My space in the world

Code is poetry

Posted by Sayak
July - 7 - 2012

A few weeks back, Teo called out for volunteers to work on an application for managing the workflow during programs like Season of KDE (our own version of google-melange). After two weeks of intensive coding, we now have our very own application!

The application has been titled “KDE Students Program” (codename Pandora) and will be available at season.kde.org after a while. My primary aim was to make something that is not only easy to use, but easy to maintain. So what does it do?

  • It allows creation of multiple programs, with more than one active at one point of time.
  • It provides an option for users to sign up as a student or a mentor. A mentor application has to be approved by a SoC admin.
  • Students can submit one or more proposals. Approved mentors can select projects they want to mentor.
  • Once the student application deadline is hit, SoC admins will go through all proposals and accept/reject them.
  • Once the coding period starts, the mentors will then coordinate with their students.
  • Upon completion of the program, mentors will evaluate the students’ performance and mark them as passed/failed accordingly.

Program Home

Project Details

Submit a proposal

So as you see, the workflow is quite simple. Of course, there are quite a few other stuff that are available to SoC admins, but I won’t get into all that. The application is wired up our central login system KDE Identity and has been built on the Neverland UI.

If you wish to test and try to break the application, the source code is available here: projects.kde.org/season-kde-org
If you can’t / don’t want to install it locally, ping me on IRC (nick sayakb on #kde-www) and I’ll share a (private) link where you can test the application.

Posted by Sayak
April - 22 - 2012

Last month, Ingo Malchow blogged about Bugzilla and Neverland. I’m happy to announce that another site was added to the Neverland category: the KDE Community Forums have been migrated to our new Neverland theme and also undergone a major revamp at the same time. The main changes are:

  • KDE Brainstorm has been fully integrated with the forum: a decision was reached to discontinue the old software due to maintenance reasons. The voting interface is still partly driven by AJAX, but the rest of the interface has been merged with the main forum structure.
  • Collapsible forums: You can now hide the categories that you don’t use.
  • Visual navigation: Jump through various sections on a page without having to scroll.
  • Hierarchical navigation: Go through a folder’s hierarchy using the new tree style navigation.
  • A new look for the user profile and control panel.
  • A re-designed online friends system and an easy way to send them messages.
  • Context based navigation everywhere for a clutter-free UI

… and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We are really excited about the release and we hope you like using it. If you encounter any bugs with the new design, please file a bug report at bugs.kde.org under the forum.kde.org component.

Here’s a link to the official announcement: http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?t=101660
Take a tour of Neverland here: http://forum.kde.org/tour.php

Posted by Sayak
May - 15 - 2011

After getting loads of requests to re-publish this page, I am posting it again. Although this time, I’m posting it as an FAQ based on the questions I had been asked.

Disclaimer: All information reflected on this page are solely my own views and is in no way any kind of official data. Neither me, nor the company is responsible for any deviations in the facts provided here. This information is based on my training experience back in January 2010, and some of it might already have changed and therefore, might be outdated. Please do not contact me personally or post your questions in other blog posts or on Facebook, such comments will not be replied to.

I completed my training in the month of May 2010. I’m in production since then and am posted in Hyderabad. I’m a part of the Infosys Retail department, and I work with .Net technologies.

Q: Is Infosys training tough?
A: Yes, it is tough. But is it impossible to get through? No, not at all. I was never great with academics (not considering school education here, everyone was a winner back then), although at Mysore, I scored a GPA of 5 on 5. It’s all about how much you can bend yourself, or you might say, how much you care. We were given every single resource we might need to comfortably clear the training. Of course, it depends upon us if we use them or not. So if you are worried that you might not be able to take it, don’t be, it’s worth a try.

Q: I am a non computer science student and I don’t have IT skills. Can I make it through?
A: Even if you were a computer science pro at your college, that wont matter much here. What they teach is from the very basics. Their course material, especially for the non-CSE students is extremely detailed and very simple to understand (again, depends upon if you are really willing to learn). We got slides and a lab guide for every module, and I can’t remember even a single question in the exams that didn’t come from those slides. Baseline is, don’t start mugging up from a million books and from the internet, that would just make things worse. I didn’t touch a single book in my entire training. And I cracked it pretty fine ;)

Q: Do I need to study anything before I go there?
A: It’s not required. You might end up in a different technology than what you might prepare at home. But if you really want to do something, you can brush up your C/C++ and basic SQL/Oracle skills. That’s because these were the generic technologies they offered to everyone in our batch. I guess they still do that.

Q: What happens if I can’t clear the training?
A: Think of it like a university entrance exam. You crack it, you’re in. You don’t, you’re not. Although we were a part of an internship program, so the trainees who weren’t able to clear it in the first attempt were given a second chance to clear it with the regular long cycle trainees. Although if you get into the regular 6 month training, you just get one chance.

Q: Is internship different from regular training?
A: Yes. First of all, you will do your internship before you even pass out of your college, most likely in your final semester. Your college would either give you a crash course, or may even just hand you your engineering degree just like that :) But that’s not your headache, like for example, our final semester was a 20 day episode where we studied everything. We had classes even on Sundays! But we guys had a 6 month advantage over the regular trainees, as in we were in production months before they started.
The internship program at Infosys had a theory section of 1.5 month duration, and a 2.5 month project, which later was taken as our final year project at our college. Internship is not tough, although since you have less time, it’s more hectic. You have classes on Saturdays as well, and you rarely get time to relax. But once the project period starts, you can enjoy yourself. Just make sure you don’t mess up your project though ;)

Q: I’ve heard that they conduct an exam before the training starts to decide if I go into fast track or regular training. Is that true?
A: If you ask me, I’d say no. That’s because none of our college seniors, or our juniors, or our batch had to give an exam. If you’re a CSE guy, you will have a shorter training period. Non-CS guys have a longer one.

Q: Do I get to choose my stream (Java/.Net)?
A: Yes and no. Yes as in our case, we were given an option. No as our college juniors were not. It all depends upon the company.

Q: What project do they ask us to work upon during the training period?
A: For the regular long cycle trainees, there was a 15 day project (this information comes from my non-CSE friends). For the interns (also known as Fast Track trainees), we had a fully blown 2.5 month project. You may/may not get a chance to do a project in the technology you were trained in. Although in 99% cases in our batch, trainees got projects in their own technologies.

Q: Do I need to take anything with me to Mysore?
A: Just clothes and grooming stuff. No need to take pillows or blankets, they provide all that. You’ll enjoy staying that their Employee Care Center (ECC) hostels. It in no way less than a 5-star hotel room. You have air-conditioned rooms with plasma TVs, room service and whatnot.

Q: Do I have to share a room?
A: Depends. The girls of our batch were given two-seater rooms, while the guys got private ones. I guess you’ll know what you get once you are allotted a room.

Q: What all facilities do they have at the Mysore campus?
A: Everything! A multiplex, supermarkets, salons, hospitals, a pool, a sports complex and so on. Basically everything you can think of in a resort. Mysore campus is a beauty. It’s a lifetime experience. You’ll understand what I’m saying once you get there :)

Q: What about food?
A: Well what about it? You have everything starting from North Indian meals to South Indian servings. You have Domino’s, CCD and a floating restaurant with wonderful delicacies served every day. Not only that, you have a range of bakeries and ice-cream parlors. I gained 6 kilograms in 4.5 months.

Q: Are they stringent about in and out timings?
A: Well, 15000 trainees in that campus, it’s only fair. Don’t challenge the system just for the heck of it. Don’t do anything stupid that might put you in serious trouble.

Q: Can my relatives/friends visit?
A: Yes, but only on weekends. You can even book a guest house for them inside the campus, and the room rent is nominal.

Q: My question isn’t listed above. What do I do?
A: Stop searching the internet about Infosys training and go do something useful!! Uhm OK, I agree, everybody is a bit curious, right? Even I was. But maybe you’ll get to know once you reach there. Infosys gave me a world class experience at Mysore campus. They polished me with their training program as well as they pampered me with their facilities. My training experience is the one thing I’ll remember all my life.

Posted by Sayak
December - 12 - 2010

Just tried Firefox 4 (Minefield) on my Kubuntu box and I must say, it is THE fastest  browser I have ever used. Plus the interface is quite impressive as well.

Firefox 4

The integration with KDE was easy. Just download this theme (it is compatible with FF 4.0).

You might also want to use a KDE-ish file picker. To do that, type about:config in your address bar, and search for file_picker. Set ui.allow_platform_file_picker to false.

Viola! You’re done.

Posted by Sayak
October - 31 - 2010

After almost a month’s research, I figured out that D90 was the best way to invest when buying a DSLR camera. This is my first DSLR, and I’m hopefully catching up fast. 24 hours down with the camera, I’ve already made up my mind about not using the flash again, and that somehow, images look much better without flash. But in any case, I’ve done nothing but play with the camera in the last 24 hours.

D90 Front

D90 Front

D90 Front

D90 Body

D90 Back

D90 Back

Nikkor 18-105mm Lens

Nikkor 18-105mm Lens

The D90 is a mid range Nikon DSLR which arguably has the Canon EOS 550D as its competitor. Honestly, Canon doesn’t stand a chance, but there were times when I was seriously considering to get the 550D as of its powerful new image processor. At the store, D90 somehow felt much better in my hand and my initial clicks were razor sharp with D90′s good enough 18-105mm lens. I didn’t really even look at 550D once the store guy shot a photo in a near dark room with the D90. Man, he had steady hands.

Since then, I’ve been trying to get sharp images in the dark with slower shutter speeds. Seems like I need some serious practice. I’m yet to get used to the 11 focus points the D90 offers as I rarely use the LiveView mode. The camera allows me to take about 540 snaps at the finest quality mode (JPEG) on the 4GB memory card that came in with the kit. The battery gives something around 450-500 snaps, although I also did a 5 minute D-Movie in between.

The performance is unquestionable. Nikon vs Canon, be it a long time debate, boils down to Nikon earning the throne. Totally worth it.

Posted by Sayak
December - 30 - 2009

Have been using Windows 7 for some time now. I really love the performance boost I experience when compared to Vista, although I sincerely feel that it has some usability issues which I didn’t find even in Vista:

1. The taskbar text doesn’t have a dark border or a dark colored cloud. So in cases where the background becomes white, the text is almost unreadable:

Taskbar

Start Menu

I feel that the text should have a dark color with a white cloud around it, or vice versa.

2. The control panel window when maximized lacks a much needed left panel. I wonder why the left panel has been removed.

3. Small icon mode isn’t very pretty for the taskbar. The taskbar overall lacks a 3D view and looks somehow – broken..

4. Windows Media Player 12 lacks the glass background at the controls area. As you can see in the following picture, the WMP window at the front doesn’t have the glass controls like the Windows photo viewer window at the background.

Media Player

I wonder if there’s a way I can convey these to Microsoft.

PS: I’ve become a fan of the Aero peek functions. Also, loving the new taskbar thumbnails! :)

Posted by Sayak
December - 21 - 2009

I just had my campus recruitment from 14th to 18th December ’09. I got placed in Infosys Technologies, the top Indian software company and an MNC. For me, the picture is as follows:

  • Training date: Starts from 27th Jan ’10
  • Training location: Infosys Mysore
  • Field(s) of work: Devel, Testing, Mainframe, Webserver etc.
  • Joining date: Immediately after training

Infosys offers this world class training at Mysore. My college will be dispersing the students off on or before 27th Jan and we’ll be ported to Mysore. I am yet to receive any details on what the training will have and what are the DO’s and DONT’s for that. But I am confident that whatever it is, I am ready to take up. I’ve heard that the trainees are so busy that they end up having a daily cycle of 08:00 to 00:30 at night, but this doesn’t scare me in any way. In fact, I am mentally prepared to be burnt out, yet have fun.

I am so looking forwards to the Mysore training. For all those who have got a chance to go for this, I suggest that you shouldn’t think again and go for Infy. It’s an amazing company and a great platform. And of course, the training is the best you can get in this part of the globe. It feels pretty damn good to be an Infoscion!! :D

About Me

A son, brother and friend. Enjoys scripting and making small bits of apps here and there. Wants to conquer the world (well, who doesnt). A geek who has an obsession for ponies. Loves acoustic and wants to play guitar sitting on the Hollywood hill one day!

A Word About KDE

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