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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My current desktop

I really like my desktop, just put this wallpaper yesterday, so wanted to share. So serene and calm….

Enjoi!

Fedora Core 5: Not worth an upgrade.

Finally after about 10 hours of struggle, I configured my Fedora Core 5 to work properly. I didn't have many demands though, just

• A decent photo viewing program … Well, it does provide me with F-Spot, but I am used to Digikam. So, first thing I did was to reinstall 'digikam' on the system along with a couple of dependencies.
• An audio (mp3) player… Does this look too much? Well, with Fedora systems, playing MP3 is a real problem, not because its bad but because it has chosen to not provide any support for MP3 due to patent issues. My obvious choice is Amarok player. First I needed to enable MP3 support in KDE for which I recompiled 'kdemultimedia' enabling 'mp3lib'. Due to some dependency or the other and due to power cuts, it took me 9 recompiles to finish the job.
• To install Amarok player was a real problem. Again the reason being patents. Amarok didn't support aRts and xine by default. Finally after installing xine and dependencies, I installed a total of 38 packages to install my Amarok player after recompiling it to enable xine (aRts still doesn't work!).
• I tried compiling Kaffeine player, but to no avail. It gave some wierd errors. Finally I installed the old 'kaffeine 0.7' for Fedora Core 4. It failed to load giving an error 'kaffeine_part.desktop' not found. I hope I can fix it too. Meanwhile am using the Xine player which apparently is the 'actual back-end' of Kaffeine player.

The rest of the system looks okay. My settings are AS IS, including the keyboard shortcuts I had set. Thanks to the great architecture of Linux and the power to separate user data and the operating system. It even remembered my 'firefox bookmarks'. There is nothing so great in Fedora Core 5. Its just as if I am using Core 4. I haven't seen Mono and Beagle working on my PC, maybe they will change my view.

Rest of me is fine. I couldn't meet Jawahar sir today also. Hopefully will meet him tomorrow. The reception of TV.IIIT.AC.IN TV tuner card has resumed. I will make it functional by tomorrow morning. Ashish, Ravi and me were **studying** in the Library reading room from 12:00 AM to 2 AM, a world record. We did some BC too, when Bhanu arrived, but rest of it was serious and productive. Though the Linear programming exam is on 12th, though its a PCO for us, we still burned our precious time and energy in working for it. I wonder if there can be a 'TA' post for the course.  We people have decided to jog every morning at 7 AM, lets see if I get up tomorrow. Have a good night!

Ciao. 

Core 5, TV Server, New Sysadmin, Love and more!

If you have a look at IIIT::Blogroll, most posts to me look like some kind of news stories at Slashdot. Well, maybe thats the whole idea, but that ways I should be thrown out of the blogger community, because I generally post for myself. Whatever comes to my mind, the moods, the ideas, the new things I see, the thoughts, I just jot them down. This blog is like my treasure, a log of my experiences in life (since April 2005 to be precise). Maybe I don't deserve any readers, but then, being subscribed to 'IIIT::Blogroll', I get some 'acceidental clicks'. I hope not many *actually* read the posts.

Fedora Core 5

Anyways, coming back to senses, I installed Fedora Core 5 yesterday. Finally, with a lot of waiting, I took this decision just because there was nothing better to do and some people said *it is faster and better*. Not much changed because I was already using KDE 3.5.1. It downgraded my gaim to 1.5.0 from 2.0beta3. There are no audio/video players and a lot of other goodies missing. F-Spot sucks, at least for me! I use digikam and thats good enough. I didn't find any beagle or something, except a little 'beagle indexer' in my Firefox. I don't know where all that stuff is. It seems it installed Mono on my system, don't know whats that for. And my net speed 'sucks'. No other word for that. I have been struggling with a meagre 1.2 KB/sec download speeds to get those huge RPM files. Maybe its actually down, or maybe its Fedora Core 5. All in all, my opinion is, if you have fully functional FC2, FC3 or FC4, there is no such *BIG* reason to get FC5.

TV.IIIT.AC.IN

Jawahar sir had asked me to meet him just after 4th. Maybe for me that means 6th, because I haven't met him yet. Not that its a very big issue, but still. The TV Server is not working for several reasons. One of them is failure of hardware, another is lack of motivation to repair it and third is lack of interest by people (mostly due to exams). The TV Tuner card's video reception has crashed, and hopefully is not a problem with the card. We'll be getting back in business soon. I guess people will need the server after exams get over. Hopefully I'll make it up and running before I leave the college for vacations.

Going home

Scheduled departure. 13 April 2006, Thursday, 9:25 PM. This is what my railways ticket says. Well, its not a 'departure', its basically a meeting. I'll be meeting my family, my parents, my friends and Tanu. Its Priyanka di's wedding too, this 20th. Hope it will be great fun, seeing her in a new roop of a married woman. My holidays are not very long though, I'll be returning on 1, 2 or 3 May. I've to work on my BTP henceforth.

Internships

I haven't got any internships for this summer. I applied in Kritikal, at least asked Manish to forward my CV. I guess soon there will be some communication. I hesitate to talk to Jawahar sir regarding internships. It is the only thing I hesitate to talk about. I mean, most people are afraid to say anything to him, but I generally am calm and composed in his presence. And so, most people (especially Freaky and Nikhil) push me forward for any negotiations with him. But now I feel he is a part of our life, no external thing to negotiate with. Some of the seniors might differ in opinion though. He has also assured us to forward our CV to some of the companies. Lets hope I get an internship too, though its not the end of the world for me if I don't get any.

Sysadmin

My first *odd* experience at the server room was last sunday. I desperately wanted to submit my MoMM assignment and had just 10 mins to print it. I went to Ranta sir and he told me to take a print in the server room, which was apparently open. As I was standing in the server room, waiting for my turn for the PC, the *new sysadmin* came and told us that *they* (the sysadmins) don't **generally** (as if its been years he has been here) allow printouts on sundays and asked us to leave. He even asked the person just about to click *Print* to stop and leave. We pleaded for some mins but to no avail. I wish there is at least one sysadmin from the students. Its not about me getting sysadminship, anyone could be made one, but at least one savior (I heard torrents also have been disabled, any downloaders having problems?)

Love

Well, actually I wanted to write this post about Love, but then so many other things just took over. I don't really understand what love is. At least didn't used to. Not that I know what it is now, but I am tending to understand. Earlier, I used to link it with *physical appearance*. Even now I do so. But then, this definition of loving someone's looks is a little complicated. You don't choose how your mom looks, but still you love her. You choose how your girlfriend looks and then you love her. Why is there a difference?

I got a forward about some boy loving some girl and the reason being LOVE. Later that girl gets really damaged by some accident and the boy still loves her. Though that really needs a very deep and strong kind of love, I agree to some extent to that, not that I can actually apply it. And why should I do so, nothing will happen to my loved ones yaar!

Now, I have started understanding that love is not just something physical. Its not a bondage, a burden. It not something like choosing the least worse. Its not about getting the same feeling from the other person too. Its unconditional. It doesn't make you worry more. Rather it frees you from all worries and makes you fly. It doesn't demand, rather it understands when you cannot do certain things because of your condition/constraints. Its not about just physical pleasure, its about a sense of belonging to someone, in any way possible. It doesn't let you go in depression, love is a ray of hope, its optimistic and brings a smile on your face whenever you think about it. In short, love is … something that pumps energy in me to survive.

Though my knowledge and understanding of love is very rudimentary and conflicting, this is what I've understood till now. Maybe I am wrong, inaccurate. But thats just my thoughts, anyone is welcome to correct me.

Conclusion

I saw the number of hits to my blog decreasing. I thought maybe dividing the post into smaller headings is a good idea. If anyone reads carefully, most of my posts are framed that way, just that there are no headings. Anyways, have to meet Jawahar sir today, and will look into the hardware for TV server. Have a nice day!

Ciao.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

Good morning

Good Morning, welcome 24 February 2006. Whats the occasion? Nothing, just another day. But from today, I’ve decided to welcome each day, and utilize it, live it to the fullest (possible). Yeah, I can’t just go mindless and do whatever, so thats why ‘fullest possible’.

Yesterday night, I leaned on to the bed for taking a small nap, and fell asleep. So that meant no dinner for me, hehe. Then I was like, kya yaar, if it was home, people would have given me food when I got up, hehe. Its okay, I wont die without one dinner. Missed eating the tablets too, god, eradicate that chest pain thing, its getting too dramatic now. And actually people have come to me and asked, howz your chest pain? I was like, woah, you people read my blog or what?

I had a general review meeting for the BTP yesterday. I didn’t know what to do, as it was first of its kind. I just tried to complete the code, and made a 8 page ppt. The professor wasn’t angry yesterday, he never is. Most people misunderstand him. I think Jawahar sir is the coolest professor in the college. Anyways, a lot of people were even confused about what they had to do. The professor wanted ‘clear goals’ and not ‘progress made’. He later explained that we should be able to make even the most dumb person understand what we are talking about, and basically begin from the beginning, saying all the Raam kahani of the project, motivation, problems, goals, efforts, etc. It was quite inspiring. Almost every student there was like, woah, he has changed, he is so nice, and so inspiring. But I said, he always is, its just that in your fear, you don’t understand him.

Anyways, so today I don’t have any deadline and all, but will work on the BTP. My code is producing the FACE VIDEOS, but has some problems (none seen as yet, but my psychology says there is a problem). I’ll correct it and embed it in the 24×7 system. Now the thing is, I WANT to make it work, I WANT that Jawahar sir sees my effort and becomes happy, not for the grades, but for the Excitement of Research. Oh, no, not for ExOR, but for the ‘actual’ Excitement of Research, hehe.

I came across another great blogger, Devil’s own. Great at english, and I came to know that her IQ is 170! I didn’t know what an IQ test is, but still tried out. Got a score of 137. Lets see if I can improve.

Couldn’t talk to Tanu yesterday night, poor girl, kept on buzzing online, calling on phone, and smsing, but kumbhkaran was deep in sleep. Hope this day is like what I want it to be. Good morning!

Life goes on…

Finally, Mid Sem 2 has come to an end. Everyone’s first reaction is “wow, its over, what a relief!”. But then after a while, when we come to senses, we realize that its just one of the struggles that has ended. There are many that lie ahead, just at the doorstep.

For most of the UG2K3, its time for project report submission of their BTP, including mine. People have been long asleep on this regard. Those who began afresh in January have nothing very concrete to show, and most of them are expected to showcase their projects in R&D showcase, which is about a week or 10 days later (3 March).

I am also worried about my BTP. Well, its not that I have nothing to show, or I don’t have a plan to go forward, but still the major ‘research’ oriented part is still pending, and I keep avoiding to think about it. I was looking at the sphagetti code one fine morning. So, out of the blue, I decided to rewrite the whole project in a clean, modular, well-designed and well-distributed fashion. I’ve been quite successful too, and basically I have to do module testing and integration testing after the last module is done. And then, I’ve to deploy it and make it work real time with real news videos round the clock, hopefully before tomorrow afternoon. Thats something like a total of 10-15 hours of work. How am going to extract 15 hours from 15?

The other projects like Robotics project, J2ME project, etc. also need to be done before 5 March, and I am worried about them too. I’m like, I can’t even have a prioritized time division, because there is no time left. Hopefully everything will be fine.

Since about 10-15 days, I’ve been having some kind of chest pain, pain in ribs, pain in the throat and problems in breathing. It could have been due to cough and cold maybe, or maybe its a little serious. I talked to mom about this though, and she suggested taking some antibiotics and antiallergic tablets. Lets see if things get better.

Before this, I just finished up with my Mid Sem 2. Though I anticipated that it will be as bad as was Mid Sem 1, this one was comparatively better. Even the vision paper was quite understandable, and Linear programming was superb. Software Engineering was a little bad as usual. I mean, why on earth do they have that subject? And why is it being taught so badly? I mean, why an exam for learning a method to develop software? Why not something practical? Is it like they have to have an exam on anything and everything? Can’t they learn from Robotics?

Anyways, now I am a little tired and basically bored because I have no one to talk to. I mean, yeah there is Tanu, but I don’t know why I don’t feel like talking to her right now. By the way, this blog is a good listener, hehe. Ciao.

Yahoo! Answers and Carpel Tunnel

Yesterday I came across a new thing, Yahoo! Answers Beta. Its a new concept by Yahoo! in which people post a question and specify the category and subcategory of the topic. There is a place to answer the questions. You get a list of posed questions, just click anyone you want to answer, and post a reply. There is a limit of the number of questions one can ask in a day, but replying is limitless. You get a +2 for replying and -2 for asking, with a opening balance of 100. Its really fun, and you get a reply to your question generally within 5 mins. Try it out!

I came to know what is a Carpel Tunnel through Yahoo! Answers. Its some disease caused due to stress on nerve fibres. Something like when you work on the computer or some other place for long hours, your nerve gets pressed and due to this, your hands will go numb or feel tickling or become weaker. This has cure from using pads to going for a surgery. After knowing all this, I have begun having symptoms of Carpel Tunnel. Hope its just psychology.

Computer Vision paper was fine. It was in English rather than Greek for a change. I did some usual blunders, but hopefully I’ll get something acceptable. Lets prepare for LP.

Complete Pandemonium

Its been really hectic and boring all these days. I was so helpless, it was as if I didn’t want to go through Mid Sem 1, but did I have a choice? Anyways, its over now, hurray! Yeah, it was not all that good, but thats okay, we’ll see in the next exam.

Even today I am surrounded by a lot of work and deadlines, meeting with Jawahar sir at 9, DIP project report, SE reflections report, SE UML assignment, BTP work (both BTPs .. for details contact Ashish ;)), Felicity Techfest work, Felicity website work, Riya’s project, Robotics project, MB project, and the list goes on. Though there are not many classes today, but still the day looks jam packed! I mean, what the hell, this is the day when my exams have just ended, I am supposed to be free damn it.

Yesterday, Dean invited us for dinner for getting good grades in the 3rd and 4th sem. We also got some book and all, but most of us had a ‘blah what is this?’ kind of expression after seeing the book. The food was also useless, except for the biryani.

I hope that things start working, and I come out of this pandemonium soon.

ACCV’06 from my point of view.

Woah! ACCV 2006, it was a roller coaster ride. It was as if we were in the dreamland. Though I didn’t know much about research in Vision, or the researchers, or even the books, but still it was fascinating. It was really enjoyable to volunteer for the event. The biggest advantage was to be able to listen to many great people, and their great theories and ideas. Though I don’t have an in depth knowledge of Vision, but still most of the ‘good’ talks had the inherent beauty of being exceptionally simple and understandable.

Another good thing that I benifitted from is the varied range of people which came into contact. Though I didn’t talk to many explicitly, but then it was nice to listen to different accents of english, their way of presenting, and even their way of approaching the problem at hand. Some of the Chinese people didn’t have great English, and it was a little difficult trying to communicate with them.

Most of the program went on smoothly, though I think that the program could have been improved. Most of the program was filled with Oral sessions. Though they contribute the maximum in distribution of knowledge, they tend to be boring and sleepy too. I think creating a more interactive environment, rather than a simple PowerPoint presentation system would have been good, though even I don’t have much clear thoughts about a more interactive and interesting alternate solution.

The Taj Krishna Hotel is nice, great architecture, nice potraits and paintings on the walls, marble floor and lots of mirrors and jhoomars around. Its very beautifully lit, has some great sofas, really polite and efficient helpers. The conference halls were big, nicely lit, with good echo-proof audio system and a good enough stage. The food at Taj was lower than our expectations, though people suggested that it is to suit the international needs. The icecream with melting chocolate was the best thing in the world one could ever have. Amazingly all toilets were western and without water!

One of the girl had a presentation. I asked her whether she wanted to test her laptop on the projector. She couldn’t understand it for a long time. All the time what she would do is, wear a cute confused smile on her face. I was noticing her all day, as coincidentally she kept sitting in the same room which I was managing. I thought she was really lonely, and didn’t have anyone to talk to. I mean, if you had seen her, what she would do is, come to the empty conference hall and sit. Then she’d start reading the brochere for the zillionth time, close it, pack her bag, and go to the internet access room. Again pick herself up, and sit in the hall and read the brochere, or roam around wearing a really pathetic smile, not talking to anyone, just grinning. I couldn’t gather the courage to go and talk to her for long, so I asked Nirnimesh sir to help. We went to her, chatted for a little while and clicked a few photographs. She told me that she has three friends here. Her name is Yuru Pei. She is a Phd student in China. I got her air tickets confirmed from Singapore Airlines. Scheduled departure 16.01.2006 9:20 PM.

We clicked many many photographs during the session. A lot of those which I clicked with my cellphone got blurred. I am still waiting for Varhman sir to release his cameras matter. I have some really good and really precious pictures in that camera.

One of the presenters did not come to the conference. He sent a ppt with embedded audio instead. Finally, I had to go and click the mouse to play it in front of the people. I made ONE mistake only, but it was fine I guess. Prof. PJN was saying that it was the only paper presented in ACCV from IIIT. I asked him about whether we will get any opportunity like this in the future. He suggested to write a paper, and present it in one of the conferences to get such an opportunity. This conference has really infused new spirit in me to do something. Lets hope I am successful.

Before this, we had the WCVGIP, which was another conference of similar type but a smaller scale adn magnitude. It was a nice one too.

To conclude, ACCV 2006 was a successful event, and a major event this year. Thanks to all the professors who gave us this opportunity and also thanks to all the great researchers who presented such great ideas. Finally, three cheers for the volunteers,
Hip hip … Hurray!
Hip hip … Hurray!
Hip hip … Hurray!!!!

How important is visual information in relation to friendship?

I really warn people that I can be rude anytime I want. And they have to be ready for it. Generally, I am calm and sweet to people. But at some rare occassions, I just over-do it. I am really really rude, I just don’t care what the other person might feel. But most of the time I do such a thing, I have a really concrete reason to do so. Why am I writing all this? Just a piece of information about me, hehe.

The days are passing as if I am not aware of them. I mean, I hardly remember whats the date today, and my mind has forgotten a time-map which was there. There is really no goal, no hope, its a state of utter confusion. I am confused whether I want to do GRE or MS from IIIT or a job. I need to decide this in a few months now. Lets see what happens.

Tanu has the NID exam a few hours from now. Hope she clears it. When she was talking, she was like, what the hell, let me take a break from padhai.. talk something else na. By the way, I keep telling her that one exam, one institute is not the end of the world. There is a lot still left to do.

My BTP is going on fine. I mean, there is very little activity, but still there is a somewhat defined path. I am being a little lazy too though. This mid sem exam I have very few papers. I have a Vision paper, and I am not sure whether there is a SE paper or not. So this means I have at max two papers.

We sent a gift to Riya, Tanu and me that is. She called me up to thank for it. I am kind of allergic to taking gifts. I mean, when you get a gift, you have to protect it, and keep it safe, still in front of you and all. Yes, it does make you happy, but its so much responsibility too. Especially if I am talking about me, whos room is a world war in itself, hehe.

We saw Kingkong the other day. Its a nice movie. Really good and real looking animation, nice sound effects, nice story, and a good senti ending. I know a lot of people will get bored of the part before the interval, but then nothing is perfect. This time the movie idea was of Bhanu. Thanks for that.

——-

I was thinking about how important is visual information? In todays world, most of us “chat” with people over the internet. Till date, most of it has been through TEXT. Some of us then start exchanging phone numbers and pictures. You have to certainly agree that AUDIO is a step ahead than TEXT, because it is more expressive.

Pictures on the other hand (not live ones) just show the other person how does the person on the other end look. How important is that? People say that looks are temporary, why bother? But here, I am not talking about LOOKS. I am talking about appearance, whether or not the other person is photogenic is a different issue.

Generally, when we make friends in person, the first thing we do is SEE him. While the natural process of friendship begins with SEEING, friendships on the internet generally get this facility months or years after it. Yeah, meeting the other person is the best that could happen, but my point is, by seeing the pictures, the other person can still create an image in the mind. Its really difficult to keep on talking to a person whos appearance you can just imagine.

Yeah, there are issues like people can morph the images and spread over the internet and all. But then, we’re talking about FRIENDS, and not about some random person. Sometimes its difficult to scan and send images, atleast loads of them. Is it a sin to demand a picture of your friend, while the people who sit with him can take 15 images per second with their eyes? What wrong have the friends sitting so far away done to receive such treatment?

Meri bheegi bheegi see…
palko pe reh gaye…
jaise mere sapne bikharke…
jale man tera bhee kisi ke milan ko…
anamika too bhee tarse…

Nice song and such nice lyrics. For the time being, this one is my favorite.

Yesterday night was cold and dark. I didn’t eat anything all day, so I had to go out. In the hurry, I forgot wearing a sweater, and went there in a half-sleeves shirt. When we returned, I was frozen. Ashish said, “Yeh to ekdam chilled ho gaya hai” and I said “To serve kar do na”. Anyways, after all that I was talking to friends on yahoo. Jaan (err… I mean Himanshu) came to my room at 2:30 AM. We decided to get up in the morning to exercise, but he was almost negative. I couldn’t get up before Tanu called up. I missed the class anyway.

Today I have to begin work on my project. Lets see what Tarun has to say. Have a nice day!

Welcome 2006.

Its the new year now, 2006. First thing I’d want to do is to learn to write ‘2006′ while writing dates. Its really hard to get used to the new ‘year’ in the dates, and I confess that I’m still stuck at ‘2003′.

First of January Two Thousand and Six was a nice morning, mildly cold. I was with my family at Bhopal, wishing people on the phone with loud music and warm wishes around. At 4 AM, I had to leave my home state and board the train to come back to college. It does look quite sad, but then, I’m used to it now.

Back in college, I’ve a really bad cold, a partially swollen eye and loads of work. Basically, I am in a mess, and so is my room! I’m thinking to switch off breathing for a few hours as its really painful to do so. I’m now used to getting up lazily (mind it, I said LAZILY, not LATE). Its really difficult to do things in a haste.

Before all this, I went home on 17 December 2005. I had barely even worn the clothing for the journey, and dumped all luggage in my bags when I had to leave. Actually, the PR project report and some final touch-ups were the problem. I was struggling to finish work till about 2 PM. I had a bus journey at 4:40 PM. I somehow reached the bus stand, and boarded the bus. The journey was nice, though a little too chilly.

Being at home was fun. This time I didn’t meet too many friends, I didn’t do any work. I saw about 3 movies in the theatre with friends and 1 with my family. It was a nice experience to meet friends and all. Tanu also turned up for the movie, along with Tapan. It was nice to have her company.

I didn’t have much time to spend with my friends. I couldn’t meet Prerna and Vijay bhaiya. Hope they forgive me. I wanted to return to college with the Volvo bus, so that I’d get one more day at home. Anyways, here I am, back in college, back to work.

Tanu has a competetive exam in January. Hope she clears it. Tapan too has GRE in February and he is working hard for it. Hope he does it too. I have GRE some time soon too, along with TOEFL (hope the spelling is right), and hope I at least study for it. Anyways, first thing I want to do is to get a passport!

I have to do the Face Detection thing before 10th, and I haven’t begun. Hopefully I’ll do it before the deadline. Actually, I want to do an internship in the summers, and not work on the BTP. For that, I have to finish all expected work before April comes. That is why I am so serious about it. There are other pressures like the Mobile Blog project, DS&A TAship, DIP cum Tracking project, GRE preparation, etc, etc, etc.

When I look at life, its busy, its painful, sometimes sad and lonely, sometimes happy and celebrating. I do get time to meditate, to spend time with friends and family. Its really not exactly the way I wanted it to go, but its still along the same direction. Welcome 2006.

Dominos sucks, its really bullshit.

Well, I know I am angered right now, but well, I have a good reason to be. It was 7:30 PM when I called up Dominos to place an order. At about 8:40 PM, when I called them again, they said “my identity is not verified, they’ll call back shortly”. At 9:30 PM, I asked Sumeet to call and ask. They said, my cell is not working! They took the order on his behalf, and we started eagerly waiting. At 11 PM did he arrive, and demanding a full payment! Dominos sucks, 30 minutes nahi to free is all bullshit. They’ve lost one customer for sure.

Right here, right now!

Right here, right now.. hai khushi ka samaa…
Right here, right now.. hum hain is pal jahan…
Bhool jao .. muskurao…
Reh na jaye baat baaki…

Nice song! Nice lively thought.

Living in the present, how correct is it? Whining or boasting of the past, how wrong is it? India was a slave in the hands of the British. India was called Sone ki chidiya in the past. Two statements which explain exactly what I am talking about.

As we grow up, we gain some sense of being us, some conciousness. We understand the past, live in the present, and plan the future. I don’t know when that sense came to me, maybe when I was 13 or a little older. Almost every human being, who is grown up enough has this kind of sense. But…

We come across so many people who are not actually in senses. One of the examples could be some bollywood star. Yes, a bollywood star. A bollywood star has almost completely forgotten that he is a human being. He is getting older day by day. He is on this planet to live. And that short stay is too short to waste it in being busy 24×7. He has stopped living like a human. He is just into making money and getting famous. Someone might say, an actor loves acting. He is actually doing what he wants to. There is where I want to say,
Ati ka bhala na bolna, ati ki bhali na choop,
Ati ka bhala na barasna, ati ki bhali na dhoop.
Which means, excess of anything is bad. Its not good to speak in excess, and nor is it good to keep shut. It is not good that it rains too much, nor is it good that there is too much sunlight.

Anyways, coming back to the point, most people have forgotten that they are human beings, their life is finite, and this life is the only chance they have. Most people just waste it in stupid things, or running after money and fame.

There are these others who are a class apart. They are not after anything, but they want to be cool. They want people to admire their coolness, their style. Most of them indulge in smoking, drinking, doping, etc. They flirt a lot, and generally don’t behave in their own natural way. They talk to girls in an unusual way, always trying to get the girl’s attention, and trying to ‘use’ her.

In my view, though I may be wrong, its not right to do it. First, be yourself. Accept the way you are. Once you accept yourself, people will accept you too. Behave in a consistant manner with everyone. Don’t change behavior because you want some favor from someone. Okay fine, you’d say, what about talking to your friend and talking to the professor? I’d say, its really a good practice if you avoid filthy language even with friends.

Most people tend to get close to pe