• After manipulating js from one side of the browser for so long -- finally looking at it from the other side -- the javascript engine. #
  • Creating user profiles. My work for the Tryst website seems to have become like a mini social networking site -- profiles, games, connects. #
  • Been coding for too many days and hours now. Feeling tired. Will have to postpone user team registration and game for a 1-2 days, maybe. #
  • Tryst 2010: 3268 lines of php, 171 lines of js, 777 lines of css. And counting. Whew! #
  • Tryst 2010: 3268 lines of php, 171 lines of js, 777 lines of css. And counting. #tryst2010 #fb #
  • iPad. Drool. http://www.apple.com/ipad/ #
  • Wish I could line up all people who both waste my time AND bore me against a wall and have them shot. Not necessarily fatally. #
  • Shifted to my new room! Single again, finally. #
  • My faking news-ish post http://kunal-b.in/index.php/2010/01/hostel-collapses is spreading throughout facebook! Nice to see! #
  • ~150 visitors on my blog today! Nice. (= 2 * EDC hits and .5 * Tryst hits) #

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30/01/2010 The Windy Hostel, Indian Institute of Consultancy, Delhi: At 11.05 a.m. today morning a horrifying accident occurred because of gross negligence by engineers at Windy Hostel, IICd. The hostel had been undergoing renovation for over a year and work had recently started on a new block today. Students were still residing in the 4-story hostel on the top 2 floors while the bottom floors had been vacated.

In order to complete his work on time, the contractor had allegedly told the workers to demolish the lower portion of the building and start renovation work on it, without considering whether the already considerably weakened, 40 year old structure could take the weight. The inevitable occurred, with the top two floors crashing down and burying and damaging many laptops.

In the words of one of the surviving students (who has requested to remain unnamed) "They were destroying the doors beneath our room and the balcony start moving wildly, deflecting as much as 1 cm. We ran to stop them, but the [expletive deleted] workers refused to budge."

The maintenance secretary of the hostel was allegedly gallivanting somewhere in East Delhi during the incident, meeting some foreigner. On being contacted he replied that he had an urgent meeting with someone he could not name -- a fact that has been noted by the investigating authorities who have taken him into custody. We managed to get a statement from the Chief Investigator, Mr. M. Adi "We have not ruled out the involvement of the maintenance secretary, and are also considering the foreign angle", obliquely referring to the recent statement by the President of United States of Pakerica, Mr. Obama Bin Bush.

Being a holiday, most of the students were sitting in their rooms during the accident, apparently trying to block their internet access so as to be able to prepare for their upcoming examinations. A quote by one of the IICians from our archives: "Our professors believe that we can obtain everything we need to learn by surfing the internet -- in fact they maintain a check to see that all students download at least 100MB of data every day to ensure they are spending enough time on the internet. We have learnt a lot but it becomes difficult to adhere to this rule during our minor exams so trying to outsmart our professors and blocking our internet access is a favourite pass-time for IICians during the exam season."

Most of the students were taken by surprise as the building came crashing down on them, and more than 50 laptops have been reported missing and are assumed to still be buried under the rubble, while 10 damaged (2 critically) laptops have been recovered. One or 2 lucky laptops survived on their battery life and were discovered as they were playing heavy rock and could be heard through the concrete. Worried students at IIC have kept a candle light vigil outside the laptop repair shop, with the very best technicians of the top laptop manufacturers including Nosy Baio, Sell and Compact working tirelessly to save the laptops. More technicians are expected to arrive from around the world soon. Excavation work to locate the remaining laptops is also underway.

Many IICians are still in shock, with many roaming around in a daze. A particularly sad case is that of a few students, who, being deprived of access to their laptops and the Facebook live feed appear to have devolved to animals -- with one imitating a bull, another squealing in French like a pig and the  worst affected keeps trying to fly off the top of the hostel and is constantly restrained by his friends. It is currently not clear whether he has delusions about being a bird or being the Man of Steel (both being able to fly).

What has made this accident even more unique is the fact that there have been various reports of the accident being a complete fabrication and fallacy as people have allegedly communicated with the missing residents of the hostel (using their own laptops). In the public interest, we reiterate that the accident has happened and any such rumours must be disregarded as utter nonsense.

There have been suspicions of paranormal activity at the site of the accident because of these apparent messages and the top investigative news channel in India -- IndiaTV -- has sent its best reporter to find out the truth. The initial findings of the reporter will be presented on tomorrow's primetime show at 8 p.m. -- "IIC ke khooni engineer". Insiders (who wish to remain unnamed) have said that such a tragic parting of nerds with their computers can cause their ghosts to linger on till they manage to complete their last wish: to update their status messages. Only then will they be able to pass on to the afterlife. As always, there are many skeptics who have denounced this theory, claiming that the ghosts need to play one last LAN game of AoE.

In a surprise turn of events, famed teen impersonator and actor Aamir K. and ex-IICian and MBA B. Chetan came together in support of the missing laptops. They said that they has put aside all differences to be able to garner even more publicity for their film/book as people had stopped discussing their recent disagreements.

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  • Adding stuff to tryst. Event details, facebook connect atm. Loads to polish and do. #
  • Tip for those refreshing after a facebook connect logout to clean up server -- trigger the button after the callback from fb returns. #
  • Finally achieved a degree of comfort with integrating Facebook Connect. It took me a long time! #
  • Solitude: something you can achieve in space, or time. #
  • This Years Biggest Mistake: eating a pizza from Pizza Square.

    Never Again! #

  • Problem with switching back to windows after using linux for so many days? Now I keep searching for "options" in the edit menu. #

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  • Using 9 workspaces. Started with 5, moved to 3 -- found myself wanting more -- switched to 9. Let's see how this works. #
  • Finally got my reliance ZTE modem working on linux! I don't even want to _think_ about the hours and days I've wasted trying to do this! #

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It seems fitting that my first post for project 52 (albeit a bit late) involves connecting to the internets. 'Cause that is generally the first step on all most of the stuff I do on the computer.

I have a HSD Reliance ZTE datacard/modem which I had been unable to run on Linux till tonight. The interesting bit is, I have had this card for around 7 months now -- and it was forcing me to use Windows Vista (the horror, the agony, the pain!).

As a log (in case my computer gets formatted sometime in the future -- a likely, but not hoped for occurrence -- ) as well as a possible guide to others, here are the steps I followed.

Note: I'm using Ubuntu 9.10 with a Reliance NetConnect ZTE AC8710 modem.

  1. Connect to the net using some other, temporary connection
    1. Get usb-modeswitch. Those with access to a repository can simply do
      sudo apt-get install usb-modeswitch
      

      Others can get the latest version from http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/ .

    2. You will also need (do an apt-get as required)
      lsusb, libusb-dev, wvdial, modprobe
      
  2. Connect your modem and run
    lsusb
    

    You should see one of the usb ports having your modem -- it will probably be classified as ONDA and have a vendor/product id specified. Along the lines of

    192d:fff6
    

    The fff6 indicates that it has been detected as a flash drive/cd rom and not as a modem.

  3. Also do a
    dmesg | tail
    

    And observe where the modem has gone -- usbtty0 / 1 / 2/ 3 etc.

  4. Edit the usb-modeswitch configuration to make your computer recognize it as a modem
    sudo vim /etc/usb_modeswitch.conf
    

    Navigate till you find the settings for your vendor id/product id.

    ########################################################
     568 # ZTE AC8710
     569 #
     570 # Two ID variants known; check your default
     571 #
     572 # Contributor: Michael Khurtsiya
     573
     574 ;DefaultVendor=  0x19d2
     575 ;DefaultProduct= 0xfff5
     576
     577 ;TargetVendor=   0x19d2
     578 ;TargetProduct=  0xffff
     579
    <strong> 580 # No. 2
     581
     582 ;DefaultVendor=  0x19d2
     583 ;DefaultProduct= 0xfff6
     584
     585 ;TargetVendor=   0x19d2
     586 ;TargetProduct=  0xfff1
     587
     588 # only for reference
     589 # MessageEndpoint=0x05</strong>
     590 <strong>
     591 ;MessageContent="5553424312345678c00000008000069f030000000000000000000000000000"</strong>
    

    And remove the ';' before the required lines. Save and exit.
    Run it.

    sudo usb_modeswitch
  5. Check whether it's worked -- do another
    lsusb
    

    and see that the product id has changed to fff1 (or whatever your target product was).

  6. Now we need to do a modprobe
    modprobe usbserial vendor=0x19d2 product=0xfff1
    

    Replace vendor and prodcut as you require.

  7. Once that's done, you need to make your wvdial.conf file. To edit the file:
    sudo vim /etc/wvdial.conf
    

    Copy paste the following in it.

    [Dialer Defaults]
     Username = &lt;enter your 10 digit modem number here&gt;
     Password = &lt;enter your 10 digit modem number here&gt;
     Init1 = ATZ
     Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &amp;C1 &amp;D2 +FCLASS=0
     Modem Type = Analog Modem
     Phone = #777
     ISDN = 0
     SetVolume = 0
     FlowControl = Hardware (CRTSCTS)
     Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0 &lt;modify based on the results of your dmesg&gt;
     Dial Command = ATDT
     Baud = 460800
     Stupid Mode = 1
  8. Once that's done, you should be good to go. Simply run
    sudo wvdial
    

And you should be connected. Hopefully this helps someone and prevents them from wasting as much time as I did.

Sources:

  • Feeling an extreme case of 'div'-itis while coding up this design. #
  • So my mvc framework continues to develop. I should have done this a year ago! #
  • Ideally speaking, whenever I need to create a form I should just be able to specify it's structure & validation -- & get reqd php, js & html #
  • Making fractals from GIMP; 's fun and adds a nice design element to the site. http://bit.ly/26MhNo #
  • Happy New Year! #
  • Can finally play the godfather theme on my acoustic! #
  • •*¨*•♫♪ HAPPY♪♫•*¨•.¸¸.•**•♫♪ NEW♪♫•*¨•.¸¸.•*¨• YEAR♪♫•*¨*•.♪♫•*¨* #
  • Just joined project 52 #p52 . It's going to be tough -- but let's see if I pull through (with a blog re-design somewhere in between). #

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