Well..... it seems I'm motivated to write another post, when it gets too irritating to keep something locked up in my head.
Guess this is the place where I can let it all out.....
The third year of my college just started a few days back, and it's been quite a long time since my last post.....
We came to campus to find that there was no internet here for the first three days. Today is the first day of Internet in this semester.
There was a notice put up in our hostels today which stated the following...
In order to provide good internet speed to all students, the net timings would be as follows:
5 pm - 7 pm - C Wing Hostels
7 pm - 9 pm - A Wing Hostels
9 pm - 11pm - C Wing Hostels
11pm - 1 am - A Wing Hostels
1 am - 8 am - All Hostels
Now, the internet problem has been existent in BITS since a long time, but I honestly do not think that rationing out the net like this is the solution. The network admins should instead improve the infrastructure, and probably increase the number and efficiency of the proxy servers. Even now, they fail to configure all four proxies for each wing. Instead they give only two proxies, resulting in the same effect, so there really isn't much difference in the internet speed in the end.
One can probably start by reading thru the man file of squid, I guess that will be quite helpful. Other than that, when it comes to the download size restriction, I think that it should be increased from 5 mb to atleast 50 mb, taking into consideration that most driver download files (for example, the NVIDIA driver for linux) are more than 5 mb in size.
And as far as the timings go, I personally feel that they are very unsuitable for the A Wing side. Dinner usually starts at 8pm, so if we need to access the internet, we either need to skip dinnes, or stay awake late at night after 11 to access the internet, while the C Wing side gets internet after snacks, i.e. at 5 pm and after dinner, i.e. from 9pm to 11 pm.
Kudos to the network administrators.....
Thats it for now,
More later when I get another internet slot......
Monday, August 4, 2008
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Quark '08 and Natasha
Its been a while.......
College ain't simple.. at least in Year 2 Sem 2......
Lotsa things to do.... reports... n assignments.... n projects..... hardly any time....
Waves '08 is here... and thankfully it gives me a bubble of time to breathe and live for myself instead of my CGPA (which keeps falling down no matter how hard you try to bring it up)
Its about time I wrote something to polish my non-existent English writing skills so here I go...
Many people have written various articles about Quark '08 so I'll make mine a little different and write about my contribution rather than Quark '08 in general
Quark is our college tech fest....
This year we wanted to make it legendary so the preparations had begun well in advance......
The organising committee this year had analysed the drawbacks and problems which had occurred at Quark last year and intended to make this year's Quark smooth and problem free....
Rewind to the beginning of Year 2 Sem 1
I had been for some while tried to learn PHP (its a language used to make dynamic web pages) following which I had made some simple web pages and a couple of small projects.....
Theres another friend into web development, I'll call him Han here (I just don't like to put down names in a public place). He's done a couple of good projects in PHP, Javascript, AJAX, CSS etc etc (Yeah I know its greek.... It's Greek to me too....)
Seeing our interest in the field, we were contacted by the CO of Quark '08 and asked to make an Content Management software (alike Joomla... if u dunno what Joomla is... plz Google it)
The CO being a really good programmer himself, gave us some tips on the database structure, and how the various modules should be designed.....
We were jobless anyway, so we started work right away.
Since I possessed lesser skills than Han, we decided that I build the smaller modules and some bigger ones, and he does the rest of them and the most important part of design and putting them all together.....
So we started planning our modules one by one and coding them......
The nature of PHP (no debugging tools available, and not too many ready made modules) made my task a handful (coding for the same things over and over again isn't exactly enjoyable) This led to a loss of enthusiasm at many times... But we came back, taking a break for a couple of weeks whenever we thought it was getting too boring to code....
All this lasted for almost one semester...... Then began the part of putting it all together....... Designing and testing.....
Since our modules were coded from scratch and there was no prebuilt code used..... we knew our code inside out and so there weren't any (noticeable) bugs.....
Once the designing was done, we named it Natasha (I really dunno why... It was Han's idea, but I like the name anyway..... Reminds me of my days in school - only a few will know what I'm talking about).......
After showing it to the Info Man in charge.... and implementing other modules as necessary, we had a fully functional event management system ready......
We then integrated the registration data from the Internet web site of Quark, to give us a complete database of everything related to Quark.
Natasha was used at the main gate to register and give accommodation to all students who were visiting our campus during Quark.
Later, we had a plasma screen in the B-Dome which showed how many students had come in from outside the campus, which events were scheduled for the day, the status of the events, (based on the status set by the event managers) a scrolling marquee showing News at Quark '08
and also the cricket score......
All's well but however, all this took a little more time than we had expected to, so we had no time for all the Event Managers to get familiar with it...... leading to the old pen n paper method...... anyway..... at least the CS/IS event managers used Natasha and were quite pleased with the functionality...
We received some good feedback (most of it being - It's too complicated to use - Papad Rule in play, so it was pretty obvious)
Well, atleast people now know that something like Natasha existed, and in all probability will be used next year too.... so they'll learn to use it well before...
However, I'm bored of web development (I'm more of a programmer than a designer) and I may not be fixing and coding Natasha next time, so I request anyone who is interested (seniors, juniors, anyone) to work on Natasha to contact me or Han... skills required will be any or all of PHP, Javascript, HTML, AJAX, CSS...
Even if you don't know any of the above, it all can be learnt in a matter of a few weeks of dedicated effort and willingness to learn......
I assure you working on Natasha will be a highly educational (and maybe entertaining) experience
Looking forward to the next Quark......
Cheers!!!
College ain't simple.. at least in Year 2 Sem 2......
Lotsa things to do.... reports... n assignments.... n projects..... hardly any time....
Waves '08 is here... and thankfully it gives me a bubble of time to breathe and live for myself instead of my CGPA (which keeps falling down no matter how hard you try to bring it up)
Its about time I wrote something to polish my non-existent English writing skills so here I go...
Many people have written various articles about Quark '08 so I'll make mine a little different and write about my contribution rather than Quark '08 in general
Quark is our college tech fest....
This year we wanted to make it legendary so the preparations had begun well in advance......
The organising committee this year had analysed the drawbacks and problems which had occurred at Quark last year and intended to make this year's Quark smooth and problem free....
Rewind to the beginning of Year 2 Sem 1
I had been for some while tried to learn PHP (its a language used to make dynamic web pages) following which I had made some simple web pages and a couple of small projects.....
Theres another friend into web development, I'll call him Han here (I just don't like to put down names in a public place). He's done a couple of good projects in PHP, Javascript, AJAX, CSS etc etc (Yeah I know its greek.... It's Greek to me too....)
Seeing our interest in the field, we were contacted by the CO of Quark '08 and asked to make an Content Management software (alike Joomla... if u dunno what Joomla is... plz Google it)
The CO being a really good programmer himself, gave us some tips on the database structure, and how the various modules should be designed.....
We were jobless anyway, so we started work right away.
Since I possessed lesser skills than Han, we decided that I build the smaller modules and some bigger ones, and he does the rest of them and the most important part of design and putting them all together.....
So we started planning our modules one by one and coding them......
The nature of PHP (no debugging tools available, and not too many ready made modules) made my task a handful (coding for the same things over and over again isn't exactly enjoyable) This led to a loss of enthusiasm at many times... But we came back, taking a break for a couple of weeks whenever we thought it was getting too boring to code....
All this lasted for almost one semester...... Then began the part of putting it all together....... Designing and testing.....
Since our modules were coded from scratch and there was no prebuilt code used..... we knew our code inside out and so there weren't any (noticeable) bugs.....
Once the designing was done, we named it Natasha (I really dunno why... It was Han's idea, but I like the name anyway..... Reminds me of my days in school - only a few will know what I'm talking about).......
After showing it to the Info Man in charge.... and implementing other modules as necessary, we had a fully functional event management system ready......
We then integrated the registration data from the Internet web site of Quark, to give us a complete database of everything related to Quark.
Natasha was used at the main gate to register and give accommodation to all students who were visiting our campus during Quark.
Later, we had a plasma screen in the B-Dome which showed how many students had come in from outside the campus, which events were scheduled for the day, the status of the events, (based on the status set by the event managers) a scrolling marquee showing News at Quark '08
and also the cricket score......
All's well but however, all this took a little more time than we had expected to, so we had no time for all the Event Managers to get familiar with it...... leading to the old pen n paper method...... anyway..... at least the CS/IS event managers used Natasha and were quite pleased with the functionality...
We received some good feedback (most of it being - It's too complicated to use - Papad Rule in play, so it was pretty obvious)
Well, atleast people now know that something like Natasha existed, and in all probability will be used next year too.... so they'll learn to use it well before...
However, I'm bored of web development (I'm more of a programmer than a designer) and I may not be fixing and coding Natasha next time, so I request anyone who is interested (seniors, juniors, anyone) to work on Natasha to contact me or Han... skills required will be any or all of PHP, Javascript, HTML, AJAX, CSS...
Even if you don't know any of the above, it all can be learnt in a matter of a few weeks of dedicated effort and willingness to learn......
I assure you working on Natasha will be a highly educational (and maybe entertaining) experience
Looking forward to the next Quark......
Cheers!!!
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Water in a Tubelight
Captured on the train while coming back to campus. There's water in the tubelight, and its a wonder how the tubelight hasn't short-circuited yet. Here's 'Nisarg Saundarya' (Nature's Beauty) for you VAB, not outside the train but but right inside it........ :)
Cube Hunt
Puzzles have always fascinated me right since childhood. I have solved a variety of puzzles available at the local toy shops back home. On the second last day of college before a Diwali break, I was in a friend's room chatting with him when I saw a puzzle there which I had been unsuccessful at solving a long time.The Rubik's Cube, one of the oldest puzzles available and also one of the most popular, was lying on his desk. Suddenly, my interest in it was rekindled, and I just had to buy a cube and learn how to solve it.
As soon as I got home, the first thing I did was get myself a cube from a local fair. The cube wasn't of a very high quality, but was decent enough to learn how to solve.
Jump to a month later.....
I had bought a cube but due to the busy exam schedule, I hadn't got an opportunity to actually analyse and solve it properly, though I had tried to play with it for a couple of minutes whenever I got the time.
Finally, after trying repeatedly to unsuccessfully solve the cube, I turned to Google™ for help. Finding a tutorial was simple enough. During the journey back home, I finally learned to solve the cube, but was still a little shaky.
During the vacations, I could finally perfect my technique but ended up spoiling the cube in the process......
Here's where the cube hunt began.....
I wanted a cube that was of a better quality that I already had. The first place I thought of was the toy store from where I used to buy all my puzzles a long time ago. However, unfortunately, the store had only one cube, but that was of a very low quality, compared to my cube.....
I tried going to a few more shops in the vicinity, but there I had trouble even getting the shopkeeper to understand what a Rubik's Cube is.
I had to visit my relatives in a neighbouring town. I tried visiting all the major shops there too, but to no avail....
Finally, there was one last shop left which I thought might be having a good cube for sale.....
I go there and find that all their cubes were sold out just two days ago. I asked the shopkeeper when new stock would arrive, and he told me that I would get a cube in a week....
Now the problem was that the vacation was almost over, and I had to return two days later, and hence my dream for a better cube remained a dream.
Hopefully, I will be luckier next vacation and will finally be able to procure a cube, and continue learning to solve it faster than the basic method I am now familiar with.
Until I get a new cube.........
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
The Start of Something New
These winter vacations, as with any other vacation, I was looking for something new to do and increase my exposure and give me more experience. In college, a few introductory lectures had been delivered by our seniors on "Microcontrollers".
I knew an old friend (old as in the duration of our friendship, not his age ;) ) who had some exposure in the Electronics and Robotics field, and I asked him to guide me as I built a programming board for a microcontroller.
He knew about the Atmel AT89S52 microcontroller, so it was the same microcontroller I chose.
I asked him to make me a list of all the components I would need to make the board and I bought all the components from the "Mecca of Electronics" a.k.a. Lamington Road.
I already had the basic electronic stuff such as soldering iron, flux, rainbow wire and the various tools with me as I had been making electronic kits (simple stuff like clap switch and listening bug etc...) since as back as 9th grade.
Soldering all he components onto the board took about a day at max, when I realised that I was a few components short, leading to another trip to Lamington Road (This happens quite often in electronics)
Finally when I had all the components ready and soldered, I went to his house at 2pm on one fine day, so that he could do the touchups , check the circuit board and help me begin programming.
As with any electronics kit, this one also had a few problems and believe me hardware debugging is a lot more irritating than software debugging. The power was not at all reaching the 7805 transistor, so I had to desolder it and put a new one in its place.
Pray to God that you never may need to desolder a component off a board...... It is the worst thing that can happen to you in electronics......
Now, back to the board..... Even after replacing the 7805, the power did not reach it so we came to the conclusion that the track was faulty...... We shorted the track, and another track and finally the circuit began to work.
By this time it was 11pm so he quickly showed me the way to write a program and burn it on the chip (we did not have time to do it then.....). Then I said a quick bye and thank you and left for home........
The next day, I decided to try making my own program. The first challenge was getting Keil and the burning program he had referred to to make the programming wire. Finding these took 2 hours together, after which I finally sat down with a Mazidi Mazidi to try out a sample program.
Using Keil was simple enough but then burning the hex code to the chip was more of a problem than it seemed. It seemed that errors while occuring randomly while programming the chip. I finally realised that holding the board in the air while the programming took place was the most secure and error free way to burn the program onto the chip.
I wrote a simple LED blinking program to begin with, and the burning was finally successful and I actually saw the LEDs blinking in the way that I had programmed them to. It was an exhilarating feeling. It was like the first time I did something new and worthwhile in a long time.
Such moments are very rare and can never be forgotten....
I may forget which microcontroller I used but I definitely won't forget the sheer thrill and joy that rushed through me when I could make a computer program do something in real life.
These moments usually occur like the time one learns to ride a bicycle, or writes his or her name using a mouse in Paint on a computer for the first time etc......
Such moments are truly magical and will be treasured by me forever....................
I knew an old friend (old as in the duration of our friendship, not his age ;) ) who had some exposure in the Electronics and Robotics field, and I asked him to guide me as I built a programming board for a microcontroller.
He knew about the Atmel AT89S52 microcontroller, so it was the same microcontroller I chose.
I asked him to make me a list of all the components I would need to make the board and I bought all the components from the "Mecca of Electronics" a.k.a. Lamington Road.
I already had the basic electronic stuff such as soldering iron, flux, rainbow wire and the various tools with me as I had been making electronic kits (simple stuff like clap switch and listening bug etc...) since as back as 9th grade.
Soldering all he components onto the board took about a day at max, when I realised that I was a few components short, leading to another trip to Lamington Road (This happens quite often in electronics)
Finally when I had all the components ready and soldered, I went to his house at 2pm on one fine day, so that he could do the touchups , check the circuit board and help me begin programming.
As with any electronics kit, this one also had a few problems and believe me hardware debugging is a lot more irritating than software debugging. The power was not at all reaching the 7805 transistor, so I had to desolder it and put a new one in its place.
Pray to God that you never may need to desolder a component off a board...... It is the worst thing that can happen to you in electronics......
Now, back to the board..... Even after replacing the 7805, the power did not reach it so we came to the conclusion that the track was faulty...... We shorted the track, and another track and finally the circuit began to work.
By this time it was 11pm so he quickly showed me the way to write a program and burn it on the chip (we did not have time to do it then.....). Then I said a quick bye and thank you and left for home........
The next day, I decided to try making my own program. The first challenge was getting Keil and the burning program he had referred to to make the programming wire. Finding these took 2 hours together, after which I finally sat down with a Mazidi Mazidi to try out a sample program.
Using Keil was simple enough but then burning the hex code to the chip was more of a problem than it seemed. It seemed that errors while occuring randomly while programming the chip. I finally realised that holding the board in the air while the programming took place was the most secure and error free way to burn the program onto the chip.
I wrote a simple LED blinking program to begin with, and the burning was finally successful and I actually saw the LEDs blinking in the way that I had programmed them to. It was an exhilarating feeling. It was like the first time I did something new and worthwhile in a long time.
Such moments are very rare and can never be forgotten....
I may forget which microcontroller I used but I definitely won't forget the sheer thrill and joy that rushed through me when I could make a computer program do something in real life.
These moments usually occur like the time one learns to ride a bicycle, or writes his or her name using a mouse in Paint on a computer for the first time etc......
Such moments are truly magical and will be treasured by me forever....................
Friday, December 21, 2007
Christmas Concert 2k7 @ BSS
It has been four years now......
I still remember the day I last performed on stage as a part of out Christmas Concert in school, my School - BSS.......
It was so much fun and excitement - eight of us, all hefty, dressed completely in black and present on the stage during the whole Std. 10 segment of the show...... technically the main characters of the complete skit showing the circle of life starting right from birth, childhood, adolescence, love, adulthood, marriage, parenthood and ultimately death...... and our part was to depict the way they changed us as each of them occurred.......
Fast forward four years....
Here I am sitting in the audience on Day 3, watching the grand Christmas Concert as it unfolds before me, the way it used to for so many years, with my sister performing for the last time on stage, the same stage I last performed on four years ago. All the dances, the themes, the performances..... all sparkling.
It was exactly the same... the same as it was in our time, except for a few minor changes I would not like to go into..... The same kind of performances, energetic and enthusiastic, with makeup on their faces.......
All the students coming together to make the show a grand success......
There is so much more I would like to express but I'm just not able to put it into words....... so that'll be it for now.......
Later.............
I still remember the day I last performed on stage as a part of out Christmas Concert in school, my School - BSS.......
It was so much fun and excitement - eight of us, all hefty, dressed completely in black and present on the stage during the whole Std. 10 segment of the show...... technically the main characters of the complete skit showing the circle of life starting right from birth, childhood, adolescence, love, adulthood, marriage, parenthood and ultimately death...... and our part was to depict the way they changed us as each of them occurred.......
Fast forward four years....
Here I am sitting in the audience on Day 3, watching the grand Christmas Concert as it unfolds before me, the way it used to for so many years, with my sister performing for the last time on stage, the same stage I last performed on four years ago. All the dances, the themes, the performances..... all sparkling.
It was exactly the same... the same as it was in our time, except for a few minor changes I would not like to go into..... The same kind of performances, energetic and enthusiastic, with makeup on their faces.......
All the students coming together to make the show a grand success......
There is so much more I would like to express but I'm just not able to put it into words....... so that'll be it for now.......
Later.............
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