Why yesterday was not the best day of my life

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Gosh!!! Since I'm finally blogging after such a long time I wanted to blog about something really interesting and amazing like the Tower project my father is working on. I evaded blogging unless and until I get the project related data. However, since writing is therapy for me, here I go again making I-really-didn't-want-to-rant-but-I-couldn't-help-it post! Here we go!

  1. Didn't sleep since Sunday afternoon
  2. Horribly nauseated enroute to Nitte ( Was almost going to puke ! and it is not pleasant when one's fasting)
  3. Failed to achieve the purpose of Nitte visit completely.
  4. Flitted between 2 banks for some transaction and queries to be made! (I hate going to banks and hospitals! Don't know why…)
  5. Failed to carry a critical online transaction using my visa debit card.
  6. Afternoon napping plans nipped in the bud by trying to call 2 banks and find out what's happening! (Apparently, due to some RBI guidelines, one cannot carry out any transaction in foreign currency using a debit card!)
  7. My favorite sabudana khichdi (I dreamed of savoring at the fast breaking time whilst dozing in the bus) got spoiled because I forgot to refrigerate it!
  8. Credit card used to do the payment but an error occurred.
  9. But my father got charged on his credit card!
  10. Frequent calls to the establishment couldn't confirm the status of the payment! ( They will confirm today, they said)
  11. Discovered that Mangalore- Bangalore trains are cancelled and that we will have to take the bus to Bangalore to attend the IEEE symposium! (NO! NO! NO! )
  12. Crashed on the bed even before 9 (A rarity for me!) and was interrupted by an urgent overseas call at 10:30! ( sob! my beauty sleep )
  13. Finally! I'm yet to come up with something concrete to submit a paper to another conference.
  14. Oh no! I totally forgot my sister's programming project! I still have that one to do! My sleep pattern is so messed up right now!!

Here I'm signing off then. Next post will be either outlining how good my day was where everything that went wrong yesterday was fixed or on the tower project I mentioned above! Ciao.


 

ShopWiki is the place to be!!!!!

Saturday, June 6, 2009

I just happened to stumble upon ShopWiki and it did catch my attention for a lot of reasons. Unlike traditional shopping sites where only the stores that have paid to be there are shown, ShopWiki crawls stores on web just like Google and gives the online users a vast number of choices of store whilst online shopping.
I decided to give this a try by searching for some Barbie dolls to buy as my youngest sister is practically gaga over them and I’d been planning to get her another one anyway. Here's a screenshot below of the search results below,image

On the right hand side pane, there are several filters where you can set the price range,brand and also view the dolls based on your color preferences ( I chose pink! ).  Further, the  ShopWiki Gift Guides gives gifts ideas classified on the basis of either recipients or occasions . So, for those of you who are forever clueless when it comes to buying gifts, make use of this and avoid all the thinking trauma you generally face!

image

Finally, this looks like an excellent stop to shop and to window shop where one can have a peek at the exciting merchandise available at all stores at the same time. So check it out today and find out for yourself while I get back to shopping for the Barbie dolls and surprise my sister !!!smile_teeth

Why the Indian Way of Running a System Should Go to Hell!!!!!!!

Friday, May 15, 2009

Then past few weeks have been really hectic, working overtime on the project. Past Wednesday, was our hostel farewell theme party which was the most awaited and amazing event for all of us. However, the beautiful hangover of it was neatly shattered yesterday and today it has manifested into an uncontrollable rage where am raring to clobber, thrash or pulverize some damned nerves!!!!

I’m just back home after attending the College Day/Farewell Function….Needless to say it didn’t match the aforementioned farewell’s standard at all. Couple of seniors and juniors spoke from different branches. Folks from Electronics and Communications, Mechanical, Computer Science and Biotechnology spoke really well and actually seemed to relate and build a bond with the audience. The rest just droned on in a soporific state leaving one wondering why the hell they just speak for the heck of it!!! I hate rehearsed and artificial toned speeches where one is not spontaneous and fails to connect with the people.

Anyways coming back to the thing that robbed my peace, my sisters cell phone got stolen in a very very very crowded bus. She immediately went to police station with a friend, the one in Pandeshwar, to lodge an FIR for the lost cell phone and SIM card. However, much to none of our surprise the damned ***********************(feel free to interpret as any horrible bad word…As a personal rule, i don’t really believe in swearing a lot!) police refused to lodge a complain as the both the things are in my mom’s name who is out of country right now. Next, called Vodafone where they said they cannot block the SIM unless and until we get a copy of the filed FIR. On hearing the problem, they said that we can provide my mom’s identity proof and get the FIR filed and in case of any problem, we could just ring them up. However, the police, as usual didn’t cooperated instead those ************* were really really rude and finally sat on his desk with his legs on it. That bloody ************* actually had the nerve to tell my sister and her friend to tell my mom to file a complaint in the country where she is right now!!!!!!! My parents then said not to make any more trips to the police station (2 trips were already made).

Today on the way back from Nitte, I stopped by at Nokia Care to have the cell phone barred and blacklisted. Previously, I had spoken to a Vodafone care center executive who said that blacklisting has to be done by the cell phone provider. The lady at Nokia Care bluntly told me that they can’t do it! What the hell! I’m studying Mobile Communications this semester and I know this can be done and that there are several services on internet which do this. When I mentioned this to her, she added that such a system is not existing in India. Damn!!!I totally lost it then I gave her the yelling of her life, screaming that a global brand like Nokia provides such poor support and so on. She even heard the nerve to retort back which I nipped in the bud by fresh, highly required insults…..then banged the desk…screamed some more and made a loud exit!!!!! I knew that am not going to be able to get them blacklist the phone so screamed thoroughly and left.

Seriously, no matter how seriously we vote or what we do and no matter who comes to power, the fact remains unchanged that the country has gone to the dogs. I watch shows like Call 911 on Discovery Channel and it really saddens me. The difference between a developed and developing country is disheartening. Unlike America, none of our systems work right when we need them. Even if one feels proud to be an Indian, at times like this it melts faster than an ice cream inside a running microwave. To get justice in our country is like kissing your own eye. God damn them all!!!!!

P.S: I’m not giving up so soon. Going to check out some online services now which will blacklist the cell phone. As for that damned thief, I hope our curses don’t spare him till the day he dies! and the Vodafone executives were really polite, considerate and very helpful. They will block the SIM following my mom’s email and identity proof.

Moral of the story: Even if you do dial one of those numbers and get your IMEI number, incase your cell phone is lost, no one will help you out….atleast not Nokia in India. And it’s better to elicit help from the police using some “contacts” as the damned Indian Police Force doesn’t believe in providing service to the common, unimportant people like us!

Speech Recognition in C#.Net

Sunday, April 26, 2009

I’ve now started playing around with speech recognition using C# in Visual Studio 2008. The last time I demonstrated Speech Synthesis to read the contents out loud from a text file. However this implementation is command based and not dictation based. This is very very basic and it recognizes only one word and then displays the results from database containing that word. For basics on getting started with speech utilities in C#, refer to my last post here.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Speech;
using System.Speech.Recognition;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Data.SqlTypes;
namespace speechrecog
{
    class Program
    {
        //connection initialization to the database
        static string connectionString = "Data Source=MEOW-PC;Initial Catalog=Shopping_eye;Integrated Security=SSPI";
        static SqlConnection cn = new SqlConnection(connectionString);        
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            new Program();            
        }
        private Program()
        {
            //access to the default shared speech recognition engine used by the desktop
            SpeechRecognizer rec = new SpeechRecognizer();            
            rec.SpeechRecognized += rec_SpeechRecognized;                        
            //add the words in choices that you want to be recognized     
            Choices c = new Choices();            
            c.Add("cheese");
            c.Add("pizza");
            c.Add("olives");
            c.Add("exit");
            //Populate the grammar builder with the choices and load it as a new grammar
            GrammarBuilder pizzadetails = new GrammarBuilder(c);            
            Grammar g = new Grammar(pizzadetails);
            rec.LoadGrammar(g);
            rec.Enabled = true;           
            Console.Read();            
        }
        void rec_SpeechRecognized(object sender, SpeechRecognizedEventArgs e)
        {
            if (e.Result.Text == "exit")
                System.Environment.Exit(0);//Closes the console when you say exit
            string cassy =e.Result.Text;
            Console.Write(cassy);       
            //This query will display the results containing the word that was recognized                 
            string squery = "select * from speechrecogtest where name like '%"+cassy+"%'";
            SqlDataAdapter da = new SqlDataAdapter(squery, cn);
            DataTable dt = new DataTable();
            cn.Open();
            // Fill the data table with select statement's query results:
            int recordsAffected = da.Fill(dt);            
            System.Console.WriteLine();
            if (recordsAffected > 0)
            {             
                foreach (DataRow dr in dt.Rows)
                {
                    System.Console.Write(dr[0]);
                    System.Console.Write(" ");
                    System.Console.Write(dr[1]);
                    System.Console.Write(" ");
                    System.Console.Write(dr[2]);
                    System.Console.WriteLine("");
                }
            }
        }
    }
}
 



image



So, when I say “cheese”, the following entries containing the word are retrieved from the database and displayed on the console. I am still figuring how to loop the program to recognize my commands back to back, as per the choices mentioned in the code. Until then, keep trying and experimenting…Au Revoire!



VTU Question of the Year

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

I was trying to cram and make sense out of the stuff I’m supposed to study for the sessionals tomorrow when I received this really funny message from my friend. Anyone who is studying under a university earlier affiliated to VTU which is now autonomous will definitely find this one good. Here goes…

VTU Question of the Year

1)2/10=0.2 but prove that 2/10=2.

Answers:

The autonomous students wrote “Out of Syllabus”.Some of them probably cried whereas some went to whine and influence the lecturer who will correct the paper! smile_wink

But… the VTU students answered…

2=TWO          10=TEN

Therefore, TWO/TEN=WO/EN

But according to the order of English alphabets order, W=23|O=15|E=5|N=14

Hence, W+O=38  and E+N=19

So, 38/19=2!!!!!! Hence Proved!

Proud and relieved to be studying under VTU and not under the institution’s autonomy. If you have more time to waste you can also read on how easily autonomy can make you a 9 point someone here.

Ok got go now and break my head again!!Au revoire..until we meet again…

The final year trip…yawn…

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

I’ve been really busy and been feeling lazy additionally, hence the late post. We are finally through with our final year 3 day trip to Munnar, Veegaland and Fort Cochin. Before I begin my tirade, let me quote that am not a cynic but only someone who would prefer atleast moderate organization of stuff before leaving for a trip. I would be completely wrong if I said I didn’t enjoy at all. I mighty enjoyed it mainly because of the company but the trip was ok.

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Why Water Kingdom is the reigning king of most water parks!

Friday, March 27, 2009

I’ve been to Essel group’s Water Kingdom in Mumbai, Black Thunder and more recently GRS in Mysore and Veegaland in Cochin. Closer to home, I’ve been to Manasa in Pilikula few kilometers from Mangalore but that is nowhere in the race for a truly fantastic water park.

  1. Unlike GRS and Veegaland,Water Kingdom has only wet rides and is completely separated from Essel World which has only dry rides. Both, Essel World and Water Kingdom, together are impossible to cover in one day.
  2. Water Kingdom and Essel World together span across 64 acres as against 28 acres of Veegaland and 30 acres of GRS.
  3. The former is very concerned about cleanliness and hygiene. Taking a shower is compulsory before beginning your escapade into the realms of Water Kingdom unlike the other 2 water parks.
  4. At any point of time in Essel world, you can enter Water Kingdom through entrances in the middle and vice versa.
  5. Only nylon clothes are allowed and anybody dressed in anything else is barred from entering the water. So you’ll never see kids bobbing in the water in their school uniforms(eww!) as in Veegaland and GRS!
  6. Essel World is any day, trillion times better than what Veegaland and GRS have to offer in terms of dry rides. GRS scores the worst here as it doesn’t have any thrilling rides for adults, dry or wet! Simulation rides are extremely disappointing and rollercoasters leave you yawning in both GRS and Veegaland.
  7. Water Kingdom has a fantastic loooong Drifting River for lazing about and floating in bliss. I was disappointed that Veegaland didn’t have anything like that. GRS has a fraction of Drifting River, called the Lazy River, which flows past the lawn of a vegetarian restaurant and I swear I saw some of those small kids washing their hands in that!(yuck!!!)
  8. I rate both GRS and Veegaland very poorly when it comes to food. Most South Indian water parks think that providing meals is the ultimate favor they can bestow upon people! Well..it’s not…I eat meals at home, I like to have some other stuff when I eat outside. In Veegaland, even the fried snacks at some other place was sad and cold! Water Kingdom has McDonalds…Beat that!!And Essel World has Dominoes pizza outlet amongst several food kiosks!
  9. Water Kingdom has excellent merchandise and some real quality stuff.
  10. Lockers and changing rooms are quite good in Veegaland and GRS but Water kingdom still scores here too. It’s clean and looks better.
  11. You cannot rent nylon outfits in Veegaland unlike the other two. Not that it matters much, you can wear your jeans and jump into the pool there. No one cares!
  12. The wave pool at Water Kingdom is really huge and beautifully designed and is best left without comparing it with the other 2. (I’m tired of trashing the other parks!)
  13. Aesthetically, Veegaland and GRS cannot ever match up to Water Kingdom’s stature.

Water Kingdom is truly the finest and best I’ve seen so far. It’s a world class park. You can enjoy even if you go alone!!! If there’s one must-visit water park, Water Kingdom should top your list any day! It has spoiled me enough not to appreciate the other parks I’ve visited henceforth! I rate them in the following order

  1. Water Kingdom
  2. Veegaland
  3. GRS
  4. Black Thunder
  5. Manasa. Sorry! not on the list.

essel world park map

 

 

The first 2 maps are that of Essel World and Water Kingdom. Compare them with that of GRS (third map) and Veegaland and see the difference! 

 

 

 

waterkingdommap

grs park map  

veegaland park map

P. S : Now I’ve also been hearing lots about Wonderla in Bangalore, obviously from the ones who have never visited the Essel Group’s park. Looking at its map below, I don’t have any expectations.

wonderla

Text-Speech from a file in C#.Net

Monday, March 2, 2009

I’ve just started doing some programming in C# using the .NET framework since it’s a requirement for my final year project. In this post, I shall show how to read out loud the contents of a file stored in any drive. I’m doing this on Microsoft Vista SP1  so it already has all the speech APIs as the speech SDK 5.3 is already inbuilt in Vista. In case you’re doing it on Windows XP, you’ll probably need to download the speech SDK from Microsoft Downloads site. However, the latest version for download is 5.1 I think, definitely not 5.3.

So, open a C# console application in Visual Studio 2008. I’ve already created a file called text.txt in the drive named X. This can read a text file stored in a pen drive also.

In the Solution Explorer on right hand side, right click References. In the Add Reference, select System.Speech from .NET tab and click ok. Add namespace System.Speech and System.Speech.Synthesis as shown below.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.IO;
using System.Speech; // required for speech utilities
using System.Speech.Synthesis; // required for speech utilities
namespace ConsoleApplication1
{ 
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
           //Create an instance of class SpeechSynthesizer 
           SpeechSynthesizer cerra = new SpeechSynthesizer();           
          //ReadAllText opens the file, reads all content and closes it. The output of this needs to be converted to string and given to cerra
           cerra.Speak(File.ReadAllText"X:/text.txt").ToString());            
        }       
    }
}


The above can read only text files as of  now. It does not work with DOC files and encoding comes into picture here, so trying to figure that out yet. However, in the next post let us make cerra read out the results of a query from a SQL server database. Till then signing off… Au Revoire.




25 Random Things About Me…

Sunday, February 22, 2009

I’ve been tagged by Praveen and pertaining to his tag, have to tell 25 random things (Note: This will be in a random order too).

  1. As a child, I was very possessive about my parent’s stuff. I would bawl all over the place if anyone drove my Dad’s car or wore my Mom’s shoes and stuff like that.
  2. I also used to be in everyone’s arms. If I ever walked, every few centimeters I’d start cleaning the bottom of my shoes with tissues. My Dad would eventually get bugged and just carry me after that. I barely walked even till the age of 5!
  3. I used to cry a lot to go school. On the first day, the beginning of my school life, I cried all the way from home to the school banging on the car windows with my fists. I clung to my mom while leaving from home, then my dad’s watch at school. The servicemen at school ( 3 of them) finally freed my grasp on Dad’s watch and dragged me inside! Phew..
  4. I am a total foodie and I love eating junk food such as burgers, pizza, French fries. I also savor several exquisite dishes from the continental, south Indian and north Indian cuisine.

del.icio.us Tags: ,,,,

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Home Sweet Home :)

Friday, February 13, 2009

Another hectic week at college passes away. I can’t express how delighted I feel using the internet at home!!! I really love our college project labs but it wouldn’t kill  to update Windows, considering the fact that we’re having  a lot of trouble installing stuff which I did with ease on my laptop. And the system administrator acts as if he pays from his pocket for every internet connection granted in the project lab. Despite getting a signed approval from the HOD, we had to make 5 trips to his cabin and he finally granted internet access. However, the others are yet to get it. I’ve no Wi-Fi access as yet ‘cause I guess he’s too lazy register my MAC address and it’s been three days of waiting! So after all this internet fiasco, it feels great to be at home finally! I can literally sleep and wake up to internet… download to my heart’s content and eat whatever delicacies I want at any time at home ( Food at College doesn’t exactly cater to your taste buds and if it does, it’s either measly on quantity or heavy on the wallet)!!

GNU/Linux Habba 2009

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Past Saturday, February 7, I attended an excellent event , namely GNU/Linux Habba 2009. This was the third version of this event which was sponsored by and conducted at our University. Since I’d resolved to try Linux, this was a great way to begin with. The tech team from Sampada were really good. They are a group of Linux hackers who are very passionate about their work and make a contribution to the world of free and open source systems. The day began with installation of the Debian distro of Linux they had been working on. The pace and interest of the participants were maintained with real good rapport the team had built with them via a lot of interactions, discussions and yes… 2 animated movies. Everyone loves a nice animation movie! The main agenda of this event was the emphasis on free, open source software and localization of technology so that it can reach the common man. We were also made aware of several tools that we can use for educational purposes and development among a few other things.

All in all, I really admire Linux but it’s difficult to make a complete switch to Linux at this point of time. However, I guess I’m soon going to finally join the bandwagon by installing Ubuntu on one of the partitions and seeing how it works out. The most important thing to keep in mind is not expect Linux to behave like Windows because they are quite different actually. And I also want to tell a mighty thank you to our Asst. Prof. Ashok Kumar for organizing and coordinating the entire thing really well. We all hope to participate in more of such events in future!

The Chronicle of Escapades: Bunking Classes

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Just the other day was chatting with two of my close friends on Google Talk who are now studying in US and Canada. It brought up some very fond memories of our pre university days. One of them was the official bunker of our class! How many classes he bunked yet never got shortage. Whereas we would plot and plan and sometimes miserably fail to bunk.

For instance, there was this guy in our Hindi class who once tried to bunk through the back door as soon as our teacher entered. Unfortunately for him, he was so busy looking out for her, that he banged right into, none other than, the Head of Department of Hindi. LOL! It was certainly the most hilarious thing.

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Hooliganism at its best: Attack on Mangalore Pub

Monday, January 26, 2009


Sri Rama Sena and Bajrang Dal have done it again and now fighting to take credit for the attack on girls at the pub Amnesia in Mangalore at around 4 on a Saturday evening, in the name of punishing those going against “traditional Indian norms”. Don’t even get me started on the definition of traditional Indian norms, keeping in mind the fact that India is the land of Kama sutra. Coming to the Indian culture, doesn’t it also preach brotherhood, peaceful coexistence and all the usual works we keep bragging about, every second chance we get? So how come these culturally-morally-traditional-concerned folks don’t bat an eyelid when so many Dalits are treated inhumanly, paraded naked on roads. Where does the sense of decency go then?


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Nokia XpressMusic 5800 is at home!!!!!!!!!

Thursday, January 22, 2009

The new Nokia XpressMusic 5800 is finally at home. Nokia’s first touch phone has arrived. Priced at INR 21800 (offer price is INR 20000), this phone gives real value for money.

It comes with 81 MB internal memory, 8 GB microSD memory card, expandable up to 16 GB, preloaded with 150 popular tracks in Hindi and English. For text input it offers options such as handwriting recognition, mini QWERTY keyboard, full screen QWERTY and alphanumeric keypad. If you hate using the onscreen keyboard to touch and type messages…don’t worry…5800 XpressMusic makes it easy via use of stylus and also an attached heart shaped thing which can be used instead of your bare fingers. The handwriting recognition was something unexpected but good that it’s there, unlike iphone.

100_1058 100_1060 100_1054 


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Typecasting: What type am I???

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Times Life dated 18 January 2009 had this article about typecasting. According to psychologists, we all belong to one of the following types:

  • Obsessive compulsive
  • Dependent
  • Histrionic
  • Narcissistic
  • Borderline Personality
  • Avoidant personality

These set of questions among the 6 set of questions, each for one personality type, sealed my personality type,

image

  1. Do you find it difficult to delegate work to others?-  Yes, big time. My biggest cause for worry is that what if it gets messed up? I’m very very particular.
  2. Are you a workaholic?Umm..I guess I am. I can’t rest until the work is done with. Until then I’ll be restless and busy with it.
  3. Are you a perfectionist?-  Yes.Totally! And unbearably when it comes to writing formal letters or dealing with some project or presentation especially. I also take a very long time to slice vegetables ‘cause I want them to be perfectly and equally cut! My fate is sealed!!!
  4. Do you feel recreational activities are a waste of time?- No way! This kind of stuff keeps me going. I love recreation! In fact I wish I was Garfield…then I could eat, sleep and watch TV all the time without feeling like a waste!
  5. Are you rigid about morals and values?-  I stick to what I believe. I don’t enforce stuff on others. Debatable topics like live-in relationships, one night stands et all are not for me but for whom it is, I don’t judge them. Live and let live. Peace. So the answer to this one is- Not really!

Yes! So I have a 3/5 so I’m confirmed obsessive compulsive personality type! So this is what it had to say about positives and negatives…

  • POSITIVE I : Over achievers
  • NEGATIVE I : Disturbed family life, prone to physical ailments, easily stressed

But, the types mentioned are too stringent, too classifying I felt. I personally feel that human behavior is very diverse to typecast this way actually. Everything in life is not black and white, they are countless, incredible shades of grey too. What if someone gets 2 questions right from each set? At any rate, if you haven’t had a look at that article, go for it and determine your type. If not for anything, atleast for a good laugh! And for those who did, what type were you? Do you think it matched you correctly?

Windows Live SkyDrive

Today, I decided to upload all project related files on Windows Live SkyDrive instead of mailing it to all my team members. I could’ve set up a Google group, I know. But I use my live id primarily. I hardly ever use my Gmail id. There is life beyond Gmail and very good one at that. Lets talk about SkyDrive in this post.

SkyDrive is an excellent storage media integrated into Windows Live. From your Mail page you can choose More at the top and choose SkyDrive from the drop down to use it. It offers a storage space of 25 GB. The interface looks like this:

 skydrive1 

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