Samik's Blog

Weekend Movie Trip - "We Are Family"

2010-09-05T22:41:00.000+05:30

Today at noon we (me and my friends) went to see the film 'We Are Family' starring Kajol, Kareena Kapoor and Arjun Rampal. I didn't have great expectations from a bollywood movie with a title like that. And it did not exceed any of it. Though it started well, in the later part it got boring with too much sobbing and all the emotional stuffs. Overall, it is not a bad movie, quite watchable.

I bought the movie tickets with the Giftmate voucher I was wanting to spend for sometime. Though Bookmyshow.com accepts giftmate I didn't get the option from their main website. I had go through the link http://www.paymate.co.in/movies/

Rainbows

2010-09-04T10:47:00.002+05:30

In this rainy season you get to see rainbows frequently. Though they are not always prominent or a complete semi-circle. The other day I spotted a beautiful rainbow from horizon to horizon.

Even a more beautiful shot was taken by one of the employees at our Bantala office.

Now, this is a rare photo. The rainbow is so very bright and prominent. You can even see a secondary rainbow outside the primary one.

Secondary rainbows are caused by a double reflection of sunlight inside the raindrops, and appear at an angle of 50–53°. As a result of the second reflection, the colours of a secondary rainbow are inverted compared to the primary bow, with blue on the outside and red on the inside. The secondary rainbow is fainter than the primary because more light escapes from two reflections compared to one and because the rainbow itself is spread over a greater area of the sky

If you see closely there is also a faint rainbow on the inner side of the primary rainbow. That is called a supernumerary rainbow (also known as stacker rainbow). Supernumerary rainbows are caused by interference of light.

The alternating faint rainbows are caused by interference between rays of light following slightly different paths with slightly varying lengths within the raindrops. Some rays are in phase, reinforcing each other through constructive interference, creating a bright band; others are out of phase by up to half a wavelength, canceling each other out through destructive interference, and creating a gap. Given the different angles of refraction for rays of different colours, the patterns of interference are slightly different for rays of different colours, so each bright band is differentiated in colour, creating a miniature rainbow. Supernumerary rainbows are clearest when raindrops are small and of similar size. The very existence of supernumerary rainbows was historically a first indication of the wave nature of light, and the first explanation was provided by Thomas Young in 1804
.

I am back!

2010-09-04T10:46:00.000+05:30

Well, it has been a long time since I last posted. Last time, I posted about joining Cognizant as a software engineer. A lot has happened since then. We did a three month training at Cognizant, and then soon after we started working on actual projects. The training period was a fun one. I think for me it was more fun than college (guess why?). The good thing is I am posted in Kolkata itself, some 100 kilometers from home. I am able to visit home on weekends. I have pretty busy work schedule now-a-days. I hardly get free time out of office. But, generally speaking life is a little better now.

Use Your Mobile as a Bluetooth Modem in Linux

2007-12-21T17:15:00.012+05:30

As there is no pc-suite or something as yet for linux, it may appear difficult to connect your mobile via bluetooth and to the internet as well. But as I found out recently it is really simple. I am able to connect my Nokia N70 via bluetooth in Ubuntu linux. And now, I can surf the internet from linux through GPRS. I think it will work with all bluetooth enabled mobile with a working gprs connection.

First get bluez-gnome installed if you don't have already.

$ sudo apt-get install bluez-gnome

Now on your phone open Bluetooth and select the 'Paired devices' tab (by pressing the right button). Under 'options' select 'New paired device'. It will find your computer. Select your computer-name. This will prompt for passcode. Give same passcode for this and when will be asked by the computer later. You can select yes to 'Authorise device to make connections automatically?', so that you will not be asked each time you try to connect it.

Now you have find out your mobile's bluetooth address. Enter the following command

$ hcitool scan

This should show you something like this

Scanning ...
XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX N70

The xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx is the bluetooth address. Now run the command

$ sdptool browse xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

There will be a section like this

Service Name: Dial-Up Networking
Service RecHandle: 0x1000f
Service Class ID List:
"Dialup Networking" (0x1103)
Protocol Descriptor List:
"L2CAP" (0x0100)
"RFCOMM" (0x0003)
Channel: 3
Language Base Attr List:
code_ISO639: 0x454e
encoding: 0x6a
base_offset: 0x100
Profile Descriptor List:
"Dialup Networking" (0x1103)
Version: 0x0100

Note the Channel number. It may be different.

Now, modify the file '/etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf'

$ sudo gedit $home/etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf

so that it looks like the one below

rfcomm0 {
# # Automatically bind the device at startup
bind yes;
#
# # Bluetooth address of the device
device xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx;
#
# # RFCOMM channel for the connection
channel 3;
#
# # Description of the connection
comment "Nokia N70";
}

Check if you can connect your mobile

$ rfcomm release 0
$ rfcomm connect 0

You should see

Press CTRL-C for hangup

Now you have to create these ppp scripts. The code should be changed in some places according to your operator. Possible parts of the code that should be changed are written in bold.

/etc/ppp/peers/bsnl

# from samiksblog.blogspot.com
noauth
#change this if you move the path to your connect script
connect "/usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/chatscripts/bsnl-connect"
#change this if you move the path to your disconnect script
disconnect "/usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/chatscripts/bsnl-disconnect"
#I found that I needed this to remove problems with loopback on connecting
silent
#remove this if you don't want lots of information going to /var/log/messages
debug
#this is the device specified in your rfcomm.conf file
/dev/rfcomm0
#speed at which to connect - might be worth trying higher...
115200
#this is needed so that a default route is added to your routing table
defaultroute
#this is needed so that you pick up Orange's DNS settings
usepeerdns

/etc/chatscripts/bsnl-connect

#from www.hingston.demon.co.uk/mike/nokia6680.html
TIMEOUT 5
ECHO ON
ABORT '\nBUSY\r'
ABORT '\nERROR\r'
ABORT '\nNO ANSWER\r'
ABORT '\nNO CARRIER\r'
ABORT '\nNO DIALTONE\r'
ABORT '\nRINGING\r\n\r\nRINGING\r'
'' \rAT
TIMEOUT 12

OK ATE1
#here's the magic bit!
OK 'AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","celloneportal"'
OK ATD*99***1#

** celloneportal is the access point name. You must replace it with your service provider's access point.

/etc/chatscripts/bsnl-disconnect

# from www.hingston.demon.co.uk/mike/nokia6680.html
ABORT "BUSY"
ABORT "ERROR"
ABORT "NO DIALTONE"
SAY "\nSending break to the modem\n"
"" "\K"
"" "\K"
"" "\K"
"" "+++ATH"
"" "+++ATH"
"" "+++ATH"
SAY "\nPDP context detached\n"

Now you are ready to connect. To connect run the following

$ pon bsnl

And to disconnect

$ poff bsnl

Joined Cognizant

2010-01-09T14:50:00.000+05:30

Last week, I joined Cognizant as a Program Analyst Trainee. With this, I began my professional life as well. Now, we are going through the training program. Some more studies and exams for the next 3 months. So, I am very busy these days. My lazy life has been completely rescheduled. I am getting very little time now to spend on the blogosphere.

Happy New Year!

2010-01-02T11:14:00.000+05:30

Wish everyone a Happy New Year. 2009 had been a significant year for me. Most importantly, I graduated in that year as well as began my professional life.
I hope 2010 will bring new hope and happiness to everyone's life.

Bardhaman Book Fair 2009

2009-12-15T22:47:00.013+05:30

I have been to the 32nd Bardhaman Book Fair today with a friend of mine. We roamed for an hour or so and browsed through many old and new books. I bought a Douglas Adams book (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), I was wanting to buy for a while. I am wishing to visit it again later this week.

The book fair is running from December 11 to 20 at Shankari Pukur Utsav Maidan. So if you are in Burdwan, be sure to visit it on or before the next Sunday. Apart from books there are some cultural festivals almost everyday during the fair.

Geminid Meteor Shower Peaks on Dec. 13th

2009-12-11T21:00:00.002+05:30

Just to let you know, the Geminid meteor shower is underway. You should be able to spot some meteors if you look long enough at the sky, say, for 15 minutes. The meteor rate will increase, of course. Though, it is quite cold outside at night, you might not want to miss the peak on Sunday night, Dec. 13th. More than 100 meteors are expected per hour.

A Day in the Internet

2009-12-10T14:30:00.005+05:30

Created by Online Education

Create Beautiful Photo Collage Online

2009-11-19T11:39:00.003+05:30

Here is a great web service from Shape Collage that lets you pull images from webpages and turn them into a nice photo collage. It also supports Flickr or Picasa Web Album links. Below is a butterfly-shaped collage of my Flickr photos!

They also have a desktop software which has additional features like, bigger and better quality collages, more shapes and other options to customize your collage.

Both the online service and the software are free.

Here are some more collages --

My Picasa Web Albums

2009 Durga Puja

Google Image Search - Hubble Space Telescope

Shape Collage Online

Install Go Compiler on Ubuntu

2009-11-13T21:35:00.006+05:30

Google released a new 'experimental' programming language called Go. It's simple, fast, safe, concurrent and fun. All of these were hard to find in the same programming language. And also, Go is open source.

The installation guide for Go is pretty straightforward. Still, I am going to rewrite that specifically for 32-bit Ubuntu (9.10) system.

First you need the set the environment variables. Open the .bashrc file from your home directory. Add the following lines at the end.

export GOROOT=$HOME/go
export GOOS=linux
export GOARCH=386

Next, install mercurial. To do that use the command

$ sudo apt-get install mercurial

You are now ready to download the source code for Go.

$ hg clone -r release https://go.googlecode.com/hg/ $GOROOT

You need to compile the source code. For that you will require gcc, the standard C libraries, the parser generator Bison,make and the text editor ed installed. Run the following command. It will install these things if they are not already installed.

$ sudo apt-get install bison gcc libc6-dev ed make

Create the directory bin in your home folder. You can use the command:

$ mkdir $HOME/bin

Make sure the $HOME/bin directory is in your path. You may have to just log off and re-login after you create the bin directory. The bin directory in your home will be automatically added to $PATH.

To check the contents of PATH variable, use the command

echo $PATH

Now, start the compilation

$ cd $GOROOT/src
$ ./all.bash

That's it. If everything goes well, it will finish by printing

--- cd ../test
N known bugs; 0 unexpected bugs

N will vary from release to release.

Now lets write a simple program.

package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
  fmt.Printf("Hello, World\n")
}

Save the program in a file hello.go.
Compile, link and run the program.

To compile:

$ 8g hello.go

To link:

$ 8l hello.8

And to Run:

$ ./8.out

That should print the phrase "Hello, World".

To learn more about the Go Programming language read the tutorial here http://golang.org/doc/go_tutorial.html

Internet Users in India

2009-11-12T08:48:00.003+05:30

The following graph shows internet users as percentage of population in India. You can see how number of internet users has increased from almost 0% in 1994 to 7.2% in 2007. The graph will update itself as more data is available.

And here is a comparison of the same data with other countries.

These and many other interesting public data are made available by Google and can be easily accessed through Google Search.

Google ASCII Art Logo

2009-10-25T20:34:00.005+05:30

  ___                _
 / __|___  ___  __ _| |___ 
| (_ / _ \/ _ \/ _` |   -_)
 \___\___/\___/\__, |_\___|
               |___/

Did you see this? The Google logo changed to an ASCII art version when I searched for "ascii art" in it. A fine piece of easter egg. Google continues to amaze me everyday!

NGC 2623 Merger

2009-10-22T12:35:00.006+05:30

The Hubble Space Telescope took this beautiful image of two spiral galaxies smashing together at breakneck speed. It is 250 million light-years away located in the constellation of Cancer.

http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic0912.html

Goddess Durga is Here Once Again!

2009-09-25T14:42:00.016+05:30

It's durga puja again. A time for fun and entertainment. Celebrations are going on all around. Let me show you some photos of the beautiful puja pandals and durga idols my friends and I took here at Bardhaman. They put huge effort in designing those pandels. There are pandals made of chocolates, earthen pots, and other such bizarre materials to pandals that resemble a temple on a hill!

	Padmashree Sangha Pandal পদ্মশ্রী সংঘ প্যান্ডেল
	Sabuj Sangha (সবুজ সংঘ) Pandal - This pandal is made of earthen bowls. Some 90,000 of them have been used.
	Durga Idol Somewhere Photo by Somnath Sutradhar

Google Provides Bengali Transliteration

2009-05-19T21:56:00.007+05:30

Google has now added Bengali to their transliteration service along with three other Indian languages - Gujarati, Marathi and Nepali. Google already provides transliteration services for Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu.
Transliteration allows users to type words phonetically using an English keyboard. Such as you type 'aami' to get আমি and so on. I was very much eager to have Bengali transliteration service from Google, so that I can sometimes write in my own mother tongue. Besides the transliteration labs page, there is also a iGoogle gadget available. You can try the gadget below.

Update: Now you can use Bengali transliteration on any website. Drag this bookmarklet to your bookmarks toolbar.

[অ Type in Bengali]

Now when you want to enter text in Bengali on any website, click that bookmarklet. Wait until the message "Transliteration is enabled ..." is displayed. Now click on any textbox to type Bengali!

I am already using it in GMail Chat.

Look here for more information and detailed instruction.

Control Music Players from Panel (Ubuntu)

2009-09-24T10:25:00.004+05:30

Music Applet is a great program with which you can control your music player right from the panel. Music Applet shows notifications when new song starts, places useful controls on the panel like, Previous track, Next track, Play/Pause, Rating etc. And it is highly configurable. Many music players are supported by Music Applet, like Rhythmbox, Audacious, Banshee, vlc and others.

You can install Music Applet from Synaptic Package Manager or any other package manager you have on your system. The package is named music-applet. Search for it.

After you have installed it, you can add it to a panel by right-clicking on the panel and selecting "Add to Panel..."

Windows 7 is Amazing

2009-01-17T12:47:00.022+05:30

Yesterday, I installed the beta version of Windows 7 on my computer. Of course, The 2.44 GB download was a pain on my 256 kbps connection. But it is worth downloading. Windows 7 looks cool. And it seems to be working faster. The inbuilt Media Center is great. Also a lot of useful features are added in this OS. I was using the XP version so far. I have never used Windows Vista or even seen it running anywhere. And I heard it really sucks.

Microsoft will let people download this beta until 24th of this month. This beta version will expire in August.

Here are some tips for you:

Remove the "send feedback" link from title bar

Open regedit (Click Start, type regedit in the search field and press enter). Now Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
Change the DWORD value FeedbackToolEnabled to 0.
Next time you log on the link will be gone.
But do remember to give them feedback if you find anything not working properly.

Antivirus

The AVG free antivirus is compatible with Windows 7 and I am continuing to use it. You can also use Norton, Kaspersky. For a list of compatible antivirus softwares look here.

Compatibility Issues

Not that every software is compatible with Windows 7. If you cannot install a software normally, you may have to use the compatibility options. For example, Nokia PC Suite.

Update: Windows 7 beta availability is extended to Feb. 12

Win+Tab

A Briefer History of Time

2009-01-02T17:58:00.016+05:30

Recently I got hold of this book, A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking published back in 2005, and read it. And to my surprise I finished it really fast. I had taken rather a long time to read its predecessor, A Brief History of Time. I had to read and reread a chapter to properly get the concept. But this book is written in very lucid manner with lots of illustrations. Most of the technical contents are gone. So, general public with basic knowledge of school level physics can grasp its contents. Some new things are added of course, like progress in string theory etc.

The book starts like its predecessor, describing the beliefs held by Aristotle and Ptolemy of Geocentric universe. And how our concept of the universe changed from then gradually with new theories proposed by Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler... And then how Newton smashed the idea of absolute space and Einstein the idea of absolute time. Then the book discusses briefly the Special and General Theory of Relativity and the idea of curved space.

The discussion continues with the discovery of the expanding universe, and the several models of the universe. It then goes about discussing the Big Bang and Black Holes. After that, comes Uncertainty Principle, Quantum Mechanics and the incompatibility of General Relativity with quantum mechanics. The authors then considers the possibility of Time Travel and wormholes in space-time. Finally it throws some light on String Theory and its latest developments.

Oh! I forgot to mention is most important topic - the search for a unified theory that describes everything in the universe, which has been discussed throughout the book.

Well, I enjoyed reading this book. If you had not much luck with The Brief History of Time, you may try this "briefer" one. It is of course far easier to understand. In fact, I think everyone who want to know how far the human race has gone in unraveling the mysteries of the universe, must read this book.

A related thing -
Here you can watch the 1991 documentary film A Brief History of Time about Stephen Hawking. The film is a biography of Hawking's life, featuring interviews with family members, colleagues, and his childhood nanny.

How a Galactic Transit System Would Look Like?

2009-01-10T10:57:00.002+05:30

Samuel Arbesman, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard created a sample transit system map for our galaxy. The colored lines goes along each of the spiral arms of the Galaxy. The stations are at their proper locations. The solar system is located in the red Orion arm near the top.

Here is a schematic diagram of the actual Milky Way arms.

eSpeak Speech Synthesizer

2009-02-18T20:49:00.005+05:30

eSpeak is a open-source text to speech engine that comes with Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex). It can read text files or stdin inputs.

To invoke it open a terminal and type

$ espeak

Now each line you enter into the prompt will be read aloud.

If you want some long text to be read aloud, start eSpeak with the --stdin option

$ espeak --stdin

Now copy some text from anywhere and paste into the prompt (ctrl+shift+v). Then press Return and (ctrl+d).

If you have a text file, say example.txt, you can set the option -f <text file>

$ espeak -f example.txt

Comet Lulin Comes Closer

2009-02-22T16:59:00.013+05:30

Comet Lulin will be on its closest approach (.41 AU) to earth on 24th February. It will not be much bright though (Max. magnitude 4.0 - 5.0). Still on a dark sky you may be able to spot it as a white splotch against the black sky. Look for it in the constellation Leo [skymap]. It will lie only a few degrees from saturn. The comet actually looks green through powerful telescopes. This is because, its gassy atmosphere, of the size of Jupiter, contains cyanogen(CN) and diatomic carbon(C₂), both glow green in sunlight.

Lulin's orbit is nearly a parabola and it's motion is opposite to that of the planets. So, this particular comet once leaves the inner solar system will never come this way again.

Lulin was discovered in July, 2007 by Ye Quanzhi in a photograph taken at the Lulin Observatory. It's technical name is C/2007 N3. It means that it is the 3rd comet discovered in the second half of July, 2007. The prefix C/ denotes that it is a non-periodic comet.

Comets are designated by the year of their discovery followed by a letter indicating the half-month of the discovery and a number indicating the order of discovery. A prefix is used for denoting nature of the comet. See Comet nomenclature

For more photos and skymaps see here
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/highlights/35992534.html

Back from Vizag

2009-03-18T12:24:00.005+05:30

I have been on a trip to Vishakhapatnam recently. “The jewel of East Coast” is what is said about Vizag. Of course it is. We are on a two day tour, which is a very short time to see everything properly. On the first day we visited Araku valley, tribal museum, Galikonda viewpoint, Anantagiri, Borra caves on a ‘train cum bus’ tour package from APTourism. We also saw the tribal dance (‘Dhimsa’). On the second day we did local sight seeing by Bus (also from APToursm). We visited Simhachalam temple, Thotlakonda, Rushikonda beach, Kailasagiri hills, Submarine museum, Vishakha museum etc. Also, on that day, we did boating in the Bay of Bengal.

	Our train enters a tunnel From Vishakhapatnam to Araku was a 4 and a 1/2 hour train journey. The train moves through 52 such tunnels.
	Gardens at Araku valley
	The tribal museum It portrays the daily life of the tribals
	Galikonda Viewpoint 4000 ft above sea level. Second highest point in the eastern ghats
	Borra caves Discovered by William King George in 1807 in a geological survey. It is a natural cave made of limestone.
	Simhachalam temple
	Thotlakonda 3rd Century BC buddhist ruins
	Rushikonda Beach
	Vishakhanam city from Kailasagiri Hills
	Submarine Museum The Kursura submarine was bought from Russia in 1969. After her decommissioning it was converted into a submarine museum in 2002

Also read my elder brother's blog entry about this trip.

Power On Your Computer by Keyboard, Mouse or Alarm

2009-04-24T14:19:00.002+05:30

I found these useful options in the bios settings of my computer. In the Power Management Setup you can enable the Power on by Keyboard and Power on by Mouse options. Then, when you want to power on your computer or wake it up from sleep or you can just double click your mouse or press some key(s) on your keyboard.

Another exciting thing I discovered is that I can start the computer by alarm. You specify a time and date, and the computer starts automatically at that time. It is particularly useful for me for downloading things from the internet at night (I have a broadband plan that provides unlimited night time usage). I don't have to keep the computer On all the time. It now automatically starts at 2 a.m. in the morning, boots into the default OS (which is now Win7), starts the download manager (I have put it in the startup list) and begins downloading!

These options may not be available on all motherboards or bios though.

Ubuntu 9.04 is here

2009-04-24T14:20:00.005+05:30

Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope was released yesterday (It's 2009.04.23). You can download it here http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download. You can also buy ubuntu CD or DVD or request a free CD. If you are familiar with torrents then consider the Bittorrent download options. It is a more fast and reliable option, I believe.

Ubuntu continues to be my favourite linux distribution for a long time. And now let's see what are the new features in the current upgrade - ext4 file system support, improved boot performance, OpenOffice 3, new notification style and a lot more visual and performance improvements.