Thursday, August 03, 2006

Mostly harmless!

hmmm so sem has started and hence the classes, but not much work to do and hence the blog. After attending few of the lectures on a *hot* topic (class full of students with no place left to get seated, implied!), I've made few observations. Basically, the course is on Data mining and we are thaught to classify the data, typically that means catagorize the data, run some programs and build some useful reports in the end. So, here is the outcome of my first *academic* report, classifying the students in a typical class:

1) Gimme more: These are students who want to learn. They don't care about anything else in the world all they want is to learn ann learn. They have an unmatch ability to ask doubts at any point in time, most of which being around the end of lecture, extending an hour lecture to overflow by 10-15 mins. I've never seen them getting good grades, but yes they certainly can talk about anything under the roof.

2) Is it under exam syallabus: All they want is good grades. Watever be the course, whosoever be the prof. , all they want is 10/10. I don't know why such people exsist but yah they are surely a way for others to pass to course, as most of ppl under this section make good notes.

3) Proxy Guys: U won't see them much as they have a nice friend who will sign on attendence sheet for them. Good!! at least they are not troubling others. Have fun.

4) ... and then I see a totally different class of people (sadly very few ppl fall under this category). These ppl are the last to-be-harmful guys. They might attend classes but surely won't ask doubts. They might do some work, but most definetly they will do just the minimal to pass the course.

Cheers!

[Title credits: Gera]

Friday, April 14, 2006

Times are changing ...

and so is me :). Had a chat with freshie last night and while I was on the bed (trying to sleep) figured out how much I've changed. So here it goes... things which I think have changed from my 1st year to 4th year.

1) Note-books
Then: How can I forget having separate notebooks for all the subjects, and how much I cared for them. Attended most of the lectures and wrote notes (though in the end always used notes of somebody else :) but still I was sincere enough to have my own :) )
Now: Acted little intelligently and bought a single notebook (and use money for xeroxes :) ) and had a thought that if needed will get another one. But thing is even that single notebook was divided into 6 partitions and in a single guss I can say about 90% of the pages are empty and rest 10% are utilised in writing the dates of the lectures I attended.

2) Exams
Then: I used to study for surprise quizzes. Yes, yes I used to study just in the anticipation of exams the other day and I seriously hate those Prof. who declared 25% weightage for surprise exams. Had to attend all classed plus read stuff every single time (ok most of the time ...OK some of the times :) )
Now: All exams are as good as surprise exams. No preparations for even the announced ones. I don't know why this attitude has changed but when its clear that a single 5 mark quiz can't even touch the castle I've built in years leave aside even threatening it so why worry :)

3) Grades
Then: Should crack all the exams. Should at least pass-out with a gold medal, ok if not gold then at least a silver

Now:" Bas pass hoo jau yaar" you can hear this slogan from every single 4th yearite around and am no different. To hell with grades just give me a DD and kick my ass out of here.

4) Taste of movies:
Then: Yes I was one of those who'd cry after every Raj Kumar Santoshi movie and would criticize the scenes when hero doesn't get hurt even when attacked with 50 machine guns and finishes everybody with just a pistol in hand.
Now: Sometime in third year the taste was more towards educational content but now its back to normal and I still cry watching the climax of Anand, the convocation in Black and lots of time during Baghban and Avatar.
[On some other thoughts ...Hema Malini, Rekha ...salaa kuch bhi bolo aaj bhi maintained hai :P]

n) Idea of first date :)
Then: OK this may sound funny. But I always wanted her to say "I Love you" at least a few hundred times.
Now: Have a wonderful evening... no santap (sentimental thoughts) in between... just before we are about to say good-bye... get few tears on those sweet cheeks (won't mind if she uses glycerin...yah I know its tough to cry when am around :) and hug me :) and say "I hate you" "I hate you" "I hate you" ... and may be ...
(yah i know its sounds like climax of Yash Raj Films but I'd love it)
[All those girls reading this ...its still an idea ...u know what you got to do hurry up offer closes on 30th Feb midnight...:)]

For all those who have noticed the "n", in simple words the list is too long to list in a single sitting. Will continue as thoughts come along. There are lots and lots of things like dressing sense, sense of humor, kind and number of friends which I think is changed in everybody life so "not to mention".
There is a even longer list of things which haven't changed... will collect those thoughts soon ...for now IPR exam coming up ...(yah this is one of those things which haven't changed ...I mug before endsems :) )

Cheers!

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Ad(d)s

When Dravid is on the pitch its more pleasure watching the commercials than him lifting the bat every time ball goes little outside off-stump. So here is what I feel about the most pleasure moments I had watching Ind-End matches.

Voltas
Voltas. India ka AC. A TATA product.

This ad seems to be more informative and like all they want to convey is Voltas is a TATA company, whether you buy air conditioner or not we don't care. A 6-7 year old girl with a typical middle class family look carrying a glass jar in hand in a air-conditioner ad. How does it convince me to go and buy the air conditioner? Point is looking at the ad, it does make me even think once about the AC. Completely directionless. While I was thinking all these there comes another add from Voltas.

Voltas. India ka AC. Korea ka nahin ....hahahahahaha

Dude, if I'm a customer who can afford an AC then probably I won't care if its India ka AC or Pakistan ka. All I care is I should feel comfortable even in 48*C.

Reliance India Mobile
Black & White handset Vs Coloured Handset
The guy running away from his girlfriend just because he has a b&w handset is completely stupid. (at least when they are sitting lonely in a car on a beach, honestly speaking I'd have thrown away my cell instead of running away with it). Absolutely non-sense.

Dubey-ji
This one is good. The actors picked-up are very good and Dubey-ji simply rocks.

Reliance Hello
Finally, Reliance get it right. The potential customer asking "Kyon le" and then explaining reasons to him why he should buy the product is a good idea. However they have 3 different ads for the campaign out of which only one conveys "no monthly rental" which for someone like me is a more than enough to think about it. I don't care about instant activation or if I can SMS through it but I'm gonna definitely inquire about these no monthly rental thing and find out if there are no hidden costs .

Sprite
Surely captures attention. They have been doing this for long and now I think they have expertise in doing this. I have been liking Spirit ads from day 1 except the Sania Mirza one.

Coke
Aish and her waist aahhhhhh. I bet that turn was at least 1289 times more than the turn Anil Kumble gets on Indian wickets. If observed from a distance she can actually look like a coke bottle :).
OK coming back to the ad. I know people who have whistled to girls on streets but none of them ever turned back and gave fundeas about how to whistle on the streets (though they have turned for different reasons :P). I'd have really appreciated the ad if Ash could have picked a filled coke bottle from the "Dude" and sup it completely and then tell him how to whistle using a empty coke bottle.

Saying all this I don't want to be a Robin Singh who never played a long innings himself but is giving fundeas to Under-19 Indian team. These are just (re)views from a normal (re)viewer.

BTW, for those who haven't noticed yet, my posts are categorized now. Thanks to Amitu. Drop a comment to me or him if you want to categorize your blog.

Friday, March 31, 2006

In a Nutshell

Its really surprising that even the "top trade officials" make mistakes in their statements to reporters. Economic times dated 29th Match 2006, on page 18th in the left-most corner reads as follows:
INDIA and Pakistan agreed on Tuesday to jointly patent a popular variety of aromatic basmati rice, top trade officials said.

Even a novice in intelluctual properties like me can disregard this statement. The very first criteria of getting a patent is that the concept should be novel and something that is not known before. How can a popular variety of something can get a patent when its already in the public domain.

For those who don't know much about all this, just a note on patents: To get a patent you just need three things:
  1. Novelty
  2. Inventive step
  3. Utility
Its not that I read the whole of ET and find out all the mistakes done and make bread-n-butter out of it. This issue was discussed in my IPR lecture. Now the prof asked us to write to the ET officials spotting the error. While he was asking I was thinking is it really worth writing to them and wasting so much of my precious time (which I could utilize in watching movies like Mr. 100% :P). No seriously even few days back when there was some reservation news ET made a headline of nothing. The leading newspaper proudly published that IITs and IIMs might have 49.something % seats reservered. To the best of my knowledge this move of government was for state-level-colleges and not the IIs. Anyways its not new for press to manipulate stories.

All is well that ends well. I still read ET :). I once thought I would discontinue the newspaper. But the morning I was about to do that, it had a headline of deal between two companies worth some few thousand crores (something around 4000 ). Now how can there be a better start of the day? The time when I don't know why I'm leaving Nandita Das lonely in the bed, when I oftenly switch off my ceiling fan thinking that it must be tired , if for just Rs 2.50 you tell me "good morning" in such good words I don't mind.

Be it manipulated, be it absolutely wrong who cares. If I'm really concerned I'll go to net and check myself, after I figure out that there is no such Nandita Das exists and Crompton Greaves is a good company to make a ceiling fan rotate whole night without getting tired :)

Cheers!

How stupid could it be?

One of my wingmates was sitting besides me and asked me to go to the URL aai-to-aai-dot-com (this is how he pronounced and any other indian would do). With all the common sense in the world and with the most powerful tool on earth (popularly known as Google) I was unable to get to this URL. I tried the following links:
i2i.com
eye2eye.com
(2 replaced with to and two and other permutation combination).

[Request: Before reading ahead please try it yourself. Coffee assured for the right guess :) ]

Being a maths student I always thought its stupid to try all the p&c's and being a computer science student I know a term heruistic :).

OK coming back to the point, the site which we wanted to visit was "i2eye.com" which we found out after browsing through the wingmates browsers history.

In the evening when I tried this exercise with few of my friends (who on an average browses the net at least 4-5 hours a day) ...the same result. Not a single person was able to get to the right URL.

This site can never get what we "kota-packaged" known as "mouth publicity".

Girls hate when I draw conclusions as they say I'm very bad at it but this time I would say please do this simple exercise before you book another web-address :)

Cheers!!