Tagged: random

Apple’s new toys


Everyone’s raving about Apple’s new toys — the [[http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle|Apple iPod-Flash]] and the [[http://www.apple.com/macmini/|Apple Mac-Mini]]. My reaction? Big deal.

The mini is probably a good idea — atleast now people can plug in their own monitors and keyboards and save up a lot on the crappy keyboards that Apple ships (the monitors are great, but still expensive IMHO).

The iPod shuffle is reasonably priced and stylish, but if I’m getting 20Gig upwards for 100-200 bucks more, why wouldn’t I got for it? Also, I don’t think its a good idea to tie the iPod flash so closely to the iTunes software… I mean, I should always be able to use it as a USB key right?

Work was slow today (read no new progress). Our machine room A/C crashed so a lot of my machines had to be taken down and so I’m stuck without any machines to run my stuff on. Besides, I don’t have any new leads on how to solve my current problem either. Its highly unlikely that we’ll have the requisite work done before the paper deadline, but still there’s no harm in trying.

I also spent some time thinking about designing my own wordpress theme. Played around with Inkscape and Scribus a bit. Also installed Drupal and playing around with it. I think there’s a niche for a personal website management system — which would combine a blog, a photo gallery and static content creation all rolled into one.

Stuff


Much has been happening at my end and I’ve been slacking at posting for no particular reason at all. The Netherlands trip was pretty good. Since then I’ve been keeping busy in this and that. For one, there was research to catch up with. Work started off well, but progress has been slow since Monday. Hopefully I will be able to maintain steam on this project — it sounds fairly exciting to me, and if I can get it to work, it will really be something.

Then there have been the incidents at IIT Kanpur, which of course deserve a post of their own — but that will follow later. In short, I’m really really disturbed, and disappointed. As I guess is mostly everyone, except probably some idiots at IITK.

At school, the courses are coming along fine. I screwed up one homework problem for the first assignment of Keith’s class, but I’m hoping that I can do better on the project. And this time, I’m doing the project alone (well both Kiran and Vikas have dropped the course, so not that I have a lot of choice in the matter).

At home, things are in good shape. Our container finally arrived and the folks have been busy setting things up ever since. Papa is visiting Italy for a few days and will most likely take up his next job in New Delhi. The IT & Public Policy course is absolutely fascinating, though the class participation is at times, daunting. I try to keep up, but hey, I got a lot to do. Anyways, off to work now.

What is with sororities?


If you’re going to school in the US, you probably know what I mean. What is with these guys? Why the hell are they so obsessed with frikking greek letters? Have you looked at the names they have? — Sigma Chi, Alpha Beta Kappa, Delta Sigma Chi — the list is endless. How do they come up with these names anyways? Do they have a program that picks out random permutations of capital Greek alphabets? Do they have any meaning at all behind these seemingly random names? And do these names anyway relate to the fact that some of these sororities and fraternities are female only or male only.

So I thought I’d do some [[http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Fraternities_and_sororities|Googling]]. As it turns out, [[http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Phi_Beta_Kappa_Society|oldest sorority]], [[http://www.pbk.org/|Phi Beta Kappa]] actually had a very sound reasoning behind its name. Maybe the rest of them do too, but I don’t know — and given the vast number of them out there, I seriously doubt it.

I [[http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Fraternities_and_sororities#Lists_of_Fraternities_and_Sororities|found out]] that PBK’s name stands for Φιλοσοϕια Βιου Κυβερνετης (philosophia biou kubernetes), “Love of wisdom, the guide of life.” — which makes sense atleast. In anycase, I’ve totally missed on the whole undergrads and sororites business since none of this exists at IITK — well atleast none that I know of. I bet it must be fun; interesting at any rate.

Going going…


I had thought that this whole month I would try to maintain atleast one blog entry a day. As you can see, it hasn’t quite worked out as planned. But then, what does?

Anyways, last few days have been not uneventful, but nothing very exciting either. For one thing, now I have an excuse for not doing any more “academic” work, since I’m quite “busy” in preparing for my upcoming India trip :D I had my last (well, almost) meeting with Amin on Wednesday. Its really a shame that he’s been really busy last 2 weeks, otherwise I would have definitely gotten more work done. I mean its not that I have been completely wiling away my time, but you know, having the advisor around always help.

I believe productivity is often directly proportional to accountability; unless of course the individual in question is self motivated, in which case it doesn’t matter anyways. Other than that I’ve been doing a bit of shopping. Got a whole bunch of chocholates for my kiddie cousins, an MP3 player, and spruced up my “computing environment” at home a bit.

First I bought a nice set of speakers — the Altec Lansing 221 from Buy.com. Then I’d been wanting to buy a nice big external HDD to solve the storage problem and also to make backups of my laptop before I leave for India — so I bought a Western Digital 160 GB 7200 RPM external HDD with USB and Firewire support. A bit pricey at 180 bucks I thought, but its a one time investment (I hope!)

Other than, nothing much really. Saw “Kyun! Ho Gaya Na?” — not worth writing a review about, and that should say it all. Also saw “The Village” — thought Shyamalan is afraid to try anything new and just wants to stick to “oh-the-big-suspense-ending-you-never-expected”; but now most people go into his movies spending each second of the movie thinking about all the weird kinds of things that could be the final surprise; and I’m afraid in this one it was all too easy to figure out. But a nice watch, nonetheless.

Have to get done with some paper work, and put a lot of stuff in order before I leave. So will be spending the weekend doing that. And some more movies, not to mention! :)

Of mice and men


I read [[http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0140177396/104-3264453-3174307?v=glance|this book]] by Steinbeck a long time back when I was studying in Indonesia. Whats surprising is that I remember it most not by its story, but by its title. But I must say that the story itself is very well written, though its a bit too sad and pragmatic.

Anyways, coming back to the title — what strikes me about it most is that it keeps appearing again and again, over and over, in all kinds of places. I don’t know if people just find it too cool, or its tone or structure seems to fit all subjects — but just scan a few headlines and titles and you’re sure to find one that reads: Of [something] and [something else].

Infact, sometimes I feel its the most generic title to discuss anything. Of technology and philosophy; Of Men and Women; Of US and Iraq; Of Bush and Kerry; Of India and Pakistan; Of Hindus and Muslims; Of Then and Now; Of Past and Present; Of Toothpastes and Picnic Baskets; Of Windows and Linux; Of Microsoft and IBM; Of Me and You; and the list goes on. Put any title into that structure, and suddenly it seems to carry weight, seems to mean something, something deep. I mean, I should have called this post “Of Steinbeck and Titles”!!

Anyways, the last 2 days have been weird. Lot of things have come up and I’m left with a huge list of things to do, which of course, I just feel like lazying around and avoiding. The weather’s also cloudy today, gets kinda gloomy without the sun here. Next week I might be going to LA for a day to file my visa application. Also need to get going with the drivers license thing — after the written test all the enthu seems to have deflated all of a sudden! :-D