Techriti

Google n GSoC \m/

2009-06-06T12:58:00.002+05:30

Y'day, I received my package from Google containing the prepaid Debit card with 505 $ , stickers and a little diary :).

Apart from that we also got a year long ACM Membership as start of program gift.... ! We already have an ACM chapter in my college. The online digital content available is really cool....!

First prototype !

2009-06-03T19:16:00.002+05:30

Well a lot of things have happened since the last post.

I started with setting up a local server for Wikipathways on my laptop. That took roughly a week with all those attempts to debug those error messages in the Pathvisio applet n having to study the documentation for Ant and Apache derby which are required for setting up the Pathvisio applet and the synonym database respectively....

Then another milestone was coding a REST client for accessing the REST API of BioPortal for fetching n traversing the Ontologies. The backend considered of a proxy script which interacts with BioPortal and is also required for an AJAX interface. The frontend s of a treeview for taversing the ontology and an complete text box for searching. It was implemented using YUI Javascript framework. I opted for YUI instead of going for other frameworks like DoJo or JQuery just because of the vast amount of documentation available. It provides most of the widgets you will ever need out of the box. JQuery was another option but I believe it has a steeper learning curve and you will have to customize the existing widgets available to some extent.

We ( me, Alex n Mr. Nigam) had our Skype Conference on 26th for discussing BioPortal n how we can use it for my project. One important thing we discussed was using the BioPortal Annotater Service for automated anotation of pathways using the pathway titles. I believe we can start working on it by the end of this month ...after the plugin has been completed !

The next step was to integrate the 'REST Client' with the MediaWiki engine. That I had begun some 4 days back. The first step was to go through the documentation of Mediawiki. You will have to understand some rather complicated concepts like Hooks etc. before you can start writing your own extensions. However, studying other extensions available proved to be more helpfule than the documentation... I have come up with a basic extensions which has the AJAX based autocomplete - Search box . It allows you to tag the pathways. However the tags are not permanent and are store using Cookies. I believe storing the tags in the GPML still requires some work n discussion with Alex !

You can find my first Weekly Report along with the first version of the REST Client here .

Exams over

2009-05-16T21:31:00.002+05:30

My exams (and my first year of college) got over a few days back. I have spent the last few days packing up and finishing a project which I couldn't complete before. Finally, I got back home today.

With the first meeting ( with Alex & Nigam) scheduled on 26th, I have a lot of things to do. I have been trying to setup a local server for Wikipathways but everytime I tried to checkout (SVN) the source code, it got stuck, apparently due to some problem in my net connection.

My goals for the next 10 days will be to develop a test plugin for wikipathways ( it is based on the mediawiki engine ) , to study more about 'Ontologies' and study the documentation on the API of BioPortal which we will be discussing further during the meeting .

As soon as I am done setting up a local site on Windows Vista, I will post the details.

GSOC 2009

2009-05-03T17:51:00.005+05:30

Yeah ... long time since my last post..... What brings me back to blogging is GSOC. I got selected for Google Summer of Code 2009 :). I am one of the 9 lucky ones from my college who made it ( 101 selections in all from India ) .

For those of you who still dont get it ...whats GSOC is all about...
Its an annual program started in 2005 by Google, in which students from all over the world get to work for various OpenSource orgs n get a huge stipend, certificate from Google and a tshirt :) at the same time...

I got selected for the GenMaPP organisation . I will be developing an annotation tool for Wikipathways ( for more details read / wait for subsequent posts....) over the summer . My mentor is Alexander Pico, he is a project lead for GenMapp and also its admin for GSOC.

During the course of this project , basically I want to improve my coding skills , get to be a part of an awesome community and yeah ... learn a lot of stuff while working under Alex... :)

You guys can also find out more details about the project on my Wiki here . I will be regularly blogging about the project from now on ( as soon as i am finished with my exams :P )

Blue Screen Of Death - On Demand

2006-03-26T19:32:00.000+05:30

Most of us are familiar with the blue screen of death which means a system crash . Now you can impress your friends by displaying this ( without a system crash ) just by pressing 3 keys . Heres how to do it :

Go to Start Menu -> Run -> Regedit.exe

Open : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters

Add a value with the following details :
Data Type: DWORD Value Name: CrashOnCtrlScroll Value: 1

Now whenever you want the BSOD just hold down the Ctrl key and press Scroll Lock twice . By the way it works only on Win Xp .

Got Indexed !

2006-03-25T21:02:00.000+05:30

Today this blog got indexed by Google . Msn had already crawled it , but still i was waiting for Gooogle .

Windows Live Messenger - Without Invitation ?

2006-03-23T14:50:00.000+05:30

I read on a blog yesterday that windows live messenger beta also known as msn messenger 8 is public we no longer need invitations for it . I decided to give it a try . Downloaded the installer from here which is 13.6 MB . Installation was fine but when i tried logging in it said that i havent got any invitation . I checked the blog again which now says that it was an accident and the server is fixed again . But finally I found a direct link to the invitation acceptance page . So we dont need invitation unless microsoft fixes the link .

The interface looks better but i couldnt find any big improvements . Its a lot heavier on the system taking up 10 mb of ram while talk uses only about 2 mb . Like yahoo we can send offline messages and apart from changing the display name we can add a personal message . They have even added advertisemets in the chat window (check it out at the bottom) . I dont think it brings anything new to go with the name change .

Edit - We can also use theme packs , send animated cartoons called My Winks and BUZZ!!! over contacts ! This way doesn't works for Windows Live Mail Beta

Try this out !

2006-03-22T21:09:00.000+05:30

Heres an amazing trick which will really surprise you . Open an empty Microsoft Word document. There type =rand(200,99) and press enter. Cool isn't it ? Thanks to Pallavi for it .

Origami Unfolds

2006-03-11T21:22:00.000+05:30

After a lot of hype Microsoft released info about Origami , the ultra mobile pc on Thursday . It will run a modified version of Windows XP and the later versions will be running on Windows Vista . With cost ranging between 800 - 1000 $ it has a LCD 7" touch screen with wi-fi and bluetooth enabled .

Tweaking MAC address ?

2006-03-10T20:45:00.000+05:30

MAC address or Media Access Control address is used to identify any kind of networking equipment like Network Interface Card ( NIC ) etc. They are unique for every device . This is used by the ISP to prevent their customers from connecting through different pc's . One such ISP is Sify bband . In my quest to connect through my laptop instead of the desktop I came across tweaking the address . You can use utilities like this :

CMAod

Or modify it by tweaking your windows registry . But this will work only if you have admin privilege . Open the keys under

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

It contains info about various NIC's you have and then edit the string "NetworkAddress" and its done . Other sify users like me can use alternate and better dialers like Experience Sify which can even force a different mac address apart from other cool features.

Today's Trick :

2006-03-06T15:41:00.000+05:30

Go to ur desktop and create a folder named Notepad . Then try viewing source of any web page in Internet Explorer . What happens ?
Also has anybody tried making a folder named con in windows ?

2006-03-05T16:15:00.000+05:30

I recently heard about mobile phones from Apple and Dell on "Gadget Guru" . Has anyone heard too? I dont think anything like that actually exists or will exisit . There are already ipod phones from Motorola .

2006-03-05T16:03:00.000+05:30

Well , my first post ! . I am Chetan , 16 ( 17 on July 25) , male , Kanpur . I like reading fiction , playing comp games , listening to music . I will be posting here all the thing i have found out in my 5 years of net surfing ( since july 2001) and may be a bit about my personal life too . My exams are finishing on this sat so i will be posting after that regularly .