Required field must not be left blank - so.

Outrageous

2011-05-08T21:30:00.005+05:30

But seriously, Rage Maker rocks.

Do not disturb

2011-03-26T18:51:00.006+05:30

Just called up a friend and heard this:

"The Uninor customer you are trying to reach is currently switched off. Please try after some time."

Self defense

2011-01-23T18:39:00.002+05:30

You know that new levels of privacy protection are reached when you go to photos of me on Orkut and see the following:

Can I stay in and connect with friends ?

2010-12-26T12:16:00.009+05:30

Just this once.. pleeease ? I promise I'll do my (home)work later.

Not Geocities too..

2010-04-25T22:41:00.001+05:30

Yahoo! Briefcase - 30 Mar 2009.
Yahoo! 360° - 13 Jul 2009.
Yahoo! Geocities - 26 Oct 2009.

RIP ?!

[Original: 7/10/09, 8:33 AM]
Update: Just noticed that there is some site that seems to have mirrored some (all?) of the Geocities content: http://www.geocities.ws/abhijitpai/

Value addition

2010-04-25T22:01:00.004+05:30

The Subway at our campus has this Everyday Value offer where we get an Aloo Patty Sub (6") for just Rs. 50 on any day of the week. However, their Veggie Delite, which is exactly the same as the Aloo Patty Sub without the Aloo Patty itself still costs Rs. 55. This means that they are actually paying us Rs. 5 to eat that Aloo Patty. I wonder, is it that bad ?
Next time when I want to eat a Veggie Delite, I'm going to ask them to give me an Aloo Patty Sub, and then, "no Aloo Patty please..".

Terrestrial parachute

2009-11-08T21:49:00.004+05:30

"A poet was once asked, If his house were on fire, what would he save ? And he said, 'I would save the fire. Without fire, nothing is possible.' "
Robert Ludlum's The Sigma Protocol

Samsung SyncMaster 2033 TFT Monitor bought

2009-10-01T12:03:00.002+05:30

Bought a Samsung SyncMaster 2033(SW Plus 50 cm) 20" widescreen TFT LCD monitor after some (much?) deliberation at Anandit Infotech, S. P. Road for 7500/-. The 19" Samsung was 7100/- and the 22" was 9400/-. The monitor has VGA and DVI inputs.

linug glinug

2009-09-30T20:44:00.004+05:30

Read the threads, not specifically just those posts:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/vrlinug/message/1071
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/vrlinug/message/1068
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/vrlinug/message/1259
'nuff said.

The sketch shop at Eat Street

2009-09-20T21:23:00.001+05:30

The small computerized sketch-and-frame guy near the entrance of Eat Street (off the Hussain Sagar lake, Necklace Road, Hyderabad) was quite frank when one of us wondered aloud about whether is was the rent that caused him to charge us what he was asking for. "My shop's rent is the cheapest in Eat Street", he says, "25,000". Given the size of that miserable square box, we exclaim about it. "I sell for about 1 Lakh a month". The other make-shift shops go for 35k and the actual eateries are rented out at 1.5 Lakh a month apparently. My friends and I walk out, the two sketch copies gotten at Rs. 250 a piece - 100/- for the print (down from the 150 he initially asked for) + 150/- for the frame.

Dominos: Cheesy or Fishy ?

2009-06-06T17:46:00.005+05:30

Menu off here.

The world's best photo site

2009-05-09T17:44:00.002+05:30

Off the Flickr login page:

Flickr is almost certainly the world's best photo site.
Not only does Flickr make you smell better, it also makes you more attractive !

Goodbye Axe, Park Avenue and Rs. 35/- haircuts.

Tale of the Dos's

2009-05-09T12:30:00.003+05:30

It's been some time since I saw four 5-rated funnys nested on comments with a Slashdot article.
Off:
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/08/169226&art_pos=12
titled R.I.P. MS-DEBUG 1981 - 2009 which talks about Microsoft retiring debug in Win7.

Slumdog and Twilight

2009-05-05T23:12:00.003+05:30

Just read this off the first page of Digg:
(http://digg.com/movies/Only_MTV_Can_Pit_Slumdog_Millionaire_Against_Twilight)

Only MTV Can Pit "Slumdog Millionaire" Against "Twilight"

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3ifb8c14aa44b9217711321ef409482ea4

hollywoodreporter.com — Mark Burnett, who produces the freewheeling ceremony, said either film has a great chance of winning best picture. ARE THEY KIDDING?

The funny part was that I needed to go read the first ten comments to to know in exactly which way they were kidding.

New laptop, broadband and landline

2009-03-31T20:46:00.003+05:30

Phew..

The laptop, a Dell Studio 15 (1555 something or the other) that I got a quote for on the 24th of Feb, paid for on the 25th, and the payment accepted laptop-in-for-manufacturing was on the 27th. However, it took appx. 30 days at their factory and finally the status on their site went from manufacturing to shipping on the 27th of March - it reached my delivery address on the 28th. I collected it on the 30th.

The Airtel broadband installation was lightning fast, not something I can probably say about the speed of their internet connection, but considering that I opted for a 256 Kbps unlimited over a 2 Mbps 8 GB plan, I think I'll have to live with it, at least for a month.

The Airtel deal went as:
Get number from friend - call guy at 6:15 - Sir, I'm sending a guy to your office to collect your papers in 1/2 hour.
Guy doesn't turn up - I leave at 7:30. Guy calls at 8 - I tell him I've gone home - he comes home and collects the docs - I ask him when more progress will be made - he says 3 more days. Next day, another guy calls and says that he's going to send someone to install - I ask him to send a person at 8 p.m. - he says that it
ll take some more time than that because the wires need to be connected - I ask him to come at 5 - guy turns up at 6:30, finishes wiring by 7. Another guy comes at 7:30 with the modem, phone etc., and finished installation in under an hour. And tada, I am now the proud(ish) owner of the internet connection on which this blog entry is being written. Amazing!

Laptop cons immediately noticeable:
The 15.6" screen over the 15.4" means that the screen LCD height has decreased by about a centimeter; however the width has increassed by a bit more than that - so I'll have to be content.
Also, the function keys F1 through F12 need to be pressed using the Fn key because by default, these keys are used for other operations like changing the brightness / volume. However, my friend who ordered his laptop just a month before me got a proper set of touch-keys above the function keys that did the volumes, etc. Also, the 15.4" screen (though he would have liked the width for the movies). The only plus is that I got it a thousand bux cheaper than him, speaking of which, I should mention that by the date of my laptop's delivery, the price had further fallen by a couple of thousand bux.

p. s. : Hurray for Blogger's auto-save - I closed another tab in IE and the browser crashed - I got back dreading having to write all the above crap again but to my surprise, I didn't even lose a word.

A difficult judgement

2009-03-18T14:14:00.004+05:30

Out of a mail; if any of you know the original source, please let me know:

In a small town in India, a person decided to start his bar business right opposite to a temple. The temple & its congregation started a campaign to block the bar from opening with petitions and prayed daily against his business.
Work progressed. However, when it was almost complete and was about to open a few days later, a strong lightning struck the bar and it was burnt to the ground.

The temple folks were rather smug in their outlook after that, till the bar owner sued the temple authorities on the grounds that the temple through its congregation & prayers was ultimately responsible for the demise of his bar shop, either through direct or indirect actions or means.

In its reply to the court, the temple vehemently denied all responsibility or any connection that their prayers were reasons to the bar shop's demise.
As the case made its way into court, the judge looked over the paperwork at the hearing and commented:

I don't know how I'm going to decide this case, but it appears from the paperwork that we have a bar owner who believes in the power of prayer and we have an entire temple and its devotees that don't.

Chutneys

2009-02-14T16:40:00.007+05:30

Passed (the somewhat newly opened) Chutneys on Road No. 36, Jubilee Hills (, Hyderabad) today while running an errand and made up my mind to get back to eat here.

It was 11 in the morning when I got back in (and I expected the place to be empty - however, it turned out to be nearly full, but possibly the day being the V-Day had something to do with it.) And before there is any speculation on this, I was (unfortunately) alone.

The prices on the menu were high, but given the locality, and possibly the quality, I should have expected it - Rs. 89/- for a butter masala dosa, 35/- for a coffee, plus 12% tax (and tips).

Six types of chutneys were placed before me. Sambar was poured into a container from a transparent plastic mug. A smallish masala dosa with a big lump of white butter on a very decent stainless steel plate with a banana leaf over it was then brought.

Decent sambar, well-cooked potato-onion masala, decent dosa, and fine yummy butter were individually adorable but the combination of dosa with the chutneys was really heavenly.

The chutneys - urad dal, peanut, tomato, ginger and spicy coconut were all superb; the plain rich white sweet coconut sheer delight.

The coffee, while perhaps not heavenly, was nothing to complain about. This was, however, large in quantity as well, unlike the dosa.

Lucky, I was, to get into this and not 36 Jubilee or Santosh Jubilee for my breakfast. Next time is time to try one of their specialities - this includes Babai idlis, MLA Pesaratus, and so on.

Orkut community Thread re-title (Greasemonkey)

2008-08-09T13:38:00.009+05:30

This script allows you to change the titles of Orkut community threads while viewing them locally.
Tested with:
Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04
Firefox/3.0.1 (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008072820)
Greasemonkey 0.8.20080609.0

Of course, it's local - it doesn't actually affect the data on Orkut's servers and you don't need any special privileges in the community to use this.

Name changes are persistent (will remain even after the browser is restarted - I think the info is lost if you Ctrl+Shift+Del your cache).

Refer elsewhere for how to install a Greasemonkey user-script.
Test with: http://www.orkut.co.in/CommTopics.aspx?cmm=22317

This does have some minor bugs which I'll fix if someone is interested in using this.

// ==UserScript==
// @name Orkut Community Re-title 1.0
// @namespace tag:abhijitppai@gmail.com,2008-08-07:Algoretitle
// @description script to re-title Orkut community threads
// @include http://www.orkut.co.in/CommTopics.aspx*
// ==/UserScript==
function myclick() {
if(this.checked==true)
{
c = document.createElement('input');
c.type="text";
c.name="apt"+this.name;
c.value=GM_getValue(String(this.name),"");
this.parentNode.insertBefore(c, this.nextSibling);
}
else
{
c=document.getElementsByName("apt"+this.name)[0];
GM_setValue(String(this.name),c.value);
var link = this.parentNode.childNodes[1];

if(c.value!="")
{
//don't have old value saved yet
if(""==GM_getValue("orig"+this.name,""))
{
//save it
GM_setValue("orig"+this.name,link.innerHTML);
}
link.innerHTML = c.value;
link.style.color="red";
}
else
{
link.innerHTML = GM_getValue("orig"+this.name,"blank");
this.parentNode.childNodes[1].style.color="grey";
}
this.parentNode.removeChild(this.parentNode.childNodes[3]);
}
}

var allLinks, thisLink;
allLinks = document.evaluate(
'//a[@href]',
document,
null,
XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE,
null);

for (var i = 0; i < allLinks.snapshotLength; i++) {
thisLink = allLinks.snapshotItem(i);
var k = thisLink.href.search("&tid=");
if(k>0)
{
k=k+5;
b = document.createElement('input');
b.type="checkbox";
b.name=String(thisLink.href.substr(k));
vlue = GM_getValue(b.name,"");
if(vlue!="")
{
thisLink.innerHTML = vlue;
thisLink.style.color="red";
}
b.addEventListener("click", myclick, true);
//insert after
thisLink.parentNode.insertBefore(b, thisLink.nextSibling);
}
}

LAPP on Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron)

2008-08-09T09:02:00.003+05:30

To install LAPP (Apache, PostgreSQL, Perl on Linux)

At the prompt:

1) sudo apt-get install perl postgresql apache2
Say Y to download dependencies.
2) sudo su postgres
3) psql
> create table a(b integer);
> insert into a values(2);
> \password

Enter a new postgres database user password twice, say "qwe" (without quotes).
> quit
4) logout (of the postgres user only)
5) sudo vi /etc/postgresql/8.3/main/pg_hba.conf

Change all the "ident sameuser" in the last column of all (non-commented) lines to "md5".

6) sudo vi /etc/postgresql/8.3/main/postgresql.conf

Find the line:
#listen_address

Remove the hash from the start (de-comment it).
Change the address from 'localhost' to '*' (including quotes).

7) cd /usr/lib/cgi-bin
8) sudo vi c.cgi

#!/usr/bin/perl

use DBI;

print "Content-type: text\html\n\n";

my $dbh = DBI->connect('DBI:Pg:dbname=postgres;host=localhost','postgres','qwe')
or die "Couldn't connect to database: " . DBI->errstr;
my $sth = $dbh->prepare('SELECT * FROM a')
or die "Couldn't prepare statement: " . $dbh->errstr;
$sth->execute()
or die "Couldn't execute statement: " . $sth->errstr;

while (@data = $sth->fetchrow_array()) {
print "$data[0]\n";
}
$dbh->disconnect();

9) sudo chmod +x c.cgi
10) Open firefox.
Try:
http://localhost/cgi-bin/c.cgi
You should see 2 on the screen.

This means LAPP (where the last P is Perl) is successfully installed.

External Hard disk bought

2008-08-04T16:53:00.003+05:30

I bought a Seagate FreeAgent 500 GB external USB hard disk from A. S. Computers on S. P. Road yesterday for Rs. 5174/- (all inclusive).
Also purchased: Transcend 4 GB pen drive for 624/- (all inclusive) (- the 8 GB Transcend was appx. 1150/-.)

Karnataka Medical Research Foundation

2008-04-17T11:31:00.002+05:30

From an e-mail:

I AM EXTREMELY happy to inform you about the launch of my own Medical Research Organization, named KARNATAKA MEDICAL RESEARCH FOUNDATION. It was officially launched on 4th Feb 2008, and brought to public notice through a press conference on 1st April 2008. We have now begun full scale operations.

The Foundation is established with the vision to carry out indigenously relevant medical research and establish a network to conduct transitional medical research. This foundation will also provide quality guidance and motivation for aspiring researchers particularly for medical students and basic life science students. Our foundation will focus on research required to evolve Health science pertinent to India. It is responsibility of every Indian to solve problems in our country and take it forward. Western countries, which we are dependent on will not help us solve our health problems unless it is of a gain to them.

I have established this foundation on ideology of true SOCIALISM and will follow the principles of HIND SWARAJ of Mahatma Gandhi.

I Invite you to visit our website http://kmrf.in and provide your valuable feedback.

If u r interested, read on,

THE STORY BEHIND

I conceived the idea of this foundation 1.5 years ago.Since then I have been establishing a base to begin this venture. With just 5 years of medical research experience on hand, i have taken a bold step to establish such a foundation at this young age. With a clear progressive vision and attitude I trust I would be successful in this venture. Set backs in medical research career, personal life and UG life pushed me to establish something new and different. Infact this had to be a reality 6-8 months back, but due to set back in personal life, the launch had been delayed. The anger against ruthless and inhuman globalisation policy of India (manmohan singh) and support to it by majority of educated India has partly fueled the ideology and mission behind this foundation.

I have a unique structure in place with very little democracy in the foundation.

Though launched to the scientific community in FEB i am bringing this to public notice including my family members now. Thus far, response from the scientific arena, government and peers have been positive. I have already secured valuable collaborations, internationally. I hope in years to come, we would be able to make significant contribution to health science and MOTHER INDIA.

Many thanks for all your support and encouragement thus far.

JAI HIND

Dr.Himanshu M.
Chairman
Karnataka Medical Research Foundation
www.kmrf.in

ಹಚ್ಕೇವು ಕನ್ನಡದ ದೀಪ.
ಸಿರಿಗನ್ನಡಂ ಗೆಲ್ಗೆ

Resident Doctor - Obstetrics And Gynecology
M.S.Ramaiah Memorial Hospital
Bangalore

Perl script to change CVS Root in a directory tree

2008-04-16T21:46:00.003+05:30

We moved our CVS to a different machine and our CVS Root thus changed. On Windows, if you use TortoiseCVS (at least), then it creates a CVS folder inside each folder of your repository and each of this CVS folders has a file called Root which has the CVS Root string. Now, I had to update each of these few hundred files with the new CVSROOT string. Perl (v5.8.4 built for MSWin32-x86-multi-thread on my system) to the rescue:

use File::Find;
find(\&wanted, "$ARGV[0]");
sub wanted
{
if($_ eq 'Root')
{
open(fp,">" . $File::Find::dir . "/" . $_);
print ">" . $File::Find::dir . "/" . $_ . "\n";
print fp "$ARGV[1]";
close(fp);
}
}

Pass the base folder name as the first argument and the new CVSROOT as the second argument.

NFS mount problem and solution

2008-03-03T20:26:00.008+05:30

At our lab, we have a Compaq ES45 server on the harddisk of which our home folders reside, and we mount these on our local machines using NFS.

We added configuration for some machines (running Ubuntu 7.10 32-bit and RHEL4 64-bit) so that we could use these mounts, but the following problem arose.
Consider folder, a directory in my home directory:

cd folder gave:
-bash: cd: folder: Not a directory

vi folder gave:
"folder" is a directory

ls -ld folder gave:
drwxr-xr-x 4 abhi users 8192 2008-02-12 16:32 folder

Sometimes, files in my home directory were accessible, directories and files within weren't. And sometimes, I could not even access my home folder.

After persistent internet lookup, a labmate found that the problem was due to incompatible NFS versions. These Ubuntu/RHEL machines tried using NFS version 3 which apparently is not backward compatible with NFS version 2 which is the version on the Compaq server.

The 4th and 5th columns of the /etc/fstab entry were made to read:
nfs defaults,vers=2
and now everything works fine.

Using a SmartAX modem with a Linksys router for BSNL broadband

2007-12-18T10:25:00.000+05:30

Modem -> Huaweii Sterlite SmartAX MT882 or similar
Router -> Linksys WRT54G Wireless Broadband Router or similar
Lan Card -> Some Ethernet card

This procedure is similar to the one here:
http://www.openfsg.com/index.php/Setup_the_FSG_behind_the_Talktalk_SmartAX_MT882_Modem/Router

Assume your modem (and LAN card) is already working with your BSNL broadband. You can find instructions to make it behave so elsewhere.
We will assume that default settings were used, i.e. - Username and password of "admin", Modem IP = 192.168.1.1

Lines like the one below show connections. Assume nothing else is connected. (Assume all devices are powered on).

Phone Line -- Modem -- Lan Card
From your modem configuration, if DHCP was enabled, disable it. Give a static IP of 192.168.1.100 and gateway 192.168.1.1 to your LAN card.
Nothing else needs to be changed.

Router's Port 1 -- Lan Card
Goto http://192.168.1.1 (now the router's config page).
This also has the username and password "admin" by default.
In Basic setup:
Internet Connection Type: 192.168.1.2
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.1.1
Static DNS 1: 192.168.1.1

...

Local IP Address: 192.168.2.1
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
...
DHCP Server: Disable

Save the changes.

Change the LAN card's static IP to 192.168.2.100 with gateway 192.168.2.1. The DNS can be the usual 61.1.96.69.

Phone Line -- Modem -- Router
Lan Card ----------------^

The internet should be accessible now.

To add a wireless node such as a laptop, in http://192.168.2.1 :
Goto Wireless -> Wireless MAC Filter
Enable it.
Choose Permit Only.
Click the Edit MAC Filter list and add the MAC address of the Lan Card on the Wireless node (laptop).
Save.

In the Wireless card settings, give a Static IP such as 192.168.2.150 with gateway 192.168.2.1. The DNS again can be the usual 61.1.96.69.

Things that might be handy:
The hardware Reset buttons on the router and modem. On the router (at least), press and hold the button for _at least_ 5 seconds when the device is ON. You can see some visible change in the lights on the front panel, after which point you can let go.

Wireless router bought

2007-12-18T10:23:00.000+05:30

Bought a Linksys WRT54G Wireless Broadband Router for 2434/- from Binary World, 1st Cross, Malleshwaram (http://www.bwindia.com).
It has a 4 port Ethernet switch built-in and the wireless connectivity seems okay but it doesn't have a modem built-in (- you cannot connect your phone line directly to this), so I guess I still need to use my Huaweii router along with this.

Auto Slide Numbering in MS PowerPoint

2007-12-14T14:35:00.001+05:30

A couple of macros for Microsoft Powerpoint XP to achieve correct slide numbering (given the presence of intermittent hidden slides) is available at http://dsl.serc.iisc.ernet.in/~abhi/ppt/Putslidenos.txt or below
under the GPL.

Steps:
1) Open the required presentation in Powerpoint XP.
2) Press Alt+F11 to open the MS Visual Basic editor.
3) Paste the entire putslidenos.txt file in the big window.
If the big window doesn't show up, right-click on VBAProject ..., and choose Insert->Module
4) Edit the constants (position, font, etc.) at the top as desired.
5) Close MS Visual Basic.
6) Save the .ppt.

7) Do whatever hiding etc. has to be done.
8) Select the first slide in the slide sorter (basically make sure nothing
on any slide is selected).
9) Choose Tools->Macro->Macros. Select PutSlideNos and click run. (Undo
still seems to work if the output wasn't nice.)
10) Save.

The first 6 steps are to be done only once. 7-10 is done after each edit (before the actual presentation).

Impt.: Note that with the default settings, the macro removes all textboxes of the form "number of number" before adding its own textboxes. If this might be a problem, change the settings as needed and/or save changed files into different files at step 10.

'
' Copyright 2007,2008 Abhijit P. Pai
'
' This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
' it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
' the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
' (at your option) any later version.
'
' This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
' but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
' MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
' GNU General Public License for more details.
'
' You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
' along with this program. If not, see .
'
'User-settable constants

'~725 * ~540 seems to be the max x and y
'startx and starty are the starting x and y locations of the textbox
'showing the slide number
Const startx = 622#
Const starty = 495#
Const mywidth = 100#
Const myheight = 30#

Const myfontname = "Arial"
Const myfontsize = 10
Const starttext = "Slide "
Const midtext = " of "

'set this to True if you want to remove the old numbering before you add the new one, else False
Const RemoveBeforePutting = True

'End User-settable constants
'-------------------------------------------------------------

Sub PutSlideNos()

If RemoveBeforePutting = True Then Call RemoveSlideNos

'total number of slides
a = ActiveWindow.Presentation.Slides.Count

'total number of hidden slides
b = 0
For i = 1 To ActiveWindow.Presentation.Slides.Count
If ActivePresentation.Slides(i).SlideShowTransition.Hidden = -1 Then b = b + 1
Next i
nonhidden = a - b

j = 0
For i = 1 To ActiveWindow.Presentation.Slides.Count
ActiveWindow.Presentation.Slides(i).Select
j = j + 1

'-1 means true for this property
If ActivePresentation.Slides(i).SlideShowTransition.Hidden = -1 Then
j = j - 1
GoTo nexttry
End If

ActiveWindow.Selection.SlideRange.Shapes.AddTextbox(msoTextOrientationHorizontal,startx, starty, mywidth, myheight).Select
ActiveWindow.Selection.ShapeRange.TextFrame.TextRange.Characters(Start:=1,Length:=0).Select
ActiveWindow.Selection.TextRange.Text = starttext + Trim(Str(j)) + midtext + Trim(Str(nonhidden))
With ActiveWindow.Selection.TextRange.Font
.Name = myfontname
.Size = myfontsize
End With
nexttry:
Next i

ActiveWindow.Presentation.Slides(1).Select
End Sub

Sub RemoveSlideNos()
For i = 1 To ActiveWindow.Presentation.Slides.Count
ActiveWindow.Presentation.Slides(i).Select
j = 1

While j
If ActiveWindow.Presentation.Slides(i).Shapes(j).TextFrame.HasText Then
t = ActiveWindow.Presentation.Slides(i).Shapes(j).TextFrame.TextRange.Characters.Text
If t Like starttext + "[0-9]*" + midtext + "[0-9]*" Then
ActiveWindow.Presentation.Slides.Item(i).Shapes.Item(j).Delete
End If
End If

j = j + 1
thecount = ActiveWindow.Presentation.Slides.Item(i).Shapes.Count
If j > thecount Then GoTo endwhile
Wend

endwhile:
Next i
ActiveWindow.Presentation.Slides(1).Select

End Sub

Personalization or what ?

2007-11-13T19:26:00.001+05:30

Rahmaan at IISc

2007-10-29T15:21:00.001+05:30

IISc Gymkhana.
19th Jan, 2008.
A. R. Rahmaan.

You need a student identity card, of course.

Update: Event canceled. :-(

Are we Making A Difference

2007-10-28T17:54:00.000+05:30

"We will write only when we have a story worth telling. A story worth telling is one that might be the solution to a problem, and not the problem by itself."
Here: http://arewemad.net/

Wikipedia: citation needed

2007-10-20T21:08:00.000+05:30

The "citation needed" syndrome (look it up; also http://xkcd.org/285/ and
<CtrlAltDestroy> Here is my impression of Wikipedia.
<CtrlAltDestroy> "There are five fingers on the human hand [citation needed]"
lifted from a certain quote site) seems to have engulfed even the Wikipedians from Bengalooru...
Compare the current http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bangalore&oldid=165645750#Media
to the older
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bangalore&oldid=96076951#Media

Imaginary scores

2007-09-28T23:47:00.000+05:30

(11:27:14 PM) Srikanth: dude your BB guesses are getting more and more interesting
(11:39:52 PM) Srikanth: we should probably start up an imaginative answer section :)
(11:40:07 PM) Abhijit: yeah.. scores should be a+bi
(11:40:11 PM) Abhijit: instead of the usual a
(11:40:20 PM) Abhijit: what a concept !

(Blogged for copyrighting, IPR, patenting etc..)

Once bitten, twice shy

2007-09-26T13:47:00.000+05:30

A [side] effect of playing psychological pranks on people (see: http://abhijitpai.blogspot.com/2006/09/orkut-birthday-reminder-psychology-test.html) is that this time, I didn't get a single wish scrap on Orkut on my B'Day, and just one belated. Or perhaps the Orkut fad has waned (- I did get a lot more phone calls).

Typo in a permalink

2007-09-26T13:42:00.000+05:30

I try to correct any error - typographical, grammatical or otherwise on my blog whenever it is brought to my notice (- not that this has happened many times ;) ). But a typo in a "permalink" (first pointed out by Srikanth) of a post on which people have already commented seems impossible to rectify. (Look [carefully]: http://abhijitpai.blogspot.com/2007/09/mrsit-changed-timings.html)

MSRIT - Changed timings

2007-09-11T16:32:00.000+05:30

No, college (MSRIT) does not start at 8:30 a.m. instead of the usual 9.

The working hours are still 9 to 4:30, but, from the 10th of September, classes are now 55 mins (instead of 1 hour), there's a tea break from 10:50 to 11:05, and lunch is 12:55 to 1:45 (50 mins instead of the earlier half-hour).

Nice. And there seems to be some connection with the latest-joined batch joining under autonomous rules.

Getting Vim to print increasing numbers

2007-09-08T15:37:00.000+05:30

One of the many things I was yet to learn how to do with Vim was to generate simple increasing sequences, which could be used if I had to do something like:

From:
hello x y z

To:
hello1 x y z
hello2 x y z
...
hellon x y z

Simple copy-paste would give me n identical hello x y z lines. Then I'd have to manually enter the subscripts. So, I decided to write Vim commands that would let me print numbers from 1 too 100 in my document. The commands are as follows:

:let x=1
:map :execute "normal a" . x . " ":let x=x+1

:let i=1
:while i<=100
: execute "normal " . "\<F8>"
: let i=i+1
:endwhile

The first two lines let me get the next number after the current cursor position when I press F8. The last four give an effect of 100 presses of F8.

Should work with Vim 6.3 and above.

Refs: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/usr_41.html

Interesting trivia about the history of ERNET

2007-08-05T11:00:00.000+05:30

ERNET started with a dial-up network in 1986-87.

Initially, UUCP mail was only service started by ERNET.

First leased line of 9.6 kbps was installed in Jan’1991 between Delhi and Mumbai.

ERNET was alloted Class B IP address 144.16.0.0 by InterNIC in 1990. Subsquently, Class C addresses were alloted to ERNET by APNIC.

All IITs, IISc Bangalore, DOE Delhi and NCST Mumbai were connected by 9.6 kbps leased line by 1992.
In 1992, a 64 kbps Internet gateway link was commissioned from NCST Mumbai to UUNet in Virginia near Washington D. C..

...
From:
http://www.ipv6.ernet.in/deepaksingh.ppt (c. 2005).

Also:
IP Ranges:
NCSI 144.16.72.129 to 144.16.72.189
IISC 144.16.64 to 144.16.95
From:
http://144.16.72.147/gsdl/collect/tracol/index/assoc/HASH014d.dir/doc.doc (Dated: 2000-2001)

"Sleep"ing in Win XP (batch files)

2007-06-23T16:00:00.001+05:30

All examples using choice(.com) which would be among the first hits on a search don't work because Windows XP doesn't come with choice.com by default. Solutions are to get it from Win9x, a (WinNT/2003Server) resource kit, or off the MS site; or to use QBasic or a ping trick such as: ping 127.0.0.1 -n %1% -w 1000> nul

But the best solution I could find that works straight out of the box is:

@echo off
echo Starting!
echo Wscript.Sleep 10000> sleep.vbs
start /w wscript.exe sleep.vbs
echo Done!
del sleep.vbs

Off:
http://www.ericphelps.com/batch/samples/sleep.txt

As mentioned there:
1) Millisecond accuracy.
2) No 100% utilization of CPU i.e. no for(i = 1 to 1 billion) loops.

Foolishness and recovery

2007-06-13T09:56:00.000+05:30

(Warning: Some background knowledge about the working of CVS is needed to understand this paragraph.) One of the few ways to kick yourself in the foot with CVS is to create a new file (in this case, a .java); forget to add it to the CVS; commit the other files; and then try to test if the build works by deleting the whole folder and checking out again there.

Short story short, three hours of hard (copy-paste) work was going to go down the drain. The file had gone; I had to recover it.

Google. The first result was this supposedly oft-used program called DiskInternals Uneraser available from http://www.diskinternals.com/. The program took quite some time to scan the partition and then did find the deleted .java and .class file, but said it needed the paid version (~10$) to actually recover them. Searching for a crack (using a GNU/Linux box, of course) was in vain. Some site actually made me download a .zip and then had a file in it which read:
S/N: Evalution

I searched some more and found:
http://www.ntfsundelete.com/
A nice piece of gratis software from a company known as Atola Technologies, this product did the job well. It scanned through the disk faster, had a better interface than the DiskInternals Uneraser, and managed to try to recover the files without any payment of any sort. It turned out that the .java file couldn't be recovered fully, but the .class file could. But I did need the source. Then comes another gratis software cavaj (downloadable from http://www.bysoft.se/sureshot/cavaj/) to the rescue. Cavaj gracefully created the .java from the class file, and this .java was almost compilable. Just a one line change, and I had my file back!

Quote for the day

2007-05-25T23:50:00.000+05:30

The coding starts and the coding stops but the bug-fixing goes on forever - Abhijit Pai.

Ubuntu 7.04 ships home

2007-05-17T22:05:00.000+05:30

Got my free Ubuntu CD's today in my postbox.
Release date: 19th April, 2007.
Order date: 21st April, 2007.
Delivery date: 17th May, 2007.

Hoarding war between airlines

2007-05-07T09:57:00.000+05:30

A great snap (taken in Delhi).
Courtesy and Copyright: Deccan Herald (Bangalore Edition, 7th May 2007, Page 10)

Seasons

2007-04-18T16:23:00.000+05:30

Two days before Sankranthi (Jan 14th 2007 if I remember correctly), there was a noticable shift in temperature indicating the change of season from winter to summer.
And now, two days before Vishu/Bihu/Baisakhi, on the 11th of April, it rained for the first time this year at Bengalooru. The first evening it didn't rain so heavily, but the second evening had people witnessing an amazing amount of lightning strikes, thunder and a somewhat heavy downpour. There was so much lightning that I manage to capture some of it.

Look here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3z_n4A_2n8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOv2S6Ipdk0

As a technical note, I used VirtualDub to time-crop, remove the audio and slow down and rotate the video to 1/3 of the original speed it would have played at otherwise.

Time-cropping is done using Video->Select Range (don't worry about the end-offset not totalling to start-offset + length - just set the latter two correctly in milliseconds and it should work fine).

Audio removal is done by just selecting Audio->No Audio.

Slowing down is done by changing Video->Frame Rate->Source rate adjustment and selecting Change to ... frames per second where ... would be 15,10 etc. depending on how slow you want the video to be (if the input video is at 30 fps, say).

Rotation of the video (to the right by 90deg) is done by choosing it in Video->Filters->Add->Rotate.

Bank account for the day

2007-04-06T22:33:00.000+05:30

[Useless post; for the author to show-off]

In the pic:
One bruised Savlon and Betadine smeared elbow.
One good-looking complimentary watch with a cracked glass.
One oft-worn non-expensive full sleeves shirt now which now needs conversion to half sleeves.
One 2-wheeler mirror (partly visible) broken where is was screwed to the rest of the 2-wheeler.

Maybe I should try slowing down at the turns.

AJAX Rot-13 demo

2007-03-30T20:16:00.000+05:30

[Technical]

If you don't know what AJAX is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AJAX
http://www.w3schools.com/ajax/default.asp

The demo just uses AJAX and CGI (perl) to Rot-13 convert whatever you type in the input field as you keep typing/changing it. The host machine is quite slow, so there might be a considerable delay before you see any change to the output when you're typing.
http://people.csa.iisc.ernet.in/abhijitpai/ajaxdemo.htm

The code of the ajaxdemo.htm and rot13.cgi are pasted below for reference. W3schools holds copyrights of a sizeable portion of the code; but I do think they intended learners to actually use their code; so, I did.

rot13.cgi


#!/usr/bin/perl
use CGI qw(:standard);

$data=param("str");
print "Content-type: text/html","\n\n";

#open(F,">>xx") or die("");
#print F $data;
#print F "\n";
#close(F);

for($i=0;$i<length($data);$i++)
{
$n1=ord(substr($data,$i,1));
if($n1>ord('z') || $n1<ord('A') || ($n1>ord('Z') && $n1<ord('a')))
 {next; #C's continue
 }

if($n1<=ord('Z'))
{
    substr($data,$i,1)=chr(
                (
                ord(substr($data,$i,1))-ord('A')+1+13
                )%26
                +ord('A')-1
                 );
}
else
{
    substr($data,$i,1)=chr(
                (
                ord(substr($data,$i,1))-ord('a')+1+13
                )%26
                +ord('a')-1
                  );   
 }
} #end of for loop
print $data;

ajaxdemo.htm


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">


<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">

<head>
<title>Ajax demo</title>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
</head>

<body>

<script type="text/javascript">
 function getxobj()
  {
  var xmlHttp=null;
  try
    {
    // Firefox, Mozilla 1.0(+?),Netscape 7(+?) Opera 8.0+, Safari 1.2(+?)
    xmlHttp=new XMLHttpRequest();
    }
  catch (e)
    {
    // Internet Explorer
    try
      { //IE 6+
      xmlHttp=new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");
      }
    catch (e)
      {
      try
        { //IE 5.5+
        xmlHttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
        }
      catch (e)
        {
        alert("Your browser does not support AJAX!");
        return false;
        }
      }
    }
    return xmlHttp;
  }

//global
var x;

function mystatechangedfn()
  {
/*
0    The request is not initialized
1    The request has been set up
2    The request has been sent
3    The request is in process
4    The request is complete
*/
  if(x.readyState==4)
  {
      //print in perl (after Content-type), echo in php
    document.getElementById("myform").resul.value=unescape(x.responseText);
    }
  }




function docalc()
{

x = getxobj();
x.onreadystatechange=mystatechangedfn;
var url="rot13.cgi?str="+escape(document.getElementById("myform").inpu.value);
//alert(url);
//3rd argument is true if the call is asynchronous.
x.open("GET",url,true);
x.send(null);
}

</script>

<!-- action is needed for xhtml 1.1 compat. -->
<form id="myform" action="">
    <!-- onkeydown, call can be with (this.value), but even if not
               I can access it as document.getElementById("myform").inpu.value    -->
<p>
Input: <input type="text" onkeyup="docalc();" name="inpu" />
Output: <input type="text" name="resul" />
</p>
</form>

<!-- <p>Suggestions: <span id="txtHint"></span></p>
In code: document.getElementById("txtHint").innerHTML="Blah";
-->


<p>
    <a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=referer"><img
        src="http://www.w3.org/Icons/valid-xhtml11"
        alt="Valid XHTML 1.1" height="31" width="88" /></a>
</p>

</body>
</html>

The brilliance of BSNL

2007-03-26T18:22:00.000+05:30

My BSNL land line is currently "dead". If I try calling it, I hear the ringing tone. None of my phone-sets ring though; and the caller ID displays are blank. What's brilliant ? The net connection through the same line still works; and it's that line which I'm currently using to type in this post. And it's not a "almost there" internet connection as well. I ran a test at BandwidthPlace and it showed 661.1 kilobits per second, which is about the speed I usually get. (Of course, the phones etc. are connected properly.) This problem had occured earlier too, and had then got sorted out automatically in the course of time (without me complaining).

Update: Phone is fine now after 3+ weeks - apparently "the computer had not registered the complaint" the first time we registered one.

Abhijit P Pai, B. E.

2007-03-18T11:12:00.000+05:30

My degree certificate arrived home at 10:55 a.m. today by Speed Post. It's a laminated sheet, but it's thinner than the marks cards VTU gives. Thankfully, it arrives in a (somewhat) thick blue file which ensured that no damage was done to it in transit.
The rank list (and convocation date) was announced on Feb 7th 2007 was generally known by around Feb 14th. The convocation was on the 25th of Feb in Belgaum, and ordinary (non-rank-holding) students in Bengalooru had started getting their degrees by March 10th.

Reclaim your GNU/Linux

2007-03-10T14:37:00.000+05:30

[Technical]

One of the most common problems that people face with multiple OS's - Windows and GNU/Linux is that the boot loader (Grub) disappears upon re-installing Windows.
This also happens if you have Tux installed in a second hard-disk which you later decide to make your sole hard disk.

For LILO, earlier, with certain versions of Mandrake etc., I used to go through all steps of the installer but the last part where it copies the files (asking it not to make any changes to the partitions), by which time LILO is written on the MBR, after which I boot to Tux and modify its settings.

This is the solution for Grub which works on FC5 (and possibly all other FC distros):
http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=975

For point 4 there, just choose the "Continue" button so that it autodetects.

After this, if the system reports that certain parts only have been mounted into /mnt/sysimage, you might not be able to install Grub on the MBR successfully.

So, vi /mnt/sysimage/etc/fstab or /etc/fstab if you have chroot'ed as mentioned there.
Correct it so that only partitions and drives which actually are present correctly are mentioned.
In the first column of each row, if you have something like "LABEL=/", correct it to the actual device name - i.e. something like "/dev/hda6".
Reboot and repeat; if your hard disk is still ok, most probably the autodetection will come out clean.

Change of CPU

2007-03-07T19:21:00.000+05:30

One more trip to S. P. Road, this time to Rajshri Computers Inc. for:

Asus M2N-MX Motherborad - Rs. 3650 + 4%
Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3600+ Microprocessor - Rs. 4350 + 4%
Transcend JetRam 533 Mhz 1GB (240 pin) DDR2 SDRAM - Rs. 3400 + 4%
Frontech ATX Cabinet with SMPS - Rs. 1400 + 4%
for a total of 13,312/-

Update: I didn't test it then and it didn't work when I got it back home. The fan was rotating for about two seconds and then stopping each time I pressed the Power button.
One more trip to S. P. Road. The heatsink-fan hadn't been inserted correctly. When he corrected that, he found no display still - that was because the RAM module was faulty (shared display RAM, remember); a replaced RAM chip and finally something on the screen.

It's working quite fine now.

DVD writer bought

2007-03-01T17:44:00.000+05:30

I bought a Sony DRU-170C DVD writer (Sony DVD RW AW-G170A) from Metro Computers, P. R. Lane, (off S. P. Road) today for 1820/- (Rs. 1750 + 4% V.A.T.).

Notes:
a) Can write almost every DVD format conceived including DVD-RAMs. (At least, the specs give me that impression.)
b) 4 screws provided.
c) Black on my beige cabinet. (I asked a couple of shops and they didn't have white DVD?RWs at all), (this cabinet will go soon.)
d) No printed manual - on the CD only.
e) One year limited warranty seems to be available only in the US and Canada.
f) Nero Essentials only provided on the CD (apart from the manual) - yet to see what software this comprises.
g) No P-ATA or digital audio cable provided.

I also picked up some blank DVDs from Ankit Computers, S. P. Road:
150/- for a ten-pack (with hard plastic cover) of Master 16X 4.7 GB DVD-Rs.
85/- for a Moser Baer 4X 4.7 GB DVD+RW.

Picture gallery links

2007-02-18T11:50:00.000+05:30

An entry, just for bookmarking, of recently updated online albums of people I've seen (or am):

http://picasaweb.google.com/srikanthnv/

http://picasaweb.google.com/mayurmotgi/

http://picasaweb.google.com/devadutta.ghat/

http://picasaweb.google.com/purnateja/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sree314/

http://www.imagestation.com/members/sandy.mallya

http://www.flickr.com/photos/34749291@N00/

http://picasaweb.google.com/amber.agarwal/TrekAndKukkeSubramanyaTemple?authkey=DbSnqwhE_wA

http://picasaweb.google.com/abhijitpai.photos/

Flash memory stress test

2007-02-16T12:09:00.000+05:30

My 128 MB Rundisk 2.0 flash drive somehow chose to remain in the pocket of my shirt when it was put for wash. Needless to say, it spun for over 1 hour 15 minutes in soapy dirty water, and I noticed it along with some unidentifiable shredded pieces of paper when I was hanging it out to dry.
Surprisingly though, it still manages to work just like before. I've dropped the drive multiple times from over 4.5 feet before, and put it inside my bag where it lay between all sorts of other hard non-electronic devices and managed rough handling that even my bag couldn't. But this, really, is some sort of a benchmark that it has managed to come clear of.

BSNL's removed the upload cap too

2007-02-11T12:58:00.000+05:30

[For ISP enthusiasts]

Background: I've a BSNL Dataone Home 500 connection.

(Feb 11th 12:50 p.m. - Upload to YouTube)

The indicator on the website was showing 52-53 KiloBytes/sec.(steady over minutes). I timed and found that 1 Megabyte gets uploaded in ~19 seconds (- If the 64 kbps upload cap was still on, it would have taken at least 120 seconds). This means BSNL has removed the upload cap too.

Note: Download tests from http://www.bandwidthplace.com/speedtest since Jan 1st, 2007, when BSNL removed the cap, have shown me results of 1 Mbps lots of times (~128 KBps for download), and at most other times, show respectable values between 270 Kbps and 1 Mbps. Earlier, whenever the connection was available, I almost always used to get the promised 256 kbps / 64 kbps speeds (~31 KBps download speeds).

Scripting e-mail sending

2007-02-08T12:35:00.000+05:30

[Technical]

For a long time, I was trying to find a way of sending e-mail from the command line, so that I could script/cron it. The alternative available was to write a Perl script to do the same, but I was too lazy to do so.
After trying hard and failing to understand sendmail, and not even finding a proper copy installed anywhere on the IISc LAN, I tried acheiving the result with Pine and failed too.

Mutt proved to be the saviour.

Steps (- substitute all italicized content appropriately):
1) Create a file henceforth called in with the following content:
To: bob@domain.com
Subject: Test message
Dear Alice,
...
Bob

You can add other fields such as BCC: etc. as well. Only the To: field is compulsory, the subject and body are not.

2) Run:
mutt -a attachmentfilename1 -a attachmentfilename2 -H in </dev/null

That's it.

February the Fifth, 2007

2007-02-05T16:45:00.000+05:30

Most shops were closed, even those which were open were half-closed. Pizza Hut Basaveshwaranagar was a funny sight, its glass outer walls completely covered from the outside with thick opaque paper, an A2 size framed garlanded color photograph adorning the closed entrance; it had tried to do its best. The police security was tight in the areas that mattered. Many rowdy sheeters had been arrested or detained the day before, this time before they could cause any damage. Every vehicle on the road bore a KA registration. Recently tarred roads were a boon for the desparate few trying to get home, as also a playground for the bold few who wanted to test drive their vehicles. Schools had closed early; offices had driven their employees home. The political parties this time had all agreed violence wasn't the right option.
The Cauvery tribunal had passed its final order.

By the time I took this photo the next day morning, the thick cardboard paper had turned into black tarapaulin. I did see a few employees sneaking inside in the afternoon; how can they do without their daily bread ?

The making of the Passport

2007-02-03T16:05:00.000+05:30

28th Dec 2006 (evening) - Book date online for passport office visit.

2nd Jan 2007 - Appointment for 2:51 p.m.
2:30 p.m. - Reach Passport Office, Brunton Road.
2:30 - 2:45 p.m. - Sit outside the building (in the compound).
2:45 p.m. - People allowed to enqueue (appointment is a farsical term, but at least the queue will be short).
3:25 p.m. - Verification and payment done for me. (They do accept even D.D. though they say they take only cash!)

8th Jan 2007 (afternoon) - Call from Basaveshwaranagar Police Station to come with documents and 2 photos.
5 p.m. - Reach police station.
5:30 p.m. - All form filling/verification done by them, and I've signed on it.
5:30-7:30 p.m. - Wait for Inspector to arrive.
7:45 p.m. - Done with his signature.
Note: No bribes asked, nor paid.

13th Jan 2007 - The light on the status page changes from red to green, indicating "Your Police Verification report has been received by us, and your file is in line for further processing.".

30th Jan 2007 - "You have been allotted a passport number and the file has been line for printing of your passport.The anticipated date of dispatch of your passport by post is 8/2/2007". It shows some of my personal details and says "Applicants are requested to check their personal details indicated above for any errors... "

2nd Feb 2007 - "Your Passport has been issued and sent to you by speed post on 01/02/07 vide Registration number EE317657664IN"
Afternoon - Postman comes with my passport; I'm not at home, so I've been asked to collect it at 9 a.m. on the next day from the post office.

3rd Feb 2007
Morning - I forget to go to the post office.
12:15 p.m. - I remember and go, but I'm told the postman has left for his round.
3 p.m. - Ding dong. Yay!

Journo Snippets

2007-02-02T16:31:00.000+05:30

A Rs. 25 (export-quality stickered) medium-sized apple only looks expensive until you spend Rs. 40+tax on a mediumly large piece of not-really fresh Black Forest cake at Cafe Coffee Day.
A Rs. 70 zip fastener change on a jacket still has no competitors though, especially if it turns out to be just as it was before the change after moving a couple of days ahead in the temporal dimension, my handling notwithstanding.

Snippets

2007-01-28T20:01:00.000+05:30

Heard on a reputable English news channel - "Channel 4 has admitted that the racial controversy has saved Big Brother from becoming the most boring television show ever."
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6297969.stm)

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Wants_to_Be_a_Millionaire%3F#Other_countries:
'Ukraine: As in Russia, there is no "Ask the Audience" because the audience gives wrong answers in order to deceive contestants.'

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharat_Ratna
Zero people have got the Bharat Ratna in the last 6 years.
Nice.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priyadarshan#Accusations_of_plagiarism
Other films accused of plagiarism are Vandanam (39 Steps), Boeing Boeing (Boeing Boeing), and Vettom(French Kiss). His latest film Bhagum Bhag seems to be a conceptual lift of "Run Lola Run".

Pranked

2007-01-19T12:46:00.000+05:30

[Irrelevant to the general public]

Last night, just after I had turned off the computer (which would almost always mean I was turning in for the day), I got a SMS message from a good friend:
"Hi, I Know this may seem shocking n surprising 2 u.But ur invited 4 my engagement on 29th of next month. Venue- Hotel kamath,jlb road Bangalore. Plz do come.."

She was out of station and was supposed to be back only the next day or after that. So, when the SMS came, it was already something out-of-the-ordinary (- to put things more in context, she doesn't really go out of station every two days). She's around 22, most probably from a family tending to be conservative, and her marriage was far-fetched, yet possible. I knew that there was no serious plan of her being married off yet, but I did know parents of other girl peers were looking for suitable grooms for their daughters.
The first thing one thinks of after having received hundreds of SMS's is "Ok, this is another prank.".
The other half of my partially sleep inebriated brain thinks, "Yes, this is possible.".

I fire off an SMS asking whether she's got back to Bangalore. She says she got back home 5 minutes ago.

So, I do my syntax analysis - check the SMS for large gaps after the starting message before the oh-so-climactic giveaway - there are none.

I do my first level semantic analysis - Is she talking about herself .. yes.. Is 29th is a valid date ..yes.. next month is a valid month.. Kamath.. valid hotel.. Bangalore.. possible.

She'd been to Tirupathi and (some) Hindus do visit temples before they do auspicious things - case in point: visits of the Bachchans and Aishwarya before the (future) marriage of Abhishek and Aishwarya. The possible part of my brain thought about the possibility of the two families going there together, the auspicious date turning out to be early, and them getting back abruptly to immediately commence the preparations.

(You can stop laughing now.)

Now, I've to decide the next question to ask. I don't surely know whether the lucky? guy is of her choice or her parents, though I believed the latter was more likely at that point. Asking "Who's the guy?" wouldn't be correct. I couldn't have also asked "Really?", "How come?" or act totally surprised, because of reasons which would take about three paragraphs to explain. So, I ask whether the guy is from Bangalore. She says he's from Switzerland and is a doctor. Doctor, I'd immediately buy at that point. Swiss - a little too far fetched.

The prank part of my brain tells me to finally run a second level semantic check - there had to be something missing. I read the SMS again, put it in the brain memory and began its execution parallelly, and begin thinking of a reply to the next SMS - by the time I get the return value from this process - asking if she would go to Switzerland after marriage; the other process tells me the flaw.
...

Applause to the person who formulated the SMS.
Special applause to the person who sent the SMS to me at exactly the best ever instant she could have in time (whether or not it was inadvertant).

Random quote I conjured up: It's an art to play a good prank; though, like art, sometimes what you paint turns out better than you thought it would.

Solitaire Bug

2007-01-18T21:50:00.000+05:30

My brother has played enough Solitaire for a rare (easter-egg like) occurence / bug to surface today.

This is an un-edited cropped screenshot saved as a JPEG.
The Five of Diamonds has been moved somewhat with the mouse (click-and-drag) to show that there are no cards beneath it. Note: There are no other closed cards.

The Two of Diamonds is missing.

Think before you partition

2007-01-16T19:53:00.000+05:30

[Technical]

This is how Fdisk's report of my secondary (as of now) hard disk read:

Disk /dev/hda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 1216 9767488+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda2 1217 6079 39062047+ 5 Extended
/dev/hda3 6080 7991 15358140 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 7992 8150 1277167+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda5 1217 6079 39062016 b W95 FAT32

Now, I had to create a new NTFS partition to run PostGRESQL from Windows.
This is impossible in the current scenario because a (almost any) system can support a maximum of 4 primary partitions and exactly 1 extended partition. Anyone good with partitioning will recognize this scenario a big headache (to convert this into a proper partition table with no space wasted; I don't believe in partition resizing tools - better slow than data loss). All I've left to do now is to move data from my 30 GB partition into my 10 GB one, tar and move my Linux home folder, and then trash and recreate the whole extended partition and install FC5 again.

Downloading streaming video in Firefox

2007-01-11T19:27:00.000+05:30

Video Downloader - Download videos that are streamed by YouTube and Google Video, among many others.

Link: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2390/

What if the video is on some other page; say, a blog ?

1) View the source of the page.
2) Search for video.google
3) Remember the part docId=-2801785420316066705 (where the number will be different, most probably).
4) In your browser, go to:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2801785420316066705
(substiture the number from above).
5) Click on the VideoDownloader button near the bottom right corner of the Firefox window.
6) In the popup which appears, choose the type of video you want to save, and save it.

Blog vs. Journal

2007-01-05T18:45:00.000+05:30

From http://www.diarist.net/guide/blogjournal.shtml:

... traditional weblog is focused outside the author and his or her site. A web journal, conversely, looks inward — the author's thoughts, experiences, and opinions.

-- Ryan Kawailani Ozawa

A weblog (blog) is a webpage where a weblogger (blogger) 'logs' all the other webpages she finds interesting.

-- Jorn Barger, Weblog Guru

Macro mode

2006-12-22T10:46:00.000+05:30

This time I managed to work out some more - trying to capture a couple of insects on my ceiling.

It can only get better.

Can't believe I took something even as good as this.

The late evening sky from my balcony

2006-12-21T19:05:00.000+05:30

Jobless as I was this winter evening a little past six, I decided to head out (to my balcony) and try out the night snapshot mode of the camera. It does seem to give considerably better results than in the auto mode.

Exam:fever :: Laughter:medicine?

2006-12-19T21:11:00.000+05:30

The Data Communications final exam paper of the 5th Semester is one our batch will remember for long. Completely numerical; no amount of theory mugging would have helped in answering this one. VTU finally decided to pass most of those who'd attempted something. I'd tried all 8 questions, and managed to get a 75. A selection of images from this one below:

Recollection of this paper even two years after the incident will not fail to arouse at least a smile in most of those who attempted it.

Features wins over looks

2006-12-19T16:39:00.000+05:30

[Possible Target Audience: Canon/Olympus wanting n00b digicam buyers]

It was for me to choose between the Olympus Mju 700 and the Canon Powershot A540. Both would have cost me about 15k overall. The Olympus is thin, and has looks (to repeat the cliche) "to die for". It just fits in one's palm so easily, and has dimensions just like some Sony Ericsson Walkman mobile. It's about 20.4 mm thick. The Canon on the other hand is 44 mm thick, and I suppose barely fits in my pocket. The Olympus was a 7.1 MegaPixel, and the Canon was just about 6.2. These facts made me lean in favour of the Olympus, mainly the sleekness. Upto last night, I was sure of buying the Olympus.

Still, the Olympus didn't have a viewfinder, which would most probably be useful shooting in daylight when the sun shines down into the LCD screen making its display invisible.
Also, it shot video at 15 fps only, which I guess is nearly as good as no video at all. And also I didn't want to take a chance on the other features Olympus might have cut in order to get that cam that thin (that cheap).

So, now, I am the somewhat-proud owner of the Canon Powershot A540.
Here's the bill details for reference:
The cam : 13,095/-
Sandisk SD 1 GB : 1,395/-
Uniross Charger 104865: 897/-

All these are inclusive of VAT (and other taxes). Because of the sale, I got discounts of approximately 10% on each of their MRPs.

I thank you all for your inputs.

An unexpected book purchase

2006-12-19T09:36:00.000+05:30

[Substance-less drag - skip down, read the book titles, and borrow them from me.]

On my way back home, I was passing through Malleshwaram. For a change, I thought I'll go into a shop without intent to buy a specific thing - I thought I'll go into Nilgiris and see what they have in stock which wouldn't be available elsewhere. Coming from Gutahalli main road, I parked on one of the crosses and started walking down the main road on which I thought Nilgiris was. Soon, I'd reached Malleshwaram circle upon which I realized that, well, I wasn't on the right road - (Nilgiris is on Margosa road, I was on the Sampige road.).

Just when I was going to turn and walk back, to my left I saw a book exibhition cum sale. I did want to do some window-like shopping, and what better than books to, so I just get inside. I end up coming out with:
Jeffrey Archer's The fourth estate and First among equals, and Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Supremacy. Priced (fixed) at 90/- each, I didn't need to haggle with the shopkeeper. The books were in the usual bad condition, old brown pages, near-tatters, partly-torn outer cover etc. - much like how they would be if I got them from my local library, except without the outer plastic sheath.

My reasoning to buying them was that they're fat enough to take me at least two weeks to read them, my library would charge about Rs. 18/- per week for each of them, and if I get a couple of others to read these too, then that'd more than make up for the price of the book.

The hunt for a digital camera

2006-12-18T19:18:00.000+05:30

[Possible target audience: Point-and-shoot low-budgeted amateur digital still camera buyers]

After long-time deliberations about whether or not to buy, finally the question had changed to which. The budget was set - Rs. 15,000 was about how much I could afford. The when and where part had been answered too - G K Vale have (/had) their Camera Fest at the (2nd floor,) Sigma Mall, Cunningham Road, Bangalore from the 15th to 25th December, 2006 where they offered about 10% (they claim upto 50% off) discount on all models.

Cash withdrawn, I went there this lazy monday early-evening. The fest is quite famous seemed like, judging by the crowd. Many of the companies had stall-likes inside the shop - pro's) - model separation, lower confusion, con's) - people at a stall will definitely want products at their stall to get sold over the others, i.e. I couldn't get someone who could impartially tell me which brand was better.

Neat posters displaying the fest models with their MRP and the discounted price were displayed all over the shop, making it easy for us price-conscious buyers.

They had Canon, Kodak, JVC, Olympus, Nikon, Sony, Polaroid, Panasonic, and Samsung, and also claimed to have Casio and Yashica.
Polaroid, Panasonic, JVC and Samsung aren't too established in this particular industry, at least as far as I've heard, so I thought I'll stick to the more-sold brands.
Looking at the Sony models, one word came to mind - "fleece". Kodak too didn't seem to catch my attention - they maybe the best with the film models, but digital is a different ball game, and I somehow thought they'll start fleecing me again with their photo docks.

Now, it was down to three.
Canon. Olympus. Nikon. For my budget, the following models seemed fine:

[Model - MRP - Fest Price]
Look up the specs of these models on their individual official sites or try the digital camera comparison at http://www.opendigitalphotography.com.

Canon:
Powershot A530 - 11,395 - 10,290 [Free 512 MB SD Card]
Powershot A540 - 14,495 - 13,095
(The A630 was 18,000 after discount).

The Canon guy was vehemently insisting I buy the lower end model, the A530, which was apparently the fast selling model which was why they gave the free card only with that.

Nikon:
L1 - 17,100 - 14,535
L2 - 15,500 - 13,175

A free SD card and a case with each of these, apparently.

Olympus:
FE-190 - 14,000 - 13,000
FE-200 - 17,000 - 16,000
Mju-700 - 17,000 - 15,000

A free 512 MB Xd card with each of these.

For possibly the first time in my life, I resisted the temptation to buy something when I had the money and had gone to buy it. (Of course, I'd informed at home I was only going to check out the range and the prices, and would buy only if there was a superb deal ending today, but with me being as lazy as I am, I buy at impulse.) I decided to do another internet based comparison on only these models, so that I could pick one of them and left the mall empty handed.

(continued)
Also, watch out for the post "The n00b's 15k digital camera buying guide".

Langauge Tips 2 - English (typographics, grammar, punctuation)

2006-12-17T14:36:00.000+05:30

Most of the text below is from or based upon text in the Oxford English dictionary:

Year and Time:

BC and AD instead of B.C., B. C. etc.
Also, write BC after the numerals, as in 42 BC.
Write AD before the numerals, as in AD 175, unless the date is spelled out, as in the fourth century AD.

a.m. and p.m. instead of AM, A. M., a. m. etc.

Apostrophe usage:

The easy part -
Short forms:
he's, haven't, can't, don't, won't, we'll, '68, o' clock (of the clock).
Letters or numbers referred to in plural form:
Mind your p's and q's. Find all the number 7's.
Omit in MPs, 1940s.
Omit in plurals of a regular noun: three cats rather than three cat's.

Tougher -
To indicate possesion:
With a singular noun: boy's book, week's work, boss's salary
With a plural (s ending): a girls' school, two weeks' newspapers, the bosses' salaries.
With a plural (other than s ending): the children's books, women's liberation.
With a singular name: Abhijit's phone; Yashyas' (or Yashyas's) phone.
With a name ending in -es that is pronounced -is or -eez: Moses' mother
Omit in a business name: Grindlays Bank.

Only for the word its:
Use it's when you mean it is or it has. In all other situations, use its.

Also, a look can be had at: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_apost.html

Blog Customization

2006-12-17T12:00:00.000+05:30

[Generally irrelevant blogging technicalities]

The site which hosted images of my customized blog template went down, and the blog was looking worser than usual (if that's possible). So, I've just dumped the customized look, and decided to stick to one of Blogspot's new-style templates. This one is readable and big fonted, but doesn't look too good at 800*600 with respect to the line wrapping, so please bear with me.

[Edit: It doesn't look good even at 1024*768, I just realized. Need to tweak the layout again :| ]

[Edit2: Now tweaked to look ok at 800*600.]

Reminiscence of a day at the cricket ground

2006-12-17T10:24:00.000+05:30

[RD page-fill material]

We'd all gone to the ground to cheer our college team, the captain of which was our classmate. After the game (which we won), a 3-year old kid joined us playing on the sidelines. After playing [around] with him (or was it the opposite) for sometime, we decided to ask him his name. Someone asked in English, and another told the former that the kid wouldn't understand and repeated in Kannada, before which the boy had already answered - "Raja". Even to the question in Kannada, the boy gave his name, which led us to probe which languages the boy knew. Each one of us began asking him his name in any language we knew - Tamil, Telugu, Tulu, Malayalam, etc. and each time the boy replied correctly. Just when we were getting to be in awe of his linguistic talents, one of us managed to ask him in Kannada what his mother-tongue was. Pat came the reply - "Raja".

How many people in your class ?

2006-10-26T22:11:00.000+05:30

[Low intellectual level, low global relevance]

In August 2006:
I've joined the CSE discipline in the ME program in the CSA department.
A: ~25 others have joined the same.
B: ~25 people have joined the ISE discipline in the ME program in the CSA department.
C: ~10 people joined for the MSc program in the CSA department.
D: ~10 people joined for the PhD program in the CSA department.

Similarly in August 2005:
E: ~25 people have joined the CSE discipline in the ME program in the CSA department.
F: ~25 people have joined the ISE discipline in the ME program in the CSA department.
G: ~10 people joined for the MSc program in the CSA department.
H: ~10 people joined for the PhD program in the CSA department.

I: MTech / PhD program students of the SERC department* joined whenever.
J: ?/PhD students of departments such as Mathematics, Electrical, etc. joined whenever.

I have taken 4 courses:
Computer Architecture: Strength - ~17 from ABCDEFHI
Discrete Structures: Strength - ~50 from ABCDEFGHI
Cryptography: Strength - ~20 from ABDJ
Database Management Systems: Strength - ~26 from ABCEFI

I would think that each of my courses could have been taken up by all of ABCDEFGHIJ and these current assignments you see above are only a fluke / co-incidence.

Note: All figures are estimates. The "from ..." are all guesses. Also, students from the August 2004 and previous batches, CSA department (mostly PhD students) maybe thought of to be in H or J. Students of SSA discipline of the ME program of the CSA+EE department maybe also considered in J.

Pardon the non-properness of abbreviations - For example, ME instead of M. E. - done for brevity.

* SERC isn't exactly a department, but we'll let that be.

nin uuru yaavudu

2006-10-18T21:35:00.000+05:30

[Low intellectual level, zero global relevance]

Long long ago, there was a Soiro Pai was staying in Goa. When the Portuguese arrived there, he, like many other Hindu families at the time, fled with his family down south into Karnataka. They settled at a place called Harekal at the Uttara Kannada District. His son Vasudev Pai assumed Harekal as a prefix to his name, which was followed upto my father (at least my brother or me do not have it as a part of our name). Vasudev's son Vaman moved to Mangalore (Mangalooru?) to work at the port since Harekal was a small village and there wasn't much to do there. His son Narayan, was born and grew up in Mangalore, working in the rice trade. His son, my father, moved to Bangalore and has been here for over 25 years. I was born in Mumbai (then Bombay*), my mothers place of residence for over 20 of her initial years. From the age of 6 months right up to this day, I have generally resided in Bangalore (Bengalooru?).

This is only my father's father's ancestor story. There are 3 more (Pa's Ma, Ma's Ma and Ma's Pa), which I might add here later.

igaa naan keLtini, nanna uuru yaavudu, hELi.

* Thanks, Deva.

Switching Channels

2006-10-14T16:59:00.000+05:30

Tom Armstrong eloquently puts the answer to a question even I've wondered about (looking at others) at times, in Marvin (Deccan Herald, Oct 10, 2006, Page 14).

Roy's wife: Why do you keep switching from station to station, Roy ?!
Roy: We're paying for 130 channels on this cable system
Roy: I figure to get my money's worth I've got to watch a few seconds of each one

Hard disk bought

2006-10-14T16:53:00.000+05:30

[Informative, but only to hard disk buyers]

I am now the not-so-proud owner of a 160 Gbyte hard disk.

Not-so-proud because I had a bet with myself a long time ago, that I would never need more than 40 GB of storage, given that I had a CD-Writer; and also because this hard disk is P-ATA, which will be obsolete within the next 3 years.

Name: Seagate Barraduca 7200.9
Model: ST3160212A
Interface: P-ATA (don't know the UDMA rate yet).
Bought From: Fairdeal Computers and Peripherals, P. R. Lane (off S. P. Road)
Date of Purchase: 14th October, 2006
Cost: 2700/- + 108/- V. A. T.
Warranty: Seagate's 5 year limited.

This post is meant to tell you to not shell anything more than 2800/- if you buy the same hard disk in Bangalore (of course, with the assumption that costs of computer products almost always decline with time).

One Ways

2006-10-14T16:47:00.000+05:30

A definitive proof that one ways lengthen distances by a signifcant amount can be found if one travels by BMTC buses. In particular, the cost to go from Kamalanagar Market to K.B.S. is Rs. 8/- in a 96D (regular blue-and-white) where as the cost to go from K.B.S. to Kamalanagar Market is Rs. 9/- in a bus with exactly the same number (and type).

A Test

2006-10-08T18:32:00.000+05:30

[Long, low global relevance]

I had my first open-book test today - on a Sunday. It was a DBMS midterm, open book, open time...

As the name suggests, it was truly open book. Our syllabus was 8 research papers, and a little other theory. We could get these papers, any DBMS books, slide print outs, any other papers to the test room, and there was a computer in the test room from which one could access e-copies of all the previously mentioned, as well as free internet access.

When it started at 8:30 am, I was under the impression that it could go on till about 12 or 12:30 pm (thinking it's a long test and Sir wants to give us time to think). From 8:30 to 10 am, we read through the papers: 6 questions, 31 marks (including the one mentioned below) and Sir told us what each of the questions implied (- in this much time, some tests even get over).

By 11, we were asked whether we prefer tea or Slice, and in some time these were got (Appy instead of Slice, since Slice wasn't available). Along with these, Samosa and (pineapple?/chocolate) pastries were served by ~12.

(Walks outside the test room to the washrooms or just to stretch legs were permitted too, and though the initially specified restriction was one person out of the hall at a time, this wasn't strictly followed in the end - in this sort of test, it doesn't matter; after all, what can you discuss during the test which will help you so much -or maybe I've to still chat with some of our toppers here. Of course, we're all trust worthy students and did no such thing.)

The "open time" funda, I realized, kicks in now, and the time was extended by the TAs (Teaching Assistants, the (hopefully) nice chaps who will (hopefully) give me marks - two of our seniors) till 3:30 pm, and there were people asking for more time (can't believe them).

And then, finally people started leaving the hall, and I too gave my paper and got out at around 3:10 pm, though initially my plan was to sit through the 7 hours, just to claim later that I did, because I had anyway stopped writing a very long time ago.

Sir was suggesting we get newspapers to read, and that time, I thought, "ok, what newspapers; I'm going to write a test", but then as the test proceeded, and in the huge fag end (1.5 to 2 hours) of it, I was sitting joblessly, not doing anything, nothing in my brain, having put down something in the fair sheets for the 6 questions already, when newspapers seemed a good idea. Of course, we were allowed to use mobile phones (as calculators), and I even SMS'ed from inside the hall (not to discuss answers, though :) ).

We were asked to think (stare at the ceiling) for 20-25 minutes, and then answer for 5; Sir was very right about those ratios though it seems quite skewed to me when he initially said them; of course, for most part I was just looking around arbitrarily.

Performance Analysis:

Question 6:
The philosophy advocated in Lagey Raho Munna Bhai is:
(a) Goondagiri (b) Gandhigiri (c) Krishnagiri (d) Soniagiri
(1 Mark)

That's the only answer I'm guaranteed to get right. It's (b), by the way. And yes, some student(s) even looked up this answer on the internet, and there was at least one other who got this wrong (He wrote (a)!)

There was another question, which Sir called the "Laddoo" question, meant to be one which could be "done easily" (read: done by me), which was like a question which was a part of the paper our seniors got, which I'm hoping to get right was well. (3 Marks)

Orkut Birthday Reminder Psychology Test

2006-09-13T11:40:00.000+05:30

Background
I changed my birthdate on Orkut to the 12th of September, on the 11th of September.

Story
Ok people, please don't kill me.
I am sorry.
My real birthday is on September 23rd, and not 12th (as was widely believed) or on some other date.Thank you for your wishes, they'll count for my birthday.

Statement of Purpose:
"I wish people on their (supposed) birthdays if it shows up on Orkut even if I have no clue about the persons birthday. I wanted to see if I'm the only one who does that, or do most."

In other words, this was a test to see how many rely solely on what Orkut reports for birthday wishings. This was a deliberate change made by me. Imagine for some time, I had not made the change, and Orkut (we all know how good technically Orkut is) made it by mistake, the results would be as they are here.

Statistical Results:

12 (MSR) Zubair, Ayush, Amber, Poonam, Ankit, Anmol, Chandan, Aashish, Madan, Sridhar, Lakshman, Amrithraj
9 (MSR not my batch) Yagnesh, Nikhil, Aashith, Abhishek, Shakeel, Ganesh, Sandesh, Sudhev, Dinesh
8 (KVM) Radha, Sumant, Preetham, Deepak, Sushil, Karthik, Debi, Rajeev
11 (NPS) Abhinav, Viphul, Shankar, Ruchika, Vinod, Vishnuram, Swastik, Shilpa, Venkat, Mahesh, Arabhi
1 (NPS not my batch) Puneet
4 (Online/SKA) Chaitanya, Priyanka, Arun, Madhu_Tejas
fell for it, and wished me either in advance, on the 12th, and even belated.
Count_A: 45

Mahendra, Kavitha, Hema, Ganesh, Srikanth, Deepshikha, Devadutta, Jagadish, Mayur (MSRIT) spotted the "error"
Count_B: 9

Asha, Madan, Prem, [Infant_Prabhu (MSRIT), Preeti] (scraps below do help in knowing the truth :) ), Srinivas (NPS) wished me but (later) got/had doubts.
Count_C: 6

All inclusions, especially to Count_B are welcome.
Please notify me if I have mis-spelt your name, want me to remove it, etc.

This psychology test was highly successful, going by the numbers.
Nearly half of my 131 Orkut friends responded.

Interesting Mentions:
Amrithraj, for giving me a "belated" wish on the 12th (my supposed birthday) itself.
Radha, for wishing me twice, once in advance, and once on my supposed birthday.
Ruchika, thanks really for your detailed wishes, you have patience.
Srinivas, for looking up my resumé to see if I was lying.
Madan, for SMS'ing me asking if it was my birthday.

Results: Most people, like me, rely (quite blindly) on Orkut's reminder for wishing.

Conclusion:
I can continue to wish people using Orkut's reminder system. Others may play pranks (possibly inspired by this), but I won't be the only one to get fooled.

Thank you all for participating.
Sorry for the trouble/hurting your feelings.
Do not be sorry that you have forgotten my birthday, I do not expect you to remember it; just like how I do not remember yours.
Treats will follow, yes.

Please continue flaming me on Orkut for this prank in my scrapbook, as well as commenting on this blog. Thank you.
BTW, my birthday this year according to the lunar calendar is on Sep 12th. So it really was my birthday! [Well, not really, I haven't bothered to check. And it's not as if you believed me this time ;)].

Other (not so) interesting facts:
Month is September (9).. 11 days to my real birthday (11) - The 9/11 connection, of course, has to be made with everything for it to be worthwhile. Why wasn't I "born" on 9/11, that's another story, let me know if you want to hear the long story preceeding this "event".

Other (nearly) famous people born on Sep 12th:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_12#Births

Code4Bill results

2006-09-10T13:32:00.000+05:30

This news is over a month old (August 2nd, 2006), but if you've not read it yet, it might be interesting.

Abishek Kumarasubramanian (abi_k) gets to work with Bill Gates. The other way around, say you ? :)

Here's the report. Also, the official site.

I just realized that he was doing (just finished) Electrical Engineering from IITM and not Computer Science.

First Indian to reach Red on TopCoder

2006-09-09T17:38:00.000+05:30

This is something we (jagadishm and me) were were waiting for (/speculating about) some time ago.

konqueror gets there on 19th August 2006. (current rating: 2276)

Also, a congratulatory thread on the TopCoder Forums.

Edit: Can any of you find konqueror's real name for me ?
Edit2: Solved by the man himself; thank you.

Gaim Plugin: Sendlog 0.1

2006-09-03T20:52:00.001+05:30

This plugin is used to send the log of the current IM window to the user whose e-mail address is thetoaddress@targetdomain.com when the user types
/sendlog thetoaddress@targetdomain.com
as in IM window.

Get the readme.txt file first and read it completely before you get and use the plugin.

Get the GNU/Linux binary (.so), source, some additional required files, (and readme.txt) in a compressed file here.

Update: Memory allocation bug detected. Version 0.02 will be out soon to correct this.
Change the [1000] to something higher (or allocate dynamically) and recompile before use, else Gaim will crash if you put/get messages bigger than 1000 chars. If you can't do this, do not use this plugin in version 0.01.

Free Software: Current status and challenges

2006-08-19T15:41:00.000+05:30

Speaker: Richard Stallman
Date: 19th August 2006
Venue: Faculty Hall, IISc.
Capacity: 160
Attendance: 120 at 11 a.m. to 140 by 11:10 a.m. to 120 by 12:40 p.m. to 80 by 1:35 p.m.

11:03 a.m. - 12:40 p.m. -> Talk
What was said: The usual. Humorous in parts, as expected.
Jokes like:
"GNU is often mispronounced as gnu or Linux."
"It's a moral duty. If there was a person drowning, and I knew swimming, and the person wasn't Bush, I'd have tried to save him."
Always expanded DRM as "Digital Restrictions Management", and TRIPES as "The Restrictions and Impediments to Profession, Education, and Society".

The 12:35 p.m. Saint IGNUcius act with the black overgarment, halo, and pose with one arm raised blessing the audience and the other carrying a laptop had the audience in splits.

Stuff I'm more convinced of than before:
The use of free software even if it is less powerful than propreitery software, because it means freedom.
To not use propreitery software _at all_ even if we have not paid for it.

12:40 p.m. - 1:35 p.m. -> Q & A.

1:35 p.m. - 1:40 p.m. -> Distribution of Gnu/Linux stickers for free, and Rs. 200 pins (to donate to the FSF so that they can hire more programmers / pay them).

Things to do:
Spend a few minutes a day advocating the goals of freedom to people using software, and if that's not possible, at least spend a few seconds a day calling GNU/Linux by it's correct name.

Notes:
Try pronouncing guh-noo, knew, new, gnu. The last 3 are pronounced the same by Americans (at least).
The right pronounciation of GNU is guh-noo, but one doesn't need to stress tooo much on the guh. Also, EMACS is pronounced e-max (not ee-max, e.m.a.c.s. etc.).

Richard Stallman doesn't get too tired even after 2 hours of speaking standing, doesn't need a prepared speech, wants a good mic and the air conditioner turned on high, and thinks his speech is the best at the start and will wait for people to enter so that they get to hear it as well. Pauses in the middle at times, but as expected, is very fluent and has an understandable accent.

Language tips 1 - English (spelling)

2006-08-18T17:49:00.000+05:30

Possibility, not possiblity.
Theorem, not theorum.
Sentence, not sentance.
Negative, not negetive, though.
Weird, not wierd.

Also, 'hierarchical' and 'arbitrary'.

Any more words frequently used and mis-spelt by you ? Comment.

David Filo - Yahoo! and the Internet

2006-08-09T19:47:00.000+05:30

From what is literarily (pardon the nonce word) "the horse's mouth"; not quoted ("...") because I do remember nearly the exact words, but can't take responsibility for my memory.

When Dave and Jerry started it, they called it "Dave's and Jerry's Directory of Cool Sites".
They decided they had to have some other name for it in the course of time.
Inspired (not they, but the name Ya...) by a popular program known as yacc (yet another compiler compiler), they decided to call their company "Yet Another something something" and they ran a search on some dictionary on their computer for ya.* and it returned yahoo, the American word for a rough uncouth person; which apparently Dave and Jerry at the time decided they were, and named their company Yahoo.
Later, their marketing team suggested that the full-form be "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle", and since the word officious meant something like neither useful, nor worthwhile (actually, I think it means something like interfering), they decided to stick to it.

Background:
David Filo - Yahoo! and the Internet
Date: 9th August 2006
Venue: CSA Seminar Hall, CSA Department, IISc.
Capacity: ~100
Attendance: ~120 (down to ~100 by 4:50 pm)
Schedule:
4:00 pm - 4:30 - Talk (no PowerPoint)
What was said -> "Yahoo! has problems of scale and is trying to find the answer to them."
4:30 - 5:00 - Questions from the audience
5:00 onwards - Tea and one-one Q&A with Dave Filo

Notes:
Americans, (pardon me for the generalization,) pronounce internet as innernet; inner not exactly like the Indian inner, but the "t" is somewhat silent. Mobile is pronounced as mobil, not moh-bil, but just mobil or mobill.

2006-07-10T14:34:00.000+05:30

Testing .gif transparency and creating rounded corners in GIMP.

2006-07-10T10:12:00.000+05:30

Continued into the morning.

2006-07-09T20:45:00.000+05:30

Random evening timepass.

2006-03-30T18:00:00.000+05:30

There is absolutely nothing here. I thought I shall copy and paste some text, but it is possible that that text is copyright, and some one will charge me under some arbitrary copyright act of their country, and I'll have to hire lawyers, in doing which, I shall have to sell my house and computer, go on the streets, and lose my educational admission and job. Thus, I will be reduced to a mere beggar. With this line, i.e. calling beggars mere, the National Association of Beggars has decided to launch a nationwide agitation against me, and also a case which will be decided by the Indian Human Rights commission, as well as the International Court of Justice, at Hague. In case both courts give conflicting verdicts, the acceptable one is decided on the basis of the flip of a coin. Which coin, you ask ? Details (possibly) in the next post.