Turbine Musings

She can keep your heart guessing, but she's yours if she stays.

2011-11-29T13:25:00.001+05:30

She can keep your heart guessing, but she's yours if she stays.
- From the song "To love a woman"

Do you want challenging projects at job?

2011-11-28T19:12:00.000+05:30

This post written back in Feb 2008 remained unpublished till now. Here it goes...

My idea of a perfect job: Lay back and relax in chair in an air conditioned room, and keep getting your salary at the end of the month. Yes, get paid for doing nothing :) Too bad it does not happen in real life :(

Why does one want a challenging job? I don't know. If job is a challenge then it would bring a lot of tensions. You don't know how to do it but you are expected to finish it on time. How is that fun? That is a hopeless situation! I would want a job that requires you to do very little. And you get enough spare time to do challenging tasks that *you* really want to do, and not so called challenging tasks specified by your boss. Like participating in a coding contest. Like spending a week in a Topcoder marathon match. Or making a software that you really want to make. Things that you like to do will become boring when it is forced (by your boss) .

Or in other words, take a job where you do what you like and it won't feel like work.

a recently taken pic

2009-01-10T23:21:00.001+05:30

Ever wondered why firefox extension install makes you wait for a few seconds?

2009-01-07T11:16:00.002+05:30

I was quite surprised to know the reason behind it. The reason for the delay is to prevent a very intelligent attack. Read about the attack here: http://www.squarefree.com/2004/07/01/race-conditions-in-security-dialogs/

BTW, the attack is quite cool. I am impressed!

My first Skydive!

2008-10-28T14:01:00.005+05:30

13000 feet, 60 seconds of freefall and 5 minutes of parachute fall!

Spent a fortune for it :( But the experience is totally worth it.

So finally after a lot of searching I could find this cheap skydiving centre which was like in the middle of nowhere! That is why it was half as expensive as compared to those in San Francisco (SFO) and still offered a jump from 13,000 feet which is much more than the 9000 feet that you could have done in SFO. This was the place for real skydivers! So, next time you are in california, don't go to SFO but Parachute Center at Acampo. This is their website:-

http://www.parachutecenter.com/

So I drove to Acampo (about 2 hrs from MountainView) . And I can't stop boasting that I drove! This is another thing that I learned here in US. I can now easily drive on US highways at the speed of 110mph (177kmph) :) You get tickets for driving so fast... Normally one should not cross 85mph. ok, enough of boasting!

We reached this place, paid money at the counter and then had to sign zillion times on a paper stating that not even the sweeper's distant uncle's uncle is responsible if something happens! Then we watched a video that explained the basics of how to jump, what pose to make during jumping, free fall and parachute fall, etc. etc. Then I met my instrucutor and my cameraman. The cameraman dives just at the same time as you and shoots your video in air! My instructor was a Japanese and I had a hard time getting his accent. After a lot of effort he explained me how to keep my legs and arms during the jump. The he put the harness on me and I was all set.

The plane landed in front of us. Such a small plane and some 15-16 of us entered it. It had just two planks of wood and we all set on after another on it like you sit on a bike. It was all cramped. After a few minutes of flying the plane became completely stable and we knew its the time.. My cameraman asked me for the last time "Are you scared?". I said "Not at all!". I was at the back of the plane and had to jump last. One after another everyone jumped. There was no time to think to get scared or nervous. Within 2 minutes all 15 of us jumped. We just moved to the edge of the plane, and before I could think my instructor and I had already jumped. We rolled a few times in air and then the instructor was able to get us balanced. We were falling freely... The feeling is awesome. But didn't get much to realise its awesomness. All the time during the freefall, the cameraman was just below me and shooting and I was involved in making poses for the camera :) Like showing thumbs up and shouting at the top of my voice :)

Then the cameraman dived away and we opened our parachute with a hard jhatka. Then slowly we descended down for over 5 minutes. We made several turns in the air by manevouring the parachute. We could see farms all around. I also did some random talk with the instructor. And then we landed.

An experience of a lifetime...

My first self-cooked dinner!

2008-09-16T23:44:00.000+05:30

Today my roommate and I moved our lazy asses and cooked some dinner. And we completed it in a record time of 1 hour 15 minutes on our small electric stove. The menu included jeera rice, dal, mashed potatoes and panner butter masala (PBM) :D And mind you, we even made the paneer from the milk ourselves.

Here is the pic:-

And it was quite tasty given that it was our first time. Actually, I have helped my mother several times in making rice and dal, but that was more of a mechanical process where my mom would keep guiding me with the amounts of rice, waters, etc. that I needed to add and the number of whistles of the pressure cooker I needed to wait for. Today we were on our own :)

We read the recipe for PBM on net and then found out we didn't have tomoatoes and a few spices. We added some tomato sauce to compensate for the tomotaoes :P A nice looking gravy came out of that. And it tasted just fine!

Add Topcoder SRM Events to your calendar

2008-07-27T14:55:00.002+05:30

If you don't participate in Topcoder SRMs or you don't know what Topcoder is, then this post is not for you.

Many times I miss SRMs because I simply forget to see the topcoder event calendar. If you use google calendar, use the add by url option and this to your google calendar:-
http://sprawdzaczka.ii.uni.wroc.pl/~embe/tccal.ics

Update: This calendar is no longer maintained. There is new one here that works:-
http://topcoder-calendar.appspot.com/

Other calendar softwares that support ics/iCal format(most of them do) can also use, obviously.

Now no excuse for missing SRMs :)

Thanks to embe for creating this.

IIIT Lan Browser updated for Firefox 3

2008-06-13T00:44:00.003+05:30

ILB(IIIT Lan Browser) is now compatible with Firefox 3. Download now. Automatic updates have been disabled. To have automatic update functionality, download from mozilla website, when 1.2 becomes publicly available there, after gettin reviewed (which could take a month).

List of FTP Servers in IIIT?

2007-04-28T01:07:00.000+05:30

PS: Blog is blocked. Use students.iiit.ac.in/~sandeep_kr/cgi-bin/FuckProxy/ .

So how many FTP servers do we have? 15? 20? 30?
...
...
...
...

Well... there are at least 110 that I know of. Some of which are useless :-)

ftp://172.16.2.19
ftp://172.16.2.29
ftp://172.16.3.5
ftp://172.16.3.19
ftp://172.16.3.20
ftp://172.16.3.24
ftp://172.16.4.45
ftp://172.16.4.48
ftp://172.16.4.62
ftp://172.16.5.5
ftp://172.16.5.15
ftp://172.16.5.20
ftp://172.16.5.25
ftp://172.16.5.28
ftp://172.16.5.31
ftp://172.16.5.81
ftp://172.16.7.28
ftp://172.16.7.38
ftp://172.16.8.77
ftp://172.16.8.79
ftp://172.16.8.172
ftp://172.16.8.173
ftp://172.16.8.175
ftp://172.16.8.177
ftp://172.16.8.181
ftp://172.16.8.186
ftp://172.16.8.222
ftp://172.16.8.234
ftp://172.16.8.243
ftp://172.16.8.252
ftp://172.16.9.3
ftp://172.16.9.7
ftp://172.16.9.11
ftp://172.16.9.61
ftp://172.16.10.5
ftp://172.16.10.15
ftp://172.16.10.31
ftp://172.16.10.35
ftp://172.16.10.42
ftp://172.16.10.50
ftp://172.16.10.60
ftp://172.16.11.16
ftp://172.16.11.21
ftp://172.16.11.33
ftp://172.16.13.16
ftp://172.16.13.125
ftp://172.16.13.206
ftp://172.16.13.219
ftp://172.16.13.222
ftp://172.16.13.244
ftp://172.16.13.251
ftp://172.16.13.254
ftp://172.16.14.6
ftp://172.16.14.49
ftp://172.16.14.56
ftp://172.16.15.3
ftp://172.16.15.6
ftp://172.16.15.51
ftp://172.16.15.56
ftp://172.16.15.98
ftp://172.16.15.111
ftp://172.16.16.5
ftp://172.16.16.77
ftp://172.16.16.87
ftp://172.16.16.94
ftp://172.16.16.108
ftp://172.16.16.109
ftp://172.16.16.111
ftp://172.16.16.121
ftp://172.16.16.193
ftp://172.16.16.201
ftp://172.16.18.50
ftp://172.16.19.2
ftp://172.16.19.3
ftp://172.16.19.4
ftp://172.16.19.7
ftp://172.16.19.25
ftp://172.16.19.34
ftp://172.16.19.109
ftp://172.16.26.3
ftp://172.16.26.41
ftp://172.16.26.62
ftp://172.16.29.178
ftp://172.16.31.16
ftp://172.16.31.41
ftp://172.16.31.57
ftp://172.16.31.77
ftp://172.16.32.163
ftp://172.16.32.181
ftp://172.16.32.183
ftp://172.16.32.199
ftp://172.17.8.36
ftp://172.17.8.58
ftp://172.17.8.164
ftp://172.17.9.155
ftp://172.17.9.179
ftp://172.17.9.189
ftp://172.17.9.223
ftp://172.17.10.79
ftp://172.17.16.68
ftp://192.168.36.13
ftp://192.168.36.14
ftp://192.168.36.15
ftp://192.168.36.27
ftp://192.168.36.102
ftp://192.168.36.134
ftp://192.168.36.150
ftp://192.168.36.180
ftp://192.168.36.207
ftp://192.168.36.251

List also available at http://students.iiit.ac.in/~sandeep_kr/ftpservers.html

Not in IIIT? but still of IIIT? Its for you then...

2007-01-11T22:58:00.000+05:30

What a catchy line! Steve Jobs should choose me to campaign for Apple's iPhone ;)

This post is just about a Firefox extension that I made that I allows one to browse IIIT LAN when you are outside IIIT! Yes, from any part of the world. It supports http, https, and yes ftp also ;) Its called IIIT LAN Browser. (suggestions for a better name?). However its meant to be used ONLY by IIITians. So you are required to login using your 200 ID(once per session). I guess alumni still have their 200 IDs, right?

And there is one more Firefox extension. FuckProxy 0.2 is released. Its basically the old one with with a few bug fixes and auto-update support. I request you for the last time to uninstall your previous version and install this one. Auto-update will then take care of all future upgrades.

Rona dhona...

2007-01-07T23:21:00.000+05:30

Got the first C at IIIT this semester. Its not that I am pissed off at getting C. I am expecting D or even F in compilers and similar low grades in a few other courses as well. But what I am pissed off at is that I got a C in an HSSM, Philosophical Discussions on Human Desires to be precise. This was the course that I was counting on as the saviour of my SGPA this sem! I always heard from my seniors that the least that you can get in Human Desires is B. And most probably one gets A or A-. To make matter worse, I have taken STS(Science, Technology and Society) this sem which is again under the same prof. Looks like I need to be a regular in STS and keep asking doubts to the prof to ensure that he considers me a sincere student and gives me a better grade this time.

FuckProxy Update

2007-01-05T08:03:00.001+05:30

Use the following url to view this blog: http://192.168.36.200/~sandeep_kr/cgi-bin/FuckProxy/showPage.cgi/http/sandy007smarty.blogspot.com/

FuckProxy has been updated to work with latest firefox version 2.0.0.1.
I have kept the old version number, so in order to install it, please uninstall the previous version first.
I am thinking of enabling the auto-update option so that firefox automatically looks for updates as it does for other extensions. But that will take time.
Also FuckProxy has been disabled for requests that are from outside IIIT intranet. This has been done to prevent possible misuse of IIIT resources.

Enjoy!!

PS: My blog is unblocked now in labs. Will have to check for hostels.

Finally Sysadmins managed to block my blog in labs too...

2006-12-29T18:22:00.000+05:30

http://192.168.36.200/~sandeep_kr/cgi-bin/FuckProxy/showPage.cgi/http/sandy007smarty.blogspot.com/
PS: Use the above link to view my blog for the time being.

I guess the title says it all...

Sysadmins blocked my blog! - but failed at that too!!

2006-12-11T05:24:00.000+05:30

http://192.168.36.200/~sandeep_kr/cgi-bin/FuckProxy/showPage.cgi/http/sandy007smarty.blogspot.com/2006/12/sysadmins-blocked-my-blog-but-failed-at.html
PS: IIITians plz use above link or FuckProxy to view it.

I highlighted a couple of truths about the sysadmins and they blocked my blog.
But how could a linux newbie who doesn't even know commands like ls; who searches for notepad on a linux system; who tries to use a mysterious command called unblock whose working only he knows; who creates 100 accounts manually; who sends mails like this; could ever successfully accomplish a task as tough as blocking a website?

Yes. You guessed it right. They couldn't even block my blog completely. Its blocked for Wireless LAN(in hostels to be precise) but unblocked in labs. So this once again exposes the sheer inability of IIIT's so called 'system administrators'.

But think how low they could go? I never wrote any abusing words about them. I only wrote truth(to the best of my knowledge). I just tried to expose the problem that we iiitians are facing. And look at what they have done...

I think I have to be careful in future. What if they do something with my students id? What if they send fake mails from my id to my girlfriend(s)? Well... I don't have any :(
What if they delete all my projects on 200 and 205? Well... I have already made backups... and I am pretty sure that when they delete something from 200/205, they will definitely forget to delete it from the respective backup servers.

PS: Best of luck to all my seniors for the placement season.
PS2: I am suffering from using-well-too-many-times syndrome.

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

2006-11-29T19:31:00.000+05:30

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

2006-11-24T23:05:00.000+05:30

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

2006-11-12T23:31:00.001+05:30

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?

2006-11-10T19:00:00.000+05:30

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

2006-11-09T00:42:00.000+05:30

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

2006-11-08T18:23:00.000+05:30

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

Atrieecs http://atrieecs.seo.iitm.ac.in
Saarang http://saarang.seo.iitm.ac.in
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!

2006-11-06T12:03:00.000+05:30

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

2006-11-03T05:04:00.000+05:30

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

2006-11-02T04:43:00.000+05:30

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

2006-11-01T09:17:00.000+05:30

Its quite good. Watch it.

Technorati: personal, life, bakwas, video

So its true - Google is intelligent and it penalises you if you try to be oversmart

2006-10-26T18:14:00.000+05:30

Google has blocked almost all the sites that were participating in the Shaastra Google SEO Event, including mine :( Now if you search for the keywords Shaastra Thamesportal Zalecenia Autophytes Invernesshire on google, you will find blogs that have just one or two posts, blogs that have been started but never taken care of, and blogs that are not at all participating in this contest!!
Yes ... a big blow to all those who have been trying so hard for over a month now. Here is a screenshot from my google webmaster page that clearly shows that google has removed all my pages from its index:-

You can also see it was last indexed on 19th Oct,2006. That was when my page achieved the top spot. You can still see the cached page here. But now, its banned......... :(

My dream of SANDEEPs winning this contest is shattered :(
Now I understand. Google, you are intelligent.
Ohh... I forgot to mention why has it been banned. It is banned because of Keyword Spamming. One-tenth(not sure) of the words on my blog were just the keywords. With such a high keyword ratio, how can it go undetected by the search engine giant Google? I knew that Google penalises you for keyword spamming. But I had to do this because the contest had not left much options.
1. You had to host your blog in their domain and you were not allowed to use keywords in your domain name.
2. There was not any control over the template other than choosing another template.
3. This also means no control on meta tags like keywords, description, etc.
4. And many may suggest getting links was a good option. But PR does not changes so quickly. Also it takes time before you come out of the google sandbox. This contest had only allowed you one and half months and now only 4 days are left. Till now, no blog participating in this contest has a PR greater than zero.

So contestants were left with no other option that blatant keyword spamming. All those who have ever been in top 10 had done the same.
However, what surprises me is why they banned all of a sudden. I mean if its not manual banning, then the site should have been banned as soon as google bot detected the spamming. This was been done for more than one and half a month. Google cant be so late in detecting such simple keyword spamming. And if its manual ban, then why at all Google Bangalore sponsored this contest?(see the sponsor on top right of this page)
Well.... Google's ways are mystery.

Technorati: blogging, contests, google, SEO, Shaastra, spam, technical

Who selected the sysadmins?

2006-10-25T18:39:00.000+05:30

Well... I have been asking this question for long to all my friends. But today, after being EXTREMELY EXTREMELY HIGHLY HIGHLY FRUSTU over the performance of internet and NO PERFORMANCE of WLAN and DC++, I want to ask this question to the concerned authorities.

I know that Profs like DR. Kamal, Dr. Sangal, Dr. Govindrajulu, Dr. PJN, etc. read blogs. Well.. if you are reading this post, then consider it as your responsibility to defend the selection of the sysadmins
or
Accept the inability of the sysadmins and remove them.

How come someone employ such system adminsitrators who don't even know linux, to monitor / administrate around 10-20 important linux servers in the server room that are the lifelines of IIIT?
I want to know what was the process followed when selecting the sysadmins. I want to know who selected them. Those who selected them, don't they know that all IIIT servers, proxy, etc. are linux systems and only a linux bond can administrate them. Forget linux bond, you have not even selected a linux newbie, you have selected such persons who are not even linux newbies. They simply don't know linux.

Well... Let me go into a little defensive note. I can't prove that they are completely new to linux, but its well established that they are no more than linux newbies. Even a UG1 student (after passing the first semester) knows more than them. If you want proof of this statement then visit:-
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

If you still don't believe, then just go and have a chat with the sysadmins regarding linux. You will soon start believing.

PS1: Yes... I am not doing anything else than weeping about the problems. But the problem is that faculty does not believe that there is anything wrong.(well, not exactly but still they prefer to ignore). So, I think weeping about the problems may ring some bell in faculty's mind.

PS2: Sangal sir, please don't say I have over emphasized the problem as you say about every post in the blogging world.

PS3: Those who are trying to block DC++, please understand that you *MAY* block DC++ but still you can't block all ways of sharing unless you block the whole LAN. If you block DC++, students will resort to some other INEFFICIENT way of sharing resulting in more degradation of LAN performance(if at all its true that DC++ degrades performance). We need sharing and we will do it somehow. Only problem is that it may be an inefficient method as compared to DC++.

PS4: I have nothing personal against the sysadmins. It is all the fault of those who selected windows geeks(not sure) to administer linux servers.

PS5: So long PSs!

Technorati: iiit, life

Finally at top

2006-10-22T22:38:00.000+05:30

Yeah... I am at top finally. After weeks of effort, I am top now in google search results for the search string "Shaastra Thamesportal Zalecenia Autophytes Invernesshire". Just 3 hours before I was at a meagre 5th position and now I am at top!! Atriiecs has been pushed dwon to second. He he, the wish that I made here in Postscript(PS1) seems to be coming true...

Spamming under my name !!!

2006-10-19T20:41:00.000+05:30

There is an entry in iiit blogroll with the name "sandy" that is not mine. That blog is contesting for the google seo contest. Now as soon as I stopped spamming, someone else is doing this under my name!!

UPDATE : That blog has been removed now. so here is the screenshot:-

Read on for the full story.....

For quite long I have been spamming in my splog(spam+blog) Shaastra Thamesportal Zalecenia Autophytes Invernesshire. This all I was (and I am) doing for the Google SEO contest being conducted by IITM as a part of its techfest Shaastra.
I also used comment spamming hoping to increase my PR only to find that most blog sites(wordpress, in my case) put the attribute rel="nofollow" in all links posted in comments. That attribute was started/proposed by google and basically means that google won't consider the link with this attribute for page rank purposes.
Then I slowly realised that I should not comment-spam. I also apolozised. Then I realised that I am also spamming blogroll by registering my splog there. It was today only that I asked smr to remove my splog from blogroll. And then....... I was surprised to see a similar splog on blogroll under my name!!

Well its not exactly my name, that guy's name is also sandeep, Sandeep Reddy. [Update: and he is with his friend ad srikanth]. They are students of IITM karshak engg college hyd. He is They are the one who are at top in this contest right from the beginning. Theirs blog is at atrieecs.seo.iitm.ac.in. Everyone else has tasted all positions in google search results, but THIS blog has never budged from the top. Congrats to them for that. But dude! don't spam under my name or under a name that is similar to mine. Anyways, you blog is going to be removed soon as you are not a iiit student. I have mailed smr.

PS: The guy, Sandeep Reddy, who is at top , is quite a bright student. See his webpage here.
PS1: If not me, someone with a similar name is winning this contest. I would love to see the top two positions going to SANDEEPs.... only problem is , it would have been better if I was the first one and he the second :)

Technorati: google, Shaastra, SEO, blogger, blogging, blogspot, wordpress, contests, iiit, spam

New Look 2

2006-10-12T21:08:00.000+05:30

Changed the template once again :)

Technorati: blogger, blogging, blogspot, template

New Look

2006-10-11T07:14:00.000+05:30

As you can obviously see, I have changed my template. Does it look better?
Of course, it looks better, atleast to me and that is all that matters. The old template had lots of images which made it very slow to load. This one is much faster to load.
I am planning to make my own template for blogger, which would look like one of those ajax sites. No ajax, but look would be look like that. Its not that only ajax sites could have that look, but normally such looks are present in ajax sites.

Technorati: blogging, template, blogger, blogspot

My take on attendance policy

2006-10-08T15:44:00.000+05:30

A hot debate is going on on Karan's blog regarding the attendance policy. Here I am presenting my own views and solutions.

My Views:-
1. 85% is too much. Should be reduced to 70%.
2. Reducing grades should not be the punishment for less attendance. Faculty says you perform bad if u dont attend classes. So we already get punished by getting bad grades. Then why to reduce grade further on top of it.

Note: Faculty says we perform bad if u we dont attend, not I :) There are tens of examples of students who got an A and then their grade is reduced because of less attendance(including me :( ). So, in a way faculty's argument itself is at fault. Either way, its proved that reducing grade is not a solution.

My Solution:-
If at all there has to be a punsihment, then it should be doing some kind of social work for a week or two, like teaching slum kids, etc. Or may be attend Jivan Vidya for a week. Prof. Sangal will agree to it :) There should be an FSIS where we can say to the faculty to change the punishment to doing social work.

Oops!! down to seventh

2006-09-30T01:21:00.000+05:30

Pre Script: Nowadays, whatever I am writing here I am also posting it on my Google SEO Contest blog to fill it with little more of some sane content.
PS2: My blog in this post refers to my google seo contest blog.

Ohh no!
Search google for Shaastra Thamesportal Zalecenia Autophytes Invernesshire and look for my blog. Done?
What happened? Why did my blog slipped from 2nd to 5th to 3rd and then finally down to 7th? Did my comment spamming using bot really worked against me. Well after working like hell for 3 days and fucking my exams for it, I was surpsrised when one of my comment-spam-target-blog-writer pointed out to me that those links in comments are of no use. Worpress automatically adds the attribute rel="nofollow" to all the links posted on comments. Havoc!!! All my effort gone waste. Thats when I started receiving comments back to my blog all blaming, accusing, threatening me and what not. Well in India, don't expect cyber laws to work. I dont fear the threatenings. But then a mail from one of my comment-spam-target-blog-writer made me realise that its indeed wrong, morally. So I then apolozised for spamming. And I have decided not to resort to such measures in future.

But so far I thought my spams for Shaastra Thamesportal Zalecenia Autophytes Invernesshire didnt do any good to me nor did they anything bad to me. Now this sudden change in my position in the search results makes me to think that may be the spam report by some user was really taken seriously by the google. Or its just a periodical shift in position. If yes, then why? What should I do to get it back, say , at top two. Obviously no more spams...

All those who would like to exchange links with me - meaning they should put my link on their blog and I would put theirs on mine - please leave a comment here. I want as many links as possible. Doesn't matter if its from a page with 0 PR. By the way, this blog also has a PR of 0.
Mind you, I am talking about links for my blog here http://sandy007smarty.seo.iitm.ac.in/ and not this blog.

Technorati: blogging, google, contests, wordpress, SEO, spam

eXlinks - explode links

2006-09-29T22:49:00.001+05:30

eXlinks stands for exponential links. They say:-

“EXLINKS is the ULTIMATE, EXPONENTIAL LINK-SWAPPING, SITE EXPLODING SYSTEM.”

So go and register for free here. I don’t know whether it will really help or not. Or is it for real or some scam. But after reading about it in various blogs at digg and technorati and after knowing that its from the same people who made Blog Mad, I think it may be for real, but may be a little too hyped.

Anyways spending 5 secs to sign up is not much.

For those who don’t know about Blog Mad, its another cool service aimed at redirecting traffic to your blog through a system of credits. Go to the site to know more.

Now the keywords:- Shaastra Thamesportal Zalecenia Autophytes Invernesshire .I will win :)

Technorati: blogging, Autophytes, Invernesshire, Thamesportal, Shaastra, Zalecenia

Best Hacker Ever

2006-09-29T15:17:00.000+05:30

Read this IRC chat transcript fully:-
http://www.crisscross.com/forum/Worlds_worst_hacker%25_IRC_t%20ranscript/m_422436/tm.htm
Its really good.

Now a link to my Google SEO site.
Shaastra Thamesportal Zalecenia Autophytes Invernesshire to increase its PR (hopefully).

My blog is currently at 3rd position.
Have a look here.

Technorati: blogging, bakwas, contests, google, SEO, Shaastra, Thamesportal, Zalecenia, Autophytes, Invernesshire,

IIIT LAN Browser

2006-09-26T12:40:00.000+05:30

I have made this IIIT LAN Browser which allows someone from outside iiit to access our lan. Right now following domains are considered as part of IIIT LAN:-
192.168.36.200
192.168.36.150
192.168.36.208
192.168.36.250
172.16.*.*
172.17.*.*
I got this idea in summer when I found that daily tens of people, who were at home, would give their 200 password to me and ask me to check their grades on ISAS. So I thought why not make a site which would help such students.
I have been working on it since summer. The basic site was made in summer only. I implemented everything including forms, response headers like user-agent, accept, etc. But after implementing it I found its still not working for ISAS. To my utter dismay, I found that ISAS site used cookies and my LAN Browser just ignored cookies. I tried ... but couldnt do it.
But now, when exams are so near, I had to find something for keeping me away from studying. So started it again and now its work. Yes... now you can check your grades while at home!

[UPDATE : Now its working for diglib as well. There was some bug. Now you can download softwares from diglib for your home pc.]

This site could also be configured to make it as an anonymous proxy site. I would do such things in future. Right now I think I must study.

And finally this link to my blog : Shaastra Thamesportal Zalecenia Autophytes Invernesshire to increase its PR.

Technorati: hacks, iiit, summers, technical, utilities, work

Stupid Blogger/Blogspot

2006-09-25T22:31:00.000+05:30

Blogger/Blogspot has now reached the limit regarding being stupid and non-professional. As many of you know, shifting to blogger beta has been a nightmare for most of the bloggers. If you don't know read my old posts here, here and here and also go and checkout google's blogger help group at google groups.
I am writing this post because today they did another stupid mistake. They disabled the old feeds url http://sandy007smarty.blogspot.com/atom.xml and instead started feeds on this new url: http://sandy007smarty.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/full for everyone(atleast all beta users). But before doing this or even after doing this they should have sent a mail notifying us of this, which they didn't. In fact, ideally, they should give us an option whether we want to shift our url or not. Because many people might have subscribed to the old feed and would have no way to know what happened to the old feed. They should additionally display a message at the old feed saying that it has been moved to a new url.
I got to know only when I saw that my new post was not coming on smr's blogroll. Instead my old post was being displayed there.
So, moral of the story, blogger sucks. I think I should move on to wordpress.

Technorati: blogger, blogspot, blogging, feeds

Strategy backfired?

2006-09-24T17:42:00.000+05:30

Looks like my last post backfired. I tried to increase the page rank of my contest blog by providing inbound links to it from this blog. But instead *this* blog is coming earlier in the google search results than my contest blog. May be thats because my present blog is old and has relevant things which has already gathered a good page rank over time. So just the appearance of the Shaastra keyword made it come at top.
So now my new strategy is to provide more and more links to several pages of my contest blog so that google bot understands that thats a more important page than this one... thats why there are so many links to it from this page. It was not just one out of million links!
So Mr./Master/Miss/Mrs/Monieur/whatever google bot, do understand my concerns and help me. I am desperate.
And those fellow humans who are still reading this post, can u please leave a comment along with ur blog url if u would agree to get a few spam comments linking to my contest site.
It would be of great help to me.
Another thing is that I risk my blog being deactivated for illegal use of blogspot's resources. Yes... thats the reason the seo contest was put on hold for around 1 month. Earlier the organisers allowed any blog site for the contest. Then wordpress and blogspot deactivated several blogs citing misuse of their resources as the reason. So now organisers have created a ditto copy of wordpress on their own server. And everyone has to register there.
I hope this blog would not be deactivated because I m just blogging about my normal life. The actual contest blog is not this but on iitm's server.

Technorati: blogger, blogspot, blogging, contests, SEO, Shaastra, wordpress

Google SEO contest

2006-09-22T18:21:00.000+05:30

Shaastra, IITM's techfest has a Google SEO Contest where you have to make a blog like this that will come at top for a particular string search on goggle. The particular string is "Shaastra Thamesportal Zalecenia Autophytes Invernesshire". This is an extremely weird string. Before the contest started you would have got 0 results for this page.
So, the point of writing this blog is not that I feel like blogging but just to provide some precious inbound links to my contest blog at http://sandy007smarty.seo.iitm.ac.in/ so that it improves its page rank. Thats the reason I am giving so many links to it.
Humans, please stop reading ... or u r getting to be surely bored.
Google Bots, you continue scanning and pasrsing this page or else how am I suppose to increase the ranking of my contest blog. So google bots, here are a few more links to my contest blog.
Please, please bring it at top for the search string "Shaastra Thamesportal Zalecenia Autophytes Invernesshire".
Hope you counted them as inbound links to my blog and didn't considered it as a spam.
Lets take one more link bot : shaastra autophytes.
A few more links to my blog categories in alphabeticla order:-
Autophytes
Autophytes Invernesshire
Invernesshire
Shaastra
Shaastra Thamesportal
Shaastra Thamesportal Zalecenia Autophytes Invernesshir
Thamesportal
Thamesportal Zalecenia
Zalecenia
Zalecenia Autophytes

Humans, if u r still reading, please drop in your ideas and comments about how can I make my site come at top.

Technorati: bakwas, google, Shaastra, Thamesportal, Zalecenia, Autophytes, Invernesshire, SEO, contests, blogging, wordpress

Why is my blog always on top in IIIT Blogroll ?

2006-09-11T16:31:00.001+05:30

There is some problem with my feed since I shifted to blogger beta. The blogger beta atom feed was not getting correctly parsed by SMR's IIIT Blogroll. It seems MagpieRSS (the software used by blogroll to parse feeds) is not comfortable with the newer versions of Atom Feeds. So I decided to shift to RSS feed. But Blogger would allow RSS feeds only to paid customers. So I created an account at http://www.feedburner.com/ which takes my atom feed provided by blogger as input and publishes an RSS Feed. And I asked blogroll to subscribe to this feed.
Now my blog feed started getting parsed, but time is not correct. Blogger publishes the time in this format 2006-09-11T01:26:52.069+05:30 , i.e GMT +05:30. Now feedburner keeps the same time but changes to 05:30 to -05:00 . So a blog written at 1:26:52 +5:30 becomes 1:26:52 -5:00.
Now blogroll rightly adds 10:30 minutes to this time to get the IST time which becomes 11:56:52am.
So my blog comes to top and remains there atleast till 11:56am.
The problem is with feedburner(changes +0530 to -0500). Any solutions ??

Technorati: blogger, blogspot, blogging, hacks, iiit, feeds

A good programming problem

2006-09-11T01:18:00.000+05:30

There was a really good and tough problem in TCCC 2006 Algo Competition. None of around 600 participants could solve it in the given time.
You can try the problem in the practice arena.
And remember that your solution should not take more than 2 seconds for the worst case.

Technorati: contests, programming, TCCC, TopCoder

Yahoo AddressGuard - Fighting Against Spam with disposable email addresses

2006-09-03T03:03:00.000+05:30

Its good to see that Yahoo has found out a new way of preventing us from spam. Lately I was getting a lot of spams in my students account(IIIT students server) as well as yahoo account. Well, I can't do anything about students account (LOL at sysadmins), but yahoo's new AddressGuard concept may help reducing spams.
Though Yahoo is successfully able to filter spams to my bulk folder, still I can't ignore them all as some of my important mails are also labeled as spam and moved to bulk folder... specially mails from my students id.... again I think a fault of sysadmins.
The new concept is : You can create several email ids of the format basename-keyword@yahoo and then use different ones at different places. Messages to all ids will come into your inbox or separate folders as u choose. Once you see a particular email id is the reason for spams, then simply delete it.

Good ... No! My old original email id is still valid and its already been targeted for spams. How do I deal with that? I think Yahoo people must find an answer to that. I was all delighted to see the new service but the problem is still not solved for old users who are already been targeted for spams.
While writing this post, with the help of googling I found out yahoo AddressGuard, in a modified form, already existed for paid users. Also gmail also has something similar - aliases... but their method is not so good. Gmails aliases are of the format gmailid+blabla@gmail.com. So spammers can easily extract the original email id from this alias (string before the plus is the original gmail id). But yahoo's format basename-keyword@yahoo.com is different coz basename has no relations with your original yahoo id.
Read the official thing here. You can get a different perspective about it here and here.

Technorati: technical, spam, yahoo, gmail

My new home page

2006-08-31T00:25:00.000+05:30

So now my new home page is up and running at http://students.iiit.ac.in/~sandeep_kr . Its just a copied template copied from Gaurav Garg of stanford. I came across this template when skp came across Gaurav Garg's template and copied it :P I like it as its very simple yet looks good.... and professional.
Right from my second sem, I always wanted to change the stupid home page that I made in first year as a part of ITWS1 assignment. But could never find time for it or I should rather say could never devote time to it even when I had plenty. Now finally its complete and I think looks good enough and should not any require any major change for atleast this year. BTW I am talking as if I did a great job. I just copied :D and to add to that its nowhere near to sites of good website-makers of our college. To know what I am talking abt just have a look at Tarun Nayak's home page. or look at himashu arora's websites(his home page not working, visit this) or those of Devansh Mittal. (sorry if i missed someone). For more astounding works of Tarun Nayak see this page. He is too good!

PS: See my bookmarks. They are exactly same as the bookmarks stored by firefox in my PC. I use winscp's scripting power to scp my firefox's bookmarks.html file to my 200 account 8 times a day.
PS1: Yes, I still work on windows for most of the time. So, I had to use winscp.
PS2: Is their some better method to make my bookmarks public?

Technorati: life, personal, template, bookmarks, firefox

How to get Yahoo Mail Beta

2006-08-21T23:55:00.000+05:30

Yahoo Mail Beta is out there for quite sometime. But alas! only for Yahoo UK, Germany and France(as far as I know). But there is trick at this post that allows Yahoo India users(or for that matter any yahoo user) to get Yahoo Mail Beta.
In essence, what you need to do is to switch your yahoo content preference to Yahoo UK or Germany or France , get the beta version and then switch back to your old preference. See the above link for step by step method.
Note : Yahoo Mail Beta does not yet work on IE7.

PS: The new interface is phodu - specially the drag and drop feature . Try it, its better than gmail.

Technorati: hacks, technical, yahoo

Technorati Tags Bookmarklet adapted for blogspot and blogger

2006-08-19T16:50:00.000+05:30

Inspired by Rakesh's Bookmarklet (originally Lorelle's), I came up with a technorati bookmarklet for blogspot and blogger.com users.
Technorati tags bookmarklet is a Firefox bookmarklet to tag ur blog posts. First created by Lorelle and later modified by freehogg and then again modified by Rakesh. Veterans can see the modified code below and newbies first read "How to create bookmarklet" and "How to use it" further down.
-----
javascript: ( function() { /* Technorati Tag Book Marklet 0.3 Created First By: Lorrell <http://lorelle.wordpress.com > for wordpress. Last Modified By: Rakesh <http://rakeshkumar.wordpress.com > for wordpress. Adapted for Blogspot By : Turbo <http://sandy007smarty.blogspot.com > */ var a=''; var t=prompt('Enter Tags separated by commas',''); if(!t) return; var tr=t.split(','); a+='<p><img id="technorati_img" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/technorati.gif" alt="Technorati" /><strong>Technorati: </strong>'; for(var i=0;i<tr.length;i++) { tr[i]=tr[i].replace(/^\s+/,""); tr[i]=tr[i].replace(/\s+$/,""); var tag_text=tr[i]; tr[i]=tr[i].replace(/\s+/g,"+"); if(i > 0){ a+=', '; } a+='<a href='+unescape('%22')+'http://www.technorati.com/tag/'+tr[i]+unescape('%22')+' rel='+unescape('%22')+'tag'+unescape('%22')+'>'+tag_text+'</a>'; } a+='</p>'; prompt('Copy this html code, Press OK, Then Paste into your blog entry:',a); } )()
-----
Its character by character same as Rakesh's version, except for the image url. I changed the url to a blogspot url to make it a blogspot bookmarklet in true sense. That is, blogspot won't have to go to wordPress for that image. Although I have not tried, Rakesh's original version should also work without any problems, unless blogspot specifically blocks wordpress urls (which it does not do now atleast).
Following FAQs have been shamelessly copied from Rakesh's post :-
FAQs
Q1. How to create bookmarklet?
Ans: Copy the above script and paste it to Firefox’s address bar. Drag and drop it to bookmarks toolbar. Right click on it, go to properties and verify the location.
The location should contain the above script. Change the name to something related like “Technorati Bookmarklet”.

Q2. How to use it?
Ans: Just click on the bookmark. A dialogue box will open. Enter your tags in it, seperated by commas. (spaces are allowed within tags). It generates
the html code for tags. Copy and paste it in your blog post.

Q3. Why Technorati Tags?
Ans: A simpler explantion is that it adds meaning to the information that you are providing (i.e. your post). Tags work both ways, it helps sites like Technorati
to organize the contents properly and on the other hands it increases your reach to a broader audience.

Q4. But blogspot already has labels?
Ans: Yes, a recent feature. Those who still use old templates don't have the labels feature. Also its simply good to have technorati tags. Isn't it?

Technorati: firefox, technorati, tags, bookmarklet, blogger, blogspot, hacks, technical

Enabling Adsense in the new blogger/blogspot templates

2006-08-19T02:24:00.000+05:30

Those who are wondering what is this fuss about new blogger, read my previous post or visit this.
Those who have already added the javascript code and still their adsense is not working, read from step 6. Others see all steps.
1. At the dashboard(the page that opens when you login) , click on settings :-
2. Then go to template tab. If you have not yet moved to a new template(beta template) , do it now as mentioned here .
By default, page elements tab is open.
3. Now click on "add a element" link.

4. A popup will open up showing various kind of page elements. Select the one named "HTML/Javascript".

5. You will be presented with a form. Don't write anything in the title text box because anything that you write here will appear above the adsense thing and will look very bad. In content box paste your adsense code.
[UPDATE(27 Sept, 2006): Blogspot has removed the bug with javascript. So step 6 is no longer required. Continue from step 7.]
6. Now you need to understand a fact about javascript. Most of the javascript codes are included inside comments(HTML comments) so that javascript incompatible browsers are not confused. For example :-
<script type="text/javascript"></script>
What you need to do is to just remove the red things(comments) in above code. Remove only "<--" and "//-->" and not the matter in between them.
7. Click on save changes button
8. Done!!!
Note that this thing will create problems in javascript incompatible browsers. But then you need adsense, so thats the way.
Also note that step 6 above is required because beta blogger seems to have some bug. Once that bug is removed no need to do step 6. FYI, as of now, step 6 is required for any javascript code whether it is of adsense or not.

Finally blogger adds tag support

2006-08-18T23:52:00.000+05:30

Finally blogger acts, but not before it lost a hell lot of customer base. I have seen many iiitians switch to wordpress citing the unavailability of tagging(categorizing) feature. Anyways its good to see the new features. A number of cool features have been added:-
1. Category/tags feature has been introduced with the name labels.
2. No need to republish anymore.
3. Site feed for comments also.
4. Easy to change the layout - drag and drop - too cool - a must try.
5. Blogger can email you whenever you write a new post... can create a kind of archive, just in case u delete ur blog by mistake.
etc.etc.
Also now you have the option to integrate your blog with google accounts.
You may miss the raw HTML template editing. But you can still do most of those editings using HTML/Javascript page elements that the new template provides. And obviously you have to move to the new template to avail these features(including categorization).
The catch : Google adsense is not working as of now :( ... anyways its useless ... generated just $2.5 in around 1 year.
EDIT : I have found a workaround. See this post.
Blogger is quite late ... in nirnimesh's words - working in damage control mode. Still, better late than ever. I also wanted to switch to wordpress, but didn't coz of laziness.

Shifting to Linux....

2006-08-09T22:55:00.000+05:30

It may sound weird for a IIITian to shift to linux so late... 3rd year. There are linux bonds in our batch like Bharat Joshi and Nishant Shobhit who are using it from the first day they brought their PCs. But I simply didn't require linux.
Windows has:-
1. Phodu(good) User Interface
2. Easy software installation.(compare it eith rpms, dependencies, yum , etc.)
3. Games : The most important one.
People may disagree with my views.
Also those points mentioned above are not the main reason for me to use windows. The main thing is that I got used to working on windows and coding in linux(mirage) using putty and listening music in the background in the first year. I was also enthusiastic about linux but sadly our poor PC wouldn't support it. Just in 64MB RAM, you can't think of using linux in graphical mode. After working on windows for 1 full semester, I got habituated to putty and I prefer putty over gnome-terminal/kde-terminal. Its 'instant' copy-paste is too good. Since I coded in linux only, I can also say I used to 'be' on windows and work in linux. So getting the best of both worlds :)
In second year I stopped using mirage but still worked on linux on my friends's machine using putty through my windows PC. I never needed linux on my PC except for the kernel installation assignment in OS.
But now the time has come. How can a geek love windows? No, I am not shifting to linux to be called a geek but simply because I need to. Being in CVIT and working on images and videos, I can no longer use my old putty.(Images you can still handle using Xservers but video? no you can't). So saying goodbye to the faithful Windows OS and stepping into a new home - Linux.
Its not that I am totally new to linux. I know how to install rpms, and how to install using source code, etc. But now linux will be my mainstay - coding, browsing, music, movies - except for games, of course.
I have recently installed FC5 on my PC and learnt to use yum. Its extremely helpful. I als0 intalled mplayer, xmms, dc++, etc. As of now everything is fine and I am loving linux.

Disclaimer: Linux lovers, its just my opinion. I never really used linux(except for coding). So I am not comparing linux and windows here. Just writing my experiences.

Technorati: linux, personal, life

Foxmarks, TCCC and random stuff...

2006-07-21T23:07:00.000+05:30

Thank God! Blogger is back. I could not post for such a long time, though I could read blogspot blogs using pkblog and several other proxies. But I didn't get how ppl posted blogs during the time blogspot was blocked.
Foxmarks
Foxmarks = Firefox + Bookmarks
You guessed it right. Its yet another firefox extension but is extremely useful for dual OS people like me.

If you use Firefox on more than one computer, you'll want Foxmarks. Install Foxmarks on each computer, and it will work silently in the background to keep your bookmarks synchronized. As a bonus, log in to my.foxcloud.com from any computer anywhere to access your bookmarks.

What it does is that It synchronizes the bookmarks that you add on different PCs/OSs. That is, if you add a bookmark in your lab PC you can get it added on your room PC as well. It creates an account for you on sync.foxcloud.com and your bookmarks automatically get uploaded to this site every 1 minute. It uses the same account on the other PC and downloads the updated bookmarks. This happens both ways. That is both upload(every 1 min) and both download(every 1 hour).
It helps me because half of time I am in windows and half in linux. So I created an account for myself and use it in both OSs.
Now before further delay, download it here : https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2410/

There is another way around (only for dual OS ppl like me and not dual PC ppl) that struck me just now. You will require a fat32 partition.
Create a file called bookmarks.html in your fat partition.
First lets handle windows. Create a shortcut to this bookmarks.html file in the folder where your bookmarks are stored in windows. The directory is :- C:\Documents and Settings\Turbo\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\n074fqtc.default
You have to make some changes in above path for your PC.
For linux create a softlink to the bookmarks.html file with the same name in the directory where your linux bookmarks are stored. I don't remember the exact the path (as I am in windows now) .
I haven't tried it yet. Should work without much trouble.
For more info about extensions that I use read my previous post Cool Firefox Extensions.

2006 TopCoder Collegiate Challenge

Yes! yet another Topcoder contest. This is diffrent from Topcoder open. This one is open only to college students. Still its very tough. I don't hope to get any further than the Qualification Round :P The guys from Poland, Sweden are extremely good in programming. You won't believe there are highschool students in these countries who are red at TopCoder. One of the finest examples is Zuza. The registration begins from August 28 and the qualification round is somewhere in september. Hope I don't get disqualified this time as I was in Google Code jam.(Read this for more details).

Random Stuff
No time for random stuff now. Got to go to give bumps to Akash Deep.

Technorati: hacks, technical, bookmarks, firefox, linux, windows, TopCoder

Finally the project starts....

2006-07-06T06:44:00.000+05:30

Hmm... Wasted 2 months in the name of project and did nothing.
Reason : Prof. Jawahar gave us the job to make a portal : an extremely boring job.
He told us to complete the portal in 10 days and then start with our project. It was actually 10 days work only. But it was so boring that we would work on it for 2 hours after a gap of every 10 days! And add to it Prof. Jawahar's style of asking you to change everything once you have completed. We had to change the entire(almost entire) portal 2 times. So.. 2 months passed.
Now its complete(atleast we have stopped working on it and Prof. Jawahar didn't ask us to do anything more on it.)
And now we are starting our summer project on Shot Boundary Detection. It sounded pretty boring to me at first, but after reading a few research papers I think its interseting and I am ready to dive into it!
Hope we will work sincerely on it.

Technorati: project, iiit, cvit, personal, life

Made Indian ACM Ranklist

2006-05-24T01:11:00.000+05:30

Was getting bored of writing php scripts for the cvitportal. So thought to make this site. It lists the top 100 Indians on the UVa acm site on the basis of number of problems solved. It is updated every hour unlike the one I told about here which has not been updated for months.
PS : PHP sucks.
PS1 : CGI Python rocks.

Technorati: ACM, programming, technical

Cool Firefox Extensions

2006-05-21T23:43:00.000+05:30

These are the extensions that I use:-
StumbleUpon : I bet a lot of IIItians are using this. Its the best tool for passing your time :) For those who don't know - there is a site called http://www.stumbleupon.com/ which provides a service that lets you to random pages on the web that match your preferences. This extension provides a toolbar in your firefox that makes stumbling easier. When you install it you will be asked to register and your preferences(what topics you like). Then start stumbling!! As u visit pages you can click on "I like it" button to recommend that page to like minded ppl. Also you can press "I don't like" if you don't like. Using these two buttons enhances your prefernces and makes stumbling better customized to your taste.
VideoDownloader : This one lets you download videos from youtube, google video and many more. I know there are hacks that let you do those stuff. But this extension makes it so simple. Just one click!!
DownThemAll : A download accelerator and manager. Its good, supports multi-part downloads.
FlashGot : Lets you integrate your favourite download manager with firefox. I use it only on windows as FlashGet is my favourite download mananger on windows. They should make flashget for linux also. In linux I use DownThemAll(see above).
Tab Mix Plus : A brilliant tool for enhancing your tab functionality. I like its "restore last session" option and the "undo close tab" option. Restore last session opens all tabs and windows that were open last time. Undo close tab is obvious... but very useful.
FasterFox : Its supposed to increase the loading speed of your pages by tweaking certain network parameters. But I don't know whether it really works. I didn't find any noticable change in speed.
Delicious : It helps you integrate your delicious account with your browser. Bookmarking and tagging is so easy now. For those who don't know abt delicious - http://del.icio.us/ is a site that helps you organize your bookmarks.
Some themes:-
I am not the one who is too careful about how the desktop, browser,etc looks. The only reason I started using themes is to increasing the browsing space. LittleFox and Microfirefox are two(very similar) themes that reduces the size of your toolbars and buttons to make more space for the actual page. But then there is a price you have to pay. Looks are not so good. The designs are old and outdated. Seems it was made some years back.
PS: Went to Anti-reservation rally today. It was fun. Rally was very peaceful.
PS1: Have to seriously start our summer project. Till now we only wasted time.

Technorati: firefox, firefox extensions, technical

Reservation - a different opinion

2006-05-17T15:18:00.000+05:30

Till now my points were only against reservation. See my previous posts on this here and here.
But today a different point struck me. Though I am personally against reservation(as of now) but I would like someone to contradict my following point.
We all(almost) are opposing reservation with the main reason being that reservation in higher institution and at every stage of life(education,jobs,etc) is absurd. Rather, improving the education at primary and secondary schools is more important as it will automatically ensure that the BCs will perform well thereafter.
[Note : By BCs I mainly mean the BCs who are also economically weak, not the creamy layer. So, please don't bring the point that only some high-profile BCs will get the advantage.]
Now, my point - However cheap and better education govt. provides to the BCs(remember, also economically weak) the environment at homes of those poor souls won't be anywhere near to the ones that we IIITians have had. Govt. can provide free education or even free meals, but what about the study environment at home ?(better call it slum, not home, for most of the BCs). So without proper environment BCs can't compete with the non-BCs. If no reservation, then they can't get into good institutions like IIT, IIM and then they can't get good jobs. Their plight will be same as their parents. For their children, again the same environment. So this forms a vicious circle if there is no reservation, even if govt provides free education and free meals for all 3 times. Even if it provides free meals for all members of the child's family for all 3 times(not practical though), still, having a well-educated parents is a different thing. There are some who succeed ... like the story of a son of a rickshaw puller which is doing the rounds now-a-days, but thats very rare - you all will agree.

Now my real point- If we provide reservation at every level, that is, at school, at university level , in jobs, etc. Then few of the BCs will finally get a good job(though they may not be worthy). His financial condition will be much better than his parents. Also he will be much better educated than his parents, though not as good as the non-BCs who had the education in the same college. So now, his children have a much better environment at home. Now they can study nicely and might be able to compete with the non-BCs.
So providing reservation for a few years may be not be a bad idea afterall. But then their should be a strict law that the reservation will be scrapped after 'n' years. Otherwise no govt. will scrap the reservation later because of fear of losing votes.
Got my point?
Do correct me if I am wrong.
PS: Don't get emotional. Emotional comments and foul language is not allowed. Comment with a cool mind.
PS2: Don't pick a small statement from above and start contradicting it. Some small points may be little exaggarated. Comment based on your overall understanding of this post.

Technorati: reservation, personal, India

IIIT ACM Toppers at UVa

2006-05-16T18:52:00.000+05:30

The solvers of highest number of ACM problems on Uva site from IIIT Hyderabad are:-

Rank	Name	Problems Solved	Rank in India	Rank in World
1	Ankur Jaiswal	212	10	989
2	Manikandan Subramanian	118	23	2040
3	Visesh Uday Kumar	114	25	2115
4	Ankur Handa	102	29	2370
5	Bharat Joshi	92	34	2615

Note 1: Some of these guys are continuosly solving problems(one is solving right in front of me). So the above data may change by the time you read this.
Note 2: The ranks in India are not absolutely correct. They have been derived from the old data present on this site.
Note 3: I might have mistakenly left some IIITians name while browsing through the ranklist. Please let me no if someone is left out. Also those keeping logins different from their name are ignored.
Note 4: Kudos to Ankur Handa for being in Top 5 as he is in ECE and not CSE.

Technorati: iiit, ACM, technical, programming

Petr wins TCO 2006

2006-05-06T15:01:00.000+05:30

		No Photo
Petr-1st	tomek-2nd	natori-3rd

fuwenjie-4th	misof-5th	andrewzta-6th

cyfra-7th	John Dethridge-8th

These are the eight topcoders who advanced to the finals in the sequence of their ranks in the finals. Petr won with a very comfortable margin as he was the only person to crack the hard one. For more on exact scores, visit this.

Technorati: TopCoder, programming

Going Home

2006-05-06T00:03:00.000+05:30

I am going home on 7th May. But not for long :( I will be back by 15th. I am going for my sister's engagement. It would be so much fun... everyone will be present.

Technorati: life, personal, home

TopCoder TCO ... and the usual boring life

2006-05-04T22:44:00.000+05:30

Currently 2006 TopCoder Open(TopCoder's Annual Algorithm Contest) is going on in Las Vegas ... Yes!! you heard it right, in LAS VEGAS. Las Vegas seems a unusual place to host such a contest but thats the Topcoder's Way. I love it. To make the TCO fun for the unlucky ones like me who could not qualify for the finals, TopCoder selected 4 official bloggers through its pick me contest to bring the action live to us. Now one would ask what action is there to watch? May be to you and many others it doesn't sounds exciting but I and the whole topcoder community loves to see/read how their favourites among those who qualified perform. Their ups and downs, the way a room leader falls down during the challenge contest and another one rises. Yes, TopCoder's contest have a lots of thrills. Every second you will be worrying if misof or antimatter or petr is viewing your code and has found a bug and you are going to be challenged. Even if you pass the challenge phase you can still be awarded 0(zero) if your code fails the system test. And as in any other contest, time limit is there, so not just pass the system test but pass it in the time limit. In other contests like ACM ICPC and majority of the online programming contests once you get "accepted" your solution is perfectly correct. But in TopCoder its not, first pass the challenges and then the system test , and you get just one opportunity. I mean that in other contests if your solution fails you can debug and resubmit, but not in TopCoder.... thats the thrill. For more on TopCoder's SRM details , visit my earlier post.
Ok.. so I was talking about the 4 official bloggers of TCO 2006. They all are doing fine and posting cool stuff - with pics of Las Vegas and all. To read their blogs, visit this page.
I would paste some of the cool photographs from Las Vegas here:-
The topcoder onsite arena:-

A close up with Omgrace, one of the official bloggers sitting there. Isn't the desk cool?( and isn't the lady hot :P )

The BIG monitors to watch whats happening during the contest for the use of onsite visitors.

The tall misof(left) with other topcoders:-

UVa ACM solvers would also recognize him(and many more topcoders) as he is an Experienced poster there. He is two time ACM ICPC winner or finalist I guess.(I don't remember exactly whether he was winner or just a finalist. By just a finalist I mean he was atleast in top three atleast once.)

The Usual Boring Life
Now about the usual boring life. Ther is little non-boringness here. Today I found out about G. Anand and "she" (I was 2 days late in knowing this) . My first reaction was a kind of laugh, and don't care. But as I read the whole blog from Sept. 2005 to current day I understood what it really was. I am sorry the way I laughed at G. Anand in his room at him. We all made a mockery of him. But its real. Their story is no less than a normal movie love story. As I read all the posts one by one, I felt as a movie is being played in front of my eyes.

The CVIT Portal
We have done absolutely no work after our presentation on Monday. First of all, we were not too happy at being given a portal to eat our summer time. But anyhow we started and thought to finsih it quickly and move on to our real project Content Based Image Retrieval(CBIR). But as everyone says Prof. Jawahar won't let us finish the portal quickly. We made almost half the portal before the presentation and then we were asked to change everything. New features etc. had to be added. Next time we meet may be we will have to redesign it once again. I wish I was one of the TopCoder Design/ Development Contestant who could do these kind of things so fast.

Technorati: TCO, TopCoder, programming, cvit, project

All about TopCoder

2006-04-26T21:00:00.000+05:30

Next SRM is on 28th morning at 6:30 am IST. And yes it has lots of prizes as it is the 300th SRM. Do participate.
Nowadays I am addicted to TopCoder as I said in the last post. So what is TopCoder? Most of the IIITians here would already know about it as IIIT is primarily an IT institute. TopCoder conducts weekly programming contests in its own special arena(will write abt it later in the post) and you get a chance to compete with world's few of the finest coders.
Programming contests are conducted by other organisations as well, but they are not as thrilling and fun as TopCoder's is. ACM ICPC is one of the world's finest contest, but is conducted only once a year. Its true that there are hundreds of acm practice sites, but they don't have that thrill. They are just for practice.
TopCoder's weekly matches are termed SRMs - Single Round Matches. Let me till you a little about SRMs. Each SRM consist of three phases - Coding, Challenge and System Test. Actually only the first two of these are relevalant. In coding phase you will be given 3 problems : easy (300pts), medium(500pts) and hard(1000pts) and you have 1 hour and 15 minutes to code them all. Yes you heard me right , just 1 hr 15 mins!!! And there are in now way less challenging than ACM questions. The easy one is usually too trivial, medium one is alright, but the hard one is as good as an ACM Hard question. I am saying hard because half of the problems on acm.uva.es are too too too trivial. There are questions like subtracting two numbers, etc on ACM sites. Yes dudes, those of you thought ACM questions to be too tough or something , change your mind now. Have a look at this questions and see for yourself :-
272 : Tex Quotes : Just replacing quotes!!!
424 : Integer Inquiry : Adding integers using strings !!
458 : The Decoder : Just do ch=ch+7
488 : Triangle Wave : This you already did in your first sem
499 : What's the frequency : Simple Counting
There are hundreds of more dumb questions. And yes I do agree there are hundreds of pretty tough questions as well.
But whatever, doing 3 questions in 1 hour 15 mins at TopCoder requires some skills dude. But there are people here who do all three of them much before the time. The record is 15.50 minutes by Zis. All red coders here are ACM finalists or have been an ACM finalist during there time. Many of them are ACM coaches in some universities. So you have a chance to compete with the best coders and yes you can chat with them during the matches and on the forums.
Oh yes I forgot to tell you about TopCoder's rating system. All new members who have never competed in an SRM are called unrated and are white. Coders till rating of 800 are Grey. 800-1200 are Green, 1200-1500 Blue, 1500-2200 Yellow, 2200-3000 Red and above that are called target. I am currently Blue and its really easy to get a green or blue. Initially you compete in divison 2, which has extremely easy questions. (Don't frown when you see dumb questions when you participate for the first time .. coz you are in div2). Once you are Blue , that is you rating is above 1200, you start competing in divison 1. For actual rating formula, see this.
Ok this was all about coding phase. The competition does not ends here. Next comes the challenge phase - 15 mins . In this phase you can see others' codes and challenge their codes with a valid input if you think the code is wrong. You get 50pts for this and -20 [ EDIT : Its -25 actually ] if you have unsuccesfully challenged. I forgot to mention that , when you submit a solution during a SRM, then its not evaluated at that time. Its finally evaluated at the time of System Tests. That is when 100s of test cases are applied to your problem and you get zero if your code does not pass all system tests.
So does it sound good ?
If not then wait, there is more to topcoder. Maybe you don't like just programming but you like making softwares, etc. In that case you can compete weekly in design and development competitions. And I must say, they have a lot of prizes as these events are directly sponsored by IT companies. I can't tell you any more about design and development matches as I have never participated in any of these.
Then there are other events like Marathon Matches and Intel Multithreading Series.
And TopCoder also conducts an annual TCO which has a lots n lots of prizes. This year's finals will be starting in a few days in LAS VEGAS. (Yes, every year they choose cool locations for the finals).
And yes it was TopCoder only which conducts Google Code Jams.
And being a good scorer at TopCoder can enhance your resume. You can place following badges on your resume:-

Obviously, these are available in various sizes.
For more information about TopCoder, visit the FAQ section at Topcoder's website.

PS: Doesn't it look like I am advertising for TopCoder?
PS1 : Ohh! I forgot to write abt the arena. I will do it later :( Its too much for today.

Technorati: TopCoder, programming, ACM

Next post on topcoder

2006-04-26T00:27:00.000+05:30

Nowadays I am totally addicted to Topcoder. Its not all about programming but there is a lot of fun in the forums as well. Well, this post was supposed to be all on Topcoder and why I am addicted to it. But due to lack of time ( I want to go to sleep early. Don't want to miss any more CVIT classes.) - so I was saying due to lack of time today I thought I won't do justice to it by finishing it too quickly. So I will be writing about Topcoder tomorrow. Keep waiting ... ( obviously only they who are interested :) ).
But LOL. This blog now seems useless. So let me post a screenshot of topcoder to make it up. It looks cool, isn't it ?

I know you would say why a screenshot. I donno myself. I am nowadays inclined towards putting pics on my blog, makes it look better :)

Technorati: TopCoder, programming

CVIT Day 2 & 3 and more ...

2006-04-20T17:39:00.000+05:30

So, after the extermely hectic first day, I had an extremely relaxed second day. Now note that only "I" had a relaxed day. Thats because my body refused to do any more work. I slept all through the day and finally woke up at 3'0 clock. So missed the class. It was a two and half hour class. Missed a lot. And since I didn't attend the class I was not in a position to do the 2nd day's assignments. So no work :) Watched 5 episodes of Rome continuously ;)
OK so then came the third day. This was on video - quite an interesting topic. I enjoyed this class the most. Was taken by Tarun Jain sir(This link is currently not working as tarun sir has disabled permissions . Dunno why ). We were basically taught reading and writing videos in mpeg format.
Got 3 assignments today :-

Implement a basic video player which reads a video file and displays the sequence of frames in a GL window.
Capture a strem of images from a webcam, save it as video sequence with each video of 10 secs. and generate the output in HTML with each video hyperlinked by its thumbnail (a smaller size version of the first frame)
Capture output of an openGL program (any existing one with you, which has some motion/navigation) and save it as a video.

All three are pretty easy, not because we are bond in video processing but because of the API that we got. Its so simple to use. Using this API reading, writing video is as simple as reading, writing a normal file. And this was developed by our seniors at CVIT. Thanx to them. But one problem with it, it has no sound support yet. Hope one of us will add that functionality.
Being Cyrus
Sucks big time. Don't watch it if you haven't yet. When I heard the name first time, it sounded interesting to me. I mean a hindi movie by such a name ought to be different. It was different ... but in the wrong sense. Just the same double cross story.

Rome

It rocks. Not because of the tasty scenes (is tasty the right word? who cares anyway?) but it has trully depicted the minds of the people during the ceaserian era. Its so real. A person is on one side now and switches his loyalty so quickly at the next monent. The king turns into a slave in a matter of seconds. That time the world was so violent. How a person's minded is so easily corrupted by the powerfuls. So much politics. I bet today's politicians are nothing as compared to the nobels of the roman era when it comes to treachery, betrayal and shrewdness. A must watch.

PS: I wonder what happened to iiitbuzz. Has cmdrbuzz left for home?

Technorati: cvit, movies, summers

Debate rages over benefit of quotas

2006-04-19T15:47:00.000+05:30

Read this article from NDTV. That is why I say "Provide scholarships to the needy not reservation". Even if an SC/ST/OBC gets an admission in a good college due to reservation, he may not have the money to pay the fees.

Technorati: reservation, personal, India

Welcome to CVIT - Day 1

2006-04-18T20:29:00.000+05:30

Got the first hand experience of what being a part of CVIT(Centre for Visual Information Technology,IIIT) means. Got to know why seniors said CVIT requires so much of work. Got to know Why ppl run away from it.
Today was our first CVIT lecture. This trend of CVIT lecture has been started from this year. So the first CVIT class was sheduled at 9:30am today. And true to his style, Prof. Jawahar was there even before we reached. So this class was all about image - very basic image stuff. He told us about B&W, grayscale and colored images. Then different file formats : pbm, pgm, ppm, gif, jpeg, etc. These all were easy to understand. But the real surprise came towards the end of the class. We got an assignment!! Yes, on the very first day. We have to develop an image library for basic image processing like rotation, zoom, crop, etc. And to add to that, the time given to us was just 7hrs : From 11(the time when class ended) to 6pm. We were to meet at 6'0 clock in the evening to integrate all codes to develop the final library.
But as you might have guessed, we are used to postponements, and no one completed it. And its not only abt getting used to postponement, but the task given was so big that its bound to take time however sincerely you work. Ohh.. I forgot to mention Paresh Jain sir was also there in today's lecture and he showed us some example programs on how to read/write various image formats. So now he came at the 6pm meeting to integrate our codes. He was pretty surprised to see that we haven't done anything. I guess he has now got used to CVIT so he was surprised that we did almost nothing ;) Ok, but finally at the end Rasagna got postponement till tomorrow morning from Prof. Jawahar(he had to go to J's house to ask for it). But still so less time. I wonder if any one would be able to complete it by tomorrow morning.
I guess for the next 2 and half months(or even more?) we are going to be screwed badly. But atleast we can say onething ,As Prof PJN put it "We are VIP people" :D
VIP = Visual Information Processing people :D
PS : Does blogspot has smiley support ?

Technorati: cvit, summers, work

Made a Hit Counter, Edited Template and more ...

2006-04-16T16:55:00.000+05:30

[ Edit : I uploaded the image in .png format(a lossless format) and file size was just 159kb. But blogspot automatically converted it to .jpg and now the text looks blurred :( Any idea how to correct that ? ]
Since last 2 days I had been trying to make a hit counter. The reason being that my original hit counter is now disabled. They say that I have used their counter for more than 6 months and I need to subscribe to payed service if I want to use it anymore. LOL at them. (I m referring to that free counter site as they/them coz I forgot its name. It was some flaxmconsultancy something.)
So , why would I pay when there are plenty of more free counter sites ;;) . But then I thought why not make myself a free counter site.
Take a look at my site. It has more than 150 designs to choose from ;;)
The counter on my blog is now from my free site :D
Though it was pretty simple but took me some time coz of a lot of problems. I didn't know how to join images of digits to make a number. So I decided to use iframe and display all images side by side so that they look as one. But the default size of the iframe was too large. I could not use the width, height attributes as they would change as the number of digits in ur count increases and this width, height code has to be in user's site(which I can't change). So then I went back to the image joining idea. But How to join image? Nirnimesh sir told that I could use ImageMagick for that. But 200(for those who r not from iiit, 200 is the server on which all iiitians have their accounts and are allowed to host websites) does not have ImageMagick. So now my problem became complex. I had to join the images on my local machine and then send it to 200 from where the user will get the count image. For that I had to create a page on my local machine that would return a joined image given the counter design and the count. Now that required setting up a http server. So I had to do a lot of work and finally all is done and working fine.
I have also added almost all possible google adsense products. Hope I would earn something from it :D
Similar change done here also. Removed "about me" section and added google ads, google firefox with toolbar referal and google search button.
Now another idea is wandering in my mind(is the english OK? I doubt.). Now I m planning to create a website that would allow people to access our intranet sites from outside IIIT. That means u can access ftp servers too and the documentations and software at 150. The idea is same as that used by several anonymous proxy servers. Users will query my site on 200(which is accessible from outside) for a intranet site. My site will fetch and display the queried site.

PS : ImageMagick is really cool. It allows you to operate on images directly from command line. Also it has a wrapper interfaces for python, perl, php, java, c/c++, etc.
PS 1: Python rocks. It has a module for almost everything. U need to write very little code to get ur work done.

Technorati: technical, work, project, utilities, adsense, template

50% reservation - How's that ?

2006-04-06T21:27:00.000+05:30

Politicians can go to any level to fill their vote banks. Now govt. is introducing 27% reservation for OBCs in 20 Central Universities including IITs and IIMs and probably that may be later extended to private institutions like ours as well. Add to it the 22.5% already present for SC/ST - total 49.5% seats are reserved. And in the remaining 50.5%, remember that we also have 33% reservation for girls!!!. So that leaves just 33.835% of total seats for GENERAL boys. WTF???
Don't we had already so much reservation?
And first of all, I don't understand why a reservation on the basis of caste/community?
Everyone knows that the benifit of reservation goes only to the better ones of the caste. It should be rather based on economic backwardness rather than social, if at all it is. Or a better idea would be to provide scholarships to the economic backward right from the primary schools to the university level intead of providing reservations.
And when Congress is introducing it, no major party seems to be opposing as it may effect their vote banks. So, its left on us to stop the govt. from enforcing this rule. In fact, SMS protests have already started :-
"Think about it, if you're giving your Class XII exams or trying for a masters in JNU, 50 per cent of all the seats are reserved. Let's start a campaign against this insanity.
- Angry Students"
One good thing about OBC reservation is that the reservation does not cover "Creamy layer". Persons having gross annual income of Rs.2.50 lakh and above come under creamy layer. Still, 27% is too much. Why not make a creamy layer rule for SC/ST as well? I guess politicians can't do that as SC/ST have long enjoyed this reservation without this rule and will protest against a change whereas OBC reservation was introduced later and the creamy layer rule was from the begining itself. But still, the creamy layer rule can easily be abused by non-salaried people.

Technorati: reservation, India, personal, OBC

Google disqualified me

2006-03-24T21:24:00.000+05:30

Ok... so i m back to blogger's world. Actually i never left it, i read almost all blogs on smr's blogroll. But i had stopped writing myself.
So lets come to the topic. Google disqualified from Google India Code Jam for no reason(not exactly).
Actually i used three logins during the contest. Now, I don't know how they found out that. But I m frustrated because i didn't actually cheat. My original Topcoder ID is(or rather was, its deactivated now:( ) was sandy007smarty. I participated using this ID and submitted 1 question for 230.95 points. Then after some 3 hours or so , i used one of my friends ID to sign into the contest. But this time i just saw the questions of this set and didn't submit any code. Again after 1 hour or so i opened another ID and again didn't submit anything.
Now, google says(they mailed me) that its against their rule to use more than 1 login. And, therefore I m disqualified.

Now how did they found out that i was the one who used all 3 ids? I guess they extracted out my internal LAN IP because i opened all three logins from the same PC. But if they are smart enough to extract my internal IP, then don't they have the common sense to see that i didn't submit anything from other two IDs? Also the other two IDs I opened 3hrs after i submitted problems from my original id. So there is no case of cheating. Also what if some other person had participated from the same machine(its a lab PC, any1 can use) then we would both have been disqualified? This is not fair. And this is the case when they took almost 16 hrs to eliminate all cheaters and still couldn't eliminate all cheaters(there are ppl with score >249 out of 250) and falsely eliminated me.

I m not the only case. There is a guy from Dhaka who has solved around 1500 questions of ACM and is a acm tutor for his college, and google has disqalified him. See this link.Do u think a guy who solved 1500 ACM questions needs to cheat to get through the qualification round. Let me tell u that the 250 point question was really really easy(i did it in 7 mins). And the cut-off was 91, which means a guy who takes around 50-55 mins to solve such a easy question has also qualified.
Whatever, i m disqlaified and would take care that i don't do such stupid things next time.
PS: I mailed them and told them to check my past performance in Topcoder's SRMs and see that I could easily solve that question without any cheating. But their reply was negative.

Technorati: google, TopCoder, programming, contests, personal, life

High-Level Nerd

2005-10-22T18:55:00.000+05:30

Technorati: personal, life, bakwas

Worries of a labcom

2005-09-16T18:50:00.000+05:30

Yesterday was a really really bad day for me. Had a row with one of my batchmates .... The culprit was neither him nor I, it was the whole ug2 batch.
I don't understand why r ppl stealing RAMs, graphic cards,etc. from the labs? There are two types of stealing currently going on :-

1. Stealing from one PC of lab and putting into another PC of lab: This is the most common type of stealing and is creating a hell for we labcoms(UG2). Every hour RAM goes missing from some PC and the owner then asks us ... This is exactly what happened today. Someone stole the RAM from the PC beside me. When the owner came , he asked me. So,what do I do ? .... Its not possible for me to open the cabinet of every system and see who has put an extra RAM into his.( it can be done without opening the cabinet also, but only if u can login into it, which requires password). I can check all the PCs once a day ... but not every time(almost 4 times a day) a owner ask for his missing RAM.
So, I made a temporary arrangement for the owner(whose RAM was missing), i.e took out RAM from one of the PCs that was not being used at that time. But just 15 mins later, the owner of this PC also came. Now he started accusing me and we had a row over it. What can labcoms do yaar ? We can't sit in the lab 24hrs guarding the PCs. We are just co-ordinators.

2. Stealing RAMs from lab PCs and putting into room PCs: This is less frequent but more serious. Two batches have already been fined 8K and 16K for thefts. I don't want that two happen to us also. If one can pay 1 lakh(approx) to be in iiit and can purchase a 35K PC, then what attraction does he/she finds in a 1.5K RAM. Also almost all ppl in room have 512 MB RAM. The full 512MB is rarely utilized even if u play very high demanding games. Then why the need for more ?

Solutions:-
Don't think that labcoms are just sitting idle. We(I,GN Aditya and Mohit Jain) already had 3 meetings with Prof. Vikram Pudi regarding thefts. We suggested putting locks in every cabinet. That was the best solution we could think of.(If anyone has better soln, plz let me know). Then after discussions with faculty, Prof. Pudi decided to implement doors with swipe cards in all labs. But what can swipe cards do if the ug2 students themselves are stealing ?(Prof. Pudi first thought that students from other labs or outsiders are stealing and the cost of locks for all PCs in iiit labs is equivalent to swipe card system). So we met him again and suggested plastic locks(like what we have in teaching labs PCs) which are cheaper. Now on Monday we have a meeting with all the faculty. Hope we get locks soon. In the meantime Prof. Pudi has assured us that he will provide some temporary seal to us.
Lets hope for the best.....

PS :- 1. We are also talking with faculty about keeping the lab open during night. Lets see what comes out.
2. Feel free to give any suggestions regarding betterment of our labs.

Todays Links:-
New Video Search Engine
Google Blog Search

Technorati: personal, life, iiit, labcom

UG1 vs UG2 Surprise!!!!!

2005-09-08T19:50:00.000+05:30

Yesterday we had a football match : ug1 main team VS ug2 Surprise - the people who seldom play football. But we still beat them..... yes we did beat.... and it was a very very very ... exciting match.
Our match was sheduled at 5pm and i don't know what enemity God Indra has with IIIT .... yes, it rained again ... not just drizzles but a full fledged rain. But see the excitement of UG2 surprise .... we still wanted to play and reached the ground 10 mins before. But alas !!, the excitement was not with the ug1 ppl. So what to do ?? ... We were fully drenched with water and there was no point in going back. we started playing amongst us .... and then ... we saw a ray of hope ... a ug1 was coming. We caught him and sent him to call the ug1 football team. And then after waiting for ages .... ug1 ppl started coming 1 by 1 ... after around one and half hours, the match finally started .
Every one played with full enthusiasam and first,we scored a goal (luckily it was me :) ). But then, they fought back and soon it was 1-1. Then we scored again ... Dhruvan took a nice header off a corner kick (i took the corner kick :)) and we were 2-1. Then till the end we were at the top, but ..... just 30 seconds before the match was supposed to end ... they scored.....so 2-2 now.
So what next ? .. played 5 mins more but with no result. Then came the penalty ... and with the Xtra quick reflexes of our goalkeeper Mohit Jain, WE WON, hurrah!!!!!!!!!!!.

But that was not all, before we could realise, we were out in the rain , fully drenched for more than 2 hours. So , I got fever and had to take paracetamol to bring down my temperature.

Oh! I forgot to mention others. Our team captain was Abheet Bharti, who made sure that every aspiring UG2 got a chance to play, sometimes in place of himself. Our other goalkeeper, Sankalp Mulye aka sikka has a few nice saves to his credit. Then, Gaurav Ruhela, whose breath taking last penalty made us win the game. Sandeep Saini and Ankur Singla(singla scored in penalty as well) did a nice job as defender. Saini made quite a few nice clearances. Anuj, Sumit,Abhay all did a gr8 job in defence and midfield. Dhruvan(not to forget his nice header), Rahul Chauhan and S Rahul were wonderful strikers.

This was the one of the best matches we ever played...... .

Technorati: personal, life, iiit, football

Projects and my Wishlist

2005-09-07T00:40:00.000+05:30

So finally we all(ug2,iiit hyd) have been alotted ITWS-3 projects. Some got their first preference, some 2nd and some none. Some are curious whereas some are frightened.
The main purpose of my writing this blog was to write about my friend Abheet Bharti and his poor luck with the ITWS-3 project. He got none of the five preferences that he chose. Ask Why? Because he has the first roll number(200401001) in our batch. Prof. Vikram Pudi, in his mail, used his roll number as an example to explain us the format in which we have to submit our preferences through mail. So everyone replied to that mail. But the example was written in almost every one's mail( because they all also included the original message by pudi in their reply). So when our gr8(no offence intended) professor used 'grep' to extract the preferences out of the mails, abheet's preferences where extracted as the one in the example and not his original one. And alas!! he didn't want any of these projects.
Then he went to the proff. and compalined. Pudi said "I can't do anything now. You have to choose one of the remaining projects." So Abheet finally got the 'Robosoccer Project'.
But alas! his nightmares didn't end here. When the remaining allotment list was announced, Abheet got some other project!!!!! .......... Bad Luck.
.....Payed the price of being the first :)

Ok. now see again the topic of this blog .... It says something else also apart from projects. MY WISHLIST. These are the things( actually programs, softwares.etc) that i intend to make. Not under any proff. but myself. My wishlist is quite long and i m only describing here about the first object in my wishlist :-
The IIIT Search Engine
Well, i know many readymade softwares must be already there for LANs such as ours or maybe google itself is more than enough ... but I am making it out of my curiosity and blablabla(i m not getting correct word to describe. After all i got only B- in English :) ).
So today i did a bit of research on it. In fact i was doing this for last few days. But today i got a kind of breakthrough. I made out how to parse html scripts to extract out relevant information on it. It could be very easily done by httplib module of python. Python is great. It has something for everything. Now my next task is find out how to store all the data and index them.

Ok now I will stop. Rest of wishlist will be unleashed in coming blogs.

PS:- All wishes do not come true. :)

Technorati: project, work, technical, iiit

So Called IIIT Football Ground

2005-08-24T23:29:00.000+05:30

I have two marks on my legs :- one on my right knee and the other on the left. One I got in a serious accident when my scooter skidded on a rainy day at a high speed on a sharp turn .... and the other .... in our Football Ground last year during 4*100 m relay race. ... and both look alike. This shows the severity of the problem.
And it happens almost daily that someone gets hurt. Yesterday only, one of my friends ( he is in our college football team) fell down and hurt his right palm ... and the midsems are approaching.
The IIIT Football ground isn't worthy of being called a ground at all. Its a desert( i really mean it). Has loads of sand and stones. I complained to the Sports Council last year .. but with no effect. I only got a reply that :" I agree with you. We will think about it. "
In the discussion forum, someone said to "plant grass on it during the summer vacation". But how can grasses grow in sand ?? We had enough rains both this year and last year , and yet u can see how much grass the ground has. The soil is the problem . Its because of the sandy soil that grasses don't grow and its again because of the soil that we get hurt severely. If u fall and ur hands skid/slide on it, the sand particles cut through the skin and aggravates the wound. Therefore i suggest that the soil should be replaced. And for this we don't need to wait till a vacation as we need in case of growing grasses.
I think the campus green club can take this issue. I am also mailing to Sports Council. Hope this year they will do something.

Technorati: personal, iiit, life, football

My Second Blog

2005-08-16T23:55:00.000+05:30

Hey, I assure u my netxt blog's title won't be "My Third Blog". I wasn't getting any nice title .. so i used this one. So this my second blog only ... and i m out of thoughts. I dont know what to write.
Lets start with CZ. As u might have guessed, i won't have written abt CZ if i hadn't played it well today. Today i played really well and thrashed all others. I payed de_dust_2 and awp .Today i was thinking abt doing my ITWS assignment( shelve address program thru web based interface). But i couldn't do it because of CZ. Sill i searched somethings on Gooole and i got a site which provides some custom templates to u..... well i didn't like it much.. but u can check it out
..here.
Hey man , i dont know what to write ..... bye

Technorati: blogger, blogspot, blogging, personal

My first blog

2005-08-16T12:00:00.000+05:30

Hey, today i read several people's blogs ( startes with smr's ) and finally shifted to the "BLOGGERS'S GROUP" from the group of "NON BLOGGERS". SMR's blog is really nice and it inspired me. Earlier, i used to always comment on one of my friends(Bharat) that only chutiya's blog... but now ... what r u thinking ??? .... i m not a chutiya... I have changed . I beleive :-
"CHUTIYAS DON'T BLOG".
Ok enough for today .. as i have already wriiten a lot of comments on Bharat's, sikka's, etc blogs.
So BLOGGERS JINDABAD!!!

Ps: Hey no offence meant. If u dont like , don't read my blogs in future.

Technorati: blogger, blogspot, blogging, personal