I am Vedant Lath, and I am currently studying in Amity Institute of Information Technology, Amity University, Noida. I have been using computers since I was a kid, and I like programming and administering systems a lot. I am very fond of photography (my photos) and reading books (mostly funny fiction).
achievements/experience
- In late 2005, I got a bit addicted to the puzzle game Sudoku and started getting stuck on difficult puzzles. I thought I could write a program that solves sudoku puzzles and see how I was missing the answer. At that time, we were being taught in Java in school (class 10th of ICSE), so I started writing a sudoku solver in Java. Even today, people visit my website through Google to see my sudoku solver. I wrote this program in around December 2005, just two months before my 10th board exams, even though I wasn’t fairing well in preparatory exams.
- In the beginning of 2006, having to study a lot for board exams, I got confused between books and teachers. In the end, I started a project to write textbooks for ICSE exams online, based on the concept of Wikipedia. It turned out to be a waste of a lot of time that could have been used to get better marks in board exams.
- Since around 2006, I am managing around 8 computers in both my home and my dad’s office. They are all in Active Directory with a nice Group Policy that speeds up the system. Some systems don’t have any anti-virus installed so that people can actually work on the system rather than waiting for the anti-virus to scan everything they do. Most business files are centrally stored.
- I developed a few Python scripts to check the PNR status of a railway ticket in the summer of 2007. Background: Once I had to check the PNR status of several tickets (of relatives in town) to see if they were confirmed. I got fed up of the interface of the official site, so I wrote a webpage which displayed the PNR status with a clean interface and without any hassles. I also thought of extending the script so that it could notify the user by email or SMS once the ticket gets confirmed. I never got around to implement it though. A few months later, when my ticket was on the waiting list, I set it up so that I would get an email every 12 hours with my PNR status.
- Since late 2008, I am using my desktop in my Noida home as a file server with Debian testing. I set it up completely through ssh through my laptop and operated it without a monitor for about an year as I didn’t have a monitor at that time. Only the installation of Linux was done with a monitor because I had no experience with installing Linux over the network, and I wouldn’t have a monitor for long to troubleshoot if things went wrong. I also use the desktop for chatting (I chat with friends over the Internet only through finch, a command line client).
- Since late 2009, I am working as a part-time sysadmin for Apra Infotech in Nehru Place, Delhi on most Saturdays.
- These days I try to learn Scheme with the help of the book Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.
