Early research on Indian scripts rendering and input in Linux/X

Posted by hooeezit on February 1st, 2010

Hindi_KWhen I was in junior year of college in 1998-99, I worked on a project at the Indian Institute of Information Technology in Hyderabad, India under Dr Rajeev Sangal and Dr Vineet Chaitanya. My programming partner, Naoshad Mehta, and I collaborated on adding support for Devanagari script in X under Linux through ‘rxvt’. We called the modified version ‘rxvt-idev’. The results were so well received, that Naoshad and I received a Department of Electronics, Govt. of India grant to continue the work and add Indian script I/O capability to X in general. Read the rest of this entry »

Why you should abandon Hotmail

Posted by hooeezit on February 1st, 2010

HotmailPeevesTo anyone who has used GMail, it would be a no-brainer. Hotmail is simply much harder to use. I enumerate some of my frustrations with Hotmail and how the experience compares against GMail. In a future post, I will show you how to move your main email account from Hotmail to GMail in an organic manner.
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Hyland Lake Park in Fall Colors

Posted by hooeezit on October 27th, 2009

Click on image to see it in full size
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He didn’t fall? Inconceivable!

Posted by hooeezit on September 17th, 2009

A memorable scene from a memorable movie, The Princess Bride.
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Farming Strategy on Farmville

Posted by hooeezit on September 17th, 2009

If you are on Facebook, you have certainly been implored by a connection to join Mafia Wars or Farmville. I have, and I’ve joined both. Farmville’s interactivity is far more visual and engaging, so I actually spend time playing Farmville. Here are some thoughts on maximizing your returns from the game. Read the rest of this entry »

Extracting WAV file header information using a Python script

Posted by hooeezit on August 18th, 2009

I am currently working on WAV file playback in an embedded device. To store WAV (PCM) sounds on an embedded device, you need to strip the headers and extract the uncompressed PCM data from the file. My previous post shows how to convert the binary data from the WAV file into a C array that can be included in a project as a source file. In this post, I show you how to figure out where the PCM data lies within the WAV file.
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Embedding a binary file as an array in Firmware

Posted by hooeezit on August 18th, 2009

Most small embedded devices do not have enough storage to justify a file system abstraction.  So, if you have to store binary data like an image or a sound waveform, the most common method is to embed it in the code as a linear array. In this article, I show you a Python script that can convert any binary file into a C array encoded in hex.

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Table Join Operation in Excel

Posted by hooeezit on August 16th, 2009

The interactivity of Excel makes it a very handy tool for data analysis. But Excel excels only at numeric analysis. Unfortunately, tabular/set analysis is not inherently supported in Excel and you have to jump through hoops to do that. I’m posting the source code for a VBA subroutine (Excel Macro) that performs one of the most common tabular operations – a Table Join. The subroutine here takes 2 tables in the form of ranges, and the name of the join field as input and produces a new worksheet with the joined table as output.

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What will happen in Iran and Why does it matter?

Posted by hooeezit on June 25th, 2009
Tankman, Redux?

Tankman, Redux?

Iran is front and center in all major new outlets these days. Iran has been the errant relative of the international community the last few decades, and has shot into prominence since George W Bush’s moronic invention of the ‘Axis of Evil’. Iran fared prominently in the last major international political event – the US Presidential Elections. John McCain chanted ‘bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran’, but thankfully, the majority of the US electorate saw that as completely unnecessary. Conservatives kept talking of Regime Change in Iran by hook or by crook, though, so now that Iran is showing signs of the same ‘by hook’, the US audience in particular and the international community in general, is understandably excited. Read the rest of this entry »

Repairing a Casio Piano Keyboard (CTK 400)

Posted by hooeezit on June 19th, 2009

MusicI find the finger movements of accomplished piano players to be poetic and mesmerizing. I don’t have delusions of ever reaching that mastery, but I do want to be able to play a few notes on a piano when accosted by one! So, a few years ago, I bought a cheap (but 61 key) electronic keyboard from Craigslist – a Casio CTK-400. And it sat in the closet till I was suddenly bestowed with oodles of time 2 months ago.
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