Goodbye, Blogger !

This blog has now moved.

To where, you ask? Hint - take a look around!

Been there, couldn't do that :(

Sat through the INFY recruitment process today. Couldn't make it. In fact, I couldn't make it past the aptitude test itself. Well, I am hoping for better luck next time.

Hukum, Sarkar!

Sometime today, Akky wrote :

Ya even I feel the same.

Hey bt do chk out Sarkar if you:

> Like intense films
> Enjoy watching both B's together
> Luv Ramu's film making style

I define it as quality cinema... LoL

The reason I went out for Paheli was that Sarkar was houseful. However, today, the tickets were available, and I saw a movie of this type for the first time (of the Satya/Company/D genre).

The movie is violent, but not too graphic in the blood and gore department. The second half is where I believe the real story starts, when junior B starts to grow in the family business. Senior B, as usual, is great throughout the movie.

Somehow, I am prejudiced against junior B, I feel the only reason he looks good in Sarkar is the fact that he didn't have to do much of talking. But yes, he _does_ look good. On the other hand, has anyone seen him dancing in the "Dus Bahane Karke" song from Dus? Yuck! I feel he is best suited to intense roles as in Yuva and Sarkar.

A must watch.

cat /dev/random > paheli

FGQwA4weXgbN4QQ6IOJ7PjmuR 6uW VPO Vwe2nJHCXGJnY3IQKT0R B1iTovJizyi7SSNR3lDZYGtvYCRvaRjZfuPQIQxRdlb
g0Ph5Xy7PuQs5xj0 bGZpxE1zI4QRCF1xsROPTA5NThSaqH2yYvfAnekkS2MBtaFKVPOSq 9sZieJIXXw4io
m4RHXs
bbHmSjFcXmMn2sLnZOWmkTM0euW7WR8iave8kHmI aCJvzrNtT5mPvatMRrRo
pFSCBqv1SiqYrova7ixZuseAWWoHefw7hNcYMq50c4gMa0Sw4M3M7nAC6QqV0IQrZrSq0
eNFBmIQsYf9SwapxMIziu80i az 5ZGwvE4ls9WYXTuVXI7q3uoVyQH3QrHAGIpDKuIuso5J
1OBErzquj3SAqFErdH0Z2MaoT FGQwA4weXgbN4QQ6IOJ7PjmuR 6uW VPO Vwe2nJHCXGJnY3IQKT0R B1iTovJizyi7SSNR3lDZYGtvYCRvaRjZfuPQIQxRdlb
g0Ph5Xy7PuQs5xj0 bGZpxE1zI4QRCF1xsROPTA5NThSaqH2yYvfAnekkS2MBtaFKVPOSq 9sZieJIXXw4io
m4RHXs
bbHmSjFcXmMn2sLnZOWmkTM0euW7WR8iave8kHmI aCJvzrNtT5mPvatMRrRo
pFSCBqv1SiqYrova7ixZuseAWWoHefw7hNcYMq50c4gMa0Sw4M3M7nAC6QqV0IQrZrSq0
eNFBmIQsYf9SwapxMIziu80i az 5ZGwvE4ls9WYXTuVXI7q3uoVyQH3QrHAGIpDKuIuso5J
1OBErzquj3SAqFErdH0Z2MaoT 7ple1dXNb0 cin2YD8QPd9
MTI6ztQqsAR J5H43RggqcfKA6H4dEUdBVFK213QfDpO9R
yU3u5v7
uI9RtdajMBtT ZX2cjsNyfaeMdv9nqAb6gXl3ch
hk8yC0m Qb898LJ27CntJTP1e60Wz8OiGFqanGOmudP J4si1U7lj3j2IVamtpd p5zKAUpLsD1mpvROqRB1LSp5aNgionWkp1COIO9IwkZ
61TgyYA9USdlFxnyxoyf44ohuCbIpixvbVgybr9 imTj0jqTAL 9T4vFD2BW0Lhcuc79bG617p
MZof5BBTp
aJP 5Kuzsf4jvdxmhvAiJASJ5
kFLwOTGhRi6DaPH6M3 Pqh Glp1 MvVsBFRPu9wSUSsptPdTVBNtSgWO9OnqHPnwqaqdEMN
kzR99sLtHnQDPRGUZ11gewhlzTloDBXICWpca
W3h438qz3pHaOosMKeVuMZbx8mcHeCCHFoIblexV98
HfZZSapGkGQdLT4Lzn1YUNVSNh9WRRAceUiA6q QY1qhK1j9BEJmVfzbx4fz4jhtUTAHuO5p1vNz3z
9o9zqbH
mZ6yoT3r9EtUjmJg5X2Lu62Y9
7ple1dXNb0 cin2YD8QPd9
MTI6ztQqsAR J5H43RggqcfKA6H4dEUdBVFK213QfDpO9R
yU3u5v7
uI9RtdajMBtT ZX2cjsNyfaeMdv9nqAb6gXl3ch
hk8yC0m Qb898LJ27CntJTP1e60Wz8OiGFqanGOmudP J4si1U7lj3j2IVamtpd p5zKAUpLsD1mpvROqRB1LSp5aNgionWkp1COIO9IwkZ
61TgyYA9USdlFxnyxoyf44ohuCbIpixvbVgybr9 imTj0jqTAL 9T4vFD2BW0Lhcuc79bG617p
MZof5BBTp
aJP 5Kuzsf4jvdxmhvAiJASJ5
kFLwOTGhRi6DaPH6M3 Pqh Glp1 MvVsBFRPu9wSUSsptPdTVBNtSgWO9OnqHPnwqaqdEMN
kzR99sLtHnQDPRGUZ11gewhlzTloDBXICWpca
W3h438qz3pHaOosMKeVuMZbx8mcHeCCHFoIblexV98
HfZZSapGkGQdLT4Lzn1YUNVSNh9WRRAceUiA6q QY1qhK1j9BEJmVfzbx4fz4jhtUTAHuO5p1vNz3z
9o9zqbH
mZ6yoT3r9EtUjmJg5X2Lu62Y9

This is just how much sense Paheli made. The only things I can say in favour of the movie is that it was visually very attractive, and the CG was above average (although it was apparent in some places).

Look ma ... my friend got a job!

Three cheers to Pascal Nunes, who has been recruited by Hexaware Technologies.

ADBMS exams tomorrow

That's Advanced DataBase Management Systems. I have taken the pains to study from no less than four books, that's how fragmented the syllabus is. Sometimes I wish had taken one of those cheap local rip-offs ...

Anyway, the prep's good. I hope to do well.

Update: Didn't go as well as expected ...

12 hours unto the exams ...

Barely twelve hours remaining. Have finished most of what I had to, and as always, left something for the last day. As we in engineering get ready to face the exams, here is a dialogue from "The Return of The King" :

Thousands of orcs stream out of the (enemy) gates. Aragorn's soldiers look frightened. Many take a step back. Aragorn rides before them.

Aragorn: Hold your ground! Hold your ground! Sons of Gondor, of Rohan! My brothers! I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me! A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship. But it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down. But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth. I bid you stand, Men of the West!

Question: Who would stand up to play the role of Aragorn among us?

A quest for the perfect Window Manager

Recently, I have been trying to choose a window manager (WM) that will suit my needs. The search has been long, and it's far from over. I hope u don't mind reading through my experience as I went on this quest.

When I first started looking, I was using WindowMaker as my WM. Initially, my "needs" were speed, speed, and speed. I have a 500 Mhz box, u see, and I resent even a two-second delay when I deal with my computer. So I went for a "pure X" WM - FVWM. This WM was *fast*, and the memory usage was the least of all WMs that I tested (about 500kb). However, configuring this WM was a royal pain in the u-know-what. The configuration possibilities were endless, and I seemed to be taking forever to come to grips with them. Why, even getting a keyboard shortcut to work properly took me about ten minutes! Also, fast though it was, it wasn't pretty. There are people online who say that it *can* be made to look pretty as well, I wasn't ready to put in the effort. Not for now, at least.

So the quest continued. I stumbled uppon FVWM95 (an FVWM fork that aims to be a Windows 95 clone). I left that alone. Then came Joe's Window Manager (JWM), which was very small indeed. Compilation : a mere 20 seconds, on MY machine. However, it was far too less configurable. I tried fiddling with the source, and even managed to overcome a deficiency (that of switching to the previous desktop - my first attempt at modifying source), however, there were far too many issues. Then there was IceWM. I can't recall why I left it ... ahh ... yes, the rendering was slow in some cases. Whenever I switched to a desktop with a Gnome app, redrawing was a bit slow. Not acceptable. Also, it had a far too many binaries (executables), one for managing windows, other to set ur backgrounds. Ditto with Blackbox, which needs bbkeys to get keyboard shortcuts working. I also tried Hackedbox, a hacked version of Blackbox, optimized for speed (or so they would have me believe). There was also TWM (comes with all Redhat installations, I think), but it has no support for virtual desktops. I moved on.

I had given up by now. In fact, I had decided to switch back to WindowMaker. Then a thought hit me - whenever I am *working*, I am in the console mode. I even have a console player (mpg123) that plays songs for me (with a randomized playlist, which is important for me :). All I use the GUI for is the internet, and maybe a few games. Not very demanding applications, are they? Then why was I looking for a lean-n-mean gui environment? I decided to revert back to the old console while working, and into the gui only at time of _leisure_. Now that speed is not one of my concerns, "looks" has taken over. While I am at it, I'm trying to get the best gui environment that is out there. I have decided to go back to KDE. Here's a screenshot of my latest desktop. It may not be the coolest one around, but I hope I am getting close!

BTW, notice the wallpaper ... does the lady bear any resemblance to Aniston?

Here's a close-up ...

LOGO interpreter for M$ fans

I had posted about LOGO yesterday. Just so that everyone on the bad side can share the goodness, here's a link for a LOGO interpreter that runs on Windoze. Haven't tested it, check for your self that it works.

Template to be changed soon ...

I am thinking of changing the template (look and feel) of this site, please post your opinions as comments to this post ...

Sibling expectations

Children can be so strange ...

There was this time when I used to try to force my sister to read the Harry Potter books. I myself hadn't read them, but I had heard a lot about them, so I thought it might do my sis a great deal of good (improve her English, for example) if she read them. However, she never listened, and after some days, I gave up.

I don't remember exactly when, but sometime before the vivas, I just happened to start reading the first book. My sister read the first thirteen pages or so, and since then, hasn't been able to stop reading the books! She's a big Harry Potter fan now, though I admit we are bit late to join the club.

These days, I am trying to get her to learn "LOGO", a very simplistic language with very elementary drawing commands (actually, all it does is draw lines, but you can control their direction, length etc.). She seems reluctant to learn it, however, I am hoping that she'll show more interest with time. After much coaxing, she wrote her first LOGO program today :


reset

fw 90

tl 135
fw 125

repeat 3 [
tl 90
fw 125
]

tl 90
pu
fw 125
pd
tl 135
fw 180
tr 135
pu
fw 130
pd
tr 135
fw 90


This draws a sort of a kite on the screen. Try running it in KTurtle (included in KDE, windoze users might be able to find a logo interpreter somewhere ...). Of course, the diamond doesn't come off well, because my sister couldn't determine the exact lengths needed. Afterwards, I tried to teach her the Pythagoras theorem(of course, I didn't mention Pythagoras ...). Unfortunately, LOGO doesn't seem to have a square root function ... Will have to write one for her now.

If she shows interest, that is. And I hope she does.

PS: If anyone of you has tiny tots around, you might want to introduce them to LOGO. KTurtle is included in the 'kdeedu' package of KDE. Despite the visible efforts, the documentation still falls short. Children whose native language isn't English might find it difficult to understand.

Esselworld trip

Our class (at least some of it) went to Esselworld the day before. With exams about two weeks away, we all wanted to have a bit of fun before getting down to some serious studies. Most of us have finished a major part of the syllabus, due to the vivas that just got over.

The trip was great. But it took us a lot of time to get through the rides. We were about 20 in all, and no one wanted to split up. So we all used to line up together, and while some enjoyed the ride, others waited in the queue behind. The only place where we all got together was the bumper car ride, which was real fun.

'Thunder' was terrific. Though most of us took the ride, we had to take a 10 minute break before we moved on. Some of us took it two times straight, but then regretted it. It took us quite some time to recover, my head was spinning like crazy. Only after did we rest and eat did I feel better.

Then there was this Karaoke tryout, where u were supposed to sing some song, and a computer (?) decided whether you were good enough. Some of us made fools of ourselves there, with our extremely flat voices. We actually noticed some people leaving the place because of us.

I also tried to dance. The music was really good, and the 'rain' added to the fun. Himanshu, who happens to be a terrific dancer, wasn't ready to stop dancing. We had to pull him out in the end. None of us really minded getting wet, even though we planned to do ice-skating next.

Ice skating was a blast. Although I fell down thrice, I was pretty good (really), though I have no prior experience of skating. I just tried to imitate the assistants, who, trying to be the perfect gentlemen, were only to eager to help the girls out. Whenever I or some of the other boys asked them for help, they demonstrated the art of skating by actually skating - away from us and towards the girls. There was this other girl from my class too who skated pretty well, and yes, an assistant helped her.

It was about 7:30 when we decided to leave. I and Shrikant Shrikant and I reckoned that boarding a train from Borivli wouldn't be that easy, so we decided to catch a bus. The next bus to Bhayendar was scheduled at about 8:40, so we had to wait fro more than an hour for it to arrive. I finally reached home at about 9:45.

XP vs. Linux

Here's a mail from Dhruv I received a few days back.

Hello fellow blasphemers.......
   I truly deserve to burn in hell for everything I've done today....
Let me explain....

o I've used Windows XP whole of today.

o I've [tried] to study Ooad because of constant taunting and
torturing by Sandesh. So, what o you have to say for yourself Sandesh?
X-(

o I've used many features of Yahoo! messenger, including 'invisible
mode', 'stealth setting' [don't worry, I'm not hiding from anyone here
;-) ]. Games, and Launchcast Radio, and I zimbly can't 'Get Over It'.
[yes, even that song!]. I must have heard at least 50 songs by now.
What a fruitful use of bandwidth :d.

o I am now at the stange of appreciating Windows XP!!!! God, please
help me! But fret not Linux patriots, I shall not desert you. 'I'll be
back', with a rebutal that is ;-) Let me add that Sandesh is sgain
responsible for this lin of thought,so any hate mail can be directed
straight to him :-)

An engineer's incentive

From Webster's New Dictionary :

incentive a. : arousing. -n. something that arouses to feeling or action.

It didn't quite start out as a normal day. I was somehow not in the very best of moods, today was one of those days where you feel right from the start that something will go wrong.

And I didn't make the proper choices either. I chose to wear a shirt that I had sworn a year ago to never wear again, thinking that it was time I got over those issues.

Today, we had our 'Web Technologies' vivas, for which I was decently prepared. I had not studied ASP, since I've never needed to use it, although I am pretty familiar with Java servlets and PHP. It started off well, I answered the first questions with relative ease, given that they were simple HTML/Javascript questions. Then the external asked whether we knew JSP. None of my partners knew, neither did I. Then she looked at me and casually asked - "Why?". And I answered - "I had no incentive."

Well, that seemed to tick her off. No no, it did tick her off. She talked about how she has to teach ASP, HTML, and JavaScript every year, does she ask for incentives? Do I get more money just because I teach ASP, she asked. I replied - "maim, money is not the only incentive one can get." Wrong move.

She countered by giving an example of a boy in her class, who, inspite of being well versed with JSP, did his project in ASP, because she had asked it to be done. According to me, that was compulsion. She forced him to do it. We were given the freedom to use any language for our project - of course, it still had to be an "e-commerce website." I chose PHP. Our ma'am had no problem with it, I am grateful to her for that.

Later on, she asked me questions that were very platform-specific, like where does IE store it's cookies, how do u set up an HTTP server (IIS) on a port other than 80, how do u disable cookies in IE etc. I told her that I have not used Windows for over a year now, and had no idea about how IIS goes about doing it's job, or where XP stores it's cookies. She found this unacceptable, she told me that I use Windows in college, I should know all this. Well, I do use Windows in college, but very rarely do I get the chance to surf the net. Even if I do, I am not the admin to be worrying about cookies.

Later, while putting my file in the heap alongside others, I heard the external tell our ma'am that people who need "incentives" to learn something, have no place in engineering. I am sorry ma'am, but I feel we two have very different views on engineering.

Letter to a friend

This is a true account of what happened tonight. I am the "first person" below.

No, it's not what u r thinking ;) !

But it was interesting, nevertheless. I watched Malcolm In The Middle till 
12:30, got down to study SP, couldn't understand much, so started reading 
Potter. Finished it off by 3:00. Then started playing Quake III, however, the 
CPU started beeping due to overheating (faulty fan, remember?). Got so 
irritated that I ripped the old CPU off and tried to put it in that old 
cartridge CPU that my friend had lent me. It fit in ... But the PC wouldn't 
start !!

Just below the slot, as I later saw, were some jumper configurations that told 
the motherboard which CPU to use. Kind of let me down, I thought the MoBo 
would figure it out by itself! Anyway, after searching a **LOT** among those 
tiny wires, I found the jumpers (1 and 11) and set them accordingly. Voila!! 
You are getting this mail courtesy the cartridge CPU.

One disappointment though. Read this cat /proc/cpuinfo -

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 7
model name      : Pentium III (Katmai)
stepping        : 3
cpu MHz         : 501.277
cache size      : 512 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 2
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 mtrr pge mca cmov pat 
pse36 mmx fxsr sse
bogomips        : 989.18


Notice the clock speed? It's just 501 Mhz, instead of the promised 550. 
Anyway, I can play as much Quake as I want to now ... three cheers to that !


-- 
Sandy (http://sandesh247.blogspot.com)

"Roman Polanski makes his own blood.  He's smart -- that's why his movies 
work."
-- A brilliant director at "Frank's Place"

It is 4:15 a.m. right now. Time to study some SP, then off to sleep ...

"Deception" Dan

Finished Dan Brown's 'Deception Point' today. Again, it was a marathon reading - I couldn't afford to give the book more than to-day, as it would eat into my study time (if you are searching for logic here, you are doomed ...).

It's a nice book, and although the plot is again mostly predictable, it is predictable in a way you (or rather I) would want it to be, which kept me glued to the book. The one or two real twists that do come up are too comic-book-dramatic to be believable.

Dan Brown is not a very popular figure in my college. There is this friend who argued that if Dan Brown wants to publish a bunch of lies, he shouldn't mix it up with true facts. The reference was to Dannie's 'Da Vinci Code'. I told her that she was wrong. The book clearly states that it's fiction, and as Steven Spielberg had said - If you want to sell a story, make everything else around it as real as possible. I was discussing this with Pascal today, and although I think I discussed this matter in a rather improper way, he would largely agree with me.

As an other friend, Adil, put it - don't blame the shopkeeper for selling junk you don't need, blame yourself for buying it.

TCS

TCS was in our college today, for an "interactive session" with the students. Was mostly useless ... all that was told is easily found on their website. And it lasted barely an hour, simply not enough for us to judge them or them to judge us. The HR person probably had a good lunch though, maybe that is why they visit all the colleges.

Debugging the world

Here's a few ways to do it ...

Musings of an idle mind

What have I learnt in all these days?

Engineering colleges in Mumbai are worthless. At least when it comes to computer engineering. Rohit had written about this a long time ago, about the growing irrelevance of computer engineering. Not that I disagreed with him then, but sometimes some things just make those beliefs stronger. Like the fact that many times in our classrooms, students actually know more than their teachers ...

Emacs rules! It is the best editor around! Now, only if someone could add code completion in it ...

For those who study Theoretical Computer Science : friendship is NOT a reflexive relationship.

Windowmaker is one of the best window managers out there. Download it, and see your productivity multiply! The support for hot-keys is amazing! (actually, it's possible in KDE too, but it simply hogs too much memory).

Real people have real problems. Forget assignments, forget project deadlines, forget submissions ... most have other issues to deal with. Most of us have built superficial relationships all around us. How many of those people are really going to be there when you really need them?

You can't trust blogs anymore (except this one ;). A flurry of fake blogs has dented the credibility of blogs. I read this somewhere on the BBC website. Even I wrote an article regarding ethics for bloggers in the college magazine. Will put it up if possible.

You don't always get what you want. Forget the past, and try to move on, however hard that might be. Keeping others happy doesn't always mean that YOU have to be a part of their happiness. Just let go.

Open source rules! Dhruv just patched XMMS to give me some improved functionality (not that I asked for it, but did anyone ASK for sliced bread? Or the TV remote?).

Rasputin lives. Many still prefer to listen to people who tell them what they like to hear, not what they should hear.

"An OS is a simple program, with complex data structures". How true. After reading up on operating systems, you feel as if the development of OSes has followed a very natural and obvious path, and if it were for you, you too would have probably come up with the same concepts. However, you do find a few gems in the course, for example, the time dependent priorities of Unix processes.

Some people don't work unless forced too. And not all people possess the capability to force them to work. Those that do, are probably good managers. Chingi, someday I'll learn. And brilliant people aren't necessarily the best managers. Noticed this about a teacher of mine.

The CSI National Convention isn't "national" at all. It isn't even fit to be called a local festival. What a colossal waste of resources! The Microsoft guy actually complained about the low attendance, the rest were probably too timid to complain about the largely empty auditorium. And some of the competitions had less than five participants! At least give me good food people.

Most people live artificially. They aren't what they show themselves to be in public. Sometimes, the real person is better than the artificial one. I hope the people for whom this stands true realize it soon.

I need to study.

Knock knock ...

Question : Is this really you?
Answer : Yes, this really is me, Sandesh Singh.


Q: Where the hell were you all this while?
A: Well, the modem I used was a borrowed one, and one fine day the person who lent it to me found use for it, so I was left without ...


Q: ... But didn't you get a modem when you bought that PC of yours?
A: Yes I did, but it is a worthless Motorola SM56 which is out of production, and it's drivers are hard to come by. Forget Linux, I couldn't get the XP driver working.


Q: Linux?
A: Yes Linux. It's been my primary OS for months now. Although XP remains, for Quake III Arena, and academic purposes.


Q: So Windows still rules ...
A: Excuse me? No, it doesn't. But it does have it's place in society. More on that later.


Q: So you finally bought a modem ...
A: Uh ... no ... actually, a good friend of mine had a friend who switched over to broadband, so I get to use his modem.


Q: You are one cheap fellow ...
A: Hey ... gimme a broadband connection, I am ready to pay, but I wont spend another paisa on this worthless 56Kbps !


Q: So, what have you been upto?
A: Many things, actually. I have learnt quite a few lessons too. More of that will come up in soon-to-come posts.


Q: How soon?
A: Leave me alone! My vivas are due in a week ... yaar, I need to study too. But I will write as soon as I get the time.


Q: As if I am dying to read your posts ...
A: You aren't?? Crap, what the hell did I write all this %^&# for, then!?

God, or no God?

I just finished reading Stephen Hawking's 'A brief History of Time'. Excellent book, people should write more like those ... or maybe I just haven't read enough books.

Among other things, the book rekindled my long lost love for physics. I used to spend hours in the 11th and 12th thinking about why things are the way they are, and I was lucky to have really good teachers at that time, who used to answer my questions. I used to come with so many theories ... trivial, yes, but important to me nevertheless. I have forgotten most of them now, but I don't think I am missing out on any Nobels!

Also, the world-renowned physicist carefully separates those theories that support the existence of God from those that don't. Personally, I have always been on a see-saw in this matter, so I wont make any comments. I am too confused myself, and this book didn't do anything to help me. But it did make me realize that nothing can be branded as un-scientific, not even the question of the existence of God. In fact, the Church routinely inspects new scientific theories and separates those that support the existence of God from those that don't. And scientists, while researching, keep in mind which concepts support the existence of God and which don't. In fact, some even reject theories based on the direction they take!

It really doesn't matter to me. Work is worship. God or no God, that remains my policy.

Computers in the human body ???

A question : how many of you believe that the brain is the computer in the human body?

There was a TPP competition in our college as a part of an intra-college fest. One of the entries was on DNA computing (which eventually won the first place). One of the team members, during the presentation, made a statement which went something like "... the DNA molecules in the human body are nothing but computers ...".

The guy sitting next to me got pissed at this. According to him, we statements like "the brain is the human computer" are utter nonsense. The computer is an attempted imitation of the human brain. And a very poor one at that.

Hmm. Will make me think the next time I am comparing the two.

Rappelling @ ZEAL 2005

Spiderman, Spiderman,
Does whatever a spider can
Spins a web, any size,
Catches thieves just like flies
Look Out!
Here comes the Spiderman.

Is he strong?
Listen bud,
He's got radioactive blood.
Can he swing from a thread
Take a look overhead
Hey, there
There goes the Spiderman.

In the chill of night
At the scene of a crime
Like a streak of light
He arrives just in time.

Spiderman, Spiderman
Friendly neighborhood Spiderman
Wealth and fame
He's ingnored
Action is his reward.

To him, life is a great big bang up
Whenever there's a hang up
You'll find the Spider man.

See for yourself ! [ http://sandesh247.freestarthost.com/gallery/rappelling/ ]

The beach

Picture this - someone important in a college expires, a holiday is declared, and the students, instead of mourning, decide to make a day of it by going on the beach! Then something goes wrong at the beach - a day that started wonderfully for the students doesn't end as well as expected.

Sounds like fiction? Well, it isn't. This is exactly what happened with our class today. I wont go into the details, but please, if you do go to the beach in a group, be careful. A lot of mischief happens, most of it is not intended to harm anyone, but all you need is one wrong move and someone could get hurt.

It was good however that none of us lost our cool, and got the person hospitalized nearby. Most of us had no previous experience with emergencies, and thankfully, we did not do anything that put the victim into more trouble (although we did come to know later that one of the guys was performing a medical procedure the wrong way).

However, all is well that ends well. The person is now doing just fine. In fact, it turned out to be nothing serious. But maybe we were lucky. Don't let the same happen to any of you.

Adios ... ZEAL

Phew !! Just finished with the intra-college fest of ours, ZEAL 2005. Didn't take up much responsibilities this time, therefore I wasn't really that busy, like some of my friends. I have really begun to hate the politics at such fests - this time, too, there was a major argument among the event heads, with some of them threatening to resign. I still don't know whether matters have been settled yet.

Anyway, ZEAL has gone now, with me having burst balloons, threaded needles, scaled down a building, danced, sung ... etc. I also won the 2nd place in the mock interview. I had a lot of fun, and it's really disappointing to have to go to college now to sit in the classrooms.

BTW, my results came out a few days back. I passed with 60%.

Eminem fan club

Guess what? In an interview to the Times of India, Sania Mirza revealed that Eminem happens to be one of her favorite singers!

Guess I have elite company ...

Fighting a reputation - III (was I mistaken?)

I am allowed to make mistakes, right?

Well, there was this other friend of mine who went to the U.S. for vacation. His way of explaining his experiences revealed why my other friend felt the way she did.

This friend, Ankith, told me that people in the U.S. are inherently more friendly (read: social). It isn't uncommon for complete strangers to come up to you and say 'hi' and ask about the weather. In fact, he said that during early days of his visit, he used to be surprised at the way Americans talked to him, it was as if they knew him as a friend.

So, Indians don't behave strangely in the U.S. . It's just that Americans are more social. I remember reading in a business magazine once that with growth in urbanisation, social inhibitions decrease. That is fairly obvious. What my earlier friend probably experienced was just a culture shock.

Fighting a reputation - II

A friend of mine just returned from a holiday in America. It had always been, rather, it IS her dream to land up in America at a point later in her life. Naturally, I was really curious as to what lessons did this small trip give her.

As expected, she enjoyed the trip a lot. In short, it probably was a perfect holiday for her. There was at least one thing that disturbed her though. She happened to notice that Indians (not red ;) living in the US were not quite as receptive to Indians as one would expect. Americans, on the other hand, extended much warmer feelings.

I wasn't really surprised at this though. Post 9-11, many "outsiders" in the U.S. have been eyed with suspicion. America obviously doesn't want a repeat of 9-11, what with their political/military excesses in other parts of the world. And those "outsiders", I guess, have been try as hard, if not harder, trying to "fit in". It's like being a teenager - the more you try to be someone, the more you ignore things that hold you back from being that "someone". We try to be not seen with certain kind of people, and try to hang out with others. And Indians in the U.S. are probably going through something similar.

What further reinforces this point is Pascal's trip abroad. Pascal has been abroad quite a few times, and many of those trips have been while he was in school (pre 9-11). Although he has never been to the US, he tells me that Indians abroad were quite pleasant and friendly. In fact, he had lived with an Indian family in Europe for some time.

California callin', twenty miles to go ...
And I don't, I don't know,
Should I turn around or should I leave you alone ?
I don't, I don't know ...

Fighting a reputation

It's hard to fight your reputation.

It's good to have a reputation of a "good" student, isn't it? I know it has helped me many times. Teachers are usually very helpful to me, my term work marks reflect that too. I am certainly not among the top rankers in our class, in fact, I really lag behind. Thankfully, I am at good terms with my teachers.

But the college sports taught me that this may not always be good. I was never really "into" sports, only this month was I taking cricket seriously (with me having lost around 10 kgs in the last few months, sports suddenly is now pleasure). As I had mentioned in my earlier post, my bowling was pretty okay. I am not really that bad a fielder. And I did belt quite a few good shots with the bat during practice. But no one from the the "team" really took me seriously. There were a couple of selections that I could have debated ... but, well, I chose not to.

I am a programmer. Sports is not my cup of tea.

Shane Warne, beware!

Oh! How my legs hurt!

For the first time in my life, I am being "seriously" considered for selection in a formal cricket team. I mean, I have never even made it to our colony's cricket team. And there I was today - bowling leg spin to some batsmen from our class. Seems I was good enough to be invited for the second stage of selection of the T.E. CMPN cricket team for our college sports. It's strange though - I never liked bowling.

But all this took it's toll on my body. It's been a long time since I spent some time on the cricket ground, and my legs are really paining. Hopefully I'll be fit enough to bowl tomorrow.

Pascal's new PC : Part II

This is why I sometimes hesitate to recommend Linux to my friends.

Firstly, I know they wont really appreciate the principles on which the world of GNU/Linux is based. They don't give a damn to freedom, for them, the 'freedom' with which they can acquire Windoze is good enough.

Secondly, even though Linux is coming of age, it still leaves a lot to be desired in the area of hardware support. In Pascal's case, his sound card and DVD/CDRW combo drive are not being detected. I am sure we'll find a fix in a few days, but really, should hardware be a problem with a distro as recent as FC3? Most of the SOHO users are not adventurous enough to fix problems on their own. I am still a student, and can afford a few hours a day sometimes to fix problems with my PC. Not that I did not face problems when I used Windoze, but in those days I could call my dealer in times of desperation.

Of course, I am still a dedicated GNU/Linux fan. But I don't think I can be as enthusiastic a promoter of GNU/Linux as some are.

Pascal's new PC : Part I

Pascal got his new PC yesterday, and I happened to be just in time to watch the delivery guy put the machine up. Actually, I had rushed there as fast as I could - with my Fedora DVD. The machine came with Windoze XP pre-installed (it's a branded PC). It was so irritating to see the delivery guy make his moves. It was obvious he was weaned on Windoze. The fact that 'My Documents' opened up was good enough to convince him that the machine worked fine. I can't help admitting the fact that even if Microsoft hasn't managed to sell legal copies of it's software to most home users, it has managed to create a healthy eco-system for itself.

Anyway, the machine is pretty good. It's one of the fastest I have seen. Frankly, I have just one benchmark - run 'glxgears' on Linux. Pascal's PC managed 123 FPS. My PC can manage barely 58. I just hope he lets his sister's use the machine!

I haven't been in the best of health lately, which is why I have not been posting regularly. My advice : please dont eat out, in any case, Mumbai has seen an increase in the number of Hepatitis patients in the last month or so.

Die another year

Happy new year, everybody !!

Just saw the James Bond flick, "Die Another Day".

Now, only if I had a penny for every pun in the movie!