Gaurav's Log

New Blog

2011-07-17T12:26:00.001+05:30

Hey,

I am now blogging on, http://blog.gaurav.im

See you there.

Visage

2010-11-26T02:47:00.002+05:30

To the face that brought smiles to mine, many a times, in the past four years.

Craziness

2010-11-26T01:18:00.003+05:30

Sometimes I wonder, if we aren't being crazy enough. Especially me.

I mean, I have done things which are crazy, but those were involuntary acts of stupidity. What I really think I should be doing is, going crazy by transcending my comfort zone. Life is really short, and in the times we are living in, we can't be totally sure if the world won't indeed end in 2012. Who knows?

Why hold back? Unless the outcome can be outright fatal (read: proposing to a girl with a brawny boyfriend), who cares.

Easy to say, let's try that out.

This is why we prefer GMail :)

2010-06-29T10:49:00.004+05:30

I had forgotten the password of my Hotmail account. So I tried resetting it by choosing to get a mail delivered to my alternate email account (which was my GMail account, and while trying this, the page told me that a mail will be sent to my GMail account). But I did not receive any emails from them for two days. So I tried resetting it by answering the secret question (the answers to which, I always forget :P ). Luckily, I succeeded. I found one mail from the Windows Live team in the inbox. It read:

Hello, gaurav.menghani@hotmail.com:

We received your request to reset your Windows Live password. To confirm your request and reset your password, follow the instructions below. Confirming your request helps prevent unauthorized access to your account.

Says it all, doesn't it :)

Goals

2010-06-05T22:52:00.003+05:30

Just a small update, got selected for Fedora Summer Coding, will be putting up stuff about it later. But for now, some goals that I want to achieve in the next 6 months.

1. Get in shape - (1st October 2010)
Could never go to gym for more than 2-3 weeks at a stretch. Time to make amends.

2. 1500+ on TopCoder.com - (5th October 2010)
This is a long standing dream.

3. Be conversant in Python - (10th November 2010)
It is one cool language I really want to be fluent in.

4. Make it a habit to sleep by 10:00, wake up by 5:00 (and no siestas) - (By 1st July 2010)
Enough of the late nights. Some discipline is essential :P

5. Clean up Grid Computing Framework, make it release-worthy - (10th November 2010)
The code can be scrubbed to a great extent. Several things to be ironed out.

Batch resize pictures on Linux

2010-05-25T21:17:00.003+05:30

1. Install ImageMagick
sudo apt-get install imagemagick (On Ubuntu)

2. Run this:
convert -resize 640x480 *.JPG

Voila!

Send mails through Rails!

2010-05-17T15:56:00.003+05:30

I was looking for tutorials on how to send mails through RoR. It turns out, it is pretty easy. Check out the Railscast.

If you are using GMail as your mail-server, it uses TLS(Transport Level Security). We need a little modification in the environment.rb for that. Make sure you have Ruby 1.8.7 or later, and Rails 2.2.1 or later. Just change the smtp_settings block. Rest of the procedure will be the same.


config.action_mailer.smtp_settings {
:enable_starttls_auto  => true,
:address               => 'smtp.gmail.com',
:port                  => 587,
:authentication        => :plain,
:domain                => 'yourapp.com'
:user_name             => 'username',
:password              => 'password'
}

Update

2010-05-16T21:48:00.007+05:30

Long time since I blogged. Feel the urge to blog now more than ever. As you may have noted, I have changed the template.

Also, I am done with my final year project 'Grid Computing Framework'. Though it works fine till now, I feel a lot of work needs to be done to make it usable in a completely unsupervised network. Yash, Anil and Kalpesh did an awesome job with the GUI and documentation (which was in LaTeX, using LyX). They solved problems, which were indeed very very frustrating. Hats off guys!

The last few days were quite horrifying. The processing would work fine for three machines, and as soon as I added one more machine, everything went haywire. This was what I had in front of me on 24th April, after a week of relentless debugging. I could not find a way out of this mess.

But the simple concept of 'Replication of Resources' from Distributed Systems helped. It turned out that there was one socket on which the Supervisor (server) machine which was serving files, and Workers (clients) were receiving them. Simultaneous requests were handled by mutexs. However, in the background there was a time-limit for a file to be received and processed.

What was happening was, the clients were waiting on the mutex and getting timed out, since there were a few of them and the files being sent were large. This was having a domino effect on the system. The problem was solved by increasing the number of sockets (20 for our purpose) and keeping individual mutexes for each socket. This solved the problem for the time being, and by April 26, the project was working as envisioned. :) A lot of hard work has gone into this project, in the last one month more than 7 - 8 hours each day (and there was regular college during that time too). I am sincerely grateful to the lab assistant, Mr. Shukla who was in the lab till 9 in the night in the final 15 days. Technically, without him, it was impossible to work.

Have a look at the git repository: http://github.com/reddragon/Grid-Computing-Framework

Read the documentation first. :)

C++ Trivia

2010-03-24T16:05:00.007+05:30

Q. What is the single colon operator doing in the constructor definition?

class Temp {
const int member;
public:
Temp(int m);
};
Temp::Temp(int m):member(m) { }

A. A colon here is used to initialize a member constant.

Q. What is the difference between the following two codes?
a)
template< class T, class U, class V>
T doSomething(T t, U u, V v)
{
return t + u + v;
}

template< typename T, typename U, typename V>
T doSomething(T t, U u, V v)
{
return t + u + v;
}

A. Technically there isn't. It is better practice to use the class keyword in templates when there is a class expected, and typename for anything else.

Q. What is an accessor function?

A. An accessor function is one which does not modify any members of a class. The const keyword is used to denote an accessor function. For example,

bool student::checkAge() const;

This does not provide any extra functionality, but it is a good practice to use the const keyword wherever possible, as it can help eliminate any possible bugs.

Quizzical

2010-03-14T21:58:00.005+05:30

1.2.

1 and 2 are the logos of which company?

Answer (Highlight to reveal): 1. Puma 2. Jaguar. The first one is a panther and the second one is obviously a Jaguar.

Did you know..

2010-02-22T00:30:00.004+05:30

(From Wikipedia's 'Did you know...' Section)

... that the Lefschetz theorem on (1,1)-classes proves the only case of the Hodge conjecture, a Clay Mathematics Institute million-dollar Millennium Prize Problem, which is known to be true on all Kähler manifolds?

No sir, I don't know what the crap you are talking about :P

If Gabbar Was a System Admin

2010-02-16T23:02:00.001+05:30

'I am not responsible for the damage this does to your machine :)

#!/bin/bash
bullets=3
while (($bullets>0)); do
if (($RANDOM%2==0));
then echo "Tera kya hoga kaaliya"
rm -rf *
else echo "Yeh bhi bach gaya!"
fi
let bullets--
done
echo "Saare bach gaye"
rm -rf *

How to set keyboard shortcuts in Ubuntu

2010-01-30T16:49:00.004+05:30

From now on, I will be posting some tips and tricks which I think are cool to know. Here is the first one.

If you use your computer for more than 4 hours a day, you probably have a few things you do regularly. I for instance, open the terminal quite frequently, and it is a pain to move my hands from the keyboard, take it to the mouse, then select Applications tab and then select the Accessories menu and then go down by about 10 items to open the terminal. I am not being lazy, but I think there should be a better way. We can use keyboard shortcuts to avoid that much trouble.

The following is for users who have Metacity as the window manager. Which is what most people might be using.

To do that,

1. Open your terminal the normal way :P
2. Type in: gconf-editor
3. A window opens up, select apps->metacity->keybinding_commands
4. There would be several rows with the fields of the form command_1, command_2 and so on. Select anyone of them, and edit their value. Write the command you want to execute when your type in the keyboard shortcut. In my case it was: gnome-terminal.

5. Now go to apps->metacity->global_keybindings
6. If you selected command_1, then select the row with the first column value as 'run_command_1'.
7. Edit the value, and set it to the shortcut you want. For example, if you want Control + e, you can write: <Control>e

8. You can also write something like <Shift><Alt>p etc.
9. Voila!

It works..

ACM ICPC 2009 - Amritapuri (Part 3)

2010-01-21T19:44:00.004+05:30

After the contest, was quite disappointed with our performance. Though, teams were much much more competitive here as compared to Kanpur site, but still the questions we solved looked a bit too easy to me, and there was no satisfaction in getting them.

Anyways, after the contest we were too tired and spent most of the time relaxing. An excursion was planned for the next day (our train was on the day after), but the sincere ones amongst us were a bit concerned about the impending Oral exams, and the insincere ones (ahem) had not even opened the books. Add to that, you had to get up at 5:00 the next morning to get to their bus by 6:00. :P

Anyways, the lazy ones and sincere ones convinced themselves to go for the excursion. Okay, getting up at 5:00 is really tough, I can sleep at 5, 6, 7 or even 8 in the morning.. but getting up is tough :P !

It was the right decision. We visited the beautiful Pallaruvi Waterfalls (where the coach of the chinese team went really crazy :P ), Thenmala Dam, and then to Adventure Zone. Made a lot of new friends. The volunteers of Amrita University who accompanied in the bus, were truly a crazy lot, and insisted on dancing and singing continuously throughout the way on some Tamil and Mallu songs which made no sense to us, but could not stop tapping our feet. The time in the bus was infact way more fun than the sites.. for instance, Anil accidently got hit really hard by an over enthusiastic volunteer who was busy in dancing and hit him at the exact spot where he had a sprain :P, we were beaten by the Bangladeshi team at Antakshari, and one of us became a hit with the girls with his hitherto hidden dancing skills :P

Later in the night we were given a special treat by Lata Ma'am at the American Canteen :) . The Elaneer soda, which is coconut water with fizz was the discovery of the trip. As refreshing as a soft drink, but healthy too.

The volunteers really deserve a special mention, all of them took such great care of us throughout the trip. Kudos to Archana, Suryodaya, Akshaya, and countless other names I can't recollect.. great job! On the overall it was a trip of a lifetime and so many people have contributed to make it an unforgettable experience.

Most frequently spoken words and phrases during the trip:

1. Aiyappa Mandir
2. What say Mash? :D
3. Are you Kracked Dudes?
4. Yo Maaaaan!
5. Thank you, Mad men.
6. Daddy mummy
7. Kakdi
8. Boddyy massager :D
9. Are you a woman? :P
10. Team Superrr Awesommme Woolf Squadronn! (with all the sincerity in the tone :) )

ACM ICPC 2009 - Amritapuri (Part 2)

2010-01-12T21:44:00.002+05:30

Okay, the D-Day has arrived. We get ready by 7:00 in the morning. On our way to the canteen, I spotted Prunthaban (and whose name Mahsheed can't pronounce properly even now :D ), and then later Ajay Somani and Nishant Redkar. These people are big time algorithm coders, and are one of the best in India, all of them work for Google and were obviously one of the problemsetters for the contest and the judges.

Had a filling breakfast and then proceeded towards the lab where the contest was supposed to begin. At 8:00 AM, we were let in, and soon the contest began. We started with looking at all the problems. Soon we saw that a lot of teams were solving problem F. So went for it. Meanwhile, Mahsheed and Anil were trying to solve problem C. In some time, was ready with a solution, which involved finding the unit vector from the point to the origin, checking if the unit vector was present in the set, if it was then the point is not visible else, the vector is inserted and the count is incremented. This sadly timed out. Mahsheed then asked me if it was possible to use some kind of sieving. This was a brilliant thought, was so silly not to think of that. This brought down the complexity of the solution to O(N^3). Another O(N^3) solution that I realized while writing the code was to check if the LCM of the points was 1, if it was, then the respective points were visible. Got accepted. Now we were in the top 15.

I then started with G. The brute-force solution is O(N^3). That would probably solve the problem, but after about 4 months of server-time :P . It is easy to see an O(N^2) solution. Find the sum from 1..N for every element in O(N). Then, for each pair of indices, i and j, the sum is Sum[i]^Sum[j]. Anyways, this still timed out. I kept cursing myself how there was an O(N) solution for a similar problem in Hitchiker's Guide to Programming Contests, which I used for preparing the 25-page reference document which we could carry to the lab.

In the meanwhile, Mahsheed suggested we move to problem B, which was also being solved a lot. I frankly hate this problem now. The reason being, we read rules number 2 and 3 in the problem, and frankly the only difficulty in the problem lies in interpreting these 2 rules. Now, I wrote a very diligent (though exponential :P) solution which would easily fit in time, but it gave a wrong answer. After about 30 minutes of racking our brains, we realized that there might be an ambiguity in those rules. We then asked the judges via Mooshak (the contest environment), 'If we choose only 1 copy of p1 to construct s1 and 1 copy of p2 to construct s2, the problem reduces to a very trivial one. Are we interpreting something wrong?'. We received a very cryptic reply 5 minutes later (they were usually replying within a minute or so, and replied to questions asked after ours).. 'You can re-read the problem and ask if you have any doubts'. WTF! This clearly meant 'some copies' was 1 or more than 1. We modified our solution a bit and got accepted. Though, I would admit it was a mistake on our part too, but it could have had been framed better, much better. May be the obscurity was intentional. We were now on 23rd position, and about half the time was over.

Now, I tried some more on the problem G, but to no avail. So, I asked Mahsheed and Anil to try their approach of problem C. They tried very hard but met with no success. Anil was so tired, he asked Ajay Somani was walking through the aisle, 'Dude, Paani le ke aa naa' :P , mistaking him to be a volunteer :P , this later led to him taking some ( > 1) breaks :D :D. All the solutions which we tried for C, kept giving WAs (Wrong Answers). Looked for other problems too, was not sure about H (in the hindsight, I think I should have gone for it). Somehow, I being my persistent self stuck to G kept racking my brain for that O(N) solution, and in the end.. the third balloon never came. We ended 24th, missed our target of a top 10 finish, and even the modest target of top 20 (courtesy unsuccessful submissions). Anyways, I was in a really irritable mood after that (sorry team-mates for the grumpy behaviour :( ).

There was this prize distribution ceremony later. Firstly there was a presentation made by this really cool guy called Linkesh Diwan on Global Warming and the effects of man's greed on the environment (especially the Pacific Gyre). He was selected to represent the Indian youth at the Copenhagen Summit. He had infact made this banner titled 'Seal the Deal at Copenhagen' to urge the world-leaders to finalize an climate-change agreement, we all signed the banner. We now know what happened there :( .

Later there was a presentation made by IBM, and then a really boring, exhausting, mindless, pointless, ridiculous talk by a TCS fellow. The drone went on for a millenium! Finally, they distributed the certificates later, and we went back to the Ashram and relaxed.

(To be contd.)

ACM ICPC 2009 - Amritapuri (Part 1)

2009-12-26T13:31:00.005+05:30

I know I am a bit too late to write this post, but better late than never. (For those who don't know: ACM ICPC is a very prestigious programming competition for college students. It is usually conducted in two stages. The first being the regionals (where we went). The second stage is the World Finals, where only the top 1-2 teams from each regional site are invited. More than 3000 teams take part in the regionals every year.)

We (Mahsheed, Anil and I) participated in the Amrita University's online prelim round for the regional contest on 13th September (and I had an all too important exam on the 15th :) ). But, nevertheless, we performed decently and qualified for the finals.

Soon we got our tickets booked. Our college was kind enough to sponsor our entire trip, thanks to our coach. :) (Since the college sponsored only sleeper class tickets, we quite foolishly, as we later realized, booked sleeper class tickets for travel to and from the place). The place we were travelling to was Kayamkulam in Kollam district of Kerala. :D

The train journey to Kayamkulam was quite eventful. The food was horrible and it seemed like they hadn't cleaned the coach in quite some time (and the train is supposed to be one of the best in that region). But anyways, we survived and somehow reached Kayankulam after 32 hours in the train :)

There was a bus waiting for us at the station to take us to Amritapuri. Once at Amriatpuri, we were bedazzled by the breathtaking view. The mighty backwaters separate the college campus and the hostel, and the Amrita Setu connects them. Our boarding arrangements were made at the Amrita Ashram (not a typical Ashram, a 16-story apartment block for foreign visitors). All the teams were assigned a volunteer whom we can contact in case of any problem.

After we were assigned our room on the 8th floor, we took some time to clean up all the dirt we accumulated en route. Washed and polished, we proceeded towards the college campus for some gastronomical pleasure. But just as we were about to leave the Ashram, a lady asked us which city we were from, and we replied 'Bombay' ( :P ). 'Which college, DJ Sanghvi?' she asked next. First our faces twitched for obvious reasons and then we replied, 'TSEC'. To this her face lit up. It turned out, she(Lata Ma'am) was a '94-batch passout from my college and was now teaching here :). Later, we made our way to the campus canteen where we were served one of the best spreads of Indian cuisine I have ever had outside home :) .

The next day was reserved for two practice sessions. Went quite decently and awesome food again. There was a small excursion planned that day, but we stayed back since we were still tired from the long journey. But the excursion was later cancelled since it started raining really heavily. Later that day we met Lata Ma'am and she was kind enough to show us around and take us on a boat ride through the back waters. The rower of the boat, 'Bhargavan Accha' was a really nice man and was quite eager to show us around, but we were running out of time, so we bid our goodbyes to relax for the next day.

The final round was on the next day... (To be contd.)

Pythonized

2009-11-10T10:58:00.004+05:30

I am back from ACM ICPC Asia Regionals at Amritapuri. An average performance there. More about it in a coming post.

I have been wanting to get started with Python for almost an year now. I would read up the tutorials, and then leave it soon. But this time I decided to use it to solve the problem Uncle Jack (UJ) on SPOJ which required big integer multiplication. I could have used my BigInt library but the source limit was 512 bytes, and I was feeling too lazy to cut it short. So here is what I did.

I started with submitting a solution for TEST

num=raw_input()
while int(num)!=42:
print num
num=raw_input()

This should be pretty self explanatory.
The problem is, raw_input takes the entire line as the input. The problem UJ required to take input in the form of two numbers on the same line. Python lets you return multiple values from a function. So instead of return a nested pair, like you do in C++, you can do something like this:

def fn
      .....
return a,b,c

a1,b1,c1 = fn()

But this functionality is not extended to raw_input(), i.e. you cannot do something like


       inp1,inp2 = raw_input()

to get multiple inputs from the same line. There must be something to do that, but I do not know it as of now. Thus, I had to use string handling and split the string.

         str = raw_input()
       n,temp,d = str.partition(' ')

The partition function breaks the string into three parts, n contatining the part before the separator(space), temp contatining just the separator and d containing the part after the separator.

After this, the problem is pretty trivial with Python. :)

Tip for Newbies: To multiply big numbers, you simply do a * b. To raise a to the power b, you do a ** b. Now doesn't BigInt library of Java look messy? :P

Back from... err.. wherever I went ;)

2009-10-01T23:32:00.003+05:30

Hmm.. So its almost two months since I posted. Well, I was kind of busy :)
Now that the thing is done, here I am.

What is exciting these days is, firstly my team qualified for the onsite regional round of ACM ICPC to be held at Amrita University, Kerala this November. It is a prestigious competition, and I really want to make the most of it.

Secondly, we are working quite assiduously on our final year project 'Grid Computing Framework' . Although, the lab attendant is really getting on my nerves, I think we should sail through pretty comfortably. Though I know the project is a bit ambitious, but we have set ourselves moderately high goals. The Grid is supposed to be the college network, and our USP would be the ease of implementing it over a small network. I won't bore you with the technical details already. However, I plan to put up certain generic modules which you might find useful.

For instance, the basic TCP communication module, or a small GTK tutorial (GUI API for Linux).

If I solve some good problems on SPOJ or UVa, will post some tutorials for those too.

God, Save the Nation! :P

2009-08-04T02:24:00.002+05:30

Was browsing through the search trends on Google. And this is what India is searching for.

A cute little code

2009-06-26T00:49:00.008+05:30

After looking at this page, I thought may be I should create something similar. So here it is:

main() { int a=705220614,i; for(i=4;i<30;i+=5)
printf("%c",((1<<6)+1+((a&(((1<<5)-1)<<(i-4)))>>(i-4))));}

Use gcc to compile it on Linux. Or use DevC++ and save this as a C file.

What do I see from my balcony?

2009-06-25T02:54:00.002+05:30

The time is 9 PM, I am standing in my balcony which gives me a strategic view of my housing society and its surroundings. This is what I see.

1) A child being dragged out of the swimming pool by his father.

2) Another kiddo riding a swing. He tries to be adventurous and falls down miserably. However, he stands up almost immediately and without a thought limps away from the playing area. It appeared as if he knew what was coming and was prepared to leave. :P

3) 16 towers of concrete :(

4) Two security guards chatting away to glory.

5) The road bears a deserted look. A battered Maruti-800 is the sole vehicle in view.

Someday soon, Mr.Mitrichev! :)

2009-06-08T03:05:00.000+05:30

Blogging Tips

2009-05-21T00:49:00.007+05:30

I was going through my posts and to my horror I found that in the post where I reviewed Golden Star Thali, I wrote 'I don't think everybody would have a smile on their faces when they leave.' whereas what I meant was 'I think everybody WOULD have ...'.

Wow! It made hell of a difference and I didn't get to know that because I didn't read it twice before publishing it. And maybe people took that as my views about the place. It was probably because of two or more lines coming in my mind at once and it all got mixed up.

Here is what I observe, should keep these things at bay, atleast for me.

1) Read every post, carefully before you post :P. You took pains to write it, take some more to avoid any kind of misinterpretation. Or atleast do it my way, publish it, then check it in the browser, correct mistakes, publish again and iterate. It kind of looks clumsy in the blogger edit area. :P

2) Grammar is one thing to watch. While writing, the sentences might get jumbled up a bit and would sound very awkward. When we speak we kind of get away with some big grammatical mistakes as the talk is mostly casual. On blogs we never really know who reads it and what kind of impression that mistake will create in that person's mind.

3) Avoid getting into things that might cause legal issues. If you are stating something that is not based on concrete facts, you might be in for big trouble. Or when you write something that might look like an advice or anything similar that may lead to influencing decisions that a person makes, do clearly state exactly how much liable are you for any kind of loss that person suffers if he/she follows your advice. I for instance do not advice taking any kind of decisions whatsoever, based on the content of my posts.

4) Please make sure your blog looks neat. I have come across a lot of pain-in-the-back blogs with dark red backgrounds and all-bold, dirty-green fonts of size about 32 pixels. I am not going back to those kinds of blogs again.

That's it.

Happy Blogging.

(For the note, I followed what I wrote and have already made 6 edits in the past 5 minutes! :) )

The One With Exclamation Marks

2009-05-20T01:29:00.002+05:30

1. Never skated in my life!
2. Watching How I Met Your Mother is fun!
3. South Park kicks ass!
4. Sometimes I love being awake till 6 in the morning, but it really screws me up!
5. Gimme some Butter Chicken!

Welcome back Mr. Singh

2009-05-18T23:03:00.003+05:30

So the Sardar(d) is back!

A lot of newspapers, news channels, discussion forums are quite surprised by Congress' landslide victory. Congress is even more surprised. I guess they shouldn't be because the people of India did not have an option. Amongst people who want to ban Computers and English and those who build their very own temples with mammoth-size statues, and people like Left (don't even get me started on them), Congress was the only alternative.

Congress can now sit back and relax for the next five years, (because this time round, there would be no bully in the camp (read: Left) ) do nothing and still get elected again. As I said, its not about the prowess of the 'young turks' and their sharp oratorical skills or whatever.

Because Mrs. Gandhi, we do not have a choice.

The Great Indian Election Tamasha

2009-05-10T22:52:00.002+05:30

The elections have been done with in the two metros that are important to me, Delhi and Mumbai. Personally, I have never been in the awe of the Great Indian Democracy. Have been hearing all the nonsense about how we should not just curse the system for being what it is, rather we should bring out changes by being a part of it. Crap! i0exception's post is a good read for those who agree and even more so for those who don't.

I sometimes wonder what people like Mayawati and Mulayam Singh Yadav would do if they ever (god forbid) become the Prime Minister. The country would surely go the dogs because these people lack the ability to think beyond divide-and-rule policies. Can they pull the country out of a crisis? In such testing times when our neighborhood has become the 'most-dangerous-place-on-Earth' and with the Dragon playing tactical moves by winning over all our traditional allies, do they have what it needs to deliver if things turn completely hostile? I wonder if they realize how grossly incompetent such people are.

I still can't think of a title for this!

2009-04-27T21:08:00.003+05:30

It has been some time since I posted. My lectures for the sixth semester have ended and I am currently going through Vivas and Practical sessions (six of them this time :P). The ending of the sixth semester brings to my mind, the worn-out and age-old cliche, 'It was only yesterday, that I took my first step into the college campus..'. LOL, frankly I won't like to trouble you with all the emotional doses, but I would like to share that the first day wasn't good at all. It was raining heavily (you know what 'heavily raining' means in Mumbai) and I came all soaked in water despite having come in a bus and an umbrella for protection.

Highlights of the year gone by:

Even the third year has zipped past quite soon. This one had more tech-stuff as compared to the first two. Actually I kind of curse myself for not being able to significantly raise my technical calibre (or whatever it is called) from where I left in school in those two years. Practically, if you sum up what I did in those two years equals less than what I did in the first six months of my eleventh standard (but then I kind of screwed up my competitive exams :P). Though I am thankful that my academic performace was pretty good (amongst the top ten in the branch, throughout) and that fetched me the JRD Tata Scholarship as well as an entry ticket to the Accenture Workshop on Project Management this year.

a) Organized a number of technical, business, management events this time for a lot of societies like IEEE, CSI, IETE and Management Society, and almost all were resounding successes (Can't be modest here). My objective in some of them being the letters of appreciation and some were done for friends. But, the key learning is that no matter how much effort and pains you put up in these events, the organizers almost always do not care for you and they just want to get their work done (atleast in my college). Most of these events were in the fifth semester and after certain happenings where I worked for the sake of my personal equations and got the most unexpected returns, I have given up organizing them altogether. And now that the technical fest is in September, I have started being greeted very warmly by the prospective organizers for obvious reasons.

b) Also took part in a lot of extra-curricular (technical / management) stuff. The highlight of the year being qualifying for the Tata Crucible 2009 Mumbai Edition finals (Business Quiz). This was something my team always dreamed of and finally made it amongst the top 6 out of 250 other teams from IIT and other prestigious colleges in the region.

c) Took part in the Microsoft Student Partner selection process. Eventually, got selected too but then later changed my mind. It involved too much of evangelism which I could not afford with the fifth semester exams on my head.

d) Still stuck in the high green region (60 - 70 percentile bracket) at TopCoder.com. :(

e) Failed to qualify the ThoughtWorks Object Boot Camp aptitude test (Wins the 'Biggest Disappointment in the Year' award hands down!) :( :(

Can you beat the brain in that algorithm?

2009-03-27T19:27:00.004+05:30

I think they have got it just right.. I type about an automated Tours and Travels Website, and they throw up an ad of a similar portal. Just sometime back one of my mails had the word 'Toothpaste' which was central to the theme of the mail, and I had an ad of 'Colgate' sitting happily up there on the blue bar and smiling at my astonishment!

Hats Off!

Tata Crucible 2009..

2009-03-24T18:28:00.001+05:30

Finally qualified for Tata Crucible onstage edition! After an year of preparing for this event, we (Kunal [my team-mate] and I) finally made it onstage amongst quiz-world biggies.

Got a lot of goodies too :D

We didn't go through the finals (actually scored a naught, a +5 followed by a -5), may be next time..

Whoa! That's quite suggestive!

2009-03-12T23:23:00.004+05:30

Holi-days

2009-03-11T19:22:00.004+05:30

Holi is a very unique festival, some love it like crazy while some hate it to the core! Some of my observations of events which make Holi what it is..

1) Paint that Snob!: Everybody gets 'painted'! Kewl Dudes, Attitude Gals, Boring Aunties, Bookworms, all... It is a great time to take revenge and still get away with it by saying 'Holi Hai!'. This quite the opposite of what the festival was meant to be.. :D

2) Paint Me, Paint my Hair, Paint my Ears: Yeah, when you are grabbed by the mob which is so enthusiastic to color your milky-white skin into metallic silver or golden, you can't control all their hands. The color would inadvertently go into places where you least expected it.

3) Water Balloons and Dungballs!: If you thought water balloons were terrible, meet its rural cousin, the DUNGBALL. Why do you need to spend on balloons when you can do the same job so cheaply (courtesy the inhouse buffallo) and much more effectively. This actually happens in North Indian towns and villages.

4) Bhang-Bang: Well this is the central attraction in the Holi get-togethers. It is quite funny when people get high on bhang-laced thandai unintentionally, mistaking it to be the plain one. Have you seen 'Moment of Truth' on Star World? You can see a desi-version live, with such people spilling out all secrets :P.

5) She doesn't like to be Colored? Color Her First!!!: Hehehehe.. that's not me! That happens everywhere. So, if you aren't exactly fond of the colors, be prepared to be targeted :)

6) Sweets!!!: Yaayy!!! Stuffing gujiyas (a north-indian sweet, prepared during Holi) and giyars (a Sindhi sweet) is one of the prime reasons why I and may be a lot many people love this festival.

LKAdvani on UVa Online Judge!!!

2009-02-23T16:07:00.001+05:30

What's LK Advani's 'Advani for PM' ad doing on UVa Online Judge?

Answers to Quiz over Coffee - 1

2009-02-16T18:34:00.001+05:30

Quiz over Coffee - 1

Note: See the questions first if you haven't.

Answers:

1. The gentlemen are Abhay Deol, PC Barua, Dilip Kumar and KL Saigal. All of them have essayed roles based on Devdas, the protagonist of the novel of the same name by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay.

2. Palm Jumeirah, the man-made island.

3. Hewlett Packard

4. Tiger Woods

5. The 'Hello World' program, or a program that is used to test if the I/O, other devices are working properly, i.e if the machine is 'sane' :P

Totally Un'Reliable'

2009-02-16T17:39:00.005+05:30

The story begins like this...
I had got a Reliance Broadband connection on 5/02/09, this was like twenty days after submitting the application. The plan that I had chosen was an Unlimited Internet @ 300kbps for INR 800 a month. As the plan was unlimited I kept it switched on for long hours and to my surprise, I could not connect to the Internet from the morning of 7/02/09. Later in the day, I called up the call center to find out the reason for this. They told me that my services were barred as I had exceeded the limit of the connection! When I further questioned that how it was possible since I had an UL (Unlimited) connection, the lady replied that my connection was a Data Transfer plan and not a UL one!!!

When I called up the sales executive, Mr. L, who had got me to subscribe to this service, he promptly redirected me to his senior Mr. M. When I called up Mr. M, he said the problem would be fixed soon, but he too asked me to talk to his senior, Mr. A. After a day passed, I called up Mr. A who again assured me that it would be fixed within two days. This was the last time I talked to either of the trio.

Since then, they have been evading my calls, disconnecting my calls, switching off their phones and what not. When I try to call them from different numbers, they do pick up their phones but hang up instantly on hearing my voice. This was a clear signal of some wrongdoing at their end and I called up the call center and filed a complaint regarding the entire matter. I also dropped a mail at the main customer care email-id of Reliance Broadband. But, as expected they haven't replied with a call /mail, leave alone solving the problem.

It has been 10 days since the event. Frankly, this is the worst possible way that I have seen a customer care department respond in. Sure, there are mistakes, but no company that I have ever seen behaves as if the sole intent is to rake in money. They simply do NOT want your satisfaction. Just pay the bills and their job is done. I would like to mention the case of Airtel Broadband where in a similar scenario, they not only closed the issue in a day but also compensated us in kind as a goodwill gesture. I am hardly interested in anything else but the resumption of the services, but that I think, is too much to ask.

I think my case is sufficient to illustrate how responsible this company is.

College, Contests, Algorithms....

2009-02-02T15:47:00.004+05:30

Hmmm.. So college is 'on' again. And here I am, raring to participate in tech-fests again...

The season has begun with a very average start. Didn't qualify in algoCrack (VJTI, Mumbai) TWICE!!! Although I am satisfied with what I performed. May be its just not enough. Won dCipher at the same venue, which nullified the pain of not qualifying algoCrack. Also, came an abysmally low 3rd in Unicus (B-Plan Competition), the top prize was 15k.. :P

I would like to share with you a few stereotypes that I always encounter in B-Plans:

a) No plan ever-EVER has a break-even period of more than 2 years!
b) If the plan is in the technical domain, NO one has tried that technology before, yet it is not patented and can be licensed for peanuts.
c) If it is otherwise, there is almost NIL competition from the organized sector.
d) All potential Competitors, always offer the WORST deal.
e) None has had a start-up investment of less than a crore. (Remember Lijjat Papad and Infy?)
f) Loans to the tune of tens of crores would be easily procured, infact they would themselves deliver the cheque at their homes, without any collateral obviously.
g) Advertisements can be used to generate heaps of money that would almost entirely fund the business' activities.
:D

Frankly, its quite comical when almost everybody wants to show it is the best deal. C'mon, when will we have a B-Plan which says, 'Don't take me. I suck' :)

Yo! Ubuntu!

2009-01-18T15:33:00.002+05:30

My laptop has been dying a slow death over the past few months. Earlier the hinge broke up and then, the hard disk crashed. Luckily, my external HDD could infact replace the diseased one. So, after the hdd was replaced, the big question was how long would it take to get the things started again.

The hdd didnt have a boot sector. I expected my original WinXP copy to set up the boot sector for me without any hassles. But sadly, it failed on that quarter as well. Whereas, Ubuntu 7.10 got the laptop running in 20 minutes. And in another ten minutes, got almost everything back.

It has been a nice experience with U 7.10 for the past 9 months. My machine doesn't have a great config. But Ubuntu has made the experience zippy and smooth. Just that it took a little time to boot when the swap space was 500 MB. This time I have a swap space of 5 GB as I have a li'l extra and that problem has also gone.

QuizOverCoffee - 1

2009-01-18T02:44:00.007+05:30

Quizzing has been my passion for a long time. Even though I am not 'great' in quizzing, I always love to set up questions for fellow quizzers. So here is the first set.. Most of them are sitters, so try getting them all correct.

1. Connect the Gentlemen in the pictures:

2. "The ______ is in the shape of a palm tree. It consists of a trunk, a crown with 17 fronds, and a surrounding crescent island that forms an 11 kilometre long breakwater. It is 5 kilometres by 5 kilometres and its total area is larger than 800 football pitches. It is the self-declared 'Eighth Wonder of the World'".

What am I talking about?

3. This company came up during the Great Depression era, with an initial investment of US $538. The founders tossed a coin to decide over the name of the company. One of the company's earliest customers was The Walt Disney Company, which bought eight Model 200B oscillators (at $71.50 each) for use in certifying the Fantasound surround sound systems installed in theaters for the movie Fantasia.

Identify the company.

4. This sportsman is one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter Thai, one-quarter African American, one-eighth Native American, and one-eighth Dutch. He debuted in the year 1996 and was named Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year, the same year.

Who am I talking about?

5. In the computer lingo, what is a Sanity Test?

New Year.. New Fear? :P

2009-01-08T14:48:00.004+05:30

The blog has turned two. Sadly, I have had been busy with my semester exams which have been stretching for periods sufficiently large to freak my mind out. One of the biggest tortures for a self-confessed-geek (regardless of his being a virtuoso or a tyro in his chosen field) is to restrain himself from the computer, or an even enhanced one being, not getting access to one even when he/she wants to. The feeling is similar to running out of breath while running uphill, or trying to shove in that one extra push-up even after the lactic acid concentration in your muscles has risen to alarming levels!!! Okay, you get the point I suppose.. :)

So many things are happening around. Pakistan has been dilly-dallying over the citizenship of the terrorist. Here is one good article from Jug Suraiya [TOI, December 25] on how to deal with Pakistan. Another interesting bunch of ideas is: 12 Steps to shock and awe Pak Economy. Incidentally, if you have some of your ideas to fill up the space or you think you might have the solution to the crisis that the world finds itself caught up in, then visit: Prism@Work.

Saving some food for thought, Satyam is in a big mess, Google and Microsoft have frozen their placements, things don't look great for other companies as well. Companies are sinking, Nations are going bankrupt... I read in a DNA article about a week back, some Chinese Graduates are ready to work for free.. its that bad. They just want to survive the downhill with some worthwhile experience even if that means not getting a salary. I hope by the time it comes to my placement, things would have eased out. ;)

While the Economies are melting, something much more tangible is also following suit. May be at a faster pace. Surprise Surprise, the poles are melting! Some ridiculous theory says that global warming is being 'conducted' by people who want the ice around Greenland to melt away so that their freight ships can move through that route instead of going through Panama Canal and incurring a significantly large fuel bill. Something even more ridiculous is, 'Global Warming is nice.. it would save the cost of Heaters and warm clothing in this time of recession.' A nice idea would be to take a walk than taking a cab to your destination.. Saves on fuel and money and you get a fitter body, so you save on Gym fees as well.

Lets hope all's good in 2009.

The Aftermath

2008-12-07T11:53:00.005+05:30

So, we are done with the ordeal. A lot has been said, little been done..

We have had our share of promises to deal with the people who so blatantly infiltrated into our soil and held the country to ransom for 60 hours. The ex-CM who has been so shamelessly laughing in the press-conferences, Mr. ex-deputy CM who remarked that it was something trivial that happens in big cities, Mr. Savior - of - Mumbai (who apparently has been bestowed upon the right to decide who lives in Mumbai, who doesn't) colored the issue in the same hue as he as been doing for long by saying that all the policemen who died were Marathi-manoos.. Shame on You!

Then the question arises, who is to blame. We chose the government. But then, we don't have an option. Between a government which is ineffective and soft and a government which has a pretty consistent record of being 'non'-secular, more-show-less-substance who do you go for?

The PM promised to punish those behind the attacks in his address to the nation.

What a cruel joke...

Read: http://youthcurry.blogspot.com/2008/12/lot-has-been-said.html
Another One (Satirical Post): http://www.rakeshjhunjhunwala.in/2008/12/jhunjhunwala-times-featured-article.html (This is not Mr. Rakesh Jhunjhunwala's official blog)

2008-11-29T21:55:00.002+05:30

UNITED WE STAND

"Exams are coming, dude...

2008-11-25T01:17:00.004+05:30

"...

I am sitting on my study table and pull down the laptop lid down. The lid still makes an angle of 45 degrees with the keyboard, and GTalk is still active with some studious and not so studious stuff open by the side

Concentrate

And I turn back to studying about the super-cool, from-the-future, apocalypse-preventing.. the great Intel 8086.. :P. "Did I check my Facebook notifications today?".. "Ohh No.. I didn't"

Back to square one.

That has been the story of the past 20 days. Nothing great has been achieved on the academic front and nothing great on other fronts too.. :) . Whoa! Sem 5 the most crucial semester of engineering as we have placements coming up soon and if I flunk, I am almost sure not to get a job and who knows about GRE and stuff. And being jobless in recession is just the worst thing to do end up with.. So practically I should have been "studying in every possible place", but no I ain't doing that..

That's the joy of Engineering. You do practically everything you should'nt be.
With this note I shall return to my books..

A post in a couple of days..

Microsoft Dreamspark

2008-11-25T00:53:00.002+05:30

Microsoft recently unveiled DreamSpark - a software giveaway for an estimated 10 million eligible students in India. DreamSpark will provide students access to the latest Microsoft developer and designer tools at no charge.

Microsoft DreamSpark will be available to all students whose studies touch on technology, design, math, science and engineering. The software available to students will include:

Microsoft developer tools

Visual Studio 2005 Express
Visual Studio 2005 Professional
Visual Studio 2008 Professional
Visual Basic 2008 Express
Visual C++ 2008 Express
Visual C# 2008 Express
Visual Web Developer 2008 Express
XNA Game Studio 2.0
12-month free Academic membership in the XNA Creators Club

Microsoft designer tools

Expression Studio 2, including

o Expression Web

o Expression Blend

o Expression Design

o Expression Media

Microsoft platform resources

SQL Server 2008 Developer
SQL Server 2008 Express
Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition
Virtual PC 2007

Training Resources

IT Academy Student Pass

This broad range of professional-level software will be available both online via www.dreamsparkindia.com; and in offline format via DVDs distributed by program partners NIIT, Aptech and Hughes Net Fusion Centers. A student merely needs to offer a proof of identity at a branch of these institutes to avail of a DreamSpark DVD. There are 125 NIIT, 175 Aptech, and 200 Hughes Net Fusion Centers participating across the country.

These program partners will also provide technology training on the DreamSpark software tools at a nominal cost; as well as have the option of soft skills training in languages like English and Hindi. Microsoft India is also working with academic institutions, government bodies and student organizations across the country to ensure that all students get a chance to benefit from DreamSpark.

The DreamSpark program in India is tailor-made to join the dots between software access and employability - which means making training and enablement complement simple access to technology.

Source: Microsoft Mail to me.

Disclaimer: The post is intended to be informatory and not advisory. Please use your wisdom

Resto Review - Golden Star Restaurant, Mumbai

2008-11-06T16:08:00.008+05:30

Golden Star is located just outside Charni Road station. I had heard a lot about this restaurant and its legendary Thali, but never visited it. Incidentally, it is my friend's place and he invited me over(Thanks Mash! :P). However, the review is completely unbiased.

Actually, I was never very fond of Thalis. Somebody told me that when there is so much different kind of food on the Thali, the stomach gets confused.. :P..

Maybe I never had a good one. GS (Golden Star), is a Gujarati / Rajasthani Thali serving restaurant. So the ambience is pretty much based upon that. The people who would serve you are dressed in their complete traditional attire. All in all, I felt pretty much at ease there.

Initially, there was this Thali with about 8 - 9 katoris
My Mind: What's Great?

Then, the Thaali unfolded itself. :D

For the next 10 minutes we were being served unstoppably. About 15 different items were served to me, there were some more which I rejected since I knew the potential of my stomach.. :) . [Don' sue me over the count.. ].

There were some conventional sabzis and there were things like the awesome Puranpoli (My mouth is watering like anything, just thinking about it), the chilled Chaas, the sweet dal, daal-baati, and the army of farsans including my fav cham-cham. And all this served with ghee-laden fulkas. Ohh man.. ask the value of those soft lubricated fulkas to a hostel guy.. :) . Almost all the stuff is unlimited (just confirm once, I didn't have room to have any more so I didn't explore that option).

I've heard the Aam-Ras which is served during the summers is pretty famous. A lot of people come just to have a meal of Aam-Ras alone.. :)

Anyways, here is how I would rate the resto.

Ambience: 8 out of 10
Food: 9 out of 10
Service: 8.5 out of 10
Value for money: 7 out of 10 (A little high on the cost side for students, but it is very much justified.)

On the overall, its worth a try. I think everyone would have a smile on their face when they leave, just like the people at GS.. :)

Link: http://www.goldenstarthali.com

Edit: I made a typo where I wrote: 'I don't think everyone would have a smile..'. I wrote quite the opposite by adding the extraneous 'don't'. Regrets.

Discalimer: The review expresses personal opinion, and doesn't qualify as an advisory article.

Who cares about Basanti?

2008-11-06T15:38:00.002+05:30

New Template.. for Now

2008-10-28T13:50:00.001+05:30

Even I was bored of the same template.. Almost had it for 2 years.

A new template on Diwali. May be I'll move to a better looking one soon..

Happy Diwali

2008-10-27T13:09:00.002+05:30

A Happy Diwali to one and all..

I hope its a safe and prosperous Diwali for all of us. :)

Some Relief at Last!

2008-10-27T12:10:00.004+05:30

Edit: Massive Editing.. :)
Phew! Some highlights:
1) Won BioZeal '08 Business Plan Competition. Yet to receive the prize money. Well, we were promised a good amount (about 10 grand or so..), thy have dropped it to about 2 grands and even that is yet to come.. golmaal hai bhai sab golmaal hai.. :P . The event was good, the judges particularly liked the concept. I think the plan has now reached conceptual maturity, although I still doubt whether it can be practically successfull. I like taking risks, but somehow I always have an intution whether my risk will reap rich benefits or will I fall flat.. :) .. Anyways, as long as the moolah flows, who is complaining?

2) Conucted Business Quiz for Lakshya '08. A pretty decent event. Some controversies added spice to the event. For instance there was this rookie team who had won the Biz Quiz at Chemergence '08 and we (my team-mate Kunal and me) came second by a margin of 10 points. See this.. we come out of a class-room adjacent to the venue after ensuring the preparations were done. And here we meet the team, and instead of greeting us, one of the guys points a finger onto me and says to his friend "These are the guys we defeated at Chemergence '08 by 10 points!".. Learn some modesty!

Obviously they were pretty charged up. "Yeah, I can defeat them easily..".. "Yeah, I can solve those questions even when half asleep".. "Yeah, Even my Cat can win this business quiz".. Dream On. They lost in the elims and cried that it wasn't fair. Some other teams also cried. Suddenly it became a soap-opera. People didn't rest until we showed them their respective answer sheets, which stimulates some chemical reaction in their cognitive faculties and they transformed from a dominating body language to a meek and submissive one.

On the good part, the event really sparked some comments like, "Great Questions" etc. Business Quizzes are supposed to be that way, we aren't special, but we like to be praised :D

3) Won the Technical Quiz conducted by CSI. Whoa! There was some misunderstanding between me and the compere of the quiz. But okay, that was resolved. A decent quiz, mostly a breeze. I teamed up with Kunal, while Anil teamed up with another friend. In the end our team and Anil's team were on tie and eventually we won! Yeah! Some more moolah.. small amount, but it works.

4) Finally complete the JRD Tata Schol procedure. Tiring stuff man.. have been procastinating so may things, that I had nearly missed it. Had things gone according to plan, would have submitted it about a week before the last date, but then the turn of events was such that I submitted it just 1 hour before it closed! So many lessons to go back to that meticulous planning and all..

5) Completed 4 journals in a night! Had to spend the entire night awake.. too much trouble for the body HAHAHAHA... In between I cursed myself for spending so much time on ISAAC.. but I knew I would do the same thing given an opportunity to rewind. We all love to do what we love to do.. :)

6) Diwali is here.. Can't go home. 'Coz of PCT. I haven't really given anything more to a subject than to PCT.. I've missed a Diwali at home. I hope this is taken into consideration if somebody is reading.. :D

7) Had food at Golden Star, Charni Road. My friend Mahsheed invited me there. Awesome food man.. a big review on that in the coming posts :)

Busy...

2008-10-24T17:58:00.000+05:30

Very Busy..

Four Journal Certifications tommorow.. Loads to tell..

If Work was Alcohol...

2008-10-10T18:53:00.002+05:30

.. I have drunk a gazillion barrels.

It has been more than a month that I strarted work on ISAAC 08, our tech-fest. I was organising three events, The Ultimate Coder (C / C++ Programming), Treasure Seeker (Online Treasure Hunt), Survivor (Technical Marathon). Was neck deep in work for quite some time.

The fest was okay, but below my expectations.
Here is how it all happened..

Treasure Seeker: Great! People liked the puzzles I had set. Although registrations were below the high expectations. But still, there was a demand for a second version, which was later conducted.

The Ultimate Coder: Online Eliminations were decent. Onsite Finals had a problem with the third and the heaviest task being labelled as ambiguous. All teams asked for personal explanations, something which could have been avoided. But the problem itself was created to make the event innovative. Many things to learn...

Survivor: No nonsense in the part of the event that we conducted. But there was a little fiasco in the final round where the Contacts commitee did not inform the selected participants about the finals.. :P

Came 2nd in Chemergence '08 Biz Quiz. Lost by 10 points, and it hurts man... More things coming up this week.

September

2008-09-07T15:14:00.003+05:30

:P

Couldn't find a title that suits my life right now..

Okay, so the iPhone is here. Hmmm... Move on. Frankly, I tend to get bored with gadgets after some time. What I like the most are, good zippy desktops or laptops and a great home theater system (with DivX and all). Rest all iPhone - shyPhone stuff I tend to dislike after some time. The second or third-best thing about vacations is lying down on the couch and watching your fav pics on the home theater! Amazing. Laziness is next to Godliness.. :P

That reminds me of the Ganpati festival. Mumbai gets all coloured up during this time. I don't remember seeing enthusiasm of this scale anywhere else. Even Deepawali isn't close.

Results & More

2008-08-13T18:52:00.002+05:30

Yeah. Results have come out. Scored 78.6%, (around 9.4 GPA). Pretty satisfied with the output.. scored in places I didn't expect and lost in some really comfortable territories.. Anyways, all's good.

Missing home more than ever, terribly homesick. Immersing yourself in work is the only solution that I think is practical here.. Hope it gets better in sometime. No time for GRE vocab.. missing out on valuable time.

What else to write? Not much.. Too busy with coursework...

Another post soon.

2008-08-13T18:42:00.002+05:30

I can feel you...
I can feel you through the mist
I can feel you..

You were behind the veil..
The veil of mystery
But, I can feel you...

I chose this path..
Long back, Long back
The journey has been arduous
The path has been straining
The wounds are still paining
But, I can feel you...

I can feel you...
I can feel you, Now!

Back to College!

2008-08-04T16:29:00.003+05:30

A long gap seperates this post and the last post. Mainly, bcoz I was busy with my facebook application, Videospot (http://apps.facebook.com/videospot). It was meant for a competition and lost there by a narrow margin (it still hurts). I don't even feel like describing the application now.. although I am proud of what I made...

Anyways, back to college. We have the fifth semester up and running.. Crucial sem. The placements would depend upon this. Plus we have PCT (a humanities course) which is demanding in a lot of respects, 1 compulsory Java project, 4 technical events on my head to organise within the coming 2 months and the GRE vocab! Phew!

What used to be 12 - 13 hour sleep in the vacation has been shortened to 5-6 hours. And beleive me, I love being immersed in work. There is so much you end up doing. Slept at 3 yesterday and got up at 8! More coming up soon...

Back at Home

2008-06-29T01:52:00.003+05:30

Whoa! The vacations have begun. It's already been a week since I have been at home, and let me tell you, time passes like anything. What I dislike about college is that we have too short holidays. Just 1 Month! ;) . IITs get 2 1/2 months of vacations.

Offlate, I have been playing this game called TypeRacer on Orkut, a lot. It allows you to measure your typing speed and then compete with others, which might be random persons or your friends. While, I have always used my two index fingers to type and used to consider myself to be typing really fast, my dreams were shattered when I saw that people clocked nearly twice my speed. Whats more, the typed with all their fingers... Hmmm.. How do the fingers decide whether one should go for a keystroke and not the other? Is it the Shortest-Distance algorithm at work? ;)
[If you haven't got the joke, chuck it.]

Euro '08 is on and haven't watched a single match, mostly because I missed the main matches between the exams only. Watched Sania play at the Wimbledon, after a long long time. If you have noticed the change in her sports-apparel (err..), she semms to be more-or-so relatively 'covered' now. Looks like its because of the crackdown by moral-police.. Phew! And we talk of Women Liberation!!!

I have some really serious doubts whether I should write on topics which are serious... Do they end up always being negatively poised? They are definitely not fun to write.. Frankly speaking. :P . What something reading or watching something light-hearted can do to our sagging spirits is, unmistakably huge. Atleast for me.. I have seen movies and tv serials that most of you would never even thing of watching, just because they promised to be filled up with comedy (eventhough the packaging clearly warned of awful B-Grade PJs, and mixed with assorted variety of outrightly mega vulgar double-entendres)... Getting an adrenaline rush by watching something like DieHard etc. is at its place, but it can never match 'it'.

One Last Hurdle!

2008-06-14T19:24:00.003+05:30

Almost through with the IVth Semester. The last exam coming up is Applied Maths - 4. Hope it passes smoothly as well...

Till then look at HP Blackbird. HP Blackbird is aimed at gaming enthusiasts..

Read at Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Blackbird_002

Official HP Site : http://h20435.www2.hp.com/

Images :

Half the Job is Done!

2008-06-01T12:09:00.003+05:30

I am done with half the exams. Luckily all of them have been decent enough. Now I wonder, why is it always during exams that we get so many ideas about what we would like to do once the exams are over. It makes giving exams such a pain in the back! I am too excited about the plans I have made up.. Let's see how things turn out to be.

In the meantime, check out this baby.. Asus Vento 3600 (Chassis for Gamers). Just too good.

Awwsum. More Info.

Guess Who Is Back?

2008-05-15T11:11:00.005+05:30

Exams!

Yes. I have just finished up my Vivas and Practicals. Apart from the Algorithms Prac ( I got Shell Sort to implement) and the DBMS Viva, it wasn't a great experience. Exams are from next week, so I am all geared up for them.

For those who have been watching IPL, I wonder why the GOI (Govt of India) is spending so much on the Bharat Nirman Ads. Each 10 second slot is said to cost a whopping 8 lakhs INR and they have atleast 10 ads every match!!! So the cumulative cost runs into tens of crores, atleast.

I wish they could've made a better use of it.

Random Ramblings

2008-04-16T19:01:00.005+05:30

A lot of things have went by since the time I posted. For those who missed Google's 'Annual April Fool's Day Prank', Virgle was the latest one. The link is here : http://www.google.com/virgle/index.html

Since the time Jashan ended, I have been waiting for a lot of things to happen. The PayMate voucher that I received at NMIMS, expired before I could use it since the server was down all the time.. plus I changed my cell number, so the voucher which was linked to the phone got stuck. After several requests, the PayMate fellows have extended the validity of the voucher, but did not transfer it to the new one. What use it is to me, I cannot use the old number and hence I cannot use the voucher! LOL! ;)

I am also waiting for the prizes and certis of the contests that I won at Jashan '08. The Organising Committee has also been procastinating the cash and certi distribution. Feels like red-tape is making way into my college. :D

Exams are coming up pretty soon, and I have the vivas very shortly. So I should better go and study now.

Jashan Day 2 and 3

2008-03-31T17:38:00.003+05:30

After an awesome day 1 at Jashan, we had loads of events to manage on day 2. The first one was Model United Nations. This was the first time we (my team-mate, Kunal and me) were participating in such an event. Though we were prepared with the basic knowledge about the ountry we were representing, we were not aware of certain protocols. But nonetheless, it was a very learning experience. We faultered several times on the protocol, and some participants were left laughing.. ;)

The next was C++ Programming. Now here with a Anil as a team-mate, we were ready to go full blast! We survived a narrow first-round elim with 6 teams tied on the same score!!! I could only imagine what would have happened! The finals were not that difficult, managed to solve 1 question and one half way through (was not fulfilling the time constraint of output in 2 secs) out of the 4. Decent performance, and hence we were 2nd!! Yipee!!!

After the events, was pretty much exhausted and what better than a free can of Red Bull to chill! I sometimes simply love the free Red Bulls they distribute in our campus. Maybe their marketing guy is realy stupid, he doesn't realize that over the past 1 1/2 years, they have been here for atleast 20 times! And nearly everybody has tasted a drop of their concoction!

The next day, we were truly ready for United Nations round 2. But the sad part was, that we representing Japan, which was a neutral country in the context did not have much say. All we could do was "We support the North Korean delegation! What the U.S. delegation is proposing, is extremely preposterous!" LOL! And wonder what, nobody was interested. It was North Korea, U.S., and Iran who were fighting amongst themselves. It sometimes also seemed like a 'Setting' with the Chair knowing the Iranian and the U.S. delegations before-hand and kept on calling them in private to discuss god-knows-what! Infact it was the Iranian female delegate [ :) ] who brought the flags of the respective countries. Whichever way it was, we never stood a chance there. So we moved on to the next event, Defend Yourself. Here we partnered with the guy who won the Young Entrepreneur, won the best delegate award for MUN, and he also has his own firm. Whoa! And he is just a final year-ite.

The contest revolved around some controversial topics. One team has to be the institution who is involved with the event and the other becomes the press who is there to grill the insti. We sailed through all the prelim rounds pretty easily. But the last round required us to be the Censor Board officials on the Eklavya's Oscar Nomination issue. What the press was expecting was us to be the jury, but we carefully decided to be the representatives of the Censor Board and take the benefit of the doubt. And whatever questions that the press were throwing at us, most were ducked with an answer like "It's the opinion of the Jury. How can we comment on a personal opinion?". The press was truly irritated! We did win the 1st prize for being 'Clever foxes' (in the judges' words), but the opposite team did oppose [;)], even the judge was a bit tilting towards a re-match, but due to time constraints we were declared the winners! Yohooooooo!!!

And with that comes to end my winning spree in Jashan! How immodest I am, sometimes I think this blog is for my own publicity. I have hyped my own self so damn much... LOL

BTW we did go to the NMIMS fest in between, what surprised me was Souvik Basu and Govind Grewal, who were the organisers were participating. They take part in the 60k prize money comps, they take part in the 30k ones, they take part in the 10k, 6k and now they have also came down to 3k!!! They won by a margin of 110 points! All I wanted to say was, "Yaar.. Kuchh hum bacchon ke liye bhi chodd do!". But I did win a Fun Republic cinema's silver class pass. And you see the godamm marketing here, the pass is for a single entry. Now who would go to silver class alone. ;)

Jashan '08 : Day 1

2008-03-22T10:57:00.006+05:30

At TSEC, the annual cultural fest is 'Trifles'. 2008 being the silver jubilee year for my college, had to be special. This year, we had the big daddy of all the fests that I have ever seen in college with 45 events spanned over the period of 4 days. A plethora of events from all fields, Management, Technical, Cultural to name a few.

The fest was themed 'Salaam-e-Mumbai', and to complement that a carnival was organised on the first day. It had put on display all those things that are unique to Mumbai, be it the dabbawalas, be it the Vada Pav, be it the local trains.. Anyways, to be frank, I find these very boring. ;)

Since I was not related to any event as such, I had chalked out some of the events that I wanted to participate in. Events like Business Plan, Technathlon, C++ Programming were high on the agenda. The motive being to earn some more cash before the end of the semester.

Though the marketing was pretty good, the promotion wasn't. There were teams, but the numbers were pretty ordinary. Since most events clashed with each other, I could only take part in Business Plan and Young Entrepreneur on the first day. A lot of co-ordination ensured that we could somehow manage both of them.

A pretty big surprise awaited me in the second round (the first being a pretty easy Biz Quiz) of Young Entrepreneur, where some fellows from NMIMS were waiting for me. While I had expected some 'return-of-favor', I had not expected it here! We exchanged a few words and they asked if I mind having a pic clicked with them. Such a humbling experience! LOL! A decent performance in the second round (G.D. cum P.I.) ensured that I qualified. The third round was a 1 minute speech over a given video clip's contents. I got an anti-reservation one. Though I tried my best, it wasn't enough. There were better speakers on the dais. The gentleman who won, was a perfect example of how a well thought out speech is a gazillion times more intense than a purely loudly and flowery worded blah-blah.

We (My friend Kunal and me) won in the Business Plan contest. It was sheer luck that we won. We were facing a strong chance of a guy from NMIMS winning the thing with his plan on an interpreter service (his plan was the last). What I was hoping was, since interjection was not allowed, I wanted the judges to know that there is a free-of-cost service called Google Translate. But the fellow put his own head through the grass-cutter by inviting questions at the end of presentation. But what was disappointing was some genuinely cut-throat questions were answered with replies like "Whatever you say, I am sure that .... ", "I am confident.. "...

Anyways, we did win. We filled up another event into our already cluttered schedule, the Model United Nations for Day 2 and 3. Big Bucks and Fame was what we were looking forward to. But with hardly any preparation, we were confused about our chances...

Continued later

Of Results, Superstitions, Astrology and all..

2008-03-13T18:57:00.002+05:30

The results have been put up. I had a good score of 77% (Aprroximatley a GPA of 9.0+). Actually when I saw my result, I was overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of my score. I was thinking that the magical number of 507 (70%) would be pretty difficult, only to realize later that while I was expecting something around 50 marks than that figure, it turned out that I got 50 marks more! Life is great, especially when you come out of trouble smiling. The exams weren't really great, but I am not complaining at all.. :) . I had spent my Prep Leave on GTalk and TopCoder, so I was expecting an uproar at the domestic front, had my marks dipped below 70!

I am a bit superstitious when it comes to exams and results. I survived the Sem I scare with blue ink ( I used the black ink throughout the semester) in the answer sheets, so I used the same combination in the next two semesters as well. In both the semesters, I was amongst the first few who got to see their result. So, even this time I made it sure that when the result does arrive, I should be right there! But obviously, there is no substitute to pure hard work.

With the first of the vivas and practical exams coming this semester, I only hope that they too pass away smoothly.

More posts coming on my college fest Jashan '08 soon..

Seminar Time!

2008-02-28T18:52:00.006+05:30

Well it was round 2 of the power-sharing deal that I entered into with my friend. After I helped him with the certis and some cool cash in Tech Quiz, he returned the favour by inviting me to help in his seminar on "Advanced Aerodynamics". All I could ever know about aerodynamics was confined to 3 or 4 words like wind tunnel, stream lining, F1.. can't recollect the fourth one!

Chota Einstein (Anil)

Anyways, the seminar was conducted on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I explained all that I could. But, my friend became an instant hit amongst the students who had come for attending the seminar for his unconventional way of teaching.

On the Podium!

The seminar went pretty well. We got a feedback of 8 / 10. Wohooo!

I would especially like to mention about a brat from the same fellows who organised the seminar. He asked my friend to take a workshop on Robotics (scheduled to be held earlier in the day), then told him to forget it as he had got another guy, then asked for it again and then ditched him again! Pretty indecisive, to say the least!

How to screw your college fest in 5 simple steps!

2008-02-25T18:10:00.013+05:30

The story goes like this... My friend Anil and me decided to go for Sattva '08, the annual tech-cult-management fest of Mukesh Patel School of Tech Management and Engg of NMIMS Univ. The idea was to take part in C++ Programming / Quiz (I still don't know what it was!), Technical Quiz and a Surprise Event.

We reached MPSTME at around 10 in the morning. The first thing we encounter are students checking our backpacks. And they didn't just do that.. they were closely examining every object that rested in peace there and commenting! We let that pass and went on to get ourselves registered. To our surprise the reg desk people were as ignorant about the contests as the rest of the people wandering on the streets could have been! The contest schedule was such that everything was clashing. So we decided to have the best that we could. (Step 1 : Screw your fest with odd rituals like bag checking)

Took part in the C++ thing which was a quiz for the moment! Got questions like, "What is 22 % 5?" and that too with options. Though some questions did take more than a jiffy, the difficulty level was vey low. Qualified that.

The next round was of Algo background, with questions that reminded me of grade 11, where we got questions to print patterns and all. Aragorn would've killed me, had I not qualified.. :D . In between, I let my partner do the job and I went for the first round of Technical Quiz. Most of the questions were based on Robots and Sattelites. Deep down I knew, I had performed pretty badly with around only 10 questions correct out of the 30, and a good quizzing guy could've easily beaten me. But, I qualified. What surprised me was, hardly anyone from outside NMIMS was participating, even volunteers were participating. Throughout the contest, we came across only 3 teams other than NMIMS fellows. (Step 2 : Screw your fest by pushing all the volunteers to participate)

In the mean time, we went for a break. While my partner was filling up his water bottle, a volunteer came from behind, snatched the thing and threw it in the bin. All he said was, "Bottles, not allowed in the campus!" and disappeared from the scene. We were annoyed at his rude behaviour, and it was only after we complained to his seniors that the guy apologised. But even then, his initial reaction was, "Why are you creating such a fuss! I can buy you a water bottle if you want.". (Step 3 : Screw your fest with badly behaved volunteers)

Surprise event was moronic. Xara-3D6 was given and we were asked to make an animated icon. God knows if there exists one.. So I left the event for Tech Quiz round 2 and my friend continued. This round was better, but still the questions throughout were aligned in one particular direction. Qualified.

Surprise Event prelims had ended and the final round for C++ had just begun. Now comes the best part of the story. What we had to do in the final round, to win was : "Make the game Snake.". Plain and simple! No criteria for judging.. No evaluation.. Nothing! I still feel pity for those two students who were organising. Keeping inexperienced fellows as event heads can really ruin your reputation. I could now clearly understand, why not many non-NMIMS teams were present. The argument against scrapping the program was there was no way of judging the better candidate, and more importantly, Graphics was not exactly a part of Algorithmics. People, who aren't familiar with it would obviously be at a loss. And the reply was, "Snake isn't all about graphics, it is logic too.". I felt like replying, "Come to TSEC, I would give you Warcraft to design. It ain't all about graphics. It has SO MUCH of logic". (Step 4 : Screw your fest with inexperienced event heads)

Nobody cares! (View from Tech-Quiz stage)

By that time, I had got a call from the Tech Quiz fellows that we had qualified for the on-stage final. The stage that I thought would have been in some well designed audi with acoustic resonance and all, turned out to be pretty.. below standard. And I wasn't surprised. The quiz went on well, except that the quiz master was pretty bad. (I am tired of complaining about anything and everything, but that's the way it is.. If everybody screwed up their parts, not my mistake!) He repeated questions from the elims, had wrong answers for the questions.. You name it and he had it.

Participants at Tech-Quiz

Confused volunteers!

But finally we won. What we were promised was a handsome sum of 5 grands. And this is what we got.

The vouchers!

1 grand in cash and the rest in 4 passes to a water park in far-flung Thane, and 12 K-Lounge vouchers of 250 bucks each which had the condition (Rs. 250 off or 10% off, whichever is less).

Returned the vouchers to the organisers, who were less than bothered. (Step 5 : Screw your fest by filling the winnings with useless discount vouchers, so that the only few teams that come to the college don't come the next time and the inter-college event becomes a complete intra-college event)

So.. What are you gonna do on V-day?

2008-02-14T18:47:00.004+05:30

For the 104th time, I replied.. "Sorry to disappoint you, but nothing much". Sometimes I feel like replying, "Oh Yeah.. I just joined Shiv Sena. Now I am gonna blast your head off your body if I see you with your coochie-coo!" :P

College going on as usual, every now and then there are rumours of results being posted in the evening. Must say, the 3rd semester has brought all of us closer to God! Anyways, there is a new subject called Industrial Economics and Management (IEM) this semester. Altough I read the ET with as much interest as I read about Crypto, but it always so happens that the instructor asks me some question ( on something that hasn't been yet taught, and I have to take a guess) and I answer it from such a weird angle, make it so large, boring, complicated and miserable that he always asks me to sit down with a bad taste left in his mouth! :P And the answer turns out to be so simple. ;)

Winter is retreating and I am very much thankful for that. It has been a long long winter this time. While last year I hardly had one, coz I was here in Mumbai and the mercury was always above 20 degree mark, this time I have more than compensated with temperatures being sub zero even till last sunday. The best place to spend the winters is Delhi, cuddled up in a warm, cozy quilt, sipping the best cup of coffee ever known to humanity (courtesy dad :) ), or riding your bike on a chilly eve with the breeze brushing against your cheeks! Heaven!

Soo Much to do.. Soo Less Time!

2008-02-10T12:05:00.000+05:30

Well, the semester number 4 has begun... It brings back the memory of sem 2, the best time of my life. Still remember all the fun we had. But this sem began on a bad note. With Mumbai's temp dropping to 9 degrees, I got a terrible fever. Although I have survived much chilling winters in Delhi (around 1 degree) without getting ill, i was caught unawares here.

Anyways, took part in Tata Crucible 2008 Mumbai Edition yesterday. There was the traditionals day as well yesterday in college, so had to miss it :( (I didn't bring my traditional outfits to Mumbai this time, so was pretty relieved ;-) ).

Finally got to see Giri 'Pickbrain' Subramaniam! The quiz was great. The bad part was we didn't qualify. With 11 questions out of 20 answered, we missed the cutoff by 2-3 questions. And it hurt pretty badly, coz we were almost there! Lost out on some cool audience hampers as well.. but it did pump us up to perform better the next time. As somebody rightly said, Losing is losing.. whether you lose by an inch or a mile, it doesn't make a difference. Yes, it doesn't make a difference at that instant, but if you lose by an inch, doesn't it inspire you to push the boundaries even more agrresively the next time? It does.

Finally 6 teams got selected for the on-stage round. With just 1 being an engineering team, that from VESIT (Shanmugasundaram and his friend) and the rest being MBA students. The team from IIT-SOM was simply phenomenal. They were pressing the buzzer before Giri could complete the question (the quizmaster stops reading the quiestion if the buzzer is pressed while he hasn't completed the question), and then assuming what the correct QUESTION would be and then giving the correct answer! Phew! Sad that they didnt win. A team from NMIMS (Souvik Basu and Govind Grewal) won the quiz in a tie-breaker with IIT-SOM team. Most fittingly, the last question was on JRD Tata.

More posts coming up..

SimStock - The Stock Exchange Sim

2008-01-25T00:25:00.000+05:30

SimStock, stands for Simulate-Stock(Exchange). It is an online stock market game which has 10 fictional shares listed for the users to buy. Each user, upon registering gets 200k SimBucks (the currency that the exchange accepts :D ) and can buy any number of shares that they want. The value of these shares keeps on changing, depending upon their demand. You can then sell your shares when you want and book your profits!

Visit the site at : http://simstock.zzl.org/

Let me know, what you think of the website.

Return of the Blogger...

2008-01-24T22:58:00.000+05:30

Hey..

Sorry that I kept you waiting for so long.. Exams are over and so are the holidays. Before i knew it, it was the time to pack my bags and go back to college (sad)! Well a lot of things have happened and I really wanna comment on them :

1. Bucknor and Benson (Umpires who suffer from sudden attacks of Myopia as well as Hyper-Metropia while umpiring the matches involving India), kick them aside!

2. Federer is God! Nobody can stop him. [Update : He's human after all :P ]

3. The statue of the bull in front of the BSE has nothing to do with the crash. Be practical! And then you say, "Why do all that the Yankees can imagine about India, is Snake Charmers and Superstitions?"

4. Why is there so much attention being paid to Govinda slapping a man on the films sets. Get it done once and for all..

5. And finally.. why do so many of you send scraps to all your friends at once? As if that were not enough, you get messages like "Pass this message to all your friends, or you would fail in exams. Sorry.. couldn't ignore bcoz the probability of failing this year is 2 high!". Wonder, if we get Orkut spam removers! LOL!

Ahhh.. Feels nice after venting out all my frustration!!

What kept me busy these days was my work on a Stock Exchange Game (a simulator), which finally got complete. Saw a lot of movies. For those, who have some time to spare, please watch 'The Shawshank Redemption' and 'The Prestige'. Each of them is a masterpiece of a movie.

I am also working on a file sharing site, without all the waiting and all..

Keep lookin' for all that..

The Blog is One!

2007-12-28T15:10:00.000+05:30

The blog turned one, this christmas. It has been one full year since I started sharing all the exciting and the (more frequent) non-exciting stuff in my life and around.

But currently I think the birthday-cake-pic would suffice for the time being. I shall return on 9th January with a behemoth of a post. So wait for that..

Some relief finally..

2007-12-21T11:40:00.000+05:30

Well it has been a long time since I posted here. I have been busy with my exams. Had a long long gap between the end of lectures and the beginning of exams, so had a vacation kinda time at home. The exams have been of all kind, from excellent (data structures) to average(digital design) to pathetic(electronic devices and circuits), and have another 13 day gap for the final two exams!

Anways, so here I am in the M.E. Lab of the college writing this blog, because the Second Year lab was closed and I had a good rapport with this Lab Assistant who himself asked me to sit in the lab, while others usually dont even let us be in peace even in the Second Yr lab.
So I was trying to check out my scraps through this proxy site and this message pops up "Orkut is baaned you fool, the administrators didn't write this, guess who did! MUAHAHAHAHA".

LOL!

It could have been put more soberly. I couldn't even read my scrap notifications with GMail, as it would close the GMail window as well. I decided not to tinker with the settings and decided to download Mozilla Firefox. So when I try to install it, it says "I dnt like Mozilla. Use IE or else.." and tries to close the windows. So finally I made up my mind to trace it and it appears that it had used all possible obscure means that even a fifth grader would know... keeping the .exe shortcut in Startup, making the folder hidden and then keeping the name of the file as "svchost.exe" one of the few system .exes. Deleting the folder did the trick.

Hope the forthcoming exams go good..

Exams..

2007-11-22T21:38:00.000+05:30

Exams are coming up from 5th December.. Would be occupied till 8th of January. I know its pretty tooo loong.. But can't do anything.. Hapless, Hopless, Helpless :P

I am pretty busy with studies these days.. :( and am nervous this time for a change.. ;)

Dunno why but I get this feeling of impending doom..

Anyways, till the time either these omens come true, or I am done with my exams, or I think there is no hope even after studying, the posts would be seperated by a larger gap..

Hope I am done with this soon..

Cheers

Tooooooooooooo Good!

2007-11-13T02:18:00.000+05:30

Been into a Geek's Mind?

Here is how it works.. :P

Image Courtesy : http://xkcd.com/

Orkut goes 'Open'.. Facebook Beware!

2007-11-12T21:10:00.000+05:30

The OpenSocial pic, courtesy : Open Social page at http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/

Orkut now supports OpenSocial, a common set of APIs, HTML, and JavaScript designed to let developers easily build social applications.

Similar to how any developer can create and deploy an application for use on Facebook, only there's one big difference......it's open for use on any web site. It's not only for proprietary use on a single website. A no walled gardens concept.

"Common APIs mean you have less to learn to build for multiple websites. OpenSocial is currently being developed by Google in conjunction with members of the web community. The ultimate goal is for any social website to be able to implement the APIs and host 3rd party social applications. There are many websites implementing OpenSocial, including Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.

In order for developers to get started immediately, Orkut has opened a limited sandbox that you can use to start building apps using the OpenSocial APIs. " - Open Social page at http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/

What does this mean? This means that Orkut is taking its 'Be-Like-The-Best-If-Not-Better' strategy against Facebook a level higher. One of the major attractions in Facebook was the freedom to develop applications, which obviously brought in novelty. This is being seen as Google's move to attract users from countries like USA where Facebook is the more prevalent Social Networking site, while offering users from their strongholds, India and Brazil more to drool upon..

Check out how the Sandbox looks at : http://mytechrantings.blogspot.com/2007/11/orkut-sandbox-initial-looks.html

Devs can register themselves at : http://code.google.com/support/opensocialsignup/ to get access to the Sandbox (at the discretion of Orkut, the entry is currently limited)

Memories of Sem - III

2007-11-06T00:47:00.000+05:30

Leaning Tower of Fizz

Winners' Trophy - Chemergence Biz Quiz [ Hazy.. :( ]

Of Holidays, Email and Crap!

2007-10-31T23:19:00.000+05:30

Well.. the tests and have ended and so have the lectures for the third semester. Have a long long month with me before the exams start. So here I am.. at home, enjoying my vacs ;)

Loads of things to say.. tried CoolHotmail.com some time back. Wanted gaurav@somethingcool.com but sadly couldn't get anything good.. so felt pretty disappointed.

Anyways.. GMail's current capacity is running at 4542 MB. Phew! Now you must be wondering why am I being so excited at this number, while others promise to give you 'Unlimited'! That's becuase, technically they can't. There has to be some formal fine-print to that. Take for example the 'Lifetime Plan' of a mobile service provider. That ain't exaclty lifetime. 7-10 years.. I had this rude experience with Sify, around 5 years back (when a 10 MB mailbox was a luxury) when Sify was giving a meagre 3 MB. I was still satisfied that I can use the complete 3 MB. To my utter disappointment, they mailed me up when my inbox size became over 80% of the stipulated capacity. They barred my incoming mails until I cleared some space.. S______

First of all, why is this hype about Booby Jindal, the "Son of the Soil" being elected as the governor of some state in USA? We Indians get so ecstatic when anybody(mind you, ANYBODY) who is even very remotely connected to India achieves anything.. we start distributing ladoos and all on the streets.. our news channels cover all that crap (crap is what they cover all the time, so it ain't new). What is more important is sometimes these people admit that they feel less Indian and more American at heart. Not their fault actually, 'cause they have been born and brought up there, sometimes have one non-Indian parent or maybe a firang spouse..

An ideal case is Dr. Amarnath Bose of Bose Electronics. His father migrated from India, some 80 years back... Has a "white" mother. How can you expect such people to be Indians at heart. Even if they are.. why do we need to search for people outside the country and market them as posterboys of the Great Indian Talent? Don't we have sufficient talent within the country that is dying to be recognized and given its due?

The Test Festival..

2007-10-23T18:38:00.000+05:30

Well.. the test festival has just begun. The last tests of the season, and have left the Applied Maths - III answer sheet blank as usual..

Anyways.. came across this joke in the quarterly bulletin :

Once a helicpoter was flying through the Seattle city(does it ring any bells?) . The pilot is lost and can't find his way to the helipad. So he writes "Where am I?" on a big sheet and waves it in front of a tall building.

The people in the building write on a sheet "You are in a helicopter" and wave it back to him. The pilot smiles and then finds his way to the helipad and lands. His co-pilot asks him.. "How come you found the way? ". "Well.. when they waved the sign, the information they gave was technically correct, but completely useless.. I knew it had to be the Microsoft building".

To be taken in good spirit.

They are everywhere..

2007-10-18T17:46:00.000+05:30

Yeah.. Bastards are everywhere..:P

I searched for something on Google and came across this one page website called 'The Google Bastards'..

Awesome job! Brilliant job of mimicking Larry Page's face.. Just check this out.

http://www.googlebastards.com

[For those dressed in black robes]
Note: This isn't intended to defame anybody.

It's Over So Soon..

2007-10-18T17:25:00.000+05:30

Yeah.. the term is ending next week.

It was a rollercoaster ride.. did what I hadn't done last year.. infact things which I never dared to try in the past 18 yrs.. :P

Some paid off, some didn't.

Listen to some more of the memorable quotes i heard in recent times...

1) "Silver Jubilee comes once in 25 yrs.." a lady, during the College's 25th yr celebration function. Err.. Emm.. Well the silver jubilee comes only once. Then there is the Golden Jubilee.. :P

2) "Can You Able to See?", an instructor. What he/she actually meant to ask was whether we were able to see

3) "Line Maaro, Line!", another instructor. May be he/she did it knowingly..

4) And add to that so-s0 many weird pronounciations (along with the mispronounciation of the word pronouncitation itself).. I sometimes wonder if these people can really kill English!

Had loads of fun this semester.. lets see what the exams have in store. All I desire for the next semester is to make the right choices.. they have gone real bad this time.

Surprises Galore...

2007-10-09T17:12:00.000+05:30

It has been a hectic fortnight. The college tech-fest, ISAAC '07 got over the past sunday.. The second day of the fest had the programming contest eliminations(for which i was registered), which was clashing with the fest of the Chemical Engineering deptt, Chemergence 07. The fest had an event called the Biz Quiz. I registered for it for because of two reasons. Firstly, it was free (that's important... sometimes ;) ) and secondly, I was pretty good in general quizzing uptil the high school level (later I concentrated on Computing Quizzes only) and wanted to see where I stood.

The scenario is like this : Programming elims (1:30 - 6:30) and Biz Quiz ( 5:00 onwards). So I was expected to do a lot of time-management. While sitting for the elims, I realised that the problems were more difficult than what I expected. So I finished it some how by 5:00 and rushed towards the Auditorium for the Quiz. I frankly had no expectations of qualifying as teams from IIT, VJTI etc were taking part.

Similarily, had no expectations for the Quiz as well.. But luck was in my favour that day and we (Kunal Bihani [My Team-mate] and me) won the 1st prize there (There is a long list of ups and downs that happened during the event, which I can narrate to you personally.. but not here..)

We won a huge amount.. (Around the pocket money of a rich college going student ;) ).. I qualified the elims with 2nd place as well..

But then came last in the onsite event. I wasn't sad, but was surprised. Anyways.. as somebody rightly said, "The curviest girl is the Learning Curve".. don't blame me if it was lame.. ;)

The Wankhede Incident..

2007-10-03T19:44:00.001+05:30

Okie.

I am in the defaulter's list.

I am here to study.. not to bunk

I will have my entire life to enjoy..

I am a good boy..

Naah

Monday morning, in full mood to attend lectures.. Here I come, already a lecture late and realize that my friends are standing outside the lecture hall, waiting for me. They jump upon seeing me and immediatley propose the idea of going to Wankhede stadium to see the Indian team.

Within an hour we were at the Wankhede. The team was scheduled to arrive around 10 am but it finally came at 3:00 pm. A lot of political drama happened and then finally we got to see the lap of honour..

People from one particular stand ransacked the frills and poured into the ground. Wonder what else did they want? An uplcose performance of the Pelvic Thrust? :P

Ganpati Bappa Morya!

2007-10-03T18:34:00.000+05:30

Well yeah.. shut up 'coz I know I haven't blogged since 10 days... ("#*&^#& is the way to talk to your visitors", my conscience says to me... ")

Frikkin' Hell..

So much to talk about. Okay here it starts.. 25th september. Ganpati Visarjan. Some 'auntie' in our society had Ganpati at her place and was quite keen that I accompany the ladka log for the Visarjan thing. I agreed for the sake of telling my adventures to folks back home.. ;)

I am religious, but frankly I haven't been a part of this kind of devotion. There was this tempo which housed the idol and the ladies. Everybody (including sometimes me.. ) was dancing like mad (inclusive of a topless dance) .. Around 3 hours and we had travelled just 10 kms. Not because the road was jam packed, but because everybody wanted to savour every tiny bit of this fest. People in Mumbai are so-so enthusiastic about Ganpati... I can compare this to the enthu about Deepawali and Holi back home.

Now comes the fun part. We have the ladies sitting in the tempo with the idol and around 10 guys who dont have the place to sit. So where do we sit?

Ideally, Einstein would've suggested to hire another tempo, or maybe we could just walk as the automobile was literally crawling when we finally decided to speed up (as the roads were packed now).

But where do we sit? Atop the vehicle!

Blimey! 10 people in this 2 mtrs x 1 mtr space! Fun! So around 6 people were packed in that space. The rest three were hanging and I had no option but to stand, because the only space I could find was sufficient for my feet. ;)

Imagine this.. the vehicle moving and I am standing atop it. A little velocity and Boom! But thankfully all that I got was well grown trees slamming their outgrown branches into my face.. I had to bend 135 degrees literally in the 'Matrix ishtyle' to save my face the next time.

We soon came to our destination, the Juhu beach. After performing all the required pooja we bid adieu to Lord Ganpati and prayed for everybody's well being.

This can't be true.. ! ;)

2007-09-21T19:00:00.000+05:30

Phew! This semester is turning out to be too good to be true. Firstly I started bunking.. then I am not able to answer a question the teacher asked (obviously because I am not studying 'unkelishly' this semester) and now.. I am in the attendance defaulter's list for a subject!

"Roll Number 28!"

Bang! For a second I couldn't believe that I was in the defaulter's list. My entire past of being regular in the class, being the most sincere student and being taunted for being 'scotch' came whirling in front of me... but I came to terms with the reality soon. Okie.. I missed out by a whisker. My attendance was 22/30 out of the minimum 22.5/30 required to cross the safe figure of 75%! But then I had known deep down inside that I had to be in the defaulter for atleast one, partly because I had missed a lot of lectures when I had gone home for a week and the other part being that I didnt get anybody to sign proxies for me (should I regret this now? :P )!

Academically it doesn't mean apocalypse for me.. it is just a warning to improve my attendance. I think which would not be very difficult since I have an entire one month of term left.

Coming to more important stuff now.. I have been conducting the C/C++ workshop for the first yearites. Three days have passed since it began.. and one thing I need to say that teaching is not really easy. Even more, when you have been doing the same thing for around 5 years.. it becomes trying. The first day wasn't all that great.. but the past 2 days have been decent and I hope the workshop ends on a good note as well.

Have loads and loads to blog about.. but guess it would be all for now. ;)

'He is a male boy'

2007-09-12T19:23:00.000+05:30

...

What?

"He is a Male Boy" my friend repeated it for me..

Yes.. that was the precise dialogue that one of the professor of Applied Mathematics mouthed this morning.

"Zyaada OPAMP mein mat ghuso, warna woh toot jaayega" replied the Electronics Devices instructor when one of the students posed a too complicated question. She obviously explained later, but the line was enough to have us in splits..

"You aren't supposed to think" remarked the Discrete Maths instructor, when a student hid his ignorance behind the usual i-was-think excuse.. ;)

I still remember, Harbeena Ma'am (my fav teacher to this date), back in Grade 5 had said.. "Please don't think"... Little did she know, that I would take this way too seriously. :P

If all this wasn't enough, I got my first ever in-class drubbing by the discrete maths instructor, after she managed me to catch me in a tight spot. And there was this rain of "Useless", "Why do you come to the lecture", "Sign the attendance and leave" kinda remarks. It seemed like a lifetime and she didn't seem to stop..

College Life Rocks!

Untitled Scribbling

2007-09-11T18:44:00.000+05:30

Have you ever got a big ZERO in a test? I am getting one most likely! My first ever official failure..

Not really, 'cause I walked out (obviously not alone.. :P ).. And I walked out pretty early in the Discrete Structures periodic (and voluntarly left a 3 mark question).. and I did follow the tradition of leaving a blank paper in Applied Mathematics.

And I got a Sony GoGear SA2115 for my self. It is sleek to say the least. That kept me entertained over the weekend. I can't say if it is a notch higher than the iPod, but it is definitely pretty close. ;)

Guess.. that is it for today!

The very busy Me!

2007-09-09T13:25:00.001+05:30

Yeah.. dudes and dudettes, sorry to disappoint you with no posts coming in the past week. Its coz I've been way too busy with college as the periodicals had popped up out of the blue and caught me unawares.

Would be posting soon..

'Chuck' your schedule : Watch CD!

2007-09-01T16:14:00.000+05:30

The past one week has been pretty interesting.. with a trip to Delhi squeezed right in-between the term, the 'acquisition' of a 80 GB portable hard-disk and seeing ChakDe!India finally!

ChakDe! was pretty cool! 2 hours 30 minutes of total fun.. The cast had a variety of characters, loved most of them. But the best one was Komal Chautala, the Jat! And it brought so many fond memories of dealing people with the Haryanvi accent.. there was this really cool dialogue..
"Sir, manne bhi maaf karwa dijiye laundiya se!" LOL! There was a better one, but it would be tooo rural for most of you to understand.

Preeti Sabharwal was the eye candy of the lot. But frankly I didnt find any of them to be novices, they kept me engaged with their acting. The captain ironically doesn't have a big role, so she is most of the time, away from the limelight..

And who can forget "Ek Hockey Doongi Rakh Ke", which every other girl has her on her lips (okie.. i know its an exaggeration), but it is way too much for the cause of the liberation of Women! ;)

Go ahead! Watch it!

The Results Return..

2007-08-28T23:36:00.000+05:30

The last time around, I was pretty interested in the results. Probably because, I had worked real hard.. slogged like anything. No tafri, no nonsense, nothing.. And moreover, I had this big fear of the dreaded results, and most importantly, of the KTs (MU equivalent of back, supplimentary, etc.) But thankfully, that too passed. Yours truly got a decent score of 64%.

This time.. I was hardly interested in the results. Partly because I knew they went pretty decently and results aren't that far from your expectations anyway. I was coding (rather my senior, Aniruddha, who is rated far higher than me) for TopCoder Collegiate Challenge Round 1B when the results were put up (btw, I cleared the qual and wud soon receive the official TCCC tee..).

Loud roars were making their way up to my auditory nerves. It was only after I had finished my attempt did I go down to check the result. I had secured 503 out of the 700 alloted marks. But sadly two of my very good friends had got KTs. One of them was pretty disappointed coz he cudn't secure a first-class even though he had worked hard enough.. Some of them got an year drop.

Just didnt feel good at all.. I think you actually can't when you friends don't.

Orkut - MTV Youth Icon 2007

2007-08-25T01:19:00.000+05:30

It was a clear winner. Who likes AB's baby anyways..

Orkut has been declared the MTV Youth Icon 2007. Rang De Basanti, and Abhishek Bacchan were some of the other nominees.

VirusProtectPro : Angel or the Demon?

2007-08-20T13:13:00.000+05:30

Okay.. the name suggest it is a virus / spyware removal tool. Visit http://www.virusprotectpro.com/ and you will have no doubts regarding its authenticity.

But wait, search for virusprotectpro on Google and you would be shattered, to say the least.

VirusProtect Pro is installed via a type of Trojan infection called Zlob Trojans which masquerade as video or audio codecs required to view a movie or listen to a audio file. In reality, though, these Trojans instead install VirusProtectPro as well as other malware on to your computer without permission.When the Zlob Trojan is launched on your computer, it will automatically download and install VirusProtect Pro. When VirusProtectPro has finished downloading and is installed, it will automatically launch and start a scan of your computer. This scan will provide exaggerated or false results and state that the only way to clean these "infections" is to purchase the commercial version of the software. They do this purely as a way to scare you into purchasing the full commercial version of their software. Needless to say, you should not purchase VirusProtectPro. A screenshot of VirusProtectPro can be found below.

Another byproduct of the Zlob Trojans are that you will see fake security alerts in your Windows taskbar saying there is a problem with your computer or that you are infected. Once again these alerts are false and are only being used as a scare tactic. When you click on the alert, it will automatically launch VirusProtectPro and do a scan. The current text of the fake security alert is:System has detected a number of active spyware applications that may impact the performance of your computer. Click the icon to get rid of unwanted spyware by downloading an up-to-date anti-spyware solution.An example of the fake alert is shown below:

What's more.. there isn't any smooth removal tool available for VPP. It contains around 69 trojans and can be removed by some manual-cum-automatic clean up. Visit the site :

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic98219.html and download SmitFraud.exe to clean your PC.

What is more popular? Linux or Wine?

2007-08-20T12:54:00.000+05:30

For those who don't know, WinE is a windows emulator on Linux. It helps you to run your .exe files on a Linux OS.

One of my friends asked me to search for WinE on Google. As I had to type 'wine' in the search bar, it seemed obvious that the more important results would be captured by the ethonalic drink...

To my sweet surprise and to his shock, it was the Windows Emulator which had the top spot!

Hail Tux!

Lenovo gets Power Ranger Desktops for kids

2007-08-19T12:24:00.000+05:30

Simple is so boring these days. Companies churn out snazzy designed products to attract the attention of the customers. And the customer base now in question are the young lads which will be targeted by Lenovo to sell its desktop PCs. They have teamed up with Disney to sell Power Rangers Mystic Force limited edition 3000 H series desktops in India. The child won’t be looking into the specifications but as a worried parent you would want to know if you’re spending more than Rs. 41000 ($1000) that it will come with 17” LCD monitor, will be powered by a 2GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB RAM, 250GB of HDD space, DVD writer and will run Vista Home Basic.

Now.. don't tell me, if this isn't interesting.. Frankly i cannot come up with a good topic so soon.. College is going tough with labs every day, so its kinda difficult to find something good and having a mass-appeal.. ;)

Tagged.. Again

2007-08-14T19:31:00.000+05:30

I have been tagged and Deepak did it..

How it works:-
1. Players start by posting 8 random facts about themselves.
2. Those who have been tagged, must post these rules, along with their 8 random facts.
3. Players should tag 8 other people and notify them, that they've been tagged.

Here are the 8 facts…

1. My name is Gaurav Menghani. People call me Gaurav, Menghani (rather distorted versions of that), Red.Dragon (My code name).
2. Well.. I am quite a shy guy. But I can suddenly metamorphose into a shameless guy once in a blue moon.. ;)
3. I love Kulfi Falooda!
4. Sometimes I don't even feel like eating. Now that explains it.. isn't it. So please don't ask me the next time whether I am on dieting..
5. I lovvvvvvvve to play Football. I am a decent defender but a pretty much ridiculous goal-keeper ( I tend to use my feet all the time!)
6. I do not have a crush on any of my Computer teachers.. PLZ!
7. Alternative and Sufi Rock is what I feed to my ears.. with a slight tinge of Maiden.
8. I am definitely not a good negotiator and definitely ridiculous person manager. So, I guess I would be into technical stuff all my life. (Until life has better plans)..

The Orkut Doodles

2007-08-14T19:21:00.000+05:30

Well.. we finally have the Orkut Doodles..

Simple and Slick : The new iMacs..

2007-08-09T14:22:00.000+05:30

Apple has unveiled new iMacs which are more sexy and slimmer than its predecessor. Chucking out the 17” model, the new iMacs will be available in 20” and 24” options. It has a super slim design and is made of glass and aluminum. Leaving aside the beauty, the new iMacs possess brains too. It can run on 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor or a Core 2 Extreme processor. ATI’s Radeon HD 2600 Pro GPU, 1GB of default RAM which is expandable to a whopping 4GB, upto 1TB of HDD space, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, DVD burner and an iSight camera.
The minimum pricing starts from $1200 and goes up to $2300 for a fully loaded 24-incher rig.

Ramblings of the past, present & French..

2007-08-04T19:22:00.000+05:30

Life has been a sinusoidal wave since the past 1 month.. Wonder if it is written on my face, as to which all cities I have traveled to, lived and did some suspicious and scandalous deeds.. ;)

Sometime back, in Delhi, some uncle told me that I had this Lucknowi demanour and asked whether I had ever been there. I confirmed his doubts, but stated clearly that I was there for just 3 years.. and that too, a decade back. But he insisted that I was nowhere near a Delhi ka lad..

Okay. Accepted. Now I am in Mumbai, one of my classmate told me yesterday that I had this Punjabi accent and asked whether I was one.. Actually I am not, but having lived in Delhi, you do catch a bit of that accent. Wonder how come this Punjabi tinge replaced my Lucknowi style of speaking, which is so very courteous and so very opposite of the Punjabi style. ;)

But listen to this third and the final complication of the story. My friends have now started accusing me of becoming a total Bombay guy.. for my mannerisms and all that.

First of all, everybody seems to have gotten a habit of not acknowledging me as a localite.. they all want me to be a product of some other culture but not theirs.. ;)

Talking about the culture, it reminds me of languages. Especially my love of French, which has now become an Albatross around my neck.I do acknowledge that I love French, but I nowhere claim that I know it. Well, now everybody seems to have got a habit of using Google Translate to write cryptic messages in Arabic on their profile. I used to do it when I was a newbie at Orkut, about an year back.

What caught my attention was a forum where people were discussing in French. From what I could comprehend, it was broken and neither of them was fluent. So I used Google Translate and wrote some complicated stuff their. Sadly, one of the lasses there, found about it and asked whether I used GT.. I reluctantly confirmed! I was surely impressed that gals do know about GT. I really admire girls who are at least tech-savvy if not a pro-codebreaker.. ;)

The bad part is that people do associate a lot of expectations with you through your online escapades. Most of the time we do fit the bill, but sometimes it doesn't feel good not to do so.. even if you never painted that picture of yours ever. She later became my class mate and while I was on my way out once, she said something gibberish to me. My stimulated reaction was if it was Marathi, coz she used to talk in Marathi most of the time. So I said..
"Sorry.. Me not a Marathi!".
Her reply was "French. It was French!".
"Sorry, I dunno.."
"But what about that French connect.." she asked
"That was Google Translate.." I replied and left the room in a hurry..

I could hear chuckles from behind.

The Aesthetic Search Engines..

2007-08-02T09:20:00.000+05:30

I think almost all of you would agree with me that we visit a search engine to search! Not to see clusters of useless information all around. There are situations when a user wants some information urgently, but gets lost in the maze of pics, text, animation that the web-designers put on the search page.

Why most Indian search sites like Rediff, Indiatimes and others don't generate enough search traffic is mainly because they have got their home-page cluttered. I remember Indiatimes used to put up images of female models that an be nearly termed as obscene, apart from their ads, classifieds, matrimonials, this-that and what not. Rediff is a notch better with slightly more aesthetic interface. The other reasons behind their poor performance are their incompetent search engines and more importantly, they never market themselves strongly..

Google, Ask and Altavista are pretty clear about what they want to do. Google has sported the same minimalistic look since a long-long time. You can find a line or two added on the interface, but the rest of it is same. Ask.com has offlate started to sport a new look. A cleaner one I should say. You can even have your own skins now.

Altavista used to have a rather confusing look around 2002-03 but since the past 4 years, they have a reasonably slick looking home-page. But the search page makes me feel giddy... ;)

Done with Harry Potter.. !

2007-07-31T18:52:00.000+05:30

So.. most of you must have read the last Harry Potter book, 'The Deathly Hallows'. As a book, this one did not live up to the high expectations and hype at least in my eyes. It was more of confirmation of all the rumours and theories that all the fan sites had proposed.. :P
Spoilers Ahead :
Some facts were so very obvious.. like RAB being Regulus Black, the Seventh Horcrux being Harry himself, Snape being loyal to Dumbledore, and etc. etc. Seemed more of tying up of loose ends and hence it did give a feeling of all-ends-fit kind of thing which was very much there in previous books.

Anyways, the book had many funny moments. There were various instants between Fred and George which were hilarious, like George said he felt like a saint, cause he was Holey (after loosing his ear to Snape's curse) now.

Another was when Vicktor Krum gets disgusted when he comes to know that both the eligible girls at Bill and Fleur's wedding, Ginny and Hermione were already committed.. and he barks "Vot is the point of being an international quidditch player, when all the good girls are taken!"

And the best was the following song sung by the ghosts of Hogwarts when Voldemort dies..

We did it, we bashed them, wee Potter’s the one, And Voldy’s gone moldy, so now let’s have fun!

The 100th Post! Voila!

2007-07-27T16:32:00.000+05:30

Hey.. this is the 100th post on the blog! It only seems yesterday when I started this blog. It has been such a wonderful experience blogging. The blog has got such a warm welcome from one and all... It only seems prudent now to use it as a tool of information and spreading awareness and of course, unadulterated fun!

There are so many issues I wanna talk about. But I won't describe them in detail in this post alone. There would be several posts over the coming weeks over several topics that have remained untalked and unblogged.. ;)

The most important is the Harry Potter fever.. I am reading the book and am so-so eager to finish it off. The second and no less important is the upcoming TopCoder Collegiate Challenge 2007. More on this as soon as I finish HP

The Harry Potter fever..

2007-07-23T20:07:00.000+05:30

Ohh. It has grabbed one and all..

As I step into the seriousness of the third semester of my engineering, I face so many hurdles.. Subjects that do not interest me (to say the least, e.g. Electrical Networks), teachers with attitudes, numerous new faces in the class after the branch wise shuffling, and now.. the biggest of them all.. Harry Potter.

No.. I won't ruin your surprise, by disclosing who dies and who survives. As a matter of fact, there hasn't been a single HP book, whose ending hasn't been spoiled by friends. This time, it was a guy sitting in the Library who ruined it for as many as ten people. We all felt like killing him.. but then.. little can we do about such cases.. ;)

Vista Hacked at Black Hat Again..

2007-07-19T17:57:00.000+05:30

Well.. Vista has been hacked once again, after being hacked at Black Hat some 11 months back. For those who don't know, Black Hat is a meeting of all those constructive hackers who help companies to find out flaws in their security against potential vulnerabilities.

The Black Hat attack demonstrated that it was possible to run malicious code in the administrator account of a Vista 64-bit OS. MS later supposedly fixed it. But this time,a hacker group known as NoPE somehow managed to create a cracked Windows Vista DVD that works immediately, out of the box, with no serial number or activation keys required.

Just like some of those corporate versions of Windows XP that worked for years, the hacked Vista product appears to be already activated and it even automatically updates itself with the latest patches. The cat and mouse game continues, where Microsoft will counter this, and then the hackers will respond, and so on, and so on. Of course, activation schemes, digital rights management and security measures only affect the honest people, inconveniencing them and sometimes even stopping them in their tracks, while the h4ck3rz rise to the challenge every time with their formidable sk1llz. Sigh

It can't be over sooo soon...!

2007-07-16T20:57:00.000+05:30

Updated : Post edited for typos

The fact is that I am done with my vacations. College resumed today, but wasn't able to attend it. I will go to college tomorrow finally. I am currently in the worst of moods, maybe the hangover of the vacations.

Vacations were simply too cool. The very reminiscence causes my stomach to hurt. It was really very distressing to leave the place once again. I wonder why we don't even get proper holidays.. People at IIT have 80 days of a summer break. That's approximately 1/4th of an year. Okie.. that's one of the never ending list of Being-In-IIT benefits. Sadly, I'm not there.. but still.. we don't want prep leaves for exams.. Don't give 10 days of gaps between exams. Atleast we would study throughout the semester. But I won't divert from the topic of how interesting the vacation was. The second-best part during any of my vactions is the football match (second only to the pleasure of eating Mummy-ke-haath-ka-Khaana) that we play at the BPCL complex in Noida.

I will be posting the details of some very interesting football matches we (me and my school gang) played during the vacations. But that is subject to the pics that sadly one of my friends has in his cellphone and is refusing to part with them for some strange emotional-cum-nostalgic reasons. Till the time I convince him to leave aside his girlish traits (Anshu : Just kidding man.. This is my blog, I have the upper hand) you will have to bear with me..

That might actually take some lightyears to get the pics, but for a limiting value, i will be posting again within the next two days.