One

Its been one year since this started

Google Talk

Another thing for Y! and MS to worry abt from Google. Looks like Google is serious about taking over the world.

Still in its early stages but I like it already

The ID-Cod Song

This a song about Id cards created by a guy in Vellamal. Its HILARIOUS
Make sure ur floor is clean before u listen to this one coz u'll be ROTFL afterwards

You can get it here

[Google for Id Cod for more download links.]

Thanks to Shrik for telling me abt it. I cant thank him enough
my stomach is aching from all that laughing...

[Its been around for a while I guess but I came to know of it only tonight
and couldn't resist]
Listen to it if u havent already

The circle of life

Today I went to college to get my provisional degree certificate and final semester marksheet. Nothing special about that; whats special is the date. It was today four years back that college life began for yours truly. I didn't even know today was the 8^th till I was signing for the documents and then I felt kinda weird at the realisation.

I am now an engineer first class with distinction; so if you need someone to solve your computing difficulties I am sure I can find someone else who'll know what to do ^_^

Translatable quote 2 : DravidSpeak

This is what Rahul Dravid Captian Team India said to NDTV's Jaydeep Bhandarkar yesterday when asked a question about India's match against Sri Lanka today(May not be the exact words he used but its pretty much what he said)

“We are not concentrating on winning. We just want to play good cricket and get the right team composition. I am a believer in playing good cricket and when you do that the results tend to take care of themselves”

This is what he meant

“Don't expect us to win. We'll be lucky not to get our asses whipped”

Back to the future or The case of the deleted Firefox history

Last month, on about the 26^th or the 27^th , I opened Firefox and when I hit Ctrl+h I was shocked to see that the history was blank, clear, empty just like the mind of an Indian politician. It's as if I hadn't been on the world wide web in the past 30 days.( I've set Firefox to remember the history for 30 days) So there I was with a browser that seemed to have suffered a dose of amnesia that would give the impression that it was Leonard Shelby living in a Memento of its own.

For a moment I was stunned and then I cursed a little and got on with things and I didn't think about the problem or else I should have discovered it at that time. People who know me will not be surprised that I didn't think because it's just the way it is with me; thinking is something I don't do often (ok ok at all).

I let things be as they were for a couple of days and my browser picked up new memories. Then I wanted to look up what day of the week a certain date was and so I opened the clock and noticed something quite weird. My computer was running in the month of August while I was sitting in the month of July. And then in a moment of realization's the case of the cleared Firefox history was solved by the the culprit and I kicked myself for not having figured it out earlier.

I had inadvertently changed the month to August while checking the day of certain date in August. This time I changed the month back to July before I clicked 'ok'. And ofcourse the history(may have been history) of the past (future?) 2 days disappeared again thus completing a cycle of living in the future, going back to the past and thus landing in the present.

Moral of the story: The dumbest part of a computer is its user.

Naam aada likhna

Naam adaa likhna has to be the best song to have come out this year. It's from a yet to be released movie called Yahaan(no nahin the name is not a multilingual reduntant yes [sorry couldn't resist the pj]) directed by Shoojit Sircar. The movie's music is by Shantanu Moitra of Parineeta fame. He composed the music for this movie before he did Parineeta and he has done an absolutely amazing job. The lyrics are by Gulzar which are brilliant as is usually the case with Gulzar. I've listened to this song about 299 times in the past 2 days. I just love it.

I know 2 movies do not make a man but if Shantanu Moitra continues like this for a few more movies he is gonna be the hottest property in the Bollywood music scene Had to blog about it. Just love the song

Ps: If u happen to see the trailers notice the herione. She is sooooo pretty ^_^

Translatable quote

What Hewitt said : “You've just got to bide your time, keep grinding away, you know, try and look for answers I guess. “

What he meant : “I have to wait for Federer to retire before I can think about winning Wimbledon.”

Bono's old clothes

I read recently that U2's lead singer Bono was suing some ex stylist of his because he wanted clothes. Now ordinarily a singer asking his stylist to give him some clothes is not a very strange phenomenon; I mean stylists are there to recommend dresses and stuff. But you see Bono is no ordinary singer and his demand for clothes is quite extra ordinary.

Now why is Bono not an ordinary singer. For one he is probably the only modern day rocker whose name is an adjective. “But aren't names nouns? My III standard English teacher told me so” I hear you ask. Let me explain. See Bono gets his name from “Bono Vox” which are words from a very old language now spoken by really old men in the Vatican and in Biology text books – Latin. In English “Bono Vox” means “Good voice” and Bono when he started singing was told he was too loud so he dropped his voice and became Bono. If you've been following the elementary lesson in Latin very carefully will now realise that Bono means “good”. So basically Bono is an adjective. See I told you he was no ordinary singer. Bono is good, really really good.

Now coming to Bono's old clothes. Bono wants his ex-stylist to return a few of his 18 year old clothes that he claims she stole and she claims he gifted. Let me ask you all a question “Do any of you have any item of clothing that is 18 years old?” I mean do you want to wear clothes that old. Apparently Bono does and he is suing her to get those clothes back. Now people if you have really old clothes that you were wondering how to dispose of may I suggest that you get in touch with Bono. He lives some place where the streets have no name with someone who moves in mysterious ways. He frequents some discotheque near his house quite often to recover from his bouts of vertigo. I am looking for my diapers which I wore when I was 2 months old. I am sure I can sell them to Bono.

I wondered why U2 released an album titled 'All that you can't leave behind' I know now what they were referring to – Bono's old clothes.

to BE YES !! ... YES! ... YEEEEEEESSSSS

Thats what you hear when you make love to a woman with Hamlet by the side

Sorry about that less than satisfying joke. This post is there because I just added two letters of the English alphabet and 2 periods after my name thus ending a period in my life. The worssssssssssst univeristy in the world came out with our final semester results and I am now Nandan Saha B.E.

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am ending this post here and not troubling you with all the possible variants of 'to be not to be' PJs. The title should satisfy you and thus this blog post climaxes.

THE MEATRIX

THE MEATRIX

You gotta see this and make sure ur speakers are on. Thanks to vetri for the link. It is actually a public awareness campaign. It is brilliant !!!.

I am moopheus...

ROTFL

Training Days

The past 3 weeks which ended with Tuesday were good fun.Why? I was going to college. (Reader at this point screams and jumps off his seat and checks URL to verify he/she is at Nandan's blog.) Before you wonder what has happened to me and whether I have found my sanity again or something let me assure you that I am still the same crazy, Nandan you know. Then why am I saying I had fun in hell and what the hell was I doing there anyway?

Well you see Wipro decided to conduct basic training for people joining in 2005 in their colleges itself for students of some colleges.(the classes are held by the respective college teachers Wipro just supplies the material) So basically I was going to hell and back for 20 days. Here are some of the things I (and some of my classmates) did in those 20 days

Sudoku

The latest craze to have hit town and I am totally crazy about it. After getting to college Anand and I would finish the Sudoku in the Hindu before classes started. I am totally hooked to Sudoku now.

Crossie

I have dabbled with crossies a bit. I am not too good at solving them. But when you have to put with boring lectures in the cool comfort of an aircondioned lab nothing works better than a crossie to keep one engaged. I have come to realise that trying to solve a crossword is way more fun when a class is in progress even if at the end of the day the crossie looks as sparsely populated as Alaska.

Making music

For a week out the 3 we were in a lab different from the lab that we spent the other 2 weeks in. In the '1 week lab' the machines are quite old and probably imported from Bedrock. So these has some old software installed and one of them was Qbasic which is an implementation of BASIC from Microsoft. What does all this have to do with making music. There is wonderful function called “play” and well it does what it says. So basically I was playing around with play and in the process irritating the people around me. Used Qbasic after many years and using it brought back memories of childhood and indeed I year at hell

Chilling out

Did I mention that we had our classes in labs. Well 2 out the 3 weeks were spent in a lab in the new IT block and the AC in the lab actually works. A computer lab where the AC works is a novelty for someone like me who has spent a considerable amount of time in CS department labs playing Mahjongg and Gnibbles and generating core dumps. You can imagine the shock I got when I realized that in this lab the temperature inside is actually going to be less than the outside temperature and am I glad that it was.

Surfing

One of the things that I learnt in the 3 weeks is that surfing the web is a lot more fun when its free and especially if one is not supposed to be surfing in the first place. Its kinda funny when you login to Orkut and your friends list has people who are all in the same room. You should check out this guy at Orkut. I am glad he didn't name the site after his second name ;)

Show me the money

Hell usually shows a complete lack of thought and planning in things they do with one exception – collecting money from students. We were asked to pay 40 rupees a day for the 12 days in June as bus fees. Nothing surprising in the fact that they came after money at the slightest chance they got. What is interesting is the planning, resourcefulness and dedication they showed in collecting the money from us. The people who came to collect the money even brought Rs.20 change !!! If only they showed the same kind of thought processes in the other aspects of college life...

Testing times

During the last week of training we had these mock tests in the various subjects that we had during the training (Have to write a test on 29^th at Wipro and need to get >80% in it so basically they were trying to prep us) When I say the tests were mock tests they really were a joke, seriously. They were so called 'on line' tests basically we took then on a computer. If I go into the flaws of the tests in terms of the system and everything else I'll end up writing a post longer than A Suitable Boy and your hair would have turned white or simply fallen off. But I'll leave you with a sample question. Don't bother about the question itself concentrate on the choices they are just brilliant

ARP module convert the pair to a 48 bit Ethernet address

1. True

2. False

3. None

4. Never

Hell has told us to write a full length 'mock Wipro test' 2 days before the real one

Question: Should I attend it?

1. No

2. Never

3. None

4. All of the above

Saw - A bloody spooky thriller

Saw is one heck of a movie. When my friend Kiran told me about Saw all he said was that it's a psychological thriller. I didn't know what to expect and this movie despite its flaws left me very pleasantly surprised.

Saw is about this serial killer called Jigsaw who puts his victims in situations where they end up killing themselves.

The movie starts with Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) and Adam( Leigh Whannel who makes his acting debut and who also co-wrote the story and screenplay) waking up to find themselves tied with chains to pipes in opposite ends of a very run down dirty yucky public toilet with a dead guy in the middle of the room. They are the latest victims of Jigsaw's murderous game.

I don't want to spoil the plot by telling u guys any more about the story. All I want to say to u is watch this movie. Be warned though the movie is quite graphic. Lots of gore and blood. People who like thrillers will like this a lot. It does have quite a few twists and turns to keep u engaged till the end. There is no dull moment in this one.

The movie was made in only 18 days on a limited budget being an independent movie.

But Saw could have been much better than it turned out. Cary Elwes' acting sucks. The actor who plays the dead guy does a better job. Its not easy lying perfectly still for 6 days of shooting. Debutant Whannel and Danny Glover who plays a cop do a decent job. There are some scenes which though very well filmed and quite spooky (like the stethoscope scene) add nothing to the overall story and seem a little deviant from the main flow of the movie. There are also a few logical inconsistencies in the details of the story.

All said and done Saw is a movie to be seen. See Saw.

Bored hoc ergo ad hoc post

If any of u obviously jobless and infinitely bored people reading this know what the title means please let me know. I knew but somehow I can't seem to know now. Bow wow. (that was my imaginary cat called America (belonging to the president of some far away republic) who is trying to imitate the dog on the street that just bit the policeman on the beat to get a taste of his feet). If any of u know what language the title is in and don't mind please let me know. And if u made sense of this paragraph congratulations!!! U win a free trip to Eroticon VI to meet Eccentrica Gallumbits*

There is an ad in today's Hindu for IIPM. There was a colour ad in the same paper last Monday. Nothing remarkable about that. If u look at the ad carefully, more specifically at a series of pictures at the right side slighly below the centre u'll notice a woman looking at a laptop. The same picture comes in the BSNL Data One broadband ads. Don't believe me go look for yourself. Arindham Choudhary sure know how to flick pics from other ads. Hope he doesn't make any more flicks though.

Was surfing aimlessly today in the afternoon and came across a phone in show on Zee Music. Unfortunately for me the remote refused to work and I was left watching this rather engrossing conversation. The original was in Hindi but considering all the 42.42 factors to be considered before making such a decision of utleast unimportance I shall translate the above mentioned (and presented below) conversation into English.

The TV screen shows the show's presenter, the logo of the TV channel and a line at the bottom of the screen that says “Jatin Delhi” atleast I think it said Delhi. Can't remember the city properly and not remembering the city's name does not bring capital punishment.

Presenter: So we'll play u ur song Jatin

Jatin: I want to say something.important

Presenter: Go on

Jatin: My name is actually Nitin. I've called 4 times and everytime I say my name the line gets cut.

At this moment there is silence and the line saying “Nitin Delhi”goes off the screen.

The silence continues for a few seconds before the shaken presenter says hello a few times and a voice responds from the other end.

Presenter: See Jatin err Nitin u can call ur self whatever u want. Nobody on this show has a problem with the name Nitin. So Nitin c ya. Dear friends we'll now take a break and be right back

*Refer The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy for further information

News just in: A dog was found dead in a street near my house. Apparently it died of asphyxiation. In other news a wife of a policeman has filed for divorce on the the grounds that her husband washes neither his feet nor his socks.

No dues blues

I went to hell on Wednesday for my Final Project Review and in the process experienced brain dead bureaucracy at its worst (No I am not talking about the Indian government nor is this post about the project review). This post is about a piece of paper called the “No due Certificate”. This piece of bull shit epitomises everything that is wrong with hell.

Let me first describe this thing to u. It's a piece of paper the usual cheap kind nothing special. There is place to fill in the name of the student, register number, roll no, batch and signature of the student. That is as much as I can fill up as a student in the no due certificate, despite the fact that we are told to fill this thing up and submit it at the time of collecting our hall tickets. Now I am not really keen to have a hall ticket but considering I need to write the final semester exams (Note to myself. Find xerox of books and start studying) I needed to get this “No due Certificate” filled.

This post is about this adventure. See in order to fill in the “no due certificate” one needs to get the following signatures with the words “No due” attached. And the list is painfully long and full of dependencies. Here it is.

Hod

Class counselor

Main library

department library

NCC

Physical education

Office accounts section

Office academic section

Now one is required to collect the form from the office. Nothing unusual or irritating about that but if u ask the accounts or the academic section to sign then they tell u to fill the rest of the NDC and come back to them. How brain dead is that. Why the f*** do I have to make 2 trips to the office. Why can't they sign it first up. Who the hell gave this college ISO certification. May be I should lend my copy of the Xerox of the TQM text book to them. (Note to myself. Look for TQM Xerox)

So I went around looking to fill up the rest of the form.

NCC – Why should I have to get a no dues from the NCC. I've had as much contact with them as a Pope's reproductive organs with the female equivalent (of reproductive organs not pope). I am not a member and have never thought about becoming one. So there is was climbing 2 floors to find the Applied Physics lab to get that signature.

Physical education – It's a well know fact that I get as much exercise as a hibernating bear. There I was climbing 2 floors again to get the signature. Its a conspiracy. All the signature givers seem to be on 2^nd floors of buildings.

Department library – the department libraries were disbanded after the library expansion a hundred years ago. Still I needed to get that filled. (brain dead. This entire process is dumber than a dead dodo). So I had to figure out whom to get the signature from. Considering there was no library to go to. Fortunately some some guy had already filled it up and knew whose signature to get. So I got that done and went looking for my class counselor. But she was no where to be found.

Library – This was rather comfortable considering the AC was working. So got the signature and wanted to hang around for a while but the moment the though occurred to me the power went off and the AC shut down. So I left

Class counselor – It's not very easy trying to get the class counselor's signature when she is in class studying. So I had to wait a long time till her class finished before I got that signature. And in the mean time I couldn't get the signature of the HOD 'coz our man won't sign till everyone else other than the office people sign the NDC.

HOD – At last got his signature and I was done for the day.

I have seem many instances of brain dead rules and procedures in hell but this one has to take the cake. The accounts section has asked everyone to get the signature on the day the hall tickets are going to be given which means there is going to be a huge rush in the office delaying the process of getting the stupid hall ticket and wasting everyone's time.

Ah the sheer brilliance of all this makes me wonder. Who the hell came up with the idea of a no due certificate anyway?

Meme

Vinod passed this meme on to me so here are my answers.

1. You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451! Which book do you want to be?
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. This book taught me that some books need to be persisted with before they reveal themselves in all their glory. I know people who gave up reading this book after a few pages because they couldn't figure out what was happening. My advice to anyone wanting to read this would be read till the catch comes and after that this book is just a joy to read. Probably the funniest book ever along with H2G2. It has some of the best characters ever created. My favourite is Milo and his scheme is just pure genius and the situations the characters find themselves in are just amazing (like Doc Daneeka being dead despite being alive) well just grab and read this book if u haven't done so yet. Absolutely brilliant.

2. Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

I don't think I've ever had a crush on a fictional character. Even if I did I can't seem to remember now.

3. The last book you bought is:

Last time I bought books were during this second hand book sale that was going on. I grabbed 4 books there.

Jaws

Harriet the Spy

Moonstone

A small Charlie Brown collection

4. The last book you read:

'The Media Lab' by Stewart Brand. This also happens to be the last book I borrowed from the college library. Written circa 1987 this book describes the Media Lab at MIT and generally tries to put fundaes on the future. It was quite a nice read despite being very dated.

5. What are you currently reading?

I am now reading 'Hackers' by Steven Levy. This is an all time classic. Written in 1984 this book chronicles the Hacker sub culture from its beginnings in the late 50s till the book's publication in '84. The term hacker here does not refer to people who break into other people's computers but its correct and traditional meaning “A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary” (source the Jargon file) and other such similar definitions. Basically brilliant computer enthusiasts and programmers who built most of the stuff to do with computers that we take for granted today. I have finished reading Part I of the book titled 'True Hackers'; which describes the Tech Model Railroad Club of MIT where hackerdom had its origin (and the term 'hacker' was coined), the activities at Tech Square in MIT, chronicles some legends like Steve Russel (who wrote the 1^st computer game Spacewar; infact there is a separate chapter dedicated to Spacewar), the life style of the hackers, their lingo and has some goose bump producing anecdotes Currently reading part II (what a surprise!) titled 'Hardware Hackers'. I am not sure if everyone reading this blog would like this book but for some like me who is interested in the history of computing this book is ...

6. Five books you would take to a deserted island:

1. Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins and Dominic Lapierre because its the only book the made me want to cry. And to also remind me of home. Not sure if reading this book on a deserted island would keep me in the best of spirits but I guess this book is ultimately a story of hope, a hope that is India.

2. Lord of the Flies by William Golding because this book tells us that we are after all animals and will behave like wild ones if we are pushed enough. And also the story is about being abandoned on a deserted island.

3. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. If you're asking why then I guess you haven't been reading this post very carefully.

4. Either 'The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy' or the 'Godfather'. Because ... well if u've read them u won't need an answer to this question

5. Any so called Holy Book like the Bible, Gita or the Koran or whatever because I'll need toilet paper. These books have caused more trouble and violence than any revolutionary manifesto. If there were books that deserved to be burnt they would have to be these

7. Who are you going to pass this stick to and why?

AC – he reads a lot. A heck of a lot

Pps – He reads and has a blog that needs a post

I am not as much a bibliophile as Vinod neither have I read as many books as Suze, or Goach or my classmate Prashant Raghavan but I like reading. I am not reading as much as I would like but what the heck I at least have the 'reading habit' and I'm thankful that I do.

The 2 posts that never were

I started writing 2 posts but never got around to posting them. I dont know why that was the case. Well the posts got a bit too long and winding and never ending so they never did begin their journeys as blog posts.

The first one was about my new computer. I got one on 8th March. I did mention that I was gonna get one and I finally did. I replaced my Celeron 433 with an AMD 64 bit 2800+ based machine with 512 megs of RAM, DVD burner, and 80 + 20(from the old comp) hard disk space. Changed everything except the monitor which is only about a year and a half old. Kept my cd rom drive, harddisk and internal modem. The cabinet has 3 fans to keep things cool. AMD processors have the hottest technology and as a consequence their processors do get hot. Nice to see them advertising a bit (seen the Ferrari ads in the paper with AMD?) They do offer a better price and performance than Intel and I hope more people buy their chips

The other post was about one of the few things about hell that I actually like -- the library. This is one thing I am going to miss about college. Even though I am counting down the days to my escape from the Pennalur Penitentiary (as Suze calls it) I will defintely miss the library. I loved just sitting in the air conditioned comfort reading magazines or just pretending to read so that I could just relax in the comfort of artificially controlled air.

Those 2 posts just got a bit too long and I really dont know what I was writing. Basically they did not make very interesting reading (not that this one is but atleast your page down button wont be abused and battered after you read this and certainly you will not be wondering at the lack of coordinated cerebal processes in my head.)

Yesterday was April fools day and Google decided to give us a gift on Gmail's 1st anniversary by doubling the storage and adding a whole host of other nifty features to make the best web based email service even better. Go Google You guys rock (and jazz and pop and dance and u guys get the point).

Since yesterday was April fools days I guess I'll just wish you a Happy New Year just like they did in the old days. (Wondering why? click this)

Sania's blog?????. i think not

check this out

the links comes coutesy Kitty. i guess its not her blog thoiugh it has lots of pics of her. if u're a mad fan then i guess u've already clicked on the link.

funny people are actually writng stuff on the tag board

Renaissance

It's been a while, a long while. While I have been away from the blogosphere much has happened in the world of blogs. Blogs such as mine on the other hand have remained ... umh well just remained. Remained untouched by the creator (me not God ) who was away doing things and not doing things. Things such as blog titles need explanation sometimes otherwise they just seem to be funny word(s) in a foreign language written by some moronic carbon based biped having woken up from a self imposed slumber of his only outlet of writing. Writing after a long time has its advantages though I can't think of any right now. Now is the time to tell you why this post is called Renaissance. Renaissance as you all know is a French term meaning rebirth; it is also the name of the annual inter school culturals organised by my school; it is the title of this stupid and meandering blog post and also happened to be some art movement (though movement is usually preceded by fart) (sorry abt that really bad attempt at a PJ).

I could called the post Phoenix but that is the name of hell's magazine and I didn't want any hellish connections. Connecting sentences by using the last word of the previous sentence is getting rather boring and tedious so I am going to stop doing that.

I could have called this post resurrection but then that was taken. So I chose renaissance even though technically my blog didn't die; it just went into a deep slumber.

My archives will not have an entry for February 2005. Sad but true.

So why haven't I blogged for so long. Lots of reasons actually but basically I was just being myself, (read being lazy). Thats why this blog hasn't experienced an update in [Mar 04 2005 - 14^th Jan 2005] days. Lots has happened in the world but I am not going to dwell on whats happened in the solar system because thats not why you read this. One of the reasons I think blogs are so popular is that they feed our voyeurism. Though I am not going to justify that statement. Why? Because I choose to.

Inter-collegiate culturals have been a high priority in the days I have maintained blog silence. There was the mother of all culturals Saarang. Had an amazing time. Managed to fit in an assessment test and project report within the Saarang week. Finally attended the Lone Wolf quiz finals and stayed till sunrise. Was an experience I shall not forget in a hurry. Techofes at Anna happened next and was good fun. Then came Ragam at NIT Calicut which for reasons I shall not know till the day I burn up into smoke and ash and pollution, hell sponsored. AC has saved me the trouble by writing a post about our experiences there. U can find it here. My complaints about Ragam are the low quantities of prize money and of eye candy. Though the pineapple juices were very gooood. And yes it was all free. Loved the jam and was very intrigued and bemused by the Malayalam jam and the roommate forced on us who eventually did 'shmok' in the room while we were not there and left us the empty packs and an aromatic room as a parting gift. Also we had connoisseur in college which was awesome fun. It is supposed to be a test of management skills but I guess it didn't quite turn out that way. I got reprimanded for vulgarity by the way though I am not complaining. 1000 bucks is quite sufficient thank you. My favourite moment has to be from the Mitafest quiz which Goach and I wasted an OD attending. There were enough goofs to fill a whole blog. But I'll leave you with this question which wins my award for the 'Waarrrrrsssssstt question ever reproduced in a blog'. Who is the second highest president of India[sic].

Other things that have been keeping me busy include Sania Mirza and her amazing recent run of good form and Narain's much deserved and belated break into F1. Really looking forward to Sunday. Though I still haven't finalised where I am going to watch the race. (remember CAS?) Also am in the process of upgrading my stone age computer. More on that when I get the new kit.

Our 7^th sem results came out and as usual there were some shockers. I am still thanking my stars for not having got an arrear. The revaluation scheme that anna univ has is the biggest scam since Telgi. I am surprised that no one raised eyebrows at an examination scheme that is so obviously designed to bring in revenues to the university. I dont want to spoil my mood by talking more about this farce.

I'll leave u with a few words of wisdom from David Gilmour. I know these are much better when heard but...

Lost in thought and lost in time

While the seeds of life and the seeds of life were planted

Outside the rain fell dark and slow

While I pondered on this dangerous but irresistible pastime

I took a heavenly ride through our silence

I knew the moment had arrived

For killing the past and coming back to life

Le joie de vivre

I have to go to hell only 2 days in week this semester. So on the days I don't have to you might think that I sleep till noon. Well I don't. The reason for that is water comes only for an hour in the morning between 6:30 and 7:30 so I am forced to wake up early and finish off the morning duties. I have always been an early riser type so this is not really a problem and for the fast few days I am enjoying it. Why??? u might ask. It's because of the weather. See cool weather in Madras is a rarity like the water so when it does become mildly not hot its a reason to celebrate.

I just love waking up at about 6:30 and taking a few deep breaths letting the cool air through. You can actually feel the air as it passes through cause its cooler than the rest of the body. I love watching the dew on the plants and the cars in the morning. I remember as a kid I just loved walking and sliding on dew laden grass in school, the cricket ball leaving its red colour on the hands, the water trail the ball made while rolling on the grass. But I think the reason I like this time of the year is that it reminds me of Kolkata. I used to go to Kolkata usually at the end of December as a kid. The last time I did this was about 6 or 7 years back. Somehow cool weather always reminds me of those amazing vacations spent as kid with my grand parents and cousin. I could go on about the amazing things that I did in Kolkata in winter but I am getting rather sentimental so I am going to stop.

Another thing that I have been doing reasonably regularly for a few months is listening to 107.1 MHz FM between 7 and 9 in the evening. Its the only time English music is played on radio. (Radio mirchi does play English music on Saturdays after 9:30 something I think but I've never listened to that) I know listening to radio in the age of digital music on the computer and portable devices seems like using pigeon mail in the age of gmail but there is a reason why I like listening to the radio.

It is the randomness and the unpredictability of the radio that I love. One does not know what song is going to come next and more than that if a song that you've thinking of gets played then the feeling is just amazing. A few days back I got into the lift at home and just as i pressed the go up a girl got down the steps and I didn't get to see her face and a song came to my mind. Later when i put on the radio at about 7:30 it was that song that was playing. There have been many more instances where songs I had been thinking of got played.

The guys with the big mp3 collections are probably saying that they can just shuffle to get the randomness and not have to decide what what one wants to hear. But u see computers cannot do random things. The so called random number generation and shuffles are not actually random. It's what the geeks refer to as pseudo random numbers. A computer can only generate pseudo random numbers meaning basically that even though for all practical purposes the numbers seem random they are not really random. Think about it. Generating random numbers is an oxymoron like honest politician. It's what a friend of mine said “If u can generate it then its not random and if its random u can't generate it”.

It's been a while since I blogged last. Since then a tsunami hit and killed over 150000 people. Goach and I went to Singapore for 3 amazing days. This was a prize for a quiz we had won in September. A new year has started. I have been sleeping a lot coz I have nothing better to do. I am supposed to be working on a project to build an automatic text summarizer. Just finished reading Michael Crichton's 'State of Fear'. Good book. Very Crichton in every respect. Finished reading Stallman's biography. Saw Swadesh and The Incredibles. Loved the latter more than the former.

Looking forward to Saarang 2005 (thats if hell doesn't have CAT ( Continuous Assessment Test read the biggest farce after the Anna University Exams) to coincide with Saarang as it usually does. Also looking forward to the Odyssey Quiz 2005. Intel Inside Mental Outside has not qualified for this ever so we're hoping things change this year. Forms are out so if u want to take part come to Odyssey and fill in the form (teams of 3). Should be great fun.