Let’s make metros more interesting

After moving to Europe for my masters, I’ve been accustomed to finding my way around cities using the subway trains. They’re convenient, relatively cheap (unless you’re in Stockholm, where using the word cheap throws an exception), and usually fast enough as well. The only problem I have with metros is that they’re boring as shit to travel in, especially when you’re alone. Sure you can carry a book with you or invest in a tab/pad/slate/smartphone/whatever, but we definitely need to do something about the view from the windows.

Given that there’s hardly anything interesting about rocks and the occasional flash of light in a metro tunnel, I think there’s a lot that can be done to make the metro experience better. Here’s one idea I have to solve this international crisis which is oh-so-more-important than anything else on this planet. I call it, metro cartoons (the animated ones).

The basic idea is to insert cartoon panels between the tunnel walls and the tracks. Since we know the approximate speed at which the trains move, you can estimate the minimum spacing between the panels that would be required to provide a reasonable frame rate required for the animation. I’m sure artists understand these aspects better (thus, I don’t), and can come up with the right kind of drawings for this setting.

What say? I’m pretty sure someone must have tried this already, so let me know if you’ve heard of any such attempt.

Interpreting Birthday Wishes on Facebook

A very important aspect of birthdays, is the part where your friends wish you. Few of them surprise you with a party, a handful may call you up, some might leave you an SMS, and the rest? Well, they’ll wish you on Facebook. The advantages of wishing someone on Facebook are manifold. The miser’s way to look at it is as follows:

A surprise party for a friend: Rs. 500
Calling up your friend to wish him/her: Rs. 3.00
Texting a friend on his/her B’day night: Rs. 1.00
Wishing him/her on facebook: ‘Price’ ‘less’

There are some ways to wish a person that cost you tangibly, for everything else, there’s Facebook.

Anyhow, it’s very well possible that among all the people who wished you via Facebook, there are some genuine wishes tied in there as well. A lot is conveyed through the overall tone of the post that the person named X writes on your wall. Given below is a simple characterisation and analysis of different kinds of Facebook wishing methods. Note that none of these have ever happened to me, because I’ve never been on Facebook during any of my birthdays. 🙂 Since Wall Posts are public by default, these happen to be my observations from countless number of Birthday wishes that appear on my news feed. So with no further ado:

1) The personalised birthday wish:

Example: “Hey Pluto! Have a wonderful Birthday! Hope you write twice as much code as you wrote last year! And don’t forget our little race to the Turin prize dream. :)”
Analysis: It usually starts off with a pet name of yours. Even otherwise, note how personalised the post is all in all. And finally, it ends with a nice memory that you and that person share. Truly genuine!

2) The you-happened-to-be-on-my-list-so-here-goes wish:

Examples: “Happy Birthday!” / “happy bday!” / “happy birthday. Have a blast!” / “happy bday. Hope you have a gr8 yr ahead of u!” etc.
Analysis: Exactly what the name suggests. These are standard birthday wish templates that everyone unconsciously types. It’s perfectly understandable if 90% of your wishes look like this. After all, there’d be hardly any Facebook users who have contact lists filled with only their best friends. Right?

3) The I-care-so-little-I-don’t-even-bother-to-double-check-the-spelling wish:

Examples: “happy bitrhday!” / “happo bithday”
Analysis: This can fit into category 2) , with an extra tinge of ‘I don’t care’-edness. The number of such wishes that you’ll get is directly proportional to the number of people you have in your contact lists (and consequently, the number of people who don’t give a rat’s ass about you having become a year older).

4) The I’m-obnoxious-when-it-comes-to-online-presence wish:

Examples: “hAPPYYYY BDAYY!!!11 YOOOOOO” / “hey budddyyyy. hav   a happpyyyyyyy bday!!! hav a gud1 1!!” / “HAPPY BIRTHDAY HAV RCOKIN PARTY YAAAAAAAAR!”
Analysis: These are typically a trademark of people who have the ‘describe me’ section of their profiles filled with variants of the following:

a) “hiiiiiiiiii”
b) “wat do i say abt myself??? if u want 2 knw more, add me as a frend!!!! i promise ill b best frend of u!”
c) “im a cool person…… u wont regret doing frandship wid me cuz i live life to fullest.”
d) “HIIII! IM LOOKING FOR FRAANDSHIP. IM VERY FUN TO HANGOUTWITH”

… and so forth. Yes, the word you’re looking for, is lame. Unfortunately, all social networking websites happen to be littered with such profiles.

That’s as much as I can think of right now. And by the way, I personally admit to using methods 1) and 2). 🙂

Happy Facebooking!

Home at last…

After two months of self inflicted torture at Jaipur, I’ve finally made it home, at last! On the 23rd of last month, I was informed that I’d been selected as the Sun Ambassador to my institute. Awesome! I’d almost forgot what joy felt like until then. As Sun Ambassador, I get trained in a multitude of Sun Microsystem’s technologies such as Open Solaris, Java, Netbeans, Sun Studio and a lot more. My job is to conduct tech demos and events in my campus to promote all these technologies among both students and faculty alike. The coolest part is, I even get to code on specific projects of their’s and hence get to contribute to open source. And as if that’s not enough, I even get paid to do this! What more could I ask for? Four days later I was on a train home. For the first time in two years, I was super excited about going home because I’d really worn myself out throughout my fourth semester and on top of that, I stayed back at Jaipur so that I could continue my work with the institute network. I also thought I’d complete my RHCE examination training from Linux World for which I’d got a 100% scholarship for; although it (sadly) turned out to be a complete waste of my time (since I don’t intend on spending 12k to get a certification). Two hours of classes everyday for which the very young and inexperienced teacher of ours teaches only for an hour. He keeps getting things wrong and the sad part is, his working knowledge of Linux is confined ONLY to Red Hat. He hasn’t experienced the sheer awesomeness of distros like Debian or Gentoo. Plus, his knowledge was restricted only to whatever he’d learnt after attending a couple of similiar courses. And, he has no developing experience. In my honest opinion, Linux and everything else related to computers, is best learnt alone. But anyways, my decision to stay back this summer has been one of the most rewarding decisions I’ve ever made in my life. I came to know about the Sun Campus Ambassador post being open and my working knowledge on networking and system administration improved by a factor ten 🙂 . I also worked on firewalls, name servers, proxy servers, SMS alerting systems, VPN and high availability clusters, all of which contributed to a steep learning curve. Apart from the one week of nonsensical politics we had in college during Gaur sir’s absence, I’d say these two months have been the most productive months for me so far. Anyways, I hadn’t actually reached wonder land yet as I’d just embarked on a two day journey which, as I was to realise soon enough, was without any doubt the closest thing to getting a nine inch nail hammered into your skull. And why was that? Anyone who knows me well enough would guess one out of these three things: brats, brats and brats. You guessed right? Awesome!

Yes, my coupe had a family with a very little 5-6 month old brat and his big sister who had to be the brattiest fucking brat ever (not to mention the fact that the neighbouring coupes had a brat each). The stupid piece of filth could not sit still for no less than 2 seconds. And if you think i’m exaggerating, kindly ask her parents who told me that she couldnt sit still at all. tiI can understand that the little brat couldn’t do much but cry, because that’s the only thing little brats can do (right?), but that darn swine of a sister of his kept crying for attention while her unfortunate parents tried to attend to the routine diaper changes and what not. I’m sure they must have sinned like crazy to get a kid like that. Her folks tried ‘asking’ her to keep quiet, but in vain. If I were the parent, I wouldn’t resort to words to get the job done. I’d be quick to toss her out of the train, preferrably off a bridge so that the chances of survival are grim and that there is no possibility of some unfortunate passerby having to find her and take her in. For most of the trip, I confined myself to my upper berth and thought of ways to get rid of the brat. I even thought of ways to get rid of the little brat just in case. You can be sure that he’ll grow up to be just like his sister. I’d share those thoughts with you but it might end up being too graphic and is hence not appropriate for any age group at all. Luckily, there was a Malayali guy and his mom on their way to Calicut on the side berths. The guy’s name was Nikhil and he’d just complete his twelth grade from KV Pattom and hence, I could open up a conversation with him. We talked about how crazy our batches at school were, about the people in Jaipur and a lot of other things. The blasted brats and their incompetent parents (after long last) got down at Madgaon the next evening. The train was running pretty late (five and a half hours to be precise) owing to an engine failure which happened close to an hour after it left Chiplun. I finally reached Shoranur junction at 7:00 AM on Sunday morning. After a wreched two hour long ride by bus, I finally reached home! Mom, Priyamma and Ammamma gave me a warm welcome with nice, long, crisp dosas and stew for breakfast. I mowed down six dosas.

Dial-up blows by the way. For signing into blogger and putting up this post, it took me no less than forty minutes.

Although it feels great to be visiting relatives and friends (after a long time!) I kind of wish I was back at college. Guess I got used to the hectic lifestyle I’d led back there. Hope my mom doesn’t see this or I might get bludgeoned with a rolling pin or something. Cheers!

You know someone wants a favour from you when…

Ever felt odd when that person who’s always ignored you comes up to you and becomes nice all of a sudden? When that person who’s always in the ‘I’m busy’ mode when you’re online suddenly opens a chat conversation and says “Hi! How are you today?”. Well, chances are, Mr/Mrs X wants a favour from you. In this post, I’ll give you a little tutorial on how to tell if someone wants something from you. Once you’re through with this, you’ll be unmasking those hypocritic maggots in no time! I shall move on to a little categorisation based on how cunning the maggot under consideration is. So with no further ado…

NOTE: I don’t know what you call such a person, so I guess I’ll continue referring to them as maggots throughout this tutorial. No offence to the real maggots which are just nice little crawly creatures who want to make the world a better place.

Level 1 maggot: Loser class

Skill level: poor
Cunningness: poor
Brains: N/A
Sinister rating: 1/10
Signs: You’ve never had a conversation with him in your entire life, nor will you for many more lives to come, but this person actually walks into your room, sits on your bed and acts as if he’s very interested in whatever you’re doing. When asked, “Hey, what brings you here?”, he’s dumb enough to answer, “Nothing, just dropped by to say hi, we are friends and all aren’t we?”. Note, he said friends. Wrong answer. The verdict: maggot!
Comments: The one finger salute works well. Try it out.

Level 2 maggot: Grunt class

Skill level: less than average
Cunningness: less than average
Brains: Rumours are they do have some, but I still go for N/A
Sinister rating: 3/10

Signs: You’re sitting in the mess, cursing your rotten luck to be served cattle feed, when the suspected maggot comes running and sits right next to you. You observe he’s already had his meal. You also remember you’ve just given a kick ass presentation that morning. He puts his arm around you like you grew up together only to say, “Hey man! How’re you doing? How’s your life going?” Note that both the questions are related to you. This is a sure give away. This person has nothing to do with you at all and you’re not related. Chances are, he’s going to ask you to help him out with his project but he’s going to play around for a while before asking you for certain, just to make you feel comfortable.

Comments: Shove your plate up his throat. And then proceed with the one finger salute.

Level 3 maggot: Striker class

Skill level: above average
Cunningness: above average
Brains: A teeny weeny bit. Or maybe not.
Sinister rating: 6/10

Signs: You know there are a lot of people in your friends list who don’t give a beep about you and vice versa? That’s the kind of people that we’re talking about here. Now you’re working away in the server room trying to figure out a solution to a problem that has long been elusive. Then, the maggot opens up a chat conversation saying, “hi”. You also note that he’s got the ‘I’m busy/Don’t disturb/away/I’m dead’ status message up. The conversation proceeds as follows:

Maggot: hi
You: hi there! ssup?

…10 seconds later…

Maggot: how are you?

… Notice the delay…

You: uh…i’m ok. Wat abt you?

Maggot: i’m fine.

… It’s time to slip up you evil scum…

Maggot: wat are you workin on in the server room again?

… Gotcha!…

This is where they all go wrong. The two of you might have been in the same class for maybe two years and it’s been a whole two semesters probably since you’ve been working in the server room and he knows it and you know that he knows it. BUT, he comes out of the blue and decides to ask you what you’ve been doing all along? It’s strange. It’s not like he woke up one fine morning and while having coffee, realisation struck, he went OMGWTF and he figured out he didn’t know what you’ve been doing in the server room all along. I’m sorry. What he really wants to do, is to get a conversation going so he can ask you a little while later to check his grades or something of that sort. Dork.

Comments: Tell him he flunked in all his subjects and that he’s got a sem back. It works great!

Level 4 maggot: Elite class

Skill level: High
Cunningness: High
Brains: Lots of it. Lots and lots of it. Or then again, I’m just kidding.
Sinister rating: 10/10

Signs: These guys are the mommy’s and daddy’s of all the above mentioned maggots. They’re the pros. If this whole thing was Warcraft, they would be some boss like Nerzhul, the Lich King. They’re pretty good at getting what they want from you. They’ll plan way in advance as to get what they want from you and how they’re going to go about to get it from you. Even people who rule as much as myself are prone to these things. They’re a menace and we should all unite to send them to oblivion. Yet again, I’ll take the example of a chat conversation but in this case, the hunter won’t make it that obvious until at least half an hour.

Elite maggot: Heya… long time! Have you forgotten me kya?
You: oh hi. yeah right. long time!
Elite maggot: So what have you been doing?
You: oh nothing…just working away…
Elite maggot: i c. when’re you going home?

…blah blah blah…

…blah blah blah…

…blah blah blah…

20-30 minutes later, the maggot is out of things to talk about…

Elite maggot: temme…howz ur (continued below)

Remember, all this person wants from you is the favour and he/she doesn’t give a shit about you or your life, let alone your…

(continued from above) ….girlfriend? 😉

It’s a 99% complete give away and this is a sign for you to become cautious. Put up your guard and be on the defense. Or better, do what I do…

You: hey…the connection seems to have some probs here. I might get disconnected any sec…

Elite maggot: wait… can you do me a favour?

And it’s at exactly that instant that you turn invisible to the maggot. You have to time this right ok? It’s all about practice. But do keep in mind that this depends heavily on the IM client you’re using. For example, in Gtalk, it takes a while for the other person to get the message that you’re offline. So it’s all about preventing the maggot from knowing that you’re sure there’s that question coming to you.

Comments: Once you turn invisible, either block that person or ignore him/her for at least a century and a half.

So there you go folks. Hope this helps. And don’t forget, squish ’em maggots! And an advice to anyone who wants a favour from me; JUST ASK!

Hypocrisy

The reason I choose to turn this into my first blog entry, is because of the sheer amount of hypocrites I know personally, and otherwise. I fail to understand why people actually maintain double standards. I don’t think a public services officer who is to abide by the laws that he has sworn to protect, just isn’t supposed to be doing the straight opposite of the little sign in his office that says “Do not give or take bribes.” There’s hypocrisy for you, people. Now the corruption at the political stage isn’t the only true example of this my friends. Let’s move on to pretence over a more, wider scale.

Example number 1:
I belong to a country where a majority of the population are Hindus. I myself was born a Hindu. I say ‘born’ Hindu, because it didn’t take me too long to turn atheist. Steering the discussion back to the topic, I always couldn’t help but ponder over the fact that, in spite of having thousands and thousands of temples built in honour of goddesses in all forms, in spite of worshipping these very female deities for wealth, knowledge and what not, the plight of women in our country well…sucks? Why is it that in many parts of this beautiful land of the Aryans, regardless of the fact that females are being worshipped, atrocities like female foeticide and the torture of the girl child still takes place? Why is it that they are denied their basic right to education and schooling? Why is it that they are expected to remain confined to their homes and to simply service the men? Why is it that they don’t have a say in important (or rather all) matters regarding the household? To me, this is the saddest example of hypocrisy I can point out. Although anyone who’d be reading this might not have seen all this for themselves, it is true for a good part of our nation, for many of our fellow brethren who’re still living in the dark ages.

Example number 2:
Now didn’t Aishwarya and Hrithik get the shock of their lives when they were subpoenaed by some glory seeking loser just because they kissed on screen? Before I saw Dhoom 2, I was pretty much curious to see that shot myself. Heck, if a scene can generate that kind of hullabaloo… it’s got to be something else! And there I was, holding on to my popcorn, my mouth wide open telling myself “WTF?That’s it?!?” All this fuss over something like that? That’s obscene, indecent and dangerous to the youth? You can’t be serious! Is this some kind of a joke? Another famous example of ‘shitty cases’ was when Richard Gere was summoned to an Indian court for going all over Shilpa Shetty at some event. I wonder how our honorary courts have the time to entertain cases like these when there are murders, rapes and what not happening every minute or two on in this land. Shouldn’t they be going medieval on people who actually come up with cases like this? The only way I see it is that our courts need a break from all these serious cases. Everyone needs to relax and chill out? Don’t you think? Maybe the guy who decides the next hearing says something like “Hey guys, enough of murders… lets have some fun! How about a stupid-shitty case like this where we get to be on TV? Should we pick the Richard Gere one, or the Aish one?” And meanwhile look at all the bedlam Mallika Sherawat and some other hotties in the industry brought about for showing off a bit too much skin and pulling off some bold roles.

Now can anyone please tell me why the f*** is it that this country, where sex is a four letter word, somehow, has the 2nd largest population in the world? Ironic isn’t it?

My country is full of hypocrites. The place is littered with them. Check out my college for instance. There’s this person who literally cried and begged a teacher to get her marks increased, and when it seemed that her efforts were in vain actually coaxed the teacher into cutting down a more deserving guy’s marks instead(the most deserving one in the batch, actually). The same person complains a few months later about teachers giving away marks on the basis of impression. How very interesting. And its funny when I’m being called a CC by some of the most letcherous and perverted oafs in existence.

Man, this sucks.

But wait, the fact that I am writing this should imply that I am not a hypocrite isn’t it?

Isn’t it……?