Interior monoBlog

Miscommunication

2008-02-16T21:16:00.005+05:30

A few days back a colleague asked me to review an email that he was about to send to an engineer working for a company that outsources to us. Let’s call the colleague X and the intended recipient of the email Y. X sent me the email and X and I were going over it at my desk. I knew what the email was about so I skipped the first paragraph and was reading the rest of the email, when X asked me, “What is copulation process?”

I was taken aback at hearing this question from X. I did not understand the relationship between the mail we were reviewing and the act between a male and a female of the homo sapien species except that the word mail is a homophone of one of the entities in the heterosexual act of procreation. Also, one would not normally expect X to talk about such subjects, since X apart from being vegan, has never shown any signs of interest in the fairer gender. Thus he keeps away from all things feminine just as he does from all things bovine.

I asked X, why he was asking the question, to which he replied that Y had mentioned it in the last call that X had with Y. Now this was completely shocking, because I’ve been working with Y for about 18 months, and speak to him once a week, every week. He has never in the afore mentioned time frame spoken about anything other than work, only deviating from the task at hand to exchange pleasantries. Seeing the bewildered look on my face, X pointed me to a line in the first paragraph of the email that X had written,

“When I gave the XXXXXX¹ file to the Copulation process, it generated YYYYYYY with the following errors…….”

On reading that line, I realised that the process in question was compilation² and not copulation! X misheard what Y had said and since X’s knowledge in such matters is non existent, he thought copulation was some fancy jargon for something technical.

I proceeded to correct the offending line and suggested some other changes to the email. I told X that copulation had nothing to do with the task at hand without explaining to him what it was and X went back to his desk leaving me with a big grin on my face and blog post in the mind.

¹ The names of the files have been changed to protect their privacy, since they face the risk of being thrown out their /home directories if the files they share the directory with found out that they had been inside the other

² Technically speaking the process in question was assembling and not compilation.

Dodecahedral calendar

2008-01-13T22:46:00.000+05:30

Made my own dodecahedron calendar today. See this link for more info (via lifehacker).

Came out better than I expected it would, given my ineptitude at cutting and sticking. When I cut something in a straight line, it comes out looking like a cartoonist's representation of a thunderbolt and I am as adept with a glue stick as is nerd hitting on a hot blonde - it leads to quite a sticky situation, but the whole thing just comes unstuck.

Useful addition to the table and completely worth the effort :-)

new Keyboard

2008-01-13T22:40:00.001+05:30

Got myself a new keyboard yesterday. The move was motivated by the deviant behaviour of a couple of key keys in my old keyboard.

The enter key:Once it was hit, with one's finger, it would as its name suggest enter into the space available so that it could make contact with the necessary bits of the keyboard, to allow the computer to recognise that the enter key had been pressed. Then quite unlike its alias, it would decide not to return from that position, thus giving giving me more "enters" than I had asked for.

The 'right' shift key: Quite the wrong behaviour, from this one. Once it was pressed and shifted out of its position of rest, it simply refused to come back, thus giving me lowercase with CAPS LOCK on, inverting cases and never once making a case for itself for good behaviour and bringing upon the keyboard capital punishment.

Things back to normal now!

It was five past midnight

2008-01-01T20:01:00.000+05:30

Last night, which was the last night of last year, I, like many other people was celebrating the onset of the new year, occupied in the most natural of all nocturnal human activities - sleeping. I had gone to bed just a little after midnight, thus ushering in the new year in semi wakefulness. At around five past midnight, when I had reached sheep number 7, the calm of the night was broken by the call of Bell's invention. After time had decided to bring in the new year, the phone decided it was time to ring, in the new year.

A call on the land line is quite a rare occurrence given the many cell phones at home, and a call after midnight an even rarer one. I let the ringing continue hoping that ignoring it would make it stop and having a hunch that in all likelihood, the call wasn't meant for anyone at home. As I reached sheep 15 the ringing stopped and I was beginning to drift off.

Just when I had bid good bye to the sheep, the phone rang again. I thought that whoever it was must be quite desperate to get whoever he/she was trying to reach given the time of the night and thus decided to do something about the phone. I got my behind off the bed and picked up the phone and said "Hello".

The voice that greeted me from the other end was sort of high pitched, the type that one does not associate with grown up men. My brain dumbed down with the onset of sleep, for a moment thought it was a woman. At that thought synapses fired, the neural net was suddenly abuzz with activity sending signals to the rest of me to become alert, and suddenly the journey from the bed to the phone seemed worth it. That burst of alertness provoked more thinking and this is the unfortunate bit, the rational me realized in a despair inducing burst of logical deduction that if the voice was indeed that of a young woman, then the call was certainly not meant for me.

After reaching this conclusion the brain decided to begin the shutdown sequence again. At that time, the voice at the other end asked for "Arumugam Sir" and the tiny number of awake grey cells in my head, realized that it was boy and after realizing that, the gray cells went to sleep. I said "wrong number" and hung up, dragged my body to bed and dozed off.

Yawn!
PS: Happy new year!!!

Stirring tale

2007-12-23T22:53:00.000+05:30

On a sleepy Monday morning, a bunch of software engineers tired after a morning's work of checking email forwards, catching up on the world news and cricket scores, decided to take a break and thus found themselves in the pantry milling around the multi fauceted vending machine - the dispenser of all things useful and necessary for the preparation of a hot beverage. It can dispense milk, hot water (sometimes one has to put one's gustatory organ to the test to distinguish between the two) and politically incorrect and seemingly racist, black coffee.

After filling one's cup with the liquids of one's choice and after having added requisite powders for flavouring and measured amounts of sugar for sweetening, one can imagine the shock as one discovered that the stirrer - the wonderful invention that can fuse together disparate ingredients into a wholesome cup of joy, the instrument responsible for creating many a storm in a tea cup, the catalyst of an invisible molecular miracle that stuffs solids into the empty spaces within a fluid - was not in its usual resting place of a tumbler half filled with water. As an aside one might also add that it's quite fortunate that the tumbler cannot live up to its name on this own, unless one puts it down with say a swipe of the hand. Now it's not uncommon an occurrence to find the stirrer missing from its resting place; since quite like a migrant worker, the stirrer works away from its watery abode in a cup in a far away hand.

Thus one proceeded to take a look around the room to find the hand that had the stirrer, and the horror, the horror - the stirrer was not to be found in any cup in the room. Then one looked down and found in dustbin, among used tea bags and other things that had reached the end of their usefulness the stirrer. Having never before faced such a predicament in one's coffee making lifetime, one proceeded to face the bitter truth and had one's coffee shaken, not stirred. Coming to think of it, the truth was bitter because one had the coffee shaken, not stirred.

Epilogue:
The stirrer was not rescued from its graveyard and thus was destined never again to work its magic in a cup again. In its place stands a poor replacement - a spoon. Even though it is adequate for the job, stirring isn't what it was made for. Sigh!

E478

2007-11-12T09:31:00.000+05:30

Vim like other great Free / Open source software has excellent documentation and a brilliant help system. In fact it's so good that it even knows the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. (:help 42)

It even knows about the Holy Grail, just in case you are looking for it (:help holy-grail)

But the one that takes the cake is what you get when you type :help!

Love software with a sense of humour ^_^

Debt deduction

2007-10-22T17:27:00.000+05:30

Me: That thing cost 280
GB: Ya
Me: I paid 60 for auto
GB: Ya
Me: (giving him a 100), So I owe you 140 - 60 = 80
GB: Ya
Me: You owe me 20
GB: OK

I know that I don't know Maths, but can't believe GB didn't find anything wrong with it!

Of course, he does know now that I owe him 10 bucks and plans to use my line of thought in future transactions...

Kicked!

2007-06-07T10:21:00.000+05:30

Check this out. I've no idea why they put our picture but I ain't complaining! No, we din't win, we topped the prelims and then got royally whipped in the finals. Nevertheless, it was great fun. Superb questions beautifully put together. Also managed to meet up with lots of old buddies. Had a blast!

QFI Open Quiz 2007

2007-05-31T16:46:00.000+05:30

The QFI Open Quiz is happening on 3rd June. Details are available here. Going by the shows the quizmasters have put up in the past it promises to be loads of fun.

water, biscuits, chicken, dosa, ice cream, burp!

2007-05-22T17:20:00.000+05:30

Some days back a colleague of mine; whom I shall refer to as X to avoid disclosing any details about the person such as name, gender, blood group, shoe size etc.; put up the following GTalk status

Life is like a normal biscuit, if you add love which is butter it becomes a butter biscuit

The above statement is so utterly butterly undelicious that it prompted a slew of GTalk status changes from colleagues

Life is like chicken, if you add butter which is love it becomes butter chicken

Life is like soda, if you add lime which is love, it becomes lime soda

Life is like ice, if you add cream which is love, it becomes ice cream

Life is like Palar water, if you add love, it becomes corporation water

Undeterred by the responses, our friend X cooked up a second status -
Life is like dosa, if you add onions which is love it becomes onion dosa. (Note that this statement is grammatically incorrect and coming to think of it the process of making such a dosa might bring tears to your eyes and after a while you life might stink)

At this point I’m wondering if there is a point to this post, and apart from the 3 that are in this statement, the point is that this is a blog and if I add a post which is like love then it becomes an updated blog

La joie de vivre

2007-01-16T22:26:00.000+05:30

A crimson backdrop to the green of the cocunut trees - Ah a picture postcard perfect sunrise. The sight I got up to, this morning, was reason enough to get up and get on with life; after pausing to watch the dark red fade to a light red, orange, to merge with the blue and become a part of the infinite expanse.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
-- Leisure by WH Davies

Under Transition

2006-08-31T20:16:00.000+05:30

Moving my blog to the new Blogger Beta, so just hang on till I set things up properly

I am India

2006-08-24T11:10:00.000+05:30

Awesome video! Make sure your speakers are on as well. Link here

Pepsi - Yeh Devta maange more

2006-08-23T19:38:00.000+05:30

All this hoopla surrounding Gods drinking milk has given me an idea. Let’s face it, whether you believe in surface tension or divine consumption, milk is running down the drains and milkmen are running to the banks. The cola companies need to change their marketing strategy and I am assuming its not going to be very hard to spread the word that Lord Ganesh loves Pepsi or Coke. Think about it, if someone thinks their God drinks colas then they will too and if that does not happen, then at least in the process lots of cola would have gone down the same path as the milk and sales will go through the roof.

Preview of new KDE start menu

2006-08-23T09:27:00.000+05:30

This is a link to a preview of the proposed new KDE start menu, Looks kick ass!

Happy B'day Chennai and Nandan the working man

2006-08-22T20:19:00.000+05:30

Today Chennai turned 368! Yeah!!! and yours truly completed one year as an engineer.

Firefox Crop Circle

2006-08-19T14:36:00.000+05:30

Check this out. While you are there, also check out the other cool things those guys have done. Even though I use Opera most of the time these days, Firefox still rocks!

Thanks to Paddy for the link. Coming to think of it, an appropriate person to have gotten a link from about work done in crops ;) What say?

The x86 days

2006-08-03T09:03:00.000+05:30

Yesterday(2/8/6), today(3/8/6) and tomorrow(4/8/6) are the x86 days :) Found a post on /.
Reminds me of the 1st computer we had at home a "fast" 486DX2 @ 66Mhz with a "massive" 4 MB of RAM and a "humongous" 520 MB hard disk and a video card that could do only 256 colours.
Ah.. Those were the days. Life was simple and DOS ruled and Dangerous Dave kicked ass and that CGA racing game was my favourite pastime.

QFI Open Quiz on July 30

2006-07-27T15:09:00.000+05:30

The 2nd edition of the QFI Open Quiz will be held on 30th July. Here are the details

Date: 30th of July 2006 (Sunday)
Schedule: Prelims - 9:30 a.m. and Finals - 11:00 a.m.
Team size: Maximum of 3 members
Venue: "Sri Venkata Auditorium"
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan
37/39, East Mada Street
Mylapore, Chennai – 04

So just grab a couple of friends and enjoy. Will be loads of fun considering Vinod and Goach are the quizmasters.

Read the full announcement here.

YouOS

2006-07-25T10:38:00.000+05:30

This has to be the coolest thing I've seen in years, check it out - it's an web operating system. Click on try a demo and check it out. It's brilliant

More info here

Bolti Bandh

2006-07-18T09:11:00.000+05:30

The Indian government has blocked access to typepad and blogspot blogs

Bloggers against censorship wiki
http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Bloggers_Against_Censorship
This has lots of useful info about using RTI and lists of bloggers protesting and ways to work around the gag

Slashdot entry: India joins China in censoring websites
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/06/07/17/1732209.shtml

Sites carrying the story
http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/jul/17blog.htm
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/07/17/report_indian_gov_bl.html

Ways to by pass the ban (courtesy Kiruba’s blog)
http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Bypassing_The_Ban

Bloggers collective is having a discussion on this
http://groups.google.com/group/BloggersCollective

Best part is I am able post to blogspot as blogger.com is not blocked! But I cannot see my own blogposts!!!! (Access via http://www.pkblogs.com/ works from office)

Wordpress, livejournal have not been blocked
I thought we became a free country in 1947

It's so sad that the country touting itself to be the world's technology destination does not have Free Speech

Seriously what kind of bozos are running this country anyway???? It's been done to tackle terrorist elements apparently and may not be a permanent blockade

Zizou head butting Materazzi flash game

2006-07-11T14:58:00.000+05:30

:D Check this out. You are Zizou and you get to "butt f***" [sic] Materazzi. Just keep head butting him till you get a red card!

World E Book fair

2006-07-07T16:51:00.000+05:30

Free Access to the public from July 4th to August 4th, in celebration of Project Gutenberg's 35th Birthday

Happy reading!

Link here

When boredom strikes

2006-06-26T11:53:00.002+05:30

I was hajaar bored yesterday, and as I was using my computer and had booted my new Open SuSE 10.1(arguably the best non-commercial GNU/Linux distribution currently) I decided to play some Tetris clones. I prefer to use the K Desktop Environment (KDE) which IMHO is the best GUI ever. So I played the 3 available ones that come with the default KDE Games package in turn. Here are some screen shots taken with KSnapShot

KSirtet which is a very conventional clone of the evergreen game.

KSmileTris in which one can match smilies and other things and also has a very irritating sound scheme which is very useful for irritating others at home ;)

KFoulEggs is a clone of a Japanese game called PuyoPuyo

If you are wondering what the P is with the wolf thingy is at the bottom right of the pic above, its a part of the On Screen Display (that got captured in the screen shot) of AmaroK (Quite simply the best music player!!) telling me that the playlist has finished playing.

Dunno what it is about Tetris like games that one never gets bored of them

Steven Hilton's software war map

2006-06-23T09:02:00.000+05:30

Taken from here
Read the slashdot discussion here

Chennai Bloggers Meet on June 24

2006-06-19T09:10:00.000+05:30

There is a bloggers meet on 24th June at Ascendas Tech Park at 3:00pm.
Courtesy Sagaro. His site has a FAQ. You can find that here

Truly beautiful

2006-06-16T20:41:00.000+05:30

I am no fan of football but what Argentina did today has made me one. Oh yes, now I know why it is called the beautiful game. It was amazing. I am not even going to try to put in words, but I had to record this moment in my blog

Worst job in the world

2006-06-15T17:49:00.000+05:30

Been watching a bit of the world cup lately, even though I am no lover of football (yet) and have come to realise that the worst job in the world has to be being a steward at the world cup matches watching the crowd, instead of the game. Must be terrible for these guys. They'll be like "I was at the game, so I did not get to see it, how was it mate?" sheesh. Why would you do such a job anyway?

Where in the world is your B School?

2006-06-13T10:19:00.001+05:30

This post is a collection of 3 instances of Geographic brilliance, what can I say except that I wonder if these people ever played Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego

Courtesy Goach, players: unfortunate Goach, and Narendra Modi’s best friend
Goach and X where were talking about IIM Ahmedabad and something about the availability of non-veggie food and stuff. Well, anyway, X says that one will get good Andhra food there. The statement in itself is not what this part is about, it’s the reply to this question “Why do you say that?” “Ahmedabad is in Andhra Pradesh”

Courtesy Goach again, players: Shrik and Dhoni’s best friend
Shrik who is going to XLRI Jamshedpur in a couple of days time tells Y that he is going to XLRI Jamshedpur. Y asks “Why do you want to go to Bangalore to study what’s wrong with Chennai?”

And if you thought that these things don’t happen to your’s truly, don’t despair.
I had a copy of Sports Star which has an ad for TIME (the coaching institute). So this guy, lets call him Z, has a good look at it and evinces interest in going for coaching. The ad has a table which lists how many of their students made it to the various IIMs. So Z points to IIMK and asks me
“K is Kolkata?”
“No, Kozhikode”.
“C is Calicut?”
“No, Calcutta”
Then Z closes the tabloid and gives is back to me.

I still do not know how I did not laugh at that time, my self control is better that I think or I must have been in a state of shock

Talking about funny things, check this out.

Dante's Inferno Hell Test

2006-06-07T09:01:00.000+05:30

Saw this at Shrik's and had to take it, fact that I was very vetti at that time helped.

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Moderate
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Moderate
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Very High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	High

You approach Satan's wretched city where you behold a wide plain surrounded by iron walls. Before you are fields full of distress and torment terrible. Burning tombs are littered about the landscape. Inside these flaming sepulchers suffer the heretics, failing to believe in God and the afterlife, who make themselves audible by doleful sighs. You will join the wicked that lie here, and will be offered no respite. The three infernal Furies stained with blood, with limbs of women and hair of serpents, dwell in this circle of Hell.

Take the Dante's Inferno Test

Google hopping

2006-06-06T14:17:00.000+05:30

Found some tools Google has to offer but stuff I didn't know about

Gapminder
Google spreadsheets

Windows Vista Beta review at Tom's Hardware

2006-06-01T09:14:00.000+05:30

Tom's Hardware has an extensive review of Windows Vista. I'm reading it while typing this. Here is the slashdot post about the review.

Will probably post later about what I think, (not that it matters!)

Bringer of rain

2006-05-26T23:00:00.000+05:30

Someone said that if I left office at the normal working hours instead of staying late like I usually do then it would rain. Now you know whom to thank for the good weather :-)

A missing page and a desultory post

2006-05-25T17:48:00.000+05:30

I've not blogged for a while. (Duh! There I go again saying the most obvious things! and then making exclamatory statements) So what have I been up to in the time I've not been contributing to increase the data content of the blogosphere? Well…. umh , now let’s see. I’ve got to rack my brains to figure out what I’ve up to. See that’s what not blogging does. It leaves me with only my memory of the things that happened, with no way to relive them. Well it’s not like I blog that very much about personal stuff but it kind of gives a reference to hook on to. It’s like the past few months is a missing page in the book of the life of Nandan Saha

This Sunday I saw this awesome movie called Shaolin Soccer on Hungama TV in Hindi. It’s by Stephen Chow the guy behind Kung-Fu Hustle Well since I’ve given the IMDB link I am not gonna tell what the movie is about since you might as well read it from IMDB. All I want to say is that it was bloody hilarious! Truly enjoyed myself.

Read The Curious Incident of the dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon recently. It’s a brilliant book. It starts out being a mystery about a dead dog and turn out to be this amazingly poignant tale. I recommend it very highly.

At this point I stopped writing for a whole day because I really did not know how to proceed with this post. Why didn’t I just stop?! Coz it’ been a while since I blogged and the 1st post after the nth hibernation is not going to have only 3 paragraphs

Isn’t it irritating that MSWord™ does not recognize blog as a valid word? Just added it to the dictionary.

While making coffee now I realized that the container that keeps chocolate powder in the pantry that I use at work is labeled “Choco” while earlier it was labeled “Chocolate”. That makes me wonder if all the guys who like chocolate are now punctual.

Cribs

2006-02-16T23:26:00.000+05:30

Scene: Dining hall of a software company
Actors: Yours truly, X, Y
X and yours truly were having lunch when X spots Y waiting in line for food. X it seems is seeing Y after a while and wants to tell him that he will tell Y what ever is on X's mind via email. But X cannot tell Y about the email without shouting a bit and attracting attention to himself. So what does X do. He SMSes Y that he will email Y later and get his message across.

******o0o******

Scene: Staff bus of a software company
Actors: Yours truly, Lady on phone
Yours truly after a day of work is thanking his stars that his bus does not have a radio so he doesn't have to listen to a screaming RJ and thinks he can actually relax. Seated behind is a lady who has discovered that incoming calls are free and that she is better at telling a sad story than Ekta Kapoor and actually proceeds to transfer her sorrows through out the journey leaving yours truly to wonder why cell phone networks always fail to fail at such times.

******o0o******

Scene: Yours truly watching an idiot on the idiot box
Actors: Yours truly, idiot, idiot box
Yours truly decides to watch just for a few minutes “Super Sale” on STAR One because he likes to torture himself once in a while. Saajid Khan the host asks this question “Which is the next leap year” Answer from the roll over contestant (who's won more money in an hour than your's truly makes in a year) “2006”

******o0o******

Scene: A software company
Actors: Yours truly, Z(yours truly's friend)
Yours truly and Z working for the same company get to meet each other probably once a month or so and have exchanges over email and SMS leaving yours truly wondering what one has to do to have a tête-à-tête. Conversation where art thou?

Version 2.02

2006-01-31T09:04:00.000+05:30

Knowing that you guys must be shocked to find me blogging again, I have decided to write a FAQ about this 1st post of a refurbished, restarted blog. So wiping away the cobwebs of inactivity presenting the FAQ about Interior monoBlog v2.02

Q1. So Nandan you are actually alive?!!!!!!!!!!
A1: Er… Yes

Q2. No seriously. Is it really you????
A2: Ya Its me

Q3: We must be dreaming. Tell us again. It’s THE Nandan Saha
A3: Again, It’s THE Nandan Saha

Q4: So why did you stop blogging?
A4: I didn’t stop per se. Lets call it a momentary lapse of writer’s flow

Q5:”Momentary lapse of writer’s flow” WTF is that
A6: I could explain again but it would take me 4 months to demonstrate

Q6: Ok Forget it. So what’s new?
A6: Template template template template template

Q7: Are you becoming colour blind?
A7: Why?

Q8: Template template template template
A8: #$%$@#$^^&$#$%

Q9: So can we at least now expect some good writing?
A9: Oh sure. There are lots of very good blogs around

Q10: Do you plan on blogging more frequently than last time
A10: I’ve planned. Let’s see how it pans out

Ok let’s stop this. This is very boring. Hope you get the idea. Interior monoBlog is back. Better, Frequenter, Smarter, Funnier, Seriouser and …..er……

Let me know what you think(Read as Comment darned readers)

Hopefully I’ll keep this going and give you guys something good to read

Coming Back Soon

2006-01-23T19:34:00.000+05:30

This blog is currently under renovation. Will be back in under a week. Be back then!!!

One

2005-09-30T23:12:00.000+05:30

Its been one year since this started

Google Talk

2005-08-24T21:53:00.000+05:30

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

2005-08-20T23:19:00.000+05:30

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

2005-08-08T22:20:00.000+05:30

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

2005-08-03T12:28:00.000+05:30

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

2005-08-01T22:48:00.000+05:30

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

2005-07-24T22:41:00.000+05:30

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

2005-07-03T13:39:00.001+05:30

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

2005-06-30T23:07:00.000+05:30

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

2005-06-27T20:52:00.000+05:30

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

2005-06-25T19:12:00.000+05:30

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

2005-06-19T17:25:00.000+05:30

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

True
False
None
Never

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

Question: Should I attend it?

No
Never
None
All of the above

Saw - A bloody spooky thriller

2005-05-18T12:39:00.000+05:30

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

2005-05-16T23:22:00.000+05:30

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

2005-04-22T00:25:00.000+05:30

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

2005-04-12T22:13:00.000+05:30

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:

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

2005-04-02T21:12:00.000+05:30

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

2005-03-31T21:12:00.000+05:30

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

2005-03-04T20:24:00.000+05:30

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

2005-01-14T01:23:00.000+05:30

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.

Bullshit and General Update

2004-12-21T23:53:00.000+05:30

Ever since there have been laws and rules there have been strange laws and rules. The trend seems to be continuing. India's IT laws seem to be the most screwed up thing ever conceived by the Babus. I am writing about this because of the unwarranted (pun intended) arrest of Avnish Bajaj the CEO of Bazee. It doesn't make any sense to hold service providers responsible for the content carried by them. It's not like Bazee bought the cd containing the video of the DPS students and decided to make a quick buck by selling it. They are an on line auction site for God's sake. X decides he wants to sell something and he decides to auction it and Y decides he wants it decides to buy it. Bazee just facilitates the process. Moreover the guy is the CEO. How the hell can he keep track of anything thats being sold. (as a side note anyone who is foolish enough to buy the video when it takes 10 mins to download from a site deserves to be shot. Why pay for something that can be got free?).

Even more ridiculous than the Indian IT law is this new rule thats been imposed in hell. They've banned camera phones in the campus. I am just ROTFL thinking about this. What purpose does it serve? It's not like that stupid video was shot inside the school.(or at least doesn't seem so). Also what do the guys who have camera phones do when they wanna communicate. It's one more of the rules in college I don't understand. There's this rule that says that we've gotta wear T-shirts with collars. Basically if you're a guy u've gotta wear something with a collar. They treat us like dogs I tell ya. Also the ban on Pepsi is still on in college. They use some sub standard local brand of fizzed drink instead. What sense does it make. Hell always seems to react excessively when some major scandal breaks loose. For God's sake let us choose our Cola at least. (I am glad I am getting out of there in another 4 months).

The biggest loser in this whole DPS thingy has been the poor camera phone. Albeit a camera phone was used to shoot the video; it was still shot with the girl's consent. It's not like the Shahid Kapoor and Kareena Kapoor kiss thing where the camera phone was used discreetly. I hate it when technology is blamed for the crimes that people commit. Don't blame the technology and don't punish it. Blame and punish the people. Nuclear technology powers up our lives at the same time it has caused immense suffering. That doesn't mean nuclear technology is bad. It's how the technology is used that is important. The point is that guy wanted to shoot a video. He chose to use a damn camera phone. He could very well have used a normal camera.

BTW CAT 2004 results came out last night. Apparently they weren't supposed to come out yesterday. After a question paper leak they've now got leaked results. I've gotta start preparing sometime in the middle of next year for CAT 2005. I don't know why it is but some people actually congratulated me on getting 96.8 %ile. I have no idea who told them that that was a good score. U can imagine how irritated I must have been.

And in case ur wondering why I haven't posted in a long while well I have been busy with exams, project work, standing in line for a Singapore visa (more here) and generally doing other things and plain lazy

I am actually reading three books in parallel. They are somewhat related. The first is this classic piece of work called 'Hackers' by Stephen Levy. This came out in 1984 and is a brilliant account of the hacker subculture. (When I say Hacker I don't mean the morons who break into computers for whatever reasons. This book deals with the Gods who defined a whole new sub culture and made a great deal of the computer technology we take for granted possible). I have read the 1^st part which deals with the period from 59 odd to early 70s and talks about the origin of the term and about some 'true hackers'. Absolutely brilliant

The 2^nd book is Richard Stallman's biography called 'Free as in Freedom'. The book is available here under O'Reilly's open books project. Levy in his book calls Stallman the 'last true hacker'. The book is good. Read a bit of it as well

The 3^rd is titled 'Open Sources:Voices From the Open Source Revolution'. Its a collection of essays by some of the stalwarts of the free software movement. Its a little dated.Lots of things have changed in the free software world since this book came out. Its still seems like a good read. I would advice anyone who wants to know why software should be open source to read the introduction of the book. This is also available under the open book project and u can get it here

Also Animax has restarted Samurai X on weekdays at 9:30pm. A must watch. 12 episodes out of the 94 are over till now. Watch this. At least make sure u see it from episode 28 when Saitou comes and just after that the hunt for Shishio begins. Those episodes are simply brilliant

The number one word of the year is 'blog'

2004-12-02T20:16:00.000+05:30

IOL: Science & Tech

yay!!!!

Copulatory Practices of Blood Sucking Organisms: A Practical Handbook

2004-11-29T21:29:00.000+05:30

Some time back my buddy ac put a blog post about mosquitoes and suze put a comment about mosquitoes doing it and all and then vinod put an even better comment. So all this talk about blood suckers and it reminded me about this book that I came across once. It's called 'The Copulatory Practices of Blood Sucking Organisms: A Practical Handbook'. Now this book u see is very hard to find and very few copies exist now. A Romanian friend of mine called Vlad had it and told me lots about it.

This book is only available in hard cover to live up to its topic of discussion and there are no soft copies of it available on the Internet.

The book has a foreword appropriately titled 'Foreplay' written by the eVam Bats Theatre Quartet. These guys are famous for plays such as 'Sonar Yet so Far', 'Death at Dawn', 'A Cave Roof with a View'. They recently released a music video called 'Here Comes the Sun (I Gotta Run)'.They have also authored the wooden cook book called ' Steaks for Your Heart' which was a follow up to Ray Cadbury's 'Death by Worm Infested Chocolates'. The foreword should set u up for the rest of the book. As I am constrained by space I shall tell you about some of the interesting chapters of of the book.

There is this chapter called 'Lecherous Leeches'. Let me warn you that you should take whatever you read in this chapter with a pinch of salt or you will find yourself completely drained. This chapter really is meant for suckers.

Also present is a curiously titled chapter called 'Promiscuous Proboscis' which tells how a male mosquito manages to seduce a female anopheles mosquito without contracting malaria.

In '69 Ways to do It in a Coffin' we get to know about the techniques used by master vampires to do ...er u know what they do best – suck blood.

There are chapters on Indian Zamindars of yesteryear and how they festered wounds and fostered bondage. Also mentioned are tales of Indian politicians and Indian software companies.

You will be glad to know that a movie based on the book is already out in Romania and will be hitting Indian theatres shortly. A reviewer in Romania who saw the movie with his wife felt the movie was fast paced and his wife felt that the ending came too quickly and she was left unsatisfied as usual. Another reviewer felt that the movie is very well paced and reaches an astonishing climax which is sure to leave you breathless thought not necessarily speechless.

Following the climax is a song that features Limp Bizkit which makes sure that you don't watch the movie for sometime to come.

The distributors of the film in India want to only keep night shows of the movie but are scared of competition from the movie 'Copulatory Practices of Carbon Based Bipeds Living in the Third Rock from the Sun' featuring Jenna Jameson and based on the book of the equivalent but shorter name by Madonna.

Thats all folks. I gotta go eat and then watch Area 88

Microsoft does it again

2004-11-27T21:48:00.000+05:30

mcall.com - EDS, Microsoft blamed for crash

looks like mine is not the only computer MS mangaed to f*** in the past few days. i reinstalled windows 3 times in 2 days and am totally pissed as i had to format a partition wiping out 8.5 gigs of songs and movies. aaaahhhh

fortunately all the important stuff was in another partition (whew!)

It's over

2004-11-21T20:57:00.000+05:30

CAT 2004 is over. I thought the paper tested both how well a test taker was prepared (via the quants) and how smart one was (via the DI/LR). Absolutely brilliant paper. Just reinforces the legend about how difficult the CAT is supposed to be. I think this paper will just direct more business to the coaching institutes which is definitely not a good thing.

Anyways its done for this year. I don't want to hear anything more about CAT 2004 again and if any of you ask me anything about it be prepared to experience the full extent of my vocabulary of the bird variety.

You will find that there is a new link added to the side bar under the links section. I think the addition of the link should tell you how I did the test.

Until CAT 2005 then...

Home stretch && 15*2 minutes of fame && 69 && End of the wandering swordsman ( Not necessarily in that order )

2004-11-16T07:47:00.000+05:30

Less than week to go before the CAT and even lesser number of days to go for the biggest academic farce ever envisaged – the Anna University exams. It also happens to be the largest money making racket since they charge you Rs 400 for re-evaluation and Rs 300 for a photocopy for your answer booklet when it costs 100 rupees a paper to write an exam and get that paper corrected and 40 paisa per page at the local 'Canon Xerox' shop which actually uses a Toshiba machine. That makes me wonder why they charge so much. Are they using industrial money printing machines to give the photocopies or do they get them photocopied at the local counterfeiter's. Some of my friend tell me they charge so much becoz they need to find your paper. WTF, if Google can find me a web page from 8 billion others for free why the f$%^ should the guys at the Univ. charge so much.

The 69^th Acharya got arrested a few days back on charges of murder. I have always wondered how people can claim to be messengers and incarnations of Gods and how other people actually believe that. I remember the time in first year of college, one fine day the Sankarachrya came a visiting with his deputy and entourage. In college whenever somebody famous comes they have to come only after college hours. So I was not surprised to find lots of people cribbing when they found out that the buses would leave late. Of course after the function was over I thought to myself that at last i could go home but they announced that people could take 'blessings' from the seer so to my surprise, amusement and consternation lots of guys who were cribbing about going home late queued up to fall at his feet and the queue took longer to clear than the function itself. Just when I thought things could get worse they actually did. See I have only one paternal uncle whom I see as rarely as Haley's comet sees the Earth and by some miracle of the Gods he was in Madras on that fateful day and came to visit but by the time I got home he was leaving. He was coming down the lift when I was waiting for it. So I got to meet him only for a minute instead of the hour and more I would have. I wanted to scream. I am not complaining about the seer's visit but about the attitude of the people who feel at his feet. For some reason lots believe in him but others... well. I should have expected it considering most of those people realise there is a temple in the college campus only during exams and the day the results come. You can tell something important is there in college by looking at the crowd near the temple. People's attitudes amaze me.

My favourite animé series Rourini Kenshin (Samurai X) got over last week on Animax. I am hoping they'll restart it quickly like they did with Get Backers so that I can watch the 1^st few episodes that I missed. Animax has done a good job of replacing RK with a with what seems to be a good show Area 88. Should be fun. Lot of my friends just don't get the point about animé. They think it should be like cartoons. The point is animé is not like a cartoon. Just because it is animated doesn't mean it has to be the same. Its different and that's the best part. I love cartoons and I don't see why somebody who loves cartoons should not like animé. Don't expect a cartoon and you'll love animé. Some others don't like the look of the characters with their big eyes. That missing the point completely. The eyes give the animé characters their emotions. The eyes shape and look changes according to the emotion. Without the eyes the characters would not have any way of showing what they feel. I'll write more about the joys of animé some other time

Can't wait for CAT to get over; then I can watch Animax for much more time, at least till next June/July. After that I will have to do one of 2 things. Start preparing for CAT 2005 or figure out how to survive 2 years in a place that'll let me sleep only 4 hours a day. I wish some one could tell me what's gonna happen on Sunday right now. Maybe the seer can help me.

Ps1: The telecast of 2^nd round of UC is on 18^th Nov at 10:00pm on BCC World. This bit of info is for anyone who wants to see me on TV. (I know its a shameless ad)

PS2: Hope the title makes sense now

Xbox: I couldn't resist the ps2 Xbox pj. Really sorry

Rediscover the web

2004-11-11T21:08:00.000+05:30

Its here !!!!!!!!! Mozilla Firefox 1.0 was released on November 9^th. If u guys haven't yet done so I suggest you guys get it. It simply rocks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For those of you out there who think that Internet Explorer is the only way to surf you guys are sooooooo wrong. It is the WORST way to surf. Blake Ross' baby has come to life and how. Its amazing this guy is still in his teens and has been the main force behind the browser that is now IE's biggest worry. Over 2 million downloads in 2 days. Its only 4.7Mb for the Windows edition.

I had been using Opera for a while now but for the past few weeks have been using Firefox 0.8 for almost all my browsing. Now upgraded to Firefox 1.0.

Its amazing what people can do when they come together. Forefox has been another stunning example that Open Source Software is here to stay.

As the GNU philosophy says ``Free software'' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of ``free'' as in ``free speech,'' not as in ``free beer.'' When Microsoft bundled IE with its terrible operation system it killed the Netscape Navigator and the freedom of millions computer users. It's a question of choice folks. Now you have the choice to use a faster,better,safer browser. I used to think few years back that what MS did with the bundling of IE was a brilliant business move and quite approved of it but I have come to realise over time that what they did was wrong and as a result lay computer users are stuck with what is a brilliant example of what a browser should NOT be. Think about it people if Tim Berners-Lee hadn't given away his creation without thinking about making a single cent, the World Wide Web would not be what it is today. Shouldn't you be using software that truly reflects the spirit with which the web was created, to access it?

Some Links:
CNET news articles
Google star of Firefox

Aiyo Ohio

2004-11-05T09:05:00.000+05:30

Oh no!! not again. Dubya is back in power. When everyone thought that he wasnt gonna win he did And this time quite comfortably. That makes one wonder why he won. Now I've been watching all these analysis programs on tv instead of analysing CAT papers . No CNN this time due to CAS so had to make do with BBC and NDTV. People on these channels gave quite a few reasons like the Americans did not want to change their commander in chief mid way through a war and stuff like all the very conservative right wing religious types who don't like abortion and homosexual marriages voted for him(of course these people dont realize that homosexual marriages are the best form of contraception and abortion is not an issue with homosexual couples).

But if u ask me I have my own asinine theory as to why the undecided voters went the Bush way. I hope my intelligent readers would know that the Republican party symbol is an elephant and the Democrat party symbol is a donkey. Now an undecided voter to make up his mind asks his/her friend for advice

dude1: whom should i vote for

dude2 (a kerry supporter): vote for the ass

dude1: u sure

dude2: yeah

so dude1 goes and votes for Bush using his average American intelligence. After all u cannot get a more fitting representation of the ass. And dude2 goes and votes for Kerry.

I know this theory is as plausible as Mallika Sherawat coming fully clothed in a movie but stranger things have happened (for example Bush has won a second term).

Vinod has been reading a book about useless information but there is a piece of information that that book does not have. It was only in 1930 that scientists were able to determine the size of the brain of the average American because in 1930 was invented their most important tool -- the electron microscope.

I have been informed that they are still trying to measure the size of Dubya's brain. They are facing a practical problem when u try to measure the size of something – u have to find it first. They are still looking i have been told. And statisticians have said that there is a higher probability of finding Osama than finding Bush's brain.

In other news Yasser Arafat has died and come back to life googol times last night if tv reports are to believed. This morning they have settled for the safer 'in very bad health' line.

CAT is looming in the horizon. God only knows whats gonna happen.

Me going to watch match. Gambhir's already out. Looks like India is trying to do everything to lose by an innings

Counting sdrawkcab

2004-11-02T13:48:00.000+05:30

Ever since man invented numbers and could count he started counting backwards as well. Now i am not going to dwell into the history and the geography and angiography of counting backwards in eras gone bye bye but i shall bore you with the significance of counting backwards in modern society.

See if we were not able to count backwards we would not have countdown shows. There would have been no Superhit Muqabla and Baba Sehgal would have remained the engineer Babloo trying his hand in building things. There would no Mirchi Top 20 on the new suck it channel Zoom. So where would I get my weekly dose of Yana (of course in Mirchi Top 20 they put as much make up on her as the weight of Vijaykanth's a** and try everything possible to make a beautiful woman look ugly).

What would our movies be without counting backwards. How would the hero save the day from the time bomb if it was not ticking down to 0. No fun in seeing a timer trying to reach a hundred (like our Indian cricketers... oh sorry they are trying very hard to go from 0 to 1) and then the hero stopping it at 99. The fun lies in the hero wanting to cut off the blue wire cuts the red wire because he is colour blind and the counter reads 1. Wah kya scene hai!

Science would not have progressed without the countdown. Just imagine a space shuttle being launched without the 3,..2..,1 ..... and lift-off. We would not have set foot on the moon without counting backwards.

Without counting backwards Europe would never have had their hit The final Countdown. Talking about final countdown reminds me...

See the most important use of counting backwards is its use in counting down the days to a special occasion. Without counting backwards Vinod would not have the Doomsday counter counting down the days to the biggest rat race of them all CAT and without such a tool how would anybody psych out sleep depraved capitalist libertarians with Hutch connections.

See people counting backwards is sine qua non to the survival of human kind in the modern world.

How NOT to go about a programming assignment

2004-10-29T08:13:00.000+05:30

This link was sent to my class' mailing list by Bubble boy. If u've ever had a programming lab u'll like this thing. its quite funny.

Orange Juice

2004-10-28T09:25:00.000+05:30

Nagpur known for its oranges is now making pulp of only one thing – the Men in Blue. C'mon guys show some spirit. I don't know about others but my mood definitely changes in accordance with the team's fortunes. Right now i am nearing depression. Guys don't become squash at the hands of the Aussies. If u've gotta give away ur wickets give them to Hollywood atleast I'll be happy that my favourite cricketer is demolishing the team i love so much. Show some fight. Get bruised black and blue but don't go down without a fight.

InMoBlo news

2004-10-28T09:21:00.000+05:30

Found a free image host.

Things i like about them

no limit to the number of images i can upload
no bandwidth limits
easy to use
no registration required(registered any way coz then i can keep track of all the stuff i upload)
they use Linux servers(go Tux go!!!!!)

limitations

max size of each image is 1MB
an image is deleted if its not accessed for a year

figured out how to put only haloscan comments. but figured i like to give the readers some choice so both forms of commenting will stay on except for this post.

put more gap between the end of comments link and the next post. feel there is too much space between end of post and the start of comments link. freed for the moment. hope the changes make it look less cluttered

SPAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2004-10-26T20:30:00.000+05:30

Recieived this amazing piece of spam which somehow found its way into my inbox breaching Yahoo!' s much vaunted spam filtering.Yahoo! Gmail just kicks your a**. (btw guys have u noticed Yahoo! has blatantly ripped a lot features from Gmail like address autocomplete and all.) personally i think Gmail has been in beta way too long. Time is ripe for regular junta to feel its awesome power. Anyways getting back; just read the mail. My thoughts are in italics just like this para and everything that stands straight up like this is the creation of some loser spammer

I am highly compelled upon strict recommendation,(who the hell recommeds my name unh?) to write you this very urgent and confidential letter.(no longer coz it's on my blog) I do hope my letter will not embarrass you(not in the least bit) since I had no previous correspondence with you.

I am sending this proposal with due sense of humanity, responsibility and with few awareness(is that correct English) that you will give it a sympathetic attention.(yeah right lots of it) I regret the inconvenience it may cause you.(no incovenience dude. U've given me a blog post)

I am PETER MALUSI the son of Dr. SIMON MALUSI, who was murdered in the land dispute in Zimbabwe.(sorry to know that seriously)

I got your contact from South Africa Chambers of Commerce (i have never left this country and just because i share my birthday with Gandhi doesn't mean i have something to do with South Africa) when I was searching for a reliable and reputable person(yeah that i am!!) to handle a very confidential transaction which involves a transfer of fund to a foreign account(not sure if i have any local a/c ) and I decided to write you, my late father was among the few black Zimbabwean rich farmers murdered in cold blood by the agents of the ruling government of president Robert Mugabe, for his alleged support and sympathy for the Zimbabwean opposition party controlled by the white minority. Before his death he had taken to Johannesburg South Africa to deposit the sum of US$ 10.5 Million (Ten Million Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars) (i can read numbers no need to spell it out) with a Security and Finance Company as if he foresaw the looming danger in Zimbabwe. The money was deposited as valuables to avoid much demurrage from the Security Company.

This money was embarked for the purchase of new machinery and Chemical(forgot the plural) for farms and the establishment of new farms in Lesotho and Swaziland. This land problem arose when President Robert Mugabe introduced a new land act that wholly affected the rich white farmers and some few blacks that vehemently condemned the "modus operandi" adopted by the government. It is against this background that I and my family (should be family and I. Didn't u learn English in Zim or did u study Swahili)who are currently residing in South Africa as refugees have decided to transfer my Father's money into a foreign account.As the eldest son of my Father, I am saddled with the responsibility of seeking a genuine foreign account where this money could be transferred and Invested. More so, the South African Foreign Exchange policy does not allow such investment hence I am seeking for an "asylum".(i suggest Kilpauk)

I must let you know that this transaction is 100% risk free and the nature of your business does not necessarily matter. For your assistance, we are offering you 20% of the total sum, 70% for me and my family while 10% will be mapped out for any expenses we may incure during this transaction.

We wish to invest our money based on your advice.(my advice is give me all of it)

Finally, if this proposal is acceptable by you, please confirm your interest via my phone number or you reply through email.

Best Regards.

PETER MALUSI. (For the family) (if u're from the family shouldn't ur second name be Corleone?)

InMoBlo news

2004-10-24T23:57:00.000+05:30

fixed all problems with the commenting and all. old blogger comments are back and the new haloscan comments are also ......well .... er there .

thanks to all (read 2) people for the comments.

keep em coming!!!!!!!!!!

ps: had time to fix the blog coz some maha padips types sent the programs for the lab exams destroying all my study plans.

InMoBlo news

2004-10-24T07:52:00.000+05:30

added haloscan commenting. to view/put the default blogger comments click on the time of the post. the old comments haven't disappeared. lots of free speech on the blog

UC travelblog [post 2]

2004-10-22T23:54:00.000+05:30

(Continued from the post below the Durga Pooja post).

What does happen when u put 2 deranged young men(2DYM) in a room? That was the question I left off with in the previous part. I get the feeling that a lot of u perverted minds are expecting some spicy stuff. But u see the problem is this. 2DYM on their own are harmless unless one of them or both of them are gay or they are drunk or they are in the company of women. Now for AC and I none of the above mentioned conditions held true that night. So basically nothing happened. Gotcha!!. what did happen though was that that mad b@#!#$%^ AC decided he wanted to watch TV late into the night and ended up doing so and after he had finished he didn't put off the light in the room. As a result i got very little sleep the night before the 2^nd round shoot. When i asked him why he didn't put off the light he said "it doesn't make a difference to me". What the F~!@ u freak you're not the only one in the god-damn room.

After the bright night i woke sleepless in seat.. oh sorry Noida. Next came a very chilling experience. See Noida for some reason was having quite low temperatures as was the entire north. As a result the temp. in the morn. was a very cool 18 or so degrees centigrade. Now this is very nice for someone coming from the searing heat of Madras. So why am i complaining u ask? The problem arises because of a human need to keep one's self clean by taking a bath. There was geyser in the bathroom but like half the keys in my 10 year old keyboard it wasn't working. As a result i got chilled to the bone. The only thing about a cold water bath is that it wakes u up. So in the end it was probably a good thing.

At breakfast met our opposition for the day the wonderful guys from NIT Calicut ( Roshit, Ravi, Kevin and Abid ). Also chatted a bit with my good friends from CEG (Vijay, Dipak, Psycho Hari and Venkat) who had their shoot scheduled in the afternoon against IITB (Rahul, Chitranshu, Vivek, Arijit); the team we beat in the 1^st round. (if u don't know the format of UC basically there are 4 lucky losers from the 1^st round who go into the 2^nd round IITB was one of them).

During the drive to the studio saw a sight the seemed to defy all of Newton's laws of motion and his law of gravity. Well u c there was this car that had got on the median. There is nothing extraordinary about this but for the fact that it was on the wrong side of the road and somehow had managed to drive on the wrong side of the road and got up on that high median. U don't get the point. Just free it then coz i am very bad at describing weird road accidents and i don't have the help of Aaj Tak's amazing (read yuck) computer generated re enactments.

After a few 1000s of seconds we reached Eagle Studios in sector 18. I wonder if any movies were shot there coz there seemed to be a lot of posters of movies. The most familiar was Chamatkaar. Do u guys remember this movie. It had Naseeruddin Shah who was some kind of a ghost and helped Shah Rukh win a cricket match (Ganguly could do with a chamatkaar right now).

One of the good things about Synergy is the production team is made up of a lot of women. So their co-ords and stuff are female. I personally feel that they have too many people on the set but i am not complaining. After we were ushered into the make up room this pretty co-ord told us "give me your shirts" Before u get any naughty ideas let me disappoint u again by saying that she was doing her job and asking us to give her the shirts we were going to wear for the shoot so that she could get them ironed. She left the room after telling us to think of starting lines.

Thinking up imaginative and non-standard opening lines to introduce ourselves is the 2^nd most difficult thing to do in UC. (I'll come to the most difficult thing shortly). After racking my brains i came up with something I'm sure will get me beaten up in college once the episode comes. I won't tell u what it is just watch it on TV. Let me just tell my potential assailants that i meant no malice.

Once we changed we went to the other room to get our make up done. Just the usual stuff that has to be done before anyone comes in front of a camera. Next we went to the set. The first thing that struck me was that it was cold, f^%$*^! cold. Somebody forgot where the switch to put off the AC was. Once we took out seats the co-ord (the same one who wanted our shirts) started telling us the rules of the game. Duh !!! as if we didn't already know. "u'll get starters for 10 points ...." zzzzz .... brrr brrr brr achooo. Then she heard our starting lines and after finishing an endless stream of instructions she went on to bore the NIT Calicut guys and some guy fixed microphones on us

Then followed what seemed like an endless wait. The audience was made to sit properly and some guy started asking the audience questions to keep them engaged while we all waited for the shoot to start. The audience didn't answer too many questions though. (the most obscure questions about Hindi movies got cracked though and they seemed to know more about Kishore Kumar than AC (hi AC ^_^ ) ) They weren't quizzers they were there for an altogether different reason.

This brings me to the most difficult part about shooting for an episode of UC -- keeping one's eyes off the audience. See the audience is usually made up of Delhi college students most of them girls.

Now if you're a normal guy u'll empathise with me when i say that it's bloody hard to keep one's concentration in amongst such an audience. They are supposed to watch us but the traffic goes the other way too. While we were shivering in our seats the crew began recording the audience applause. Basically some crew member starts clapping and the audience then joins in. they take a few retakes till the noise level is up to their expectations. Our microphone tests followed After what seemed like an endless wait the star of the show made his entrance.

Siddharth Basu ('Babu' to most of the crew) walked in to applause and some sighs of awe (made up the 'awe'ful part). He was dressed in a jacket as u'll see on TV. What u won't see was the jeans he was wearing. It's funny to see a guy in a jacket and jeans. He shook hand with all of us and took his seat padded with a cushion ( they gave me 2 cushions and strangely enough Goach also got one despite the fact he is so tall. Now me asking why give me 2 and him one. give me one and him none. (sorry for the terrible rhyme)) .

Before the shoot began Babu threw the teams a few practice starters just to calm the nerves and warm up. Now that I'm in the topic of practice starters i have to tell u guys about this funny incident that happened with the CEG guys. Now during their shoot with IITB Babu threw the practice starters. Being the better team CEG cracked all 4. Now Babu used his head to give the poor IITB guys a starter and asked the following question "What is Vivek's surname". Much to i guess everyone's surprise Dipak buzzed and correctly said "Ramamurthy". U c Dipak studied with Vivek when he was in Bombay ages ago and knows him reasonably well. Imagine the look on IITB's faces. A kodak moment for sure. They must've been totally psyched.

Returning to our shoot the intro music played followed by "Welcome to University Challenge... Asking the questions Siddharth Basu." The shoot had started. Babu intoduced us and we did our intros. Then the same was repeated for the NIT guys. Just when we thought the intros were out of the way the "voice of God" spoke. There is this control room located somewhere in the set where somebody sits and looks at everything that's been shot and advises changes and re shots if necessary. Now where we are seated we can't see the guy in the control room. He not seen; only heard. Thus my reference to the voice as the "voice of God". Basically the guy told us that there was some camera problem and we needed to redo the intros and so we did only this time poor Goach kept fumbling his lines and took 4 or 5 attempts to get it right.

The quiz proper started and i won't give u details about it coz i don't want to and u can watch it all on TV. I will mention two incidents though.

This season Babu has decided that he wants to make the teams look good as in seem like good quizzers, so if neither of the teams answers a question it's scrapped and not shown on TV unless a team gets -5 on an interruption. This led to quite a fiasco during our audio question. Basically 3 audios had to be scrapped during our shoot. Now that's not a problem by itself but the problem was that after every audio got scrapped they had to hunt another one and the production people took 10 to 15 minutes to get a song. So in the mean time we were freezing and the audio co-ord ran out of questions so basically people from the audience were asked to sing(of course none of the songs they sung became qns). Under normal circumstances i would have tolerated bathroom singing in a studio but not when the team is down on points and knowing that every qn from that point is crucial. Finally the audio qn did get answered and it was Pps who did it much to our relief.

The 2^nd incident i want to talk about is the last question of the quiz. No matter what is shown on TV this is what happened. Babu said "Which toy dog.." and i buzzed. In the time that it took for the buzzer to go off and the light to come on and Babu to say "..it's Nandan from SVCE.. " Babu said some thing about Poland while continuing the qn. I was frozen. I was in a state of shock. U c i was thing about the literal toy dogs as in toys. So i was thinking about Aibo and tomagochis and not breeds of flesh and blood dogs. But when i heard Poland my head and heart stopped working. After Babu said that he was passing the question with -5 to the other team i said "dalmatian". Now Babu said that he wasn't going to allow that and said he was passing the question to the other team. Before they could answer the hooter went off. We jumped for joy in a spontaneous outburst of relief. We thought we had won. Then Babu did the unthinkable. He said he wanted the time to be turned back. I think he felt that i was stalling when i buzzed and decided to be what he thought was fair. Of course i wasn't stalling and moreover i had no way of knowing that that was the last question. Anyways they did turn back time and Babu repeated the qn and just before the qn ended Kevin buzzed and said "Dalmatian". Then Babu said "that is incorrect". Then he said words to the effect of moving on the next qn and before he could the hooter went off and this time we had indeed won. I found out later when Abid told me that Abid (who was pretty much their star performer) new the answer to the last qn was pomeranian but was waiting for the qn to complete before he buzzed and in between Kevin buzzed. I realised then just how close we had come to losing.

After the shoot they basically do dubs. Basically the 'voice of God' guy tells Babu to repeat some qns or some participants to repeat answers. They also reshot the last question where i buzzed and didn't give an answer at all and Kevin said Dalmatian. I guess this is what will get shown. After that reshot for the long shots the passes where one person gives a wrong answer and a person from the other team gives the right answer. Then they kept us waiting for some more time when the cameras took long shots of us and the crowd.

We went back to the hotel to rest up a bit. Saw a bit of TV and went for walks in the neighbourhood. While watching TV we saw this Airtel ad where a guy and a girl are in plane that crashes and ends with the tagline which basically says that their network goes everywhere. Now there is nothing remarkable about watching an ad for a cell phone network, really there isn't anything. Only small thingy was that AC's phone hadn't worked from the moment we landed in Delhi and didn't work again till we got to Madras when he got his signal back. This is where as Vinod put it irony makes an appearance -- AC's network provider is Airtel. (btw the look on his face when the ad came was another kodak moment).

The next day (Thursday) was our quarter final shoot against IITM. Won't talk much about it. Pretty much the same thing only thing we lost and lost really badly. A scoreline does not reflect our true capabilities as a team and neither does the result. But then that's the way UC's format works. One day u can look like a hero out of a Western the next day u can look like an absolute fool. Basically the qns are really easy. It's mostly about speed on the buzzer and IITM was much better that day. Maybe another day the result would have been quite different. And as IITM found out 4 hours later during their semi-final that UC can be very, very cruel. Still remember Babu's words that he told us trying to console us after the loss, "Don't look so mournful. It's only a quiz". Some how i don't agree.

In the night saw the telecast of our 1^st round against IITB. Seemed to be much closer a contest on TV than what we felt it was during the shoot.

The next day we packed and left a little after 12. Saw the Lotus temple and grabbed lunch on way to the airport. Reached there at 3 for a 4:50 flight which was delayed by half an hour. Saw Ashish Nehra whose autograph Goach got and Jagmohan Dalmiya whose existence Goach wasn't willing to acknowledge coz AC told him (its very hard to trust AC these days). Of course after i conformed his presence we all saw him. Also saw Prabhu Chawla the India Today (bald) head who comes on Aaj Tak. He was there with some reporter from Aaj Tak whose name I don't remember though I think this is the guy who got slapped by BSP founder Kanshi Ram.

Reached home to find out that i didn't have any material for one of the 2 tests i had the next day. Anyways freed it coz we got the qns the next day and the answers.

Well that's about it.

Durga Poojo

2004-10-20T21:55:00.000+05:30

Its that time of the year when Bengalis all over the world come out to celebrate Durga Poojo and why should the Bongs (as u guys call us) in Madras be any different. So the Bongs in Madras have their own celebrations for their favourite and most important festival. There are quite a few pandals put up various groups and societies. I have been told that the T. Nagar one is supposedly the oldest and biggest. Today I went to the festivities organised by SMCA— the South Madras Cultural Association at Beasant Nagar as I do every year.

This time the pandal seems to be rather well made and arrangements have been made to prevent the rain from being a spoil sport as it did with the India-Aus test match. First went in to see the idol. Aarthi was going on so there was the beat of the Dhak which is a drum like thingy and smoke all over due to the burning incense and whatever else is used during one of these aarthis. The poor priest guy was sweating all over as were most of us. Got a little psyched when i heard so many people speaking Bangla in the place- just not used to that. The idol seemed the same as every year. The organisers haven't tried anything special. In Calcutta lots of places have themed pandals. Few years there were Titanic pandals. Basically the pandals in Calcutta reflect a lot of whats happening currently. Though this year the police in Calcutta have told organisers not to have any themes related to hanging as would have been the favourite theme considering the Dhananjoy Chatterjee story and stuff. The idol here in Beasant Nagar was simple and usual with Godess Durga in the middle killing the demon and to her right are Saraswati and Ganesh and to her left Lakshmi and Karthik. Don't ask me to put any fundaes on the myth and religious significances coz i know very little.

After the aarthi got over picked up the prasad and went to food stalls. I wait one whole year just for this. The poojo may mean different things for different; but for me poojo means great food at the food stalls at the pandal and the Bengali girls(by default beautiful) who come to the Pandal. Today had egg roll(don't have to explain what that is), chicken Muglai Parota(stuffed kind of a parotta very diffent from the Punjabi parottas and fish Kabiraji(fish fillets fried in an egg batter). The food is what i miss most about Calcutta. Madras just doesn't have that kind of roadside food.

After picking up the food came back home.

The Durga poojo here is nothing compared to what happens in Calcutta. One my biggest regrets in life is not actually seeing a Durga poojo in Calcutta. I've had to make do with the SMCA pandal.

I strongly recommend that all of reading this go to any of the Bengali pandals during this time of the year and sample a slice of Calcutta in Madras. The best time to go would be in the evening. Today was 'Saptami' the 7^th day of Dussera. U've got 2 more days. So hurry up. The immersion is on Saturday and will take place at the Beasant Nagar beach.

HAPPY DURGA POOJO !!!!!!!!!!!!

UC travelblog [post 1]

2004-10-19T11:17:00.000+05:30

In my previous post i wrote that i was going to Delhi for the shooting of the next rounds of UC. Well i am back from the city of the Indian parliament, the India gate and awesomely[sic] hot girls. This post is about my experiences of the those 4 days. I dunno why i am writing this. The trip was on the whole extremely disappointing and has some painful memories. Writing things down will make me relive those memories i am desperately trying to get out of my system. There were some great moments too and maybe by writing them down I'll have something to draw from later on in life. I think the post is going to be rather long but read on if you're interested in knowing how a quiz programme is shot Synergy style or what happens when 2 deranged young men who have to share a room get up to.

Tuesday was the day of departure. AC told us to rendezvous at the airport at 12:10 for a 13:35 flight ( i wonder why oh why; but then AC is like that). So Goach and I went to the airport by car and Pps (read peeps) joined us at the entrance to the terminal at 12:15. now there was no sight of AC. Our man decides to turn up at 12:35. in the meantime Pps sent him some mean messages which basically meant that he had to get to airport rather quickly or else.... so after not carrying out our threats of doing nasty things to AC the 4 of us went in basically carried out all the formalities. We still had a bit of time left till the departure and the airport was really deserted. So we decided to throw random meaningless questions like "Connect the escalator and Adolf Hitler" and "What is the latitude and longitude of the airport?" at each other. Saw this very beautiful woman who seemed to be an air hostess but wasn't going to be a host but a guest. She was reading The Da Vinci Code. We decided to spoil the ending for her by telling her the ending but then we didn't carry out that plan either ' coz i don't think any one of us wanted to get slapped by a beautiful girl. I must make a confession here. She was definitely the prettiest girl on the flight. If she is reading this(high hopes dude!!) i hope she takes it as a compliment because the air hostesses like the food were hot. (oh God i just compared beautiful women to food!!!!!!!!! ( wonder what that tells about my thought processes)).

The flight was uneventful for the most part. There was a bit of turbulence. I didn't know whether to stare at the air hostesses or outside the window; the view outside was just amazing. The clouds looked as if they were out of a painting describing the abode of Greek Gods. Believe me they looked just like that. I could almost imagine Zeus in all his glory in there among the clouds. After imaging some heavenly images i decided to basically just keep my ornithological pursuits active. So the journey left me fairly satisfied and the food was also good.(wats m obsession with the food????).

After landing we picked up our luggage and began the task of finding a taxi to take us to Noida where our accommodation was arranged. Now the what appeared to be official tourism development taxi booth told us that we would have to pay 1080 bucks(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) to get to Noida. So we just went to the other booths and found one that was going to take us for 380 deer. So we hopped on(actually we just walked) in the black Maruti van. See Delhi has this policy that all public transport vehicles should run on CNG. A by-product of this(apart from the cleaner air) is that the Delhi transport corporation has the 'record' for having the "largest CNG bus service in the world" which the buses on the road very proudly proclaim. During the long journey AC went off to sleep and drooled all over the seat( of course he'll deny that (and maybe he is telling the truth)) but lets assume for the sake of the blog that he was indeed drooling.(not that achieves anything but just gives him something to do during the journey coz he was not doing anything). Anyways we were reserved .. well actually our accommodation was reserved at this place called 'Jewel Palace' in sector 61. this sector 61 happens to be a really far flung location and pretty undeveloped. The problem with Noida is that all streets just have numbers for names and all look the same. So it makes the task of finding a small hotel (well technically it was not a hotel.. I'll come to that in a minute(actually u'll come o that in minute (of course if u read fast then in about 30 seconds)) a very arduous task. Now the problem is compounded further by the fact that the place did not have a sign board saying that it was indeed hotel Jewel Palace. When we did finally meander our way to the address given to us we landed(actually we landed long ago) at a huge (i mean huge) house that said it belonged to some IAS officer. Puzzled Pps went inside and after seeing the receptionist's came out satisfied that we were at the right place. The reason he was satisfied was that the receptionist(cum manager) lady was the same person who had greeted us during our previous stay. Then Jewel Palace was in sector 41. See they apparently got kicked out of that place because of some "problems with the authorities" so they were masquerading as a hotel in an (abandoned?) IAS officer's house.

The rest of the evening went off without without any scares. The dinner was great. The food on all the days of our stay was really good. We decided to practice a bit after dinner just to get into the groove. After a bit Pps and Goach left to their room. That left AC and me in the room late in the night. (now is the part i promised in the beginning about 2 deranged young men in a room)

(to be continued...............)

University Challenge part deux

2004-10-12T09:30:00.000+05:30

In a few hours time I'll be on a plane taking me to the capital of this country (of course it became the capital only in 1913 (or was it 1912) after the Brits moved from the City of Joy,the wonderful city i was born in but have not had the good fortune of knowing that well ) for the 2^nd round of shooting of BBC World's University Challenge. I might as well be totally correct and tell u that it's the shooting of the 2^nd, quarters and semis. So at the end of the week the finalists will be known. Of course junta will come to know about it only after the shows are aired.

Feeling very nervous for some reason(actually thats why i started writing this post 'coz i was feeling very tense thinking about the trip and not doing anything. Have a strange feeling in the stomach for some reason. I really don't know what i am so tense about. I know we (Goach,AC,pps[captain SIR] and I (yeah i am the only one in the team who doesn't have a nickname)) are a good team and we can go far in the tournament but suddenly i am engulfed in self doubt. I don't know why. We almost blew it against a weaker IIT Bombay team (the episode it to be telecast on 14^th October – this Thursday at 10pm ). my fear is not performing to our full potential. I know that we can take on the world nut we gotta keep our cool. Maybe i am putting too much pressure in myself......... aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

no more talk about UC 'coz i feel relaxed already and that weird feeling is gone from my stomach. The purpose of writing this post is served.

Now moving on to other things.

Its been a favourable week. Hardly went to college. Any day that is not spent in college is a good day

Sunday was simcat 4. didn't do too well (not that's very surprising) but got a higher city percentile(national hasn't come out yet) than i expected so i am feeling a lot better.

Now my mood has changed from one of gloom to one of glee. Talk about the healing powers of writing a blog.

Will be back on Friday night. Hope to have made it to the finals UC by then. Anything less than that will leave us a team extremely unhappy, i am sure.

Wish us luck and the power to kick ass

May he answers be with us

sayonara

A blogger about blogging

2004-10-09T08:31:00.000+05:30

maisonneuve :: eclectic curiosity

Link was there in one of the text ads in gmail. Mailed my self a post to check if the mail post thing was working properly and voila there were ads related to blogging. And guess what the 1st link was blogger. Boy what a surprise (sarcastic grin)

What if Vijaykant decides to play for Arsenal

2004-10-07T22:54:00.000+05:30

My good friend Vinod while writing about Emirates Air's new sponsorship deal with Arsenal suggested that Arsenal with their new found wealth could get big stars like Vijaykant(he's BIG alright and he's more like a black hole than a bright shimmering star) to play for them. That got me thinking. What would happen if indeed Vijaykant started playing for Arsenal?

Patrick Vieira is gonna have to step down. Now i don't have to explain this. There can be only ONE captain in the team. They'll have to get 42 metres of cloth to make the captain's arm band to fit it around Vijaykant's bulging(with fat) arm

They would have to reinforce the football stadia he's gonna be playing 'coz no football stadium i know of is earthquake resistant. Now why would they need earthquake resistant stadia?? well... imagine a herd of elephants running , the earth trembling begging for mercy ; that's the kind of impact Vijaykant with his 7 tons of make up will have when he's gonna run after a ball trying to kick it between 2 czechs.

The viewership of EPL matches is going to go thru the roof as all the captains men would want to watch his antics especially those who missed his circus days. This would mean that CAS gets revoked (yippeeeee!!!!) or ESPN becomes free to air or DD starts showing EPL 'coz how the hell are we, in Chennai supposed to watch the bloody matches

The referee's job is going to be that much easier, as by seeing the injury he'll be able to tell that Vijaykant is responsible for the blow. Of course Vijaykant is such an honest goody guy that he'll probably take the red card and leave the field (phew!!!!!).

Thierry Henri is going to lose all his sponsors as everyone would be backing the new(old, really old) kid [sic] on the block.

People who don't know much about football will be wondering which the ball is- what captain is chasing or what is chasing it.

Commentary would not be needed. Just give Vijaykant a mike and all the sound u need for the match will be there. Of course if u don't understand Tamil ur lucky because then u don't have to feel guilty about not having made any sense of his lines.

U would only need the most sophisticated software like Microsoft's Paint to do all the television graphics.

And most importantly Arsenal will have no fear of losing... u kant lose with a guy whose name means victory in the team

At long last ......here is the first

2004-09-30T01:19:00.000+05:30

After toying with the idea for weeks, i've finally put up my blog. So here are 2 kicks to the rear and a pat on the back - ouch, oucher , wheeeeee ^_^ . Now that i have started i am not going to stop with some self depracatory and self congratulatory thoughts , and imagined screams of pain and squeals of jubilation. So here goes.....

Stroke Edith at Aberdeen Colon She is Under Half

Dispense Royal Justice Napolean for Charlie Knows Tall Zebras Laugh

We Hear Young People Question on Best Grounds

quotations for a thousand fifteen pounds

Now before u begin to clap or criticize, let me tell u that this doggerel is not mine. This was created at the Univ. of Manchester in the 1940s with the purpose of mugging the following...

/E@A:SIU½DRJNFCKTZLWHYPQOBG"MXV£

"SO... whats the point?" i hear u ask

Now the point is that the 32 characters the quatrain is a mnemonic for happen to be the...er mnemonics for the instructions of the Mark 1 computer built at the Univ. of Manchester. Now those of u who know assembly programming know modern days mnemonics like ADD,SUB, etc. For those who dont have a clue wat assembly language is; its basically a kind of ancient,weird way of communicationg with the computer which is still used today for various reasons (and in some situations is the only way of getting the computer to do ur dirty work). Say i want to tell the computer "Computer saab add the contents of registers (tiny places of memory) a and b and store the sum in register a" i would write something like 'ADD a,b'. I hope u haven't gone off to sleep or typed some other address in ur address bar.

So if u're still reading this (WHY???????) in the 40s people were still trying to figure out how to talk to the computer and assembly language itself was a new idea.Basically they used to punch a whole bunch of holes on cards and feed them to the computer. So in the 40s there lived a genius(i bow to thee respectfully and ask for thy blessings) called Alan Mathison Turing. Now basically he was a homesexual super genius who during WWII worked for the British government at the top secret Bletchley Park where these guys used to crack codes and basically had a huge role to play in winning the war. If he wasn't there this blog well may have been in Duestch. Apart from that he came up some brilliant ideas on how to well .. er .. communicate with computers. So when this Mark 1 was built he gave the 32 symbols for the 32 operations that the Mark1 could perform to make it easier to well ( u guessed it) communicate with the computer. Now programmers could just type out the symbols from a primitive keyboard to write their programs.

But... But there was a problem. The symbols were in no order and no body except the great Turing himself could memorize wat each symbol stood for (basically what binary(1's and 0'c combination) the symbols represented). So some despo dudes at the univ came up with this to remember the words they had with them to talk to the burly old computer.So thats why u have the poem. Now that i've told u how the poem came to be i'll be going. Here is a parting Haiku (well i'm not sure if it is but it'll have to do)

Let me know wat u guys think.

This blog is new.

Could do with a lot of encouragement

Auf Wiedersehen