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.

Live in reality

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

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

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

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

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

Stateless and stateful

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

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

Whats your name? Anurag.

Whats your name? Anurag.

Whats your name? (louder) Anurag.

Whats your name? Anurag Singh Rana.

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

Whats your name? are you mad? Buzz off.

Now try some maths.  Open your calculator.

2+2? 4

2+2? 4

2+2? 4

2+2? 4

2+2? 4

4 ….. till the battery is down ;) 

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

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

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

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

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

Ciao. 

My first salary

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

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

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

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

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.

First time

Tension mat le mamu, life mein bahut see cheezen first time hoti hai ..!!

Well, as you people know, its 20th May, Alvy aka Snopy aka Dodo's birthday. You might not expect this, but we met for the first time in this life ever 'Today'. She asked me to meet her at PVR Priyas (a place in Delhi) where she had decided to meet some of her friends to kind of celebrate her birthday. I hadn't gone to a pub or a disc ever in my life. She also knew that, and very proudly announced to the rest of her friends. Her friends were all switched off kinda, maybe not interested in me (me as in such a boring seedha sa person). Anyways, Alvy was nice and friendly and made me feel comfortable.

She took us to some pub/restaurant called TJI Fridays. The ambience was nice there. Very nice and comfortable place as she had told me. I wasn't too hungry and also not willing to have any alcohol. So, I just had some kind of juice she chose for me. I gave her the greeting card and a small humble gift which I had got for her and she was more than delighted, I guess. After that she took us to a 'disc' called RPM. Wow, RPM is my favorite word, lol. Anyways, the disc was all crowded and stuffed up to the brim. There was smoke all around, and besides that, I am a really bad dancer, actually I am not a dancer at all. Anyways, I tried to keep pace with Alvy's moves. She kept talking a little bit in that noisy place, though it was difficult. After some time, she left the place. We wandered there for a while gasping for free air.

The evening has been nice here. It began to rain as we reached here. By the time we reached our room, we were completely soaked. We quickly changed and had dinner. Now, I am sitting in the office, writing this blog. I might work on my project, or just check mail and return. All in all, the day was pretty nice, and it was great to meet Alvy. And I must admit, I actually wanted to stay in the disc for a little more time.

Have a nice Sunday. Ciao. 

Learnt a lesson

Learn a lesson today. Well, it was a kind of free day and I hadn’t got much work. So, I thought of going for a movie during office hours. I had heard other people plan movies in the office and so I thought maybe its okay if we do it for a day. Anyways, finally I was called back to the office and had to cancel the tickets. This didn’t anger me though, infact I learnt the lesson of discipline and puntuality through this. Will remember it for a long time.

Heard people are protesting very fiercely against the reservation thing. Some doctors are on hunger strike since 96 hours and 94 of them have ‘collapsed’. Anyways, I can’t do much but still am with the ‘antireservation movement thing’. Going out now, my code is kind of working. Will meet Alvy tomorrow and have to finish work on Monday. Have a nice evening.

Ciao.

My mood swings and some techno crap

Human brain is an amazingly complicated thing. It can create virtual scenarios out of thin air, it can come up with thoughts which have no meaning at all and still depress you, it can come up with imaginations and ideas which no one ever thought about (using their brains, lol), it can make you feel romantic or excited or what ever in the world’s most gloomy and dirty places, it can make you imagine that something is great or beautiful or wonderful or amazing, though it might not be so, the brain can …. eh.. it can do what ever your brain can think of.

Last few days, I have been kind of irritated and/or depressed about being in Noida. Well, if you judge materialistically, everything was fine. An office with AC/PC/net, freedom to do anything in the evening, two new cities, Noida and Delhi. But then, it got a little monotonic,

• come out of office
• go to the Centre Stage Mall
• eat or see a movie and return
• sleep early and wake up early.

Maybe that wasn’t that exciting, but then, it wasn’t like I should decide to return to IIIT. Actually, the problem is, I was feeling bad that I couldn’t work on the BTP, which Jawahar sir was eager about. Mixed with some other feelings, last Sunday I had decided to quit the job at Kritikal. But then, I stayed on. Its feeling a little better today, lets see.

Kingsun DKU-5 USB to serial cable

Well, as Nikhil has this cable, I wanted to make it work on FC2 which I am using. I googled again with some success. I found out that ‘cypress’ driver which is a loadable module in the kernel supports this cable. But for that we need to patch cypress_m8.c and cypress.m8.h in KERNEL_SOURCE/drivers/usb/serial directory. The patch wasn’t compatible with the kernel source I had got. So, I read the patch file and manually patched the two files. Finally the kernel compilation failed when it reached the patched files due to some errors. Frustrated and tired, I finally gave up. Here is the link to the patch (nokia ca-42) (http://gnome.dnsalias.net/patches/). Though it mentions that it works for the CA-42 cable, it might work for DKU-5 (http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/showdev.php?id=3565).

Bon Echo alpha 2

A new alpha version of Firefox 2 has been released called Bon Echo Alpha 2. I downloaded and installed it. It has prebuilt session saving crash recovery, a suggestion system for ‘google search’ (like intellisense), and is much like the good-old firefox. Most extensions say that they are incompatible with it, but that’ll change soon I think. Due to lack of extensions and themes compatibility, I am back to Firefox 1.5.0 for the time being.

Conclusion

Rest of life is fine. Its Alvy’s birthday on 20th. I’ve to get a gift for her, lets see. My code isn’t working well, so rest of the day is just hard work!

Ciao.

Today

Wow! Nice day it has been today. No work all day! I finally shifted to the new place which was quite an unpleasant experience. Maybe thats how life is. I mean, it reminds me of the SBI card advertisement. Jo dikhta hai, vahee milta hai. We were told that the room is generally cool all the time and there is power supply all the time. There is a TV and two beds, and we can go in and out anytime. There are a lot of bathrooms and toilets, and generally there wont be any issues about them.

When we shifted, the problems began immediately. The fan was throwing hot air blows and there were no windows either. We didn't pay much attention to all that and quickly got ready to go out for dinner, as it was already very late. At 12, we didn't find any shop where we could have dinner. Finally, we managed to get inside a restaurant called 'second floor' or something. The restaurant was actually on the 'second floor'. When we saw the menu, we remembered the latest Amir Khan ad of Coca Cola where he has become Chinese and demands 'Thanda Samosa'. Everything in the menu was above 170 and at least beyond what we could afford to afford. Finally, we decided to have some Chicken Biryani (Rs. 200). Still not satisfied, we consumed a cup of chocolate icrecream each and finally reached the room. Oops! No water! There was actually no water! After walking for about 1.5 kms, I was very thirsty. But, we had to sleep without water.

We increased the TV volume a little, and as we were not told that there were 'neighbours' who wouldn't let us see TV in the night, we had the third blow to our faith in the room facilities. In the night at about 3-4 AM, the power supply went out. As a result, we had to sleep in dark without any fans and even without any window! Even after so much, I woke up at 9:30 AM, thanks to my cell phone whose alarm was on 'Silent'.

We got ready somehow and rushed to the company where I had the first drops of water since the 'second floor' episode. Rest of the day was kind of fine. I went out for a few hours in the middle of work to the Centre Stage mall with a friend. In the evening, amazingly Snopy aka Alvy came online after a zillion centuries. She was amazed to find out that I was in Noida. We exchanged our cell numbers, and she invited me to, or rather asked me to join her on her birthday. Its quite far actually, I mean the date. Lets see, we'll talk and fix up some timing. She is quite excited to actually see me 'aamne saamne'. She'll be disappointed though, because I'm generally calm and quiet in person, almost opposite to what I am online. And besides that, these problematic facilities have made me all the more irritated and sad. Lets see whats in store.

I've to work hard this evening because I didn't work in the afternoon. I guess I'll be here till late. Lets see what happens. You take care.

Ciao. 

Past one month

I've been 'offline' on my blog since long now. Almost a complete month it has been. Most of the month has been nice, happy, exciting, some days were like in the dreamland. A few of the days have been depressing, sad, irritating too, not many though. Where should I begin from?

I kept longing to write a good entry many times in the past one month. Most of those ideas/memories/events have become blurred in my memory now.

I reached Bhopal on 14th evening by Dakshin Express after a kind of long and tiring journey. I was happy that I had got the upper berth in the train. Suddenly some middle-aged man asked me to vacate it as it was his seat. I told him that it was mine, and in confirmation told him my seat number, and correspondingly the number printed beside my berth. Ooops… amazingly the sequence was a little wrong, and my seat number was printed beside the middle berth. I, reluctantly moved down. It was only after two hours that I realized that my seat number was actually printed beside the upper berth, but was occluded from view, damn!

It was nice in Bhopal. If only I didn't have the SE assignment to submit in the evening, it would have been better. I had to rush to a cyber cafe to submit, and so, it was too late to go out anywhere, except for dinner. People (especially my Mami) were 'excited' to see me in a moustache. I didn't like it at all, I just grew it because mami asked me to. The very next morning I left for Dewas.

It was wedding time at Piyush's place. Pinky di was getting married. Almost all day I spent at his place, helping in doing some stuff, and just enjoying most of the time. There were some really nice girls too there. But I didn't know who all were his sisters and who all were friends, so …. hehe. Anyways, on 18th, I went to Indore, met Tapan and taught Tanu about some HTML and Java. She kept on sounding scared and confused till late in the night. I returned around midnight.

On 20th, Pinky di got married. To confess, am actually confused about the name of the bridegroom, Sameer, I guess. Anyways, it was fun there, got a little shouting from mom for overusing our car in the marriage. She doesn't understand much about the 'friendship' kind of relations. Her 'domain' in just 'family and family and family'. I realized that its not possible to change her outlook however much I argue, protest, give example and counter arguments.

I was reading about this too, I mean the opinion clash between the parents and children. I read that in these growing years, the child is making a new personality of his own. At that time, he/she needs a lot of freedom and privacy. Obviously his is going to be a new personality. Though the child is supposed to be 'derived' from the parents, he/she is a new individual, and the opinions, ideas, ways of doing things, the morals and ideals are bound to differ. The parent doesn't understand that their child is a 'different individual' and the child doesn't understand that the parent is 'already made' personality and it wont be possible to mould him now. I guess some flexibility from both sides is the solution. The parent should try to accomodate the 'new person' in their framework and the child should try to blend well with the 'already made' framework.

Coming back, I got an offer to do an internship in KrikalSolutions around 22 April. I hadn't planned for an internship in summers. I was 'obediently' going to persue my BTP in the summer. But then, the craze to go to a new city, to work in a new environment, to work on something other than my BTP, to get an internship listed in my resume, to live alone and independent, to see Delhi and Noida was strong enough to motivate me to want this internship. There wasn't much that I could do in order to get it. Somehow, by gods grace, my prayers, Nikhil's 'sifarish', and the goodwill of people at Kritikal, I got into this thing.

The next big target was the pending 'Vision assignment' and a 'permission from Jawahar sir' to go ahead with the internship. I still remember the confidence and certainty he told the professors in the BTP viva meeting that I'd be working on the BTP in the summer and will complete it then and there. Those words kept ringing in my head for long. It was not that I was not eager to fulfil what he had said, but it was a question of choosing one of the them, both being great opportunities. I kept mailing Jawahar sir about every progess in the internship issue. Finally, when I got the internship, Jawahar sir replied saying to go ahead with the internship if I was interested. I was more than delighted that very moment. Seriously, I have to confess, Nikhil's communication skills, at least with Jawahar sir, are zero.

Finally, with much fuss and hassle, a zillion lines of instructions from all elders, a lot of chits about places, paths, phone numbers and other minute details, I landed in Delhi. The company KritikalSolutions is a nice place to be. Just like our CVIT lab. I haven't been here since too long, but it feels great. The project I'm working on is also kind of interesting. Hopefully, I'll be able to contribute in a positive way here and also gain in some positive way from here, its a give and take thing you see.

Delhi and Noida are nice places. I was telling Nikhil and Sumeet that we'd settle in Noida after graduation. Though it has been a little hot these days, and a lot of power cuts too, a lightweight earthquake yesterday and long tiring walks to distant places, it has been fun too. The nice roads, the huge flyways, the metro, the Mc Ds, the Centre Stage Mall, Waves theatre, the gals around, wow!

The best part about the company is the great mess inside. Coke, Mirinda, Maggi, Milk, this, that, anytime! Nikhil keeps hogging something or the other all day. And well, the powercuts haven't left this place untouched either. We were enjoying in the company guest house since a few days, but today we vacated the place. Shifted to a rented room with two beds, a fan, a plug-point and a TV. My god, the other bad thing about Nikhil is TV. I mean, this guy is always pressing some button or the other on the remote. So many movies did I miss just because he couldn't bear the 2 minutes ads, grrr.

Rest is all fine. Just realized that I've to finish the Robotics term paper in two hours, which bears about 40% of weightage of the entire robotics course. God help me. Anyways, for the next two months or so, am in Delhi, enjoying and cribbing, both. I might blog once in a while.

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. 

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.

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!

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!

Rang De Basanti

Nothing much to say.. rest is said by this song..

ding ding ding ding ding ding ding
ding ding ding ding ding
thodisi dhuul meri dharti ki mere watan ki - 2
thodisi Khushbuu baurai se mast pavan ki
thodisi dhondhane waali dhak-dhak dhak-dhak dhak-dhak saansein
jin mein ho junoon junoon voh boonde laal lahuu ki
yeh sab tuu mila mila le phir rang tuu khila khila le - 2
aur mohe tuu rang de basanti yaara
mohe tuu rang de basanti
mohe mohe tuu rang de basanti - 9
oh mohe rang de basanti basanti rang de basanti - 2
(ding ding ding ding ding ding ding
ding ding ding ding ding) - 2

sapnen rang de, apne rang de
khushiyaan rang de, gam bhi rang de
naslen rang de, faslein rang de
rang de dhadkan, rang de sargam
aur mohe tuu rang de basanti yaara
mohe tuu rang de basanti
thodisi dhuul meri dharti ki mere watan ki - 2
thodisi Khushbuu baurai se mast pavan ki
thodisi dhondhane waali dhak-dhak dhak-dhak dhak-dhak saansein
jin mein ho junoon junoon voh boonde laal lahuu ki
yeh sab tuu mila mila le phir rang tuu khila khila le - 2
aur mohe tuu rang de basanti yaara
mohe tuu rang de basanti

dheemi aanch pe tuu zara ishq chadha
thode jharne laa, thodi nadi mila
thode saagar aa, thodi gaagar laa
thoda chhidak chhidak, thoda hila hila
phir ek rang tu khila khila
mohe mohe tuu rang de basanti yaara
mohe tuu rang de basanti

basti rang de, hasti rang de
hans hans rang de, nas nas rang de
bachpan rang de, joban rang de
ab der na kar sachmuch rang de
rang rez mere sab kuchh rang de
mohe mohe tuu rang de basanti yaara
mohe tuu rang de basanti
thodisi dhuul meri dharti ki mere vatan ki - 2
thodisi KHushbuu baurai se mast pavan ki
thodisi dhondne waali dhak-dhak dhak-dhak dhak-dhak saansein
jin mein ho junoon junoon voh boonde laal lahuu ki
yeh sab tuu mila mila le phir rang tuu khila khila le - 2
mohe mohe tuu rang de basanti yaara
mohe mohe tuu rang de basanti - 9
mohe rang de basanti basanti rang de basanti - 4
rang de rang de rang de basanti
(ding ding ding ding ding ding ding
ding ding ding ding ding) - 3
mohe rang de basanti basanti rang de basanti basanti
mohe rang de basanti rang de basanti rang de basanti yaara

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.

I am lagging…

Its been nice to remain in dreams till now. But now reality is striking back, making its presence felt. I felt that I was really stable, and could not go mad at any point of time. I thought it was wierd why people just lose sense of the present and start living in hallucinations. But this new year has brought in a new experience, absent mindedness. Even saying ‘absent mindedness’ would be toning it down. Something like forgetting the present, and going to deep sleep all the time would be a better explanation.

No, its not laziness that surrounds me. Its the sudden outburst of zillions of thoughts, emotions, calculations, fears, pains, joys, constraints, and what not. During this short period of NINE days in this new year, at many points of time my brain has undergone unbearable activity. So much that I can LITERALLY hear a big siren ringing loudly and I can’t even shut my ears to reduce the pain.

I cannot blame a single cause for the whole environment that exists around. Its been a mixture of things, emotional, practical, physical, technical. With this overwhelming chronology of sudden events around me, I wish that time just stopped for a few days, at least a month. The speed at which things are progressing, I am not able to cope with them.

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?

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.

Suddenly everything has turned me inside out…
Suddenly Love is the thing, that I can’t live without…

Nice song, soft, very-english, romantic, nice tune.

Anyways, here I am, 1:32 AM, sitting in my room, its cold, its lonely, and there is a hell lot of work! Fouzia is online though, she’s just investigating my heart, trying to ask me “Do I love someone?”. Well, I told her very precisely and clearly that I don’t love anyone, and I want to concentrate on my studies. She’s just trying to convince me, but am rigid, afterall, I know myself.

Anyways, finally, the CV test was held, even after repeatedly trying. Actually some of the MTech students had some PROBLEM. I don’t know why people behave so plastic, can’t they understand when someone says PLEASE. Some of the UG3 guys were not any less than those people. I got even more pissed when after the test, I didn’t get to play CS, because the server was full. Though it might look kiddish, but I am really pissed with the guy who didn’t restart the server for me, after something like 10 times of saying PLEASE.

Finally, I decided to do the normal thing, count till 10. I did it once, twice, thrice. It didn’t work. Then I called up Riya, and I don’t know when, it all slowly went away. She’s so nice to talk to, hehe. Oh, my balance is also over now, shit.

I have this PR project to work on. Its nothing actually, just one combination that will start working, but god! Its not working. I have tried and re-tried, and re-re-tried. Lets see if I can change the code, and do something else. Today is 11th, and I have to submit it on 13th. God, help me.

I am feeling quite sleepy now, and its about 2 AM. I have to get up at 6 AM to go to GRE class, and I am not able to decide whether to sleep or stay awake. Lets see.

Piece of advice: Don’t expect anything from anyone, they all turn you down.

Bad day.

Man! I am caught up in such a bad situation. All my time management has completely failed. SE report, GRE test, CV test preparation, PR project work, PR report submission. Oh god, all at one time. There is no time for anything. I lost my notebook, DIP notes, PR notes, CV notes, SE notes, all in that. All my work of last sem, and whatever till today in this sem, gone! I have mailed all people, but no hope of getting anything back. God, help me.

I am still alive though, hehe. Apparently, I am not sad about the whole thing. Its okay, I mean bad things do happen. I think I will somehow manage. The only good thing that happened was that I talked to Riya today. She was so happy again, hehe. She had shown her birthday gift to her sister. Her sister also said that those were good, and it was nice that we sent those. Sometimes, I feel, Riya is such a nice girl. I mean, we started with just a “hi, asl please” a few years back. And now, its like she’s an inseparable part of my life. I guess, when I meet her, that’d be the happiest moment of my life.

Ok, fine, cut the crap. I am going for lunch now. Will hopefully finish all tasks successfully. And hopefully someone will find my notebook and return it to me. Fingers crossed, hehe. Ciao.

PR project… pain in the a**

Nice day today. I got up at 9 AM. My first reaction was, what the hell, CV class again gone! Two classes in a row! Man, got to do something about it now. Anyways, Srikanth did give me a proxy. I hope that works. Then, at about 10:30 AM, I came to know that I have to leave for Visu at 12. I had to register my BTP too. Nikhil had a class at 11:30, and Srikanth was down with fever. I hurriedly got ready and rushed to Prof. Jawahar.

We registered for a BTP, as one team, a team of three. But, sir suggested to do it 2+1 or 1+1+1 instead of all three in one team. We waguely agreed. Lets see what happens. Sir also told me that I had been selected for the DS TAship, and I should report for work as soon as possible. Hurray! He asked me why did I miss two classes in a row. Oh my god! Does he know that I didn’t come today? Does he know that I was absent today? Ofcourse he does! Did he mark me absent then? Anyways, lets hope that I get the attendance for today.

Oh, and by the way, I chose Prof. Jawahar finally, after one night of dilemma. I guess we’ll do quite well under him. Lets hope for the best.

We went to Visu today. Lakshmi and Bhanu couldn’t make it due to I don’t know what! Anyways, we reached quite very much in time there. We finally enrolled for the classes. Thursdays and Sundays, a total of 8 hours a week and 4 hours of self study per day. It looks to be tough. I hope I can do it.

I called up Riya when I was in Visu. Her DIP paper was nice. Most of it was morphological things. And she was like, bye bye bye, keep down the phone monkey. And I was not doing it. We kept on quarreling on keeping down the phone. Finally, she gave up and kept it down, as in disconnected it, hehe. I win, I win, I win!

Okay fine, this PR project is really pissing me off. We tried to see if that blurred smooth image can give us some output. I thought, maybe the training is less. We tried increasing epochs. Its going around 7-8% error till about one lakh epochs. I tried 8 lakh epochs, and it overfitted to give 20% error. I guess I will first make it display what it means by 7% error. If it has any problems, we might change the hidden nodes. Hope things work.

— continued after a break —
At 12 AM, Neeraj called me up. It was a BC meeting as usual. Nice friendly talk, teasing and stuff. I have just returned. Its damn cold right now. I am almost frozen. I will now do the PR project work. Tanu has a paper tomorrow, rather today. Hope she does well.

New Lesson.

After a long day of work, its 2 o clock that I am getting to sleep, just for about 3 hours. I went to the bathroom, and was washing my hands in the basin. I looked at my image in the mirror. I realized that it wasn’t me. I could clearly see that what the mirror was showing was just the physical embodiment of a more complex concept called ME. It really didn’t represent me, as I was from the within. I wondered that this same physical form was the one which people looked at to explain ME, understand ME, define ME. It is really wrong to do so. So, basically understood the lesson taught long back, “Don’t go by how one looks, but by how his/her heart is.”. No book taught me, no scholar, just a mirror, midnight and me!

Be blunt, it helps.

Earlier, I thought, it was always good to speak softly to people, to be gentle. What my theory said was, don’t modify the truth, present the truth as it is, but change the words in which you present the truth. This would mean, you’d try to convey the exact message contained, but even after that, you don’t hurt or disturb the person.

The problem with the view was, initially, it was more about how to modify the truth in order to make it less hurting, but still not lose any information. Gradually, it turned into trying to be as gentle as possible, even if there is some loss in the actual information. And, after a few days, it became, doing anything for the sake of gentleness, even if the truth gets modified completely.

Though the initial thought that CONVEYING it softly (less bluntly) was really good, and quite practical, most of the time it converts into more of the false presentation than the preservation of truth. There is a simple solution to this. Follow the conventional approach.

Speak the truth as it is, whether it is harsh, blunt, hurting, frustrating or anything else. Speak it even if someone will die if he comes to know about it. Speak it even if it harms yourself. Though this might tend to SPEAKING EVERYTHING BLUNTLY, but its safer than the previous approach.

If we are gentle and nice, and make some promises, there is a risk of not living upto the expectation and hurting people, or getting hurt. If we’re blunt and rude, people wont expect anything in the first place, is it not great? If out of the blue, you do something good to them, they’d be more than satisfied and pleased.

Points to remember today…
1. Truth is truth. Don’t modify. Don’t soften. Convey it as it is even if it hurts.
2. Don’t expect anything from anyone.
3. Don’t be nice to people, they will start having expectations.