How about a projector without a canvas and on the battered corner of your room?

How about a projector which does not need a white canvas or a flat surface to project on?

I was reading about my BTP(Smart Camera - Projector Systems), and then found this cool application of it. No need to roll down a big white canvas anymore for a theater experience. Just select any part of your wall, or just a curtain, a table cloth or just anything. The surface need not be even flat..., you can even choose corners of your room as a screen..... To know what I am talking about see the pics below:-

A scruffy corner(yes a corner of a wall!):-

Output of a normal projector(notice the effect of choosing a corner as your viewing screen):-

Geometry-Corrected output by the smart camera-projector system:

Geo+color corrected output by smart camera-projector system:


For more read this or this research paper(pdf).
Here a few more cool pics:-
Projection on a natural stone wall inside a castle vault (click to get a larger view):-

Projection on a checkered curtain:-


Its cool!!

LOL at sysadmins

Yesterday, when Wireless LAN was down, the following mail was sent to the students mailing list by help@iiit.ac.in for helping us out of the problem:-

dear student,

wlan is not working due to some technical problem. In your
browser
setting (mozilla) you select direct internet connection setting it will work.

thanks
sysadmin

Do I need to say anything more?

GOD help us...........

Performancing For Firefox : Review and How to install

PS: Since IIIT Network does not seem to be coming back to normal, contrary to what is claimed here, so you can help me by trying out this.

Hey, right now I am blogging straight away from my browser using Performancing For Firefox or PFF in short.

Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right in your Firefox browser and lets you post to your blog easily. You can drag and drop formatted text from the page you happen to be browsing, and take notes as well as post to your blog.

Get the PFF extension from here. Blogger beta users should install the latest version(1.3.5 Beta 3) from here or you will have troubles. Learn to set it up from here. Remember that Blogger beta users should give their google username(e.g. bla@gmail.com) and password when asked.

Now lets have a look at the features. This is the list of features that I got from performancing's home page.

Features

• Full WYSIWYG and source editing
• Save as Notes
• Add all your various blog accounts
• Technorati Support
• Delicious integration
• Trackback support
• Draft support
• Ping support
• Image upload and FTP
• Metrics stats

In order to copy the above features I just used another cool feature thats not mentioned in the above list. Just selected the feature list and did drag-n-drop. And it got placed here with all the formatting! Now lets see whether its also possible to drag-n-drop images.



O.. Yes. It works. Now I got to see whether it will get posted to blogger nicely or not. That I could only see after I post. So wait.[EDIT: Seems like it does not get uploaded. This is the only thing of blogger that PFF is unable to support.]

Now lets label it using the categories tab on right hand side and see whether its converted to blogger beta labels(after I post).[EDIT: Yes]
Also provides technorati tagging. No need of any bookmarklet now.

The bookmarks tab aka del.icio.us integration seems useless. It just provides link to all your bookmarks, which you can directly see in browser also. Ya... One use is that you can automatically bookmark all your post. Check the checkbox on option on right hand side for that.

Lets also try the trackback support. Lets put a link to my shaastra seo contest blog to check it. It is great boon to blogger users as blogger does not sends trackback pings.(EDIT: Does not seem to work, may be I missed something :( )

The pinging(not the trackback one) support is also cool. Blogger pings only weblogs.com. PFF allows you to ping more than 20 services using Ping-O-Matic, PingoAt.

One of the most important thing is that it provides more space to the editor window than what is provided by blogger. Also writing offline is much faster than editing in blogger's editor. May be thats why I could write such a long post :) [EDIT: One thing that I missed is editing of a posted blog. They claim somewhere that you can do that. But I couldn't.]

Technorati Tags: blogger, blogging, blogspot, firefox, Performancing, Review, technical

Ain't it cool?

Warning : This is a crap post ... so read it at your own risk....

Hey... I have edited my template and gave it a totally new look. The new blackish template looks fcuking cool to me. Hover your mouse at the bookmarking buttons at the bottom of each post. Such a nice effect. But I haven't seen any comments saying its good. Isn't it cool? Or is it that exams' tension is stopping people from reading blogs and dropping comments. Or is wireless LAN not working? Or is net not working? Or is slow net keeping people from reading blogs ?

Or is it the thing that I fear the most... its fcuking bad? No No. Please don't say that. I made it during the exams. Devoted(or wasted?) so much time on it during exams. Hey, I know my template is worthy of appreciation. At least its not copied. I mean I edited an existing template on blogspot to get to this. This is the original template:-



And here is current template(just for the sake of future reference):-



I call this "Black Beauty".
Some of you might prefer the original one. But then thats one of the standard 30 templates that blogspot offers. And you will find hundreds of users using those same 30 templates. Having your own distinct template makes you feel happy.

PS: Nowadays I am posting so much crap ;) So from now on I will put a warning on every post :)
PS1: Firefox has updated its list of recommended addons (extensions).

Image Storage

I created this page just for the purpose of storing images on blogspot.
Just now I created my own template for blogspot and needed to store my images somewhere. Storing them on iiit's server would mean increased load on our server, apart from the fact that it is fucking slow. So this is the post that will contain all special images that I need for blog. Just using those images in this post will allow me to store them on blogspot. I want this page to be the central repository of all my *special* blog images. Images appearing just on one post don't count as special images.

feed-icon32x32.png:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/feed-icon32x32.png

headbotborder.gif:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/headbotborder.gif

outerwrap.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/outerwrap.gif

technorati.png
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/technorati.png

diamond.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/diamond.gif

commentbug.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/commentbug.gif

fav-normal.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/fav-normal.gif

fav-hover.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/fav-hover.gif

fav-reddit.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/fav-reddit.gif

fav-digg.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/fav-digg.gif

fav-netscape.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/fav-netscape.gif

fav-delicious.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/fav-delicious.gif

Shaatsra SEO Contest Results

So here are the results of the contest in which I wasted almost one month.

1. Atrieecs http://atrieecs.seo.iitm.ac.in
2. Saarang http://saarang.seo.iitm.ac.in
   
3. Priya Venkateshan http://priyaven.seo.iitm.ac.in

Yes, my contest blog is not there. So sad!!
But I am sure I am fourth. And I am sure I would have been second or third only if Google hadn't banned by blog. It banned my blog just when it reached the top. You are so bad google bot. You didn't ban when others were spamming. And you banned all when my splog(spam blog) came at top. So bad!!! You are partial google...

PS: Made my own blackish template. Its fcuking cool!!
PS1: Blogger offers so less templates. I don't know why I am not shifting to wordpress.

Technorati: blogging, contests, google, SEO, Shaastra

IIIT's Network blogs out its woes!

IIIT's Network after being sucking for so long could not stop itself from blogging. Well, blogging is the new buzz and how could the ultra savvy techie iiitians' network remain behind? Confused? Well.. it seems like some iiitian after getting frustrated over the condition of IIIT internet, started an anon blog, thats quite good to read.

PS: The blog claims the network is back to normal and will be better very soon. Lets hope its true.
PS1: IIIT's Network back to normal => one of my almost finished project(beta already released) is now useless :(
PS2: IIIT Blogroll seems to have gone weird. It shows refreshed 20 mins back and still doesn't show the post posted 4 hours back. Heard smr is adding some new features. Waiting eagerly for the new features! One of them is really cool.... don't want to spoil the surprise.
PS3: IIIT Blogroll has gone even more weird now. Its now even refusing to publish my blog. [UPDATE: Its published now after about 3 days. ]

Technorati: iiit, network, blogging

Server Room Tragedy: #11

Well.... tragedies are happening so frequently that I don't even have time to report them. This tragedy happened before I reported the last tragedy... but I didn't had time yesterday to report it.

Well this time the server room staff knowingly or unknowingly changed some configurations that blocked SAS. Those who don't know, SAS stands for Simple Authentication Service. Its purpose is "One person One password". That is, you can use your 200 password for all IIIT portals. It is used in almost all IIIT portals- Mess Portal, Movie Club, ISAS Portal, Student Information Portal, News portal, TV Portal, Election Portal, and tens of other portals that students make as a part of their projects.

Most probably(just my guess), they tried to make the 200 more secure by blocking unused ports and in the process blocked port 61237, that was being used by SAS. Well, the shocking thing is not that they blocked it (because they did it by mistake), but that they could not unblock it back themselves. Devansh sir, had to help them for such a simple task. System administrators don't know how to unblock a port. LOL. (DISCLAIMER: This para makes sense only if what I guess is correct.)

Those who missed the last tragedy(10th), here is the link:-
http://sandy007smarty.blogspot.com/2006/11/server-room-tragedy-10.html
Links to previous nine tragedies (reported by Nirnimesh sir) is also available at the above page.

PS: If you have a screenshot supporting the last tragedy(10th), please mail me. I need to put that on the last post as a proof.
PS1: Feel free to bug/flame/spam sysadmins at http://students.iiit.ac.in/sysadmins/suggession.htm . Its your right to ask them questions on what is happening. Why is net down... etc. etc.

Technorati: server room tragedy, iiit, SAS

Server Room Tragedy: #10

Server Room Tragedy series was started by nirnimesh sir. But now he is out of campus and no one is reporting the blunders that are still being done by the server room staff. We need to highlight the problems(apart from several other things) that the stupid server room staff is creating. So I thought I might report the latest tragedy in the same series. I hope there is no copyright issue :) Links to the previous 9 tragedies are at the end of the post.

Well... 200 was hacked!!! Yes! On monday evening(30th Oct. 2006), students logging into 200 were greeted with the message :-
"You have no profile. Permission Denied."
The prompt was changed by the hacker to "I don't have a name".
Running pine would ask you "who are you?"

[UPDATE: If someone has a screenshot supporting this, please mail me. I would like to put that here as a proof.]

As far as I know, this was the first time in the history of IIIT that 200 was hacked... Not stupid hacking... but someone could actually hack into the system and change so many things that only the root user could.

The server room staff responded by blocking telnet and ftp on 200. They didnt give any reason or explanation. With no student sysadmin, the student community doesn't even know what actually happened, how was it hacked. So we can't even say whether blocking telnet and ftp is the right move.

I bet they(server room staff) don't even know how it happened. They just blocked ftp and telnet to show that "They are doing something". Someone must have told them that ftp and telnet are insecure and then they just blindly blocked these services.

Here are the links to previous 9 server room tragedies reported by nirnimesh sir:-
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/04/server-room-tragedy-1.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/04/server-room-tragedy-2.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/05/server-room-tragedy-3.html(hilarious as well :P)
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/05/server-room-tragedy-4.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/06/server-room-tragedy-5.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/06/server-room-tragedy-6.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/06/server-room-tragedy-7.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/07/server-room-tragedy-8.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/07/server-room-tragedy-9.html

PS: Feel free to bug/flame/spam sysadmins at http://students.iiit.ac.in/sysadmins/suggession.htm .

Technorati: server room tragedy, iiit

Omkara Song Video Spoof by IITD Guys

Its quite good. Watch it.

Technorati: personal, life, bakwas, video