Virtual Drums

http://webcric.com/0309/india-vs-new-zealand-live-streaming-2.htm

Best link: http://new-zealand-v-india-2009.blogspot.com/2009/04/link-5-3rd-test-new-zealand-v-india.html

http://webcric.com/0309/india-vs-new-zealand-live-streaming.htm

http://www.cricketheats.org/server3.html

Okay lets get down to business. Most of the steps you will read are what you see in most of the forums and blogs. But i was never able to get the ringtones on to my iPhone after i created the customized ringtone(due to Apple’s restriction on length of the ringtone to 40 seconds). Thats where netatalk came to my rescue.  This method lets you create ringtones of any length and is not restricted to 40 seconds. In case you want to convert the entire song to a ringtone and avoid the hassles start from step 9.

Step7:

Type in the end time of your ringtone in the text box next to “Stop Time.”

Hi my name is Naveen and i am 16 years old. I have always been the best student in class. Best in studies and awesome in sports. My friends just love me. People are dying to be my friends. I am every teacher’s pet. Life can’t get better than this.

I entered the class and instead of getting a cheer from my classmates i got nothing. I looked around the class to find everyone crowded around a desk in the corner of the class. I couldn’t see who everyone was talking to. When the teacher came in everyone returned to their respective desks. I could see a fair guy with short hair and dark eyes sitting in the corner desk. The teacher looked at him and called him to tue front to introduce himself. His name was Pradeep and his father just got transferred from jabalpur. For the next 15 mins he spoke about jabalpur and his journey from there. Everyone was listening very intensely and he spoke pretty well. But for me he was just a big show off. After the introduction we went back to our science lesson. The tea cher asked a question and as usual i was the first to raise my hand. I was about to stand up to answer when the teacher called his name. His answer was correct but i wasn’t impressed. Then the teacher  looked at me and said that now i have someone to compete with in class. I didnt like that a bit. But boy was she right.

Not only did he compete with me, he faired better than me in everything. He was scoring better than me. He slowly becoming the teacher’s pet. And i was loosing my popularity. All my friends were more interested in hanging out with him. The worst part was that he was a very nice person. He was never proud of his achievements. But i just hated that guy. But there was one thing he could never beat me in.

The annual school debate competition was going to start next week. I had won the competition for the past 4 years. I never expected pradeep to compete in this competition because he was very soft spoken. When i went to enroll for the competition i wrote down my name in the enrollment list. Guess whose name was written before mine.

It was the first day of debate. I was waiting for neha to come and wish me luck. Oh i didn’t tell you about neha. She was this girl i liked since god knows when. I think she liked me too. But i could never tell her how i feel about her. When i was with her i used to forget everything else. She used to get the best out of me. When i saw her coming towards me i started smiling. She shook hands with me. I kept smiling and i am sure i was freaking her out. She told me she would be back in 5 mins. Then she went to pradeep and wished him good luck. I decided to ignore this.

First couple of rounds were really easy. I won with high margins. My last debate was with pradeep. The topic was easy and we both did pretty well. I was expecting to win the debate. When the results came i have to say i was quite surprised. For the first time in the competition there was a tie. The judges could not decide who was better. The top 4 scorer went to the next round. Out of that 2 would proceed to the finals. No marks for guessing who went to the finals. I wanted to win this competition  and i could have done anything to make that happen.  This was the only thing that could prove that i was better than him. So i went up to him and tried to make him a little nervous i told him that i bet 100 bucks that i would win and while he hands me that 100 bucks he has to write “Naveen is a winner” on it. It was my turn first and gave my best shot. When pradeep came to the stage he was welcomed by a round of appluades. After he started talking no one moved a muscle. By the time he finished the judges had already decided the winner. After the competition i went upto him handed the 100 bucks with the dreadful words on it. But the worst was yet to come. Neha ran to pradeep and hugged him. I had lost everything. I never spoke to neha after that. I heard she got married to pradeep later.

The second part of the story is when naveen is 27.

I am a manager in one of the branches of the country’s largest bank. My parents are forcing me to get married soon. I like this girl in office and we have been dating for quite a while now. Everyday i walk from my house to the office. Its a 2 km walk. I like the atmosphere in the morning. Everyone is so lively. Everyone but this small house and its occupant. The house is so dirty that even dogs don’t go towards it. I dont think it was ever cleaned or repainted. Everyday when i cross this house i see an old man with uncombed hair and a dirty beard sitting on a chair outside the house. Once in a while i look into his eyes and i get a feeling that he is trying to talk to me. Then after i reach office and start my normal work. In the evening i take shruti out for dinner and then drop her to her house. I have been following this routine for the past 4 years.
  

One day i woke up late and i was running late to work. I walked a little fast and decided not look around but walk straight to office. As i was crossing the old house i looked at the chair outside. To my surprise the chair was empty. I got really curious. I wanted to go check inside the house but i was getting late. So i continued to office. The whole day i kept thinking of the old man. Shruti had sone work in the evening so i decided to walk back home. On the way back i was hoping to see my friend sitting outside. But the chair was still empty. I decided to keep walking but some force made me turn towards the old shack. I kept walking towards the door. As i went closer i saw a group of people standing in a circle inside the house. I joined the group and tried to find out what everyone was looking at. In the centre my friend was lying down motionless. People were trying to decide what to do with the body. After standing in the crowd for 10 mins i decided to turn around and walk out. As i was about to do that, i saw something peculiar. My friend was holding something tightly in his fists. Before i realised it i was already trying to get the thing out of his hand. It was a crumpled paper. I opened the note and read what was written on it.

“Pradeep Naveen is a winner”

My flight is at 7. So i left at 4 and was at the airport by 5. But guess what the flight is cancelled. Infact the aiport is closed. The reason is unknown. So the only way i can reach blah is by train. You got to be kidding me. I have never travelled in a train. I always had enough money to travel by plane. But i have to be in blah by tomorrow evening. I have a meeting day after. So i am scared.

The train is full. I have a lower berth. The train is clean. But i am not going to the toilet. I have heard horrible stories about the train toilets. Considering its a 18 hours journey, i think i can manage. There is a couple sitting in frint of me. I dont think there was a single conversation where they didnt argue. But for a guy who is has not been in a relationship, it was music to my ears. They were quite comfortable unlike me. I didnt know anyone and didnt know what to do. What was taking the stewardess so much time.

I had heard of beggers in train. This guy with a shabby shirt and couple of suitcases. Nah beggers dont carry suitcases. So the guy came and sat next to me after placing his luggage below the seat.

I didnt want to talk to him. If i could just get my dinner, i would go sleep. I didnt find a button to call for assistance. The couple removed a big cylindrical steel box. It was made of smaller boxes which had rotis, subji, salad etc. I was looking at the food when the guy next to me spoke up.
” did you get food to eat from home?”. I didnt know what to say. So he poked me and repeated the same question.
“no i thought i would get something in the train”
“hmmm.. I think this is your first time in this train. The food in the train is really bad. But dont worry we can pick something up from the next station.”
I didnt say anything. Why is he being so friendly. What does he want from me.

The train stopped and a few people came in trying to sell some dishes. By the time i realized  i was dragged out of the train onto the platform. He ordered a few items on the menu of a food stall. I was scared i would miss the train so I kept looking at the train. Guess what the train started moving and my friend was not bothered. Should i make a run for it. What will he think. But what if i miss the train. May be he knows what he is doing. And he surely did. Within the next 30 seconds he picked up the food, held my hand and dragged me into the train. This guy is crazy. What if i got injured, even died. But a part of me was saying this is the only excited thing that has happened to you since god knows when. Time to eat.

The food looked delicious. I was very hungry so i started eating and didnt talk much till i finished eating. I didn’t know how to thank him.

” The food was good. Which station did we buy the food from?” Okay that was dumb.

“The food in the train is never good. The platform stalls have fresh food. I didn’t see the name of the station.” 

“I never got to say thank you. I would have never done that alone. Let me pay for the food. How much did u pay?”

“That’s okay. The food wasn’t that expensive.”

“But i insists..”

“Okay lets make a deal. If you can guess my profession by the time i get off at blah, you pay for the food”

What a weird guy. Not everyone is jobless like him. Anyways the food was not expensive. Let me just go to sleep. By the time i get up, we would have reached blah. So i tried sleeping for the next one hour. But the curiosity to know what this guy does kept me awake. I tried to listen to his conversations with other passengers.

“The Indian cricket team is doing well now. I think its the best team since the world cup winning team in 83′. I have followed Indian cricket closely. I know a few cricketers personally.” So he is definitely  doing something in the field of cricket. Commentator, journalist etc.

“But there is no money in cricket unless you are a player. I was more interested in politics from the college days. I know very few people of my age think about going into politics, but you cannot clean the dirt in your house without getting dirty.” Oh a politician, god bless him. He thinks looking at his age i would never expect him to be a politician.

“I am definitely joining politics after 3 years. In fact all my college friends belong to the ‘youth of india’ party. 3 years because i need to finish all my current assignments before i resign from my job.” So close yet so far.

Now I knew I couldn’t sleep till i find out what he does. So i joined his conversation with the other passengers. I waited till the other had gone to sleep to introduce myself.

” Hi my name is Shivu. I am a .., sorry forgot our deal. So you must be really rich. Have you ever thought of donating money to the needy.?”

“Ya i sponsor the education of a few kids.” I said. And i started to think if he was a social worker. 

“Don’t worry i am not a social worker. The question just comes to my mind when i see a rich guy. But I think you are doing a very good thing. My kids might need a sponsorship too. ha ha ha…”

I didn’t laugh. As i had guessed from his clothes that he was not from a wealthy background. But he was happy. What makes a person happy. When he has everything in life. But no one can have everything. But why is he happy, he doesn’t have anything.      

The rest of the night he told me what he likes doing. He is into adventure sports, loves watching movies, likes playing guitar and traveling around the world. But what do you do for a living.

” How can you waste your life doing all this. What will happen after you are too old to do all these things. Thats why I work so hard now so that when i am old i have enough money to live comfortably.”

“What will you do with so much money when you get old. You can’t do anything. You won’t know how to spend the money. When I am old i can at least say i lived my life to the fullest. I fulfilled all my ambitions and now i can die poor but happy. peacefully!!!”

I didn’t know what to say. It was around 7 in the morning and we were about to reach. And then something happened, I got up and went to the toilet. My feet weren’t in my control anymore. By the time i came back, Shivu was nowhere to be seen. I didn’t look for him, I knew his work was done. 

After a year i got into the same train. My shirt got stuck somewhere while boarding the train. When I tried to pull my shirt, it tore. I placed my luggage below the seat and sat next to this guy who looked really tensed. I looked at him and said.

” did you get food to eat from home?”. I knew he wouldn’t answer. So I poked him and repeated the same question.

This was in march 2008. We had gone to Orlando for a job fair. You experience 3Gs of acceleration. Next stop bungee jumping.

We recently had the problem with our SunSpots where in the SunSpots stopped responding, when we tried to update the firmware or deploy any code we got the following error:

“[java] [waiting for reset] Caught java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: negative sleep time while collecting/sending sensor sample.”

The main problem was the reset button was not working.

After lot of googling we didn’t find any answer. None of the users had ever encountered the error. We found a lot useful sites which help troubleshoot. One of them is given below:

http://sunspot-evrenbingol.blogspot.com/2008/11/resetting-button-does-not-work.html

https://www.sunspotworld.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=564

We decided to try constantly resetting the SPOT by hitting the control button the moment the rapid green flashes stopped to see whether I could keep it in a semi-controlled state of crashing long enough to at least get code deployed. And it worked!!!!!! Though i don’t know how to rectify this problem, at least i can get the code deployed to the SunSPOT for our demo today.

I have written a post for our SunSpot project. We call our project “Virtual Drums”. Click here to read it.