Looking back at early accidents
When I look back at my short life I can see distinct periods or chapters. The time when I moved to Chennai and joined a new school in 3rd standard was the beginning of discovery that I could do well at studies and be competitive. During that stage I found my interest in science and technology and aptitude for various extra-curricular activities like quizzing, painting, essay-writing and such. Another parallel phase started in 5th standard when I stumbled upon my interest for computers and programming. In 6th standard I realized my potential in being a leader and continued to be the class representative for most of school life capping it with my role as a School Pupil leader in 12th std. All these phases happened more or less without any conscious effort on my part. They just happened. I lot of credit goes to my family and teachers for guiding me through these. The point however is that the phase transitions were by and large accidental from my point of view.

Hmm… Can we make accidents happen?
The first time when I consciously ushered in a new phase was in 11th std. An incident at school made me introspect and got me to start the process of understanding myself and people around me. What motivates us? What do we all want? What elevates us into happiness? What drops up into the abyss of sorrow? I learnt to control my anger and to think more rationally. I learnt to observe people around me and look behind the eyes. It taught me to empathize and connect. That was when I realized that I could decide what I could do and be – that future phases in life need not be accidental.

Life is a powerful force that keeps pushing you around. I have not met anyone who is in complete control. I don’t even believe complete control makes sense in the framework of life. At best we can attempt to understand the forces behind life and learn to go with the flow. Whether or not we can influence the direction of it, we can atleast benefit from the interaction. We can learn and become better at it – at understanding. The one thing I decided not to do was to get too comfortable. Learning happens when there is a differential current in the river of life.

Undergraduation was a new phase filled with freedom, learning and fun. As opposed to school where your peers come from your immediate locality, in college, you get to meet a more diverse set. You meet people who think differently and are motivated by various ends. In understanding them there was a great opportunity to discover more of myself which I did.

Veveo – my first workplace
After college I was confused about what to do. Do I pursue higher education or should I get a job? The companies coming to my campus for recruitment were Wipro, TCS, CTS, Infosys and so on. I work profile being offered did not excite me. Pursuing MS was the option I was considering and started the application process. At that time I came to know of a startup in Bangalore who were looking to hire freshers. Having set my mind on MS, I applied to this company half-heartedly, more to experience the interview process than anything else. I was interviewed by two people from the company one of them a co-founder and other a VP. What hooked me was the way they interacted with me. From my point of view they were experienced professionals working in the industry having etched out successful careers and I was a little no-body – a fresher from a private college. For the first time I felt I belonged somewhere and could establish a relationship based on mutual respect. I had always detested the authoritarian nature of our society. In schools and colleges I saw a lack of reciprocative respect from the faculty. Our society has a lot to learn in terms of treating each other humanely. Anyway, that’s that. I got hooked and told my family. Despite their concerns about this being a “small” company without “security”, I decided to dive in head long to discover the “insecurity” of being in a puny startup. Thus I joined Veveo.

Veveo was a very productive experience. I discovered startup culture and rediscovered myself. I walked up to the co-founder who interviewed me after getting my first paycheck and thanked him for paying me for having fun at work. That is a double scoop. I could not believe that was happening to me. For the first time in my life, I felt I belonged in a group. I found people who thought like me with whom I could share my ideas and I found other smart people who were so different that I would spend countless hours bludgeoning their logic (and getting bludgeoned too . The 4.5 years of experience at Veveo feels more than the sum of what I had experienced before. Phew! What a ride it has been. The day I quit Veveo, I found it difficult to justify my decision to do so. Even today the thought is not extinct.

What next?
Looking back I realize that I was getting too comfortable at Veveo. A good work environment, nice people and wonderful pay — yummy! Time for an adventure. I came up with an idea for making a physics simulation engine to aid game devs in creating awesome destructible environments. That was slightly more than a year back. I worked on it part-time in the evenings and weekends and then in March last year I requested my superior to release me so I could do it full-time. Much to my surprise he offered a part-time schedule where I could work at Veveo three days a week and spend the rest working on my project. This opportunity was god-sent and I lapped it up. A friend of mine from college who was also my roomie quit his job and joined me to work on this full-time.

The period since March last year is easily the most productive and exciting phase of my life. I have learnt immensely on a multitude of subjects – technology, project management, startup fundamentals, spirituality and philosophy, business development etc. The experience has altered me as a person and opened up avenues of my brain which I thought inexistent. I decided to take a plunge into this world full-time and took that step. I quit Veveo to work on this full-time from Jan this year. The journey so far would have been but a dream had it not been for support from my family, friends and colleagues at Veveo. Thank you all for being there.

Startups businesses are difficult beasts to tame and most people get flattened. The promise of glory (and $’s ) is a worthy lure for a persistent one. I intend to succeed doing this but failure is no less a success considering the path you tread and the things you experience. I will keep you posted in the forthcoming articles on this blog. A new chapter awaits.

Aliaser works by monitoring your bash history. It analyses command frequency and suggests candidates for aliasing. It manages aliases so created. The feature I like most in Aliaser is that it reminds you to use the aliases you created by showing tips on opening a new terminal session.

Download Aliaser from http://aliaser.googlecode.com.

Here is my recipe (sourced from my wife)

• Decide how much rice you want and what kind.
  • for one person, 1/2 cup measure (cup from Vasu’s kitchen (how much in metric units?))
  • Rice types
    • Normal rice – The kind that you get in restaurants and in homes usually. The rice particles do not stick to each a lot and their shape is more or less well defined. It is not soggy.
    • Soft rice – Softer than normal rice. Easy on digestion. You don’t have to chew much. Just pop in the morsel and swallow (Prashanth kind of rice ). Rice particles stick to each other but you can still make out the shape of each particle. Very easy to squeeze each particle to paste. Not soggy.
    • Very soft rice – Softer than soft rice. Very easy on digestion. Nice to have when you are sick. The morsel slithers down your throat (almost). Soggy.
• Water requirement (for x units of rice)
  • Normal and soft rice: 2.5x in inner vessel and 1.5x in outer vessel (cooker)
  • Very soft rice: 2.75x water in inner vessel and 1.75x in outer vessel.
• Start heating and before putting the cooker weight, wait till steam starts coming out.
• How long to wait?
  • Soft rice: 4 whistles on high and 2 on simmer
  • Very soft rice: 6 whistles and 2 on simmer
  • Normal rice: 3 whistles on high and 1 on simmer.

Hmmm… I am going to try it now. Let us see what happens…

Knock … Knock …

Bleh! Bleeeeh!

I’m awake folks. Will resume posting soon

vikraman: hey!
me: hey, solra.
vikraman: just to say hi
me: hi
vikraman: hi
me: okay. bye.
vikraman: bye

If you want to have more interesting conversations with my friend Vikraman, head over to his blog.

Here are a couple of Marvin videos.

It has been a long break. A lot of things have happened since the last time I blogged. I finished college and got a job in a Tech start-up in Bangalore. Been here since then. I got married a few months back. My perspective towards technology has evolved since I left college. I’ve worked on a couple of interesting projects at work and it has been a roller-coaster ride.

Python has displaced Visual-Basic as my language of choice. I’ve finally succeeded in making the switch to Linux thanks to Ubuntu (I remember the pain of getting X to work in “Red Hat Linux” 5.x) and have not looked back since.

The company I work goes by the name “Veveo”. It is headquartered in Boston, USA. We are working on a powerful search technology for input-constrained devices like Mobile phones, Televisions etc. Our product “VTap” is scheduled to launch the 10th of September. At work I have been involved in building the web crawling infrastructure and It has been a wonderful experience. Many a naive notion I held has been quashed, especially that scalability is a non-issue. Even the simplest of algorithms/techniques often struggle to scale.

I am working on two projects at home. One is a game called “Lord of the bots” where participants write code to control “bots” and the other is “Mentat” which is about creating a highly user-friendly and accessible computer experience.

I will have more to say about these soon.

I wanted a Palm top computer for many reasons ( A very important and significant one being “for showing off” ). My cousin in Canada offered to buy one for me and she did. I had to wait for a year to get it to India because I could not afford to get it shipped fearing the hefty customs duty.

The month I got it, I was mesmerized because that was the first time I had handled a touch-screen and Grafitti nearly took my breath away. I spent the following weeks downloading applications for it.

Slowly but eventually I realized that the Palm OS in it was very very buggy. It kept crashing once in a while and I had to keep soft resetting the device. Although this was a nuisance, It did not really hinder its usage. What I dreaded was the hard resetting which erases all the memory and the only way to restore from backups on the PC. The device also has a zillions problems with graphics and the 16Mhz DragonBall Motorola processor inside is a joke when it comes to running applications with even slightly demanding processing requirements.

So the one application I really found useful was one that painted the whole screen black and effectively converted the palm into a mirror where I could study my harried face (very thoughtful of the guy who wrote this wonderful piece of software. Also I’m surprised that the OS could actually run this complex resource hungry program without a hitch – As an aside, this might be because I did not realize the difference when the screen froze).

It is then that I had this divine vision where I saw Bill gates with a copy of Windows 98 and many people around him. Wait a minute!! These people were really angry. Really, Really angry! The whole place was stinking. Oh ok, these guys had rotten tomatoes and eggs loaded into giant catapults ready to cut the restraining ropes. Then I saw myself manning one of them with a Palm III xe. I was showing off to all the people around me about how I could calculate the exact trajectory for my load of rot to strike Billy’s face. People walked me to the front lines and elected me the chief rot-thrower and gave me the esteemed job of launching first. I aimed the catapult and started taking the reading off my palm when it crashed. I was flabbergasted and did not know what to do. The dumb thing just would not work. I closed my eyes – thought hard and came up with a random angle and aimed my catapult. I launched with closed eyes and listened with closed eyes for a while. I heard the sound of tomatoes and eggs landing and breaking. I risked a quick look from in-between closed eye-lids and saw the horror of horrors. The catapult has misfired and people around me were covered with rot (they looked very funny and I might have laughed but for the fact that they all seemed extremely angry).

I heard catapults being moved and aimed and a angry buzz all around. I huddled up and waited for the inevitable and it did come. A thousand “Splotches” on and around.

You know what, I am going to sell that damn thing. Also, I’m going to stop blaming MS for writing buggy software.

What did you say? What am I going to do with the cash I get for selling the palm? What else?

A KILOGRAM OF BATH SOAP, SHAMPOO AND A LITRE OF BODY SPRAY

We chose this hill for several reasons

1) It is bigger than the one we went to last time

2) It is close as before to my place (in Maraimalai nagar)

3) We wanted to try out a hill with ample vegetation (although we were to have a particularly painful surprise later in the evening)

Aditya (my friend from Computer science department) and I went for a recon mission to check out a viable route to the location along with a place to leave the bikes and bags that we wouldn’t need on the hill. This was at 2:00 P.M.

After having found a comfortable route, we memorized the landmarks and the route and headed back to home-base (fancy! Well I like to dramatize) i.e to my place. We packed in all the stuff we would need like water bottles, matches, a frying-pan, spatula, egg-box, a pruning knife to make way for us on the hill, a digital camera to take snaps of us conquering the peak, kerosene, newspapers, piece of old cloth etc. Having done with the packing we started off on bike to meet the rest of the people (Vikraman, Sridhar, Sudheer, Jatin) at Guduvancheri bus-stop. We bought some eggs there and checked our torch-lights and then set off on two bikes to the location. You might be wondering how two bikes and six people went together, well, I should say, just like last time!

We parked the bikes in a house near to the foot of the hill (which reminds me of Vikraman who was quite eager to have a snap taken with the lady over there and would have gone on to do so had not her husband come out then). Then we started walking towards the hill. After a kilometer’s walk we got there.

We found a used track and decided to follow that instead of cutting right across the vegetation. We later thanked our past selves for having taken that decision because we found that the vegetation on the hill was not very friendly. In fact, at any attempt at friendly contact, they pricked us to hell . Most plants there were thorny and we found it increasingly hard to keep going and I would not blame Sudheer for being especially whiny and for constantly reminding us that we were out of our minds and for dragging him into hell’s drawing room! (Of course he was the happiest of the lot after the trek got over. He kept saying “Man, that was wonderful”. Although I suspect he was happy for other obvious reasons).

We labored hard for the next hour up the slope. Along the way we made many more friendly “contacts” with our vegetarian friends. We stopped only to take snaps and to check on the painful rewards that had been proffered us by them. I remember Vikraman exacting particularly venomous vengeance on one Cactus plant that dared prick him. He used the pruning knife liberally and did away with it.

Half-way up the hill we dropped the plan of reaching the hill top for various reasons like failing light, fear of vile reptiles and of course because we found no track.

We made a stone stove and collected dry twigs and started a fire to heat the pan. As soon as the pan got heated we started making omelets. That was real good fun. After eating them and getting various parts of our bodies singed we started the descent.

It was tough initially due to the steepness of the slope but after some time we got used to that and descended faster. Mid-way down the slope it grew dark and we switched on our torch lights but realized that the light they were producing would not do and until that realization came about we ran into some more of our vegetarian friends. Then we stopped and made a kerosene cloth torch with a stick that we cut out of a plant and wrapping the old cloth around it. We wetted the cloth with kerosene and put a burning match to it and Viola! – Light.

Feeling very much like primitive cave men, we got to the foot of the hill and found that we could not figure out the way out to the road. After a fifteen-minute period of utter confusion we happened upon one dirt track and following which we reached a spot we had been to before and instantly tracked it down to the house where we left our bikes.

The amused residents looked at us and the kerosene torch and I heard quite a few snickers around us. We said goodbye to them and biked it to the bus stop where out trek ended.

I almost forgot to mention that we found treasure on the hill. Well not gold nuggets and all but seeds! (Well, should not have said treasure – something interesting then). These were colored red and black and shaped like eggs. I have seen them being used as eyes in idols of Lord Vinayaka.

It was quite hot that day. I had not slept properly the night before, slept maybe only for an hour and a half if I stretch the definition of an hour. What was I doing all night, you may ask. Well, I was breaking my head over the course material for this esoteric subject called “Mobile communication”. The first time I heard of that phrase – I told myself, “Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy” style: “Don’t panic!” Then I tried to reason it out.

“What’s so tough about this one? Sounds fairly simple doesn’t it (said my stupid half). Let’s put it this way it is ‘mobile’ and it is ‘communication’, so it must be about cellular phones and stuff” That is how far I delved into this “interesting, thought-provoking, totally exhilarating (and other such heavy adjectives)” subject.

Being involved in organizing my department’s symposium – Cressida 2004, I did not find much time to attend classes (I made sure I did not anyway . However, out of extreme interest and owing to my deep passion towards this subject, I forced myself to attend exactly two hours. The teacher was talking about satellites and how they help in communication. I happen to like satellites and anything to do with space etc and I told myself (Well, my stupid half) “This subject is a piece of cake. I can crack it in no time. Why do people make a big deal of it?”

That is how I spent time until 12 hours before the exam. I had gone to a movie the day before. I had come back and casually flipped through the text (one of many). I went straight to the satellites section and finished the unit in two hours.

You might be wondering why I have digressed so much from what I intended to talk about. The fact is I still do intend to speak about that and you should understand that I like to give long preambles to set the stage and of course to make for compelling reading! So let us go on with what we were talking about.

Just as I digressed now, my thoughts suddenly found a juicy thought-line in the middle of pondering over the equations for satellite orbital calculations. The topic my brain wanted me to consider was about the forthcoming holidays (Phew! Here we go). Some things in live are always the same and repeat over and over again. What I am talking about is the tendency of exam-troubled minds to waver from the “interesting-not-so-little-monstrous-equations” neatly printed on “equally-interesting-monstrous” textbooks (Did I use ‘interesting’ in the wrong way? Maybe a preceding ‘un’ will be more like it) and to inevitably choose topics like “what do I do in the holidays?” “How is the next semester going to be” “How not to get stuck in last-minute studies!” etcetera etcetera.

Damn! Why the hell can’t I stick to the topic of discussion? Looks like a chronic disease I’ve to consult my psychiatrist about. By the way, in thinking about, not digressing or rather why I do, am I not doing so further? And by doing so, am I not doing so even more? And by …….. DAMN! STOP!

Heeeheee, as I was saying, Minds do waver a lot to topics like I mentioned above, and mine tends to choose the first one more than anything else. The very thought of which excites the trillions of neurons up there into neurosis driven pandemonium. Well that is for an intelligent biology student to ponder over. As for the rest of us, that translates into me jumping off the chair and grabbing a poor sheet of bond paper (Which had been napping for aeons). Then I put my mind to work on the various things under the sun that I could do in the holidays. I spent two hours this way not realizing that time just sneaked past me. I looked up and back at the sheet and realized as always that it was overflowing with bulleted items.

The list is something like this.

• Go to the gym and work like a bull. Why you ask? Do you think I would really mind flaunting a chick in an open top jeep with a tight muscle hugging shirt with sleeves rolled up half the way to show my biceps and of course the triceps too and my bulging rock-like chest with armor plated abs right below? (It looks a lot like I want to be Suria of Kaakha Kaakha, doesn’t it?

• Work on project X and impress prof Y as soon as college opens for the next semester

• Finish coding for another project and earn billions of greenies overnight.

• Go to coffee day and show off the bi’s (That is a bit too much of planning!)

• Learn C,C++,Java,C#,VB.NET, Python, Lisp, Ruby, Haskell, Prolog, Smalltalk

• I forgot to mention Ada ?

• Pull Linux down to its nuts and bolts and put it all back together and make a custom build named “Elinora core 2”.

• And so on (many more awe-inspiring plans which I’m very good at cooking up)

“Don’t get fooled by the lack of too many points above, I had an a4 sheet overflowing with them on both sides with handwriting the size of 8pt”

Well, I took a smug look at the list (as always i.e. as far back as I can remember, almost). Then with immense satisfaction at how cleverly I had worked out how to spend time during the holidays and with self-adoration about how planned and meticulous I was, I stretched my aching muscles and relaxed my equally tired mind. My eyes suddenly fell upon a round object pasted (or maybe hung) on the wall. Bleary-eyed, I deduced that it must be a clock because the probability of anything else climbing up the wall was extremely low (Grumble, grumble – Too much math spoils your mind, doesn’t it?). The clock said “It’s 3 A.M idiot, what the F**& are you doing?” I said to myself “Oh my god! What the F*&* am I doing!”

Then again I told myself “Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy”-style, “Don’t Panic”. “You finished a unit in two hours and you can finish the rest equally fast or maybe much faster”. Then again like so many times before, my stupid half said “Since we have that solved, why don’t you give yourself a much deserved break? You can wake up early (What was I thinking? It was 3 AM already) and continue”. My better half pondered over this and in a moment of infinite stupidity said “Well, why didn’t I think of that?” and so I did sleep but of course not before setting the alarm to 4:30 AM as any obedient student would do.

“People were chattering like monkeys in the college campus (Am not sure whether they looked like or whether they really were). Everyone was exchanging notes and of course moaning about how crappy a subject “MOBCOM” is. But I, never! How could I stoop as low as to study on the day of the exam, as always I was well prepared and amply equipped with loads of ammunition like blue, black, green, red, pink, yellow ball pens and thick-nib felt-tip sketch pens and of course rulers of two sizes and then spares for all these along with erasers, sharpeners, lead boxes, pencils and the like. The exam bell rang I walked into the hall head held high. I sat in my place and got my sheet from the invigilator who looked at the pile of stationery beside me on the desk with what looked like bewilderment. I told myself, Hah! Who do you think this is? It isn’t some nitwit jack-ass. This is ME! Then I saw the question paper and instantly I could see answers to all questions, thanks to my well prepared and sharpened mind. The last thing I remember is bending down over the answer sheet. Screech screech scratch scratch screech zoom zip zip screech. I sat back and looked at my wrist watch and noticed that an hour and half had gone past. I smiled to myself with extreme self satisfaction! The answer sheet looked a lot like one of Leonardo Da Vinci’s specification sheets for one of his many inventions, filled with intricate diagrams drawn with an eye for perfection and text as elegant as any modern day laser printer can churn out and decoration as aesthetic as can be done with an advanced modern day DTP software. I stood up and walked out of the hall.

But then as soon as I walked out I felt intense heat and extremely bright light and the chirping of birds Maybe god has come down to congratulate me! But wait , what is this annoying beeping sound, did I not turn my cell phone off? Then I felt it, I was being sucked out and the world around me became a dark mist”

Beep Beep Beep (“Wake up you ass, have been shouting myself hoarse for the past two hours! What the hell are you dreaming about” said my clock) Beep Beep ! The morning sun was beating down on my face. It was hot and bright and a crow was cawing right outside my window. I felt quite drowsy and the gears in my brain started to grind forward incessantly. It was then that I realized “Oh my god! I am so screwed! So much so that I could screw up no further!”. The clock said “6:30 AM”. “Oh my god, I’m so screwed”.

In the next two and half hours I used up more adrenaline than the lone agent BJ Blackowitz in the final level of “Return to castle wolfenstein”! It is not that this is new to me as it most surely isn’t to most of us (A special breed, aren’t we? Last-minute-crammers, I would say)

Here is what followed. I went to college at 9:30 AM. The exam was to start in a half hour. People were chattering like monkeys in the college campus. Everyone was exchanging notes and of course moaning about how crappy a subject “MOBCOM” is. And I to myself “And what are you waiting for? Go fall at someone’s feet and beg for some last minute tutelage” I spent the next twenty-minutes like that. Then I opened my bag to check for all the things I would need. Well, the hall ticket – ok, ID card – ok, pen – nope, pencil – nope, eraser – nope! Eeep! I ran like a maniac to the stationery shop and spat some mangled words at the lady there. She gave me puzzled look and then it dawned upon her “Another one of those weird last-minuters who’s forgotten his ammo!”. She promptly brought me all that I needed and I paid for it. I was shaking miserably. I ran into the exam hall sweat pouring in water-falls all over. Another puzzled look and another dawning of understanding and the sheets were pushed into my hands. I saw the question paper and instantly I could make out that is did not look anything like my intended paper. I got up and asked the invigilator who checked the subject code and told me that it was indeed the paper I was to take. Puzzled, I sat down. I might as well have been attempting to write IIT entrance. The last thing I remember is bending down over the answer sheet. Snore Snore zzzzzz zzzzz Snore gurrrr Snore. I sat up and looked at my wrist watch and noticed that an hour and half had gone past. I panicked, however I told myself “Don’t Panic” (yeah “Hitchhikers guide to galaxy – style”). I looked around and saw faces similar to mine around and even more others bent in intense concentration as if it took that look on the face and that leaking of saliva from the corner of the mouth to churn out answers to questions!.

But then I had to write something on the as-yet-not-written-upon-answer-sheet. I pretended to be letting out some methane from a vent conveniently provided (thanks god!) and leaned to the left and caught sight of some equations(pah!) then I tried the other direction and was more lucky , Diagrams! I took a mental snapshot of that. Then I sat down to answer the question “4) Define the law of exponential path loss in a free-space environment interspersed with foliage, also account for diffraction and reflection effects introduced by interfering mountain peaks and man-made structures like buildings and also account for the brewster’s angle. Of course we expect you to derive the final equation.”

Well I knew the diagram (atleast in part) to start with. The answer was something like “ Definition : It is to be noted that cellular instruments emit waves in the higher frequency range of the EM spectrum which are thus susceptible to effects such a diffraction and reflections as can be ascertained by Maxwell’s equations. These waves follow the ….

I needed to put in some flashy equations. But how? I remembered Vivek writing down some greek alphabets for my benefit. So I started like this

1) pick some flashy greek symbols (eta, alpha , beta, phi, gamma, epsilon etc)

2) pick a few flashy math symbols (integral, delta, summation)

3) Pick some subscripted English alphabets that look intelligent – PLfoliage , PLbuilding (BTW PL = Path loss, look at the question!)

4) Cook up a fancy equation

PL(total) = 3/5 (integral) limit eta to alpha (PL(foliage) – PL(building)/Brewster’s constant + summation (4*PI / gamma)

Believe me, that looked very impressive on paper and with the actual symbols thrown in. I really won’t mind if you use these technique yourself but I do expect to be treated in the canteen if you clear the paper and of course not to be bothered in case you do not.

Well then, getting back to my narration, I spent the next one and half hours like this putting my mind to the highly demanding task of making up my own equations. After aeons of arduous work, I stopped to admire my work. I looked at my answer sheet and found that it looked like the splotchy scribbling of a baboon in African jungles gone mad (Now, now I am not sure if there are baboons in African forests okay? So don’t point that out as a flaw! Please people, allow me to go on). The equations however looked very very intelligent and I liked that very much. Lost in deep self-admiration at my ingenuity I did not notice that I had only two more minutes left. I frantically finished the last question and took out a black ball pen and started underlining “Important points” in a hurry. In someplaces , the “important points” had the privilege of having a neat horizontal tear in the page under them. I am sure they must have liked it! (Now, my imagination is running wild, isnt’t it?). Well just before I finished the last two pages the bell rang and the invigilator walked up to me and said “Stop writing”. I was quite determined to finish the job and did not stop. He pulled the answer sheet from under the freaking black ball pen. Now, some unimportant points had the privilege of having a cross – tear. What followed was a 5 second tussle for the answer sheet which concluded only after I was reminded through a threat that they could and in fact would honour my paper with an all-round horizontal tear if I kept this up.

“Well, I told myself. I’m doomed. There goes a paper. An arrear. Oh god! Why me? Why why?”.

I came out hoping against hope that other people hadn’t fared any better and to my relief there were quite a few, In fact they were in majority and that is what makes me still talk about this paper in a manner so light.

It was quite hot that day.

One or two exams later, holidays started.

“Phew! Exams are over finally. What a relief. Now let me look at the list I made for the holidays.” I rummaged through the pile of papers on my desk and found the sheet and after I looked at it for a while, said to myself “Come on now, you have one and a half months to go, that is 45 days, 1080 hours! Give yourself a break and take some time out to have fun”

I spent the next week in the city, going around. I went to Besi-beach, Coffee day and a zillion other places, saw two movies, played a lot of Civ3 etc. Then came the day after these got over.

I looked at list and said to myself “Aren’t you tired after that hectic week? Of what harm is one day lost? Come on now. Don’t be a Mr.Do-it-right!”

I spent the whole day listening to music, reading some e-books, mailing people, reading news online. Then I had a sumptuous lunch and then slept for a while during which I had dreams of dating and I prefer “Alyssa Milano, Jennifer Aniston, Demi moore and the likes”

Then I sat on the comp till dinner, playing more games and writing more mail. Then I went for dinner at Andhra mess and “Orru vettu vettiten”. Then again I got back to the comp and after 11:00 PM I sat down to chat with people online as net is free for me then and of course did all the chores that guys do online.

I woke up late the next day morning and as usual repeated the same thing all over again. I have a feeling human lives are meant to go in circles!

The most productive thing I’ve done so far is going for a Trek with Vikraman and Sridhar (Thanks vik for dragging me away from the comp). I had great fun and plan to do it again.

The second most productive thing is writing this long long blog for your benefit.

Hoping that everyone is stuck in the same routine (diabolical grin),

We scaled the hill in not more than half an hour and after some site-seeing and gasping at the wonderful sight of the surrounding. It gives you a sense of infinite elation to be at the top of a mountain (well well, a hill). I spent some time on a rock perched precariously on the edge of a cliff fancying myself to be Edmund Hillary on mount Everest’s peak!, besides trying Leonardo Dicaprio’s flying act on the Titanic which was great but for the fact that I had to suffice with Vikraman in place of Kate Winslet. Well maybe next time, just maybe it will turn out better.

I shouldn’t forget to mention how we made a fire and an improvised stove built with rocks and fed with dry twigs. We roasted some chicken pieces Tandoori style and spend the next hour blowing out fire where I suddenly felt like a fiery Horntail right out of a Harry Potter novel!

We took some snaps and I’ll put them up as soon as them come from the lab. It was a superb experience and am looking forward to the next one – maybe a ride on one of the many “catamarans” of the Marina. Now that promises to be even more fun (and I can do that Titanic thing again!).

So it all came down to me having to format C: and to re-install everything. I made a mental note never to mess with partitions (that is the 37th time!).

Well, so today’s lesson for everyone is “DO NOT MESS WITH PARTITIONS!”

There are two things that brought me back to blogging after the initial burst when my enthusiasm lead me to post 1 blog!

• In anticipation of a gmail account!
  
• because I still think it is cool
  

Well, as a start, let me introduce myself

I am Prashanth Ellina, a student of SRM Engineering College, Chennai, India. I am doing a B.Tech in Information technology and am in the final year now.

I like computer programming, keep up with tech news, reading science fiction and watching sf movies, am a fan of Isaac Asimov. I like talking about anything techy under the sun and about space flight, astronomy, interesting ways to spend time, fun things to do, cosmology, wars and weapons.

My favorite computer game is Civilization III. I spend days and days in front of my comp screwing the Germans to glory and of course my favorite civilization is India.

My academic interests include Robotics, Artificial intelligence, Neural computing, bio-inspired computing, Evolutionary computing, Genetic algorithms, Multi-agent systems etc.

My favorite movies are The Matrix trilogy, Independence day 4, Star wars and I can spend hours and hours just talking about the intricacies of the Matrix.

I code a lot in Visual basic and have just begun my foray into Linux and open source stuff which I think is really cool. I do take a lot of interest in what Microsoft( I used to say M$ before but stopped after hearing about the nice things they are doing from Sriram ) is upto. I am vastly interested in the upcoming Longhorn and ancillary technologies.

I need to credit Vivek srikumar for inspiring me to start blogging again.

That’s for now people.