Excuse the insanely ghastly time but I just completed my first resume about 10 minutes back. I just thought that if I can stay awake till 3:15 AM in the morning writing a resume, I can surely write a blog note to remind myself about this a few years down the line. This is where it all started. Your first resume is exactly 2 pages long, consists of 2 fonts in 3 different sizes using 3 styles of writing and is a 18,548 byte long docx file having 671 words (or so says Microsoft Office 2007 :P)

Just a note to future me reading this one, you didn’t have a crazy flash urge to write a resume 1 AM in the morning. You needed to have one for your mock interview scheduled at your college on Friday. Even though its only a mock interview, hope the mock panel doesn’t mock you and hope it actually gives you the mock job

Time to sleep and pull a rabbit out of the hat when I (hopefully miraculously) get up at 7AM in the morning for a 9:30 AM Microprocessors lecture. Thanks for wasting one and a half minute of your time that you’re probably never going to get back Be sure to waste another precious 30 seconds writing a bitching comment about this Round numbers are so much better than fractions

Tags: college, interview

Today was the first day of this sem (on the JA calender) and boy was it a shocking one. First thing that happens as soon as I enter college is that I get congratulated by my friends. Why, I ask? Couldn’t be because of the PRAXIS. I told my friends on Saturday/Sunday and Monday morning is too early for people to find out. Especially people who don’t talk when not in college.
I asked them why I was being congratulated and to my surprise, I had received the Nagesh Rane Memorial Trust (NRMT) Scholarship under the Meritorious Students Support Program (MSSP).

They are paying IMS-India for their GRE Program. I have no idea what I should say, of course, this is a first. All I can think of is, thanks Prof. Nagesh Raghunath Rane

Tags: GRE

3 posts in 3 days.. That doesn’t usually happen often but this latest one is just for the ones who know The AXIS in any shape or form.
After the events over the past few days, I’ve just been informed that I’ve been inducted into the AXIS Core. I guess congratulations are in order, for myself

I’m not a man of many words when it comes to such things. This was certainly a surprise. I was expecting this day to come in a month or two when I’d get down to finishing dP2P for the release of Scribble Scrabble 1.0 (the long duration because of over due college work, nothing else :P) but hey, I’m not complaining.

I enjoyed my time as an AXIS member for 1 month and 29 days. It was fun being part of the AXIS support team for 1 months 22 days and each one of the 1 year, 1 month and 12 days I’ve spent as an AXIS Aspirant have been educational.
Now the inf days I shall spend in the AXIS Core should certainly be enlightening.

You can read about the official post by SaM on the AXIS RDC.

May the greenness shine upon you.

Tags: AXIS

Day 2 got off to a late start with me reaching VESIT by 11:20 and directly being summoned to the 4th floor for the first elims of Brainwave. We cleared that with not too much difficulty. Then it was off to the 1st floor for the SupremaC elims. It was 12:30 and my usual partner Anand was unable to make it. So was Amith’s usual partner so we teamed up for the SupremaC elims. The paper was really good. Had fun. Little did we know that we’d score a 108/125 and be in first place

Then came the second elims of Brainwave and we were screwed royally. We got around 20 marks worth of stuff right but probably so did another 5-8 teams of the 30 in this round. Of course, we hadn’t solved any of the 7 mark tie breaker questions which were, needless to say the toughest.

On to the SupremaC finals and this year, each finalist team was given 2 comps to work with. The questions were quite tough. Q1 was, as I just found out, BrainFuck. Looks like someone copy pasted. I had heard of it before but didn’t know what it was. I wouldn’t be able to remember the multiplication function that we didn’t solve there anyway
Basically we scored 90 marks out of a max of 150. The winning team got 120. So the results were…
Catch this space tomorrow for more.. Read the rest of this entry »

PRAXIS 07 Day 1 is set and done and I’m really tired after all the work. So let me just give you a brief summary of what happened today.

1. Me and Renuk finished first in Mind Benders.
2. Me, Renuk and Prasen finished third in the Open Software competition with Scribble Scrabble.
3. SaM, strider and motr_fresco finished first (tied) in the Open Software competition with Transperancy.
4. SaM, strider, motr_fresco and musicaltherapyworks finished first (tied) in the Open Software competition with expRSS.

So thus far the first day has been good. 3 certis bagged and a ton of cash The events I shall be taking part in tomorrow are SupremaC and Brainwave. Lets keep our fingers crossed and hope we can rack up as many things as possible

From what I heard, I was just one step away from winning the PRAXIS On Line Treasure Hunt (OLTH). Oh well Me and anna want to break our record with the first rounds of C Coding competitions.. lets hope we do

Edit: Seems some people want to see a screen shot of Scribble Scrabble. Lets show it to them. It might be just plain windows GUI for now but it will be spiced up in the end when all the back end for all the features are done. XAML (.NET 3.0) should show its worth then

Tags: AXIS, competitions

Praxis 2007 is almost here and its time to prepare for the Open Software competition. You know of What I’ve Done and the reasons why my project isn’t up yet. I should have, ideally speaking, been done by now but what I didn’t expect was the fact that this sem, the subjects would be so time consuming, each having professors loading us mercilessly with work. Sure, if I didn’t have to work on my project, I’d do my work with almost no arguments but in light of my current status, I really can’t do much. Solution? Simple.. Bunk a few days of college until the 26th of August (self set submission date for the Praxis package) and stop spending time on anything that will not allow you to work at least 2 hours during college days.

Here is to hoping I can pull off this entire thing and yet not get screwed in college.
Its time to get ready for PRAXIS. Time to win ’cause “If not now, then when? If not us, then who?“

Enjoy your evening and don’t drink and drive

Tags: competitions

Potter maniacs are out on the streets again with the latest movie in the Harry Potter series to grace the golden screen, ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix‘. I for one went to Adlabs at the Palm Beach Galleria (Screen 2) to catch the first show at 10 AM on what seemed to be quite an early morning on Friday the 13^th

I loved the movie. It had more or less everything I wanted in the movie. I loved Alan Rickman playing Severus Snape, Imelda Staunton playing Dolores Umbridge and Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood after beating out 15,000 hopefuls for the role which had a line almost a mile long If you didn’t already know, Evanna Lynch is a huge Harry Potter fan

My favourite part was of course the fight at the end between Tom and Albus though all the other fights we depicted quite well as well. The part where Lord Voldemort possesses Harry and Harry realises that he is stronger because of all the love around him and his friends seemed to be kind of a cheap shot with Voldemort standing at the back a fake background created using a blue screen.

Overall it was a pretty nice movie. After the movie I hung out with a few friends at Center One
When I thought that was all the HP I’d have for the day, I was in for a surprise. At night, I saw a telecast of ‘Harry Potter and the Philosophers stone‘ on HBO I hadn’t seen it all that well the first time (when I caught it on Pogo a few years back 8-))

Not to mention the fact that the last book in the series, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows‘ is going to come out this in less than a week’s time. I just hope that my friends read it quickly so that I can have a crack at it asap I’d rather read it myself that have the story told to me so I’ll probably stay off the internet until I get the book Not to mention that if someone randomly calls me and tells me the story, I’ll kill them

In case someone didn’t already know this, I thought its time I told the (very few) people actually reading this a little trick I use (in case they already didn’t know) to guess what’s going to happen in the upcoming book (since it is the last one :)). Always catch the movie because the movie can’t be as long and detailed as the book. They have to cut out some parts (unless its made by Peter Jackson :P). “WTF? Have you gone insane? They are showing us less things. How can that be good? ”
If you haven’t realised, here’s the secret. If they (script writers/directors/other people related to the development of the movie) cut out parts that are important for future plot lines (like unreleased books), the book writer (JKR) has to point it out to avoid problems.

What you must know about movie #5 is that in the initial script, Kreacher was left out. JKR has been quoted to say “You know, I wouldn’t [cut him] if I were you. Or you can, but if you get to make a seventh film, you’ll be tied in knots.” Needless to say, Kreacher was added back into the script albeit for only 2 scenes.
Now all you Potter-maniacs should be out trying to figure out all the things you thought were important/unimportant in the previous books that weren’t/were included in the previous movies and form your own theories about the final movie
Happy spell casting

Tags: Harry Potter, movies

Sem 4 is done and Sem 5 is almost here. Almost the entire vacation has passed. Lets see how its been, shall we.
The vacation started off with me working on a project that I had thought of just a day before the final exam. I completed it asap and moved on to the next thing in my list. The term completed means that I’ve done everything on my side. All I need to do now is put some content on it which will come soon enough.
That very night, I had to rush to a town up north one night at 10 pm when I got the news that someone I knew there had passed away.
I spent about 4 days there and managed to goto Kandla port as well. I have 2 pics that I might up some other time (on my first project actually). OK that was 2 weeks back. What have I been doing since then? I certainly haven’t worked on the project whose phase 1 should have been almost complete by now.

Have I wasted 2 (very important) weeks? Have I lost sight of PRAXIS 2008 already? I didn’t even finish studying one subject at classes this sem. What have I done?

The answer is simple. No, I haven’t wasted 2 weeks, I haven’t lost track of my PRAXIS 2008 commitments and as for the one subject this sem, that’s a bit more complicated. In all my mid sem breaks prior to this one, I’ve worked on my projects and done one subject from the up coming semester. Though I might not have done the latter and hardly done the earlier, there is one thing that I did do now that I never did before. Something that was more important than my projects to be done this time that wasn’t as important then. I got my other errands done. There were a few decisions pending on my side. A few things to inquire about. A few things to figure out about my future plans (not that I didn’t have them planned for years before this moment, its just that this was the time to start execution for all the plans I had made ages ago). Oh did I mention, I played on my ps2 for at least an hour a day, albeit after midnight most of the times, but at least I got to have some fun

Now that the wheels are in motion, I’m free to work on my PRAXIS 08 commitments. I do realise that I do not have as much time now but I’d rather have it this way than have all my projects ready and not have done the work I’ve done in this vacation already because honestly, this was more important

This means that sem 5 is on my door step now. Starting this Monday, I’ll be back in class doing another 6 subjects and not to mention 2 classes. Haven’t done that since sem 1 so it should be a nice experience, getting my hands dirty and all. I think I needed that with all my laziness.

Now Playing: Linkin Park - What I’ve Done [Minutes To Midnight (2007)] [1:52/3:25@256kbps]

So let mercy come
And wash away
What I’ve done

Finally I have my ps2 chipped and its time to have fun. Before I go further, I think I must say that no, my exams aren’t over. After my last paper on the 9th, I went to the passport office on the 11th (Monday) and later got my ps2 chipped. I also got some games for 50inr each.
Here is a list of the games I already had

Then I went out and bought my self a couple

I also bought Rainbow Six: Lock Down and Final Fantasy 12 but they aren’t working
Then just today I went over to a friend and borrowed 4 more games which are Devil May Cry 3, Hitman: Blood Money, DragonBall Z: Budokai Tenkaichi and Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects. Unfortunately the DBZ game is detected as a PS2 disc at first but later asks me to insert a ps/ps2 disc
The games which didn’t work shall be returned next time I go anywhere around VT. And oh, I have my last paper on the 19th (Applied Mathematics 4). I wonder if and when I’ll get any studies done
Currently I’m in love with Burnout 3: Takedown and Smack down vs Raw 2007 but I also like God of War II, Devil May Cry 3 and Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects. The latter 3 have similar gameplays but I haven’t played GoW2 and DMC 3 as much as MN:RotI which I have been on for a few hours straight now It satisfies my love for comics which I never read but loved via the movies and cartoons

PS: Got any game suggestions? Fire away

As like every year, AIEEE season brings in tonnes of visitors to my site each asking God knows what not.
I don’t know how they expect me to get them their hall tickets or their results but when they just need a general about something, I try to help them out. This year was no different. At a certain time, in fact the load was so high that the guys at dreamhost had to send an email notifying me that the server was under load due to the high activity.
Solution? Install wp-cache to cache the pages thus decreasing the server load a few thousand times over This is like a yearly digg effect without the involvement of digg
I am pretty sure people don’t even read what I have to say because if they did, they would notice that I am just “another engineering student“ and that I am in no way linked with the guys who run the AIEEE website.

Oh well.. As for the latest developments, my sem 4 exams are going on which as every sem shall end on the 19th of June lasting just a tad bit under a month like every time Fun days, eh? Vacation seems to be pretty well lined up just like every time Planning to watch a few of the movies that have released recently that was on my to watch list. Hopefully this comes true. My console will be up so its gaming time \o/ And then we have our AXIS work Its going to be a great month or two. A few key decisions need to be made about future plans too. Should be fun.
PS: Happy now Knuckles? I updated it