Mint

A few things new

2011-10-11T14:35:00.001+05:30

This is going to hurt just a little bit

2011-08-06T19:59:00.002+05:30

I was at the dentist's today for the first time in my life. The experience brought back to my memory a poem that I had read in primary school. A little googling and I could find it again :) Here it is.

One thing I like less than most things
is sitting in a dentist's chair with my mouth wide open.
And that I will never have to do it again is a hope that I am against hope hopen.

Because some tortures are physical and some are mental,
But the one that is both is dental.
It is hard to be self-possessed
With your jaw digging into your chest.

So hard to retain your calm
When your fingernails are making serious alterations in your life line
or love line or some other important line in your palm;

So hard to give your usual effect of cheery benignity
When you know your position is one of the two or three in life
most lacking in dignity.

And your mouth is like a section of road that is being worked on.
And it is all cluttered up with stone crushers and concrete mixers and
drills and steam rollers and there isn't a nerve in your head that
you aren't being irked on.

Oh, some people are unfortunate enough to be strung up by thumbs.
And others have things done to their gums,
And your teeth are supposed to be being polished,
But you have reason to believe they are being demolished.
And the circumstance that adds most to your terror
Is that it's all done with a mirror,
Because the dentist may be a bear, or as the Romans used to say, only
they were referring to a feminine bear when they said it, an ursa,
But all the same how can you be sure when he takes his crowbar in one
hand and mirror in the other he won't get mixed up, the way you
do when you try to tie a bow tie with the aid of a mirror, and forget
that left is right and vice versa?

And then at last he says That will be all; but it isn't because he then
coats your mouth from cellar to roof
With something that I suspect is generally used to put a shine on a
horse's hoof.

And you totter to your feet and think. Well it's all over now and after
all it was only this once.
And he says come back in three monce.
And this, O Fate, is I think the most vicious circle that thou ever sentest, That Man has to go continually to the dentist to keep his teeth in good
condition when the chief reason he wants his teeth in good condition
is so that he won't have to go to the dentist.

- Ogden Nash

Dear buddy Ogden Nash, I must say, I simply couldn't agree with you more.

GPRS with Nokia and Kubuntu

2011-07-26T22:33:00.000+05:30

For the first time in years, my BSNL internet connection stopped working - for 4 days. So, I was forced to try out GPRS. Airtel has this nice plan which provides 50MB internet for Rs 5, valid for 1 day (midnight to midnight - dial *222*5#). Perfect for my situation!

I have Kubuntu on my home comp and have a Nokia 6300. I was wondering how difficult it would be to get my Nokia phone to work with it. But surprise surprise, configuration was a breeze, and I had internet working in about 4 clicks and 0 key strokes. KDE network manager rocks! \m/

Being used to a speed of 4mbps, well, GPRS felt SLOW. The connection was pretty stable. Gmail took 5 minutes to open (the basic HTML view). Google chat worked fine through pidgin and thunderbird managed to pull my office mail. All I could download in 5 hours was 11MB (so much for the 50MB per day offer).

In all, I learnt 3 things - Nokia modem works with Kubuntu, GPRS is a decent backup if the main internet connection breaks, and it is really really hard to use up 50MB!

Shopping in Bangalore, minus malls

2011-05-29T22:08:00.001+05:30

I still haven't got used to malls. Having lived in Bangalore since the time there were no glitzy malls, having bought things in the places I mention in this post, I always get the feeling that the mall prices are a tad too high.

Alankar plaza

If you are looking for clothes at low prices, this is the place to go. A five minute walk from the majestic bus stand, this is one of the oldest shopping complexes in the city (I might have called it a mall 7-8 years ago). Though you have to bargain in most of the shops, these days I see quite a few shops with fixed prices too. The average price of a jeans pant is Rs 350, T-shirts start at Rs 125.

National Market

Located a block away from Alankar plaza, this place has many stalls selling cheap consumer electronics, cell phones and accessories, music systems, DVD players, speakers, pirated CDs, calculators etc. It is hard to find such low prices anywhere. Of course, you have to bargain. Since it is all grey, none of the shops will give you a bill, and the shop keeper is your warranty.

Avenue road

Located near Mysore Bank bus stop (once again, walk-able from majestic), this is THE place to buy and sell books. One side of the street is lined with book shops from one end to the other. Even the foot paths are stacked with books. Every kind of book for academic needs - be it engineering, science, architecture, philosophy - is available here. Most of the engineering books are available at a 20% discount at all shops. They buy old books at 60% of their selling price.

Bhendi Fry

2010-11-26T22:24:00.003+05:30

Today, for the first time in my life, I cooked a curry (of course, under the watchful eye of my mother). If you don't mind handling gooeey stuff and washing a very stubbornly greasy kadai, I think Bhendi Fry is one of the easiest curries to cook. Below is the recipe :)

Ingredients:

Lady's finger - 0.5kg, serves 4

Garam masala - 1 Tb sp.

Ginger garlic paste - 1 Tb sp.

Turmeric - 1 tea spoon

Salt - 1 Tb spoon

Oil - Approx. 50 ml

Optional ingredients: My mum suggested Til and grated coconut. Add anything else that you feel like adding :)

Time:

Takes about 30 mins (assuming you have already chopped the bhendi)

Procedure:

Chop the bhendi into small pieces. Pour the oil in a kadai. Add a little salt (apparently, it prevents the bhendi from sticking to the kadai).

After the oil becomes a little hot, add the bhendi. Wait 5 minutes - mix well. Repeat this at 5 minute intervals until about 80% of the gooeey stuff vanishes. Then add salt, turmeric, ginger garlic paste, garam masala (and everything else that you want to add). Mix well. Turn off the stove after another 5 minutes. Bhendi fry is ready :)

It came out pretty well, dad said super (yay!)

That's all for now.

Suggestions, anyone?

-Prashanth

Update
Do not close the kadai with a lid throughout. Keep it open :)

Lost in translation

2010-08-16T19:01:00.000+05:30

I saw this notice on Old Airport Road today. The kannada text reads "ಅತಿವೇಗವೇ ಅಪಘಾತಕ್ಕೆ ಕಾರಣ" meaning "High speed is the reason for accidents".

The honeymoon period

2010-08-08T12:47:00.000+05:30

It's been 3 weeks since I joined Oracle and I have gone through 3 weeks of extreme joblessness. My manager calls it the honeymoon period.

Well, the honeymoon period officially came to an end last night with my first night-out at office. (It was actually fun working on a saturday night). This morning, I got a mail from my manager with my first assignment and deadline. All this while, I used to think that Prof. PB is the only person crazy enough to work on weekends and nights.

In conclusion, managers don't sleep. I finally have some work. Things look good :)

Last day at IITB

2010-07-07T16:14:00.001+05:30

I leave IITB in about 3 hours. And I have a lot of people to thank :)

The mess workers for keeping us well fed throughout. Though a few may complain about food, I feel that I've had the best food of my life here.
The house keeping staff, especially at H12, have been excellent. I can't imagine how things would be without them.
The office staff who have been so kind and helpful. They have been so patient and such a great help during our final stages. I find it in stark contrast to the office staff at RVCE - ask 3 questions and you are shouted at.
DC++ hub owners - thank you for the unlimited supply of entertainment.
The man at the H12 printer shop for providing low cost, good quality prints; and also for the nice chats every time I visited him
The excellent faculty who made us stretch our limits in every course.
My guide, for giving me good grades and finally letting me go :)
The government of India for setting up such wonderful institutions. I wish them success with all the new IITs.
All my friends who made my life here so colourful.

I will surely miss my friends, the ambiance, the food, the fun, the freedom, the courses and everything. But I'm certainly not coming back for a PhD.

So long.
Prashanth

Navjot Sidhu's funny and inspiring talk on courage

2010-07-02T23:01:00.000+05:30

Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54UG-ILhRKU

Remaining parts are here

Happy :)

2010-06-11T18:22:00.000+05:30

A few nice things happened in the last 24 hours, and I'm reaaaallly happy about them.

Last night, my parents called to tell me that they received my Oracle offer letter (finally!). Today, I came to know that they've pushed my joining date by a week (exactly what I wanted :) ).

My thesis defense is over (Y!). Both the internal and external examiners hinted that they have given me good marks (\m/) . And the external examiner bought me a pack of biscuits (Hide and Seek, my favourite!) and gave his blessings(!!!) when I went to see him off.

Only 15 days of IITB left!!!

Downtime@IITB

2010-06-06T10:54:00.001+05:30

Officially, my first rant on blog

The last 3-4 days felt like we had gone back a decade in time.

To start things off, it was 12.20 at night when boom - the power went out. And it is so humid all the time here, it is impossible to sleep without the fan. All we could do was queue up laptops and watch movies till the power came back at 5 in the morning, using notepads to fan ourselves dry. (God help the people who were refactoring their code at 12.20)

Then, 2 days ago, a construction worker at one of the million construction sites in the campus had this bright idea of chopping the campus' optic fibre backbone. Result - no network for 2 whole days! With project presentations coming up soon, I must say, great timing.

Yesterday was supposed to be a no water day. But thankfully, we did not feel the pinch.

One crazy night

2010-04-06T09:52:00.005+05:30

This was the night when my juniors showed their love, my namesake got GPLs, I got wet twice in an hour, stole the draught of stinking hell, chased, got chased and got baptized.

So here is the story.

Prologue: Prashant Borole is one of my classmates here at IITB. Prashant and I have more things in common than just the name. His birthday is on 5th of April and mine on 6th. He stays in room 214 and I in 215. We were both TAs for the Software Lab course which is mandatory for all MTech first years. And all the first years remember him for the sed assignment he gave one day, which made them spend 1 whole day on just 1 problem, and there were 8.

Scene 1: The curious case of the redirected GPLs
It was 11.55pm on the 5th of April. I heard noises. When I came out of my room and looked, there were about 20 first years and quite a few of my classmates. My classmates usually spare me from the GPLs because I have a reputation of being a "Non-Kamina", but the first years couldn't be trusted! But to my surprise, all of them moved to room 214, pulled out Prashant and delivered well aimed GPLs. I was thinking they got the wrong guy until they wished me a happy birthday!
Phew! That was close!

Scene 2: The bath
After the regular cake-cutting, I went to the bathroom to clean up my face and hair. As soon as I came out, Ajitav emptied a bucket of cold water on my head. Grrrrr.....That wasn't there in the birthday protocol!

Scene 3: The great escape
As per the birthday protocol followed by us, the birthday boy gives a treat in the night canteen, and after that, The Draught of Stinking Hell(DOSH) is poured on his head. DOSH is brewed by putting bits and pieces of food in a cold drink bottle and shaking it well. Saurabh took up the initiative this time and ordered Slice (it's more for the bottle than for the juice). As the food arrived, people started contributing to it. As far as I know, the following ingredients went into the bottle - mango juice, slice, chips, dosa, chutney, ketchup, noodles, lemon juice, rose milk, chickoo juice, omlette and rice. It looked ugly and disgusting.

All the time, I was trying to think of ways to escape. All I wanted to do was get rid of the bottle. So, after my friends were done with the food and were leisurely trying to envision my fate, I grabbed the bottle, ran to the sink and poured out the sticky, smelly DOSH in the sink :) :) And by the time Saurabh caught up with me, I had managed to empty 90% of the bottle :)

Scene 4: The baptizing
After the escape, I was talking to a few of my friends outside the canteen. This was my biggest mistake of the night. Saurabh had somehow managed to brew up the DOSH again! I ran as soon as I saw him. But Adil was quicker and caught me and Saurabh happily emptied the DOSH on my head :| Now that the damage was done, the best I could do was run after Saurabh and dirty his shirt.

As I write, my hair still smells of cake. And I'm glad it smells of cake rather than DOSH. And thank god Saurabh wasn't able to brew it up to its usual concentration!

Addicted to this song

2010-03-23T12:30:00.004+05:30

Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop *POP*(2x)

Call my baby Lollipop
Tell you why
'Cause he's sweeter than an apple pie
And when he does'nt shake he rock and dance
Man I haven't got a chance
I call him

Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop *POP*

Sweeter than candy on a stick
Huckle berry, cherry, or rye
If you have a choice you fill your pick
But Lollipop is mine...

Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop *POP*

Crazy way he thrills me
Tell you why
Just like a lightning from the sky
He loves to kiss me
'Till I can't see straight
GEE, my Lollipop is great!
I call him...

Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop *POP*

Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop oh Lollipop

Source http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/c/chordettes/lollipop.html

Counting lines of code

2010-03-03T22:37:00.004+05:30


 $ find . -name *.java |xargs wc -l

But this counts blank lines and comments as well! Better ideas, anyone?

Shit happens

2010-02-08T23:44:00.004+05:30

Disclaimer: I have posted this mainly for its humour value. It is not intended to offend Spammer in any way.

One of my classmates was sending a lot of forwards to our Google group. Some people didn't like the spam. Here are parts of the conversation with some witty replies by Chander Iyer (reproduced here with permission)

Chander:
No wonder that the streets of Mumbai felt a little cleaner today...cuz all the trash that was supposed to thrown outside has been transformed into Junk mail by Spammer...

Kudos Spammer...i can at least see uniformity in s*** in Mumbai now...Garbage in Bins outside, and garbage in Bits inside !!!

Spammer:

If its really junk then why r u so deeply digging into it..? I hope u guys r not scavengers....

Chander: (This one takes the cake :) )

Dude...when you defecate junk out in the open (in the MTech group), either we can ask people to stop defecating, or shut our eyes and walk away...so i choose the former, if indeed you persist with these unhyegenic habits, we might be required to notify the sanitation department...

The choice is yours...I just hope it does not raise too much stench around !!!

Spammer:

It looks like u r lord of the sanitation deptt. btw ur nose seems to be too sensitive to smell the shit, I firmly believe u r a great competitor to sniffer dogs :) Btw does the M.Tech group lie at ur backyard tat u r concerned so much.
Other pals r enjoying a little... seems u have a problem with tat too... ??

Chander:

Hmmm...comments seem to get pretty vitriolic...let's see...

I never did mention abt me being any sanitation head...it is just that the shit was a little too close to my doorstep, hence the stinker...

A sniffer dog is a better epithet than porks s***ting pellets out on the highway (read that information highway)...watch out, you might be run over by too much traffic here...

What not to do after plagiarizing

2010-01-25T09:39:00.003+05:30

Act 1: http://www.chutneycase.com/2010/01/three-one-idiot-s.html

Act 2: http://www.facebook.com/notes/charukesh-sekar/mr-mr-iyer-the-biggest-setback-of-my-life/263510393

Act 3: http://www.chutneycase.com/2010/01/clarification.html

Summary: http://idlingintopgear.blogspot.com/2010/01/game-theory.html

Nice talks

2010-01-19T14:42:00.002+05:30

By Shashi Tharoor and Sunitha Krishnan

Christmas and VLC

2009-12-25T21:51:00.001+05:30

Today's christmas. VLC icon on my taskbar is wearing a Santa hat! Is this regular, or are they doing it with only this version?

Things I miss at home

2009-12-24T11:15:00.001+05:30

It's been around 5 days since I've been at home, and I have already begun to miss a few things

I can no longer download 90MB in 40s
DC++, it's been such a long time since I stress tested the media player
Gym, I feel ssssssooooooooo lazy
Damn these regular powercuts, I had forgotten all about them
Hostel food
The noise free ambience of IITB
Borrol and Kashyap's "discussions" over food

Google chrome for Linux :)

2009-12-09T00:25:00.002+05:30

Google chrome is now available for Linux :) Yay yay!

Panther again!

2009-12-08T20:26:00.002+05:30

Got this in mail today. I really don't want my parents to read this!

C I R C U L A R

Sub : Sighting of Panther in the campus

Residents of the campus may recall previous circulars issued on the subject cited above. Panthers were seen at various places in the campus during the last few days. All out efforts are being made to ensure that the panther is trapped/chased away from the campus by the Forest Authorities. Special patrols are being deployed everyday to patrol the most vulnerable areas where the panther is being sighted frequently in jeep and motorcycles equipped with high power search lights and fire crackers.
Campus residents are requested to inform any suspicion about presence of leopard on the telephone numbers given below:

Main Building Security Control
Intercom no.: ****, **** & ****

For the purpose of precautionary measures, the campus residents are requested to observe the following:-
1)Not to provoke the animal by stone throwing or attempting to hit it with anything.

2)Not to take photograph, nor should the animal be followed or make provocative gestures.

3)If the cubs are sighted, do not indulge in any provocation whatsoever, as the panther accompanying the cubs can be highly dangerous.

4)Not to allow small children unaccompanied by adults to move around during night.

5)Not to sleep outside and, doors and windows should be secured.

6)Lonely and dark stretches of roads should not be used during night.

7)When dogs bark or run frantically at night, it may be taken as warning of panther’s presence nearby.

8)Panther is afraid of lights and cracker bursts. Hence, it is advisable to carry a torch and flick it around while moving at night.

9)In case of a pet dog, it should be kept indoors at night.

The Institute has approached the authorities concerned to remove/scare away the panthers. This section will be bursting crackers during nights. Hence do not panic on hearing sounds of crackers.

Does this remind you of something?

2009-12-06T22:15:00.001+05:30

Rafi

Lyrics here

Placements, and a BIG thank you!

2009-12-05T12:10:00.002+05:30

The last 3 days were really busy, with little time for food, bath or sleep. I'm writing this post to thank a few people who helped me so much during these 3 days.

Devshree, Prajakta, Ajinkya, Borrol, Adil, Ambika, Ashish, Chander, Somil - thank you sssooooooo much for everything you guys did.

Saurabh, Prashima, Kulk - You guys gave me an "I'm not alone" feeling, which was so reassuring. Thank you.

DPNs Sree and Rakesh - Thank you for everything.

On a lighter note, below is a pic of the goodies I got. Not getting placed early has some advantages :)

Comments!

2009-11-19T19:07:00.002+05:30

Recently, I have been getting comments like these...

Great blog as for me. It would be great to read something more about that theme.
By the way check the design I've made myself Young escort

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So, I'm disabling anonymous comments. And of course, a heartfelt f**k you to the people who are responsible for the above comments.

By the way, you can read the details here and here.

Update:
I've allowed anonymous comments again :) But have enabled word verification to prevent automated spam

I miss the colourful VTU marks sheets!

2009-11-18T18:47:00.005+05:30

This is what we get at IITB

How to mount NTFS partition in Linux

2009-11-16T10:38:00.004+05:30

Well, these days, NTFS partitions do get auto-mounted. But it may get a little irritating when you are asked for the admin password every time you boot your comp and click on the partition.

So, to make the mounting "truly" automated, you have to add an entry to the file /etc/fstab.

In my case, I had to add

/dev/sda3  /media/cdrive  ntfs-3g defaults

So, the first thing you have to do is - create a directory /media/cdrive. Then, to find out which device your ntfs partition is listed as, run

# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x01238b30

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1          26      208813+  83  Linux
/dev/sda3           29447       38913    76043677+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4              27       22978   184361940    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5              27       20914   167782828+  83  Linux
/dev/sda6           20915       22873    15735636   83  Linux
/dev/sda7           22874       22978      843381   82  Linux swap / Solaris

From what I can see, my NTFS partition is /dev/sda3. This is how my /etc/fstab looks after making the entry.

# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0
# / was on /dev/sda6 during installation
UUID=295dd122-7bd3-49e3-8e94-e192bd48e741 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# /boot was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=31640fe8-bd0a-409f-b09e-f340e31b87ce /boot           ext4    defaults        0       2
# /home was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=88e313d9-2537-466d-9856-4ae03bf75f81 /home           ext4    defaults        0       2
# /media/cdrive was on /dev/sda3 during installation
UUID=286841F96841C672 /media/cdrive   ntfs    defaults,umask=007,gid=46 0       0
# swap was on /dev/sda7 during installation
UUID=872f1854-af38-48ee-807d-b46ec1db6a75 none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/scd0       /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0       0

/dev/sda3  /media/cdrive  ntfs-3g defaults

--------------------------------------------
Reboot. You'll find your partition mounted :)

Ants in my laptop - II

2009-10-20T12:39:00.001+05:30

The extermination

I got suggestions ranging from "Put your laptop in a refrigerator" to "Put your laptop in the microwave" :). I chose to use the laxman rekha approach.

So, last night, I put my laptop on a cardboard box and encircled it using the killer chalk. The result is shown in Figure 2 ;)

Figure 1: The setup

Figure 2: Suicide (or mass murder?)

Ants in my laptop :(

2009-10-19T22:34:00.001+05:30

There are heaps of tiny red ants crawling out of my keyboard and USB ports from time to time! I have eliminated around 40 today. I wonder how many are still inside! What do I do!!!

Scilab 5.1.1 on Linux

2009-09-18T15:06:00.008+05:30

Well, if you have landed on this page, you must have got something like this when you ran Scilab 5.1.1 on linux

bin/scilab: line 132:  8184 Segmentation fault      "$SCILABBIN" $*

The easiest way to get around this is to run it as

$ bin/scilab -nogui

You obviously will have to sacrifice the "improved" GUI features of Scilab 5.1.1. But it really shouldn't matter much as gedit/kwrite are perfectly fine as text editors. And I think the terminal version is much much easier to use than the GUI version.

Update:

Well, no GUI is a problem when you want to plot graphs :( I haven't yet figured out a way to get around this.
Ubuntu has a deb package to install scilab 5.1. Fedora users, bad luck.

Intelligent IITians

2009-09-02T19:15:00.004+05:30

A few people I admire most

2009-08-28T21:32:00.015+05:30

	Abhiram Natarajan - For his never ending repository of algorithms and swear words
Anup B Prakash - Simply awesome at everything he does
	Chaya Ganesh - For being such a wonderful person
Rama B - For shamelessly lying about his academic abilities all the time
	Netra Malagi - For being a geek, and an open source enthusiast right from the beginning
Prashant Borole - Coder++, writes his own kernels, file systems and what not. IMO, one of the best systems guys in the world
	Sriram Kashyap - An extremely helpful Geek++

A lecture series on Analysis and design of algorithms

2009-08-23T11:37:00.003+05:30

A lecture series on Analysis and design of algorithms

Just happened to find it on youtube :) .The above set of videos is from the under grad algorithms course offered by Prof. Abhiram Ranade and Prof. Saisundararaman Vishwanathan at IIT Bombay. More subjects here

Bought an Acer 5738 :)

2009-08-14T10:44:00.007+05:30

Comes with Linux, 3GB DDR3 RAM, Core 2 Duo T6500 2.1GHz, 320GB hard disk, Gigabit ethernet card, fingerprint reader, an HDMI port (pretty useless unless you have a decent graphics card), multi touch touchpad (allows to zoom using a 2-finger motion), laptop bag, and the usual stuff. More here.
Price: Rs. 34,000

About IIT profs and exams

2009-08-08T15:58:00.007+05:30

In my last post, I said that I would post something about SVN clients. Since it's pretty boring, I'll do that some other time :)

Now, coming to the topic, there are different kinds of exams...the general idea is that nothing from the allowed material comes in the exams.

Closed book: Nothing allowed. The easiest kind of exam.
Open notes: The most common type of exam. We are allowed to take our notes, print outs of slides and a few research papers.
Cheat sheet: 1 or 2 A4 size sheets are allowed. Contents must be handwritten. The number of sides that can be used is pre-specified.
Open book: The toughest. You can take any book (any number of books) you want.

There are some other more interesting types. One prof actually had the first 15 minutes of the exam as "discussion time". One is allowed to discuss the answers with the others in the first 15 minutes. But sadly, people discovered that 15 minutes were not enough to understand any of the questions.

Another prof usually doesn't have a time limit on the exam. People come to the exam hall, think....think....think, write whatever they can figure out, and leave when they are too tired to think any more, or just get hungry. And there is a certain prof who said, "Leave the exam hall in <=2 Hours, get 3 bonus marks!"

There are some profs who give "unrelated questions" like "Do you think Obama will be a better president than Bush?", just so that students can take a break from thinking, and relax. These questions, of course, do not carry any marks.

Though weird, the good thing about all these exams is that it's "marks for thought", rather than "marks for how well you can mug or how much you can write".

How to set up SVN

2009-07-15T12:01:00.009+05:30

I wanted to set up an SVN server for my project recently. Here is the small script that I wrote for configuring SVN. Just copy-paste it in a file and run it. It'll guide you through the configuration process.
-------------------------------------------

#!/usr/bin/bash

svnadmin create svnrepos  #creates a directory called svnrepos 
#in the current directory, and 
#creates the config files

printf "[general]\nanon-access = none\nauth-access = write\npassword-db = passwd\n" > svnrepos/conf/svnserve.conf
printf "[users]\n" > svnrepos/conf/passwd

while [ 1 -gt 0 ]
do
    printf "Username: "      #create username,password for 
    read user                #whom access is required  
    if [ $user == "q" ]      #press "q" to stop accepting username, passwords
    then
       break
    fi
    printf "Password: "
    read pass
    printf "$user"" = ""$pass\n" >> svnrepos/conf/passwd
done

-------------------------------------------------
To start svnserver,

svnserve -r /users/proj/prashanth.kamle/svnrepos -d

/users/proj/prashanth.kamle/svnrepos is the path of the directory in which the SVN repository would reside (/users/proj/prashanth.kamle is the current directory).

To stop the SVN server, just kill the process (or use the script below)

#!/bin/bash
pid=`ps -A|grep svnserve| cut -d" " -f1`
kill $pid

In my next post, I'll explain how to access SVN from eclipse. Till then, happy subversioning :)

Coolest web app ever

2009-06-29T13:20:00.002+05:30

http://wave.google.com/
I simply can't wait till it comes out!

Rain ke side effects

2009-06-28T14:56:00.010+05:30

Rains are a time when many things begin to happen. Here in IIT Bombay, they start clearing the drains, cementing the roads and tarring the roofs (yeah, you read it right :-P ). Most of the campus goes a nice shade of light green, and the moist soil smells so good. And the best of all, little creatures start appearing. Here is my collection :)

Most of the pics which follow were taken in this corridor which connects the four wings of my hostel

A slug

Interesting colour

What are these??

This one looks like a cross between a grass hopper and a moth

An earthworm. People say they are blind (I mean, they don't have any eyes :) ).

Suddenly popular :)

2009-06-18T11:05:00.002+05:30

Thanks to Sree for starting the "Guess who?" contest.

Resizing images

2009-06-17T17:06:00.010+05:30

Pictures accumulate. The treks, trips, parties and the infinite fun that we've had in the past one year of college has resulted in me filling up half my hard disk with photos. My dear friends have fancy cameras which produce 8 mega pixel images, each occupying almost 2.5MB of my precious hard disk space.

Since an 8 mega pix image is serious overkill, I decided to resize them all to 1600x1200 (2 mega pix, around 1MB). Now that I've turned all linuxy, I was looking for a 'Microsoft Office Picture Manager'-like application for linux when Sriram Kashyap suggested that it'd be way easier to write a shell script to do the job.

So friends, here it is :)

#!/bin/bash
pics=`ls $1 | grep JPG`
for pic in $pics
do
   echo "Converting $1$pic ..."
   convert -size 1600x1200 $1$pic -resize 1600x1200 $1$pic
done

Pass the folder containing your pics as an argument to the script, or just put the script in your folder and double-click :)

Renovated :)

2009-05-20T18:11:00.002+05:30

I finally paid some attention to my long neglected home page. www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~pkamle

Train, food and home

2009-05-03T17:35:00.005+05:30

It was 6.30 in the evening when I was at the new Canara bank ATM in IIT Bombay, looking at a receipt which said "Unable to dispense cash. Transaction failed". I had exactly Rs. 260 in my wallet, and a 24hr journey ahead.

After a short auto ride to Kanjurmarg, and 20 minutes of waiting in the queue, I got a ticket to Dadar. The local train ensured that I was at Dadar in the next 20 minutes. At the entrance of platform 8, my luggage was inspected, and the policeman on duty spent almost 3 minutes playing with my Nokia 6300. He seemed to be particularly interested in the albums. I still wonder what he was looking for!

On to platform 8, and I bought a packet of chips (10 bucks, and barely 10 pieces of chips) and boarded the train. There was 1 hour before the train departed, and I busied myself with the chips and Jeffrey Archer.

As the train was reaching Kalyan, I bought a veg palao for dinner (Rs 40!), and I felt thoroughly cheated. The fact that I now had only Rs. 183 left didn't help the cause.

After 9 hours of uninterrupted sleep (even the TTE didn't turn up), I woke up near Belgaum, the land of VTU. I had 2 idlis and 2 vadas for breakfast (Rs. 20), and it was a pleasant break from the usual pav-bhaji - vada-pav of Mumbai. Even the chutney had just the right amount of spice.

By lunch time, I was in Dharwad. I must say, the menu on trains has improved considerably. I had 2 ಜೋಳದ ರೊಟ್ಟಿs, curry, rice, dal and buttermilk for lunch (Rs. 35 only). I started feeling more and more south indian :)

After 200 pages of Jeffrey Archer, the train neared Tumkur. The cool air was refreshing. For the first time in months, my shirt was not sticking to my body - I was dry! What a feeling!

Dad was waiting for me at the railway station. I wonder why home always feels sweet.

The curious case of the burning finger

2009-04-24T19:11:00.006+05:30

April fooled!

2009-04-06T23:28:00.003+05:30

Last week, Prof. Om Damani announced our next assignment. We had to implement statistical machine translation, that too with exams just 15 days away. Given that he took almost around 4 classes (that's about 6 hours) to give the overview of the procedure, we simply had no clue how we would manage it.

Well, we got this email from him today.


Was it April 1st when I announced it  :)
Sorry to disappoint you, but no assignment 6.
- Om

I've never ever felt this good after being fooled!

munnabhai@cse.iitb.ac.in

2009-03-19T23:34:00.003+05:30

Life at IITB surely rocks, and so does our department :)

Starring Adil as Munna Bhai, and Sree Shankar as Circuit.

Viterbi algorithm for second order Hidden Markov model

2009-03-09T15:40:00.004+05:30

This post is a supplement to the Viterbi article on Wikipedia I'm posting this because I couldn't find an understandable implementation of Viterbi for second order HMM anywhere (I badly needed it for my assignment). So, Anup, Saurabh and I put our heads together and modified the Wiki article's Viterbi code to work for 2nd order HMM.

The story goes thus(from Wiki) - Two friends, Alice and Bob, who live far apart from each other and who talk together daily over the telephone about what they did that day. Bob is only interested in three activities: walking in the park, shopping, and cleaning his apartment. The choice of what to do is determined exclusively by the weather on a given day. Alice has no definite information about the weather where Bob lives, but she knows general trends. Based on what Bob tells her he did each day, Alice tries to guess what the weather must have been like.

Alice believes that the weather operates as a discrete Markov chain. There are two states, "Rainy" and "Sunny", but she cannot observe them directly, that is, they are hidden from her. On each day, there is a certain chance that Bob will perform one of the following activities, depending on the weather: "walk", "shop", or "clean". Since Bob tells Alice about his activities, those are the observations. The entire system is that of a hidden Markov model (HMM).

Alice knows the general weather trends in the area, and what Bob likes to do on average. start_probability reflects Alice's belief that it is rainy on a given day, there is a probability of 0.7 that it'll rain the next day as well.

Below is the python code (with some helpful print statements added). Feel free to copy :)


states = ('Rainy', 'Sunny')

observations = ('walk', 'shop', 'clean')

start_probability = {
'Rainy|Rainy' : 0.7,
'Rainy|Sunny' : 0.3,
'Sunny|Rainy' : 0.4,
'Sunny|Sunny' : 0.6
}

transition_probability = {
'Rainy|Rainy' : {'Rainy' : 0.8, 'Sunny' : 0.2},
'Rainy|Sunny' : {'Rainy' : 0.5, 'Sunny' : 0.5},
'Sunny|Rainy' : {'Rainy' : 0.6, 'Sunny' : 0.4},
'Sunny|Sunny' : {'Rainy' : 0.3, 'Sunny' : 0.7},
}

emission_probability = {
'Rainy' : {'walk': 0.1, 'shop': 0.4, 'clean': 0.5},
'Sunny' : {'walk': 0.6, 'shop': 0.3, 'clean': 0.1},
}

def forward_viterbi(obs, states, start_p, trans_p, emit_p):
T = {}
for state1 in states:
  for state2 in states:
  ##          prob.           V. path  V. prob.
      T[state1+"|"+state2] = (start_p[state1+"|"+state2], [state2], start_p[state1+"|"+state2])
for output in obs:

  U = {}
  print "--------------------\nObservation:",output
  for next_state in states:
      total=0
      argmax=None
      valmax=0
      print "Next state:"+next_state
      for curr_state in states:
          for prv_state in states:
              print "\tprv_state|curr_state:",prv_state+"|"+curr_state
              try:
                   (prob, v_path,v_prob)=T[prv_state+"|"+curr_state]
              except KeyError:
                   (prob, v_path,v_prob)=T[prv_state+"|"+curr_state]=(0,None,0)

              p=emit_p[curr_state][output] * trans_p[prv_state+"|"+curr_state][next_state]
              prob *= p
              v_prob *= p
              total += prob
              if v_prob > valmax:
                   argmax=v_path+[next_state]
                   valmax=v_prob
              print "\t\t",v_path,v_prob
      U[curr_state+"|"+next_state] = (total, argmax, valmax)
      print "\targmax:",argmax,"valmax:",valmax
  T=U  
## apply sum/max to the final states:
total = 0
argmax = None
valmax = 0
for state1 in states:
  for state2 in states:
      try:
          (prob, v_path, v_prob) = T[state1+"|"+state2]
      except KeyError:
          (prob, v_path, v_prob) = T[state1+"|"+state2]=(0,None,0)
      total += prob
      if v_prob > valmax:
          argmax = v_path
          valmax = v_prob
return (total, argmax, valmax)

def example():
return forward_viterbi(observations,
                      states,
                      start_probability,
                      transition_probability,
                      emission_probability)

res=example()
print "\nResult:",res

Side-Middle Berth!!!

2008-12-20T10:58:00.004+05:30

Population is increasing. There's no space for more lines, we can't introduce new trains. So what do we do? Increase packing density :)

My first 0

2008-12-12T15:43:00.006+05:30

I got my first ever 0 in AI mid sem exams. Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharyya had a wry smile on as he distributed the answerbooks, as if to say "Welcome to IIT". I managed a BB in the subject :-)

A do-anything firefox toolbar

2008-12-10T13:38:00.007+05:30

We have a course called "Software Lab" at IITB. The agenda of this course is - one programming language every week, with a side effect - you fall in love with linux and everything that is free and open source. As a part of the course, we have to contribute something to the open source community. So, I, along with Sumair and Sree developed "Run-a-prog", a do-anything toolbar for firefox. Screenshot

Run-a-prog allows you to run ANY program on the text selected on a webpage. For example, if you have a text2speech program, you can add it to the toolbar and make it read out the text you selected on the page at the click of a button. You can write your own programs using any programming language of your choice and add it to the toolbar, and run it on selected text. All your program has to do is take a file name as a command line argument. Besides this, there are a few other useful features as well ;)

Run-a-prog has been tested on Fedora Core, Ubuntu and Windows XP and works fine with Firefox 2.0 and 3.0. To install Run-a-prog, download our cross platform installer and open it with firefox. Comments and suggestions are welcome :)

I have published the project on Mozdev.org, and can be accessed at http://runaprog.mozdev.org

Here is a presentation which gives an overview of the functionality and design. The source code and the documentation is available here.

26/11 and onwards

2008-12-07T10:49:00.002+05:30

It was my last exam that day, and I was happy that it had gone well. After the exam, I went to the lab and started off on my mini-project for Service Oriented Computing. Dhaval and I had to do it, start to finish, in 36 hours, and we were coding frantically. At about 11PM, Vishal told us that there were blasts in a few hotels in Mumbai. We didn't give it much of a thought and just carried on with our work. At 2.30AM the same night, when I went back to the hostel, I saw the TV room was pretty crowded, and a whole lot of guys silently staring at the TV. I went in, saw the disturbing visuals for a while and went to bed, couldn't sleep for quite a while....

I woke up early the next day (because parents called early that morning to tell me to stay indoors) and grabbed a copy of the Times, the first page read - "WAR ON MUMBAI". The news didn't make a pleasant read. I went to the lab after breakfast and continued work on the mini-project, all the time hooked to the rediff homepage.

28th November was a busy day, I had my project demo. We did the final parts of the documentation, had a decent demo. I came back to the hostel TV room after that, and witnessed a very moving interview of Sabina Sehgal's husband on CNN-IBN, I simply couldn't stand the pain and went back to my room, lied down on my bed, frustrated, angry.

More thinking....and I thought of making a resolution to kill atleast one terrorist before I die...my heart said "yes", my mind kept on asking "Is it logical? Can you do it? What about your family?". I still don't know. The movie "A Wednesday" show's that even a "stupid common-man" can make a difference, but it's only a movie. My questions are still unanswered.

Janmashtami

2008-08-26T22:03:00.003+05:30

Janmashtami

For the first time, I saw Janmashtami being celebrated the "Marathi" way. It was awesome fun watching :-) My friend Sree Shankar, one of the guys in the photo above(click to view more), has described the entire experience really well in his blog. Here is an extract (reproduced here with permission)

It was decided that 8 people will form the base, 4 on top of them and then a 3rd guy on top of us to break the matki. As all of were discussing of how to go about it, suddenly a bucket of water fell on us...."abee saale bhen**** teri maa ki..." shouts came out from the group...For me this water business was unexpected and I was totally drenched...

I was at the base (fat people are not allowed to climb others shoulders and break others hands :D). There were 8 of us. The water kept falling on us from the 2nd and 3rd floor....and the swearings kept coming out...The 2nd layer started forming. Everyone was shouting "Alareeeeee govindaaaaaaa"...The moment a guy got on to my shoulders I was like "O man this guy weighs a ton"...but the spirit of alare govinda kept all of us going....in between the guys on the top floor started pouring hot water...the swearing too got hotter....the water was soo hot that the cry of "alare govinda" was replaced by "aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh $#&#@#%$"...we could even see smoke rising from the ground once the water touched the floor...

But we still kept on going...The 2nd layer was formed. (the guy above me seemed to have a special ability to increase his weight every second)...The last guy started climbing...by this time the "pyramid" already started shaking :D...suddenly..."dim dim dim...." before I knew what happened my shoulder suddenly felt light...then only I saw it...the 2nd layer and 3rd layers were now on the "ground floor"...one on top of the other...one guys head was inside the pile on the ground and his 2 legs jutting out...everyone started laughing out soo much...the ground had turned so much muddy with water that we were all covered in mud...

This went on like this for some 4-5 times,climbing and falling, before we successfully broke the pot. Cries of joy exploded out and it was all round celebrations. People were kicking mud on each other..photos taken...as for me it was such a good time...never in the recent past could I remember myself to be covered in so much mud and still enjoying...This was followed by tug of war. All in all it was such a gr8 day..one of my most memorable.

Life at IIT Bombay

2008-08-18T10:25:00.006+05:30

Yes guys, it's been a long time since I blogged. I mainly attribute it to the deluge of assignments that I've been given.

Lots of you have been asking me - "How's life at IITB?", hence this post.

Before I came to IITB, I had imagined that it'd have green-carpet lawns, neatly pruned hedges and aesthetic looking trees etc. It's not so. IITB is wild. It has huge trees, with climbers covering the trunks, going all the way up to the branches, and then hanging down like ropes. It has money plants with leaves as big as banana leaves (I'm not exaggerating), parrots, mynas, pigeons, cranes, sea gulls and many other kinds of birds that I don't recognize.

IITB is flanked on the left by a green hill, and on the right by a lake. Near the hill is a national park (from which a panther had wandered into the campus a few years ago).

Moving from the wildlife to the hostels, most of the hostels look as if they may crumble any moment. But looks can be deceiving ;) The hostels are built to stand the Mumbai rains. Even during heavy rains that we saw in the last month, none of the rooms got even a drop of water inside, and no water logging anywhere. Every hostel consists of about six 3-storeyed buildings, and one can go from any building to any other building without getting wet. The rooms are good and comfy, bathrooms are beautiful too ;) We get hot water even at midnight! There are washing machines to do the laundry, a billiards table, TT table, carroms and a gym (all this within the hostel). We also get a dozen different newspapers everyday. Food is great most of the time(yeah, honest!)

I'll talk about the lessons some other day. That's it for now :)

Mumbai

2008-07-21T09:54:00.007+05:30

This is my first time in Mumbai, and there's definitely lots that I can blog about :) Everything about Mumbai looks ancient-the roads, autos, taxis buildings etc, it's only the local trains that look modern

Buses

The conductor doesn't use a whistle. There is a bell near the driver (see pic), to which a rope is connected. This rope extends till the back door, and is supported by pulleys at equal distances. To stop the bus, the conductor pulls the rope which makes the bell ring :)

Autos

The meter shows at 1.00 at first and increments in steps of 0.10. I traveled from Andheri(East) to Powai(about 6 km) in an auto and the fare came to 4.70! But my joy was shortlived, the driver enlightened me with this piece of information.
Actual fare = Meter fare * constant

The current value of the constant is 9. Whenever fuel prices are revised, they just change the value of the constant. So, no recaliberation of meters required.

Taxis

If you are a fan of vintage cars, you'll find plenty. Most taxis are old premier padminis. Warning: Travel in a taxi only if you have plenty of money to spare.

Local trains

There are 2 kinds of local trains-Fast and Slow. Fast trains stop at fewer stations than Slow trains. Since the trains stop very often, they seem to be equipped with a nitro-boost kind of mechanism which allows 0 to 60 in 10 seconds. Inside some trains, there is an LCD scroll which displays the next station, and a voice announces the station in 3 languages. Local trains - fast, cost-effective and convenient, but crowded.

Next blog, all about IIT Bombay! So long for now :)

15th July, 2008

2008-07-15T10:53:00.002+05:30

After months of day dreaming, weeks of planning and days of packing, the day that I've been looking forward to with a mixture of excitement and dread has finally arrived. I leave to Mumbai today. The days ahead promise plenty of freedom, learning and realization.....a whole new experience......

Cisco, the best place to work

2008-07-12T23:06:00.000+05:30

Work culture

Cisco needs only a reason to party. On the last day of every month, we have a monthly birthday bash, with all the people whose birthdays fall in that month cutting a big cake. Once a project is completed, the entire team goes out for a party, sponsored by Cisco, of course. The last such party happened on July 1 at Barbecue Nation, and had plenty of food, booze and fun. People leaving Cisco get a farewell party as well!

The people

The people here are as crazy as they are sweet.

This happened to me on my second day at Cisco. I walked into the men's room, and at that moment, all the three urinals were occupied, and so I had to wait. My mentor, Hafeez, was one of the occupants. He saw me walk in, turned back and said "Come, lets share"!

My manager Dharmendra's boss, Shanthi Iyer was in India one day, and visited our office. As soon as she entered, the team gathered around her for her pep talk. Dharmendra was still in his room supervising a P1. Shanthi noticed his absence, and shouted across the hall - "Dharmendra, mere bhai!"

On my last day at Cisco, my manager Dharmendra took me out for lunch. On the previous day, the Engineers there had arranged a small farewell party for me, and I got to cut a cake with "Good bye Prashant" written on it. And here are some sweet emails that I got from the people at Cisco on my last day.

Workplace resources

The office looks more like a resort than an office. Here are some pics.

Paycheck

Timely and fat.

Work

Now, where have I heard that word before?????

FAQs

2008-07-12T22:28:00.000+05:30

1) Why Mint?
Refer answer to Q2.

2) What are you going to blog about?
I'll be blogging about
(a) Myself
(b) My Inner thoughts
(c) News and views
(d) Tech
So, Mint :)

3) How often can I expect a post?
I plan to post approximately once in 2 weeks.