Planet LUG Manipal

Ankur Shrivastava (BE-2k7): Weekend Project

Ankur Shrivastava — 2010-03-10T19:52:34+00:00

In Dec 2009 at foss.in at the maemo stall i saw a guy control a small toy car through accelerometer on his N900, i thought of replicating that but it just remained in my mind, so last Saturday i finally decided to implement it and went straight to a toy store and bought a toy RF car, one hour of hacking and i was able to control the small car through by phone (Nokia E61i) here is the video of it working.

the concept is simple, i send commands through my phone over wifi to my laptop which controls the car remote, controlling a toy car remote is very easy with a Parallel port and few transistors but laptops don’t have parallel ports, so i used a micro-controller in between to sort that out, so now micro controller controls the car remote by acting on signals received over UART from laptop.
the working is Phone —(WiFi)—>Laptop —(USB/UART)—> Micro controller —(Relays)—> Car Remote —(RF)—> Toy Car
will post details with code sometime later

Manish's Tech Blog: The Ubuntu Rebranding

Manish — 2010-03-05T18:40:15+00:00

When I look back at my college days, the only two distros on which I can count on for simplicity was Fedora and Ubuntu. I used the latter just because it suited me and for exercising my right of freedom. Let me jot down the biggest problems I faced whenever I wanted to propagate Ubuntu in my college days under the LUG Manipal banner:

People disliked the dark brown theme
It didn’t look professional
The graphics card didn’t work (The ATI ones)
Atheros wireless driver has it’s own share of problems
It wasn’t windows
…..list continues

The change in branding

This is what I actually wanted from Ubuntu. Just making things doesn’t work. Normal people don’t want advanced things like GIMP or a desktop mail client. All they need is basic things should just work and an eye-candy. Everything should look cool and pleasant.

This font looks better and more professional than the earlier one. The one before this looked someone like Comic Sans.

Improvements

The re-branding brings in much needed boot-screen change. A simple boot-screen is a lot better than a constantly animating one. Remember, the blink tags and marquees for HTML. They do nothing more than distraction.
I liked the light theme more than the dark. The reason being that it looks better to my eyes and not because it remotely looks like Mac OSX.
Read Mark’s view on this whole saga. Orange will represent Community and Aubergine would represent Canonical. Every branding should be looked with three parameters: Community <=> Commercial, Consumer <=> Enterprise and End-User <=> Engineer. Aubergine with white dots means it is more Commercial and Enterprise based branding.
The newer website is a lot better than the previous one. Hope they are not moving away from Drupal.

The Roadblocks

Ubuntu has many roadblocks in becoming a major Operating System. Many of them are from within the Open Source community itself. Probably Ubuntu is growing quite fast, but when compared to overall OS market, it is stagnant.

Wireless driver problems need to be fixed. Many people just give up because they cannot make Wireless to work on it.
The graphics support is still quite weak. People with ATI cards report more problems with NVidia ones. This is one of the places where everyone has been bitten one or the other time. Since I have Intel 945GM graphics chipset on my laptop, those bad days have not struck on me yet.
Another roadblock is that Ubuntu has to face a lot of hate from within the OSS community itself. People bash it because it brings in non-technical people into the Linux worlds who don’t want to compile their drivers or don’t want to use the command line. Some of them go even one step ahead and claim that Linux isn’t meant for people who can’t understand computers. My situation would be the same if I was asked to open the BMW engine(Linux kernel) and fix something deep inside by pulling some random wires(typing commands)
Linux in particular was designed to run on ever goddamn architecture on this world. Even though it is a good thing, the effort is split up.

Solution

OEM tie-ups: To me, this is the only left to fix the current mess. If you buy a system, the people supplying the hardware will make sure that everything works fine with the OS they provide. In this case, graphics and wireless drivers can be pre-installed. Depending on patent jurisdictions, even codecs can be pre-installed.
Focus on Looks and Usability: Many of the GNOME apps have such horrible looks that I feel it was hacked overnight by devs in half-sleepy state. Some apps like gnome-system-monitor eat up 50% CPU and report the CPU usage to be 50%+.

Finally I am thinking of shifting to Lucid once it comes out.

Manish's Tech Blog: Mozilla Developer Day Bangalore, 27th February 2010

Manish — 2010-02-28T08:04:03+00:00

Mozilla along with Mahiti organised a Mozilla Developer Day at NIMS, Bangalore at JRD Tata Auditorium. For people who want to know about the event via tweets please check the hashtag #mozdevday on Twitter

Introduction

As per the schedule, the event was supposed to kick-start at 9:30AM in the morning. After getting up in the morning and beating all the traffic as travelling 33KMs, I finally reached NIAS Campus at 11AM. After getting the badges, feedback-form and other delegate stuff, I went inside the auditorium to see what’s cooking inside.

Web Standards

Speaker: Arun Ranganathan

When I entered Arun was speaking on Web Standards. I think I missed the drum-beat part of his presentation as I was late. Abhishek Mishra and Rohan Prabhu had reached at 10AM itself and were a part of the audience from the very beginning.

Arun gave us a presentation on

Geolocation based services for pictures.
Font-face support in Firefox and other HTML5 based controls.
API for drag-and-drop
2D support in Firefox. He showed us a Mario kind of game made using Canvas.
3D support in Firefox using WebGL
Accelerometer support for Firefox. He showed a game which we can play by tilting our devices (Mobile/Laptop)
Video support in Firefox using HTML5

Arun even showed us how powerful video tag is on Firefox. We can embed a text inside a video, or even a video inside a video. Don’t believe? Have a look at the page where Arun pointed us to visit

Web.Next

Speaker: Seth Bindernagel

Seth is the localisation Director at Mozilla. He was speaking on what we can expect next from Firefox. His presentation covered mainly:

Out of Process Plugins
Improved cold startup time
Personas
Extension Manager
Weave

Seth discussed a bit on how Flash crashed are a big headache for the web. The next Firefox will have these plugins running as separate processes, so that the crash effects can be isolated.

For people who actually want to see how Flash crashes on the browser and how easy it is to make Flash go bonkers, just visit this site http://flashcrash.dempsky.org/

Seth also gave a lot of time on Weave and how useful it can be for a person to sync his preferences on the cloud. For privacy fanatics, he explicitly stated that all the data is encrypted at client side and then sent on the Mozilla servers. People can even run their own Weave servers.

Mozilla Labs

Speaker: Ragavan Srinivasan

Ragavan came on the stage to present Mozilla Labs and what all they develop apart from the browser. The products which come out of the lab are Weave, Bespin and Jetpack.

Broken Sites

Speaker: Arun Ranganathan

If you visit MS Ramiah Institute of Technology’s Student Information System or FYJC’s site using a non-IE browser, then you can experience the over-smartness of the super intellectual web-masters behind the site. FYJC takes the situation to extreme levels.

Arun explained how we are supposed to report these broken sites using Firefox itself or using Mozilla Bugzilla. When using bugzilla, the explanation needed to be very exhaustive. He even asked us to tag such reports with “India” so that Arun can personally hunt down such sites.

Hack Session

Speaker: Arun Ranganathan

Arun recorded a video using a camera. Then he transferred it to his MacBook which was in MP4 format. He created a small page using HTML5 video element and opened it in Firefox,Safari and Chrome. The video which was recorded showed up properly in Chrome and Safari and not in Firefox. This was posed as a question. Many hands went up, with the first answer being the correct one. Yes. Firefox wants the web to be free and doesn’t want to license proprietary codecs for the web.

The million dollar question remains – How to convert H.264 videos to open format. Arun introduced us to a Firefox Addon named Firefogg. This converts the video to ogg which can be now played using Firefox and Chrome. Safari doesn’t want to support ogg.

I know I made no reference to Mahiti’s speech and Praneesh’s too. The post would be just too long.

Finally I would like to thank Mahiti and CIS-India for organising the event, providing free WiFi and arranging Lunch, tea and T-shirts and badges.

Seth Bindernagel

Ankur Shrivastava (BE-2k7): strange thing in python

Ankur Shrivastava — 2010-02-10T12:52:17+00:00

i recently noticed this anyone has a proper explanation for this

for literals i get this
>>> def a(): ... b = [] ... c = {} ... >>> import dis >>> dis.dis(a) 2 0 BUILD_LIST 0 3 STORE_FAST 0 (b)
3 6 BUILD_MAP 0 9 STORE_FAST 1 (c) 12 LOAD_CONST 0 (None) 15 RETURN_VALUE

but for constructors i get this
>>> def a(): ... b = list() ... c = dict() ... >>> dis.dis(a) 2 0 LOAD_GLOBAL 0 (list) 3 CALL_FUNCTION 0 6 STORE_FAST 0 (b)
3 9 LOAD_GLOBAL 1 (dict) 12 CALL_FUNCTION 0 15 STORE_FAST 1 (c) 18 LOAD_CONST 0 (None) 21 RETURN_VALUE
i mean why the difference, i was thinking {} and dict() do the same thing, shouldn’t they?

Kunal Kerkar (BE-2k7): Valentines Day Dilemma

Kunal — 2010-02-08T12:25:25+00:00

My understanding of gifts are PS3, Asus Ferrari Notebooks, A Fire-steel knife or a BUG gadget fctory. So when some gifts me a spongy heart with a press me sign on it which gives out some monophonic voices when pressed, it makes me go 'Wow I could have never thought of that!!'

Over the last 1 year I have been getting all sorts of gifts, a bamboo plant, a pen stand which has a red headed guy kissing a pink headed female ceramic figurine, a star named after me, scotch tape and balloons too! While i have stuck to the text-book and given things like chocolate, roses, teddy bear and more roses(seriously they are a cheap getaway!). So the other day when I was thinking of buying a gift, I was as blank as a Turbo C NONAME page in a graphics lab. Coming back from classes today I asked a few friends of mine to suggest a few gifts. Well, turns out my friends stay away from girls like a Baba Ramdev from Beauty Parlors, let alone buying them gifts.

Anyway while Im trying to decide between a box of chocolates or a stick with a furry dog on it, valentines is still 6 days away!

Ps. Anyone remotely planning to buy me something, heres a clue http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/warfare/abf5/

Kunal Kerkar (BE-2k7): Alrighty then

Kunal — 2010-02-04T03:20:06+00:00

Well, the writers block, we all go through it! Anyway moving on.

What makes this post so special that i wake up from my angelic sleep and wonder what Katy Perry would be doing, is the fact that today is 4th february, the day Yasser Arafat took over as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Yeah like you care!

Manish's Tech Blog: Directi Hackfest 31st January, 2010

Manish — 2010-02-01T19:09:02+00:00

Ever since I learnt how to use git, there has been an urge from within to share my code, look at others and collaborate and develop something useful which everyone else can use. For me, usability is as important as functionality. Both are as equal as the other in general cases.

Rewind

Long back I once asked Abhishek Mishra (ideamonk) if we could meet up and organise a small hackfest. The aim was to let know each other’s project, meet new people, learn new things etc etc. One in these *etc* was to complete our unfinished projects due to lack of time, motivation or even know-how of some of the aspect of a technology. Long back Abhishek and Yuvraj Pandian T (YuviPanda) have collaborated on a project named PyMos which was to generate Mosaic for any image. It was written in Python and works like a charm. Give it a try.

Since me and ideamonk live in Bangalore, having a hacking session being physically present would be better than working online. Abhishek liked the idea and tweeted whether anyone is willing to give us space for this event which has wifi. He instantly got a reply from The Chef of CodeChef and there we had a space in the Directi office. Thanks to all the kewl cool people at Directi with “Hacker Mentality” for supporting us.

Agenda

Abhishek invited his friends for this session and two of them turned up – Ishaan Chattopadhyaya and Rohan Prabhu. Naresh from Directi was waiting for us. When we came in, there wasn’t any plan on what needs to be done, as we expected to work out on a common interest field. Ishaan had to speak on Location Based Search and me on CodeIgniter (PHP Framework). Abhishek had some projects like sahanapy and creating a GUI over apt-offline.

Talks

Till this time I had a feeling that we won’t be working much today since I didn’t knew anyone apart from Abhishek. To learn more, we first had small talks so that we can know each other and their interest of fields. Ishaan talked on Location based search which includes geographical searches like Google Maps. It wasn’t a very exhaustive one, but a pretty nice explanation of what all complexity lies beneath the hood.

At this time, we were total 4 people – me, Abhishek. Rohan, Ishaan and Naresh(Directi)

Then I went to speak on CodeIgniter which is a Framework of PHP. As opposed to what I said earlier, it actually doesn’t look like a framework, since it does not have many of functionality which make a F/W. This is what I explained – why it has only the things which we want, awesome documentation and a dead simple setup. It is just a set of classes which relive you from messing with lower level functionality. Since it is very simple, there is hardly any overhead with speed. You get only the basic boring things and complicated and interesting things are left to you.

Code

Abhishek showed us apt-offline which is an utility for getting updates, upgrades and packages on a Debian based box which does not have internet connection. The system on which these updates,upgrades and package download is done can also be windows. Typical situation is you have a very slow or no internet at home, but blazing fast net at workplace. You would be tempted to use office net to download the packages and update your local index, install updates and install packages.

This utility was created by Ritesh Raj Sarraf long back and was just a command line based application. Abhishek had tried it and it works flawlessly. All which was missing was a GUI over it. It first looked like an easy task. Use Qt Designer and drag-drop every control and here we go. This way of development had a big flaw. The GUI developed is no better than the CLI since the clueless non-techies wont understand words like “apt-offline set”, “apt-offline get” etc etc. Even it took me a minute or two to actually get what all these mean.

Rohan can be called a Qt geek. The guy knows each and every class and it’s properties and event etc etc. This made us even more interested since he is always at disposal to help us and teach us more. By this it was pretty late and we were wondering if could do something worthy at that time. Then we decided to work only on UI as of now, make small changes in the core class to accommodate the GUI which is otherwise hard-coded. We had to dive in the code to get better knowledge of how apt-offline works as there is hardly any documentation apart from one written by Ritesh himself.

Conclusion

I don’t have much idea of Qt and this was a good learning curve. I agree that this hackfest didn’t pay off well as we expected. Most of the time we spent in discussing data structures, algorithms, Qt, git etc etc. which was again as usual – AWESOME.

My personal expectations from such sessions is to create some useful software and not just YAXX (Yet Another XX). Functionality, Usability, Accessibility and Documentation – all matters equally. I would also like to slowly slowly move on more tougher and promising things like kernel and filesystem level coding.

Winding up, this is just a start and I have great expectations from these sessions. I would like to again thank the Directi guys and the other people who were supposed to come but were not able to turn up due to their personal commitments.

Ankur Shrivastava (BE-2k7): Begining Python workshop

Ankur Shrivastava — 2010-01-30T21:17:50+00:00

LUG Manipal python workshop poster

LUG Manipal is organising a workshop on python, Workshop is aimed at people interested in beginning programming with python.No programming experience required.

Details are ->
Time: 5:30 pm
Place: NLH 103
Date: 29th JAN to 3rd FEB

PS :- Slides for the workshop are available Begining Python Slides

LUG Manipal: PYTHON WORKSHOP

Kartik Mandaville — 2010-01-29T17:04:34+00:00

LUG Manipal is conducting a workshop on python from 29th January. Python is a remarkably powerful and easy to learn, dynamic programming language. No prior experience is needed. We would be starting from the basics.
No Registrations required. Free of Cost.
Bring your laptops along

LUG Manipal: C++ Workshop

djays — 2010-01-17T05:58:59+00:00

LUG Manipal is conducting a C++ workshop to introduce Industry level C++ (ANSI) for both experienced and inexperienced programmers.

OPEN FOR ALL
NO REGISTRATION
NO CERTIFICATES WILL BE GIVEN
BRING LAPTOPS
G++ COMPILER WILL BE USED.

Manish's Tech Blog: 2009. A Recap(Technical)

Manish — 2010-01-07T19:40:29+00:00

2009 has been a great year for me in the sense that I learnt many new technologies and used a few other. Below is the list of keywords/products/terms which have affected me in the last year. Take this list as a collection of technologies which I adopted, hated or loved.

1. GitHub

Status: Adopted and love it

Probably one of the best thing for me this year when it comes to software engineering is the evolution of GitHub as a de-facto standard for hosting code. Earlier there was no such service by which people used to swear by. Projects were scattered all over Google Code, Launchpad, FedoraHosted, SourceForge and what not. GitHub changed the way people looked at source code hosting. It also gets the credit for making git insanely famous such that people who had settled with svn started their shift to git. It was only due to GitHub that I tried out git other I would have been stuck up with Google Code with svn.

2. Nokia 5800

Status: Bought

I bought a Nokia 5800 in September 2009 and it has now become my major source of internet on the move. I know many die-hard Apple fans bought curse me for not buying an iPhone. Anyway, thanks for the pain to think about it.

3. Posterous

Status: Love

Posterous is probably one of the most awesome service I have ever seen. Just mail the snaps, audio files and whatever you have and the awesome Posterous would take care of it. It is integrated well with many twitter clients too(Gravity) which allow us to snap and send the pics. The best platform for informal blogging.

4. Dropbox

Status: Adopted

I started using Dropbox on the daily basis quite late. Even though I had an account long back, I didn’t feel to use it on day to day basis. After exploring the awesomeness of this service, efforts were made from my side to get used to it. Now I keep all my code in Dropbox folder. This code is basically those which I have checked-out(svn)/cloned(git) and made local changes and havn’t commmitted(svn) or pushed(git). Sometimes of other some recent snaps also find their way.

5. Lotus Notes/ClearCase

Status: Use at work. Hate a lot

I am still not able to understand which idiot made these two junk software? Lotus Notes isn’t meant for humans and ClearCase creates more problem that it actually solves. Files take ages to checkin and half of the options are not clear. Even Lotus Notes is no less. WTF is replication? Shocked? In Lotus Notes lingo "Replicate" means "Fetch Now". Even people with sound technical knowledge easily get confused with this junk.

6. Seagate 500GB External Hard Disk

Status: Purchased.

I recently(3 months) bought a Seagate 500GB external Hard Disk. It has solved many of their storage problems. Including a HDD in this list would look lame, still it deserves it’s place due to the problem it solved and the immense help it provided.

7. Google Reader

Status: Got addicted

Someone says that due to Twitter effect, feed reading is declining. For me feeds are still an important source of knowledge since I shell out dedicated time for reading feeds. The subscriptions contains only those sources which give complete or sometimes exhaustive coverage of the topics they are covering. Sources whose feed vomits only the URL are purged. I need atleast half of the article to be in feed as a minimum qualification. Only Ars is the single source left with a partial feed.

8. Python

Status: Now I swear by it

Even though I like Python, the first half of the year was spent in hacking, coding, eating and sleeping python. The language got on me and at one time I found it as the only language which exists on this planet. After a period I recovered and started looking the world from a wider angle and became language agnostic (for language which pass the minimum threshold)

9. C#, .NET and Silverlight

Status: Love and Hate

My employer needs me to work on .NET based tehnologies. Since I usually don’t have much problems with .NET unlike others and I view C# as really a good language which has evolved as a good alternative language of choice. Silverlight is the thing I really don’t like personally even though I have been working on it. I hate technologies which are as a plugin for browser technologies like Flash, Java Applets, Silverlight, Shockwave etc.

10. IE6

Status: Hate

God! This thing refuses to die. My hate for IE6 has grown so much that these days I find any browser fit for my need. Earlier it was just the pain of developers as ignorant users never had seen a better browser. After using IE6 at my office for official work, I am ready to fund for the funeral of this villian. Anyway I use Firefox/Chrome for my personal work at work.

Shubhendra Singh (BE-2k5): The 50th one!

Shubhendra Singh — 2009-12-30T21:58:36+00:00

Saw that this will be my 50th post. 2 years of blogging has been really a nice experience. In this post I mainly see back my last one year "2009". The year where I traveled a lot (Land of dreams, city of lights, beautiful beaches) saw lots of people suffer (everyone in family was going through some problems), saw lots of close one's leave (some left forever and some didn't left me a chance to stay with them further), made lots of new friends (friends made in France, friends made in US).

Next year 2010 will be a whole new experience, I hope it is for best. Happy new year to all of you and I hope it goes well for all of us.

Dhananjay (BE-2k7): Simple espeak Program (speak_lib)

djays — 2009-12-27T09:53:55+00:00

One of my friends was making a project requiring espeak. He was using speak_lib.h and wanted help on using it , so here is a simple c/c++ program i wrote:

DEPENDENCIES:

portaudio-devel
espeak-devel

USAGE:

(Assuming speak_lib.h in your current dir)

(Replace g++ by gcc and .cpp with .c for compiling as c )

g++ -g -I. Speak.cpp -lportaudio -lespeak -o Speak
./Speak

SOURCE CODE

Download

Posted in Fedora 11

Soumen Banerjee (BE-2k7): BSNL 3G Modem (HUAWEI E156G) in Linux

Soumen — 2009-12-26T13:05:04+00:00

Heres how to get your Bsnl 3g connection working in linux. Im going to outline a process which uses mandriva since it provides a GUI way of working through configuring an internet connection. You will however find all the relevant information you need to configure something like wvdial (a heuristic auto-dialer) to use this connection in case you want this to work on some other distribution.

First things first, ill describe the connection properties.

1) this is technically a dial up connection. there is a phone number your modem dials using the bsnl network, this is then followed by a authentication process, which results in an internet connection.

2) The phone number for BSNL east is *99# for other zones try plugging the thing into a windows computer and read the connection properties to find the telephone number.

3) The authentication protocol in use is CHAP, to know more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenge-handshake_authentication_protocol

4) this renders a username and password inessential.

So here goes,

Right click on the network icon in the taskbar, and click configure network. When this is done, youll be promted for the root password. Enter it.

From the several types of connections you can choose select Analog Telephone modem.

This will present you with a choice of modems, select Manual Choice, then select port /dev/ttyUSB0. In case this is not present, youre using too old a version of mandriva. The drivers for this ind of modem have been around since kernel version 2.6.20.xx so upgrade to a newer version of mandriva, 2010 is a beauty.

Now, it will present you with a choice of Telephone Number, Username, Password, and the Authentication protocol to be used. In telephone number, write *99# (or the number you read from the windows connection in case you are not in BSNL east)

Leave the username and password fields empty and select CHAP as the authentication protocol. Youre done!

press next and youre presented with DNS, etc settings, leave all of them at the default (automatic) and press finish. You might want to select allow users to manage this connection on the way.

Your network should now be connected. Enjoy!

EDIT- I had initially tried this with mandriva 2008.1 and since ppp etc is preinstalled there, there was no problem, on 2010 however youll have some trouble since ppp etc isnt installed.

just download these and install them serially

kppp-provider-4.3.2-1mdv2010.0.i586.rpm

ppp-2.4.4-10mdv2010.0.i586.rpm

kppp-4.3.2-1mdv2010.0.i586.rpm

just do a google search for these and download them. Follow that by double clicking them, which should install them. Now you can follow the instructions starting from “Configure Network” and it’ll work.

Manish's Tech Blog: Education given by Indian Engineering Lecturers

Manish — 2009-12-21T12:04:59+00:00

Case 1:

Lecturer: Write a program to implement a simple stack.

Student: Here is the program

Lecturer: No, not like that .You need to ask the user which element needs to be pop-ped.

Case 2:

Lecturer: What is your project on?

Student: I have implemented a software tool like revision control system which can keep revisions of all files during the software development cycle.

Lecturer: Why have you taken so much pains to implement it, can’t you use “Save As”?

Case 3:

Lecturer: Total Internal Reflection happens when light travels from rarer to denser medium.

Case 4:

Lecturer: Examples of web browsers are Internet Explorer and Netscape.

Students (shouting): Ma’am Mozilla too.

Lecturer: No! Only Internet Explorer and Netscape.

All incidents are true. Don’t ask me for proofs – I don’t carry a video camera with me for collecting proofs. If you think the incident can’t be true, consider it to be cooked up.
Not all professors/lecturers are like these. I have met lecturers/readers/professors with sound technical knowledge.

Dhananjay (BE-2k7): MEDIAFIRE DIRECT LINK GENERATOR

djays — 2009-12-15T14:28:14+00:00

UPDATE: Added Proxy Support

This is a python based Mediafire link resolution script . It resolves the input link to give the direct link to the file.

By using this script you are automatically agreeing to MediaFire ’s Terms and Conditions.

If you wish to have the source code , contact me.

DOWNLOAD

For help use “mediafire.pyc –help”

Posted in Bash, Linux, python, Windows

Ayush Pranshu (BE-2k5): Schindlers List and related thoughts

gurudev — 2009-11-29T07:22:05+00:00

I watched Schindler’s List recently. To many this may come as a surprise considering that it is a film that has been generally acknowledged to be one of the best. This is the precise reason why I hadn’t seen it earlier. Such critical acclaim and multiple recommendations raise my expectations too high. To be honest, this level of expectation is unfair. The film was great, it now ranks as one of my favourites after Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron and alongside Lakshya, DCH and Pyaasa. But that is digressing from the point. The film showed what human nature is all about, how compassionate and caring it can be and how selfless can man become. The events shown in the film are historically true. Such a camp, factory and man did exist. The town is also still there in Czech Republic though it is listed in Wikipedia as Svitavy even though the film shows it as Brinnlitz.

But this blog entry is not about the film, it is about something more important, more manifest; this one is about human nature. The film shows the main protagonist as one who is kind at heart, but as I was watching the film, this question was coming up in my mind repeatedly, are human beings really so compassionate as to risk their lives, career, reputation and more for the sake of others? I mean, it is difficult for me to believe that humans can be so selfless. I am not a skeptic, I like to believe in human beings, in the inherent good qualities of human nature, I believe in believing in others till my faith is proven misplaced. I was not always this skeptical but recent events have made me into one.

What are those recent events that have changed my view? Good question, but the answer to which isn’t forthcoming. I am just expressing my thoughts. One may argue that not all human beings are such. Well, when the time comes we will know the true nature of every person and not always is the reconstructed picture rosy. One thing is for certain, I will never be the same person again, I have undergone a profound change, may not be for the best but I am hoping that I never have to go through such a harrowing experience again.

Swaroop Hegde (BE-2k4): iPhone

2009-11-28T09:07:53+00:00

I am now a proud owner of an iPhone. All thanks to Mike, who kind enough to send gift his 3G – I gave up hopes of an iPhone 3GS launch in India. The phone arrived a month ago but I had to wait for 30 days for the sim card tray to arrive from Hong Kong. The screen replacement never arrived and it looks like I’ll have to order again

I couldn’t hop around like an excited kid on finding every coll feature of the phone since I already owned an iPod Touch and have been working on iPhone apps. I was forced to “unlock” the potential which did help bringing out much of the hidden potential. Some day, when I am competent in Objective-c, I might try a hand at a few hacks myself.

Once the screen replacement arrives, I’ll be posting pics. I don’t need to review this gadget, do I?

Manish's Tech Blog: The Art of Power-Point Presentation

Manish — 2009-11-18T19:37:52+00:00

How many times did you have “butterflies in your stomach” just because you were told to be present in the auditorium/seminar hall where your attendance was compulsory for something more precisely called “Power Point Presentation”. You especially need to take care that it is referred to as PPT and not just a presentation, the former probably stands for “Powerpoint”.

PPTs are probably one of the most hated things in this world, due to one simple reason-They are usually boring. The person giving the presentation considers it a liability and the audience feel attendance a compulsion. The audience resist from asking questions as it will prolong the event to unbearable lengths. The presenter just wants to get rid of his responsibilities either because he is not interested or he knows no one cares to listen.

Essayists

Nothing is more torturous for me than attending a presentation, where the dude has copied the whole content on the slide and is reading it aloud for the audience! Like we are illiterates.

Body Language

Would you like to attend a presentation where the person uses his hands, eyes, face for communication or in a presentation where the person speaks like a robot? We have enough text-to-speech converters. Humans need not take the pains for the same.

Animations on the slides

Probably many people might disagree with me on this topic, but I hate those presentations where the slides have tons of effects like fade-in, swirl, zoom-in etc. To add more insult those effects have sounds effects like brake,gunfire,coughing, sneezing and what not.

One-Phrase Focus

This solution is probably for all the essayists. I have seen many people who can capture the attention of the audience by focussing on one-phrase at a time. If a person is speaking on say “Memory Management”, then keep this word/phrase on the slide and nothing else. The slide is just to keep the audience alert on which topic the talk is going on. If there are many sub-topics, probably all of them can be shown on the screen, but only one of them should have focus and rest should be grayed out.

PPT

Presentation is not a “Power Point presentation”. You don’t need Power Point for putting forward your views. I don’t know who coined this horrible term called “PPT” which most probably stands for “PowerPoint”. I use OO.org, so it means I am unfit for giving a PPT?

Steve Jobs

If everything else fails, turn towards one of the biggest visionary and orator of this time for more suggestions. Have a look at the keynotes delivered by Jobs. Learn from them. Do you find his whole speech written on the background?

In fact presentation should not use PowerPoint. Ideally, every so called PPT should be like a Steve Jobs keynote.

Conclusion

I am also not an expert in delivering speeches or presentations. Since I have to attend some of the other presentation every forthnight, I do notice some of the other mistakes committed by others, make a note of it. Next time when I prepare for any speeches, I keep those points in mind. The above points are taken from that list. This list is from an audience perspective.

Ankur Shrivastava (BE-2k7): Mobi Vision 2.0 Slides

Ankur Shrivastava — 2009-11-15T12:34:33+00:00

First and Second Phase for MobiVision 2.0 is long over, and we can call it a workshop well done, the slides are here

Mobi Vision 2.0

View more documents from Ankur Shrivastava.

Manish's Tech Blog: Computer Science Project for Indian Engineering Colleges

Manish — 2009-11-12T19:35:15+00:00

How many times you put your best effort in making a project only to be ridiculed during the presentation with words like “This is shit”.”WTF is this” by the teachers. OK OK! I am exaggerating, but it is a truth that students who put their best don’t get their reward. Most of such students put their sincere effort just because they like their work and not just for marks. To add insult to injury, those who copy-paste the projects get great reviews.

The situation is no different in Computer Science branch too. We loose hundreds of such talents students just because they became de-moralized after poor feedback for their project by the faculty. They should realize that hard-work in college hardly pays off. They should put their coding efforts in competitions like “Google Code Jam”, “CodeChef” or some open-source projects.

Now the million dollar question is “How to handle the college projects”? Let me explain with an example.

Project: Create a source Control Management or Revision Control System for efficient code management for single person project.

Technology: Python with SQLite for client.

Additional Information: There need not be a central repo to push the changes, local commits are enough. The name of the binary should be srcs or “Simple Revision Control System“

Creating the Project:

In real world development, people would ask you to make tons of documents like SRS, Technical Specification etc before moving on to coding. These things simply don’t exist in colleges. All you need to do for your project to be ready is shown below.

You need to run the following commands on any Debian based distro (probably Ubuntu)

$ sudo apt-get install bzr

$ sudo ln -s /usr/bin/bzr /usr/bin/srcs

….. and it’s done. Now let’s start using it

Creating the repository

$ cd ~ && mkdir code && cd code

$ srcs init

Creating files

$ touch file1.c

$ touch README

Adding and committing

$ srcs add file1.c README

$ srcs commit file1.c README -m "First Commit"

So your project part is complete. Now come let’s handle the typical vivas

Conversation 1:

Teacher: Why have you used Python?

You: Python is _______________(put all sorts of Python advocacy here)__________________

Teacher: What. Explain it clearly!

You: So that you can’t make the head or tail of the codebase.

Conversation 2:

Teacher: Explain your project briefly!

You: My project is to create a system to manage the code. Keep revisions, find the differences between two commits

Teacher: How to keep differences?

You: I save the code at regular intervals, or say commit it to the repo, so that I can access any file any time if I make a mistake

Teacher: Why the **** do you need to make such a big software to keep copies. Can’t you just use “Save As(s)” every time you need revision of a file?

You: *Facepalm*

Shubhendra Singh (BE-2k5): USA and my first Semester as master's student

Shubhendra Singh — 2009-11-06T11:13:08+00:00

So finally got enough time to think and write down what I think. So after awesome experience in France, spending a month at home is always best time. In the middle went to Manipal which was like one more trip to heaven, the weather in Manipal just sets up the mood. Now next trip was to USA, an unknown land to me but as they say its always exciting to explore new places. Well the exploring part was more intellectual till now rather than exploring different parts of USA. Have finally figured out what does research means to different people, atleast to me it means that I should be able to make something work in the end of my research and people can use it. People here are really friendly and a big misconception that American's have limited knowledge about world outside USA isn't completely true. At least some of those I met were really smart people, thinking about what they will do in like next 5-10 years. American's have tendency of wasting things also like the one promptly seen was wasting electricity (all there stores have all lights open even at night when shops are closed, they even don't switch there LCD panels) and at the other end they want to move to solar powered systems and how to conserve energy, recycle everything (which is good approach). This trip is really helping me to understand how to handle pressure in tough situations esp. when deadlines are around you and nothing is working. Will be back to India again in winter and really hope to get good amount of rest before gearing up again for next semester.

LUG Manipal: Install Fest and Web Development Workshop

Kartik Mandaville — 2009-11-06T10:24:19+00:00

Well , here is a small write up of both the events LUGM conducted in October 2009 .

Install Fest :

LUG Manipal organisesd a Linux ( Ubuntu 9.04 to be precise ) Install Fest from 6th to 8th October . Well , this time , it was the job of the second years to do it . Most of us were noobs . We should congratulate Saurabh for the excellent organisation of the entire fest which went without any major hiccups . Also ,at the last day , there was a small talk on the upcoming Web Development Workshop .

Web Development Workshop :

A workshop on how to make web pages covering HTML , MySQL and PHP conducted by LUGM .We ( LUGM ) focused on web development rather than web designing .We were planning this workshop from around 6 months but due to many problems it could not materialise . Kartik had prepared the slides way back in July .So , it was finally decided on the last day ( i.e 9th ) to conduct the workshop from 12th October 2009 . With only three days , we had plenty of work to do .The next day , we got the room booked ( NLH 405 ) . We got the top floor as there were many other events going on . The posters were up the next day at all important places in MIT .SMS’s were sent with a request to “Forward to all ” . LUGM website , the wiki page and the Facebook Fan page was updated . Also , a facebook event was created to futher publicise . Manu, made class announcements in all the first year classes . He did the job single handedly ( Dunno why he likes the job so much ) . Meanwhile , slides were being given the final touches by Pratik and Saurabh . Kartik and Saurabh made a comprehensive plan of the entire workshop detailing each and every thing . Our seniors suggested some changes and then we were all set to roll .

So , finally the D-Day arrived . Most of us bunked classes to be in time for the workshop . The crowd was ok , almost the entire class room was filled . One more thing which is worth a mention is that we received a number of calls asking for registration and if there is any fees for it .

For the record, LUGM does not charge people for attending a workshop neither is there any registration . ( Check out the guiding principle of LUGM )

Coming back to the topic ,the first day went pretty well .HTML and beginning of MySQL was dealt with . As expected , the turnout on the second day was less than the previous day. The second day consisted of MySQL and beginning with PHP . At the end of the day , we gave a small assignment which involved the use of forms and POST . Many had made the effort of completing the assignment . The third day basically consisted of integrating PHP with MySQL , Sessions and Cookies .On the last day , we were expecting a low turnout , but the turnout was far less than we expected . We had kept this day only for application , so we demonstrated a login page complete with Remember Me feature from scratch .Although the turnout was less but the response was amazing .We had divided the entire application into modules and then gave some time for the students to complete . We were glad that many were easily able to complete the modules in time .

For more ,

The post about the workshop on the LUG Website

Slides of the workshop

Refer to the Guiding Principles of LUGM

Facebook Fan Page

Manish's Tech Blog: My Stackoverflow archives #1

Manish — 2009-10-28T18:12:07+00:00

Usually when I am wandering around on stackoverflow, there are times when I find some of the questions being interesting and bookmark them. Since this list grows day by day, it came to my mind to publish them for the betterment of the general public. These are the questions which I found good and don’t claim to be the “Best of StackOverflow”. You would notice the variation in the type of questions.

If you have your list, please let me know. The comment section is open for this noble cause. BTW here is the part 1 of the list.

LUG Manipal: Slides Web Development Workshop [Oct 2009 ]

Kartik Mandaville — 2009-10-18T17:52:57+00:00

The slides of the workshop :

Slides

LUG Manipal: Web Development Workshop[Oct, 2009]

Kartik Mandaville — 2009-10-09T21:57:25+00:00

Ever wondered how to build your own web page ??? No need to wait any longer !!

LUG Manipal is organizing yet another workshop — “A Web Development Workshop” covering HTML , MySQL and PHP.
This will be a 4 days workshop Starting on 12th of October 2009 at 5:30pm at NLH 405 , MIT.
Our main focus will be to promote Open Source Technology for Web Development and Design.

The content material for this workshop will be basic HTML for getting a start to web programming. The basics of this tagged language can be learnt at W3Schools. We will then advance to the basics of server side and client side scripting and the differences between them.

PHP is the choice of language for Server side Web Design. There is usually a lot of spectaculars between ASP and PHP. Some of the most famous places where its used is Wikipedia, Wordpress (most famous blogging software), most of the Content Management System. Even Google and Yahoo make use of PHP for their pages. It is a very simple language which borrows it’s syntax from Perl, another classical language. It is time to make PHP your friend.

Now turning to MySQL, this is the most widely deployed database software which has more than 5,000 downloads per day as the statistics revealed by MySQL AB. Being the world’s most famous Open Source Database, its bound to be quite attractive. Being a very lightweight database software, its easy to install even on desktops.

The scripting will be done on Apache Web Server, its the world unchallenged king when it come to server deployments, covering some 70%of the webservers. Lightweight, extensibility , great features make it the no 1 choice of web developers all over the world.

A brief Schedule :
Day 1 : Introduction to Web , installation , distribution and basic HTML , MySQL
Day 2 : PHP overview , variables , functions and HTML forms , get and post methods
Day 3 :MySQL through PHP , sessions and cookies
Day 4 : Full Fledged Login Script demonstration from scratch

Please bring your laptops

It is advised that you go through the following links to have a better understanding .
MYSQL
PHP

Further References :

Get the Official PHP Manual from its website.
Get the Official MySQL Manual from its website.
Past Workshop’s PHP and MySQL Portion Syllabus

LUG Manipal: Round Up Install Fest

Kartik Mandaville — 2009-10-09T21:26:06+00:00

After two months of no interaction with the freshmen of the college, we at LUG Manipal thought what better way to begin than to introduce open source among them. So we organised an install fest of Ubuntu 9.04 remastered version from 6th -9th October.

First day of the fest, we had a huge turnout of enthusiasts. Majority of the first day was spent on burning the iso’s onto the DVDs and defragmenting the system. After that we made them partition the system and installed Ubuntu on their laptops. Luckily there was no disc errors and the entire process went on smoothly. And by the end of the session, everybody in the workshop had Ubuntu on their systems.

Second day was more of instructions. Firstly there was an introduction talk on the philosophy of open source, a general introduction to LUG and the history of Linux. It was followed by configuration of CNTLM to make them able to access repositories over I-ON’s network. Then a general overview of software alternates in Ubuntu including open office, synaptic, rhythmbox, transmission, geany etc followed, ending the day’s proceedings.

On the last day of the event, there was a talk on Mozilla Firefox from the open source perspective, with amazing goodies, courtesy Mozilla. And rest of the day was spent interacting with the crowd and solving queries. Lots of interesting stuff was discussed.

Overall this event had a great turnout and served the perfect start to LUG Manipal’s line-up for the events this semester.

Click here to download the slides:
Intro to Linux
Open Source Software talk

Lug Manipal Install Fest

View more presentations from Linux User’s Group.

Open Source Softwares

View more presentations from Linux User’s Group.

Coming Next is the Web Development Workshop .

LUG Manipal: LUG Manipal Facebook Fan Page

Manish — 2009-10-06T15:49:13+00:00

For all those people who have been actively involved in LUG Manipal, people who are excited to be a part of it or anyone who is even remotely interested in FOSS, I created the Facebook Fan Page for Linux User’s Group, Manipal on 6th October.

Join it ASAP so that you can get updates regarding any event, any worthy news related to FOSS or just anything which you want to share with the follow FOSS enthusiasts. You can contribute to it by

Become a Fan of LUG Manipal
Discuss anything useful on Discussion tab of the Fan page
Post links related to anything FOSS which do affect the larger community
Create Events and invite them to attend it.
If you took any photos during any of the LUG Meet/Workshop/Meetings, do upload them on the Fan Page’s album.

Lastly you can promote LUG Manipal by adding this badge on your website. The HTML Code for the same can be found out from here

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://static.ak.connect.facebook.com/js/api_lib/v0.4/FeatureLoader.js.php/en_GB”>

</script><script type=”text/javascript”>FB.init(“f83ca3350173b99bf34091c463dce8b0″);</script>

<fb:fan profile_id=”146702001478″ stream=”" connections=”10″ width=”300″>

</fb:fan><div style=”font-size:8px; padding-left:10px”>

<a href=”http://www.facebook.com/pages/Manipal-India/Linux-Users-Group-Manipal/146702001478″>

Linux User’s Group, Manipal on Facebook</a>

LUG Manipal: LUG MANIPAL INTRODUCTORY MEET 2009

soumen — 2009-10-05T19:54:20+00:00

So, Techtatva is over, and so are the second sessionals, and there is finally some more time to devote to the things we have been trying to find time for. So, what better time for picking up on the fundamentals of the FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) Movement? What better time to break free?

So we bring to you the Introductory Meet for LUG Manipal. It’s completely free and everyone is invited! We will be covering the reasons you would want to use linux, dispelling myths about it and in general increasing your Tech Awareness. Here is a brief gist of what we will be doing:-

1) Introduction to the FOSS Movement & the motivation behind it.

2) Introduction to the Linux operating system.

3) Clarifying the LUG’s internal structure and how you can be a part of it.

4) What you get out of being a part of it.

This is going to be no workshop or class. This is a meet with a difference. Everyone attending is on an equal platform, and they can express their ideas without any other considerations. There will be a free interflow of ideas and knowledge, and youll learn quite a bit. Come down and find out what “freedom” is about!

Date:- 1st October 2009

Venue:- NLH (Academic Block 3)

(The exact room number will be put up at the Venue)

LUG Manipal: Linux Install Fest

Kartik Mandaville — 2009-10-05T19:51:09+00:00

LUG Manipal is organising a Linux Install Fest aiming to introduce GNU/Linux to people who haven’t experienced a type of operating system which is crash-free , virus-free , with power of absolute customization and which is also being used by Google , NASA ,NSA and others.

This will be a 3 days install fest Starting on 6th of October 2009 at 5:30pm at NLH 103 MIT.

Distro – Ubuntu 9.04

We are providing with a re-mastered Ubuntu 9.04 which contains the commonly used packages .

6th – Introduction to OpenSource and GNU/Linux and Preparation for Install Fest ( Burning of DVD’s and defragmentation )

7th – Installing Linux (Ubutu 9.04 ) and explaining the basic softwares ( VLC, Gimp,Rhythmbox ,OpenOffice,Synaptic, Geany, Gedit,Transmission,Brasero,Pidgin,gcc/g++ )

8th -Talk about various open source projects like Firefox etc .

*Please come with your laptop and 1 BLANK DVD

NOTE : You can have Windows and Linux both simultaneously running on your laptop.Also ,there will be no problems with your warranty .

Swaroop Hegde (BE-2k4): Anniversary4

2009-10-02T14:19:54+00:00

When my blog was put on hiatus way back in February, I never realized it would take 8 months to bring back. Much has changed since then (I say that every year, I know). Picking October 2nd wasn’t a plan. It struck me few days ago how cool it would be celebrate on the day I hate the most – no, this has nothing to do with Gandhiji!

Instead of regretting what happened 4 years ago, I decided to treat this day like a birthday (maybe, better). I wore new clothes, had a filling breakfast, headed to work with a strong mindset, called many of my friends and re-structured (delete all posts, change theme) the blog to bring it back up.

Ever since I moved to Twitter, I’ve always had a need to say something more than 140 chars. Less workload should now allow me to do that. I’ve decided to keep the bits & bytes to Posterousспални – which I will soon be integrating here. And oh, this theme is temporary. More later..

Manish's Tech Blog: Feminism

Manish — 2009-09-27T11:02:38+00:00

Looks like Mark Shuttleworth has created a storm by uttering something which is not well received by a few Feminine Geeks. First I thought that ‘asking for apology’ is only my country’s national pastime, but probably it’s international.

The way everything is put forward, I can only say that things are blown out of proportion. Did Mark say that women are incompetent? Did he say that they are dumb or anything even faintly similar? Quoting from Skud’s article on geekfeminism

I’m sorry I wasn’t able to make it to LinuxCon this year; I hear it’s a pretty good event. I’ve been listening with some interest to people’s reports of what’s going on there, and this afternoon I heard from multiple sources about your keynote, in which you referred to our work in Linux as being “hard to explain to girls”.

She was herself not on the venue and all she knows is from *multiple* sources. Sometimes words get distorted and lose their context if they get passed from person to person. LinuxCon is not a place to vent someone’s anger, nor to abuse anyone. If Mark wanted to abuse them, he would have said it somewhere else.

It just works

The reality is that the population of girls/women in FOSS world is very marginal. I know that situation is improving, but it would not happen overnight. In my country girls are more attracted towards medical, healthcare, product services etc. First, India’s female literacy is less than male’s. Secondly, the percentage of girls in Indian engineering colleges is quite less. Thirdly, most of the female engineering graduates want to pursue MBA. So, hardly girls are left whom you would find interested in FOSS. Those who are really enthusiastic surely go a long way.

Shuttleworth said that Linux is hard to explain to girls. I can only say that it’s even tough to explain to guys who are not interested in technical matters. Probably Mark must have tried explaining it to girls who are not even interested in computers. Neither me nor Mark has any intention to look down upon women, but nit-picking at each and every phrase is somewhat lame. This actually does more harm to women who want to be more involved in FOSS.

For those who are still trapped up in the same array of tweets and dents related to this event, you may prefer reading Matthew Brennan Jones’s response to geekfeminism. He has written a post on his blog clearing the misconceptions. Go read it as he was physically present that time of the event.

I know am late expressing my views, but it hardly matters.

Saahil (BE-2k7): U_Need

Saahil — 2009-09-25T18:31:21+00:00

Ok, this one’s right out of nowhere, but just the last evening I thought up of something. How many times have you been in a situation when your cell phone totally screwed after falling from your pocket while running for the class in the morning. Now that’s not the worst part, is it? Not only did it cost you hefty to get the phone repaired, you were also left totally bereft of any kind of contact with anyone till the time it got repaired. All this because, probably, you couldn’t find someone who had a cell phone to spare. How about we come up with a way to *let everyone know*? That is exactly what this new web service would be all about. You tell us what you need and where you are. I bet there’s someone around who’d be glad to lend a hand, be it with a spare cellphone, a bike for a day or a pair of black formal shoes. This is supposed to be an entirely user-collaborative service, which is why your participation is highly appreciated. That said, I am currently just carrying out some sample runs to determine stuff like approximate load, response time from users, effective reach of the service etc. So, if you’re as much as a little carefree at the moment, take a minute and help me out here. Here’s what you could do to be at the top of my awesome-things-and-people-that-I-know list :-

1. Get a twitter account
They’re all tweeting these days. Its the first step to be popular and get a hot date for your high school prom. You, obviously, know if you’re already signed up on twitter.

2. Tell me if you need something
Now, this is the important step. Whenever you need something, just use your twitter account to shoot me a reply at @U_Need describing what you need, followed by a hashtag called #ineed. For example, your tweet could look like-

@U_Need I need a calculator for a day for my Discrete Mathematics test. #ineed

3. Tell me if you’ve got something
If you have something that someone could use, and you could spare, be nice and send me a @U_Need reply with a #ihave hashtag at the end.

eg. @U_Need Could lend my bike to someone for the weekend. Black Yamaha FZ #ihave

4. Follow me
Follow me on twitter at @U_Need to see what’s up with us.

5. Follow up
You could search for #ihave hashtags on twitter, if you tweeted a #ineed, and vice versa. Be smart. Once my service starts, you could gift me a beer or two for taking the pain out of the whole procedure, but for now this would be the only way to follow up.

That’s it!! You’ve told everyone what you need (or got). You couldn’t have done more than that, could you?

Thank you very much for taking time out for this baby. I appreciate.

In case you’re wondering, yes I *do* have a life and you could be a part of the fun by following me at @saahil.

So long….

Posted in Technical, Thoughts Tagged: have, need, twitter, user collaborative services, u_need, web service

Ankur Shrivastava (BE-2k7): Getting started with pthread

Ankur Shrivastava — 2009-09-24T19:40:17+00:00

Recently i have started coding in C a lot and what i came across from a lot of people is that doing Threading in C is very hard, is it really like that? here is a simple Pthread program that should clear that up

get it here

in the above program i have just created 2 threads and passed thr1 ( = 1 ) and thr2 ( = 2 ) values as parameters the function void * thread ( void * ptr ) is executes as a separate thread, we create two thread objects thread1 and thread2, and start threads using pthread_create function passing thread object, function pointer and parameters as arguments, here NULL specifies default attributes for the thread, we can change this by passing pthread_attr_t structure instead of NULL.
we wait for the threads to finish using the pthread_join function
One major problem that is faced by most of the people is of using a library which is not a thread safe library, so you need to be careful about the libraries you use in your program, if not sure about a particular library being thread safe, just assume it not to be thread safe

PS – No updates from a long time as i dont have a proper net connection ….

Manish's Tech Blog: List of useful Python libraries

Manish — 2009-09-04T08:09:12+00:00

If you are a .NET programmer, then you find Python a bit tough. Reason? Python does not include library for each and every operation possible in this world. You may have to work around to find the necessary packages, download them and continue with your development.

Python’s standard module list has a finite number of entries as opposed to .NET ( I use .NET at my workplace). Here this is an attempt to collect all such libraries which are outside standard modules, which you might badly need for your development. Many of them are extensions or wrapper packages for already existing libraries.

1 ) scapy

This is a library for TCP/IP stack wherein you can have full control over the lowest detail of the Packet that leaves your computer. It supports many protocols like ETH, IP, ARP, ICMP, TCP, UDP etc. You can create custom TCP/IP packet and send it to any host. Typical implementation is ARP Ping, ICMP Ping.

Experience: Tried. Works perfectly. Havn’t stumbled across any bugs as of now.

2) soaplib

Used for creating lightweight web services. As the page says, it comes with a client and server built in and on-demand WSDL generation.

Experience: Havn’t tried. Heard about it’s existence.

3) mysql

Uh? Do I really have to tell what this is actually. I hope everyone knows.

Documentation for python-mysql

Experience: Obviously! Obviously! I think I should remove this line.

4) aubio

Stating directly from it’s site – “aubio is a library for audio labelling. Its features include segmenting a sound file before each of its attacks, performing pitch detection, tapping the beat and producing midi streams from live audio. The name aubio comes from ‘audio’ with a typo”

Experience: None. Presently in To-Do List.

5) Beautiful Soup

BeautifulSoup is an SGML parser which is highly robust and doesn’t die straight-off even if you give it poorly formed data. To make it scream and die all you have to do is to give something that isn’t SGML at all. It even has a parser class named BeautifulSOAP which is used to parse SOAP message (as the name applies). It even has a class named ICantBelieveItsBeautifulSoup. Sounds stupid? Who cares as long as it does it work.

Experience: Tried when I saw Anomit using it. Need more experience as I have lost touch as of now. Never tried BeautifulSOAP.

6) python-clamav

It is pending in my To-Do list. Will start working as I get time. Check a small tutorial

Experience: No! Read the line above.

7) python-crypto

Presently in #1 position of To-Do list. Sounds just too promising. Hope it is as I thought it to be.

Check the API and it’s general overview

Experience: No

8 ) django

Now if you don’t know django – Go shoot yourself or read about it here if you somehow survive.

[ As pointed by Anomit, it isnt a framework, but library is a general name I have used for the title ]

Experience: Obviously!

9) gd

I have used GD a lot in PHP, but hardly on Python. GD is simpler than ImageMagik (never used) as people told me. Hope to use this library if I ever require.

If you ever require the documentation, head yourself to this page.

Experience: Not used in Python, but in PHP

10) gmp

GMP stands for GMP Multi Precision and gmpy is a python wrapper over it. Though you might not need it in Python, but if you are coming from C background, this might be a familiar name.

Experience: Normal, not an expert

11) python-jabber

Python-Jabber is a python module which implements jabber instant messaging protocol. Check out the documentation and a funny example .

Experience: Little experience. Not much. After all it doesn’t look so tough, so will sit down for a hacking session,

12) python-irclib

I encountered this library when I was searching more on python-jabber library. This also falls in the category of real-time messaging. The problem I can see is that there is no documentation. How to proceed? Use dir() and inspect module extensively?

Experience: Kidding? Please show me the documentation. I don’t have more time for hacks as I did with scapy.

–

Till now ,I had kept this list for my own reference. Many more required libraries are missing. If you have any more in mind, please mention it. I would be glad to add it.

Manish's Tech Blog: Idiotic Twitter Activities

Manish — 2009-08-21T19:26:12+00:00

With the uncontrolled explosion of microblogging we have seen every Tom, Dick and Harry having a Twitter account. The problem doesn’t lie in having a account, but how they use it.

Re-tweets

At times it looks like some people have just no work and only thing they do is to re-tweet another’s thoughts. Re tweeting a few exceptional ones makes some sense, but why re-tweet each and every fuckin tweet in this damn universe? Come-on, create a script, follow people and do mass re-tweets. In this way you won’t miss even a single piece of shit thrown upon you. Sometimes re-tweets can be thought upon as a method to gain more followers. God knows how? Am just making wild guesses.

Tweets with Innumerable Handles

I have seen some people whose tweets contains more twitter handles than they have text. Consider an example

@deathsen It would be better that me, @fcukarrington @dziuba go out for drive with @gragsha. Should we @scobleshit @fkbeer ?

If you can decipher the tweets, it is well and good. If you get such tweets on a daily basis, the unfollow button comes handy. Just hit that button before insanity starts getting hold of you. I am hardly able to understand whom they are talking to or whether trying to gain attention. I am even curious whether they know what they are writing.

There are more, but probably not so nasty as these. SMS Lingo is one which still gets on my nerves, but somehow I have managed to live with it.

Manish's Tech Blog: FOSS Industry Adoption

Manish — 2009-08-16T15:37:34+00:00

Probably I am not so much qualified to enlighten others on this topic, but this is what I can see from my eyes.

Praise Python! Praise Linux! Praise any other FOSS technology! Now go and check what is being used in the corporations. I would like to list them down a few – .NET, IE6 , ActiveX, Rational Suite, Lotus Notes etc etc. Most of the technologies are either outdated or fully enterprise software. Half of them would be probably new for anyone.

.NET

Even when I was in college, all I used to hear was that .NET used to be an integral part of their requirement of any company that hits the campus. Even in the Internship last year, .NET was the religion. Even in all the jobs around why is .NET so important? We hear so much about Python, isn’t it? Where is it? When will it be adopted as mainstream popular development language?

Don’t confuse between .NET and Python. When we say .NET we usually mean C#.NET. This language was responsible for the success of the framework. We even have IronPython, but hardly anyone uses it. (Please don’t bring VB.NET in between). One reason is that since all of the language having .NET bindings generate MSIL, the language doesn’t matter. Since C# has syntax very similar to Java, it becomes a preferred choice even for beginner and experts.

I personally don’t like the .NET runtime. It is slow and hogs the resources. Visual Studio sucks more RAM and resources than the OS itself(read Vista). It is slow in response, freezes a lot. (Please don’t give bullshit suggestions to get a 4GB RAM Module). The only positive thing is C# which is very familiar and is probably the best language from Microsoft.

To make Python more famous, we need to look out from the standard modules and create a huge collection of libraries and organize them in categories. .NET has a bigger library for more functionality (makes it more heavy).

Source Control

ClearCase! I would keep my mouth shut over here, but the web interface sucks. Sucks bigtime! Doesn’t look like a web app in the first place. Upgrades are slow in enterprise and we are forced to use the old versions of any software which should be kicked out by now.

Why not subversion? I know some of my friends who say that their company uses it, but still ClearCase still has a big market share. Probably a big reason may be due to early adoption and a complete Suite. I have attended one conference of IBM Rational Suite in which I was really impressed by the way it was being explained. I hope people should get the point. Marketing matters as much as quality matters. Subversion may be excellent, but it needs an excellent marketing to make it more appealing. A rock-solid support is also needed.

IE6

Probably nothing sucks more than IE6 when web is mentioned. The usage of IE6 is highest in corporate offices. Employees are forced to use this stone-age browser because either their company policies don’t allow or they don’t have admin privileges or the worst of all – The smart-ass programmers made the company’s intranet to work only on IE6.

Operating System

Do I even need to mention this? All companies have deals with the software giant for bulk licenses to keep their systems running. They strike special deals if they ever need *nix systems. This decision is usually taken after lot of brainstorming.

This post was not to show someone superior or inferior. Just my point of view! Your point of view goes down in the comments section.

Ankur Shrivastava (BE-2k7): A simple python socket chat example

Ankur Shrivastava — 2009-08-03T19:09:16+00:00

i was trying to explain sockets to one of my friend and this is what i used, the code should be self explanatory, this is a very simple application of sockets…

download here

Shubhendra Singh (BE-2k5): Smile like you mean it

Shubhendra Singh — 2009-07-29T15:34:44+00:00

Was listening to this song by The Killers and I felt like so much has changed in my life, from school to college everything has changed.

I have changed the friends have changed the situation has changed the whole life has changed. The innocence of school is long gone, college time is over where everyone is so relaxed and only motive is to enjoy in life with friends, then France internship is over where Friendship showed new and beautiful chapters in life, recently Manipal days are also over which were best days in my life.

Now heading to new destination and finally going to that place where even my grandfather visited 44 years ago then my uncle visited and now I will be also going there and become Sun Devil! Life is such a big mystery where you don't know what will you be doing next second. Is it all fixed for you? Is this the path which eventually you would have opted? Was this the boulevard that will lead you to your destiny? These questions always ponder in mind and I just think that God is there to help me! Just flow with this river and you will reach the destination.

Dhananjay (BE-2k7): Freeing up RAM in Linux

djays — 2009-07-27T10:58:35+00:00

NOTE: Little clarification, this is not needed at all ,as memory is freed when required.

WHY IT MAY BE HELP-FULL: This clears the page-cache , dentires and inodes.

IT’S TRANSLATION : It may be that you are watching a movie or using a Virtual Machine , a resource hungry process has filled up your ram by caching data and the data needs to be continuously removed to make space for new data . This is managed by the kernel.

IF YOU STILL DON’T GET IT: Notice video in your movie hanging (not audio) while your ram gets cached Or your system running a bit slow ?

1) Stop the process consuming loads of memory. (Check System Monitor). 2) Open a terminal with root privileges . 3) Sync 4) echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches 5) echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

Posted in Bash, Fedora 10, Fedora 11, Fedora 8, Fedora 9, Linux, openSUSE, Ubuntu 8.10, Ubuntu 9.04

Dhananjay (BE-2k7): Fedora 11 Fixing Various Problems

djays — 2009-07-12T08:16:42+00:00

0) Graphic Driver Problems

- For ATI RadeonHD cards (especially x1250 and x1200)

yum install xorg-x11-drv-radeonhd

if /etc/X11/xorg.conf doesnt exist
yum install system-config-display
Run system-config-display –reconfig in terminal.

Modify /etc/X11/xorg.conf
"Device" Section Driver "radeonhd" Option "DRI" "True"

- Or Install fglrx (At the time of writing of post official rpmfusion drivers dont exist)

Hence Fedora 10 ’s kernel needs to be installed .Refer this post

(Make sure that you use correct driver since ati recently removed support for many cards )

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=224519

1) Enabling OSS
(This is needed for Real Player 11 as it crashes with ALSA)

(In Root /Sudo Mode)
nano /etc/modprobe.d/dist-oss.conf
uncomment line as mentioned

2) Fixing glitchy sound problems.
There are many solutions to the sound problems listed in http://fedoraforums.org
They mainly deal with time scheduling
Other solutions consist of

- Enable OSS (See Above)
- Install OSS v4.x ( This replaces all the ALSA/Pulse Audio kernel modules)

3) Enabling TAP in MousePad / Touchpad

- Temporary Measure
synclient TapButton1=1 synclient TapButton2=1

- Permanent Measures

- System > Prefrences > Mouse >Touchpad > Enable mouse clicks

- Modifying xorg.conf

See this link.

NOTE: IF YOU FIND ANY PROBLEM / ALTERNATE SOLUTION WITH ABOVE FIXES PLEASE POST A COMMENT.

Posted in Fedora 11

Dhananjay (BE-2k7): Fedora 11 Leonidas Essentials Guide Part 1: Getting Started

djays — 2009-06-26T15:20:18+00:00

Fedora 11 Leonidas essentials guide

Well Howdy Folks ! ,thou having trouble with getting Fedora 11 Leonidas Up and Running ?

Well then you have come to the right place !!!
NOTE:all commands r to be typed in terminal with sudo or su login or su -c
PS: All yum commands can be replaced by package kit alternatives type “info pkcon” in terminal.

0) PRESTO PLUGIN FOR YUM: Presto is a delta rpm plugin for yum . (Delta rpm is only the difference in old and new version of packages Hence Saves Precious Bandwidth.
yum install yum-presto

1)RPM-FUSION:Adding rpmfusion as a repository to get access to lot of other packages and features.

(VERY ESSENTIAL ALL OTHER STEPS REQUIRE THIS)
rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

yum update

To install something in command line use

yum install Name of Packages Seperated by spaces -y

of course to find the exact package name use

yum search Package

2)Package Management Frontend GUI :

Fedora already has PackageKit (System>Administration>Add/Remove Software)

but it doesn’t quite compare up to yumex

yum install yumex

3)MP3 Support:

Well, everybody loves their songs right ?

yum install gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-ugly xine xine-lib libdvdcss xine-lib-extras-nonfree

4)Music Players:

Everybody has a different choice of a music player , I personally prefer Songbird and Amarok which have everything from cover management ,id3tag editing,online Music Store Support and Global key Shortcuts.

Few of the most used players.

                     -Amarok
                     -Audacious
                     -Banshee
                     -Exaile
                     -Listen
                     -Rhythmbox
                     -Xmms
                     -Songbird

4)GCC compatibility:

GCC is the GNU compiler supporting a lot of languages. Its needed for old packages.

yum install gcc gcc-c++ compat-libstdc++-33 compat-libstdc++-296

5)Video Codecs:

Fedora doesn’t with proprietary codecs for playing Codecs.

Download them.

wget http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/all-20071007.tar.bz2

then

mkdir -p /usr/lib/codecs

tar -jxvf all-20071007.tar.bz2 --strip-components 1 -C /usr/lib/codecs/

5)Video Players:

Totem is installed by default but its not a favourite of mine.

Real Player

Download RealPlayer 11 GOLD from: http://www.real.com/linux/. ( preferably use .bin file)

Select: “Advanced Installation RedHat Package”

Before installing RealPlayer, make sure to have the compat-libstdc++-33 compatibility libraries installed.
yum install compat-libstdc++-33

chmod +x name.bin

./name.bin

Read Agreement Go to end and press y and enter (keep pressing enter, till it starts installing)

For RPM:
sudo rpm -ivh RealPlayer11.rpm

note:if real/helix or any plugin doesnt load in firefox use:
sudo /usr/bin/mozilla-plugin-config -i -f

Other Players

mplayer: yum install mplayer mplayer-gui mplayer-skins mplayer-fonts mplayerplug-in mencoder
xine: yum install xine xine-lib-extras xine-lib-extras-nonfree libdvdcss
vlc: yum install vlc

kaffeine yum install kaffeine kdemultimedia kdemultimedia-libs

Dragon : yum install dragon kdemultimedia kdemultimedia-libs

Note: After this if it doesn’t work refer to my other posts

Posted in Fedora 11

Ankur Shrivastava (BE-2k7): How Manipal got its first Linux (fedora) server

Ankur Shrivastava — 2009-06-25T19:18:54+00:00

It all started with a failing Student’s Teacher Feedback System, designed by few fourth year students of my college, in oct-nov 2008 the system was not able to scale and everything was reverted back to paper, it was then when i was contacted by a teacher from my Department ( Information and Communication Technology ), regarding if i can improve it.

i asked DJ if he wants to join me and after few weeks of coding there it was Manipal university’s first (working) Feedback System, when the point of hosting it came, i was surprised to find Manipal University has no Linux servers, i mean come on no Linux what are you people click sys admins, then we decided to setup our own server in the department, thus giving Manipal university its first Linux ( fedora 10 ) server.

currently it just hosts the Feedback System, but we are planning to use it as local ( internal ) fedora repository mirror, we need permission from the WiFi provider ION because almost all the students use only WiFi and not LAN, last time we tried we were denied by saying ” You are a threat to our network “, lets see how it goes this time. we will also require people to manage it but i think this can be handled very well by LUG Manipal, some pics

Fedora 10 server in Manipal

PS – i am looking for a way to convince them that setting up a mirror will be helpful for them as well as students can anyone suggest me how to go about it??

LUG Manipal: How Manipal got its first Linux (fedora) server

Ankur — 2009-06-25T17:49:38+00:00

It all started with a failing Student’s Teacher Feedback System, designed by few fourth year students of college, in oct-nov 2008 the system was not able to scale and everything was reverted back to paper, it was then when i was contacted by a teacher from my Department ( Information and Communication Technology ), regarding if i can improve it,

Fedora 10 server in Manipal

PS – i am looking for a way to convene them that setting up a mirror will be helpful for them as well as students can anyone suggest me how to go about it??

Dhananjay (BE-2k7): Fedora 11 Leonidas Essentials Guide Part 2: More Config

djays — 2009-06-24T16:07:54+00:00

NOTE:All Commands to be entered in terminal in Super User/root mode. (.:. su – or sudo)

1) Setup sudo
In Fedora the root and normal user accounts are different and one can switch between them to do administrative tasks.
However if you want to give a user other than root administrative priviliges

nano /etc/sudoers

Add to the end

<name> ALL=(ALL) ALL

is the user name you want to give sudo privilige.

<name> ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

if you dont want to be asked the password .(NOT RECOMMENDED)

2)Permanantly Mounting Partitions:

Fedora 11 has ntfs 3g preinstalled but sometimes the partitions don’t get mounted (or you just may want to get rid of manual mounting)

Editing fstab gives read/write support on boot

a) use fdisk : /sbin/fdisk -l

b) note down partions u wnt to access name (eg sda1) type (eg ntfs or FAT32)

c)Make mount points:

mkdir /media/<name>
<name>can be replaced by whatever name you choose.

d)open gedit in sudo mode

e)Open /etc/fstab

f)For ntfs drive ( mount point here is DATA)

   /dev/sda1 /media/DATA ntfs-3g rw,defaults,umask=0000 0 0
or /dev/sda1 /media/DATA ntfs-3g defaults 0 0

if drive is FAT32/FAT16 use vfat instead of ntfs-3g , other lines are NOT REQUIRED

3)Adobe Flash :

For 32 bit:

install the Adobe YUM repository, and install through yum:

rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm rpm –import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux

yum install flash-plugin (if you dont do this no sound for flash applicatons)
For 64 bit:

There are 2 ways.

OLDER WAY: (NOT NEEDED AS 64 BIT FLASH PLAYER WORKS)

mkdir -p /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins yum install nspluginwrapper.{i386,x86_64} pulseaud/io-lib.i386 yum install flash-plugin mozilla-plugin-config -i -g -v

NEWER WAY:

Download 64 bit Flash Player 10

http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

4) Installing Sun Java

a) Download JDK from http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads
To install rpm
rpm -ivh .rpm
To install bin
chmox +x .bin
./.bin

/usr/sbin/alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /usr/java/jre/bin/java 100 /usr/sbin/alternatives --install /usr/bin/jar jar /usr/java/jre/bin/jar 100 /usr/sbin/alternatives --install /usr/bin/javavc javavc /usr/java/jre/bin/javavc 100 /usr/sbin/alternatives --install /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin.so 100
b) To use Switch among javas:
/usr/sbin/alternatives --config java /usr/sbin/alternatives --config libjavaplugin.so /usr/sbin/alternatives --config jar
c)For Java Programs(You Probably Already Have This):
yum install libXp compat-libstdc++-*

Posted in Fedora 11