Anurag Bhandari

The Place Of Shiekh Of UAE

Anurag — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Here's the glimpses of the palace of the Shiekh of UAE

Downloads

Anurag — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

About

Anurag — Fri, 23 Dec 2005 07:55:44 +0000

Team India On Spree

Anurag — Fri, 23 Dec 2005 15:25:46 +0000

The fact that the Indian Cricket Team was taking faltering move to disaster, is not a memory so ancient. But then, Team India emerged out as a glorious and ever-winning team in a short span of time, learning from the blunders commited previously. All the team members are now utilizing their skills to the full and making India proud by constantly winning tests and one-dayers. India has had a winning start this season by clintching the series title from the Sri Lankan Cricket Team by 6-1 lead in a seven ODI series. Then, in the next series against South Africa, India ended the winning rampage of the SA team by putting an end to the 20 consecutive wins by SA. Then, India won the latest three match test series vs Sri Lanka too by a 2-0 win(one test match been drawn due to rain). Indian Team has come up all together as an invincible team with the new talent like MS Dhoni, RP Singh, Yuvraj Singh and Mohammad Kaif showing up.

Yeah! I got the MCP credential

Anurag — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 13:57:42 +0000

Finally, today I got certified as MCP(Microsft Cerified Professional) on the Windows 2000 track. Its the first step towards becoming a MCSE(Microsft Certified Systems Engineer) or MCSA(Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator). This was the day I had been waiting for since four months and the reason I didn't use to be on the net and updating my blog since a long. I guess, MCP has many career oppertunities. But I did it not for a good placement and all that but for my own satisfaction as I wanted to convert my playing with computers nature into some serious business.

HALO - The movie

Anurag — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 13:07:34 +0000

Halo in theatres??? Its a dream come true for the game lovers especially for those who fully appreciated and enjoyed playing Halo 1 & 2. Believe it or not Halo movie is going to hit the theatres in 2007, according to the source. Based on a great storyline and thrilling adventures with mindblowing actions, this movie will surely strike the box-office. Unbelieivable, but believe it!!!

TAG

Anurag — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 09:33:46 +0000

Soft-shell mobile phone. "tag" is a new, malleable, casual communicator. It is not only soft but also flexible, for example, it can be hung from a belt or wrapped around the user's arm. Shape-memorizing material and multiple pressure sensors allow the phone to change its shape according to the mode. The user can also alternate the mode by changing the shape.

Evil Baby Genius

Anurag — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 09:52:06 +0000

So, remember to not let a little baby alone near your computer in future. Or else.....

Blog moved to a new location

Anurag — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:20:42 +0000

I know this is damn too late to inform my dear visitors, but I've moved my blog to a new location and it's been a while since I did this. The new location is: http://anurag.acespace.co.uk/ I apologize for any inconvenience the absence of this post since a long might have caused

Back to basics

Anurag — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 04:11:22 +0000

So, now I am finally back here, at my Wordpress hosted blog. Prior to this, I had been enjoying the free quality services of AceSpace hosting company, which now seems to have been hacked or is down for some unknown reasons. What that means is, due to my utter negligence (of not backing up my databases from my AceSpace account in time), I have lost all my old posts, all the comments, the list of friends, and everything I had on my AceSpace account. Damn, I even lost all that hard earned reputation that I had built in the so-called "blog-o-sphere" using that site. :( This implies that, unless I get my AceSpace website back, or get some other good webhosting service with my desired domain name, I am here to blog, to spit out rants, to relax, to enjoy. :) Anyway, I am hoping to find some new friends here with my new posts, and hoping to see some new comments. ;) From now, expect me to visit this blog of mine often enough to become regular in posting new entries. Hey, do you like this new design (of my blog)?

Recent happenings

Anurag — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:29:27 +0000

Although I haven't yet gotten out of the agony that I got on loosing my previous blog, I am finding this new place quite comfortable. Today, I was feeling like blogging here, after so much time. So, here are some events related to me take took place not too long ago:

Granular 1.0 Preview was released on 14th March 2008. Check out the release annoucnement here. I am quite happy with this release and so are rest of the Team Granular members who put the real efforts in making this release possible. So far, the reaction of the users who have tried this release has been nice and as expected. Another good news related to the release came when its official torrent became the featured torrent at our tracker linuxtracker.org. Check out the torrent here.
My journey of learning a couple of programming languages resumed after the latest Granular release. I am now continuing my Python book from where I left it and sharpening my HTML/XHTML concepts simultaneously. Starting from today, I have also started a book on Java (damn, you cannot be called even a "computer guy" without learning this language!).
Windows Vista SP1 has been released and it's on my download schedule for this weekend.
Apart from the programming books, these days I am reading a little nice novel by John Grisham. The name of the novel is Skipping Christmas. Till now, I have found this book a real worth-a-read.
Yesterday, I took out some time to resume playing my favorite game - Half-Life 2.

More to talk later. :)

Projects

Anurag — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 12:28:21 +0000

My projects include (both active and inactive): Granular Linux Project Granular is a Linux distribution targeted at the desktop users. It features a user-friendly and easy to use environment. Granular also unites the KDE and Enlightenment desktop environments. Official sites: Granular Linux Granular Project MyBlog MyBlog is a blogging engine which lets the end user to easily create / edit / manage blog posts and comments. It is easy to use and comes with nice features, like specialized sections "MyMovies", "MyGames", "MyWebsites", and "MyWidgets"; all of these sections come with corresponding nice & unique features. Download: Click here to check out the downloads for MyBlog Note: The official website of MyBlog is down for some reason. So, the above link provides a temporary location to download MyBlog. As soon as the official website of MyBlog is up again, I'll update this page accordingly.

Anurag — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 12:29:34 +0000

Anurag — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 12:32:05 +0000

Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP)

Anurag — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 12:32:53 +0000

Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS)

Anurag — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 12:34:15 +0000

Resume

Anurag — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 12:35:23 +0000

Please download my resume from here. I keep my resume as updated as possible. Resume (PDF) Resume (DOC)

Anurag — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:44:26 +0000

Anurag — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:45:14 +0000

se_seminar

Anurag — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:06:15 +0000

se_seminar

Anurag — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:06:59 +0000

Downloads

Anurag — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:07:26 +0000

Metrics and their scope (Software Engg. Seminar)

Download [PDF] Download [DOC]

Jumbled Words Game

Download [Setup] Download [Zipped] Download [Source Code]

Recent Happenings - II

Anurag — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:48:51 +0000

Posting after about a month. So, what happened in the past one month with me? Read on....

In my Python learning quest, I have reached the most interesting and core part - OOP (Object Oriented Programming). Before that, I had been reading the functional programming part, which is also interesting in itself, but of course not as interesting as implementing classes ;) . You might be thinking why I am too slow in learning Python. That's because of a simple reason that I get to read my Python book only when I get some time (which I rarely get in continuation).
Last month, I also created a Python based Jumbled Words game. It's a GUI-based game which uses wxPython as the front-end. I have already prepared a setup file for this little game (for Windows) which I will be posting for download soon.
As a part of a college project, last week I was all too busy coding a light-weight Forum System (prepared in PHP and uses MySQL as the database backend). If you are interested in checking out how it looks like, visit: http://www.granularproject.org/sandbox/forum/. Currently, it doesn't boast of many features, but at least provides all the basic functionality in a cool looking interface. And well, I don't intend to introduce any more features in it. It is better left as it is!
On Granular development front, I had been slow since the last 2 weeks. But now, I intend to devote some good amount of planned time as the next Granular Linux release date is approaching soon.
The recently launched IPL (Indian Premier League) has been quite a success. I myself love watching it. the major matches are very addictive and high scoring. Gosh, due to IPL I am worried about my forthcoming end semester exams! ;)
And did you remember I was reading Skipping Christmas by John Grisham? Well, I haven't gotten any far in it yet. I am still there where I left it the last time I gave a mention of it. ;)

Jumbled Words game in Python

Anurag — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:20:00 +0000

I talked about a jumbled words, GUI-based, game in my last post. I made that game just for fun. It was not at all hard to make when you are using a write-less-do-more-language, like Python. I would like to share the code of that program with you and give a short tutorial on how to create your own Jumbled Words game. The tutorial is platform-independent. So, no matter if you are using Windows or Linux or Mac, the tut will work out in all the cases. Here's a screenshot of the Jumbled Words game running in Linux.

First of all, you will need the Python programming language installed on your system. Get it from here: http://python.org/download/.
Next, you'll need a GUI-tool kit for Python which would actually allow you create GUI based applications. I used the wxPython tool kit. Get it from here: http://wxpython.org/download.php#binaries.
After installing Python and wxPython on your system, you'll be ready to start writing the code now.
Create a new file, copy-paste the following contents in it, and save it by the name JumbledGUI.py. import wx # First, we define a dictionary of jumbled words dict = {"special":"licapes", "guava":"augav", "begin":"ngibe", "compression":"serniospmoc", "praying":"igyaprn", "linux":"uilxn", "opposite":"seopopit", "depricated": "cpdirdaete", "leonardo da vinci":"o draconian devil", "the mona lisa":"oh lame saint", "dreaming":"earimngd", "tormented":"nemortted", "flabbergasted": "tasedbgaberlaf", "meticuluos":"ecusoulmit", "rectify":"fitecry", "mobile":"ibelmo", "computer":"mertopcu", "granular":"lrgaruna", "metro":"torem", "outrageous":"gretsouauo", "nothing":"hotning", "appreciable":"celbepiapra", "vandalism":"misdanlav", "tropical":"ptorlica"} def func(): 'This is the core function of the program' # The result of popitem() method is a tuple # The following is an example of "sequence unpacking" word, jumbled = dict.popitem() return word, jumbled def guess(event): ans = input_word.GetValue() if(ans == query[0]): result.SetLabel(label="Congrats! You got it right.") else: result.SetLabel(label="Sorry, wrong answer. Better luck next time!") def next(event): # After a person clicks the Start button for the first time, this will happen nextButton.SetLabel("Next") guessButton.Enable() hintButton.Enable() input_word.SetValue("") # Unless we define the variable "query" as global, the function "guess" won't be able to access it global query query = func() if(dict!={}): question.SetLabel(label="The jumbled word is: "+query[1]) result.SetLabel(label="Waiting for your input...") else: question.SetLabel(label="Game Over!") result.SetLabel(label="Yup, the game is finally over!") guessButton.Disable() nextButton.Disable() hintButton.Disable() def hint(event): input_word.SetValue(query[0]) app = wx.App() win = wx.Frame(None, title="Jumbled Words Game", size=(460, 345)) win.CenterOnScreen() bkg = wx.Panel(win) guessButton = wx.Button(bkg, label='Guess') guessButton.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, guess) guessButton.SetDefault() # Unless the player has pressed the Start button, the Guess button will be disabled guessButton.Disable() nextButton = wx.Button(bkg, label='Start') nextButton.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, next) hintButton = wx.Button(bkg, label='Hint') hintButton.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, hint) hintButton.Disable() input_word = wx.TextCtrl(bkg) question = wx.StaticText(bkg, label="Welcome to jumbled words game\nTotal words: 24", style=wx.ALIGN_CENTER) # We define some stylish fonts for the welcome message / game questions font = wx.Font(pointSize=18, family=wx.DECORATIVE, style=wx.NORMAL, weight=wx.NORMAL) question.SetFont(font) result = wx.StaticText(bkg, label="Waiting for the initial result...", style=wx.ALIGN_CENTER) hbox = wx.BoxSizer() hbox.Add(input_word, proportion=1, flag=wx.EXPAND) hbox.Add(guessButton, proportion=0, flag=wx.LEFT, border=5) hbox.Add(nextButton, proportion=0, flag=wx.LEFT, border=5) hbox.Add(hintButton, proportion=0, flag=wx.LEFT, border=5) vbox = wx.BoxSizer(wx.VERTICAL) vbox.Add(question, proportion=1, flag=wx.EXPAND | wx.ALL, border=5) vbox.Add(hbox, proportion=0, flag=wx.EXPAND | wx.LEFT | wx.BOTTOM | wx.RIGHT, border=5) vbox.Add(result, proportion=0, flag=wx.EXPAND | wx.LEFT | wx.BOTTOM | wx.RIGHT, border=5) bkg.SetSizer(vbox) win.Show() app.MainLoop()
To run it, open the command-line. In Windows, go to Start > Run. Type cmd. In Linux, open Terminal is GNOME or Konsole in KDE. Then cd (move) to the location of the folder containing the file JumbledGUI.py. After that, type python JumbledGUI.py and enjoy playing with the just created application.
Now that you just ran it, what if you wanted to show it to your friend? Would it look good if he had to issue the command in the command-line just for running it? No? You are right. Now is the time to publish it!
You'll publish it by making an executable out of it (that .exe file which runs on double-clicking). With this step, I am going specific for just the Windows users. I'll come to the Linux method of creating an executable some time later. To make an executable from your Python file, download and install py2exe from here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=15583.
Create a new file in the same folder as JumbledGUI.py, copy-paste the following content, and save it with the name setup.py. # Requires wxPython. This sample demonstrates: # # - single file exe using wxPython as GUI.from distutils.core import setup import py2exe import sys # If run without args, build executables, in quiet mode. if len(sys.argv) == 1: sys.argv.append("py2exe") sys.argv.append("-q") class Target: def __init__(self, **kw): self.__dict__.update(kw) # for the versioninfo resources self.version = "1.1" self.company_name = "Anurag Bhandari" self.copyright = "GPL v2" self.name = "Jumbled Words Game" ################################################################ # A program using wxPython # The manifest will be inserted as resource into JumbledGUI.exe. This # gives the controls the Windows XP appearance (if run on XP ;-) # # Another option would be to store it in a file named # JumbledGUI.exe.manifest, and copy it with the data_files option into # the dist-dir. # manifest_template = ''' %(prog)s Program ''' RT_MANIFEST = 24 JumbledGUI = Target( # used for the versioninfo resource description = "A cute jumbled words game", # what to build script = "JumbledGUI.py", other_resources = [(RT_MANIFEST, 1, manifest_template % dict(prog="JumbledGUI"))], # icon_resources = [(1, "icon.ico")], dest_base = "JumbledGUI") ################################################################ setup( options = {"py2exe": {"compressed": 1, "optimize": 2, "ascii": 1, "bundle_files": 1}}, zipfile = None, windows = [JumbledGUI], )
It's time to modify the publishing information of the to-be-created exe. Open setup.py and look for the code: Replace the self.version, self.company_name, self.copyright and self.name values with your desired values.
Now you are ready to "build" the exe. For that, open command prompt, cd to the folder where the setup.py file is placed (the same location as JumbledGUI.py) and issue the command: python setup.py py2exe.
This will create two folders where your two Python files are placed. One is the dist folder and the other is the build folder. Our folder of interest is the dist folder.
Open the dist folder and look for the just created exe file. Double click it and viola! It works!
To give your application a more professional touch, you may opt to created a setup of your program so that the end users are able to install it the way they install other softwares (the Next, Next, Next way...). For that, download the Inno Setup software from: http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php.

It was fun, wasn't it? I've provided comments in the code at all possible places so you don't find it difficult to know what has been done there. I admit not using much efficient code, like making use of classes than just pure functions, but I'll try to modify the code and rewrite it with classes as soon as I get some time for it. I'll post my own created setup for this app soon. :)

snapshot3

Anurag — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:28:48 +0000

f9release

Anurag — Tue, 20 May 2008 11:25:08 +0000

Fedora 9 - The first impression

Anurag — Tue, 20 May 2008 12:50:42 +0000

It took me about 8 hours to download the Fedora 9 i386 DVD image from their server. I did that even when I had my final exams going on, but then Fedora has always had a special place in my heart. I had an existing installation of Fedora 8 on my PC (which I could have just "upgraded", still I went to make a fresh install. I'll format the F8 partition later, once I have backed up my stuff from there. The Fedora 9 download got over in the morning, after which I had my paper. So, I decided to install it after returning home from college. And I did exactly that. ;) It didn't take much time in burning the image onto a DVD. As soon as it was done, I popped in the DVD in my DVD drive and rebooted. After a few seconds, I was able to see all the installation options, like perform a fresh install, upgrade an existing installation, boot from the first hard disk, etc. I chose the first option. To my surprise, it just took about 6-7 seconds to load the Anaconda installer, contrary to the 15-20 seconds it used to take earlier. And the speed boost didn't just end there. I could clearly observe the increase in speed, compared to the earlier versions of Fedora, in the graphical installer as well (or may be my recent hardware upgrade is to be blamed for that ;) ). The installer was almost the same as that of F8. So, I had no problems at any step of the installation. The installation went fine and finished in just 25 minutes, after installing 1300 packages! A reboot was required to get into the newly installed system, and I was eager to do that. So, I rebooted. During the installation, I had chosen to install Fedora's bootloader on Fedora's installation partition itself, the reason being simple - I already had a lot's of them installed all over my PC, one on the MBR and the rest on the partitions of corresponding Linux distros. This meant that I had to add an entry to boot into Fedora 9 manually. I added this entry in the menu.lst file corresponding to the GRUB installed on my MBR:

title Fedora 9 root (hd0,6) configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst

Theoretically, this should have worked, but on hitting the "Enter" key on the Fedora entry in my GRUB, I got the following error:

Error 2: Bad file or directory type

I was surprised! This had never happened with me in the past. A quick Googling and I came to know that this is a common problem an had been reported on Fedora's bug reporting system. After that, I tried some 2-3 tricks, but nothing worked. Finally I was able to find the solution. I had to modify the Fedora entry in my menu.lst file like the following to get it going:

title Fedora 9 root (hd0,6) chainloader +1

What this command did was to tell the GRUB installed on the MBR to pass the control over to the GRUB installed on the Fedora partition, and it did just that. I was able to get to Fedora's bootloader. I saw it an wondered why in the era of gfxboot-enabled GRUB had the Fedora developers decided to stick to the traditional looking GRUB? Anyway, I hit the enter key and booted into Fedora. I was greeted with the post installation steps which I was required to complete. As soon as had finished all the post installation setup steps, I was shown the login screen of Fedora. I was pleased to see the nice artwork. I logged using my user account into the default desktop environment - GNOME. I was further greeted by a matching wallpaper. Everything was looking nice. An interesting fact about the default wallpaper of Fedora is that its color changes according to the time of the day, that is, lightest shade in the morning, lighter in the noon, darker in the evening, and darkest in the night. :) I was eager to get connected to the Internet. Initially, I had some problems connecting to the net as I could not get the correct DNS entries permanently saved. But editing the file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 manually for the DNS entries and restarting the network service, I managed to get everything right. During this process, I faced another little issue. When I issued the command service network restart, I got an error telling me that 'service' command was not found. I frowned! But then I realised that this command could be hiding in some folder that was not in the default command path. I found the command service in the /sbin folder. So, I created a link to service command in the /bin folder (by issuing the command ln -s /sbin/service /bin/service) so that the next time I had to use the service command, I have to write just 'service' and not '/sbin/service' in the command prompt. I did the same for the ntsysv command which was hiding in the /usr/sbin folder. After these glitches were solved, I moved onto use Firefox to browse my regular websites. Firefox 3 beta 5 is installed by default and I was happy to notice the huge improvement in the font rendering there, as the fonts used to be major irritant for me in the pervious Fedora versions. Then I moved forward to installing the multimedia codecs which were, as always, missing from Fedora due to some legal issues of using the proprietary codecs in some countries. To do that, first I had to add a new repository called Livna (If you want to do this too, follow the instructions at: http://rpm.livna.org/rlowiki/). Then, I issued the following commands:

yum install ffmpeg yum install gstreamer-ffmpeg yum install gstreamer-plugins-ugly

Once installed, these codecs can play virtually any audio and video file. So, I am enjoying my web and multimedia experiences. I briefly checked out the KDE installed with Fedora 9 too. For your information, Fedora has discontinued the support for KDE 3.5 series and the only KDE you would be getting with Fedora 9 is KDE 4 (version 4.0.3). KDE 4 in F9 is fine, but not as good as I had expected. The improper font selection is a big let down. For now, I am using Fedora as a home-based webserver and mailserver. You can access it through the URL http://granular.myftp.org, but the downtime is quite large as it is not always up (remember that it is a home-based server? ;) ). Here is a screenshot of Fedora 9 from my PC to wind the things up.

Fedora 9 Desktop

Anurag — Tue, 20 May 2008 12:53:16 +0000

jumbledgui-screen

Anurag — Thu, 22 May 2008 17:39:28 +0000

Jumbled Words Game Downloads

Anurag — Thu, 22 May 2008 17:42:23 +0000

As promised in my last post about my Python-based jumbled words game, here I am posting the game for download in various forms. As of now, the first and second forms are for Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista only. First is the normal setup in which you install the game by following those usual Next buttons. Second is a zip file. Extract it, open the extracted folder and click on the JumbledGUI.exe file to start playing it. Third is the zipped source code file + other required stuff. Let me know about your experience with this little game. Any suggestions and comments are always welcome. Note: There is one little bug in the setup / installer, and that is the shortcuts for the game executable created in the Start menu and (or) during the installation process won't work. You'll have to start the game by running the JumbledGUI.exe file in C:\Program Files\Jumbled Words Game, assuming that you have installed the game in the default location. [ Icon from Indeepop.com ]