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Emotional overload

Paralysis

I am paralyzed by the emotional overload which this movie has given me. It ‘pings’ so many ‘ports’ of my conscience, so very effectively and deeply. And this song is the representative of the whole package. It goes like this,

Main kabhee batlata nahi, par andhere se darta hoon main maa,

Yoon to main dikhlata nahi, teri parwaah karta hoon main maa,

Tujhe sab hai pata hai na maa, Tujhe sab hai pata meri maa.

(English literal translation :

I never tell you this, but I am scared of the darkness, oh mother,

Generally I don’t show it, but I care for you, oh mother,

Do you know it all, oh mother? You know it all, oh my mother. )

Thoughts
I was thinking how emotions can paralyze a person, both mentally and physically. The first symptoms of this can be seen in the eyes, where you can’t control your muscles to stop the salty fluid from flowing out of the tear bags.

A greater impact can be seen mentally, when all day you just keep swinging here and there, and are not able to concentrate on your work, or do something else except being in that pathetic mental state.

If emotions are so harmful, then why do we need them anyway? If through evolution, only the best traits of all living beings get boosted and the useless ones get deprecated, how have we, humans, supposedly the most developed species on earth, retained this ‘defect’?

What good do emotions do to us that their shortcomings can be ignored as minor round-off errors? When a person is acting emotionally, it is less likely that he/she is doing things practically or rationally.

But if we look deeper, emotions can create revolutions, emotions can boost the morale of an entire army by a thousand times in magnitude, emotions can help people keep going on even when its gets tough, emotions can make someone achieve that practically and rationally seems impossible.

Conclusion

Emotions are a reason for misery and sadness in the world,

Emotions are behind revolutions, discoveries and inventions,

Emotions make us behave worse than animals sometimes,

Emotions are what makes us human.

Another OS brainstorm(?)

I feel that my brain is heating up from inside, too much thinking going on lately! I wish there was an ‘off’ switch which I could press so that I leave all worries and thoughts. Well, there is this ‘die’ option, or ‘drugs/drinking’ option, but then I prefer neither. The first option, well, of course is like a permanent solution, but there is no ’switch on’ after it. The second option … well I decided to never use it.

I am going home on this 31st evening. A lot of wrapping up to do, I want to buy presents for my family members as a token for the first money I’ve earned (that comes under ‘taxable’ income ;)). And then, I’ve this OS thought process going on, and I need to plan in advance for the coming holiday, how will I utilize the time as well as give enough time to people there.

Office work is going on as usual, but the workload since TODAY has been unusually low. So, all day I’ve been reading articles about operating systems. Most of which say that Linux is a clone of a 30 year old system, UNIX. And a lot of them say that most OSes are based on the three tier thing, kernel, files/folders and processes. We must change this to something that is shown in hollywood, no windows nothing, just some vague interface to get the information we want. This thought is influencing me a lot.

Another thought that comes to me is the ease of use of the existing systems. If we were to shift to a vague system with no “Firefox”, no “Windows Media Player” (eh, “MPlayer”), no “Start menu” (eh eh, “K Menu” (eh eh eh “Gnome’s whatever menu”)), and whatever application you used to like! Well, it might take a decade for people to finally accept (if ever) such a thing.

Then there are people who ask to ‘do-away’ with GCC. Does that mean we need to implement another compiler? How can anyone not port ‘GCC’ to their OS (except Microsoft)? And people ask us to do-away with C! Imagine coding a new OS with D, and writing a compiler for it along with the OS! If we do port GCC, then how will GCC run if we’re not basing upon ‘kernel, files and processes’? Yeah, the C code we write can work the way we want, but GCC needs to run on ‘files’ and write ‘compiled binary files’. Also, the gcc executable and shared libraries are also ‘files’ stored in a specific ‘directory structure’. And all the C code which we write is ‘files’. How can the compiler survive in an environment that gives up this basic structure?

A way of doing it would be to create ‘emulation of kernel/files/processes’ in the new OS. The compiler will run in this emulated environment and spit out binary ‘files’. There should be some way of running ‘files’ created by GCC on the new OS, which supposedly wont support ‘files’?  The idea seems wierd, apart from creating an overhead of an emulator for the existing structure of computer systems. Maybe a little more pondering on it can give some clearer picture. Rather, the method should be, what will be the new structure? And then later we can answer other questions of compatibility with existing structures and porting applications.

I know I am talking really wierdly these days, but then, my knee injury has really damaged my ‘brain’ (My wound has fully recovered now!). Anyways, I’ll keep posting more on this. For the ‘conventional’ OS development talks, which I keep writing as and when I read more and more, I’ve created a wiki, http://myos.scribblewiki.com/Main_Page. Do visit to read more, and all wierd thoughts will find place in this blog, hehe.

Ciao.

Dream Operating System

Anyone who is remotely related to programming, internet and such has a dream to create something of his own. Often this dream is of creating a new Operating System of their own. An operating system that will be faster than any other, will support everything and will have so many features that it’ll outnumber Windows XP in its user-base!

Yes, its close to impossible to outnumber Windows XP user-base or even Free BSD for that matter ;). Yes, its close to impossible to make something faster than them and still support as much as they do! Yeah, you can make a ‘hello world OS’ which is zillion times faster than any other, but whats the use?

Ok, all this was to build up a platform to talk to you. Well, just like ‘everyone’, even I have dreams. And they never become concrete, only day-dreams of all that I said before :D. But then, I realized that I wasted some 8 years in just dreaming! I didn’t take the next step which generally ‘human beings’ take. Thats how the human race has progressed from apes to what we are now, ‘mobile apes’ :D.

Anyways, so basically, till now I was a dumb day-dreamer like a couple of million more, when this angel came and told the golden words in my ear, … “IDIOT! START TOH KAR” (means, Idiot! Stop dreaming and start something). And then, me, following her words began to look in the world around me.

Coming to the point directly after all this drama, the straightforward deal is Tanu asked me to do something in this regard, and I began reading about OS development, and trying out ’something’ ;).

Ok so the next FAQ looks to be, ‘So have you begun your own OS?’. Dude, chill, Microsoft Inc. took five whole years before they could change these lines

printf (”Welcome to Windows XP\n”); to printf (”Welcome to Windows Vista\n”);

So, its not that simple as it sounds in the dream world. At least the 80X86 processor is not as simple as it should have been. And then there are other mental blockages for me. Here is a list,

1. Why make another *nix clone? Why not something new?

2. Everything is a file, umm.. *nix concept, I want something original, WHAT?

3. Copy windows? Uh, not even in my dreams

4. Why C? Why not my own D or E or F or G? Do I need to write another compiler :O

5. Why OS? What happened to web-dev and python scripting? And eh, computer vision?

6. My own filesystem or new? Why old? Why not be ‘readable’ by others? Linux also did ext2, why not me do my own AFS or something?

7. Ok, so if I use C, how do I write my kernel? I don’t even know much about it!

8. Uh, all this GDT, IVT, IDT, Page table, Multitasking, PCI, A20 line, and every damn thing has a hundred configuration settings. Am I enough or I need help?

So, basically I didn’t reach all this just by beginning. First I encountered Viral Patel (http://www.viralpatel.net), who is a anti-ME. He actually made a fully functional ‘CLOSED SOURCE’ OS, called Taj OS (named after Taj Mahal).

Then I reached www.osdev.org, which is a whole portal dedicated to help people like me try their hands on some OS development. It lists more than hundred hobby operating systems developed by people, many of which are open source and closely resemble *nix or DOS. The site has extensive tutorials for all aspects of OS development, with some holes left, which I might fill up one day.

I started using ‘nasm’ compiler to write initial bootable code in assembly. Using ‘vmware’ to keep it ’safe’, I booted the first few experiments, and with the help of Fedora Core 7 rescue DVD, I installed the bootloader onto the ‘virtual vmware hard disk’. So, now my small bootable assembly program can boot from a disk, read the keyboard and display messages! Cool for a start, at least I can feel that :D. Ofcourse, that hard disk will be able to boot my OS (rather boot code) and nothing else, even if we try GRUB.

Now, my next tasks are to read this book, THE INTEL MICROPROCESSORS (750 pages :() by BARRY B. BREY and C. R. SARMA (Rs. 299 only :D). And then I’ll have a better clue of the things that are happening. Then I might decide to begin some design of an OS, if I still have interest left. I also read the source-code of Ace OS (1.0 and 2.0), DEX OS 1.1, which are small operating systems, written in C and are somewhat understandable. Viral’s OS doesn’t run on my vmware and I don’t have a floppy drive, :D.

Ok, maybe I am thinking too high, but if I make one, I won’t make a ‘floppy OS’ for some DOS work, I’ll make a real installable OS with a CD setup and a hard-disk GRUB compatible install. I might not remain compatible with *nix, so maybe it’d be difficult to port Linux applications to it, but I’ll maybe write some of my own!

Right now, all this is a distant dream, but gladly the first bricks have been laid. And soon, when I am on the same level as other OSdevers (term for OS developers), I’ll come up with some concrete thing to write here.

Created a new page to log my knowledge and status on this issue.

Any comments are welcome. Any people interested in development can discuss with me, learn and share. But right now, as there is no ‘development plan’, there is no ‘development team’. Though, I will need more people by my side when I really go into doing it. And as you know, that there is no plan, YOU can affect the plan, and YOU can make it your plan. So, like me, you wont have hesitation in joining me when we actually begin work, because it’ll be YOUR OS too!

More information soon. Cheers!

PS: I fell from the bike, injured my knee, so maybe some cells in my ‘brain’ have been killed or altered, so I am thinking wierdly these days. Operating system and me, really huh?

PS2: Am perfectly fine guys, just an injury on the knee, so thanks for being concerned, but don’t worry, I’ll be ok.

PS3: HA HA HA, ok fine so you are not concerned, neither am I concerned about your concern ;).

PS4: Someone ask me to shut-up yaar!

Ok bye then. Take care.

Aag

‘Ramu ki aag’ …. bujh gayi

“Humko bhi AAG ne mara, tumko bhi AAG ne mara,  is AAG ko band karwaado.”
When we try to make tea at home, though its not a very big or significant task, still we take care to put the water first, then the tea leaves, then sugar, then milk and then pour it in cups and serve it while its hot. And yeah, kind of measure each thing before using it. The total cost of making a cup of tea doesn’t exceed like Rs. 20, thats also an exaggerated estimate. Ramu (aka Ram Gopal Varma) made a remake of Sholay. Assuming it costs at least a million times more than a cup of tea, couldn’t he have thought about the whole thing at least ten times more cautiously? At least should have seen how the songs begin in the movie. The scene is going on, and suddenly you see Devagan jumping around Ms. Kothari and woah, did a song just begin out of the blue?

And that new Thakur, even I can rate myself better in dialogue delivery. Comedy sucks, picturization, flow, connectivity.. and so on. There are a few good scenes worth appreciating, like the one when Thakur gets his palm cut, the climax scene, the jay-veeru-ko-gabbar-ke-hawale-kar-do scene. One more thing Ramu could have possibly done was thinking of changing something in the script. Like the new Don movie. That small punch at the end could have made the movie better.

Anyways, still WE SURVIVED IT through and through, lol.

Hey babyy

Nice movie. Good light comedy. Strong impacting emotion. Bearable storyline for a fun based movie. Good picturization. One item number. What else do we need to make an evening with friends lively and happening? Yesterday, we all got this DVD of Hey Babyy and saw it at home. And then a round of BC till 3:30 am. Oh god, I was so sleepy in the morning, got up at 8:30 and reached office only by 10:30, thanks to the great traffic of our new city.

Tanu is a little ill, and I am very very worried for her. Hope she gets better soon. Please pray for her.

I am still sitting in office, working a bit. Though a bit distracted too. Have a nice day. Ciao.

Another combo post :D

Its not fair. I write so less these days and most of the posts are just a sum total of the past days. Anyways, what can I do, lets continue the trend.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is a busy day. I have to prepare a BTP presentation, a Advanced Graphics course presentation along with normal classes (read it as one class at 11). The upcoming matches from 7th of this month is to be recorded match-by-match on the tv.iiit.ac.in server. Yes!! The same old server which people enjoyed. We are working on the audio-video sync of the recording system these days. Hopefully after the series, the server will be open for the public.

This week

Well, I’ve to finish a lot of things this week. There is a pile of backlog for the Cognitive science course and a pending GPU assignment. We’ve set up a YUM REPOSITORY SERVER for IIIT. But mirroring 12 repositories for 6 platforms is a wastage of disk space and bandwidth. As a result, we are working on a better mechanism to create the repository. Sagar and I are jointly working on the project to come up with something good. Lets see what do we make.

This month

Diwali is ’scheduled’ this month. And its been 3 long months since I went home. I came to college on 7th of July 2006 and today is 4th of October 2006. I’m thinking to go home from 16th to 22nd of this month. As a result I’ve to skip a few classes and also finish the BTP final report beforehand, which is to be submitted on 24th of this month. Hopefully Jawahar sir will allow me to go home. I have to restart the work on the 4th semester 4 credit Mobile Blogging software project. The placements have come very near, and I need to have a clean marksheet.

Qt 4

Wow! This new thing is such a marvel. Initially I used to hate it, because I didn’t understand how to use it. But now I am familiar with the Ui namespace, resource files and other fundas, it feels good. For starters, let me tell you a good news. In Qt 3, if we created a Ui from Qt designer, and edited the header and sources generated using the uic command, the ui files used to overwrite them next time we needed to change something in Ui. Now, they’ve separated Ui component from the functionality code. As a result, the programmer can completely rely for Ui on Qt4 designer and on his code for the rest of it. Another good thing is resources. Now we can define the resources like images, text files used by the application we develop. All of them will get embedded inside the executable itself. As a result, we need to ship only single files instead of zip archives.

My experiments - Embedder

I was thinking about making something like ’setup.exe’ of windows. Generally linux setups come as tar archives or like rpm files. Almost nothing (except jdk setups, etc) come like a single setup file which handles everything. I wrote a command line utility as the first steps to generate something similar for linux. The command is called ‘createArchive’. This command takes two arguments, name of a new executable and a resource file. The resource file contains a list of files, both executable and ordinary. The command reads all files given in the resource file and finally creates an executable by the name as specified. This new executable contains all the files embedded in itself. Upon execution, this executable creates a temporary directory in /tmp and extracts all the files. It then executes the executables in a specified order. It has options of ‘quiet’ and ‘destroy extracted files on exit’ too. You can try this too. Download the files from here. It works on Linux, but is pretty much platform independent, most of if is just CORE C++. Maybe you can try it on windows as well. Does “FILE * fp;” work on windows? Sorry, the code isn’t documented (at all).

Movies

Ok, not many in the list. Lage Raho Munnabhai has been the favorite since a few days. I don’t know if the director had any intention to spread the gandhigiri, but I can see it already spreading (at least in orkut profiles). What I think one should notice is that the ‘noble thought’ is being internalized and understood by someone who has been violent and aggressive all the time, a gunda. If such a person can understand the words of truth and non-violence, we, the ordinary people ought to.

Pyaar ke side effects… they are already there. Actually Tanu wanted me to see this one. And after people appreciated it, I got desperate to see it. Eh, well I can already notice some of the side effects in my life too, hehe. In all a fun movie, a must see for your PC and can be worthy for the cinema hall as well.

Blogging - bring me back

Oh its been so long since I last visited my blog or someone elses. I am like out of the blogging world. Not that I am busy or something, but I do other things more often. They include movies, orkutting, chatting, working on the YUM REPO, etc. And rest of the time I am outside my room doing some other activities. Lets see if I revert back with this opening post. Actually I was considering of creating a private blog as well, or making this one private or something similar. I think a lot of my thoughts don’t find place in this open blog. Maybe its too early to let my ideas open for the public to read and judge.

Conclusion

Ok fine, now that I wrote a post, I have to have a conclusion. There is nothing to conclude though. Welcome me back to the blogging world. Hopefully going home this diwali. And well keep your fingers crossed for the upcoming YUM REPOSITORY and TV.IIIT.AC.IN.

Ciao.

I love my India

A picture is worth a thousand words, needless to say anything more now.

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.

Tagged??

I don’t know whats TAGGING or TAGGED and stuff. I was just reading Sumeet’s blog and saw that he was tagged or something. And I saw that at the end he has TAGGED me. I went and asked him the whole funda. So, according to him, I am supposed to answer this questionaire and forward it to someone else. Here it goes…
1.Grab the book nearest to you, turn on a random page and find random line..

Do you remember when you bought, or comtemplated buying, a new car?
Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis
(Yeah, am trying to try to mug up some words…lol)
2.Stretch your left arm out as far as you can

Just got my room cleaned…. a lotta free space in here…

3. What is the last thing you watched on TV?

The song ‘No way no way’ from ‘Anthony kaun hai?’ on MTV

4.Without looking, guess what time it is?

11:40 AM

5. Now look at the clock, what is the actual time?

11:56 AM … wow!! I am so bad at remembering time… just saw the watch before taking this questionaire.

6. With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?

Nothing! The wing is unusually calm!! :O

7. When did you last step outside? What were you doing?

Went to brush at 10 AM. Am soooooo lazy hehehe.

8. Before you started this survey, what did you look at?

I looked at my monitor and the lovely ‘wallpaper’ on it

9. What are you wearing?

Shorts and T shirt

10. Did you dream last night?

I dreamt that I was chatting with my dad… which has happened like only twice in this whole lifetime till now..!!

11. When did you last laugh?

Don’t remember… been a lil sad these days

12. What is on the walls of the room you are in?

Dead bodies of insects… some marks left by the tapes that were stuck… cracks …. just removed all my posters and all….

13. Seen anything weird lately?

Well… cant even think of anything wierd… wierd isn’t it?

14. What do u think of this quiz?

Quiz? Is it a quiz? Its more like an interview

15. What is the Last film u saw?

Omkara …. the a-shade-less-than-DVD print… with ok ok video and crappy audio x-(

16. If you became a multimillionaire overnight, what would you buy?

I dunno… I need a bike and a Ford Icon… and maybe build another floor for my home… and surely wanna help some needy ppl.. dunno how

17. Tell me something about you that I dunno.

Well… Sumeet… you know almost everything… :).. and I wont tell you the rest of the ‘details’ .. nice try

18. If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?

I wanna have a world without the border disputes between India and Pakistan…

19. Do you like to dance?

Like to… well thats tricky… YEAH I do.. But you see am not a professional dancer.. or rather not even a dancer… so I prefer doing it in private

20. George Bush

Screwed the world.

21. Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?

I’ve already thought about it.. I’ll call her Mahfooza…. hopefully… if my wife agrees too
Mahfooza Rana wont go… so maybe we’ll come up with something else

22. Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him?

Never imagined that… !! .. it’ll be a gal.. come on

23. Would you ever consider living abroad?

Yeah why not… I’d love to. I mean I don’t have these ‘principles’ that I’ll live in India and stuff. But then I might feel homesick and return..

24.What do you want GOD to say to you when you reach the pearly gates?

I don’t think there is anything like that. Everything that IS is just in this world.

25. People who may do this memo in their journal.

Didn’t get the question. But if you mean people who take this quiz… then … well.. who have a lil time to spend outta their busy schedules

So, thats it, now my turn to TAG!! Wow!… I don’t even know how many people will actually read it and reply to tag or whatever you call it. So here is my list (skipping people who have been tagged by Sumeet)

IV … lets see what the bond has to write … AAAAAAIIIIIIIVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

Hari puttar lets see what paaji writes… …

Pati … ok this one is a brave attempt… awaiting acceptence

Gokool lets see what are the ‘optimists’ thoughts

Beegle …. something techno expected

Ok fine.. as instructed.. I’ve put Five people on the TAG list. Ohh, and here are some specially invited/tagged

Gautam …. the coolant guy …. would love to know what he would answer… hey gimme the link to your blog

and last but not the least ….

Nidhi …. lets see how a PROFESSIONAL would reply

Ok thats it for this time. Am busy trying to study for GRE as you all know. Shamefully hopelessly failing to do so though, but I’ll keep trying. Rest in another post, and I promise wont delay it a lot.

Ciao.

My world

I thought lets draw how my world looks like. This is a rough draft, if am more free than today, I’ll make an elaborated one too.

Can you see some peculiarity? Is there any boundary between me and the entities in the innermost rectangle? Do you see the boundary of the white square? Or rather, do you see a white square in the middle? It is to say that well, I don’t know if there is a boundary for those close people too, its all what you perceive. (Thats what we’re learning in cognitive science by the way)

So how is the thought?

FAQ :

1. Why is the image not so fundoo?

Ans. Its made in MS Paint. With the limited functionality, (and limited time ) this is what I could do.

2. Whats happening to TV.IIIT.AC.IN ?

Ans. Its going to be up soon. My BTP and a few pending projects are coming in between. Almost everything is ready, if someone is ready to do some mechanical labour for me, I can make it working in two days.

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. 

What do you need eyes for?

"If you loved me, you wouldn't care about my looks."

"Looks don't matter, what matters is the heart of the person."

"So, if I stop looking good, you'll stop loving me?"

On one side are words like these spoken by one set of people, and on the other are people who describe beautiful things. I don't know many sentences in support of the other set, but well, all that Windows XP boasts about is an all new LOOK. Everyone who is a little tech-savvy knows that its just Windows 2000 beneath. All this business of modelling, movies, media is about good looks. And then, the other side defends saying, "Dikhawo pe na jao, apni akal lagao".

But, if we think again, is everything which is beautiful, fake? Is there nothing like a real beauty? Can every human being be so purely in love that the looks wont matter at all? And those who think that one of the conditions to love something or someone is that they should look good donot 'actually' love it/him/her. Well, I don't support such a thought.

As far as I know, more than 50% of the brain processing is done for the vision system. Why? Just because god thought it'd be great to do so? Or maybe visual data is too much or something? A more convincing answer is that visual perception is the most effective way of getting information. Even imagining or understanding is a synonym of 'visualizing'. And still people think that visual appearance is not the way to like or love people.

One of the reasons people give about not judging people by looks is that looks aren't in control of the person. But then, thats just the bone structure, height and tissues, complexion. There are a lot of other things that make up looks. The hair, a clean face, the clothing, the freshness, etc, etc. All these are very much under human control. And with plastic surgery and dental science, even the facial structure.

The other reason people give is that when we love someone, we love the person and not his appearance. But then what are the ways you can communicate or get in touch with a person? Touch, voice and vision. People keep saying about its important how someone touches you, or talks to you. Why not how someone looks to you, or looks at you? Gestures which are just 'visible' also form a great amount of interaction between persons. For example, the traffic policeman does gestures with his arms to signal things to you.

If something looks good, like a car or a computer, it can become the only reason why you end up buying it. Are persons less important than these products that we donot use the visual information while judging people? I strongly support the notion that looks do matter and are a very very big factor in human interaction.

And we have very good examples too. What do we see when we are looking in a matrimonial site? Don't we first see the photo than seeing the other details? All the community search engines provide a button "look for profiles with photos only", why?

If someone changes the way he/she talks, and begins being rude, we could stop interaction with the person. If someone touches you harshly and hurts you, you might get annoyed with that person. But if the same person dresses shabbily in front of you, or stops looking good, it is assumed that we wont change our attitude. Why? There is no reason why a person, be it a husband/wife or a boyfriend/girlfriend or even a father/son should like the other person in the same way as he/she looked before. Just like the way a person talks to you 'everytime' matters, the way a person touches you 'everytime' matters, the way people look to you 'everytime' should and does matter too.

Lets think about Reservations

I am not here to present a new concept or what I think. Actually, I haven't given it a thought ever. So I am here to battle out the issue in my mind. The issue is not other than 'reservations'. Please don't scold me if I write childishly, please don't say that I am a fool or something, and please don't tell me that I am contradicting my words if I say something else later. This post is completely based on the thoughts that come along 'during' the time I am typing here.

The Backward Classes (BC) have been long exploited by the upper classes. Ranta sir gives a detailed time-line about the history of reservations in India. Reservations these days have become like a pain in the lives of people of the 'general category'. Everywhere, the number of seats for the GC is slashed down by the 'reserved seats'.

When I did my AIEEE counselling, many of the NITs (National Institute of Technology) had something like 1-2 seats for 'Madhya Pradesh students'. Out of the 1-2 seats, 1 was reserved. As a result, some of the colleges didn't even have a seat for me (a GC MP student). But another issue is, does it completely hamper my career? I did get admission in another college where there were enough seats (actually 0% reservation to be precise).

What 'good' was obtained out of reserving seats for BC students? Many of the parents who were hoping that their son/daughter will get through AIEEE but couldn't make it into the high ranks could actually go in and become an engineer. Maybe in some colleges, there is a relaxed passing criterion for BC students. Finally, some company comes and recruits the students. Obviously the company will take the 'high ranking meritorious students'. As a result, the so-called 'BC software engineer' with a degree too remains unemployed. He is a little less capable, maybe. He might get a job, but that too in a smaller place where his skills are enough to do the job.

Now, in the new scenario, 49.5 % of the students will be from the BC. At this point, we should not stereotype BC = less capable. Even a BC student can be a genius and a general student can be a duffer. But the cause of the stereotyping is the fact that the GC student has no choice but to face the competition among millions of others while the BC student 'has a easier way out too'. We are told the story of a cocoon in childhood or somewhere. If the butterfly doesn't struggle and break the cocoon to come out, and someone else just helps her open it up, her muscles don't get enough strength and it doesn't achieve the capability to fly. In a similar way, this 'reservation system' is crippling the BC students by giving them perks.

The government, as you all know, has also chosen to ask the industries to create some criterion of reservation for BC graduates for recruitment in the same. As a result, 49.5% of the employees of all companies will be from BC. Though those who face the actual competition will be as good as the GC people, the 'crippled' ones will help create chaos in the companies too. Bad economy, bad productivity, higher prices and so on will be some of the consequences as I see them.

Some news channel was showing us the condition of the BC people in India (Mumbai to be precise). It says that these people continue to do the downtrodden jobs just for the sake of getting a quarter to live in. As a result, some people left other good jobs and became sweepers in the municipality. Their job hasn't changed, just that now it has become a government job from being a forced occupation. How will reservation help those kind of BC people? They will not even know what IIT or IIM is. The reservation quota will keep depriving GC students for the sake of those BC people who aren't even aware of their rights.

As discussed in the above paragraphs, I feel that a BC student needs to be given encouragement and help at the lower levels of education, when the foundations of his academic career are being grounded. After that, he should be left into the open competition, to struggle and fail or succeed, but finally at the end of the day live like a self-made eligible capable Indian citizen. So, at the end of all the thought process, I think I support 'anti-reservation' at the level of 'higher studies and employment' but I strongly support reservations, benefits and perks to all BC people at the foundation levels of education. And I also advocate a re-evaluation of the list of BC people of India. Rather than keeping it caste-wise, make it income-wise.

Hope you didn't get bored. I might change my views tomorrow, don't expect anything from me. 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.

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. 

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

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

Fedora Core 5

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

TV.IIIT.AC.IN

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

Going home

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

Internships

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

Sysadmin

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

Love

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

Ciao.

Humility and posers.

This post was written on March 10. I didn't find much 'meaning' in it. But still, posting for the sake of it. Please correct it where ever there are flaws, contradictions and inconsistancies.

We come across enormous amount of textual content every day, news stories, blogs, discussion forums, newsgroups, essays and what not. Generally you notice that everyone tries to be humble, down to earth person. Everyone calls himself (or herself) crazy and stupid. Some of the instances from IIIT::Blogroll are (no offense)…

• Just my'crazy erratic'self, with an ever wandering, rambling soul….composing entirely what my infatuated mind perceives!!
• I am continuously wandering from one place to another, trying to make sense of things and comprehend what my mind allows me to.
• joblessfreak
• My rambling on ideas, thoughts on technology, business and other topics that constantly feed my thinking
• Yet Another Blogger — innocent and incoherent ramblings

Talking about all people in general, how many are really humble as they show they are? The human tendency is to feel happy when we get appreciation from others. Generally people are very much interested in the number of hits to their blog or number of comments on it. The basic motive of 'stats and comments', apart from getting opinion of others, is to feel happy about the number of people that read our thoughts. I don't think there is anything wrong in seeking love and appreciation from others.

Personally, I don't think there is something like a 'purely humble' person. I mean, its good to read about great people in scriptures and all, but in the 21st century, everyone is just someone, with certain 'natural behavior'. Some might be soft spoken, some might be blunt, some might boast a lot, etc, etc. But, we all know 'the internal self' and its nature. Its not wrong to hide it, but then, posing to be a completely different person is also kind of not-right. Say for example there is some person who is a complete pervert from inside, and poses to be a really nice and 'decent' fellow, just to get some girl fall for him. Though that girl might later repent and leave him, but such an act can be termed as close to 'crime'.

Generally, people exposed to the media, or some kind of public platform end up becoming posers. A lot of them just want to show that they are modern and 'with the times'. Say for example, a son getting ashamed of his own father because he is a software professional and his father is not that well-to-do. Other reasons could be that people who are not like the majority. Take for example the Rock lovers. I am one of the few who basically doesn't find any sense in that stuff. But fortunately or unfortunately the majority of people aren't Rock lovers or at least there is a big enough group who is not (in IIIT). If it was some other place, lets say New York or something, just to keep up with the 'rock loving tendency', I would have posed to really really love rock music and actually end up growing some long hair. That ways, posers aren't completely at fault, even the environment forces them to become like that.

Till now, what I have concluded that most posers are those who want to 'look alike' the majority of people in a community. There are others who just want to look different than the rest and end up posing something which they are not. Again, being different from the rest is also a natural human tendency. Everyone wants his own independent and 'different' existance. To make our presence felt, we tend to add some 'different'ness to our profiles which otherwise are very monotonous and boring. Another thing to note is that a poser who wants to look different tries to at least acquire all 'common' attributes, and then be different on some other virtues. For example, a normal Programmer will at least learn the correct syntax and somehow digest the processes of a company, even if its not natural to him or her. Now, just to be different from others, he'd develop a 'custom style' in coding, designing or working. Does constant exposure to 'posing to be someone' change the person internally? Is it not like slowly even a 'posing rock lover' begins to understand those songs, and start liking it too.

Anyways, till now, you would have seen that this post has no connection with 'humility' (at which I began writing it). How is posing related to 'humility'? A person who is really humble will be humble. A person who wants to pose to be humble will also behave that ways. Everyone saying 'am crazy', 'I just ramble', what does it show? Is the current society completely crazy and aimless? Its generally considered cool, friendly to call oneself all that. How many of us are really cool? Most of us are 'boring, selfish, calculative' and we generally 'try to present syntactically and semantically correct facts or thoughts' in our public appearances (just like I am trying to write this post). This simply indicates that a major portion of people in this world are 'posers' (including me). If we were really cool and careless, we wouldn't care about writing all our thoughts in a public thing and making people read it and also comment on it. Why would we want to make a tamasha of our own life? We all want that people understand how pathetic lives we live and feel sympathetic about it.
Is there a way to figure out who is really humble? One of the characteristics could be that a humble person doesn't 'show' his emotions, deeds to people. He remains quiet. He does good to the society and then quiety slips into his own world. A poser on the other hand basically openly informs each and every person he knows about anything he does. And finally 'requires' that every person give a 'opinion' about the whole thing. The huge growth of blogs around the world which just write about people and their work, thoughts, deeds is just an indication of the amount of posers in this world. No, I don't think each and every blogger is a poser, or if you just write about your work, you become one. I just want to say that there is fair enough probability of finding posers among the bloggers.

Okay fine, I give up. Even I am getting confused about the whole thing. Am dumb. Can anyone help please?

Dependence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Technology

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a nice day! Ciao.

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 

Placements.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ciao.

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

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

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

Bush visiting ISB, this thing has been made so loudly audible. I mean, ISB isn