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.

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.

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. 

Midsem 2 : Day Three

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wish me Luck!

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

Midsem 2 : Day One

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wish me luck!

Exams : I am too busy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GOD Life Humanity .. some philo crap!

Well, yesterday in the hindi class, we were taught something about “Vishv Mandir”. It says that the entire world is the home of god. We should try to look into ourselves to find the god within us, instead of looking for him in temples and mosques. After this happens, there will be no discrimination, it will not be like, this is the place of god and that is not, every place will be his home. And we will find everyone as good, and we’ll love all. There will be no discrimination based on the religions.

Another thing I came to know was the meaning of the word MANDIR. I thought it was related to something about praying and that too strictly Hindu thing. But the literal meaning of the word MANDIR is home! So, actually MANDIR is called MANDIR because its the home of god. So, its kind of contradictory to say that there is a home for god, because the entire universe and maybe beyond that, this whole structure is His home, and the sooner we realize it, the better it will be.

Anyways, another doha that I came across is … (I really don’t remember it)
jab tak main tha, hari nahi they .. ab hari hai.. main nahi..

It means that till I had “ego” (main), then there was no god within me, but now that there is god within me, there is no ego left!

I came to know that Hinduism is nothing. That is there is no religion called Hinduism. Actually, the way of life in this Indian region is called Hindu culture, so basically Hinduism is a culture, and the religion of the people of Hindu culture is SANATAN DHARM. Actually, this SANATAN DHARM is also not any religion. DHARM means DUTY. So, basically these are the set of DUTIES which a human needs to follows while acting in different roles in life, like the DUTY of a Student for his teacher, for a son for his father, etc. And when there were other RELIGIONS coming in India, like Islam, then, how to distiguish? We called ourselves as of HINDU RELIGION, which wasn’t there before. And there was no concept of RELIGION in our culture, so what did we do? DHARM (which means DUTY) was also overloaded with another meaning, RELIGION. If we realize this fact, then there will be no anger for other people, and might as well help us understand our culture better.

Seems like I’ve been getting too philosophical these days, hehe. Anyways, I was just sitting and sleeping in my room, (I actually slept a lot, and missed POPL class too, along with the PT ofcourse), and suddenly a thought came to my mind.

The video of the song “Show me the meaning of being lonely - Backstreet boys” was being played on the PC. I thought how a man lives his life, has thousands of expressions, experiences, and meet so so many no. of people, and does such varied amount of things. Then, one day, he dies. Still, there are another 5 billion left on the planet, who continue living. Even when all these 5 billion will be gone, another 10 billion will start living here (population explosion, lol).

So, I thought to myself that this world is some sort of a place where everyone gets a chance to play his/her part, and when the end comes, you leave the place for others. What remains permanent? I guess almost all of us believe in, or have faith in some god. And the same god, after we are gone, will be with the other new set of people. So, this means A HUMAN BEING is basically so small in front of the ever prevailing GOD.

A forwarded mail about a girl who got 80% burnt in a car accident, and has no fingers, a non functioning eye and horrifying look now, moved me a lot. Though the forward was about driving slowly, but then I thought to myself, if for a moment we go inside her body and feel it, how would it be like? Her only chance to live on this earth has been completely damaged and made off the track. Now she has no choice but to live this burden, such horrifying and depressing. I really felt sad for that girl, I don’t know her, but still she is a fellow human. Oh dear God, don’t do this to anyone else, again.

Anyways, another thought that came to my mind is, because this is my only chance on this planet to do my part, nothing should get messed up. I don’t have a RESTART ARENA button like Quake. So, basically I would want that my life goes perfectly, I get a perfect job, or maybe do something great, I get the perfect wife, etc. But these selfish thoughts surround me a lot of times, so it was not just these this time too.

I was thinking that well, just like I want a perfect life because this is my last chance to do something, another 6 billion minus one people are also here to do the same. I mean, each and every human life, or for that matter animal life is actually acting its part for the LAST TIME. And so, we should not do something that will somehow disrupt their perfect path, or maybe help a few who are off the track.

And this is not for any COMMUNITY CAUSE, this way, I’ll be adding to my own perfect life, because in my definition, perfection also includes PERFECT IN HELPING PEOPLE. So, I don’t want to stand at the verge of dieing, and think that, Kaash, I had helped someone in this life, why did I miss doing that!!

Anyways, enough of the philosophy crap, coming back to reality. Exams are near, and I haven’t begun preparing. Six papers, Hindi, POPL and networks look easy, DIP and PR look easy but lengthy, and Compilers looks difficult, lengthy, confusing, and I am quite scared of thinking about it. Today, I am studying PR before the DIP class and maybe in the night, so, NO CHAT WITH TANU TONIGHT.

Aahhh.. forgot to mention, Tanu and I have finally come to a conclusive decision to COMPLETELY REVERT BACK TO FRIENDSHIP. There was some hesitation left, and so finally, when I boldly mailed her, explaining it all, she also conveyed that she was hesitating to tell all that to me. So, all’s well!

Piyush, a junior came to me for help regarding his project in java. He doesn’t know CPP and he wants to do JFrame and WindowListener and inheritance and interfaces in one night, can you believe that? Anyways, hope he gets it postponed somehow.

I’ve been writing in the LUG Wiki, some articles about FC4 and YUM and SQL, etc. Its fun and tonight there is a LUG meeting. Lets see what comes out of it.

Umm.. I guess that about it for today. I’ll be taking a shower and getting back to studying PR in a short while. Pray for me.

The fall has begun..

Well, its been a nice midsemester examination. Networks and Compilers as easy as ever, and PR getting screwed, all unexpected things happening here. Its okay, who cares. Tomorrow is DIP, and I am so complacent about it, not even reading the book properly, just reading without concentration.

Riyanca, ohh, what to say now. I think the fall has begun. No, she didn’t do anything, but I think that this internet friendship is getting too much for her. Its not like I don’t think we are not as good friends or something, but then, still, I think she needs to depend more on people around her, and not on some internet link miles away. So, you can say, now I am trying to make her go away from me, its not very good for me, makes me sad and all, but then, its good for her, and so I am doing it.

I guess she’ll be beginning to feel it now that my hold on our so called “eternal friendship” is losening. She told me this before too, that finally I will leave her, as if we never met. Its not like that is what I always wanted to do or something. I really want her to be with me, and me with her. But if that harms your own friend, you don’t want that right? So, I am doing it. I hope everything gets okay.

Rest is all fine. Tanu and I are carrying on nicely with our talks. Now now, don’t tell me that you got Tanu, so you are leaving Riyanca or something. Its like, a girl who takes so keen interest in the minutest detail of my life, remembers all my friends, their names, their habits, and what not, can’t be replaced by someone else. So Riyanca can’t be replaced, ever. Anyways, so Tanu’s been friendly all these days. One day she stopped and asked on phone, that we didn’t used to talk so much and such friendlily, you remember? And then, as if she thought it was not correct to ask it, she just switched the topic. I don’t know whats happening. Is it friendship? Mind you, we flirt a lot these days. Can’t say its love, because my heart doesn’t say, YES, this is the girl.

I got to know of another new algorithm for my visual tracking project. Its called something motion detection. So, instead of the old crappy image substraction, I will try to use this new algorithm. Lets see how successful I am. I’ll begin working on it from tomorrow.

I haven’t gone to PT yet, so thats a little bit of problem. I’ll surely begin from 2nd September, hehe.

Anyways, wish me luck for DIP.

A fresh start…

New semister, new start, new energy, new courses, new people around, new challenges, new room, new! Everything is going through a changeover here, and its nice, I am happy with the change. The new semister has just begun, or rather will soon begin, and I am looking forward to it.

I arrived Hyderabad on 14th July by train, ANDHRA PRADESH EXPRESS. It had not been long since I went away from college, just about 14 days!

Nothing much happened at home, except that I met my old friends, me, Rahul, Anni, Tapan and Anurag. We spent some time together, talking, playing, eating, roaming and seeing movies.

Rahul has not changed since he went to Russia, he is the same old, even after two years, and so I was happy. Just as soon as he met me, it was like we had met just yesterday. No, we didn’t cry or anything, we are grown up now, hehe. Tapan had an accident so we could not go out a lot, and Anni was busy with his work as usual. Piyush got a little free, and Tanu was like, called up on the last day, when are you leaving, hehe.

It was nice to remain at home for a few more days. This time the feeling was different. This time there was no sadness that the holidays will soon end. Out of the 93 days of holidays, I just stayed about 40 days at home, but still I am content. Most of it is because I was able to meet all my friends and spend time with the family as well.

I didn’t meet Prerna and Vijay bhaiya this time also. I had thought of giving a visit to their place at least once. After all I consider them one among the best friends. I called them up on the last day, that is, on the day I was supposed to leave for Hyderabad. They were so delited to talk to me, and a little angry that I didn’t meet them. What I could sense from their talk was as if they were saying, come on dude, you’ve forgotten us, now just move on, no need to try to do anything. I want to correct all this when I go home next, maybe this December or maybe next year in June.

The new achievement is that I got my CAR AND TWO WHEELER GEARED EXCEEDING 50 CC DRIVING LICENSE finally. The driving test was almost as if it wasn’t there. I drove alone to the RTO and then the person just asked me take out the car and park it back, piece of cake, and then just a digital photo. Will get the CARD in a few days.

Tonight, Tanu was behaving strangely, talking like she never talks, and I feel its like we are not so close friends or something, we are just friends. This is mainly because of her attitude towards me, a little arrogant all the time, and maybe there is some of my fault too. Anyways, I later found out that it was her new friend Chahat who was talking so friendlily, and not Tanu. It doesn’t matter much to me, but it does matter a little bit.

I got the Farewell CDs of my school batch and was seeing them. My old batchmates, some of them I had forgotten, and some of them I wanted to see, some of them I didn’t want to see. I showed the video to a couple of friends.

The video these days going on everywhere is of the song KAJRARE from BNB. Devansh Amit Sumeet Karthik Parag and Me, all are just completely hipnotized by the song. The act of Aish is a little hot and because of her sweetness, its even better. I love the song.

There were some problems in choosing where will I live in the coming time. Most of the people decided to go to the Old Boys Hostel. I was not compulsorily required to go there and later Ravi and Ashish pushed me to stay in the New Boys Hostel. Just then I understood that I can live a little far with Ashish and Ravi, but its difficult to leave people like Amit and Parag, the ones who are all the time around you and make the air lively. So, I chose to go to the OBH. There were minor problems in room allotment. Finally I got 184 OBH. I’ll shift the room as soon as the other person vacates the room.

There are a lot more thoughts flowing in the mind at the moment, but I am half asleep, didn’t sleep all night, so have no strength to carry on, thanks to Chahat and Tanu probably. Everything is new here, and I hope that the new semister will be fruitful.

Oh, I missed writing about the courses I have opted. I talked to professor PJN, and he suggested to take up Digital Image Processing and Pattern Recognition as the elective courses. Later Srikanth backed out of PR because of the heavy workload. I also opted out of PR. But PR is a important course for me, and I am considering to take it up again.

The result of the last semister has been nice, with a SGPA of 8.8 excluding a 4 credit course under professor MB Srinivas, so its expected to go even higher. Ok, ok, I’ll leave now, bye.

Kubuntu 5.00000000004…

Ohhh.. gosh. Never waited longer to get 1 MB downloaded. This kubuntu linux CD… took 10 restarts and 2 days… 2 PCs and 2 men to complete… finally.. installed it. Initial hiccups and disappointments, still not very good, but still I am tending to like it. Nice KDE 3.4 apps, crashing and seg faults. Alien environment of Debain Linux.. and me a Redhat user…. still, its a nice experience. Most of the utilities are working here too. Gaim and firefox look bad… kaffeine crashes now and then.. amarok is great….

wow,.. is it my blog or a lug archive.. actually nothing else happened today.. was doing this thing all day. Met prof. Jawahar… will begin a project under him on visual tracking for security of sensitive places… will begin this monday.

Increased some marks in Algos…. so feeling happy…

Anni sms’s and says that I am forgetting old friends.. he’s gone mad.. i have always wanted to go home and meet my friends.. if there was no summer project.. i would have been there… how can i make him understand??

Rest is fine. I am a little lonely and a little sad.

No work day!!!!

Today was.. a lazy day. I kept on doing something or the other on the PC till late in the night. In the morning, I got up just in time for the GPU Workshop, then thought, who wants to leave sweet soft cozy bed and went back to sleep again.

I had just one work to do all day. Programming Assignment 5 on Graphics. But then, complacent me, kept of delaying it. I did play volleyball a little. Then, my shorts tore from the centre while I was stretching out to hit the ball. That was the end of volleyball for me.

Parag kept on pressing to go for the regular jogging, but I realized I don’t have much time left for the assignment, so I refused.

Rest is all fine. Not feeling very lonely today. I am afraid of Prof. PJN, because I skipped the workshop.

I am still struggling with the assignment, its almost done, 1 hour 57 minutes left for the submission to close. God help me.

Finally, there is some motion…

Ohh, today was a nice day. Started off at 9AM in the morning, in a hurry. GPU workshop and DBMS exam papers checking, both at the same time. And then, when I reached Prof. Kamal for my DBMS paper, he asked for the ID card, and I had to walk back. And was late for the GPU workshop too.

The GPU workshop was nice. New thing to learn. Haven’t been able to read the matter whole day, and the night doesn’t seem free enough either.

The rest of the day was also fine. Ate too much at lunch and at dinner too.

Prof. Jawahar finally agreed to start a new CVIT summer project. Finally, I have some work to do and I feel better now. Things are starting to get interesting. But this internet is not attracting me anymore. I have stopped chatting for hours, and seems its a nice trend.

My headache is continuing even today. I don’t know what causes it, besides, I haven’t taken any medicine yet. Lets hope it get okay.

Okay, I’ll take a leave. I have to finish my Graphics assignments.