Planet TwinClinG

Shakthi Kannan: KMR Foundation

2010-08-22T06:00:00+00:00

Visited KMRF who needed assistance in installation, troubleshooting, and use of the XO laptops. I had a chance to visit the Government school in Aziznagar, Ranga Reddy district, Andhra Pradesh, India, where they have their XO laptop deployment. Most of the students can speak only in Telugu. They have a chart in the classroom for English-Telugu reference.

Tuxmath was installed, and they enjoy using it a lot:

Kenneth Gonsalves: oss vs foss

2010-08-22T04:44:09+00:00

பொதுவான அம்சங்கள்:

௧. மூலம் இலவசமாக கிடைக்கும்
௨. எப்படி வேண்டுமென்றால் பயன்படுத்தலாம்
௩. விநியோகம் செய்யலாம்
௪. மாற்றங்களை விநியோகம் செய்யலாம்
௫. மூலத்தை மாற்றலாம்.

வேறுபாடுகள்:

oss: மூலத்தை மாற்றி அதனை மூடலாம். ஆனால் பெயரை மாற்ற வேண்டும்.
foss: எக்காரணம் கொண்டும் மூரத்தை மூட கூடாது.

குறிப்பு: 'Free' என்றால் சுதந்தரம், இலவசமல்லா

Shakthi Kannan: nesC

2010-08-17T03:30:00+00:00

nesC is now available for Fedora. It is an extension to the C programming language designed for use with TinyOS, which is used in wireless sensor networks. Install it using:

  $ sudo yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update nesc

It could not be shipped with Fedora earlier because it used the now deprecated Intel Open Source license. Thanks to David Gay and Philip Levis, it has now been updated with dual BSD/GPL license. There is also support for GNU Emacs with the emacs-nesc package.

  $ sudo yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update emacs-nesc

Here is a screenshot of GNU Emacs with syntax highlighting in nesc-mode:

Srikrishna Das: Vodafone Keeps silent on Payment Complains

2010-08-13T10:36:13+00:00

Vodafone’s payment gateway literally sucks. Paying through online or IVR is supposed to give you a peace of mind. Looks like Vodafone has no intentions of fixing their payment gateway issues. I’ve had payment problems the last 4 times in a row. Outgoing barred for 9 days after making payment. Payment from their website or [...]

Ajay Kumar: Story Yelling at Digital Natives Workshop in Taipei

2010-08-12T20:27:10+00:00

The Centre for Internet and Society in collaboration with the Frontier Foundation is holding a three day Digital Natives workshop in Taipei from 16 to 18 August, 2010. The three day workshop will serve as an ideal platform for the young users of technology to share their knowledge and experience of the digital and Internet

Balaji Narayanan: Just Books

balaji — 2010-08-08T18:22:16+00:00

In the last few months I would have spent atleast a few thousands on books for S. Most of the books she was reading were all pulp fiction. I decided that it was no longer fun coughing up money for books which would never be touched after they are read once. This was the same time when I stumbled upon Just Books.

A couple of weeks back we walked up to their branch and figured they have an impressive collection of books. The library is well lit, and well maintained. The different plans that they had to offer were also attractive. They have a section of books for children with small chairs neatly arranged to encourage reading habit.

They have also put technology to good use. Books are tagged with RFID and each member is issued an RFID card for issue / return of books. We signed up immediately and the experience so far has been fantastic. If you have branch around your area, do check it out.

--
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
-- Mark Twain.

Balaji Narayanan: Swimming

balaji — 2010-08-07T18:32:11+00:00

Since school days learning to swim was a fascination to me but never had the opportunity to learn. I thought I would learn this once I joined college since river Cauvery was nearby. But that too never happened thanks to the sound reprimand I received when my parents discovered about it. The wish remained as one of the top priority bucket list items for a long time. I had tried on and off venturing into the pool but never learnt the nuances.

A couple of months back when I was talking my running coach Beedu, he suggested me to go and learn swimming. The nonchalant yet firm way he talks pushed me into signing up. I signed up with a lot of apprehension and much against the approval of my parents but S pushed for it. With July feeling as if it is peak winter and with the rains, I was not very sure but decided to put my best foot forward.

I finally made it to 19 of the 20 sessions. After completing the course, I am confident that atleast I know the nuances and can swim the breadth of the pool with confidence. Needs practice and I will get to once I am done with KTM.

KTM, here I come.

Kenneth Gonsalves: hourly billing

2010-08-05T01:55:11+00:00

I could never wrap my head around the concept of hourly billing. It is a strange western thingie that is totally unsuitable to our culture. Possible it is realistic in the sense of purely mechanical work - like ploughing a field or writing php code - one can predict exactly how much can be done per hour and bill accordingly. But in any field that involves thought, research or creativity the whole idea of hourly billing is stupid. In both the legal profession and in programming, I may estimate 4 hours to do some work. I may do it in 15 minutes or maybe in 24 hours - so what do I bill? Traditionally in India we bill per piece of work done. And in estimating how much it costs, there are 2 considerations: how much work is expected and, more important, how much the client can be expected to pay.

Shakthi Kannan: Teal

2010-08-02T19:00:00+00:00

Teal, the popular verification utility and connection library is now available for Fedora:

  $ sudo yum install teal

It is a C++ multithreaded library to verify verilog designs. It deals with simulation logging, error reporting, threading, memory model management. It basically provides all the low level building blocks needed to start a verification environment. A simple example:

#include 
using namespace teal;
int verification_top ()
{
  vreg clock (“testbench.clk”);
  vout log (“Chapter 4- Example 1”);
  dictionary::start (“simple_clock_test.txt”);
  uint number_of_periods (dictionary::find (“number_of_clocks”,20));
  for (int i(0); i  number_of_periods; ++i)  {
    log  note  “i is “  i  clock is  clock  endm;
  }
  dictionary::stop ();
  vlog::get (expected)  “test completed”  endl;
}

It is released under the Trusster open source license, but, that is incompatible with the GPL. But, thanks to the founders of Trusster.com, Mike Mintz and Robert Ekendahl, who agreed to release the same under the LGPLv2+ and GPLv2+ license for Fedora!

Thejaswi Puthraya: Extending JQuery UI widgets

Thejaswi Puthraya — 2010-07-27T03:22:14+00:00

JQuery UI is a useful project that provides theme-able widgets built on top of the JQuery project. It has an active community and lots of community contributed widgets that do a lot of interesting and sometimes out of the world stuff!

For a mini-project, I had to work on replicating the GMail filter labels widget. I looked around if any were available and the closest I came to was the dropdownchecklist project. Then I had to figure out how to extend this widget and in the process learned a lot of cool stuff that I would love to share on this post. These are two very good posts that you must read before you try to extend widgets:

Understanding jQuery UI widgets: A tutorial

Extending JQuery UI widgets

Here are some observations from my attempt at overriding the widget:

The JQuery extend method is the best way to extend the widgets.

JQuery UI hides methods that start with an _ (underscore) from being called by the instance.

So here are two snippets of extending the widget:

Method - 1

$.ui.widgetName.prototype.someMethod = function(someArgs) {
  // Function body ...
}

Method - 2 (recommended)

$.extend($.ui.widgetName.prototype, {newMethod: function(someArgs) {
    // Function body ...
  }
});

Kenneth Gonsalves: language wars

2010-07-22T02:19:57+00:00

recently ilugc mailing list had an unprecedentedly huge flame war regarding language. This had it's beginnings a couple of years back when one or two members started posting in Tamil. Ilugc is the biggest LUG in India and has a large and active component of members from outside Tamilnadu as well as members within the state who cannot read Tamil - in many cases do not even have the fonts installed so all they see is either junk or little boxen. Repeated requests were made that the mails be tagged [Tamil] and a brief english translation be appended. The posters expressed the opinion that 'this is the Tamilnadu state LUG and hence they have the right to post in Tamil, and also every member should learn Tamil'. At that time no one was opposed to posts in Tamil - all they asked was that the posters do them the courtesy of tagging the posts so that they could filter it out - or give an english summary so that they could know what is happening. This went on for some years - periodically requests were made for tagging/summary, and the requests were ignored.

In India language is a very sensitive issue - but in Tamilnadu by and large there is a lot of tolerance as there are large linguistic minorities - although I remember torrid times in the anti-hindi agitations of the past and the Tamil-Kannada riots in the late nineties (this was actually more a dispute over water than over language). There are fanatics like the MNS in Mumbai that wants to kick out all the non Marathi speaking people - and a few hot heads in other states. Bangalore comes to mind in this regard.

Anyway the issue flared up again a couple of weeks back - and this time due to the intransigence of the tamil posters (actually only 2-3 of them in a 2000 strong list), flames erupted and this time there was heavy opposition to tamil posting itself, along with a much more insistent demand for tagging/translation. Finally the co-ordinator ordained that any language may be used as long as it is tagged and translated. This lead to posts in all manner of languages and a general state of anarchy. In the end the list owner stated that he is willing to start language lists on request, but only english posts would be allowed. Anyone posting in other languages would be warned and then banned.

So why were they posting in Tamil and refusing to tag/translate? Simply because they wanted to impose Tamil on the members. If they genuinely wanted to promote Tamil, they should have been polite, tagged the mails and also provided translations - or even transliterations to encourage people to learn. There was even one moron who suggested that Marathi posts should be allowed in Mumbai, Kannada posts in Bengaluru and Telugu posts in Hyderabad - which shows how much he knows about the languages spoken in the respective cities and the tensions wrt to language there.

Well youngsters will be youngsters - but I hope some of them get posted to some place like Kolhapur or Kannur - then they will learn.

Shakthi Kannan: Computational Fluid Dynamics General Notation System

2010-07-20T13:00:00+00:00

The Computational Fluid Dynamics General Notation System (CGNS) library is now available in Fedora under the zlib license. Install it using:

  $ yum install cgnslib

It provides a general, portable, and extensible standard for the storage and retrieval of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis data. It consists of a collection of conventions, and free and open software implementing those conventions. It is self-descriptive, machine-independent, well-documented, and administered by an international Steering Committee.

Sudharshan: Touring, now a Breeze!

2010-07-18T16:58:35+00:00

India, is a wonderful place for touring on a motorbike. With terrains ranging from high mountainous North, North Eastern India to the Coastal plains and lush Ghats down South, we sure have a huge load of places to see and experience. Motorbike touring can also be risky since a disproportionate rate of road accidents involve [...]

Jinesh K J: Asus eeepc 1005HA and Meego 1.0.1

2010-07-16T21:15:00+00:00

I bought my eeepc in last December and since then i am using Ubuntu Netbook Remix(UMR) or Ubuntu Netbook Edition(UNE). It was working good and with some hacks i was able to use it to the best. I don’t use my netbook for much multimedia purposes(still i need to listen to a set of songs [...]

Shakthi Kannan: Chalmers Lava2000

2010-07-01T11:00:00+00:00

Chalmers Lava2000, a hardware description library in Haskell is now available for Fedora. Thanks to Emil Axelsson and Jens Peterson for their feedback, and package review. You can install the same using:

$ sudo yum install ghc-chalmers-lava2000       \
                   ghc-chalmers-lava2000-devel \
                   ghc-chalmers-lava2000-doc

To illustrate a half adder example with the use of the Lava library, create a Test.hs file:

import Lava

halfAdd (a, b) = (sum, carry)
  where
    sum   = xor2 (a, b)
    carry = and2 (a, b)

Load it with ghci (Glasgow Haskell Compiler):

$ ghci Test.hs

GHCi, version 6.12.2: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/  :? for help
Loading package ghc-prim ... linking ... done.
Loading package integer-gmp ... linking ... done.
Loading package base ... linking ... done.
Loading package ffi-1.0 ... linking ... done.
[1 of 1] Compiling Main             ( Test.hs, interpreted )
Ok, modules loaded: Main.

Test half adder with low, high inputs using:

*Main> simulate halfAdd(low, high)
Loading package syb-0.1.0.2 ... linking ... done.
Loading package base-3.0.3.2 ... linking ... done.
Loading package array-0.3.0.0 ... linking ... done.
Loading package filepath-1.1.0.3 ... linking ... done.
Loading package old-locale-1.0.0.2 ... linking ... done.
Loading package old-time-1.0.0.3 ... linking ... done.
Loading package unix-2.4.0.0 ... linking ... done.
Loading package directory-1.0.1.0 ... linking ... done.
Loading package process-1.0.1.2 ... linking ... done.
Loading package time-1.1.4 ... linking ... done.
Loading package random-1.0.0.2 ... linking ... done.
Loading package haskell98 ... linking ... done.
Loading package chalmers-lava2000-1.1.1 ... linking ... done.
(high,low)
*Main>

Testing half adder with high, high inputs gives:

*Main> simulate halfAdd(high, high)
(low,high)

You can also generate vhdl file using:

*Main> writeVhdl "halfAdd" halfAdd

Loading package syb-0.1.0.2 ... linking ... done.
Loading package base-3.0.3.2 ... linking ... done.
Loading package array-0.3.0.0 ... linking ... done.
Loading package filepath-1.1.0.4 ... linking ... done.
Loading package old-locale-1.0.0.2 ... linking ... done.
Loading package old-time-1.0.0.4 ... linking ... done.
Loading package unix-2.4.0.1 ... linking ... done.
Loading package directory-1.0.1.1 ... linking ... done.
Loading package process-1.0.1.2 ... linking ... done.
Loading package time-1.1.4 ... linking ... done.
Loading package random-1.0.0.2 ... linking ... done.
Loading package haskell98 ... linking ... done.
Loading package chalmers-lava2000-1.1.1 ... linking ... done.
Writing to file "halfAdd.vhd" ... Done.

Copy /usr/share/chalmers-lava2000-1.1.1/Vhdl/lava.vhd to your project directory, and you can verify the generated halfAdd.vhd with it using ghdl:

$ ghdl -a lava.vhd
$ ghdl -a halfAdd.vhd 
$

You are encouraged to read the "Slightly Revised Tutorial on Lava" by Koen Claessen, and Mary Sheeran for more detailed documentation on using the library.

Shakthi Kannan: Hardware Complexity Tool

2010-06-18T23:00:00+00:00

Hardware Complexity Tool (hct) is now available for Fedora. It generates scores that represent the complexity of the modules of integrated circuit design projects. It uses McCabes' cyclomatic complexity for understanding branch complexity. You can run hct on verilog, vhdl, cdl (computer design language) files or directories that contain these files. For example:

$ hct verilog
Directory: /tmp/verilog

verilog, 18 file(s)
+--------------------+--------------+------+-------+----------+--------+
| FILENAME           | MODULE       | IO   | NET   | MCCABE   | TIME   |
+--------------------+--------------+------+-------+----------+--------+
| Case.v                              0      0       18         0.1504 |
|                      case           0      0       18                |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| modules.v                           1      0       2          0.0137 |
|                      m1             1      0       1                 |
|                      m2             0      0       1                 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| RAM.v                               7      0       4          0.1653 |
|                      RAM            7      0       4                 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| hello_world.v                       0      0       1          0.0113 |
|                      hello_world    0      0       1                 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| one_day2.v                          0      0       2          0.0423 |
|                      one_day2       0      0       2                 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| S430.v                              13     4       1          0.2438 |
|                      S430           13     4       1                 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| one_day3.v                          0      0       4          0.0305 |
|                      one_day3       0      0       4                 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| first_counter.v                     4      3       3          0.0765 |
|                      first_~unter   4      3       3                 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Multiplier.v                        7      4       1          0.1646 |
|                      Multiplier     7      4       1                 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Sys430.v                            10     12      9          0.5017 |
|                      Sys430         3      12      5                 |
|                      LEDTest        7      0       4                 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| first_counter_tb.v                  0      1       1          0.0279 |
|                      first_~er_tb   0      1       1                 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| longtest.v                          9      5       12         2.1130 |
|                      RAMB16_S9      9      5       12                |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| GPR.v                               8      0       3          0.1039 |
|                      GPR            8      0       3                 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| encoder_u~g_case.v                  3      0       16         0.1384 |
|                      encode~_case   3      0       16                |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| RAMB16_S9.v                         9      5       12         2.0922 |
|                      RAMB16_S9      9      5       12                |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| comment.v                           0      0       1          0.0264 |
|                      comment        0      0       1                 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| encoder_using_if.v                  3      0       17         0.1941 |
|                      encode~ng_if   3      0       17                |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| MUX2.v                              0      0       1          0.0035 |
|                      INV            0      0       1                 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+

Shakthi Kannan: First blog post after marriage!

2010-06-16T14:00:00+00:00

First blog post after marriage! Have updated my Dell Vostro 1310 to Fedora rawhide. The relevant configuration outputs are now made available:
/sbin/lspci
/sbin/lsmod
/boot/grub/menu.lst
dmesg

Updating tcl to tcl-8.5.8-2.fc14 solves 540296. One can now do:

$ tclsh
% package require Tk

Running "mcu8051ide --check-libraries" should now be clean on Fedora:

Checking libraries...
	1/9 Checking for library BWidget
		Library present	... YES
		Version 1.7	... YES
	2/9 Checking for library Itcl
		Library present	... YES
		Version 3.4	... YES
	3/9 Checking for library Tcl
		Library present	... YES
		Version 8.2	... YES
	4/9 Checking for library md5
		Library present	... YES
		Version 2.0	... YES
	5/9 Checking for library crc16
		Library present	... YES
		Version 1.1	... YES
	6/9 Checking for library Tk
		Library present	... YES
		Version 8.5	... YES
	7/9 Checking for library img::png
		Library present	... YES
		Version 1.3	... YES
	8/9 Checking for library tdom
		Library present	... YES
		Version 0.8	... YES
	9/9 Checking for library Tclx
		Library present	... YES
		Version 8.0	... YES
RESULTS:
	Number of fails: 0
	Everything seems ok

Pushed recent mcu8051ide 1.3.7 and vrq 1.0.76 to Fedora repository.

Kenneth Gonsalves: billdesk scamsters?

2010-06-09T10:22:31+00:00

I recently had to make an urgent journey - so I booked tickets by 2 different trains - when the waiting list did not clear, I also booked tatkal. 3 or 4 of the bookings ended in failed transaction - billdesk deducted the money from my bank account - but did not credit it to the railways. Then I tried air - two attempts, both times money left my account, but billdesk did not credit it to the booking site. Net result: about 12K rupees left my account and is sitting with billdesk. After lots of emails, all parties agree that I have paid the money, that the transactions have failed and that I should get my money back. Now they say 7-8 business days. Obviously there is some scam here - why should a refund take more than a few seconds when the transaction has failed? They are probably earning lakhs in interest from the money they are holding in this way.

Kenneth Gonsalves: how to build your house

2010-05-24T00:26:25+00:00

Contractor (C): Sir, I will build your house for you - see pictures of all the houses I have built and choose one
Owner (O): I like house B, may I see the plans please?
C: no sir, plans are secret - if others see they will build houses like mine and I will lose business - but I will give 100% guarantee and you may test the construction when complete
O: ok, please build it, but I would like to watch the construction process
C: no sir, construction process is a business secret - if I show then other people will copy. My building process is highly secret - even the workers and sub contractors do not know the full details. Please pay 20 lakhs advance and I will complete construction within a year, then you can pay baaki 30 lakhs.
O: (two years later) Is house ready at least now?
C: yes, it is ready - you may test.
D (special testing team from Israel): sir, only 5 lakhs, we will test construction with latest techniques
O: ok, please go ahead and give result, I want to move in before I die
D: sir, we have completed testing - we used latest hand grenades and bombs to test structure and are happy to report that house is resistant to all but the very latest bombs which are anyway unavailable to the public and can safely say that the construction is robust.
O: where is the house? I only see a pile of rubble.
C and D: sir, best quality testing will do this, but please pay another 50-60 lakhs and we will build and test another house for you

Balaji Narayanan: Run for the Biscuit

balaji — 2010-05-23T16:53:17+00:00

Last year, since I was regular at the NRC, I had trained well. However, this year, I was neither regular nor well trained. I wanted to do atleast 200K before the actual race and atleast 4-5 10Ks but I managed about 100K with not a single race distance. However, one good thing I noticed was that my overall pace had increased and I was able to do the small distances that I was running with ease. I was thinking that I would be able to do 52-54 mins for the 10k.

I started of the race at an easy pace. For the first couple of KMs, I had to fight for the way. There were too many people. It eased out around the 2k mark and the next few kms were covered in quick time. I started feeling a bit tired around the 6K mark and started taking it easy. The 7th was even more difficult. When I was thinking of walking for a few minutes, I started to play with my mind. I was thinking what I would I be telling Vasu if she decides to quit. That made me push and I was able to complete that last couple of kms with relative ease. Overall I did the 10k in 56:36, a couple of minutes better than last time.

Once I completed, I took a few minutes break and went back looking for Vasu. She was near the Hudson circle gate and I pushed her to run the last 700 odd metres. This was her first 10K and I am glad she completed it under 1:30:00.

After the race, we went to the Nike Lounge for foot massage, photo session and a sumptuous breakfast. I also ran into Dr.Rajat at the lounge. He was cheerful and all smiles as always. When I approached him with a couple of questions, he was happy to provide me inputs on the spot. So bad that he does not consult in Bangalore anymore.

The lunch was at Ragoos, on Kanakpura road, a vegetarian place for pizzas, pastas and rice. More about it later.

--
It is a fight between your body and mind. The body says it cant go any further but the mind is trying to push. When you achieve this harmony, then you can breeze.
-- Balaji, 2010

Satyaakam Goswami: Whats on your Mind ?

2010-05-18T05:11:40+00:00

Ok i decided to change title of my blog from “Free and Open Source ” to “whats on your mind” yes the first one was good focussed one on one topic but i felt and that what i do is more than just FOSS. This gives me the freedom to write here instead of places like Facebook or Twitter or Identi.ca . Ok whats on the plate to start with the new title “whats on your mind ” yes you got it right its been flicked from Facebook , thanks to there policy changes they were in News for past few weeks , actually i really like it so does so many of millions of Facebook Fans .

i started digging and try to find out the social maps which exists and the connections i can see , obviously FB was the tool of choice to begin with i hit upon my first search with Nexus which has shut down ;-( , but it gave me enough apps using which i can do pretty much what i wanted here are the list of applications on Facebook which mapped social connections not only they did that they were digging more into the connections.

Touch Graph
NamegenWeb
Friedn Wheel

i am sure there are more ways to dig in with the Graph API .

For all those people who are afraid after seeing the web of connections and having privacy concern there is no straighforward way to deactivate your Facebook account , deactivating actually does not help you in deleting all the data , to actually wipe all the info you need to go to this link Delete Facebook account

for all the other folks who do not want to delete the account here is a scanner to test your reclaimprivacy privacy setting on Facebook.

nice reads on this topic
eff link 1
eff link 2
yahoo link
wired.com
Quitfacebookday

Shakthi Kannan: Blender meet, Hyderabad

2010-05-17T14:30:00+00:00

Attended May months' Hyderabad user group meeting on Sunday, May 16, 2010 at:

Rhythm & Hues Studios India Pvt. Ltd.
The V, Vega Block, 11th Floor,
Left Wing, Plot No - 17, Software Units Layout
HITEC City, Madhapur, 
Hyderabad 500 081
India

Satish "iloveblender" Goda gave a very informative talk about the history of the Blender project, animation movies created using the Blender software, pipelines involved in animation movie production, and on how the blender community functions in producing open animation movies with the guidance of Ton Roosendaal.

Their open animation movie projects are code named after names of fruits. One interesting aspect is that before starting on a new movie project, one can pay and pre-order the DVD, and your name is added to the credits when the movie is released. This funding also helps the team in producing the movie!

Thanks to the Management of Rhythm & Hues Studios India Pvt. Ltd. for hosting our user group meet at their auditorium. Special thanks to "cheedhu" and "iloveblender" for initiating the effort. We hope to have more sessions of blender and other F/OSS sessions at this venue.

A photo taken at the end of the session:

Thejaswi Puthraya: Use the Windows key as Ctrl Key on Linux

Thejaswi Puthraya — 2010-05-11T21:44:59+00:00

The Ctrl key on the Samsung R517 laptop is placed awkwardly for comfortable use with Emacs. Off late due to the strain of hitting the Ctrl key often, I started to feel a mild tingling on my pinky. I was anxious if this was the first stage of the infamous Emacs pinky. So I started looking for ways of reducing the pain and I came across a beautiful article by Steve Yegge on Effective Emacs. If you wish to become a power Emacs user, then you ought to read it. This article came as a real blessing in disguise and I hope my post might be useful to some other soul.

The article actually recommends swapping the Caps Lock and the Ctrl key. But as a fairly frequent user of the Caps Lock key, I did not like the idea and hence decided to swap it with the 'vestigial' Windows key. This is fairly simple process on Linux. Here's how I went about it...

Figure out the key code of the windows key. Linux comes with an X utility called 'xev'. After firing that utility, I pressed the windows key several times and noted down the key symbol and key code. In my case, they were "Super_L" and "133".

Map the key using 'xmodmap'.

keysym Control_L = Super_L
keycode 37 = Control_L
remove mod4 = Super_L
add Control = Control_L Control_R Super_L
What the code above does is that it first assigns the left control to the windows key and deassigns the left control. But we want an additional control key instead of deassigning it. So we take the key code of the left control as mentioned in Step 1 and reassign it to the Control_L key symbol. We then, remove the Windows key from the modifier group called 'mod4'. The 8 modifier groups are Shift, Lock, Control, Mod1, Mod2, Mod3, Mod4 and Mod5. These modifier groups hold a collection of keys for a specific action. For example, by default the Caps Lock is part of the Lock modifier. Suppose, you add another key to this group, you can make it function like a Caps Lock. This is the basis for the last line, where I wish to use the Left Control, Right Control and Windows key as control keys.

Add the above xmodmap file to your bashrc (or bashrc_profile depending on your distro)

source path/to/the/above/xmodmap/file

May the power of Emacs be with you!

Shakthi Kannan: KMR Foundation

2010-05-08T21:00:00+00:00

Visited Sreenidhi International School and members of the KMR Foundation today, Saturday, May 8, 2010 in Hyderabad. They have OLPC XOs that they are using for class(grade) IV students in a school near their premises at Aziznagar, Ranga Reddy district, Andhra Pradesh, India. They require support for Telugu language and use of XO software for the school students. Here is a screenshot of one of the XOs:

Shakthi Kannan: perl-Sys-CPU

2010-05-07T01:00:00+00:00

Pushed perl-Sys-CPU to Fedora repository. You can use it like:

use Sys::CPU;
  
$number_of_cpus = Sys::CPU::cpu_count();
printf("I have %d CPU's\n", $number_of_cpus);

print "  Speed : ", Sys::CPU::cpu_clock(), "\n";
print "  Type  : ", Sys::CPU::cpu_type(), "\n";

Kenneth Gonsalves: நான் அவன் இல்லை

2010-05-01T00:46:29+00:00

the other day I was travelling in a bus from Kochi to Coimbatore and they showed the movie naan avan illai. It is about a guy who marries various women and cheats them and their families. He is variously known as Joseph Fernandez, Madhavan Menon, Zakir Khan ... Finally he is caught, but claims his name is Annamalai and that he is not the cheat but an innocent look alike. He is put on trial, but before the verdict the DVD in the bus got stuck and we reached Coimbatore, so I never got to find out whether he was guilty or innocent. Anyone knows?

Satyaakam Goswami: OLPC Site visit

2010-04-23T22:56:33+00:00

I was invited for a site visit of OLPC in Chennai India , Arani is town around 150 Kms from Chennai here is a route map Route Map , and pictures below

OLPC in Chennai

, overall the visit has been fruitful saw sugar @ work kids discovering and learning new things on there own , there were some 10 Xo’s which attracted around 200 kids from in and around the village.

The weather was too hot and dry i did not feel the humidity like Chennai so suggested them to install water cooler . The most popular activities were Paint , Wikipedia , lack to Internet is something which needs to be looked into to get these kids talk out to the world.

on 20th the next day i visited one more school which is a govt school which is under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan programme of govt of India , here i learned about the ABL ( activity based learning ) which is similar to activity based in Sugar but it was more structured in the sense of the kid goes from one class to other after he has completed a set of activities in on subject or class. In this school the four XO’s are provided the programme is schedule to begin after summer holidays.

things to be done in coming days , XO’s need Sugar upgrade. Teachers need training , identify kids who can teach other kids , get Internet connection so that they can connect to the larger OLPC community .

Shakthi Kannan: \newcommand macro substitution

2010-04-21T00:22:00+00:00

Used \newcommand to abstract the four actor names in di-git-ally managing love letters presentation:

\newcommand{\oneactor}{pretty-zinta}
\newcommand{\twoactor}{raaani-mukerji}
\newcommand{\threeactor}{nayantaaara}
\newcommand{\fouractor}{aishvarya-ray}

You can now get the sources from gitorious, and replace the above names to your liking, and rebuild the presentation by invoking make from the sources directory.

Satyaakam Goswami: Events Application of Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) In Science Teaching and Research

2010-04-20T03:53:53+00:00

The day started with my car tyre goin flat , tried taking friends his car won’t start , some how i reached the event by chaging two autos from my place.

By the time i was there the event was in full swing , Saini introducing foss concepts and Ubuntu desktop , there were around 60 + participants from colleges across Delhi. Overall a diverse group of teachers from Chemistry , Biology, Physics and Matematics.

the Event venue as announced earlier was Acharya Narendra Dev College (University of Delhi) and the theme was
Application of Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) In Science Teaching and Research.

Day 1

Inaguration with lighting of the lamp , people present on the dias , Prof Krishnan , Mrs Latha , official from DIT
after the brief speech from Prof Krishnan and .… the Saini took over and explained the desktop , then i explained the installation to the audience. Prof Tabish Explained about Scilab , then all the group from the mail auditorium dispersed to the individual labs . The Chemistry sessions were taken by Arun Luz which covered tools like Bkchem, xdrawchem,pymol,chemtool the Physics and mathematics sessions were taken by Tabish , Lekha, Asad and Myself , we covered topics like Latex, Gnuplot, Gamgi Phoenix kit, Sage, scilab and R-Commander.

The bilogy session were taken by G Ramesh covering Pymol, perl premier, melting temp, chemtool in computer science sanjeev saini covered lamp

The most popular of them was Biology and Chemistry to our surprise , the least was the mathematics and computer science track.

all the labs were assisted by Lab in charge Godfrey, Prabhakaran, Choudhary, Gopalsivam .

Day two ended with vote of thanks by Subash from Andc and Dr Savitri Singh spoke about her pet project , the event concluded with distribution of certificates.

Here are some pictures from the event enjoy

Satyaakam Goswami: Adempiere listed in the top 10 open source business applications

2010-04-18T04:11:44+00:00

Adempiere listed in top 10 Business applications in this article here