Anurag's Weblog

Graduation Ceremony' 08

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 05:36:33 PDT

Attended the Spring'08 Graduation Ceremony.

Anand wins the Chess World Chess Championship

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 21:50:00 PDT

Anand wins of WCC against Kramnik after 11 games. I have been following the games closely and all his wins were wonderful. Anand outplayed Kramnik in preparation with a number of novelties!

Diwali at UT Austin

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 06:22:27 PST

Indian Community organizes Diwali at University of Texas at Austin and we got to get some taste of Diwali here. Fireworks was great, along with pujas and food :)
Though we later went to a restaurant for dinner. Most importantly, got to see a number of guys after a long gap.

hdltags version 1 released

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 20:03:45 PDT

First version of hdl tags released:

http://code.google.com/p/hdltags/

The perl code creates tags for verilog/system verilog/vhdl code for browsing the code with functionalities similar to ctags

Current version supports Verilog and System-Verilog. VHDL would be supported soon! Only module names are tagged.

Usual ctags commands work:

vi −t : Start vi and position the cursor at the file and line where "tag" is defined.

:ta : Find a tag.

Ctrl-] : Find the tag under the cursor.

Ctrl-T : Return to previous location before jump to tag (not widely implemented).

Another Semester over

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 05:36:33 PDT

Spring Semester is over and I have a few days to rest. It's been nine months now since I am in Austin, time is just flying here. I have been very infrequent on the blog all this time. To give quick update, apart from completing two semesters here, I went to Florida last March. Visited Disney-World, Miami, Keywest, Tempa etc. For the summers, I would be interning in Intel, Austin.

Pictures of UT!!

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 05:36:33 PDT

I spent the last evening roaming on the campus with a camera with some friends. The photographs have been uploaded on flickr. UT is a beautiful campus and it does not get dark even at 8:00pm in this part of the world.
I also created some web-pages and uploaded them on my ece web-page earlier in the day. It still needs some work but a start page is ready and working.

Grandcentral - Customize everything about your cell

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:02:33 PDT

GrandCentral is an exciting application for personalizing a lot of things about phones through the web. Since the google bought it a few days back, I hope it would remain a free service for ever like most other google services. With this, you can choose a number which stays with you for your whole life without having to bothering about mobile service. One can do a lot of things from screening users to blocking them, receive voicemail notification using e-mail and SMS, personalize different things like different Phones using a single number. I have quickly created a number for myself which I hope will remain with me forever: (512) 524-3985

AideRSS -- Filter the RSS

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 05:04:50 PDT

AideRSS is a new service which filters out RSS feeds to present before you only selective good posts. It may be useful for people who are get hunderds of feeds and are not able to spend time reading the most important ones. The idea is important because of the increasing usage of RSS. However, I was not quite satisfied with the results of this site for my blog :(

Feedburner Integration!

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 08:00:04 PDT

Ever since acquisition by Google, Feedburner has made some interesting features free and created some new features. My brand is one such feature allowing feedburners to retain their domain-name in the feed. I used this feature to convert my feed address to
http://feeds.anurag-kumar.com/anurag-kumar from the earlier http://feeds.feedburner.com/anurag-kumar . Blogger has started allowing feed redirect which now allows more accurate estimation of number of subscribers by feedburner. I have activated this feature also, so hopefully I would see some increase in the number of subscribers :)

Create sessions to access terminal on multiple computers on Linux

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 07:39:40 PDT

On a linux machine, nohub command can be used to keep a program running even if a terminal is closed. But if you want to use a session from more than one computer, screen command can be used. Matt Cutts has a good short tutorial on how to use screen for working on a session from more than one computers:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/a-quick-tutorial-on-screen/
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/screen-power-tips-screenrc/

Anti mosquito software !

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 06:23:01 PDT

Mosquitoes are a big menace and people keep finding ways of driving them away in different ways. A number of softwares are available now which use different methods for keeping the mosquitoes away.

- Anti mosquitoes is a unique software which creates a low noise to keep the mosquitoes away. Various parameters need to be adjusted to suit it to the mosquitoes of your home :)
- Download.com also lists a few of them. They are also simple to use requiring no external devices.

Some of them are even compatible for your mobile devices!

Google spreadsheet accessible with filters!

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 05:56:25 PDT

A very important feature which I find lacking in google spreadsheets is filtering. However, what sets it apart is its capability of collaboration and APIs. A google intern has created a simple and nice application for viewing google spreadsheets with filters using publicly available APIs. This can work as a great filler till spreadsheet starts allowing filters in its main version.

Setting up cron in Linux or Unix using shell script

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 05:37:42 PDT

Setting up cron is an easy way of performing time-scheduled jobs in linux or unix machines. Cyberciti has a good tutorial on how to setup cron.

Sometimes you may want to execute a script on 2nd Monday or 4th Thursday only. A one line shell script can do it for you.

Consider this:

$ date +%a

The output is: Fri
Now to execute a script on first Friday:

$crontab -e

Now, append the following code in script:

# Run a script called myscript.sh on First Friday at 11:30:
30 11 1-7 * Fri [ "$(date '+%a')" == "Fri" ] && /path/to/myscript.sh

Create your own digg like site with coRank!

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 04:30:50 PDT

coRank had started as a digg like social voting platform. But now it has transformed to allow users to create their own digg like social voting platform with a lot of customization! I have recently created a page using corank on my domain: http://news.anurag-kumar.com. I hope to use it in future :)

Zoho creator to have an upgrade!

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 07:42:40 PDT

Zoho keeps coming with nice upgrades and new tools! They are now going to announce an upgrade of Zoho creator. From what I have been told this new upgrade will have following important features:

1. Completely New UI. Ability to creats apps with simple drag & drop.
2. Scripting with no coding. Introduction of 'Deluge Script Builder' which will let users add advanced functionalities into the applications users create.
3. Embedding Form/View in websites, blogs and other Zoho Applications.

A demo is available here: http://www.vimeo.com/clip:210220
Such applications are good time-savers when you don't want to create them yourself. I had once used it for creating form for my web-site. It works well and data filled in forms is stored on zoho server. What irked me then was that there was no notification process for web-site administrator to know when a visitor has filled a form.

Finding longitude and latitude on Google maps

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 03:22:05 PDT

Google maps does not show the longitude and latitude of a place by default. I remember wasting a lot of time finding these data for an application of mine. This small javascript code can solve the purpose!

javascript:void(prompt('', gApplication.getMap().getCenter()));

This code when copy-pasted in the location bar of browser and executed, pops up a window showing the longitude and latitude.

Find the neighbors of your domain!

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 07:01:01 PDT

MyIPNeighbors is a good application for finding the sites which are hosted on the same server. Searching for yahoo.com gives all the domains hosted on its server. google and msn search also give such results but they are not as accurate as the results of this site!

Some funny csh/sh command outputs!

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 06:27:41 PDT

Just came across some funny csh/sh command outputs:

% cat "food in cans"
cat: can't open food in cans

% nice man woman
No manual entry for woman.

% ar r God
ar: creating God

% "How would you rate Quayle's incompetence?
Unmatched ".

% [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?
Missing ].

% ^How did the sex change operation go?
^ Modifier failed.

% If I had a ( for every $ the Congress spent, what would I have?
Too many ('s.

% make love
Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop.

% got a light?
No match.

% man: why did you get a divorce?
man:: Too many arguments.

% !:say, what is saccharine?
Bad substitute.

/* not csh but sh */
$ PATH=pretending!/usr/ucb/which sense
no sense in pretending!

$ drink bottle: cannot open
opener: not found

Some inspiration

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 06:25:32 PDT

Graduation day speeches are meant to be inspirational. Steve Jobs speech at Stanford is probably his most famous one. Just came across this piece by President of NUS:

I see three paths ahead of you – those of the Koi, the Bluefish and the Atlantic Salmon.

Of all the fishes in the world, the Koi has the most comfortable life. When young, it is carefully selected and bred for its beauty. It then spends its entire life in a sheltered environment, living in order to be admired by others. The Koi is also fragile – change the water by a bit, and the Koi perishes. People who are like the Koi play it safe and do not venture out; they thrive in the established system. Then, there is the path of the Bluefish. Some years ago, I went deep sea fishing in the Atlantic Ocean. I caught a bluefish. It was not a large fish, yet it put up a strong fight. And when I reached inside its mouth to take out the hook, it bit right through my thick gloves into my finger, almost biting it off. The captain said to me: "You must be a first-timer at ocean fishing. Ocean fishes like the bluefish are tough and fierce. Have you been fishing only in small ponds?"

People who are like the Bluefish take risks and embrace life, seizing the abundant opportunities of the vast ocean. While others are exhausted by a changing environment, Bluefish types thrive in it. This is the path of the worldly Bluefish. Home can be anywhere – and perhaps, nowhere.

Finally, there is the path of the Atlantic Salmon. Born in freshwater streams, it heads out to the open seas in young adulthood. After maturing in the ocean, the Atlantic Salmon returns to where it was born, to breed, and then heads out again. It makes this journey between its home and the open sea several times over its lifetime.

People who are like the Atlantic Salmon are at ease moving between the old and the new, between the familiar and the unfamiliar, between what is comfortable and what is challenging. While they seize opportunities to grow in the global arena, they understand the true meaning of home. Home is not just anywhere. Home is where the heart is. Home is about identification and commitment, about family and nation.

Orkut now allows feed import!

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 08:05:14 PDT

Just found that Orkut is now allowing importing feeds into your profile. To make things easy, blogs of blogger account and pics of picasa web-album are already present in the list of feeds that can be added. This is good improvement, although slow compared to other players in social networking especially facebook. I have added my picture blog and this weblog to my profile!

Google announces Feedburner acquisition

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 02:45:28 PDT

Google has finally announced the acquisition of Feedburner. Feedburner is one of the services I have been using for my blog. With this acquisition, the number of different log-ins that I have to remember will reduce :) Also, if the blogger feed can be directly burned, I can deliver ads directly into the feeds! That's what google wants to do with this acquisition. We can also hope for some nice improvements in the way we consume feeds today (google has recently announced a closed beta of mashup editor, which people are hoping to be something similar to yahoo pipes).

Yahoo rolling out unlimited storage

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Thu, 31 May 2007 05:26:51 PDT

Yahoo mail has started showing "You now have unlimited storage" in my account! Yahoo has come a long way from providing just 5 MB some five years ago. Although this feature won't bring me back to using yahoo, I would definitely use it as a dumping ground forwarding mails automatically from all other accounts :)

Google goes offline with google gears

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Thu, 31 May 2007 05:22:57 PDT

Google has announced Google gears which attempts to take browser offline. At present, it supports Google reader and very likely it would start supporting gmail and google docs in near future. This development is in sync with the announcement of mozilla to support offline browsing in firefox 3.0. This application being open source can be used by other developers and soon we would see a number of sites allowing offline access to data. If implemented in google docs, it would be a huge advantage over other competitors providing similar service.

On the results of public examinations

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Wed, 30 May 2007 06:20:32 PDT

Results of a number of public examinations are being declared. Today, the result of IIT entrance was declared where some 7000+ students were given place in the merit list. This is a huge increase from last times, maybe because some new institutions are added in the list which would use JEE for their student intake.
A few days ago, results of Class-X CBSE results were declared. Intrestingly, more than 3000 students have got more than 95% marks. A Patna boy is the topper this time with 99.4% marks!

Google maps now has street view

noreply@blogger.com (anurag) — Wed, 30 May 2007 03:12:11 PDT

Google has announced Google Maps street view.

They had licensed some related technologies and this was a natural addition. Google maps is quite fast with new feature addition and they are bridging the gap between google earth and this online version.