Thursday, June 30, 2005

still searching

just saw teh sharapova-Willams match. Wonder what happened to Serena...

Was hoping Williams would win against Sharapove for the past ten minutes so taht I could watch the Davenport-Maurusmo match. Wonder what made them put the other two semifinalists into the centre court. Just because of the defending champion? Anyway, I don't want to watch the finals if Davenport does not get through. No first seed, and no defending champion - will not be a match worth watching. Williams versus Sharapova wasn't a match worth watching either - come to think of it. The first four male seeds have made it to the semifinals -now that's an evenly placed macth. I remember watching the Agassi - Sampras face offs, it was as exciting as wrestling, only not made up. even last years Nalbandian versus Federer and the Federer versus Ferrero matches were pretty cool. Men's tennis is infinately more interesting than female tennis.

Anyway, that was about wimbledon. There was some article in the papers today about girls being more adventerous because of their career choice. I believe its a bad sign, because here, it's just the same old, don't be unemployed till you get married thing.

The potholes are being levelled by some guys in the municipality who think it is going to be a good idea. Bastards. Now the vehicles slow up at those stretches of road anyway, because it is dug up...

And watched the final episode of friends today. Pretty emotional expirience. Was sitting in a friend's house surrounded on all sides by pretty close friends I made in just two years. I used to believe that I'll never have close friends in Junior College because I had made some pretty lousy "friends" in school... despite my twelve years there.
But in two years I made much better friends, and the ones that I already had also became better friends in those two years.
Either
1) This happens to everyone for some wierd reason
2) I finally became clever enough to handle such relationships.
Now real college is starting tommorrow. Match point... match washed out due to rains. Damn.
Anyway, so i had this emotional moment where I felt like hugging everyone around me. It was the last episode of friends, somewhere in the middle where Ross is in the wrong airport, and everyone is screaming about the falanche. I was in the middle of this group, and they were my friends. Right then, it meant everything to me.
I didn't cry when friends got over and everyone headed over to the cofee shop. No one else did. Good freinds that we are, we had an argument right there.
Now it's all OK, and we are probably going to Lonavala on sunday - but I am sure this plan will fall through.
But tommorrow is my first day of college. Day one. 8:45, I will see my new classroom for the first time. Many of those guys are going to be my friends.
And this time I will have three years.
I will have more friends, and mess up less.
I am pretty happy with my life right now. I am in a good course in a good college, with good friends, and a good family. I am an adult, but still a teen. All my friends think I am a pretty cool guy, and say that I underestimate mself, which is the best compliment anyone can ever recieve. Hell I KNOW that I am a pretty cool guy. I have no problems except my innate laziness, which I sometimes enjoy, I have no ambissions except surviving college, and study the hell out of this course, I am confident I will ace it, I have no unsatisfied wants or needs, no financial problems whatsoever, in perfectly good health, despite enjoying raste ka food everyday, and hogging it out at home too, I have absolutely no unsatisfied needs. Hell I have no unsatisfied wants.
My life is perfect right now.
I think I will end this post right there - I can;t believe this - Tommorrow is the first day of college, and I am going to enter it knowing that my life is perfect right now.

I really really hope that college is not a big let down.

My life is PERFECT right now.

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

7515

Finally ended up in yeoor today - though Ashwin did not come. Aashray and I headed out to yeoor at around ten. We took a rickshaw till upvan lake, and ended up at the gates at around eleven. But a guard was sitting there, and he told us entry was not allowed. So we contemplated bribing him, and decided to sneak past using a circuitatious route, and exploiting a break in the wall.
The guard's sidecick reached the break just as we did, and we ran like hell from there. then we went up the other side, and trekked a bit. we soon found out that this wasn't familiar territory, and therefore we were lost. We just walked around a bit, and moved this way and that on hunches. And to our surprise, we were standing on this stream, collecting cattle bones, when a car went past less than fifteen feet from where we were standing. We were apparently very close to the road, and we did not know it.
Thankfully, we got out. Will make a nice comic strip about this... maybe. Maybe will do that now.

Anyway, after that came home, had a bath, my mom freaked out over the pectoral girdle of a dead cow, but it is in a pot in the balcony now - so she does not mind too much. Then I headed over to a friend's house where we played monopoly and bluff. Won bluff, and came second in monopoly.
I think I am an expert in bluff. An alternative name for the game, as suggested by Ameya, is bullshit. I like bullshit.
But I cannot say I think I am an expert in bullshit.
Will make a strip put of that too probably.

Then came home, did a few chores, and headed back to Ameya's house, and played monopoly. And it was total monopoly. I owned all cards at the end of the game except three red cards. Damn.

Anyway, the total figure of my cash and assets at the end of the day was:

Cash
------
1x5 = 5
5x2 = 10
9x10 = 90
4x20 = 80
4x50 = 200
13x100 = 1300
1x500 = 500

property
----------
580
230
100
120
490
280
250
300
120
400

deveoped property
-------------------
300
300
150
180
240
210
270
225
210
375

That gives me a total of 7515. Cool eh?

But Ameya won the previous game...

The google phenomenon

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

What would my secret be?

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

such a fucking cool blog. I am already downloading it. Wonder what my secret would be?

That I hate SK? That's no big secret. Shit I almost came into a mood to really tell my secrets. I thought I was a pretty normal guy with no secrets. Then i began thnking. I have secrets that I don't acknowledge. I know stuff about people that I ignore. Fuck I am going to stop blogging and send these guys a postcard. Handy address:

PostSecret
13345 Copper Ridge Rd
Germantown, Maryland
USA 20874-3454

fuck I almost told it all here...

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Diminishing Marginal Utility

The law of Diminishing marginal utility states that for every subsequent unit of goods or service offered, the marginal utility of that good or service decreases.

Aashray was explaining this to me after I asked him to explain me some economics shit so that I am better prepared for my college when economics classes are held.

So basically he means to say that the theory states that the more of something you have, the less of it you want. Marginal utility is something like satisfaction.

Say like the more paani puri you have, every subsequent time you have a pani puri you will want it less.

But I don't think this works - with say something like diamonds or condoms.

He told me economics was a bunch of complicated sidey theories that you didn't really need to know anything about.
So we went back into the realms of science, where I explained to him the bladder capacities of humans, and the definate diminishing marginal utility of public toilets.

The complex relationship of the word alcohol to the word hot.

Alcohol is hot. Not hot like you put it in a vessel, and put a smaller vessel containing water in it - alcohol is not - it will make the water boil hot. It is just it will burn up your cells hot. Or alcohol can be hot as in stolen stuff is hot. So stolen alcohol is hot in two ways. Then stolen alcohol that is being boiled is hot in three different ways.
But Aashray, a friend thinks that alcohol is hot only like it is hot in the third case - without the boiling.
I tried explaining all the possible ways that alcohol can be hot, but he was pretty confused. I told him it can be hot in the way he thinks it is hot, and that alcohol is not hot that way.
He pointed out the fact that alcohol is hot because it burns you out inside when you drink it pure and neat.
I asked him where the fuck he got his hands on pure and neat alcohol.
nevermind the answer.
But that is apprently because the alcohol just irritates the mucous lining and is a nervous stimulant. IT's hot in a totally different way.
but that confused him even further - and he thought I was telling him alcohol was hot like chillies are hot, and not like why alcohol really is "hot."

the conversation got too confusing at this point of time, and fortunately the discussion ended when this hot girl walked past.


Then something about getting nailed got into the picture.
Of cource, jesus got nailed to the cross. But that's like the most unobvious thing to think of anywhere.
He aslo got nailed. Like getting screwed. Like getting screwed... and you know gettin fucked. aarghhh... isn't there ONE word which is not ambigous with respect to this!

more anaglyphs.

Basically, I learnt the procedure myself. Shoot two pictures in slightly different angles, adjust the color in photoshop so that one is cyan, and the other is magenta. Then blend them in together, and viola, you have an anaglyph.

so the basic principle of an anaglyph is that you take a pic of the same thing as seen by each eye, and use them together, and filter out the info that the other eye sees from each eye using the anaglyph goggs, or two bits of cellophene.

Theoretically, if you take a pic of the same thing in two drastically different angles, and fuse them in together, you will also be able to see the thing from a totally different perspective using the same principle. Like, this picture is my attempt to get a picture to perspective if one eye was on your right temple, and the other eye was positioned in the bottom left corner of your chin.



I also know now why this will not work. Because the anaglyph goggs, or your eyes are placed in one fixed ratio, any other image will not siphon out the image of anything more different than that distance. Therefore, my theories of making anaglyph images to show how a rabbit, an eagle or a deer looks have all been unfounded. Damn.

However, I tried to make a real anaglyph next. What troubles you is the coloration of the hightones and the shadows. Should cyan also mean coloring it green and blue? I have no idea. Blue is a common factor in both magenta and cyan. This would explain why creating two images then fusing them together does not bring back the old image. Neither anaglyph component has anything yellow, so yellow gets filtered out in the processin itself.

I should have left that intact to give the picture some authenticity. Anyway, this is pretty good for a third attempt. Looks somewhat like an anaglyph, but still does not work. This is of a mouse.



I like the look crossed version of anaglyphs, which does not even require glasses.

My first introduction to anaglyphs were the august 1998 issue of National geographic. It had beautiful ones of the Martian landscape as well as ones of the titanic exploration. Amazingly enough, atleast the ones of the Mars exploration have somehow managed to find their way into wikipedia. Click here

another cool way to make anaglyphs keeping in mind the fact that you have only one image to start with, is to expand one side, and contract the other using paint or photoshop, then color-toning them in photoshop to get ther equired result. The principle is to slightly doctor the image so that it appears that you are looking at it from slightly different angles.

lesser of two weevils

Captain Jack Aubrey: To wives and sweethearts - may they never meet.

Saw only a few scenes of Master and Commander after that. It was a very watchable movie, but taking a nap was more appealing right then.

Ok, so it rained a lot today. If you live in Mumbai, then a lot of rains takes a whole new meaning.
raining a lot, reminds you strongly of old people who go to parks looking dissappointed, anxious mother's of schoolchildren calling up the school to ask if they'll be leaving the school off early, schoolchildren who are left early playing in all the puddles, and any sort of rainwear being absolutely useless.

It rained a lot today. Which means this happened:



Also, a cable line was broken, and the electricity failed in only my flat. I had to call the electrician who charged me fifty bucks to meddle around in the meter room.

In the evening, Aashray and I went to play badminton, saw that the clubhouse was full and decided to go on a walk. hell, I can make an interesting blog out of that.

Load of cartoon strips.

what is funny is that how something meant to add colour to the blog becomes another blog itself. happened with the occult diaries, which I thankfully, deleted, happened with themythological crap after I bloged quetzalcoatl's story, which I thankfully deleted especially there was this one post about the lays of rome, which was a blog consisting of no less than 50,000 words. Then there was the photoblog of useless photos, which was also thankfully deleted.
And finally, this one is comin up with all the cartoon strips. Actually, I made the strips to follow the storyline as in the blogs of yellowwonderwall and the wankhade chap. Too bored to link the actual blogs here...

So after we ended up not going on the trip to yeoor for three consecutive days, I went to sleep after getting up early.



This was from yesterday.. or was it today... hard to remember when youth disrupts your sleep cycles. Anyway, some day in the not too distant past, I... hell the explanation is too complicated for this:











HBP is out already. The registrations a crossword were done at January. 1000 and counting. hat cost 899 bucks. That's the price at paperback. but at Kapoors, it cost only 760 bucks, with a 200 downpayment now, and at Oxford its 721. so the book's cheapest at Oxford, but i'm getting it from Kapoor. Watch this place to find out who dies.

this is a funny thing that actually happened while coming home yesterday.



So I guess all the strips merit a seperate blog for themselves. Dont know whether to upload them to the blospot server or leave them in geocities.

still not going to yeoor

Come to think of that, still not over Padme's death in episode three. Hell, I can make a strip on that too.



Yesterday, they were asleep. Today, they are not in the mood, and have lost their windcheaters.
Damn.
Anyway, I don't know why I show myself in the comic light every single time. Maybe I should make fun of someone else, seeing that I make the strips. Each strip takes about seven to ten minutes to make. First I do the background in photoshop, add the chars in photoshop too, put in all the speech boxes in powerpoint, and finally format the whole picture in photoshop again.

As expected

As expected, Ashwin backed out at the last moment. So I just got up early mornin, waiting in anticipation to call someone dumb or stupid. the dumb nokia model has this really loud alarm, and it goes into some sort of snooze mode. Fortunately I disabled it, and was able to snooze myself for some time. The idea was to actually go ack to sleep, I didn't know why I set the alarm in the first place - oh yeah, to call someone up and tell them they are dumb or stupid.
But i couldn't go back to sleep, and I went and read a few blogs, including the one by the JAM ed - youthcurry.blogspot. I also drifted around into the blogs of people who had left comments there...

There was some discussion on college relationships, and how boys want 'only one thing.' I wrote a comment on Richard Dawkin's view that we are all merely vehicles for the passage of genes, and that all the other things that girls apparently want lead up to that one thing anyway.

But it atleast made me realise that I should blog more meaningful stuff:



So I've decided to tone down on the constant blogging and utilise time doing other activities, therefore giving me more stuff to blog about.

Like making cartoon strips.

Got up pretty hungry actually. There was nothing to eat, I had finished all the food in a mammoth dinner yesterday night. So i din't even have curd rice for breakfast.

anaglyphs


Been somewhat of a fan since te August 98 issue of NGC which showd anaglyphs of the pathfinder mission as well as some pics of Titanic. So I made my first anaglyph, which is not much of a sucess. will make more, better ones tommorrow. This was just sort of a trial. Actually, the principle behind this image was, why stop at the two point five inch area? why not go ahead, widen the gap, and see how it feels to have stereoscopic vision with your eyes placed really wide apart in your head. Like how about stereoscoping contrasting sides, like to get the idea of how a rabbit looks at the world or something.

I like the looking cross versions of anaglyphs, which do not need 3d glasses at all...

Will try all that pout with a digital camera tommorrow. Am going to sleep now... not taking the cam to yeoor, but hopefully GOING to yeoor tommorrow.

Monday, June 27, 2005

Monday evening blues

Pretty amazing opical illusion I came across while surfing...



the page is available here


Aashray just called and gave me the serial for a new world : 9097-7234-289-558-2467-5251. Ashwin and Aashray both had called with conflicting plans for tommorrow - the conflict being in the fact that we're going to go/ not go.
As things stand, we are going to go to yeoor tommorrow, and come back home by ten thirty. Not in a mood to do that right now because I am going to get wet and soggy, and have to haul my ass all over the place. Damn.
OK major achievement for today is that I emptied the cardboard box. Now i don't know what to do with it - it was the old box the TV came in. I cleaned up my room, from a horribl horrible state. the bed was so full of clothes and papers that I slept on the floor on a matress. Made a shrine under the table... finally. but its a bit too cramped, and I cannot even sit properly.

After cleaning my room, I did the most whacked out thing possible. I was given the task of destroying my father's old credit cards. So I had to come up with devious and innovative ideas of destroying plastic.
the first idea was to burn them - but even I am not that stupid. My simple idea was to wedge them at the door hinges and press hard. This is good excercise, as the carre pretty tough. When they din't exactly get pulvarised - I didn't burn them. What I did do was put all the credit cards in a mixer grinder...
After that, i took what was left, dumped it all in a plastic bag, wrapped it in paper, iverted a stool over it, and began jumping on it like hell.
the problem was, that the blade of the grinder had inadvertantly worked its way under the stool. Shit. It was fortunately bent in a somewhat symmetrical manner, so i am not too worried, but the plastic top was damages unsymmetrically.
After this, I burnt them. First I rapped them in paper, sprayed perfume on it, and set it on fire. the paper and the credit cards fused together, but a really clever fellow could have probably gotten the numbers. Then I wrapped everything in an old piece of cloth and set the thing on fire.
Let me tell you, cloth burns for a long time.
Mission accomplished.


Exhausted from cleaning my room and the exertion of destroying old credit cards, I went to sleep. then I got up, had palak panner, which the guy called a farsan now. I don't like it when shops change the names of their stuff. I also had a veg pattice. Aashray founds the fact that I blog about all such things both boring and funny - which is a very rare thing to feel. Anyway, I made the first comic strip as I promised:

Left to right, that's Me, Aashray and Ashwin in a southparkish setting.



Will blog aain - mebbe something about anaglyph images.

You don't love me anymore

Didn't go trekking afterall. Both Aashray and Ashwin were sound asleep. There are plans to go tommorrow, but they'll probably be sound asleep tommorrow as well. An ad is just coming in the no ads radio. liars.

Anyway, was just listening to this song by Yankovic. Yankovic rocks man... but he has NO presence whatsoever in India.


We've been together for so very long
But now things are changing, oh I wonder what's wrong?
Seems you don't want me around
The passion is gone and the flame's died down

I guess I lost a little bit of self-esteem
That time that you made it with the whole hockey team
You used to think I was nice
Now you tell all your friends that I'm the Antichrist

Oh, why did you disconnect the breaks on my car?
That kind of thing is hard to ignore
Got a funny feeling you don't love me anymore

I knew that we were having problems when
You put those piranhas in my bathtub again
You're still the light of my life
Oh darling, I'm beggin', won't you put down that knife?

You know, I even think it's kinda cute the way
You poison my coffee just a little each day
I still remember the way that you laughed
When you pushed me down that elevator shaft

Oh, if you don't mind me asking, what's this poisonous cobra
Doing in my underwear drawer?
Sometime I get to thinking you don't love me any more

You slammed my face down on the barbecue grill
Now my scars are all healing, but my heart never will
You set my house on fire
You pulled out my chest hairs with an old pair of pliers

Oh, you think that I'm ugly and you say that I'm cheap
You shaved off my eyebrows while I was asleep
You drilled a hole in my head
Then you dumped me in a drainage ditch and left me for dead

Oh, you know this really isn't like you at all
You never acted this way before
Honey, something tells me you don't love me any more, oh no no
Got a funny feeling you don't love me anymore

same old wierd custom stuff

The mirror has an article on how lions saved this girl from kidnappers. The last lines state that kidnapping young girls and orcing them to marry you is like a tradition there. Woah. Wierd custom eh? But the thing is even here, in the south, it's somewhat of a custom for the husband to kidnap his wife. Now the whole thing is arranged, and the bride to be is left alone at home, and everyone leaves, and the groom comes and picks her up for the marriage. Wierd eh?

Anyway, made the southpark chars from southparkstudios and will start blogging the cartoons with every post from now on - for the heck of it. Will probably put in real life jokes or at least jokes inspired form real life - there is no OTHER way to do it.

Thouht for the day:

Mankind will never have enough RAM

Relieving monday morning blues

Read a father's friend's message a few dozen times right now. Apparently cheques are going to get cleared in an hour, tha'ts the headlines in today's TOI. This is actually a good thing, because the frauds will be caught sooner, especially for outstation cheques. Then there is some old news - the gas reserve find - who hasen't heard about THAT yet?

BT has a very irritating thing - the XP mediacentre PC. There is some foul play going on - someone has paid BT to put that article in. For as long as I remember, there has been no tech article on the front page, and stuff like the k750i with the world's first two MP mobile camera, or the PS2 finally coming in India, or the PSP also coming in India - none of these ever showed up in BT. They have also conviniently left out the fact that the official XP patches from the websites open up security holes for new stuff to creep in.

I am NOT supposed to be blogging about the news, I am supposed to be on my way to yeoor. But my friends who were supposed to come with me are sleeping. Aashray's father probably cut the call on his mobile, Ashwin's mother picked up and misunderstood my intentions. She told me college wasn't there for another four days, which pretty much is good news, but I am still eager to know who my classmates are going to be.

Need to it in a nice cartoon here... will probably start making a comic strip sometime.

That's what most JAM writers do in their blogs. Atleast two out of three. Vaibhav Wankhade's Protonic Distillation of Sub-atomic particles and Arjun "i-bet-he-doesn't-have-a-nickname-in-real-life" Ravi's liberation of postal service have the cartoons. In fact, have somewhat similiar cartoons, but Rashmi Bansal's blog, youth curry does not have any pics, and is more sensible. Seeing that I am going to start writing there soon, I must start putting up comics too I guess. I will probably make up chars and then make cartoons...
yeah that seems to be a good idea.


Will now come up with all the chars, as well as a cartoon for not going to yeoor.

555

celebrated hitting the ciggie brand mark by going twenty five. Now the main page will have a hell load of blogs... will take an even longer time to load on Ashwin's comp.

ok, this list has just ten items. Just ten things I hate in life. Donno why i am doing this.

Aashray told me h never got past five in making any list.

the list is not in any order. Will or wont make sense, but I don't exactly care much.

1) "Reality" television shows
2) Pretentious people
3) Typos while chatting and in e-mails
4) People who judge other people because of their faults
5) Not compeleting something
6) A tape getting spoilt
7) Never having enough RAM
8) Nothing good on television
9) People who spit while they speak
10) Bullies

Dont actually hate anything here. Really. just find them mildly irritating. Anyway, going to sleep now, even though I have slept a lot today. Will read a bit more of born that way and turn in. Have to go to yeoor tommorrow. That is why I must not go to BCL tommorrow, though the guy I bumped into while looking at Jai Hind admissions might wanna go. Damn. His college starts tommorrow, I donno when my college starts. Probably tommorrow... that seems to be the university dates. Still, I donno. Will find out who my classmates are day after tommorrow at least. So the journey begins. Will have a BMM blog or miht incorporate it into this one. Donno. Maybe. The charachters now are V, M and S, people who I have met during admission.

there is also this girl who reminds me of umbridge and who I hope as hell isn't in my class.
I hope she got through in KC or something. Please God. Or even better, get ME through in KC.

good night to me.

the cameraphone



Will be getting one of these anytime soon. They are going for eleven grand on e-bay, which means they'll be a lot cheaper in the shops. Or otherwise I donno. The k750i is just ubercool but I'll be satsified with the 700. Not that much of a difference except that the cam is a hefty two megapixel one. I don't need a two MP camera, I laready have a digital camera for that, and it would be too costly.
currently am using some wierd nokia model of Aashray.s The inbox and the phone memory is just too small. And the phone is somewhat retarded takes a long time to process simple things like opening the inbox. My actual mobile, some wierd samsung model is with him now. He has changed all the settings and ringtones, which I have done on his mobile. Will be getting that back soon, but its a very cheap mobile that my father purchased for temporary purposes. It actually has a bloody antenna. Damn.

My first mobile, the alcatel one touch 120 is currently being used by my father. It is also retarded and takes like a millenium to start up, and the antenna just sucks big time. It has polyphonic ringtones though, which is somewhat of a consolation.
Alcatel had a miserable launch in India. Despite their dead cheap mobiles, they just did not have the name to find a corner in the indian mobile market, which is pretty much in the afteboom stage right now. I think.

News

Manmohan singh wants power, water and reforms. Despite rains that make building crumble, the tanker comes in and pours murk in the buikldin'gs water tank everyday, the electricity does what it damn well pleases, and slums are getting demolished, cops are raping girls, the university is slapping a dress code for this incident, people are openly offering teenagers drugs on marine drive, the underground racing-gambling scene is flourishing like hell, and this guy wants reforms.
I was walking with a friend in marine drive, and both of us wanted to buy a few animorphs books. The guy there was a bit confused, asked us if we wanted to buy or watch, which made us confused, and we both agreed we wanted to buy the books, and he got out - get this - bestiality porn. He heard "animorphs" as "animals" and got us this tiny little book that he said cost fifty bucks. Who would blow fifty bucks on a very wierd shag?
There are a load of people who will end up in hell. If it does not exist, one should be made up just for them. Like the t-shirt hell shirt "MJ did not molest the children, he made love to them."

The other major news on NDTV right now is the big gas deposit discovery. At least Modi was in the news an people were not bickering about him. This is a pretty rare thing to happen. GSPCL just hit the biggest gas deposit in India. That should give a nice boost to the 7000 plus stock market that wr finally have.

Actually things are looking pretty good for India right now. Ah well...

BBC is for the first time, introducing a delay in the broadcast of news of sensitive issues. Thats actually pretty uncool, the reason being that they rank accuracy over speed, but I don't think accuracy will be compromised because of the speed. Damn the keys on this new keyboard are already fading out. the only survivng keys are q,w,r,t,y,p,g,h,j,k,b,z and X. the most messed up keys are a,s,d,e,s,i,o,l and I. th emost messed up are probably D and L.
Damn.
He he. There is something drastically wrong with this keyboard. Some of the keys have wrong symbols over them. Like this four has the pound symbol but the dollar shows up when you press it...

my keyboard is not news.
If you want news then my blog is the fucking last place to read it.

Sunday, June 26, 2005

simhadri simha



Simhadri Simha. Saw the kannada movie today. Atleast parts of it. vishnuvardhan is like a demigod there, just below Rajkumar.

The thing is, this is a pretty well made kannada movie, without overacting, but still, such a movie gives a lot of totally twisted social messages like:

1) Girls who get raped should marry their rapists to solve the problem.
WTF? Why the hell should girls who get raped marry their rapists? The argument from the other side is that once you marry, such feelings die down. Yeah right - the cure of such charged perverted people is to get them married.

2) The only other way out for raped girls is to commit scuicide

3) The treatment of eunuchs as another species that only deserve to be made fun of.

4) The villiage head doling out punisments instead of the law following its course. Like being banished for murder, or being banished for suspected rape, without even an investigation, let alone a trial.

Dumb movie. And all this was only in the twenty minute window that I watched it for. The way such "good" kannada movies go, I have no remorese whatsoever in the fact that bollywood is making the kannada industry extinct.

Anyway, all kannada movies (including the ones with mythological themes) border on soft-porn in the song sequences that suddenly jump up from nowhere.

stuff



Wierd blogger thing has got a complicated way of adding your photos directly into the blog now. Which is a good thing, because I will not have to go to adobe photoshop, c\modify the image for net suitability, then head over to geocities and upload the images, THEN paste the HTML coding into blogger.

But now an Id I made exclusively for this purpose is going to get wasted. And how many photos can blogspot handle anyway? bound to go down sooner or later. can't believe the CIA is actually funding keyhole.

Anyway, getting nice letters from creativegarh, and I think I might start writing a few stuff myself. I need to know a good t-shirt printing thing around Mumbai. there are a lot of custom tees I require right now.

The photo shows a fallen part of our bulding's compund. The dumb rains probably made the wet mud too heavy to handle. I remember the game in christian charity fairs where you have to hold up a wet brick for a minute with two fingers. When I tried this out, the brick fell in the bucket with such a force that the water splashed all around and the stall owner scolded me.

Damn I am getting nostalgic, a really nice christian couple had taken some of us building kdis to the fair, and we had a good time. I shot baloons with this gun, and I was one of the few who actually managed to shoot the baloons in two out of the three tries, and not to boast too much or anythin, but that was my first time. then there was this bucket with a bangle kept in the middle of it, and the bucket was filled with water. The aim was to drop a coin into the ring. The trick was to slide the coin in sideways.
Then there was the great fare of VVHS, where I sat in a stall and got a certificate for it (though a half-friend Karan Nandawani sat there for sixteen bloody hours and also got a cert). My game was blowing a pencil into a bottle, which is a pretty tough thing to do, the scientific reason for this being that you blow air into the botle at the same time, and the pressure generated actually pushes the pencil out. everyone were preplexed as to why blowing the pencil in would actually make it come out, but we didn't bother to explain this to them mostly because we didn't know.
the stall close to me was getting this loop of wire across a whole load of loops of wires and making sure that the lightbuld lit only thrice when the circuit was compeleted. Basically you had to get the loop through without touching the sides of the wire. the clever strategy I evolved was to keep the wire touched always, which makes sure that the lightbulb comes on only once.
I never tried this out, I donno why.
I also remeber the stall with the "fishing" some water, some plastic fish with rings, and a long fishing rod. I was pretty good, won once, and the prevented me from trying again for some wierd reason. Dumb fools. The gift for winning a lot were a few shampoo bottles and stuff. I remember the gulab jamuns which were too sweet, the fashion show which people were saying were indecent, and the fancy dress show where I was the tinder box soldier or some shit like that.
the other fair I remember was at Shopping centre, where I was spoiling the gambling games by not betting the fifty bucks, but tlling people the correct tin under which the biscuit was hidden. Dumb as he was, he was not conning, but the biscuit really was under a tin.
Idiot.
They also showed titanic at that fair, and we sat and watched on the stone margin. the problem was that he fast forwarded the stuff on the comp. But I caught a hint of the director drawing her...
Anyway, goin to totally another area which really lacks a point, after coming back from taking th epic of the allen wall, I just took a pic of this fire hyrant pipe.
Look at all the spiderwebs that the teensy spiders have spun.

So didn't go to yeoor today. tried building card castles, but dtopped being determined to rebuild one every time they came crashing down.

Things I have learns while trying to build card castle

1) Getting a camera will make everything collapse

2) Stay away from the wind, close all windows and doors, and pray that there are no minor tremors that only the cards feel

3) Don't breathe

4) Build castles with only used cards, the new cards are too smooth

5) Build in a |\|\|\ instead of the traditional /\/\/\/\ manner

6) Straight cards hold up better than slightly bent cards.

7) Don't bend the cards, because after everything crashes down, placing the bent cards betwen two propped up cards will make the structure unstable

8) switch sides while building each layer

9) give room for the cards to slide sideways

10) Brace everything with something

getting a tiny card hutment is in itself a great achievement. Listened to music, then went to sleep. got up and played one game of badminton, and one game of tt, and made plans to go to yeoor tommorrow. Aashray and Ashwin are mostly coming, so am trekking tommorrow...

won't take the cam. Last time that happened, the camera almost died, then resurrected on its own accord.

Saturday, June 25, 2005

favorite things

inspired to write this after reading this abandoned blog

Ok this is not going to be nowhere as good as that, but I will try to be honest:

1) Winning in CS against all the hardcore gamers in a rare visit to the arcade

2) Winning in badminton after loosing the toss and getting stuck in the unlucky side

3) This will be pretty sadistic, but learning that someone got a new Darwin out there.

4) checking your e-mail everyday, and finding that one rare one which is not generated, spam or a forward

5) Hell, finding a good forward in your inbox

6) Your parents agreeing to get you something without you begging for it

7) Your parents agreeing to get you something after you beg enough for it

8) Obeying your parents no matter how absurd it sounds in the aftermath of learning that your parents are going to get you something expensive

9) Listening to scary stories of the "real world"

10) A song that you like suddenly coming on in Radio

11) Finding out that you like a song that suddenly comes on in Radio

12) Telling the dialogues in a movie you have already watched before the charachters in the movie actually tell it, in front of friends or family who haven't watched the movie

13) A bunch of friends sitting togethere and repeating the dialogues in a move (or particularly, an episode of F.R.I.E.N.D.S)

14) Suddenly going to a movie without any prior plans.

15) Loosing tickets to said movie, and finding them on the road. Has happened only once though.

16) Getting wet (from outside liquid sources, obviously)

17) Watching a taboo porn film (hey, I get my kicks alright? (atleast I don't watch regular porn (and the taboo stuff does not turn me on (I watch it because its just wierd (I have an O-C disorder for paranthesis))))

18) Listening to a joke you can predict

19) Crying over Simba's father's death in the Lion King

20) Blogging

21) Reading a book while it is raining outside

22) Eating the last mango at the end of the monsoons

23) Trying out a new flavor of ice-cream

24) Remembering all the emberassing moments of your life

25) Bringing up old school tales while talking with a bunch of old school friends

guess I will stop here and continue sometime later eh?

nyah, I guess I will just go on

26) clapping a mosquito in your palms and showin off the amount of blood that comes out

27) Playing a game with winamp playing in the background

28) Watching illegaly downloaded versions of Southpark

29) Laughing at all the outrageous stunts in a kung-fu or a Rajnikanth-Mithuenda film.

30) Trying to create music on a friend's guitar even though you have no idea how to.

31) Pulling of a sucessfukl prank on a friend. for example, making him wear underwear on his head in public, then make him remove it in disgust, which in turn makes his specs fall out, he runs behind you, catches up with you at a crowded railway station and screams at you about the consequences of a smashed specs.
Then having another friend reply back that its not his fault if he did not know how to take pout underwear in the middle of the said crowded railway station.

32) Swimming. While it is raining.

33) Watching a foreign movie with subititles.

34) Watching a foreign movie without subtitles.

35) Eating uppu - tupa rice. what do you call it in english? salt-ghee rice?

36) Getting a RAM upgrade

37) Compeleting a tough game without cheats (Deus Ex)

38) Discussing complicated occult theories with friends

39) Kunj Vihar Vada Pavs.

40) Finding out a new "amazing fact"

41) Striking up a conversation with an absolute stranger

42) Playing one of those old fashioned video games on a mitashi gameboy - like contra or super mario brothers

43) Reading a new Harry Potter book, and tell crucial plot changes to others who haven't read them, and getting the nuts bashed out of you in return (After I told a guy about Sirius Black's death)

44) Managing to read the controversial contents of a site before it goes down. (washingtonionine)

45) Managing to get hold of rare banned songs (moist vaina)

46) Somebody saving your life (has happened - many times actually)

47) Doing something illegal and getting away with it.

48) Having friends who think you are really cool

49) Having no real enemies you can think of

50) Having fifty things that you actually like in this world, and still have the energy to keep going.

51) Getting a currency note with a special number on it

52) Impressing someone deeply.

53) Managing to confuse someone

54) Making someone believe that werewolves actually exist and are out to get you

55) Eating old soggy cream biscuits

56) Doing a dare in style

57) Winning in a round of musical chairs

58) The gentle rocking motion of the train in a long distance journey while you sleep in the top berth.

59) Sitting snugly in a tourist car while it rains outside, and you are travelling through mountain country with old hindi songs playing on the bad speakers.

60) Bumping into long lost relatives

61) Getting a fever in your grandmother's house - everyone pampers the hell out of you.

62) Stargazing at night

63) Gaondevi mandir, on top of the abandoned water tank, starin up at the sky, and the trains going all round you...

64) Consoling a friend who has proiblems you can relate to

65) coming across an old computer game that you used to play a lot - and discover that you still know how to play it well

66) Buying something from the hawkers at mumbai locals

67) Cadbury's diary mil - in the rains.

68) Blowing a motherlode of cash on a useless activity.

69) Not bowin to peer pressure

70) Making someone else bow into peer pressure

71) Winning in a game of housie. winning despite the loud cries of "bogie bogie" from the crowd.

72) Someone giving you a treat

73) Givin a treat to someone

74) Finding out that someone famous came from your hometown

75) Listening to old family tales

76) wasting time doing nothing and then geting scolded for it

77) The anticpation after the exams and before the results

78) writing with a brand new gel pen on a fresh blank page

79) Painting

80) Eating as much cake as you want, alon with the cherry

81) A friend calling you and informin you about a victory or a prize in an unexpected area

82) A good bargain

83) A good waiter

84) Listening to the radio on the sly while the prof is taking a lecture

85) telling dirty jokes with a bunch of guys and laughing at the most atrocious ones...

86) Getting one shoulder wet while hanging out of a fast mumbai local in the rains

87) going trekking, crossing a river twice and finding out later that people had to be airlifted out of that place

88) Bicycling alone.

89) Taking a walk with a friend

90) Swinging from a banyan tree pretending to be Tarzan

91) Riding a bike.

92) Revving up the said bike before riding it.

93) Hogging out in front of some pretty useless television.

94) Pretending to study the moment your parents come home.

95) Spilling the beans in a game of truth and dare

96) Winning in a game of cards that you have only just learnt

97) Photographing people who are sleeping and later showing it to them

98) The computer recovering from a hang just about before you switch it off

99) The smell of damp mud just before the rains.

100) Holi.

damn, I am through to a hundred and STILL can go on. Will make another hundred ka list later on... lessee...

the visa ad



what is particularly striking about this ad is that the birds are left from behind the girl, just as the expressions on the girl changes from initial surprise to something of both happiness and awe. It is just impossible to do in one take, and imagine the number of takes necessary to get all the birds to fly free from behind her, AND get the perfect expression. I think that the birds didn't fly far, and came back almost as soon as they were released aftercircling around once.
OR the bords could be digitally added later on after the girl gives the right expression. This wouldn't be too tough or expensive but I doubt if this is the case...

agencyfaqs.com does not give details on how the ad was shot. Think I should write to them asking them to start putting that up as well...

Mr and Mrs Smith.



Saw the movie today. Was pretty apprehensive about watching the movie, especially because I somewhat like the serial, even though nobody else I know likes it, and I wanted the movie to have the same actors.



But the movie is still pretty cool. And I am not entirely sure, but I think the neighbours were these actors. Would be so cool if they were.
It follows the whole story of us thing, where the two are sitting in front of a councellor and talking it out. I like the part where the councellor tells them that a LOT of couples go through this, and Brad Pitt says something like "un-huh?" this quote is NOT there at imdb, which is pretty wierd. This one is there though...

Jane Smith: There's this huge space between us, and it just keeps filling up with all the things we don't say to each other. What's that called?
Counselor: Marriage.

Pretty funny. There were a load of pretty cool dialogues, like the chiken-shit and pussy exchange. I like the parts where they are trying to kill each other off. Then the make up and gang up against everyone else. But they have a lot to catch up on.

Jane Smith: My parents died when I was five. I'm an orphan.
John Smith: Who was that guy who walked you down the aisle and gave you away at our wedding?
Jane Smith: Paid actor.
John Smith: I said it! I said I saw your father on Fantasy Island!

Nice dig at "reality" shows. Who actually believes them any more? i was wondering how all of this fit into the real life story of the Mr and Mrs Smith of the television series. At first, the movie seemed like a good ending to the series, then it seemed like a good beggining to the series. Finally, the best cunclusion I can get is that there are many pairs of Mr and Mrs smith as Mrs Smith pointed out in the movie. Also, the councellor does say that more couples than this one have similiar problems... AND since the neighbors were most probably the same actors, they could've been a Mr and Mrs Smith too...
Just an idea.

I never actually wanted to watch the movie, but something struck me about the posters since the beggining. There were two versions of the officially released posters, one with Jolie having a gun on her thigh, and one without:

this is the poster with both of em



notice the gun on the holster. Now the same picture of Angelina Jolie appears without the gun, which shows that the gun was added later on digitally. kind of like the mace windu lightsabre incident which led to the invention of the entire lightsabre exchange ritual in the star wars universe just to explain the goof up.



this is Mr. Smith, for the heck of it.



the s&m action in the movie is really hot. But its too soft, reminds you strongly of Liv Tyler in One night at McCool's.

About the rest of today, Aashray came over in the morning, I gave him underground 2, and he gave me non-working copies of a new world and gta3 : vice city. Damn him... Anyway, after that i went to watch the movie. Played ONE game of badminton and won after the movie, then came home and am blogging. taken admission in SIES, but turns out that there was a second list in KC< which was put on the fifth floor, and no one knew about it, including the pune who told me there wasn't going to be a second list... ah well. Still keeping my fingers crossed, but I don't think I will get into KC afterall. Still, would be cool if I do.
But SIES is pretty good too, and it shares most of the faculty with KC, so i am not at all dissapointed with SIES. I finally realised how important my HSC marks were. Even if i would have got around twenty marks more, which was easy, but not dead easy, It would have boosted my percentage enough to make me cut the mark and enter the best BMM college around. Damn.
Regretting it just a bit now, but as I said, SIES is not too bad. Have seniors from my old school, one of whom I'd rather avoid for his twisted sense of humour...
I am rambling now. Hey I have a right to ramble, that's what blogs are for. Need to put up my list of favorite things too... bumped into this blog... pretty good blg actually. http://charuta.blogspot.com. Oh yeah, just click here if you are really bothered enough.

Forgot to blog, something exteremely funny happened in the theatre today. i got up from my seat, and as I was sitting back down, the chair folded up behind me and I almost sat on the ground. Was a bit emberassed, but I laughed it out. damn. Then my bottomside got really wet as I had a great fall while playing badminton on the leaky, wet side of the court. whoever heard of playing badminton in the monsoons?
Jane Smith: Any last words?
John Smith: The new curtains are hideous.

Friday, June 24, 2005

Occult symbolism in X-men

read a X-men comic today. Found out why nightrawler ws in that abandoned church, and how the hell he was a priest. I thought that he used to be a priest and then became mutant. Turns out that he was made a priest in a flase ceremony by some wierd organisation that wanted to throw down the church for not allowing women to be priests, and because some priest raped a nun and accused her of adultry, so the nun takes revange.
The particular story burst with occult symbolism, because of the references to the devil pope, this picture in the beggining which shows mutants crucified like Jesus,



and this panel, which you will not understand unless you are familiar with occult stuff. Because there is no reference to the dragon king after or before this panel. This appears just once. Once is enough...



like the code says, the story is being said all around you if you just look closely enough. That is the scary part...

load of mostly related stuff

Reading two books now, two sides of the nature - nurture debate. Actually reading the nature side o it, and am going to read the nurture side of it. Reading born that way right now.



And the seven rings thing, and the two dogs named toy are the most compelling evidences for the nature argument. Listening to scotman's wrld right now. Long time since I heard that song. Pretty good song.
Back to the topic, the other side is tackled by this book:



Not in our genes probably argues from the nature side.

What I am saying right now is that even if you clone Hitler, you might not get another successful Hitler, but a guy pretty much like him in ideals and stuff.
the probmlem with the minnesota twins study is that all evidences point to the fact that you probably will get another succesful Hitler.

this is a pretty good site, probably the official site of the study. click here
The sad thing is that stuides will not be possible in the future, because twins are no longer sperated for increased adoptibility...

So this is THE last chance to get all the scientific data you can.

another site but it mostly centers around only one aspect of the study. Will find links for the nature argument when I read THAT book...
will have too look it up in wikipedia right now.

load of mostly unrelated stuff

I am blogging this on notepad just in case the virus kicks into place again. The wierdest thing possible just happened. There was this virus on my comp that frequently shows up and starts doing wierd things like chanigng everything I type into nb//- and repeatedly loops this. It also changes the colume like hell, and no matter what key you type on, it automatically holds down the ctrl and alt keys to bring down the menu associated with that function. So basically the only way to type anything at all is to bring up the symbols thingy in word and click on one letter at a time. Damn. Did something like "not blogging today because of virus" but that whole text changed into something like "nb//- nb//- nb/--" as soon as I copy + Pasted it into notepad. I am hoping like hell that this does not happen again. The point is this problem has been there since I purchased this computer. Now this guy came and changed the keyboard, and the whole thing began working again. I don't understand how the fuck in hell that happened. It just does not fucking make sense, how a dumb keyboard can change your volume, prevent certain programs from loading and basically messing up your comp big time.
Anyway, I have to blog about yesterday too, I went all the way to VT to see if my name had come in the list, but again there was no list in KC. Damn. But SIES is not a bad college. On the way over, the monsoons had already kicked in big time and there were like seven trains stuck one behind the other on the slow track. The fast track wasn't much affected and it ended up in CST only around twenty minutes late. The train also stopped at Bhandup, I donno for what reason. Harbour line was totally closed. Then, when I reached CST, I caught a 138 to churchgate, got down before the signal, the theatre was still showing batman returns but thats a huge flop here at least. My name wasn't there, and I walked back looking for a bus to catch to CST. Usually, I head over to mittal towers and catch the bus from there, but this time, I came back to church gate and walked back to CST. All those guys tried to sell me porn and pictures of Jesus on leaves, but I didn't succumb to any of these exteremely tempting offers, and ended up at the first shop that sells pirated cds. Just realised now that the tenth results are out. Want to see how my friends have fared. Anyway, i ended up there, and purchased NFS U2. The pics during the installation looked like the ending animated sequence from 2 fast 2 furious, but maybe that is on purpose. Anyway, that chick, forgot her name, walks around naked all the time, heather brooke, yeah, never really liked her, and she looks fat in u2. But the game never really started, I don't have enough RAM. in the twenty first century with 192 MB RAM is ont of the worst place you could be.
Here is, for the heck of it, twenty five worsts places you could be at
25) In hell. Yeah that just about makes it to the top twenty five.
24) In Mulund with a fast track watch or a cameraphone
23) In Iraq, with Bush presidenting the USA, and Saddam "presidenting" you.
22) In Marine drive, in the vicinity of a Cop, and female.
21) In the "Ladies" compartment of a Mumbai local when you are eleven. (young enough to be allowed with you mom, but old enough to... you know. I tell you, you can't look at anything but the cieling)
20) In a Mumbai Local. Any how.
19) In Jai Hind college. Worst canteen guy ever.
18) In Bhandup, with a fast track watch or a Cameraphone.
17) In the vicinity of the opnoxious fat bastard called Biswajit.
16) In Mulund.
15) In Karakatoa around a hundred and fifty years ago.
14) In the vicinity of any Mumbai cop anywhere.
13) In Iraq. Anyhow.
12) In SIES college of Arts Science and Commerce.
11) In DPS with a cameraphone
10) In the Ganga with a scratch (you'll get all the infections from hell).
09) In Kamatipura with money (Having no cash was the only thing that saved a on-the-way-to-become-a -journalist friend from a bunch of pimps)
08) In Currey Road with a handkerchief on your right hand (actaully not THAT bad - depends on how you look at it.)
07) In Dombivili with a fast track watch or a cameraphone
06) In Dadar with a bag. Any bag. Hell, in Dadar with expensive clothes. Hell, in Dadar full stop.
05) In a Mumbai Local with an Itch. (Seen people being there doing that - not a pretty sight.)
04) In Mumbai, out of doors in June (with or without umbrellas and raincoats - does not make any difference)
03) In the twenty first centuty with 192 MB RAM
02) In a temple with shoes (believe me, there is almost NOTHING worse than this)
01) In the vicinity of SK.
while THAT kept me distracted, and celebrating the use of my comp again by blogging even mroe nonsense than I normally do. If you have actually read this much, you desperately need a life. I am going to add that in my sidebar somewhere. In fact, if I don't stop writing now, I probably nee a life...
Hell. It's fun being dead. After I purchased the CD, I went to SIES, and saw tat te third list wasn't put up. Not too dissapointed, I came home. then went and played some badminton, after breaking the calculator over some argument.
My fater didn't scream at all, he had a load of important contacts in tat digital diary. Damn.
Pretty much won the badminton matches, but the club house wasn't dry after all, the water was leaking all over the place. will have to go to school now and see how the results were. Might not do tha, will just go to eden woods in the evening and find out.
then about today - might as well go there. After many futile attempts at fixing my defunct computer, I gave it up and called the repair guy. Who repaired it - by changing the keyboard, which is pretty wierd. Almost as wierd as 42.
Now I have got this new temporary keyboard, which does a load of cool things, like it has a www button, an e-mail button and all sorts of play/pause/mute controls. cool eh? Wanna buy something like this, will go do that now.
Ah well...
will stop this notepad blog right now, and probably go swim. Not in the mood but will get there real soon. Haven't swum in a long time - might as well go do it.

the virus thing

this is an exaggerated rendering of what happened today.


The impossible virus.
Coming home from classes one afternoon, everything was pretty normal in my small housing colony. A few overanxious mothers were trying to ruin the summer afternoons of a few children by telling them it was too sunny to play outside, the gardener was sleeping soundly underneath the shade of the mango tree, and the watchman was happily flirting with the four or five kamwali bais. So I thought I would go home, sit on my comp and start playing ‘need for speed underground 2’ before my parents came home and told me off, ruining my summer evenings, and asking me to spend time in a more “fruitful” manner by studying. Heather Brooke was about as “fruitful” as I wanted anything to be.
But the computer and God (some believe it to be the same enigmatic thing) had other things planned for me. I sat down, and promised myself to finally win at least one drag race, though I had already bluffed my way into the advanced drifts with my friends. There is no way I would lose this time. Especially since I had looked up the cheats. Heather Brooke warned me to drive safely on the real road, and I was on my way around the town looking for a nice place to race. Just as I found a nice place to cheat in, God’s and/or the computer’s plans kicked into action. The game suddenly closed down. Nothing I could do. It just disappeared from the screen and I was left facing the desktop. Then winamp, which was running in the background suddenly died. Now I knew that THAT was a VERY bad sign. I have known powerpoint slideshows to hang, webshots to stop cycling its wallpapers, the web browsers to crash, and all the windows to freeze, and the comp crashing so hard that the start button does not even allow you to boot BUT winamp blares on resolutely from wherever it goes into hiding when you minimize this. In fact, you can’t even ctrl+alt+delete winamp away, pretty emberassing when it resolutely plays banned Nirvana songs like “moist vagina.”
So when winamp did stop, that too, apparently on its own accord, I knew for sure that something was terrible wrong with my comp. I was right. The desktop froze, couldn’t do anything. Refreshed it a couple of times, tried clicking on the start menu, then stopped doing anything and stared at the comp wondering whether I should risk hard booting. Now I knew that XP was a pretty messed up OS, and that hard booting is one of the last things you want to do with such a fragile OS. But there seemed little other choice. My hand reached out for the power switch, but just in time, the start menu popped up a couple of hundred times, and the desktop refreshed itself over and over again. So it was just a time lag in the commands. Happened before, nothing much to worry about, I opened up notepad just to type some nonsense and see what happened.
The winamp closing thing should have stayed with me longer. The virus, or worm, or whatever kicked into full force then. This is a cut+copy+paste job of what the virus typed in notepad:
nb//- nb/-- nb/-- nb//- nb/-- nb//--
Now, this could be a cryptic message from God, or a encrypted way of a Microsoft employee saying that he hated his mother-in-law, but the whole winamp crashing thing pretty much convinced me that I had a huge virus on my hands. Now, I had taken all the precautions that a person who wants to safeguard his comp from viruses usually takes. I had not opened various forwards despite extremely appealing titles like “nude paparazzi shots of Heather Brooke.” I had installed a proper firewall, and around four anti-virus programs. The best of the lot. I had no idea where this virus crept in from. I did the most sensible thing possible. I ran a virus scan on all the four anti-virus programs.
Around six hours later (I have seven drives due to a recent but mostly dysfunctional system upgrade) I found that all the four programs had detected and removed a mother lode of viruses, worms and Trojans I never knew I had. Nimda, Sassar, Polybot, Sober, Zindos and Doomjuice. I was infected with all of these. There was a prompt on screen “for the healing process to be complete, the computer should be restarted now” I clicked on yes. And waited. Eventually the login screen came on, after the computer found it fit to scandisk each and every one of those seven hard drive partitions. I logged in, and a load of things started happening at once. The start menu clicked on itself, selected notepad by itself, suddenly all the dings and beeps stopped, and one line of text began to appear in notepad.
nb//- nb/-- nb/-- nb//- nb/-- nb//--
As you most probably can’t see, this is the exact line of text that I previously attributed to God’s message to mankind. Not that the virus did not type it out, but this time, I could not even save the text file. All sorts of programs kept starting by themselves, and I knew my computer was on a logic defying rampage. I somehow managed to start up one anti virus software, and since all kinds of buttons were getting pressed randomly, the settings window came up. I noticed a fatal error in my previous virus scan. I hadn’t scanned the boot section of the comp. I clicked on it, started another scan, and tried to turn on winamp again. I managed it, but I could not get the songs I wanted to play, and had to do with the previous play list. Suddenly, Enrique whining about some lost love began to have jarring interruptions. The music faded out, faded back in then began to break in the middle. It was then I noticed that winamp had, after all, not been defeated even by this avg and nortron (amongst others) defying virus. I thought winamp had died merely because the virus had managed to turn off the volume. Now the virus was doing something really weird, but nonetheless managing to improve the forgettable Enrique song. It was turning the mute thing on-off at a very rapid break, producing the momentary breaks in the song. I turned the speaker off, and waited in silence, as the hi-fi system had problems of its own. I don’t suppose that God and anything remotely electronic are good fellows. That’s why He keeps messing up stuff.
Now my life has a LOT of electronic stuff, so I don’t exactly like God all that much. I waited patiently for the scan, while I went and watched television. I came back to check on the comp when Enrique managed to appear there too. The scan was complete, and though something called Lirva was detected, the virus was still alive and kicking when I opened up notepad to check. I wont cut+copy+past the nb//-- line again, but that was more or less what came up in Notepad. In sheer frustration, I hard booted the comp, fragile OS and all. Then I looked up chip. Damn, I still refer to Planet Digit as chip. Now the virus kicked in just as I booted the comp, which means that the virus had to be in the boot section. I called the computer engineer from a nearby comp repair shop who is seen at my home more often than most of my other “friends.” As I waited for the computer repair guy to show up, and as I waited for the computer to scandisk through the seen hard drive partitions for the second time in the same day, I sat and read Planet Digit looking for a good solution.
I found out a load of things, like the official update from the Microsoft site opens up security holes in Windows XP that allows even more viruses to get in. I also found out the find distinctions between viruses, worms and Trojans. I can’t help it if this dumb office XP automatically capitalizes the T in Trojans. Anyway, about half way through the stack of Planet Digits (doesn’t have the same ring as chips) the computer guy rang the bell. I let him in and explained all about the virus. He was as perplexed as I was, and ran his own scan with his own anti virus. After this didn’t work, he got up a boot disk, and said the solution was to format my hard drive. Re-installing all the software would cost five hundred bucks. This didn’t seem like a good idea. I asked him if he had the good old win98. Or even the bad old win NT. Nothing, he just had XP and that was the only thing he could re-install after formatting the drive.
This seemed like a really bad idea. I called up my father, explained the problem, and he told me to let the computer repair guy to do whatever it takes. he restarted the comp, and found out that he couldn’t format the drive because the keyboard wasn’t working. He told me that there was a problem in the keyboard, because it simply had to work in dosprompt. He told me that no virus can kick in this early in the startup process. Being the half-wise smartass that I am, I told him that a boot section virus could be programmed to make the computer believe that a keyboard wasn’t plugged in. It just didn’t make sense, whoever heard of a virus residing in a keyboard? That’s about as absurd as a… actually its more absurd than anything you can think of. Next time you get something that is really absurd, you can safely use the simile, ‘as absurd as a keyboard virus’.
But the computer guy ran to his shop, got a new keyboard, came back, and attached it to the computer. Believe it or not, it worked. The dumb thing worked. The virus or whatever was actually in the dumb keyboard. Since the computer repair wasn’t forthcoming with a plausible explanation, I am forced to come up with my own. There was a berserk circuitry in the keyboard, which pretty much kept pressing keys in a random manner. Then again, I may be being my old half-wise smartass self.
The other explanation being, there is a very smart virus writer out there who has programmed the virus to temporarily stop when the keyboard has been switched, only to make the virus kick in at some other innocuous time.
nb//- nb/-- nb/-- nb//- nb/-- nb//--
Nah just kidding. The problem seems to really be in the keyboard, which is something pretty weird. But all virus activities have thankfully subsided, I have taken extra care now, installed two more anti-virus programs, continued not to open mails with nude pictures of anyone, and I still regularly scan (all seven) of my drives, and harmless little viruses (that do absolutely nothing keep) showing up – viruses like Mimail, Korgo, Fizzer, Zindos, FunLuv…

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Im in college!

Got up, went to VT, then to KC, the list hadn't come out, so I went back to SION, got admitted in SIES. I am in college now. Yeahah!
Then went back to KC just in case. The list had still not come. Probably not going to come at all. I have almost given up hope... but we'll see. Then came home, and gort an mp3 cd with all the latest hindi songs. Its titled "Bollywood entry with no entry" and has songs of obscure movies like "sehar" and "mere jeevan saathi" and I live in the thick of it all. Listening to "mein teri hoon jaanam" from the dance divas album, and it is such a direct rip of yanni's "chariots of fire" those cuntlicking bastards with no originality.
Switched to coldplay now. That was next on the playlist...

Tried installing battles of middle earth but the file was currupted, as usually happens when you get CDs from CST. Haven't swam in a long time now. How to do it tommorrow. Will probably go with a totally different group of friends. Will sit and start writing today. Don't like this song too much... A whisper. they should have whispered more.
No news apart from that - at least nothing worth blogging.

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Always wondered what I missed

When Forrest gets up to talk at the Vietnam rally in Washington, the microphone plug is pulled and you cannot hear him. According to Tom Hanks, he says, "Sometimes when people go to Vietnam, they go home to their mommas without any legs. Sometimes they don't go home at all. That's a bad thing. That's all I have to say about that."

This is from IMDB.com

just click here to go there

KC formula

I figured out how much marks I go in the entrance. 41/50. Which is pretty good.

To put how I did it in an unnecessarily complicated manner; the formula is:


e = (2x+p)/2

note: p = h-15 if HSC stream is Science
p = h-10 if HSC stream is Commerce
p = h if HSC stream is Arts



where,

e = merit list marks
x = entrance test marks
p = considered marks for HSC performance
h = actual HSC percentage

therefore,

x = (2e-p)/2

I have got 63.5 in my KC merit list entrance. and a 63.5 in my HSC in Science stream. Therefore, my entrance test marks are 41 out of fifty. Which, as I said, is pretty good.

I now realise just how importance my HSC performance was. If I had pushed chem or IT or even Physics just a bit, I would have gotten around twenty marks more easily. That would have propelled me into the sixty eights, which would have gotten me an admission in the best BMM college in Mumbai.
DAMN.
why the fuck did I think that the HSC results weren't important for BMM?
Still, SIES is not a bad college, and I got through. Early morning, I left for SIES and got a bit wet in the rain. Bumped into ashwin there, and he helped me by moving around the college. In typical SIES fashion, I roamed around from the fourth floor to the first floor, met the vice principal, and someone else in the line. Sowmya or something I donno. Then I had to head over to NErul to cancel the admissions. First had samosa, Bhajiya and Sada dosa at GK. Then headed over to Nerul. Sumedh, Bala, and Sid were supposed to come but they never made it when I was there. Took a little time but I got my admissions cancelled. My fees will be returned to me within a fortnight. Yeah right, knowing SIES, multiply any time limit they set by a factor of four. So I can safely expect my seven and a half grand refund only after say two months.
After that came home, watched tv, saw starship troopers.
gump, for a movie made in 1994 is pretty damn amazing. Zemeckis is the director right?
Hung out with Ameya in the evening. He showed me photos of kerela. It is not made up of mud and rain after all. Then walked with him, played a little cricket with friends, got hold of a pirated version of the battles for middle earth CD. Then went to the bank, drew the cash for tommorrow, sat with aashray, and created a few "poems" like yesterday...
Also thought up of a story... will blog it sometime later.
Came home and am blogging now...

about today

am sleepy now. So i wont blog in detail. Basically:
up - thane - sion - no second list - KC - first list - no name - VT - Vrindavan - CCD - chocolate fantasy - bad, rotten songs - almost free tee - look for no answers tee - also almost - SIES - second list put up - transferred to sion - home - eden woods - home - blog - bed.
good night.

Monday, June 20, 2005

Some poetry.

poetry in blogs are usually deep and intellectual. Something like

A storm in the eye of the mind;
A silent scream in an eternal fall
And a soul's weight, undefined
But communism will liberate us all

thats about how much sense all of em make. Aashray and I made a few very understandable, but nontheless, deep and philosophical poems. We were on a swing in the garden when we did it. The swing was really low and it was so uncomfortable that we thought it deserved a poem. The swing moved us into writing a deep and philosophical poem which is nonetheless understandable. Mostly. and I am not drunk. Not now, not then.
Anyway, here is the poem:

The swing is bad
Which is sad
I wish I had
gone mad

Then we saw the stars above us. Yeah right. its monsoon, and the clouds were covering us. The sky was pink because the white clouds were reflecting the yellow light from the city. Because of refraction or referraction or some wierd scientific phenomenon that no one really understands, the sky was pink. We decided since the stars were dead for four months or so, (if not then some farmers will surely be dead) that it would be a nice thing to write a poem to the non existant stars.

the stars in the sky
are so high
it makes me wonder why
my pants are dry

then Aashray made this rhyme about Pamela, while i told him about one Varun and I had made up long ago. The punchline being, that all the silicon actually turned out to be sand. anyway:

Pamela!
ko tok ke mujhe kya mila?
mera lavda hila
jaise ek kela
Dheela dheela!

That translates to:

O Pamela!
what did I get from screwing you?
My penis shook
Like a banana
which was loose!

I wonder how deep and profound all this would have got, if we were, indeed, drunk.

The very forgetable interview

I want to forget about it, but I want to blog about it before I do...
wierd thing. Anyway, here goes.
I was waiting in the Library with some people I had met around, and this girl came up and asked us to write a serial number next to our merit list number and sign. Basically, we got to decide when we would go for the interview. This guy was really nervous and shaking all over. I was really nervous, but just knew that I shouldn't shake. Only I had an Idea of what could come - he didn't. We were sitting in front of two people who had no idea what would come, and who were busy chatting about who would be a more appropriate idol for them - John Lennon or Kurt Cobain. One was this guy who studied in a foreign board from calcutta, for edexcel and had thir really wierd hair. The other guy had combed up his wierd hair for the interview. the calcutta guy hadspent the previous night at velocity. That's a club.
But the guy sitting next to me and me were reflected over the word "studds" on the second guy's helmet. I told them what was likely to come "why did you do this course?" and "why do you want it in this college."
The appropriate answer would be to string a few random words together and include the phrases "creative thinking" and "language abilities" along with "an ample scope for creative expression" somewhere.
I tutored them for a while like this, and intimidated them, and finally, even the two people who party regularly (probably are losers) got nervous. Our Serial numbers came up, and we had to go sit on this tiny table along with a few other people. This was the final line - or so I thought. After waiting there, and looking around in the library and seeing the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica for the first time is a pretty unimpressive sight. Basically, you think, why the hell would someone waste all that paper now that the net is here.
There were also around twenty volumes of the encyclopedia americana, around that many volumes of the encyclopedia of social sciences and shit like that...
At this point of time, it was just about to be my turn next when this guiy showed up, and started asking the people co-ordinating the whoile thing about the nature of the interviewers. There was a khadus pair and an OK pair. I got the Ok pair, thankfully, as I was sent up to have the interview.
There was this small wooden cabin with two wooden rooms, and I had to sit on this yellow chait outside. Soon the other guy joined me, and we talked with a girl standing there. she told us that she would'nt have gotten through with today's competition. She was only in the second year. She scared us more than consoled us. It was my turn next. I smiled, confidently and went into the room. I went in and saw this girl showing them drawings. He told me to wait for five minutes. I began to walk out, when I was directed to a door I had hardly noticed. No one else was in there but the two interviewers.
One was a perfect Journalist stereotype. Jeans and Kurti and long wavy hair. the other had a blue top and did not speak much, was probably a in-house faculty.
The first one did most of the asking, and would have played the role of Rita Skeeter very well.
But she was a very sweet lady, or a very sarcastic, peevish lady, can't figure out which.
I think she was a sweet lady though.
Anyway, as soon as I entered, she asked "so gentleman, why is a gentleman like you (someone who has taken Science) not doing engineering or medical". She hadn't asked me why I was doing journalism, but why I was NOT doing engineering or medical. I launched into my prepared answer of why I was doing Journalism anyway.
Really want to forget the rest of the interview, but i did really well till this one question. But I evened it out, and gave te right impression in the end. In fact, the interview was amazing...
only in the end she said a pretty confusing phrase, which is still bloody troubling me.
"Hope you get in somewhere, dear"
What the fuck does that mean? Either way, are theylikely to tell me? Will they tell me I;ve got throguh? Will they tell me I haven't?
A friend went to the same college, for an interview, and she got through to KC - Khalsa college, not fort KC. She said, they had said at the end of the interview that "hope to see you in KC."

Everyone around me thinks I will get throguh, but I had serious doubts. Now I am somewhere in the middle - just hoping that I get in.
But I am convinced that the parting line was just to move things on, and finish the interview on a positive note.
THEY SHOULD BLOODY LEARN HOW TO DO IT.
OR I SHOULD BLOODY LEARN NOT TO BE SO PARANOID.
The REAL problem with this whole situation is that if I don't get through, I will not know because of what.
I really want to forget about this.

Sunday, June 19, 2005

only geeks with no sex life click here

got up early morning. Fortunately the water supply was there, so i got ready and headed over to the station with my father on the back of his bike. Missed a fast train to VT, and also just missed a slow one because I wanted to get on in first class. I resisted the temptation of running and catching the train.
Which turned out to be a good thing because a fast train came on platform six just as I headed over there. This is a very rare event...
Each person had six seats to oneself, anda fter Dadar, twelve.
Going to VT in a fast that early in the morning was pretty poetic, especially as it had begun to rain. The rain hung in small drops from the grill, and everything around was just a little wet, and everything was grey and serene, jarring grossly with people shitting on the sidelines.
Got to VT at around nine, and was in depserate need of a belt. Didn't find one in VT subway, headed over to churchgate, didn't find one there too, got a few comic books, then found a belt shop in the churchgate subway.
Then headed over to KC, bumped into this guy, and then two more and waited. We sat in the library waiting for our turns at the interview, what was funny was that this guy had a studds helmet, and our reflections were right above this. Pretty cool eh?
The interview went OK - want to forget it as soon as possible. Might blog about it later mebbe, came home after that, a bit confused and mystified, finished watchinf forrest gump, played badminton and won every single fucking match... then came home and am blogging now.

ocelot

something in UD. Interview in two hours. somewhat nervous. blog in evening. THIS is the most important interview in my life so far and for another three years...

lesbian lizards

This is actually an about today blog. Got up, did not go swimming, can't go till tuesday now because I have the interview tommorrow. Prepared just a wee bit for it and hope that I will do well... best of luck to me.
Got up, headed over to VT after watching a bit of discovery, learnt about the whiptail lizard, a lexbian race that lays unfertilized eggs. Pretty interesting.
But I already knew about that. It had something to do with the top ten gender battles thingy. They showed elephants, lions, and praying mantises amongst other things. I caught only the end of the program and saw snippets of these creatures as they were counted down. I thought the black widow would be in there for sure. the name itself shows the superior gender, as well as the reason why. At the lst moment I changed from my guess in the no 1 pos from the spider to the lizard (guess the mantis and the spider were too similiar)...
By the way, jsut realised that Dan brown has made the same mistake I just made. A spider is not, truly speaking, an insect. it's a crustacian. In DF, brown claims that a Lobster is an insect, working the other way round, You can guess how accurate his other information is likely to be eh?
then went to British council via Jai Hind and Kc. My name wasn't on the Jai Hind list for sure, and was on the KC list for sure. Tommorrow is the interview. Didn't read much in the library, extended my membership, xeroxed the introduction of sex in the future, got "born like that" and "not in the genes" both books probably have contrasting arguments for the classic nature - nurture debate. Will read them after the interview tommrrow .Have to get a good belt for the interview too... damn.
Then came home, capped Kajra re, which you can read about below. Watched a bit of Forrest Gump in the morning. Only around forty minutes or so.
Pretty cool movie. Then went to play badminton. Lost a load of matches, but still played well. Being unsportsmanly, and irrgramatical and uberinventive, but the fact remains that i lost because of my partners.
Mostly.
Willer inventise and modificate mostest of the wordinglets as muchasmo is possibling. Willer mostest probeblantry inventise a new languager in the processant.
Prettymost ubercoolechismo eh?
Played badminton, came home after having paani puri and a dew/pepsi cocktail. The staple diet of paani puri is giving me loose motions, which isn't very disturbing as you don't have to take too much effort to crap. now crapping is like peeing. The good thing about blogging is the absolute freedom of speech.
the bad thing about blogging is the absolute freedom of speech.
Man gives himself more credit to his intelligence, and thinks he can handle freedom of speech. freedom of speech should be allowed only in a society which is free of any influence whatsoever. since this is not possible, freedom of speech should not exist. That way, you wouldn't have to hear about why being loose is a good thing.

Like the slogan on the shirts from hell site. "if Jesus would come back, we'd kill him again"

will end with that. Nothing much to blog. Will blog tommorrow. Sincerely pray and hope that I get through in KC. Please God.

Saturday, June 18, 2005

kajra re

Really like this song. Got the cd and Main Hoon na for like hundred and ten bucks. Bunty and Babli.
If yashraj films somehow find out about this blog, and have the energy to sue my ass, then I claim that a hacker hacked into my blog and put it up.
The hackers name is |)|_||\/||3|3|_|71337. He happens to live in C-80/101 Panchavat, Vasant Vihar.
If that does not stop them from suing my ass, then I claim that a friend trusted with my blog's password blogged this.
If even that does not stop them, then I claim temporary insanity, which is not surprising, and will be accepted in the court that since I took the time and energy of doing this, then i am both 1) dumb 2) clever 3) an asshole who thinks heis funny 4) self-critical, more importantly 5) insane and most importantly 6) innocent.

(mostly a) disclaimer:
By agreeing to scroll below this point you agree that you will see or read anything but blank text for the remainder of this post. You will not sue my ass. You will also agree not to laugh at me for being over-cautious. You will not say that Aishwarya Rai is sick. Which she is. And if you are anywhere in Yashraj films, you will agree to have the following things in your movie.
1) Shorter songs
2) More content
3) Clear endings
4) More of Aishwarya Rai('s cleavage)
5) Less lawyers

I will just get down to the dirt then. I got the Bunty aur babli movie and capped some parts of it.



that is the thing as it appears on the cinema screen. The dumb pirates took it from the theatre, so the movie is accompanied by the stall hooting and shouting, which adds colour to the boringly dumb movie.
here the fellow's head comes up while the logo is being drawn at the end of the movie.



the rap song aint recorded. damn.
Rap = rhythm and poetry according to B.

BUT, despite the dumb movie, Aishwarya Rai totally rocked. At first I thought she was Priety Zinta, when the cameo came up.



I think she looks pretty. but my rare "lady" friends think that she was sick. probably because of this:



Trust me that's the most you can see... and it's not much. These same "lady" friends (I should quote friends too probably) totally dig Angelina Jolie, who is known for much more than THAT.

This is the clever part I (or my hacker alter-ego, or my "trusted friend" alter ego, or my insane alter-ego) wanted to blog about.
the candle trick.
First Aishwarya looks ever so seductively at B, holding up this candle...



Amitabh Bacchan comes over really close,



and then... blows out her candle!



Amitabh hardly walks by Ash, when Abhi dances and comes over with a lit candle



intending to light ash's candle with it. Ash consider's him for a moment...



and blows out his candle!



This is one song that does not seem long in the movie. Ash is justso damn beau in this one

maire naina judwa behena or is it just judwa naina? will never know I guess...



i however, figured out the ending. The choies were
1) The con
2) they police

turns out they police after all. Aashray, this is for you, you dumbass, I figured out the fucking ending.
The couple join the police. the evidence for this is that
1) Amitabh Bachan calls them
2) He says there's a big con about to happen, and he cannot stop them, he needs their help
3) The movie HAS to have a positive ending, or I would sue THEIR asses. (or counter sue after this)
4) The Sikh fellow is there on their team, who is a god fearing person
5) Amitah says he puts them up to Samaj ki safai

the evidences against this are
1) The ending words "they conned happily ever after"
2) "Samaj ki safai" could mean "cleaning out the public"(of cash)
3) all the conmen are on their team
4) Abhi asks to be removed from the sharafat ki duniya, and rani says making one more paratha will kill her

So the endind is still pretty unclear, but the absolute number of arguments per ending makes the whole "joining the police" theory just a little more plausible. The counter-arguments can be put down to mistakes made out of extereme stupidity, the evidence for this stupidity include, but are not limited to the facts that:
1) They found it fit to make the movie...
2) With so many fucking damn songs, and each song so fucking damn long.
3) only one of them had Aishwarya Rai
4) The degree of dumbness in the "jokes"
5) The low number of actual cons showed
5) the underrepresentation of Tanya, which is almost as dissappointing as that of Aishwarya
6) Amitabh Bacchan Raps. Amitabh = Eminem according to Yashraj. WTF????
7) The wisecracks of Amitabh Bacchan
8) The irritating background score during the "action" sequences
9) Rani saying the eyes makes you sexy, not short skirts, and wears that revilting blue things that highlight her thunder thighs in some song.
10) Rani being able to run from the cops minutes after giving birth

I can go on, but I have a real life, in which I eat and some stuff like that, so i am going to stop right here.