lgezbuy site down!

When I visited lgezbuy.com today morning (10:30 am IST), it said that the domain name has expired and click to renew it!

Its strange that an online retailer like LG's lgezbuy.com can be so lenient to keep up the site especially during the Christmas eve!


Update: (25th Dec, 2k6) It seems to be up again, but a few links seem to be broken still!

a conversation with rikshawala

This post is based on a real life incident that happened to me a few days ago.. well you would better like to call it a real life conversation than an "incident".

A few days after I came back from my Australian adventure to amchi Pune, I decided to go a bit earlier than usual to the lab. Unfortunately the time I choose was really bad, it was the peek hour in Pune traffic and PMTs and the six seater rikshwas simply didn't stop because all of them were overcrowded. Finally bored at the plight of traffic, I started looking out for the 3 seater rikshwas (tum tum), or the poor man's taxi. After ignoring a couple of "old" ones, I spotted a not so old but one with a large green diamond shaped label sticked to the left upper corner of front glass shield. It read LPG. The rikshawala apparently spotting my curiosity somehow managed to get an eye contact with me and asked me if I want to board it. "Can you take me next to Sasson?", I asked (Sasson is the City general hospital in Pune). He said, "But it will be on meter". I said that would be fine and just pushed my self inside the comfort of this rikshwa, sill somehow wondering about LPG. Liquid Petroleum Gas based vehicles were made mandatory for new as well as some old vehicles a few year ago in India. But I didn't know that they had started enforcing this in Pune about 1-1/2 years ago. Unable to curtail my curiosity, I asked my driver (the rikshawala) as to when did he convert his vehicle to use LPG. "It has been almost a year now", came a prompt reply. And then without a word from me, he stared talking with me! He continued on to tell me the economics of using LPG instead of Petrol. He had bought his Bajaj 3 wheeler Rikshaw in 1985, which was quite contrary to what I had guessed when I saw that "not too old" taxi. For 1 liter of LPG, he had to shell out some 25 Rs while a liter of petrol almost cost double this amount. However, the mileage that he gets out from using the LPG powered was less that what he got when he used to run on petrol. But using LPG was still economical, as he didn't have to buy a new vehicle which according to him are poor in quality and break down in 5-6 years of service; priding himself that he has a 20 year old model which never had given him any major problem to date!

So how was his experience with the Regional Transport Office [RTO] when he went on to do the conversion of LPG? At this point he really started opening up and expressed his views rather openly. On the backdrop of the violence that happened in Maharashtra, just the day before he remarked that the situation here would be worst than in Kashmir today if we can't control our emotions, build good people and a strong society. I was just starting to wonder that probably every Indian thinks that way.. Then came a twist, he began to tell me why the continuing reservation policy is affecting the overall progress of the society. Of incompetent officers being promoted over more competent and experienced peers. Of the reservation policy not benefiting the poor people who really need it. Of providing the benefit of reservation to a person only once in his life time, preferentially only at the early schooling days, because he said once you are given an equal opportunity, every one should prove their competence to go ahead. Providing reservation at each stage for even the well off people serves no means and it just widens the gap in the society. And of corruption and vote bank politics effecting this whole scenario that needs rationalization for a better and all involving India. Of every Indian cherishing the value and the tradition of being an Indian and contributing to her prosperity.

I just couldn't imagine that a talk was just getting deeper. He asked me if I was learning medicine (in BJ), probably for the second time. With a negative answer from me, he asked "then where?". I said I am at Pune University. He continued with his talk, voicing his support for the recent strike by resident doctors all over India against the recently passed bill on extending reservation policy. Its a question of life and death, best people should be the only once that go to medicine, by not having merit as the only basis he said we are sure to get below par medical service.

The journey to my destined place for that day was coming to an end, but probably a few things that my rikshwala said were really troublesome to me and still rang in my ears. Thats why probably I decided to just jot down about it. The last time I had a similar encounter was in Hyderabad, just before the assembly elections there. When I tried to understand if the hyped "Cyberabad" had any impact on the lives of locals (probably i think, a rikshwala is a best person to voice the general view). To my surprise I was to find an interesting and affirmative answer... probably reserved for another post (of course if i get time ;))

Disclaimer: This is my jotting of a real conversation that happend between me an unknown rikshwala. By no means this should be considered a public viewpoint on any of the issues mentioned in the post.

an experience with freedom mini bluetooth keyboard

I am writing this review using the new keyboard for my nokia 6600 that I recently bought here in Australia. It cost me 100AU$ (i.e around 3400 INR! less than half the prize of the nokia wireless keyboard). A small form factor QWERTY keypad that is easy to use to key in text and not operate the phone in general. It is the freedom mini keypad from freedom input. You can also write fair amount of code on the key pad but you may find some missing symbols! Simple symbols like the greater than symbol seem to be missing altogether! Thus you might have to employ alternative logic to program on this phone using the keypad. So far, I myself have only written basic Python scripts on the phone... remains to be still seen how well this scales up though. Also there appears to completely missing features of cut copy and paste! When the keyboard driver is active I am simply unable to use these features even from the phone itself! To me this appears to be a major drawback of this product. Given that this product is meant for text entry copy and paste is an important operation; until of course someone makes a nice port of vi on symbian. But even then it would have problems with key repetition... but generally not bbad so as to make it totally irritating. The device is a complete fun and makes messaging, sending emails and chatting from the phone over gtalk client a real breez... rather than using the predictive text on the phone itself. The keypad can also be used for mobile journalism, blogging especially when you are traveling. It is an extremely compact device that is light enough to slip into your pocket. However while writing large essays a few thing can get irritating, like to put a full stop you need to press two keys! While its easier if you use a lot of semi-colons! Finally it looks to me that it wont be really difficult to develop a device that can connect a standard PS2 keyboard to a bluetooth hub that can be used as a wireless keyboard for the mobile... the only difference being loss of portability. But in return you get a low cost device that can use your existing computer keyboard for the mobile.
Having a QWERTY keypad seems to be a good idea, though out there seems to be some innovative ideas like the frog keypad that claims that you can achieve a blazing 40 words per minute using an average 10hr training! The key layout for these keypads is totally unconventional and contrary to the claims you might find them not so easy to adjust to in the beginning. Another aspect of a keypad design is ergonomics, and in this department freedom mini keyboard does fairly well. Nokia wireless keyboard driver is the next I tried to use instead of a bit buggy freedom mini keyboard drivers. It does resolve some issues like putting of the mobile screen when keypad is not in use. But in the process introduces many new problems like inability to access many special characters. 123456789#()1!@#%",.?:-+*/ Well it appears that if I put the phone pad in numeric mode then everything seems to work quite well. And so here is it (we) can use the nokia wireless keyboard driver effectively for the freedom mini keyboard!... and that too seems without any issues. I also found that we can get other special characters by simply changing the layout of the keypad. Now the most difficult or rather more irritating part is the removal of the freedom mini keyboard drivers from my phone. It simply refuses to go! Finally after a couple of trials I was able to remove the defunct driver without any live trace. The nokia driver that I have been using since, still does not seem to solve the problem of reconnecting the keyboard... the is an option of reconnection but it simply refuses to work... and I end up paring the device again every time! Now I am typing on this keypad in complete darkness. The back lit feature of this keyboard is really nice and is just bright enough to get the work done and not attract others attention toward you. Unlike the freedom drivers which used to keep the screen on even when there was no keyboard activity, the nokia driver appropriately shuts down the screen in case an inactivity on the keypad is detected. The back lit feature also automatically goes into a power safe mode once no key press activity is detected. In any way today successfully managed to crash my phone while using the keypad. Though it appears that the nokia drivers are still able to connect to the keyboard after a restart. Another good thing is that these drivers load up automatically once the phone starts... But IndSMS still crashes have written to the support but never know if that will ever be read! And there are also issues with python ui when using the keypad. There are a few nice things that I found though a bit late like you can use the Ctrl+C to copy selected text and the use Ctrl+P to paste it conveniently. The feature of strapping the phone on the keypad is not that attractive though... It might be useful is u have a PDA type phone whose main keypad is hidden away Well that is all I would like to say about this mini keyboard... it is basically able to suffice my mobile computing needs to a large extent.
Update: I was finally able to get the predictive text working after a bit of twiddling around with the ROM image. Essentially I had to copy the z:\system\fep and z:\system\data\fep.ini to c: in the respective places. It turns out that the freedom keyboard driver simply screws up these files and the nokia drivers do not touch the at all. So my advice is instead to use the nokia keyboard drivers which effectively works well with most of the HID wireless bluetooth keyboard. After doing this modification I was also effectively able to use the IndSMS application from the keyboard without any problems. And after restoring the predictive text feature i have on further issues with using this keypad...Except of the issue of pairing.

This was entirely written on my 6600 and later posted with the windows PC using the same keypad now connected to my windows machine!

back to olpc again!

Via PC1 initiative website has more reference to views about pros and cons of OLPC. Check is here.

Btw, Via PC1 initiative is also working towards the same kind of goal using a different approach though. And they have a research center in Mumbai too!

pthreads: when light becomes heavy

Pthreads or POSIX threads are said to be "light weight processes" and are usually recommended instead of fork(), exec() and calls to shared memory and semaphore routines. This is because a thread creation is supposed to take less resource for creation and cheaper for switching between them. Threads (pthreads) may be implemented at OS level or supported by appropriate hardware.

Though it seems that pthreads take up much less resources, but the way an OS is configured can drastically alter the resource requirements of creating pthreads. This was typically the situation I landed up when I was using pthread via Python on a large SGI Altix system (google for: ANUSF).
The stack size on this altix system was set to a default of 1GB, which resulted in stack allocation of 1GB per thread even if no work (or memory allocated) was done within these threads. Initially I though that this was a problem with Python interpreter on IA64, so i coded up a small skeleton code in C using pthreads; to my surprise this also resulted in allocation of 1GB per thread. Next, I tried using OpenMP "threads" and was pleased to see that the memory of this process didn't shoot up like its pthreads counterparts.

After some consultations with my instructor, I discovered that you can set the stack sizes of pthreads using: pthread_attr_setstacksize() function (check google codesearch for examples). But all this meant rewriting all my code in Python in C or writing a full thread wrapper for Python in C.

So determined not to do that I set out finding new ways to handle this in Python itself. I discovered that you could actually set the stack size in Python, but to my dismay this had been only introduced in the latest 2.5 release, and there was no way that the 2.3 version of Python on the Altix machines were to be updated.

After googling around a bit i discovered what is called as stack-less python. This essentially reduces usage of python stacks by maintaining a common stack. But again this had many problems, first and foremost was this was not standard python and had to install it separately. Secondly there is a lot of debate on the merit of using stackless python and the disagreement with the main Python development community.

Ruling this out, by sheer chance i googled for "microthreads" and came across an interesting article by David Mertz. This article suggested using generators in Python to achieve user level cooperative multithreading. This was really an interesting article for me as it was the first time that I was introduced to the wonderful generators in Python. I began toying around this idea, but finally discovered that I would still be requiring preemptive multithreading for my particular application.

I had known the use of "ulimit" in bash (or "limit" in csh), and had frequently used it to query the system limits. But had never intentionally used it to change those limits. As soon as I remembered this command, it was very obvious what I would be doing: wrap up python execution in a shell script, and issue an ulimit with 8MB (or so) as the maximum stack limit. So only the python process will be affected by this change, and the rest of the system process remained intact.

In the end the solution to the problem seemed to be simple, but learned a lot in the process.
Now I am writing a small MicroThreads interface using generators, which I will be soon posting here. (Note: there are many more implementation using this idea, but I just want to have some fun with generators)

day light saving: googly!

Today, i was taken unaware of a practice followed in countries not near equator.
Canberra, where I am presently staying had a daytime saving for +1 hour for the "summer time" .. and evidently not aware of this change, I reached one hour late to my work place. Surprised, my instructor asked me how come you are late today?
late? i looked at my mobile and said "probably u r early, its 8:45am".
"no, the time changed on saturday ... it is quarter to 10!" he said promptly with a smile.

... after some time I realized what day time saving was all about: only heard of now experienced!
Have a look at http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/c.html to know more about the rational behind it.

Later on I realized that my nokia 6600 has an option to adjust automatically to day light saving which obviously was set to off!

and the web office ...

google just combined its writely and spreadheet app:

http://docs.google.com/

updated to blogger beta

just now updated to new blogger beta...

google code search!

google has release a wonderful code search utility!!

http://www.google.com/codesearch

it has found most of the code that i have released... except one MeTA Studio.
these seem to be many a projects which seem to have similar name!

collaborate over the wire (or without it!) with MeTA Studio

The new developements that have been going on in MeTA Studio:
- a peer to peer networking and discovery protocol
- talk application built over the above apis ...

u will have to wait for the latest binaries to be updated! so look back.
(excuse: the source is not yet in a state to be released .. will take time, can't say how much!)

take a look at some of the shots...

Build ur own Tuxphone

yes, this is a pretty interesting site by Surj Patel and others that is in the process of describing how to build your own cell phone and load customized linux on it.

its really exciting and the work seems to have just begun!
visit http://www.opencellphone.org/ for details

Indian Ocean Tsunami Detector

Is a really useful application written in PyS60 which according to the site:
".. is a tsunami prediction program that filters and analyses LIVE data from the United States Geological Surveys (USGS) Earthquake reading..."

update: mobihf and mobimol

Am happy to announce that the source of mobihf and mobimol have now been merged to PyQuante CVS, thanks to Rick.

Please see:
http://tovganesh.googlepages.com/s60

and the CVS:
http://pyquante.cvs.sourceforge.net/pyquante/PyQuante/MobiCode/

all further updates will be made to the above CVS.

on OLPC: why indian policy makers should rethink?

Till my last post of the OLPC (one laptop per child) subject, I was wondering whether someone in India had experimented with the idea of providing access to computers for underprivileged or rural kids?

I was pleasantly surprised to find the "Hole-in-the-Wall" project being run by NIIT in coordination with International Finance Corporation.

From the hole-in-the-wall site:
"The acquisition of basic computing skills by any set of children can be achieved through incidental learning provided the learners are given access to a suitable computing facility, with entertaining and motivating content and some minimal (human) guidance."
is some thing we should seriously look at, rather than outright scrapping of OLPC in india.

Dr. Sugata Mitra, Chief Scientist at NIIT, who is toying with the idea of providing computer access to the kids since 1982, and allowing them to acquire the skills and education on their own is a prime example of why such projects are needed at a large scale in India. And with the GOI honoring Dr. Sugata with Dewang Mehta award for Innovation in Information Technology, the government probably itself recognizes the need for such work.

India could set an example on how to make technology accessible to the masses .... only if we think right and take right decisions.

PS. To know more about the "Hole-in-the-wall" project visit: http://www.hole-in-the-wall.com/

Lost mobile phones: can they be found?

Yesterday while travelling back home from pune railway station to viman nagar, some rouge stole a mobile (samsung) from an unsuspecting girl in an overcrowded bus.
After reporting the matter to the conductor, he offered to stop the bus immediately to get it checked, but as commonsense suggested, this wasn't feasible as the person who stole it would have already disappeared. In any case I found that the attitude of the people really disturbing: instead of suggesting ways what to do next people were finding faults like 'her bag was open', 'its her mistake', 'you cannot find a lost mobile' and all that: not a single attempt the calm down the crying looser!
Any way after waiting for some time, I couldn't resist but offered to call up the customer care center (fortunately it was airtel, same as my service). And also advised to file an FIR with the IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) number as early as possible. After few attempts i was able to get the a line to the customer care executive, to whom she spoke. To my surprise, in spite of giving all SIM details to the executive, she refused to block the SIM! and instead asked to call back after lodging an FIR! This was a real shocker for me.
In any case I am not aware of any other mechanism of tracking a lost mobile, than lodging an FIR and then asking the operator as well as the mobile manufacturer for blocking the stolen mobile.

I guess, with more of these thefts, we must device some way to track down these gadgets. And also people must realise that a lost mobile can be (and probably will be) used for unlawful activities. As law abiding citizens we must do all that is possible to avert such misuse. Thus, a theft of a communication device must be taken seriously.

In the end, i could not (and probably can't - at least for the time being) trace the lost mobile but at least brought a slender smile. :)

on OLPC and RTIA

Two disconnected issues. But the way in which policy makers are taking decisions (and giving reasons for them) on these apparently important matters should be of real concern and .

A few days ago, the HRD ministry had indicated that OLPC (one-laptop-per-child) program is *not* suitable for children of rural India... providing some absurd reasons like: ".. the problems (health) faced by rural child is well known, and would be further complicated by usage of laptop". and it goes on to give so many other reasons (by quoting foreign experts)! I fail to understand why no Indian expert is at all considered?

So is the case of Right To Information Act (RTIA) where an amendment to limited/ no access to "file noting" on certain "classified" areas is proposed. Similar acts in other countries were cited as example for the proposed amendment. This is simply not good for a health of democratic India, where we seem to be trying to do what others are doing, and simply not having our own views on these subject of prime interest to any democratic institution.

And as Arvind Kejriwal gets Magsaysay Award for the very RTIA that he and may others (including Anna Hazare) fought for, we simply wonder how our elected representatives are modifying a powerful act to suite some wested interests.

Blog of V.Ganesh

Blog of V.Ganesh

.... Hurray! It up again! So finally the ISPs and DoT, GOI seems to have figured out the "technical issues" involved in stopping access to only certain blogs.

... A real pity situation. But anyways I am happy, and hope that such incidences do not happen in India again. BTW, it would be interesting to see if some of the avid bloggers still file a PIL (which i guess they will) in Supreme Court? This would probably bring in some amendment to the IT Act, 2000 to include "blogs" ... its wait and watch.

INSAT 4C on GSLV fails

An hour ago I was watching the live telecast of the launch on DD. By now its very clear that we have not been successful in launching the INSAT series on Indian soil. This was the third launch attempt of the GSLV (cryogenic development vehicle), the first two have been a success and has placed weather satellites (kalpana I and II) in geo-synchronous orbit.

Hard luck for ISRO. The launch originally scheduled at 4:36 pm IST was postponed twice, first to 5:16 pm and then finally to 5:36 pm. So far no official reason for the failure has been given, but it is speculated to be a failure in the second stage of the GSLV.

The next plan of ISRO, if they are not going to hold up, would be another launch of GSLV in 2007-08 (http://isro.org/decade_plan.htm), and the much publicized lunar mission.

... hope for the best

lexicographical combination algorithm

have written a small article on generating combinations in lexicographical order. you can read it at: http://tovganesh.googlepages.com/comb.pdf

mobioo v0.1, first OpenOffice (odt) reader in PyS60!

ah well but a really basic one with following formating:
- paragraphs
- bold, italic, underline, strike-through
- font colors

not yet:
- bullets and numbering
- pictures and tables: probably never??

Get the source at:
http://tovganesh.googlepages.com/mobioo.py

And set a sample ODT (OpenOffice writer) file from here:
http://tovganesh.googlepages.com/sample.odt

Please note that you will need pyexpat for s60 installed on your phone which is available here:
http://pdis.hiit.fi/pdis/download/pyexpat/

PS. I will be making a SIS installer too shortly so check back!
In the previous post of BtSMS, be cautious about the UID, its a mock UID!

BTSMS v.0.1: forward your SMS over bluetooth and send SMS via PC

With BTSMS you can:
- read all your SMS (no MMS or bluetooth files)
- forward SMS over bluetooth as note files
- send SMS via PC using pcsms.py client
( the pcsms.py client requres you to have:
> python interpreter 2.4 or higher on linux or windows xp
> pybluez extension library available from: http://org.csail.mit.edu/pybluez/
> and ofcourse a bluetooth transreceiver (dongle) connected to your PC
)

- Get the source and SIS file for this application at: http://tovganesh.googlepages.com/btsms_app.tar.gz

My Way News - Hawking Says Humans Must Go Into Space

My Way News - Hawking Says Humans Must Go Into Space

The survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy the Earth, world-renowned scientist Stephen Hawking said Tuesday.


(...my take worth reading and giving a serious thought)

update at: http://english.people.com.cn/200606/14/eng20060614_273839.html

When answering a question about how he copes with frustration, which also mentioned a paralyzed accident victim Bun Tsai in Hong Kong who appealed publicly for legalized euthanasia, Hawking said, "The victim should have the right to end his life, if he wants.

"But I think it would be a great mistake. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there's life, there is hope." Hawking is in the best position to say so, his action of defeating physical difficulties has proved his word right.

google spreadsheet

there has be a lot of press attention to the realease of spreadsheet application by google, but i guess many of us don't know a much better, functional, online spreadsheet tool (with can be added on your google home page aka. google ig) by: IROWS

i find it more usable because:
- has lot more features, charting support!
- right click works as in OpenOffice (i do not use excel)
- it can save & read in OpenOffice format!, google can read and write only .xls and .csv format

but probably these features will get added into google spreadsheet with time.

new version of mobihf

get the stuff from:

http://tovganesh.googlepages.com/s60

and let me know the feedback on the previous post on math library in symbian!

Bugs in Symbian math library?

This is my experience of using the math library function for Symbian 7.0 (s60 2nd phone, nokia 6600) while writing two applications that require extensive math support in terms of basic function like pow(), acos() along with some advanced functions like lgamma().
The applications (mobimol and mobihf) are currently hosted at my google pages along with their sources at: http://tovganesh.googlepages.com/s60

Simple functions like pow() and acos() seem to have some problem with handling very low values, which are typically less 1.0e-12. So, using such functions with these low value resulted in crashing of the code (in this case the Python interpreter), with no apparent error message. To avert this problem I had to add a wrapper over the pow() or acos() function that reads some what like as follows:

def myacos(ang):
   if(round(ang,1)==1.0): return 0.0
   return acos(ang)

def mypow(self, x, y):
   if (round(y,10)==0.0): return 1.0
   if (round(x,10)==0.0): return 0.0
   return pow(x, y)

Initially I thought that this problem was only with Python implementation of these method, but it suddenly struck me that the implementation of these function would probably be done by the underlying symbian math library. When I wrote a similar code (for mobihf) in C++ I faced a similar problem of the code crashing with no apparent warnings or errors. To avert this problem I had to write another wrapper in my C++ code, which is probably more correct than the Python version that I had written earlier:

double absd(double x) {
  return (x<0.0 ? -x : x);
}

double mpow(double x, double y) {
  if (absd(y)<=1.0e-10) return 1.0;
  if (absd(x)<=1.0e-10) return 0.0;
  return pow(x, y);
}

The most painful part was that abs(y) did not work, and the complier (Symbian SDK on Windows XP for s60 2nd edition) gave me an error indicating that abs() takes an int argument (possibly it took my code to be a pure C code)!! Anyways, I later on discovered that it is better to use fabs() instead.

And finally many math function that are a part of standard C library seem to be not available with the Symbian SDK most notable ones that I missed were: round(), lgamma()

It may be possible that the Symbian OS developers have not paid a lot of attention in writing these specialized functions given the very limited nature of the smartphone platform, but I guess with stiff competition coming up from other quarters (Windows, Linux, SavaJe), it is possibly worthwhile to correct such problem and make the already wonderful Symbian OS more general.

PS. These are solely my private views and have nothing to do with Symbian development team.
Also I have tested these codes only on my Nokia 6600, these may have been corrected in later version of the Symbian OS, consequently I urge the readers to download the code provided in the above link and verify if the "bugs" still persist. If so, please let me know by posting a comment here.

convert ur mp3 to ogg

if u are a linux user and enjoy listening to some gr8 mp3 and wma, then converting them to a better "opensource" alternative: ogg vorbis is really simple :>

you need:
1) mplayer with all its plugins
2) oggenc (i.e. ogg support - comes default in most distros, i use FC5)
3) use the following script (toogg.csh) to convert the files

------------------------------------------

#~/bin/csh
mplayer -ao pcm "$1"

set quality = $2

if (null$quality == null) set quality = hi

if ($quality == lo) then
# useful for your mono phones (like 6600)
oggenc --downmix --resample 8000 -q 1 audiodump.wav
else
oggenc audiodump.wav
endif
mv audiodump.ogg "$1:t:r".ogg
rm -f audiodump.*


------------------------------------------

and enjoy the freedom in music (or videos) :)

Motorola opensource

Motorola opensource


with Motorola following Nokia http://opensource.nokia.com/ in opensourcing its software stack, i do not see any reason to buy a windows powered mobile!

parvati shots

being in pune for so long and not going to parvati is something that i can't still digest. but any way finally went here for the first time! here are some shots from my mobile.

Sun promises to open source Java

Sun promises to open source Java


WOW! Now that probably means SUN is working on something entirely new. Probably the Fortress.

I guess this is the best way to manage software today, make it so big and usable, and make people so dependable on it that one day if you opensource it: you donot loose any thing, you still win hearts and make money.

what does it mean to opensource J2SE/J2ME will have to be seen. but to my best apprehension, sun will go for opensourcing J2EE and J2SE and may be J2ME too, but will take licensing fee from implementers.

now if J2SE really is opensourced, the other attempts to make opensource implementation of 1.5 like the apache foundations Harmony project become redundant.

secondly, J2SE stack should be opensourced in such a way as not to have forks, which are so common on opensource community. if forking happens that all breaks down the fundamental idea of Java platform: "write ones, run everywhere".

some shots of may

May flower in department of chemistry garden.




and the drops of water looks good in this scorching summer heat.

simputer

have written up a general article on Simputer at: http://qbit777.googlepages.com/simputer

also check an interesting article on programming Simputer at:
http://linuxgazette.net/issue87/pramode.html

and another interesting post from a user:
http://www.knowprose.com/node/3008


... making me more and more crazy about this device and its use ;)

3-Lib History of Psion

3-Lib History of Psion

... A pretty informative article on Psion to Symbian and the man who made it: Dr. David Potter, a doctorate in mathematical physics!

Tux shaped computer

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS3880195342.html

.. interesting and cute device! :)

cluster in a day!

At my lab yesterday, all of us got to work and built up a cluster of 16 nodes.
A bit on specs:
8, 32-bit Intel Pentium IV @ 2.8 GHz with 2 GB RAM
8, 64-bit Intel Core Duo @ 2.66 GHz with 1 GB RAM (contributed by Intel India)

Though there is lot to setup still, cheers to all TCGians. Check out some snaps taken from my mobile.

 
 
 
  

Spider spider!

 


.... :) great closeup :o 

Quantum Chemistry on Mobile!

This might not be the first attempt to do so, but to the best of my knowledge this is the first such attempt on an s60 platform using python!
I have managed to do electronic structure calculation on a small molecule H₂ and will attempt to do larger molecules soon!

The code available here with a sample input file, is based on PyQuante (written by Rick Muller) and quantumj (written my me in Java, and based on early PyQuante code). The code has been squeezed to suite the constrained memory and CPU available on s60 phones.

Current code is very basic, and here is what you can expect from future versions:
- an interface for running the script.
- clean up, where required
- calculate electron density over a grid, and visualize it using mobimol

enjoy!

ps. i hope to create a page (google home page) describing some aspects of this and other codes written by me on s60 phones soon. so look back!

update: check http://tovganesh.googlepages.com/s60 for a brief description of mobimol and mobihf.

photography after long break!

well managed to do some photography and got time to post one of them ;)



you can guess the amount of magnification i could get from the fact that the "black thread" that you see in the photo is actually a thin human hair!

and some quotes on cactus:
The world is full of cactus, but we don't have to sit on it. ~Will Foley
Reach for the stars, even if you have to stand on a cactus. ~Susan Longacre
I have learned the difference between a cactus and a caucus. On a cactus, the pricks are on the outside. ~Morris K. Udall

finally hope to post more photos in the comming week, so look back!

The Hindu News Update Service

The Hindu News Update Service

this is great the next INSAT (4C) will be launched from indian launch vehicle (GSLV)... all the best for ISRO !

Insight 7: The hidden value of the mobile operating system

Insight 7: The hidden value of the mobile operating system: "this argument, if the technical differences between operating systems are slight, companies should pay higher regard to the general popularity and general availability of an operating system – including (for example) how widely taught an operating system is in univ"

Cross-Platform Sample Virus Targets Windows, Linux

Cross-Platform Sample Virus Targets Windows, Linux

beware, you will soon have "write once destroy every thing" kind of viruses ;)

phonescoping

nokia site has an interesting mention of phonescoping - taking some stunning closeups with nokia mobile phones. it is about a guy called Tommi Laurinsalo in Finland, who is a bird watcher and has how to's of taking such pictures at: http://koti.welho.com/tlaurins/phonescoping/

mobimol v0.6 and mpatra v0.1

get mobimol v0.6 from http://tovganesh.googlepages.com/mobimol.py

it has a few bug fixes, particulary regarding rendering.

and a new script mparta v0.1 is a pdf viewer, a very simple one though. only displays pure text no formating as yet, and no graphics! get it from http://tovganesh.googlepages.com/mpatra.py

its inspired from one article on codeproject indicating how to extract text from a pdf document, but now i can't get its reference.

mobimol v0.5

get it from: http://tovganesh.googlepages.com/mobimol.py

- minor changes, added a new filechooser

:) as usual, no older versions now available!

mobimol v0.4

the previous version (v0.3) didn't survive long. get the latest at:
http://tovganesh.googlepages.com/mobimol.py

change log:
- fixed lots of bugs. one notable one is the call to math.acos() in findAngle(), which i feel is a bug in the implementation of acos rather than my code.
- the other notable change is that the painting technique has changed from endless loop to canvas.redraw_callback method, this has greately reduced the cpu cycles mobimol consumes.
- apart from the H₂O coordinates provided by [cyke64] on nokia forums, you may also obtain benzene(C₆H₆) coordinates from here http://tovganesh.googlepages.com/benz.xyz.

enjoy!

mobimol v0.3

get it from: http://tovganesh.googlepages.com/mobimol.py, as usual the older version(s) are no longer available.

- added line and circle model for displaying atoms (as suggested by korakotc, thanks)

- thanks to cyke64 for announcing mobimol in nokia developer forum and giving an example .xyz file :)

enjoy!

PythonForSeries60 - Matt Croydon::Postwiki

PythonForSeries60 - Matt Croydon::Postwiki

a wiki listing mobimol ;)

blogger problem?

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access / on this server.

mobimol v0.2

change log:
- get the updated script from http://tovganesh.googlepages.com/mobimol.py. older v0.1 is no longer accessible.
- added: zoom, smoother rotation, labels (id and symbols), and a query utility (length, angles, dihedrals).


... enjoy!

RFID Viruses and Worms

Andrew S. Tanenbaum et al. have published an interesting article on possible infection of RFID based cards at: http://www.rfidvirus.org/

mobimol v0.1 - worlds first molecule viewer for s60 phones

.. (most possibly ;))
well first thing first:
- you need python interpreter for s60 phones available at http://opensource.nokia.com
- after installing this on your compatible phone, grab mobimol source from http://tovganesh.googlepages.com/mobimol.py
- push it to your mobile (serial, blutooth, ...)
- and you are done!

currently this viewer reads only .xyz files and has very, very basic functionality.
you will see more features in a few days... (hope to get some spare time to do this!)

well, i never thought that i would be writing my first mobile app in python! java was my first choice, but as you see python and nokia have a nice combination :) only problem is that its not as truely portable as java. that is the cost paid for easness.. this script was written in about half a day, and about an hour to get used to the s60 python APIs.

and finally this all means that i have got a mobile! so that would be a real surprise for a lot of people that i know (u will get my number shortly ;))

.. was a nice gift for me on my BD ;)

titbits:
- the shots are taken from my camera with H₂O (whats that?) shown on mobile and the same stuff open in MeTA Studio on my PC.
- mobimol is very basic and will remain so, if u need full featured (programmable stuff), you may consider a look at MeTA Studio (see my earlier posts on how to obtain it)
- mobimol is GPLed , if u make changes, please make them available!

 
 

my first mobile app, mobimol - a molecule viewer written in python for s60 phones, see above post for description. 

 

those of who still remember pune univ, will know this tree ;) 

mp3 in MeTA Studio

get the latest and the first public version of meta studio at:
http://chem.unipune.ernet.in/~tcg/MeTAv2/meta-bin.tar.gz

along with many changes (in the UI) and the underlying APIs (the network apis in org.chem.unipune.meta.net package), you can do some cool things like playing mp3, while checking out on latest geometries ;). here is the code:
pl=play("path to mp3 file");

and to stop the player:
pl.close();

to use the code u need to open the beanshell prompt (from Tools->Open Beanshell)

enjoy and plz. give feedback!

(update: a) the mp3 decoder is taken from jlayer mp3 library
b) all "additional" packages used in meta studio are LGPL, if i have modified them their source is available else where.
c) no source code of meta studio is released as of now. its still in development stage, and as the source code changes are pretty fast, i can't provide the source at this point.
d) most of the APIs are documented and are available from Help->MeTA Studio Help. .. but are subject to change.
)

Quantum computer solves problem, without running

Quantum computer solves problem, without running

.... and it says later on

“In a sense, it is the possibility that the algorithm could run which prevents the algorithm from running,” Kwiat said. “That is at the heart of quantum interrogation schemes, and to my mind, quantum mechanics doesn’t get any more mysterious than this.”

well people solve problems without running then on computer, i am not able to solve even after running them :(

update yogi just sent me the nature link: http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060220/full/060220-10.html

ENIAC: A computer is born | CNET News.com

ENIAC: A computer is born | CNET News.com

... the origin of the machines:)

eyeOS | Web Based Desktop System. Taking your data and applications everywhere.

eyeOS | Web Based Desktop System. Taking your data and applications everywhere.

... well a good attempt to redefine the desktop!

we code....

 


... courtesy jovan jose :) 

a closer look at it :)

 
 

innocence: have we lost it somewhere?

 
 

Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems

is some facinating history of Sun :)

"A scientist builds in order to learn; an engineer learns in order to build."
- Fred Brooks

another set of screen shots :)