Racquet

In august I bought a squash racquet. In march this year its gone. That bloody frame made of carbon fiber broke down. The worst part is it did not happen while playing. Otherwise it would have been a consolation. Somebody borrowed from me. I lend him. He goes to his room. After minutes he discovers that racket is broken a bit. When I look at it that 'bit' was not really a bit. It was byte. Or may be megabyte if not gigabyte. Carbon fibre is supposed to last life long. That bloody quack who sold me the racquet told me this. My life goes on but its life ends. What am I supposed to do. End my life or somewhat.

Non living objects are to be used and living beings are for loving. So it's not love for racquet .But it carried more significance than just being a racquet. It was birthday gift.

Anyways there more setbacks these days than this. Nothing seems to be working in thesis these days. And I have to anyhow do it well before joining date- 28 june. Right now I have no clue how will I make it. I will make it through though. Because all things must pass! All things must pass away!

Talking sense

Why do people think that they sound more convincing by stretching R's and L's and making faces with the words and jumping around with the words. All they need to do is speak logical and sensible and intelligent things to convince people. Is it really that very difficult to say things sensibly?

When you have to say something say it. Don't over say it. Don't mix the sense of simple things with shitloads else they might get lost in the shitloads and never appear to surface of the matter.

Im staying back

So now it's official that I am staying  back at campus in summers. According to my supervisor I have to stay here at LEAST till mid of June. Good and bad in some sense. Good that I have one month more to enjoy campus life. bad that I wont make it to attend the SPIC MACY fellowship will not come after this year reason being it is offered only to students. A lot has happened. I am working more. At least trying more if not working more.

25 km cycling trip today was nice. Probably it was first time IIT Kanpur has organized such trip. The response was nothing less than humongous. 1100+ participation is something which misrepresents the usual laziness of IITK junta.

Btw I've just uploaded a new set of photos on flickr. All of them before sunset in hall 9. 

Locked up

Enough wastage has been done. To the satisfactory level. Now Im no more wasting away.

The price is I spent a cube crazy week and lost something like 10 second. 50% of the time Im getting below 50 sec. And few 40s also.

Finally to get rid and start working on thesis I had to lock the cube up. I've locked the Rubik's Cube. It will come out only after wasting satisfactorily enough time on thesis.

I will waste myself on

After a sweet break of 5 days at home life is back on same old track.

Loads of cubing. In early 50s. Lots of 40s and few sub 40 sec timings.

I will waste myself on.......

H@H

It's Holi at home guys. With all the usual papad, chips stuff its yet another colourful time of year. We love it when we are happy and we hate it when we are in sad composure. I dont know but it happens with me sometimes. I have mood swings sometimes.

For better this time I am happy and Im loving it. I went shopping with Mom. These days we are inundated with choices in the garments and I am that kind of tasteless fellow that I can't choose among them. It was quite a difficult time.

So friends Happy Holi and enjoy your time. I don't have much to write right now. If you are in :) mood then you are rocking! But if you are in a sad mood then just 'take a sad song and make it better'. Listen to 'Hey Jude' from Beatles.

Weekend out

I had a weekend out of college. went to attend wedding ceremony of a friend's sister. It was at a rather unknown place 3 hrs journey from Delhi. So we (I and a friend) went to Delhi and traveled with 2 others in Delhi by road. I must say it was a rather boring day sitting there idle with no one to talk. We stood like 3 idiots. I started to wonder why we in India make so much pomp and show of marriage. We should rather save some bucks instead. And save a lot of people from getting bored and wasting 1-2 days of their short life. We invite people, bore them, feed them then bid them. Better to KISS. Keep it straight and simple. I would chose otherwise if given an option.

In spite of all this I had very nice time on Sunday. Came back to Delhi in the morning at my brother's house. After that there was a sort of mini-family-gathering. Two of my (cousin) brothers, I and my sister. All 4 of us have spent our childhood together at our old house. We are childhood mates and share close bonds.

By the way I practiced a lot on blindfold solving and got close several times during the return journey. Couldnt make it successful though.

But right now got my first successful blindfold solve!

A * can change your life

A * can change your life. For worse if commuted with a /. This is what ruined my life for over a week. Absolutely simple shit-piece of code was not working. So I thought I was not using the correct equations for computation. I scanned many journals and looked around for alternative methods but with no hope. In the end yesterday was a path breaking day and it just flashed me trace back the values. And the moment was maddening when I found out that I actually mistyped * in place of /. I went berserk screaming like stabbed man in the middle of road.

Good thing is results are absolute match with the reality and Im on to the next step! :)
Sometimes things can be simple shity. Shit happens. At times, shit happens.

Blindfold

I am learning blindfold cubing these days. For the less enlightened ones let me tell you that in blindfold cubing you first take visual of a completely scrambled Rubik's Cube and memorize its configuration without moving it. Next you put on a blindfold on your eyes and in one go you have to solve the cube.

Right now the status is that I can solve only the edges of the cube. Still working on the corners. I have to device mnemonics of my own for each locations and memorize with the help of pictures-story in a journey form.

Since we are going to Delhi this weekend (in all probability, if my mates do not ditch once again) to attend a wedding ceremony. I will have lots of time while traveling in the train. Let's hope I would be able to perform a successful solve after return on Sunday.

The results of an absolutely simple piece of fortran code seem to trouble me since last week. Don't know what went wrong. Have to check it once again. Now I know why mtech thesis is extends beyond May.

Run time starts

Fun time up. Run time starts. Techkriti is over. A lot happened. IORC 2010 was good. This time it was good with decent number of turnout in events other than normal Rubik;s cube speedsolve. 11 people solved 4x4x4 cube (including me at last posittion :| ..) means it's also well known now. Quality of timings was definitely better than last two years. You can have a look at the results on WCA website as soon as they are uploaded in a day or two.

Among other things I lost two of my cubes. 3x3x1 also called Floppy cube which was the cutest of all the cubes I have. :( The second was 4x4x4 cube. It was turning weirdly since I lubed it last. Anyways I was going to get a new 4x4x4.

Yesterday we had a dinner with Mr.John Louis. It was nice time sitting together and sharing time with this wonderful gentleman and his prodigy child.

There was this girl from San Francisco who came to IORC for filming a part of her documentary on Rubik's Cube. He interviewed John, Bernett and me. She was on a fellowship of one year. What a dream fellowship. For one whole year you have to travel all round the world and meet people and see places and shoot movie!

Did a decent job and secured fourth place in gimmick competition to win some bucks. :) And this time, unlike the previous year when I was not able to en-cash the cheque, got the cash immediately.

Now back to square-1. have to meet my supervisor. Before that gota fix a piece of java code. Already I am running behind the target in the master's thesis. Today mamma asked me when I will be getting the degree in the robes. And I just tried to avert the question. Big task ahead. If I have to save my chances of wearing convocation robe then I should better get things running. Run time starts now!

Buzz

So the new Buzz is Buzz from google. I would say it emulates twitter. (Although I never used twitter. I dont have account on twitter.) Twitter is to blogger what T20 cricket is to test cricket. Oh a far fetched imagination. But well quite a comparison. I love blogger as I love test cricket. I can write my life down on twitter. You may have a lot more followers on twitter but whats the point if you are forced to practice frugality in talking. That's not what makes a good conversation. And I can converse to myself at blogger. That's the beauty! More time to reflect. But then 140 chars means more economical in spending words. May be good thing sometimes.

Another buzz on the campus is Techkriti.  Going from 11th to 14th Feb  its a 3 day treat for guys here at IIT Kanpur. 3 and half day to be exact. Only half of first day is counted. For old people like us (yes, 5th year at IIT Kanpur and you feel old-ish type for routine things on campus) a little more than extended weekend. I'm quite involved in coding AI for a game. The idea is to develop AI for a bot which will play on its own in an areana on web against other people's bots. And not to mention I'll be there for IORC for some cubing. Though not speedcubing. I lost speed over last year or so. :)

Im also looking work around with my new cam. Just need to get the entry pass for my camera to things worth clicking. I'm not sure about the effect of laser lights on the camera lenses. How much unhealthy it. I can carry it for many other good things though. Look out fro highlights from my cam soon in this space.

Forgot to mention that I have been pretty consistent with jogging. me and a friend are going jogging in the morning every alternate day from last week. Wont we call it consistent? :P

Padhai

Tell you people something.. I am auditing a course. Although officially all course work of my curriculum is over. I chose to attend a course without crediting it on my gradesheet. And this is mid term exam 1 hr from now.

Ever since I was born exams have been a strong turn-on for me when it comes to writing blogs. And so its customary to write a post now.

If ever somebody plots scatter-graph of my blogger post versus time then there the highest density of posts would be the exam days.

As of exams its fixed. There is going to be a one-day cricket match in Kanpur and this is the last chance of watching a cricket match in Kanpur. But it seems I'll have to miss this too. It falls on 24th Feb. and the same day I have to appear at a presentation as Teaching Assistant. damn it! All my friends are going. And poor me is left with this damn TA thing...

All the gears-stackmats and displays- that we ordered for IORC has arrived with a person named Lee Sonko and this gentleman will be carrying this stuff from USA all the way down to Kanpur for us. This year they are spending lot of money on this Rubik's cube event. And I heard that someone from US is coming to Kanpur to participate in IORC. Probably this the first time we are having a participant in Techkriti coming from outside India.

Our plans of going to Orissa to attend a friend's sister's wedding is in abeyance because of people are backing off and numbers are dwindling fast. Let's see who all are left in the end.

(cant think of a title today)

SO things have been moving fast since I dropped by blogger last time. Got some results in my thesis only to realize that we need to simplify the problem statement right now. :P

This time techkriti, IIT Kanpur ordered 4 sets of stackmat timer and tournament display from Speedstacks for IORC 2010. But it seems participation is not going to be as high. Lot of cubing junta have been diverted to the new WCA competition being held in Mumbai. Seems like we are being hit by the other competition. But then its going to be good because there are more no. of good cubers from campus itself. At least 3 sub-30 sec. solvers and many sub 60. In the meanwhile I realized that I have degenerated and my timing slipped beyond 60 sec. Thats's embarrassing. I'm trying to gain speed on 4x4x4 cube. But not able to squeeze enough time from other engagement.

Also having a mid-sem exam for a course I'm auditing. Also our FEDUCON team geared up and we are working like 2-3 hrs daily on its website. We may soon expect a career counselling website up and running. Hopefully it will be of great help to students of 10th and class 12th in choosing their path when they have time. There are hell lot of career options out there apart from the ususal engineering/medical fever that is apparently infecting every second parent and subsequently every second school-going child. All this on the website soon. Our team working.

New cubes

Finally they reached me. New puzzles. Now I can solve 2x2x2, 3x3x3,4x4x4,5x5x5.

Now Im trying my hand on the other new puzzles - Mastermorphix , 12 sided puzzle, floppy cube and 3x3x4. That's whole lot of exciting pack!

Consumed...

Im kind of consumed these days. Little bit of work at opportunity college. I take two classes at the end of weekdays - Thurs. and Fri. Learning fortran for thesis. Not using my new camera very frequently. But now I have procured the battery charger again.

Its hell lot of foggy here in Kanpur each night. It is effecting badly. Mamma was traveling to delhi and her train is running late by 15 hrs! Feels bad. Wish I could do something. May be I shud have gone with her.

Indian Open Rubik's Cube this year at Techkriti 2010 is closing by. Seems like it is going to be big this time. I was not involved too much in the preparation. But Im happy guys here are doing great. Sure they will make it biggest this time. With cubing fever spreading in India very fast this year is promising.

Daybreak

Sun in the earth, Sunflower.
Bird in the air, rain.
I within I daybreak.

Streets we have never walked on.
Windows we have never opened.
Hands we have never held.
Dreams we shall never see again

Lives we have never lived.
Hopes we have never realized.
Fires we have never lit.
Loves we shall never, never make again.

Bavra mann. dekhne chala ek sapna.

Amazing poetry!

Look back

When Im not writing too much I tend to look back at some of older posts. Its good reminiscence of the past. A bit of brushing your brain what you had been. A picture of how you've been changing all these years. And yes I've been changing. There is this post which amazes me now. Some of the lines written do not make much sense. But at that time it was all naturally flowing thoughts. May be I used to think a lot over then.

May be nowadays I've sort of grown blubber skinned. Most of these days I'm sitting here doing nothing but aging.I need to reflect more. It's time to get to something. Another GRE, history books, philosophy books, blogging. or something. anything.

work

So seems like I have some work at the end of it. And consequently back on blogger. Worked out some equations and finally got something to code in thesis. The CFD work comes in. Deadline is Tuesday noon. amm... seems like a lot of time left. Well can wait for a lil before I get started. :)

Without the camera charger I have managed to take some 200 shots with the once charged Li-ion nikon battery. The charger was left behind at my brother's place in Delhi. Forgot to pack it in hurry. Just waiting for it to be couriered to my place.

Meanwhile am reading some photography tutorials online. Also downloaded few books. Anyone in need of ebook copies can get it from me. (Of course the pirated once). Here is a good website for viewing and uploading photos. I'll be uploading soon. Good to see a lot of Indian presence on NGM website. Seems like lots of good guys in photography are Indian.

And getting back to the Beatles days. Hey Jude, Day tripper, While my guitar,........

And thats me and my tool

And thats me and my tool
Originally uploaded by Saucy007

So after a long time and showing lot of patience finally I bought this one. Nikon D3000. And it's a beauty! There is a helluva difference between DSLRs and point and shoot cameras. it clicks amazing photos. Ultra clarity and sharpness and colour depths.
Saving myself 27k from months I got a new DSLR kit, a carry case and a tripod. That's quite enough to begin with photography.
:D

Winter

Its been a long and lonely winter and it seems I was hibernating. Somehow something kept me away from blogger. Why does it always happen that when something is on my head, exams, lectures, some sort of deadline or something, only then I find ocean of topics to write about.

When I have free time writable things do not come in mind.