Closing Time

Its been over a month since the last blog - in between the shifting back to Bengaluru, joining Oracle and no broadband at home - there seemed to be no time for blogging...

So here is a long shot recap of my last days at IITB - of which I mostly remember stuff related to Food alone: Zaffron pay-for-yourself-no-treat, Red Olives send-off treat by my considerate professor and who can forget - Mess food the uncomparable :D

Apart from that - nice to have experienced first flight - the feeling of being on top of the world - with the clouds and the sky forming different imagery around you is surreal!

All things said and done - a lot more do remain. Least prominent of  which are three more blogposts in the drafts that are never going to see the light of the Internet day. No real senti-stuff to express as such - feels good to be back in Namma Bengaluru; duly excluding the fact that Namma traffic is a nightmare!

As for my M.Tech - it was a bumpy ride - but I lived the undergrad way during my M.Tech - so not much to be dismal or ecstatic about; but I am surely glad it is over!

So, time to bid adieu to Blogging - atleast for the foreseeable future(and remove that from Special Interests section of my resume!)

Bye Bye Blogger..

Time for a few lasts and a few firsts

The End is here - well, the good kind of End - End of school :)

Project presentations, reports, classes, academic life - the few lasts for many of us. All of them are being backed up in memory archives - making way for the newer things coming ahead in life.

Also the time to recap the past two years - orientation, friends, courses, projects, holidays, TA duty, fb fights, labs, research, placements, tensions, treats, farewells and everything ending well...

Talking about farewells - good to see that there were no teary eyes and goodbye hugs this time around ( seen a lot of them the past 3 times!!) - or might have missed all of them staying at my den :D

Coming ahead - First job(or.. new job), first true monetary freedom, first professional environment and much more. Time to prepare for all that is coming !!

Not much can be said with certainity about the future - but lets have fingers crossed for a few things: less nightouts, fun weekends, time for a social life amidst the busy worklife, finding that special someone and getting hitched - or delegate that job to the parents, catch up with friends and basically enjoy whatever you do!

Wishing everyone all the very best; or Spock style - Live Long and Prosper :D[Thinking of adopting this line as a standard goodbye message...]

Afternote:

Phew - Writing has been real tough these days...

Explains why it seemed so ridiculously hard to modify just the Project Abstract - Time to revive a few of those gray cells!! 

A late late late late realization

It is so simple and obvious - Keep away from distractions, Go to work, Try your hand at a few things with effort and consistency, Take small steps towards doing something meaningful, Earn your fun, Keep Calm and Enjoy!

Easy steps to a decent living, or in my case - a decent MTP; yet something I have repeatedly failed to keep up in the past few months. After months of degeneracy, the D-day is here and I am utterly clueless - not just for now but for the coming future as well...

Anyway, without jumping the gun, let me make my point. In a bizarre parallel universe - getting work done is just like writing this blog post. You may think of a hundred things, or you may think of nothing - both are essentially same and lead nowhere until you actually start writing. And once you do start writing - its important to keep consistency and clarity throughout - or else the end result turns out to be a gobbledygook. And the end is important - make a point before signing off..

And that is it - The End!

(See what I did there :D)

The Giving Up syndrome

As a man of immense personal experience, here is me sharing a few thoughts/rants on the classical art of giving up, of being the opposite of "When the going gets tough, the tougher get the going" thing!

The first sentence gives a fair idea that this is going to be a boring post - that I am writing for no obvious reasons. Hoping that it does not kill too much time of the reader..

The issue starts small - not wanting to spend 10 more minutes on a problem, postponing a homework until the deadline comes, bunking a class because it is boring etc. And slowly it hogs on the bigger things - things like courses and decisions. Laziness acts as a great catalyst to it!

Coming to personal experience - dropping Mrudamgam learning, leaving cisco( afraid of commiting to work life so jumping back to the familiar raft of education - somehow sounds like 'giving up' inside my head!!), and the impending doom - MTP. For the past months, I have been kind of avoiding the project and meeting my guide - now leading to the Give Up stage: Time to turn hypocritical and hope that there is some higher power to help me out :D :D

Anyway, I am not the self-advice or advice others kind - and there are tons of material out there that help people in getting out of it. However, I do want to say one thing before giving up on this give up post - once it sets in, it is tough to get rid off!

Thus ends another pointless post. 

Behind Proxy Lines !!!

" I want to grow up, but netmon won't let me!"

Quite a famous quote this one - on the T-shirts of many IITians. Apart from the pretension and humor in the quote - sometimes 'netmon' - the IITB proxy really pisses you off!

It tags along a whole bunch of extra work!

There is the ritual of setting up the proxy for all applications accessing the internet, the extra hit of Enter/OK to authenticate the proxy each time you fire up the browser, and then with the Aakash tablets - rooting them and installing ProxyDroid to make the wi-fi device usable(plus Connectify Me on laptop for sharing the ethernet connection as wi-fi).

But you get stumped when there is a software you are installing that demands internet connection, but does not have proxy authentication feature!

So coming to the background for this post - A bunch of my school friends started a Group chat on WhatsApp - and asked me to join. Here lies the problem - I dont have a smartphone!(and for incompatibility reasons, I couldn't install it on the tablet..)

A quick search on the met came out with a workaround - run the BlueStacks android emulator and install WhatsApp on it. Here is Hurdle 1 - Bluestack downloads some binaries online - termed 'runtime data'; and well - no proxy support yet as it is still in beta. Also, by the virtue of its beta status - the installer just freezes at this point!

To pass this hurdle, I had to use ccproxy - which is kind of a proxy in front of the netmon proxy for the computer. So there I spent around half an hour getting the settings right so that Bluestacks continued installation; and then revert back the network settings to the old ones(I personally feel ccproxy is kind of a messy business!)

Now things seemed well and good, but wait - The native application of Bluestacks cannot access internet, and as it is already established - No proxy support. One of the forums suggests the use of ProxyCap - another application that lets you specify those applications that use proxies. So - one more precursor was met - installed ProxyCap and added a 'rule' to allow the network access executable of Bluestacks to have a proxy redirection!

Things were not over yet - as ProxyCap allows setting of HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS4 and SOCKS5  proxies. I wasn't sure what goes for what kind of requests - so had to do a trial and error - there went another hour.

The end result was this - To load the initial Top Charts apps in the home screen(well, there is the Retry or Cancel popup, but the Cancel button almost never works!), it uses HTTP connection, but to install apps, run network dependent apps or surf the internet via the browser, it uses HTTPS. This translates to me starting ProxyCap in HTTP mode for the startup of Bluestacks, and then switching to HTTPS mode for running Whatsapp(Standard non-marketplace installation; download .apk file and run it via Bluestacks application installer).

Oh yeah, there is that standard trick of installing WhatsApp on non-phone devices - Wait for the SMS verification to time-out, and then get the call with the activation code and use it. 

For some reason, Bluestacks refuses to use the HTTPS proxy during startup; so I have to do the start in HTTP mode and then switch to HTTPS mode to view Whatsapp messages all over again!

Anyway, did find out a few things - you can run WhatsApp on PC, although not in the most elegant way, and also I just found out that Whatsapp did not install on the tablet earlier due to space running out - so process repeat now :D!

3 Idiots - A Double Bluff message??

I usually watch repeats of one or two movies on my laptop - so I thought: Why not review one of my favorite movies that I watched tonight, in a new found light....

No doubt it is one entertaining movie - the earning figures spoke well for that claim. Its one perfect Bollywood recipe with all the tadka: comedy, songs, emotion, romance, message, alas - no fist fights - but still great. But ultimately - its no different than a fantasy themed film like Iron Man; which I also love by the way - in providing unrealistic yet gripping scenarios that keeps you captivated:

From delivering a baby using a vaccum cleaner run on car batteries(and god knows how the internet worked - assuming it was part of the LAN that also needs power), being lucky that the heroine is getting married the same day, driving a sick man on scooter directly into the operation theater, fultu honesty and nothing else getting a job - and many many more! 

The story - witty, great, funny and motivational and all that (I can go as far to say that it improves upon the Chetan Bhagat novel that it is based upon)  - gives a lot of know-how on the creepy things a person can do: Fake a heart attack, electrocute a guy's weak spot(ouch!), screw up a language-unaware guy's speech and make him a laughing stock, gatecrash a wedding and more...

That being said - its out and out hilarious - whether its Chatur's speech, the fake Chanchad confession, Farhanitrate and Prerajulization, Raju's home that looks like the 50s, showing the Gadhapan of Suhas, drunken adventure at Virus' home, and starting of an induction motor !

Finally, the point I wanted to make: The Double Bluff...

The Bluffs: The film goes in lengths to drive the idea, in the protagonist's words : "Baccha, Kabil bano, Kamyabi jhakh marke tere peeche aayegi". It shows the flaws in the educational system, that the futility and arrogance of characters like Chatur and Virus shall meet their match and all that typical Bollywood funda(actually, the funda of most movies).

The Double Bluff: But then, one cannot fail to notice that it is the Chaturs, Virus' and Suhas' that are successful, be it materialistic; and Ranchos are but an idealism that everyone adores but nobody intends to be. Whether it is Chatur's way of determining success by how well-off he is, or Virus striving to keep his institute number one: Its just the way the world works - Kab tak Kabil banta rahega Baccha ??

One also has to sympathize with Chatur in the end - who tries to prove himself better all the way through; but is outdone by the 'A faar Apple, B faar Bal' yet 400 patentee Scientist :D

To list or not to list - Thats also the question!

Its a funny circle of events - You make a list of things to do, then do some of them and leave out a lot, then make a list of things remaining and start with them, then scrap them out and back to creating the new list!

Over the past few months - thats what has been happening in my life. The above pic is a snapshot of the exact thing. Made the list of To Dos - and didnt follow up with any one of them in the right sense. Made a list of things to study - just glanced through few of them, left out a lot...

The whole thing makes you question the credibility of the process and yourself - why make lists when you dont follow up ? Let things stay chaotic - atleast you have something to lay the blame on! But again, you cannot let anarchy of things decide for you either!

Consciously or otherwise - you list out things to do and start working towards them - Thats one way to look at life... 

So here is my refined list, that I don't intend to keep:

  

Machaxx Valfi!

Aage padhne se pehle bol du ki pehle baar is post ko Hinglish(English mein likhi hui Hindi) mein likh raha hoon - kyon ki apna Valfi bhi zyaadatar usi style mein hua tha - aur uss wajah se aur bhi mazeedaar tha. To thoda bahut grammar aur transliteration ka galtiyon ko maaf kardo..

Kal raat zabardast thi - Aakhir mein apne H-14 walo ki Valfi ban gayi - aur wo bhi poora pagalpanti aur masti ke saath :)

Sabse pehle to hamari CS Mtech batch ki procrastination aur baad mein last minute effort dalne ka character ko tarif karna hi padega - valfi se ek din pehle tak log thanda the - itni ki valfi ke liye stage bhi book nahi kiya! Aur phir valfi ke pichle sham ko aakhirkar kuh paanch saath logo ka facebook mein valfi threads chalu kar diya...

To phir jaake valfi ke ek ghante pehle function ke coordinator aur Secy ke saath fight marke bacha hua 6th floor ka jagah le li - stage-vage kuch nahi - magar ek light to lagwa liya. Aur 10 baje tak logon ka profile banate rahe, banate rahe...

Magar apne bande bhi hain bahut hoshiyar - music room se laaye speaker aur mike, tablet aur laptop mein profiles ke saath; aur khudh ka cameras, extensions aur chargers leke ready ho gaye valfi ko 11 baje.

Aur tab se shuru hua - laughter pe laughter, bharpoor bhakchodi, dher saare non-veg gande jokes, total taang kichayi, past aur present ke girlfriends aur crushes, nashe mein kiye hue cheesey, sharamnak incidents, dark secrets, aur end mein thoda appreciation bhi - bole to fultu entertainment !!

Kuch highlights is tarah hain:

• Dan ki to sab lete hain; aur uske khane ka range gazab hain.
• Aarif hain download, DP aur online shopping ke expert - hai isko penthouse ke sapne aur bahut kuch.
• Peeyush hain ladkibaaz aur bhayankar coder - aur Mumbai ke trains to isse hi chalte hain.
• Madnani ka sirf do mood hain - spiritual aur sexual(aur unke rangeen daastane)
• Bol Burange ka pol khul gaya - Goa ho ya IITB - Burange ulti optimize karta hain.
• Kashyap ek hi wo banda hai jo PB ke bare mein complaint nahi karta, aur koi negative point nahi hai iska.
• Rajesh ki daaru ke baad kiye hue kaarnaame hai bahut saare.
• Yogesh ke explanation kisi ko samaj nahi aata - phir bhi koi phir se Samjha Na sunna nahi chahta.
• Manish hai senti aur fundebaaz - aur poore wing ko pata lagta hai ki kab ye naha raha hai..
• Siddhanth to 11 baje ki baat alag hi aadmi ban jata hai - aur uska oracle ka interview ka koi jawab nahin!
• Anuj nikla sabse bada chuppa rustam - hai iski GF bahut pehle se - Google, Visa aur GF: kuch baaki nahi raha is bande ki!
• Dabre ki muh uske height se jyaada hai - bahut ladkiyo ko kiya impress, phir bhi pata nahi paya ek ko.
• Ananth ke paas hai bahut stories - lekin hai bhulakkad bhi, sabko course mein help karta hain, par uski grade ka lag jati hai end me.
• Senthil ka to hain kahi punchlines, aur Deepika pe hain fida all the time; Khud ko kahta hai LPG - Low Profile Guy.
• Ramteke hain best bahut saare cheeso main, phir bhi hain Down to Earth.

.......................

aur bhi bahut saare kisse - jin pe has has ke sabhi log thak gaye!

Mera bhi thoda bahut khichayi hui - upar wale hastiyo ke saat compare nahi kar sakte ho, phir bhi - mazaa to aaya. Pehle to Title diya 'Chindi' - aur pizza ka har piece main hisaab dalke pay karne ka kaarnaama bataaya. Phir aayi baat naya facebook profile banane ka reason. Isi bahane main ne 'self-experience' ke do baat bataaya:

1. Jab ladki ke saat ho to kaan pe earphone lagake usko ignore mat karna

2. Jab uske saat bus mein jaa rahe ho to use sone mat dena - kuch baat mein lage raho

Magar apne class ke ladke to iss baat mein mahir hain - shaayad kisi ne suna bhi nahi; aur kahi doosre baaton mein bhi bahut bakkarchodi hui :D

To anth mein poore raat masti aur baatein ki barsaat ke baad subah ko 7 baje hamara Valfi khatam hua, aur last wala Valfi toh dirty jokes ke limit paar kar di! Bas uske baad breakfast kiya aur so gaya - aur utha to shaam ke saade-paanch baj chuke the!!

Is sab ke baad to picture kheechna banta hain(Kuch log to missing hain - picture main aur upar ke kahaniyon me, maaf karo aur adjust karlo...) :-

Job Treat v/s Farewell Party

The season of big treats is coming to an end for us IITBians - viz Job Treat, Farewell and Valedictory functions. Valfi is just around the corner - and we had the other two in the recent past. 

For those unaware of the whole thing - As per IITB tradition: Job treat is what we seniors give after the placements to our juniors in celebration, and the juniors reciprocate by giving us a Farewell Party. 

As any outsider ready to pass judgement, here is my verdict: To put succinctly - the Job Treat was a brave attempt, the Farewell Treat was conventional but well executed..

To elaborate on the details (because this is a blog and not a facebook post so that I can end as above!) - our Job Treat was on boats - a few kilometers away from the shore facing the Gateway of India. An innovative idea indeed - rather than the usual Hotel or Party Hall plans. Except for one thing - the constant rocking of the boat implied that no one even needed to dance; it sways you automatically - both good and bad! And everyone unanimously agrees that the food too was a spoilsport - I still get goosebumps imagining the almost non-veg tasting Paneer sabzi x-( 

But still; it was quite adventurous to party in the middle of the sea - albeit those with Thalassophobia (of course I googled that!) 

The Farewell party was in a more common party place; and in keeping up with the current trend of Confessions and Secrets - there were games of share your secret, get others to confess a secret etc. Food definitely scored more points than Job treat; and so did the Memento - A photo/scrap book of all the current batch students.

Since I don't have any of the pics of the event - I am sharing pics of the book itself, also seems symmetric with the above content...

Oh, and here is my entry in the book; thanks for the geeky description +Amitkumar Patil !!

So it was Holi today....

So here I am - sitting with a pinkish hue in my face - courtesy all the colours of Holi.

Yeap, I was part of the festival of colours - officially for the first time...

And I got to say - it is another version of a Dance party for me!

So your friends come barging in at your door; smear the colors all over your face and hair; pour more on rest of you - and you have to do the same - thats the covenant. Well, I was following the social convention and became part of the tantrum party..

Too late to change the track of this conversation from grumpy to cheerful ? Of course; how can I leave a chance to rant - though I did forego the job treat :D

But hey, there were a few positive takeaways - do not wear any cotton whites - I now have a purple-pink colour-patched Banian that is a sight! And for that matter - loose the glasses too - its tough to clean around the edges! 

Anyways, here I am wishing everyone Happy Holi - with traces of the colours still in my cuticles and hair - and gallant about going back to being a Bangalorean depicted thus:

Post #100

Well, it took a long time, but here is Post #100 on the blog.
Enlisting 100 things that flash into my mind to commemorate that:

1. Mumbai to Bangalore, Bangalore to Mumbai - 17 hours by bus; 22 by train.
   The farthest place I have been so far !
2. Hostel life for the first time - and that started in Hostel 6 x-( !
3. Speaking in half-polished Hindi
4. Local trains - Lifelines of Mumbai
5. Room # 42, Hostel 6 to Room # B-208, Hostel 14
6. Beating myself in laziness times over in the past one and a half years of stay
7. Placements - Oracle on day 2
8. Squandering time online - facebook, gmail, imdb, twitter, reader and what not...
9. Pissed off my project guide by not meeting for a month - and on the way to do it again..
10. Blogging, of course - why else would this post come.
11. Elephanta, Gateway of India, Nehru centre, Bandra-Worli sea link, Malls, CST - just a few places of visit
12. Running off to home whenever there was a bunch of holidays - not so much now :D
13. Tons of movies and serials: http://www.imdb.com/user/ur35793309/watchlist
14. Staying up overnight and feeling sleepy during the day
15. LAN BAN dictated sleep cycle
16. A renewed taste for Sci-Fi and Fantasy themes
17. Me and my laptop - Best and Worst relationship at the same time ;)
18. Big fat birthday treat - Lesson: Take people to a veg hotel for treats :D
19. Mumbai monsoon bash!
20. Vain attempts at reducing time-waste by staying invisible online
21. Visit to 'Alma Fater' Cisco previous December
22. New facebook profile with Kannada name
23. Kannada sangha and the a formidable number of Kannada people
24. "I used to be indecisive, now I an not sure" prevails
25. IITians of all kinds - serious, not so serious; like me, totally unlike me; research-oriented, job-oriented, un-oriented too..
26. The goddamn mess food !
27. Graduation day at PESIT :)
28. 2G 'Snail'-Net when I am back home v/s IITB unlimited LAN
29. Make and break resolutions after every quiz, exam and presentation
30. Off and On jogging regimes - morning, evening, midnight and now none..
31. Proportional Efforts Theorem - and proportional CPI !
32.  MTP = Mostly Time Pass :D
33. Job treats and Send-offs
34. Tomorrow never comes!
35. A brief spell of documentaries fever
36. Attended many ppts of companies - only to end up getting placed in the first shortlisted company - such a waste of time that could have been wasted otherwise...
37. TA duty - few ups and downs but overall sailing safe..
38. Shortening of every word - Acads, Valfi, Convo, Apping etc among other nuances of the IITB janta lingo
39. Pulling all-nighters - Never for work but to watch serials
40. Showing off 'Still studying' status among other friends who are deep into worklife
41. Semi-successful and uncoordinated meetup plans 
42. First try at a few things - should I say first taste..?
43. Getting into the Tum-tums
44. Spending 2 hours and more to write a blogpost like this..
45. 1 TB hard disk for data needs - and thats apparently not enough..
46. Aakash tablet - for 'educational purpose'
47. Lengthy posts that made no sense - and didnt do anything about the ones that did  
48. No subjects in the last sem - just the big fat project
49. Lot of TO-DO lists that were never done!
50. Few friends and many many acquaintances.
51. The willingness to do anything except work!
52. Retracing footsteps before 10th Std - Dorky and does not talk to girls :D 
53. Experiencing a wider world - outside the Bangalore bubble..
54. Kind of liking the single life now..
55. crazy courses where I got AA - IT Project Management and Philosophy of Education 
56. Halfway through - and wondering who will read this long and blatant monologue!
57. Fill up laptop with movies - and then search for space to save course documents :D
58. Aimless chats and conversations online late in the night - just before the lan goes down..
59. Not sure even now whether I know all the classmates from the M.Tech batch.
60. Following #59 - never cared to know names of students enrolled in the courses for which I am the TA
61. A dirty one - bath cycle extending to once in 3 days!
62. The hype of IMAX!
63. Fingers crossed - Hoping Oracle apps places me back at Bangalore
64. Nostalgia - now and again - school, college, bengaluru and more
65. Ridiculous habits and laziness that are hard to get rid off..
66. Every day was Sunday - January 2013
67. Coding skills - From OK to I dont trust myself bad!
68. Non-dancer at party - and intending to keep that record..
69. I dont understand the big deal about this number !
70. Contemplating all possible ways of cutting back time waste - while doing those activities that are responsible for it
71. An improved Dont Care attitude towards a lot of things
72. Self-induced distraction of things
73. 11 subjects in first sem of B.E v/s 11 courses in entire M.Tech - definitely not the same!
74. 4 more months to go - if I dont get an extension - or else more!
75. NOTHING - most common response to small talk when someone asks about life or MTP
76. Corporate lingo: Current package - 96 kpa
77. Bored and lazy - 2 self complementing moods
78. Lost one month's TAship for not signing attendance and not submitting any leave application
79. Lot of the points on the negative side - what can I say - I am a natural cribber !
80. New attitude towards pizzas - a welcome change out of the boring routine of mess - but better look for coupons and offers
81. Watching runs and re-runs of TV series that I love
82. Oh yeah - they call us 'Matka's :D
83. Stingy as ever - I still dont have a mosquito repellant(and that officially tells that I am out of things to tell and looking around the room for more!!)
84. After the Troll era - its confession time now(IITB confessions, PESIT confessions..). Here is mine - I keep changing my IP every week because I get blocked out by netmon due to some rogue software update requests that I have not been able to figure out!
85. Contrary to the general trend - I like Windows over Linux - and preferably free. By the way - IITB provides 2 year licensed Windows products :)
86. Summer days of Mumbai are no different from Monsoon days - same exhaustion!
87. Going lengths and breadths into making the resume - only to realize that what matters is the top column of marks - same as other colleges!
88. Follow up - CPI matters! Even in IIT!
89. Hiranandani - One place for everything for IITians - and I went there after one whole year!
90. Clocked more time on youtube than my project!
91. Apparently there are some places in IITB like the boathouse that I have not yet visited!
92. Getting a tummy and doing nothing about it!
93. Step out of IIT to see the real Mumbai - and all you get to see is tons of people rushing around all the time - its all about work.... 
94. Au contraire - IIT, PESIT, or some other ****IT - all that matters is you - what you want to be and what efforts you put into it..
95. Correcting answer books - not the best job!
96. Did 2 more years of studies pay off - Upto time to decide!
97. Missing breakfast in lieu of sleep - where else can you do that :D ?
98. Brand name IIT forever...
99. Thinking about a 100 things in a flash(that lasts 2 hours though :D) is not an easy task!
100. Now looking at this list and wondering: Who gives a $#!+ about this ??
     

Exquisite Elephanta!

There is more to Elephanta Caves than just the caves.
Here is why:
1. Boat Trip from the Gateway of India
2. Exploring the now dilapidated caves
3. Hiking up Cannon hill
4. A mini garden
5. A view-only lake
6. Tons of shops
7. A small museum
8. Lots of Foreigners ;)
9. and a fair number of restaurants - albeit upper-priced
--> All the reasons making Elephanta caves a perfect one day trip-cum-trek spot!

Like my last post; I am letting pics do most of the talking - for detailed information; there is Wikipedia anyways :)

The Boat Ride:

The Caves:

The Hiking and the Cannon:

The Lake and the Garden:

Back to the Sea:

A day well spent - for one who wants to have a fun weekend outing :)

Funky T-shirts

It is often said that a picture says a thousand words - so does a T-shirt with a witty or funny slogan. 

IIT - a home for both kinds; definitely has an interesting spectacle of such T-shirts.

So here is a post on a few such shirts I have come across - and a graphic illustration of the same(well, nothing compared to the original ones; but who knows when somebody gets angry for violating copyrights - if any ;-))

"We code the rules, you follow them"

Somewhat egoistic statement by our very own CSE department T-shirt; but thats what we are...

But poor depiction - Imagine a grid of 1's and 0's with the CSE embossing out - so geekishly binary :)

And also missing is the department logo at the back that says "Watch out - The one inside is CSE property !"

"Somehow got in, somehow got out"

A quirky one and seemingly favourite of the alumnis; for reasons obvious...

"IITians - Gods of Dating" 

Keep wondering until they turn the back!

"Eat, sleep, material science"

Probably of the metallurgy department; goes similar to this famous design:-

"Talk Nerdy to me"

The punchline of Techfest held recently

" Road to Success is Under construction"

Well, now that you got the general hang of things; I am going to cut down on the T-shirt illustrations..

This one is the favorite tagline of the Civil(I guess..) students.

" By the time you leave IIT Bombay you are absolutely ***ked!"

Well, Wait for It before jumping into conclusions - Look at what is there behind :P

Some of the other top favorites of mine are:

"So you think getting into IIT was tough ?
Try getting out!!!"

" Cowboys dont take a bath, they just dust off" 

- Not exactly academic; but explains a general scenario crisply !

"Either way, we fuel you"

The Chemistry T-shirt is rather bold - with a beer glass and a petrol fuel injector - the Chems show off what they do best(Sorry, no images hit that depict the shirt)

"Relax, Its only ONES and ZEROS"

Last but very relevant - Not just a CS t-shirt; but also a reflection on the marks :D

Facebook reboot

Long boring weekend ahead - You have to catch up with the course project, but you don't intend to; you are bored with the sitcoms and movies on your computer and not in the mood of watching; and lazy that you are - you don't want to go out...

Given this situation what can be done ?

Well, I created a new facebook profile and archieved the old one - for I am obsessed with it and can live without but not want to !

Few things that I observed:

1. Not many people care why you do it. They just accept the request thinking - Obviously this guy has nothing better to do!
2. A few people do - and either accept the request thinking the old profile was hacked or deactivated; or reject the request suspecting phony account.
3. Even lesser people actually ping and ask whats up with the whole thing. Although the primary reason I believe to be is the Kannada name...
4. Reduction in number of troll posts - the social networks are so very trolled these days!
5. Whatever be the reason - its actually a good way to reduce the number of 'friends' you have - my count: 543 to ~250.

The question remains - Why did I create a new account ?

Silly as it sounds - I did that to remove the non-existent 'Rao' in my real name :D

So here is my suggestion - Want to have the thrill of something new but at the same time reinvent the wheel ?

Delete your old facebook account and create a new one - Start afresh, get rid of some of the old things and keep what is needed.

And catch me on my new facebook account:

 https://www.facebook.com/jsumanth1989

A January of Grand Nothingness

People have lazy Mondays or lazy weekends or lazy holidays - but I had a whole lazy January !!

A rather unpleasant start to a new year - and faced the heat on the last day from my Prof. !

So what did I do the whole month - NOTHING, absolutely nothing !

Whole days went in youtube, facebook. movies, and lots and lots of sleep... 

Not that the time waste is something unique - but it just got amplified this time around - so much that its become a real concern.

Unlike earlier times where some work used to happen - this time no efforts - all time went in waiting for the moment of realization - the sudden spark that comes around where all priorities get straightened up, I get up and go promptly to do the project etc etc - alas, that Magic doesn't ever happen !

Apart from the no work debacle - one other thing I tended to do was thinking of far future, and ignoring the imminent one: "Hey, I will do this after joining Oracle, I should be buying so-and-so stuff, go to such places" etc where the current important thing to do is to sail through the MTP !

So, January did not go well - and all blames on me for that. Went to my Prof. to finally meet him after roughly 2 months - so one can expect the reaction to that. Got advice from a lot of friends to stop all this fooling around and concentrate on work - yet to do that.

And was so very lazy that I did not even write a blog post !! 

Closing words - No promises, one should not do any promises that do not have the intent to be kept behind them...