Planet Manipal

Retro RTC

2010-09-08T16:13:01+00:00

5th of April’10

<1130> Got up after a long sleep.

<1200 – 1300> WTH was I doing then? Probably taking some pills for having a good memory huh!

<1330> Had lunch.

<1600> Came back to room.

<1630> A KNOCK at my door.

A friend of mine was asking for some assistance in his mini project. I thought it would be fun and started discussing about it. It’s a retro RTC (Real Time Clock). The fact that I call this a retro is that he didn’t want to use any RTC chip and he brought an AT89C2051 microcontroller for this 24 hour clock project.

<1700> Project started.

It has a timer facility as well. The relay in the above picture is to drive a load connected to AC mains. A timer can be set to switch on and off the load automatically at a particular time.Starting from top to bottom in the picture, the first switch is to set Hour, the next one for min, the third one for timer on off and the last one for manual on/off switch. For the load to have a normal operation when the whole device is off, it is connected to NC (Normally closed) and Common pins. He wanted to have power supply from AC mains. He had brought all the stuffs for that so finished that part as well.

And finally………….

Timer mode on/off

I covered the display with a polythene bag to give a better look ( I didn’t have anything better at that point of time).

<1900> Project Completed!

New Domain

2010-09-07T20:00:06+00:00

Finally shifted to a new domain http://blog.abhimanyukumar.in/ form http://abhikumar777.blogspot.com/. Also my e-mail has changed to mail@abhimanyukumar.in. Do feel free to mail for any queries.

P.S. : If any one needs the file to any of the 3Ds max models ... Send me an E-Mail .... i will send it to u ASAP

Playing Pong on a Laptop Using Mobile Phones as Paddles

2010-09-04T02:42:42+00:00

About a week back (while getting bored sitting in a java lab) me and Mudit were thinking of some simple project ideas to do over the weekend.So after some very wacky (when i say wacky i mean really over the top stupid) ideas we finally settled down on making pong but with a twist. We decided that instead of running it on one screen as it is usually done we will make the game area a lot larger buy using screens from various networked computers to make a very long but very awesome pong table.Next we decided to control the paddles not by using traditional keyboard keys but by making use of the accelerometer commonly available on most phones now-a-days.The idea was to control each paddle with separate phone by using the accelerometer on the phone to detect the motion of the phone and sending the data via a TCP socket over a wireless network to the computer running the game.

So we started working on the idea and after some time Mudit lost interest and gave up the idea so i went and asked Ankur (a.k.a OS) if he was interested in doing the project. He seemed pretty into the idea and so we stared first trying to narrow the choice of mobile OS we were going to use. We wanted to use android but left that as none of us actually had an android device (me having a Samsung Wave S8500 running bada OS, and Ankur having a Nokia E61i). As the E61i did not have a accelerometer we went for bada OS as the platform of development.I wrote the bada OS app part and ankur did the coding for the game running on the computer.

After some really silly mistakes like trying to load a x86 binary on an ARM architecture phone and trying to connect to a socket on another system without turning on the network we finally got something running.We were able to make a basic ping pong game using C++ and get some sort of rudimentary physics running on it.Also we were able to read the sensor values on the phone and device a simple algorithm to calculate on how to move the paddle using these values.Obviously this is in no way complete and loads still needs to be done like providing multiple monitor support and improving the paddle motion algorithm and making the sensor data error free.Here is are a few videos of the first demo.

Experiments with Sanity

2010-08-31T23:37:57+00:00

Mind and Body, Body and Soul (Part I) There was something off about it all. But he couldn’t point his finger at what it was exactly. His eyes blinked too slowly and sights rushed by in the seconds they stayed open. Anxious faces, stern expressions, closed doors, noisy corridors. People stared down at a body, whispering to themselves furtively, as if to keep a secret from the person sleeping on

Weekend Project II

2010-08-30T16:51:02+00:00

In march i posted about a weekend project which involved controlling a small toy car using my cell phone, this is a similar one again implemented in few hours, here we are trying to play the awesome game of pong using the tilt sensor on Samsung Wave. The pong application running on Laptop is written in Qt (C++) and the application on the Phone is written using the Bada SDK.
The working is simple, the pong application running on Laptop requires phones to make a TCP connection to it. Phones just create a TCP connection to the application on PC and sends tilt sensor data to it, movement of paddles is done by the PC application based on the value it receives from the phones. It still requires better calibration and we will work on it after the exams are over (Education prevents you from doing cool things!!), there are a lot of ideas buzzing in our empty heads (according to our teachers!!) , the original idea was by Abhimanyu which we implemented.

if you cannot see the above video here and here are short demo of how it works.

PS – code and proper working for the previous and this weekend project will be posted soon!

Character Animation

2010-08-30T00:38:25+00:00

Character animation done in 3Ds max. Model of a soldier downloaded form the web. Rigged using biped and Physique Modifier.Applied some .bip (motion capture) files to it. Then and rendered it out in using mental ray with daylight system for shadows and lighting.

Understanding Kaizen and 5S : Japan’s widely acclaimed Key to Competitive success

2010-08-25T18:30:48+00:00

This Article covers understanding what Kaizen and 5S basically mean, how and when they are supposed to be practiced, how they are instrumental in the success of an organisation and the importance this receives from the management. After going through this, you might feel that it is very basic and similar to its other English counterparts but on further dissection it would be clear that these are simply varied derivations of each other.

New Rupee symbol : Re-branding the Indian currency

2010-08-25T18:30:10+00:00

This article covers the importance of symbol as highlighted by the government, how we zeroed-in on this symbol, what it means, where will we see the new symbol and how long will the transformation take. Additionally, this article also covers why the government decided to use the symbol now, what this symbol means for Brand India and how it would have to be achieved.

Commonwealth Games – Really worth it?

2010-08-25T18:26:09+00:00

Hosting the Commonwealth Games in Delhi is not just about portraying the country's image to the world but much beyond. Also its success not only depends on the preparations but also how the investment is tackled with after the games are over. Read all about it and much more.

August 24, 2010

2010-08-24T17:45:29+00:00

It was 1st of August, 2007, I joined Manipal Institute of Technology. I still vividly remember that day. Heavy rains and long walks to the lecture halls used to be as cohesive in our lives as the same daily menu of egg curry and 'coconut' chicken! I had heard so much about college life and here I was experiencing it first hand.

Days passed quickly, we were hoping from one set of sessionals to another; jumping between end semester exams and lab tests and before we could even realize; I am done with three years of my course. All of us used to ask ourselves the same question everyday, "How will we manage surviving for four years in this boring dull place?", and yet here I am, today, a student of final year, telling you that 1st August 2007 looks like yesterday.

I was sitting in one of my lectures, listening to everyone around me, of course professor excluded, when the idea for this entry struck me. I am not writing today to tell you about how much fun we had or to complain about college life coming to an end. I guess I have already done that in my last post. Today I am here to write about something different. Something that I have noticed over the past few weeks and something thats got me thinking!

I see my friends, my classmates, even people I do not know, and I feel that they have all somehow woken up from deep slumber! There is something about all of them that tells me that reality has caught up with all of them. Maybe this is what they mean when they say, "the rat race makes us a rat!". All of them have a look of fear and tense on their face. The topic of girls, crushes and alcohol seems to be a thing of past and have been replaced by what few would say, much more serious things like GRE, GMAT etc.

Everyone is either busy with their word lists or trying to configure routers on a simulation. Few have already aced the tests they took scoring 1550 in GRE while others have become Cisco Certified Network Associates (sounds pretty heavy)! Few of them are happy for being certified by Sun as Java programmers; while I sit here in front of my laptop singing praises for them!

I was always under the impression that the last year of college is meant for fun; after all it is supposed to be the last year of your life when you can sit and chat with your friends (or few with their girlfriends/boyfriends) till you pass out on their couch without worrying that you have to wake up early tomorrow or report to your boss. Well chats still happen, but now its mostly about placements, grades, scores and certificates.

All this has got me thinking about where I stand. I have not done any word list or any certification course; I was not even eligible for first few companies that visited my campus for recruitment. I sit back and I think. Where do I fit in? Looking back, these three years have been wonderful. There is nothing about them that i would want to change. Of course I would'nt mind a higher GPA or a few more certificates; but if I had to do it all over again; I would probably do it the same way.

Was I too casual in my approach? Did I drift away? Did I go wrong somewhere? These are probably the questions that will haunt me and few others like me for sometime. I agree that there have been times when I could have probably been more serious but tomorrow when I look back, I am sure it will bring a smile to my face.

Cheers!!

PS I could not think of an apt title.

Mines in the ocean

2010-08-21T03:34:29+00:00

Found a really good tutorial on mental ray lighting system (link).I changed the Torus Knot with a few mines designed by me as they look a lot better.

Here are my renders :

Sunset:

Night:

How much of rendering can HP 6515b take?

2010-08-21T02:24:09+00:00

I set up this scene of a few virus like things floating in 3Ds max, put on some textures on them and added some depth of field effects(9 passes) and rendered it out.

The specifics of the scene are:
Faces:5566720
Lights: 6 (Ray Traced Shadows)
Image Resolution: 1920x1080
Renderer: Default scanline
3Ds Max Version:2009

Here is the system config:

It took about 54mins 52sec to render 1 image.

The System performance while rendering:

The Final Render :

Note:There have been images that have taken much longer to render on HP 6515B(some taking as long as 2hrs to render at 1920x1080). But this is the 1st that an image crossed 30mis using a the scanline renderer. All other images that took longer than that were done using mental ray.

Simple Cloth Simulation Using 3Ds Max

2010-08-21T02:24:02+00:00

Cloth simulations is one of the coolest features of any 3D program.It is very simple to create basic cloth animations but it takes a lot of time to simulate cloth due to the huge amounts of processing power required.Here is a simple cloth simulation tutorial.

Step 1: Create a sphere (Position(X,Y,Z)=(0.00,0.00,0.00),Radius=20)

Step 2: Create a plane (Position(X,Y,Z)=(0.00,0.00,40.00),Length=50,Width=50,Length Segments=50,Width Segments=50)

Step 3:Select the plane(Plane01) and go to the modifier stack and add cloth modifier to it

Step 4:Click on "Object Properties" and using the dialogue box add Sphere01 to the Objects in simulation list.

Step 5:Select Plane01 and Sphere01 one by one change their properties as shown in the screenshots below.Click OK

Step 6:Click on "Simulate" to start the simulation.Change parameters like gravity and end frame to get result.(I used -4000 for gravity [earth's gravity being -980] and 500 frames.)This will create key-frames for the cloth (in this care Plane01) falling on the sphere and colliding.This has to be done only once and will take time depending on your system config.

Step 7:Put some materials and render out the result.

Note:You can increase the length and width segments to make it cloth smoother and more realistic but this will make the simulation process slower.

I used this same technique for this picture of the cloth covering a car.The cloth was a plane with 300 length segments and 400 width segments. The car and the ground were collision objects.

Yes, I am proud of my country, but….

2010-08-15T12:29:29+00:00

It’s 15th of August, it’s India’s Independence day. Exactly 63 years back British left the country and our country got independence. From that date, till today we have a lot of achievements. (Check #63ReasonsToBeProud on twitter for listening to people)

Let’s s look at the other face of our 63 years of Independence. Should we use this day to only celebrate our achievements or also to look at the areas where we have failed? Looks like the former is what everyone agrees to. No one cares about the latter. Don’t you learn from your mistakes?

Let me showcase a few areas where we have failed miserably and tend to avoid. I am not against my country, but please don’t turn a blind eye to the problems. If I was not passionate about my country, I would never spend so much time thinking about the problems too

Poverty

Looks like we are better in campaigning than actually acting. All “Garibi Hatao” did was getting a seat secured for Indira Gandhi. It’s 39 years since that campaign and we still have the more poor people in 8 states combined than 26 poorest African nations. Poor are dying, food grains prices are rising and guess what? Food grains are rotting in open.

Illiteracy

The literacy rate in India is only at 66%. No! 66% is not a decent figure! Look from the other angle — One-third of the population is not educated. The people who can actually exploit this 1/3rd is politicians.

It’s easier to sway illiterate people by emotions. I started believing more in this theory when some 10 years back, Lalu used to command a great section of illiterates in Bihar. Any rally used to pull a huge amount of crowd and people from my city used to fill trains heading to Patna. At stations I have heard them saying(in local dialect) that “Lalu is our saviour. I am feeling excited since he might announce something for us to end my family’s poverty“. Poor brainwashed people! Probably they never knew that Lalu wants to keep them poor and illiterate so that they can keep on believing in him. Bonus points for guessing why Literacy rate in Bihar took a dip when Lalu took over the CM post.

Caste

I don’t get the much difference between Religion politics and Caste politics. At the lower level, they must be different, but from upper view, it does the same thing - Divide people. Only India can have hypocrites like Lalu Prasad Yadav and Mayawati who call themselves secular and play caste politics. It’s like one hand doesn’t know about the other.

Now forget the politicians. Lets look amongst ourselves. Do you ask other’s caste? Why? Is that necessary? I am not looking at the Internet savvy crowd, but everyone in general. Goto towns, villages, many places caste-spirit runs in the blood of people. Have a look at some

Probably the list wont end and I can jot down one incidence of violence in every state.

Do you know that Hindu temples are dominated by priests who think that by worshiping god they are bringing peace all over the society. Ironically, the word “all” should be changed to “a restricted section”. It is a known fact that temples are pretty much conservative when it comes to let people enter. I always find Gurudwaras to be more open and tolerant. My experience says that people from all castes are allowed to enter and you will be treated same everywhere.

Do you know about these events?

I have given temple examples, since it represents a classic case of how a small section of people have hijacked religion and faith.

Reservations

Finally we are onto the most controversial topic and so called magical-solution to the downtrodden sections of the society. Proponents think that reservation is the only way to bring up the oppressed people. Let’s now look at the outcome of reservations

Colleges lower OBC cut-offs to fill seats
IITs may relax cutoffs to fill up quota seats (IIT is also not immune)

There are a few families who are taking advantage of quota for their generation and people in genuine need for it are getting starved. There should be a rule that only a person and their next generation can take the advantage of reservation. If they need the help of reservation for generations and generation then either “The quota system in broken” or “They are incompetent”. In both cases they should be starved of the benefit.

It has been half a century years since reservation was introduced and the society still needs it. Either we are useless or the Quota system is broken.

Another thing which irks me is that the quota system in caste based instead of financial status based. Quota system are meant for oppressed section of the society. Even forward caste people can be poor and lower caste people can be pretty rich. Still, the current system fails to address this problem. Politicians are more interested in caste based politics.

Conclusion

I have stopped only on 4 topics. This doesn’t mean we have only four problems in India. Look around and you will get a more like rising crime rate, corruption etc.

Disclaimer

I don’t care if something in this article hurts you. Getting offended is the easiest thing to do and requires no thinking. If you get offended by this article, I will get offended that you got offended by my article.

Please post polite comments. Any rude/harsh or personally insulting comments will be deleted ASAP. Please don’t bring emotions in the picture, but counter the claims by facts and proof. Emotions is a sure-shot way to kill logic.

Raigarh Couple Lends Light to Local Theatre

2010-08-14T05:09:33+00:00

This particular piece was published in The Asian Age, New Delhi, on 13th August 2010. Written by Vatsala Shrivastava. Thought it would be great to share it. :)

THE BOUNDARY of the place is no constraint for creativity. No area can restrain the creative seed from growing giant enough to pierce the high-rise sky. Small-town dreamers have mastered the art of picking up dew drops and placing it high in the sky which shines like stars even against the bright moonlight. Usha Athaley and Ajay Athaley, the theatre activists of Raigarh, a kasbah-style town of Chhattisgarh, have picked and placed many such drops to create their galaxy in the universe of Indian theatre. Chhattisgarh can pin its hope on this “consistent couple” when it comes to leading the culture of state theatre, post-Habib Tanvir.

Their workshops, festivals, symposiums and productions have placed Raigarh on the national canvas of theatre.
Usha and Ajay, who have given a new pace to the stage activities of their state, lead the Raigarh chapter of the Indian People’s Theatre Association (Ipta). Born to Marathi theatre activists of Bilaspur, Usha started her journey as a child artiste in mohalla plays and graduated to Pragatisheel Lekhak Sangh in the late ’70s. Her politically-sensitive appro-ach and desire to express inspired Usha to join Bilaspur Ipta in 1983. She moved to the Raigarh unit of Ipta after tying the knot with Ajay. It has been more than 26 years, but Athaleys have never let the theatrical flame die in the region despite various adversities.

“The biggest problem any small town faces is not getting an opportunity to watch good full-length plays. Watching a good play is like attending a practical class of any subject. We had no experienced directors or trained artistes to come up with high-quality productions. When we revived the Ipta unit here, our main focus was to ensure the availability of good productions,” says Usha.

Athaleys’ emphasis is more on doing and being than on getting and having.

They started organising workshops in association with the National School of Drama since 1994 for training their group members and other theatre enthusiasts.

They also organise yearly eight-day theatre festival with participation from all over India.

The emphasis is on interaction among groups and local theatre enthusiast.

Ajay stresses on the need of intellectual stimulation for developing a long-term vision for theatre. “These days people shy away from thinking hard. They come unexposed to great stimuli that could have made them active thinking human beings. Here comes the role of symposium and seminars. We invite critics and activists and discuss the present trend. It is very important to have a vision,” says Ajay.

Lack of female artistes and auditoriums are other major practical issues Usha points out. “Hassle-free female participation on the stage is still a dream. We keep our rehearsals in the evenings and girls are not allowed to go out of their houses after sunset, or stay out till late in night. In Raigarh, Ajay’s family is well-esteemed, so people are a little comfortable sending their girls to work with the daughter-in-law of such a reputed family, but the mindset must change. Any small-town theatre activist has to spend a lot of time convincing the parents and guardians of girls for allowing them to work on stage,” says Usha.

Another important issue she raises is the lack of auditoriums. “When we organise festivals, we do it in a ground by covering it from all sides. We must find reason of doing things instead of cribbing over what we do not have. These adversities have never stopped us from exploring the creative horizons around us,” she says.

Athaley’s family life also revolves around stage with their son, Anadi, equally interested in this alternative world. They recall how their seniors convinced them to be life partners. Ajay calls it “lovely arrange marriage” with common dreams. Usha’s involvement in backstage and Ajay’s dedication to direction give a complete picture of their rapport.

Their eyes, sparkling like “alive and coloured pebbles” on wave-washed sea shore, are in constant search of creative drops waiting to be turned into shining gems on the stage.

The Emerging General Caste

2010-08-11T06:25:01+00:00

Things started with NOBLE intentions, Dr B R Ambedkar who had vehemently supported the backward classes had unintentionally given birth to an epidemic which has in due course turned into a successfully BALLOT filling medium. Being from the Mahar caste, Ambedkar had himself faced the oppression of the so-called touchable and naturally he sympathised and dedicating his own life to their uplifting. His principles were based on the Buddhist Philosophy and he envisaged a nation in which all the people were looked upon as the same.
Further moving we had the Kalelkar commission which was accepted for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. This commission was set up according to the Article 340, Constitution Of India

Under Article 340 of the Indian Constitution, it is obligatory for the government to promote the welfare of the Other Backward Classes (OBC). Article 340(1) states, ” The president may by order appoint a commission, consisting of such persons as he thinks, fit to investigate the conditions of socially and educationally backward classes within the territory of India and the difficulties under which they labour and to make recommendations as to the steps that should be taken by the union or any state to remove such difficulties and as to improve ‘their condition and as to the grants that should be made, and the order appointing such commission shall define the procedure to be followed by the commission.”

Article 340(2) states, “A commission so appointed shall investigate the matters referred to them and present to the president a report setting out the facts as found by them and making such recommendations as they think proper.”

The Kalelkar commission had defined the backward people as

Who, then are the backward people? Evidently those who do not command adequate and sufficient representation in government service, those who do not command large amount of natural resources like land, money and industrial undertakings; those who live in ill-ventilated houses; those who are nomadic; those who live by begging and other unwholesome means; those who are agricultural laborers or those who practice unremunerative occupations without any means to enter better paying professions; and those who on account of poverty, ignorance and other social disabilities are unable to educate themselves or produce sufficient leadership, are all backward. The communities, classes or social groups who occupy an inferior social position in relation to the upper castes and who also answer the above description, naturally come under the category of other backward classes.

According to the commission, people belonging to a specific community may not necessarily be backward classes. However, the same list came up with a list of 2399 backward classes out of which it recognised 837 communites which required immediate attention.

Moving further to 1979, the Mandal commission was appointed which used the census data of 1930. The commission estimated that 54% of the total population (excluding SCs and STs), belonging to 3,743 different castes and communities were ‘backward’. These data when added together with SCs and STs give rise to more than 5000 backward communities. Further in 1991, Narasimha Rao introduced 10% separate reservation for Poor Among Forward Castes.

Now if my calculations are even remotely correct, our reverred Government Of India has successfully bought more misery to the people of India. Instead of raising the standards of Indian Society, in the last 63 years our Government has just degraded the standards of the society by around 100%. According to the Indian National Congress and our ex Prime Minister Narasimha Rao the poor people just exist among the Forward Castes only and thus the so-called high caste societies who have their own ego trips joined the ranks of untouchables. This may be one of my perspectives, however there is another one. Our political parties have adopted the same Divide and Rule policy, the consequences of which are well known to all of us and we are again following suit.

Internship at Let Me Know

2010-08-08T08:01:27+00:00

During the summer of 2010, I did a internship at Let Me Know as a web developer.

About the Company :

Let Me Know is India’s largest web portal for youth opportunities and has received over 400,000 unique visitors from 150 Indian cities since its inception. We’ve increasingly become a very popular, time-efficient, and currently free channel for companies, start-ups, universities, international agencies and student bodies to advertise their competitions, conferences, events, internships and jobs, and quickly gain access to a diverse pipelines of self-selected talent.

My work was adding new features to their existing website and modifying some of the current features. It was a work from home internship, so I could work whenever I chose. LMK being a startup, gave me first hand experience on how a company works. I had many interactions with the CEO, COO and the CTO learning a lot of stuff. Abhimanyu, CTO was the point of contact for me and he guided me throughout the internship.Check out the team page.

LMK is based on Zend framework. So, I had to understand the MVC architecture and the Zend framework. During my tenure, I developed a entire new oppurtunity which is soon going to be released to the public and created a internal stats tracker. Zend is a great framework for MVC and reduces your work significantly.

Overall, it was a great experience.

Laziness – the donkey within me!

2010-08-06T18:18:22+00:00

Everyone has this in some quantity… but I guess I’m gifted Laziness is such a sweet-little-integral part of me and I can call it with many names!! 108 in total! “Ahh… I’ve had too much work today, will handle the rest later; Why do I get all the work? ; There’s still time, will do … Read more

Even Jailing Criminals can hurt the Economy

2010-08-02T20:28:03+00:00

Jailing criminals is good, is it not? Not when its over-done. Read about how the laws are manipulated to jail a greater amount of people and how is that severely hurting the economy while failing to curb the crime. Also read and suggest alternate ways to counter such problems which the developed world faces today.

Ubuntu Hour Bangalore

2010-07-31T19:39:13+00:00

I have noticed that Ubuntu community based activities in India are lot less than expected and Fedora leads the game here. To give a boost to Ubuntu, Nigel proposed to hold an Ubuntu Hour for Ubuntu users/power-users to meet. Apart from ubuntu-in mailing lists, rest everywhere the activities are pretty much nil.

Nigel sent a mail to ubuntu-in telling that he was organizing a small meetup. Initially I was also not very much hopeful of a huge turnout, but to my surprise 6+1 people turned up.

Nigel blogged about it on his weblog on the turn of events. Initially he was sitting alone with a laptop with Ubuntu sticker for confused people. Initially four of them were sitting inside the Cafe Coffee Day on Richmond Road, Bangalore when I turned up. Since I had never seen any of them, I was not sure whether I should ask them or not. Nigel suspected that I was “Manish” as he recognized me by my pic. After talking for an hour we left.

Just before leaving, I found Ritesh waiting for us. I had sent a mail to him telling that there is a meeting of Ubuntu users and as a Debian Developer does he want to attend? Well, he got lost and came only after we left.

After everyone left, me and Ritesh went inside again to have a coffee. In the next one and a half hours, we talked about Ubuntu and Debian communities, their policies, their cooperation, the plus and minus points of both the systems. We also talked on apt-offline, a tool which Ritesh himself developed for offline package management. He is also a maintainer of laptop-mode-tools in Debian. He gave me a lot of insight into kernel development, APT and a plethora of other technologies.

The day was fun filled and we Ubuntu people expect to meet every fourth Saturday of every month. Meanwhile I might meet Ritesh again this Saturday to finish the work on apt-offline, so that the changes me and Abhishek made on our forked repos can be merged back upstream.

Above Pic: Arjuna, Nigel, Ganesh, Harish, Manish, and Venkatesh

Above Pic: Manish, Ritesh, Harish, Ganesh, and Venkatesh

Lazer Logo Engraving Animantion

2010-07-25T10:26:53+00:00

I saw this tutorial on how to make a logo engraving and decided to go ahead and make it. Here is the final result.

The original tutorial site are here(for the engraving) and here(for the sparks).

Bugatti Veyron

2010-07-20T13:18:09+00:00

Bugatti Veyron - Fastest road legal car in the world. @ 407 kmph .

3D anaglyph (Red - Cyan)

BMW Theme and Wallpapers for Windows 7

2010-07-19T18:38:59+00:00

Have shared a BMW theme for Windows 7 consisting of 38 High Quality Wallpapers and is fully customizable upon download. Download it now and if you like it, share it with your friends. Do let us know if you liked it and/or if anything was missing.

The 7 Links Challenge

2010-07-17T06:13:01+00:00

This is about 'The 7 Links Challenge' by Darren Rowse which i liked and thought was worth giving a try. Here i have posted exactly what the challenge requires you to do and have done that myself. Go on, give it a try. It might be fun for quite a lot of bloggers.

Lamborgini Reventon

2010-07-15T23:44:54+00:00

Here are a few still of the model of Lamborghini Reventon that i created .. there is also a cloth covering the car .. this has been done using cloth simulation in 3ds Max 2009...

Cloth Covering

WireFrames

Model - No Texture

Model - With Texture

Video - Music provided by my friend Akash Sharma

Update:

Here is the version with photometric lighting

Update 2:

Anaglyph Red-Cyan 3D image

PS: Will be posting cloth simulation tutorial asap.....

Creating Anaglyph & CrossEyed 3D images using (MaxScript)

2010-07-15T23:41:25+00:00

Stereoscopy (also called stereoscopic or 3-D imaging) is any technique capable of recording three-dimensional visual information or creating the illusion of depth in an image. More info here.

Now to create a 3D image we need two pictures - one for the left eye and one for the right eye. These two images must be of the same size (height x width). These two images can be obtained by either clicking 2 pictures form a camera (one representing the image for the left eye and one representing the right eye) or can be rendered in a 3D program such as 3Ds max or Maya by creating 2 cameras in them offset by about 2" (the average distance between the human eyes) .

Left Eye Image:

Right Eye Image:

Now we can combine these images to get different types of 3D images . This can be done in various ways such using specialized programs available on the internet or using Photoshop but we will do the same using maxscript(F11 to open script editor).

Here is the script for creating red-cyan anaglyph 3D images.

a = openbitmap (getOpenFileName caption:"Left Eye Image")
b = openbitmap (getOpenFileName caption:"Right Eye Image")

c = bitmap a.width a.height

for i=0 to a.width -1 do
{
    for j=0 to a.height -1 do
      {
      ColorLeft = getPixels a [i,j] 1
      ColorRight = getPixels b [i,j] 1
      ColorFinal = #([ColorLeft[1].red , ColorRight[1].green , ColorRight[1].blue])
      setPixels c [i,j] ColorFinal
      }
}
display c

Output:

Note: You will need a pair of red-cyan 3D glasses to view the image

Here is the script for creating cross-eyed 3D images.

a = openbitmap (getOpenFileName caption:"Left Eye Image")
b = openbitmap (getOpenFileName caption:"Right Eye Image")

c = bitmap a.width+b.width a.height

for i=0 to a.width -1 do
{
    for j=0 to a.height -1 do
      {
      setPixels c [i,j] getPixels a [i,j] 1
      setPixels c [i,j+a.width] getPixels b [i,j] 1
      }
}
display c

Output:

Note :
1) .jpg images were giving a problem with this code but it worked fine with .png format.
2) The above images are of Apache LongBow made using 3Ds max with mental ray and photometric lighting...

Ubuntu Developer Week

2010-07-13T19:25:32+00:00

After Ubuntu user days ended on July 11, Ubuntu Developer week started the next very day. I was more interested in following the latter since it was my wish to know the basics of Ubuntu Development esp Packaging

You can have a look at the Ubuntu Developer Week Wiki page

My main interests are

Getting started with Development 1 and 2 – Daniel Holbach (dholbach)
Desktop Team overview – Sebastian Bacher (seb128)
Authoring Upstart jobs – Steve Langasek (slangasek)
Packaging like a Ninja – Rohan Garg (shadeslayer)
Operation Cleansweep, reviewing patches – Nigel Babu (nigelb)
Forwarding bugs and patches upstream – Pedro Villavicencio (pedro_)
Daily Builds and You – Jorge Castro (jcastro)
Making your application shine with application indicators – Ted Gould (tedg)
Kernel Triage – Jeremy Foshee (JFo)
Improving Ubuntu In An Evening – K. Vishnoo Charan Reddy (vish)
Django and you – Micheal Hall (mhall119)
Adapt an upstream – Jorge Castro (jcastro)

Progress

On 12th , I attended 1 and 2, but missed 3 as it was in late night. I do have the IRC logs.
Today on 13th, I even missed 4 as I was too exhausted. Again logs are there to rescue.
Tomorrow on 14th, 5,6,7,8,9 would be there which I would try to attend at all cost.

Arsenal Themes, Wallpapers and Live! Screensaver [for Windows 7]

2010-07-13T18:53:25+00:00

Sharing a self made Themepack of Arsenal FC based on the season 2009-10. This theme consists of Arsenal's goals featuring players like Fabregas, Arshavin, Bendtner, Ramsey, Van Persie etc. The Wallpapers are high resolution and suitable for 16:9 and 4:3 displays. Also featured official Arsenal Live Screensaver. All of this is available to be shared

4 weeks at Microsoft (Internship)

2010-07-10T00:10:43+00:00

Hello From Hyderabad

It has been 4 weeks since i arrived in Hyderabad for my internship at Microsoft IDC and it has been a unique experience. There are 7 people from MIT,Manipal this time 6 in IDC and 1 in MS IT, but manipal being the crowded place it is none of the 7 people knew each other, well except for me which was kind of odd, imagine having to introduce people who have spent 3 years in the same college to each other !!. Akshay jhori (MS IT) arrived one week before us i.e. 23rd May (i guess) and rest of us arrived by 30th May. First day we were given a small orientation, which was just to get us familiar with how things work and what we were supposed to do, after the orientation we were taken to our respective Mentors who is the go to guy for all things related to what ever we were supposed to do, i was assigned to AdCenter team. I was given a cubicle and later my mentor explained what i was supposed to do for the next 8 weeks and was asked to get familiar with MS tools and process.

Hyderabad is kind of a strange city where if you ask an auto rickshaw driver to go to a place X he will simply say “i have no idea where that place is, but it will cost you Rs100″, so most of the time you need to look up on maps for directions and then tell the auto driver where you have to go, which is what we did after loosing our way few times, it all starts with Someone saying “Hey lets go out and see around” to which you say “Ok nice, lets find a good place to eat!!”, after walking a few kilometers and looking around and probably eating, when its time to return someone is bound to ask “Which way ?” and atleast one guy from your group will say “Its this way, TRUST ME!” by point to a particular direction in the INDIAN WAY, believe me that is the time when you should start asking for directions because every time the “TRUST ME” incident happened with us, we were going in completely wrong direction.

Coming back to the four weeks, for the first 2 weeks we were provided accommodation in white fields (Hyderabad, not Bangalore as most the people were thinking after i told them where i was staying), the place was good and around 5-6 Km from MS IDC at Gachibowli, you get shuttles from ~9am to ~10am and if you are taking an auto just say you want to go to Wipro, Gachibowli and not Microsoft, Gachibowli you will have to pay less this way, even tough Wipro Campus is just in front of Microsoft Campus, ohh and the sharing auto is a very cheap way to travel around in Hyderabad but it gets weird, i remember there were 8 people + 1 auto driver in a single auto one time.

Microsoft Surface

I got my hands on Microsoft Surface at the visitor center and it has increased my desire to create something like surface using what is already available by NUI Group, dunno if it will get somewhere. Also i have started to like C# as a language and i have personally found it to be more close to C++ then Java, which is not what a large number of people think, this has also made me realize that there is no computer language that i hate which is kind of strange because most of the people i know hate one or the other language and JAVA tops most of their list as the most hated (but used) language.

During my 2nd week AdCenter team had an outing to Leonia which was a great experience, i met some interesting people from AdCenter team during the trip and the best part was Paint Ball, a match in team of 22 Vs 22 it was pure fun, well except for the friendly fire part, where i got shot in the arm from a really close distance, anyways we lost the game because of what was clearly CHEATING done by other team but that is as always debatable.

After our 2 weeks were over we shifted out to a different place in White Fields itself, if someone is looking for accommodation there are plenty of places in HiTech city / Madhapur area to stay for short/long duration, we looked at a large number of places before settling for white fields because its close and we were familiar with this area now, plus the price difference was not much.

Microsoft India Development Center - Building 3

The first few weeks were pretty exciting but now after 4 weeks everything seems normal to us, all the free coffee/tea/ice tea/cold drinks/etc, all the games of pool/foosball/TableTennis, cab drop at night, the cubicle, all the excitement is gone and work has started.
anyways i am planing to roam around Hyderabad which i have done only a little, any special places that i should absolutely visit ? leave a comment….

Social Entrepreneurship: Targeting the bottom

2010-07-09T20:33:34+00:00

We might have entered the 21st century and may call ourselves as the most able humans ever but there are problems which still remain unsolved. Neither government, nor charity, nor traditional capitalism has been able to solve the world’s hardest social problems — poverty, hunger, ignorance, and environmental degradation. But that does not mean that … Read more

Achieving the best fuel Economy from your vehicle

2010-07-08T10:37:33+00:00

Fuel Economy simply means the Cost of driving the vehicle per kilometre. Even the most fuel efficient cars will not give the exact mileage it boasts. You are bound to get much less, unless of course you know how to get that. Here are listed the easy-to-do ways to achieve the maximum fuel economy from your car without any investment! Try it out!

One year of job

2010-07-03T15:20:46+00:00

1st of July marked the day when I had a reason to celebrate - “One year of job”. Though the last one year has been filled up with lots of excitement and troubles, the overall experience is positive. Here I want to go back on 1st of July, 2009 and do jot down some important incidents in simple and plain English.

Joining day and Training
I joined Schneider Electric on 1st of July (Wednesday). I was part of 24 people who joined with me from all over the country. We had 3 days of induction ceremony on Wed-Thurs-Fri (WTF). This included all the bigshot people introducing themselves and giving an insight into what they do.
Out training started next week on Monday which was supposed to last for a month. We were divided into IT and EMech(Electrical-Mechanical) people. As expected, the training was a walk-through of the technology needed to work in a technical workplace. This included C, C++, Networking, .NET, version control, testing/validation, Quality standards and team introduction. One day when our trainer was unavailable, we were put in a team which was going for an outing in Savandurga.

Real work
Finally after a month of training, we were put in real work. The initial work was mostly learning about the technologies in which I was supposed to work upon. I was even asked to find the best technology for the given problem statement(project) which was exactly what I wanted.

Confirmation
We all got confirmed from trainees to Software/Design Engineer on 1st of April, 3 months before the scheduled date. We all(most) had a small outing/dinner at Amoeba/3 Quarter Chinese to celebrate this landmark.

One year
On 1st of July, we all had one more important milestone - One year at Schneider. Though, this time we couldn’t go out(till time of writing this) as a few people amongst us(batch-mates) are not in Bangalore, I am hopeful some plan sooner or later.

Learning
One thing I learnt the most I how to interact with people. I made tons of friends from all teams, business units and people whom you might consider are hardly related to me and my work. I came to know a lot about the company and what it works on. All this cannot be achieved without the cooperation and the trust of the managers(worked under 2 manager) I have worked under. This is to the sharp contrast to talks talks that happen on every table during lunch in every company.

Looking at the capabilities of both the managers, all I can say is that “A leader should lead by an example”. They have helped me personally to solve my technical problems which come up now and then, which is again a sharp contrast to the magistrate kinda roles which I keep on hearing from my friends in other companies. Oh even you must have heard it.

Even before working in Schneider, I have an experience working under other people too in other organizations as interns. A few of them were good or average in managing people. A few of them didn’t even have an idea of “A leader should lead by an example”. This is my first positive experience which will always be fresh in my mind

Cya.

A Hairy Tale

2010-06-27T02:20:23+00:00

‘Nooooooooo!’ I heard my neighbour’s kid Arun bawl from the end of the street. ‘Man, that kid has some lung power,’ I mused. ‘I won’t go, I won’t, I won’t!’ I brought the book closer to my face and continued to read. Louder screams ensued, similar to those heard from victims of slow and painful torture. Recognising a lost case, I shut my book and went out into the street.

‘Asha? Is everything okay?’ I yelled, spotting her walking angrily outside her house.
‘My son’s screaming his lungs out! Let his father deal with him for a bit.’
‘But, what happened?’
Uma and Nita had joined us by now. Clearly, Arun’s powerful vocal chords were gaining the recognition they deserved.
‘Is Arun okay, Asha? It isn’t right to beat children up, you know. If he isn’t behaving, you can make him do lines. Children’s rights, you know, are…’ began Uma. It had the potential of an award-winning speech on Children’s Rights, fit for the UN. Thankfully, Asha butted in.
‘No, no,’ she said, waving her hands impatiently. ‘Arun refuses to cut his hair. It’s growing past his ears and he doesn’t let anyone touch his head.’
I hid a giggle. Aloud, I said, ‘Perhaps, he’s afraid the barber will hurt him. Why don’t you ask the barber to promise him he won’t?’
‘I’ve tried it all! I’ve gone to the barber’s every Sunday for the past two weeks but he bawls like crazy! Now the barber shoos me away since he’s afraid Arun might scare away the other customers.’
‘Hahaha,’ laughed Uma.

‘Noooooooo!’ screamed Arun from inside the house.
‘Bolmande*, bolmande!’ yelled Amit.
‘Ammaaaa, he called me “bolmande”,’ whimpered Arun.
‘Bolmande, bolmande!’ yelled Amit, again, doing a war-dance around Arun.
‘Amit!’ said Asha, her tone indicating dire consequences were the dance to continue. Taking the hint, Arun sidled away, after making a final face at Amit.

*bald pate

‘Asha, his hair is so long, you could plait and tie ribbons to them,’ giggled Nita.
‘Shush, ‘I said. ‘Perhaps you can tell him that you’ll give him an ice-cream if he gets a hair-cut?’
‘You know, I wonder, I really wonder ….’ said Uma, trailing away so that mystery hung in the air. For once, I didn’t want to say, ‘what’ and I let her dramatic pause continue.

‘What?’ I asked after a while, unable to bear the suspense.
‘He has always been a little girlish. He doesn’t play a lot with the other boys and now, this…’ she finished.
‘That’s not fair, Uma. He’s too young for you to say that!’ said Asha, nettled.
‘So?’ I asked, not understanding the dejected nod and the ‘tsk’ that went around.
‘So? There could be a problem, don’t you see? Girlish boys could turn, you-know…’said Uma, nodding her head knowingly.

Heatedly, I began, ‘you know, Uma, you should learn to be more open-minded. If indeed, there’s a ‘problem’, as you put it… (blah, blah, homosexuality, Section 377, some more blah)

‘Umm, has anyone asked him why he’s so scared to go?’ interrupted Nita.
Three adults stared at each other, the feeling of foolishness inching forward slowly.
‘I assumed he was being silly… Like when he has to take a bath and refuses to?’ said Asha.

‘Arun, hey, come here,’ I yelled.
Asha picked him up and asked, ‘Why’re you scared of the barber?’
With eyes full of horror, he pointed at his father watering the garden.
‘Did he shout at you? Did he hit you? Tell me, Arun,’ said Asha anxiously.
‘Amit told me that if I went for a haircut, my hair would never grow back,’

‘Just like Dad’s,’ he added, tears rolling down his cheeks as he stared at his father’s hairless head.

IIT Craze

2010-06-25T09:31:11+00:00

When I was young and still in class 8. I would warned by everyone - “If you don’t study well, then you won’t get good marks in Class 10. So you won’t be able to study in good +2 schools and won’t be able to get in a good college (read IIT) and then won’t be able to do an MBA in an elite institute”. In short I was warned that one failure is cascading and can spoil your life.

Fine, you can say I sensationalized the whole scenario, but I bet every other kid out in the town must have heard some part or the other of the above statement. The catch is that if you don’t study in an elite institute your career is dark. No one ever cared to realize that success depends mostly on the person itself and the institution just provides a common meeting point for like-minded people.

Now after finishing my education, I do look back. I do look back some 10 years when I entered class 8. My initial reaction is “What rubbish were we taught about career those days?”. I never studies in any super elite institutional. I never got any salute from my fellow countrymen for studying in an elite school/college. I don’t the salute for my status, but for my capabilities (if any).

IIT Coaching

Love it or hate it, IIT Coaching is an industry. An industry whose Input is vastly high than it’s output. Keep walking down a lane anywhere in N. India and you would be overwhelmed by the *spam* of IIT Coaching Classes Hoardings. Every pole, wall, tree or entity under the sun is covered by these “foo coaching classes students set a record. 8/10 top students studies at our center”. No wonder, the first rank is claimed by coaching institutes all over the country even though the student never took any coaching in the first place.

IIT Coaching Centers are nothing less of organized loot. Those who burnt their money in this gamble would surely understand that no coaching center can guarantee you a seat in IIT (unless some scams). It is the student who clears the exam and not the coaching institute. You go there to learn some new concepts, solve doubts. The real study has to be done by *you*.

Mania

IIT has become such a sensitive topic that if a child fails to qualify, it is the parents who feel millions of times more offended than the student. The student is scared, not sad. He fears what will he say to his parents who set their expectations so high that is looks unrealistic for him throughout his preparation. I have seen people dropping years and years in a hope that one fine day they will crack the elite exam. Some are even ready to take any course for the sake of IIT tag even though they have no clue of what course they are taking.

When I took the admission of the college of my choice, the branch of my choice and looked back 2 years, the whole setup looked like a mess. Parents and students have unrealistic high expectations. Unrealistic for the capabilities a student has. Who is the winner in this whole game? The parents? The student? NO - it is the coaching institutes who have their ever expanding bank balance.

Class 12

Now look at class 12 exams. It is the third-grade citizen. Since it does not carry any weight in most exams, it is neglected. In short it increases the load of the students even more since they need to pass with 60% marks to be eligible for IITs. Apart from that it is hardly of any use. The whole setup is so stressful.

Sacrifice

I have even seen parents asking their students to disconnect their TV sets, give up playing XBOX etc since the sacrifice is a good thing.

One logic I hear getting proposed is that “You need to sacrifice something to achieve your goal”. If you can achieve your goal without sacrifice, but you still do sacrifice, are you still a hero? Not for me, I’ll call you a fool. Humans should always try to be more comfortable as possible and turn to sacrifice when there is no options left. I never respect sacrifice. If you do it intentionally, then you are a fool, if you do because you had no option, then you have to do it, nothing break-through.

Recommendation by Damodar Acharya

When I read this recommendation by Damodar Acharya IIT KGP Director, my eyes lit up.

Firstly it might reduce the importance of IIT Coaching centers. That open loot can be controlled. Now head down to read the knee-jerk reactions. All you will hear is that “This undermines the prestige of our institutions”. Now one cares to explain how? Some say “IIT will be destroyed”. Again now proof. Some say that “Increasing the value of class 12 exams will destroy the prestige of the institutes”. Again how? how? how?

Looks like there is more importance on keeping the brand value and status of the institution intact rather than improving the pathetic situation of millions of students appearing for IIT. It’s like a Monarch where people are dying of hunger, but the king is more worried about maintaining of the Palace because the quality of the Palace is a status symbol. Again you can bring in the logic of sacrifice for candidate students, but as I explained above, sacrifice is nothing short of stupidity. It’s like “What’s the problem is being harassed? Weren’t you harassed for last 10 years?”

If you really want to oppose this recommendation, sit back and think deeply and come up with real opposition points rather than “IT WILL SPOIL THE IITS. THIS IS BAD. NO THEY ARE ALL STUPID”. Sigh.

Maverick Development Updates #2

2010-06-23T14:15:32+00:00

1. btrfs support
With current daily builds of maverick, installation with btrfs filesystem is supported, though ext4 is the default filesystem. btrfs was pulled in mainline kernel on 9th January 2010.

2. Suspend/Resume bug

Lee Jones working in the kernel team, has written a long exhaustive mail on his experience reguarding to suspend/resume in Thinkpad X61 when SD card is in the card reader. If this bug is solved, it can help a lot of us. Just read the whole paragraph and you would come to know how nasty the situation actually is.

3. Maverick Alpha 2 approaching

Maverick Alpha 2 would be released on July 1st (Thursday). Archives would be frozen on June 29th,. The next Alpha would be Alpha 3 on August 5th.

4. Freezes in effect and in future

DebianImportFreeze on June 24th and Colin Watson has sent a mail to ubuntu-devel asking people responsible for packages to get the packages imported ASAP

Freezes which are still far off are FetaureFreeze on August 12th, UserInterfaceFreeze and BetaFreeze on August 26th. Beta freeze is for Beta Release planned on September 2nd.

5. Bug Days

Bug Day on 3rd June target – Compiz
Bug Day on 10th June target – GNOME Games
Bug Day on 17th June target – USB Creator
Bug Day on 24th June target – fontconfig

6. Ubuntu Developer Week has been announced

Ubuntu Developer Week starts on 12th July(Monday) and ends on 17th July(Friday) between 1600UTC and 2100UTC

7. Kubuntu Tutorial days

Kubuntu doesn’t get as much love at Ubuntu gets, still it’s the second choice for many people after Ubuntu(GNOME) who want to stick to the environment.

Kubuntu Tutorial day is just one way on 7th July and only some 6-7 hours.

8. Update from Operation Cleensweep

Daniel Holbach informs that progress is at 14%

9. Software Center Update

From the logs of Desktop Team Meeting dated 15th June, it looks like, we can buy applications from the Software Center in near future. Remember, long back it was rumored to be called Ubuntu Software Store? Later the actual name came out to be Software Center

Under “Buy Something”:

# Payments API is in good shape; we had an API overview from Ricardo Kirkner including a walkthrough of the process
# We identified a problem in that there is the potential for unverified payment amounts submitted to the billing service by the client

* Will require some LP to payment service integration for verification of price paid before authorizing access
* This integration has been targeted for Alpha 3 (after the June 30th LP upload window, tho we can use edge while developing)

# Currently prototyping a payments widget to learn/test/use the payments API
# Launchpad login functionality and basic integration features have been release with Software Center 2.1.2

* As these features are still in-development the next release of software center (later this week?) will hide this feature unless s-c is launched using a command line switch

# LP team on track to deliver needed core functionality at June 30th upload window

MARS Bot Final Design

2010-06-23T06:11:10+00:00

Here are some pics of the 3D model of the M.A.R.S. Robot. The 3D model has details of all the mechanical components of the robot....

Specification Video :-

TRYING for feedwordpress

2010-06-15T14:39:40+00:00

Ragdoll physics in 3Ds Max 2009

2010-06-15T05:59:02+00:00

For information on ragdolls click here.

Here are a few ragdoll animantions i made using 3Ds max physics engine "Reactor"

A simple ragdoll effect in 3ds Max can be done in 2 ways . One way is sit down design the ragdoll from scratch and then apply constraints to it. This although is much better when you need very precise ragdoll physics.Another way is to simply use a premade MaxScript.

Step 1

In the script panel on the bottom left side of the screen type rctMakeRagdollUI () and press enter.A dialogue box will open. Open the "create humanoid" dropdown panel and click on Create Humanoid. This will create a box shaped human figure in the viewport.

Step 2

Keep the ragdoll panel open and and now go under the "constrain humanoid" dropdown panel select the ragdoll (just created) from the humanoids list and click on Constrain Humanoid. This will define a set of

constraints on the ragdoll.

Step 3

Draw some boxes and cylinders in the viewport. These objects will act as collision objects with the ragdoll. Now create a new helper of RBCollection type and add all objects just created to this collection. This will make these objects as rigid bodies and enable collisions on them.

Step 4

Now under reactor panel go into the "Preview & Animation" panel and click on Preview in Window. Play the animation and if u are satisfied with it just click on Create Animation. The system will take some time to calculate and create the animation. Once done play the animation and render it out.

P.S. Will try to upload other simulation tutorials as well such as water, rope add cloth

4th Sem Contd

2010-06-14T12:25:39+00:00

This is in continuation to my previous post. I suggest please go through the post before continuing.

So, where was I ?? My previous post contained information till March 12th.

March 12th onwards : 2nd Sessionals went pretty well, better than the first one though Maths was pretty disappointing. After the sessionals, I applied for a internship at Pictualize through Let Me Know. Needless to say( confident or over confident ?), I was accepted after a small test. I was very excited and quickly signed the NDA( Non Disclosure Agreement ). During the rest of the month, I was busy making a Facebook Application as part of my internship. Facebook has a great library for PHP. I will write a entire post about the application I developed once it’s launched( PS: The launch will take another month or so).

April : April started with disappointment, I was admitted into hospital for the first time. I am not going to drag about that. I recuperated fast enough and was back to work in a week. Well, I couldn’t delay as I had my sessionals coming. The sessionals went far better than expected especially Maths. After the sessionals, another bombshell fell, rejection from ETRI, Korea. Two major disappointments were more than enough. April ended with my three lab end semester exams. All went pretty well. More about April in this post.

May : With May, my end semester exams came. While everyone else was busy studying, I found a whole lot of time to catch up with my work. But this time, due to my less than average performance in the internals I studied a lot more to maintain the required GPA. Exams went pretty peacefully without any major hiccups. I got my first domain on May 18th (http://www.mkartik.com)

That’s all for this Semester. Overall, this semester has played a very important role in shaping my future. I had many disappointing yet they were great learning experiences.

How to reach Manipal

2010-06-12T20:06:11+00:00

Manipal lies in the lap of one of the most beautiful place in this world- “Western Ghats”. Its situated 65 kms north of Mangalore, the port town of Karnataka. Its situated just 3-5 kms from the District town of Udupi.

Manipal is a multi-cultural heritage center. People from all walks to life come here to pursue their graduation and higher education. Interns from International Universities also find their way into this multi diverse cultural place. The “C” shown on the map below is Manipal.

The nearest railway station is Udupi which is just 2-3 kms away from the town, Mangalore Central(MAQ) station is the nearest major railway station. The nearest Airport is Bajpe which is near Mangalore, some 70 kms south of Manipal.

Goa is just 4-5 hours journey from here by train. Daily buses are available to Banglore which takes some nine hours. The nearest beaches here are Malpe,Kaup, Surathkal Beach.

Stargate Project

2010-06-12T18:28:22+00:00

After watching loads of episodes(315 - 215 of SG1 and 100 of SGA) & movies(3) of the stargate series I decided to start designing a stargate in 3DS max. Then i made some sand and pyramids to go along with it and came up with this..

After that i decided to make the event horizon "kawoosh" effect.After working on that for about 5hrs i came up with this (Video still rendering) ...

I could not do any more because i got bored and also my laptop overheated to a point where it left its physical state and now exists only as energy (LOL)

Installing a copy of Zend Server onto your localhost

2010-06-11T19:42:30+00:00

Zend is a very famous open source framework for PHP. It’s known for its MVC (Model View Controller) architecture.

Zend at Wiki

MVC at Wiki

Suppose you have a web server using Zend Framework and you want to migrate it to your localhost, just follow the steps to get your local copy working :
( I use Ubuntu 10.04 along with Apache2 )

Install Zend Framework from the Ubuntu repos. You would need the following packages : zend-framework, libzend-framework-php and zend-framework-bin. Others : just download the framework from here : http://www.zend.com/en/community/downloads. Zend_Tool is automatically installed. It is a command line utility which is very useful for creating projects, controllers, action etc . More about Zend_Tool here http://devzone.zend.com/article/3811
Now open a terminal and type “zf show version” . It should show the current version. This acts like a checkpoint.
Then create a project using “zf create project <project-name>”. You would notice that a directory by your ‘project-name’ has been created in your ‘www’ folder.
Open /etc/hosts with root access and insert a line :
```
127.0.0.1  [your-name].localhost
```
Then go to /etc/apache2/sites-available and make a new file with the name [your-name].localhost and insert this :
```
ServerName [your-name].localhost

   DocumentRoot [directory]

   SetEnv APPLICATION_ENV development

DirectoryIndex index.php

       AllowOverride All
       Order allow,deny
       Allow from all
```
Just remember to enter your directory in place of [directory] eg. My directory is “/home/kartik/www/testrun/public”. In my case “/home/kartik/www/” is my Document Root
Now type sudo a2ensite [your-name].localhost. This enables the virtual host
Now restart Apache by sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
Now download all the files from the server and just copy them into your project folder. Replace all of them.
Insert this line into your index.php file inside the public directory :
```
set_include_path(get_include_path().
PATH_SEPARATOR.'/usr/share/php/libzend-framework-php');
```
This includes the Zend Library.
Now open a browser and type ” http://[your-name].localhost . Your homepage should show up

Tada !! You just got your local copy working. Happy Debugging !!

References:
#zftalk on irc.freenode.net
Zend Framework

Comments as always are highly welcome. If anyone faces a problem, please leave it as a comment

Microphone

2010-06-10T04:15:16+00:00

Here is a 3D model of a microphone that i made. I used HDRI to get the proper lighting and turned on Final Gather and GI.Used Mental Ray as renderer.

Boeing 737

2010-06-10T04:11:14+00:00

I designed a 3D model of Boeing 737 using 3Ds max (it has landing gear and all). I was confused between a shot of it taking off or it being airborne. I decided to go with a shot of the plane in the air. I downloaded a pic of some clouds from the net. Set up camera and lights in 3ds max and rendered it at 1080p.

So here it is:

Project M.A.R.S

2010-06-10T01:05:01+00:00

M.A.R.S or Moblie Adaptive Robotic System is a robotic platform being developed by me and a few friends. The original design for the robot was:

Then after a few design changes we decided to keep the inner and outer tracks on the the same plane.Currently the chassis of the bot(an aluminum frame of 22" X 17" X 8.5") has been completed and rite now the gearbox is being designed.

The current layout plan for the robot is

A few pics of the chassis are here:

The driving motors we are using for the robot are:

The specks for the motor can be found here . The motor is S28-150.

We will be using the axon microcontroller for the robot.

Spcifications can be found here.

The video of the robot design is here.

Ubuntu Maverick development updates

2010-06-08T18:41:45+00:00

For last 2 hours, I dug through all the mails from ubuntu mailing lists, esp the announcements related to development, recalled many changes which I heard in last week or two and penned them down.

Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat Alpha 1 released with Linux Kernel 2.6.34-5 #
Ubuntu sparc and IA64 ports are candidates for decommissioning unless someone comes up to take the responsibility of maintaining it. #
Maverick won’t run on processors below i686 #
DebianImportFreeze on June 24th, Alpha 2 will come on July 1st #
On Alpha 1 alternate, creation of encrypted /home is broken #
Shotwell replaces F-Spot as Image organizer #
Daniel Holbach invites everyone for Operation Cleansweep. It aims to bring down bugs with patches down to 0(zero) by the time of Maverick release. #
Ubuntu User Days has been postponed till July 10th, 2010 #
Jono Bacon has invited interested people to come forward and take over Acire and PyJunior development #
Maverick rebased to Kernel 2.6.35-rc1 # # # (Status: Maverick (ogasawara) section)
Maverick will be getting 1.8 X Server due to which all drivers need to be rebuilt. It might break X when upgrading. Later in the cycle X will be upgraded to 1.9 #
Chromium is default for Ubuntu Netbook Remix #
Martin Pitt has a page for burn-down chart and work progress for Maverick Alpha 2 #
Lots of Software Center UI enhancements on the way #

Edit on June 9, 12:02

Two more entries:

Next Ubuntu Hug Day targets Gnome Games to be held on June 10th. 68 New bugs, 28 Incomplete and 14 Confirmed. #
Aptitude has been removed. Though it is still available in repos. #

Opposition: To what? and for what?

2010-06-06T11:42:57+00:00

'To gain something, we need to lose other things', this might be true for many a things. We have been watching our country grow and reach new levels. It is progressing. The growth rate will soon be more than 8%. We will soon be a super power. Then, why is there opposition to industrialisation? Just yesterday, on the World Environment Day, I saw a large gathering shouting slogans against some big industries.

I have been thinking why these people oppose industries. As someone had pointed out, if you want development, you need to give up some things. Isn't it as simple as this? Then, why shout slogans on the road, when the temperature outside is 49 degrees. Our main question is still unanswered. Why this opposition?

To understand what they are opposing, we need to first understand what made them oppose. Ten years ago, my hometown was a green mountainous region. There was a beautiful stretch of the Satpura ranges, where many prehistoric caves were safely preserved, one of them being Singhanpur. These caves hold sketches which are around 2, 500 year old. Today, right in front of these caves is a sprawling industry, called Monnet Ispat Limited. Around 20 villages are affected. There is a loss of vegetation is this region. The singhanpur caves are just caves, there are no sketches, just rocks. Surely, there are roads, a developed highway. The cost people paid for this development: 20 villages, trees, forest, water and historic caves.

The same can be seen with numerous industries, this is just one example. But we missed out on very important aspect. Where did the people from these 20 vilages go? They are still there, living next to the industry. Where else can they go? They have been paid around one lakh each, for their lands, which was taken up by the industry.

Why is there an opposition? and why is there an opposition to private industries? Why are people not protesting against NTPC and SECL? Why only these private players? The answer lies somewhere here, the government owned NTPC delcared that it will soon be arriving at Raigarh. This was six years ago. They bought land, gave compensations to the people nearby. Six years down the line, there are sprawling trees in the area, and the project office is in the middle of this plantation. They have just started building the factory now. Their whole process starts with planting more trees, growing them into thick forest, building the project offices, then the arrangement for the accomodation, other facilities and then the industry.

Now, this is just opposite in case of the private players. They would buy the land, pay less compensation, make false promises. Cut the trees, dig the land. Put the industry, start polluting first. Build the project office. Then the accomodation. By this time, atleast five years have passed. The area is under extreme pollution. Since they are too late for some damage control, they'd plant Gulmohar trees, which would grow tall in just six months. But sadly, these trees wouldn't help in curbing the pollution. By this time, there would be loss of lives due to pollution. Their industrial waste would be dumped on open grounds, which would further risk the lives of the people.

But why is there so much opposition? Well, the chhattisgarh government goes on signing MoUs with the industries, because someone has asked them to be the number one state in India. So they blindly sign MoUs, screw the environmental regulations of the country and put the lives of 2 crore people in risk. All this is done, with extreme secrecy. Even the public hearings are a secret, where there is no public. And then, to top it all, the chief minister gets the 'Best Chief Minister' award by several agencies and news corporations.

The chief minister comes back, he has a new found energy now. He signs another thousand MoUs and eventually sells the state, converting it into industrials parks. But, where does the land come from? It is the forested land, some of it protected by tribal laws and some by the forest ministry. Now, the tribal laws are easily played with. How? Well, by showing that there are very few tribals there after all. In Raigarh itself, we found that during the last ten years, atleast 5 lakh tribal people have disappeared in the government records, and many areas have been declared non-tribal lands on this basis. And the environment ministry does not even come to Chhattisgarh, it depends on the Environment Reports by the state, which of course is tampered with.

In Bolivia, according to the mining laws, the people of the affected area are hold 20% shares in the company. The country has recognised and realised, that if you build an industry on someone's land, you cannot employ them, you are indebted to them, and hence they should be your stakeholders and not your servants.

Now, why is there an opposition? What did we gain out of all this? We gained the naxalite problem. Why do you think the tribals largely support the naxalites, even if they are afraid of them? Do you think they find naxalites less dangerous than the government? Well, it might be true, who knows.

And then there is Mr. Chidambaram. He says, lets send army to this region to control the naxalite problem. If it happens, it will do irreparable damage to the state and the country. But have these people ever thought about what is the root cause? What is the opposition about? Why is the opposition at all? Why? Does the government want to solve the problem? Does it even care? Does Mr. Chidambaram even bothered where the country is heading to? Is mere condemning the deaths of thousands or offering to resign a solution to this? Is offensive a solution? NO, it is not.

The opposition is against reducing the value of human lives to money and compensation. The opposition is against the 'take-it-easy' attitude of the rest of the country towards a destruction which might happen in their part someday. The opposition is against vested interests. The opposition is against pseudo-democracy and the pseudo-democratic-government, and not against the Indian state. The opposition is against atrocities being forced on the voiceless people. The opposition is by the voiceless, who have finally started voicing themselves...'By the people, of the people, for the people', isn't this what the democracy stands for? Why is the country opposing this then? Why?

Are you a pundit?

2010-06-04T16:01:36+00:00

Before going ahead, read Jeff Atwood’s post on pundits

Here is your checklist

1. are you expert in talking crap? (esp shitloads of them)

2. have an opinion on everything under the sun?

3. regularly use buzz-words like “ecosystem”, “model” etc?

4. regularly use phrases like “You won’t understand”, “You don’t matter in the ecosystem”, “You are not the target audience”?

5. get outraged if someone doesn’t agree to you?

6. force your opinion on everyone?

7. when opposed, do you express your opinion like an essay, such that the person in front has to say tl;dr

8. your opinion essay lacks proof?

9. scorn at “Talk is cheap, show me the code”?

10. can cook up points for defense instantaneously?

11. you are an unofficial PR spokesman for your favourite company?

By writing this, I fear I am starting to gain some traits of a pundit. If it is true, I apologize. You can call me a sinner.

Stargate Project (Update)

2010-05-30T16:02:29+00:00

Finall the rendering is complete(it took a good 16hrs on a very decent i7 at 720p):
Here is the video .... Check it out in HD.... Music is the Stargate SG1 Theme Metal Version

Data Binding with Signals

2010-05-29T04:01:12+00:00

I haven’t talked much about our startup project factors on this blog yet, but you will hear more and more about it from me over the coming weeks. Today, we’re open sourcing a very small but quite interesting part of the factors web client code. The client is built mostly in AS3 using an in house framework we call crayons. Crayons provides an application architecture as well as a library of user interface components along with a component architecture, you could think of it as a mixture of functionality provided by flex framework and cairngorm, but several times lighter since it only implements functionality we need for factors and doesn’t try to be too generic.

Among other things Crayons has a built in data binding framework which we’re open sourcing today. Data binding in crayons in based on Signals where an object dispatches a specialized ChangeSignal whenever a bindable property changes, for example the setter of a bindable property data in SomeModel object would look like this …

When an object signals a change in a property it has to pass in the old value of the property and the new value of the property. Unlike Flex, there is no [Bindable] metadata tag, an object can make one of its properties bindable by dispatching a ChangeSignal whenever that property changes. The ChangeSignal implementation is inspired by Jackson Dunstan’s TurboSignals instead of Rob Penner’s more flexible AS3Signals library because using a specialized signal made sense in this scenario .. just like flex, signaling a change in a property is something we do a lot in a crayons application, for example to signal change in model data or change in the property of a component, for data binding etc. so taking advantage of the speed of a specialized signal seemed reasonable. Also this especially helps data binding, since a Binding is really an implmentation of a ChangeSlot and Jackson’s already shown that such specialized slots are extremely fast. While in most cases its hard to justfy implementing a Slot interface just to add a listener and I would almost always go with adding a function listener, but in case of data binding since this is only used internally within the binding framework and the user of data binding is not bothered with it, implmentating a ChangeSlot was perfectly reasonable.

Now to use crayons data binding you can use a Binder object to bind a source ChangeSignal to a target property as follows …

The Binder class provides some other interesting apis to remove binding or to check if a binding exists. This binding implementation is heavily inspired from Eric Feminella’s implementation where he’s used as3signals. I refactored it for use with ChangeSignal and ChangeSlot and changed some other APIs for our needs.

That’s about it, you can get the complete crayons binding framework source code here on Github, do let me know what you think, any feedback would be very welcome.

Finally, I want to say thank you to Jackson Dunstan, Eric Feminella and Rob Penner who’s great work and research helped me implement this. I’ll buy you guys beer whenever we get a chance to meet

Applications for your sanity on windows

2010-05-27T19:25:49+00:00

Even though I work on the OS of my choice, this choice is not always available at my workplace. I am required to use Windows to develop applications for my employer. I do miss a lot of *nix stuff and the command line awesomeness. I have striven hard to find replacements for them. Here I present a list of applications which a non-geeky person should look at after installing Windows. Some of the geeky part is left out.

Firefox

Do I need to explain this? I think unless you are using Internet for Orkut and Gmail, you must have surely heard about it. Do get some awesome addons like Adblock Plus, Sxipper, XMarks, DownThemAll, Firebug etc

Google Chrome

If you want even more speed, then get Google’s browser. Googlers are crazy when it comes to speed. I recommend keeping a second browser as IE doesn’t qualify as a browser.

Console

You ever tried opening cmd.exe only to say “How stupid ugly it looks”. Even tried looking at terminal emulators of Linux? You’ll start abusing MS. Get Console.

Launchy

Don’t move your hand away from the keyboard. You can launch any application using this Launcher

Notepad++

The TextMate for windows. We hardly need it for Linux. We have Vim/Emacs

Paint.NET / Pinta

Even wanted to do any image manipulation and you were forced to open Photoshop/GIMP? These two come to rescue.

Pidgin

The multi-account instant messenger. Works like a charm on majority of the OSs available

pidgin-facebook

Add facebook buddies on Pidgin. No need to chat from inside the browser window

Thunderbird

The mail client which I really admire (after Outlook 2007). It’s cross-platform

Inkscape

Vector drawing tool. Cross-platform. Works great. It’s not an Illustrator replacement.

7Zip

Stop there. Don’t install Winzip or Winrar and then get annoying messages to register to continue using it. 7zip gives you peace of mind.

PdfCreator

Even want to convert any document to PDF? Use Pdfcreator which adds a virtual printer to your system.

Foxit Reader

Please! For God’s sake, don’t install Adobe Reader and save the mankind. You’ll never use 95% of the features provided in that bloatware.

Process Explorer

The Process Tab of Task Manager isn’t so great. Try this application and have more control over what applications are running.

uTorrent

The first and last torrent client you will ever need for windows

You know, 12/15 applications I suggested are open-source ones. (Including Paint.NET)

The agents of God

2010-05-22T13:12:49+00:00

Scene: Regional Transport Office

Just imagine a story. You went to Regional Transport Office (RTO) to apply for your driving license. You are an honest citizen who wants to abide by law. You even took a leave from your work so that you can get a license and drive a two-wheeler daily from home to office. It is 10 in the morning and RTO hasn’t opened. You wait till 11 when all the employees of RTO enter the building. They are shocked to see you waiting outside the office (you know why). You are asked to wait in a small waiting room in a hot summer day which doesn’t have provision for water and then ceiling fan is nearly dead.

You wait for an hour before someone calls you. It’s your turn to apply for license. You produce the documents as proof only to hear “This won’t work”. Before you can say anything, even your photo is rejected the reason which is not known to anyone. After arguing for 10 minutes you leave.

You come next day with all the proper documents, this time with more proofs in hand. To your utter surprise, they again made some weird reasons and rejected your application. You are broken and leave for your office from RTO. During lunch you tell one of your colleague what you faced for last two days and even add “How did you get your license in 1 working day?”. The answer you get shocks you badly - “Dude! You don’t know the corruption in RTO? Looks like you never dealt with this office? Unless you get your application filed from the agent, it won’t get accepted through ever. This is because a part of agent commission even goes to the person who is dealing with your license. Since, you went directly, the person rejected your application using weird reasons since he wanted you to apply via agent”

Scene: Deogarh

When I was in class 9, my parents took me to Deogarh which is known for it’s world famous temple Baba Baidyanath Temple. Our relatives used to live in Deograh, so it was a dual purpose visit. It was ages since my parents gave to visit to the temple. We reached the place in afternoon and headed to our relative’s house to take rest for the day.

Next day morning, me, my younger brother, father and mother headed to the temple in a 2 rickshaws ( the most famous means of transport in Deograh). As we reached near the temple, the experience was something different from what I experienced in Puri or any other famous temple. All of a sudden priests (pandas) came flying out of nowhere running behind the rickshaws asking us if we need their help for visiting the temple. My father kept on saying “No” time and again. Just imagine how you feel when you are attacked by a colony of honeybees? As we neared towards the temple, the pandas standing near the temple were even more surprised. How on earth did we manage to break their strong fort and come so close inside all alone?

When I saw the honeybee attack, my first reaction was “Is it situation in some dense forest area or a cave that we need a guide/priest to go all the way upto the shrine?“. When the rickshaw stopped all I could see was a temple in midst of a big market. We paid the rickshaw driver, took off our shoes and headed inside the temple. As we entered there was another attack of honeybees, this time with all rates and slabs. It sounded like “Bribe the God with Rs x and you will get salvation from your sins” or “All you send to spend is some xK and leave the rest to us, God will forgive your sins“. The offers and donation plans were more exhaustive and elaborate than even a Nokia product showcase with various models of all shapes, sizes and price. It sounded like, if you take this donation scheme your sins would be washed away in n days and if you take even a costlier scheme your sins would be washed away in just n/2 days.

Pushing away all pressures, we somehow managed to get near the shrine and suddenly one of the priest lost his temper and started shouting at us. Why? Since we came on our own and didn’t take any agent to pay a visit to God. My father, who knows how to deal with the world told us “Leave him, ignore him”. It sounded like “Look front or you’ll be trolled hard“. We went inside the shrine, came out unharmed.

Implications

Noticed something? The similarity between the two scenes? In the first case, we crib against the corruption and have to take the services of the agents. In the second case it isn’t considered even a corruption. The priests who are considered to be pure and supposed to be away from materialistic world are in a mad rush for money. That too, to such an extent that they start shouting at you if you don’t take their services. Atleast in the first case, they didn’t openly say so. Any lesson learnt? Everything is fair when it comes to religion. God is hostage, even though we say “God is everywhere”

Even though am more of an agnostic, my parents do believe in God. The have no issues since everyone has a right to lead their life the way they want. One thing I admire is that they still didn’t paid the pandas the bribe to get the Almighty’s blessing.

Login to a linux system using your USB Drive

2010-05-20T12:57:40+00:00

5.30 in the morning I accomplished this, just before Java exams could not sleep with excitement and to my dismay the net did not work properly. I forced myself to go to sleep otherwise I would have certainly messed my papers ( thank God, I did not). Now lets move on to the topic.

Certainly, I had thought of this idea long ago, before diving into linux( openSUSE 11.2) and deciding to learn about it as much as I can. Ankur Bhaiya had given me a hint that it will have to do something with PAM modules. To be honest, I am a lazy humbug who has a lot of great ideas and always fails to accomplish them. So even completing this gives me a great sense of achievement.

I followed the instructions from this site which has a PAM module for pen drives
http://pamusb.org/doc/quickstart

I hope everyone can follow the instructions pretty well as they are pretty easy to understand and follow. However I myself would like to add a point or two on this issue which I experienced and maybe you can experience yourself too.

If you are downloading and compiling from the source, which I did, on openSUSE 11.2 I really had no need to get a dependency module for python-celementtree. However python-gobject is now python-gobject2 which you may also get it as a one click install from openSUSE software search. I cannot say about the others.

The example which is given here is for the root user and so our module will perfectly run when we login as a root. However if we run it as some other user we may not be able to execute all the commands. The reason is the pamusb module uses pmount which is a wrapper on the mount command and is used in many debian based systems. So we might need to get the package pmount which is also available as a one click install in openSUSE. However, this is not enough we have to login as root and then move to the directory /usr/bin/ and after this we change the permissions of pmount as chmod 111 pmount ( this gives executable permission to every user in the computer).

The last step is to finish it with writing a logout command. The pamusb.conf already indicates that it has something to do with gnome or kde or whatever we are using. I am a great fan gnome( just because it is simple, no fights over here) So I will continue with gnome itself.

Change the following
<agent event=”lock”>gnome-screensaver-command –lock</agent>
<agent event=”unlock”>gnome-screensaver-command –deactivate</agent>
To
<agent event=”lock”>gnome-session-save –logout</agent>
<agent event=”unlock”>gnome-screensaver-command –deactivate</agent>

Introducing WADL#

2010-05-12T17:59:50+00:00

Of late I have been working on a small project which deals with C# code generation. I named it WADL# by the way most of the C#/.NET projects are names. If Apple products can start with i , GNOME with g, KDE with K and Windows with Win , then I think WADL# is an apt name.

For all the people who have been working on .NET and web-services must be diving deep into SOAP based web-services. Right? How many of you know that SOAP based web services are not the only type of web-service which exist on this planet? How many of you have heard about RESTful web services? I know the fight between SOAP and REST is just like Emacs v/s Vim and GNOME v/s KDE and SQL v/s NoSQL. If someone worked on SOAP based web service, they must be familiar with WSDL. They added a “Web reference” and voila – Your IDE generated the client proxy for you.

For people in the RESTful world, don’t have something called WSDL. Sun came up with something called WADL. It is again a XML based representation of operations offered by the web-service. WADL doesn’t get so much of love since RESTful people are opposed to anything such as WADL. Whatever may be the case, WADL is still pending with W3C and not yet finalized. This makes the situation more complex for people from WSDL background who have been in a habit of getting their client proxy code. Hardly anyone looks at the actual XML. Why does it make the life tough? This is because I along with many people could not find any such code generators for WADL. After days of hunting I finally gave up.

I actually needed the WADL -> C# code generator as I wanted to write a client side proxy for Launchpad. After figuring out that LP provides a WADL, I started researching how to use it, but only in vain since no such code generators exist. This inspired me to write one of my own. I got the WADL schema, read the reference, sent some mails to launchpad-dev mailing list asking for clarification and finally came up with v0.1 of WADL#, download the assembly file.

I am still learning WADL and not everything is clear. There are many conflicts which might take time to grasp, but the current assembly works flawlessly for Launchpad WADL. Let me know if it fails for some WADL file which you provided. Take the pains to mail me the WADL file too. My email is mail at manishsinha dot net

Documentation:

This is no magic or rocket science. All you need to do it to call the Convert method of WadlConverter which implements IConverter interface. This means you need to use LpNet.WadlSharp.Common.WadlConverter class and call it’s Convert method. The signature of the method is

void Convert(string inputFileName, string outputFileName, string rootNamespace)

The explanation of the method:

The first argument is the filename of the WADL file.
Second argument is the filename of the .cs file. If the file does not exist, it would be created. If it does exist, it would be truncated and then overwritten.
The third parameter is the name of the namespace which you would like the generated code to have.

Languages Supported:

WADL# uses CodeDom which is provided both in .NET and also Mono. WADL# can theoretically gen rate code for all languages which CodeDom can.

In reality, there is a small problem in the file Customizer.cs at line 215 where there is a hard coding for C#. Next release of WADL# will remove that.

Code:

WADL# uses Launchpad for development using the Bzr source control system. Get the code from trunk, make changes, push it and add it to merge queue. I love contribution and patches.

License:

WADL# is an open-source project released under MIT/X11/Expat License. This means you can use it freely any way you like it provided you do not remove the Copyright notice. Know more about MIT License.

–

Just now I got a mail from Softpedia informing me that they have added WADL# to their repository of Linux Softwares.

Please don’t start with Mono and patents talk. Please point your browser to Slashdot, Hacker News, OSNews and Reddit for such discussions. You’ll get better responses in such places.

Please let me know if there is any mistakes on this post which includes typos, grammatical and factual ones. I would correct it at the earliest.

Update: I just got a backlink from a blog at weblogs.java.net on a post titled Bumper Crop of WADL Tools

Cartoon

2010-05-06T17:29:44+00:00

Trial

Kasab on death row

2010-05-06T16:23:21+00:00

Finally Kasab has been shown where his future lies. After coming to know that his hardcore terrorist started sobbing when the verdict was given takes me by surprise. He didn’t feel that when he gunned down hundreds of innocent people?

The plea of Pawar, who while admitting that his client was “blinded by religion” sought leniency for the terrorist given his young age, failed to convince the judge.

This statement should have made the case against Kasab even more stronger. Religion is always misused for personal gains. If he was “blinded by religion”, then also it is his mistake.

What next? As I said in a reply to Mehul, I am just waiting for Human Rights activists to stage a protest that Kasab has a right to live and law doesn’t have power to take away his life. Ironically, such people only appear from hiding when justice is announced. When policemen die, they open their mouth. They would go to attend funerals of terrorists but not of martyrs. It’s their old hypocritical practice to oppose death penalty ignoring the current situation of law and order.

Filttr – A New Hope

2010-05-04T05:49:49+00:00

Note: This post is cloned from blog.filttr.com
It has been a year since Filttr’s last beta but that doesn’t mean we haven’t done anything since then. There has also been heavy performance improvements. However, our company has been looking forward to move from Filttr over to other things. It was an experiment by Aditya & me which transformed into a full time project as we got popular – not to forget the first big coverage by TechCrunch followed by CNN & New York Times. However, we hit some roadblocks and then the negative attitude of Twitter towards the developers led us to lose interest in trying to monetize the service. The final nail in the coffin was flurry of decisions by Twitter last month. We will not get into the details as everyone here at RH loves Twitter & the way they’ve managed the service so far.

Coming to my point, our company has decided to move on to other projects & I, have decided to take over Filttr’s development & server expenses. We have never charged our users and I do not plan to do so either and yes, ads suck! There are no major bugs (tracker.filttr.com) but I will try to add more features (filttr.uservoice.com) during my free time. I’m already in the process of developing FilttrFon – a mobile app for iPhone & Android.

I would be grateful if people can even donate something as little as $5; it will help me pay for some part of the expenses and most importantly, encourage me to continue developing Filttr!

–
Swaroop

P.S. You didn’t think I would actually forget mentioning Star Wars day, would ya? Hint: Check title.

The Month that was – April

2010-05-03T14:27:17+00:00

This month has been one of the most happening months in my college life !!! There have been many highs and lows during this month ranging from the time when I was literally on top to the time when I thought I was “good for nothing”.

The month started with my bad health which lead to hospitalisation, the first time in my life. After recuperating, I made up for the lost time and started worked hard on my project.

The sessionals went well, at least were a lot better than the previous two. Then the shock arrived “Rejection from ETRI, Korea” which prompted me to rethink. Finally, the three tiresome days having three Lab End Sems, one class test and 10 theory classes arrived. My first end sem JAVA, went pretty well with me scoring 60 on 60 in the internals whereas the second one, Microprocessors was a total disaster and finally the third one, DBMS was also good.

The end of the month gave me a nice surprise, my Birthday was celebrated on 30th night even though it was on 29th May. Well, the reason is quite obvious, my friends wanted to bash me and hence thought of the nice plan. I enjoyed the birthday as there was a yummy cake for me.

There were many other minor incidents during the course of this month which prompted me to write this post. This month has been a great learning experience and I am a lot more mature now !!!

Season's Passing

2010-05-01T09:48:17+00:00

It was the first warm morning of the past two months, and he set out to buy flowers for her. A brisk, chilly wind blew, Nature making sure everyone knew it was still winter, but the sun had risen early this morning, offering hints of the coming change in season. She couldn't tolerate the winters, he knew, it was a very difficult time of the year for her. Last weekend, she had refused to step out

Bye Bye Korea

2010-04-24T12:29:31+00:00

Well, frequent readers of this blog must have guessed the purpose of the blog from the title. For the ignorant ones, I was nominated from India for a two month long internship at ETRI, Korea but alas, was rejected by the employer as they wanted a “more” senior student ( 3rd or a 4th year).

I was initially taken aback by the rejection as I had worked pretty hard but then with the help of my friends and family, I am back A Chicken Tikka Sub and a chocolate shake sponsored by my friends was more than enough for cheering me up.

On the bright side, I would be spending an awesome two months at home, working on another internship, completing my pending projects.

Bye!! (PS: This was a short post just to convey the news )