The whole people - importance thingy ...

This blog will be on a different note ... I will be deviating from my usual "trying to be funny" blogs ..

This does not concern with any person in particular, but an ideology in general ...
Why do people expect to be treated with importance ?

By this, I dont mean, the regular respect and courtesy which every individual has a right too ... but I mean, people, who feel offended, if not shown respect too ...
Or the ones, who need that constant licking, so that they feel alright ...

I mean, its not the man, but the achievement which commands the respect ... doesn't it ?
How many of us, admire Bill Gates, not for the money he has ... but the way he's earned it ?

In the past, I have come across so many individuals ... professors, people working in Govt Organisations, etc etc ... who want to be so badly treated with respect ...
We had a professor once, who would start off most of his lectures with .. I did this ... I did that ...
And, the entire class had to sit and tolerate all the non sense, only because our 50 marks were in his hands ...

Isn't the importance you associate with a person - in context ?
Like, we have a prof back in my junior college, whom I respect a lot ...
He told us this thing ... which I want to share now ...

I think, his point was, that there is no practical use of doing Trignometry and Calculus and all that stuff if you really wouldn't want to use it ever ...
He said, that if you go to a rickshawala, and tell him that you have a Phd in Mathematics or something like that ... his reply would most probably be ...
"Who gives a damn ? How does your Phd make a difference to me ?"

The point which I want to state is that everything is in context ...
If you were a PhD in Maths and were talking to a MSc, he would be pretty impressed, but I guess the rickshawala wouldnt care a damn ...

For example, when I were to meet my dad's boss in a wedding, is it supposed to make a difference to me ?
He is my 'dads' boss ... not mine ...
Why should I treat him any differently ...

Wanted to add another point of view ... The entire 'standards' thingy ...
A person might be very important ... if you believe in the same standards as he does.
What if you dont accept the same standards which make the person worthy of importance ...

Like, the people who wrote the constitution of India, felt that the backward class people and related reserved sections of the society, should have a quota reserved for them in Educational institutes, because they need it ...

I believe that if a person wants to pursue a course, he should be worthy of it, and be able to get it on his own merit.
Though that person ( who made the reservations ) would be God for some people, he doesn't make any difference to me ... because I don't believe in his standards ....
On the contrary, I kinda hate him ...

Average students who slog hard throughout their lives and end up with 80 - 85 percent marks, get admission in the second best colleges, end up paying 50 grand a year for their degree ... while the reserved category people, with 60% marks get into the best colleges, finish a 4 year course in 8 years ... that too if they are lucky ...

After all, paying a fees of 5 grand a year is peanuts, when your peers are paying 50 grand which also makes up for bulk of your fees ...

All this, just because you are worthy of studying in the college where you got admission, and they, because they have the need to ...

My typical day

[0745 hours]
It is a Saturday morning ...
Quite early for me to wake up ...
Logged on to the internet to check mail ...
The plan of the day : simple
Finish 2 writeups, 6 programs

[0930 hours]
Finish putting the last morsel of breakfast in my mouth.
Time to put the plan in action.

[1127 hours]
Put the finishing touches on 1st writeup.
1 big one more to go ...

[1131 hours]
Finish drawing the margin for the 2nd write up and start writing

[1133 hours]
Call from mom ... She's given her car for servicing ...
Have to go and buy spares and leave them with mechanic

[1203 hours]
With uncle at car shop, paying the money

[1227 hours]
Sitting at granny's place ... waiting to pick up mom from clinic.
Write ups completed : 1/2
Programs writted : 0/6

[1304 hours]
Reach home after picking up mom.

[1348 hours]
Finished lunch
Back to work

[1452 hours]
Call from Mechanic.
The right drive shaft turned out to be of a Wagon R instead of a Zens

[1512 hours]
At Mechanics
Mechanic remembers he forgot to ask me to get something else ...
Mechanic gives a list of more 3 things to buy before tomorrow

[1517 hours]
On way back home with heavy drive shaft jutting out of my Kiney on potholled roads

[1526 hours]
At entrance of society
Rear tyre starts wobbling tremendously ...

[1527 hours]
Rear tyre completely out of air

[1528 hours]
Kick the bike in frustruation

[1530 hours]
Finally at home, with what feels like an hour of dragging a bike with a flat rear tyre.
Dragged bike for distance of 300 mts in about 2 mins 40 seconds
Number of times bike foot stand hit calf : 12

[1547 hours]
Get up after having changed the flat tyre

[1602 hours]
Back in room
Wasting time on the computer
Write ups done : 1/2
Programs written : 0 / 6

[1806 hours]
Dropped mom to clinic on bike

[1856 hours]
At tyre repair guy's shop
Still getting flat fixed

[1908 hours]
Leaving shop
On scavenger hunt for the remaing stuff to give mechanic

[1912 hours]
Standing in front of closed car shop which was open in the morning

[1921 hours]
Still searching for shops which have the requisite stuff

[1955 hours]
Back at home after successful scavenger hunt

[2214 hours]
Just putting finishing touches on 2nd write up
Write ups completed : 2/2
Programs written : 0/6

[2356 hours]
Finishing stupid blog
Expecting many hate emails and comments
Write ups completed : 2/2
Programs written : 0/6
Result : "Screwed" on Monday


"Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong ..."

Comments ... Word Verification ...

Just a quick thing ...

I enabled the Word Verification on my comments thingy ...
Seems that the only comments I get these days are by spammers ...

So, for all those of you who still take the trouble of commenting and letting me know that there are people who read what I put up, I am sorry, but you'll have to key in an extra word ...

Sorry, but this step has become necessary ...

aarrgghhh!!!!!!!!

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhhhhh
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Read somewhere that bloggers use blogs to remove frustruation ...
My life's a mess ...

I am having one of those mid-mid-life crisis ...
I hope that it gets better soon !!!

Until then,
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhh
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There ... feeling better already :)

It's the end of the world ... and I feel fine ...

If you had watched the movie Independence Day carefully, you'd notice that there is a song playing very often in the background which goes
"It's the end of the world ... as we know it ... know it ... and I feel fine ..."

Its sung by R.E.M

Anyways, seriously ... is it really the end of the world .. or am I just being paranoid ?
These have been the worst monsoons ever ... and I have been through the thick and thin of it ...
And the worst part is that it has not yet stopped and does not the least bit look like it ...

It's already almost mid September and the rains seem relentless ...
Mumbai has been flooded for ... I don't know how many times over ...

The infrastructure is pathetic as it is ... but the rains have just worsened it to new heights ...

There is an actual stretch of road here in Pune, which starts from Residency Club to the Don Bosco Bridge ( for those of you in Pune and know the place ) that is so, so, so, so, so bad ... that I swear to God, you would probably be better off taking a 5 km extra long path, just so you could avoid the 500 mts or so of that road ...

I mean, people actually come on bikes till the entrance of the road, look at it and turn back and go another way ...

I had the pleasure of getting stuck on it in my car ...
The only other time, I was so scared was when I was in a pretty big roller coaster sometime ago.

I dont have my camera with me right now, otherwise I would take pictures and post it.

Anyways, the weather has really turned lop sided this year ... and it has happened so suddenly ..
Last year, most of the things were normal .. but now, rain has become such a part of our lives that you wonder why it isn't raining at the moment ...

If I could bring your attention to a very recent movie ... "The Day After Tommorrow" which was completely about the shift in weather patterns and everything freezing over, it does not look so sci - fi now ... does it ?

Saurabh's Seminar Tips ...

Okay, was just doing TP online in the morning ( ya ! I get up in the morning too ) when I got a comment regarding my previous blog ...
And then I realised ... crap ( its better than saying shit ... ) !
I forgot to post my set of tips in my previous post ... which was the main intention ...

However, the previous one was so long and I wrote it in 2 sittings, that by the end of it, just wanted to finish it off ...
So, naturally forgot to write the tips ...

======================================
These are to be followed on your own risk ... I am not responsible for you getting chucked out of the college ... Though it is a remote possibility ...
But just washing my hands off it anyways ...
======================================

Okay, so here goes ...

====================
The first and the foremost thing is that you DO NOT want to ... and I repeat ... DO NOT want to bore the examiner or any other people sitting for your seminar.

If by the end, the examiner is yawning, and has trouble remembering what your topic was, you are pretty done for anyways ...
=====================

Okay, read carefully ...

How you plan to start, and how much time you spend on preparing your start depends on the time of day and the number at which you will be giving your seminar.

If you are one of the people giving the starting 3 seminars of the day, you probably dont need to work on your starting much ...

But, if you are giving your seminar just before the lunch or towards the end of day, or sometime in the middle, when you know, people will be dead ... a little intro video or music will do wonders to your marks.
No matter how stupid your friends think of your effort to put some stupid sound track on the first page, do it ...

It wakes the people and makes them attentive enough to be able to sit through your seminar.
Not to mention the examiers too ...

A friend of mine had his, second last before break and he started with the Kill Bill soundtrack.
Most of the people were laughing when he said that he'd be putting the soundtrack ...
He almost changed his mind, but last minute decided to go with it ...
His seminar probably turned out to be one of the best of the day ... even though he had a not so interesting topic.

And I noticed that almost 75% of the class sat attentively through his presentation for 8 out of the 15 minutes that he was there ...
So, if your start is good, half the battle is won.

========================
Also, make sure that you end well ... its pretty difficult and I found only a couple of people pulled it off ...
Though, this is not as important as starting well ... for obvious reasons ...

Firstly, most of your audience left are your loyal friends ... and the examiners give the marks somewhere in the middle of your seminar.
So, unless you really botch up your ending, you should do fine ...

Just start well ...

=========================
I cannot stress enough for the fact that you should make your seminar interesting ...
No matter what your topic ...

Your presentation does not have to stick to the paper ... it can deviate a lot ...
When preparing your ppt, ask yourself whether you would actually want to sit and listen to it in the audience ...

If the answer is 'NO' ... you're probably going about it the wrong way ...
==========================

Hard work always pays ...
Search, search, search the internet for flashier icons ... and the works ...

Make your stuff look good ... even though it means burning the mid night oil a day before ...
===========================

Using a default template is definitely a no - no.
Almost all the people in my class made their own templates ....
Not only does it give you originality and allows you to make your presentation resemble your seminar topic, you also avoid putting on a template someone else used already ...
===========================

Watch out for the colour scheme ... What may look good on your monitor, may not look good on the projector ...

Try to keep a white bg with black / blue text or the inverse ...

If there is not enough cover in your seminar hall ( like we did not have curtains and there was a lot of light ), you'd be better of using a black bg and white text ...
I screwed up in this regard ... I had a white bg with Blue text
===========================

And finally, my list of things that will get you killed and things which will save your ass ...
( Compiled painstakingly during the presentations )

THINGS WHICH YOU'D GET KILLED FOR
( i.e. things which you should not do ... duh ! )

1. Going technical very early
- Bad mistake ... People who do this, will lose 80% of their audience within 5 seconds ...
Take my word on it ... No one, and that includes even the examiner, is interested in seeing protocols and architectural diagrams ...
Though this is important ( to show that you did some work ) keep it at last after you've said what you wanted people to hear

2. Lots of Architecture Diagrams
3. Not preparing the presentation well
4. No eye contact with the audience
5. Speaking fast

6. Using an auto timer on the slides.
- This is by far the worst you could do for yourself.
Don't be stupid and dont try to show off unneccesarily ...
Advance the slides yourself ... and if it is too much work, bribe a friend to do it for you.

7. Underlining text
- Does not look cool ... not always anyways ...
Try CAPITALISING or making text bold.

8. Bad font selection ...
- Avoid using fonts like Times etc .. they dont look good on screen

==============================
THINGS THAT WILL SAVE YOUR ASS
( or the things that you SHOULD DO )

1. Give more real life examples
- Something that people can relate too ...

2. Use more easy to understand images

3. Do something to grab people's attention at the beginning of the seminar
- Use video, audio, aliens, do a strip show ... anything ...
Just make sure people give you atleast 5 minutes to get their attention full time.

4. Speak loudly and confidently.

==============================
Okay, that was another long blog ...
So, me will again lay off for a while ...

Put up a comment if you need more help specifically.

And if you find this information useful, please consider making a donation to my PayPal account.
( Hey, I just bought a cell ... down by a lot of cash ... need to make that up somehow ! )

Scenes from a Seminar Hall

We just finished our BE Seminars a couple of days ago, and I am still basking in the sense of achievement that I did not screw it up ...

Oh well, some idiot messed with the projector settings and my slides got all screwed and stuff, but other then that, it was mostly okay ...

Getting into the meat of things, I wanted to write about the observations that I had during the 4 gruelling days of sitting and listening to other people talk mostly about subjects which I had no interest off ...

So, here goes ... the people who make up a typical seminar situation ...

1. The Guy Giving the Seminar
This without doubt is the most important guy in the seminar room.
The poor soul, whose worst fear is of public speaking ( even greater than death ), is made to stand up in front of 50 people, who are mostly not interested in whatever he has to say.
On top of that, he is expected to narrate and manage the slides in the 15 minutes alloted to him.
These people fall in the following category ...

1.1 - The under time fellows
These are the people who prepared too few a slides, and probably did not practise enough to realise that they did not fall into the 13 - 15 minute category.
These people make up about 35% of the crowd and finish their seminar, to the delight of all others, within 8 - 9 minutes.
The number of slides are typically just around 20 and the topics covered are generally superficial, and application oriented ( non technical ) which does not allow for more matter, and hence more time for the presentation.

Notable features are lots of pausing and umms and aahhs ... which basically help them get to 8 minutes ...

1.2 - The good time fellows
Most of the people fell in this category. I'd say about 50% of the people ...
These people have generally practised atleast once and finish off their seminars between 13 - 14 minutes.
These people generally, are not very hated and the they have a good mix of technical and non technical information, evenly spaced out ...
These people probably end up with the most marks.

Notable features are generally decent presentations and many a times, elocution like speeches which come off as mugged up ...
Quite a few topics falling in this category are decent and worth listening too ...

1.3 - The over time fellows
These people generally shoot off their 15 minutes.
This species, has trouble, not knowing what matter to cut down and how much to speak on.
Either the person has really prepared the entire seminar on his own ( thus not being able to delete the content that he so painstakingly collected ) or the fellow just copied the entire seminar of some person from another college ...

Notable characteristics are skipping through atleast 20 slides, rushing off so fast that people didnt even get the topic.
And mostly, the ability to cram 40 - 50 slides in the space of 15 minutes.

2 - The Examiners
These people are the most confused people sitting in the hall.
They either know that they have no idea about what you are talking or they 'think' they have an idea of what you are talking.

What students generally worry about is not whether they will be able to answer the questions these people ask at the end of the seminar, but whether they will be able to somehow relate their topic to the questions asked by these people ...

Therefore, questions such as "But don't you need some p2p network to use BitTorrents ?" after a seminar on BitTorrents, or a question like "Tell me the application of Red Tacton in touch screens ..." ( Red Tacton is a method of transferring data by human touch ) are asked.

And the students are left totally bewildered and are lost for words.

We had a examiner who had his head so high up his a** that he asked questions to each and every student ...
No matter if the question was the least bit related ...
Naturally, most of the people trying to answer would be left fumbling and confused ...

This guy would sit back, look at the hapless student and smile ... thinking that he was oh, so smart and clever to ask such questions ...
And sitting at the back, we would think, "What a moron !"

3 - The General Audience
These people make up for maximum of the crowd.
If you can speak well and hold their attention, you can keep them interested for exactly 3 minutes.
After which, most of them go to sleep, or put those ear phones back on ...

In the very rare event, do these listen to the entire seminar ...
And if they do, you can be rest assured that you have done a good job.

4 - Your loyal friends
These people are your truest buddies from the class.
They will turn up for your seminar and even sit through it, patiently, attentively trying to grasp every word that comes out of your mouth - never mind it not making the wee bit sense ...

Nodding everytime you look at them - to give you confidence.
These are the people, you'd probably need most during the 15 minutes ... and the ones to start clapping as soon as you've answered a couple of questions, to spare you from the slaughter ...

5 - The Not So Friendly ...
These people are the ones who have been waiting patiently, anxiously even ... for you to get up there for your seminar.
They prepare, conspire, read your report, so that they can ask you questions which you probably wouldn't be able to answer in the Q & A round.

These ploys generally fail and seldom work, thus adding more insult to injury ...
Interesting attributes include, asking multiple variants of the same question and back questioning, till they get tired themselves, or the person answers with a shrug, and the words, "I don't know ..."

6 - The Plants ...
These are the ones which you pass on questions to, to be asked during the Q&A round.
Probably the only ones you can answer properly ... with confidence ...

These are very easily noticeable, because mostly the questions are very lame, multiplied with lamer acting on the part of the person asking the question ...
This is generally followed by some scratching of the head or stammering on the part of the person giving the seminar, so that it all looks authentic ...

The biggest give away of this entire operation is that the plants are generally seated within a radius of 2 to 3 people of the person giving the seminar ... before he got up to give it ...
Helps in the easy passing out of chit questions ...

Next blog, what to do and what not to in a seminar cum presentation ...

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 ...

What's with Japanese food ?

Today was more of a chilled out day ... with nothing much to do ...
We went to the amusement park in the morning .. at about 12 and sat on the Ferris Wheel and the roller coaster ... which I dont think I will be doing again for quite sometime now ...

The Roller Coaster was uncomfortable and short and pretty scary ... the Ferris wheel was more of a sight seeing thing than a joy ride ...

Anyways ... the rest of the day, went in watching all the short films which were submitted earlier by the participants and the 6 finalists of the Software Design Invitational ... which were all pretty good ...

The 6 finalists were : Slovenia, Brazil, Germany, Greece, China and Russia ...

Russia had a really innovative app and China was scarily comprehensive ...
Greece tackled a social issue of creating a speech to sign language and sign language to speech app for the hearing impaired ...

The other team presentations were boring ... and the Germany app was not that interesting ...
Whatever they did, we could have implemented on our base system within a matter of a few hours ... We had all the back end ...

Only their presentation was slightly better ...

My prediction is : Russia, China and Greece ... lets see what happens tomorrow...

Note to myself : Next year, the presentation has to be awesome !!!

Anyways, we had this very sophisticated, formal, Japanese dinner in one of the poshest clubs in Japan ...
Again, all of us could just not consume the food.
Whats with the food huh ?
I think rest all people from all over the world can still eat it ... but we Indians just cannot ...
We had an early Indian dinner before we went to the one at the club ...

The dinner was supposed to be 5 course ... and by the 2nd course ... we had excused ourselves to go to the bathroom ... and ditched the entire event ... walking 25 mins to get back to the hotel ...

Had two glasses of ( not so good ) starbuck's cold coffee on the way back ...
Anyways ... next year's Imagine Cup is going to be in India ... so there is going to be a flag handing over ceremony and all of us are supposed to be on stage ...
So, we have some sort of rehearsel at 10 am ...

Thats all from me for now ...

More pictures ... :)

This was supposed to be our main course .. some boiled carrot and some seeweed look alike vegetable ...
We had 9 types of cutlery out there !!! 9 types !!!

Yes ... you can rub your eyes again ... but this is Gaurang in formals !!!
Didn't think that would happen before the world imploded in itself .. did ya ?

The Roller Coaster ride that we sat in ... which solidifed my belief that these things are not for me ...

End of dream run ...

Okay ...
First, the bad news ...

We didn't make it to the final 6 teams of the Software Design of the Imagine Cup ...
It's okay ...

I think our presentation was the best we had given till now and the software was also working properly ...
Only, the idea didnt click well with all the other international judges ...

I'm happy for the fact that we atleast made it all the way here ... and got to present our solution ...
Would have been really depressed if we had got stuck up at Mumbai itself ...

On the bright side, we still have one year to go ... and besides, winning World two years in a row would be kinda hard anyways ...
So, we'll just win it next year ... promise ...

The other teams to make it were Japan, China, Greece, Slovenia, Russia and one another team which I don't kinda remember now ...

I seriously have no idea what the other solutions are ... so, I have no basis for comparison ... but we'll come to know about it tomorrow ...

Anyways, the entire ceremony was like an Academy Award dinner kinda thing ...
We had round table reservations and all the short films were shown on the screen and we had a 9 course "Vegetarian" Japanese dinner ... which honestly, I could not consume ...
Nothing personal ... but except the noodles, which I ate with a pair of chop sticks for the first time ( Yay !!! ), couldnt think of eating anything else ...
Most of the veggie stuff ... was ... just bamboos ... It tastest okay ... no taste actually ... something like boiled wood ...

Anyways, as soon as the entire thing got over, we hit the Indian restaurant and packed some desi khana ...

Thats all for tonight ... just before I push off ... picture of the day ... clap, clap, clap !!!
We'll hopefully be riding that thing tomorrow ...

The giant ferris wheel ... second in the world only to the one in London ...
Comes with its own Roller Coaster ...

Me thinks, Microsoft India is going to pick up the tab on this ;)

Day 2 at Japan ...

Hmm ...

Day 2 at Japan ... Yokohama ...
Today is supposed to be a relaxing, chilled out, picnic day ... and we'll come to know whether we will be making it tomorrow or not for the finals ...

We had a trip planned to the Sankeien Gardens at 9:30 ...
We woke up at 9:20 ... and made it to the bus departg for the gardens ...

The gardens, as you would imagine were very beautiful ...
Apparently, it is about 10,000 sq mts and was a private garden of a person ... Sankei Hara ...

They had also lunch there ... but we vegi Indians had to fruits and salads and chocolate pastries.

We later came back and pigged out at a buffet at an Indian Restaurant ...
The place is only about 5 mins walking from our Hotel ...

We have a digital theatre program in the evening along with the preliminary results of the Software design invitationals ...
In the digital theatre, they will be showing us all the entries from the Short Film category ...

There is also a team from BITS Pilani among one of the 6 teams ... so we will be rooting for them ...

Check out some more pictures below ....

Until later then ... :)

The Sankeien Gardens ... Entrance

Lawns at the Garden

Our ADE ( Academic Development Evangelists ) taking a nap :)

More garden shots

We guys ... and Tejas and Pratibha ( 1at and 3rd ) from the left ... They're Microsoft ADEs from India accompanying us for the trip

Bamboo plantations

Our Hotel ... Pan Pacific International

Hotel Lobby

The Giant Ferris Wheel opposite our Hotel

The Imagine Cup welcome board at the Hotel

Pictures from Japan ... I ...

Some pictures that we clicked today from Japan ...
Will be putting up lots more when I get the time ... and when I click it ...
Clicked them only today after we got into our rooms ...

The harbour ... the bridge can be seen clearly in the background ... from our balcony :)
We have some very nice views ... yet to come ...

Our hotel room ... I've tried to hide most of the messy part of the room ... but it still shows :)

Night view of Japan from our balcony again :)

The Pacifico building opposite our building ...

And it rained on my parade ...

Finally ... writing this from the comfort of my hotel room in Yokohama, Japan ... but this trip has not at all been easy ...
It has been an adventure ... sort off ... here is an account ...

We were supposed to fly to Japan on the 26th night at around 11:30 from the Sahar Airport in Mumbai ...
Just to be safe, we decided to leave early morning on the 26th by train ...

I woke up in Pune, at 6:00 am to heavy torrential rains ... like there was no tomorrow ...
When we reached the train station, it was still raining ...

We got into the Pragati Express and headed to Mumbai ...
The rain was unrelentless ... it was just pouring all the while with no letting down ...

On the way, the train stalled at the Vittalwadi station, as the tracks were flooded with water and the train could not proceed ...

We were stalled at the station for 3 hours ... before Gaurang's ( my team mate ) dad arranged for a car to pick us up ...
Gaurang's grandparents were also accompanying us ...

The car picked us all up and took us to Mumbai ...
On the way to the Airport, the road ahead got flooded and we got stranded ...
All the cars stopped on the road and there was a pathetic traffic jam ...

Somehow, we switched roads and ended up in front of a eating joint at around 5 pm
The rain was so bad, that all the umbrellas and everything was useless ...

We were stuck there till about 10 pm

Then, once the rain got a bit less, the water started receding and we decided to make our way to the airport ...

On the way, got stuck up at a very bad traffic jam ...
We then got the news that our flights had gotten cancelled ...

On our way out, we landed up at another water clogged place ... where the driver just stopped the car and let it stand ...
There were 5 of us ... trapped inside a car ... with knee deep water all around us ..
We even couldnt open the windows as the rain water would come in ...

Finally at 3 am, we started moving ... and landed up at a hotel at 4 am in the morning ...
We luckily got a room there, and stayed there for 2 days ... before Mumbai got back on its feet ...

The flights were still not leaving ... so we came to Pune, took a flight to Delhi and then to Japan ...
Though we missed one day, the people here, made arrangements for us ... so it was not a problem ...

More about the Japan trip later ...
Here are some pictures that we took of the entire rain onslaught thingy ... the next day ... once most of the water had pulled away and we could analyse the damage done ...

The worst thing was that people had left their cars ... thousands of them on the street and walked away ... many of these cars were still lying there when we saw it the second day after the rain ...

Motorcycle abandoned on way to hotel

Crap in car ... Leaves, sticks ... water hyacinths even ... that were stuck in car radiators, motors, etc ...

Yeah ... I'm still all here ...

Yes.
Sorry to disappoint you all, but contra-ry to popular mis-belief I am still alive and breathing ... and very much 'all' there ...

I've been in a cocoon kinda thing of late ... emerging out of the house, only in the search of that ever elusive job ... our college is having all the placements going on from week one itself ...

However, I have not attended a single lecture or practical in what has been my largest, ever, bunk exercise which has lasted for about 20 days as of today, and plans to continue till the 3rd of August.
My teachers have given their kind consent to let me ...

We are working the 'big daddy' of student contests ... the World Finals of the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2005, and I'd stay home regardless of whether we got permission or not ...

We have to get flying in less than 10 days and we're still running to get lots of things done ...
So, I'll probably hit the blogging scene after I get back ... with loads of photographs from Japan ...

Till then, adios ... or ... umm .. err ... Sayonara ?
( hehehe :) )

That 'resulty' feeling ...

Do you remember that feeling ?
When you go up to collect your result ?

The anxiety ... butterflies crawling in the stomach ...
Suicidal tendencies ???

Today were the SSC ( Std X ) results for the Pune Univ ... and were of importance coz by bro was due to get his results today ...
From morning onwards ... he was tensed, harrassed by people calling to ask the results which he hadn't got ( results come out at 3 pm )
Anyways ... basically, he was pissed ... it was his first big examination results ... and it was showing ...

All his crying and self loathing eventually rubbed off on me ... and I was taken back to my time, when I got my 10th standard report ...

For all those of you who don't know, std X is the first exam we people give at the University level ...
At that age, it is the 'grand poo-ba' of all exams ... the very feared class to be in ...

Anyways, my results were pathetic ... considering how much I had expected and how much I had gotten ...
I had come home, miserable ... and locked myself in ... hating myself ... for a couple of days, without any social contact ...

Now that I think of it ... it was pretty stupid ...
I had gotten some 81% ... and I was feeling miserable because I had expected marks in the upper echelons ... 88%

Anyways, the feeling stays ...
Just before you are handed your results ... you study the faces and expressions of people who have got their results ...
Trying to gauge how badly you are going to get slaughtered ...

There are only two feelings that one experiences when one peeks at the result at hand ...
One of utter disappointment ... the lowest you have felt of late ... or the sheer exuberance .. knowing that you didn't flunk out on that extremely dubious paper ... or maybe got the grade that had eluded you for the majority of your lifetime ...

Anyways ... the crux of this blog ... is 'the feeling before knowing'
Something, everyone should experience atleast once in their lifetime ...
( which we guys do twice every year now ... )

And after seeing so many summers, have wisely realised ... that in the end, marks don't mean a thing ...
They're just a crappy way of expanding the boundaries between people ... victims of a crappier education system ...

One of my favourite lines, which I sincerely trust in such situations ...
Everything will be alright in the End ...
If it's not ... it's not the end ...

And oh, by the way ... my bro got almost the same marks as me ... 80.66% ... ( I beat him by 2 marks ... hehehe :) )
That, after crying the entire day about getting 68% ... and he's not the scholarly type ... so we kinda believed him .... :p
Idiot !

When was the last time you enjoyed studying ?

And by studying, I don't mean members of the opposite sex ...
I mean, actual, practical, "hitting the books" kinda studying ...

And oh, by the way, I am back :D
( Encouraged by the fact that there are people actually out there who read the stuff I write about, I've decided to return ... )

Anyways, back to pressing issues ...
So, when was the last time you actually enjoyed studying ?
I can safely vouch for most of the people there, the answer will be never ...

Just gave the most pathetic exams of my life, just a couple of weeks ago ...
They weren't pathetic because I did not study for them ... but because, I did not, in the least bit, feel like studying ...

We had the worst subjects - ever !
And this made me think, why ... why are we tortured by the Ministry of Education into studying utter crap, which :
(a) : Has no significant use to us, in the least possible way
(b) : Is so outdated, that whatever use it had, has long passed its prime ...

The main reason, this happens is because, I think, we are made to study all this without understanding the application point of view of the entire thing ...

If we knew, where the stuff was applied, and where we could use it ... we would probably study with more interest ...

Instead, we get teachers who walk into the classroom - on the first day of college, and the first thing they do is, to scribble something on the board and speak in Greek and Latin.
This actually goes on for the entire semester ...

The practicals are mostly just copied ... and modified, and it is not until the last month before the exams, do we begin to understand all the stuff ... while hitting the books ...
But, it's too late till then ... the subject is dead ... and I don't think any person would even consider taking it up again in the future, just because of the initial fright - the entire thing gave him / her ...

This semester, we had some good subjects ... well atleast they 'sound' good.
We had databases, our first tryst with Visual Programming languages ( like VB / VC ), Microprocessors, System Programming ...
The syllabus of all these subjects were so bad ... that I don't think I want to databases again ... and I shudder at the thought of writing programs in VC++ with all the crappy MFCs and the like ...

We also had a subject called "Software Engineering" which was supposed to teach us how to 'design' software, before beginning to write it ...
This, I have realised, is a very, very important thing ...
But the way we were taught it, I squirm at the thought of drawing another UML diagram ...

The Ministry of Education is just doing the opposite of what it is supposed to - It is murdering 'Education'

Remember that famous T Shirt quote :
"I was born intelligent ... but Education ruined me ... "

Hanging up the boots

Honestly, I had seen it coming ...

Of late, I haven't been blogging nor have been having the time to read the blogs of other people whom I generally read ...

I could ... If I planned my time properly, but I don't see it happening ...

There is no point in blogging so infrequently ...

My last blog was on the 18th of April ...

Soo ... I've decided to call it quits ... atleast for now ...
Might decide to come back later ... but it all depends ...

I will be back writing reviews on Mouthshut ... which I can do as infrequently as I want ...
(http://www.mouthshut.com/userinfo.php?uid=sajain84)
So, until next time, this is adios and goodbye ...

Might start blogging again ...
Might be sooner than I think ...

Anyways, thanks for sticking around and going through the stuff I generally crap about.

Adios :)

To Blog or not to blog ...

Of late, blogging has been pretty much an off - on affair ...
My excuse being ... of no time ..

I guess thats what Engineering and Submissions does to you ...
And more often than not, its the teachers who create all the problems ..

So anyways ... now, that have completed with all the submission crap and stuff ... will try to blog more ...

The LAN partiee ...

Dreams do come true ...

On the 16th of this month, we had our last day at college - which was sort of an unnecessary extension due to the 'genius' of some stupid people from my class.
If life would be perfect, 13th would be the last day ... but anyways ...

Having a LAN party had been on our agenda for months ... we even almost had it 4 months ago ... but the stupid college got in the way and everything was washed off ...
So, this 16th, with a do or die attitude ... I left college at 10:30 and headed for the Comp Stores.

Most of the guys were already at my place and were setting up their comps ..
I had cleared the entire drawing room of its belongings and had put 3 large tables - edge to edge to house the 8 computers which were gonna come ...

Anyways ... so I went to the comp guy and purchased 30m of LAN cable and 20 crimps and headed home.
A friend of mine has a crimper and also a switch.

According to plan, we should have finished crimping the wires and setting up the Network by 12 and started playing by 12:30 .. but this was not to be ...
After a lot of loose connections and bad crimps and a lot of mess ... we finally got everything in order by 2pm

We then played CZ ( Condition Zero ) with a few bouts of Quake III thrown in till 7 - a good 5 hours of continuous gaming ...
The plan could have easily extended to an over-night affair .. but for a particular person who left early .. grr :@

Anyways ... we had lots of fun ... and if you would have walked alongside my house in between those 5 hours ... you would have heard all the expletives that have ever fallen on your ears in your lifetime ... and even more ... just in the span of 30 seconds !!!
Good times :)

Anyways, the thing is that its not amazing that we played for 5 hours and stuff .. but that we managed to pull it off ...
The first time - our first ever LAN party with a network of 8 different computers ...

Now that we have all the wires crimped and stuff ... next time shouldn't take more than 30 mins to set up.
For any help on how to set up a LAN gig ... feel free to contact me :)

Ambush at 32 Vidyanagar ...

Trickery, treachery, back stabbing even ...
I was ambushed today ...

Today, was supposed to be the festival of colours - Holi ...
A perfect day to get drenched, drench people ... be the very hated practical joker ...

I hadn't played holi for many years ...
Actually, I hate the dry colours ... the pain in removing them .. and the very chemical wet colours .. when, once your clothes are drenched with, you can use them as mops from the next day onwards ...

So, I hadn't played holi since many years ...
The joy that one derives from the festival has taken a quantum shift from drenching people to the good food that accompanies the special day ....

So, today, like the so many years before ... I went to my granny's place for the customary holi greetings and also to devour all the goodies ...
However, my uncle ( my mom's second brother ) is visting ... who is also a member of the Indian Army ... and is notorious from his childhood days for all the pranks he played ...

So, after all the greetings are done with ... I settle with a plate of food watching Sehwag clobber the Pakistanis ...
All the cousins were at my granny's place ...

So, my uncle comes in ... catches hold of my other cousin ( who is just 2 years younger to me ) and drags him outside ... with a lot of effort and pulling and resistance .. he finally ejects him out of the house ...
My cousin held on to dear life ... clinging onto 3 door frames on his way out ... before my uncle ... finally pulled him out after 5 minutes of resistance ...

Finally outside .. all my younger cousins pounced on him ... and gave him his worth ...
He finally came in sometime later ... drenched ... and his tail between his legs ... cursing me as I had my hearty share of fun ... at his expense ...

I was high and dry at this point of time ... though not for long ... read on ...

I had just finished with the food .. when another aunt of mine came to me and asked me to come out for a photograph ...
I smelt a rat ... ( my family members are pretty bad actors .. can't help smiling ... )
Anyways ... I thought what the heck ... she had a camera in her hand ...

Took off my watch and kept it on the table ... just in case ...
Peeped out and to my surprise, no one was in the vicinity ...

I couldn't believe that she actually wanted to only take a picture ...
No sooner I stepped out of the door ... I got it ...

It was an ambush ... I was trapped ...
All the kids who had been conveniently hiding in all the possible corners ... came rushing out with water guns, balloons, buckets of water ... all led by my uncle ...

In 20 seconds, I was drenched head to toe ... dripping with colour and with a face that would not have been recognized had I been on a coroner's table ...

I just stood there ... let the kids have their share of fun ...
Then, when the time was right, charged on my other two cousins who were in the range of my age group ... and had my share of fun ...

After getting one with a bucket of 'hard-to-remove' coloured water ... I got the other 'running' one with a carefully executed balloon lauch ...

Good times :)
Feels good to be back :)

An idea can change your life : Part 1

This blog comes in the wake of me having seen the movie : "Pirates of Silicon Valley"

I wouldn't say that the movie is brilliant, but I liked it just the same, for the entertaining manner in which it tries to teach us - from a chapter in History ...

The movie takes us from Steve Jobs' ( founder of Apple ) and Bill Gates' ( Microsoft ) college days to their current Industry Domination and how it all came to be ...

For those who don't know ... it was the researchers at Xerox who invented the Mouse and the Graphical User Interface ( GUI ) - which is the basis of any popular Operating system seen today ...

The Board of Directors at Xerox made a decision - which can easily be, the worst business decision ever made ...
They turned down the mouse and the GUI ... stating that - "No person in the right mind would want that ... "
They later, dug their own grave ... when they allowed Jobs and his team to take a peak at their non-feasable product and dissect their invention ...

The apple team goes back .. reproduces what they saw ... steals everything ... and releases the Macintosh ... with a mouse and a GUI ...
Then comes Bill Gates, convinces Jobs to let him have some Macintosh prototypes ... while they were still in development ... takes them home, dissects them ... and comes out with Windows ...

Apple steals from Xerox, Microsoft from Apple ... and today, both Jobs' and Gates are billionaires .. and Xerox is still there ... where it was a decade ago ... making Photo copying machines ...

Just makes you think ... if the Board of Directors at Xerox would have agreed to go ahead with the product, Apple wouldn't be where it is today ... and Microsoft would still be a 2 bit company in Albuquerque ...

How just one idea can change your life ... or ruin it for you ...
Being at the right place at the right time ...

Take the case of Sabeer Bhatia ... free email ...
The Ambanis, the Gulshan Kumars ... the perfect 'rags to riches' story ...

Was talking to my dad earlier today and narrated to him the story - about the Microsoft and Apple thing ...
At the end, I mentioned that ... it's all about being at the right place at the right time ...

To this my dad said that, the right time will come eventually ...
You just have to keep trying ...

I kinda agree with him ...

People don't fail ...
They just give up trying ...

Banner Banters ...

There is this thing going around in Pune ... which I had been wanting to blog about ... for quite some time now ...

Its about the amazing number of advertisement boards coming up ... all over Pune ... with guess what ... Birthday wishes for politicians ...

The board will be a pretty big one ...
And will be strategically placed at the corner of an intersection ... so that whatever view we got of the traffic coming from the left ... is blocked ...

The entire board will contain a huge picture of an ugly politician .. who looks like he's stepped out of Satya ...
The message will read something to the tune of "Heartiest wishes for so and so's birthday on such and such date ..."
The poster will then contain the photographs of the 3 to 4 people who are wishing him ... in bottom right ... which actually look like mug shots taken from the Tihar Jail ..

If the entire poster didn't look gooney enough ... the pictures of these 3 dumb-asses would complete the picture ...

Saw in the newspaper sometime ago ... about this dude from somewhere in the city ... who put up an equally sized poster with his Alsatian dog's picture on it ...
Below, he conveniently puts the pictures of a pom, a doberman and another dog ...

The caption reads ...
"Heartiest birthday wishes to my dog - Rocky ... from his fellow dog friends ..."

This deserves an applause :)
Bravo !

A new project ...

We're working on a new software project for this contest ... and have decided to keep an online blog for the same ...

Will be posting updates and whats new and progress made there ...
If you're interested, you can check it out at : http://citypulse.blogspot.com

Whats with the lights ???

Am actually pretty peeved right now ...
We didn't have lights for the entire day !!!

Ever since Congress has come to power ... we're having 3 hours of load shedding everyday ...
And ever so often, on top of that ... lights aren't there for complete days ...
Like today ... there was load shedding from 3pm - 6pm ... and then no lights from 6:10 - 8:00 and then again 8:10 - 11:30 !!!

I mean, whats wrong with these people ???
And on top of that, they are planning to give free power to the farmers !!!
From where is it going to come ?

Maybe, they should pick up some efficiency on the way and check out power thefts and do maintenance work more often ...
And whats with the street lights being on most of the time during the day ??

We people pay all our bills ... then why should we have power cuts ?
What we need is a system ... in which, our bill gets reduced by some amount every minute that MSEB is cutting power ... load shedding or otherwise ...

That way, either they will get efficient ... or bankrupt ... opening the doors to private players like TATA Power or similar ...
Either way, we should benefit ...

Bombay apparently never has power cuts ...
And the profit it generates, it will be suicidal for them to even cut power for a couple of hours ...

Pune on the other hand, also generates a lot of income ... but these really dumb politicians ... give away free power to farmers ... by cutting down on our power ...

Hows the country going to progress ?

Those darn spammers ...

Actually, the title should have been ... "Those spamming bastards ... " ... but I thought it'd draw a lot of attention ...

I don't really get it ...
I mean, what is with these people ?
How can anyone in their right mind, send millions of emails to people daily and expect to sell a product ?

I've been using email regularly since the time I knew Internet existed ... and still have my very first email address at yahoo ... which is n...

I get about 50 junk mails a day on that account ... which Yahoo mostly filters out ...
But, Yahoo's filtering rejection ratio is pretty high ... and sometimes, legitimate messages get thrashed out ...

I primarily use gmail now ... which is an awesome service ... with tonnes of free goodies ( which I hope stays that way ) and also another service called myrealbox ...
Both give me POP access ( which lets you download messages to your Outlook Express )

Sometime ago, when I had my own domain name ( tidesigns.com ), I would get about 170 spam messages a day ... that too in a mailbox which I was paying for ...
Had to use a filtering software and most of the time, was just deleting all the email ...

I cant believe, people still post their complete email addresses in posts or websites ...
If at all necessary ... put your email up like : abc_at_yahoo.com ...
This way, there are less chances for email reepers to get your mail and you to get spammed ...

Also, report spam if your mail service provider allows ... so that everyone is benefitted ...
And the best precaution is to use a completely different email address for signing up ...
Sigh ...

Some CD Flak ...

Have you ever wondered ... why the Principal is the dumbest guy in the college ?
He never seems to make a right decision ... atleast not from your POV ...

In my entire life, I've had exactly 3 principals ... 2 at school and 1 now ...
The problem with Principals is that they are very, very old ...

Talk about the generation gap !!!

I didnt have much problem with my school principals ... its the college one who is bothering me a bit ... mostly on the CD issue ...

Firstly, I was pretty much forced into making the CD Magazine ... which I knew from day one ... was going to be a pretty crappy job ...

Then the changes ... thousands of it ...
Actually, it took more time implementing the changes than making the actual CD ...

Throughout the entire process ... I always updated a few fellow companions with the CD .. how much it was done ... and they all gave me the ok tag ... just to make sure that I wasn't getting carried away ...

And, when we give the Princi to see the CD ... for one whole day ... he doesn't ... and then last minute ... more changes ...
And very, very stupid ones at that ...

And in my college ... the second you have to do something for the college ... you are completely screwed ...
You go to play for the college, take part in a contest ... even if you win ... no attendance ...
On top of that, they expect you to have completed all the assignments on time ...

The biggest burn was when we organised an Inter Collegiate Event ...
People who went to put up posters and announce the event in other colleges ( which is a necessity for any event ) were conveniently put up in the defaulters list ...

Too much restriction and the staff want to get involved in everything that we do ... even though it does not really concern them ...

When recently, we were at MIT-WEC for a game development contest ( which we won ... :) ) , the vice principal actually came, sat with the participants and asked us for suggestions as how the contest should have been and areas for improvement ...
Now, thats how staff should be ...

Story of my life ...

Phew ...

Finally the CD Magazine thing is over me ...
Now, have a race against time to finish up lots of college submissions in the coming 3 days ...

The CD Magazine took up a major chunk of my life, for the past month ... about 5 - 8 hours a day ...
Had to learn a totally new application - Director ... along with a bit of Lingo ...
Just crossing my fingers now ... that everything goes on well ...

Coz, most of the time, I really jinx myself pretty bad ... so ... I hope this time its all done properly ...

Also, noticed that it is better to blog smaller blogs ... more often, than larger ones rarely ...

So, from now on ... will write *try to write* smaller entries ... and now that all the CD crap is behind me, hopefully shall have more time ...

Woah ! Headrush ...

Phew ...
Finally ... some time to get back to blogging ...

The past few days had been over the head ... hectic ...
Race against time and all the yada yada ... to complete this CD Magazine that our college is coming out with ...
Shouldnt be counting the chickens before they hatch ... but have finished about 80 - 90% of the stuff ... demo-ed it to the teachers and a selected few friends and the reviews have been pretty good ... and best of all ... no changes whatsoever ...
The most difficult part about any project ( esp graphics designing ) is to get everybody to be happy ...

Also, was busy with this Inter Collegiate event, which, I am happy to announce went off much more smoothly than I had expected ...
So much, that our delighted H-O-D complied with our request and declared Monday to be a Holiday for the entire Comp Dept.
Woohoo :)

Today, caught the morning show of 'The Aviator' at INOX ...
This is the first movie in which ... I have felt nothing about the movie ... during the entire course of the film and even afterwards ...
Maybe it was the front - row seats that we ended up in ... or the very rare Housefull at INOX ... I don't know ...
But the movie just started, got over and I was there ... three hours later ... and felt nothing.

I will have to agree that the movie is awesome-ly made ... and that Caprio didnt even let me feel for one moment, that he was acting ...
The USA of 1930 - 1950 has been recreated nicely ... with all the aristocricies and the likes ... but the movie doesn't tell much about Howard Hughes, other than his strong liking for making expensive movies and planes.

"A Beautiful Mind", according to me, was a much better biography by far ... and was more satisfying ...

The Aviator just covers some 20 years of Howard Hughes' life ( from his twenties to his fourties ) which leaves us with no head or tail ... really ...
Its just a sequence of events one after the other ...

But at the same time, I must admit, that there isn't one boring moment during the entire three hours and I never felt the movie dragging ...

The movie has got a very impressive cast with Kate Blanchett and Kate Beckinsale and lots of other stars who have done justice to their character ...

I especially like Kate Blanchett's portrayal of Katharine Hepburn.

Ending this, want to make a strong protest against the cutting of film done at theatre - level ... where all these theatres cut around 10 - 20 minutes from each movie just so that they can get an extra show in ...
Damn SOBs ...

Anyways ... we were totally lost in seeing Beckinsale's character ... as she just appears abruptly out of no where in the film ... no introduction ... nothing ...
This, I feel was definitely cut in addition to 3 dialogues which were very very visible cut in the course of the film ...

Who is John Galt ?

The Fountainhead was a pretty good book ...

I was at Crosswords, the other day, and happened to notice that they had 'Atlas Shrugged' in stock for 275.
Didn't think twice ... bought it ...

"Atlas Shrugged" is also by Ayn Rand and is another of her best seller ...
This is the 35th year, the book is in production ...
From the time I had finished the Fountainhead, I had been trying to get my hands on this book, and here it was ... finally ...

The book, may be pretty intimidating to many ... its about 1100 pages, with a very small text...

I haven't read the entire thing, just started today ... read about 100 pages and thought of writing about the book.

The book, reads a lot like the Fountainhead, and reflects Ayn Rand's style of writing ...
She stresses a lot on emotions ... and the character build up ...

Unlike Fountainhead, this has a lot more characters and the story is quite interesting from the starting pages...
The manner in which she describes, each and every thought, emotion ... her manner of writing ... is simply superb ...

Just 100 pages into the book, and she's mapped out all the characters perfectly ... and with every other page, the detail gets more clearer ...

The book, like the Fountainhead, is based on her philosophies of life - namely Objectism ... Or the virtues of selfishness ...

The characters, are again, portrayed very strongly, and you can't help but feel attached to some, and hate the others ...
The book, is not a page turner ... as per se ...
Its no a mystery book ... and sometimes, it gets slow ... but at the same time, is very intense ...

I've thought about it a lot, and I don't think a movie might ever be possible on either of the books ... the character portrayal will be just too impossible ...

Anyways, if you have read and loved the Fountainhead ... I think you'll enjoy this book too ...
Am already doing so ...

More, after I have finished reading :)