Anurag Bhandari

Since I landed in Bangalore, my schedule has been extremely busy. Yeah, I had heard in the past that the training period in an IT company, especially Accenture, is very tough, I am experiencing it only now. I have yet to take out some time to go out and explore that grand city that is Bangalore. Most of my time everyday is spent preparing for in-training tests. But anyway, the first phase of my training ends today, the last test of first phase being on 28th Sept.

A ray of hope in my frustrating daily schedule has to be me getting .NET stream, that is, I would be doing my second (and final) phase of training on Microsoft .NET technologies, and eventually be getting projects based on it. I am curious to begin my stream training, more because my stream is more web-development oriented (yippie!). By the way, it would be ASP.NET + C#.

That’s all for now. I’ll try to keep my blog as updated as possible.

Continuing my Java learning stint, I started experimenting on RPM packages in the Granular 2008 repository by extracting meta data from them using various Java classes I had written for my on-going college major project. To give a shape (end-user interface) to these leisurely done Java programs, I used my existing project MyBlog to create a website that could display information (extracted by the Java programs) about every RPM package in the repository. In other words, the Java programs store information about each RPM package in a central database which in turn is used by a PHP-based website to display that information, and much more.

In the introduction to Granular Package Archive post I wrote on the Team Granular blog, I explained the various features it has to offer. My personal favorite is the ability to leave comments on individual RPM pages. Other than that, I am quite satisfied with the overall look-and-feel too. In another of my Team Granular blog post, I explained the working of this package archive system, and the way to use it with any other repository of RPM packages.

Some guys at the Unity Project are also contemplating the idea of using this package archive system with their repository too.

Remember the little, cute Jumbled Words Game I prepared in Python? More than 4 months had passed since I made it, and now it was time it got some makeover. So, featuring a host of new improvements, here I am making the improved game available for download.

Installing and playing is easy. Just to remind the readers, the game is made in Python using the wxPython libraries for the graphical interface (GUI).

The Python source was converted into a Windows executable (.exe) using py2exe. An installer was made out of the executable using InnoSetup. Both are freely available for download and very easy to use. I’ll come up with a Linux executable soon. And maybe a Python Egg?

Changelog:
1. Words are now read from a text file
2. The words read from text file are jumbled automatically & randomly
3. Changed splash image
4. Improved font system
5. Score system
6. Improved overall interface

The various downloads are:

• Setup – install the game from this like any normal application (Windows)
• Zipped – just extract the zipped file and double-click on JumbledGUI.exe to play (Windows)
• Source – the source code of the game in a zipped file (cross-platform)

I hope you like it. You may encounter bugs. If so, do let me know. Also, I would be happy to get some feedback from you regarding this little app.

Credits: The game was improved with suggestions and inputs from DaniWeb.com.

Update:
As requested by Sajith Karingat (comment #29), I worked on a Phone Billing System in C++, as per his requirements. You can download it here.

I have entered my final year in my B.Tech course, and with it, it’s placement time. Companies for the computer science stream (my stream) will start visiting my college beginning from 11th August. The first to come will be TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) which is considered as a good IT firm in India with global fame.

As part of my prep for the placements, obviously, I am revising my concepts (technical ones). Today, as it was raining heavily in the college, we sat in our central canteen, waiting for the rain to stop. During that time, we held a heated discussion on C++ programs that were most likely to be asked in interviews for placements.

Amongst those programs, one was to swap the values of two variables “a” and “b” without using the “temp” variable. Another interested one we discussed was that would generate a pattern like:

1
2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14
…… and so on.

When I got back home, I decided to have a go on these programs. And so, here are my answers to above problems.

Read more…

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 ]