Bye bye 2007

I'm not sure what inspired me to start blogging again, it's probably sepsis's mail about blogging kumaarrs(yes, there are quite a lot of them doing it, blogging I mean ;) ). Especially now that I don't have net at home(we shifted our residence again, our fourth house in past 1 1/2 years) I never thought I'd be blogging so soon. Ok ok, cutting the crap...

I had never seen a jatre(can't think of a word in English, fair doesn't even come close) in a messenger before this.

I'm not a big fan of foxtrot(not the dance) but this is good stuff.

Heard that JKR is thinking of eigth book, I just hope it doesn't end up being a parody of the previous installments by rediscovering the sexual orientations of it's characters. Only Tarantino has the right skill to do those things.

I always support gamers, by principle.. but d00d!

No year end posts ends well without saying something about coming year's anticipated movies.

Peace.

Whatever..

Ok, here is the thing. I am writing this post just for the heck of it and to some extent to not have the disgusting rodent post(exact words by Deepu don) on the front page of this blog anymore. I am stating this at the very beginning 'cos I'm not a sadist and am fully aware how frustrating it is to read a totally worthless blog(kumaarrs would know what I'm talking about ;) )

Sepsis wrote something about terrorism recently and I would like to add one thing, the definition of terrorism I came across while digging, it is bang-on accurate.














Don't blame me, its a professional hazard to seek all explanations in block diagrams.

Recently I read an article about sharp increase in number of failed love marriages and things responsible for it, my question - can you blame anyone for your failed love marriage? Its like saying "Dude, my suicide was so uncool." (This is of course a completely hypothetical situation. No one asks who is to blame, its always the man's fault)
Having a lame death is alright, but not when you do it yourself. A lame suicide is completely your own fault. While you're still thinking about suicides.
Don't get me wrong, I don't support suicides or even marriages as a matter of fact.

PS: Reading about marriages has got nothing to do with me. Its just that the topic is coming across a lot recently in conversations and stuff.(No offense meant, to anyone)
If you think the post is crazy and offensive I blame Superbad for that, my mind has gone totally insane after watching it.

I smell a rat

"I smell a rat" thought came to me at a chicken center I had been recently. It turned out that it was indeed a rat and not the effect of watching "The Departed" for the nth time.
"Is it for sale?" I asked and the shopkeeper smiled, I hoped it wasn't a "You'll know when you get home" grin. I took a pic and he smiled again.
Well, next time if you order chicken kabab and something tastes funny, you know what the joke is.

Movie masti..

The weekend was rather uneventful except Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix which we watched in IMAX 3D. I'm not a big fan of HP but staying with one for quite some time seems to be rubbing off on me.
The movie wasn't half as bad as I had expected(especially after Goblet of Fire), the visuals were fantastic. The new cast Imelda Staunton and Helena Bonham Carter were good, Ron and Hermione didn't get the screen time they deserve, the twins rock and I really miss Richard Harris who played Dumbledore in the first two installments. The movie was a bit slow in the middle but picked up pace in the last 30 minutes(which was screened as 3D in IMAX) and was wrapped up quite well.
The rest of my weekend was idle, didn't have much choice with both my roomies working(yeah!). Well, as Calvin says "Weekends don't count unless you spend them doing something complete pointless."

Watched Man of the Year yesterday night. Robbin Williams was brilliant, as usual. I've picked up quite a liking for stand up comedy after watching the movie for the first time a few months back. Damn I miss television.

I've always wondered about my position in the food chain(not to be taken literally :P) and Times of India had something interesting to say about this.
They stated a totally random quote(not related to any of the articles) saying
"Women like mediocre men and hence men are striving to be mediocre!" (..really)
Me: "Good. I'm already mediocre".
Frastu: "No you are not. You aren't trying hard enough".
Well, guess I still have hope :)

Things are back to normal..

Well me n frastu did some spending and had crappy food yesterday night and psycho was working well past midnight. Seems like I went back six months in a time machine, the only thing missing is net. Missing it, seriously. Looks like the post trip hangover is finally over.

Good thing: Now I've got a sturdy footwear which tempts me to learn kick boxing
Bad thing: Things are back to normal. Sigh!
Worst thing: yet to start ;)

Holy Shit!!

PS: No comments

Free Will?

Is Free will a Myth?

I am sure everyone must've come across this question. It's not the question itself that triggered the thought process, but the nature of the question. How do we try to understand something which is beyond perception by definition?

It's the same case when we debate about the existence(and nature) of God. The main problems with the existence of God is with logic, we do end up with many contradictions.
Some Classic contradictions are
- can He create a stone He can't lift(omnipotence)
- can He change the past/future (omnipotence and omniscience)
and so on..

Coming back to free will we see that this is not very different.
- we either have free will and choose our paths or
- we don't have free will, all that we do is predetermined and unchangeable but still we have an illusion of free will giving the impression that we do choose our paths

I tried to initiate this discussion with my roomie but he was busy with Rubik cube I got a few days back. For the past few days all he does is sit in front of the monitor with some cube solving tutorial with the cube in his hand. It's been real fun watching him break his head over the cube :D

I personally choose to believe in free will only because of the reason that it appears to make more sense. With Occam's Razor on my side I at least have some basis for my belief.

Ah, This is Life!

Fire in my hand, spirit in my blood
Altitude gives high, shaken by the strong wind
It's dark and peaceful, while music plays in my head
Ah! This is Life :)

PS: Everything above is meant to be taken literally(not metaphorically)

Confrontation

Realist: Dude, what are you doing?
Optimist: What?
Realist: This is bad, could've been so much better
Optimist: Yeah
Realist: And that! You know what, you suck
Optimist: I know
Realist: Why don't you do something?
Optimist: Can't, no time
Realist: What do you mean no time?
Optimist: Busy.
Realist: Busy doing what?
Optimist: Other things.
Realist: And how are the other things?
Optimist: Not very good
Realist: See what I mean? A man who is truely busy never says he is
Optimist: I know
Realist: You know, you can easily forgive an ignorant idiot. But..
Optimist: Who asked for forgiveness
Realist: Arrogance without strength is futile. You know what happens when you build over a weak foundation
Optimist: It falls
Realist: Precisely, the higher you build the harder it falls
Optimist: Ok Mr.Know it all, what have you done?
Realist: Duh, I don't even exist!
Optimist: Damn it

Realist: Where are you going?
Optimist: To sleep, too much bullshit makes me sleepy..

Get a Life!

A few days back, one of my roommates was telling me about his dissatisfaction with the inactivities in life. I just reminded him one of the axioms.

The Axiom: Each individual is designed to have three kinds of lives
Professional Life, Personal Life and Life(you can call it Miscellaneous Life).
Now, we have only the former with the latter two missing. It is not a wonder that we feel incomplete/hollow, we are living only 1/3rd of what our life is supposed to be.We hardly go outside and involve in any sort of activity other than work(by we I am referring only to me and my roommate :)).
It is not like we haven't tried or something. We are planning to go running/jogging in the morning, from past 6 months. We even had a serious plan to go play Tennis at a nearby court, but haven't registered yet because of what happened last time.

What happened last time?
Nothing much actually. Last time when me and mechi had serious plan to do something, it was about going to Gym. We even registered at a nearby Gym for a month's membership. But we did underestimate our indolence, we ended up not turning up at the Gym for the whole month and were sane enough not to extend the membership.
Our other roommate Littal was rolling on the floor laughing after the incident.
All I said was this..
"Laugh all you want. We may have fared very badly, but are still one step ahead of you. We tried. You have to go through this phase to at least get where we are :)"
Hum Honge Kamiyaab.

SCREEEECH EEEECH KEEEEEE

Sometimes driving here in Hyderabad gives me chills in my spine. Today a car charged into the main road at a speed of over 50kmph and almost slammed into the SUV ahead of me. There was this "SCREEEECH EEEECH KEEEEEE" all over. Fortunately both vehicles only got a dent each. After arguing for a while before entering the vehicle the driver clasped his hands and thanked god, and I wished I had a camera in my hand :). "Yeah, you better pray. If you continue driving like this, you need all the help from your GOD if you want to stay alive".

And that wasn't a singular incident, people's lane changing talent puts Hollywood stunt-men to shame. None of the two-wheelers have rear mirrors and auto-wallahs drive with their legs on the seat(really!).

Why am I compaining? I wished for Need for Speed and Fast n Furious to be true, didn't I.

Why I hate TurboC?

After a long time I decided to code something(in C) for personal use, the last time I remember was an auto-shut down timer which was meant to save on some download time(Yup, we don't have unlimited download). Code was just for some online game(which I've actually been taking a bit seriously) and we had to monitor some sort of pattern in it.
Coding in C is something which I have been doing for a long time, but this time it was a bit different. Unfortunately I didn't have linux installed in the system, so I had to code in windows. When I began thinking it couldn't get worse I realized I had to code in TC, me and my big mouth.

Well to cut the long story short, it was one of the weirdest coding I've done in months. I looked like a joker coding with three windows, one for sciTE(only thing which beats this is vi), one for the TC(which I used only for compiling, and by compiling I mean just Ctrl+F9) and one for an open C library(this is one of my best finds, whole of C library in a single HTML file). Just to make it worse, I couldn't stop thinking how easy this would've been in unix all the time...

Why I hate TC?
That is because currently I am stuck with a 'Null Pointer Assignment' error, which mysteriously makes TC compile perfectly and run only parts of the code and execute successfully without performing certain actions, I mean the output. Execute successfully without the output, I know I pity myself too.
The agony, AAEEEE

Statutory Warning:
This post will make sense only to those with basic knowledge in programming.
Oops I guess I should've put this in the beginning of the sections :D

One word

How would you define a typical software professional in one word?
Huh..? Ok , from the beginning.

There is this funny thing I saw on the office leave application.
Please avoid using characters like semicolon(;), greater than(>), less than(<), asterick(*), pipe(|) in the fields
and I was just wondering what kind of stuff they had to face for THAT to be there..
$> grep home contact* | cat > Contact_when_Off.txt ; \r - in contact field??


THAT wouldn't be pretty. :P

It was then that I faced the question.
How would you define a typical software professional in one word?

Nerd?
A person with limited social, but advanced technological skills and interests. - Close but not close enough.

Geek?
one who eats (computer) bugs for a living, an asocial, malodorous, pasty-faced monomaniac with all the personality of a cheese grater. - That's more of an insult than a definition.

Well, I am bad at one word definitions I guess. I couldn't even get one for me, the closest one was 'Lazy' which is actually not bad. It atleast it explains why I don't post blogs frequently.

Hah, it's finally 2007.
I am not wishing new year to anyone now, it's way too late.

Hey I got my bike from Bangalore a few days back, now I tell myself
"Bachelors crave for only three things - Money, Bike and Girlfriend, you have one now. What are you going to aim for next?"
Nah, I am happy for now.

What's new in 2007?
Well I did take a resolution.
I will minimize my idle time. I will utilize my time for more constructive things and stop wasting it.
What constructive things?
I am not going to waste my time thinking about that. :P

My GTalk status message for many days has been
We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true. - Robert Wilensky
I had heard this before but hadn't understood it's essence until I became an active member of orkut and mylot.