Bunk Bazaar (Attendance Manager) - a mobile application for students

Bunk Bazaar is a mobile application that helps every student manage his/her own attendance in a very easy and efficient way. The Bunk Bazaar application in addition, also gives alerts and other utilities. In short, its a complete software which any student would require!

Being a mobile application, its very handy and easy to use it. It can save a lot of time for every student and make them more cautious about attending classes and being regular to class. On the same line, it also gives the count of number of classes that you can bunk so that you don't cross below the threshold percentage.
Specifications :
Name : Bunk Bazaar
Version : 1.1
Details : CLDC 1.1,1.0 and MIDP 2.1,2.0

Attendance Register : Attendance register is a module that allows you enter your daily attendance. The intuitive way provides those hours(i.e. classes) that you've on a specified day. You can easily run through the check boxes and tick mark the absent hours. That's it.!
You can also find a modify option which will help you correct the mistakes made during the attendance entry.

Check Zone : Allows you to check your attendance.
This provides you with a short summary to a full statistics about your attendance. You can check alert meters, overall percentages and couple of other things too.

Quick Alerts : To those who want to know things quick! you've got Quick Alerts. This module will alert you about those courses in which you've to make sure that you attend classes regularly. It's a very intuitive alarm interface that will make you go gaga when it says! "Enjoy your day!".

Forecaster : Intense computations through a lot of equations, this module helps a student know how many classes he has to attend to make up the threshold attendance percentage level and how many he can afford to skip. The software has an inbuilt intelligence capability and prompts you when in need.

Time table : Time table gives you a few options like viewing and modifying a time table. This is provided so that, you can add up a few more classes, in case you get a special class on weekends or during some other day.

Roll Back : Roll back allows you to reinstall your software to its factory settings.

All these options provide a complete attendance suite for a college/university going student who carries a mobile :). The interface is as simple and doesn't even require you to spend lots of MBs of your precious phone's memory card.

The application was developed by me (Sanjeev Gopinath V) and my fellow friends Anurag Jain and Sudha Rani. In case if you're interested to use it, you can mail us at : sanjeevsince90@gmail.com. We'll provide you with the .jar file at the earliest :)

GATE 2010 Exam - Application Forms and other rules...

Hi there,
It was very tough to Google out the GATE 2010 application form and other procedures. Anyways, after sometime I found the official GATE site.

Try this link : http://gate.iitg.ernet.in/index.php

Uninstalling NetBeans in Linux (fedora, Ubuntu and OpenSuse)

Hello there,
Recently I wanted to upgrade from NetBeans 6.5 to 6.7.1 in Fedora 11. I didn't know how exactly to go about it. So tried NetBeans > Help > Check for updates. It gave option to migrate from 1.5.1 to 1.5.2. Went in vain. Next, I tried checking the Add/Remove software to find some clue of uninstalling NetBeans. It didn't show up any of the Installed S/W.
Hence made up my mind to search manually for any uninstalling mechanism. I found this one working in Linux.

Goto Root > USR > Local > netbeans-6.5

Open your terminal and type sh

Now drag the Uninstall.sh to the terminal.

The address would have got pasted.

Click Yes and follow the Uninstallation Wizard's instructions.

Hope this helps. Comment if any query.

Desktop Effects problem

Yet another day with linux...
I was playing with the windows (not MS Windows) effects of KDE in Fedora. In the wobbling effect, I set weird values and finally all my windows, menus and everything started to move randomly and quickly. I thot, omg! Do I need to reinstall everything again? Is there no solution?! Then slowly I tried understanding the window behaviour and chose the resize option. Tada! The window stopped moving here and there. Then I changed the effects..! :)

Moral of the story is : Linux is user friendly.

Fedora 11 Boot Problem (disk checking)

Oh my god! After having a complete system update and Electronic Lab installation, I did a reboot. I do not know what exactly happened, the white stuff loaded only to some extent. Then suddenly a black screen turned out saying
"Press Ctrl + D to continue or enter password to do a manual disk check". Gawd! It scared everything out of me..! Last time I had similar kind of problem and I ended up Reinstalling the whole Fedora 11. But this time, I thought of making things myself. Remembered this command, fsck.
But when I gave it just as "fsck"... It started asking me weird questions like... "Do you want to move this block, actually it was supposed to be at this place and stuff". I didn't have any clue about the moving of disks. But I tried understanding the inner stuff of what was exactly going on behind the scene. Then, I brutally rebooted the system, and I gave

fsck -A -y

and things turned out to be Real GOOD! It asked me to reboot at the end of this filesystem checking process. And Cool..! The white stuff loaded well and the system started. Thanks to the stability of Fedora. No wonder why Linux is mainly focussed on developers, but when I was able to solve the problem, I really loved it..! No matter, I love fedora and love to be as an Ambassador throughout..!

Fedora ROX big time..!


p.s. All the companies and related stuff which I have used here belongs to the company. I put my head into no licensing issues. ( This statement is meant for geeks who actually peep into everything around and check for licenses..!)

Page ranking of my blog..!

Hey there!

The concept of page rank is really cool..! I don't know how exactly it works after the improvements over the previous algorithms, but anyways it has done one major thing..!
It has given the same page rank for both yahoo (http://in.yahoo.com/?p=us) and my blog..! Means that both have the same importance according to Google..!
Interesting...

Sending mails using PHP through a GMAIL account...

Hi,
This post will explain how to send mails using your Gmail account by using PHP script.
I use XAMPP, so the tutorial will be based on that... Modify if you use some other service! It'd work...

* Download the phpmailer from http://phpmailer.sourceforge.net .
* Extract the folder in htdocs of xampp.
* Now navigate to \_acp-ml\phpmailer\ and create a php page with the name you desire.
* In the section, paste the following code...!

include("class.phpmailer.php");
include("class.smtp.php");
$send_mail=new PHPMailer();
$send_mail->IsSMTP();
$send_mail->SMTPAuth = true;
$send_mail->Username = "someone@gmail.com"; // your gmail username
$send_mail->Password = "passwd"; // your gmail password
$webmaster_email = "someone1@gmail.com"; //Reply to this email ID
$email="someone@aaa.com"; // Recipients email ID
$name="Cool Dude"; // Recipient's name
$send_mail->From = $webmaster_email;
$send_mail->FromName = "Webmaster";
$send_mail->AddAddress($email,$name);
$send_mail->AddReplyTo($webmaster_email,"Webmaster");
$send_mail->WordWrap = 50; // set word wrap
//$send_mail->AddAttachment("/var/tmp/file.tar.gz"); // attachment
//$send_mail->AddAttachment("/tmp/image.jpg", "new.jpg"); // attachment
$send_mail->IsHTML(true); // send as HTML
$send_mail->Subject = "Test E-mail";
$send_mail->Body = "Hello there,
This is a test message..."; // Write your email body here!!!
$send_mail->AltBody = "This is a plain test message..."; //Text to be visible in Plain text mode..!
if(!$send_mail->Send())
{
echo "Error : " . $send_mail->ErrorInfo;
}
else
{
echo "The Message sending was successful...";
}
?>

Once you do this,
* Try accessing the file from localhost thru your browser.
* If this doesn't work,
* Find out the php.ini file from xampp folder, open it and uncomment extension=php_openssl.dll" by removing semicolon.
* Now, find the "#connect to the smtp server" line in class.smtp.php in phpmailer folder and add $host = "ssl://smtp.gmail.com"; $port = 465; before it.
* Now restart XAMPP by stopping and starting Apache once!

Try executing the php script, and you'd find this working...

Comment if any changes are to be made or if you found this useful...

Creating a website in 10 minutes

Hi all,
Lets deploy a website made with PHP and a MySQL database. Follow these steps carefully...

Installing the business tier
1. Download XAMPP by clicking http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html
2. Install XAMPP by selecting Apache, MySQL and FileZilla AS SERVICE.
3. Click next for all other windows that appear.
4. Start XAMPP and start Apache, MySQL and FileZilla.
5. Disable your windows firewall by navigating to control panel.
6. Type localhost in your browser and see if XAMPP site is opening.

Installing Access tier
1. Download MySQL Gui tools from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/gui-tools/5.0.html
2. Pick a mirror based on your platform type. Its generally x86.
3. Either register or, click on No thanks! Generally i prefer the second one! ;)
4. Choose a location and click https.
5. Download it.
6. Install it by clicking Next to all that follows.
7. Your Back end is ready.

Create your first web-coding (name it index.php) by following the instructions in the link,
http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp

and put your file in a Newfolder (Give it a name) in C:\xampp\htdocs.
Now open your browser and type, localhost/NewFolder(the folder name that you gave) and press enter. Tada! the html file appears...
Now try some php coding by using this link,
http://www.w3schools.com/php/default.asp
Now try combining MySQL queries by following the appropriate links that appear in the above mentioned link.

XAMPP didn't work - solution

Hi ppl,
I had installed my xampp and deployed my website in the htdocs! I was able to access it by typing localhost/website-name but not using the ip or website address... I worked on that for a few hours and found out that windows firewall was blocking it. If you get the same problem, disable the windows firewall and try testing your ip...
It works

Clearing screen using GCC or G++

When you use the conventional compilers such as TurboC, you can use the conio.h function clrscr(). But when you're using GCC or G++, we can't go with clrscr(). Hence try theses

for windows - system("cls");
for unix, linux and others - system("clear");

Time change between Linux Fedora and XP / Vista

Hello guys,
For visitors from some Search Engine : You're so punctual hm? Tending to synchronise time, technology, etc,etc!!! Great man! Anyways! You can find the necessary solution here! Take sometime to read it!

Fedora has been doing really great these days and many of my friends have started moving towards fedora! After quite a few days of our consistent use, we found that the time was not synchronised in many of the laptops running dual boot between Vista/XP with Linux Fedora/Ubuntu. We were trying to find a solution for this and here it is!!

Goto your linux system.
Goto System > Administration > Date and Time > Time Zone.
Below this, you may see a check box telling about some UTC and stuff!
Uncheck it. Close and reset your system time and date! Tada! Everything will work fine from now!

Finding out the number of Zeroes at the end of Factorial for a number

There is a unique formula to find out the number of zeroes at the end of a factorial of a given number.
Divide the number by power of 5s and add the sum.
For eg.
Take the number 60.
= (60/5) + (60/25 ) + (60/125) + ...
= 12 + 2 + 0 + ..
= 14.

you can stop the series once the power of 5 exceeds the number.

C++ program for the logic:

#include
#include
using namespace std;

int main()
{
int tc,i;
long int count,num5,inp;
vector output;
cin>>tc;
for(i=0;i>inp;
num5=5;
count=0;
while(inp >= num5)
{
count += inp / num5;
num5*=5;
}
output.push_back(count);
}
for(i=0;i
cout<<
//system("pause");
return 0;
}

Wifi at SASTRA

Its 9:40 p.m. and Oh my GOD!!!, I'm browsing internet at the speed of my thoughts! Pages are opening faster than my explorer. Morning, I had my Gmail showing the mails even before the booting was complete! Man! this is the real power of an 18mbps internet! Thank you SASTRA! Such a great initiative!

Writing a wiki page

I started learning quite a while about the wiki pages and the commands used for various functions! Its actually a fun to script in the wikis. This link should do the magic for you! Since only a limited number of tutorials are available on the net, its a little difficult for a beginner like me to understand the core completely. For instance, I was stuck up with creating an infobox, which has a very limited or less information on the net!
Try my wiki - mywiki.

Multinational companies and their Interviews

Hey Guys,
www.placementsindia.blogspot.com is a great link to find about the ways of preparing for interview of various software MNCs. It also gives a huge collection of tips and puzzles that might be useful to many of us who are thriving to get into google, ms and other big daddy's of s/w.

Young Coders Forum

Hola ppl!

Hmmm all set! Many of my friends have left to their home for the semester hols. And I am really big time peaceful with the silence around here! Hmmm... late yesterday night, when I was googling to find out a good coders forum, I found this! Though, I now can't give a review about it... I can just say enough that it rox!

try this link: www.youngcoders.com
You ppl can also try my fav. site! Its absolutely cool: www.spoj.pl
and this too... www.topcoders.com/tc

the archives in topcoder about solving problem is worth readin'.

Lets try Linux Season 1

Last month, we planned to come up with some session for GLOSS and finally decided to go with my idea of having a seminar series on linux and troubleshooting. To have a strong impact with the student community, I suggested the name to be Lets Try Linux season 1. The daily agenda contained a 50 min of seminar on a particular topic about linux and also a ten minute talk by a regular member on a technical community website. The sessions went as per plan and the participation of students was decent. The ones who came the first day, attended till the end of the series. Lets try Linux season 1, showed the power of Linux and made people get cleared with their caches that Linux is not user friendly. It made people find Linux an interesting operating system to use and work with. We offered a complete insight to everyone about linux and in the process, we in the team learnt a lot too. Dwarak gave the introductory session about Lets try Linux followed by community talk on OSUM website by Alagu Nachal. The next day, it was my turn to talk about the installations of various Linux flavors and I explained in detail the ways of partitioning hard disks and installing linux without affecting other operating systems installed previously. I explained most of them using Virtual Box and also about installing Linux (ubuntu) inside windows. When my seminar was going on, volunteers helped to install linux in their system based on my explanations. They sorted out their problems and we installed Linux as a native boot to many systems. My seminar was followed by a community talk by Sudha Rani about Javapassion.com . The next day to add spice, Anurag had showed a lot of customisation that would make the appearance of linux more appealing than its counterparts. He also explained about configuring wifi drivers (biggest problem in SASTRA) in an easy way. He told about the mad wifi drivers and various other drivers such as the ndiswrapper. Following him was Gayathri's talk on another community website. The next day, seminar was about wine emulator and Dwarak showed how easy it is to play age of empires and counter strike in Linux. The next day, it was Vikas's turn and he spoke about LAN and networking using Linux. He explained about SAMBA and stuff. Followed by his seminar was Komal's community talk. This ended the season 1 successfully. Hope the next season would rock too.

OSUM Pizza Party

Hey there,

I'm sorry to come up with a blog post this late. I had to settle a lot of issues with my previous post about my visit to Goa. I was also engaged in a few other stuffs which I'll be blogging about sooner or later.

Coming to the topic of discussion...

OSUM is a social networking website which offers a lot of features exclusively for students who belong to a technical university. It allows one to create forums and discuss about various technologies related to open source and Sun Microsystems.

A few of SASTRA students belonging to GLOSS, the open source community of SASTRA, are a part of this website. According to a recently declared contest, colleges that make more than 100 registrations in the OSUM website will get a free pizza party. And we were more than 200 before the last date of the contest. After long time then, we planned for the pizza party and Dwarak, the Sun Campus Ambassador of SU arranged one for GLOSS members at Krishna Canteen. Since pizza was not available at our campus, we had to go with sandwiches and samosas. It was completely organized right from the beginning to the end by Dwarak. Myself and Anurag voluanteered for distributing the sandwiches and stuff to all. Almost 90 of them attended OSUM party and were happy to the zenith. We gave chocolate cakes, samosas, mango drink, sandwich and much more. Everyone just loved it. We took a lot of pics and had a group photo too.

At this happy occassion, I felt a little sad too. I found members of GLOSS standing in their own gangs, for instance, the first year folks, second year ICT students, Hindi speaking students, third year girls and third year boys. They were all upto there own stories and chit chats. Good to see that, but these days since there is no proper unity, GLOSS is getting smaller and smaller day-by-day. People have started losing their interest in technologies of tomorrow. Also most of the important members of GLOSS have started moving towards various other activities and clubs. A few give reasons and blame their internals and other exams but the main reason being lethargic.

GLOSS is a great platform for learning and it has a very good base and is well structured too. The open source lab is also a great gift which makes GLOSS, a real technical community, far ahead and different from others. GLOSS is nothing but the outcome of sheer hardwork and sufferings of Kumar Abhisek who is presently the Student Co-ordinator of Sun Microsystems. Also Dwarakanath, Sun Ambassador of SU, has taken GLOSS to a great height by helping the developers at GLOSS, get projects to work on. He also made a lot of other contributions. He helped people to get involved in international contests organised by Sun, like the CodeJavafx, Code for freedom, etc. But sadly, not many of them are making use of GLOSS to a good extent. Even the number of mails in the mailing alias has gone down drastically. If this is the case today, tomorrow the situation might even get worst. And so, a few of us have decided to come up with a series of measures and events for GLOSS next year. Hope that would not let it vanish in the mid air even without the participation of main members of GLOSS.

Disclaimer : I don't know if this post would create any controversy, but be it anything, these are my views and is not meant to hurt anyone.

Statistics on my internet usage

Some Statistics about my internet usage! I used many other internet applications such as gtalk, avg updates, etc. My main use was to explore second world. I started using right from 3rd and you can see and increase in graph!

Start Time

Stop Time

Send[KB]

Receive[KB]

Total[KB]

Duration[second]

Traffic(KB)

2009/05/04 22:00:19 2009/05/04 23:24:19 15280 173213 188493 5040 188493 2009/05/04 19:41:03 2009/05/04 20:41:03 6468 81370 87838 3600 87838 2009/05/04 14:17:33 2009/05/04 14:23:33 17 1 18 360 18 2009/05/04 11:29:06 2009/05/04 14:17:28 14263 110055 124318 10102 124318 2009/05/03 23:03:45 2009/05/04 02:10:45 27313 178175 205488 11220 197081 2009/05/03 20:52:12 2009/05/03 21:17:12 5318 44191 49509 1500 49509 2009/05/03 18:16:39 2009/05/03 20:52:07 35132 316244 351376 9328 351376 2009/05/03 17:56:16 2009/05/03 18:16:34 526 5588 6114 1218 6114 2009/05/03 11:43:44 2009/05/03 12:53:44 3455 28862 32317 4200 32317 2009/05/03 11:23:01 2009/05/03 11:33:01 0 2 2 600 2 2009/05/03 10:39:34 2009/05/03 11:22:52 1 7 8 2598 8 2009/05/03 09:51:52 2009/05/03 10:39:25 1220 9453 10673 2853 10673 2009/05/02 18:31:29 2009/05/02 18:33:59 28 182 210 150 210 2009/05/02 18:29:55 2009/05/02 18:31:24 24 31 55 89 55 2009/05/02 18:19:17 2009/05/02 18:29:50 329 1882 2211 633 2211

So ppl, use secondlife, but be sure that Internet costs less or is free. Its actually good to explore the Second life technology. A lot of lecture series, the great languagelab, Princeton University etc rock. I wished I had unlimited connection for this sake!

Internet Usage by Second life...

Heya guys? addicted to second life. Though its an unbelievable creation, please know that it might eat up a lot of bytes by receiving and transferring. Though I didn't cross my limits, a two to three days of intermittent Second life usage, has already crossed 1 GB limit. Thanks to the plan that I use, I have free access upto 2.5 GB. So be careful with your pennies, that might go out of you pockets without your knowledge. Use second life during the free hours that the internet service providers allot. It'd be economical, else you'll end up using tera bytes..!

p.s. In no way, I mean to say that Second life is bad. Its actually good! Compared to any other service, I feel that SL eats less. I am just giving a warning that broadband internet newbies might burn out the internet service and money in SL unknowingly! :(

396 Visits Yesterday...

Hi ppl,
Glad to tell you all that, I had almost 400 ppl to visit my blog just yesterday. Cool.
Most of the visits were from Chennai, Goa and Seattle.