Quest for Knowledge

World Cup Final

2011-03-19T15:08:00.001+05:30

Excuse me if you are not from India and thought that World cup mean SOCCER world cup for here in India the WC by default means Cricket.

Was having a chat sometime back with my colleagues and learnt that 17 terrorists have bought tickets for the world cup finals. Quite terrifying but along came a question. What if India and Pak have made it to the finals and the terrorists are in that final. What would they do ?

Shouldn't be that difficult to guess ... is it ?

Coz I know what they would do ... they would watch the match ....

Welcome to the World Cup fever !!! Lets hope the Cup comes HOME

The Friction of Corruption

2010-12-17T16:46:00.001+05:30

Few days ago I read an article which said abt wat was possible, if by the turn of a wand, corruption was erased in India ... the growth rate would be 10% it is said from the current 8%. This looks mostly to be true especially after movies like "Knock out" (I know its almost a copy) tell the huge amount of money swashed in foreign banks by Indian power class.

But lets take a moment off and look from a different angle ... In a sense Corruption can be equated to friction ... its mere presence reduces the efficiency of the system. I hated friction when I was a kid ... why did it always had to come up whenever anyone planned to do anything ... I thought tht one fine day we can live in a world without friction ... I dont wait for it anymore not because I think it is not possible but coz I have learnt that it is not possible to walk without friction. So that brings me back to the point of comparing friction with corruption ... anyone can write tonnes of lines abt why corruption is bad ... I am trying to get something on the other side...

Lets take an eg. I repeat just an eg .You go to a government office to get something done ... now you dont meet all the requirements ... this has to happen because the government machinery functions in that manner ... There are 10s of thousand of things that you are supposed to know and till you are a professional at that dealing daily with such activities it is impossible to know all of them ... but there is a way out of this ... pay bribe ... get you job done ... now ur working day "chutti" to go to that office has been useful and things are pretty much OK.

There are many companies in India that are in the position they are primarily because corruption exists in India ... and one of them is pretty successful ... they say enough to buy the entire stock exchange market of Pakistan . I am not sure their rise is good or bad ... but I am sure they had their contribution to the 8% growth rate which we are boasting off ...

I dont endorse corruption ... I realised that in the current socio economic conditions, corruption is more like friction ... hate it .. love it ... but you cant get rid of it and it is not always useful to get rid of it either ... we are not at that growth rate just in spite of corruption but also because of as the title puts it ..."The friction of corruption"

So Sonar ki ... Ek Lohar ki

2010-08-05T11:06:00.001+05:30

Yesterday was a special flight for me ... not because it was my maiden one but for other reasons. Now the reason why I was flying ie. 2 attend my convo was quite special but that is not the main focus of this post.

I was flying with two more classmate of mine who were placed with me in the same company... Mr P and Mr C. Both of them, humongous creatures, well not that huge but for me with a modest height of 5f 6' they do seem humongous. I hope they dont get in a bad temper after reading my description of them .... after all I need to spend most of my day with them ... and m in no position to defend myself if both of them decide to explain to me the standard deviation in manpower.

Well back to the main topic ... this was a maiden flight for Mr. C ... It was fun to relive my 1st flight through him .... guess this is wat Pops must be feeling wen they learn of their son's crush ... :D ... reliving gr8 moments ... after all that is what life is all about .... Unfortunately for him this was a budget flight .... typical cramped seats ... wait cramped .... I never felt they were cramped ... but both of my buddies took no time calling the flight cramped .... Poor P sat with his knees touching the front seat still lucky that the guy in front decided not 2 recline his chair .... C was no better .... and here it was me ... lying comfortably as if I was sitting in some charted flight ... for quite some time after living with these guys ... I have been wondering that gr8 height must be awsum ... well I have wondering that for most of my teenage life but now that I have to roam around with these 2 guyz the feeling sometimes gets stronger ... we all kno the inherent benefits .... tall chicks among the big list which I miss but today was my day ...

The flight was a moment of realisation .... to cherish the gifts we have ... to be happy about the numerous graces of the Almighty ... to understand that good moments spent are the real treasure of this temporary life .... and last with when we got down from the flight with a crooked smile on a face come the words .... "So Sonar ki .... ek lohar ki"

I dont know ...

2010-04-22T20:53:00.002+05:30

I walk into my guides cabin ... I show it to him ... He asks me wat is it ? ...

One day earlier:

I am a Masters students and am supposed 2 do research ... so accordingly I was trying to achieve something ... lets cut the details out.

Interestingly I get some deposition of in my beaker which I was not expecting ... after keeping some solution overnight ... I am startled ... so I take it to my guide and show it ... he asks me what is it ...

I reply ... "I dont know" ... we both laugh .... literally and I smile again while writing this blog ... research is a lot of these I dont know stuff ... Sent the deposition for some probing today ... but it was cool man ... because in this wen u say ... "I dont know" ... u are actually up to something ... u got the most cherished thing in research ... a problem to solve :)

ESA presents ....

2010-04-09T15:21:00.000+05:30

ESA is short for "Energy Students Association" our departmental consortium ... somehow indirectly I am a council member of ESA (lets not get into the complications Y is it indirect).

ESA has not been doing good last year ... there were absolutely no activities ... even the pride of ESA the "Energy Day" was not credited to it this year ... As I said earlier lets keep the complications out as to Y ... but rather concentrate on facts ...

So me a member and indirect council member of ESA could take it no more ... I arranged a talk by our distinguished alumnus Mr Girish Sant of Prayas. Check more about him here. Now unfortunately due to lack of his dates .. the chosen time was 10 am Sunday morning ... trust me a very bad time ... any one who has arranged talks will know ... but there was not much I could have done.

Finally the proud moment arrives for me to announce " ESA presents talk on ....". I have been anticipating this day for some time. The talk was supposed to start at 10 am. Around 11 am a minuscule 20 gathered as audience of which 5 were definitely not students ... they seemed too old ... may be some people concerned abt sustainablity ... I think I had managed some good advertisement with the ESA presents stuff. But 20 in a room capable of 200 was too embarassing.

So after the talk was over and I was pondering whether I did manage to beat Prof X class' attendance, the worst ever reported, Mr Girish offered to buy me n my buddies some tea. We discussed some real good stuff. I think we r really lucky to have had the chance to sit with him and talk about the core issues our society faces. After some 45 mins of intense discussion when we were taking leave I finally said what I had to ... "Sorry for the poor attendance Sir"

Mr Girish looks at me ... smiles ... and then says "it happens ... more so on Sunday mornings ... by the way ... in 1988 when I was of your age I had arranged a talk on AIDS awareness in the campus, I thought the news would spread like wild fire. But on the day only 4 ppl turned up ... the speaker, me, my frnd and the slides man" .... We burst into laughter and so ended a remarkable meeting ...

PS: I am working on implementing the discussions we had then ... I know I wont fully succeed but I can definitely make a start ... and besides earning some fame for ESA it might change some lives for good and that would make all the difference.

Some awsum quotes

2010-03-04T23:48:00.007+05:30

With great responsibility comes great power [:P] - Sweetswatster

Tumhar pyar ishq aur mera pyaar friendship request - BT

I don’t have a license to kill. I have a learner’s permit - stolen by some one

Life is not fair. But Life is not fair to anyone and that makes life fair - Jeet's gtalk status

Integral from birth to death of luck = 0; but that does not tell anything about the instantaneous value of luck - PK

You never conquer a mountain. You stand on the summit a few moments; then the wind blows your footprints away. -Arlene Blum

I was put on this earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I'm so far behind, I will never die. --Calvin

E-Insulated (Feb 2011)
-Smriti Ojha

Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.
- Dame Edna Everage

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication
- Zen Buddhism, Steve Jobs and his biographer

Of Yog and Consumerism

2009-07-19T16:15:00.001+05:30

[First Draft on 19 July]

I m reading "Raj Yog" by Swami Vivekanand now a days ... [although its not a book to be read but practised still lets begin somewhere :) ] I came across this concept of evolution Vivekanand claims that the seers and the founders of religions actually went past through in their lifetime which the entire humanity will take ages to achieve whatever they did. That brings me to the topic of this post .... consumerism ... our society is becoming more and more consumerist day by day ... the kind of Yog Vivekanad describes relies heavily on renunciation .... there is absolutely no scope for consumerism ... so if we look forward as a civilisation we are not achieving our ultimate goal ... as a lifeform that is evolving ... I am not sure but it definitely seem that way from here.

So are we actually seeing the downfall ... is the civilization evolving in reverse ... probably the answer to this also lies in the same text. It says that body is the ultimate tool we have, to achieve salvation ... its like a map which by itself is not what you what and once you have achieved your target does not matter but when u start searching for your goal it is important. Only a person with a healthy body can start doing Raj Yoga ... although that is not a sufficient condition that is a necessary one. It is also said that one should neither work too hard or too little ... in summary one needs to have a moderate good life if they ever are to start practising Raj Yog ... not to mention they should not worry about getting square meals.

Probably some centuries back conditions were just perfect for that but they are no more ... if we talk of India then there are many people who are more busy fending for themselves than anything else. People travels like animals in local trains and work like asses. The same can be said of many poor places in the world where the conditions of living are not good. Consumerism as it has grown in USA seems to be a solution for this ... the middle class there enjoys just the perfect amount of luxuries needed.

The humanity missed its chance sometime in the past. But strange it may sound consumerism is the way forward towards the salvation of humanity. The standard of living has to grow ... and only when one has food in ones stomach, hygienic living conditions and good quality of life can thoughts of spirituality enter the mind.

So I believe we have hope ... we as a society are not moving backwards but towards the ultimate goal ... One may ask that if such standards of living have already been achieved in US ... why does not everyone search for the ultimate goal of life .... the answer ... Things are much better now ... an average person with his needs satisfied cares more about a fellow human than one's whose arent ...

I hope my optimism is based on facts in the other case as well ... there is nothing to fear ... coz if wat Swamiji says is to be believed ... its the destiny of mankind to be salvated ... if not today may be a thousand years laters ...

PS: Again posted during my midsems ... boy I just turn too creative around dat time

Pehle Aap

2009-05-17T14:30:00.000+05:30

My hopes stands in good faith and it does not take me 2 years to rite back again ....

Your blog is supposed to tell a lot abt U but mine doesnt ... infact it does not tell anything except that I njoi playing with Linux and belong 2 a class of wannabe(m not sure if this was the right word) geeks.

Well a different facet this time .... I am crazy abt renewable energy ever since I can remember ... this love has brought me back from the job of a Software Engineer to do an M.Tech in Energy Science and currently m working on Organic Solar Cells (OSC).

So back to the topic of this blog ... any1 from India can easily guess it has something to do with Lucknow ... well not exactly Lucknow but close ... its Kanpur. We dont have a lab for OSC in IITB so am here in IITK trying 2 learn the tricks of the trade.

To start with Kanpur inside the campus is an awsum place ...its infra is GOD compared 2 IITB but then there are always other things we have better there ... an obvious eg ... Their T-shirt for intercollegiate festival says "The ~~biggest~~ best intercollegiate festival in ~~Asia~~ India" ... The other being the punch line of MoodI ... IITB's fest :) ... Riting something on a T shirt does not help Kanpurities :P

OK the better things ... well there are a thousand things worth riting but let me stick to the ones that are most subtle ... the really good ones.

1. I am walking down a lane and ask some1 4 directions ... that person was not only kind enough 2 tell me the directions but offered me double seat on his cycle (they would never offer u lift on a cycle in Mumbai ... I dont :D )... but it does not end there ... We come across a turn where I had to take a different path ... now this really cool dude ... offers me 2 drop me till my hostel ... I politely refuse ... but he does not seem to budge infact when he finally agrees he has expressions on his face as being sorry abt that ... so he decides to make up for it and offers to buy me a juice in a nearby juice counter ... BOY Kanpur is cool ... isnt it ....

2. I had a broken button and away from home it can be a big problem so I tried borrowing a needle from a tailor within campus ... did not feel like shelling out money for a button ... So I go to this tailor and ask for it ... he offers me to take it away ... I insist I will fix it there and return him .... and then as soon as I take my shirt from my bag he offers to stitch it .... He not only stitches that button but almost all of them coz they were on the verge of breaking .... now how do I say thanks to this guy ... I cant offer money for his hospitality that would be gross .... "Idea !!!" So I but him a nice icecream and he is as happy with it as I am ....

A short part of my big travelogue of visit 2 Kanpur ... probably one of the best parts ... Isnt Kanpur cool ... and so is Life !!! made up of such wonderful moments

Intrepid Ibex .... Refreshing

2009-02-23T19:32:00.000+05:30

It took me about 2 years to get back to the scene again. And the most ironical part is that I am doing this during my Mid-Sem exams .... hehe ... but then as they say ... fact it stranger than fiction .... fiction has to make sense ...

So what brings me back here .... A good internet connection and a head bored of studying and with lot 2 tell abt its expts with Intrepid Ibex .... Ubuntu's latest distro.(Yes its still the latest stable release)

So what is interesting ... firstly the graphics .... quite beautiful this time ... with some really cool workspace and window switching graphics ... Check out here

But inspite of this I still have a dual boot system with Vista Ultimate .... and its not just the MS compatible programs that are holding me back ... I still cant see the elegance of Vista in Linux ... neither Ubuntu nor any other .... Applications like Firefox or ThunderBird look so much more elegant in Vista but unfortuately not in Ibex ... but then thats OK and I can live with that .... Just a tht ... its my blog right ;)

And although almost everything worked out of the box .... 2 things caused me a lot of pain ....
1. My wifi card Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 was not detected ... Took me quite a while before I could fix it. You may find more details here and how I fixed it
I needed a firmware upgrade

2. I am behing a proxy server in my university which need authentication and the network authentication part of Ubuntu is still buggy continuing its legacy from 8.04 .... It cant handle 'dot' in login name ... and God knows may be in password also ... I have filed a bug in bugzilla ... but I dont know if they will fix it sometime soon .... Fortunately for me a friend of mine has lended me his non-dot containing login name and password for my linux use .... GOD must be in his finest mood [generally] when he decides hostel life for some1 .... May be if possible I may someday look into the code myself and try to fix it and win the coveted title of a contributer to Linux .. ;)

Well enough for today ....I have not been able to study since I have installed Linux ... (Billy u listening ... I have something against Linux u may use) ... Have been playing with it all day and nite .... personalizing it and fixing issues ....

Hope my next post will be pretty soon ... Not after another 2 years ... Kip checking

Cheers
PK

Krugle - code search engine for developers

2007-07-23T17:42:00.000+05:30

Krugle is a new code search engine for open source developers. It lets you search specific channels of information. Using krugle you can search the actual code of many open source projects

http://www.krugle.com/

2007-03-04T15:25:00.000+05:30

So I have finally started all over again...Cyber space watch out for me ......he is back