Change

The shift to Wordpress is now complete. I must admit I succumbed.

Find my new blog at choastheory.wordpress.com or www.karmanya.co.nr

RSS subscribers, Im sorry- you'll have to re-subscribe because I deleted the old feed like the moron I truly am.

May be down

My blog may be unstable, including the RSS feeds for the next couple of days.
I don't have any vision of grandeur, I doubt maybe a handful of people actually read this, but thought i might inform all 8 of you.

The Aerial Strike

Please note: watch out for small spoilers below

Met up with A-boy, U-kid and N-dude today. Went to watch Watchmen. (Pun intended). Now the ticket lady is like "I hope you don't have any minors with you". Looking at her, I originally thought she was joking- turns out she was dead serious. How many minors do you know, that while going for an A-rated movie, will agree that they're minors ? Anyway, I mumbled something, grabbed my tickets and turned away.
One good thing about Anupum, is that the security guard isn't neurotic. I mean the last time I saw a movie(Fast and the Furious 4) we ended going to the PVR in Rajouri Garden (In some mall called TDI?), the guard there was freaky- we became a little too intimate, [If you know what I mean].
The movie itself isn't to great- It's a great Superhero movie, but I wouldn't classify it as a great movie. The dialogs were pretty cliched, as were some of the charecters, but the visual effects were truly cool [And I'm not talking about The Scene(you know which one my perverted mind means)] and the ending was kinda nice. I liked the fact that the guys didn't exactly win. The movie could have been a lot better though, I've heard that the comics were extremely dark. This movie was kind of Kurt Cobain meets Candyland.
Some really cool things were the Apple II that Pyramid used. and the small scene from the 1984 add. I wish that the replica of Ramesses statue had the text in original coptic instead of english.
I want my own mutated tiger with the long ears/horns.

One of the last dialogs of the movie is that "Nothing ever ends" anyone see the irony in that ?

so after the movie, we decided to go bowling. At FutureBowl [Some Really Bad history here. The last time I came, I ended up loosing 3 air hockey pucks in three successive shots]. Anyone who seen me bowling knows two things- a. I suck at bowling. b. The floor of a bowling lane is REALLY strong. you see when I bowl, I don't just roll along across the lane[Where's the fun in that ? ] in my hands the ball becomes a projectile, lands halfway down the lane and then proceeds.
So on my second last try, for some strange reason - the ball lands 3 quarters down the lane and goes for a strike. My first and only. Flushed with adrenalin I grabbed the same ball [It was green. Sadly it wasn't fuzzy] ran exactly the same way and launched the ball again. It developed a sudden affinity for the gutter. Twice in a row.

Pray for my data

Ok,
I've been using Norton Antivirus 2009 Gaming Edition for a while now, while I first got it because my dad was buying a bunch of licenses for his office (He offered me one free!), I was pretty happy with it. Today however, my beliefs in Symantec was shattered.

A little background info- Our school computers are riddled with viruses. (There was this tech guy, who always cried alot and didn't believe in anti-virus options. This combined with the hosteler's penchant to download all sorts of *things* resulted in a bunch of viruses including Conficker, Trojan Mourner_Operator.exe, something called W32.SillyFDC and a bunch of others) Today I plugged in my pendrive, to create the question papers for the Talent Hunt. So I go home, this one time, I forgot to boot into Ubuntu and delete the virus files. Anyway, I plug it into the system. Having switched AutoPlay off, I scanned it using the above mentioned Symantec product. Scanning, detected and repaired all the viruses, except for Trojan.Mourner. It basically said I needed to remove it manually. By then, the trojan starts acting up with my system. Thankfully TeaTimer prevented it from changing my registry and group policies.
Anyway, I click the "Get Help" option that Norton throws up to help you manually remove malware. It brings up this ugly page which basically tells me to update my virus definitions, run a full system scan and use system restore. Now, I've switched off system restore on all drives for a long time now, so I figure that I manually undo the changes it would have done. I could ignore the registry edits because of TeaTimer.
Anyway, I updated my definitions, ran a scan- only for it to throw up the same report telling me to remove it manually. Anyway, I undid all the changes that the trojan made, and rescanned. Surprise Surprise, the bugger was still there. I click "get help" again. It tells me to do the exact same thing. So I do. No change. Finally I get sick of Norton Antivirus and download Mcafee Stinger and KAS's 30 day trial. Ran the stinger, then installed KAS. The bastard goes and uninstalls Spybot S&D so the bloody trojan changes my registry as well. Then having done all the damage, the installer crashes. Frantic now, I search for the AVG installer I have somewhere.  Install it, run it, bastard insists on updating first. Run the scan. It detects the file. Access to it is denied. IM ON A FUCKING ADMIN ACCOUNT! but it's still useless.
I have only one hope left short of a system format. Hopefully Avira will get rid of it. Im downloading as I write this, will bring updated information later.
Pray for my data.

5 Day Weekend

I usually never know what to say to Christians about Easter and Good Friday, technically didn't their "Son of God" die ?
Anyway, thanks to Good Friday, Easter, Dr Ambedkar's birthday and the arrival of a German delegation to our school, I was able to take a 5-day weekend (That's as long as a regular school week). Great right? Not really. I had my second Reshuffle test on Sunday(The same day as the JEE, supposedly to give us the "feel" of giving the main paper  next year), Paper 1 was OK at best, Paper 2 though went really well(Completely Mechanics and Organic), and I have exams in little over a week, for which I haven't studied/attended classes.
I'll scan and upload all 4 papers soon (read: once I get off my butt ) But I doub't you'll see any really GOOD questions. Most of them were from the Archive(Fiitjee's booklet of the last 25 years papers.) as a result people who mugged up the solutions will do really well.
The Sunday's Paper with solutions is here :Paper 1 and Paper 2.  They were uploaded to the FIITJEE site at midnight on the 12th of April, so I doubt the errors will have been fixed. I've skimmed through it and it does seem to conform to the hard copy I got from a friend. (His paper went well, or so he says)
The WarP Talent Hunt will probably be held at the start of next month, once we get the details all tidied up.

Reading a few Star Wars books, made me think- does the word Alien still have relevance "In a Galaxy Far Far Away" ?
Think about it.

Of tests, movies, music and mothers

Not everyone would go see Fast and the Furious 4 two days before their Fiitjee reshuffle test. Honestly, I figure that since I didn't study all of eleventh, two days before a test isn't the best time to start.
Its been a slow week- studying for sure, but I'm aiming towards the SAT II's in June rather than Fiitjee. As I've already mentioned, I saw Fast and the Furious 4 at Rajouri Garden yesterday. The movie wasn't really great. I mean sure, it had the hot chicks and hot cars, but the director seems to have been deluded enough to believe that the cast could act. Im not going to give away any spoilers, but I would ask you to give it a miss.
Been listening to a lot of RHCP lately, It irritates me that I can't keep all my music on my baby but I've started keeping pre-set playlists for all my moods(Blinding Flash of the Obvious. I know.) and it takes me roughly 10 minutes to load one on it. This birthday I'm hoping to get a couple of SD cards so I can hot-swap. I've been burning my entire music collection for a friend, Bullshit I know ( Burning 10 DVD's is a B*tch, Thankfully I'm in ogg not FLAC).
We finished the thinkquest site, and submitted it, Formatted both my pendrives with a very large smile. I'd honestly be extremely happy to format each of the school computers personally.  I mean those viruses screwed us over so badly, it isn't even funny. Missed a solutions test in Chem mainly because of that, will have to ask the teacher if I can give it later.Also I lost my version of Death Magnetic so if anyone has the Guitar Hero version in FLAC I'd like to *borrow* it.
Dreams of my Father is an interesting read, though I'd ony recommend it if you have a 'Bama obsession as large as U-kid's is.
Gmail has officially turned 5, the official google blog makes a very good point- You can send email attachments today, that are 4 times the size of the average mailbox just 5 years ago. It also reminds me of a picture I have-

 The big clunky thing is what 1 Gb looked like in 1998. I don't know how accurate it is(and it might be, because of the small leaflet in the bottom), but i sure looks cool.
My mother took a break from her wierd theories about how I'm so screwed up to watch a huge The Big Bang Theory marathon. Two seasons,36 episodes, 22 minutes each = 13 hours of hell. Swimming starts in a week. Woohoo!

Murphy's Law

To quote The free encyclopedia "Murphy's Law is an adage in western culture that broadly states Everything that can go wrong will go wrong". "Adage", is an understatement.
I'd like to introduce intrepid readers to an organisation called ThinkQuest. Funded I believe entirely by Oracle, they host an annual international website design competiton. Thing is, the competiton starts in August of a particular year, continuing till April of the next. The thing is, due to *some* reasons* (Mainly our own laziness) we didn't find out/start to do anything about it until perhaps 3 days ago. The submission date is the 2nd of April.
Anyway, walking into the lab today and we get a couple of nasty surprises- The lab technician (sarcasm)God Bless his soul(/sarcasm) decided to delete our xampp server because "The system had too many viruses". This would not naturally be a  problem, except for the fact that the only .jpeg version of the final site logo was in the fricking folder!
Next up- the internet refused to work.
THEN- the installations of photoshop and swish refuse to work because "User files" were missing.(Techguy at work again!). Slightly irritated, we decide to move the files to another system and work on them there. The magnum opus of it all. Some wiseass decided to lock all our files with folder-lock. So basically, we're up shits creek without a paddle, with no flash, images or anything whatsoever to show for the last 4 days of work. Whoop-di-fricking-do.

Also, my mother wants her iPod loaded up. Now I'll have to return her PX100's. Added to the fact that I broke my CX 95's, Im having to survive with the free kingfisher earbuds-the ones you get in every flight. Pity me please.
FIITJEE re-shuffle test is coming up, I never attended in class 11 and missed a couple of phase tests, so will probably end up in X8.

Confessions of WOT Addict

I'd like to introduce Rajeev Raza, a fellow dipsite, amazing editor and great friend. Follow him on Twitter he's recently starting blogging find it here. For all interested, WOT means Wheel of Time. it's actually an amazing fantasy-fiction story, in about 11 parts. He took about a year and a half to release each part leading to much humuor about him dying before he finished it.(Much to our chagrin, he did) The final part is being completed by his wife. For those who already knew that, Baah.
A new sport in our school, much enjoyed by our juniors is "Hit each other with shoes" wierdly enough, they run around, taking their shoes off, throwing them at each other, grabbing other peoples shoes,  and throwing them at their owners. Its mildy entertaining to watch.
IIT Madras has a fest going on, a part of it being online- The picture IQ is extremely addictive (I got stuck on 12) The contest ends at midnight tonight. They have other competitions too, a programming contest, a visual editing contest etc etc. Check em out at http://csfest.iitm.ac.in/home/
Final thought : Preperation books for SAT II are horribly expensive.

The adventures of V-man and the U-Kid

Ok, this is a bit of an inside joke, so anyone not from DPS mathura road, don't expect to get this.

The adventures of V-man and the U-kid :The Prologue
Let me introduce V-man and his trusty side-kick the U-kid. Scene today in school. A bunch of kids are fighting. With a most super-hero like yell V-man jumps to the rescue. U-kid looks on hopefully. Using his most faithfull weapon, The Nod of Death V-man subdues the fight. Yells something about a "compro" U-kid giggles in the back-ground. Turns out the kids weren't fighting anyway.

Scene Shift.
Its late in the afternoon. The last period to be exact. V-man and U-kid are discussing plans to welcome the 10thies back from thier boards. They assume cries of "Hail the conquering Heroes" will not be sufficient. Things get political. A portly kid, an irritating girl and A-boy walk up. U-kid uses his secret weapon : The ultra-sonic giggle to scare them away as V-man looks on. A-boy uses his non-sensical skills to kick footballs at everybody. The bell rings, people go home.
V-man congratulates U-kid on a job well done.



Weird perhaps, But this stuff really happened.
In other news, Phoenix has landed on mars,Nick Sakozy has a thing for chicks in bikinis(Oh, I never knew), I registered for the SAT II in june, I have no idea when MJKPS' Cyberfest will happen and the person who took most of these needs to go see a doctor about his hand.

Of Days Gone By

Its a badly kept secret that I've become slightly inactive about my blog. Sucks to that.
The past couple of weeks have been slightly wierd. SAT II prep+Fjee Reshuffle test prep means that I get very little free time. Halo Multiplayer means that even that is spent staring at a screen, moving a mouse and muttering "Will that fricking Banshee stop circling?"
I finally got a LOTR omnibus. Like I said on my Twitter Feed; "I'm in love".
Some people may find that wierd- but some relative borrowed my mum's first two books when I wasn't overly protective about books (I don't think I could read back then)- we never saw them again. Having had to borrow the book from an extremely irritating friend of mine, I only managed to read it perhaps 3 times. Now I own the series. Its SOO cool.*cough* (trying to act macho) I mean its O.K.
Participated in the Digit/Modern BK story writing competiton recently. Only managed to submit it at 11 pm on the deadline day, so it may not even be accepted. Plus I submitted it without the name of my teacher co-ordinator.
If you're intrested(And I wouldn't be) find the storyhere.
Be Warned though: Its extremely generic, crappy and over all lame. The only way I could give it some momentum was to keep it short and cut over parts.
Helping to organize an intra-school general quiz for the middle school. Having a serious problem deciding how hard to make the questions. Thankfully the teacher wants it to cover a broad range of topics.
Officially, I'm the New WarP President, with Ayush Chaudhry and Sagar Singh as VP and Sec.
Investiture ceremony practises are crappy.
I've decided to make all future posts, short, clipped sentences with no real point. Have fun reading that.

Modern 2008 archives:

Got all excited the other day, apparently Dreamhosts was giving away free hosting for life. The catch- No FTP access. Oh whoop-di-do, doesn't that just make you want to kick someone?
Anyway, Class 12th is blazing away as always, already had 2 tests and have seen like 10 people get suspended for playing with Eggs(Yes EGGS!, raw ones too) since Holi is coming up. Talk about retardedness. I mean no one minds a water ballon, but an egg? thats just disgusting. What was funny was to see the arrogant Fast Tracks guy get one right across the face.
Finally got my hands on the Access 2008 Archives, nothing's very impressive, and since my scanner is acting up, there is no natural force on earth that's going to convince me to type out the finals. you can however, find the prelims here.
Appointment interviews are were going full speed ahead, until guess what? The principal is now in Japan, and won't be back till the 16th. Funny thing is the Investiture Ceremony was meant to be held on the 13th. I just don't get it- The  school doesn't have a large enough budget to get our tennis courts fixed (Despite the fact that we have a world rank no. 1 enrolled here) but we have enough to send Our Principal to JAPAN?
Something smells fishy.
Digit has a sort of "Sci-Fi Story Writing Competiton" coming up, the deadline is the 20th. Was thinking of writing something loosley based on the HALO series- I wonder if it's allowed?

Resident Evil : Resurrection

My apologies to Shinji Mikami for copyright infringement. Also to all hopefulls, this post is not relevant to the widely successful series of games/movies.
The past couple of weeks have been intense.  8-10 hours a day of studying trying to clear up all my class 11 fundas before 12th starts off in earnest, coupled with a few hours of anime and COD2 multiplayer means I'm getting only about 2-4 hours of sleep a day.
The proceedure to select our new school appointments ("Prefectorial Body" if you want to be pedantic) and today we had to undergo 'psycho-analysis'  while I walked in worried about them finding out about my homicidal tendencies- I walked out having given the most generic psychological test I've ever seen. approximately 200 questions- multiple choice, the only intresting question was "Would you rather admire the beauty in a painting or a shiny new revolver". Tomorrow will be the second round- the actual interviews.

Gyaan.in is kinda on a hold right now as most of the others have exams.
For the longest time- I've been arguing with a bunch of VMC students who believe that when you fall you're wieghtless. I mean seriously- what do those guys teach them? I mean common logic will tell you that if you were wieghtless, you wouldn't be falling. period. Sure the lack of a significant normal reaction will mean that you feel like you're wieghtless- doesn't mean you are.
And to top it off- my english is degrading. Me not saying me are dumbo- but it took me 5 minutes to come up with 'embodiment' in english class- and I couldnt differentiate between enunciate and pronounce. Its scary.

So to summarize it all- life's just as crazy as ever. paranoia can now be added to my list of flaws.
Peace Love Empathy-
(Kurt Cobain Wannabe)

 

A Shoutout For Yuki Bhambri

Yuki Bhambri, a student from Delhi Public School Mathura Road, has now beaten Alexandros-Ferdinandos Georgoudas in straight sets to become the fourth indian to win a Grand Slam Title. Kudos to him and Aditya Sachdeva. :)

Ένα πείραμα της παράξενο

Amongst a lot of my friends I have this weird, undeserved reputation for being a news fanatic. Unfortunately because of a rather irritating conversation between 2 friends, I now have to go an entire week without news. This thankfully is limited to-
1. Traditional forms of media(Paper and Tv)
2. Any type of news specific blog/Internet Epaper.
3. The various feeds i keep on my iGoogle page

Its been 27 hours, and I'm already regretting it.
I had to set up a filter to automatically archive my HT and couldn't log into my /ig page.
Every 10 minutes my finger would curl towards the  TV remote, itching to change to BBC, as a last resort I started studying. That keeps me focused off've news, for now atleast.
Thank God (This coming from an almost atheist, so you know I mean it) my grandparents are home. One of them wakes up even earlier than I do to put religious songs on- avoids temptation.
I might even have to close twitkit. I get some news through that. Can hardly wait for the next 6 days.

Συναντώ με το πεπρωμένο

More than half a century ago, Mahatma Gandhi declared this day to be India's Independence Day. As most people will know, when we actually drafted the constitution the erstwhile governors of the nation decided to end the beta and release the final version of the constitution. Instead of ranting and raving about the level of corruption, poverty and the state of Indian Democracy, I decided to rant and rave about what we're doing about it.
Today being a national holiday, undoubtedly thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people will be blogging about today right at this instant. But are we actually doing something?. We sit and moan about our political leaders but when the election comes around less than 30% vote. My parents didn't and frankly I don't think my maternal grandparents have even seen the insides of an election booth. Am I any better? I tell myself I'm not old enough to vote. Yet I can't even name the contesting parties, let alone the representatives and I know I'm not going to bother to learn them.
A year or so ago Times of India came out with this lead India campaign



Amitabh Bachan talkes of an India that's eager to spring forth and live up to the adjectives showered upon it by the world. I must be myopic, because no matter how much I squint this 'India' remains invisible.
We 'honor' the soldiers that died during 26/11. Yet 90% of the people in the military and para-military forces come not from well off backgrounds but from the poorer sections of our society. We fob this off by saying that the people with access to education can better serve our nation by serving in more scholarly ways. Though how many people in your schools are the 'rich-kids' people with shitloads of money that spend their day not working towards that goal, but running around the field or bunking in some place or the other. They graduate, get some tiny degree or the other and take over their father's business or sponge of their parents forever. Am I any better? I tell myself that I want to become a teacher, and I do - a teacher teaching at some university that will create little bunny rabbits with one thing in mind- get that engineering degree, join a MNC and make shitloads of money.
How does that serve the nation? No matter how much we pander to ourselves. The truth is that people don't change. Agreed, India is a country with great potential. Though that potential is wasted in this land of broken, twisted dreams.
A paragraph from Nehru's Tryst with Destiny
The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.
Where do we go?


I leave you with my favorite led zep verse
Oh, pilot of the storm that leaves no trace, like thoughts inside a dream
You've the map that led me to that place, yellow desert stream
My Shangri-La beneath the summer moon, I will return again
Sure as the dust that blows high in June, when moving through Kashmir.

Ποτέμην χειμώνα-Νύχτες Μια αναθεώρηση

The promised review.

Neverwinter Nights takes place surprisingly, in the land of Neverwinter. A mysterious plague called the "Wailing Death" has struck the land, as an adventurer, you have to traverse the world, leveling up and solving quests until you spend enough time to complete the game. Being a recovering Ragnarok addict, at first I was a little vary of touching another RPG game,  I seem to have it under control though I can't help salivating about Feyduster's Shortsword. The game is very different from a lot of RPG games, the damage you do depends very little on your stat levels, instead it depends on the toss of a dice. Obviously though, stronger spells and weapons will have higher  value dice leading to higher damages. Your statistics however do count towards your hp, hardiness and your ability to dodge attacks.
When you start the game, you choose a starting class- each class has its own skills and 'feats' that allow you to perform specific taks. In addition to class specific skills you also have general skills which can be accessed by every charecter. Feats are passive skills that perform various functions for example, a sorceror's skills are geared towards empowering his spells, allowing him to cast them faster etc..
The starting classes are very varied apart from your usual barbarian, fighter, rogue and ranger you get a bard, a cleric(Thier version of healer) , a sorceror(Would probably be called a wizard in most other games, devastating spells, coupled with cast time and physical weakness), a wizard (Sort of a support/passive sorceror)and a bunch of 'prestige' classes you can access when you have certain feats/stats/skills.
The nice thing about NWN is that each time you level up you can change your charecter around totally, even going so far as to change your class- becoming a sort of 'multiclass' that has access to the skills you acquired before you multiclassed. After multiclassing, you can only get the class specific skills of the second class you chose/general skills so choose the right time to multiclass.
A useful feature for n00bs, the game features a 'recommended' button that automatically selects what charecter to play(Fighter always) and what skills/stats to upgrade at levelups.Detail on the textures and graphics isn't bad, though it isn't great either.
The game is as long as your average RPG game, no where near as long as Morrowhind though. The game features an intresting 'alignment' feature. depending on what quests you do, what answers you give etc.. your charecters alignment can be good, evil or neutral and each alignment has 3 levels of how aligned you are. No matter what your alignment though, you can still do all the quests and the game pans out the same way. Bit of a disapointment that, would have been nicer to have even slightly different story lines.
Final Verdict : NWN is a fun game to play, and if you're waiting for Diablo 3 to come out(Who isn't?) pick it up. or as I did *acquire* it.
Found a couple of intresting utilities today- mainly from ars technica. One of them is Ubiquity Would be extremely cool if this worked out all the kinks.

Went to Midlands Yesterday- Literally broke the bank, it has to be the first time I blew up wisely spent a thousand bucks on books. Stalin's Bioraphy looks promising. I also picked up Stormrider, the final book of David Gemmel's Rigante Series. Plus I found the first two books of Genghis, Conn Igulden's latest series. (For the un-initiated, Conn Igulden writes historical faction. His Emperor Series is to die for. I would lend you mine, but *Someone*(You know who you are) kept it for the longest time and has only recently started reading it.) I was about to pick up a collection of lectures by Stephen Hawking but the book was only about 100 pages long and would have emptied my pockets of a considerable sum( roughly half of what i ended up spending). Will look for his lectures on the internet.

Η μέρα που δεν ήταν ... σχεδόν

For all interested, the title of this post should read "The day that wasn't ... almost"

My grandfather took up a private ward yesterday at AIIMs to get the a cataract operation done, being an ex DG of Railways, he knows how to pull strings and actually get things done in hospitals. Due to Manmohan Singh needing to get some heart problems tested, he was bumped off the list of operations for that day.(Being the last person on it due to Hep B.) His new date is on the 31st. Because of this, my grandparents are shacking up at our house for a couple of days. So when i woke up this morning, the first thing I did was help him with his email. 3 hours later, I finally got time to check my email.Seeing nothing but a few cursory updates, I ignored all of them opting to instead play NeverWinter Nights.(For all diablo fans, its a must play) time rolled by fast and by the time my mum's *patient* cries of "Get of the computer and study" had reached an octave above high C it was 9:30. walked into the shower only to hear my phone ring. It was Atanu Kundu. Normally I would summarize this, but since i have nothing better to do-
A: "Dude Where the kitty are you ? "
me : "Huh ? "
A: "Where the kitty are you ? "
me : "At home. Duh."
A : "Why the kitty aren't you in school ? "
me : "why the kitty would I be ?"
A: " your practical starts in an hour."
me : "Huh?"
A: "Your kitty-ing computer practical. One hour. Get to school."
(He knows I respond better to short commands when i usually answer in monosyllables.)
me : "What the kitty? you sure? who told you?"(I thought it was 3 days from today)
A: "Anu Kumar, who else?"(That my computer teacher)
me:"Is everyone else there?"
A: "most of the day schols are missing"(There are 4 day schols in computer science in my section)
me : "ok thanks, call the rest of them"
Please note the above conversation has been edited for objectional content

The next 15 minutes saw me, struggling to make phone calls, get dressed and think cohesively simultaneously.

40 minutes later, I'm in school, hyperventilating about the fact that the only things I know about structures can fit into tinker bell's thimble and still leave room to spare. Fortunately though, the practical went pretty smoothly, my first question was about matrices, the second was a simple series and the third had me entering 10 number and count the even and odd.
Ludicrously simple even for the shit-poor programmer that I am.

Walked out of there with a smile on my face and a warm glow on a few of my friend's faces (Lenon and McCartney again. though i was on the non-business end for once.)
Wierdly enough I can finally say "My exams are Over! Have to start studying from tomorrow"
Reached home, slept for a while, then proceeded to play Neverwinter nights just as I had before. the last two hours already a distant memory. Will post a Proper Review of NwN soon.



__Post ends here__ Stop reading now.


















Seriously though..stop.








I apologize for the retardedness of the last two lines. Should show you exactly how much time I have on my hands.

Η μουσική επανάσταση

I've Been Meaning to Redo my music collection for quite a while now. Now that I have a weeks worth of leeway before I study for my SAT II's and the Fjee Reshuffle test. I finally decided to do it.
My current music collection is 4 Gb large(The size of music i can store on my Cowon) as i would keep trimming songs. I've decided to screw the cowon and store all the music I like. I can keep switching songs around on my D2.
Useful as Hell softwares-
1. dBPowerAmp
Possibly the best conversion software ever, this software comes free with a 21 day trial of the paid version. It automatically switches after the 21 days and the only thing missing in the free version is the batch converter.
The Free version will only allow you to convert songs in one directory at a time. You Can't Que up lists of songs. That's where the batch converter comes in.
The encoding this software uses is much faster than any other software I've encountered. Before I get any wierd comments from people like "Encoding speed depends on your hardware moron!" I would say that if it works faster on my turtle-comparable machine, it'll obviously work fast on a C2D or a C2Q.
The second thing that's great about this software is the CD Ripper. Not only does it support FLAC but also automatically rips with the correct offset(MediaMonkey and iTunes rarely do)
Plus it will read the disc in multiple passes, allowing it to correct minor errors in my discs
2. MediaMonkey
This software is one of the best media management software available. For 2 main reasons-
Firstly the Auto-Tag feature, it searches amazon according to artist and album, and pulls up album art, Dates and Genres.
Secondly it suppports FLAC and .ogg which is not something a lot of software do.

I'm ripping all my files to my ancient technical disaster Apple likes to call an iPod as after I've gotten my Cowon D2, its acquired a lot of dust bunnies as friends (I believe one of them's called Steve though I can't be sure) since Im ripping to a lossless format(24 files of my Sinatra MY WAY Cd gave me 411 MB).
The First time you fire up the Cd Ripper, it'll detect your drive and apply the correct offset. I would NOT touch these settings if you do not know what you were doing. (For example, if you have to google what offset is, you should NOT be editing those settings.)
So, settings done, take a moment and check out the Options Button. You can choose whether you'd like to go for a "Burst" rip(All speed, only do this if your disk is less than a few months old) or a "Secure" rip which is when it'll go through the whole shebang of using multiple passes to read the data.
Pop in a CD, wait for AccurateRip to pull up what it thinks the CD is and Rip away to glory.

Once Ripped, you want to Fire up Media Monkey, Use the Hierachy on the left to navigate to where your songs are, select the songs of each album and fire up the Auto Tag from Web feature(CTRL+L) and have it download the album art, plus fill up any fields that your ripper missed.
From here on, the universe is your oyster. For portability you can convert your songs to .Ogg, AAC or Mp3 whichever you prefer.
You can also convert and keep files that you *acquire* to FLAC, but I doubt there'll be any noticeable change in audio quality. Lossy to lossless makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Think about it.

In other news, I was watching the "We Are One" concert on HBO- it really makes me wonder. Suppose someone wanted to create a CD of the songs sung, it could probably be recorded live. Thats how good it sounds. A far cry from the concerts we see hear.
(Check out the Bryan Adams in india concerts from a couple of years ago to get what I mean)

My mum finally caved and has decided to pick up a new laptop and phone. Thanks to @ankurb i have some idea of where to start looking for the latter. The laptop on the other hand will be much harder. It has to be lighter than or as light as 1 Kg, be fast enough for her email and cost less than 50k! She isn't really asking for much is she? :P

PS- 20 minutes ago, According to CNN The Obamas and the Bidens were having tea with the "Bushes". When will people learn that spell-check isn't the pinnacle of english?

The Cheese is back

The last post on this blog had me saying that I was shifting my blog to WP.
As most people should be able to see that post no longer exists. Suffice it to stay, my blog will remain with blogger till the day I no longer decide to post my weird, random and often disturbing thoughts for everyone to view.

Delhi Public School Mathura Road recently exercised their right to make all their students experience the cruelest and most unusual punishment known to man - better known as Exams. I should pass- since i gave each paper while upholding the oldest of DPS Mathura Road traditions. In true Lenon and McCartney style.

In other news, I've been extremely active in the gaming department. Experiencing the old classics- BF1942, UT99 nothing but good gameplay and shit graphics.

Be back with more later.

An End to an Era

Yesterday marked the end of the symposium season of 2008 and with it ended an Era of WarP. Come February, the last of the old crowd will be gone leaving the reigns slack for new blood.While the prospects are exciting, one must wonder, what will happen.
Access, Modern School Barakhamba- an event I've been hearing about since my first quiz, was honestly a disappointment. Sure they had shit-loads of sponsors and money, but the execution was pretty crappy. The rules and schedules were changed whimsically. Announcing last minute that there would only be 5 teams in both quizzes, not allowing a team to take the 3rd (or was it second)place in programming, starting late, keeping us waiting for hours at an end. It all spanked of poor organization.
Day 1 of the event, saw our school send 18 people to take part in various events. After a few hiccups we finally left school at 10:30 fearing that we would miss everything. Luckily with the organization being what it was, nothing had started even at 11.(Stuff was supposed to start at 9)When at all it did start, the question paper was wierd at best. At the last minute they removed negative marking, ensuring that anyone with even a few wild guesses would qualify (Frankly, I think that's how we did.) Spent most of the remaining time talking to people from Dwarka + Kartik(From VK) while Sagar and co. roamed around the school *Cough* The junior quiz was pretty low level- unsurprisingly Sopan's team decimated them all. Wrote down some of the finals questions- Find them here.
Two teams from RKP qualified for the senior finals, one however decided not to show up. Springdales won after six rounds with RKP second and us third. On his way out, Sagar flicked a copy of the question paper. I'll have it up here in a couple of days.
Need to finish Undercover, will finish this post later.