Yesterday

What a busy day was yesterday! Its aftermaths can be felt by me even today. There were no classes as such yesterday, happy Ugadi/Gudi padwa to everyone! I really don't know much about this new year, all I know is that we get to eat nice dishes when we're at home. Unfortunately, we're not.

Anyways, so yesterday I had to complete and submit the postponed BTP progress report 3. The day began lazily at about 10 AM, thanks to the late night random browsing. I somehow couldn't get into a mood to work. I just kept on trying to begin, but in vain. Finally, at 3:00 PM, I decided to take brunch in the canteen, and took a few blank sheets with me. Amazingly the mild breeze and the clear skies helped my thoughts flow and I was done with a rough draft of the report on paper (first time ever have I written a rough draft on paper, generally its all electronic). It was soon typed down and modified to complete the report.

I submitted the report and asked Neeraj and Meghna to accompany me for jogging. It was almost eight when I ended the exercises, and collapsed in the canteen. Literally collapsed. I was really really really tired, had some juice and back to the hostel. I had a Computer Vision test at 9:30 PM, and I hadn't begun studying. Even then, I decided to take a shower first. I began reading at 8:45 PM, not panicking basically, but I couldn't grasp a lot in the short span (others were preparing since post lunch!).

As soon as I saw the paper, I said to myself that I'm screwed. I was reading the first question and the book (the test was open book!) for about 30 minutes or so, and couldn't figure out a thing. The second question was easy and mechnical, everyone did it. The last (4th) question was more of creativity and imagination, so I thought about some wierd imaginative solution and scribbled it down. Finally, I came to the third question, and it was then that suddenly mom called. Oops! In the middle of the exam. I cancelled it. Then Riya called. Oops again! I figured out some solution from the book, wrote an answer and was about to leave. Sukesh asked me which direction to move in, so I told him the pages to read to get to the answer. Then I left the place.

I was damn hungry at that time. I called up Riya and told her that she could come online if she wants to talk. I, first reached the canteen to eat something (basically the first 'solid' that I would consume in the whole day). Riya got her code, but it required a C drive and MS Access! Where the hell will I get a C drive in Linux? And what about MS Access. So, we decided to skip running her code, and I just explained her the parts by reading, understanding, explaining. I was quite impressed with the whole code, it was nothing but a new chat application server which had all features required to talk 'securely' over LAN. We could even deploy it in IIIT.

The night was bad, I didn't sleep very well, and had to get up early for the SE class. I have to submit the DIP project report by afternoon, and I haven't begun. Hope my mood swings come under control. Anyways, sorry to all those who were expecting a 'thoughtful' post. Today, no thoughts are coming in my head, I am just kind of blank, and I thought recollecting the past day would help me.

Have a nice day! Ciao. 

Dependence

How good or bad is it to be dependent on someone for something? We all are in some way dependent on people and things. If I didn't have a PC, I couldn't have blogged at 5 AM, so I am dependent on my PC. If this PC didn't have a wireless card, it couldn't have connected to the college network, if there was no power, neither the PC nor the wireless card would have been of use, and so on.

Basically if we look in this world, we will find that there are millions of examples of dependencies. Even the RPM system (those who know of it) and the DEB system is nothing but a logical ordering of dependencies of software entities. But to 'ease' the dependence or rather 'reduce the risk' due to some dependency, there are 'alternatives'. If it were not a wireless card, I could as well get a RConnect or a wired LAN card to get the same end-result. Alternatives generally help us overcome the absence or unavailability of things we depend upon.

One of the peculiar dependencies is 'human dependecies'. I am not talking about someone waiting for some favour from someone, which could be as well counted into 'materialistic dependence', but rather on a more 'emotional and spiritual' side of it. How risky is it when someone depends upon some other person emotionally? Say for example a wife depending upon her husband. What if the husband leaves her or dies? What will help the wife resurrect herself from the loss then? Obviously a husband cannot have alternatives. Maybe that time the family members can help.

Now lets take another example. Two friends. How much does emotional dependence in friendship affect? What happens when your friend doesn't care anymore or leaves you? In case of normal friends, its generally not even felt, and we say, let him go, as if he was the only one. In case of closer friends, we might feel the pain, but then our 'other close friends' help us come out of the situation. What if that friend was the bestest of the best? What if he was irreplaceable? How does one recover from the loss then? No one else would be even close to understanding how you feel. They wont even know you very well. Whom can you tell then?

Well, loss of a better half and loss of a best friend are seemingly related but still a little different as far as I think. When you lose your better half and you still have a best friend, you can still survive. What if your best friend leaves you? Then there is no alternative. Even if you have a hubby, he/she wont understand how you feel. He/she would even expect him/her to be the most important person in your life and the loss of a friend and your remorse over it might as well annoy them. How do you handle the loss when your hubby too leaves you? And what if the hubby and the best friend are the same person?

Anyways, coming back, what can a person do to reduce risk? Is there a checklist for it? How about me coming up with one. Some of the points might look funny, meaningless, but still here it is.

• don't assume things, see what is visible rather than seeing what you want to see. What I want to say is that most people start depending upon someone even if the other person doesn't know. In such cases, he/she may leave you and you might repent later. So you should not get involved more than what the other person is ready to.
• don't be a closed book, share with everyone. When people have just one best friend whom they tell everything, on his/her loss, you have no one to talk to. This risky situation can be avoided by having information transparency. Till its possible, keep the information about you very very public. That ways people will know you in general, and anyone of them can support you in the situation of loss with just some little extra effort.
• become self reliant. There will always be a heart that will beat for you till the end of life. Whose? Your own duffer. You can never lose yourself (as far as I know). So try to be independent, independent in thoughts, emotions, actions, decisions, etc.
• have a backup plan. We, software engineers, are always taught to take backup of our essential data as soon as we make changes or anything. If software can be treated with such importance, why not your own life? Don't get very sadistic, but still remember that things can go wrong and prepare for it, have alternatives and backup plans. (How about a post marital affair as backup for the better half? That ways its not cheating na? ;))
• become stronger from within. What if there is no alternative? What if there is no recovery mechanism either? If you are too weak, you'd just shatter down to pieces. Have a minimum amount of tolerance level. Even if things go wrong, even if there is no way out, keep your cool. Generally this is the harder part. Some people keep cool by not even thinking about the issue. I prefer battling it out completely in my mind, so that there is no issue left at all.
• think fast, accurate and practical. When you go and bargain in some big pirated goods market, you think fast. Everyone wants the maximum profit at the minimum expense, the one who thinks faster and more accurate is one the who remains happy. Why can't we apply it here? In the twenty first century, I am not saying that there is no room for emotions, but being practical helps. That ways, a lot of emotional dependencies lose meaning. Though this would be the complete emotional failure of the human being, but then, it will help him/her come out of the pain, faster.

I guess more ideas can be added to this list. Some of them might even need to be removed. Everything is debatable, as its not a set of facts, but a particular stand on the whole issue. I just have a vague feeling that the post has somewhat less meaning, and some people might even react like, 'duh, what the hell is this man?'. For them, 'sorry to disappoint you man' is my answer.

Its just 5 AM here, and I have a very busy day ahead. YOU have a nice day! Ciao.

Technology

Modern technology keeps bringing newer innovations each day. With the great amount of weapons of mass destruction, it makes our lives less secure each day. For this, science has been condemned since long, and has been seen as evil and destructive.

Humans have a tendency to look at the darker side more. They see a small black spot more than the rest of the clean white paper. It is then that technology shows us how it made things possible, made them easy to do, made it safer, faster, efficient, accurate and what not.

Yesterday, Bhanu wanted to have an eye test. In my memory was the painful eye drops to dilate the pupil so that the person can get a clear view of the internals of the eye. Generally this liquid which is poured causes a lot of pain, and with the dilated pupil, the person cannot open his/her eyes, because of the immense amount of light entering the eye. (Pupil is basically the opening in the black part of your eye through which light enters and strikes the eye lens to form an image on the retina)

With this greatly risky situation, it is generally not advised to trust anyone with all this. So, we were looking for a 'trustable' optician. When finally, we went to one of them, it went like this. He just put Bhanu's head between the edges of a small machine. Through that machine, he could see a very enlarged image of her eye. He did some kind of operations on the device, and came with some output. I am really not interested in the output or something, what I am saying is, now there IS a device which 'automatically dilates the pupil' and takes images. The advantage is that we need not pour anything in the eye and the eye gets normal as soon as the test ends. I was happy to see that technology had made a difference in our lives.

Coming back to senses, I was very busy yesterday. I went out at about 4 PM to do shopping for the robotics project, along with the list of items our friends had given us. Bhanu and I went out to actually do the work. She was so tired of all the walking, and we occasionally took auto-rickshaws even when it was unnecessary. Finally on the return, we bought 7 litres of 'whole milk' for Devansh. I don't know how does he manage to drink so much, but man, 7 litres. Actually he had asked for 10!

The night was boring as usual, I fought with Riya too. I guess I just get unnecessarily pissed on her. I don't know what happens to me, what ever she does, I just become angry, spoil the mood and then tell her to leave. I have promised her to be better from now on. Lets see.

Today I have to submit my BTP progress report 3. There is little progress because of the abstract state in which the project is. I'll get ready asap and then ask Jawahar sir to guide me about it. Hopefully he wont get angry that the work done is not up-to the mark. Even I feel it, but then I have other commitments too.

Have a nice day! Ciao.

Bored

Nothing to do and such a bugged up feeling in my head, its one of the worse nights of March. Its like 3 AM now, and I'm still sitting and doing nothing. Literally NOTHING. I was reading a couple of blogs here and there, then shifted to seeing all those forwards in my gmail account which I never cared to even read the subject of. I tried seeing 'Kalyug' for the zillionth time, I tried refreshing my blog stats to see if someone has commented or something, I tried listening to music and what not.

My bed is all covered with clothes, basically all washed and pressed. I am so lazy to pick them up and lie down that am not leaving this chair. The cooler has no water and my fan is also not working. Its not that hot though, but still its not very comfortable. And I am lazy enough to keep living in this state. There is a little headache too, I wish there was someone here who could help me out. Not do my work, but just sit and talk till I do the work, some company is basically what I need.

Why am I not sleeping?  My bed is not empty, remember? Why can't I clean it? I need company, remember? Oops, am in a deadlock. So basically am just whining about everything without doing anything. That ways, I should take inspiration from Dad. He's always so inspiring, especially this fits here so well,

Udhyamen hee sidhyanti karyadee naa manorathe, na hee suptasya sihasya (some words missing) mukhe mrigaha. 

It means, only hard work can accomplish tasks and not day dreams, just like a deer doesn't go into a sleeping lions mouth (without any hard work by the lion).

Wow, am starting to get motivated! No guys, how can I turn you all down? I'll not work, I'll not work, hehe. Okay fine, will do it as soon as am done with this post.

But thats not the end yaar. That will just create a clean setup to sleep. But am not sleepy remember? What to do? I am really tired though but still not sleepy. I wanted to talk to someone, anyone, but there is no one here. No girl, no guy (no gay! :P). Everyone is busy, seems I have to begin working too, remaining empty headed is the problem.

Well, the problem is my project. It has come into a state where I have to stop coding and come up with a new design. And thats what I don't like. Its like create documents and all those formalities. Though the professor must be expecting a lot, but then I am not feeling motivated enough to think and come up with a good design. And when I think about it with less effort, I come up with such a trivial design that I just discard it. I want to go home on 15th April. But, seems this project would not end then.

Even Tanu has her final exams from 15th. And then she'd leave for internships in May. If I don't go in April, one of the things that will happen is that I'd meet her in July or December instead of April, long time na? Hope that I work and finish up work and that Jawahar sir allows me to go home in April for a few days. Actually even I am quite interested in the project and very very very eager to see it work. But I need to meet some friends, Taps, Prerna, Tanu, Ullu in April. Besides its Pinky didi marriage in April and well, I can't miss that anyway! Wow, just completely forgot about her marriage in the midst of all this tension, blogging really helps!

Anyways, hope that tomorrow is a nice day. Its sure to begin with me getting up at 8 AM, rushing to SE class, sleeping there and then coming back. I didn't go for buying Robotics project spare parts, all because of the lazy bum Bhanu ;). Anyways, will leave for shopping at 2 PM sharp, hopefully. Well, its too sunny then, but its okay, I am despo to eat Gokul Chat, lol.

Will clean up my room now, haath mein ek jhaadu hai, ganda sa room hai aur main hoon!
 

Just got up

Good morning everyone. I just got up, not that I slept late or something, but still. Yesterday night, again due to some reasons, 204 server disconnected from the internet. I hate it when that happens. I mean, at least in IIIT, my life revolves around the internet. And its so frustrating to see error messages saying 'unable to connect'. Anyways, its up and running today, good for me.

I've to restart work on my robotics project today, buy some spare parts, join them together and make it work. It works a lot though, we had to make a stair climbing robot with obstacle avoidance. It climbs stairs but doesn't avoid obstacles, it just madly runs, hehe. Now, we're planning to put some Infra-Red sensors to make it avoid obstacles, using some complex circuit. I really don't know anything about the circuit, will have to read and make. I could say that I've some experience in soldering from my school, but that'll hardly be an advantage. Lets hope it works, or else we'll have to write its 'shortcomings' as 'features', and show.

The tv.iiit.ac.in server is down since a couple of days. Its not that I am liking it, but there is no alternative. We want to make two TV cards work from the same connection, so that the other can be used for CVIT purposes, but then, two cards from one connection makes it degrade the connection so much that its impossible to get a clear reception. We'll be calling the cable guy and electrician to fix the same. Hopefully it'll work soon.

Yesterday, after posting the poem, I didn't expect such a great response. I thought there'll be some person to say that it is so bad and childish. Anyways, thanks to everyone for appreciating and thanks to Sukesh, Paggi and Nidhi for adding a few lines to it. You guys are much much better than me, really. I mean, Sukesh's part just added the 'hope' that was missing in it, Paggi just killed the real theme and took it in a new direction and Nidhi, wow! She took the sea beach scene to the city, lol.

There are no classes today, I've to go out for shopping for Robotics. Lets hope this day is good. Have a nice day!

Ciao.

Poem: Sagar ka kinara hai, ek kashti hai aur main hoon.

I wrote a poem on 24th March. It wasn't for anyone to read, but then lets see, I'll put it up. Mud says the 'meter' is wrong, I didn't even know whats that. The poem isn't great anyway, and might not even have a consistant meaning. It might not even have a meaning at all. But in any case, here it is. My first poem in 2006.

 

Sagar ka kinara hai, ek kashti hai aur main hoon,
Saamne hai ek doobta sooraj,
Ek bhayavah see kaalima jaise sabkuch apne andhkar mein dubone lagi hai,
Mein is dardnaak ant ko rokna chahata hoon, lekin mere bas mein kya hai,
Mein to tat ki ret ke samaan ek nirbal vastu bhar hoon,
Sagar ka kinara hai, ek kashti hai aur main hoon.

Kashti mein mera meet hai, mera humdum hai,
Kaalima to sab kuch duba degi, sooraj bhee, ret bhee, kashti bhee,
Main ek mook darshak bhar hee to hoon,
Main apni is bebasee par has bhee to nahi sakta, na ro sakta hoon,
Sagar ka kinara hai, ek kashti hai aur main hoon.

Humdum se naraaz hoon main, kyon gaya vo kashti lekar akela,
Maine kab kaha tha ki main uska saath chhod doonga,
Main to bas kuch pal reteele manzar ka maza lene gaya tha,
Kyon usne mera intezaar nahi kiya,
Ab mujhse poochta hai ki meri naraazgee ka karan kya hai,
Yeh meri bebasee hee to narazgee bankar hoton par mandaraa rahee hai,
Mera humdum mera hai, main usey takleef mein nahi dekh sakta,
Par main kaalima ko bhee to nahi rok sakta,
Sagar ka kinara hai, ek kashti hai aur main hoon.

Mere humdum ki kashti chalee gayi,
Neele samandar mein ojhal ho gayi,
Main aaj bhee intezaar mein hoon uske,
Kaalima ko guzare to zamana ho gaya, par mera man mere humdum kee raah tak raha hai,
Ek chhoti see bacchi mujhe bula rahee hai,
Lekin main isi aas mein hoon ki kaheen koi kashti mein mera humdum ho,
Shayad jo saamne deekh padhti kashti usey lekar aa rahee hai,
Sagar ka kinara hai, ek kashti hai aur main hoon.

So, how bad is it?

 

Edit: Some lines added by Sukesh!

Sagar ka kinara hai, ek kashti hai aur tum ho
kashti mein tera hum dum hai, aur tum bebas ho
kinare par bathna teri bebasi nahin, tera darr hai
yeh raat ki kalima nahin, yeh teri nainon ka mail hai
woh bachi ki awaaz nahin, teri aatma ki pukar hai
andhkar se lad kar apne meet ko roshni dikha
us bhule rahi ko apne paas bula
uth bande yehi teri preeksha hai
Sagar ka kinara hai, ek kashti hai aur main hoon.

Some by Paggi..

Sagar ka kinara hai, ek kashti hai aur tum ho
Samne jo suraj hai woh dobne ko laliyat hai
Mein khada dekh raha, ek mook darshak hi to hoon
mera mann ikchuk hai is shad to sametne ka
par mein sagar ke is kinare hoon aur suraj us kinare..
jane kaise honge is mann ke arman purre
Sagar ka kinara hai, ek kashti hai aur tum ho

And then a really cool one by Nidhi..

Sagar Ka Kinara hai, ek kashti hai aur tum ho
Shopping mal hai, hazarun kapre hai aur tum ho
McDonalds ka sahara hai, ek burger hai aur tum ho
Kitchen ka darwaza hai, ek belen hai aur tum ho
Poem likne main jo ustad hai, ek main aur tum ho 

Lost post due to browser crash :(

The most frustrating thing that can ever happen to me while blogging is a browser crash. I was happily writing a long post on my todays happenings and suddenly … dhuppp… the browser vanished!! Another firefox crash. I thought to myself, don’t worry yaar, my firefox session saving plugin will recover the data, but it couldn’t even open the ‘write a post’ page properly. I still didn’t give up, I thought my wordpress will have a recover post button, but alas, nothing saved me. Here I am, cooling in my cooler, and my head aching with all the anger and frustration due to the so called modern software technology. Seems my good old Blogger with the good old IE was a better option. grrr..

March

In the month of March 2006, a change has come about in me. A lot of things have changed. Say for example, I used to be a very frequent blogger. But now, I hardly write anything. Even this post which I am writing is for the sake of writing it. I mean, in the past when I wrote, I could hear myself speaking it loud to the world. But today, its as if I am just reading a boring chapter uninterestedly in a boring class. What has happened to me? Where have the words gone? The fluency, the ease of writing and going on and on and on. I have about a couple of long posts saved as drafts, not published. Why? Because I feel that if I publish them, people will laugh at me. I just feel that there is a void within me, as if I have lost the capability to write. Its as if my logics and my language don’t go together now, as if my sentence formation has gone bizarre and my vocabulary has no words left!!

Anyways, just for the sake of record, I have been fine all these days. Not doing a lot though, have been working on my BTP. Last saturday, Jawahar sir told me that my project is going too slow and in the wrong direction, and I was completely shattered. Not because I had worked too too hard, but still I respect him, and I feel bad when I am not able to live up to his expectations. On Monday, I met him again and this time he was cooler. He explained me the next few steps and we had some discussion over it. My BTP Viva went great. I had the viva at 2 PM and I began making a PPT for it at 1. I missed lunch, though the viva began only at 3:30.

I learnt how to make a presentation. On saturday, I made a ‘text based presentation’. Huge amounts of text on each page explaining everything in great detail. Jawahar sir told me that it wasn’t a presentation. It was a report converted into a presentation. Just before the viva, I knew exactly what to do, thanks to Jawahar sir and Ashish. On each page, I had a heading, at max 2 lines of text and images on almost every page. I didn’t go too deep in explaining everything, but only the summary. I kept a lot of information to be given verbally rather than writing down everything. I even omitted certain information from being transmitted in any form what so ever. These comprised of the low level details of algorithms, low level details about the problem, the motivation, etc. The lesson I learnt was,

• a presentation should be short and precise
• shouldn’t contain a lot of text
• shouldn’t contain the fine grain detail
• shouldn’t contain the information to be conveyed verbally
• its more important to understand what to omit than to understand what to keep

And with this I now know that failing and rising again is the god’s way of teaching us important lessons in life. If I had been given these 5 points written on a sheet of paper, I wouldn’t have bothered to read them even. But now, I’d never forget them.

These days I am going mad about tv.iiit.ac.in. Its not that its too great a thing, but still I just love it. Its because of the feeling of belonging. Its not a project for me, nor something else, its just done for doings sake (though it might be useful for other researchers in CVIT). All through the day, I have a konsole opened with some php file of that website. I just keep doing modifications to make it better (hopefully). I mean, at least 10 hours per day of my life are being burnt in fuelling tv.iiit.ac.in!

Riya sent me some Java code to read and explain. It was some code related to socket programming in Java. I haven’t done socket programming in Java ever! But after reading the code and understanding each and every line of it, I have a nice idea of how it can be done. Sometimes I think that I should learn Java by explicitly devoting time for it, but I never get any. These small instances keep me in touch with the language and make me learn new things side by side. ( The code isn’t open source, so can’t post it here )

I have been very busy with all the things I explained above and haven’t been able to give time to my friends. I went to Meghna’s birthday party at 1 AM instead of 12, I didn’t get to call up Riya or Tanu in all these days, and the list goes on. Its not that I don’t have time, but it some how gets used up without much productive work. I wish I could do something about it.

I bought a new cooler today, thanks to Harsha who ‘actually’ bought it for me. Its a local brand (Vaishnavi) plastic body cooler of roughly 3-4 feet. It cost me 2000 bucks. With my fan still out of order, a cooler will be a big relief. I would have loved to work in AC of the lab, but then, am lazy enough to remain in my room, more so with my new cooler, yay!!

Rest is all fine, seems like I’ve come back in tune. Or maybe its because my blog is back in the IIIT::Blogroll. Due to some technical faults, my blog didn’t show up in the blogroll since long, thanks to Ranta sir who corrected it today. That will further fuel motivation to write more.

I guess it just takes an initiative to write a post, after that it just flows!

Ciao.

Why Core 5?

I was determined to get Fedora Core 5 in my system. So much so that I decided to download the iso images from the internet. 10 hours, 600 MB of the first CD I did download, when someone mailed about all iso images being there in the campus. I was delighted. Promptly, I downloaded all images, and resumed other work.

Today, I was too free and was looking for some work to do. I opened the fedora webpage and was looking at the features. I almost had given myself a green signal when I stopped and began looking at its screenshots. What would it provide that my Fedora Core 4 cannot?

• Beagle
• F-Spot
• New version of Gnome
• New version of KDE
• Mono (.NET support for Linux)
• crippled mp3, DVD support
• Totem player

Seems Fedora Core 5 is nothing more than a new name to the same old OS. And I have reconfigure my system, enable all media support, flash support, etc. Install my favorite media players, set up the databases, and what not. All this for the sake of getting nothing extra? So I decided to drop the plan.

Its better with my Fedora Core 4, it purrs, it hums, it mesmerizes !!

tv.iiit.ac.in

How did it happen? Another idea by our good old Jawahar sir. Tarun was already recording news using some windows software whos license expires every 16 days! He knew it could be done in Linux too, he had done it before. Finally, first we came up with a portal so that we can test how people like the interface. Still runs on http://172.17.9.33/videoserver

The next step was the harder one. Making a recording possible in Linux. It wasn’t difficult as we thought. But then, first we had to tune the channels. Those hardware frequencies given ‘human recognizable’ names. We tuned about 40-45 channels, of which the one available are of good reception. Then, as we all know, Linux and audio are the two things that never meet. We did anything, left, right, center, /dev/dsp, /dev/dsp0, alsamixer, kmix, aumix, rpm, ffmpeg, nothing made audio come out! Finally, somehow we figured out the solution and it was recording.

The first video recorded was of ‘GREAT QUALITY’ but unfortunately 40 MB per 20 seconds. We kept trying different tweaks, codecs, but the compression ratio didn’t come down for the ‘best possible’ quality. Not the disk space but the ‘feasibility of download’ was the criterion in mind. Finally, we decided to drop the quality till we find a solution. And the odd channel switches might be caused by the operator himself as there is no other way one can change the hardware frequency that the card is using.

We’re planning a discussion forum kind of thing to be added there. And as and when the requirements start looking obvious, we’ll make changes. Expect a DF coming up soon. And thanks for all your compliments.

Ciao.

Missing old days.

Sometimes I’m just sitting idle or standing somewhere and something reminds me of something in the old days (the days when I lived in Indore). Its like, as soon as the thought strikes the brain, the whole scene, the sounds start ringing in my head. And then, its turns into loud harsh sounds and very fierce lights all around. Its something like I have lost something, left a complete world behind me. I want to relive it again. Its not like where I am is bad, but its just that being there was a completely different experience, and those days wont ever return.

Woh kagaz ki kashti … woh baarish ka paani …

Anyways, thats just a small tremor in my ruitine life. Like everyone else, I’ve also forgotten the past and moved on. But then, my mental state is exactly like this song by Celine Dion.

. . . . . When you touch me like this
And when you hold me like that
It was gone with the wind
But it’s all coming back to me
When you see me like this
And when I see you like that
Then we see what we want to see
All coming back to me
The flesh and the fantasies
All coming back to me
I can barely recall
But it’s all coming back to me now

If you forgive me all this
If I forgive you all that
We forgive and forget
And it’s all coming back to me
When you see me like this
And when I see you like that
We see just what we want to see
All coming back to me
The flesh and the fantasies
All coming back to me
I can barely recall but it’s all coming back to me now . . . . .

And I read another little poem about my Indore somewhere on orkut, and here it is. . . .

Aisa hai mera Indore

Kuch khaas hai Indore,
Sabse pahle to mera Apna hai Indore.
Kal tak indore mein sapne dekhta tha,
Ab Sapne mein Dekhta hoon Indore.
Kuch Khaas hai Indore, Mera Apna Hai Indore.
Nit naye rang leta hai Indore, Bhaur se le kar Saanjh kat jaane kitna roop badalta hain Indore.
Khattee meethee yaad dilata Indore, Dosto se bhari Chatpati Duniya me le jaata hai indore.
Suraj ki keerano ka Sunhara Indore, Har pal mujhe Yaad Aaya hai Indore.
Kuch Khaas hai Mera Apna Indore, ab to ek sapna hai Indore….
Hope I get to live there again!

Placements.

Well, I never thought very seriously about getting placed as such. Actually thats not in the agenda. I mean, I never wanted to get into a JOB. I wanted to do something on my own. Thats not new actually. I mean, if you see other professions like doctors or lawyers, they basically don’t run some huge firm like Microsoft, but still in a way, they are quite independent compared to an engineer who has a boss on his head, and has to worry of his pay and bonuses. So, basically the idea is not to do something great (though I’m not against doing it, if I get the opportunity to), but to be ‘free’ and ‘independent’.

Anyways, ideas apart, talking about the placements of our batch in the coming months, I’m quite optimistic. I mean, why should there be a problem? The way Microsoft employees visited our SE classes and were so enthusiastic in explaining the software process, safe coding practices, the StringCchCopy function, etc, etc, I am sure they wanted to put some of us on track so that we’d be easy prey for their recruitments. The only problem that could possibly occur is with ‘miscommunication’ of timings and dates, ‘non-transparency’ about placement of people and other statistics, ‘ambiguity’ in rules and possibly ‘annoying’ some company because of insulting it or opposing it based on some opinion mismatches.

I feel that faculty has a very important role in ‘not complicating things’ apart from some role in bringing companies through their contacts. We know that this institute is so-called ‘research oriented’ and stuff, but the ‘excitement of research’ should come from within, not that you force it on people. You can just get ‘less placements, more MS students’ by forcing a policy to favor research. Most people read the ‘100% placement’ tag line rather than ‘research oriented’ thing before opting for IIIT. And I don’t think its wrong to get placed. It actually exposes oneself to the actual industrial environment. Then, if the person is motivated enough, he might as well come back into research.

Even in the ‘getting admission for MS in foreign universities’, most professors are reluctant to support. They want that the student should do an MS degree from IIIT. That is to say that ‘we want to encourage research’ and then impose another thing ‘we want to encourage research only within the boundaries of IIIT’. I think if they want us to become true researchers and that is the only motive, we might go to a company and work, or work in some other institute (in India or abroad) or work in IIIT, it shouldn’t matter. But what I feel is, its more of showing that ‘we support research’ and actually ‘we want to bag more papers and researches to be done in IIIT’ thing. I mean, its more of a selfish thing rather than a thing done for the ‘benifit of India and the world’.

Coming back, I hope that this time the faculty is more helpful and clear about its policies. Also that there is no ‘internal policy’ to mess up the placements deliberately so that they can get a large part of our batch as ‘researchers’ for MS. I feel that any decent person, (I heard Machine Jain became), can handle the placement secretary thing. He just needs to be able to communicate well, and coordinate the events with students, faculty and company schedules. I hope this time the scenario is good.

Placements in relation to me are a big big opportunity to get into some good place. I mean, people keep telling me to do research, some people tell me that for me GRE would be a piece of cake, and when I say that I’m looking forward to placements, people say, placements are for us, why are you going into them. First of all, I haven’t done anything great in any field, so basically am not a researcher or anything. Its just that the idea of ‘working in a company’ doesn’t suit me. But then, if thats the only way to survive, then be it.

Ciao.

Hello wordpress!

Well, I finally came to this new thing called ‘wordpress’. People kept on shifting to this blogging portal and I kept ignoring them. For me, the good old blogger was good enough. But then, now I can ‘feel’ that wordpress is kind of better. I mean, at least the first experience has been good.

For starters, the ‘republish your blog or index’ headache (for those who have used blogspot) is gone. One click and apply settings, change templates, change what you want to show on the sidebar, categorize your posts (don’t know if blogger supports that), moderation of comments, smart spam detection engines, show full posts or summaries, password protect posts, a REALLY CLEAN AND SIMPLE INTERFACE with REALLY COOL FEATURES are some of the new things which I am coming across. Lets see, whats in store.

Have a break, have RSI-Break

www.kde-apps.org is a great site, has tonnes of great new small big applications for the KDE user. I was browsing through it, and found so many new and great applications.

Some of them were Hydrogen (some kind of audio mixing tool for guitarists), a couple of tools like FruityLoops, a lot of tweaks and shortcut apps for doing varied jobs, like KCleanup to remove unwanted files, etc etc.

Another one was RSIBreak. Its a tool that helps people like me. Generally working continuously on the computer can cause so many problems. It keeps running in the background and after a scheduled amount of time, it asks the user to take a break. There are two types of breaks, a short break (for me its after every 10 mins, for 20 seconds) and a long break (for 3 mins after every hour). It looks for keyboard and mouse activity when its break time, and resets to 20 seconds or 3 mins if it detects activity. IF the user keeps working, after 3 activity detection events, it locks the system and freezes. The user has the option of ’skipping’ the break or ‘logging off’, but I think most users will then at least stand up, and stretch instead of taking off the break signal. Really cool thing for those who stress a lot. RSI means Repetetive Strain Injury, and this app is to prevent that.

I also came to know that my KOffice contains a nice component called Kivio. Its the same thing as MS Visio. I just opened it and was amazed to find the same interface and functionality. Really cool app and a good answer to people who keep telling me to make them count a replacement of Visio in Linux. Cheers!

Its been so hot these days, I mean the ‘temperature has been high’. And as per Murphy’s law, my fan has stopped working since two-three days. Its kind of difficult to keep alive, many people who visit my room are amazed at my tolerance capacity, hehe.

Anyways, these days, as you all know, the R&D showcase thing is going on. Not that I’m very much involved in it. I wasn’t even told by anyone that I’d put up some project there. Actually, Tarun sir has his ‘Information retrieval from Video’ project, and my project is one of the extensions of it, the BTP I mean. So, I had to complete the pending work to make it functioning and ready for display. I’m not much happy about the project though, I mean the state in which it is right now. Big challenges are in the way right now, and hopefully next year, in R&D, people will be impressed. They wont react the way they do this time, the ‘blah, thats so simple and useless’ kind of look.

I HAD to put up the robotics project too, as it carried MARKS for putting up a project in R&D. But we weren’t ready. So, we decided to ‘lose marks’ instead of getting humiliated. Lets hope I don’t lose much from the perspective of grades.

Bush visiting ISB, this thing has been made so loudly audible. I mean, ISB isn’t even visible from here, its so far (I know its far, I run upto ISB often). And still, they’ve to increase security in IIIT, ask us to keep windows closed and all. I seriously wished someone should kill Bush when he is in ISB. And thank god our government didn’t make the ‘fast breeders’ also under the agreement between India and US. I read that we’ve developed expertise in processing fuel for fast breeders, which are some advanced kind of nuclear reactors, while US puts us in the ‘developing and unsafe’ category. If we had signed the agreement, it would have meant curbing all the research that went into that fast breeders and other processing stuff. Hail Manmohan!

Rest of the life is kind of fine. I’m still alive, in senses, very much stable (unlike what my friends think or believe).

Another thing we were talking about is, if you love someone, what does it mean by getting involved? Is there a way to stop somewhere in middle? I mean, when you love, its like it just goes on, keeps growing. Can you decide, okay fine, itna pyaar ho gaya, ab stop! Just because there is a risk, should people stop loving? And what does it mean by ‘loving in safe limits’? As in, a state from where you can recover if something crashes! What I think is, this kind of risk is everywhere. I mean, when a person invests somewhere, or a company makes a new software, or even when we decide to opt for a course through ISAS, there is always a risk that things go wrong and we reach a very unfavorable state. Knowing all this, when investors don’t stop, the companies don’t stop, nor do students, why will a person who loves someone stop? And what can he stop, thinking about the other person, meeting him/her or even having a relationship? Conclusion: Risk is everywhere. Just do what your heart says and be optimistic.