Rona dhona...

Got the first C at IIIT this semester. Its not that I am pissed off at getting C. I am expecting D or even F in compilers and similar low grades in a few other courses as well. But what I am pissed off at is that I got a C in an HSSM, Philosophical Discussions on Human Desires to be precise. This was the course that I was counting on as the saviour of my SGPA this sem! I always heard from my seniors that the least that you can get in Human Desires is B. And most probably one gets A or A-. To make matter worse, I have taken STS(Science, Technology and Society) this sem which is again under the same prof. Looks like I need to be a regular in STS and keep asking doubts to the prof to ensure that he considers me a sincere student and gives me a better grade this time.

Ain't it cool?

Warning : This is a crap post ... so read it at your own risk....

Hey... I have edited my template and gave it a totally new look. The new blackish template looks fcuking cool to me. Hover your mouse at the bookmarking buttons at the bottom of each post. Such a nice effect. But I haven't seen any comments saying its good. Isn't it cool? Or is it that exams' tension is stopping people from reading blogs and dropping comments. Or is wireless LAN not working? Or is net not working? Or is slow net keeping people from reading blogs ?

Or is it the thing that I fear the most... its fcuking bad? No No. Please don't say that. I made it during the exams. Devoted(or wasted?) so much time on it during exams. Hey, I know my template is worthy of appreciation. At least its not copied. I mean I edited an existing template on blogspot to get to this. This is the original template:-



And here is current template(just for the sake of future reference):-



I call this "Black Beauty".
Some of you might prefer the original one. But then thats one of the standard 30 templates that blogspot offers. And you will find hundreds of users using those same 30 templates. Having your own distinct template makes you feel happy.

PS: Nowadays I am posting so much crap ;) So from now on I will put a warning on every post :)
PS1: Firefox has updated its list of recommended addons (extensions).

Omkara Song Video Spoof by IITD Guys

Its quite good. Watch it.

Technorati: personal, life, bakwas, video

My take on attendance policy

A hot debate is going on on Karan's blog regarding the attendance policy. Here I am presenting my own views and solutions.

My Views:-
1. 85% is too much. Should be reduced to 70%.
2. Reducing grades should not be the punishment for less attendance. Faculty says you perform bad if u dont attend classes. So we already get punished by getting bad grades. Then why to reduce grade further on top of it.

Note: Faculty says we perform bad if u we dont attend, not I :) There are tens of examples of students who got an A and then their grade is reduced because of less attendance(including me :( ). So, in a way faculty's argument itself is at fault. Either way, its proved that reducing grade is not a solution.

My Solution:-
If at all there has to be a punsihment, then it should be doing some kind of social work for a week or two, like teaching slum kids, etc. Or may be attend Jivan Vidya for a week. Prof. Sangal will agree to it :) There should be an FSIS where we can say to the faculty to change the punishment to doing social work.

My new home page

So now my new home page is up and running at http://students.iiit.ac.in/~sandeep_kr . Its just a copied template copied from Gaurav Garg of stanford. I came across this template when skp came across Gaurav Garg's template and copied it :P I like it as its very simple yet looks good.... and professional.
Right from my second sem, I always wanted to change the stupid home page that I made in first year as a part of ITWS1 assignment. But could never find time for it or I should rather say could never devote time to it even when I had plenty. Now finally its complete and I think looks good enough and should not any require any major change for atleast this year. BTW I am talking as if I did a great job. I just copied :D and to add to that its nowhere near to sites of good website-makers of our college. To know what I am talking abt just have a look at Tarun Nayak's home page. or look at himashu arora's websites(his home page not working, visit this) or those of Devansh Mittal. (sorry if i missed someone). For more astounding works of Tarun Nayak see this page. He is too good!

PS: See my bookmarks. They are exactly same as the bookmarks stored by firefox in my PC. I use winscp's scripting power to scp my firefox's bookmarks.html file to my 200 account 8 times a day.
PS1: Yes, I still work on windows for most of the time. So, I had to use winscp.
PS2: Is their some better method to make my bookmarks public?

Technorati: life, personal, template, bookmarks, firefox

Shifting to Linux....

It may sound weird for a IIITian to shift to linux so late... 3rd year. There are linux bonds in our batch like Bharat Joshi and Nishant Shobhit who are using it from the first day they brought their PCs. But I simply didn't require linux.
Windows has:-
1. Phodu(good) User Interface
2. Easy software installation.(compare it eith rpms, dependencies, yum , etc.)
3. Games : The most important one.
People may disagree with my views.
Also those points mentioned above are not the main reason for me to use windows. The main thing is that I got used to working on windows and coding in linux(mirage) using putty and listening music in the background in the first year. I was also enthusiastic about linux but sadly our poor PC wouldn't support it. Just in 64MB RAM, you can't think of using linux in graphical mode. After working on windows for 1 full semester, I got habituated to putty and I prefer putty over gnome-terminal/kde-terminal. Its 'instant' copy-paste is too good. Since I coded in linux only, I can also say I used to 'be' on windows and work in linux. So getting the best of both worlds :)
In second year I stopped using mirage but still worked on linux on my friends's machine using putty through my windows PC. I never needed linux on my PC except for the kernel installation assignment in OS.
But now the time has come. How can a geek love windows? No, I am not shifting to linux to be called a geek but simply because I need to. Being in CVIT and working on images and videos, I can no longer use my old putty.(Images you can still handle using Xservers but video? no you can't). So saying goodbye to the faithful Windows OS and stepping into a new home - Linux.
Its not that I am totally new to linux. I know how to install rpms, and how to install using source code, etc. But now linux will be my mainstay - coding, browsing, music, movies - except for games, of course.
I have recently installed FC5 on my PC and learnt to use yum. Its extremely helpful. I als0 intalled mplayer, xmms, dc++, etc. As of now everything is fine and I am loving linux.

Disclaimer: Linux lovers, its just my opinion. I never really used linux(except for coding). So I am not comparing linux and windows here. Just writing my experiences.

Technorati: linux, personal, life

Finally the project starts....

Hmm... Wasted 2 months in the name of project and did nothing.
Reason : Prof. Jawahar gave us the job to make a portal : an extremely boring job.
He told us to complete the portal in 10 days and then start with our project. It was actually 10 days work only. But it was so boring that we would work on it for 2 hours after a gap of every 10 days! And add to it Prof. Jawahar's style of asking you to change everything once you have completed. We had to change the entire(almost entire) portal 2 times. So.. 2 months passed.
Now its complete(atleast we have stopped working on it and Prof. Jawahar didn't ask us to do anything more on it.)
And now we are starting our summer project on Shot Boundary Detection. It sounded pretty boring to me at first, but after reading a few research papers I think its interseting and I am ready to dive into it!
Hope we will work sincerely on it.

Technorati: project, iiit, cvit, personal, life

Reservation - a different opinion

Till now my points were only against reservation. See my previous posts on this here and here.
But today a different point struck me. Though I am personally against reservation(as of now) but I would like someone to contradict my following point.
We all(almost) are opposing reservation with the main reason being that reservation in higher institution and at every stage of life(education,jobs,etc) is absurd. Rather, improving the education at primary and secondary schools is more important as it will automatically ensure that the BCs will perform well thereafter.
[Note : By BCs I mainly mean the BCs who are also economically weak, not the creamy layer. So, please don't bring the point that only some high-profile BCs will get the advantage.]
Now, my point - However cheap and better education govt. provides to the BCs(remember, also economically weak) the environment at homes of those poor souls won't be anywhere near to the ones that we IIITians have had. Govt. can provide free education or even free meals, but what about the study environment at home ?(better call it slum, not home, for most of the BCs). So without proper environment BCs can't compete with the non-BCs. If no reservation, then they can't get into good institutions like IIT, IIM and then they can't get good jobs. Their plight will be same as their parents. For their children, again the same environment. So this forms a vicious circle if there is no reservation, even if govt provides free education and free meals for all 3 times. Even if it provides free meals for all members of the child's family for all 3 times(not practical though), still, having a well-educated parents is a different thing. There are some who succeed ... like the story of a son of a rickshaw puller which is doing the rounds now-a-days, but thats very rare - you all will agree.

Now my real point- If we provide reservation at every level, that is, at school, at university level , in jobs, etc. Then few of the BCs will finally get a good job(though they may not be worthy). His financial condition will be much better than his parents. Also he will be much better educated than his parents, though not as good as the non-BCs who had the education in the same college. So now, his children have a much better environment at home. Now they can study nicely and might be able to compete with the non-BCs.
So providing reservation for a few years may be not be a bad idea afterall. But then their should be a strict law that the reservation will be scrapped after 'n' years. Otherwise no govt. will scrap the reservation later because of fear of losing votes.
Got my point?
Do correct me if I am wrong.
PS: Don't get emotional. Emotional comments and foul language is not allowed. Comment with a cool mind.
PS2: Don't pick a small statement from above and start contradicting it. Some small points may be little exaggarated. Comment based on your overall understanding of this post.

Technorati: reservation, personal, India

Going Home

I am going home on 7th May. But not for long :( I will be back by 15th. I am going for my sister's engagement. It would be so much fun... everyone will be present.

Technorati: life, personal, home

Debate rages over benefit of quotas

Read this article from NDTV. That is why I say "Provide scholarships to the needy not reservation". Even if an SC/ST/OBC gets an admission in a good college due to reservation, he may not have the money to pay the fees.

Technorati: reservation, personal, India

50% reservation - How's that ?

Politicians can go to any level to fill their vote banks. Now govt. is introducing 27% reservation for OBCs in 20 Central Universities including IITs and IIMs and probably that may be later extended to private institutions like ours as well. Add to it the 22.5% already present for SC/ST - total 49.5% seats are reserved. And in the remaining 50.5%, remember that we also have 33% reservation for girls!!!. So that leaves just 33.835% of total seats for GENERAL boys. WTF???
Don't we had already so much reservation?
And first of all, I don't understand why a reservation on the basis of caste/community?
Everyone knows that the benifit of reservation goes only to the better ones of the caste. It should be rather based on economic backwardness rather than social, if at all it is. Or a better idea would be to provide scholarships to the economic backward right from the primary schools to the university level intead of providing reservations.
And when Congress is introducing it, no major party seems to be opposing as it may effect their vote banks. So, its left on us to stop the govt. from enforcing this rule. In fact, SMS protests have already started :-
"Think about it, if you're giving your Class XII exams or trying for a masters in JNU, 50 per cent of all the seats are reserved. Let's start a campaign against this insanity.
- Angry Students"
One good thing about OBC reservation is that the reservation does not cover "Creamy layer". Persons having gross annual income of Rs.2.50 lakh and above come under creamy layer. Still, 27% is too much. Why not make a creamy layer rule for SC/ST as well? I guess politicians can't do that as SC/ST have long enjoyed this reservation without this rule and will protest against a change whereas OBC reservation was introduced later and the creamy layer rule was from the begining itself. But still, the creamy layer rule can easily be abused by non-salaried people.

Technorati: reservation, India, personal, OBC

Google disqualified me

Ok... so i m back to blogger's world. Actually i never left it, i read almost all blogs on smr's blogroll. But i had stopped writing myself.
So lets come to the topic. Google disqualified from Google India Code Jam for no reason(not exactly).
Actually i used three logins during the contest. Now, I don't know how they found out that. But I m frustrated because i didn't actually cheat. My original Topcoder ID is(or rather was, its deactivated now:( ) was sandy007smarty. I participated using this ID and submitted 1 question for 230.95 points. Then after some 3 hours or so , i used one of my friends ID to sign into the contest. But this time i just saw the questions of this set and didn't submit any code. Again after 1 hour or so i opened another ID and again didn't submit anything.
Now, google says(they mailed me) that its against their rule to use more than 1 login. And, therefore I m disqualified.

Now how did they found out that i was the one who used all 3 ids? I guess they extracted out my internal LAN IP because i opened all three logins from the same PC. But if they are smart enough to extract my internal IP, then don't they have the common sense to see that i didn't submit anything from other two IDs? Also the other two IDs I opened 3hrs after i submitted problems from my original id. So there is no case of cheating. Also what if some other person had participated from the same machine(its a lab PC, any1 can use) then we would both have been disqualified? This is not fair. And this is the case when they took almost 16 hrs to eliminate all cheaters and still couldn't eliminate all cheaters(there are ppl with score >249 out of 250) and falsely eliminated me.

I m not the only case. There is a guy from Dhaka who has solved around 1500 questions of ACM and is a acm tutor for his college, and google has disqalified him. See this link.Do u think a guy who solved 1500 ACM questions needs to cheat to get through the qualification round. Let me tell u that the 250 point question was really really easy(i did it in 7 mins). And the cut-off was 91, which means a guy who takes around 50-55 mins to solve such a easy question has also qualified.
Whatever, i m disqlaified and would take care that i don't do such stupid things next time.
PS: I mailed them and told them to check my past performance in Topcoder's SRMs and see that I could easily solve that question without any cheating. But their reply was negative.

Technorati: google, TopCoder, programming, contests, personal, life

High-Level Nerd

Technorati: personal, life, bakwas

Worries of a labcom

Yesterday was a really really bad day for me. Had a row with one of my batchmates .... The culprit was neither him nor I, it was the whole ug2 batch.
I don't understand why r ppl stealing RAMs, graphic cards,etc. from the labs? There are two types of stealing currently going on :-

1. Stealing from one PC of lab and putting into another PC of lab: This is the most common type of stealing and is creating a hell for we labcoms(UG2). Every hour RAM goes missing from some PC and the owner then asks us ... This is exactly what happened today. Someone stole the RAM from the PC beside me. When the owner came , he asked me. So,what do I do ? .... Its not possible for me to open the cabinet of every system and see who has put an extra RAM into his.( it can be done without opening the cabinet also, but only if u can login into it, which requires password). I can check all the PCs once a day ... but not every time(almost 4 times a day) a owner ask for his missing RAM.
So, I made a temporary arrangement for the owner(whose RAM was missing), i.e took out RAM from one of the PCs that was not being used at that time. But just 15 mins later, the owner of this PC also came. Now he started accusing me and we had a row over it. What can labcoms do yaar ? We can't sit in the lab 24hrs guarding the PCs. We are just co-ordinators.

2. Stealing RAMs from lab PCs and putting into room PCs: This is less frequent but more serious. Two batches have already been fined 8K and 16K for thefts. I don't want that two happen to us also. If one can pay 1 lakh(approx) to be in iiit and can purchase a 35K PC, then what attraction does he/she finds in a 1.5K RAM. Also almost all ppl in room have 512 MB RAM. The full 512MB is rarely utilized even if u play very high demanding games. Then why the need for more ?

Solutions:-
Don't think that labcoms are just sitting idle. We(I,GN Aditya and Mohit Jain) already had 3 meetings with Prof. Vikram Pudi regarding thefts. We suggested putting locks in every cabinet. That was the best solution we could think of.(If anyone has better soln, plz let me know). Then after discussions with faculty, Prof. Pudi decided to implement doors with swipe cards in all labs. But what can swipe cards do if the ug2 students themselves are stealing ?(Prof. Pudi first thought that students from other labs or outsiders are stealing and the cost of locks for all PCs in iiit labs is equivalent to swipe card system). So we met him again and suggested plastic locks(like what we have in teaching labs PCs) which are cheaper. Now on Monday we have a meeting with all the faculty. Hope we get locks soon. In the meantime Prof. Pudi has assured us that he will provide some temporary seal to us.
Lets hope for the best.....

PS :- 1. We are also talking with faculty about keeping the lab open during night. Lets see what comes out.
2. Feel free to give any suggestions regarding betterment of our labs.

Todays Links:-
New Video Search Engine
Google Blog Search

Technorati: personal, life, iiit, labcom

UG1 vs UG2 Surprise!!!!!

Yesterday we had a football match : ug1 main team VS ug2 Surprise - the people who seldom play football. But we still beat them..... yes we did beat.... and it was a very very very ... exciting match.
Our match was sheduled at 5pm and i don't know what enemity God Indra has with IIIT .... yes, it rained again ... not just drizzles but a full fledged rain. But see the excitement of UG2 surprise .... we still wanted to play and reached the ground 10 mins before. But alas !!, the excitement was not with the ug1 ppl. So what to do ?? ... We were fully drenched with water and there was no point in going back. we started playing amongst us .... and then ... we saw a ray of hope ... a ug1 was coming. We caught him and sent him to call the ug1 football team. And then after waiting for ages .... ug1 ppl started coming 1 by 1 ... after around one and half hours, the match finally started .
Every one played with full enthusiasam and first,we scored a goal (luckily it was me :) ). But then, they fought back and soon it was 1-1. Then we scored again ... Dhruvan took a nice header off a corner kick (i took the corner kick :)) and we were 2-1. Then till the end we were at the top, but ..... just 30 seconds before the match was supposed to end ... they scored.....so 2-2 now.
So what next ? .. played 5 mins more but with no result. Then came the penalty ... and with the Xtra quick reflexes of our goalkeeper Mohit Jain, WE WON, hurrah!!!!!!!!!!!.

But that was not all, before we could realise, we were out in the rain , fully drenched for more than 2 hours. So , I got fever and had to take paracetamol to bring down my temperature.

Oh! I forgot to mention others. Our team captain was Abheet Bharti, who made sure that every aspiring UG2 got a chance to play, sometimes in place of himself. Our other goalkeeper, Sankalp Mulye aka sikka has a few nice saves to his credit. Then, Gaurav Ruhela, whose breath taking last penalty made us win the game. Sandeep Saini and Ankur Singla(singla scored in penalty as well) did a nice job as defender. Saini made quite a few nice clearances. Anuj, Sumit,Abhay all did a gr8 job in defence and midfield. Dhruvan(not to forget his nice header), Rahul Chauhan and S Rahul were wonderful strikers.

This was the one of the best matches we ever played...... .

Technorati: personal, life, iiit, football

So Called IIIT Football Ground

I have two marks on my legs :- one on my right knee and the other on the left. One I got in a serious accident when my scooter skidded on a rainy day at a high speed on a sharp turn .... and the other .... in our Football Ground last year during 4*100 m relay race. ... and both look alike. This shows the severity of the problem.
And it happens almost daily that someone gets hurt. Yesterday only, one of my friends ( he is in our college football team) fell down and hurt his right palm ... and the midsems are approaching.
The IIIT Football ground isn't worthy of being called a ground at all. Its a desert( i really mean it). Has loads of sand and stones. I complained to the Sports Council last year .. but with no effect. I only got a reply that :" I agree with you. We will think about it. "
In the discussion forum, someone said to "plant grass on it during the summer vacation". But how can grasses grow in sand ?? We had enough rains both this year and last year , and yet u can see how much grass the ground has. The soil is the problem . Its because of the sandy soil that grasses don't grow and its again because of the soil that we get hurt severely. If u fall and ur hands skid/slide on it, the sand particles cut through the skin and aggravates the wound. Therefore i suggest that the soil should be replaced. And for this we don't need to wait till a vacation as we need in case of growing grasses.
I think the campus green club can take this issue. I am also mailing to Sports Council. Hope this year they will do something.

Technorati: personal, iiit, life, football

My Second Blog

Hey, I assure u my netxt blog's title won't be "My Third Blog". I wasn't getting any nice title .. so i used this one. So this my second blog only ... and i m out of thoughts. I dont know what to write.
Lets start with CZ. As u might have guessed, i won't have written abt CZ if i hadn't played it well today. Today i played really well and thrashed all others. I payed de_dust_2 and awp .Today i was thinking abt doing my ITWS assignment( shelve address program thru web based interface). But i couldn't do it because of CZ. Sill i searched somethings on Gooole and i got a site which provides some custom templates to u..... well i didn't like it much.. but u can check it out
..here.
Hey man , i dont know what to write ..... bye

Technorati: blogger, blogspot, blogging, personal

My first blog

Hey, today i read several people's blogs ( startes with smr's ) and finally shifted to the "BLOGGERS'S GROUP" from the group of "NON BLOGGERS". SMR's blog is really nice and it inspired me. Earlier, i used to always comment on one of my friends(Bharat) that only chutiya's blog... but now ... what r u thinking ??? .... i m not a chutiya... I have changed . I beleive :-
"CHUTIYAS DON'T BLOG".
Ok enough for today .. as i have already wriiten a lot of comments on Bharat's, sikka's, etc blogs.
So BLOGGERS JINDABAD!!!


Ps: Hey no offence meant. If u dont like , don't read my blogs in future.

Technorati: blogger, blogspot, blogging, personal