Arbitrary Scribbles

A Century of posts, Quarter century of Life !

2011-01-19T04:46:00.004+08:00

Around four years and a hundred blogs ago, I decided to start off this blog. On my 21st bday, one that I considered a bday for a lifetime. And mann, have I come a long way since then. Not just in terms of distance (Calicut -> Singapore translates to 1000s of kms :P), but mentally, emotionally, physically, academically, socially, and many more 'ally's (pun intended :P ). Change has beaten the face of my exteriors, yea. And yet, inside I'm still the same guy :). What I still crave for is company of more and more people. Yea, I'd say I'm still pretty much where I was for the last 7 years :P. A lot of change and no change (pls dont ask me how many coins I carry around :P).

A quarter of a century ago, somewhere in Dubai on a cold wintry night, another boy childs name was added to the register in New Dubai Hospital. He didnt know that he would write this blogpost afer a quarter century as a Capricornian.. oops.. Saggitarian..But while writing this, he realizes one thing. That feeling of gratitude and LIFE flowing all through him.

I logged in to Facebook to greet 50 something messages on my wall, and I'm waiting,counting,wishing for more to come :). I rubbed my ass after the butt-blowing GPLs, laughed over and over again at the entertainment show that had passed over the last 3 hours spent among an amazzing group, and whats more, stayed up till 5 am to see India win a thriller ODI with South Africa ! I just cant help thanking all of you guys out there, my friends, well wishers, for making me what I am by letting me know you atleast think of me. So I'll sum it up in the 6 letter word : THANKS !

And I just cant help get over that feeling of JOY that I feel now. So its time for a repeat telecast of the blogpost I wrote exactly 2 years ago :). Happy Blogday to me !

Power of MANY

2011-01-10T14:01:00.006+08:00

Remember the story your mom told you, about how its harder to break a bunch of sticks when they're together than to break them one by one ? I've come to realize how true it really is :). The power of a "group"- unbounded, unbreakable, overwhelming. After I felt the sheer mindblowing force that hundreds of minds working together could achieve from my experience with Ragam and Tathva during my college days, I'm feeling it yet again, here in Singapore.

Making a group work is making the difference between "Many Hands make work light" and "Too many cooks spoil the broth". But once a group achieves that state... "Coherence".. when you can bring together a bunch of 10 or 20 or even more people together..get them to pitch in a multitude of ideas, get different hands and minds working on different parts.. understand where to lead and where to follow.. At that point, when the group begins to function as a single individual in many bodies.. IT can achieve anything !

Apart from feeling the overwhelming power of being part of a single large entity during Ragam times, I've had the fortune of being associated with many gems of friends and friend 'groups' throughout my life.My EEE pals still remain an unchanging pillar of support to me (and I'm sure we'll stay that way) :).Through my friend 'circle' in Singapore, however, I've had the chance to really see and learn a lot of group dynamics. Over 2 years, we learnt a lot.I would'nt say we've perfected the art of acting as a united group, but we've come a far way.I've learnt that when a group is involved, even life-changing actions can be done with minimal effort.

Over 2 years, we learnt to celebrate as never before. Organized parties and trips that we will remember forever in life, celebrated birthdays in full style, made videos, dance dramas, treasure hunts, and took each one by surprise that it was no more surprising to be surprised :P. Did it all, from group lunches,coffees and dinners almost every other day to squash games on thursdays to mass movie-goings on fridays.

Well, we did "almost all". With Naren's bday, we reached another level beyond the art of celebration, that of group responsibility.The time spent with children on Naren's bday was one of the most satisfying moments for me, I'm glad I had an equally enthusiastic group with me to share and multiply it.And that is going to go on.Happen again.The small step we took towards 'encouraging' Protsahan (pun intended :P ) is going to be just one step towards whole new heights that we can scale.

And we will do more. Much more. Cos diverse as we are, we have learnt the art of doing as One :).

Teaching to teach...

2011-01-05T23:55:00.007+08:00

A session spent teaching a junior recently reminded me of my passion- for teaching ! After the last 21 years spent in academics, I know by now that my only chance of job-satisfaction lies somewhere close to academics :). I realized something - all through my student life, I had known I would be a teacher. I had seen myself in the teachers shoes, standing right where he was, holding what power and knowledge he had, and imagined "How would I teach this if it were me ? Would I be better than him? What would I give importance to if I were in his shoes?".

And I learnt another very important fact. One that 90% of us never realized in student life. IT ISNT EASY TO BE A TEACHER, LET ALONE A GOOD ONE !

Here's the deal.When you teach, you aim multidimensionally. You aim to

- Impart the idea about the topic to the student,
while
- Not making yourself too boring and repetitive,
and
- Making sure the student develops a passion/interest for the topic by giving real-life examples,
but you want to
- Make sure the student practises/implements what he learnt. For eg., that ever irritating word called 'problems' :P,
then again you have to
- Reach out to all sections of the class - help the weaker ones survive, help the intelligent ones aim for greater heights in the topic

And all this through one hour of classroom teaching ? Seriously, its just not enough ! So what do you do when you have no time in the classroom? Prioritize and prepare outside your classroom. You prioritize what it is you aim for through your course. You do this by

- Proper course design - deciding what should be taught : Make the course relevant and useful to the students.
- Preparing the teaching presentation/lecture well beforehand : Not making it boring, at the same time making sure the information reaches the students.
- Being ready to take questions and answer them : This involves reading heavily and understanding the topic yourself beforehand.
- Preparing good tutorial/problems and handouts : Cos you might know what the relevant material is, and sometimes putting it together yourself might help the students (spoonfeeding ? :P I wonder).
- Setting a good question paper that tests everything in a balanced way : Not too easy, cos you want to appreciate the understanding of the ones who really learnt the topic. Not too hard, cos you dont want to grill the students, just test their knowledge.
- Correcting and examining the students : Not just the papers, but minute things like assignments, classroom participation etc. Extend this to a class of 60 students, and you realize that a teacher would require superhuman memory to do this !

And all the above 6 require the most valuable of all resources: TIME ! Observe that in order to make 1 hour of classroom teaching effective, you needed to do such a lot! One hour of complete sincere effectively delivered classroom teaching requires atleast 4-5 hours of outside classroom preparation for the teacher. And this is for one who is assumed to have a good understanding of the topic already !

Now do you understand how much of sweat your teacher actually went through to give you that one lecture you bunked effortlessly ? :P When I realize this, I cant help but bow down to some of my teachers for the amount of effort they put in to deliver an effective course.

So I set about Project Teacher.Teaching myself to teach.I remembered my teachers (the good ones). Which ones possessed qualities I wanted to imbibe in myself? How did they prepare their material ? Who was effective in making me finally learn ? Jeevamma ma'am (DSP, EEE NITC) came foremost to my mind, followed (closely) by KSK, SreeRamkumar Sir, and many more.I may be jumping 10 years too far already :), but I began imagining.Prioritizing. Deciding what sort of a teacher I would be and what I would not be. And to end this record of my thoughts, here is what I finally decided in a few hours what to do for the next 40 years of my life. Irony ? :P

Priority ONE: NOT to be labelled a cliched Boring teacher ! So? HUMOUR :). I am going to crack every single PJ on earth I can find with respect to the lecture :P. Forget the time involved. The talent of PJ-Cracking is for using, so my dear students, beware, here I come with a really new poverty level of jokes :P. Another way for this is to make sure I have really catchy slides and presentations :).

Priority TWO: I want the lecture to INSPIRE.How many hundred times have you got out of a lecture wondering why the heck did I learn this shit? If that should not happen in my course, I should give them examples. Real life stories, real implementations, real applications of whatever I am teaching them.The student gets out of my class satisfied, this is important ! Atleast 5 minutes devoted to this one.

Priority THREE: The lazy/weak ones in class should not be left behind.Hence I need to find an alternative to make sure they catch up to the class topic, atleast after a few lectures.And I cannot find a way to do this other than provide them some course material.But seriously, isnt this spoon-feeding? :)

Priority FOUR: The really interested ones need something to keep thinking about my lecture even after I leave the classroom.So at the end of every class,I give them a question about the next step, or something creative that they need to find out themselves.Another way to do this is by giving really creative questions in the tutorials, as KSK would. These so-called 'starred' questions were bound to lead to questions, which I'm sure the old man enjoyed answering :). And that would be one hell of an answer, one that would leave us mouth-wide-open for sometime :).

Priority FIVE: I dont want to be labelled a 'fake'- i.e., a teacher who doesnt really know about his topic. This according to me, is the hardest of all, since I need to read enormously well beforehand and have an excellent understanding of the topic before I start.Time spent reading and studying myself seems to be the only way out.

Priority SIX: Making sure the course goes way beyond the course and classroom.This can be done by explaining the state-of-the-art in the topic to them, and inviting students for their ideas/projects/questions and pointing out further reading in the topic.

Project Teacher is still on. If you have any more comments and suggestions, I will incorporate them into my future plans and even this blogpost :). @Naren, Joseph, Sid, Kishore, Laxmi, and all the fellow aspiring teachers out there...

Why 'Micro' rules the blogosphere

2010-10-31T12:06:00.006+08:00

After breaking my so-called 'blogger's block' for the umpteenth time last week, during my time in my thinking-box (also called a 'washroom' :) ) I reflected on why I would put up a few dozen Facebook status messages a week, but had stopped blogging altogether for many few months altogether ! To put the question more technically, why micro-blogging was wide gaining popularity among the masses nowadays as compared to conventional blogs :). And I realized, the reason was for this was probably...

Pure Damn Laziness !

Or has it just become too fast a world to stop and write ?

Yea, it takes a bit of an effort to go and write out that post in a few hundred words :). More effort than it takes to flip channels in ur TV using a remote, or watch videos in Youtube by clicking on 'Related links' an infinite number of times. And definitely more energy than it takes to log on to Twitter, Facebook or Buzz and write the answers to questions like "What am I doing right now?" or "How do I feel right now?" or "What do I feel about this" etc etc etc....

Yea, a hundred words is definitely more than 140 characters :).

Some months ago, Google decided to enter the microblogosphere by introducing Buzz, trying to catch up to Facebook. When google decides to follow someone, you know they're really business :). Attaching it to the Gmail Window, they made it easier for us lazy ppl to speak to the world in a few quick sentences ! :) They got an immediate response of 9 million hits on the first day truly buzz-tling activity :). Google were in buzz-iness. Puns based on 'buzz' were so abuzzed and rampant, one of my friends even started a buzz of a list of all the hilarious puns he could think of !

It's a clear message - microblogging is here to stay. Whether you tweet or facebook or buzz, a few sentences spoken to the whole wide world can be an effective and addictive form of communication. Its really sad for me as a blogger though, cos I miss the feel of the detail I used to give in a conventional blog (which may not be dying out but is definitely nowhere close to the micro version now). But then, the easier it is to speak to more people, with the least effort and time, the better ! So no more point staying away from updating that status message of yours, or writing a whole new philosphic saying, or putting up ur latest corny joke.. microblogging Is the communication of the future !

( PS: I saw Social network, a movie based on Facebook. It was awesome ! Fast paced and drama-filled. Justin Timberlake came out well.)

A (Birth)Date with innocence

2010-10-31T09:55:00.006+08:00

It has turned into a regular practise among my friend circle here to be quite creative, stylish and extravagant with our celebrations. Starting with a treasure hunt my birthday in Jan, we never much compromised on the magnitude of a celebration :). Ofcourse I never mind, because like the rest of the 15-20 freaks circle here, I am always in for a party :). So when Naren's bday came recently, something similar was in mind. However, this time yet again, we were slightly different cos of the way we celebrated it. And I'm not talking about the 'haunting' celebrations we had the previous night ;).

On Saturday (30th of Oct) we made our way to Chen Su Lan methodist children's home (for underprivileged children). The plan for todays celebration was simple. As Naren had been wanting to do for quite some time, we would give the kids what they might have been wanting - Company. Spend time with them, play with them, have food with them, and entertain ourselves by entertaining them. In short, 'kid around' for some time :). That was the agenda.

What we realized is that nothing could be more satisfying than the date we had with the 25-30 odd angels there :). Yea, I'd say we found ourselves grow plenty of years younger in a matter of minutes :).

From the word go, most of the kids were forthcoming and friendly. Our job was made pretty easy really. Who said time-travel was not possible :P. The children were more than ready to give Naren their share of the bday surprise when he walked in mouth-wide-open into the place :).Then we went on to do what we do best in our labs and offices all the time.. TIMEPASS ! Musical chairs and passing the parcel (Oops, I meant squirrel, no offense to Basu's pet ;) ).. were a piece of cake (which we shared with them later, by the way). We barely noticed the fast moving hands of the clocks (there were none :P) as the lemon-and spoon and dinner sessions flew by.The guy kids were pretty bent on playing a game of soccer, so then we decided to play ball for sometime.

That must have been the most animated and hilarious game of football in my life :).We found it hard not to hog the ball (even after hogging at the dinner session :P ), but the kids showed their footballing skills against us anyway. Especially worth noting was the moment when a shot was taken with/at the ball at Mrinal :P. Goals were flying left, right and center, and the goal celebrations grew grander :). I really found it hard and sad to walk away from the ground after the game.

I dont know about the children, but I'd say we were touched by the experience.Wont mention any names, but many characters among the kids are still fresh in my mind.Many eyes filled with innocence. A whole talkative, naughty bunch of them. And I'm pretty sure I'd love to do that some day again :).

Many thanks to the ones who helped pull it off. To Nancy, Doreen and the rest at Chen Su Lan homes. And starting with Manish and Maggie who took care of the communication part, to the rest of us who went around buying, deciding and ordering stuff, guys - any day in life with you guys is worth it, but this day was one that will stay etched in memory for sometime :).

(PS: Yea its another hopeful case of breaking bloggers block, which I should abbreviate to BBB, since I use that word a lot anyways :P ;). So no more disclaimers on the long gap without posts :D.I wanted my last post to remain posted for quite some time)

In the Na(i)me and memory of Nai..

2010-04-17T22:56:00.025+08:00

I do this in your memory. In honour of Mahesh Mahadevan, aka Nai.. truly one of the greatest human beings I have known in my life. No exaggerations.

In honour of your never-ending positivity.. infinite energy.. addictive enthusiasm for knowledge.. boundless intelligence..

In honour of your technical PJs (which only I would understand half the time :P )..

In honour of your multi-faceted talents that always left me mouth-wide-open, in everything, from music to mechanical engineering.. computers to quizzing..

Mahesh, you have always been a wonder. A symbol of something impossible to attain. Not just to any arbit junior at Bhavan's Varuna Vidyalaya, where u inspired hundreds of people u havent even met, but even to me and and the rest of your batchmates. If only you could read all your wall-posts now. Even when we won all those quizzes together because you knew all the answers.. even when we did our C++ superprogram experiments in lab with everyone else staring.. Even when we discussed problems in class behind the teachers back thinking we had solved the next biggest thing since e=mc2.. cracked away puns to the limit getting on everyone else's nerves- Dude, I was always awed, and secretly envious of you. How could you exist.. how could someone love knowledge as you have.. I think half of my outlook towards knowledge has always been you, dude, You.

I take honour in claiming you have been one of my closest friends up to date. Even when you turned heads all over Kerala with your brilliance (see this and this) I was telling people : "Thats Mahesh, my school buddy"

For the love of the world, none of us can understand how this happened to you. And no, we do NOT believe you are stupid enough to end yourself. Yet. All I can do now is hit myself on the head for not having been in touch with you for the last 2 months. Yes, you are at the opposite side of the world, but I cant help thinking I missed you out somewhere. Cant help thinking: you wanted to tell me something, but I didnt hear. Cant believe that maheshmahadevan.iitm@gmail.com will never again chat to me. Cant stop reading the chat history again and again.

Cant believe ! no one will end chats again with me with a full loud BHA! (watever that meant, originating from Butylated-Hydroxy-Anisole in Saritha maams to another hundred meaningless expansions).. that legacy is dead..

Dead.. That word has a numb feel to it. Dead. As in. No more half dazed 'Bha'rking Nai's out there. Dead, as in, the world will be devoid of your loud chuckle and sly smile forever.

You owed yourself to the world dude, and you owed yourself to us. The world needed your brilliance.

I cannot think of any way to honour or mourn you now. I'm in that mode of helplessness, and I know it will take sometime to subside. I'm in that life-death-philosophy mood that everyone goes to when they see someone so near is suddenly missing. Yea, world, be wary of philosophic Me for sometime :). I will learn to accept once again that every person I see now, it might be for the last time. And all I can do is to try even more harder than ever to keep in touch.. and listen intently to everyone of my friends out there.. I have learnt that this is the one of the hardest things to do in life.. but I will still attempt it.. for who knows when the last time will be ?

But for now, in the name of all Varunites and friends of Nai out there: I remember you, my friend. I have no illusions that this blog will do anything productive than take up kilobytes of webspace, and invite comments, but it is the least I can do. I remember you, and as long as my healthy memory permits, I will. Your memory will not fade away into the "unseen orphaned pages of the cyberspace discontinuum" like your last post.

And like someone said, I will always await that one more smartass comment from you. Or one last PJ. Yea, just once more would be good..

(PS: For those who are clueless, Mahesh Mahadevan aka Nai was my school friend from BVV Kochi. He was found dead in his university UC Irvine a few days ago.I think the rest of the blog is self-explanatory)

Please also check
- http://www.findmahesh.com/

The organisation called Surabhi is collecting money for the cause of bringing Mahesh's body back. You can donate money to help bring his body back here. There is already and outpour of funds for this, apparently.

For those with doubts, I have (kind of) verified their authenticity by contacting his sister, who has said she has been contacted by the group which says they will take care of the return of his body. For further enquiries you may mail the ids on the website itself. Also check:

http://www.clubs.uci.edu/surabhi/

Another blogpost regarding Mahesh

- http://havetimewillwaste.blogspot.com/2010/04/good-bye-dog.html

News reports regarding this :

- UC Irvine

- Asianet (outrageously crappy piece of reporting. What nonsensical yellow journalism in Kerala.)

Fun in the Sun at Batam

2010-02-19T01:47:00.020+08:00

This time, it was Batam. Located about 20 km south of Singapore, Batam island is very much similar to Bintan which we had visited last year. Lush greenery, plenty of 'sea' to 'see', sun, beaches and sand. Nothing less to expect from this truly beautiful island in Indonesia.

Our population doubled this time - we were a group of (lucky?) 13 restless souls, just waiting to get our asses out of our labs and a few hundred kms away from research. And get off we did, in style :). Merry-ly taking the ferry ride from Tanjong Pagar, we made for Batam on Feb the 15th, the start of Chinese New year hols. The ferry ride is a most enjoyable experience - apart from being hot due to the sun, the ride is actually pretty Cool :). Watching the busy Singapore skyline (and along with it, all memories of research fading into the distance.. seriously, no feeling could be better !

Pt-KTM resorts - thats where we stayed. Beautiful place. No testimonial would be enough to do justice to the five-star royal treatment we got there. Just - dont try to expand the name K-T-M :). Since the exchange rate was pretty high, we were millionaires by the time we reached, and immediately set about blasting off every inch of currency that we had stored up.

Water sports are one of the major attractions in Batam. Para-sailing, Jet-skiiing, Banana-boating and Kayaking - these were the items on the menu. Needless to say, we ordered all :). The para-sailing was a first for me- being slightly afraid of heights, I never thought I'd pull(rather, fly) it off, but it turned out to be an awesome experience with a sufficient amount of 'high' to it ! :). After sufficiently wetting ourselves (no pun intended ;) ) on all the rides, we decided to call it a day (er.. at 4 pm in the evening) and go around city-seeing a bit. The Barelang bridge was 'bery bery laang', and actually a let-down.. there was nothing to do there except to.. er.. watch it :). Tired of letdowns, we retired to our beautiful villas.

Needless to say, the high-night was one of the high-lights of the trip. Dumb-C was called for. Despite being 'dumb', we were pretty noisy out there, mind you :). 3 hours and a few kilos of junk food later, we made for the beach, and wasted away sometime until we decided to call it a.. thats right.. night. Next day, after refilling ourselves with enough food for a few days, we set out to Nongsa beach.

Nongsa is one of those paradises on earth called a beautiful beach. Thirteen hot people out there (yea yea, hot cos of the sun ;) ) - we 1st cooled ourselves in the inviting blue waters. Few hundred pics and some desperate attempts at swimming and stunt-making. A pitiable round of volley-ball was followed by a coconut break, and even more pitiable gaming :). Truly, I have never had enough of sea, sand and sun in my life. Finally when we'd all turned different bright shades of crimson, we decided to call it quits and return to the city. BCS mall was our final stand - our shopping consisted of an incredible mixture of tatooing, food, and sun-glasses ! Loads of them ! Finally we made a desperate rush for the resort and then the ferry terminal.

The night trip back on the ferry is a beautiful experience too. An hour or so later, we were thirteen tired but satisfied souls, cribbing about what lay ahead for us in our boring labs the next day. Ofcourse, that was enough inspiration for us to float our next trip plans :). Cambodiaaaaa, here I come !

Ping !

2009-08-10T01:16:00.004+08:00

Ok, so I decided to break my 'Bloggers block' again.. Loong time no see, everyone :).. There's been lotsa stuff keeping me away from blogger, but one of the main culprits is - u guessed it.. right here..
Here's how Gtalk changed my life in the past one year.. You'll know you've fallen prey to the Gtalk-olism, like me, when :

1. U get up in the morning after yesterday's late night chat, and the first thing that comes into your mind is "Oh, I gotta sign in !..."

2. Ever heard of the phenomena of 'phantom rings' ? Those mobile vibrations u imagine in ur pocket, even though its not ringing.. yea, that was once upon a time..

Well now its 'Phantom Pings'.. U imagine you heard that ever-inviting gtalk 'ping' sound even though its never there.. Yea, I even hear it in between songs and normal conversations :) ..

3. Your latest hobby is collecting cool Gtalk Status messages.. and building a collection of profile pics to put up too :) ..

4. You g-chat for hours with people whom you never even spoke to in school or college.. and they keep saying "Its a wonder I never knew you well back then..".. :)

5. You come to know about incidents in your hometown/country/other places even before your own folks back in India hear of it..

6. When you're 'invisible', it means 'busy' to ppl.. when you're 'busy', it means 'available', and when you're 'available', all you hear is a bunch of 'ping' sounds every 2 seconds :)

7. While multi-chatting, You are used to multiple emotions at once - you cry in one chat window, press tab and laugh in the next chat window, press tab and get serious in the next one..

8. In real life, you tend to say 'Lol' and 'Rofl' and forget to really laugh sometimes :).. (To be frank, I use np, ty, k and all the other crap too)

9. When you enter lab, you prefer to ping your labmates 'GM' instead of going around saying Goodmorning yourself..

10. You tend to make short forms for every single usage u use more than 2 times a day..

11. You update ur status messages on a minute-by-minute basis.. using 'brb', '@Lab', '@Room', 'out for tea', 'out for lunch', 'sleeping'.. etc.. (yea my gchat buddies wud know :) )

12. Ppl prefer to chat to you on gchat than in real life !

13. When ppl ping u on gtalk and dont find you, they worry that something has happened to you ! :)..

Hmm.. like i saw on a status msg sometime ago, PHD seems to have given me a P(ermanent) H(ead) D(amage) by now :)

Getting 'High' in S(w)ingapore..

2009-06-06T14:13:00.009+08:00

Lately, weekend timepasses have become addiction for us.. Part of life.. No, probably the only things in life..

Few weeks ago we went to Clarke Quay, probably the entertainment hub of Singapore. There was an adventure sport : an 'Extreme Swing' that everyone was waiting to get 'high' on. 5 of us were taken in a seat-cage taken to extreme heights, and then released downwards.. Yea no more description - the video is here..

Yours truly was the 'pilot' of the swing.. meaning I was the guy seated in the swing, who would pull a lever that releases the swing downwards. Yea, like the 'lives' of 5 lay in my own hands (chuckle and grin)

So.. You can hear the countdown initially while we're up there.. 15..14...13.. till 3, 2, 1..

Then the 4 losers with me looked at me, expecting me to release at 0.. (I esp remember Naren's face :P ).. and then I say "Now, its MY suspense.."..

And while they're thinking about it.. in the split second, yours truly releases the lever :).. (You can see the gap between 'Zero' and swing release in the video)

Later on we went on exploring other venues to get high again :)

Blogger Stereotypes ?

2009-06-01T16:08:00.001+08:00

Was ROFL after reading RC Balajee's (aka Red carrot Jalebee's) post on Blog titles. It was then that it reminded me of another discussion I'd with Venky about blogger stereotypes.

- This may be too much generalization, but it struck me how quite a number of Bloggers are into Free and Open Source Software. Dont think I need examples : about half my blogroll is testimony to this.

Attempted explanation :Maybe FOSS enthusiasts are generally ones who spend quite some time on the internet, and hence invariably end up on the blogosphere too (! ?)

- Then there's the connection between people who blog, and are also into Freelance photography at the same time.

Attempted explanation : No surprises. The freelancers are bound to post up their photos simply because they find no better way to publicise it :).

- This one must be the weirdest. There are a number of Bloggers out there who Run. Yea, run - marathons, half marathons, awareness runs, social runs, jogging, the type. (Run for fun? :) ) You can find quite a number of bloggers posting that they're going for so and so run next week.

And for the love of blogger, I cannot even attempt a reason for this correlation :)

[ I'm still gearing up for 4-80 run next week.. but I assure you.. the decision for this run had nothing to do with observation 3 :).. it's just going to be an experiment as part of my, er, Underwater Acoustics research :P .. ]

A Run for the Fun..

2009-05-29T11:26:00.003+08:00

One fine day, a bunch of guys and girls here at NTU became health conscious and started jogging, gymming and swimming (and eating ;-) ) on a regular basis..

That fine day was about a month ago.. Now, we're going to put it to the test :) .. A mini-run race.. 8 km and 27 stories..

Some people run to make a difference.. spread a message.. make a stand.. or simply for health reasons. We're a bunch of 8-10 amateur runners.. So, our aim is more about surviving the distance than winning the 300 bucks :) ..

The 4 - 80 challenge : http://www2.ntu.edu.sg/ENewsreader/Announcement/4-80+Challenge.htm?wbc_purpose=Basic

Yours truly has been attempting the treadmill for some days now with no hopes of reaching the 8 km mark anytime soon :)

The time-less VS The jobless

2009-05-23T03:12:00.004+08:00

The other day I got into a usual bout of work-cursing and cribbing over chat with a friend. I then realized he was out of a job, and in quite the opposite situation as me. So, well, we had a 'discussion', (probably a competition :-) ) to prove who was worse off. But after I was done with the chat, I was convinced that in these economically desperate times, it is much better to be in my situation than his.. ie.. - more work to do is probably better than no work to do :).

A comparison of the lives of the time-less guy VS the jobless guy

- Timeless guy : Wakes up in the morning, thinking "Oh, I wish I could sleep more.. but no.. this cursed work reckons me.. When do I get to sleep as much as I want, ever ?.."

Jobless guy : Gets up.. realizes he has no reason to wake up.. nothing to do.. but feels wasted going back to sleep.. so what to do ?

- Timeless guy : Has not enough time to complete work, socialise, take care of health, etc. 24 hours just isnt enough in a day.

Jobless guy : 24 hours is too much time in a day ! Wish I had something to do in these 24 hours... Wish life could go faster than this..

- Timeless guy : Always thinking about changing career track.. looking for new job.. change of field.. grass is always greener on the other (company's) side :)..

Jobless guy : Worried about never even having a career at all.. Believe me.. some grass(job) is better than no grass(job) at all..

I seriously pity the jobless. They end up losing self-confidence. Then hope. Worries about future life are constantly hitting them. And since they have too much time, worrying takes up a major part of life for them sometimes. Atleast the timeless ones dont have much time to even worry !

If, by some cruel twist of fate, you find yourself among the jobless, please find something productive to do.. (sorry, I really cant think of anything else to say). And if you're timeless, well, be happy you have a job atleast :) ..

(PS : Ppl, I have NOT been snoozzzing away on blogger :).. looks like it was a bit of 'bloggers block' that hit me.. hopefully im back on a posting spree now :) )

SnooZZZ..

2009-05-03T02:52:00.003+08:00

Ookay, here I am, back to the b'sphere after a nice long period of exams and deadlines. Back to the 'high life' for me. Not much of work pressure now, and waking up is getting so hard because I have been infected by the 'Snooze-flu' (Its more of a mind game than a disease :)). So often here's how a typical day starts for me :

8:50 am : Alarm 1 rings

"Whats that irritating sound? Oh, alarm 1 ofcourse. Purposely selected as the most annoying piece of 'music' among the available list of cacophonies in my cellphone... (Quickly switching off alarm 1) .. The limits of self-torture on myself I have to endure to wake up myself sometimeszzzz.."..

9.20 am : Alarm 2 starts blaring away

"Heey.. its barely 5 minutes since I stopped that last one.. (Take a look at watch) ... Ok maybe more than 5 mins, but too little anyway.. (Eyes barely open, hands working dextrously to disable A3) Anyway, my roomie Ravi is sleeping too, I think I should wait to see if the next alarm ringszzzz..."..

9.30 am : Alarm 3 shouts into my ears

"Ooh Gaawd.. Cant a man sleep in peace.. 5 more minutes.. Just 5 more minutes.. I think I'll sleep for 5 more minutesszzzz"..

|
(1.5 hours later)
|

11.00 am : Ravi shouting the time into my ears (along with a most unparliamentary choice of words that never fails to wake me up)

"What the $%@ is that !@#$ shouting?.. 11 ? What 11 ? (One eye opens to steal a gaze at the clock)

OH MY !@#s.. When did a 5 minutes nap turn into 1.5 hours ! Meeting deadline missed, I am soo screwed.. "

And there starts off my day :)..

The green post :)

2009-04-06T23:44:00.000+08:00

This is a 'green' post that has been in Draft for long. Finally with Earth hour the environmentalist in me decided to publish it :)

On 28th of March the worldwide event called Earth hour was 'conducted' at 8.30 over several cities all over the world. An alien viewing the earth from a distance would (hopefully) observe a dark belt of 'lightlessness' moving across the globe from Japan to US. Many countries, notable India and China, lended support to the movement in terms of publicity and awareness. In India Aamir apparently campaigned for the movement in a big way. Infosys and some other firms had an earth hour at their offices. In Gods own country even, Trivandrum and Kochi apparently had a lot of EH support (though everyday in Kerala is practically an Earth hour day anyway :) )

EH is just a symbol. A gesture. And a warning. Wake up, humans.

Yes.. you.. who ridicule the guy out there who switches off lights because he's worried about the human race and you're not..

You, who dont give second thoughts about turning off your computer simply because its too inconvenient for you to reboot the comp the next day..

You, who wont speak out against unnecessary usage of plastic or paper because it seems unfashionable to be environmentalist..

You, who think the world is too big to run out of oil anytime soon, so why worry about the energy crisis or renewable energy?..

Theyre all among us. I may be one of them. You may be. Well, its time to change , to speak out and tell others too. Lack of awareness is often what leads people to being complacent when in comes to taking a bold step in saving the environment.

I have sometimes found myself ridiculed when I take a green step. 'What change could it make if you did this?' is what people may ask. So much that often I hide the raging environmentalist inside me who is actually longing to shout out loud "Losers.. dont you see.. its not just me who should be doing this.. its everyone of you.."

So here is the cliched part of my blog. Here are a few simple steps that we all can take. We've heard of some, not heard of some, yet we dont follow any of them. Maybe considering them a second time wont do any harm :-

1 Monitor at a time

Change the power settings in your computers to automatically switch off your screens if you're not using them for, say, 15 minutes or so. Make it hibernate or sleep if its not being used for a longer time. Monitors consume so much power that saving the power on monitors itself could bring down your bills by a lot.

2 Cycles is better than a car

Use public transport when possible. Dont be the lone guy taking the car out, treating yourself and yourself alone to gallons of petrol every year. If possible, switch to cycling or walking for smaller distances. Not only healthier for you, but for the environment too.

3 R's

The golden words. Reuse, reduce and recycle. Minimize your ecological footprint

4 my shopping, use my bag

Carry your own plastic bags or jute bags when you go for shopping somewhere.

5 star appliances

Heating and cooling appliances take up a lot of power that can be saved by a few simple steps. Make sure it has more energy stars so that it is energy efficient. Use sun-drying if its possible, try to insulate your heater to save on heat, and try to use your ACs only as much as needed and avoid overcooling or overheating.

6 CFLs make a sun

Wherever continuous usage is needed, replace an incandescent bulb with a CFL. A CFL may not be as durable as the normal bulb, especially if you turn it on and off more than 4 times a day. But the power saved is enormous, and the light quality is not too bad either.

7 (sorry, cant think of any ideas :) )

Start shifting to renewable energy slowly. In cities, Solar energy maybe our only option, and currently, may just be catching up in terms of price with the other power options. But this is the only way we can encourage renewable energy to come up, and the only way the economics of renewable energy can improve.

(Please excuse the really really really corny catch-lines. Results of a brain gone crazy in the night)

And last but not the least, be aware of environmental issues around you. Happenings and events. Try to help out at plant-a-tree sessions or the like. Or even if you dont, atleast dont discourage one from doing it :). What is needed for us to make a change is fear. A state of fear of our own extinction (ironically, the controversial Michael Crichton book deals with another view on the environmentalist issue :).. its truly worth a read)

Ragam through blogs..

2009-03-29T22:39:00.004+08:00

Ragam '09, my (ex)college cultural festival, ended yesterday with a bang. 3 big pro-shows, more events, and .. well.. sorry, I dont know any more stats :). Truly having lived upto the motto : "Every Ragam is the best until the next one"..

So the NITC blogosphere is springing to life with Ragam blogs everywhere.. the whole place is flooded with them.. heres a link to the ones I've read so far.. Should give anyone a better idea than a post by myself.

http://ragam09.blogspot.com/ : The official Ragam blog

http://angadsarena.blogspot.com/ : A good photo walkthrough

http://vinithavasanth.blogspot.com/

http://nitlife.blogspot.com/

http://harshaddesai.blogspot.com/

http://life-in-nitc.blogspot.com/

Woooah.. what just happened to the NITC blogging community, eh !

Earth hour !

2009-03-28T16:13:00.003+08:00

http://www.earthhour.com/

Today at 8.30 pm, you can vote Earth by switching off your lights, fans, ACs, Computers and whatever is possible, for one hour.

Sure, this gesture may not save us so much energy enough to save the world from impending doom, no. EH is more of a symbolic event than an attempt to save energy for an hour. You can save energy practically all throughout your life. By simply taking care of those small things that you often forget in your haste - turning off monitors.. putting your comps on hibernate.. switching off lights and fans..

Earth hour is more about the awareness. The faster we humans realize that we need to take bold steps before we become extinct altogether, the better.

So dont forget to turn off your lights at 8.30 !

Pre-Friday syndrome

2009-03-26T20:37:00.002+08:00

In between catching my own zzz's at the back benches of another sleepy Probability class, I also manage to pursue my favorite classtime hobby : Sleeper-spotting.. On mobile blogger now.. Here are 4 of them caught fresh on cam :-)..

And now, Open Knowledge !

2009-03-19T02:39:00.003+08:00

Any one out there depressed you couldnt get an education at a reputed IIT or IISc ? Or for that matter, foreign world class universities like the Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT) or Stanford? Wait no more ! The concept of Open courseware coming up now is ensuring that the word 'Open' can be applied not only to software or hardware, but even academic knowledge.

Here are a few links for Open Courseware from some of the topmost universities in the world ! Apart from normal Engineering topics, even as diverse topics as languages, pure physics, modern physics (relativity, quantum mechanics), astronomy, geography, politics and humanities have been covered.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology : http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

For specifically the Audio-Video courses, you should follow
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/av/index.htm

The MIT ones are particularly good because of the video lectures available.. some of them are really great courses.

Stanford University : http://www.youtube.com/profile_play_list?user=stanforduniversity

http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx

University of California Berkely : http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses.php

Yale University : http://oyc.yale.edu/

And last but not least, some of the best courses I've seen are from our very own

Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institute of Science Bangalore : http://www.youtube.com/profile_play_list?user=nptelhrd

All of the IIT courses are Video lectures and worth a watch if you're looking out for some course to learn more.

(Ofcourse, those of you who have escaped from the academic field and are enjoying life in your respective jobs now.. I think you'd better be looking at some sites like http://www.watch-movies.net/ :) )

Greatest secret in the history of the world...

2009-03-08T05:49:00.004+08:00

... has been revealed !

http://www.nitc.ac.in/nitc/Convocation_09/Final_Convo_Ad_6th_Feb_09_WEB_only1.pdf

NITC announces its convocation.. that too on a working day ! Voila !

Notice that they used 'Final Ad' for convo.. seems like theyre pretty sure of themselves this time.. what a joke :)

Whats more, its right after our Cultural festival Ragam, which means half the crowd will probably still be 'high' (ahem.. Chathamangalam is at a high altitude u know) when we reach there to grab our degrees...

(courtesy Brittz for most of the observations)

Lingo or redefined language ?

2009-03-06T00:05:00.007+08:00

We're entering that stage now, where we can truly be called 'Net'izens. We live on the Net. A daily dose of Google, Wikipedia, Youtube, and most importantly, Chat. 8 months ago, I used to chat like once every 2 weeks or so. Now I need a daily dose of G-chat, much to the point where I heard a joke the other day and said out 'LOL' instead of laughing !

Now you must be thinking, ROFL, right ? Or am I the only crazy one here?

A standard chat text might be like something below :

Me : hi man.. ssup.. u in lab nw?
Friend : s.. ssup..
.
.(a long chat ensues)
.
Me : k thn man, gtg
Friend : k.. cya l8r :)
Me : K, bye, gn, tc, sd :)
Friend : gn

Ok, I found just THREE normal English words in there !

Now I really wonder.. is this lingo? Or a whole new language by itself? We could name it Internet English, or 'Intlish'. If the Net is a place where we live, then this bunch of 3 lettered words are surely a language. A language that is now permeating everywhere. A language that I live on so much that my thought process tends to follow Intlish now. And dont u ppl rofl out there.

And not to speak of smileys. They are a whole new different story. I cant resist putting a smiley after every single sentence now, be it a :-), :-P or :-/.. that i get so tired of it. I even use it in blogposts nowadays ! :). No wonder all Chat messengers keep introducing new smileys, environments, themes, and what not.. New ideas towards the makings of a true customizable cyber chat world.

Well I'm not really happy or sad for it. Chat has allowed me to socialize beyond my wildest dreams. I wont say close friends shouldnt chat, but they definitely shouldnt replace face- to- face conversations with chats. Chats bring a sort of 'Internet distance' that can never replace the closeness of a face to face conversation.

So lets not forget the good old and more human way of 'speaking' to communicate :)

Neways.. Signing off.. cya ppl l8r.. bfn..

Going Mobile !

2009-03-02T18:43:00.000+08:00

My first post on my Mobile! Im totally jobless in a boring desolate class of adaptive signal processing.. Moody Monday strikes again..

Getting a tan at Bintan...

2009-02-26T00:38:00.018+08:00

Bintan Island a small island in the Indian Ocean, one of many that make up Indonesia. Cheap, exotic, lots of water and located outside Singapore. More than enough reason for 8 of us jobless souls to choose Bintan Island for the weekend.

So we decided to set out in the morning (yes, we do see mornings sometimes :) ) of Saturday. It was a rush from NTU to catch the Ferry to Bintan from Tanah Merah terminal. The ferry ride in itself was beautiful and worth it. We had our own space on the open upper deck with the sea around us and wind in our faces, the smell of salty water combining with cigarette smoke from those around us. The 2 hours flew by in talk and smoke, and before we knew it, we were in Tanjung Pinang terminal in Bintan.

'Immigration' was not more than a girl in a cubicle stamping our passports without giving a second look. We got out quickly, where our transportation took us to Nostalgia Yasin Bungalow, our base and place of stay for the rest of the trip.

Nostalgia was a simply beautiful place. Placed right by the beach side, and right next to its sister resort Agro Bintan resort, Nostalgia gives one the full freedom to enjoy cheap accomodation rates and access to wonderful water sport activities from Agro at the same time. The bungalows were spacious too, and had a beautiful view to the sea.

After a heavy lunch (buurp) we immediately jumped into the water sports. A boat from Agro Bintan took us to a nearby island, where we went into the surrounding sea with our snorkels and lifejackets. The surrounding sea was comparitively shallow, and had a lot of coral reefs which were a beautiful sight to behold as we went snorkelling deeper into the sea, apart from occasionally spotting rare types of fishes and sea plants. The island itself was nothing much to explore except its jungles (which we dint dare delve further into). After rounds of beach volleyball and taking pics, after the sun had tanned us several shades darker, we decided to head back to Nostalgia.

In the evening we decided to explore the city of Tanjung Pinang. Unfortunately, it was'nt much of an exploration. After going through Ramayana Mall and Bintan Mall, we just drove along the busy streets. The streets, shops and general city structure reminded me greatly of India, especially Kerala.

We got back to have a 'high' dinner at Agro Bintan. Lost count of the orders(well who can count when you're flying sky high). That bill also went equally sky high, by the way. Walked (staggered) back to our resort and had a nice lie-down by the beach, before we retreated back to our 'bungalows'.

Sunday was also full of water sports. The 'Flying fish' and 'Banana boat' kept us roaring on the top of our lungs while we were pulled through water at super high speeds. Kayaking was also an adventure, especially when a few kayaks capsized and we had to push the kayaks all the way back and then it got tiring :). Few more rounds of beach volley. Then it was back to resort to freshen up before lunch. The lunch was truly a phenomenon. Indonesian seafood cuisine, not only does it taste good, they do know how to make it look that way. Coconut water was literally flowing over the place by the time we were done. I even found a satisfying vegetarian item called Cap-Cay(on left) which towards the end I realized was not exactly vegetarian :(.

Shopping at the souvenir shop was a marathon. Settling the bill was even worse. Ultimately we forced ourselves out of the shop with stuff worth a few million Indonesian Rupiah (the Rupiah is highly inflated, so u end up talking in millions most of the time). Finally it was time to bye bye. We settled the bills (which has still not settled into us yet) and went back to catch the ferry to Singapore.

2 days later, we settled the accounts. It took 3 hours, 20 phone calls, 3 excel sheets, 4 accountants and a lot of 'approximations' to do. After all, we're all Engineers. By the time we looked at the total amount though, a Doctor is who we needed. Well, so much for a 'cheap' holiday :)

Naan Kada-fool ?

2009-02-17T02:08:00.007+08:00

Ok, so I made one more mistake that was worth it. I watched it - the Bala film that everyone was apparently talking about. As expected, 'Naan Kadavul', the latest 'hot movie on the stands', was not upto my expectations (was that self-contradictory?). Plot? What plot? It was'nt exactly the kind of movie that leaves you with the satisfaction of having finished a book, or seeing an action movie in which the hero kills them all in the end and saves the heroine (pun intended, for those who have watched the movie)..

But all that said and done.. So what? If you're looking for change, I say go watch it ! Just make sure you dont come out shouting 'Kadavuleeeee' at the end of it :).

'Disturbing' is how Naren described it first to me. And that.. what I felt throughout the movie.. was the biggest enjoyment. The scenes with the beggars - the suffering of the poorest level of society - was truly path breaking, and what one should expect of a director who dares to explore. The new faces in the cast - the disabled, deformed, impoverished and I should say, scary new faces - they have really done it. Whether it came from the bottom of their heart because its what they live out or not, the beggars in the movie truly bring the emotions on. And let's not go back to the 'Slumdog millionaire' debate of denigrating India's status or anything now. Cos those guys deserve the kudos.

Ok, then what is 'Naan Kadavul' really about? Aghori Hindus? I dont really think so. The lead character comes out more as a madman to me than representative of a sect. (You should check out the loincloth scenes, they might actually leave u laughing in the most serious part of the movie). A confrontation with the 'Religion' question ? Not really.. As everyone else before him has done, Mr. Director is going around the question, rather. Safer option for him. Showing the plight of the poor? Sorry, this wasnt exactly a documentary. No wonder Arya himself had to stand on top of his head, figuring out what his role was all about :)

So NK is just about the scenes. A set of awesome scenes that unfortunately do not make up a whole. Beggar girl Puja's amazing performance. Arya's ganja puffs and occasional Blah-blahs in Hinskritamil (combo of all the languages as and when he chooses to) that are delivered as if to imply a deeper philosphical meaning attached to them. Ilayaraja's beautiful music, both foreground and background, that give a, shall we say, doomsday feel to the movie. And as I mentioned before, the well depicted plight of the underpriveleged, if you're not sick enough of seeing it already. And somehow all these are mixed up somehow in an unrealistic way to bring together a plot.

So after all that review, if you ask me "whats the point of watching the movie", I'll reply with a PJ. No point. A point is an intersection of 2 lines. NK is just a bunch of parallel lines that are never supposed to meet. But if u enjoy seeing the lines go to infinity, well watch on.. (Kadavuleee.. Kaapaathungo..:D )

Brief History of Assignment-writing

2009-02-08T03:01:00.004+08:00

After Hari Shankers release of the Bootstrap Video (worth a watch), I couldnt help but revive some of the old college memories again. An NITC version of how the Art of assignment writing has evolved through the ages.

Year : 1
Scenario : Any assignment

Anyone knows that the students are at their most dumbest studious best in the first year at college. Thats when the teachers scares of "No copying..." and "Plagiarisation will be severely punished" are at their most effective. The select brilliant few, who realise that assignments are just another useless routine in Engineering, wait for the remaining to toil it out and make their original copies.

Original copies are about 40-50 % of the total submitted. The remaining 50% even is well-modified by the poor copying soul who imagines what his life will be if a professor sits and compares his assignment to that of the class topper. Sometimes, grammatical mistakes are purposely introduced to make the paper look like a genuine copy (excuse the pun)

Year : 2
Scenario : ECT assignment 5

The whole class is dumbfounded on how to attack the assignment. Original copies are so far zero. The only hope is the God of S3 EEE, Sheddy (expanded as S.Kumar Reddy), who is rumoured to be the only one who understood Electric Circuit Theory after Einstein and Newton. The submission date is 24 hours away.

Unknown sources rumour that the God has come up with an original creation. Photostats are flying around B hostel, with a familiar neat and clear handwriting that could only belong to Him who hath understood all (in ECT). Soon a tree structure of copying is developed - the original, situated around the B-220 area, spreads its copies through multiple individuals, whose assignment copies (literally, copies) are then taken to rooms B-218, 312, 304, and and so on. Some of the copy centres are located in the common room, where 6 people at once can copy an assignment.

Next day : No one missed the submission. 67 guys submitted the exact same copy of Sheddy's assignments in their own handwritings, without understanding a shit in ECT. Abru, truly desperate, submitted a Xerox copy of the original Sheddy assignment and added his own name!

Result : The professor sure as hell found out. He knew where the original was, that sly fox. A mention was made in class, but the true revenge was taken in the Sessionals exam, when most of the questions came from the assignment mentioned.

65 guys failed the sessionals, with the class average 4 out of 20 (thats 20%). The only one (apart from Sheddy ofcourse) who managed to rummage a double digit figure was Naren (11 on 20). Myself hit rock bottom with life's worst performance ever : 2 on 20.

Year : 3
Scenario : Control systems assignment

The protocol of assignment copying has been established. The mechanism is now almost polished. Originals for the CS assignment come from 3 sources : E-hostel (where God resides), LH (where the second topper Donna resides), and one from anywhere in C tops or D bottoms.

My (and Donnas) job as Class Reps, meanwhile, is to extend the deadline by any means possible. Not so easy. Techniques ranging from Oscar award winning acting performances to short story telling has to be employed.

Next day : First 2 hours in S5 EEE class are exceptionally silent. All the students seem to be studiously taking down notes. Only a closer observation by a prof would reveal that the 'notes' were being taken down on sheets of A4 paper, and had the curious words 'Assignment' written on them . Luckily, the deadline is extended by a few hours (whew) to 5 pm. By 4 pm, the whole class is busy writing away whatever sheets they may find. Needless to say, there are a lot of submission entries at 5 pm.

No one missed the deadline, again.

Year : 4
Scenario : Instrumentation Systems (IS)

IS (no pun) was truly the most useless subject in EEE. The IS assignment deadline is on Friday, but not a soul is aware of it, including the (ahem) supposedly-well-informed Class Rep, yours truly.

9 am : News arrives from prof that the deadline is Friday(today) noon 3 pm. Number of original copies in EEE: One.

Technology is immediately put to use. The branch scanner, located in F-318 (Burghu's room), is used to scan Donna's original assignment onto F-Lan. Thereby, the procedure is simple. Download from Burghu's comp (which also stores other, ahem, interesting stuff). Copy onto A4 sheet. Meanwhile, my job is to inform the branch that an original has been scanned onto the LAN, and all students in S8-EEE are to immediately copy the assignment before 2.50 pm and submit to my room.

2.55 pm : There are 67 copies of the same assignment lying in my room.
3 pm : I rush. Assignment deadline is met.

No one missed the deadline. No one ever does. And yea, anyone mention the word Plagiarism ? Where would we 'Engineers' be without it ?

(PS : The 'GOD' of original sources, S. Kumar Reddy, went on to top the All-India GATE examination later that year. After helping 67 electrical engineers pass out of NITC, he is currently churning out assignment originals in IISc Bangalore. )

2009-02-06T01:04:00.002+08:00

This Link had come some time ago on Wikipedia..

An appeal from Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales

Now thats some not so good news eh..

(Mis)adventures at Thenmala

2009-01-28T02:03:00.002+08:00

Here's a misadventure of a trip that came to pass in the middle of my short break in God's Own Country. [Coudl'nt resist putting up a photo walkthrough with my own pics either :P]

So 5 of us cousins set out to Thenmala, an eco - adventure tourist destination somewhere in Kollam. We were inspired by the beautiful pics on the website and an article in the Yaathra magazine that fired us up with enthusiasm about adventure laden treks and activities. Little did we know that Kerala tourism is sometimes a bigger letdown than even the worst Mallu movies.

The information counter was pretty informative, allright, except he failed to mention that the only 'adventure' in this place would be trying to find anything adventurous at all. So, grabbing a few tickets and thanking God we were not 'international tourists', we set out for the 'adventure' zone.

The 'walkway' was a beautiful sight, in fact it was a pic similar to the one on the right that started off the Thenmala plan.

When we reached the 'rock-climbing', unfortunately, we received our first shock.A small 10 metre rock stood in front of us, with a signboard saying

"Feeling adventurous? Try this.. You are safe in professional hands.. " .

Yaa right ! It was safe allright. 10 metres. If its safe, then wheres the adventure, dude ?

Anyways, enthusiasm unbeaten, we proceeded through the 'natural trail' (a small kachcha road through the woods) to a small lake, which was supposed to be the centre of the remaining 'adventure'. The lake was beautiful allright.

But the rest of the let-downs came quickly in succession. The 'ropeway' was nothing but a small piece of rope around 20 metres long for people to hang on and cross. The 'spider net' was a rope net that we used to play on as kids, or find in theme parks. 'Flying fox' and 'freedom fall' were worse than they sounded even, you dont even want to guess what they really were.

After the adventure zone letdown, though, the 'leisure zone' turned out to be better. It was a beautiful area. The view of the dam and the river was breathtaking.There was a trail through the small forest area, with all sorts of 'modern sculpture' in between. The 'modern art' was so abstract (read as 'corny'), they had to give us a pamphlet explaining what each one meant. Some were as foolish as a man holding a ball, and a long crappy explanation to follow it. The type of bullshit we write in our History exams. Probably some engineer after 4 years of bullshitting in his exams, decided to find a job in tour-packaging instead of coding in C++. The pic on the right though, was one of my favorite ones. Its called Meditation - it signifies that man should 'keep aside' his 5 senses to attain salvation (and u can see how the 5 'senses' are 'kept aside' in the sculpture, literally)

More sculpture photos follow.

That last one means "Why try to attain pleasures you cannot reach (the moon on top) while you have simple pleasures of life within your own hands (the moons reflection in the girls hand)".

The rest of the story was scenery. The walk along the dam and river, the garden and the 'boardwalk' (we prefer to call it bored-walk) are better seen through the pics than words.

Finally, wondering whether to kill the Yaathra magazine writer, bomb the Thenmala ecotourism society, or sue Kerala tourism authority for what they'd done, we were on our way home faster than we hoped to be. And that signpost. Theres one that will still leave me in splits of laughter and anger together.

Happy blogday to me!

2009-01-19T01:01:00.006+08:00

Looong time no blog.. so this one is out of pure desperation to blog.. in the last 2 weeks I've been over thousands of kilometres, home, college, relatives, friends, and back to Nanyang tech. In 2 weeks I've been through so many different worlds that sometimes this world seems completely out of place to be. And now, finally, somehow it seems dramatic that the first time I get to blog in this year should be on my birthday too !

Had a nice celebration, thanks to a great bunch of loving friends here. My mind really went back to my 21st bday 2 years ago. 2 years ago, I started this blog. That was Calicut. And now here I am.

Celebrations... make u feel happy for living. I wonder how would it be if everyday was a birthday for me. If everyday I could wake up feeling happy for having lived and still going on.

After all the usual birthday dose of kicks, cakes and calls, I came back to my room and comp, to good old G-chat, and I saw this on my friends status message :

"You are dying slowly... If you do not risk what is safe for the uncertain. If you do not go after a dream. If you do not allow yourself, atleast once in your lifetime, to run away from sensible advise..."

So I've decided. Time to fix some priorities. Take decisions about things I really wanted to do. Photography, music, travelling, exploring.. the list may be impossible and endless. But theyre MY dreams.

So time for me to go after my dreams. And let the 'sensible' advise go to the trash can...

Year-end scribbles

2008-12-27T04:19:00.005+08:00

As I start my last post for the year, inching closer to my (short) return home for a convocation that looks as uncertain as it was 2 months ago, several contrasting thoughts come to mind..

1. The @$#% going on in NITC over the convo goes beyond blog posts now! Wild rumours about the 'expected' dates and even 'official' information of it being held in the 'second week of Jan' dont look so official now. So as the number of days for the stipulated date nears single digits, all I can say is : "Screw the Convo !".. After all, I wanted to meet friends, and do that I will. However and whenever it be.

One of my friends chose to describe the situation as : "Maybe the college authorities want to give us a surprise". Talk about seeing a positive side to everything. And anyway they already have surprised us by doing whatever they have done so far. Which is, nothing. I think an anonymous prank mail blasting our authorities should be in order any moment now ;)

2. Thoughts of spending the New Year moment flying are looking attractive day by day. No, I dont mean 'high' and 'flying' on something else :), I meant flying, as in, on Tiger Airways flight TR638 on New years eve. Wonder if we'll 'have a blast' in the plane.. I should hope not.

3. Despite point no. 1, the thought of wanting to give a boost to our Alumni association is now something for us to think of in a strong way. Proper alumni support is something my college always lacked. Another 'success story' on the part of the authorities, I can say, but instead of pointing fingers at them, I think its time we took matters and responsibilities into our own hands.

Take any other college in India, IITs, IIMs, anything else, and you see alumni support visible in their events, their decisions, even on their college campus. Alumni support makes a statement. That we passouts are proud of our college, and want to contribute to that which made us what we are. At NITC , but, we remember and feel the need for seniors and alumni only when searching for contacts. Say, like when for marketing for Ragam or Tathva.

Its time to change our 'live, enjoy, passout and forget' attitude towards college now. Through 4 years we took pride in our college and tried our best to contribute to it in some way. And at the end we cannot forget it as another chapter of our life. The potential of alumni is something that can change a lot of things that are lacking in a college.

Short chat with some of my friends and I were realised that we were concurring on the possibilities already. Alumni are everywhere - in jobs all over India (or the world).. in higher technical education doing their masters or PhDs somewhere.. in IIM's battling it out to get an MBA.. they are the best contacts we can get any day. They can help you get contacts to obtain an internship or training in some company of your choice. Tell you about the possibilities. Get you sponsorship for some events if possible (thats one thing that goes into everyones head every year around Ragam time :) ). The ones doing higher studies can tell you how to go about it. Recommend on where to go. What formalities they went through, What openings and opporunities are there. The highly placed ones can occasionally give talks when visiting the alma mater. And yes, if we're rich and happy enough, we alumni might even think of contributing something in terms of money :).

I cant think of ideas right now, but atleast a list of contacts of your seniors would be a good place to start for an alumni movement. A decent website wouldnt matter too. Everyone would know where to look to get in touch. Instead of having to go through orkut each time to find someone. Later on, planning annual get-togethers wouldnt be a bad idea.

All this, ofcourse, requires a bit of cooperation from the currently running batch, the passed out ones, and the authorities too. Not at all easy. But this will be what we will be hoping to pull off anyway, hopefully at the convocation itself where we can get hold of everyone. I hope the '08 batch pulls this one off too, like many other things we have pulled off :).

So, hoping for a year of wonders.. signing out.. and a Happy New Year to all of you out there !..

Star light, star bright..

2008-12-14T05:56:00.005+08:00

An experience you would've had at some point in your life : Its night, late night... You're walking alone, tensed, worried about next weeks assignment, or perhaps next month's report. Having no clue on what to do, you look up at the sky. Its night, theres not much sound or light within much distance, and you look up and see something like the one on the left.

And then you just realize : Man, the Universe is much bigger than I thought. So.. why worry ?

Well, maybe not the exact one, but all of us have felt this wave of relief on looking at the sky at some point. Star-gazing.. or just sky-watching.. as Carl Sagan put it.. is a truly humbling experience. Not just fun as a hobby, to spot a Saturn here or an Orion constellation there, or to make up shapes in the stars imagining them to be something out of our imagination.

Its a very relieving one too. How many nights I have looked at that clear black expanse, peppered with infinitely many tiny pinpoints of stars, and felt.. The Universe is so daarn big man ! There are billions of galaxies out there, uncountably many worlds unexplored, forms and phenomenons yet undiscovered ! And we are just a small part of it ! So why worry about some small mistake we did yesterday.. or some deadline thats about to come tomorrow. Its just a small nothingness in the scheme of things of the universe we see out there. Why worry ?

I still recall frequent star-gazing sessions I had with a cousin. The topic would start from astronomy, go over a wide range of topics, and generally always fade into some vague topic about fate or the future or of that sort. We attach so much importance to what happens around us, worry in the smallest of things instead of delighting in them. While all I am, is a single organism among zillions, on a small pale blue dot called Earth.

Next time something insignificant seems to nag you, remember these words from a famous address by Carl Sagan, from 'The pale blue dot' that inspires this feeling. The address is in reference to the photo on the right, a pic of Earth taken by Voyager 1 from a large distance. See where we stand. Earth. A pale blue dot near the centre. (The 'pale blue dot' also carries an environmental message that I simply loved)

" Consider again that dot (Earth). That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, ... every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, .... every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. "

Canvas in the heavens

2008-12-08T01:55:00.001+08:00

Walked out of my lab one day and saw this ...

2008-12-03T13:43:00.002+08:00

To all losers (esp the ones without girlfriends) -

http://www.stwing.upenn.edu/~jenf/writing/rant04.html

Think there must be many of you out there who can relate to this one :)

'Gone'-vocation?

2008-11-23T02:08:00.003+08:00

Since the great passing out of the NITC 2004-2008 batch in the mid of May 2008, there has been just one thing that 400 odd NITCians all over the world have been looking forward to. And its called a bloody Convocation !

Okay I admit, I'm frustrated, and college sick. No, not sick of college, as in, you know, home-sick doesnt mean sick of home, so, you understand what I mean. I cant wait to meet friends. Old teachers. The old places and hangouts. The classrooms even, yes, I loved them. And the officially recognised last date for doing this is the NITC 2004-2008 batch convocation date. Unfortunately, such a date doesnt exist. Not yet

Every NITcian at any place, wherever he meets up, I think this question is bound to arise. A typical NITcians conversation.h header file :

NITCian 1 : Hi.. how are you.. long time no see..

NITcian 2 : Hey.. how are you..
Heard anything about the convocation?

NITCian 1 : Nope.. last I heard, it was supposed to be held in December 2nd week.. but there was a chance it could happen in 3rd week also
NITcian 2 : Haha thats old info.. latest I heard, it been shifted to last week.. and if there is no time it might be in Jan too..

And so on...

So far, The convocations 'tentative' date has been shifted and delayed soo long now that its giving new definitions to the word 'tentative'. The 'latest' info keeps on changing every few hours. Me and co-NITcian Naren are in the process of finding new sources of information about the ever-so-secretive convocation date, as if it was High Sensitivity Military intelligence. Nope, not even CIA would have a chance at this one for sure.

Last I heard (and you should be laughing at that phrase by now), it has been fixed for Jan 10th. Plus or minus a few months I'm sure.

It seems that even after one year of missing NITC life and yearning to see it, the NITC beauracracy is bent on not allowing us to go for a moment without bitching about our system. It sucks ! having to wait so long to know.. Its just a degree certificate distribution after all, and most of the fun is in the meeting up.. So why make such a fuss about the event ?

Nevertheless we poor souls will, until then, keep betting on the date, calling up everyone from the Director to the Profs down to the students to catch on any rumours about the reportedly 'prestigious' event called a convocation.. Until then..

P.S : 'Latest' Highly confidential reports state that the 'latest' "tentative" date of the convocation is an evenly spread probability among all the saturdays in January, which includes 3rd, 10th, 17th and 24th. Wonder why they wont include Feb too

A 'Novel' definition of freedom

2008-11-17T01:20:00.007+08:00

(Warning : High FOSS Content)

A really depressing incident that happened at the recent National Conference on Free Software 2008. The event was widely hailed as a major example of how a government initiative is being taken to promote FOSS. Little did the public know that the people to do with the event were neither people who had any sort of experience/contributions in the field of FOSS, neither were they people who were in any sort of touch with what is called 'FOSS Philosophy'.

Bottom line : A 'Boycott Novell' Protester is manhandled at the apparently 'Free and Open' national conference. Why? Because he chose to make public his views on why a proprietary corporate like 'Novell' (which is widely regarded as Microsoft's playpawn against the rise of GNU/Linux) should be the main sponsor for such an event.

To go right to the story, here :

http://playingwithsid.blogspot.com/2008/11/boycott-novell-protesters-man-handled.html

http://boycottnovell.com/2008/11/16/novell-sponsorship-critique/

Read Anivar's full storyon his blog post here - a complete account, and you will appreciate the situation even more if you know what the political atmosphere at CUSAT is like (I have been there, I know).

To cut it short
- Yes, Novell Software (makers of Open SUSE) is no longer one of the heroes of the FOSS world, it has changed its stance well enough to make it no longer 'FOSS' in the true sense of the word. That even 'Open SUSE' may no longer be accepted in all circles as abiding to the GPL.

- Novell turns out to be main sponsor for the above mentioned Conference. Now what they are doing here, dont ask me. Its a sure joke on the moral groundwork for the conference anyway.

-Anivar Aravind, a major Open source activist in Kerala, and also a former student of CUSAT, was at the conference representing SMC along with many others (a FOSS Malayalam computing organisation).

Anivar and other SMC members had previously (on Saturday) taken a workshop on language translation and localisation, and language computing, at the request of the organisers themselves. Ofcourse, seeing the main sponsor being a familiar former friend turned enemy, some of the activists there decided to spread the word about why Novell can be dangerous to freedom, through posters.

Nevertheless, there were some pretty good posters depicting 'novel' ways to spread awareness. 'Say no to against 'Microvell' was one of my favorites.

So, as is obvious to anyone, you dont insult the main sponsor and get away with it ! :). The organisers spent no time in setting the police onto the people behind the incident. Who incidentally were invited guests only 24 hours ago. Ofcourse, no one really cared to ask whether the organisers ever knew what they meant by Free and Open source at all.

Or perhaps the world itself is still confused on what it means to be free :). I still know people who think using pirated Microsoft OS's means theyre promoting Free Software. (Aah.. thats what you thought too, isnt it ? :) )

Long time no Tag !

2008-11-11T02:51:00.004+08:00

Aaaaah... long time no tag.. and since I'm still fishing for topics (being winter, the fish arent biting), time to go for one.. I've got this one from Abhi..

The Tag

Two questions from the past, present and future. Answer them and then tag your friends from the blog-o-sphere. Leave a comment on their blog letting them know they have been tagged and DONE.

Yesterday - Rewind..

Your oldest Memories..

Ooooldest memory.. maybe I was 2 years old.. a virtual horror movie I had in a lift in my apartments (Dubai). I was playing with a ball, which fell and got stuck in the lift doorway. Then the lift suddenly stopped, leaving us stranded between 2 floors. I faintly recall the firemen having to help us out of the lift. Luckily, mom was there to give me a saree to hold on to and blare away, while she took all the tension :).

What were you doing 10 years ago...

1998.. I am a teenager in the 7th standard in Sharjah Indian School, a peaceful Indian school in Sharjah, UAE. 2nd term exams are over by now, and the UAE national day is about to come up. Hence it is almost festival time, with Sheikh Zayeds photos and the flag and lights put up everywhere. Since it is vacation time, and I am blasting away on the computer playing games !

Today

Your first thought in the morning

Naren is calling me at 6.40 am, waking me up to go jogging with him. My thoughts are : "Oh, why the hell do I have a mobile? Why did he have to wake me up? Why did he have to remember me and call me too ? Doesnt he have any other job at 6.40 in the morning?... Waah, I wanna sleeeeeeeppp....." (Ultimately and surprisingly I did end up going for the jogging session :) )

If you built a time-capsule today, what would it contain ?

A backup of my entire hard disk, thats for sure. All my Photos, Documents, E-books collections, Songs, Movies, that would be enough of a time capsule for me. And yes, wikipedia, (sorry Abhi, couldnt help that one). Wikipedia is the largest definition of 'knowledge' in the world ! And yes, all Youtube videos qualifies too..

Tomorrow

This year ?

What year? Years over, dude !

Hmm, but in the next one year, I will have made some of what they call 'progress' in what I call 'research' here at NTU. I will have compiled 5 reports, a couple of papers, bunch of literature reviews, made a hundred presentations, attended half a dozen courses, met a thousand people, gone to all over Singapore and the adjoining Malaysia, Thailang and Indonesia, added a 100 more contacts to Gchat, and yea, become a total nutcase bugged with life.

Man, I seriously hope not !

What you see yourself doing 14 years from now ...(This sure is a weird tag :) )

14 years. I'm 37 years old ! I'm probably working as a scientist in some defense laboratory in India. Or I'm a lecturer in the Electronics or Electrical department at NIT Calicut, my alma mater. That was quick and highly specific, wasnt it ?

I tag

Aha ! Well, I'm not forcing it on anyone at all :).. So this tag, its open to all, up for the takes, but yea, heres a list of people I think should do it :

- Naren, on his Universal Monism
- My Dear (ex)roommate Drunken Mind, when he chooses to reminise
- Chathan, on his Quest beyond eternity
- Mahesh Mahadevan : Dude ! I just wanna know what you're upto :)

Aah..Life's got a long time to go..

2008-11-03T02:37:00.006+08:00

Thats how we always feel about our life.. and death.. That we've got a loong time to live, so we can take it for granted.

We never realise that anyday anytime someone we know, someone who is close to us, can just stop in his tracks. Immobile. Paralysed. Unconcscious. Or worse, those four most feared letters. xxxx.

I bet you that you just rejected that thought from your mind now. Its natural of us to do it. When we think of it, we just leave 'death' as something that is not for us. "I'm young, I've got a loong life, so I can do anything to my body, take risks, smoke, eat uncontrollably, and I'll still live".. Yes, many of us do this often, and take our health or lifeline for granted. Or even if you dont smoke, have a good diet, exercise regularly, etc, theres still plenty of scope for something bad to happen anytime. Lets just call it Fate.

I read a book that says that the human mind tends to make jokes about subjects that trouble it the most, that way tryin to defend itself from its own fear. Its an inbuilt mechanism. Have you ever thought about the immeasurably large amount of humour made on death? Type death humour in google and you'll get plenty to keep you laughing. And movies, what about them? For one, I suggest you see a movie like 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang'.. I saw the movie and was surprised that some of the most comic scenes in the movie that left me rolling over with laughter were the death scenes.

Or you can check out the phenomena of 'Gallows humour' about people making humour in their darkest situations. Believe me, that wiki link has got some nice jokes :)

But the seriousness of that dreaded word 'death'.. I come face to face with this reality now after news I hear about people around me. Friends, relatives, parents. People in bad health. Such news forces you to accept things. Things that you took for granted before. And yet after all these happenings I hear around me everyday, I still think I'm meant to live longer and hence dont need to worry about it. I'm just : 'Meant' to live. After all, the average life expectancy of an Indian is around 50 or so, right ? . And yet, someone in, say, South India, doesnt think twice when he hears that a few people were killed in Kashmir, or a bomb blasted in Assam and 76 people died. To him it is something far away and nothing concerning him. Similarly, to someone in the north, the bangalore blasts or the Tsunami, say, is just another news to catch on tv.

Well, so what about it, I cant go fearing our own shadow now can I. No, what I can do is enjoy life while it lasts. And accept that a sudden stop can come to anyody around us anytime . So from now on I'll just be prepared for it. And not take life for granted.

[ Sorry if that post was a scary one. Theyre just thoughts I wanted to let out. Maybe I should add a disclaimer at the top soon :) ].

A Little India in Singapore

2008-10-26T03:51:00.006+08:00

Thats what it's called. Little India. Originally a 'district' established by the British during their regime, Little India is the hub of Indians in Singapore.

What strikes you most when you get down at Little India Metro station is that you feel you suddenly popped up somewhere in Chennai by accident ! Look all around, you see Indians, especially Tamilians. Tamil spoken all around, along with Hindi and the occasional Malayalam. Even the announcements at the railway station are made in Tamil, only for this particular station !

I got down at Little India to go to Mustafa centre, a get-it-all place, Mecca for all Indians in Singapore. You can buy anything there, food, jewellery, electronics, clothes, book tickets, send money to India, anything at all. We were at the Mustafa clothes store, tired of hearing some Indian language all the time for the last 4 hours and turning to find all Indians around us. At the bil payment, I was searching around when suddenly I catch some Malayalam being spoken !.. Surprised, I turned, to find out that the cashier guy was a mallu and was flirting with the other female cashier, who, u guessed it, was also mallu :). No surprises, this is Little India. And mallus, we are everywhere.

We went to the mobile store to check out some Nokia handsets. I was secretly passing critical comments to my friends in Malayalam, only to find out that all the salesmen there were mallus and had understood every 'secretive' comment I had made :). Well that was an embarassing situation I wudnt want to have again.

Outside, Little India is decorated for Diwali preparations. (check out the pic on the right) Brightly lit, you'd feel more excitement here than in India. We searched for somewhere to eat, and along the road we see the following : Saravana bhavan, Ananda Bhavan, Annapoorna, and Komalas. All Indian restaurants. How can you blame me for believing this was truly India?

We had some typical South Indian dosas at Ananda bhavan (with the song "Machchaan Peru Madurai" playing in the background). Felt like heaven. And a lot closer home. Even walking on a road here feels like India. Dirty, crowded and noisy. Ironically, some of the people here label Little India also as the dirtiest place in Singapore !

Little India is a true centre for India in Singapore. It houses quite a few temples and mosques, a bunch of cheap shopping centres for all cheap (Indian type) items that you would never in your dreams find elsewhere in Singapore, the main link for anything to do with India through Mustafa centre, and ofcourse, too many Indians walking and talking all over the place :-).

Hah! Did anyone say India was thousands of km away from Singapore !

Breeding under Captivity?

2008-10-08T04:18:00.001+08:00

This is a question I came face to face with through my recent Zoo visits, and a debate I had recently with a friend. Gave me another possible insight into the situation of captive breeding, and its possible implications on our attitude/duties/powers over or towards nature.

So many species are going extinct now. And yes, obviously we (humans) are directly or indirectly responsible for a lot of them. But now, if we cannot help it by not disturbing their habitats, does this mean breeding them in captivity to ensure they survive is a noble option?

Many of us have gone to zoos. And most of us have at some point felt :"How sad.. that animal must want to be free and roam the jungles now, instead of being caged like that".. But we may not think, that the animal if left in the forest by itself might not have survived in the first place. So by capturing it, does it mean we ensured it survived, and hence we have rights over its life ?

I am not taking sides in this argument. I do think that captivity is important sometimes to make sure that atleast the remaining species dont go extinct. But then, when I see the poor cheetah forced to walk about in 20 yards of space in Singapore zoo, I remember the dialogue I have quoted previously also from Wall-E : "I dont want to survive.. I want to live !..".. and I imagine the cheetah saying this while he suffocates in his meagre make-do 20 yard jungle.

So, simply survive, or else live free in some jungle under the risk of extinction. Is that the only options these creatures have now?

Singapore hosts World's First Night Grand Prix..

2008-09-28T03:58:00.005+08:00

"... and we dont have the tickets to it!! We must be the worlds biggest losers!!... "
This is the desperate post I was about to post until on Saturday, my luck struck big time, and finally I ended up getting tickets to the Formula One Grand Prix !!!!

Its an amazing experience, in that you feel the sheer raw power of the vehicles as they blaze past you in thunderous speed, the ground virtually shaking under their speed and sound. We had to wear earmuffs to reduce the damage of the sound. The engines and fuel for GPs apparently challenge even airplanes. You can feel the flash as the car goes by at speeds of around 300 kmph, and wonder at the beauty of the car and the drivers skill.

But unfortunately, unless you know what car belongs to who, you cant even make out whether it was a Hamilton who zoomed past you or a Raikkonen :-). We had to stand at the turnings where the cars slow down to even get a look at the cars. You can see the 'whoosh' in some of our pics even (not uploaded yet, will do soon).

The Singapore GP, the worlds record-setting first night-time GP, was held over 3 days. Friday: the Practise sessions for the drivers, Saturday : the Qualifiers, which is what we went to, and Sunday : The main race We went at around 7, watched a practise session, then walked around the place seeing different angles of the circuit. The funny part about the GP (similar to what happens at a cricket match) is that you cant follow anything at all about the race unless you get to a good old TV somewhere. So ultimately we saw in a TV screen that Massa had got Pole position through the qualifiers :-).

Other than that, the atmosphere was thrilling, and the scenery of skyscrapers against a backdrop of the Singapore Marina and some nice hotels was awesome(it was at the heart of Singapore city). There were plenty of Europeans around I can say(theyre apparently crazy about F1), and lots of food stalls and entertainment camps scattered all around the place too.

Could'nt catch much of the finals though :-(, and missed seeing Alonso fight it to the top from the bottom of the list, while Massa, who was at pole position, went all the way to the bottom by the end of the race.

Park Hopping @Spore

2008-09-24T00:23:00.018+08:00

So, what have I been doing in Singapore? Heres what the last 3 weeks have been about.

Theres an unsaid understanding among our group of friends here (thats me, Naren, Ravi, Deepak, Ashish and Amrith) that no weekend shall be spent boring away to death at the Laboratory here, like the rest of the week. So we came upon the Park-Hopper deal.

Park-Hopper was a 3-in-1 : the Singapore Night Safari, Singapore Bird Park, and Singapore Zoo. For 40$, I must say it was an awesome deal. We decided to start off with the Night Safari, since it sounded the coolest.

Singapore Night Safari :

Dont be fooled by the name - Night Safari is just a zoo with a more natural setting, and animals that are more nocturnal in nature. It was nice nevertheless. There are 3 'trails' that lead you by footpath among not-so-dense forest covered areas through enclosed areas containing animals.

The night-time experience was good enough, with the nocturnal animals conveniently seeming to appear at the right places for the viewers to see. Though the Night safari wasnt quite natural and adventurous as I expected it, cos the animals were all fully enclosed, it was still entertaining to walk around the 3 trails (leopard trail, fishing cat trail, and tree giants trail).

The worst problem was that being night, we couldnt take too many photos, as flash also was not allowed since it scared the creatures away. So the only photos we could take ended up being those at Z-bar :-) and the entrance.

The night safari ended up being a midnight one, as we lost both our last train as well as last bus. We ended up taking a bus to the closest heard bus stop to our campus, having a midnight snack at MacDonalds, and then walking by foot over 2 hours to our hostels.

Jurong Bird Park

The Singapore Bird Park at Jurong is reportedly the worlds finest one. I had half expected it to be boring, but it turned out to be an awesome experience than ever!

The highlights of the trip, apart from being able to see all species of rare and beautiful birds like eagles, vultures, hawks, ostriches, mackaws, penguins, lories, cockatoos, toucans, pelicans, etc, was

1. Feeding the Lories, at the Lory loft. This was an enclosure in which lories fly freely about. If you're ready to feed them, they get real friendly and even perch on you while having a snack. Beware, really hungry ones can get violent and competitive in stealing the food from their friends.

2. Watching the shows, which were too cool. The first one was in general about bird species, where birds were made to do tricks. For example, one Sulphur-Crested Cockatoo was made to fly upto where I was seated and give me a free-drinks voucher :-). Unfortunately, I ended up buyin a more expensive pic of the same(below)

The second show was about birds of prey, and we got to see some of the biggest birds in the world! Including the Himalayan Eagles, the Bald-headed eagles, Brahmin Kites, etc

Unbelievably, we also got to see, touch and even take photos with a penguin!.. And talk to cockatoos(they say "Hello", their name, etc).. And go into the 'World of darkness' where we caught some really exotic owl species.. The whole package was really entertaining, notwithstanding the good collection of 'Chicks' that were roaming about :-).

Singapore Zoo

So you might think, after all this, what would a zoo have to offer? Well, whatever doesnt fall into the above 2, comes in the zoo.

So somehow we ended up at the last phase of the park-hopper trilogy in the morning(oops, afternoon). By now, we had become experienced 'park-hoppers', and had hence come with full supplies of food and water in our bags, and also the mental courage to last walking till evening.

There was a wide variety of animals, to say the least. I cannot possibly set out on a list of species that we came across. Some surprises for me included the polar bears (here in Asia?), the white tigers and the sealions (I thought they were for the ocean !), apart from the species shown on the right here(the 'park hopper team'). We(especially Naren) engaged in particularly vigourous photography here, not sparing any of the animals from a "Say Cheese.."

There were 3 animal shows here, both involving tricks with trained animals. The Splash show involving sealions was particularly awesome, and the sealions showed excellent form and intelligence in performing the tricks. There were shows by apes, elephants, etc also, and shows centering on rainforest conservation. We got the chance to get kissed by a sealion at one of these Yea.. you guys must be like.. "Yuck!.." now.. it was a particularly juicy kiss. Like Naren said, I hope its not my last kiss :-)

However, I must mention one thing. Going to all these has definitely brought about in all of us a greater sense of belongingness to nature. And a greater want to protect teh environment and save its species ( as if I already wasnt tree hugging enough :-) ). So much that We are all into watching nature documentaries now on DVD :-)

So before I finish, heres a pic of a board we saw at the zoo before we left. Its apparently some native Indian saying. And those lines will remain with me forever.

Wall-E.. with a Green message..

2008-09-09T10:59:00.004+08:00

I initially planned just a movie review about Wall-E. 'It rocks', 'must see', etc. But thats just not what this movie is about. Its about the message. A message that has been around for sometime and yet finds it hard to enter human brains nowadays. So this will not be a review exactly.

Wall-E by Walt Disney, as you all may already know, is an Animation movie about the robot Wall-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth Class). Wall-E is all that is left on a desolated Earth that has nothing but leftovers of a human civilisation. I wondered whether it would be worth watching an animation movie in the theatre. Maybe, maybe not. But for Wall-E, the theatre makes a difference - The first 10 minutes of the movie will hit you full in the face. A large screen with an earth filled with nothing but trash. A picture of the future of Earth. Scary stuff, man.

Trash, trash all around. That's what Earth is becoming. Or even the space above Earth for that matter. Why dont we realise it? Even if we realise it, why dont we wake up to it? We know the 3 R's (Reuse, Reduce, Recycle - do you know? :-) ). We know we can do it. And yet, why dont we go ahead and practise conservation like our lives depended on it? Cos our lives do depend on it, u know.

"Feel your place is becoming a trash can? Well, dont worry, let Wall-E clean it up for you..".. Ya right..

Plastic bags, for example. We all know how easy it is to reuse plastic bags for our shopping. And yet anywhere I go, no one seems to want to reuse them. All of them want brand new bags from the grocery, more junk for Earth to consume. It is not being miserly, you cannot save money by reusing plastic bags. You can only save Earth.

Just think, if you reused a plastic bag 1 more time by taking it to the grocery store, you cut down your plastic consumption by half! 2 more times, it becomes 1/3rd. If everyone did that, the plastic bag consumption would fall drastically! Why hesitate to take a bag to the store and tell the store-lady that she can pack it for you in your own bags? What right does she have to refuse you and insist you use her own plastic, and thereby add more of her own plastic waste to Earths system? I try my best wherever I am to reduce plastic consumption, many people do. Yet a few people cannot make a difference. Thats why I blog :-)

Yes, Wall-E is scary. Apart from the future of the Earth, and inducing a sense of love towards trees and greenery (the green colour rarely comes in the movie that you actually love it when you see it), it wakes you up to the negatives of mechanization. Imagine a world of couch-potatoes, not used to walking, not used to socialising, stuck to their screens (I am now :-) ), not knowing whats outside. Getting lazier. And obese. Man, I really felt like taking a walk after I saw that scene.

Wall-E ends on a good note. The robot Eve looked cute, and Wall-E even cuter :-). The Robot-romance scences were nice alright, well shown. But the environmental feeling - thats what I carried out of the theatre.

I'll end with a dialogue from the movie. Sorry guys, I may be spoiling a bit of suspense here, but like I said, this is not a review. So if you dont want to lose suspense dont read the below conversation between the Captain of the Axiom ship and the Bot 'Auto'. My favorite dialogue.

Captain : "This place.. Earth is beautiful. Auto, take me to Earth right now"

Auto : "Captain, conditions on Earth are not good. You may not survive"

Captain : "I dont want to Survive ! I want to LIVE ! ..I want to do it on Earth !"

Conservation is no longer our gift to the environment. It is our duty to nature. It is a sin not to conserve. By not conserving, we are guilty of murder. Of our future. This is not a doomsday prediction, or a conspiracy theory. It is, as Al Gore put it, an Inconvenient truth.

Power Of Bullshit

2008-08-26T17:10:00.001+08:00

Bullshitting, or technically speaking, the art of effective presentation aided by tools like exaggeration, right tone and facial features, big words and sometimes even bluffing, is much more important to the academic or technical field than one might think, as I came to know here through some seminars I attended recently.

All through college, I was used to seeing people who were good at bullshitting get away with their hurdles like project presentations, seminars , and most importantly, EXAMS, despite having not an ounce of technical content in their work. Theres also the other type of people, who know their stuff, and have content, but do not know how to put it well. They might put in more content than the former type of people, but the former type still has longer answers, more slides, bigger explanations, better diagrams. So the end result usually goes in favour of the bullshitter-who-knows-nothing than the Know-it-all-who-cant-bullshit.

(Comic strip courtesy phdcomics.com Check it out, theyre really awesome.)

Even at our major project presentations, we learnt that learning to speak confident, project your tone even though you dint really know what you were saying, presenting slides clearly, fully and in laymans terms, were of utmost importance to the profs. What you did in the project did matter, content was important, but it was nothing compared to the big presentation.

At a Ph.D confirmation of my friend X recently here, I learnt that the same applies to the whole academic community. My friend X : it was clear X had got results, fairly good findings in the field. But despite this, it was a hard time for X at the end, almost got screwed by the panel. Why? If my views are right, X lacked in presenting his views clearly. The panel was very much like what we had at NITC : Profs waiting to ask qusetions to screw the students. The questions asked were also similar : If u present one method, they ask if you have explored the other methods and why not, etc. X presented ok, not so forcefully, and neither could he answer his questions in a glamorous way or in laymans terms. He couldnt add the masala. He didnt look confident enough. And remember, these are the very principles of project presentation we learnt at NITC.

So people, next time you hear a guy and say "That guy is full of bullshit..", remember, that guy just might be closer to a Ph.D than you think :-).

The Friday Syndrome

2008-08-23T15:44:00.003+08:00

How many times have we got up on a Friday and thought "Oh Hell, the weekend is here, I might as well take leave today..". Or thought "I cant wait to be free.. " or "I must make plans for the weekend" or something like that. Friday - The last working day of the week, and the best of all too. I have come to notice this mental pattern, and we dubbed it the 'Friday Syndrome'.

It was common for us in College and even here in NTU, to consider Friday as an early start to the weekend. For that reason Friday is not like any other weekday, it is generally the least productive. Half the time is spent in deciding what to do for the weekend. People generally leave early on Fridays to get an early start to their weekends.

And yea, in college, most people used to bunk Fridays totally. In which case their weekend started one day before, and it used to become a 'Thursday syndrome' :-).

Ofcourse, everyone must be acquainted with "Monday syndrome" . The "I hate Mondays" feeling or "Monday-moodoffs" - Monday being the first working day always gets to be the worst. In particular, Monday first-hours were our most hated moments in life. The only thing worse used to be post-lunch sessions on Monday :-). Sometimes, an early manifestation of Monday syndrome appears on Sunday night, in which case the thought goes like "Oh my God, the weekend is over, now tomorrow its back to slogging our ass off again... Groooaaannn.. ".. I think I hate this syndrome even more than Monday (it would probably be "Sunday evening syndrome")

Anyways, so here I am on a Friday, hallucinating(/hoping/wishing) that despite being a working day, my weekend has already started off, and so I should start off my weekly posting :-)..

Open Office 3.Rocks !!

2008-08-18T14:32:00.000+08:00

I'm hearing news about Open Office 3 beta version ! And the reports are so unbelievably great !

Open Office, the best Office suite in the world, has now further entrenched its position by blasting away with its 3rd version. Some hi-fi news about OO :

1. The presentation tool Impress is now way too cool, probably has beaten the best in the field. OO Impress even has Apple Keynote's functionality of multiple screens projection and next screen prompt etc.

2. OO owns PDF files as if they made it ! You can now handle and edit pdf files just like an office document !

3. OO can open Word 2007 files ! If the reader is aware from my previous posts on the OOXML controversy, you will understand the cream of the joke is on Microsoft. Because the latest Word format (.docx, .pptx etc) are not open formats, and thus their formatting/processing are not supposed to be known to anyone except Microsoft ! Well, nothing is impossible for the Open source community eh.. they have virtually hacked into Microsoft Words own format!

4. Open.office.Calc has superb features like Optimisation and Solving !

Just Cant Wait to get my hands on it. Well, what are you waiting for? Go

http://download.openoffice.org/3.0beta/

Independence.. is still to be fought for..

2008-08-15T00:38:00.004+08:00

Happy Independence Day to All!! May this great nation achieve greater heights still.. May we own this century, like we rocked the world thousands of years ago once..

There's a national flag hoisting at the Indian Embassy of Singapore here.. Might be able to see it if i wake up at 6 tomorrow.. In other words, I wont be able to see it :-)..

What is Research

2008-08-12T03:56:00.000+08:00

That test tube you see on the left. Dont you feel it represents the term "Research" quite well more than anything else? Well nothing could be more wrong.

I never quite fully understood what research was. Or how it worked. How did people think of new ideas just like that? How did they find it? Do all researchers work in labs doing experiements ? etc etc

That was until I met a cousin of mine who was doing research in IMSc Chennai. I was more shocked by the fact that his 'experiments' were all conducted in a closed room that resembled more a cubicle in an IT company than a laboratory !

In fact, in IMSc, all research which spans physics, maths and computer science is done by 'research scholars', much like you and me, in closed rooms like this with AC. I was also amazed by the easy life they led, the fact that they actually got paid while enjoying life researching.

Now I have a fuller idea of it. My research centre, or 'Office', as I call it, at NTU, is called CEMNET. Centre for Multimedia and Networking. And trust me the only multimedia and networking they have is the pc speakers and the Internet on the computers installed at every terminal :-)

Advanced simulation techniques, mathematical modelling techniques, data-gathering techniques, database management systems : these 4 things have made it possible to conduct 'experiments', or research, in 'labs' with nothing more than a computer terminal in front of you ! Its an amazing concept ! So the result? Im no longer a scientist in a white labcoat with glasses and test-tubes, but rather just a guy in front of a terminal with G-chat open most of the time :-)

Well things may not be that easy,because research is nevertheless the most challenging thing anyways because it does'nt ensure results. You'll never know if what you were working on for the past 4 years will be useful or existent. And if it clicks, you have a Ph.D. If you dont, well, you're an unlucky loser, thats all. And in the initial part of research, you have to do a looot of study, literature survey, to keep up to date in the latest research in these fields you are going into. That itself is a hard process that may take upto one year or more, from what I see. And yes, its still a continuous process even when you're researching something new, you still have to keep yourself abreast of the technology by reading.

So basically, thats my job at the Cemnet now :-) Nerd off, read read read, and find everything that is written in my field. And then research to find something new so I can add to that ! Signing off now..

The Kitchen Laboratory

2008-08-08T00:44:00.004+08:00

If you're staying outside India, food will definitely be one of your major expenses. So under this assumption we started our research strongly in the kitchen lab (instead of the DSP lab where we were intended to do so :-) ), and have been cooking well for some time now.

Ofcourse, the main thing is that when u cook it, whatever it is, tastes good. Here are some pics of what turned up at our latest experiment. It was (supposed to be like) Sambhar saadam. Theres some potato fries for company too.

One thing I learnt after coming here, even more than my college life, was to respect Mom's cooking. The first day we experimented with Rice and one easy curry we took around 2.5 whole hours to cook it! Its better now, but now I understand how much our mothers put in for us just by cooking 1 or even 2 curries for us daily.

Anyways, I guess 4 years is a long time, I have quite a lot of papers to present in this vast unexplored world of cooking :-)

The One-Month-Smoking experiment

2008-08-03T03:17:00.008+08:00

(Wow, I reached a half-century of posts last time! And I dint even know it! Ok I'm not coming up with Singapore chronicles part 2 yet cos I dont have any photos, but what I'll do is post a story from one of my college-memories.)

I referred to it as the "One-month" experiment with Tobacco. Smoking. There was a great deal of talk (and I'm sure all of you know this) that once u get addicted to smoking properly its very hard to stop it all of a sudden, and u can do it only gradually. So this guy at our college wanted to test it out. No names, sorry.

The experiment : Mr X decided to start smoking one fine day. Continuously. In chain fashion. Packs after packs per day. He would do this suddenly and continuously for one month. And then, at the end of 30 days, he would (attempt to) stop it fully! Just like that!

It was an experiment not only to test the addiction of tobacco but also the guys self-control. It was a bad idea, doing that with his own life and health. We were all critical.. What if the guy failed the expt and did get addicted?

As everyone knows, quitting smoking is hard both physically and mentally. Physically, a smoker who stops for even a day, will experience headaches, tirednes, restlessness, and even problems in going to the loo ! (courtesty : friends of mine) Mentally, its hell, really.. you cant keep your mind under control for its cravings, its just restless, and you even lose your mood and isolate yourself from friends. I think these are called the withdrawal symptoms.

I underestimated the power of tobacco myself once. The first time i tried it out I hated it and hence took an oath never to do it again. But amazingly after a few weeks i started fancying another smoke! And to be honest, the first one dint even give me a high and tasted particularly bad too! I was amazed at how tobacco had fooled me! Needless to say, I did have a few smokes after that, but it stopped with college anyways, well, I got from it what change I wanted by testing it.

The point is that Tobacco is a highly underestimated, misunderstood evil, which in my opinion is worse than alcohol but sometimes not feared as much even. No wonder its so badly common then. A recent documentary i saw rates tobacco as the number 9 most dangerous drug on the list. And it comes above Cannabis, Ecstasy and LSD ! And the worst part? Its out there still, so common, that you yourself have a passive puff sometimes..

Anyways, Good news. Because after all this, Mr.X passed the one-month Test ! He stopped smoking one fine day after 30 days ! So, well, I guess the situation is more hopeful than we think finally.

Another war in the Fight to Freedom

2008-07-21T15:46:00.000+08:00

The Free Software world will win someday. I'm sure of it.

Heres a story of a knight fighting for his freedom in MES College, Kuttipuram. Its a real treat to read the Open letter by him to his HoD on installing Free Software in his labs for his experiments, especially when these are not only easy to use, but also theres no restriction in the curriculum mentioning what software to use.

Back online!!

2008-07-18T15:29:00.002+08:00

"Give me net or let me die here.. "..said Atul Chitnis at FOSSMeet '07 at the pathetic net connectivity in our (ex)college NITC.

Well finally atleast I'm back online already here at NTU!!

So beginning from basics, I reached Singapore Nanyang Technological University on 17th morning. Jetlag and only 2 hours of sleep. Notwithstanding that we went on to our college to proceed with the formalities.

What struck me first was the neatness, systematised (er, is that a word? ) way of functioning of the place. The roads itself were a sight to behold, larger than probably any of our NHs. As I and Naren reached NTU, International Student Services was waiting for us and directed us on what to do. We soon proceeded with formalities and landed in a room in Nanyang Heights.

(not many pics yet, sorry, dint get my cam :-) )

The medical test we had to undergo in the noon was a great experience. We had to undergo all sorts of test, even test our urine using paper sticks!! And there were blood tests and even a Chest X-ray to check for TB !

After that we toured the beautiful campus a bit. NTU looks like a toned up version of IIT Mumbai, maybe twice as big or so. And neater. There were a large number of canteens with enough vegetarian outlets, so I had no trouble finding some vegetable chow for myself.

The only sad part was that theres no more hustle-bustle here because the classes have not started yet. So the crowd is still thin. But yea, there are treats for the eye :-). Still, somehow I dont think the place would match the hullabulloo that we had in night-life at NITC.

In the night I discovered to my delight that I could access wireless net here from my lappie. That was it!! Night out time! It was mailing and chatting till 2 am.

So anyways I guess the blogs not off after all.. Hoping to get a cam and get some pics to post on blog soon..

Vacation ends, New world beckons, Old language makes frontiers

2008-07-14T04:09:00.006+08:00

Bottom line : Day after tomorrow I'm off to Singapore to do my higher studies.

So the last few days have been hectic, finishing off all the relatives visiting and shopping. Owing to the timely hartals in Kerala (a blog subject all by itself), I couldnt even put in one decent day of shopping yet.

Linux Translation to Malayalam (for the next version of KDE Desktop) is one of the most satisfying things Ive been doing. It was an adventure all in itself, it started off with a handful of people like Manu, me, the pros Ani, Praveen, Santhosh etc.. soon the group became larger.. our deadline (13th) loomed closer.. people put in more night outs.. we made a wiki to make sure everyone knew what to do and what the other person was doing.. there was a googlegroups to consolidate things.. a project leader.. and even IRC online meetings sometimes..

It was the best online managed project Ive ever been part of!!!
To say the least, we made the deadline!! KDE 4.1.0 will include Malayalam in it!! And I'm an official Linux contributor now! (dont get boggled by that, its really too easy :-)

People who want to know more go to the site KDE Malayalam FCI Wikia
And you can learn how to contribute easily to Malayalam translation in Linux. Even I can add a few pointers, if you want :-)

Other than that, Ive been to Chennai, Calicut, Palakkad and back in a matter of days. Visited my school and met my old teachers. Went around the neighbourhood. These are the nonsensical stuff I've been doing the last few days.

To end it, a foreward bail : I dont know when I might see the Internet world again in Singapore, so my blog wil probably go on snooze for a few days now. Hope I can make it to a terminal on time :-)

2008-07-07T04:18:00.000+08:00

After reading my chalified movie review on 'Dashed'-Avataram, Mahesh commented on this one with a few crazily good chalis.

So this one is for the PJ lovers out there (I am one of them, so please keep your chappals down :-) )

Kamal - the 'shava' thaaram
Himesh - dasha avathaaLam
Mallika - the sha-wah! thaaram
Appeasement - desha (I mean rashtriyam) avatharam

Non-Mallus who dint get the puns, please excuse me.. Others, if you're out for mine or Mahesh's blood, you wont find me on my address any more .. I'm in Trivandrum and then Chennai visiting :-)..

Freedom, Finally!

2008-07-04T04:12:00.000+08:00

I have done it! On 25th night at 11 pm, my computer was freed (well not totally) from the feudal rule of Microsoft Windows!

I have now shifted usage almost completely to Debian Linux. I dont want to elaborate on the advantages, read Hari Shankar's blog here for a Free man's view on Open source software usage.

But I've to mention specifically that the scalability and the package concept of installing software in Linux really impressed me!

Now Warcraft 3 gaming is all that holds me back onto booting in Windows once in a while. FOSS Contributors, Here I come!..

Renewal of the Renewable

2008-07-01T03:58:00.003+08:00

The Renewable energy and Energy Conservation Exhibition held at Ernakulam Town Hall recently was a major eye-opener.It was a clear sign that 'renewable energy in India' was not just a word chanted by students in school and college (thats 4 words by the way), but a movement being pursued strongly by both government and private parties alike.

Especially in the light of the recent rise in oil prices, the nuclear power deal going nowhere, Iran pipeline still being in the pipeline [:-)], and the increase in electricity prices in this power ridden Gods own country, the fact that renewable energy is all set to renew the bleak horizon of the energy security of the country is very relieving.

The exhibition showcased different emerging technologies utilising renewable energy, some gave even live demos of how renewable energy is tapped, and gave an outlet for renewable energy companies, especially in the solar power field, to market their products.

(This poster has nothing much to do with this exhibition. This was just a last-minute poster made by Me, Naren, Joseph and Lakshmi that won us a prize at ESCT conference in NITC.)

Some nice stuff I noted from the exhibition:

1. The Bio-Diesel dream is not dead, and is being pursued in a major way by some companies. It will soon hit the market.
2. LED lighting bulbs rules the market, even beating CFLs now. It is pretty widespread.
3. Solar water heaters are a moving product.
4. Wind power players like Suzlon and Bio-gas plants are coming on at really low costs, and will soon spread over India fast.
5. Environmentally friendly products that cost 0 power to produce are another way to reduce power consumption.

The bio-diesel production stall was one of the major highlights. It was a relief to know that Indian railways has taken up bio-diesel research in a big way, and even has set up some plants to produce bio-diesel, if only for test purposes at the moment. Also, it has started running trains on bio-diesel blends now! Soon, railways will set up more plants in different parts of India. 'Jatropha curcass', the plant that is most utilised for bio-diesel production, is now being cultivated in some parts of India too!

It was a solar-water heater market, as major players like V-Guard, Hykon, Technomax etc set up stalls to market their products like Solar heating, Solar lighting etc. Most of the stalls innovatively used panels set up outside to light up their own bulbs.The LED bulbs shown used lesser power apparently, and gave better light than even CFL Lamps. whats more, replacement cost for an LED bulb is much lesser!

There was more. A couple of Saint Gits college students showing their major project of diesel production from another source. KSEB demonstrating hydro-turbine power generation. The superior Electronic chokes performance being demoed. All in all, a tree-huggers and Energy-engineers paradise.

Lets hope the movement gains more momentum and becomes a household phenomenon.

The Marriage Breakers

2008-06-25T03:56:00.000+08:00

Thought that was a spelling mistake? Nope, its not marriage brokers i meant, its breakers, people who love breaking marriages that are about to happen..

In a moment of total desperation I started reading this article in Grihalakshmi (a typical Mallu housewifes magazine :-) ), and this story really struck me as unbelievable!

Think about these true cases :

1. A village in Kalady has had several cases of marriages being broken after the girl-seeing has taken place. 4 of these happened even after the engagement happened !

When people investigated, they caught the culprit, a lady, who claimed she had broken 13 such marriage cases all by herself by way of the tongue !! She did it out of desperation because her daughter's marriage had not taken place and she was growing quite old and unable to do it!

2. Case of own family members breaking the marriage, like the lady who broke her own engaged brother-in-laws marriage because she feared the new bride would be more beautiful than her!(I wonder how believable that is)

Or the sister who broke her bro's marriage cos her marriage had not yet materialised successfully!

3. On October 23rd in a hotel in Edapal, Mr. Bava holds a press conference. Its to clarify and bring to light the happenings of marriage breaking, which has happened a couple of times to his son Faizal who is of age now. All of them have been broken by people who give unnecessary opinions to the girl's part, and lots of wild rumours have now gone around about his son.

4. Brokers who break their own fixed-up marriage cases cos they dint get enough money from the marrying parties.

Simply unbelievable stuff.. Just like the movies. only this time, its painfully real.

This stuff happens around some parts of Kerala. The 'Challenger's Club' of Kalady has started a new revolution against marriage-breakers, after one of their own members faced the brunt of unnecessary rumours that broke his marriage.

The challengers club puts up notices warning the breakers ,like the one on the left.( sorry its in malayalam). They dress up as normal people wanting to marry off their kin and try to pick up gossip mongers. They also try to create awareness and bring together marriage cases that were broken under uncertain conditions by breakers.

Some possible reasons why the breakers do what they do :-

1. Because they have had some tragic experience of their own, especially related to marriage.
2. Sheer jealousy
3. Gossip-love
4. The Indian-crab-in-the-basket tendency (they tend to pull down any crab that happens to get one step close out of the basket)
5. Out of professional hatred.
6. Joblessness, maybe !

We'd probably not be able to do something like that, but we can atleast try to spot a marriage-breaker next time we see him. And expose him to the public for what he really is. And also not listen to wild rumours from the public when it comes to marriages, cos rumours have no origins or bounds and should not be taken as a final word when i comes to marriage.

'Dashed'-Avataram

2008-06-22T03:59:00.001+08:00

10 different roles, Crores of rupees, years of making, star-studded launch, Reshammiya at the music and Kamal, Asin and Mallika. Plenty of reason for you not to miss this Tamil blockbuster.

Unfortunately, skillfully as the movie has been made, the screenplay falls apart badly in the last half an hour or so of the movie. And if All's Well only that ends well, nothing is well with Dashavataram. I dont know about the Tamil audience, but the unbelievable stuff at the end invited plenty of boos from Keralite theatres.

Last half an hour apart, bottom line is : Great acting, good music, great action, nice scenes, decent plot, great Kamal, sexy Mallika and cute Asin. So dont miss it.

Ofcourse, not all the 10 roles have been played to perfection. Neither are they all instrumental to the plot, in fact only 3 or 4 characters really form the core of the plot. Make-up looks weird on some, like the lanky 'Khalifulla'(an Afghan?) and the Japanese master (man he was really corny). And again, when you start seeing the hero and villain do superhuman stunts, you know its time to go into 'timepass' mode and not take the movie too seriously, cos from then on apples start falling upwards. The throat cancer curing joke, ofcourse, took the cake.. somehow I expected that one, seeing the way the movie was going (for those who dint understand, watch it, you dont want me to break the suspense do u?).

Then theres the point of trying to satisfy every type of customer- scenes of Jayalalitha are followed soon by Karunanidhi's speech. Bush and Manmohan Singh sharing stage. And a praise to Allah is followed very soon by a Church bell, Amen, and then soon after by a scene of a Hindu idol. I thought that was pretty unnecessary.

But dont let all this take away the glory of the movie ! Kamal is a treat to watch in most roles. The priest rocks, the Vincent and Balram Naidu guys dialogue delivery are awesome, and George Bush make-up looks surprisingly convincing some places. The rest of the characters are pretty good too(except maybe the Japanese guy).

Mallika Sherawat is hot! (or is it just me?) And I thought Asin played her role of a conservative girl well too. She looks nice in the movie too :-).Reshammiya's music is a treat where it comes, especially the background scores.

And the sheer variety, speed and magnitude of the movie is reason for all you people sitting there to go and watch it at your nearest theatre !

Time time everywhere.... but not a second to spare..

2008-06-18T03:21:00.003+08:00

Whoever said vacations were full of time and should be made useful?

Every year at college, a common thing used to happen at our hostels. When the year was closing in, especially during exam time, the guys would discuss and make plans on what to do in the vacations. A long list (sometimes written) of what to do, would be the result of such endless and useless discussions. Mine would last atleast a page. It would include one or more of the following, and maybe other stuff too..

- Do regular exercise, maybe body build and go to a gym
- Read a whole lot of books
- Learn new stuff, maybe a new musical instrument, driving, etc
- Go through next sem's academic stuff (ya right)
- Visit a bunch of places

Unfortunately, not even 3 months of long boring vacations seem enough to make any of these happen fruitfully.

When I'm at home, the timetable changes dramatically. Sleep takes over completely, and even food comes secondary. Bodily needs are barely met. TV may finish up the day, if the computer does not take over. And once in a while, there may be an outing too. Most of the people seem to live on orkut during this time.

This is how my timetable looked during last years vacation :

0800 : Wake up to close door for parents to leave for work. Attend to calls (especially natures), and go back to sleep
1500 : Wake up again, for real this time. Brush up, and read newspaper
1530 : Eat breakfast+lunch+tea, whatever this meal is called
1600 - 1800 : Doze off under effects of huge meal mentioned above, maybe sit in front of TV.
1830 : Have tea or whatever eye catches in kitchen
1800 - 2100 : Try to find something more interesting to do than TV. This could be a) seeing a movie on comp, b) reading a book, c) sleeping again !

Generally, doing items a) and b) would result in item c) inevitably.

2130 : Have dinner
2200 : Sit on computer
2300 : Play Dota/Browse net/Orkut
2400 : Play Dota/Browse net/Orkut
0100 : Play Dota/Browse net/Orkut

and so on, till
0400 : Play Dota/Browse net/Orkut

By now Dad wakes up, so I find its better that I sleep. So..

0500 : Go to Sleep again.

Around 10 hours of sleep per day. And remaining spent on comp and eating. A whole lot productive wasnt it.

So the end result of last times vacation?.. Very pretty :

Stuff learnt : Nil
Exercise done : Nil (few hours if I'm lucky)
Books read : Nil
Places gone to : Nil (a few movies maybe)
Academic stuff gone through : Not to mention

New season, new language

2008-06-10T12:40:00.001+08:00

Well well the monsoons are here now! Its raining so hard you can actually hear the meows and bow-wows of cats and dogs :-).. Its virtually 24-hr rain now.

And the sad part is, ofcourse, this is the season of stinking clothes and slippery roads and dark mornings. Some days you actually wish for the sun to come out. The worst part about the rainy season is that anything left outside for more than 10 hours straight catches fungus and must immediately be washed or kept in quarantine. Sheesh, so tough !

Funny part is that I was in Trivandrum, at the southern part of Kerala yesterday, and the clouds dont seem to have found their way there. While here at the Queen of the Arabian Sea (Kochi), and Thrissur the floods are already starting.

Time for me to experiment on my mother tongue now.. Malayalam blogging. I'll probably create a new blog for malayalam blogs only. So here goes my first post in my mother tongue...

ഓം ഹരി ശ്റീ ഗണപതയെ നമഃ ്്...

...എന്നു തുടങിയേ എനിക്കു ശീലം ഉള്ളു, അതൊരു പുതിയ പുസ്തകം ആ‍ാണെങ്കിലും പഠിക്കാൻ ആണെങ്കിലും കഴിക്കാൻ പൊലും ആണെങ്കിലും. അതു കൊണ്ട് ഇവിടെ ഞാൻ പതിവ് തെറ്റിക്കുന്നില്ല.

എഴുതി വരുംബോൾ എനിക്കു കാണാം, അഞ്ജലി എന്ന സുന്ദരമായ് ഈ ലിപിയിലും പോരായ്മകൾ ഉന്ട്. സമയം കിട്ടും പോലെ അതൊക്കെ ഒരുനാൾ ഞാൻ തിരുത്താൻ ശ്രമിക്കും. NITC-യിൽ FOSS Meet കഴിഞേ പിന്നേ എനിക്കു ഒരു പുതിയ മലയാള ലിപി ഉണ്ടാക്കണം എന്നതു ഒരു മോഹം ആണ്. ഹിരൺ എന്ന ഒരു പുലി തന്ന Talk-ഇലൂടെ ആണ് അതെ എങനെ ചെയ്യാം എന്നു പഠിച്ചത് .

സമയം പോലെ ഞാൻ അതു നോക്കണം. ആദ്യം Open-Source-ഇലേക്കു contribution ചെയ്യാൻ തുടങടട്െ. അതിനു മുംബ് ഞാൻ എന്റെ ഭാവിയുടെ കാര്യങൽ ശെരിയാക്കാൻ നോക്കടെ. അതിനു മുംബ്, ഞാൻ ഒരു മണികൂറ് ഒന്നു ഉരങാൻ നോക്കടെ ! :-)..

അങ്ങെന ഞാൻ മലയാള ബ്ലോഗിംഗ്‌ തുടങ്ങിയിരിക്കുന്നു !

2008-06-06T04:07:00.011+08:00

Branch spirit is not an alcohol. :-). But its definitely the most addictive high I've ever had.

When I remember my branch, the EEE batch of 08, my first thought goes back to Debutante and Sangam 04. These were inter-branch cultural/literary fests held for first years exclusively. We were doing particularly bad. There was no cheering. No spirit. No unity. Open quarrels and divides. We lost the competitions badly. We were mocked, and even we accepted- we tricals probably had bad misunderstandings, bad talent and no unity. It had lost us. It was a moment I'd rather not remember.

Then 2nd year came. We had common classes. We started getting along. People started talking. Every persons Birthday led to common Treats in the corps. GPLs every now and then. [For people who dont know the terminology, GPLs are a pain in the ass, you can see my 21st Bday GPL Video on the right here, poor me :-( ] And ofcourse, a common hatred towards the academic system and a unanimously lazy attitude towards studies and teachers. We definitely had more in common than we had thought.

3rd year was the turning point. First I remember the Kaapad beach trip some of us had, and a Marketing trip to Kochi. The 8-9 of us who were together in this were really gelled together. We thought in the same frequency when it came to the idea of enjoying, or unity, or something like that. That probably started it off. Our group stuck on together for the remainder of college days.

Then it was the Branch trip to Kodaikanal. That did the trick. I remember all the highs and lows we had to go through for it. Being CR, I was in the thick of it all. People pulling out every second. Having to push people into the trip so that another 50 bucks would be saved off every one else's back. Obstacles from the department. Permission problems. Having to bargain and use contacts in everything from transportation to accommodation. Making an itinerary to go with everyones demands and meeting deadlines. Man, that trip was more tension to me than an exam.

But finally it happened. And then I realized the magnitude of what we'd done. Something no branch in our batch in NITC had ever pulled off before. Plus, when you spend 3 days completely together in a bus or hotel or seeing scenery or walking in a park, I dont know why, you just get another mile closer to everyone (how else do u measure how 'close' ? :-) ). That trip did the magic for us. People shared responsiblity, tensions and work for the trip. Our plans worked. And most importantly, we were one branch. Around 47 people thinking as one.

4th year was the final concrete. Classes were much more interesting, something we always looked forward to. Everyone knew everyone else, and not many were actually silent in class. I actually looked forward to classes sometimes just to see 60 people in class.

We pulled off another Branch trip to Mysore. We had to face an equal amount of difficulties this time too. And again, the trip magic worked, we came together like never before. And created a record maybe in NITC. And earned a name among the faculty too as a very united branch, very fond of trips.

Then again we pulled off another trip to Kaapad beach. And followed it up with a dinner. And hot seat. That really finished it. Everyone knew everyone else's secrets. We were completely open. We pulled off another one too, to a nearby river. In a matter of half a day. Treats and trips were commonplace by now. We had learnt the art of getting together, of enjoying as one large group.

And now when I think back, I sorely wish that the unity that followed had been with us since first year. Well, Atleast it was there.

Its one thing to miss your parents and family. But its completely another thing to miss 70 people including guys and girls who think like you. I can only hope that the spark (no pun) of Electrical unity remains a flame forever.

(PS : We still keep in touch, many of us. We've had still more get-togethers and trips since college closed. In Wayanad, Kochi. Trivandrum, etc etc etc.)

Game of Tag

2008-06-01T02:29:00.005+08:00

So while i write up my next one, heres a tag I've been procrastinating for quite sometime. It seemed such a girlie thing to do before, but now I think its quite an interesting experience. I was tagged a looong time ago by Saritha (:-s sorry, and thankyou Saritha) and instead of fooling around, I've been quite frank in this one ...

Eight things I am passionate about:

1. My family: Mom, Sis and Dad. They're the world to me. Everything else is secondary. (Even girls!)
2. My friends: Cant live without the society and its chitchat around me. Both sexes needed in equal amounts :-)
3. Knowledge: Anything interesting and new to learn, I'd love to spend time on it. I respect people who can pull facts out of thin air too, for that matter, be it in any field.
4. God: not to be too serious about it, but this something that gives me direction when im lost. The silver lining amohng the dark clouds. Thats what I cant do without.
5. Food: Both cooking and eating. Have'nt yet got on top of the first one, though.
6. My Laptop : I wonder what I'd 50% of my life if it were'nt for my lappie. Since it came into my life, I've been able to forget everything around me and just spend time on it. Ultimate time-wasting tactic, needless to say.
7. Books : I just live through them. Any author is God for me once i finish reading his book.
8. Multimedia : Er, sorry for the technical term, but I guessed music, movies and videos couldnt be grouped together in any better way :-).

Eight things I want to do before I die:

I'll keep this really modest (hehe)
1. Travel to a) Everest b) Kailasa c) Switzerland and d) the South pole
2. Tell all my family and friends every little bit I've thought of them or any secret Ive hidden from them.
3. Become a real action hero, like the kind you see in the movies. Dude, seriously !
4. Plunge into mysticism, astronomy, meta-physics, psychiatry and religion.
5. Become world famous in whatever i'm doing. And make sure my name stays period.
6. See a) the Aurora b) a Tsunami c) an Earthquake (from a safe distance ofcourse, whatever that is)
7. Make a loooooot of money, enough for all the following generations and also for me to spend the rest of my life in Pizza Hut eating.

And the last thing before I die...

8. To close my eyes seeing a masterpiece of nature like the one on the right (this one is a sunset at Fort Kochi beach)

Eight things I say often:

1. Oh Shite!
2. Oh maaannnnn...
3. Entammmoo !
4. Oh my Gaaad !
5. Really? (sarcastic smile included)
6. Ya right! (ditto0
7. Mmm hmmm.. (I wonder if that can be classified as 'saying' )
8. Ente Palli (translated into malayalam, stands for 'My Church'. Makes no sense does it)

Eight books I’ve read recently:

1. Kite Runner by Khaleid Hosseini
2. In spite of the Gods (highly recommended) by Edward Luce
3. The Interpretation of dreams (almost) by Freud
4. Pappilon
5. Cheiro's book of fate and fortune
6. Harry Potter 7 (yea, that old :-))
7. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by Richard Bach
8. The Art and Craft of Poetry

Maybe I should add something like 'Electrical Technology by B.L. Theraja to give you an idea of what I've actually been reading for 4 years.

Eight songs I could listen to, over and over:

None. Any song i listen to too many times, I get tired of. But heres a list of my all time favorites.
1. Devasabhathalam in His higness Abdullah
2. Harivarasanam (a devotional to Ayyappa)
3. Vasantha mullai in Pokkiri
4. Du Hast by Rammstein
5. Asche Zu Asche by Rammstein
6. Shivadam (another classical Malayalam number)
7. Thaye Yashoda in Morning Raga
8. Kalai dinavum

Eight things that attracts me to my best friends:

1. That I listen
2. My Fool-around style humour
3. That they can pull me up and give me a GPL anytime (yeouch)
4. Interest in long conversations
5. Keenness to do Work (ahem ahem)
6. Neutral and Safe approach to relations
7. Sense and practicalness (hmm...)
8. That I keep in touch in some small way or the other

Eight people I think should do this tag

1. Viajero
2. Naren
3. Abhi
4. Rahman
5. VVS
6. Monster
7. Subrata
8. Wetfingers
Also Vinitha, Warrier, Vasu and a bunch of non-bloggers who I wish would start soon!

Power of blogging - Legends

2008-05-25T07:34:00.000+08:00

The power of blogging is really too much, and i keep on hearing more and more blogger success stories..

Meenaxi Madhavan, who blogs at The Compulsive Confessor, seems to have a pretty popular blog going. She was recently invited to some talk show to talk on blogging apparently. Now, it seems she has been invited to author a book. The publisher apparently invited her after reading her blog!

Crystal Blur, who writes excellent spoof-fantasy at www.aashraya.blogspot.com, is another excellent blogger. She has a laaaarge fan following,. Do read the Mahabharata Series and the Rishyashringa series by her, they're sure to have you rolling on the floor laughing your asses out. One of her comments is from a film producer, who claims to have liked the blog and invites her to write a script for a animation movie he's taking. Talk about making money for something you like!

Kiruba Shankar's stories on the power of blogging are awesome. He talked at FOSSMeet '07 about how he blogged about Trisha's bathing video, and how he was finally contacted and then intimidated by Perk, the Chocolate company brand, because his blog was threatening Trisha's image. Trisha was apparently Perk's brand ambassador! And when people googled Trisha Bathing Video, the first link they hit was Kiruba's Post on Trisha!! No wonder people go for paid blog sites.

Another story from Kiruba is how a blog by another blogger brought about a fall in the sales graph of Club Mahindra's Kodaikanal tour trip package sales. Atul Chitnis was telling us how a blog entry by him, and subsequent follow ups from other readers, led to an improvement in Yahoo's yahoogroups, which was showing a number of technical problems at the time.

How much true these are I cannot say, but nevertheless, the stories floating around are a real encouragement to keep typing are'nt they?

Those were the best days of my life...

2008-05-13T04:31:00.008+08:00

The link on top to this blog, says college-memories. Thats what this blog was meant to be. And it hurts me to say this might be the last blog on college memories that I'm putting up.

So here it is, the last few days of my life at NITC, probably the last memories I'll have of the place. And this is the end to the college-senti Trilogy of posts i guess. I shall try to avoid emotions in this post as much as possible, simply because if i started doing that, this post would never end.

Curse of the Project Presentation :

The worst part about the last days, more than the fact that my friends were leaving, was that I couldnt even wish them farewell cos I was caught up in my project presentation. It got over on 30th, and I'm really sorry about this bad technical standard shown in such a class institute, but not a soul came to investigate our project to see whether it was working or not. I was secretly happy that they dint see what we dint do. My project mates were pissed, they dint even appreciate what we did. That was a lot. Our project was 'Solar Powered Electric Vehicle'.

The Closest go First :

My roommate for 4 years, K.V.Varun called me up at the end and said he had already left for his hometown. At first, I felt no emotion, and said the usual 'take care, see you in Chennai ' etc stuff. My other roomie, Subrat was about to leave too.

The First Tears:

It was 10 min later in the MC, that it struck me that the closest 2 guys in my life were about to leave me. Forever. It struck me hard like a pile of books. I put down the Cold Coffee and started crying. I couldnt control it, so i ran to my room and wept for another half an hour.

The Nanyang treat :

Then 8 of us tricals went to the Sea queen as My and Narens treat for getting into Nanyang University. The food was good, the cocktails were awesome. The beach was really beautiful and so was the star filled nightsky. We sang antakshari all the way till there and back too.Came back and listened to senti music and rock, and burnt newspapers just for the sake of it. For fun. We made 'E's out of fire (See pic on the right) to represent EEE, our branch. Our friends. Our whole life at NITC

Formalities headache :

May 1 was a day full of formalities and headaches, like getting the no dues and trying to clear the red tape at the AB. All of us started early morning, and by evening we were all exhausted. All done and clear.

One down:

In the night, Shambu was about to leave. We had dinner with him in Kattangal and a treat from Rituraj for IIM-B admission. Around 30 NITCians left that night in a bus, including Shambu.

In the night, we all got together and played cards. 9 of us. We listened to 'Confusion theerkaname..' a mallu song in memory of Shambu (mallus- got the pun in the song wrt Shambu?) Then I went back as I had to pack up to go home next day.

D-Day

It came. 3 of us were leaving today. I had finished packing up. G-man, me and Naren. We had booked Sumos. It reached around noon. I loaded the luggage, then got in after all the goodbyes waved and farewell hugs given to all the rest, including Warrier, VVS, Vasu and Britto. We went to LH to collect Laxmi.

The girls were crying there. So I couldnt hold back. It started. My crying spree.

And as I left my college, the last scene I saw, that of the road (called Rajpath by us) beyond the gate, with fallen leaves and the royal MB at the other end, was one that would be embedded into my mind for eternity. No exaggerations.

We had a final lunch together in Mezban - me, Laxmi, Naren and Nithin. Then Laxmi broke into crying again. I followed. And finally Naren broke up too.

The Kochiites, me and Laxmi got into the Sumo. I sent my Nanyang application hardcopy by courier, and then me and Laxmi had some arbit conversations. Then we both fell silent, both left to our thoughts, senti music playing in the background catalysing our emotions.

Cry Cry Crying all the way...

The rest of the trip was crying. Pure unadulterated sincere crying. I think that day I have beaten all the girls at their forte. None of the male ego or 'must-be-strong' attitude worked. As aptly put by Naren in his blog. How many gallons of salt water I dont know. But it took me all the way till Ernakulam from Calicut to finish up my crying.

And I dont think that even now when I think of those days, I cant hold back my tears... Like Naren said, I wonder if Ive reached home now or left it.

Blog Publicity

2008-05-13T03:39:00.005+08:00

So here it is.. I will pen (keyboard) down whatever turned up at Kiruba's talk on Blog Publicity at FOSSMeet '08 held in NITC..

We were made into groups, and it was a sort of group activity to come up with ideas.. here are some that turned up..

1. Blog regularly. This point's importance can never be stressed enough. It was told to us by Kiran Jace too at last years FOSSMeet. People will only visit your blog if they know theyll have something new to read.

2. Make maximum use of blog-linking through another's blog. This is particularly useful in finding readers that you havent met in any other way or have no contact with.

3. Write on really controversial topics, you just might end up a hit in a search.

4. Similar to the above, upload videos, pics or audio that u know people are searching for.

5. Add your blog link as your signature when you mail or sms so that people know. Many of my friends have now started off this one.

6. Make your own domain name, say, www.harivishnu.com. Kiruba has been stressing this point over and over again from last year's FOSS also, though i dont completely agree with him. Getting a personal domain is pretty cheap, though, as Vatsil explored.

7. Specify interests, books, location etc in Blogger.. people who use blogger search to find people from similar interests etc will find you.

8. Publicise! Publicise! Publicise! Use word of mouth, mailing or any other brute force method if you're so desperate for readership! :-)

9. Comment on other blogs. Especially on blogs of popular bloggers >-))) (evil grin creeps onto face)

10. You can upload or comment stuff on other sites(not necessarily blogs) and link them to your blog.

There were more, I just dont remember them all. Anybody want to add some suggestions?.. I can edit this post to include more suggestions..

Kiruba's talk was also about the power of blogging. How blogging changed the fate of a whole company.. or a product.. or that of the actress Trisha.. (lol), and how he and his company would use online web publicity tools like blogging to help companies. A really interesting talk that was I must say. Audio will be uploaded on FOSSMeet site soon, hopefully.

Coming up next : Blog on Blog Publicity!

2008-05-09T03:33:00.003+08:00

Kiruba Shankar, the famous blogger, had recently come to our NITC campus as part of FOSSMeet '08, to talk on the power of blogging and blog publicity.. The talk was really awesome, it was more of a group activity like, where everyone got to give their ideas.. and some of the points and ideas on blog publicity set me thinking..

I'll post the conclusions from his talk soon..

Before that, Please Vote on the poll on the right sidebar, on

"How did u come by my blog?".. (I think I already know what gets the majority :-) )

PS : Was surprised to find a poll among the other things available here.. Blogger Rocks!

Cutting the Red Tape

2008-05-07T05:25:00.004+08:00

This is the curse of the NITC Administrative Block, otherwise called lovingly: AB, by us. When we were admitted to NIT, this was the building that inspired us the most by its beauty. Today this is the only one that shames us in NITC by its virtually Govt. Institution style functioning.

Story start : We poor final years at NITC have to finish some formalities called 'clearing the no dues', for which we have to go through the cursed system that prevails at the place mentioned above. It is like a kick-in-the-ass for the final years who are leaving the college, to force them out of college in case they ever had some love towards the college and wanted to stay.
At the head of it all is the worst processing bottleneck in NITC history, the deputy registrar, the laziest guy in such a high position I've seen. The finance section is equally bad.

I and Narendar went to the Academic section (hereforth called AS) to get our transcripts, which we would have to send to Singapore for our application. So here starts ther story :

Lady in the AS : You have to go to the DR, he has to make a decision
We go to DR
DR : You have to come with an application letter, a bill for 520 rs paid in Finance, and ur grade cards

We make a letter then go to finance

Finance : Its 3 :35 now, we are closed for the day (closing time is 3:30)

None of our 'pleases' and 'ayyo chechy's work. Next day, me and naren go to finance early, pay the bill, go to AS

AS : Give the letter and bill to DR, the grade cards here

We go to DR

DR : Give everything to AS

We go to AS

AS : You need to get these cards attested, go to your department and get them attested, or from some faculty here.

We go to the Registrar who is from our department and hence can actually attest for us

Registrar : Im too busy: Go to department.

We go to deparment, get it attested by HOD, run back. AS tells us the transripts will be ready in a day. We went the next day, and the next and they still werent. We had to push them all the way to get it done. Finally we did get it 2 days later.

Similar thing happened for our grade cards. You should understand how important these green pieces of paper called 'grade cards' are. 65 guys in our class cant go to their jobs without their grade cards. We've been bugging AS for 1.5 years now asking for the grade cards. And this was the last day for many of them. So we went there, asking them the status.

Came to know they were printed, but not verified. We pushed the AS to verify.

AS pushed the matter to DR.

We bugged DR sooo much that he pushed it back to AS, as an order.

Time : 5 pm, AB about to close.

Helpful lady in AS starts verifying. 5 of us (me, naren, donna, joseph, laxmi) are determined to break the red tape of 1 year no matter wat, so we also sit and verify. In the middle some cards have a problem which can only be corrected in Computer Centre, so Naren runs off to do it.

After verification, we cross check it with the details in AS's records. Some cards are yet to return ,and DR is about to leave. Luckily we made it just in time for Dr to sign on them.

Time : 5:50 pm, record timing for AB.

This way, we did in 45 minutes what they were waiting for 1.5 years to do. And thus secured the future of around 65 guys. We 5 were reall satisfied, and also our minds pretty much made up on lodging a complaint to someone about the system at the AB.

The only problem is, whoever we can complain to would also be part of the AB system himself :-)..

Admitted to Nanyang University!!

2008-04-28T20:51:00.003+08:00

The Good news just came in right now!! I have a confirmation for a research scholarship (5 yr Ph D.) in Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.. It's supposed to be rated among the top 5 in Asia.. Woooohooo..

I'll be doing a project in DSP under a Prof. Benjamin Premkumar.. Let's hope this turns out to be great !.. I'm planning to come back to India ofcourse.. am that sort of a home sick + patriotic guy anyways..

And great thanks to all my well wishers!..

My Biggest Achievement in College

2008-04-25T07:00:00.000+08:00

Here it is ....A Bunkometer, a term common among engineering students. The name is self-explanatory.

Mind you, I'm one of the decent ones out here.

The OOXML Controversy for Dummies

2008-04-20T17:40:00.006+08:00

For Dummies to the Open source world like me, heres the issue in a nutshell..

Microsoft, the bully of the software world, brought out Microsoft Office in 95 along with the .doc format for documents, .ppt, .xls, etc. The format details and rules are known only to Microsoft and its Office developers, and no one else, as Microsoft is neither free nor open source.

If you go to the Microsoft site itself, you will see that Office is priced from $300 to $ 600 ! For a f@#$ing piece of software! I'm not devaluing Office, but its an atrocious price for a just a piece of code. So owing to its high cost (no ones talking about pirated ofcourse :-) ), the free software world developed several Open Document standards (.odf, odp etc) and softwares to use them, including Star Office, Open Office etc.

The free versions of Office, like Open Office, are

1. Totally Free
2. Open source, meaning you can go through the code of Open Office softwares, see the rules yourself, modify it if you want
3. Equal to or better than Microsoft Office from my own experience.

The odf got the ISO standard in 2006 or so, ensuring it was an accepted standard and would now gain more popularity. This ofcourse, dint stand well with Microsoft, whose very existence was being threatened by the FOSS world on all fronts. So Microsoft decides to bring out its trump card for the same game- money and influence.

Forward to the end of 2007, Microsoft gets an ISO standard for its OOXML document format. Majority of the countries voted for the OOXML standard. Surprised ?

Rewind back a few months, to where the game was played :-

1. In India, Microsoft tries to influence the NGOs to put pressure on the government to accept the standard. The alleged letter sent to NGOs is available.

2. In Sweden, the panel responsible for voting on the issue, which was supposedly against OOXML convened a meeting to vote on the issue, but this was adjourned. Then, the panel was extended from 9 members to 34 members based on payment within a space of 12 days. The bought out panel reconvened, and this time the additional 25 members voted in favour of OOML.

3. Similar game were played all over the Nordic states and in Europe in general.

The story in India is funny :-

1. All the IITs, IIMs, IISc who represent the academia in the voting panel, voted against OOXML.

2. Most of the software giants in India like IBM, Oracle, etc were against OOXML and voted against them.

3. Only Infosys, Wipro and TCS abstained in the voting.

The last 3 are now facing fire from the open source community for their decision. Read this Hindu newspaper report for details.

More about the effect of this event on us, situation in India, flaws in the OOXML standard in my next post on the topic..

The Free Vs Proprietary Debate

2008-04-17T17:30:00.001+08:00

World War 3 is happening. Only, this time its soft-'war'e !

I have always wondered why people use stupid proprietary software when there are better substitutes available to it. (I for one, am one of those idiots, i still use windows, but that will change soon ;-)). Recently i took a list of proprietary software that have better free substitutes :-

1. Mozilla Firefox RULES over Internet Explorer.
2. Open Office is equivalent to Microsoft Office, and with the recent OOXML standards controversy (Read this Hindu article for info on this debate), Open Office is definitely the better choice.
3. Audacity (Music composing) has no comparison in the proprietary world as far as i know.
4. Linux Over Windows. Open to debate.

Then why oh why do these proprietary ones even exist? I mean, if you have this good chocolate free of cost, and a bad chocolate that you have to pay for, do you go for the good or bad one?

In other areas, the Free world is yet to catch up
- Blender is still far away from 3Dsmax or Maya
- Inkscape + GIMP is yet to beat Photoshop
- Octave and Maxima (Technical computing) require more consolidation to reach upto MATLAB,
and I dont know if theres any Free Media players that are really really good. Maybe cos I'm a noob to FOSS.

One thing is that people are so complacent using pirated copies of their software that they dont find any reason to change. Is 'better software' a reason to change? (In our college, though, Firefox has fully replaced Explorer)

The day will come when there wont be any more IExplorers and Microsoft Offices or MATLABs. This ofcourse, requires a large amount of contribution from all sorts of people, especially the software consumers who know exactly what is lacking in the software they use. That is the beauty of how the Free world works. It's a pity that the movement has yet not gathered the momentum it needs. Still, Lets hope the day of freedom is not far off.

Anybody want to help me out in contributing to Maxima ? :-)

Fare - (not so) - Well

2008-04-15T06:00:00.004+08:00

Last week was a string of farewells for us seniors at NITC. There were 3 consecutive ones for me :
1. The Director gave all the 4th years a farewell in NLC. I went up on stage representing my branch, and gave a sentimental and emotional speech.
2. The Electrical juniors gave us 4th year Electricals a farewell in NLC. Ditto Ditto second part.

3. The IEEE Juniors from my branch who I have worked with and conducted soo many events like FOSSMeet with for long, gave us seniors a farewell. For the third time i went up and gave a senti speech.

I couldnt help being sentimental. It's how a farewell speech is supposed to be. I did crack jokes, mind you. But in the end, a farewell is a sad event. I cant crack too many jokes at an event i know will be my last at college.

Promises of 'keeping in touch' are always made. But you know what, its hard. Its hard to keep in touch. The mails and sms's and scraps and calls keep on decreasing slowly. You find it hard to relate to your friend anymore. Nothing more in common. No more bitching about teachers or asking about classes or studying together to do. Your conversation once in a while will probably be like :

Passout 1 : Hi.. how do you do.. Long time no see..

Passout 2 : Yea, hi.. long time no see either.. i was busy here..

Passout 1 : What do you do now?

Passout 2: I'm working.. Its going fine.. How about you..

Blah blah blah.. once in a while you try to find something common and ask the guy about old friends, teachers, when he visited the college last etc. But its futile. Physical distance brings mental distance. And you need a great deal of bonding to overcome that fact.
I still dont know whether to hate or like farewells. Farewells are one of the greatest and worst things in life. They give you memories. So that you can laugh your last day out. And cry the rest of your life remembering the last day.

Wish u a Happy Vishu !

2008-04-14T02:08:00.004+08:00

Vishu(/Bihu/Ugadi).. The Beginning of a new Indian year!!

In Kerala, we start off the day with a beautiful 'Vishu Kani'- the beautiful opening first view on the Vishu day to signify a nice beginning. Unfortunately, we poor souls here at college have to make do with software 'kani's for our Vishu. Heres one for you below..
The funniest joke on Vishu's is always the 'Wish u' - 'Vishu' one. Ofcourse, there was this friend of mine who dint get the occassion and came and wished me 'Happy Vishnu' (thinking it had something to do with my full name Hari Vishnu). Another tradition is the 'Kaineetam'.. whereby the seniors and elders are supposed to give pocket money to the younger ones. Yum yum, a day for lots of money and food!

Crackers are waiting in store.. waiting to blast them away!..

Happy new year to all of u out there!

How to Pass out of college?

2008-04-12T05:39:00.003+08:00

I have found out what will be the worst day of my life. Its going to be when i pass out of college.

It is soo bloody impossible to have come together with a bunch of 300 people for 4 years, share everything from rooms to clothes to food to your closest secrets with them, open out to them like you've never done with your family even maybe, and then just walk out on them one fine day saying 'Good Bye, I'll keep in touch'

I faced this situation once when i was returning from Sharjah. I'd spent 16 years there (being born there), and i decided never to think about the reality until when i really had to leave UAE. But that last day i will never forget, for I was soo pathetically bathed in tears that day i was to return back to India that I thought I'd never return to mental stability again.

To admit shamelessly,many of my college-mates know me better than my own mother and father even know me. So much that i sometimes feel weird when i'm at home. It's just not normal there sometimes- not without the hostel noise and all the bad words and bottles and smelly toilets and assignment deadlines. Some of my buddies never even go home saying 'It's Boring at home, college is better'..

I really dont know how to face this situation this time. I'm probably going to cry it out. Shamelessly in front of my 300 batchmates (who will probably be in the same state), hundreds of juniors who I've got to know through 4 years, all the faculty and all the people who've made my life at College the best i'll probably have in life.

On second hand, maybe it's not so shameless to cry at all. Not at all. Not for such great memories. But I'll always remember this orkut profile comment of my friend's that is really popular among us now :

"Dont Cry cos it's over, Smile cos it happened..."

How I wish..

EEE Class of 2004-08 (sniff)

2008-04-04T00:27:00.006+08:00

This is a pic of my Electrical Class of 2004-2008.. Pretty united bunch of 70 we were..
Its pics like these that bring back the memories later on in life

Female Factor

2008-04-03T20:25:00.009+08:00

An attempt to define a relationship...

Today, 50 of us S8 Electrical students, for the 3rd time in our engineering life went for a class trip to Kaapad beach. The trip was beautiful, the sea was really rough but great. There were around 40 guys and 10 girls. Manu almost drowned and was saved by a combined effort from lots of people, and vowed never to touch water in his life again !

Then we went to The Hyson Heritage, where we had a fine dinner, and then a Hot-seat to kill the time. For those who dont know, hot-seat is where you sit on a chair on the stage with a mike, and the audience gets to shoot any question at you, anything at all, personal or sensitive. And you're 'expected' to answer them (although finally its up to you ofcourse :-) ). In general most of the people hot-seated today, as i expected, were people with, shall we say, 'relationships'. My hot seat was not in the least bit comfortable, with some of my closest secret-keepers asking the juiciest ones. But it really made me wonder.. and define well.. something about my attitude to relationships.

Eternal question : "Why do guys go behind girls?" (and vice versa). Is it just the hormones? Is it just some pleasure they seek? Bodily? Well there may be some like that, but believe me, that's not what every guy out there is thinking about. If i wanted just that, I might as well go for other options. No, theres something else about a girl that gets to a guy.

I hit on a girl in my second year. Valentine's Day Eve. She did'nt agree [:-)] cos she gave reasons, perfectly good reasons which even I appreciated later on. But the more I went on, the more I felt a sort of void. Female Company. There were friends in life, good ones, and stuff to do, and enjoyment, and studies[:-)] and family and everything in necessary amount, but still it was there. Like theres this Yang part of me in full flow, but I still needed this Yin part to complete my life (Man, Taoist philosophy rocks).

Yes, theres something about female company thats satisfying to a guy. I dont know what, I may not be able to point at it- it could be their plain simplicity, or playfulness, or stupidity or how they act it(look, I'm not trying to be male chauvinist ok), or just their way of flirting around all the while knowing you enjoy it. It's different from being with a guy. Being with a guy is cool sometimes. But being with a girl is different.And it's definitely the other half of the Yang part that guys are. No matter how many friends I had who were guys,this part still remained to be filled.And no amount of work (I sometimes enjoy work) or guy friends or movies or timepasses can take that necessity away.

I think this is what makes the guy go behind the girl.I have seen people who have been in several relationships,and who have been fully dedicated and sincere in all of them, and when he loses his girl that look on a guys face is like a half-empty juice bottle. We see it all around us. Everywhere. Its just human, and theres nothing cool in admitting you dont want to have a girl [I tried the cool-bachelor-doesnt-like-girl attitude, dint work :-) ].

I wonder if this is how girls think too. Something amiss in their lives? Need a guy to fill up?

Anways,I never tried again. I was not brave enough to take another no.I decided to brave it as a single,desperate-for-a-girlfriend bachelor until other things were done.Maybe I'll try again, but after reading the manual once more :-).

'Anime'ted!

2008-03-20T19:36:00.002+08:00

(Readers,pls excuse my increasing use of PJs as blog titles..cant help it!)

Engineering is about four things. Timepass. Timepass. Timepass. And also timepass. And watching Anime Series is the latest in a 'series'(no pun) of timepass ventures hitting engineering college students.Japanese anime top the list, with an unbelievable fan following.

What makes Japanese anime so watchable?

1. Story line : Man those guys know how to tell one
2. Music : Those mood-based music tracks are simply awesome and keep any addict begging for more
3. Plot : Keeps you glued on forever, like, until you finish every single episode in the series
4. Characterisation : Makes you talk about those characters in class hours and in hostel as if they were hot news like Saddam or Osama.
5. Ideas : Animation opens up infinite possibilities, and my oh my these guys use every single one of those to make the whole package colourful and addictive.
6. Dramatisation : Goes overboard sometimes, but all the same seeable.

For me, Bleach tops the list of anime. Naruto comes an addictive second. Avatar(not Japanese) is making waves all over the world,and others like Full Metal Alchemist,Death Note and Kenichi are getting equally good responses.

Heres a list of Anime series I watch(with comments):

1. Avatar : My first one. Aang, the last airbender, the avatar who is the only one who can master the four elements water, earth fire and air, is still a child, who must wake up to his responsibilities to save the world from domination by the Fire Nation.His friends, who have their own abilities in bending of the elements and are also young themselves,help him in revealing his destiny and finding his path.

Story : Really Really Awesome.
Speed : Fast most of the time. Some episodes are dragging
Music : Pretty nice
Plot : Good. The earlier episodes would keep you die-hard addicted.Now the episodes are isolated from the main storyline.

2. Naruto : Apparently has one of the largest fan followings in the world,even US and Europe.The old Naruto(meaning young naruto) with its simple style was better, and shows how Naruto,a young Ninja student who was isolated from society due to the nature of his childhood, grows into a powerful Ninja through his determination and with help of his friends, Ninja Master Kakashi and teammates Sakura and Sasuke. The story has several twists and turns and takes you through a completely new world of Japanese Ninjutsu lore. Naruto Shippuden is about an adolescent Naruto,now trained in his powers,trying to defeat his arch-enemies and find his one true friend and foe, Sasuke.

Story : Really awesome
Speed : Old Naruto was fast most of the time and slows down only here and there
Shippuden started off fast but is now reeeeeallly dragging,and its really costing it viewership I can say.
Music : Old Naruto- awesome. Shippuden- decent.
Plot : Really good and keeps you addicted. But the drama is overplayed and sometimes gets on your nerves

3.Bleach : My favorite. Also has a large fan-following.It is about Kurosaki Ichigo,a 'normal' jap teen with, shall we say, extraordinarily large spiritual abilities. His life changes when he meets Death God Kuchiki Rukia,when he is forced to take on Death God responsibilities to (As usual) save the world.

The plot is unbelievably thick, and the story so well crafted, each episode is so much more satisfying than what Naruto or even Avatar has to offer.

Story : BEEEEAAAAUUUUTTTTY
Speed : Very fast very moving.Big time addicts, this is gonna be your fav.
Music : Decently good
Plot : Too good,unbelievable fast and thick.Each episode ensuring the next is seen.

Fluked Out!!

2008-03-16T01:30:00.003+08:00

My GATE Score Came out today, and it seems I totally fluked out!! As I had mentioned in my earlier post (Gateway to Success) I'd attended the exam with an only preparation of Badminton practice till 12 am and Warcraft Gaming till 3 am, but apparently luck doesnt care about odds..

Score is some 576... that gives me an AIR of 191, or 98.75 percentile.. atleast my doors to higher education are now open.. Might try a hand at jumping into the prestigious IISc, or perhaps an IIT MTech ?

Kochi Rising

2008-03-11T14:02:00.005+08:00

Welcome to Cochin. Queen of the Arabian Sea. One of the fastest developing cities in Asia. Apparently in the last few years, there has been a real boom of development in Kochi, and it is still continuing now, promising to bring Kochi on par with with any other metro in India.

Where it started?

Well I'm not too sure but some factors include the coming up of the Cochin International Airport in Nedumbassery around 8 years ago, which proved to be a monster killing for development activities in the area. The Vallarpadam container terminal was a sure push to trade. Cochin Port as such is a really busy place and trade was already booming here, maybe the strategic location was influential too. Infopark in Kakkanad was another one of the earlier victories for Kochi.

On the tourism side, GCDA has gradually taken up steps to meet the developing Metro cultural demands of Cochin. The Marine Drive is a sureshot timepass destination for visitors to the place, and GCDA has done quite some work on beautification of this very scenic area. Bay Pride Mall, Penta Menaka and the other shopping complexes in the area greatly complement the tourism scene as small-scale shopping destinations. Jewellery and fashion industry is competing in making outlets, with 2 really large outlets by Alukkas and Jayalakshmi coming up in the Marine drive- MG Road area.

Now some of the biggest development activities in Cochin are sure to convert it's face competely. The Lulu Shopping world in Kalamassery to come up in about 1-2 years covers several acres and has 8 Billion IN Rupees pouring into it and covers over 16 acres of land! It even includes an amusement park and a 5 star hotel! Housing projects and apartments all over Cochin are in fierce competition, with the Choice Paradise 40 storey apartment coming up in Thripunithura area promising to be the largest in South India when finished. Others include Aquacity in Aluva,Grand Mall, MetroOneMall, Kayaloram, Mir Emerald Towers, Oceanus Maple, Trinity Crown, Trinity Crest, Orchid meadows,Star Lagoon,Technopolis,Swapnil Regency and lots more(all thanks to Monster for the info and the pics).

Why we are not prepared..

1. Do we have the road infrastructure for this? Frankly speaking i think not.. even on a peaceful Sunday night at 11 pm the roads from Ekm South to Aluva may be held in traffic block for hours.The highway is full of bottlenecks and i dont know how Kochi roads can meet the demand of metro traffic. The Private Bus operators, ofcourse, still drive like they own the road, and this really creates enough traffic problems on the road.

2. Our Waste Disposal SUCKS!!!! The old joke goes, and still continues, that if u can smell the stink you have definitely reached Kochi. Demands for a proper disposal system have fallen on deaf ears. Not to forget the bad gutter system, that is definite to overflow in proper rainy conditions.

3. Are we Cochinites development minded enough? I say the culture is yet to adapt itself to embrace a metro lifestyle.

4. We have no night life at all. Life comes to standstill after 10 pm or so. Well, more or less :-).

5.Lots more tourist destinations,amusement parks,scenic locations and walkthroughs needed for people to make their Kochi trip worthwhile. After all, dude, how many times can u go to Veegaland?

Needless to say, its time for us Kochiites to come together and bring the Metro to Cochin.

What 4 years of engineering did to us...

2008-02-20T04:33:00.003+08:00

Four years of life in an engineering college with less than a 10% sex ratio, and with virtually no female population to dedicate roses to, what do poor souls like us do on Valentines day?

Clearly, no other option..

GATE-Way to Success

2008-02-11T06:29:00.000+08:00

Feb 10th : Another normal day in engineering student life. The day for my GATE exam, one of those life-turning, career-deciding all-important situations in life. GATE (I can only guess it means graduate ability test examination or something better) is literally the gateway to higher studies (Masters) in India's premier colleges, like IISc or IITs.

So what does a core branch-loving electrical engineer student like myself, whose ambition in engineering life is to make use of his earned engineering skills to develop his country's electrical power sector do? Excuse me, but did anyone say "Prepare for GATE..." ? Take a look at that small book on the right, and you will know why not.

So I woke up on the 10th morning, deciding whether or not to write. It would be an adventure, the bolder part of me said. It'll be complete murder, the scaredy cat part insisted. Finally the part that won was fear of momma's scoldings..: "What are you doing when youre' supposed to be writing a career changing exam..Why did u not prepare.. 900 Rupees gone waste.. What has college done to you.. blah blah blah..". So, washed n dressed up, I got into our jeep with as much resentment as my fellow GATE-attempters Naren and AK. I recalled the previous night, when I had, inspite of my staunch decision to do nothing but nerd off for the exam, played Badminton till my bones started creaking at 11 pm. Then Computer Games (Dota, specifically) till around 3 am. Then went around asking anyone who was awake to wish me luck, cos that was the only thing I would have for the exam.

And then this strange confidence crept into my mind.. the confidence of somebody who has nothing to lose..4-1 negative marking scheme, 85 qs in 3 hours, i decided upon all gods that i was going to leave GATE to luck and attempt every single question on a guess-atleast basis.
The center was Guruvayurappan college- a very beautiful place, really. I have put some of the pics here. It was worth coming here for a tour trip if not an exam. The scenery would provide enough timepass during the exam. Since we had nothing to do but burn an hour, we had breakfast in the canteen, then proceeded to our halls.

Three hours later : Satisfaction pours out all over me. The GATE paper looked like it was meant to be done unprepared. Any minute of preparation over it would have been a loss. I had attempted all except 2 questions in the paper, needless to say consisting of n number of guesses (n generally tends to infinity for some unexplained rule in engineering), ie 83/85 qs. The paper tested only concepts, which luckily the 'efficient' Electrical Dept had succeeded in drilling into us.

Hence that satisfaction of a guy who has gained something for nothing.
Mathematically put,
Efficiency = output/input = k/0 = infinity.

The rest of the day was celebration. going around the scenic place taking photos, finding new shortuts to get to the road and getting lost, taking photos with the largest on-campus statue in India (in Guruvayurappan college)- its that poor girl you see on the right reading a book (hopefully not Gate)in candlelight. We reached back in time to catch the match (I was getting uncontrollably worried about it during the exam)- and as if in reply to our mood, India made wonders beating Australia by 5 wickets.

Lets hope luck still believes in second chances. Or else who cares, it was just another enjoyable day of college life...

What people do in Seminar Class..

2008-01-28T16:02:00.001+08:00

My deepest apologies to those poor souls whose photos i have used here without permission...I am sure to get a GPL for this one!...

And the prize goes to....

The Devasura Clan Wars

2008-01-23T13:28:00.002+08:00

Warning : Publicity content included

A long time ago in the ages of the Pentium 1s and 2s, the Deva and the Asura clans would fight their Counterstrike clan wars in order to decide the fate of the world. The Devas always had the upper hand, what with Indra and his speciality Vajrayudha-47 gun and Vishnu once in a while picking off headshots with his Sudarshana Scout Rifle. So things went fine for a while, and the gaming world was happy.

It was during this time that in the month of Tula (July) there was a Devasura clan war in Swarga. The Devas were all pumped up and rearing to use their secret Agni grenade tactics. But as soon as the first match started off, BAM BAM BAM, all headshots, and the 3 million Devas went dead on the floor. The Asuras had scored their first CS match victory in yugas!

The Devas were surprised. The second match started soon, and this time they decided to Flash Bang the enemy with Surya (The sun), but no longer had a second passed, than BANG BANG and 'Terrorists Win..', the Devas had lost again.

Needless to say, The Devas lost the Swarga clan war none to 20.

The Devas, as usual, ran to their mentor and star gamer Vishnu for his Sudarshan Scout Rifle. However Vishnu, who was enjoying a quiet moment with his consort on his Snake-bed, was in no mood for a game:

Devas: "Oh Vishnu, greatest of gamers, the Asuras have defeated us at the clan war at Swarga.. they were too fast for us to see.. none of our tactics went through, and we could'nt score even one kill..Even Shiva on his Bull-pup Nandi could do nothing..Please salvage our pride and use your weapon to help us.."

Vishnu: "Learn to fight for yourselves, you @#%^s. Why the Naraka (hell) do you think you lost the war?"

The Devas look puzzled

Vishnu: "The Asuras use pitiable 486 processors, yet they beat your latest P4 dual cores. They use memory sticks for memory while you people have all the RAM you want. Yet you lost. Why?

You people, in your greed for winning, were ready to use the pitiable OS provided to you by Kubera (God of wealth): Lindows. And blinded by your hunger for power you bought it time and time again, not caring for how slow it was or how many bugs it had. You stuck to your old ways of running to me for debugging or pressing Ctrl-Alt-Delete. No more shall this happen. Its time you discovered a new way, a new OS."

Devas: "But oh Lord Vishnu what OS can be greater than Kuberasoft Lindows? And how do we get it? Even our software division manager Brihaspati has no clue.."

Vishnu: "There is one, created by the greatest software engineer of all: Linux. Learn it, install it, and you will see your counterstrike perform a million times faster than before. Then it will be killing spree for the counter terrorists (aka Devas).. "

Devas: "Linux? Duh.. We have no clue..What the hell (ahem.. excuse me).. what in the heavens is that ? How do we study about this oh lord.."

Vishnu: "Well theres an easy way, and a hard way. Hard way: Go to the mountain of Mandara, carry it and put it in the ocean of Paalazhi, Bring the snake Vasuki from the snake world, coil him around the mountain, churn the mountain and get your new Linux tutorial guide..."

(The Devas are puzzled and understandably baffled)

Devas: "Er.. and the easy way..?"

Vishnu: "Yes, the easy way.. I was coming to that. In Makar (March), there will be an event called FOSSMeet '08.. It'll be in the south of Bhaarat in a place called NIT. Go there, and you shall receive all the tutorials you need about Linux and Open source. Then only will you be freed of your sins. Its all about freedom and sharing, after all. And yes, there are good earthly girls to be seen too..."

Its that time of the year again.. See you all at FOSSMeet 2008!.. Please visit the link http://www.fossmeet.in/nitc
To know more about FOSS, see my previous blog on FOSS..

The Art Of PJs

2008-01-16T12:40:00.000+08:00

Okay.. I'm back into blogging after a looooooooong time, and since i'm desperate to write anything at all.. here goes.. and theres a disclaimer..

Disclaimer : This post is not meant to entertain.. no PJ is meant to entertain.. it is meant to irritate people..Hence, Read at your own risk..

PJ = Poor Joke : also called Chali in Malayalam lingo : A remark/sentence misleadingly called a joke that has such low humour content, practically no standard, and no point at all, so that it tends to irritate more people rather than it entertains.

By definition, PJs can be of any type, but the most common type of PJ is done using duplicate meanings in language. I find English language most suitable- its such a shitty language that every word has atleast 2 unrelated meanings to them. Hence an easy algorithm for a standard chali maker goes as follows :

1. The Chali-Maker (henceforth, called CM) hears a sentence made in any language. eg : "The person reading this has absolutely no shit to do"
2. He scans his brain for any other alternate meanings to every word in the sentence. eg : Shit : has a real meaning that i'd rather not elaborate.
3. Find this word's opposite or any other related word, and make a sentence using this(any arbit shit (no pun) will do). eg : CM : "I bet you he has some peeing to do, though"

Rolling on the floor laughing, arent we...

I know how you must feel now.. that was a standard (i mean, no standard) no-class PJ, the type that you'd want to kill people for. But believe me, PJing is a mental exercise in itself : a lot of lateral thinking involved. And for the CM, its such a satisfying feeling (btw if you have'nt figured out yet, i am one of 'them' u know)

Another phenomena can be observed when more than one CMs get together : PJ bouncing : a process by which a PJ attracts another PJ (bounces) and this process can continue almost infinitely. for eg :

Normal Person : "I have no idea what this blog is about.. "
CM1 : "But you must be having an AirTel on what its about.. "
CM2 : "You can have your Water tell you about that too.."
CM3 : "Water is public property, it cant be his.."
CM4 : "Why cant it be private or protected property"(If you know your basic C++, you may not have missed that one)
CM5 : "Protected property? Protected by whom."

(By now, the normal person must be really pissed off, and makes an attempt to stop this onslaught on human common sense)
Normal Person : "Can you people stop saying PJs please"
CM6 : "But we never said 'PJs please' "
CM7 : "Wait, you just said it now.."
CM6 : "I never said 'it' either.." etc etc etc

Seriously, you should realize how much thinking goes into making a chali.. that why its so satisfying to the Chali-maker, despite the fact that Chali making is bad for (the CM's) health. Realize that and the you will start appreciating all those PJ bombs dropping around you..you can hear their BANG BANG sounds don't you.. well well i better get going..

'Train'ing Time

2007-07-09T06:19:00.000+08:00

A train journey provides a whole engineering case study in itself. Starting from the mechanics of train boarding to finding yourself a seat, the train journey provides ample opportunity for the mind to set into application several of its engineering principles. For example, how many times have we tried to figure out that old problem of where the train will stop, given its initial velocity and braking speed?

Seat finding provides a whole new mathematical model study in itself.. starting from probability and statistics, I try every single method possible to ensure I am standing right next to the seat which will be empty in another moments time.. ofcourse, nothing provides better results than relying on plain old luck!.. or better still, worth taking the risk is the seat that is guaranteed to be always empty, called the 'footboard'. It comes with an additional non-ticket charge, also called a 'fine'.

Ofcourse, it is impossible to solve some of the harder problems, like why the food always turns up at the wrong time. The key is to realising that you should feel hungry at the right time, and sleep the rest of the journey. Like they say, 'A bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush', so eat when the opportunity comes.. The toilet is nearby for any emergency cases that may arise after all..

Then there are the indeterminate problems like "Is my body balanced enough to sleep, or will I end up sleeping on the guy next to me.."? What would really save money would be if one could figure out the exact position of the TTR on the train, which may be labelled as a standard mechanics problem of movement combined with a thrilling random human factor. Alternate techniques include Avoiding the ticket by learning to go to the toilet at the right time, or deciding to get off the train right. Or, better still, you could buy a ticket! But whatever be the case- be sure to keep your engineering mind open.. there are problems to solve out there!

New Seven Wonders?

2007-06-10T16:06:00.001+08:00

I could'nt believe my ears when i heard this one.. that they were conducting a poll to select the New Seven Wonders Of the World! And that the Taj Mahal was one of the contenders!

Apparently there seems to be lots of problems behind this one.. it is facing some criticism also globally.. the official New7Wonders declaration is to be held in Lisbon on July 7th 2007. Siting Wikipedia- a Bernard Weber launched the project in September 1999. By November 24, 2005, 177 monuments were up for consideration. The wonders had to be man-made, completed before 2000, and in an "acceptable" state of preservation. On January 1, 2006, the list was narrowed down to 20 Finalists.

But though the Taj Mahal is one of the top 20, the Indian government has done nothing at all to promote the voting of the Taj.. what this means to India in terms of status is unthinkable.. Not to speak of the tourism potential this brings along with it.. Yet we see nothing of this around.. its going to be unbelievable if it comes down to the 2nd most populous country of the world not being able to influence the decision of a global online poll..

(Unbelievably, the Pyramid at Giza was also included in the election list for the New seven wonders, but after protests from the Egyptian media and government it was removed from the list and made an 'Honourary new wonder' candidate)

There may be some of us who believe this declaration is unimportant.. but I truly believe this is a chance India cannot afford to miss.. if it comes down to a global poll, we Indians should do what we can to make sure the Taj is up there.. this was my first impulse when i got this mail forward which i would have deleted like any other.. But on second thoughts.. maybe its worth it..

If you truly think this chance is worth it, people, cast your vote on
http://www.new7wonders.com/index.php?id=351
(Just register yourself and get the 7 votes and you can then vote)

Or you can sms TAJ to 4567 to vote.. or From BSNL phone call to 1255545

Current results of vote till a few days ago
1.The Acropolis———–> Greece
2.Mayan ruinsat chichen Itza———->Mexico
3.The colloseum———>France
4.Eiffel tower———>France
5.The Great Wall———>China
6.Machu Pichchu——–>Peru
7.Petra——->Jordan
8.Statue of Easter Island——–>Chile
9.State Of christ Redeemer——–>Brazil
10.Taj mahal——–>India

Chennai Diaries- the Detroit of South Asia

2007-06-06T03:11:00.000+08:00

Chennai- Indias 4th largest metro.. one of India's major technological hubs, culturally rich, high in population and even higher on the temperature scale..I'm here right now for a short-term course.. And Chennai is truly turning out to be a real treat..

When I got down at Chennai Central, what struck me most was definitely the heat.. Since I come from the other side of the ghats (Kerala) where its constantly raining, coming here, where its dry with practically no rain was discomforting..

We made our way to the IIT Madras.. one of India's most prestigious and leading academic institutions.. IIT Madras is in itself a treat to see, covered in all greenery everywhere, and who can forget scenes of deer running around occasionally, or even monkeys, which are the main species here apart from dogs and humans. Even got a snapshot of some. They say IIT is the coolest place in Chennai owing to its greenery, on an average 2 degrees lower on the mercury than the city parts!

IITM has many other impressive features also- its Central library, Cricket ground, swimming pool, quarters etc being just some of them. Our food was arranged at Himalaya mess- and man do hey cater some pretty good food. I definitely have gained a few extra pounds during my stay here.

IIT falls in a region of Chennai called CIT (Central Institute of Technologies) which houses, apart from IIT, some very reputed and leading research and academic institutions, like the IMSc, etc. I was surprised by the number of research institutes here. Maybe its the presence of places like these that create a difference in the status of a city, like Chennai, as compared to say, Kochi, my hometown, with which I constantly used to draw contrasts and parallels.

Another name synonymous with city life in Chennai is Spencer's Plaza. Usually the first on the visiting list of any traveller here, this impressive shopping center (the term doesnt do justice to its size) has around 4 towers or so with 3 levels.. packed edge to edge with shops of all kinds.. branded items are usually more frequent but occasionally u might also find the traditional cheaper rate shops. The Landmarks store is another highlight feature here- spanning 3 floors and a very large area, this so-called 'gift items' shop has everything from a huge collection of books to cds and all kinds of audio,video,jewellery and other gift products. The Spencer's food court is also something to watch out for. The Chennai City Center is another major shopping center in the city.

Chennai city houses some major IT companies in India, and some major manufacturing units also in the industrial zones. A Hyundai car factory is also located in chennai.Another stark contrast i drew with the situation in Kerala was that the Traffic in Chennai is pretty well corrdinated. The roads are wide enough and in good condition, unlike some of the narrow cluttered roads of Kochi, for example.Buses are also in plenty, as in Kochi, though not as frequent as one would want them.

Beaches in Chennai are the other major attraction to watch out for. The most famous among them is Marina Beach- a 12 km long strip along the east coast of Chennai. There are other beaches also located along the coast. What struck me most about them was the cleanliness.. maybe it has something to do with the tourism potential of these places, but all the same. If you're on the lookout for somewhere special to eat, Murugan's Idli shop located near Besant Nagar beach might interest u- much more than a wayside idli restaurant, this place has the fame of being makers of the best idlis and vadas in Chennai! I was surprised by the long queue (yes queue!- much like a slot system) standing outside the hotel waiting to get in. Well, When I did get in, I perfectly understood why Murugan idlis are so famous! In fact, they even have their own website www.muruganidlishop.com, and it seems they're starting a new branch in Dubai now!

On the whole, the city has so much to offer to the visitor, especially in terms of city life. All this if u can take the heat, ofcourse!

D Hostel @ NIT Calicut

2007-05-16T05:44:00.000+08:00

D Hostel is situated almost at a corner of the NITC map.. generally considered a final years hostel, this single room hostel also houses many of the luckier 3rd years ..

D hostel is most famous for its D-Bar, where every type of alcohol from Vodka to Naadan Kallu (Local toddy) may be served[or have i exaggerated too much? :-) ].. unfortunately, after a series of happenings lately, D-Bar has been ‘debarred’ from functioning (excuse the pun)..

The hostel on the whole is very beautiful.. apart from the small patch of greenery in the front and the entry hallway, the often dimly lit coridoors are also beautiful in their eerieness.. The legend of D goes that at any point of time only 2 out of any 10 bulbs in the hostel must be working..

The COOLER : This is a local hotspot (no pun intended again) for the ‘D’-enizens, who hang around here for their daily water..the best place to beat ‘D’-hydration..it also gets visitors from other hostels..unfortunately freezing cold as the water is, it doesnt often taste like ‘D’istilled water.. who cares anyways..

The Toilets in D-Hostel are something to be proud of..something we gladly show everyone,and write about on blogs..very well maintained,shown by the fact that the smell starts only after around 9 in the night ..

MY ROOM: Room D 160, and luckily the one closest to the bathroom, so that people often call this room ‘bath-attached’..and not without reason..makes it easy for me to use the toilet regularly enough..I wouldnt call it a very happening room in terms of studies,but other activities are at its best here..Not the neatest of rooms,but then,you should see the other rooms!..

ME.. Hard At Work!!..

What people do in Labs.. a night out story at Tronix lab

2007-04-06T05:29:00.000+08:00

A Laboratory is supposed to be that booring place where you have to spend 3 hours a week doing nothing while pretending to be interested,and finally writing a hell of an exam to get another course added to your CV,isnt it? Well, not any more..

"A Lab should be like your home.. where you can come ,go and work anytime you want..where you can try out then and there if you have an idea or a brainstorm..a place to do things" .. said Mr.Sachitanand Malewar,Director of NEX Robotics to us,when he came to our institute recently for a workshop.

So this day we got together at 5:30 pm in this Electronics lab,cos we had a deadline for the 5th April,which means we would be dead in 3 days.A complete nightout was in order.6-8 of us poor hopeless lost guys from S6-Electricals who were beginning to feel the whooshing sound of the mini-project deadline approaching fast got together..and we saw that a lab can actually be a really fun place to learn things!!

Soon it became apparent that mini-project was not the only thing on our minds.Some of us soon launched ourselves into a Computer Tennis tournament(the 3 guys you see there),while some of the others who were not in favour of wasting away our time playing games,decided to do so by seeing movies (thats me there, on the right).I finished 'Eragon' right there in the lab.Once in a while,one of us would suggest that we were not concentrating on our work,and we would go back seriously to our task at hand our miniproject.My own miniproject,which was a sun-tracker,made great progress that day.Ya right..

When dinner time approached,restlessness began to show on everyone again..me and Josef went out and had our dinner,while some of us(Naren and Laxmi on the left) decided to have dinner in their very own lab..now THATS calling Lab a Home!! There were other time passers too.. Manu would sleep off on the teachers desk every 20 minutes,wake up to find everyone either playing or sleeping,and go back to sleep again..Bijoy decided to go around doing a bit of photography.And Josef would go off on the phone every now and then..

But to be frank,it was a day of fun and learning..i learnt quite a bit about laboratory culture and circuit handling like I'd never before done in lab classes that day..all of us learnt a lot of new things that day just trying out again and again at new ideas we could never before unleash on our lab..and also grew to appreciate the power of a lab that only months ago we were cursing to the death..we went a full 12 hours in that lab, till 5:30 am the next day morning..practically having lived in the lab for a day..

A Lab is a place to learn stuff,not to be bored to death..Minimum freedom and open resources can ensure that a student can enjoy the potential of his lab to the maximum while still enjoying learning..otherwise practical lab sessions and experiments in our colleges will remain as boring as normal boring classes,and scare away any decent guy who plans to actually learn things the hands-on way.. like our Electronics lab,where 71 of us Electrical guys spent a whole year without knowing what it was actually made of..

The Student Politics Question

2007-03-31T07:06:00.000+08:00

A question that every Indian has been asking since the time India gained independence in 1947- what is the role of politics in India?Build or Destroy?Especially Student politics in India,which has come down to a scencario of political vendettas full of physical violence and dirty political games.
I live in a college where College politics is banned.We in NITC have resisted several attempts by external student party politics to enter NITC for so many years now,including the greatest and most feared Students Federation Of India (SFI),the KSU,etc..NITC has shouted anti-SFI/KSU slogans throughout its many odd years of existence, and we will continue to do so.We have seen what party politics has done to other colleges inside Kerala.I know personally.I live next to a typical example of such a college,though out of respect i will not mention its name.

In this particular college whose case I mentioned,anytime a student(or union) wants,he can get his clases cancelled.Classes are like a disposable commodity-go for it if you want,cancel it if you're not in the mood.Exams are even worse.

The bigger problems start when the cultural festivals start-every program held here is ended by an SFI-vs-KSU fight,which most definitely ends up in a few broken bones,a police charge,a few dozen registered cases,and ofcourse, the inevitable end result- a HARTAL.Let me define this cursed word to you.No college,no class,no study, nothing.Immobility.Helplessness.Silence,Submission and Inactivity.Thats what a Hartal is.A whole population goes immobile when a thing such as a hartal occurs.Nevertheless, it is a status symbol and a show of power for several political unions,and thus it does go unstopped all throughout Kerala every odd day nowadays.

Recently there was a close attempt by the local SFI unit in our area to penetrate into our college,and even attack some of us.The result was drastic.The whole college awoke like an angered monster,around 400-500 students out on the road,all tense and angry,most of us armed with sticks and stones,and ran back at them.The police had to interfere,otherwise there definitely might have been bloodshed.The night went by in a flurry of abuses and stone-throwing between angered NITC students and local SFI activists,with the police unfortunately caught in between.

Quoting a Hindu newspaper report :

"Classes at NITC are suspended owing to the attack on Administrative Block and breaking of drinking water supply pipes by SFI and DYFI activists on Monday night..disruption of water supply affected more than 2,000 students in 12 hostels..Hostels could not be closed down since 50 per cent of the students were from outside the State, officials said..Water was supplied to the college from a nearby river.."

Check out the Link http://www.hindu.com/2007/03/28/stories/2007032806340500.htm

I think the message given by NITC to the external student unions on this day is clear : "WE STUDENTS DO NOT NEED EXTERNAL STUDENT UNIONS TO TAKE CARE OF OUR NEEDS.. WE HAVE DONE SO BEAUTIFULLY FOR SO MANY YEARS AND WILL CONTINUE TO DO SO..We have conducted over 30 Ragams and Tathva's and will conduct a 100 more,each one living up to its name of being the best until ony the next Ragam or Tathva,and WE DO NOT NEED THE SFI OR THE KSU TO TEACH US HOW TO DO SO..."

We have seen the potentials of so many colleges all over Kerala wasted away by years of student politics..wach one of them capable of being an NIT in themselves..each one capable of conducting their own Ragams and Tathvas..but divided and hampered between themselves only on the count of Student Politics..so when i see what Damage this has done to not only the academic standards and technical standards in Kerala,but the very honour and name of Kerala,I am forced to shout out loud..To Hell With Student Politics in Kerala..for its own good..