Planet Manipal

Valentines Day Dilemma

2010-02-08T12:25:25+00:00

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

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

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

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

Alrighty then

2010-02-04T03:20:06+00:00

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

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

Directi Hackfest – 31st January, 2010

2010-02-01T19:09:02+00:00

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

Rewind

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

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

Agenda

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

Talks

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

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

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

Code

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

Begining Python workshop

2010-01-30T21:17:50+00:00

LUG Manipal python workshop poster

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

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

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

PYTHON WORKSHOP

2010-01-29T17:04:34+00:00

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

"...Like a Diamond in the Sky"

2010-01-28T08:02:23+00:00

I remember looking up at the sky when I was a kid and had no idea what the thousands of dots in the sky were. They looked like tiny pin pricks which showed bits of some holy daylight from beyond the otherwise dark night sky. And that was probably the beginning of a four-year old’s fascination for the night sky; the thousands of bright pinpricks –the twinkling little stars. For all of you out there, who feel or have felt even the tiniest of inklings of awe and wonder for the vast dark night sky at some point of time; I’m sure you have your own story to tell.

Throughout man’s existence on the planet, since the time of the early Neanderthal man, he has tried to explain what the sky, the pinpricks meant; what they implied. We had our share of men –astronomers and physicists who strived to solve the mysterious unexplained, right above them in the sky.

“Where does it come from? This quest, this need to solve life's mysteries, of the simplest of questions can never be answered. Perhaps we'd be better not looking at all, not delving, and not yearning. But that's not human nature, not the human heart. That is not why we are here.”

We will keep looking. We will keep searching for answers. We will always be awed by the mahakaash. We will keep looking at the constellations, the stars, the planets, the nebulae, the thousands of pinpricks and wonder. And be amazed now, tomorrow, for many many years to come.

***

Men came and went. Theories came and went. Models of the Universe explaining why the night sky is the way it is, were given. Few of them accepted. Even they went. The only thing that stayed the way it was, was the sky and man’s fascination for the unexplained.

For the thousands of bright pinpricks in the sky...

-Pramit

An Introduction to Rich Internet Applications

2010-01-23T20:48:19+00:00

I had the opportunity to present a 4.5 hr lecture on Building Rich Internet Applications at ACM’s Compute 2010 today. We started out by defining what an RIA is and exploring the various RIA platforms available, we then further explored the Flash Platform in more detail, wrote some experimental code to understand the internals of Flash Player, looked at Flex 4 and its various new features and also spent some time understanding the Flex Component Lifecycle

Here’s the slide deck from beginning of the lecture which tries to define what an RIA is and explores the architecture a typical RIA platform …

C++ Workshop

2010-01-17T05:58:59+00:00

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

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

Views on God and Religion

2010-01-16T08:25:18+00:00

Disclaimer: This post is not intended to hurt any religious feelings. It is written from a neutral perspective.

God loves you. He loves the world. Even if you do a thousand sins, he won’t demolish the earth. Any speculation of doomsday and apocalypse due to his anger is pure bullshit. No one wants to destroy what they built. If any disaster happens on this planet, it is because such a disaster can happen. Murphy rules them all.
God loves you. You don’t need to fear him. Remember the religious books? — God forgives. Now stop fearing God and live your life peacefully.
You think that you committed some grave sin and God will forgive you. Now since you know God will forgive you, so you go on committing more sins. See what you have done? Created a chicken-egg problem. You idiot!
If you goto God only when in times of need, you better need to introspect yourself. You love God just because you need something from him. Is this what religion is meant for?
When God sent you on this planet, he expected some minimum output from you. This output actually includes living you life, crying like a baby to make others say “choo chweet”, becoming a good human being, making love, raising your children, doing humanitarian services and all those good things taught in Moral Science books. No where did he say to give up the normal life and worship him day and night. Get up and serve the society. God would be more pleased.
Going to place of worship won’t make God as happy as much as you think. He would be more happy if you spread peace and humanity all around. Hey! Leave God for a while. Doing these would even make you happy.
Who on this planet can ever think that offering sacrifice to Gods makes them happy? I mean sacrifices like Animal Sacrifice or even Human Sacrifice. Urgghh! You are committing a ghastly crime right front of his eyes. You really need to rot in hell. He never likes to see his creations butchered by narrow-minded people like you.

Trip To St. Mary’s Island

2010-01-14T06:56:10+00:00

First of all, a short and simple intro :

St Mary’s Island is a small group of islands lying 58 km north of Mangalore and little to the north of the port of Malpe town. St. Mary’s Island are known for their famous basalt rocks which have crystallized into columns and split into hexagonal mosaic.

Now,about my trip :

One of friends(Pratik) had asked me if I would be kind enough( ) to accompany him to St. Mary’s on Sunday,10th Jan. Well, I did not have any urgent work and moreover it was my first weekend at Manipal in the new year, so I readily agreed. Next Day, I bunked gym( Yes, I started gyming) and we started at 10 after having a nice breakfast. There were 14 people and I knew only 3 well. I had asked my friend (Abhinav) to accompany us just half an hour before because I knew had I asked earlier he would have said a clear “NO”.

We took a Bus from the MIT Bus Stop to Udupi and then took another to Malpe. Then, a ferry to the Island. Detailed travel instructions below.

During the ferry ride, there was water all around us and I remembered the famous “Water Water everywhere but not a drop to drink” from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor. On reaching the island, we quickly changed and took some nice pictures (We had a wonderful photographer among us ).After a round pf pictures, where each one of us displayed their best poses, we went to the other end of the island. There were big rocks all around and I later came to know that these are Basalt Rocks and St Mary’s is the only place in India where these kind of rocks are available. The water too was quite ok but not very clean (thanks to the careless tourists). We went to a place which was surrounded by rocks and there was water in the middle. We started swimming and I got a chance to try out my skills ( ). We played catch – catch and some other idiotic but fun-filled games. At around 3, we boarded the ferry again to take us back to Malpe as the last ferry was supposed to be at 4 and we were not in a mood to spend the night there. If given a chance,I really plan to spend a weekend at an island. On reaching Udupi, I had lunch after getting turned down at two restaurants. One more bus ride and HOME SWEET HOME ( Well, I call my hostel my home )

Travel Instructions from Manipal

1. Take a bus to Udupi bus stop.

2. Ask for a bus to Malpe Harbour, tell him clearly that you intend to go to St Mary’s Island.

3. At the Malpe bus stop, walk for around 200 meters to Malpe Harbour .

4. Buy a 1 rupee entry ticket for the harbour.

5. Go right till you see a gate and a shipyard.

6. You would find a ticket counter there, buy a to and fro ticket costing Rs 80 for the ferry ride to the Island

7. Wait for the ferry, it can take upto 1 hour. As soon as the ferry comes, don’t rush, make a queue and board it nicely. Pushing others is dangerous as people may fall off into water.

8. Find a seat, the ride takes around 30 minutes. There are two floors in the ferry, go upstairs if you can spare another 30 bucks.

9.All the passengers are transferred to a smaller boat which then takes them to the island.

10.This boat ride takes 5 min. Get down safely and voila, you reached the island.

Tips :

1. Be prepared to get yourself drenched. Take another set of clothes if you are too shy to take of clothes while in water. More importantly, take a towel.

2. Take adequate amount of food along ( Chips and cold drinks). Alternatively , if you are a rich lad, you can buy them at the island at triple the price.

3.Take along a nice camera.

4.Most important, take your friends along.

Final Word : On reaching the island, I was not actually happy as I expected a lot more but at the end it turned out to be one hell of a trip. I recommend all my friends to at least visit once.

Annular Solar Eclipse-January 15th 2010

2010-01-09T21:47:25+00:00

On Friday, 2010 January 15, an annular eclipse of the Sun is visible from within a 300-km-wide track that traverses half of Earth. The path of the Moon's antumbral shadow begins in Africa and passes through Chad, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Kenya, and Somalia. After leaving Africa, the path crosses the Indian Ocean where the maximum duration of annularity reaches 11 min 08 s. The central path then continues into Asia through Bangladesh, India, Burma (Myanmar), and China. A partial eclipse is seen within the much broader path of the Moon's penumbral shadow, which includes eastern Europe, most of Africa, Asia, and Indonesia.

* courtesy NASA

to view the official page,

http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEmono/ASE2010/ASE2010.html

Bottled Up!!

2010-01-08T21:26:22+00:00

"Tears are words the heart can't express"
I have been caught crying many a times and most of these times I have heard people say, "be a man, don't cry"; what I still don't understand is what's ones sex got to do with ones feelings? Men are expected not to cry and keep their emotions and feelings bottled up inside; and we tend to try our level best to do that. However when words are not enough; when it becomes to much for us to keep it to us anymore; it all comes out in form of tears.

We have been told since time immemorial that we will portray our selves as weak if we cry and that its not manly enough to cry; but what I don't understand is that how can the entire male specie be expected to turn emotionless. Well wait, before you start hurling abuses at me let me amend my previous sentence a little; the male specie is expected to keep his emotions bottled up inside only when it will portray him as a weak person (read make him cry), otherwise he is expected to show full emotions,feelings and understanding.

I am sure most of us have come across circumstances when we feel the urge, the need to cry. Its supposed to be one of the best ways to let out your emotions. Its scientifically proven that after you cry, you feel more relaxed. Metaphorically speaking you feel a big load off your chest.

You can close your eyes to the things you don't want to see, but you cannot close your heart to the things you don't want to feel. Emotions are such a big part of ones life that its almost impossible to be emotionless. A person without emotions is as good as a dead person. Emotions like any other thing have two sides to it. A happy one and a sad one. How can someone be expected to show the happy side whereas keep the sad one just bottled inside?

Is it fair to ask a person to laugh along with you, to make you laugh and to show it when he is happy but at the same time if he becomes sad he must not as much as tell someone that he is sad? Is it possible to ask a person to show love but at the same time not show hatred? Is it possible to ask a person to care but not feel bad? Is it possible to ask a person to be cheerful but never be miserable, to be happy but never sad? I think this is as impossible as tossing a coin and hoping that you always get heads.

I feel if a man cries, he doesn't become less manly. Only a man who is totally comfortable with himself and is courageous enough can cry in front of others. There is nothing wrong in letting go of your emotions in what ever way possible. So all I want to say is that next time you see a guy crying don't say, "Be a man!" or "Guys don't cry! or "You are such a sissy!"; just try to understand that there can be a very deep reason for him to cry; that maybe you should talk to him instead of making fun of him; that maybe all he needs right now is a hug or an ear to hear him, cause you never know the little actions you do can make or break a man. Remember no one other than yourself is going to love you for what you are; people love you for how you make them feel.

My first encounter with working lifestyle

2010-01-08T10:55:14+00:00

Till now I was living in a very well guarded world. My boarding school in Ajmer was like a fort; I was not allowed to go out neither could someone just come in, so my interaction with the outside world was very limited. Then came my high school in Delhi. It was a place with relaxed rules. I could go in and come out, we had day scholars, we had people from different backgrounds; so my interaction with the outer world increased. Finally came my college. College as we all know, places almost no restriction on you. It is assumed that you are now mature enough to decide what you want, to distinguish right from wrong. Here I chose my set of friends. My life was again going very smoothly. My parents kept meeting my demands for money and I never faced any difficulty as such.

It was towards the end of my fifth semester that the thought, "Life is not a bed of roses", rang a bell. I started to wonder that for me till now life has been more or less 'bed of roses', with only minor hiccups here and there. It is then that I decided I need to experience first hand how life outside the protected walls of my college is going to be. How it is going to be after I am forced out of my comfort zone.

So armed with 126 credits (thats what you get for clearing every subject in your course even if you don't understand a word of it) I went looking for a place which would be kind enough to offer me training. In time of recession, when people are finding it hard to retain their jobs, finding a place willing to offer training was surely a tough task. Here also I was again saved the hard work as a place was found through 'contacts'.

So we(me along with two of my friends) reached Mumbai, all set to experience the working culture, thinking about how I will manage when I have no support! The experience started right from the time we got down at Andheri Railway station. Looking for a place to stay was not only very confusing but a big hole in pocket too. Finally we found a place and decided to stay over there for a night.

The next day we were supposed to go to the head office of the company. The ride in the local Mumbai train is a experience in itself. When I saw the building which housed the office, I was awestruck! It was so huge and beautiful. Excitement took over me. The person I was supposed to meet was very helpful (contradictory to my belief that no one treats college students seeking training nicely)!

My training was to start from the next day. I was supposed to go to Vashi which is very far from where I was staying. Again the local Mumbai train came to our rescue. I admire the person who gave the concept of local train. It would have been so difficult without it!

I was expected to reach office by 10:00 AM and by the time I reached it was already 11:30 AM. On my first day at office I was late by an hour and a half! So you see things didn't exactly started as planned. To be honest I was little scared cause I didn't know what to expect. After waiting for sometime our department head came to us. He was a very helpful person. During the entire course of training he never made us feel as if we were trainees and took really good care of us. We were treated very nicely.

Everyone in office seemed to be busy with their own work. A few of them I guess where even surprised to see three undergraduate students walking in the office. All my fears vanished soon. The next few days were decent enough. Other than the fact that we had to travel more than three hours everyday, everything else went fine.

The entire experience taught me few things. They are :

Once you go out of college, life is not easy. I saw people working there. They probably reached home late and slept cause they have to wake up again next day cause they can't afford to be late.
Discipline is a must. You should be disciplined in whatever you do
If you are good to people, they will be good to you

So friends I would like to say one thing, don't get scared. Go out and have fun. Its not an easy world out there but its not that scary also. Remember who you are and don't get lost in the crowd.

Cheers!!

2009. A Recap(Technical)

2010-01-07T19:40:29+00:00

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

1. GitHub

Status: Adopted and love it

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

2. Nokia 5800

Status: Bought

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

3. Posterous

Status: Love

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

4. Dropbox

Status: Adopted

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

5. Lotus Notes/ClearCase

Status: Use at work. Hate a lot

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

6. Seagate 500GB External Hard Disk

Status: Purchased.

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

7. Google Reader

Status: Got addicted

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

8. Python

Status: Now I swear by it

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

9. C#, .NET and Silverlight

Status: Love and Hate

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

10. IE6

Status: Hate

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

Symlinks in a libfs virtual file system: The Pains

2010-01-06T18:44:22+00:00

The only documentation you have got for libfs is the code itself, which says a lot about the hoops I had to jump through to at least get this thing working

I still don’t claim that I know all the innards of libfs regarding this functionality. It took me around 3 days, poking around the code and quite a few kernel freezes and oops to figure this thing out. Also to be noticed is the fact is that this is for a non disk-based file system like /proc. I guess things will be different when it’s done on file systems like ext3.

WARNING:

This is quite a long drawn post as I haven’t presented the solution in a straight forward manner. I have rather chosen to ramble on about my personal experience. For a no-nonsense, tldr-free answer, visit this

To begin with, I was absolutely clueless. All this time I had been using `ln -s` or symlink() without worrying about what really goes on under the hood. Imagine my frustration when ln -s didn’t work on the file system. I had completely neglected this part and thought that it’d be somehow taken care of automagically.

Going through a few online resources, I managed to deduce that the symlink operation takes place on inode level (whatever you make of that). Looking through the fields of struct inode , I found struct i_op for inode operations. Referring to both the book Understanding Linux Kernel and the source code for the fields in i_op, I found out a few function pointers that had something to do with links, namely symlink(), readlink(), follow_link().

Initially, I thought of implementing getattr() so that it’d return a S_IFLNK for the symlink but the idea of having to handle attribute generation for the rest of the dentry objects was too much for my puny brain and this plan was discarded.

Reading through man 2 symlink, I came across this and instantly everything was clear:

Symbolic links are interpreted at run time as if the contents of the link had been substituted into the path being followed to find a file or directory.

First, I changed the file creation function a bit for the symlink so that the proper st_mode is set and put the target location string in the i_private field of the inode structure.

Then I created a inode_operations structure and put in the following function definitions:

static void *sample_follow_link (struct dentry *dentry, struct nameidata *nd)
{
    nd->depth = 0;
    nd_set_link(nd, (char *)dentry->d_inode->i_private);
    return NULL;
}

static struct inode_operations sample_inode_ops = {
    .readlink = generic_readlink,
    .follow_link = sample_follow_link,
};

....
//in the function for the dentry and inode creation
inode->i_op = sample_inode_ops

But it was the second step that actually took up the most of my time. I read the man page of readlink and naively put in my own readlink implementation.

int sample_readlink(struct dentry *dentry, char __user *buffer, int buflen)
{
    unsigned long ret = copy_to_user(buffer, dentry->d_inode->i_private, buflen);
    if (ret == 0)
        return buflen;
    else
        return -EFAULT;
}

Kernel freezes happened and wailing of wolves were heard in the distance. Putting in just generic_readlink didn’t solve the problem either with kernel oops happening every time ls was run. Looking into the function definition of generic_readlink in the kernel source, I found it’s mentioned in the corresponding comment block that follow_link needs to be implemented for it to work. Looking into the code for ext2 gave me some idea about dealing with struct nameidata. Problem solved

Internship at Dulcet Solutions

2010-01-06T18:25:30+00:00

In my IIIrd Sem , I was consistently trying to get a internship for my Winter Vacations so as to get some industrial exposure etc … blah blah . The process of finding one was a lot easier than expected .

In late September , I had got a internship ( 6 months project well beyond my 1 month holiday) at Data Mining Tools but had decided against pursuing it as the asking working hours were too much ( I had to enjoy my holidays too )

Then , I came across Dulcet solutions through a IEEE Delhi Branch mail . It was a startup and was in the field of Web Development . Bingo , the one I had been exactly searching for . I called up the number given and then sent my CV by mail .I received the reply within a couple of hours . And Yes , I was selected and in fact he was impressed by my CV .After that , I finalised a couple of details about the internship .I was told to learn MediaWiki , Ushahidi and sum other packages for better understanding .

As soon as I arrived in Delhi , I started working . Rather than a internship where you learn nothing , mine was more like a project which we did on line and hence there was no need to go the office ( ).The project was about Democracy i.e to empower people their democratic rights . Our work was to create a software ( rather a crowd sourcing website ) which brought life into the project .We were a group of 8 people ( 3 from VIT , 4 from NSIT and me ) . All were in the their final years except me .All of us collaborated over the net ( mostly chatting ) .Our employer had made a google site which was used as a platform for our discussions ( maybe Google Wave could do the same ).

Perhaps , you could say it was a software ” of the people, by the people, for the people ” in Abraham Lincoln’s words.

We were using Drupal , a very popular CMS ( Content Management System ) .

My Experience

I learned about the ER Diagram and Schema , which I was supposed to learn in my IVth Sem . More importantly , I coded two Drupal modules from scratch .I worked deep into the night as I have seen I can concentrate a lot better at night . I had used “Learning Drupal 6 – Module Development ” by Matt Bucher . It is a excellent book as it has covered almost the API’s that Drupal provides .During the coding , I learned many conventions eg the function names , when to use a underscore ( all functions which are for internal use by a module start with a ‘_’) etc . It was also my first experience at using API’s ( Database , Form ,hook ) .

Very Soon , both my modules will be released under GNU GPL ( its Open Source ).. I am currently documenting it . I will post the link once the modules are released .

Lastly , this has been a great learning experience for me .And Yes, it was great fun too . I would recommend all my friends to try doing a internship as it gives you huge amount of exposure .

Download the Module here :

Email Node Module

Users Tax Module

References and Links :

The Quote ” Of the people , by the people , for the people ‘

Drupal

Content Management System

Crowd Sourcing

PS: As usual , comments are most welcome

Snippets

2010-01-04T01:37:55+00:00

Hey there all you lovely people,

Owing to the government’s order regarding the Swine Flu situation, my ‘ever-so-generous’ college (I still love you XIC) finally had some pity on us and decided to give us 5 days off… Therefore, I decided to finish my assignments and write… Not that I have any burning issue to talk about, but yes, my random thoughts floating here and there as always… So here goes…

I saw Kaminey today. Needless to say, as an after effect I’m still drooling over Shahid, yes the BOTH of them! ;) I liked the movie; it’s full on Dhannnn taaa nannnnnnnn!

Pardon me for coming back to the two words that have been all over the papers lately and of which you must be sick and tired of by now, Swine Flu. But its magnanimity has seriously left me dumb-founded, probably because it’s closely associated with one of my favorite cities, Pune. Travelling by the Mumbai local trains and walking on the streets, seeing everyone equipped with their masks, handkerchiefs, shawls, stoles or any piece of cloth for that matter and laden with an intense sense of fear which is very evident in their eyes. It scares me.

I miss Manipal. I really do.

Nose rings. Wear it ONLY if it suits you dahlings’! Now, now, you don’t want to look like a walking-talking fashion disaster, do you? :P

Public Relations & Corporate Communication. Phew!

I want to be dedicated to dedication, sincere to sincerity and committed to commitment.

The ways of Mother Nature are simply beautiful. Subtle and strong, all at the same time. There are some forces in life you don’t dare to mess with.

I’ve always wondered why the city of Mumbai is what it is. And you know what, each passing day in this place makes me marvel at this thought even more…

I thank all my class/batch mates throughout school, junior college, graduation and post-graduation. You have acted as a catalyst in making me work harder, think smarter and try to give everything I do nothing less than a 100%.

I will lose weight and I will get fitter. Don’t ask me when. I WILL.

A long-distance relationship is not that bad a concept after all. :) It’s like that approach-avoidance conflict we learnt in our Psychology lectures. Where the same thing, comes with its positives and negatives both.

Xavier Institute of Communications, Mumbai is taking me closer to realizing my dreams. From MIC to XIC, after being ‘inspired by life’, I am finally in a place ‘where potential becomes achievement’! ;)

Till next time, lots of love xoxo

The 50th one!

2009-12-30T21:58:36+00:00

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

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

IIIrd Sem

2009-12-30T12:26:04+00:00

Well , Here I am once again after a long long time .

Finally the most awaited IIIrd Sem came to an end ..It was the semester which brought many changes into my life . First and foremost , I became a senior .. So the first question that comes into your mind obviously is Did I rag ??? Na , that’s not me .

What prevented me from ragging ? Was it the fear of getting fined ( Rs 25000 /- ) or Was Ragging not my type ? That’s left to you guys to answer .

So, my IIIrd Sem, the first time in life all I had to study was Computers , Computers and Computers . Time and again , I was thanking my brother who helped me avoid getting into NIT Allahabad . I had got into there through the AIEEE Round 1 Form 2 Counselling , where you only get the Institute’s name and not the branch . Well , this is one thing I totally disagree with the Indian Education System . How are you supposed to join a institue when you don’t know what branch you would end up with ? According to me , branches should not be decided according to the rank but instead there should be a test to assess your ability in that particular field or let the student decide after a year or so .

Coming back to the topic , We had five subjects and three labs , thats one subject less than others, a advantage for the CSE guys . One subject less means one sessional less , one end semester less and more importantly, you would be home earlier than others .

Our course was ok ok , I found COD ( Computer Organisation and Design ) pretty boring . My teachers were ok , not that bad as expected .Our OOPS teacher was the best . Many of our classmates would disagree on this fact but I liked his teaching style .

Most of my theory classes were boring as mostly it was a repetition of what I had learnt in 12th . The best part was the labs . They usually finished within one and a half hours .This is one more advantage CSE had .Also , we had two half days because of the crappy time table . CSE usually had 3 to 4 half days .

In the first month , I made a website for Formula Manipal (http://www.formulamanipal.com ) using WordPress . It was not much of work , but I had to edit almost all files to suit the needs .It brought me instant recognition . For more info , refer my previous post .

August went by and September Came . We had our tech fest Techtatva 09 in September and I was one of the organisers .This has been previously mentioned in my post .

Two sessionals were over and Diwali arrived . As usual , Diwali in Manipal was not much fun . October too went away

In November , I participated in NITK’s Engineer , Tech Fest . I got through the prelims but as usual did not win anything . I played laser tag for the first time and won too. I guess I am better at non- technical events .Then our end sems came, everyone started studying and I started to get bored .

One more thing , I made a couple of very good friends this semester .Thats the end of my IIIrd Sem. It was the best semester till date .

Looking forward to another semester full of surprises .

Simple espeak Program (speak_lib)

2009-12-27T09:53:55+00:00

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

DEPENDENCIES:

portaudio-devel
espeak-devel

USAGE:

(Assuming speak_lib.h in your current dir)

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

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

SOURCE CODE

Download

Posted in Fedora 11

BSNL 3G Modem (HUAWEI E156G) in Linux

2009-12-26T13:05:04+00:00

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

First things first, ill describe the connection properties.

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

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

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

4) this renders a username and password inessential.

So here goes,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your network should now be connected. Enjoy!

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

just download these and install them serially

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

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

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

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

Err..... hmmm..

2009-12-23T23:58:47+00:00

Blogging after a long time can get nostalgic.
I hate nostalgia, hate it. Too emotional. Rather be drunk out of my skulls and pass out than think about the past.
And yes, my friends, all of them, are on an I-miss-Manipal-overkill for a long, long, long time now on Facebook. One of the other disadvantages of social networking, you have to let people know you miss them. Yes, we all love Manipal, all of us do miss that place and each other. So let’s move on, shall we?

Sometimes, you close your eyes, take a few steps, and then open your eyes. You suddenly find that you have reached the point of no return. The only way is the road ahead. The only way is to run forward, you might not even be able to slowdown. Has the journey been good so far? You don’t know. Is the present position good? Dunno. Are you comfortable? No. For sure, no, this post wouldn’t be here otherwise.
But then what really matters is to do what you want to do. To have the balls to turn around, show the world the finger, and walk back. There are other routes, better ones. And there is always the same route back to the present position if need be, it IS there, I will make sure it is there.

Hypocrisy is a funny thing. It bothers those people the most who don’t want to be hypocrites. There are two kinds of hypocrites, and all of us fall in either of the category. Number one, people who like being hypocrites and think that’s the way ahead. The other, people who are forced to be hypocrites because there is no way ahead without being a hypocrite. I just wish I remain among the latter.
Ethical hypocrisy can be even funny. Ethics are designed to hide incapability. Ethics is what people talk about when they are incompetent in a competition driven environment. Ethics hold back innovation, creativity and enterprise.

Arrogance has to be earned. No, not the first time I say that. Have seen that HOUSE episode a million times. Undeserved arrogance makes the guy look like an idiot. Almost always, even when he is not being arrogant.

Performance is relative. But what will happen when there is no performance in the first place?

I need a break. Short, refreshing one.

Got it, back to work tomorrow morning.

Education given by Indian Engineering Lecturers

2009-12-21T12:04:59+00:00

Case 1:

Lecturer: Write a program to implement a simple stack.

Student: Here is the program

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

Case 2:

Lecturer: What is your project on?

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

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

Case 3:

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

Case 4:

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

Students (shouting): Ma’am Mozilla too.

Lecturer: No! Only Internet Explorer and Netscape.

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

Tonight, We Feast On Human Flesh

2009-12-19T22:58:38+00:00

For infidelity, Tiger Woods receives censure and the upturned noses of the entire world. ATP's Player of The Decade is criticized by television reporters and journalists from around the world, his every single following day tracked and pored over. Will he do something again? Will he talk to someone about it? What will he say? How dare he??Random talk-shows on random networks discuss perversity,

dauna paula,goa

2009-12-16T09:12:46+00:00

Well, before starting I’d like to apologize my readers about the part—1.Agreed it was very long, but can’t help it, after all its college & some of the experiences are just inarticulate. It’s fun writing about those things. Hope that my readers are satisfied with the reason. Although this one is long too. :-‘)
I had come home after 5 months. Naturally I was treated very well (as if I were some awaited guest) & pampered by my mother.Mom used to prepare the choicest of delicacies for me. The food was just finger licking good (I know it’s the punch line of some food chain) but after the terrible mess experience that is the least I can say.
Apart from all that, a bigger surprise awaited me. My father told us that we were going to the Kolkata & the Andamans.I was ecstatic. It had been ages since we had gone for a nice holiday. I was very excited & a lot of fun was going to be there for sure. It was a cold December morning,We landed at Kolkata.Our relatives were there to receive us. We visited many places in Kolkata. I liked south city mall very much. There was not much in Kolkata for me, it was the “amazing Andamans” that I was waiting for. We spent 3 days in Kolkata & after that we left for Andamans…. After having lunch in the hotel, we went for a sightseeing of Port Blair. The city was small & surrounded by water. The best place in Andaman’s was Havelock Island. The seashore over there was unique. The water was turquoise & crystal clear. I went for snorkelling. Truth be told, it was an experience of lifetime.

We returned to Delhi. A few days were there for college to start. I had bought a lot of stuff in the holidays, mainly tees. Finally the 2nd semester started. There was something new to notice in the class. All the girls were looking prettier(counting only those who were pretty before).It was a good time pass,suddenly,a number of makeovers(in the traditional guy language ,sab “maal” ban ke aayin thhi).The records needed to be updated(sexiest & beautiful girls only, nerds were still the same…(refer to part—1 for more)).It was our physics cycle, I was finding it more interesting than chemistry cycle, although it had difficult subjects. Don’t have much to write about the subjects,oh yes,I didn’t make notebooks for any subject except EG.But I still managed to pass all the papers…thanks to xerox notes of my friends & a BIG thanks to the “akka”(meaning lady in kannada) in the Shiva xerox shop(I still have to pay them 17 bucks).How can I forget about ma’am Sujata.She was the reason that our maths lectures suddenly became interesting. Our classroom seemed like a battle sky, with all the paper planes landing near ma’am Sujata.The best part was when ma’am used to squeal (her voice used to freak out the ear drums) & scold us, she used to say” who throwed the rocket”(believe me after the scolding a few more planes took off to fly the friendly sky of section L).I was once caught. My friend, Vaibhav, aimed at ma’am, but, it crashed on my head (on the first bench).I decided I would do the rest for vaibhav,I threw it towards the board & it landed in her feet. She had seen me. She threatened to cancel all my attendance for the sem,but then bluffer in me never goes down, I just kept on insisting that it was not me.Ma’am didn’t agree, but, my section co-ordinator(NNK sir) was my saviour for the day.

We had EG (Engineering Graphics),it was the most difficult subject for that semester. I was miserable in graphics. All I did in graphics classes was just copy the positions of all arcs & points from Kartik & Akansha(thanks to both of you).only god knew how I was to pass the subject, no ,perhaps one more person Mr. Potty knew (don’t laugh at the name,i know it’s shitty,but,he is only a little lesser than god as far as EG is concerned, I passed because of him only, thank you sir).This was EG.
Time to tell you about the Goan curry…We (myself, my friends Appan & Sanidhya) visited Goa on Republic day holiday.Since it was Goa, we did a lot of bakchodi (i know that you know what it means) apart from the usual.It was another memorable trip that I won’t forget for the rest of my life. I hadn’t informed home, travelled ticketless on train in the general compartment, drove in Goa on a rented maruti, slept on the railway platform, etc(might sound creepy to you, but I had fun).we visited our friends in BITS Goa. It was a nice get together. We had the time of our life on the beaches, looking forward to visiting Goa again.

I had to visit home in the middle of the semester ,there was no particular reason just that we had few half days,many other people were going,and then flight tickets came cheap. It wouldn’t have been possible without the daredevilry of a true friend,Saim.It was Saim bhai who gave proxies for me,had it not been him,I would have got ordi(i.e. repeat the subject during holidays).I don’t know how do I thank you Saim bhai.
My birthday was luckily during the holidays, I was saved from those brutal birthday bumps (man they kick the hell out of you),but that didn’t mean that my birthday treat was also saved. I have a very large friend circle, so I had to give 3 birthday treats in all(man this time they kicked the hell out of my wallet).I enjoyed all the parties, I also apologise to my friends whom I couldn’t invite,I am sorry guys.

It was the last few days that I was to spend in 5th & 6th block, what I now consider the best hostels in MIT. One thing i disliked about these blocks was that there were too many thefts. I had a jeans, few pairs of socks & few jockeys stolen (ya.. they stole those used ones too).But overall, these hostels were very good,I hated them in the beginning,but had adapted really well later on.
This time…
This sem was over very quickly…unlike the first sem when we almost died waiting for it end. Results came..I had done well considering the amount i studied…I had crossed 8.
Some more things can be written, but I have to watch Two and a half Men…

MEDIAFIRE DIRECT LINK GENERATOR

2009-12-15T14:28:14+00:00

UPDATE: Added Proxy Support

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

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

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

DOWNLOAD

For help use “mediafire.pyc –help”

Posted in Bash, Linux, python, Windows

Small rant on the FUSE API reference

2009-12-15T13:02:48+00:00

I generally don’t rant on such well established open source projects simply because I’m not even remotely qualified to do so. But I’ll be making an exception this time. The bad cold I got more than a week back simply refuses to go away and poorly thought out documentation rules really raised my hackles this time.

Sample this from the struct fuse_operations documentation page:

int(* fuse_operations::write)(const char *, const char *, size_t, off_t, struct fuse_file_info *)

Read the accompanying description. How is someone who is just starting off with FUSE supposed to know what the two char *’s are for? So off you go looking into source code provided by some tutorial and thereby waste at least 10 minutes in the process.

As it can be seen the docs have been generated by Doxygen. I know it’s “experimental” and all but is it really that difficult to write a bit more detailed comment on the function?

Of Death

2009-12-14T22:57:49+00:00

It was damp. The sky was in a perennial dark cloud. It seemed of a single mass, enveloping and overshadowing the town. The sun hadn't been seen, except through a haze, for weeks now. The clouds bore a cold rain, which had beat down without stop for the last three days, drenching the damp earth and forming little rivulets in the mud, which led downstream to a river, black in the darkness of the

Climax Redux

2009-12-12T23:42:38+00:00

The man casually tossed aside two barrels standing one atop another to reveal himself, pointing a pistol at his adversary and arch enemy."You! But you … you're … you're supposed to be dead!" he spluttered, unable to believe his eyes. He rubbed them once to make sure. A dirty business that, with all the soot and grease on them. Escaping with a briefcase full of money from an abandoned factory was

He Does Strange Things After Hours

2009-12-06T17:34:37+00:00

"Hey, you there! Peon, yes. Come here. Why is that turbaned man dancing in my office??""He's very happy, sir. He has got a rocket.""Rocket? WHERE??""In his pocket, sir. He's got a rocket in his pocket."

The "I miss Manipal" Post... :)

2009-12-04T09:00:26+00:00

i was meaning to do this for a long time now... but somehow never got down to it... but was just inspired by my friend Shaz's post on "the bubble", a post called Chapters... (http://shaazyspeaks.blogspot.com/)

Its been over a year and half i think since i've written anything... let alone update my blog.... i dont' know why really... it just happened that way... :)

so well.... like i was saying... "the bubble" Shaazy was talking about... the bubble that kinda enclosed us when we lived in manipal... it was a world in its own actually... where you can be yourself without thinking too much about the others (that is, if you don't want to think abt them)... the security, the freedom, the ppl, the lessons and ofcourse.. college :D

Manipal... ive spent the best three years of my life here... and there's hardly anything that compares to that... really... and going back this time was in itself a lesson in many ways... the value of people, the value of freedom.... so many other indescribable things...

There are so many things to say.... i don't even know where to start... from the experience.. the people.... the place itself... the first time i saw it...

ok... lets start from the place and the expeience...
i've said this many times... when i first arrived in manipal... i had a very rosy picture of life and four "friends" that i thought were my life... Ah my FIRST BIG MISTAKE....

But slowly i've learnt... from many things.. from many people... they shall be mentioned soon... :)

I made friends, i learnt the importance of work... i learnt to enjoy work... and discovered freedom in a sense that hardly anyone outside manipal can ever experience... Here i've learnt soooooooooooo many things... abt life... i'm not saying that i wouldn't have learnt things if i didn't ever come to manipal.... may i would have learnt more... maybe not...

anyways.... now all those ppl who mattered in my manipal life... and have left a mark.. forever

this list isn't in any order of preference or importance it is just a list of ppl i love

Ruchika... my oldest friend in manipal... we've come a long way since the day i tried to chuck her out of her own room (her first day!!!) :P but yaa... its been a roller coaster ride ruchi... and its been a lot of fun... the laughter, the tears, the anger sessions, the long discussions, you inspiring and encouraging me to do things...gymming, FOOD :P, the trips and what not.... love you loads and loads... and i really miss you :)

Nina.... one of the best friends and room mates i could have asked for... all those crazy music sessions, and those jokes and teasing, the trips, the watching movies and soo many more things that can't be said... and i am just sooooo thankful that Nina Chengappa is in Blore... away from too many friends can do harm... thank god for nina :P muahzz nina ;) lowe you loads... :D

Yatharth... i've always called her my support system.... he he... more like my listening box.... those endless walks, those fights, the secrets, the "emotional quotients", the sunsigns... he he... too much fun they were yaa... and i miss them alot... as much as i miss you ofcourse.... :P YATHHHHHUUUUUUUUUUUUU :P i love you yaa... even if i never call you ;)

Ragamalika... raga my love.... what do i say about this woman.... she's the one who comes and gives me a reality check everytime i move away from the the practical path... someone who was my friend when "i thought i had no friends" (that's how she terms it).... She's also one of those ppl who taught me that i can work and that work is fun... this and all those late night conversations, beach trips, endpoint walks, venu walks, star gazing and soo soo much more... i love you loads raga... i don't know if i've said this to you... but i've always looked up to you... muah

Anaswara... My beloved Bum.... aahh what do i say abt you my love... the person who talks to me most during the day... Thank god she's here in blore too.... cuz of her i've learnt several lessons.. in manipal... and made lots of new friends in blore.... but more than anything she's the one who listens (or rather reads) all those whiny talks, all those nostalgic statements that i always make... the one i can endlessly have a "Manipal Discussion" with....
love you loads bum... thanks for everything...

now... Akki's boys (shaaz calls them men now... )

Anadi... the first of the boys that i became friends with.... the reason being simply... he used to make me laugh (initially he was nice enough and didn't tease me...) he he... but the thing abt Anadi is... that when he wants to.. he can invariably make me laugh, whatever maybe the situation.... (as he claims, he knows me inside out)... also.. this guy taught me the importance of working and being busy rather than having an empty mind... an inspiration for me to do several things... :) love you loads athaley

Niranjan... The spoilt one... he he... reason being me... the problem with this guy is.. that despite all the teasing and irritating and screaming and fighting... if he just gives me a smile, sings for me, cracks the dumbest jokes or says "please akki, tum to akki ho na".... i'll do anything for him... and worse.. he knows it... but then.. he can do such nice things for me once in awhile... though he kills it by saying "arre tumhe special feel karadiya"... nevertheless an essential part of my manipal life... i love you loads niranjan... FATTY ;P

Shazzy.... One of the happiest ppl i know... the thing i love about shaaz is... whatever maybe inside... he'll always have a smile, a hug, and the AKKKKIIII song... everytime he sees me... i don't know if i've told you shaazy but you have one of the most contagious smiles ever... love you loads shaazy... muah :)

Azmal... intense conversations, gyaan, dieting, exercising, moral support, ghost stories and ofcourse... bike rides... me and azmal have had great times, great coversations and also really weird fights... but he's taught me a lot of things (and he says i've taught him alot of things)... thanks azmal for everything... life in manipal wouldn't have been crazy enough if you weren't a part of it... love ya.. :)

Kiran .... My Big Brother in Manipal.... done a million things for me and i can never do enough for him to return all the favours... thank you so much for everything kiran... for being such an awesome friend.... and for making manipal less scary for me for the first few days... :)

Suraj... My favoritest super junior... he's one of those that i never thought i could be friends with (for some odd reason).... but that was until i got to know him... he has to be one of the sweetest people i know... sometimes too sweet for his own good...but he's been awesome.... Suraj... all those blue shots and DT sessions are missed... and you're awesome.. love you loads :)

Sameera.... The penguin... one of the cutest ppl i know.... this girl has just brought happiness and smiles to my life... several times... all those hyperactive sessions are never gonna be forgotten sammy... and ofcourse.. our love for "Tenu Le," "Khwaabo Main Tu" and ofcourse "Graduation Song" favorites... love you loads sammy.... come soon to see me :)

Kamna Arya... I don't know where to start... Kamna was always there when i wanted to see a familiar face from home... from school... though we wouldn't meet often, a msg every few days, a small conversation everytime we passed each other, the thought of someone from home or from the "old times, " whatever it be.... i'm soooo grateful that you were there in manipal Kamna... like a reminiscence :)... lots of love...

Anthony Aubrey Philo.... We became friends cuz of gtalk and then the morning msgs... Aubrey's the one who instilled the whole scenario of Radio and Sound Designing in my Life... our morning conversations, the happiness of TGIF, that one day in City Walk (Delhi) and so many other things... thanks for everything AAP... :)

Nandini and Jacksi.... and ofcourse Sherry.... Mashed Potatoes, the first ever dog i loved, Blue shots, getting high at your place, and parties... thanks for having me at your place whenever i wanted to.... and also for letting me eat all your food... The trips, the sessions, the food and jokes are never gonna be forgotten.... thank you so much for everything.. love you both loads :)

Ashima... My first ever room mate... We've done a lot of fun stuff together... had a few long conversations.. laughed like crazy... shared food... and do you remember that Haunted Mansion I spy game shenoy... he he... they were so much fun... he he.. and ofcourse... the trips and the food sessions will always be rememberd... :D

Ashwini... my room mate.. my conv partner... he he... but its been fun having you as a room mate... someone who cares without expecting too much in return.. that's her... (sometimes that's not so good for her...) the head massages and the conversations and music and ofcourse assignments... thanks for everything ashwini.. love you loads

Prassuna... Prassu... the person who always had time for me when he was in blore... i love you loads prassu... and i miss you alot... those walks in manipal... movies and cauvery meets in blore.. the lunches... i don't even know how to mention in words the craziness abt prassu... i just love you loads prassu.. come soon prassu... muah :D

Bakshi.... another person i never thought i'd be friends with.... until it just happened... all those msg conversations... meets in blore.. the 'date' in Spoons... and business conversations.... would always appreciate all the help, the support and the advice this guy gives me... thank you so much bakshi... smile always.. and when you open your resturant don't forget me... :D

Vinamra .... i wasn't great friends with her when i was in manipal.... Infosys Blore changed that :D... my first job wouldn't have been half as good if it wasn't for you vinnu... cycle boy, grinch, creeps, giggles and ccd... ha ha ha... we became good friends in a short time!!! and hey you're awesome... thanks for everything vinnu... loads of love...

Rahul... For being the sweetest around... and moreover fore being a really really good CR... we owe you an applause atleast Rahul.... thanks for everything... In Manipal and in Blore.... you've been the nicest around...

Himanshu.... The person who's always had good conversations and msgs for me... especially here in blore... Thanks for everything Himanshu.. you're an awesome friend...

I could actually keep going... but there are so many people that i have nothing to say for.. but have played a part in my manipal life in some way or the other and am really thankful to them for small/big things that they have done for me... thank you so much. Some of these names are:
Rolika
Elvin
Mansi
Bala
Nida
Karishma
Vineeth
Naim
Ami
Roshan
Pallabi Dutta
Pallavi Arun
Joy

Diary of a Hitman, Chapter 1: Initiation Ceremonies

2009-12-03T19:27:07+00:00

The two men in black suits, one of them startlingly handsome and the other not so much in comparison, quietly exited the black Audi R8 which had arrived at the corner of the street in stealth mode. Not a leaf waved at the arrival of the black car-monster, specially modified for its silence mode. No baby would even stir in his or her sleep, if the Audi braked at 60 miles an hour. It was made for a

Going Commando in Flash Builder

2009-12-03T01:49:35+00:00

Along with the Custom Components in Flex 4 presentation I shared yesterday, I also gave a 15 minute lightening talk at Adobe DevSummit on Keyboard Productivity in Flash Builder, this was just a quick show and tell where I walked people through various ways of what Jeff Atwood calls Going Commando …

Shortcuts

Here are some Flash Builder Keyboard shortcuts I use very frequently, if you have suggestions on others that are especially handy, please let me know …

CMD + 3	- the swiss knife of a commando, jump to anywhere inside eclipse
CMD + SHIFT + T	- find type
CMD + SHIFT + R	- find resource
CMD + O	- find/jump within class
CMD + E	- switch editors (CMD 3 also works for this)
CMD + D	- delete line which has cursor, without having to select
ALT + Up/Down Arrows	- Move Line/Selection Up/Down
ALT + CMD + Up/Down Arrows	- Copy Line/Selection Up/Down
CMD + W	- Close tab

* CMD on OSX = CTRL on Windows

Customize

If you press CMD+3 and type “keys”, you’ll see the keyboard customization preferences panel for Flash Builder, I recommend spending some time customizing Builder for your own needs, for example I use CMD+1 and CMD+2 to switch between Develop/Debug perspectives. I barely use the NumPad on my keyboard so I’ve customized it to be all keyboard shortcuts, pressing CMD+0 inserts snippets

Snippets

Having a good snippets plugin can greatly improve a developer’s productivity, I love how Snippets work in TextMate, I’m still searching for a good solution for this in Flash Builder, till now I’ve been using CFEclipse’s SnipTreeView but the problem is it only works with AS3 code and can’t handle MXML. I was so desperate one day that I figured out that it fails because the CFEclipse InsertSnippetAction class on Line No 71 assumes that the editor is an ITextEditor, while this is true for most Eclipse editors, the MXML editor is actually made of 2 editors a Design Editor and an ITextEditor, so the type cast on Line 71 fails … I never got to building CFEclipse on my own though. But, it looks like Lee Brimelow did, he has released a fix which makes SnipTreeView work with MXML editor, unfortunately though Lee’s fix doesn’t work for me because of a Java version issue on OSX Leopard.

Another handy Mac only tool is TextExpander. It sometimes breaks your formatting in eclipse, but that has gotten better with Flash Builders new auto formatting improvements.

Multi Clipboard

A multi-clipboard tool is another must have for all developers, I use Jumpcut on OSX and it is a big big productivity boost to not have switch between files and applications when copying and pasting. I don’t know any good equivalent for Windows, so if you know of one, please let me know.

Finally, I have to thank Chetan Sachdev because he got me hooked to optimizing my workflow using the keyboard while we were working together on a project earlier this year.

I would love to know if you have any other handy tips on Going Commando.

Custom Components in Flex 4

2009-12-01T11:21:21+00:00

I gave a presentation on Custom Components in Flex 4 at Adobe Devsummit last week in Chennai and today in Hyderabad, here’s the slidedeck where we create an Imperial StormTrooper component

Schindler’s List and related thoughts

2009-11-29T07:22:05+00:00

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

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

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

iPhone

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

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

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

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

Flash, Erlang and Realtime Collaborative Interfaces

2009-11-28T02:49:20+00:00

I’ve been learning Erlang for the past few weeks and loving the simplicity and beauty of the language. As part of a discussion at SAP TechEd, last week, I ended up creating a simple, rather rudimentary prototype of a realtime messaging server that enables collaborative user interfaces where multiple users can simultaneously work with the same interface …

Here’s a video of the code in action …

As you watch the above video, note as I drag a rectangle in any one Flash application, its sends AMF encoded binary messages to the server and the server multicasts these messages to other connected clients and those clients update in almost realtime. While in the example above all the application instances are running on the same system, they could just as easily be running on different systems and still communicate via the server.

Here the code for the Erlang server …

0001 -module(server).
0002 -export([start/1,stop/0]).
0003 
0004 -define(TCP_OPTIONS,[binary,
0005                      {packet, 0},
0006                      {active, false},
0007                      {reuseaddr, true}]).
0008 
0009 start(Port) ->
0010 	 Pid = spawn(fun() -> manage([]) end),
0011     register(client_manager, Pid),
0012 	 {ok, Socket} = gen_tcp:listen(Port, ?TCP_OPTIONS),
0013     accept(Socket).
0014 
0015 stop() -> todo.
0016 
0017 accept(Socket) ->
0018   	 {ok, NewSocket} = gen_tcp:accept(Socket),
0019     spawn(fun() -> recieve(NewSocket) end),
0020     client_manager ! {connected, NewSocket},
0021     accept(Socket).
0022 
0023 recieve(Socket) ->
0024     case gen_tcp:recv(Socket, 0) of
0025         {ok, Data} ->
0026             client_manager ! {multicast,Socket,Data},
0027             recieve(Socket);
0028         {error, closed} ->
0029  		 client_manager ! {disconnect, Socket}
0030     end.
0031 
0032 manage(Sockets) ->
0033     receive
0034         {connected, Socket} ->
0035             NewSockets = [Socket | Sockets];
0036         {disconnected, Socket} ->
0037             NewSockets = lists:delete(Socket, Sockets);
0038         {multicast,Socket, Data} ->
0039             multicast(Socket, Sockets, Data),
0040             NewSockets = Sockets
0041     end,
0042     manage(NewSockets).
0043 
0044 multicast(FromSocket, ToSockets, Data) ->
0045     SendData = fun(Socket) -> gen_tcp:send(Socket, Data) end,
0046     Sockets = [ S || S <- ToSockets, S /= FromSocket],
0047     lists:foreach(SendData, Sockets).

Bring Me This Disco King

2009-11-27T03:00:26+00:00

Perhaps the strangest thing about it is that, well, almost anyone and everyone can do it. Right? Or at least so they think. There isn’t anyone who thinks he is or she is a bad dancer. Well, sure many admit that indeed they’re horrible, and must have exchanged their feet with jelly at some point, but that’s not exactly a personal opinion. It’s borne out of the shell-shocked facial expressions they

The Art of Power-Point Presentation

2009-11-18T19:37:52+00:00

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

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

Essayists

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

Body Language

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

Animations on the slides

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

One-Phrase Focus

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

PPT

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

Steve Jobs

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

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

Conclusion

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

My Life, My Terms

2009-11-15T22:24:49+00:00

The world is a blur around you. Sights and sounds, buildings and neon, pedestrians and beggars, garbage and billboards. People zoom past, looking hazy around the edges, as you perform the daily tasks of living. As you perform the daily tasks you call living. In earnest enthusiasm, we jump the bandwagon, grab this life by its horns and make our place in a ruthless, backstabbing world to build our

Mobi Vision 2.0 Slides

2009-11-15T12:34:33+00:00

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

Mobi Vision 2.0

View more documents from Ankur Shrivastava.

Computer Science Project for Indian Engineering Colleges

2009-11-12T19:35:15+00:00

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

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

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

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

Technology: Python with SQLite for client.

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

Creating the Project:

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

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

$ sudo apt-get install bzr

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

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

Creating the repository

$ cd ~ && mkdir code && cd code

$ srcs init

Creating files

$ touch file1.c

$ touch README

Adding and committing

$ srcs add file1.c README

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

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

Conversation 1:

Teacher: Why have you used Python?

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

Teacher: What. Explain it clearly!

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

Conversation 2:

Teacher: Explain your project briefly!

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

Teacher: How to keep differences?

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

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

You: *Facepalm*

MU Convocation ‘09

2009-11-10T19:57:16+00:00

If you were following me on Twitter or Facebook, you might have been overwhelmed with the massive influx of messages/tweets which had only one intention - Explaining how much I love Manipal.

I had been to Manipal for three days for my University Convocation which was on 2nd of November. This day being a weekday instead of Saturday can be held responsible for a bit poor turnout of this great event. I reached Manipal on Sunday morning and left on Tuesday night.

Sunday

Reached Manipal at 10:30AM in the morning. The bus was unusually late and I was dead tired. When I stepped out of the bus, I could feel the real heat which we had been bitching for the last four years. It was really too hot especially after spending 4 months in Bangalore where the weather is excellent, or say PERFECT!

Getting down the bus, I went to the college hostel which one of my friend had booked for us. The hostel was 14C(MIT Hostels) which is probably situation in the valley. Going up in the heart of the campus needs some serious exercise as the 15th floor of this block is at the same height as the ground floor of the hostels in the heart of the campus.

After getting fresh, we(Gaurav, me and Atul) left for lunch at Dollops. We were in no mood to miss the finger-licking chicken lollipop. After finished the lunch, we went to college to get ourselves registered for the convocation.

The real fun was at night. Nearly 95% of the crowd who came to Manipal for convo headed for DT. The place was full and for those few hours, it looked like this place was the most happening place in the world. People were enjoying at their max, all beautiful chicks the place was filled with smoke. We all reached back Hostel by 2 in the night

Monday

I got up quite early in the morning, went to the college to get the convocation gown. I was shocked to know that the college had so-so many gowns which can be given to most of the students who came for this event. After getting all the required, we all 3 headed to China Valley, which is another restaurant which I had never missed whenever I got a chance in my engineering. After having delicious food, we all returned back to hostel. The big event needs big preparations.

Everyone I could see was running here and there, getting formals, shoes polished, ties and what not? Everyone wanted to look as smart as possible. It looked like a formal fashion show. We took our gowns in our hands to wear it at the event itself. At evening, reached KMC Greens on time. The venue was well lit up and looked more like a traditional Indian marriage. All of us who had registered had been allocated a seat for the time other’s were receiving degrees.

The Convocation started with Kasturba Medical College and ended with MIT. I was really thrilled when I got a chance to come on the stage and was handed over the degree. It is a prized possession. After the distribution of degrees, we headed over to Manipal University campus where dinner was arranged for all of us. After dinner, the only place I could think was again -DT. The Mecca of Manipal. Even though it was jam packed as usual, I along with some of my friends managed to find a place with other friends who were already camping for an hour. The experience that day is difficult to explain. All I can say is that we somehow managed to return back to hostel by 2:30AM.

Tuesday

Tuesday morning I got up early. I have a younger cousin studying at Manipal in 2nd year Mechanical. Called him up and asked him to come for lunch. We both went to Saiba, the place which I was not able to visit for last 2 days. We had a normal lunch as opposed to my heavy one. By that time I came to know that all the photos were being transferred by Aavik. I missed no second and went to this room to collect all the snaps from different sources.

Around 4PM, I called up Akshay and asked all the LUG guys to assemble in CCD for a get-together. The people who finally turned up were - Ankur, Djays, Anomit, Sameer, Akshay, Ujjwal, Tushar, Shashank. We had discussions ranging from latest breakthroughs to technology to where Manipal is heading to. This exhaustive session lasted 2 hours.

The day was drawing to a close. I had to catch a bus back to Bangalore. All I could take back to Bangalore were memories. This place gave me so many things. So many good friends. Miss you all! Miss you Manipal

Flickr set

A day spent without you

2009-11-06T18:39:55+00:00

Its morning as I wake up to the remembrance of your smile, an embrace with innocence, a delight for the soul. An indulgence of a dream with open eyes that the time has not passed at all. Cutting through the numerous rays of sun and this alien world I keep holding on to that ray of hope, not to walk alone again. The day passes brushing against characters, with the goodness in each of them meeting you on the way. Finally closing my eyes with a wish for the distances to disappear so I can feel you even closer the coming day.

Many happy returns of the day

USA and my first Semester as master's student

2009-11-06T11:13:08+00:00

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

Install Fest and Web Development Workshop

2009-11-06T10:24:19+00:00

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

Install Fest :

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

Web Development Workshop :

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

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

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

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

For more ,

The post about the workshop on the LUG Website

Slides of the workshop

Refer to the Guiding Principles of LUGM

Facebook Fan Page

Kernel module debugging: a simple technique

2009-11-04T17:59:05+00:00

Disclaimer: I have only started out with developing kernel modules and even novice would be an overstatement to describe my current skills. What follows is stuff I gathered from different sources while trying to debug a kernel oops due to a module: some googled, some from the LDD3 book which finally put together gives more or less a basic strategy to start with debugging a kernel module.

As I figured out from reading LDD3, you can use one of these tools to debug a module

plain ol’ gdb
kgdb
kdb

kgdb doesn’t really strike me as something I will be needing in the near future. I’m quite sure I won’t be taking the trouble to find another system to set up a debug session. But for all I know it might be invaluable to those involved in serious work.

kdb requires you to patch the kernel. I’ll admit I didn’t try this out of sheer laziness.

gdb should be a part of the arsenal of even a half-serious programmer and in my case, it was. There are just a few things that need to be in place before you start using it. First, you need the uncompressed kernel image, vmlinux (not vmlinuz). Second, you need to compile the kernel with some extra options to help you with debugging. This one is again from the LDD3 book, Chapter 4.

CONFIG_DEBUG_KERNEL* 

CONFIG_DEBUG_SLAB

CONFIG_DEBUG_PAGEALLOC

CONFIG_DEBUG_SPINLOCK

CONFIG_DEBUG_SPINLOCK_SLEEP

CONFIG_INIT_DEBUG*

CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO*

CONFIG_MAGIC_SYSRQ

CONFIG_DEBUG_STACKOVERFLOW

CONFIG_DEBUG_STACK_USAGE

CONFIG_KALLSYMS*

CONFIG_IKCONFIG*

CONFIG_IKCONFIG_PROC*

CONFIG_ACPI_DEBUG

CONFIG_DEBUG_DRIVER

CONFIG_SCSI_CONSTANTS

CONFIG_INPUT_EVBUG

CONFIG_PROFILING*

It’s not that all of these are absolutely necessary to get any kind of debugging work done but you never know what kind of oops/kernel panic you might be facing. Still I have starred the ones that I feel *must* be enabled. But don’t go by my words, compile and recompile to find out the truth

With all the yak mowing out of the way, you can finally start debugging the module with your freshly recompiled kernel.

Start the debugger with
#gdb /usr/src/linux/vmlinux /proc/kcore

But gdb doesn’t yet know where to find the module’s code and data sections. You can either do it manually by going into /sys/module/module_name/sections, cat-ing the values of .text, .data and .bss and then this command at the gdb prompt

(gdb)add-symbol-file /path/to/module 0xd081d000 \  # .text

 		-s .data 0xd08232c0 \

		-s .bss  0xd0823e20

or this shell script will output the whole command for you:

#!/bin/bash
#
# gdbline module image
#
# Outputs an add-symbol-file line suitable for pasting into gdb to examine
# a loaded module.
#
cd /sys/module/$1/sections
echo -n add-symbol-file $2 `/bin/cat .text`

for section in .[a-z]* *; do
    if [ $section != ".text" ]; then
	echo  " \\"
	echo -n "	-s" $section `/bin/cat $section`
    fi
done
echo

This information is again thanks to the LDD3 author Corbet, from this article. What would I have done without his book and articles?!

The module I was trying to debug was causing an oops due to null pointer dereferencing, which actually has been the source of quite a few vulnerabilities in the mainline kernel source. The following is what it looked like (got it from dmesg)

[27570.020736] BUG: unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at 00000018
[27570.020747] IP: [<e07b3c31>] :plan9_net:socknet_connect+0xd1/0x110
[27570.020760] *pde = 00000000
[27570.020767] Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP
[snip]
[27570.020939]
[27570.020945] Pid: 8622, comm: bash Tainted: P          (2.6.27-14-generic #1)
[27570.020951] EIP: 0060:[<e07b3c31>] EFLAGS: 00010296 CPU: 0
[27570.020960] EIP is at socknet_connect+0xd1/0x110 [plan9_net]
[27570.020966] EAX: 00000000 EBX: 00000000 ECX: 00000000 EDX: 00f60000
[27570.020971] ESI: de4182a8 EDI: 00000002 EBP: dddedf20 ESP: dddedef4
[27570.020977]  DS: 007b ES: 007b FS: 00d8 GS: 0033 SS: 0068
[27570.020983] Process bash (pid: 8622, ti=dddec000 task=c198f110 task.ti=dddec000)
[27570.020988] Stack: 00000000 de4189f0 de418308 17000002 0101a8c0 d0f85494 d0f85493 de4ed200
[27570.021004]        dda077c0 d0f85494 d0f85493 dddedf54 e07b37d5 00000000 dd4fd340 dda077c0
[27570.021019]        0000000e dd4fd340 de4182a8 d0f85493 dd4fd340 d0f85480 09582808 caaa4540
[27570.021035] Call Trace:
[27570.021041]  [<e07b37d5>] ? tcp_n_ctl_process+0x145/0x170 [plan9_net]
[27570.021053]  [<e07b3505>] ? slashnet_write_file+0x185/0x190 [plan9_net]
[27570.021070]  [<c01b2c70>] ? vfs_write+0xa0/0x110
[27570.021081]  [<e07b3380>] ? slashnet_write_file+0x0/0x190 [plan9_net]
[27570.021092]  [<c01b2db2>] ? sys_write+0x42/0x70
[27570.021101]  [<c0103f7b>] ? sysenter_do_call+0x12/0x2f
[27570.021110]  [<c0380000>] ? __down_killable+0x60/0xd0
[27570.021121]  =======================
[27570.021124] Code: 7b e0 bb ff ff ff ff e8 cc ab bc df eb 8f 8b 58 0c 8d 55 e0 b9 10 00 00 00 c7 04 24 00 00 00 00 ff 53 10 89 c3 8b 45 f0 8b 40 14 <8b> 40 18 c7 04 24 5c 3e 7b e0 89 44 24 04 e8 9a ab bc df 85 db
[27570.021211] EIP: [<e07b3c31>] socknet_connect+0xd1/0x110 [plan9_net] SS:ESP 0068:dddedef4
[27570.021235] ---[ end trace 1d54537d6fc8b3bc ]---

Phew that’s a lot of information! You get a dump of all the register values, the stacktrace, codetrace etc in an oops message. I’ve given a couple of links at the end that deal with all the information present. Refer to them for more details.

For now, we can see that something was executed in the socknet_connect section at an offset of 0xd1 which caused the null pointer dereference. We’re very close to finding out the errant piece of code now. Just do the following in the gdb prompt to home in right on the culprit statement :
(gdb)list *socknet_connect+0xd1

..and we are done! Pretty simple and basic, wasn’t it?

These two links are really good for pointers on how to look for the necessary information in an oops message

Re: what’s an OOPS by John Bradford from LKML
A very detailed oops report analysis that’ll really help you with ‘how to get from bug report to the source of bug’

I’ve been also trying to use the offset information with the disassembled module to figure out which part of the source code it might actually correspond to. I haven’t met with much success though.

111 Hai Bhai! (Hint: Binary for Bond)

2009-11-02T22:47:36+00:00

"You know how it is, don't you? The first few weeks of a job are always a struggle. One has to find potential clients, advertise one's skills, put out special offers and all that. The worst part is when sometimes people do not even understand what I'm talking about! So I have to sit them down and explain my job. Nothing is more infuriating than that.""Yeah, that can be very irritating. What is it

1st Year @ MIT – PART 3

2009-10-31T21:08:25+00:00

Here comes , The Most Awaited Part of the Four Part Series of my First Year Experiences . This post took a very long time to me to write …

The Other Three Parts … ( m giving the links here . this way I get to increase backlinks and in turn my Page Rank ..hehe )

Part 1
Part 2
Part 4

From Delhi to Manipal :

I came by the most famous train for MITians .. MANGLA .. on the 11th January .. As usual , my friend Anirudh was with me and along with him , my friend Ankit ( 9.67 CGPA mind it .. ) and Abhishek was to board at Bhopal
The Train Journey went peacefully, we played UNO and saw a movie with couple of fellow batchmates ( one of them later on became a great friend of mine ) ..

Also , one important thing to note is that I was for the first time cursing the Indian Railways for being on time because my train arrived exactly on time and as a result , I had to leave my movie halfway .

Manipal :

The Semester was to start on Jan 14 . I had reached on Saturday, 12th at midnight .Had pizzas from dominos as the train food sucked . I had physics cycle this semester which meant I had to study Engineering Graphics and work like a carpenter in the workshop wearing a auto driver’s uniform . As the sem progressed , my worst fears came true , I hated the studies like anything .. all physics and mechanical .. no computers . Imagine a computer science student doing soldering , welding and drawing designs using pencil ( not a software ) !!! . So , my marks went on a downward trend . My interest had reached a new “low” . As I had no interest in studying the college syllabus , I spent time learning PHP which turned out to be great for me ( Refer post on Web Dev Workshop ) . REVELS, our cultural fest was organised in March . I participated in some events and as usual no results . Then , we had Tech Weekend organised by IEEE Manipal in April . .I was one of the organisers of it and was helping in its website and registrations .

Then , my dreaded EG sessional came , guess what I got a meagre 19 out of 50 . EG was the first subject in my life till now which had the power to scare me .. (lol) . I had actually made all plans to come back early for the make – up exam .But , with help from friends and my birthday wishes I passed EG with a B grade . The EG exam was right on my birthday . Well , it was actually blessing in disguise . I had only one wish to make that was ” to pass in EG ” . Imagine having the most fearful exam on your birthday !! My exam went well and my day was made .

This semester went pretty fast and no major events happened .

PS : For the observant readers , I have mentioned about my train journey to Manipal in January twice in my blog.. Once here and once in the PART 2 post .. Did you notice this ?? There’s only a small difference between the both .

PS: This post is pretty much undescriptive. A long time has passed since the 2nd Sem

My Stackoverflow archives #1

2009-10-28T18:12:07+00:00

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

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

Peace And Nothing But

2009-10-27T10:50:52+00:00

In a fresh bid to end attrition between the two countries and get on with life already, India has put to Pakistan the offer of Lata Mangeshkar in exchange for putting an end to terrorism and surrendering POK, recalling the famous Pakistani cry of the 70s - "Kashmir rakh lo, hume Lata de do!"Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, after a particularly exasperating summit with Pakistan PM Gilani, who

Whaat Aee Joke!

2009-10-24T16:08:11+00:00

"Alright then. I'm off.""Really? Why? What's the hurry?""Well, I'm not feeling very well. I think it's heart palpitations. Like a bit of a fluttering, every now and then. I don't feel very right. No, your hand across my neck and waist is helping much.""Huh? Why is that? Did you eat something wrong last night? Maybe you should stop thrusting your hips like that.""I don't know. I'm just afraid ...

LUG Manipal – Install Fest and Web Development Workshop

2009-10-21T04:37:06+00:00

Well , I finally had my first hand experience at organising a complete workshop. I had a amazing learning experience andI gained a lot of knowledge especially by solving doubts .. I remember one of the doubts was how do we print “<br/>” using php .. Well , its pretty easy but still it took time for me to figure it .. Also , speaking on the stage for three days removed all traces of stage fear ..( lolz) ..

Install Fest :

LUG Manipal organisesd a Linux ( Ubuntu 9.04 to be precise ) Install Fest from 6th to 8th October . Well , this time , it was the job of the second years to do it . I being a noobie in Linux did not have much idea , so I just did whatever I was told by Saurabh . Here , I should congratulate Saurabh for the excellent organisation of the entire fest which went without any major hiccups .I gave a talk on Open Office and Viruses in Linux in the second day of the fest . Also ,at the last day , I spoke on the upcoming Web Development Workshop .

Web Development Workshop :

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

So , finally the D-Day arrived . I bunked two classes to be in time for the workshop even though I did not have anything to speak on the first day . The crowd was ok , almost the entire class room was filled . One more thing which I forgot to mention that I received a number of calls ( as my name and number was printed on the poster ) asking me for registration and if there is any fees for it .

Well , I don’t blame the first years for the ignorance of the fact that LUGM does not charge people . It is actually the work of other clubs who charge people for attending a workshop where a student is teaching you .Pretty funny isnt it ? For the report, LUGM does not charge people for attending a workshop neither is there any registration . ( Check out the guiding principle of LUGM )

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

For more ,

The post about the workshop on the LUG Website

Slides of the workshop

Refer to the Guiding Principles of LUGM

Facebook Fan Page

Slides – Web Development Workshop [Oct 2009 ]

2009-10-18T17:52:57+00:00

The slides of the workshop :

Slides

Diwali Celebrations @ Office

2009-10-16T14:35:22+00:00

Yesterday at office we had Diwali celebrations organised by the HR department. The topics were Fancy Dress Competitive and Cubicle Decoration. I won’t waste time, but show you some snaps which I took from my mobile camera. Apologies, it is just 3.2 megapixels.

Cubicle Decoration

Admin Department

The Admin Department came up with their own decoration

Fancy Dress Competition

This is a group pic of all the participants

You want to know who is the winner and why? Watch the video below. Have no hard feelings, the performance was awesome and mind blowing. Lower the volume of your speaker before hitting Play.

Web Development Workshop[Oct, 2009]

2009-10-09T21:57:25+00:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please bring your laptops

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

Further References :

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

Round Up – Install Fest

2009-10-09T21:26:06+00:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lug Manipal Install Fest

View more presentations from Linux User’s Group.

Open Source Softwares

View more presentations from Linux User’s Group.

Coming Next is the Web Development Workshop .

Vim/Cscope quickie

2009-10-09T19:51:26+00:00

You can find a detailed tutorial here. This will only help you get started real soon with cscope.

First of all, you need to have cscope support compiled with your vim installation. Packages for vim offered by Ubuntu and Fedora already have it. In Gentoo, I had to add app-editors/vim cscope in /etc/portage/package.use for the cscope USE flag to be enabled.

With all the yak shaving out of the way, get down straight to business. Move over the cursor to any symbol or identifier in your source code and try out these:

Ctrl-\-s: Search results are loaded in the same window

Ctrl-Space-s: Search results are loaded in a horizontally split window

Ctrl-Space(twice)-s: Search results are loaded in a vertically split window

You should also check out a link within that tutorial that will help you to use cscope efficiently with a large codebase such as the Linux kernel

PS: I forgot to mention that you need to install the plugin for these keymappings from the sourceforge project whose tutorial link I have already posted.

Indian Telecom Revolution : Fixed Line Phones

2009-10-08T14:18:13+00:00

Remember the good old days when having a fixed-line phone was considered a status symbol? This was also called a basic-phone or a land-line or a PNT. I still have the image of those old-age phones in my memory.

The first time I saw those phones were when my grandmother applied for a connection. That phone was a big rock like device where you had to revolve the dialler till the end to dial someone’s number. If I compare them with the present generation basic phones, they look quite cumbersome. Inspite of looking ridiculous in this age, they did their job well as per the technology limitations. Probably after 10 years the present generation basic phones would look like a silly device.

Call Rates

There was a time when calling someone over 1500kms (or 2000kms) costed Rs 24! No, that is not a typo. I still remember the tariff rates to some extent. Local calls were Rs 1.20 for 3 mins and STD went upto Rs24. Suddenly one fine day in January - (January 14th to be precise) I saw a big advertisement from BSNL. Tariffs have been slashed. The upmost limit was just some Rs8 (approx). The advert had big letters saying - Upto 66.67% tarrif slash. It is a gift from BSNL on occasion of Makar Sankranti.

Previous and Present Situation

If you hear from most of the people these days, mobile is the most preferred form of phone. It’s portable and there are a lot of private players. You have a choice to choose between the options and most important of them - No running from pillar to pillar getting a line repaired. Attribute it a bit to BSNL Linemen too. If your phone died (no ring tone), then you probably need to take a leave from work, goto BSNL office, stand in an infinitely long queue and submit the complaint. They might take their own time and move the complaint at a snail’s pace. Till the time your phone is back again, you would have given up the hope. I admit, the experiences may be different in different parts of the country, but hardly anyone had a pleasant one.

Private Players

There have been a few private players in fixed-line phone market for personal use, but none of them have made much news. Two of the most famous are Tata Indicom and Reliance. I have used the Reliance one only to find that is is actually wireless and uses an antenna to communicate with the closest station. Obviously Reliance wanted to avoid the hassles of laying down cables all of the country when they knew that the real money is in consumer mobiles and not home fixed-line phones. I do have a BSNL fixed-line phone at my home-town which is used for Internet connection and for emergency incoming calls.

Conclusion

The mobile market is the biggest, fastest growing part of the Telecom industry. In my family we have a BSNL fixed-line phone. My mother and father have BSNL Excel pre-paid (which they took long back), my brother has Airtel and I have Idea and Aircel. I had never ever imagined that there would once be a time when we 4 ppl together would be having 6 phone numbers!!

This and That

2009-10-07T13:51:30+00:00

A policeman was beheaded for no fault of his.

The people who did it are supposed to be fighting for a cause, for justice.

So in this fight are they allowed to do what the fuck they want to and still receive the support of the intellectuals?

But when they have been 'asking' for such a long time, isn't it natural that they over-react?

Whose war are we fighting? Who are we fighting against? In any kind of aggression, the 'oppressed' who want to prove a point always, always turn into the oppressors at some point. Against someone. What is the point you're trying to prove then?

Violence is always ugly. There's no justification for it. No justification for senseless bloodshed - there's a reason why it's called 'senseless'.

And then there's the media.

Repeatedly showing the 'blurred' body and separated head of the dead policeman. Making a seven year old talk revenge (and we all know how 'questions' are 'answered', so no point trying to even IMAGINE that that was just a spontaneous reaction caught on camera.) Gaining TRP from the piece of news, creating 'news' at every step and finally making it all about the 'exclusive' than about the people and the event...

If the naxals wanted the authorities to sit up and take notice by doing this, then they achieved their goal albeit in a different sense - the 'authorities' have asked the armed forces to 'take notice'. So whose purpose is solved here?

I've always wondered why such issues never come to an end on their own... why its never sorted out... Maybe the government is just too crappy to do anything about it. Maybe they aren't competent enough. Maybe even that they don't give a damn. But it may also be because the other side is so used to their identity and all that comes along with it, that they don't want to stop the fight either.

Maybe I'm just confused and ignorant.

PS: And all the brouhaha about 'Venky' winning the nobel and that 'at last' bringing hope and happiness to India is bullcrap. It's like the whole of Italy celebrating the Congress win. Seriously.

It happens only in India.