Friday, May 15, 2009

I had been saying that, my next story is time to live and its about three engineering students. Here goes the plot of the story.

Dr. Prince is the dean of computer science dept at Mistian University in Florida. He asks his students, Sam, Benny and Harry to find a book titled Time to Live and bring it to him. They find the book and take it to his home. To their surprise, they find Prince dead. They read the book, to find out what the professor had in his mind. The book starts with a professor asking his three trustable students to bring him a book and the three characters resemble them. In the book those three characters go in search of a treasure. Sam, Benny and Harry decide that, they should also try that fortune and follow the path of the characters in that book. What happens to them? Was this book a coincidence? Was their fate pre-written in a story book? All this unfolds in a gripping climax which goes back to the second world war era!

Hope I start this story next sem and finish it by the end of this year!

I had been so obsessed with the usage of Microsoft Access, that I almost forgot about other databases. Ofcourse I turned to IBM DB2 for my project Min Kalloori. But turned back to access once again for the Informative Bus Transport for Transport Corporation project. Finally I had to quit MS Access because I had to develop an application which was a multi-user application and I had to use a server. Thats when I consulted with few people on the databases available. Obviously oracle comes as the first choice. But lisence is a big problem. Then MySQL and Postgres was suggested. I liked Postgres for its front end. But storing a BLOB created lot of problems. So, I turned back to MySQL and used a third party front end software called MySQL-Front.

MySQL is a much more stable and faster database than Microsoft Access. MySQL is also open-source, which means that it is free.

And I have completed the project using MySQL. MySQL had become My SQL. Its much better than MS Access.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

This is my first worthy flash animation.
Have a check and do comment!
I know its pretty bad...
I was just checking the concept of onion(in flash) in this animation.

Monday, April 13, 2009



Today I had to submit my English record, it was for the language lab. I wanted to have page number at the header, but for some pages I didn't want the page numbers to be displayed. That's when I was trying certain things on my MS Word(2007). In Insert----> Header I found that there was an option-Link to previous and it was checked. But it was disabled. Now my job was to find a way to remove the link.

It' pretty simple, Page Layout--->Break--->Section Break-->Next page.



Now in header, the link to previous check box becomes enabled. By unchecking it, I could have different headers for different pages.



Hope it was useful, if you were toying with so many complicated ideas instead of having different headers!

Sunday, April 12, 2009



God created the mule, and told him, "You will be mule, working constantly from dusk to dawn, carrying heavy loads on your back. You will eat grass and lack intelligence. You will live for 50 years."

The mule answered, "To live like this for 50 years is too much. Please, give me no more than 20." And it was so.

Then God created the dog, and told him, "You will hold vigilance over the dwellings of Man, to whom you will be his greatest companion. You will eat his table scraps and live for 25 years."

And the dog responded, "Lord, to live 25 years as a dog like that is too much. Please, no more than 10 years." And it was so.

God then created the monkey, and told him, "You are monkey. You shall swing from tree to tree, acting like an idiot. You will be funny, and you shall live for 20 years."

And the monkey responded, "Lord, to live 20 years as the clown of the world is too much. Please, Lord, give me no more than 10 years." And it was so.

Finally, God created Man and told him, "You are Man, the only rational being that walks the earth. You will use your intelligence to have mastery over the creatures of the world. You will dominate the earth and live for 20 years."

And the man responded, "Lord, to be Man for only 20 years is too little. Please, Lord, give me the 30 years the mule refused, the 15 years the dog refused, and the 10 years the monkey rejected." And it was so.

And so God made Man to live 20 years as a man, then marry and live 30 years like a mule working and carrying heavy loads on his back. Then, he is to have children and live 15 years as a dog, guarding his house and eating the leftovers after they empty the pantry; then, in his old age, to live 10 years as a monkey, acting like an idiot to amuse his grand children.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009



Today, while installing adobe photoshop7.0 I had a problem. The setup ran 99% and then suddenly closed. I tried several times, restarted my system, but the setup happily vanished after running 99%. I got bugged and googled about this. Finally I found that the C:\temp folder content should be empty while installing adobe photoshop! I am not pretty sure why it is, but for those who have faced this problem would definitely be happy to know this solution!

My former object oriented programing lecturer Mr.Nandhakumar wanted me to help with his project in which path generation was a part. For a given sequence directed graph I had to generate all possible paths from the start node to the end nodes and I tried it out. It took nearly an hour to finish this program. It's quite understandable from the comments I have added to the program!


#include<stdio.h>
#include<conio.h>

void findpath(int);//function to find the path
void printpath();//function to print the path

int graph[13][13]=

//0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

{0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 ,0 ,0,//0
0,0,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 ,0 ,0,//1
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 ,1 ,0,//2
0,0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0,0,0 ,0 ,0,//3
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 ,1 ,0,//4
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 ,1 ,0,//5
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0 ,0 ,0,//6
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0 ,0 ,0,//7
0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,1,1 ,0 ,0,//8
0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 ,1 ,0,//9
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 ,0 ,1,//10
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 ,0 ,0,//11
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 ,0 ,0};//12

int i=0,j=0,k=0,temp=0;//k--->acts as a pointer to the queue cur path
int start_node=0;//stores the start node
int path[13][13];//stores the paths available
int curpath[13]={0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0};//queue of the path formed
int final[13]={0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1};//final state or not
int tot_paths[13]={0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0};//total paths available from a state
int path_count[13]={0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0};//paths that have been traversed
int flag_cycle;//it is a flag which is set to 1 if the current path has a cycle
int previ;
void main()
{
clrscr();
for(i=0;i<13;i++)
{
printf("\nPath %d:",i);
k=0;
for(j=0;j<13;j++)
{
path[i][j]=0;
if(graph[i][j]!=0)
{
printf("%d,",j);
tot_paths[i]++;
path[i][k++]=j;
}
}
}
printf("\n\n\nThe paths available are:\n");
findpath(start_node);
printpath();
for(temp=k-1;temp>=0;temp--)
{
if(tot_paths[curpath[temp]]<=path_count[curpath[temp]])
{
path_count[curpath[temp]]=0;
curpath[temp]=0;
k--;
}
else
{
k--;
findpath(curpath[temp]);
printpath();
}
}
getch();
}

void findpath(int start)
{
int count;
i=start;
count=path_count[i];
while(!final[i])//while final state is not reached
{
//check whether there is a cycle in the graph,if so skip it

if(checkpath(i))
{
curpath[k]=i;
i=previ;
return;
}
curpath[k++]=i;//add the node in the queue
path_count[i]++;//increment the path count
previ=i;
i=path[i][count];//move to the next node
count=path_count[i];//update count
}
//the same process is repeated for the final state

curpath[k++]=i;
path_count[i]++;
i=path[i][count];
count=path_count[i];
k--;
}

void printpath()//when this fn. ends temp should be equal to k
{
int temp1;
//check whether this path contains a cycle
//if so skip it
for(temp1=0;temp1<k;temp1++)
{
if(curpath[k]==curpath[temp1])
{
temp=k;
return;
}
}
printf("\n");
for(temp=0;temp<k;temp++)//don't change this variable temp,it is a global
variable!
{
printf("%d--->",curpath[tem]);
}
printf("%d",curpath[temp]);

}

int checkpath(int value)//checks whether there is a cycle
{
int temp1;
for(temp1=0;temp1<k;temp1++)
{
if(value==curpath[temp1])
return 1;
}
return 0;
}

Sunday, April 5, 2009

After finishing my first two stories, I had been toying with the idea of writing a pre-independent political thriller titled, "The Effervescence of Life ". And started collecting information and facts for that story. In that process I found that, it would take nearly a year to frame the plot. So (while framing the plot) I thought of writing another story. I even had plans of reviving my uncompleted story - "Final Fiasco". Finally I settled into a new story about three engineering students who travel across the globe in search of a fortune!

I have titled it, "Time To Live". Hopefully, I would finish it before next April.

Friday, March 27, 2009

People generally do not know the full version of this nursery poem all they know is the first stanza of the poem, here is the full version poem!




Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky!

When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.

Then the traveller in the dark,
Thanks you for your tiny spark,
He could not see which way to go,
If you did not twinkle so.

In the dark blue sky you keep,
And often through my curtains peep,
For you never shut your eye,
Till the sun is in the sky.

As your bright and tiny spark,
Lights the traveller in the dark,—
Though I know not what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.