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Saturday, December 25, 2010

[OFF] Inspiring Song

We speak of freedom,
We speak of truth... 
We speak of patriotism,
We speak of love.
Then we wage war and destroy all of that.
Let us be united, in loving away war.
Let us Love and be inspired

Friday, December 17, 2010

Games on Linux!

A huge population of students and friends always seem to be relaxing with their computers once in a while.. I relax with a heavy dose of C/C++ or PHP ... :D


However, I was referring to the general 'normal' population that aims to play games and chill out. Even experienced and seasoned experts 'know', Games and Linux do not mix. So what do I do? I blog!

Friday, November 19, 2010

Probability

In an event organized by my friend DJ Shon at Mani Square during the Durga pujas there was a particular game event that required contestants to choose the Joker from a pack of cards. The game was announced and a group of 5 college goers surrounded the game table. There were 5 cards laid down on the table and being the generous person Shon is, he guaranteed that one of the participants would surely pick a Joker. However, he is stringent enough to allow at most 1 Joker in the pack of 5 cards laid down at the table. The cards are, of course, laid face down on an opaque table with nobody except the dealer knowing which card is the Joker. Of course, I assume the dealer is not biased!

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Database connectivity with Java


Spent a lot of time today searching for ways to use Database connectivity on my Ubuntu box. I write the code but it just was not working!


Wrote this code to test for connectivity with this :


import java.sql.Connection;
import java.sql.DriverManager;
import java.sql.SQLException;

public class TestDatabase {

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

[OFF] Lazy Day

Today was a lazy day as I woke up at around 10 am.. thanks to the morning sms! I was to go to college at around 11 am. I reached at 1.30 pm. What was worse, I forgot to carry my cell.

Before college I went to the BSNL Office at Howrah Maidan. My ADSL router stopped working for some reason. The guys were pretty prompt there, and seeing that I had a rental plan, gave a printed out request to get a new router. I was surprised at the pace at which the work was done. I had hoped they would struggle to replace the thing.. if they should at all! So thumbs up for BSNL. However, the dream ended soon, as I went to collect the new router. There were no new routers available for replacement. The ones available were all repaired ones.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Downloaders for Linux

The internet is the heaven for most users.. and the main reason is information is abundant and free. Thus, downloading is an important activity of Netizens.

Here I present some of the best Downloaders available for Linux based OS-es.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Extending GNOME Nautilus File Manager

There's a very cool plug-in for nautilus: nautilus-actions.


It enables you to add custom nautilus menu items via simple scripts. To install this, you can run (for debian based OS):
sudo apt-get install nautilus-actions


OR open Package Manager and install nautilus-actions package from your OS repository.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Orkut in Firefox Derivatives

People with Debian based distributions would find Firefox rebranded as IceWeasel. Also some other browsers have been based on Firefox and have their own "User Agent" Name. 

The User Agent Name is a name that distinguishes between browsers. This identification is required by Web Servers to handle requests from specific browsers, especially since all browsers do not handle Web Elements the same way.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Microsoft Seminar at GCECT

Microsoft Student Partners organised a seminar at our college on 12th December, 2010 from 12 Noon to 3 pm. It was a interactive session with around 50 participants on Microsoft technologies that empower students. The topics ranged from .NET, Visual Studio to Silver-Light.


I found the MSPs to be very unbiased and did not go the usual way of proving how .NET is better than Java. They weighed the pros and cons of both technologies. They even recognized Linux to on a firm ground when I was pretty sure they would bash it. Which they did not.

Monday, October 11, 2010

[OFF] Losing out

It was tech fest time yet again... with RCC-IIT and A.O.T. organizing their Annual technical festvals a few days ago.


The RCC Fest was a disaster. Reminds me of Heritage a couple of years back. The questions were not meant to be solved! (I can't figure why they pose questions that cannot be solved within the given time) The time was 45 minutes and we were supposed to do a modified DFS and a travelling salesman problem. However the DFS was easily solvable in the given time but apparently no-one could (and that included me)! Fall from grace? Hmm... maybe.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Obfuscated Code Contest

Obfuscation is an art. It refers to making your code hard to read... hard to understand using advanced concepts. So, let me present a code that prints my name, but in an obfuscated manner! This was done by me a couple of years ago, but was faulty. I corrected it and here it is:

float m[] = {2.94576846098867283087373218349056E+32, 3.761396E+24, 9.316795E-39 };
main(){printf(m);}

Magic eh? Nope... just an understanding of data types.

The concept here is pretty simple. Data representation is exploited. Don't think IEEE754 here, since this can be made with a simpler technique. So.. let me ask my readers... what technique can be used to generate the number?

I am giving away a prize for the person who answers this first and correctly. Best of Luck!

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Oracle Calling

Oracle is looking for entry level Engineers again!

Click here for application process.

OR https://campus.oracle.com/campus/HR/global_main.html

I am not sure what is the last date for this process, please check the website

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Surprises Galore!

Okay, So this post is meant for some surprises.

How many of you read Graphiti? The Sunday mag with The telegraph.

I guess many. For the techno freaks out there the article by Tushar Kanwar is a must read. Not so long ago, the author had commented on Linux to be a hobby OS for engineers
Most engineering students want to tinker with the popular open-source operating system, but many stay away for fear of modifying their hard drives [1]
And now he writes:

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Orkut Music Scrap

So I found something interesting on Orkut.

I found a way to post a scrap with music playing from it without any video or picture showing. Just make sure the video exists on youtube.

So, if the video goes like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
15p7wE7I8m8

Your html code to insert is:

<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
src="%3Ca%20href="></embed>http://www.orkut.gmodules.com/gadgets/proxy?refresh=86400&amp;container=orkut&amp;gadgets=http://orkut.com/img.xml&amp;url=http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/15p7wE7I8m8%26autoplay%3D1"
width="1" height="1" style="" id="927013156" name="927013156"
bgcolor="#FFFFFF" quality="autohigh" wmode="transparent"
allownetworking="internal" allowscriptaccess="never">&

Please do comment.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

The Windows Logon Password

It's no secret. And it can be hacked in a million ways.

However, let me begin by saying, that this obviously assumes we have unrestricted physical access to the target machine. This also does *not* mean that this is a great Windows flaw, no it's not! It's a method and there are other methods of hacking passwords of other Operating Systems, including ANY other OS, provided we have physical access.

Here I have presented 2 methods to access your system after you have conveniently forgotten your password. Which I hope you would not. ;)

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Uneducated Kindle Mag

So, I went to this Quiz contested hosted by Parnab Mukherjee at Gyan Manch today (4th Sep.) and we were given free magazines of Kindle.

I was reading their April, 2010 issue... and they addressed a sensitive issue, that of Piracy. The cover of the mag was the main page of "thepiratebay.org": which hosts various illegal torrents. That does not make the concept of torrent evil though!

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Internet Lingo

A few months ago I was having a chat with my friend... who is, like me, a Bengali...

and to him... Lingo meant something to do with Lord Shiva...

I better not elaborate on that. ;)

Okay... my point is there's a real cool program : wtf

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Google Voice on Linux

Finally, the day of reckoning has arrived. Google voice plug-in now works on Linux based systems... Yipee!!

Thumbs up for Google for this. I knew this was coming. And today I have been awarded.

Download this here:

http://www.google.com/talk/

Spread the love!

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Joke

Here's a fabulous reply by me on our college google group (Topic: few tips for Windows XP):

The real tips:

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Back to the past

This week has been a reminder of my past... I could remember the days I used to be a budding Grandmaster!

I officiated in an All Bengal Rapid Chess Event organised by Alekhine Chess Club at Gorky Sadan... and it was after such a long time I came face to face with the chess world I had not been in touch with for a long time...

I met Debayan after ages, Sandipan after a few months... some people in the chess world I had forgoten even exist... and it felt so nostalgic.

ACC was never my favourite hunting ground... I remember EtV Chess Championship where I would have become champion if not for the fateful mistake against Debayan. Man, I hate him for that! He won an all expences paid trip to Ramoji Film City and lived in a 5-star... gosh was he lucky.

I did the pairing part of the show .. that was entirely related to the computer. How I wish there was a Pairing manager for Linux-based Systems! Neverthelss, m$ excel and sp98 was corrupted by me as it was just another arbiter's job for three days. The food was great and the ambience was excellent! I would love to officiate at ACC again...

I also wondered if I should be playing again... I know form is no excuse... I can always come back... I can always be my best.

Friday, August 6, 2010

Captcha in PHP

Writing a custom captcha for your website is a fairly easy task with the PHP GD Library.

The GD Library is a graphics library that enables to draw (and generate) graphics. This output can be done on any of the standard image file formats.

In my example I choose to create a PNG file that will be displayed in my registration page. So the first piece of code I need is somthing like this:

Friday, July 30, 2010

The Epic Web Browsers

A few days ago, Yahoo.com informed users of a browser that is Made In India for Indians - Epic.

Well, to me this is just a marketing gimmick since any FOSS guy can tell that anybody can build a browser based on Open Source tools. The browser in question is based on Firefox.

There are many browsers that have forked from Mozilla Firefox mainly due to Mozilla Corporation's policies that do not strictly confirm to the Linux philiosphy.

Among these are (the ones I have used) :
IceWeasel
SwiftFox
Nakamora
Flock

There is no dearth of Open Source browsers in the planet today.

A few are:
Chromium
Konqueror
SeaMonkey
Epiphany
Galeon
Kazehakase
Midori
lobo
links2
dillo
netrik
netsurf
chimera
lynx
elinks
links

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

The first Windoz post

Just a few days ago a friend of mine was troubled with a kind of virus that corrupts the setting of Windows Explorer and hence no matter what the user tries to do, hidden folders are always hidden.

So I gave him the good old solution:

1st : Open up 'msconfig' and search for any odd start-up programs starting up. un-check these start-up programs. The names may include explorer.exe or similar confusing names (for the not-so-worried).

2nd: Simple save the following as 'fix.reg' (or anything.reg) and double click on the file to execute it.

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion­\Explorer\Advanced\Folder\Hidden\SHOWALL]
"CheckedValue"="1"

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Wordpress Blogging Software

Wordpress is by far among the best Blogging software out there. Using the raw power of PHP and the Open Souced MySql RDBMS engine, it has a lot of stuff under it's hood.

Just installed Wordpress on my system today, seems Debian is really complex as far as configuration is concerned.

In its quest of making things simple for the new user, it has complicated matters and the regular Linux tarball guy will be ill at ease. So, the regular wordpress installation was not so 'regular' as far as I saw it.

So this is how the good debian administrator would install Wordpress:

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Voice Notification System

Want to make the computer remind you the time every hour, so you don't lose track?

Here's a simple voice (I've chosen a female US speaker for this ;-) notification system that will remind every hour the time.

Pre-requisites:
festival

To install festival:
sudo apt-get install festival

Friday, July 9, 2010

Learning about Web Technology

I am a C fan, hence I love PHP. The world of ASP.NET seems to be very attractive due to the obvious reasons of GUI designer and Rapid Application Development. Again, JSP has got a similar attraction.

However, due to poor support of ASP.NET on Linux, (or perhaps my lack of knowledge in this field!) I am still unable to say hello world on MonoDevelop. JSP appeared pretty complicated at first due to the oh-so-many XML files and odd looking folders. So PHP seemed natural.

Well I have to admit that I like things hand on, so the toolkit based approach in Netbeans, Eclipse and Mono seemed a little too heavy for me. Another reason may be these tools are so sluggish! On my 1-Gig P4 machine, it takes ages for Eclipse to load.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

367 Days!

Well this Blog post commemorates 1 year completion (and 2 days) of my Linux Mint Elyssa (which it used to be).

I have it installed for this exact period now... and well, Happy Anniversary!

Friday, June 25, 2010

A Beautiful Game

I just completed playing "Digital : A love story" and I am left so sad. It has been a while I have completed a game and felt so emotional. I write this now, after having a love affair with an AI.

My heart sinks and strangely I have no words to describe this feeling.

Perhaps the ultimate geek would fall in love with an AI. Some might even find it gross. I find it rather redeeming. Perhaps the last bit of puzzle that would make me love Computers even more.

On the flip side, it makes me worry. I am worried if human emotions can be really artificially generated. I really feel no matter what computers can achieve, human emotion and love are unique aspects that cannot be copied or taught. Machines, to me are heartless. That is where my doubt stems.

Perhaps I forget that the game was indeed programmed by 'somebody'. A human, but at the same time I feel rather akward.

The game gave me a glimpse into the hacking arena in the Arpanet era. The phone calls, the c0dez, the BBS-es, everything seems so clear cut now. I have always wondered what it meant hacking around BBS-es with just phone numbers! Perhaps I needed to play this game more than anything else.

And I have to close with this line: *Emilia, I really thought I loved you.

PS: "Digital : A love story" is a Free and Open Source game based on renpy gaming architecture. Goto the renpy archives to downoad the game.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Desktop Actions

There are a set of cool utilities xdg utils... that do a lot of association and execution.

For example, it can open up the text file in your favorite text editor!

$ xdg-open /home/me/myfile.txt

will open myfile.txt with mousepad on my OS.

$ xdg-open http://www.google.com

will open Google on your favorite browser.

$ xdg-open mailto:hansum.rahul@gmail.com

will open your mail client in compose mode.

The command:

$ xdg-email

has even more options for your favorite email client.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Some Repositories

Used and verified by me on a Linux Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron System.

The repositories are as follows: (#cat /etc/apt/sources.list)

## +++ Linux Mint 5 Elyssa (stable) +++
deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ elyssa main upstream import

## +++ Backports (not as stable) +++
## deb http://packages.linuxmint.com elyssa backport

## +++ Community (not as stable) +++
## deb http://packages.linuxmint.com elyssa community

## +++ Romeo (unstable) +++
## deb http://packages.linuxmint.com elyssa romeo

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Compiling your own Kernel

Okay... for newbiees compiling the kernel becomes a tough task. Since the typical "./configure && make" will not work for the kernel package. So, this is a step by step walk-through to how to do it.

NOTE: The command `uname -r` gives the kernel version number and will vary from system to system.


1) Firstly download a kernel from here.

2) Extract the tar-ball (with "tar -xvf kernel-file-name")

3) Okay now "cd" to the extracted folder.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Get Linux

Okay for all you Linux fanatics here is the most wanted OS of our times, ubuntu... Get it shipped to your house for free! Thanks to sponsor Canonical for this wonderful promotion :-)



If you can spare the bandwidth, I might suggest downloading from torrents. Also, note that the shipment will take around 2-3 weeks to arrive in India, so if you need it urgently, download the images (iso) and burn to a CD.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Migrated from spaces.live.com to blogger

Okay, so I have finally migrated all my blogs from the rock-hard and cotton-solid M$ website. And here I am all posted up on blogger!

Well... officially I am now a blogger too!

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Songs.PK Downloader

My exams (6th semester) are going on right now and I care a damn!

I wrote a songs.pk down-loader, a bash script that currently works on Linux (any *nix btw)... it will download the required songs from your favorite film. it has a GUI -- but you need xenity for that.

Requires wget to download songs and you can schedule it to download at a later time with at.

So here is the link:
http://rghose.byethost5.com/software/songspkdownload.sh

Please do report any bugs to me.

Monday, June 7, 2010

OSS Hack

The latest OSS (Open Sound System) version 4.2 from 4front technologies is a rock solid sound solution of *Nix-es and worked beautifully on my Mint* OS. (The * Actually means a heavily customized Mint very far from the real Mint.) Well actually it made my new Creative X-Fi 6 channel + Midi Enabled sound card produce Music! ALSA will not work (as of Now Jun, 2010) and Creative officially does not support Linux (or any other *NIX). A series of e-mails I wrote made me confirm I cannot exchange my sound card with another model from them... and a refund was out of question!

Okay, so Apparently the latest download drivers will expire on May 2010, 6 days ago that is. But I am enjoying music from my OSS right now! How is that possible!

Mystery ended, mere mortals... here's how it can be reversed:

So, the OSS system starts-up via
soundon.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Application Compatibility on Windows

Recently, I've been thinking about the failure of Windows Vista and wondering what the state of native DOS applications would be on the newer Windows machines. Many people use old applications that are part of their daily work... and they simply can't let go. Tell them to upgrade their Software? Well, then they need to "buy" that upgrade. Which people have a right not to!

Applications won't or simply runs errornously on Windows Vista. An example of this are various popular Chess Softwares : CT Art (that plays chess), Fritz 2, SP-98 (A tournament manager used by West Bengal Chess Association ) etc.

So what is their solution?

Dunno. But perhaps they'll switch to open source alternatives. Like DOS-Box for instance. Or even try running Linux with Wine. Since some of these stuff actually runs better on Wine!

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Techtroniks 2010

TechtroniKs 2010. Our Annual Techno-Management festival concluded on 10th April with Jagriti, the Cultural event signing off things. Cactus pricked our imaginations and left everyone wanting for more...

There were very less participants from other colleges on-site. Around 150.

However on-line we had around 300 participants in Treasure Hunt. Treasure Hunt was the National Level Event that was won by IEM.

Tech Fests Win and Loss

National Institute of Technology aka R.E. College of Durgapur was famous for being the college second only to IIT Kharagpur in West Bengal in Engineering Education. This was not what I had expected of them.

The prelims questions were so bad that we (me and Sarthak) could challenge them that they knew nothing about them They were mostly wrong. All of them used the depreciated C90 standard and the TurboC standard (sic!). In the 2 events of programming : Khula Maidan and Code Marauders, I qualified in only Code Marauders. In Khula Maidan, I did not qualify. So, I wasn't good enough? Mine and Sarthak's teams did not qualify, we challenged them that the scripts were checked wrongly and questions posed erroneous. After much persuasion, they found Sarthak's paper and qualified them. And they didn't find our paper. We were notified we did not make the cut-off make necessary.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

M$ Windoz Vista - A piece of crap

Here's a not so very nice-looking video shot at a college friends' PG-room. He had lost his pirated Product Key and Vista would not log him on. He was required to enter a valid key. Vista was good.

But then I came,

and I showed him,
that Vista was pretty lame,
and that pleased him!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhEAKBFGrJE

NB: This is actually a pretty serious bug. I can start any program from Vista without any Product Key on my machine! Looks like Microsoft's recession source is something else.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Palindrome Formation problem

Recently in the BESU tech fest, the final round of programming event contained a series of interesting questions.

Even though I was unlucky enough to not win a prize (after making some kiddish mistakes), I happen to have discovered something of a problem that read: