My first Skydive!

13000 feet, 60 seconds of freefall and 5 minutes of parachute fall!



Spent a fortune for it :( But the experience is totally worth it.

So finally after a lot of searching I could find this cheap skydiving centre which was like in the middle of nowhere! That is why it was half as expensive as compared to those in San Francisco (SFO) and still offered a jump from 13,000 feet which is much more than the 9000 feet that you could have done in SFO. This was the place for real skydivers! So, next time you are in california, don't go to SFO but Parachute Center at Acampo. This is their website:-

http://www.parachutecenter.com/

So I drove to Acampo (about 2 hrs from MountainView) . And I can't stop boasting that I drove! This is another thing that I learned here in US. I can now easily drive on US highways at the speed of 110mph (177kmph) :) You get tickets for driving so fast... Normally one should not cross 85mph. ok, enough of boasting!

We reached this place, paid money at the counter and then had to sign zillion times on a paper stating that not even the sweeper's distant uncle's uncle is responsible if something happens! Then we watched a video that explained the basics of how to jump, what pose to make during jumping, free fall and parachute fall, etc. etc. Then I met my instrucutor and my cameraman. The cameraman dives just at the same time as you and shoots your video in air! My instructor was a Japanese and I had a hard time getting his accent. After a lot of effort he explained me how to keep my legs and arms during the jump. The he put the harness on me and I was all set.

The plane landed in front of us. Such a small plane and some 15-16 of us entered it. It had just two planks of wood and we all set on after another on it like you sit on a bike. It was all cramped. After a few minutes of flying the plane became completely stable and we knew its the time.. My cameraman asked me for the last time "Are you scared?". I said "Not at all!". I was at the back of the plane and had to jump last. One after another everyone jumped. There was no time to think to get scared or nervous. Within 2 minutes all 15 of us jumped. We just moved to the edge of the plane, and before I could think my instructor and I had already jumped. We rolled a few times in air and then the instructor was able to get us balanced. We were falling freely... The feeling is awesome. But didn't get much to realise its awesomness. All the time during the freefall, the cameraman was just below me and shooting and I was involved in making poses for the camera :) Like showing thumbs up and shouting at the top of my voice :)

Then the cameraman dived away and we opened our parachute with a hard jhatka. Then slowly we descended down for over 5 minutes. We made several turns in the air by manevouring the parachute. We could see farms all around. I also did some random talk with the instructor. And then we landed.

An experience of a lifetime...

My first self-cooked dinner!

Today my roommate and I moved our lazy asses and cooked some dinner. And we completed it in a record time of 1 hour 15 minutes on our small electric stove. The menu included jeera rice, dal, mashed potatoes and panner butter masala (PBM) :D And mind you, we even made the paneer from the milk ourselves.

Here is the pic:-

And it was quite tasty given that it was our first time. Actually, I have helped my mother several times in making rice and dal, but that was more of a mechanical process where my mom would keep guiding me with the amounts of rice, waters, etc. that I needed to add and the number of whistles of the pressure cooker I needed to wait for. Today we were on our own :)

We read the recipe for PBM on net and then found out we didn't have tomoatoes and a few spices. We added some tomato sauce to compensate for the tomotaoes :P A nice looking gravy came out of that. And it tasted just fine!

Add Topcoder SRM Events to your calendar

If you don't participate in Topcoder SRMs or you don't know what Topcoder is, then this post is not for you.

Many times I miss SRMs because I simply forget to see the topcoder event calendar. If you use google calendar, use the add by url option and this to your google calendar:-
http://sprawdzaczka.ii.uni.wroc.pl/~embe/tccal.ics

Update: This calendar is no longer maintained. There is new one here that works:-
http://topcoder-calendar.appspot.com/

Other calendar softwares that support ics/iCal format(most of them do) can also use, obviously.

Now no excuse for missing SRMs :)

Thanks to embe for creating this.

IIIT Lan Browser updated for Firefox 3

ILB(IIIT Lan Browser) is now compatible with Firefox 3. Download now. Automatic updates have been disabled. To have automatic update functionality, download from mozilla website, when 1.2 becomes publicly available there, after gettin reviewed (which could take a month).