Shift of Blaaag!

So, yours truly got a web domain. Frankly, I got it about a year and a half ago but never did anything with it. But then, it struck me. Why bother with a blog on WordPress.com when I can have my own on my site. So I installed WordPress and set up the blog and imported all my posts from here.

Also, I put some changes into the new blog like some really cool widgets and all that. But anyway, the new blog is set up here and you can go check it out.

Both weblogs will remain. But I’ll only update the new one from now on. This will be the last post here. Adios amigos! Meet you on the other side

PS: I’m playing around with the server files. So in case accessing said link doesn’t work after some point, please check back here. I’d have updated the hyperlink.

The Wheel

When we were little, it was taught that there were 2 inventions in the history of mankind that are the absolute base of all civilisation – the Fire (which is merely a discovery in the first place) and the Wheel. The former, is ubiquitous for all purposes in most industries. The latter, I would like to focus upon.

You think the wheel is round, rotates on an axis and moves along with every revolution thanks to friction, right? Wrong. That is the only type of wheel *you* know. There is one other type. This type of wheel does not have any physical shape. It has no physical laws either. It is never called the “wheel” but rather affixed with a number which is of the form (2n+1), n=1,2,3,…

Most people would have no clue what I’m talking about. Let’s get that out of the way before I start ranting. Have you ever heard of the Third Wheel? Or the Fifth Wheel? Or the Seventh Wheel? No? Then, let me explain. A third wheel is a guy/girl who tags along with a couple. A fifth wheel tags along with 2 couples. So on and so forth.

I have been every single value of n up and until 5. How do I feel? Like a tub of lard.

I have been open about my absolute loathing of moving around with couples. They take it lightly. I couldn’t care less. But somehow, I end up being a wheel (which shall henceforth be a reference to any 2n+1 wheel) to one or more couples. There are many advantages to being single. This is not one of them. Not by a long shot.

I know men and women are supposed to be inherently attracted to each other. I’m not saying I’m above all that. Hell, I’d be lying through my teeth if I did. I just prefer not being committed. I have no animosity against couples either. I know quite a few people who are actually a perfect match for each other. But that is besides the point.

Committed people think they have a license to be free about their commitment in front of others. I believe they have every right to be. But there are certain areas where they cross the line between being friendly and couple-like to getting downright indecent in front of friends. I found this out the hard way.

For the last 2 years, there has been this flurry of relationships cropping up all over my batch. Again, to be clear, I’m not against it. Unfortunately, most of these guys and girls are my own friends. When I moved around with them in the past, I blissfully ignored any signs (even the most obvious ones) of flirtation, attraction etc etc. When they became couples, I still ignored most of it. I have, although, reached my breaking point. So, I will directly address any of my committed friends who read this (for reasons of ease of pronoun usage, I think first person is a bit easier to use than third person).

I know you guys like each other. You know you guys like each other. For some reason, you want the whole world to know that you like each other. I can understand holding hands and all that. But talking absolute lewd bullshit when your mutual friend is sitting right in front of you? Come on. Give the guy a break. I don’t want to know what you want to do to each other. Keep that load of absolutely crappy imagery inside your own stupid head. I have enough to deal with in a normal life.

I am not avoiding conversation. I really do like my Android phone. I am not texting some secret girl (as you always love to think, for some reason) but rather updating myself with world news through this decentralized set of data banks or servers which the world colloquially calls the Internet. Also, I use it as my only worthy distraction when the two of you are hitting at each other with lines of such increasing intensity, it would make some busy beaver numbers ashamed of themselves. I like zoning out around both of you. Remember, I am not there by choice but rather, by circumstance or by force.

Please get it into your collective hive consciousness (assuming the existence of such a thing since individuality in your subset of human interactions seems to be rather minimal) that I am single by choice. Respect me for it and stop asking me to get committed. Who the hell are you? My mom? Hell, even my mom will start forcing marriage upon me only after a decade or so. No, I have no idea if I can “pick up” a girl or not. I don’t even know what the hell that physically means.

Stop asking me to interact with you. I loathe being in that situation in the first place. I am there because I could not avoid it. I would really love to be left alone to my iPod or my phone or both. No, I cannot let you play the game I’m playing. As you do not seem to have noticed, I’m trying really hard to distract myself and I want to succeed in that particular venture more than anything in life up until that point.

Guys, one last thing. When I came here 3 years ago, I was a loner. So were most of you. Each of us kept to ourselves. We became friends over the course of 3 years having shared living space for the majority of that time. The next time you walk out to take a phone call when we are playing a game or passing time in each other’s company, think about it. I have cut calls from my mother when I’m playing with you people. I’m not being emo on this issue. I’m just pissed that you either initiate or join a conversation where we are passing time and simply walk out to talk hours on end with your significant other. Sometimes, I’m physically pulled out of my room to play something or talk about something. Yes, I can still live without constant human interaction but getting cut off when I’m really starting to enjoy the conversation or game … That *really* pisses me off.

Why did I blow steam today and here? I dunno why today but I ranted here because there is very little chance any of my batch mates will see this. If you do guys, seriously, think a little before you go all cuddly in public the next time.

The Great Knowledge Divide

Yes, my posts look like editorial columns in a newspaper. That is because unlike most people, my life is pretty boring. But the inside of my head is always a lot more interesting. So, here goes another tl;dr article.

A normal day in anyone’s life would start like this:

Wake up, check phone for messages, mails, IMs etc. Brush teeth. Finish bathing. Sit on laptop for sometime. Go to work. Sit again in front of a computer for sometime. Come back. Loaf around. Connect and update your social networks all day with photos and status updates. Check other people’s posts. Watch some movies from your laptop or external HD. Sleep.

Sounds pretty normal. Obviously, you know where I’m going with this. That’s right .. It ain’t all that normal. When you are an Engineer (yes, I’m actually one of the few guys who’s proud to be one), you realise the absolute enormity of computing that goes on around you.

For instance, I will take the phone part of my previous example.

I am taking a smartphone for added emphasis. Your phone consists of a processor that would put something that sat on a big cabinet on your desktop around a decade ago to shame. The antenna it uses to receive messages and calls is a tribute to the finesse with which human machines manufacture electronic products. Let’s say you get a message from Person A.

1) Person A picks up his smartphone and clicks a button. The button closes an electrical connection which is connected either directly or indirectly to your processor which tells your screen to switch on the backlight and start displaying the information it sends to it (or the GPU sends to it depending on how advanced the phone is).

2) A goes into the messaging app and stars typing a message. All the while, his processor is screaming along at 600 MHz (nominal for today’s smartphones) to display images, interfaces, power the touchscreen etc. Then, A types on his touchscreen which sends appropriate coordinates of point of touch to the processor which again sends it to the application which in turn decides what key you pressed.

3) A finishes typing the message and hits send. His DMA controller (or its more advanced version) sends it to the antenna which then transmits it after applying a few mind boggling signal processing algorithms to account for errors on the receiver side.

4) The tower receives the data, contacts the central server and sees which area your phone has logged itself into. Then, it redirects the message to the tower in your area.

5) The tower sends it to all devices in the area as part of the link transmission. Your SIM card recognises the message as being meant for you and tells your processor that you have received a message.

6) The processor in turn directs the message to your SMS application which asks the processor to turn on the screen and let it display the message to you.

7) You read the message.

I have actually skipped a few steps here but you get the picture. Also, don’t even get me started on the laptop.

What am I getting at? I believe the amount of collective human knowledge on this planet far exceeds comprehension of any single individual.

For instance, mathematics has steadily progressed since the 15th century or so. Today, the level of mathematics is so advanced, people devote their whole lives to studying just one specialised field.

Communications and electronics (which are intricately linked these days) have progressed so much in the last 50 years or so, specialisations started almost a decade ago. The microprocessor industry is also in a similar state.

Physics has branched out with the astronomy fellows studying stunning phenomena in deep space while quantum buggers dig deeper and deeper to somehow find the very secrets of the fabric of time, space, reality and human perception in general.

There is no way that one human can comprehend, study and assimilate all this knowledge in one lifetime. Is that a problem? I believe so. Why? I shall presently explain.

I believe all human knowledge is linked. One fine example would be how people are trying to prove/disprove the Riemann hypothesis using energy levels of subatomic particles in quantum physics. How did this clash happen between pure mathematics and quantum physics? Apparently, a mathematician and a physicist were discussing the problem when it struck the physicist that this was possible. Nope, I’m not kidding.

But this is just a stroke of luck. What if there are several branches of knowledge which are intricately connected but would need an individual well versed in both to figure it out? It is a dilemma, is it not?

Arthur Clarke (or Isaac Asimov, I really don’t remember which of these 2 sci-fi greats) wrote a story in which a professor seeks to look back in time by exploiting some property of a neutrino (stupid, yes, but it was written in the era when neutrinos had just been discovered and no one knew its potential). It takes a student with knowledge in 2 very specialised fields to realise that it was easy to build the machine which until then could only be used in some top secret facility controlled by the government. Of course, the moral dilemma of looking back in time settles in and the professors wife gets addicted to watching their long lost son/daughter (don’t remember which) through time. A government agent finally comes into the picture and salutes the 2 men congratulating them for finally sinking all progress of humanity since cases like the professors wife would become more prevalent when the machine became public knowledge as the story was released to the press.

Yes, the last part of that anecdote was pointless but what I meant to say was that it required a student highly specialised in 2 fields to construct a machine. With the diversification that is presently happening, will not all human knowledge one day go completely out of reach?

In that sense, if there were 2 broad yet diverse fields which could solve some major problem and these 2 broad fields became more and more specialised, there would be no way of attacking that problem since no one would see the connection.

I’m guessing you got my point now. If not, read “The Last Question” by Isaac Asimov. Arguably, the best short story in sci-fi. It deals with a computer which is sentient and expands without human help at such a pace that at some point, no single individual knows how it works. That isn’t the main plot of the story but it reiterates my point anyway.

I believe we have to solve this dilemma if the human race has to progress enough to become a type 3 civilisation one day (you know, master of all resources in our galaxy and all that).

I have come up with 2 solutions.

1) Let humans choose to specialise in any 2 diverse or even similar fields. Assuming free will is somewhat close to a gaussian random variable, we will be able to see every combination there is and most or all of them will yield results.

2) Force humans from birth into some combination of specialised fields. I believe all talks to aptitude are just hogwash. You have an aptitude for what you chose to like. I have an aptitude for math because that’s what I’ve been learning since childhood and my parents encouraged me into it. I quickly learned that specialising in it is not my cup of tea. I find communications mildly interesting and believe I can specialise in the cellular communication techniques since I find it very interesting. This suggestion may seem a little too 1984-ish but really, free will is how you make it out to be. Yes, I know, I’m a despot, tyrant and an otherwise very disturbed individual. Or I could really be the guy with the most sound logic.

Streamlining the knowledge and the way humans learn it may increase our progress exponentially. Only time can tell. Or it cannot. Who is gonna read an obscure blog written by a jobless intellectual and even consider the options listed here?

You? I don’t think so

Punch you ate !@#$%^&*

The internet is a vast virtual space. Everyone knows that. More people join the virtual world every day. Everyone knows that too. What people DON’T know is that not everyone who joins is a normal person. Yes, I speak of the most dreaded kind of netizen – The Troll.

The trolls intrigue me. They are rude, argue for arguments sake and basically do undesirable things. They are irritating to a fault. When you are a person who loves correct punctuation, they can be your WORST nightmare.

But is that it? Are they just wasted souls who don’t give a damn about what others think of them and simply spam or irritate others? We can bear with that. Hell, every social networking site has a feature to block them. You need never hear from them again. But trolls, being trolls, will create another profile and come after you. This, on the other hand, cannot be resolved. Not unless websites start taking biometric data for each account from every user. But I digress. Our question was – is that all trolls are? A minor nuisance to the society who can be ignored if we so choose? Frankly, I believe not.

Why? I will take a long winded scenic tour through the world of what is and what-nots and then reach the point. No, you can’t skip to the section where I start making sense. Yes, it is my wont.

Anyway, let us start. I made a post on storage media recently. As we all know, the digital data in the whole world is now in zeta bytes (according to Cisco, anyway). There are server farms for every major company out there which store all the data it can find about any of us. Though it can be misused, they are only aimed at bombarding us with ads. The amount of data stored is almost incomprehensible. Those companies which do not have these server farms can avail one from web based companies like Amazon etc. My point? There is a flow of information like never before seen on Earth (unless Atlantis existed).

This information is transported through wired and wireless connections to your mobile, tablet, laptop, desktop, iPod, any other damn device you can think of. Now, consider this. You have the official Facebook app for Android installed on your phone and your tablet. You have the iOS version on your iPod. You can access Facebook from your browser in your desktop and laptop. With me so far? Good.

Now, consider (heart patients and easily excitable people, please skip) a troll being on your friend list. Let’s say the said troll has a tendency to type “……….” instead of a simple period. As the more observant of you may have counted, you have 5 devices in your possession. Each device updates it’s application independently. Imagine (again, excitable people, careful) that the troll spams your post with one of his signature 10 period punctuation. Replicating this information on every device implies you have to send 10 times as much data to each device (10 full stops instead of just 1). 5 devices => 50 full stops instead of just 5. You get my point, right?

Let us assume you have 500 friends (a safe assumption) to whom this post is visible. Assume each friend has each of these 5 devices. If you do the math (correctly), you will see that 25,000 full stops are sent on the whole instead of just 2,500 which would have been enough to get the meaning  across. Now, considering Facebook, we set your privacy to public on all your posts (don’t freak out, just consider it). Let’s say you use some very common word in your post (like spoon?). Let us say there are a meager 1000 people searching for “spoon” on Google, Bing, Yahoo and any other major search engines. I will consider only Google and Bing for this example. Let us say you are a famous web 2.0 journalist whose technorati, Page Rank and whatever ratings are through the roof (or way underground depending on which is better). Your results will definitely rank higher. Let’s say each of these 1000 people click through to see your post in it’s entirety (with the comment from the troll). Again, doing the math (correctly), we see that 20,000 full stops are sent instead of just 2000.

Does all this data seem farcical to you? Maybe you are not convinced? Ok, check this out. Each troll makes more than one comment every day. Each comment contains more than one unwanted punctuation (!!!!!!!!! is a good example). Even if your compression rate reduces ALL of these punctuation blocks to a single byte, at the rate of 25,000 possible bytes for every person, you have 25 KB of wasted data. Seems small doesn’t it? Ok, here is some *more* math for you. On an average (from my experience), every one in 50 friends for every person is a troll. At that rate, from your imaginary 500 friends, 10 will be trolls. Each troll may/may not post troll-ish comments every day. Let’s assume they do. This means 250 KB of data is sent for just punctuation. Agreed? Now, there are 700 million users on Facebook. At the rate we previously assumed, we have 14 million trolls. Since this number seems too small to be true, we shall consider that all 14 million trolls post the signature 10 period punctuation every day. That is 14 MB of data wasted. Now, since this data is viewed by, let’s say, all 700 million members (it’s a safe assumption that every member will have ONLY 1 troll on their friend list), we have 7 GB of data (10 x 700 million).

Of course, most of this data is just numbers I pulled out of thin air. But, that is not the point. What I’m trying to put across is that trolls are not just harmless, irritating online avatars whom you can ignore and be done with. They are a true menace to the developed world since their idiocy leads to wastage of data, bandwidth and ultimately, more pollution (data centers generate a LOT of CO2 apparently). How do we rid the world of this problem? Do we need to form a convention for dealing with trolls? Just as we have for dealing with climate, nuclear wastage and terrorism?

My brainwave? Simple. Make them use Twitter. Limit their idiocy to 140 characters. If there exists a fool who will actually waste 10 characters from 140 for punctuation and then continue his tweet to the next one, people will hate him. They will not follow him. Hence, his data will not be distributed onto their various devices. Unlike Facebook or G+ where a comment on a post from a famous personality will be visible to one and all who view the post, Twitter posts are visible to those who wish to see them. There are no comment forums. It is the bare backbone of intellectual communication. Trolls will be weeded out with efficiency. Their data will not be distributed among the unwise netizens. The world shall be a better place.

Yeah, I’m still pro-Twitter

Secret of the Nagas

The second book in the Shiva Trilogy series by Amish Tripathi.

A review in one word – Very Good. Ok, 2 words. My bad.

Indian authors have never impressed me. As a not-so-infrequent reader, I care less about the story and more about how the book is written. Witness being the fact that I’d prefer Amitav Ghosh to Chetan Bhagat any day. Having said that, Amitav Ghosh is my favourite author at the moment (I’m very fickle in these things). So no, not all Indian authors are bad.

Anyway, coming back to the book.

Secret of the Nagas starts almost at the exact point where its prequel Immortals of Meluha stopped. From there on, the book picks up pace .. very hard and very quick. In a span of 384 pages, the author covers more than 5 years worth of incidents. I have read many books which attempt to span eons together. The most accurate example would be, of course, the Silmarillion by J.R.R Tolkien. But there is a different flavour to this book. I was able to give it only one read as the book is in high demand and I am one of the few people with a copy.

What I hate about Indian authors is their utter lack of writing quality. I know they are trying to write for the masses in general. But that does not give them the license to use downright lame writing styles. One example from this book would be this – every few lines, there will be some word from Sanskrit whose meaning is not evident in English. What the author (or probably his editor) did was to put it in italics along with the meaning of the word as a phrase in English – again in italics. One of the few I remember is this – janau, sacred thread worn by … The first time, it made sense. Not everyone who reads the book will know what a janau is. But repeating this every single time the word janau is used gets H-I-G-H-L-Y irritating. I didn’t read the appendix but I’m guessing it is defined once more there as well.

Now that I’ve put my rant out of the way, let’s get to the story. One word – BRILLIANT! Every single mythological character we have heard of associated with Shiva has been introduced in an *almost* completely logical manner (I still find the concept of nagas kinda unbelievable). For anyone who hates details, you can rejoice. The author does not describe most elements in the book in much detail (well, not as much as I like) but that is fine because a large part of the audience usually hates it.

*spoiler* – There is a description of the gates of a city called Branga. J.R.R. Tolkien and George Martin would’ve shed a tear. What concept, my god! #notSarcasm

The book is a fast read. I finished it within 1 and a half to 2 hours (effectively). It is a definition of a page turner. I never stopped reading unless I had some chore or the other to attend to … I have acute ADD when there is a laptop near me. So, you get my point.

Consensus: Read the book. Even if you’re not a great fan of mythology, the book is a fantasy novel of the first order. Don’t be a snob (like me) and let the writing style be damned. Or remember that you’ve ordered a copy of River of Smoke (like me) which you can read once you have free time.

I rate it a 4/5

Requiem for Better Storage

Disclaimer: This post is a musing. You may/may not like it but the title will give you a fair idea of what I want to say.

The world has completely turned digital. All my memories (parts of it which my brain can no longer store) are in the form of 1′s and 0′s spread out over the vast cloud of the Internet and in the 2.5 inches of space my external Hard Disk takes in one of it’s dimensions. As all things that change, it is for the better and for the worse.

How it is for the better is quite obvious. Reason enough that almost all the world now talks to each other in 1′s and 0′s when not face to face.

How it is for the worse is something only those with the experience and the means can tell you. You have all heard of hard disk crashes. Happens all the time. People around you lose loads of data – Movies, TV Shows etc. But they’re all bright and sprightly the next day. In a hostel with 600 guys, there are no movies, games, TV shows, unwanted videos, music videos etc which cannot be found. It is when you lose something very precious that you know how fickle life in the digital world can be. I found this out … the hard way.

I recently bought an external HD. After debating with my parents, friends, my conscience and with people online, I decided to settle with a 1 TB itself. I bought the HD on the last day of the vacations and immediately backed up almost 465 GB of data on to it. I felt liberated. No longer was I constantly running out of space. No longer will I have to think before installing a new OS when I have so much free space to spare. No longer will computer crashes worry me because all my data is outside. No, I wasn’t stupid. I’ve seen people lose data. I backed up all my files and songs onto my computer hard disk because although the chances of the external HD getting corrupted are almost as minimal as an internal HD getting corrupted, there was still the possibility. What I did not think about was backing up other stuff which was just as important to me.

I connected 2 Seagate HDs (mine and my friends) to the laptop at the same time. Result? Both crashed. My friend’s HD got its headers corrupted (at least that’s what I think) while mine got totally screwed. I tried everything I possibly could. My first priority was my own HD. I had to recover truck loads of data and it was gonna be corrupted – I knew that the minute I realised the HD had crashed.

I first removed both HDs and then plugged mine back into my linux OS. No use. I unplugged and went to friends comp and plugged it into HIS linux OS. No use. Plugged it into his Windows. No use. Took it out and gave it a day to cool off (you know, one of those age old things .. hitting an electronic device may make it work, giving a computer time may magically make it boot even though it’s BIOS is totally screwed). No use. Then, I got really techy and downloaded a Hex Editor (took me a whole day) so I could dabble around with the headers and make them right (hey, who knows, right?). The next day (after the Hex Editor had been downloaded), I realised the HD wasn’t even getting detected. Forget the fact that the partitions table had been corrupted, the computer was now recognising it as an un-allocated 931 GB of space (which also made me realise that we’re cheated out of 97 GB of space on every 1 TB hard disk).

So, I finally resorted to recovery software. It took the software 6-7 hours to scan and make a list of files that could be retrieved and another 13 hours to retrieve them. Yep, almost a day. I was very happy though. The recovery had been done. All my folders were back in place. All my files seemed to be there and except for some 3 files, everything had been recovered (according to the software). I didn’t care what those 3 files were since I couldn’t see them in the important places.

It was then that I realised that all my movies had been corrupted. I didn’t care though. Movies could always be re-acquired. I felt a little unease and started going through the folders one by one to see what else had been corrupted. Then, I realised it. All my pictures, videos and books were gone. Kaput. Like they were never there. 45 GB of data, or more importantly, 6 years worth of memories went away in a second all because a small sequence of 1′s and 0′s couldn’t set themselves right and so told their digital master (my computer) that the rest of the 1′s and 0′s didn’t exist. Their digital master then told me that I had been fubar’d

I am mostly a very hyper guy. I can move my considerable weight around and act goofy, not because I want people to notice me, but because it’s the way I am. That day, when I realised what had happened, I moped around in the room without going out. People thought I was sick. I didn’t talk much because my mind was buzzing with possibilites as to how I could ever recover my data. I have lived through disheartening board marks, seeing an accident, getting operated on, getting rejected by most top institutes but this … this hurt me where it mattered.

I have always been a strong proponent of technology. Everyone around me knows that. I have fought long and hard with my parents to digitise their photos, which they still stolidly refuse to do. I have taken the time to acquaint myself with shortcuts, softwares and general knowledge in things most people around me don’t know exist. My friends think I’m some sort of genius when I fix their computers. Truth is, if they took some time to google it out, they’d be just as savvy. Witness to the fact is how woefully uninformed I am about most things that are concerned with art and extra curricular activities. But this .. This made me feel like an agnostic. I started doubting what I’d put all my faith into. If the world of 1′s and 0′s was so fickle that a little shizz of electricity could make it delete almost everything I have of value, I have to believe that there is something better out there. Some medium of storage that would unfailingly make sure my data does not corrupt itself.

In the aftermath of the moping, I started taking random trains of thought to see where they lead (my favourite time pass). Unwanted crap put aside, I realised that most of my data is now digital. Movies, books, photos, videos .. anything and everything is in the form of binary data. My personal journal is now on the computer. My public journal is on WordPress. Thanks to the world shifting completely to digital cameras, I now have 40 GB of personal pictures and videos which got deleted entirely. My text books and fictional book collection is now in PDFs, which have also been deleted. There is nothing left on my hard disk. I still retain the pictures, videos and books in hopes that SOME recovery software will be able to get it back (it makes no difference whether I keep them or not, I know, but it’s just me being a little humane).

I have almost NO record of any conversation with my school friends. I keep track with messages, emails, chats. All digital streams of data which have every chance of getting corrupted one day or the other. I have never written a real letter in my entire life. I have never seen a telegram ever. Any record of my very existence has chances of getting erased within seconds. Is our existence so fickle? Is there a possibility that the minute we are ushered into an era with totalitarian rule, the ruling power will have all the infrastructure in place to assert themselves on us? Is there no way in which our memories could be stored more permanently? Is the world of digital data here to stay? Because if it is, I must start creating strategies to save all my data if the inevitable armageddon or loss of privacy does happen.

All of mankind has reduced to a bunch of binary data. Implying that if we somehow die out and someone releases several EMPs just before the apocalypse, all data of our existence would be wiped out. No time capsule would be saved considering we’re getting our life so much into the digital sphere, time capsules will probably have pen drives in them. That said, I’ve always believe any remaining copies of Lord of the Rings (which was written long before the digital age was even considered a possibility) would become gospel. What clue would future civilisations have that the world was any different that what Tolkien had written? Maybe Sauron really existed. Maybe the Ainür still existed in this unknowable land the book called the West. I’ve always had the feeling the Bible was some epic work of fiction from a previous civilisation that just happened to be found and made the gospel for all Christianity and Jews.

Yes, I know .. Random rants and digression. But this is my blog and this is where I let loose. Anyway, I shall return to the bunch of recovery software I’ve downloaded and give everything a try. What I’ve lost is not something that can let me sleep in peace. Adios, world. I shall now drift off into forced subconsciousness and take other trains of thought to follow (seriously brilliant exercise, I assure you).

How to go unprepared for a Trekking trip 101

So, I thought I’d officially start the year with a bang and went for a trip to Ooty with friends from college. There were 16 of us and to keep it short – it was fun. But this isn’t about the trip as a whole.

This is about one particular aspect of the trip – trekking up a hill in almost completely uncharted territory. To be more precise, this is about how to go unprepared for said trip.

How to go unprepared for a Trekking trip

Aim: To make an itinerary of all the items that would be detrimental to a trekking trip and procedures to follow that would effectively endanger your life and those of others with you.

Apparatus Required:

1) Sandals with no traction – 1
2) Sprain in leg – 1 (Maximum of 2)
3) Cotton clothing for effectively letting the chill get to you
4) Foolhardiness – As much as possible

Procedure:

1) Start with letting your friends plan a trip. Initially, refuse to go along so that you’re absent from the planning sessions. When you agree to go along, make sure you forget the fact that a trekking trip has been planned.

2) Do not forget to act tough and not take any type of protective clothing even though you are going to a hill station and you know about it.

3) Make sure you don’t have enough sleep because you know sleeping on a bus with 15 friends (who talk themselves to high glory) is quite easy.

4) Start the trekking trip with minimal energy. This is essential to gathering the grit to go till the very top.

5) Remember to sprain your ankle a little on each leg so that it gets worse by the time you’re done.

6) Start the trek

7) Remember to keep your foolhardiness at max throttle and agree to move forward on unused slippery muddy pathways.

8) Take support from people on both sides of you. This way, you’ll feel safe that when you fall, you won’t be the only one going down.

9) Do not think about the way back and how much more difficult it is to stop yourself while slipping down the muddy pathways.

10) Reach the top. Stop for photos on the way when there is enough foliage to literally hide an elephant.

11) Start the trek downhill. This is the part where the fun starts.

12) Hold on to maximum number of people so that you can take everyone down when you go. For best effects, make sure the people on both your sides are light ones. This will help in bringing down the whole group a lot faster (Satti’s Weight Disproportionality Theorem).

13) Break a few toe nails so that you can feel the pain when you are trying not to slip.

14) A few thorns all over your body will also help. For good measure, make sure they’re poisonous.

15) Hope that the sprain in your ankle acts up to make your job all the tougher.

16) Get down and look at your feet. Mud should have crusted all over your nails (the ones that aren’t missing), mud over your pants and T Shirt(which should have been black for maximum effect).

17) Make sure you come back into your room with said filthy sandals and then realise the fact. Reminisce about the trip and write a blog post on the one part you think would not be all that boring to read.

Conclusion: To decrease your chances of coming back alive, do not go for a trekking trip with your head in the right place or traction in your footwear.

Of course, the trip on the whole was awesome. My sarcasm is directed wholly on myself and my stupidity for not being prepared for a trekking trip.

1984 – A review

Yes, it’s been a long time since I blogged. A lot has happened. For instance, my college has started. But more on that later.

Classics is a very ambiguous word. I believe it’s a classification given to anything that has stood the test of time with a large set of people. It is not necessary that most people you know will like what has been termed a classic – be it music, books, movies or anything else (even the good old Irodov).

I’ve always had a fascination towards the classics. I am intrigued by why something was labeled a classic. I’ve come to learn that, in most cases, it is justified. There is something about the book, movie or music that has made it alluring to so many people over such a length of time.

It was with this trepidation or lack thereof that I started reading 1984 – a novel by George Orwell. I was not disappointed.

1984 by George Orwell

1984 is, as the name suggests, a story set in the year 1984 as imagined by Orwell when he wrote the novel in 1950. He paints a bleak future where the world is divided into so called 3 “super-states” – Oceania, Eastasia and Eurasia.

Our protagonist lives in Oceania in modern day England. Oceania is ruled by the Party – an oligarchical dictatorship – whose founder/leader/dictator/ruler is a man only known as Big Brother. The Party is completely authoritarian and rules every aspect of people’s lives by watching them through telescreens, rewriting all newspapers and historical books to wipe out the trace of any history that existed before the Party itself did and other absolutely despotic and mind blowing stuff. The Party aims at killing emotions, like love, in their subjects and fueling them with hate while the endless war with the other super-states goes on.

The protagonist – Winston Smith – is still capable of independent thought and cannot take in the whole agenda that the Party propagates. He sees through all of it, unlike most of the population of Oceania which has been brainwashed over time and where people like Winston are slowly being wiped out (vaporised) from the society. Winston finds love in a similar minded woman named Julia. But – and I quote directly from the back of the book – “Big Brother does not like dissent. For people with independent thought, the Party invented Room 101 … ” . Gather what you will from that statement because I will not tell you what it means.

I rate the book among the best ones I’ve read. Yes, I know I rate all books as awesome but this one strikes a little closer to the heart.

Why? Zombie – my pal – and I have long chats on certain nights. We exchange not only intellectual ideas and what our latest fascination is but also what we imagine our perfect future would look like. I always emphasize on freedom in such discussions. Freedom to study what we want, freedom to contribute to society however we want, freedom to stop worrying about such things as a job, family etc. The future depicted in the book is the exact opposite, in every way, of what I’ve been imagining. It is, at once, daunting and intriguing. The measures the Party takes to curb all the basic freedoms has been depicted in such detail in the book that it fascinated me no end to just look for loopholes. Yes, I found some few and far in between but they do not seem obvious to you unless you’re looking for them.

You want to know how good I found the book? I’m giving it a second read in a few days. Yes, I’m serious. The book is absolutely terrific. I have a feeling that concepts for movies like Equilibrium and V for Vendetta were taken from this book.

Edit1: Wikipedia proves me correct.

Edit2: Apparently, Big Brother, the reality show which started in UK, takes its name from the character in the book.

Consensus – Must read for any intellectual.

War is Peace.

Freedom is Slavery.

Ignorance is Strength.

What is Twitter?

No, the answer is not 42. Though if it was as simple as that, life would be much better.

Anyway, this post is for all those of my contemporaries out there who don’t know what Twitter is / don’t know how to use Twitter / can’t understand what the hell they’re doing on Twitter / cannot appreciate Twitter.

I thought I’d do all of you / us a favour and make this a Q/A post. I will be as denigrating as I want to because people do not understand what kind of a phenomenon Twitter really is.

 

Q: What is Twitter?

A: Twitter is defined as a microblogging service. A blog is where you post something (like this). A microblog is for status updates. The reason you use Twitter are three-fold:

1) You update your status so that people who follow you can know what’s going on with you.

2) You follow your friends and see their status updates to see what’s up with them.

3) You follow news websites, celebrities and the like to keep up with their news.

 

Q: So, what’s the big deal? I can do all that in Facebook as well.

A: Twitter is a revolution. It is utterly different from Facebook. While Facebook is filled with spammers and trolls, Twitter is filled either with intellectuals (like myself ) or with spam bots who can be blocked with one click.

Also, Twitter noticeably lacks “apps” which make enough spam content on Facebook to irritate some 700 million users. Twitter is pitched as a simple microblogging platform and that is all it ever is / ever should be.

Besides, following news on Twitter and Facebook are 2 different things. There are 2 reasons for this:

1) Companies and organisations that give news content online do it mostly on Twitter. Facebook is just their auxiliary option. The fact that they can post on Twitter in small 140 character updates, have their own timeline where they can look back on the updates without the hindrances of such nuances as “comments” or “likes” appeals to them.

2) Twitter has the cleanest interface that you can think of. Now, there are 2 ways to follow news .. either you add everyone who is tweeting news about something to your timeline, or all the users create a hashtag and you search for that hashtag and follow all the tweets there.

Example: Say an earthquake occurs in Atlantis, one user will create a hastag like #atlantisquake .. The power of social media will propagate this hashtag in such a way that within 5 minutes, well over a thousand users will be using that hashtag. Now, lets say there are people on site in Atlantis tweeting about it, people offsite who have relatives stuck there asking for help, people on site asking for help etc – you can see ALL of these things if you are searching for that hashtag. Yes, its that simple.

 

Q: Ok, that’s too advanced for me to comprehend. Why would these things help me? I just want to keep up with my friends and check what photos they upload.

A: Oh ok fine. Then, please go back to Facebook. Twitter is not for you.

 

Q: Fine. Let’s say I’m interested. What else can Twitter do?

A: Not much else. This is what people love Twitter for. The people working on it are wise enough to know what the users like and they don’t want to do mundane optimisations which will spoil the user experience.

 

Q: Hmm .. What about media content? Like photos and videos and all that?

A: This is the most opportune moment I can answer this. Twitter recently released a photo uploading service. Its is the most complete image search engine anyone can hope for assuming people tag the pictures they upload with the proper tags.

 

Q: Wtf? Didn’t Twitter have any way of viewing photos before this?

A: They did. You uploaded photos in another service like Twitpic, yfrog etc. and posted a link along with a small one liner on Twitter. Using hashtags helped in searches.

 

Q: Ok fine. Any down sides?

A: Oh yes. As with all “social” media, this is powered by the people. You have to be responsible about what you post, what you share etc.

For example, some fool made a mistake and posted that Abdul Kalam died even though it was just his friend who’d died. It spread like wildfire (as is its wont) and finally, at the stage where even news websites started believing it, it died down. So, it’s on your part to be a responsible netizen and do what’s right.

 

Q: How do I join Twitter?

A: Head over here and create an account. That’s it. You’re done. You can start using Twitter right away.

 

Please spread the joy and make people aware. Also, in case any of your friends pesters you as to what Twitter is, direct them here

PS: Any questions? I’m sorry .. You gotta go Google. There is only so much time I’m willing to spare in making people Internet-aware. Comments? Post below.

I know What I did This Summer

So, nothing great here. Another summer has come. Another of my birthdays has come and gone. Oh, I’m 20 btw. Yes, I still don’t give a damn.

What did I do this summer? (The title of the post is a play on a famous horror movie title)

All the people I know have been working their ass off trying to get internships. I will not scorn at them (well, not at first anyway ) because I tried. In the course of trying, I realised 2 things – 1) You really need to have contacts to get into these internships. I have none. 2) They definitely aren’t worth it. I mean, yeah you get stipend and work experience (neither of which I care about). I care about getting to know things. I’ve heard they teach you about the work in the company. But I dunno .. starting to go to work daily .. I’d feel too grown up to believe it

I now believe in keeping my summer free. I have only one more summer to go but I don’t care if I keep saying that .. So this summer, I kept it as free as possible, apart from CAT preparation, a hellish project and some other small stuff, I have nothing to do.

So I started the summer with some coding. There was this Huffman code I wanted to do badly. I finished it on my birthday (June 2nd) after some 4 hours of coding (spread over 20 days or so). I still have the decompression program to look forward to though.

The project is probably the best thing that happened last semester. Our project guide hardly remembers our faces. Each time we walk into his cabin to talk about the project, he gives a look of incredulity (wouldn’t you, if 6 full grown college students made their way into your private 9’ x 12’ space without no explanation whatever? ). Anyway, we remind him we are his project team for the year. Then, he talks with his “trademark” style. If you plot his volume to the time of his monologue, it’d look something like this.

Its funny how all of us lean in to listen to him as he goes on and his volume keeps going down .. Anyway, his idea of a “starting” exercise was something too tough for us to dream of finishing. We accepted anyway. I mean .. What else could we do?

Then, there is the facebook-ing which has become excessive thanks to utter boredom. I would like to clarify my stance on why I use facebook. It’s not to keep up with people. I couldn’t care less about who potty trained their dog or who got the Nobel recently. I’m more interested in seeing how society as such uses it. Its just a visual thing. I’m not plotting graphs or rolling around in statistical data. I just keep track of stuff that stands out in my memory.

Twitter .. Now THAT is something I cannot stay without. I’m basically an information junkie – as are most avid twitter users. I’d rather have a twitter account than subscribe to a newspaper or watch news channels on TV. My repeated appeals to everyone I know (through facebook statuses – shouldn’t it be statii btw? – class speeches, casual talk and what not) to join Twitter seems to be paying off. More and more people from my college are joining the site whereas my school people remain as ignorant as ever.

I love patterns though. And I saw some distinct patterns here:

1) People from ECE in my college have maximum presence on twitter (now, I was the first one there so I may be the starting point but we can never be sure)

2) People from my school have many different patterns depending on which college they joined:

2.1) People in Sastra hardly have a twitter presence. They’re more prominent on Facebook.

2.2) People from BITS, Goa have more of a presence than people from BITS, Pilani (well, from amongst my school friends, at least) .. BITS, Pilani people have limited presence on either site.

2.3) People from NITT have a strong presence on Twitter but they’re mostly unused accounts. From the Twitter stalking (yes, I’ve learned to stalk people on twitter as well) I have done, there are further 3 categories of people here:

2.3.1) People who join Twitter and use it avidly like @anirudh24seven

2.3.2) People who join Twitter and then never come back to the site again

2.3.3) People who join Twitter and never really post anything but follow news. This set can be identified by their limited number of tweets but very large number of “following”.

2.4) Random people have a mixed presence on Twitter which I can’t really split into patterns since i don’t know how the rest of their college is on these sites.

3) People from my old school have a very weak Twitter presence (almost negligible except for @anirudhpullela ) But that is understandable considering they never were nerd in the first place.

4) People I know from elsewhere (IIT Tuitions, Tennis Classes and the rest) have no twitter presence at all or I haven’t found them yet (an exception here is @shreeranjani who has a greater twitter presence than I do)

Now that my pattern appetite is sated, let’s move on.

I finally jailbroke the iPod Touch. Brilliant shit after jailbreaking. I installed some repositories like Hackulo.us and Crackulo.us .. Got some really cool cracked apps from those. The best though is VLC media player. It does not require us to do ANY conversion of the video file. Simply load them on the pod, click play and it’ll resize the file to your screen size. Epic, right?

Mom bought a cheap Nokia phone which looks surprisingly awesome. Uncluttered Symbian OS .. a refreshing change from Symbian^3 and the later versions. Problem is it requires a micro USB cable and I don’t have one. Have to load all the songs through bluetooth :/

Birthday was a quiet affair – just as I like it. Dinner with family. Small cake. Refused to meet friends citing dinner. Meh. They more or less knew I wouldn’t come. I’m 20. I don’t have an internship. I don’t know much about Communications even though I’m due to major in it in a years time. I practically hate talking to people and don’t pick up people’s calls because I don’t feel like talking to them. Yep, I still don’t give a damn

CAT mock test came up. Scored somewhere near the 50s. Should be enough considering I haven’t studied a word for CAT till now.

I’m hoping to get a hard disk. I badly need one. I have too many pictures, videos and music on my laptop. That apart from all the game installations. I need to free up space and install linux both as a backup and to aid me in programming pursuits. I have some cracking packages I can’t wait to try out.

I’m reading Nine Lives by William Dalrymple for want of anything better to do. The computer has become boring. The PS3 is boring. The Android is boring. The iPod is boring. It is hot. I don’t feel like going out. Sometimes, I hate holidays. But then, since these are probably the last I’ll ever have, I might as well enjoy them.

The Calcutta Chromosome

So, my reading habit has taken a back seat for the last few months. But that did not stop me from buying books and storing them for later. With a little help from Abinaya and other fellow bookworms, I was able to read about a book every month in college. Considering they were mostly James Patterson books on the David Cross series, it was quite a handful. I will review that series a little later once I get the chronology right considering I’m reading the books in some random order.

Then again, after my first tryst with Amitav Ghosh in Sea of Poppies, I couldn’t resist buying some other book of his I saw in Odyssey the other day – The Calcutta Chromosome. The book belongs to the sci-fi genre and it won the Arthur C. Clarke award – something I didn’t quite understand why it deserved until the very end.

The Calcutta Chromosome is, in all ways, different from the books I’ve read in the genre. Considering I’m an avid fan of Arthur Clarke and Isaac Asimov, I should say I’m not kidding about that.

The story starts with an Egyptian dude at some point in the future and consists of flashbacks either in the form of letters or documents recovered by his all-knowing machine – Ava. In this sense, it reminded me of The Fourth Estate by Jeffrey Archer where every chapter would start like a news article. This wasn’t exactly the same but it gets the job done.

In gist, the story follows the Egyptian dude – Antar, as he traces the steps of L. Murugan, his former, presently missing colleague who in turn in tracing the steps of Ronald Ross, the man who discovered the means by which malaria is transmitted.

If you ask me, the novel can also be partially categorised in the Fantasy genre. But that’s beside the point.

I found the novel pretty interesting actually. I could never have guessed most of the twists the story takes and I’m a guy who can predict Agatha Christie novels through sheer statistics – the least likely is the most obvious. But this novel had some very interesting twists. Since I hate giving spoilers, I will not delve any further into the story.

The novel is really small .. as in only 276 pages in the version I bought. It is a definite page turner, unlike Sea of Poppies which took me ages to finish for all it was worth.

Any more description and I would be giving away plotlines and spoilers.

Consensus: VERY different sci-fi thriller. Read it if you love the genre. Romantics will love this. Logically inclined people will find this a big bore and worth bitching about a lot. Personally, I loved it

Agent Naapathi Yezhu – Mind it!

Naapathi Yezhu = 47 .. “Mind it” is a phrase most northies use to make fun of Rajni when they have no clue where it came from.

Assassination games and movies are my absolute favourite. I don’t know why, frankly. I am a big fan of the Bourne series, the Hitman franchise, the Assassin’s Creed franchise and anything related to silent killing. I’ve read Day of the Jackal twice .. which is a feat for any Forsyth book.

It comes as no surprise that I find the Hitman franchise irresistible. I love everything about the Hitman game. In fact, it is the only third person action/adventure I play at full difficulty.

As with any game, my connection with it starts at one particular point in time. My memory archiving methods give me easy access to such things.

My tryst with the franchise starts somewhere in 9th std – sometime around 2005. I was over at a friends place because I was bored. He was playing Hitman: Contracts on his PS2 while I was simply reading some Marvel comic deluxe edition I found lying around. I finished the comic and was watching him play while my mind was elsewhere. But sometimes your subconscious actually registers what you’re seeing. In this case, I registered how my friend executed a full contract. Starting from the briefing till the debriefing. It stunned me out of my reverie. I found it exceptional.

I mean – starting from the garrotte wire kills, the dress changing, the walking with a careful speed so as to not draw attention, looking out and recording the patrolling patterns of the guards, the lethal poison you administer to the soup the target is going to consume and finally, exiting without so much as leaving a blip on the enemy radar. The whole precision and clockwise MO of the protagonist was exhilarating (nope, I’m not using the wrong word here).

My friend offered me the controller and I finished one mission since I was given the chance. The game mechanics took quite some time to master and I was glued to the controller for almost 2 and a half hours since I refused help from my more experienced friend.

After that, 2 board exams and various college entrances happened. The game simply slipped out of my mind. Then came 2nd year of college when laptops were allowed into hostels. My roommate brought the Hitman: Blood Money game from somewhere. I was a bit experienced so he let me play along with him.

I convinced him to play the game at full difficulty from the start. We finished level after level with our exams looming about a day away. I managed to scrape through as usual. My roommate got so pissed that I convinced him to play and lose his grades that he never came near me again during exams

Hitman: Blood Money .. SUCKED. I dunno how else I can put it. I never expected it to be this stupid. I mean, I played Contracts, which was very very advanced for its time. Blood Money had some superb moments but the story hardly held together, the gameplay mechanics were kind of nutty. Eidos seems to have been in a hurry with the whole game because the story didn’t make much sense.

Hitman 5: Absolution has been slated for release some time soon. I can’t wait for the game and I’m hoping Eidos got its priorities right. From what I can see, this is an absolute hit franchise they’ve got on their hands.

For one, a little weapon variety would be nice. I mean, the silverballer is trademark and all that but seriously, sometimes, an air pistol would be good and it’d also make sense that it stays hidden while a 17 inch gun like the Silverballer is not as easy to move around with.

Next, a better story please. I understand cloning technology is the absolute base of the Hitman series, but honestly man, I’m bored of it. Give me a little more conspiracy and all that crap.

A little vengeful killing on the part of 47. Blood Money did not have this while I distinctly remember this happening at the end of Silent Assassin. A deadly assassin using resources most government agencies can’t get their hands on takes a little personal time to clean up the skeletons in his closet – can it ever get more badass?

Some new gameplay mechanics would be good. Torture scenes for extorting information about a target maybe? Splinter Cell Conviction had this integrated in an awesome way (smashing a guys head into a sink – that is so \m/ ). The Hitman franchise has a lot more scope for implementing this.

Here’s hoping for some awesomeness in the new game

PS: Yes, I find the concept of a bald guy with a bar code not getting noticed by security personnel as a tad stupid as well. But then, Fisher’s night vision goggles are supposed to be invisible to naked eye. I suppose some sacrifices have to be made for creating a logo for the franchise.

Museeeek

So, I finally convinced my dad to buy me an iPod on his latest trip to the US. I’m not a big show off when it comes to technology. I buy everything to sate my own appetite rather than flaunt it to all my acquaintances (but it is a side effect, I concede).

So, even though I have around 40 GB of music, I thought I might as well go with the 32 GB model since my music collection will anyway exceed any storage device I obtain eventually. I was in a dilemma between buying a 120GB classic model or a 32GB iPod Touch 4G. I went with the latter since apps, rather than storage, are my bigger priority.

I still haven’t completely used it to my satisfaction. Right now, its mostly for listening to music and checking out the iOS world before a jailbreak. Yes, I’m now a person of experience in both Android and iOS.

I’m more definitive than most people in the case of these comparisons between Android and iOS. I have always believed in an open environment and since Android is open from the get-go (I don’t like the use of the word conception since it means something entirely different in slang), I vehemently supported it.

Fact is, I’ve never lived with an iOS device in my household before. Now, considering my newer experience, and the fact that jailbreaks will give the iOS the “open” definition in some senses, I’m willing to change opinions.

I’m waiting for my 4mbps connection to jailbreak (I dunno why, I guess I just want it done faster), to download those free PS3 games Sony is offering (Nope, I’m not kidding you ) and usual browsing.

I’m leaving for Delhi the day after tomorrow. Hopefully, the internet connection has been set up there. I need to go get my dad’s civic (YEP! ) and ride it around. I’m taking my laptop so productivity would still be pretty low. Meh. I’ve stopped giving a damn.

PS: Listen to ‘3 different pigs’ by Pink Floyd. I can’t get that song off my head for some reason. Epic.

Hitman 5: Absolution

No, the game hasn’t released yet. But the teaser has come out.

Oh yes, it looks completely awesome albeit too short to give you any adrenaline rush.

But of particular interest is this: At 0:21, they show the famous hitman barcode that Agent 47 has on the back of his head. So? It looks something like this.

Now, I’m no conspiracy theorist or someone who speculates a lot but those first 6 numbers – they are NOT from the usual Agent 47 barcode. Those 6 numbers are originally 640509 – Birthdate of the clone that is Agent 47. Now, WHY would they change that? Is it the date of release of the actual game itself?

Unfortunately no. Its just that 07/06/2011 or 06/07/2011 (depending on which format you follow) is the start date of E3 2011. Hopefully, there is a better trailer coming up. Until then, I will lose quite some sleep.

PS: Square Enix – yes, THE Square Enix is the publisher this time. No, I don’t expect FF graphics to be showcased here considering its IO’s own proprietary Glacier 2 engine.

PPS: I’ll write a detailed post about why I love the franchise as such a little later.

<insert title here>

So, my last few days of this semester are upon me. A year from now, I will be a graduate who will be thrust into the cruel backstabbing cutthroat world out there. I shall be helplessly overcome by the sheer multitudes that mass around me and feel like I’m just one among the throng of humanity.

“You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else”

- Tyler Durden, Fight Club

Meh. I couldn’t care less. People keep saying these things so often, I wonder if it’s actually true. If everyone was going to be faced with such odds in the “outside world”, I think the asylums would be a lot more full with voluntary admissions.

I think I should have become more mature by now. Shifted my areas of interest to working, reading serious books, following the stock market (?) etc. But me? I can’t WAIT to go home and get my hands on my PS3

This summer is going to be fun. Movie sequels to some of my favourite movies are releasing (Kung Fu Panda 2 babyyyyyy ) and some new awesome movies coming up (Thor) along with the leftover games that I can play at home (Portal 2, here I come). Not to forget all those books I still haven’t read (I shall honour Salman Rushdie by a reading ) and the new iPod Touch which I can’t wait to jailbreak and start modding *rubs hands in glee*

Of course, there is the project work which needs to be done over the holidays. But then, when you have all the time in the world, hardly go out of your house and love to sit on your computer, you have a tendency to finish what work you have.

4 more days and I shall be back where I belong (?) and living the life. Good food, AC, laptop + PS3 + faster internet connection + home theatre system. I think I will interface everything

Till then, 2 more exams + 1 awesome night + train journey back home

Batman: Arkham Asylum

So, there I was, sitting around, not knowing what to do after a recent bout of mugging up and vomiting (read – exams) when I thought I’d get back to my usual stuff and game a little. Although I have enough games in my hard disk to last a whole year in college and enough processor power to run most of them simultaneously, I have never been into gaming much.

Yes, my laptop is very powerful and I will boast as much as I want until some acquaintance of mine buys one to trounce it

So, anyway, I looked through the selection and thought I’d divert a little from the FPS craze I was feeling and go for a very very very highly acclaimed and highly recommended game.

Yes, my first action adventure game in sometime. Batman: Arkham Asylum is a VERY good game. It may sound a little prejudiced on my part considering I’m a big fan of the Batman franchise as such (particularly after seeing the recent efforts by Christopher Nolan to bring it to the silver screen) but trust me, the game is actually pretty brilliant.

Au contraire to what I do with most FPS games, I have not the patience to either fight every mini boss battle a million times in order to win them nor sate my curiosity until I play hard enough to clear levels to let the story progress, that I play the game in the highest difficulty (Not a very concise sentence I know, but it should make perfect sense).

So what did I do? I played it in the easiest difficulty. That’s not to say I didn’t attempt the highest difficulty but since my mouse maneuverability is still in its infancy, I thought the better of it.

The game was, as I keep repeating, bahut awesome. As with all games, it had flaws. But that makes it a fun package (as most people keep saying for some reason).

Gameplay: Epic. No other word. Proper slightly super-human skills in the martial arts, use of batarangs, bat claws and all other apparel the batman usually takes with him on his nightly charades were an integral part of the game. The protagonist sprite felt, moved, looked and spoke like the Batman that I have come to associate with from comics and movies hereunto. I found the unlimited batarangs a little ridiculous but then, it makes the game a little more fun. The soft landing from any height thanks to his piezo electric cape makes the game a little more easy leading to lesser deaths.

What I did NOT like about the gameplay was the utter lack of perception of edges by the AI. What do I mean by that? In most games of this genre, when you reach the edge of say, a platform you’re standing on, the character does not walk into the void beyond if you keep pressing forward. He’d rather do nothing (most games), hang on a ledge (pop) or look down and show the player what’s below (assassin’s creed). In Batman: AA, the character just walks off a ledge. Of course, considering you have the bat claw and the cape to stop you from dying through such unfortunate mishaps and later feel stupid about it, its not that big a deal but I hated it.

The nice touches like the detective mode – in which he can follow trails using DNA data, chemical composition of the atmosphere (to its finest detail, down to the molecular orbital diagram of ethanol, which is admittedly not very tough to find online), fingerprint analysis and other things make the gameplay an awesome experience.

What I missed though was seeing bones broken when you hit the villains in the detective mode but I guess the new Mortal Kombat trailers have made me a spoilt kid

Graphics: I’ve taken a healthy interest in graphics considering I’ve been studying video compression and OpenGL for some time now. The game uses the Unreal engine from what the credits show. The graphics are not extra ordinary. Some cases, they are downright cartoonish. The characters themselves seem well made but the environment, although rich in detail and very interactive in certain cases, does not have the feel of the other recent games I’ve played. As in, I can’t say its bad .. But I feel its definitely lacking in some way.

What really hit me about the graphics was the lighting. It was absolutely like nothing I’ve ever seen. It was, to be quite honest, very surreal but also looked very good..

See what I mean? I can assure you the light falling on these guys has NOTHING whatsoever to do with the lighting in the room. But, grant me this … It looks terrific.

I’m guessing though that the graphics requirements are quite minimal. I was able to run this and AC: Brotherhood simultaneously without loading the processor too much. I’m not able to express how stunned I was when I noticed that it hardly took any power from my CPU – which is important considering some games take a lot of my CPU power (at ~14 GHz, that’s a LOT of clock cycles).

Story: The highlight of ANY media in the batman franchise – movies, cartoons, comics etc is the story. For people like me, its the cinching factor. I mean .. You can have a lot of villains and a fair amount of fighting but when it comes to story, whether it be in movie or comic, I like to see something good.

Batman: AA does not disappoint. Although, I’d read the whole Knightfall series a mere five days before I started the game, I found the story as good as any comic. Though not as epic in scale as most comics are wont to do, it was still very good. The whole story is, as happens often, based on Jokers masterminded scheme to take over the Arkham Asylum. I will tell you no more.

The story was lacking at certain points though. But then, my expectations are high … I mean, it’s BATMAN!!

Consensus: MUST PLAY!

PS: PLAY THE GAME AS SOON AS YOU FRICKIN CAN!

PPS: Batman Arkham City is due to be out soon. Trailer? Check this out.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

So, I finally convinced myself that FPS games aren’t all that bad after watching the whole frickin hostel going at it in multiplayer on Call of Duty 6.

To be honest, I’ve never been good with games that require the mouse. On a joystick, after a point of playing, it becomes flesh memory to press the right buttons. My mind says things like “kill that guy” and my hand will press the appropriate buttons. On a mouse, it’s a right pain trying desperately to keep the sensitivity at just the right level, A bigger pain is finding the right surface (book, piece of wooden plank, mouse pad, whatever) to keep the mouse on so that it doesn’t act weirdly.

But I can manage playing with a mouse specifically because using a mouse is something we all do day in and day out through our lives (right?). So, there I was, one hostel hunt for games later, sitting in my room with COD 4, 5, 6 and 7 all loaded and ready to install. I thought I’d start with 4 cos it was the game that started the epic-ness in the whole series.

I started the game in Veteran mode which the game very clearly told me I “will not survive”. How true it was. But first the game:

The game is addictive … And I mean addictive as bloody hell. In veteran mode, after Act 1, every checkpoint took me a minimum of 5 tries to cross. Around the end of Act 2, I was stuck in a VERY tight spot. As in, my tries had exceeded 20 or so and I still was nowhere close to having a clue as to how to cross that stage. So I thought I’d see how the people with COD clans fare in that level and gave it to a pro. He tried the first 2 times and couldn’t get through after which he pressed “Restart Level”. It reset the game back by some 18 checkpoints and frustrated me as hell when I tried to cross the first 4 of those.

So I took the cowardly path out and restarted the game in “Recruit” mode (read: supremely easy). Then, I got bored running through the same levels (albeit as considerably faster pace) and resorted to cheats *hangs head in shame*

I finished the game today evening. I can honestly tell you I LOVED the game.

I’m not a big fan of FPS .. I mean beyond CS, this is the first game that has captured my attention (No, I’ve never played Half Life 2). But I will tell you this – the game is bloody BRILLIANT. I hated Crysis 1 because there was too much story. I have a love/hate relationship with games like CS and Rainbow 6 because they have too less (Rainbow 6 is actually a Tom Clancy game but I still found it lacking back when it released). COD 4 gave me a perfect blend. The story was simple but provided solid gameplay hours (multiplied many folds considering I was playing in Veteran).

Halfway through the game, you keep switching between playing as Sargent Paul Jackson of the US Marine Corps and ‘Soap’ Mactavish of SAS \m/ . Then you switch to Captain Price of the SAS for a brief period of time. The story follows the accession to power of Khaled Al-Asad who kills some random president and takes power and then detonates a nuke (sadly killing Paul Jackson). The rest of the team trace him, his partners and Imran Zakhaev and kill/execute all of them.

What truly blew me away was this one particular mission when you don the role of Captain Price and move through tall grass in camouflage suits. It was TERRIFIC to say the least. I could not, at times, figure out where the other guy was before I spotted something that looked like a slightly taller strand of grass holding a camouflaged sniper rifle.

Consensus: MUST-PLAY. Epic Game. So awesome I read up on the history of CoD games here

PS: Started playing CoD 5 now – seems kinda drab after CoD4 but you’ll never know until you finish it

Morning Blues?

This is gonna be a long post. There is nothing interesting here. It’s just an outlet to my sudden urge to write.

There are times in everyone’s life when you get a feeling that too much is going on. Your work never seems to end. You long for those days of lazing in the afternoon sun and watching tv in an AC room while having something cold like rooh-afza simultaneously. Somehow, most of my friends seem to have forgotten that there was a time in their lives when they actually had no worries and could peacefully sleep at night without caring about homework tomorrow. I guess that is good in a way. You can’t miss what you can’t remember you ever had.

I, on the other hand, can remember all of it. When we used to start playing hide and seek early in the morning, get called back in the afternoon, have lunch, come back and simply talk while sitting on stairs. It was fun. I miss those days with Akshata, Venkatesh and all the others who came and went in the flat. I guess, for a long time, akshata was the only constant friend in my life.

Do not take me to be a sucker for the past. I hate reliving old memories. Why? Because they’re the best I have and remind me how much simpler life could’ve been had I not grown up and conquered the aging mechanism.

We just confirmed a project guide for ourselves in college. It made me realise I’m an adult now. I can no longer attribute my mistakes to immaturity because according to the likes of Dr phil, I shouldn’t have any. I can no longer relax and let my parents take care of stuff. And there is no way on earth I can dream about “when I grow up”. The ads on tv which I thought were meant for me when I was a child mean nothing any more. They look senseless and feel senseless. I see school vans going about when I go out in the evening at home and I search if my old vans is one of them. Then I realise I don’t go to school anymore. The vans don’t mean anything to me. What little sense of belonging I had to that mode of transport has been lost on me and probably transferred to another child who will get just as disillusioned as I was. One day, he too will grow up and discard this delusion. All signs of my childhood ever having existed are getting erased. Amar Chitra Katha may continue but uncle pai will no longer be behind it. Children no longer run about in my old flat. Akshata tells me the same people have lived there and grown older. No longer is there the shouting of children which used to be delightful to my senses a long time ago since it meant I had company. A few days ago, when I came back home, there were a bunch of kids playing around and I found the noise intolerable. I told this to my mom and she started laughing telling me, “you do remember that, not more than 5 years ago, that was you down there?” .. I brushed it off but then I realise, she was right.

Somehow the bright sunny days when we used to have fun and frolic without a care in the world have turned into days of constant worry day and night about what the Next day would bring. The realization that you can no longer rely on your parents to make plans for you tomorrow. They aren’t there to do your laundry, cook your food, feed you at regular intervals and Call you back if you stay in the sun for too long. I get a strange feeling when I go home these days. I feel like I’m intruding in the life of my parents. My hostel, which until two years ago, I would have misspelt as hostile and not given it a second thought, seems safe. It feels like home or as close as it gets to home.

I dunno if I’m as emo as this post will make me sound but I can tell you this – if something could make me a child again and let me live the absolutely contented life I led before all world around me tore apart, I would kill for it. Yes, I think I really would.

Forgotten Sands: Must Forget!

So, absolute boredom and quite a bit of joblessness made me resolve to get back into gaming. This is the epic journey of a geek who went through possibly the worst game Ubisoft EVER made.

College is a wonderful place for people who love to game .. Unless MMOs are your forte. Games are in everyone’s hard disk. Just moving around 4 rooms in the hostel can net you at least 20 different games, each being a combination of different genres except for the FPS’ – which are mostly very alike but fun nonetheless.

So, I started moving around the hostel and after going to one room, I got Metro 2033, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Just Cause 2, Modern Warfare 1 and 2 and finally, the GOTY – Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands.

Ubisoft has been one of the best game making companies in my experience – probably after Rockstar Games and CodeMasters. I’ve played at least 5 of their games and they were mostly the same type – guy jumping around evading traps or whatever. However redundant it gets, it is still awesome.

Forgotten Sands, in my experience, was the WORST game I’ve ever played. Filled with glitches, bugs, stupid graphics problems and other nonsense which I can’t even start on, the game was hell to finish through. It took me 6 hours to finish a game that I could probably get through in less than 4 hours – sans the cutscenes maybe.

The game was FILLED with glitches. I thought this was because I had a cracked version from SKIDROW (NOT the band, no). Turns out the game is actually quite buggy .. the PC version of it at least.

From having doors that didn’t open to keys that didn’t work to graphics that kept getting messed up or downright missing from the place, it was a terrific experience and not something I’ll forget soon. My roommate had a good time laughing his head off each time I met up with one of these glitches and started trying to circumvent it by hook or crook. Finally, I resorted to downloading a bunch of saved games online and crossing levels which just could NOT be crossed.

Apart from that, the game itself had some levels which required a kind of mixed focus and for a guy more accustomed to a joystick, moving your hands around on the keys didn’t feel all that good .. but fact remains that they ARE quite challenging and I crossed all of them when I reduced my concentration level to zip and let my fingers do what they wanted. Yep, instinct actually helps.

Anyway, PLEASE give this game a miss. I cannot emphasise on how bad an experience it was. I got through it today and am sitting here talking to you. You may not be so lucky (I sound all dark and mysterious, I know). Also, tell anyone you know to give this game a miss or probably get the PS3 version which has fewer bugs reportedly.

Anyway,

And then there were none!

Boredom has hit me in varied levels. I’m not gonna lie and pretend this is the worst it’s come to. But it’s close.

I’m alone in my room in the hostel. My wing has a max of 5 people as compared to it’s usual 35. There is no food in the hostel. I don’t have anything to study. I don’t feel like gamin. I’ve turned in for the night at 3 itself. Also, I’m feeling the need to talk to someone so I’m posting on my blog from my bed (android phone and all that, y’know).

Why am I telling the internet all this when maximum views will come from random statistics websites? Because I dunno what else to do. The very painstaking effort of typing this truck load of lard is welcome to my numbed out brain.

The only thing to look forward to in the days ahead is the project mentor decisions. It’s gonna be a metaphorical bloodbath for nerds. Me? I’ve stopped caring.

Ah well … To boredom *raises glass* .. may you return to haunt me again and again to remind me about the uselessness of the life I’m leading.

Adios world .. I’m off to sleep. Hopefully at least my dreams will be better ..

The Life of Pi

And then he took the seventh day to rest. We call it a Sunday. My exams are about 2 days away. I can’t read a word of the book I’m trying to study. So I resorted to writing the much procrastinated review of one of the best books I’ve read and probably the only book I believe was worth the Man Booker it got.

As is usual with me, I will digress to the level of making you check the title of the post again. But yet, I will come through. So, we went to Odyssey at EA Mall one fine day and I go directly into the books section. Since I usually have an unlimited budget on what books I buy (Yeah .. My parents are THAT awesome), I tend to browse and buy a lot. I see this book. Although it was in the fiction section and I had heard of the fact that it was a great book from people who never were into math in the first place, it did not strike me that the book was not about the number pi. Ajay clarified that the book was complete fiction, had nothing to do with math and was one of the best books that he ever came across. Now I trust few people on the subject of reading. Ajay is definitely one of them.

So I bought the book with a debit card (Again, what can I say, I am COOL! ) and went off home to read it.

The Life of Pi is hard to describe in one sentence. It is like nothing I’ve ever read before. That is saying something considering I read a lot. I am not being patronising, believe me. Some books leave a very deep imprint on your memory cells. This is definitely one of them. I categorise it in the same league as LotR, Shantaram and all the other classics which are worth their words.

The book is about a character named Piscine Molitor Patel – the great mix of names has a long story behind it – and this is a story of how his life completely changes from peaceful harmony to absolute chaos and a struggle for survival. Sounds like the government of 10 countries are chasing him around the globe, doesn’t it? There, you would be wrong. The story is about how he gets caught in a lifeboat after losing his family in a drowning ship and has a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra and a Royal Bengal Tiger for company. Getting interesting, isn’t it? Like the back of the book says – The scene is set for a great adventure

Rather than delve into the plot and make spoilers, I thought I’d just skim through my own thoughts on the book. I find most authors have a knack of being VERY exhaustive on the descriptions. Of particular notice among the contemporaries would be Dan Brown. Yann Martel has the same problem. If you read a lot, you will eventually start ignoring most of the facts or come back to the descriptions if some line in the book doesn’t match the imagined character in your head.

The author seems to have done his homework on both India (where the protagonist is from) and survival at sea. Although some of the descriptions may be too grotesque to the liking of others, I am quite acclimatised to it (I suggest watching dexter ). It can get quite boring in the middle for people who get easily distracted though – one reason why I couldn’t finish the book within a day and a half as I usually do at my speed.

Yann Martel’s writing is kind of unique in a way (as is everyone else’s). He seems to go more into the language of the layman – which is pretty appropriate considering the style of narration – rather than the high end English that Amitav Ghosh resorts to. It is sheer hypocrisy to say I prefer that but I really do.

Final Consensus – The book is most definitely worth the read. If you feel bored after some time, keep the book down, go for a walk, whistle random tunes, log on to facebook, drink some coffee, have a KitKat and then come back to the book. I guarantee you that when you finish reading, you will feel the exact same way as I do.

The beast!

People nickname a lot of things. Their friends, themselves, their stuffed toys, teachers, college subjects, places, hang outs and finally their “little” selves

I nicknamed my laptop. No, not the old one. But my brand new laptop. Yes, congratulations are in order, jealous looks are anticipated, slander to be borne but its all worth it for this veritable beast that I almost tricked my father into buying

But, let me relive my boorish awesomeness and my steadfast nature which facilitated me in getting this new toy.

I really needed a new laptop because I didn’t have enough power in my old one. I mean, it looked cool, downright cute and was very handy but it had an Intel Atom processor which made it about as powerful as my old home PC.

I brought up the subject in summer of 2010. Dad agreed immediately when I told him I needed it for studies. But I didn’t have the heart to give away my beloved netbook. So, I leave it at that.

Then, around October, my dad tells me to get a new laptop since he needs my netbook. I agree. But again, my love for my netbook stopped me from taking further action. Around November, my dad gets really frustrated and asks me to get one or he will buy one himself and it will be another netbook. I fought a little but left it at that since I had lost all need for a new laptop by then, what with Matlab no longer being part of my core syllabus.

In December during my holidays, my dad gets his frustration to peak and threatens to take my netbook away without buying me a new laptop. I get my legs under me and go shopping. I know what I want – an i7 core processor with whatever else can fit in the budget. I didn’t look far. I browsed the Dell site and ordered it online.

 

 

YES! I got a Dell XPS

The specifications? I’m only too happy to tell you:

Processor – Core i7

Speakers – JBL

RAM – 6GB

Graphics Card – 2GB Nvidia GT series

HDD – 500GB (Sad, I know )

3 USB ports; 2 of them being USB 3.0

Blu Ray Drive

That’s about it I guess. Although I made a mistake of not buying a 9 cell battery with the laptop, the rest of it is well worth every penny. Its worked like a charm till now. Oh, btw, the screen is LED

Yes, I miss my netbook but this is more than a good substitute. Downsides? The bloody weight of course. But the absolute raw power it gives is so satisfying to the absolutely deadened brain receptors which give a gap of almost 10 seconds to check the screen after clicking Firefox to check if it finally opened.

Oh well

Aaaand we’re back!

The title is inspired from the message gtalk gives once it connects back online. Considering I have enough experience on the connectivity issue, I have by hearted most of the error messages Google Chrome gives.

Anyway, things have changed around me. There is the new playtoy, the work concerning college clubs, the new semester, the awesome new year .. and a lot more.

So what do you do when you are bored and you know a lot about the internet? You create 4 or 5 posts, tag them separately and post links on all major social media sites. Then, watch as the views per day for your blog rises like hell. I guess I shall start with the playtoy.

Post A Week!

So, WordPress here thought it’d be fun to introduce some new agenda of PostAWeek to help increase their blog posts, page views, ad views, revenue and all that shit. Oh, btw, it’s also an awesomesauce idea.

I guess I’ll sign up for it since I post once in 2 weeks already … Next post is not due for sometime though

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood

I’ve been a great fan of Ubisoft’s astounding platformer since the first iteration came out sometime 2 years ago.

Assassin’s Creed is a beautiful game. In both design and story, I can see no parallel. In gameplay, it is somewhat similar to Prince of Persia for all the jumping around even though this is a free roam.

I found Assassin’s Creed 1 stupendous. The major reason for Assassin’s Creed 1 was that the story was different. So different that it stunned me into bowing to its awesomeness. I realised that the convenience of having another device within the game – *spoiler* – the Animus, gave any faults that the game had to lend blame to the Animus rather than Ubisoft (or at least, that I guess would be their argument). Gameplay I found quite awesome what with climbing places and all but there was quite some similarity with Prince of Persia. Graphics were simply stunning. The different aspects of the game like Leap of Faith, counter attacks and all that were equally good. The ending was superb.

I found Assassin’s Creed 2 absolutely phenomenal. Story was, yet again, top class. It equalled if not exceeded expectations that AC1 set. I personally found it better than AC1. Gameplay largely remained the same although since the protagonist changed, the environment was recreated to pure pitch perfect awesomeness. The difference now was that you had levels in the game in terms of developing your hometown. Graphics actually exceeded AC1 even though it was the same engine far as I could tell. The new weapons in the game were well crafted and the introduction of Leonardo da Vinci as the eternal genius maverick was a clever move. The ending was just … stunning. There is no other word for it. It was just too good to be true.

I found Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood mildly boring. Yes, I’m not kidding you. The major problem was that Ubisoft clearly did not intend this to be Assassin’s Creed 3. They intended it to be Assassin’s Creed 2.5 or something.

The story still revolves around the spoilt noble’s son – turned awesomesauce killer assassin – Ezio Auditore. Although the game shifts focus entirely to Rome (which is HUGE in the game), it has basically very few differences. The story progresses a lot (in the real world and in the Animus) and the ending was very very very good. But it left a lot of unanswered questions (definitely intentional). The last 2 dialogues after the credits start are so enigmatic that some really awesome theories have cropped up.

The story mode ends with the usual amount of gameplay.. I guess a solid 5 or 6 hours would do it. Then come the side missions. There is no other word except “hell frickin lot”to describe it. It starts from Romulus Lairs, goes through Assassination Missions and contracts, encompasses thief and courtesan assignments, and finds a real niche in Leonardo Machines. I will explain none of that since the ingenuity of Ubisoft would be lost. They are numerous as HELL. Too many to count and too many to finish. So much so that hitting 70% of “synch” is turning out to be really tough (though I suspect not getting 100% synch in the smaller missions makes a difference).

No new weapons from what I could see though a ton of new tricks like horse to horse assassination, kill streak accumulation etc are superb. The best part of the game (gamers will LOVE this) is that the guards no longer attack you one at a time and they are no longer easily disposable. They can get REALLY tough and *spoiler* calling in assassin recruits sometimes becomes a necessity rather than an afterthought *spoiler end* . There are things like the guards grabbing you while the other guard hits you and all that. So yeah, you will definitely enjoy the level of fighting in this game. Obviously, you will get used to this one as well and it’ll look a lot easier later but that point is moot.

Leonardo da Vinci makes his appearance again as do many of the characters from AC2 including Rodrigo Borgia (who I found out was actually a Pope in öur”universe .. s#!t Ubisoft, what the hell were you thinking?), Ezio’s mother and sister, La Volpe and the dude who attacks France and calls his sword Bianca (I forgot his name).

There is also the “Virtual Training”mode in the Animus where you can go and earn medals for doing what you do best in video games – KILL. You also get medals for running around and all that but hell, who cares

Consensus: If you worship the series (high-five btw) or simply liked the last 2 games, this is a must-buy. If you’re new to the series, please check out the first 2 games for 2 reasons: 1) They are a much better representation of the series’ awesomeness; 2) You will not understand the story of this game as it starts very abruptly from where it last left off.

PS: First post from new laptop

Curtain Call

Yes, yet another of my last few holidays comes to an end. Only .. hmm .. about 3 more to go. Wow! To think there will be a point in life when there won’t be long stretches of lazing around and hanging out with friends. I definitely need to become an entrepreuner to enjoy life. Or a coder .. basically holiday time since I can do that 25/8

These holidays were just as unproductive as the last few, if not all that boring. My college decided to shorten these winter vacations as compared to the last 2 years. Where it was a solid 30 days last year, it came down to simply 27 this year (Sad, I know) … But all that apart, I spent most of those 27 days doing something or the other to rid myself of boredom.

There was the PS3. I finally finished Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood in story mode (review coming soon) and most of the non-story mode as well. It’s time to go back to some RDR again. Man, that game never gets boring

My book reading took a back seat though. I bought 3 books – Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynmann (Yes ) by Richard Feynmann (the man himself) and Nine Lives by William Dalrymple. I’ve started reading Life of Pi and seem to be crawling through the book even though I can see that it is one of the most interesting stories I’ve read in a very very long time. The other 2 books will have to take a backseat. I finished 2 of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot novels – Death in the Clouds and Hercule Poirot Christmas. There is really nothing to say – Agatha Christie is the best crime writer I’ve read in a very long time. Although when you look for pattern in her novels, you find one concerning the killer and the motive, the modus operandi is completely different each time. I have a feeling she wove her tale backwards from how the murder is staged. Also, I got some Isaac Asimov reading done. I finished the third book in the Robots in Time series and am in the fourth one. It is fairly engaging but not exactly something to keep you hooked.

The TV shows have been caught up with. They have been put on hold thanks to the holiday season but no worries .. They shall start again in January. i haven’t seen many movies these holidays either. Of worthy note was Scott Pilgrim  vs the World which was frankly speaking, a very weird movie but it was funny as hell, no doubt about it. And also, I went to the theatres and saw Ratha Charithram or some similar named movie. It basically sucked. And then, today ..

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 : The movie was actually pretty good compared to its predecessors. Apart from the usual extravagance a story with “magical” potential gives special effects a chance to have, it was directed with just enough action and emotion to keep it from becoming complete crap .. but I didn’t enjoy it. I can impartially rate movies since one part of me is always attentive to something so big going on in front of my eyes. The other part made it hell, considering I was sitting near an ABSOLUTE douchebag and the fact that the theatre had a lot of local crowd who basically came there to gawk at Emma Watson and make comments about a movie they could’ve hardly understood beyond the Harry Potter part.

After the movie, douchebag and another friend of mine revealed that they had about 1350 bucks worth of free gaming left for Blur .. Starting from Air Hockey (which I own’d) till playing car race on LAN in an Arcade (which I own’d as well) and playing Tekken 6 (which douchebag obviously own’d) and other minor arcade games, we had a lot of fun for the money.

Apart from all the fun and frolic, I’ve been preparing for CAT *snorts* , learning python (holy crap, whatte language) and trying to start on writing stories.

The holidays will end this Sunday when I shall leave for college early in the morning. And then, another semester will begin where I will yet again pretend to struggle for gaining academic merit when I know it hardly matters anymore and will develop my hacking skills to another level entirely (hopefully).

Ah well, adios 2010, welcome 2011 and all that. Like I read in a tweet last year .. “The universe is 15 billion years old and we celebrate  every new year. Seems like having a fuckin parade every time I piss”

The #WikiLeaks Furore

When you are an avid Twitter user, you realise that within seconds of anything happening anywhere across the globe, you are appraised of the event – possibly with photos and a good footage – provided you “follow” the right people, of course. Twitter is very very powerful in that aspect. So powerful, in fact, that the top brass of the company don’t even have a goal as to what the site intends to be.

But, if you’re an avid Twitter user, much like any source of information that is user controlled and free, it tends to be misleading. There are many instances of this happening. The most recent that comes to mind, though, is the WikiLeaks drama that has been escalated from a small regular incident of the freedom of press being violated into an international drama involving most of Europe, the inevitable US of A and the Interpol (?)

So, what is all the furore about? Yours truly went investigating online yesterday out of pure boredom and found out many interesting facts.

WikiLeaks was a site founded by this fellow called Julian Assange – who has been in the news for the last few days without a break. It’s what they call a whistleblower site. The site believes in Right to Information for the common man and the Freedom of Press and did anything from shady deals to honest over the table payments to get their hands on classified documents which were not meant to be seen by the general public.

Now, the inherent problem with these sites that believe they serve a “higher cause” or the “greater good” is that they never realise the repercussions of their actions. So, instead of analysing whether the documents had information that nobody should EVER see, they leaked all of it – albeit in batches.

There are some people you can piss off and get away with, some people you should never piss off and then there is the US of A. An epitomisation of power gone wrong, in my opinion – I’m still surprised the country manages to hold together as a supposed “superpower”. So, the dudes in the government of USA were really pissed with documents reaching WikiLeaks and they couldn’t understand who the “mole” was in their organisation who had such top level clearance. They became even more pissed with the latest batch of documents which contained cables of diplomatic conversations. Now, talk all you want about freedom of press,but that is some serious shit to put out for the world to see and can lead to wars.

Since they were not sure they would succeed in finding the rat, they started using all their political clout against WikiLeaks, trying to heap allegations on the site and shut it down. They tried a variety of attacks ranging from “This is just wrong! Hmph!” to “Dude, seriously man, stop putting all our shit out for the world to see!”.

Most of the companies which were supporting WikiLeaks indirectly – Amazon.com was providing servers, EveryDNS was providing the … DNS; Visa, MasterCard and PayPal were allowing transactions online to the wikileaks website – started calling off their support. EveryDNS took down the DNS entry for the site. Amazon stopped providing servers to the site – thanks to this US Senator called Joe Lieberman. Visa, MasterCard and PayPal went ahead and cut off their ties with the site as well. This series of support-withdrawals led to a mass media coverage and outrage from every reporter worth his weight in paper or digital media.

But the site survived since there were still servers willing to support it and it didn’t matter any longer if it didn’t get a DNS (clarification – DNS is what your URL is called from the server side of things). At one point, Twitter had updates which gave IP addresses as to where the WikiLeaks site was located. I guess that was fine with the world since they now had something to protest about and also, their favourite whistleblower site was still up and running. Some people didn’t like it though.

Chief among them was a group of hackers called just “Anonymous” who presumably met on 4chan. Pissed over what these sites did to WikiLeaks by withdrawing support, they started organising DDoS attacks on the site servers. DDoS – Distributed Denial of Service attacks are simple to orchestrate but difficult to synchronise. The idea is that you simply overload the servers with so many simultaneous requests that it either shuts down or times out all other requests temporarily. This basically means the site is no longer usable. They became so audacious as to post when exactly they would attack. For instance, they took down the MasterCard site and then, about a few hours later, put up an update saying that the Visa site would be down in an hour. yours Truly checked a minute after the said hour and lo and behold, the site was down. They gave warnings of an attack on Amazon servers as well. But later on, they called it off citing that it was too huge right now and the attack would be done in future. Sweeeeet!

So, coming back to the site, it was up and running. Now, US of A was still perturbed because those Diplomatic cables were there for the world to see as were their dirty little secrets. So, instead of attacking the site, they went after Julian Assange, the founder. Out of nowhere, Assange gets a reward on his head because he is suspected in a case of rape. Now, here comes the best part – it seems the sex was consensual but once the condom broke, the woman wanted it to stop but Assange didn’t. I laughed so hard when I heard this .. pathetic, these allegations. Seriously, I thought the guys behind it would come up with something better. Now, the whole drama has become a cheap Bollywood movie and I hope TR becomes part of the judge panel

Man, does he crack me up!

Anyway, to get back to the point, Julian Assange has been arrested and the whole of twitter is following his every move right now. The media, when misused, is the most dangerous weapon on the planet. But when misused over a certain extent, it starts to get boring. Whenever something new pops up, it splashes the headlines for a week and raises the TRP of all news channels. But it dies out as other things replace it. The social media, though, is where all news can be followed through every update. For example, the #wikileaks channel is buzzing with news and will still be, long after the news channels stop reporting on it and moving to something else.

Basically, I feel the purpose of Twitter is that the social media gets free rein – which is the best way to spread news anywhere on the planet.

Pissed!

I will start this philosophically. I don’t care what anyone says about my mental health. It’s just that sometimes, I NEED to let things out. And I hate doing so to other people. I’d rather that an unknown server somewhere stored this information and some random viewer see it and pass on. Yes, my social skills are that bad. So sue me

In a person’s life, there are good times. Then there are bad times. Then there is the phase I’m going through today. It’s called “Oh crap”. It’s like I’m Arthur Dent. That the universe felt that it should maintain the (good luck : bad luck) ratio and came up with the brilliant idea of dumping all the bad luck on one guy to balance the rest of the world. Guess who the guy was

I usually don’t bother putting effort. I know that unless I go all out on something in particular, it never works out. I found out today that if I don’t go all out on something, it turns out f**ked up as well. So, what do I resort to? I resort, with all my conscience and contemptuous attitude, to show the finger to the universe. Take all you want, you bitch. I will definitely not respond to any societal pressure from now on. Nope. None of it.

There are some rules of the society I absolutely do NOT understand.

#1 : You’re hitting puberty. You should gawk at girls your age.

_|_ … I don’t give a damn. I know I’m not gay. Also, I don’t have the slightest interest in gawking at girls. Save me some time. And STOP poking fun at me for it.

#2 : You should keep in touch with friends and family.

I’m definitely not a great fan of social networking. I quit Facebook (No stupid comments) for a reason. I don’t make calls for a reason. I text, rarely. Unless you’re as close to me as to know what’s going on in most aspects of my life, I don’t WANT to talk to you. Yes, I’m a social misfit, I’m a recluse, I’m an asshole. So WHAT? What are you gonna do about it? You wanna know? You can’t do SHIT! Yep, that’s right.

#3 : You should score marks.

My greatest bane. My biggest nightmare. And my most IRRITATING conformation rule. I will show the finger to the society. The rest of the world may care about marks. I DO NOT! I don’t give a damn. Do marks define you? No. What those articles say are true. People will tell you that those articles are for making the losers feel better. I’ll tell you .. They’re for making the people who score in subjects they have ZERO interest in to feel the intensity of their stupidity. I hate those kinds of people. They’re not nerds. They’re not geeks. They’re what we call in India, as padips. They have no reason to study a particular subject but to get marks. Their existence has no meaning. But, for the world out there, they define the above average intellect people. They are the ones who work like workhorses and put in 60 hour weeks. If you classify yourself into this category, I’m not going to say sorry. But PLEASE! GET A LIFE!!

#4 : No Vices.

I have nothing against this particular rule. I mean, it’s all for your own good. But when I’m 20, I know how harmful any vice is. If I STILL opt to go ahead and say I’m not addicted, it does NOT mean that I’m in denial. It means I can handle it. I’m not a bloody child for the love of god!

#5 : No “bad words”

Oh yes. Civilised society does not entitle you to have the freedom of expression to speak out your mind. Expletives are frowned upon. People look at it as a mindset of an individual rather than just a way of taking out all your frustration. Have you ever noticed how most expletives are bi or tri-syllabled? Also, if you observe, repeating them continuously makes you take out all your frustration by simply emphasising on particular syllables. For example, fu-kkk is the best way to take out most of your frustration.

Yes, I hate civilised society except for one aspect – “Survival of the fittest” is no longer a lifestyle for homo sapiens. If it was, I wouldn’t have made it to 20 years of existence.

yes, I hate life right now. Like I said before .. So sue me

BarCamp Chennai 5 – #bcc5

For reasons of hashtagging search results leading directly to my blog, I included that in the title.

Why post so soon after the previous blog post? Because I promised I would to a bunch of like minded geeks.

Today, I attended BarCamp Chennai 5. It’s an unconference – which is another way of saying it’s the most free forum on the planet. The participants are the ones who conduct all the sessions and with whom all the interaction takes place. There is no greater authority asserting itself and taking centre stage all the time. I absolutely loved the concept.

It takes some time to understand what an unconference is and how much freedom you have in there. Actually, you have zero restrictions and some minor monitoring in case things get out of hand for the sponsors – PayPal.

I went to BarCamp with my friend, Abishek. Believe me, getting to that office is not a piece of cake considering all areas beyond Thiruvanmiyur are memory blocks you can’t access (The influence of assassin’s creed is evident, sorry )

But we made it to the PayPal office and after fumbling around the maze they call the parking area, we got to their registration desk and to the 6th floor into the Main Camp. We took quite some time trying to wrap our heads around their schedule. Once convinced we’d got it right, we proceeded to our first session – BrainNook.

BrainNook is an online multiplayer game – for kids. It was an eye opener as to how an online multiplayer is generally designed. I mean – this is nowhere close to the complexity that MMOs like WoW or others possess but the basic underlying architecture is the same – server handling, client handling, server-client communication and all that. BrainNook is an educational game and can be accessed here. I never bothered trying to play it because I know I have no interest in these things. The session anchor – Abhijeet Vijayakar – explained to us the major components of the game design. The game seems fairly simple on the in-game quest designs part (hardcore gamers will know what I mean by that term) but still amazes me on how much resource is needed for such a simple idea. Starting from a server having 2 server management softwares – PHP+MySQL and Flex – till the feature-rich client and the custom analytics code for data collection, the game took 15 months to design and while not a visual treat (it’s for kids – so what the hell), it certainly brings out some design perspectives. The games in BrainNook are designed from a few prototypes to which specifics are supplied so that the Flex server can supply the required game on demand. It’s like keeping a substrate and either adding or removing stuff to get the desired product. One valid question was the design inconsistencies when it is laid open to developers who want to create a game with a different base prototype. Although the answer was not satisfactory, the game is only in its developing stages. So a lot can be overlooked right now.

After that, we moved on to the NoSQL session. Now, considering I’m not at all knowledgeable in RDBMS or any type of data management system, this was a no-brainer for me. But the session was really interactive and I came across a lot of tech jargon like JSON, schema etc. The basic thing I understood was that instead of data management that SQL does, NoSQL aims at decentralisation of data management and a more flexible data storage structure. Querying for patterns seems to be a problem to deal with. Although some explanation was given, it was beyond my plane of knowledge to grasp it.

After a little loafing around since we had no other session which was interesting, we went to the TEDTalk given by Siddhartha Jayakumar. Siddhartha suffers from Cerebral Palsy and has no coordination with this movements but still managed to get a job into RBS and get a CDCS certification and go into the documents checking section. Very inspiring talk, all in all.

The most interesting session was the next one – On the Android OS by Mr. Gajendran. The last time I attended a session on Android was in college and the ex-Amrita Motorola employee was not exactly very knowledgeable. Fortunately, when you are given a session by a man who hacked the bootloader of his nexus one on his own – as a hobby – you are lucky because he knows everything about the OS. The session was basically about how the Android framework is built and the interaction of applications within the android environment. Very very interesting to say the least.

After getting a T-Shirt (which I’m wearing right now ) and taking a look at who won the PayPal award for an innovative money making idea using the PayPal API, we left the building back home.

I was tweeting the whole while I was there and checking random laptops plugged into the #bcc5 stream in twitter to check my own updates appearing

All in all, a very fun and productive day – definitely what I predicted it to be .. Or not!

Return of the Satti

Guess who’s back … Back again ..

Finally, my holidays are here. FINALLY! I dunno how long I’ve been waiting for this one.

So .. I thought about when and if I should blog again. I thought a lot and then, I thought, let’s do it.

What does a holiday entail to a hyper active teenager who is going to be not-a-teenager in a matter of months? For me, it means gaming (a lot), some book reading, some movies and trawling the net and wikipedia alternatively for internships and random information respectively.

This might be the one vacation that I truly plan on using productively. But, when you think about the fact that this may be the LAST vacation I ever have, I feel I should rethink that particular stratagem.

So, a report on my progress:

First, the book reading. I’ve finished 2 books since the last time I blogged – Shantaram and H2G2 part 6 of 3

Shantaram, as I typed before, is about a heroin addict who escaped from Australia and came to India and fell in love with the country. To say the book was good would be an understatement. It actually left a profound impact on me. The highlight, as I mentioned before, was it’s deceptively simple language. The other highlight I found upon further delving into the book, was the fact that the author was very philosophical in the way he looked at the world. In fact, there are some particular lines in the book – parts in which the narrator is pondering over some worldly aspects of life – when it gets really profound and then you realise, the author is actually right about what he is saying. My tweet about the book being awesome got a –1 on a RT (thanks @shridharama) which I partially deserve because I mentioned that it may be close to LotR, which, now I come to think of it, is just absurd. The book tracks Roberts journey from coming to India and living in a Marathi village, moving to the slums of Bombay, opening up a free health clinic there, acting in bollywood, working as a street soldier for the Bombay mafia, fighting alongside the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and a lot more. Should you read the book – Hell Yes!

H2G2 was a very funny book. I’ll be frank though – it wasn’t even close to the reboot I thought the series would get. Instead, it turned out to be a pretty funny sequel-prequel … If you read the series, you’ll know why I can’t call it either. The amount of inconsistency and blatant stupidity the story deals with sometimes gets on your nerves – fair examples being the bistromathic drive, the tender moment – horrible accident juxtaposition (or the lack of it) and some others. Also, DNAs final books leave a big question mark as to where in the space-time region, the protagonist actually is and which dimension he still exists in. But, since the story is meant to deal with absurdities and the notion that a lot of stupidity can couple together to create a great, meaningless and yet, quite an enjoyable story, you can forgive all its faults. Scratch that, you’re actually expected to praise them

Now that those 2 books are ticked off my reading list, I’m getting back to Isaac Asimov and books in his series that other authors have written. Following the chronology can get really boring with this author considering that his science and his stories make perfect sense – unlike any of the H2G2 series. Right now, I’m reading a book written by William F Wu about Robots in Time. It’s the third book in a series of 6 where robots get lost in time and a team of 3 humans and one advanced humanoid are sent in search of them. The reason all these books fall under the chronology of Isaac Asimov, is that the robots in the books always obey the 3 laws he set down. Those 3 laws are so famous, in fact, and so quintessential that all AI systems are planning to be made on their basis. But Asimov’s interpretation of his laws was a lot different than what this author does. William Wu goes so deep into those laws, you sometimes wonder if such complex AI systems aren’t human in themselves and if the paradoxes and difficulties they encounter will simply not lead to a machine rebellion that so many movies depict.

Heavy pondering on trivial and completely abstract issues apart, I have also covered up a lot on the movies front

I’ve seen only 2 good movies since the last post – “Stranger than Fiction” and “Tron”.

“Stranger than Fiction” is a superb movie. Having a storyline unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, the movie was very well taken. All B Grade actors except for one guy who looked remotely like Alec Baldwin. I expected a better climax but I could’ve settled for this one anyway. Must-watch!

I watched Tron mainly because I wanted to be able to follow the storyline in the sequel coming up called “Tron: Legacy”.

“Tron” had a story unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. It was definitely created by a computer nerd from the 80s. But the graphics are absolutely, phenomenally, totally sucky! When I say, they suck, I mean they S-U-C-K! To put it in perspective, I found the graphics of that epic arcade game – Skyroads – to be slightly better than what this movie offered. Yes, it sucked that much. You want a glimpse of what’s got me so wound up? Here, see for yourself:

Yep, that’s how the majority of the movie looks like. That, btw, is the game of “Lightcycles” which is a very very important part of the movie. No spoilers though. For true nerds, the movie is an epic. It marked a totally different type of out-of-the-box thinking.Giving personalities to programs and creating protagonists and antagonists in a plot that concerned the internal workings of a computer was a major breakthrough in unconventional thinking. Consensus: If you’re a nerd, I beg you to watch this. If you’re not a nerd, give this a miss.

The holidays have also marked the return to the world of TV Shows. I’m still following Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Dexter, Chuck and Lie to Me. To say the least, Dexter seems as epic as ever and Chuck seems to be getting better and better guest stars – what with Linda Hamilton, Timothy Dalton and all that.

Tomorrow is my first productive activity for the holidays. I’m attending this unconference called BarCamp Chennai – 5th Edition. Sounds like fun. But considering I have stage fear and this being an unconference, I have some trepidation about going there. It’s in Shollinganallur. So we’ll see. Abishek is coming here and mostly Ashwin may make it as well. Will be fun, hopefully

Surprisingly, I still haven’t touched the PS3 since coming back. I guess it was due to the lack of games. No worries – the issue has been solved. Today. With this:

… Yes, that’s right. I got the epic awesomesauce game. Sadly, I still haven’t played it. I’m waiting for the TV to get free so that I can let loose my awesomeness  … I don’t think anything this childish should excite me so much at this age. But what the hell

I also went out with the buggers today. Where did we land up? In citicentre. I dunno why we keep returning to that dilapidated, good-for-nothing mall again and again. But we do. I purchased AC3 there, ate a sub, a veg zynger and a chocolate ice cream

Also, I’m getting my C++ programming back on track. Just finished a permutations program which was eluding me for quite sometime. Should get started on the others

Apart from this, life is just the usual. I’ve got a thing for Opeth’s jarring death music now. I guess it’s a passing phase. Also, I’m trying to be productive and prepare for my CAT entrance next year. Yes, I’m a very padips and studious fellow

Until tomorrow (when I update the blog concerning #bcc5),

Adios!

PS: Hashtagging should be made a search engine base for the whole internet, I swear. Metadata tagging is so yesterday.

Vaazhkai Oru Vattam!

The title is actually a very famous saying in Tamil which means ‘Life is a circle’.

I’ve never tried to learn the true meaning of that statement basically because I have no inclination to delve ln issues of philosophy. But I’ve also felt that the examples people quote to support this proverb are usually not very correct in their description.

For example, meeting someone after a long time doesn’t exactly imply that the “vaazhkai oru vattam” proverb holds true.

But when life hits you on the face with tragedies one after another, you’re forced to admit that sometimes, a higher force does not really like you. I’m usually cynical of philosophy and all other superstitious practices like horoscopes, palm reading etc. Hell, I’m a proud atheist as well. I’m always proud of being a rebel to the orthodox ways of my family and caste.

When things happen like it happened to me today, though, you have a feeling you’re just another of the billion life forms on the planet and that life itself, far as you can see into the near future, has no ultimate purpose. You live, eat, breathe and die. Why act as though a higher calling must be fulfilled? Why have the feeling that everything will become all right when there is nothing to really get back to? What difference does food make as long as its hygienic and edible? Spending money on stupid stuff like pizzas and other vices just becomes hilariously moronic in your eyes. Finding what all romantic as well as intellectual poets and writers refer to as ‘true love’ becomes a chore that holds no meaning when you’re born alone and will die alone .. taking none of your achievements or failures into what is romantically referred to as the netherworld.

At times like these, I relate to my favourite video game character – Agent 47 from the Hitman franchise – who has no morals to speak of, does not care about women and kills without conscience. He has no concept of revenge or killing when it does not serve his purpose of getting money and leading a luxurious and out of limelight life.

Being inconspicuous is in anyone’s genes. Calling attention to yourself would only alert the predators as they look for things to satisfy their hunger. I guess going along with those genes will help me from now.

Sixth sense, in my opinion, was a bane as well as a gift to mankind … something God gave along with death.

Yee Haw!!

Yes, that’s what I feel like saying. Why? This is why:

That’s right … I have FINALLY acquired the much talked about game. How is it? I’m not sure, really. I will get into my groove with the game tonight. Sandeep and Vikku came to my house today and totally spoilt the save point for the game. So yeah, I’m gonna start all over again.

Apart from that, I have been trying real hard to get the PS3 to connect to the internet. So far, it has not been a success. The major problem with the PS3 (as with my phone) is that it needs an access point network and can’t connect to an ad-hoc network. Why? I don’t know.

So basically, after some googling (they should make that a proper verb), I came across this software called Connectify which is able to do what I want. The problem? It STILL doesn’t work with my PS3 (although my phone is able to connect to it)!!

I need to get some DLC for the game (it’s paid, I believe). I also need to desperately get a PSN ID. Oh well … Hopefully, I figure it out by tonight.

I just came back from Bangalore, btw. The trip was … fun. It wasn’t worth it for the In Plant Training, or for the accommodation, or for the worthless hours spent roaming the city. It was just worth it to be back with friends. Sometimes, I look forward to college for this particular reason.

The reading I got into so voraciously has not been coming along well. The last book I started with – “Sea of Poppies” by Amitav Ghosh still isn’t over (not even half over, come to think of it). I desperately wanna finish it before college reopens (which is next week )

Next thing to look forward to? Artemis Fowl – Atlantis Complex … releasing on 20th July. I won’t be here. But my mother will be. I will make sure she buys it.

The Artemis Fowl series is really awesome. For a book targeted at the juvenile reading market, it keeps me very very hooked. Eoin Colfer has made the first chapter for the new book worth the read. I’m just looking forward to his version of a sequel to the EPIC (yeah, E-P-I-C) Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy!

Mom is hogging the TV now, so yeah, I need to get back to that book.

Adios!

Back and Gone Again!

Travelling is supposed to be really awesome. I believe in that age-old dictum (rephrased to suit the modern times). But then, too much travel is tiresome. I have been travelling – a LOT! For the past 15 days, I have not known much rest except for the last 2 days of it, I guess.

This trip to Bombay was really something – I actually moved around so much that my whole time table changed. I also understood, in true sense, the meaning of the word hectic.

Giving a full summary of the trip is a pain in the hands that type and on the brain that reminisces to collect enough memories to put into the post. So yeah, I’m basically NOT gonna do that. Suffice it to say that the Inplant Training was basically OK. Not that you expect much from it in any case. The certificates are still pending though.

On the other hand, there are some other more interesting news that I would like to share. I found some true love in life after a long, long time. I am so happy and so sad that my ex will now not be treated with the same reverence. Yes, it is pretty obvious that I’m using metaphors here. But then, here is the real thing:

Yes, I am now the proud owner of a PS3 – The latest edition as well. After putting tantrums, reasoning and shouting at my parents (all of which I am NOT ashamed of in any way), I have got it!

I also got THIS free:

Yes, I feel all hazy and dream-like

Anyway, I got the PS3 a day before I left. I played as much of the game as I possibly could. I played it in easy mode (I just wanted to finish it, see?). I got back yesterday and now, about an hour ago, I officially finished the game. It was absolutely phenomenal and TOTALLY worth the ratings.

I can now go to Bangalore with a clear conscience … There are some more things to do though – search for new games, a HDMI cable at a cheap price (It is absolutely UNBELIEVABLE how much a cable can cost these days) and hopefully another controller. All in good time.

Now that the game is over, I need to get back to some reading. Yes, I have taken up the age-old hobby. I am trying to get a membership card at Crossword so that I can get some discounts on future purchases … but I’m just too busy at the moment.

Read this new book by an Indian author called “The Immortals of Meluha”. It’s about how Shiva may have actually been a human whose karma recast him as God in the books of history. VERY well done book – a little too amateur in some senses but then, it was well worth the read. It is part of a trilogy and I’m waiting for the other 2 parts – “The Secret of the Nagas” and “The Oath of the Vayuputras” … Strikes me that the author – Amish Tripathi – has really outdone himself with the titles . Thinking of reviewing the whole series once the other 2 parts are out.

I also finished a 4-novel omnibus edition of Miss Marple cases (Agatha Christie is da best!) . I need to get back to “Sea of Poppies” by Amitav Ghosh which was a nomination for the Man Booker Prize of 2008 (yep, that DAMN good!).

I leave for Bangalore tomorrow for a training at BHEL. When? At frickin 4:30 in the morning *shakes head in disbelief*

Oh well, hopefully the net works there. In any case, until I come back, adios!

PS : Did you people see the Apple iPhone 4 signal strength problem? *laughs his head off at Apple Inc*

The iPhone 4 :|

There are some tech companies which are good. There are some which are bad. But then there are others you just cannot classify. Apple, as you may have guessed from the last 3 sentences, falls in the third category.

iPhone 4 – the latest venture by Apple had everyone on their toes and I guess it’ll deliver to the target market. But the Smiley in the title says it all … I am not impressed. Here is some YouTube video my friend posted on Facebook (evidence of permeating social networking)

That is a trademark Apple ad in my opinion – brilliantly made, points put forward as easily as possible in layman language and they also showcase how advanced they really are. All of which is true … and yet insidiously over advertised in most ways.

For example, this FaceTime product their advertisement seems to be revolving around seems to be a big deal for them. Frankly, it isn’t. I live in India (assume I applied emphasis here because putting the country name in italics gives me a feeling of performing moral disgrace) and for me, 3G video calling (which is essentially what it is) is pretty commonplace even though the last time I checked there was just ONE operator providing 3G networks throughout the country – BSNL.

Then their next feature – multitasking. This is when frustration sets in. Multitasking is the most basic feature any respectable OS must have. Android had it from it’s earliest stage of development. The iPhone on the other hand went from iPhone 2G, 3G, 3G S and then 4 to get this feature. I just feel like going to one of their presentations and shouting “Big Deal” when they talk about it.

The HD recording is a new feature though. I find it intriguing. Recording video at 720p resolution from a phone. NOT something I’ve seen before.

The design is worth mention in that advertisement. I dunno if any of the hardware they show is news to the tech world but I trust Apple to at least pioneer design whatever they lack in any other field.

The worst part of the advertisement though is how those executives from the company react to the features. I mean … Did you see how that guy in the black dress made FaceTime look like a feature never seen before? Again, at the end, the fellow with glasses mentions how FaceTime is revolutionary enough to call for the release of a separate iPhone in it’s honour. I feel like punching those people when they show this look of being blown away by this feature and that one … It’s YOUR product for the love of god. Don’t act like it’s some meteor that fell from space and you harnessed it.

My 2 cents? : The user experience will be unbeatable as ever but please … if you want the REAL techies to appreciate the product, add some new features.

PS : Just noticed FaceTime works on Wi-Fi … Is it routed through the AT&T network or the Apple servers? I thought the former was the most obvious but now I have my doubts.

This and That *ramble ramble*

These days when you want to express something on the web or share something interesting, there appear to be a LOT of ways. For instance, among my friends, facebook seems to be a very permeating phenomenon.

Self styled web 2.0 elitists like me though give vent to all feelings and share information on almost all famous sites. The reason? It is a complicated one but what other job have I, lying down on the bed at 3 in the night and using the wordpress app to do what this post is describing.

But I digress as usual. The reason all elitists use all the networks possible is threefold.

The first – we don’t know which of these sites will survive the test of time (relates to very very bad pun if you’ve just spent the evening seeing PoP:SoT). Each of these sites has very high potential but no one is ever sure which is the best of them. For instance, Yahoo! has damn near died even though it had major hype for quite some years. For web visionaries (I’m starting to become delusional giving myself all these weird names, I swear), none of these are the ultimate social networking sites while all of them put together are.

The second reason – loss of information. The web has also become a major storage house of personal media and information. The very thought of losing any of this information gives some people the creeps. This is a branch off from reason 1 since dying company ==> loss of information. I personally trust google to never clear it’s storage banks (which contains MOST of my digital online data).

The third reason – being hip and happening. There are times when the newest start ups catch on so soon that people are amazed by it. The ones who were with the service from the start become these undesignated yet unanimously anointed “pro members” kinda users and get this fan following. Say what you want but having a web following is something else when you realise that the guy or chic who is admiring your work is from another part of the world

In my case, I have only few services I use to share feelings, links, info and all that – twitter, facebook, google buzz and wordpress.

Facebook and wordpress are obvious candidates. Twitter and Google Buzz is redundant usage since both are micro blogging sites. So redundant that my accounts in both sites are connected. What I post in one place, goes to the other which saves me unwanted trouble with copying pasting and all that. One of the two can survive.

Twitter is the pioneer. I cannot say whether it’s good or bad since whatever they do is the first thing ever of that kind in microblogging. So yeah, they have high chances of surviving. Google Buzz was a new startup and they started promoting the service in a revolutionary way (typical google). They provided mobile users with location based services and the ability to simply post online with a photo and all that on the go. All other social networks caught on a little later to this concept.

Social networks intrigue me a lot. As I said before, I’ve always believed one of the greatest goals of techonology was building the perfect social network (apart from solving multi dimensional equations, invent time travel, find the theory of everything and all that).

Anyway, typing on the phone is pretty cool (what with my supremely modded fyodor ROM and all that) but it’s getting painful. So yeah … adios!

Birthday!

I think “Happy Birthday” is the most often sung song in English or something like that. Yes, it is my birthday today *acknowledges all wishes*

I’ve a private blog so I might as well write a post about how the day goes.

The biggest surprise from the start was that so many ppl remembered. I usually don’t get all these midnight calls from random girls and guys I hardly speak to in class. The usual messages from chennai friends came through on the dot (peppered with calls this time for some reason). I woke up to calls from ppl in other branches in college. I won’t flatter myself saying that I’m famous. I won’t lie to myself either saying I’m virtually unknown. But these many wishes when I don’t store my birthday in any social network … I still can’t express how surprised I am

Went to the temple in the morning with the new shirt in the unbearable heat. Slipped into the AC as soon as I came back. Had to come back home to eat though.

In the evening, I went to the beach to meet Vikku, Pavithra, Amogh and Swetha. Why? In my defence, I was lured there by Amogh under false pretences that everyone had assembled. Meh. My very very very bad. Anyway, we went to frankies while Amogh and Swetha ate at Pupil. And then … back home.

Spent the night at Vikku’s place playing Tekken. Quietest birthday I’ve had in sometime. Oh well … I loved it!

Holidays!

Yes, it has been long. So long, in fact, that I forgot my wordpress password

I am so so so so so happy to be back home and to be eating edible food

These holidays are gonna be busy though (as was the 4th semester). I have been back a week and I’ve finished an entire IPT at BSNL offices in Tambaram. Pradeep and Sathyaraj came to stay over at my place for the IPT and thanks to them, none of the days so far have been boring. We’ve been roaming around like mad in the Chennai sun. From going to Mocha morning, afternoon and night with Pradeep’s friend, Shiva to meeting up with Satyaki impulsively without thinking … It’s been good. I still have 2 more IPTs left. One in Pune and one, hopefully confirmed, in Bangalore and I’m quite unfazed about all the travelling.

As with all holidays, this has been a boring one. So boring in fact that I’ve mastered the art of feeling that I’m in REM sleep. I can feel dreams when they occur and bend them to my will *mimicks evil laugh* … When I sit back and think about it, I realise that these are the kind of things all spiritual leaders claim as part of their enlightenment. Screw them! All this requires is an iron set will to not have nightmares.

Talking of dreams, I saw this movie called “Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind” a few days ago and I must admit … It was frickin good. The story revolves around this couple that get together, fight and then go to this place called Lacuna corp to get their memories erased. Jim Carrey carries his role to perfection but the best part of the movie are these dreamy sequences. Jim Carrey is getting his memory erased of his girlfriend and all his memories are pulled up and destroyed and even though he wants to stop the process, he can’t wake up long enough to do it.

My upanayanam got over yesterday and I’m now officially a brahmin. Which implies I can’t get to any sort of mischief

The new TV arrived some time ago and man, is it good. Specs : LED, full HD, usb support, 32 inches … Virtually the most advanced thing in the market as of the end of may, 2010. I’m downloading a blu ray movie to see the effect completely

Got my phone rooted at last. All I have to wait for is a stable eclair ROM and I’ll be set with a working bluetooth file transfer.

Birthday is around the corner and I’m trying to leave before that to avoid giving treats (I’m evil, I know) and to avoid getting gifts (I hate that).

Plans of Iron Man 2 got dropped today. Bah. I so badly wanted to see the movie but we had to wait for whiney boy vikku to get back :’(

I have a truckload of movies I want to watch and no time to do so. Sigh. Oh well … back to android

PS: Publishing this post from the phone. Expecting a profound number of typos … Lets see

The fun-nest days ever!

I’ve been meaning to write this for quite a while but a series of activities involving my full concentration (reading cracked, playing games etc) have deterred this task till today. But it gave me the opportunity to put up “J entry” as a task in the Astrid app in god-frickin-awesome phone (which I try to mention in every entry J )

Anyway, this week was one of the best ever. College life seems a lot more fun now. Unlike last semester, I’m a bit more active these days and move around with the “gang” a lot more than I used to. Anyway, all this started on this Sunday.

11/01/2010:

I woke up pretty late but found out that the guys were going out to eat. I presumed it was the Dhaba and followed considering that I really needed an outing and that they would not buy me any food if I asked for it. But surprise, surprise, they were planning on a trip to “That’s Y Food”! If I haven’t mentioned it till now, that is THE most awesome restaurant in all of Coimbatore and bookings are almost always full. But pre-booking for a set of 10 people is not something they can ignore and we were there at about 13:40 hours … A train ride and an auto ride later.

We ordered amazing food and had an even more amazing time. There were 10 of us exactly from what I remember – Shiva, Ajay, SM, Saksham, Sid, Amith, Sarath, Gautham, Yadhu and me. There was the fun we made of each other and going to that small bathroom in huge groups just to show the EEE gang (who were new to the place) the “10 Commandments” poster, meeting KG and some of the EIE and also the other buggers from CSE and EEE.



I also had my first taste of chicken there. I know … It’s a HUGE deal, isn’t it? But then, I think Amith’s philosophy is the best – Try everything once … Experiences will take you a long way in life. We left after our meal – which came to about 200 bucks a head for filling us to the gills with food (I know … Plain awesome!) –, we went in different directions. That is to say, ECE went one way while EEE went the other. We had nothing to do so we went to Bonbon and ate some ice cream (instead of that melt-in-the-mouth mud soufflé or the newly discovered Ferrero Rocher Smoothie in That’s Y … I should try the latter the next time I go there).

We took an auto to the station after that and left by the 16:40 train to college. When we landed in college, we found the caravan of Amma going past the gates to take the freeway gate that we are not allowed to use. To fudge with that … All SM and I noticed was the white Mercedes she was travelling in and the RV that followed. Ah me … If only I could learn to preach philosophy in a convincing manner, life would be all the better.

But then, this was NOT the best part … That was the next day.

12/01/2010:

Monday – I hate this day of the week the most like every other guy. It has all the essential things which are needed to spoil the start of a week – boring lectures, lab and all that crap. But this Monday, things were going to be different.

The first period was Fuel Cells. If I haven’t mentioned this anywhere before, it is one of the 2 electives that our class was offered and I, along with every other fun guy in class, took this one. Since we share both electives with EIE, we have to go to their class while guys from EIE who took Electrochemistry – the other elective – have to come to our class. Fortunately for us, EIE people – who are the coolest on most counts in our college – thought that a Monday like this should not be wasted and went off for the Amma Darshan which our college was sponsoring transport to. So we were left early since there was no one left to take class for.

While we were loitering around in the corridor with our free period in hand, we made a group and discussed things out. We came to the awesome conclusion that we should go for that Amma Darshan and then go to the city for some fun. We asked permission from Kirthika ma’am (who is our class counsellor or advisor, I dunno which), who in turn asked the HOD and we got our permission. Yeah, that’s right … The whole frickin class was allowed to go for the Amma Darshan. We left without delay – or as little delay as possible by a college bus.

The fun started on the bus itself. When people like the ones in my class are put in one place, things get really, really awesome and to be sure, it did. We literally rocked the bus with all our singing and dancing and “koothu adichufying”. We sang all the way till we reached the Amma Darshan place.

We un-boarded and went off into that place and registered our names. Then, we got together and planned to get out of there. But this time, the fun was supposed to be more since we were taking the girls along with us. We left via a small village road all the while checking if Joshi was around and escaped as safely as possible under the circumstances. Once on the city roads, we were left looking for means of transport and came up with the best we could … We hired three taxis and paid 200 bucks to each to leave us at the theatre. We reached there and booked tickets for the “Pyaar Impossible” movie. Then, after some convincing and a stint at Annapoorna for the veggies, all of us reached the Sampoorna hotel. The food wasn’t spectacular but we had fun with the others jabbing at Maheshwari and the Badugas (her ”tribe”) in general – until she got pissed off and they all stopped (Notice how I say “they” and not “we” and to be honest, it was getting extremely lame with every testosterone charged homo sapien trying to fight the other for attention and humour).

Then we went for the movie (where Shiva cleverly engineered the seating arrangements to his own needs) and I swear on god as we all thought … It was an IMPOSSIBLE movie. Absolute bull shit and a waste of probably crores of rupees, which could have been used for the betterment of mankind in general. It was a fiasco … in every sense of the word.

After the movie, we were in a dilemma as to where to go and the group came together for a discussion again. The proper decision was obvious to Abhiram; me and Pradeep didn’t care too much. So, while these buggers were trying to act all corporate-decision-making-stereotyped-awesome-alpha-males, Pradeep and I did the wise thing and went off to have a Coke . The group of around 22 – Abhi, Amith, Aparna, Archana, Arun, Devika, Keerthika, Maheshwari, Neelima, Haareeth, Pradeep, Sharath, Sathyaraj, Shiva, Shruthi, Sukanya, Unnimaya, Abhinaya, Varsha, some woman whose name I never learnt, Archana C.K and myself – finally came to the decision that we should take a taxi back to that Nallampalayam place where the Darshan was going on and catch a late bus from there back to college so that we can skip the next day. We went walking till Baskin and Robbins where some of us bought some ice creams and took a group photo and we boarded the taxis back to Nallampalayam.

In Nallampalayam, after some roaming around, all of us got together and sat at a some kind of a congregation for almost an hour and enjoyed ourselves making fun of each other and trying to be awesome for the girls (yeah, me too! … Though I would say all I had was an epic phail). This sitting around was probably the most awesome thing we did all evening. It really was fun and we took loadsa photos.

After some time sitting around lazily, we met EEE gang who had come along at about 20:30 or so. After that, we got back to sitting again when this idiotic nut of a teacher came and called the girls for some plate washing. Now, I did vehemently revolt against this because Mahi was looking for support but I tell you this – I did not like it. I mean … Forget the fact that they called only girls for it – Amrita is a gender biased institution for all it otherwise is but they made the students do it. I mean … There are some hundreds of devotees who eat there and if each could wash his own damn plate, there would be no need to call the university girls for such a demeaning job (fuck the proverb which says that no job is demeaning … washing plates without being paid for is very, very disgraceful). Unfortunately, while almost all the girls escaped, Devika and Aparna could not and had to wash some plates.

We, meanwhile, moved to safer places like the playground at the back. There, we had lots more fun climbing those tower like structures and taking photos of people on the top.

That, apart from having photos taken by the people at the top.

We were dispersed though, thanks to the appearance of the demonic nemesis of every student at Amrita and a direct, real-life counterpart of the Viru Sahasrabuddhe a.k.a Virus character in the 3 idiots movie – the one, the only, the asshole : Joshi! After that, the group somehow never got together again. We roamed all over the place and the girls decided to leave by the bus at 23:00 or so. After some thought, sathyaraj, arun and abhiram decided to go with them. This effectively meant Amith, Pradeep, Shiva, the EEE gang and myself were left over. We caught ourselves some empty seats at the extreme back end of the auditorium along with a small horde of mosquitoes and talked for a while and drank LMN.

13/01/2010:

At about midnight, we decided to have a walk. Some were willing and some were not so finally, Amith, pradeep, gautham, shiva and me went for the walk along the same village road we had used to leave the place with the girls earlier that day. We reached the main road and again, since we were jobless as usual, took a photo in front of a shutter-closed shop using ingenious techniques of combining flash lights from 2 separate cameras to get a photo in one of them.

We had Amrita buses coming and going that way and had lots of fun turning away from the head lights which were hitting us in the face to avoid any form of recognition. The funniest in this regard was Gautham who went “Hood” and put on his hood every time a bus came round the street corner.

After some time, we started the walk back to the darshan place when another wave of lunacy struck us and we put on the “kodana kodi” song and danced to the “oooooo ….” track in the middle of the frickin road under a bright street light. Yes, we are abso-effin-lutely crazy and we are proud of it for the same reason J. Oh btw, we did that twice. We walked back to the darshan place after that.

We were mainly waiting for a performance by Nitin and team. But that got delayed due to a dance by the Baduga people until it was 3 in the morning when they started. I tried taking videos of it as Nitin wanted me to but one fiasco after another, I had epic phail in doing it.

We caught a bus at around 4:30 in the morning and reached the hostel (after a troublesome head light popped off) at about 5:15. We had had more than enough fun where I was concerned. I was so tired that it took me 20 minutes in bed to get some sleep. Kiran tried talking to me but I really wasn’t up to it so I told him to shut up and sleep.

I fell unconscious, I guess. It seems the  3 of them tried waking me up but I just wouldn’t budge and woke up and told them to get lost in their face. Classes were cancelled anyway so it didn’t really matter. But the 6th and 7th hours were there and we attended them. After that was Varsha and Dhanyas treat in the canteen with some limited menu and another buncha photos.

On the whole, it was an almost unforgettable 24+hours and I lived every moment of it.

At the moment, I’m back at home and have already watched Sherlock Holmes .. but that later!

A Happy New Year!

Saturday, the 20^th of December, 2009 was when we left Bombay. We had no hope of any of the tickets getting confirmed. But while we kept checking till the last moment, we found out that the tatkal ones had been confirmed. We packed and left immediately in a Toyota Innova. But here was the funny part. We left in such a hurry that we missed important details. Our train was at 2 and we left at around 12:20 which is quite late considering Bombay traffic. We were proceeding to Mumbai Central when I, fiddling around with the GPS in my new god-oh-it-is-SO-awesome phone that I noticed that we had booked in a station called CST and we were proceeding towards the one called Central. I pointed this out to Dad. We were in a fix. The actual station was nearly at the other end of the city and very difficult to get to in the limited time we had. Luckily, we were near a station where the train would stop en route called Dadar Western. All hunky dory? There was one very minute problem … The train stopped for exactly 3 minutes there in which time we had to load 2 old people and 6 bags and 2 pretty well sized suitcases on board along with the almost 20 other people who had decided to board the train in the same station within the same 3 minutes. Result? Chaos.

But we got on after a lot of effort on my part and a lot of shouting to let me do the lifting so that we could move a little faster and I would not be treated like an invalid. The journey was just awesome. There is no other word for it. We spent the whole time on the train doing various things like sleeping and ordering whatever passed the coupe … At the end of it all, it was better than a 2 hour flight which would deliver us early enough that the 5 grand that we spend on it seems like an utter waste.

The day after I came back, it was doc appointment time and I had my stitches removed (quite painful, I must say!). The rest of the hols were spent in catching up with some of my friends … Specifically, vikku, sand, sori, gl, arj, yele and amogh. It was fun while it lasted

College has not been all that fun till now. The subjects this sem seem absolutely horrid and the teachers appear to be worse. Only the teachers for COA and Probability and Statistics seem to be good.

Nothing special seems to be happening right now. So, adios!

And yeah, Happy New Year!

Reboot!

I once had a dream … I dreamt I would use the internet to it’s fullest and I would relax in life while surfing through facebook, twitter and what-nots that web 2.0 has to offer. Hell, who am I kidding? The only dreams I usually have are of falling down great heights and jerking awake. It’s probably a signal from some cosmic intelligence that my life would be like that.

I digress, aye? Anyway, even though I got the perfect address from the perfect blog hosting site, I didn’t really bother keeping a blog. It just wasn’t worth it in school. But now, I just feel that there should be some outlet. Some possible way to get things out of my system.

I present: The Rebooted “Loony Goons 2.0″ !