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Top 10 Reasons why Mumbai University Exams got postponed

2008-11-25T08:37:00.000-08:00

News came out on Mumbai University's website that examinations to be held from the 2nd of December 2008 have been postponed to the 12th.
So a flurry of people came online. Surprisingly, people were curious as to why they got postponed. And since nobody knew why, I too started asking around. All I got was some curious answers. :)

So presenting:
Top 10 Reasons why Mumbai University Exams got postponed
(credit goes to the people in brackets & me otherwise)

10. They may not have place to dump our papers coz all the place is occupied with the previous papers, which we had written (Rupal)

9. Not enough sales was recorded for text books across mumbai.

8. Instead of losing the answer sheets, this time they lost the question papers (Sushanth)

7. They all realized the significance of S.S.T - Suyash Standard Time :P (Anshul)

6. After 4 semesters of Sagar continously saying "Exams are gonna get postponed." and they never did get postponed, this sem they finally realized that this was the one sem when he didn't say that! So they postponed it!

5. They just printed the wrong dates on all the halltickets ..and they didn't want to go thru it again. (Shiv)

4. They misplaced the results for the upcoming exams. Thats right. Exams are fixed!

3. They realized that they didn't make the question papers yet! (Rupal)

2. Mahesh complained to the controller, - "What is these, the studies are not getting over. How I will writing the paper? Im living"

...and the No. 1 Reason why Mumbai University Exams got postponed:

1. cuz the univ guys want to watch the Champions League from 2nd to 10th ! :D HAAA (Shiv)

SkiFreek

2008-06-30T21:38:00.000-07:00

SkiFree
A friend of mine came over the other day to pass some time, sat on my PC and saw, among other things (like Simpsons Hit & Run, CStrike, CZero, GTA III, HardTruck), SkiFree on my desktop.
One by one he played (or tired to play) all the games on my desktop, till he reached SkiFree.
Having failed miserably to enjoy the other games, he started it and began playing.

Now let me explain something about this very simple game (from the Windows 3.1 ages). All you have to do is ski down the snow mountain, avoid obstacles, and occasionally perform jumps and flips to gain Style points. After you reach the finish line in the game, you can continue playing for some time.
Well for exactly how much time is unsure, since after a while, either you get bored, or the Jumping Snow-Goon (officially: Abominable Snow Monster) gets bored, so he comes and eats you!!

And there's nothing really that you can do about it. He eats you. Game stops. Thats it!

Sometimes you can avoid the Snow-Monster, but not for long :)

I've personally avoided him a few times, but then he ultimately does eat you after some time. And thats the fun of it when you're playing it for the first couple of times. :)
(You can get SkiFree over here. )

So this friend of mine, plays SkiFree for the first time, and goes nuts when the Snow Monster eats him up after the game.
"What the hell!! Why'd he eat me?!! Damn!!! Did you see that?? That monster ate me up!!!"
By now I'm smirking wildly.
So he restarts the game.
"Damn him! I'm playing again!"
And again after he reaches the finish, the monster comes a chasing.
"Aargh!! Here he comes again!!! Run Run!! How do you make this thing go faster!!??"
So I press F for him to play in the fast mode. He hits a tree. Monster chomps him up.
By now I'm laughing hysterically. And my friend's totally pissed.
"What the hell man!! What's wrong with that monster?!"
Restarts the game.
"This time I'm gonna ski all the way from the side! Just you watch!"
So this time he walks all the way to the right. And makes his skier ski all the way from the right. Avoiding obstacles. Carefully missing the snow-boarders. Till he reaches the finish line. Then he continues. Keeps going right. Carefully avoiding obstacles. With this determined look on his face. Probably thinking, "You just come now Mr. Snow Monster. Just you try and catch me now buster!". And by this point I, who so far was trying really hard to control my laugher, suddenly burst out laughing! But he keeps playing, till suddenly he sees the Monster chasing him.
"Aargh!! Run Run!"
Luckily this time he's already in fast mode, so he outruns's the monster till the monster is just out of frame.
"Ha Ha!! See I beat that monster!! Ha ha!!", and exults, lets his hands fly.
Without his navigation, his ski man trips over a tree and stops.
Out pops the Snow Monster. Chomp Chomp!!
Him: Noooooo!!!! You fc$#&ing ##$^^#. Damn You!
Me: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
And the Snow-Monster just stands there, jumping, grinning. :D

nothing is impossible!

2008-05-11T14:35:00.000-07:00

Talk about impossible!!

Maybe the server returned something like: 'This statement is a lie'
And the application went, "If it's a lie, then it must be false. Then that means its true! Which would mean its not true!... MEEP MEEP MEEP.. BZZZT! - Impossible Error!"

some new things

2008-01-28T10:49:00.000-08:00

For a switch to a newer OS I should ideally be switching to Windows Vista now. But tradition has it that I've switched to the next eldest OS with official support so I switched to XP 64-bit instead. Even with Windows 98 and 2000 it was the same. Just when Microsoft announced that it will stop Windows Updates to 98, I switched to 2000, and then some years back, again, support for 2000 was to be limited till only the year 2010. So here I am using XP. That too 64-bit. Frankly I can't really tell the performance differance between XP 32-bit & XP 64-bit. Because I haven't run XP 32-bit on the PC. I have it on the laptop, but then that sucks since its a Mobile Processor (that too an Intel Celeron!)

Here are some eXPeriences about this new OS:

Look-and-feel: Although I can't seem to install the XP Royalle theme or the Zune Desktop theme due to the fact that their installer doesn't seem to work on x64, the eXPerience is still very good.

ClearType: Instead of anti-aliasing just the very large or very tiny font size, now Cleartype anti-aliases almost all sized fonts.

64-bit: Finding native 64-bit applications is a real pain in the neck! Although Microsoft seems to give some seperate links for 64-bit applications and softwares, the truth is, most software developers don't seem to bother or it's probably too difficult. Heck! There's even no Flash support for 64-bit IE. I have to run it in 32-bit mode for the Flash plugin to work! (which is actually great if I have to avoid Flash on some site for some reason! ;))

FlashGet: For wierd reason has auto-registered itself when I installed it. This is a clean OS install over which I downloaded a newer version of FlashGet. However to my surprise, it is already registered! I didn't even do anything!

IE 7 : Love it for the tabs. Hate it for the tabs! While re-doing their tabs design into a no-frills version, they completely broke my IE 6 functionality. The Links bar dissapeared. Earlier I used to place the Address bar next to the Menu bar and the Links bar next to the Toolbar and the Googlet Browser button used to work as the integrated browser search. So total occupied space by the entire top portion was 75 px. Now I can't seem to move the Links bar out of its fixed place. I can't even shift the Address bar anywhere or even resize it. And the menu bar is nowhere to be seen! And yet, even without the Links bar it takes up 95 px! And I can't really do without the Links bar, so for me it takes up almost 120 px! And thats a lot of space going waste!

Fig 1.1: Comparison between old IE and new IE

Winamp 5.52: Rocks! Even though there is no substantial change, the new Bento skin is pretty nice too.

Fig 1.2: Winamp's new Bento Skin

Kaspersky 7: Works like a charm, except that my key is blacklisted. Keeps giving me that annoying pop-up!
Mouse: For some reason my mouse seems to work much smoother. When I move it on the mousepad, it physically seems a bit smoother! Even the functionality in the new 64-bit Microsoft Mouse software I had to download is good. The middle-scroll-click doesn't open a new tab! It shows 'Instant viewer'. Allows me to switch between the windows I've opened so far. Good, except that its a bit slow on my PC. Another good feature is the Magnify (thumb) button. I can instantly magnify anything on screen with the click of a button. You'd be surprised how useful this feature can be!

Fig 1.3: Instant viewer in Microsoft Mouse

RAM: Need some more of this please. 512MB is not enough. As it is I'm running low on disk space. So can't even increase the Virtual memory size much.

Fig 1.4: Going low on memory

Office 2007: Looks nice, works great! They've totally redesigned Office! Don't even get me started on where the menu bar went! But this time its for good! I really like what they've done with it! Unfortunately.... no more Clippy!! :( :( Boohoo!!

Fig 1.5: Office 2007's new sleek look! - I miss clippy

SMPS: Seems my Power supply (SMPS) is going bad. Sometimes it unexpectedly reboots. All I was doing was opening some folder and BAM! Reboot! No BSODs even! Other times it just doesn't start up at one go. It powers up, then powers off again before the boots screen shows up. Sometimes it even induces my harddisk to not showup at the BIOS screen. I truly hope its not the harddisk going bad! Once it even conked off when I was trying to plug in my USB printer! I saw some sparks fly, and POW! It rebooted! Trouble is, I haven't much time to debug this issue, so I really hope it works well for a while.
Tech@MET is here to rock! 8th & 9th Feb 2008. MET's ICS is having its own festival - Tech@MET . Did the designing of the brochures & posters. And got plenty of events in it.

So much for now. Rest of them updates later! :)

follow-up post

2007-12-15T12:59:00.000-08:00

Just following up from my previous post..

And then there's that time I had a nice song and dance (performance) in college! :)
Can you see where I am?

Been a while since I posted anything worthwhile. Hmm...

Too bad- been busy with exams so much!
Heard the wierdest questions during the exams this semester. Man! You know its a bad thing when you're reading that question for the first time on the exam question paper! O boy!

Like Q.: What is a Smart Pointer?
A.: A Smart Pointer is one which outsmarts you in the exams!

Sheesh!

sneak peek at last week

2007-09-09T13:11:00.000-07:00

Did a lot of things last week.
Went to VESIT's Praxis festival. Actually a lot of us from college did. Just to participate in the CS events. Turns out the bots there kicked our a$$. They were mod bots downloaded from the net. (Although when I asked Amar, he said they were 'normal bots at expert level' -- pshaa! no ways! I've played normal bots at expert level and I've pwnd them; they don't get jumping head shots at moving targets! They were definitely modded bots!)
We lost 7-12. Very sad. Especially since we all play CS in the lab at every practical session.
It seems that's going to stop soon. :(

So since CS wasn't our game, I went rappelling down the main VESIT building's terrace! Damn, it was fun!
Just getting both feet off the ledge was the kicker, because I was held on by just a rope and the instructor just kept saying, "Put both your feet down!"
I can't put both my feet down you twit! I'm 6 floors above the ground!!
It seemed scary at first, ( I even pinched my left hand - it got caught between the rope and the building's ledge), but then i learnt to let go.
I wanna do it again!

The Freshers party we arranged at Intercontinental The Grand was also good fun!
The on-now-off-now (or party-now-picnic-now) freshers party was at Club Sutra in Intercontinental. It was hella fun! Danced like a maniac and what not! Luckily all went as planned. Party wrapped up by 1:30am and then we ate at The Airport Restaurant. Then instead of ricking it up home so late Jammu and I decided to go to Aadha's place. There we watched The Hypercube. Well, more like, explained most of those concepts to Commode. (Thank you DC Comics and The Crisis of Infinite Earths!)
Then went home in the morning. Reached by 7.

Got a new All-in-one Printer / Scanner / Copier - EPSON CX5500
Now I can SCAN! Hooray! Looks amazing! Has lots of features! :)
Unfortunately doesn't fit in the existing printer spot. Its fatter by 1 cm than the space :(
So I kept it sideways!

P.S.: Will update this post with pics & scans later.

comfort oriented me

2007-08-26T09:50:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Babyzilla, I know now, that my laziness is Comfort Oriented.

I knew comfort was my thing!

It says:

`The laziness of comfort orientation - we just try to stay comfortable and cozy.'

And as long as that is possible, why not?!

It goes on to say:

`Comfort orientation comes in a variety of forms. Sogyal Rinpoche writes that in the East, for example, laziness often manifests as flopping down in the sun with one’s cronies, drinking tea, and letting the days pass by. In the West, he observes, laziness frequently manifests as speed. People rush from one thing to another, from the gym to the office to the bar to the mountains to the meditation class to the kitchen sink, the backyard, the club. We rush around seeking, seeking, seeking comfort and ease.'

And in the end they have also provided a 'So What To Do?'

But my comfort orientation didn't let me read past that part. So I guess I'm gonna stay like this! ;)

Bees Knees

2007-08-04T13:39:00.000-07:00

Here's a lesson for you.
When a bee comes buzzing in your home, don't swat it.
Not because it will sting you back, but its more to fun to trap it in a box!
Thats what dad did when a bee started buzzing all over the living room. Although, this time around, he didn't gift-wrap it and send it to anyone!!
Boy was that fun or what. He trapped a bee in a box, and then gave it to a friend as a surprise!
And his friend went home, and opened it in front of his family. As soon as he opened the box, out zipped the angry little bee, found all the doors and windows closed, zipped around a little more, and stung his little daughter! :D
Hahaha!!

Watch..

ghostrider

2007-06-12T12:04:00.000-07:00

There's this amazing story

A guy finishes giving his boards exams - last paper. Waits for a bus at the bus stop. While he's waiting, along come two of his friends, on a bike, one teases him a little and flashes his butt to him standing on his bike!! Half the people standing at the bus-stop burst out laughin! He's laughing too. They're good friends, and whacky too! They rev off, leaving him waiting for a bus.

Buses come and go, none from his route. This always happens. You must have heard the axiom - 'When you're searching for something, its always at the last place you look for'. It the same axiom intertwined with life - 'When you're waiting for your bus, its always the last one to arrive'
And finally it arrives. Some friend of his yells the number. Everybody start their warm-up for the run. And a bunch of them standing for the bus jump in. They get in. The conductor jostles the crowd, moves them forward. And since he doesn't want to get bugged by his friend again he starts inching his way forward.

There's no place to sit now. So he waits. All he can do to bide time is watch the road outside and the bottom half of cars going by. And on the highway, it always seems the bus' got no speed limits. The driver weaves past traffic better than a bike would. Inches past another truck.
Right through an amber signal.
He does seem to be going pretty fast.
Too fast! He almost nicked another bus!
Suddenly he sees bright flashy signs. 'USE DIVERSION'. There's some roadwork going on ahead and traffic slows to a crawl. A normal scene one would think, except the only thing he's thinking is, "If traffic's slowing to a crawl, why aren't we!?"
Suddenly the bus speeds through two busses on each side, seperated by an inch of air. Everybody on the bus seems as calm as ever, and he breaks into a sweat. Slowly he inches his way to the front of the bus to see the driver.

His arms move from right to left. He swerves the steering wheel an entire 80 degrees to the left. The bus comes almost to the footpath. His thoughts race to form some sort of conclusion, only to find there's isn't any.
His thoughts scream, "What's going on? When did I start driving this bus? Why is it so fast?"
He sees traffic ahead. He starts veering to the left again, almost scrapes across a concrete wall. Hits a car ahead and pushes it out of the way.
Free road ahead. For some unknown reason he gets an urge to speed. He hits the gas with as much anxiety as he'd wished it were the brake. Zoom!

They reach the bus-depot. Everybody gets off at the last stop. As he gets off he sees his mum on board. Rushing back in again he helps her with her stuff. Everybody else gets off while he tries to tell her the bus was out of control.
"There must have been some evil driver today ma!"
She rubbishes him off. The bus starts to make a final turn at the depot to park.
Who's driving? He goes to the front again.
There's nobody there.
The steering's moves on its own. The gear shifts.
All he does is point it out to his mum. They rush to get off the bus.

Thats the story!
Except that the 'a guy' in line one is me.
And this was a dream.

three stars for this one!

2007-05-21T12:15:00.000-07:00

Sometimes i get really good shots from my camera :)
Like this one!

I prefer pencils

2007-04-23T09:17:00.000-07:00

I'll finally be able to study now - I got me some pencils!
Somehow, a pencil adds to my thinking power!

I can chew on it - when in need of deep thought.
I can scratch my head with it. (Or those unreachable parts of your body)

I can tap it against the desk, whenever I get something wrong.

If I make a mistake, I can immediately erase it.

I can write upside-down with it! (Something which is frequently encountered with me)

I can doodle endlessly and anywhere.

I can poke someone with it.

I can tuck one over my ear.

I can then search for hours where that pencil went. (Silly me! Its over my ear!)

And of course, just use it to mark/underline in my text.

And apart from all this, nobody ever suspects if you're studying when you have a pencil in your hand!

death by fuss!

2007-03-18T14:14:00.001-07:00

So SIES college, Nerul had what could possibly be the last inter-collegiate fest of this season.
Naturally, I had gone. (That naturally coming because I had gone to Thakur's fest, turned out to be the only guy from MET participating!)
But this time almost 11 of us had gone! (That number coming down from a 20 who had actually given their names up 2 go)
And it was fun! Not that the events were spectacularly different - same old events, same old crowd. Good Fun!

At gaming, we have CS, and for that we had practiced a bit, in lab sessions, almost every practical session, (without the teachers knowing, because they used to leave the labs to us anyway!). Especially Nix, Shreader, Invader & I (Lackey) had done this a bit more often.
Of course, we were still noobs compared to pros like 'fr.Dante' from Thakur college or 'xSports//:Fuss' from VESIT college.
And they were coming too...
But our team sailed through the elims.
And just for kick, three of our classmates wanted to play too so the registered - team of 3, handicapped by 1. Now they were playing it fresh, so fresh that I was actually teaching one guy 'laden' how to play and what to click! And surprisingly they got through the elims too! :o
Whoa! Cool! :)

Death by fuss!
Now at the second round, fuss's reputation preceded his head shots, and the team he was supposed to be against- BVIT, ran away when they found out that they were against VESIT. So they pit us against them! Dammit! We were creamed!

And then our other team - 'osama' 'bin' 'laden', (that how we'd named those three, Tahir, Atish & Milind) went up against some IMCOMS team and they kicked their ass!!
Dammit! I just taught laden how to click!
They went 3-3, and then 4-0 after the switch!
Man! Then I guess we would have raped those guys!
We were laughing our guts out there! :D

And that wasn't all!
Badminton!
Atish participated just for fun. And his opponent for elims, was some pro guy. He even changed to his shorts and straps and all. And this guy made so many faults.
He just kept trying to smash it over and over, but kept netting it! All the points Atish got were unforced errors! :D
Ultimately he lost and got eliminated and Atish went to round two. Now for the next round the next day, however, Atish lost miserably. No effort at all, and it was fine with him - he had just participated for the heck of it. So when he's back, Tahir is like, "There's that guy you eliminated. Man he must be cursing himself real bad"
Atish: "Why?"
Tahir: "Probably disgusted with himself, who did I lose against!"

:D

stupid blogger labrary

2007-03-10T10:54:00.000-08:00

Stupid Blogger didn't allow me to login and post new posts until I upgraded my account to a Google Accounts account!
Now I had to go and make a new google account! Would you believe how many attempts failed? Most of the good user-id's were already taken! Dammit!

Ultimately went with wirefall.
Thats now my blogger+gmail id!

Also I was readin ADFS and guess what I saw!

Hehehe! Now that's silly! Wait till I tell everyone in the Labrary about this!! :D

10 years of silly quests

2007-01-28T09:00:00.000-08:00

my long long quest is finally over!!

I finally have all 10 years of Calvin and Hobbes. Taken strip by strip from www.calvinandhobbes.com, one strip saved everyday. Not much of a quest really, yes. But good fun.

the very first image putup by ucomics.com when they started it over

It all started when Bill Watterson stopped creating new strips for Calvin and Hobbes.
After that, the the then comics site, ucomics.com started to publish them online, starting from the very first strip! They even bought calvinandhobbes.com domain. Ever since I've been slowly collecting each .gif file everyday. Subscribed to the mycomics email list, so even if I missed a day, it would be mailed. Even set all my browser's homepage to calvinandhobbes.com!

However, there was a huge loss once. My OS (the then Win98SE) had crashed on me. But using Getright (my the then download manager) and some daily scripts (which the then Getright supported) was able to get 2 years worth of strips all at once! That too on a dial-up connection (my the then internet connection).

Now I have from ch851118.gif to ch951231.gif a total of 3545 files in 11 folder (a whopping 91.6mb, which doesn't sting that much on a dial-up if u collect a 16kb file everyday - for 10 years! ;) )

And at the end, ucomics, went web2.0 what with changing its domain from www.ucomics.com to www.gocomics.com. Also tried to deter people like me from saving .gif files by changing their viewer to Macromedia Flash. But that subscription for list@mycomics paid off, providing .gif files as usual. But now they are repeating it over again. I just did a file compare with Beyond Compare 2 and the original ch851118.gif matches with ch070101.gif - byte to byte!

In the meanwhile, my college changed, my PC changed, even my frikkin residence changed!

I guess there are just some die-hard fans for Calvin and Hobbes :)

aaaaaaaah!!

2007-01-13T08:03:00.000-08:00

Boohoo!!
I lost all my SMS's from my inbox in my cell phone!! :(
All I did was swap my mum's SIM to check why she wasn't able to send any text messages.
And now they're gone!! All gone!! Inbox, Sent Items, Drafts!! :(
Only SIM Archive survived the transplant!! :(
How stupid. What's the point of phone message memory if its going to erase itself after a SIM change!?
Sniff Sniff!!

Bloody orkut!
Today's fortune:Avoid a hasty decision.
Now it tells me!! :D

the flat screen

2006-10-28T09:05:00.000-07:00

I just read Joel Spolsky's - The Phone Screen.
He writes very very well indeed. He should be a teacher.

So now that I know how companies (or atleast this one) screen you on the phone, I'm all prepared for a phone interview.

No kittens!
First things first, my grade will be in fine print.
And having had no previous jobs (so there goes experience), it will still be quite a task to get my powerful-sounding jobs down a notch.
But seventeen languages!! My God! What is he applying for? Software translation? Is there a Guinness Record for this?
I just know three, and a few more broken up maybe. So if I include programming languages and add gibberish, then maybe I'd just reach 10.
Obviously, kittens are a definite no-no! But an impressive resume atleast gets the company to call me up. So I did save a baby eagle once. Its a long story, and good - at least it will fill up my otherwise empty resume!

Once the phone interview starts, I won't have much to say about myself, so I'll get a good book lying nearby, and read something nice about someone nice from there.
"Kylie Minogue is a phenomenon of truly international proportions. To date she has released nine albums, six long-play videos, in addition to the Greatest Hits double album and video package, live album and video and 39 singles throughout the world, all of which have been hits...."
[click!] [beep][beep][beep]...
"Hello?..."

But once they start asking me questions, its smooth sailing for me.
"How would you design a data structure or a block of code to do x? "
"Didn't you ask my the same question last year?"
"I did?"
"Yes! You ask the same questions year after year!"
"Well, do you have an answer this year?"
[click!] [beep][beep][beep]...
"Hello?..."

Here are some ideas to get you started:

How might you design a program that lets people play Monopoly with each other over the internet?
"Well sir, my first step would be obvious. I' d google for 'Monopoly' and..."
[click!] [beep][beep][beep]...
"Hello?..."
How would you implement code to operate the elevators in a high rise?
"There would be two buttons: UP and DOWN. Guess what they do!"
[click!] [beep][beep][beep]...
"Hello?..."
How would you implement the rendering engine of a web browser?
"Well there's this control for Internet Exp..." [click!] [beep][beep][beep]...
Man! Didn't even have to complete that one! Was it IE?

That went well. I'm almost through! Last question! Woohoo!

"Is there anything you would like to ask me? Any questions about our company, about working at our company?"

Now I'll probably be asked this at more than one place.

Microsoft: "Can you put me through to Helpdesk now?"

Apple: "Didn't you guys copy Microsoft's idea of a GUI?"

Google: "Does Google have a website?"

booked

2006-09-23T12:47:00.000-07:00

Using a new id3 RF tracker tag, I start this new post.

One book that changed your life?
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
However it wasn't just the book that changed my life. First it was the radio series. Then the TV series. Then the 4 books from the trilogy. And finally the long awaited movie.
One book you have read more than once?
Dune - Frank Herbert
Because I got Prelude to Dune: House Atreides after I got Dune, and House Harkonnen before House Atreides and House Corrino before that. So each time I used to go back and put the pieces back in the huge jigsaw puzzle of the Dune Universe
One book you would want on a desert island?
The Hitchhikers's Guide to the Galaxy - Megadodo Publications
I'm not talking about the book written by Douglas Adams. This is infact, the wholly remarkable book published by the Great Publishing Corporations of Ursa Minor Beta. Because apart from the words "Don't Panic" written in large friendly letters on the cover of the book, it has something written in it for every situation. Even being stuck in a crack in the ground underneath a giant boulder you can't move, with no hope of rescue.
One book that made you cry?
Operating Systems - William Stallings
Because everytime I wanted to find out just what a process is, I had to read through 4 pages of mind boggling explanations that lead to nowhere and 3 diagrams which looked like a cross between one of Schulz's characters and a box of pointing arrows strewn across. Apart from which, every sentence had references given to other books and authors in the most irritating manner ever. (MQ1989)
One book that made you laugh?
Justice League International - DC Comics
Now I know this is cheating one out. But these comics really kill! With Booster Gold and Blue Beetle trying to make the most out of every situation, its a real blast if G'Nort is coming.
One book you wish had been written?
How to use your brains
Because I come across many people in life who just don't use them enough.
One book you wish had never been written?
None yet that I have come across.
One book you are currently reading?
Nothing right now.
One book you have been meaning to read?
(Any of the books suggested according to my syllabus! Because I haven't got a single one yet!)
Actually it is The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
And I still need to borrow it from some friend to read it. Because I've learnt that there's a different class to reading books borrowed from a friend. And buying a book from a bookstore can never match that.
Tag five people
Gadling, CeeTee. Two are enough for now...

FREE-SOFT-WARE-KEYS

2006-08-03T03:49:00.000-07:00

Since my Anti-Virus Update definition Subscriptions are going to expire soon, I started Googling for a better Anti-Virus Software (preferably free).
As I was surfing through (some known and some totally unknown) AV websites I needed a way to find out how popular and reliable these software are. I couldn't rely on editorials and reviews anymore, they always seem bland in the sense of long term usage. (Most reviewers install them, check the interface, check its functionality, praise it, criticize it, conclude it. I doubt they ever continue using it and review after/over 6 months or over some serious problems and even if they do, they wont be doing it for every a-v s/w).
So what better way to check its popularity than Social Bookmarking! And what better site than del.icio.us!
So I started using the 'Related' browser button to check how many people have already fav'ed it.

But what I stumbled upon was something even more interesting!
A few users had even saved their License Key and Name!
Was it for the sake of convenience or for not knowing whether anyone else is ever going to visit their favs, I don't know. But Social Bookmarking meant that anyone could visit it. (with the right buttons of course).

So here's how to click the right buttons!
[Required: One del.icio.us account.]
Have the del.icio.us/related bookmarklet configured in your browser.

Google for the software in question. (Say an anti-virus)
Go to a few different sites.
Navigate to the main page or the download page.
Now check their stats by clicking on the related bookmarklet. Del.icio.us will show you a list of users who have previously linked that page with their comments. Some users, (not all, and sometimes none) have saved the License Keys also! :D
If there is no del.icio.us history, that probably isn't a good software anyway!
Works only on software where the trial period is available for download AND the s/w registration is based on a License key AND some user on del.icio.us has saved it there!
Eg: Avast.com

The success rate of this technique is very low actually. But using a little adaptive strategy, (like different Bookmarking sites etc.) can bring on lots results.
I'm still working on that! ;)

It appears we have a problem...

2006-07-17T11:58:00.000-07:00

For those who can still read this... Hi!

Since *.blogspot.com is being blocked by India's major ISPs, I'm pretty surprised I can even post this message. But, it turns out that blogger.com is not being blocked. Even www.blogspot.com does a DNS redirect to blogger.com. (But all sub-domains don't work however).

Apparently this measure has been taken to prevent some rogue factions to communicate while the authority gets a proper lockdown on their IPs.
Ok. Then this won't take a long time.

Then why the hell are people making such a ruckus?! Can't you have a little patience? Give it a little time.

For those who already know how to goto proxy sites to view pages, what seems to be the problem?
Those who want to post new messages, what seems to be the problem?
Those who are lay about it, ok, frustration is understandable, and maybe instead of 'SITE BLOCKED!', they could have put, 'Work in progress, please bare with us'.

So please bare! :P
Cut the Govt. some slack. (You don't think they would have blocked them proxy sites too?)
Things ought to be back to normal soon.
(If not, then panic!)
Till then, chill!
We do have a democracy to uphold!

who says i dont think anymore

2006-06-06T12:13:00.000-07:00

I just realized where the word tissue came from.
When you sneeze, you go: "Atichoo! Atichoo"

Now if you look closely, thats 'A'-'tichoo'.
A tissue.
And everyone offers you a tissue when you sneeze. Now you know why!

Now... if only I knew where the word fart came from...

up north

2006-05-10T04:08:00.000-07:00

Last year this time I was in Delhi!!
Shiv, Chetan and I had left on the 6th - Rajdhani Exp.
The journey was awesome. There were all these kids in our compartment and Chetan just hated it. Haahaa!
And we saw lots there.
Like... Vinu's house, Vinu's computer, Vinu's big hairy b***.
What I meant was... his big hairy back!!
But actually we roamed a lot - India gate, Red Fort, Agra Fort, the Taj Mahal, etc etc. (DTC buses too!)
And how different Delhi is! The place is huge! Too huge!! You can't even see any street cricket! Whoa!
(Esp. the buses. Gotta admit, even if BEST's goin in losses, they still got a much better service.)

And now here I am sitting at home, doing nothing, but postin blogs. pssht!!

extensions for IE

2006-04-27T09:14:00.000-07:00

Hahahaha!
I knew this would come. I just knew it!
IE people have opened up a new site: IEAddOns.com.
Reason?
(For the not so bright:)
Only IE serves little purpose, as does only FF.
Most of FF users use it in conjunction with a lot of extensions (equivalent to plugins for IE)
Now if IE comes out without a huge array of plugins to counter FF's extensions they know what might happen!! Not that there weren't any plugins before. They were just too dispersed and users had no way to find out where to get a good plugin and how they were rated.
Now you know.
Now the ultimate for IE would be a plugin that uses FF's extensions in IE. Or one that opens a page using a Gecko engine!
Haha!
Enjoy the plugins!

remember these

2006-04-24T04:10:00.000-07:00

There are lots of shortcuts in windows.
(And that is why it crashes a lot too: cuz they took lots of shortcuts ;))

These following few are the ones I remembered from my Win3.1 and MS-DOS's Edit program endeavours, which surprisingly still work in 2k/XP.

Ctrl + Esc : Opens the Start Menu (Useful if you don't have the Start Key on your keyboard. In Win3.1 it used to open the Program Manager's Task List)
Ctrl + Shift + Esc : Opens the TaskManager.
Shift + Ins : Paste (i.e. Ctrl + V)
Shift + Del : Cut (i.e. Ctrl + X)
Ctrl + Ins : Copy (i.e. Ctrl + C)
F10 : Opens the Menu (i.e. Alt. So Alt + F becomes F10 + F etc etc.)

Some of the few I've quite forgotten.

Rest of them are all listed on this page by some guy. And I'm pretty sure Microsoft must have some help file on it. Basically it's the control's behaviour which each application inherits so no biggie.

they're back!

2006-04-05T11:03:00.000-07:00

The Cola wars are back!
Not that they were ever gone really....
Finally!
It's been a long time. Nothing to do with the Cola, or the taste, or the price or the offers or anything actually related to the cola.
They're the Cola Ad wars.

Pepsi comes up with some Pepsi TV ad.
The bloke's asking some techies to adjust his TV antennae to tune to Pepsi TV.
Out pop one of the most hottest anykinda saleswomen I've ever seen. Priyanka Chopra and Kareena Kapoor. (They're wearing a uniform and all, but that doesn't fool me. I know who they are.)
But all they do is ask him, "Pepsi TV chahiye?"
And all he does is squirm like a guy getting his first wedgie.
The Ad, however, is to be continued.
Great! I never follow any TV series, now I follow the ad?

But Sprite kicks in, making the second half much more interesting and also clearing up what's Cola and what's TV. (After all, Sprite does say - "Clear hai!")
A total rip-off of course.
I'm just waiting for a reply for this one.

(You know a guy's day is wasted if he starts having opinions about Cola Ads!)

musically speaking

2006-03-22T10:31:00.000-08:00

I love the sounds a laptop makes. They're so much different than a PC.

I love the keyboard. Unlike a PC keyboard, which goes 'thak.. thak.. thak.. khachak!', (where 'thak thak' are some normal keys and 'khachak' is the big Enter key), a Laptop keyboard goes 'pichik.. pichik.. pichik.. pachak!'

And I love the touchpad! A regular scroll mouse goes something like: 'squeakity.. squeakity.. squeakity.. click!'. But a touchpad! Oh No!. A touchpad is much more classy. Touchpad is something like 'fssssss.. fsssss.. fssssss.. thpppbth' (where fssss fssss is normal scrolling... and the thpppbth is when you tab the touchpad to simulate a click)

I wonder what else I'd be able to hear...
(maybe I should switch off Winamp!)
(waitaminute! I think I hear my ma callin!)
bye!

today was

2006-03-03T14:15:00.000-08:00

quite a wierd day.

tab! you're it...

2006-02-22T10:43:00.000-08:00

Try this. Open as many tabs in FireFox as you possibly can - (until your processor's down on its knees), take a screenshot, and upload it at flickr.com with a tag that goes - furiousfirefoxtabs. You open it in a single window, or multiple windows - your wish!. You can even use any other tabbed browser you like, say Opera, Mozilla, Netscape, IE7 beta, Flock beta, Avant Browser, iRider, Konquerer, Safari, Crazy Browser, OmniWeb Browser, Maxthon, Athlon, Kommunikator, SpaceSurfer, QuickNet, ...etc, etc... I'm really just making up names right now, but you know, the usual plethora of tabbed browsers that are out there! (Too bad NCSA Mosaic and HotJava don't come tabbed huh?!). Its just that it started off with this guy trying to see how far you can push your computer (farther, if it's not your computer i'll bet!) using Firefox. So here's my entry on flickr. There's another one too which shows the memory usage after all the tabs have been closed. I must say, FF for Win has surely followed in MS's footsteps- occupy memory after tabs are closed.

no time limits

2006-02-16T14:20:00.000-08:00

There's no difference between day and night. Infact, night is more day than day, night.

Chatting: online, awake.
Surfing: online, awake.
Talking on the phone: awake.
Missed calls: awake.

Those who are on the other side of the globe are too precious to talk to.
Those who are right here. They're up anyway. Online or on the phone.

Why I'm still not asleep.
Got home at (12+) midnight. Was at Shiv's place with Chetan.
Get online (12:30+), chatting with Shiv, Chetan, Girish...
Bro's snowed in (1+). So chatting with him after a long time.
Chetan's gone (2+). He has to goto Pune tomorrow morning.
Shiv's off (3+).
P calls up (3+). Shift over. Talking on the phone.
Sis gives a missed call (3:30+). Give her a missed call back. Then msg her to goto sleep.
Boo comes online (3:45+). "Are you crazy?? Online at this time?!". Chat with her.
Bro so hungy (3:45+). Off to eat out.
Chatting with Boo (4+). Lots to talk about.
Bye to Girish (4:30+). He calls up. "Bye". Not everytime. This time.
Bye to Khushboo (4:50+). Lots of luv.
Bye to bro (4:50+). Lots to him too.
Off to sleep (5+).

Its not like its compulsory or anything. I'm not doing much. And in the day. Well. Nobody's really there that much. So I try to study. Repeat: try.

And get through the day.

(Ahem: At this point I would find it appropriate to mention that my 'day' begins at 12+. Hehe!)

points from a line

2006-02-13T10:11:00.000-08:00

There's a huge line for just submitting a form for an entrance test. I Got in line at 9 and got over with it after 1:30. Thats killing. So what to do. Just look around.

A totally macho- kinda guy comes and stands straight off in the girls line. (Maybe he's submitting a form for some girl who couldn't make it. He acts as if he's feeling wierd to stand in that line.) The watchman comes and asks him about the form he's filling, looks at him surprisingly and tells him to get in the 'oh-so-never-ending' guys line. Laughter erupts once he's earshot.

We are to stick two passport sized photographs on the form. I have no gum, but i'm pretty sure they must have provided some. I go up to the lackey and ask him, "Bhaisab, yeh... gum ki line kidhar hai?"

Line is now in the lab to get the form verified.

"Thank God! This is the last line, then, finished", exclaimed the guy in front of me.

I said, "Oh no. Don't you know? You have to goto the 1st floor. There's a line there..."

"What!?", he interrupts me.

Just then the officer directs some guy to go to the first floor (to get a xerox actually, which the guy hadn't got).

"See! I told you. You need to go to the first floor line after this."

"What for?!"

I smile.

"Oh very funny yaar!"

Guy works slow.

Girl behind me sighs, "Its too much yaar!".

A second line forms near the door, where another man starts verifying forms to quicken things up.

"Now whats going on there? What d'ya suppose that line's for?", she said.

People ask me like I know. Ok. I know.

"Thats the line to go out."

"What?! No way"

Cool! even though just for a sec, she actually believed me.

look! up in the sky

2006-02-06T11:02:00.000-08:00

He didn't have a big 'S' on his chest.
He wasn't even in his blue-red uniform with a red cape.
He was just this guy sitting behind a desk like any guy in an office.
And yet mom recognized him at first go.
It and it wasn't "that actor who was in that movie" kind of recognizing, or "I've seen him before....".
Christopher Reeve starring in an episode of Smallville as Dr. Virgil Swann.
"Thats Superman! Na?"
Thats recognition.

Combo1

2006-01-30T13:35:00.000-08:00

After spending so much time figuring out which song it was and then finally downloading the song it turns out to be a different one man!

Its this song I had at Barrista which had lyrics from the song 'A few of my favorite things' (originally from the movie The sound of music). The song was undoubtedly by OutKast. No doubt about it. So I set about searching for lyrics and album info. And after downloading the album (2 actually), the song had no lyrics in it!! Just music! What the fart-fart! And I'm pretty darn sure that I had heard the lyrics (no matter how drunk on coffee I must have been). Great! Now I'll have to go through downloading the remix versions and DJ mixes. One thing that would have made it worse though, would have been if I was on a dial-up now!

Also whats really funny is that there's no decent torrent for Lynard Skynard. Damn!

In other news...

On my india.com account, I saw this moveTo dropDown box which said Combo1. Looks like some programmer left a Combo here. Didn't even bother to name it! Wow. What a cool bug!

Then my brain yelled, "Ha Ha! Fooled Ya!!"

Heh. Turned out, it was me. I had long back made a folder called Combo1. I used to see this empty DropDown Combo box, (obviously left for moving selected mails to that Folder), and since I had no folder as such it used to be blank. Thats bad programming. So I had made a folder called Combo1. Now it looked like a default Combo box somebody dropped out.

Nice trick.

Then I forgot all about it.

Then I saw it today.

And I fooled me.

And its not just this once. With me happens everywhere, anywhere. My brain fools me. I think it has a mind of its own...

eof: Y'know one of the things I like about IE best? The way it renders pages. Not loads. I mean the look-&-feel render. How each page can be felt through IE. In other browsers its all glazed by the browser.

pigs can fly

2006-01-25T12:22:00.000-08:00

Y'know how some people try to act all aloof? Like they're better than you? Like if you tell them something exciting, they try to make it sound like its no big deal. "From where I come from, this happens all the time".
Sure! Do pigs fly?

And then if suddenly someone brings a baby in the room, no matter how heated an arguement it was, the baby suddenly takes over. Everyone goes googoo, gaga, trying all sorts of noises to make the baby laugh. (That's probably cause baby's laughter is damn cool anyway.) So, its solong arguement! People go off tangents trying to somehow get that baby to laugh, and once that's done, they beam with pride! As if you've just accomplished world peace! :) And somehow everyone switches to an ages old language you had inherited from your mother - Gibberish. No matter how many languages you learn, you never forget this one, its universal. I'll bet even aliens speak it. Doesn't matter if they're green or bug-eyed or both. You will still go "goo goo gaa gaa".

just go with it

2006-01-22T11:16:00.000-08:00

Y'know what i realized? No matter the fact that my template's not ready yet, I can still post here. I mean if I know myself properly, my template will never be complete. I will always be sprucing it up bit by bit. So I'm going to start posting already.
To heck if the template's got bugs in 'em still.

Sweet Home Alabama!!!

WooHoo!

again! again again!

2006-01-19T12:39:00.000-08:00

man i'z gonna make this again man!
hell with blogger. makin my own template and starting anew... what say?
gotta fix em template bugs first!

Suyash's Views on Bloging the network: blog me

2005-09-23T11:21:00.000-07:00

Suyash's Views on Bloging the network: blog me
Alternatively. If life has'nt been good to you so far...

blog me

2004-05-30T08:42:00.000-07:00

How many people blog daily?.
whats the essential need to blog...
its just like a forum... kinda like your own personal forum

what to do when you're stuck in a crack in the ground underneath a giant boulder you cant move, with no hope of rescue.
Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far.
Alternatively, IF life has'nt been good to you so far, consider how lucky you are that it wont be troubling you much longer.