It's been a really long time since I've updated, and believe me, it's not for want of time. Just generally been lazy. Add to that one more thing - sometimes when I've sat at the comp and come online, certain things go through my head that really aren't fit for public consumption. Hell, they shuldn't even be going through *my* head in the first place.
Btw, I've almost decided on a project for my final semester. Just a few more details to flesh out, and I'm done. It's going to be a more algorithmy kind of thing rather than some practical application thingy, but I'm hoping it's decent enough to pass muster. And if you e-mail me asking about details, I'll just politely say no.
I just took my first mock CAT. Admittedly, it was at home, and even more admittedly, it wasn't even complete, but I did sit for an hour and managed to finish up 60 questions. Actually, I really was intending to take it completely, but as usual my luck deserted me when the lights went out. Taking the test by emergency light is *NOT* an option. Unless, of course, you don't mind having all sorts of unknown insects crawling/flying/walking/running/whatnot around you...Oh yeah, coming back, when I decided I couldn't wait for the lights to come back, I went ahead and evaluated meself, and came to the alarming conclusion that I really need to brush up on my mathematical abilities to reach the CAT level. In fact, the situation is so bad that I actually did better on my reading comprehension - a traditional rival - than on the maths bit that I attempted. But seriously, how many people still remember sum to 'n' terms type of problems after the 1st year any more?
Incidentally, out of 60 attempted, I got 44 correct, 12 wrong, and 4 left blank. All for a grand total of 41 out of 60. Which is positively brilliant percentage-wise. At this rate I should get 123 out of 180 in the full paper. But hello. Any sane human being taking the CAT will tell you that's just a pipe dream. Actually, even a 90+ is considered God level. Sooo...
Anyways, apart from the CAT, I will also be taking the NMAT and the Maharastra CET thing. The former for NMIMS and the latter for JBIMS. Sigh...*and* I've also given my GRE/TOEFL stuff and will be app'ing..
For some reason, when I run a Google Image Search for Asin, a few pr0n results are thrown up. I know I've turned off Moderate SafeSearch, but man! As we would say in college, this is a-two much! Incidentally, for the uninitiated, Asin's the new love of my life :)
Friday, 22 October 2004
Sunday, 10 October 2004
Misc Musings
[You have been warned. This post goes off on a tangent at many points.]
Does anyone else really enjoy listening/watching fights? I don't mean like in movies (dhishum dhishum or otherwise) or WWE (get the F out, I say), or even television mega-serials. What I mean is real-life action. No seriously. I really really enjoy, in a weird, twisted way, watching 2 people go at it hammer and tongs. More than that is okay, but it should ideally be 2. The other(s) may take sides, which spoils the to-do a little. The balance should never really be shifting towards anyone. When the fight is actually in progress, I tend to make little bets with myself internally, as in, "He's going to raise his hand first." or "She's going to swear first.". Oh yeah, one more very important thing. Fights between guy and girl and invariably more interesting than same-sex fights. No, no, don't get into orientations. I'll tell you why.
If it's a guy-guy fight, it won't be too long before it simply degenerates into a brawl involving either cuss-words, or fisticuffs. And that's just boring. Anyone can do that. But it takes a real man of intelligence to keep his end of a fight up in the air. Although admittedly, it takes much more intelligence to quell a fight one is involved in. But that's beside the point!
If it's a girl-girl fight, it quickly becomes downright nasty. Which gets very, very awkward. What is even more awkward is, generally two girls fight with each other directly only if they're somewhat close to each other. As a result, after the fight, both of them will more often than not end up in each other's arms apologizing 'for all the horrible things said'. That's far too anti-climactic...
But guy-girl is absolutely perfect! The guy's trying to win while still remaining properly gallant, and the girl is trying to win and crush the guy's gallantry at the same time. You can actually see the effort on the guy's face as he exercises, or tries to exercise, restraint. You can see the effort on the girl's face as she, for her part, diligently applies herself to the total annihilation of her unfortunate adversary, while still somehow appearing at the receiving end.
Truly, the female of the species is deadlier than the male. No, actually, there's no comparison. Whoever coined the term 'weaker sex' ought to have his head examined. And if it was a female who did come up with that, which seems highly likely, I salute her. A stroke of sheer brilliance. A perfect decoy. And such a typically feminine move.
The above paragraphs are so unabashedly male chauvinist, that it makes even me shudder..
Does anyone else really enjoy listening/watching fights? I don't mean like in movies (dhishum dhishum or otherwise) or WWE (get the F out, I say), or even television mega-serials. What I mean is real-life action. No seriously. I really really enjoy, in a weird, twisted way, watching 2 people go at it hammer and tongs. More than that is okay, but it should ideally be 2. The other(s) may take sides, which spoils the to-do a little. The balance should never really be shifting towards anyone. When the fight is actually in progress, I tend to make little bets with myself internally, as in, "He's going to raise his hand first." or "She's going to swear first.". Oh yeah, one more very important thing. Fights between guy and girl and invariably more interesting than same-sex fights. No, no, don't get into orientations. I'll tell you why.
If it's a guy-guy fight, it won't be too long before it simply degenerates into a brawl involving either cuss-words, or fisticuffs. And that's just boring. Anyone can do that. But it takes a real man of intelligence to keep his end of a fight up in the air. Although admittedly, it takes much more intelligence to quell a fight one is involved in. But that's beside the point!
If it's a girl-girl fight, it quickly becomes downright nasty. Which gets very, very awkward. What is even more awkward is, generally two girls fight with each other directly only if they're somewhat close to each other. As a result, after the fight, both of them will more often than not end up in each other's arms apologizing 'for all the horrible things said'. That's far too anti-climactic...
But guy-girl is absolutely perfect! The guy's trying to win while still remaining properly gallant, and the girl is trying to win and crush the guy's gallantry at the same time. You can actually see the effort on the guy's face as he exercises, or tries to exercise, restraint. You can see the effort on the girl's face as she, for her part, diligently applies herself to the total annihilation of her unfortunate adversary, while still somehow appearing at the receiving end.
Truly, the female of the species is deadlier than the male. No, actually, there's no comparison. Whoever coined the term 'weaker sex' ought to have his head examined. And if it was a female who did come up with that, which seems highly likely, I salute her. A stroke of sheer brilliance. A perfect decoy. And such a typically feminine move.
The above paragraphs are so unabashedly male chauvinist, that it makes even me shudder..
This warrants a different heading...
Anyways, on a different note, I won 2 grand on Friday, the day before yesterday, at a quiz in Panimalar Engineering College. And no, I will not hyperlink that, because I don't think it deserves that 'honour'. Admittedly, though, that place was nice to me. The students were nice, and it gave me free food, and best of all, cash. In spite of all that, I still enjoyed today at Shaastra, where I got chucked out in the prelims of the Main Quiz, more than I did at that useless excuse of a Jeppiaar-run college. My apologies to all Panimalar students, but seriously man, your man runs Virgin Vaults, not engineering colleges.
IITM, on the other hand. What can I say? That place just oozes brain. And not in a grotesque, Ramsey Brothers manner. You can physically feel the rise in mental activity on the campus. You can sense the vastly different brainwave frequencies. I can't think of a proper term in English, but in colloquial Tamil, IITM is 'one range place'. Phew.
And this is applicable at all times. Even if I just go there for QFI. In short, it's different. And that, my sir, is palpable.
IITM, on the other hand. What can I say? That place just oozes brain. And not in a grotesque, Ramsey Brothers manner. You can physically feel the rise in mental activity on the campus. You can sense the vastly different brainwave frequencies. I can't think of a proper term in English, but in colloquial Tamil, IITM is 'one range place'. Phew.
And this is applicable at all times. Even if I just go there for QFI. In short, it's different. And that, my sir, is palpable.
Tuesday, 5 October 2004
Me = Mo Joe!
I've finally got my hands on Firefox 1.0. Frankly, I thought Firefox 0.8 sucked majorly, which is why until now, I was in no great hurry to get rid of Internet Explorer 6. And seriously people, don't even *bother* suggesting that lame excuse for a competetive product - Opera. It takes even longer that IE 6 to start up. Ditto for Netscape. Firefox though - phew! F.A.S.T! In *all* aspects, be it loading web pages, or just starting up. And I used to think I'll never get to like tabbed browsing interfaces!
Incidentally, in the title of this post, I am *not* referring to that great simian evil-doer - Mojo Jojo. Since I'm just another user of a Mozilla product, I become a Mo Joe...heh...mokkai party...
Incidentally, in the title of this post, I am *not* referring to that great simian evil-doer - Mojo Jojo. Since I'm just another user of a Mozilla product, I become a Mo Joe...heh...mokkai party...
Monday, 4 October 2004
New comp!
I know I've been on this 'new comp' issue for quite a long time with all my friends, but finally, it's up and working! And I hope this time, it lasts! And for anyone who cares, here are the system specs:
Astute readers might have noticed that I've omitted monitor and keyboard details. That's because I've retained those from my older system [Compaq Preasio 4620], which was, incidentally, bought some time in June 1998. That's right. I've stuck by my old system faithfully for 6 years. Also, I've retained the old system's 4 GB HDD, so yeah, I don't really think that particular machine will have too many buyers queueing up for a look at it. Although, God knows, it certainly deserves looking at.
Compaq, I believe, is the Apple of the IBM-PC world. What I mean is, the Compaq Presario series definitely had to be the best looking series of branded comps doing the legitimate rounds in the country around the time I bought it. Love at first sight man. What curves! Since then, however, I've matured a bit since then, and look more at functionality now...or so I say ;)
AMD Athlon XP 2600+
256 MB DDR-RAM (333 MHz)
80 GB HDD
Sony DVD-ROM/CD-RW [48x/24x/48x/16x]
Samsung Optical Scroll Mouse
Currently running Win98 and Slackware 8.0
Astute readers might have noticed that I've omitted monitor and keyboard details. That's because I've retained those from my older system [Compaq Preasio 4620], which was, incidentally, bought some time in June 1998. That's right. I've stuck by my old system faithfully for 6 years. Also, I've retained the old system's 4 GB HDD, so yeah, I don't really think that particular machine will have too many buyers queueing up for a look at it. Although, God knows, it certainly deserves looking at.
Compaq, I believe, is the Apple of the IBM-PC world. What I mean is, the Compaq Presario series definitely had to be the best looking series of branded comps doing the legitimate rounds in the country around the time I bought it. Love at first sight man. What curves! Since then, however, I've matured a bit since then, and look more at functionality now...or so I say ;)
Tuesday, 28 September 2004
Mood/music update
No, actually, scratch that stuff. While it's nice, I'm not really all that maudlin. So life doesn't just go on, it goes as jauntily as it used to :-)
The story of my life
Thursday, 23 September 2004
Another one dites the bust
I'm terribly [LINUX] happy. In the last few days, I've re-discovered an old friend, added more people to my Orkut list, and more people I know have started [XML HTML SGML] blogging. Point #1 takes preference though!
Woohoo! Go [MACROMEDIA] Internet Names Database!
Anyway, this post is mostly a lame-ass [MICROSOFT] attempt to try and influence my Google AdSense sidebar into showing ads that I want it to. As you might have noticed (or not, which [LINUX] is highly unlikely), I've interspersed this post with random tech words just to try and force [VIRTUSA] AdSense into showing stuff. [LINUX]
Incidentally, my quest for a decent final year project continues, although - [LINUX]admittedly - [APACHE] not very intensely. Mostly because, frankly my dears, I don't give a damn. It's just some nuisance that I want desperately out of the way, so that I can get on with my life. Currently, the [SCO] company arrangement seems to be working out properly in that [LINUX] respect at least. Apparently, L & T [LINUX]cannot "accommodate" us in-house, and by us, I mean meself, Vivek and Vinod. Well boohoo! [LINUX] So much the better, really!
[LINUX] While project suggestions would be helpful, what would *really* help me is advice on studying abroad, [LINUX] especially USA and Australia, first-hand. [LINUX]
Woohoo! Go [MACROMEDIA] Internet Names Database!
Anyway, this post is mostly a lame-ass [MICROSOFT] attempt to try and influence my Google AdSense sidebar into showing ads that I want it to. As you might have noticed (or not, which [LINUX] is highly unlikely), I've interspersed this post with random tech words just to try and force [VIRTUSA] AdSense into showing stuff. [LINUX]
Incidentally, my quest for a decent final year project continues, although - [LINUX]admittedly - [APACHE] not very intensely. Mostly because, frankly my dears, I don't give a damn. It's just some nuisance that I want desperately out of the way, so that I can get on with my life. Currently, the [SCO] company arrangement seems to be working out properly in that [LINUX] respect at least. Apparently, L & T [LINUX]cannot "accommodate" us in-house, and by us, I mean meself, Vivek and Vinod. Well boohoo! [LINUX] So much the better, really!
[LINUX] While project suggestions would be helpful, what would *really* help me is advice on studying abroad, [LINUX] especially USA and Australia, first-hand. [LINUX]
Wednesday, 22 September 2004
Project? What project?
Final year project time has finally stopped being just around the corner, so its apparent that I'll just have to get off my lazy behind to do something about it. Only problem is...WHAT THE HELL DO I DO???
It's not like there are a shortage of ideas or anything. But everything I think of sounds so simplistic, that even I find it too ridiculous for a final year project. And for four hundred (400) marks at that.
Guys, suggestions are welcome. And oh yes, it should be something fun.
BTW, I went to St. Joseph's College of Engineering yesterday, and came 2nd in the quiz. The prelims hinted at decent stuff, but the finals were somewhat messy, what with a round being scrapped and some weird non-quiz questions being asked. However, all was well, as I ended up eating 4 times at that place. Morning breakfast, morning snacks, lunch, and evening snacks. And all of them totally rocked the place. Definitely better than sister Satyabhama, where the food was worse than my college even.
It's not like there are a shortage of ideas or anything. But everything I think of sounds so simplistic, that even I find it too ridiculous for a final year project. And for four hundred (400) marks at that.
Guys, suggestions are welcome. And oh yes, it should be something fun.
BTW, I went to St. Joseph's College of Engineering yesterday, and came 2nd in the quiz. The prelims hinted at decent stuff, but the finals were somewhat messy, what with a round being scrapped and some weird non-quiz questions being asked. However, all was well, as I ended up eating 4 times at that place. Morning breakfast, morning snacks, lunch, and evening snacks. And all of them totally rocked the place. Definitely better than sister Satyabhama, where the food was worse than my college even.
Monday, 20 September 2004
He's ba-ack!
After a long self-imposed hiatus, Vivek's finally returned to the blogging world, and took me back a week (last Monday, to be precise) to the Murugan Idli Shop. Where the prices rival Saravana Bhavan and the stuff outranks it! *drool* Oh my kingdom for a Murugan Idli feast....
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