Was that just a weekend?

Sometimes you do so many things together that you forget that you did it in small time of two days? That was precisely the case with this weekend.

This weekend went out to a picnic courtesy Veritas. umm.. Where to start? Let's start where we started. It was not so hard to convince Gopal, who was enjoying his well-earned weekend sleep, to drop me at Parihar Chowk for the bus. Left Pune at 8. Things were going on as boring as this post on my blog is right now. Inspite of nice Pune-Mumbai express highway we were travelling on City roads as driver hadn't filled up the fuel tank and worst part of it is Pune Roads. It's talk of the town these days. Potholes everywhere and add to it traffic. and I was like Oh God! Why am I here? It would have been much better if I had been to Ahmedabad to bid adieu to my dear friend Jay, but things changed once we entered the express highway. When you are on way from Mumbai to Pune or the other way, travelling itself is a great pleasure. Throughout the highway, it's like you are in altogether a different world, especially in monsoon, where you are surrounded by green mountains and clouds and add to glory it was raining too when we were on our away and my agony?? just like that.. it's gone, nobody has ever seen since then :-)

We reached Rishi Garden Resort which is around 100 km from Pune. And we were ready to rock!! Swimming Pools, Water resorts have some magical effect on me :-) It was long back at IITK when I used to plunge swimming pool, but adrenaline started pumping when I saw water rides and swimming pool and wasted no time before diving. It was total fun and frolic to enjoy after such a long time, albeit I had one regret that couldn't dance long in rain dancing as had to move for lunch and then to Alibag, a nearby beach. In the afternoon we were ready to move to Alibag.

The best thing about Pune is that there are lots of places to roam around in vicinity. While going to Alibag, we were moving along through different mountains and just after some time we were at beach!! That was pretty cool ;-) Alibag is not glamorous beach as Juhu or Nariman Point is, but that's the good thing actually. Not many people come here and thus no pollution, no crowd. It was wonderful evening. We had a walk, played football. Someone said that A man becomes philosopher when he goes to sea. True! Atleast for me, many-a-times, I just feel like sitting on the beach and keep thinking. I start putting facts in balance sheet of my life. Anyways, it didn't end there, we had been told that the fort of Shivaji (visible at the horizon of the sea in pic) can be reached just on the foot at the time of low tide. It didn't look probable as it was more than a kilometer away from shore, but again god helps those who help themselves :-) so four brave men started their journey and believe me although it looked very far water never raised above our waist. And we celebrated our triumph to the fort. Soon many other followed. We visited canons and temples over there and not to forget all our stupid Mangal Pandey acts over there.

The night and next day morning was all-filled up with games. Housie, Ad Mad Show, Treasure hunts and what not... BTW, no luck for me as I didn't win in any game until next day morning Naval's Ballon blowing, my puzzle solving did the trick and we won the first prize in the team event.. yeah!!! and won a nightlamp enabled clock with alarm ;-)

We had planned a trek in early morning to the fort (visible in the pic) and Karnala bird Sanctuary , but we were advised not to move early because of very dense forest and high probability of snakes. so we moved after lunch, but only 6 of us as rest of us decided to stay and resort only. It was yet another joyful patch of our trip, although we couldn't make it to the top of the mountain due to time constraints, but atleast we moved up quite a lot and guess what!! we also got full mobile coverage over there, which was not at resort ;-) and came back. Yet another daring act by few brave men (and yes a woman :-) ). back to base and a photograph session courtesy our photographer Nitin.

During this trip I had some strokes. Strokes of dance. Unsufficient time for rain dance, DJ arranged by another group during first night, and garba arranged by Gujarati group who arrived there Sunday afternoon, all added to my desire to dance and that was finally fulfilled when we started disc in the bus itself, this time courtesy Girish. Dumb charades and Antakshari followed soon. Speaking in 7th standard student way, masti masti mein Pune kab aa gaya pata hi nahi chala!!! Yeh trip mein zindagi bhar nahi bhuloonga. It was indeed a memorable trip! During trip I couldn't carry camera as I didn't have one. Some memories are best kept in hearts than in photographs (or probably that's other way to say Damn!! I should've taken a cam with me.)

PS:- "someone" might notice that there is no solo photograph of mine this one. Don't ask me who that is. He knows I am pointing at him.

The tech commandments

BTW, 11th one was "Thou Shalt not check your email every 5 minutes" :P

Ganpati Bappa Moriya

The best thing about staying in different part of country is that you gotta see the best of all. Well, Kanpur is an exception, because there is no such thing as "best thing in Kanpur" ;-) Anyway, after coming here I got to see best of two places.

Last month, I had been to Mumbai and luckily landed up there at Janmashtami itself. Who doesn't know about towering matkis at this Govinda festival in Mumbai and I got chance to see that too. On the road just opposite to our house, they had placed a matki and it was so much fun to see they finally broke the matki. They did it in first shot!!! Dadar area is said to have highest matki which takes 7-8 layers of human pyramid to reach, but couldn't be there.

Now this week I am at Pune at the time of Ganesh Chaturthi. It's said that Maharastra has best Ganpati festival in India and Pune has best Ganpati festival in Maharastra. In our gully itself we have 6 ganpatis !!!!! Mind well, it's just a gully with not more than 150-200 metres. Concept of Sarvajanik Ganpati was given by Lokmanya Tilak until then people used to celebrate Ganpati in their household only, which people still do. but Sarvajanik Ganpati has taken a big leap since then. Yesterday we decided to go to have darshan of Dagdu Sheth Ganpati, which is quite famous all over Pune and Maharastra. Due to our foolishness and ignorance about the area, we walked a lot but that was all worth it. Pune indeed is Ganpati Capital of India. :-) I remembered my good old days when I as a child used to go to have darshan of all sorts of Ganpatis at Baroda. A friend with me was getting bored initially and was giving all sort of philosophy (such as ganpati is ganpati, ek ke darshan karo yaa dus ke bas shraddha honi chahiye types), but I was not in mood to listen and thoroughly enjoyed my visit. Ganpati Bappa... Moriya...

Why I love Linux

It's been a month since I am here and for a month I have been working on Win2K at my office. Haven't seen Linux in loooong time. Missing it, especially today.

Today I needed to do some scripting in Windows, for some personal work. Due to inefficiency in finding some advanced features for wget and in the presence any good download manager, I needed to shift towards this scripting. Oh God, What an unfortunate soul. Need to work in windows and that too with scripting. After coming to real world (read industry) I started loving linux more, you know why? because here you can't use pirated softwares any more and this is not IITK, where you just switch on your DC++ and download any bloody software within seconds. Thought, Let's take a dive and at unfortunate moment started scripting.

Now, I needed to make a FOR loop. After trying out different keywords found out following command

FOR %%e IN (1 2 3 4 5 6) DO ...

Now why would you need to type two '%' to mark a variable?? Anyways, this command will run for six time take value from 1 to 6. Now what would you do if you need to run loop for say 100 times are you going to write (1 2 3 ... 100). Well, you have to, I couldn't find any other technique. So thought let's try some another technique, something similar to while loop, implement using notorious GOTO. Now the question was how to set a variable and use it. tried out various combination

i=100
%i=100
%%i=100
...

Neither worked and suddenly remembered good old days where somehow I studied AUTOEXEC.BAT and they used something like SET for setting a variable. %$@@#$%%@$#. What the hell? why to type something extra as SET, I bet even Bill Gates won't be able to tell you that. Don't lose the spirit, go ahead. I thought. Now, came the next ultimate question, how to increment a variable? again combinations...

i=%i+1
i=%%i+1
%%i=%i%+1
...

Again, no luck. There exists something like INCR in dos, but for some reason that won't work in Win2K, so here is where I am stuck up. No clue to get out of this. Don't think I didn't Google for any of this stuff. After hard work on Google, I am pouring out my frustration here. Should get back to search now I guess. God bless me!!

Recent breakthrough : Finally managed to find out the way to increment a variable. it goes

SET /A i += 1

Now don't ask me why to put extra /A for doing so, in one other achievement, I found out that IF syntax would be like

IF NOT "i"="100"

but I am still unaware about use of < or > in IF, because if I use those, it says unexpected end of statement or something like that. Let it be whatsoever it is, I am done with my job. After I was done with my download thing, I am enjoying the geeky strips I downloaded and sharing one which is very pertinent with this one.

Google Talk

Big G has struck again and this time it's Instant Messenger Service. After rounds of rumours and denials, it's finally there and it's called, Google Talk. Agent Kujan was right. "Rumour is not a rumour that doesn't die" :-)

As Google's trademark, it's just beta as of now. Official google client is available only for windows, but as it supports jabber protocol you can use iChat for MAC and Gaim for linux. As of now, it doesn't have many features. Only basic text chatting and voice chatting, not even emoticons and no audibles, nicknames... NOTHING. Owing to which client is very light and easy to use. It has raised lots of criticism for Google, because when Google launches something, people expect it to be out-of-the-box thing. Take for example, Gmail, which forced email market leaders like Yahoo! and hotmail to increase the mailbox size. Similarly, Google Earth. Where in the case of GTalk, there is nothing new, infact much less than state-of-the-art IM services.

BUT, look at it from this point of view. Google is just trying to add a dimension to its Google Universe. It's a universe. A universe where user can avail all the facilities and don't have to switch between providers. (Much more coming up, rumours say that Google is also coming up with Paypal like system) Everything in just one login and one account, so this is just another dimension, which doesn't deny the scope of lots of development before official release. Imagine the future (I bet it won't be too far) where in all you need to do is just say few words and Google will do rest of the job for you. One point I noticed especially is the voice chat GTalk provides. Quality of voice is really good and is almost real time. First day feedback has been satisfactory as per my survey goes (Launched before less than 24 hours could be the reason, which results in lesser initial traffic as compared to Y! or MSN, but just wait-and-watch). The buzz is also that Google may extend voice chat to phone lines. Yes, you would be actually able to make a call to landline phones through GTalk. BTW, it's official announcement has not been done yet on Google Blog, which may solve lots of puzzles and may reveal some of the Google's plan for improvement in GTalk. Hold your breaths till then...

Quote of the day :- A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.

Link of the day :- So who cares about pennies huh?

Jugaad

I learned this word during my stay at Kanpur, only to realize that I was Jugaading all along my life although I didn't know the word ;-) Jugaad is formally defined as follows:

Jugaad n. An improvised or jury-rigged solution; inventiveness, ingenuity, cleverness.

well, this formal definition is too small to define the actualy depth and greatness of the word. It'd be impossible to visualize anything running smoothly without this powerful Jugaad. Starting from the national government to Laxman's common man won't survivie in India without this Jugaad. Mind you, Jugaad is not to be taken in the negative sense. Jugaad is an essential part of every thing which needs to run on time. Today read an interesting article about (link) fabulous Mumbai suburban railway network, lifeline of mumbai. Scheduling and management of suburban railway can be best exercise in contraint satisfaction for hardcore mathematician and practially it really has been nightmare to theoretically come up with the solution, where a train arrives every 3 minutes on all the stations between Churchgate and Virar, the tracks run for 60 kilometres. Over 3.1 million people use 1,007 services on this network every day to get to their places of work and back home. That translates to 50,000 people for every kilometre, making it the densest suburban rail network anywhere in the world. But since 80 years (1925-2005) this is running perfect without glitches, owing to omnipotent JUGAAD. Here is Google's tribute to Jugaad :

• Definition : Jugaad
  
• Management by Jugaad
  
• Jugaad... the new buzz word
  

Parineeta

Bollywood these days is experimenting with all sorts of techniques. One of them is trying to recreate magic of old work. After success of Devdas with Grand sets and wonderful music, now it's Parineeta. No this is not going to be another review of movie, but what made me come here is the music of the movie. Managed to watch movie last month and must say I liked and it was treated well with maintaining proper backdrop of '60s.

I heard this album first time when I was working on my thesis report at 3 am and it really moved me. I could feel the music deep within my soul. Only few albums/tracks have managed this. Again, today I am sitting in my office and it's 8-15 in the evening and it's time to leave, but after long time I have managed headphones and can't hold myself back from completing this whole sound track second time before I leave for home. (Anyway, I haven't got anything to do when I reach home ;-) )

Album starts with Piyu Bole by Sonu Nigam and Shreya Ghoshal. I feel this song is dear to more after I watched the movie, because the chemistry between Saif and Vidya Balan is very well depicted in the video and song seems natural and not forced in the movie. Kasto Mazza includes superb use of the sound of a chugging locomotive like some '60-'70 movie.

Soona Mann Ka Aangan is the paragon of the album. Sonu Nigam manages to fetch millions accolades from me for this one. He managed to put in all the dard required and wonderfully accompanied by my favourite new age singer Shreya Ghoshal.

Kaisi Paheli Zindgani by Sunidhi is on the lines of dil ko hazaar baar of Murder, but once again consistent with backdrop of the movie. Raat hamari toh is melodious solo by Chitra. Dhinak Dhinak Dha is nasty song and typical wedding song. OK types.

Album ends with title track, Sonu Nigam-Shreya Ghoshal duet Hui Main Parineeta. A romantic and sensual song to fit wedding of Shekhar and Lolita. Both Sonu Nigam and Shreya Ghoshal are going up and up in my favourite singers. Cheers for both of them.

PS:- You can listen songs on Raaga.com Here is the link.

Pune says welcome Nishit...

Away from blog for a long time, and back to blog now...well, almost...

Landed here in Pune, two days back. It was wonderful scene from window of my plane and made me feel that stay here is gonna be wonderful and added to it just started raining making the atmosphere cool... reached the office and whole day went in formality stuff. Filled up some forms and became employee of Veritas now Symantec and reached to friend's house. Well, this was just starting. "Real" life began then. It was raining through out the day and the rain continued, when we reach the flat basement was already in the water and water level was rising and lo! no electricity (which is not restored even after 3 days, may be because of water in the basement, it has been switched off intensionally and hope to get it restored when I go back home in the evening). Water was upto knee-level. Next day I was supposed to report to my office in IT Park - A, which is just walking distance and building 'A' is closed and we have holiday \:D/, albeit we enjoyed wonderful breafast in other office at IT Park -B :-) As reviews have come, best thing about Veritas is its FOOD :D and I agree after having a lunch and a breakfast. so, me and Gopal went around for some shopping and after roaming around when we reached home road was blocked due to water!!!! and we had to take another route to reach home and after seeing water level there, we were sure that we won't be able to come out until the water drys out, but had to take the plunge and this time water was waist high. Worries didn't end there. Took bread-butter and bananas for dinner and not to add the darkness.

Well, God has already warned us now. My dear son, your days are different now. Gone are the days when you had no power-cut, 24 hour water supply and nice drainage system. you are in REAL world now. Accepted my lord. We enjoyed all the "candle-light talks" and "daily bread". No complaints my lord.

Today began on good note. When my eyes opened at 0600 hrs in the morning and opened the windows. All the water was gone and for the first time after arriving here I saw the actual terrain around the building. Went for a morning walk and finally saw sunlight in 3 days. Phew... and back to office now, hopefully today I'll get my cabin and will get all the things done. Till then good bye. Well, lot more things to come on my blog from my one week mini vacation, but till then Adios...

Road Trip

It's rather unusual for me to have post on blog for consecutive days :) but, here I am after yesterday's wonderful trip.

After submitting thesis and having done some of the formality stuff, I was thinking of starting making presentation, but just then these guys came up with proposal of going to canal. Ah!! my long chersihed dream. Since last year or so, I had thought that I would go to this canal nearby, but plan never materialised, but when they asked me, I didn't hesitate for a second and that was just the beginning of a beautiful road trip.

We (me, Sheetesh, Rawat, Ritesh) chose the road behind the Hall-7. Oh yaa, forgot to mention we were on our bicycles, well and biking in that terrain was no less adventurous then tour de france. up-and-downs, right-and-left and not to mention all of them just kachcha roads. That turned out to be the best start of the trip. Going through such a rough patch, was kind of biking I was doing after a long time. Makes you feel like no you still have that dare spirit inside, you are not rotten after sitting in airconditioned office and keep looking at stupid computer screen all the time. :)

Soon, we reached the canal and a tree fallen on the road, automatically decided our returning point, as it was already getting darker and it would be difficult we don't return from there itself, but it was the best place we could have stopped at. The trunk of the fallen tree was extending to canal itself, so added a bit fun to stay over there and doing all the childish masti. Sitting on trunk thinking we have done such a dare act, wetting legs in the flowing water, splashing water over one another. and yes not to forget, our photo-session all along the trip. When Sheetesh is with you, don't need to worry about documenting your trip. We clicked some nice photographs over there. These photographs in blog are clickable.

On the return trip, we decided to choose another route, which will be touching GT Road and eventually to IITK. And all along the road, it was like a typical village, such as in a Yash Chopra movie ;). Lush green fields on both the sides all-along till your eyes can see. Yesterday nature too was in aesthetic mood and we got to see some beautiful colors in the sky and yet again, we didn't miss to click it. Took so many photographs there too. Unfortunately, Sheetesh missed to recharge his camera and we soon ran out of battery, so our photography session had to end there itself, but the fun didn't end there. Road trip continued and after long paddling got to see the road again. and this time it was Lance Armstrong act for us. On the highways, we enjoyed some fast biking. It was also dinner time and we decided to stop on dhaba on the way. Bijji da dhaba is what it was called. Well particularly not dhaba but modernized dhaba. We were suspicious about the kind of food, we'd get. But somehow this tour was meant to be great and the dinner to didn't disappoint us and food was much better than what we get in CR (our Campus Restaurant). well, it was a treat from my side owing to my thesis submission :D. On the way back, when we thought we were not far, it took us really long to reach back to IITK, but in the end all of it was worth it. We did atleast 15 km of bicycling yesterday!! and my long cherished dream was a reality thanks to these guys.

Thesis submitted \:D/

Whew...!!! long awaited moment finally came. I submitted my thesis today and will be defending on July 23, 2005, Saturday. :D

Feels like a relief. Although I am yet to make presentation and prepare for defence etc, but certainly it's a welcome change. Well, today I thought of something while I was all day busy for finalizing the thesis after changes, getting it printed, getting it photocopied, submitting to DOAA, then giving copies to my guide and the examiners. When I went to DOAA office for submitting my contingency form, the guy over there said, "aap computer waale kitne bhi software bana len, abhi bhi paper work to hai hi... aur aage 10 saalon tak rahega." He made me thinking while I was going here and there to get my work done. He was very right. In the age of computers and automation, atleast as far as India is concerned, it takes lots of paper work. e.g. we get to do NO-DUES in order to obtain provisional degree certificate and would you believe it takes 18 signatures from all the places over IITK and that includes NCC, Central workshop, Glass blowing factory, Students' Gymkhana cultural office, the places where I've not been a single time in my stay of two years, and still need to get NO-DUES done from there. As sepultura says "Paper work... bloody paper work!!" and ironically all-of-these, all of the efforts of two years for a single paper, albeit laminated :), the degree certificate. Anyways, on the positive side, automation scenario is changing fast at IITK. Registeration and related stuff in every semester has been automated since quite a long time and I heard that this tiring no-dues procedure is also under automation. Well, hope it hits the road soon and next year people won't have to roam around whole IITK in order to get it done!!

Diverged to somewhere else from where I started..:P. Anyways, we had real cool trip today, when we (me, Sheetesh, Rawat and Ritesh) went to a canal nearby. Story will soon be blogged with photographs :) , but right now get to go to sleep and start making slides from tomm. Adieu.

DUS : Funniest thriller of the year...

Well, these days movies seems to rule my blog, but watched many movies in last some days. And this unexhaustive list contains some very good movies like Raincoat, Sarkar, Hitchcock's Notorious, Guns off Navarone, Al Pacino's Scent of a woman, but here I am going to talk about something for people like me who think that standard of bollywood movies is improving and someday we'll be at par with hollywood.

... few Priyadarshan movies are yet to be released in this year, but I bet you won't find any of them funnier than this creation of Anubhav Sinha. We were laughing like anything when we came out of hall after watching "Thriller" DUS.

so here is a plot. wait a minute... was there anything like plot? probably there was. Few brave men from ATC(Anti Terrorist Cell, cool isn't it?)decide to save a big jeopardy which they even don't know about except that it was going to happen on 10th May, but these are brave soldiers. Now IMDb tells me that Naa Tum Jaano Naa Hum and Ab Ke Baras were released on 10th May, but probably more dangerous disaster exist in world, so they are searching for it. After some furious action and some "relay bombing" (as Suniel Shetty can't directly throw grenade, he would pass on that to Zayed and eventually Zayed on flying bike would throw that into car and before grenade could explode lo! Zayed is standing beside Jr. AB and Shetty inorder to give that high-profile action movie look). Well they have found some clues and caught a man who helps them in searching the villian Jamaal or Jambal or Jamval or something like that... and when finally so called Jamaal is killed Sanjay Dutt tells them that man who pointed them to Jamaal he himself was Jamaal. Shut up you all morons if you said that this is copied from 'Usual Suspects'. Our intelligent ATC chief Dutt Jr. finds out that disaster is going to happen at stadium. Now at the climax, they found out where bomb is and AB Jr. is on plane with disastrous C-4. Only way he could save Canada is that he jumps along with plane and his love Esha Deol, wait but somebody said she was traitor, but she has to die anyway. and then starts eternal dilemma. Whether Abhishek should die and save people or He should leave Canada to God. Everbody forces him to leave the plane, but he is "true soldier" and saves Canada. May his soul rest in peace.

I strongly recommend that everyone should see last 15 minutes of this movie (if you manage to survive till that point). No matter what will happen to that bomb, but Zayed tries to convince Abhishek that not only himself but both should take care of Dia Mirza. Sanjay Dutt is into tears and doesn't care to stop Jamaal who is not running away, but waiting for elevator to come. Sunil Shetty is shouting.. "fenk do bam, mar jaane do logon ko.. kud jaao Shashank..." Director will teach you geography which you've never learnt. He'll enlighten you that AIIMS flyover is situated near some sea or something. I bet you didn't know that.

Well, there are few saving graces for movie. 'Dus Bahane' and 'Deedar de' are treat to hear. Pankaj Kapoor proves that he is definitely one of the frontline actors and AB Jr. proves himself again after Sarkar. and yes, how can I forget Shilpa Shetty and her stunts (a la Trinity) and one must not forget the guy, whosoever it is,who made the trailer(download) and posters (see the one in my blog, doesn't make you believe that this one is definitely going to be different) and made people believe that this is movie worth watching, so go and watch in theatres. arre bhaiyo, suno, agar movie dekho to upper/stall mein dekhana aur mazaa aayega...

Raincoat

And the monsoon continues. Last weekend I decided to give a shot to this movie. Rather it was raining outside and I couldn't resist myself for seeing this movie *again*.

Yes, I had seen this movie way back in December when Punet was on his trip to India. That was bizzarre. In the theatre, we did everything but watch the movie. I found it too slow and boring. Then after sometime I came across O Henry's Gift of the Magi, from which this movie was inspired. And I realised that Raincoat had something which I missed and since then I had decided to give it one more watch. With the help of a guy, I managed to download DVDRip of the movie from net. and finally rainy season did it and I watched the movie again. and here is my word : AWESOME!!! I was completely into the movie this time. It took me by real surprise that how could I have ignored such a wonderful movie and that too in theatre. I regret that probably I spoiled mood for Shalin, who probably liked the movie at that time.

Manoj/Manu(Ajay Devgan) is in Calcutta, looking for some money from friends so that he can start his business and decides to meet his childhood love Neerja/Neeru(Aishwarya Rai), who is happily married to some rich guy in Calcutta. Movie is about just one afternoon they share with each other and pretend to be happy in their respective lives. Movie is quite subtle. All-of-us... All-of-us wear a raincoat all the time to hide ourselves from one thing or the other. We are afraid, we are concious and as Rituparno Ghosh puts it, we are PLAYERS. Protagonists Ajay Devgan and Aishwarya Rai are credited as Players in the title. If you really are into the movie it makes you ponder. It was more of emotional affair for me than philosophical one.

Movie excels in every department. Direction, Cinematography, Acting. Aishwarya Rai proved that she can do much better than just glamorous roles. Ajay Devgan has now definitely established as a versatile actor and this movie just strengthens his stand. Annu Kapoor and Mauli Ganguly excel in their cameo. Director is succesful in keeping the environment dark and gloomy as was needed. full marks to Rituparno Ghosh and all I can say is I am more than happy to see this movie again. Puneet, are you listening? :-)

PS:- For Gujarati readers, Jay Vasavada(Gujarat Samachar) had written a beautiful article for movie Raincoat in his weekly column Spectrometer. Worth reading. you can access it from here.

PPS:- Crossposted at InFiCa, where I am.. ahem.. critic now.

Sisterhood of travelling pants...

Yesterday after getting bored doing coding. I, finally decided to see this movie.

Somehow I had this feeling that it won't disappoint me and it didn't. The movie is about 4 girls Lena, Tibby, Carmen, Bridget, who haven't left each other since they were born. They're best friends, but one summer they had to seperate, so they decide to rotate among themselves a pair of jeans which magically fits them all. Then starts the summer. Each of them goes in different directions with different goals, with different emotions and share all these with one another.

Let me tell you, this is not just another teen movie. I mean, it's more subtle than any teen movie I've seen. Although people say the movie is much different from Ann Brasher's book, from which movie is made, but who cares as long as it's enjoyable. This one depicts emotions properly in emotional way rather than sentimental. The Narrator, Carmen, in the end says "It would be easy to say that pants changed everything this summer, but looking back now, I feel that our lives changed because they had to. and real magic of pants was in bearing witness to all of these and somehow holding us together, when it felt like nothing would be the same again."

Yaa, at some points it's like a typical hindi movie thing, but worth giving a try. Do give it a shot in your free time.

Rain, Rain, Come Again...

Last week has been fabulous at Kanpur, as far as weather is concerned. After burning heat of 47C, the arrival of monsoon has brought great relief to all of us over here.

It was almost midnight when first heavy rain came. It was pitch black sky and sky started being thunderous and as expected it started raining!!! First sight was really something. First rain brought air of relief, literally. I and Maddi decided to jump in. alas! it didn't last long, rather we decided too late. Rain stopped. :-( Next day scene was really cool. All trees and plants had become lush green after getting washed in the rain. Temperature had come down to around 35C and whole environment became ``user-friendly'' so to say :-)

We didn't have to wait long for next rain. My dear bro was here and we were enjoying the time and rain started again. We made no mistake this time, me and maddi set out on wandering on our bikes. I don't remember having enjoyed this much in monsoon in my last two years' stay at IITK. Just imagine, how great Aloo Paratha would taste after this when you rush to mess and you're all wet. I still feel it in my mouth.

Next time, it was even bigger. Accompanied by wind, this time Indra Dev had decided to go full-fledge. It was more than half-an-hour that me, Niral and Maddi kept dancing, singing, going crazy... This time it was Maggi that accompanied us in this pleasure. Only a man without heart can deny that this wasn't scene to cherish!!! This was best monsoon I had at IITK.

Reports are coming in that many parts of Gujarat are in flood, especially Vadodara. Divya Bhaskar says 95% of city is affected by flood. Hopefully, rain will slow down in coming days and Gujarat will return to its normal state again. That's all we can pray.. Amen!

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Life is all about change. When man gets bored of routine, decides to do something new. For that matter, even if he is not bored a good change is always welcome.

Today, me and maddi decided to take same welcome change. Forced by hot weather of Kanpur (It's really getting hot over here, maximum temperature recorded is 47 C!!!), we decided to shave our heads. and here is the result. You got to see "bode plot" (tribute to KCJs??!!). It really felt nice after getting shaved. You won't believe but people say I look better after getting my head shaved. *blushes* . Anyways, people believe it or not doesn't matter much though. I found it pretty *cool* (pun intended).

Now, two of us are finding this very enjoyable and we strongly feel that everyone should get their shaved. For once, if not all the time. For more, you can also ask the guy who is accompanying me in the photograph. He will also agree. So bhaiyo aur behno, aage badho aur apne baal katane mein koi sharm mat rakho. Jab bhi marzi aaye apne baal kata len aur ganje hone ka mazaa len. I seriously apologize you all if you find this all writing crap, because I also do. Bahut neend aa rahi hai, but it had to be there on blog. so...

Halting Problem is solvable

Sometimes you come across articles which always remain in your memory. Here is one such funny article, which says Halting Problem is Solvable :-) (For unenlightened, Halting Problem is one of the very fundamental problem in Theoretical Computer Science). So here I go...

From rec.humor.funny archives

Recent Results in Theory of Computing - I

Halting Problem is Solvable

Bala Rajagopalan (raja@cs.uiuc.edu)

A fundamental question in the graduate computer science curriculum can be posed as follows: Given an average grad student doing a Ph.D, will the student ever complete his dissertation? This problem has been termed the "Halting Problem," and it has been an open problem thus far. In the following, we show that the halting problem is solvable. Furthermore, the problem can be solved within the time stipulated by the Graduate College for Ph.Ds or, in the worst case, with only a constant number of petitions for extensions.

The halting problem was first formulated by Alan Turing, who observed a number of his graduate students being apparently busy all the time but never graduating. Turing tried to solve the problem by first stopping all assistantships after the sixth year and then by purging all games from the research computers. Needless to say, his efforts were fruitless. Later, Church almost succeeded in solving the problem when he placed notices in grad students' mailboxes indicating attractive jobs in industry with several orders of magnitude higher remuneration. The so called Church's thesis was that the halting problem is solvable, given enough financial motivation. Church's idea backfired when grads found out that they have to actually work to earn money in the outside world. Thus, far from solving the halting problem, Church aggravated it (After this, we are not sure whether Church himself graduated). Recently, Cook et al have shown that the halting problem falls under a new complexity class, "NP Hairy." (NP hairy is the class of hopelessly complicated problems with no known solutions. The hardest problem in NP hairy has been shown to be the problem of trying to claim standard deductions in the 1040 form).

In the following, we show that the halting problem is indeed solvable. For this, we assume the existence of a "Super Grad," who is capable of working in any area in CS (except possibly numerical analysis). For notational convenience, we call this super grad, S sub G sup i,j sub * (written using a funky theoretical CS font). The property of Super grad is that, given the description of any grad (mostly in terms of the number of newsfiles he/she reads every day) and a description of his/her thesis topic, Super grad will either halt with a dissertation or keep publishing technical reports indefinitely. Now, we give Super grad a description of himself and his own thesis topic. If Super grad halts, we are done (and so is he) otherwise we get a stream of technical reports. But by the "fundamental research theorem" of CS Departments (refer to the graduate study manual) any five arbitrary technical reports on unrelated topics can be compiled into a Ph.D thesis. Thus, we are done in the second case too.

Finally, how long does it take for a dissertation to be completed? The time is either less than or equal to the duration allowed by the Grad College for the completion of a Ph.D or it is greater. In the latter case, infinite number of petitions can be filed for extensions. Since the Grad College never remembers previous petitions, the total number of petitions received by the Grad College is always one, a small constant. (QED)

"Des-Ni Nanav" My name is...

STAR WARS happens to be my latest passion. Around a month back I completed whole series.

IV - New Hope
V - Empire Strikes back
VI - Return of Jedi

I - Phantom Menace
II - Attack of the clones

and like any other STAR WARS fan, I am eagerly waiting for Episode-III : Revenge of Sith. Finally, Anakin Skywalker turning to the dark side. Goerge Lucas confirms that it will be more of emotional affair. Anyways, today series of events forced me to finally write something about STAR WARS on my blog.

Today while returning for dinner, I was discussing this whole STAR WARS thing with Nitya and got in so much enthu while talking about whole series, then courtesy Slashdot, I came to know some people actually made something like lightsaber. How stuff works explains How a Lightsaber works. Since then I wish to own one. Trying to convince friends so that atleast of them gives me one. Puneet, Vraj has already denied :( . If you want to be the one who wants to have opportunity to gift me one, you can select anyone from here. While searching for all these stuff also found build-your-own-lightsaber kind of thing. Well... that didn't interest me much, but what I found more interesting was that I could actually find out my STAR WARS name. They claim that your STAR WARS name is based on your first name, last name, your birthplace and your mother's maiden name(yeah, that's right!!!!) and my name turned out to be Des-Ni Nanav. Sounds cool, isn't it? It does sound like some Obi-Wan Kenobi types. I am happy :-) From now on thou shalt call me nothing else but Des-Ni Nanav.

Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram...

Yesterday's Ram Navami would have gone without any celebrations, but Thanks to Archna ma'am it didn't happen that way.

Yesterday being Ram Navami, we didn't go ahead with Bhagwad Gita, Chaper 14 instead we heard Vibhishana Gita (Lanka Kand, Ram Charit Manas, interested people can download it from here. (after Doha 79, Page 15 )). This is the scene where finally Ravana comes to battlefield. Seeing his Mayavi Chariot and his powerful aura, Vibhishana gets anxious and out of love and with respect he asks Shri Rama, "Oh Lord! you don't have chariot, nor you've armour, nothing to wear in feet. How will you fight against mighty Ravana?". Shri Rama replies, "The Chariot by which you can win, is not this one.". Then he starts describing what true Vijay Ratha would be made of.

Words were simple yet elegant. I may not have felt it so great if I would've read it, but it was whole environment that madam created over there that made me realise the importance of those words, so if you don't find it so interesting I recommend you to read it again. There was no deep philosophy, just simple words, but if you contemplate on each you would realize how enlightening they are. For me, it came to me when I needed it most. Yes, I needed too much of it. After the class, I was in the state of pure joy. So free, so jovial... could sense the beauty of Ram Charit Manas. I only pray to God that please provide me energy to remain in this state.

Siyavar Ramchandra ki jai...
Pavansut Hanuman ki jai...
Sab santan ki jai...


PS:- If anyone can find out English Translation of these dohas please let me know so that I can put them here.

Aamchi Mumbai

"Ae dil hai mushkil jeena yahan...
Zara hat ke, zara bach ke, yeh hai bambai meri jaan..."
- C.I.D. (1956)


Very true. Mumbai is a altogether a different cultrue in its own. I had been to Mumbai many-a-times before I went for a week from March 28th, 2005 to April 4th, 2005. But this time it was different and subconciously "studied" Mumbai.

Mumbai wakes up very early. If you start moving on at let's say 7-00 in the morning, you won't feel it's early in the morning, because you soon realize that you're not rare that you started moving so early. I feel there is no such thing as night for Mumbai, except may be 2-3 hours around 0400-0600. Lifeline of Mumbai is its local train. Mumbai is stretched in a belt, so unlike Delhi or other metro city it's better to have end-to-end transport rather than circular route buses. 60 km route from Churchgate-to-Virar is covered by hundreds of local trains. You can't imagine Mumbai without these trains. It's said that one who is not used to trains shouldn't catch trains in morning going towards Churchgate and shouldn't catch trains in evening coming from Churchgate. Crowd is huge!!! if you want to get down or get in you just need to stand in between and people around will do rest of your job :-) It's worth having an experience.

Mumbai has his own rhythm, which is very fast. When you're walking among people, you realise that you're not moving at your normal pace, instead you're just one among them. Once you step outside bombay you feel that everything is so slow. Speed flows in vein of Bombay. Mumbai is city of dreams. Whosoever came to bombay, had a dream, had thought of an accomplishment. Characters moving around you're worth observing. While you move along, you can feel a different atmosphere altogether while moving any part of bombay. What else could I say? Just "feel it to believe it..."

Holi ke din...

It was Saturday. March 26th, 2005. 11-50 A.M. Nishit Desai was sitting in front of computer doing nothing but absolute timepass. He was somehow very enthusiastic about Holi (Dhuleti) this year, but it seemed no one else was. Except his neighbour came in the morning and painted some gulal on his face, holi otherwise had been dull for him. Peeps out of window, some holi enthusiasts are out-of-control by now. Playing holi with mudd and everything that comes in their way. A big sigh!!!! "I wish I could play like that. Hmm...!!! Should do something", he thinks. Logs in to messenger, pings some people around...

madhavpandya : no reply , must be sleeping after a big nightout...

rupmehta1 (a.k.a rupeshkaka) : "got some work to do...", yaa people busy in publishing papers...

vipin_deep : no reply, seemed enthu the other day, no whereabouts today... damn it...

India-Pakistan test going on, but he seems out of it. Sitting ready in "holi-wear", but no one is interested. "Oh! It's 12-55 and mess was supposed to serve lunch till 1-15 only and I am yet to take bath. I should rush now..!!!" Moves to wake up Madhav after getting ready, in case he is still sleeping. Room is open, no signs of Madhav, where is he??? ... and there he is... face painted with gamut of colors, barely identifiable... and soon, he sees a bunch of people following him, and they too see him. Eyes go wide. Ek aur... muhahaha... without any color on face... muhahaha... They rush to him. They won't listen, nor he wanted them to. And in few seconds he was just one of them. And "gheraiyas" continued their quest for more-and-more victims. Some of their willingly "sacrificed" themselves. Others viz Somu, RahulBan had to be pulled out of their hideouts. Junta won't listen till anyone is not colored.

This was not enough... More was yet to come. "Let's move to A-block lawn and play some real holi.", suggests Nishit and crowd starts moving. We are here, now what? hmmm.. pipe must be located and there it is. Muhahaha.. now starts real Holi. water splashing all around... and mudd was all around. "Let's play Kabbadi", someone says and everyone is into it.

Under the captaincy of Rohan Shetty and Gopalraj, teams started playing. People coming in, coming out, getting caught, catching opponents. Points?? Winner?? one word... WHO CARES??!!! They were there for enjoyment and that's what they were doing. Enjoyment continued till all of them were not out of their minds (albeit, Madhav Pandya ran away for some obscure reasons ;-) )... people were going crazy.

Who says you need 'bhang' or liquor to have 'nasha' :-)