Through my eyes

things that i find interesting , too random to be categorized. .

[ankurmawandia]

SeedR

A great many people download downpours with desktop customers, for example, uTorrent yet with a straightforward UI and small expectation to learn and adapt, Seedr takes torrenting into the cloud. Concealing clients' IP addresses from general society and with a thoroughly complementary plan to kick individuals off, the administration is quickly picking up footing. BitTorrent is a considerably well known device. More than 170 million individuals frequently utilize the convention to share records of all sizes, with the dominant part utilizing desktop programming customers, for example, uTorrent and prominent group pleaser BitTorrent. By the by, choices are accessible. For a long time more progressed BitTorrent clients have been utilizing alleged 'seedboxes'. These remote servers run downpour customers that permit individuals to share content far from their home machines. With extended transfer speed available to them, sharing expansive amounts of information by means of seedbox is a breeze. Yet, while seedboxes aren't especially hard to work or see (most utilize a well known interface), the greater part are holed up behind a paywall. Albeit moderately modest, this absence of introduction guarantees that individuals intrigued by remote torrenting aren't presented to the experience. This is the place Seedr ventures in. Basically a downpour customer in the cloud, Seedr offers a free support of kick individuals off and is ludicrously simple to work. On a fundamental level it's as basic as making a record (only an email location is required) and either dragging or transferring a downpour to the administration. Seedr is likewise completely magnet join able and can even discover a deluge when supplied with simply the URL of a page. Seedr then does all the downloading and sharing itself without a solitary byte hitting the client's machine (incredible for the individuals who need to get on with different things) and with no neighborhood IP locations being presented to a downpour swarm. This implies the administration keeps up client protection as well. Once the download is finished (shown by a fundamental advancement bar) clients can exchange the substance to their own particular machine by hitting the download catch while a right snap uncovers different choices. In tests we effortlessly downloaded at a consistent 25Mbps (notwithstanding when restricted by a VPN), implying that a 1GB document took around five minutes to snatch. Since downloads occur by means of HTTP, clients can say farewell to ISP throttling. "Associations with the site are scrambled utilizing SSL-256bit with solid figures, over HTTP/2 associations. All deluge movement is done on our servers, and the character of the clients is never uncovered. Security is up-to industry guidelines," administrator David educates us. Be that as it may, Seedr can accomplish more. "Once on the cloud you simply see and deal with your documents – you can play them, stream them or download them on the off chance that you need," David says. "There are numerous other little and cool elements incorporated with the framework. For instance, before you stream a motion picture you can look for subtitles in any dialect and include them live. You can even synchronize them as you watch the motion picture." Since it's program based, Seedr additionally works crosswise over gadgets – "anything other than a sewing machine" as per David. Seedr likewise has a Chrome module which empowers clients to add a download to Seedr in only two ticks – right-tap on the connection, left tap on 'Add to Seedr'. Done. "The whole framework was worked to give smooth gushing without sit tight times for changes ( even on telephones ), and quick download velocities to home PCs. All servers are 1000mbit or speedier, and tuned for deluge, and record download activity," David says. At the point when endeavoring to stream to our Android test gadget there was an underlying postponement while the record changed over however survey was consistent after that. The dark window that first shows up should be tapped to uncover the playback controls. Seedr gathers unknown information for bug fixes and the organization says that every one of extra measurements are anonymized following 60 days. At the point when clients request that have their records erased, Seedr wipes their insights alongside the records inside 48hrs. Seedr offers a complementary plan and a few bundles for cutting edge clients. Complementary plan – 2GB of free stockpiling + more space for welcoming companions – Unlimited transfer speed, video playback bolster, fast downloads – 1 parallel downpour download and 1:1 seeding proportion on open trackers Premium – 30GB, 100GB and 1TB of capacity – Unlimited parallel downloads, HD gushing and API access – 1:1 seeding proportion on open trackers – Private trackers support with up to 5:1 or 5 days seeding proportion In admiration of copyright activity, if Seedr gets a DMCA notice the organization expels the culpable deluge and exhorts the client. That is the end of the matter. By and large Seedr's excellence lies in its straightforwardness. It's difficult to envision anybody other than complete tenderfoots expecting to return to the site's instructional exercise. In any case, those that do won't be baffled as it uncovers approaches to coordinate the administration into Kodi/XBMC. The individuals who fixate on the particulars of their torrenting may favor an out and out seedbox experience, however Seedr knows its intended interest group and seems to serve them well. Seedr can be tried here for nothing.

[ankurmawandia]

[ankurmawandia]

Bus and lightening..

  A bus full of passengers was traveling while suddenly the weather changed and there was a huge downpour and lightening all around.  They could see that the lightening would appear to come towards the bus and then go elsewhere.  After 2 or 3 instances, the driver stopped the bus about fifty feet away from a tree and said -  "We have somebody in the bus whose death is a certainty today.  Because of that person everybody else will also get killed.  I want each person to go one-by-one and touch the tree trunk and come back. Whom so ever death is certain will get caught up by the lightening and will die.  But everybody else will be saved".  They had to force the 1st person to go and touch the tree and come back.  He reluctantly got down from the bus and went and touched the tree.  His heart leaped with joy when nothing happened and he was still alive.  This continued for rest of the passengers who were all relieved when they touched the tree and nothing happened.  When the last passengers turn came, everybody looked at him with accusing eyes.  This passenger was also very afraid and reluctant.  Everybody forced him to get down and go and touch the tree.  With a fear of death, the last passenger walked to the tree and touched it.  There was a huge sound of thunder and the lightening came down and hit the bus - yes the lightening hit the bus, and killed each and every passenger inside the bus.  It was because of the presence of this last passenger that earlier, the entire bus was safe and the lightening could not strike the bus.  Sometimes we try to take credit for our achievements, but this could also be because of a person right next to us.  Look around you -  Probably HE is there around you, in the form of Parents, spouse children, siblings, friends, colleagues etc, who are saving you. Appreciate them

[ankurmawandia]

[nfafoto]

[ankurmawandia]

[ankurmawandia]

#USSR #USA #COLDWAR

[ankurmawandia]

Depicting foursquare data feed on a openstreet map

Foursquare is a popular geo tagging application. It allows user to check in two places. A number of check in's will award you the title of mayor. There are batches to be unlocked. Mayor ships to be won and what not. But today I am more interested in the data this app collects for you...When you checkin in to a place you exactly record your latitude, longitude data, time, name of place etc.....

I have been using this app for more than year and half now and I did check in to 450+ places. Not all unique though. So foursquare has data about exactly where I was on the earth at 450+ instances in the last year. So this data is what exited me. I decided to plot this on a map. I chose open street map to do this. 

Though there are ways to do this just with foursquare login on sites like www.4sqmap.com. I took this opportunity to try hands on open street map and 4square developer api.

The outcome is pretty neat, Hope you like it. Here is the Demo http://bit.ly/1bwYV9e

You can zoom in at the street level and see the checkins individually. On mouse over of the base of the flag you see the location and time of checkin

Let me know if you would like to get you own maps. I can take five requests

[ankurmawandia]

Decoding the facebook lookback video

So yes Facebook just turned 10 and they gifted us  a look back video, I had look at it and it looks like neatly done and almost impressive.

 There is a footnote on the bottom saying Mark & the facebook team. It has the mark zuckerberg's signature, the first thing that came to my mind was that how would they be able to create a 1min 2 sec vid for everyone.

If you look through the video they share some key information

When did you join

Your fist 3 or 4 pics

your 5 most liked post

and a collage of all you pictures

If you are aware of this amazing graph search then I think facebook already has the framework to attain this feat. All they needed was some creative brainstorming and a generic jingle that would go along with it.

So basically what graph search allows you to do is to run queries to the facebook user database just like a regular database. You can combine queries and get very specific results. You can be smart and find your exact target audience for ex

  You can exactly find which of your friends who live in Bangalore like the cartoon shinchan.

Now what I am assuming facebook engineers did was they wrote queries like

Find joining year for user1

Find posts for user1 arrange by date

Find posts for user1 arrange by likes

Find all photos by use

I am sure generating such data for each user would take them some time. And then they use this data and automate it to create a video for each user .This is just my assumption and not very deeply thought. It might look technically naive and possibly it is.

There is a high possibility that it could be generated on the run time. Because it would be a huge overhead to create videos for all 1 billion users, I guess less than 10% of them will look at.

So all in all if you have an insight on how it was done do share your views

[ankurmawandia]

Lalbagh flower show  jan 2014

[ankurmawandia]

The vintage thing called hmt

Two weeks ago some I realized that there used to be a thing called hmt in the past. Yes the government of India watch making company, there was a time when hmt was synonymous to watch in India. It was worn with pride. A little browsing on the internet will tell you that watch enthusiasts are still inquisitive about hmt. 

They are still being manufactured in limited numbers; the process has not changed in last 60 years. The motion of the watch is same design which was collaboration between hmt and citizen. You can easily find them being sold on eBay in black.

I got myself an hmt "Janta" 16 jewel watch. It’s a mechanical watch i.e. no batteries. You need to wind it daily. One time winding will make it run for solid 24 + hours. It’s pretty accurate and reliable. I have read on the internet that these models may gain/loose 10 -30 seconds a day. Not bad at all. What I like the most about this piece is that it has Hindi dial. The letters are in Hindi making it unique, the glass is a hand cut dome style which gives it an ancient look and makes it more prone to scratches. But then all in all I love it.

[ankurmawandia]

Google spread sheets : Fixing you up with charts

Google drive is a great service , There is some really interesting things you can do with it. 

You can stored data, documents , files what not , you can even host a basic wesbsite . 

Here is a great blog by Amit Agrawal http://bit.ly/1bng5BL which tells in detail how to do that , today we go a step ahead and try to host  a few charts on  our google drive.

You  can begin by creating a spread sheet with the data you want to use.

Like this one

Next what need to be done is to publish this excel sheet so that it works as a datasource for us. Go to File /Publish to the web

Next

The url can be used to acces the data feed which will contain information , We can convert this in to js friendly JSON by just appending ?alt=json-in-script

The full url may look something like this

https://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds/list/0AuoSxd1LDMgddGZFTXU5MTBIM2tEMWlzejlmWml4RFE/od6/public/basic?alt=json-in-script

Acessing this url will show that you are getting a json. Now this JSON can be used as raw data in you web page

I used chartjs to draw some graphs and pie charts. The out come were really impressive.

here are the demo that i did Demo 1 and Demo 2 

If you want to look the source you can download it from here. 

PS This might look like a bit of over engineering for charts  because you can create a chart in your google spread sheet and embed it as a chart or image in you webpage , but i like it this way

Let me know if you have any other cool project that can be done using this 

till then

[ankurmawandia]

impress.js a ligtweight geeky presentation framework

Few days back i came across this impressive presentation library by Bartek Szopka .its called imress.js and yes it is impressive. It harnesses the raw power of client side javascript which every one seem to be in love these days. this allows you  to create an unlimited canvas and navigate to parts  with effects.

First things first you need to have some coding or atleast fiddling experience for  this one ,thought it has a gui based editor called jspres i thought its better to keep it real ;). Another thing it is based on htm5 so  dont even bother trying it  in ie. and if you are still using ie it  is better you stop reading now.

To get yourself started download a copy of this from github , all you need to get going is a text editor and a browser.

All you need to do is a plane html page and create a div with id "impress" . Each div inside this acts as a slide, with some parameters like data-x,data-y ,data-scale allows you to move around the canvas generating cool transitions like pan and zoom.

Another cool thing is it allows you to rotate in full 3 d  along x ,y and z cordinates . with some good co -ordinate geometry one can achieve some real fancy stuff.

This tool will not make your presentations interesting. but if you have somthing interesting to say impress.js sets you up

Now the good part what i feel is a good thing to do is we can host this cool impression(not using presentation , defying ms) on your google drive . All you need to do is go to drive.google.com and create a new folder and change the sharing setting to public.

upload the html,js and css to the folder, you can also any images that you have in the impression to the same folder.  When done with uploading click on your html and open it with your googe drive viewer.

there is a preview option 

 On clicking you can see this page as a web. This url is accessible to all and can be shared  :)

  Five points which makes impress.js kick ass is

its all web , means light weight can be hosted any where no need to carry the  presentation in a flash drive 

It harnesses the web so its platform independent  no installations required

Amazing transitions  no competition here

Html5 support means you can add all audio and vedios in your impression

and lastly its unique : break free from  the monopoly of microsoft power point

  look at a sample presentation here. done in one sitting using the github files only nothing fancy.

Let me know if you have some great ideas post your presentation here.Ciao happy impressions :)

[ankurmawandia]

Music that keeps you going.

Difficult times are like a purifying fire, When you face it you realize what you really are. what your true potentials are a little pep talk, a little push can get you going . Music is a therapy which works . A good tune can cheer you up and shaker your neural fibre and yes it does work. So early in the morning while commuting to work what i find encouraging is a good motivation. My top 10 are 

10)From the moview rocket singh , This song deserves a place here.Nice tune by the golden trio Shankar ehsaan and loy.

9)Bulla ki jana (Rabbi shergil) This semi sufi-punjab song

8)This track from wake up sid strikes a jovial mood in you.

7)Rubaru(Rang de basanti)Rehman sir respect :)

6)Allah ke bandey(Waise bhi hota hai)Another gem of a track by kailash kher

5)yun hi chala chal rahi(swadesh), A R rehman shows why he is the best.

4)Arambh hai prachand(Gulaal)This song by piyush mishara in shuddh hindi lyrics is definitely is the warsong that gets you pumped up

3)Ashaien(Iqbal))From the movie iqbal, an amazing moview as well a great song

2)ye Haunsla(Dor), Amazing movie. In the voice of shafaqat amanat ali Khan this song tells a story on undying human will to succeed

1)Naav hai teri( udaan). Inpired from life of Anurag Kashyap ,with  great lyrics and good tempo it does  deserve the spot. 

Here is a youtube playlist with all the songs , comment of you like it. Let me know what your top 10 are

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[ankurmawandia]

The criminal tribe act of 1871

The criminal tribe act was passed by the British in the year 1871. This Act declared that a tribe or people belonging to certain ethnicity were addicted to crime. The entire tribe was stereotyped as criminal.  Since they were described as 'habitually criminal', restrictions on their movements were also imposed; adult male members of such groups were forced to report weekly to the local police

  In the entire west the British spread the propaganda of atrocities and horrendous criminal tribes of India. This act was sought as a measure to civilize the monstrous tribes. The underlying cause to this move was the fact that the tribes were more organized and were self- governed. They claimed owner ship on the forests and lands which they have been living and offered resistance to the British. 

This law was used as a tool to harass the tribes. The police could arrest the any member of the family without a warrant. The act was used to the full advantage of the government and served the purpose well to them. A hint of the British propaganda can still be found in the fact that the word "Thug” name of a nomadic tribe in north India is synonymous to a criminal.

  Even after seven decades of freedom the law is still there in the Indian constitution under Habitual offender act 1952.

As many as 60 million Indian citizens are forced to live as two tier citizen facing constant humiliation from police and media. This act is still imposes an economic hardship to these tribes. Today, there are 313 Nomadic Tribes and 198 Denotified tribes of India.

  An act which was created to facilitate the expansion of east India Company continues to haunt the republic of India. This has created a cultural guilt among people who are ashamed of their past. Laws are made for the people and should be subjected to continuous reforms. Such hypocritical laws need to shed and the constitution reforms are much needed.

 Reference- further reading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Tribes_Act

http://delhihighcourt.nic.in/writereaddata/upload/CourtRules/CourtRuleFile_ZS0TN8C4.PDF

http://www.breakingindia.com/

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[beautiful-india]

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beautiful-india:

Rituals - Sonepur by Maciej Dakowicz on Flickr.