iit shows up in dilbert :)
asok is from iit and he knows tantrik magic ;)
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Friday, September 30, 2005
football
:)) thought i had to post this photo, except that it is a little dark, we are all a little too dirty and very very smiling :D
we had something like a football match between wings in the hostel and we lost 1-5
Monday, August 22, 2005
iscii for indic scripts
continuing from an earlier post regarding unicode indian fonts and scripts. just had to add this link to http://tdil.mit.gov.in/isciichart.pdf where you can get the inscript layout for all the indian scipts which are in unicode.
note that inscript is a little hard to learn but eventually turns out alright. most people seem to prefer RTS (rice transliteration ...) where you type in english and it is transliterated into you language. neat.
note that inscript is a little hard to learn but eventually turns out alright. most people seem to prefer RTS (rice transliteration ...) where you type in english and it is transliterated into you language. neat.
Saturday, July 02, 2005
touch -- -i
picked up this near-blackmagic from an old followup to an old slashdot article the details of which are irrelevant here.
so here's the idea.Wait, before that, here's the situation
* you own a *nix box
* you recognise a bash when you see one
* you worked the night out
* you just typed rm -rf * or rm -rf a * or any of the umpteen incarnations of satan.
* and you hit enter
poof!
a genie appears :-) {here's where the idea comes in}
rm: remove regular file `bookmarks.bak'?
no, this is not that old sneaky alias rm='rm -i' thing that can rankle even the most patient idiot among us. it is the magic of touch -- -i . at some point in the past, when you recognised that the directory you were working in was important and you wouldn't have the will to survive an rm -rf *, you ran touch -- -i in order to tell your genie that he's screwed if he ever let you screw around that directory :)
enough of my semi-illiterate shit for now. what touch -- -i does is that it creates a file by the name '-i' in your direcotry and when in the distant future you do a rm -rf *, bash would have rewritten your command to
rm -rf ..... -i ......
and there you have it.
so here's the idea.Wait, before that, here's the situation
* you own a *nix box
* you recognise a bash when you see one
* you worked the night out
* you just typed rm -rf * or rm -rf a * or any of the umpteen incarnations of satan.
* and you hit enter
poof!
a genie appears :-) {here's where the idea comes in}
rm: remove regular file `bookmarks.bak'?
no, this is not that old sneaky alias rm='rm -i' thing that can rankle even the most patient idiot among us. it is the magic of touch -- -i . at some point in the past, when you recognised that the directory you were working in was important and you wouldn't have the will to survive an rm -rf *, you ran touch -- -i in order to tell your genie that he's screwed if he ever let you screw around that directory :)
enough of my semi-illiterate shit for now. what touch -- -i does is that it creates a file by the name '-i' in your direcotry and when in the distant future you do a rm -rf *, bash would have rewritten your command to
rm -rf ..... -i ......
and there you have it.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
My Namesake
Coincidences are fun!
Especially when that allows you to find a namesake who happens to be 6 years your senior from the same department and same institute you are studying at. More so when that person was a Techfest-OC, started IIT Bombay's first startup and whose current address reads Mountain View, CA.
I was filling up a form at some site and filled in my gmail-id as kashyap instead of kashyapp. And whatever message had to reach me, obviously went off to the wrong id. I then wrote an apology to this guy and wonder of wonders ...
And wonder of wonders, can you believe that I'd seen his photo over 2 months ago without paying real attention to who it was. Zishaan put up a photo of Kashyap's Marriage Ceremony on his photoblog and I distinctly remember seeing it back then. If only I'd known....
Especially when that allows you to find a namesake who happens to be 6 years your senior from the same department and same institute you are studying at. More so when that person was a Techfest-OC, started IIT Bombay's first startup and whose current address reads Mountain View, CA.
I was filling up a form at some site and filled in my gmail-id as kashyap instead of kashyapp. And whatever message had to reach me, obviously went off to the wrong id. I then wrote an apology to this guy and wonder of wonders ...
And wonder of wonders, can you believe that I'd seen his photo over 2 months ago without paying real attention to who it was. Zishaan put up a photo of Kashyap's Marriage Ceremony on his photoblog and I distinctly remember seeing it back then. If only I'd known....
Wallpaper for the rains
Vladstudio is one of my favourite places to pick up wallpapers from. This new wallpaper feels nice on the desktop when it is pattering away outside.
--eof
Monday, June 20, 2005
Unicode, Inscript and Linux
कश्यप पयिडिमर्रि
కఴశ్యప్ పయిడిమర్రీ
కఴశ్యప్ పయిడిమర్రీ
Was fiddling around with unicode and stuff today(for no reason whatever). Managed to get my name written in Hindi and Telugu all by myself :) Enough of achievement for today :)
If you are in windows and if blogger doesn't screw up with the UTF-8 encoding, then you should be able to see something to the effect of
WindowsXP is supposed to support the full unicode character set of which the devanagiri and telugu scripts are now a subset of.
Not that the modern linux distros are far behind. The comp i am right now using is an RHEL3 and doesn't seem to have any indian fonts but FC2 onwards, all the fedora distros are purported to have Indic support alongwith transliteration support for hindi, gujju and a few other indian languages. I will check this out later tonight.
So if you are in linux and if your distro doesn't seem to have out-of-the-box support for your language, you might want to check out this link.
setting up your browser for Indic scripts.
this is a page in http://te.wikipedia.org and at the bottom, there are a bunch of links to other places with references to similar pages in Hindi etc.
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Latest updates
:D
:D
:D
arun got AIR-2 in JEE-2005
:D
:D
:D
UPDATES (1:00 am, july 17th)
Hindu article on eamcet results(Arun got state 14th)
Of eenadu and vaarta, AP's biggest newspapers, vaarta came out with the first online article that had proper information in it.UPDATES (11:55 pm, 18th June)
Kartik Dasa found these two links. I searched around today but could find no article in an english paper on the JEE results, and our dasa guy here finds two. Hail Dasa!.
Article in timesofindia.com
Article in Newindpress.com(login: kashyapp,passwd: kashyap)
Eenadu 17th June article. from Archives
Another Article in Eenadu
Hopefully both of these are permalinks. Anyway I should archive all these pages.
Sunday, June 12, 2005
a learning experience :(
Been through arguably what should be the worst night of my life. Most people would marvel at the enormous stupidity of it all. And even though I am calling it the worst night of my life, I curiously don't 'feel' anything. It is just that it has to be the worst night of my life, so bad that I can't even be bitter about it or yell about it.
Before I get back to myself, I must note that Zishaan has announced that he'd be unable to keep updating his photoblog point-n-shoot. Hopefully, it only means that he'll be unable to update it for some time and will get back to it in a few months.
And for those still with me to hear me bickering about my woes, lets begin.
It all started when that cheeky little monkey man Adnan asked if I'd come on a trek to Gorakhgarh. Seeing no reason to say no, and tired of doing little other than my internship, I decided to go along. Well, so I go get me a nice pair of shoes yesterday. And that is where the trouble began. As soon as we started last night for Kalyan (it was to be a night trek, that is where the night part comes in), my feet started complaining. I hoped my feet and their shoes would find peace by themselves and ignored it. By the time we got to Thane, pain had set in and forced me to buy a pair of socks to replace the thick ones I was wearing. From that point, it was down all the way. Getting from Thane to Kalyan, I miss Kalyan station and have to come back from the next station while the others were waiting at "Kashyap Enterprises, Platform:2, Kalyan Station". Then we take bus to Murbaad from Kalyan where I am practically limping. At Murbaad, I eventually giveup and while the others boarded a bus for Dehri, I got back to Kalyan. Reached Kalyan early enough to see the last local leave. The last bus into Bombay has also left. Take the
Gorakhpu-LTT express and get off at Thane only to realise that it was 2:00 in the night and an auto to IIT would subtract approx 150 rs from my tiny pocket. Feet still killing me, only driving force is that I can get back to IIT before sunrise, I sit down on a bench at Thane station. I then realised that you are not allowed to sleep on station benches, that you can't sit-n-sleep on station benches, and that all stations as a rule suck. Eventually at 4:00 pm, a local starts off from Thane and sad little me sleeps off on the train and wakes up at Sion, four stops after Kanjur. It is 5:00 by the time I take a train back from Sion and get to the auto and to top it all, those sad little security people make don't let me in without writing an entry into the register as to why I was going to IIT.
Meanwhile, the root of all this trouble, the big toes on my feet give up the fight with the shoes my feet were in and have gone numb and hence painless. Only as I write this has circulation been restored and some semblance of normalcy restored to my groggy brain. Adieu.
Before I get back to myself, I must note that Zishaan has announced that he'd be unable to keep updating his photoblog point-n-shoot. Hopefully, it only means that he'll be unable to update it for some time and will get back to it in a few months.
And for those still with me to hear me bickering about my woes, lets begin.
It all started when that cheeky little monkey man Adnan asked if I'd come on a trek to Gorakhgarh. Seeing no reason to say no, and tired of doing little other than my internship, I decided to go along. Well, so I go get me a nice pair of shoes yesterday. And that is where the trouble began. As soon as we started last night for Kalyan (it was to be a night trek, that is where the night part comes in), my feet started complaining. I hoped my feet and their shoes would find peace by themselves and ignored it. By the time we got to Thane, pain had set in and forced me to buy a pair of socks to replace the thick ones I was wearing. From that point, it was down all the way. Getting from Thane to Kalyan, I miss Kalyan station and have to come back from the next station while the others were waiting at "Kashyap Enterprises, Platform:2, Kalyan Station". Then we take bus to Murbaad from Kalyan where I am practically limping. At Murbaad, I eventually giveup and while the others boarded a bus for Dehri, I got back to Kalyan. Reached Kalyan early enough to see the last local leave. The last bus into Bombay has also left. Take the
Gorakhpu-LTT express and get off at Thane only to realise that it was 2:00 in the night and an auto to IIT would subtract approx 150 rs from my tiny pocket. Feet still killing me, only driving force is that I can get back to IIT before sunrise, I sit down on a bench at Thane station. I then realised that you are not allowed to sleep on station benches, that you can't sit-n-sleep on station benches, and that all stations as a rule suck. Eventually at 4:00 pm, a local starts off from Thane and sad little me sleeps off on the train and wakes up at Sion, four stops after Kanjur. It is 5:00 by the time I take a train back from Sion and get to the auto and to top it all, those sad little security people make don't let me in without writing an entry into the register as to why I was going to IIT.
Meanwhile, the root of all this trouble, the big toes on my feet give up the fight with the shoes my feet were in and have gone numb and hence painless. Only as I write this has circulation been restored and some semblance of normalcy restored to my groggy brain. Adieu.
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Arun
I seem to be going on an on about him :)
But when you have a brother who gets himself into the Indian team for the International Chemistry Olympiad, you can't not be proud. And to top it, he wins himself an award, at the Physics Olympiad Selection Camp, for "Best Solution to a Challenging problem".
Notice announcing the awards at HBCSE (Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education) where the camps were held.
So , Arun now flies to Taipei, Taiwan on the 14th of July.
That's all for now, enough braggadacio (hope the spelling's right)
But when you have a brother who gets himself into the Indian team for the International Chemistry Olympiad, you can't not be proud. And to top it, he wins himself an award, at the Physics Olympiad Selection Camp, for "Best Solution to a Challenging problem".
Notice announcing the awards at HBCSE (Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education) where the camps were held.
So , Arun now flies to Taipei, Taiwan on the 14th of July.
That's all for now, enough braggadacio (hope the spelling's right)
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
elated, depressed and schizoprenic
no bones please!
After the flurry of books I read over the past few weeks, I read another and this time it had to be Doctors by Erich Segal.Doctors is atleast as good as "Love Story" and "Man, Woman and Child".
And the choice of subject and opening line have little relation to my reading of books. I am elated because Arun (pdot junior) cracked the 14th rank in AP's CET (EAMCET). He then hopped on a plane to Bombay and he's here for the next two weeks.
I am depressed because, I usually tend to be, unless lifted up by events such as the above.
And schizoprenic is just another cool sounding word.
After the flurry of books I read over the past few weeks, I read another and this time it had to be Doctors by Erich Segal.Doctors is atleast as good as "Love Story" and "Man, Woman and Child".
And the choice of subject and opening line have little relation to my reading of books. I am elated because Arun (pdot junior) cracked the 14th rank in AP's CET (EAMCET). He then hopped on a plane to Bombay and he's here for the next two weeks.
I am depressed because, I usually tend to be, unless lifted up by events such as the above.
And schizoprenic is just another cool sounding word.
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Been reading copiously lately. Making up for all the lost time over last semester. Not that I have all the time in the world even now. I however put in about 3-4 hours of reading everyday mainly while travelling to and fro to the place where I am doing my internship. Staying at IIT in Powai and travelling all the way to TIFR at the very tip of Bombay in Colaba is no simple task. I get to ride a cycle, a bus, a train and another bus for an hour and 40 minutes before I get from point A to point B. And I get to do this twice a day :) (once to get there and the second time to get back, you morons).
Back to where I started. After a hard semester, I was yearning for some good reads and decided I'd try a few recommendations.
Icon by Frederick Forsyth: Not good! I would not recommend to anyone except a stranded sailor on a remote island. There are lots of good books with russians, communists, journalists, spies and the underworld and this is definitely not it. Weak plot and the execution was run-of-the-mill. Seems like the author realised it eventually and put in quite a fight at the death.
Hammer of God by Arthur C Clarke: Arthur Clarke is good. Picked this up from a friend and is a very nice medium sized work and highly entertaining and intriguing. Most science fiction novels fail to convince most of us. They are more often than not lacking in research and conviction. But the Hammer of God is wonderfully scripted where this comet/asteroid comes hurtling out of nowhere headed for earth and our hero and his crew are sent to push it off course. Set somewhere in the future when it was finally decided that Star Wars was an impossibility and moon and mars have been colonized, the book is definitely worth a read.
A Time to Kill by John Grisham: It has been real long since I read any courtroom drama. Della Street and Perry Mason seem like long forgotten acquaintances. Back to Jake Brigance. For a first novel, the book is a real hit. Maybe his later novels like 'the Firm' and 'The Pelican Brief' received more acclaim, but this book is more than what I needed to become a fan of John Grisham. Unlike Perry Mason, Jake Brigance is a mortal. Jake is a married,30 something criminal lawyer living in Clanton, Ford County, Missisippi fighting for this black who kills two whites that raped his ten-year-old daughter. The book is filled with action, emotion, suspense and the triumph of good over evil :)
I definitely got to catch hold of his other books.
Bye, got to go catch the sunset by the rocky coastline of TIFR.
Back to where I started. After a hard semester, I was yearning for some good reads and decided I'd try a few recommendations.
Icon by Frederick Forsyth: Not good! I would not recommend to anyone except a stranded sailor on a remote island. There are lots of good books with russians, communists, journalists, spies and the underworld and this is definitely not it. Weak plot and the execution was run-of-the-mill. Seems like the author realised it eventually and put in quite a fight at the death.
Hammer of God by Arthur C Clarke: Arthur Clarke is good. Picked this up from a friend and is a very nice medium sized work and highly entertaining and intriguing. Most science fiction novels fail to convince most of us. They are more often than not lacking in research and conviction. But the Hammer of God is wonderfully scripted where this comet/asteroid comes hurtling out of nowhere headed for earth and our hero and his crew are sent to push it off course. Set somewhere in the future when it was finally decided that Star Wars was an impossibility and moon and mars have been colonized, the book is definitely worth a read.
A Time to Kill by John Grisham: It has been real long since I read any courtroom drama. Della Street and Perry Mason seem like long forgotten acquaintances. Back to Jake Brigance. For a first novel, the book is a real hit. Maybe his later novels like 'the Firm' and 'The Pelican Brief' received more acclaim, but this book is more than what I needed to become a fan of John Grisham. Unlike Perry Mason, Jake Brigance is a mortal. Jake is a married,30 something criminal lawyer living in Clanton, Ford County, Missisippi fighting for this black who kills two whites that raped his ten-year-old daughter. The book is filled with action, emotion, suspense and the triumph of good over evil :)
I definitely got to catch hold of his other books.
Bye, got to go catch the sunset by the rocky coastline of TIFR.
Sunday, April 10, 2005
some people are just amazing
Recently come across this amazing photoblog called chromogenic.net. And one very very fine example of the genius of this guy is this photo.
Notice something about it :)
Well, it is a photo of the WTC towers.
>> break.
Now look at this. It is mind-boggling how much creativity can fit into one person's head.
And once you are done with all that you might want a little of NewYork
Notice something about it :)
Well, it is a photo of the WTC towers.
>> break.
Now look at this. It is mind-boggling how much creativity can fit into one person's head.
And once you are done with all that you might want a little of NewYork
Thursday, March 24, 2005
honour among thieves and other things
I read A twist in the tale by Jeffrey Archer s few months ago. Finding it good, I picked up another book of his that I found. Honour Among Thieves however turned out to be a sad story that simply loses steam after having built up quite some tension in the first 400 pages or so. To simply massacre villages after villages of poor Iraqi's and then tell
the reader that all was in vain is a little sad. And add to that, the bigger fact that 'poor' Saddam is no longer in power and his 'tyranny' has got nothing left to do in Iraq now, it was my mistake to have picked up the book. It is interesting to note that, the tyranny of dictators, be it Hitler or Saddam or whoever is almost like the staple food of fiction writers and pretty much every writer of thrillers has done one such book.
Friday, March 18, 2005
Software Patents in Europe
boom!
bomm! boom!
The software patents issue has come to a bad bad peak right now with loads and loads of free software coming under the scanner of those hawks from the big companies in Europe.
Europe was like the last stand and if Europe is taken, all is lost. The gravity of the situation doesn't hit immediately and not especially when someone like me writes about it.
This is what mplayer's site says
Closed for patent infringement
This site has been shut down because of numerous patent violations in MPlayer. The other free software Multimedia players are next.
The European commission has just passed its directive on software patents, violating democratic rules and procedures to the sole benefit of big non-European corporation and Ireland and to the detriment of small and medium sized businesses (which comprise 99% of the European software industry) and free software.
The European parliament will now be taking the last stand against software patents in a voting for which an absolute majority is needed. Such a majority is hard to come by in a parliament with a low attendance level.
But not all is lost yet as long as you decide it is time to make a difference and take action. This is our last opportunity to fend off software patents worldwide, there will be no second chance for the foreseeable future. Contact your local EU representatives and educate them why software patents are bad and why they must attend that parliament session to vote against them. For in-depth information and starting points to get active visit software patent page of the FFII (Foundation for a
Free Information Infrastructure) and NoSoftwarePatents.com.
Wish us luck, we will need it.
Sunday, March 13, 2005
posting through email
blogger allows me to post through email
this is pretty cool, except i am not too sure if the formatting will stay
right
Saturday, March 12, 2005
life on the slow track
most people live on the fast track, me chooses to sleep on the slow track.
that is pretty much what i've been doing for the past few days. been reading "the complete hitchhikers guide" and falling asleep regularly. to add to the lethargy thursday was a day off (having bunked the day's only llecture at 8:30 in the morning :)
people have been asking why i've been underground for such a long time now. maybe it's got something to do with my turning into a werewolf :D
anyway, been reading an enormoue amount of stuff recently. books i've read recently
catch-22 (joseph heller?), da vinci code and digital fortress (dan brown), rock star (?), the complete hitchhikers guide ... , hms ulysses (mac lean)
dan borwn seems to be this author that got lucky with one book of his. all his other books are very similar in feel to the overly successful 'da vinci code'. and alistair mac lean has a grip on me that will not break ever. i read ulysses again after many years and by the time i finished it, i was dazed.
that is pretty much what i've been doing for the past few days. been reading "the complete hitchhikers guide" and falling asleep regularly. to add to the lethargy thursday was a day off (having bunked the day's only llecture at 8:30 in the morning :)
people have been asking why i've been underground for such a long time now. maybe it's got something to do with my turning into a werewolf :D
anyway, been reading an enormoue amount of stuff recently. books i've read recently
catch-22 (joseph heller?), da vinci code and digital fortress (dan brown), rock star (?), the complete hitchhikers guide ... , hms ulysses (mac lean)
dan borwn seems to be this author that got lucky with one book of his. all his other books are very similar in feel to the overly successful 'da vinci code'. and alistair mac lean has a grip on me that will not break ever. i read ulysses again after many years and by the time i finished it, i was dazed.
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