Oh the 'dead'lines

Been away for a while and I can't remember putting this kind of effort earlier. I was facing a conference deadline and it was all about spending endless hours trying to get the results. Its over and things are much better now.. till the next deadline.. :D

Back finally..

Another semester went by. I start off with every semester thinking its going to be better than the last one, thoroughly determined to take it easier, but some things never happen. It just always hits hard anyways..

It was interesting though at times and not so at others. I hate theory and it was evident by the theory course I took. On the other hand, I just can't remember the last time building so much code for academic projects. It was tough while I was doing it, but looking back, I guess it was interesting!

Anyways, back for now and though I guess I'll be a little busy during the summer working over some project, but I guess regular posts will be on my agenda for sure..

Movies Galore..

Yeah, that says it all. Its been a long time since I've seen one. All in all three of them in the last couple of days. Enter spring break..

The Fountain was pending since long and it lived up to its branding of being a little obscure. Classify it as science fiction or the romantic genre, it stays true to the Darren  Aronofsky brand. It might not have the kind of impact that Requiem for a Dream had, but nevertheless, its a pretty good watch with Hugh Jackman really showing his class. It took me a while to get into the groove after I played it and I won't grade it as supremely entertaining, but definitely worth a watch for it really is a different grade of cinema. What more, it stars Rachel Weisz..

Pure unadulterated action was what I expected from the latest Sly Stallone's John Rambo.. Plenty of blood in it, but somehow it doesn't really invigorates as the earlier editions. But then, even if you are a Sly fan, you can't let this one go, for even at 60 this man can rip the enemies apart. :)

I don't know what drove me to watch The Notebook. Perhaps a high rating on imdb was the catalyst and though it was pretty decent, its not for me. I avoid watching such flicks, but then at times I do fall into the trap.

That was it for me, radically different genres to get the ball rolling. I've heard 10,000 BC is a drag, and I wonder how can the makers of Independence Day screw it up. But then I do remember Godzilla!

Adios Stage6

A one stop for most of us, if not all to find a high quality video. Be it the movies or the TV shows, Stage6 has always been there. As expected, it was a shocker when news broke out that these folks are closing it down due to lack of funds. The detailed letter has been put over here,  and sadly it wasn't supposed to be a prank. :( Now that stage6 would be closing down today, I hope it gets reincarnated in some form. Damn, so many movies have been made on this formula, I'd love to see it come true at least once!

Mission: Destroy Earth

Space science has always been one of my favorite pastimes, to an extent that I dreamt of becoming an astrophysicist till a few years back! Well, an eternal optimist that I am, I won't really rule out that possibility, but the probability of that happening are as good as the you being able to destroy earth using any of the ways described here. Its as insane as it can get, but a terrific read. This is probably thinking along the fourth dimension. :D

                    

Micro-hoo! An interesting Perspective

Computer Science at Grad school at times can really beat the hell out of you at times. A similar thing happened last semester and I grew increasingly inconsistent in my blogging life. The tech facet has already been almost non existent here, since I hate talking tech all the time. Grad life already takes care of that! :) But sometimes it gets really interesting as well, such as this article by New York Times on the Micro-hoo! episode. Well, its not the usual 'whether-or-not' thing, but gives an interesting perspective of 'what-if'..

"I Dream of Bangalore"

Well, not literally true for me, but these are the words of a song by Kevin Maney of Portfolio.com. According to him, "In case you haven't heard it, it is truly a song of its time", which puts it as a candidate for being perhaps the only love song about outsourcing. And for the records, its doing great off late, by climbing as high as #84 in the rankings, courtesy GarageBand.com.

You can listen the song here..

WACA and the Three de Bruijns in the Countin'

Just an interesting analysis about the dice sequence problem that I came across. Long but worth a read, since its bound to wake up a few dying cells in your brain.

Further, its an interesting day's play today at the WACA and it remains to be seen if India will finally seize the advantage against the Aussies or squander it away as it so often does. Call it paranoia, but I still can't count the Aussies out of this game. Even though they might be trailing by 170 odd, but how often have we seen this bunch assert themselves out of nowhere. No matter what happens, but leave all your bread and butter and stay glued to the television sets, coz its not too often that the wicked heat of Perth gets to the Australians. Rest assured, if its 41 degrees in the city, its way higher out there at the center. Somehow Sehwag seems all so crucial in this game and I'm not sure if Lee's faced a tighter test in the past year or so before. With WACA gradually getting close to its pacy prime and with virtually no hopes of an Indian win prior to the start, it'll be interesting to see if Lee delivers or the pressure of performing gets to him.

Whatever said and done, the game has been a surprise to most.. and a exciting one for me in a pleasant sense. :)

The Great American Vacation

"College is the longest vacation you will ever take"

                                               - Dan Indante and Karl Marks

I guess I would agree with that more often than not, but then during the semesters it can tend to get a touch too tedious and demand an actual vacation away from it. It didn't get off to the best possible start, but then as it turned out to be, it's been one of the best vacations I've had till now.

I've been to a few places up north in India in the past and seen some snow, but Madison, WI was a different experience altogether. Not that I'm comparing the two, but the scenes there were right out of some of the Hollywood flicks I've seen so far. White Christmas - well, I did indeed get to see one!

 

From up north here to the Gulf of Mexico the next day, and I landed up at Corpus Christi. Though, its not the best time to hit the beaches 'coz of the cold weather, but nevertheless, it turned out to be a fairly good drive down there. Mexico remains one of my cherished destinations, but haven't been this closer to being there.

Microsoft entertained me for the interviews at just the right time, and I did get to hit Seattle the very next week. It did refresh my memories of my stay in Assam, India where it rained almost every other day.  But then, it didn't really stop me and a friend of mine from having fun out there. Well, if nothing more, but I guess it would take a lot to forget one of the best chocolate desserts and drinks that I've had in a very long time.

Well, though time to get back to the Spring Semester now and lets see what its got in store for me. 

Back for Good!

Time flies by and boy, does it fly fast! It just doesn't seem as though a semester is over, and it just was freaking crazy and way too much happened during this course.
No time at all a couple of days back, and now I've got this luxury of watching back to back episodes of Prison Break, writing a blog and even.. doing nothing! Well, I kinda hated this life a few months back, but how badly I needed this for now.

India won, but damn, it was one of the most irrelevant series ever played. It was only sad to see how the arch rivals match-up is just losing all its fizz. It was not just the dull results, but the manner in which the game was played that was disappointing. Well, though I'll be up in sheer anticipation of watching India meet the Aussies down under, but deep inside I'm pretty sure that facing the likes of Lee and co. on the bouncy tracks won't be a trivial task. Add to that misery of the Indian attack and you are left wondering that all that the team can do best is bat for 5 days. Less than a couple of weeks left and it would be interesting to see how the boxing day opens. Sometimes I wonder if the real essence of this series lies in seeing the master perform for one last time down under. There have been numerous articles in the Australian dailies citing how the Aussie crowds would be fortunate enough this summer again to watch him effortlessly switch between spanking backfoot punches and elegant on the rise cover drives! I hope they don't get disappointed..

I've not seen much of John Cusack and can barely recall Runaway Jury, Identity, Con Air and couple others of his flicks. 1408 showed why he's damn good at his job. A li'l scary and fun at the same time, 1408 is pretty gripping right from the start, though am still wondering what the heck was Samuel L. Jackson doing in that nitty role of his. Talk about wasted talent..

I've not been keeping up to date with the tech news and its barely been a couple of days since I was done with my semester. Replication systems and security was all that I could think till then. I didn't give much to Grad school, but sometimes its imperative that you return to the best papers in systems to actually get a feel of whats happening on the application layer. Three years of work in the applications side didn't give much insight on what allows you to build 'em, 3 months of extensive reading in systems did give me a fair idea though!

Another couple of weeks..

No time at all for now, am just nearing the end of my first semester. I'll be back with a bang though sometime later with renewed energy. Damn.. sounds cliched, ain't it?
As the tour down under draws near, the aussie papers have started beaming about our man..

Destination: Burma (Myanmar)

Rocky Balboa.. John McClane - we saw them get back last year belting the hell out of whoever came against them and now its time to let the master enter - John Rambo. Yeah, he looks old after his Vietnam stint, but then you can't count him out. Waiting for January 25th..

Hilarious!

And its been under construction for ages! Back of the envelope calculations say that if one wants to fly from Delhi to Bangalore on one of those happy-go-lucky cheap tickets - one still ends up paying 1700(tax) + 1500(ferry) + 1(Best case) = 3201, which implies the ticket actually costs you 0.000312 of the total amount! :D Now there's some staggering planning which has gone in, ain't it? Burst with laughter..

T(h)rash the Dell Vostro 1500

This post was long long due and in fact Harish, a pal of mine from my Huawei days had also asked me about the same. Somehow we know what to expect from each other at times.. :D

Any new technical gadget from a laptop to a sleek mp3 player deserves a mention, who more than Venu would agree on that. ;) I'll restrict myself to the former here, a piece that I bought a couple of months back. In a nutshell, it was a hasty decision.

Vostro 1500, launched by Dell a few months back was a much anticipated product, such that even Walter Mossberg wrote about it. But then I had purchased it by then. Before starting, my ideal laptop definition (without considering the RAM, HDD and other customizable factors) would incorporate the following -

• Light, its a 'lap'top after all
• Quick to come up after a standby or power save mode
• needless to say, slick screen display

Vostro 1500 is everything but that. At 6.7 pounds I'll put it as a mini desktop with laptop like features. Perhaps I was asking too much, but a laptop should epitomize 'lightness' when it comes to weight. Needless to say that at 6.7 pounds its a back belter! How I wish IBM was a touch cheaper..

Frequent BSODs, failure to come up after standbys and hibernate failures - Welcome to Dell. Sometimes it is quite infuriating to see such brands perform so miserably such that you vow never to purchase their products again. Dell's just landed in that category for me. At a low volume, it'll also mix an agonizing burr when you plug in your earphones. Now that's an unwanted freebie.

There have been apparently some decent reviews on Vostro and sometimes I wonder if they were using some other machine while writing the review, or did Dell dispatch a wrong product to me! Sadly, none of them is true. May be I expect too much in $800 odd but then this product simply defies the concept of a laptop.

Vostro was supposed to be the second generation of the Inspiron series, but I guess the only thing that they have improved is the sturdiness of this laptop. Got a burglar at home, don't worry, just whack him with the Vostro, and he's all yours! 

Perhaps I was too harsh on Vostro, but then it hurts when your $850 doesn't give you a good feel in the age when every 'other' firm is trying to bring some real sleek gadgets in this category. Once Dell, Never Again!

Quantum Gradanamics!

This one's an absolute peach! :D

'Halloween' be thy name!

An end-term exam day after, but I couldn't let go off getting a feel of Halloween after all! Incredible and spooky at the same time - it was quite unbelievable to see an entire bandwagon parading through downtown here in Austin wearing in the most wierd attire you can imagine! Happy Halloween.. :D

I wasn't really sure of the historical details associated with this, but then Wikipedia gives it all. In a nutshell,

The modern holiday of Halloween has its origins in the ancient Gaelic festival known as Samhain (pronounced /ˈsˠaunʲ/ from the Old Irish samain). The festival of Samhain is a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture, and is sometimes erroneously regarded as the "Celtic New Year". Traditionally, the festival was a time used by the ancient pagans to take stock of supplies and slaughter livestock for winter stores. The ancient Gaels believed that on October 31, the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead overlapped and the deceased would come back to life and cause havoc such as sickness or damaged crops. The festivals would frequently involve bonfires, where the bones of slaughtered livestock were thrown. Costumes and masks were also worn at the festivals in an attempt to mimic the evil spirits or placate them. When the Romans occupied Celtic territory, several Roman traditions were also incorporated into the festivals. Feralia, a day celebrated in late October by the Romans for the passing of the dead as well as a festival which celebrated the Roman Goddess Pomona, the goddess of fruit were incorporated into the celebrations. The symbol of Pomona was an apple, which is a proposed origin for the tradition of bobbing for apples on Halloween.

Enough of enlightening and as the saying goes, a picture says more than a throusand words.

P.S: There was this hilarious incident where a genuine fire brigade was rushing to some spot, and a seemingly moron chap with an axe and dressed up started sprinting behind it. To add to the hysteria, once he was done, an encore chanting 'Bravo' went up. Crazy Austin, but its fun.

Halloween Beckons!

Just an image to capture the moment. Yeah, cynics would accuse me of getting americanized! It isn't that way, its just that these folks here paint the entire picture of Halloween so well that you tend to get a li'l involved! :)

Finally!

So finally I did something which was pending since a long time now. You can now find me at my department web page. It ain't pretty for now, but atleast its there. :D

iHumor!

iMac, iPod, iPhone - Steve Jobs and Co. have given quite a few i's since the iAge took over. We all know the kind of hysteria that was on display when the iPhone was first revealed. However, humor could sometimes fit so perfectly in certain scenarios. For instance, sample this spoof on the same. Thanks to Kunal for the link.

P.S: In no way do I despise Apple or any of its products. Its just some humor out here!

Trends of a Different Sort

Trends! Beep.. Beep.. Mind says fashion or food or probably even cultural! Welcome to the Google Age and so yet another addition - Google Trends. :) The term is self explanatory but is enough to generate inquisitiveness. Although Google Trends has been there for sometime now, but then one doesn't have time to really infer from the data as such.
According to statistics provided by Google, it definitely shows some interesting patterns. PC World summarizes the same for data from 2004 (Oh c'mon, its like 3 yrs but I guess nothing much would have changed).
Indians hunt for 'sex' and Swedes hunt for 'Kate Moss' while the Americans stay glued to 'Burritos' (damn, I'm sick of Burritos). But the most interesting one would be the Latin Americanos - Mexicans and Venenzuelans lusting for 'Britney Spears'!! Why on earth do they need to hunt for anyone else? ;) Read the article here..