After All, Who Cares?

Difference between malloc and calloc

2010-03-20T18:21:00.000+05:30

One of the most basic things a person familiar with programming language 'C' is supposed to know is:

What is the difference between the malloc and the calloc function calls?

Query Google and it'll tell you how many folks are interested in the answer to this question. The reason for that is that it is one of the most commonly asked questions in job interviews at the beginner's level.

Since the readers here may not possess that familiarity, the answer that's usually expected is:

While both the functions allocate memory, calloc() additionally initializes all the locations in the newly allocated memory block to '0'.

That's that. That answer is sufficient for the interview. That's all I knew. Until now.

I was reading The Old New Thing today and there was a mention of Copy-on-Write (CoW) in one of the posts. To understand it better, I decided to read about CoW on Wikipedia. From the Wikipedia page, I found out that calloc can be implemented using CoW:

Another use is in the calloc function. This can be implemented by having a page of physical memory filled with zeroes. When the memory is allocated, the pages returned all refer to the page of zeroes and are all marked as copy-on-write. This way, the amount of physical memory allocated for the process does not increase until data is written.

Nice, I said to myself. Note taken. Thanks TONT, Wikipedia!

John Gruber, we expect better posts from you.

2010-02-16T12:03:00.000+05:30

On Monday, February 15, 2010, Microsoft announced their new platform for mobile devices, Windows Phone 7 Series. This was at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. The internet, since then, has been full of positive reviews of the platform.

Being one of those guys who got an early preview of the platform, I can tell you that it is a very good effort. Not better than the best out there, but certainly an impressive effort.

However, John Gruber, on his popular blog Daring Fireball, has this to write about it:

What a great product name. Not a mouthful at all.

Yes, we know it is not such a good name, but instead of just saying that, you could have at least said a couple of things about the platform, good or bad. Positive reviews encourage the folks building it and bad reviews highlight the areas to improve. It also makes for an article worth reading.

Over the years you have written lots of good posts; this one isn't one of them. We have come to expect better from you. Please do not let us down.

Trying out the email interface

2010-02-06T16:09:00.003+05:30

blogger.com (or blogspot.com) provides the blog owners with the ability to publish posts to their own blogs by sending an email to an email address, part of which is chosen by the blogger herself.
I know it has been around for a while, but I haven't tried it prior to this.

One of the things I want to try out is its ability to handle rich text, i.e. bold, italics, colors, highlighting.

Then there's quoted text.

How about the following:

Ordered list
...

What happens if I include unordered list, such as this one:

Unordered item #1

Let's find out how good/ugly looking this one turns out to be.

Now that's a deal!

2009-12-18T17:13:00.001+05:30

Found this "best" deal while watching a video related to COP15 on NDTV's website:

Get a Secure Government Job today!

I happen to know quite a few folks who are vying to get a government job because it is perceived to be the safest and least demanding job in difficult times for the economy.

I should probably pass on this link to them ;-)

#FAIL: Never book railway tickets via Cleartrip!

2009-12-10T17:56:00.001+05:30

I made a railway reservation from Indore to New Delhi via Cleartrip. The ticket was waitlisted till the preparation of chart, so I did not get to travel. That's fine, I should have made the reservation in time.

So I call up Cleartrip and ask them about the refund after the train has left Indore station. At first, I am told:

We can't tell you about the refund amount since it'll be processed by IRCTC and we don't know about it!

Excuse me, I made a deal with you! If you're in the business, you better know it down to the last detail. If you can't do that, please move out of the trade.

So the lady puts me on hold for a little while and then comes back to give me an "approximate" number. I am told, in a cool, cam, composed manner, that the following fees would be charged:

IRCTC Charges
Cleartrip Charges
Transaction Charges
Reservation Charges

Now this drives me crazy! I am being charged for the reservation I never got!? I'm exasperated, she realizes and says:

The reservation charges are levied by IRCTC, we did not charge you for this.

That's an "Aha!!" moment for me. She means I should argue with IRCTC about it, when I actually made the transaction via Cleartrip? Aha!!

So then next time onwards, why should I make the reservation through Cleartrip, and not go to IRCTC instead? That's what even Cleartrip is doing. The service they provide is certainly not worth my money, no way! Booking through IRCTC is almost the same (pain). If done via IRCTC, I'll know the exact refund amount as well.

I'll tell you what I'll do from now on: Research about the train and availability on Cleartrip and then book through IRCTC. Up yours, Cleartrip!

In case anyone from Cleartrip cares to read this post, here are the trip details, if they want to verify:

Cleartrip ID: 912021268
PNR: 8337869853

PS: Regardless of that, Cleartrip's calendar feature is very well thought-out and done. Give it a try (and leave the site after that). Did I mention that their support forum also does not work?

When you need something badly, give it your best shot ...

2009-11-22T01:41:00.001+05:30

When you need something badly, give it your best shot, keep improving yourself, keep trying, stay focused, stay motivated. Even if you don't get it, you come out a better person and that's more important.

Yeah, that's by me. Please feel free to use it wherever, whenever you see fit. If you do, try to drop me a link to it here although that's completely optional.

Super Mario Bros tunes

2009-10-27T11:06:00.000+05:30

This post is just so that I do not have to search for the MP3s next time around.

Oh, and I love it! :-)

Deciding which IT challan you need to fill

2009-10-01T11:55:00.004+05:30

If you are unsure which IT challan [280-283] you need to fill while filing income tax (new or revised), take a look at the FAQs section on the IT department's website.

If you don’t know Assessing Officer (Ward / Circle) ...

2009-10-01T11:49:00.002+05:30

Here's a handy tip:
If you don’t know Assessing Officer (Ward / Circle), Find it here by submitting your PAN.

How could one be loosing his/her data?

2009-09-22T02:44:00.006+05:30

One of the blogs I try to read regularly is FavBrowser. No doubt, it has good content. You should follow it if you are interested in news and stuff related to web browsers, though it is, by no means, the source all the interesting news.

Anyway, so I was reading this article today, posted on FavBrowser, and here's something interesting I found (pay close attention), and I quote:

Firefox uses SQLITE databases to store lots of its settings. By the time the databases grow and Firefox starts working slowly. SpeedyFox compacts those databases without loosing any data.

So I said to myself, "Must be just another copying mistake", so I headed over to the source to verify, and I quote again:

Firefox uses SQLITE databases to store lots of its settings. By the time the databases grow and Firefox starts working slowly. SpeedyFox compacts those databases without loosing any data.

Turns out, they had quoted it from their own source, and I quote once again:

Firefox uses SQLITE databases to store lots of its settings. By the time the databases grow and Firefox starts working slowly. SpeedyFox compacts those databases without loosing any data.

The funny thing is, I've also quoted it without any modifications/corrections but I hope the message has been conveyed :-)

When it comes to mobile space, Opera rules!

2009-04-26T12:17:00.004+05:30

I've been experimenting a lot in the mobile space lately, mostly as an end user. This includes trying out various applications available for the device.
One thing that has emerged very clearly is: Internet on mobile means Opera. Mini or not, Opera is the browser for all platforms.
Just for the record, I like Opera Mini 3.1 on my MotoRokr E6 much more than 4.2 Beta. BTW, I use Firefox 3.5 Beta on my desktop every day, so I know what beta means.

Way to go, Opera!

Follow @Opera on Twitter, just like me.

What is this?

2008-09-11T10:50:00.006+05:30

So you have to tell me what is being described here:

Inside there was only an enormous, transparent block with infinite internal needles in which the light of the sunset was broken into colored stars

Some extra information:
1. This is the description by a curious person who is living in an isolated village, unfamiliar with what Science has achieved in other parts of the world.
2. What is being described here is something most of us come across almost daily.

Source: Book titled 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' by Gabriel García Márquez

I've finished only the first two chapters of the book but it looks to be a MUST-MUST read.

I have a secret admirer!

2008-07-03T15:14:00.006+05:30

Today morning, on Thursday 03, 2008, I recieved a pleasant surprise in the form of a paper-flower mounted on the outer wall of my cubicle, waiting for me. Take a look at it in the attached shot:

From Misc

Enquiring with friends did not reveal anything; and I did not try too hard either.
It is an Origami-kind paper-folding-art flower, made out of 'Stick-It' notes. A very fine use of office stationery supply, eh?

(Notice the tag 'Insanity' ;-)
Update (26/02): The flower fell off its stem some days back & the operations staff cleaned it up before next morning :(

Woo Hoo!

2008-05-01T10:05:00.004+05:30

In case you did not know/realize (and I do understand that you have no means or motivation to realize), this is my 'century' post on this blog!
And I'll celebrate it just the way my current favorite explosive batsman Adam Gilchrist celebrated his most recent century in the IPL (109* off 48 balls):

Woo Hoo!

(See the video and celebration here)

...and in case you can't see that video, read the commentary here.

You've got to be really brave to...

2007-09-12T11:39:00.000+05:30

I have stayed in Delhi (the capital of India) long enough to make the following statement, and I'll also mention quite-a-few instances and reasons (in a multi-part series to follow), to drive my point:

You've got to be really brave to drive a vehicle in Delhi

To get things started, consider the case of what happened on numerous roads in the city today (September 12, 2007):
Some insane people, the group being quite large in number apparently, decided to protest by blocking various heavily-used roads at multiple points all over Delhi causing blockades and hence a lot of inconvenience to traffic throughout the city.

The news was all over the radio and television channels and the RJ, on the radio channel that I was listening to, ran out of breath multiple times when he started calling out the names of the roads affected. This is preposterous!!
And.. that is not the end of it. The police, according to the same RJ, had all the information about the 'protest' but never bothered to take any corrective/preventive measures. They intervened only once there was helter-skelter all over the city and there was complete pandemonium on the city roads. What the hell was the 'With You, For You, Always' force doing sitting on their butts when they knew what could happen (and it eventually happened!)?

Anyway, thankfully or luckily, I decided to leave for office a little early today (although I had no idea about the chakka jam protest) and therefore did not have to face the 'music' :-)

By the way, nobody knows what the protest was against.

This is a part of a series titled 'Delhi Driving'.

Super Mario Bros. Anthology

2007-09-12T11:37:00.000+05:30

This is a treat for Super Mario Bros. fans. I found a website (sincere thanks to Google) from where I could download the MP3s of most of the sounds in my all-time favourite arcade game. The website is KHInsider.

Thanks KHInsider and Google :-)

Truth about 'commitment'

2007-08-31T11:57:00.000+05:30

No comic strip has ever been this close to describing me! ;-)

Video Game: PETA against KFC

2007-08-22T14:23:00.000+05:30

Here's a nice game 'inspired' by my all-time favourite: Super Mario Bros. from Nintendo:

Source: [The Thinking Blog]

Thought of the day: #4

2007-08-22T13:59:00.000+05:30

Read it on the Graffitti that appeared in the Delhi Times section of The Times of India (20 August, 2007):

A bore helps you appreciate the brighter side of solitude

;-)

Thought of the day: #3

2007-08-21T17:53:00.000+05:30

Found on the inside of another chocolate's cover:

Dare to love completely!

Thought of the day: #2

2007-08-17T09:37:00.000+05:30

Found it on the inside of a chocolate wrapper:

There's no excuse not to dream.

I have one too, and my quest is on (Ref: TOTD#1)

Thought of the day: #1

2007-08-13T16:50:00.000+05:30

Pardon me if you find this (or another quote that means something similar) elsewhere, but I don't remember reading it anywhere and therefore, I consider it a result of my own thought process:

If you truly love someone, then that individual is worth sacrificing and risking everything you've got because once you win that person over, you really have got everything.

Feel free to remember 'Yours Truly' if you use this quote anytime anywhere.

For Linux Lovers

2007-08-09T14:57:00.000+05:30

Old Linux Newbie is one of the few blogs where I contribute, and I love this one dearly.
Anyway the last post there is about screen which has really excited me and I am sure you'll also find it highly useful. Let me know what you think.

Howto: Be a Programmer

2007-03-26T17:47:00.000+05:30

How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive, and Personal Summary - Robert L Read

A nice and not-too-long article! I specially liked the "time estimation" part, which guides you how to make the estimates logically and to never make pessimistic estimations. Must read, I would say.

Spam, Spam and more Spam...

2007-03-20T12:13:00.000+05:30

HEY ITS DIANNA, FROM THE DIRECTOR OF ORKUT, EVERYBODY SORRY FOR THE INTERRUPTION BUT ORKUT IS CLOSING THE SYSTEM DOWN BECAUSE TOO MANY BOTTERS ARE TAKING UP ALL THE NAMES, WE ONLY HAVE 57 NAMES LEFT, IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO CLOSE YOUR ACCOUNT, DONT SEND THIS MESSAGE, IF YOU WANT TO KEEP YOUR ACCOUNT, SEND THIS MESSAGE TO EVERYONE ON YOUR LIST. THIS IS NOT A JOKE, YOU'LL BE SORRY IF YOU DONT SEND IT. THANKS DIRECTOR OF ORKUT, TIM BUISKI. WHOEVER DOESNT SEND THIS MESSAGE, YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE DEACTIVATED AND IT WILL COST YOU $ 10.00 A MONTH TO USE IT.

Kick some ass...

2007-03-01T19:59:00.000+05:30

This is my original composition, on behalf of Ozzy, whose birthday is not too far:

Long long time ago,
I can still remember,
How the lukkhagiri used to make me swear.
And I knew if I had my chance,
That I could really kick some ass,
And may be they'd swear back for a while...

And now April makes me shiver,
For every kick that he had delivered,
Some of 'em hardest 'n some softest,
I couldn't take one more step...

I can't remember if they cried,
When I kicked around their dearest hind
The kicks, they hurt them deep inside
And for days, the ass would die...

This is under Creative Commons license.
Let me know if you like it. Even if you don't like it.
Suggestions are most welcome.

All In One Vijay (awesome swf)

2007-02-22T09:47:00.000+05:30

Some nice quotes

2007-02-06T03:12:00.000+05:30

Everything I say is a lie. Except that. And that. And that. And that. And that. And that. And that.
Computers are like air conditioners: they stop working properly if you open Windows.
He came , he saw, he coded (and left a bug).
Always write your code as if the person who's going to maintain it is a violent psychopath who knows where you live.Always write your code as if the person who's going to maintain it is a violent psychopath who knows where you live.
entomophobia n : A morbid fear of insects; Example: Most computer programmers suffer from entomophobia.
Why is 6 afraid of 7? Because 7 8 9.
There are no stupid questions, but there are a LOT of inquisitive idiots.

I like the bold ones the most. Picked all of them up from a database in my organization.

(1975) Dog Day Afternoon

2007-02-04T15:57:00.001+05:30

Rating: 8.5/10
Genre : Crime, Drama, Thriller

Dog Day Afternoon (DDA) is an excellent movie based on a real incident that happened in Brooklyn on August 22, 1972. It is one of those movies which is claimed to be closest to the real life incident it is based upon (although this has been challenged by the real-life protagonist).

The movie is based on an incident which started out as a 10-minute bank robbery, turned into a drama, and ended on a _____ note. (The space has been left blank intentionally so that this post does not act as a spoiler.) All of this happened in about 14 hours and the director Sidney Lumet has done a tremendous job of capturing the whole of it in just about 2 hours without leaving out (m)any details. Also worth mentioning, is the job of Al Pacino (Sonny Wortzik) and Chris Sarandon (Leon Shermer). I was disapponted to find Chris' name absent from the list of characters on IMDb.

What I liked most about the movie was how the protagonist managed to gather crowd support by shouting "Attica! Attica!" against the police. The details of the "Attica" incident are here.

Some of the quotes from the movie will last in the viewer's mind for a very long time:

Sonny: Attica! Attica!

Sonny: It's your job, right? You know, the guy who kills me, I hope he does it 'cause he hates my guts. Not 'cause it's his job.

Sonny: Kiss me.
Moretti: What?
Sonny: Kiss me. When I'm being fucked, I like to get kissed a lot.

Sonny: [talking to Sal, waiting for his wife to answer the phone] You know I can call anybody, they'd put it on the phone? The Pope, an astronaut, the wisest of the wise...

Too much for the movie. Now about the real incident and the men involved.
The man involved in the real bank robbery attempt is John Wojtowicz. He was sentenced 20 years of imprisonment but was released after 7 years. He was offered $7500 + 1% of the net profits of the movie, for his permission to make a movie on this incident. Here is a must read letter from the man where he explains his side of the story and also talks about what the movie did not capture, intentionally or otherwise.

I would recommend you to watch this movie soon.

[IMDb page]; [Crazy4Cinema review]; [Movie script];
[Attica incident]; [John Wojtowicz's letter];

Cute Wickedness

2007-01-30T18:02:00.001+05:30

REDRUM | MURDER

2006-12-16T21:41:00.000+05:30

England were taken to the cleaners, once again; This time in the 3rd Test at Perth (Ashes 2006-07) by none other than Adam "Gilly" Gilchrist.

Here are the statistics of his play in the second innings:


Runs  : 102
Balls : 59
Fours : 12
Sixes : 4

Strike Rate: 172.88

Each picture is worth more than a thousand words!

[Ashes 2006-07 | 3rd Test, Perth | Adam Gilchrist | Gilchrist's Innings] at Cricinfo

2006-12-16T16:10:00.000+05:30

I received this message on Orkut from one of my friends in Intel:

Hi… This is a marketing strategy of INTEL to promote Core 2 Duo. check this out [SOME URL] Why don’t you give it a shot and you could win an i-pod or if you are really lucky even a new computer!

This is NOT a SPAM.

- ABC
Intel Corporation, Bangalore

I replied:

So Intel has stooped so low! [:o]
All the best! [:)][:D]

Another friend had recently asked me what was the news on Intel-AMD front. He got to know from some sources that AMD is not doing so well and is having a really tough. Well, you can judge yourself mate!

Mission Statements

2006-12-14T10:47:00.000+05:30

We have committed to proactively fashion principle-centered content so that we may completely create scalable methods of empowerment to exceed customer expectations

The Pointy Haired Boss will give you a few more of those on Dilbert.com

[Mission Statement Generator] at Dilbert.com

Learning about vehicle suspensions :)

2006-12-13T18:08:00.000+05:30

I guarantee you, no one can teach you vehicle suspension mechanics better then this Jeep advertisement!

I would call it: Hilarious Bull-Shit Advertisement!

New RSS feed

2006-12-13T17:28:00.000+05:30

I have recently updated the RSS feed of this blog and now the latest and greatest feed, with a lot of cool features which I'll add in the near future, is available here.

I would request all my readers who read my blog via RSS feeds to switch to those feeds for the following reason:

The new feed is going to include some cool new features, like headlines etc.

The old feed is causing me some problem in numbers management so I am planning to get rid of that feed altogether.

I am sorry for the inconvenience it has caused but I hope to compensate that with the refreshing new feed.

[New Feed]

The All TIME 100 Albums!

2006-12-13T13:26:00.000+05:30

TIME Magazine has published:
"A selection of photographs of artists from TIMEs 100 best records of all time"

I'll mentions the shots in Order:

Johnny Cash
1968, At Folsom Prison

Little Richard
1957, Here's Little Richard

James Brown
1963, Live At The Apollo
1991, Star Time

John Coltrane
1964, A Love Supreme

Aretha Franklin
1967, I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You
1968, Lady Soul

Ray Charles
1962, Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music

The Beatles
1965, Rubber Soul
1966, Revolver
1967, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
1968, The Beatles a.k.a. The White Album
1969, Abbey Road

Bob Dylan
1965, Highway 61 Revisitied
1966, Blonde On Blonde
1997, Time Out of Mind

Phil Spector
1991, Phil Spector, Back to Mono (1958-1969)

Carole King
1971, Tapestry

Willie Nelson
1975, Red Headed Stranger

Neil Young
1970, After The Gold Rush

Marvin Gaye
1971, What's Going On

Sly & the Family Stone
1969, Stand!

David Bowie
1971, Hunky Dory
1972, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust

Miles Davis
1959, Kind of Blue
1969, Bitches Brew

Bob Marley
1984, Legend

Prince
1987, Sign O' the Times

Elton John
1973, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

The Sex Pistols
1977, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols

The Ramones
1976, Ramones

Talking Heads
1984, Stop Making Sense

Run-DMC
1986, Raising Hell

Public Enemy
1988, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

Metallica
1986, Master of Puppets

Nirvana
1991, Nevermind

Kanye West
2004, The College Dropout

PJ Harvey
2000, Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea

The All TIME 100 Albums! [Via TIME]

Awe-inspiring, astounding, stupefying

2006-11-15T11:55:00.000+05:30

Just saw the chip of AMD's processor, The Next Big Thing, to hit the market. It was an exhilarating experience. I had it in my own hands!
Mind you, I am not talking about the packaged processor that you get in the market with the all the plastic surrounding it; It was only the chip, bare chip!

It looked like a hologram and upon moving it around in my hand, I saw the floor plan. OMG! I saw the core(s?), the caches and the interaction links.

Such a small piece of hardware, and it earns me my bread, butter and all the South Indian mini meals ;-)

And they do it again

2006-10-31T19:01:00.000+05:30

Heard Microsoft(R) Windows(R) Media Player 11 is out of Beta? Yes it is.
My reaction(s) to this piece of news item: Wow! Let's see what it offers! Has to be cool!

So I do a "I'm Feeling Lucky" Google search for "Windows Media Player 11", from right within my favorite browser: Mozilla's Firefox (here).

I reach Microsoft(R) Windows(R) Media Player 11 homepage and guess what... I am unable to find a download link!

I find my way to the download link. Thank to the lord and the site designer, it is on the very next webpage I open

I look at the screenshot and can't help saying: "Cool... Awesome".

I start the download of the application and while the download completes, I decide to read the "System Requirements"

I start reading the table from top to bottom, both the Minimal and Recommended configuration: Operating system, Processor, RAM, Free hard disk space, ... !!!
There it says, recommended amount of "Free Hard Disk Space: 60 *ucking GBs!"

I wonder, what on Mother Earth are they going to do with 60 GBs of hard disk space? and what comes to my mind for Microsoft(R) is:
Oops! ...I Did It Again!

I did not install the application. What if it starts hogging my system, like the resident OS ;-)
Looks like I learned from my past experience.

To Install A Software (on Windows)

2006-10-23T15:14:00.000+05:30

Update: Bought the book last weekend :)

I tried to give this post a title similar to "To Kill A Mocking". Just in case you didn't know, I do not have this book, neither have I ever read it so if you are planning to present me a gift in near future, now you know what to buy.

Anyway, coming back on track, this is yet another post dedicated to the most widely used operating system in the world today, Microsoft Windows XP (what a shame!). So here I was, reading the review of a software called "Paint.NET" at TechCrunch. The review, among so many other things, says that it is a good software for PaintShop users. What the review does not say is, it should be named "Pain.NET" for all the pain you go through in installing the software, thanks to the software's dependencies and more than that to Bill's Microsoft.

Step 1. You download the installer of the software, Pain.NET from the home page.
Step 2. You try to install it. It displays the most annoying thing in the world, a message box! A message box that says, "You need Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0. Press OK to download it from Microsoft's website". You press OK.
Step 3. You download Microsoft Framework 2.0 installation binary from Microsoft.com
Step 4. You run Microsoft Framework 2.0 installation file hoping that in another few minutes, you'll be able to try out the "great tool", Paint.NET and what you encounter is another dialog box, which says "Setup has detected that you the following prerequisite programs are not installed: Microsoft Windows Installer 3.0"
Step 5. You shout a few swear words and proceed to download the Microsoft Windows Installer, again from Microsoft's website, but the ordeal is not over yet. You are asked to download another exe which validate your copy of Windows. WTF! Just let me download it and program it to not get installed if it detects my system is not running a genuine copy of Windows.
Step 6. You would be stupid to carry on beyond this point. Microsoft has already made a fool of you so many times in the past 10-15 minutes that you should show Windows a finger and go out to a friend's house, collect your (or his) favourite Linux distribution and install it on your fu'ed up box still running XP.
Step 7. If you still decide to stick to Windows for some reason beyond your control (like in my case, I am not allowed by my employer to run any non-Windows OS), you run that damn validation-key-producing software, get your copy of Windows validated, and install Microsoft Windows Installer 3.0 (like I did).

Still haven't been able to install Pain(t).NET since all other installations are going on. Paint.NET better be damn good!

In hindsight, I think I should not read and follow all the reviews as religiously as I do.

I have a new address!

2006-10-19T10:25:00.000+05:30

This is where I will be: http://afterallwhocares.blogspot.com
Ciao!

Justice, at last!

2006-10-18T12:00:00.000+05:30

Dunno how many of you read the news so forwarding a news item:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2191535.cms
http://www.hindu.com/2006/10/18/stories/2006101813540100.htm
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/oct182006/index20311320061017.asp

More than feeling good because the accused has finally been convicted, I am feeling bad for the girl.

Gross... Grosser... Grossest

2006-10-08T01:48:00.000+05:30

Let's see who can stand these!
http://bouncy-bubbles.net/?page_id=75

WikiCharts: Top 100 Wikipedia articles

2006-08-28T12:09:00.000+05:30

This tool shows the articles from the English Wikipedia that are viewed most.

The tool is available here.

This tool is still being tested. Some of the results may be false or misleading!

Thanks, No.

2006-08-28T11:34:00.000+05:30

Do you get forwarded mails from people you are very close to and therefore are afraid of hurting them by telling them that you do not like getting forwarded mails or chain mails and even if they want to send you something like that, they should put your email address in BCC instead of TO/CC? At least I am.

Here's a solution to your problem: You can send a gentle reply to them containing the link to the website: Thanks, No. Nice, gentle and works!

Say good-bye to forwards!

The demotion of a ... planet !! (Updated)

2006-08-25T09:10:00.000+05:30

I don't see the need to redefine the solar system - Siraj Ahsan, Dubai

People all over the world are discussing the topic of Pluto being demoted so passionately as if one of their close friends is being subdued and they must do something (which invariably means kill time discussing it with others) about it. Most of them have a few questions. I would like to answer some of them for everyone's benefit. And then some people may say, "Who are you to answer those questions?" to which I would say, "No one. But then, Who Cares?"

So the questions go like this:

Why are they doing it now? It does not make any sense!
Oh I am emotionally attached to seeing it as a planet. Why are you breaking my heart?
Why don't they realize that all the textbooks need to be changed?

And this is how I would like to answer them:

Why they are doing it now? Better late then never. Would you not go to a doctor if you realized that you had been suffering from AIDS for the last 2 months? Okay, bad example but the point still holds. If the top people researching in this area think it does not qualify to be a planet anymore, then there must be some good reason behind it. It is not politics, after all.
They are breaking your heart? Oh! I am so sorry for you honey. May be what you should do is to run to the closest shop selling a model of the now outdated solar system and at least preserve a model for yourself. This is science of planets, not the science of hearts!
I see. So you think it is better to teach the young lads wrong stuff than to update the stuff? Hmm, nice point that.

So, as you can see, I am all for updating the textbooks and anything that is needed as long as we have a good reason to back it up with, specially if it is related to Science or Finance.

(This link here echoes my feelings)

Update:
And now there's more to it. A few big names have also joined the "outcry" as BBC reports here. What is happening? I see some of the questions above coming true!

What you "mostly" see while running Windows

2006-08-21T17:38:00.000+05:30

Also take a look at (this).

Setting up RSS feed for your blogger blog comments

2006-08-13T21:53:00.000+05:30

This is a useful post for setting up RSS/Atom feeds for the comments posted on your blogger blog. BTW, you can subscribe to my blog's feeds here. Here goes the step-by-step procedure to set it up:

Open your main blog's Settings
1. Go to Comments
2. Set Comment Notification Address to something like: <YourGmailId>+<SomeStringABC>@gmail.com
Go to Dashboard and setup a new blog. You can call it whatever like. This blog will hold your comments! Wondering how? Keep reading.
Open your comment blog's Settings
1. Go to Email
2. Set Mail-to-Blogger Address to something like: <YourBloggerId>.<SomeStringXYZ>@blogger.com
Login to your Gmail account,
1. Go to Filters
2. Set up a new filter with the following values:
  - Mail sent to: <YourGmailId>+<SomeStringABC>@gmail.com
  - Forward to: <YourBloggerId>.<SomeStringXYZ>@blogger.com
  - Select: Delete it.
You're done mate! Your comments will now be available on your new blog. You can publicize the feed to it on your main blog for the convenience of yourself and your readers.

PS: I utilize this post to congratulate on of my close friends for getting "The Nod"! Your responsibilities have increased now ;)

Be an Expert on Anything

2006-07-31T09:44:00.000+05:30

Extremely interesting! I'll just list the points. Read the entire article to know more:

Pick a field that can't be verified.
Choose a subject that's actually secret.
Get your own entry in an encyclopedia.
Use the word "Zeitgeist" as often as possible.
Be sure to use lots of abbreviations and acronyms.
Speak from the balls, not from the diaphragm.
Don't be afraid to make things up.
Don't limit yourself to current knowledge.
Get an honorary PhD. (Reminds me of someone :) )
Make a habit of name-dropping.

Wish I Were A Meter!

2006-07-26T17:54:00.000+05:30

As the bikini turns 60, it's entering the electronic age with a new model featuring a built-in alarm to warn wearers to get out of the sun -- and ease concerns that the scanty swimsuits damage the health.

The American Cancer Society advises that the best way to lower the risk of skin cancer, the most common form of the disease in humans, is to avoid too much exposure to the sun and other sources of ultraviolet light.

So Canadian company Solestrom has come up with a new bikini that goes on sale next month with a UV meter built into its belt and an alarm that beeps to tell wearers when to head to the shade.

"There's so much concern about sun exposure and skin cancer that we saw the demand and designed something to be safe for the wearer," Solestrom spokeswoman Emily Garassa said.

Garassa said the meter on the $190 bikini displays a level of UV intensity on a scale from 0 to 20. A person's sensitivity to UV depends mainly on skin type, but generally three to five would be considered moderate strength, 8-10 very high and anything above 11 extreme.

Garassa said the company was already seeing high demand from Australia and South Africa, which have the world's highest skin cancer rates. The United States has about 1 million new skin cancer cases each year.

Despite increasing awareness of the sun's dangers, sales remain strong for the bikini, which celebrated its 60th anniversary this month.

A new survey by U.S.-based market research company NPD Group found the number of the suits sold in the United States rose 18.8 percent to 33.6 million in the year ended in April 2006, with sales worth a total of $811 million.

The two-piece suit was officially named the bikini in July 1946 by French automotive engineer Louis Reard who persuaded nude dancer Micheline Bernardini to appear in his design at a Paris beauty contest.

Reard named the design after Bikini Atoll in the Pacific, where the United States tested an atomic bomb, because he thought the excitement over it would be like an explosion.

Here's the source of information.

IIT Bombay to set up campus in Gujarat

2006-07-26T17:12:00.000+05:30

Please read the referred post.

Yeh haath mujhe dede thakur

2006-07-24T13:44:00.000+05:30

Apple’s products are now undoubtedly distinct among all other products, and this has turned into a great asset for Steve Jobs’ company. He can now rely on a huge community of Mac users who would rather cut a hand than give up their good ol` Macintosh…

Reminded me of the famous dialogue from one of the biggest Bollywood movies ever.

All jobs PASS

2006-07-24T13:31:00.000+05:30

Job <307595> is submitted to default queue <normal>.
<<Waiting for dispatch...>>
Job <307596> is submitted to default queue <normal>.
<<Waiting for dispatch...>>
<<Job is finished>>
<<Job is finished>>
All jobs PASS.

That's what I had been waiting for for almost 2 weeks now, my first success!
:)

Bypassing The "blogspot" Ban in India

2006-07-20T10:22:00.000+05:30

Inspired by Kaushik's post, here's mine.
Go through the link in this post and you'll find a handful of ways to show the finger to the stupid people who took this decision!

If none of this works, try creting an account on bloglines.com and subscribe to your most widely read blogs there. This is how I have been reading the blogs I follow.

Have a nice time blogging and reading!

Paying homage to Mumbai blasts victims

2006-07-19T13:33:00.000+05:30

I am filled with sorrow and emotions. I feel sorry for all those who lost their near and dear ones.
Do take a look at the photos on the link in this post.

Free Linux DVDs

2006-07-14T09:55:00.000+05:30

No, not just Ubuntu! They are shipping Fedora, Mandriva, OpenSuse, Debian, Gentoo and a few more distros.
Order them here.

Use Linux, Fall in love!

Panning flash

2006-04-20T03:02:00.000+05:30

I hate my job. What I really want to do is make films. But they won't let me do that because I don't have talent. So watch this Flash intro.

Now I'm a centurion too

2006-04-19T09:48:00.000+05:30

Here's a list of movies I saw for the first time in Kanpur (doesn't include the ones I had seen earlier and ones which I saw at home):

12 Angry Men
23 (German Movie)
A Bug's Life
Batman Begins
Big Fish
Bridget Jones's Diary
Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid
Dumb and Dumber
Erin Brockovich
Fight Club
Finding Nemo
Forrest Gump
Four Rooms
Four Weddings and a Funeral
French Kiss
Gods Must Be Crazy
Gods Must Be Crazy 2
Gone in 60 Seconds
Groundhog Day
Hanuman
Harry Potter and The Chamber Of Secrets
Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone
Harry Potter and The Prisoner Of Azkaban
Ice Age
Jackass - The Movie
Kill Bill
Kill Bill - 2
L.A. Confidential
Ladri di Biciclette (The Bicycle Thief)
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
Lord of The Rings - Fellowship of the Ring
Lord of The Rings - The Two Towers
Lost In Translation
Memories of Murders
Millions
Miss Congeniality 2
Monsters, Inc.
Monty Python and The Holy Grail
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
My Sassy Girl
Notting Hill
Ocean's Eleven
Office Space
OldBoy
Pulp Fiction
Raising Arizona
Requiem for a Dream
Run Lola Run
Saw
Scary Movie - 2
Scary Movie - 3
Scent Of A Woman
Secretary
Shawshank Redemption
Shrek 2
Sin City
Six Days Seven Nights
Sixth Sense
Snatch
South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut
Spirit - The Stallion of Cimmaron
Spring Summer Fall Winter ... and Spring
Spy Kids
Strangers On A Train
The 40 Year Old Virgin
The Apartment
The Bridge on the River Kwai
The Exorcism of Emily Rose
The Incredibles
The Italian Job
The Mask
The Naked Gun
The Rear Window
The Ring
The Usual Suspects
The Wall
There's Something About Mary
Toy Story - 1
Toy Story - 2
Trainspotting
Vertigo
Wall Street
Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
When Harry Met Sally
You've Got Mail

Aitraaz
Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi
Dhoom
Gayab
Hulchul
Hyderabad Blues
Kya Kool Hain Hum
Laila
Main Hoon Na
My Brother Nikhil
Naach
Page 3
Parineeta
Sehar
Yuva

5 Fast ways to check Gmail

2006-04-17T23:46:00.000+05:30

Read the other 4 ways at the site mentioned below.
I'll post screenshots of the one I liked the most, because of the speed and ultra-clean interface.

Very fast, no JS

Preview of unread mail

Quake -> Gauntlet -> Humiliation

2006-04-11T07:38:00.000+05:30

This post is about two games of Quake, wherein Arjun and I were playing against the might (self-proclaimed) Bataka (Nitin Dahra)!

Now all those who know of my Quake skills and Bataka's Quake skills would have understood by now what the title suggests. Let me explain.
If you kill an opponent with a guantlet (the simplest weapon, infact not really a weapon) it is called HUMILIATION and doing that to players of good skill is very difficult.

However, I am glad to tell you that what you thought earlier is exactly the OPPOSITE of what happened today! You can read the earlier line again if you do not believe your eyes, but the fact is that you read it correctly.. I did humiliate Bataka by fragging him with a gauntlet. I would like to thank Arjun "Ozzy" Karande for his support (I am sure he is just as excited about it as I am) and Mausoom "hardrive" Sarkar for those encouraging words which were pinching Bataka in the a** right throughout the game.

Just to add to his humiliation, I must also tell you that he was actually defeated in a game by Arjun and Mausoom and his cries could be heard from outside the room for long after the match. The final score was 59-49 in favour of Arjun+Mausoom team.

I would like you all to reach out to Bataka and wish him better luck for the next game ;-) His e-mail address is nitinkd[at]gmail.com

PS: He did humiliate me twice after that but for that, Who Cares?

King of the World

2006-04-05T14:54:00.000+05:30


kvarun@[~/Simulations/MPDirLess/EarlyCompletion/512KB/mipc_16] 09:49 PM $ MachineLookupCSE.sh csews 4 25
csews4 :1.75 -> 2.00,2.02,1.75
csews5 :1.01 -> 1.08,1.04,1.01
csews7 :1.00 -> 1.00,1.00,1.00
csews10 :0.73 -> 1.05,1.02,0.73
csews11 :0.79 -> 2.61,1.60,0.79
csews12 :1.00 -> 1.00,1.00,1.00
csews13 :0.97 -> 1.00,1.00,0.97
csews14 :0.89 -> 1.00,0.99,0.89
csews15 :0.47 -> 1.33,0.94,0.47
csews16 :0.91 -> 1.00,0.99,0.91
csews17 :0.37 -> 0.99,0.71,0.37
csews18 :0.26 -> 0.99,0.59,0.26
csews19 :1.04 -> 1.00,1.01,1.04
csews20 :0.33 -> 1.77,0.74,0.33
csews21 :1.11 -> 1.12,1.31,1.11
csews22 :0.00 -> 0.00,0.00,0.00
csews24 :0.09 -> 0.63,0.25,0.09

Wondering what is that? Stop wondering. I'll explain.
'MachineLookupCSE.sh' is a shell script that I have written to find out the approximate load on each machine. So the way I have called it, it tells me the load on all running machines from csews4.cse.iitk.ac.in to csews25.cse.iitk.ac.in

Why I think I am the king of the world is that I (Yes, I.. Oh yes, I) am using ALL these machines to run my simulations (for my thesis). This is a once in a lifetime opportunity and I have got it! HURRAY :)
No Dhiraj, no Srinu, no Bhaskar.. Just ME

You cannot understand how satisfying this feeling is. I can assure you, it is a really great one.

Google ROMANCE

2006-04-01T18:37:00.000+05:30

Google comes up with yet another product, and a very useful one this time.
Introducing Google Romance!

With Google Romance, you can:

Upload your profile – tell the world who you are, or, more to the point, who you’d like to think you are, or, even more to the point, who you want others to think you are.
Search for love in all (or at least a statistically significant majority of) the right places with Soulmate Search, our eerily effective psychographic matchmaking software.
Endure, via our Contextual Dating option, thematically appropriate multimedia advertising throughout the entirety of your free date.

Things you need to know/do...

2006-03-29T00:01:00.000+05:30

Here's a very small list of things that one needs to know of or do, to get the privilege of being called my FRIEND:

Knowledge of and (to certain minimum level) passion for Firefox Web Browser. Craze for extensions goes without saying.
Acknowledge the fact that Linux is a great operating system and though some distributions might have some problem, overall it is shaping well to become the strongest contender for The Best Operating System.
Believe that ♬MUSIC♬ is the reason for life. Gene Propagation is a secondary issue, although it is also highly important.
Preach that The Beatles, are the GODS of music. Thy shall bow to the BEATLES!
Agree with me when I say that there might be great music bands, great songs, great orchestra.. but Bryan Adams has his own place at the top (could be shared.. I am open to that idea).
Possess "Live and Let Die" attitude.
Last but most importantly, (s)he must pay due respect to my swimming costume, more famous by the name Pink Chaddi.

By the way, I notice that my simulations have completed and a few machines have been freed so I better close it here and get going!

Scent of a Woman

2006-03-27T09:21:00.000+05:30

This is almost entirely from the Delhi edition of The Hindustan Times (dated March 27, 2006 : Page 1 : Article : Male allure: Scent of a woman).
So what Mr. Vijay Dutt reports there is that it has been proven by British researchers at Cambridge University that Females are, probably, attracted to married men because of the smell of another woman's skin they carry on their skins!

Experiments were conducted on mice, and the results could be the same for Homo Sapeins. The key is the chemical oxytocin, nicknamed “Attachment Hormone”, which is released during pregnancy, childbirth and sex.

The article ends with:

So if something is rotten in your marriage, woman, blame it on your smell. Even science let the man off easily.

Symbol of friendship

2006-03-22T00:33:00.000+05:30

DISCLAIMER: This is senti stuff. Read at your own risk! Do not bother me with any questions related to this.

Few years back, on this date i.e. 22th March, I was a witness to the marriage of one of my best friends better known as 3.8 (:P) amongst my friends at IIT-K and as Shivalee amongst my friends at BVCoE and Rosary School. What happened to me for a few months after that is a sad (and at the same time, amusing) story but that's not the subject of this post. I'd like to add here that I do not really like to discuss that story so please do not ask me about it. Here, I'll post about the symbol of friendship that she and I share.
Back in August 2000, I had my best Friendship Day with Shivalee and Namita with me. Now these two girls (women now, I guess) are my best friends and I really wish to be with them for as long as I can. That day in August, Shivalee tied a wrist-band around my hand as a symbol of our friendship and I have carried it around my wrist since that day. So far so good.
The problem, however, is that due to constant wear-and-tear, the band has gotten into a not-so-good shape and I fear that if I keep going on like this, it would snap-off sooner or later. To be ab;e keep it as a life-long memory, I decided to take it off my wrist and preserve it for as long as I can. Since today I was anyway going to call her up, I decided to ask (read inform) her about this and so I did. Guess what, I'll be getting a new one!

The entire process refreshed some of the moments I enjoyed the most. Olden times are undoubtedly golden times!

The Politics of Honest Voting

2006-02-22T07:00:00.000+05:30

Came across a good article on Open Source: The Politics of Honest Voting
Read it when free..

Happy Valentine's Day

2006-02-14T16:05:00.000+05:30

People think I'm a casanova. No, I'm not.
People think I'm a flirt. Well, probably yes I am.
That means today is the day for me, because today is the day of love. Today is Valentine's Day.

First of all, Happy Valentine's Day to all my readers. I know most of you are as single as me, in fact many of you are more single than me so this day adds fuel to the flame burning us all the time.

I proposed to a girl today, who has been a good friend for quite some time (a little under 9 years). Needless to say, I was turned down very politely (otherwise this post would not have been as sad as it is), and turned down for the second time. I told her that I'll not let her go and will try next year again :)

While I was crying by myself, I realized something.
The first girl I called up, to wish Valentine's Day was, let's say, A.
The girl I proposed today, let's call her B, is not same as A.
The girl I plan to give a Rose today, let's call her C, is neither B nor A.
The girl, people believe I might be serious about, let's call her D. So, (D != A) AND (D != B) AND (D != C)

However, the thing that is hurting me the most is that none of them is the girl I want to be with today. That THE ONE doesn't even know about it yet.

Is it really a Happy Valentine's Day? I wonder.

Michael Learns To Rock - Paint My Love - 25 Minutes

2006-02-06T07:10:00.000+05:30

After some time I've finally made up my mind
she is the girl and I really want to make her mine
I'm searching everywhere to find her again
to tell her I love her
and I'm sorry 'bout the things I've done

I find her standing in front of the church
the only place in town where I didn't search
She looks so happy in her weddingdress
but she's crying while she's saying this

Chorus: Boy I've missed your kisses all the time but this is
twentyfive minutes too late
Though you travelled so far boy I'm sorry your are
twentyfive minutes too late

Against the wind I'm going home again
wishing me back to the time when we were more than friends

But still I see her in front of the church
the only place in town where I didn't search
She looked so happy in her weddingdress
but she cryed while she was saying this

Chorus:
Boy I've missed your kisses all the time but this is
twentyfive minutes too late
Though you travelled so far boy I'm sorry your are
twentyfive minutes too late

Out in the streets
places where hungry hearts have nothing to eat
inside my head
still I can hear the words she said

Chorus:
Boy I've missed your kisses all the time but this is
twentyfive minutes too late
Though you travelled so far boy I'm sorry your are
twentyfive minutes too late

I can still hear her say...

No title

2006-02-06T01:18:00.000+05:30

This post does not have a title because it has too much in it, which cannot be described in a single line, at least the author cannot describe it. You need patience (lots of it) to read this one till the end.

/*----Original Post----*/
Title: Orkut is dead

No, not that Orkut is being closed or something. It, however, has died for me.
I have been unable to log into Orkut for 2 days now, and now it seems that my account information was mishandled. I'll tell you what happened, and why I feel the way I feel.

For the past two days, no one I know was able to log into Orkut but this afternoon onwards everybody has been able to log into Orkut; well almost everybody. I tried to log in, but it kept saying Bad, bad Orkut. No donut for you.

I tried to change my Google/Orkut account username and was able to do that successfully (the only success in the whole process, as you'll see shortly) but with the new username also I could not login.

I lost patience and tried to connect my Gmail account to my Orkut account. Now, when I tried that, it asked me to enter my Orkut account info which I did gleefully. Orkut replied, Invalid password!

What adds salt to injury is the fact that when I login into Google Accounts (www.google.com/accounts), it tells me that I am still subscribed to their Orkut service.

I think I'll change my stance.. Google sucks!
Google sucks more than Microsoft, because with Microsoft one can atleast restart ;-)
/*----End of Original Post----*/

/*----Follow Up----*/
Less than 5 minutes after publishing the original post, I tried to login again by clicking on someone's Orkut profile link and ALAS I was logged in.

So, I change my stance again.
Google still sucks, but now it sucks as much as Microsoft because it did the equivalent of a reboot before things started working :-P
/*----End of Follow Up----*/

/*----Follow Up to Follow Up----*/
Amazing! Something weird happening here.
My posts have started to disappear. No that's incorrect. I'll give you a good analogy from the world of my favourite operating system: Linux.

<ANALOGY>
root user, that's me, sets up a repository of all Bryan Adams' songs (okay, Pink Floyd's too) and gives all the users a read permission
[$chmod -r 755 BryanAdamsAndPinkFloydSongs/]

root then enjoys the songs for about 10 minutes, then goes to eat (let's say, cholcolate cake) and when he comes back does not find the songs folder there!! What's astonishing is that he finds a non-root user listening to all those songs from the same folder (not a copy of that folder, not a cached copy either).

While root is pondering over how this happened, that user comes to root and requests the root to share the folder again, which basically means that this non-root user also cannot see the folder anymore. No one now knows where the folder is!

A day later, root realizes he had made a copy of the folder elsewhere and therefore is able to get back the folder. Still, no one knows what happened to the original folder.
</ANALOGY>

Now I'll tell you how this is related to my original post and the follow up to it. So,

original post	=	the songs folder;
root	=	me, i.e. the owner of the blog;
non-root user	=	you, i.e. the reader;
current post	=	the recovered folder;

No, I won't change my stance again. Who knows, may be that's the reason behind my dis-appearing posts.
/*----End of Follow Up to Follow Up----*/

My god! You are really very patient.

Spend more time with your kids

2006-02-03T12:57:00.000+05:30

I'm not advocating that here, thought I truly beleive in it.
Not sure if the following will work:

Source: iitk.fun (posted by Abhas)

If you really love her...

2006-02-02T01:30:00.000+05:30

If you really love her, you should let her go. If not, then it's not love.

The quote is from the movie My Sassy Girl. It brought back some old memories.

I did :)

Rang De Basanti (2006)

2006-02-01T18:48:00.000+05:30

I am not saying anything about the movie, except that I would give it the following rating:
(4.75 / 5.0)

Watch it not on your computer, not on your TV from a pirated CD/DVD, watch it in the theatres. You'll love me for suggesting this one.
Wait! Before you rush to buy the tickets, remember, you should not have high expectations otherwise you might not enjoy it.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405508/

Best blonde joke ever

2006-02-01T18:45:00.000+05:30

Here's the best blonde joke ever.

It is hilarious. Had me laughing for more than ten minutes continuously. Picked it up from an iitk.fun post.

Laughlines

2006-01-25T11:00:00.000+05:30

Laughter, The Best Medicine (Reader's Digest)

An older father noticed his son's Viagra tablets in the medicine cabinet. "Could I try one?" he asked.

"Sure," his son replied, "but make the most of it. Each of those pills costs ten bucks."

His dad was shocked by the price. "Don't worry," he promised. "I'll pay you back."

The next morning the son found an envelope under his breakfast plate. Inside was $110.

"Dad," he said, "that pill only cost $10."

"I know," his father said, smiling. "The ten is from me. The hundred is from your mother."

All In A Days Work (Reader's Digest)

Bill Gates my father is not. As church treasurer, he had two computer files labeled "St. Mary's Income" and "St. Mary's Expenditure." While copying them from a Macintosh to a PC, he had no idea the PC would automatically truncate the file names to ten characters, eliminate spaces and replace apostrophes with periods.

Now the church's income is stored in "StMary.sin" and expenses in "StMary.sex."
Contributed by Christine Thien

Believe it or not!

2006-01-24T21:23:00.000+05:30

Those who know me well would be surprised to read this. I, myself, am amazed at how could it happen!
Believe it or not, for the first time in more than 3 years, I thought I was getting serious about a girl in my life!! Putting it in better words, I questioned myself for about 2 days whether my feelings for a girl were that of love?
The good part is that I bet no one can guess who that girl is, which makes the whole thing even more mysterious. Why and how could I?

Oh, by the way, she is not the girl from Mumbai. The girl from Mumbai is Deepa, but I hardly know her and haven't met even once. As of now, Deepa is just a good friend.

Patents slip out as India nurses data

2006-01-23T09:10:00.000+05:30

What a shame! I read this article today and have been feeling bad about it since then.
Our country is losing so much wealth and recognition because of a handful of administrators who, I am sure, have no idea of what a patent is and, how it works.

Government officials pointed out that the objection of the HRD ministry was on account of a confusion between patent and copyright.

This is a good example of what I discussed about, with some friends day-before-yesterday: Administraors unwilling to take any step forward as they do not know what "side-effects" it might have, thus threatening their position.

Left Shift

2006-01-19T04:34:00.000+05:30

Being a Computer Architecture freak, I am in the habit of specifying the direction of shift. More about shift in Computer Architecture can be read here, but that is not even remotely related to what I am going to blog about.

The hostel in which I stay at IIT-K, called Hall of Residence - 4, is undergoing partial renovation these days. As a part of the renovation, each room is being patched (if absolutely necessary) & white-washed, wardrobe is being upgraded and anti-mosquito meshes are being put on window panes. "Wow", I said, when I first heard about it. However, the next moment I realized I would have to empty my room for all this to happen and with only a few months left before I graduate (Yes!! I am very sure now) and leave this place, "Do I really need it? Wouldn't this be too much of a trouble?" So I decided to reduce the percentage of overhead.

Now, overhead equals the amount of extra work done as a ratio of the amount of gains. I figured out, since I cannot reduce the numerator term much, I shall have to increase the denominator to bring down the overhead. This, basically, meant that I shall spend as many days in the renovated room. On January 17th 2006, I did that. Grabbing an opportunity that had come Mangal's way, I shifted to B-309 and handed over my original room (B-313) for renovation.

So for all my fans out there, please send your fan-mail to the following address until I notify you again:
B-309, Hall of Residence - 4,
IIT Kanpur,
Kanpur - 208016.

Just a little more. I called this post 'Left Shift' because B-309 lies on the left of B-313. What is more interesting is that B-313 also lies on the left of B-309.
Can you tell me how is that possible?

Symantec versus Spybot

2006-01-14T21:41:00.000+05:30

This is an interesting article I came across while surfing the internet. I don't want you to spend a lot of time reading that so will tell you in a nutshell what is that about.

In April 2005, Symantec's Norton Antivirus started giving warnings to its users about Spybot, an anti-spyware, and recommended them to uninstall it! Since both the involved companies are in the anti-spyware arena, it was clearly seen as a threat to its market by Spybot. By the way, that was a false positive. So Spybot took it very seriously and asked Symantec to remove the warning from their software. Symantec did not want the issue to be dragged too far, so they removed the false positive from their software and things cooled down (atleast publicly).
However, some time back Norton again started claiming that Spybot was corrupting Norton Ghost images. Spybot, angered by this, wrote to Symantec once again but as they say, "Mr. Guido Sanchidrian, product marketing manager of Symantec, appeared offended"!! Symantec said they will reply within a week with evidence but they haven't bothered to reply since then. Spybot even tried to contact other people in Symantec who 'requested' for time till the first week of the new year, but nothing has happened from that front either. Hence, the article, in which Spybot has indicated taking the case further and suing Symantec.

Symantec people, better start looking for other opportunities. Who knows, the manager who hired you might himself get fired before you join! :-D

The day we won the cup

2006-01-12T02:43:00.000+05:30

This one deserves a place on every page. Got it from Nishit, although the original post is here.

June 25. 1983.

Greatest day since independence. You bet.

India won the Prudential World Cup by beating the mighty West Indies.

For all you newbies, this Australia team has got nothing on the West Indies of 83. No other team in the modern era had a bowling attack like they did - sure other teams, at various times, had Waqar & Wasim, McGrath & Gillespie & Warne, Pollock & Donald.

But the West Indies firm of Roberts & Holding & Marshall & Garner was something else--- four of the most accurate, fearsome gentlemen ever to have walked the cricket field. And all of them did it together on that day in mid summer, June 25 1983.

The batting was not too bad either.

Three of the greatest one day batsmen ever were in the West Indies team that day---------Greenidge, Haynes and Viv Richards. Backed up by the mighty hitting Clive Lloyd, the steady Larry Gomes and the artistic and athletic keeper Dujon who was the best keeper-batsman before Gilchrist.

Yet they lost the biggest game of their collective lives.

They lost to India. India, which then looked about as threatening as Bangladesh does today. Kapil was the only world class one day player in the side. Gavaskar was a liability in ODIs, the bowling attack of Binny, Madan and Sandhu would give no opponents sleepless nights and the other players - well not much could be expected from them. Or so we thought.

When the World Cup began, there was no excitement in the country. We did not care about it and you could not blame us for that.... in 2 previous editions we had beaten only East Africa (even lost to Sri Lanka before they got Test status). I remember buying the pre-World cup "Sportsweek" (now defunct) and asking my father what chances we had. (I was 7 then)

My dad nodded mournfully, "Winning the cricket World cup is as much a pipedream as winning the football one." This time however things were a bit different.

Just before the World Cup, India toured the West Indies. Needless to say, they were plastered. It was not in vain though. A 3-month tour playing against the world's best opposition was exactly the right kind of preparation going into the cup. In addition, two significant things happened on that tour.

Mohinder Amarnath rose from the ashes to become India's leading batsman. Amarnath used to be known as a pathetic player of the short ball whose career was in jeopardy after he got hit on the head by Rodney Hogg. After a layoff, he came back a changed man. He had stood tall among the ruins in the Pakistan series (where Imran and Safraz razed our batting) and then attained legendary status on this tour to West Indies. The West Indian speed merchants peppered us with the short stuff. Gavaskar ducked. Gaekwad took it on his body. Amarnath hooked. The West Indians had never seen Indians hooking bouncers. The faster they came at Amarnath, the more vicious he hooked it. Such was his dominance on that tour that both Imran and Marshall accepted that he was the best player of pace in the world.
The second significant event was that we actually won a ODI off the Windies. It was the last one - rather insignificant in terms of the series but of great significance for what was to follow. At Berbice, Gavaskar finally got into the groove of one day cricket (forgetting his 36 over 60 overs) and Kapil blasted the West Indies bowling attack. A mere blip on Windies' radar but at least we knew we could beat them.

Well not only was it possible to beat the West Indies, India made it two in two defeating them in the first match of the World Cup. And then, after a few wins and losses, it all came down to the match against Zimbabwe.

My dad had a small radio. When I turned it on, India were 15 for 4. Soon they were 17 for 5. I was deliberating whether to skip drawing school but this did it. I trooped off with my paint brush and was ensconced on the cold floor along with scores of others, drawing "still life." My mind however was anything but still.

There was the unmistakable drone of transistors coming from outside. That means people were still listening in. Soon the drone increased. More transistors/radios had come on. What could that mean ? Was India still "in the game"?

It was hot inside the room, I desperately wanted to leave but I had to wait to get picked up by Baba. And then the first sound of "chakka" (sixer) from someone next door. Soon others followed. My heart was pounding, threatening to jump out of its socket into the paint bowl. "Baba where are you? I want to go home."

Baba came, a big smile on his face. Kapil was smashing Zimbabwe all over the place - he was in a marauding mood. Going home, I caught the end of India's batting on the radio. India wrapped up the game in style with the commentators describing the fielding as brilliant. India had made the turn. Cricket would henceforth be India's national sport.

Semi-final! I knew India would lose. I was sanguine. I also thought that if I thought India was going to win, God might punish me for my hubris and defeat us. And by God, did we need godly intervention to win against England.

India bowled first. The fielding was exceptional. The runs were choked and England made their mistakes. Alan Lamb was run out by an exceptional bit of fielding, Gatting was bowled by a gem from Amarnath and Botham was castled by a brute of a delivery from Kirti Azad.

Then India came into bat. Also went out the lights. Power cut! or what we used to call "load shedding".

I have this problem. Whenever I get tense, I start shivering. So here in the month of June, on a hot Kolkata night with all power off, I was shaking. With tension. You see, I had maneuvered myself into a lose-lose situation. Long before Azhar and Jadeja, I had bet against my own team. I had a running bet with an uncle---if India makes it to the finals, I will treat him to a "Rajbhoga". Which cost Re 1 in those days. Something I was not willing to give up since it constituted about 20% of my "personal stash".

I wanted India to win. Desperately. And I also wanted to avoid losing my Re 1.

Yashpal Sharma flicks Bob Willis for a six. Sandeep Patil hammers Allot. The power comes back on for us to see Yashpal Sharma getting dismissed. But no further hiccups and Kapil races back to the pavilion after the winning run as he is engulfed by the teeming population.

I lose my Re 1. Which, I refuse to pay when uncle asks for it.

Then June 25 dawns. No more bets. No more debts. India vs West Indies.

Sunil Gavaskar. 5 feet and a few. Joel Garner. 7 feet and a few. Garner hustles in and hurls them from sky high and Sunny is all at sea. He is soon taken out of his misery. So are we.

Srikkanth, on the other hand, looks cool and composed. Well as cool and composed as he can look. Roberts is hooked over fine leg for six and then Sri gets on one knee and creams him through cover. Shot of the match. Twitches his nose, walks towards square leg. And then gets beaten by a beauty from Marshall and is trapped in front.

Amarnath has dropped anchor. Runs are difficult to come by. Holding goes wide of the crease, angles one in. Amarnath plays down the wrong line and his stumps go cartwheeling. My heart sinks.

With runs not coming, Yashpal Sharma loses the plot and gifts his wicket to the innocuous off spin of Larry Gomes. Kapil also holes out to deep square leg attempting a mighty heave. Then Doordarshan loses feed. Damn.

Back to the radio. Azad and Binny are blown away. India's tail fights back. But my heart has turned to cinder. I knew India was going to lose but at least a fight was expected. This was abject surrender.

Everything is going according to their script. Their script. I almost feel like crying.

Power is back on for the Windies chase. Only good news, Llyod has pulled a hamstring. Fat chance of Lloyd batting though. Richards is enough.183 is nothing. Absolutely nothing.

And then it happens. Pure magic.

Gordon Greenidge, one of the world's most technically correct batsman is at the crease. Sandhu runs in and bowled a seemingly innocuous outswinger. 183 to get...60 overs. Plenty of time. So Greenidge reads the outswinger and shoulders arms to let it go.

Nothing wrong in that. But the ball is charmed---- the collective will of so many Indians makes it change its line. Late.... very late it swings in ever so slightly and clips Greenidge's off stump.

Greenidge stands there with his bat raised---incomprehending, incredulous. Sandhu is rushing towards keeper Kirmani clenching his fist. India has drawn blood.

The Man comes in. Chewing gum, twirling bat, utter disdain for the opposition. Madan Lal is dismissed from his presence with a swipe to square leg. Binny (India's version of JLo---if you have seen him you know what I mean) is thrashed through cover. And then Doordarshan loses transmission again.

"A good thing" my mother says. It is torture watching India lose. Now we can all go back to our respective lives.

But the radio is on. My dad mutters to himself---"Richards has got to go".

However it is Haynes who goes, unable to keep a drive down off Madan Lal. The wrong guy....the wrong guy....we need Richards.

The fall of Haynes has no effect on the Man. Richards is no mood to step off the center stage----determined to finish off the match himself and repeat his murderous innings against England in the 1979 World Cup. Runs flow from his bat with precise inevitability.

" He is out. Gone."

The commentary drowns out amidst the thunderous applause. It's true. Viv IS out and Madan has scalped him. Richard's overconfidence has done him in. He bludgeons Madan Lal uppishly and Kapil Dev, runs back and takes the most significant catch in Indian cricketing history. Crowd goes silent and then the Indians erupt.

But we all saw that later. For now, we are simply jumping up and down with joy. We are in with a chance.

Clive Llyod is not being able to play his normal flowing game and Gomes has gone into a shell.
Binny takes out Larry Gomes with a late moving outswinger.

And then "Big Cat" Lloyd, strung by a hamstring, plays a nothing shot and is skinned by Kapil at cover.

I run around the room in the unquestioning glee of childhood...........we have won, we have won. My father tells me to calm down...............half of the side still remains. But yes, we are in with a chance.

Now we are cursing Doordarshan. Doordarshan obliges by restoring live feed.

Bacchus is scratchy. Dujon looks solid but watchful.

Srikkanth hits the stumps on a direct throw. The Indians go up in appeal. The umpire does not oblige. Srikkanth runs around like his pants are on fire.

My mother opines that it is better luck when there is no live feed. Maybe she wants us to just have our food but there is logic in what she says. As long as I was watching the game on TV, India kept losing wickets. When the feed went off, India's batting fought back. And now also just after the feed is back on, things have stalemated.

Sandhu comes back in and bowls one wide of off stump. Bacchus is no Richards but tries to be. He swings hard hoping to send the ball screaming to the fence. It takes the edge and Kirmani dives full tilt to his right and brings off a blinder.

India's problems have always been in getting rid of the tail. How many times has it happened that we get rid of the main players and then the fringe guys come and bite us on our bum?

Marshall, who was a fairly decent bat, digs in. Dujon works the ball away into the gaps. No more of the frenetic, disdainful heave-ho of the top batters------Dujon and Marshall have gone over to Plan B. The Indian fielding is tight, Binny beats Marshall all ends up. But the edges are not coming.

Kapil is striding like a wounded tiger----the team is pumped up.

I am shaking like crazy. Please let us not lose this from this state....please God.

God answers. Mohinder Amarnath is called into bowl. He lopes in, the only bowler in the world who decelerates as he comes to the bowling crease. A loosener, gently going down off. Dujon takes an exaggerated front foot movement and seeing the line of the ball raises his bat.

And as he raises it, the ball miraculously takes the inside edge of his bat, comes back, bounces once in front of the stumps and hits it !

Dujon slaps the ground in digust and I am airborne with joy.

Amarnath is not done. He induces Marshall's edge and Gavaskar clutches onto the ball for dear life.

Kapil brings himself back on. A lot of overs still left. This is a gamble.

Andy Roberts. Shuffling across he is pinned to the crease by a Kapil inswinger. The finger goes up. Kapil is growling now and the Indians are all over the place.

Andy Roberts wends his way back accompanied by a fat white man who keeps on lecturing him. It is still a wonder to me why he did not smack the guy then and there.

Garner and Holding hold on. They are not scoring runs but they are not getting out either.

Amarnath bowls. Holding launches into a wild swipe. It misses, strikes him a bit high on the pad. Who cares? The umpire's finger is up, Holding looks dejected. Amarnath has already gotten hold of a stump.

The Indian contingent is rushing onto the ground. The TV flashes " India has won the World Cup". Kapil is smiling from ear to ear.

The Goliath has fallen. David has won the World Cup.

Many years have passed by since then.

I have since become an atheist. I don't know what to believe or trust any more.

But there is one thing I do believe in and that is in miracles.

Because I saw one myself. On June 25, 1983.

Calvin and Hobbes today

2006-01-09T16:39:00.000+05:30

War of the Worlds

2006-01-09T01:26:00.000+05:30

"What a shot!" I said to myself, that would do anyone proud of himself.

Date: January 7, 2005 (Saturday)
Time: 0245 hours
Venue: B-313, Hall-4, IIT Kanpur (i.e. my room in IIT-K hostel)
Event: War of the Worlds!

Here are the details:
I returned to my room at about 2:40 AM from the department, and was looking for ward to read something to sleep. After getting into my pyjamas, I got into the bed but suddenly I realized I had company, actually too many uninivted guests, and they were not Homo Sapiens. My room was full of little creatures that thrive on our blood, the mosquitoes (that link is for *******, hehe).

My first reaction was to light my Mortein Mosquito Coil (MMC), but for some reason I was feeling pissed-off and decided to take on the battle, with MMC acting as my assistant. So I sat up in my bed, with a slipper in my right hand and kept my left hand free to get a good swing of the right arm. The war had been declared, and I along with me assistant, went on a rampage.

My killing mechanism was unconventional. Instead of squishing them between the surface of my slipper and another plain surface, I was hitting them HARD with my slipper. Due to a blow that hard, they would fall down on the floor (or the table in some cases) and would die after sometime. By adopting this method, I made sure that there was no blood around and my room remained clean of all the bloody stains ;-)

After sometime I realized that the enemy's strength had come down to very low numbers, but I had started to enjoy the war so I got up and stood on my bed. This increased the volume I could cover, and therefore resulted in some more killings. After a while, I noticed that all the enemies left alive by now had clinged to the ceiling of the room or to other parts of the room where I could not reach. So I thought and thought and came up with an idea. Now remember, it is December and it is very cold in Kanpur right now. This, however, did not stop me from switching on the fan (what an idea!) for about a minute. The move worked very well, and I got some 8-10 more frags. Looked around the room and found only very few enemies left, wandering around looking for a place to hide from me. I let them go, for them to narrate the tale to others from their species so that I do not have any invasions in future :-)) All this took just over 30 minutes and by 3:20 AM, I was back in my bed reading a book and almost ready to go for sleep after a long battle!

By the way, for all those who think that I was being cruel, I should mention that I gave the enemies a chance to escape before declaring the war by switching off the tubelight and opening the door of my room for them to escape into the corridor. After around 2 minutes, I closed the door and rest is history.

CAT - 2005

2006-01-09T00:25:00.000+05:30

"This time again, I got up in the morning feeling fresh and good. Took my time doing morning chores i.e. the rest-room part, followed by brushing teeth (and taking a nap during that time), followed by a visit to the bathroom, followed by a good heavy breakfast and finally left my home with my dad (he had some work in a place nearby) for the centre of the exam I was appearing for.. CAT."
The day described above is 20th November 2005, and there I was in my hometown Delhi, in a school waiting for the invigilator to distribute the exam sheets. People around me looked so anxious and terrified (because the D-day had finally arrived!) about the whole event and I could easily identify myself as the only soul enjoying the whole process :-)

One look around the room and I figured out the I was sitting in the column with maximum number of girls (we are talkig about Delhi girls, wow!!), N-1 to be precise (N being the number of seats in that column) and I was the only male candidate in that column. Other columns had lesser number of females :-)) Now you would think that this was a great situation for me to be in, but alas it was the worst place to be in. I could not look at any of them!! What a waste of time it would be to sit here, I thought.

A little later, the whistle was blown and I opened my exam-sheet to take a look at the couple of sheets that had cost me (1100+434+16+some more=) 1550+ bucks and I knew it had all gone down the drain. Anyway, managed to do some of it pretty well and felt really good when the whistle indicating the end of time was blown. Thank God, the ordeal had ended as it was taking too much out of me. Another look around the room (the invigilator was still collecting the sheets) and I found that people were emotionally too attached to the answer-sheet and were not willing to let go of it easily. I laughed at them and then at myself, the fool i.e. me sitting there in that room, who had turned up to write the exam without any preparation at all, in the midst of people who had worked day-in and day-out to do well on this day. I did not stand any chance against them, so why was I there? The answer came from within, "C'mon dude it is just 1550 bucks. You get to appreciate the beauty of Delhi girls atleast!! :-P" and that cooled me down because trust me, Delhi girls are the hottest lot I have ever seen. See it to believe it!

Just to mention, it was a brilliant co-incidence that I had the same centre for CAT last time I had written it (back in 2003) and that time I was with my college pals. So while climbing down the stairs, I went through all those memories, all the fun we had together, all the hanging out and suddenly I realized I had got much more for those 1550 bucks, than I ever expected. For the next 30 minutes or so, I kept thinking about two things:

The time I had spent with my friends in Delhi over the last 5 years.
How do I reach Akshardham? (Why Akshardham? Forget it!)

Let's leave all that there (except the hot Delhi girls).. that's the end of flashback part :-P

Anyway, today while discussing with Kaushik about the CAT scores (he had also written it), I proposed a bet that whosoever scores better in CAT has to pay for the other's coffee at Nescafe hoping to win a coffee. He accepted the bet and I got a strong sense of achievement, after all I had won myself a coffee. Luck, however, betrayed me. As we found out later, I had actually scored more than him (which is a big-big achievement, he is our dictionary.com) and therefore I had to pay for his coffee (although Dhiru payed to for it because I had run out of money and the ATM wasn't working). According to the IIM Kolkata website, I have got a percentile of 98.44. What a joke!

(This result has ensured that I'll waste some more money few years later to go through all this again..)

Happy New Year - 2006

2006-01-01T02:51:00.000+05:30

Let me start by wishing you a very Happy New Year. Let's hope the coming year brings everything you wanted all this while and brings me the best of everything I always wanted :-p

Anyway, I was talking to Kaushik during our new year celebrations about the importance of the day in our lives..

Does it really carry any significance at all in our lives?
Does it change our life or is it just another day in the calendar?

For me, it is just another day, another year. So why was I celebrating? I did not celebrate the coming of the new year; rather I celebrated another evening with some of my good friends, frinds I would be parting with sometime soon.

What does it mean to you? Think hard.

Oh by the way, we had a great time while celebrating. Would be sharing some of those moments in pic form very soon. Okay tell me one thing, do I already sound nostalgic?

Albert Einstein and me

2005-12-29T20:05:00.000+05:30

Don't you believe me? C'mon!

Just for updating...

2005-12-29T20:01:00.000+05:30

This is just to update all my readers that I have been selected by Intel Corporation but I am not really amused by the selection :-(
Does anyone have any contacts in the folowing companies:
1. AMD, Bangalore.
2. Texas Instruments, Bangalore.
3. Sybase, Pune.
4. Mentor Graphics, NOIDA.
5. Adobe Systems, NOIDA/Bangalore.

Please let me know.
(Using this space for some really important work for the first time!)

D-Day is here

2005-12-20T23:37:00.000+05:30

The time is 2341hrs on 20th December, 2005 right now.
That means we are about to enter 21st December, a date which we had been waiting for since we joined the Masers programme in Computer Science at IIT-K. Placements kick off from tomorrow and that come as a huge relief.

First company: Google.
Expected Intake: Not more than 4-5.
1 Written Test + Upto 4 interviews!
That means my chances are bleak.

Let's move onto next company: Amazon.
Expected Intake: N/A
1 Written Test + Interview(s).
The problem is that they ask questions in Algorithms so I do not give myself high odds.

Next company: Intel.
Expected Intake: Upto 3.
1 Written Test + normally 1 Interview.
I am not sure if they have R&D work to offer.

And the list goes on...
What will happen, no one knows but I hope everything turns out well.
These are probably the most anxious moments in my life over the last 2 years.
Oh my god, mera kya hoga?

Mr. Hussain on Bollywood

2005-12-16T15:16:00.000+05:30

Read in a ToI article yesterday:

MF Hussain: Bollywood is complete junk!

Mr. Hussain, have you ever looked at your own art? To me, bollywood still makes sense!

Congrats maestro!

2005-12-10T21:47:00.000+05:30

December 10, 2005
First and foremost, my congratulations and best wishes to Sachin "The Master Blaster" Tendulkar for scoring the second most-awaited* century of his test career, the 35th century to take him past another legend Sunil "Little Master" Gavaskar. Not only did that mean a good record and good score for him, it also has put India in a comfortable position after the heart-break loss of Rahul Dravid's wicket.

The century did not come without any hiccups though. This ball from Fernando hit him on the chest.

Was reading The Hindu moments back and this is what I found there:

Behind the composed batting was a burning intensity which was in display when he showed his disapproval when Ganguly turned down a third run.

Some folks just cannot change their habits, come what may. Our dada is just one of them. He has been playing cricket for a time too long to be such a bad runner between the wickets. I have long been a critic of his game and one of those who have questioned his role in the team in recent past. Not that Ganguly is a good for nothing man, he is a world-class player with his own problems. Infact, in the current game, he has played a good knock by keeping things down at his end.
This, I am sure, is one of the most important games for Ganguly to prove his mettle specially against (world-class) spinners.

Go on Sachin, conquer the world.
Hey Dravid, prove it to the world that you are 'The Best' at whatever you do. I (We) want a 2-0 victory in the series.
Dada, my best wishes are with you. Let's take Atapattu back to 1999 World Cup :-)
Pathan bhai jaan, ek Wasim spell ho jaye?
Kumble Jumbo, remember the 1998-99 seson here? It's the same Kotla pitch. So what are you waiting for?

All the best, Team India!
Go! Go! Go!

Oh boy! Did I mention the match is being played in Delhi, my hometown? Dilli meri jaan!

* The most-awaited one, definitely, was the first one.

December 14, 2005

Congrats Team India, that's the way to go!
We were bound to win, after all it was a brilliant team effort that saw Team India beat the Lankan lions so comprehensively. Keep going!

December 15, 2005

As soon as I heard that Dada had been dropped from the team, I said

"What? Howz that possible?"

After all, he scored a match-saving 40 in the first innings of the Delhi match which also included a crucial partnership with Sachin, and then again in second innings he scored a decent 39 (again a 81-run stand with Yuvraj).
Come on, give me a break. When this guy was performing badly, he wasn't dropped. Now that he has shown signs of getting back into runs, he has been dropped. This is complete BULLSHIT!
Some of the reasons that have been stated to drop him are:

Does not score runs: Yes. But then you should have not included him for the second test either. Now that he has scored some runs (79 in a test match is not great, but not bad either), you are dropping him?
Building a team for the future: My foot! Stop telling the lies and tell us what the truth is. How does Jaffer come into picture if you want to build a young team?
Not a team player: Hullo.. Go and read the newspapers, the press coverages. His teammates were the first ones to protest against his removal from captaincy. His team-management skills were praised during the World Cup 2003, and now all that has disappeared into thin air?
Arrogant nature: Did you not like his gesture of removing his T-Shirt at Lords, as a reply to some of the most arrogant England players? By the way, don't you like it when Glenn McGrath or Shane Warne cross the limits? Yes I agree he has some issues regarding this, but you cannot drop him for that now. We were the ones who stood behind him when he did that and encouraged him. Not his fault entirely. In fact, in my humble opinion, this is not a fault at all.
Got any more reasons?

For the past 1 year he had done nothing much, but we had him on the team that too as a captain. Now that he has actually done something good and worth a place, he is dropped. What a pity!

The reasons to persist with him earlier and drop him now seem to be beyond cricket to me. Could someone please explain the reason(s) to drop him?
The selectors, definitely, are a Bunch of Jokers and I am very sad to include Greg Chappel and Rahul Dravid in the lot.
By the way, the Kolkata crowd better start behaving normally. Sometimes, you make us feel ashamed of you when you do that senseless stuff that you did in '96 and again in the match against South Africa recently. Get a life!

For the first time in 2 years, I support you Dada.

Cow-tipping!

2005-12-09T22:17:00.000+05:30

This is a dedication to those who think their work (thesis or BTP or office project) is f*a*d (the most fraudulent word in English).

Natural Selection

2005-12-09T19:08:00.000+05:30

A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members.

In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine.

That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers.

Cheers!

Humor in Uniform and Virtual Hilarity

2005-12-06T19:08:00.001+05:30

Came across these recently. Could not resist posting them.

Our personnel officer, annoyed by the report from his secretary that troops and members of the staff were using the new copying machine for personal documents, posted this notice on the machine:

Troops are not to tamper with the secretary's reproduction equipment without approval of the officer in charge.

Picked from Humor in Uniform.

This one is for the geeks IIT-K is full of.

Picked from Virtual Hilarity.

Microsoft's Anti Spyware results

2005-11-24T23:37:00.000+05:30

A picture is worth a thousand words. This one is worth many more.

Speaks (Shouts?) of the level of desperation of Microsoft to see Firefox out of the market.
God save Microsoft (I don't really mean that, but then I think of MS employees).

Linux and Open Source rock!
So does Firefox!
(I love to repeat this)

Google rocks!

2005-11-15T04:32:00.000+05:30

I have become a huge fan of Google now. After all, because of their research and dedicated hard work I can show the world where my home is!! I mean, there has to be a limit to everything but Google is above all those limits.
I wonder how much storage space they have. Let us count:

Google Search: It is said that Google maintains a copy of (almost) the entire internet on its fileservers. Can you imagine how much storage that would require? I don't think you can. I can't. But these guys are doing it.
Google Groups: Usenet like newsgroups for people to discuss and solve their problems and issues. Amongst all the services Google offers, I like this one most.
Gmail: Forget Yahoo!, forget Hotmail. IMHO, Gmail is much better than them because it offers 2GB(!) of inbox size and also because it doesn't append those stupid footers at the end of the mails.
Google Earth: Oh this is where they take the lead. Infact, in this category, in my knowledge, there is no competition to what Google has done. C'mon, they showed me my home (yes I could see it very clearly) on my PC with a only few mouse clicks. They are GODS in this!
I have attached a screenshot (see the oval there in the image?), but a clearer image can be seen here and the exact thing can be seen here (requires Google Earth to be installed on your machine).

Infact, they are so advanced in this that they can show the 3-D imagery of the buildings in 38 US cities! Can anyone match this?
Google Maps: This seems less useful now with Google Earth out. Still a very useful service for PCs connected to not-so-high bandwidth networks.
Orkut: Needs any introduction?
...and there's so much more that they are doing I will run out of space on this blog of mine.

For some more screenshots I took from Google Earth, click here.

Antaragni - 2005

2005-10-23T00:49:00.000+05:30

This one is about the biggest festival I have ever seen, Antaragni, the cultural festival of IIT Kanpur.

The good part of this fest is that we get to have some real fun in the form of events like Quizzes, Crosswords, Extempore, Kavi Sammelan, Nukkad, Stage Plays, India Haat, Rock Show, Treasure Hunt, Personality Contest and Discotheque. Believe me, the atmosphere is electrifying (reasons stated later in here) and you just cannot resist the temptation to participate in or be a part of the audience in any event. The campus looks like a place to be which makes me think what the visitors would think of life here.

The general opinion of people who have never been to IIT about IITs is that these are places where people are either found in libraries or on the roads with their faces burried in books (or research papers). However, that's not true by any means of imagination. You can always find some people who find interest in studying 'only' but they are far out-numbered even in IITs. In fact, the number of people who are crazy about things like Rock Music, lets say, is much more here than the number of such people in my previous college, Bharati Vidyapeeth College of Engineering (BVCoE), although that is so mainly because of the fact that the number of students in IIT is atleast 20 times the number of students in BVCoE.

Given that, some of these people with misconceptions about IITs sometimes go to IITs for cultural fests and that's when they get to know the truth about life in here. They see how we enjoy all the good things in life and equally appreciate things like Nukkad etc, which goes completely against the image of IITians they have in mind. In some cases, it goes so far that some people actually start thinking that life at IITs is only about all these cultural activities and that clearing JEE or GATE once and then spending some years on the campus (each year containing 3.5 days of Antaragni!) is all they need to do, which again is a myth. They do not see the amount of effort IITians have to put in to get up early in the morning to attend the classes, complete the assignments in time and in case of really motivated students, also do research work to get some papers to their name.

Coming back to what makes the atmosphere electrifying, among other factors the most important and beautiful factor is the set of babes who come to participate in and enjoy Antaragni. One of the reasons why all IITK students look forward to events like Antaragni and Udghosh is the number of beautiful females who come to the campus for about 3 days. Those of you who have read Chetan Bhagat's first (and very famous) book know what is it that makes such fests the most awaited events :p Not that we do not like the events, we just love all the events and are very interested in taking part in those events, but the reason stated above takes the front seat when it comes to "Why we love Antaragni (or Udghosh)?"

I would now give a very brief description of an event in Antaragni, called Mridaksh and then tell you something about it. Mridaksh - The Personality Contest is one of the most famous and looked upon events in Antaragni. You wouldn't believe how long the queue of people waiting to get the entry is. Cannot tell you more about Mridaksh because I have been a part of only two Antaragnis and both times the queue was so long that I dropped the idea of going inside. Now the reason why I told you about Mridaksh. One of my very good friends Monika has won the event this year. Haven't been able to talk to her because the event took place only tonight and I was busy in the Rock Show past 3 hours. Knowing her, I am not surprised that she won it, because she has the qualities in her to win such contests, but I am very sad that I did not wait in that queue outside to enter the Auditorium and see her win the night. Well done Monika! (You owe me a treat now :-p)

There are more good news. Another very good friend, Kaushik, secured 2nd position in the quiz contest. This result was actually very surprising because to me, he is the among the best in the game and if he doesn't win a quiz, it really says a lot about the winner. Though second prize is great too, but I know how dearly he wanted to win the first prize. After all, he lives quizzes. Would a normal person wish birthday to his best friend by sending a quiz, the answer to which is "Happy Birthday"? (Sorry Kaushik, I never wanted to mention it here, but could not stop myself)
This post is dedicated to Monika and Kaushik, for the success they have got. You make me proud, both of you.

All in all, Antaragni is one of the most beautiful things in my life and I am surely gonna miss the fun next year onwards (assuming everything goes fine and I graduate in time). I love you Antaragni (and also all the babes who come along with it)!

Just now came to know that Arjun's love life was spiced up at Calypso. He'll put up the details in his blog shortly (otherwise, I will).

Trying out Flock

2005-10-21T23:29:00.000+05:30

I was just trying out this new browser, called Flock that I have come across.
Appears to be a good browser to me, at first look.

The best feature about it is, I can compose my blog offline and then ask it to publish directly, from within the browser's composer. So it is something like what 'Thunderbird' is for mail exchange.

Most importantly, it is based on the Firefox Engine, and therefore is very fast to use.
Firefox rocks! So does Flock!

WordSearch Game

2005-10-20T07:17:00.000+05:30

Came across this addictive game on the internet today. The URL is here.

Have fun!

Oh by the way, I re-learnt the power of the famous technique of problem solving, called Hit-and-Trial. This post is a result of a post on the IITK Newsgroup asking how to run an applet in blogger, and to answer his query I picked this applet & tried to put it into my blog :-)

Big Fish and 12 Angry Men

2005-10-17T18:53:00.000+05:30

Sounds like the title of a tale?
Those, actually, are two of the movies I have seen lately. Both the movies are great in their own respects. While '12 Angry Men' is a serious drama, set in a room, a small budget movie with hardly any camera effects, 'Big Fish' is a feel good movie, which takes you through a person's life, describes how he lived his life (and much more), captures the imagination of the viewer and leaves the viewer happy and sad at the same time. No doubt, both the movies are great in their own sense. I'll take some time and write a little about both of them one by one.

Big Fish: The movie mainly is a feel-good movie to be watched specially when you are feeling a little lonely or just want to watch some light stuff after long gruelling hours of work (or anything mind-consuming like CS). The story revolves around a guy named Edward Bloom, what he goes through in his life and how he manages to cross so many hurdles along his way. The guy keeps telling his stories to people around him and most of his talk seems to be full of plain stories, full of adventure and drama, but hardly any truth. His own son grows sick of all this story-telling stuff and they separate for sometime, only to meet again when Ed Bloom gets seriously sick. That's when Will Bloom (Edward's son) comes back to live with him, and to take good care of the ill old man. While he is there, Will again has to go through all that story-hearing stuff, which kind of keeps driving him crazy. Finally, Will tries to find the truth behind these stories that his dad had been telling him since he was 5 years old. In the processes, Will meets quite a few people and gets to know about few more people who had been in Edward's life. The movie ends with emotion-packed drama, leaves you very happy, and a little sad. If you are not a dumbo, by now you might have guessed that Edward Bloom dies in the end, but not before making his mark in many lifes and making a difference to so many of them.
Must watch, atleast once.
My Rating: 3.5/5
12 Angry Men: A Gem! One of the best all-time movies, for me. The plot basically is that a boy is convicted for murdering his own father and after the hearing, a jury of 12 jurors is appointed to pass the verdict on the case. Now the verdict of the jury will be accepted only if the jury members agree on a unanimous decision, failing which the judge will pass his own judgement.

So these 12 guys are seated in a room, and that's where the rest of the movie is shot, on a very hot day's night (which is cooler by no means) and most frusuratingly, the fan in the room also doesn't work (although as it turns out later, they did not turn it on the right way). Now these guys have to come to a unanimous decision, or discuss the case until either they come to a decision (i.e. Guilty or Not Guilty) or they are unable to decide and the case goes into the hands of the judge.

The beauty of the movie is that each jury member has an important role to play in the movie. Some of them have their own opinions about people (basically prejudice) which influences their decision, while some jurors are unable to make their mind about the thing and therefore keep changing their decision too often, and there are some others who want the thing to get over by reaching a decision, no matter right or wrong, as soon as possible. Then there are those jurors who think very logically and are very dedicated to the task, and also there are those who do not want to reach any decision in haste, because it is matter of life or death for the accused.

The movie takes a lot of twists and turns and at many points in the movie, I changed my opinion about the case. It is one of those movies which are the best mix of best of stories, appropriate direction and unmatched acting by everyone (almost) in the cast. By the way, one of the jurors reminded me (and my friends Nitin and Sachin) of Boman Irani, one of the best actors in Bollywood today and one of my few favourites.

I have given below, my favourite piece of conversation. This Juror, whom I call 'A', stands up and starts speaking very aggresively to all other Jurors and tries to make his point. But one by one, all other jurors (except one, whom I call 'B') start moving away, thinking about the case and paying no heed to whatever he was saying. This makes him a little bit nervous and he kind of breaks down during his own speech, may be realizing that his reasoning on the subject is wrong. Notice how he modulates his voice, changes his expression and makes gestures during all this.

The italicized part that follows contains spoilers. Please do not read it till you see the movie once.

Juror A:
I don't understand you people!

All these picky little points you keep
bringing up, they don't mean nothing!

You saw this kid just like I did.

Don't tell me you believe that
phoney story about losing the knife

and about being at the movies.

Look, you know how these people lie.
lt's born in them.

What the heck? I don't have to tell you.
They don't know what the truth is!

And they don't need any real big reason
to kill someone, either.

No, sir. They get drunk.
They're real big drinkers, all of 'em.

You know that. And bang!
Someone's lying in the gutter.

Nobody's blaming 'em.
That's the way they are by nature.

You know what I mean? Violent.
Where are you going?

Human life don't mean
as much to them as it does to us.

They're lushing it up
and fighting all the time,

and if somebody gets killed,
somebody gets killed! They don't care!

Sure, there's some good things about 'em,
too. I'm the first one to say that.

I've known a couple who were OK,
but that's the exception.

Most of 'em, it's like they have
no feelings! They can do anything!

What's going on here?

I'm trying to tell you.
You're making a big mistake, you people.

This kid is a liar. I know it.
I know all about them.

Listen to me. They're no good.

There's not a one of 'em who's any good.

I mean, what's happening in here?

I speak my piece, and you...
Listen to me.
I... We're... we're...

This kid on trial here. His type.
Well, don't you know about them?

There's a... There's a danger here.
These people are dangerous.
They're... wild.

Listen to me. Listen to me.

Juror B:
I have. Now, sit down
and don't open your mouth again.

Juror A:
Some of the time... I tell you.

Must watch, see it as many times as you can.
My Rating: 4.5/5

Draw-a-pig!

2005-10-13T11:17:00.000+05:30

It is a funny title to give, but it just tells you what you are going to read about.
Came across a site today which claims to tell you about your personality, your traits and your sex life. The most interesting thing, however, is that they find it all by analyzing "your pig".

What you are supposed to do is to draw a pig, in the space provided.. Draw as much or as little as you like and then submit the picture. A little more work, and you get the answers to some of the most important questions about yourself. How much of that is true, and how much it should be believed is another question.

My PIG is here:

Do not believe the last deduction made from my pig's drawing!!! As I said, it is just a stupid piggy thingy.. Do not believe it.

Waiting for your pigs to join mine .
Post your pigs too!

Fire in the hole!

2005-10-12T09:57:00.000+05:30

Confused what that means?
It indicates that a grenade is about to explode... More confused?
Okay how about, "I am dangerous"? Or "I'm on your side"?
Does all this drive you mad? It has surely driven us mad! ;-)
Well, these are some of the expressions used in the immortal game named Counter Strike.
I started playing it about a fortnight back, and already I have become addicted. Actually, not just me. I am accompanied by few more in following our madness(?)... "Madness of Counter Strike". These guys are (in alphabetical order): Arsenal, AtalJi, Billu Badshah, Bud, Chinmay, Cij, DDK, Hardrive, Hitler, Hood, Mangal, Neo, Ozzy, Sauron (that's me), Simha. Now that's a pretty long list isn't it?
Atleast an hour everyday, we play this game. Sometimes some of us are not present. In such cases, the BOTS come as replacements. So once the game starts, all we think of for atleast an hour is how to kill the enemy (or maybe, complete the assigned mission). Oh, it's a great atmosphere. We are all shouting, helping each other, dropping hints, developing strategies.. what not!
Once that one hour of game ends (which almost invariably is more than an hour), it is followed by a coffee session at a cafe joint near the arena (:-p department, I mean. Yes, we play the game in the department!!!). That coffee session is the time to discuss our moves, come up with new plans and also to laugh out the frustration caused due to some players' gameplay (which I won't discuss here). The night ends with more discussion about the game and how it would be like to play CS in a map much like our department, or maybe our hostel. One thing is sure, if hostel is chosen as the map and the terrorists have to plant the bomb, both the teams will choose the same location for both the bomb-sites: MESS and none of the players will try to defuse the bomb :-p
For a preview of the game, take a look at these:

I have print-screened them from my machine. There's just one thing that I want now.. A CS-CZ version that runs on Linux (What? There's already one? I knew it would be there).

Counter Strike and Condition Zero rock!
Yes they do!

What keeps me busy?

2005-09-04T15:31:00.000+05:30

You might notice from now onwards, that my blogs will normally be posted during the first half of the week (starting from today) and seldom would I write them on weekends. Seems to be an interesting pattern, isn't it? Normaly, people blog during the weekends when they are away from their work and spend time by doing all sorts of time-pass activities. Not me.

The reason for such patterns is the 'Weekly Reports' that I have to submit to my thesis* supervisor** every week. As he said, the report should be there in his mailbox on Monday morning. So here's my itinerary for the whole week:

Monday: Time to take rest. Have loads of sleep. Lying around. Listening to Rock music. Playing Anagrams. Thinking about the just-passed weekend and how I just managed to write something worth sending to the supervisor. Go to the lab and browse internet. Most importantly, waiting for the reply from supervisor telling me 'Start working for Thesis!'.

Tuesday: Get up early in the morning for TA duties. Once back from there, sleep throughout the day because of not getting enough sleep previous night. Get up in the evening, read a few novels and few non-academic books, lie around, go to the lab to browse internet & check mails. Most importantly, keep waiting for that mail.

Wednesday: Watch a movie (not too many). Think about how the movie could have been made better. What I would have done had you got the chance to go so close to that blonde in the movie... Start worrying because that mail hasn't arrived yet. It should have come this week atleast. Not to forget, keep checking emails very often.

Thursday: Get up late, because the worried get to my head very quickly and sleep is the only solution. Discuss with colleagues about what they did wrote in the last 'weekly' and how mine was more fraud than them. Keep waiting for the mail. Since it hasn't come till now, the tension starts to get to my head and therefore to feel better, I check the newsgroups for stuff to watch and feel better. All this while, keep checking the emails.

Friday: Last day of the week before the weekend begins. Although, I don't have any classes now, weekends still bring that feeling of holiday and lesser work pressure. So, most of the Friday is spent in thinking about the things I would like to do over the weekend. Sometimes, go to the city also to have a bit of fresh air in Kanpur city. It is essential, you see. The mail hasn't come. This means that the supervisor is not serious about my thesis work and is more concerned about them who just go and meet him everyday :-D . Wtf, I don't care. I'll take care of my topic and thesis myself.

Saturday: Saturday comes with a fresh air of happiness and joy all around. After all, the weekend has finally arrived! So I celebrate its arrival by sleeping till late. Getting up takes a bit of an effort but ummm., I guess I cannot just sleep for too long. That job is done best by my neighbour ;-) Anyway, so as the day progresses, I start worrying about the crooked 'Weekly report' that I have to send. What is it that I could have done thoughout the week, that will impress my supervisor enought to make sure that I don't get that 'dreaded' mail this week? Answering this (NP-Hard) problem takes up the whole day, and at the end of the day, I am nowhere close to getting that idea.

Sunday: The D-Day has finally arrived, but no clue about what to write in the weekly report. Saturday and Sunday are always spent in trying to come up with matter to write in weekly. You see, if there was no weekly report mechanism, I could have utilized 2 more days for thesis work i.e. Saturday and Sunday. But apparently, my supervisor wants the work to be too properly organised or may be has some other things on his mind. But why am I being targeted? Why me? I thank The Almighty for putting in a very sharp brain in my head because almost every week, I am able to cook up something to write in the 'Weekly report', which may not be very useful work, but good enough to be mentioned in something as insignificant as a weekly report.
Deep down in my heart, I know that I have not done the right thing by telling things that I have not done and, therefore, I decide that the coming week, I'll complete what I've written for the past week and also do significant amounts of work so that I don't have to send any more lies in the next weekly. After so much hard work, don't I deserve a good, sound sleep?

--
*Thesis: A worthless piece of so-called research that must be submitted and defended (which you can never do, because it is all crap) to get a Master of Technology degree. For getting Bachelor of Technology degree, the same crap is renamed to BTP.
**Supervisor: Someone wo is chosen to tolerate few thesis/BTP students for one full year (actually 18 months in case of thesis) and at the end, declare "Enough is enough, I'll sit with you and help you defend this crap to make sure your stay is not extended. I can take no more of you!"

--
This post is not what I always do, but sometimes this does happen. Most importantly, I would like to clearly mention that my thesis supervisor Dr. MC is very co-operative, helping and welcoming. It is infact due to this idea of weekly reports, that my thesis has gone ahead, although the speed is rather low right now. Sir, please do not mind it if you come across this post sometime although I will try to make sure that it doesn't reach you.
Hats off to Dr. MC!

Happy Independence Day!

2005-08-15T02:31:00.000+05:30

Happy Independence Day to all the Indians and all those who have good intentions towards the country.
58 years ago, on this very day, we were freed from the clutches of British Rule after almost a century of struggle and freedom fights.

I salute those who fought for India's freedom and also those who were not directly involbed in the struggle, but supported those who were! There's a famous saying in Hindi (which happens to be my mother tongue): "Yuddh mein JAI bolne waalon ka bhi mahatva hai"
It means, in a war, even those who shout for the fighters are also very important!

Now, I wasn't born at the time our nation was declared free and I haven't been following political happenings closely by any standards, but I do subscribe to the fact that perhaps we could have made more progress under the British Rule, than we did independently. And I don't say that for no reason.

I have been in Kanpur for a little over an year and have observed the quality of life here. Can you imagine yourself eating a dish made out of vegetables which could have been bought from someone sitting on half-dry swamp and resting the vegetables on a piece of cloth. Mind you, the cloth also is rested on the half-dry swamp! Interestingly, the market that I am talking about here is never empty, sometimes very crowded. Goes to show the hygiene consciousness of the people.
Look at the condition of roads in Kanpur. I study in IIT, which is one of the most respected institutions of the country. The road leading to it is terrible! However, undoubtedly, this is one of the best roads in Kanpur. Actual condition of other roads is left upto your imagination. I do not have the words to describe them.
Forget Kanpur, its roads and its hygienics. Let's turn our face to more serious issues. You know what an ex-health minister of our country thought about AIDS?
According to the ex-minister I am reffering to, the root cause of AIDS is not unsafe sexual habits. Rather, it is our desire to have sex (which is most natural to any organism). This ex-minister is well educated and has enough knowledge of sex and AIDS, so I was amazed to hear these words. Instead of promoting the use of condoms and making them most easily available, the government was trying to stop people from having sex! And they thought they would succeed at it?
Come on! Grow up people!
A panchayat asking a rape victim to marry the accused!
Another panchayat asking a woman to leave her husband's house because her father-in-law raped her and therefore she was now her original husband's mother. WTF! What rubbish!

These are some of the issues that came to my mind as I was writing this post, but there are many more topics which are much more serious.

This does not mean that we should not have got the freedom in the first place. I love my motherland and am very happy that I was born and have lived in a free country. However, have we done justice to those who lost their life in winning us the freedom?

This is a time to look back, see where we went wrong, possibly try to rectify the mistakes and make sure we don't repeat them.

JAI HIND

Beautiful. Isn't it?

PS: I am ashamed to admit that I haven't done anything for the country till date and therefore I do not have the right to write all this that I have written. There's one thing, however, that I have done. I have always cast my vote and will always try to continue doing that. I request all those who are eligible to vote, to go and cast their vote during elections, now onwards. Atleast do the minimum you can do for your country.