Shantibhushan Naik

Tag: show

  • Javascript sprite animations

    Javascript sprites weren’t as difficult as I thought. With a little bit of help, math, some css, js, images (of course) a decent animation can be shown without using any flash at all. I coupled it in a small class Animator, and wrote a small demo for anybody interested in using it.

    http://www.naiksblog.info/jsspriteanim/index.html

  • Got my bike license – 大型二輪免許を一発合格しました

    Hurray ! I received my bike license today in Japan ! In my first attempt itself ! Wish me congratulations !

    Bike license in Japan
    My bike license in Japan

    Ok some background – I had a bike license from my country. I had not converted it to International License, so I had to opt only for conversion into Japanese license – 外国免許切り替え. I do have a car license obtained in Japan, so I was exempted from written test (which by the way is too difficult, trust me). Instead, I simply had to appear an actual driving test (which is again difficult, mind you). I was required to produce a translated copy of my original license from my country, which can be done in 30 mins in JAF offices. Rest are your passport (both old, new ones), an application form, few stamps which you can buy right there. I live in Tsukuba, so I had to goto Ibaragi License Center, which is situated in Mito. You can go during weekdays, from 09:00AM. Believe me, you better arrive early. There is plenty of crowd, for all sorts of licenses, and usually you have to spend almost whole day there, in case you pass the test and obtain the license. I spent close fo 6 hours today, but in the end I was a happy guy.

    Once they receive your application, they ask you few questions about your original license – How did you obtain it? Where did you practice? What kind of test did you appear for this license? How many cc bike? Learner’s license? etc. Unless there are any problems, you are then handed over a course map, and timings when your test will start. Mind you, the course map is given so that you “memorize” it, period. You are required to drive the exact course map, observing lane rules, traffic signs, signal, right or left indication, speed or slow. The usual advice is that you have some 45 mins in hand before your test starts. Thus, you should actually take the course map in hand, and walk the entire course by foot atleast once. I did that, making a mental note of the lanes, the distance around which I should turn on the indicator, and so on – till I burnt the course map into my brain cells !

    The most difficult are – Ipponbashi, and Slalom – for me. And I did literally walk on foot imagining I was on bike before my test started.

    I believe I was the only one appearing a bike test today – why I was alone sitting in the waiting room till my turn came. The instructor was kind enough to walk me (verbally) through the course map once again. He also gave me a brief about the bike – Honda CB750 – and for my own safety, in case I should fall, had me wear elbow, knee, body protector before the test.

    When the actual test started, the instructor actually sits in a watchtower, from which he had a complete view of the course. Once he gave a go, I just drove the same path I had walked on foot earlier. I was particularly careful about slow down sign, lane change, and making sure that I move my head from left to right wide enough to show that I am taking visual confirmations before proceeding. At one point when making a turn I did step down, but I guess that was OK, because if I’d had done the same on Ipponbashi or Slalom, or even S-letter, or Crank, I am out without any further discussion. Phew, I did feel once the bike will stop during Crank, but I was lucky enough to make it till the final stop.

    In the end, the instructor appraised my driving skills, and gave me the golden word – “合格” !

  • Tired of teaching how to think

    Sir Ernest Rutherford, President of the Royal Academy, and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, related the following story:

    “Some time ago I received a call from a colleague. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed a perfect score. The instructor and the student agreed to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected.

    I read the examination question: “Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer.”

    The student had answered: “Take the barometer to the top of the building,attach a long rope to it, lower it to the street, and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building.”

    The student really had a strong case for full credit since he had really answered the question completely and correctly! On the other hand, if full credit were given, it could well contribute to a high grade in his physics course and certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this. I suggested that the student have another try. I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning that the answer should show some knowledge of physics.

    At the end of five minutes, he hadn’t written anything. I asked if he wished to give up, but he said he had many answers to this problem; he was just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him and asked him to please go on. In the next minute, he dashed off his answer, which read: “Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop the barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch.

    Then, using the formula x=0.5*a*t^2, calculate the height of the building.”

    At this point, I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded, and gave the student almost full credit. While leaving my colleague’s office, I recalled that the student had said that he had other answers to the problem, so I asked him what they were.

    “Well,” said the student, “there are many ways of getting the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer. For example, you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer, the length of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building, and by the use of simple proportion, determine the height of the building.”

    “Fine,” I said, “and others?”

    “Yes,” said the student, “there is a very basic measurement method you will like. In this method, you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and his will give you the height of the building in barometer units.”

    “A very direct method.”

    “Of course. If you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of g [gravity] at the street level and at the top of the building.

    From the difference between the two values of g, the height of the building, in principle, can be calculated.”

    “On this same tack, you could take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower it to just above the street, and then swing it as a pendulum. You could then calculate the height of the building by the period of the precession”.

    “Finally,” he concluded, “probably the best,” he said, “is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent’s door. When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: ‘Mr. Superintendent, here is a fine barometer. If you will tell me the height of the building, I will give you this barometer.”

    At this point, I asked the student if he really did not know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think.

    The name of the student was…

    Neils Bohr

    The Nobel Prize winner in Physics 1922

  • Eset Nod32 blocks Trusted zone IPs

    Last whole week I was stumbled by the fact that my home network with 3 PCs suddenly stopped working. None of them were able to “see” each other, except for a little while… strange.
    Technically (since it is easier to describe), A, B, C – my 3 computers – could reach each other, share files, host apache, download files without any extra configuration.
    Last week, however while using C’s http server from A suddenly stopped. Puzzled, I thought the machine might be overloaded, or something like this must be causing page to timeout, or apache must have hanged (does it?). But things seemed to be working OK on C, in fact top showed a load average below 1 ?
    Further puzzled, I tried pinging A to C, and vice-versa. It worked… but only for a while. Pinging after a while seemed to stop. Huh?
    Scourging over the Internet wasn’t easy for answer. Maybe my way of searching was wrong, but I did spent a good week trying to fish out the ping issue, then next to dig deeper to find that accessing C’s IP from outside (it already has a global ip; though dynamic, paired through dyndns to the world) worked. Now each of them – A, B, C – have no internal 192.168 ip’s, just public ip’s. What good are public ip’s if I have to access them from outside than just sitting home?
    Something was wrong.
    To cut short, I called the ISP, asked them if they have changed anything recently (well, I was using A, B, C sharing files for over 6 months now). My ISP reported that no such upgrade, or settings were done. Deeply mad about this situation, I chose to disable the firewall (Eset Nod32) on A, and then tryout the ping – which worked effortlessly to C, and back.
    What the hell! Why did Nod32 suddenly seem to block my own A, B, C from seeing each other? ARP Poisioning? I don’t know, only thing I know is that it shouldn’t block them. 🙂
    Well, atleast things are fine now. I’ve changed settings on Nod32 to Not block threat detected addresses henceforth.

  • Crazy summer in Japan

    Weather in Japan seems to get crazier each day. Though extremely hot & humid, weather signs show confusion what to expect anytime

  • Elephant Land – Amazing elephant show

    Our weekend got spent in Ichihara Elephant Land. The elephant show was a major attraction there.

     

    Wasn’t it amazing? Might go again sometime to see the monkey show too 😉

  • Using Apache’s mod_rewrite on Windows

    I recently happened to experiment with Apache’s mod_rewrite, an excellent library to change your machine friendly (or perhaps program friendly?) web urls into user friendly urls.

    The steps to make mod_rewrite to work on Windows is-
    – Edit httpd.conf for Apache, and uncomment the following line
    # LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
    -to-
    LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

    – Next, under <Directory “{Your document root}“> change
    AllowOverride None
    -to-
    AllowOverride All

    – Restart Apache

    – Create a sample folder “rewrite” under {Your document root}, with the following files
    {Your document root}
          rewrite
        .htaccess
        details.php

    – What we will attempt now is to have a url like http://localhost/rewrite/details/shantibhushan to be automatically executed as http://localhost/rewrite/details.php?user=shantibhushan

    – Edit your .htaccess file as follows
    <IfModule rewrite_module>
     RewriteEngine on
     RewriteBase /rewrite/
     RewriteRule ^details/(.+)$ details.php?user=$1 [L]
    </IfModule>

    – The RewriteRule is the actual line where we specify what url is to be mapped to which actual url. ^details/(.+)$ takes a user friendly url /details/shantibhushan and extracts “shantibhushan” as $1. It then replaces $1 into details.php?user=$1 resulting in details.php?user=shantibhushan as the actual url.

    – Edit details.php as follows
    <?php
    $user= $_REQUEST[‘user’];
    print(“<h1>$user</h1>”);
    ?>

    – The above sample simply takes “user” from details.php?user={user} and shows it back.

    – Done! Try accessing http://localhost/rewrite/details/shantibhushan and you should see details.php getting called with parameter as “shantibhushan”

    TODO
    – Simply accessing details/ results in error, and rewrite rule doesn’t assume such a case. It can be handled by RewriteCond
    – First I wanted to have details:shantibhushan as the url, but this has a bug on Windows not allows : in path. It seems to work fine on non-Windows.
    – The example assumes Apache is running on port 80 on your machine.