Most of the apartment communities in big cities in US are gated community, residents need a secure key fob to open the car or building door to enter. Guests who are visiting residents need to call the resident from the directory phone in front of the apartment, so that the resident can open the door remotely from their phone after verifying who is visiting them.

I also stay in a gated community with two other roommates with friends from outside visiting often. So when our friends are visiting us, they would call twice, one from the car door and one from building door to let them in. It was getting cumbersome to take call for each one of them and then press a key to open the door. Also, when my friends are visiting and when they call from directory, it goes to my roommates as it’s his number which has been added to directory and he should be available to answer the call, otherwise I need to go downstairs to open the door. Also another problem is, sometimes we won’t receive call because there is no signal and friends would be waiting outside for someone to let them in and it would be pretty frustrating for them.

So to avoid all this and to make life easier, I created a solution called The Magic Door!

What does this do?

Instead of using one of our numbers in the directory, I created a new phone through Twilio which can be managed programmatically and we have added this number to the directory of our apartment. So when someone calls, we don’t need to answer the call, it is answered automatically by the phone which is running on the server.

It says:

Hello there!

>Press 0 to enter pin.

>> Please enter pin

>>> Correct Pin?

>>>> Send signal to open the door

>>> Incorrect Pin?

>>>> Start over

>Press 1 to call <Friend1>

>> Call <Friend1> phone

> Press 2 to call <Friend2>

>> Call <Friend2> phone

…

Now this new phone acts as the interface between us and our visiting friends. Visitors depending on whom they are visiting, can choose whom to call by the pressing the appropriate key. Also, the cool part is, to our close friends who are visiting often, we created a secret pin which we share with them and by entering that pin, the door open automatically or magically if you like : D So now, we receive call only if someone new is visiting and also the one whose friend is visiting would get the call.

Doesn’t this create a security problem by opening the door automatically?

The secret pin is shared only with our close friends and this can be changed easily by editing a file in the server. So we can create a new pin, every other week or a special pin for a party night and share it with our friends.

How reliable is this? What if the server goes down?

It is pretty reliable, but sometimes if the server goes down, then we would have to go down to open the door or call the leasing office to change the number in the directory. To avoid this, I created a another layer of interface with Google Voice. We have a Google Voice number which is added to the directory and the Google Voice would forward the call to the Twilio number. When the Twilio server or my server goes down, I just need to change the forwarding number from Google Voice and I would receive the call. Once the server is up, I can change it back to the Twilio number.

Just wanted to try something like this and Twilio is uber cool to control phone programmatically.  Also,  its cool to know that all the key presses on cell phones to make calls are nothing but DTMF signals which are basically sounds from particular frequency. So I just used this by playing a sound to interact with Google Voice and the directory phone.

PS: If you are also facing some problem like this and want someone to help you out, just ping me @ njrahulkanna at gmail.com.

As I met each one of them, I could easily say whether they are an Angel or a Demon, except for one person! I was wondering why :–?

Here it goes, a small kavithai in Tamil.

ne ennai parthu sirithal,
          andru ennaku thookam illai;

ne ennidam pesinal,
          andha vaaraththirku ennaku pasi illai;

ne ennodu sila neram irunthal,
          andha mathaththirku  ennaku muulai veelai seiya villai;

ne enn …

ne ennai ippadi kollamal kondru puthaikiraye,
          ne ennathu devathai ah illai ratchasi ah yendru theriya villai!

~ Tubelight Dreamz

Teammate: Wahoo (that’s me btw), do you want some dark chocolate?
Me: Sure! But why is there a Zebra in the wrapper? (there was a pic of Zebra in the chocolate wrapper)
Teammate: (trying to be smart : P) B’cos the chocolate is made up of Zebra’s skin!
Me: Orly! Then where are the white stripes in the chocolate? : P
* Teammate: Grrr, Why am I working with this guy? : ) *

Just trying a post via iPhone as I wait for my Black Beauty to be serviced : )

So what happens then? That’s the interesting part! I meet new people, think of funny one liners, get crazy ideas … and all things that won’t make any sense in the morning but sure will give me lolz whenever I think about it. I credit all these to an awesome phenomenon I call Tubelight Dreamz : )

And here, I plan to publish some of my one liners and any other mokkai (PJs) under Tubelight Dreamz Creations. Stay tuned!

PS: If you are actually smart enough to be convinced of this awesome discovery and phenomenon and want to try it out, then go for it! Today is your day buddy!  As with everything, you need to believe in it and have the commitment to get the best results. If you are happy and experience something funny and smile then leave a comment, I would feel good. But if you suffer from head ache, sleep deprivation or keep yawning the next day, then I am not responsible. Because, as I read what I have written above, it didn’t make any sense what so ever to me. But wait, may be it would in my tonight’s Tubelight Dreamz! \m/

Created this Facebook app to visualize friends in a world map based on their current location. This is utility as well as fun app where it can be used to search for friends location, see friends in a location you are travelling to or just to see where all in the world you have friends. It uses Facebook SDK and Google Maps to visualize the data in the world.

Hitler conquered the world with force, lets conquer the world with friends! Check out where all in the world you have friends using Vizearch.

Internet is an enabler for people to different things easily like shopping, communicating etc etc. In early 1990s, World Wide Web (WWW) was proposed as a way to share information across Internet using webpages and hyper links.  Information on the web were mostly static then like company information, how to do stuffs linked by hyper links.

In mid 1990s, it was used by people to communicate between each other and contents were dynamic based on the user. User can login to see there emails (AOL), Yahoo chat rooms, Yahoo Games, eBay, Amazon and others.

By late 1990s, there was information overload as every company had a website and every one was adding information online like using Yahoo Geocities. All the information were online now except that you can’t find that easily. This is when Sergy and Larry felt the need to search for information through this massive web and came up with Google in 1998. By 2000 with Internet booming, every service was online and this was the culmination of boom and it finally burst in 2000.

It continued to grow after that too and by mid 2000, many people were using Internet and they were using mostly for one-to-one communication like GMail, MSN Chat etc.  By this time, overall infrastructure of the Internet has grown and it can support Voice over IP VoIP (Cisco) as well now.

After 2005, Internet has taken us to next level where it is a community on its own and we form network of friends online and share information with them through social networks like MySpace, Orkut, Facebook etc. It went further into our lives by tracking at real time what we are doing with Twitter. Internet infrastructure did grow with time as well and application services like Google Docs where offered online through Cloud Computing.

I think current trends are social networks (Facebook), real time data mostly using mobile clients (Twitter, Four Square), business case of social network like an online agent (Covestor, Groupon), Cloud Computing (Google Docs, Google OS, SaaS) and Video.

The million dollar question is, What’s next?

Video would be the next big thing as it is natural progression from static data to dynamic data to voice to video. It is no brainer, Cisco as a networking company is going after video.

With Cloud Computing, I think we should see more desktop applications and services moved to the cloud and I think it is a natural progression for networks to become powerful to support these kind of applications. We would be less constrained to our desktop and I believe we should be able to login to our desktop online in the future.

Tablets would be the enablers for cloud computing as everything would be online and we just need a way to access it online like iPad, Cisco Cius. What’s cool would be as something similar to what Cius does, we use it as tablet when we are mobile and when we go to the desk we hook it to a desktop and it becomes powerful machine.

I am not sure what would happen to our phones though. Sure they would be smarter and I think we  will carry a smart phone and a tablet with us at least for the next leap.

I think identifying these areas is an easy one, if I am correct that is but the actual million dollars question is in what we can do in these areas to earn million dollars! If you know the answer let me know : ) I don’t know anything now and no more in limbo state as its 5 AM and sun is coming out. : )

PS: I dint do much research into this post, just wrote what I know. If some information is wrong excuse me.

PSS: After completing this post, I realized I dint mention Microsoft at all in this post. I think Microsoft has not done much with the whole online use case and should be interesting to see their strategy.

#10. To put mokkais (PJs), it is an art if you like : P I happened to be with a group of friends who always make PJs and I must stay I am still no way close their PJs : P

#9. To learn to cook : D I had no clue on cooking before I came here and I would say I have learnt a bit.

#8. To gain technical knowledge in Computer Science. Through the courses I took and the projects I did, I must say I got a broader scope of Computer Science like HCI, Networks and also gained some in-depth knowledge on the subject.

#7. To mingle with completely different environment. I had no clue of how this place would be and dint know many people either when I came. So it was good to experience life; if you like, from scratch : )

#6. Learn to manage yourself and be completely independent. From washing clothes to bank account everything is on you.

#5. To experience new things! ; )

#4. To do creative and innovative projects. This is technical, on the courses I took, couple of courses emphasized on creating a new innovative tools to solve common problems like teaching and visualization. This was a new experience, as it involved not just implementing something based on requirement but thinking out of box and doing something new no one has done before.

#3. On Virginia Tech and Blacksburg, I really like this place. Virginia Tech and Dept. of Computer Science is a great place with all the facilities and Blacksburg is small, cheap, safe college town which I really like.

#2. To meet smart, interesting people and make new friends. I made few good friends and came across people whom I liked from the day I met them because of their character, charisma and work.

#1. Ssssshhhhh! Figure out yourself whats yours : )

Somethings may be silly but these were the things came to my mind when I thought about it. Life moves on and its moving pretty fast, should experience it too see what it holds!

Cheers,

Rahul

Other day, I was counting something and I started counting from 0 (because Arrays start with 0) and then wondered why it is 1 less. : D

From traffic signals to parking lots to playing cards everything is a Computer Science problem and Java class design : P Because Java has such a good Object Oriented concepts and we CS guys are good at it, Life is good, mind you! : )

Btw, for complicated relationships too sadly we are responsible. You know complicated relationships are nothing but a circular single linked-list which creates a deadlock? A guy loves a girl but this girl doesn’t love him, happens always right?! this girl loves someone else who in turn loves some other girl forming a linked list and somewhere down the line this link forms to be a circular one causing deadlock! As defined in CS, deadlocks happen when two or more process wait for resource in a circular chain. We are very seriously working on solving this problem! : )

So Computer Science is nothing but Life and Life is nothing but Computer Science. I am writing this mokkai post when I am suppose to writing my project report. Having attained this eternity, shouldn’t I be awarded a PhD in CS?! : P I know, I know.
System.exit(‘Rahul’);

It was afternoon when I landed in Chennai and climate was not so hot and thankfully it was good for most part of my stay there. One thing I immediately noticed was of course traffic.

On the way from airport to home, I seriously thought traffic was bad and people were driving crazy, wondering how did they change so much in just a year and half. But I was told the traffic hasn’t changed at all just my perspective has. I used to make fun of my friends who tells me how different it would be when you go to India after an year for the first time. Just being used to traffic here in US for one year, you will see the difference and feel awkward. But it was just for one day, after that I was back to where I truly belonged and I was driving on the roads as crazily I was before. On the way though to compensate for the crazy traffic outside, enjoyed the sweets mom has bought to the airport, it was good to see them after a long time. Reached home just in time to see my sister who was “seriously” preparing for her afternoon exam and wished her best as she left. She has grown a lot in a year and was good to see her and hang around with her.

Spent first two weeks going to my native place and other places down south Tamil Nadu. It is always fun and this time around it was more fun as we went with cousins and aunts and also now you go with a different perspective. Other than that met friends and relatives and went around Chennai.

Most of the days relaxed at home, having good food, watching TV and sleeping. Went back to those good old days and did exactly as I had wished here : )

While here in US, I thought I have changed a lot but your character is defined by the environment you are in and mostly while in Chennai I was as I was before. I understood that culture, environment and people around you influence your behavior and its very different out there from what it is here but to me both are equally fine.

There are two things I felt has changed from the time I was there. One is really the traffic as I have told before. But one another thing which may seem silly is Ear Mufflers. Oh man! I have never seen any new thing being used by people before in this scale. Every other person was wearing one and I don’t know how it caught up among people in every place in Tamil Nadu. Every shop was selling them and it was really cheap. Although being in cold place like Virginia here, I never used them, so it amused me when everyone was using it. It made me wonder, is this real indication of how the climate has changed and effect of climate change?!

Overall, it was fun and relaxing but dint know how days had passed and suddenly realized I will be leaving back in few days. It was sad to leave but at least I dint feel bad to be back here, I should thank those who make home away from home here. Don’t know when I will be back home but till then these memory of it will be there for sure.

PS: Post title is inspired from the book “2 States” by Chetan Bhagat, which saved me in the long flight on the way back. It is a story of a boy and a girl from two different states in India getting married, it was a good read.

Somehow I think I dint work much this sem but did a decent job on the courses. I dint code much too in the course projects which is rather disappointing as I like to code but happy that my teammates did a good job on it. Grades are not out yet but hoping to get fair grades.

Experienced new things and tried few things, some things turned out well and some things failed. Thinking of missed opportunities I feel bad but at least I tried and learnt from it!

One thing for sure, I have changed a lot and I know it! Not sure if people around me see it that way or whether its for good or bad … but change is constant and change for the better.

Everything has to come to an end one day and it will be written as past but not the memories of it! As this semester comes to an end and with it 2009, hope you had a great time as well and wish you a great year ahead. Happy new year : )

PS: I wish to write a lot but can’t find words to express and few things cannot be expressed! Unnai ennip paarkkaiyil kavidhai kottudhu … Adhai ezhudha ninaikkaiyil varththai muttudhu … Abirami abirami : )