Road rage..

Yesterday was one of those bad days in which nothing works the way it should. The only tangible result of yesterdays work at office was a severe head ache by the time i left for home, not to mention the effect chaotic peak hour traffic on ring road. While on my way back home, i got caught in a traffic jam, boxed in between two busses on the sides , a maruthi omni in front and an auto with the most annoying auto driver behind me. I think this particular autodriver must be a descendent of a KGB officer in torture cell, for just by honking his horn incessantly and in the most irritating fashion he managed to bug me to the extent that i felt like killing him then and there. Alas, for the lack of any fatal weaponry near by, i had to settle for a 'revenge'. After the traffic jam had cleared, i ensured that he did not exceed 15 kmph by going as slow as i could, all the time blocking him from overtaking me. I was able to hold him back for around 100 m or so, after which he had to listen to the sweet sound of my horn till the next junction, where i lost him.

Now that i think of it, i feel the reason for me to act the way i did was more due to other factors than just the irritating noise of the horn , and that he just provided an outlet for my frustrations. Do all road rages have similar reasons?

Rang Barse...

Its Holi time here in IIT. Water, color, some paint, dhokla, laddu, thandai, great weather, and a lot of spirit made it one of the better Holi celebrations of my life. The other two were limited to some colors in Yahoo! in 2003 and of course, the amazing night Holi of 2001; with all the eggs and colors on bikes.

This year's can be termed hard-core Holi. As I type this, I can still see my hands all pink and blue. I see myself in the mirror and there is this huge streak of red on my face. My torso is all blue. Crazy stuff.

A few of the dudes here started yesterday, got some thandai concentrate, milk, colors, sweets, ice etc., and mixed it all up and we were ready in the department garden at around 1030. Someone had the brilliant idea of using the garden water hose to douse everyone in chilled water and with the sun beating down upon us, it was something.

The girls were not spared, male shirts were not spared, modesty vanished, just festivities. A few photos are here. After the reluctant crowd left, the rest of us started some karaoke, rain dance, more thandai, and overall crazy stuff.

AXE EFFECT and miscellania....

One of the best and costly ways to promote a product and create an instant hit brand is by delivering clever advertisements.

I just love the axe effect ads for their sheer creativity and actually make a guy get up and buy their product.



Just think of all the axe effect ads.The women are too good, but the key idea is that of the cooL guy with the coolest attitude.He often has a "women are naturally attracted to me...i cant help it" look.But the idea is dont get deceived by those ads and think that you are the happening idiot in that place.

Other kind of ads are those of liquor ads.
They have a quick and easy idea :-

a) Create a crappy album with dik-chik music

b) Come up with a slogan like :-
Life is calling where are you
Even now you can hear the bagpiper's organ hehehe

c) Promote your liquor by displaying it full screen on TV.

d) All the bacardi and Seagram's and 100 pipers of the world follow this idea religiously.

Other morons promote their products as "apple juice" or "soda water".

I got the

Shakthi Kapur casting couch video which is creating news...

You can download it here

PS:- My codec didnt decode the voice.It is a plain MPEG video, but my mplayer (on linux) couldnt decode the voice.

Shifting done :-)

Well the shifting is over guys....
And things are a bit in control today when compared to yesterday...

Will continue to update blogs whenever I get time today...
cheeers !

Happy Birthday Sudeep

Welcome to the real world :)))). Unfortunately, no one can be told how it feels to have a quarter...er....be a quarter. You have to feel it for yourself. And now that you are here, I will let you soak in the feeling.

Happy Birthday maga!! Between You and GD at the ends of the spectrum, we have (had) great people in the 1979-80 academic year. Imagine, go back 25 years.....all of us in cradles, not knowing where we would meet as friends, not caring, growing up, making first friends who disappear after we grow older, making long lasting friends during the formative years of childhood, going to school together, playing sports, eating food, discovering the opposite sex, those definitive self-discovering days of college, one-way traffic, going through agonies, anger, angsts, ego-trips, successes, failures, learning to accept each other, tolerate each other, and finally, now, after all these years, all I know is that I miss you Sudeepa. Wish we could hit the south Bangalore food circuit today on your sister's Scooty and discuss the usual crap.

Happy Birthday again.

Naa real paani

The naariyal paani season is here and the tender coconuts are tasting damn good this season.I have started drinking and driving, naariyal paani, ofcourse, and it is damn fun.Well the usual routine is that I stop near the Hiranayya's "Rangabhoomi" at BSK II stage at abt 8 or 9 pm and drink it and scrap the tender coconut and go home contented.

I heard that tender coconuts are like branded items.The ones coming from Maddur are the best.
Maddur Bus stand has also pioneered Maddur Vada which is really a great snack.

They are two types of tender coconut venders :-

The mobile tender coconut vendors who carry their stuff on a cycle.Generally they carry limited and smaller tender coconuts.They also have a wooden rod for supporting their cycle.They get their coconuts from smaller coconut plantations near bangalore.

The stationary tender coconut vendors who trade about 200 to 300 coconuts per day.These are high quality coconuts.They have sweeter coconut water and are REALLY fresh.

Whatever kind of coconut vendor he is, at night he drinks ONLY YENNE and not coconut water.

Hahaha.

back to work ..

and its fired up here. A brief explanation.

Had told my PM that I would not be coming on Monday and Tuesday and be pilgrimaging Sabarimalai. I hadnt applied prior leave and hadnt followed the verbal communication by a Written one.

Some minor hiccups were bloated up and my absence has been regarded as job hunting. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

With a round of promotions due this April, this will be taken against me. I heard from some close sources of mine that he heard it from the higher ups.

For no mistake of mine am punished or to be punished.

Has been a real good week. Kummi congrats on achieving the 76th rank. Hope you will stay in Bangalore.

software development

Developing with a great IDE is a pleasure. To be able to refactor a big big chunk of code in a second is oh-so-very-good. Thinking in design patterns is making me all nostalgic for ThoughtWorks. So, as a part of my project-lab, I am working on this big big Java code base and adding a lot of features into this crazy, undocumented, posteriori-optimized code. Its fun to do some industry-like coding after a while.

My sister is on her way to Mumbai now, as I type this. Will be catching her for dinner during her transit from the domenstic airport to the international. Its been a while since I saw her, and a real real pity that I could not make it to Bangalore for that weekend when a great Dose Camp was organized at my place.

Bought a cool football. Playing everynight. Alone. Trying to practise a few moves. Get more ball control. Using my left foot more. In football, I have always felt that my vision and shooting were decent, but my ball control and confidence were abysmal. Should be able to kick the Lords' gang's ass. The football days were fun. Need to play more. Need to revive the spirit of the Sport.

Ah, and btw, screwed sleep cycles, screwed eating patterns, incredibly screwed shower regularity, intermittent movies, studies, general reading, and life....all going on.

AIR => 76

GREAT STUFF SARVAGNAANI

Hats off !

Pet

I always thot that hyenas were a skinny lot.
But after seeing this guy having a beasty hyena for a pet i am speechless.



Baddi makkalra, choo bidtheeni

Do hyenas laugh ?
Do any animals like a dog or a cat laugh ?
I have seen a dog sneezing ...( but it doesnt say "god bless" or any other vernacular equivalent as far as I know :-) )

I dont think I should come very early to the office.
Whatever.

Assume

that you have a camera (a motion picture camera) with you.

Now you go filming a room (say your bedroom). You have filmed all the four walls and the ceiling of the bedroom and the floor.

Now you have a film of ur bedroom.

A software can take this film sequence as an input and give a 3-D model as an output.

What is the use of this software ?

An exact 3D model of a crime scence can be produced in the courtroom.The judges and magistrates can be given 4 arrow keys to navigate thru' the crimescene sitting at the courtroom.They will become like tombraider players.

Check out the film sequence and the model produced by this software.

Hi_Fi Technology creates an un-necessary need and eventually ends up making you a slave.Soon judges everywhere want 3D models of courtroom scenes.Lawyers need an extra dimension to prove their lies.

BUT I have to say that the software is Amazing.
I salute to these creative bastards.

high on food

After a long time, today, I had good, never-before-tried, exotic, tasty, and feel-happy food. It is truly feel-happy. I am high on food right now. I am feeling oh-so-pleasant inside. Its not very heavy, its just right. Of the four types of material pleasures*, bhojana sukha has its own very high place.

We went to this Gujrati Thali place called "Raajdhani" in Mulund (Nirmal Lifestyles) today. Rs 160/- thali, unlimited vegetarian Gujrati food. Here is the menu:

- Undhyu (a Gujrati delicacy that is so tasty, I am out of drool)
- Thepla
- Aamras
- Kadi
- Jamoon
- Poori
- Roti
- Raita
- Dal
- Samosa
- Thick and rich halwa
- Three types of curries
- Five types of chutnies
- Liters of butter milk
- Amazing service
- Greatest company ever. Had my Gujrati friend Jatin taking us through the gourmet treat.

I close my eyes and I can see the thick aamras and undhyu right in front of me. Gosh, I have had good food many times in my life. Bangalore has some of the tastiest food. Why feeling so high???
I suppose its about eating something really really new, and really really tasty, at the same time - after three months of hostel food. I guess thats whats evoking such emotion.

* 4 material pleasures - nidra sukha, snana sukha, bhojana sukha & sthri sukha

Zeppelin

I have wondered how Zeppelins flew. There are no wings ? How did they take off ?

I will be back, in a jiffy......just a sec.....

.....I am back :-)

Well just came to know that they are baloons.

Wikipedia is a great source of useful and useless information.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship if you care.

My doubt is cleared.

all about admit letters..

read this article about harvard bussiness school admit letters and the comments esp the comment of one of those guys who saw his ding letter . Personally I dont understand the reason for all the fuss..i mean its not a big thing..it isnt a national secret ..
and from the students point of view its perfectly natural..if i was in such a situation definetly i would have done the same thing and i bet even the guy in bussiness school mgmt who rejected them also would have done the same thing..
btw i was really impressed by the marketing skills of this guy who is trying to make a profit out of his loss..

wasted week

The whole of last week was wasted in doing nothing. The weekend was spent compering our department's flagship event. It was a workshop on Computing Infrastructure for Enterprise Networks. The name couldn't be any vaguer eh? So was the workshop.

The worst part about being a compere is that you have to sit through the entire lecture series, so that at the end of each lecture you know the right adjective to fill in "A fill-adjective-here lecture, Mr Speaker!" This made me sit through all the lectures. Most of the industry speakers using the platform to give their sales pitch, even the CTO of Amazon.com :(( . The academic talks were good. But anyways, the one thing I surely learnt during the entire 2 day workshop was that Gujrati Dhokla's taste great. :)))) The low of the session was that, as a compere, I got my 15 minutes when some projector broke down and I had to kill time for the audience. Of course, I didn't have any regaling anecdotes to entertain them with. So, I stuck to one of my drier informative speels on our department and some more world-class crap. Wasted the 15 minutes.......aaaargh.......Shows that I should've preprared for everything.

That was this weekend. Later that day, visited the aged Yogi who resides just opposite IIT, and had some good talks with him around.

This week is gonna be screwed cuz of impending project presentations, one big exam, and a lot of machine learning to catch up with. I dont think of approximation algorithms cuz I feel depressed when I do so :)))

Thats academics for now.

Happy bday kumar

Have a great day today

Got an admit..

into UCSB. No aid :), but still a gr8 school to study in. Another friend of mine, from the ispeet group, a compilers/C++ punter, has also got into the same university. This and PennState were I guess the best schools that I had applied to. So shall contemplate another university only if I can get better chances of aid ( fat chance, I know :D ).

Lift karadey

Everywhere, lift sessions are pretty grim.People want to get out of the lift as soon as they get in.Even if they are very free and they dont have a work in hand.

I made friends with one of the lift operators, who is kind of, effeminate.He is this typical feminine guy (eg. some guys in bangle stores with long nails (especially the little finger nails) with a dash of lakme or l'oreal nail polish, and maybe some of them wear eyeliners.) Before he got this job, he was working in a "ladies garments shop".
:-)

I just asked him how many times does he go up and down everyday.Our building has 11 floors and people from sasken,bosch and cap gemini use the lifts.He said about 800 times.Somehow I cant believe that.800 is too big a number (try counting upto 800)

But it's one of the "lonely jobs".U are given a steel chair and people come in and get out...People always want to get out of the lift if it is crowded.You are always there in the lift.

Loneliness is not a phase.

Apart from this guy, there are many other guys who operate lifts.Another guy is the head of the lift operators.A 50 year old man(who looks like a retired colonel), who shouts "3rd floor please" when you arrive at the third floor.

We have a mistress for these lift operators/sweepers who stands in the ground floor lift lobby.She doesnt have a plcae to sit.Poor girl.SHe has the best desi dressing sense and her salwars are pretty cool. All short top type salwars...

So this much for the ups and downs in the office...

HAPPY WEEKEND guys...

Carl Sagan

(Whacked from Wikipedia)

Sagan was considered by some to have an inflated ego. In 1994, Apple Computer began developing the Power Macintosh 7100. They chose the internal code name "Carl Sagan," in honor of the astronomer. Though the project name was strictly internal and never used in public marketing, when Sagan learned of this internal usage, he sued Apple Computer to use a different project name — other projects had names like "Cold fusion" and "Piltdown Man", and he was displeased at being associated with what he considered pseudoscience. Though Sagan lost the suit, Apple engineers complied with his demands anyway, renaming the project "BHA" (Butthead Astronomer). Sagan sued Apple for libel over the new name, claiming that it subjected him to contempt and ridicule. Sagan lost this lawsuit as well; still, the 7100 saw another name change: it was now called "LAW" (Lawyers Are Wimps).

online test

Take an English test


My results were pretty okay :-(

You scored 86% Beginner, 93% Intermediate, 93% Advanced, and 55% Expert!

sap....

SAP SAP SAP SAP SAP

Junoon.

I just loved this track by junoon

Try to listen to it.

Pakistani rockers are good.