Change of blog!

I’ve moved to a new ‘wordpress’ blog on my own site. The new url is http://www.anuragsinghrana.com/blog. Actually, I’ve set up a new website of my own at http://www.anuragsinghrana.com which will be up and running soon. Please update your bookmarks in your browser, del.icio.us, blogroll and minds!

Adios,

Anurag.

Find. Use. Share. Expand.

 

Emotional overload

Paralysis

I am paralyzed by the emotional overload which this movie has given me. It ‘pings’ so many ‘ports’ of my conscience, so very effectively and deeply. And this song is the representative of the whole package. It goes like this,

Main kabhee batlata nahi, par andhere se darta hoon main maa,

Yoon to main dikhlata nahi, teri parwaah karta hoon main maa,

Tujhe sab hai pata hai na maa, Tujhe sab hai pata meri maa.

(English literal translation :

I never tell you this, but I am scared of the darkness, oh mother,

Generally I don’t show it, but I care for you, oh mother,

Do you know it all, oh mother? You know it all, oh my mother. )

Thoughts
I was thinking how emotions can paralyze a person, both mentally and physically. The first symptoms of this can be seen in the eyes, where you can’t control your muscles to stop the salty fluid from flowing out of the tear bags.

A greater impact can be seen mentally, when all day you just keep swinging here and there, and are not able to concentrate on your work, or do something else except being in that pathetic mental state.

If emotions are so harmful, then why do we need them anyway? If through evolution, only the best traits of all living beings get boosted and the useless ones get deprecated, how have we, humans, supposedly the most developed species on earth, retained this ‘defect’?

What good do emotions do to us that their shortcomings can be ignored as minor round-off errors? When a person is acting emotionally, it is less likely that he/she is doing things practically or rationally.

But if we look deeper, emotions can create revolutions, emotions can boost the morale of an entire army by a thousand times in magnitude, emotions can help people keep going on even when its gets tough, emotions can make someone achieve that practically and rationally seems impossible.

Conclusion

Emotions are a reason for misery and sadness in the world,

Emotions are behind revolutions, discoveries and inventions,

Emotions make us behave worse than animals sometimes,

Emotions are what makes us human.

Another OS brainstorm(?)

I feel that my brain is heating up from inside, too much thinking going on lately! I wish there was an ‘off’ switch which I could press so that I leave all worries and thoughts. Well, there is this ‘die’ option, or ‘drugs/drinking’ option, but then I prefer neither. The first option, well, of course is like a permanent solution, but there is no ’switch on’ after it. The second option … well I decided to never use it.

I am going home on this 31st evening. A lot of wrapping up to do, I want to buy presents for my family members as a token for the first money I’ve earned (that comes under ‘taxable’ income ;)). And then, I’ve this OS thought process going on, and I need to plan in advance for the coming holiday, how will I utilize the time as well as give enough time to people there.

Office work is going on as usual, but the workload since TODAY has been unusually low. So, all day I’ve been reading articles about operating systems. Most of which say that Linux is a clone of a 30 year old system, UNIX. And a lot of them say that most OSes are based on the three tier thing, kernel, files/folders and processes. We must change this to something that is shown in hollywood, no windows nothing, just some vague interface to get the information we want. This thought is influencing me a lot.

Another thought that comes to me is the ease of use of the existing systems. If we were to shift to a vague system with no “Firefox”, no “Windows Media Player” (eh, “MPlayer”), no “Start menu” (eh eh, “K Menu” (eh eh eh “Gnome’s whatever menu”)), and whatever application you used to like! Well, it might take a decade for people to finally accept (if ever) such a thing.

Then there are people who ask to ‘do-away’ with GCC. Does that mean we need to implement another compiler? How can anyone not port ‘GCC’ to their OS (except Microsoft)? And people ask us to do-away with C! Imagine coding a new OS with D, and writing a compiler for it along with the OS! If we do port GCC, then how will GCC run if we’re not basing upon ‘kernel, files and processes’? Yeah, the C code we write can work the way we want, but GCC needs to run on ‘files’ and write ‘compiled binary files’. Also, the gcc executable and shared libraries are also ‘files’ stored in a specific ‘directory structure’. And all the C code which we write is ‘files’. How can the compiler survive in an environment that gives up this basic structure?

A way of doing it would be to create ‘emulation of kernel/files/processes’ in the new OS. The compiler will run in this emulated environment and spit out binary ‘files’. There should be some way of running ‘files’ created by GCC on the new OS, which supposedly wont support ‘files’?  The idea seems wierd, apart from creating an overhead of an emulator for the existing structure of computer systems. Maybe a little more pondering on it can give some clearer picture. Rather, the method should be, what will be the new structure? And then later we can answer other questions of compatibility with existing structures and porting applications.

I know I am talking really wierdly these days, but then, my knee injury has really damaged my ‘brain’ (My wound has fully recovered now!). Anyways, I’ll keep posting more on this. For the ‘conventional’ OS development talks, which I keep writing as and when I read more and more, I’ve created a wiki, http://myos.scribblewiki.com/Main_Page. Do visit to read more, and all wierd thoughts will find place in this blog, hehe.

Ciao.

Dream Operating System

Anyone who is remotely related to programming, internet and such has a dream to create something of his own. Often this dream is of creating a new Operating System of their own. An operating system that will be faster than any other, will support everything and will have so many features that it’ll outnumber Windows XP in its user-base!

Yes, its close to impossible to outnumber Windows XP user-base or even Free BSD for that matter ;). Yes, its close to impossible to make something faster than them and still support as much as they do! Yeah, you can make a ‘hello world OS’ which is zillion times faster than any other, but whats the use?

Ok, all this was to build up a platform to talk to you. Well, just like ‘everyone’, even I have dreams. And they never become concrete, only day-dreams of all that I said before :D. But then, I realized that I wasted some 8 years in just dreaming! I didn’t take the next step which generally ‘human beings’ take. Thats how the human race has progressed from apes to what we are now, ‘mobile apes’ :D.

Anyways, so basically, till now I was a dumb day-dreamer like a couple of million more, when this angel came and told the golden words in my ear, … “IDIOT! START TOH KAR” (means, Idiot! Stop dreaming and start something). And then, me, following her words began to look in the world around me.

Coming to the point directly after all this drama, the straightforward deal is Tanu asked me to do something in this regard, and I began reading about OS development, and trying out ’something’ ;).

Ok so the next FAQ looks to be, ‘So have you begun your own OS?’. Dude, chill, Microsoft Inc. took five whole years before they could change these lines

printf (”Welcome to Windows XP\n”); to printf (”Welcome to Windows Vista\n”);

So, its not that simple as it sounds in the dream world. At least the 80X86 processor is not as simple as it should have been. And then there are other mental blockages for me. Here is a list,

1. Why make another *nix clone? Why not something new?

2. Everything is a file, umm.. *nix concept, I want something original, WHAT?

3. Copy windows? Uh, not even in my dreams

4. Why C? Why not my own D or E or F or G? Do I need to write another compiler :O

5. Why OS? What happened to web-dev and python scripting? And eh, computer vision?

6. My own filesystem or new? Why old? Why not be ‘readable’ by others? Linux also did ext2, why not me do my own AFS or something?

7. Ok, so if I use C, how do I write my kernel? I don’t even know much about it!

8. Uh, all this GDT, IVT, IDT, Page table, Multitasking, PCI, A20 line, and every damn thing has a hundred configuration settings. Am I enough or I need help?

So, basically I didn’t reach all this just by beginning. First I encountered Viral Patel (http://www.viralpatel.net), who is a anti-ME. He actually made a fully functional ‘CLOSED SOURCE’ OS, called Taj OS (named after Taj Mahal).

Then I reached www.osdev.org, which is a whole portal dedicated to help people like me try their hands on some OS development. It lists more than hundred hobby operating systems developed by people, many of which are open source and closely resemble *nix or DOS. The site has extensive tutorials for all aspects of OS development, with some holes left, which I might fill up one day.

I started using ‘nasm’ compiler to write initial bootable code in assembly. Using ‘vmware’ to keep it ’safe’, I booted the first few experiments, and with the help of Fedora Core 7 rescue DVD, I installed the bootloader onto the ‘virtual vmware hard disk’. So, now my small bootable assembly program can boot from a disk, read the keyboard and display messages! Cool for a start, at least I can feel that :D. Ofcourse, that hard disk will be able to boot my OS (rather boot code) and nothing else, even if we try GRUB.

Now, my next tasks are to read this book, THE INTEL MICROPROCESSORS (750 pages :() by BARRY B. BREY and C. R. SARMA (Rs. 299 only :D). And then I’ll have a better clue of the things that are happening. Then I might decide to begin some design of an OS, if I still have interest left. I also read the source-code of Ace OS (1.0 and 2.0), DEX OS 1.1, which are small operating systems, written in C and are somewhat understandable. Viral’s OS doesn’t run on my vmware and I don’t have a floppy drive, :D.

Ok, maybe I am thinking too high, but if I make one, I won’t make a ‘floppy OS’ for some DOS work, I’ll make a real installable OS with a CD setup and a hard-disk GRUB compatible install. I might not remain compatible with *nix, so maybe it’d be difficult to port Linux applications to it, but I’ll maybe write some of my own!

Right now, all this is a distant dream, but gladly the first bricks have been laid. And soon, when I am on the same level as other OSdevers (term for OS developers), I’ll come up with some concrete thing to write here.

Created a new page to log my knowledge and status on this issue.

Any comments are welcome. Any people interested in development can discuss with me, learn and share. But right now, as there is no ‘development plan’, there is no ‘development team’. Though, I will need more people by my side when I really go into doing it. And as you know, that there is no plan, YOU can affect the plan, and YOU can make it your plan. So, like me, you wont have hesitation in joining me when we actually begin work, because it’ll be YOUR OS too!

More information soon. Cheers!

PS: I fell from the bike, injured my knee, so maybe some cells in my ‘brain’ have been killed or altered, so I am thinking wierdly these days. Operating system and me, really huh?

PS2: Am perfectly fine guys, just an injury on the knee, so thanks for being concerned, but don’t worry, I’ll be ok.

PS3: HA HA HA, ok fine so you are not concerned, neither am I concerned about your concern ;).

PS4: Someone ask me to shut-up yaar!

Ok bye then. Take care.

Daily update 6 Sept ‘07

Oh god, why am I getting so tensed about writing a blog entry? I already have a ‘rejected draft’ for this post! Well well well, just that I saw some ‘readers’. And more readers means more expectations. And more expectations mean more fear. More fear means hesitation. More hesitation means more mistakes. More mistakes means bad output. Bad output means less readers. And so it keeps getting balanced.

Lately, nothing much on my end. We changed the ‘cyber layout’ of our home. Now we have a central internet server, and all computers connect to it using ad-hoc wireless. This means better coverage and connectivity. Speaking of which, I am thinking to change my mobile phone connection. It seems that Reliance Postpaid offers a much better deal that any other postpaid mobile phone at least for STD calls. Hence, I will switch.

Tanu has been keeping ill these days and has been admitted to CHL Apollo. Shes having jaundice, with some index value being 5. She hasn’t been eating much these days, and vomiting since 3 days. Hope she recovers and feels better. Please pray for her.

Nothing much in my life these days. The salary is still ‘un-used’. I am seriously thinking of doing some expenditure planning, so that I can manage my money well. Maybe Sumeet G and Sheharwasi can be of assistance as they have been through it  since a couple of months now.

Ok so readers, this is not a bad post, so keep reading. I will get back soon with more updates. Ciao.

PS: @ Nikhil. Where are you? No information about you. Are you coming to Bangalore or not?

Aag

‘Ramu ki aag’ …. bujh gayi

“Humko bhi AAG ne mara, tumko bhi AAG ne mara,  is AAG ko band karwaado.”
When we try to make tea at home, though its not a very big or significant task, still we take care to put the water first, then the tea leaves, then sugar, then milk and then pour it in cups and serve it while its hot. And yeah, kind of measure each thing before using it. The total cost of making a cup of tea doesn’t exceed like Rs. 20, thats also an exaggerated estimate. Ramu (aka Ram Gopal Varma) made a remake of Sholay. Assuming it costs at least a million times more than a cup of tea, couldn’t he have thought about the whole thing at least ten times more cautiously? At least should have seen how the songs begin in the movie. The scene is going on, and suddenly you see Devagan jumping around Ms. Kothari and woah, did a song just begin out of the blue?

And that new Thakur, even I can rate myself better in dialogue delivery. Comedy sucks, picturization, flow, connectivity.. and so on. There are a few good scenes worth appreciating, like the one when Thakur gets his palm cut, the climax scene, the jay-veeru-ko-gabbar-ke-hawale-kar-do scene. One more thing Ramu could have possibly done was thinking of changing something in the script. Like the new Don movie. That small punch at the end could have made the movie better.

Anyways, still WE SURVIVED IT through and through, lol.

Hey babyy

Nice movie. Good light comedy. Strong impacting emotion. Bearable storyline for a fun based movie. Good picturization. One item number. What else do we need to make an evening with friends lively and happening? Yesterday, we all got this DVD of Hey Babyy and saw it at home. And then a round of BC till 3:30 am. Oh god, I was so sleepy in the morning, got up at 8:30 and reached office only by 10:30, thanks to the great traffic of our new city.

Tanu is a little ill, and I am very very worried for her. Hope she gets better soon. Please pray for her.

I am still sitting in office, working a bit. Though a bit distracted too. Have a nice day. Ciao.

Just arrived in Bangalore

It has been several months since this blog got an entry. And well, I guess there are no readers left either. But alas, I will still write to ressurrect this blog from the ashes.

Changes in life

My life has changed dramatically since May 2007. The biggest change being in my identity, from a student to an employee. From being dependent to being self-sustaining. Rather ’self-sustaining’ is a weaker word, I could as well have dependents now, ;).

BTech Achieved

The biggest achievement in the past few months has been completing my BTech. Honors degree, which was looking unachievable in April. Though I could not finish the project I was working on, in its totality. Not even to my content or even Jawahar sirs content, or for that matter, even Pramod Sankar content :). It was getting unbearable after May start. First, I was tied down to the legacy of the existing system, which I thought, a re-design would make things better. And then the problem is ‘not having enough power to take major decisions’. This made me drift from the main project to others like iYum, iChat, tv.iiit.ac.in and so on.

Anyways, lets not drift further from the topic. So, finally I achieved the degree, with all requirements met. And an extra topping of 8 extra credits completed apart from the ‘BTech Honors’ degree with a 8.57/10 CGPA. Not really very impressive like IV or Nikita, but still a respectable total for a player like me. Yeah, I could have got into 9+ if I was more focussed on ’scoring’ rather than doing all random stuff. Or if I have ‘real talent’ like IV, no study all fun but still manages an outstanding CG. (CGPA = Cumulative Grade Point Average).

The Yahoo! experience

Thanks to Yahoo!, my life has changed now. The Yahoo! experience has changed a lot of things in me. Now, at lot of the times, I ’search.yahoo.com’ instead of ‘Google’ for things. And well, it turns out, its just ‘cult branding’ that keeps Google above Yahoo! (at least in search services).

The atmosphere in the Yahoo! EGL office is nice and cool. People talk to each other casually, and I haven’t heard anyone raise voices, yet! My work is pretty less these days as I am just getting to know the old system and so on. Though my honeymoon (training period) is over, but I am still on vacation, lol.

Old friends parting

Well, for the first time Indore feels viraan. My dear buddy Tapan left Indore some days back. So, the central headquarters of our group has been relocated to USA, ;). Rahul is also in Indore till September something. And Anni is enjoying ‘his’ kind of life in college. He has been facing hard times since his breakup, but now his life is beginning to stabilize again. But you can’t be sure when its Anni, hehe.

Tanu as usual has been there. She keeps getting angry with me sometimes, but thats ok. What option do I have, I am an employee now, and need to answer to my manager and not Pramod, hehe. She will be looking for internship soon. Hope she gets a nice opportunity in some reputed agency.

Riya. This word has been like stuck with me since we ever talked. I really really wish someone just goes and stabs her or something, or comes and tells me that she is gone forever. She is wierd, she doesn’t need me. She still wants to hold on to me, just a hook around my neck, so she can pull it whenever she finds time out of her friends, colleagues, best friends, family, Glenn and so on. But I wish to be free, and so I have decided to cut her out of my life. I hope she just lets go and I am set free.

New friends at Yahoo!

Its not all sad sad in here. This new place has a lot of scope for new people to jump into my life. And well some of them have already come in. The most prominent ones being Deepak and Rishu. Oh come on, why do you keep cribbing that you got to have some ‘girl friends’? Well, I don’t generally discriminate much, a good understanding companion is all I need, how does their gender matter? Though we haven’t hung out as such, but spending 9 hours every day 5 days a week together at office is a huge thing. More than I would get to spend time with my girlfriend if I had one in Bangalore.

Deepak is a cool guy, more like me. Always having fun, talking in a desi tone, though he is responsible and hard working too. He keeps working in the ops team for like hours, even after work. Rishu is a ’sophisticated guy’, thats what I could infer. He is good at technology and fashion and pubs and stuff. We’re planning to create some cool things in our free time, apart from work. Lets see how it turns out. Well, I am not the dancing-drinking-going-to-pubs-n-discs kind of a guy, but still I am looking forward to a good friend in Rishu.

There are other colleagues in my office like Rahul, Puneet, Vinod, Amar, Santosh, Poonam, Mangesh, Abhishek and so on. And some others in MG road like Rohan, Smita and Sravanti. These people are good too, and I keep talking to them when life permits and when they feel like giving me time.

I noticed an air of ‘informality’ in Yahoo! life, people talk casually and generally have low ego, or at least potray to have it such. But, in terms of what to create and all, they focus more on ‘planning, reviewing, computing the revenue and the risk’ rather than just listening to instincts and making things. Maybe its right too. If its for one person, he/she can listen to ‘instinctive decisions’, but for a big company like Yahoo!, this is the right way. But it conflicts with my way of thinking, just a personal opinion.

And the old buggers still there

Well, thats not all, the old buggers from IIIT still haunting my life, :). I got a home with Bhavik and Sumeet. Well, as Neeraj puts it, friendship is another thing and becoming someone roomie is another. Its fun to live in the new home, but sometimes it feels irritating to hear about ‘this is your house too, so you should also do this do that’. Sometimes I wish I tell them that if its my house too, then let me live a little in my own way too. At weekends, its a fun place. All the friends from IIIT and beyond gather at a place and have a blast.

Sheharwasi aka Neeraj has also joined me in this new city. This guy has shared the same city with me all his life, be it Indore, Hyderabad or Bangalore. And well, he is a good friend, fun loving and easy going. And sometimes I hang out at his place for dominos and related issues. Rahul Mangla also lives with him, but you must be knowing how these Delhites are. Ravindranath Thakur aka Bokaro also keep visiting sometimes. Other frequent buggers include Sukesh, Amit, Gopal and friends.

Loneliness

Well, Aquarians are supposed to be deep thinkers, so I tend to be one. This new city Bangalore has so many people, almost over-crowded. I have almost the biggest circle of friends one could expect to have in a city in this short span on one month. But still, it feels a bit lonely here. There is no one here to speak my heart out to. I wish Tanu or Tapan or Ullu or someone was here. Yeah, Tanu keeps talking on phone, but no one can actually see me, and understand how I feel.

At times my personality splits into two. When someone talks to me, I am two people there. One is the guy ‘Anurag’ listening to that person, looking straight into the eye. Another is this second ‘Anurag’ who is looking at both of us, and smiling that what the hell is Anurag doing. He is smiling about the fact that how Anurag has changed. How he has grown into someone who can listen to such people like a credit card marketing person explaining details or a team leader explaining the details of the project. The second Anurag feels ‘Anurag’ is not eligible to be a part of all this. He is a simple sweet child, who wants to fly and play around, and not get involved in serious stuff like this. But then, I try hard to keep myself confined to the first Anurag that people know. The Anurag who has been good at work, who has passed a BTech degree, who can do wonders, who can take up responsibility and so on. There is no place for the innocent second Anurag, who is hesitant, who is not perfect at anything, who is introverted and shy, who is just a small child. But still, he keeps showing up.

Conclusion

Well, thats pretty much it from my side. This weekend hasn’t been much fun except the pizzas and movies and BC and driving. Lets see how the coming days look like. I am planning a home visit on Diwali, in November. And yeah, I got my first salary too, so its party time in Bangalore. Take care. Ciao.

Disclaimer : The facts, opinions and ideas expressed in this post are completely my personal. They don’t represent any organisation, group of individuals or any individual other than me. 

A small survey.

Hi people,

Tanu is conducting a small survey for some advertising thing. And I request you all to go and fill it up as a favor to me. This will help her get a grade, and I know people at IIIT know what ‘getting a grade’ means! Thanks in anticipation!

Here is the link …. http://196.12.53.39/~tanu/questionaire/index2.php

Ciao.

JDK on Fedora Core 6

I was installing Java Development Toolkit 1.5.0 on Fedora Core 6. And I got an error saying.
The installer is unable to run in graphical mode. Try running the installer with the -console or -silent flag.

I thought it was a usual error because ‘root’ couldn’t connect to X. I did

ssh -X root@localhost

or ssh -Y root@localhost

I also tried,

xhost +

su - root

export DISPLAY=:0.0

setenforce 0

service iptables stop

Nothing worked! I tried and tried and tried. Finally I got an answer. Fedora Core 4 onwards a package called ‘openmotif’ has been removed from Fedora Core. Hence, the installer doesn’t start. Another replacement of the same package that now comes with Fedora Core is lesstif.

Hence I installed lesstif and libXp. After that, the installer just worked fine. So anyone facing the same problem, check if you have openmotif or lesstif installed. If not, do so, and then try out the installer.

Cheers!!

Google ad

Tanu made an ad/poster for Google as her assignment. She says its just a concept. I really liked it, so here it is for you to view it. [ Click to enlarge ]

Operating systems, iYum and Flash 9

Introduction - Operating systems and me

Its been long since I wrote an entry here, but this one has a purpose rather than being a pass time. I’ve always been interested in operating systems. Ever since I knew about computers, I wanted to make my own operating system. MSDOS used to be my dream at a time, then Windows 3.1, then Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows Xp, Redhat 7.2, Redhat 7.3, Redhat 9, Fedora Core 2, Fedora Core 4, Ubuntu, Kubuntu and now Fedora Core 5. I’ve been updating my knowledge at each step, changing the dream everytime.

BASIC and the OS dream

In the beginning when we began with ‘BASIC’ (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), we learnt to write ‘graphical’ programs in it. We wondered that all world has been programmed in BASIC and that learning to create a ‘WINDOW’ using the graphics of BASIC will enable us to write an operating system. As if thats the only missing link in our knowledge. Back then, our computer instructors used to say that operating systems are very complex things and can’t be made by someone as such. I accepted his point of view, but didn’t let the dream die.

When I came to IIIT

When I entered IIIT, the exposure to a new environment, different from the old and familiar Windows, which I had been used to since 1994, gave a new outlook to the whole thing. And the fact that Linus was able to make an OS of his own made my will even stronger. Though now we know that Linus only made the ‘kernel’ of the whole operating system, which is only about 3% of it (I read it somewhere).

Anyways, this was just to tell you about my strong desire to work in the field of operating systems, though I haven’t been able to do so. This was also to tell you about my familiarity with both platforms, as some people stereotype me as a ‘Linux person’. I use what I like more and its not completely impossible that I’ll switch to Windows Vista if I find it better.

iYum Repository

When Sugandh mailed about having a IIIT Yum repository, I was very excited about it. I had some idea about it. Initially, Sagar and I began working on making the Yum Repository for Fedora Core 5 - 32 bit. Sugandh talked to the faculty and got us resources. We installed a new system there, and I wrote some shell scripts initially. Later Sagar helped me out with some python too. Finally we made a mechanism to create Fedora Core 5 -32 bit repository. It downloaded about 7700 packages from the internet, about 12 GB of data.

And a set back

But you see, bad scripting and organisation resulted in a catastrophy. The script automatically deleted all packages naming them as ‘old versions’. This was a huge set-back. We decide to revive. I am very good at this I’d admit - reviving. People generally lose interest, hope, faith - after a crash. I, on the other hand, rebegin from wherever it is. Even if it means building from ground up.

Reviving

Sagar almost lost faith, while I was getting fascinated by the whole thing. It opened a new path of imagination for me. Besides, I was getting in touch with the power of Python, which I never acknowledged or experienced before. I designed a new mechanism for the Yum Repository.

New plan

Why should Yum Repository download all packages from everywhere? Why should it download any RPM for Fedora Core 2 if there isn’t any PC running it? Why should 100 others with Fedora Core 5 wait because Fedora Core 2 is being updated? Everything was so straightforward, ask the users to generate the requirement, and download only that.

The design
I designed the two tier architecture of the iYum network. The client runs a service in the background, constantly reading what packages the server ‘can’ download, comparing with what packages are old or not-installed. It sends back a list of those packages to the server. The server process combines the lists from various users and downloads the requirements. Thus, an automated system takes birth, which can expand itself as an when needed, as well as shrink itself when a particular operating system is getting obsoleted.

The actual work

I kept on telling Sagar to work, but he had his other commitments like his DIP project, BTP, etc. So, slowly and gradually, I coded the entire thing. The iYum client service, made in Python as well as the whole server and its webpages. The iYum client is currently a non-GUI thing, but my vision is to make it into something like synaptic or yumex. I might use yumex code to do so too. Anyways this is just a dream.

Flash player 9

Adobe took over Macromedia. The new version of Flash, Flash 8 came into picture. But, as Linux is not a popular platform, they didn’t work towards developing a version for it too. As a result, all Linux users were forced to use the old version, Flash 7. Many internet sites insisted on Flash 8, like the popular news site, www.ibnlive.com. Finally, Adobe has kept its promise to release a version 9 for Linux. It prerelease versions include a browser plugin and a standalone utility to run Flash 9 on Windows, Mac and Linux. Enjoy! Here is the link.

BTP

On 9 of October was a great day for me. Jawahar sir scolded me like anything for not working on the project. Initially I was very depressed and angry, but now I am happy that he did so. It brought me on the right track again, the track of working! He explained me very nicely about the BTP viva and report today, and about the future plans. I’ll be giving it my best during these couple of days. Wish me luck!

Fedora Core 6 and Vista

I heard FC6 was coming today, haven’t seen any news about it. The Fedora website is down for maintainance. Regarding Windows Vista, I am very keen. Recently I’ve read many blogs supporting and against Vista. I want to see what has Microsoft offered this time. Hopefully it’ll be something good.

Anyways, bye for now. Ciao.

Another combo post :D

Its not fair. I write so less these days and most of the posts are just a sum total of the past days. Anyways, what can I do, lets continue the trend.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is a busy day. I have to prepare a BTP presentation, a Advanced Graphics course presentation along with normal classes (read it as one class at 11). The upcoming matches from 7th of this month is to be recorded match-by-match on the tv.iiit.ac.in server. Yes!! The same old server which people enjoyed. We are working on the audio-video sync of the recording system these days. Hopefully after the series, the server will be open for the public.

This week

Well, I’ve to finish a lot of things this week. There is a pile of backlog for the Cognitive science course and a pending GPU assignment. We’ve set up a YUM REPOSITORY SERVER for IIIT. But mirroring 12 repositories for 6 platforms is a wastage of disk space and bandwidth. As a result, we are working on a better mechanism to create the repository. Sagar and I are jointly working on the project to come up with something good. Lets see what do we make.

This month

Diwali is ’scheduled’ this month. And its been 3 long months since I went home. I came to college on 7th of July 2006 and today is 4th of October 2006. I’m thinking to go home from 16th to 22nd of this month. As a result I’ve to skip a few classes and also finish the BTP final report beforehand, which is to be submitted on 24th of this month. Hopefully Jawahar sir will allow me to go home. I have to restart the work on the 4th semester 4 credit Mobile Blogging software project. The placements have come very near, and I need to have a clean marksheet.

Qt 4

Wow! This new thing is such a marvel. Initially I used to hate it, because I didn’t understand how to use it. But now I am familiar with the Ui namespace, resource files and other fundas, it feels good. For starters, let me tell you a good news. In Qt 3, if we created a Ui from Qt designer, and edited the header and sources generated using the uic command, the ui files used to overwrite them next time we needed to change something in Ui. Now, they’ve separated Ui component from the functionality code. As a result, the programmer can completely rely for Ui on Qt4 designer and on his code for the rest of it. Another good thing is resources. Now we can define the resources like images, text files used by the application we develop. All of them will get embedded inside the executable itself. As a result, we need to ship only single files instead of zip archives.

My experiments - Embedder

I was thinking about making something like ’setup.exe’ of windows. Generally linux setups come as tar archives or like rpm files. Almost nothing (except jdk setups, etc) come like a single setup file which handles everything. I wrote a command line utility as the first steps to generate something similar for linux. The command is called ‘createArchive’. This command takes two arguments, name of a new executable and a resource file. The resource file contains a list of files, both executable and ordinary. The command reads all files given in the resource file and finally creates an executable by the name as specified. This new executable contains all the files embedded in itself. Upon execution, this executable creates a temporary directory in /tmp and extracts all the files. It then executes the executables in a specified order. It has options of ‘quiet’ and ‘destroy extracted files on exit’ too. You can try this too. Download the files from here. It works on Linux, but is pretty much platform independent, most of if is just CORE C++. Maybe you can try it on windows as well. Does “FILE * fp;” work on windows? Sorry, the code isn’t documented (at all).

Movies

Ok, not many in the list. Lage Raho Munnabhai has been the favorite since a few days. I don’t know if the director had any intention to spread the gandhigiri, but I can see it already spreading (at least in orkut profiles). What I think one should notice is that the ‘noble thought’ is being internalized and understood by someone who has been violent and aggressive all the time, a gunda. If such a person can understand the words of truth and non-violence, we, the ordinary people ought to.

Pyaar ke side effects… they are already there. Actually Tanu wanted me to see this one. And after people appreciated it, I got desperate to see it. Eh, well I can already notice some of the side effects in my life too, hehe. In all a fun movie, a must see for your PC and can be worthy for the cinema hall as well.

Blogging - bring me back

Oh its been so long since I last visited my blog or someone elses. I am like out of the blogging world. Not that I am busy or something, but I do other things more often. They include movies, orkutting, chatting, working on the YUM REPO, etc. And rest of the time I am outside my room doing some other activities. Lets see if I revert back with this opening post. Actually I was considering of creating a private blog as well, or making this one private or something similar. I think a lot of my thoughts don’t find place in this open blog. Maybe its too early to let my ideas open for the public to read and judge.

Conclusion

Ok fine, now that I wrote a post, I have to have a conclusion. There is nothing to conclude though. Welcome me back to the blogging world. Hopefully going home this diwali. And well keep your fingers crossed for the upcoming YUM REPOSITORY and TV.IIIT.AC.IN.

Ciao.

I love my India

A picture is worth a thousand words, needless to say anything more now.

Hello…. come back….

Yesterday I was talking to Tanu about something relating to how a person can remain stable and well-balanced and calm and all. (I am not claiming that I am any of these, but whats the problem in giving phokat ki edhvaaees. So I told her about how I think about my childhood, schooling, college life, friends and her. After that we simply said bye and got back to work/sleep, etc.

In the dream last night, I saw my school’s vice-principal Mr. Dixit and a lot of my classmates, a girl from commerce section that I still can’t remember the name of and my grandma’s village house. Everyone was looking so so realistic with such great detail of their faces as if I remember them perfectly and I met them very recently. I could even see the pupils of the girl’s eye, which I guess were similar to the actual ones (though the ones when I used to ’see’ her in school, no pun intended).

I mean, here we are not talking about the girl, so come out of that. I am saying that, what a wonderful thing our subconscious mind is. Just because I was thinking about the old memories, it played an old tape from its archives for me, in the dream. And well, it wasnt an old tape playing, rather it animated a fresh scene for me using all the information it stored, back then. Ok fine, the whole ‘greatness’ of subconscious isn’t very useful for any practical uses, but just a thought.

—-

I’ve been reading a lot about booting, MBR, partition tables, filesystems, kernel, init, NTFS, FAT, LBA, CHS, ext3, WinFS, and what not. Most of it is circling around Operating Systems. Someone just shake me up and tell me to do VISION. I need to finish up my BTP for presentation tomorrow. And I haven’t reached a level yet. Anyways, this was just a quick update from me. Will keep you posted.

Oh, and totally forgot to mention this. I have decided to drop plans for attempting GRE. I am now going to get fully dedicated on my BTP, courses and the placements too. I hope I get somewhere decent. I could aim high, but I don’t want to get REALLY disappointed at the end, so I’ll just say for the time being that any decent ‘paying’ company would do. YES, anyone which pays good enough.

And please don’t ask, will you do a job in Microsoft? YES I’ll do it. Just because I ‘like’ ‘using’ Linux doesn’t make me not eligible for working in a company which pays overwhelmingly high. I’ll do anything for money,

Ciao.

Tagged??

I don’t know whats TAGGING or TAGGED and stuff. I was just reading Sumeet’s blog and saw that he was tagged or something. And I saw that at the end he has TAGGED me. I went and asked him the whole funda. So, according to him, I am supposed to answer this questionaire and forward it to someone else. Here it goes…
1.Grab the book nearest to you, turn on a random page and find random line..

Do you remember when you bought, or comtemplated buying, a new car?
Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis
(Yeah, am trying to try to mug up some words…lol)
2.Stretch your left arm out as far as you can

Just got my room cleaned…. a lotta free space in here…

3. What is the last thing you watched on TV?

The song ‘No way no way’ from ‘Anthony kaun hai?’ on MTV

4.Without looking, guess what time it is?

11:40 AM

5. Now look at the clock, what is the actual time?

11:56 AM … wow!! I am so bad at remembering time… just saw the watch before taking this questionaire.

6. With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?

Nothing! The wing is unusually calm!! :O

7. When did you last step outside? What were you doing?

Went to brush at 10 AM. Am soooooo lazy hehehe.

8. Before you started this survey, what did you look at?

I looked at my monitor and the lovely ‘wallpaper’ on it

9. What are you wearing?

Shorts and T shirt

10. Did you dream last night?

I dreamt that I was chatting with my dad… which has happened like only twice in this whole lifetime till now..!!

11. When did you last laugh?

Don’t remember… been a lil sad these days

12. What is on the walls of the room you are in?

Dead bodies of insects… some marks left by the tapes that were stuck… cracks …. just removed all my posters and all….

13. Seen anything weird lately?

Well… cant even think of anything wierd… wierd isn’t it?

14. What do u think of this quiz?

Quiz? Is it a quiz? Its more like an interview

15. What is the Last film u saw?

Omkara …. the a-shade-less-than-DVD print… with ok ok video and crappy audio x-(

16. If you became a multimillionaire overnight, what would you buy?

I dunno… I need a bike and a Ford Icon… and maybe build another floor for my home… and surely wanna help some needy ppl.. dunno how

17. Tell me something about you that I dunno.

Well… Sumeet… you know almost everything… :).. and I wont tell you the rest of the ‘details’ .. nice try

18. If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?

I wanna have a world without the border disputes between India and Pakistan…

19. Do you like to dance?

Like to… well thats tricky… YEAH I do.. But you see am not a professional dancer.. or rather not even a dancer… so I prefer doing it in private

20. George Bush

Screwed the world.

21. Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?

I’ve already thought about it.. I’ll call her Mahfooza…. hopefully… if my wife agrees too
Mahfooza Rana wont go… so maybe we’ll come up with something else

22. Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him?

Never imagined that… !! .. it’ll be a gal.. come on

23. Would you ever consider living abroad?

Yeah why not… I’d love to. I mean I don’t have these ‘principles’ that I’ll live in India and stuff. But then I might feel homesick and return..

24.What do you want GOD to say to you when you reach the pearly gates?

I don’t think there is anything like that. Everything that IS is just in this world.

25. People who may do this memo in their journal.

Didn’t get the question. But if you mean people who take this quiz… then … well.. who have a lil time to spend outta their busy schedules

So, thats it, now my turn to TAG!! Wow!… I don’t even know how many people will actually read it and reply to tag or whatever you call it. So here is my list (skipping people who have been tagged by Sumeet)

IV … lets see what the bond has to write … AAAAAAIIIIIIIVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

Hari puttar lets see what paaji writes… …

Pati … ok this one is a brave attempt… awaiting acceptence

Gokool lets see what are the ‘optimists’ thoughts

Beegle …. something techno expected

Ok fine.. as instructed.. I’ve put Five people on the TAG list. Ohh, and here are some specially invited/tagged

Gautam …. the coolant guy …. would love to know what he would answer… hey gimme the link to your blog

and last but not the least ….

Nidhi …. lets see how a PROFESSIONAL would reply

Ok thats it for this time. Am busy trying to study for GRE as you all know. Shamefully hopelessly failing to do so though, but I’ll keep trying. Rest in another post, and I promise wont delay it a lot.

Ciao.

My world

I thought lets draw how my world looks like. This is a rough draft, if am more free than today, I’ll make an elaborated one too.

Can you see some peculiarity? Is there any boundary between me and the entities in the innermost rectangle? Do you see the boundary of the white square? Or rather, do you see a white square in the middle? It is to say that well, I don’t know if there is a boundary for those close people too, its all what you perceive. (Thats what we’re learning in cognitive science by the way)

So how is the thought?

FAQ :

1. Why is the image not so fundoo?

Ans. Its made in MS Paint. With the limited functionality, (and limited time ) this is what I could do.

2. Whats happening to TV.IIIT.AC.IN ?

Ans. Its going to be up soon. My BTP and a few pending projects are coming in between. Almost everything is ready, if someone is ready to do some mechanical labour for me, I can make it working in two days.

Backlog

So, its been over a month without a single blog. Great! Actually I didn’t feel like blogging these days. Some of it was due to some personal reasons, and most of the time in the later part of July, it was due to lack of motivation. Anyways, what I remembered is that it just takes a fresh start to make things roll again. Here is the fresh start.

Let me tell you things in the reverse order. Right now I’ve just returned from my class, Middleware Systems. It was a very hectic day today, hypothetically. I haven’t done much work today practically. NOW I have to do some wordlists for GRE. Phew, god help me.

This week

I have behaved quite complacently this week. Most of it is due to the fact that most people around me are attempting their GRE in August, while I am attempting it in September. Hence, the complacency. The Barrons GRE book, as they call it, contains 50 wordlists, each having about 75 words. That makes it 3700+, wow! I haven’t even done 200 of them. Hope I get a little more sincere on that front.

Last month

The month of July has been easy going. Not many classes, unneccessarily delaying the project work, not doing any GRE preparation has been the norm. All my classes are scheduled after lunch this semester, except one on Wednesdays. Hence, sleeping late and getting up late has become the ruitine. Well, and I explain it as taking rest after the tight schedule in the internship.

Post Noida

I already mentioned how nice was my trip to Noida. Thanks to Rakhi ma’am and Deepak sir for the kind remarks. After my return my Noida, most of the days back home were spent in roaming around with my friends. And then, an unplanned return to IIIT, which I realized was unneeded. I could have easily spent another week at home. Those few days living in the campus were painful, after knowing the biting reality.

Room shift
I shifted to a new room, OBH 110. Great room it is, the room of my pal, Arun. Apart from a screeching door and an almirah without any hanging rod, its quite cozy in here. Its in the front wing in OBH. Ravi Shankar often claims that girls come for breakfast at the exact time he is leaving for a shower, so that they can have a glance at him, half naked in a towel. I don’t know how true is that, hehe. Other things are great about this room. With Ashish in the adjacent room, and Devansh around the corner, its always fun time and guidance to this poor soul. And well, teasing and irritating Ravi is like a everyday timepass.

Courses

Not very many, just 4 courses this semester. And most of them are not much into the technical side.

A perspective to Industry and Society - As the name suggests, this one is a pure philosophy subject, just write what you want in the answer sheet kind of subject. Most classes are just fun.

Introduction to Cognitive Science - Ok, no need to think it like a real course with some matter to mug up and all. Its like a discussion forum. The only constraint is the topic is chosen by the course outline. Rest of it is just the way you make it. We are divided into groups of 15 each and have group discussions on topics like human vision in 3D, illusions and stuff. Most of it is fun.

Middleware systems - This one is a great one. Real tech thingi involved, all Java, Corba, .NET, J2EE and stuff. We learn some really useful tools and concepts and well we have a project to do too. Will also learn Java in the process. Nice one it is.

Advanced topics in Graphics - This one is like a learning and experimentation based one. Most of it is related to OpenGL and GPU programming. Today was the first class, so can’t write much about it. Its going to be a great experience I think.

Projects

Eh, this is the area I am lagging. Too many projects have aggromerated (hope the usage is correct). The BTP, Mobile Blogger (4th sem project), Visual Tracking (5th sem honors project), Computer Vision course project, isn’t four enough? Hope I get to some serious work.

Fedora Core 5

Since long I have been getting irritated with Random Hangups and Freezes with FC5. I just upgraded the kernel from 2.6.16 to 2.6.17 and the hangups disappeared. It seems there was some problem in the kernel and its ATI drivers or something. The issue has been resolved in the newer version.

KDE 3.5.3

Upgraded to this new KDE after I reached college. Its simply awesome. You would say it has copied stuff from XP, but the konqueror with its metabar and the capability to play video previews (actually play the video as a preview, pause, ffwd, rew, stop) is great. It supports ALL formats supported by MPLAYER, i.e. MPEG, AVI, ASF, RM, RA, RAM, anything, you just name it and it plays. And the KBFX menu (with the normal K-menu is great), actually the button looks cool, hehe. Rest of it pretty much similar to 3.5.

Conclusion

GRE is my priority. Others are my projects. The courses are easy going so need not bother much. And well, my readers, sorry to keep you waiting…. please come back.

Ciao.

Wrapping up

So finally my days in Delhi (or rather Noida) have come to an end. Just another 3 days to go. The project work finally got completed. Though we kept thinking about improvements, but nothing seemed to make it any better. I completed documenting it in doxygen, commenting the code and also a general writeup about the whole thing. Since about two days, I’ve been looking for work to do. There is really nothing left now. I’ve to still keep coming to office for the next 3 days from 10 to 6.

Independent for the first time

Past two months have been great. Landing in a new city alone for the first time, looking for a place to live without dad to help me out, roaming in unknown places using maps, asking people around, etc. Then, in the middle came the big tension of being extravagent. So from 21st of May, I decided to write down every transaction and expenditure, be it as less as 1 INR. Now, not only do I have a log of the expenditures till 17 June, but also a log of the places I went to, where did I eat, from where to where did I travel and by what means. This log isn’t of much importance in the sense of money matters, but I’ll still go through it once to recall everything.

Places I visited

I saw some new places in Delhi. I had visited Delhi before this only once, and I remember to have visited India Gate and Qutub Minar. This time I went to see public places like Cannaught place, Palika Bazar, Metro, Lotus temple, India Gate, Appu ghar and Oysters park, PVR Priyas, PVR Spice, and CS Mall in Noida. I also went to a pub for the first time in my life, namely TGI Fridays and Aliens Foot. I also went to a disc for the first time in my life here. Its named RPM.

I didn’t go to

Well, even this time I didn’t see Delhi completely. I missed seeing Akhshardham temple, Gurgaon, Red fort, Chandni chauk, and whatever places I didn’t mention in the above list. I’ll come here soon. Lets see.

People I met

I met quite a number of new people in this place. One of them is my dear net friend, sms friend, phone friend and now a friend-in-person, Snopy aka Alvy. She is a nice girl, too bindaas and all. Sometimes forgets me for weeks in her careless attitude. But thats okay, shes expected to act dumb and careless hehe.

I came to know some students from IITs who are interns here. They are Sandeep and Rohit. Most of my interaction in this office has been confined to Sandeep since a few days. He is a nice simple guy with no worries in life. He can be naughty at times, and irritating. But he is nice. And well he is good at maths too. At least faster than me in algebra. He has been a great help in solving some of the complex equation which play a major role in my project.

I came to know Phanindra aka Phani. He is one of my seniors from IIIT and my project lead too. He is too nice and friendly to be called a project leader. He has been working on this project of mine as a partner rather. And its so easy to approach him, talk to him, roam around, eat bhuttas, sit adjacent in movies (company outing… movie: Fanaa). Nikhil keeps teasing him all the time, hehe. He is a great guy and I like him as well as respect him.

I met Piyush sir again. He is as he was, nice, friendly and with a great voice. Even here he is a bond and people approach him for tricky problems. Though I didn’t interact much on the project front, but he has been a help in some of the problems I faced.

I met another great guy called Gautam. Another Linux lover like me. Actually a pure linux user unlike me. He is also nice, friendly, casual, jovial natured. Sits right behind me and keeps talking about Linux and related stuff. He has suggested me to try out Gentoo. Lets see if I get my hands on it sometime. We also went to a movie together.

Though I didn’t meet Dipinder (whos the head here), but still all of us admire his communication skills and the way he makes everyone feel comfortable. It has been a nice experience to work with him. Also I met our HR manager, Miss Rakhi. She has been more like a school teacher, pushing small kids to work. But then now when I think about it, I can only smile about it.

Other people I came into contact, which were again employees of Kritikal are Tarun, NS sir, NT sir, Deepak sir, and others. They all have been nice and friendly too.

I didn’t meet

I didn’t meet the only person who knew me from back home in Delhi. That is Anurag bhaiya. He is one of our neighbours back home and works in Airtel here. He was supposed to be the first one to be contacted after landing in Delhi. But I haven’t met him yet, though we talked on phone as late as June! I haven’t ever seen him in my lifetime though.

What did I get

I got a new experience of being independent. I learnt how to manage money and maybe sometimes spending it mindlessly. I learnt how to bargain in Palika bazar. I learnt to be punctual, come on time, keep working during working hours and leave on time.

I understood some new concepts in opencv, doxygen and linux. I came to use NFS which I hadn’t seen anywhere in college. I learnt from Phani, how to plan and work, instead of working in any random direction.

Whats next?

Now, I am returning home on 1 July by Intercity express. I’ll reach there by 2nd noon. Then I’ll meet friends and family, fill up my GRE form, and leave for IIIT by 5th or so. I’ve to rebegin my Computer Vision project there. And I have to complete my J2ME project. I’ve to talk to Jawahar sir for leaving in the middle and restart work on the BTP too. Next semester is going to be light. Less subjects, less working days. I might be able to sneak out to home in the middle if the schedule is less busy. Lets see.

Conclusion

These days in Noida have been wonderful. Some of them were somewhere in the dreamworld. Some of them were sad and rude. But most have been good, full of energy, zeal to work, some fun days with friends, and what not. I am going to leave Noida in a happy note. Three cheers for Noida, Kritikal, these days and me.

Hip hip hurray !! Hip hip hurray !! Hip hip hurray !!

Ciao.

Live in reality

If we put on pink colored glasses, everything looks pink. If its just momentary, then we remember whats reality. But then, if we keep them on for like two days, we might start thinking that the world is pink. Its only when the rosy glasses come out that you see the reality. Its not that the reality is worse than the rosy world. There are more colors in the real world per say. So, there are advantages and disadvantages.

Last month, I sneaked out for a movie in office hours. I thought that all people have been so good to me. So no one will bother if I took a little break. But I had broken rules. Immediately the HR manager called me up and asked me to return. That day one of the rosy glasses got shattered. I came to the realities of working in a company. That day I was very angry with her, but then today I realize that its better to remain in senses that to go into the rosy world and then shatter it.

Every person is different in their own way. And everyone has a certain opinion towards you. Everyone has a degree of closeness to you, from either side. Everyone has some things which are their own. Some people come so close that there is nothing hidden. Whereas in some other cases, a person maintains a protective canopy around him/her so that we can’t go beyond it.

If we keep living with a world in which all people are very close to you, you expect that everyone of them will tell you everything. But we’re not some colgate packets made in bulk. Every human is designed in a unique way. Having high expectations, and having expectations beyond a limit can be really dangerous. Not only can it lead to quarrel but it will then shatter your rosy glasses. This time its not just removing them, but shattering them, so that the glass pieces pierce your eyes and blood starts dripping.

Maybe you’ll feel I am sad or angry. But I am actually relieved. I’ve managed to survive after something similar happened to me. And now, I swear I’ll never leave the reality. I’ll not fall for fancy looking words. I’ll stick to hard facts. I’ll live in this real world. Maybe its bad, harsh, rude or anything. Maybe there is loneliness, sadness, pain. But at least I know its for real.

Stateless and stateful

Mathematical functions are stateless. Something like sin (0) is 0, cos (0) is 1 and so on. Mathematics is such a pure mechanism that everything has an 'exact' proof. But most things in life aren't like that. Most things give different results at different times.

Try this out. Go and ask someone his name. The replies could go something like this.

Whats your name? Anurag.

Whats your name? Anurag.

Whats your name? (louder) Anurag.

Whats your name? Anurag Singh Rana.

Whats your name? (clearly one word at a time) Anurag Singh Rana.

Whats your name? are you mad? Buzz off.

Now try some maths.  Open your calculator.

2+2? 4

2+2? 4

2+2? 4

2+2? 4

2+2? 4

4 ….. till the battery is down ;) 

Anyways, this was to demonstrate that the state of a person/object plays an important role on how it reacts. Even in programs, an object of some class returns different values based on its state (namely the data members).

It is very necessary to understand the state of a person before you interact with him/her. Some people understand it well. And some others are more like stateless machines. They think that human behavior matters only because of 'big' events in life, like some calamity or some great success. They fail to notice the minor variations due to things as minute as a friendly glance.

But this state itself can be a problem sometimes. A bad mood can make a small problem look like a huge hurdle. It can make people take decisions as big as committing suicide. When one is busy in work, it doesn't matter if he is sad. Its because slowly he'll forget the problems and get involved in work. But when someone is alone, or missing someone, its a different story all together. He/she has nothing else to do but keep thinking. With a bad mood and empty mind, only negative thoughts accumulate. He/she fails to look at the good things happening in his/her life and begins to cry about the bad happenings and unfair things in life.

This pattern suggests that some part of every person is stateful and some part is stateless. Being completely stateless makes a person insensitive and hard. He might hurt people too often to remain popular. On the other hand, being completely driven by the current state can make a person take big decisions based on short-term problems. It might lead to depression, sadness, loneliness and what not.

A balance between both the characteristics of the person is the solution to these problems. I personally don't have any solution for them. I'd rather classify myself as too emotion driven. I lose control due to this, sometimes. I am still trying to overcome it. Its something like a war in my mind. And the enemy is also me. God save me!

Ciao. 

What do you need eyes for?

"If you loved me, you wouldn't care about my looks."

"Looks don't matter, what matters is the heart of the person."

"So, if I stop looking good, you'll stop loving me?"

On one side are words like these spoken by one set of people, and on the other are people who describe beautiful things. I don't know many sentences in support of the other set, but well, all that Windows XP boasts about is an all new LOOK. Everyone who is a little tech-savvy knows that its just Windows 2000 beneath. All this business of modelling, movies, media is about good looks. And then, the other side defends saying, "Dikhawo pe na jao, apni akal lagao".

But, if we think again, is everything which is beautiful, fake? Is there nothing like a real beauty? Can every human being be so purely in love that the looks wont matter at all? And those who think that one of the conditions to love something or someone is that they should look good donot 'actually' love it/him/her. Well, I don't support such a thought.

As far as I know, more than 50% of the brain processing is done for the vision system. Why? Just because god thought it'd be great to do so? Or maybe visual data is too much or something? A more convincing answer is that visual perception is the most effective way of getting information. Even imagining or understanding is a synonym of 'visualizing'. And still people think that visual appearance is not the way to like or love people.

One of the reasons people give about not judging people by looks is that looks aren't in control of the person. But then, thats just the bone structure, height and tissues, complexion. There are a lot of other things that make up looks. The hair, a clean face, the clothing, the freshness, etc, etc. All these are very much under human control. And with plastic surgery and dental science, even the facial structure.

The other reason people give is that when we love someone, we love the person and not his appearance. But then what are the ways you can communicate or get in touch with a person? Touch, voice and vision. People keep saying about its important how someone touches you, or talks to you. Why not how someone looks to you, or looks at you? Gestures which are just 'visible' also form a great amount of interaction between persons. For example, the traffic policeman does gestures with his arms to signal things to you.

If something looks good, like a car or a computer, it can become the only reason why you end up buying it. Are persons less important than these products that we donot use the visual information while judging people? I strongly support the notion that looks do matter and are a very very big factor in human interaction.

And we have very good examples too. What do we see when we are looking in a matrimonial site? Don't we first see the photo than seeing the other details? All the community search engines provide a button "look for profiles with photos only", why?

If someone changes the way he/she talks, and begins being rude, we could stop interaction with the person. If someone touches you harshly and hurts you, you might get annoyed with that person. But if the same person dresses shabbily in front of you, or stops looking good, it is assumed that we wont change our attitude. Why? There is no reason why a person, be it a husband/wife or a boyfriend/girlfriend or even a father/son should like the other person in the same way as he/she looked before. Just like the way a person talks to you 'everytime' matters, the way a person touches you 'everytime' matters, the way people look to you 'everytime' should and does matter too.

My first salary

It has been a nice week althrough and supposedly going to be a great weekend too. I've got my 'mid term presentation' tomorrow afternoon at 3 PM. Some professors from IIT Delhi are going to witness it. I am kind of nervous too, though my ppt is almost complete. We're going out to see 'Fanaa' as a monthly outing of the company. We'll be leaving shortly for the movie.

At about 1:30 PM, there was a loud noise in this building and the power supply unit stopped functioning. I hadn't completed my ppt and was least expecting a powercut. The HR manager asked us to go 'off' as in, leave for the day. I was happy and sad both. We were just leaving when she called 'bacchon.. idhar aao…', as if asking some kids to take away some chocolates. And then with a mild smile she told us that we are going to get our salary. My first formal salary in a 'real' company. Wow! I wasn't that thrilled, but then I signed the document and held the check of 8000 INR. I called up mom and dad, and dad congratulated me. Then I called up Tanu too and shared the good news. It feels great to have earned my first ever pieces of currency. Thank you god for letting me live and feel this day. Nikhil also got his salary along with others.

Three cheers for us. Hip hip hurray! Hip hip hurray! Hip hip hurray ;) 

I am preparing for the presentation, and will be leaving for the movie in a couple of hours. You have a nice evening and also the weekend to follow. Wish me luck. Ciao.

Lets think about Reservations

I am not here to present a new concept or what I think. Actually, I haven't given it a thought ever. So I am here to battle out the issue in my mind. The issue is not other than 'reservations'. Please don't scold me if I write childishly, please don't say that I am a fool or something, and please don't tell me that I am contradicting my words if I say something else later. This post is completely based on the thoughts that come along 'during' the time I am typing here.

The Backward Classes (BC) have been long exploited by the upper classes. Ranta sir gives a detailed time-line about the history of reservations in India. Reservations these days have become like a pain in the lives of people of the 'general category'. Everywhere, the number of seats for the GC is slashed down by the 'reserved seats'.

When I did my AIEEE counselling, many of the NITs (National Institute of Technology) had something like 1-2 seats for 'Madhya Pradesh students'. Out of the 1-2 seats, 1 was reserved. As a result, some of the colleges didn't even have a seat for me (a GC MP student). But another issue is, does it completely hamper my career? I did get admission in another college where there were enough seats (actually 0% reservation to be precise).

What 'good' was obtained out of reserving seats for BC students? Many of the parents who were hoping that their son/daughter will get through AIEEE but couldn't make it into the high ranks could actually go in and become an engineer. Maybe in some colleges, there is a relaxed passing criterion for BC students. Finally, some company comes and recruits the students. Obviously the company will take the 'high ranking meritorious students'. As a result, the so-called 'BC software engineer' with a degree too remains unemployed. He is a little less capable, maybe. He might get a job, but that too in a smaller place where his skills are enough to do the job.

Now, in the new scenario, 49.5 % of the students will be from the BC. At this point, we should not stereotype BC = less capable. Even a BC student can be a genius and a general student can be a duffer. But the cause of the stereotyping is the fact that the GC student has no choice but to face the competition among millions of others while the BC student 'has a easier way out too'. We are told the story of a cocoon in childhood or somewhere. If the butterfly doesn't struggle and break the cocoon to come out, and someone else just helps her open it up, her muscles don't get enough strength and it doesn't achieve the capability to fly. In a similar way, this 'reservation system' is crippling the BC students by giving them perks.

The government, as you all know, has also chosen to ask the industries to create some criterion of reservation for BC graduates for recruitment in the same. As a result, 49.5% of the employees of all companies will be from BC. Though those who face the actual competition will be as good as the GC people, the 'crippled' ones will help create chaos in the companies too. Bad economy, bad productivity, higher prices and so on will be some of the consequences as I see them.

Some news channel was showing us the condition of the BC people in India (Mumbai to be precise). It says that these people continue to do the downtrodden jobs just for the sake of getting a quarter to live in. As a result, some people left other good jobs and became sweepers in the municipality. Their job hasn't changed, just that now it has become a government job from being a forced occupation. How will reservation help those kind of BC people? They will not even know what IIT or IIM is. The reservation quota will keep depriving GC students for the sake of those BC people who aren't even aware of their rights.

As discussed in the above paragraphs, I feel that a BC student needs to be given encouragement and help at the lower levels of education, when the foundations of his academic career are being grounded. After that, he should be left into the open competition, to struggle and fail or succeed, but finally at the end of the day live like a self-made eligible capable Indian citizen. So, at the end of all the thought process, I think I support 'anti-reservation' at the level of 'higher studies and employment' but I strongly support reservations, benefits and perks to all BC people at the foundation levels of education. And I also advocate a re-evaluation of the list of BC people of India. Rather than keeping it caste-wise, make it income-wise.

Hope you didn't get bored. I might change my views tomorrow, don't expect anything from me. Ciao. 

I hate “The Da Vinci Code”

The movie

Big banner, big publicity, big controversy and for me, a big failure. Yes, yesterday night I saw the much awaited, sure-shot success movie The Da Vinci Code. I hadn't read the book. Some of the parts were quite understandable and nice. But then, as time passed, it failed to generate interest to continue watching it. The whole thing boiled down to a man getting killed and passing a secret Grail to his grand-daughter. And as usual, some evil/hidden elements trying to stop her and kill her in this whole drama. Even Tom Hanks failed to infuse any life in the movie. I confess (and its not an exaggeration) that I slept (deep in sleep) for the last 30 minutes of the movie, waken up only by the roar of people getting up and leaving. Nikhil said that it is better and more understandable for those who read the book. My suggestion, either watch X Men III or read the book word by word and then only dare to see this movie.

Missing IIIT

I am missing my college like anything. In the first year when I arrived, it was like I left my school, oh my great school. The college was some alien place which I thought I could never belong to. But, after these 3 years of living there, am really attached to the place, and all my friends and other people there. Every morning I come to office and see that Hyderabad is cooler than New Delhi. This makes me more and more tempted to go there. Hope that day comes soon.

Grades

Amazingly my grades have been nice in the past couple of semesters. Most subjects like PR, DIP, Networks, MoMM, Compilers and so on have shown nice results and I am very happy about it. Hope I get good grades in the projects which I took in those semesters. I am returning to Indore on 1st July by Intercity Express. I'll be reaching Hyderabad on 5th evening.

GRE fever

I badly want to prepare for GRE but I am not getting the mood and the time to do so. The available dates for GRE are 22nd, 23rd and 25th of August and all days from Monday to Thursday in the month of September. My mid-semester examination will also be beginning on 28th of August. I am really confused about which date to choose. I also need to find out whether I can give it once or twice. After October, the course of GRE is being changed. As a result, I need to attempt it before that. Lets see what happens. Anyone knows if we attempt it twice, do we get the score as the maximum of the two or the average of the two? A lot of decisions depend on the answer to this question.

At present, I am working in the company. I have a presentation on 2nd June. Hopefully I'll finish work by then. Wish me luck. Have a nice day!

Ciao.

Noida and me

Actually there is nothing to write today and as some people mentioned, you shouldn't write when you have nothing to write about. But then, its all your fault, yes, YOUR fault. Today, the hit count dropped to 50 and I got worried, lol. Finally, I've decided to write this post, which contains almost no content. Read it if you still care to.

Noida

Now that I am writing about nothing, let begin with Noida. How does Noida look like, what is the whole thing about, how are the people, etc. Well, I haven't roamed a lot in this place, but still. Noida is basically a city very close to Delhi. You just need to cross Yamuna river (and change of state from Delhi to UP), and you are in Noida. Its about 40 mins by bus from Hazrat Nizamuddin station and about 100 mins from Connought place. The whole place is like a big developed city with clean broad roads and loads of traffic, offices, company buildings, malls, gardens, and I heard there is a stadium too.

Every colony in this place is called a sector and each one is not very big. I mean, sectors change at each crossing, so basically you can say every small part of the city is one sector. Generally people travel by 'Cycle Rickshaws' to go across sectors and use the bus for going to Delhi. I personally feel Rickshaws are a great help to the environment friendlyness and give employment to a huge bunch of people who ride these rickshaws to earn the