the second bench

Another 2.5 hour class of compilers today. Location wise it ranks amongst the worst classes I have ever attended. I enter the class about five minutes late and am heading towards the regular spot near the fan on the last bench when zulu calls me to the front. Now, I dont want to sound pessimistic but I had a pretty bad feeling about this. Not feeling exactly, kinda more like intuition. You see, the following thing(s) can happen in the front bench

(a) the blackboard looks HUGE
(b) the professor keeps staring at you
(c) it is virtually impossible to sleep (even mentally)
(d) you should ask some doubts or something

Now, that in my opinion is a catastrophe. However the worst is yet to come. So zulu starts off with asking whether I have done the now-dreaded-by-all MSIL assignment. (Actually I was thinking of doing it but Neeraj convinced me that it was not worth it and I ought to rather play bf2 instead ). I answer no. So far so good, no references to my CGPA or something. (speaking of CGPA why doesnt zulu pick manish or vishnu or someone else for a change). Class goes on normally for a while. Fast forward to 11:15 (15 minutes to end of scheduled class time). Manish decides it would be a good time to give a missed call. Incidentally Zulu had already screwed Patel and would later screw countless others on the state of their notebooks. So Manish “pinki” Jain (please do not misinterpret pinki here) decides to give a missed call. For a change, I’d brought the cell to class and forgotten to put it on silent (yeah I know, my bad). The phone rings loud and Zulu’s face is like “what the …. is that”. So he goes around asking whose phone it was and there are like 10 fingers pointing at my head. Probably it was that I’d been screwed enough (read sitting on the second goddam bench) that I got through that one without much incident.

So at about 11:20 I am like “Yahoo!!! Class going to end!!! Hurrah!!! Yay!!!” (and what not). Sadly Zulu decides to take attendance for an hour and ask half the class to show him their notes. Among the notable minor-sub-incidents during attendance were

(a) Monga vs Zulu showdown on the utility of compilers
(b) Sanchit being labelled as Sundar Sanchit Agrawal
(c) Tipo being called hero ….
(d) Anand impressing Zulu with the quality of his notes

Wag the dog

After a long time I saw a nice film. Starring Robert DeNiro and dustin Hoffman this comedy kicks ass. Its about how presedential scandals are covered up. Its good acting, nice script (a little weak at the end though). Its a must watch.

The Longest Yard

A crap dumbass film which you should watch if you are really bored with absoultely nothing to do. Adam Sandler and Chris Rock fail to add some spice to this hopeless comedy.

—————————————————————-

PS – F.E.A.R almost done and Call of Duty 2 is out

PS1 – Quake 4 seems to be sucking (I am not sure if I’ve said this before)

PS2 – ate dinner at sid’s house. awesome food.

PS3 – i swam 50 mts at a stretch

compilers

Compliers is getting interesting. Wait, No … Actually its getting really really really … boring. This post is going to be about compilers and our dean. Its mostly for me, to keep a record of one of the most entertaining and boring courses I will ever take. So if anyone is offended by this post, please go take a hike. Also, anyone who has not taken compilers, please do not take any of this as an indication of what your experience may be like when you take compilers.

The events that led to the above paragraph in chronological order ….

(a) Someone went to Sir and told him how he felt about compilers. In honest terms, with no holds barred I guess. (Actually Sir had been giving us a lot of stuff about MSIL and an unknown number of assignments out of which most of us have done ZERO and submitted two or three). So in the class Sir starts out with a discussion on this. Well, he discusses about his jokes, about how we should study, about CGPA and about honours.

(b) Then there was some discussion on study hours, gaming and the now dreaded-by-most-and-feared-by-all MSIL assignments. There was also some reference to a relationship being constructed between MSIL and the grades which led one of us (read Trappi) to say “I dont give a fuck”, a sentiment echoed by many of us.

(c) That class went on for one hour extra. An hour that could have been utilized in other ways (read bw2/bf2)

(d) Feedback day – Last Monday (hee hee) was feedback. At 11:20 Sir finished the ppt so we were like , Hurrah, class finishes early. But then, as usual, shit happened. It was time for feedback. Now most of us were extremely delighted to finally having our say. However Sir decided to read the feedback then and there, taking up an extra hour again. (Some notable feedback is mentioned below).

Net Result: last week – 5 hours of compilers (thats way more than the 0.25 hours acceptable by my brain)

Compilers Feedback

(a) COMPILERS SUCKS

(b) Stop doing BC
Live and let live.
Why the obsession with MSIL?

(c) Projects matter.
Love one love all (or something else related to love. If someone remembers this exactly please tell me)
[A complete mathematical proof denying the existence of free time for MSIL]

(d) We thank you for the excellent gaming facilities in IIIT.
We request a Plasma television and a Home Theater system in the hostels.
We would also like AC’s in rooms.
We also want 50% reservation for girls

NOTE – Sir thought that a girl wrote this

————————————————————-

PS – Black and White 2 rocks. Will post a review soon

PS1 – Aziz has a top of the line PC now. P4 2.4 GHz, 200 Gigs, ATI Radeon 9800 PRO, 512 MB RAM ….

PS2 – Chess rocks and I lost in TT (:baah:)

PS3 – BF2 rocking, lot of fun these days

PS4 – I am swimming well

PS5 – me and trappi having really nice conversations in MAS. Will post a few of them soon.

the anguish of middleware

Middleware. A course. It was supposed to be good. Well, its an ok course if you do work for it. Actually its less work than crypto unless you leave it all until the last moment. In that case you are fudged in the A.

Basically the problem is with Java. Java is supposed to be an open standard or atleast not a closed standard. Therefore the implementations should not differ from vendor to vendor. However this is not the case.

For two days we struggled with NetBeans (TM) and Pramati (TM), trying to get them to talk to each other. They absolutely refuse to communicate. The code that works well on one platform gives a dumbass exception on another. The internet is of no help at all. A google search for Pramati and Netbeans leads to a webpage in which half the results are from Loganathan’s (the prof’s) blog. Thats the type of stuff that makes you want to pull your hair out and scream. Actually screaming helps, ask Sriram …

In the end, if you intend on taking middleware make sure of three things

(a) you will work as MUCH as the crypto people
(b) you will choose the same platform for the project
(c) and you will do lab 5.

———————————————————————-

PS – there are more posts above this one

asok from india??

Another clue from Scott Adams.

quake … ahem … earthquake

There was an earthquake yesterday. Rather a big one, or so it seems. Something like 7.6 on the Richter Scale. So I was in the house, minding my own business, actually troubling the dog (read whacking him with a newspaper) when he starts barking unnecesarily. So, I am like what is going on here??

Instantaneously, as if on cue stuff starts moving around arbitrarily. And by moving around, I mean moving around. The fan shakes a little, you can feel the vibrations in the floor. So, I say hmmm??? and then go about minding my own business i.e. whacking the dog with the newspaper.

Later on during the day while channel surfing (switching through the channels hoping to find HBO / Star Movies / ESPN etc) I happen to stop over at NDTV. Well they are going around saying that a big earthquake’s been going around the place. Lots of people dead all over everywhere.

And then it hits me. I have got the best earthquake prediction system there is (read blackie)). Course, I gotta refine it a little bit, because if there was an earthquake each time he barked there wouldn’t be much left of Delhi.

Anyway if anyone has any idea on how to patent “A canine based forward prediction mechanism for earthquakes”, please do tell me about it. I may even be favourably inclined towards sharing the royalties.

——————————————————————-
PS – Musharraf looks like a jackass. All he is doing is going around on Television and saying that he has some dumbass exam to pass, and begging for blankets. Now he is begging for helicopters. The next thing you know, he will be asking for a nuclear warhead.

PS1 – I wonder what happened to yacc and zulu

PS2 – how many people know what foo-bar means?

Battlefield 2

Ok, a lot of stuff has happened and it’d take a lot of blog posts to report it all so i thought i may just as well start. (course whether everything gets reported or not depends on how much time i get over the next few days to write)

Battlefield 2

Battlefield 2, the successor of Battlefield 1942 (correct me if i am wrong) is largely a multiplayer FPS.

The Story

There is no story per se. There are two factions – the Americans and the non-Americans (read China / MEC ). They are at war in a set of scenarios. So the basic idea of the game is a hybrid of Capture the Flag (Quake 3) and Double Domination (UT) (and later the infamous Onslaught mode in UT2K4).

The Gameplay

There are a set of spawn points which you have to hold / capture and hence you win. To get a spawn point you have to go and stand next to it until its converted to your faction. Capturing a spwan point enables your other team members to spawn there itself. Usually Spwan points are at more advanced positions on the map. Each team starts out with a fixed number of tickets (deaths allowed etc) and the aim is to reduce the other teams tickets to zero.

Thats not all. There are six character classes

1. Special Forces – equipped with C4 and a powerful rifle these guys can blow up enemy radar / artillery and are the second most effective against armor (read tanks / vehicles etc)

2. Assault – Run of the mill infantry with very powerful guns and grenades. Pack serious punch.

3. Sniper – Well the hiding guys. Not the same as snipers in CZ. Requires a lot more skill. Also has antipersonnel mines (claymores).

4. Medic – Can heal and revive other teammates

5. Engineer – can mine / demine areas and repair vehicles, radar artillery etc

6. Anti-Tank – armed with a portable bazooka kind of thingy they can take out armour with ease.

There is also the concept of the Commander who can do a complete Scan, drop Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and use artillery. All of these can be destroyed by enemy special forces and then repaired by your teams engineers.

So as you can see, the game is pretty well balanced and a lot of fun to play. The adrenaline in moments of the game is brilliant, especially when a jeep full of enemies goes right over your AntiTank Mine / or you blow up an enemy tank with C4’s.

The Graphics and Sound

The graphics and sound are really good. You’d need a topnotch system to play this game (anything less than 512 MB RAM and the game would feel sluggish). Actually there is nothing much I can write about the sound and graphics, you just gotta play the game to see them.

As of now bf2 penetration in IIIT is pretty low. Actually, AFAIK we (read UG3) are the only ppl who play it on a regular basis. And I would like to thank Prof. Rajeev Sangal and the entire IIIT faculty (and also the labcoms) for getting us PC’s in the lab which can run the game. The other ppl (read UG4) please start playing this. I want to play some 16 v 16 with aircraft carriers (did I mention that there are helicopters, tanks, jeeps, F-15’s etc?).

The People

As of now the following in no particular order are the people who play …

1. rahul aka Rahul Mangla – A testament to the awesomeness of this game. Mangla plays it, and he plays it well.

2. butcher aka (if u dont know him u suck) – the special forces guy who gets into a jeep and goes to blow up the enemy’s artillery

3. lol aka (sairaj) – the best medic around

4. matrix aka (Manish [i hope you know what comes here] Jain) – A competent commander

5. neeraj aka tharwani – gyani tharwani, a very good team player

6. peesu aka srinivas – the most dangerous special forces guy around

7. ken aka T3 – if you’re in a tank and he is in front of you then RUN. Also known for calling out people’s name before they are blown to kingdom-com by his C4

8. arthur aka komarneni – an excellent all round player. very very dangerous

9. Neo aka Mouli – one of the best?? commanders (i hate his artillery)

10. rock aka vandv aka nandu- (bleh), no comments

11. sham aka (C. Shamanth Bhardwaj) – definately no comments ;p

12. obelix aka me …

If I have missed neone, my apologies cause I am in kind of a hurry here ….

————————————————-

PS – I am at home as of now

PS1 – There are a lot of assignments due and all the intelligent people over there are getting mine postponed rather than submitting them

PS2 – Cinderella Man rocks. Course I saw it in a theater where no one else was there except for us.

PS3 – There is a lot of stuff to post. Hopefully it will all get posted.

the battlefield of exams

so exams again around the corner. sadly havent studied as much as the others (read Vishnu, Monga) hence am feeling the pressure. the basic problem seems to be the lack of will to study. typical day goes like this –

1. wake up by 10-12.
2. do bc / timepass till lunch
3. eat lunch and get pissed at the food (thinking that if i was back home food would be so damn good)
4. try to read networks
5. fall asleep while reading networks
6. get rudely woken up by shamanth
7. go swimming
8. eat dinner
9. play bf2
10. sleep
11. rinse and repeat

clearly there is a problem with this schedule. since its exam time I should be reading more. plus I want to play more TT and more chess. (im sucking at TT of late). The only thing that I can think of cutting down is studies (which i shudnt due to aforementioned exams) or sleep (which i wont because I need more sleep). so any suggestions on an improved schedule for the day would be welcome.

swimming going around pretty well. swam 500 mts the other day. course its all abt rhythm. sriram swimming really nice, efficient i wud say.

started watching the jeeves & wooster episodes. nice they are. watch them you must. i wonder if a whole post can be written yoda style??

have been playing a truckload of bf2. the game is amazing, easy to learn (i mean even mangla is an accomplished player). will post a full review soon

——————————————-

PS – sorry for not blogging. mostly due to the schedule.

PS1 – forum going well, some really nice bc going on there. chk out http://172.16.14.6/forum/