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Life
6 months in Citrix / Bangalore
Jul 4th
Lot of time has passed since i last updated my blog, i have finished the 7th Semester of my engineering and just one step from my degree, i have moved from Manipal to Bangalore for my last (8th) semester and I was interning at Citrix Systems, working with NetScaler Tools team. The last few days as a college student have turned out to be awesome, living in Bangalore with friends is fun (except for Bangalore’s night life which sucks big time). During the last 6 months i have learned at lot about life, universe and everything :p .
The experience at Citrix was great mostly because of the kind of work and guidance i was given, we arrived in Bangalore on 3rd Jan, it was weird that no accommodation was provided to us for the initial weeks, but since manipal is one night journey away from bangalore, we came here after our exams and searched for a flat, we finally decided on a flat in Cambridge Layout (near Indiarnagar) since it was pretty close to our work place which was near brigade road !! I was working with the NetScaler Tools team on a internal stress testing tool called BlackWidow, the best thing about my work at citrix was that i had to work with FreeBSD kernel, which meant i had to use *NIX development tools (cscope/vim/kgdb which is what i am pretty comfortable with) and not some bloated IDE (for me Vim + cscope > any IDE) which i had to learn for my last internship at microsoft, this helped me get started pretty quickly which surprised my mentor, although i was not assigned the feature i wanted to implement still my work was pretty interesting.
I found Citrix to be a really awesome company to work at, it has a lot of interesting products, the people are friendly and helpful and the work culture is great, ohh and not to forget the facilities they provide to employees, but one thing that I noticed during my internship is that the work can become monotonous, so you really need to pitch in and get some interesting work or one might end up doing similar work again and again, but then i think thats the case with most of the places.
The main motive behind me coming to bangalore was meeting interesting people, not that people in Manipal were less interesting, i wanted to meet with some ‘similar’ minded people. I had hardly talked to other people from my college who interned with me, but they turned out be interesting, also interns from other colleges like PeeShit (read PESIT) were interesting. I didnt actually went out to meet people, but then i guess i can do that now as i am going to stay in bangalore. A few days back i met folks at Artoo on their Demo Day, they are doing some really interesting work.
My internship is over but I will be staying in Bangalore for my first full time job, i have a few on campus and off campus offers but more on that some time later, Thanks to my flat mates Mikhail Jacob, Sohil Himanish and Tushar Dadlani for making my stay in Bangalore awesome and Thanks to my mentor, manager, all fellow interns and everyone else at citrix for making my work awesome, you people rock !!
4/8 weeks at Microsoft (Internship)
Jun 26th
Hello From Hyderabad
It has been 4 weeks since i arrived in Hyderabad for my internship at Microsoft IDC and it has been a unique experience. There are 7 people from MIT,Manipal this time 6 in IDC and 1 in MS IT, but manipal being the crowded place it is none of the 7 people knew each other, well except for me which was kind of odd, imagine having to introduce people who have spent 3 years in the same college to each other !!. Akshay jhori (MS IT) arrived one week before us i.e. 23rd May (i guess) and rest of us arrived by 30th May. First day we were given a small orientation, which was just to get us familiar with how things work and what we were supposed to do, after the orientation we were taken to our respective Mentors who is the go to guy for all things related to what ever we were supposed to do, i was assigned to AdCenter team. I was given a cubicle and later my mentor explained what i was supposed to do for the next 8 weeks and was asked to get familiar with MS tools and process.
Hyderabad is kind of a strange city where if you ask an auto rickshaw driver to go to a place X he will simply say “i have no idea where that place is, but it will cost you Rs100″, so most of the time you need to look up on maps for directions and then tell the auto driver where you have to go, which is what we did after loosing our way few times, it all starts with Someone saying “Hey lets go out and see around” to which you say “Ok nice, lets find a good place to eat!!”, after walking a few kilometers and looking around and probably eating, when its time to return someone is bound to ask “Which way ?” and atleast one guy from your group will say “Its this way, TRUST ME!” by point to a particular direction in the INDIAN WAY, believe me that is the time when you should start asking for directions because every time the “TRUST ME” incident happened with us, we were going in completely wrong direction.
Coming back to the four weeks, for the first 2 weeks we were provided accommodation in white fields (Hyderabad, not Bangalore as most the people were thinking after i told them where i was staying), the place was good and around 5-6 Km from MS IDC at Gachibowli, you get shuttles from ~9am to ~10am and if you are taking an auto just say you want to go to Wipro, Gachibowli and not Microsoft, Gachibowli you will have to pay less this way, even tough Wipro Campus is just in front of Microsoft Campus, ohh and the sharing auto is a very cheap way to travel around in Hyderabad but it gets weird, i remember there were 8 people + 1 auto driver in a single auto one time.
Microsoft Surface
I got my hands on Microsoft Surface at the visitor center and it has increased my desire to create something like surface using what is already available by NUI Group, dunno if it will get somewhere. Also i have started to like C# as a language and i have personally found it to be more close to C++ then Java, which is not what a large number of people think, this has also made me realize that there is no computer language that i hate which is kind of strange because most of the people i know hate one or the other language and JAVA tops most of their list as the most hated (but used) language.
During my 2nd week AdCenter team had an outing to Leonia which was a great experience, i met some interesting people from AdCenter team during the trip and the best part was Paint Ball, a match in team of 22 Vs 22 it was pure fun, well except for the friendly fire part, where i got shot in the arm from a really close distance, anyways we lost the game because of what was clearly CHEATING done by other team but that is as always debatable.
After our 2 weeks were over we shifted out to a different place in White Fields itself, if someone is looking for accommodation there are plenty of places in HiTech city / Madhapur area to stay for short/long duration, we looked at a large number of places before settling for white fields because its close and we were familiar with this area now, plus the price difference was not much.
Microsoft India Development Center - Building 3
The first few weeks were pretty exciting but now after 4 weeks everything seems normal to us, all the free coffee/tea/ice tea/cold drinks/etc, all the games of pool/foosball/TableTennis, cab drop at night, the cubicle, all the excitement is gone and work has started.
anyways i am planing to roam around Hyderabad which i have done only a little, any special places that i should absolutely visit ? leave a comment….
Using Apple Keyboard in Linux (Fedora)
Feb 19th
My Apple Keyboard
Few Days Ago i received my Apple Keyboard and i am enjoying typing on it, but having to hold down the Fn key then tap one of the F-keys to get F-keys working was irritating.
a simple solution to get it working just add this to your /etc/rc.local file
echo 2 > /sys/module/hid_apple/parameters/fnmodeand F-keys will start to work properly, enjoy
Update :- update for recent kernels,
Accessing any site blocked by sonic wall!!!
Aug 26th
Removed because of objection form ION
old text avaliable here
iPhone3G or Openmoko Freerunner
Jun 29th
We all have been listening ( reading ) a lot about the new iPhone 3G and how it is different, better and well cheaper from the first generation iPhone and a question came to my mind with Airtel and Vodafone planning to launch iPhone what will happen to Openmoko how many people know about it and well its available in India at a price of around RS. 20,000 by IDA system its really a great Phone to own actually Openmoko Freerunner is the second phone which will run Openmoko software and is similar to the first Neo 1973 its specification are
* Processor -- Samsung S3C2442 500MHz
* RAM -- 128MB
* Flash -- 256MB
* Display -- 2.8-inch diagonal 640 x 480 VGA Color TFT LCD
* Graphics -- SMedia 3362-based 3D graphics acceleration
* Accelerometers -- 2 x 3D accelerometers
* Audio -- "high-quality" audio codec
* USB -- 1 x version 1.1, switchable between client and host modes
* Cellular -- 2.5G tri-band GPRS/GSM (900MHz or 850MHz, depending on region)
* WiFi -- 802.11b/g WiFi
* Bluetooth -- version 2.0
* GPS -- AGPS (assisted global positioning system) receiver
Which is really great Freerunner does not have 3G but well in India at present there is no 3G and i dont think it will be there anytime this year as frequency allocation has not taken place add to that only planning is going on which will take a lot of time so remove all the 3G factor from iPhone 3G …….
Another thing Openmoko Freerunner is a complete Open Source Phone you can download the whole source code and change it according to your wish and well about the applications there will be plenty of applications available for it at no cost
So while many of people around me will go for iPhone 3G ( without 3G ) i am going to FREE MY PHONE!!!!!!
Creating a Simple Chat Application with Python
May 1st
Creating application with Python is very simple, here is a simple chat application made by using the socket module, it has 2 parts First Server and Second client, you run the server first and then connect the client to it, here is the code
Here is the Server Code
#!/usr/bin/env python
from socket import *
from time import time, ctime
IP = ''
PORT = 23456
ADS = (IP, PORT)
tcpsoc = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM)
tcpsoc.bind(ADS)
tcpsoc.listen(5)
while 1:
print "Waiting for connection"
tcpcli, addr = tcpsoc.accept()
print "connected from:", addr
while 1:
data = tcpcli.recv(1024)
if not data : break
print data
data1 = raw_input(">>")
if data1 == "q;t": break
tcpcli.send(data1)
tcpcli.close()
tcpsoc.close()
Here is the client code
#!/usr/bin/env python
from socket import *
IP = ''
PORT = 23456
ADS = (IP, PORT)
tcpsoc = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM)
tcpsoc.connect(ADS)
while 1:
data = raw_input("msg>>")
if not data : break
tcpsoc.send(data)
data = tcpsoc.recv(1024)
if not data: break
print data
tcpsoc.close()
the code above might not be properly intended so you can download the code from http://fb.ankurs.com/tcp_server.py and http://fb.ankurs.com/tcp_client.py
enjoy!!!
Moved to a fully hosted http://ankurs.com
Apr 4th
Finally i have moved to a fully hosted WordPress 2.5 blog from my previous warofwords.wordpress.com blog and it rocks!!!!
Hosting is provided by Racked Hosting and the plan is very big for my needs so i am sharing it with Sohil who is going to bring a blog at http://weirdspectrum.com/ soon, he is planning for it right now, it will be up by tommorow.
Updates on my blog will be more regular now, i think i will be very busy this month but i wont let that come in between my blogging.
One thing about Racked Hosting — They Rock!!!!!!!!!! the server is extremely fast, extremely efficient and at a great price
so if you are looking for hosting you know where to go……..
Making Xml dump of MySQL
Mar 18th
Yesterday when i was trying/searching for a way to generate XML file from PHP so as to use it in Project 11, i came across a way to make a direct database/table dump from mysql and its damn easy all you have to do is type
mysqldump -u username -p --xml databasename > data.xml
and it will dump whole database into the data.xml file enjoy!!!!
PS:- Info about Project 11 coming up…..
PAMP — Apache, MySql, Php on your Phone
Feb 17th
PAMP, an S60 Powered Apache Web Server with PHP and MySQL is available for the S60 3rd edition phones, imagine running a WEB Server on your phone, i saw a few days ago and as i had a supported phone Nokia E61i i was well happy. The supported phone are Nokia E90, Nokia N95 8GB these have 128MB RAM and Nokaia N95 and Nokia E61i with 64MB RAM, well i guess PAMP should run on any S60 3rd Edition device as long as it has 64 MB of ram. The Installation is Simple just download the pamp_with_htdocs_on_c.zip or pamp_with_htdocs_on_e.zip depending on where you want your servers root to be. Unzip the file and you will have
- pips_s60_1_2_SS.sis
- openc_ssl.sis
- PythonForS60_1_4_1_3rdEd.sis
- PythonScriptShell_1_4_1_3rdEd.sis
- pamp_with_htdocs_on_...sisx
transfer them to your cell and install them, after the install you will find pamp and connector in your phone menu, click pamp. then start pamp from [Options]->[Start]->[Pamp], when you see Apache and Mysql running, open your phone browser and goto 127.0.0.1, you will be greeted with a page that says IT WORKS….. congratulations now you have a web server running on your phone for more configuration options you can check the nokia wiki http://wiki.opensource.nokia.com/projects/PAMP enjoy!!!!!!!!!
Fedora 8 Install Fest in MIT Manipal
Jan 28th
For the First time in History of Manipal a Linux ( Fedora 8 ) Install Fest took place on the Campus, it was organized by Linux user Group Manipal. It was Basically a 2 Day Fest, on 24th a Pre-Install Fest / Meet was there where participants were Informed about the requirements, advantages and Importance of GNU/Linux and what all we will be doing in the second day i.e. 25th , there were all information given about various events held by companies inviting students to innovate. The Day ended with the collection of DVD to be burned for 25th Main Fest and some 45+ DVD’s were collected with DVD’s still coming till start of Second day
Second day began with partitioning and distribution of DVD’s after which the main install fest began and all the steps were shown and explained, there was some DVD corruption / Improper burning but everything else was just fine, a script was prepared for upgrading Compiz and enabling 3D effects for the HP 6515b laptops, the script handled most of the task which were to be done in command line though all people were explained what it did but since most of the people were First Time users it really made the task of configuring the system very easy, rest laptops faced no problems so they directly booted in Graphical mode already being out of time the Install Fest was Finished with some problems still remaining which were solved
more photos here
