Compress Photos before uploading Online

Uploading photos on your facebook or other online places can eat up your bandwidth and be a slow process. There are many compressing software available but instead of wasting time in choosing the best one.Microsoft office Picture manager can serve the purpose. This office too not only converts 3 MB file to 8kb-301 KB as per your choices without affecting the quality much.

Step 1: Windows button on taskbar->Microsoft Office-> Microsoft office tools-> Microsoft Office Picture Manager.As shown below



Step 2: Add picture shortcut by clicking the link on left side panel.

Step 3: Choose a photo-> Edit picture -> Compress picture



Step 4: For 4 MB image Choose documents(301kb),Web pages(30kb),Email messages(7kb) as per your requirements.Save using save as option.

My college life :: Episode 07-11

This is a post after a long time ,I thought of writing about my college life which is a milestone in my career and a memorable experience.All the folks of my batch I want to share the following lot with you FINALLY :) I shall describe this journey yearwise to keep it brief and interesting.

1st year:
I stepped into a place which I never heard before but I had crossed through this Durgapur JN many times while going to and fro Calcutta/Kolkata.I started with all new faces around ,I knew nobody except my brother Shivek Agarwal he was in 2nd year that time.He supported me and guided me through every step out them.Nepali seniors were very supportive and fun loving.We spend many memorable and enjoyable moments with them.Whether it's family picnic or any other family occasion.Life was quite exciting then as going to city center was very interesting and too much of fun.I interacted with almost everybody in Hall9 and spend my time with nepali friends specially Yudhir,prakash,rajiv,manoj and Nirjhar.Exam time...most of the papers vomited guesses for them....but I screwed up my 1st sem results scoring mere 7.76.I was quite disappointed and some friends helped me out to come out of this shock.In second sem I was quite motivated to focus on studies ,and I woke up thinking it's high time as time is running very fast if I don't perform well the whole engg. degree will of no use being a 7 pointer.It was 2nd sem exams and we were newly cought up by PETER ANSWERS.com .This is a very addictive and funny website until the person comes to know the truth and continues to be superstitious.Still somehow I could score well between loads of fun and Jolly statements by Yudhir ,Nirjhar on peteranswers .I was a part of GNU/LUG..Got to know about the open source world..and my addiction to UBUNTU began :)

2nd year,3rd year:
I entered CSE Deparment and I from my last blog post you can estimate my interest for the subject-Computer Science.I liked most of the subjects except few...CMOS,NMOS...I couldn't build my interest for that please ...........I was interested in software.A girl(I won't name her) came into my life..We started with likeness ,same department,similar passions and goals...brought out close and we started helping each other ,working towards our goal forgetting the world for a while.We were so involved in our work and ourselves we didn't give ample time to friends and people around(Few of my friends had problem which i came to know later on).Keywords I would like to mention...Library,Profs(we ran after projects also),working on codes,STL etc,First benchers,Padhakus,bookworm.I was performing well in my Semesters not so great but it was satisfactory.In 2nd year summer break I did a training at Delhi on Networking which was to utilize my time and poor knowledge on what is good or bad and 3rd year summers I prepared for Interviews,coding,Aptitude and brushing up my skills which I felt imporant for interviews.
Final year:
Session started in July and I found Novell is the first Dream company coming for CSE and made my preparation more specific and it was 5th August ..I appeared and Cracked it...:) I was quite relaxed after a job and very confident (cracking on the first go matters a lot).Few friends told me in the race you have forgotten us,you din't keep a proper balance between the girl and friends..work and friends....I thought yeah I was wrong but I was quite serious on the studies and I liked it too.It happens with everybody ,if you are involved with something very much it's quite difficult to focus on something else.For me it's always 0 or 1 .I can't go fuzzy.But after the job I started correcting it.Started keeping balance which i know it was difficult but still I tried my best.I was isolated in 2nd and third year ...It was little contributed by me little by my friends..After Novell...I started having fun...Enjoying...walking out to CC almost everyday...Dining out...Freaking for no reason..I wanted to taste every minute of my last year.Novell was taken over by attachmate and again I became low about my future.We Novellites (Saurabh,kapil,subhasis and me) had some bad times too..but still we were confident to face the consequences.In the meantime I heard Microsoft will be coming to our college for placement.It was 3rd time ..announced the same line.I was hopeless ,after preparing for 2 times..I thought of preparing again for the last time..I sat for the interview and cracked it.:) I was very happy to know the results as that girl who was my gf also got placed with me.It was moment of rejoice and celebration.Then started the season of treats and dining out with friends.I remembered everybody who were important to me..In the meantime I interacted a lot with Saurabh koar,kapil and subhasis and shared good friendship which I din't in first 3 years....After a month I was invited for New hires day at Hyderabad which was quite a fun and I will share with you soon :).There are few bad and sour memories of my college too...concentrating when full music in being played in the hostel wing...Some of my friends misunderstood me...and finally they stayed in they attitude and me too..Now I don't know when we shall meet next...It's Alvida Bidding to everybody...Truly speaking...I understood little about the memories and I gonna miss my college in last few days..but right now I miss it like anything..I hate to think of the day when going back to college for results when nobody will be at the college to laugh with you in the corridor of the wings,pull your legs and discuss on a silly issues of all over the globe...Empty mess...But finally I want to thank my college...for making me whatever I am today...capable of sustaining every where with any kind of food...making my food habits flexible..and my self development..and I thank all my friends..who beleive I am worth a friend ..Knock me anytime I will be right there for you.:) Finally Signing off from NITDGP both officially and unofficially....Leaving durgapur...college,89 cinemas,suhatta,junction all the restaurants(with and without discounts :P) in durgapur..LH more,Jhoops,Techno and all the canteens...CC,Department..Library( best place in college) and every street within ...All are my memories..and I dive into the sea of nostalgia while thinking of them.. After all it's life one has to move on...Hyderabad I am coming...:)

Install NS2 (ns-allinone-2.35-RC7) in UBUNTU 9.10

Checklist of prerun package installation/command
1.g++
2.repositories updated($sudo apt-get update)
3.if you are behind a proxy, make sure you have $http_proxy variable configured in ~/.bashrc or type the following in the terminal

$ export http_proxy=http://username:password@ipaddr:port/

Step 1: Download the source for NS2 all in one (I used this version ns-allinone-2.35-RC7.tar.gz )

Step 2: Extract the tar.gz file downloaded into your home folder by right-clicking the tag.gz file

Step 3: Open terminal (Applications–>Accessories–>Terminal) and change the directory (using cd command) to the extracted folder and execute the following:

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf automake libxmu-dev

This will install the dependencies required to compile NS2 from the source.

The following command is used to compile the source.

$ ./install

It will take long time to compile all the required packages for ns to work…
Step 4: Setting Environmental Variables

Type in terminal:

$ gedit ~/.bashrc

and append the following text to the opened file (Please note that the path contains the path in my system, replace path with yours.)

# LD_LIBRARY_PATH
OTCL_LIB=/media/E0BAB170BAB14436/ns-allinone-2.35-RC7/otcl-1.14
NS2_LIB=/media/E0BAB170BAB14436/ns-allinone-2.35-RC7/lib
X11_LIB=/usr/X11R6/lib
USR_LOCAL_LIB=/usr/local/lib
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$OTCL_LIB:$NS2_LIB:$X11_LIB:$USR_LOCAL_LIB

# TCL_LIBRARY
TCL_LIB=/media/E0BAB170BAB14436/ns-allinone-2.35-RC7/tcl8.5.8/library
USR_LIB=/usr/lib
export TCL_LIBRARY=$TCL_LIB:$USR_LIB

# PATH
XGRAPH=/media/E0BAB170BAB14436/ns-allinone-2.35-RC7/bin:/media/E0BAB170BAB14436/ns-allinone-2.35-RC7/tcl8.5.8/unix:/media/E0BAB170BAB14436/ns-allinone-2.35-RC7/tk8.5.8/unix
NS=/media/E0BAB170BAB14436/ns-allinone-2.35-RC7/ns-2.35
NAM=/media/E0BAB170BAB14436/ns-allinone-2.35-RC7/nam-1.15/
PATH=$PATH:$XGRAPH:$NS:$NAM

Step 5: Now, after editing the file, save and close it. Then in terminal type:

$ source ~/.bashrc

Try “ns” command, it shud go to the “%” prompt then it just means the installation was successful! Enjoy :D

Note: These steps have been tested and worked like breeze in Ubuntu and is expected work in all the debian based linux.

Reference:
3.) http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/ns-build.html (Might not be needing this, but just in case)

Microsoft interview continued ...Part 2

Day 1 :
Today is 18th Jan'11.After a long wait MS was finally coming to NIT Durgapur.PPT was scheduled at 1 pm with few glitches.We all were asked to be in formals ,So I started from room in the same attire.We were waiting for the ppt and they announced that they will be first conducting the written exam and it will be forwarded by PPT and then the interviews.This seemed to be a multithreading operation to me .The parent thread MS panel ,created a new thread called "Paper correction team" just after the written test:).

Round 1:Written examination
IMHO this was conducted by merit trac wing of MSIT.This had 11 questions :
Qn1->how will you sort array of numbers(logic and dry run only)
Qn2->In a given string print the character occuring maximum number of times.
Qn3->A question on void pointer's output and typecasting.
2 testing question,1 troubleshooting question,2 question on OS(1 on disk seek time and latency) other was on uptime etc.,2 puzzles,1 design question(spacecraft).
Test streched for 1 and half hr(so far i remember).I did fairly well.

Round 1a:Preplacement talk
Guys I tell you ,It's Microsoft IT (Aukaad wali).PPT was boring at the beginning and picked up in midway.I didn't like the business and division part but rest was fun.The perks were impressive and few lines acted as a motivating touch.One of them I remember "We have hackers working day and night monitoring our systems so that none of our offsprings msn.com,hotmail.com and bing.com suffers from any sort of malicious attack.Coz once they are successful this will be the headline of the next day's newspaper".Next was "We go to orphanage and schools to teach poor children ,we believe in giving back to society."etc.This way I was highly impressed by the company to go ahead and ATTACK :):).

Round 2:Designing round
They asked us to fill our choices between SDE,SDET,SME posts.We all filled down the forms and I was shortlisted for SDE/SDET post.The designation was uncertain now.They shortlisted around 18 people for the interviews for FTE's(Full time engineers).I was called in the last room :) of our gd/pi rooms.There I was asked to design an ATM machine,integrate the SDLC with this.All the phases of designing including database part,coding and front end.I like this the most and I proceeded with my idea.I had frequent interactions with the interviewer and he was a sort of impressed.I was pushed to the next round.Interviews were over for the day.I was asked to report next day at 9:30 am.

Round 3:Coding round
I was waiting and waiting and waiting.It was around 2 pm ,I was sick tired of it and then they called me.This was the worst part.But now I enjoy thinking :).I was asked what are the questions you have come across as you have been waiting for so long.The interviewer was a dude:).I liked him but believe me I am straight:):).I told them all the questions which my fellow interviewee got struck so that he is impressed with my honesty.As I had already prepared those questions so I was gutsy to speak those questions.:) He replied I won't be asking you all that.So don't worry:).Then he started typing my name on his keyboard.I enquired are you googling my name.He replied I have bing and turned the laptop towards me adding that I ws preparing a feedback form for you anyways let's open BING.He asked me check '/' division operator.I wrote around 54 cases of a/b form and he told nikhil are you missing something that those were actually 108 test cases total :).He asked tell me what happens inside recursion,what are saved in stack etc..After this he asked me write simple codes Q>Sum the numbers upto n (given). He asked me to write test cases,solve the overflow situation and many pros,cons and alternatives of my code.Q>Write the code for depth of the tree and test it.He asked me write it fast and I did that .

Round 4:Coding and Final round with the Senior most interviewer
I was called early in this interview may be the Round 3 interviewer gave a positive feedback about me,which accelerated my interview.He started with "Tell me about yourself".He didn't express how far he liked my answer.They he started asking code for LCA of Binary tree ,I wrote it, Q>Two linked list merge at a point in Y shape don't have both the arms equal how will you find the point of intersection and other coding and algorithmic questions.He asked puzzles to my fellow interviewees to but he didn't ask me any.Then he moved on to the final Q>Take a mobile keypad,each key maps to some characters eg. 1->abc 2->def etc. So if a 10 digit number is given how will you find all permutations.How many permutations will be generated,you would prefer iteration or recursion and many questions related to that.The answer stucked me there itself and I explained him ,he seemed to be impressed.Then he asked me ask some questions(SDET and SDE fear) ,any improvements you suggest.I told few and I was moreover sure that I will crack it :).I came out with full energy and priyanka and everyone waiting outside could understand my interview was good.One more thing about this interview I would like to add is a story with my CV.I made a CV for Microsoft specially and nobody even had a look at it.I thought my effort will go in vain.Then I asked him to please see my CV,he was not interested but I convinced and then he took a copy of my CV and I was satisfied.

This ends the interviews.Result was declared(2SDE+1SME+1 intern(SME)) ,I was in :) but it was very difficult to wait for that.I couldn't take my dinner properly.It was Wednesday also :(.Still it was fun.

Marriage with Microsoft,My second Job offer,Part 1 :)

Micosoft and me ,we have a great bonding.Not from now, but since a decade ago.Let me rewind the pages of my life and present to you all.

My Story Begins:)

#June 2000
I am from a middle class family and I got my education from the best school of my City birgunj,It is a gateway of Nepal and business hub.We assume daily more than millon dollar transactions takes place at birgunj which is just a sub-metropolitan city.Computers were new at that time and we couldn't afford them or you can say I was in mere class 6 and my dad was reluctant to buy on the first go.He asked me get me a BASIC COMPUTER KNOWLEDGE degree from CSE,A computer training institute and then he will be sure that we will use the computer properly:).Till then I was devoid of computer at my home but luckily I had a Cyber Cafe(CC) just below my house and the owners didn't know anything of computers.One fair day, I was passing by that CC and my brother AMIT BHOJANIA(Delhi) asked me to made an email ID ,which was my first email ID (nikhil_18_4@hotmail.com) His Id was amit_18_4@hotmail.com.I blindly followed the legacy of " _18_4 " blindly as I love my brother alot.Soon I started catching up.Internet was NRS 60/hr that times and I started using Internet and MSN Chat.I spend most of the time in that CC,learning and teaching newbies.It was like every regular user thought that I was the boss of that Cafe.I more person I would like to mention "Sushil Agarwal"(in mah facebook friendlist).He is gem of a person,a geek and too creative.We both met,started getting deeper and deeper in computers.Those days computers were very low end and IE didn't clear temporary internet files automatically so we(I am sushil) had to regularly visit Client machines of Cafe and fix them up.We were so called tech bouncers there :).People ask me why do i have a typing speed of 54 words/min.I tell them its since 2k2.We used to call Bill G as "Bill**"(As being close to bihar but respected him like anything,sorry no offences intended) tried making few sites like Khakhor.com(chat startup) but lacked time and proper knowledge.The CCafe boss thought we use internet for free and asked us to do some job.Opening sites for newbies and do some typing/printing jobs.I was having no problem as I got time to sit with computer,my mate :).I started suffering from Intejavascript:void(0)rnet fever,High and very High.We both used to hack passwords Keyloggers,snapshot taking bot,I remember the site (alpinesnow.com and many).I completed my Basic computer course too :).

Happiest movement of my life,my first computer machine :)
My dad on dhanteras'01,I was at my shop handed me a Rs. 55k bundle and told "Go and grab the best system you want".I purchased the system and life was awesome henceforth.My sister gifted me AOE(Age of empire) CD on my birthday :):).I skipped lunch ,dinner ,tutions and played that game.It was great fun :)For me computer was Internet,Windows office,music,Hacking from websites(I downloaded songs by disconnecting the net when I was playing a song on embedded real player online by availing the link after DC) and loads of fun.Literally I knew what programming is but I didn't know how it is done or what are the syntaxs and I was passionate about hacking accounts ,playing games(AOE,motorcross midtown madness,road rash etc)& learning Windows architecture(System,system32,temporary internet files folder etc.).Beleive me people I have used almost every edition of windows(98 I loved it,Me(explorer.exe error),professional WIN2000(cool),WIN2000server(didn't use much),WINXP and now WIN7 :)) and office.

My motivation towards what I loved to do.:)
I wanted to do computer engineering any how.I started researching how to grab a Comp. Sci degree.I started researching online.I found B.Tech with Science background is the only way and respected comp. sci degree around the world.People asked me before appearing class 10 what you will choose I replied Science.They suppressed me by telling you won't be able to cope up,It's not for you,take a commerce degree and handle your business.I din't like them then I ran away from that place of discussion.I started focussing on my studies,knew things won't be easier but I was confident enough to cope with it.I spend less time at CC more on studies.

Fast Forward :)
I gave my 10th board,12 from Delhi and that line by people that I won't be able to cope up was a source of inspiration and dedication.I couldnt grab a good seat on the first go and got NIT Durgapur in 2007.On the very first day ,I saw Microsoft visited this college and hiring few students and hence I thought I got my Ramp to get loaded into the proper locomotive :)

Journey at NIT Durgapur :)
It was a difficult path although I covered and finally reached here.I was very unsatisfied with the college and the standards(now It has been completely transformed and getting transformed).I didn't repeat the mistake bought a laptop in the first year itself and started using it :):).In a farewell party to the batch of 2k8 @Nepal family we boozed.After that I broke around 4-5 beer bottles(my seniors told me next morning when I asked why my hands were burning) fighting between Microsoft and open source(I supported Microsoft like anything,I am a die hard fan).We discussed all tech stuffs there like Vista file search is far advanced than XP search,Why it failed etc.Saurabh dai,Bibek dai If you are reading I hope you can recall.Then I met priyanka and got motivations from my seniors(TOPCODERS ..nitdgp,rajatag12 ).They guided me through repeatedly saying Comp Sci<->Programming.My love for coding and programming increased exponentially and I enjoy doing that.People criticized me, friend didn't like me thinking I didn't give them time.But dudes I don't know where I was in 2nd and 3rd year.I was like LOST!! I was so involved with my work and love I couldn't Context Switch.You can call it as Hibernation :P.We prepared ourselves,coding,spending time in library learning,giving big shot semesters and scoring 9 pointers :):) and on 5th august 2010,I cracked Novell:).In Convo2010 sushil dai visited ,I was tensed about future of Novell,he told me very confidently that in anycase won't be joining Novell:).I knew something else is waiting for me.So I didn't treat any of my Nepal family mates,friends and people at my home.And it's 18th Jan'11 and Microsoft is visiting:):).I will cover the interview experience in next part.Till then goodluck guys.Hope you enjoyed it.