Before IIIT

Looking back in the time ok lets give it a timestamp, the year 2001, I was just another engg aspirant, not very brilliant, but was struggling very hard to get admission into any one of those famous engg colleges in India (namely IIT, Roorkee, IIITS). I already had a bitter experience of being a dropper and wasting some precious time of my life. But like many Bihari guys like me I had no other choice but to continue this fight untill my goal was reached. I was staying in Keshavpuram Delhi with my friends Yashvir, Mukesh and Arun. Don't know why but I always wanted to be a computer engineer. May be computers were a buzzword at that time [remember I am talking about 2k1 and .COM Boom]. But I guess it was my fear from the core courses, especially chemistry which got me attracted towards IIITs. These colleges were getting very popular (even though they were barely one or two years old only 2 yrs ago) among the students. But getting admission into any of the IIITs was considered very tough, even tougher then IITs because they had very limited seats apprx 100 and almost 50000 student were appearing for that compared to IIT JEE where almost double or triple number of students were fighting for some 20-30 times more seats... Anyway, getting admission into IIIT-H was considerd as next to impossible. But somehow after the papers I was quiet satisfied because I felt that I had done well. But when the results were declared I was not in top 500. I was very upset because I hadn't made into any other exam by then [No luck in IIT, Roorkee, very poor rank in DCE, hadn't applied for the state engg ], so I was at my lowest. Well a few days later I got one good news, I had secured 97th rank in IIIT kolkatta.. This news gave me some relief that atleast I can do something ... by this time we had changed our flat and shifted in a nearby flat... Some 2-3 days later I got call from the previous land-lord saying that I have got some letter from IIIT Hyderabad. I said him that it must be from IIIT Calcutta because I was expecting the letter from IIIT Calcutta and not from IIITH but he again said no its from Hyderabad. I was a little puzzled then I thought that may be they have sent marks. So that evening I went to my previous landlord who gave me this letter and surprisingly it was from IIIT Hyderabad. I opened it and read the letter and what was inside the letter, I only had dreamed that.. don't know what the actual content was.. but it was something like this : Dear Mr Rakesh Kumar You have secured a rank 634 in the entrance exam conducted by IIIT Hyderabad and are requested to attend the second counselling session of it. There have been already many seats filled up in the first counselling and this letter doesn't gurantee your admission. Directions to reach IIIT Hyderabad: From Secunderabad railway station you may take the buses numbered 5,5M or 5C. From there you come to Mehdipattnam. From Mehdipattnam you can board buses numbered 216,217 or get into some 7seater for IIIT. The nearest bus stand is JNIDB stand. Signature: Commandar M. V. Raman Well, I hardly had any time to think about anything as I had to attend the counselling in 4 days. The next 3 days I spent in travelling. Next day morning I left for my home. I reached my home in evening. Slept in the night, the next morning I went to my college to issue some certificates, I came back at the time of lunch had my lunch and left for Calcutta stayed there in night with bhaiya. He already had booked tickets for Secunderabad. In the morning I left for Hyderabad for a journey with a Dream... A journey which gave me a new life and gave a new meaning to my life...

Introduction [Yaadon ki baarat...]

"Yaadon ki Baarat nikli hai aaj dil ke dware..." I am listening to this song and getting nostalgic about the past few year spent in this college. It has become more than a home to me. I may get bored in my home but here !! Never !!... the only thing which rarely come closer to us was probably boredom ... There was always something to feel the gap.... Ahhh !! college life is so fun and hostel life ... well U can't explain... u just need to experience it to understand what it is... Today I feel like recollecting my memories related to the time I spent in here and also in making into this place...

Modi denied visa to visit US

Modi denied visa to visit US: "The US has denied visa to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to visit the country, apparently because of Gujarat riots. Modi has been denied diplomatic visa and his tourist/business visa already granted has also been revoked as per the US Immigration and Nationality Act, a spokesman of the US Embassy in New Delhi said." PS: Just testing the blog this ..

R&D Showcase...

As everyone is writing about this I thought why shouldn't I ?? Thought its a little late but who cares :) Well !!! The R&D showcase has travelled a long distance to reach to its current form and status... till 2002 it used to be Open House, then last year it got renamed as Showcase and now the R&D Showcase... The name sounds very cool, but to a die hard Pancham Da fan like me.. it sounds like a musical extravaganza full of "Jhankar Beats". Similar to last year, this time also we got this mail from our project Guide that we have to put our project in showcase. Well !! For every such mail I have only one reaction, I ask Pankaj; What is the situation??? If he gives a green signal then its OK otherwise its a little disturbing... but again not for me ... I know that anyway Pankaj is going to do all the work :) So, it was Pankaj only who did all the work this time. I helped him with setting things up, like moving the system to Data Engg Lab... putting everything in place and configuring network etc... Finally the D-day come. The most difficult thing was to wake up at 7 in the morning... somehow both me and Pankaj managed to do it, we tried to wake up Utkarsh also but all in vain, so we decided that we should leave Utkarsh will join us later.Now it was the time of demonstration... Before writing anything else let me explain what our project is (which I understood that day only :) ) ... Basically our project was to implement a Data Stream Management System with an additional monitoring module. Its the "cutting edge" research that the IIIT always talks about... I won't brag much about this but sincerly speaking Pankaj has done some real good work because Dr Kamal and Dr P K Reddy both were quiet happy with the work. So I was talking about demonstrations. That too was mainly done by Pankaj only. I just stood there to give him moral support. I was feeling very sleepy by lunch so I said goodbye to Pankaj and left for the hostel. Utkarsh came to accompany Pankaj after the lunch. The next day again Me and Pankaj went for the demonstration. As Pankaj was very tired. I reluctantly took command of the demonstration part. I was confident about the students which were coming to see the project but the time any faculty used to come closer I used to start behaving like even I am here to see this project :) ... Well, there were some nice experiences. Once I started explaining a bunch of girls form some college about my project. I explained them for almost half an hour... and at the end I was feeling good that probably I have succeeded in explaining and I was expecting some good questions... but No the questions they asked was "what programming language have you used", "what database have you used ??"... same was the situation with many other guys... vision students were trying to explain some fundas to the crowd and later they came to know that the audience isn't even familiar with simple graphics concepts ... Such was the situation of the audience.. from industry side also we didn't see many visitors... except for the first day when Kiran Karnik came at the very inaugral of the event... The projects were more or less similar to last year... only the students have changed ... conceptually I liked very few projects... some of the vision projects ... some DE projects (mainly Rishi's, Ravi's and the Agrids and ofcourse mine :) ) ... Tintin and Pelu have done some really interesting work... Amal didn't show me his project :( ... Ranta and Bedi were not present on their desk .. but their project was interesting.. Nir's and Chandu's project was good... In communication lab I didn't see any new thing.. all the projects were basically done on existing ideas... LTRC was just repeating what it has done so far... the same old Shiva and Shakti... nothing new... The Building science demonstration was good .. but again that was done last year by the MTech BS guys... Didn't get much time to visit other labs... but heard that there wasn't much serious work being displayed anywhere... Finally me and pankaj were discussing what research is. I thought to start afresh, I searched the dictionary.com to get the definition of the word "research" re·search Audio pronunciation of "research" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (r-sûrch, rsûrch) n. 1. Scholarly or scientific investigation or inquiry. See Synonyms at inquiry. 2. Close, careful study. And both of us found that here we do, may be only the 2nd part of the above definition... I really doubt about the first part... and also the R&D showcase was more or less like D&D only... I haven't seen any other similar activity anywhere else ... so there isn't any example with which I can compare .. but certainly most of the things which were on display didn't qualify for the research .... I don't want to demean anyone .. but most of the projects looked like some sort of cool hacks... Anyway... the good things were that we got 2day's extension for fyp report and enjoyed free coffee, tea and cold drink for 2 days.... The bad thing is that we didn't get the Showcase T-shirts like last time :((

Best Article [How to Blog ??]

Written by Tony Pierce.. this article got the best article prize in bloggies 2005 1. write every day. 2. if you think youre a good writer, write twice a day. 3. dont be afraid to do anything. infact if youre afraid of something, do it. then do it again. and again. 4. cuss like a sailor. 5. dont tell your mom, your work, your friends, the people you want to date, or the people you want to work for about your blog. if they find out and you'd rather they didnt read it, ask them nicely to grant you your privacy. 6. have comments. dont be upset if no one writes in your comments for a long time. eventually they'll write in there. if people start acting mean in your comments, ask them to stop, they probably will. 7. have an email address clearly displayed on your blog. sometimes people want to tell you that you rock in private. 8. dont worry very much about the design of your blog. image is a fakeout. 9. use Blogger. it's easy, it's free; and because they are owned by Google, your blog will get spidered better, you will show up in more search results, and more people will end up at your blog. besides, all the other blogging software & alternatives pretty much suck. 10. use spellcheck unless youre completely totally keeping it real. but even then you might want to use it if you think you wrote something really good. 11. say exactly what you want to say no matter what it looks like on the screen. then say something else. then keep going. and when youre done, re-read it, and edit it and hit publish and forget about it. 12. link like crazy. link anyone who links you, link your favorites, link your friends. dont be a prude. linking is what seperates bloggers from apes. and especially link if you're trying to prove a point and someone else said it first. it lends credibility even if youre full of shit. 13. if you havent written about sex, religion, and politics in a week youre probably playing it too safe, which means you probably fucked up on #5, in which case start a second blog and keep your big mouth shut about it this time. 14. remember: nobody cares which N*Sync member you are, what State you are, which Party of Five kid you are, or which Weezer song you are. the second you put one of those things on your blog you need to delete your blog and try out for the marching band. similarilly, nobody gives a shit what the weather is like in your town, nobody wants you to change their cursor into a butterfly, nobody wants to vote on whether your blog is hot or not, and nobody gives a rat ass what song youre listening to. write something Real for you, about you, every day. 15. dont be afraid if you think something has been said before. it has. and better. big whoop. say it anyway using your own words as honestly as you can. just let it out. 16. get Site Meter and make it available for everyone to see. if you're embarrassed that not a lot of people are clicking over to your page, dont be embarrassed by the number, be embarrassed that you actually give a crap about hits to your gay blog. it really is just a blog. and hits really dont mean anything. you want Site Meter, though, to see who is linking you so you can thank them and so you can link them back. similarilly, use Technorati, but dont obsess. write. 17. people like pictures. use them. save them to your own server. or use Blogger's free service. if you dont know how to do it, learn. also get a Buzznet account. several things will happen once you start blogging, one of them is you will learn new things. thats a good thing. 18. before you hit Save as Draft or Publish Post, select all and copy your masterpiece. you are using a computer and the internet, shit can happen. no need to lose a good post. 19. push the envelope in what youre writing about and how youre saying it. be more and more honest. get to the root of things. start at the root of things and get deeper. dig. think out loud. keep typing. keep going. eventually you'll find a little treasure chest. every time you blog this can happen if you let it. 20. change your style. mimic people. write beautiful lies. dream in public. kiss and tell. finger and tell. cry scream fight sing fuck and dont be afraid to be funny. the easiest thing to do is whine when you write. dont be lazy. audblog at least once a week. 21. write open letters. make lists. call people out on their bullshit. lead by example. invent and reinvent yourself. start by writing about what happened to you today. for example today i told a hot girl how wonderfully hot she is. 22. when in doubt review something. theres not enough reviews on blogs. review a movie you just saw, a tv show, a cd, a kiss you just got, a restaurant, a hike you just took, anything. 23. constantly write about the town that you live in. 24. out yourself. tell your secrets. you can always delete them later. 25. dont use your real name. dont write about your work unless you dont care about getting fired. 26. dont be afraid to come across as an asswipe. own your asswipeness. 27. nobody likes poems. dont put your poems on your blog. not even if theyre incredible. especially if theyre incredible. odds are theyre not incredible. bad poems are funny sometimes though, so fine, put your dumb poems on there. whatever. 28. tell us about your friends. 29. dont apologize about not blogging. nobody cares. just start blogging again. 30. read tons of blogs and leave nice comments. if you're going to ripoff/mimic/be inspired by one blogger make it raymi, shes perfect.

Isn''t it strange !!

Feel like writing something... but what ??? Well there are a a few things which are puzzling me for last couple of days... Most of them are because of Making of Modern Mind class... This course really made me think seriously for some of things which we see in our day to day life....but never give much that much importance that it deserves... There are lots of why's... for which I don't find any answer?? One of them is this paradox about situation of women in India... We Indian think women as the fairer and weaker sex, which supposed to have lesser brain than men... We have statistics to prove this.. In all the games/Athletics women performance has always been one step behind humans... Every R&D team is dominated by males... but isn't it the same India whery every mythological work is full with praise of females. This country worships Durga and Kaali as the symbol of power and Shakti... Our entire freedom movement had one driving mantra "Vande Matram"... We call our country as BharatMata (even though it is named after the king Bharatha...) Similarly the symbol of knowledge is again a Goddess, Goddess Saraswati... Ironically girls are supposed to be sex symbols... but isn't it Kamdev which is seen everywhere in the ancient texts.. with only some mentions of Maya and she too is not an sex-symbol.. and she too is a avatar of Lord Vishnu... When and why did this U-turn in Indian thinking come into existence ???