Friday, August 8, 2008

The Kitchen Laboratory

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 :-)

Sunday, August 3, 2008

The One-Month-Smoking experiment

(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.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Another war in the Fight to Freedom

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.

Friday, July 18, 2008

Back online!!

"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..

Monday, July 14, 2008

Vacation ends, New world beckons, Old language makes frontiers


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 :-)

Monday, July 7, 2008

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 :-)..

Friday, July 4, 2008

Freedom, Finally!

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!..