Art - Love of my life

Its been a long time, I posted something non technical and about my interests. Well, the title is pretty clear about what I am gonna talk about in this post. I always had a knack for painting and all the artsy stuffs. Given that nobody in my family's been interested in art, this is something that I can proudly say I immensely enjoy learning with an open mind. As one of my art teacher told me, art is all about having an open mind and different perspective on a scene. All this started when I very badly wanted to do something for school annual day competitions. I had a friend who was very good at drawing things as such, I guess I can say I may be inspired by him. When I won the drawing competition, I felt so happy and started doing more paintings. Till now I have done quite a number of drawings and few paintings. I love

1. drawing cartoons:
2. Glass painting:
3. Oil painting:
4. Coffee painting (Monochromatic painting):
5. And ofcourse trying out pencil shading and other stuffs.

I did a lot of glass paintings in college which I gifted my friends and professors. Even last week when I talked after one year to my research professor for whom I gave a picture as our farewell gift, he said everybody loved it. These little things make me happy and content with my ability.
Recently since I am busy between chaffering Ovia to school and amma to shopping, working on MS projects and course work, I rarely find time to paint. But when I do, it becomes my world!!! Hope I would soon post many more of my work :)

How to send an email using mutt in ssh session in a Linux machine?

The process is simple.

1. install a ssh client in your machine. In a command line,
"sudo apt-get install openssh-client openssh-server"

Note: server is optional.

2. You will need a shell account. Its available for free from sdf.org. Just follow the instructions printed on the applet. After creating an account, logout from that account.

3. In the command line, type

"ssh @sdf.lonestar.org"

4. The connection will prompt for the password that you configured with the sdf account. Type it in and press enter.

5. If the password is right, you will have to configure your backspace key and then a crescent will appear and you can start typing your unix commands.

6. For sending mail, you need to open a mail client. I am using mutt. In the command line, type

"mutt"

It will open the inbox. The set of controls that are available will be listed on the top. You will have to setup the /Mail folder, just enter yes and the OS will take care of it.

7. To send a new mail, press "m" or to reply to a mail press "r". It will prompt for To: address and then Subject: After the subject, the pico text editor(may be a different editor) opens and you can type in anything you want. Then press "ctrl+o" to write it out and press "ctrl+x" to exit the editor. The screen will return to the compose mail page. Press "y" to send the message out.

You can explore about other options like adding cc, attaching a file, replying to a group, deleting the mail as you go.

Note: These steps are based on Ubuntu 9.10 OS. If there is a better option to anything I listed here, please share it in the comments field. Thanks in advance.

String reverse in Java

In SPOJ, there is a problem to take two integers and reverse them and find their sum and reverse the sum.

The catch here is when two large integers are given. In java there is a object to help you with reverse, for deleting a char at a index in a string and lot more. It is StringBuffer class.

But the solutions to the problems in C takes very less time and space than Java does. I am not sure how thats possible.

Factorial and their trailing zeroes

In SPOJ, there is a problem to find the number of trailing zeroes in the factorial of a number. Though the question seems intimidating, the solution is rather simple.

zeroes come from multiplying the number by 10. To find the number of times the factorial has been multiplied by 10, we can find the number of times 10 is a factor in the factorial expansion of the number. 5 x 2 = 10 is also possible. So instead of finding the factors of 10, we can find it for 5. All the powers of 5 like, 25,125,etc should also be considered to add number of 5 factors to the expansion.

Thus, to find number of trailing zeroes, keep adding the floor of (num/power of 5) until the division is less than 1. The reason why we ignore the reminders in the factors are we need only whole factors not partial ones.

For more detailed explanation see the Source

BitInteger Java solution for finding factorial

In SPOJ, there is a problem to find factorial for numbers between 1 and 100. Though the algorithm for the problem is very easy and simple, finding the right datatype to handle the factorial of larger numbers was not so easy. But the solution is however made simple by java.math.Integer

Amazing thing about BigInteger, the number of digits that it can hold is limited by the memory of the system. It would be unfair to the rest of people who are trying to find the solution if I post the solution here but I can sure help others and save the time I spent researching on this problem.

Follow this sample program: http://leepoint.net/notes-java/data/numbers/60factorial.html

DalalBull 2009

"This story only inspired to get the Coordinator post for DalalBull next year. No matter what happens or who coordinates the event, I will make sure next year, Dalal Bull gets the spotlight right from day one. I will write about it next year."

-Sujeetha (Myself) a year ago.

I am glad that I could get to coordinate the onsite event this year. This year's experience was the pinnacle of all my extracurricular activities. I am talking about Dalalbull, an event in Kurukshetra which is about simulation of stock market. There is both online and onsite event of Dalalbull. The online event was coordinated by shanketh, one of my classmate.I organized the onsite event. For the onsite, we had 5 organizers just like last year. 2 girls and 3 boys from same class. But this year it was from IT dept. Last year it was myself, usha, thanu, rajesh and pradep who did the organizing work. This year it was prathyusha, gayathri, ramki, rahul and ganesh. The work started by first reviewing our last year software, then fixed some bugs. The organizers this time did a wonderful job. The ultimate experience was the volunteer meet. Dalalbull, being an event which involves the maximum number of volunteers and the largest hall in college for venue, solely depends on volunteer's enthu for a good show. We arranged at 2 the meeeting in 111. But only after 2.30 some volunteers entered the hall. One person who I really should mention is dharani of second year computer science. This junior had super contacts and arranged like 100 volunteers(first and second years, both girls and boys) for the event in just one phone call(slightly exaggerated!). In the meet, I really understood the difficulty in making all 100 people listen to you. I understood the difficulites of the faculty. After the meet, I completely lost my voice but I gained confidence that I am still the same good old speaker who used to get prizes for debates and state level speech competitions. The hall 13 where the event was supposed to take place was just getting ready for the computer installation after the Contraption event. When my hostel curfew got over, my work still continued. Myself, kalpu and abi went to first year block and conducted an informal meeting there. Then finally on first day of the event, I heard as usual the night was a nightmare for the guys.

So the day started by first setting the computers, this time we had 30 systems like last year. Some juniors helped to set up the LAN to all computers. This time there was no problem with LAN wire at all. Thanks to vishnu and the juniors. I forgot to mention about some of my friends who helped me the most in conducting this event. Abi and kalpu spent their time with me by helping me in every aspect I could think of. The onsite event had a great help from thanumalayan. For record, he is not the coordinator, but off the record he is one of the coordinator. He helped me by staying in the hall the day before the event. Thanks to vicky for arranging the lunch at the hall.

My voice was completely out by the end of the day. Finally we had a successful event. No fight, no complaints.

to be contd.........

KURUKSHETRA - BATTLE BEGINS

One more year has gone by.. I could say this because the next big thing in my calendar is KURUKSHETRA'09. I never believed in adage. According to me its all crap. But one thing I learnt from Kuruk is "united we stand, divided we fall". All students of our college work together to make this great event. Do check out the website. Lot of online events are open.

the website address is : http://kurukshetra.org.in/

The battle begins on Jan 21st. But registerations open now !!!