FOSS.IN

This was my first and sadly the last FOSS.IN and as expected, it was full of fun as well as inspiration. Speakers and developers from around the globe had gathered for this event.
On the first day , i got off a little late from my room and reached the spot only to find a long queue for the ID cards. After the formalities, we (Praveen, Prayag and of course me) stepped in the hall.
The first talk was on Wikimedia by Danese Cooper who also said "Wikileaks!= Wikimedia" :)
There were several other talks but i attented a few which included :
Beyond init - Leonart Pottering
Failures of Fedora and what we learned from it -Rahul Sundaram
Day two was even more interesting:
It featured Fedora MiniConf . It included 6 talks. Rahul started it by getting throught the schedule and then Amit talked about virtulisation.This was followed by talk by Arun and then Ankit Patwari and then Shreyank talked about his Four Seasons Of Code.
Later we had a packaging session by Arun Sag.
The last day included another packaging session by Rahul and it was very detailed. Thanks to IRC :)
The event ended with a lively performance by Raghu Dixit , a well known band in Karnatka and the ambience was filled with excitement. Thanks to him , i even learned some Kannad words!!
It was an awesome experience and will be remembered for a long time .
Proud to use Open Source .

Convert .jpg to .pdf instantly! and combine multiple pdf to one

Hi all, recently i had to convert some .jpg files to pdf , i knew that it can be done via GIMP by exporting as pdf but going by the number of files , it would have taken a lot of time, so i googled and found this amazing tool called Imagemagick which one can find in the Ubuntu repository.
First you need to install it as:
sudo apt-get install imagemagick
and then convert simply as:
convert foo.jpg foo.pdf
Moreover i'm thinking of writing a bash script which would convert all the files at one go. It will take some time so keep watching.
Here's script i wrote to convert all the .jpg files in the current directory to .pdf:


#!/bin/bash
count=1;
for file in *.JPG;
do
echo "$file coverted to $count.pdf"
convert $file $count.pdf
let count=$count+1
done


Now to combine multiple pdfs to one , one needs to install two small packages:
gs and pdftk
next to combine use the following command:
pdftk *.pdf output combined.pdf
where combined.pdf is the new combined pdf formed.

Hope it was useful.
Proud to use open source :)

Anyone into Programming?

Hi, it's been really long since the last post.I've been really busy of late due to campus placements and this i think will go on for another semester :(
Neverthless i've been practising at various online judges like SPOJ
and TOPCODER . They are a very good platform for one to build one's programming skills and the problems vary with difficulty.
I came across a blog recently about how one can improve his programming skills and would like to share with you all. Though it ultimately depends on how you go about it but here's just a startup.
Good luck. :)

Java plugin not working ?

hi i came across this problem that while trying to launch any applet or run a .jnpl file it failed to load. I checked my system and found that java was installed but not sun java ,it was icedtea . So i found a solution to it in ubuntu.
Go to System->Administration->Software Resources->Other Resources and enable to canonical repos.
Next just install sun-javaX-plugin. (where X is the latest version).
Hope it solves your problem.
Let the source be open :)

Adding libgraph, an alternative to graphics.h in ubuntu

hi all, recently we were asked to write graphics programmes in C and we were 'suggested' to use Windows as Linux doesn't support the graphics.h library . This really felt awkward and i knew there must be some way out. By some googling, i found that libgraph was the alternative.
Here's how to install it in ubuntu:
1. Install the libgraph tar.gz file from here.
2. Next you need to install some dependencies , i.e packages:
libsdl-image1.2 libsdl-image1.2-dev guile-1.8 guile-1.8-dev (For fedora it's SDL-image and SDL-imagedev and the rest two are same)
3. After that you need to extract the downloaded tar and cd to it.
4. Next perform these:
(i). ./configure
(ii) make
(iii) make install
5. Next you need to copy all the libgraph shared files from /usr/local/lib to /usr/lib ,i.e
sudo cp /usr/local/lib/libgraph.* /usr/lib
That's it! now you may run any programme using graphics.h library and see the resutls. ;)

Here's a sample programme to draw a rectangle :


#include stdio.h // please put in angle brackets, there was some problem while posting
#include graphics.h // --do--

int main(void)
{
int gd=DETECT, gm=VGAMAX; // gd is the device driver , gm is the graphics mode
initgraph(&gd,&gm,NULL); // to initialize the graph
moveto(0, 0);
rectangle(50,50,500,200);
while (!kbhit());
closegraph();
return 0;
}


Note:For running the programme you must use the lgraph flag with gcc i.e if the programme is test.c then use gcc test.c -lgraph




For more details you may check out : this
Let the source be open :)

Google fails but makes merry!

Here's something interesting. Google recently closed down Wave and they are celebrating about it. Yes, it's a trend they follow, that when they close any service they enjoy as it reflects some more work and more innovation is required by them . Here's the link with full details. Wonder! Let's Celebrate

Reverse Search!

I was just experimenting with some commands when i pressed the Ctrl + R button and i discovered a great feature in linux(ubuntu).
It's called reverse search and is similar to the history command . It gives you the most matched commands which you had typed on the terminal. So, explore it now and njoy!

And this is my favourite sound theme

It's from the movie Braveheart , a masterpiece. The sound track has been composed by James Horner who also composed for movies like Titanic, Avatar,The Karate Kid...

Adding a new java library to Netbeans

hi, i needed to add a new java library to NetBeans so that it becomes easier to code. I just couldn't get it how to do it ,then finally i got the solution on irc.
here are the steps so that you don't feel harassed the next time :)

1. Save the folder in the home directory, e.g /home/yourloginname.
2. Now, open NetBeans, go to the Project you've created and there you'll find the Library. There you can add a new Jar file .
3. To add the docs you need Library Manager which is under Tools. There in the Javadoc tab you can add the doc folder.
4.. Then you also need to add this folder under the same library package as you added the Jar file
That's it , njoy coding .
Hope that was useful. :)

BOTS BOTS

hello, i wanted to make a bot for our channel on IRC . At first i thought that Perl would be quite useful and is the most preferred language specially for this purpose but why learn new semantics when Java is at rescue? Yes, there is this pirbot module in java which has all the functionalities to help you build it.
Thanks Java :)

P.S: It's always better btw if you learn more languages. I was in a hurry though.

Now make your own movies online!!

hi all, i was watching a vedio when i found a link to this amazing site. Here you can literally create your own animation movie , hold on , it doesn't require you to be someone like Subhash Ghai but you only need to type . Yes, just write the script and you have all facilities like camera,cast , view ,lights etc to make your movie come alive . So go on and become a movie maker!

here's my first useful app in android

hi friends, today i'm delighted as i have developed an application in android which would speak out to you the new messages as they arrive to your inbox! so no longer straining your eyes. Just start the app and it will run in background.
Here's a demo for you all



njoy ! :)

IT'S ANDROID TIME

Hi folks. i recently started writing applications for android , and i came across this great site which a number of very helpful tutorials to help you get started.They are hosted by Mathias Riesh.

Here's one :




Hope that helps

Love open source :)

Tweet through terminal!

I was experimenting with how to make a fast tweet when i stumbled upon an article as to how can one tweet right from one's terminal.
for this you need to install a very small programme called curl and then open the terminal and write:

curl -u yourusername:yourpassword -d status = "your status message" http://www.twitter.com/statuses/updates.xml

and for those who want the easier way out can try for gtwitter but i think it won't work under proxy server, so better watch out !

be free, use open source :)

Changing login-screen in ubuntu 9.10

This one's pretty interesting, i wanted to change the user-icon in ubuntu 9.10 login screen but found that from this edition of ubuntu users were not allowed to mess up with it , so i searched and searched and found that there was a way out!

open the terminal , type
usr/bin/gnome-about-me
and you will see a window pop up, here you can choose the icon of your choice!
You can even add new icons in the folder /usr/share/pixmaps/faces and can choose from them

Happy Linuxing :)

install nvedia graphis card driver in ubuntu

hi, this was really getting frustrating, i tried installing the drivers through Hardware Tools ad also tried Envyng but nothing was working ! finally i got the solution , manual labour is sometimes more fruitful! . I downloaded the driver .run file from the nvedia site, switched over to command mode ( Alt+Ctrl+F1 ) ,stopped the X server ,by writing :
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop and then installed the driver , after that i started the X server
and was at last successful
Hope this was useful!