Vroom

I got meself a new toy :-)

Don't look at the antenna

The scene is set. It is a crowded mall on a Saturday evening. I'm
wandering aimlessly in the mall awaiting the arrival of my cousin. I
see a "Tata Sky" booth. A sales boy and girl are standing next to the
stall. I approach the booth.

Me: Hi, what is the subscription charge of this thing.

Boy: 300 bucks a month.

Me: Oh!

Girl: Yeah, its 300 bucks plus 4 grand for the installation.

Me: Oh!

Boy: Yes, you have this small antenna which you have to put up in the
terrace (gives a pamphlet with a picture of a small dish antenna).

Me: (declines the pamphlet after a cursory glance) OK, so it works on
the principle of line of sight (pointing at the antenna).

Girl: No no.. you don't have to look at it for it to work.

Me: (lifts eyebrow) Hmmm .. Thank you. (controls laugh, leaves)

English bollywood movie

HBO has been showing runs of the movie: American Ninja. If you do get the time, please do watch it. You would feel as if a Hindi movie has been dubbed into English. The following dialogue has been lifted from IMDB:

Black Star ninja: Who is he?
Colonel Hickock: He's a new recruit, he just got here yesterday. I don't even know his name!
Black Star ninja: He posses great skills!

And of course its an insult to all the marshal arts movies ever made.

Dhoom 2 review

OK, so this other day there was a company outing for the movie Dhoom-2 !! After watching the movie I realized that "Times of India" had given it a biased review, 4 stars, by a large scale. I would have given it 2.
The story has numerous loose ends. The action is not out of this world (these days I despise stunts with cables. I mean c'mon, people don't somersault and land on their feet after getting punched on their chins.). Ash and Bipasha look good but I felt like slapping them when they opened their mouths. You feel like slapping Uday Chopra when you look at him, but is quite funny when he opens his mouth. Abhishek Bacchan is pissed off during the entire movie. Hrithik Roshan is "sophisticated" .. I mean you have to be if you are the "perfect thief" of the world and want to write an "A" on the whole world. But above all, the movie doesn't have the amount of bike stunts which I would have liked to have. And yes.. the whole movie is filled with scenes where the actors/actresses walk ... and oh how they walk.. in style.
In normal life, when you walk you can hardly do it in style. There are various things which you need to be aware of. The bird which likes to bomb you with its morning payload. The paan chewing auto-rickshaw wala who will invariably spit when you walk past. The sweepers directing the dust of the streets in to your face. Due to all these things, you have to walk fast, dodge, duck and sometimes shout.
But in movies, you walk in slow motion. You have your soundtrack playing in the background. You may even have dancers doing somersaults in the background. Balloons going up in the air. Fireworks all around.
But apart from all that the only good thing which I found about the whole movie was the make up. Now that is really good and maybe.. just maybe for that it is worth watching once.

My first test ride

After days of procrastination I finally decided to test ride a bike. The reason for the delay, more than my laziness, was the fact that I'm a beginner when it comes to riding a bike (note: I'm an expert pillion rider though B-) ) So when I left from office the agenda was to try out a Pulsar 150 or Avenger, but we somehow landed up in a Hero Honda showroom and there lay CBZ-Xtreme. First impression is that the bike does look good. It has got LED tail lights, black alloys, black engine, the smiling grid of the old CBZ in front, 1 down 4 up gear shifts and a 63K on road price tag.
And then came the main course. The time I was supposed to test ride the bike. People who have driven vehicles with gears will tell you that of the many embarrassing things in life, stalling the vehicle after starting and putting it in the first gear comes on top. Yes.. you guessed it right, thats exactly what happened with me. Not once, not twice, but a grand three times and the bike had moved roughly 12 inches. So apart from insulting myself, I also managed to insult the 149 cc pulsar by making it move slower than an old snail.
Well.. life goes on and I'm still stuck on neutral.

Temptation Vs Practicality

Vs

I have spent the last week debating with myself and some of my unfortunate friends on the above issue: Which one to buy?

Tiny grasshopper

Power to Wii.

Proof by oddity

Got this the last time I ran fortune.

Proof techniques #2: Proof by Oddity.
SAMPLE: To prove that horses have an infinite number of legs.
(1) Horses have an even number of legs.
(2) They have two legs in back and fore legs in front.
(3) This makes a total of six legs, which certainly is an odd number
legs for a horse.
(4) But the only number that is both odd and even is infinity.
(5) Therefore, horses must have an infinite number of legs.

Topics is be covered in future issues include proof by:
Intimidation
Gesticulation (handwaving)
"Try it; it works"
Constipation (I was just sitting there and ...)
Blatant assertion
Changing all the 2's to n's
Mutual consent
Lack of a counterexample, and
"It stands to reason"

T-Shirt folding machine

More 360 bashing

By the way my previous 360 review doesn't hold. It seems that the game on demo is rendered only at a paltry resolution of 600x600 (info courtesy Rahul). Don't know why the Microsoft guys made such a dumb move.

Me Delhi trip

I somehow managed to sneak around 12 days of holidays (begging and borrowing from here and there) and went to Delhi on Diwali. Few of the highlights of the trip include:

• Getting a bird's eye view of Diwali from up above the clouds. I'm not much of a cracker burster so I didn't miss doing that and yes if I had done it then I would probably be behind bars right now. By the way the aerial veridct is that the Delhi Diwali was much more festive and polluting than the Bangalore one.
• A defunct school reunion which happened on the next day I landed. I don't blame anyone, but it was a failure.
  
• I have gained a more than passing interest in income tax, mutual funds and the stock market. Reason being: I hate channel surfing and my PC was down, so this was the next best thing to do.
  
• I attended a rock concert (courtesty Rakesh) and didn't quite enjoy it that much. First, I hadn't heard a single song which the bands were playing (given that they were Indian and I don't listen to heavy metal) and second I couldn't grasp a single word they were saying (given that they were Indian and I don't listen to heavy metal). One new revelation which did come out of it was that of the Mosh Pit. If you are even .000093 % sane you won't be in one.
  
• Finally, Air-Deccan can't be relied upon to take you anywhere on time. You may reach before time or after time but never on.
  

Long shot

I have spent a major portion of my college life playing multiplayer games on our LAN (ah.. those memorable days, afternoons, nights.) and arguably I was the best in house. Yes I was beaten many times, but my win percent was always high.
Anyway, anyone who is a gamer knows the value of a sniper. Be it when you are on top of the tower in "CTF-Face" (Unreal Tournament) or when you have the AWP in your hands in "Dust" (Counter Strike) You will be the most hated person by the opposition and the most valued by people (bots??) on your side. Anshul even prided in calling himself "Sniper-Krishna", because there was once a time when no one could get rid of him while playing in CTF-Face. That is no one ... other than me B-)
And then there are the classic snipers from the movies: "Saving Private Ryan", "Enemy at the gates", "Phone booth", "Behind enemy lines" (yes there is a very short sniper sequence during the end of the movie and we have watched it enough times to notice), "Band of brothers", all highly coveted positions. Of course of the lot the best sniper (according to me and Anshul) is the one in "Saving Private Ryan".

So, now having ascertained that we are huge sniper fans, when someone shows me this, my reaction is: "Damn! I got to have that thing."

Quick link thrown in as an after thought: Making your breakfast more interesting.

Ehh.. 3 more

Two movies and one gaming console. Here goes:

Pyar Ke Side Effects
Pros: Witty dialogs, Mallika Sherawat's acting.
Cons: The movie drags on a bit too much, Mallik Sherawat's acting.
Verdict: Average

Dor
Pros: Shreyas Talpade stands out! His mimicry is a refreshing change. Everything else.
Cons: None
Verdict: Damn good!

XBox-360

Ok this one won't be like the above two, because its not a movie and because I'm a computer guy.

The XBox-360 is Microsoft's attempt to get the gaming console into the Indian houses. If you take a look the Sony Playstation has been here in India since quite some time, but Sony never marketed it like Microsoft is doing (I hope you have seen the Akshay Kumar/Yuvray Singh ad). I had the opportunity of using the X-Box 360 recently in one of the many shops they were being demo-ed. So what is it like?
Not good!
I think the console is over-hyped. People come in already believing that the graphics are mind-blowing. For example the guys who were before me on the demo-stall were already like "Wow! Look how cool the graphics are!!" when the initial game video was playing!! Before I go on, I would like to point out that those guys were satisfied by the video alone, because they couldn't navigate the menu to actually play the game :D
I, of course, could.
The demo consisted of the X-Box 360 console (which comes in a slim gray cabinet a la the Dell cabinet) , the X-Box 360 controller and an exquisite 27" Samsung plasma monitor. The game on demo was some racing game whose name I forget.
So after navigating the main menu and starting a new game, what do I see? Jaggies!! A whole bunch of them. The anti-aliasing was rather bad. Now I don't know whether the X-Box 360 or the game was running on a low-performance setting, but that is what I saw and if they are going to show me something like that in a demo I won't take their side >:) and will assume that it was running on full steam.
I finished the race coming 2nd, but not liking what I saw.
The only good thing is the controller. It fits in my hands nicely and gives a nice force-feedback, but again I will be frank and say that this is the first controller which I have laid my hands on (which has force-feedback) so I'm bound to like it.
X-Box 360 is priced at 24K (including the controller). The one which comes with the wireless controller is priced at 27K (which includes a 20gig hard drive) and as Rahul pointed out: "You won't be playing on a 27" plasma, but on a 21" CRT (!!), so the quality is bound to decrease further from the demo." Other than that each game title costs around 2.5 K.
So what should you do if you have already saved a bit of cash for the 360? Well... assuming you already have a PC, an AGP slot (if not a PCI-X), and some green goodies: buy a massive Nvidia graphics or ATi card and live life in peace.

Three more

So here I'm again trying to amuse my audience (if any of it remains) and myself. So what do I have this time around in my bag of goodies? Well here goes..

With terrorism on the rise how do you educate people to take preventive measures? Well .. you show them pictures and hope that they don't misinterpret things.

It had always been a childhood dream to integrate emacs into the browser, so that I would be able to edit all the text areas with the help of the razor sharp editor :) A recent discovery lets me do just that.

There are normal ways to have tea and then there are some people who like to take some effort in doing the exercise.

Among other things I'm trying to learn how to drive (ride??) a bike (as in a bike with gears, I consider all things without gears a disgrace) so that on the long run I can buy a bike, drive (ride??) it, and not be at the mercy of the Bangalore auto-wallahs (who are the biggest dipshits I have encountered and till now there have been no exceptions)

Well this makes sense

Stumbling through the weekend

Found this, tried drawing my own face, failed miserably, realized my inabilities once more, had a coffee, life is still good :)

Of course at first there was Xiao Xiao and I was impressed by that. This is again of equal caliber.

Nightly enlightenment

Just came back from a fancy diner nearby which specializes in *cough* continental food. So you get into this place with all kinds of fancy light effects, plush interiors, the odd hukka lying in the corner. Don't know if this is the correct spelling for hukka, and anyway they don't call it hukka anymore. The newer, fancier name is "Sheesha".. you know like the mirror where you can see your reflection and all. Its just like that, except that you have a pipe coming out and you can actually get flavoured smoke doing rounds of your lungs if you suck on that pipe. You can share the pippette around with your friends, because you would be crazy if you could finish the hukka alone and also you would be crazy to go to a *cough* continental place alone and of all the things in the world start having a hukka... I mean what more could be wrong with you?
Anyway coming back to the previous thread of discussion, contrary to popular belief, smoking hukka doesn't make you high, of course if you are someone like Auto, then it will.
Wait! what was I talking about?
Ahh... the *cough* continental place.. yes.. So we (notice the "we", because I'm not a crazy loner like you) went in. Our ordering strategy was something like this:

1) Look hither thither.
2) Look down on the menu.
3) Randomly hit at three spots on the menu .. and thats it.

Food comes, we eat. *cough* a bit more and leave. So what did I learn out of all this?

Well.. nothing. Thanks for wasting your time.

Vista RC 1

Rahul, having nothing else to do, downloaded Windows Vista RC 1 and has been generous enough to post some screenshots on his flickr account (which I have conveniently lifted and posted here). Word of caution, the guy has a monster graphics card, so lesser mortals are advised against doing such stunts:

My attempts at drawing

As it is quite apparent from my previous two posts: I can't draw. It was not always like this though.
I still remember that at one time in my life when I was in 5th standard, I actually won a painting competition organized in our colony. My drawing consisted of a teacher teaching a classroom full of students (or eggs, depending on who looked at the painting). That was the time I actually drew for fun (and won something for it).
Then came the time when we had this "commercial" art thing in school, where we were supposed to draw alphabets (!!), pots, different kind of obscure shapes etc. That was the time when I started losing interest in drawing.

Anyway, coming back to today or rather yesterday, when I bought this drawing ka book from a shop in Church street. I started reading and I was bowled in the 1st chapter itself.
I realized that I couldn't draw two freehand similar looking round shapes, however hard I tried. I sucked... big time. I filled up almost 4 sheets of paper with round shapes and not any two of them looked the same.
I guess I will try this for a few more days (As it is I do very little in the evenings, except read books). A few more pages won't do any harm.

Talking of drawing, slashdot had this link to a program called teddy created by a Japanese programmer which converts 2D hand drawn images into 3D (!!) Pretty interesting.

Weekend till now

1. Munnabhai 2: Thumbs up! Rest is up to you to find out.
   
2. Also got to look at the Dhoom-2 trailers and it too looks promising.
   
3. Beer
   
4. Bought three books: One fiction, One technical, One Arts(!!)
   

Result: Substantial amount of green leaves exhausted :(
P.S: The scanning happened at an angle. Its not a mistake ... its art !!

Innovation replicates

My humble tribute to the masters. Well I have little to do or blog about, but I like to think that I think.

Your neighbourhood pixel city

This is not only huge, but also for some reason reminded me of Lego bricks and Google maps.

Compress and waste

Bangalore has now become a small place. It won't take you to be a genius to bump into people from your not so distant past. Especially with the kind of people our college nurtures and kicks out every year: The "aawara" types.
Also with the number of software companies recruiting and henceforth increasing the influx, something like this is bound to happen. Not that I'm complaining. I welcome the company of the enlightened souls, from the past, into my present.
The list includes Anshul, Auto, Naagu, Lino, Alan, Siddharth, Venkata, Pylee, to name a few. This list, of course, is not complete and I expect it to be ever expanding.
Having such a companionship does have its benefits, in that you can spend your weekends fruitfully... uh.. yeah.. well.. mostly... that is, if the fruit is beer.
The interesting thing is that Bangalore is blessed with pleasant weather all throughout the year, and you would rarely feel thirsty. But that doesn't stop people from hitting the pubs. But then thirst is really not the reason people drink, is it? Nah..
Hmm.. I went and started conjuring up new theories, so I will end with a non sensical note, just to show that I haven't lost my insanity.

If you ever have the fortune of going abroad, please do the following exercise:
a) Find a sufficiently crowded place.
b) Start doing Bhangra or any random desi dance move.
c) People will start thinking that you are part of a bollywood movie and actually stand and watch.
d) You can then proceed and deliver autographs at your leisure to the poor unsuspecting foreigners. Maybe even be kind enough to be a guest in a local talk show. Who knows what fame will bring you?

Ah... the pleasure one can get in wasting other people's time.

Results out...

and I passed. Our university did a grand job of letting us hang by the thread, playing with our feelings and giving all of us a lot of false alarms (as usual). The result was supposed to come out "tomorrow" around 2 months back, but it came today... so.. uh.. whatever..
So now I can sleep peacefully and not have dreams where I get 3/100 (serious) and find out that I lose my job because of that.... gave me the creeps the other day.
The results getting published also means that I have to make the grand trip back to Cochin and meet the familiar faces which are slowly fading away. So that should be nice.
Other than that I managed to blow some of my salary by doing some shopping. Both the amounts (amount spent and salary) are strictly confidential and are left as an exercise for the reader to speculate :P . The clue is that I brought 3 shirts and an iron.

Peace.

What's new?

The blog post frequency has literally fallen to an all time new. I myself am not visiting my blog to see how many hits I have got (hey cmon.. everyone does that) and ergo increasing the hits. I didn't see any movies in the past weekend, so I don't have any movie reviews to bore you with. I did go to a 5 star resort as a part of a company trip. I have a few photos from that trip, but I will show you the one that matters (rest are inconsequential):

Get a diploma in hindi expletives..

... watch Omkara :)
Its a good movie, but don't go and do something as dumb as taking your parents to watch it. Although if you are comfortable with them listening to all the BCs, MCs, BetCs, Cs and a lot more new ones.. then go ahead..

Note: For further studies, visit Delhi or consult me :)

5 in 1

The screen-shot shows a server running.

1. Windows XP (locally)

2. A Virtual PC Windows XP machine (demo001)

3. A remote desktop session through the virtual Win XP machine (i.e. 2) to my machine .

4. Another instance of Virtual PC Windows XP machine (cydttestmachine-001) running on the remote machine , through the remote desktop session (i.e. 3) started on the Virtual PC Windows XP machine (i.e. 2)

5. An instance of the Bochs emulator (http://bochs.sourceforge.net) running DLX Linux n the remote machine, through the remote desktop session (i.e. 3) started on the Virtual PC Windows XP machine (i.e. 2)

This pointless exercise was brought to you by yours truly. ... I'm sooo happy :)

An apple a day

Let me be frank, I spend most of my day in office. The reason is not just the excellent coffee machine, but also something else.
In a cubicle hidden from the eyes of most, sits a beauty. Slim and sexy and all alone in that cubicle. Before you have your tongues lolling out and having scandalous thoughts, let me bring you down to earth by telling that it is an iMac that I'm talking about. It has been 3 days since I got an account on that machine, and I have been playing with it everyday for at least one hour. Apart from being good to look at, its a pleasure to work on. It runs Mac OS X Tiger and it puts the current OSes (WinXP, Linux etc) to shame.
I'm currently fidgeting with the automator, applescript and dashboard widgets. Lets see where it takes me to :)

I got something to distract you

So I saw this article on slashdot about community empowered search engines or something, and I say... ok.. another thing to decorate my blog... yummm... So I have gone ahead and put it up on the sidebar. Now, it is up to the community (ie you.. my precious blog reader) to go and empower it.
I should get better things to do ... sigh

The Spy Training Manual

Another series of "Profane Intellect" showcased by our very own personal favorite: Penny-Arcade :)

Boo

Lots of spare time brought me close to Python and now work has brought me close to C#. Hence I said why not go ahead and try out Boo.

P.S: The cartoon is there just to throw you off track .. Actually ... no.. its there just because I love it.

RIP Google Talk

I don't know how old is this, or maybe its totally new, but the two giants: Yahoo! and MSN have tied up their IM networks together to whip ass. And that ass belongs to Google. I smell a dirty battle ... yummy :)

Krisssh

Of the many goof ups which Bollywood makes, this one has to stand out as the best... or maybe the worst. Apna Jadooo empowered Rohit Mehra (Hrithik Roshan) is working on some stupid future seeing computer. He works day in and day out for two years continuous and on his last day of work he comes to know that his wife is pregnant. This is where you rewind and look at the previous sentence... yes I said: two years continuous work and wife getting pregnant. Now, only if you remember the teachings from your 9th class biology text-book you will realize that Jadoo was really hard at work ;-)

But thinking as to how the movie really was, I would say that it was definitely better than Superman returns. One of the stunts where Hrithik imitates a singaporean street stunt artist is really impressive. Otherwise if you are as big as a movie buff as me, you will notice many things similar to : Minority report, Matrix and Spiderman.

Now time for a bit of self mockery:

(Name of movie) : (Name of Protagonist)

Koi Mil Gaya : Rohit
Koi Mil Gaya -2 : Krishna
Koi Mil Gaya -3 : Your guess is as good as my name.

Zombie

Most people who start working have this excuse that they don't update their blog because of too much work. I thought that I will try and not make that cliched excuse, but I just have a gaping creative black hole in front of me, which is sucking all my good ideas (and in a short while, also me and the surrounding light), so that will be my excuse as well.
Yanyway, I'm right now in Bangalore. The land of gardens, or the city of gardens. More appropriate to call it the city of one-ways, traffic jams, pubs, modified cars/bikes and babes (Ankur, you need to get out more :P )
I live in a 1BHK (1 Bedroom, Hall , Kitchen, for those uninitiated to the real estate and brokerage world) house and cough up 3.5 K for that. As I don't have a roommate, I end up paying the whole amount.

Life's been a blur from when I landed here 2 weeks back and till now. I have consumed in a lot of interesting technical stuff, and also a whole lot of coffee.

I will end this post by saying, that Superman is a whole lot worse than Krrriiiiissssshhhh (pardon my spelling), don't see it even if you get free tickets. Your two and a half hours can be spent more usefully by sleeping, day-dreaming, picking your nose etc.

Bye bye Delhi...

hello Bangalore.

Half time

England is putting up an exceedingly poor display against Trinidad and Tobago. Its half time and they haven't scored a goal. In fact they just managed to escape being down one goal. The score is right now 0-0.
The only snazzy thing which happened was Gerard kicking a ball with full power and it colliding with some other balls, which were gallantly provided by Yorke of Trinidad and Tobago. Needless to say it invoked agony in the player and humor in those watching.
Which makes me ask you one question: Do you remember the first time you were kicked/hit/stabbed/crunched/punched ... errr.. .. there? If not ponder and write your feelings in 500 words or more and come back for more tips on wasting time.

Brazil Vs Croatia 1-0

Its official now, I'm also engrossed with the Football World Cup fever.
Contrary to my previous beliefs Croatia wasn't annihilated by Brazil. The Brazilian team looked a bit too relaxed. A lot of their players looked overweight and the great Ronaldo looked fat. He moved like molasses and other than one shot at goal, there wasn't really anything which he did before he was substituted in the second half.
Interestingly Croatia had a lot shots on target, they were just unlucky that they didn't go in.
Anyway, there was this other match between France and Switzerland and it was too boring. The match ended 0-0. But even more frustrating was the ESPN presentation in between matches. Especially the ones in which the Channel [V] VJ's come out and try out their hand at humor.
I don't know what the Indian comedy scene is coming down to these days. There was a time when genuinely funny comedy movies / TV serials used to be released. Movies like "Golmaal", "Jaane bhi to yaaron", "Andaz apna apna", "Hera Pheri" etc, which had pure unadulterated comedy. The guys
then didn't have to resort to cheesy double meaning jokes, as they do now. It was much enjoyable. The genre of comedy movies these days comprise mostly of Hindi remakes of Priyadarshan's Malayalam movies. They seem to be raking in cash, but believe me the original Mallu movies are much better.
Of course, if you don't understand Malayalam, then the jokes on you.

Among other things, Google in a bid to compete with Flickr has launched Picasa Web(courtesy Ankur). They are offering 250 MB for a free account and 6 GB for a paid version ($25 for 1 year). I will hold on to my preciousssssss Flickr Pro account and view everything else with suspicion.

Eating one's own words

If not here, I have at many places said time and again that I don't like to watch football matches (I don't mind playing though). They were too slow, too boringly lethargic (coming from a guy who watches 5 day cricket test matches... yeah yeah I have my double standards). My excuse being that the number of goals scored were too less. Being a basketball player, I guess that excuse was valid to some extent. But then today I saw this world cup match between Japan vs Australia. Australia came back from behind and beat the Japanese 3-1 and ignited in me a new appreciation for the game. I like to watch now.
Now I'm looking forward to the annhilation of Costa Rica Croatia at the hands of Brazil tomorrow :)

Other than words, I'm also eating a lot of other things. Be it visits to coffee shops, restaurants, pubs , roadside vendors, and a countless amount food items which my mom is forcing down my throat, they are all adding to everything to what I had lost earlier... ie.. the thing which grows below your chest. And I bloody well can't keep my tempation under control..

Why I ended up diskliking Da Vinci Code.

There are somethings in life which at first you like, and then after some time you end up not preferring too much. To quote from my life, some examples will be: The Times of India, Almost everything which comes on TV, Chilli Gobi and Navjot Singh Sidhu.
Its like when you meet a person and you really like them, but in a few days, when you get to know them better, you wished you had kept your distance. Something like that happened to me.

My computer got crapped up and I ended up with a lot of fiction novels to read. The prequel to "The Da Vinci" code, "Angels and Demons", was one of them. Now what is interesting is that in both novels the plot is essentially the same. You have a gruesome murder at the beginning, of a person who hides a big secret (which actually is the theme of almost all Dan Brown fiction novels written till now). Then you have the femme fatale who is somehow related to the murdered person, who, inspite of facing such a grave emotional loss, manages to laugh, act sexy, and carry herself as if nothing happened. There is the evil conspirator who is easily guessable and always has a code name, ala "Teacher" and "Janus". Then there is Robert Langdon, who keeps on blabbering about symbology shit at the most inappropriate moments. It all just doesn't seem practical to me anymore.
At one time, though, it did.
When I watched "The Da Vinci code" (the movie), it was merely a test of patience for me. I had read the book. I knew the plot. I knew the answers to all the puzzles. It was really not worth it. I think the movie will not be appreciated by people who haven't read the book (if there are such people ie). I didn't like it even after having read the book.
The good thing though about Dan Brown books is that they do give you a lot of knowledge about a lot of things. Be it art, architecture, cryptography, the works. His books are, as one friend of mine puts it, "Masala books".

I burnt my motherboard

After bearing the 2 and a 1/2 years of torcher at the hands of many in Cochin, my motherboard, ironically, stopped working in Delhi. The reason why this happened is still a mystery. Some speculate it was the train journey and others think that it was due to the heat. Whatever be the case, I have a new one (ASUS A8N-VM-CSM, Rahul's reccomendation) with a 64-bit AMD 3000+ processor on it. Motherboards supporting 32 bit processors are almost extinct. For some reason the sound drivers are not working and I have to get that sorted out. Other than that, I'm just happy to get my "online life" back :)

Pssssstttt.... If you are on the lookout for an AMD 2000+ CPU, I'm always there for you :)

Band of brothers

I just finished watching the HBO mini series (10 episodes): "Band of Brothers". It was released in 2001, but I could get my hands on it only a few months back.
I have seen a lot of war movies, but this is the one which showcases all the aspects of war and is the best among what I have seen. It tells the story about "Easy Company", who are US army paratroopers fighting in the 2nd world war.
It is truly entertaining and revealing. IMDB rating: 9.6 Big thumbs up :)

The eagle lands back in its nest

After a rather comfortable journey in an AC 3 tier compartment with 10 other partners of crime, I finally returned back home. Accompanying me was my monitor, two speakers, keyboard, mouse, UPS, an airbag and a suitcase. Our luggage occupied most of the coach and some of it was even spread under the seats of innocent co-passengers in the other coach.

Our departure at the station witnessed a grand farewell party comprising of our batchmates and some juniors. All of them were used as "coolies" and I'm thankful to them for saving us a lot of money :)
But seriously, it was not too tough for me to leave my friends waving, while the train moved on. Don't think that I'm insesitive or anything. The fact is that I was too tired to be nostalgic.
Another thing with me is that, these things take a lot of time for me to sink in.
So anyway, I'm back in Delhi. I have broadband. I'm keeping myself busy. And I'm as sharp as ever. Envy me!!

Goodbye Cochin

I leave in another 3 hours (or so) for Delhi. It was a hectic end to an otherwise relaxed four years. The end had a trip to Bangalore, 3 sleepless nights, a few interviews and a probable job offer. I wish I could write more, but my fingers fail me and so do my eyes.

Rohit nawab ka bahaduri kartab

Some people sing. Some people dance. Some people play the guitar. Some people collect stamps. Some people collect coins. Some people sleep. Some people travel.

I... well... I .. stop trains B-)

Goodbye Auto

Murphy's Law:

Anything that can go wrong will go wrong

Rohit's corollary:

Indian railways will always run on time, when you are running late.

Auto's train was scheduled for a 12:45 pm departure from Erankulam. We were already late when we left the house at 12:20 pm. The journey to the station usually takes 40 minutes, we had only 25 B-)
We had Sujit Nair behind the wheel, the person who learnt driving when he was only 13 years old. I was at the co-driver's seat providing general navigation and abuses to the passing-by-slow-moving-drivers.
We reached Vytilla junction at 12:30 pm. It really seemed an impossibility that we would be able to reach on time. The traffic was slow moving and we had three more signals to compromise. But then all that was for the usual folks, we were blessed.
On enquiry an innocent bike driver revealed that there was another stealth route to the south station, which went from below the Kadvanthara flyover. We took that route and reached the last platform of Ernakulam South station. The clock read 12:45 pm.
We took all the luggage from the Zen and put it on the ground. Sujit went to park the car, while I took Auto's rucksack (which arguably weighed around 20 kilos) and Auto carried one suitcase and one cardboard box.
We were at the entrance when there was this announcement:

"Train number 2617. .... Ernakulam - Hazarat Nizammudin... Mangla Express.... is on ... platform number.... 1"

We had time... or so I thought.
I burst into a slight jog (I couldn't run due to the weight of the rucksack), jumping and dodging passerbys, trolleys, weighing machines, trains, engines, railway tracks, dogs, people's excreta. (This was the part where Job Bon Jovi's "It's my life" was running in the background) I crossed one platform by jumping the track, then another by going through a train. The next platform though, had a train on it and all the doors were closed. I was forced to take the "flyover" (for lack of a better expression). Auto was following me somewhere, but I couldn't see him behind me. As soon as I reached the top of the "flyover" there was another announcement, which sent shivers down the Auto's spine:

"Train number 2617.... Ernakulam - Hazarat Nizammudin... Mangla Express.... will leave shortly from Platform number... 1"

First in Malayalam, then in Hindi and then finally in English. By the time I started descending the steps of platform number 1. The engine had already blown the horn !! The train started moving. ("It's my life" was still running inside me) Bam ... I landed on the station. The train had gathered speed, but Auto and Sujit were nowhere in sight.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Enter bullet time
.
.
.
.
I knew what I had to do. It was not a decision which I took after a lot of thought. It was more like killing a mosquito which is sucking your blood. You just look at it, register, and kill it. It was like that.
I had to pull the chain !
I got into the train (Rucksack still on my shoulders) reached for the first chain in sight. There was a bewildered gentleman reading a newspaper whom I conveniently ignored, while I pulled the chain. The whole train shivered at the might of my hands. The train came to a sceeching halt. The reading uncle looked even more tensed. I got down and Auto came running down the steps along with Sujit. We packed him in, and asked him to vanish before the squad comes ;)
We wished him a very small goodbye before the train started on its way, once more.
The squad was clueless, after all they were struck by the master-chain-puller-of-the-east, they were looking under the AC compartments when the chain was pulled elsewhere.
I, obviously, due to my ninja training, vanished away without trace.

On retrospect, it was a good thing that we didn't have too much time to say goodbye. The lesser time, the lesser emotional we get. The lesser emotional we get, the lesser uncomfortable we feel.

Although I did give Auto a goodbye gift. I gave Auto the gift of knowledge. The knowledge that he is not a 21 year old bed wetter, but a 21 year old victim of a master prank.
I hope he liked my gift :)

Broken

Auto is leaving today afternoon. Mangla Express, the train which has ferried us so frequently, will carry him to Delhi. Its not like I won't meet him hereafter. Au contraire I will surely meet him in Delhi when I reach there in a few days, but our gang has officially started to break.

We drift away like soap bubbles,
beautiful and fragile,
blown away by the winds of time

I would like my Grammy home delivered by tomorrow :D

Dribbling

Dribbling
Originally uploaded by [Rohit].

We had never taken any snaps in the basketball court. So, today, me and Pylee (yes, the one with no hair) forced Bhattu to take his camera and come with us to the court.
Most of these photos are taken in real time... well.. not all of them.. ;)

Gangster

Gangster is a good movie .... if you watch it silenced and with eyes closed.
The dialogues of the movie are cheesy and too predictable. The story of the movie is actually not that bad, but the performances of the actors was not upto the mark (except Gulshan Grover who makes a special appearance). The leading lady's voice is comparable to that of a sick buffalo. Shiney Ahuja (The Gangster) has few lines in the movie and they go something like:

1. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarggggggggggggggghhhhhh
2. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
3. Mai tumhare bina zinda nahi reh sakta :(
4. Mummmmmmyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

He has the usual hindi-film gangster kinda role: look pissed and break everyone very nicely.
The few stunts which the movie has are actually nice and authentic. I quite enjoyed seeing Emran Hashmi having a crate of bottles broken on his head.
It could have been a good movie, you just need to change a few actors and dialogues.

The final 8

I will try not to sound like Amitabh Bacchan from Deewar.

Today I have the best friends I have ever had, a really nice place to live, a well paying future job, the best whiskey (DSP Black) in our house(which I can drink whenever I want), a car and 2 bikes for conveyance, a ton of new good movies on my computer, the best songs which are there, a color phone, internet, television, a swiss army knife, my darling PC, an ideal weight, no exams, no tensions to worry about, beautiful weather (compared to other places), greenery everywhere,a lovely breakfast and a nice lunch.

This is how life should be.

I have everything which I could ask from God.

Everything.... but just for 8 more days.

Man on fire

When you start working in an Indian IT firm they really put your ass on fire. I just got evidence to prove it.
The following clip shows what TCS guys call "Fun @ Work". Video courtesy my dear brother.

Done.. finished...over.. 100

4 years ago... May 12, 2002

I was recovering from a viral fever which I had caught while giving the Karnataka CET exam and the trip from Mysore->Bangalore-> Palakkad didn't do me any good.
The entrance exam was supposed to be held in some school which had really red walls. The exam didn't have negative marking. We sat on wooden chairs and desks and filled up the OMR sheets. That's all I remember about the CUSAT CAT entrance exam.

That was four years ago. This is today.

My 4 year ordeal has finally come to an end with a paper called Real Time Systems. Call it coincidence, divine intervention or something else, but my (our) association with this college has been exactly 4 years long.

Its been one beautiful joy ride, these four years.

75

3 down 1 more to go. Come Friday and I will be facing the last exam of my college (hopefully).
Its really going to get over.

Reclaiming the system

I'm usually skeptical when people say that the whole Indian system can be changed for the good, but then I'm cynical about most things.
This, though, was an impressive stunt. Who would think of chasing a cop? The roles reversed.
Got it from Gaurav Sabnis blog.
Among other things, 25 % of my exams are officially over. Today's was quite lengthy and there was a gradual degradation in the legibility of my answer sheet. In the end, I was even forced to draw free hand (without scale) diagrams due to lack of time. But then.. In the end.. it doesn't even matter... haa hahaha.. Oh, I kill myself sometimes.

The beginning of the end.

Exams from tomorrow.

Another blog in the wall

I have this really cool friend who, like me, writes blogs in his free time (which is like 24x7). But the difference lies in the fact that he has been writing relatively recently, as compared to my vast experience of around one and a half years. The other difference being that, his posts usually have more ... ummm ..lets say .. finesse, wheras I write posts which mostly go like I-did-this-thing-today-yay. And this has gotten him a couple or more of female admirers. I obviously envy this fact. I hope that there are a few hot-silent-female-admirers of mine, but my experience tells me that most hot-silent-female-admirers are usually gay men or my own roomies trying to pull a fast one.
But then there are little to no things on which I can put my mind on and philosophize (computers may come under the few little things). For example if you would ask me my opinion about the protest-against-reservation-in-premier institutes thingie, I would say that "It sucks and so does Rang De Basanti". Your cries of protest would obviously be ignored by me, as I busily stare at the next random girl walking on the road.
So, I will stick to my usual kind of posts.
Today I studied Industrial Organization and Management. Its a subject which gives me immense pleasure because I now know that when I decided not to give CAT, I didn't make a wrong choice. After somehow managing to finish one module I went jogging after a span of many months. And jog I did. We (Me and Addy) ran around 3 KMs and obviously at the end I was tired.
I ate food and most probably I will have my midnight Boost ("Boost is the secret of my energy.... our energy" wala Boost) and go to sleep.
So till next time, tata.

PS: I won't tell you the name of my friend, so that he doesn't get any more attention :P
PS 2: I truly didn't like the revolution part of RDB.

Evening extravaganza

For people who failed to notice or didn't know, I became health conscious a few months back. I have since then stopped having fried snacks, chips, biscuits, cold drinks, ice creams, puddings, cakes, my once favorite mango shake and anything which I feel is high on calories. And of course I have become fitter, so to speak.
But today... today all that was swept away in a sea of temptation (or rather oil). The culprit was something which we call "Bread Roll", Rahul calls it "Bread Chops" and some god fearing people have even named it "The Bomb". Tagging along with it was the good old "Bread Pakoda" and the evil bottle of Coca-Cola. The idea was to replay what was done by Rahul, Addy, Anshul and Bhattu during Vishu. The result, though, was much better.

I leave you with a few pictures and the credits, for my head is getting a bit heavy and it is telling me to go and sleep.

The temptation "Bread Roll".


The start of the attack.


Giving into temptation.

Credits:

Main idea and concept:
Sujit Nair.

Chief King Chef:
Rahul Sharma.

Deep fryer:
Rohit Krishna Kumar.

Auxillary deep fryer:
Sourav Bhattacharya.

Mixer and general crowd support:
Aditya Raman.

Transporter and logistics:
Anshul Krishna.

Garnishing and decoration:
Sujit Nair and Anshul Krishna.

Technical Support:
Rohit Krishna Kumar.

Chief Camerapersons:
Sourav Bhattacharya and Rahul Sharma.

General Nonsense and no-help:
Auto Rickshaw.





The END

A few things to be happy about

The company which I'm planning to join (Subex Systems) recently acquired Azure Solutions . This is the biggest overseas acquisition by an Indian IT company. So... yay!!!!

I hope a lot of people took note and not give me these blank stares when I tell them that "I'm going to join Subex Systems in Bangalore.", from now on.
Now, before I got a job in Subex (which was actually a big, but pleasant, accident) I had gotten placed in Wipro. Wipro being a household name for like a century, was recognisable by everyone. Most importantly by my parents and my relatives.
I mean for a few days, I would just go here and there and happily answer queries as to where I was placed:

Arbitary relative/friend/well-wisher: "Where did you get placed?"

Me: "Yo!! Wipro."

Arbitary relative/friend/well-wisher: "Wow!!!"

End of story.

Now though, its a different story all together.

Arbitary relative/friend/well-wisher: "Where did you get placed?"

Me: "err.. um.. I got placed first in Wipro and then in Subex Systems. I'm planning to join the latter."

Arbitary relative/friend/well-wisher: "Oh, so when are you planning to join Wipro? Where will you be joining?"

Me: "Subex Systems.. err.. not Wipro.."

Arbitary relative/friend/well-wisher: "Oh what is that?"

Me: "Its a software products company doing business in the telecom sector and based in Bangalore."

Arbitary relative/friend/well-wisher: "And how is it related to Wipro?"

Me: *pulls my hair out*

Me: "Err.. nothing, I'm joining Wipro."

Arbitary relative/friend/well-wisher: "Wow!!!"

End of story.

But then this isn't something which is new for me. I have always been associated with institutions having weird/unheard-of names. For example the name of my school was "Ahlcon (not alcohol) Public School", the name of my coaching center was "TOCAB", and last, but by no means the least, the name of my college is: "CUSAT". My dad, for some reason, still calls it "Cochin Institute of Technology". I mean its been 4 years and I have relentlessly corrected him, but he still persists.
But I don't need to worry, because in a few months our college will become IIT-Cochin and we will be like the masters of the universe ... yeah right.

Among other things, Anubhav started writing a blog because he got bored of studying for exams. I would like to welcome him to the blogosphere.

Beered

Just to tease Rahul.

He is still the best biker I know :)

Update: In his defense Rahul says: " I will show you a video, when i will buy the yamaha R6." I will be waiting for that day buddy :P

My new and customized home page :D

Wheelie

Of the many stunts which Rahul performs on his bike, few have been recorded. He remains a phantom to most of his admirers, showing his class only when he has enough adrenaline (or enough alcohol) inside him.
This one is a short and, I would say, not the very best of his wheelies, but the only one which has been caught on camera.

Determination.

Must... *cough* *splatter* *cough* *cough* .. Must start... studying.

I hate this stalemate kind of situation. The exams are not too far off, but they are not too near also. If I were in a hindi movie, I would say something like "Tum door ho kar bhi mere paas ho" and sing some shitty romantic song. But then I'm not in a Hindi movie and neither can I be romantic or sing a song.
The only time when I used to sing regularly was when we were getting ragged. At that time I would sing without a worry and the seniors would ask me to stop after like 5 seconds and I would be like "Hey, I just started..".
My favorite song at that time was Shaan's "Tanha Dil". That was mainly because I knew the lyrics of the song and also because it was a nice song. I used to sing it whenever I was asked to sing. I hate it now.

Err... so where was I? Right.. exams.

So, I should start to at least hold the books in my hand, but I can't even do that. Rest of my activities are going on like clockwork.. i.e if you call eating and sleeping, activities. And now I have this half cold-cough kinda thing, which has given me an excuse not to study till I'm fit. So I will go and take rest now.

A must read

Ladies and gentlemen I bring to you "Passing in the test" from "Lightning Strikes Everyday".

What the .... ??

I hate mosquitoes. I don't say that just because they bite me and leave some itchy rashes on my arms and legs, but because, in the true sense, they are my righteous enemies.
The time when I had dengue was when I was in 12th standard. The doctor didn't know what had happened to me, but after a few blood tests and other similar stunts, he got to know, and so did I and my parents. On hindsight, maybe he already knew but didn't tell, so that my parents didn't get worried. But, whatever, that was the first time I got to know what leukocytes were and what their average count should be. Platelets were a term which I knew about, but that didn't really help. Fortunately it didn't have me in bed for more than 3 weeks and the disease caused by Aedes Aegypti vanished away.
But wait, for there is more. Within a week of my respite, a female anopeheles thought: "Let's take a bite." and that was the beginning of my malaria. Shivering sucks and all that and I was in bed for another 2 weeks. My highest recorded temperature was 106 ° F (yay!! although I still believe it went higher than that.).
When I got out of bed, I was faced with the IIT-JEE screening test and only god knows how I cleared it. My parents had their hopes high, but I knew what I was made of. Or rather, I knew "Ki main kis mitti ka bana hun". IIT mains saw me using my creativity in somehow filling up the sheets, so as to not get a sense of inferiority complex and I just chimed whatever the others said about the papers i.e "physics was tough", "maths and chemistry were easy", "cutoffs will be low" etc. I was confident that IIT won't be in my reach.
DCE (Delhi College of Engineering + NSIT) was another hope which I had. And it hit me pretty badly when its results came out and I couldn't get through that either.
I had gotten mediocre ranks in AIEEE, IP university and Karnataka CET. I was, pretty much, down and out.
536 was the rank which I got in the CUSAT Common Admission Test . It was a university which I had heard, as Rakesh's brother had written its entrance test three years back. Most people asked me to keep it as the last resort (for obvious reasons), but I guess I just wanted to run away from my failures when I decided that I will join CUSAT.

Project presentation

After keeping me and my pc waiting for one hour, my project presentation finally began. It consisted of 25 powerpoint slides and two demo programs. Thank godfully™ it went fine.
I leave for Palakkad today, to meet my dad and grandparents. So it is tata from me for a few days.

Just another rant

I'm totally jobless and, more importantly, so are you :P
Anyway, everything in this city seems to be closed for the past few days. First it was Vishu and now the Easter holidays. Everything from the restaraunts, to the cd-shop, to the gym, to the swimming pool is closed. That just leaves me, my evil mind and my classy fast typing fingers in front of my PC; alone, bored and tired of sleeping. And this is actually when I have my project presentation on Monday. I wonder what my condition will be after that gets over and I have like another 20 days before the exams begin. Needless to say is that studies for the exams won't start till maybe a week before the D-day or even later.
The one thing which does keep me occupied these days is, peering into other people's life with the help of Orkut. And I mean how can anyone get tired of doing that. After all the whole world depends on the breach of privacy. I'm sure I'm making a lot of sense right now, so I will get back to seeing the scrapbook of someone who had scrapped someone else somewhere. And here I would like to say what the great Einstein said after delivering a masterly crafted speech, to a jam packed hall in Kathmandu on the special theory of relative bullshit: "My brain hurts.".

Coffee

I'm sure you must have seen the guys who hang out in Barista for like half their life, playing chess, scrabble or guitar, after just ordering one drink. The ones whom you look at and wonder: "Don't they have anything else to do in life?".
Well today, I just became one of them :D and its not that bad

Last internals

Tomorrow will be the last day of my internals ever. And me being in the last and final semester am not studying for it, but, on the contrary, am writing a blog post for I have lost all hope.
I still remember the time when I was in my first year and was faced with the daunting task of facing the first internal exams of college life. It was a never felt before experience. We all had to give 10 exams in five days continuously. Which translates to 2 exams per day on a five day stretch !!
Being in the first semester and all, we had a "we can become good engineers and make the world a better place" attitude. I used to write 10 page assignments on A4 sheets. Now, I didn't have the experience of writing on blank sheets of paper, so invariably the text would go zig-zag. To counter that, I used to draw equally spaced parallel lines with the help of my drafter on each of those 10 sheets. Yes I sucked (to some extent), but then I didn't know what engineering was all about. (Engineering is actually 4 years of watching movies, eating, sleeping and boozing)
But coming back to the internal exam thingie. I remember we had a short preparatory holiday before the internal and we had smartly decided to go back to Delhi. (On a side note, that was the only trip when we were blessed with the babes of Manipal in our train). I had carried an air-bag full of books, notes and what not just for the exams. If there was one thing which I learnt from that trip was that you can't study at home (and also that the Manipal crowd boards the Mangla express from Kankanadi and Udupi).
After returning what followed were the five most gruelling days of my life. And yes that sucked.
The internals which followed over the years have never been taken too seriously by me or most of my fellow mates. I also stopped drawing those silly lines with the drafter and my assignments were no longer than 4 pages.
But the one thing which hasn't changed over the years is that, I don't cheat in exams. This is one of the few (only??) principles which I have and I don't know why? It is not because of the "You are after all cheating yourself" thingie. It is just one of those crazy stupid things which you believe in and end up regretting.
God knows what is going to happen tomorrow :(
Update: No more principles for me. Exams went fine ;D

What a taunt !! (Courtesy PA)

Farewell

Lots of photos, speeches by faculty and friends, truth and dare, whiskey, vodka, beer, more photos, dance and back home.
I will write something more sensible once I get some sense. Cheerios.

Epilogue

Lost in space II

Nah, this is not about my project. This is about astronomers making useless discoveries. It seems that astronomers have found an alcohol cloud in space measuring 463 billion kilometers !!! Now, before you start packing your bags, bottles, glasses, ice, peanuts and re-fuelling your state of the art space craft, listen to this:

"The vast bridge-shaped cloud of methyl alcohol has been spotted in a region of our galaxy, the Milky Way, that is called W3(OH)"

Yes you heard right: "Methyl Alcohol", not ethanol. So, unless you want to go blind, don't attempt the heroic journey into outer space.

Damn.. I should find something better to do. I mean its that time of the year when people are all nostalgic and shit, about college coming to an end. But here I'm talking nonsense about stuff which no one cares. So, I guess I will write the next post about how college has changed me mentally, physically, financially and made me a new person , or maybe I will just go and sleep the next 12 hours and eat a watermelon in the morning.

Lost in space

While most of my other batchmates have already completed their projects, and are preponing (!!!!) their presentation dates, I'm still tinkering along with mine.
Now the graphics engine has the ability to load 3ds models (ie models made in 3d studio max). It is not complete and is still a bit buggy, but I do have a video to show off :D
Mission to mars anyone ? ( I hate that movie, by the way)

Touching the void

The closer you are to death. The more you realize you are alive.

If you want to know what real guts are, watch this movie.
It is a true story of two mountaineers (Simon Yates & Joe Simpson), who decide to climb the peak of Siula Grande in Peru, how one of them is left alone to face death, when things go horribly wrong and his eventual fight back.
More about it on wikipedia.

Double trouble

I have been partaking in many a misadventure in the past few days.
Firstly, I joined the gym after a long long break of around 1 year. My gym schedules , till now, have usually lasted for around 3 weeks after which I give up due to some excuse or the other. Anyway after half an hour of gym, I came to realize why I had given up gym for so long: It pained !!

When I reached home 2 DSPs were waiting. And the resulting party resulted in the worst hangover I have ever had in my life.

And today I combined swimming and gym together. As in, I swam for an hour and then went to the gym. Interestingly, basketball is more strenuous than the two combined and I would have stuck with that if I hadn't torn my shoes (again).

"All things must pass none of life's strings last. So, I must be on my way and face another day"

- Beatles

Flickr pro

My brother bought me a Flickr pro account when I was in Delhi, and it rocks. So, these days when I'm not wasting my time watching ridiculous movies, I organize my photos.

The weekend continues

I seem to be laying my hands only on really pathetic movies these days. Yesterday I got "Teesri Aankh", Sunny Deol's latest flick, not because I expected a great story, but because I wanted to see some of Sunny Deol's trademark stunts. Like, for example in "Gadar" he stops a bunch of goons just by shouting out loudly. In "Hero" he manages to kill Amrish Puri by breaking a test tube of plutonium in his mouth, which causes nuclear fission. Sunny Deol, who was in close proximity to the explosion, is unhurt and only suffers from mild cold and cough.
"Teesri Aankh" though is a great dissappointment. There is only one stunt which impressed me, where Sunny praji kicks a SUV, which then flies into the bad guys. Amisha Patel is dumb (as in she can't speak) and dumb (as in she is really idiotic) in the whole movie. Her antics made me stop fast forwarding the movie. I just stopped watching it. Another 20 bucks down the drain.
But wait, I'm not done yet. I also watched "Skeleton Key", which is supposed to be a horror movie. The first CD dragged on for quite some time. By the time I started watching the second one, I fell asleep. Maybe I will just go watch "Crash" a third time.

Another weekend

and I rushed to the CD shop to get some movies.
"15th Park Avenue" is a tragic movie on two counts. Tragic because it depicts the life of a girl who is suffering from schizophrenia and also because the movie is a genuine waste of time (not that my time is valuable or anything, but still). It is a painstakingly slow movie with an open ending. And I hate open endings. Given that I would like to see intelligently made movies, but I'm not intelligent enough to work out some obscure ending all by myself. I don't have that much intellect. But I guess such movies will get (or has already gotten) critical acclaim in the same way that modern artists get to sell their paintings for a fortune. Most people don't understand them, but the rich ones pay a real big amount for them, just to show off (it is obvious that they too don't understand them). Bloody rich people. I hate them too, along with open endings !!

The second one, Pink Panther, is what we call a "Khaali" movie. Full of nonsense and it sure made me laugh. The only dissappointment being that *the Pink Panther* is not in the movie.

Weird coincidences

I have not been updating this blog for the past few days, due to some really lame reasons, one of which is internal exams. But exams got over yesterday and I'm all relieved that another pain is off my back.
I saw "crash" yesterday and it is a really good movie, just couldn't understand its motive.
Attendance was again the reason for me to go drag myself to class in this really hot and humid day. The 7th semester results were announced when we were in class and I came to know that I weigh as much as my percentage. And I'm happy about both.
Update: The overall good results resulted in us landing at Cherai beach at 1 a.m and trying to imitate the white mischief advertisment. I have sand all over me ... dammit.

404 - This author cannot be found

The author you are looking for might have moved, had his name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

On other no-nonsense notes, I took the grand risk and endured the two days, two nights in a surprisingly chilling sleeper coach to reach back home. College is reopening tomorrow (according to the most recent confirmed rumor), and internals will be from Monday. So, I will be making my grand entry on Sunday morning, to face the tropical heat of the land of coconuts.

Water water everywhere

I'm sorry to bore everyone with videos of my project, but I have nothing else to do.
The scrolling texture at the bottom is supposed to be water. It doesn't look real, but I'm a beginner in this.

Another video

I combined a few things on which I had been working on separately and came up with this:

Now a video

I just signed up on youtube and uploaded a video of my project in action. The video is a walkthrough of a terrain. At the beginning fog has been enabled. The fog is disabled halfway through the video. And at last the terrain is displayed as a wire mesh.
I'm tempted to embed it here itself ...

and I give in to temptation.

News at 11

-Rumors and some newspapers are claiming that CUSAT has been in fact given IIT status. I still maintain my cynical pessimism.

-The tickets for Delhi have been cancelled, leading to a loss of Rs 150/-. No news of the suspension being withdrawn though.

-E-mails and SMSs still continue to be boring. Consisting of messages from lawyers of deceased kings in Nigeria, who want to make me rich and "Exciting offers !!!!!!" from airtel, respectively.

-Orkut records massive traffic from Cochin as most B.Tech students from CUSAT suddenly feel the need to view the profiles of a thousand people, their friends and their friend's friends.

-Our yahoo group bombards the unsuspecting subscribers with viruses, hair pulling forwards, and other subtle forms of torture, leading to mass hysteria.

-In sports news, India fielded like they were trained by Bishan Singh Bedi and lost many an opportunity. The third umpire was without doubt an ISI agent for not giving Pietersen out.

-In weather, Cochin experienced mild showers with some lightning yesterday, which distruped most of the internet service in the campus. This left most B.Tech students aimless, as their sole source of entertainment was gone for hours.

Confusion prevails..

Delhi is a near and dear place to us all. So when the (malayalam) newspapers announced today that our college has been suspended till March 17th, it was a reflex action to plan the trip to Delhi. For some inexplicable reason, I was deliberating whether to go or not. Don't ask me why I did something like that? Sometimes I surprise myself with my stupidity. So after a lot of thought I decided that I will go.... and then after some more thought I decided that I won't go.. that was final... yes, final.
Anshul was going to the station to book the tickets for himself and Ashish, when I told him that I won't be coming. So he left and as soon as he reached the station, as the gods would have it, my mom telephoned me and convinced me that I should be coming to Delhi. So, I chased after Anshul to the station and booked the tickets for tomorrow evening (confirmed, no waiting list/RAC hanky panky).
Finally, at least something was decided... or maybe not.
The latest news (rumor) has it that the strikes and the suspension will be withdrawn by wednesday. Now this is the point where I want to strike myself with a hammer, because as soon as the college reopens we will be having our internal exams.
The next logical step is to cancel the tickets for tomorrow and lose 25% of the money spent on it. I'm sure as soon as I do it, all hell will break lose in campus and the college won't reopen till a month.

I propose a toast to CUSAT where, as Ashish once said to his HOD at her house, "anything is possible".

Taxi no 9211

Worth the watch. Thumbs up!! I liked all of Nana Patekar's recent movies and this one is right amongst the top.
All four actors have equally substantial roles. The story is also good and well paced with a retro style ending. Go watch it!!

A few snaps from yesterday.

 

Munnar revisited

We had the audacity to repeat the stunt of yesteryear. Same old story: Bunch of guys get a holiday and plan to make good use of it: We went to Munnar (the Darjeeling of Kerala)... once more.
This time we were 7 instead of 5. Because of some mystical reasons Rahul planned to stay back, otherwise we would have been 8. There was one more difference ala I carried my x-ray vision glasses (I will post some photos to make things more clear).

The drive consisted of carefully navigating the blind curves and the f*ckers who kept their lights on high beam, all the while being sure you don't land up 3000 ft downhill in some tea farm . The drive was repetitive (honk horn, turn left, honk horn, turn right and repeat), but I enjoyed it anyway.
We again went to Top station (which is like ... umm welll.. at the top) . Nothing much happened there, as most of the awesome scenery which is visible from there was covered in a dense fog.

We then went for boating. Sujit, Anshul and Sourav, learning from their past experience opted for the pedal boat. Whereas I, in a hope to relive my past heroics, opted for the row boat along with Ashish, Arun and Addy (who were doing the row boat thing for the first time). I wish I hadn't. It was more tiring than enjoyable. I guess I never learn.

Basically we visited the same places again and did the same things again... the reason being: We didn't have enough money to go to Goa :(
I'm sure I'm making very less sense right now, but in my defense I haven't slept for 36 hours straight. Maybe I will write something more sensible when I regain my sleep. ... till then Good night.

Saved by the strike

Strike on, and internals postponed indefinitely. Thank god, for I hadn't studied anything.
Among other things I have started swimming at a nearby pool. Also, I registered for the Google India Codejam. Registrations opened today only. I guess I will give it a shot this time.

Final game: The farewell gift.

The setting was not new. In fact for the past four years I have spent in this college, it has always been the same. They would crush their opponents as ruthlessly as we did. They were always as strong as we were (if not more). And they would always reach the finals as we would. Last year though, they beat us. They beat us real bad.

My day had started with me cramming up the portions of the dreaded internals. Distributed computing and Security in computing to be precise. Till the clock showed 5:45 pm, I was always near a text book. It was time for the finals. B.Tech, CUSAT vs Rest of CUSAT.

The match started on a high note for us: Praveen scored the first points by scoring a 3 pointer. But, after those first points, ROC came roaring back into the game. At the end of the first quarter we were down 7 points.
We didn't give up. Our playing five fought like hell and tied the score by the end of the second quarter at 15-15.
The third quarter saw the same ups and downs. At one point they would score at the other point we would do well. At the end of the third we had a small lead of 3 points.
The fourth quarter started with a bang for us. We managed to extend the 3 point lead to 7 points. The time left on the clock was somewhere around 2 minutes, and the game was a wrap .... or so it seemed.
Thomas is undoubtely the best player in the university. Be it ball control, shooting or passing. He is literally a one man army. And he was in the opposing team. He shot a 3 pointer and followed it up with another excellent 2 pointer. And we became nervous..
The clock had counted down to 45 seconds. Thomas had the ball. The B.tech crowd was shouting their lungs hoarse, for they though t the match was over, while the ROC crowd waited patiently for a miracle. He slowed the game down. Waiting for the clock to count down further. And then came the screen. Bipin came and blocked Praveen who was guarding Thomas. Thomas went to his right, looked down at the 3 point line and let one loose. The ball had a perfect arch and it fell into the basket. ROC lead by 1 point. Clock showed 10 seconds. We were in dismay.
The throw was taken, the ball passed to Praveen, which was then quickly passed onto Pylee, who was standing at the ROC three shot line. Pylee fumbles the ball... Freddy gathers it tries to drive in and gets fouled !!! Two free throws granted.
Now that is what you call pressure. But, we all had confidence in Freddy. He shot the first free throw, in front of a crowd which was trying their level best to distract him, and it fell !! What a relief, the scores were tied. The second one didn't fall and the whistle was blown.
The game was tied and we were to have 5 minutes of over time. The playing 5 played their hearts out and in the end we managed to win the game by 6 points !!!
It was the perfect goodbye gift.

PS : I was a substitute player in the team, and didn't get a chance to play. The first five played the whole game and no one could have done better than them. I'm just really happy to be a part of this team.
There were a few fights and unfair decisions in the game. But those all are a part of it, I guess.

Another textured terrain

This time around, no wastage of time or effort and the texture is 2D. The results are for you to judge :D I'm satisfied though...

Terrain textured with a high resolution texture.

The terrain textured with a low resolution texture.

The wire mesh.

I beome cooler by the clock ;)

A textured terrain

I spend a lot of time (time, not effort) getting the terrain textured by a 1D texture. The main problem which I faced was making a texture in Photoshop which looked natural enough. After a lot of hit and trial with the gradient tool I got it somewhat right. End result, the wire mesh looks much cooler than the textured terrain :(

The textured terrain.


The good old wire mesh.

And now I can't concentrate on studies.

Skybox

After much lazying around, I finally managed to get one skybox demo running (although I haven't made the skybox class as of yet). It is actually pretty easy to make and really no big deal.
A skybox is basically a cube which is textured on all six sides by seamless images, so that when you look around it seems like you are in a real world. But, actually you are just in a painted box.

I hope that made sense. If it didn't just look at the pretty pictures.

Venom ??

To all the spiderman movie fans, it seems that Spiderman 3 will not have 1, but 2 villains. There is a lot of speculation over the photo below, that the person in the photo is not spiderman, but Venom.
If you are thinking that this is a Black and White image, then listen to the official sony announcement. Here is another pic to show the similarity in the costumes of the two (i.e Spiderman and Venom).

I really don't think that Sony Pictures would actually risk changing the costume of Spiderman from red and blue, to black.
One thing is sure though, Spiderman 3 will be having Sandman as one of the villains. IMDB has the cast listing, and only person (Topher Grace) is there without a specified role. So looks like he will be the one who will play Venom.

Match 2

Model engineering college thrashed by B.Tech, CUSAT 46-24. We are back !!!

Google pages

It seems that Google has finally come up with a web page hosting + online web page editing (WYSIWYG) tool. At first look, it seems that Google has beaten Yahoo (Geocities) once again.
The editing interface is pretty cool, uses AJAX, the works. Best part, they are giving out 100MB and no ads. Also there are a lot of designs and layouts to choose from. The domain name is also easy to remember. It is of the format: http://username.googlepages.com
The bad part is that, I don't think that you can edit all HTML by hand online. But, you can upload any HTML page, from your computer, to your account.
I had to test it out, right ;)
Update: You can edit the HTML online !! I just couldn't see the option on my browser, as there was no scroll bar and the "Edit HTML" link was at the bottom left. If you can't see the link, hit F11.

Another day in the calendar...

which saw another mass bunk from our class. It has now become a well revered practise. Whenever we don't see any faculty in the staff room, it is assumed that he/she is absent and what follows is one thing which our whole class is good at: walking out of the class really fast.
The day also saw our basketball team (that includes me) getting our spanking new red and black jerseys for the sports meet. Our game was against College of engineering, Munnar. We played very badly in the first three quarters, but still managed to beat them by a margin of around 20 points. The game also saw some really bad intentional fouls, which in my opinion were not required.

Inzy winzy spider

The most awaited moment for me during each of the India-Pakistan ODIs was: the presentation ceremony. Especially Inzy's speech.
Now, Inzamam Ul Haq has matured to be a really nice person and I would go as far as to say that he has reduced the amount of in-game rivalry which existed in India-Pakistan matches. He is also a caring person who has built a free hospital in Multan, his home town. But, his presentation speeches are a bit .... well funny.
Here are two forwards which I got. One from Sarvesh and the other one from my brother.

1. Inzy's interview: What he wants to say.

This is Inzy'S interview after the third ODI

*Rameez*: So Inzy, disappointed with your performance today?

*Inzy*: Bismilla-e-rehman-e-rahim. Thank you allah.ya the indian batsman
is play very good today. we is try very hard but is not win the game.

*Rameez*: Any words for Dhoni?
*Inzy*: Ya dhoni is play very well. He is hit his shot very hard in our
gaps. In start, we is protect our gaps very well. the grass is also
thick.. but dhoni is split our gaps with his bat.

*Rameez*: Another ordinary bowling performance?
*Inzy*: Ya our balls is loose. the bowler is went for many run. Asif is
bowled well. Also, after some shots the ball is out of shape. umpire is
not give another ball.. it is tough to play with one ball

*Rameez*: Dropped catches.. did that prove costly?
*Inzy*: ya the ball is not stick to our hands. we is practice a lot
sticking our bat in our hands.. but now we is more practice sticking
balls in our hands.

*Rameez*: Any plans for the next match?
*Inzy*: ya India is on top but we is try to bounce on our back. Insha
allah we is play better.

*Rameez*: All the best Inzy
*Inzy*: Thank is you

2. Inzamam's interview.

Most cricketers, who are not comfortable in conversing in English, go prepared for some standard questions that are asked from them when commentators chat with them during the awards ceremony.

Inzamam was once asked a different question after Pakistan won the match, for which he was not prepared. He always had a standard response to the first question. But this time.....

Tony Greig: So Inzi, that's fantastic, your wife is pregnant for the second time!

Inzamam: Bismillah-e-Rehman-e-Rahim! All credit goes to the boys. Everyone work hard for it, especially Afridi. It was tight situation when he went in. Without his strokes it not have been possible. He was pulling the
good balls. Also Bob Woolmer keeping close watch on progress and giving instructions. It's all team effort which pulled us out of big hole. Insha Allah, we all will work together as team, put in big effort and
deliver good result all the time.

Random musings

So after the mixed reaction which I got for my previous post, which left me in a lot of self doubt, I will ramble about my life just to distract you from what I had written previously.
There are more basketball matches in store for me. The University sports meet has already started and basketball starts from tomorrow. Our first match though is only day after tomorrow. The special thing being that this time we will be getting jerseys with our names on the back. This does make a difference, because first it cost me Rs 200/- (and I may have to give another Rs 40, they say) and second the crowd will know my name. This is, in one sense, BAD !! Now the abuses from the crowd won't be directed to a number 5, but to my name. And civilized crowds in CUSAT are as elusive as the IIT status, which we were about to get. But other than that, it is the first jersey which will bear my name and it would be a nice goodbye gift.
Talking about basketball, you have to see this: The Top 10 slam dunks of NBA (5.04 MB wmv). Even if you don't play or watch basketball, you will find this awesome.