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Posts Tagged ‘kolkata’

  1. Summer holidays: projects, Kolkata visit and shopping

    July 27, 2014 by Sunit Nandi

    So friends, I’m back again with a new post. It has been quite a while since I wrote on my blog. In this post I’ll be describing how I spent my summer vacation. So here it goes.

    My 4th semester exams got over and what followed was a summer break. I was finally free to do whatever I liked to and wanted to. The first thing me and my parents did was offer a special puja for my dad at the Navagraha temple. It was a really long process that lasted for two hours. On another day, we went out for shopping to the city and had our lunch at Chinatown. The most surprising part about this is that, I met Loya ma’am (Mrs. Loya Agarwala, a student counselor serving various institutions) there. I had a long chat with her. My friends from Faculty H S School would be very happy to know about this.

    In the meanwhile, I joined two projects at IIT Guwahati. The first one is related to speech processing while the second is a student tracking system based on RFID tags and ZigBee PAN backend. Both are still underway, even though my holidays are over now. The speech processing project required me to get my BeagleBone Black ready with Archlinux ARM, ALSA, XFCE desktop and Linphone to act as a IP-phone. I’m using an audio cape extension on the BBB get audio-in and audio-out to it. Hopefully, things should be getting into shape soon. Here are a few photos I shot while setting it up:

    IMG_20140620_121209 IMG_20140620_122226 IMG_20140620_122239 IMG_20140620_123252

    I’ll be writing several articles on the BeagleBone Black on Techno FAQ as soon as I get some free time.

    The other project is still on paper and will take much longer to get a physical implementation.

    I spent the first two weeks with parents in Kolkata. We were there for some family errands. But during this time, I had the opportunity to visit the Birla Planetarium and also do some shopping.

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    Also, behold the other random photos.

    IMG_20140701_165330 IMG_20140701_165337 IMG_20140701_171754 IMG_20140702_111050 IMG_20140702_111120_1 IMG_20140703_144328 IMG_20140703_144405 IMG_20140703_175611 IMG_20140703_175756 IMG_20140703_180037 IMG_20140704_103941  IMG_20140701_165502

    Some pictures of our new flat at New Town, Rajarhat:

    IMG_20140704_182429 IMG_20140704_182924 IMG_20140704_184331

    I spent 3 days at Digha, my hometown, and so was able to see the ulta (reverse) – Rathyatra. Here are some pics.

    IMG_20140707_212135 IMG_20140707_212250_1 IMG_20140707_212401 IMG_20140707_212505 IMG_20140707_212644 IMG_20140707_212703 IMG_20140707_212752 IMG_20140707_212825 IMG_20140707_212913 IMG_20140707_212204 IMG_20140707_212233 IMG_20140707_212332 IMG_20140707_212430

    After returning back to Guwahati, I finally had my new workstation ready (a custom-built HP Z420), which I’ll be using for video editing, graphics, app and OS development and gaming.

    IMG_20140612_124924 IMG_20140612_195237 IMG_20140710_155716

    The specs are:

    • 8-core Intel Xeon E5 @ 3.6 Ghz
    • 4×8 GB DDR3 ECC 1600 MHz RAM
    • AMD FirePro W7000 GPU (4x DisplayPort interfaces)
    • Intel C602 chipset
    • 1 TB 7200 RPM Toshiba HDD
    • 4x USB 3.0 ports, 4x USB 2.0 ports
    • FireWire port
    • 1 Gbps gigabit ethernet port
    • DVD-RAM / DVD+-RW drive
    • HP EliteDisplay E221
    • HP USB keyboard and mouse

    I got my workstation ready with Windows 8.1 Pro and Manjaro Linux. Right now, I’m looking for a good secondary HDD on which I can try out Hackintosh.

    With all this, the holidays came to an end. The 5th semester has started and classes have begun with full steam.

    Right now I’m playing around with PC-BSD. It is kind of hipster approach to learning Unix.

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    I’ll be writing again soon with more stuff on my blog and interesting articles on Techno FAQ. Please stay tuned.

    Take care.


  2. Life rolls on, as it always did

    July 26, 2012 by Sunit Nandi

    So finally the boards result and results of various competitive exams were out. I got opportunities to study in three places, namely, NIT Silchar, Assam Engineering College in Guwahati and Institute of Engineering and Management in Kolkata.

    For a while dad was confused about what to do as I did not have my permanent resident certificate for Assam state. Then rounds for WBJEE got stuck. That meant I was forced to leave for NITS.

    On the final few days before Assam CEE counselling, dad managed to get my PRC. So getting admission in AEC was a moonwalk cakewalk. 😀

    Then choices remained were NITS and IEM. Mom was really fixed on her decision to put me in an NIT. So IEM was dumped and we all went to Silchar.

    On reaching NIT Silchar, we had a long discussion and debate on whether to join or not. Finally, it did come to light that if I stayed there, I wouldn’t be able to study for the upcoming JEEs. Add to that, 3 students in each hostel room and travel facilities to Silchar are extremely limited. Getting airline seats is a lottery. And road and rail transport can be erratic because of landslides.

    Putting all those into consideration, I decided to abandon Silchar. I’m back in Guwahati. Classes in AEC will be starting on 4 November. Also, I’m continuing my IIT JEE coaching at Concept Educations, Maligaon, Guwahati.

    So its like that.

    Apart from that, me and a couple of my friends are working on the Techno FAQ blog. It will soon be released at http://technofaq.us.to/ . We are working on the theme and Facebook integration and hope to be fully functional soon along with the page and the group. The great news is that the Facebook group is reaching 4000 members soon, and time for celebration is not far away. You can speed it up by joining here.

    So far so good.

    Will write again soon after some major events. 😛