Random Scribblings

A Morning in Basel

2011-02-02T01:43:00.000+05:30

This was shot in Basel. The river in the background is the Rhine.

A rather boring day

2011-01-17T23:01:00.006+05:30

It has been a boring day today.

I returned back to Kharagpur today after spending the weekend at home. I could have stayed for a couple of days more. If only there weren't the BEM class today !

This is the last semester at IIT. Four more months and then university life will be over. Phew ! How much I wished to get out of here for the last two years ! Though, now it feels a bit uneasy to meet the outside world all on my own.

I never gave a damn about classes,except when professors are strict as sick. This semester either, it isn't any different. I have committed myself to attending 4 classes of BEM this time around. I wish the other classes carried as much as merit as Prof GPRS's BEM class does. Though I must admit that I don't understand much ( :P ), nevertheless I pay attention and try to learn the arcane mathematical stuff that this subject involves.

Therefore, I had to attend the BEM classes today. Later in the afternoon, when I was back in my room, I kept browsing stuff on the Internet. When I finally got tired, I read a short story entitled "Beyond the Wall" by Ambrose Pierce. It was from the "World Famous Ghost Stories" book I have,but rather disappointingly, it was not even a trifle spooky.

The one thing that really got me today was the "RockMelt" browser. Its a new Chromium-based browser created to bind the social-networking experience and the browsing experience even tighter. I am looking forward to an invite from the RockMelt team - they are at a limited beta stage, I think.Image via CrunchBase

I have finally revived my blogging interests after nearly 7 months. I will try to make a habit of blogging from now on.

First Day in Switzerland !

2010-05-04T00:41:00.004+05:30

It has been a long time since I last blogged. This time I really have something to write about !

I am in Lugano, Switzerland for a summer internship at SUPSI. I arrived in Kloten airport near Zurich two days back, that is, on May the first. In the morning, it the terminal was a deserted place. As I tried to pass through the green channel at customs, one of the officials took me in. From the look on his face, he could have assumed me to be a drug peddler.On his bidding,I had to open my suitcase. After rummaging through the stuff for some minutes, he smiled and let me go.

I made my way out through to Zurich Flughafen, the train station at the airport. At the ticket counter, I got a ticket to Lugano and a "half-fahr karte" as I am going to take some tours in the days to come and will it make travelling cheaper for me.
Then I took the metro train to Zurich Hauptbahnhof or HB and waited for the Zurich-Chiasso train via Gotthard. The train took half an hour to arrive, and was right on time.

Switzerland is such a beautiful country, every view you take has so much in it. As the train made its way, the little cottages on the hill-sides, the mountains, the numerous streams that flew from the top into the streams that run along the mountain passes, the snow covered Alps, the beautiful valleys along the lake-sides sent me into a dream. I can tell you for sure that the first train-ride in der Schweiz (as they call it here) will be etched in your memory forever.
I took a lot of pictures on the way and after 3 hours- which melt more like 5 minutes- through stations like Zug, Arth-Goldau and Bellinzona, I reached Lugano.

I will post a few pictures of my stay in Lugano. Watch out for them !

A Morning in Basel

2010-05-03T01:27:00.000+05:30

This was shot in Basel. The river in the background is the Rhine.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

There and Back Again

2010-03-05T21:22:00.002+05:30

Owing to my recent ( and timely ) disillusionment with 'philosophy', I have changed the title of this blog from "factatus blah-blah" to "Random Scribblings".

Philosophy, though a wonderful subject, can be obscure for nitwits ( i admit ) like me. Its hard to appreciate at times, and you choose your own interpretations of what the author says. In case of some seriously stupid people, it has the potential to land them in big trouble.

For me,it triggered a series of bizzare( to say the least ) events which have made the present seemingly hellish for me. However, it also sparked off something wonderful, which I had been longing for quite some time, and which more than makes up for the entire mess. So, I am not that disgruntled;only a little...

Think of me as a hobbit. Like Bilbo Baggins, I ventured out of the Shire -unintentionally- had an adventure ( or misadventure from a different viewpoint) and now am back at Bag End, drinking ale and smoking Longbottom leaf. "There and Back Again".

Bye bye to philosophy. There is The One Ring for me now. :)

P.S. - I love LOTR. Its the best goddamned fantasy book ever written.

Firefox tip

2009-11-20T08:06:00.000+05:30

To restore previous session ( all the tabs before the instance of firefox crashed )
use :

about:sessionrestore

about:blank - gives a blank page

about:config: lets u manually change firefox's settings. But dont tinker too much with it. :)

find tips elsewhere on tweaking it.

BTW, did u know ?
Firefox really is a animal.
I mean there is a animal called firefox.

Meekly Meekly Dear

2009-11-06T13:29:00.002+05:30

Meekly you came into my heart,
Spare roses and lilies abound
A shallow tempest in your eyes
And shades of blue and grey....

But never did I pray
You come upon my lap
And never did I say
I hear you clap....

And a long age of yearning
For a hard love's shy earning
Upon many a bright morning
In a cave and a cove and
A kitchen..

Meekly Meekly Dear;
Just , Stay here.

Madrigal

2009-09-20T12:49:00.004+05:30

This is a nice sweet poem I came across :

Love not me for comely grace,
For my pleasing eye or face;
Nor for any outward part,
No, nor for my constant heart :

For those may fail or turn to ill,

So thou and I shall sever :

Keep therefore a true woman's eye,
And love me still but know not why;
So hast thou the same reason still
To dote upon me forever.

August and Faust

2009-09-19T23:07:00.005+05:30

Hi all,

I am writing again after a really long time.
(Considering becoming a regular blogger for a change.)

Life at Kharagpur moves at a brisk pace. It feels like the semester began only a while ago, but now the midsems are already over.

I have been keeping myself busy with a few books. I just finished reading Stephen King's Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption. You might have watched the Hollywood movie The Shawshank Redemption which also happens to be the #1 movie on IMDB's list of 250 best movies of all time. And deservedly so. If you haven't watched it yet, you might as well do yourself a favor. So, go, watch it !

Before Shawshank, I did away with Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and finished Goethe's Faust ( An English translation ). I understand Rand's philosophy of objectivism and appreciate it quite very much. But I felt the novel stretched the concept too far. Or may be I don't want so much philosophy in one novel so as to enjoy it. Thats my major complaint against this book. I gave up reading it just before the 72-page long speech of John Galt. Ironically, that happens to be the most important segment in the book. But what the heck ? Who's John Galt ? Faust was a comparatively pleasant read.,though I could read only the first part.

Among other things , I discovered a renewed interest in coding. I was wary of Ruby earlier because of its performance woes compared to Python. But it hardly matters now. It so simple to think in Ruby. And then there is Rails and the pack of glittering gems that come along with it. Ruby is really cool !

And now to music. Only recently, I got exposed to a few Western Classical compositions and I must admit I had been missing a huge chunk of the musical pie for a long long time. My favorite so far is Mozart's A Little Serenade ( or Eine Kleine Nachtmusik in German).

So thats about it. I am looking foward to going home next weekend to spend some time with my parents.

Signing off,
Dev Jyoti

A Love Poem

2009-01-12T20:02:00.003+05:30

So folks,
This would be my first poem .
Its very badly written ,and some lines may be very funny.
But it came from my heart, quite very much.
Do comment on how much you hated it,how stupid,meaningless, and lifeless the words are
and how to improvise.

It may give you a feeling that it has been finished in haste .

So have a go at it :
(By the way 'mi corazon' means my heart in Spanish )

TRYST WITH LOVE

'Twas a day in autumn
When I was in town
for a zero and a one
Then the sun went down.

And the stars came up
When the full moon shone
I saw a fairer thing walk
Like a misty dawn
Into the dark of my life
And a heart forlorn.

Sat by my side
Gazing at a game
A semblance of Venus
A glimpse of her frame.

I felt I had known
Deep in mi corazon
Her tranquil presence
Becoming my life's essence.

For years and years
concealed very deep
Among pains and fears
which made me weep
Came now a sweet emotion
Dancing all along
And made me smile
I sang a song
Of the joy of love
And the image in my mind
Of the loveliest dove
Ever I could find.

Dare I not describe her
And break the limits of verse
Nor dare I wrong her
With these words so coarse
But forever my love
Owes itself to her
For this reason most simple
I will say no more
Than,Narcissus would blush
And Pygmalion turn sane
To witness the charm
Of this wonderful dame
Fairer than Aphrodite
Purer than a flame
Sweet as a songbird
Sweeter than her name.

Slowly moved her lips
And when she spoke to me
Her words filled my soul
With an irresistible ecstasy.
When her eyes met mine
This heart felt a tremor
And I fell in love
A million times over !

Alas ! she left ...and
A void filled this soul
Beads of tears
Down my cheeks did roll

Then I said to me
'Tis but a dream
In which I may reign
And she be my queen
So wishful a thought
May never come true
For only He can tell
Who is worthy of who

On silent nights,
I live this dream,
When a little grey dot
turns red or green
And every thing lifeless
Lively does seem
'Tis not much
But quite enough
In these days so hard
And the road so rough

Slave of my Fate
I let the gods conspire
To keep me ever
Distant from her desire
Cause the heart loves most
When its cast into the fire.

Installing Lucene and Nutch on your Ubuntu machine

2007-12-09T17:51:00.002+05:30

What you need :

JDK 1.6.0_03
lucene-2.2.0.tar.gz
nutch-0.9.tar.gz
apache-ant-1.7.0-bin.tar.gz

Note :
To run commands as root user,u should either use 'sudo '
To set root password use 'sudo passwd'.
You may also want to login as root :
$su
Enter the root password and the prompt($) will change to # .
To change back to your user :
#su

1.Installing JDK

Get the ' Java(TM) SE Development Kit 6 Update 3' from www.sun.java.sun.Download the Linux self-extracting file "jdk-6u3-linux-i586.bin".Save it to say /home/dev/dwloads where 'dev' is your username.
Fire up a terminal and go to the dwloads folder : $cd /home/dev/dwloads.
Make the bin file executable : $chmod a+x jdk-6u1-linux-i586-rpm.bin.For this you may need to assume root status.
Now execute by running : $./jdk-6u3-linux-i586.bin.Skim through the License Agreement by pressing the space bar and enter 'Yes' when prompted.
JDK should now be installed.
Set JAVA_HOME variable as the location of your jdk folder.E.g. - I had jdk installed in /home/dev/jdk1.6.0_03 .So i did : $export JAVA_HOME=/home/dev/jdk1.6.0_03

Testing

Run :
$java -version

It should show jdk 1.6.0_03,etc.If instead it shows gij (some version) and talk about some GNU Java then do the following :

$cd /usr/bin
$su
#rm java*
#ln -s JAVA_HOME/bin/java* /usr/bin
Test again.

2.Enabling Java in Firefox

$ln -s $JAVA_HOME/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so

3.Installing Ant

Download apache-ant-1.7.0-bin.tar.gz from some mirror site of apache ant. eg.http://ant.apache.org/bindownload.cgi
$tar -xvzf apache-ant-1.7.0-bin.tar.gz to untar the file and create folder with same name as this file.
$export ANT_HOME=/apache-ant-1.7.0
$cp $ANT_HOME/bin/ant /usr/bin/ (May need root status)

Testing

$ant -version
should show the version

4.Installing Lucene

After getting the tar.gz file do: $tar -xvfz lucene-2.2.0.tar.gz.If a folder of the same name is created then fine.Else do : $gunzip lucene-2.2.0.tar.gz,then $tar xvf lucene-2.2.0.tar.This should now produce a folder with name 'lucene-2.2.0'.
move into the above folder using $cd lucene-2.2.0.Run this : $ant war-demo
Finally,when it completes , it will create a “build” folder within lucene-
2.2.0 directory within which there will be jar and demo files :-- lucene-core-
2.2.0-dev.jar and lucene-demos-2.2.0-dev.jar.
Put them in $CLASSPATH : $export CLASSPATH=.:/home/dev/lucene-
2.2.0/build/lucene-core-2.2.0-dev.jar:/home/dev/lucene-2.2.0/build/lucene-demos-2.2.0-dev.jar

Testing

Create a folder /home/dev/text/ and put some text files in it.
Run :
$java org.apache.lucene.demo.IndexFiles /home/dev/text

Now it will create an index directory 'index' in the directory from which u issued the above command.

To test your index now :
$java org.apache.lucene.demo.SearchFiles

It will prompt you for a query.
Enter and see the results.

5.Installing Nutch

Download the file from the web.It should be nutch-0.9.tar.gz
Untar it like you did for the lucene tar.gz file .[See above]
cd your way into nutch-0.9 directory and run : $ant .It may show 'BUILD FAILED' blah blah.To solve it comment out line no. 61 62 and 63 in the build.xml file in the nutch-0.9 directory (using gedit).Finally it should be like this :
run $ant .This will build Nutch for you.

Testing

create a folder called urls (in your nutch folder) within which create any text file holding the seed urls (one every line).
modify the nutch-0.9/conf/crawl-urlfilter.txt to perform the following
changes.
# accept hosts in MY.DOMAIN.NAME
+^http://([a-z0-9]*\.)*MY.DOMAIN.NAME/
# skip everything else
-
should be changed to
# accept hosts in MY.DOMAIN.NAME
-^http://([a-z0-9]*\.)*MY.DOMAIN.NAME/
# skip everything else
+
modify the nutch-0.9/conf/nutch-default.xml to add the values in the following properties
- http.agent.name - add any agent name in the values field
- http.agent.url - add any valid url, preferably your institute URL in the values field
- http.agent.email - add the email of the person performing the crawl
- http.proxy.host - add the proxy server address in the values field
- http.proxy.port - add the proxy server port.(Just scroll to the each property and add proper value between value tags.(See Image)

cd into the nutch directory and run : $bin/nutch crawl urls -dir crawl -threads 5 -depth 3
this will crawl the urls mentioned in the urls/ and also fetch
index and parse them. now the data is ready to search. A “crawl” directory is created in the nutch-0.9 directory which holds all the fetched, indexed, and parsed data.
To dump the data in some file for further use, go to the nutch directory. Then
type:
/bin/nutch readseg -dump ~/nutch-0.9/crawl/segments/segment/
Time to run a query : $./bin/nutch org.apache.nutch.searcher.NutchBean

Important Note :
To add the environment variables defined permanently you must edit the /etc/bash.bashrc file (as root user) .Add the following :
JAVA_HOME=/home/dev/jdk1.6.0_03
export JAVA_HOME
ANT_HOME=/media/sda1/linux/java/apache-ant-1.7.0
export ANT_HOME
CLASSPATH=.:/media/sda1/linux/java/lucene-2.2.0/lucene-core-2.2.0.jar:/media/sda1/linux/java/lucene-2.2.0/lucene-demos-2.2.0.jar
export CLASSPATH

Your variables will depend on the folders you used.

Random Scribblings

A Morning in Basel

A rather boring day

Related articles

First Day in Switzerland !

A Morning in Basel

There and Back Again

Firefox tip

Meekly Meekly Dear

Madrigal

August and Faust

A Love Poem

Installing Lucene and Nutch on your Ubuntu machine