Software Freedom Week Celebrations @ GLOSS, SASTRA

Hello Readers,

I'm really sorry for not posting for so many days. I've been busy lately on many things like looking out for final year project internships and things like that. Anyways, the news is that, 3rd and 2nd year folks of GLOSS are organising Software Freedom week at SASTRA University. Software Freedom Week is celebrated inorder to emphasize the importance of open source to everyone. And, being at college, students and faculty members take immense pleasure in getting to know about what open source can do for them. Last year, we had conducted many competitions during the open source week, but this time, I'm not quite sure about the kind of surprises our juniors are gonna give us. I've got high hopes on them and I must say, the publicity thingies have been going quite well. Especially the posters are quite attractive. I sincerely appreciate the enthusiasm that they have been showing towards the community.

To tell a few lines about how open source can help you, I've got a small experience to share with. Recently I've been working on linux kernel development. It’s been going quite good and I seriously can’t express the kind of thrill I feel when I compile the code of Linux Kernel by myself and when I go through the source code of scheduler and stuff. I feel that may be, sky is the limit for the joy that you get when you’ve got some real cool operating system like Linux’s kernel source to play with. If not for open source, you might not be able to play with an OS’s source code like what you can do right now.

It’s like this... everyone cannot focus on reinventing the same wheel and releasing it as a new technology or product. It is always good to make use of already invented things and yet make something real cool.

Let me stop with this for now, it’s already late 1:40 a.m., I might start blabbering in the post if I don’t.

Till my next post, C’ya guys n’ don’t forget to attend the SFW celebrations at SASTRA :)

Lex and Yacc

Its been long since I've blogged about anything. I wanted to share lots of things, but unfortunately I couldn't find enough time to write on a topic. A few days back, I completed my lab exams successfully. I had a great time learning new concepts such as Lex and Yacc. Lex and Yacc are powerful tools through which we can design complex programs such as a compiler with very less effort. Most of the programming is done by Lex itself. Let me explain how it works!
Basically, we have got to write a lex program which has an extension ".l". The lex file contains lex specifications which are mainly regular expressions and their corresponding C response code. Once we write a regular expression, we can specify a C language function that will execute the necessary actions that are to be taken if input matches to one of the regular expressions. The lex can also return values to other programs. Lexers are written to analyse the syntax of anything. For e.g. a decimal number can be of form 90.34 or 1232e10.
Yacc is a tool to write parsers. Parsers are grammar analysers. We can specify grammars as we do in writing grammar for CFGs and other automata concepts. If yacc finds the input to be matching to the grammar, it finds the action to be taken and executes it.
According to me, they form a really powerful tool and a must learn for any developer/student of CSE. I just loved when I wrote shorter and simpler regular expressions for solving my lab exercises. I should thank Mr.Sai Ram for giving us an insight into the world of regular expressions,grammars and their implementations.
May be if time permits, I'm willing to do a spelling and grammar checking program and embed it into my own text editor.

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.