A La-b-log....

It was 10^th of August, 2010 when we guys (me and Kshitiz) had to lead the SM Lab Session. Our group was the one who was the first sub leading group among the whole 2010 batch. Once we gave our names for the same, then only we started realizing that “Kya hoga hamara!”. No experience and had not seen any of the leading groups before as we were the first ones. But with the name of God, we finally decided “Jo bhi hoga, karna to padega...”.

Training session was scheduled on the preceding Saturday (i.e.7^th August, 2010). After the training session, I was especially in a complete messy state because Kshitiz had done a bit of all these before but if you talk about me, I was a beginner to all these stuff. But when we started doing all those on our own then ”Jaan mein jaan ayi!”. Yes, we would also be able to do something.

Those 3-4 days were pretty hectic for us. We had to submit few assignments, a test was scheduled and this task of leading the lab session. Finally, the day came and everything went really good. And finally we both were like ”Ah! Finally everyone installed it!”. Everyone left happily but the worst part was that we both had to spent another 1-1.5 hour to uninstall the OS from all the systems. Rest, everything was like a new experience for both of us. It feels great to be in the place of teachers for sometime but on the other side you start realizing that how much effort teachers have to put in to make us understand.

Kshitiz would like me to add here, that being in the teachers shoes was a completely new experience, it was great. But when I ask him would you want to do it again? Silence...

Thank you! :)

Experience of leading lab session-3

Hey everyone!! Its been quite some time I lead Lab Session-3 ( Linux installation)... But I guess its never too late to share experiences...

Let me start with the training part. We reached for training on Saturday around 2:30 pm. And it continued till 6:30 in evening. For the first 2 hours, we were just staring at Arjun (our TA) trying to figure out what he was doing! Finally when we started doing on our own, we got it.

I was so tensed before the lab session. What all are my group mates going to ask? What if I cant answer? And after the lab session was over, i was laughing at whatever happened. It was a mixed experience. On one hand, I felt everything became chaotic. We (me n my partner, Monika) had to go to each table since everyone had reached to different steps. Plus, I felt we should have been a bit more prepared. On the other hand, was happy to see that ultimately everyone had installed linux natively and using virtual machines.
Lab finished in around 1.5 hrs. But that was for others. We had to stay back to uninstall linux now so that other groups can perform lab next day. So we stayed back till around 6:30 pm.
I learnt a very important thing through this process, that its easy to learn something. But to teach that to others, is really tough. But overall a very nice & enriching experience!! :)

My experience of leading lab session-4

My choice of choosing the 4th lab session (with my partner nikhil) was to end up with leading in the beginning of the sem as to relieve myself of tension. And it was really a big task for me to attend the lab session on saturday from 10am to 2pm on the day when I was supposed to reach home by 1pm. The lab session was fine but Samy sir were not much audible so I and others had to surround him while doing the training. I still remember I asked atleast 5 time the meaning of PF usage but samy sir never got irritated and answered clearly everytime. Somehow, the training ended and the first thing i did back home was to download all the utilities that were available on my laptop. I surfed through net to know what all utilities we were taught (only because i had to fill in the lab evaluation form-" what extra you have surfed" and i did not want to leave that remain empty). To be frank, i was not eagerly awaiting the day i had to lead the lab session.

                                                   Finally, wednesday came (the day I had to lead). We (I and my partner) were prepared but were nervous to think what questions would be asked by our group members (though most of our doubts were clarified by samy sir beforehand). the lab started at about 1pm. We started with the task manager and somehow ended in 1hour30min ending with task manager in linux (we were promised of good grades by the group if we end early, but it was not the actual reason why lab ended so early). The lab ended early because many of the windows utilities were known to the group except the utilities from sysinternals.com. After completing the interesting (especially the diskmon and rammap of sysinternals) windows utilities, when we decided to shift to linux utilities, passwords for most of the computers were unknown(blame the last lab group for that), so we had to show the linux utilities on 1 or 2 computers only(where fortunately login got possible).

                                                                   When we ended before time , the whole group was happy(this is what their faces told) and even we were happy as a big chunk of tension was over(my mindset about that is still the same). I don't know the grades i got but it was a different experience of acting as a teacher and trying to order someone(i tried once after i was told by arjun sir that i can do that). Initially, even i was not interested but once you try well, you somehow succeed. All that starts well, ends well.




                                              
                                                   

Question: Intel® CoreTM i5 processors or AMD PhenomTM II Quad-Core processors?

Can someone tell me what is the difference between the 2 processors in terms of performance? No need to post the tech specs as those are easily available over the net.

My Experience of Leading Lab Session

The week before, when sir announced in the class that the slot for the leading lab session for the next week was open, I and my lab partner Yash rushed straight off to the lab after the class to send sir the mail to lead that lab session which was going to cover some limited LINUX commands.

Not only did we have to put in a lot of effort to first get ourselves acquainted to the commands but also teach them to our fellow batchmates on the lab day though how well or bad we acquainted was yet to be seen.We felt that day that in a batch of as less as 26 students it was very challenging to focus on each and every student's problems and then we thought of the plight of our teachers who take on almost a 100 of us everyday. KUDOS TO THEM!! AND A VERY HAPPY TEACHERS DAY (Sorry, am two days late).

Though, we who had to lead the session were also not very perfect on those commands but we tried our best to understand and make others understand how these commands are formed.Still, most of the students were confused on how these commands work. Most of the students were convinced that they are required to rote learn these long commands which is not the case. What you need to do is form these commands from some elementary commands which are not difficult to learn.The commands that we took on that day were some of the most basic commands in Linux like 'top', 'grep', 'awk, 'sed', 'echo' etc.(it is not my fault if they look alien blame it on Linus Torvalds or for that matter on Blaise Pascal) and we also read about the loops and shell files. Most of the students were not clear about command

$ chmod 755 name.sh

that we used to write before executing the shell file(some asked ,some didn't).I will explain it here once again.This command what it basically does is that it makes the file executable.

What we are doing is that we are setting the specifications of the file to read,write and execute.We use 111 to signify that a file is readable, writable as well as executable.This 111 when transformed from binary to decimal gives the value 7.This is the reason why we write chmod 777 or chmod 755(even this value sets the file to executable which is our ultimate goal from this staement).Now this blog is not the place to explain the commands that we did in lab so I will not elaborate further on commands that students found difficult to follow.

Yash has named it Labmare but what we really did was Labshare!

All in all, leading the lab was really a fine experience to have and should continue in future years too. And I would like to thank sir for providing me with this opportunity.

My post was really boring,isn't it?Let's put in a photograph.

OOPS!! Isn't that a photograph of MAC OS X.What is that doing in here?Well, Whatever.It is vaguely related, isn't it?

Linux->Terminal==Mac->Terminal

True

Look at it and pass your time admiring it at your own risk, after all

THE MID-SEM IS HERE!

Hey what am I doing on net, aren't the mid-sem exams approaching?I think i must get offline and put some of my brains(if I have any) into my five subjects(for one of which I am here).

Labmare!!

Ok... So here it goes...I am about to describe my experience of leading the lab...

If I can describe this experience in two words, I will say it was an enjoyable 'labmare'.Weird it might seem,but indeed, it was a sort of problematic challenge that ended quite well...
The idea of conducting a lab seemed interesting.We were very eager to try it out as early as possible, but got a chance only this past week.We were called for training on Saturday at 10 am, and as some of you might have anticipated, I was late yet again, and so I missed quite a bit of the explanation part...:-)
Soumya, then helped me out.I tried to understand everything that I had missed and simultaneously made an attempt to keep track of what was going on(Multi-tasking I may say).Unfortunately,it didn't help much, I could not understand what was going on.Thankfully, at that very instant,when matters seemed to be getting out of hand, Madhuri ma'am gave us a break...We went to play TT.We had a great,refreshing one hour.Then we returned to business.
The scene was quite different now, I seemed to understand things better now.Soumya and I tried our hands out on the questions along with our friends from the other sub-groups.We all put our heads together, and finally things seemed to be in place.An exciting day,I must say.
Then began the difficult part.Understanding the things, was easy, but explaining them to others was not going to be.So we put in our efforts,tried to understand the concepts, practiced a little more.And got ready for the day.
(Oh boy!!it was tiring...)
With little confidence,I started the lab session.My mantra "tension kis baat ki hai" really helped.Though, my confidence was low, but I managed to bring conviction in my voice :-).
The lab went on quite well.We were able to help our mates out.They had no complains(at least this was what I felt).Moreover, we got to learn a lot from our group mates, who came up with doubts, that needed some on the spot research.(I was ready for it and so I was carrying a book on LINUX commands :-D).
So on the whole, it ended pretty well.But the effort that went into it made me realise one thing-"Teachers ko toh bohot jyada mehnat karni padti hogi!!"
Thank you sir, for this opportunity, but I would not like to do it again.
Being on the receiving end is much easier... :-D

Thank you!

After all that happened, the performances in the class put up by all the groups were quite impressive. I just thought, I should publish a post showing the positive trend right away for record purpose :).

It was apparent that you guys had put in effort preparing for it. Thank you for preparing the wonderful performances. I hope you continue putting in efforts not just in this course but in your education all through.

Those of you who took the videos and photographs, can you please share them on the blog or wherever you feel comfortable. And the group working on video editing as their project should see if they can create some good video about this course out of these videos.