Visited the Jain temple

On the occassion of ending day of Jains' festival of "paryushan" we went to the temple at Aagapura (IIRC). The group included Abhay, Arpit, Rishab, Chaitanya and me. We took some photographs also.

The temple is a good/big one, with lots of pratimas, we were all excited by the idea of going to temple once in so long time. So the trip was more enjoyable. We also got addresses of other Jain temples in Hyderabad so we will think of visiting them soon.

Linear Algebra class test 2

It was again a sorrowful event for me, this time it was the worst ever as I had not ever clear understanding of the topics that were prerequisit for understanding the questions. I seriously think that sir will get annoyed by the crap that I have written.

Yesterday I got interested in reading the EJB pdf by Nova, Which looks to be a very good book to me, kept cutting time for the test and finally got screwed up today. Another great cause of disturbance was not being able to talk to any family member on phone.

Today we will have some discussion on our PR project.

Also I will give some project proposals to the PG guys for the ITWS1a course. Let see what turns up!!!

Campus Green Club Campus Roundup

We had a campus roundup organized by Campus Green Club, lead by Faculty Coordinator Dr PJN and Mrs Narayana. More reports and photographs are available at this link

It was a nice trip overall, many other ppl have expressed there desire to join us in the next trip. Let see how big the next trip comes out to be.

Finally for first app running on Symbian OS

Thanks to all fellows at the forum.nokia.com who have helped me a lot with all their answers specially sopta007 and symbianyucca.

I learnt some new things in all this exercise.
0) You need to change the target build through Project->Options, incase you want to make a deployable file for the hardware use the option armib release. For emulator Winsb options are used. You now need to make, it will do the processing then, like creating various intermediate and target files.
1) Basically a .aif file is needed by a application to show up on the main application menu in Symbian OS.
2) Since the software aif builder failed in creating all of the components( with the wierd error mesg "cpp.exe has terminated with error code 2" ), I manually created the AIF file for my project by copying format from an example.
3) Anyway the tool was good help for creating the .rss file in the directory which I set as output for the aif generation.
4) Some data that need to be given in AIF builder is the application UID which is the uid that tool provides in the .mmp file in the line.
UID 0x100039CE 0x101F5462
Now on I will use Red to mean something that is changed/need to be changed by me/programmer.
5) I have created a AIFdirectory in same level as Group, in this directory basically I copied the RSS file available in another application, it looked like this on after making the changes I named it CamTimerAIF.rss (used later).


#include

RESOURCE AIF_DATA
{
app_uid = 0x101F5462;
caption_list=
{
CAPTION
{
code = ELangEnglish;
caption = "CamTimer";
}
};
num_icons = 1;
embeddability=KAppNotEmbeddable;
newfile=KAppDoesNotSupportNewFile;
}

// End of File


Most probably the colored things are the one that you might need to change based on you application.
6) Note that the MMP file contains some information like

// Creates Mbm file.
START BITMAP CamTimer.mbm
HEADER
TARGETPATH \system\apps\CamTimer
SOURCEPATH ..\aif
SOURCE C12 CamTimer.bmp
END

AIF CamTimer.aif ..\aif CamTimerAif.rss c12 camTimer.bmp camTimer_mask.bmp

I have mostly modified data from an example to my needs, will diagonse more later on what things might mean here.
7) For this AIF directory had the fiels camtimer.bmp and camtimer_mask.bmp copied from the directory which contained the output of the NOKIA SDK tool used for creating image.
8) The PKG file looked like this at the end of the exercise.

; targetapp (CamTimer)
; target directory \Symbian\Series60_1_2_B\epoc32\release\armi\urel; Header
#{"CamTimer"},(0x101F5462),1,0,0,TYPE=SISAPP

;Supports Series 60 v 0.9
;This line indicates that this installation is for the Series 60 platform v0.9
;This line must appear _exactly_ as shown below in the sis file
;If this line is missing or incorrect, the sis file will not be able
;to be installed on Series 60 v0.9 platforms
(0x101F6F87), 0, 0, 0, {"Series60ProductID"}

; mmpfile: camtimer.mmp
; targets
; target: CamTimer.app
"\Symbian\Series60_1_2_B\epoc32\release\armi\urel\CamTimer.app"-"!:\system\apps\CamTimer\CamTimer.app"
; resources
; resource: ..\src\camtimer.rss
"\Symbian\Series60_1_2_B\epoc32\release\armi\urel\camtimer.rsc"-"!:\system\apps\CamTimer\camtimer.rsc"
; bitmaps
; bitmaps: CamTimer.mbm
"\Symbian\Series60_1_2_B\epoc32\release\armi\urel\CamTimer.mbm"-"!:\system\apps\CamTimer\CamTimer.mbm"
; languages
; aif files
"\Symbian\Series60_1_2_B\epoc32\release\armi\urel\CamTimer.aif"-"!:\system\apps\CamTimer\CamTimer.aif"

; end of pkg file

the tool Borland C++ Builder 6, with mobile produced automatically.

Finally you use the option Project->Make a Symbian Installation System. to get the sis made. In case the tool ask you to overwrite the pkg file in most cases you can allow it to do it, I make the pkg file with the information provided in the mmp files. In my case the final pkg generated by the tool contained information about the mmp file and aif file automatically, that is quite good I will say.

PR Exams and Some mishaps

Really had a very time imagining about how much I will have to pay for the USB device (dongle) that I lost during the B'day Celebration of Amal Raj.
Spoil quite some time yesterday searching for it, ignoring the scarcity of time we had for our PR exam. There were already many mails on the mailing list regarding postponement of the Exam. Except for 2 ppl most were desperate for some extention at the least.

Finally in the class today sir postponed it for indefinite time. It will be only after LA test on 5 Oct. Also the great thing that happened today was getting back the USB dongle (It fell on the floor of the roof).

We have opted for the project of "Tracking of Face in a Video". My Team members are Jagmohan and Sandeep. Finally Jagmohan agreed on doing face recognition project after sir discussed about this in the class.

Yesterday We submitted the name of the 50 students and 3 faculty members to IBM Linux Campus Club stuff.

That all, running for the Systems Thinking class now. I plan to do some assignment and paper correction of Middleware and Networks in the free time tomorrow as We won't be by any change going to LINDEC.

Celebrations on 'Vinayaka Chaturthi'

Let me know if the spelling of the festival is wrong. I actually woke up late due as I slept very late, watching some videos. I was not willing to get ready for the Puja so I did not wake up at time.

Chandana and me were discussing PR assignment in my room when Dixit brought us the prasad. The day went on cool with almost no work till 3PM when I went to CVIT. At 4:30 me and Jagan went to Indranagar for Samosas as Jagan denied bringing them for me. We brought them for Anu, Tarun and Sashi. Just one day after mail from PJN sir regarding working in CVIT lab, I have taken pictures of some one eating and watching movie in the CVIT :)

In the evening we had Kabaddi game. It was a nice game overall, though some confussions did occur and some dicisions looked harsh to either teams. Finally Vayu won the close match by 4 points 21-17, IIRC.
Good show of game by my teammates Gopal, Mehta, Siddhart, Valecha, Shantalu and Kesav, offcourse I played the best, kidding. The second match ended up in bad way with both the teams literally fighting with each other.

In the night we watched the movie "Mujshe Shadi Karogi", courtsey our new cultural council, specially PP and Tarun Nayak. The movie was overall a good one.

Forgot to write about this wonderfull concept of Random Numbers' unrandomness which I came to know from Numerical recipies.

Networks 2nd Tutorial

Finally I decided to take 3 slots, It looked better and more manageable. The topic was "Network Setups in General", with specific reference to to IIIT.

Delved in to some details of local addressing, security, proxy, DNS etc etc. I did not get much immediate feedback but most ppl seemed to understand most of it :). Some ppl were off-course sleeping, Even I sleep sometimes in the class so I could imagine their situation. Attendence as far as I believe should not be compulsary at all, ppl shud come only if they are interested, if they are not even I shouldn't bother much.

Any feedback is most welcome. (I shifted to blogger only for providing me this comments stuff :) )

Rest is going ok. PR assignment is to be started tomorrow. Have some basic idea and also the matrix library ready, will again bug our tutor ranjith for details.

This weekend should be cool with saturday being free.

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_IP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subnetwork_address

You can post more information on this topic in comments.

Project Management Midsem

After lot of rescheduling the exam happened on Tuesday only. Tarun and Darbari got the book from Mehdipatnam on Monday evening. Somehow finished the topics covered in the class.

The exam was a altogether new experience. A real torture. There was 100 question all mostly cyclogical I must say. I really felt the difficulties some PM would face, but just reading the questions. No practicles needed now.

Celebrations of Anubhav's B'day

--Met Prof PJN after long time, I have still not choosen area of MS thesis. Present work continues to be seaching for ways of making mobile phone more usefull, using CV and IP methods.

--We did finish some work on Systems thinking's Mid sem, I mean the presentation of the National Problem "POVERTY".

--In the evening we went for dinner outside as we were going to have celebration for Anu's B'day in the night. The Cake read "Happy 9/11 to R. anubhav", Details not be disclosed. Photo I will try to upload soon. The dinner was at 4 Seasons after we got much delayed in the book photocopy bussiness and could not think of going to Angethi(??). The food was good. The bill was enormously huge, came to some 160/- Per Head.
We finished it by 11:30 or so and then came out, searching for autos, seven seaters, Finally got one Auto but couldn't reach on time, we reached the hostel by 00:10 AM.

-- The celebrations went well, obviously we cud not have beaten him more. His photo would be posted here too.

-- ANOTHER SHOCK today Exam of PM is scheduled on Tuesday. I am already lagging behind in LA and PR, and new things are coming not allowing me to do anything. Anyways I will watch a movie now.

Thinks Getting Tougher this semester.

--SHOCK OF THE DAY. We will have mid terms in Project Management.

- Got back some feedback from Computer Networks students. Basic suggestion is to have a lower strenght, slow pace and more praticle approach. This might be just good enuf for next class, anyway I will give them some lecture about the importance of Feedback now, after hearing that the first class was bouncing

-- Checked middleware assignment. Only some PG fellows did the most important part of making codebase work. That was the most important functionality that might take some time to be implemented, everything else is as it is available on the Sun's Site.
A good link for Codebase is
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/rmi/codebase.html

-- Tomorrow(??) we need to finish our System thinking work. Also I have to wake up early for Swiming pool, And then The LINEAR ALGEBRA class which seems to be real GPA decreaser for this semester. After missing just one class I have 74% attendence due to this add/drop delay funda. Notwithstanding is the excellent performance in the first test, where I got 10/25(sighs). Then PR class, again I am very badly out of context in all these subjects (need to put in some extra effort).

_Evening We have a talk by Pramati CEO, hope to write something speacial here for that too.

--Tomorrow We have some new assignment for Networks coming, I mean I have to be involved in checking it :).

Orkut really coming to good use

In search of Old friends from various schools (8 in number) and Bansal Classes KOTA. I am able to find Ankur Badola, a guy who proved himself chuppa rustam by capturing 108 rank in IIT JEE in first attempt (when all of us were nowhere in the list).

The other day I found another inspiring profile of Mr Shubham Jain at orkut searching for Shubham Jain from Bansal Classes Kota, This fellow has very recently opened his own company savnetworks with the help of IIT KGP.

Took first class of Computers Networks

Tonight I took the first class of Computer Networks, the topics covered were Multiple Access Protocols and general doubt clarification. The classes seem to have gone ok. First the class was for UG3 and then for PG2.

I realize that the smaller class size helps. The second batch was lot more attentive and I could easily interact with more people.

I would be looking for some feedback on the class. If you were present in the class you can just give feedback, even anonymous ones will be most welcome.

This class clashed with the checking of the Middleware assignment. Which anyway students haven't done. :)

thinking about Linux Challenge from IBM & LUG's New Focus

Visesh, Me, Majji and Vamsee(Oh!!! Didnot notice before that we all have names starting with V) are thinking about the IBM linux Challenge, if not this year lets get started for getting something by next year. We have been assured of help from Mr. Atul Negi of Hyderabad Central University. Our basic interest is to atleast learn some of the best parts of the Masterpeice (Linux) developed by the greatest hackers around the world.

Our LUG which is soon going to handed over to our Juniors will soon have a new direction. we have already been of quite greate help to programmers (At least I feel so.), we now want to include the idea of knowledge gaining and sharing over Kernel Internals and Deeper Implementation Issues.

What do we gain out of It??? Well we are just students and presently our Aim is to learn, the benefits will come out when we have learnt properly. We can directly see money over doing silly projects (sometimes internships too), in various places, but at the end we have only some money and nothing else. Lets have a broad view and then we can always apply our intelligence to narrow implemenation issues, is what I feel. I have personally earned quite some money in my 3 years of college education, but I really feel, If I would have done something more towards learning(than earning) it would have been better.

One new suggestion given by Sunil Mohan Ranta is to get started with trimming down a linux Distro, to make it good enuf for low end hardware(basically customizing it our needs), present in some of the places in our Campus. I really think this is a great Idea, it might be of help to outsiders too.

Found an inspiring profile at Orkut

I happen to see the profile of Ms Saili P today. It was really surprizing that she has opened a Eco-loving portal with her friends at almost same age as mine. I think it would be a great learning and encouraging experience to be friend with her.

Looked back at the Mobile program, some how the testing is not working, I have to make it quick.

In the night I read the Java RMI turorial from Jguru, It is a very nice an ellabourate one I give it a link http://http://java.sun.com/developer/onlineTraining/rmi/RMI.html

Linear Algebra Test Over.

Not as bad as expected. My state of health seems to have some improvement now.

Watched the movie "Pirates of the Silicon Valley", Nice movie, shows a good coverage of how some of the best(??) companies in the software industry grew up by pirating stuff from others. The worse thing was Bill copying Mac and Releasing Windows before Mac was out. Bill really Sucks.

Had a long discussion with Anil over Middleware project. I got bit angry for a while in between when he was not agreeing to me, I dunno if he has accepted the sorry, but I really Am. I am trying to get control over my TEMPER, my biggest bug as of now.