Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

« Older Entries

Coming Soon…

December 28th, 2009 by Naman Bagga | No Comments | Filed in General, MANIT Bhopal

I was in Mumbai for the last week or so to attend Mood Indigo 2009. I watched a couple of movies there and had loads of fun. I was back on 26th and all I've been doing since I've come back is eating and sleeping. Now that normality has been restored, I'm back to blogging and here's a little idea of what's coming soon on the blog-

1.All about my Mood Indigo 2009 trip
2.Reviews of the 2 movies
3.The year 2009 in review

These are just a handful, many more posts to follow. In the meantime, I'll enjoy the remainder of the sem break, waiting for the 3rd sem result, eating lots of homemade food and enjoying the luxuries I get in Delhi but miss in Bhopal.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Plans for the sem break

December 17th, 2009 by Naman Bagga | 1 Comment | Filed in General, MANIT Bhopal, Movies

I'm halfway through my semester break so this is not really the ideal time for a post like this but still, here's a short description of my plans for the semester break. Its almost been a month since the third semester ended. I stayed in Bhopal till 26th November to check my marks, which were satisfactory. I'm expecting a SGPA between 7.5 and 8 which would be an improvement over the last 2 semesters. I'm eagerly waiting for the result which should be out pretty soon.

After all the hard work done to convert 79s to 81s, finally it was time to go home after 5 weeks of staying in Bhopal which also happens to be my longest stay ever in Bhopal. Somehow, I always manage to visit Delhi once a month. I don't see that happening too often in the future though. So for the last 20 days I've been enjoying my stay at home. Homemade food tastes heavenly after 5 weeks of having mess food, canteen food and towards the end of it, the paranthas at main station with my buddy Shilpesh. I'm enjoying the number options of fast food joints I have in Delhi. Apart from eating, and sleeping, I've been watching quite a few movies (no I'm not a fan of the tubelight series and am not talking about full moons or crescents) . I just love the number of multiplexes I have to chose from and how I can book my movie tickets very conveniently online. Speaking of movies, I watched 2012 in Bhopal(Hindi dubbed :D ). The Hindi dialogues made that boring movie a bit interesting and gave me reasons to LMAO at every dialogue. You must read this review of the movie by Ankur, my views are very similar.

Here are some random updates about my life at home. As usual, I've been blogging a lot more frequently at home and that's probably I'm writing this post. I got a wireless router at home, got a beetel router through Airtel because that turned out to be a better option than buying one. For a one time charge of Rs 1500, I can do anything I want with the router and get unlimited replacements from Airtel if anything gets messed up. Quite a few Airtel engineers that handle my locality know me too(kinda helps at times). My PC(yes, the one I used to use before I got myself a laptop) turned 9 and probably will get some rest soon. Its been serving my family for over 9 years and its still usable despite of the fact that the only changes I've done to it is replaced a dead 128 MB SD RAM module with a 256 MB one and eventually 512 MB and replaced the CD ROM drive with CD-writer DVD Combo drive. Buying a new PC is something that is planned for this semester break and I shall be doing it soon.

I'll be going to Bombay Mumbai for a week in 2 days to attend Mood Indigo, the cultural fest of IIT Bombay. That would be one week of separation from my laptop, its always been with me ever since I bought it. I'll have my phone for internet access as always :) . I'll be back in Delhi by 26th December. Nothing great planned for the rest of the sem break yet. College reopens in the 2nd week of January. I'll spend my time at home in Delhi till then.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Ubuntu 9.10-Karmic Koala

December 9th, 2009 by Naman Bagga | 4 Comments | Filed in General, Linux, MANIT Bhopal

Ubuntu 9.10 codenamed Karmic Koala released in the end of October. I was at college at that time and the hostel LAN was not working due to some optical fiber failure. The only way I had to access the Internet was through my mobile phone. Since I'm not insane enough to try downloading a 700 MB iso on a GPRS connection, I decided to wait until the LAN problems were resolved. It did take quite a long time and I was midway through my exams by the time the LAN started functioning properly.

Thankfully my subjects in the 3rd sem were relly easy and I didn't need to study much. The day before my Digital Electronics exam, when the LAN started working, I downloaded the Ubuntu 9.10 Alternate CD. It turned out that the downloaded iso was corrupt and the upgrade failed when I tried it. Then started downloading the iso again using a different download manager. This time the iso was downloaded properly and the upgrade ran successfully. But that doesn't mean that it would improve my 0% success rate with Ubuntu upgrades because as soon as I restarted Ubuntu, I had all sorts of issues with my display and probably the ATI drivers are to blame for this. Understanding the fact that upgrades never work (for me at least) and solving the problems might take even longer than doing a fresh install, I did a fresh install of Ubuntu 9.10.

Then I spent the next few hours installing all the applications again. It was much simpler because I had my home folder on a separate partition so my home folder was intact. I got a rough idea of the applications I had installed through the folders in my home folder. And since the application files were intact, I did not to change any settings and make any customizations. This is what makes using a different partition or youfr home folder so useful. So in no time I was using Karmic Koala with everything just the way I like it.

Ubuntu 9.10 has few big noticeable differences from Jaunty but one thing that is easily noticeable is the significantly lower startup time and the new splash screen. Also Empathy is the default IM client but I'm too used to Pidgin so installed it and I didn't care to check out Empathy(its pretty similar though). Also the Add/Remove programs has been replaced by the all new Ubuntu Software Center. Ubuntu 9.10 works perfectly with my laptop. The media keys, brightness keys, wireless key all work properly without the need for any modifications. I'll probably use at least for the next few months though I must say I was tempted to try OpenSUSE 11.2. I downloaded and burnt the CD too but I'm too used to Ubuntu on my laptop the way it is and feel too lazy to try installing OpenSUSE, a distro that might give me problems with drivers for my graphics card. So for now, I'll be using Ubuntu 9.10 on my laptop.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

End Of 3rd Semester

November 19th, 2009 by Naman Bagga | 2 Comments | Filed in Education, MANIT Bhopal

My theory exams ended on 14th November and I had my practical vivas on 16th and 17th November. That officially puts an end to my third semester in college. The 3rd semester was really fun for many reasons. I got to live the life of a senior in college. I studied subjects that actually had something to do with IT. This was my first semester with a laptop with me. Noesis was a great experience and bagging the 2nd prize was cherry on the cake. Uploading Data Structures sessionals on my blog and minor question papers was yet another fun part of the semester. IT was the only branch that shared soft copies of sessionals and question papers online. This semester, I got the opportunity to make the master copy of a couple of DS sessionals which is something I've done only for Computer Programming in the 2nd semester. Teaching my friends Digital Electronics and Data Structures was another part of 3rd semester that I enjoyed (makes me feel I can apply for the post of a contract faculty in college :D ). Although the semester has ended, I'm going to stay in Bhopal for a few days to check my Majors marks and to beg each teacher to convert my 78s to 81s to get a higher grade. I also have some other work to do so I'll be going back to Delhi by 25th or probably by the end of the month.

This semester, the 2 subjects that bothered me the most were Network Theory and Electronic Devices and Circuits (EDC). The answer sheets of both of these subjects have been evaluated and I managed to get 48/60 in Network Theory and 50.5/60 in EDC. That gives me a grade point of at least 8 in both these subjects. I managed to get over 2 big hurdles, now I need to do the same with 4 small ones.

There were some issues with the LAN in the 2nd year hostels during the exams and a few days before it. So I had to use my phone to connect to the internet for a few days. This was the reason I couldn't download Ubuntu 9.10 for a few days. I finally did download Ubuntu Karmic when the the LAN issues were sorted out sometime during the exams. More about Ubuntu and probably OpenSUSE 11.2 in later posts. For now, I just need to convert 78s to 81s :)

Navigation »
« Older Entries
Subscribe RSS

Canonical URL by SEO No Duplicate WordPress Plugin