New Blog

Stuff moved people! Be kind and follow my new blog at saahil.posterous.com.

U_Need

Ok, this one’s right out of nowhere, but just the last evening I thought up of something. How many times have you been in a situation when your cell phone totally screwed after falling from your pocket while running for the class in the morning. Now that’s not the worst part, is it? Not only did it cost you hefty to get the phone repaired, you were also left totally bereft of any kind of contact with anyone till the time it got repaired. All this because, probably, you couldn’t find someone who had a cell phone to spare. How about we come up with a way to *let everyone know*? That is exactly what this new web service would be all about. You tell us what you need and where you are. I bet there’s someone around who’d be glad to lend a hand, be it with a spare cellphone, a bike for a day or a pair of black formal shoes. This is supposed to be an entirely user-collaborative service, which is why your participation is highly appreciated. That said, I am currently just carrying out some sample runs to determine stuff like approximate load, response time from users, effective reach of the service etc. So, if you’re as much as a little carefree at the moment, take a minute and help me out here. Here’s what you could do to be at the top of my awesome-things-and-people-that-I-know list :-

1. Get a twitter account
They’re all tweeting these days. Its the first step to be popular and get a hot date for your high school prom. You, obviously, know if you’re already signed up on twitter.

2. Tell me if you need something
Now, this is the important step. Whenever you need something, just use your twitter account to shoot me a reply at @U_Need describing what you need, followed by a hashtag called #ineed. For example, your tweet could look like-

@U_Need I need a calculator for a day for my Discrete Mathematics test. #ineed

3. Tell me if you’ve got something
If you have something that someone could use, and you could spare, be nice and send me a @U_Need reply with a #ihave hashtag at the end.

eg. @U_Need Could lend my bike to someone for the weekend. Black Yamaha FZ #ihave

4. Follow me
Follow me on twitter at @U_Need to see what’s up with us.

5. Follow up
You could search for #ihave hashtags on twitter, if you tweeted a #ineed, and vice versa. Be smart. Once my service starts, you could gift me a beer or two for taking the pain out of the whole procedure, but for now this would be the only way to follow up.

That’s it!! You’ve told everyone what you need (or got). You couldn’t have done more than that, could you?

Thank you very much for taking time out for this baby. I appreciate.

In case you’re wondering, yes I *do* have a life and you could be a part of the fun by following me at @saahil.

So long….

Taste no evil

When you speak, you shall be heard. When you lick an ass, you shall be noticed. But it doesn’t end at that. Infact, it only starts there. What has succeeded in being something that is most operable in this world, is that which follows one’s noticing the ass-licking act. You could choose to let it be, and leave the subject’s ass to dry in the sunny daylight, or contribute to the moisture on the mentioned hind part of the body (thereby, allowing the reciever to indulge in one of the most gratifying experience of his lifetime), or acknowledge the sight and kick some ass yourself. The butt-kicking can be executed upon the recieving or the providing party of the afore-mentioned procedure, tending to provide different results in each case.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to this. You cant work your ass out to the one that calls for a lick everytime it hits the road. If you have it, you can chisel it to perfection. But if you dont have it, there is no way you are gonna grow one anytime soon.

THINK…

Its a long way to the top….

I’ve been longing to write this since quite some days now. The latest terrorist act, that everyone has been talking about, happened on 26th November 2008. I was no more or no less annoyed by the incident, than any other ordinary Indian, in any ordinary household. But it wasn’t until about a week back, that I actually felt the real shock value and the intended setback that we ought to derive from this aweful act of terrorism. These attacks, indeed, have a long lasting effect on the lives of more than just a few targeted. Its amazing how our lives are intertwined and how we are so dependent on so many people around us, that there is hardly a point in time, where we actually acknowledge this fact. In that sense, there always is someone, within atmost six degrees of seperation, whose loss can, in one way or another, can be traced as our loss too. If one observes, he’ll find quite an amount of people cursing the terrorists for what they do, asking them-damning questions(which are infact, rhetorical, contrary to their beliefs), like “What could have anyone possibly gained by mercilessly killing the innocent?”. These questions, infact, do not hold in the current frame of reference, i.e. the self-proclaimed “jihadi” propagandists. Their sole aim is aimless destruction, and they are aware of the fact. Their acts, in reality, are not expected to fetch any returns for any existing bodies or individuals. They are just supposed to plant the seeds of fear and terror in the minds of the common men. In that regard, I would say that they have been more than just successful. I, for one, would undoubtedly think twice over before venturing out of my hostel or home, fearing there might just be another bomb out there waiting to be detonated.
There have been terrorist activities throughout the globe, throughout the span of time, but not in the quantity and in the frequency that it has been happening in our country. This should lead us to introspect the policies within. As a matter of fact, there hardly is anything that the common man could have done, or can do in a situation like the one today.
Now, this might seem to be the most strongly and bitterly worded part of the whole article, but as a matter of fact, I am not able to remind myself of ONE thing about the country that I live in, that I can really be proud of. You can go ahead ranting the song of “Cultural and traditional diversities” etc. but stuff like these can be rebuted too. Other countries have cultures too, which cant be labelled as “non-existent” just because they are nothing like the culture here. That would, infact, be rather opposing to the very sense of the word. My comments section would be open to your rebuttals, if you manage to find me a field where we lead the world.
As much as this essay wasn’t meant to be anti-patriotic, it remains for a fact that we have a long way to go before we can de-tag ourselves as a third-world country, and be able to be counted amongst the world leaders. Till that time, the only way to nirvana for the Indians would be to put on our thinking caps; the statement being said in the most subjective sense as one can imagine. Self help is the best way of rising above the others.
THINK….

A much needed peek at Android

Not in agreement a very common misconception that Android is an OPERATING SYSTEM for the upcoming android phones, i would first like to clarify that android is more of a Software Stack, and not an operating system, as such. It was the brainchild of Open Handset Alliance, which is a group of companies and organizations, with google being one of the most prominent ones, who decided to invent an open source mobile platform, for developers to work on and design applications for. A major initiative taken by Google to promote Android was the launching of Android Developers Challenge, which met huge success, and saw participations from all over the world in large numbers, with about 50 of the contesting entries making it to the next level.

The most promising feature of Android platform, which clearly demarkates it from other mobile computing systems is its ability to not differentiate between the base operating system and third party apps. this essentially means that u can customize or totally revamp basically every aspect of the OS, from SMS reciever to the home screen.

Android makes use of, what they call as, IntentReceivers to trigger actions based on them. IntentsReceivers are nothing but notifications which are automatic, in the sense that they are dependent only on the provider’s “alerts” to the user. the example of an intent receiver may be an incoming text message, an incoming call, voice mail etc. these intent receivers can then be used to trigger various methods, which also form a part of this software stack. one of the methods deployed is Activity. An Activity is simply a screen (or what programmers might call, a single Form) which forms a part of the larger UI of the application. so u might have an Activity to show your contact list, and another activity to dial the selected contact. these two screens can form a UI for dialer app. the various activities of an UI are linked using Intents, which decides what-to-do(intent). then there are intent filters which decide whether the activity would be able to implement a certain Intent.

The above writeup, very briefly explains the basic building blocks of the Android software stack. Google has also provided the developers with a amazing lot of APIs to work with, which also include its landmarked Google Maps API, that provides beautiful functionality of an android phone as a GPS device. The android SDK includes a phone emulator, on which u can take ur applications for a spin, providing u with nothing less than a complete phone system in itself. this, particularly, makes developing android apps a fun task too. btw, these apps have to be written essentially in java, so a basic working knowledge of java is needed before u dive into programming on android SDK. then there always is google’s official documentation.

There is also an Android plugin for eclipse users known as the Android Developer Tools(ADT), which is pretty useful too.

Hello world program with code

Home Screen

Emulator’s browser.

Hello world program with codeHome ScreenEmulator's browser.

System updates

Back home, this vacation, i had fedora 8 and ubuntu 8.04 installed on my system. in process of installing these OSs i had formatted various partitions (had 3 primary, and 3 extended including a 1gig swap), so that the disk had a bunch of unallocated space pending here and there, wasting some 400mb of the total space. once after coming back to insti, i formatted the whole disk (with aayush donating his external hdd for my data backup of almost 35 gb). then installed XP on a 10gig primary partition. also made a 41gb of ntfs partition to keep my data permanently on. apart from that installed fedora 9 on another 10gig primary, leaving a partition of about 9 gb for trying out various distros, now and then. so presently my Os config is as follows -

1. Windows XP service pack 3

2. Fedora 9

3. openSuse 11.0

its my fedora gnome desktop. dont know y i put it here, but i kinda like the way it looks on a webpage. currently my eclipse 3.3 is giving some wierd errors in resolving the mylyn bridges so i m not able to install the Android plugin. therefore, i m updating eclipse from yum, and if that doesn’t work, i might download eclipse 3.4, which is another huge 160 mb. neways, had nothing to do otherwise, so wrote this entry. will get back will something more sensible soon.

Beyond just faculty reservation at IIT

Now that the reservation for the faculty thing being said, figure this. the Times of India, Jaipur edition, dated july 3, 2008, writes “Kanpur yet to get HRD funds for IIT-Rajasthan. Even as at least 112 students have already been enrolled in IIT Rajasthan for the current session, the Ministry of HRD has not provided funds to IIT Kanpur to run the newly set up premier institute.”
So is this wat is has come to? Make as much as 50% reservations for the non-General class (which, in fact, makes me think y is it called General Category at all, when all we are, in comparison to the “non-general” category, is just 50%. Shudn’t it just be another Minority then?) and when someone decides to make up for the lost number of seats in the general category, there is no funding from the same authoritative body to set up more institutes. way to go Mr. Singh.

Cyber Bullying

Just when we thought that the cases of bullying in our schools and colleges throughout the countries were not very satisfactory, and that children were time and again taunted and bullied by their counterparts and seniors, does BBC put light on another very serious form of this age old malicious practice viz. Cyber Bullying. Then the only safe way out of this threat being posed to the younger surfers, remains to be a platform which will allow them to surf in a safe and CLOSED environment, which will still be informative and fruitful, and be free from the dangers of open communicative environment. The whole BBC story follows here.

This way up

This post was originally my last post on my old blog. I just added it here as my first post to start the blog…

what have i been upto? a lot in a sense, although nothing in another sense too. realizing this is my first post this vacation, doesn’t actually feel like i’ve not been writing all this time. maybe i was too “occupied” (or watever that is, that u call “doing nothing”). reached on 2nd june. left again on 7th for a 15 day tour to leh, srinagar etc. about that, although most of the people that i went for the tour with (some of dad’s frnds and their families) didn’t have the best of their times in Leh, i totally had a blast. that was majorly due to the high altitude of the place, which results in considerable drop in the amount of oxygen available in the atmosphere, which in turn results into severe headaches, and breathing problems, at times, too. nevertheless, the place was breathtaking, with its non-conventional charms as a cold semi-arid region. apart from Leh, other places that v visited were sonmarg, srinagar, gulmarg, pahalgam, amritsar etc. for those lazy bums of u who dont have nething better to do neways, check out my picasa album at http://picasaweb.google.com/saahil.in/LehKashmirAmritsar .
came back from that tour on 23rd of this month. been lazing around my time here and thinking about stuff. seems so unlikely, that i had not thought of these things before, though i cud’ve, looking at how spontaniously they came to my mind now. unlikely, but true. for one thing, it seems so straightforward to me now what some people have been trying to convey this whole time. but y is it that i cudn’t gauge that then? more so that i know it now, it ceases to displease me ne more.
out of the blue, i think calvin and hobbes is the greatest comic strip ever. not only a comic strip, no other author (other than wayne dyer and maybe, ayn rand) has been able to project the trueness of a human mind and the simplicity with which it ought to work, better than Bill Waterson(Author and illustrator of Calvin and Hobbes). i am in complete awe of the philosophies that calvin and hobbes has been projecting for so long. for example, his attitude towards history lessons is precisely what i always thought of them, only to be short of words to explain what it felt like. his unusual snowman creatures as a form of “art” is also something that has a lot of thought put into it.
i guess thats about it for now. hoping to come out of this temporary blackout of my mind soon. until then….its me and the endless servings of tomato-cucumber sandwitches.

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