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Its been quite long since I wrote anything in this diary, not that I didn’t want to. Actually, while walking, talking, thinking,.. words kept on coming in my mind, to-be-written in this blog, but now I don’t remember anything.

The most recent things that have happened in my life are, that dad visited me, in my college, day before. It was a short stay of about 30 hours. I was also somewhat busy with classes and assignments. Anyways, I am going home soon, so its okay.

Dad got me a new cell. Actually we were just sitting and talking, when I suddenly demanded a cell. When Ashish also asked him to get me a cell, he got me one. It was a long battle trying to buy the cell. First of all, its almost impossible to find a Punjab National Bank ATM in Hyderabad. Anyways, finally, we got a Nokia 3220 for me. 640×480 camera, with video, about 3.5 MB of memory. The best thing is the dancing lights around the cell. I just love the cell, except for some functionality buttons, which are difficult to operate.

End semester exams are approaching soon, 7th November is the first one, and as usual, I haven’t begun. Hopefully, I’ll do the Sri Ganesh today, hehe. The DIP and PR projects are kind of bugging me. There is only 7 days to end sems, and if they are not done, I might have to cancel my tour to home. Lets see what happens.

Prof. Govindrajulu got a really bad feedback from our class, which was a little obvious. But people were a little too harsh on him. I think he felt bad about it. Anyways, I guess he’s old enough to not be affected by such small things. And, what I think is, that he should try to change some of his ideals to fulfil the need of the hour.

I guess there is nothing else to write. Lets hope I am able to go home. And wish me luck for exams.

I am Windows 2000!!

Which OStan are you?

You are Windows 2000 Professional Edition. You are the most stable and reliable of all the Windows girls. Of course, since your main comparison is with ME, that’s not saying much. You’re popular with some, but you’re being replaced with XP. You often help take care of your sister ME.

How much relevant is this?

We’ve been having talks about the relevance of this project. There is this “Redhat Scholarships”, and we had thought of doing this one for this scholarship.

Analysing the requirement of this project, we see, what all it will “actually” add.

* I wont be required to install a few media players manually.
* I will have one more icon to start XMMS for me, heh.
* It will possibly install all other softwares I need!

Lets look into it this way.
* How many softwares are actually provided in palatable form such as RPM or SRC RPM or even an easily compilable source?
* How many times does it happen that we can install a software flawlessly, and flawlessly on more than one system with the same procedure?
* How many people will actually consider installing it for installing media players for them, which are in some way, easily installable?
* How will it do any better than YUM?
* How many softwares does Fedora lack? (its almost a complete solution for everything)

With the current state, its not possible to frame a really convincing “Requirements list”. We will wait for more ideas to pour in, and begin only when the relevance of the project is proved.

Firefox :bypass proxy for 172.*.*.* solved!

In our network, we wish to bypass the proxy server for IP addresses like 172.16.*.* and 172.17.*.*, oops… this doesn’t work in Firefox! Anyways, its not a great discovery, but, from somewhere I came to know the notation to be used for FIREFOX!

This is how you write it.

172.16.*.* … means first two fields are fixed. First 2 …. so do … 2 x 8 = 16.

write … 172.16.0.0/16

and if you want 172.*.*.* … 1 x 8 = 8

write 172.0.0.0/8

Simple! It just works. Cheers.

Midsem 2 : Day Three

Well, there is no post for ‘Day Two’, which obviously means there was no time with me to blog. After I finished up my PR paper, yesterday, I was in a die or die situation. With three papers to prepare for, for today, I had no solution to this problem.

Today I had “CS4750 : Digital Image Processing” “CS3150 : POPL” and “hindi literature”.

I took DIP and Hindi complacently as both had easy syllabi and I had studied them before (read as DURING CLASSES!!). POPL was one subject, which I even forgot the fullform of. The course was HUGE, and really ununderstandable. It was interesting, which means you wont get bored if you read the content, but learning a new PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE, in two days, is not a joke. Besides all this, was the examination fever, building up, which hindered the “learning process” even more.

I somehow managed to revise DIP (most of it), till about 7 PM, and then kept on reading, trying to understand, the all new language, OZ. The whole POPL course basically revolves around OZ. Though OZ is a really nice and powerful language, its syntax and concepts are really itchy.
(Think of calling functions as {Function A} instead of Function(A); )

I slept at 3:30 AM, in the hope that I will somehow make it to the examination hall at least before the time ends. I got up at around 5:30 AM, which accounts to less than 3 hours of sleep. DIP is the subject I love. So, its never painful to read, explain, understand, discuss it. I got ready in time, and gave the DIP paper, which went pretty cool.

Now was the test, test of my patience, memory, intelligence, and what not. Three hours for the POPL paper and then just an hour gap for Hindi. Finally, in the scheduling algorithm, Hindi won! I read some chapters of Hindi, actually the ones which were really huge and the ones I never ever read. This gave me some confidence of strategic superiority over those who hadn’t done them.

Then, in the last two hours, I slogged, fought for life, discussed, read and read again, till I got some meagre percentage of the whole data into my head. I reached the examination hall about 5 minutes late. Unexpectedly, the POPL paper was not something out of the world. As time progressed, it seemed more and more conventional than something wierd and new. I attempted a ‘respectable’ part of the paper, wrote whatever I knew, could recall (some part was recalled as “images” instead “information”, which means I just made the exact shapes/sentences/expressions/functions like those made in the book, so that I get marks). After I was satisfied, I left, with half an hour to spare.

When I was returning, a sense of happiness surrounded me, some kind of triumph over the challenge that was put before me. Though the Hindi paper is just an hour away, I am much more happy, and confident than I was a couple of hours ago. Lets hope I do it well too.

Wish me Luck!

@ Comment.
Yeah, sure I’ll try to explain about the Hindi literature course in the next post.

Midsem 2 : Day One

I don’t generally write the title of the post when beginning to write it, but today, I know I am writing about, you know what!

The first day in Midsem 2 was supposed to be cool and easy, because the two courses “CS3155 : Compilers” and “CS3350 : Computer Networks” had really small syllabi and were expected to be easy.

I woke up early on Sunday morning, in the worry of revising all the left over courses as well as these two. Quite comfortably, I was able to finish with them, and also teach half a dozen others in the process. I had decided to get up early in the morning to do a final revision, but then, I was lazy enough to keep sleeping.

Morning 11, it was the compilers paper, which was quite simple, small and straightforward, except …. the last question. Actually there were only 3, and out of that I got stuck on the last one! Yacc, that was THE topic which I hadn’t studied well, and oh my god, straight away ‘8 out of 20′ marks going away! I somehow struggled to get these precious marks back, and wrote some crap in the process. I wrote an answer and then cut it, and then repeat! I am sure the evaluator will have a tough time to find out where the actual answer is.

There was a gap of six hours before the Networks exam, and I was waguely confident about the subject content. So, I was complacently wasting time till about 2 PM. Then, circumstances and the people demanded me to study, or at least explain the course content to my so-called students. After this tiring job of explaining things to totally confused people (who seldom bother to pay heed to the teacher during classes), I gave myself a break. I speedily ran through the book once more, to make sure I was not missing out anything.

Finally, it came. Such an easy paper, 10 questions, all non intuitive, non intelligent, non tricky, just simple essay questions. I wrote whatever came to my mind regarding each of them, and maybe much much more than was ever required, still sparing 45 minutes. I finished the 90 minute paper in 45 minutes!

After this big relief of completing two papers out of the six, I felt a bit relaxed. In the process of “a bit relaxing”, I wasted time upto something like nine PM. I somehow opened the book and slept over it. Which book? Obviously, Pattern Recognition. I have a PR paper tomorrow morning, at 11, rather today.

“CS4770 : Pattern Recognition Systems”, its basically a nice course, and Prof. PJN teaches it perfectly. Its good to listen to, and understand in the class. But when it comes to collecting all the information and really answering something, its a real mess. I mean, the course is not huge, but its so … mathematical, for a start, and then… there are things like similar sounding terms and similar algorithms, one almost mixes the whole thing to create a hotch-potch.

I couldn’t gain any conciousness till about 1 AM. I somehow picked myself up, and dragged the body to reach Amit’s room. We went to the canteen for a ‘walk’. I helped myself with a really strong coffee. With all the caffeine in my blood, now, I am quite awake and wasting time, reading and writing blogs. Sooner I get back to senses and start studying, the better it’d be!

PS: Devansh wrote a really good “testimonial” for me. You can view it here. The description is quite nice, actually too good for me to fit in it. Anyways, I am thankful to him for writing it. Maybe I’ll write him one too, though I am really lazy and I really suck at describing things.

Wish me luck!

Exams : I am too busy

Its seriously not possible to keep blogging while my blog is open for the public, somehow the best in me comes out when I am hidden from the world. Its not in favour of the world, but then, its their fate, hehe. Anyways, still I am continuing with it.

Life is fine here, kind of hasty due to the exams that are just two days away. I feel that its more of the hype created by the students than the real pressure. I mean, come on, the syllabi are not too big, or complex, except for a few exceptions, but then there is a hell lot of time too.

I’ve been reading PR for like 3 days now, a little more than is required I guess, and a little bit of DIP, Networks and POPL. Well, I am not afraid of any of these, but I want to finish within time. Its just 7 AM now, and I have this whole day minus 5 hours, and the whole day of tomorrow too. I have to study some part of DIP, the whole of Compilers, the whole of Networks and POPL, the left over of PR and an overview of Hindi. Lets sum it up..

DIP - 1.5 Hrs Approx. - 2 Max.
Compilers - Don’t know - Don’t know - Lets say 5 hours.
Networks - 1.5 Hrs Approx. - 2 Max.
POPL - 2 Hrs Approx - 3 Max.
PR - 1 Hr Approx - 1.5 Max.
Hindi - Leisure time - Leisure time - something around 2 Hrs.

Summing it up, I get 1.5 + 5 + 1.5 + 2 + 1 + 2 = 13 Hours. Approx.
and 2 + 5 + 2 + 3 + 1.5 + 2 = 16 Hours max.

And I need more time to study the subjects of tomorrow, that is Compilers and Networks, which will take around 3 + 3 = 6 hours. In all, I’d be required to study for about 19 to 22 hours within the next 48 hours. A big percentage I would say, lets see how am I able to cope with it.

Rest is fine. I haven’t recharged my cell, and which apparently is causing a lot of “problems” for Riyanca and Tanu. Well, there is no reason why there should be any. I mean, I am not Lata Mangeshkar, and if you talk of communication, we are chatting almost daily, so shouldn’t be any problem. And I am going to NOT RECHARGE for another, lets say, 15 days. Actually the card will expire in 3 months and so I have all the time in life. Mom and Dad also want me to recharge, which is explainable, but then, I’ll somehow convince them to talk to me via my friends’ phones.

Nothing else is happening here, as you already know, I am too busy for the next 48 hours, and even after that. Wish me luck!