kalyanchakravarthy.net – Kalyan’s Weblog, Rantings, Projects, Designs….and more blah
KalyanChakravarthy.net
Projects, Php, Designs & Blog
About Kalyan (me)
I am Kalyan Chakravarthy, a 20yr old Designer, Developer, Student, Tech-freak, from India, currently studying 3rd year B.Tech at VITU, with majors in Computer Science. This is my online space, which would showcase my Designs, Projects, Blog, Tech-Articles, etc.
I also offer freelance Web Design, Php & JavaScript/Ajax Development services at a nominal price, drop in a line if you are interested.
From my Tech blog
Playing with graphics and processing
June 7th, 2009 | In Graphics, Programming, Thoughts & Ideas | No Comments »
Graphics have always fascinated me, especially 3d structures and stuff. Most of you might know me as a web geek, but before i even knew about html, php and blah, i was into C++ most of which i learnt by self after i discovered some two 95 edition books Let us C by Yashwanth Kanethkar and TurboC++ by Robert Lafore strewn in my house. I still have them.
It might be obvious i always has fascination for art, graphics and anything that involves visualization. I was a bit ok ok with 2d. When ever i tried to break into 3d i used to end up frustated more not because i didn’t know how to, but more because i could visualize stuff and couldn’t replicate them. And all i wanted was just to try it once to get rid of that frustation.
I have contemplated many tiems to start overr with SDL and OpenGL, which always ended up the same old way.
So to break out of the daily php / html chores, i started playing around with Processing Language ( processing.org ), and the first thing that came to my mind was why the heck didn’t i knew about it years back ! Its simply Awesome.
And might come as a surprise that even though Processing language its built on java, its totally non clumsy and has totally easy to use syntax without all those nonsense classes and stuff !!! I totally recommend it to anyone who has interest in graphics 2d or 3d especially if you are just beginning !
As i get along with it, i will post some more experiences that i have had, which might be of help to you.
Tags : Tags: 2d, 3d, Graphics, history, processing language, Programming, visualization
Up and Alive
June 2nd, 2009 | In General Chatter, Site stuff | 1 Comment »
Its been quite a while since i last blogged. The site or to be more precise the domain went down, and my stupid domain host just won’t renew it even after i promptly paid. Other than that the last 2 months have shown me a lot of adventures, diversified my tastes, streamlined my goals.
I have started to pursue photography as a serious hobby, bought a DSLR thanks to all those who hired me. You can check out my flickr photostream if you would like to, and if you like something please commment. I am an amature, it helps.
As far as the redesign is concerned which i have announced some time back, i myself have been yearning to do and is prepetually on dealy, expect it soon.
Exams got over some time back, and the only thing that i have been doing in holidays after a week of travelling is eat, sleep & php.
Since i am almost back to my hopeful self with loads of rest and time, expect loads of interesting stuff that are going to come up.
Cheers, Kalyan
Tags : Tags: alive, blogged, freelancing, holidays, PHP, site news, up, website
Happy birthday to me
April 4th, 2009 | In General Chatter, Personal Stuff | 3 Comments »
Well yea, as of 2nd of this April i have officially lived for 2 decades, completed 20 free trips around the sun.
Some of the highlights of my birthday were that
- I tried to paint again after a gap of nearly 5 years, before which i used to do it as a hobby which lasted nearly 9 yrs. It doesn’t really matter much coz it turned out to be a total piece of crap, but hey that’s a start.
- Bought myself a new DSLR camera to pursue my photography interest more seriously. Thanks to all those who hired me and those who were generous to make some donations.
- Attended crappy classes the whole day … from 9am to 7pm with just few hours break !
Looking back things have changed a lot for me. I seem to have reach the point again where i am beginning to wonder my life’s purpose, my goals, what i have done worthwhile and what i will be. Its funny feeling that i get that past seems to have passed very fast and future seems to come at a snail pace, 10 years past seem 10 days and 10 days to come seems like 10 years !!!
Since past year I have been getting good at the resolutions i have taken and goals i have set. So here are some of the things that i am looking forward in this next year of my life…
- Pursue my side-interests like photography, etc more seriously
- Become a recognized speaker
- Create something really innovative which would change the way people do things.
- Get good at academics and get actively involved in an outdoor sport !
- Improve my spellings and grammar … lol
- And loads more which are undisclosable
This site has been up for almost 3 years and this blog for nearly 2 years, and there have been lots of things that have happened since. Its a customary that i have been following to make a new design for every birthday. I made one last year, and will make one this time too. Pretty soon the current design will be going down, so if you are interested in having it let me know, i am sure we can workout something
Cheers, Kalyan
The spirit of fools day
April 1st, 2009 | In General Chatter | No Comments »
Many people await for this day to play pranks on their friends, co-workers and hey sometimes even their bosses ! Though some people may frown upon such activities at work or at school, it actually works by helping bringing a spirit of togetherness.
The most common way to celebrate the day is mostly playing pranks on other, but for a change i tried the other way around, and surprisingly much more people felt happy then i would’nt have had i not fallen for the lamest of april fool tricks . At first the very thought of getting fooled might be embarassing, but it definitely gives a much more satisfying feeling that you made somebody laugh which ultimately gives them a reason to remember you. The best part is that you can put up a devils smile for fooling them into believing that you actually fell for their trick which they would never accept.
So for a change try getting fooled the other way around and see for your self what i mean
Cheers, Happy fooling (and being fooled)
Firefox Sucks ! Chrome rocks !
March 30th, 2009 | In Browsers, Internet | 8 Comments »
Well that might be a pretty bold of me to openly state that firefox sucks, but seeing what it was and what it is now it sure may seem true.
Firefox browser came out of no where after doing 6 years of homework at time when IE, Opera & Safari were fighting for market. IE was least bothered about improving its situation of its falling and failing browser standards, mostly because it was ignorant that there could be something which will beat it to death, which proved to be of immense help to FF in proving itself to be better.
Just like any other Open Source project, the downside bug of “Too many people spoil the brat” has bitten it too, (just the way it did for linux). Too many features were added which made it slower then ever. The latest version now takes triple the time that it used to take in its initial days. On my 3gb ram, 2GHz system it takes around 10 seconds for it to start where as chrome takes just 1 second.
Many people start to support FF when someone says its bad by giving reasons like … Its more popular than chrome, has plugins, themes blah blah. Little does everyone know that its Google that made FF popular in the first place.
Chrome has the best user interface, easy, simple and beautiful. One can Re-Organize tabs which is the best part. Each tab has its own background process which is even better because if one tab hangs it can be gracefully terminated without affecting others. This is another big down side of FF, it hangs too frequently and when it does it terminates everything.
People who go about criticizing chrome about its popularity and features, listen up … Chrome is still in its “1st stable version” and it rocks with the features and flexibility it has to offer. There have been more than 10-15 releases of FF and it progressively started to suck more than ever.
Technically speaking, my friend actually did some browser tests which i saw myself and their scores were – FF<150, Opera-<100, Chrome-2100 !!! Even Mozilla’s own browser test suite performs terribly on FF.
Cheers, Go Chrome !!
I am not trying to preach or convince anyone, I am just trying to express what what i feel. What are your thoughts on it ?
Flare v0.0.0.1 … almost there
February 26th, 2009 | In Google, Internet, Projects | 1 Comment »
v0.0.0.1 may definitely sound funny to most, but considering the scope of a project/idea which me and 2 of my genius friends have begun to work on … its a milestone.
For the past few months, me and 2 of my friends have been working on a project which got selected for the finals of an Asia-Pacific level product engineering challenge – conducted by Google !!!. Yes, the real Google !!! We were one of the 12 teams which made it to the finals !
The product which we are working on is called Flare, which is radically innovative stuff and will probably become the next big, afterall people at google liked it . I can’t reveal much about our project as its confidential.
Pretty soon i will be getting a chance to visit the GooglePlex, stay there for a few days, and also interact with google’s engineers. I am so exited.
More updates soon, Cheers
Kalyan
Tags : Tags: Competition, Google
Beginning of mobile phone spamming
February 18th, 2009 | In Internet | 3 Comments »
Just as we were finally get a hold of spamming and beginning to forget, its back to remind us but this time in the form of mobile phone messages. Unlike normal email messages which can be filtered of by vast array of servers from the service providers with complex algorithms, it is really tough to do the same for Spam SMS mostly because of the limited programmability of the handsets.
Mobile spam messages also generally follow the ideology behind email spams, but instead of blunt advertising which normally happens in email spam, the message you get tempts you to call an unknown number or send your details, guising themselves as voice message reminders or competition winners or etc.
I received my very first mobile spam SMS today. It said “You have 1 new bpq voicemail” along with a number asking me to call back. It was a total catch as i don’t have that service activated at all. Anyway i did give it a call and just as i expected i was on an automated response system, starting with congratulating me for winning me $2500 without even bothering to mention their company name, which obviously is too good to be true as i never participated in any competition.
What was your experience ?
