My Modus Vivendi

Hello me, long time no see

2010-04-04T20:57:00.003+05:30

Its not like I've found the real meaning of '42': the answer to everything, that I don't write here anymore. Just that I've been thinking more and writing less. Lately life revolves around the Linux kernel more than before, a lot more frisbee.

There's also been a lot of thinking about 'flow'. Yes, I'm obsessed about it. Must.Have.It. And I'm not referring to the kind which happens to everyone every now and then, like while digging your nose. I'm referring to the kind where its controlled. Set goal, know what skills it takes, start, real time feedback about progress and end with wanting more. No, not orgasm. Similar in effect but more prolonged..

So far, as an experiment I think I've found a way that might need adjustments, but sorta works. The key is to set goals, but not focus on finishing it as an end of itself. Rather set the goal and yearn of the rewarding feeling after. Use feedback to throttle focus on that feeling. It should build on itself. To some this may sound utopian, but it you read in between the lines, or backwards or whichever way, you'll see it makes sense. I end up feeling soo much calmer and in control at the end of every day of trying this.

The key realization to this approach was: take an example of what takes up most of your time in a day. Its about work for most of us. If you think you like your work, then there is hope to achieve this at work. Realize what stops you from getting into flow. Invariably its frustrations. Root-cause that frustration. For me, I realized, in my line of work (geeky stuff), there is no such problem that does not have a solution. And deep inside I knew I really believed it. So, the root cause of frustration could not be that I can't find the solution. There had to be ulterior motives, hidden agendas that crept under my pre-front cortex. Expose that agenda, just being more aware of that before starting off a task really helps changing the whole experience .. drastically.

Thinking at the speed of thoughts

2009-05-02T09:37:00.003+05:30

Every now and then I question myself if I'm being too judgmental about someone. I realize it can't be completely avoided and shouldn't be either. Moderation is the principle here, I thinketh. So, quite naturally the next questions to follow would be whom to judge, how much, and when. Maybe even why. Somehow I feel this maybe the wrong way to look at this. Instead, how about looking into oneself and defining a perimeter of sorts. This perimeter could be formed by questions like "what would the other person have to do, to /cross-the-line/". So then, you could simply keep this perimeter in the back of the mind when you meet someone and get judgmental only if he/she crosses that perimeter. I think many of us already do this, quite subconsciously. The perimeter is defined by the values we were brought up/around in. But I still feel I tend to forget this every now and again. This leads to misinterpretations and occasionally improper reactions. When I realize this later, it invariably hurts me more than it does to the other. Of course there could be other reasons for those reactions, depends on the circumstances at the time.

I think looking at things with this angle, could help keep the mind clearer. At times, I thought the best way to deal with human interactions is to find something else that you are deeply passionate about. That way, nothing else can really bother you, coz the state of flow is easily attainable whilst doing that /thing/, and in flow, everything is timeless. But clearly, this is almost like running away from problems (more like papering-over-it). Having that passionate activity certainly helps to maintain balance, but I think dealing with another human being needs some effort and careful thought.

Now here's the crazy thing. Malcom Gladwell says in one of his books, that when humans are conversing or even around each other, they tend to send these /instructions/ into each other, through words, body language etc. When two people understand what the other is exactly talking about, there's usually another connection at a much deeper level. These connections enable people to empathize. At the climax of such a harmonious connection, is that conversational /flow/. I find this extremely interesting and want to have this skill. But, more often that not, I end up thinking about this while conversing and as an inevitable result mess up the chances for any /flow/. It's like trying to concentrate on something while thinking about whether you are concentrating or not. It needs to be natural, almost instinctive.

Thats is the mighty confusing part. And that is why I end up judging people, often wrongly. This sort of judging isn't harmful in so far as I can see. But clearly it's just a distraction. Therefore, if I aim to keep things simple in my head about such interactions, it should help to get into the flow of conversations.

memoir

2009-04-22T10:24:00.003+05:30

I'm almost done with my masters at pennstate now so I thought I should probably look back and see how I feel about stuff. While thinking about it, I turned to my much ignored blog and read all the earlier posts. At the end of it, I think I just ended up reconfirming that I can be soo geeky. Well, so be it.

Here's the interesting thing I found. I've actually been achieving most of the stuff I'd set out to achieve but completely forgotten about along the way. I won't bore you with the details. By 'you' , I actually mean any computer out there which parses the internet to check for any security threats, coz I know no human really reads anything I write out here. ;)

Quite ironic that I set goals, forget about them, but actually achieve them at some point in time. I guess this is good, coz maybe it means I am not satisfied easily with things as they are. Looks as though, I dont really set goals, but instead set out to do things that would be nice to have in me, in my life. That way, I dont really have a single tracked mindset to achieve goals, but instead have a broader perspective to acquire something that I find nice.

Was it all worthwhile ? hell yea. If I can look back and conclude I was stupid back then, it means I'm smarter now. So I guess I'm v26.

What changed ? quite a lot. I think my hair is whiter than before. I have more facial hair, not quite as much as it normally should have been, but getting there. I can sit at one place for 1.5 hrs. I have mastered the art of flicking a frisbee in ways you thought was not possible. I have learned to optimize the use of underwear so I can postpone laundry time without buying any new underwear. No, it's not the switching sides and inside out trick. It's a combination of wearing boxers and normal undies. Also, wearing t-shirts more often saves the pain of ironing shirts, which also means, you dont have to wash those shirts coz you never really wear them that often.

hm. what else.

I picked up some skills on the guitar with a plectrum. This meant relearning some skills, coz I learnt to play with fingers when I started initially. I can read faster. Cooking is still challenging, but atleast I started.

nuff said. btw, the undies thing, I just do that when laundry must be deferred due to work or weather. Just saying so you dont get the wrong ideas. Wow, I must remember no human reads this, I should not need to clarify.

oh well. Whats next ? Lets see, I will be moving to NC in 3 weeks. Really looking forward to starting a new life there. This time I'm going to make it different. I want to live a more balanced life. Meet ppl, play sports, learn new skills. The main goal for this year is to really figure out my mechanism to get into 'flow' in everything I do.

WTF moment

2009-03-04T11:46:00.002+05:30

I've been wondering about this for quite sometime now and I thought I should just write this down. The /thing/ in question follows from some self reflection and introspection. There, thats your warning. I'm quite a boring person in general and so I highly recommend you google for an image of fluffy kittens if you're a girl or watch some pRon instead, if you're a guy.

The real question to me has always been: Why? Why do we do things we do? What makes us do them? This includes implusive decisions, snap judgments, long term motivations and so on. Does the understanding of these ulterior subtle motivations define ones /character/ ? Does everything have such a motivation, nasty or noble as it may be ? Where is the fine line between genetics controlling your actions or thoughts and your pre-frontal cortex generated ones ?

If its your brain and your brain constructs neurotic connections for every thought then can you undo those connections ? Do these connections lead to other coritical goo and manifest later as actions ?

Has the internet and social networking craze made us zombies incapable of making choices ? Actually, substitute the two things above with your favourite distraction causing external influences. If we can still make these choices, what drives us to make those choices ? herd mentality ? wannabe-differentness ? If these are the reasons, are they really /choices/ we make or being made for us ?

Is it a good idea to always choose ?

The Stone

2009-01-23T22:29:00.003+05:30

I rarely do this .. but this time.. an exception.. :D

I've this creeping
Suspicion that things are not as they seem
Reassure me
Why do I feel as if I'm in too deep
I've been praying
For some way to show them
I'm not what they see
Yes I have done wrong
But what I did I thought needed be done
I swear
Unholy day
If I leave now I might get away
This weighs on me
As heavy as stone and as blue as I go
I was just wondering if you'd come along
To hold up my head when my head won't hold on
I'll do the same if the same's what you want
If not I'll go
I will go alone
I'm a long way
From that fool's mistake and now forever pay
No, run
I will run and I'll be ok
I was just wondering if you'd come along
To hold up my head when my head won't hold on
I'll do the same if the same's what you want
If not I'll go
I will go alone
I need so
To stay in your arms see you smile hold you close
And it weighs on me
As heavy as stone and a bone chilling cold
I was just wondering if you'd come along
Tell me you will

--Dave Matthews Band

Argh. the stupidity !

2008-12-18T05:13:00.003+05:30

Picture this..
you leave home and you wonder, what if you might be hit by some 1/4" steel balls at 150 feet/second in the eye ? Fear no more, coz you could always buy this.

---Snip--

The lenses run almost perfectly clear to a nice, dark tint in the sun, with nearly 100 percent UVA/B protection. They have an ANSI Z87.1+ rating, which means they’re shatter-proof even when struck by a 1/4-inch steel ball at 150 feet/second. The lenses are polycarbonate, so a significant scrape against sand, ground, etc. would probably scratch them.

--Snip--

I read the ANSI Z87 part, and I thought wtf !

Just imagine wearing these and feeling safe coz you're protected from 1/4" inch steel balls hitting your eyes at 150feet/second and then a little while later absentmindedly dropping your shades on the road. You pick them up and find out that you cant really use them anymore coz now they're scratched. How ridiculously stupid will you feel then ? protection against 1/4" steel balls (dont forget the speed: 150 feet/ second) but no protection against a simple ground scratch. what about 151 feet /second ?

damn i dont know if im just too happy coz my exams are over that makes me giggle , or is this just pure stupidity.

Some more WiFi

2008-12-11T23:04:00.007+05:30

Recently, I tried a simple experiment. In WiFi you can choose to transmit each packet at different bit rates. eg. for 11b, your options are 1, 2, 5.5, 11Mbps. There's a lot of research in getting the best throughput by controlling the Tx rates. This is usually done to adapt to the flaky medium. I didnt find any research on the power consumptions of these rate control algorithms. So here's what I did and found out ..

Linux Kernel 2.6.22.15, hostAP driver, Prism3 chipset based PCMCIA adapter, and really old laptop (P3 something or other, doesnt matter). Implemented ARF, AARF and SampleRate and compared their PS.

Results:
Proved the theory that Bicket states in his paper; lower bit rates dont necessarily give better delivery probabilities. Lower bit rates infact consume more power. Intuitively, they take longer to transmit, hence keep the Tx circuit alive for longer. Given a flaky medium, these lower bit rates are major power hogs, coz of the packet retries involved. The following graphs show these results ..

This is w/o wifi ON, just for comparison. ~0.7V drop.

This is for AARF. ~1.5V drop. (ARF is similar)

This is SampleRate. ~1.0V drop.

Basically, SampleRate looks at a 10 sec history and chooses the best rate that gave an average Tx time thats lower than the current bit rate. In short it's got some intelligent way of switching.(Read the thesis if you're really interested), or ask me :p

This actually is quite important. Think embedded systems. Every device has WiFi out there. Power saving features directly affect the usability of these devices. My guess is, the differences in voltage drops will be more significant in those kind of devices.

More later ..

Aha-moment

2008-04-21T11:28:00.005+05:30

I've been wanting to have an Aha! -moment for quite sometime now and I think I got it today.

An Aha!-moment is one where something suddenly makes sense. Unfortunately, I cant remember the last time I had one of these, but I'm sure I've had em, but never really gave it enough thought to objectify it.

So, Dad sent me this link. It's about this Neuroanatomist who watched her own brain deteriorate and was able to narate this after she recovered. Very touching and inspiring !

What I gathered from it, is a startling realization of my own way of thinking. Just the realization of how the 2 halves of my brain can think in different ways and also realizing 'when' it happens, suddenly seems to explain 'why' it happens. Now, I've yet to see, if my theory is right, but I think I've got something interesting going on here. Hopefully, I will be able to convince myself through some experiments.

The way I understand it is, the Left brain = Logical thinking and Right brain = Day dreaming. Honestly, I dont find much use of my Right brain .. yet... (maybe I can sell it off for a couple of million bucks and get that Bugati Veyron) :p

Even now, as I'm writing this, there's something interesting happening. As I'm thinking of what to write, my left brain is controlling the flow of thought into words and the right brain is simultaneously thinking of how to phrase it, so that YOU find it interesting. This is easier if you can visualize someone you know well when he/she is reading this. If I were to write this in a personal journal which noone but me, is going to read, it would be very different. Probably more detailed with more examples/instances. Think of it like preparing for a presentation. You study the topic so you understand it well, now the next task is to prepare slides and a Talk so that your audience follows it. Especially, when your audience is predominantly Chinese. :) You have to re-phrase it, use simple english, multiple ways of getting the point across and so on. If it were your friends/colleagues (people you know well), you'd be thinking very differently. This probably is an example of both halves coming together in harmony.

While reading something highly technical, for the kind of 'effective' reading required, I think the Left brain is most dominant. It tries to relate concepts learned from the past to what you're reading now. And when the topic is really boring, and you loose your discipline, the right brain leads to digression/distraction. At other times, the out-of-the-box thinking comes from the Right half. Its when your left brain has done its job and you have understood a concept very well, your right half could perhaps try to apply it in a completely different angle. (Lateral thinking ?)

There's a lot more to this, but for further discussion, a couple of Beers/Wine, would get me talking...

Come to think of it, I should try some experiments the next time I'm High. I've always been intriguied by the fact that whenever I'm inebriated I loose all inhibitions and am able to make better conversations with the 'other' species. (read: females) ... or maybe not. :D

Argh !

2007-07-20T03:58:00.000+05:30

Yeah, I hate these meds !

"When something can go wrong, it will." Damn right, this.
~2 weeks back I took a shot of MMR .
I was told there /could/ be a reaction after 10-14 days, which could manifest as a facial reaction or fever, which will subside in 2 days. And voila ! I have the MUMPS ! unilateral infection, so only my right cheek is swollen. Now they tell me it wont subside for another week or so. Like wtf ! Why isnt there a better way of testing for Mumps other than injecting me with the virus and /then/ checking if my body has the antibodies, coz my body doesnt !! and therefore I have MUMPS ! I actually know why they do this, but I dont want to explain ... coz I'm just frust with the fact that my right cheek jiggles everytime I move a facial muscle. Argh !

Moreover, I wonder why I wasnt given this shot when I was ~12 months old, like everyone else ! Whoever is taking revenge like this must be reeally happy now ! !@^%#

Ive shifted

2007-07-06T00:11:00.000+05:30

Too much of a hassle this, blogging business ...

I'm on flickr now .. clickey !

Coming up: My Life at PennState

Update:

Okay, so i think i want to get back to writing some crap here. Believe it or not, I was reading Mihirs blog mihirat blogspot com and felt like writing again ! Ironically as he mentions in his blog, I inspired him to write ! Ah well, lets see how long this one continues.

So, here's a quick rundown on what's been happening since I last posted anything here ..
Damn, the words /quick rundown/ remind me of the tech-talks I gave over the last few years, always started off with /a quick rundown on what I'm going to cover/ :)

Anyway, I digress. So, life got interesting after I changed my job. It began at a Mark Knopfler concert. This guy who was my superior, had joined us at the concert. We began chatting about some tech stuff, meanwhile as Vaidaah and Mihir were sleeping in each others arms, this guy asks me if I'd like to join him at work. A few months later I joined his team. From there on, I've made awesome friends, learned some kick ass stuff; tech and otherwise, and partied like crazy !
You'd be amazed to see how my body is immune to large voka and orange juice, until you see me crawl out of the pub in the way babies dont. (douglas adams humour; attempt) ;p

I've met really influential people along the way too. From chaps who sit in their cabins with sub-zero temperatures coz their laptops need it and only come out of the cabin forgetting why they came out(shyam), to chaps whose scalps turn red like a red-bottomed-baboon when they're under stress(patan), I know I've seen a lot. Not to mention people who drink like there's no tomorrow and dont put on an ounce of weight ! (pradosh)

Then comes the "sie kernel team"; a group of 4 engineers(me included) and a boss; whose cubicle was termed "Sparta; the village" after watching 300 (twice). I've worked with these guys, partied nights in a row, drunk (a lot), rolled on highway roads(empty; mostly) when inebriated, and god knows what we've not done. A kick ass team to work with !

Now, I'm in england, where its raining unusually in summer. So effectively, Ive left my country which is experiencing highest rainfalls this year, as it does every year, only to come to another country which is also experiencing unusual amounts of rain this year, that too in the wrong season ! What has the world come to !?

And I'm on my way to get raped (read: masters in computer science) at the pennsylvannia state university at university park. Soo looking forward to the /fun/ times ahead !

More later ..

Diwali: Over my terrace

2006-10-21T20:45:00.000+05:30

It's like a war this time of the year.. every year. :D
These rockets exploded right above me. While it was exciting to get the shots right, the residue gun powder that comes showering down after the explosion, isnt.
More snaps coming up...

Babe on board

2006-08-28T20:08:00.000+05:30

London Eye queue

2006-08-28T20:05:00.000+05:30

London: Embankment

2006-08-28T20:04:00.000+05:30

BA's London Eye

2006-08-28T20:03:00.001+05:30

Big Ben, Parliament, Thames

2006-08-28T20:03:00.000+05:30

London: Oxford Circus

2006-08-28T19:49:00.000+05:30

London: Charing Cross tube station

2006-08-28T19:48:00.000+05:30

London: Elmstead Woods train station

2006-08-28T19:47:00.000+05:30

This train has WiFi !

2006-08-28T19:46:00.000+05:30

Daring shot

2006-08-28T19:45:00.000+05:30

Would've been a perfect shot..

2006-08-28T19:41:00.000+05:30

had I not shaken the camera !

Row of lights, orange-blue sky, cool winds, sound of waves clashing against the water breakers, this couple walking together ( she was "hot"!) ... isnt that picture perfect !

Whitby town , the modern side.

2006-08-28T19:40:00.000+05:30

Whitby:Graveyard again..

2006-08-28T19:37:00.000+05:30

This is where Lucy met Dracula...and the docks picture below ... thats where Dracula's ship landed in a storm.

Whitby: Graveyard

2006-08-28T19:33:00.000+05:30

This place is haunted by some "lady in white".

Whitby: Docks

2006-08-28T19:19:00.000+05:30

Whitby: Plaice(fish) at The Trenches

2006-08-28T19:15:00.000+05:30

Whitby

2006-08-28T19:14:00.000+05:30

Northeast England at ~10:30pm

2006-08-28T19:09:00.000+05:30

Ear Bud-ies

2006-08-15T17:47:00.000+05:30

Guitah dood

2006-08-15T17:45:00.000+05:30

Xgl Coolness

2006-08-05T15:04:00.000+05:30

Window minimise wobble.

Desktop cube rotate.

Window drag wobble.

Desktop switcher spinning fast.

Wtf is this you say?
Ans: clicky

Hyperspeed

2006-07-30T12:26:00.000+05:30

Dark temptation

2006-07-29T23:05:00.000+05:30

A new beginning

2006-07-29T22:58:00.000+05:30

Row of lights outside Naughty Angel's.

WiFi as in HiFi, not WeeFee

2006-02-15T13:33:00.000+05:30

My fifteen minute attempt of an abstract on "Wifi in Linux" got selected for Linuxasia2k6. The conference was held at the IHC(India Habitat Center) in Delhi. It was my first visit to the capital, so I was quite excited, actually more so , coz I was flying by Kingfisher [:p] They're damn right about their motto "fly the good times". Even before you board the plane, in the airport itself, you can spot their cabin crew by either looking around for chics with bright red suits or simply look where everyone else is looking. The flight is a good two hours from Pune, so that gives you enough time to "be attended" by the air-hostesses, for any lame reasons you can think of. Well for me, getting a window seat behind the wing was more important, than "being attended". [Ahem] The in-flight entertainment systems are cool. They have LCD screens on every seat, serve good food, and the music stations are pretty neat. So, enuf said about the flight.

My first impression about Delhi was ruined coz of the traffic. I mean, they have excellent roads but everyone drives carelessly. Even round-abouts have more than one lane ! So ideally, if they were to follow the right hand rule, and pick a lane according to the exits around the round-about, they'd have such a peaceful ride. But no, that aint the kind of thing happening here. The second thing you notice instantly is the number of four wheelers ! Everyone has a car, there are hardly any two wheelers around, and hardly any undented cars.. in fact I could see only 3 undented cars in 2 days. Trust me, I did travel a lot around Delhi, mostly coz the roads were blocked and diverted because of Moharam (?) processions.

So the venue was at the IHC(India Habitat Centre), which is like a convention centre for expo's and conferences, not just for the techies. But LinuxAsia was full of techies alright. Not really the geeky kinds but it was a mix of CEO's, CTO's, regional heads, VP's blah blah... so basically excellent for startups wanting to pitch at open source tech. The 'crowd' was 'pretty good' (pun intended), so it made for excellent timepass. Was even better coz I had the "Speaker" tag hanging round my neck, so free food, free everything and an excellent excuse to get talking to the chics ;)

The IHC has WiFi too , so that was cool ! Just a couple of hours before my talk, my colleagues who had tagged along, decided to kill some time checking mail and stuff. So they got some scratch cards from the IHC that had the login names and passwords on them. Within the next few minutes 3 of us were out in the open gardens with our thinkpads. I didnt find it worthwhile paying 150 bucks for an hour so I didnt buy me a card. Instead I decided to fire up Kismet (read: wifi sniffer) to check for anything interesting. Suddenly I saw "codito marvin enter login name: ramana.radhxxxx, enter password: ramana123" !!!!! yes, I could see my colleagues login name and password as the dude was checking his mail. So I say to Ramana, "Dude ! ramana123 ?!! C'mon man you can do better than that !" , Ramana just looked at me for the next 20 seconds until he finally uttered a series of "F" words in succession. I had already taken a screenshot of this and added it to my presentation slide, and I was right, it really was an eye opener to the audience. So, basically, the Wifi at the IHC sucks, nothing is encrypted in the air. I dont know what they've done of it now, but its a serious flaw in their setup. So with that last slide and my comment on ramana's lame password, my talk ended with a good sound of laughter in the theatre.

All in all, I had a great time at the IHC.The talks by Klaus knopper ( Knoppix dude) and Mark Shuttleworth (Ubuntu dude) stole the show and I got to meet some of the prominent personalities in the open source industry at the CEO lunch, although I was in casuals and everyone else was in suits. But the "Speaker" tag saved my arse [:)]. I have some snaps of the event on flickr, but I cant for the life of me remember the url right now :p so will update this space later.

Tech this Tech that

2006-01-20T01:17:00.000+05:30

Damn it, I think its time for one of those things called vacations. I mean, my parents never used to say this to me before, but since the time I've started working, they've been after me to take breaks periodically ! Man, I wish I could just go biking, or camping, or just spend a weekend at a lake or something with friends, every weekend or so. Honestly I'm ever ready to do these things, but its fun only when everyone shares the excitement. Also, its really a pity that we cant do many things that our peers in the western (eastern also perhaps) world do, like surfing, adventure sports types. Sure they say there are "adventure sports" near our city outskirts, but I just heard they charge astronomical prices. That just spoils it for me :)

Actually, I dont even need to be going outdoors to maintain that "balanced life". I mean, I _think_ I could even do with watching really good classic movies. The ones that dont make it to our theaters, you know. Plan to watch a movie, depending on what mood I am, lookup imdb, find a perfect match, download it if it isnt available with friends, choose a day, setup the acoustics, culinary stuff and some aqua vitae maybe and then .... just chill !

But I dont think I could do that for too long consecutively. I'd probably need to try out different things every so often. Whatever it is , I'm really looking forward to this Goa trip that should happen around this month end.

The problem with me is, once I get back into the rigmarole at work, all these plans go for a toss, and even if I happen to finish my work earlier than expected, I know I could do some of these things that Ive planned for me, but I still dont do them ! Coz either I'm too tired, or just satisfied that I did my work well. The latter being more probable. I wonder if "somebody" can change that ? :D

I'm at it again :)

2005-11-06T20:35:00.000+05:30

I just figured out how to use the plugin features of GAIM. So no more ugly source code hacks. I just followed the simple.c sample in their plugin folder and voila ! Lo and behold, you now have fortunes in IM. I've simply used fortunes cookies from linux and routed them to GAIM through a pipe. So far it looks stable enough. Actually havent really stress tested this, but what the heck, it aint no big thing. My TODO things for this would be, to add GUI support for different fortune databases (the simpsons one is really cool).

How does it work?
Now that the interface is clean and all, to enable this, you just need to select the plugin through preferences. Of course you need to compile the source (make ashbert.so) from your source trees plugin folder and then copy it to the systems plugin folder (generally, /usr/lib/gaim). Restart/start Gaim, and you will see my plugin there. Just tick it.

Then when someone opens up a conversation window with you, and types fortune , he will get one ultra cool fortune. Of course in this case, its like _you_ are the fortune server. If you want to see the fortunes, either add yourself to your list and IM yourself OR tell your friend to install this plugin.

Here's the source code. I will also convert the Haddock insults patch(See links) into a plugin when I find time.
Till then Happy hacking.

Apple freak

2005-11-03T22:34:00.000+05:30

Holy sheeaaat ! I just stumbled upon this site ..
http://www.apple.com/uk/retail/regentstreet/gallery/

As I see the pics in their gallery, I'm thinking, daaayum I was RIGHT THERE ! Infact thats where I got my mini ipod from, thats _also_ the place from where I logged onto amazon.com (UK) and cancelled my order for the same, coz they were out of stock with the minis, and I just happened to go to London around that time. And all I can say is, Apple rocks with their decor, sure way of attracting folks. Check out the store pics, and then check out the grand opening pics. B E A utiful !

Another thing I must add : When I reached London, I was searching for this store. Someone told me its on Oxford Street. Its actually _near_ oxford street, Regent street to be more precise. So anyway, I took a tube to Oxford street, got above the tube station, and was simply dumbstruck. The damn street was soo long, soo many shops, soo much crowd. Anyway, I decided to walk on, since I had all the time in the world, hoping I had taken the right turn towards this store. Anyway, as these convictions of street senses go, I was wrong, had to walk back about another kilometer. The funniest part is, I kept walking in the right direction, then I suddenly stopped, thinking damn I must be wrong again, must ask someone, and then, look behind me, blam, I was right at the fscking entrance of this huuuuge Apple store.. all glass store. I remember saying to myself, D'oh, how could I have missed this !

My house: Bachelor pad + WiFi hotspot

2005-10-31T12:41:00.000+05:30

Why bachelor pad? well, I'm not saying anything about that here. Those who were present will know :p
Wifi hotspot ? Its obv. only for me, so hotspot isnt really the right word. Lets just call it the Zone(2). Coz Zone(1) is another place.(read: tapri near my place, where we hang out for "coffee").So, I bought this and it has arrived ! Woohoo !!
Its really sweet, extremely compact, and packs a whole bunch of features like 802.11g , has mixed mode too, wpa, wpa2, firewalls, 4 port switch, and shit loads of admin. stuff. I already had the BSNL dataone 256kbps modem, so all I did was hook it up to the AP, configure it for auto-dial, and route it through the AP, to the clients through dhcp. So, all I need to do is just power it ON, and voila, we have Wifi ! Since its soo compact, my guess is that Linksys must have used a standard mini-pci card in there, with its own antenna. So, there's no pointy black things sticking out of it, although if you need range big time, they've got another slot which is nicely hidden away, for attaching another antenna. So, all in all, its pretty neat, I get really good connectivity throughout the house. On the terrace, its a little problem, I need to place the AP near the window to get range. Actually, I think its because of the encryption mode, and power saving mode on the laptop. I get 55% sig. strength, but I cant ping. So, putting it in Open mode, should do the trick. With WPA , the shared key is reset every (configurable) ms. So, some bandwidth goes in that itself, to keep the connection alive. Also, powersaving mode, keeps the Tx off , and is alive only in the recv. mode after some intervals( like reduced bandwidth usage). So, time is spent in kicking the transmitter out of sleep. Therefore, perhaps, there's some packet loss in there, and causes for timeouts and retries. Anyway, its working really fine now, and I'm having a great time !

The Tao... of programming

2005-10-09T15:28:00.000+05:30

For the uninitiated mortals .... Tao is a chinese philosophy about "the way and its virtue".
Over the years its principles are applied everywhere possible, but I'm referring to software, the land of confus-ion. I've made attempts to read the real Tao book, its the basis of the Buddhist way of life. But, the book seemed so damn confusing, I could'nt even get the gist of it. Now, I realise, thats what the Tao is! Its wierd, yet sensible, not stupid, seems strange, but is wise. I've just found the perfect link to what The Tao of programming is. clickey
Its a little long, but entertaining too. I've come across several quotes and jokes in the geek world that adduce the Tao, some of the hilarious ones are in that link above. For those too lazy to read the whole thing ( although recommended ) here are some excerpts:

Thus spake the master programmer:

``After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless.''

A program should follow the `Law of Least Astonishment'. What is this law? It is simply that the program should always respond to the user in the way that astonishes him least.

A novice asked the master: ``I have a program that sometime runs and sometimes aborts. I have followed the rules of programming, yet I am totally baffled. What is the reason for this?''

The master replied: ``You are confused because you do not understand Tao. Only a fool expects rational behavior from his fellow humans. Why do you expect it from a machine that humans have constructed? Computers simulate determinism; only Tao is perfect.

``The rules of programming are transitory; only Tao is eternal. Therefore you must contemplate Tao before you receive enlightenment.''

``But how will I know when I have received enlightenment?'' asked the novice.

``Your program will then run correctly,'' replied the master.

A master was explaining the nature of Tao of to one of his novices. ``The Tao is embodied in all software - regardless of how insignificant,'' said the master.

``Is the Tao in a hand-held calculator?'' asked the novice.

``It is,'' came the reply.

``Is the Tao in a video game?'' continued the novice.

``It is even in a video game,'' said the master.

``And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?''

The master coughed and shifted his position slightly. ``The lesson is over for today,'' he said.

When managers hold endless meetings, the programmers write games. When accountants talk of quarterly profits, the development budget is about to be cut. When senior scientists talk blue sky, the clouds are about to roll in.

Truly, this is not the Tao of Programming.

When managers make commitments, game programs are ignored. When accountants make long-range plans, harmony and order are about to be restored. When senior scientists address the problems at hand, the problems will soon be solved.

Truly, this is the Tao of Programming.

Hardware met Software on the road to Changtse. Software said: ``You are Yin and I am Yang. If we travel together we will become famous and earn vast sums of money.'' And so the set forth together, thinking to conquer the world.

Presently they met Firmware, who was dressed in tattered rags and hobbled along propped on a thorny stick. Firmware said to them: ``The Tao lies beyond Yin and Yang. It is silent and still as a pool of water. It does not seek fame, therefore nobody knows its presence. It does not seek fortune, for it is complete within itself. It exists beyond space and time.''

Software and Hardware, ashamed, returned to their homes.

A master programmer passed a novice programmer one day. The master noted the novice's preoccupation with a hand-held computer game. ``Excuse me,'' he said, ``may I examine it?''

The novice bolted to attention and handed the device to the master. ``I see that the device claims to have three levels of play: Easy, Medium, and Hard,'' said the master. ``Yet every such device has another level of play, where the device seeks not to conquer the human, nor to be conquered by the human.''

``Pray, great master,'' implored the novice, ``how does one find this mysterious setting?''

The master dropped the device to the ground and crushed it underfoot. And suddenly the novice was enlightened.

One of those "Been there done that" things.

2005-08-30T21:15:00.000+05:30

Last sunday, we _finally_ hauled ass and went to Tamhini ghat. Its around 75 Km from Pune. Mihir and I drove on my Hero Honda Passion, which was exciting, more so coz the horn didnt work, and the engine would randomly bail out on us. All in all, it was an absofsckinglutely rockin time. Here are some snaps from the trip.

We went right upto these waterfalls, and got drenched.

The clouds coming down. Within the next few minutes, one couldnt see
beyond 5 feet ahead.

(From L to R) : Me, Amol, Mihir, Arun

What can I say ? Empty roads give us the kicks.

Treacherous roads of the ghat.

One of the many random waterfalls on the way.

Holy shit ! I'm tagged :p

2005-08-12T23:22:00.000+05:30

Carrying on the tagging tradition. Parag tagged me to answer 10 turn on's and 10 turn off's.
Here goes nothing.

Turn On's:

Ahem

0. Women :p (not all) *

1. Peace of mind. In-the-zone or whatever you may call it. The state of mind where one feels above or below nothing, but still carries on with life without a hedonist attitude.

2. Creativity. People who can see art in little things.

3. Guitar pros. The chaps who play it with effortless ease. Its as if the guitar talks to them.

4. Flexibility. I should say "balance", coz some people _live_ life to fullest in every possible way.
eg. There's many of them actually, who have fooled around in their life and yet are
respectable personalities in the world.

5. Text formatters: (lol) kidding kidding..I suck at formatting my text. But I rock with my code
formatting, mind you :p

5. Selflessness: I think that explains it.

6. Open source code. :)

7. Tech stuff , Gizmo's etc . I'm in love with my iPod.

8. Engineering. Colossal structures, machines. Raw power, the whole testosterone thingy.

9. England. I just loved the place. The whole natural personality.

**Okay, right about now I'm struggling to come up with something ...

10. Hot chocolate brownie.

Turn off's:

1. Bad temper.

2. Cowardice.

3. Educated people making irrational decisions, and unwilling to at least listen to others.

4. Burger snatchers. I think its a valid term. It basically means, people who just suck up to others (read: superiors) to claim credit for what they've not done.

5. Fake people. The always "yes" people. Or even the elevator-eye syndrome.

6. People with bad empathizing/listening skills.

7. Show off's. People with attitude.

8. Paranoia.

9. Seg faults and kernel panics.

10. MSEB. coz when they turn off, everything shuts off. :p

* Notice how I started with 0 and end with 10. Thats coz not only am I geeky, but the 0th point was just an attempt to be funny. So laugh people, laugh, for I shall like you for it :p.

Meanwhile as I ponder upon whom to tag, check out this link. I think this bloke was in Loyola ?

The Southpark me

2005-08-07T18:36:00.000+05:30

Well, almost me. The guitar I _really_ have isnt like the one here. But soon, I shallz buy me one of em Fender Strats, to be precise

Wahoo ! Surfs Up! Of the wireless kind.

2005-07-02T12:38:00.000+05:30

Let me start off by catching up where I left. So, I'm back home, been a month now, swarmped by work, but tackling it all with new zest and ethusiasm. Wonders of a vacation.
So I've been watching a lot of movies, listening to a lot of music, and working my ass off. Meanwhile, since I got sick of using a dial up connection, I got myself BSNL's Dataone 256kbps line. I think it rocks coz I invariably get 35-40kbps downstreams. Anyway, dowloading stuff wasnt my intention. I just wanted a fast, always ON internet lifestyle ; )

So, first I got this working on windows, no sweat at all. The router that they give can be configured to dial-up internally [PPPoE] with DHCP and DNS, so all you have to do is power it up and connect the LAN cable. No need to use the WAN miniport driver on Win. Then I thought I should try this on Linux.

A little googling around shows how to setup PPPoE in Linux. Well, you can do it without PPPoE. Here's one of my HOWTO articles : )
My config:
1 really old Toshiba Portege
1 Ethernet pcmcia adapter [ This toshiba didnt come with an inbuilt port]
1 WUSB 54g (802.11g) WiFi adapter
Red Hat 9 , with kernel 2.6.12 .

I just HAD to setup this bband over WiFi !
Of course I had another WiFi client (

On the Toshiba:
ifconfig - a : shows two interfaces

eth0 subet [192.168.1.x]
wlan0 subnet [10.0.0.x]

Most Linux distro's come with dhcp clients, so on the Toshiba I did dhclient eth0 and got a 192.168.1.x IP assigned.

The wlan interface is all yours to configure, so set it up as you like. In my case, the 11g drivers for linux are discontinued , thanks to Connexant for not providing the programmers manual for Prism GT. So anyway, I used ndiswrapper , and installed the WinXP driver for the dongle on linux. Fired it up for Ad-Hoc mode.

On the client side, started Wifi similarly and got associated instantly.
Now that I was through with WiFi, I only had to bridge these two interfaces on the Toshiba.
This can be a bitch, coz it involves iptables. The whole netfilter code in the mainstream kernels has caused several pre-releases since 2.6.11

So anyway, albeit its really powerful, I just wanted to get surfing.
So all I did was, enable IP forwarding,

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

Set up chains in the NAT.
iptables -A FORWARD -i wlan0 -o eth0 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -o wlan0 -j ACCEPT

iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE

and voila !

Surfs Up !

Of course you need to setup various firewalls along with this. I had configured the router firewall, plus if I used WiFi on Windows, I had another firewall burning hot. :)

A really long time since that happened !

2005-05-26T02:30:00.000+05:30

I remember back in school days, there were some times (read as many times or even almost everyday :) ) when I'd wake up from bed and just hate the feeling of actually going to school. Starting my day off like that, would rub off on pretty much everything from brushing my teeth , having a bath, breakfast etc etc. I'd just hate it.

Now, its pretty much how I feel ! I just got back from London and what I'm feeling now is just incredible. I stayed at my "favourite" aunts place. "Fav" coz she's too cool, she knows how to cook all cuisines, knows where to shop for stuff, and is really more like a close friend to me. Anyway, when I arrived at her place, she gave me the map of the Underground and said look this is how its going to be. You go on your own, travel by yourself, these are the numbers in case of any emergencies. My mom almost died when she heard all this :p But anyway, all this independence was the main reason why I feel soo different now. I didnt quite realise this while I was alone travelling the streets of London ! Funny that !

So, I was saying, I've enjoyed soo much in the past few days mostly in London, that I dont feel like going back. Alas, another 4 days and I will be on my way back home.

Anekh-dotes

2005-05-17T01:35:00.000+05:30

Alright, so was in NewCastle this afternoon, just walking back from this
(the millenium bridge) to grab a bite, waiting for the pedestrian signal to glow green, this chap walks up behind me * brief attempt to be funny here * ... tall, maybe 6'4" , fair, faint beard, not-so-well-dressed, looked much older than me, so I guess he's 18 :) ....says "Excuse me Sir, blah blah blah passport ? " .....this is exactly how I heard it .... So I say "I'm sorry ? you want a passport ? " .... He stoops down a bit and says softly this time " No sir, but do _you_ want one, I want to sell you one ! " .... I'm like "No thanks" ... I turn around coz the signal begins beeping when its green, then I turn back and this dude is already seen accross the street disappearing into the crowd.

Hmm, it happened so quick, it was wierd, but I didnt feel scared, but instead I was amused ! New castle has many of those typical crowded streets around the town centers, and I was told to be careful of such goons. But it really isnt suprising, coz when you enter a town center, there's soo much crowd, if I were a thug, this is the place I'd be :p , so it didnt come as a suprise to me that I'd come across something like this.

A little later, as I was munching on my super meal deal ( a sandwich + free coke) , around the same area, I see this couple, maybe in their early 30s, tatooted right till their faces, a lot of peirced stuff (Im sure they'd drowing if they were to go swimming coz of the holes in them) ... they seemed happy with it. So they were walking in front of me, suddenly turn into this magazine shop and start browsing pRon magazines together. I guess there's nothing wrong in that. But if Obelix was real , he'd say "these Britons are crazy".

Dreams

2005-05-15T15:00:00.000+05:30

When was the last time you dreamt of something and really achieved it ?

I was watching the McLibel case on TV last night. Two people from UK fighting against McDonalds , a gigantic corp. Here's an excerpt from the article ...

The verdict was devastating for McDonald's. The judge ruled that they 'exploit children' with their advertising, produce 'misleading' advertising, are 'culpably responsible' for cruelty to animals, are 'antipathetic' to unionisation and pay their workers low wages.

They showed how detemined these two people were to bring down the corp. and how they just refused to give up, against all odds ... for two and a half years ! Undoubtedly the longest trial ever.

After the case was over, they went off to Europe and fought against McDonalds there ! Since europian human rights laws are taken very seriously, they won there too. McDonalds had good reason to fear, and so did the other junk food corps.

What was most interesting was the way these two people handled it all along. Both of them lived in single room apartments, filled with documents, posters of protest, signboards etc etc. Yet they were very efficient at what they were getting at.

The last time I dreamt of something and got it was the flight till middlesbrough from India. I've always loved airplanes. And the jets noise, the G forces during take off and landing give me the kicks. Its been a year since I've been working as an embedded systems engineer, and the novelty of spending cash on general stuff was wearing off, until I could pay for my own trip and household bills. I could take pride in that, it only hurt when I had to shell out for those damn LIC bills. That was not in my plan :p Its these pleasures that keep me driven.

But this is so small as compared to what people do to feel good inside themselves. I crave for that sense of achievement that a team feels when they crack a nasty bug, or come up with an ingenious solution to a problem. I've been in these situations and theres no feeling like it.
However, most of it has happened at my work place, which is good I guess, coz it means I'm enjoying what I do. But I havent done anything or participated in anything that has made a difference on a large scale ...yet. I can only imagine what the engineers at google must feel when they realise millions of people use their search engine out of choice just because its the fastest most accurate thing of its kind, or even what the guys who contribute to the open source world, especially linux kernels and find their code running servers in massive corporations.

Sheer genius

2005-05-13T13:40:00.000+05:30

I just had to post this up.
Nothing but creativity and skill at its best.
Check out Guess-the-google & Montage-a-google.

Clickey

After the haitus ...

2005-05-10T00:44:00.000+05:30

Yes my beloved blog readers ... i yam back. bah who am I kidding, I know how many people read my blog. But anyway, I thought I'd post some gibberish, now that I'm on VACATION.
So, I took leave for a month, for the whole of May, and went to the land where beer is cheap, it rains, snows, and there's bright sunlight all in one day, where people never say "Hi"/"Hello" but greet each other by saying "awryt/cheers" sometimes "Heya"...and where it is considered strange and impolite if you dont greet them back. This can happen only in England. I'm currently in the middle of this country which is the size of two Indian states, probably thats why its called Middlesbrough. Its been a week into my vacation and I'm having a ball of a time. Feels good not to think about code, bugs, projects, work pressure etc. I yam loveeng it.

So far I've been to Scotland, Whitbey, crossed over New Castle and some few other places. In the coming weeks I plan to go to London for a couple of days. So if I were to write about each of these places and what I did there, that'd be boring, so I'll just skip it and get to the interesting parts.

People in this country have major problems ! 90% of their youth are obese. 90% of people over 60 who can barely walk straight smoke ciggarettes like there's no tomorrow. And their ciggarettes smell really bad. If you come here, you can see why the youngsters can barely put their pants on. Every ten feet you will find a shop, bakery, or junk food stall, that gives out this lively aroma with hands, that pulls them, like they show in cartoons. ( Yes I watch a lot of cartoon network here, coz its in English)

Somehow every mall or towncenter you go to, you find more females than males, which is awesome make no mistake, coz the other 10% youth is real eye candy .. AND ... its summer time here, so off with the tops :p.. I must say, I find it reeeeallly strange that in this weather, some people wear warm clothing, while some wear em like they're off to a beach ! Also, it seems to be some kind of a fad going around here... I mean I've seen girls wear this sort of apparel only on new years day or some night out to the local clubs. Anywho, no matter what you hear about racial discrimination, Britons are really well mannered and polite. Be them senior or even toddlers ! When I was in Scotland, it was nine at night (O yeah did I mention these Britons have dinner at 6:30 pm and the sun doesnt set till 9:30pm ?) , I was off for a walk along Loch Long ( lake near our hotel) this couple with their kid passed by from the opposite direction, the kid was probably a year old, but when I was near her, she looked up and with a radiant smile said "Heya!" with one hand in the air. I was like Awww choo chweeet. no seriously, I did.

Their transport system is excellent and so is the traffic management. Their driving license exam is supposedly the toughest exam for anyone. And I can see why, I mean its hard to be under 15 minor and 0 major faults when a major fault is like crossing your hands on the steering wheel when you're turning! and one minor fault is not looking over your shoulder when you're reversing inspite of looking in the rear view mirrors. However all these ridiculous rules last only through the test. But its hard, our neighbours here have tried 5 times ! and they're only in their early thirties. But people get through it eventually in their lifetime, and you do see an occassional Ferrari scream past you. I hope to see the McLarens/Aston Martins someday. So, I always keep my camera ready to shoot.

The real meaning of driving/biking to the country side can be experienced here. Lush green valleys, farms, endless pastures and a hell lot of sheep and the Brits are very proud of it and make sure that its kept that way. Its got everything you've read about in novels, seen in movies, heard about; the works ! Really feels different. There are several villages scattered about, each with their own personality. I felt very much at peace when I was at Whitbey and Oban, both of which are small towns with a population of about ~50,000. You see small alleys, leeways, narrow roads intertwinned between buildings, the local florist arranging her shop to attract visitors meanwhile as the painter is doing some job on the house accross the street, a few people walking their dogs, someone leaning against the wall smoking to glory or even some kids playing on their bikes, very picturesque. And whats more amusing is, everyone passing by exchanges greetings or even waves from across the street to each other. Its like, these people probably havent seen any voilence, anger, or bitterness. Theres just soo much peace around them. Ive taken some snaps of these scenes, which I shall put up soon with some description.

So after travelling around the country in buses and seeing these celestial sights I knew I was missing something. Music. To feel it completely, I decided to get me one of em iPods. Its yet to arrive, but it should be here within the next couple of days. So, a camera, iPod and something to chew on should get you "there".

More coming soon...to the ISP(internet service provider) near you :p

my Haddock Insult patch

2005-02-03T00:45:00.000+05:30

Gone are the days when QuackBot* was born, thanks to MS for changing their MSN API, that C# code is unmaintenable. So I officially announce the sad demise of our beloved, pedantic QuackBot. But, this time I've done it in GAIM. It would be too boring if I didnt do anything new to it , right? So, no GRE wordlists or any of that crap. This time its Captain Haddocks endless, ever creative insults. Suppose you feel like abusing someone, but dont want to be too harsh, just type "!@# " or anything that ends with a "# " , in your sentence, and voila.
eg
The other chap sees:
(04:39:26) Tyler durden: hello ?
(04:39:29) Tyler durden: you Pithecanthropus
(04:39:41) Tyler durden: damn you Gangsters , sob, Bashi-bazouk

when you type:
hello ?
you !@#
damn you !@# , sob, !@#

kewl eh?

Patch:make it, test it, break it, have fun. (Thanks Parag)

Whats more cool is, since the send_messages protocol is generic, you could use this patch to have fun with any other IM client ( MSN/Yahoo/Napster/Zephyr/Jabber etc )
What you need is the GAIM source package, get it from gaim.sourceforge.net, then patch it with my file, and make.

Another kewl google idea.. Check this out ..
And while we're on the topic of GAIM , also check this out ...

*QuackBot was a MSN bot, made in C#.net and could give you random GRE words , their meanings and sentences using those words, when you typed GRE.

Ramble in the bronx

2005-01-26T14:33:00.000+05:30

A month without weekends and an extracted tooth later, it doesnt feel so good now. However, losing an inch and a half from my waist and a sexy tuned motorcycle more than makes up for it. I've attained a strange homeostasis :p

After a long hiatus from blogging, several thoughts are waiting to be put into words. So here goes ..
On the geeky side of life..
I think Linux rocks, coz I could succesfully run my USB wifi dongle in 2.6.10 using its windows XP drivers.
Broke your head thinking about it didnt ya!? Well, the fine folks who wrote the ndiswrapper does that. Simply awesome. Now only if it could be ported on ARM, that would save a lot of effort of many embedded systems Co's.
The VoIP team needed the bandwidth so they got the leased line all to themselves through the Access point. The rest of us had to surf on a sucky ISDN line like lusers. So now you see where ndiswrapper came to the rescue. The drivers for that device for linux arent ready as yet, but till then ndiswrapper works like a charm.

Im working on porting a kernel thread sample from 2.4 to 2.6, just for the heck of it. Its interesting to see how task queues have been changed to work queues. The code is done, but has issues when insmod-ing it.

Now onto the other parts of life..
Want to lose some weight ? Just eat rice and dal for a week and a half. Excercise Schmekercise ... not needed.
I think photography is a random hobby for any guy. Give a digital camera to any guy and you'll see what I mean. Googling for photography lessons leads you to some self proclaimed photography pro's galleries .. even I think I'm better off than some. (Although I dont have a digi cam) heehee.

Thought I needed to add something more ...
Its 1:30am , and I'm at work ! gawd whats gotten into me.
This makes me think about what my boss told me. He asked me my birthdate, and concluded that since I'm a sagittarian, I'm impatient and persevere a lot.
Impatient ... I am, but I just cant put down something thats on my mind. I just need to get the answer sometimes. So here I am...trying to get Jffs2 working on AMD and ST flashes.. a thing which I had successfully done two weeks back, but it backfired and started acting strange. However, at the end of the day, or should I say beginning ... alls well that ends well. *for those interested* I was mounting the filesystem on an MTD partition on which data was mysteriously getting corrupted coz it overlayed with the ramdisk. So now with a completely clean partition set aside for jffs2, all works great !

With that note, I shall endeth my post and go home.

On the frayed ends of sanity

2005-01-10T02:53:00.000+05:30

Who could just stare into Winamps playlist as it populates 1816 mp3 time tags ? *me*
God, O Almighty , father of all, creater of all, why !? Just ........WHY?

Hey come to think of it; WHY could be an abbreviation for Why the Hell Y ?
And then you could recurse it, just like LAME( LAME aint an MP3 encoder) , or GNU ( GNU's not Unix).

On a different note ..
Do you believe there is some sort of energy out there in the cosmos, that one can connect to through meditation ?
Deepak Chopra believes so. I've read his articles, books.. its all enticing till he says you need to meditate 2 hrs at a stretch everyday.
He keeps saying , we need to take a break from our internal conversations. The world we live in causes us to think too much and in the midst of this rigmarole, he fears, we might lose ourselves. And by connecting to that cosmos, we should realise our real essence, our real purpose, the ulterior motives. Somehow , I see some wisdom in that. But I know I would never be able to follow his advise.
I think most of us , at some point of time, get a grip inside, and develop our own ways of dealing with things, which gives us that satisfactory feeling.

I need to ask someone who meditates religiously, if its absolutely necessary to be completely blank mentally, to start off meditation ? or could imagining something that makes you feel good do the trick, eg in my case, I could just think of the perfect place to live in ..like endless grasslands, small house, perfect relationship, xbox, unlimited electricity, food, and voluntary human interception... uptopian ideal, but feels good...coz if this is good enough to switch to that meditation mode , I could do it with my eyes open, no troubles of shutting down, quiet place or any of that :))

hmm time to sleep...

Wahooo

2004-12-20T11:43:00.000+05:30

http://www.highiqsociety.org/noflash/nonmembers/iqtests.htm(ultimate IQ test)

I scored a 118.

which they say is significantly above the average population.

But ... you need a min. of 126(which means super-duper brainy :p ) to qualify for further tests.

I'm sure I screwed up the "which of these unfolded patterns when folded is NOT formed" Q's.

but wahooo anyway : )

Paradig{u}ms

2004-12-18T13:21:00.000+05:30

Doesnt it all come down to perceptions ... Beliefs, convictions, conclusions.
I had a very intruiging conversation with a friend of mine over lunch a couple of days back. She believes it still is a man's world. She says , at the end of the day it is the man who will work at anything but family matters, and the woman will take care of the child no matter what... even if its an emergency [child getting sick]!

Now .. I totally disagreed with that. But I heard her out completely and found that her arguments always cropped up from her belief that people never change, their attitudes always remain the same. I say , thats 1 ton of bullshit. Change is a very integral part of everyones life. There's no such thing or event when the change is said to be complete. Your life isnt like some crazy scientists experiment. Its a process, changes / adjustments / sacrifices have to be made. Thats how one moulds his/her character.

About the patriachal society concept... I'd rather work out the differences. Why should one follow the herd. Everyones lives are different... I just cant imagine myself taking charge over all matters. I find it ridiculous to even think about it.

Im very open minded about acknowledging the fact that life is never a smooth sail. I've been through rough patches and have learnt to accept that life can be unfair, one just has to get used to it.

But thats the best part, I'm ready to go through the tough patches.. not that I'm aiming at it. But I percieve it differently. Every fall can be made an opportunity to rise.

Also it isnt the case that Im no longer in good terms with that friend, but I have to say I totally disagree with her notions. I just hope all girls arent like that :)

Over the years as i've become more open minded, I've learnt to enjoy the simple things in life like admire nature. My dad being a psychiatrist had written an article about how the connection between neurons are formed for every thought!

So... if you can spawn a thought and form a neuron connection, why cant you also break it when you want to! Its _your_ brain isnt it !!

Neuron Burning

2004-12-15T15:34:00.000+05:30

Been a while since I rambled anything here. So here's a quick rundown on "what's been up".
For starters, the gods have betrayed us .. damn xbox got busted. Then its been more work and more of "others" work. Some chaps here have phrased it very well... they call it Ashwin's consultancy services [acs] extension 209. :-s It's not good you know ! It fouls up my "peace of mind" concept :p

So, other than that, nothing really interesting going on. One of these days, I'm going to stay at home, sleep all day, catch up on reading some novel and stay very far away from my computer(s). Yes its possible !

Ok, so there's this new thing called the "nach syndrome", where a guy randomly digresses from the context of a conversation and starts rambling about the movie "nach". My friends say I have that ! Thats not true....well not entirely true... I dont come back to the same topic ! And even if I do, I'd say its a virtue !
wait wait let me explain ...

No one likes to hear people being back bitched / girls talking about cute ( which is not always cute) stuff / people not knowing where + when to stop / etc etc ... sooo thats where its a virtue. My mind tends to .. as if automatically.. think about other stuff. Now dont be mistaken, I _do_ have control over that. But sometimes I dont :p ... I think it could be extremely helpful when your mind tends to think about things that are beyond your control, but refuses to give up, simply because you really want it ... get me ?

So there..

Talk about humour ..

2004-11-25T19:04:00.000+05:30

This is what the geek world is all about.

Do an egrep -ir "( fuck)|( shit)" * in your distro's kernel source.
Be careful , dont spill that coffee/beer into your keyboard while you're laughing.

Writing funny comments makes the reader chill, sip his/her coffee and carry on.
Its good for health, no seriously.

Even I write funny comments, in my code... its better than just //Ashwin

Want to read more ? Check this out.
more
more

Comprende amigo ?

2004-11-19T15:26:00.000+05:30

Got this fwd in my mail a few weeks back ...

>> For those in their twenty-something's...this puts it all into words

>> perfectly. They call it the "Quarter-life Crisis."



Some things seem to match, but some dont, read on ...



>> It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that

>> there are a lot of things about yourself that you didn't know and may or

>> may not like.

I'd agree.. I am more inquisitve than before...however.. i get answers to most of my questions.

>> You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two,

>> but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.



Umm. I'm not insecure, but I've grown to be more ambitious

in my professional life and proven to myself that breakthroughs

however big or small dont happen all that infrequently if the job

is done passionately. So, I'd say, I'm getting more confident, but

 will never be blase or over-confident.



>> You look at your job. It is not even close to what you thought you would

>> be doing or maybe you are looking for one and realizing that you are going

>> to have to start at the bottom and are scared.



Exact opposite ! I'm really lucky with my job, I know the

state of some of my buddies, who still dont have work. I'm

invariably challenged with tasks, that prove my competency,

and earn me some well deserved respect and satisfaction.



>> You miss the comforts of college, of groups, of socializing with the same

>> people on a constant basis. But then you realize that maybe they weren't

>> so great after all.



True, that I miss the comforts of college, but back in college I dreamed of

 being where I am today, so its all good.



>> Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find

>> yourself judging a bit more than usual because suddenly you realize that

>> you have certain boundaries in your life and add things to your list of

>> what is acceptable and what is not. You are insecure and then secure.



True.



>> You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and

>> scared and confused.

>> Suddenly change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with

>> dear life but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further

>> away and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward.



I'd take it more gracefully.



>> You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such

>> damage to you or you lay in bed and wonder why you can't meet anyone

>> decent enough to get to know better.



Oh so true.



>> You love someone but maybe love someone else too and cannot figure out why

>> you are doing this because you are not a bad person.



err. no comment. : )



>> One night stands and random hook ups start to look cheap and getting

>> wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic. You go through

>> the same emotions and questions over and over and talk with your friends

>> about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision.



first line : no comment ;) But rest of it is very true.



>> You worry about loans and money and the future and making a life for

>> yourself and while winning the race would be great, right now you'd just

>> like to be a contender!



As long as I earn the respect, and give my task my best shot, I'm satisfied.



>> What you may not realize is that everyone reading this relates to it. We

>> are  in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can

>> to figure this whole thing out.



Im sure this is true.

Like, Ouch !?

2004-11-16T14:57:00.000+05:30

The pain, the migrane, aah unbearable , this one !
I can understand the haiku amongst geeks, general IQ tests I mean, code challenges and the like. But this ! I cant look at it, although I wish I could someday achieve that apotheosis.

Take a look at this ..

http://www.google.com/googleblog/2004/11/give-up.html

then this ..

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/news/2004-10-13/google/

Mathematica !!??

A few days back, I was begining to feel better that I could finally answer "whats the coolest hack you've ever done ?" in the GLAT
and this just spoils the fun, doesnt it ?

Mailing list flame wars ..

2004-11-15T00:45:00.000+05:30

There's no end to this ! It all started the day I started my job, and was giving a task of writing some snippets in an LCD driver; in linux of course. I had to find out some ways of getting hold of memory allocated by the kernel cache pool, for ARM ( Advanced RISC machines) architectures. So I posted this query on the ARM mailing lists, from my hotmail account. Little did I know, every mail I sent from hotmail to the list, was getting duplicated as a new entry ! Russel King , the _dude_ who wrote and maintains the ARM linux kernels, got pissed off and started to abuse. He said " and wtf (why the fsck) do you think you can post it twice everytime !? ", to which I retorted " htf ( how the fsck ) do I know that its comes twice through hotmail !?" ... and it continued from there on .. However, I had many people to my defense,.. someone there said to Russel that he should cool down, coz everyone knows how hard he works and etc etc .. At the end of it , I didnt get the answer to my question at all ! later on , of course I got the job done.

Again, on the linux LVM (logical volume manager) mailing lists , I wanted to know if the RAID 1 driver could be done on 1 disk with several partitions on it... coz so far we've read from texts that RAID <> needs more than one disk and so on ...

Now, the reason why I asked about RAID 1 on one disk was, to find an alternative to hacking the kernel IDE subsystem and obtaining the same functionality of RAID 1 ( mirroring).
History repeated again, only this time , my mails didnt repeat, but people started asking me the same question over and over again , as to why would anyone be as silly to have RAID 1 on a single disk !

Im like " tere baap ka kya jara" , I just need to know if its possible or not , simple. Although I got the answer to it, some really inquisitive chap found it hard to believe that I could hack the kernel IDE subsys to get RAID 1 functionality and so wanted to know how its done. I told him that, and yet again , the dude ,wonders why I was trying to do it, when "md" ( multiple disk) modules were part of the kernel these days ! Again "tere baap ka kya jara" ...

So, moral of the story, expect uber-geeks to act really stupid once in a while.

But still class Geek : public Earth {

AKA The geek shall inherit the Earth.

PS: Just in case you're still wondering why the IDE hack ? ( im sure most of you arent) ..well, RAID needs to have "formatted "partitions with filesystems mounted on them ... So the IDE hack , will eleminate that need , all I need is one formatted partition , be it any filesystem, the rest could very well be unallocated space ! , kewl in'nit ?

Hello me , its me again ..

2004-11-12T02:32:00.000+05:30

Its been a long time since I wrote anything here. Since its _my_ blog and I tap into myself when I begin typing anything here .. hence the title. So, there hasnt been much on my mind, except buffer cache's and IDE controller device drivers. The last few days made me switch onto a totally workaholic track.

Come friday next week and I shall be the proud owner of one of these WiFi babies !
802.11g WiFi cards. What will I do with it !? .. the USB dongle driver for linux is kind of incomplete, so I hope to contribute there. What does the driver do ?! It'll make my computer work like a Wireless Access point. I've worked on this for 802.11b and on the PCMCIA driver before, so I think I know what Im doing.

Meanwhile, one of my buddies got his X-Box... now I'm convinced .. _there_is_a_God ; ) Now, we just need to get that thing modded, coz the games are ridiculously overpriced otherwise.

I was just talking to my friends about how we've changed after we graduated. It all happened soo fast, it seems like not too long ago, when we struggling through our semester exams, cramming up loads of text and writing a million sheets of submission work... and now suddenly all this freedom ! Sometimes I feel like those days were much better than now! But then, schooling days seem even better .. almost no worries, didnt even know what real freedom was like ! But yet we enjoyed like crazy. hmmm

What would be a perfectly balanced life, at this stage? In my case, my work life is going pretty well, social life .. not bad at all, then why do I feel like somethings missing ? Is it just the ambition from the work life thats intruding in the other aspects of life ?

Now you know !

2004-11-01T15:38:00.000+05:30

Child like curiosity is the best ! Its even better when the "big brains" give it a serious thought and get the answers. Here's a cool one : Why doesnt paper ( or any flat, thin thing) fall straight down ?
What d'ya know ! Cornell gets the answer :

While college students suspect the answer is known to lazy professors -- the ones who allegedly grade essays by throwing them down stairwells to see which sails the farthest -- the so-called falling paper problem has long intrigued scientists.

As Wang explains, "Leaves and paper fall and rise in a seeming chaotic manner. As they fall, air swirls up around their edges, which makes them flutter and tumble. Because the flow changes dramatically around the sharp edges of leaves and paper, known as flow singularity, it makes the prediction of the falling trajectory a challenge."

Im sure we being engineers were on the right track guessing the answer to this ( atleast I was ) but to put it in words *sensibly* is always tough :p

Why dont I feel like going for one of these !?

2004-10-29T11:19:00.000+05:30

Snapped from http://www.openforce.at/mozparty2/
Remember the Mozilla 1.0 Release? Mozilla supporters were partying all over the world! But now, it's 1.0 time again - for Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird Join the parties and help making the next months browser statistics way different :-)

Have a look at which countries are participating !
Suprisingly ! our own Pune is on the list.

I had a good look there, to see if it would be really worthwhile going for one of these , coz I think its a damn neat idea to party all over the world, its like new years day. BUT ! although I dont have anything against firefox/thunderbird ( in fact its all I use .. both on windows + linux) I just dont feel enthu enough.

Look at the banglore LUG participation and then look at Pune's. Then I went to PLUG's (Pune linux users group) mailing list, they seemed to be talking about how they could use this as an oppurtunity to spread their existence awareness. I've been to one PLUG meeting some two years back... it was boring as hell. Sure they were geeks, but the community seemed very small, and something was missing. Some of the guys couldnt even speak proper english ! I personally, fall instantly asleep listening to such people... esp when they're delivering lectures. Pune seems to lack active participation from the "working" public. PLUG seems to be full of engineering students. Its good, but I think if there are many experienced people who have proven their smartness by contributing to open source significantly and thus acquiring "bragging rights" ... it would be a lot more cooler. izz jes what I feel.

BangLinux .. the bangalor LUG .. appears to be a big group.. they have these massive events sponsered by industry tycoons.. which immediately stikes an impression.

But then again, do we really need a reason to paaardy , huh ? ; )

Hello from picasa

2004-10-28T14:19:00.000+05:30

My cube

Hey this thing actually rocks !
try it out ... really neat interface... easy to use ...
but down side = need broadband to enjoy the s/w : solution = do it from work :p

Triangles Challenge

2004-10-28T13:33:00.000+05:30

I had some time in the morning till my hardware arrived. So I thought of giving this a shot. I tried it for about half an hour.. got to the point where my code fails to see if all 3 points are collinear.
And then, I gave up and thought I'd leave it to rest.

Damn this screws up the indentation ! ... baah nevermind

Woot ! woot !

2004-10-26T14:42:00.000+05:30

Just read about this on Google's blog and followed the links ...

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who as Stanford graduate students successfully created the Google search engine, have been named the 2004 Fellows of the Marconi Foundation at Columbia University. In announcing their selection, John Jay Iselin, the Foundation’s president, congratulated the two men for their invention that has fundamentally changed the way information is retrieved today.

AND !!

Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. Academy membership honors those who have made "important contributions to engineering theory and practice, including significant contributions to the literature of engineering theory and practice," and those who have demonstrated accomplishment in "the pioneering of new fields of engineering, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education."

Lawrence Page, president for products, Google, Mountain View, Calif. For the creation of the Google search engine.

Makes me kinda wonder... are these really humans ?

Bjarne Stroustrup, College of Engineering Professor of Computer Science, Texas A&M University, College Station. For the creation of the C++ programming language.

Now .. I have his book.. I bought it because I thought it would be the best resource for a self made programmer. I barely got to the third chapter .. and havent looked at it since. Now it seems fathomable , after having read from other resources. But for a complete beginner.. its a nightmare.

Thats not to say I dont admire him. If I had one day with him, like sit for his lecture or catch him in some conference, it would be the day of my life.

Random thought generator

2004-10-26T00:06:00.000+05:30

Warning: Some of the stuff I've written below might make you think I'm not human. Sometimes I could'nt agree more. ; )

I was up on the terrace last night... the stars seemed really bright, clear sky, full moon, and I saw 2 shooting stars... upon which I was amused. All these "shooting" stars always seem to fall off towards the horizon. What if one of them were to be bang up above you and it were to fall perpendicular to your ground. Would'nt it look as if its getting bigger and bigger. Hopefully it would disintegrate. Or else no matter how far you ran, you'd still be squashed like a fat butt sitting on an ant.

What if one day the skies were to change colour like in any version of Doom. I'd hate to be amongst any of the characters in that game, but just the sky colour, even if its for a few minutes. If you dont know what I'm talking about, obviously you are a lesser mortal for not having played the game.

If we were on Saturn, would we see large stones rotating around us ? Do the Saturn rings also change their plane of rotation? If so, then it would be a problem for air traffic ! Airplanes would have to adapt immediate braking mechanisms like mosquitoes.

There's more to this article .. but something inside tells me to stop.. and so me, my mind and myself shall stop.

Are you tech e-nuff ?

2004-10-19T15:44:00.000+05:30

Everyday I read about newer technologies related to my work. It mostly revolves around operating systems and networks. Since most of my work is on open sourced projects, I cant help but greatly admire the geeks and nerds out there who wrote it in the first place! Its one thing to concoct an idea, another thing to start coding, and a whole different ball game to open-src it.

What boggles my mind is ... should I want to dedicate myself to a particular technology for most of my life, or is it too early to decide that !? This thought stems from the fact that, one cannot just simply decide to write a WiFi USB driver from scratch without knowing USB and Wifi internals. Same goes for any other project.
Moreover, to study these technologies means "studying" that technology and also how it integrates into the OS in 'n' out. How does one get there ? When does one suddenly "know" everything about WiFi / OS / or anything else... Sitting under a banyan tree with eyes shut and going into a trance wont help. ; )

Currently, my exposure to technologies directly depends on the tasks I get. So far I've hopped from WiFi to uClinux kernel ports to PPP and so on.. and its just 5 1/2 months since I started. Generally these tasks take about 3-4 or even 5 weeks... and just when the task gets over, with whatever little confidence that I acquire, I feel like contributing to open-src... another task kicks in. I guess, time will take care of that... where time = next few years of the tech-industry.

So far, its cool that I learn from snippets of code from the various nuances of the embedded world. But one day I hope to implement something so that someone else (read uber-geek wanna be) gets inspired.

Ton Whileloop

2004-10-15T15:28:00.000+05:30

This week has been a nightmare. I've forgotten how the sky looks at 7am and how the sun sets in the evening.
All this courtsey of our client. His real surname is Verloop, but you can guess why we call him whileloop.
This chap must be in his mid 40's , supposedly wears a wig, earings, and is an extremely enthusiastic german dude. So, he's actually german, has a chinese wife, main office in the US, does business in Europe and China.

#define global Ton

But he's a great guy, walks in every morning, salutes everyone he bumps into, and is ever energetic. Today he suddenly thought of something while having lunch... ran upstairs , took his magnifying glass and observed something on a PCB.

A few days ago.. he wanted to see if we could get MP3z to run on this prototype board which had an audio codec and a speaker attached to it. Somehow, when we mangaed to get some sound out off it, he ran upstairs ...got his camcorder.. and taped the lifeless proto board playing the MP3 file !
All this .. so he could show his ppl back home that "the thing" really works!

But his enthusiastic spirit is really good... it keeps him high ! Being a german , and we know what alcoholic capacity they have .. one wonders which spirit keeps him high (pun intended).

Power Naps

2004-10-08T19:18:00.000+05:30

These days .. esp. for the past week I havent had good sleep.. so I thought why not try a power nap in the afternoons when I come for lunch ..

I come home for about 45 mins... 15 min. have lunch and 20 min nap... At first it seemed tough ..but a little effort and it feels like a miracle !
There are some people I know .. like my cousin .. just eyes shut .. and its like he hasnt slept for a year !
Wish I could do that ...

Whats the most you can stay awake ? I've stayed awake the whole night only twice so far .. once when we were all playing cards .. and the other time was I think before some exam ../ in the PLs

Some one once told me .. "So.. you want to become a Comp. engg?... can you stay awake for 72 hrs straight? "
me:" Yeah rite !"

There are some people out here at work .. who have stayed up for 5 days straight .. esp. when its delivery time...
They all say .." i'll learn soon"..
But I guess its different when there are soo many people around .. all work their but_s off of one common purpose .. the atmosphere doesnt remain mundane any more ..
But then there are some working people .. who cant sleep more than 5 hrs a day .. _insmoniacs_ is what they are!

Why not just work < || == 10 hrs a day and finish everything off so you're free on the weekends , or evenings ..

hmm..what else ?
One of these days I'm going to tweak this thing so it'll display some random IRC conversations .. from bash.org
bash.org has some of the funniest , weirdest conversations ever captured.. and the list never stops .. shows how stupid people can get ..
check out bash.org and you'll know what I mean..

Indifference

2004-10-06T14:04:00.000+05:30

Music is such an integral part of my life now .. Every couple of songs reminds me of some time that went i through in the past .. both good and bad. eg. I used to listen to a lot of The Calling, Wallflowers, 3 Doors Down etc while i wrote some code a few months back .. and now whenever i listen to those songs .. memories come gushing by .. memories ; of all that happened around that time !
Power of music .. i say !

And then there are some songs that make me thank god for women in this world !
songs like .. Shaggy : Strength of a woman , Pearl Jam : Indifference etc
Damn cool .. make me go into that mood...
Now only if someone's frequencies matched with mine ; )

Pearl Jam: Indifference would sound excellent over a candlelight dinner .. listen to it !

I will light the match this mornin', so I won't be alone
Watch as she lies silent, for soon night will be gone
Oh, I will stand arms outstretched, pretend I'm free to roam
Oh, I will make my way, through, one more day in Hell...
How much difference does it make
How much difference does it make, yeah...

Free Running

2004-10-05T18:08:00.000+05:30

Dont know if you had heard about this ... but its becoming a sport !
I was home for lunch today .. on Discovery channel ... there was a documentary on these chaps from some french town.
Apparantly, these chaps have mastered the art of running with "grace". Something like those Matrix stunts .. but no strings attached. Remember the scene .. where Neo tries to jump across the building ? Something like that ..

I thought it was stupid ...until they showed what these guys were really capable off ! Its an art ! .. art of jumping .. You have to see it to believe me. Its aptly called "free" running . Just run! Jump on railings, walls, between balconies, through railings , whatever , wherever ... freedom.

So the discovery crew wanted to see how these chaps would do, if they were in central london.. amongst the victorian buildings, monuments etc .

Now, what amazes me is that, the administrative departments of these monuments/ victorian buildings etc were actually enthusiastic about all this ! Isnt that cool ! ... If you think about it .. Its very dangerous ! yet artistic and therefore these chaps actually gave them permission to jump across their roofs !

It shows how the western world is open to freedom of expression. Maybe extreme , but damn neat !

The state of freshers in some companies ..

2004-10-04T16:03:00.000+05:30

This is one of the cool forwards i got in my mail today .. from one of my "jobless" friends ;)

Something  really keep u thinking and wondering....

                                                

1.     Coca-Cola was originally green.                                

2.     The most common name in the world is Mohammed

3.     The name of all the continents end with the same letter that they

start with.                                                      

4.     The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.                

5.     There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.



6.     TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters

only on one row of the keyboard.                           

7.     You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.             

8.     It is impossible to lick your elbow.                        

9.     People say "Bless you" when you sneeze because when you sneeze,your

heart stops for a millisecond.                         

10.    It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.  

11.    The "sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is said to be the

toughest tongue twister in the English language.                   

12.    If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib. If you try to

suppress a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and

die.                                                      

13.    Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king   

      from history. Spades - King David ,Clubs - Alexander the Great,    

      Hearts -Charlemagne ,Diamonds - Julius Caesar.                     

14.    111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321             

15.    If a statue of a person in the park on a horse has both front  

      legs in the air, the person died in battle.                        

16.    If the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a

      result of wounds received in battle. If the horse has all four legs

      on the ground, the person died of natural causes.                  

17.    What do bullet proof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers and laser

printers all have in common?

      Ans. - All invented by women.                                   

19.    Question - This is the only food that doesn't spoil. What is this?



      Ans. Honey                                                    

20.    A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.



21.    A snail can sleep for three years.                             

22.    All polar bears are left handed.                               

23.    Butterflies taste with their feet.                             

24.    Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.                

25.    In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated. 

26.    On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.       

27.    Shakespeare invented the word 'assassination' and 'bump'.      

28.    Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand. 

29.    The ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.   

30.    The electric chair was invented by a dentist.                   

31.    The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body

to squirt blood 30 feet.                                            

32.    Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over

million descendants.                                                

33.    Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in

your ear by 700 times.                                                   

34.    The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.            

35.    Most lipstick contains fish scales.                             

36.    Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different







37.    Everybody after reading this try to lick their elbow :-)

Making a start ...

2004-10-04T13:53:00.000+05:30

So .. its been on my mind for a long time to make my own website .. get my own domain .. write some php/asp.net code and make my own blogging engine + photo gallery ... yeah sure ! .. one word: toolazy

Now that google is powering blogger .. its become very interesting ! Especially the comments interface .. the new templates ( made by web dev guru's like Zeldman etc) and so on ...

I plan to update this section as and when time permits .. in between work , maybe weekends , or whenever ..
Should be interesting .. so come check it out !