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/ ]