fun Ends; Life begins ...

It seems just yesterday that I had cracked up a herculean exam and secured my place in a prestigious technical institute. What a sense of jubilation that was. Leaving those cozy-comfy school days behind and setting up a career path. Taking up engineering studies had alway been my dream an I was literally living in it. I was proud & my folks were prouder. I had great expectation from myself & saw a big change coming in the 4 years to-be.

Today, I stand at a juncture where I'm about to complete my undergrad and I feel a moral urgency to  retrospect these four years of my life. These four years where I had expected to become a specialist in my field, where I was supposed to carve a niche for myself, where I was supposed to become an 'engineer'. But, as it is said, life looks perfect only in the dreams, the realities are harsher. Something very similar happened in my case too.

First of all let me state some facts out right. Here in my country the 11th and 12th grades are undoubtedly the worse years of ones life. Its like we get a taste of hell even before we commence living our lives. We are made to run in a rat race, drudge incessantly for hours together and give-up everything there is to life just in a hope that we beat millions of other rats to enter these seemingly prestigious altars of technical learning. We are told that once you live through these years life would become a serving on a silver platter and we, being our naive selves, believe, only to realize later that it was all a hogwash. I was no exception to all this. Putting in about 15 hours of work daily, 7 days a week, which included school, private coaching and self study, i was by any standard one of the most productive individual on this planet. I became a social pariah, gained 15 kilos but ended up in this engineering college & told myself that the worse is over now. Relax.

Now that I look back, relaxation was the only thing I did seriously during my engineering. My productive time went down from 15 hours a day to 15 hours per semester. Earlier even a single movie per week was a luxury, then I started watching two a day and then three. We as humans get used to good things fast and this is exactly what happened. Studies & work became a thing of the past, or literally, a thing to be done just a day before the exams. I became so lazy that even typing a blog became too much of an exercise(:-P). No doubt, after those two hellish years I needed a break but I never came to know when this break turned into a habit and then into a lifestyle.

Here, at the end of four years my heart fills with melancholy when I think what I've achieved. Am I a specialist in computers as I dreamed of becoming?? Hell no. Sometimes even a question of a 9th grader renders me quizzical. On paper I'm one of the consistently good performers in my courses but somewhere in the back of my mind I feel feeble and incapacitated to tackle real world challenges. Whether this is due to the continuous dallying I did for the last few years or is it that everyone, even those who did pursue engineering the way it was meant to be, feel the same way, I don't know.

This brings me to the central point I want to express. It is time to gear up. Now is the time to free myself from the shackles of my lazy self. Whether I pursue a job or further studies, I know that I'll have to leave my current habits back in the college where I cultivated them. I'll have to bring back that old 11th grader inside myself again. I know it would be difficult, but then again so is Life!!

and the reincarnation ....

So here I'm again, typing off my mind after what has been nearly two years. First things first, let me establish the ground rules ....

1. no one asks why I was comatose for so long ....
2. no one asks what I have achieved in the past couple of years ...

So lets get started ....

Something worth a read....

Recently I read an essay on hackers & open sourcing....which are i must admit my current passions.....it was titled "In the Beginning of The Command Line"--By Neal Stephenson.
Though it was written over a decade ago & in this ever dynamic in world of software this essay might just sound a little out-of-date....it is still worth a read....especially if u are really into hacking....
Here is a catchy abstract out of it....a typical conversation between a layman blindly going for MS Windows (reffered to as a wagon) & a guy who wants to give away an open source OS (like linux-reffered to as Batmobile or a tank) to those opting for Win....

The group giving away the free tanks only stays alive because it is staffed by volunteers,
who are lined up at the edge of the street with bullhorns, trying to draw customers'
attention to this incredible situation. A typical conversation goes something like this:

Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is
invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while
getting a hundred miles to the gallon!"

Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know
how to maintain a tank!"

Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"

Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my
station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I
sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music."

Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house
to fix it for free while you sleep!"

Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!"

Bullhorn: "But..."

Buyer: "Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"

Isnt that interesting??....n i assure there is more to it....
if u want the full essay...just leave ur mail id as a comment to this article....i'll make it a point to send it to u as soon as possible......have a god read....!!

The Baltimore Bullet.......Whizzes By...

The 'Baltimore Bullet' in action....
So the euphoria was on.....at the starting of the game Phelps.....nicknamed the Baltimore Bullet....said that he was aiming for a perfect score at the '08 Olympics.....8 golds on 8 events.
Its not very often that you get to hear such proclamations....but this guy was different....he was Phelps!!
Right from day one at the Water Cube, this aqua boy started his juggernaut....and no one in the world was able to stop him....he just went on....& took a breath only when he had 8 Gs at Beijing....on the way he also became the most decorated olympian of all time & also broke Spitz's 36 year old record of having 7 Gs in one olympics....with 16 olypmic medals in his sack...omigosh!!....16!!
I dont have any words do aptly explain this feat....
al I can say is....Kudos...dear Mike!

China didnt walk....it just SOARED!!

60...50...40...30...20...10...9..8..7..6..5..4..3..2..1....BOOM!!

The biggest sports extravaganza on the planet began & with that China which hitherto had been reserved in a cocoon of communism walked onto the world's stage...but it didn't walk in...as was expected...it just flew onto the stage in a luxurious craft!
With an opening ceremony this of this grandeur China has kept its promise of hosting the biggest,the most scintillating & the most expensive Olympics ever.
Right from the very beginning of the countdown the ceremony was gripping.China not only demonstrated its cultural heritage but also displayed its technological leverage, the gritty approach of the Chinese & also boasted a tremendous money power.This was,no doubt, the best Olympic ceremony i have ever seen (though I remember only two,I was too small in '96 to remember an Olympic ceremony).

After watching the whole ceremony I was awestruck.....even the thought of organizing such a huge ceremony gave me goosebumps.The next day I saw the statics in the newspaper,about the funds they spent,the volunteers that were involved & the duration of rehearsals they did....n I was convinced that this Olympics are really going to be one of the biggest of all time...
Suddenly a wild thought crossed my mind.....Can India do It too??
I was trying to desperately convince myself that the aswer was affirmative.....but i was'nt able to. India still has a long way to go until it has the capacity to host the Olympics.....n given our indifferent approach towards sports...I doubt how much more time we'll need to do it.....
Whatever the case China won't be the same in the world's eye anymore.....it has commanded respect...& i'm quite sure that it will get it......after all it's all about soft power!!
We can just hope that India too, some fine day, host this mega event n reserve a place of respect for itself in the world of sports.....

Richard Stallman--Is he a GODMAN??

Richard Stallman, unarguably is the most influential software activist in the world today. Stallman, who graduated from the MIT, is credited to start a movement that not only elevated the world of coding to a whole new level but also led to a worldwide interaction & collaboration never before seen in the history of software industry, yeah by now you must have guessed it correctly, Stallman started what later came to be know as Open Sourcing.

In 1983 , Stallman, who looks morelike a sadhu from Himalays than a software expert n activist, established the GNU project which resulted in the birth of the most famous open source software—Linux. After the launce & success of Linux this movement of open sourcing, simply put, just became a juggernaut in itself. Since then, thousands & if not millions of comp whizzies from around the world, right from Silicon valley to China, from Redmond to India, have actively contributed to open codes & thus have, bit by bit, built up a grand variety of open sofwares.

Hence, a software are no longer a thing to be stored in safety vaults, as it hitherto was. Today, an experts in china writes a code & just releases it on the Internet, from where any layman can download it, modify it (under the terms & conditions laid down by the GPL), improve it & of course use it as required. Thanks to open sourcing, the job of software coding is no longer done only by a handful of buffs sitting in Cupertino or Redmond, but is a result of interaction & combined effort of millions around the world. This had empowered an individual like never before. I no longer need to be an MS employee to write an OS, I just need a desktop & an internet connection & the whole world is mine.

This of course seems to be a very positive development, looked one way.

But there is another school of thought which is not for whatever is happening today. One result of open source is that if u write a code & release, its not yours any more. Neither do you get the credit for it nor do you have any financial reward for whatever you have done. Some people think that on an apparent sight we see that open sourcing speeds up the innovation, in a long run it is on the contrary killing it. It as said that unless you make money by selling sofwares & then redirect those funds into research & development of new software techniques, innovation wont be fired the way it has been till now.

Thus sometimes, OpenSourcing, seems to be a boon but when viewed the other way, it may as well become a curse in a long run!! Only time will tell…….

The Drak Knight--A Film Review

So the 'Masked Messiah' of Gotham City is finally back after a long wait.....n with an upgraded costume, new hi-tech gadgets n of course a new adversary..the psychotic jiggly super planner....The Joker(Heath Ledger)...
This time Batty(Christain Bale) not only has to deal with the age old bad guys...the mafia of Gothan n The Scarecrow...but also has to match his wits with the Joker who with his flawless intuitive plans plays havoc in Gotham.
The good cause is invigorated by the new Public Prosecutor Harvey Dent(Aaron Eckhart) who along with Batman tries to suppress the mafia crime.....but peace shall not prevail until Joker has been tamed.....
Though some parts of the flick seem too far fetched....be it the plans of joker seem to be too flawless n intuitive to be planned by any single person...or the burning of huge fortune that he gets from mafia just on the pretext that he doesnt want money....movie is a great watch.
So people...go ahead...get some pop-corn....a have a rocking week-end seeing Batty sizzling the sliver screen.....