Heed to the soul, not to the age…

Sitting idle for a long time, thinking of what to do for the next few days of a pretty long vacation is the most terrible thing that drowns one in the pool of laziness and dullness. Yeah, I am into one such condition. I had to boost some of my technical skills, hence I just crafted myself a good bunch of vacation plan. But this wasn’t done for my personal and non-technical part. All of a sudden, someday, between the vacation, I planned to take morning walks. Yes, just like a school day schedule, I perfected it the very first day, in fact, only the first day. Oh no!…This is tough! I should have planned for the non-technical part too, I realised. But later I really got mad at times and then I had to sneak into the kitchen and I prepared some crazy things. Yeah, my brothers can’t deny their sisterhood! So, they had to eat it.Anyways, it was pretty good, they said.The other part of crushing time was driving class. I’m gonna be 20 this year while most of my friends are still 19,18 and even 17, and I haven’t got a license yet while many of them had! Was that supposed to be shameful? Well, it is, according to my younger brother. I love the class, driving all way down the road, beholding the golden shine of the rising sun, except for the tutor shouting, “reduce the speed!”.That breaks the mood. Anyways, the tutor is really good, he just pours confidence and instructions which I never even thought of before. He was really funny when he imitated me, squeezing the brake with my left foot and his jokes would make everyone’s fear fly into thin air. So, I’ll never repeat that stupidity ever. Then I come back and go to my room, between my favourite walls and just relax for a short time until my Mom calls me for lunch. That’s when I realise that half of my day is over. After lunch, I would take my Acer Swift and climb up to my room and gaze at my technical task list. I wanted to learn things better, rather than jumping from topic to topic. So I just sit and work in my own way. This has been my schedule for the first week. If I start working, I just miss my club in my college where I rolled the granules of programming and the spark began. The responsible seniors at our reach and an efficient mentor are the right atmosphere to learn and improve skills. Anyways, now I have to work in my room. One such day, it was half past five in the evening and I was working in my room and suddenly the power went off. My fan slowed down and as my phone died out of charge, my earphones were quite jobless, the whole air was sunk in a dreary sort of silence. Even my window panes seemed to be boring and the folds of my bed sheet did not fancy any beauty without a tune in my ears. Suddenly I heard a vessel hitting loud on the floor. My reflex made me shout loud, “Mom is everything okay?”. This became a routine since childhood when my dad used to advise me and my brother to take care of our mother. He always asked her so, when he hears a loud noise from the kitchen. Once in my childhood, I asked him the reason why he seeks her well being at a random time, he said that it was to ensure that your Mom isn’t hurt with the vessel that fell on the floor, in case it is glassware or if it is sharp. I was happy hearing her saying, “Yes dear”. but my mind was still on that silence, the vessel and on my Mom. I felt that this calmness is the same thing that my Mom sees and feels even in my absence. Placidity can even be hated if it is dealt for long. The only difference was for me, free from all burdens of exams with warm and soothing music plugged deep into my ears. Suddenly power was on. my fan started turning with the same bustle and the purple light in my room gleaming against my purple walls. Everything turned back to normal after that. It was just like a short reminder, felt like someone just pulled my locks, and waved me to the real world, unplugging my earphones. Then I thought deep that if I save the time that I spend on funny memes and stupid posts and use them so as to put a smile on someone’s face, it would be good. I just looked back at what I was doing for the last 20 years out there, on earth. Life has taught many things. It is not mandatory that you have to count 60 to weave up a lesson list. Most of the time that teen wastes their time is on nothingness! We just think of a lot of things starting with our parents and it comes to friendships and at times, to relationships. These aren’t stupid things. But family is really something that can never be compared with. That is pure love. and then friendships, there too exists pure bonds, but very rare! Within my 20 years, many people, the so-called best friends have come in and gone out. But very few were really roped. Some just sway off beside the forever promises. But at times losing friends have caused a lot of impact on me in my early teen. But this has been quite less when I grew. I was the one who just rings all my relatives and asks them to come over and enjoy the vacations together. But somewhere in between, I lost that enthusiasm. I started withdrawing myself into my own world. All these just flashed once in a stupid current cut! Maybe mobiles and too much social media madness do this. Or maybe teen is really dreadful! I don’t know clearly, but I do know that I’m not alone on this route. I felt that I wanted to make some change. I kept all my works down, put my phone in silent and just went to the kitchen. My Mom was busy cutting mangoes. As soon as she cut it, she just gave me the whole bowl, filled with yellow-orange smooth cuts of juicy mangoes. I just took a chair and sat with her eating mangoes and talking lots of matters with her. Yes, I enjoyed with gaiety, the smile on her face when I started talking to her. We talked for a long time, I just helped to do things in the kitchen. Her mood was really good that day. My father reaches late at night after the job. Yeah, he will be tired for sure. I just made a juice out of the mango pulp and served it to my Mom and later to my Dad. He smiles every day when he came back after work, no matter how tired he is. But that day, it was really elated and thus more perfect. It wasn’t about the juice nor about the level of tiredness, but it was because the mood was dealt with a sense of togetherness. I talked with him and had a walk through our courtyard at night, talking and laughing. It was totally different. Everything seemed to have a light and soothing touch. I called my old friends. We planned for a meetup. The last day, when I was having food from a restaurant in Calicut, I saw a familiar face and I started staring at her. She noticed me, but there was no sign of recognition. Later I remember turning the pages of my Hindi textbook and those same lips reading out loud the lines in it. Yes, she was my Hindi teacher in 6th grade. I just rushed to her, remembering how much terror the same steps towards her used to be a few years ago when I used to forget the homework and also felt the stiff nails against my arms. I stood smiling in front of her. There was no chance of her remembering a little 6th grader, 9 years ago. I told her that she taught me 9 yrs ago. She held my hands and smiled at me, and the sparkles of joy in her eyes reflected deep in my heart. I felt like the extent of gratitude towards her couldn’t be explained. If just reviving a teacher of her student would make her so happy, how good it would be to meet all the teachers who just nourished and moulded us to be ‘us’. I planned to go meet all the teachers who taught me from my nursery rhyme age. I started planning many things for the next few days. I started looking back at all my hobbies that have been wrapped tight in the shades of wrinkles by time. I started versification on a piece of white paper. I started looking through the eyes of nature and the world, I turned back to photography, one of my hobbies that was dumped a few years ago. I learnt to manage time. I was able to balance my driving class, my technical work, my family time, my hobby time, all with vibrant colours. This just made my pace zestful, which once turned to be indolent. This is simply called life. It teaches you many things, later when you become too obsessed with fruitful living, you are put with issues, loneliness and a variety of woes that we tend to be a foe. But this period depends on how you paint your picture and in fact painting the foundation for a colourful future.Then comes the role of sitting in the throne that you just made.Though it depends if you made a throne or a deadly quicksand. Now its the time to reign or to drown. This is nothing but the childhood, teenage, pre-adulthood and then adulthood. Everything seems to be defined, well and perfectly. All we can do is utilise it. That consciousness of realising the priority of things that really matter will lead us to utilise and revive them in our lives.As early the consciousness awakens, better and glee will we be. So it’s crucial to wake up and unplug the dumb tone in our ears and heed to the soul that whispers secrets of immense pleasure for enlightening a triumphant future. Now, I am here, working with my laptop, with immense pleasure, that, today I have done things that made my mind chortle, things that have put a smile on the face of my loved ones and things for letting go of unnecessary things and feelings in my life.

How to collaborate with Git?

Creating and learning becomes more interesting and worthy when people around the globe too contribute and share their ideas and technologies. This would also provide a space were they can store lines of code, projects or even other information. This platform is excellently staged by Git. Git is the right place that you can collaborate your works, sharing your ideas into various projects and works of others as well as getting better ideas from others so as to innovate technologically developed and efficiently working products. So its really important to have a deep insight into Git and well verse to manage with one’s workspace namely, a repository.

Getting to the core, Git is a free and open source Version control system. It helps to handle small to large projects with speed and efficiency.It has many features like cloning,local branching, merging several contributions, giving pull requests etc. It is really a space to store content. Apart from the remote repository one has in git, it also provides a local repository in one’s computer on which a person can work on. It is generally a distributed VCS as the changes made in the code or project occurs in computers all the developers working on it.

SETTING UP GIT

So let’s get started with installation of Git.It can be easily installed usig the following lines of command.

• For Ubuntu (debian based OS), use:               

$ sudo apt install git-all

• For Windows:Check this site: https://git-for-windows.github.io/.

• For macOS:

Checkout this site: http://git-scm.com/download/mac.

Now you can check the version of git through your terminal, using the command:

git --version

Now its all set to make through to the Git world.

CREATING A REPOSITORY

After getting Git installed the main task is to create a repository and get initialized to it. Git repository is a virtual storage space which you can access at any later time.You can give a description for the repo and also the programming language for the projects and codes that would be pushed into thst repo. Or you can clone an existing repository from elsewhere.

For creating a new repository, follow the steps below:

• Either create a new folder of choose any of the local directories in your computer.
• Get into that directory using:

cd /path/to/your/existing/code

• Initialiseinto that directory using:

git init

For cloning into any existing repository, follow the steps below:

• Fork the repository that you wanted to clone.(This creates a copy of the repository that you wanted to work on).
• Clone the repo using the the url given using the command:

git clone <repo url>

• Get into the repository that was cloned using the command:

cd /path/to/your/existing/code

Next, you can work in the cloned or created repository and make changes or new projects in it.

PUSHING A FILE INTO GIT

After making required changes in the local repository, these changes has to be updated into the remote repository, which can be done by the process of pushing the code into the repository.This includes several steps like:

• Staging- Adding the committed changes and to keep track of all changes.

git add example.txt

For adding mutiple files do the following:

git add file1 file2 file3

• Commiting- Commit is a change done to a local repository. It should be given a commit message signifying the commit done.

git commit -m "Commit Message"

• Pushing- This pushes all the changes made in the local repository into the remote repository.

It is done as follows:

git push origin master

BRANCHES AND REMOTES

A branch serve as an independent abstraction for git operations like edit/commit/stage etc.The git branch command is used to create, rename, or delete branches.The main branch for a repository is mostly master branch or development branch. We can create several branches from this branches and work on it.Some commands related to branches are:

git branch         \\lists all branches in the repository.

git checkout -b <branchname>     \\Checkouts the current branch and                     switches to the new branch.

git branch -D <branch>            \\deletes the branch

A remote is like a common repository that all members working on it can use to exchange or share ideas.Collaborating with others involves managing these remote repositories. The following are some commands using remote:

git remote -v            \\lists all the remote present

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PULL REQUESTS

They are the features that provide a user-friendly interface for viewing proposed changes before integrating them into the main project.When you work on a different repository in Git and make certain changes in it, you have to let the collaborator know about the changes so as to let them merge your changes into the original repository. When the pull requests are open we can compare the changes between your branch and the remote branch and if there are no conflicts, you can send the PR. This is helpful well many developers are working on a single project parallely . While creating a PR, you can create a summary of the proposed changes.Once the pull request is created, the committed file undergoes certain checks which sees for anything which harms the already existing codes.

Once you push a code into your repository, go to the repository page and and click on ‘Create new pull request’. Pick up the branch to which you have to push the request and the branch from which you want to push. Add a title and a description for the PR. Then click on Create pull request which makes the process done.

GIT REBASE 

Rebasing is the process of combining a sequence of commits to a new commit. This is used mainly so as to make a branch even with the master branch of the original repository. This can be explained taking a situation where the master branch had progressed certain commits forward compared to the feature branch by the time you are working on it. This makes the feature branch to be certain commits behinf the master branch. Git rebase can be used so as to seem that you have been working from the branch that have been even with the master branch. Hence there are 2 ways of merging, either by direct merging which would lead to conflicts or by rebasing and then merging which would make the branch look clean. Hence rebasing helps to integrate the upstream changes with the local repository.

The steps of rebasing are as follows:

• Checkout the feature branch:

$ git checkout <branch>

• Rebase the feature branch to the mater branch

git rebase master

GIT SQUASH

It is the method of consolidating multiple commits made by a branch into a single commit before pushing into git.It is a manner of picking several commits and squashing them into one.The steps of squashing are as follows:

• Rebase the feature branch as this shows all the commits done in that branch.

git rebase -i master

• This shows something like:

pick fb554f5 This is commit 1
pick 2bd1903 This is commit 2
pick d987ebf This is commit 3

• Edit all the “pick” tags except the first one to “squash”.
• This looks something like:

pick fb554f5 This is commit 1
squash 2bd1903 This is commit 2
squash d987ebf This is commit 3

• Save the editor give a commit message and close it.
• Force push this into the feature branch.

git push -f origin <featureBranch>

This would squash all the previous multiple commits into one.

GIT RESET

It is a complex command of undoing certain local changes like undoing addition of some files etc.

For example:

$ git add abc.java       //will add a file named abc

$ git reset abc.java     //will remove the added filed named abc.

There are 4 ways of using reset command. They are:

• –hard: It rsests the whole commit. By using this all  the local changes gets removed.Hence be very careful using this as it would probably clear all the local changes made so far.

git reset --hard

• –mixed: This is the default one. It rests the staged files,but the working tree is not affected. Any difference between original commit and reset ones will be shown as untracked files.

git reset --mixed

• –soft: It does not affect the added files or the working tree. It is almost similar with –medium except that the changes show as the changes to be committed.

git reset --soft

• –merge: It is the recently added one. It helps to abort a failed merge.It resets the added files and the files affected by the merge.

git reset --merge

GIT STASHING

This is a command where your uncommitted changes are stored in some other space and can be reverted back to the branch. In this all changes whether staged or unstaged will be saved, unless it is committed.This helps in freely making other changes and commits and apply the stashed changes when required.This is also useful when you have to apply same changes for different branches.

The steps of stashing are as follows:

• Check status to confirm that the changes are not committed.

$ git status

• Stash the changes.

$ git stash

For Unstashing,

• Pop the stash to reapply the changes to the current branch.

$ git stash pop

Inorder to give a proper idea of the stash we can make it descriptive by using the following command:

 git stash save "description"

These steps would help to stash the changes and work with ease.

The above are the important terms that one may use in Git. All these would help to collaborate projects integrating the contributions from around the world.

Babysteps into Java.

Lets get started peeping into what Java really is.Java is a programming language that creates several softwares. The compiled codes are known as Bytecodes.Java is much similar to C++ and C languages. This has a great hand in android and app development.                    As i stepped into Amrita, particularly CSE, i kept thinking of peeping into coding and learning lots in programming. I knew that it was not like blinking an eye. But i had the patience and strong dezire as i was a begginer. I have also been thinking a lot about android development and app development. Seeing my parts of interests in my bio, one of my senior, Abhilash G (Java and Android developer), talked to me and sketched my dezire. He helped me a lot and gave me excellent introduction on android development.                            This made me step into Java. I was totally new to it. I googled more about it and also surfed through java documentation. Finally, i took my fingers vibrate to code the basic program in java, “Hello World program”. I have written my experience in java in this blog. Hope you all enjoy it.

After reading and surfing a lot, i started my works. I did not have Java in my in linux. So i installed java 10 in it. Then i wanted an editor to write the code. In this i was a bit confused. I saw many editors like Pico, Atom etc, while i was fogged with just Gedit and Vim. So in installed Atom and installed the script package in it. Then with the help of my senior i learnt about each command and parameters in it.

It was really different from python which i initially knew. I learnt that we use “class” defenition and it is assigned a name. Every code in java begins with a class command.A class includes Modifiers (public/protected/private) , a Class name, Key words and the Class Body which is within curly braces. Public, the commonly used one exposes a class to other classes too. While private hides from other classes. Then we write a name for the class. There are 50 keywords in java. Being the key words they cannot be used as variable names.Then comes the main body of the program.

Coming to the second line of code. This line has a main method and its signature is as follows:

                         public static void main(String[] arg)

The  main method gives the Main part of the program. It includes the string and the argument given by “argv” or “args”.The next step is to give the output. This has the following signature:

                        System.out.println("Hello World!!");

The program now gives the output. We can also give certain comments for the code wherever required. this can be done by the following way

 /** this is my HelloWorld program in java. I am a learner in java.*/

 

There are certain thing that one has to keep in mind while saving the java file. Its recommended to save the file in the same name as that of the class followed by .java signature.I have done my code using Atom editor.

This experience of java was really thrilling and good. This becomes much more interesting when you have such a good guidance as i got from my senior mentioned above. And it is real fun to write and learn the codes in Java.

Completing my Foss Task!!!

Stepping first into Amrita, I was a bit scared about computing and programming as I was new to this. But it have all been so different when I joined the Foss workshop. Even  academic portions had been more clear and I had a good picture of every single algorithm done in class just because of Foss workshop, particularly the efficient seniors, has nourished us well through their training. I also found that python is really cool and interesting to the core.

At first when I used to get questions, I felt nervous and didn’t know where to start with. But as the tasks were uploaded, I was all set to peep into it. As I saw the questions, I felt confident and just started it. As I did it, I got pretty good flow to move forward to the next step. At first I thought that it might mess up. But the logics that lit up just because of the proper training of the workshop, helped me to do it. It was really an proper time to do it. I did the Task, “Rock, Paper, Scissor”. It was quite easy thrilling and I really enjoyed it. At first I just made out the logics. Then I modified it in a user friendly manner. Then it was very interesting to work with Github. For this I created a new repository of mine and named it “fosstask”. It was a really good experience and I am eagerly waiting and hoping that I will go through the screening phase and interviews. The link to my repository through which you can access the code for the ever interesting game “Rock Paper Scissor” is given below:

https://github.com/hsymphonyk/fosstask/blob/master/task1.py

Myself here!!!

I am so amazed to let you all view my ideas. Just feeling happy to share with the world my ideas of life and taking in the soothing fragrance of nature. The aspect of life to me is “a thing that makes each little being engaged with enthusiastic expectations.” The elixir of life is a charming soul that connects and sings along the rhythm of nature. So I wanted to connect all young souls, no matter how much it counts on you biologically, to the vibrant green glowing touch of nature.

Photo by Daria Shevtsova on Pexels.com

The Journey Begins

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton