The World as I see it.

The More Loving One

2011-10-03T09:46:00.001+05:30

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well

That, for all they care, I can go to hell,

But on earth indifference is the least

We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn

With a passion for us we could not return?

If equal affection cannot be,

Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am

Of stars that do not give a damn,

I cannot, now I see them, say

I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,

I should learn to look at an empty sky

And feel its total darkness sublime,

Though this might take me a little time.

-- W. H. Auden

There is Grandeur in this View of Life

2011-09-07T09:02:00.001+05:30

I finished reading Richard Dawkins's "The Greatest Show on Earth". As I mentioned earlier, this book provides ammunition for you to confront the irrational types of who believe that God in his mercy created the earth with all the living creatures in it (including humans) in the last 10,000 years. It provides evidence for why evolution is a scientific fact, beyond all reasonable doubt.

The book dives deep into the tons of fossil evidence discovered throughout the earth, which have been meticulously calculated to be in the right order. For example, a flying creature has been discovered to live only after the evolution of wings, not before. Not once has there been any fossil records discovered from the wrong time. If you find one, evolution will be debunked -- I'm not holding my breath.

But here's the kicker: even if there were no fossil records, evolution would still stay ground on the basis of all the other scientific evidences. That we have the arsenal of fossils available to us is a bonus. It further reinforces evolution. Evolution is in line with the myriad forms of life that exist on the planet. It explains why life is imperfect (it's still evolving). It explains why creatures have different abilities depending on their habitat. It does not lead to paradoxes. Compare this with the creationist argument of an intelligent designer (God) where even if you are somehow able to explain who created God, you still have all the explaining ahead of you. Why is there misery? Why is there sorrow (unless of course if you agree that God is a sadist)? Why is that some creatures have acute vision while others are practically blind? Why do we have redundant body parts (appendix, tail bone, ..)? Why do we have body parts which would have been much efficiently designed if an "intelligent" designer was devising them? Evolution answers all of these.

Not that I ever doubted evolution, but I never realized how profound it was in shaping life. Nature cares about only one thing: the survival of the fittest. Period. It doesn't matter if it leads to widespread agony, plague or earth quake. Nature is not interested. At every point the genes undergo random mutation, and nature selectively votes in favor of the ones that have a high chance of survival, thereby carrying forward the genetic code.

The book ends beautifully with: We are surrounded by endless forms, most beautiful and most wonderful, and it is no accident, but the direct consequence of evolution by non-random natural selection -- the only game in town, the greatest show on earth.

There really is grandeur in this view of life.

The Greatest Show on Earth: Evolution

2011-08-29T11:47:00.001+05:30

All of us have religious friends, who might otherwise be fairly smart and logical but assume a veil of irrationality when it comes to anything that challenges their "faith". All logic and science is kosher as long as they don't contradict their beliefs. Out of respect you tread not to offend them but at the same time you wish you had solid arguments or anecdotes that could help them discover their irrationality if only one step at a time.

Richard Dawkins's "The Greatest Show on Earth" is just that. Through a series of examples, historical as well as contemporary, worded in layman's vocabulary, he conveys the scientifically observed tenets of evolution. Evolution is not a theory. It's a fact. It's a fact beyond reasonable doubt. It's a fact beyond all doubt. It's a fact. Period. It can be proven with scientific rigor, it can be repeated, and to date there hasn't been a single observation or finding to the contrary.

When you think of evolution you might think of centuries of chiseling of the genetic code through natural selection. The picture of fish to amphibious mammals to apes to humans is all too familiar. But did you know that there are examples of evolution that you can observe in daily life, today? Evolution through natural selection is the reason why every time you have a bacterial infection the doctor requires you to complete your antibiotic dosage -- you're not supposed to terminate it premature even if you feel fine, or else you'd have selected in favor of resistant bacterial mutations before you get rid of the entire population.

I've just finished Chapter 5 and I've already seen several such examples from daily life, as well as examples from radioactive timing of fossils from millions of years of evolutionary life. The grandeur is so beautiful and makes so much sense through an understanding of evolution that you begin to pity the desperate arguments by creationists who believe that all life originated merely some thousands of years ago through the whims of a sad God. The book is absolutely delightful so far.

The Rubaiyat

2011-07-23T14:44:00.001+05:30

Look not above, there is no answer there;

Pray not, for no one listens to your prayer;

Near is as near to God as any Far,

And Here is just the same deceit as There.

And do you think that unto such as you;

A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew:

God gave the secret, and denied it me?--

Well, well, what matters it! Believe that, too.

"Did God set grapes a-growing, do you think,

And at the same time make it sin to drink?

Give thanks to Him who foreordained it thus--

Surely He loves to hear the glasses clink!"

--- Omar Khayyam

A trip to Yellowstone

2011-07-18T11:00:00.003+05:30

Yellowstone, the country's first national park, is unlike any other. Every spot in the park reinforces this.

From high mountains to grassy plains, craters to waterfalls, huge trees to wild animals in abundance, each of the 5 entrances to the park presents an entirely different perspective.

We began our visit from its southern neighbor, the Grand Teton park. In retrospect, it wasn't such a good idea. The only thing the Grand Teton park has is the Gand Teton mountain. Nothing else was exciting enough but we fruitlessly spent an entire day looking around in this park.

As soon as we entered Yellowstone, it was a dream. Only you could see it living and breathing infront of your eyes. The first wild animal we saw was a bison, a creature which has been living on this earth since the last ice age. With shredded furry coats they looked like having a good time in the summer. In fact, they'd quite often get near the roads, sometimes even block traffic, with onlookers every so happy to point their cameras while they made their way across the road.

We also saw elks, mule deers and pronghorns. They can be easily seen in the Lamar Valley area, the stretch coming from the north-east entrance of the park. At one spot in Lamar Valley there was a huge lineup of stationary vehicles, so we stopped too. People were peering into the adjacent hill and I was able to see a wolf on its chase. Pretty neat!

I didn't see any bears. In retrospect, that was a good thing, since the very day we made out of the park, someone was killed by a bear in the interiors of the park. When you see a bear, don't run, don't startle, just drop dead. As per common wisdom, that's your best defense. But I think if a bear attacked me I'd attack it directly in its eyes rendering it directionless. I mean how difficult can that be?

Yellowstone has the highest concentration of natural geysers in the world. There are hundreds of them. You can see them active any time, any season. And boy are they colorful! Apparently, aside from the minerals being pushed out from the inside of the earth with the boiling steam, the colors are also caused by some thermophile organisms that live here. Puddles of green, turquoise, greenish-blue, boiling mud, were abundant. It was breathtaking. Nothing like I'd ever seen before.

In all it was a memorable trip, well worth the 2500 miles I drove.

I like Americans

2011-05-07T12:19:00.001+05:30

I like Americans.

You may say what you will, they are the nicest people in the world.

They sleep with their windows open.

Their bathtubs are never dry.

They are not grown up yet. They still believe in Santa Claus.

They are terribly in earnest.

But they laugh at everything . . .

I like Americans.

They give the matches free . . .

I like Americans.

They are the only men in the world, the sight of whom in their shirt-sleeves is not rumpled, embryonic and agonizing . . .

I like Americans.

They carry such pretty umbrellas.

The Avenue de l'Opera on a rainy day is just an avenue on a rainy day.

But Fifth Avenue on a rainy day is an old-fashioned garden under a shower . . .

They are always rocking the boat.

I like Americans.

They either shoot the whole nickel, or give up the bones.

You may say what you will, they are the nicest people in the world.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), American poet

Happiness

2010-10-22T12:26:00.001+05:30

I asked professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them.
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.

-- Carl Sandburg

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

2010-09-24T11:21:00.002+05:30

One of the things I need to do before I die is to read Lord of the Rings. I finished Book 1 in the series yesterday. I'll admit I'm disappointed.

The book has so many unnecessary sequence of events, which don't have any connection to the flow of story, and seem like they've been put there to blot pages. For example, that Tom Bombadilo guy singing songs and being gay was magical and ultra-capable but sadly he doesn't have any part in the rest of the story; so why have him in the first place? Talking of songs, what's with the characters bursting into songs every now and then, sometimes for multiple pages? I skipped through every one of them except the first few ones. Oh and why do they have to address the characters with their fathers' name over and over again? Gimli, son of Gloin! Aragorn, son of Arathorn! Isn't it simpler to call "Gimli", and "Aragorn"? Will the reader forget who Gimli is unless qualified with the lineage? And why do every few sentences have to introduce 3 new nouns, unheard of before and probably won't be repeated later ever? It's not like I'm going to remember any of them. In fact, it makes it difficult to remember even the important ones.

My English teacher back in school days taught me that "good" is a actually a very inarticulate word. One uses "good" when one doesn't understand why it's good. When one does understand why it's good, one uses the specific qualification. Similarly, "great" is an even worse word, meaning that the writer wants something magnificent but can't really qualify it so. "Great" is repeated so many times in the book that it's lost its meaning. Every single character is either "great" or "dark" or "shadow". Every single one of them. Even Gollum. Great race of men! Great Elves! The great council! The great dwarves! The dark lord! The evil shadow! Give me a break.

This is indeed a series for which the movie is more enjoyable than the book. The book sure makes the movie more meaningful and understandable though. I've begun with the Book 2 and I hope it's more interesting than the first one.

"Paranormal Activity" -- A dumb homework badly done

2009-10-26T13:29:00.001+05:30

They played the advertisements for "Paranormal Activity" so many times on television that I decided to go for it. I repent now.

It can hardly be called a documentary. Combine a story-less series of activities with a budget-less production and a crew with a single camera (which is used throughout the movie as the lens) and you get paranormal activity. First things first, there's nothing paranormal about this movie. There's a plump girl who gets aroused during nights because her boyfriend is busy all the time with his camera, something he carries everywhere he goes. Even when she's screaming, he grabs the camera first before rushing downstairs. The entire movie is shown through the lens of the camera and believe me this is high on the list of how a movie should NOT be made. You don't want to keep watching through a jerky camera for more than a few minutes, leave alone an entire movie. The scariest thing that happens in this movie is that the girl throws the guy away a few feet. That's it. I wasn't even amused.

The boyfriend supposedly wants to help but just ends up fighting because the girl wants him to give up the camera. He does not. The guy takes his camera everywhere -- to the toilet, to the dining table, to the bedroom. I mean everywhere. He's recording even when they have supposedly serious conversation about tackling the situation. And lord even when playing back the recorded movies on his laptop.

Did you note that I did not mention about ghosts or anything paranormal above? That's because there isn't any. Save yourself the time and go blackmail a bandit if you want to make better use of your time.

More Items for Sale

2009-09-21T21:47:00.001+05:30

All items are available immediately. Reason for selling: relocating.

Contact: 99086 89990 [or nirnimesh@gmail.com]

Wooden Cot (with mattress) Cot: ~2yrs old. size: 3ft x 6ft. Cost price: Rs 3000. Expected price: 2000 Mattress: Duroflex ~2.5yrs old. Fits in the above cot. Cost price: Rs 2400. Expected price: Rs 1500
Microwave Oven Onida Power Grill. 20L. 800W Microwave power + 1050W Grill power. Easy to Use Jogwheel controls. 2 Combi Grill settings. 24 Customized Indian Auto Cook Menus. 1 yr old. Original packaging available. Excellent condition. Includes 2 free cooking recipe books and a mitten. Cost price: Rs 6500. Expected price: Rs 4500

Items for Sale

2009-09-17T18:17:00.001+05:30

All items are available immediately. Reason for selling: relocating.

Contact: 99892 99704 [or n@gmail.com]

Wooden Cot ~3yrs old. 4ft x 6ft. Cost price: Rs 2500. Expected price: Rs 1500. Add Rs 200 for cotton mattress
Breakfast Table Set 1 table + 2 chairs. Totally disassemble-able. Original packaging available. Bought from Reliance Mart, 11 months old. Cost price: Rs 2400. Expected price: Rs 1500
Microwave Oven Onida Power Grill. 20L. 800W Microwave power + 1050W Grill power. Easy to Use Jogwheel controls. 2 Combi Grill settings. 24 Customized Indian Auto Cook Menus. 1 yr old. Original packaging available. Excellent condition. Includes 2 free cooking recipe books and a mitten. Cost price: Rs 6500. Expected price: Rs 4800
Center tea table Wooden. ~3 yrs old. Good condition. Cost price: Rs 400. Expected price: Rs 200
Steel Almirah ~3 yrs old. Cost price: Rs 4500. Excellent condition. Expected price: Rs 3500
Wooden rocking chair with cushion ~3 yrs old. Comfortable. Cost price: Rs 3500. Leg rest broken (but fixable). Cost price: Rs 3500. Expected price: Rs 2000
Acoustic Guitar + Electronic tuner + Original bag Granada. 6 string. 4 yrs old. Excellent condition (hardly ever used). Still has the original shine and smell. Also included: a new (unopened) pack of strings set, 2-3 extra strings, pick. Cost price: Rs 3500 (for guitar) + Rs 400 (for tuner). Expected price: Rs 2700
Book Shelf 4 levels. 50 inch height. ~6 months old. Excellent condition. Original packaging available. Disassemble-able. Bought from Reliance Mart furniture. Cost price: Rs 1600. Expected price: Rs 1250
Roti Maker Jaipan. Used sparingly. Original packaging available. Cost price: Rs 1500. Expected price: 1000
Sandwich Toaster Used 4-5 times. Cost price: Rs 600. Expected price: Rs 300

Why I Love my Android Phone

2009-06-24T02:21:00.003+05:30

When I used to read fairy tales as a child, I used to wonder what if I could see what's there on the other side of the world, or where this road leads to, or how far is the nearest candy-shop. How neat it would be if I could have access to all kinds of information in the form of a magic wand. What if I didn't have to memorize the width and height of the Meenakshi temple.

We are living it today.

If you've met me in the last few months, chances are I've shown you my android phone.

I have an app (Places Directory) on my phone that not only lists the nearest restaurants/petrol pumps/ATMs and gives driving directions, it points in the direction. I could literally follow the arrow and reach to an ATM. There's another app (Shazam) that can recognize any song you play it, and discover the video on youtube. Another one (Sky Map) that I can use to recognize the constellations and planets -- I used it to identify Venus, the morning star (turns out, the white dot I had been passing off as a star is actually Venus). When I last went to my home town, my brother could track exactly where in the journey I was, with the precision of a few meters, since I had Latitude enabled on my phone. It only adds to the orgasm that I did not have to pay a penny for any of the above apps -- they're all free.

India has 360 million cell phone users. That's roughly one-third of the population. By 2011, it's poised to grow to 600 million. This means that cell phone would be the most unifying thing in the country, more so than language, and much more than the number of people who vote. The most interesting aspect of this population is that a majority of these are youngsters, and many are first time users. This is their first real interaction with a technological device with duplex connectivity. Imagine what it would do to democracy. You could have an election every day (I'm not suggesting that democracy is a good idea.. just that it's possible).

There's satisfaction, then there's happiness, and then there's the ecstasy you experience when you install an OS on your phone yourself. Why? Because I can.

Oh, and yes, I did run a hello world C program on it.

Eye and I

2009-04-26T22:46:00.001+05:30

So I saw the eye doctor last Friday after I experienced some minor irritation in my eyes leading to fatigue. The doc did a thorough examination and concluded that everything was ok, and that I needed to blink more. Get a load of this! My name "Nirnimesh" translates to "one who does not blink much" and the doc wants me to blink more. I'm standing true to my name. :)

3 Things for which I cannot forgive Congress

2009-04-15T22:29:00.002+05:30

It's election in Hyderabad tomorrow. And there are 3 reasons why I cannot vote for congress.

1. OBC Reservations: Nothing severs equality of opportunity more than providing reservations based not on merit but by birth. Congress introduced reservations for OBC in higher education institutions and set a precedent against merit. I remember marching on a rally against this, a few years ago. Arjun Singh, the perennial a$$hole, became an overnight champion and messiah.

2. 26/11: What do you do when a mole steals into your house and breaks your stuff? I hammer it with a broom and throw it out, as soon as I can. A handfull of armed militants attacked Mumbai and threw the country out of gear for 3 days. I repeat -- 3 whole days. For three days, the government didn't have a clue about how to sort out the matter. Instead, we managed to lose 4 top police officers, the likes of whom we can't easily get in police force. This national tragedy became an international shame for the country. A rogue state like Pakistan had demonstrated India's incompetence to protect its soverignity. No wonder then that a third rate failure like Pratibha Patil is the President, the supreme commander of the armed forces.

3. 3G Melodrama: India has the 2nd fastest growing telecommunications industry in the world. Telephones have made their way into the veins of the country in a way that roads haven't. Small-scale farmers, auto-drivers, village shop-keepers not only have cellphones, they use it. India looked ready for continuing its dominant stride in the Information Age. 3G was knocking at the door. We had to let it in. Instead, the 3G auction was delayed, license prices were doubled overnight, and lots of confusion eventually led to it being postponed forever.

These are the three things I feel the strongest about. I haven't even mentioned other things like: daily power cuts in Hyderabad, the national highway project melodrama, the royal lineage of potential PMs, the Gandi-ization of every road, bridge and scheme names, the international shame that the uncertainity over the nuclear deal brought, and Shivraj Patil as home minister.

Advani for PM

2009-04-13T03:42:00.002+05:30

I was browsing my usual way a few days ago when I first noticed ads for "Advani for PM". What was interesting was that this ad was on slashdot. After a few days I started seeing these ads at a lot of places -- online discussion forums, blogs, news websites, and so on. These were served through some adsense account, I believe.

Ordinarily I wouldn't bother about these kinds of political blabbers. But since I had already been amused at seeing such ads on a technical website (I was searching for 'assembly language on mac') I wanted to be amused even more so I clicked on the banner labelled "My IT vision" near Advani's face.

The banner linked to a doc detailing Advani's IT strategy. And I must admit there were quite a few very interesting points there. Whether or not they can get implemented will be seen in time but the fact that someone in these scurry circles has actually been thinking not just abstract melodrama but specific numbers and figures is impressive (2 Mbps unlimited broadband for Rs 200 pm!).

I knew that techies like us hardly ever formed a voice in a political arena. We never mattered enough for these politicians. Have things changed recently? Are we a potential votebank target? Are we being noticed?

I also found that Advani has a full-fledged website being updated on a continuous basis with links to the party manifesto, documentaries, question answers, and digs on congress. I couldn't find a similar one for Congress. I'm not saying that it does not exist. I'm just saying that I couldn't find it. All I could find was a link to a .doc, which I hate to click on.

While I kept following the pages, I could imagine the rhetoric Congress has been pulling off for ages in the name of Nehru and Gandhi. I mean come on. Agreed that these people must have done good things at their time, but enough is enough. Live in the present. "Aam aadmi ka haath, aam aadmi ke saath" just gives me a feeling of one guy masturbating. If you think of more than one guy, they're gay and beating each other off. Nothing more. It doesn't tell me anything concrete. It's like an abstract class with pure virtual functions which no one wants (or intends) to inherit.

Anyways, I'm not sure Advani is the right person. But given the political chaos, if I had to choose between Manmohan (aka Sonia with beard), Advani and Mayawati (or the entire breed), I think I'd go with Advani.

Maybe I should have taken the pain to get my voter id card this time.

I See Stupid People

2009-04-11T04:35:00.001+05:30

The punchline in The Sixth Sense went by:

I see dead people

There's this boy who could see dead people. He was haunted by them to such an extent that he could not make out the difference between the living and dead. He had been taught to fear the dead, so he did, except that he could not separate them from the living.

I see stupid people. They're all around. I don't know what their purpose in life is. Frankly, I don't think they even have a purpose. They breathe, because they'd die otherwise. They go to work, because they'd die otherwise. They marry, because the society wants them to. They breed, because the society would kill them otherwise. There's not one thing that they'd do if not by a force threatening of something more devastating. They're like a paper boat being carried along by the river's current. They don't have a will of their own. They're not alive.

The difference between dead people and stupid people however is that stupid people are easier to identify. Their actions follow no logic. You could identify them with just an imbalanced mathematical equation. It's so mundane that you could almost automate the process, the input being a stream of people and the output being a binary flag associated with each indicating whether or not he's stupid. It's a bit more complicated than that since the classification is not black or white, but a rounding off can be performed.

The problem after classification however is what to do with the stupid people. I would gladly leave them alone but they don't leave me alone. They make life difficult for me. They take my money in the name of law, they haunt me in the name of society and they try to stop me in the name of progress. They run the government, they make the rules, they pass judgments and then they decree punishment.

It's not like they'd understand logic. I don't want them to understand logic, as long as they leave me alone. Just leave me alone. I don't want you, I don't want to talk to you, I don't want to hear you. I don't want to see stupid people. I'd gladly see dead people instead.

The Sad Tale of 3G in India

2009-04-11T03:57:00.001+05:30

What does it take for a compelling technology to go down the drains? Answer: let the government regulate it.

3G, poised as a definitive stage for mobile internet, has gone through a similar harassment through the hands of the government in India. I can recall hearing about it as early as 2008. The spectrum war, the auction, the technology and how it would prove a boon for the millions of devices carried around by millions of Indians. Alas!

The service providers geared up for 3G, pulled up their socks, deployed the technology and have just been waiting for the government's permission. The government, on the other hand, delayed the auction indefinitely, created all kinds of controversies around it, and finally let state-owned MTNL and BSNL launch the service. BSNL and MTNL, known for their indifference to customers (have you ever heard of customer service for BSNL/MTNL? have you ever been to a BSNL office? I have. It's a hole where serendipity abounds) and slow head towards new technology, choose to launch 3G in select towns in India, carefully choosing not to launch it where it might be useful. Are you surprised then that there are a mere 3000 3G customers for BSNL? 3000! That's all.

And now it's election time. All business, development, and progress must be set aside as a bunch of retards fist together for a seat in the parliament run by my tax rupees. The fate of real 3G has been put in coma, while I hold in the air my 3G-compatible phone and look up in the sky. Sigh!

The Depravity of the Third Front

2009-03-12T17:16:00.001+05:30

Communists are weird people. And not in a good way.

As the country prepares for general elections, all kinds of political weirdos are born. Third Front has been born too. The chief among this is the communists - the same people who vehemently opposed the Nuclear Deal and threw the country in a limbo for a long time, opposed any kind of disinvestment, blocked all labor reforms, discourage education in the country - basically leave everything just as it is so that "social harmony is not rippled".

"I don't see why industry or corporates should feel that this coalition will be less favourable or hostile to them," CPM leader Prakash Karat told CNN-IBN

I mean, how? How on earth do you think that after your Nuclear Deal parable anyone ever would want to support you. Have you been living in dungeons? Mr Prakash Karat, please buy a computer and look out.

Number of States in India

2009-02-27T11:39:00.001+05:30

How many states are there in India?

I was watching this episode in Friends where Ross could not name all the 50 states in the US. And that's when I thought, wait a minute! I don't even know how many states are there in India. The last time I read a number in the text books it was 25, and I was twelve years old. Maybe they stopped putting that in text books for fear of getting outdated. I mean creating new states is in a way the piece de resistance of several budding Indian political leaders. There's a saddist who wants Telangana, a few more who want a piece out of Jammu & Kashmir, and I'm pretty sure several leaders are toying with repeating the tactics with other states like Maharashtra, Karnataka.

I think I lost interest in the count when they stopped calling Delhi a state. And whenever you raise the issue half of the people would say that Delhi is still a Union Territory while the other half would think it's a bonafide state. I wonder if I can name all the states. I know I can name the 25 that I learnt when I was twelve.

New York City

2009-02-21T15:36:00.005+05:30

I was in New York City on New Year's eve. Yes, I went to Times Square. Yes, I was there when they dropped the ball.

I had known about the greatness of this city, through movies (remember Gotham city from Batman?), news, elsewhere but I had to see it to really believe it. Called the city that never sleeps, New York, aka the big apple, truly is a magnificent place. The mix of people, culture, business, infrastructure I saw there is like nothing I had seen before.

After ~2 months, one thing I can foremost recall is the metro system. It's spellbinding. Not just about the punctuality and infrastructure but the planning, the day to day operations, the details, the ticket booth, everything.

I even went to Wall Street, the financial capital of US, and by extension also for the world (almost). I went there on a holiday. It seemed like any other street but I could imagine the scurry of stock brokers that must be the order of that street on working days.

I went to Madame Tussaud's near Times Square. It houses waxed life-size statues of celebrities. It became extremely difficult inside the hall, within a few minutes, to tell if a person was for real or a statue. The pictures above do not do justice (damn my cheap camera). I gawked a real person and almost touched him only stopping to think for a second before the person moved coz guess what it was not a statue!

Apart from the usual suspects like the statue of liberty, the Empire State building, I also visited the Museum of Sex, which housed this funny board.

I was amused to find a case study on necrophilia in animals.

All in all it was a trip I'll remember for years and whenever greatness is attributed to a place I'll automatically think about the New York City.

My New Toy: Android Dev Phone

2009-02-19T11:55:00.004+05:30

I got myself a new toy - Android Developer Phone. It's an unlocked incarnation of HTC's dream phone. And I love it.

My favorite feature? I can reflash it and install the OS from scratch.
Why? Because I can.

The Depravity of our Health Minister

2009-01-31T05:43:00.001+05:30

The guy who banned smoking in public places is in the news again. This time he's trying to stop pub-culture.

Starting from the assumption that drinking is against Indian ethics, he somehow concludes that we cannot progress unless India bans pub-culture. Now, wait a minute! What's the rationale? I'm listening - explain me please?

He mentions that 40% of road accidents happen because of alcohol. Even if I believe these numbers, what he does not tell you is that 99% of those accidents would happen because the road was un-even or had spiky speed-breakers or massive pot-holes. For what it's worth, US has more cars, more roads and more alcohol. They use alcohol detectors instead of banning pubs outright.

Reminds me of a SouthPark episode where Cartman toilet-papered his teacher's house to avenge a punishment but the police booked the store who sold the toilet-paper.

I also disagree with the stupid Health Minister when he says that drinking is not in our culture. How exactly? Let's begin from the beginning. It's well known that Kauravas were to drinking as motherboard is to computer. Lord Shiva, we all know, is perennially drunk. All the members of parliament drink (they do more when they're drunk, but let's focus here), most people in villages drink (heard of toddy?) or smoke (heard of beedi or hookah?). Which culture of the Indian society is the doorknob-headed health minister talking about again?

What the government should instead focus on is to improve education and way of life, not banning everything and anything that brings happiness. Mr Health Minister, just because you coughed up the first time you tried drinking coz it was too much for you and your wife pointed and laughed and burnt your wee-wee with her smoking cigarrette does not mean that you should go ban alcohol, cigarrette or laughter.

The Vicious Circle: It all comes back

2009-01-30T06:28:00.001+05:30

I committed a sin two years ago.

I had purchased a Sony product - a laptop and that too with M$ Vista. It was for my little brother. I knew Sony couldn't be relied upon, my CD writer from sony had stopped working years ago, but still I went ahead and made the purchase. And don't even get me started about Vista!

It's all coming back now.

The laptop has performed poorly. Throwing a mere 1 GB RAM to a behemoth named Vista was like offering a gaping pig to a ravaging tornado - it can only result in destruction. And no you could not reinstall it with Win XP because several of the hardware features (like touchpad, wireless) would no more work. Why? Sony hasn't bothered to make drivers for XP (aka M$ did not want it so).

And when I say that the laptop had Vista in it, I mean it literally. It did not come with a Vista CD, it never does. All it comes with is a partition with a Vista recovery disk on it. There's a funny key-combination to activate this recovery upon boot, and can be figured out only by serendipity (the laptop didn't come with a manual either).

Anyway, after less than a year's use, Sony timer kicked in. The battery started dissipating in minutes and transitioned to a situation where it could not work at all without AC power. A Japaenese friend had told me earlier about the Sony timer - the law stating that all Sony products expire when their warranty expires. Now that I think of it, that's exactly what happened to my CD writer too.

Moving forward with life, I'm trying to purchase a replacement battery from the Sony store. Bear with me while I tell you that it costs $192.34 (excluding shipping, I think). This is about one-fourth the cost of the laptop itself. A quick Google Search tells me that equivalent batteries are available for much cheaper elsewhere.

So, to hell with Sony. I'm not going to buy anything with "Sony" on it. This includes the playstation.

Damn you, Sony! Die. Go to hell and die. May the economic recession shut you down!

Write in Hindi anywhere

2008-10-23T18:17:00.003+05:30

If you've been happily amused by the transliteration feature on Orkut that lets you write scraps in English but transliterate them to Hindi (जैसे: ये और वो), you are going to love this Firefox transliteration extension that lets you do the same thing in practically any textbox on any webpage (well almost). No more do I have to painfully try to map words to strict characters. It even offers dropdown suggestions to choose from.

The extension works for Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil.

ये बहुत मज़ेदार है. इंस्टाल कर के देखो. केवल फायरफॉक्स में.

Chandrayaan I

2008-10-22T08:28:00.002+05:30

India launched its first mission to the moon, Chandrayaan I, at 6:22 AM today.

The launch has been perfect so far and the launch vehicle has reached the orbit successfully. It'll take around 15 days from now to reach the moon, our nearest heavenly neighbor. With a cost of Rs 380 crores (USD 83 mn), it's going to the cheapest mission to the moon, even cheaper that what China sent. It carries 11 payloads including 2 from NASA.

ISRO's PSLV series of launches have been immensely successful, with this being the latest (and greatest) feat. This will position India as a leader in space programs rubbing shoulders with only a select few nations in the world.

Space-talk aside, what's especially intimidating to me is that it's hardly been 2 hours since the launch but Chandrayaan's wikipedia page has been updated with the exact information, including the launch time. That is, someone somewhere cared enough to make this information accessible and useful to others, despite the fact that Chandrayaan's launch has been celebrated with a lesser fervor amongst the media (and by extension, amongst Indians) than the passion with which rioters have torched Mumbai following the arrest of Raj Thackrey, the latest Indian barking-pimp. This speaks for itself the kind of stories the children of this country are growing up with.

Anyway, I'm thrilled that Chandrayaan's first leg has been perfect despite rains and rough weather at Sriharikota. I hope it reaches the full journey as perfectly.

Go Team. Go India.

Rain Rain, Go Away

2008-09-06T18:23:00.002+05:30

Like a true cancerian, I love rains. Actually, I also love waterfalls, brooks, lakes, any water body for that matter. However, of late I've developed a kind of hatred towards rain, especially Hyderabad rain. Not only does it start pouring every time I'm riding my bike, the intensity of the downpour is directly proportional to the lack of shelter-sheds on the road-side. Screw you, Murphy!

To add to the anguish, bad roads cause havoc in rains. Potholes, lack of proper street-lights, stagnated water every here and there on the roads, are a common scene when it rains. There's one thing especially painful about Hyderabad rains - sometimes when it rains, it keeps drizzling for days at a stretch. It's like, it doesn't want to downpour, and at the same time it doesn't want to stop; just the perfect amount to totally drench me on the road.

Last night, my macbook got spoilt as I got trapped in a downpour.

Rain Rain, Go Away!

F.R.I.E.N.D.S One More Time

2008-07-30T03:53:00.001+05:30

I finished watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S one more time - all seasons, all episodes. I thought I'd blog every time I finish one round. No matter how many times, it doesn't get old.

Every time around there are jokes and expressions that make me laugh, events that make me sad, dialogues that teaches something more about America, and situations that, well, let's face it, teach about life.

I lied a bit when I said that I watched all the episodes. I conveniently skipped the scenes where Joey and Rachel (attempt to) make out, coz it kinda touches a gray area. No matter what, this scene irritates me. Hey, don't blame me! I have a friend who gave up watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S just coz Rachel & Ross broke up. Things can get emotional, you see. I have my own bias against Rachel. In my opinion, she's too uptight, high-maintenance and it appears conspicuously clear to me that she and Ross were on a break. :P

There are characters everyone loves. But at the same time there are some characters hated unanimously (read, Janice). The feeling on hearing Janice was best described by Joey as "feel like pulling my arm off just so I have something to throw at her".

I'm pretty sure I'll continue watching this series over and over again. So long.

Disable Overlay Advertisement on IBNLive.com

2008-06-24T20:14:00.000+05:30

IBNLive.com is a great news website for India. Just one problem - they have this irritating overlay advertisement every time you visit the homepage. Besides, while you check the individual stories, and go back to the homepage, the advertisement comes up again. It's irritating because you should either wait a few seconds before the advertisement auto-closes, or click the close button (which changes position every once in a while).

I wrote a greasemonkey script that disables this advertisement once and for all on the IBNLive.com homepage. It's located here.

If your firefox does not have the greasemonkey ad-on, install that first. If you don't use firefox, see why you should. If you don't know what firefox is, you should go out more often.

Room available in Kendriya Vihar, Gachibowli

2008-06-17T00:56:00.005+05:30

One of my roommates discovered that he had spent a long time of his life in Gachibowli, so he decided to shift to Kondapur. Kondapur's not too far away, but I sure need a replacement for him in my aptt now.

Our aptt is a 3 BHK in Kendriya Vihar Phase II, Gachibowli. The place is great. It's clean, no-noise, water 24 hrs, electricity almost 24 hrs, gated community, safe, secure. The place is a 4-min bike-ride from Microsoft, Infosys campus and a 10-min bike-ride from Hi-tech City. A lot of guys and gals from Microsoft and Infosys stay in this aptt.

The room has 2 windows and wooden cupboards. We have a BSNL 256 kbps broadband internet available over wifi. Also, a fridge, well-equipped kitchen and washing machine are at disposal. All this for a room at Rs 3950 p.m. (including maintenance charges).

If you are interested, or you know someone who is interested, leave a note here, or mail me at: nirnimesh-(at)-gmail.com

Google Reader & What I Should be Reading

2008-06-02T02:47:00.000+05:30

"Web as a Social platform" You've all heard it, might have even seen it in action.

I realized the power of a social web when I was thinking about my blog reading habits. There was a time when I'd painfully populate my Google Reader's subscriptions. Depending on how ambitious or slacking I was, it'd either drown my reading-list with hundreds of blog posts, a bit too many to handle, or drought it with scanty ones so I'd have to look out for news websites in askance for more. I could never figure out the right set of feeds to subscribe to - the same feed that'd report something as interesting as an iphone launch would sometimes also report something as worthless as Amitabh Bachhan being down with flu. How did this problem get solved? Enter the social web.

What I did was simple. Discounting the bare minimal set of blog feeds that I did have to subscribe myself to keep my Krebs cycle working (say, Slashdot), I left all the others for the people in my friends list to read and share. I began with reading stuff that ALL my friends would share and then cut it down to hide the ones that felt like abusing the 'share' feature. Now I'm down to a much smaller list of friends whose shared blogs I read. The most awesome part now is that what I read has already been screened once by someone whose judgement I tend to agree with. The end result: I'm pretty happy with my reading list these days. I realize that I hardly ever miss something I'd really want to read about and at the same time, I don't get swamped with excess of them either.

It's intimidating how easily a seemingly tough problem of "figuring out what I want to read" could be made more tractable by a social web, even though I myself did not have a clear judgement of what I really wanted.

BSNL Broadband

2008-05-15T04:10:00.001+05:30

I recently got a brand new BSNL broadband connection. And it's amazing.

After the initial hiccups of waiting for a about a month to get the phone setup and the router/modem delivered to me, everything else was a charm. I was given a type IV wifi modem. It's a UTStarcom WA3002G4 modem with 4 ethernet ports.

Now, I was terribly pissed off with my previous connection - one from Sify. First, it wouldn't work on my Mac without having to login from a windows machine (Sify has a mac login client but it doesn't work). I had to wait for hours for my windows-loaded roommate to return home so before I could get online. Second, one would need to login using the login client at least once every day, which means that you couldn't leave the internet unattended hoping it to keep downloading stuff. Third, the speed was awful. Fourth, I was charged Rs 1222 per month for the unlimited connection. Fifth, the Sify guys have blocked icmp, so I couldn't ping the outside world.

With my BSNL Dataone connection, I have all the above problems solved, and everything comes for a chick Rs 750 only. It has been only 2 days and so a little premature to comment on reliability and speed, but I have been able to view youtube videos with minimal buffering wait.

Now coming to the modem. The UTStarcom WA3002G4 modem is a beauty. I had a DLink wifi modem earlier, which amongst other problems, didn't allow connection to my company's VPN and had a crappy web interface which was dumb as a door knob. The BSNL modem provides a tidy http interface & slick telnet interface as well. My account information is entered into the modem itself so I need not have a login client on the end system, and so it works on all OS-es all the time. The modem allows me to backup configurations to my machine, and it saved my day a few minutes ago. I love it.

Every thing's worked like a charm so far. Touch wood!

Nobel Prizes, Innovation and India

2008-04-13T22:26:00.001+05:30

I came across this article about "What will it take for a Indian Resident to Win a Nobel Prize" (see pdf or converted html), written by CSIR boss, R A Mashelkar, with whom I had the pleasure of shaking hands once during IIIT's R & D Showcase. Little did I know Mr Mashelkar then.

The article talks about how the Indian society acts, in the name of conservation, to not only discourage original out-of-the-box ideas, but in some sense to even penalize them. In the history of science, a mere 7 Nobel prizes have gone to people of Indian origin, which is a shameful number. The Indian Society is so resistant to change that even original and novice ideas get lost very soon. At CSIR, Mashelkar did not have the difficulty of finding funds, but that of finding original fundable ideas. Even today, there's no lack of employment but the lack of employable people.

Nobel prize requires not only original ideas and path breaking work, but also hard work and luck. Considering the amount of investment India makes in research, it's hardly any surprise that all thinkers flee to USA or Germany. Not coincidentally, these are the two countries which have the highest number of Nobel prize winners.

India's answer to this appears to be -- well, we don't get enough Nobel prizes, we deserve more, let's reserve a certain number of them for Indians. That's what has been done with professional education lately. That's what is being done for jobs. At this pace, it's rather stupid to bear the brunt of being an Indian and sing patriotic songs. Fleeing to other countries not only makes sense, it also becomes necessary for survival -- I'm talking about the kind of people who need to think free to survive.

Google.com Turned the Lights Out

2008-03-30T01:33:00.002+05:30

Found this out from a friend's blog and couldn't help shamelessly copying. The folks at Google turned the lights out for an hour. Read the original post here.

Oh, and if you are quick, you can find the it live at: www.google.ca

Check mChek

2008-03-27T22:05:00.003+05:30

Today, while trying to foot my airtel bill, I came across mChek, a mobile payment solution. It works like a charm.

It allows you to make payments from your cellphone without giving out your credit-card information or following painful websites. I just had to register once and choose an mchek pin, using which I was able to view my latest airtel bill and make payment, all in a matter of about 3 minutes.

You get all the good things that online payment services like PayPal & Google Checkout already offer:

consolidated summary of your expenditure in your bank-statement
never have to divulge your credit-card details to third-party

..except that you can do all this from your phone, the only electronic device you carry anytime, anywhere.

mChek will be expanding to cover bank's payment gateways soon.

mChek has shown the way - the cashless society is here and has gone mobile.

State of the TV

2008-03-23T20:13:00.001+05:30

Deprived of good internet, I spent a lot of time in front of the idiot box (television) in the last few days. I have a few observations on the state of television in India.

All news channels have crime as the general theme. They now dig for crime. A TV channel showed the full footage of a man mowed down by a train, and the channel was blaming the train-driver for not stopping! I mean, come on.
The channels on God and religion have the unique distinction of having people blabber words with absolutely no sense. And that lack of sense is supposed to give a feeling of how limited man's abilities are. (Swami Ramdev's programmes are a small exception)
The only channels worth watching (movie channels excluded): Nat Geo, Discovery, Cartoon Network, Pogo, CNBC
The house-wife channels (Ekta Kapoor types) have reached an unbelievable level of depravity. The fundamental ask is: Use No Head. It's funny to see how they imagine about the kind of things a household can fight for. And what's with the 3-way face-flashing after each and every dialogue?
All DD channels was, is and will be legally and socially and politically safe. They believe in: No action, no mistakes.

All views are personal and should not be misconstrued as detrimental to anyone living, dead, waiting or zombied.

Tata Indicom Wireless Internet on Mac OS X Leopard

2008-03-23T12:36:00.000+05:30

I am visiting my hometown in Patna, a part of the country where good and reliable internet is still a luxury. I had purchased a Tata Indicom wireless USB modem (Huawei EC325) for internet on-the-move. It works like it's supposed to, except that I couldn't get it to work on my MacBookPro running Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).

Though the folks at Tata Indicom customer service refused to support Mac OS, their website now does have the drivers for Mac and usage instructions. However, that didn't work as-is for me either.

With minor tweaks, however, I did get it to work and now I'm using the same internet to blog.

1. Download the driver and README at Tata Indicom's website.
2. Install the driver corresponding to your machine (ppc or intel). Do not follow the README. Those instructions did not work for me.
3. Open System Preferences > Network and you should be able to see an entry for "Huawei Mobile". Configure the device with #777 as the telephone number and "internet" as the username & password.

4. Click "Advanced..."
5. Select "au by KDDI" as the vendor and "cdmaOne Bluetooth" as the Model. This chooses the modem script to run. The defaults did not work for me.

6. Click OK and then connect as usual

The internet is not blazing fast, but is good enough for checking mails, that is, good enough to let me breathe everyday.

Blood Donation

2008-03-05T17:11:00.002+05:30

I donated blood today for the first time. They say that blood donation is good for health, as it improves circulation of new blood. And the body is able to make up for the loss in a mere 48 hours anyway.

More than anything else I'm happy for the fact that I'm not underweight anymore. I remember having considered blood donation earlier but could not because I wasn't healthy enough. My weight at 68 now makes me perfectly healthy for my height.

Yay!

Shop Review: Shapes Opticals

2008-03-02T12:45:00.002+05:30

Shapes Opticals is located in the heart of the nearest market from Hitech City, near Pizza Hut in Madhapur. I went to Shapes Opticals to get my specs' frame mended after I managed to break it on my flight back to Hyderabad from Singapore. What happened thereafter is an exclamation.

The guy refused to mend it; he suggested buying a new frame instead. I wanted my specs fixed as soon as possible, so I gave in and signed up for a new specs. I was promised that it would be done in a day. Now, I wasn't truly confident, as it has happened on a previous occasion that the shop had defaulted on the promised time, so I insisted that he better make sure that it's ready by time. He said that it would be.

When I went to the shop the next day, I was surprised to see that it was actually ready. Just that it wasn't the frame I wanted. The frame I wanted was black. This was red. When I complained, the guy in the counter (the same one who took the order) started tweaking it -- he started pulling out things from another black frame and plugging into mine. I didn't object. And there in front of my eyes, he broke the frame. He asked me to come back later. And he wasn't even ashamed. To make it worse, when I got angry, the other guy across the counter asked me to take cancel the order.

I returned back after a day and this time my frame was brown. And it didn't even rest well on my nose. I had given up hope to get my point across. Brown wasn't unbearable, and I could do some adjusting myself, so I just took it. After all, it was my fault to choose Shapes Opticals despite apriori bad experience.

Points to note: Shapes Opticals has exorbitantly high prices -- frames and glasses alike. The guys across the counter are dumb to say the least. They don't have any kind of expert knowledge about specs. They are rude. They'll almost certainly default on the order.

All things said and done, I understand that he has the right to sell crap if people are ready to buy, and I have the right to refuse to buy from him if I don't like it. So, here I am, exercising my freedom to make others aware that if you want reliable service on your specs, do not choose Shapes Opticals. You'll almost certainly be dissatisfied.

Disneyland and Wow!

2008-02-08T01:23:00.000+05:30

One of the things I can most prominently remember about my childhood is Disney cartoons. There was a stage when Mickey, Donald, Pluto, Goofy meant more in life than probably computers mean today.

I visited Disneyland at Anaheim near Los Angeles. Many thanks to Google for the company trip.
I managed to catch 2 rides with Larry Page and Eric Schmidt.

Disneyland is a childhood dream come true. One less thing left to do in life.

I'll stop now and let you look at the pictures or the slideshow below.

Unconditional Love

2008-01-27T10:57:00.001+05:30

They say that when you want someone no matter what, without any expectations for returns, then it's love.
Love is blind, they say.
Love knows no reason, they say.
Love is unselfish, they say.
Love is about giving, they say.
Love is unconditional, they say.

All wrong. And most Bollywood movies are a testament to the above errors.

I'm afraid to say after spending (a little less than) 25 years on this planet that I disagree with the above tenets. Love is exactly the opposite.

Love is an expression with the tightest equations, where ever give is balanced by an equal and opposite take. You love someone for his/her qualities, not for the lack of them, which is why perhaps I'll never love a beggar. You love someone for his/her achievements, not for their failures, however unfortunate the circumstances leading to the failure be.

Love is selfish. If it's not selfish, it's not love. It's charity. You love someone not for the other person, but for yourself. You try to make the other person happy because it makes you happy in turn.

Ayn Rand said:

Love is an expression of self-esteem, of the deepest values in a man's or a woman's character. One falls in love with the person who shares these values. If a man has no clearly defined values, and no moral character, he is not able to appreciate another person. In this respect, I would like to quote from The Fountainhead, in which the hero utters a line that has often been quoted by readers: "To say 'I love you' one must know first how to say the 'I.'

Love is not about perishing for someone else but about rising higher together.
Love is not a weakness but a strength.
Love is not a bondage but an encouragement.
Love is not unconditional.

Happy Republic Day

2008-01-26T14:18:00.001+05:30

Not that the Republic Day bears a great significance to India as it exists today, this day has been celebrated for 58 years now. Called as the red letter day, this was the day 58 years ago when the Constitution of India came into effect and India was declared a Republic (that's straight from my 7th grade history text book).

As a child, I actually used to enjoy this day primarily because it was a holiday but also because of the colorful jhanki (processions) that different stats would march near the Red Fort, and the President onlooked them. It was fun to watch all that on TV. Then the president would give away awards to the highest achievers in the country.

Alas, the grandeur is lost. It's just another day for me now. Even though a president doesn't really "command" anything, his personality and achievements in the past used to at least make it look honorable. But with the current president, Pratibha ...something.. , I hardly see the point. Failure magnified and under-achievement celebrated. Imagine a Bharat Ratna given off from her hands!

It's time we stop doing things to carry on a tradition. Just because it has been done that way for years does not mean it's not outrageously stupid!

A Day in the Life of a Prime Minister

2007-10-19T05:06:00.001+05:30

Here's how I imagine a day in the life of Oxford alumni, India's Prime Minister, probably is:

4:30 AM
PM wakes up. Goes to the dairy. Fetches milk and delivers to the residence of Prakash Karat, Sonia Gandhi (and family, one by one). Returns back to PM's residence and begins morning prayers, "Oh God! May my government not fall today. May mighty Prakash and almighty Sonia shower their blessings on me today too. Amen!" In the background, photos of Prakash Karat and Sonia Gandhi, with incense sticks fuming him to oblivion. He has reached a trance.

7:00 AM
PM gives wake-up call and bids good morning to Sonia Gandhi (and family, one by one). Sonia Gandhi faxes back the list of places the PM has to visit and the papers he needs to sign the day today. PM then rings up the residence of all Left party leaders and asks, "It's 7:15 AM. I've been holding it since 4:30. Can I go to the toilet now?" Dare he not go against the common minimum program. Dare he not do anything more than the bare minimum. "Who am I to decide?" he muses.

9:00 AM
PM reaches office. On the wall are neatly arranged pictures of Sonia Gandhi and the entire progeny. Alongside is a check-list of the UPA coalition's common minimum program (CMP). It's a coalition government after all. The word "minimum" is the highlight. Time and again has the PM been reminded by his coalition partners that their aim is to do the minimum and no better.

The PM takes his seat and rings up the caterer who services breakfast to Prakash Karat. "Has it been delivered yet? What! What the hell are you up to? I will fire you." And yes, he can. When it comes to care-taking the appetite of his Left allies, he has supreme jurisdiction.

10:00 AM
PM chit-chats with Finance Minister.
PM: What's up with the sensex, dude? You told me it won't rise. 18k to 19K in 4 days. Are you kidding me?
FM: I don't know. I tried. I have the RBI and SEBI try every trick in the book, but the bulls have been raging the market. Evidently, they see India as an excellent growth corridor.
PM: I don't care about what you do. I just want it down. You have no idea how mad Prakash sir is going to be with me today. He had personally asked me to ensure that no progressive attitude be tolerated. How will the millions of sulking sobs survive if India's economy ramps up? We cater to the "common" only -- that's the plan. Anyone who has enough to eat two meals a day is not common. We don't care for them. The beggars are my friends.
FM: I do realize how deep the pole goes inside you. Believe me, I'm at my wit's end. All industry majors have been doing wonders with the economy. Lately, Mukesh Ambani rallied up to become one of the richest in the world. It's shameful I know. We have millions below the poverty line. How dare he make so much! I suggest that we seize all his money and bring him down to rags. Then and only then will he realize that the poor are his brothers.

11:00 AM
A train of cars screech towards PM office. All cabinet ministers come rushing towards a conference hall in PM's office. PM wonders what the meeting is for. "It only befits that they don't inform me when the guys are meeting. I mean, who am I to know?" All of them assemble inside the conference room. PM follows. Only the doorman gets up to greet the PM. And why not? He was appointed there through the national employment guarantee scheme. He did not deserve the job. What's great with giving the job to a deserving candidate anyway? It's divine only if the candidate couldn't dream of the job. Then it's mercy. Then it's charity. Then it's virtuous. No wonder the doorman is cheerful. Homo sapiens have no tail, or else one could see it wag.

The meeting has already started. PM quietly pulls a chair and seats himself beside Sonia. Prakash Karat is already furious and he would dare not aggravate the situation.
Karat: What's up with the Nuclear deal? What will we do with all the energy? Poor people don't have light bulbs or cars. We don't want the deal.
Montek Singh (from Planning Commission): Sir, our energy requirements scale exorbitantly with industrialization. We cannot afford to buy oil for long. The Nuclear deal is important.
Karat: You just don't get it, do you? We cannot purport the idea of being friendly with America. They are the bad guys. They waste money on education and science. Americans consume so much while so many in the world die of hunger.
PM: But, sir, with progress....
Karat: Shut up. Just shut up. Not a word from you.
PM: Sorry, sir.
Sonia: But Prakash, we must do something about the scaling power requirements. Where will India get its power from?
Karat: The nuclear deal will happen over my dead body. Cut the problem at it's source. Why do we need so much power anyway? Banish all industries. They are only corporate money minting machines. Dismantle all schools. Life was so much better in the stone age. Oh the stone age..
(face blushes with evident orgasm)
Sonia: Ok. As you say, Prakash. The N-deal is done for. I assure you it will be blocked indefinitely. We'll teach Bush a lesson. Manmohan, tell Bush to go to hell.
PM: Yes, Ma'm.
PM looks excessively worried, perspiration running down his chin.
Sonia: What is it now? Why are you sweating?
PM: Ma'm. Just this one thing. Not a big deal. If I call off the N-deal, the people are going to tell me to go and die. They are going to ask me to resign. They'll hate me. Why do I have to face the brunt? Oh, God, why!
Sonia: You mean they don't hate you already? Look.. spare us the thinking. You just giggle and nod along. Think of America. If the mightiest nation can have a retard for a president, there's absolutely no reason why you can't head India.
PM: (almost squeaking) Ma'm! I went to Oxford!
The room bursts into laughter. Everyone leaves the room and heads for lunch.

12:00 PM
Lunch time. All cabinet ministers are seated around a round table. Manmohan is the real boss now. He is busy giving directions to the caterers as they scurry around hurriedly. Who says he doesn't have a control over his ministers? Who says he doesn't run things? He's feeding them currently, isn't he? He has the sole responsibility of their nutrition. Don't say he doesn't have powers.

One of the catering boys, an OBC, aspires to enroll into the B.Tech programme from a reputed Indian university next year. His eyes are lustfully fixated towards Arjun Singh, his hero limping along to fill his plate. He rushes towards him and performs the needful and jestfully mentions "I'm an OBC" at an opportune moment. And why not! No one else stood for a cause as noble as marking deep the social caste divide and plant into an unprecedented territory as higher education. OBCs have suffered for ages. It's time to reverse the winds now. Arjun Singh looks back in his eyes with an equal lewd. Sparks! Cupid strikes. Arjun drops his plate and drags the boy to an adjacent room. Door bangs shut.

1:00 PM
PM is sitting on the floor of his office, trying to mend the broken wheels of his revolving office chair. It broke the other day when Rahul Gandhi took his mother's words too seriously when she said "My son will take the chair soon". How alarmed the PM was that day while he wrestled with Rahul pulling onto the chair from either side. "Naughty children!" muses the PM merrily.

2:00 PM
PM heads towards a suburb in western Delhi. He is supposed to inaugurate a newly built road near Indira Nagar. The road is christened M G Road, named after the "father" of the nation. PM is oblivious to the fact that the new road leads up to another road of the same name at the next turn.

5:00 PM
PM heads back to office. Meets a few people, mostly representatives of charity organizations, anti-industrialization gangs, anti-rich campaigners. He has had a tiring day. Being the head of a 1bn strong democracy is no mean job. He prides himself and gives himself a pat on his back. Another day passed. He was able to push all "contentious" decisions for another day. 'Why should I have bother about these? Ma'm is there. Who am I to think?"

Sin City

2007-08-24T05:22:00.001+05:30

I visited Sin City, Las Vegas, last weekend. The last words of the pilot while greeting our arrival at the Mc Carren Intl airport were: "Take a final look at your money" as the people cheered.

Las Vegas presents tens of thousands of ways to lose money. The main street, Las Vegas Blvd, is aptly named "The Strip" -- so easily can the road strip you off your money and clothes alike. The four elements of joy considered taboo in a "decent" society -- drinking, smoking, gambling and flesh are abundant as air. It's a festival every day. Blazing lights, music, (free) shows, crowd -- the sin city has it all.

Several casinos host periodic free shows. Famous casinos include: Bellagio, Caesars Palace, The Mirage, Treasure Island, Newyork Newyork, Paris, Excalibur, Monte Carlo, MGM. Bellagio hosts a dancing fountain show which is spectacular. The Mirage has a volcano-on-water show. Treasure Island featured a 20-min long carribben pirate show with real boats moving and canons blowing, while girls danced (of course).

Caesars Palace is my favorite and it's absolutely out-of-the-world. Rich Caesar-theme abounds from the walls to the ceilings, which have royal statues and artwork. Expensive shops are located in a setting with sky-ceiling and lighting that makes u feel you are in the open. Lavishness is the word. Money flows. And you can see it. All casinos are always filled with people who are ever ready to gamble even though they know they're most likely to lose all money -- people earn hard and spend thriftily in Vegas.

Insane is it? Well, is the "real" world sane? At least the Sin City is truthful. Clothes are a redundancy anyway.

Oh, and there's a quote:

What happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas.

India's I-day at the Googleplex

2007-08-17T12:55:00.000+05:30

A social ceremony was held at Charlie's Cafe in the Googleplex to celebrate India's 60th Independence day. Friends and family were invited and it looked like they had a good time away from home.

Crookedest Street

2007-08-16T07:06:00.000+05:30

My favorite place in San Francisco is Lombard Street. Touted as the crookedest street in the world, a patch in Lombard street takes 8 sharp turns on a downward slope of 40 degrees. The street has beautiful flowers on either side and it's fun driving with a speed limit of 5 mph.

17 Mile Drive + Big Sur

2007-08-09T12:28:00.000+05:30

I went on 17 mile drive and to Big Sur last Saturday. The place is a one-and-half hour drive from Moutain View. Both of them are scenic drives along the Pacific ocean, with beautiful cliffs, rocks, beaches, vegetation and such. Awesome weekend getaways and a sight for sore eyes.

Of particular interest is the way such scenic spots are publicized and streamlined for visitors. All along the way you'd find directions, illustrations and teasers about what to expect. It gets a lot easier for visitors and earns natural income to the county managing it.

Two Days at Dubai / Sharjah

2007-08-01T18:47:00.001+05:30

I spent two days last weekend at Dubai and Sharjah. I was en route to San Francisco and had taken a stopover at Dubai. Luckily, a colleague's relatives stay in Dubai, so I didn't have to worry about accommodation and food.

The most apt word for Dubai is "lavish". Not only do the Sheikhs have an enormous amount of money, they don't hesitate to show it off. Beautiful mosques with golden domes, neat roads with posh latest cars and heavy concrete density abounds this oil-rich mafia-ridden port city. In case you didn't know, you don't have to pay any income tax in Dubai. Yep, you heard it, no tax at all. Yet the ruler (a filthy-rich Sheikh) provides all civic amenities at his own cost. Of course he runs the biggest corporation himself (heard of emaar group? they own hyderabad's hitex, if you will) and this promotes Dubai as a business hub. Another big one -- if you are a citizen, you can legally keep 5 wives. Of course you'll have to be super-rich to afford and maintain 5 wives (and that still leaves out 2 days of the week), but just think about it.

Burj-al-arab, a seven-star hotel meant only for the super rich, is a tourist attraction. This is the hotel where David Beckham lives when he comes to Dubai and where Agassi and Federer played tennis on the heli-pad. This is the same hotel, by the way, where Rakhi Sawant stayed when she went to do it in Dubai. The tallest tower in the world, Burj Tower, is still under construction and its expected final height is yet unknown -- they want it to be the tallest for a long time. I also passed by Hyatt Regency, the hotel where Dawood Ibrahim's daughter got married and the cops from the world over kept vigil but couldn't track him down even though he's known to have come at the occasion. They don't even know for sure how he looks!

United Arab Emirates comprises of 7 emirates, of which Dubai and Sharjah are two. Apart from the oil business which accounts for most of the wealth, construction is a major industry. Dubai has the highest concentration of cranes world-wide, which was quite evident by the sight that almost all the buildings had cranes stemming out. Speed of construction is mind-boggling. Soil is almost as costly as gold. People gift soil and plants to each other during festivals.

The Arabs are very proud people. They do not resign their culture at any cost. They are highly motivated as well. Who can think of skiing in such a desert? Yep, they have a skiing center, artificially created. It's an entirely different world out there.

Height of Democracy?

2007-07-09T20:02:00.001+05:30

So you thought that electing the wonders of the world was a height of democracy? Wrong.

There are more fantastic ways in which the democratic rights of the breeding multitude be used to establish fundamental facts. The algorithm of democracy mandates a clear answer to all long impending questions. Let me tell you some of them:

Vote to ascertain the validity of the Newton's laws of motion
P = NP? Vote to find out
Are dinosaurs really extinct? Vote to derive the correct answer
Vote to determine if God exists
Tsunami, is it? Vote to determine if Tsunami is really harmful
Is euthanasia cruel? Vote for it
Vote to determine where e = m . c^2 (or e = m . c^10000, for that matter). Also vote for the value of c, pi, e, etc
Should the value of pi be constant? Vote for it
Did Pratibha Patil's company go bankrupt? Vote for it
What's the DLF's share value? Vote for it
Vote for 2 + 2 = 4
Is all this the height of democracy? Vote to find out

Einstein once said, "God does not play dice".
Right. He votes.

President who Talks to God

2007-06-26T23:44:00.001+05:30

Pratibha Patil, UPA's candidate for the post of citizen number 1, now also appears to be the number 1 contact with God. She claims that she gets divine messages from God.

Of dramatic consequence will the proceedings at Rashtrapati Bhawan be if she's voted to power, as a scientist leaves the premises and a "tantrik" takes over. I suspect that Rashtrapati Bhawan would be turned into a full-time reception station for beaming hotline messages to/from God, for the way things are these days, God's advice would be needed quite frequently. Mughal Gardens will have not peacocks but instead chanting sadhus trying to appease the Almighty. The rare species of herbs and medicinal plants in the garden will be used as incense sticks.

Everytime a bill requires the President's assent, a yagna would be performed and out from the holy fire will rise sparks resembling God's powers and the warmth from the holy fire will be used as an indicator of the President's assent. As for the signature, "old" ways wherein a pen was used, will pave way for "progressive" ones wherein sandalwood paste would be smeared on the bill, marking President's assent. Article 356, President's rule, would be rechristened as "the Order of the Almighty". The President, the head of the Armed forces, while on regular rounds, would purify the army-men by sprinkling holy water from the Ganges onto their heads.

And for once, India would be a country "bhagwaan bharose" in the literal sense too.

Gurukul

2007-06-17T22:38:00.001+05:30

This Sunday I accompanied a friend to "Sree Chaitanya IIT Prep school" at Ameenpur where he had gone to see his brother. Now, this place on the outskirts of Hyderabad is an all-inclusive world for the near-1000 students enrolled for 2 years to crack the JEE. The points which I find striking are:

Students are not allowed to leave the campus
Students have to get up at 5:00 AM everyday
Students have to sleep by 11:00 PM, no late-night studying, no night-outs
Students have to study during designated study hours
It's a boys-only boarding school, so no girls within sight for days/weeks at a stretch

All this reminded me of Gurukul, the movie, wherein a bunch of youngsters defy authority in search of "love" outside the confines of the institution. Obviously the institute is well within its rights to provide a suitable studying environment but I ponder how the crave for IIT has transformed the students' life. The shortage of good institutes of higher learning in India has reached magnanimous proportions even as the government continues to deduct 2% education cess from the tax-payers -- I wonder where all the money goes.

I don't blame the institute -- it's just catering to the demand from the public, and it's doing a good job. I don't blame the students -- they're just working hard in hope of a better future, even if it comes at a huge price, literally or otherwise. Whether or not the students are grown up enough yet to realize their freedom is a debatable issue. But something still doesn't feel right.

Online Chess at Freechess.org

2007-06-16T10:09:00.001+05:30

There was a time once when, at IIIT, all I used to do was play chess online from dawn till dusk. So much so that I wanted to document the steps for playing chess online but never managed to -- instead I played on. I'm just about beginning another such spell these days, and before I get too engrossed, I want to list down how to play chess online with 'real' people at freechess.org

Getting the interface:

So, you'll need xboard (download version 4.2.7 for unix/linux, for windows). There are a number of other clients available, but I use xboard. On a Mac, an easier approach would be to install X11 (if it's not there already) and fetch a darwin port for xboard with "sudo port install xboard". You'd have a better luck with linux if xboard comes along with your distribution. A more complete list of all available clients/interfaces can be found here.

Access at freechess.org:

As the name implies, freechess.org is a free, well-maintained, feature-ful avenue for playing chess online. xboard merely connects to the server and everything else is managed by freechess. The things you can do at freechess.org are:

play chess online with other people. You can set the parameters for a match (time duration, time increment, color, type)
observe other (great) people playing. You can also observe live matches from grandmasters, along with expert commentary
take online step-by-step lectures on chess -- this includes lectures on tactics, tips, opening/closing moves, best practices and recognizing patterns.
examine past played games
save / adjourn games for a later time

Sold? Ok, now get access by registering at freechess using a unique username (aka handle). You'll have to follow another link to activate your registration. This is a one-time process.

Connection and Setup:

My xboard command that launches xboard and automatically connects to freechess.org is:

xboard -ics -icshost freechess.org -icsport 5000

If you have a firewall, there are workarounds discussed in detail elsewhere. Essentially, you'll need to have telnet access to a gateway server which can then connect to freechess. When at IIIT, I used to use:

xboard -ics -telnet -telnetProgram telnet -icshost students.iiit.ac.in -icsport 23

(this connects you to students.iiit.ac.in first, and then you can "telnet freechess.org 5000" to start the session)

I usually save my username and passwd (on separate lines) in ~/.icsrc so that I don't have to enter it every time.

The Game:

There are >5 kinds of games on freechess:

Blitz: This is standard chess with short time constraints
Lightning: This is standard chess with very short time constraints. A match can conclude within 2 mins
Standard: This is standard chess with regular timings
Suicide: This is the suicide variant of chess. Whoever loses all pieces wins
Atomic: This is a variant in which bombs explode when you take a piece, thereby bombing adjacent pieces as well
Crazyhouse: As the name says, it's crazy. You have to try it out yourself -- it's interesting

Of these, Blitz and Standard are the most played.

After you have logged in, you can issue a huge number of commands. See "help commands" for the complete list. I'm listing out the basic ones:

List out all the matches currently being offered:
$ sought

To accept a match offer:
$ play 9
(where 9 is the id, as displayed by "sought"). There are lots of people online on freechess, so you need to be quick in accepting a match offer.

List out all players currently online:
$ who

Offer a match request to another user with handle "nirns"
$ match nirns
A match request is sent to "nirns" which if he accepts, a match starts.

$ match nirns 5 12
This starts a "blitz" game of 5 minutes and 12 secs increment after every move. If you run out of time, your opponent can "flag" you and you lose

To see your score/ratings/points:
$ finger

To see nirns's ratings:
$ finger nirns

To see the list of LectureBot's lectures:
$ tell lecturebot list

To observe LectureBot's lecture:
$ observe lecturebot

Ratings:

Apart from the game and the fun, you need to keep track of your ratings. Your ratings are displayed for each category of game with "finger" command. Newbies have ratings of 400 - 900 in blitz/standard category. OK players have 900 - 1400, Good players have 1400-1900. Computer bots have 1900-2400. Grandmasters have 2400-2700.

Apart from the rating, you need to keep an eye on something called RD -- Rating Deviation. It gives a sense of "confidence" in your rating. Mathematically speaking, if your rating is x, the probability that your actual rating is within [x - 2 * RD, x + 2 * RD] is 95%.

Intially, the rating deviates by a huge factor after every game because RD is high. As you play more and more, the RD decreases and therefore the rating settles to a near-true value.

That's it. Explore the tonnes of happy commands on freechess. Have fun!
Oh, and if you happen to get online, my handle is: nirns.

1bn People, yet no President

2007-06-14T18:20:00.000+05:30

1 billion. That's the population of India. But when it comes to deciding who the next President should be, our political parties don't appear to have a strong contender.

Smitten so many times by the current scientist president (Bihar assembly dissolution issue, reservation issue), congress definitely doesn't want an intellectual for the next President. Why, it's a democracy; every common man should have the right to become the President, and it appears that that's exactly what's going to be. Gone are the days when people of repute and excellence were contenders for the post of the citizen number 1. Only common people, those who have the distinction of having done nothing their entire life, thereby preserving their inability, are the contenders now.

Oh, and women should be Presidents. Why? Just because no woman ever has! If Left, the messiah of the common, the perpetrator of the idea that no one can go to college until the last limping sob has gone to school, has its way, so will it be.

Without Engineers All Around

2007-06-10T12:20:00.001+05:30

Disturbed with the sad realization of spending most of my time with engineers, this weekend I decided to try something else. So, on Saturday evening, I went to a gathering of people where I'd ordinarily not. It was a group related to private franchisees -- Quickstar and Amway. There I was sitting with a lot of people from different walks of life -- there were doctors, lawyers, businessmen, teachers/professors, students, and of course engineers. There was a speaker who was supposed to give a presentation on "something which would change your life". A good deal of people jumped up to the stage before the "real" speaker did, trying to pull excitement out of thin air with their broken English and miserably impersonated accent, and each of them claimed that this evening would "change your life forever". This phrase was being repeated with such liberal efficacy as if the intent purpose of "something which would change your life" was either understood or unquestioned, as if it had been globally accepted as a common ask. I hung on, not for an opportunity to "change my life forever" but for an opportunity to analyze what was going on.

The real speaker ranted about why everyone wanted to change one's life, how one could make life comfortable, how one could be happier, and it was shocking to see that each of these were tied with an idea of not having to work. It was assumed that to be truly happy in life, you needed to quit work and spend time with family, and he would have me believe that as long as I had to work, I didn't have "permanent" happiness. I'm accustomed to let such brag pass unabsorbed through my head but I wanted to see what the speaker would arrive at and how he'd drive the point home, so I lingered on. To my astonishment, he didn't. He didn't have a point to drive home. He spent all his talk motivating people that they needed to change their life but volunteered nothing as the means to it -- as if it was already well-established, unquestioned. He beat around for long about how he had "changed his life" and now he didn't have to work anymore, as if work were a punishment. He would make liberal use of metaphors that I care not understand, citing examples of how the richest people in the world had made money, as if he had decoded all of them.

In essence, the speaker spoke about everything except what the real point was. It was unnecessary. The audience was in applauses.

The speaker had taken 2 hours for his beating around the bush. If I had given the same presentation, it would last no longer than 5 minutes and all of it would contain the points of essence, nothing more nothing less, as if hitting the nail on its head.

Now that's the difference between engineers and others. Engineers try to make a point, others consider that it's unnecessary to make a point. Engineers tend to go by logic, others tend to go by ... well, I don't think they go by anything. (no flames please, by "others" I mean the crowd that was there)

I'm better off with engineers anyway, but I'll continue with my analysis at such gatherings. There's an awful lot you get to understand about the world and its suction.

Engineers All Around

2007-06-06T03:15:00.001+05:30

I had been contemplating the other day about the people I spend my time with daily. The introspection was shocking.

From dawn to dusk, I spend time with engineers of the most technical type. But shocking is the fact that it's only engineers that I spend time with. Of course there are other kinds of people which I don't happen to cross paths with, but are at least equally capable. Not only that, all the engineers that I spend my time with are computer engineers, so that's an even more specialized group. I'll have to strain my thoughts to recall the last time I talked to someone who was not a computer engineer. Despite the usual brouhaha about a large portion of the currently employed kind in the country being computer professionals, it takes out a certain spice/variety from life. I would have loved to talk to lawyers, writers, painters, poets, businessmen, detectives, criminals, and such. What a pity!

McD buys IIT Kanpur?

2007-06-05T18:17:00.000+05:30

At about 3:00 AM yesterday night, a friend pinged me to inform that IIT Kanpur's site had been hacked. And it had been done in with a funny story-line:

McDonald buys IITK for $40 billion. The institutes's mission has been revised to: carrying out original research of significance and technology development in the ever-green field of burger making. While the general look and feel of the website remained the same, funny links to McFries, Mccy, Fry Gold medal, McBurger appeared.

See the screenshot for the rest of the fun.

Should the Unfit Survive?

2007-05-04T01:57:00.000+05:30

As per Charles Darwin, evolution is governed by the survival of the fittest.

However, we have reached an age wherein the unfit and weak are almost forced to survive, out of compassion, brotherly love and the like. This not only places severe resource crunch, it discourages development by the able. Progress is governed not by the fastest but by the frailest legs. Society dictates that even the most unfit be allowed to survive, even against will. I disagree. Let me elaborate.

I was discussing with Rawat how ridiculous certain laws are. Did you know that it's kinda illegal to use nmap on a system on the internet? Not because you'd do any harm. But because it's "possible" to. Compassionate desire to protect the vulnerable renders armless the able. Deeds are governed not by your ability to hack, but by the vulnerability of the weakest target. I'll never understand the logic here (or the lack of it). A similar discussion on slashdot today discusses why we need most of the security industry anyway.

Turning our eyes at society, we find innumerable instances of laws that protect the incapable -- permanent reservations being an exponent to the case. Mind you, all these efforts have the utmost brotherhood, selfless compassion and the purest love in mind. Millions are spent to coax the downtrodden to rise above their levels and lead a better life. They refuse. It's not a coincidence that 60 years of reservation didn't bear fruit -- it can't. Ask a beggar to give up and work for you. You'll see why he continues to beg.

Give me a fish and I'll eat for one day
Teach me how to fish and I'll eat for the rest of my life

Unfortunately, all compassionate public-welfare laws are prime examples of the first kind. It isn't myopia. It's blindness. It doesn't taken an Einstein to realize that there aren't infinite fishes. It won't be long before fisherman will be forced to part with his hard-earned fishes because his pitiful brother doesn't bother to fish for himself and would almost certainly die otherwise. Alms has become righteous, ability depraved.

It's all about balancing equations. Unless the LHS equates to RHS, there's no way any ground can be gained. The rich will remain rich and the poor will remain poor. I believe that if you work honestly, there's no way one can remain poor in the first place. It's not difficult to make both ends meet and make enough for three meals a day. Poverty cannot be pitiful, it's criminal. In the least, it cannot be virtuous.

Have you no sense to realize that you need to remain indoors if you are so vulnerable? You cannot blame the wind for blowing off your candle, can you? The earth doesn't owe you a living. It came here first.

The Curse of Heritage

2007-04-27T11:16:00.000+05:30

So someone kissed Shilpa Shetty on her cheeks on stage the other day. And now arrest warrants have been issued against the two. Why? Oh, we have to preserve our "culture" and "heritage" you see. We have no food, drinking water or roads, but we MUST preserve our rich heritage. Study shows that 50% of Indian children go through sex-abuse but we MUST maintain the sovereignty of our diverse culture. Respected MPs are busy with illegal human trafficking -- who cares about these trifle matters? All we care about ever is to preserve our culture. Let nothing change. Stand still the time. Let the backward classes be permanently labeled as backward; go a step further, hand them free certificates of accomplishment. But we MUST preserve our culture. And we'll use force, dharnas, plundering, firing, mass-genocide or any other conceivable measures to safeguard our culture. If these fail, we're prepared to use missiles, nuclear warheads inclusive.

Suddenly, an actress, who no one really cares about, has become a symbol akin to Mother Mary whose virginity needs to be preserved. Suddenly she's a representative symbol of India's culture (recall the Big Brother tantrum!). If any of the culture and heritage drama is any worth, is it really so fragile that a actress's pomp could not only shake but challenge its very base? I mean, what's the whole tantrum about anyway? Are the people pissed off that a foreigner dared kiss Shilpa Shetty on stage while no Indian had the guts to do the like? Oh, I see. Can't say this in public. What a trick -- remodel the cause as an abuse to our heritage. Ahan.. I get the point now. And why was FTV banned? Oh, more foreigners. Yep, gotcha.

Such hypocrisy pertains not only to India but to the entire world. There are different levels its of operation, though and in India it operates at the very root. Any form of pleasure is taboo. How dare one ignore the oppressed and have moments of happiness! How dare one rest in peace while others have no food. So, what if someone has worked hard to earn his moment of peace? Sounds like communism, eh? Who do you think dictates the government anyway -- right or LEFT? Why do you think government employees are called "servants" -- they're just doing a "service", they have no personal ambition. Only the community holds supreme.

Reservation Issue: Love you SC

2007-04-23T17:48:00.000+05:30

With the decision to reject OBC reservations in IIMs (at least) for the current season, the Supreme Court has pushed its hammer up MHRD's (read Arjun Singh's) all necessary body parts.
With Arjun Singh's logic-less limping efforts suffering a jolt, I have only one thing to say to him: Do humanity a favour. Please goo and die!

The judgment was ensued from pure logic. The panel asked just the right questions and gave just the right answers to the MHRD's lack of logic.

The judges had said that the creamy layer does not deserve any reservation.

SC asked the Central Government was that why should there be reservation in institutes of super speciality.

And finally, when the Centre said that this 27 per cent was additional seats which had been created so that no inconvinience shuld be caused to the General Category, then the SC said that these 27 per cent extra seats were created by the revenue generated by all the citizens of the country. Under Article 29, all the citizens have a right to this investment.

Rightly said SC. Love you.

The Royal Flush Evening

2007-04-23T17:35:00.000+05:30

We (Kunal, SMR, Rawat, Parry, I) were playing poker yesterday evening and what a game it was. Especially for me, I mean.

The game closed with my Royal Flush and wiped up almost everything. Now, Royal Flush is not something you get in every hand. Or even every day, for that matter. In fact, it has a meagre probability of 1 in 649,739 *. That is, if you deal a hand every second (for argument sake), it'll take you 7 days straight before you could expect a Royal Flush. It has the highest value hand possible in poker.

It felt lucky.

PS:
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poker_probability. Link courtesy Kunal.

Submit, Submit you Form

2007-04-21T20:44:00.000+05:30

<form>
<input type=text />
<input type=submit />
</form>

It can't get simpler. Pretty much all you need to make an html form work on ALL browsers ALL the time, without being dependent on the phase of the moon or the price of tea in China or muhrat. Yet, of the limited number of ways to get this wrong, some website creators tend to know all of them.

Chances are they're are result of javascript abuse. If there's a need for driving licenses, there's an equal need for javascript-license. There are a couple of things in javascript you should not do just because you can. www.indianrail.gov.in is a handsome example of a painful website experience made traumatic with javascript abuse.

Anyway, the website I want to criticize today is that of Hutch (www.hutch.in). It has a login form. And it submits in exactly ONE browser. No points for guessing which one. And even on that lone browser, it won't work properly if ....(well, I don't really know what it depends on. my guess is it doesn't work unless your (age+weight+time_in_secs+7) % 22 == 0).
If you get through this ordeal (and I did), you have to be really good with all the pink colors which already make you feel unwanted, or else you'll get broken links, missing files, and what not.

Despite all this, Hutch AP is amongst the 5% of service providers who manage to cross TRAI's minimum service performance metrics. So, I ain't complaining.

Shitty bank

2007-04-15T12:17:00.000+05:30

If you have an account with Citi-bank, you'll realize how much pain in the a$$ it really is.

The trouble started when I opened a Citibank account for my monthly salary credit. Little did I know then that it would become a frustrating experience within a matter of days. First off, a Citibank agent helped me open my account and thanks to the fantastic training she must have gone through, she managed to get my account name and date of birth, the two absolutely essential information, wrong in the records. It took me about 3 months of phone-calls and online complaints to fix the name. Talking of online, their UI is a nightmare. It has more flashing ads (for their own) than anything else. It's a treasure hunt to locate their contact phone number on their site (and no, the ATM card doesn't have this already. what a shame!). I set aside all work one fine day and put in all my time to locate their phone number, and I did. I called up only to find that the number was wrong. I think it took a few months before they fixed it. Talk of online availability.

They deducted Rs 500 for a card I did not ask for. Then when I asked them to disable it, they disabled my only ATM card instead. I could still login online, which is good because I could transfer all my money to some other bank and just forget about the whole trauma. But now, they seem to have disabled online access too. So, I can put IN money. But I cannot take any OUT. Talk of security -- could anything possibly be more secure?

I could have banked on the phone. But since they managed to record my wrong date of birth, they won't recognize me anymore (it's one of the things they ask you to confirm your identity).

More highlights:

There are exactly 4 Citibank ATMs in Hyderabad. And no, I cannot withdraw free-of-charge from other ATMs.
If you need to call up Citibank, it just notes down your request. They tell you that they'll call back within 48 hours (yes, yes, that's 2 days). But they don't. Instead, they call back after 3-4 days, if at all. Talk of 24x7!
Make an online complaint and you'll get back a template response. While we are at it, I must mention that their online complain form takes in no characters other than a-z and 0-9. Characters like (, ', ", %, $, are taboo. Therefore, you cannot write: it's.

Moral of the story: if you ever want to open a Citibank account, think again. If they approach you instead, run for your life.

The only thing integral to the bank's image is its name. Rhymes well with "Shitty".

Back to Hyderabad

2007-04-11T17:43:00.000+05:30

I returned back after a 3-month trip to Mountain View in Silicon Valley last Friday. I broke off for 2 days at Singapore. As I summarize the trip, the things that I remember most prominently are:

People in the US are generally self-centered and focussed. This is a good thing.
Rules have a reason. Following them makes sense.
If someone hates US, he is either myopic and jealous or blind.
Driving a white 2-door G6 Pontiac at 160 km/hr
The place is insanely costly. If you don't earn in dollars, you cannot survive.
Medial services are extremely costly. Hospitalization will cost you a fortune
There's no one on the roads to show you directions if you get lost
There are no small shops in the US.
Don't argue with cops in USA
Park only when you are damn sure it's not a "No Parking"
Beauty and brains CAN go together. Really.
US has pathetic TV/radio ads
Afro-americans wear only 1 size of T-shirt - XXL+
Americans are generally bold and loud.
People don't work or sleep or weekends. Instead, they go skiing, camping, surfing, etc.
Wine is just another drink
A$$holes are everywhere
There are approx 40% asians in the Silicon Valley (note: asians comprise about 40% of the world population)
Many americans don't know much about anything other than their line of work.
You're a veg? What's your source of protein?
Red/Pink == gay
There's only 1 fundamental right: Freedom

On Necrophilia

2007-03-25T20:13:00.000+05:30

Necrophilia (nekros: dead + philia: love) -- love with the dead. Essentially, necrophilia implies sexual attraction towards the dead (corpses).

If you are left gaping with "What? Really!", that's exactly how I felt when I started researching this topic a few days ago. My findings were bizarre to begin with and took time to sink.

Necrophilia is a paraphilia characterized by sexual attraction to corpses; the broad definition envelops all amorous propensities towards things that are dead -- corpses and carcasses alike. Some necrophiles like fresh corpses, some like it decayed, while there are some who like to make love to carcasses. Things get gory when necrophiles get to hunting for their dead, by digging up corpses, stealing them, or even by killing. Thankfully, most necrophiles don't. There are numerous instances of misdemeanor with corpses in mortuaries and morticians are a common suspect.

Now get ready for another eye-opener. Necrophilia is not unusual. There are books, papers and poems on the topic. Evidences of necrophilic activities appear in several forms, although the intensities vary. Examples:

The recent Nithari findings where dozens of skeletons were recovered. This is what sparked my curiosity in the first place.
Heard of vampires, demons and ghosts in the context of Lord Shiva in Hindu mythology? Well, that's necrophilia.
One Dr Carl Von Cosel, scientist, inventor organist and necrophile, found the woman of his dreams in Elena, a patient dying of tuborculosis. Heartbroken at the death of his beloved at 22, the doctor paid for a lavish funeral and she was buried. In a few years, he stole her body to his airship. For the next seven years, he held her body together with piano wire, put glass eyes where her real ones used to be, made a wig of her own hair and, piece by piece, strenthened her skin with wax and silk. He treated her with lotions and potions and electrotherapy. Amongst his resurrection tools was a million volt tesla coil. He serenaded her with his home-made organ and slept beside her.
Ed Gein was so fond of having the dead around him in his house that he hunted over 15 women to add them to his collection. When discovered, they found numerous body parts: four noses, several bone fragments, nine death masks, a heart in a pan on the stove, a bowl made from a skull, ten female heads with the tops sawn off, human skin covering several chair seats, pieces of salted genitalia in a box, skulls on his bedposts, organs in the refrigerator, a pair of lips on a string, and much more.
more, more, more, more, more, ...

Rob's site has a believable reasoning for the roots of necrophilia as a part of evolution. At a time when at average life expectancy was 20-30 years, there were more dead than living. It must have been hard to give up one's loved one after he/she died. Love lingered on.

Also intimidating is that most of these necrophiles don't believe they have done any wrong, that their acts are governed by their natural instincts much like the regular attraction of a live man and live woman.

As if life doesn't already exist in so varied forms, death too wants its share. I cannot figure out for sure whether I'm curious, frightened, enlightened or plain awe-struck.

Oh Lord! Pardon my Sin

2007-03-17T12:28:00.000+05:30

I committed a huge sin. Even thought I was fully aware of it, I couldn't do anything to stop it. I was rendered powerless.

It all started when I went to Fry's to buy a laptop. I bought a Sony VAIO T2250 (1G RAM, Centrino Duo 1.73 GHz x 2, 120G HD, DVD RW, 15.4") for $874. Now the sin part -- the laptop came with Windows, a Vista variant, to be specific. I appealed to the Fry's personnel to give me a laptop which didn't come with Windows. There's none. I repeat, the whole of Fry's (a store with thousands of electronics items) didn't deal in a laptop which without Windows. In fact, there's no windows-less desktop either.

Helpless, I'm now waiting to take a dip in the Holy Ganges. It has purification effects, they say.

Damn you Wisdom Tooth

2007-03-06T09:06:00.000+05:30

The story begins 5 years ago when two pairs of wisdom teeth set foot in this world. They were born in Jaw street, one pair in downtown, the other in upscale uptown. Being molars, they were destined to the dark parts, near the premolars. They had a playful childhood without much work to do in the inner bylanes; they didn't have much sunlight either. Off and on some crumbs would make way to them and they would have a nice time nimbling over. Such merriment was detestful to the gums residing in the neighbourhood.

"How dare stupid little molars have no work and all play!"
"How dare they be called wisdom-teeth, while we turbid gums!"

The gums conspired to outgrow their colonies. They began spreading their appendages to such extents where it'd almost block the growth of the poor molars. Very soon the molars had difficulty coping with the cramped up space. Lumps of gum would get in between the meeting of the uptown and the downtown wisdom teeth. It caused pain, yes.

The above is a story a dentist narrated to me after having charged me $150 making my toothache worse (he didn't have painkillers either). Well, he didn't craft it as a story, but yes, this is the gist. And yes, damn you wisdom tooth. Just kill the gums!

Mystery Spot

2007-02-19T16:00:00.000+05:30

Imagine a hilly-region about 50 metres in diameter. Also imagine that it's spooky enough to defy some basic laws of physics, that gravity behaves anomalously; a billiard ball placed on an inclined wedge rolls up the slant, two people standing on opposite sides of a level surface appear to change height. Mysterious, huh? Well, that's Mystery Spot and it exists for real in Santa Cruz, CA. No one has been able to explain the phenomenon observed.

A free pendulum makes an angle (about 17 degrees) with the normal, as does this guy hanging from the door. There's a small story about this place. More spooky pics here.

Renouncing my Religion

2007-02-18T11:42:00.001+05:30

Convinced that religion of all forms is primarily BS, a mistake in the making for centuries now, and having dragged it along unconsciously for 23 years myself, I've decided to let go. I've decided to abandon my religion. I have no religion anymore. If there are any "religious" rites that my religion ordains before such acts of renunciation, I'm unaware of it. And I couldn't care less.

My apartment-mate at where I stay currently is a Chinese, and he doesn't have any religion. Neither do most other people in China and I didn't even know. That's 1.5 bn people, straight. One of my T-shirt reads "Come to India.. 1bn people cannot be wrong"; if this is true, 1.5 bn people are almost correct in not having a religion. My earlier apartment-mate, a Japanese, had told me that most people in Japan don't have any religion either.

A lot of bloodbath has taken place in the name of religion. Most don't understand why God was invented and yet would go any lengths to water his palettes, as if he's a sick sadist hungry for pomps of drums and incense sticks. A sizable population breathes with the hope of being able to please god as means to salvation, whatever manna that is. I refuse to comply with this insanity. I refuse to recognize an illogical stream with justification no greater than age-long adherence by the multitude. I refuse the madness. I refuse my religion. I refuse all religions.

My First Journal Paper: TVCG

2007-02-17T19:05:00.000+05:30

I received confirmation yesterday that our Display Wall paper titled "Garuda: A Scalable, Geometry-Managed Display Wall using Commodity PCs" has been accepted to IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG). (Co-authors: Nirnimesh, Pawan Harish, Dr P J Narayanan). The paper underwent a series of correspondences, as is normal for a journal, before it was finally accepted. Thanks to Pawan for carrying out the numerous iterations after I left IIIT. The paper will appear in a forthcoming issue of the journal.

I tend to believe that this is the first TVCG submission from India, as far as I know of (Jagmohan confirms me this, and I know he can be counted on his meta-researching abilities).

So, yay!

Macworld 2007

2007-01-11T13:16:00.000+05:30

I attended Macworld 2007 held at the Moscone Center, San Francisco. I know people who lined up all night to catch Steve Jobs speak in flesh. And what a scene he showed.

I used to like Apple; I'm a fan now. Apple demoed the Apple TV and some exciting new features from Leapord, the next version of Mac OS X. But the most exciting thing was iPhone, and it literally had the audience sitting on the edge of their chairs, leaning forward.

A music player, a phone and a kinda computer -- all in one. If all the promised things comeout as wonderfully on the ground
as it looked in the demo, iPhone will be a must-have thing. And if
Apple's track record is anything to go by, it most-probably would. The multi-touch screen is exciting -- not a new concept -- but I'm sure it'll work like a charm, the ipod way. Who can imagine a phone with just one physical button? And a touch screen without the stupidity of a stylus. And 802.11 n wifi, 2 MP cam and Bluetooth 2.0.

So excited.

From USA

2007-01-07T01:38:00.000+05:30

I'm on my first trip to the US. I reached Mountain View, San Francisco on 4th Jan and have kept my eyes open since then. There are a lot of new things to see, and I'm just getting started.

The Journey

There's a finite limit to the number of times a plane journey is exciting before it gets monotonous and dull. How many hours can one spend looking out of the window to see the white clouds below and sky-blue sky above, and nothing else! Things get uneasy when the flight is long. Mine was about 23 hours on Singapore Airlines. Tired of watching movies and sleeping, I spent some time teaching myself the art of classifying chinki airhostesses into more than one class.

There sure was one thing funny about the flight, though. I woke up the morning of 4th Jan two times -- once in Singapore and again in San Francisco. The journey began at 0030 hrs and ended at 1100 hrs local time. Essentially, therefore my 4th Jan was 37.5 hours long. I was forced to compare this to time dilation, a phenomenon which occurs when you (or someone else for that matter) travels at speeds comparable to that of light. No, they're not the same. Contact Albert Einstein for details. I'm sure that the return journey will be even more fun, when time will shrink!

The place

You must have already heard the rhetoric of the place being neat and clean, so I'll not repeat the illustration. From where I stay, I can see lots of trees and the day is good today coz there's sunlight. It's cold out there nevertheless. Swanky cars and SUVs flaunt the place. Driving a rented car is cheaper than keeping a chauffeur. People are costly.

As I said, I've only been 2 days here, and I am still exploring the place. First impression is freakishly awesome. I passed by Orkut yesterday; yes, the guy himself. Later, I saw Sergey and Eric Schmidt too.

The Asians

There are a lot of Indians. Chinese too (or are they Japanese? Taiwanese? argh!!). On a small stroll yesterday night, I could locate as many as 3 Indian restaurants (a couple of Chinese too). So, yes, all the fear about Asians taking over the world is kinda true. I had been reading the newspapers today and on an average almost every page has a news about India and/or China. Funny, they remember about the ongoing Kumbh festival back there in India. I'm sure I wouldn't have known about it had I been in India this time. Naked sadhus dancing around? Not that interesting, I'd say. Newspapers have a lot of word about the "Incredible India" campaign. This explains the foreigners you find everytime you go on a trip in India these days.

My First 3 Months at Google

2006-12-10T05:41:00.000+05:30

It has been over three months since I joined Google, and pretty much the same time since I last wrote here. A lot has happened in this while professionally and personally and I just want to begin by mentioning that it has been amazing, to say the least.

Ever dreamed about a place where you are pampered with luxuries, surrounded by god-like techies, goddess-like babes, and you don't have to worry about trivial things like clothing & mmm.. food? And you know that there are only a few others like you. Open your eyes, it's Google.

Life @ Google
Disclaimer: If you hoped that I would leak out some secrets, I'll disappoint you. Everything that can be said about the company is available elsewhere on the net and for the rest, I'm not supposed to.

There wasn't really a training. Things started with fun and it lingers on. Initially, I got assigned to a project which I didn't really like. I had a small chat with my manager (who's a cool guy, btw, and works like hell) and within a few minutes, I was working on a new one, a one I did like. I stayed at the Google guest house for a fortnight while I used to keep running to and fro from IIIT as I was still trying to finish my thesis defense then (it's finished now, btw. I'm an MS. yay!).

I have a Mac laptop (Macbook Pro) to work on and it's beautiful. It's my first (significant) tryst with a Mac. Things are integrated pretty well and it they (almost always) work. I'll still rate linux above Mac, though. I definitely like some of the softwares on the Mac -- iPhoto, Photo Booth, Quick Silver. iTunes and QuickTime are pathetic, however. Besides, the mac, I have a dual-monitor linux workstation and my desk in office, just in case the laptop screen feels too small.

The speed with which things get done by at Google is intimidating, and I'm not just talking about the technical things but also about the administration, HR thingies, etc. Think about Google search and you'll have an idea of the kind of speed I'm talking about. The prime reason I joined Google was because I found Googlers to be happy. And now I'm happy too. Besides, it feels nice to know that you are being taken care of.

We have cabs for pickup and drop from office to residence daily, which is a nice thing coz this gives us some more sleeping time: in the cab, that is.

There have been a couple of parties since I joined. One was a booze party at Bottles and Chimneys and everyone soaked. It's funny to see engineers dance, especially when they are drunk. The other party was the (pre) holiday party recently, which included dance, besides food (of course).

I'll quickly run by some other things that have happened all this while.

Visited New Delhi for visa for Taiwan. Everything was in a terrible rush but I turned out lucky.
Visited Taipei City, Taiwan for presenting my paper in Pacific Graphics, based on my MS thesis work. Google sponsored the trip. Taiwan is a nice and clean place. The main railway station is as clean as IIIT. The mass rapid transit (MRT) system is nicely streamlined. I clicked a few pics with my new cam. People speak Chinese and don't understand much English. So, if you are traveling to Taiwan, be prepared to seek help (in sign language) from some lovely ladies on the streets. This trip also includes the joy of first overseas travel. Singapore airways is astounding and Singapore airport is heavenly -- they have XBOX gaming joints and movie theatres there!
Visited Chennai (& Mahabalipuram) for US Visa. I had been pre-warned about Chennai so I had kept my hopes to a minimum. It turns out that Chennai can be tolerated for one day (but no more). Mahabalipuram is an OK place for a few hours.
Leaving for the USA (for 3 months) in Jan.
Graduated. I'm a "Master of Science by Research (Computer Graphics)" now.
Bought a digicam (Panasonic DMC-LZ3 with 1G Transcend memory for ~Rs 12K)
Lost my drinks virginity somewhere near South-China sea
Visited Patna during Diwali. Patna is progressing gradually. Nitish Kumar, the new CM, is hardworking and ambitious.

Greenphone: A phone to yearn for

2006-08-15T20:53:00.000+05:30

Finally, there exists a phone which I want. Ever since I lost my last phone (an year ago), I didn't get a new one partly because none of the ones available had features which this yet-to-be-released Greenphone has. For eternity, phone-makers have been assuming consumers to be stupid and users can't modify things on the phone lest the warranty should void.

But now Greenphone is there to change things.
For one, it runs on linux, you can reflash the bios to load a custom kernel (why? just coz I can), you can rewrite any of the apps therein without locking-horns with the supplier and create new apps using Qt library (QPE to be specific) -- essentially, a phone which I can truly and completely own.

Trolltech co-CEO Haavard Nord stated, "With Greenphone, the sky is the limit when it comes to creating and testing new applications on a powerful mobile device platform."

The phone also has a QVGA touchscreen, WiFi, bluetooth, 1.3 MP cam, mini-USB and extensible SD slots (apart from the builtin 128 MB flash and 64 MB RAM) on a 312 MHz processor.

The phone is expected to start shipping in September. The pricing hasn't been released yet but with the above features, it doesn't appear that it'll be cheap. Since the phone is first of its kind, Trolltech would do a good job of keeping the phone affordable not only to sell in large numbers but also to ensure that developers get hooked.

So excited!

11.14 Review

2006-08-14T17:30:00.000+05:30

I saw the movie 11.14. Here's how I'd like to review it.

Code:
void* thread0(void* arg)
{
// do something
return arg;
}

void* thread1(void* arg)
{
// do something
return arg;
}
void* thread2(void* arg)
{
// do something
return arg;
}
void* thread3(void* arg)
{
// do something
return arg;
}

int main()
{
pthread_t thread0, thread1, thread2, thread3;
//! Create all threads
pthread_create(&thread0, NULL, thread0, NULL);
pthread_create(&thread1, NULL, thread1, NULL);
pthread_create(&thread2, NULL, thread2, NULL);
pthread_create(&thread3, NULL, thread3, NULL);

//! Join all threads
pthread_join(thread0, NULL);
pthread_join(thread1, NULL);
pthread_join(thread2, NULL);
pthread_join(thread3, NULL);

//! Print time
print gettimeofday();
}

Output:
11:14 PM

CVIT gets a 7950 GX2

2006-08-12T22:10:00.000+05:30

Cribbing about low RAM on your system? Have a look at CVIT.

CVIT today acquired a GeForce 7950 GX2 which has 1GB GDDR3 VRAM (the RAM on the video card, that is). Earlier CVIT used to get the 2nd level of graphics cards but this one is the fastest graphics card that there is, on a single PICe slot. It came for Rs 35K. The difference between this card and a "regular" one is that this actually is two graphics card PCBs coupled tightly side-by-side. Naturally, this card cannot go on just any PC (actually, there are only 2 PCs currently in CVIT which can handle this card), so a new system will be bought soon.

Looking back, I still remember the system with mere 32MB RAM that I had when I was in my 1st year.

Server Room Correction #3

2006-08-11T01:14:00.000+05:30

We had a "knowledge transfer" session in the Server Room, as it was decided in an earlier meeting I had with Dr Bruhad. Apart from Dr Bruhad, Dr Pudi too joined in. All Server Room staff (except Mr JP) were present. To my surprise, some unrelated people were present too (Sambabu, Phani Kumar).

Routine jobs at the Server Room will get more organized. Expect basic things like backup, response-to-queries, help-page, wee-bit responsibility, etc to come up. Nothing can happen overnight. So, be patient. Sending a mail to sysadmin-(at)-students.iiit.ac.in should be good enough to get your problem registered. If need be, Cc it to bezawada-(at)-iiit.ac.in and rest assured that your problem will be looked at (you'll get a response).

If you have been following this section, you must would remember about the 3 types of jobs in the Server Room that I had talked about. 1) Routine, 2) Devel & 3) Security-related. Today's session was aimed at covering the first of this. Although I didn't have the least idea what a "knowledge transfer" session was supposed to mean, I had a list of trouble-shooting test cases prepared. (Why is it called "knowledge transfer" by the way? Wouldn't "knowledge mirroring" make more sense, given that nothing is really transferred?) Not much discussion was required on these issues. Dr Bruhad asked for setting up help-pages, FAQs etc.. all manageable stuff.

I hope the 2nd and 3rd points are tackled too.

To my surprise, discussion on wireless took up most of the time, even though none of that was planned. Nothing was concluded. I won't write anything about this since I'll end up using words which I don't like to write very often.

Personally, I have a very mixed opinion about the nature of today's meeting.

Slow Internet? Check weather

2006-08-10T19:12:00.000+05:30

Is the internet performing a bit too sluggish? Check the weather outside. If its raining, the slow internet is due to our wireless connection to the ISP. The radio waves somehow don't do well with humidity.

Come to think of it and quite funny correlations can occur between technical performance of computers and environmental factors.

Internet graph can be used as a rain-gauge -- the lower the bandwidth, the stronger the downpour. (Wonder what no-internet might end up indicating.) Imagine, the newsreader citing monsoons as 3.14 Mbps!!
Room temperature can be predicted by the swearing-frequency of a gamer. How? Well, the hotter it is, the worse his graphics card will perform. So, the gamer will feel more irritated and swear more. With minor adjustments here and there, a mapping function can be devised.
A novel way to kill geeks: Bring down the internet for 3 days straight. All geeks will either die of anxiety or will commit suicide.

I'm sure there are more such correlations.

Happily denied food by OBH

2006-08-10T04:51:00.001+05:30

I was denied dinner by the OBH caterer. But I'm pleased by the gesture. Why? Read on.

I wasn't registered to the mess. And by the time I reached the OBH mess, it was (partially) running short of food. All previous catereres would have accepted the money and allowed one to eat from whatever was left, even at the cost of running-out on regular/registered members. I always wondered, in a professional system, the caterer should be bold enough to deny food, if it foresees shortage for registered members. This is exactly what happened.

Why is professionalism good?
Professionalism has been created by the fierce competition between the 4 caterers in campus. Only those who are fit enough will do good. This also means that for any of the caterers to survive, they'll have to perform good. Professionalism helps.

Seeing the professional attitude of Hot Rottis guy, I do have a feeling that this caterer will do good and might last longer than any previous caterer.

Feel like this

2006-08-07T18:17:00.000+05:30

A Monkey and a Bird

2006-08-07T18:01:00.000+05:30

It was raining heavily. A monkey, dumb as he was, was shivering on a tree, while a bird was sitting merrily in its nest. Seeing the plight of the monkey, the bird offered him a suggestion -- "You look capable enough. Why don't you build a nest of your own? Then you won't have to shiver in the rains." This suggestion angered the monkey -- "How dare a tiny little bird give me advice!" He ran up to the bird and tore down its nest.

Moral of the story: Never give advice to fools.

Server Room Correction #2

2006-08-03T02:15:00.000+05:30

After sending the long mail on Tuesday night, Paresh and I met Dr Bruhadeshwar on Wed (Aug 2) morning. The meeting lasted long and I must admit that Dr Bruhadeshwar has a lot of positive energy.

The Meeting
I have a feeling that Dr Bruhadeshwar didn't believe much in what I said, at least towards the beginning. This I feel is natural since he has taken over as a CRC head only a month ago and is not acquainted with many things. He had a printout of the list of issues which I had mailed yesterday and it had a lot of markings (even though he mustn't have gotten much time since yesterday night to this morning). He began going through them and discussing corrective action. I had listed only 10 such examples. Even though each of them were tragic blunders in themselves, I mentioned that these were only specific examples of mismanagement and that we needed more fundamental level reforms or else such a list could be practically endless and tackling them one-by-one would be impossible. He did not agree quite, or at least so I feel, towards the beginning of the meeting.

We went through a couple of the specific examples and we landed to the OBH lan problem. That's the time when he called up the server room twice regarding this issue and asked for what was happening. The immediate fallout was that OBH lan was fixed in merely 3 hours (aah.. why couldn't they fix it earlier rather than wait for a bashing for 3 weeks?).

On the issue of poor internet he blamed DC++ for choking up the bandwidth. Now, this is not true. Perhaps he had some misconceptions about the network structure. Eventually, I was able to convince him that DC++ or any such sharing over the LAN doesn't affect internet bandwidth by as much as a dot.

I reiterated that we were just going through specific examples whereas what we should instead be doing is prepare a system. These inconsistencies would just fade away. I gave the example of misconfigured DNS leading to mail-loss by several faculty members. From this point onwards, I believe, he started feeling that I was talking sense. We didn't discuss specific examples after this point.

Student Sysadminship
I have been reiterating that the server room has to have some responsible expert-level administrator, whether student or otherwise. Since such a person is missing at this point, he mentioned that the staff should be trained for it. But this takes time, even if it's possible.

He mentioned that the idea of student sysadmins abandoned because students didn't document properly what they did. Even though I'm not nearly a software engineering fan, I agree that a certain level of book-keeping is required to ensure awareness amonst the staff. However, I categorically mentioned that the level at which it'd be helpful (in the current case) would be an overkill. I don't want to start teaching how to use VIM! I mean, isn't there a documentation/manual available for these?

I do belive that by the end of the meeting, he did start seeing that I had valid points, and also that students sysadmins are required. Probably, this issue will be discussed in some faculty meeting later. Erstwhile, he suggested that there be a knowledge tranfer session (whatever that means) on next Monday where I run the staff through some routine admin know-hows.

I told about the solution which I had proposed, the three steps that needed to be taken (as per my earlier mail). He was convinced.

Personally, I was irritated not with the idea of knowlege transfer but with the term itself -- it's so SE-ic (and need I mention that I don't like SE?). But should I expect that all of a sudden someone who I didn't even recognize (and vice versa) follow me totally? Was Rome built in a day? I don't think so. So, I agreed to the knowlege transfer session to be held next Monday.

As of now, things look extremely positive. Probably, student sysadmins will get appointed. By the end of the meeting, we landed up discussing about the stuff on DC++. Now, I don't watch a lot of movies, but I'd still like to have the option. So, I responded with what a student should and he responded back with what a faculty should -- perfect ethics, although on a light note. Dr Bruhadeshwar is extremely active and I hope things shape up well. Or else, god save the system administrtion, and I'm not just exaggerating.

Server Room Correction #1

2006-08-02T21:11:00.000+05:30

If you have been following this blog, you might have seen the sequence of posts labelled "Server Room Tragedy..". Well, things got out of hand. So some of decided to raise the issue to the higher levels. In a brief meeting with the director, we had scheduled a meeting just after the convocation. This meeting was held yesterday (Aug 1). However, since Dr Bruhadeshwar was not available then, he asked us to list out the issues and then discuss. I sent him the mail which is shown below. Since the mail is long, I'll discuss about the meeting in the next post.

From: Nirnimesh
To: bezawada[at]iiit.ac.in
Cc: sangal[at]iiit.ac.in
Subject: System Administration related issues

Dear Sir,

I'm listing out the issues which we wanted to discuss and which we feel
that need attention. Some of these are very critical and apply at the
fundamental level of system administration. I first list out specific
examples of concern. This list can practically be endless so I list out
only a few. Then I list out some general issues. In the end I list out
solutions which in my opinion would be required to solve the problems.

Specific examples:
1, Backup disks: In a CRC meeting once, it was decided that a backup
system be setup, which would backup data incrementally. 4 hard disks (2
TB in total) were approved to be purchased for the purpose. The hard
disks never got purchased. The current backup server is improper (if at
all). Checkpoint backups on to DVDs were planned but even the first
checkpoint never materialized.

2. DNS misconfiguration: Drastic server failures take place if the DNS
is misconfigured, since it forms the basis for delivering all mails,
etc. Recently, when the ISP was changed, the DNS was misconfigured
(ideally, it should be a planned transition from one set of IPs to the
other). Not only did several mails bounce, some of our servers got
classified as spammers by some prominent DNS black-lists, due to which
our mails were tagged as spam. This was reported even by some faculty
members (Dr Madhav Krishna, Dr PJN lately) when they discovered
undelivered mails. I'm sure there are more such instances which have
gone unnoticed.

3. Wireless LAN: The wireless LAN is in an abysmal state. Not only does
it go down without any warning, it works at poor speeds, sometimes even
lesser than the internet b/w! Given that the number of wlan users in
campus is now more than the wired lan ones, this issue is all the more
important. I do feel that it has been time enough that wlan become
stable and reliable rather than bearing the experimental tag forever.

4. OBH LAN: OBH LAN has been non-functional with proper settings for
more than 3 weeks now. This has been reported to the server room several
times but in vain. Some random network setting is working currently, but
it is non-optimal.

5. SPAMS: Faculty reported bombardment of spams from infected systems.
Methods to identify and block these infected systems are required apart
from proper configuration of the mail server's spam checkers.

6. Internet: The internet has been unreliable ever since the ISP was
changed, even though the b/w was increased and the internet graph shows
good throughput. I feel that no amount of b/w can circumvent the need
for proper monitoring of where the b/w really goes. My assessment is
that there are infected systems on the network which are hogging up the
b/w due to which the browsing speed has gone down. These should be
monitored, identified and treated. Besides, IIIT is dependent on a
single ISP link now, which means that mails cannot be routed through an
alternate path if this link is down.

7. Phishing: Proper monitoring of logs is are required to make sure that
our servers don't end up getting phished. The last phishing event went
unnoticed for 2 days, before I accidentally discovered it. No such
security-related logs are monitored currently.

8. Proxy crash: I had known from the proxy server logs that its hard
disk was about to crash in due course. I had informed this in the server
room and had prepared a backup system to be used. Unfortunately, this
backup system was recklessly formatted. Days later, proxy really
crashed, and it took quite some time before we set things up from scratch.

9. CDROMs in teaching labs: Whereas the systems in teaching lab #333
don't have cdrom drives even though they have hard disks, the disk-less
thin clients in the new teaching labs have cdroms each even though they
will never ever be used. For the 100 thin-client systems this adds up to
a straight misuse of Rs 1 lakh.

10. Gateway server: A gateway firewall was put in place to prevent
research server labs from getting hacked (LTRC server was hacked once
because of this reason). Besides, it also improves the internet
bandwidth. This server is missing now thereby posing security threats.

I will conclude by saying that the server room currently lacks a system.
Things happen ad hoc. I can best describe the current system as:
clueless, irresponsible and acting in damage-control mode.

General issues:

Mails: If configured properly, mail protocol is so versatile that
there's absolutely no possibility of mails getting lost or even getting
delayed. But proper configuration is required nevertheless, and slight
DNS misconfiguration can wreck havoc for all mails. Students have
started shifting to gmail. Not only is this shameful for an institute
such as ours, it causes a waste of costly internet bandwidth. (Blocking
gmail is not the solution, though. Instead, our mail servers should
function reliably enough)

ISP/Internet: IIIT should have at least two ISPs. The second one can be
low-cost, low b/w one. This is critical for 24x7 mail or internet
access. Besides, the internet traffic from the ISPs needs to be
monitored, since they often end up cheating. At the 4 Mbps b/w that IIIT
has, it is possible to have an excellent browsing and download speed, if
monitored properly to weed-out b/w-hogging infected systems.

Responsibility: Several institutes (even in India) have well-managed
system administration, along with websites as help-pages. We lack such a
thing altogether. Students and faculty often don't know how to configure
things and they don't know where to get help from. Having a web-page not
only eases things out, it ensures that the solutions can be reused for
recurring problems. This is not the case with the current server room
functioning.

Solutions:
I see the following 3 steps as necessary to ensure a reliable,
responsible and smart system administration.

1. System

Set up a planned system along which the server room works. The staff
need to be allocated jobs and be held accountable. I see three types of
jobs to be dealt with:
a) Routine: this involves all common monitoring and related activities
like managing accounts, managing network, checking logs, backups,
grievances, etc. This works in damage-control mode currently.
b) Development: this involves developing and automating ways to make the
working of the server room more efficient. This is missing currently.
c) Security: this involves maintaining the security of the network, the
servers and privacy-related issues. This requires expert-level
understanding. This is missing currently.

2. Have Student Sysadmins

There has to be at least one expert-level administrator who understands
the system throughout and can take quick actions. IIIT students are (and
will always be) better than any of the sysadmin staff or perhaps even
more costly sysadmins. This is why the model of having student-sysadmins
was ideal for IIIT. I feel that getting rid of student sysadmins is
suicidal because it leaves the server room with no one who understands
the system. All servers till date have been configured by student
sysadmins only. The notion of the baton being passed on to the successor
student-sysadmins has been carried out effectively in the past.

3. Strict accounting mechanism overseen by a faculty (that is CRC)

A faculty's involvement is the most critical to ensuring that the server
room functions properly, instead of in a clueless damage-control mode.
This would be too much pressure on the faculty, which is where the
student sysadmins come helpful. But accounting from a faculty is
necessary to ensure that the decisions are implemented by the server
room staff.

I have in the past tried several measures with the server room staff to
streamline the activities, but in vain. My current activities are like a
last-resort effort. If corrective actions are not taken immediately, I
can foresee severe inconsistencies and problems arising in immediate future.

I hope I could be helpful.

Thank You

Respose to a "Hi"

2006-08-02T17:13:00.000+05:30

There's no dearth of mails/scraps that one gets with the subject "hi". It gets even more painful when that's all the content that there is. And I'm left at my wits' ends trying to figure out how to respond to such mails/scraps. Though I'm not overly social, I still want to respond so that I don't sound rude. But the point is what?

My interpretation of "hi.. wassup?" is: "I don't know what to write. But still I want to write. So, here's my mark". Now, I don't know how I could respond to such a scrap. Some options I ponder over are:

1. "Listen dude/dudie, I understand that you have had nothing to do and want to see some movement on your orkut scrapbook. But I'm not nearly the correct person. Try someone else and you might actually strike a conversation out of thin air."

2. "Do you know that you can self-scrap on orkut? (Yes, really, I've tried it.) Why don't you self-scrap?"

3. "See, I hardly even remember who you are. Accepted that we might have spent a wonderful evening one day but come'on."

4. Respond back with a "hi" or "hello" or a similar monotonic salutation (essentially throwing the ball back into his/her court)

5. Give a pointer to my blog

Acts 1, 2 and 3 are overly rude. Act 4 doesn't have a purpose, other than symbiotically incrementing the scrap-count. Act 5 requires that I update my blog regularly, a condition almost never met.

I know the mole

2006-08-01T23:46:00.000+05:30

All eyes are focussed towards Jaswant Singh as he claims of a mole in PMO ever since the 90's. The unanimous question everyone is asking is: "Who is the mole?"

Given the reputation of Jaswant Singh as a high-profile diplomat, I do expect he has something up his sleeve rather than merely embarassing the NDA. But still, it's such a simple question to answer. Who doesn't know the mole? Any self-respecting person who passed high-school without cheating would know it. Here it is:

"A mole is the amount of substance of a system which contains as many elementary entities as there are atoms in 12 grams of carbon 12, where the carbon 12 atoms are unbound, at rest and in their ground state."

Jaswant Singh is correct. He knows the mole.

To Panchgani

2006-08-01T00:41:00.000+05:30

I was at Panchgani for the weekend. And I must say: what a weekend it was! How do you feel when wind is so strong that you almost get blown off, literally? Or what if you are thouroughly drenched and all you can see is beautiful cliffs. Or what if rain falls like needles into your face, not from top but horizontally, and sometimes even from below! That's Panchgani.

At one spot, called Table-top, we were on the top of a cliff and the rain was heavy. The weather was so foggy that visibility was limited to a few metres only. Off an on this would clear up so that we could see down the cliff. We were in the arms of nature, literally. Now, to reach the edge of the cliff was not a mean job. At least not as easy as we thought it would be. We walked and walked and walked while it poured and it poured and it poured and the wind blew and blew and blew and we shivered and shivered and shivered. The edge seemed like a mirage since it distanced itself every time. We finally made it, and it was a feat. One slip, and that would be the end of any of us. One step at the wrong place, and that would be the last step on earth! The feeling was exotic.

Near Panchgani is the place called Mahabaleshwar. Now, this place has a beautiful waterfall (actually, it has many, but all others are closed at this time of the year). Every now and then the fog would clear up so that we could see down till the brook forming out from where the water fell. The greenery was relaxing -- the mind was all cleared up, not taxing thoughts, nothing. We went till the source of the waterfall. Some of us paddled into it.

The next stop was Pratapgarh fort built by Shivaji. The severe weather rendered it interesting. The serpentine roads leading to the fort illustrated nature's face at its full glory. There were several small waterfalls along this road.

If only all weekends could be as refreshing as this.

Server Room Tragedy #9

2006-07-26T20:36:00.000+05:30

The situation:
IIIT site has been inaccessible from outside IIIT for the last two days. Karteek Alahari mailed me from Oxford to inform this.

The tragedy:
The tragedy is not that the site is down for two days. The tragedy is that server room doesn't know that it's down.

Qs:
1. You mentioned about meeting the director. What happened?
Ans: Yes, some of us met the director yesterday. We have scheduled an at meeting after the convocation (convocation time is hectic).

My Home on Wikimapia

2006-07-23T03:05:00.000+05:30

I am able to view my house on WikiMapia. In the iamge below, the rectangle showing "Prem-Villa" is my house. Since it is Patna, the neighbourhood is quite green yet. I always had a conviction that my house bisected the straight line joining Patna Jail with Patna Airport (both visible from my house). I was right.

Feels like I should change this post's title to: "My Home as I See It"

Server Room Tragedy #8

2006-07-22T23:19:00.000+05:30

The situation, the tragedies:
IIIT changes ISP. Internet deteriorates, and is unpredictable (my opinion). The transition of public IP addresses weren't carried out smoothly -- misconfiguration. The research server managed to get itself listed into a number of DNS blacklists. Mails from the research server were being bounced back or treated as spam (I tested with gmail). The DNS configuration file serial ids were unchaged, confusing the DNS caches for our IPs all over the world. I fixed some of these.

IIIT is now dependent on a single ISP. Alternate mail routing is impaired. No round-the-clock incoming mails now if this ISP is down. The internet gateway server is removed. It's firewall had been placed with the intention of protecting the webservers of several research labs since they don't have firewalls of their own.

Paresh tells me that he's unable to use spamassassin for filtering spams. Some configuration files are inaccessible. He mailed the sysadmin staff a week ago and now has given up hopes for a response.

Visesh tells me that his mails to some universities had bounced. They treated IIIT mails as spams. He has switched to gmail now.

The cookie crumbles:
Things are not right. This is not how IIIT's system administration ought to function. I have three words to describe it -- cluelessness, damange-control and irresponsibility. If student sysadmins are unnecessary, why does Mr XYZ come running to me for every silly but critical problem? I can continue "helping" but what after 1 month when I'm gone? There has to be a solution before a major disaster breaks out.

I'm going to meet the director. I've sought an appointment. Others (particularly labcoms) are welcome to join me.

Qs:
1. When are you going to talk to the director?
Ans: As soon as I get the appointment.

2. What are you going to suggest to the director?
Ans: I think that the server room cannot function without a student sysadmins. Not having student sysadmins is suicidal. Repeat after me. Not having student sysadmins is suicidal.

3. Do you think you are crazy?
Ans: Yes. Do you think so too? :)

Frailty, thy name is Manmohan

2006-07-12T21:46:00.000+05:30

"Frailty, thy name is woman," mused Shakespeare.

In the present context, Shakespeare would like to reconsider the phrase to something like the title of this post. Clearly, his Cambridge degree and Oxford doctorate could not evoke in him enough perseverance and will power. How else can the most educated prime minister in the history of India agree to life-changing decisions like 50% reservations, abandon disinvestments, office-of-profit bill, etc. All these when India's missile man is the president. Leave alone the constitution, how did the PM's conscience permit him these? As the only PM who could never make it to the Lok Sabha, is it difficult to see him as a puppet, intentionally planted to take orders from the real boss? Is India stupid? Maybe. Is the majority a fool? Definitely.

People, crowd, mass, the population just see the end-result, not the complete equation. One can blame terrorist organizations for the 7/11 Mumbai blasts. But does India have enough will power anyway to avert these? Is it impossible that the blasts were a signal from some disgruntled youths who wanted to make a point -- that no good can come from reservations? The PM may express solidarity by saluting the Mumbaikars for quick recovery from the blasts. But that's nearly not what a PM must be doing. While the intelligence tries to figure out the WHO for the blasts, the PM should think about the WHY for the blasts.

Someone would say -- "terrorists want to disunite India". What a shame! Why, in god's name, would they want to do that? What is the motivation? What'll they get? It's stupid to even think on these lines. They cannot be objective-less. They have to have a real RHS for the equation with 7/11 blasts as the LHS -- not something as placebo as "disunite" India. It just doesn't make sense. One doesn't get up one morning and start bombing just to disunite India. But if one's livelihood is snatched away -- yes. So, the real culprits are not the terrorists, but someone else, most of whom move about scott free. With ministers like these, who needs terrorists?

my news shoes

2006-07-05T19:54:00.000+05:30

My first paper

2006-06-23T03:25:00.000+05:30

My research paper titled "Scalable, Tiled Display Wall for Graphics using a Coordinated Cluster of PCs" made it as a poster paper to Pacific Graphics, 2006. The conference will be held on 11-13th October.

The paper discusses IIIT's efforts in building Tiled Display Walls using off-the-shelf inexpensive PCs. A 4x4 tiled display setup showing Fatehpur Sikri shown below.

Server Room Tragedy #7

2006-06-21T03:39:00.000+05:30

The Situation:
If you have followed Tragedy #6, I mentioned about all students receiving over 20 mails from a virus-infected PC. Even if you didn't follow Tragedy #6, you must've noted those mails in your mailbox -- yeah, the ones where viruses write poems too.

This time, the same got repeated, with the faculty. All the faculty were greeted with not 20, but over 60 such mails.

The Tragedy:
The server room has already gotten through the situation. The nature, cause and solution is the same. Is it that difficult to learn at least from old mistakes?

--
Qs:
1). You are reporting a tragedy after a long time. What happened?
Ans: I'm not frequenting the server room these days.

Server Room Tragedy #6

2006-06-08T21:45:00.000+05:30

The Situation:
Today students received numerous funny mails (seemingly) from a faculty account.

4 times -   [Students] Fw:
1 times - [Students] Fwd: Crazy illegal Sex!
2 times -   [Students] Fwd: image.jpg
5 times -   [Students] Fwd: Photo
2 times -   [[Students] Fw: Funny :)
4 times -   [Students] Fw: Sexy
2 times -   [Students] Re:
1 time -    [Students] Word file

This series went on till the evening.

The Tragedy:
Mr Someone-in-the-server-room was supposed to properly install the virus & mail scanner which had been stopped in damage-control mode yesterday. By the evening, due to some reason, the imap service too had stopped working. Obliviious of the solution, Mr Somebody rebooted the students server and left for the day (the server hadn't booted back yet). Even after the server booted back, the imap service hadn't got back.

--
Qs
1. Hey, but imap on 200 is working now.
Ans: Yup, I switched it on. I myself use imap.

Google's Hiring Strategy

2006-06-07T19:53:00.000+05:30

I found this reference to Google's hiring strategy. Google relies on the Lake Wobegon Strategy, which says only hire candidates who are above the mean of your current employees. An analysis of the simulation over time, using this strategy shows how good it is (the blue line). An alternative strategy (popular in the dot-com boom period) is to justify a hire by saying "this candidate is clearly better than at least one of our current employees." -- red line. The orange line corresponds to the no hiring manager strategy, in use by Google.

Server Room Tragedy #5

2006-06-07T17:41:00.000+05:30

The tragedy:
Mail problem: Mails getting delayed.

This tragedy hasn't finished -- it's still ongoing. One fine day, Mr Someone installed MailScanner on 200, and didn't care to make sure that everything was ok. Turns out, it wasn't. Mails started getting delayed, first minutes, then hours. Mailscanner isn't processing the mails properly and they're getting delivered only when it times-out. Mr Someone has to solve the problem, with the help of the new server room staff. In damage-control mode, he came running to me. I relayed some of the processing to another server. Mailscanner is switched off right now until he fixes the problem (I'm not going to fix it). No spam-checks, virus checks till then.

Update:
My mails were getting delayed. So I corrected some probs just so that they get delivered on time. I've informed Mr Someone what else needs to be done. The rest of the fixing (virus checks, spam checks) remains.

++Update (June 9)
MailScanner's virus and spam check probs are fixed now. Oh, that's evident isn't it. You didn't get "Fw: Photo" kind of mails in the evening.

Bihar on a devel track

2006-05-30T22:17:00.000+05:30

It has been six months since RJD was kicked out of power in Bihar and a new governement was sworn in. Nitish Kumar is the last hope of Bihar, they say. I had been to Patna for a fortnight this month. For a man facing the task not of mismanagement but of complete absence of governance, Nitish Kumar, I feel, has been quite successful. Phrases like "development", "investment", "production", which I did not hear about Bihar ever since I gained consciousness, are being discussed and debated. Yes, it cannot happen at the flick of a switch. Yes, it takes time. Yes, it'll take time before things really start getting visible. All that's required is a will, which sparks determination in more people. The rest, as they say, is details, and will follow.

I perceived a saner general environment in Patna. I could see highways being widened, made and repaired. Several of the hooligans who used to kill time on every other nukkar were missing. A long long way to go still, before people can recall that Nalanda University, once a seat of learning in India, was in Bihar.

Server Room Tragedy #4

2006-05-21T17:05:00.000+05:30

The Situation:
It is common knowledge that the internet had been sulking for quite some time from the start of this summer vacation. Refer the graph. Note the unduly high upload rate beginning the month of May.

The Tragedy:
Even a slug-head should realize that an upload rate of 3 Mbps is preposterous for IIIT. When I returned back from my vacation, I noted problems with the firewall configuration at the proxy server, and fixed this. The net has gotten better now.

FAQ:
1. You have resigned. Why did you bother?
Ans: For the simple reason that I need the internet.

2. Are you going to raise all these tragedies with the CRC, or the Director?
Ans: Yes. But not yet. Let the cookie crubmle.

Server Room Tragedy #3

2006-05-21T16:55:00.000+05:30

The Situation:
U K Visesh goes to the Server Room to get his IP unlisted from the IP Black list. He mentions his IP to a new guy there.

The Tragedy:
The new guy ponders for a while, then shakes his head, goes to the proxy server, and types: "unblock <IP>". But it instaneously results in a command not found. The new guy, entirely oblivious of it, replies -- Yup, done.

What the hell! This guy U K Visesh is in his fifth year at IIIT, and "command not found" is what is being shown to him. Too aghast to speak any further, Visesh silently returns back.

Server Room Tragedy #2

2006-04-28T04:09:00.000+05:30

A few months ago:
We realized that the proxy server's primary hard-disk was going bad. It was reporting errors in several sectors. We knew it would go down very soon. The Server Room staff were duly informed and we also acquired another system as a backup. This system was setup as a fallback proxy server

A few days ago:
Mr XYZ, a server room staff, reinstalls the fallback proxy server with FC5. All the configuration settings are gone

A few hours ago:
Proxy goes down. You guessed it right -- the hard disk crashed. With cries of SOS, the two new staff members rushed to us. Then started the damage control again. The proxy server won't boot. Need FC2 1st CD. And I was nuts to expect the Server Room to have one. Had to burn one (dig a well when it's fire). But it won't solve the hard disk problem -- hard disk problems can be hard, remember!

Anyways, we looked at the fallback system -- it had a brand new FC5 installed, smiling shamelessly, unconfigured. With nothing else to do, we start configuring this system. It took a lot of time before the basic services got working and the internet came back (thank god the backup server hasn't been tampered with yet).

svn recovery

2006-04-21T21:44:00.000+05:30

What do you do when you have a submission in a few hours, and your svn starts reporting something like:

svn: Unable to open an ra_local session to URL
svn: Unable to open repository 'file:///svn/gswall/trunk/Client'
svn: Berkeley DB error while opening environment for filesystem /svn/gswall/db:
DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery
svn: bdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery

To make matters worse, you recollect that the last non-svn backup is a bit too old, and you start blaming yourself for keeping all the blank DVDs unused.
Well, luckily (and thank God for it) there is:

svnadmin recover /path/to/svn

This did something to the Berkeley DB, and the prob fixed. I was almost dead.

Server Room Tragedy: #1

2006-04-13T13:09:00.000+05:30

Mon:
A TA informs the Server Room about a lab exam to be conducted on Wed morning. He asks for accounts for 100 students.

Tue:
Mr JP, the one who had been informed on Mon, forwarded, as is his custom, the work to one of the new staffs. He asked him to create the accounts MANUALLY. 100 accounts manually -- it took a whole day. He does it. But the TA is not informed. The TA was left to guess the system IP, the 100 user names, and the 100 passwords. Besides, the server room is clueless about the whether the teaching lab (the exam spot) is intact and working or not.

Wed: (Lab Exam day)
The TA inquires in the Server Room at 9:00. The exam was at 9:30. Only Mr Madhu is present (he wasn't there in this loop). Dr Anoop would be angry if things don't work out. Oblivious, he begins the damage-control mode, the only mode in which the Server Room ever works, whenever that is. A machine is handed over to the TA and he is asked then to create accounts, etc. Mr Madhu finds a script that was used earlier for this job, and the TA then creates the account, all accounts on the same system. Naturally, no quota, process limits, mem limits, etc were placed. The server froze several times during the exam.

Points worth nothing:
The server room, the place supposed to be the mecca of technical efficacy, creates 100 accounts manually. And the TA isn't even informed.
At the last moment, the TA is handed the server and is expected to feel at ease with it -- i.e. he is asked to manage the needful.

--
Expected Questions / FAQs

1. What's the hue-cry? What's your point?
Ans: Simple. The server room is not in a position to manage itself. Doing away with new student sysadmins is suicidal.

2. When do you expect the Server Room staff to get efficient?
Ans: Never

3. Why did you title this post as #1?
Ans: Things like this is just the beginning. More such exemplary activities happen every day. I'll post the next one as #2.

4. Such examples are called case-studies. I took SE, so I know.
Ans: I don't care what it is called. I took SE, but still I don't know, and happily so.