Posts from — December 2007

Today I attended ilugHyderabad’s meet. It was once again the under-renovation building at Osmania University that now looks good from the outside. However, after another “brush” with the wall, my favourite jacket was “whitened”. I got to meet the CEO of rknowsys and seemingly rknowsys has a ruby on rails tutorial on its page. I am however not going to try ruby. Not after what I got when I first installed it. I know that most of the problems I faced were due to a very recent version of rails. With Rails2, scaffolding’s gone and so’s a lot more as per what theju says (remember, theju’s dad is an ROR developer)

This has been my least productive month. I have been so busy writing those essays and whatnot and now I am pretty much harried. I need a good break for a week. I have dad’s pdf application to roll out and I’ve got timepass to work on and I have Brown’s essay to submit. But je suis robust dans la tete !

I got to see DP110 after a very long while on IRC. Actually DP110’s beowulf cluster hosted my blog last year. After his server was sold, I lost my blog + kernels I compiled on it.

I have a bad headache now. I’ll write again later.

I am a Hindu, so what? I take every opportunity to celebrate. So I went with my dad to one of these eateries that exemplifies the “Today pleasure, tomorrow diarrhoea” category. Well I don’t actually have diarrhoea now but what happened in the morning was … well figure it out.

Later that day my dad came into my room to have a look at what I was doing. I was working on “timepass”, a web application that plans to do many things I am not too sure of (http://launchpad.net/timepass). He showed me an external drive and told me that the he was not allowed to access directories one level below the root directory of the device. He plugged it into his laptop (a gleaming Dell Inspiron) and showed me. I was stumped, FAT32 drives and no permissions ? I remember that something similar had occurred once upon a time with my iPod as well. I decided to work on this. I had two possible ideas about what could go wrong:

1. Drivelocks (we can’t do much apart from call the vendor of the drive and pray that he gives the password to us)

2. Filesystem needs repair. This could be done easily using the command “dosfsck -a <device>”.

I asked my dad about the drive. It was a Toshiba make and was the HD in his previous Compaq laptop. After this I knew what was wrong, drivelocks. I don’t know if drivelocks can be repaired with dosfsck and I decided to give it a try. I plugged it into my laptop (runs Debian remember) and it got mounted. I could even navigate as per my wish!

This leads us to conclude one thing: “Linux doesn’t give a damn about drivelocks”!

I offered my dad to do a direct dump using the dd command. I had a 200 gig maxtor and after a period of more than 15 minutes, the copying was done. I get to keep the new drive and my dad gets the previous drive. He had quite important stuff in there. Most of them pertaining to his work (designs and blah blah).

I don’t know what impact this blog has in the IT world but if Toshiba reads this, they are going to <censored> bricks.

After that I got to look at software my dad uses to design stuff. There was Staad Pro, Tekla Structures XSteel and something called DTH. He was talking about productivity as I saw him swiftly create figures that made no sense to me (he is building a port so I am not expected to have any idea about it).

I am submitting all my essays tomorrow. Man, it really gives me the jitters. There is something about this admissions process that makes me feel like “someone cares”. Is it true? Does someone care if you are a geek at 16. Does someone care if your mouth waters if you look at Apple’s 10 TB storage rack ? Does someone care if you broke both your bones and almost lost your life, prepared for the class 10 boards without going to school for a major part of the year and carried the injury to class 11?

The answer is: yes. Someone cares. Someone really important cares. I am going to click on the “Submit” button tomorrow and I feel priviliged to do so. I really cannot believe that a college from which Claude Shannon graduated is going to read my application, a college where Google finds its roots is going to read my application, or a college where Raj Reddy sits, is going to read my application. It is just too elite to think of. All I can do is thank those who have made this possible, dad, mom etc.

I am getting too emotional now and my blog posts suck if I get too emotional. I will write again later.

My father came two days ago from Lagos. After the ceremonial procedures, I got him to show me the state of the site he was working on and the pictures of Amsterdam - he was there for a few days before he came here. My dad gave me his Sony Cybershot camera and also the domain http://shriphani.com . Hence my blog’s residence is here.

I’ve almost finished my essays etc. I think I will be free to work on my web application after that.

I got a mail from Pavithran S. recently. He says that there will be a mukt.in meeting on the 30th at Osmania University’s Astronomy building and I have to make myself visible there. From what I gather on iLugHyd’s forums, there is a meeting on the 30th as well. And the topic….. Rapid Web Applications with Ruby on Rails !!! This will give me the chance to learn more about Ruby and the Rails framework which seemingly is undergoing drastic changes in the soon-to-be released version 2. I tried ROR myself some time back and found that scaffolds don’t work with rails 1.99. Open source software’s biggest drawback is the lack of backward compatibility. I supposed developers have to take backward compatibility seriously. Entire applications need to be rewritten thanks to these huge changes that are incorporated into the new releases.

Dad has a few problems looking at pdf files on his Treo. Seemingly files over 1 MB in size do not appear in full resolution. I have a solution with me right now and I shall put it here in the next post.

I wrote this post right after I woke up and hence my grammar/spelling/ might not be correct.

I rushed back home today to finish the CMU Essay and as usual checked my Gmail Inbox and I saw a mail from Steve Holden there !!. It reads:

Dear Student:

Congratulations! One or more of your submissions under the Google Highly
Open Participation contest has been deemed to be of high enough quality
to be incorporated into the Python distribution.

So my work at the GHOP( task 165: Python on Unix is accepted !!!

For those who want to verify this, I uploaded the document to the discussions page and it is over here.
I hope I get the all important t-shirt from them. I’ve got to fill a form and fax it to them. This is one email which won’t find its way to the Trash directory.

I am about to finish my essays and this blog might be devoid of the enthusiasm I put in my posts. So please bear with me.

Well, I was browsing around in /etc/init.d and I found this:

shriphani@psp-laptop:/etc/init.d$ ls -ltotal 368

\-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1386 Sep 13  2006 README

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1850 Jan 14  2006 acpid

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5884 Feb 26  2007 alsa

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8710 Jan 12  2007 alsa-utils

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4886 Jun 18 01:42 apache2

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  969 Jan  3  2006 atd

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4318 Mar 17  2007 avahi-daemon

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1109 Oct 27  2005 binfmt-support

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2803 Oct 18  2006 bittorrent

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5089 Sep 20  2006 bootclean

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2146 Sep 13  2006 bootlogd

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1915 Sep 20  2006 bootmisc.sh

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2930 Sep 14  2006 checkfs.sh

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 9548 Sep 23  2006 checkroot.sh

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 6110 Sep  5  2006 console-screen.sh

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1693 Oct 21 18:35 cpufrequtils

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1761 Oct 13  2006 cron

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1977 Feb  2  2007 cupsys

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2760 Dec 13  2006 dbus

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1753 Oct  8  2006 dirmngr

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5984 Oct 23  2006 discover

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1196 Sep  3  2006 festival

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1833 Dec 15  2006 gdm

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5823 Jul 31 02:09 glibc.sh

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1360 Jan 14  2007 halt

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1287 Sep 13  2006 hostname.sh

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3886 Feb 21  2007 hwclock.sh

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2518 Sep 15  2006 ifupdown

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1046 Sep 15  2006 ifupdown-clean

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5119 Sep 21 21:39 kdm

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3484 Oct 16  2006 keymap.sh

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  944 Sep 13  2006 killprocs

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1375 May 25  2006 klogd

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  417 Aug  9  2006 libdevmapper1.02

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1060 Jan 29  2007 lisa

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  421 Mar  5  2007 lm-sensors

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1054 Sep  7  2006 makedev

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1793 Nov 14  2006 module-init-tools

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  617 Jan 15  2006 mountall-bootclean.sh

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1718 Sep 13  2006 mountall.sh

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2206 Oct  3  2006 mountdevsubfs.sh

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2394 Sep 25  2006 mountkernfs.sh

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  615 Jan 15  2006 mountnfs-bootclean.sh

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2299 Nov 26  2006 mountnfs.sh

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3668 Nov 26  2006 mtab.sh

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2550 Jan  6  2007 networking

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 6644 May 16  2007 nfs-common

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2324 Feb 26  2007 openbsd-inetd

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 6499 Oct 22  2006 pcmcia

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2350 Nov 27  2006 pcmciautils

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1525 Dec 22  2006 portmap

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  375 Mar 18  2007 pppd-dns

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  997 Sep 13  2006 procps.sh

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8045 Nov 28  2006 rc

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  798 Sep 28  2006 rc.local

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  117 Dec  2  2005 rcS

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  655 Sep 22  2006 reboot

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  994 Sep 13  2006 rmnologin

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4096 Jul 31 17:09 rsync

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  695 Mar  7  2007 screen-cleanup

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1376 Nov 28  2006 sendsigs

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  585 Sep 13  2006 single

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4187 Sep 13  2006 skeleton

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  520 Sep 13  2006 stop-bootlogd

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  730 Oct  2  2006 stop-bootlogd-single

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  541 Apr  7  2006 sudo

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2037 May 25  2006 sysklogd

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8178 Dec 19  2006 udev

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1252 Mar 28  2006 udev-mtab

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3175 Nov 25  2006 umountfs

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2128 Nov 26  2006 umountnfs.sh

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1122 Sep 30  2006 umountroot

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1815 Sep 13  2006 urandom

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1626 Oct  5  2006 wpa-ifupdown

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1805 Feb 13  2007 x11-common

shriphani@psp-laptop:/etc/init.d$

My current OS was installed on my laptop this November and here one can see that the timestamps date as back as 2005. This means that those files haven’t been tinkered with since 2005 by the developers ?

I was talking to Mr. Saifi Khan of TWINCLING some time back. He told me about a discussion he was engaged in with some geeks from Yahoo! (TM). Seemingly Web 3.0 would be released. I shook my head. Web 2.0 was such a pretentious name for trash. Mr. Saifi then told me that Web3.0 was UI + Wisdom. Then my cellphone’s (well, my mother’s) battery got dischared. I then began formulating ideas based on what I was told on the phone.

I was browsing MIT’s EECS Research Page (I am inclined towards CSE now, but who knows) and I saw something called Semantic Web by Prof. Tim Berners Lee. Semantic Web has the wisdom to operate on data. Here is what he has to say about semantic web:

using the WWW infrastructure to create a global, decentralized, weblike mesh of machine-processable knowledge. Please see my general page for information about other subjects.

The Semantic Web can be described as doing for Knowledge Representation what the Hypertext WWW did for hypertext. It part of the completion of the original dream of the Web. URIs and HTTP create a universal addressable space of information, allowing things to be given globally unique and dereferencable names. By relaxing traditional constraints of global consistency, we allow the system to grow to a global scale, maintaining local consistency.

I might mention that Prof. Tim Berners Lee’s “work” called Design Issues seems to be a good source for information on the dynamics of the World Wide Web. I actually want to work on this (if I do get the chance to that is). I am really busy nowadays. I will write again later.

I am particularly sad today. I didn’t attend the Open Source Roundup at TWINCLING Society. Well, lets forget it. I went to HPS Ramanthapur this morning as I had some free time. Seemingly Parag is holding some position of importance in the HPS prefectorial committee and so is Saurav. Saurav is as tall as me and is sprouting a beard. The school has a new principal who served in the Indian navy. I was surprised to see class 10 C (class 8 C when I was prefect) grow quite tall. What’s more, most of the teachers who taught me have resigned. But I did meet a few teachers.

BTW the NIPL wiki that was hosted on Argo which got closed recently has now been moved to another server and is up and running. Good news from the NIPL camp after some time.

Pavithran S. from NRCFOSS who works on KDE translations will be coming to Hyderabad on the 30th to talk about mukt.in. We plan to meet at Osmania University’s astronomy building again. This time our meeting will be aimed at mukt.in version 2. The mukt.in blog is being updated and artwork in flowing in. I have to make a few more stickers. I have been so busy with this admissions process.

I’ve got to go and draft those essays now.

Well, argo is closed and the URMS that was made on it is pretty much of no use now. I have hence planned to host it on google code. I feel bad whenever I look the work I did on Argo. Well here’s the application I made.

Today I returned a bit too late from FIITJEE considering that I had to give the evaluation forms to my teachers. After returning home, I picked up a book titled “An Unusual Algebra” by I.M. Yaglom. It is an excellent work that introduces Boolean algebra. I have finished half the book. Here is what I learned:

2 + 3 = 5

3 + 4 = 7

If we have sets like A, B and C and if we define addition to be union, and multiplication to be intersection, then we have the following properties associated with the operations addition and multiplication:

1. Commutative property:

A + B = B + A or A + C = C + A or B + C = C + B

AB = BA or AC = CA or BC = CB

2. Associative propery:

(A + B) + C = A + (B + C)

(AB)C = A(BC)

3. Distributive property:

(A + B)C = AC + BC

(A + C)(B + C) = AB + C

4. Idempotent property:

AA = A, BB = B and CC = C

A + A = A, B + B = B and C + C = C

So we go on to state that the operation “addition” and “multiplication” are to have the above properties and if we go on to apply this operation “addition” to a set of numbers {0, 1}, then we have the following:

0 + 1 = 1

0 + 0 = 0

1 + 1 = 1

1 + 0 = 1

Now these satisfy the properties stated above. There’s Boolean algebra in a nutshell.

I was then musing that those properties that we stated for sets form the peoperties for operations in Boolean algebra. However I did find a catch in that. We have what is known as the Identity element for addition and multiplication, 0 and 1 respectively. But there is no such set X such that X + A = A or XA = A. If there were such a set, it would be the superset of every set. There you go.

I need to learn a bit more. I will be posting more about this book here. Till then, goodbye

I finished my GHOP (Google Highly Open Participation) task a few days back. I was writing the docs for different unix platforms and it was nice to have a person from caltech monitoring my progress. I won’t say it was fun filled because it was not. I literally had to struggle to get those commands sorted out. I actually decided while writing the docs that I wouldn’t put in “./configure”, “make” and “make install”. I decided to put in useful links to help people prepare binaries for their own system. I will be getting the all important T-Shirt from them soon (hopefully). I do want to participate in a few more tasks. I actually picked a task a little too late and was left with the choice of talking on django or some other thing or writing docs. I went for the latter as both iLugH and TWINCLING won’t be meeting any time soon.

Now, I was thinking about the stickers for mukt.in yesterday. I didn’t know a lot about sticker design myself so I had to figure out something. I made myself a list of points to be kept in mind while designing a sticker. They are:

1. Imagine the object that the sticker will be stuck on. In our case, it might be cellphones (Superkiddo stuck a gnome sticker on his cellphone at mukt.in 1), laptops (I stuck two stickers on mine) and desktops (I don’t know who did this as there was only one desktop over there).

2. Pick a color that will go well on any laptop out there. My laptop is an acer travelmate with a brushed metallic finish on the keypad. A white background with a very professional font on it should look fine. A silver background seem too regular to me as the Intel inside crap or the “designed for windows xp” nonsense (it is on my toilet tank now) stickers come with silver backgrounds.

I got an idea about a firefox extension yesterday. I could make an extension that checks a website for change in content (The GHOP task page) and reports the new task through a popup. I will finish soon (hopefully)

rxKaffee, a dear friend on IRC gave me a free shell account on his new ubuntu server. Thanks rxKaffee.

Now the bad news, Argo (the server I worked on when I was at NIPL) has been permanently shut. I do remember the first time I dabbled with django on it. Made the User Request Management System on it and whatnot. Seemingly Sam Watkins (the owner of NIPL) is no longer able to generate funds for it. I am now free to provide the request management system to users. Probably it will be of use to someone somewhere. I will be putting it up today. I guess that this was inevitable considering the huge number of requests and the relatively low funds that came to the NIPL project.

Well, I will write again.