Ek Kathak Aur Uski Kathayen

Monday, November 29, 2004

Aa khel khekein hum....

There's this game - Its called.... jeez, I need to think up a name for it. But, we can ignore such minor technicalities.

So, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, bhaiyon aur behenon, deviyon aur sajjanon aur mere pyare doston (phew!). Hop over to Dan's, and help us prove the power of friendship. All you got to do is to go to this post and get over 100 comments to it. Simple, ain't it?

Spread the word around, we're going to make Dannny an international star (Don't ask me how)


Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Update

I decided to work on the Template. So I did. I worked on it. 2 hours, maybe a little more.

The result?
A screwed up template with nothing working, no links linking, half the text mising, the other half linked to I-don't-know-where.

All I used was a WYSWYG editor.

The only thing that works is the license information on the footer. I didn't use the editor for that. I wrote the tag myself.

The moral of the story: Next time, I will use a html text book for help if I need to work on the template

Till then this template from blogger.
If it kills your eyes, I'm not at fault - the wyswyg editor is.

Friday, November 19, 2004

We need to talk, honey!

I am aware I still have to conclude Cesium 133. For those of you late to join us in here, Part 1 and Part 2.

Also, considering the offline response I got for Agent R, I think I will work on making her the next James Bond!

However, the post is not about what I have to do, but about this letter. Another breakup - the letter of a lover who can't take it no more! Got it via a newsletter in the 17th! I'm sure, it can go down in history as classic literature!

In the author's own words,

<snip>
I just can't continue with this relationship any longer. I know you say you'll fix things, that next time it'll go better - but that's what you said the last time - and the time before that. Each time I believed you. Well, not any longer.
</snip>

And, then there is the final good bye!

So this is it: Good-bye. I know you'll do fine without me; you always have. I'm sure there'll be someone who'll find you to be cute and interesting. It just won't be me.

Some love stories are never meant to be!

Friday, November 12, 2004

Season's Greetings

Wish you and yours a very happy Diwali and a prosperous and challenging New Year, full of friendship, friends and lots of celebration!

Pile on the sweets and stay clear of crackers!

Cheers,
K

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

10101

At 4 a.m IST, I started off on yet another journey around the sun!

Monday, November 08, 2004

Another Victory for Agent R

There was the entire bunch of us. Me, lover, bi, R and another friend who I'll call Saturday. Not for any specific reason like an affinity to the day of the week, but for the fact that her surname can be shortened to Sat and that can be further expanded to Saturday. I could also be expanded to Saturn or Saturate or Satrap for that matter, but due to personal idiosyncrasy Saturday it is. But that is not the point, and as always I digress.

We were waiting for our viva on a subject called "Electronic Design and Software Techniques", interestingly software techniques is something we electronic engineers know nothing about. But that again, is not the point; it is just a background to our knowledge of the subject, or rather the lack of it. While trying to figure out the use of those zillion diagrams of UML, all of which looked the same to us, wondering whether the stick men are the creation of some bored engineer and later moving onto our project and then onto microprocessors, it was trivia time. And this, ladies and gentlemen is the point of the entire text you've been reading till now.

As I was saying, we happened to transcend into processors and further into overclocking them and so on, when I stumbled onto this plot. Read on.

A note to the readers: This plot is a half baked one, lots of lose ends yet to be tied up, if anyone interested in working on it, mail me.


Agent R, Record on Interpol Files
Age: 21
Date of Birth: 14th July
Educational Qualifications: B.E Electronics and Telecommunication
Claim to fame: Saving little frog Danny from a spider induced self immolation
Rank: Ace Detective (Hey people, remember that game, Carmen?)

Agent R had a nasty time this year. Her brains were totally screwed up. She had been on her trail for a long enough time - Pune to Melbourne to Montreal to Silverstone to Monaco to Suzuka and then back to Pune. That was one hell of a task, keeping up with the clues. She sat down to analyse the clues.
But something seemed wrong.
Something didn't quite fit in.
Something was really wrong in the itinerary.

Restoring the copies of TechView back safely to the college from where they were stolen was of paramount importance. Stolen, each and every copy of both the issues of the academic year 2003-2004. Not even a single copy left for the records. Agent R had a lot of work on her hands, and then the itinerary kept bothering her. Being the world famous Ace Detective, she couldn't let this thief slip off from her hand, and not when her best friend, the then editor of TechView had pleaded with her to get the copies back. She just couldn't let her down. And so, Ace Detective Agent R was torn - between letting that small nagging doubt about the thief's travel plan bother her for some hidden clue or look at the most obvious clues and head straight into the computer lab. The thief's next attack had to be the website.

Agent R had to work fast; she figured Monaco could be dealt with later on, and dashed into the computer lab. And there was the thief struggling to hack into the TechView site. 'Twas a funny sight - the thief was trying to access the directory and just couldn't! The machines in the lab were so slow and Agent R had a lot of time on her hands. A lot of time, because she couldn't so anything till the thief doesn't make her actions obvious. You can't just accuse someone of stealing after all. She wouldn't be able to do that even if the thief had stolen a wallet with 2500 in cash. So she waited and waited and waited, and then the thief started working on the chipset in the computer.

"WTF!!????" exclaimed Agent R.

The thief was smart, trying to improve the performance of the machine by overclocking the processor. You really think the thief was smart? Think again. Agent R chuckled. She knew the thief wouldn't be able to do much. She messaged Interpol via the wireless communication module embedded in her watch. And she decided to wait. Waiting was something Agent liked a lot - it didn't draw too much attention to herself, while at the same time she could keep an eye on what was happening. Nonchalantly she continued writing the code she was writing - developing a wireless protocol for communication between a chip embedded into the buttons on her coat and Interpol.

But what about our thief? She was getting bolder by the minute. She thought she could steal everything and get away. Little did she know Agent R was on her trail. Little did she know agent R was right next to her, waiting for her to make on small mistake. Little did she know... ! As per the script, she made on small mistake, she managed to hack into the system. Before you could blink, Agent R had her gun out with an aim on the thief, and the thief - she had hers aimed at Agent R. What could R do, sacrifice her life? If she pulled the trigger, before dying the thief would pull hers also. Agent R, for the first time in her illustrious career was in fix. She should have acted earlier she thought. "I messed it up, this once"!

Still vacillating between her life and her job just as she was about to pull the trigger, there was fire and the overclocked processor in flames. The smart thief managed to overclock it so much that the heat generated crossed any level of dissipation by the heat sink and went up in flames! Flames - fire! The fire distracted the thief by a couple of microseconds, which were enough for Agent R to have her firmly in handcuffs to hand over to the local police who just about made it in time! And the sanctity of TechView was restored!

Another victory for agent R, but there was something bothering her, what was Monaco doing in the thief's plan of travel?

Saturday, November 06, 2004

Cesium 133 - #2

A few hundred kilometres away, in the city of Nashik, lived a fellow named PK. No one knows why he was called PK; even he didn’t know why he was called PK. He just was. Formerly a reporter with a leading newspaper he quit over woman; a woman that both PK and his editor claimed to love.

“It was sheer insanity”, says PK.
“I was so in love with her that I couldn’t think of anything else.”

But that was history. One day he was sitting in the park, smoking a cigarette, inhaling the smoke and vowing that would be his last; after this one he would quit smoking. Did he quit? That is immaterial for the time being. In this state of trance he boarded a train to Pune. No one knew how he managed it, he didn’t know that himself!

A few days in the city, and he was in love, all over again; with the city where the girl lived – the girl for whom he quit his cushy job at the newspaper. He hadn’t met her, but had read enough of her columns to answer a quote-from-memory or fill-in-the-blanks test paper on her columns. He knew every word she wrote, every word she could say. And one day, he finally met her. No one knew how it all happened. Right from the-first-meeting to getting-on-like-a-house-on-fire to she-quitting-her-job-only-to-start-a-publishing-house-with-him and so on. No one knew how it all happened. No one. Not even PK himself. That’s how things always happened with our man PK.

As far as PK was concerned, life was just perfect. He had a business, and he had the woman! The woman he wanted to take home and say, “Look ma, dad. This is the girl I want to marry!” The woman he’d want to take to his editor and say, “Look here, this is my woman!”

But he couldn't do that. There was a catch - he didn’t have parents; he was an orphan, a product of the streets of Nashik. There was another catch - he didn’t have an editor any longer; to refresh your memory, he had quit his job. The next catch was he didn't yet start the business. And so our man knew, that life was not all that perfect, although he believed it was. “No”, he mused. The real catch was that he hadn’t popped the question. “That’s because”, he thought, “I don’t know her that well”. he didn't know where she lived, her likes and dislikes, the colour she liked, none of the basics, never mind the rest. Or something like that. He wasn’t sure. That’s how things were with him, he could never be sure.

However at the risk of letting my plot out, I’ll tell you the real catch. One that even he didn't know. Or probably would never know. She was another cesium 133.

A Crusade

I don't where I read/heard this one, but it keeps doing the rounds of the memory bank!

"Its Impossible" says Reason
"Its Reckless" says Experience
"Its Painful" says Pride
"Try" says Dream.

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Its Joke Time!

Dan's idea of TV fault finding!
My idea of TV fault solving

Yeah, you guessed it right. This is another space filler. But while I'm at it, I remembered an old joke I had got on my e-mail a few years ago, sometime in the 1st semester engineering.

Historians have concluded that W.Heisenberg must have been contemplating his love life when he discovered the Uncertainty Principle:

  • When he had the time, he didn't have the energy and
  • When the moment was right, he couldn't figure out the position!


Cheers,
K!