Murphy's Laws

Thursday 10 AM poster presentation - need a printout
*color printer jammed
*posterboard is in my friend's room( i don't have the key)

Thursday 4 PM laptop does not want to wake up.
* CALL IBM - they run a telephonic troubleshooting, I tell them laptop is dead, but the ibm calle, insists that I, (1)boot up the system (I say it won't) (2) Boot up and press F8 (I frantically say, that the nothing happens when I press the power button (3)Boot up and press f12! ( i say ok, i have given up hope) -> ....... few more useless steps --> concludes that something is worng with the motherboard...complint filed -> redirected to call another number to find the details of servicing.

Call other number :
They work only from 8-8 EST, have to wait till morning

Call in the morning
Out of parts, have to wait till next shipment (10 more days)

Meanwhile...270 report due next monday, 281 next thursday
Status 270 (yet to start) 281 report(ditto!)
All recent data is in laptop (wondering, why didn't I have the latest backup)

EECS helpdesk:
Can't read ext3 linux drive to recover data
Download and install ext3 reader for windows
Software cannot read ext3 data from SATA->USB interface.

Office:
Found laptop with the same config, decide to swap disks
No philips screw driver in the universe
Found something at last the opens the laptop!

Copied ~60MB of my precious data ( it's a shame that, 60MB can ruin one's life!)

....
ps. and you thought murphy was kidding.

Breathless, but worth it

Out here in berkeley any cool place you can go is either uphill or uphill on the way back...tilden park is once such place, which involves a steep bike ride but 1) you are almost flying during the ride back 2) The view from the top is just cool, so I do it once a while! Figures on top are one of the views and a pastel rendering of it by me.

IITK in 2030!

IITK in 2030...

I was reading up someone's(link) thoughts on what IITK might be in 2030, here's my version of it.

@PAN - IIT meeting (more resembling a congress rally)

Student: Hey, I am from IITK, where are you from?
Yet Another Student: I am from IIT Ram Nagar, which K is this ? Karai, Karimnagar ....?

Student(Embarrassed): Oh, I am from Kanpur, one of the original ones, you know.
Yet Another Student: whatever, btw did you know my school is being promoted to IIT status next year. we have
3 profs, which is 3 times more than the minimum number of profs you need to start an IIT.

Student(In tears now) okay :( btw, do you know when are they serving food? (why else come to a rally?)



JEE : Excerpt from "The Hindu Muslim Sikh ... (wraps for three lines)" newspaper.
The JEE exams are now reduced their syllabus to basic school math,physics and chemistry so that students from coaching institutes have no "unfair" advantage over students in the any other school. For those who did not attend(or were expelled/failed) 4.75% of the seats are reserved, bringing the total reserved tally to 99.9%. The community which does not fall in any reserved category however have filed a petition that 10 % of the seats should be reserved for them. The board of directors of IIT have agreed to do so, though they need to resolved how to increase the total reserved quota to more than 100%(a minor technical detail though).

@IITK:
Ragging: Juniors - Plz Plz Rag us..we want to know what its like?
Seniors - We don't know either :(
The senate meets to consider introducing RAG 101 to teach about ragging as an HSS course.

Hostels: Hall 73, is now under construction, Hall 23, 34, 66 are cribbing as they still have government messes and food menu is controlled by religious reservations.

Heath Center: Unfortunately, its still the same

Departments: Who cares about them anyway? Its all the same..you do an MBA(ya, 30 years is what it takes to realize the truth)

Class Rooms: Tutorials are in L7. Kalyanpur is engulfed into IIT K empire. The expansion of many iits however has been stopped as they have run into the boundaries of other nearby IITs.

100 things to do in berkeley

So, i found the guide to a good living life somehere in my drawer which was given to us during the orientation. It has a section on 100 things one MUST do before leaving berkeley. Some of my favs are:
* Protest Something: catch a glimpse of what is is like here!.
* Have a converasation with a Telegraph Bum:....you might even make a good friend.
* Learn how to spell Berkeley correctly: If you have come all the way to berkeley and still cannot spell it, you should have spent your time on that college farm in Palo Alto! also don't ever wear RED.
* Get Arrested and Spend a night in jail: eeh!
* Play Ultimate Frisbee..yaay.
Also:
* Atend a PhD dissertation!

A wing page!

Finally I got myself to put together a webpage for our wing(D -MID) iitk. It all started with the idea of making the page layout look like a wing with rooms and all and you could reach the personal webpages by clicking on the rooms. I just had to make this! . Check it out at here.. Looking at the pictures got me nostalgic again.

Nothing better to do :D

Last few days I have done nothing other than eating, sleeping, playing go and watching southpark. I shopped at an Indian store, went to the Safeway twice this week and still looks like we are gonna run out of food before the weekend! If only I could hibernate i would be saved from all the trouble. Not to be..so here I am wiling away my time on the internet. For those of who love southpark, I collected all the "you know, i've learned something today" lines here. See, I really have nothing better to do.

Art or No ART?

Kasimir Malevich, Title: Suprematist Composition: White on White

My last visit to the musem of modern art at new york confirmed my belief that most people apprecite the art not by its content, but rather who drew it. A huge line behind a Picaso painting while a a similar cubist painting by braque only got a careless glance! Embarassingly enough, after a while I too was looking for a picaso or a monet or a wharol while skipping the artists i didn't know of. Afterall any person can draw a white square on a white square( yes, thats an art!) so what is it about these art which makes them special? We tend to forget that skill and creativity are two different aspects of art and sometimes the later outweighs the former. Prior to the modern art era (late 18th century - today) we see paintings which were beautiful" in the traditional sense. Such was the trend so far and art was pretty, abeit, stagnant. Simplificaition of form began with impressionism and movements that followed took drastic steps which let art to gradually lose form and representaiton. This leap of creativity is what we should appreciate.