E-Snips Flaws

Observe the page numbering. Dunno what's the algorithm behind...

What do you say about this???

Hope you enjoyed it.. :-) Real snaps.. no manipulation... Check out the links yourself...

Link1, Link2

Linux is indeed tough...

I agree that linux is really great, but, doing stuff is a real pain for Windows people like me. As linix is free in every aspects, I wanted to be acquainted with the technologies under linux. Like everyone likes GUI, I wanted to write GUI programs and started learning GTK+.
I had a misconception that everything would be there in the "Synaptic Package Manager" but I was not able to find GTK in that. Anyway, sources are a free download. Downloaded them and their dependencies from their website.
Dependencies! It was the main problem for me. The dependencies had other dependencies, i.e. Nested dependencies. Somehow, managed to find and install then with three magical commands "./configure", "make" and "make install".
Well, these magical words, however, needed some small changes in between.
One of the dependency I'd little problems was the "gLib" (gnome Library). Although it got installed easily, there was an older version installed which caused problems. Thought of removing it from "Synaptic Package Manager", but removing that would cause, literaly, remove everything on the system. As always, google is there to help with lots of information. Thanks to ubuntu forums as well, I somehow managed to install everything.
At last, after about 5 hours, GTK+ is successfully setup on my machine. I'm able to write GTK+ programs using the Anjuta IDE, which is pretty good.
All's well that end's well. I'm enjoying linux!!!

Planet Positions

Planel Positions! This app calculates present 3d-coordinates of all the planets (except pluto). If you know some stuff in DirectX, you could probably use these co-ordinates and generate a 3d Solar System!!!

Download - Binary (or) Source

Downloading songs from E-Snips

E-Snips is a pretty good source for getting the music you need. But, few days back I found that they had removed the download button they had provided. I've figured out how to download the songs, even though download button is not available. Follow these Simple steps...

1. Navigate to the page where you can listen to the song.
2. Open the page's source. (View menu -> source)
3. Search for something like makeWMPlayer("/nsdoc/.....", -1);
4. Copy the stuff within the quotes.
5. Open your Download manager, such as DAP or FDM, click on Add Url.
6. Use the url http://www.esnips.com/nsdoc/..... (text that you copied in step 4)

Your song will be downloaded. Give it a try. Comments welcome...

What is this?

Looks like some mess? Well, it is the value of pi!!!
Pi is value represented in binary... Black dot = 0, White dot = 1.

More such pictures on pi is available here.

Dataone Usage Finder

2 days before my 4th semester exam, I was getting bored and didn't know what to do. Then, I thought of developing this small tool so that I could regularly check my Dataone's Internet usage without having to visit the website. It is a simple little code.
Download - Binary or Source Code


Screen Shots

Fell free to send comments or suggestions...

Improve your programming skills...

Programming is not knowledge, but, a skill. It cannot be learnt just reading books or, even, attending courses or classes. A skill is to be developed and not learnt! Another thing I would like to mention here is that if you can’t really think, it’s not a good idea to learn programming. But, if you want to try thinking, try programming. ;-)
I would like to share some tips on developing programming skills.

Be clear at concepts
When you learn a concept, I strongly recommend you to make sure you know what it is, how it works and where it can be used. People really think some stuff in programming is really a waste. One such example is the ‘continue’ keyword available in C++. ‘continue’ skips an iteration in a loop, but, think of its application. It can be used in calculation determinant of a matrix where we need to skip a row or a column.

Experiment on things you learn
Practical approach is very important. It isn’t just enough if you know the concepts. You should also verify if it is really works or not! Also try new things with the concepts you know. I’ll give you one such example. You might know the concepts of “type casting” and “pointers”. But, have you tried “pointer type casting”??? Think… there are many such examples.

Logical vs. theoretical approach
If you come across a code segment, think of its logical functioning rather than a theoretical working. One small example is that “left shift” should be understood as multiplication by powers of 2 along with knowing that it shifts the bits towards left.

The stuff I’ve discussed is at a very basic level. The ocean of programming is deep and it’s up to you to dive deep into it and explore. Comments are welcome. Happy programming!!!

Windows on 'Web'

The world's first Windows-based online desktop named 'Nivio' has been launched. Nivio as a service will provide global access to personnel virtual Desktops. Most of the things happen on web these days. This service will reach lots of people.

We should be proud that it has been created by Indians!! Click here to read more...

LightScribe

LightScribe is an Optical recording technology which allows creation of laser-etched labels. The writer, apart from burning the Media, can also print the label on the CD/DVD ROM. A special Lightscribe CD/DVD ROM is required. Lightscribe enabled DVD Write costs about Rs. 3000 and Lightscribe DVD ROM costs about Rs.25 as of now.

For more information click here.

3D-Desktop in XP

You want this??? Download it here. (It's a freeware!)

TechMela

Project Experience

Recently, I got an opportunity to work on a Project given by Thales International, forwarded to me by Microsoft. This was my first ever project. The project was about "Commercial Situation (SITCOM) Database - Opportunity and Bid".

I went thru the project’s requirement gathering, and grasped the requirements after a prolonged and continuous interaction with the appropriate personnel in Thales at Delhi, who delegated this responsibility on me. I started the design and prototype of the project once I was thru with the initial interactions for understanding the exact necessities of the company the same day..

The project has been developed using ASP.NET technology - Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express, and SQL server Express as the back end.

I took time off during the weekends to complete this project and completed the major tasks related to database creations, so that the easier tasks could be addressed during the weekdays (since I had to devote adequate time for my college too).

For the purpose of creating the graphs, I did some R&D to understand as to how graphs could be easily generated using ASP. Thereby, I understood the newer components of ASP which could be used effectively to complete the task to generate reports and graphs (which is the most critical for any company)

It has been a great experience for me, as I have got the opportunity to be delegated with a project at such an early stage in my life. It has helped me learn a lot more about ASP, especially the part of Graph Generation (in a way that the end users can customize the graphs and generate data in the manner they want to view the reports and results), SQL Queries and a lot many other programming intricacies.

At the moment, I am in collaboration with Thales, to add further enhancements to the software, and also I am in the process of continually testing it as and when I take time off from my studies. My sole objective being, making the end users in Thales have an enriching and user friendly experience with the software and avoid as many bugs as possible while making any enhancements to it.

I thank Microsoft and Thales International India for giving me this opportunity. I'm looking forward for more such projects in future, which will definitely help in a great deal of value addition for me.

1 byte = how many bits???

You think this is a silly question?? Obviously 8-bits.. Isn't it? Well, if you think it is 8-bits, you are probably wrong. Each byte is made up of 9-bits out of which 8-bits are used for data and the last bit for parity. Always, the number of 1's in the collection of 9-bits should be odd. Thus, parity bit automatically takes the value '1' when number on 1's the the 8-data bits is even and '0' otherwise. As this parity bit is not accessible for the programmer, 1 byte is considered to be collection of 8-bits.

True in Visual Basic is "-1". Why???

People have been wondering why Visual Basic represents True as -1 whereas most of the other languages consider 1 as true. Here's a brief explanation for why it is like that.

In 2's complement number system, range of numbers that can be represented is -2^n-1 to 2^n-1 - 1 where n represents the number of bits. For representing True or False, only 1 bit is required and, thus, n = 1. Therefore, according to that formula, a single bit can represent numbers ranging from -1 to 0. 0 is considered as false and -1 is considered as true.

XNA Session at VIT

I had accepted to give a session on XNA Game Programming at Hands-On-Lab conducted. Due to hardware incapabilities, it turned out to be a Hands-Free Lab. We hadn't checked the requirements of XNA Game Studio Express which needs a Graphics Card capable of Pixel Shader 1.1 or later. To give the demo atleast, XNA had to be installed on a laptop. JK, for heaven sake, had got an awesome lappy with him without which it wouldn't have been possible to give a session there

Everything turned out well in the end. Although it was a Hands-Free lab, I hope people have been satisfied with my session! All's well that End's well!