Visa experience at the US Mumbai Consulate

Before we start I want to tell a bit about myself.
I have done by BE in Electronics from Rizvi college of engineering
BE final Year = 71 %
Overall = 63 %

I have also have 2 years of experience in the software industry (web development)
and now i work as a freelancer

I have decided to go to Missouri University of science & technology for
FALL 09 to do masters in Computer Science

This is how my visa interview took place.

I had my interview on the 3rd of June at 8.15am . I reached the VFS office at around 7.40 am and I immediately entered the VFS lounge as I had purchased the coupon for it.

Once i entered i sat for while and then I took the sandwich as well as the coffee which is part of the coupon which you buy from the VFS.

At around 8.30 am the 8.15 batch was called and we were asked to go ahead and site in the bus as the bus was waiting for us to take us to the consulate. After reaching the consulate we were asked to wait in the bus only for the next 10 mins or so and then we were asked to stand in a queue to enter the consulate.

Once you enter the consulate you have to go through security checks like metal detector and you will be handed a wooden token as well.

NOTE: Please do not carry things mobile phone, digital diary, pen drive, any thing which has metal involved in it. If you have taken the VFS facility you can take a locker and keep your things in the locker.

Once you enter in the consulate you will have to go to the counter next to the door and you will have to show them your I20 & passport and they will give you a token number and your DS forms.

Then you have to stand in queue for the fingerprint where your fingerprints are taken and then starts the long wait for your token number to be announced for the interview.

Please keep your ears wide open because announcements are made only once and if you miss it you will have to wait for a long time. Once your token number is announce you will be asked to come to a certain window and then starts the interview.

i was asked to come to window no 6 and there were 2 people in front of me both of them were there for the students visa only and both of the were granted the visa. The visa officer was a guy in his mid 20's and was in a very good mood.

here is how my interview took place

VO = Visa officer

VO : Good morning How r u ?
ME : Good Morning sir .

VO : Which university you are going ?
ME : Missouri University of Science & Technology

VO : So doing your masters in computer science ?
ME : Yes sir.

VO : Where did u do your undergraduate from ?
ME : Rizvi College of Engineering Mumbai.

VO : Who are your sponsors ?
ME : My Parents.

VO : What do they do ?
ME : Dad is working at the High Court Mumbai as a class one section officer and mom works at Shoppers Stop.

Then came the golden words that your visa has been granted.
I thanked the visa officer and left.

Install Microsoft Truetype Fonts

To download the rpm file click on this link below
http://msttcorefonts.googlecode.com/files/msttcore-fonts-2.0-2.noarch.rpm


[root@neptune msttcorefonts]# cd /opt/
[root@neptune opt]# mkdir msttcorefonts


copy the rpm file to this directory


[root@neptune msttcorefonts]# ls -l
total 3408
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3484074 2009-02-05 10:38 msttcore-fonts-2.0-2.noarch.rpm

[root@neptune msttcorefonts]# rpm -ivh msttcore-fonts-2.0-2.noarch.rpm
Preparing... ########################################### [100%]
1:msttcore-fonts ########################################### [100%]

and we are done installing Microsoft Truetype Fonts

Installing Adobe Reader 8.1.3 in Linux

Just a few months ago , Adobe came up with the Adobe Reader for Linux OS .

-------------------
Installation
-------------------
1 Download the latest version of Adobe Reader from the Adobe Download Page .

2 Select the rpm and download the rpm

3 then just run this command

rpm -i AdobeReader_enu-8.1.3-1.i486.rpm

------------
Usage
------------

To run Adobe Reader, click Applications → Office → Adobe Reader 8 menu item. Or run the following command in terminal:

/opt/Adobe/Reader8/bin/acroread

Install Internet Explorer on Fedora Core 8

Before you start you'll need to make sure you have wine and cabextract installed:
# yum -y install wine cabextract

Then just download the latest script, extract and run it.

The example below is based on version 2.0.5 ;

$ gtar xzvf ies4linux-2.0.5.tar.gz
$ cd ies4linux-2.0.5
$ ./ies4linux
Welcome, greg! I'm IEs4Linux.
I can install IE 6, 5.5 and 5.0 for you easily and quickly.
You are just four 'enter's away from your IEs.

I'll ask you some questions now. Just answer y or n (default answer is the bold one)

IE 6 will be installed automatically.
Do you want to install IE 5.5 SP2 too? [ y / n ] y
.
.
.
IEs 4 Linux installations finished!

To run your IEs, type:
ie6
ie55
ie5

PHP regular expression tutorial

Regular expressions are a powerful way of analyzing and retrieving values from text strings .

The regular expressions basic syntax

To use regular expressions first you need to learn the syntax of the patterns. We can group the characters inside a pattern like this:

1 Start and end indicators as ^ and $
2 Count indicators like +,*,?
3 Logical operator like |
4 Grouping with {},(),[]
5 \ is used as a general escape character

A basic example would looks like this:

if (preg_match('/tutorial/', 'tips and tutorials are very useful'))
echo "word 'tutorial' found!";

Now let's see a detailed pattern syntax reference:

1 "ab*": matches a string that has an a followed by zero or more b's ("a", "ab", "abbb", etc.);
2 "ab+": same, but there's at least one b ("ab", "abbb", etc.);
3 "ab?": there might be a b or not;
4 "a?b+$": a possible a followed by one or more b's ending a string.
5 "ab{2}": matches a string that has an a followed by exactly two b's ("abb");
6 "ab{2,}": there are at least two b's ("abb", "abbbb", etc.);
7 "ab{3,5}": from three to five b's ("abbb", "abbbb", or "abbbbb").
8 "a(bc)*": matches a string that has an a followed by zero or more copies of the sequence "bc";
9 "a(bc){1,5}": one through five copies of "bc."
10 "hi|hello": matches a string that has either "hi" or "hello" in it;
11 "(b|cd)ef": a string that has either "bef" or "cdef";
12 "(a|b)*c": a string that has a sequence of alternating a's and b's ending in a c;
13 "a.[0-9]": matches a string that has an a followed by one character and a digit;
14 "^.{3}$": a string with exactly 3 characters.
15 "[ab]": matches a string that has either an a or a b (that's the same as "a|b");
16 "[a-d]": a string that has lowercase letters 'a' through 'd' (that's equal to "a|b|c|d" and even "[abcd]");
17 "^[a-zA-Z]": a string that starts with a letter;
18 "[0-9]%": a string that has a single digit before a percent sign;
19 ",[a-zA-Z0-9]$": a string that ends in a comma followed by an alphanumeric character.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

An example pattern to check valid emails looks like this:

^[a-zA-Z0-9._-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9-]+\.[a-zA-Z.]{2,5}$

The code to check the email using Perl compatible regular expression looks like this:

$pattern = "/^[a-zA-Z0-9._-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9-]+\.[a-zA-Z.]{2,5}$/";
$email = "jim@demo.com";
if (preg_match($pattern,$email)) {
echo "Match";
}
else {
echo "Not match";
}

Hope this helps .

how to increase the upload filesize limit

To check your upload_max_filesize setting, create a php file called info.php in your web root directory with the following code in it

phpinfo();

and view it in a browser.Check your current upload limit .
To make changes to the upload limit you will have to edit the php.ini file .
For Fedora users it is present at /etc/php.ini .

Open the php.ini and check for
upload_max_filesize 32M

You can change it whatever file size you wan to upload .
Once the changes have been done restart apache .

Installing ffmpeg & Lamemp3 for FlashVideo module

Got a whole lot of instructions from multiple sources

Instructions
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/archive/index.php/t-565563.html
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?p=4234345#post4234345
http://dev.gemin-i.org/wiki/index.php/Ffmpeg_install_instructions
http://www.hiteshagrawal.com/ffmpeg/installing-ffmpeg-easily-on-linux

Download links
http://www.audiocoding.com/downloads.html
ftp://ftp.videolan.org/pub/videolan/x264/snapshots/
http://www.xvid.org/Downloads.43.0.html
http://downloads.xvid.org/downloads/xvidcore-1.1.3.tar.gz
http://www.penguin.cz/~utx/amr

Also, please ensure you have libtool, patch installed on your machine, if not do

Check for the following packages


rpm -qa automake
rpm -qa autoconf
rpm -qa libtool
rpm -qa m4
rpm -qa gcc-c++


[root@earth tmp]# yum install libtool
[root@earth tmp]# yum install patch


also ensure u have libogg-devel libvorbis-devel libncurses-devel

1 - install faac


[root@earth faac]# pwd
/home/dld/ffmpeg/final/faac

[root@earth faac]# ls -l ../faac-1.26.tar.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 400915 Feb 5 13:56 ../faac-1.26.tar.gz

[root@earth faac]# sh bootstrap

configure.in:11: warning: underquoted definition of MY_DEFINE
run info '(automake)Extending aclocal'
or see http://sources.redhat.com/automake/automake.html#Extending-aclocal
configure.in: installing `./install-sh'
configure.in: installing `./missing'
common/mp4v2/Makefile.am: installing `./depcomp'

[root@earth faac]# ./configure > CONFIGURE.LOG 2>&1 &

[root@earth faac]# make > MAKE.LOG 2>&1 &

[root@earth faac]# make install > MAKE_INSTALL.LOG 2>&1 &


2 - libmp4v2


[root@earth libmp4v2-1.5.0.1]# pwd
/home/dld/ffmpeg/final/libmp4v2-1.5.0.1

[root@earth libmp4v2-1.5.0.1]# ls -l ../libmp4v2-1.5.0.1.tar.bz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 375541 Feb 5 13:57 ../libmp4v2-1.5.0.1.tar.bz2

[root@earth libmp4v2-1.5.0.1]# ./configure > CONFIGURE.LOG 2>&1 &

[root@earth libmp4v2-1.5.0.1]# make > MAKE.LOG 2>&1 &

[root@earth libmp4v2-1.5.0.1]# make install > MAKE_INSTALL.LOG 2>&1 &


3 - faad2


[root@earth faad2]# pwd
/home/dld/ffmpeg/final/faad2

[root@earth faad2]# ls -l ../faad2-2.6.1.tar.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 839410 Feb 5 13:56 ../faad2-2.6.1.tar.gz


[root@earth faad2]# cat README.linux
To compile under Linux.
----------------------
just run :

autoreconf -vif
./configure --with-mp4v2
make
sudo make install


about the xmms plugin.
---------------------
The xmms plugin need to be build after the install of the faad project.
so after you have installed correctly faad (--with-xmms options) you need
to configure and build the xmms plugin part in the plugins/xmms directory.
Read the README and INSTALL files into the xmms directory.
[root@earth faad2]#
[root@earth faad2]# autoreconf -vif
autoreconf: Entering directory `.'
autoreconf: configure.in: not using Gettext
autoreconf: running: aclocal --force
autoreconf: configure.in: tracing
autoreconf: running: libtoolize --copy --force
autoreconf: running: /usr/bin/autoconf --force
autoreconf: running: /usr/bin/autoheader --force
autoreconf: running: automake --add-missing --copy --force-missing
configure.in: installing `./install-sh'
configure.in: installing `./missing'
common/mp4ff/Makefile.am: installing `./compile'
common/mp4ff/Makefile.am: installing `./depcomp'
Makefile.am: installing `./INSTALL'
autoreconf: Leaving directory `.'

[root@earth faad2]# ./configure --with-mp4v2 > CONFIGURE.LOG 2>&1 &

[root@earth faad2]# make > MAKE.LOG 2>&1 &

[root@earth faad2]# make install > MAKE_INSTALL.LOG 2>&1 &


4 - Installing lame-3.97


[root@earth faac]#tar -xzf lame-3.97.tar.gz

[root@earth faac]# pwd
/home/dld/ffmpeg/final/lame

[root@earth faac]# ./configure > CONFIGURE.LOG 2>&1 &

[root@earth faac]# make > MAKE.LOG 2>&1 &

[root@earth faac]# make install > MAKE_INSTALL.LOG 2>&1 &


5 - Installing Xvid 1.1.3


[root@earth xvidcore-1.1.3]# pwd
/home/dld/ffmpeg/final/xvidcore-1.1.3

[root@earth xvidcore-1.1.3]# ls -l ../xvidcore-1.1.3.tar.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 739591 Feb 5 14:34 ../xvidcore-1.1.3.tar.gz

[root@earth xvidcore-1.1.3]# cd build/generic

[root@earth generic]# pwd
/home/dld/ffmpeg/final/xvidcore-1.1.3/build/generic

[root@earth generic]# ./configure > CONFIGURE.LOG 2>&1 &

[root@earth generic]# make > MAKE.LOG 2>&1 &

[root@earth generic]# make install > MAKE_INSTALL.LOG 2>&1 &

[root@earth ~]# cd /usr/local/lib

[root@earth lib]# ls -l libxvidcore.*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 834244 Feb 5 16:20 libxvidcore.a
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 724482 Feb 5 16:20 libxvidcore.so.4.1

[root@earth lib]# ln -s libxvidcore.so.4.1 libxvidcore.so.4

[root@earth lib]# ln -s libxvidcore.so.4 libxvidcore.so

[root@earth lib]# ls -l libxvidcore.*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 834244 Feb 5 16:20 libxvidcore.a
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 Feb 5 16:24 libxvidcore.so -> libxvidcore.so.4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 18 Feb 5 16:23 libxvidcore.so.4 ->
libxvidcore.so.4.1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 724482 Feb 5 16:20 libxvidcore.so.4.1


6 - Installing a52


[root@earth a52dec-0.7.4]# pwd
/home/dld/ffmpeg/final/a52dec-0.7.4

[root@earth a52dec-0.7.4]# ls -l ../a52dec-0.7.4.tar.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 241507 Feb 5 13:58 ../a52dec-0.7.4.tar.gz

[root@earth a52dec-0.7.4]# ./configure > CONFIGURE.LOG 2>&1 &

[root@earth a52dec-0.7.4]# make > MAKE.LOG 2>&1 &

[root@earth a52dec-0.7.4]# make install > MAKE_INSTALL.LOG 2>&1 &


7 - Installing libtheora


[root@earth libtheora-1.0beta2]# pwd
/home/dld/ffmpeg/final/libtheora-1.0beta2

[root@earth libtheora-1.0beta2]# ls -l ../libtheora-1.0beta2.tar.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1961709 Feb 5 13:59 ../libtheora-1.0beta2.tar.gz

[root@earth libtheora-1.0beta2]# ./configure > CONFIGURE.LOG 2>&1 &

[root@earth libtheora-1.0beta2]# make > MAKE.LOG 2>&1 &

[root@earth libtheora-1.0beta2]# make install > MAKE_INSTALL.LOG 2>&1 &


8 - Installing x264


[root@earth x264-snapshot-20080204-2245]# pwd
/home/dld/ffmpeg/final/x264-snapshot-20080204-2245

[root@earth x264-snapshot-20080204-2245]# ls -l
../x264-snapshot-20080204-2245.tar.bz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 537647 Feb 5 14:09
../x264-snapshot-20080204-2245.tar.bz2

[root@earth x264-snapshot-20080204-2245]# ./configure --enable-shared
> CONFIGURE.LOG 2>&1 &

[root@earth x264-snapshot-20080204-2245]# make > MAKE.LOG 2>&1 &

[root@earth x264-snapshot-20080204-2245]# make install > MAKE_INSTALL.LOG 2>&1 &


9 - Installing 3GP stuff ...


[root@earth amrnb-7.0.0.0]# pwd
/home/dld/ffmpeg/final/amrnb-7.0.0.0

[root@earth amrnb-7.0.0.0]# ls -l ../amrnb-7.0.0.0.tar.bz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 226952 Feb 5 14:37 ../amrnb-7.0.0.0.tar.bz2

[root@earth amrnb-7.0.0.0]# ./configure > CONFIGURE.LOG 2>&1 &

[root@earth amrnb-7.0.0.0]# make > MAKE.LOG 2>&1 &

[root@earth amrnb-7.0.0.0]# make install > MAKE_INSTALL.LOG 2>&1 &

[root@earth amrwb-7.0.0.2]# pwd
/home/dld/ffmpeg/final/amrwb-7.0.0.2

[root@earth amrwb-7.0.0.2]# ls -l ../amrwb-7.0.0.2.tar.bz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 222579 Feb 5 14:37 ../amrwb-7.0.0.2.tar.bz2

[root@earth amrwb-7.0.0.2]# ./configure > CONFIGURE.LOG 2>&1 &

[root@earth amrwb-7.0.0.2]# make > MAKE.LOG 2>&1 &

[root@earth amrwb-7.0.0.2]# make install > MAKE_INSTALL.LOG 2>&1 &


INSTALLING FFMPEG - finally


[root@earth ffmpeg-export-2008-02-05]# pwd
/home/dld/ffmpeg/final/ffmpeg-export-2008-02-05

[root@earth ffmpeg-export-2008-02-05]# ls -l
../ffmpeg-export-snapshot.tar.bz2.2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2468551 Feb 5 12:01 ../ffmpeg-export-snapshot.tar.bz2.2

[root@earth ffmpeg-export-2008-02-05]# cat CONFIG.sh
#!/bin/bash
# ./configure --enable-libmp3lame --enable-gpl --enable-shared --enable-libfaad
./configure --enable-shared --enable-gpl --enable-nonfree
--enable-libxvid --enable-libvorbis --enable-libmp3lame
--enable-libfaad --enable-libfaac --enable-liba52 --enable-libtheora
--enable-libx264 --enable-libamr-nb --enable-libamr-wb

[root@earth ffmpeg-export-2008-02-05]# ./CONFIG.sh > CONFIGURE.LOG 2>&1 &

[root@earth ffmpeg-export-2008-02-05]# make > MAKE.LOG 2>&1 &

[root@earth ffmpeg-export-2008-02-05]# make install > MAKE_INSTALL.LOG 2>&1 &


Flash Player installation instructions for Firefox

Download the latest version of the flash player from
http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

Depending on the type of installation follow the instructions .

Installation instructions for .rpm

1. Click the download link to begin installation. A dialog box will appear asking you where to save the file.
2. Save the .rpm file to your desktop and wait for the file to download completely.
3. In terminal, navigate to the desktop and type # rpm -Uvh . Click Enter. (Note: This must be done as a root user). The installer will instruct you to shut down your browser(s).
4. Once the installation is complete, the plug-in will be installed in your Mozilla browser. To verify, launch Mozilla and choose Help > About Plug-ins from the browser menu.

Installation instructions for .tar.gz

1. Click the download link to begin installation. A dialog box will appear asking you where to save the file.
2. Save the .tar.gz file to your desktop and wait for the file to download completely.
3. Unpackage the file. A directory called install_flash_player_10_linux will be created.
4. In terminal, navigate to this directory and type ./flashplayer-installer to run the installer. Click Enter. The installer will instruct you to shut down your browser(s).
5. Once the installation is complete, the plug-in will be installed in your Mozilla browser. To verify, launch Mozilla and choose Help > About Plug-ins from the browser menu.

Installation instructions for YUM

1. Click the download link to begin installation. A dialog box will appear asking you where to save the file.
2. Save the .rpm file to your desktop and wait for the file to download completely.
3. In terminal, navigate to the desktop and type # rpm -Uvh . Click Enter. (Note: This must be done as a root user).
4. Once the installation is complete, in terminal, type # yum install flash-plugin. Click Enter. (Note: This must be done as a root user).
5. To verify the plugin is installed in Mozilla, launch Mozilla and choose Help > About Plug-ins from the browser menu.
6. To get the most up-to-date Flash Player in the future, simply type # yum update flash-plugin in terminal. You will not need to repeat steps 1-4.

Installing RealPlayer 11 for Linux machines

Download the latest version of the Real Player from:
http://www.real.com/linux
OR
Download the latest version of the player depending on the OS from
https://player.helixcommunity.org/Image:2005/downloads

Installation Instructions using rpm

1. login as root
2. run the command "rpm -ivh RealPlayer11Gold.rpm"