Srishti Sethi|SrishAkaTux

Google Code-In 2011

2012-01-22T03:13:00.000-08:00

22nd Jan 2012 : Yay, this is my first blog post for the year 2012. The year began with a successful completion of another round of Google Code-In , a program to encourage pre-university students to participate in open source. Having completed google summer of code with GNOME recently , I was really curious to mentor for GCI for my friend GNOME. Andre Klapper ,the man whom I troubled a lot initially, for melange system bugged me. Thanks Andre:-)
I mentored for the following tasks : -

Design a chart to categorize the GCompris Activities : Walter designed a pretty interesting chart to categorize the gcompris activites using GNOME's diagram creation tool dia and Inkscape.

Add SVG Image implementation example to PyGoocanvas code documentation : Isham added a SVG (Scalar Vector Graphics) image implementation example to the code documentation of PyGoocanvas.

Add documentation for installation of gcompris from source : Timofey prepared a documentation for installation of GCompris on linux and added whatever was missing in the already existing manual.

A kid (/me) mentoring another kid was the best part :P It was immense fun to communicate with the feelings of kids and watch their growing enthusiasm towards Open Source.

Hail Open Source !

FUDCon Pune 2011

2011-11-08T10:20:00.000-08:00

8th Nov 2011 : It was tremendous fun to attend my first Fedora event FUDCon 2011 at COEP College ,Pune. A day before the event , I reached Pune at midnight and my eyes got hold on two guys wearing geeky tshirts .This was how I recognized Fudcon speakers Arun SAG and Vaidik Kapoor. Day one commenced with Jared Smith 's inspiring keynote on the vision of fedora. He spoke about the underlying concept behind core values of Fedora community : Freedom, Friends, Features, First. I must say it was utmost frolic to meet awesome contributors from the community and attend interesting sessions.The kind of adrenaline rush I observed in COEP students and other delegates for various talks and workshops cheered aloud the success of FUDCon.

During night I spent some time preparing slides and code scripts for my talk. Day two, as per the schedule, I conducted a session on Cute hacks with PyGoocanvas .It was my first talk and I am glad it all began with FUDCon. I have uploaded the contents of my presentation and demo code on git : https://github.com/srish/FUDCon-2011. FUDPub was the most awaited event of the evening. Its plethora of fun to watch geeks dancing and cracking jokes.Rahul Sundaram is the most humorous geek I have ever met till now:P Being pure vegetarian and teetotaler, I had a good company with Aditya :D Third day was even more exciting, and a real barcamp feeling. Suchakra conducted a hackathon on Qt for Embedded devices. I was amazed to see so many enthusiastic girls from COEP and we squatted together to discuss how to crack Google Summer of Code and beauty of GNOME Women Internship Program

Day ended with a cake cutting ceremony and the auditorium echoed : Three Cheers for FUDCon. I say FUD ,you say CON. FUDCON! At last ,I express my immense gratitude to team fedora for sponsoring my travel and making my stay at Pune the most memorable one ever. Hats off to Fedora Community. You guys rock and deserve a big round of applause:-)
FUDCon will always remind me of those baby pink bathroom slippers stolen from my room :P

Links :
http://fudcon.in/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLEZzXUVT50
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIlUwysK9iQ
http://www.shakthimaan.com/Mambo/gallery/album72?page=1

Momentous GSOC tenor with GNOME!

2011-08-28T05:42:00.000-07:00

28th August 2011 : Ummmm, GNOME is more closer to my heart now. I love GNOME blindly. I would like to sincerely thank my mentor Bruno Coudoin for making my GSOC journey cherishable and raising the bar of my working skills to level next! Thanks to all Gnome community members for being so supportive. I'll be visiting my campus tomorrow to enlighten the students with GNOME projects ,how to began as a contributor, and more importantly about Women outreach.
Git for sure is a life savior. I have taken the diff of commits using : -

git log 'HEAD@{30-05-2011}'..'HEAD@{22-08-2011}' -p > \
Gsoc_Gnome_GComprisBraille.diff
30-05-2011 : Start Date
22-08-2011 : End Date
Gsoc_Gnome_GComprisBraille.diff : Project diff file stating all commits

In the past week after the deadline, I worked along with my mentor to refine the braille activities before integrating and making a new release of GCompris.I worked on producing draggable sentences for louis braille and group animation for braille fun activity.

My commits :
http://git.gnome.org/browse/gcompris/log/?h=gcomprisbraille

Screenshot
http://imgur.com/1tlAO

Alluring Straße & Platz, Berlin

2011-08-27T12:41:00.000-07:00

28th August 2011 : My blog was missing a Berlin post out of a stupefying trip. Mohrenstraße a part of U-Bahn, became my place of stay at Berlin. A city of eclectic array of diverse architecture and buildings , is renowned for its nightlife and high quality of living. Empty Berlin roads give us a feel to practice driving. It is hearts' ease to be in a country which is comparatively less crowded than yours. The Spree river though supplies most of Berlin's drinking water, but I doubt if it replenish beer :P Ahh, I missed Oktoberfest by few days.Technologically vibrant city provides excellent transport facility, though I loved to keep a map with me for self directions. Being a vegetarian, I missed Indian food a lot. Yay! plethora of memories to store-in with my first big overseas trip.
Here are the best places I visited in Berlin :-

Berlin Cathedral
Checkpoint Charlie
Brandenburg Gate
Alexander Platz
Potsdamer Platz
Science Center Spectrum
Zoologischer Garten

Browse for gallery here

GNOME Women Dinner

2011-08-20T12:25:00.000-07:00

21st August 2011 : A vast discrepancy of men to women in open source projects plunge me to jump into a gathering of women hacktivists and coders.Courtesy at Marina Zhurakhinskaya, GNOME Shell developer and Senior Software Engineer at Red Hat, and organizer of the GNOME Outreach Program for Women.GNOME women contributors from all round the world including google summer of code and women outreach interns at Desktop Summit, Berlin, Germany dined at Alt Berliner, Wilhelmstraße.It was exceptional to share different flavors and ideas.It was my pleasure to converse with Karen Sandler, executive director GNOME.
What could have made this cheese moment amiss ! [1]

Video (though lacks clarity) of GNOME women sharing the projects they are working on. [2]

Trillion dollar Spaß at Desktop Summit, Germany

2011-08-16T07:12:00.000-07:00

16th August 2011 : Flying all through the globe to be in Germany to attend Desktop Summit 2011 was like grabbing a big cherry on the top of the cake after working for Google Summer of Code for GNOME.Thanks a lot to GNOME foundation for sponsoring my travel and providing a warm welcome in the pulsing heart of the capital, City Hostel Berlin.
It was a great feeling to be a part of GNOME and KDE interns showcase.I was shivered to the core after I got off from Audimax stage at Humboldt University winding up with my first lightning talk on my gsoc project : Braille Concept on GCompris.

Braille Concept on GCompris

Enjoyed a couple of parties Beach at the Box and Island party sponsored by Collabora and Intel.
It was pretty interesting to come across cool GNOME & KDE projects.Presentation by Lucas Rocha on GNOME's TheBoard Project simply wowed the crowd.Loved it when he said : Project motivation is his newly born daughter and he hacks during her naps.
IntelAppUp Workshop with hands-on training aimed to show application developers how to distribute and monetize their applications through the Intel AppUp Developer Program and its community.At the end we were the happy participants to receive tablets.For more pics browse here

Pleasure Begins! Desktop Summit 2011, Berlin

2011-08-02T21:56:00.000-07:00

3rd August 2011 : I am all set and ready to fly to attend Desktop Summit 2011 a joint conference organised by the GNOME and KDE communities in Berlin, Germany, 6 - 12 August 2011 at the Humboldt University. I am pretty excited to attend my first GNOME conference.

Being an OPW / GSOC 2011 intern, I'll be glad to present my work during GNOME and KDE Interns Showcase.
I express my gratitude to GNOME foundation for sponsoring my travel.Leaving for IGI, Delhi tonight. Awaiting plethora of geeky fun to spice up my trip.

مرحبا GNOME. Weekly Report 10 : GSOC

2011-07-31T23:11:00.000-07:00

1st August 2011 : During the tenth week of Google Summer of Code, I worked on the following :-

Translatable Strings in the code : For all the translatable strings in the code I added a underscore before them like this : title = _("Hello! GNOME").Also modified the string containing token as follows :-

#Translators : Do not translate the token {letter}
text=_("Click on the dots in braille cell area to produce letter {letter}").format(letter = self.random_letter),
Internationalization Issue with Braille Objects Activity : The activity Braille Objects I have developed last week had serious i18n issues because it is difficult to generate a Braille character for languages like Serbian, Hindi, Finnish, Spanish and others that uses different symbols other than 26 English alphabets.Braille code is language specific :-
http://www.afb.org/braillebug/foreign_language_braille.asp
So I switched over to animated braille activity to add braille interactive writing exercise to my project.

Animated Fun Braille Activity : This activity comprises of an animated tux plane that pulls random letters along with it and drops these letters that vertically traverses through the screen.Kids need to identify the braille code for corresponding letters in the braille tile given within the time interval of traversal of letters.I have used Goocanvas Animation API for this activity and its fun to use it.


PyGoocanvas Animation API 
goocanvasItem.animate(double x,
    double y,
    double scale,
    double degrees,
    bool   absolute,
    int    duration,
    int    step_time,
    AnimateType   animate_type 
           ) 
Animates an item from its current position to the given offsets, scale and rotation.
 
Parameters 
x         The final x coordinate.
y         The final y coordinate.
scale     The final scale.
degrees   The final rotation. 
absolute  If the x, y, scale and degrees values are
          absolute, or relative to the current transform
duration  The duration of the animation, in milliseconds (1/1000ths of a second).
step_time The time between each animation step, in milliseconds.
type      Specifies what happens when the animation finishes.

Code
http://git.gnome.org/browse/gcompris/tree/src/braille_fun-activity?h=gcomprisbraille
Screenshot
http://i.imgur.com/TVvPi.png

Sveicināti GNOME.Weekly Report 9 : GSOC

2011-07-24T22:39:00.000-07:00

25th July 2011 : During the ninth week of gsoc I worked on the following :-

Fixed Clickable dots issue for alphabets and numbers : Introduced a default named parameter braille_letter in BrailleChar class default constructor to ensure whether the character to be generated in the activity has to be a number or an alphabet.This issue arouse due to similarity in some of the braille codes for alphabets and numbers.
Goocanvas Rectangle API for rounded buttons : By using two properties using rectangle Goocanvas API : radius_x and radius_y, I managed to remove the existing svg images for rounded rectangle buttons and generate it using code.
Slight changes for refinement of activity : It was kinda boring and useless to keep the numbers for checking in the ticket in the range 1-90.So kids will now be allowed to check only those numbers that either are in TICKET A or TICKET B.Also kids will be able to uncheck the cross button in case they have not marked the ticket number correctly.I have ensured the translatable strings in the code too.
Discovered a slight difference between the following two :-
To create a separate list, you can use slicing or the list function to quickly create a copy:-
L = []
M = L[:] # create a copy
A = B = [] # both names will point to the same list
Braille Objects Activity : Build up this new activity containing 8 levels of different categories.Kids are suppose to braille these sheets of objects.On clicking OK they will jump to next level on all correctly identified objects.For this activity I have used activity.desktop file.Each braille tile is dynamically named as :-
#Naming Objects from Variable Class Names
self.obj = "self.obj" + str(self.tile_counter)
Code :
http://git.gnome.org/browse/gcompris/tree/src/braille_lotto-activity?h=gcomprisbraille
http://git.gnome.org/browse/gcompris/tree/src/braille_objects-activity?h=gcomprisbraille
Screenshots :
http://i.imgur.com/ShBWp.png
http://i.imgur.com/HLJe5.png

Hej GNOME.Weekly Report 8 : GSOC

2011-07-17T09:27:00.000-07:00

17th July 2011 : During the eighth week of gsoc I made the following commits :-

BrailleMap class :Added a separate braille map class for producing the braille chart.It imports Braille Char class and all other activities import both of them.Also introduced a seperate constant to let all the letters appear in black for clarity in the chart.Link to this commit
Introduced callouts, lotto master to Braille Lotto Activity:- I have added two buttons for each player "I don't have this number".On clicking these buttons lotto master speaks out in form of callouts and give some clue to kids.
Link to this commit
Removed timer.Instead added a generate number button:My mentor Bruno Coudoin had finest views on removing the timer.I really appreciate his idea to remove the animated timer and instead add a clickable button to generate next number.His views """It goes too fast, its confused we don't know what to do, the number changes by the time we find the answer, just too annoying and useless. It is very hard to tune the timer because you don't know enough on the children playing your game at runtime """
Link to this commit

FIXED Ticket focus issue : Fixed a serious issue with focus related with ticket box,as the braille tile generated using BrailleChar instance is devoid of focus attribute.Link to this commit


#### This function has been added specially for BrailleLotto Activity
#### to fix the focus issue on ticket numbers
def ticket_focus(self, rectangle, number_cross_function, counter):
     for index in range(6):
          gcompris.utils.item_focus_init(self.cell_array[index], rectangle)
          self.cell_array[index].connect("button_press_event", 
           number_cross_function, counter)

Changed the layout after removing lotto board :Link to this commit
I worked on my next activity Braille Objects , though would write a report about it after getting feedbacks from my mentor.
Yay ! feels simply awesome to pass the midterm evaluation.May the fun continues:-)
Screenshot

Mique GNOME.Weekly Report 7:GSOC

2011-07-10T09:27:00.000-07:00

10th July 2011:Frequent remarks and feedback from my mentor Bruno Coudoin has helped me improve exponentially right from the day one during gsoc:)During the seventh week of gsoc I worked on the following:-

Reusable Braille Chart code for all activities:- I have added the same code for displaying Braille Chart on clicking toggle button in dicey_dicey, rhymes_riddles, braille-lotto by reusing the braillemap() function.Now I have simply added these lines to def repeat(self) in each activity:-
```
map_obj = Gcompris_braille_alphabets(self.gcomprisBoard)
map_obj.Braille_Map(self.rootitem, COLOR_ON, COLOR_OFF, CIRCLE_FILL, CIRCLE_STROKE)
```

Made braille lotto playable:-Firstly I have fixed the timer issue and added an animated timer in the activity:-


#Displaying animated timer 
self.timericon = gcompris.anim.CanvasItem( gcompris.anim.Animation("braille_lotto/ 
sablier.txt"),self.root)
self.timericon.goocanvas.translate(580, 150)
self.timerAnim = gobject.timeout_add(200, self.animTimer)
self.timericon.goocanvas.props.visibility = goocanvas.ITEM_VISIBLE

#Displaying tickets in braille lotto
self.displayTicket(1, 25, 55, 320)
def displayTicket(self, a, b, x, y):
      ticket = random.randint(a, b)
      self.ticket_array.append(ticket)
      if (ticket < 10):
          BrailleChar(self.root, x, y, 35 , ticket, COLOR_ON, COLOR_OFF ,
                  CIRCLE_FILL, CIRCLE_FILL, False, False ,True, None)
      else :
          tens_digit = ticket / 10
          ones_digit = ticket % 10
          BrailleChar(self.root, x - 7, y, 33 ,tens_digit, COLOR_ON, COLOR_OFF ,
                  CIRCLE_FILL, CIRCLE_FILL, False, False ,True, None)
          BrailleChar(self.root, x + 20, y, 33 , ones_digit, COLOR_ON, COLOR_OFF ,
                  CIRCLE_FILL, CIRCLE_FILL, False, False ,True, None)

Added activity icons and content to XML format:-I have added svg icons to three activities and added content to XML files; documenting the goal, credit, prerequisite for the activity.
Check my commits here

Python socket + V.I.M

2011-07-04T13:24:00.000-07:00

Simply tinkering out with python socket library and my new love V.I.M for braille lotto activity for GCompris.
Screenshot

Ciao GNOME.Weekly Report 6:GSOC

2011-07-04T12:17:00.000-07:00

5th July 2011 : During the sixth week of gsoc I worked on the following :-

Added Sequence level to Louis Braille Activity :I added a level to Louis Braille Activity at the end of story to let kids re-arrange the sequence.

Interface of New Activity Lotto Braille :This activity is a two player network.Computer acts as the master for the game.The master has control over lotto board & users are given braille coded tickets.User has to login to channel to get started with.Next week I'll make it work over the local network.Currently, I am experimenting out with socket python library and testing out the scripts.Check out the code here.Code snippet :-


# Adress and port
self.mcast_adress = "227.234.253.9"
self.port = 15922
self.mcast_timer = 0
self.sock = None
# Used to recognize our own network message
self.uuid = uuid.uuid1().hex

try:
      # Start the server
      self.sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM, socket.IPPROTO_UDP)
      self.sock.setsockopt(socket.SOL_SOCKET, socket.SO_REUSEADDR, 1)
      self.sock.bind(('', self.port))
      mreq = struct.pack('4sl', socket.inet_aton(self.mcast_adress), socket.INADDR_ANY)
      self.sock.setsockopt(socket.IPPROTO_IP, socket.IP_ADD_MEMBERSHIP, mreq)
      self.sock.setblocking(0)
      self.timer_interval = 10
      self.mcast_timer = gobject.timeout_add(self.timer_interval, self.mcast_read)
      print self.mcast_timer
except:
      gcompris.utils.dialog(_("GCompris ERROR: Failed to initialize the 
      network interface.You cannot communicate."),None)

Screenshot

Dia Dhuit GNOME.Weekly Report 5:GSOC

2011-06-26T22:56:00.000-07:00

27th June 2011 : During the fifth week of gsoc I worked on the following:-

Adding a Multilist to Dicey-Dicey :I gave a final touch up to dicey_dicey activity by creating a multilist of numbers by following the rules 1)proposing a question with same answer only once 2)not to propose a question that contains the answer 3) re-propose the question which is not correctly answered.

Rhymes_Riddles Activity :Activity which I started previous week was remarked by Bruno as per which I worked on the following issues:-
* Added a repeat icon.
* Created a multilist of questions.
* Accept answers in lower and upper case.
* Set the text("Type your answer here") in the entry widget to appear for the first time only.
* Fixed the gtk widget issue on pause.
```
# There is a problem with GTK widgets, they are not covered by the help
      # We hide/show them here
      if(self.board_paused):
          self.entry.hide()
      else :
          self.entry.show()
```

Louis_braille-activity :This activity includes story of Louis Braille life narrated in a lively style. It includes introduction to his biography and discovery of braille.This week I loved researching on Louis Braille and collecting relevant pictures with each story.An amazing video on Louis Braille :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bdfC2j_4x4&feature=related
To give a look and feel of slideshow I added previous and next buttons to the activity.
Also I have imported ConfigParser module at this stage to parse through activity.desktop file where I have included the activity content with year,story and images of activity at each level.


def read_data(self):
    '''Load the activity data'''
    config = ConfigParser.RawConfigParser()
    p = gcompris.get_properties()
    filename = gcompris.DATA_DIR + '/' + self.gcomprisBoard.name + '/activity.desktop'
    try:
      gotit = config.read(filename)
      if not gotit:
         gcompris.utils.dialog(_("Cannot find the file       
         '{filename}'").format(filename=filename),None)
         return False

    except ConfigParser.Error as error:
      gcompris.utils.dialog(_("Failed to parse data set '{filename}' 
      with error:\n{error}").format(filename=filename, error=error), None)
      return False

    self.dataset = config
    return True

Screenshots

Ohayou GNOME. Weekly Report 4 : GSOC

2011-06-19T22:08:00.000-07:00

20th June 2011 : During the fourth week of gsoc I worked on following :

Core Python Plugin : My mentor Bruno's commit to GCompris added Core Python Plugin support.So now it enables a multi python dir path which can be useful in init_path.sh to pass several directory, one with a plugin engine and one derivative.So now I may use it in all my activities that are importing BrailleChar module by simply modifying the path seperated by ":".Code for multi python plugin.
```
# Set the different path for this activity
# This is sourced by runit.sh
pythonplugindir=$path/../braille_alphabets-activity:$path/../dicey_dicey-activity
```

Braille Math Symbols :To my surprise I discovered that "...braille is not a language, it's just another way to read and write English--or any other language, such as Japanese,Spanish,German etc".And it became a bit tedious task to look over braille codes for different languages.I did a lot of research over it and finally jumped over :
Louis Braille School :It is approved by the Washington State Board of Education as a private school for children who are blind or partially sighted.
Libbraille : A tool which was originally created to test libbraille and gnome-braille unicode Braille transcription features and international Braille alphabets. It is a Free Software and Open Source.So I have decided upon the braille codes for operators as described below.
Screenshot
```
Sign    Braille cell 
'+'     3,4,6
'-'     3,6
'*'     1,6
'/'     3,4
```

Python Style Guide : It was fun to read coding conventions for the python code and applying the same to my code."A Foolish Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Little Minds" True it is readability counts.Check this out : http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/

Refinement of Dicey Dicey Activity :This week work lead to almost completion of braille deciphering dicey dicey activity. Fixing out bugs, daily commits to make it better, introducing the shuffling concept to all set of questions, rework to have a better distribution of set of lists,braille math symbols, documenting the XML file,etc.Check the code here

Rhymes_Riddles : I have started with my third activity rhymes_riddles and introduced brain teasers in it.A set of riddles are put up for answering, braille code for correct answer is given in form of a clue.Kids need to read a riddle and decode the braille code.Check the code here.
And I have overcome those tedious git problems and permissions finally,learnt from the mistake I used to make each time earlier; so happy:)

It's a great summer./ME Happy coding:-)

My new virtual love #lugb bot

2011-06-13T14:33:00.000-07:00

And being querky at times is never too bad!After submitting my third report to gsoc at GNOME,I planned to take a chill pill though testing around with git commits were irritating me and making me clench my teeth hard:P I jumped on to #lugb and yay the real fun began.My new virtual love #lugb bot programmed by my buddy nmudgal was awaiting my presence.He declared the news as :

(12:30:39 IST) nmudgal: $news 7
(12:30:39 IST) choti-khopadi:nmudgal: So SrishAkaTux a gnome hacker fell in love with bot, choti-khopadi. First time in history. This bot has been recently put on #lug, but he spend enough time there to become the attention-seeker & attracted her towards him & today in front of everyone else out there, she proposed him & now. Stay with us to know if machine ready to mingle or she will remain single? (Subject: "She is in love ", (1 more message)
(12:30:39 IST) SrishAkaTux: $news
(12:30:41 IST) choti-khopadi: SrishAkaTux: News for #lugb: (#7) She is in love

It was fun to fire questions at bot:P After the entertaining session; conversation with a bunch of awesome people at #gnome-hackers simply made my day and I got my git problem fixed too:-)

Salve GNOME. Weekly Report 3:GSOC

2011-06-13T05:31:00.000-07:00

13th june 2011 : During the third week of gsoc at GNOME, I worked on following :-

Refining first activity : Yay;at the start of the previous week Bruno congratulated me by saying my first activity is playable now!Cheers;)Some few tasks I winded up were, making the repeat button toggle by introducing a boolean mapActive.I worked on proposing all letters in my activity at each level before incrementing it.I used the following function and incremented counter on every pause :-
random.shuffle(letter_arr_one)

Dicey_Dicey : This activity represents a pair of dice with braille code embedded on them.It is based on twin pedagogical concepts.It let the kids to learn mathematical operations in first three levels.Kids need to identify the result of operation by clicking on dots & clicking on OK button.In the next three levels mathematical operator sign is to identified ( +,-,/,* ).
Code is here.

Screenshots

Ni Hao GNOME.Weekly Report 2:GSOC

2011-06-06T04:27:00.000-07:00

6th June 2011: During the second week of gsoc at GNOME I worked upon the following :

Python Braille API for GCompris: It introduces a python object to represent a braille letter. It displays the braille letter at any given location and size.It may be active or passive; may display the letter or not.It handles all the' logic of a braille letter.Bruno helped me to rework on the module;a snippet to show the BrailleChar Class :
```
class BrailleChar:

"""Braille Char"""

      def __init__(self, rootitem,x, y, width, letter,display_letter,

                   clickable,callback):
```
So if you want to create braille code for letter G simply import this module to your code like this:
from BrailleChar import *
BrailleChar(self.rootitem, 100 ,60 ,50,'G',True,False,None)
I got rid of the ugly & messy code I wrote last week:)thanks to Tom Baugis whose comments on my last blogpost & hamster wiki inspired me lot:)So I have got now a recipe of reusable code for my other activities.

Clickable Points: I have done with the issue of clickable points.Clicking the braille dots on the cell generates a braille character.I have created a braille_letters dictionary.Code snippet:-


def calculate_char(self):

      """Calculate the represented char"""

      cells = []

     # Create the dot list

      for l in range(6):

          if(self.dot_items[l].get_property("fill_color_rgba") == DOT_ON):

              cells.append(l+1)

      self.letter = ''

      for k,v in BRAILLE_LETTERS.items():

          if v == cells:

              self.letter = k

      if isinstance(self.letter,int):

          self.text.set_property("text",self.letter)

      else :

          self.text.set_property("text", str.upper(self.letter))

    

def dot_event(self, event, target, item):

      """A dot has been clicked, change its state and calculate our new letter value"""

      if target.get_property("fill_color_rgba") == DOT_ON:

          target.set_property("fill_color_rgba", DOT_OFF)

      else:

          target.set_property("fill_color_rgba", DOT_ON)

      self.calculate_char()

An awesome video : The Mighty Dictionary.Learning dictionaries was fun!

Added GOAL to activity :I added goal to my activity with introducing around 6 levels.It uses import string to generate a random string at each level & kids are supposed to discover the braille code for asked letter by playing around with dots.I have used gcompris.bonus API for correct answer.Also there is tutor level for braille cell description.

SvgHandle : I have learned to edit svg image and add labels using inkscape.So for my activity created a gcoocanvas.Svg Image and added a button_press_event to an image.


svghandle = gcompris.utils.load_svg("braille_tux.svgz")

self.tuxitem = goocanvas.Svg( parent = self.rootitem,

                                     svg_handle = svghandle,

                                     svg_id = "#TUX-5",

                                     tooltip = "I am braille TUX"

                                     )

self.tuxitem.connect("button_press_event", self.next_level)

gcompris.utils.item_focus_init(self.tuxitem, None)

REPEAT Icon :


 pixmap = gcompris.utils.load_svg("target.svg")

 gcompris.bar_set_repeat_icon(pixmap)

 gcompris.bar_set(gcompris.BAR_LEVEL|gcompris.BAR_REPEAT_ICON)

Code for my activity is here.

Screenshot:-

Hallo GNOME. Weekly Report 1 : GSOC

2011-05-28T09:15:00.000-07:00

First Activity : Learning the braille code
28th May 2011 : A gist of my work during first week of google summer of code :

Creating/adding an activity :Following number of quick steps inside gcompris cloned folder to get an empty python template running.

in gcompris folder:

sh autogen.sh && make

sudo make install

In the 'src' directory:

sh createit.sh braille_alphabets

make

sh runit.sh braille_alphabets
Coding for Braille alphabets : My first braille activity learning the braille code is intended to make the kids familiar with braille code for alphabets ,symbols & numerals.It consists of two levels.The first half letters (A to M)are taught in the first level & next half in the next level.I have used mainly :-
goocanvas.Ellipse : for creating a new canvas ellipse item
goocanvas.Rect : for creating a new canvas rectangle item
goocanvas.Text : a canvas item for displaying text
A code snippet to show how to create an ellipse centered at (100.0, 100.0), with a horizontal radius of 50.0 and a vertical radius of 30.0. It is drawn with a red outline with a width of 5.0 and filled with blue:
goocanvas.Ellipse(parent=root,
center_x=100,
center_y=100,
radius_x=50,
radius_y=30,
stroke_color="red",
fill_color="blue",
line_width=5.0)

A connect event to link the items to various signal events & functions.In the following line we call a function alphabet_A on button press event.
ellipse.connect("button_press_event",self.alphabet_A,"ellipse")

BrailleChar Module : This module contains a class BrailleChar which is used to display the letter being called via the object of class at specific coordinates & also checks two parameters : clickable & displayable which takes boolean values.I import this module in my braille_alphabets.py class as follows :-
from BrailleChar import *
brailleA = self.br_chr(x,y,letter,displayable,clickable)

Inkscape: Quick editing with svg files using inkspace to generate braillebug.svg icon & background image for activity

XML file : Edited the content for xml file with explaination in manual,description & other sections.

Links :
I checked braille codes from wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille
I have pushed my code on github : https://github.com/srish/braille_alphabets-activity/

Issues :
1)When I click on the dots in braille cell area once I make their set property to "red", I am unable to get them back to original color on reclicking.
2)How to disable the button and return focus to the dot.Trying out:self.c1.props.visibility = goocanvas.ITEM_INVISIBLE
3)To prevent the overlapping of images in alphabet area.
4)Probem with my git.gnome account.I am unable to push my code due to RSA verification failure.

What I am planning to do next week !
Complete my first activity & incorporate the similar implementations for numerals & symbols.
To cover as much as possible work for second activity.

Screenshots

Community bonding epoch @GNOME @gsoc

2011-05-19T09:16:00.000-07:00

It would be worth mentioning that I am lucky to be a GNOME gsocer!yay!It has been memorable so far right from the beginning.Day 1 of the community period, I received a greeting email from Marina Zhurakhinskaya.To thank her would be falling short of words for she helped me out at the last moment to upload my proposal on the melange when I got stuck.Next joined the GCompris mailing list & created a wiki page SrishtiSethi_GCompris_Braille as per the guidelines from Vincent Untz.Meanwhile discussed the ideas for working with my first activity : learnbraille with my mentor Bruno Coudoin.I would really love to serve him juice/beer when I met him at GNOME hackfest soon:P.Configured working environment eclipse helios for getting started with.Jumped in #eclipse IRC channel to clear the errors while setting up PyDev.I followed these two useful links:
Install the PyDev Eclipse Plugin for Python Support
Installing Eclipse On Ubuntu

Read the documentation on PyGoocanvas,PyGtk,GCompris Python API.Getting familiar with the braille codes was much needed.Woah,I came across some cute images that could be used in my other activites at OpenClipArt.
Another mail popped in the box by marina asking to create a hackergotchi & I giggled & chortled & sniggered at my own.Link to create one [1].I then filed a bug : [#648923] and to my pleasure my blog got added to Planet GNOME.Thanks Alberto Ruiz:)
Frequent mails from carol from google groups for enrollement proof,information about welcome goodies,ACM membership cheered me up!
I learnt to export an image to svg format using Inkscape & made some slight changes to the file.I got my GNOME git account from Andrea by filling up a form via Mango.'srishs@src.gnome.org'.This beautiful tenure ends up with an invitation mail from Bharath to Desktop Summit 2011/GUADEC at berlin,Germany:)

Google Summer Of Code 2011 :)

2011-04-25T17:09:00.000-07:00

26th April 2011 : My happiness knows no bounds on much awaited announcement of results of google summer of code 2011.And Indeed my pleasure to get selected for GNOME organization.It would be fun to have a learning experience this summer.My tasks during google summer of code would be to develop an engaging user-experience by extending GCompris to kids between the age group(2-10) letting them to explore a variety of interactive activities theming braille.Mentor for my project is Bruno Coudoin.It would be extreme fun to tinker with GooCanvas & python.My GCompris proposal is here:
http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/proposal/review/google/gsoc2011/srishakatux/1
Its entailed with mockups here : http://www.slideshare.net/srish22/gcompris-proposal-7561528
Thanks to LUGB,seniors & all friends for getting me through gsoc:)
Links
List of accepted projects for google summer of code 2011
GNOME summer of code 2011 projects
GNOME women outreach program accepted projects
My wiki page at GNOME

My First Patch to GNOME

2011-04-25T15:17:00.000-07:00

Using my favourite git version control system, I submitted my first patch to GNOME for gcompris via bugzilla .
Patch [#185360] Manual description error in /math/numeration/magic_hat_minus Bug [#607080] : http://bugzilla-attachments.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=185360
Bug Report[#646961] Modification of skin does not affect gcompris configuration : https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=646961
Steps to create patch : -
1)Cloning the Gcompris repository
git clone git://git.gnome.org/gcompris
2)To check the current branch
git branch
*master
3)Create a new branch for the patch
git checkout -n srishti
4)Again recheck the branch
git branch
*master
srishti
5)Performing alterations
6)To check the alterations perform
git diff
7)To commit all the changes in the branch
git commit -a
8)And finally perform format patch command
git format-patch master --stdout > new.patch

Wikipedia 10 @Bikaner #lugb

2011-02-01T12:15:00.000-08:00

Wikipedia Event http://ten.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikaner

RajasFOSS #lugb Report

2011-02-01T09:07:00.000-08:00

RajasFOSS Report 2010

23rd Wikipedia Meetup Bangalore

2011-01-15T01:29:00.000-08:00

18th December 2010 : Thanks to FOSS.IN that drove me to my first ever Wikipedia 23rd Meetup in Bangalore.Amazed to discover Danese Cooper(Chief Technical Officer,Wikimedia Foundation) with knitting needles.Took no time to cature her in my cam to show my dearie mom who loves knitting.Alolita Sharma (Engineering Programs Manager, Wikimedia Foundation)along with Danese greeted the folks & started up with a brief introduction of all wikipedians amidst the cozy little TERI auditorium.
I shared my mini 1WPS project with the crowd.
Danese picked up the issues & jotted them on the board which were appealed by the crowd.
Some of the issues were : -
*Indic Language Support
*Foundation Objectives In India
*Open Street Map
*Video Content Plans
*API for Commons
*Top technology challenges as C.T.O.
*Least known projects
*Caching /Load Balancing
*Semantic Data
*Open Government Utilities
*Offline Availability (Mobile Handsets)
Besides ,it was fun to converse with Arunram & Vijay Kumar during the tea break.
A wonderful evening with wikipedians ,Danese & Alolita.

FOSS.IN 2010 Bangalore

2011-01-01T08:23:00.000-08:00

15th to 17th Dec 2010 : Whoosh .Another unplanned & sudden trip with my juniors to gulp in sweet open source love soon after my semester examination. Though I missed lugb members on my way to Bangalore ,still the thrill was alive all through.
Day 1 :
In the long registration queue for ID cards. Danese Cooper,CTO (Wikipedia) delivered the keynote , a very impressive effort putting in the whole scenario that works behind the organization. Delicious lunch .Towards jam packed mini conference of Meego simply amazed me.Hands on at QML ,PyQT & building up image viewer with meego personnels.Meego SDK USB flash drives were distributed.The good ,the bad & the ugly session discussing out the pros & cons of Ubuntu linux were stated in a funny manner.It left the seated crowd giggling & chuckling.
Day 2 :
Hands on at open Moco's cute Wikireader. At Hp stall meetup with balaji & anirudh who demolized LipiTK tool for (online headwriting recognition).On the fedora's desk letting the personnels to shake their brain cells to figure out the bugs with Apoorv's system.
Day 3 :
In the workout area with Meego group to get ourselves acquainted with a kickstart to begin with building an app with its SDK.Played around with PyQT in lure of grabbing N900 but in vain :(
Amit Shah's talk on Fedora Virtualisation & the brimming venue @fossdotin. Leveraging the git object store.Git was new for me.I learned to commit a git anyhow.And yeah Raghu Dixit Project soared my spirits high & compensated the fact I was attending the last FOSS.IN as concluded by Atul Chitnis.

GnuSphere : SchoolOS

2010-12-09T04:04:00.000-08:00

SchoolOS highlighting Gnuosphere & putting forth Linux to Kids is complete and fully functional operating system based on the Gnome window managers and powered by the popular Ubuntu Linux Distribution & MonoFree.It Comes with Live DVD which specially made for Indian students a joint collaboration of NCERT , IIT Delhi and Knowledge Commons.

Know more about schoolOS

With the great support & guidance from Narendra Sisodiya cofounder project -SchoolOS ; community manager @LUGBiitd ; I started off with demo to faculties in various schools of my city including Sophia senior sec School,Bikaner Boys School,RSV bikaner ; evangalizing SchoolOS.

Success story framed along with my neighbouring kids with SchoolOS :

RSV bikaner is now SchoolOS-ified.
Conducted a successful install fest @RSV school along with an interactive session & managed to turn all the three labs systems with play-way fancy & a repository of education operation system SchoolOS. Besides demolizing schoolOS installation some of the applications that they were made familiar to the students during the session : -
-Using Netbeans for Coding in java
-BlueFish editor for web development (html/php)
-Gimp for Image editing.
-Open Office for creating documentation ,presenation
-Kplot for graphs
-Kturtle for logo
-Celestia for exploring solar system.
-Dr Geo for geometry in mathematics.
-Periodic table for studying chemistry elements.
-Kanagram ; stellarium ; pitvi editor ; etc
-Ubuntu software manager ; synaptic package manager
It was quite interesting to sort queries of students related with running .exe files with wine & running their game related softwares on linux.
School uses a smart board technology for effective teaching.This issue need to be fixed out with SchoolOS.Also the NCERT syllabus followed by some schools is a bit different or older one.The need of the hour is to take this into consideration.For example : logo ,visual basic used.
Students were happy to come out of the clutches of viruses & piracy.
SchoolOS files can be downloaded here

For more School Pics @RSV browse here

Diwali With Kids @Slum

2010-11-12T10:03:00.000-08:00

5th november 2010 : I am 22 on this diwali .Strolling past the lane since I stepped into this world, I celebrated diwali burning crackers.Playing around with crackers used to bring a mouth widening smile on my face. But what about the long lost smile of KIDS from slum areas? Its really thought-provoking. But the question remained unanswered each diwali.I Never paid heed to it .
From nowhere an inner voice came to reflect upon my smile which is so downturned & frowning .The idea of rejoicing with kids ; lighting candle at every hut step & passing on the flame of knowledge from shade to shade kindled me deep within .
I managed to save bucks out by cutting down cracker-expenditure.On diwali eve,with my mom & younger sister I visited slums in nearby locality.It was really a tough fight initially to tackle them with love that we are not carrying money/clothes/food with us for distribution.It was slates & chalk pieces that I carried along.We made the little kids to sit in a cluster & handed over slates & chalk pieces one by one.I asked them to draw or write anything that they would love to or would like to.Every white dot they marked on the slate,happiness came in my plate.
Their innovations with a combination of white & black carving every bit of their desire mesmerized me even more & more.Ahhha,a sigh of relief to observe the imbibed emoticons in each of them.
Next I started curling my hand over each one's clenched fist holding chalk piece & made them to write their names on slate boards.WoW ,sweet names were what I got in return Namenath, mudiyo, rekha, deeparaam, phooli, mausmi, siddi, mukesh.
At the end sparklers(phooljhari) to kids to augment the joy of innocent minds.
An unimaginative relaxation & peace of mind achieved.The ever best diwali of my life in 22 years.Had a wonderful time being with kids.
Browse for more clicks below :
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=464882&l=295f3e166c&id=100000442523140

Ubuntu Remix Workshop ,Delhi

2010-11-06T12:59:00.000-07:00

31st October 2010 : - Ubuntu Remixing Workshop at Society for knowledge commons at delhi was organized by Narendra Sisodiya;free & open source activist;Linux expert & community manager LUG@IId.The workshop was conducted to enlighten folks to remaster SchoolOS 1.0 (Ubuntu based Distro) & a complete solution for schools.The real need to evangelize for GNUosphere concept is ably & aptly disucussed by Narendra in his blogpost
Foss In Indian Schools Serious Concern
Between it was fun & frolic to be seated amongst open source personnels.
Naren Began with installing schoolOS using Network installation server.
checkout.
Next interesting session embarked : Remastering a distro.UCK(Ubuntu customization Kit) for easier customization.Unpacking the ubuntu9.10 iso & its corresponding rootfs (root filesystem.Customization & playing around via svn (subversion)for exporting files
SchoolOS trunk.It was a kind of play way to learn how to configure settings using Gconf-editor.Adding & removing softwares in .sh files & then finally packing the iso.A well organized wiki link for the remastering process : Wiki Page-Remastering
My backed up terminal editor work can be downloaded from following link :
Download File
Session winded up & Priya Kuber (Beachbrake) introduced us to arduino boards.Hands on flash Led's & traffic light circuit using arduino refreshed us all.
The day ended at dominos along with photoshoot.Thanks Narendra.

Girly LUG Meetup

2010-11-02T13:00:00.000-07:00

24th october 2010 : -First initiation for the cause of augmenting girls to technology.A girlyLUG meetup organized at CCS girls ,hostel.A group of 22 girls assembled to converse on LINUX ,opensource ,computing,technology & lot more .Most of the first & second year-ties were taught how to use IRC channels.Varied fields were pondered upon from documentation ,designing ,coding to CMS joomla & drupal .Chix were encouraged to get started with blogger to express themselves.
Problems related with using linux were tackled efficiently.Besides internet via mobile broadband was established.Systers ;An organization for women in computing & linux chix were deliberated.
We built up agenda's for next meetup & conducting sessions on varied streams .

MTS Mblaze on lucid-lynx

2010-10-16T02:33:00.000-07:00

Following steps to setup MTS Mblaze on ubuntu 10.04
1)Install the dependencey packages ” usb-modeswitch-data”& 'usb-modeswitch' through synaptic package manager .
2)Reboot your computer .
3)Connect the Mblaze Modem and wait for 30 seconds. The usb-modeswitch package is working behind the scenes , you can check the status through the following command :
dmesg
4)Install wvdial through synaptic
5).Type on terminal
gedit /etc/wvdial.conf
Copy paste the folowing code in it .
[Dialer cdma]
Stupid Mode = 1
Inherits = Modem0
Password = mts
Username = internet@internet.mtsindia.in
Phone = #777

[Modem0]
Init1 = ATZ
SetVolume = 0
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
Baud = 115200
FlowControl = Hardware (CRTSCTS)
Dial Command = ATDT
6)Start browsing with command on terminal : wdial cdma
7)After this step follow the screenshots . Right click on network manager.Enable mobile broadband & select edit connections .

8)Following window appears.

9)Select the mobile broadband tab .

10)Add a new connection .

11)From the drop down list add any list CDMA products .

12)Go forward & select the country .

13)Provider name : - fill in MTS

14)Apply the changes

15)Fill in details
number : #777
username : internet@internet.mtsindia.in
password : MTS

16)Apply changes & MTS connection will be available in networks.
You are done !!!

Pycon India 2010 , Bangalore

2010-10-15T05:20:00.000-07:00

25th to 26th september 2010 : -A night before the inaugral of conference; glance at facebook update about Pycon India & coincident stay at bangalore makes me feel opportuned enough to attend a grand workshop;a geeky weekend.A keynote from David Goodger highlighting the myths realted with python .

An interactive plotting for newbies & getting started with python with FOSSEE group by Prabhu Ramachandran. Its a pleasant expierence to be in a open source community & meet its developers & contributors as usual . Hands on sessions with ipython -pylab drawing out cute 3D images .

Parallel talks from Asim Mittal : Python + Wii = Intuitive Control ; Live demo touchless workspaces + mouse + wii controlled desktop ; Jeff Wishnie : Python In The Wild: Enabling children to voice their opinions . A ThoughtWorks project rapidSMS brought into limelight .
Side by side a debatable session between engineering students & Infosys recruiters & discussion on cource-structure #engg #India .
A talk on offline wikipedia from santhosh showcasing a liveCD bootable #malyalam wikipedia .

Okular : - A KDE4 Universal Document Reader

2010-09-21T04:58:00.000-07:00

Googling hard for turning a pdf file to odt or doc format on my latest linux lucid made me to stumble over a wiki page for Okular. One of the new applications introduced with KDE 4 . KDE 3 had a PDF viewer named KPDF, but Okular aims to be a complete document viewing solution, supporting many different file types & morover a fast-loading and works in any operating system and desktop environment that can run KDE applications.

Originaly written by Piotr Szymanski and currently mantained by Bruno Toscano, this is actually the best multi document reader I’ve ever come across.
It is based on QT4 libraries and uses a bunch of additional libraries for accessing the various file formats. It can open PDF, PS, Tiff, CHM, DjVu, Images, DVI, XPS, ODT, Fiction Book, Comic Book, Plucker, EPub and Fax documents.

Okular has four modes for viewing and manipulating documents:

1. Browse (Ctrl+1) – Clicking on the document allows you to drag the page up, down, left, or right.
2. Zoom (Ctrl+2) – Click and highlight an area to zoom in on it.
3. Selection Tool (Ctrl+3) – It uses a selection box to highlight any area and can copy images or text.
4. Text Selection Tool (Ctrl+4) – This functions more like a text editor’s selection tool, highlighting text, row-by-row.

There are four view modes for Okular, found in the View menu:

1. Single page - scrolls one page at a time
2. Facing pages – displays two pages, side-by-side
3. Facing pages (center first page) – like normal facing pages, but displays the first page by itself, which is useful if the first page is a book cover.
4. Overview – which shows three zoomed-out pages at a time.

Okular is light enough to be portable and work well even on tablets and small devices, but it is also powerful enough to view very large, complex documents as well. Okular is part of KDE and is free and open source software, available to everyone.

Getting started with Zend-Framework & Google Gears

2010-09-04T09:16:00.000-07:00

Open Source Web Technologies

View more presentations from SrishAkaTux.

Optical Mouse PS2 classy #hack

2010-08-28T11:40:00.000-07:00

The day begins with yawn ; couple of seconds passed . Screwdriver in one hand & optical ps2 mouse on the other & shortly scavenged it to parts .On the PCB (printed circuit board) first took off the mouse ball ; a rounded rubber wrapped over a plastic wheel . As it rolls,an encoder connected to it sideways moves .

A four cable conductor is soldered on the board . On the front are two microswitches ; a third one in the middle that makes a noise on each click of mouse . LED surrounded with various resistors , capacitors , emitters . IC : S2091-A0345F in the middle .

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Bangalore Sunfeast 10k Marathon

2010-06-25T05:11:00.000-07:00

23rd may 2010 :- An event to raise fund for charity besides an emotional reconnect in the hearts of citizens. It brings together the common man, the corporate czar, the politician, the socialite and the physically challenged onto one platform. It motivates the grandmother and grandson, across the generational divide, to set personal targets and record personal triumphs.It is an event that stirs the conscience of every citizen, encouraging them to reach out, in aid of a cause or charity.
Bangaloreans put their best foot forward and showed the nation and the world at large, that they care!!!
I volunteered for Mahiti group ,we ran for a cause & it was FOSS ;to spread the fire & magic of free & open source in the field of software .Mahitians under CONVENE conveyed to Learn + Apply + Share + Transform.Myself dashed 2km & dawdled through rest 3 .
Downpoured with kingfisher & sunfeast funny goodies !!

Sms Gateway

2010-06-22T04:43:00.000-07:00

An SMS gateway is a device or service offering SMS transit, transforming messages to mobile network traffic from other media, or vice versa, allowing transmission or receipt of SMS messages with or without the use of a mobile phone.
Suppose you are the developer of an SMS text messaging application ,to send and receive SMS text messages on your server, one way is to connect to the SMSCs of the wireless carriers from different vendors, which means your SMS text messaging application may need to support multiple SMSC-specific protocols .Thus ,the SMS text messaging application's complexity and development time increases.
To deal with the above problem, an SMS gateway can be set up to handle the connections to the SMSCs.

How to send sms from a website??

1)Install the Ozeki NG SMS Gateway(for ubuntu) to verify, that you can send SMS messages from the gateway manually.

2)How to send SMS from PHP using HTTP?

The idea we use is to have an HTML form, that allows the website visitor to enter a phone number and the message text. This HTML form can be submitted by clicking on the "SEND" button. Once submitted the form variables will be processed by a PHP script. This PHP script will post the SMS message to the SMS Gateway. As you can see on Figure 1.

3)Download php_sms_send_receive.zip After your SMS gateway is functioning you can create the HTML Form and the PHP script.

Internship At Mahiti : March -April 2010

2010-04-27T23:50:00.000-07:00

Nostalgically ,MozillaDevday turned around as a mascod for me.It was really awe-inspiring getting introduced with MAHITI : A social enterprise & an active contributor of open source through the talk delievered by “Mr Sreekanth S. Rameshaiah”.Next day i met him and expounded my interest in FOSS & a keen desire to learn & luckily opportuned to work as an intern in web designing.
At the very first day of my joining Sree sir introduced with my mentor Mr Vijay Rasquinha. He made me familiar with different web developing frameworks.This was how I started with the journey of cognizance hitting first PHP(server-side language) & MYSQL.
Next was 'Smarty' template search engine for php & epitomized the underlying smartness behind smarty.How dynamically it seperates the presentation & logic part of our web page??
I started woking on quanta plus editors & aptana studio on my favourite linux disto fedora & made a small music album app & photo gallery in smarty & acquainted the art of using firebug addon to edit CSSscripts.
Thereafter I busted the gut with javascript for validations & visualized the power of AJAX behind web applications like google/twitter/IRC channels/flicker. Perceived to code the RSS reader,polling & Live Search.
A Zeal to learn Zend-Framework & continuation with a build up of live website on kids.I then undertook my last task on SMS Gateway mobigator owned by mahiti.
Thanks to all php team members vinutha,nirmal,abhishek,kolappa,harshit,shanthi for support.Lastly forgot to mention the ever best healthy working environment that mahiti imbids in the field of open source!!Its real fun to work in open source environment.
Coming to bangalore was a big fight.Thanks to my mom & friend Anirudh.

Hacked on MozillaDevDay ,Bangalore

2010-04-05T07:25:00.000-07:00

27th feb 2010 :- Completely splendid day jointly hosted by Mahiti & CIS welcomed more than 300 delegates at JRD Tata Auditorium (National Institute of Applied Studies).
Seth Bindernagel, Mozilla Localization Director, kicked the day off with a brief introduction about Mozilla.
Lucian Teo, a Mozilla Volunteer from Singapore introduced how Mozilla allows regular individuals to participate in its mission to keep the internet public, open and accessible through their new initiative Drumbeat :Peer2Peer University.

Arun Ranganathan Mozilla Evangelist, spoke about the web as a platform and web standards across software providers. He demonstrated exciting techniques in HTML5 including: drag and drop functionality, automated geo-tagging, font-face support, 2D and 3D support using Canvas and WebGL, accelerometer support,video embedding using ogg addon.
Sreekanth S. Rameshaiah, the Executive Director of Mahiti, gave the audience a great overview of how Mahiti supports the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) movement.

After the sessions were over, and the goodies distributed in form of Mozilla T's,stickers,posters I spoke to the Executive director of mahiti for my internship & the results were fruitful!!

Joomla 1.5 Blooming On Fedora12 With LAMP server

2010-02-15T09:47:00.000-08:00

Successfully installed joomla 1.5 with full swing followed with LAMP Server setup.

I espoused through the illustrated paces below:-

A. Apache, PHP, and MySQL on Fedora Core

A.1 Install Apache (httpd), PHP, MySQL (server and client).
yum -y install httpd php mysql mysql-server php-mysql

A.2 Configure the new services to start automatically
/sbin/chkconfig httpd on
/sbin/chkconfig --add mysqld [this is not required with FC4 and above]
/sbin/chkconfig mysqld on
/sbin/service httpd start
/sbin/service mysqld start

A.3 IMPORTANT! Set up the mysql database root password.Without a password,ANY user on the box can login to mysql as database root.The mysql root account is a separate password from the machine root account.
mysqladmin -u root password 'new-password' [quotes are required]

A.4 Make additional security-related changes to mysql.
mysql -u root -p

mysql> DROP DATABASE test; [removes the test database]
mysql> DELETE FROM mysql.user WHERE user = '';[Removes anonymous access]
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

A.5The document root for Apache is /var/www/html/. Create a test PHP script (such as phpinfo.php) and place it in the document root. Using the command :-
gedit /var/www/html/
A useful test script sample :

phpinfo();
?>

A.6 Create a database and database user for your data.You will use this database and user name in your database connection string.The GRANT statement actually creates a new MySQL user account.
mysql> CREATE DATABASE web_db;
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON web_db.* TO 'web_user'@'localhost'
IDENTIFIED BY 'the password';

B. Joomla Installation

B.1 Download Joomla ZIP File from http://www.joomla.org/
Create a folder
# mkdir /var/www/html/joomla

B.2 # cd /var/www/html/joomla/
# unzip /home/user/Desktop/Joomla_1.5.9-Stable-Full_Package.zip

B.3 Start Joomla installation in browser (Firefox)
http://localhost/joomla

There You go!!!Joomla Installation page opens up!!!

CDMA USB connection on fedora12

2010-01-26T05:17:00.000-08:00

Infinite enjoyment,From easy connection.
It's time to let what fun the world has to offer. Huawei EC325 USB Modem gives your laptop and desktop fast access to internet enjoyment, keeping you wirelessly connected through CDMA anytime. Perfect flow statistics bring everything right under control.
I have finally established the CDMA internet connection with USB HUAWEI modem on fedora12. Firstly I installed wvdial & then plugged in the device.
Using lspci on root,the modem was detected. Almost close to the configuration process now. In the System->Preferences->Network Connections selected mobile connections and added a new one following the setup of the modem.

FOSS.IN Bangalore

2010-01-22T08:21:00.000-08:00

1st Dec to 5th Dec:-Foss.in is one of the best & the biggest free & open source conference i have ever been to.
A Real Communtiy Feel!!!
Talks, workouts, workshops, techtalks and bofs all in one.The concept of contribution ,distribution, modification,hacking coding & freedom brought to the forefront.

A real experience of interaction with geeks.
Mozilla weave, Jetpack, KDE desktop environment, Fedora, Sahana, Common creatives, Maemo geared me up.
Last day Raghu Dixits' band refreshed our spirits.

Linux Install Fest at ECB girls hostel

2010-01-22T06:20:00.000-08:00

16th nov:-Geeky chicks switching over to Open Source Operating Systems.We conducted a midnight install fest in the hostel compound knocking from door to door & expounding them the importance of FOSS (Free open source software).
We linuxified approx. 15 systems with different flavours fedora 11(LEONIDAS) ,Fedora 12(CONSTANTINE), UBUNTU 8.0 &9.0 along with their installation steps in detail.
We taught them to use terminal window and mostly used linux commands on it. We installed certain packages using YUM (Update Manager). Internet Connection was established too.
This way we managed to give away windows & spread the fire of open source & set up a benchmark to the geek feminism.

FossGn09

2010-01-21T12:19:00.001-08:00

28th oct to 30th oct:-FossGn09 event for the undergrad students across the country at engineering college bikaner spreaded the magic & fire of open source at an alarming rate.Talks were delievered during the day time.
We conducted hackfests in the midnight on Sahana, Multitouch/HCI, Fedora, Drupal,Mozilla firefox.
Goodies from google,red hat fedora (Tees,Dvd's,stickers) were distributed.

Last day Niyam Bhushan, most renowned I.T. industry veteran consented over the talk " How to remove AXE effect?".
He inaugrated LUGB (Linux user Group, Bikaner) & named its annual event as RAJASFOSS.

MITS Sports Fest

2010-01-21T12:05:00.000-08:00

1st to 4th oct 2009:-Dexterity out of bounds. Time for some Recreation!!. Participated in Table Tennis Event Conducted during All India Engineering Sports Meet of MITS-FET "Abhigya'09"

OSUM Open Source University Meetup

2010-01-21T11:06:00.000-08:00

19th September:-This was how I stepped into open source. ECB osum club organized an "Open Rythum" at Engineering college Bikaner (E.C.B) under which various events categorized were paper presentation,java quiz,adobe flash etc.We gave a presentation on Eclipse IDE. A seminar on Sun Spot took place.The device was well expounded along with its applications

Java Core

2010-01-21T10:20:00.000-08:00

Completed One Month Summer Training of Core Java from Road Ahead Technologies (R.A.T),Jaipur . Worked With Notepad++, Eclipse IDE & MySql. Designed a small project "Online Java Test Conducting system" using swings.
Struggling hard with Audio Clip Interface these days...Going through "Java After Hours by" Steven Holzner.

Photograph : A picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.

2010-01-21T06:49:00.000-08:00

There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.
I just love to capture every moment which is passing,& which is really true.It lets me to move down the memory lane whenever i feel like.

GIMP(GNU Image Manipulation program) an open source photoshop graphics editor is my biggest inspiration that intrigues me and helps me in adding beauty to my pictures.

A Glimpse Of Comparing!!

2010-01-21T02:49:00.000-08:00

A short glance & peep into the stage anchoring sessions of the early school days & college fests. Indulging in debates foretasted brain storming.Dramatization indeed was a tool to refresh my spirits.To grab the spectator's attention & fancy till the last moment of the show steals every breath out of you!!!!!