I worked out the entire IIT-JEE 2011 results and the end result is available here. I’ve intentionally removed the Application Form Number (partially) in the results, so that it may not be misused. I’m thinking of trying a full-scale birthday permutation attempt on the JEE site for the Application Form. What do you think? Will it be worth it?
I had been meaning to learn either Python or Ruby for a long time but had been unable to decide. I had a basic understanding of both of these, but I never had the chance to build an entire application in either. And I’m not talking about using Django or Ruby on Rails (which are both brilliant), but building a desktop application using GTK. The application I was first aiming for was a P2P sharing client which would be completely decentralized and offer several special features, such as :
However my dreams were shattered by the first point itself, being the difficulty of NAT Transversals. Further ahead was the question of networking as well, which could have potentially driven me nuts. I worked a bit on it, using STUN, twisted, but gave up on it soon as being unfeasable as a learning project.
The next idea came to me when I got tired of downloading stuff using axel from the command line and started itching for something similar to Internet Download Manger for Ubuntu. The closest thing to a download manager on Ubuntu is FatRat and is something I really don’t like. It is based on Qt and prouds on working as a front-end for several file-sharing websites as well. What I needed was in fact a fast download manager, which keeps tracks of what I download, and does not require keeping a terminal open all the time.
I found GwGet, which occassionaly looks much better in the source version than in the one from the Ubuntu Repositories. I really liked this one, except for the fact that it was made using C++, and used single threaded downloads (like wget). As a result it was quite slow, and not upto my needs.
That was when I thought of the idea of creating a download manger using [GTK][gtk] + Python/Ruby. I looked around for axel ports in Python/Ruby and found PyAxel, which beat axel in some of my benchmarks (after this patch). For the past two days, I have been working on PyGTK, Glade, Anjuta and several other IDEs, none of them to my liking. I really prefer Vim :)
So far, the work on PGet has been minimal. I’ve worked out threading, and little parts of GUI which were stripped from GwGet. As of now, it is still under works, but I am hoping for a release real soon. After all, it is not for nothing that they call Python a dynamic langugae
For more details, please go the PGet project page on Github. I will be posting further updates over there. In case someone is following this blog, you can view the source for this website at github and maybe even fork it!
Since I’ve already decided to make this my newer blog, why not just continue in the same spirit and write a little of the events of my highly boring, lazy life. For one, I was part of the SDSLabs 1st yearly trip to Robber’s Caves which was highly enthralling. We enjoyed a lot, and as a bonus I learned to play Mafia. Somehow the concept of not-knowing and yet trying to deduce out a solution in Mafia seems quite interesting for a Party game to me. Among other things, my sister got me a new Rubik Cube (which should be my 6th or 7th I guess), and I’ve been practising quite a lot (to the dismay of my friends and teachers), My timings have not been upto the mark as they were last year, but I’ve been improving and I average around 80 seconds per solve. I’ve been focusing on learning the entire Fridrich, and try to learn 2-3 moves per day.
I also spent some time reading a brilliant new fantasy series called “The Kingkiller Chronicles” by Patrick Rothfuss. It is a brilliant new debut series in fantasy fiction, and already has 2 books out from its planned trilogy : The name of the Wind, and The Wise Man’s Fear. The series is highly praised, and you were to believe me, one of the best pieces of Fantasy ever written. But it is not the fantasy about this book that makes it so great. Its the general themes of love, tragedy, enemity, and knowledge that make it brilliant. Kvothe, the protagonist of the series is a charming character who is telling the story of his life to the Chronicler. Enough on the book, just go ahead and read it!
Oh, and I’ve got a RSS feed for blog using Jekyll already. Its available [here] (/atom.xml)