A New Adventure

75 Post

2007-07-10T20:45:00.000-07:00

How so much I wanted to customize my blog and photoblog to represent a quasi-extension of my personality ;), but alas I have not been able to do that in two months and with the amount of things to write about and show pictures of crossing the danger levels! Friends, Romans and Countrymen! I present to you “Confusion Art” - plain vanilla remix!.

Sadly this post will mark the end of blogger. 75 posts it was standing by me, sharing ups and downs, walking left right and center. Blogger.com - you shall be my first love. errr! Maybe not.

yanyways do check out Confusion Art for the latest happenings in my life. Maybe some old ones too! And you are working at your station as I am writing this post, expect some posts in couple of hours.

Three weeks of Adventure

2007-05-20T22:15:00.000-07:00

During a 'bulla' session yesterday, one of my friends passed a comment, 'Tere ko to vaise bhi hero banna acha lagta hai' (You like to become hero anyways), and I was bemused. By hero he did not mean the 'reel hero', but the essence of the word was 'to stand out from the rest of the lot'. I was confounded with his statement, as he was right to a certain extent, rather in a certain way. I do like to do uncommon things most of the times and these are small little things not worth thinking/talking about. Although it still remains a question - do I like to do because I really like to do them, or do I like people appreciating me doing it. Let that philosophical dialogue remain a question for some later post, this post is about a little 'uncommon' thing I used to do, and the last time I did it, it led to three weeks of adventure :).

Most of the times I have lunch at Canyon View in UCSD, and many a times I go there by my bicycle. The final leg of the route has a small sloppy path which merges into a flat road by a means of uneven banking. There is however, a small one feet strip which curves into the path where I am to go. Ideally I should use the road to go there, as that is the safest and easiest way, - but I often choose the small curvy strip. Last time I did that was three weeks back when lo I was not able to control my bicycle and I landed on my right palm. I have skidded a couple of times riding my bicycle but, the feeling was different this time. I had a premonition just instants before the fall, and things exactly went the way I had seen it all. Although it was not paining a lot then, I knew something was wrong with my right wrist. The adventure begins.

Few more hours into the pain, and the wrists starts to swell up. Reluctantly, I go to the health center and they take an X-ray. There is no fracture and I belittled myself for going to the hospital without any serious injury. But pain soon turns into agony and agony into torment. I can say that that night was the most painful night in the recent past. It was interesting to see the play between sleep and pain - both fighting hard to have my attention. There was no clear cut winner. The next day was as bad. No relief whatsoever. Reluctantly, I went to the hospital again, and thankfully this time I was seen by a sports injury specialist. In no time he referred me to a wrist specialist. He confirmed that there was no fracture visible in the x-ray but proposed that it could be a bad sprain or else a micro fracture. I was a bit satisfied with this meeting, and got another appointment in two days with the wrist specialist. From then on the pain mollified and when I went to see the specialist I was able to move my fingers marginally. He was not able to make a firm decision either and vacillated between a bad sprain and an inconspicuous fracture. Nevertheless, he advised me to put on a cast for three weeks, rationale being it will aid the healing process in either case.

So the past three weeks I have been living off my left hand :). It was an interestingly frustrating experience. Here is a list of the things that are interestingly frustrating to do, to the limit that some of it can’t be done with just the left hand,.(in order of recall)
1. Applying toothpaste on the tooth brush/the process itself
2. Bathing
3. Writing
4. Typing
5. Washing dishes
6. Buttoning the cuff buttons
7. Buttoning the pant buttons
8. Opening a jar/bottles
9. Always sleeping on left side
10. Paying via cash
11. Eating
12. Cutting vegetables
13. Doing laundry
14. ...

Anyway, this journey ends tomorrow (hopefully, no fracture, does not feel like it), so this had to be a blog today.

Pandora

2007-04-18T23:25:00.000-07:00

Its been ages that I had a post, and it was most probable that I would not have posted anything on this as I am working on my own web space now, keep your eyes on www.confusionart.com
but I was just impressed by this.

Many of you know that I work in the area of image retrieval, the basic idea being - "I should be easily able to retrieve the image that I want to from my database, and find images that I have a picture of in my mind, but one that I have never seen before." One of the paradigms of image retrieval is call query-by-example where in you provide a query image and the system should return all the images it feels that are *similar* to the query image and this operation is said to be successful if the user also feels so.

Now last winter I was talking to Doug ( another researcher at UCSD, working on a similar problem but in the domain of music annotation and retrieval) that I need a simple software that, given a song should be able to retrieve all the songs that are *similar* to the query song. He being a specialist in music analysis said that similar is not a well defined term as similar could mean by the same band, same year, same genre, same beat, same instruments and lot many things. Moreover a song changes over time and its not trivial to define similarity. From a non-expert point of view I still felt that it should be possible to define *similarity* the way I was thinking - It does not matter who is the singer, what year it was composed, what genre it is, just plain similar in perception. Alas I went home in winters and things went dud!

Recently came across www.pandora.com and they have achieved what I wanted, to an extent. Although everything on their database is manually annotated and hence in a way they have provided manual similarity measure between songs. You give them a song or artist and it keeps on playing songs *similar* to your choice. They do so by matching around 400 features of the song/artist (after all Doug was right, there are indeed many parameters to define similarity on) which have been provided by professionals to each song. But the result is just awesome. I tried to find songs similar to *Enya* and I must say it has been two days that I am on the same channel and it has played just awesome songs from various artists. I wrote this blog when it played *Dream of dolphin* by Enigma, one of my favorite. Bang on one great *similar* songs.

So after www.dhingaana.com this has become my favorite site for music. :)

I got stripped

2007-01-29T11:24:00.000-08:00

How do you feel when you are stripped off your clothes. I mean literally. To me it felt funny ;).

To give some background to this incident, everyone here(residendial housing complex for graduate students at UCSD) does their laundry in a common room which has 'lots' of washers and 'lots' of driers. I usually go once in two weeks with my load of clothes to get a clean and refreshing new set, ready to be soiled again, in another two weeks. This laundry room also has a 'table of commons'(TOC), that is for, if you dont need something and feel that it might be useful for others, you leave your stuff on the TOC and anyone who wishes can take possession. Generally, it happens, that people are shy to pick stuff from TOC and prefer to do it when no one is around.

So coming back to my story. Today morning, as I was entering the holy place to collect my washed and dried laundry back, a guy in his twenties passed by me in swift strokes that some how signified he was guilty of a crime. Bit surprised as I walked in, on the next step I saw the TOC on my right. On this there was a small pile of clothes and things got into perspective, as I figured out that he was searching through the pile as I was about to enter. He did not want me to see him doing his scavenge hunt so left slyly. Slighly aloof from that pile of clothes was one shorts that just caught my eye. That is because, I had exactly the same shorts I use for soccer, and I knew that it was of good quality. I just said to myself, after collecting my clothes, I will have a look at those shorts, and maybe if it is indeed of good quality and condition, sneakinly grab it...(oops, did I reveal something?). It so happened, that right most corner of my eye, got a glimpse of another jeans, that looked exactly like the one I had. When my head turned right, and I had the full picture in both of my eyes, it struck me that, THAT whole lot of clothes, where no one else but mine!!!. Someone took out my clothes from the drier and had kept it on the Table Of Commons. "F***! these are mine", I went and clumsily started to collect as if each one of the clothes would vapourize the next moment!

So I went back and did a status check, to find, that I was stripped off my clothes. This is the tally of things I was able to remember that was 'stolen'.
1. 3 Lowers - One in extremely bad shape, and two almost new
2. Two jeans - One in extremely bad shape, and one okayish
3. Three sweat shirts - Two in extremely bad shape, and one new
4. One tshirt - Okayish
..and still counting. I regret I dont have a count of my underwears, to have my laugh.

To all the people who are reading this and live in mesa. Dont ever leave your clothes overnight in the washroom. You might be stripped off yours too. :)

In Kuala Lumpur Right Now

2006-12-08T05:44:00.000-08:00

Could'ne help posting this, but at this very moment I am writing from a shady internet cafe in the china town area of Kuala Lumpur and every hour spent here has been an enriching experience. The sweet experiences I am having here is making my one day stay really memorable. The people here are too helpful. They go out of their way to help you out. Most of them can speak broken english so communicating is not a problem.

Anyhow, stating chronologically, the first mild shock I got was to see everything non vegetarian in all the joints in the food court. I asked a couple of them if they had 'anythig' without meat, but they were negative, finally I got this lady to get me fried rice with vegetable, but I could sense some pieces of meat (a couple) while I was eating it. No, complains. Next instead of taking the express rail from airport to city center, I took the bus. Although it took more time (but was cheaper), I wanted to see the view along the roads, and it is really a green place - tropical rain forests you see!

I was not knowing where to go next, someone suggested me to look for cheap accomodation in China Town, while I was on my way looking the map, out pops a guy asking if I need help. He then walked with me to a couple of hostels, but before that I walked with him to the postoffice as he has some work there, and then to his house, where he has to drop some things, although later I thought 'something' was fishy about him ;) but he did help me to find a place to stay, although not in china town, but another happening place here called, Bukit Bingtan.

I am walking on Jalan Bukit Bingtang, I see a man, I see a crowd around, I got my small little space and started to see what everyone else was. It turns out that today is some festival here, and artists from different country perform various street tricks at different places around the city. This guy swallowed a 4 feet long baloon down his throat and didnt even burp.

Next I am on my way to central market, this is the place where local handicraft items are sold. On the way had a delecious Daab pani. The guy there probably in his fifities, was a nice chatty fellow. Taking about the rich and the poor indians to the girls of india being very nice, he asked me why was I travelling alone ;). I promised him to come after some years (read that two, I slipped and it just came out of my mouth) to have his daab paani. I tried to give him some tip but he refused. I was indeed surprised.

Finally I reach, central market. A nice enclosure of local stuff. Malaysia basically has three different kinds of people - Malay, Chineese, and Indians. There were different corridors there for the three sytle of handicraft. I found a lady from pakistan selling things from india, pakistan and iran. Again a nice talkative lady who tells me tricks to bargain there, and herself gave me 50% discount. She was the first person I was able to talk to in Hindi and she was from peshawar and understood urdu.

Next I enter an indian shop - not the indian you are thinking of, this was an american-indian items shop. The guy there says that he feels I am from chile - from all the palce he could think of - chile. I wonder if people there do look like me. Btw sometime later I was buying dried figs from a small girls and she hesitatingly asks me where I was from. My true answer also surprised her, she was small and shy and blurted out she thought I was from 'Australia', duh! probably she got a bit nervous when I asked her about her guess.

Anyways, some more lillte things here that has shaped this journey so far. Still some more hours to go tonight, and some more tomorrow. Plan to do tomorrow the real touristic way - will try for Petronas towers and Batu caves. Lets see. :)

(sorry for the errors if any, I did not even have time to read it myself, the cafe tme is ending. its RM$4 == Rs52 per hour:)

Photography - Are edited images okay?

2006-11-18T10:15:00.000-08:00

Sharing a common interest in photography, a couple of weeks back during a discussion with Phantom, he said - "But that photo was edited and not original!". What he was referring to, is the idea, I myself adhered to, and considered appropriate - 'A picture should be only praised, in capacity of calling it a photograph, if it has not been modified in any form on a computer'. If we use a computer or any digital means for that sake, to edit a photograph, it is in a different league altogether, and should not be compared with photographs which have not been 'retouched'. Lets re-look this point of view.

Its been almost an year now, that I got my NikonFM10 and started to call myself an 'aspiring' photographer. I always used to admire photographs, but never had an exposure to the process of classical photography. Early this year, I did a course in B/W photography, where we developed our own negatives and made prints in a darkroom. This was the time my notion of photography changed. I realized that behind every excellent professional photograph before say 1990's, was an exorbitant amount of time spend in the darkroom. Taking pictures, compositioning, framing, timing, is only half the work, or maybe even less. The other half is what the darkroom does to the photograph. From developing to printing, there are innumerable ways in which an artist modifies what he has shot, to better its appeal. Improving brightness, contrast, suppressing the midtones, improving the highlights, cropping to a desired area, darkening some areas, washing out other, changing it hues (for color photographs), all is done inside a darkroom for each photograph separately. This is an 'integral' part of classical photography, and cannot be parted with. Infact, it is not even appropriate to call this 'improvement' as there no defined 'original shot' to improve upon. Moreover, with digital camera's you HAVE to edit, to produce a B/W photograph.

Now with computers, the same process can be done, at almost 1/1000th the time and effort. In darkroom, to test each incremental step, one needs to print the photograph, which takes atleast 4 mins for the chemicals to act upon it, but on screen its just 0.4 seconds. This is not something optional, but an essential step to produce the end result. So from an appreciation point of view, I now have completely changed my outlook, to one that focuses on the end result and not the process. The issue, then is, that on computer, a lot more can be done to alter the photograph that was not possibly classically. This is where another hitch lies. The feeling that doing image adjustments is one thing, but completely modifying the photograph is another. But, art has no definition per se, it could very well be termed as another art form, if not classical photography. The picture below was taken by Dubey saab

There are two problem if I accept everything, under the domain of photography. The first one is more practical, and the second one philosophical. Practically, what would you call a person who is apt at digitally modifying a photo. Is it justified to call him a good photographer? Or should there be another term for such a person. Personally I am confused on this, for this person does have the abilities of compositioning and a sense of art to produce good picture, but it is not sure if he has the human touch and a sense of perception, that a classical photographer has.
Philosophically, and this is personal philosophy, the sweetness of effort spent in a darkroom is lost, when the process is done digitally. In anycase, I have now developed more respect for digitally processed photos, any try to look it as art, instead of thinking about the classification problem. Here is one of my 'retouched' work.

Fasting

2006-11-04T00:48:00.000-08:00

I have been brought up with an idea of fasting as an integral part of life. When I was young, I was motivated by my father to keep vows. Just for the sake of it. For example, I was in love with papads. I could have had a whole meal of papads itself, and usually I used to order for a papad even before I started my meal. So my dad gave me a challenge, to test and ask myself, "Can I live without papads for a specified period of time?". And so I stayed for weeks without it to take on this challenge. I really enjoyed the feeling of 'achievement' once the fast/vow/challenge was over, and used to resume to normal routine. For me fast is not something meant only for ascetics or the weight-troubled people. Also fast is not only related to food, but can touch various spheres of life. I believe its effects touch deep inside and the satisfaction it brings is unparalleled.

As youth took on its speed, I had forgotten this long lost joy. But, graduate life has given me an opportunity to slow down and live the life I really want to live(or atleast give an attempt). So, I planned another fasting. This time, Khatri Bhai was there to support me, not only motivating me to do it, but by being an 'integral' part of it, and phantom a 'official' part of it ;). The fasting was to stay on fruits and vegetables for seven days. No cereals and no dals. I almost believed to factuality that I cant live without rotis or rice without giving myself mental trouble, and this was to test myself of this limiting belief. Also, I was motivated in part by reading Gandhiji's autobiography, where he also experimented with food and in another part by my health condition.

To my surprise, it was an amazingly easy task to perform. I could not have imagined that I can stay easily without cereals and dals for a week. Infact, four days out of seven, I was living even without milk. And one of that day, was a pure juice day - no solid food, not even soup. To my good fortune, and what made the fast more exciting was that Bhavjit had his farewell party the very same day I was to stay only on juice. This was the only day I really felt week and need for food. My average diet during this period was, juice and munakka breakfast (sometimes sprouts), some fruit plus just boiled vegetable(usually carrots or cauliflower) for lunch and soup for dinner. I even abstained from any spices, living on just salt, pepper and lemon. I am happy that we were successful in the attempt and would do more such fasting in the coming years. Oh! and did I tell you that such fasting is also considered a cleansing process for the body in Ayurveda literature and even western medical science :)

My father also suggested me this book by Paul Bragg, which I have still not manage to procure. On the flip side, I was expecting a more pronounced effect of such a fasting on the body, with some spiritual side effects ;), but it seems that with pure satvik food its important to keep your mind at peace to reap the real benefits of such fasting, which was missing this time. I was as active as I am on any given day, and did not gave time to be with myself to have mental relaxation. Any suggestions for next fasting?

Amusing

2006-11-02T23:33:00.000-08:00

Book Reviews - Jan - Oct 2006

2006-10-26T21:34:00.000-07:00

Its november now. 10 months have passed by from when I made my new year resolution of one book per month. I know thats not something to be proud of but given my past record of one an year, i'd be happy to showoff the new achievement. Well the count is that I am lagging by one.

Here is a brief Summary of the books I have read with their ratings(max 5 star) (followed by the review of the latest one - Freedom at Midnight)
1. Conversations with God - Part 2 - Neale Donald Walsch. (***)
2 .Life of Pi - Yann Martel (****)
3. The Roots of Ayurveda - Dominik Wujastyk (***)
4. Ayurveda and Panchakarma - Sunil V Joshi (****)
5. Many Lives Many Masters - Dr Brian Weiss(***)
6. My Reminisences - Rabindranath Tagore (***)
7. The story of my Experiments with truth - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi(****1/2)

8. Existentialism and Human Emotions - Jean Paul Sartre (***)
Sometime I become too ambitious. And this was perhaps one of my most ambitious pursuits. Although I have taken two philosophy courses during my undergraduate studies, and there were obscure ideas that needed to be chewed upon, but this 100 page book was a hard gum. The existentialist philosophy for a layman would mean - man is sum total of the decisions he has made in his life. I will not go into the details to avoid making any inaccurate presentation of the idea, as I was not able to derive much thoughts from the book. Infact one reason I choose this book was its attractive 100page thickness. This was apt, after the 450 autobiography by gandhi, and before the 570 page freedom at midnight. Alas, it was meant to be otherwise.

9. Freedom at Midnight
Authors: Larry Collins, Dominique Lapierre
Rating: 4.5/5

How did India got its independence? What was the state of affairs when she was dissected by a man who had never been to the land he was going to dissect. Why was India given independence on 15th of August and not any other date?...

An amazing book that talks about the India, as she was when Lord Mountbatten was appointed the last Viceroy General of India, and what she had to go through, as the pressure was mounted by congress for her independence and by the muslim league for her dissection. Her royal princes, her common man. Her riches and her woes. The pain she had to experience during the unfateful mass killings on both sides of the dissection. The story of some real heros, the story of some gory brutal killings. The fast-unto-death tactics of Mahatma Gandhi to his actual death. The build up of situation that led to his murder. This book has it all. A 575 page book (a LOT by my standards), that keeps you engrossed as it unfolds the story of one of the largest migration in the history of mankind. Another MUST read for every India.

BUT - Keep in mind that this book has been written by a French and an American author, with most of their inputs from a the last viceroy, Lord Mountbatten. Although it seems that they have tried their best to present an unbiased view of the state of affairs, but I feel that it is highly biased with what lord Mountbatten used to think. The crass belittling of Mohammed Ali Jinnah without any substantial evidence seems more of a personal opinion than a presentation of his character analysis. Also, every act of Lord Mountbatten, right or wrong has been presented in a positive light. I accept that his task was monumental, and the mistakes he made are human, but it should be accepted as mistakes and should not be presented as a praise. For example, as per the book, the date of 15 Aug, was a spontaneous decision that he made during a press conference - which was praised, as his fast decision making ability - but given that every month was important, I feel that it was a mistake to announce the date without any proper thought, and to the surprise of many. I dont propose that things would have moved more smoothly given a well thought of date, but still I find this act a mistake, but ofcourse not an act worthy of praise.

Nonetheless, the picture it paints of India in the 1940's is truly heartrending. I really want to read a historical treatise by an indian author, does anyone know of a good book by indian author about independance?

Whats up?

2006-09-20T15:33:00.000-07:00

how are you doing?
kya chal raha hai?
hows life?
whats going on in your life?
Aur suna...
hows life treating you?

Does anyone know of a script that generates random answers to these questions? I am just not able to handle when people ask these question either on orkut or especially on phone. Ofcourse I can give the generic answer, "lifes great, what bout u?" and many a times I have to :( but thats not me. I always want to tell someting, something thats more creative or atleast conveys an iota of information, not something that has zero entropy from a Shanons point of view.

Btw I found out the solution, before someone shoots you with that question, take the lead, bang him with the same question, then the ball will be in his court ;)

Book Review - "The Story of My Experiments With Truth"

2006-09-06T11:43:00.000-07:00

The Story of My Experiments With Truth (click to read online)
(wikipedia info)
Author: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Translated from gujrati to english: Mahadev Desai
My rating: 5+/5

I am an Indian, lucky enough to be born in free India, and still luckier to be born in modern free India. From our childhood we are taught about how India got its freedom, how Gandhiji with his Satayagraha was instrumental in bringing the deserved freedom with the policy of non voilence and non co-operation. But somewhere down the line, as we grow up all that is taught and fed in the childhood tends to loose away its charm. Anything that is related to Gandhi becomes 'not so cool'. So much so, many youths take pride in proclaiming themselves anti-gandhi, a miniscule because they really mean it, but the larger chunk just trying to be different by trying to be iconoclasts.

I still remember, there were talks going on after the move 'The Legend of Bhagat Singh' (the Ajay Devgan One), that it was because of Gandhi ji that Bhagat Singh had to face the torture of jail. This this was taken up by the wannabe-iconoclasts as a point they would brag about why they dont like Gandhi. My memory fails me to recollect when was this other anti-gandhi argument I had heard, but it was a strong argument, that Gandhi was a sex fanatic and even when he was old he used to live with young females. I must confess I slipped too at one point of time, not because I was anti-gandhi in any sense, but because of my ignorance. My knowledge about him was resticted to what I had learned in my childhood.

Then came 'The story of my experiments with truth' and I could not forgive myself for the few moments I was against Gandhi. I believe, every Indian should read this book atleast once in his life and the earlier the better. A very humbly written book and excellenty translated by Shri Mahadev Desai. All the arguments against him fail once you read this book. It is amazing to see how a common man rose to a position that he was able to communicate with millions of India by the sheer medium of simplicity. Please dont not take me for being under his influence, because I am not praising Gandhian Philosophy (though I seriously believe in many of his), but I have develop respect for him as a person.

One does not find even a speck of arrogance or pride when you read his autobiography, also he has tried to be as open as possible, humbly accepting his shortcomings and highlighting his principles that shaped his life. It is infact fun to walk along with him through his journey of life. Having an initial knowledge about life of Mahatma Gandhi, sometime I really want to read about Nathuram Godse and his point of view.

Enjoy, fun, happiness - Part II

2006-07-23T20:39:00.000-07:00

(...cont from part I - 1. Losing the 'conscious' sense of existence - Loosing yourself.)
Last post I was trying to figure out how can I possibly exhaust ways in which people (believe to) enjoy themselves. The prime way that the majority of today's so called civilized people fall back upon is to enjoy is music, movies, booze, party, reading, an extreme extent drugs. May be Hobbies can also be counted in this category, but I will like to talk about it as a seperate topic. All of this I believe is a way to loose yourself. Forget the moment. Looking from another perspective it could be very well said that instead of forgetting the moment this is more like 'Living the moment'. One is just concerned about whats happening right now. No thoughts of past or future and that seems to be a plausible setup for enjoyment. The only problem with this is that this is not a conscious mode of living in the present (or Loosing yourself). Its more like forget everything(past, present and future) and just *exist* in the present. The thought I am after is that - Is there is a conscious way in which man can train himself to remain in a state of enjoyment if Living in the present/Loosing Yourself is a successful strategy?

2. Another class of strategy is 'Change' or 'Something New' or 'Learning'- Though all these three have subtle differences I think the root is the same. The mind becomes active and has to process in all three situations.

'Change' shall stand apart from the other two more actively. Change might not per se be a source of enjoyment but the lack of it sure creates a boredom which is lack of enjoyment. So it can be said that lack of change causes lack of enjoyment. Now some people desire for change when they reach this situation, for other change in itself is a source of enjoyment and they keep on doing 'Something New' to make that change happen. The open question is if one finds a 'Strategy' to be in constant source of enjoyment then without change will he be able to maintain that state?

... to be continued.
3.Being with loved ones
4. Hobbies.

Enjoy - What the hell!

2006-07-17T21:39:00.000-07:00

What do you want in life?
I want to be 'Happy'

How was the party yesterday?
Oh! I 'enjoy'ed it a lot.

How was Miami?
'twas 'fun'

Happiness, enjoyment, fun - They define our life and positive things associated with it. But they are among the most abstract of concepts and carry different meaning for everyone. I wonder what does enjoyment mean for different people. I was in arizona the last couple of days. One night I was at a bar listening to live music, and a wave crossed my mind. "Am I 'Enjoying' right now? If yes, what is it that is giving me enjoyment? Why is that I am feeling a sense of happiness - if I am?" Interesting question indeed.

I know that am incaypable of knowing what enjoyment means to you, but still feeling the desire to write about it. What I see the meaning of enjoyment from different point of view. These are not necessarly my notion of enjoyment, infact I still have to become fully aware of what it is that give me 'Enjoyment'.

1. Losing the 'conscious' sense of existence - Loosing yourself.
In todays world, the most common way in which people believe that they experience enjoyment are the activities that makes them loose the sense of existence. Atleast at a conscious level. I do not imply that they start to feel that they dont exist, but they forget they do. A perfect example would be movies, whereby using the principle of 'willing suspension of disbelief', we get engrossed in the timeline of the movie. At a conscious level we know what is on screen is false, but we still manage to produce emotional response to it, we forget about our presence in this world.

Another most common source of enjoyment is listening to music and/or reading. Here again the sense of 'forgetfullness' of the present existence makes us feel that we are enjoying that moment. For that matter, most of the true hobbies would fall in this category. It makes them forget their 'worries', 'concerns', 'responsibilities', 'needs', 'desires' and submerge in a single activity that occupies the mental space. It is like loosing yourself to one single activity.

Now this has had such an impact on our society, that things that make you forget your existence, or inactivates your senses about it are promoted/attributed as a source of enjoyment. Drugs is one extreme, but since it has harmful effects of the body, it is considered as 'negative' way to enjoy. Alcohol and other such product also create this effect of 'enjoyment', but this time loosing yourself not to any activity but to the lack of it.

The question is that is this 'really' enjoyment. Losing to an activity or alcohol. Is this all a human can do to be in a state of enjoyment. What about sustenance of enjoyment using the above trick? Is it possible to be in a contineous state of enjoyment by any of the above mentioned tecniques? Is there something more a man can strive to fulfill his desire for 'happy' and 'enjoyable' life?
...to be continued

Image Retrieval - CIVR 2006

2006-07-13T15:59:00.000-07:00

Right now I am sitting in a chair which is in a conference room in Mission Palms Hotel, in Tempe(Phoenix), Arizona, attending Conference on Image and Video Retrieval 2006. The task is what google has done to text, easily and efficiently retrieve images from a database. Lots of research is going on at different levels.

First the image is needs to be represented in computer, I know we have the color data for every pixel but thats not enough/rich enough to perform retrieval, so one chunk to people are working on what would be the best way to represent image so that it stores the image features efficiently.

The second step is to find which image features to save or what are the 'salient' points or 'interesting' points in a image that one would use to retrieve images. The basic is image color, image texture to little more complex as shape of objects. The notion is that both image representation and saliency should be able to 'generalize' the concepts one would be interested in.

The third direction of research is once we have the representation of the 'interesting' points, how do we match the given representations of two images to say wether they are similar or not. Two points in the space can have different measures of distance between them, the most common being a eucledian distance or an L2. Based on the feature space chosen, one can from very many metrics.

Talking at higher levels, one has then the notion of extracing image features of a concept that can be visually very different. Most commonly cars can have very many colors, shapes, direction of view, illumination conditions, backdrops they are while ckicking the photograph. Is is possible to still learn a mathematical model of a general term car? This is semantic image retrieval which is best with the human notions of similarity as we very easily can abstract out the concept of car from any image of car in various conditions.

The destination is far far away, I am not even sure that it can be solved in full generality, but history tells us that future is not deterministic. It is random with probabilites of unexpected events having spikes. Or is it destined? ;-P

How bout thees? My Past Life

2006-07-12T08:24:00.000-07:00

From: http://users.pandora.be/gad/re/engels.html

Diagnosis: I do not know how you feel about it, but you were male in your last earthly incarnation.

You were born somewhere around territory of modern USA South-East approximately on 775.

Your profession was sailor, shoemaker.

Your brief psychological profile in that past life:

Such people are always involved with all new. You have always loved changes, especially in art, music, cooking.

Lesson, that your last past life brought to present:

There is the invisible connection between material and spiritual world. Your lesson -- to search, to find and to use this bridge.

Adventure Documentary - A Question.

2006-06-26T23:45:00.000-07:00

Just finished watching the National Geographic - Journey of Man - hosted by Dr. Spencer Wells. An extraordinary scientific quest to find out the ancient lineage of mankind. His quest takes him to various parts of the world - from Kalahari Deserts of Africa to the sub 100 degree celcius frozen parts of northern Russia, and that makes me ask a question. Are these adventure stories shot first hand or the paths are traced back only when the success is achieved?

The same question irked me when I watched 'Mystries of the Nile' - where in it shows the close escapes the travellers had - once being attacked by the natives and again by aligators. If these scenes were true, then did the cameraman really choose to caputre the moment in the camera over saving his collegues life? Also the commentry by the protagonist during the trip on actual places seems like he is confident that the trip will end. Moreover if the cameraman was with the protagonist, then why is he/his name not highlighted?

Another question to my list of questions. :-)

Surprise Dreaming

2006-06-25T14:05:00.000-07:00

I got up yesterday with a tingy feeling. I had faint recollection of my dream and what went through the dream surprised me, I asked myself a question. Is it possible that we get surprised while we are dreaming (not day dreaming)?

I believe we have a conscious and a subconscious (may be a super-conscious). When we are sleeping our conscious is sleeping, it is out subconscious that is active. The emotion of surprise involves two entities, the 'event' which creates surprise and entity which 'experiences' it. These two have to be decoupled from each other and incaypable of sharing information. The question then boils down to is - Is subconscious that creates the events or the one that experiences it when we are dreaming while sleeping? Or is it doing both? I rule of the possibility of doing both, by the same reasoning that it is not possible for our conscious to create an event and itself be surprised by the experience of the event. So the subconscious has to be the 'event' creator or the 'experiencer'. And if its either of one what is the other level of cognition that perform the other task?

:-?

After a long time.

2006-06-19T14:57:00.000-07:00

Its three quarters over now, I remember I started blogging first to write about myself, my experiences my thoughts, but as time passed this blog was more of stuff that I wrote just for the sake of writing. I like new things, things that give my 'thought' a chance to wonder. But soon that wonder wears off and the things once of deep interst and fervent passion fades away in time. So has been this blog. But thats me, my nature to get over things very quickly and thats what I have to inprove to find a stable souce of joy, a 'non-event based joy'. We are all involved in 'events' in our lives, most of the times so deeply engrossed that we fail to realize that they are events that we are living and some that event with find its natural death and we will smoothly transition to the next event, ...life goes on.

Book Reviews - Apr - June 2006

2006-06-11T13:09:00.000-07:00

Seems I am lagging a bit from my resolution of one book per months. From the last beeok review in March . I have only been able to complete two books, though I had strarted three others but lost interest in between.

4. Ayurveda and Panchakarma - Sunil V Joshi
Rating - ****
Borrowed this book from Nitin, when my interest in Ayurveda was high (somehow its experiencing the shallows right now). This book, though talks about advanced treatment techniques of 'Panchkarma', is a nice read even for beginners. The first half of the book is dedicated towards the basic principles and fundamental understanding of Ayurveda. The language is simple yet explains the concepts in a wholesome way. I'd recommend this book for anyone wanting to know in brief what this Indian science is all about. I did not pay much attention to the panchakarma part as it was getting more involved and needs proper experiential knowledge to fully grasp the technique.

5. Many Lives Many Masters - Dr Brian Weiss
Rating - ***
Do you believe in life after death. Or life after death after life after death. Dr Brian Weiss did not but his real life experience with one of his patients made him believe in it. This is his first book in the series where he shares his past life regression experience while treating his patients. I liked the book because I believe in many of the concepts shared in the book ( though some of them seems bit unconvincing), but if what he writes is true, then its helps to bolster my beliefs. What I also about the book is that, he does not waste his energies in convincing the reader with examples, that its not a work of fiction, he merely states his experience and let the reader decide for himself about its verity. The negative part is the it becomes too obvious and repetitive towards the end.

6. My Reminisences - Rabindranath Tagore (***)
Given the greatness of the author I feel I am incompetent to review the book. I have not read much (read any!) Tagore literature, so my incapability to comprehend his artistic form of writing. I was indeed mesmerized by his childhood thoughts and life and was motivated to read his poems and writings(although I have still not done so), but I felt I was not there yet to really appreciate the book. Also it became too much factual details at the end, which, given my interests in autobiographies for the perspective of the author about life, was something that gave me a reason to remain unsatisfied.

7. Self Unfoldment (Next in line)
8. Freedom at Midnight
9. My Experiments with truth

a. Thoughts Without a Thinker - Mark Epstein (Gave Up)
b. Collapse - Jared Diamond - (Will pick up later)

Google Calender

2006-04-14T17:43:00.000-07:00

Though I am pretty much okay with the combo of spongecell for daily events and yahoo for recurring event, just thought to give this new kid on the block a try. The anticipation was that google will take care of all my problems, but the firstlooks are not that impressive. I mean nothing novel in the calender, the basic features that various other calender sites offer. Infact less than that. Though it has sucessfully copied the 'sponging' idea from spongecell. I must say this is the second time google has disappointed me. (The first being Google Reader, I have now shifted to Bloglines and its wayyyy too smooth than google reader)

Tax Returns for Indian Students in California

2006-03-30T16:49:00.000-08:00

I happen to attend a small seminar on the basics of filing your tax returns in California state. For people who are totally confused what is what, this might be a good start. Please note the information given here might not be accurate.

Go ahead if you are,
1. An Indian citizen, who came to California on F1 visa (I am not sure if the rules below will apply to other states)
2. Earn your wages through Research/Teaching Assistanceship -( I am not sure if the rules below will apply to Fellowship candidates)
3. Have no other sources of income in America
4. Have no investments in stocks, bonds etc
5. Do not owe a business
6. Do not have to claim theft, loss or Charity deductions.

Points.

The wages you earn and *received* in a financial year - 1st Jan - 31st Dec is the taxable wage for that year. Note if you receive your pay for Dec 05 in Jan 06, do not include that in your tax return for 2005.
Usually your employer 'withholds' certain amount of money, which is meant for tax. Your job now is to check at the end of the year when you know yout exact income, that if the total money withheld was more or less. (See Next Point)
From every Job that you have, you need to take a W2 receipt from your employer, which tells you exactly how much you earned and how much of it was withheld. This information is most critical and used to fill all the forms.
You pay/file return for two administrative organizations - The State of california using the form 540NR and the Federal Government using forms 8843, 1040NR, (and 1042).
For the purpose of Federal Tax Returns, if you have been here for less than 5 years you are a NON RESIDENT ALIEN.
For the purpose of State Govt, I am not sure if you are a Resident or a Non Resident Alien.
The interest you earn on bank accounts is non taxable only if you filled a form W8BEN while opening the bank account (which most of us did unknowingly, thanks to the bank but you should confirm.).
There is a tax treaty between India and America that $5000 of your income is non taxable, which you can claim as deduction only if you signed the tax treaty form (8233 I think) before the end of the year.
I think for the people on fellowship its the 1042s form/receipt they get from the university instead of W2 - though I am not sure about this.
So when you have the form ready, just see the instructions and fill it ;-).. its simple. Make sure you do it before 15th of April of the next Year. For tax return of 2006, do it before 15th April 2007.
For people at UCSD, the International Center Provides a software, CINTAX, which automatically fills the federal tax return forms for you. You still need to fill the state tax return forms yourself.

Happy Taxing.

Book Reviews Jan-Mar 2006

2006-03-26T10:42:00.000-08:00

I wanted to develop a habbit of reading from long time, but it was only that I came here I was able to give it its due importance. I am happy to see unlike my most of the unsucessful conversions from 'Wanting' to 'Experiencing', this is one 'Want' I am able to 'Experience'.

1. Conversations with God - Part 2 - Neale Donald Walsch.
Rating: ***--
He has an interesting way of putting things forward. In this part two he talk more about time and space, love and war, sex and as he puts it planetary geopolitical considerations. The ideas are pompous and utopian, and many are the common accepted utopian solutions to the world problems, but interesing read because he tries to build all his logic from the platform he created in book one. The author believes in 'iterate, iterate, iterate and then iterate' way of learning, so the ideas are repetitive in the book which can make it bit dull. Part I was better than II, lets see whats store in part III where he talks about more universe, aliens life and other metaphysical issues.

Quotes:
"You can tell you are on your way to mastery when you see the gap closing between willing and experiencing"

"If you spend your time trying to figure out whats 'best' for you, your choices will be cautious, your decisions will take forever and your journey will be launced on a sea of expectations"

2. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Rating ****-
I wanted to read this book from a long time, had heard a lot about it - about the way he has made an unbelivable story seemingly possible. A tale of a boy and a tiger, and their ordeal in the sea. The story gets a bit too abstract at the end but thats the whole point. Where does one draw the line between possible and impossible. The depection of the issues and the psychological state of a castaway is amazingly interesting. It makes you think about the potentials of human body and how caught up we are in the daily lives and petty things to miss life itself.

3. The Roots of Ayurveda - Dominik Wujastyk
Rating ***--
As a member of UDAI, an organisation which is commited to promoting awareness towards social issues concerning India and providing a platform for synergizing active effort for their remediation, and currently being involved in a project on Ayurveda, this book was an effort to study the history and foundations of it. Having negligible knowledge on the subject this book was was a good start as it does not really talk about the treatments and philosophies of Ayurveda but highlights the main texts that have been preserved through ages - Charak Samhita, Susruta Samhita, Bower Manuscript, Kasyapa's Samhita, Vagbhata's Heart of Medicine and Sarngadhara's Compendium. It gives a brief synopsis of their content and the ideas contained in them not only related to treatment per se, but Ayurveda as a way of life.

4. Ayurveda and Panchakarma - Sunil V Joshi (In Progress)

5. Thoughts Without a Thinker - Mark Epstein (Just Started)

Time

2006-03-17T20:02:00.000-08:00

I am bit perplexed by this instance, more so a thought twister. Its bit confusing from a point of view, and the confusion is about time. If two people see the same thing at the same *time*, then can they be seperated by time? Einsteins apart, the answer is seems to be negative. How can two people see the same thing at the same time and still be seperated by time? For this either the thing that they are seeing must be existing all through the time difference, the two people are experiencing or else that its limited by time or so to say is beyond time. This would also probably bring in the concept of different time frames for different object and that time is not uiversal. BUT a brirds eye view makes this possible.

It was evening here and I was sitting by the beach viewing the beautiful sunset on the pacific ocean and my friend in India with a nightout was able to see the sunrise at the same time, so effectively we both, though seperated by time, were seeing the same sun (if its the same and there are no parallel universe) at the same time.

Well the catch is that the time frames we have attached to out world and when we say America is 12 hours behind India, it actually is misleadin cus in the universal time frame America is not seperated by India timewise.

just amusing.

Wikipedia Wikipedia Wikipedia

2006-03-05T20:23:00.000-08:00

Wikipedia Wikipedia Wikipedia, I love Wikipedia
Wikipedia Wikipedia Wikipedia, I love Wikipedia
Wikipedia Wikipedia Wikipedia, I love Wikipedia
Wikipedia Wikipedia Wikipedia, I love Wikipedia
Wikipedia Wikipedia Wikipedia, I love Wikipedia
Wikipedia Wikipedia Wikipedia, I love Wikipedia
Wikipedia Wikipedia Wikipedia, I love Wikipedia
Wikipedia Wikipedia Wikipedia, I love Wikipedia
Wikipedia Wikipedia Wikipedia, I love Wikipedia
Wikipedia Wikipedia Wikipedia, I love Wikipedia

Thanks Wikipedia. :-)

The time has come - Videos Everywhere

2006-02-27T00:19:00.000-08:00

What first happened to text and then to images followed by music and finally it will happen to videos - The preperty of permeating our lives via Internet. Its really amazing to see that videos no longer seem to have the premium attached to them as it was 4 years back when I entered IIT.

I am not talking only about Google Videos. Ofcourse its one of the feathers in the hat and probably the largest one, but its the other smaller feathers that makes it beautiful. The inumerous blogs which have now started to link to videos online - say for example my blog itself ;=). The frequency of getting emails that link to some 'fundu' video online is increasing day by day, I can watch a complete movie in streaming mode (www.bwcinema.com) . Some of the good links that I recently got. Enjoy!

Minority Report not far away
Honda Ad
The Moving Train (its funny)
Mockery of President Bush
Girls Just wanna have fun - coursey Nitin Gupta ;-) (might not play in India)

Testing - ViewSonic Wireless Keyboard and Mouse COmbo - CW2206

2006-02-21T13:03:00.000-08:00

Inspite of having a laptop with both touchpad and pointer, I finally decided to buy myself a Keyboard and a Mouse. Keyboard was not so necessary but then got a good deal. With every good deal there is a freebie - A worry that will it last?

I had three options to choose from. - A wired keyboad and mouse, A high cost wireless keyboard and mouse and A cheap wireless keyboard and mouse. I decided no to go for the wired one, partly because I have never used a wireless mouse and keyboard and it was exciting to have one, and partly they were not very cheap compared to the cheap wireless version.

Logitech and microsoft rules the market in the wireless segment. They have both high end and the low end versions and I have still not been able to figure out, what are the exact differences between the two. By highend I mean around $80 and low end implies <$40. My requirements after the initial survey were well defined. I needed a wireless version of (ranked acc. to priority)

1. Optical mouse
2. The usual arrangement of 2x3 (Ins-Home-Pg Up) and (Del-end-Pg Dn) : Yes this is a concern, cus back at IIT I had ordered a microsoft keyboard and it had a 3x2 version of it which really was a pain.
3. <$40 incl. shipping and tax.
4. Black colur.

I tried and I tried hard but just did not find one that meet all the requirements. God knows what has bitten Microsoft and Logitech, they dont make a keboard with the usuall sytle of Insert-Del combination. They rotate it 90 deg probably to save space. There was the Logitech 110 (~$37 with shipping) with great reviews and satisfying all the requirements but that one. Finally I found the Viewsonic Wireless Keyboard and Mouse Combo CW2206 on Amazon for a price of $27 incl. tax and shipping. This was the deal I was looking for but I was not able to find any reviews for it. With my fingers crosses I just ordered it.

First Impressions: The make does not seem too sturdy, with seemingly lower quality plastic. The keboard lacks any indicators, not even to tell if its on or off. The initial synchronization was simple enough and as I am typing on it, the response seems good. The mouse also has good precesion. The range is fantastic > 3 meters (beyond that you cant even see the text). However, most of the reviews for other wirless combos talked about the battery life and that many of them stopped working in few weeks. Lets see!

...and they have done it.

2006-02-14T23:56:00.000-08:00

I was thinking that in the slightest possibility can I ever climb Mount Everest,

from Wikipedia,

Youngest person to climb it - 15 years.
Oldest person to climb it - 70 years and 222 days
A blind person has climbed it
A disabled has climbed it
A Polish guy came cycling from poland, climbed it alone without oxygen masks and went back all the way on cycle
Fastest Ascent - 8 hours and some mins
People have married atop everest

...and they have done it.

Entropy of Events.

2006-02-14T19:07:00.000-08:00

Day by day, the entropy of events in my life is decreasing. (For the lucky souls who still are away from such blasphemous collection of letters, entropy => randomness, like entropy of gas is high, and of solids is low). Still have not been able to figure out if that is a good sign or a bad one. If I have a birds eye view to it, it feel good and satisfying and the way it should be, after all what one needs is to settle in life, but then week to week life becomes monotonous. By mononte, I dont mean that the number of activities are less, but they are fixed to a time schedule. I know that every monday at 6:00 pm I will play soccer. Every friday at 3:00 I will be with my professor, Every firday night is movies and party night. Every Wednesday and Thursday, I will be working hard for the Friday meeting. Every Sat is reserved for Photographic Activities. Every Tuesday I will play Squash. Every Sunday and Monday, I have to cook. I can sleep as much I want (no! I am not complaing, just stating the facts), I can eat whatever I want to, every morning I have to prepare my breakfast, everyweak I have to go shopping. It looks soo organized and let me say boring. Not that the activities are boring in itself, but the joy of not knowing what next is on a different plane all together. The subconscious mind loves the situation but conscious wants more entropy(or is it the otherway round)

For records, the event with highest entropy in my life was the bike trip we had from Kanpur to Nainital and back. At 1:00 am in the night I has reasons to believe that at 3:00 am I would be sleeping comfortably on my bed. But entropy had its way and I was on a bike, driving at 60kms and hour, piercing the blackness of the night with the headlights of my bike (did'nt that sound artsy?) Next 3 days were of high entropy, not knowing where to sleep, where to stop, where to go, what to eat. Damn memories!

Calender Again.

2006-02-14T19:00:00.000-08:00

This time its a positive news, I am starting to get hooked to SpongeCell. After a two month long turmoil (;-) to find a simple calender, this has been my final bet. Of course its not perfect, but it does one set of work flawlessly. Basically I needed calender to manage two things.

1. Things that recur yearly or monthly: birthdays etc.
2. Things that happen only once: talks, deadlines etc.

And sponge cell does the second task perfectly. Probably just what I want, I dont even have to go to their site to add an event, can mail it and it adds it automatically. Also the GUI is well suited and has got keyboard support. The only bad if I might want to pick, it that viewing the calender is slow but it still does not crosses the threshold of frustation. They say that recurring events are coming soon - eagerly waiting for it.

Innovative Search cum Bookmarking

2006-02-13T15:17:00.000-08:00

Thats what I call it. The people who made it prefer to call it Listable. A nice concept of merging social bookmarking and search. It actually allows you to increase or decrease the ranking of the sites. They put it as 'Listible is a new way to get relevant resources quickly.' I wonder if they have some protection from bots increasing the rank of the sites.

Rebates - Why the heck!

2006-02-10T20:37:00.000-08:00

I am completely puzzled right now. The concept of rebates just does not get in my head. For the uninformed rebated are a kind of discounts you get when you buy something. Generally they are the mail in kinds, that is you buy something at its original cost but then you mail them the receipt and some form and they send you the money back. Why if one is supposed to get his money back should he pay it in the first place. Why does'nt the company offer discount at the point of purchase itself.

Hmmm.. I can probably try to reason that the company wants to pay directly to the customers with no middle man involved or some crap reason like that and live with this kind of rebate. But right now I am baffled. I was searching for speakers to buy and came accross a product Logitech Z 2300 - that ranged from $54 - $165. thats more than 66% difference. All because of different kinds of rebates. Not that this product is of poor quality or something, infact ZDNet gives it 'Spectacular' tag with a rating of 9.0/10.0. So is this rebate from the company or from the seller? if its company how does it vary so much among different stores, and if its the seller, why is he giving it when no one else is and that too >50%. Also the rebate form needs to be sent to the company and not the seller, so it has to be the company thats giving this rebate. ... is there any fruad in this? is the product of the same quality and workmanship as the other high cost versions of it? so I buy it without any fears?

Research - What does it actually mean.

2006-02-10T19:46:00.000-08:00

A very basic question, what is research? Off hand research is search for solutions to problems that have still not been solved and sometimes even finding problems to solve. No rules to abide by. No formalism to live with. Thats what I too used to think when I was an undergraduate, not that much has changed though in post graduate life, but there are subtle differences.

'Anything that works' is research is not true anymore, well it is but not enough to grant someone given a 'Dr.' epithet. It all developed during my last three meeting with my graduate advisior. The first of these three meetings I went in sad, but came out more jovial. The second time I met him to discuss research, I had gone in happy but came out gloomy. And today was the third of the enounters which finally went as it should have been. I went in in good spirits and came out with the same. The reason: the first time I did not have good results to show, but he pointed out the good theoritical base I was using for those. The second time I had results, but he showed the shaking grounds they were on. Today, I had some results and they were backed by theory :-). So research, atleast for a degree, is not 'Anything that Works' its 'Anything that works, and has a theoritical base to support it.'

I once read an article that discussed how language was a reflection of a socitey. And it gave an example. It said there is no word in English that captures the feeling of the common Hindi word - 'Jugad' (and I still have not got any common or even esoteric english word for it, it means to do what every is minimal to get things working). It probably does caputures a cultural difference between Americal and India. I think I was doing that till now - result oriented thought process, to tweak some cranks and make the machine work. But I always enjoy 'Jugad'. It gives me a peculiar kind of happiness to make things work with mininal input. In real life situation one probably has to have that skill. Anyways now research has a new dimension to it, atleast if I want 'The Paper' that will prove that I can do research :-). Lets see how well I fare in this 'Non Jugadu' research :-)

(btw the article also said that there is no hindi word that caputres the essence of - 'Maintenance' - well I will give it to the guy cus I really dont seem to find that good a word in Hindi. There is 'Dekh bhaal', or may be 'Marammatt' but to me it really does not give the same feel as 'to maintain something' - though I must admit that I not great at vocabulary. )

Calender Updates.

2006-02-06T15:03:00.000-08:00

Seems that my search for a perfect working calender wont end at Calenderhub. i am just not able to get hooked to it. Still too complex for my needs. Its fast to add events - fast from the user perspective but too slow from the server side. It was a promising tool, alas I will have to search for more.

Got some more calender links (web 2.0). This one caught my attention cus of its special feature. SpongeCell - with 'Sponging' - you dont even need to go to the site to add event, you can 'Sponge' it to the site by sending an email (or sponge at the site also). They dont have a good help on that so first time I tried to add an event it was added to the year 2012! Anyways, form its response email I have been able to add the events as desired (not able to set the reminders sill - they should give a help atleast or have a standard format to add events. Right now its hit and trial but its a simple learning curve!). Apart from that all the extra benefits that common to web 2.0 calenders - RSS, drag drops, publish, share etc. I have been using it for three days now and seems good - have made it my homepage, so the first thing i see in as i open the browser are the todos/reminder for events. Simple indeed.

Event Management

2006-02-05T13:26:00.000-08:00

As bhatti demanded more technology news on the website, here it goes.

From past few weeks I was in lookout for a service/software that lets me manage the upcoming events in my life. Be it birthdays, talks, seminars or just personal reminders. Diwaker had long back suggesgted me Yahoo calenders, but that was too complex for simple events. I wanted something that lets me add an even in less that 3 clicks and minimal typing. Well I did not find the exact match that I wanted but landed upon CalenderHub. Its closest to minimal input calender I want. Based on Web 2.0 technologies, the interface in realistically simple (well it takes 5-10 mins to get familiar with most of its operations). Some pro and cons.

Pros:
1. Its online - so you can view your calender, add/delete events from anywhere.
2. It has a small widget tool that you can download and get reminders on your desktop. Good as then you dont even have to log in to their service to see whats all is stored in for you today.
3. Reminders in your email.
4. Facility to publish your calender to a webpage and get RSS feeds from it.
5. You can creat group/public calenders. I cant remember how many times I have filled that birthday reminder/alarms type of information. By group calenders on can creat say a Family calender/ School calender, in which everyone can add and view birthdays. So one needs to enter his birthdate just once for the complete group.
6. It also has import and export facilities.
7. As the trend is, you can add tags to your events.
8. The facility to add weblinks to your events - this might be useful for linking your event to a webpage if it has one.

Cons:
1. As was the problem with yahoo, here too to add a recurring all day events such as birthdays, with reminder emails, one still has to click on three tabs and few drop downs to add it. But if the group thing works this will be just for one birthday.
2. The desktop widget still does not has the facility to set such events. Its good for one time events.

Anyways, I have missed quite a few talks due to lack of reminders, hope I get addicted to this and it makes my life more organized.

Philosophy: I wonder if its good to get attached to such things - what if someday they cease to exist.

15 Park Avenue.

2006-02-04T03:30:00.000-08:00

I was very excited to watch this movie, reading Nanda's reviews on it, but I must say it was a let down. Overall its great to see the way Aparna Sen has handled the issue of schizophernia, I am not much knowledgable on this and got whatever it was depicted in A Beautiful Mind, and here too its interesting portrayal.

But the thing that caused the let down for me was the artificial dialogues and over use of English. Its true that a new class is being formed/ has been formed in India which talks in English even at home, but I am sure its not as formal as in the movie. Moreover, Waheeda Rehmaan did not seem very comfortable talking everything in english. Charu's dialogue in Bihari tone was seemingly much more realistic and digestable.

The second thing, its about the abstract flavor she has tried to give to the movie. I generally like movies with open ending, but here there were many loose ends. Its like cut pieces are joined together to make the movie. Also there seemed no central theme to the movie. Schizophernia for sure was the main line but intermingling siter-sister, mother-daughter, adding doctor-azmi relation, no real use of brother, bose - bose's wife realtion..... all were not required and made the audiance loose track of what actually did she try to depict.

On the whole, a watch for people who like off-beat movies, a must avoid for the ones who just see movies as an entertainment tool.

Comic strips.

2006-01-31T19:51:00.000-08:00

I am not a die hard fan of comic strips ( partly because I dont get the subtle humour in many of them ;-) but lately I and regular with Dilbert and have started to enjoy it. I think to get all of it one needs to be familiar with the whole set up. I want more now. Tried Ripleys believe it or not, but most of the facts they state are not very exciting. Today itself started reading some of the Calvin and Hobbes series and I think this will be something that I will like. Dont have the complete background knowledge yet but just found this direct one nice.

Food Update

2006-01-27T16:12:00.000-08:00

9. Ocean View Terrace
Taste: 2.5/5
Location: 10 min walk west of ECE building.
Cuisine: Multi cusine. Messing style.
Cost: low. I had a personal Pizza and Fires and the total was less than $4. Thats what I call low pricing. Though some of the other item are nominally priced. There is not tax for students.
On-the-go-option: No for the most of the Graduate engineering students. Its too far, even for a meal. Its different if one is in the mood of a light walk and munching something with a peep of the ocean.
Vegetarian Factor: 4/5
Late Night: YES. Its open till 1:00 am in the night (check online for weekends and special days)
Health Factor: 1-3.5/5
Comments: I wanted to try the open hearth pizza and did so the first time I went there, but was dissapointed. It tasted okay, nothing great about it. The good point was that they bake it fresh for you. Also the fries I had were cheap but pathetic. They were cold and once can imagine what cold fries tastes like.

8. Earl's Place
Taste: 2.5/5
Location: Near Canyon Vista.
Cuisine: On-the-go-packed-food and coffee.
Cost: EXPENSIVE
Late Night: Yes.
Comments: Dont go there. I

7. Canyon Vista
Taste: 3/5
Location: 4-5min walk east of ECE building.
Cuisine: Multi-Cusine. Messing type of eatery.
Cost: Nominal. It has variety of option ranging from $1.75 bowl of pasta with marinara sauce (ass a $0.30 garlic bread to it and you have got a meal) to ~$2.00 pizza slices to ~$4.00 subs to ~$4 burgers to stir fry etc.
On-the-go-option: Pricewise yes, but its far so not a very practical option. I am not sure if they even have a take away option.
Vegetarian Factor: 4/5 given the variety, one can find enough vegetarian stuff to please himself.
Late Night: No.
Health Factor: 1-3.5/5
Comments: Its good to go there, but I usually end up eating Pasta and Pizza, which have low nutritional content, so I avoid going there. Its kind of a mess (not the messy mess, but mess hall) so great for backup strategies, though I feel that it should extend its timings - it closes at 8:00 pm.

6. Sunshine Store - only One The Go Food and coffee.
Taste: 2.5/5
Location: Price Center
Cuisine: On-the-go-packed-food and coffee.
Cost: Mocha - $1.12 (16 ounce)
On-the-go-option: I have really not tried the packed stuff there, only go there for coffee.
Vegetarian Factor: X
Late Night: No.
Health Factor: X
Comments: Probably the cheapest coffee you can get on campus. They have all the paraphernalia for making coffee, tea, hot chocolate. One needs to have the Mocha for atleast 10 times to develop the taste. I dont know why they have a habbit of adding some like of weird flavors to coffee and chai.

5. Tacone (will be updated)
Taste: 3/5
Location: Price Center
Cuisine: American. Sandwiches, warps etc.
Cost:
On-the-go-option: $1.50 for hot fried french fries. The quantity is descent and they also add their special spices which gives it a more Indian taste. Also tried $2.50 Sweet Potato fries - (fired shakargandhi with honey). Did not like it on the first time.
Vegetarian Factor:
Late Night: No.
Health Factor:
Comments:

4. Round Table Pizza
Taste: 3/5
Location: Price Center
Cuisine: Italian. As the name suggests it specializes in pizzas.
Cost: $1.50 for a single topping pizza slice. Has options for personal pizza but are expensive. A better thing is to go in a group and order the large pizza.
On-the-go-option: One can take two slices of one topping pizza for $3.
Vegetarian Factor: 2.5/5
Late Night: No.
Health Factor: 1/5 - ones eating only cheese, bread and tomato sauce.
Comments: Having had pizza is its birthplace itself, my thresholds are high, but given that one gets a hot pizza slice, its better than other pizza joints I have tried on campus. They also serve Beer.

3. Rubio's
Taste: 3.5/5
Location: Price Center
Cuisine: Mexican. Wheat/Floor Tortillas with filling options of Beans, rice, vegetables, lettuce, cilantro, onions, corn, bell peppers, cheese with their choice of salsa and chips.
Cost: $5.50 for a vegetarian Especial Burrito- Includes all of the fillings as mentioned above. $3.50 just cheese and bean burrito with chips. $2.50 for a Street Burrito.
On-the-go-option: A Street Burrito is one of the best on-the-go optin in PC. Though a vegetarian option is not their on their menu but one can ask them to substitue meat for vegetables and lettuce. No chips with it.
Vegetarian Factor: 4.5/5
Late Night: No.
Health Factor: 4/5
Comments: Was the favorite during the initial days, but got bored of it and subway is taking on the first spot.

2. Subway
Taste: 3.5/5
Location: Price Center
Cuisine: American? Bread toasted/plain with cheese, some fresh vegetables - lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, cucumber, carrot, onions, bell peppers, some tinned - olives, jalepenos etc with mustard and mayonnaise.
Cost: $5 for a vegetarian footlong (12 inch), $3 for a vegetarian sub (6 inch).
On-the-go-option: a 6 inch sub is a descent option but with tax it shoots bit abouve $3 to $3.21
Vegetarian Factor: 4.5/5
Late Night: No. But closes last among the PC eateries.
Health Factor: 4/5
Comments: Its becoming a fast favorite of mine, cus of the vegetable content and the fresh factor. I usually go for the 6inch, but with 12 inch it is also a cost effective option. A 12 is sufficient for normal appetite people, but hogger like me need something more.

1. Panda Express
Taste: 2.5/5
Location: Price Center
Cuisine: Chinese - that includes steamed rice, fried rice, chowmein and for sides mostly meat items, but also found tofu and a mix of stir fried vegetables.
Cost: $6 for half portion of steamed and fried rice each with a portion of tofu and vegetables. Tofu was patheic, cant take it the next time.
On-the-go-option: Nothing is available below $3
Vegetarian Factor: 2/5
Late Night: No.
Health Factor: 4/5
Comments: May be a bowl of rice and stir fried vegetables or chowmein can be the next experiment. That would also bring the price under $5.

What can you still do with 15 Paisa - $0.003

2006-01-20T15:17:00.000-08:00

Get closer to your sweetheart! I mean not physically but vocally.

Reliance Info offers intra-circle calls at 15p

That really does break all bounds.

Hypocricy of the press or the college?

2006-01-20T15:03:00.000-08:00

Obscene CDs: 4 engg students suspended
"In yet another crackdown by Anna University authorities four third-year Mechanical Engineering students of the College of Engineering, Guindy, were suspended on Wednesday for allegedly possessing obscene film CDs and misbehaviour in the hostels."

Anna University Vice Chancellor D Viswanathan said,
“As many as 300 hostel students own computers which are connected to local area network, so that students can share their information. However, we never expected them to use them for watching pornographic movies,”

Really? I mean does the H'ble Vice Chancellor really expects that from 21 year old males (and females //?//) or is it the media and public they are afraid of? I wonder even these kinds of suspension should be brought to limelight by media (or by me)? I mean in IITK we had various such cases of student logins getting suspended for non academic use, nothing more than that and probably that was the right amount of punishment/importance given to the matter, not worth a newspaper article anyway.

For God and the Country

2006-01-17T15:12:00.000-08:00

You must be knowing the recent announcemt to have five more institutes tagged as IIT's. It does not matter where you are from, but if you beleive this is NOT the solution to the problem of Higher Technical Education in India and would rather mitigate the brand name of IIT's please sign this petition.

Fellow blogger, kindly spread the word.

Photos Updated on Flickr

2006-01-15T16:01:00.000-08:00

Ultimately found a soultion to get my rolls developed and digitize at bearable costs. There is Ritz camera (one of the best photo studio) in La Jolla Village Center, that develops 24 exposure rolls for $4.50 but gives UCSD discount of $2.00 so thats just $2.50 for developing and then at Ralph's Photo Express at La Jolla Village Square one can get them scanned at $3.00 if the negatives are not cut. For cut negatives they charge $5.00 for 50 negative photos and $7 for around 100 negative photos. So on the whole one can get a roll developed and digitized at around $5.50 (good quality) which is quite decent. Infact got all my negatives scanned at Ralphs today and uploaded them at flickr at

Random(includes the cycling trip pics): (~ 8 new)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/97388042@N00/sets/1786421/

California Trip: (~20 new)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/97388042@N00/sets/1785831/

Task for this Quarter - Food at UCSD

2006-01-08T18:16:00.000-08:00

"Visit each of the eleven campus restuarant and write about them." (I hope :-)). Food, Food, Food are the three top most things I miss about India and IITK. Today morning itself Himanshu came over and we went for a short drive. And I said - "Agar abhi India mein hote to kachori kha ke aa rahe hote". :-( . I really miss the road side food stalls. In Delhi I could have found a 'Sundar Sasta Tikau Chola Kulcha' with a drop of a stone. In Kanpur Lala made it sure that we have OnDemand food from 2 in the afternoon to 2 in the night. And ofcourse there was MT for Chai-Samosas and ShopC for Cold Coffee, Patties and Milk Cake. If we used to get fed up with even these, there was the Famous Dosawala at the entrance. Once in a while IceSpice.

But here, its just Subway(Sandwitches) or Rubios(Mexican). And if one is a gastronome, he tries out Canyon Vista (mess type of arrangements) or some eateries in Old' Students Center. Even a pathetic coffee with all kinds of awful smelling chemicals makes you shell out a dollar. (I mean think by Indian Standards 4.5 Rs vs 45.). You can find better tasting coffee at Roma's cafe but that costs double. Anyways, no point cribbing cus the problem is not lack of eating options. The problem is lack of exploration. The UCSD website says there are 11 dining option on campus. And how many have I tired yet - Just two. Apart from these there are few more fastfood types of eateries in Price Center and Old Students Center and again I have a patheric experimentation count. So this semester I aim for trying atleast 10 different kinds of eatries. The parameters are cost, On-the-Go-Snacks and Vegetarian Options. - My aim is to find vegetarian option that fills your tummy for under $5 if thats a proper meal, or under $3 if its On-the-Go-Snacks.

1. Panda Express
Taste: 2.5/5
Location: Price Center
Cuisine: Chinese - that includes steamed rice, fried rice, chowmein and for sides mostly meat items, but also found tofu and a mix of stir fried vegetables.
Cost: $6 for half portion of steamed and fried rice each with a portion of tofu and vegetables. Tofu was patheic, cant take it the next time.
On-the-go-option: Nothing is available below $3
Vegetarian Factor: 2/5
Late Night: No.
Health Factor: 4/5
Comments: May be a bowl of rice and stir fried vegetables or chowmein can be the next experiment. That would also bring the price under $5.

To Try
Café Ventanas: 30 ft. floor-to-ceiling windows, an exhibition-style kitchen, a sushi chef, and more await you in this architecturally breathtaking restaurant.
Club Med: Begin your day with a cooked-to-order breakfast, or stop by for a HeartSmart lunch or fabulous Italian cuisine.
El Mercado: The best spot on campus for authentic Mexican foods.
Foodworx: Pizzas, salads, Quizno-style sandwiches, and much more.
OceanView Terrace: Serves open-hearth-fired pizzas with a breathtaking view of the Pacific.
Plaza Cafe: There's something for everyone with vegetarian specialties and rotating international specialties from the South, Middle East, Asia, and Mexico.
Plaza On The Side: Coffeehouse-meets-poetry reading-meets-live music.
Sierra Summit: With made-to-order wok, a vegetarian station, and "on the rock" ice cream.
Snackropolis: Catch a spectacular view of the ocean while enjoying grilled-burgers-of-the-day, specialty salads, and more.

Photoblogging - California Photos

2006-01-07T18:37:00.000-08:00

If you just want to see the photos and not go into the crap written click here.

I did forget to write a blog about my entry into SLR photography. Anyways, I got a Nikon FM 10 a month back, a fully Manual SLR camera and got to use it properly for the first time during the California Journey.

Now there are some draw backs of still using a roll based camera. The rolls cost you money, the developing costs you money, the printing costs you money and the digitizing costs you money. I am still experiments whats the cheapest way to get my rolls in digital format without compromizing on the quality. Still not sure, I have to buy the rolls, I have to get them developed so there goes $5 per roll. Add good quality printing - another $5. And you also ofcourse them in Digital formats another $5 in uncle sams country. But the camera was way cheaper ($200) than the digital SLR's ($800 - Nikon D50) and it being completely manual you are forced to learn the hard way, but the learning is permanent.

Shot 4 rolls in all, and got two of them onto CD. A new issue I am tackling with right now is how to best organize them and display them. I know flickr is there, but came to know about Pixelpost from Zishaan Hayath. Right now I have uploaded some pictures at My Flickr account itself to get started. Also pressure from freinds and family was too high. So enjoy the photos and dont forget to comment on them.

Book Tag - Books I read this year.

2005-12-31T13:51:00.000-08:00

I am not sure whats this tagging business all about but from some digging it seems that once I am tagged I am supposed to write about what books I read this year and tag three more people. I anyways wanted to write such a blog but was procratinating it.

Diwaker Tagged me so here it goes.

1. Siddhartha - Herman Hesse - (previous review) - One of the best books I have read this year. For one it was just 80 pages, and two it was simple and direct. The story is about Siddhartha(Not Gautam Buddha) who wanders in the forest in seek of truth. As a priest's son, as an ascetic, as Buddha's discipile he feels incomplete and finally decids to live the Material life as a merchants advisior and in love with Kamala. Still unsatisfied he finaly learns something else thats the climax. The sentence that hit me the most was - 'I can Think, I can Wait, I can Fast'

2. Ukridge - PG Wodehouse - My First PG Wodehouse. Ramesh Mamji gifted me this book when I was coming to America. I usually dont read such fiction (In fact I did not use to read much but have started to cultivate this habit from this year itself.) but the PG Wodehouse is just amazing. An exceptional book for light reading. Ukridge, considers himself as the next Bill Gates, and tries innumerous ideas to become rich. Alas! he does not become rich but finds something thats the climax.

3. Conversations with God (Part I) - Neale Donald Walsch - An amazing view of the world. Arun Raghuraman suggested me to read this book and I read it during my ITC stint. He in his platfrom cant be contradicted easily. The book is about God talking to him and answering the eternal questions. The ideas do get repeated a lot and it seems more targetted towards the American souls, nevertheless a must read.

4. Ramayana - C Rajagopalachari - As the author himself claims, Ramayana for growing up children. He has beautifully written it without and pompous words or even any strong interpretations of events. Sometimes writes in too many superlatives but a refreshing book. Specially as it is very easy to read.

5. Right Ho! Jeeves - PG Wodehouse - Typically PG Wodehouse again.

I think I am too late to tag, but anyways will tag Nanda, Bhatti and Pango.

A journey into the US - Yosemite - 21st - 24th Dec

2005-12-31T01:59:00.000-08:00

Right now writing about the complete trip seems so huge a task - so many events to write about, so many moments that needs mention in the blog. All that with a want to make it as short as possible. But as every long journey starts with a first step so be with this blog.

The Explorers

So finally - Nitin - Phantom, Bhatele - Hatele, Ankit, Himanshu(Replacement for Yash till San Francisco) and I started for the journey on 21st Dec. I and nitin were registered drivers for the car - Chrysler Sebring Sedan. A standard luxary car. We were to drop Himanshu and pick Yash from San Francisco. I had boasted that I can drive for long time so was given the steering from the start. Before going into the 'gory' details as himanshu puts it, lemme first write the the moments that shall remain eternal.

1. 21st Dec - 28th Dec: Covering a total distance of ~1700 miles - more than the distance from Delhi to Kanyakumari was a feat very few people would think to undertake back in India. I dont usually give it to the Americams but the system of freeways and highways, and the quality of roads in America demands appreciation.

2. 23rd Dec - 3:00pm: The highpoint of the journey was when we lost our way in Yosemite trying to follow the trail to the Yosemite falls and ended waking up and down on rocks meant for water in rainy season. Thick forests on both sides made it immpossible to conquer the slopes, but our leader Ankit was motivated enough to overcome any hard knocks. Finally after a detour of 2 hours we found the trail but then it was too late to go to the top of the Yosemite Falls. The mighty falls, 6th highest in the world with the height of around 2500 feets shall call us again.

3. 23rd Dec - 8:00 pm: Two more things were added to my First Time list - Ice Skating and Corss-Country Skiing. After coming from the trek to Yosemite Falls, Ice skating was just the perfect thing to do. The feeling of floating freely on ice is something that cant be expressed with words. Beautiful girls with perfect figures dancing on ice as if they were born for this noble task. The background score of 'Hallelaiuh' giving it the romantic feel . Cool misty atmosphere, with the thrill of doing something for the first time - I mean Ice Skating. Ah! the thought itself makes me dreamy (It feels so feminine to write all this but I have to do justice to the ambiance, and show that IITians can also respond well to nature)

4. 24th Dec: Though I have done downhill Skiing in Auli, never had a chance to do cross-country. Its more or less similar but there are basic differences. Cross country, as the name suggests, is meant for longer distances. Downhill has both toes and ankles locked, but cross country has ankles free for easier traversing uphill. It was good, but for fun lovers i think downhill will be more interesting. More over the snow was hard and crystallike - so it made it more difficult to learn and much more painful to fall. An interesting thing happened here - When Bhatele was given his ski shoes, gods curse the attendant, she gave him a blue ones. Blue color! Doesnt she know that Bhatele does not like them! naah! He wanted some different color but was shy to ask for them. So the conversation went -
Someone else - "he needs some different color shoes do you have them?"
Theresa - "sorry we dont have pink?"
*laughs*laughs*laughs*
Theresa - "Do you really want some different color?"
Bhatele - "umm, unn, uhh! yesh i dont like blue, you have any other? I want purple" Yippie!
Every one - "Yippie" Bhatele got his colors.
Later she was the one who have us an hours lesson.

View From Badger Pass

5. 25th Dec: Mariposa Grove - the place of 2000 year old trees (yeah its not 200 years). Known as giant sequoia trees - they grow taller the first 300 hundred years and then keep on adding bulk to them. Most probably the trees were around 200 ft (wikipedia says 200-300 feet) and had a diameter of 15 feets. Thats like 4 Hall 1 rooms put together at the base and 15-20 rooms on the top of it. We had no plans of going there but we met some Americans on our way and they suggested us the place. God bless them.

The Americans who helped us.

Timeline:
21st Dec 2005 - Wednesday
10:00 am: started our jounrey from San Diego with me Driving.
1:00 pm: crossed Los Angles and stopped for lunch at Taco Bell.
5:00 pm: stopped for Evening Snacks at McDonalds - around 300 miles from San Diego. Changed driving seats. Nitin took over from me (though I did not want to switch ;-))
8:00 pm: finding our way through San Jose, missing exits and turns, we had to drop Himanshu there.
9:30 pm: 500 miles away from home we stayed at Yash's sisters place. A massive and well kept house. Very friendly and caring hosts. Good food. Good company. What else does one need.

22nd Dec 2005 - Thursday
10:00 am: Left for Stanford to meet Mridul, Harsh and Sidc. Though Yash was not legally allowed to drive he took on the drivers seat. Stanford was beautiful. We did not see much of it but the feel was good.
12:00 pm: Doing brunch at Quiznos we headed for Yosemite, another 300 miles from San Francisco. I took on ther drivers seat.
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm: Inching forward in the heavy San Francisco Traffic.
3:00 pm: around 150 miles from San Fransico we stopped for coffee. Yash also found a friend at a Asian Egg Roll Outlet. Pathetic Rolls indeed. Nitin came on the drivers seat.
7:00 pm: We reached Yosemite. A single breath of fresh air was enogh to wash away any dirt of the cities. Sporadic snow made it more touching.

23rd Dec 2005 - Friday
10:00 am: Good morning Yosemite
12:00 pm: On our hike to Yosemite Falls. Though we were not able to reach the top of the falls because of the detour we took, the view of falls from mid way was enchanting enough. I wonder when will I have the next chance to reach the top. Anyone ready to join me again?
5:30 pm: Back from the Hike. Lunch at Food Court.
7:00 pm: Ice Skating amongst beutiful girls at Curry Village (the place where we stayed in Heated Camps)
10:00 pm: Exhausted from the day - retirement time, saw a movie - Gol Maal on Yash's desktop oh! people call it a Laptop but its Dell you see!.
12:00 pm: Sweet Dreams.

24th Dec 2005 - Saturday
8:00 am: Had to get up early for Cross Country Skiing.
11:00 am: Started our drive to Badger Pass 30 miles from Curry Village.
12:00 am: We were on our skis trying to balance and move.
1:15 am: Theresa gave us the Skiing lessons.
5:00 pm: Drive back to Curry Village with Dal Chawal at Food Court. Well they dont call it that - its called lentil soup without salt, and rice to be taken seperately, having Amru food for 5 days makes you innovative enough to find something close to indian food. Yash and I enjoyed it to the fullest.
8:00 pm: '29' session (thank god they dont call it '69' ;-))- Both the Lucknow wasis were together - Ankit and Yash and I was team with Bhatele initially and later on Nitin. We lost Bad time - The game went on till 1 am over few sips of alcoholic beverages and the final difference was of 21 points with Yash and Ankit having 6 Red Hearts.
1:00 pm: Retreat

More...

IBM Thinkpad R52

2005-12-31T00:41:00.000-08:00

Logically, this blog should be an extension of the previous one about my journey but I had decided that the first blog I wrtie on my new Laptop - IBM ThinkPad R52 - will be about the laptop itself. It all started with a casual discussion with phantom when I was defending the fact that I done need a laptop right now, I won the talk but he won the final battle. I ended up buying one within 10 days of the discussion. All that I have analyzed below are not first hand experience but based on the research on the net.

I had a faint idea in my mind regarding my needs. In reality money was not a constrain but I did not want to go above $1200. My roommates had bought Dell Laptops for around $800 but that didnt impress me much. I wanted something stable, something that I can bestow my trust upon given my carelessness attitude ( at times ;-) ). There was not much variation in the processor speeds available in the market under $1.2k. It ranged from low end celerons around 1.6Ghz to newer 1.86Ghz Intel Pentium M centrinos. The RAM was usually 256 MB but some also offered upto 512 MB. 1 GB was the best of the lots. On the lower side HDD was 40GB with 4200 RPM disk speed and higher ends towards 100GB with fastest speed as 7200 RPM. Other things that was considered were screen size (12" - 15.4"), weight (4lb - 6lb - see I have already started talking in American unit system), frills like number of USB port, firewire, DVD writer, good quality speakers, egronomics of keyboard, mouse etc. All in all, given the best of all these a laptop would cost around $1.6k which meant there had to be a compromise somewhere.

Either I could have gone for a Dell with low egronomic qualities and low sturdyness but higs frills and good HDD or there were other companies like Toshiba, HP that could have been considered but for me stablity was the prime issue which I did not want to compromise. So the contest was between IBM and Apple. Both are reputed for their performance and stability. Apple is surely good but... So I finally decided to stick with IBM Thinkpads.

Now with ThinkPads there are three series - T R and Z. Z is the latest one more of the multimedia kind of PC with high degree of frills. T series are the flagship product with T43 being the latest kid on the block but EXPENSIVE. The R series offered the same performance as the T series but did not have the same body material so were heavier. The same configuration T series was expensive by around $300 dollars. I wanted to go for T43 but at a price of $1400 it was well above my limit. So finally I got a great deal with 1.86Ghz Pentium M centrino, 1 GB RAM, 14" screen, CD writer - DVD reader, IBM trust and stability. The downside 40GB HDD (4200 RPM) and weight of 6lbs. But at a price of $999 I dont even call it a compromise :-).

The first looks are in accord with the speculations. A complete black body giving it a corporate look, the IBM trademark red colored mouse pointer, special lights on the top of the monitor for ease in typing in lowlight conditions. Yes its heavy but that not a problem for me. (I hope!). Right now the 4200 RPM does not seems to slow down the performance but the systems virgin right now so my fingers are crossed on that. The keyboard is definately better than Dell. It feels sturdy but only timetest will bring out the reality. Finally, it is surely the best buy if thousand dollars is all you can spend. Maybe still the best even if you have a few hundred more than that.

More after using it for a while.

The Journey is about to begin.

2005-12-20T15:06:00.000-08:00

In few hours bhatele will arrive in San Diego, and probably that will mark the start of my first journey in America.

The Journey: San Diego - San Francisco (1 day) - Yosemite (3 days)- Las Vegas (3 days)- San deigo - Mexico(1 day maybe) - San diego.

This journey is special as it has many 'Firsts'. Its the first:
1. Road-Trip by car - have done motor-bike, cycle trips before . Estimated distance ~1500 miles ( 2400 Kms)
2. Journey In America - Right now for me America is equivalent to San Diego.
3. Journey with Nitin Gupta, Yash Kapoor, Abhinav Bhatele - Yes we have been together for many years but never went out for a trip.
4. Time will be using my new Nikon FM 10.
5. Time will be driving in America - yeah even after I failed in the test, the rules allow me to drive.
6. Time I am writing a blog before the start of an Event. :-)

Any ways, we will be having laptops and hope that I will be able to write few blogs during the trip. So be ready to check out the snaps. BTW :- just for info the complere trip is organized by the renowned AIR - Nitin Gupta.

Eak Quarter Khatm aur mein fail ho gaya :-)

2005-12-14T21:24:00.000-08:00

Again its been a week that my first quarter at UCSD came to an end and I have not written anything about it. Sob Sob!

Yes I failed in one of the exams still I am happy. I have to be. :-)

I had taken up just two courses in this quarter. My advisor told me to take one as two will be heavy on me along with research work, but I insisted and took a basic course on Image Processing. The endsems were just not like the ones I gave back at IIT. The modus operandi was same but personal emotions were quite different than any of the IIT endsems. For the first time I felt what it is to be prepared before the endsem. Having missed just 3 classes that also of the basic course I did not rush to Mayank Prakash Gupta to know what the course is, I did not rush to Zia to find the notes and book, and I did not rush to Mridulto help me clear my concepts. I was all set, all by myself. First time!. I never give any comments on how was the exam, so as usuall - 'Ho gaya bas'.

Anyways, I also had a third exam - 'Behind the wheels driving test' - for california driving licence on 9th Dec. On 8th evening after the end of the second exam, Himanshu and Nitin as my mentors and tutors for American Rules and Regulations, helped me to practice. I had to hire a car and luckily (or unluckily) got two upgrades from the car I had originally booked - from compact car to a standard one - Kia Optima.

First time drove an automatic transmission car. No clutches, no manual gears, just use accelerator and zooooom goes the car. Good power, low engine sound. All in all it was an easy drive. And fast.

All was set, with full knowledge of the rules I went for the test the next day. All my concentration on moving my neck to check traffics from all the sides at intersections and turning as the rule demamded. At the end of the test the examiner says. "I am sorry you will have to retake the test"! Reason: Overspeeding - I was driving at 35mph on a street that was marked 25mph. As Nitin said: 'Jwaan khuun hai, ab teez nahi chalayega to kab chalayega'!. Have a retest in Jan. :-)

INDIA

2005-12-02T11:55:00.000-08:00

* 1/3rd of NASA scientists are Indians
* There are over 5000 Indo-American professors in American colleges.
* More than 30,000 Indian doctors in America
* GE has set up its second largest R&D centre in India with 1,000 PhDs.
* 50 p.c. Fortune 500 companies outsource work to India .
* Among the only three nations to build supercomputers.
* Among the only six to launch satellites.
* Over 35 p.c. Silicon Valley start-ups are by Indians.
* The largest English-speaking technical manpower.
Let’s look at manufacturing and trade:
* NSE and BSE rank No. 3 and 5 respectively, in the number of trades worldwide.
* The largest cotton yarn exporter, largest manufacturer of motorcycles and two-wheelers.
* Lowest-cost producer of steel, aluminium, cement, CDs.
* Pharma is the next IT in the making. We are 4th largest.

India is an idea whose time has come. It has all the ingredients of a global brand waiting to be communicated, first to the internal audience and then to the world. The key is that we have to start and this is the time for it. We cannot wait for the perfect moment, there will never be one.

(The writer is Chairman, The Aditya Birla Group)

At the back of a food carton.

2005-12-01T20:52:00.000-08:00

"Do Square. Not round. You dont get four corners of hot 'n' juicy goodness with round. A square hamburger, made fresh to order, always has the edge. After all, not cutting corners is doing what tastes right."

Yeah. As if.

but not bad on second thoughts.

First Bike Trip in Uncle Sam's Country

2005-12-01T20:20:00.000-08:00

"Procrastination is the rool of all futility"
-Nikhil Rasiwasia

I still rememer the moment when I decided to write about the first camping trip in US (for records it was with nitin, himanshu and 'Guest' KT from India in Anza Borrego desert 70 miles east of SanDiego). But I came back, I procrastinated, It lost its charm.

Same seems to be happening with the few adventurous hours I had this Sunday. The fun of writing allready seems to have diminished, but its never to late. So sunday (27/12) marked the end of my Unplanned Thanksgiving Celebration. Though overbogged with academic stuff and having dwindling intentions, I finally decided to make it. ( partly because it was My and Panju's plan and I did not want to spoil it at the very first go). It was expected that 6 of us will be there, but expectations are just expectations. For this instance only 4 made it - I, Panju, Diwaker and Sachin and I think this is the optimum number for a bike trip. Nitin and Nikhil(K2) prefered the dreamland.

Start/ Starting at 8:00 in the morning (too early by my standards and too late by panju's) the journey till Solana Beach (~12 miles) was to be covered in one hour and some mins. The route was soft with one long downhill slope near Torry Pines (which obviously implies lot of hardword the way back). We went nonstop with constant 'intimidating' overtakes by aged americans, at their age I would probably prefer to go a bit slower but these ppl are born cycling. In an enroute discussion with Diwaker I felt that it would be good to challenge them to a sleeping competition! what say?. Anyways, so we finally did not stop at Solana Beach but went three more miles cus in Panju's words 'yaar mein thaka nahi abhi tak', yeah! ask us and especially Sachin.

Having breakfast at Cafe Enchinitas(where my dish was served in two parts with an interval of 10 mins, so when you order something you dont know the contents of, and neither your mates, you only realize that the first part was to be eated with the second when you just finished the first part and second arrived, Confused eh! So was I :). We took a U trun and again a nonstop biking till the dreaded upslope. It reminded me of the emotions I went through the Cycling trip in Spiti Valley. Ofcourse there's no comparison between the two, but it was fun reliving the experience. /End

Btw that bike trip did seemed to have cost be a bit - I found my axles and peddles wobbling yesterday night, seems that the bottom bracket is faulty. Just asked one of the shopkeepers and his reply was 'twenty five dollars for the part and twenty five for the labor, plus taxes extra'(and its california). No I wont tell how much did I pay for this beauty, but if you guess its less than the total above, I wont be amused.

Living The American Dream - The American Way

2005-11-26T18:16:00.001-08:00

I am nearing the completion of three months in America (well technically its still 12 more days to go but...). I started to write blogs with the initial motive of sharing my American Experiences with the people I love and viceversa. But it seems that lately this became more of a Technology-Information Blog than Nikhil-Experiences-Infomation blog. Not that I have not had experiences here but somehow they were either not worth a blog or the lazier half of me took control, but after the last few days I am determined to write about some personal experiences.

24-25th Nov (or more generally the Thursday and Friday of the third week of November) are Thanksgiving festival days in America. Traditionally on Thursdays the whole family eats dinner together(or is it lunch?) and on Fridays its Day-of-Shopping. I had no plans to celebrate it - eating with family is a commonday activity in India (Alas! I have not been doing it for the past 4 hostel years) and a day just for shopping cant be labbeled as Festival in India, however in America its different and justified - but I ended up celebrating probably more than it demanded :-)

Well I just realise that given the amount of time I have *Wasted* in the past three days and going to tommorrow I really dont have the right to make this a detailed experiences blog, but just wont give up without writing a synopsis.

1. Wed Night
Movie - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with Nikhil K. and Mayank Kaabra. It was a good entertaning movie in absolute sense but the other episodes were much better than this one.

2. Thursday Night
Thanksgiving party at Antoni's Place with Doug and his wife Megan, Luke, Dashan and his wife, and two more people whos name I failed to capture there (I really apologize for this and request if ever any of you read this blog please help me update the names). This party is what actually made me feel that I am also celebrating Thanksgiving the American Way. After a sumptuous dinner - yes Doug and his wife were Vegetarian too so there was Vegetarian stuff too - we played few games that was a kind of Charades but had three stages to it. I must say it was one of the best night in America. Here only I came to know that friday is the Day-of-Shopping so..

3. Friday Morning: Day-of-Shopping with Diwaker, Nitin and Diba. Again this was one of the best outings - one...first time I did shopping without any list and ultimately landed up spending aroung 10k in INR in Walmart and Fry's. , two...the group was fun, three...we had nice Indian Lunch and four...got 20 packets of ParleG :-). Bought a Tripod, Camera bag, Cycling Helmet, Small-sweet knife a jacket and some other trinkets.

4. Friday Night: Movie 'Rog' at Nitin's place with Nikhil K, Bhavjit and Kundu. Irfaan Khan being the actor - Nitin's favorite guy, and to an extent mine too - the movie was tolerated. Well the second and third reason to justify the moive can be Uddam Singh for his style and Ilene Hamman for her .... (yes I did a google search to find her name)

5. and there more to come tomorrow - Sun: bike trip with hopefully Panju, Nitin, Nikhil K, Sachin, Jyoti et al. Will write a seperate blog on this.

Phew! I must be get going, else the fun I had this week with be mapped by an inverse polynomial function the next week.

Movie Review - Osama

2005-11-17T20:52:00.000-08:00

Just came back from the free screening of Osama. I should be working right now but the movie has left me in contemplation so I thought the best would be to write about it.

In short, the movie, based on a true strory, shows the pliglt of women in Afganistan during the Taliban Rule. The lead character is a 12 year old girl, who is disguised like a boy by her mother as women are not allowed to work or even travel alone. Ultimately the Taliban finds it and she just escpaces her death, when an old man weds her and takes her to his 'harem' where there are already handful of his other wives. (No he does not take her out of pity, but with lecherous intentions)

About the moive - its short and to the point, no background score, not many dialogues, a hitting story with no hanky-panky emotions or drama, a more like a documentary without narration. One does expect that like the usuall movie climaxes the story will somehow turn favorable to the girl and her mother but director Siddiq Barmak, spares no sympathy, probably wanting to depict the exactitude. This is what made me think.

I have heard from people and read in the news that Taliban was really merciless to the people especially the woman as the movie depicts. But was its really to this degree that woman was not allowed to travel alone even under a burka? And when a man takes his wife on a cycle, he can be punished as other men will be aroused? Or is it just another method to justify the ousting of Taliban by the Americams.

Well probably its true! And why not. I have heard stories about the restrictions the women had to suffer in the villages of India too but probably never really gave them a thought. Now when the thought passes by that the ritual of 'Sati' did exist(believing it actually did exist in the form as we know now) the verisimilitude of the movie can not be questioned. The problem is that I dont believe in condemning anything out and out. I believe in necessity is the mother of all inventions and also rules and regulations. But necessities change over time, and many a times the rules and regulations dont, that is the right time to condemn them. I do strongly condemn the ritual of 'Sati' and the 'unbendable rules' depicted in the movie' - in the contemporary world, and also want to do so in any other world, but the other half of me is trying to find possible reasons as to what in the first place gave rise to such rituals. Can they be justified at any point of time? (I believe not. Which might contradicts my belief of necessity is the mother of all rules and regulations, but who says that all necessities are justified? The problem lies in the necessity itself..... well!! A good movie go and watch it.)

Information Management - Websites

2005-11-10T20:40:00.000-08:00

So you are trying hard to remember a website that you had book marked at your office computer or just surfed by while enjoying an evening with your girlfirend on her computer. Or probably you are like the ones who dont believe in bookmarks and girlfriends ;-). Well I did not too! but after 'delicious' happened to me I started believing in one of them. And its still not girlfriends.

The most creative thing about the website apart from its core is its name - read del dot icio dot us without the 'dot's and you get delicious names - but they acutally have it del.icio.us . Dont go by the looks of the site just register and it will give you two links that you should add to your Mozilla browser (dont tell me you still use IE)

Whenever you want to bookmark a site ckick post.del.icio.us and it will take you to a page where you can add tags to that bookmark. If you want to retrieve that you can use my del.icio.us link. Simple as that. What makes it usefull is that it
1. You can access it anywhere
2. You can obviously sort using the tags
3. If that link is also marked by someone else it gives you a kind of page rank.
4. Its light on your network.

A suggestion: have a tag called freetime so that nextime instead of unconsciously checking your mail in your freetime you click my delicious and go to the your freetime ;-) sites without having to think what was the address or typing it in google.

Now the only thing left is - me to start believing in girlfriends, does anyone know a site?

Information Management - News

2005-11-02T12:28:00.000-08:00

Yesterday night I had a long bulla session with Diwaker - The man for all the tools you would ever need to *live* online. We both were on the common ground that Information Management is necessary. We want our minds to be free - how many times have you regretted that you missed a deadline (backpackit, rememberthemilk) , or if you could just remember the site you went to that had the best information on Hiking Opportunities in Kinnaur district (delicious), or if you are away from your home sweet home, you surely want a *noise* free news site - (Read below) - And dont give me the crappy answer - "Isnt Google there!"

I wanted to get noise free news, Times of India/Indiatimes was pathetic, so was Hindustan Times Online, I could skim something from Rediff News, Google News and the Economic Times but going to so many different pages and then lookin'n'pickin news items from those portals was not an optimal solution. Here comes RSS.

Yes I know it has been around for ages, but only for point one percent junta (and if you are still thinking how does Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh(RSS) solves the problem of getting news, you need a complete overhaulling of your infomation system).

RSS is the answer to not going to myriad of portals, and not having to scan through to get filtered news. Almost all good news portals have RSS support - and then there are RSS agregators. What agregator does is that it goes to all these sites (that supports RSS) and get out the content that you are interested in and display 'only' the content to you. Google provides an RSS agregator at reader.google.com also at the Personlaized Google Homepage, all you need to do is find the RSS link to the site you want information from and feed it in the agregator -like Rediff business news, CNN news, Dictionary.com word of the day (all RSS links).

Now be sure to tap all the information without it being a pressure on your mind.

Why are India's Achievements So Little Known?

2005-10-27T14:46:00.000-07:00

Today there was a talk by Dr. Vidyasagar, and I did not go why?
1. It was at 9:30 am and I had to sleep
2. I was hearing this name for the first time.

Bharath - my roommate told be about his achievements but still that was not enough to cross my sleep-barrier. But later when I was browsing through his profile I was really awed by his acomplishments. A simple looking man but 'The' man behind CAIR, TCS Advanced Research Center and holding visiting faculty positions at MIT, Berkley, UCLA, IISC etc. I went through an article by him - Why are Indian's Acievements so Littike known.

Some Excerpts:

"I believe the correct question to ask is not why it is so cool to hate India. Rather, we should ask: Why is it so easy to slander India and get away with it? My suggested answer is: Because one does not pay any price for doing so."'

"There is no point saying that what such people say is "true". In a huge and heterogenous society like India, one instance of almost every kind of deviant behaviour can be found, especially if one goes looking for it. The issue at hand is one of perspective

"To these people, the India of the rising Rupee, falling inflation, rising foreign exchange reserves, rising current account surplus, falling unemployment, rising self-confidence, booming stock market, improving infrastructure, rapidly decreasing poverty, burgeoning IT sector, and the second fastest growing economy in the world for over a decade, simply doesn't exist."

"I can Think, I can Wait, I can Fast."

2005-10-24T18:43:00.000-07:00

- Siddhartha by Herman Hesse.

Probably the simplest and the exaustive rule one needs to follow in life - not even follow, just say it when any negative thoughts come to mind - and life would be much more meaningful.

I happened to hear about this book from a guy called Deepak Maini who was my room mate during my small ITC stint. For all the four years he was with me at IIT we did not interact much, probably I did not think high of him, but was surprised to know him then. Anyways, he was then reading another book by the same author - Narcissus and Goldmund and another friends at ITC - Godbole also mentioned that Siddhartha was great.

Now over a small discussion with my flatmate, Bharath, I was again reminded of the excellance of the book, but this time I was lucky as he had brought the book with him. A thin book indeed, but best read at 'half the speed'. One of Bharat's take from the book was that Hesse has gone beyond 'Gautam Buddha' (wont tell how as that will spoil the essence), but to me the thing that struck the most was - "I can Think, I can Wait, I can Fast". (Though still trying to deal with the last clause ;-)

A mathematician`s advice:

2005-10-19T16:32:00.000-07:00

You cannot solve the problem? Forget it and invent a new one.
-D. Polya

When History does not repeats - Mid Sems

2005-10-19T14:12:00.000-07:00

I say the word 'mid-sem' and I am sure something flashes at the back of the memory. It brings forth the emotional turmoil that used to happen when the mid-sems approached at IIT. For many this was the only time that they ever used their gray cells for academic purposes, for some probably midsems were too meagre and they used to wait for the End Sems.

A good way to analyze the midsems may be the plot of 'days-used-per-midsem vs stress vs year'. I still remember my first Midsem in Sept 2001. Things were new, things were daunting. Probably a whole week was spent preparing for them. Yeah 7-8 days for 5 midsems getting it to a ratio of more than 1.5 days per midsem. The day first mid sem ended was a celebration day. Since I was from Delhi and had those features a typical Delhiite would, I chose to play Pool at Landmark - the only 4star hotel in Kanpur. This day would probably also mark the first time I tired a cigarette - with the words 'For the First and the Last Time' ;-). Anyways, the next mid-sems were also similar. Heart beat going stronger, spending 1.5-2 days average per midsem (incl the days of the midsem).
<- High Stress, High Time(1.5-2days/midsem).

In second year things changed a bit. Since I had scored good with supossedly less amount of effort in my first year, mid sems were taken in a lighter mood. Maybe I started to prepare for them 5 days in advance. But the stress of the midsem was still high. It still was only midsem on the mind throughout those 5 days, getting it to around 1 day per mid-sem. In second year the end of the mid-sems were marked with different kind of feeling. Going out on a rickety Vikram to city was childish so it was more whatever can be managed staying at Campus, watching Movies in and out, night out sessions with friends of 'a' glass of Whiskey and the kinds.
<- Normal Stress, Normal Time(1-1.5 days/midsem).

I got raped in my second year, probably had taken them a bit lightly. But no! who cares. I wont change, Life is about fun. Third year was bad - but not for me. Doing seven courses (one audit) was no joke, but something changed in third year. Now mid-sems were no longer something to fear from. They were like routine thing and needed time at the right time, which was duly given to them. The end of mid-sems in third year was now no special issue. 'Bula Sessions' with friends and 'khamba' was not something that deserves special mentions. Surprizingly I also reached perfection in one of the semesters - Lesson learnt lower the stress and time - higher the output :-).
<- Low stress, Normal Time(1-1.5 days/midsem).

Fourth year was like a breeze as far as the midsems were considered. There were 3-4 midsems on an average and 2 days were reserved for them, so the average time per midsem was less than 1 day. I dont even recall any sepecial feelings for midsems probably except the last one where I thought - "this would be the last mid-sem I will ever give, Ahh! I will have to leave IIT Kanpur - I wish I has some more days of even the mid-sems." ----And Lo! God heard me and now I am again in the loop of midsems and endsems. :-)
<- Low stress, Low Time(<1 day/midsem).

BUT history now does not always repeats itself. Though I am in my first year, I no longer have the anxiety I had in my first year of IIT, nor am I spending 2 days per midsem. IIT has made us strong enough that no exam can ever raise the adrenalin. I have a mid sem tomorrow on Statistical Learning, though its only one but I am keeping the tradion of low stress low time to perform my best. I have exaclty 24 hours left on the beep!.............Beep...........should start now! BTW a secret - I have always relied upon good wishes.

Spiti Valley - Marriage of Heaven and Earth

2005-10-17T16:16:00.000-07:00

The best adventure trip ever till now, and probably it shall remain the best - atleast for the 11 people that were on.
Synopsis
---------
Cycling trip in Spiti Valley (Himachal Pradesh) ~ March 17 - March 27 2005.
Appoximate Distance covered on Cycles ~ 180 Kms.
Max Height ~ 4300 Mts
Max Cycling in a day ~ 60 Kms.
Bag Pack Weights ~ 15 - 20 Kgs
Route:
Kanpur -:Train:- Chandigarh -:Bus:- Shimla -:Bus:- Rampur -:Bus:- Recongpeo -:Bus/Cycle/On foot:- Yangthang -:Cycle/Bus:- Tabo -:Bus:- Kaza -:Cycle:- Ki -:Cycle:- Kaza -:Cycle:- Hoorling -:Truck:- Maling -:Cycle:- Puh -:Bus:- New Delhi.

I dont know if I will be able to write about it in detail but just found one of the group members - Shivesh Ranjan - written an exhaustive summary. He has really written it well with all the details. Probably someday I will write a small version.

Photos: http://students.iitk.ac.in/adventureclub/cycling_spiti.htm.
(To get a glimpse at real Himalayas, check out photographs from day 4 onwards.)

From Sivesh's Blog:

Himalayan Eleven – the cycle expedition

Ravindra Vishnoi (vishnoi, behnoi) 4^th year: Adventure club coordi. One word: photographer. Another word: Spiderman. Always seen with his SLR on.

Gaurav Bhutani (bhuts) 3^rd year: Vishnoi’s successor. Tiredness and fatigue; What’s that? Suicidal tendencies – over stimulated love for adventure. Treasurer of the trip.

Amit Chosky (serial-killer*, psycho*) 1^st year Mtech: A taciturn and a perfectionist. Most helpful guy in the group.

Ankur (labor) 4^th year: A paranoid. Archie’s nemesis – shared all archie-aditi stories with us

Archisman Ghosh (archie; Urchie baba) 4^th year: Mr. clumsy, Mr. unlucky, Mr. always-falling-in-trouble. Bong!!!

Harshat Pant (pahadi, pant) 4^th year: pahadi. Best singer in the insti. Didn’t let him bore us much with his vocal chords.

Nikhil Rasiwasiya (daddu, nikux, phantom*) 4^th year, wingmate: Adobe wizard. New found love on the trip –SLRs.

Shivesh Ranjan (lala) 4^th year: That’s me.

Ravi Verma (thapa) 4^th year: thapa looks. My Jordon team-mate. Love for adventure and speed and donkeys(?).

Y. Ajayendar Reddy (reddy, terrorist*) 3^rd year: thapa’s spouse. Terrorist get up. 32 all out through out.

Raja Banka (Bhramadev*, banke-lal*, banke-bihari*, raja babu*) 2^nd year: without him the trip would have been half the fun. One line punches.

Came accross a nice Joke

2005-10-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

At age 4, success is..............not peeing your pants.
At age 12, success is............having friends.
At age 16, success is............having a driver's license.
At age 20, success is............having sex.
At age 35, success is............having money.

At age 55, success is............having money.
At age 65, success is............having sex.
At age 70, success is............having a driver's license.
At age 80, success is............having friends.
At age 85, success is............not peeing your pants

They say history repeats itself.

2005-10-07T19:41:00.000-07:00

Or does it not?

Well in my case in in the case of numerous people who make the mistake of believing that they are worthy enough to satisfy their ~Intellectual~ thirst and give back something of use to the world, it must be true. Yea I am talking about Grad School and being a first year student again. Yet Again. Not that I have bad memories of my first year at IIT Kanpur but "Kuch bhi bolo! First Year first year hai aur Fourth Year Fourth Year" - (remember our good ol' singla sayin "Kuch bhi bolo! Hall 2 Hall 2 aur Hall 3 Hall 3" ).

Final year you are the boss - you are the ultimate - you are the champion - you know the loopholes of the system - you are what you are - and above all you have 'Friends'. But first year is different. You are polite - you are the one who will say a Hi to a senior first - you have to know and explore the system - you dont have knowledge - you are 'Alone'. !@#$%^&*Ahhh! Its really nice to be back in first year cus this is the time when you learn the most - you are active - you are open - you make New Friends - your knowledge increases - you learn a new way of life - you Live a new life. But was the old life bad that you needed a new life? Someone told me at Appin, Life is all about asking right questions! and I must say he was totally correct. The question is not that was your old life bad that you needed a new one, the question is Isnt' Change Necessary?. Well i'll talk about that some other day cus this one is one first year and final year.

So after establishing myself for four years in IIT, life has put be back to the same spot where I was when I joined IIT. I know that these will be the instances that will be imprinted on the memory perpetually, but only that going thru it once again is some kind of a pain. It would have been much better to say directly enter the third year with all the information needed be fed into the brain in matrix style. Then all these inital extra efforts of the first year will wane away. Is'nt anyone working on thing like memory loader through which Neo learn jujitsu?

A Tab on Internet.

2005-10-06T17:28:00.000-07:00

Why this Blog: From the past few months I was feeling kind of left out in this new Internet that was seemingly being evolved. My past memories do remind me of website of HTML of CSS and to an extent of php, but that now whenever I tried to open my eyes and look around I could not handle the glaze. To cut short everything read about Web 2.0 in Wiki and on O'reilly

The Blog: This confusion started when I entered IIT in 2001 with the knowledge of just HTML. I used to wonder how can people make great site which are coherent- talk of any big company then and it had a website such that all the pages looked a part of the site. Infact the content inside the pages were truly organized - a supposedly difficult task to do just using html This was the time I was exposed to CSS. I started using it for small pages and also used it to develop the initial website for Appin Knowlegde Solutions.

As time passed by another doubt gripped me with all thouse dynamic content coming on the net. Nanda my roommate made his website for Navya. He had this task of updating the website from time to time with new news, polls, articles, databases etc. He introduced me to PHP and MySql and my thirst for understanding the web was pacified. But in the final year of IIT things again started changing. The foremost being Gmail which never seemed to me like a website - the interface they developed was just amazing, so must have been the tools used. It was not pure HTML-CSS-PHP-MySql types of website for sure, but then I did not let that bother me and continued on.

From past few days I was lucky to keep track of Diwakars Blog(Ajax tags) and happened to see some really nice websites with amazing functionality. - Organizer, Flickr, word processor, instant messenger, project manager. Also new words like RSS, AJAX, Web 2.0 came into my dictionary and now I again feel satisfied to be walking with the Internet unless someone else points me out new technologies. Not that I know all these technologies I dont know the 'A' of it but I feel secure that I know that it exists.

Everything thats new and exciting belongs to a class formally called as Web 2.0-Read more in Wiki and on O'reilly

Ctrl

2005-09-27T14:06:00.000-07:00

Some age old information which I can to know today - try these on the dos prompt.
Ctl - m = Enter
Ctl - d = No more Input
Ctl - g = sounds a bell
Ctl - h = backspace
Ctl - i = tab
Ctl - c = you already know.

:-)

Apping Guide

2005-09-27T14:03:00.000-07:00

Started writing an Apping Guide - Thought it would be helpful for the coming generations. If you want to write your own point of view on Apping or write articles mail me.

An interesting read for vegetarians.

2005-09-25T19:42:00.000-07:00

I found this on diwakar's blog and he has linked it to this guy's blog, but its an interesting read.

I dont know if the facts that he has stated is true or not but he surely has made a point.

click here to read the article.

Amazing way to manage pictures.

2005-09-23T16:09:00.000-07:00

I was into finding pictures on the net during my undergrad for doing al kinds of artsy work and did find it a tedious talk to find them - especially to find ones which I can call - good picture. But this site has it all - flickr.com - you can upload images, annotate them and search from among the annotated images. It also has a section called interesting pictures which i must saw are worth a peek.

Try with IIT Kanpur. Can anyone tell which year's M.E. is it?

Things of Desire

2005-09-22T14:49:00.000-07:00

Seems that the onus of planning out things to buy for my survival and lavish living ultimately has fallen back upon me. Just maintaining things that I need and that I desire.
Based on Desire
.1. Camera Nikon D70s
2. Laptop - Apple Powerbook G4
3. Car - cant afford a first hand so second hand.
4. Montaineering Gear.
5. Mountain Bike
6. Nikon FM10/N80
7. Rayban Aviator
8. Racing Bike
8.a Skateboard
9. Mp3 Player
10. Audio System
11. TV
12. Shoes
13. Sandals
14. Furniture for Home

Based On need
1. Furniture for Home
2. Sandals
3. Audio System
4. Mp3 Player
5. Mountain Bike
6. Nikon FM10/N80
7. Rayban Aviator
8. Racing Bike
8a. Skateboard
9. Shoes
10. TV11. Laptop - Apple Powerbook G4
12. Camera Nikon D70s
13. Car - cant afford a first hand so second hand.
14. Montaineering Gear.

Why is it that the order never matches? Any more suggestions in the 'Based on Desire column' ;-)

Why Blog?

2005-09-20T15:56:00.000-07:00

I have been wanting to create a real blog-spot (not blogspot - which apprantly I have from a long time) but few thoughs always pestered me on the basic question why should I write blogs.

Well its true that when I read some of my friends blogs online - nanda's, bhatti's, pango's, jaya jha's, diwakar's - the *only* ones I have read - I find different reasons of their blogging. Nanda writes mostly on social things that probably he is against or liked in the recent past or his little endeavors here and there. Bhatti is still a step ahead criticizing the social and economical backbone of India. Diwakar probably writes on whatever comes to his mind giving good latest information and upto-date happenings (Which I really appreciate), pango - though a late entrant has got some attention lately due to his blogs on IIMB. Jaya Jha's blogs sometimes have to link to any social or economic issues - what I can call is inner thoughts.

So trying to organize thoughts on blogging, the topics are:
1. Social and Economic fibre.
2. Current Affairs in general
3. Personal Current Aaffairs
4. Philosophical snippets/inner thoughts.
5. New/Latest in the Market
6......

Coming on to reasons of blogging - I wonder why do *We* write blogs?
1. Do We have lot of time?
2. Is it like writing a daily dairy - or maybe weekly dairy?
3. Do We write it to just express what we feel strongly for?
4. Is it just a community effect? My friend blogs & I like my friend => I should write blogs.
5. Do We feel lonely and want someone to share Our thoughts with?
6. Is this just a technological substitution of the Bulla sessions (just chit chat)
7. Am I thinking too much?

Proably I am. Probably there is no reason for it, but still I find it curious as I want to write blogs (dont know why) but am just not able to (dont know why again). May I feel vulnerable that We might know me and my inner thoughts - So what? - Well! what if they are not according to the norms of the society? What if You start being judgemental on what I write? - But thats what you are? - But thats the problem, maybe I am not what I write? Maybe thats just a state of mind at that moment? There have been many instances when I contradict myself and then counter-contradict and then counter-contradict and so on. - Hmmmmm, but why the hell do you care what We might think of you? - Duhh! Aint that a part of social life? Aint that important that others think good of You? Will You be able to live in a society where every one is against what You think is right? Isn't sociey about 'Right and Wrong'? If not why do You criticize so many social norms that you have? Why do You express a strong opinion about something You feel is right or wrong? - Its not what We feel is right or wrong is actually write or wrong - its only that We believe it to be right or wrong. - Then why do You forget this in you daily life that "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." - (Einstein). - But you should not care if this a fault of Ours, you should not care if We are wrong in forgetting what We consider right or wrong is a mere belief - But again, are We really Wrong? Rather Can We be really Wrong? - Lolz, Who knows?

Well probably You can help me on this, but for now I will choose the path of writing blogs. Writing about the perceived differences in cultures in India and America( I fear it wont be truely American as San Diego, especially University of California at San Diego is filled with students from over a 100 countries :-))) - I may be judgemental - afterall I am a part of We.

Maybe it pics up this time

2005-09-14T15:25:00.000-07:00

hmmm...no maybe later.