Jithu Sunny

Augmented Reality

2011-12-28T11:28:00.000+05:30

This presentation was created as part of my college technical Seminar. The LaTeX source is here -https://github.com/jithusunny/Latex/tree/master/Augmented%20Reality

By the way, ARToolKit seems to be a good place to start with developing AR applications.

Words

2011-11-15T19:18:00.000+05:30

Here's one of my favorite songs, in my voice.
Listen to it and tell me how's it... :-)

Words | Musicians Available

Words

Smile an everlasting smile,

a smile can bring you
near to me.

Don't ever let me find you gone,

cause that wouldbring a

tear to me.

This world has lost its glory,

let's start a brand new story

now, my love.

Right now, there'll be no other time

and I can show you how,

MY LOVE.

Talk in everlasting words,

and dedicate them all

to me.

And I will give you all my life,

I'm here if you should call

to me.

You think that I don't even mean

a single word I say.

It's only words,

and words are all I have,

to take your heart away.

wordify.c - Prints number in words

2011-11-12T21:08:00.001+05:30

jisuka@HCL:~/beta$ ./a.out
Enter: 9876543
ninety eight lakh seventy six thousand five hundred and forty three

You can browse the code here.

It is a really verbose version. If you find a better solution, kindly put the link here.. ;-)

Planet of the Sparrows

2011-10-23T12:51:00.001+05:30

As time passed by, the Sparrows started thinking. Putting aside their routine flying, pecking and feeding they sat thinking awkwardly for hours. Thousands of years later, they evolved into Sparrow Sapiens & dominated the planet.

Some curious fellows thought such hard that they started thinking - 'What am I living for?' & 'What is the meaning of life?' A religion slowly took shape that gave ready-made answers for many questions. The majority of Sparrow Sapiens believed that they are the center of the universe and the creator is the Almighty Sparrow-God. A relatively small percentage thought that the Sparrow God is bull-shit and they did not believe.

The believers had volumes of unquestionable Holy scriptures, all-knowing Spiritual gurus, magnificent & huge Cathedrals atop trees, famous Pilgrim centers and that kept on accumulating. They did not have any reason not to believe in the Almighty Sparrow God. As taught by the Spiritual gurus, they lived a God-fearing life worshipping the Sparrow God 24X7. They stared at non-believers with disgust and sympathy.

At present, depending upon the geography, the Sparrow Sapiens have a number of creators - Sparrow God I, Sparrow God II, Sparrow God III, etc. And because of this ~~clash of ideas~~ clash of beliefs, there exists conflicts between various religious groups. Many Sparrow-Sapiens even sacrifice their lives fighting for their faith.

Pascal's Triangle - C Program

2011-09-25T13:22:00.011+05:30

Pascal's triangle is a triangular array of the binomial coefficients in a triangle. Read more about Pascal's triangle here.

The gif image below is from Wikipedia that demonstrates the formation of Pascal's triangle clearly.

Here is a recursive algorithm to find out the number at any given position.

Algorithm

function element_at(row, position) 

        If position = 0 OR position == row

                return 1

        else

                return element_at(row - 1, position - 1) + element_at(row - 1, position)

The C program

The github repo - here

By the way, did you notice the elegance of the recursion? The code is almost same as the algorithm. Recursion makes code readable, concise and brilliant..!

Python script to decipher Caesar ciphers

2011-09-19T19:49:00.009+05:30

Caesar cipher is a simple, widely used encryption technique. It is a kind of substitution cipher in which each letter in the plain-message is replaced by a letter some fixed number positions down the alphabet.

Read more - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar_cipher

Example

Today, I prepared a simple python program to do this for solving a puzzle from Kryptos - an online treasure hunt conducted as a part of MEC EXCEL 2011.

Then I added some more features to it like handling both uppercase and lowercase & ignoring symbols. Here's it.

Sample Output

Here's the git code repo of this - https://github.com/jithusunny/Python/tree/master/Caesar

Note: This program can be used for both ciphering and deciphering..!

Mobme Codejam - Solutions

2011-09-07T11:35:00.025+05:30

I hope you have read about Mobme Codejam here.
Here are my solutions to some of the contest problems.

Mirror

Write a program which when given links to two images on the Internet, finds out how similar they are.

Bonus points if it ranks images on a similarity scale from 0 - very different to 100 - exactly the same.

Here is my Solution

Ternary

Write a number generator that keeps printing out 10 digit numbers, one in each line. Write a second program called filter that takes the output of this number generator and filters it based on its first digit: if the first digit starts with 0, write it to a file named 0.txt, if the first digit is 1, write it to a file named 1.txt, and so on. Write a third program that when run keeps a watch on these files and prints out the count of numbers in these files every second.

Note: Three separate programs are required here.

Here is my Solution

Tricolour

Write a program which will generate the Indian national flag.

Here is my Solution

Spell

Write a spell checking program which checks an input text with help of an English dictionary. Remember: the spell checker is better if it manages to catch the most likely errors.

[Bonus points if you use cool data structures, like say, a Bloom filter]

Here is my Solution

Sandbox

Write a simple TCP server that supports the following commands:

list - Lists all the files in the directory the server is running on.
pwd - Print the path of the directory the server is running on.
cat - Print the contents of the filename given as argument.
rm - Delete the filename given as argument.
touch - Create a file with name and content given as argument.
time - Returns the current time on the server.

Also implement a simple client program that uses this server. The client must create a file every minute on the server with a random filename and with the content being the current server time.

Here is my Solution

Invariant

Consider the following process done on 4 digit numbers:

Take any four digit number which has at least 2 different digits. (1111 is not allowed, but 1112 is)

Arrange the digits first in descending order to get another 4 digit number (2111) and then in ascending order to get one more four digit number (1112). Add leading zeroes if necessary.

Subtract smaller number from the larger number (eg: 2111 - 1112 = 0990)

Repeat from step b

Example - Starting with 1112

2111 - 1112 = 0999

9990 - 0999 = 8991

9981 - 1899 = 8082

8820 - 0288 = 8532

8532 - 2358 = 6174

It’s an interesting fact that this process when done on 4 digit numbers always ends up at 6174 after a few iterations. In the example above, 1112 took 5 iterations to evaluate to 6174.

Write a program that performs the above operation on all valid 4 digit numbers from 1000-9998 and find out how many iterations it takes each number to evaluate to 6174.

Also: print a frequency distribution table with number of iterations needed to reach 6174 as one column and the total count of numbers corresponding to that iteration as another. [Bonus marks if you can represent this as a nice looking graph.]

Example Output:

Iteration	Total Count of Numbers
1	10
2	151
3	240

Here is my Solution
Here is the github hub of the solutions - https://github.com/jithusunny/Mobme-Codejam

Mini Project - Computer controlled Vehicle

2011-08-08T18:56:00.011+05:30

Our Mini-Project was a Computer controlled vehicle. The user can control the vehicle using a GUI in the system. The GUI was coded in PyQt and it had PySerial code embedded in it for serial communication.
At the system side,

CP2102 USB - UART Bridge.
433 MHz Transmitter.

At the vehicle side,

Microcontroller - Atmel Atmega8.
L293D motor driver IC.
433 MHz Receiver.
12V Battery.
7805 Voltage regulator IC.
DC Motors and other mechanical parts like chassis, wheels, etc.

Screenshot of the GUI:

Updated on: Sept 7, 2011

Source Files

C-Code for AVR AtMega8 Microcontroller - Download

PyQt4 Source for GUI - Download

Project Report pdf - Download

The Github repo of Mini-Project is here - https://github.com/jithusunny/Mini-Project

Mobme Codejam

2011-07-27T12:02:00.016+05:30

This post is about a programming competition I participated in recently. Mobme Codejam...!

Mobme Codejam is the name of an online programming competition that was conducted by Kerala-based IT-firm Mobme Wireless in June 2011. It was a 14 day long event in which the questions for each day were put at a website specially designed for the event. Every day a new question is out at 11pm. Contestants have 1 day for solving the questions. The contestants can program in any of five programming languages - C, Php, Python, Ruby, Clojure. A cash prize of Rs.1000 was awarded to the daily winners & a whooping 1 Lakh for the final lucky guy...!! The Grand finale winner is Karthik R from NIT-C.

The questions were more dynamic/real-world type than traditional algorithmic problems. The question set is here. The philosophy is also different from other coding competitions. They look for idiomatic & elegant code. They support this view - the program is not only for the 'computers to execute' but also for the 'humans to read'. That's good..!

I just thought of giving a try when I heard of this event. And to my surprise(!!) I was selected as the daily-winner on two days(codenames: 'mirror' & 'ternary'). I used Python, my favorite programming language, for solving both. The experience was fresh to me and I loved it very much - designing & solving(googling, ofcourse..!) and submitting it in time was absolutely thrilling. You can see the daily-prize winners here.

        The Grand finale was held at the Mobme Wireless Office at Kochi. A few words about Mobme. It is the result of a small group of young entrepreneurs from Kerala. Ruby is the major language used by them. They have bagged innovation awards from the NASSCOM twice.
        The question for finale was to write a 'generic USSD application server'. I couldnt even write a working program for that. And I took it as an alert for me to learn at least the basics of web technologies. Now I'm working on it.. ;-) The winners program didnt work either. The prize was for his design. It should have been really ingenious..! I won't say 'I was not at all disappointed'. Yes, I was. But I had many other things - My first experience inside a real software company, Interaction with the 'very friendly' CEO, CTO and other persons at Mobme(they took us to 'Hotel Presidency' in their cars for lunch), the thrill of the climax of a different coding competition & most importantly I got a chance to meet and interact with other finalists, the best programmers in Kerala..!
        The next version of Mobme Codejam, probably a bigger event, would be conducted next year.

I will later put my prize winning codes here...till then byeeeee...:-)

Update: Here is the post about the solutions - http://jithusunnyk.blogspot.com/2011/09/mobme-codejam-solutions.html

No serial Port?! Bridge the gap with USB-UART bridge

2011-05-18T14:31:00.012+05:30

Here's a pretty useful piece of info for those of you who worry, "I don't have a serial port in my Laptop/Desktop". Yeah, hardly any new Laptop/Desktop comes with a Serial port. They have been replaced by USB ports.

Most hobby electronics projects involving PC interfacing uses RS-232 serial communication. And also many legacy devices can be connected only to the serial port. USB protocols are complex compared to RS-232.

Our mini-project is about controlling a remote vehicle using a computer. We lacked a serial port in our systems, so we searched to find a good USB-Serial converter. Actually this USB-Serial converters have been in the market since long & many are there.

Here's the one we used, the CP2102 chip manufactured by the Silabs. We bought it from the Extreme electronics website which is by the way a very useful site to start with AVR microcontrollers. Here's the link of the product. http://store.extremeelectronics.co.in/USB-to-UART-Bridge-CP2102-Based.html.

The cost involved is Rs. 400 + shipping charges. But the product is worth it. Because it's so compact when compared to other alternatives. Its actually a USB-UART bridge. ie, we dont have a db connector on it. If you require that go for an FTDI USB-Serial converter cable. In addition to the emulation of a Virtual Communication Port(VCP), CP2102 does a RS-232 to TTL level conversion also where as in most of the other USB-Serial converters the output is in RS-232 voltage level. Implies you need to use a level converter IC to interface with circuits working in TTL Logic.

Device driver for CP2102 for all platforms can be downloaded from the Silabs website. Fortunately Linux users needn't do this since the driver module is already there in your system waiting to get loaded...:-)

Hotel California

2011-05-04T13:06:00.028+05:30

'Hotel California' by Eagles band released in 1977 is considered as one of the best songs of the rock era. This song is one of my favorites that never fails to touch my heart even if I'm hearing it for the 999th time. This song has really good lyrics, an all-pervasive 12-string electric guitar base & amazingly soothing vocals. The song has won many awards including the Grammy & it has been consistently rated as one of the best songs ever.

The lyrics of the song on the surface is about a weary traveler who seeks shelter at a 'tempting', luxurious hotel & gets trapped there. This is also one of the very few songs that can be freely interpreted in the context of those listening to it. So there has been numerous interpretations for this song which includes the excess & materialism, life after death, marriage, high-life, etc. On the whole the song has a tint of mystery in it. And...I love the mysterious..!

Hotel California

On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair

Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air

Up ahead in the distance, I saw shimmering light

My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim

I had to stop for the night

There she stood in the doorway;

I heard the mission bell

And I was thinking to myself,

'This could be Heaven or this could be Hell'

Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way

There were voices down the corridor,

I thought I heard them say...

Welcome to the Hotel California

Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place)

Such a lovely face

Plenty of room at the Hotel California

Any time of year (Any time of year)

You can find it here

Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes Benz

She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys she calls friends

How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat.

Some dance to remember, some dance to forget

So I called up the Captain,

'Please bring me my wine'

He said, 'We haven't had that spirit here since nineteen sixty nine'

And still those voices are calling from far away,

Wake you up in the middle of the night

Just to hear them say...

Welcome to the Hotel California

Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place)

Such a lovely face

They livin' it up at the Hotel California

What a nice surprise (what a nice surprise)

Bring your alibis

Mirrors on the ceiling,

The pink champagne on ice

And she said 'We are all just prisoners here, of our own device'

And in the master's chambers,

They gathered for the feast

They stab it with their steely knives,

But they just can't kill the beast

Last thing I remember, I was

Running for the door

I had to find the passage back

To the place I was before

'Relax,' said the night man,

'We are programmed to receive.

You can check-out any time you like,

But you can never leave!'

Hotel California | Musicians Available

Here's the song in my voice. I managed to get a so-so karoakke from the net(no comparison with the excellent original background music!!). I used a music player to record & so this is having very poor quality & my singing is also not that good...:-P Anyways listen to it & comment. And don't forget to download the original track. :-)

Update - Perizia 3.0 Techfest @ Vidya Engg College.

2011-04-02T20:42:00.009+05:30

Computer science department of Vidya Academy of Science & Technology(VAST) conducted the tech-fest, Perizia 3.0 on April Ist & 2nd. And this post is about my participation in the event.

I'm so happy with my first proper tech fest participation. I got first prize in on-line C coding competition. The question was to build a railway reservation system. More features, efficiency & documentation decides the winner. You can browse my code in github here. I got a Mouse-pad+USB hub+Calculator thing. It has an led lighting also - its cool..:-)

Here's a picture..

Our team(Me + Vishwajeet Nair) got second prize in Quiz competition. We were so close to the first place but we couldnt get through the tie-breaker successfully. And in reverse scripting competition our team(Me + Syam Krishnan) bagged third prize. My friends also secured many prizes & I'm almost sure that GECT has the overall championship...:-)

Tech-fests are cool...I'm liking it..:-)

Resultmanager program - Python

2011-03-26T12:34:00.019+05:30

Update 1: Added code to find out the number of students in each range of percentage. Eg- No.of students with percentage above 80%.
Here is a python program to process the results of any batch of degree students under Calicut university:

I had already written a simple result fetching program that fetches and saves the s4 results of my classmates for my class tutor. Later, another program to fetch the s6 results of our seniors. But those programs are really useless after one use. When new results are out, they needs to be edited to work properly.
So I worked on it & went on making it more general and here's the result. The program as of now can:

Find the class pass percentage.
Find the pass percentage of each subject.
Calculate the individual Totals & Percentages of passed students.
Find the class topper.
Find out no.of students in each range of percentages. Eg- between 60% & 75%.

The program takes three inputs: the URL of a result page of any one student, total marks, no.of students.

I have verified the program for the various branches of GECT successfully. The program works properly for results of any degree batch under Calicut university, provided their roll number is of the format :[A-Za-z]+[0-9]+. Eg: Mine is ETAIECS020. This single constraint will be fixed when I get time, because I'm very busy these days thanks to the various document submissions, mini-project, assignments & other stuff. :P
Here's the sample program output:

Browse the code in github.
Download the program.

Running the program
1) Download the code.
2) Open terminal & 'cd' to the directory containing the file.
3) type: python resultmanager.
Done!

Saddle points of a matrix

2011-03-05T15:21:00.010+05:30

Update 1: Fixed bug pointed out by Syam. Alan. J. Perlis says: "In programming, everything we do is a special case of something more general - and often we know  it too quickly." So I wrote the most general saddle point finder - Can handle matrices of any order.

Saddle points of a matrix are those elements, if any, that are the smallest in their row & largest in their column. This is my solution for finding the saddle points in a matrix in C.

Browse the code in github.

Download the program.

What's ON now..!

2011-03-04T20:51:00.008+05:30

Mini-Project - The main process running right now using up most of the resources. My team-mates are Akhil K, Rahul CP & Salim Ali UT. Ours is an embedded systems project. We intend to implement a basic general purpose vehicle that can be controlled by remote computer. The program in computer will be written using Python programming language. As of now Sensor-module and Motor-module works perfectly. Now moving on to the RF-module part. After that we've to do the interfacing with computer through USB port and the python GUI interface. Then that vehicle can be made something specific like maze solver, unmanned campus taxi, etc. I'm getting good technical support from my senior, Appu Sajeev. Quite interesting. Everybody has finally started 'doing' something..!! And another interesting trend is the use of Python - Many projects rely on python.

A simple python utility - Here's a simple python utility that I wrote. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/21358124/result. This is a command-line utility that downloads the university exam result of any given roll number. I'm glad that it is found useful by somebody - Our Tutor was searching for a program that fetches the results of all students. A simple modification to this did the job..:)

TECHIES '11 - A techfest at IES college. Participated in C debugging competition. Didn't get any prize. But it boosted my self-confidence, because I was first in preliminary round. Next round, was coding - finding saddle-point of a 3x3 matrix and implementation of mxn matrix multiplication using array of pointers. It took a li'l time for me to start working smoothly in TURBOC and I made a silly logical error also. And the winner is our junior Anand. I regret I didn't attend many techfests. Will try now onwards.

Sister got placed - My sister got placed at Cognizant, Chennai. Waiting for her first salary..:-)

Happy New Year..:)

2011-01-01T00:16:00.002+05:30

Yet another exam season approaching. As usual an 'examination-oriented' study schedule has been prepared. But will see to 'learn' atleast some topics properly. After exams I hope to do some real tech stuff in 2011.

I would say, the abundance of interesting and elegant technologies in UNIX platform has lured me to taste all. But since my consistency-module is still under development, I'm yet to master any...! Confessing a li'l more, I spent a huge chunk of my time thinking about life, god, afterdeath, religion, etc. When I need to know/do something badly, my mind too seems to implement 'mutual exclusion'. Then I sidelines everything else. But for now, I have buried all those thoughts deep inside my mind to reopen later.

Also, I'm disclosing with you my top secret, new year resolution - "To become the best of myself"..:D.

Happy New Year buddies...:)

What is Android?

2010-11-06T07:14:00.011+05:30

"This article was published in GEC's Newspaper - Graffiti"

Have you ever thought of customizing your mobile phone according to your taste?(other than just the theme!). Google Android is here for that and much more. Android is the mobile operating system developed by Google.

Android has become a major player in the smart phone market within a short span of time since its inception in 2008. On average about 2,00,000 Android devices are being sold these days. The sales figures of Android devices is climbing on a daily basis and this, definitely, is a revolution. Android has dethroned major smart phone giants like iPhone, Blackberry, Windows mobile, etc. & is second only to Nokia Symbian OS which, analysts say, will be pushed to the second place shortly.

The entry of Android has revolutionized the smart phone market. For a touchscreen smart phone like iPhone you'll have to spend Rs.30,000+ and you have just a few models to choose from. But there are plenty of Android laden smart phones which appeal even the middle-class with a starting price tag of Rs.10,000. The Android phones available in India are from Samsung, HTC, Motorola, Sony, etc.

The heart of Android OS is a modified Linux kernel. The user interface runs on top of it which is written in Java. The web browser is based on Webkit layout and Chrome's V8 Javascript Engine. Android offers a much intuitive interface and supports features such as multitouch, Wi-fi, bluetooth, multi-tasking, etc. The tight integration with google services - such as Google search, Gtalk, Google Maps, Gmail,etc. - is an inborn feature of Android OS.

The real strength of Android OS is nothing but the large community of developers writing application programs(apps) that extend the functionality of the devices. There are currently over 70,000 apps available for Android with some estimates saying 100,000 have been submitted. You and me can change the OS and make it the way we want it to be. Applications can be written using Java programming language. If you can't wait to get a Android device you are free to download the Android SDK(Software Development Kit) and emulate a virtual Android mobile in your computer to test! Innovative ideas such as 'Apps without borders' makes it possible to have any sort of apps that you dream to have.

Android will be a milestone in the history of Open source softwares. Its true that even now many are yet to realise the real magnificence of Free Software. But at least in the realm of hand-held devices, the Open Source softwares will have a much deserving, visible supremacy.

Unixhub

2010-10-03T17:09:00.012+05:30

New hangout space for Unix lovers..! wix.com/jithus/unixhub

I created a website using Wix. Discussion forum, Chat, Poll options are there. Links to useful websites and good articles are also included. Do check out and dont forget to give me feedback..:)

#Also checkout Wix - really cool. Just so easy.

Field Visit

2010-09-26T12:53:00.004+05:30

    The teacher declared: "And that is the place where we are going right now to conduct the field-visit." He continued: "The ruins which were once the cradle of great civilizations where our culture and traditions were born. Some place where there was an abundance of fresh and free air, water and greenery and landscapes beyond imagination. The place where humans were born."

    Teacher pointed his hands to a distant place beyond the windows of the vehicle. Suddenly, the students started to chatter in between them. The teacher motioned to keep silence and asked one boy what the discussion was about. He asked: "But sir, we've studied that human beings were born in the blue planet. This is not blue. This is some grey planet." Teacher replied:"Yeah, And how the blue planet got transformed into grey, you'll study in the next year." The teacher took a deep breath and spoke out gently, "And this place is The Earth."

    Few moments later the space-ship landed on the Grey planet.

Top Speed

2010-09-26T12:47:00.004+05:30

    7:45pm. "Bye, Amma".

    Just after 2 minutes, Varun was on his top speed on his new Karizma. His mobile starts vibrating. He slides his hand into the pocket and suddenly a pair of headlights is seen flashing against him. He avoids the collision with the car by adjusting the bike to left with one hand while other hand is still in his pocket. But he hits - a pedestrian.

    The man tumbles into a canal nearby and the carrybag full of vegetables he was carrying gets thrown into the air. Few moments later Varun was sitting next to his bike rubbing his forearms when he sees a tomato that comes rolling to him. He shuddered when he thought "Did Amma say Pa went out to buy vegetables?!".

God is Black and is Nothing.

2010-05-24T19:15:00.240+05:30

Update:

Well, long after writing this, now I feel some clarification is required about this post. This write-up took birth at a transitional period in my life. Transition from 100% religious(When I was so active in church and related activities. I was in the church choir. I take this opportunity to thank those people for standing my terrible singing :P) to an Athiest (No problem in calling so. But to be more clear I'm being agnostic. Which depends on the context. For example somebody who says God is Jehovah or Allah can think I am an athiest & if somebody just asks me 'Do you believe in god?' I am an agnostic. Because until he defines what he means by God, I cant say whether I believe in it or not. So it is safe to be an agnostic in that context). So this article contains some religious bits which you can ignore easily.

Nothing is absolute and 100% perfect. Is it? And if something is, it is what we call, the God. God is omnipotent, omnipresent, etc. In short God is something that is 100% perfect in all aspects. (Atheists, please continue reading; Must be interesting. And hard-core believers, this is just another viewpoint.)

Can you think about something that is 100% perfect and that materially exists too..?! NO. Nothing is absolutely perfect that materially exists. Even idealized entities like a perfectly black body or an Ideal gas doesn't exist. So the perfectly perfect entity - God has no material existence. That is, "God is nothing". Or God is "Nothingness" or "vacuum" or "emptiness".

White is the overused color of God. But Black color better represents God. Because black represents "vacuum" or "emptiness".(The color of Lord Krishna in Hinduism is Black.) Black is the absence of everything, but it contains everything.

Read the last sentence once more..

Is nothing but contains everything.

This is nothing but the notion that everything is balanced. Isn't this the basis of all scientific theories and laws? For example, Newton's 3rd law of motion - "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction". That is "Everything is balanced".

    What ever be the concept, under all its abstractions lies down this universal, Zero-Sum concept. Summing up, you get a Zero. Or everything altogether is a zero or nothing. Many religions puts forward a concept that everything that exists is a part of God. Or God is present in everything; In all of us, sand, stone etc. That agrees with the zero - sum of the universe.

    Universe can be considered as an instance of an initially-calm-pond disturbed by a stone. The scene contains randomly distributed troughs, crests and droplets, which was altogether in an equilibrium position. Or as in a number line, how ever/ what ever random warps are made towards one direction, there exists something that balances it on the other side and what exists before, after and within these warps is the Zero. Likewise the universe is a result of infinite-warps in multiple-dimensions from nothing or zero.

    Thinking in the Hindu way, "Maya is the limited, purely physical and mental reality in which our everyday consciousness has become entangled. Maya is held to be an illusion, a veiling of the true, unitary Self — the Cosmic Spirit also known as Brahman" - Wikipedia

So Maya or Illusion is those warps.

                                                     &

    Quoting from http://1stholistic.com/prayer/Hindu/hol_Hindu-brahman.htm
- "Brahman is the ground of all reality and existence. Brahman is uncreated, external, infinite and all-embracing. It is the ultimate cause and goal of all that exists. It is One and it is All. All beings emanate from Brahman; all beings will return back to the same source. Brahman is in all things and it is the true Self (atman) of all beings."

    And this uncreated, all-embracing Brahman, the reality from which everything emanated and everything will return back to, is the "nothingness" or "emptiness".

    Thinking this way God is the ultimate truth and emptiness is that ultimate truth. Or "Everything is balanced" says it all...

    The Bhagavat Gita teaches about Karma yoga("discipline of action"). Karma Yoga is described as a way of acting, thinking and wishing by which one orients oneself toward realization by acting in accordance with one's duty (dharma) without consideration of personal self-centered desires, likes or dislikes. Acting without being attached to the fruits of one's deeds.

    According to Paramhans Swami Maheshwarananda, we produce Karma in four ways:

through thoughts
through words
through actions that we perform ourselves
through actions others do under our instructions

The Hindu scriptures also teaches that according to each one's karmic history and "karmic account balance" the jiva(soul) goes through a cycle of birth, death and rebirth(Samsara). And when the karmic balance becomes zero the soul attains moksha(salvation).

    Advaita Vedanta's description on Moksha : "Moksha is seen as a final release from one's worldly conception of self, the loosening of the shackle of experiential duality and a realization of one's own fundamental nature which is true being, pure consciousness and bliss an experience which is ineffable and beyond sensation."

    And this unification with the universal reality ("nothingness") is in becoming nothing. So be nothing..!

    A good summary of this article is that: "God does not make one suffer for no reason nor does He make one happy for no reason. God is very fair and gives you exactly what you deserve."

The Notion Ink Adam

2010-03-06T15:11:00.010+05:30

India - based company, Notion Ink unveiled a prototype of its much anticipated "Adam" Tablet PC that runs on Android OS, at the Barcelona Mobile World Congress this year.

Adam always hated "Apple" after that(!). I don't know whether the same is the case with the Notion Ink Adam - Anyway it's widely seen as an "Apple i-pad killer". Well, it deserves to be so. Just go through the specs to see the all those features you would like to have in your highly portable - tablet PC - ebook reader, etc. I believe this is going to be a great debut as far as Indian hardware start ups are concerned.

"Adam can offer the performance of a computer with the power consumption of a cellphone" - says co-founder Rohan Shravan. Adam runs on Android OS. But Notion Ink says other OS-es will eventually run on the tablet, including Chromium, Ubuntu and other Linux builds.

Adam uses NVIDIA’s new Tegra 2 chipset and a Pixel Qi display. Unlike traditional screens, Pixel Qi screen has a dual mode, and can be read in bright sunlight like an e-reader. Thanks to the Pixel Qi display and the Tegra 2 chipset the Adam should excel in battery life, despite the HD video capabilities. Adam is 1080p capable, with an HDMI port to output to an HDTV or projector.

A 3.2 MP camera with all-new swivel action is included which makes Adam usable for both video calling and regular photography. Other than the 10.1 display/touchscreen capable of recognizing six simultaneous points of contact, there is a track-pad on the back which helps a smudge-free navigation. It also makes Adam easy to use while moving around.

In the case of internet browsing, we've Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox in Adam, compared to Safari in i-pad. It offers 3G and WiFi Connectivity. It will also be a very good e book reader with an advanced light sensing technology.

The product is said to be available for shipping by June/July and will be priced around $400(not final). It may cost about $800 for a completely maxed-out version.

Before stopping, you won't be surprised to know that I would love to own one, right?!!

#proud Indian

#feeling innovative

#Jai Ho!

FOSSMEET@NITC

2010-01-20T19:05:00.005+05:30

NIT Calicut's student groups and other organizations are jointly organizing an annual event on FOSS(Free & Open Source Software). The event is scheduled to be held during February 5 to 7, 2010. http://fossmeet.in/

They have planned to provide FOSS huts for communities, projects, user groups, mappers and start ups.

We have requested for four huts for

Scribus/KStars
Git
Embedded systems/FEL
SciPy

The wiki page link is here http://www.fosscommunity.in/wiki/FSUG,THRISSUR

Hacker is a person who...!!

2010-01-17T00:21:00.009+05:30

The meaning of a word is the meaning that most people convey using that word. In the case of "Hacker", the majority conveys the wrong meaning. Wrong in the sense, not original. To many(mostly comprising of people not directly related to), hacking is breaking into private systems, stealing passwords, making profit out of confidential details etc.

Hacker is a highly creative person who does brilliant work often concentrating in a specific field. Originally, the word "Hacker" was used in this sense in the Programming society. Eventhough it is more popular in the computer related contexts, it can be used in any discipline.

To be more strict, there is a process in becoming a hacker. There is a culture and a community that has become the backbone of computer science-Free Software Community. Here hackers are respected by all and the word "HACKER" is considered as a prestigious label.

The hacker's attitude and the subtle line characterizing "both types" of hacking is clearly presented by Brian Harvey,University of California, Berkeley at http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/hacker.html

The Open Source World

2010-01-13T00:47:00.006+05:30

“Idea is born free but everywhere it is under patents.”

I used to dream of a superhuman who is massively strong, amazingly intelligent and able to do almost anything that is impossible for normal individuals. This guy could easily handle even an elephant..!!(Even if hundreds of men are there, their combined strength cannot be applied on the elephant. So my hero is quite a super-hero!). Later on I realised that such a hero cannot exist.

But to my surprise, almost near to my dream there exists something which, even at this second, is busy solving the problems worldwide. That is a highly active, proactive and creative community which is “the Open Source Community”. Here no problem is unhandleable any more. The synergy of hackers situated around the globe is sufficient to solve any problem on globe. Just get stunned to see the huge number of active open source projects - Wiki “List of open source softwares”
Like many others, I too used Windows. But later, I got oppurtunity to know Linux a little bit closer. Slowly I switched over to Linux. One thing I'm thankful to Microsoft is for helping me to learn how to install an operating system fluently on my computer(Guess how..!!)

To learn more, many wonderful articles about the free software community, culture and different aspects in this field authored by eminent people are available like “The Cathedral and The Bazaar”, “How to become a hacker”, “The art of Unix Programming”, etc.

Why Linux??!!For a worthy comparison between Linux and Windows, visit http://www.whylinuxisbetter.net/. Windows users, you may find your last reason to embrace freedom leaving windows behind.