Pycon India: Journey begins!

Ok! everyone. Get ready to hear a very interesting story about a Python: a vicious snake in the memory of our computers. The story has many twist, drama, suspense and adventure. Try to keep it up with me.

It was hot long summer day when I landed on the webland of DGPLUG, searching for some fun online training to help me find the magic world of opensource softwares, and “Google” told me about this very famous webland “DGPLUG” where the wizard Kushal and his friends helps people like me to find the magic doors of open source world without even meeting them in person.

With time, those wizards helped us well in learning various new magic spells and then there comes a day when to achieve a great skill, we all need to meet in person, but… how? Every wizard is from different dimension! So we all settled down to meet on Earth on a very special occasion of Python: rejuvenation day. I was little sceptical at first, but I am glad I chose the sacred path of Python. And all thanks to DGPLUG webland to introduce me to magic of Python and open source.

I was kind of new to all these Python spells and all, so I decided to help people in arranging the Python day we call “Pycon India”, to learn more about other python wizards whom I don’t know.

All new wizards(including me) who wants to help in organising the python’s Pycon India should reach the Earth a day before and help other wizards.

I reached Earth, found many new wizards out there who wants to help just like me and we all had great discussion about the event to be come in upcoming days. I also found some remote wizards from another dimensions who were there to help and were also from DGPLUG webland. Few of the wizard I met was known by @thebigj, @cyber_freak and @championshuttler.

Okay! That’s enough for today, will continue next on my first day experience.

The Last Key!

Hope you guys have watched the trailer, The Last key.  If not I dare you to watch it.

Okay, joke aside, this blog post is about cryptography and public keybase keybase.io.

Crypto-What?

So these days when cyber crime, identity theft as common as bug in your code, people are getting insecure with their internet transactions, chat over various media and the threat of being spied remains the same.  This threat leads some security enthusiast to find a way for a secure transactions over internet and we call this field as Cryptography.

Cryptography is the study to find secure methods to transact securely between two parties which may or may not be on internet.  Cryptography is as old as human politics :p

Kings of different nations need to transmit messages securely so that the message do not get tampered or leaked by any medium in between and to overcome this threat they use various methods which in today's modern world known as "algorithms".

Encryption

Encryption is nothing but the process of encoding message into a form of jargon which can only be understood if you have appropriate key.  It is more like, you can only read the contents of a locked diary unless you have the key to unlock it.

More resources on encryption are provided here.

Why encrypt?

Why encypt?...

Like anyone you might not like when someone peeks at your life without your consent.  Say, how would you react if someone reads your personal diaries without your consent? I guess, you would be infuriated, right?

Now, how helpful it would be if anyone tries to read your diary but can't understand what is written because of the bad writing you have :p
Or say if you have written the diary in mirrored language just like DaVinci.

This is what is called encryption and everyone needs it unless you know a language nobody understands other than you :p.

What is Public Key and Private key?

Keys, like any general key are nothing but a way to unlock the path to your secrets.  In cryptography, keys are the codes required to decode the encrypted secrets we all try to hide from others. So, whatever happens to you, never loose your key or you will be locked out of your own secrets.

In Cryptography, there are two types of keys, public key and private key.  Anyone with encrypted message for your public key can't access the message unless he have your both the keys, public and private one.

Since public keys are meant to be published publicly and distributed to all, you should never disclose your private with anyone and carefully protect your private keys with a strong password, maybe diceware one :D

So, how to publish your public key to all, here are two ways:
1. Mail to them your public key so that they can understand your jargon.
2. Publish your public key on the key base like keybase.io.

To understand the public key cryptography, watch the following video, it will sure help you :)

Keybase

Keybase is a PGP key directory that maps social media identities to encryption keys in a publicly auditable manner. It provides various utilities like, chatting with someone else using pgp encryption.

It is another method to publicly publish your public key so that only trusted people can transact with you over internet.

 

 So, follow me on keybase to understand my jargon messages.


Note: Whenever I says transact, it can be any kind of transaction like money transfer, chatting, information exchange and so on.

Till then,

To infinity and Beyond!

E-yantra is your mantra!

This year, I registered for e-yantra and this post is the part of my Journey to it.

E-Yantra eYRC guide

E-yantra home page describes e-yantra as:

An initiative by IIT Bombay that aims to create the next generation of embedded systems engineers with a practical outlook to help provide practical solutions to some of the real world problems. Sponsored by MHRD under the National Mission on Education through ICT program.

E-yantra is an initiative taken by IIT-Bombay, sponsored by MHRD to create better learning oppportunites for teachers, students and colleges. There are various programmes that run under the roof of e-yantra to help improve both the society and education standard in India.

Formation or Foundation

IT Bombay envisages the ‘e-Yantra’ platform to harness the intellectual talent of young India to create utility based robotic applications for usage across variety of applications such as: agriculture, manufacturing, defense, home, city maintenance and services industries

---

Initiatives

For Students

1. e-Yantra Robotics Competition, eYRC
2. e-Yantra Summer Internship Program, eYSIP

For Colleges

1. e-Yantra Lab Setup Initiative, eLSI
2. e-Yantra Ideas Competition, eYIC
3. e-Yantra Symposium, eYS

For Teachers

1. Two-day Workshop on Introduction to Robotics, link
2. Task Based Training, link
3. Task Based Training Challenge

Others:

1. e-Yantra Farm Setup Initiative, eFSI
2. e-Yantra Resource Development Center, eYRDC

Note: For further information, please follow the links provided.

How to get involved in …

• Go to their website before deadline and register for any of the above mentioned competitions to improve yourself and your college.
• Subscribe to their Facebook page to get updates.

---

Reference

• Another blog post to help, here.
• Another blog post to help on e-yantra.
• E-Yantra FAQ page.
• E-Yantra Contact us page.
• E-yantra Home page.
• E-Yantra facebook page.
• E-Yantra Publications

Till then:

• To infinity and beyond!