Qt Workshop at AWH
The Free Software Users Group, Calicut organized a Qt workshop at the AWH Engineering College at Kozhikode for their MCA final year students. I was asked to introduce them to Qt Programming and Application Development and I chose to do it in Python.
I thought this might be useful for those of you who are searching for an easy and powerful means of creating GUI-driven applications which are platform-independent. So I’ll be posting my “class” and a few examples that we tried out.
Check my Python-blog for details.
We’re Hacking Again…….
After a “short” break I return to active coding/hacking.
What with my laptop getting ruined when my friend Edwin fell on top of (read previous posts) and what with a flurry of exams, i’ve been out of touch with my hacking-karma for the last four two months or so.
So now we, the chipmonks, are at it again. We’re trying to develop some self-proclaimed cool projects which we think could earn us a quick buck. 
The Hackerdom Curtain Raiser
The official announcement of Hackerdom is scheduled for the 29th of August at Trichur.
Everyones Invited 
For details check: http://hackerdom.in
When Hardwork takes its toll
I just simply can’t beleive it! Edwin! and that too right before my own eyes………………
All of us, (Anil,Eddy, Sreeraj and me) were at Trivandrum Central Station having arrived by the Guruvayoor-Trivandrum express at four in the morning after a tiresome journey with sparing amounts of sleep.
Declaring that sleep was what he needed more than coffee bhai (as we fondly liked to call Eddy) rested his head on Anil’s shoulder while Srj made some fleeting joke on how we didn’t have any sleep for the last few days. Bhai stretched out his arms in an attempt to rejuvenate his tired body, when all of a sudden he just dropped on to the concrete platform floor banging his head (which we didn’t realize at the time). Knocked out with fatigue, is what we figured……..
On taking him to the Cosmopolitan Hospital, the doctor’s conformed our worst fears and declared his condition to be critical. He was vomiting blood and was in a semi-drowsy, semi-conscious state. The next day his severe internal hemorrhage and skull fracture was conformed.
He is now in the ICCU of the Cosmopolitan Hospital, Trivandrum. After two torturous days the doctors have finally started saying that his case is hopeful and though it may be a bit slow, a recovery should happen.
Pray for my friend. He was the best of us.
P.S. I thank the whole Swathanthra Malayalam Computation Team for their support and especially Anivar Aravind and Anoop John who came to our aid at the hour of our greatest need.
I also thank Lord Almighty for safe-gaurding Bhai from deeper danger.
When Hard work pays off
We all enjoy working and its been one of our most exhilerating moments when we finally launched our event site hackerdom.in. Albeit not completely finished we were still thrilled when at 6.30 .a.m on the eigth of October we could finally say that it had ninety percent of the elelments required for an event site, after an overnight hustle to launch the site before the Swanthatra Malayalam Computation’s KDE(malyalam) launch.
After two nights of hard toil Eddy, Anil, Khedar and me finally called it a day and gave into pure exhaustion, but with smiles on our faces.
Khedar is really to be congratulated for his brilliant artwork.
A Nation’s Hero…
Abhinav Bindra once again reminds a nation what pride actually is.
Hearty congrats my dear fellow……
Check out Abhinav’s blog
Project Days………
The last three days saw me running about with laptops trying to get mini-projects for my college running. Actually, my schedule was less cramped than my friend Anil’s. It happened thus that the mini-projects in our class were “core-dumped” on our heads. On top of which we had to work a wee bit harder on our project.
Anyways, I believe the three musketeers (Anil, Sreeraj and me) did come out with a few feathers on our caps. You guys can check out Anil’s blog for the more gory details.
Anyways I’ll go into a more detailed picture of our project:
Beneath its flamboyant title of ChipBluez0.1, lies a simple easy to use pc suite for nokia s60 phones with bluetooth.
More details to follow, when we release it officially under the GPL .
The Dark Knight returns…… and so do I……….
I won’t as much as go to the extent of declaring “Batman 2 – The Dark Knight” as the greatest movie to ever have been filmed, but its right up there all right. After witnessing an awesome performance by the late Heath Ledger, which no words could possibly describe, the Batman movie has now outclassed every other movie of its genre by miles (at least).
The Joker has mesmerized me back to life, and back to blogging.( the fact that my exams have now come to an end must have helped just a wee bit).
I got a book!
Okay so this guy from FedEx calls me up.
“Sir”, he calls me (immediately kindling my interest ), “You have a package from the States”.
“Ah! yes. I’ve been expecting it.”, I shout happily.
My friends Jerry and Pradeep came along with me to the local FedEx office. They gave me a book shaped package tightly bound in a white, synthetic, plastic-like cover.
Yes, I knew it was a book!.
Google had sent me a gift to congratulate me on my acceptance into the Google Summer of Code Programme.
I hastily unwrapped the package and showed off my book to my pals with a huge smile on my face.
I had been sent ‘Beautiful Code’ from O’REILLY.
I held it up proudly. This was proof of a dream come true. 
“Teri Aankhon ke siwa Duniyan mein rakha kya hain…………”
Its a song by the great Muhammed Rafi. It goes without saying that I’m a huge fan.
I chose this title for a post on the better things in life like friendship, books, footbal, calvin & hobbes ………
I’m gonna be highly irregular here. I’m writing without a compass and I’m writing on few things that make life worth all the trouble of breathing while I infest the dilapidated rooms of my college hostel.
Once in a while I go on “cynic” mode. But even then some things never loose their charm.
Like this Calvin & Hobbes cartoon………….
God ! I wish I could draw like that. The man who made those strokes is my hero. He is Bill Watterson.
I guess Hobbes has summed up pretty well how low I’m feeling right now.
How beautiful would it be sprawled on the grass, amongst trees, reading your favourite book, listening to your favorite music, eating french fries off a plate delicately balanced on your chest. Ah! that would be the life……..
You know what I think I can give it a try. I might be able to at least give it a shot.
I’m gonna get my pens and colors tomorrow and make some sketches andthen I’ll scan them and post them. Wait.
Swirl with Perl
Following my Python Blog. I’m also announcing the release of my next literary + coding venture :
Thats a Weblog too. Its destined to contained my more rash experiments in Perl.
But for now I think I’ll Just let it carry details of my Google Summer of Code project , that is, implementing full text search for Bricolage.
I think either my mentors at Bricolage will be pleased or I’ll have my ass kicked out to the Antartic
Pythonify………..
Hi all.
For the sake of those who did not know, I am quite in love with Python.
So I decided its time I showed more devotion. So I’m launching a Python Blog
check http://pythonify.wordpress.com.
I shall qoute all I write on it over here but I’m putting all major articles on Python over there.
I’ve not decided on whether or not to put toons on that blog. Overkill, do you think?
The benifits of working late………….
I burn a lot midnight oil when I’m working on something. I work late, though not necessarily hard, and I find it find that brain works much better in the dark. Curious isn’t it ?, how something I could never achieve on the eve of examination seems like child’s play when you do something that you love. ( And that doesn’t mean I don’t like exams, mind you )
There are some unique advantages to working late. Your brains starts working at speeds that you didn’t think was possible for one. You are able to roam unharnessed around the cloaked hostel grounds and the college campus, which in a manner inspires creation. And then there is always the fact that the night air does wonders for skin texture.
It was dark, and I had decided a stroll at 3.a.m. would certainly revitalize my tired circuits. I was working on something and having had little success, sleep was not an option.
I got out of the hostel and turned right, heading for the college campus. There was a figure some distance front of me. I peered. He was holding a mobile phone to his ear and purring away in the mouth piece.
An aching heart ; I smiled.
Turning away from our friend with the aching heart, I walked on towards the hostel mess only to find one more estranged soul perched on the steps with (yep!, you guessed right) a mobile glued to his ears.
Hokay!, weird. Wondering how these guys could actually stay awake talking I moved on. Only to be
confronted by yet another mobile-talking-wonder!. My eyes sweep around, taking in the hostel and its premises.
My jaw dropped of its own accord; the window-sills, the door steps, on top of all the bikes were sitting patient listeners, solemnly enduring their loved ones’ crooning. ( I even found one up a tree! ).
What is with these girls anyway? How they manage to wake up at these ungodly hours and keep whispering into their phones is fairly beyond me. It would take nothing short of an act of God to have me doing that at this hour of the night, ……unless…….yes!………..its……..my phone……..and its ringing…..
Of Viruses and Crack-heads……..
All you windows users out there, I know you are old hands at being infected so this may not sound intriguing at all.
I have a Windows XP installed on my box. My brother insists that it is much simpler to play Need For Speed on Windows ( wonder what gave him that idea ) and thus by forcing my hand via the long arm of parental law has managed to retain the XP alongside of my Debian Etch installation.
My friends also use Windows on my laptop.
The other day, on return from a most gratifying visit to the hostel mess, I found my machine with XP booted up, unmanned, anti-viruses flaming with protests of some security breach. I sat down to see what was wrong and found out that some nut called Ahsan had taken over ( God!, I hate mentioning that crack-head’s name! ). Check out my friend Anil’s blog for the gory details.
Well it takes one crazy guy to catch one. Anil did catch this virus which had stumped most of us and some of the more common safe-gaurding softwares. And he has posted on how to get rid of you-know-who. I really love having ANF to do what needs to be done.
I saw a movie……..
All right folks I finally saw a movie that is re-watchable: IRON MAN
It is worth getting myself to the theater once more just to watch all the cool “tech” stuff featured. Man!, would i like to get my hands on some of those.
I had a few friends with me. And all the un-awoken engineering spirit was kindled within their souls at the sight of those projected future machines. It is funny, how what man has already achieved is always so trivial next to where his mind now soars. Sometimes I wonder if this “developed intellect” is not, after all, a curse.
The constant drive for something better is quite a thrill, I admit. But forget not my friends who quote Frost’s famous lines, “..And miles to go before I sleep“, when asked to slow down and breathe for a while
, this poem titled LEISURE by Wm. Henry Davies
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
Whats up with Animations, eh?
My friends informed me, after watching me “painstakingly” piecing together another one of my little doodles, “Whats the big deal? Anyone with a good drawing tool could do that”;
Hmph! I strive to remain unconcerned.
“What then?”, I haughtily ask, “What then, do you propose?”
“Animations, dude! Thats where the money lies. Can you make any one of your drawings move?”
All right. I take up the challenge: The Gimp gave me this after a few tries -
That looks all right. Now I try something bigger.
Its pretty simple actually, to create animations with the Gimp. Heres how to do it
This one was much more satisfactory to make
All right. So I’m hooked. I think I’ll put in more animations in here.
Footnote: By the way, did you notice that the last three of my drawings looks like they are vector illustrated? Actually I used Kolourpaint to make these drawings and then I used this simple tool: autotrace. [ autotrace drawing_file >vector_drawing_file ]. But if I were you I would use it only for those sketches in black and white. Colours don’t go well with autotrace.
I’m still trying to get the Pencil tool to work on my Debian box. I’ve all but given up. If anyone out there has overcome this particular hazard or think that the actual hazard is my innate stupidity, please enlighten me.
I don’t know what to call this post!
Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.
- Friedrich von Schiller
The world is still round, the sun is still shining. All seems bright and beautiful. My internet connection is back!
All the cables had been cut! Yes! Some cruel vengeful soul had cut the cable lines that carried all the bytes of data I wanted to transmit from my room. I would have forgiven that dilapidated being, had they been able to repair the problem on time. But the fates were conspiring against me; it took them a never-heard-of-before FIVE days before I could check out my mail.
And as a result I had to spend my birthday ( that I share proudly with Rubin “Hurricane” Carter ) climbing up trees in my hostel compound, kicking away at a random football and eating my way through what would have fed an entire army.
Goooood Morningggggggggg GEC……………
I was absent from the world wide web for a few days.
My absence was due to some end of the term work I was forced to finish.
What was I up to these three days? Well, among other things we got a campus radio up and running. It was something on the spur. We had an open house exhibition at our college [Govt. Engineering College Trichur] and we hosted a campus radio using the college LAN and Icecast.
Visit our community: here mail us: gecRadio@chipmonks.co.in
The whole thing was a smashing hit. We had speakers installed at all our listening points in all our labs. Requests for songs and phone calls came pouring in.
But this was just a temporary set up. We plan on continuing the radio on a more permanent basis. Maybe we could get permission to transmit our radio via FM. We’ve been talking to the authorities and it seems we could get through the necessary formalities in a couple of months.
We are going to need a lot of help setting up this radio. Anyone who can help please leave your contact details as a comment and I’ll get back to you. Or please mail me at kpnunni@gmail.com.
I Got In !!!!……………
Yes, my dear ladies and gentlemen, it is true.
Yours truly has managed to make the cut. My application was selected to participate in this year’s Google Summer Code.
I think ecstatic would about cover what I’m feeling at the moment.
I’m so plussed, I’m gonna borrow a toon this time.
The Theory of Bliss…
O happiness! our being’s end and aim! — Alexander Pope
The fingers were now rebelling against the cruel overkill. It was now exceedingly difficult to keep the eyes from wandering towards all those free souls outside, waiting, oblivious to the exertions of the gray muscles within the hall. Every heart beat of the wrist watch seems to be egging me on to leave. I run my eyes over the feeble , but brave, attempt to answer the questions posed; Theory of Computation seems to be a bit beyond my grasp, after all. ‘Enough is enough’, unless God manifests himself in the form of a cipher to all the gibberish on the question paper in the next ten minutes, my answer sheet that looks like a disarrayed battlefield is not going to benefit of staying in the same room as me.
One last prayer and I tie up my answer sheet and step out- into the LIGHT!. Bliss!. Sweet oblivion.
It has finally ended. The novel manifestation of capital punishment- Examination- is now officially come to an end.
