the water cooler and the absurd software

we got a new water cooler. at the first floor I mean.

actually this is kinda old news. but anyway the water cooler works real fast. so gg water cooler.

so, i was writing this piece of code. which worked fine on my machine. and it was written in a very nice and clean manner. elegant code i’d say. however, the one day I decide to have some fun, play some football etc is the day when everything goes kaput. seriously, by now you’d think they’d build operating systems such that software written on one machine works on another machine without the developer needing to be there.

that would be the reason i am blogging at this very early hour (hey!! I woke up a heckuva lot earlier and rushed here).

In other news … we didnt goto ESWC. DTA had the worst possible luck in which they played tm and train. NTT lost to ABC in the second round (or so i have heard).

Software Engg. scripts etc to be shown today at 1100 AM not PM as I originally thought necessitating another trip up and down. :grrr:, I’m getting frustoo now.

Seriously, stupid software

oh and we went to ohri’s again. awesome food. gg sid.

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ps – hoping hoping for an a- in wdm. technically i need to go and discuss my paper … correction was blahish

ps1 – i am really sleepy …

ps2 – waiting for anand

ps3 – fauji blogs at http://goodfella.wordpress.com

ps4 – mouli found a game called trackmania or dragmania or some such shit. need to give it a shot, looks like fun

ps5 – did i tell u i was frustoo?

science and technology – when your computer is slow

another gray day … oops another grade day.

grades came out for a humanities course. anyway, it seems that humanities courses go a lot more by volume than by content. therefore if you write a heckuva lot in one exam you may get an a-. if you write a lot in all then you will get an a

but thats just stating the obvious.

neways, i am frustoo at my pc. seriously, stupid ass piece of hardware. it was working so slow that it took it 10 seconds to move out of the bios, 30 to display the initial boot screen and since it never booted i can safely say that it took  infinite time to boot into linux.

anyway, so went around wondering what was wrong. cleaned out all the components. but it was so slow that i thought that the cpu was not running at full power. checked the bios. cpu running at 1500 mhz. and then the stroke of genius. figured the cmos battery was low. hence the system timer thingie was screwed and hence it was so slow.

anyway 10 minutes later, with some reverse engineering and swapping the batteries on the pc and the calC got the pc to boot and work.

so another hardware disaster has been solved. but all these are a symptom. its like ok, this pc is going to die soon. 

hence if neone selling their pc please send me a mail …

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ps – sts sucks

ps1 – wdm papers came. wont get more than a b . someone from mtech (manish knows them well) is absolutely kicking ass in the course and hence making the rest of us humble mortals look bad

ps2 – bah 

ps3 – neone seen fanaa? 

the best and worst of 2005-2006 – II

Continued from last time …

Come January cometh the new year. Wanted to write a post on wishlists and resoulutions. The problem was that no one would get me anything on my wishlist (each item cost close to 10K) and I would not follow those resolutions. So screwed that post. Anyway, what I did write about was the inauspicious start to the new year with "PC woes". Then, I fell sick. Then manish fell sick. Went and stayed with Manish at the hospital for two nights. Those two nights taught me a bit abt life. Also, had interesting conversations with MOnga at the hospital. We talked about all sorts of stuff while Pinki rested. There was a post on the morning. Anyway, this was when there were BTP woes, wasnt even sure of what the BTP is when the first report was due :O.

In february we had felicity. There was a small post on that. (Techfest co-ordinators for next year shd talk to either manish or me. they will do a much better job then). There was also the humiliating losses in CS. Thats when it became clearer (note the use of the "er" form) that CeG may not become the best again. Forked the "CS Reporter". This was about the time I started stumbling. Near total waste of time. Then was the best post of the blog.The most insane post in terms of effort and work. The most commented on and the most read.

The definitive guide to CS – The Who’s who

After that there was a post on an interesting project idea in my head. Sadly no one was interested. 

In march I took part in IOHC. Organized by IITK. That was a fun competition. I actually maarofied a night out for that. Also that was when bunglebot (v2.0) was demoed in  RnD. (RnD was scheduled on the wrong day IMHO ). Then the most creatively genius post ever. It was awesome when I wrote it. There was a brilliant breeze. I kinda felt like Frankenstein creating Frankenstein.

CS and football

March ended with exams imminent. In a vain attempt to get people to get back to dfing I wrote abt flaming (this is a nice read). 

April started off with a post on how bored I was. Then was the post about the exams wherein I decieded to actually see whether writing a lot would help in STS. If I get an A in STS then I may / may not be appalled. Answered a tag from spawn. Found a link to a great post at an awesome post.

Blogged quite a bit this month. Wrote about the ideal schedule which infuriated Sid, and he came up with a much worse schedule. THen there was the highly geekish post on Listviews. Then I finally compiled my todo list. On the 11th of May I reached nirvana. (the day when SE grades came out). I realized that grading is random. There was a post on Unicode and Internationalization. which if you havent read you should read. It may help you out at some point of time in life. Finally there was a post on dota.

This concludes the two part series. Blogging provides an interesting way to look at how your year went. seriously … this has been one weird weird year. 2nd year was way better. Atleast it was nice and stable. 
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PS – you ay have noticed – my 'm' key is giving trouble again

PS1 – epiphany rocks. its quite fast. stupid ass sagar, because of him no firefox :grrr:

PS2 – Sumeet G's insane dedication to anti-reservation movement is amazing. I applaud his efforts. gg sumeet g

PS3 – breakfast sucks

PS4 – phanto lancer is a good hero for dota 

 

the best and worst of 2005-2006 – I

its been a year since i started blogging.

so now looking back ought to be fun. and looking back using just the blog will be double fun. so lets start

April 25 – the first one. my first post. started out as a very very cautious post. kinda like getting your feet wet by dipping your toe in the water

Rest-of-April and May – i write about movies, games etc … nothing great, nothing as useless as some of the algae that grow in the ocean. I also saw a heckuva lot of wliia then. (wliia = whose line is it anyway)

The nth law of email – the first of the "innovative" posts … i.e. posts that are not reviews of movies and what not. and yeah, i wrote an essay "The flowering of Indian Cinema". Also, praises of the bose headphones

In july came the first hardware disaster of the year. I seem to have had a good many of these this year:D

August was a big month as far as I can tell from the blog. There was me thinking that netbeans is the best IDE in the world (I was pretty green then. Now I think its the visual studio ide).  Thats when I realized that I like being a tutor (dunno what ppl I tutored think. Anyway since the course is over you can leave all the hatred comments here).  That was when we were trying out world of warcraft. Then was one of the uber-posts of this blog. You gotta read this. August was when we started playing a lot of chess. I learnt about double chess. That rocked. That was also when I was gleefully in love with MAS and Middleware. Me, monga and manish were like *thbbbt*, we got two exams over on the first day you suckers. (More on this later).

In september there was a review of Fable. Thats when we started getting hit by MAS (the workload I mean). I also composed my first poem (it sucked ass, i'd recommend not reading it. deepak was the only one who liked it …). Also the first post on frustrations with wlan. 

In october again a lot of stuff happened. DF rocked (14.6/<you know where>). Atwal and zess were having posting competitons, posting a huge number of jokes. Arun and me trying to come up with a decent 3 word story. Flames flying here and there. That was huhaness of bc. That was also when bf2 ruled. I miss that, we havent had proper bf2 since then. There was "quake … ahem … earthquake" – one of the best titles. 

Towards the end of the month started seeing the pain that the semester was. There was the "anguish" of middleware. And of course two nearly factual descriptions of compilers (I and II). 

In the beginning of November, had trouble with windows. Decided to switch to linux. So the first two posts were dedicated to Linux. Of course, that was when someone with the iq equal to that of a headless aardvark blocked 14.6 from WLAN. There was a huge story that came with this which I did not document. Ask me, and I will tell you.

At the end of the month was when the "event" of the year happened. Suffice to say, that was one of the type of days you will never forget. I was feeling as low as I could then. It was a depressing time. Full of complications. That changed a lot of my outlook on academics and study. 

On a different note, I also came up with the best description for some of my fellow compatriots – beegle-eyed-cow-faced-dog-brained buddies (read “Thiruvengadachari Prashant, Neeraj Tharwani, Manish Jain”). that ws also when I was wondering when people would stop IV, IV. And when VV would realize its IV not VV. (I hoped never, I'd like to be the anonymous type ).

December 5 – the time when we played a lot of tower defense and I answered the unanswerable – why do we blog? Then on the twelfth was the post with the best beginning. You oughta read the first bit of this. There is also another post for that month which I wrote but did not publish. When the time is ripe, the moment opportune, you will see it.

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PS – am getting late for work. the rest of the year in the next.

PS2 – after that will write a post on the best and the worst of this blog, that should be fun. 

PS3 – saw a documentary on the 7 greatest places. nice.

PS4 – doesn't anyone know who piggywiggy is?? (HINT – its a comic character. Come on )

Unicode and Internationalization

This is something that they dont teach in college.

So, rather than learning it the hardway and spending a good three four hours struggling with it (if you are lucky), or fighting a lawsuit by some japanese guy who cant understand his mail or something because your software cannot read unicode (if ur unlucky), i'd suggest you give this document a look.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html

counter strike ala warcraft

cowabunga … 

i just felt like saying that … perfect for describing my mood right now.

anyway onto the rest of the post …. 

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counter strike is a mod for half life

those of you who have not played hl please do play it. its one of the fps's with a decent story. also play hl2. 

(i have a crush on alex ).

similarly there is a mod called dota – defense of the ancients for warcraft.

and that mod rocks. usually we used to play some stupid ass td. or x-hero siege (which by the way is pretty fun too – try extreme mode for a challenege, we beat extreme mode lvl 1). 

in dota all you have is a single hero. there are creeps and ancients in your base which you have to protect. and go and kill the other teams buildings.

sounds simple doesnt it?? well it aint as easy as it looks. 

• you have 70 hero choices
• there are millions of item combinations
• there is nuking
• there is gangbanking (2-3 enemy heroes come and whack the shit out of you).  (I did not make that up. read on dota forums).
• there is team work.

its actually more complicated than most warcraft multiplayer matches ive played. (and i did play a good chunk of them in second year. actually, then I used to watch 3-4 replays at 1x, micromanage shamans to the extent of individually purging / lightning sheilding.  micromanage spirit walkers and what not). 

now, you may be intimidated. but therein lies the awesomeness. the learning curve is pretty gradual. the slope is low. a testament to the incredible ggness (I coined a new word. Dont I get some kind of a medal??) of this game is that Deepak plays it. And he plays decently well. (Deepak = NTT.sirirus = the optimist from utopia).

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PS – trappi asshole, you will like this game … play it

PS1 -  the dota forum has more people browsing it at any point than i get hits to my blog in two days.

PS2 – swimming rocks 

PS4 – robotics term paper moving slower than a turtle hit with frost nova and slow and poison

PS5 – _||_ in advance to anand if he comments on the uselessness of warcraft

PS6 – cs pwns

PS7 – question of the day – who is piggywiggy ?? (Hint – its a comic book character). If you get it right leave a comment. you have 1/x probability of winning a prize. 

PS8 – I am going to watch pubmasters 2.

PS9 – Gautam Singh Rocks … (see PS8) 

PS10 – i thought that this post would suck but hey, ive seen worse

PS11 – check this out you will . http://home.comcast.net/~wolfand/  Really awesome it is.

the electric conundrum

their is going to be a powercut tomorrow morning …

this vexed event has thrown me in a quandary

on a grey winter day spending four hours without electrons flowing through the fan in my room would not even cause a lizard to bat an eyelid

however, this time is special … its at the time when the rooster crows (or just after). its the middle of the year, close to the soliste. its going to so hot that i am afraid of spontaneously combusting.

usually, i'd beat the heat by migrating to cooler climes. a perfect example would be the 'air-conditioned' gaming heaven that is lab 330.

however those darn electrons wont be moving about in lab either …

so now, i ask you … what would be the best way of defeating that jackass of a star thats going to shine so bright??

and, i will ask you again … when you wake up sweating and cursing at 0700 hours tomorrow … what are you going to do ?? are you going to just grumble to yourself?? or will you reflect upon your existense thusfar in this universe??

i have a feeling something great will happen tomorrow … its like a little bird has whispered in my ear …

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PS – went swimming … did not drown … (you probably got that by reading this post)

PS1 – am blogging a heckuva lot …

PS2 – check out tipos blog … yeah, the guy who blogs in python – http://tipo.wordpress.com

PS3 – all bloggers, lets flame manish … he's made an account and is sitting on his ass

PS4 – eswc – support IIIT … give bumps to anyone who does not qualify (this means you spawn ) 

PS5 – thanks to tipo i have moby – lift me up playing in my head  

PS6 – a less random / arbid post. dont you think so? 

US, UN call for Somalia ceasefire

isn't it sad that the US is not a part of the UN anymore (or is that not what we are supposed to interpret from that headline on bbc) …

the fact that the US is mentioned separately just goes to show the US hegemony.

someone needs to kick George Bush in the nuts … bring him back to his senses … 

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PS – according to booshi, if you see from the american point of view he is doing a great job. booshi seems to like george bush 

a funny dilbert

enlightenment

i realize its a pointless waste to study for courses.

better off doing stuff that you like to do.

-obelix