It's Wait-listed !

An old woman in bright blue tattered saree, with lots of small shimmering props knitted all over, was squatting on four sheets of newspaper besides her eight year old grandson. The anguish of years spent worthless, suffering and ceaseless destitution was evident in her eyes. The boy, with disheveled soiled hair, unaware of his fate, looked anxiously at every person that passed by, staring at some for long and transiently at others. Nearby, on a cemented bench, a man in plush black coat, wearing glossy black shoes was reading newspaper. The headline read, ‘Coalgate scam exposed, uproar in both Houses’. While I pondered about Indian reality and contribution of politicians to social and economic gap in Indian Society at Platform 9 of New Delhi Railway Station, the C5 coach of Ludhiana-Delhi Shatabadi halted in front. I was on my journey to Ludhiana, a major city located in centre of Punjab.

After waiting for nearly two hours, I was to finally get on-board. A sense of cheerfulness and delight dawned on my face. I looked at the irctc sms to get my seat number. My satisfaction suddenly made its way into skepticism. There was no seat number mentioned in the sms. I pulled out paper ticket from my bag. WL5. For few seconds I stood still, open-mouthed, wondering what I just saw was in actual. There was no time to waste. I rushed as fast as I could making my way through the congested platform, seeping through crevices in crowd of people on foot over-bridge to reach status query kiosk at Platform 1. While my body worked hard to get to the destination, the mind found itself clogged with thoughts. Lots of thoughts seemed to be simultaneously running as mind jumped from one to other in split-seconds. I condemned the person in me for being so careless. I was anxious what if ticket was not confirmed. Mind could hardly conclude anything till I reached and hurriedly entered PNR number on touch screen. CONFIRM C8 54. A sense of relief flowed through the soul. But, there were still eight platforms to cross before I could rest. I hurried. I ran. I panicked. I watched the train moving while I ran on the over-bridge… 

Saturday, October 13, 2012

On-board,

From Ludhiana to Delhi

Police trolled :P

This a short account of my experience in Japan. I wrote it many days back.

It was a rainy day and I came back from the campus to my apartment. There were two police cars standing outside my apartment. My apartment has many rooms and I have a room in it. I was shocked a little. Policewas looking towards the room which yesterday I had knocked in the evening. I was little shocked but not fearful for I had done nothing wrong. Meanwhile, I parked my bicycle and apartment owner was standing there. I enquired him, he said “Someone has kept a mail in his mailbox and lady got panic”. I answered him back with a foolish smile on my face, “I kept that mail”. The owner called someone and talked to someone in Japanese difficult for me to make to whom he was talking. Later came to know that he had called up the Professor. While he talked on phone, I just kept my right hand on my head and said to myself, ‘Oh my God !’.

The room 202 in which the lady lived is three rooms away from mine. Yesterday, I couldn’t get my pan heated on induction cooker. The controls and manual was in Japanese language, leaving me confused. I thought, I could ask someone, and hence I knocked at that door. No one opened the door, then thinking she/he might have got afraid, I left message that ‘I am new to Japan and need some help - Nehchal, Resident Room 205, Sky Heights’. The worst happened, she couldn’t read English and couldn’t understand and called the police.

The policeman came towards me, said ‘Hi’ with a little smile on his face while raising his right hand and asked for my passport and ID card, which I have kept in my bag  (Though careless, I keep important things in my bag :P ). Professor on phone acted like translator between me and police. After talk with police, apartment owner and professor the police went off  happily J. But of course police noted down my name and date of birth in their diary :P, I am on Japanese police record now J.. The owner is a ‘always happy’ person, he came to my room. I was thinking he would scold me or something but he was laughing as always. He found that the pan was not compatible for induction cooker, he bought me new one and changed my television because that also didn’t worked. And hence, here I end my story.

Some tricks a CSE guy will need at IIT Kanpur in his stay here...

1. $ppop cancel all
Enter this command after you have printed your pages, as it will cancel all the other jobs you have given to other printers. It will help to reduce the queues for the other people.

2. double-side printing in lab
In CSE lab, lp2 and lp1 are capable of double side printing but sometimes, by default they may not be set on double side printing (setting can be changed from settings menu on the printer). 
Alternatively,
For double-side printing
$ppr -d lp2 --feature Duplex=DuplexNoTumble filename
For single-side printing
$ppr -d lp2 --feature Duplex=NoDuplex filename

3. YouTube not working !! Install flash player.
This will install flash player for Iceweasel and Epiphany Web Browser (browsers installed in CSE lab).

Download libflashplayer.so file from Adobe website and put it in home/.mozilla/plugins/
Make the plugins folder if not already present.

To install flashplayer in Chromium Browser.
Copy the libflashplayer.so file to home/.config/chromium/plugins
Make the plugins folder if not already present.
Enjoy!!!


4. On the start of Iceweasel, if you get message something like "Could not load security components..", then you may not be able to access secure website (ones with https://). Facebook is a secure website.
File cert8.db may have got corrupted.
Go to home/.mozilla/firefox/c3ocw2bl.default/ and check permissions for cert8.db.
Set access to Read and Write if not already. If changing the file permissions doesn't work then delete this file. You may have to install flash player again, if you delete this file.

5. Forwarding the cse webmail mails to Gmail.
ssh forward.cse.iitk.ac.in
Make a file .forward if it already doesn't exist.

If your gmail username is abc@gmail.com and webmail id is def@cse.iitk.ac.in
Then to forward the mails to Gmail without keeping copy on webmail, write to file:
abc@gmail.com

To keep copy on webmail as well,
abc@gmail.com, def

6. Access Main CC account from your room
$ssh username@ccpc<number>.cc.iitk.ac.in
Eg.      $ssh nehchal@ccpc143.cc.iitk.ac.in
You can also use some other number instead of 143.

Several software are already installed like MATLAB, mathematics, etc. So, you can use these software remotely without installing on your own computer.

7. Access CSE account from your room
$ssh username@csews<number>.cse.iitk.ac.in
Eg.   $ssh nehchal@csews143.cse.iitk.ac.in
You can of course use some other number instead of 143.

8. Proxy issues in Ubuntu
---system-wide proxy---
You can set system-wide proxy using network settings (Ubuntu 12.10) only if proxy doesn't require authentication. At IITK proxy server requires authentication. So, directly edit the file /etc/environment and add/edit following lines.


http_proxy="http://yourUsername:yourPassword@bsnlproxy.iitk.ac.in:3128/"
https_proxy="https://yourUsername:yourPassword@bsnlproxy.iitk.ac.in:3128/"
ftp_proxy="ftp://yourUsername:yourPassword@bsnlproxy.iitk.ac.in:3128/"


---For apt-get or aptitude---
Edit /etc/apt/apt.conf file (Make new file by this name if already doesn't exist). And add(edit) following lines.

Acquire::http::proxy "http://userneme:password@proxyserver:port/";
Acquire::ftp::proxy "ftp://userneme:password@proxyserver:port/";
Acquire::https::proxy "https://userneme:password@proxyserver:port/";

---For SVN---
Edit ~/.subversion/servers file. Find [global] in the file. Uncomment (remove hash from beginning) and edit the following attributes accordingly: http-proxy-host, http-proxy-port, http-username, http-password

---For wget command---

Edit the file /etc/wgetrc Set the proxy in the file. Format: username:password@proxy:port

9. Access IITK network from outside campusUse ssl-vpn. Detailed instructions at: <http://www.iitk.ac.in/cc/vpn_update/sslvpn.htm>. You will be able access all the internal websites, like oars.cc.iitk.ac.in, web.cse.iitk.ac.in, update your homepage, etc. To access outside internet (eg. google.com) while logged into IITK network, use mozilla firefox. Use proxy settings that you use inside campus. With Google chrome, you can access only internal sites and not outside internet.

10. Your account doesn’t opens up in CSE Lab.
There is a high chance that you have used up your 1GB (as of Feb, 2013) allocated space. You need to clean up some junk. If you can’t figure out any large file in your account, probably space is being consumed by temporary files (chrome, mozilla cache, etc).

11. Update cse homepageYour homepage is at www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/username . To update ssh to turing.

Please let me know in case of any errors or something you would like to add to this blog.
I will update soon, as I get to know more. :)

Convert your ID Card to ATM Card!!

Today I was just going through my drawer and found out a lost ATM card that I had found couple of months ago . Just playing with it, I just stripped of a layer of lamination from its backside along with the magnetic strip with quite a ease. Then I just wanted to work on idea to make my ID card work as Atm card, the idea that I had though more than a year ago, but didn't do that, in a fear that I could damage the Atm card.

To remove magnetic tape from my Atm card was not so easy, but somehow stipped it off in a good condition. The IIT Kanpur and the Atm card size are exactly the same as both follow the industry standard. If I paste the magnetic strip at the back of I-Card, then I-Card would work as Atm Card!! But the problem was how to paste. I went to shop behind the hall for lamination, but he denied owing to thickness of I-Card, then thought to paste it using electric iron. Soon, I realised, double sided tape could do the trick, which is easily available at the shopping centre in the campus. I pasted it using the tape. I eagerly wanted to test it that worked and rushed to the SBI ATM to test it. Hurray! Now I have my I-Card, which works at Atm Card through. I will post the photos soon. :) :D

The Art of Debugging Circuits

Note: This is note a complete guide but may help of help to you.

Today someone just came to me said that he has got his Atmega development board faulty with full confidence and I just said it's not possible. And even after a one day hard work, he couldn't find mistake in simple circuit. The thing is many people may be pretty good at designing, coding, making the things but just go blank, when a working things suddenly starts malfunctioning. There are unable to figure out, what went wrong even in simple circuits and assemblies. I would just write some basic things that may help.

When you have many individual circuits/components connected to each other, there are better ways than just doing random things. Individual components may be some IC, microcontroller, motors, motor drivers, Xbee wireless modules, sensor, etc.

We can have two approaches.
First one is to just disconnect all the components from each other. Then start connecting the components one by one to build up the complete circuit. At each stage, the behavior should be tested to verify if circuit is working as it should. This way you can be sure, the components connected till now. As soon as circuit malfunctions after adding a component, then that newly added component is faulty.

Second approach is to remove component one by one from the circuit and testing at each stage until the remaining circuit behaves properly.

If circuit is too large, then second approach may be useful. But if malfunctioning may lead to damage, like heating of ICs, then first approached should be followed.

The above two approaches may sometimes can't be used, when individual components can't be tested until all of them are connected in the circuit. In such cases, you can replace each component by new one, one by one. You can just hope that new one would be working properly.