BPaul's Tech Blog

Malayala Manorama Ticker on Linux

2008-11-14T05:33:00.000-08:00

For anyone who cares - it is possible to install and run Manorama's Ticker on Linux. You need to install Adobe AIR for Linux (Beta). Here's a screenshot of the ticker showing some news for the 'Kerala' tab.

RTalk works again

2008-08-01T01:47:00.000-07:00

I have no idea why Rediff suddenly decided to have connections go over port 80 for the gatekeeper. (The client connects to the gatekeeper to obtain the chat server IP to further connect to). Previously it was done over port 1836. Now the client first needs to connect over port 80, issue a "GET" request, then redo everything as was before. Anyways, my client got broken, now it works again.

RTalk & Rediff Bol continued

2008-07-06T13:39:00.000-07:00

An RTalk user has informed me that RTalk no longer connects (ie no longer works :-( ). From what I've seen the gatekeeper no longer accepts connections over 1836, but only over HTTP (the client needs to get the chat server IP after initially connecting to the gatekeeper). I will attempt a fix as soon as I get some time and an internet connection.. most probably next month..

RediffBol protocol based Java client

2008-01-25T19:55:00.000-08:00

I've checked in the source here.

Programming going multi-core

2007-12-19T18:58:00.000-08:00

Here's the first job-posting I got specifically asking for multi-core programming :


Profile: Software Programmer (Cell Lib) - ISTL
Design and development of the Maths library for multi-core architecture. Job involved Software design of High performance math library on Linux operating system. These Library are being developed for the Cell BE Blade systems. Candidate will be working on the Advanced multi-core processor architecture based systems. Work will involve understanding processor architecture, developing algorithm to develop best optimized and high performance libraries. 

##Desired candidate experience:
#Minimum 3 years experience on Linux Programming Working with multi-threaded applications. Experience with multi-core programming is desirable.
#Total experience for the positions should be 5+ years on software design and development.

The opening is for IBM Bangalore. (I guess that is obvious)

Rediff RBOL chat rooms

2007-12-13T23:00:00.000-08:00

If you had logged into a sleazy rediff chat room and seen "members" as shown in the picture, that could mean only some things.
1. Rediff chat room infested with spammers. (UNLIKELY)
2. Rediff admins artificially boosting the chat room member count via an automated program at their servers. (LIKELY).
Likely because
** You can't chat with any of these "members".
** This happens only when the traffic is low and the chat room is thinned out.
** As "real" members start filling up, these start thinning out.

I wonder whose idea at Rediff it is to have names like these!.

Compiz Fusion + Swing Continued

2007-12-03T23:05:00.000-08:00

There's a new bug filed - so the earlier one was not fixed after all, but was closed.

Compiz and Swing

2007-10-08T19:12:00.000-07:00

After installing compiz fusion (Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon defaults), I find Swing apps have rendering issues sometimes. There's a bug filed (here), however it is marked as closed, and there are reports from somebody that it works only 90% of the time. I find that true, so why is the bug closed ?

Ubuntu Gutsy Beta

2007-10-04T18:04:00.000-07:00

Installed Ubuntu Gutsy Beta on a Vostro 1400 laptop. Broadcom/Dell wireless needed to be configured via ndiswrapper. The other non-free driver installed was for nVidia. However compiz fusion looks great. Now I have a dual boot machine with Vista on it. Now all I need is some free time, so that I can work on stuff.

Done for now

2007-08-24T12:48:00.000-07:00

I am done with Rediff Bol as of now. Now I can
1. login and display the buddy list
2. get notified of buddy status changes and display accordingly
3. do 1-to-1 chat (incoming messages are displayed with correct font/color/smileys)
4. join sleazy rediff chat rooms
5. change my own status
6. view/edit my avatar
7. pick my nick name
8. view/delete offline messages

I learned some Java Swing on the way. I will start continued work on this later on, as I am moving to another US city. Also I'll need to get access to a personal machine - planning to dual boot an MS OS with Gutsy Gibbon. (more on this later). See ya later !
Update: Surprisingly, there's demand for this thing.

Dell Tech Support

2007-08-14T13:18:00.000-07:00

Comment on dell tech support (from here)
"Yah dell chat would probably be easyer to get things from anyways, If you put in a big ass biker name like Henry the Giant Baby Killer, im sure they would fear you enough to give you whatever you wanted. Otherwise its you versus this overwhelming accent for 20 minutes."
:-)

Rediff IM client RBol (contd)

2007-08-14T08:16:00.000-07:00

I now have a better handle on RBol's protocol. Right now I am trying out a Java based client - it is not yet complete. See screen shot. I can see that there are more than 3000 people trying their hands at chat. I haven't seen it cross 2000. Could be because tomorrow is a holiday (Aug 15)

Erlang

2007-07-19T08:33:00.000-07:00

Now that 'Programming Erlang' has been released, I was curious to find if any jobs that had 'Erlang' on its requirements appeared on the job boards. I searched Monster India and found a single entry :


California Software Co Ltd
Linux based Network Security Product Development Engineer
Should be an engineer with 7+ years of experience in the following skills.
Developing server side software in C/C++ on linux platform. 
In depth knowledge of TCP/IP networking 
Multi-threading, syncronization and IPC 
Encryption, AAA, single sign-on, RADIUS, Active Directory, LDAP 
Perl and Shell scripting
Network programming experience in Java and a background in network security or end point security is desirable. Knowledge of Erlang language is a plus.

Of course, the number of job entries should not stand in the way of learning a new way of thinking, but what the heck - only a single entry ?

Disassembling Rediff Bol instant messenger protocol [Part 1]

2007-07-17T14:01:00.000-07:00

Here I document my efforts to disassemble the protocol used by Rediff Bol IM client.
From the Wireshark dump, the initial connection is to the server: 203.199.83.62 at port: 1863. ie the client connects to the above mentioned address and sends a request. We see from the pcap dump that the following strings are sent in the initial request.


String  Length(decimal)  Length (Hex)
Gatekeeper2       11 (0B 00 00 00) 
GetLoginServers   15 (0f 00 00 00)
Rediff Bol8.0  build 315 24 (18 00 00 00) 
RBOL/1.2.5   10 (0A 00 00 00)
RBOL/1.2.5+HTTP_CONNECT  23 (17 00 00 00)
RBOL/1.2.5+HTTP   15 (0f 00 00 00)

The last three strings look like the client's advertisement of its capabilities for connection. Upon closer inspection, we see that for all strings, the string length is prepend'ed to the string (4 bytes). So the entire packet disassembled looks like this:


8a 00 00 00    4 total size(8a=138 total data size excluding this byte) 
00 00 00 00    4 null
00 00 00 00    4 null
0B 00 00 00    4 
Gatekeeper2    11
0f 00 00 00    4
GetLoginServers    15
5c 00 00 00    4 total (5c=92 total data size following excluding this byte)
18 00 00 00    4
Rediff Bol8.0  build 315  24
03 00 00 00    4 number of connection capability entries   
0A 00 00 00    4
RBOL/1.2.5    10
17 00 00 00    4
RBOL/1.2.5+HTTP_CONNECT   23
0f 00 00 00    4
RBOL/1.2.5+HTTP    15

Server Response

The server sends out the ip addresses to which the client should connect, after disconnecting from the first connection. (Full analysis of the response yet to be done)


String
RBOL/1.2.5
59.160.240.82:1863,59.160.240.82:1979,
RBOL/1.2.5+HTTP
RBOL/1.2.5+HTTP_CONNECT
59.160.240.82:80,59.160.240.82:8080,59.160.240.82:443,


RBOL/1.2.5
59.160.240.92:1863,59.160.240.92:1979,
RBOL/1.2.5+HTTP
RBOL/1.2.5+HTTP_CONNECT
59.160.240.92:80,59.160.240.92:8080,59.160.240.92:443,


RBOL/1.2.5
59.160.240.98:1863,59.160.240.98:1979,
RBOL/1.2.5+HTTP       15   0f  0f 00 00 00
RBOL/1.2.5+HTTP_CONNECT      23   17  17 00 00 00
59.160.240.98:80,59.160.240.98:8080,59.160.240.98:443,

Login
Once the secondary address is obtained from the above response, the client disconnects the earlier connection, and reconnects to the secondary address.
A dump of the login request is :


00000000  67 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 09 00 00 00 g....... ........
00000010  53 65 72 76 65 72 31 2e  32 06 00 00 00 53 69 67 Server1. 2....Sig
00000020  6e 49 6e 44 00 00 00 1b  00 00 00 62 69 6e 75 70 nInD.... ...binup
00000030  61 75 6c 32 30 30 37 40  72 65 64 69 66 66 6d 61 aul2007@ rediffma
00000040  69 6c 2e 63 6f 6d 07 00  00 00 XX XX XX XX XX XX il.com.. ..XXXXXX
00000050  XX 00 00 00 00 00 00 03  00 00 00 33 31 35 09 00 X....... ...315..
00000060  00 00 57 69 6e 76 65 72  3a 34 38                ..Winver :48

Once again the data length is prepend'ed to the data, so we have the request as :
(I have the password blanked out as XXXX..).


Strings     Length(dec) Hex
67 00 00 00        67 = 103 dec (total size following)
00 00 00 00    4   null
00 00 00 00    4   null

09 00 00 00    4 
Server1.2      9   09 00 00 00

06 00 00 00    4
SignIn         6   06 00 00 00

44 00 00 00    4   44 = 68 in dec (total size following)

1b  00 00 00   4
binupaul2007@rediffmail.com  27  1b 00 00 00
07 00 00 00    4
XXXXXXX        7  07 00 00 00

00 00 00 00
00 00 03 00
00 00 33 31 35    13    ??????(*magic?*)
09 00 00 00    4
Winver:48    9  09 00 00 00

Finally we are able to login, and the server responds with alerts, contact list and stuff. (Yet to fully analyze the response). I am now able to login via my Java program.
Other observations.
The password is sent in clear text. If the indicated data size is greater than the one sent, the server waits till the client sends more data. If my client claims 3 connection capabilities, but only requests the IP addresses for two, I get a response which contains:


Nitro::UnknownRemoteException2
./../Interfaces/Gatekeeper/IGatekeeper2_nitro.cpp

It seems the server is all CPP code. Ugh !
Conclusion as of now: A thorough analysis of the protocol could ultimately lead the way for a gaim/pidgin plugin or a Java client. I'll dig deeper when I find more time !

I Only Speak Malayalam

2007-07-09T12:07:00.001-07:00

Weird stuff I dug up from Amazon :
Love me, I speak Malayalam
Uh !

I can be your Malayalam teacher
This one is for the ladies ;-)

In the USA it is spoken in Malayalam
Probably at some places in Chicago and Dallas !

Please understand I only speak malayalam. Do not f**k up with your goddamn English
Probably not a good idea to wear this for job interviews !

All stuff from Top Expressions

Evaluating Indian Web 2.0 movie rentals

2007-06-28T14:35:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of Indian Netflix clones.
Homeview
Seventymm
CatchFlix
Clixflix
Cinesprite

Here are the results I got for searching "Blade Runner"

HomeView
Your search for 'blade runner' resulted in 0 matches

Seventymm
Bugs Bunny - Road Runner Movie
Blade
Blade II
Khatarnak Blade
Blade: Trinity

Catchflix
Blade Runner: The Director’s Cut

Clixflix
Movies that match your search for 'blade runner':
Blade Runner
Cast: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Edward James Olmos, Sean Young
A blend of science fiction and noir detective fiction, Blade Runner (1982) was a box office and critical bust upon its i...

cinesprite.com
No records found

Catchflix and Clixflix were the only ones that provided the expected results. Derive your own conclusions as to how Seventymm implemented their search.

HTML scraping contd

2007-06-28T12:58:00.001-07:00

As soon as HBO changes their site layout, my scrape stops working. The new code is :
scrape.awk:


BEGIN { FS="<|>"; OFS="\t"; namecount=0; timecount=0 }

/<dt class="title".*/ { namecount+=1; titles[namecount] = $5}
/<dd class="time".*/ { timecount+=1; times[timecount] = $3 $5 }

END {
 for (i=1; i <= namecount; i++){
  print times[i], titles[i]
 }
    }

And this gives:


$ ./fetch.sh
1:15AM  Beverly Hills Cop
3:15AM  Tales From The Crypt 29: House Of Horror
3:45AM  The Killing Fields
6:30AM  A Very Long Engagement
9:15AM  A Perfect Murder
11:30AM Family Sins
1:15PM  Cyber Seduction : His Secret Life
3:00PM  The Adventures Of Shark Boy And Lava Girl
5:00PM  Blue Thunder
7:15PM  Little Nicky
9:00PM  Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
11:15PM Monster-In-Law

The scrape code would not need to be changed if only there were a method to automagically rip the needed information - however that is too much AI for me.
BTW 'Cyber Seduction' looks interesting ;-)

Tic-Tac-Toe

2007-06-22T13:02:00.000-07:00

After reading this java.net article on making a nim playing computer program, I attempted to make a tic-tac-toe playing one in Python. This exercise also served as a refresher for my old AI mini-max lessons (although it would be difficult for me to forget the person who taught me).
I'm unable to reproduce the full code here due to space reasons.


class Node:
    def computeMiniMax(self):
        if len(self.children) == 0:
            winner = self.board.getWinPos()
            if winner == 'X': self.score =  1
            elif winner == 'O': self.score = -1
            else: self.score = 0
        else:
            for child in self.children:
                child.computeMiniMax()
            if self.player == 'X':
                self.score = max([node.score for node in self.children])
            else:
                self.score = min([node.score for node in self.children])

Here's where I build the game tree:



    def buildGameTree(self):

        winner = self.board.getWinPos()
        if winner == 'X' or winner == 'O' :
            return

        if self.player == 'X':
            newplayer = 'O'
        else:
            newplayer = 'X'

        for i in range(3):
            for j in range(3):
                char = self.board.getcell(i,j)
                if char == '.':
                    newboard = self.board.clone()
                    newboard.setcell(i, j, self.player)
                    node = Node(newboard, newplayer)
                    self.children.append(node)
                    node.buildGameTree()

Here is a sample run:


Who plays first? (1=computer 2=human)2
.|.|.
.|.|.
.|.|.
Your choice:1,0
Building game tree...
Done..
Computing node scores...
Done..
X|.|.
O|.|.
.|.|.
Your choice:1,1
X|.|.
O|O|X
.|.|.
Your choice:0,2
X|.|O
O|O|X
X|.|.
Your choice:2,2
X|X|O
O|O|X
X|.|O
Your choice:2,1
X|X|O
O|O|X
X|O|O
It is a draw !

Week 2 in the US

2007-06-18T06:49:00.000-07:00

Final destination (above)

US Highways

My friend's home at Edison (below)

From Elizabeth to Edison

Shot from my friend's apartment at Elizabeth - impending 'thunderstorm'

OK I shot a lightning.
All images shot with my Sony Ericsson w550i and scaled via GIMP.

HTML scraping with GNU awk (gawk)

2007-06-12T12:40:00.000-07:00

scrape.awk :
BEGIN { FS="<|>"; OFS="\t"; namecount=0; timecount=0 }

/<span class="name".*/ { namecount+=1; titles[namecount] = $5}
/<span class="showtime".*/ { timecount+=1; times[timecount] = $3 }

END {
        for (i=1; i <= namecount; i++){
                print times[i], titles[i]
        }
    }

fetch.sh :


#!/bin/sh
#get todays date
dt=`date +%d/%m/%Y`
wget "http://www.hbosouthasia.com/southasia/schedule?schedule_country=6&schedule_date=$dt" -O - -q | awk -f scrape.awk -

$ ./fetch.sh
12:15am The Thing Called Love
2:30am A Very Married Christmas
4:15am Beverly Hills Cop
6:15am Hook
9:00am Serenity
11:30am Blue Chips
1:45pm The Killing Fields
4:30pm The Making Of Monster-In-Law
4:45pm Eye For An Eye
6:45pm Little Black Book
9:00pm The Longest Yard (2005)
11:15pm Two For The Money

Altered Carbon

2007-06-11T14:01:00.001-07:00

Now Reading : Altered Carbon (by Richard Morgan). Brilliant. Interview with the author here

Choco

2007-05-20T20:24:00.000-07:00

Here I attempt to use the choco constraint programming library to solve the puzzle in the previous post:


package org.bpaul;

import choco.Problem;
import choco.integer.IntDomainVar;

public class GSSSolution {
   
    public static void main(String args[]) {
       
        Problem pb = new Problem() ;
       
        IntDomainVar domainvars[] = pb.makeEnumIntVarArray("var", 9, 1, 9) ;
       
        // add constraint: all numbers are different
        pb.post(pb.allDifferent(domainvars)) ;
       
        IntDomainVar sets[][] = {
                  {domainvars[1], domainvars[3], domainvars[7] } ,
                  {domainvars[0], domainvars[1], domainvars[2] } ,
                  {domainvars[3], domainvars[4], domainvars[5] } ,
                  {domainvars[5], domainvars[6], domainvars[7] } ,
                  {domainvars[2], domainvars[6], domainvars[8] } ,
                  {domainvars[7], domainvars[8] } ,
                  {domainvars[2], domainvars[4] }
                 } ;
        // add constraints: for sum being equal along straight lines
        for (int i=0; i < sets.length; i++) {
            for (int j = i+1; j < sets.length; j++) {
                pb.post(pb.eq(pb.sum(sets[i]), pb.sum(sets[j]))) ;
            }
        }
       
        // solve and print the solution
        if (pb.solve() == Boolean.TRUE) {
             for(int i = 0; i < pb.getNbIntVars(); i++) {
                 System.out.println(pb.getIntVar(i) + " = " +
                   ((IntDomainVar) pb.getIntVar(i)).getVal());
             }
        }
    }
}

The solution I get is :
var[0]:7 = 7
var[1]:1 = 1
var[2]:6 = 6
var[3]:4 = 4
var[4]:8 = 8
var[5]:2 = 2
var[6]:3 = 3
var[7]:9 = 9
var[8]:5 = 5
which is also correct.
Another Java based library is cream. The Java.net article on constraints programming is here

Geometric Software's Recruitment Ad

2007-05-19T19:24:00.000-07:00

The following puzzle appeared in Geometric Software's recruitment ad some time back.
"Fill in the digits from 1 to 9 into the circles, so that the sum of the numbers in each straight line is the same."

IBM job requirements

2007-05-18T06:44:00.000-07:00

Job requirements for IBM India (mailed to me by a head hunter):

Job Location: Bangalore, Pune, Gurgaon, Kolkata & Hyderabad
Positions :Permanent-SE / SSE/ TL / PL / PM
Education : 10+2+4 or higher ( regular / correspondence )
AGE : The candidate should not be more than 35 years
Interview timings: 9:30 am to 1:30 pm

I guess you need to be a "PM" (project manager) before 35..

The Beginner's mind

2007-05-17T19:39:00.000-07:00

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind there are few.
- Shunryu Suzuki