I see the light

It was a journey that started 4 years ago in this very campus (IIIT-H) and now it is over... I am happy and satisfied to have achieved the goals I had set for myself before coming here. In fact, I think I did much better. Anyway, It's unfortunate that I'm not senti or sad when I leave this place... In fact I am happy that I am getting my much deserved change. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel (Hope that's not a train >;-]). I have been literally counting days here. People look forward to their college life as a period where there are no rules, full mastee and a time they would never forget. But for me this was the darkest time in my life and I would have been lost in this darkness forever if I had not decided to shine!!!
The last 4 years were weird. An alltime topper in the class, fell to level of a below average student. An "Always Bindaas" guy, turned into an "Always Serious" one. A happy and shining soul, became absolutely dead. I hate these years because I cannot justify what I did all this time. Frankly, I did not do anything... these years are a void in my life. Neither did I excel in studies, nor did I have my share of fun. Then what did I do??? Frankly, wasted 4 years(no, last year was fine)... okay 3 years of my life completely without doing anything, living in a dream world because the reality was not what I wanted. I stuck to the goods of my past and never cared unwrap my present. Life changed drastically... I changed. Towards the end of it I was totally frustrated and one fine day I decided to have everything back... everything that I had lost in this journey. But it was too late. People already knew me...and to my bad luck, they knew me as "not-me" and would not accept me as "me". So, at that moment I decided to postpone this till the end of the college life. Once I break free from the demons of the past I shall be what I am... rather what I was. Till the end of the third year I feel my life in college was a total waste of time, money and energy... an empty mind had already become a devil's workshop. Swept by darkness, I had changed more than I could imagine.
By that time I had figured out that if I stay in this campus any longer, the damage will be more than repairable. So, I started moving out of here, picking of professional work to do. I had already screwed up three years and I had to make up for all of it in the fourth. I had to shine now... for that was the only way to get rid of the darkness around me. I started taking up professional work... and in a short time, became a thorough professional. I knew that I was "coming back to life" (there's a reason why it is my favorite song). I started to "live" life from then on, live it like there's no tomorrow and here I am today.
Now, I love my life... I am back in action and like I was never before. It seems that the "EclipsE" is almost over. Though there are still traces of darkness that will be there forever... but I don't mind that because it does not control me. I control it now... and also like it. There is darkness in me, but it is not inspired by evil, it is just "The Beauty of Darkness" (Look at what the title-bar says). There is a devil is me, but it is not the bad part of me, it is just the "sharaarat" (mischief) in me.
Now, when I look at tomorrow, I see a time when I would have cut all ties with this past of mine and would be shining like the sun...AGAIN!!!

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EclipsE

Harry Potter 3

Oh my devil!!! why the hell did I have to go for this movie at all... and that too after paying a major 185 bucks for watching it on the massive IMAX screen. I think it was just a bad day!!! This movie is not even kid-stuff... it is utter nonsense. They build up the suspense like anything...making the movie so slow that it literally crawls... and then when it all gets over in the end, you are like "what the f*ck!!??", not because you are surprised (as would happen is any good movie), but because you are feeling so irritated. Anyway, if you are the types who likes "shocking ends" then I would definitely recommend "The Others" (*ing Nicole Kidman). It has the most shocking end that I have seen till date. Otherwise also I am recommending some movies where I really liked the end because of the surprise element in it... Payback, Bandits & Ocean's 11. Can't think of more names right now (I guess I'm feeling too sleepy right now)
Coming back to Harry Potter 3, there is absolutely no content in the movie... not even anything entertaining. This one is the worst of the three. Not that I liked the other two, but they were still better than this one. Well I think i'm feeling so much for this movie because I ended up spending so much money on this one. Anyway, that's all for the moment.

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EclipsE

Lakshya - That's the word

Lakshya - that's the word!!!... Finally watched it. Good movie.. In fact a very well made movie, but nowhere near DCH (DCH was a class apart... a cult in itself). Some of the scenes were really good. I loved the rock climbing scene. Had it been any other director, he would have made a horrible copy the MI-2 scenes and put some matrix effects, but Farhan Akhtar has shot that scene so perfectly that it all looks technically very correct and believable. That guy has put some good action sequences in the movie. Hritik is better than before and preity... well, she's always that good. But Amitabh Bachchan and Om Puri were totally wasted... just doing "5 dialogue" roles. Still, i guess they were there, just for their screen presence. The storyline was kinda weak... actually very straightforward and predictabe (hence, boring). Only the good scenes in the movie hold it together and make it look good.
Personally i liked the theme of that movie... Lakshya, that's the word, that's what really matters!!! do anything you like, but do it well. I believe that "if anything is worth doing, it's worth doing well". Lakshya is very important in life. We read force*direction = work. But force with no direction is waste of time, energy and maybe money also. There have been people who came to me for a career advice (frankly, even i dunno why), but i have always said the same thing to everyone... make a call about what you have to do and then forget everything and live by your decision. Anyway... today's doze of philosoohy is over.

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EclipsE >:-]

Yippee!!! what more could i ask for???

ureka ureka!!! I found a house for myself. That brings an end to my apartment hunt. For a moment I had really started to doubt if i'll get a house here. But I am feeling really great... and I'm in one hell of a mood today. Well, today Varun and I started a door to door operation in telecom-nagar asking anyone and everyone if there's an apartment available on rent. Finally we found "my" house, nice drawing cum dining room, good kitchen (very spacious), 2 bedrooms of decent size... actually everything I wanted. I'll be moving in by the end of this month. Anyway, let's get over with that.
...last night's dinner, one more awesome thing. Shailesh and I happened to go to indira-nagar to have dinner. My original intention was to see some good infy girls, but shailesh had to make his "important" phone call. So, ended up reaching there at 10:15, when all the girls had already left. Then I looked at what was there for dinner... man!!! unlimited aalu-parathas for 25 bucks. That too each paratha, king-size, think and with a big peice of butter on it. What more would I ask for from life!!!??? ...ended up eating 4 of those things (Shailesh, of course, managed 5). Forget walking, even getting up was tough then. Somehow we managed to get to the hostel. Today, in the lunch, once again there were aalu parathas... definitely NOT that good.
...otherwise spent the entire day chatting and doing nothing else. Finally went for the hunt in the evening and came back successful. I am invincible!!! hee hee hee

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EclipsE >:-]

The Microsoft Hyderabad User Group Meet

I had been to the Microsoft Hyderabad User Group Meet yesterday. Frankly, it was horrible. There were 3 guest speakers but none of them was good... in fact a couple of them were really bad. The topics weren't good either. First was "Fun With Powerpoint" which was short and okay types... but no technical content. Then was the real presentation I was there for... ".NET Cryptography". But to my disappointment the speaker himself messed up whatever he was trying to show. The last and definitely not the least was a presentation on the "Blogging Phenomena". Now, this one was the most pathetic. No technical content ...in fact, no content at all. The speaker had prepared some 20 mins of presentation while this is something that hardly takes 2 minutes. The only new thing I gathered from there was the funda of RSS feeds, which was nice but not enough to make me feel informed. Anyway, I did get to meet some good people out there. Then after the meet, some of my Hyderabadi friends and I went for dinner to compensate for the waste of useful time by wasting some more time and money.

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EclipsE >:-]

gmail ..all the way!!!

What a day!!! Just yesterday I was having a talk with some people about the phenomena called gmail. It has pretty much become a status symbol between us IT guys >;-]. None of us had an account out there. 1GB of storage space...man!!! what else could you ask for. Yahoo had to increase the storage space from 6MB to 100MB just because of gmail. Anyway, the talk of the day is that I finally managed to grab a gmail account. Credits to Gautam (One of my IIIT friends, currently getting screwed at XLRI)...he had an invitation and he forwarded it to me. I have registered by e-mail id as frozenthrone@gmail.com and have decided to use this as my primary address. Now, talking about the name frozenthrone ...well, that originates from a game called "Warcraft 3". It wasn't quite my type of game but the game videos were simply awesome...easily the best work ever done in pre-rendered graphics except for the masterpiece called LOTR. I still remember the days when all night my graphics group and I used to watch those videos again and again (while cooking maagi) and kept admiring the detail. Anyway, the bottomline of this post is that I am now a gmailer!!!

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EclipsE >:-]

I am invincible!!!

Well, the new codecs seem to have solved the problem. Now the picture and the sound are in sync...yippee!!!

The Hunt for the Good Apartment

...yet another day full of conflict between linguistics and computer science. There's this algorithm that I was supposed to study and work on...now my ways are simple, read the algo once and get a hang of it. When the coding time is there, keep it handy and code the damn thing. But this time things were really strange...rather wierd. They want me to learn the algorithm...to be able to write it down without the book... now why should I do that. As a programmer just knowing the thing a little and using it while the implementation looks perfectly sane. The issues regarding the input to the program etc. are the linguist's issues... definitely not mine and I damn care about them. If you give wrong values, you can't expect me to write the code in such a way that it still gives you right answers.
Anyway, let's get over with the bad stuff. Today it poured like hell out here...the weather I really hate. It was really good until it rained. I went to look for an apartment at a nearby place but no luck...seems I got a little late and all apartments in the locality are taken >:-[. So, the hunt is not as simple as I expected it to be. Frankly, that's nothing new for me... coz life has never been easy. Now, the unpredictability of life has become so predictable. Spent the entire evening chatting and making a couple of new friends and also watching con-air. Okay types movie..typical hollywood action stuff (The stuff I like!!!). Dimaag lagane ki zaroorat nahin, just enjoy it. It's almost 2 in the night. Started to watch "Paycheck" at around 1 but the codec was screwing up badly. So, i'm downloading the latest version of the "Ace Mega Codecs Pack". Hopefully that should take care of the problems. During those painful 41 Mega Bytes to be downloaded, I am writing this. Hey...the download is over. So, that's all for the moment.

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EclipsE >:-]

Linguistics and Me >:-[

Well, I'm doing a course on Computational Linguistics these days. Of course, I had no other option ...otherwise linguistics and I!!!??? >:-| . So, lemme tell you what happens when someone who's too much into technical stuff and programming etc. goes to study linguistics.
...The first problem is the language problem. I have been so much involved on the technical side that now, I write in C and use mathematical expressions and don't care about language any more. But in linguistics you need to write proper hindi/english/french/russian/papago/...potato, tomato...what and what not. I didn't even know about the existance of so many languages. Moreover, I got to know that there are people in this world who have the time AND THE MIND to learn/analyse/disect/operate on them. Some of these are really pathetic. I don't have my assignment papers right now, otherwise I would have written a few examples. So, my first problem is that I'm hardly able to make any sense out of these. Then the second problem is the representation. I am a computer engineer and look at everything from the point of optimization. As a result I tend to write as less as possible and use mathematical symbols and/or abbreviations to present my answers. Now all this is greek and latin to my teacher. I had to do an assignment again today and even now she was not happy with my presentation. I am really really frustrated now. I told her that from now on I won't care about what linguistic representations are. I'll write a paragraph telling what my deductions are. Moreover, they want me to read. I tell them give me the code to read and the specs and I'll do the project. But they want me to read loads of theory inspite of my telling them that I HATE READING!!!
Anyway, who the f*ck wants to do linguistics!!!??? I'm happy enough with my profession. Now it's a matter of counting days. But this thing is getting on my nerves now, and I'm really losing patience. I just hope that these guys stop testing my patience and just do the damn f*cking course... coz if that line is crossed I'll bloody show them the finger and walk out!!!
...just holding on. Let's see.

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EclipsE >:-]

Busy Days Ahead...

well, as of now it's a vidai scene out here. Ashutosh went home (Mumbai) yesterday. Tanu left for home (Meerut) today morning. She has her visa interview in delhi on 21st. Then Arpit is leaving (For Indore, and then Lucknow) tomorrow morning. All through the night he was burning CD's in my room... that's a typical "rasm-e-vidai" at this place. You grab as much stuff as you can on CD's. I started off with my mission long time ago and as of now I have a massive collection of movies.
...Anyway, coming to me... Day before yesterday night I had a good dinner (buffet) at fortune katriya (Couldn't take the mess food suddenly after coming from Bangalore where I the food was heavenly). Ashutosh and Shailesh had gone with me. Well, the buffet also included unlimited drought beer. So, I was on a good high by the time we finished. So, just came back and slept. Yesterday wasn't really productive. Just a class of "Computational Linguistics" (Hopefully the last leech stuck to my body, after getting rid of which, I'll be free). I am having a feeling that my life is getting into a routine which is strictly unacceptable. Everyday I get up at around 11 and finish my assignments before my class which is at 2:30. This class thing lasts till around 4:30-5:00 and by then the day is already gone. I should be doing something about this. However, I have a lot of work today. ...also have to begin with the final project coding. I'm almost there but the truth is that I'm still not there and I don't have much time now. So, I think that will be something that will change my routine. Man!!! I just love coding. So, I hope GoD (My final project) will be over soon. The days ahead also look really busy because I have to hunt for an apartment now. It has become very critical now. The notice has come...and they're gonna throw us out of the college by the end of this month. No new movies watched...life seems so miserable right now...not my type of life at all. I am dying to go out and really freak out for some time with some good company.
...but "jeevan ka satya" is that I have to read some sh*t regarding my course project... I'll read that in the night. Today's timepass web-browsing was a site called http://www.funtrivia.com . The page of typical interest was http://www.funtrivia.com/quizzes/movies/index.html. This page had many movie quizzes for a nice timepass. The weather in Hyderabad is awesome these days. It's really windy in the evenings and nights. Anyway, that's all I have for today...I know nothing interesting. But I'll do something about it. Abhi to I'm fed up of writing this thing and want to wander for sometime.

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EclipsE >:-]

...and the Hyderabadi Hindi

...on the trip, Vishal and I happened to be the only North Indians among a gang of 35 Hyderabadis. So, I finally did learn some good Hyderabadi Hindi. Within a day I was absolutely fluent with it and frankly, was really enjoying talking that way. Perhaps that's why I made some real good friends. Also met with a lot of student champs from all over India. Many of them were really great people to talk to. So, my PR skills improved by leaps and bounds and I suddenly found myself having friends all over the country.

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EclipsE >:-]

Bangalore... at last!!!

Bangalore!!! it finally happened. I've been in Bangalore since the past 3 days and that's the reason why I couldn't update my blog. Anyway, I'm back now and have a lot to say about my trip which was my first visit to that place. I had been there for the Microsoft Student Advocates Meet 2004, say it was the reward for my efforts as a student evangelist. I've been involved with the Microsoft India Student Program since feb. this year and currently hold the post of the Assistant Manager of the Hyderabad chapter (http://groups.msn.com/DNUGHydStudent & http://www.dnughs.net) of the same. more than 100 Student Champs from all over India had come to attend this meet. It was an all expense paid trip to Bangalore filled with the lot of fun as well as technical content. I boarded an AC Volvo bus to bangalore with the entire Hyderabad group at 12:30, 10th night. We reached Golden Palms Resorts & Spa (the venue) at 12 afternoon, on 11th. What an amazing place it was!!! I just couldn't believe that Microsoft did so much for us. We were staying in royal suits. Steam bath and Gym at the Spa and Swimming Pool was complemetary. Food... oh yeah, I'm an absolute food-freak so can't ignore the good food out there. I got to know that the resort belongs to Sanjay Khan and was also the venue to the marriage of Hrithik Roshan. We had great fun playing pranks on people throughout the night and playing volleyball in the pool throughout the day. ...but we did attend some really productive sessions on Microsoft's future goals and technologies, hiring policies, related organisations and opportunities. 12th was a blast ...in the evening we had a Talent Show where I happened to play the role of "All American" RamLal in a spoof on sholey (For the ones who don't know, RamLal is thakur's servant). I loved doing that role and then also happened to perform a dance ...once again the song was "koi kahe, kehta rahe...". After the Talent thing there was an awesome DJ party. Once again I happened to learn the lesson that dancing after a gap of more than 4 months really scr*ws you up. Every single bone and muscle in my body is screaming with pain. I didn't visit the city at all as it was pretty far from the resort and also because I had no time. So, I have another reason to go to Bangalore. Overall, the trip was full of things that I did for the first time. These were - stay in a 7 start resort, learning swimming, tasting pork (Had bacon, really good!!!), steam bath and of course, visiting Bangalore >;-].
Anyway, all good things come to an end and so did this. I started my journey from "heaven" to "earth" at 5 in the evening on 13th and was here early morning today. Spent the entire day sleeping and i'm still relaxing trying to get out of the massive hangover.

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EclipsE >:-]

Brand New Day!!!

Yeah, it's a brand new day... but then only the day is new. All the monkeys that were on my back till last night are still there.
...10:30 AM the alarm rang and I got up looking for my assignment papers with my eyes still closed. "Why the hell did I have to take this course at all???", I cursed ...but then as the mind booted up like a Windows 2K3 Server, taking another 30 minutes, I came back to my full senses and realized that it's just "puraane paapon ka prayishchit". I had 2 assignments to finish till 2 o' clock. So, I got down to do the work and was as usual five minutes late in finishing it. I rushed to the mess and barely managed to get lunch. But the lunch was good and was definitely worth the run to the mess.
After food I rushed to the college to submit my assigments. There was no class today ...what a relief. Then enjoyed the company of a new friend who happens to have come to IIIT for a project. I had met her on ryze. We had some good time. At least I did and I hope I left some braincells in her head so that they would grow(of course, to be eaten again) in another couple of days (Food Preservation).
Now, I'm sitting in my room writing this thing, trying to burn off at least one hour in the process. Background is being made beautiful by Meenaxi songs (Rehman did a great job once again). I've been trying to give a little company to Sonu Nigam as he sings "Do Kadam" ...but I think both of us have different singing styles (Or he's a really bad singer). So, the combined result of our efforts is really bad.
Coming to the future plans. I'm leaving for Bangalore tonight for the Microsoft Student Advocates Meet. It looks good at least - An all expense paid trip to Bangalore with stay at Golden Palms Resort. Let's see what happens there. Don't know if i'll be able to write for the next 3-4 days. Also to mention a lot of pending work that is piling up. I am yet to watch "Prisoner of Azkaban" and "Dev" will be out tomorrow. I'll watch these as soon as I'm back. Then "Lakshya" is making it's entry next Friday, the 18th.
Well, that's all for the moment.

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Eclipse >:-]

Did we talk about The Matrix???

Well, our discussion on *ETU ended without a mention of "The Matrix". I sincerely appologise for the error. So coming back to the point, I think we missed one of the most important sources of ETU. Studies show that when it came to ETU, Matrix fans faired far better than "normal" human beings. I have a personal record of spending more than 300 hours watching and discussing the Matrix Trilogy. The counts would be The Matrix (>50 times), Matrix Reloaded (>10 times), Matrix Revolutions (3-4 times, though it sucks majorly). I sometimes feel that Matrix could be added as an extra level in *list. So, my advice is that people going in for movies should try to watch The Matrix and try to appreciate it.

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EclipsE >:-]

*refer to my previous post

So it begins...

"So it begins..." ...dunno where i heard that for the first time (I guess LOTR), but I like using that to mark the beginning of any "awesome looking" plan to utilize (read that as kill ...err. murder) my time. Since past month and a half I've been utilizing my time on sites like ryze and orkut, and have, in fact, been really successful in my venture. But as it's said, "old habbits die hard", I suffer from the saggittarian infuence of NOT being able to stick to something (or someone) for long. Anyway, the bottomline is that I'm fed up of the old creative ways and am looking for a newer way to (once again) utilize my time. Thanks a lot to Arpit (http://nd4spd.blogspot.com), another member of the "we have way too much free time" club, that I've finally moved on to a level above ryze and orkut and I'm here today!!!
For those who are potential members of the club mentioned above, here is a simple list of levels, I (of course with due credit to Arpit) have figured out since this research on Extra Time Utilization or ETU began -

Level 0 - The Solitary Thinker
You keep thinking what to do, keep getting frustrated, bite your nails, move stuff around in your room, try to sleep etc.

Level 1 - The Sleeper
You sleep 10, then 12, then 14 hours a days...hmm good enough. But still troubled about how to utilize the remaining hours.

Level 2 - You could fall in either of the following catagories (maybe in more than one)
2a. The Reader
You develop interest in books and inculcate a reading habbit. Then you read read and only read. You read your newspaper while attending nature's call. Then you pick up some book (any book actually) and read it through your classes, lunch, work, walk...maybe even sleep. You claim that a few books are your favourites and they are generally Fountain Head, The Firm, Kane and Abel, Catch 22, Lord of the Rings and maybe Harry Potter.

2b. The Movie Critic
You somehow get access to a computer and someone's video library card. Then you are on a rampage watching every damn movie. You could begin with real class (Al Pachino, Robert deNiro) movies like Heat, Ronin, Scarface etc., then move on to action flicks like Terminator, Independence Day, Die Hard etc. and then watch (no adjectives come to my mind) movies life King Solomon's Mines, Ben Hur, The Lawrence of Arabia. Watching 4 movies in a row is very good because you utilize around 7 hours watching the movies, then 1 hour trying to get rid of the pain in your eyes and another 7-8 hours sleeping to give rest to your eyes.

2c. The Deadly Gamer
You start playing computer games. You are the deadly gamer...thoroughly frustrated, try to vent out your anger by shredding your opponent's body to peices. Once again you begin from elite games like Quake, AOC etc. and gradually move on to Diablo, NWN etc. and finally to flash games like 3D ping pong, Space Pin-Ball or "Save the Damn Helicopter". If that's not enough, the dawn of new technology presents for you, Snake-2...yeah it's there in your cellphone.

Level 3 - The Public Relations Guy
Now you start off with PR. You are networking with a lot of people like you. People from 2a dicuss books, people from 2b criticise movies and try to prove that their choice is the most elite (even if the choice is movies like "dude where's my car???") and well, the people from 2c just keep mouthing obscenities, abusing eachother for not being there on the guard when the enemy came for the flag. Some of the 2c people also go room to room ...just to tell how much they scored in Snake-2 >;-]. Overall at this level you meet up in galleries and corridors and start off a useless discussion that goes nowhere (and of course, takes you nowhere), but indeed helps you burn those 4 extre hours.

Level 4 - The "Search and Chat" Guy
Life suddenly becomes interesting and words in the air are MSN BuddyZone, Ryze, Orkut... You get an account on all of these and then begin with your "hunt". Your network grows. Your useless discussions that were confined to your Office/Campus suddenly become international. With widened horizons you get more people to takl about useless stuff. Americans would be up when it's night here ...so all 24 hours you have companions, and your topics keep getting better as you get to talk about international nonsense. This is a pretty stable phase where one doesn't need to look for other options. Most people are satisfied with this.

Level 5 - The Blogger (yeah, that's me...right at the last known level)
You start to blog. You utilize time the same way as before, just that you also start writing about it and hence getting rid of the last few hours (I got them now...they were a serious pain, I didn't know what to do about them). See, I took some real good time to put this research in words for the fellow member.

That's all for today guys. Reading this should have been very productive for you. People at 0 or 1 should know the road ahead. buck up guys!!!
...and of course, thanks a lot to Arpit (God's own prototype). Where we go from here is what we have to decide.

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EclipsE >:-]