Temel Nosce

Edifico Italia

2010-07-07T03:08:00.002+05:30

Sao Paulo's concrete jungle from the 41st Floor. This was an Italian Building, with a restaurant on the top floors, that I went to. One of the highest buildings in the city. Also, this has set my personal record for the highest building I've been on. Previous best was a mere 15 floors.

Time of your life

2009-05-17T01:49:00.000+05:30

Another turning point;
a fork stuck in the road.

Time grabs you by the wrist;
directs you where to go.

So make the best of this test
and don't ask why.

It's not a question
but a lesson learned in time.

It's something unpredictable
but in the end it's right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

So take the photographs
and still frames in your mind.

Hang it on a shelf
In good health and good time.

Tattoos of memories
and dead skin on trial.

For what it's worth,
it was worth all the while.

It's something unpredictable
but in the end it's right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

It's something unpredictable
but in the end it's right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

-Green Day
Dedicated to the place that gave me the best four years of my life, BITS Pilani

The Great Fox

2009-04-19T04:46:00.002+05:30

There was a time when I used to consider Firefox the best browser ever. I used to always use ONLY Firefox and consider anyone who didn't use it incompetent. Times have changed, and I guess so has the browser market. For the past month, Firefox has been the slowest of my four browsers(IE, Opera and Chrome apart from the great fox). It takes up the most memory, is most easily infected by malware, is the slowest to respond, and works worst with SOCKS proxies(with the possible exception of Chrome on the last point probably). Sad to admit, our beloved fox has gone down the drain.

Ironically, I'm writing this in Firefox!

"Mammon slept. And the beast reborn spread over the earth and its numbers
grew legion. And they proclaimed the times and sacrificed crops unto the
fire, with the cunning of foxes. And they built a new world in their own
image as promised by the
sacred words, and spoke
of the beast with their children. Mammon awoke, and lo! it was
naught but a follower."

from The Book of Mozilla, 11:9
(10th Edition)

2009-04-11T08:15:00.000+05:30

A dim young man replied to an advert seeking volunteers for scientific research. The chief scientist, explaining they were trying to find the results of a meeting between a man and a female gorilla, asked, "Are you willing for $5,000?"

"Certainly," replied the volunteer. "But with three conditions. One, I want an armed man in the cage with us, in case things turn out nasty. Two, to make the gorilla more sexy, I would like her to wear lipstick. Three, can I pay by three installments?"

Desire

2009-02-06T00:44:00.000+05:30

A lover knows only humility, he has no choice.

He steals into your alley at night, he has no choice.

He longs to kiss every lock of your hair, don't fret, he has no choice.

In his frenzied love for you, he longs to break the chains of

his imprisonment, he has no choice.

A lover asked his beloved,

Do you love yourself more than you love me?

Beloved replied, I have died to myself and I live for you.

I've disappeared from myself and my attributes,

I am present only for you.

I've forgotten all my learnings,

but from knowing you I've become a scholar.

I've lost all my strength, but from your power I am able.

I love myself...I love you.

I love you...I love myself.

I am your lover, come to my side, I will open the gate to your love.

Come settle with me, let us be neighbors to the stars.

You have been hiding so long, endlessly drifting in the sea of my love.

Even so, you have always been connected to me.

Concealed, revealed, in the unknown, in the un-manifest.

I am life itself. You have been a prisoner of a little pond,

I am the ocean and its turbulent flood. Come merge with me,

leave this world of ignorance. Be with me, I will open the gate to your love.

I desire you more than food or drink

My body, My senses, My mind...hunger for your taste

I can sense your presence in my heart

Although you belong to all the world,

I wait with silent passion...

For one gesture, one glance from you

-Rumi

Darkness is near

2008-11-04T21:53:00.002+05:30

With the world talking about saving energy, we see the measures taken by the Delhi Administration. These are the streetlights on the BRT corridor in Delhi, switched on in the middle of the afternoon.

Youtube

2008-10-05T02:35:00.002+05:30

Youtube's servers went crashing down today, if only for a while. This screenshot was taken when the Youtube's server was proudly anouncing its inability with the number 500, also that its hosted on Apache.
I'm becoming so used to problems on google operated sites that I'm not even surprised anymore.

Weeds

2008-09-23T18:45:00.000+05:30

I'm watching a TV series these days, called Weeds. Its about a widow selling weed to survive in her high profile neighborhood. I heard this really nice song there:

The Big Brother

2008-09-22T17:25:00.001+05:30

If asked, what would be the scariest webpage I've seen in recent times, I'd have to say, this.
While confirming thoughts about the big-fish-eating-the-small-ones world economy that we're moving towards, it raises enormous questions about privacy.
Think of this, this is a company that started off 12 years ago. They used a search algorithm running off enormous server farms, their USP being the delivery of the most relevant search results in the shortest time. All fine, until a few years ago when they made the search algorithm public. Why would a company make their biggest trade secret public? Because they're supporters of Open source? I don't think so! Their reason was that they had shifted their search algorithms long long ago. Since their inception, google has been tracking the search habits of every internet user, using a combination of IP addresses, geotracking, cookies etc. The biggest thing that helped them in this move was their SSI concept(the idea that once you log into one google service, you don't need to login for another one again). Every search you've ever made, is stored in the Google database, with information on what websites you clicked on, how long it took you to find what you were looking, etc. They now use this information, in various ways, using neural algorithms, to target search results. In fact, if you don't feel scared yet, do visit this page. Once you're logged in to your google account, this page shows you some of the data they've recorded against your google account. Not only does it tell what you've been looking for, their stats can say a lot about your internet surfing habits. They can show graphs to show your daily search activity, weekly search activity, or monthly search activity. From that, your sleeping habits, etc can be guessed too.
Not scared still? Lets think of whatever we do on the internet.
Search, as I mentioned, is already in their hands. When they released the GB+ mail service, they moved all the world's email to their servers. With Orkut, they have your social networking history.
With Adsense, they're tracking you on every website you visit that has a google ad. It is supposed to keep a database of what kind of websites you visit and what kind of ads you click, so as to serve more relevant ads in the future.
Youtube, is a case that should be looked at with utmost scepticism. Google already had a product in the video line, the now video meta-host, Google Video. Technologically superior, faster, slicker, with richer content, it was above Youtube in every way except for one, traffic. When Google bought Youtube, what they actually bought, was the ability to keep track of people's video viewing habits.
With Google Desktop, they're indexing your desktop files. With Chrome, you're telling them even about the few websites you're visiting that Google has no way of tracking. As if having a 'Google Toolbar' to track your web activity wasn't enough, they had to launch their own browser to make sure they don't miss out on any 'trackable' information about their customers.
With Picasa, you give up your pictures and with them, information about the places you've visited, the people you've met etc in tags and descriptions.
With chat, they keep track of what you're talking about with your friends. A particular case in point here is the incident that happened in my college last year, where people were caught on the basis of chat record(which no one knew was being logged until then).
Blogger, of course, is another part of our lives we're feeding Google with. A few others would be Calender, Docs, Notebook, Reader, Froogle etc etc.
If you're not scared yet, take my advice, go take a look at how huge a portion of the internet traffic google owns, I'm sure it'll scare you too.

Ode to the Nice Guys

2008-09-21T15:18:00.000+05:30

This rant was written for the Wharton Undergraduate Journal

This is a tribute to the nice guys. The nice guys that finish last, that never become more than friends, that endure hours of whining and bitching about what assholes guys are, while disproving the very point. This is dedicated to those guys who always provide a shoulder to lean on but restrain themselves to tentative hugs, those guys who hold open doors and give reassuring pats on the back and sit patiently outside the changing room at department stores. This is in honor of the guys that obligingly reiterate how cute/beautiful/smart/funny/sexy their female friends are at the appropriate moment, because they know most girls need that litany of support. This is in honor of the guys with open minds, with laid-back attitudes, with honest concern. This is in honor of the guys who respect a girl’s every facet, from her privacy to her theology to her clothing style.

This is for the guys who escort their drunk, bewildered female friends back from parties and never take advantage once they’re at her door, for the guys who accompany girls to bars as buffers against the rest of the creepy male population, for the guys who know a girl is fishing for compliments but give them out anyway, for the guys who always play by the rules in a game where the rules favor cheaters, for the guys who are accredited as boyfriend material but somehow don’t end up being boyfriends, for all the nice guys who are overlooked, underestimated, and unappreciated, for all the nice guys who are manipulated, misled, and unjustly abandoned, this is for you.

This is for that time she left 40 urgent messages on your cell phone, and when you called her back, she spent three hours painstakingly dissecting two sentences her boyfriend said to her over dinner. And even though you thought her boyfriend was a chump and a jerk, you assured her that it was all ok and she shouldn’t worry about it. This is for that time she interrupted the best killing spree you’d ever orchestrated in GTA3 to rant about a rumor that romantically linked her and the guy she thinks is the most repulsive person in the world. And even though you thought it was immature and you had nothing against the guy, you paused the game for two hours and helped her concoct a counter-rumor to spread around the floor. This is also for that time she didn’t have a date, so after numerous vows that there was nothing “serious” between the two of you, she dragged you to a party where you knew nobody, the beer was awful, and she flirted shamelessly with you, justifying each fit of reckless teasing by announcing to everyone: “oh, but we’re just friends!” And even though you were invited purely as a symbolic warm body for her ego, you went anyways. Because you’re nice like that.

The nice guys don’t often get credit where credit is due. And perhaps more disturbing, the nice guys don’t seem to get laid as often as they should. And I wish I could logically explain this trend, but I can’t. From what I have observed on campus and what I have learned from talking to friends at other schools and in the workplace, the only conclusion I can form is that many girls are just illogical, manipulative bitches. Many of them claim they just want to date a nice guy, but when presented with such a specimen, they say irrational, confusing things such as “oh, he’s too nice to date” or “he would be a good boyfriend but he’s not for me” or “he already puts up with so much from me, I couldn’t possibly ask him out!” or the most frustrating of all: “no, it would ruin our friendship.” Yet, they continue to lament the lack of datable men in the world, and they expect their too-nice-to-date male friends to sympathize and apologize for the men that are jerks. Sorry, guys, girls like that are beyond my ability to fathom. I can’t figure out why the connection breaks down between what they say (I want a nice guy!) and what they do (I’m going to sleep with this complete ass now!). But one thing I can do, is say that the nice-guy-finishes-last phenomenon doesn’t last forever. There are definitely many girls who grow out of that train of thought and realize they should be dating the nice guys, not taking them for granted. The tricky part is finding those girls, and even trickier, finding the ones that are single.

So, until those girls are found, I propose a toast to all the nice guys. You know who you are, and I know you’re sick of hearing yourself described as ubiquitously nice. But the truth of the matter is, the world needs your patience in the department store, your holding open of doors, your party escorting services, your propensity to be a sucker for a pretty smile. For all the crazy, inane, absurd things you tolerate, for all the situations where you are the faceless, nameless hero, my accolades, my acknowledgement, and my gratitude go out to you. You do have credibility in this society, and your well deserved vindication is coming.

Fu-zu Jen, SEAS/WH, 2003
http://www.stwing.upenn.edu/~jenf/writing/rant04.html

Facebook Ads

2008-09-13T18:20:00.003+05:30

Everyone knows how Google manages to target its Adsense ads and thats the reason they don't have a lot of competition, no one can match the enormity of their database.
How, then, does Facebook target Ads to me? I was facebooking right now and saw an Ad about Flex RIAs. It has to be one hell of a coincidence for Facebook to know that I've been working on Flex lately. Google tracks everything I do on the web so they can know. But facebook?

3 years?

2008-09-13T12:46:00.004+05:30

I added the Labelling feature to my blog today. OK, I admit blogger's been offering labels for a while but I'd decided that I'd use it only if I could make a tag cloud like all wordpress-ers have grown used to. Blogger's default label widget is plain boring so I found something someone had made that was close to what I wanted, a little bit of tweaking here and there and I was done. Here it is on my blog now, giving easy access to everything I've ever written.
In the process of adding labels to every post I'd ever written, I realized I've been blogging for more than 3 years! I started blogging some time in the summer before I came to BITS. People have had 15k+ regular readers in a year of starting a blog and here I am, writing a blog which no one reads, for three years!
Anyways, pat on my back, for keeping the blog alive! And congratulations for the latest addition to the blog.

Dr Dang

2008-09-13T12:17:00.004+05:30

Like everyone else who's done EMEC and/or ES-2 from BITS Pilani recently, I burst out laughing when I saw this sticker on a car yesterday. Couldn't help taking a picture. Apologies to the car owner, its a BITSian inside joke after all!
PS: The sticker reads "Doctor Dang's Clinic"

Flex

2008-08-25T23:14:00.002+05:30

Lately I've been working in a language I hadn't even heard of a month ago-Flex. For the un-initiated, Flex is a framework developed by Adobe as a programmer's portal to the Designer-centric world of Flash. It consists of an XML based markup format called MXML and an ECMA based scripting language called ActionScript. Actionscript would be an old friend of Flash programmers and would need no introduction, for others, its a scripting language very similar to javascript.
Adobe has released an IDE based on Eclipse, called Flex Builder which is a piece of commercial software. The alternative is their command-line based SDK, which is free and open source(built in java).
Since I work in linux, and Flex builder is supported only on Windows and Mac, the SDK was my only option.
My first creation in Flex is a video widget. Take a look at it here:

You can get the code to embed the widget into your own page here.

Another flaw, Google, bad boy!

2008-08-18T03:35:00.002+05:30

Blogger seems to use the title of the post as part of the url in the permalink for a post. This is very...thoughtless of Google as opposed to other blogging platforms like Wordpress etc, where a postid is put first and then words from the title.
Although I haven't tested it, but this would mean that a person can't write two posts with the same title on the same day as the only differentiating factors in the permalink are the date, month, and the title. I know this is not a common occurrence, but this is restricting the user to conformity!

The song

2008-08-18T03:08:00.002+05:30

Yaari hai jaan ehna di
Vakhri hai shaan ehna di
Hasna pehchaan ehna di
Sab milke kehnde ne

Friendship is as worthy as their lives for them.
Their pride is a class apart.
Their laughter is how they're recognized.
Everyone says: (Singh is King)

Singh soormay rakhde ne aan
Kade lorh payi te de denge jaan
Raaje Maharaje vi karde si maan
Rakhdi si pug uchi bande di shaan

Jo Singhan ne keetiyan kurbaniyan ne
Oh duniya te chhad gaye nishaniyan ne
Duniya de ban gaye Singh badshah
Par sab to ucha oh Sacha Paatshah

Singhs are warriors and fight for honour
They'll give up their lives whenever need be
Even the Kings of old times used to respect them
Their turbans would keep their pride high

The sacrifices that the Singhs have made
have left mark upon the world
They've become the 'Singh Badshahs'(a common nickname given to Sikhs) of the world
But the highest authority is the Sachha Badshah (God. literally, the real king)

The great words of Guru Govind Singh

2008-08-18T03:05:00.002+05:30

Deh Shiva var mohe hai,
Shubh karmana te kabhon na taron
Na daron arison jab jaaye ladhon
Nishchay kar apni Jeet karon

English:
The lord has given me his blessings, that my feet will never falter while doing any good deed. I'll never be scared to fight whenever need be, and with resolution capture my victory.

Singh is KinnG

2008-08-18T02:25:00.002+05:30

This movie's been on my must-watch list for a while. Even though I'm normally very choosy about the movies I watch, and have a strict no-no for all Bollywood movies, this was one movie that I was looking forward to.
For the few days that my GoogleTalk status read "Singh is King", everyone made it a point to tell me how bad and stupid the movie was, how low it had been rated and how much they hated it, but my reason for the status was not the movie, it was the message. Singh is King.
People might find the title funny, but someone who knows the history of sikhs, would understand and relate to the title.
The movie itself was entertaining, although as any other Bollywood movie, had no story, direction or anything for that matter. The reason I was entertained was how closely I could relate to it, and the language they were speaking, the jokes they were cracking. The 4.5 crore Snoop Dogg song was put in the end of the movie, which i consider a waste of the money, more so because I particularly liked the words in the song, especially the part 'rapped' by Akshay:
Singh soormay rakhde ne aan
Kade lorh payi te de denge jaan
Raaje Maharaje vi karde si maan
Rakhdi si pug uchi bande di shaan

Jo Singhan ne keetiyan kurbaniyan ne
Oh duniya te chhad gaye nishaniyan ne
Duniya de ban gaye Singh badshah
Par sab to ucha oh Sacha Paatshah
I know a lot of people wouldn't even understand what this is, I guess I'll write another post, explaining what this means.
This movie, whether by itself or by the effect it had on other people, got back in me the pride that is associated with being a sikh. We're the targets of the largest number of jokes in our country, yet we take it in our stride. In fact, we're the ones telling them! As Khushwant Singh says, it takes a lot of pride for a person to laugh at himself, here is an entire community laughing at itself.
The biggest thing that sets a sikh apart would be the habit of always trying to help everyone. Long ago, when I was really young, I visited London with my mother. We had heard a lot about the Gurudwaras there so we decided to start our journey from one of them. There we met a fellow Sardar(obviously, we were in a Gurudwara!!) who we became friendly with. Later, on his insistence, we went to his house, ate with his family, and in fact stayed with them for the rest of our stay in London(Thank you).
The typically sardar-ish trait of not thinking of oneself when helping others has found its way within me too. A major incident that happened with me during my internship last year is proof of that. There was an argument over an issue between a friend and someone else. I had absolutely nothing to do with it, but I interfered and 'settled things', later getting into a lot of trouble for my 'lack of control'. About this, my father used to tell me a joke when I was really young:
Once Hindus and Muslims were arguing about whether 'Hanuman' was a Hindu or a Muslim. The Hindus said he was obviously Hindu as he appears in Hindu scriptures and was a disciple of Lord Rama. The Muslims said, if Suleiman is a Muslim, Rehman is a Muslim how can Hanuman not be one. A Sikh then entered and told them that he was actually a Sikh. After all, someone else's wife was kidnapped by someone else, in a foriegn land which was someone else's kingdom, he had nothing to do with any of it. Yet he put his own tail to fire to burn down the kingdom that was again someone else's. Only a Sardar can be foolish enough to do that!
Finally, I want to end this with Guru Govind Singh Ji's great words that never fail to give me goosebumps with pride every time I hear them:
Deh Shiva var mohe hai,
Shubh karmana te kabhon na taron
Na daron arison jab jaaye ladhon
Nishchay kar apni Jeet karon
PS: These words have been quoted way too frequently lately. A lot of regiments in the Indian army have them as their motto. Our PM Manmohan Singh quoted them in the parliament on the day of the trust vote.

Lively Google

2008-08-18T02:11:00.002+05:30

Trust Google to surprise you every time they come up with a new product. As if competing with half the internet wasn't good enough enough for Mr Page and Mr Brin, they've now added Second Life to their long list of competitors.
Although Lively seems to be a month old, and there's already a lot of content on the net about it, I heard about it just today(that's such a "damn!!!" for me, the persistent google follower that I am). Checking it out immediately, it looks, well...very ungoogle-ey, if you ask me. Since its going to take a while to explore the functionality, that's one area I can't comment on yet, but the design leaves a lot to ask for. Also, Google's biggest power is in its subscriber base, which seems to be missing on Lively. My first impression about lively is that it might turn out to be good, but that is something that can't even begin to happen unless we see the entire world turning to it.
Also, shouldn't Google try to publicize their products a bit? If it took me, an avid Google-Follower, a month to find out about their new product, are these people really hoping to have a lot of visitors? Is it possible that Google's bordering-on-overconfident strategy of not marketing their products is going against them and making them lose out on visitors?
Point to ponder, Google.

The Road

2008-08-12T20:54:00.002+05:30

Today I came as close to having an accident as I've ever been since I started driving(which was a long time ago). I was on a near empty stretch of road( a rarety in delhi), near the Andheria More, going at about 90 kmph when a lady, along with her little daughter, jumped out of nowhere, right in front of my car. I immediately floored the brakes on my car and hit the steering hard left. After a long screeching skid, the car came to a stop, barely touching the little girl. My heart beating again, I waited. I didn't even know whether I was the culprit(driving at 90kmph) or the victim(people aren't supposed to jump on to the road!!!). I was in an 'urban village'(one of many in Delhi), and had she created a scene at that place, I couldn't have gotten out of there alive. As the seconds passed by, I waited there, in my car, in the middle of the road, thinking of excuses to justify myself. Then she looked at me and smiled. I have no idea why she smiled, when every gut feeling told me she would be crying for my blood. I almost killed her daughter after all(from my point of view, she gave me her daughter's life on a platter and I handed it back to her).
She smiled. I smiled back. Apologized to her and her daughter. And drove away.
My speed didn't go above 40 after that.

2008-08-10T18:04:00.000+05:30

"Purple Haze all in my brain, lately things don't
seem the same. Actin' funny but I don't know why.
'Scuse me while I kiss the sky."
Jimi Hendrix

It's not the Gates, it's the bars

2008-07-04T14:59:00.000+05:30

It's not the Gates, it's the bars
By Richard Stallman
Founder, Free Software Foundation

To pay so much attention to Bill Gates' retirement is missing the point.
What really matters is not Gates, nor Microsoft, but the unethical
system of restrictions that Microsoft, like many other software
companies, imposes on its customers.

That statement may surprise you, since most people interested in
computers have strong feelings about Microsoft. Businessmen and their
tame politicians admire its success in building an empire over so many
computer users.

Many outside the computer field credit Microsoft for advances which it
only took advantage of, such as making computers cheap and fast, and
convenient graphical user interfaces.

Gates' philanthropy for health care for poor countries has won some
people's good opinion. The LA Times reported that his foundation spends
five to 10% of its money annually and invests the rest, sometimes in
companies it suggests cause environmental degradation and illness in the
same poor countries.

Many computerists specially hate Gates and Microsoft. They have plenty
of reasons.

'Solicit funds'

Microsoft persistently engages in anti-competitive behaviour, and has
been convicted three times. George W Bush, who let Microsoft off the
hook for the second US conviction, was invited to Microsoft headquarters
to solicit funds for the 2000 election.

Many users hate the "Microsoft tax", the retail contracts that make you
pay for Windows on your computer even if you won't use it.

In some countries you can get a refund, but the effort required is daunting.

There's also the Digital Restrictions Management: software features
designed to "stop" you from accessing your files freely. Increased
restriction of users seems to be the main advance of Vista.

'Gratuitous incompatibilities'

Then there are the gratuitous incompatibilities and obstacles to
interoperation with other software. This is why the EU required
Microsoft to publish interface specifications.

This year Microsoft packed standards committees with its supporters to
procure ISO approval of its unwieldy, unimplementable and patented "open
standard" for documents. The EU is now investigating this.

These actions are intolerable, of course, but they are not isolated
events. They are systematic symptoms of a deeper wrong which most people
don't recognise: proprietary software.

Microsoft's software is distributed under licenses that keep users
divided and helpless. The users are divided because they are forbidden
to share copies with anyone else. The users are helpless because they
don't have the source code that programmers can read and change.

If you're a programmer and you want to change the software, for yourself
or for someone else, you can't.

If you're a business and you want to pay a programmer to make the
software suit your needs better, you can't. If you copy it to share with
your friend, which is simple good-neighbourliness, they call you a "pirate".

'Unjust system'

Microsoft would have us believe that helping your neighbour is the moral
equivalent of attacking a ship.

The most important thing that Microsoft has done is to promote this
unjust social system.

Gates is personally identified with it, due to his infamous open letter
which rebuked microcomputer users for sharing copies of his software.

It said, in effect, "If you don't let me keep you divided and helpless,
I won't write the software and you won't have any. Surrender to me, or
you're lost!"

'Change system'

But Gates didn't invent proprietary software, and thousands of other
companies do the same thing. It's wrong, no matter who does it.

Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and the rest, offer you software that gives
them power over you. A change in executives or companies is not
important. What we need to change is this system.

That's what the free software movement is all about. "Free" refers to
freedom: we write and publish software that users are free to share and
modify.

We do this systematically, for freedom's sake; some of us paid, many as
volunteers. We already have complete free operating systems, including
GNU/Linux.

Our aim is to deliver a complete range of useful free software, so that
no computer user will be tempted to cede her freedom to get software.

In 1984, when I started the free software movement, I was hardly aware
of Gates' letter. But I'd heard similar demands from others, and I had a
response: "If your software would keep us divided and helpless, please
don't write it. We are better off without it. We will find other ways to
use our computers, and preserve our freedom."

In 1992, when the GNU operating system was completed by the kernel,
Linux, you had to be a wizard to run it. Today GNU/Linux is
user-friendly: in parts of Spain and India, it's standard in schools.
Tens of millions use it, around the world. You can use it too.

Gates may be gone, but the walls and bars of proprietary software he
helped create remain, for now.

Dismantling them is up to us.

--

Richard Stallman is the founder of the Free Software Foundation. You can
copy and redistribute this article under the Creative Commons Noderivs
license.

This article is published on BBC News online. Please share this link
with your friends and family, and post it to any blogs, link sharing or
social sites you think may find it interesting.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7487060.stm

2008-06-16T01:55:00.001+05:30

Shouldn't this thing show Post times in the Time Zone that I currently am in? Its the evening of the 15th here and the post I just published is being shown as being published on the 16th!

Language and Cultural Barriers

2008-06-16T01:08:00.005+05:30

Ritesh is the guy I'm seeing Brazil with. We've visited most places together. He had been on a Rotary Exchange to Mexico a few years ago. There, in the 10 months that he spent, he learnt and mastered the Spanish language or rather Espanol, or actually, Espanhol. He was told that he can do with speaking spanish here as most people will understand Spanish. That so isn't true about Sao Paulo. Although the Spanish language just seems like a corrupted version of Portuguese(or the other way round), the pronunciations are very different. And, forget about understanding Spanish, the paulistas wouldn't even understand you if you got a single syllable wrong in a Portuguese word. Its almost like they don't want to understand you. Even an accent can prevent a lot of people from understanding what you are trying to say.
Now because Portuguese sounds very different from Spanish, Ritesh couldn't understand a lot of spoken Portuguese but, by trying out all possible pronunciations of the words he knew in Spanish, he could make himself understood, if only with a little trouble. I, on the other hand, am interacting with Brazilians very regularly. At Dad's office for one, an employee called Kika has vowed to teach me the language perfectly before i leave. If I ask Dad for a translation of something she just said, she won't let him tell me, forcing me to make the associations myself. Due to all this, within one week, I could understand most of what people were saying to me. Forming sentences and replying takes a lot more than that so, I'd still be silent, but I would understand what the other person is saying.
As a combination, Ritesh and I could move through the city as I would understand and translate for him, while he would reply for me.
When we went down south, to Curitiba in Paraná and Camboriu in Santa Catarina, a lot more people understood what he was saying and much more easily. In fact, the language was so similar that, at times, Ritesh would forget that he's still speaking Portuguese after all and not Spanish, and he would end conversations with a gracias instead of an obrigado. Also, the change in pronunciations helped him because no one in Sao Paulo could pronounce his name. Here, they haven't seen words starting with the R sound, it becomes the H sound. For example, the name Ritesh is pronounced as Hitesh, Rafael as Hafael, Raul as Hau. Real Madrid as Hea Majri.
Due to this, no one said his name right here. But down south, R is pronounced as an R. So, it was possible for people to say his name right.
As for my name, the less said the better. Some versions of people trying to say my name:
Navjoo
Navjoch
Nove de Julho(thats portuguese for 9th of July, its the name of a road in Sao Paulo)

One other problem with not knowing the language, the biggest problem in fact, is that you can't chat up people, girls especially. Imagine being surrounded by more hot chicks than you've even dreamt of(that's A LOT) and not being able to talk to them. Fine, I claim to know the language, but my knowledge of the language is restricted to names of common grocery items and, asking for directions on the street. After all, you can't expect the guy who takes 15 minutes to explain to the attendant in the supermarket that he wants to know which section the breads are kept in, to chat up girls now can you. And it's not like I'm a big fan of talking, but when you see a guy approaching a random girl on the street, talking for five minutes and then see them kissing away, you realize the power of talking!! As an example of how easy it is for guys here in Brasil, these are two incidents from the innumerable ones I saw:

At a club, two girls are dancing together. We, the Indian guys, do what Indian guys do best, stare at them and discuss how hot the two are. In the meanwhile, the guy with me gathers the courage(read blood alcohol level) to go talk to one of the girls. While he's on the way up to her, a guy jumps in between the two dancing girls and starts rubbing his groin onto the girl's. The girl laughs and starts responding. They talk for about a minute(over the loud club music) and then they started kissing. A few minutes later they left, and from the position of his hands on her, I think I know where they went.
In the bus from Camboriu to Foz do Iguacu, there was a girl sitting on the other side of the aisle of me. The journey was long, about 9 hours, and she seemed to have no way of passing the time. I was busy listening to music on my phone but her excessive fidgeting didn't go unnoticed. After fidgeting for about an hour, she randomly moved to an empty seat next to the guy sitting in front of me. They started talking, and within 15 minutes they were kissing away. Half an hour later they had their first argument and she moved back to her seat. The guy went to her to make up with her. Then they went into the bus's washroom to celebrate. A few hours later, they broke up as the guy had to get off at his stop and the girl was going on to Foz do Igaucu. That's a relationship in Brasil, 3 hours and that's it. Short and sweet.

When Ritesh asked our Brazilian friend Victor if he had a girlfriend, he replied, "It's not the same here as in India. We don't have girlfriends here. It's just something like what you call a one night stand there. Its nothing great. Just that, whenever you feel like. No girlfriend as such."

The Brazilian Gay Parade

2008-06-15T22:00:00.008+05:30

A few days after my arrival in Brazil, there occurred something that I was very genuinely surprised to see, a gay pride parade or the Parada da gay (or something like that). Its supposed to be the largest celebration of homosexuality in the world. The kind of openness that I see here to homosexuality, I don't think it exists anywhere else in the world. I couldn't see the parade itself as I had to go somewhere else but I attended a sort of a warm-up parade the evening before. The main parade was supposed to be on Sunday morning while the warm-up I attended was a special for lesbians and it started on Saturday evening. It was a shock for me initially, to see lesbian couples kissing all around me.
It started at around 5 in the evening outside Shopping Paulista which is a shopping mall on the biggest road in Sao Paulo. Paulista is like Sao Paulo's Times Square.
I took this picture when they were preparing to start off the lesbian parade. This is on the road outside Shopping Paulista. The crowd was cheering, beer in hand. Not just lesbian, there were gay couples, straight couples and singles all around. I was there with a guy friend and we were standing away from each other so as to be not mistaken as a gay couple.I took this picture as everyone was getting ready to start the parade. The Police was supposed to escort the parade on both sides and this picture is of the policemen who were supposed to be on the front of the parade. I think they looked really cool in this 'formation'.

Took these pictures once the parade started off. Made it a point to stay on the sidelines to make sure I wasn't assumed to be part of the parade.
One point of difference that I saw here. The road was being cleaned right after the parade passed, or rather, the cleaners were PART of the parade itself. Wish we could see even half the cleanliness in India.

More pics(from the sidelines, of course). Notice the beer cans in everyone's hands and the beer vendors moving with the parade.
A DJ in a truck and everyone on the road dancing to his tunes. That's all a brazilian needs.

The saddest part of the lesbian parade was to see how many pretty girls were lesbian(or lesbicas, in the local language) and hence, unavailable. Case in point, the girl in white in the above picture.

The parade ended somewhere around MASP(The Sao Paulo Museum of Art) and a party started. It had a few bands playing(which I assumed were all girl bands, its difficult to make out the sex of a person sometimes). Although I left after a while, I assume the party lasted all night.

In contrast, the brazillian airport

2008-06-15T21:49:00.003+05:30

At the Brazilian airport, as is at most airports, there was a separate immigration line for Brazilian citizens which was a breeze through. They were being cleared in a second while the line for foreigners was obviously slow to move.
In India, people tend to treat foreigners better than Indians and in every other country its the other way round. So, every Indian tends to suffer in that respect.

PS: My worries didn't really end at the Indian Airport as I had imagined. I was stopped at customs at the Brazilian Airport too and all my luggage opened. Luckily they didn't find anything wrong and they just let me go. Which again, never happens in India. Once they've opened your luggage, they will find some way to find you on the wrong side and earn their bribe.

The Indian 'Airport'

2008-06-15T20:44:00.002+05:30

Although I was going international after a long long time(my renewed passport was fresh, never opened), my family is a regular at airports and because of them, so am I. My bags were packed keeping the 32 kg weight limit in mind. Now here's something I didn't know- The weight limit for most other flights is 23 kg but, as the Delhi-Sao Paulo is a long segment, the limit is increased for it.
When I was checking in, the guy said one of my bags was over the weight limit. I tried whatever I could but he wouldn't let me check in without a fine. After a long argument I finally agreed to pay the $50 fine. As soon as I reached into my wallet to hand him a $50 bill, he said that I have to pay in INR. I shouted at him again, for he'd been saying $50 all this while and when I tried to pay him he changed the currency. He asked me to get the currency changed at the exchange counter(I wasn't carrying a lot of Rupees). As soon as I got the INR in hand, a porter came up to me(the guy who'd helped me put my bags on the weighing machine), he told me that $50 would come out to be around Rs 2000, he offered to get it done in Rs 1500. I refused, telling him that I'd rather pay the official fine. I finally gave in when he offered to get it done in Rs 1000 as I had a flight to catch after all.
The money exchange procedure turned out to be somewhat elaborate. The porter made me follow him to another corner of the airport(just outside the immigration gate), asked me to keep the money in my hand, and took it in a supposedly unnoticeable pass.

This over, I thought my troubles were over, but was i wrong!! At the immigration counter, the officer examining my Visa declared that my Visa was fake. I actually laughed aloud at his face!! Told him to call up the embassy and quote my passport number to check if they had issued such a Visa. When he looked at the first page of the passport, he now claimed that the signature on the first page of my passport was of someone who had never been at the Delhi Passport Office, effectively calling even my passport fake!!! This is the treatment given to us Indians in our own country. After about half an hour of waiting and intermittent arguments, he finally let me go. Now, if any of my documents were fake, he had no reason to let me go. If they weren't, why did I have to waste so much of my time and energy at the immigration counter? Doesn't the immigration officer process thousands of passports daily? Doesn't he know the fake from the true? Why do I have to undergo the harassment of having to prove the authenticity of my documents when they have been issued by the regular public channel?
After crossing the immigration gate, the problems are over for practically everyone. Most people don't even know that there's a customs gate right after the immigration gate as the custom's officials just keep staring at the people passing by normally. But this was my unlucky day, so I got surrounded by 5 officers who looked like they wanted to beat me up!! They asked me where I was going, why I was going there and a few other questions that sounded like a hardened criminal was being interrogated. They asked me how much cash I was carrying and a few other questions before finally letting me go.
In all this, so much time had passed that I had to rush through security and onto my flight. I guess that was lucky or else the IGI Airport might have had some more surprises waiting for me.
PS: Forgot to add the best part. I later met a friend of my Dad's, going with me in the same flight. His baggage was also above the 23 kg limit but he had paid the official fine instead of a bribe like me. When he got here, to brazil, he shouted at his agent for the screw-up(the weight limit is normally 32 kg), who finally got him a refund and a compensation from the airline as the weight limit for long distance travel is actually 32kg and NOT 23kg. I, having paid a bribe, had no way out.

The forgotten Blog

2008-06-15T20:21:00.003+05:30

Its been so long since i blogged. The problem with me is not that I don't have stuff to write. In fact, I have so much to write that just the idea of putting all that down in words is too much to bear. In the end I end up chickening out every time I try. This is why this time I decided to start by writing about why I'm not writing before I start trying to write. Let's see if this time I manage to finish what I start.

IPL conspiracy theory

2008-06-06T19:56:00.002+05:30

I just got a `spam mail´ claiming that all the matches in IPL were fixed and that the entire series including the events that took place in it was carried out just like a reality show on TV. The story on the blog has a point to ponder over but the means the author is using to spread the story, spam mail, is totally uncalled for. Anyways, have a look at this:
http://iplconspiracytheory.blogspot.com/

The teachings of Jesus

2008-05-12T00:20:00.002+05:30

A lot of our course books are written by our own Professors but more often than not, the guy who wrote the book won't be teaching as he'd be too senior to actually take classes. This is one case where a professor who wrote one of course books was teaching in class.
Someone asked him a doubt from the book and his reply was:
Why do you want to refer to the Bible when Jesus himself is teaching?
Some attitude huh?

Musicovery

2008-05-04T17:10:00.003+05:30

I've known about musicovery for a long long time. I'd seen it first pretty soon after it was launched. But, my reaction to it was....good idea, and that was it. I never opened the site again!! Today I was sitting in the lab, mighty bored and I needed some new music to listen to. That's when I remembered this site that I had seen logn ago. The connection here is good enough for seamless audio streaming(sometimes video too) so I decided to give it another try.
Today I realized what a great website I had almost overlooked! The interface has been designed so intuitively that anyone can use its full power without a steep learning curve. The whole idea of the playlist changing at every click, and also deciding the playlist based on your mood seems very appealing. Also, it tends to narrow down the song list and after I was at it for half an hour, it was playing all my favourite numbers all by itself. The song collection of this website is amazing. It had every single song I could think of, and more.
Also, this adds a radio like feel to the whole music experience by playing new songs based on your choice, but yet maintaining the sense of familiarity by playing your favourite numbers often enough.
Just a few things that I didn't like that I'd like to point out: The music quality isn't too good. While being the biggest flaw of the website, this can be excused, considering they provide a paid service for high quality audio.Also,there is no 'user's manual'. Being the geek that I am, the manual is my favourite part of any product. The interface seems to have some cool features that don't seem to have been described anywhere. Like the icons of the songs seem to have some meaning, apart from the colour code representing the genre, the spokes on some icons are more, few on some. Some have thicker spokes than the others. Also, the playlist follows a winding path, criss-crossing itself. There seems to be no explanation or significance for that. Also, there is no way to search for a particular song and listen to it. They should add this feature so that people can select a particular song as their starting point. Another thing I couldn't manage to do was to make a sort of a playlist. I know that making a playlist would go completely against the idea of an online radio but then, while listening to a particular song, if I see a few songs around it that I like and a few that I don't, if I click on one of them to play it, some songs that I would like to listen to also disappear. There seems to be no way of preventing that. They should think of adding some regional music too, I'd love to listen to a bit of hindi in the middle of all the rock and the metal :) .
All in all, this is probably the best online music service one can find.
http://musicovery.com

Voip on Linux

2008-05-03T17:52:00.002+05:30

I have been using GTalk as my exclusive IM/VoIP service for the past 3 years. The client I use for IM is Pidgin on Linux(I use Fedora 7 currently) and GTalk itself for Windows XP. There was one problem with this setup, though. I had no way of making voice calls over the gtalk network in linux. All VoIP applications that I could find had their own networks and none used the Gtalk protocol.
I tried google's libjingle but the API wasn't the simplest to implement and I didn't have enough time to go ahead and make a client. Finally, it has been done. It is now possible to make calls to libjingle based app users on Linux. The following outlines the procedure:
http://www.zerobeat.in/2008/05/02/google-talk-voice-chat-on-gnulinux/

2008-05-01T23:36:00.003+05:30

Another question from the same paper(this was an open book test):

Solve the solved example no. X.X, using the equation no. Y.y, taking values from table Z.z. Also refer to figure no. P.p

The Best? The worst?

2008-05-01T23:32:00.002+05:30

This is the exact replication of a question from last year's comprehensive examination of a EEE course:
There is no printing error in this question, read it carefully.
Design the worst possible, yet functional current mirror circuit. Highlight four characteristics of your current mirror that a good current mirror shouldn't have.

After reading this question I realized that making the best is far far easier than making the worst. Hats off to whoever came up with this question.

2008-04-23T01:19:00.002+05:30

सरफ़रोशी की तमन्ना अब हमारे दिल में है
देखना है ज़ोर कितना बाज़ू-ए-क़ातिल में है

(ऐ वतन,) करता नहीं क्यूँ दूसरा कुछ बातचीत,
देखता हूँ मैं जिसे वो चुप तेरी महफ़िल में है
ऐ शहीद-ए-मुल्क-ओ-मिल्लत, मैं तेरे ऊपर निसार,
अब तेरी हिम्मत का चरचः ग़ैर की महफ़िल में है
सरफ़रोशी की तमन्ना अब हमारे दिल में है

वक़्त आने पर बता देंगे तुझे, ए आसमान,
हम अभी से क्या बताएँ क्या हमारे दिल में है
खेँच कर लाई है सब को क़त्ल होने की उमीद,
आशिक़ोँ का आज जमघट कूचः-ए-क़ातिल में है
सरफ़रोशी की तमन्ना अब हमारे दिल में है

है लिए हथियार दुशमन ताक में बैठा उधर,
और हम तय्यार हैं सीना लिये अपना इधर.
ख़ून से खेलेंगे होली गर वतन मुश्किल में है,
सरफ़रोशी की तमन्ना अब हमारे दिल में है

हाथ, जिन में हो जुनून, कटते नही तलवार से,
सर जो उठ जाते हैं वो झुकते नहीं ललकार से.
और भड़केगा जो शोलः सा हमारे दिल में है,
सरफ़रोशी की तमन्ना अब हमारे दिल में है

हम तो घर से ही थे निकले बाँधकर सर पर कफ़न,
जाँ हथेली पर लिये लो बढ चले हैं ये कदम.
जिन्दगी तो अपनी मॆहमाँ मौत की महफ़िल में है,
सरफ़रोशी की तमन्ना अब हमारे दिल में है

यूँ खड़ा मक़्तल में क़ातिल कह रहा है बार-बार,
क्या तमन्ना-ए-शहादत भी किसी के दिल में है?
दिल में तूफ़ानों की टोली और नसों में इन्क़िलाब,
होश दुश्मन के उड़ा देंगे हमें रोको न आज.
दूर रह पाए जो हमसे दम कहाँ मंज़िल में है,

जिस्म भी क्या जिस्म है जिसमें न हो ख़ून-ए-जुनून
क्या लढ़े तूफ़ान से जो कश्ती-ए-साहिल में है
सरफ़रोशी की तमन्ना अब हमारे दिल में है
देखना है ज़ोर कितना बाज़ू-ए-क़ातिल में है

-बिसमिल अज़ीमाबादी

English Translation:

The desire for sacrifice is now in our hearts
Let us see what strength there is in the arms of our executioner

Why do you remain silent thus?
Whoever I see, is gathered quiet so...
O martyr of country, of nation, I submit myself to thee
For yet even the enemy speaks of thy courage
The desire for struggle is in our hearts...

When the time comes, we shall show thee, O heaven
For why should we tell thee now, what lurks in our hearts?
We have been dragged to service, by the hope of blood, of vengeance
Yea, by our love for nation divine, we go to the streets of the enemy
The desire for struggle is in our hearts...

Armed does the enemy sit, ready to open fire
Ready too are we, our bosoms thrust out to him
With blood we shall play Holi, if our nation need us
The desire for struggle is in our hearts...

No sword can sever hands that have the heat of battle within,
No threat can bow heads that have risen so...
Yea, for in our insides has risen a flame,
and the desire for struggle is in our hearts...

Set we out from our homes, our heads shrouded with cloth,
Taking our lives in our hands, do we march so...
In our assembly of death, life is now but a guest
The desire for struggle is in our hearts...

Stands the enemy in the gallows thus, asking,
Does anyone wish to bear testimony?...
With a host of storms in our heart, and with revolution in our breath,
We shall knock the enemy cold, and no one shall stop us...

What is that body that does not have hot blood in it,
How can a person conquer a Typhoon while sitting in a boat near the shore.

The desire for struggle is in our hearts,
We shall now see what strength there is in the boughs of the enemy.

I realized that even though i might've read it a million times. This poem still gives me goosebumps every time i read it. My blog wouldn't be complete without it.

The end....

2008-01-28T00:00:00.000+05:30

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
Ill never look into your eyes...again

Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need...of some...strangers hand
In a...desperate land

It hurts to set you free
But youll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die

This is the end

Google Scholar

2007-12-05T12:12:00.000+05:30

Standing on the shoulder of giants.

The famous line attributed to Newton has found its resting place in my opinion. I think there is no better place for the line than the homepage of Google Scholar, or, seeing it the other way round, no other line suits the Google Scholar homepage better.
As always, rock on Google :)

2007-11-11T09:55:00.000+05:30

If you don't know what to do with many of the papers piled on your desk, stick a dozen colleagues' initials on 'em, and pass them along. When in doubt, route. — Malcolm Forbes

What is Open Source?

2007-11-08T13:57:00.000+05:30

All software is built with source code. Open source means the code can be seen and changed. With this power comes control.

In the proprietary model, development occurs within one company. Programmers write code, hide it behind binaries, charge customers to use the software--then charge them more to fix it when it breaks. No one ever has to know how bad the software really is. Bad software costs companies $78 billion per year, according to CIO Magazine.

The problem worsens when you become tied to a company's protocols and file formats. Then you're hooked. Bruce Perens calls this the "addiction model of software procurement." Any model that puts customers at such a fundamental disadvantage is conceptually broken.

That's why open source is inevitable. It returns control to the customer. The code is open and you can see it, change it, learn from it. Bugs are more quickly found and fixed. And when customers don't like how one vendor is serving them, they can choose another without overhauling their infrastructure. That means: No more arbitrary pricing. No more technology lock-in. No more monopolies.

And we believe open source simply creates better software. It multiplies one company's development capacity many times over. Everybody collaborates, the best software wins. Not just within one company, but among an Internet-connected, worldwide community. It's no coincidence that the rise of open source closely followed the rise of the Internet. The perfect breeding ground for collaboration, the Internet moves ideas and code around the world in an instant.

But it doesn't just happen by accident. Larger open source projects have a complex leadership structure. These leaders oversee a process that collects software submitted by the open source community, then integrate the software, test it, and decide whether or not to include it in an upcoming release.

Red Hat then assembles the kernel with other elements of the operating system, follows a complex quality assurance process, and certifies it for use with the top enterprise hardware and software vendors. This creates a standard platform--a key factor in enterprise adoption. Widespread support provides the necessary stability to take Linux into mission-critical deployments.

The most widely known open source software is the Linux operating system. Linux made up 25% of all server operating systems sold in 2001--#2 in the market--according to IDC. And the open source Apache web server is the #1 web server, holding 67% of the market, according to E-Soft.

The concept behind open source is not new. For centuries, universities and other research communities have shared their work. Monks copied books by hand. Scientists publish new discoveries in journals. Imagine if we were unable to build on this past knowledge. Yet this is the mentality on which the proprietary software model depends.

In the same way shared knowledge propels the whole of society forward, open technology development can drive innovation for an entire industry.

Das Wilde Leben

2007-11-05T01:00:00.000+05:30

I walked in town on silver spurs that jingled too
A song that I had only sang to just a few
She saw my silver spurs and said let pass some time
And I will give to you summer wine

Strawberries cherries and an angel's kiss in spring
My summer wine is really made from all these things
Take off your silver spurs and help me pass the time
And I will give to you summer wine

Oohh-oh summer wine

My eyes grew heavy and my lips they could not speak
I tried to get up but I couldn't find my feet
She reassured me with an unfamilliar line
And then she gave to me more summer wine

Oohh-oh summer wine

Strawberries cherries and an angel's kiss in spring
My summer wine is really made from all these things
Take off your silver spurs and help me pass the time
And I will give to you summer wine

Oohh-oh summer wine

When I woke up the sun was shining in my eyes
My silver spurs were gone my head felt twice its size
She took my silver spurs a dollar and a dime
And left me cravin' for more summer wine

Oohh-oh summer wine

Bug in Gmail

2007-11-01T03:17:00.000+05:30

WOOOHOOO!
Today I pointed out a bug in the gmail system!!! Imagine how happy I would be, considering how I Idolize Google and everything they do! Read the post on google I wrote a few days ago, you would know exactly how happy I am at this moment, to be able to spot and point out a mistake in gmail, which I, knew how to correct!

PS Pics Part 2

2007-10-30T04:29:00.000+05:30

Pics from PS (Jamnagar, Gujarat)

2007-10-30T03:57:00.000+05:30

Mera Bharat Mahaan

2007-10-29T21:08:00.000+05:30

The world's richest man is now...no longer Bill Gates, no longer Carlos Slim....its our very own Mukesh Ambani!! With LN Mittal at 5th position, thats 2 Indians in the top 5!
Go India!
Edit: Turned out to be a rumour started by over-enthusiastic stock market speculators. But in any case, GO INDIA!

2007-10-29T09:52:00.001+05:30

George Santayana - "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Google, the best ever

2007-10-27T20:45:00.000+05:30

Google is now officially the best and my favourite search engine.
I was looking for ideas for website design so, what i wanted was some kind of ranking based on design. People have all kinds of rankings so i was hoping I could find a website that ranked websites based on design. Just to see what kind of a design would click.
So here i go, searching.
Any mention of "website design" would bring up endless results about web design companies.
Similarly, "website ranking" would bring up results about SEO companies.
"Website ratings" would bring up websites mentioning censorship issues. etc etc etc. After 15 mins of trying every search string possible, I tried my first search string again("website design rankings") and voila!! The results page was different this time! The entire first page had exactly the kind of websites I was looking for!!
Google seems to have incorporated a new self-learning decision-tree/neural network based algorithm into their original plain Page-Rank based result system. This is actually adapting to the users previous search results and giving them desirable ones!
Way to go Larry and Sergey!

The beckoning portals of education

2007-01-11T00:43:00.000+05:30

The Memory Remains

2006-10-02T22:18:00.000+05:30

Orkut has now been officially blocked in the BITS network. So are all urls containing the words 'orkut', 'proxy', 'freedom', 'tropical','tunnel' and hoardes of other innocent terms. With all conventional methods of accessing the website blocked....the average bitsian can only sing along....'The Memory Remains'

PS:I couldn't complete my project on the stock market as i couldn't find any info on 'sensex', it seems to be a swear-word around here ;)

Congratulations

2006-09-15T12:56:00.000+05:30

Dear Blog
I'm really sorry I forgot to wish you on your first birthday. I know, being the sensitive person that you are, you would've felt really bad about it, you might've even had weird suicidal thoughts. I can understand how you felt. As it is, no one seems to be visiting you. Nobody seems interested in you. Your only solace was me, visiting you regularly, making sure the small numbers in the left corner kept ticking. Making sure to add new content regularly, so that the doomed soul that might land up here would have something to read. I was the only one interested in you, and I was interested in making you better.
But then I found new and better stuff to do. I suddenly had so much work to do that visiting you became next to impossible. On top of that, the net connection in my room turned from bad to worse and despite numerous attempts, you just wouldnt turn up! I was so frustrated I simply gave up on you, knowing that there was little I could do about the situation. The situation worsened further, even the few who used to visit you in your better days suddenly stopped. The numbers simply stopped ticking. My dream to see them at a thousand seemed far far away. But now, you have done it, we have done it, we have all done it! You have finally crossed 1000 hits in less than 4 months since i placed the counter on you. Not too bad, considering the kind of crap I put up for people to judge you by. I'm busy again, as usual so I must go. Congratulations once again.
Love
Navjot

Alcohol, cocaine and orkut

2006-08-08T03:29:00.000+05:30

Doesn't comparing a website to substances as addictive as Alcohol and Cocaine sound really funny to you? It would have, to me, had I not seen it with my own eyes, or, for that matter, experienced it myself.
It all started when, once in BITS, I realized that everyone around me seemed to be using a communication medium I haven't even heard of. They seemed to be using this '-kut' word a lot and I didn't like it. This is what made me join the orkut bandwagon.
It seemed to be going well for a while. Although I had used many community websites before, nothing matched up to orkut, and I loved it. At one point of time it got so bad, that it was set as my homepage(really ashamed to admit my homepage was anything other than slashdot at any time).
As with everything else, it soon became really boring and the addiction was out, or atleast thats how it seemed. I must admit, though, that the interesting phase lasted much longer for orkut than it does normally.
We came to BITS in our 2-1, excited about whatever we would be doing in our second years. The LAN connections were activated for vyaas bhawan a few days before the rest of BITS(reasons are obvious). I had the time of my life downloading my ass off, at amazing speeds, when the rest of BITS was cursing the IPC for lack of internet connections in their rooms. Yesterday evening, finally, every bhawan had access to the internet, and then it happened.....
Everyone was trying to open their favourite sites at the same time, and in such quick progression that the proxy server that handles all the net connections was taken to its limit. The System Administrators were scared it might crash, so they started analyzing the traffic. As soon as they did, a most surprising fact came out. 70% of the internet traffic in BITS was for orkut.com . If they had to save their proxy server, they had to do something quick, and this seemed to be their best option. They went ahead and restricted the bandwidth for the orkut server, almost managing to restore normalcy to the lan traffic.
Over dinner, everyone was complaining about how orkut wasn't opening. On every table, every single person seemed to be telling the same story. Everywhere you went, you would hear the same words being spoken. The number of people affected by this simple desperate measure seemed to be staggering! My room was flocked with people for some time as I had orkut already open and it was only the login system that seemed to be having problem. People came over from other bhawans just to check their scraps! Later in the night, it stopped opening on my computer too. It didn't affect me much as I was over the addiction, but I soon got desperate to open it, only because it was blocked! I remembered that the wi-fi connections were unrestricted, so I went to the lengths of borrowing friend's laptop, going to an area in my bhawan where the wi-fi signal is strong, and accessing orkut there, sitting on the floor!
Finally, IPC seems to have restored everything and orkut seems to be opening again. Thanks IPC administrators ;), beware though, orkut would've noticed the sudden drop in traffic, and might just decide to sue you for loss of traffic.

Finally

2006-08-03T00:11:00.000+05:30

The first year in BITS really put my heart off engineering, or maybe even the entire education system. I was regretting my choice of institution, education, country and everything I could find to put the blame on, cursing everyone around me in the process.
Looking at this sem's courses, it really feels like I'm gonna be doing something this sem. For a change, my life seems to be approaching what I had always dreamt of. This sem really looks right out of one of my dreams! Every single course that I like, very few classes, what more could I ask for!
But then, the sem sure requires a lot of hard work. With all types of applied courses, I'm gonna have to study my ass off. Also, considering the lack of certain other indulgences(ahem ahem), I'd have all the time on my hands, some of which I could dedicate to stuff like studying once in a while. The conclusion is, academically, I'm loving my current position and believe I couldn't be any better off. Otherwise.......

EA 441

2006-08-02T23:16:00.000+05:30

I wish someone had explained to me what the course codes in BITS represent. Yesterday, at the registration, I probably committed the biggest mistake of my educational career. With everyone around me scampering for electives, and being an enthued student at heart, I was desperate to get a decent elective(not really a decent one, ANY elective would do actually). Looking at the list of available courses, I marked the ones I would try for the next day. My friends all agreed with my choice, except for one course which was being taught by the dreaded WP instructor BKR(I'm not the kind to look at the instructors' column). I made a note and went for my registration without any hope at all, having almost the worst possible PR no.
During Registration when I tried fitting in electives into my finished time-table, I kept getting clashes until I encountered a particular course with course no EA 441-ROBOTICS. Pretty happy with my choice, I went off on cloud 9. Outside, I see the list again, and the instructor turns out to be none other than the dreaded BKR. Discussing this with a friend, he tells me that the only person he knows who had taken this course in 2-1 got an E. That was the last thing I wanted to hear, after the amazing CG i got in the last sem.
Shocked and depressed, I went back to my room, waiting impatiently for the first Robotics class.
In class, it turns out there's only one psenti-semite and 2 third-yearites in the course, with around 20 2nd-yearites. This being a course generally taken by psenti-semites, BKR was quite surprised and he audibly laughed at us for about 5 mins before he even started talking. The first thing he explained to us was what the course number stood for. I wish someone had told me this before!! EA in the name stands for emerging areas, which might not mean much now, but will in just a moment. The digit 4 means that the course is recommended for psenti-semites! Plus, he told us that even psenti-semites need to put in an hour of study every day for this course, just to make a C. In other words he was trying to tell us how big a mistake this was and how we were almost playing with our careers.

As of now I'm in two minds about whether to continue this course. I do have the option of substituting or withdrawing, but I'm not sure if I want to. This course might actually take me where I want to go. It is related to my current field of interest, neural networks. My currently adopted project might qualify for this course's compulsory project and, if BKR sticks to his promise, might even fulfill my wish of being published by the 2nd year. I don't know if I'm ready for all the hard work that this course requires, at the same time, the research scientist within me is raring to go. I have NO idea what to do. Somebody out there HELP ME!!

Everything that has a beginning, has an end

2006-07-30T15:11:00.000+05:30

This is it, the end of my two-and-a-half-month-long holidays. The end of my time at home for now, might be the end of my time at home completely(more about that in a later post). In about 15 hours from now, I would be starting off for my college, leaving all traces of civilization behind me, to a place I like to believe is the real Paradise City, Pilani. I might have been longing to get back for quite a while now, but now that it is almost time to go, I really want to stay back here, if only for a while.
Anyways, what interests this blog is that the time of the little vacation counter that I had put up here on the sidebar is over. It was a nice idea that occurred to me while in Pilani, and, a few php-gd tutorials later, I made it while in Delhi. Although I'd love to see what happens to the thing once its time is over, as I have incorporated no error-handling features in it, but its not something I'd want everyone to see. So off it goes, and so do I. Aufwiedersehen

Newton's REAL Epitaph

2006-07-23T13:36:00.000+05:30

In a previous post I had mentioned the Epitaph written for Isaac Newton by Alexander Pope:
God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.
I recently found an anonymous addition to this:

The Devil muttered, "This must not be so",
And with "Let Einstein be!", restored the status quo.

2006-07-20T02:01:00.000+05:30

GOSH! I'm having too many signs from the Devil lately. Some time back, the number of messages in my hotmail inbox(I no longer use hotmail for mail, the account survives only as my MSN messenger ID) was 666. Now, the number of hits on my blog here goes to 666! What the hell, satan, why don't you give me a break and just tell me what you're trying to say?

Freedom of Speech???

2006-07-20T00:21:00.000+05:30

Last I checked we were living in a country that guarantees its citizens the fundamental right to freedom of speech, oh no wait, that was the time before that. The last time I checked I got confused.
The Indian Department of Telecommunications passed an order to ISPs last Friday, asking them to block several domains, including *.blogspot.com , *.typepad.com and geocities.com/*

The reason for this stupid outburst seems to be that recently a blog describing a terrorist outfit had been found. Our babus have decided, on our behalf, that blocking a single blog wouldn't help as new ones will keep cropping up. Their solution? BLOCK ALL BLOGGER SUBDOMAINS! I seriously believe that if blogger or google is informed of this action, they might decide to sue the Indian Government for the loss of net traffic resulting from this stupid order.
Let me remind some of these tech-disabled babus that apart from the zillion other ways, there is a straightforward option of buying a domain and pointing it to your blogspot address. No blocks can block these domains right? So wat are they going to do next? Stop net access completely?
Not just that, even when they try to block, they use methods as easily by-passable as DNS blocking. No url-checking has been employed(or maybe that was just the particular ISP that i tested).
Also, all ISPs are not on this blocking bandwagon yet. Sify, luckily for me, is still giving us the original, unrestricted version of the net. But I have no idea how long this luck is going to last, so I'm having to hurry up this entry, lest my opinion be muffled in this authoritarian denial of basic human rights. From what I know, MTNL, Reliance and Airtel have done their part in following the order, while others are expected to follow suit(or will be forced to).
One final note on this, this blocking system is obviously not fool-proof. This can easily be bypassed. As of now, any basic proxy server(located outside of India, so that these restrictions do not apply to the server) can be used to bypass it. The easiest way would be to use cgi based proxies like anonymizer.com or cgi-proxy.net . Later, I'm sure the loop is going to be tightened and url-checking will be enforced soon enough. In this case, all you need is a cgi based proxy that hashes the url of the site, ie the name of the site you want to visit is not visible in plain text in the url of the page through the proxy. One such service is http://www.letsproxy.com

Disclaimer: The author does not endorse or is no way related to the sites mentioned above. I'm only trying to help people(read non-tech) realize that the net was meant to be a free speech medium and these efforts can't really change that.

Fire in the hole

2006-07-17T01:52:00.000+05:30

Even though all net surveys put the usage of Firefox as a net browser at a measly 10%, my blog begs to differ. In what was probably the biggest shock of my life, I realized that more than 60% of the hits on my blog were made from firefox while IE was just around 30. Its good to see that people are finally beginning to realize how much better Firefox is, compared to IE or any other browser for that matter(look here).

The following is an extract from a CNET.com article:
"The Internet Explorer is a terrible browser and it has security problems," says Wharton legal studies professor Dan Hunter. "Firefox is just a better browser, but I would argue that its market share gains have come because spyware and other hacks plague Explorer."

Deidre Woods, associate dean and chief information officer at Wharton, points to an increasing tendency among users to look at alternatives. "People, especially in the open-source community, want another winner (besides) Microsoft." Wharton legal studies professor Kevin Werbach says, "The lesson here is that open source can create a slick, consumer-friendly product. Firefox is definitely more than just a blip. It has some staying power."

Read the full thing here.

The Albatross

2006-07-14T23:35:00.000+05:30

"Ah ! well a-day ! what evil looks
Had I from old and young !
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung."

Impossible is nothing

2006-07-12T02:04:00.000+05:30

Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it.
Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion.
Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare.
Impossible is potential.
Impossible is temporary.
Impossible is nothing!

2006-07-10T00:28:00.000+05:30

Portugal and the Knights Templar

2006-07-06T03:46:00.000+05:30

What would the quiet country of Portugal have to do with the Knights Templar, you might ask me. Well, I was surprised too when i noticed it today.

The jersey of the Portuguese National Football Team bears an emblem that used to be the sign of the Templar, the cross pattee. A bit of googling tells me that the cross-pattee is indeed the symbol of the FPF, the Portuguese Football Federation, though i could not find any background on the reason(significance, rather) of the choice. Here is the logo of the FPF:

15 minutes of fame

2006-07-06T02:33:00.000+05:30

Munich, Germany 2006: It had been just over 10 minutes since the Italian prodigy Giorgio Prodi had got down to the pitch in his international debut, strategically made to coincide with the team's most crucial moment in the cup. He had been given a responsibility and was expected to deliver-he had to. As he received his umpteenth pass on the field, he suddenly cried out in pain, gesticulated for a substitution and fell down, making no move to hide the tears in his eyes. It was over, it was all over....

Torino, Italy, 1997: "We don't need any more players on the team Antonio, we already have more than we are ever going to need!"
"But Signor, you should take a look at this boy. He is beyond description, look at him play once and you will know."
"Even if, the lad plays as well as you say he does, what use is an eight year old in an under-12 team? He's going to be up against twelve year olds, what is your tiny kid going to do then?"
"One look at him, Signor, and you will forget that he is only eight."
Very close to the piazza in Turin, there is a huge lawn that is sometimes occupied by the neighborhood kids, playing their games. This is where Antonio brought his boss, to witness the miracle called Gigo, short for Giorgio, the eight year old who was thought to have been born playing football. Within fifteen minutes of his arrival, Fabrizio Tribiani, the manager of the local under-12 team had chosen his next midfielder. He approached the boy's parents, he could make it big, he told them, but that would require a lot of effort-and some help from his parents. The poor parents, understanding this was a call for a bribe, pleaded the manager to help them as they were in fact extremely poor peasants who had moved in to the city only for their son. They had brought all their possessions along and even that wasn't enough to cover up for a bribe. The manager was adamant, gave them a choice between their son's future and their present.
Gigo's father had himself been a football fanatic in his years, and he knew the kind of fame the big names in the sport made for themselves. He had always wanted to join the sport himself, but his upbringing never allowed the dream to materialize. He could not let his son, who was so obviously a miracle, spend his life telling his children how his selfish father had closed paths for him.
Against protests from his wife, Gigo's father agreed to pay up the amount asked for. The deal was made, Gigo would have to leave his home for atleast two years. In these two years he would be trained with the other team-players, and, luckily for Fabrizio, would act as the desperately needed midfielder on his team.

Gigo was an immediate sensation on the under-12 football circuit. He was all over the sports sections in the papers. Within a few years he had earned himself sponsorship and he could give his parents atleast a decent living again. This was his attempt to repay them for the sacrifice they had made for him.
No longer under-12, Gigo's training grew harder by the day. But he carried on, "For my parents, if not for myself", he told himself. He was soon on the secondary teams of some big clubs of the country, making name for himself, paving his way to the obvious success that awaited him.
Then came the big moment, the 2006 world cup. He had been chosen in the national squad for the cup even though he hadn't even debuted internationally yet. The reason simply being that Fabrizio was now the manager of the Italian National Team. Gigo was Fabrizio's creation and both of them knew and acknowledged the fact. Fabrizio planned to keep Gigo as his Ace of Spades, to bring him on in the tightest of moments.
The moment that Fabrizio was waiting for came in the semi-final where Italy was playing Germany and they desperately needed a goal. The mentor nobody but his own boy could do it and sent him on.
A little after 10 minutes of his arrival on the pitch, Gigo saw an excellent chance and rushed in towards the goal, he was one-on-one against a German defender. The defender, thinking quick, gave Gigo a hard tackle that sent him sprawling down to the turf. He got away with a yellow card for the tackle which was extremely dirty, to say the least. Gigo, on the other hand, was down in pain. Even though he felt shearing pain, he was determined to go on. He would not, he could not let this chance go. He had been waiting for this moment all his life. A stretcher was called for but he managed a limping walk to outside the playing area. Within minutes he was back on the field, all medicated, determined to go on. Seconds after coming back on the field, he was passed the ball, and try as he might he just could not balance himself to handle the ball. He had to give up, calling out for a substitution, he fell down crying. It was all over for him.

The doctors diagnosed the condition of his legs as very serious. Multiple tissues had been damaged beyond repair. He had ignored many previous injuries, many serious ones, in an attempt to continue training. This had severely damaged his legs and the doctors expected a recovery period of atleast six months.
"You should be able to walk around properly within six months from now, Mr Prodi"
"What about the game doctor? How long before I can play normally?"
"I'm sorry I'm having to say this, Mr Prodi, but I'm afraid you might never be able to set foot inside a football field again"
Tears coming from his eyes, Gigo managed to say "I had dreamed a dream, but now that dream has gone from me...."
The shock was too much for Gigo to take, he wondered how he would be able to face his parents. How could he tell them that their prodigal son, for whom they had given up everything, was worth nothing now.
It was over, it was all over.....

Ek Boti do Roti

2006-07-04T22:10:00.000+05:30

Take a guess.....what do u think the title of this post is???
No point trying, you'll never come even close!!
Its the name of a restaurant in CP's outer circle here in New Delhi. For non-hindi people, the name means one piece(as in a piece of meat) and two chappatis. Doesn't the name sound a bit too restrictive??? I mean I've read a lot about marketing and advertisement, and every single book on the topic worth its money would stress on the importance of the name on the volume of an establishment's business. What kind of a company would want to restrict their business by naming it something that, by its very nature, is restrictive. The only thing the name is achieving is to subconsciously restrict the customer's appetite to two rotis or even less. I don't really need to stress on the fact that names do affect customer behaviour.
On the experience front, a friend and I-both of us really low on cash, and expecting the place to be on the cheaper side-jumped into the place. One look at the menu and all our hopes shattered. Counting every single penny we had, we decided on a menu we could just manage to pay for.
Sitting inside reminded of that i had, in fact, heard of the place. The city edition of the newspaper had recently reviewed it. The comments had been that although they try their best to be a "posh" restaurant, they could only manage an average. Also, the reviewer had mentioned, that the chef could cook only certain items to a decent taste and that anyone going there should be careful about what to order.
Tasting the food that I got, I wished I had remembered the list of dishes the newspaper said the chef could make good enough.

Fade to Black

2006-07-01T17:18:00.001+05:30

Life it seems, will fade away
Drifting further every day
Getting lost within myself
Nothing matters no one else
I have lost the will to live
Simply nothing more to give
There is nothing more for me
Need the end to set me free

Things are not what they used to be
Missing one inside of me
Deathly lost, this cant be real
Cannot stand this hell I feel
Emptiness is filling me
To the point of agony
Growing darkness taking dawn
I was me, but now hes gone

PS: I feel really guilty, not been posting any original,interesting stuff on my blog for very long!

Summer of 2006

2006-06-20T15:26:00.001+05:30

I got my first real six-string
Bought it at the five-and-dime
Played 'til my fingers bled
It was summer of '69

I finally got myself a decent guitar yesterday! Although I already had one, but i hadn't really bought it, I had inherited it from my uncle-that too an electric without an amp! Now that I have an accoustic too, its time to get serious about my guitaring. Ready for the bleeding fingers, are we???

PS: I've named it Metallique!!

666- Satan is here

2006-06-06T16:00:00.000+05:30

Plaaaay backwards,
Hear why its sung here, oppositioner..
Allll on track, all arriving
They all sing, and they are one.
Shall I loathe you now, parishoner?
Oh hear Him, Christian within me.
It stirs my sin; the river,
Oh, she swells with our lousiness.
All my life will end for him?
We’re all out of signs,
I know I’m sorta shocked
To hear The Lord,
My God now will save me!
Oh I will n’er be saved,
Because I live with Satan..
One wish today;
That you’ll all pray for
Three who will make it here late.
Pray now and you’ll see..
The ‘Lord’ turned me on,
But, oh, I was the shaggy fool..
Clothed in agony,
Lost at a height.
There’s no escaping it,
Nor his woes..
So here’s to my Sweet Satan.
The other’s little path
Would make me sad,
Whose power is faith.
He’ll give those with him 666.
And all the evil fools,
they know he made
us suffer sadly.
Ohohohoh…
“Family won’t get loose,
They’re offered me.”
Always soothes the worker.
Always will be as we know now
“I see ruins,” said he,
“the world they offered me?
Who wished the Lord’s fall?”
If we lose feather,
Say you’ll save me!

And no wimps can bend the rules..
And no wimps can do..

Hunt next to the shore,
‘Cause they see all from there,
See here’s the news,
Who walks with mute grief!
Perhaps no-one found thee…
“Heavy, lift me out,”
Spake the Reve,
“Someday, failed, we’ll lose one line-up,
They’ve gotta leave forsaken.”

And no wimps can do..
And no wimps can do…

He, who say the lords
Thoth have our laws,
Maat must be superb. Mass is ended..
Over there,
He who should learn thee.
Any moot that serves by my sworn music,
I wish it with snow be shushed,
All for my mass’s sake.
Hear why its sung,
here, oppositioner, Ohh..
He who should show
May make his show worthy,
To look, for us, odd.. sickly,
There’s one chance - take his show.
Hold thy head,
Hear why its sung here. oppositioner.
Who owns this earth built below?
Oh sweet Israel…

Coke, Lies and Videotape

2006-06-03T22:54:00.001+05:30

The recent fiasco over Rahul Mahajan’s(son of the late Pramod Mahajan) death has raised quite a few questions over the responsibility of the media, yet again.

Here is a timeline of the facts that I am aware of:

The Police claim the crime scene had been heavily tampered by the time they could start collecting evidence.
Of the four people who were with Rahul and Vivek, three had surrendered on Friday evening, in Delhi. They belonged to pretty affluent families and went straight to the concerned police stations.
The fourth person, Sahil, who had not surrendered, was declared absconding-even though no charges were put on him.
Sahil’s father was taken into custody, to force Sahil into surrender, even though there hadn’t been a single registered against Sahil, let alone his father. This is clearly a despotic measure.
On Saturday, Sahil decides to surrender and contacts his lawyer. His lawyer suggests him to go to a TV studio and not a Police Station to stage his surrender. This recommendation alone is enough to raise suspicions about the interests of Sahil’s lawyer.
Sahil’s surrender is clearly broadcasted and advertised by the concerned news channel. It is clear to any viewer that Sahil’s was an act of obvious surrender.
The Delhi Police’s statements in reaction to this claims that this was a case of arrest and not surrender.
A rival news channel claims that Sahil’s father was detained for questioning and the information he disclosed led to Sahil’s capture.
In the meanwhile, it had been two days since the death of Vivek Moitra and a post-mortem was still awaited. How, in this world of emerging technologies, can a measly post-mortem report take so long?
A team of doctors from Apollo Hospital, in a press conference, claim that there wasn’t a trace of cocaine in Rahul’s body, against his friends’ claims. In saying this they admitted that they had still not been able to isolate the cause of Rahul’s current condition. This is Apollo, the largest and the best equipped chain of hospitals in India.
In the meanwhile, AIIMS decides to release Vivek Moitra’s body to his family. The post-mortem report is still nowhere in sight.
The team of investigating doctors submits a concise post-mortem report to the investigating team of the Delhi Police that says nothing about the cause of death. I wonder what else is more important in such a report. The team of doctors claims that it is not possible for them to ascertain the cause of death from available evidence, and they have submitted some critical body parts to the Police, along with their report for further forensic investigation. AIIMS, probably the single largest hospital in India, cannot ascertain the cause of such an obvious death, even after two days of investigation.
In reporting the above, a correspondent told the newsreader that submitting a concise report is the generally accepted procedure and that the complete post-mortem report is only presented in court during proceedings. The newsreader repeated this for the clarification of viewers, now misquoting it as “The AIIMS authorities are trying their best not to disclose any information. They have tried to withhold information even from the Police, even they haven’t been given a complete post-mortem report but only a short, incomplete version.”
Hours later, Delhi Police still claims that Sahil is guilty and that he was absconding from Delhi, and that he had not surrendered but been nabbed.

All this when the Indian judicial system renders the accused innocent until proven guilty, and Sahil wouldn’t even be considered a convict unless a case was registered against him. The cases were registered only on Saturday evening, AFTER his misrepresented surrender.

The Knight A Pope Interred

2006-06-02T15:18:00.000+05:30

Alexander Pope wrote this as Sir Issac Newton's epitaph:

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.

Ride the Lightning

2006-06-02T14:58:00.000+05:30

This is a picture taken on a trip i went for, with friends, to a place called Dharamshala-the abode of the Dalai Lama. In the picture we were sitting in the balcony of a restaurant, having lunch when it started thundering and eventually raining. This picture was taken once it had started raining, hence the foggy look. But when it was still just thundering, we were sitting right there on the chairs you can see there and lightning struck the electric pole seen just beside the roof, the tallest one in the picture. I, for one, wasnt looking when this happened, but i saw the reflections of the lightning in everything around me, and the thunder that followed, actually made me jump up and look around. People around me, who were closer to the sight of the lightning strike said they could feel something against their skin, i guess it was just the ionization of the air around them that they were feeling.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

2006-06-02T14:35:00.000+05:30

This is a quote from Alexander Pope's famous poem "Eloisa to Abelard", read the full thing here.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;

We all know the difference between the hopeful beginning and the embittered end of a relationship. It is, in a word, trust. While we believe in the promise of happiness with another person, we overlook his faults, her shortcomings. Little things remain little things and doubts only arise for their benefits to be lavishly given. Later, when hope has been disappointed, it takes trust with it. Doubts become certainties and every fault, every rough spot and irritation grows from insignificance to such a size as to cut us off from any further hopes of happiness.

The rain dance

2006-04-15T04:20:00.000+05:30

The following post has been borrowed from another blog. Please visit the original blog to credit the original author. http://thoughtsafari.blogspot.com/

She sat on the terrace looking pensively at the velvet blue night sky. . She tried to guess how many stars were there. She yearned for his embrace when the cool night breeze touched her. The sound of music floated by from a music class nearby. She thought about the children who were singing, each one singing louder than the other- their innocent attempts to impress the teacher. Life used to be so simple…

The moon was playing peek- a- boo with the clouds. It showed its face for a brief moment and went into hiding again. Even the moon was cheating her, just like life. The train of thought was threatening to take on a sadder, cynical note. To shake it off she began to hum in unison with the children’s voices. A calm came over her. She savored the nostalgic tug at her heart when the breeze, the music and the children’s voices melted together. She longed for happy days again.

She lay down on the floor and stretched slowly, conscious of every small movement she made. She closed her eyes and the shapes started looming in her mind. Everything came rushing back…

They were meeting after a week. She was willing time to move faster. She could not wait to see him. Their previous meeting had ended on a bitter note. They had quarreled again and had not spoken since. Today he had called and in his gruff style said, “Let’s meet, usual time, usual place. Bye.” She felt the familiar flutter again. The anger, the bitterness, the loneliness vanished without a trace.

It was at this moment that she realized that her love ran deep; she could never give him up. Her ego left her and fond memories took its place. A single teardrop escaped her eye and landed on her desk. She saw it glistening in the sunlight. It was full of color. Oh! The magic of this voice…

Finally, after seven hours of hearing the clock tick laboriously, she was at the beach waiting for him. He never kept her waiting, but today she had waited half an hour already. She watched the waves rolling towards her and beckoning to her as they receded. A boat tossed about merrily in the distance, carrying fishermen returning from a day at the sea. She felt like running up to the horizon and touching the sky where it met the sea. She was her usual high spirited self again. Life could not be better, Yes! He was back.

She was musing about her childish dreams and laughing to herself when someone touched her from behind. She turned to see his grim face. She was puzzled why she had not known it was him. She always sensed when he was close by and intuitively turned around. Today she had not even recognized his touch. Something was amiss.

She searched his eyes for the hidden love, but in vain. He had never once told her he missed her. Today she just wanted to scream out how much she had missed him, how desperately she had waited for him. But she held back when she saw his cold eyes. She let her eyes do the talking; they asked him what was wrong. He could not meet her eyes. He turned away and they stood facing the sea, the rhythmic lashing of the waves filling the silence between them. Still facing the sea, he spoke, “It’s over, I have to move on.” And he walked away swiftly without turning back. She watched numbly till he disappeared into the twilight, he had disappeared from her life. She stood there for she knew not how long that night.

…the music that had filled her senses a short while ago sounded like screeching. The breeze chilled her till she shivered. A whole year had passed, she had not cried once. Her life had been shattered by his parting sentence. He had moved on. She never wondered why. She just let the pain seep through her and drain her off her energy day after day for a year now.

As she lay there lost in melancholy, a heavy raindrop fell on her forehead; she felt a sharp pain. There was a loud crack of thunder and another raindrop fell and another and another... till she was soaked. Then the tears started gushing from her eyes. She got up and began and a slow dance in the rain. Slowly her steps got more and more springy. She felt alive again. The rain had washed him away. She smiled…

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust

2006-04-11T05:41:00.000+05:30

"...for dust thou [art], and unto dust shalt thou return. " -Genesis 3:19

2006-04-10T05:24:00.000+05:30

Tread softly

2006-04-02T03:23:00.000+05:30

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread upon my dreams.

-W.B. Yeats

The Butterfly Effect

2006-03-18T16:54:00.000+05:30

I forgot to add in the previous post, as to why i hated the movie so much. Now I think it deserves a seperate post. I believe the whole plot of the movie is fundamentally flawed. More about that later, I'll mention a small, specific, but major flaw first. In the scene in jail, where he impresses that religious chap by making marks suddenly appear on his palms. According to the multiverse theory, there would have been two parallel universes created at the time that old event happened-one in which Evin had injured his hands and one in which he did not.What they tried to show in the movie was that Evin travelled from the latter universe to the former. Now, think of it. Had he actually done that, the guy standing in front of him now would be from the new universe. He would have seen those marks on his hands many times over in the hours that they spent together in prison. There would be no sense of any surprise now, and the rest of the story doesnt make sense.

This is only when we assume travelling from one multiverse to another is possible. Which is where the fundamental flaw of the plot lies. Multiverse theory itself claims that the distances between universes are unfathomable. Travelling through those distances at the speed of light would make no sense. The only possibility that remains is using wormholes. Now if the director is trying to convince me that it is possible to create wormholes out of nowhere, just by reading a journal, well what can I say.....

Modelling Reality

2006-03-18T15:45:00.000+05:30

I was watching a movie called 'The Butterfly Effect' yesterday. The name excited me coz the movie seemed to be related to Chaos Theory(the butterfly effect is an important phenomenon for most of chaos theory). Actually the movie has nothing to do with chaos theory, it mainly deals with the multiverse theory, which talks abt infinite parallel universes. The name was justified only in the fact that whenevr the protagonist tried to improve something, he ended up making the situation worse. So...though the movie sucked big time, making a joke out of the amazing scientific theories it talked of, it set me thinking about scientific theories in general.

So wat exactly is a scientific theory?
Whenever we discuss a physical phenomenon, we have two aspects to it viz. the PHYSICS and the MATHEMATICS of that event.
In PHYSICS we discuss what is actually happening and in MATHEMATICS we simulate events, we go through situations that mite not actually be happening. Basically mathematics is a tool that helps us analyze situations. This is where the theory fits in, it provides the interface between the PHYSICS and the MATHEMATICS. In the most basic sense, it provides a set of equations which let us mathematically model the physics, so in essence, a theory helps us model reality within a set of equations.

Is there anything wrong with that?
I believe modelling reality on paper, within a set of equations is and always will be, an approximation! The closest analogy that i can think of, is a digital camera. Consider the theory and the mathematics to be a digital camera. You are looking at the world through that digital camera when you solve problems based on theories. But when you look closely, you are going to notice problems-in case of the camera-pixellation. Every digital camera, will eventually take pictures in pixels, however small they might be, they will eventually be pixels. Therefore reality doesnt remain real after digitization. If u keep going deeper, the inconsistencies keep on increasing. The better the resolution of the camera, the deeper you can go, but there can never be a camera that gives a TRUE image, there will be pixellation at some stage. The same thing holds for mathematics. If we want to look for a theory that models reality perfectly, we have to first look away from mathematics!!

Quote

2006-03-09T06:26:00.000+05:30

I heard this quote in a movie today and I'd like to remember it for my country's sake: "We have one foot in the past and the other in the future, that is the reason we are pissing on the present".

Temel Nosce

2006-02-28T13:57:00.002+05:30

Temel Nosce- Latin for "Know Thyself"
Inspired by the movie, The Matrix.
In the scene when Neo meets the Oracle for the first time and asks if he's the one, she points to a plaque above her kitchen door that reads "Temel Nosce".
It represents what I'm doing with my blog here, getting to know myself.

Dilemma

2006-01-28T13:11:00.000+05:30

Dilemma: A theorem proven by the use of two minor theorems.(According to wikipedia)

(Confused????))

Mathematics II got me into a dilemma over the meaning of dilemma.

It all started when I heard my studious 'friends' muttering the word 'lemma'. Not going to lectures and not attending classes, I had no idea what the word meant. I being the way I am, I chose to search wikipedia for answers instead of opening my maths book which was right in front of me.
So, Wikipedia tells me lemma is a minor theorem used to prove a bigger theorem. Thats my Maths II cleared, this one statement will get me 10 marks in the next tute. As for Dilemma, its just the bigger theorem that was proven using two lemmas. Trilemma would be with three lemmas, and polylemma would be with many lemmas. That sounds totally scientific, but dilemma????????

No dark sarcasm in the classrooms....

2006-01-19T11:03:00.001+05:30

"We don't need no education,
We don't need no thought control.
No dark sarcasm in the classrooms
Teachers leave them kids alone..."

These words are best suited to describe my mental state right now. Its not that i have a problem with education or studies, but yes i do have a problem with what i call "pseudo-education". The Professor gives you a superficial idea in the lecture, in the Tut the prof himself has no idea of what he is saying. In a way he is a tape recorder who only repeats the words uttered in the lecture. Any doubts that arise in the fresh mind will be silenced as being "irrelevant" and "out of syllabus".
Anyone who really wishes to learn something will choke in this environment.
In tests the questions asked are the exact ones that the professor had solved on the board-and the solution is expected to be the same too, a slight deviation here or there(though logically correct)will not be given any marks, endless rechecks will only increase your humilition but not your marks.
If this is what education is all about, I'm proud to say-
We dont need no education.....

I'm always late....

2006-01-16T14:56:00.000+05:30

Late night movie watching has shifted my body clock so immensely that its just impossible for me to wake up before 11. Unfortunately, due to a mistake I made in registration, my time-table has an 8-o-clock comp class mondays and fridays, and guess what i haven't attended a single one yet. Yesterday I had finally promised myself that i'm gonna attend today's class, but then one game of 29 and all thoughts of CP were forgotten. Slept at three and was woken up at 8:10 by someone who hd left his cycle keys in my room during the previous night's movie. Scrambling for everything, and wearing watever i could get hold of, i reached class at 8:25....
Imagine reaching for a 50 min class, 25 min late. I wouldn't even hv gone but i was told there was gonna be a test. The Prof, as expected, wasn't too happy to see me, considering I had missed all previous classes-and this appearance wasn't too good either. As expected the guy didn't let me enter, but he kept pointing at my dress. At first I froze, thinking that i hd reached for class in my night clothes-but i checked myself, i was in my normal dress-cargo pants and a t-shirt.
Whatever it was that he found wrong with my dress, beat me. But he finally let me enter and take my seat.
The guy bored me to death in the remaining 25 mins, occasionally passing comments abt me. There was no test and all this turned out to be a waste.
Finally just as the bell rang, i noticed the one-liner on my t-shirt-
"I'm always LATE, but its worth the WAIT"............................
poor prof

My Weak Spot

2006-01-15T14:10:00.000+05:30

Rya Raghav calls this blog "Neo's GeekSpot". I'd rather call this my "WEAK" spot. So be it....

Interesting Quote

2006-01-12T12:05:00.000+05:30

"It is not the biggest of things that make life difficult, in fact it is the small things in life that create the biggest difficulties."

As said by my chem prof in class.

Wherever I may roam

2006-01-12T11:41:00.000+05:30

I roam around...
in corridors built in my grandfather's time
yellow buildings that tell the tale of times
Look at the time in a clock wrinkled by age

I roam...
in lawns filled with wild bush...
hostels fresh from last night's ambush
A poor man was born this day
he hates the day
hates himself for being born
but it is the celebration that he hates the most
the reminder of pain....

I sit in class...
but is this where i want to be?
Is this all the world has for me to see?
The class seems to go on
but time is not passing
The teacher seems to go on
but i'm not listening
Life seems to go on
but i'm not living

Why am i not happy here?
Why do i pull a mask of happiness...
over the endless nights
spent with moist eyes
Why do i cry when i am alone?
What i feel everyday, is it pain?
Is it only pain thats left in me?
Just breathing is not all there is to life
I need a LIFE
L.I.F.E
I have already got used to living like this
but the truth remains
I am living without a Life...
Wandering without direction
Rover...
Wanderer...
Nomad...
Vagabond...
call me what u will..

Things I bet you didn't know about Pilani

2006-01-07T12:08:00.001+05:30

Which district does Pilani lie in?
How did the town get its name?
Pilani is a town in the Jhunjhunu District in Rajasthan, India. The town Pilani derives its name from Jat fighter with Pilania gotra. He died protecting the fort and was honoured by the king for his courage and sacrifice by giving his name to location.
GD Birla introduced a couple of world-class scientific institutions in that remote desert village merely because it was his birthplace. Even though Birla would not allow Pilani full scope to expand (he would not allow any industry for fear of despoiling the habitat, and the nearest railway station is 25 km away), Pilani has now become a prosperous town. That is quite an achievement because Pilani has no natural advantages whatever.

Address by Steve Jobs-AMAZING stuff

2005-11-29T20:59:00.000+05:30

This is an address given by Steve Jobs. I put it here because i found it very inspiring and wanted to keep it somewhere safe and still ready for immediate future reference-so here goes-

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple
Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the
finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be
told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I
want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just
three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed
around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So
why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed
college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She
felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so
everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his
wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that
they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a
call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do
you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out
that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had
never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption
papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that
I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that
was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents'
savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I
couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my
life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I
was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I
decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty
scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever
made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes
that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked
interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor
in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food
with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get
one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of
what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to
be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction
in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every
drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and
didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy
class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif
typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter
combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful,
historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I
found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But
ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it
all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first
computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that
single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces
or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its
likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped
out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal
computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course
it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in
college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect
them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow
connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny,
life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made
all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started
Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years
Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion
company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation
- the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got
fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple
grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company
with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our
visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out.
When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And
very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was
gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the
previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as
it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried
to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I
even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began
to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had
not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And
so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was
the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being
successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less
sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative
periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company
named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my
wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature
film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the
world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to
Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's
current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired
from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed
it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm
convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I
did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as
it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your
life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is
great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If
you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters
of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great
relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep
looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each
day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It
made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have
looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the
last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And
whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need
to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever
encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost
everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of
embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of
death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going
to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have
something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow
your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the
morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know
what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type
of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer
than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my
affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to
try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years
to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is
buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It
means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy,
where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into
my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the
tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they
viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it
turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with
surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest
I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this
to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely
intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die
to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has
ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely
the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out
the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not
too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away.
Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't
be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's
thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner
voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and
intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.
Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth
Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a
fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought
it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before
personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with
typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in
paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and
overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and
then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the
mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a
photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find
yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the
words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they
signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for
myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

------
For all your days prepare
And meet them ever alike
When you are the anvil bear
When you are the hammer strike
-------

Change

2005-11-16T12:54:00.000+05:30

Change......It is said that change is the only permanent thing in life. Does it have to be?
Why is it that by the time you get used to anything, enough to be valuing its importance to you, it is time for you to move on in life?
Why is it that just as people are learning to respect you and value you, it is time for you to say goodbye?
Why does it matter not when you join some place or a new group of people, but it matters when it is time to leave?
Why?Why?Why? Why is moving on considered good, when there's nothing like u knowing people around you and the people knowing you?

Purpose

2005-11-15T16:40:00.000+05:30

We're not here because we're free. We're here because we're not free. There is no escaping reason; no denying purpose. Because as we all know, without purpose, we would not exist.
It is purpose that created us. Purpose that connects us. Purpose that pulls us. That guides us. That drives us. It is purpose that defines us. Purpose that binds us.

The Future

2005-11-15T03:11:00.000+05:30

Finally someone let me outta my cage
now time for me is nothing coz i'm counting no age........

I aint happy...
I'm feeling glad,
I got sunshine
In a bag
I'm useless
but not for long,
the future
is coming on.........

2005-11-10T13:01:00.000+05:30

STOP THE WORLD!!!!!!

I WANNA GET OFF!!!

BACK where i belong

2005-11-06T22:38:00.000+05:30

I'm back with a bang....well almost. well for the uninitiated i'm back in BITS, hd been to delhi for diwali and then to baroda, gujarat. dint get train reservations from there so hd to return to pilani in a bus. imagine a 19 hour bus journey...through the freezing cold of rajasthan. but yes, passing through the cities of rajasthan-udaipur, ajmer, jodhpur and a few i dint pass through-alwar, jaipur, jaisalmer...i've promised myself(and these cities) that i'll visit them as soon as humanly possible.

My Phone

2005-07-17T15:34:00.000+05:30

My Phone died yesterday, an N-Gage QD-for the third time in its short life(???)span. The OS, it seems, has a critical problem that doesnt let the phone boot if it has less than 800 kb free in its flash memory(the phone memory, nothing to do with the memory card). have to take it to a Nokia dealer again to get it flashed now.