it could be of great use! Use Google maps on your smartphone to get Bus routes on the go. You can plan your travel accordingly.

Here’s something else you might find helpful while travelling around the city…

By Bus

If possible, take the BMTC Volvo as they are faster, safer and more comfortable. If you do not have an idea of the Bus routes, you can use the following links

(BMTC Route Search | Official BMTC Route Search | BMTC Bus stops )

Download : BMTC Route Maps in PDF | BMTC Bus Stops and Bus numbers (xls)

By Auto-Rickshaw/Taxi

Most of the Auto Rickshaw Drivers will not leave an opportunity to rob you. The Actual Rate is approximately 8 rupees per km. So try and bargain accordingly. It is highly possible that the Auto driver will merely drive away on hearing your bargain. Don’t be offended, it’s their style to say no!

Consider the normal charges are Z rupees, they will ask for 1.5 x Z after 10pm and before 7 am. In fact, the union has approved the 1.5 times charge post 10pm, so it is fair. Though, that does not mean that their Rate meters are in perfect condition. You can expect that the actual fare will turn out to be 25% more than the true fare.

After 10pm, if you have to travel at least 8-10km, take a cab instead. The Cab is likely to charge 150-160 bucks for 4 people whereas the Auto will demand about 200 (1 Auto). Again, the cabs I talk of are the pre-booked ones. If you use services like the JUST DIAL ( 080 – 69 99 99 99), you are likely to get a cab within 10 mins of booking. So use that instead. It’s much safer as well. At all costs, avoid the shared Taxis, like the Tata Sumo and Indica which stop at quite a lot of bus stops for pickup.

Here are two contrasting experiences involving Auto-Rickshaws.

Humanity still exists… But with a twist

Scary Auto Experience

Outbound?

When using buses to travel from Bangalore to another city, travel only in KSRTC buses or VRL travels. Both of these have well maintained Volvo buses which ply on time.

KSRTC Online Booking | VRL Travels

By Train

Oops! I haven’t travelled by Train to/from Bangalore so can’t give a firsthand guide to that. I guess the only links I can give are IndianRail.gov.in and IRCTC.com.

Let me know if I missed something…

(For exhaustive info on travelling in Bangalore, Check WikiTravel )

Featured Images – Traffic | BIAS Volvo | MeruCabs | Fare Meter

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Travelling in Bangalore: (http://wp.me/pinhe-jp) #guide #travel #bangalore #volvo #taxi #online http://wp.me/pinhe-jp—
(@genobz) June 20, 2011

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Filed under: Featured, Life In India Tagged: Auto Rickshaw, Bangalore, Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation, Bengaluru International Airport, Google Maps, India, Indica, JustDial, Meru Cabs, Smartphones, Tata Sumo, Taxi, Volvo Buses

Direct Link to Subscribe to a WP.com Blog

2011-06-17T20:07:43+00:00

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(Alternate Title : How to make a Custom designed Subscribe button work on WP.com blogs?)

A simple question,

How do I make my readers subscribe to my posts simply by clicking on a link??

(Instead of them discovering the Subscription widget on their own)

This question has struck many bloggers, specially on WordPress, like me.

Here is how I have tackled this problem :

Post a link to the Subscription Widget so that the reader is redirected to the widget where he can click on ‘Subscribe me now!’ to get subscribed successfully.

(Thank you WordPress Support Staff. Specially, Mr Blake W.)

Here is how you do it -

View the source code for the page (generally the homepage) which has the Subscription Widget

Google Chrome – Wrench Menu > Tools > View Source
Internet Explorer 9- F12 Developer Tools > View > Source > Original
Mozilla Firefox – View > Page Source

For demonstration purpose, check the source code of this page.

Use Ctrl + F to find this – widget_blog_subscription

You should get a result similar to the one shown in the following image.

Check the id as shown in the figure

As you would have seen, the id for my Subscription Widget is blog_subscription-5

Hence, the direct link to my subscription widget would be:

http://genobz.wordpress.com/#blog_subscription-5

Try it out by clicking here – Subscribe now!

Similarly, you can get the direct link to your subscription widget which you can, then, use in your posts to make it easier for your readers to subscribe to your posts.

FAQ -

Don’t I need to inform my readers before hand that they would be redirected to a widget on clicking that link since they might not be expecting that?

Yes, you might want to do that. Read the Next page to know how to do that.

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Direct Link to Subscribe to a WP.com Blog http://wp.me/pinhe-iU—
(@genobz) June 17, 2011

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Filed under: Wordpress Tagged: blog, Custom, Demonstration, Direct Link, HTML, Internet, Source code, Subscription, Widget, WordPress, WP.com

SaX3 – GSoC 2011 – Weekly Report 2

2011-06-12T16:32:41+00:00

This is my 2nd report, this week not to show much for the users, but we did a quite interesteing things. SaX is now module oriented.So, if anyone wants to write a module for SaX3 it is possible now. Besides the important things which I did was

Learn the augeas C api
Submitted a .desktop lens for augeas
It is module oriented
Tried out Doxygen
SaX3 is now localised.

The launcher is now complete Again, the source code is here http://github.com./manugupt1/sax3 Regarding modules, If anyone wants to check out how modules work, they work using .desktop files in /usr/share/sax3/modules.d. If you will remove it we can remove it from the launcher.

Using the new Facebook PHP SDK 3.0 with offline access

2011-06-11T18:20:29+00:00

As Facebook recently launched the new SDK which follows the oAuth 2.0 [1]. There are couple of things which you need to keep in mind and modify your code so that your app works fine !! getSession() function is removed and getUser() is added which just returns the UID ( if not authenticated then 0). [...]

Social cause or a political gimmick

2011-06-08T00:30:52+00:00

I am not a political guru, nor am I an expert on social causes or rallies. I haven’t even been a part of a cause. I don’t support or oppose the concept of rallies or protest which are organized these days in India. I have not voted even once in my life. My experience might be very limited. However, I do consider myself to be a responsible citizen. I have no doubt that I love my country and understand the problems that it faces. I somewhat understand how things work here. I feel as patriotic when I hear the national anthem as anyone of you would feel. India winning the cricket world cup was as happy a moment for me as it was for you. However, having said all this, I look at my country; I wonder is this how our Father dreamt of it as? Is this what Bhagat Singh gave his life for? When Jawaharlal Nehru said, “At the stroke of mid night hour, when the world sleeps, India shall awake to life and freedom”, did he mean this?

Democracy seems to be the most loved and loosely used word these days. People can do anything these days in the name of democracy. You are not happy with the government – protest, you are not happy with your employer – go on a strike, you are not happy with the marks awarded to you by the board – shout slogans, after all you are living in a democracy, that too the largest one, so you have the right to protest.

It’s true that right to protest is one of the basic rights in democracy. Democracy, after all is, “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Everyone should get a fair chance to say what they feel. After all, the entire purpose of democracy is defeated if we can not speak our mind out. Democracy, in other words, gives us freedom. Freedom to express ourselves, freedom to live our lives the way we want to and freedom to do what we please but of course within legal limits. It is not wrong to say that today democracy is probably one of the best gifts that we could have got. We can say that we are gifted to be born in a democratic country. Right from the time we are born, the constitution assures us, at least theoretically, that we will not be oppressed and are free to have an opinion.

Off late, we have seen a lot of protests being organized at large scale, to either curb the menace of corruption or to bring back the “black” money or just because someone is unhappy with the management of his company. As soon as someone realizes that there is some social problem another person is already protesting for the same. While I am not against the freedom guaranteed to us; we all must understand or at least try to understand if we, as a society, are ready for such a freedom. Are we, in general, responsible enough to carry the load of this freedom and the responsibilities that comes with it on our shoulder?

Today, we like a leader, not for any other reason but just because he is famous and we have been told by our parents and more “informed” peers that he is an honest and true leader. We don’t even stop to ask ourselves what exactly are the values that the leader stands for. If someone asks us, we simply say, “Oh, we believe in him and what he says.” A lot of times we don’t even know what the leader actually says. Since, we live in democracy and are entitled to our opinion; we just make an opinion without even considering various factors. Again, I am not saying that this implies to all of us, but then I am sure you must have come across people or at least heard of them or seen one on TV who are protesting or are part of a large gathering and when you ask them that what exactly are their demands, the best reply that they can come up with is, “Oh, its ‘something’ about XYZ, I don’t have much idea but I know this is a noble cause because my friend told me so and I am here just with him!”

I agree protests are the integral part of democracy. A lot of times we need protests to keep the government in check and get a point across. At times a simple plea or a letter is not enough to get you justice or to ensure that your point is heard. No one ever questioned the candle march for Jessica Lall and the slogan “Justice for Jessica.” However, we as responsible citizens should not misuse this “luxury”. We should be aware of the issue at hand.

I am of the belief that the power to protest should only be exercised by a person when he or she truly believes in something, however major or minor it might be. For every individual the magnitude of the issue varies according to ones need and position. There is nothing wrong in standing for what you believe in and your point should be heard. It is never wrong to stand up for yourself; however one should be responsible enough not to misuse this power.

This power to protest when misused becomes a menace and a tool to cause unrest. It no more remains a just cause but merely a political gimmick. I would just like to ask you one thing, where should we draw the line? When should we stand up and say enough is enough? How do we ensure that we don’t get carried away and end up being on the wrong side? When do we start to say, this is it, you can not gain sympathy and support under the disguise of social welfare? Time has come for each one of us who claim to be a proud Indian to stand up for our beliefs but at the same time make an informed decision. It is only when the people start to separate the good from the bad, genuine from fake and light from dark; will the country rise.

Only when every citizen becomes responsible and worthy enough to carry the “burden” of democracy on his shoulder shall the country rise.

*DISCLAIMER*

There is no intended reference to any person living or dead. Any such resemblance is purely coincidental.

Releasing Zeitgeist Datasources 0.8.0

2011-06-05T21:12:28+00:00

One behalf of Zeitgeist Team I am happy to release zeitgeist-datasources 0.8.0

Zeitgeist Datasources are a collection of extensions/ addons/plugins which log the activities of the user and insert it in the zeitgeist engine which can be later used for lot of useful tasks. These extensions insert lots of extra events apart from the ones logged by zeitgeist-datahub
http://wiki.zeitgeist-project.com/Getting_Started

The extensions present are

Eye of GNOME
gedit
Totem
Rhythmbox
Tomboy
Chrome
Emacs
Firefox 4.0
Geany
Telepathy
Vim
XChat
Bazaar

Get the release tarball from here
https://launchpad.net/zeitgeist-datasources/0.8/0.8.0

Few of the extensions require Zeitgeist 0.8.0 to build.
https://launchpad.net/zeitgeist/0.8/0.8.0

Launchpad project Page

Datasources: https://launchpad.net/zeitgeist-datasources
Zeitgeist: https://launchpad.net/zeitgeist
Libzeitgeist: https://launchpad.net/libzeitgeist
Zeitgeist Datahub: https://launchpad.net/zeitgeist-datahub
Zeitgeist Sharp – https://launchpad.net/zeitgeist-sharp

More info about Zeitgeist

Website: http://zeitgeist-project.com
Wiki: http://wiki.zeitgeist-project.com
List: http://lists.zeitgeist-project.com

Package for Ubuntu would be available on Zeitgeist PPA. I have built it in my PPA, it needs to be tested and then copied to the Zeitgeist PPA. If you have added the PPA, then you should get the update

SaX3 – GSoC 2011 – Work Report

2011-06-05T18:44:31+00:00

This week I worked on SaX3 internal UI architecture, offcourse we will be using libyui but we wanted to make it as flexible as possible so that the UI Library can be replaced by anybody and still keep SaX usable, for that we implemented the factory pattern and most of the code was working. Finally, we have something working and the screenshots below show that SaX3 is working in graphical mode and ncurses mode.

I am adding screenshots of the launcher that will launch various configuration modules such as keyboard, mouse, graphic card etc etc . Also this is just a start and by the time I present my next report I week, this will be much cleaner and you can play around more with it. Right now it does not do anything so dont get surprised.

Source code can be found at github.com/manugupt1/sax3
The working branch is newui1.

cmake is a bit messy, I will update it in the following week and a bit of other clean up tasks and try some other stuff like localisation in it

Life beyond "everything"

2011-05-23T13:32:45+00:00

Well it is that time of the year again, the board results have been declared, the college results have been declared, new set of graduates have been introduced to the world and people are ready to face the challenges that lie ahead of them. Some of us are looking forward to it excitedly while others are wondering what will happen.

My last four months have been really hectic and a very learning experience. Some call it as the life from the other side of the fence. In my opinion, once you get to the other side, all of a sudden it strikes you that you are solely responsible for all your actions. All of a sudden you feel that a huge load of responsiblity has been placed on your shoulder. People whom you would have never expected to get serious, become really serious.

Today, as I sit in my friends' flat and see them pack I realise that this is probably the last time that all of us will be sitting together with absolutely no tension and nothing to worry about. This would probably be the last time that we all will sit together, one guy packing his bag and others just taking his case.

Time does fly by. While most of my friends will be goin to Pune, there are still few of us who will be scattered here and there. As I sit down to write this blog, a friend enters the room and says that he feels like going somewhere and without thinking twice we just get up and go.

I still remember how we joined college in first year and all of us were still so raw. As time progressed, bonds were formed. We became like a close knit family. Initially, we had just one bike, Rohit Kumar's avenger, I remember how we used to make calls everywhere to arrange for bikes so that we can have a road trip. Slowly our "collection" grew and we ran out of parking space. The party place shifted from Dollops to Deetee.We had our own "transport manager", Mr. Mayur Jain, who ensured that all of us got back home safely.

Today, as the time to say good bye comes closer, I hope sometime in future we all can get together and look back at everything we did and laugh about it. Slowly, we all get involved with work and everyone starts their own life. It is weird how lives which at one point looked glued together are going to become independent now.

Hope to see all you in future and I hope that we can pick up from where we all left. Wishing all of you a lot of luck, love and happiness. Good luck.