Welcome, Blogger!

So, I left Blogger on the 26th of July? Don't say! Memorable day, that one. Google itself has a lot to say about it, and so does Wikipedia. And not only that, 22nd of the same month was my birthday. A lot of things transpired in that week, it seems.

I am back now, though. For good I hope. I looked around for a while, however, I felt inclined to come back to blogger. The vast array of services Google has to offer these days is irresistible.

I am hooked.

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.