Back on dialup ...

Hmmmm ... ( to be read as a very depressed sigh ... )

After a month of cruising along in what our govt calls broadband ... its that time of the month again when all the past days' "bandwidth spendthrift attitude" comes back and hits you where it hurts ...

I've got the BSNL 256 K home plan, which comes with a 1 GB download limit ...
1 GB ???
Who in the right head comes up with these plans ?
Aren't people not allowed to come in to work drunk ? What about doped ?

Seriously ...
We have night time free ... yeah ...
Or call it early morning free ... from 2 friggin' AM to 8 AM ...
These timings are making a moron out of me ...

Last month, nothing major was happening, so I managed to cut down till about 970 Meg by the month end ...
This time with seminars, all the papers to download and research, and by the end of the month, my XBOX got dinked ...
More research and frantic searching ensued ...
( But I got it up and running finally last night ... yay !!! )

But with 940 MB gone and 4 days to take out on a 60 MB, I'm just holding on ... for a rainy day ...
If any of you'll will need me, I'll be on dial up for a couple of days ...
( BSNL charges 1.2 bucks per MB of download !!! )
It's kinda nostalgic you know ... That 3 tone buzz that comes out of the modem when you try to connect ... the 30 seconds !!! that you need to connect ...
And the best things are the ultra variable connecting speeds ( mostly due to the awesome quality of phone lines that the same morons from BSNL put up )
As of now, I have successfully connected after 7 tries at 9.6 kbps !!!

Thats me signing off ...

And yeah, if you are from BSNL and reading this, please grow a brain !

Me ... geeky ???

This test was actually amusing ...
Hehehe ...

Another one ...

The dirtiness factor ...

When does your room become so dirty, that it actually turns into a feature of that place ?

When your mom gives up asking you to clean it and vows never to talk about it ... ever ...
When the maid starts charging extra, just to enter and clean your room ?
When ?

Anyways, I've got a normal room here ...
Lets see ... one cupboard, a study table ( which is never used nowadays ), one computer table ( which is as dusty as it can be ), one bed, two chairs ( I stole one chair from my dad's room ) and quite a few boxes here and there containing stuff, I mostly will never open again ...

You remember, the only time you "actually" clean your room is when your friends come over ... for the first time ?
The first thing you'd probably hear is how "clean" your room looks ...
Then you go something like ... "Nah ... I just did it today because you guys were coming over"

As more people stream into your room and compliment you on your "cleanliness", "cleanliness" doesn't remain a compliment any longer ...
It seems more like a guilt, for a crime which you committed ...
So, next time they come ... they get to see what your room "actually" looks like ...
And they feel better ... and you become one of the tribe ...

And then there is the "switcheroo"
We guys do it so often, that we have even come up a term for it ...

Switcheroo /vb/ : The act of transferring clothes from one location to another, on the arrival of entities in your room, so as to make more space for people to fit in ..

Now, my room is not that bad ... atleast comparing to stuff you see on US Television ...
You can easily walk into the room ... and you can probably sit somewhere too, once I have performed the Switcheroo ...
But my mom kinda gave up on asking me to clean it sometime ago ...

Rooms never stay clean ( or do they, and I am missing something here ? ), so the thought of cleaning it, is just in the back of my memory ... somewhere ...

But that great pile of clothes on the chair besides me, has started to give me the shivers ...
Hence this blog, and maybe ... just maybe ... I'll venture into that dimentia ... the room cleaning one ...

If that ever happens, I'll update all you people ...
Then we could probably have a party or something ... :)

The wet side of things ...

Today, was a pretty depressing day :(
One of the days, when you just want to quit everything and stay at home ... Not caring a damn ...

Got up to a very dull morning ... Like mornings are nowadays ...
Haven't seen the sun in like - weeks ...

Dragged myself out of bed, and 45 minutes later, on my bike on the way to college ...
Last place I wanted to be at ...

Plus, today was THE monday, the day after the extended 3 day weekend ...
Monday blues at their best !

On the way, it started drizzling ...
You know, that kind of rain which neither stops nor pours ...
Just the slight, very light rain ...
You dont know whether to stop and take shelter or go on ...

Finally reached college ... pants soaking wet ...
Those are the worst things you can get wet ... pants .. and that too jeans ...

Soo, spent the entire day in wet clothes ... and only now, was able to get rid of them and put on some dry comfy clothes ...
Ahhh ... talk about being miserable ...

Feeling my head hurt a lil' ... and think am coming down with a flu :(
And I bet you could swear that this must have been the most depressing post that you've read of late ...

Hope things get better ...
Blame it on the weatherman ...

BitTorrent Seminar Blues ...

BitTorrents ... doesn't that word have a nice ring to it ?
It does, if you ask me ...
Okay, it does only to Broadband users with some unlimited plan ...

Anyways, I have used and abused that protocol for months now ...
Ever since BSNL dataone started and they had the mind numbing plan to give away unlimited internet ... hehehe ... :)

So, when Seminar time came ( something all us BE in Engineering people have to go through ), I chose BitTorrent ...
C'mon ... I've used it for months ... I know all the settings ... Its not much work ...
Right ?

Wrong !!!

I had to slog my ass off ... but it's okay, because the topic turned out to be interesting ...
So, 13 papers, hundreds of websites, 3 interviews, 1 webcast and 3 days of gruelling typing later, I finished my 30 page report on the damn thing ...

I am so confident ... that I already printed out the report without showing a rough copy to my seminar guide ...
How this works out, only time will tell ...

But, I have this radiant glow by this sense of achievement ...

Anyways, have sat to do the presentation now ...
And after spending a day doing the graphics at 800 x 600 for the ppt ( b'coz our college comps are kinda screwy and mess up at higher res ), I figured out that powerpoint backgrounds unstretched are at 1024 x 768 ...
No matter what the display resolution ...

Aaaahhhhh !!!!

Umm ...

What can I say ?
I am not proud of it ... but anywho ...

Sore, tired and broken ...

Yesterday was a rough day ...
I hadn't touched a basketball in ages ... actually no physical activity whatsoever in ages ...

Ended up on the courts ... and at the end of the day, the title says it all ...

We have this tournament called 'Dawn to Dusk' which happens every year on the 15th of August ... and we guys ... the old school team, come together and participate every year ...

This is the 4th year we've played and the results every year, are mostly the same ...

This is an open tournament ... no age limit, nothing ...
So people, from all age groups, from many different districts ... from the School teams to the Sourthen Command and Bombay Sappers team ( both are Army Teams ) take part ...

So, practically speaking, we don't stand much of a chance ...

As usual, we crashed out in the Quarters ...
Actually, honestly, we could have won that game too ...
But everyone was dead from the time the game started ...
I for one, was in a condition to be carried off in a stretcher ...
That was our 4th game in the day, and the previous game that we played was just 10 minutes ago ...

What was surprising was that we got that far ( there were a total 72 teams taking part !!! ) even though we hadn't practised any ...
Most of the guys ( 3 out of 5 ) were touching the basketball in ages ... No practice whatsoever ...

But where we lost out, was in the stamina department ...
If we'd have enough energy, we could have taken that game too ...
We lost by a measly 3 points ...

But I guess ... we all have to make compromises somewhere ...
Hmmmmm ... ( to be read as a long sigh ... )

My Firefox ate my bookmarks ...

Okay ... I use firefox ...
Have been using since the day it has been released and in my opinion ... it is the best browser to date ... ( sorry MS )

The thing I really love about it is the tabbed interface ... the ability to add enhancements ( otherwise called extensions. Plugins are different things ) ...

One of the better features ( taken from Mozilla ) is the ability to search a document while typing ... on the fly ...
No need to hit CTRL + F ... like you do it in IE ...

But today, after I restarted my Comp, all my bookmarks had disappeared without a sign ...
The bookmarks.html file which was about 73 Kb, when I last saw it, reduced to 1 K

I tried many things ... searching for deleted files, even did a system restore ... but to no avail ...
On searching, realised that many people have gone through this dilemma ...

Luckily, found a backup which I had taken in Jan 05 ... so I am almost back to normal ...
But this is a serious flaw and I am hoping they're doing something about it ...

Saurabh's day out with the camera ...

Yesterday was results ... very unexpectadly ... but yes ... we had to wait for 2 hours after college to get them ...
The good news is that I cleared all my subjects ...
I was dead sure of flunking an oral exam ... but by some miracle, passed pretty comfortably in that viva too ...
Marks wise, it was worse than last semester ... and my total percentage slipped down by a percent ...

Anyways, I am more than happy, that all the extra curricular stuff - The College CD, the Imagine Cup, et all ... didn't take a toll on my exams ...

So today, the entire class took a day off ... a mass bunk ...
Our very first official mass bunk, where not a single student sat for class ...
It was a long time due ... its our final year now ...
Yes ... you must be thinking ... class of geeks :)

Anyways, today the IEEE student branch of our college organised their cultural event ... a tech fest kinda thing ...
Though these guys come up with many new ideas ... their implementation needs a lot to be desired ... ( sorry people ... nothing personal )

Anyways, they had this photography contest ... where we had to shoot 3 snaps within our college campus, and the theme was either "Fusion" or "Bliss" ...
Even though bought seem to be the worst topics ... especially for our campus, I chose Bliss ...

So, from 10 to 12:30 ... I went trigger happy ...
Armed with my digi cam and tripod stand ... I scouted the college for snaps which would fit the theme ...

With great difficulty, I managed to click a few ... rushed to my friends place ... burnt it on a CD and rushed to Foto Fast and got it printed ...
All this done by 3:00 pm ... which was the submission deadline ...

Glad to say, that all the pictures came decently on print ... though a touch brighter than I expected ...

I was looking forward to this contest a lot ... coz I wanted to put my photography skills to test ...
Only time will tell how I match up with the rest ...

Photography is an awesome job ... but requires a lot of patience and understanding and foresight ...
Knowing your camera inside out is a given ...
As I learnt it the more tougher way ...

Anyways, I am putting up the 3 snaps which I clicked today ... for your viewing pleasure ...

38 cents !!!

Thats how much I made with Google adsense for the past ... oh .. I dont know ... how many months ...

When I heard of google adsense ... and all the success stories doing the rounds ...
I thought .. this ju-st may be the thing for me ...

But alas... after having some 1900 visitors all this while, only 13 clicked on the ad and 38 cents got added to my piggy bank ...
And google will send you the check only after you get the $150 mark ...

Lets see ... that should take me about another gzillion years ...
bah !
Not worth it ... I think ...

So, I am doing all you people a favour and removing it altogether ...
Half the time, google does not know what ads to display, because the content of my blogs are so diverse ...
Its tough pleasing everybody ...

The Wonder Years ...

I am feeling the blues ... that nostalgic feeling ...
Just finished watching the fifth season of 'The Wonder Years'

This has to be one of the best TV Shows ever made ...
Everytime I finish watching an episode, the sadness creeps over of lesser episodes remaining to be watched ...
But I just cannot help it ...

You can relate in some way to each and every episode ...
At the end, it always gives you this hope ... that in the end, everything will be alright ...

The only series, in my opinion that can make you laugh and cry at the same time ...
One season, 22 episodes left ... :'(

Will write a big blog after the last episode is done ...
Until then, try and get the shows from somewhere if you can ...
Really, really worth all the effort it took us guys to get the entire series :)

The Entire Wonder Years Gang

Paul, Kevin and Winnie Cooper

Some more shots ...

The Arnold Family

The Island ...

Just came from watching 'The Island' and thought I'd review it ...
Follow the white rabbit here ...

Home ... sweet home ...

After the entire experience ... getting stuck in Bombay, losing all hope of making it ... then finally making it ... then coming to know what standards exist ( aka not winning the thing ) ... we finally made it back home yesterday ...

It was quite an experience ...

While coming back, we had to get our flights changed to Delhi, as none of the Thai planes were landing in Mumbai ...

Microsoft India, then booked our tickets from Delhi to Pune ...
They really took great care of us ... made our lives so much easier ...
If it wasn't for their support in India ... we'd probably have never made it ...
And if it wasn't for the ADE team in Japan, we'd probably have starved to death ... I'm serious :)
Thanks you guys :)

Anyways, attended the first day of college today ...
It has been raining pretty bad in Pune too ... comparing to Pune standards ...
All the roads have taken a bad beating ... so it's now officially very hazardous to venture out in your vehicle ...

The task of avoiding the craters and also not getting muck covered at the end of the ride, is just too much to do ...
And, when it rains ... there is a layer of water everywhere ... which makes detecting the depth of the potholes ... I mean the craters ... that much harder ...

I'm happy that we're back to college and life has ( sort of ) become normal again ...
We have our BE Seminars and Projects to do this year ... so expecting stuff to be a lil more on the wild side ...

On top of that, results are due very soon ... which might be the topping on the bad luck of things happening ...

One thing to look forward to this year, are shorter college timings ...
College gets off at 2:30 now ... yay !!!
Plus, Saturday is holiday ... and on a couple of days, we're off by 12:30 itself ...
So, this is atleast some good news :)

Will write more later ...
Adios !

The last one from Japan ...

I think, and hope that this is the last blog of this trip from Japan ...
We had an awesome time ... and Japan is a great place ...

I really liked the place, the people and the culture ... and got to learn a lot from this place and this entire event ...
Only the language and the food was kind of a problem ... other than that, everything was perfect ...

Today was a tiring day ...
From morning, we were at the conference hall and after all the prize distribution ceremonies, had the flag exchanging stuff and all ...
It was all fun ...

It turns out, my predictions were almost right ...
I got all the three teams right ... but the order got mixed up ...

In the software design, Russia came first ... Followed by Greece and then China ..

In the short film category, our India team came second and the Mexico team won the event ...
The Canadian "Thoughtpulse" team came third ...

If you would like to know what each of these teams ( in the software design ) did in more detail, you can click here.

Night time, we had a fireworks display ...
Today was Japan day ( I think .. ) and all the streets were and the entire harbour was filled with Japanese in Kimonos and traditional dresses ...

All the roads were closed and all the people were on foot ...
I have never seen so many Japanese at a time ... the whole harbour side was jam packed like a rock concert ...

We got a decent show from the convention center ...

Anyways, tomorrow we have to catch a flight at 11:00 am and have to apparently leave the place by the 5:30 bus ... as the ride to the Tokyo Airport is 2 hours long and we need to go and check there whether our flight will actually take off ...

We are supposed to land in Mumbai ... and all the news that we're getting here is bad ...
So, we're trying to get to Delhi and then take a flight to Pune from there ...

I hope everything works out well in the end ...

As always ... some more pictures of the trip ...

Some shots from the fireworks show ... Not at all good ...

I got 2 mediocre shots after clicking about 40 odd or something ...
Didnt have a tripod and impossible to do without one...

The big Japanese rush I was talking about ... All the roads were just full ... of people ...

Anoter fireworks shot ... More decent than the previous one though ...

The entire Indian Contingent ... with the two teams who actually won something ...
The Short Film and the business plan team ...
Seen on the rightmost corner in black ... is Morris Sim ... the guy who started the Imagine Cup.

Lots of other dignitaries and Japanese organisers also seen in the shot ...