My life

My experiences.

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Talkers are losers.

If any of you know Razor Ramon, you must know “Smokers are losers” was his punch line. But this post is not about Razor Ramon or his punch line. Read away!

I think you already got the point. And there are thousands of them all around. They will be sitting there minding their own business and when someone proposes to do something, these people just burst up with full of energy from God knows where and starts to put forth these “brainstorm” ideas! Some even go to the extent of inviting Obama for inaugurating an half an hour seminar of one of the students!

The usual questions and remarks are

“Why do we have to do it like that?”

“Let’s do this”

“Let’s do that”

“That hasn’t got the punch” (Soon they’ll be getting a punch!)

“Just that? Nothing else?”

“That won’t work man”

“Why plan something that is going to be a flop?”

“Nobody is going to notice it”

“Let’s take that program and route it via this one and set up a multi dimensional hologram so that the aliens passing by might see it and attend” (For goodness sake!)

You must hear them mouthing off all these “brilliant” ideas. And when you tell them, “Hey, let’s stick to the things we can do” they get all touchy and emotional as if their “stupendous” opinions weren’t valued! Oh my God… It would be nice if you could tell them “STFU”. But why make enemies? So we put that in mind.

And not only that, these guys are worse than lawyers! They spot all the tiny weeny things that weren’t upto their expectations and go on griping about them. But hey, let’s look at the bright side. Its one thing all of us programmers find really useful. Debugging! Okay, let me dub them “The Debuggers”! Less offensive too right?

Now there is one category of people who is just full of team and group spirit when talking to but when you ask them for support and participation for a venture that you’ve taken a bit trouble to organize, they come up with this bull-shit excuses of having “Exams” or a certain ‘sudden’ mood to study the second paragraph of some third chapter.

Getting things done is the beauty. Not organizing a group together so that you can sit and gossip about the things happening around you. Instead of sitting and saying, “I hate everyone and everything around me”, try to give it a shot so as to make things right. You don’t have to go to any extent of making everything right. Just start off one small piece with a few friends of yours. And just like an open source project, talk to people to pick up on the idea. Not everyone will co-operate, but some people are there who can be convinced. Some souls who just needs the tiniest bit of motivation or push. But unfortunately, since gossiping is way much easier and does not need any strain, they join that club pretty easily.

The first sentence of the last paragraph was the advice Shalin Jain gave me when I tried to “talk” to him about these “great” ideas that I had. And that was the best advice one could give I guess.

I may not truly and wholly be right in what all I’ve just said. I’m a human too. But I believe I have the right to say what I’ve said.

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The Minstrel Boy.

Its a poem introduced to me by my brother. If you hear it and read the lines, and then you don’t feel something inside, I know not what to say. Your cause and your beliefs are sacred. Hold true to them.

 

 

THE MINSTREL BOY by Thomas Moore

The Minstrel Boy to the war is gone

In the ranks of death you will find him;

His father’s sword he hath girded on,

And his wild harp slung behind him;

“Land of Song!” said the warrior bard,

“Tho’ all the world betrays thee,

One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard,

One faithful harp shall praise thee!”

 

The Minstrel fell! But the foeman’s chain

Could not bring that proud soul under;

The harp he lov’d ne’er spoke again,

For he tore its chords asunder;

And said “No chains shall sully thee,

Thou soul of love and brav’ry!

Thy songs were made for the pure and free,

They shall never sound in slavery!”

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How many Fathers do you have?

One? Guess again! I bet you’re disgusted in reading that title. But hey, don’t take it literally.

One day when I was on my way to college from home, I had the privilege of being accompanied by one of my good old friends who goes with the name of Jasim. A jolly fellow. Tall and well built. We sat together in the bus and started a casual chat about how things were going for each of us personally over the past few years.

In the midst of the talk, he put to me the above question. I was like “What!?”. He gave a hearty laugh and gave me his mobile phone and told me to browse through the contacts. And there it was!

Vappa1 – 1234567890

Vappa2 – 1234568790

(Vappa means father)

Even though the way he put it was hilarious, it certainly was food for thought.

It is a common practice these days among most of us to keep taking sim cards one after another. I know one of my juniors at college who takes a new sim card each time he wants an Internet connection.

He takes a new sim card, which are nowadays free and you can get them by just filling a form and submitting your id proof, uses off its Internet offer, throws it away and then submits the next proof, takes the next card and so goes on his story…

He must have at least 50 sim cards in his name by now.

However, there is something scary about this business. A son of my Dad’s friend was to leave for gulf. He went to the airport and was going through the formalities over there when some error was found in his documents. I do not know what sort of errors were those but it so happened that he was required to undergo a police inspection suffice to say his journey was cancelled.

He returned to his home and the police inquiry was going on. The next day or after one or two days, the police came to his home with a report  and he was taken into questioning under the fact that he had 5 different sim cards under his id! He had no answer to the question why he had so many different sim cards and what were he using them for.

As such, him having multiple sim cards was filed as a police case.

This maybe the case of one in a thousand or maybe ten thousand. But if anything goes wrong with you, this is a solid proof to show that you’re upto something criminal in nature. So be careful and think twice before getting into a kick of taking sim cards.

Drop the “Ha ha! Sim cards!! I want more! GIVE ME MORE! I’m the Powerful! Ha ha he he!! SIM CARDS!! PILE ‘EM ON!!!” attitude and be content with the one that you have.

Also don’t get more logical fathers, mothers and siblings than you already have. 😉

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Our Engineer’s day. (In the memory of 15th September, 2008)

When Afaf told me to blog about this day, I really did not think I would. But then I realized I can read this again some day later which will bring back a few moments of lovely thoughts…

We have completed 3 years of engineering. 3 years of college life. We have seen and learned so much (of course, not academically!) But philosophically regarding life and relations. Some of us even have learned academics pretty well.

I remember the 15th of September, 2008. I came to the hostel directly with my mom and dad early in the morning. There was a lot of hustle and bustle as the confused freshers were trying to get a grip on what the heck was going on. Suffice to say we had to wear Hawaii slippers, we couldn’t fold up our full sleeves, we were not allowed to tie watches, we couldn’t put anything in our shirt pockets and oh sweet lord, we had to run all the way to the college gate (from MH) with hands raised and books in our hands!! These were the unwritten laws of our beloved seniors at our beloved college.

But thank God Hashim was there whenever I needed to talk to. I love him. May God bless him. 🙂 I’ve wrote about him here.

Back then I used to almost curse each day morning. Time would really slow down when our running starts and it will be a lifetime before we reach the college gates… But now.. Now that we are fourth year students, the first year happenings are the only common things that we can sit together, talk about and laugh… 🙂

I mean even today when I ask, “Hey da, do you remember how we shot each other with the drafter” or “Dude!! The push ups on the grill!!” or “I jumped higher than you during those mech salutes”, to my friends, there is this sense of having lived life… What I mean is, the things that didn’t used to make sense once are now making the best of memories I will ever have.:) I believe what happening today that drives me crazy will make sense tomorrow when I grow up… 🙂

I have seen many people change in this course of time including me. I’m not the kid that used to simply sit in his seat without doing or saying anything. Frankly, right now I think I’m overdoing it. 😉

My sister advised me to never put smileys while writing. I’m trying to follow it hard (stupid sms habit. Just won’t go away) but this post deserves some. 😀

I go through my diary and see what all has happened. I mostly laugh at everything written over there. I’m sure I’ll laugh until I cry some day when I go through it after a long while..

Hey, next year this time? We won’t be here…

Those were the best days of my life. 🙂

Here is my most loved song ever. No dedications. Anyone who has enjoyed their college life even a bit will surely appreciate this. Whatever be said, I really am going to miss this life a lot…

Yup, I AM going to miss it…

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Wolverine fan!

Lately I had a talk with one of my friends on how to sort things out in life. Well, me being a great fan of the guy above, I put forward the ways how he deals with things. Hey, its simple. Lashing out or withdrawal.

Given a situation, either it is total carnage or else he won’t be even anywhere near the place. But I guess that’s pretty irresponsible way to live. So I told my friend to take the path that lies in between. To withdraw when you need to and to compromise when you need to too. That, unfortunately, is the hardest way. But this post ain’t about life’s philosophies!

Wolverine is a mutant. A mutant can be vaguely put as someone having an ill-fashioned gene. However, the story is that we are now homo sapiens right? One more stage of evolution comes where homo superiors get born. They have this extra gene which gives them all sort of superb powers and stuff. Wolverine is one of them.

His power is his accelerated healing factor. Wound, shoot him, hurt him, he laughs them off. The kicker is, his mind too gets healed. If there are any memories of his that hurt him, he heals over them and never remembers such a thing happening. As such, he doesn’t remember his past at all. He is always in search of it.

For a long while I’ve wanted to watch a cartoon or movie where our man really sheds some blood. But till now all the cartoons and movies shows him stabbing, cutting and all but none of them have the slightest amount of the violence this bad ass is really capable of. Not a single drop of blood. There are a lot of comics in which the massacre is there but not a single cartoon or movie.

And mark my words, for a dedicated Wolverine fan, Hugh Jackman in the X-MEN movie does not fit the bill at all! He is tall, handsome, well spoken, and all… A good guy basically. Whereas the real Wolverine is short, bulging with muscles, hairy, and doesn’t usually sit down for a chat to get information unlike Wolverine with Gambit in that movie.

I mean come on!! Hugh Jackman only uses the word ‘bub’ twice (or maybe thrice) in all those four movies together!! Each and every sentence of Wolverine’s usually start or end with ‘bub’!

So here it is folks. Marvel has finally come out with something my heart really yearned for all these  years. A real Wolverine cartoon! I never get tired of watching it again and again just to see him shout and shed some blood with those claws of his. And as for his attitude, no one tops him.

Have a nice time watchin’ bub. He is the best there is at what he does. But what he does, isn’t all that nice.

Hope you’re psyched!

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HULK SMASH!

Alright now, this post is not for the faint hearted or for those sissies. This is for those kick ass cartoon lovers out there who loves to see some serious butt kicking!

Ooookay… Let’s get down to business.

Personally, instead of putting the title for the video below as “The avengers VS the Hulk”, they should’ve put it as “The Avengers getting creamed!”

So, here is the fun. I mean, Captain America is the wonder boy. He’s got the super serum and he always knows what is the right thing to do given any situation. But over here.. Oh boy, he charges in on the Hulk!! The idiot! Fortunately he lives to regret his mistake thanks to Betty.

Ah, Iron man… Haven’t we all heard of the sweet millionaire who doesn’t have a heart? I’m glad he doesn’t have one coz it wouldn’t have survived the humiliation he gets here. He has all the cool modern technologically advanced bull-shit on him and whatever pride this son of a gun has in his so called “armor of gold”, the hulk beats all of it to an unrecognizable pulp!

Thor!!! Oh the high and mighty God he is! You know something cool about this guy? Well, apart from looking like a complete loser, he has an ultra super-cool hammer with him. Designed for a God, it is I believe. The kicker is, it cannot be lifted by anyone but him. Maybe some sorta emotional attachment an’ all but I dunno… And guess what? The HULK not only lifts it but smacks it right across his kisser knocking the all high and mighty Thor out!!! So much for his hammer. Ha!!

Goliath and the little one. You see, Goliath can turn into this huge giant sized giant which makes him “feel” that he is really big and powerful. I guess that makes him a bit over confident. Well, the Hulk sure opens his gates of reality for him .Glad Hulk didn’t decide to have a go at his family jewels! And as for the little one (I don’t know her name), I think she is the only one who was fortunate enough to at least even start annoying hulk. Nice going with getting into his ear laddie!

There are two other boneheads in there who are absolutely delusional. They shoot Hulk with guns! Oh sweet mother of mercy isn’t that just wonderful?

I mean come on!! We all know that the madder the Hulk gets the stronger he gets. And what are these idiots doing going after him without a plan?? I hope they have at least learnt that by now after getting the heroic thrashing that was coming to them. If you ask me, they asked for it bro. They’ve got peanuts for brains!

One of the most enjoyable cartoon scenes that I’ve ever seen in my life! Had a really good time watching it with my brother. 🙂

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The world is mine too.

When those times come when you feel down in the dumps, when you feel that you’re not significant in this wild world where there are so many great and successful people, the easiest way that you find to comfort yourself is to think, “I’m neither special nor worth anything”, and go back to watching a movie to hide your own mind from your own failure. In a nut shell, you lie to yourself.

Is that how you want to spend your entire life? Don’t you wish to know what you are a part of?

When one night in such a mood I wandered out of my home for a stroll, I happened to look up at the sky. Oh, the wonder that I witnessed! The shining stars lighting the sky… It is not words that convey what you feel. It has not been taught to you what beauty is and how beauty is defined. But at sights like those, you behold the beauty. And when you stand admiring it, the veil that covers what lies beneath slowly lifts and your heart feels that beauty… The glory of the creation that you are and that what you witness. You realize you too are a part of something that is truly, really wonderful.

Why do the stars twinkle and why does the moon shine if not for you? How are you not significant to them? They light your way and soothe your heart just as they do any other person’s. Are you not special if they are there to help you through? Are you not special if such beauty exists right before your eyes for you to witness?

I do not try to solve your problems or provide you with all the life’s answers that you need to know. But when one finds some sort of an answer to a common problem, I believe he should share it so that at least one out there gets his thoughts ignited. And maybe that one person blazes his trail to find the answers that we seek. I do believe that is pretty much how the spirit of open source and free software works.

I wanted to write this post for quite a while now. But I couldn’t get the proper incentive. But then I happened to see the wonder that you’re about to witness below. Then I knew I had a lot to be thankful for and that no matter what anyone said, we all are special in our own ways.

We all have much to be thankful for…

He made an example out of his life. Let’s make one out of ours too.

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Configuring wireless (Wi-Fi) on Debian squeeze.

Before beginning the post, I would like to convey my gratitude to Ershad who has been there for me whenever I was in need of assistance.

INSTALLING SQUEEZE

It so happened that one fine day I decided to do my entire main project in the Debian distro. As if to motivate me, Debian came out with their latest release 6.0, squeeze, just then itself. So I decided to go with it.

I downloaded the CD-ROM iso from this site and made a bootable flash with it. I installed it in my netbook in the middle of which it fetched about 1120 packages from the net (which inhibited all my work for almost three long hours) and installed them. I hadn’t created the ‘root’ account deciding to use ‘sudo’ for administrative privileges whenever I needed them.

The installation was successful and I booted into it. Everything was fine. There stood the bluetooth applet proudly in the notification area alongside whom stood the network manager applet displaying the message ‘wired connection auto eth0 active’. Life was good.

Happily when I was just about to retire back to my room, I pulled out the Ethernet cable. And to my dismay I noted that the internet was disconnected. That is, the Wi-Fi connectivity was not there.

I tried left clicking on the applet and it did not show any wireless reception. I realized that my system was not detecting the presence of my modem’s wireless signal in the vicinity. The problem? Wireless not working in Debian 6.0, squeeze.

I had feeling that the trail I was about to blaze was going to be long and hard.

THE QUEST BEGINS

What was the first thing to do? Google for the problem, of course. All the sites that I referred to told me to install the package ‘wireless-tools’ before going any further. Well, I went ahead and installed it.

sudo apt-get install wireless-tools

It installed peacefully. I remembered that there was a command called ‘iwconfig’ within this package. So just to try out what it did, I typed in ‘iw’ and pressed tab for the tab completion. Nothing happened.

Huh?

I typed the entire thing in as ‘iwconfig’ and hit enter. I was greeted with a friendly message.

bash: iwconfig: command not found

What!?

Okay, so the package was not installed? I had no clue. Just to try it, I typed in ‘ifconfig’ and hit enter whose output was no more helpful than a banana peel.

bash: ifconfig: command not found

So where the heck were these packages?? Being as irritated as I was, I don’t know why, but I craved for more power and accessed my root account with ‘sudo -i’. Ha! And then in that flow I simply just typed in ‘iw’ and tried tab completion and viola! There it was! ‘ifconfig’ was there too.

Debian really doesn’t appreciate its local ignorant users tinkering with super cool tools I guess. After that moment onwards, everything that I did was as root.

However, I really was sitting without any clue so as to what to do next. But then I noticed that Ershad was online by this time. We entered into a casual chat me mocking his status message in gtalk. His status was, ” ‘Reboot’ has the magical power of fixing issues sometimes 😉 “. Although in my case, ‘suspend’ was a magician too. However, after a while, I presented my problem to him.

He asked me which was my wlan hardware. I, being the genius that I am, had no clue what he was talking about. He told me to run the following command.

dmesg | grep -i wireless

Its output was:

[ 13.312354] eth1: Broadcom BCM4315 802.11 Hybrid Wireless Controller 5.60.48.36

Ah! So there it was. My wlan device was Broadcom and its model number was BCM4315. He mentioned that Broadcom needed proprietary drivers in order to work. He also mentioned that Broadcom had gone open source lately and its drivers were available in the latest Linux kernel releases. The article regarding that is here.

So I had two options. One, to fix the wireless issue by installing the driver and playing with the wireless tools. Second, by updating my kernel by downloading and compiling the latest stable version.

The second option sounded too much fun. But if doing that fixed the wireless issue, I thought that it would deny me the chance of learning what all would happen in manually trying to fix the wireless issue by itself. So I promised I would compile the kernel separately after fixing my wireless and thus decided to go with my option numero uno.

THE DRIVER HUNT

I googled for a way to install the Broadcom drivers and found quite a good description in this page. I had to add a non free repo to my Debian repository. So by accessing my /etc/apt/sources.list file, I added the following line to it.

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian squeeze main contrib non-free

Mind you, I am doing everything in root. After saving the file, I ran:

apt-get update

and then installed the package that I required by doing:

apt-get install firmware-brcm80211 

The installation finished successfully. And since the driver is a part of the kernel, you needed to load it into the kernel. For that we do:

modprobe -r brcm80211 ; modprobe brcm80211

Alright. I was good to go. But wasn’t that too easy? Yes it was. And as such, something was bound to go wrong and guess what? It did! Nothing had changed except that I had wasted a huge amount of my time. So what went wrong?

An obvious fact that my device was BCM4315 and not brcm80211! Oh how silly I was!

THE CORRECT DRIVER (or chauffeur?)

I was narrowing down to the point where my answer lay. I could feel that the end was near. Googling for BCM4315 drivers, I found the site here. The names of the drivers that the BCM43xx series wanted was given there. And I, in all the happiness, went and installed the first one.

apt-get install firmware-b43-installer

It started to work. Yes! Was I done? Oh no… Of course not. The installation showed an error. And the line that caught my eye was:

Not supported low-power chip with PCI id 14e4:4315!

Whoa! They had mentioned something about the PCI id not being sufficient enough to identify the chipset. And that itself caused the problem. So I followed the next link they had provided and reached here.

I learned a few things over here. One was that the PCI id was a pair of hexadecimal numbers just like the one that we saw above. (14e4:4315). The first four indicated the vendor and the last four indicated the device. But I hadn’t figured this out then. It was after I did the following command that I understood it.

lspci -vnn | grep 14e4

Its output was:

02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY [14e4:4315] (rev 01)
    Subsystem: Broadcom Corporation Device [14e4:04b5]

And there in the first square brackets was the PCI id. It was the same one as earlier. The following table lists whether mine is supported or not.  (I have italicized and made bold my PCI id in the table). And the table says mine is supported.

PCI-ID Supported? Chip ID Modes PHY version Alternative
14e4:0576 no BCM43224 ? ? wl (aka STA)
14e4:4301 yes (b43legacy) BCM4301 b B
14e4:4306 yes (b43legacy) BCM4306/2 b/g G
14e4:4307 yes BCM4306/3 b/g G
14e4:4311 yes BCM4311 b/g G wl
14e4:4312 yes BCM4311 a/b/g G (r8) wl
14e4:4313 not tested BCM4311 a ? wl
14e4:4315 yes (2.6.33+) BCM4312 b/g LP (r1) wl
14e4:4318 yes BCM4318 b/g G (r7)
14e4:4319 yes BCM4318 a/b/g G
14e4:4320 yes (b43legacy) BCM4306/2 b/g G
14e4:4320 yes BCM4306/3 ? ?
14e4:4320 (USB) no (USB device) BCM4320 a/g ? rndis_wlan
14e4:4321 partially in 2.6.39+ BCM4321 ? N (r2)
14e4:4322 no BCM4322 b/g/n N (r4)
14e4:4323 (USB) no (USB device) BCM4323 a/b/g/n ? ndiswrapper
14e4:4324 yes (b43legacy) BCM4306 ? G (r1/2)
14e4:4325 not tested BCM4306 ? ?
14e4:4328 partially in 2.6.39+ BCM4321 b/g/n N (r2) wl
14e4:4329 partially in 2.6.39+ BCM4321 b/g/n N (r1) wl/brcm80211
14e4:432a not tested BCM4321 ? N wl
14e4:432b partially in 2.6.39+ BCM4322 ? N (r4) wl
14e4:432c not tested BCM4322 ? N wl
14e4:432d not tested BCM4322 ? N wl
14e4:4331 no (WIP) BCM4331 ? HT (r1)
14e4:4353 yes (3.1+) BCM43224 a/b/g/n N (r6) wl/brcm80211
14e4:4357 yes (3.1+) BCM43225 a/b/g/n? N (r6) wl/brcm80211
14e4:4358 not tested BCM43227 ? ? wl
14e4:4359 not tested BCM43228 ? ? wl
14e4:435a not tested ? ? ? wl
14e4:4727 no BCM4313 b/g/n LCN (r1) wl/brcm80211
14e4:5354 not tested ? b/g LP
14e4:a99d not tested BCM43421? ? ? wl

Now what? Mine is supported so what do I do? I again went back to the site from where I had mentioned earlier I had installed the first command shown. And there, a careful reading revealed to me that it was the second one that I had to install and I did:

apt-get install firmware-b43-lpphy-installer

Thank goodness! The installation was completed successfully. And in order load the driver into the kernel, I did

modprobe b43

modprobe b43legacy

Alright the drivers were loaded nice and smooth. But there remained the task of actually getting our good old wireless device up and running. And as for that matter, what we have to do, quite literally, is:

ifconfig wlan0 up

Viola! I was done! Was I? Yes I was! Left-clicking on the network manager applet now showed my modem’s Wi-Fi signal! But when clicking it, nothing happened. It was then that I remembered the magic Ershad had taught me. Reboot!

I rebooted my system and here I am blogging from my room while my modem is sitting way far away in the hall.

It was a day well spent. 🙂

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Cloud – A menace? The future of cloud computing.

If you still haven’t figured out the new look and personality (not to mention existence) of the word that used to refer to the beautiful white, sponge like stuff hanging high above your heads since the day of your birth, then you are yet to welcome a new caretaker into your lives.

Cloud computing – the buzz word these days. Everything is being taken over to the Internet. And getting that to be the maximum is what the cloud does.

The idea is just like renting space to do your work. You don’t need to worry about the infrastructure at all. You just pay the money and say you need this much memory, hard disk space, processor power and so on along with other software services that you might need like compilers and text editors. Once you’ve paid, you’ll be given all this whose maintenance will be their responsibility and you just need to concentrate only on your work, which will be simply writing code mostly.

However, something here scares me very much personally. You can visualize the cloud like a huge building where everything is available. All you have to do is to ask for a place in it, thereby which they will allocate a small portion of the building for you, walk in through the front door and do your stuff. You’re not the only one who is going to be availing this facility. So thousands and millions of people (or rather renters) are going to be there side by side with you.

Now what scares me is this. What happens if they close the front door?

People, cloud is where a few people will cluster together and provide all the services that we need. All our works, personal informations, everything will be out there with some others. What if ‘they’ decide to take over the world? It will be the end of the world as we know it. Is this a plan for 2012? Lot of questions and zero answers. Only time will tell.

I feel the whole situation like Sauron waiting for the Ring and instead of trying to destroy it, all of us are desperately trying to get it back to him.

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An Engineering problem.

Having studied the Engineering B. Tech course, I’m bound to say something about it. And I couldn’t find a more apt title than the one above.

People have the problem of inertia too. Not only objects. The tendency to continue the state that he is already in unless some external force acts on him. But unlike objects, man has a quite complicated, yet wonderful, very securely kept collection of cells and tissues, called brain, in his head. That can give all the force that a man would want in order to change his state. But it is very sad that how little of us uses that unlimited potential to come out of the inertia we are so comfortably wound up in and do something different. Really sad.

But we are not completely to blame. A philosophy that I read in a book called “Sophie’s World” comes to mind. In that he says that the world is like a big rabbit. We live deep within the Rabbit’s fur in the quiet comfort without any trouble. Of course, we can live like that. But there are those who climb the fur. A fur that is not that steady. But these people climb it no matter what. Slowly, bit by bit. And finally they reach the tip of the fur, revealing to them the light and wonders that lie around! And that is when we see and know where and who we are. We realize the long paths that are still to be trodden.

Now, coming to the Engineering problem, talking as one of the students, we never are willing to take that risk factor. Let me try to make it more clear.

The Engineering curriculum and the syllabus that we have to go through in order to get our degree is quite vast and challenging. And the so called teachers make it only harder for us with all their rules, assignments, personal egos and stuff. This being the case, a student naturally becomes afraid to try something out of the way. To try something new. To take a risk.

He is afraid because a risk demands a bit. It demands a lot of his time. His brain power. A lot of effort and the results are doubtful too. All this don’t put up much of a fight to make you give up when you think of all the work that you’ve got to do for college the next day. So you just stop thinking about this new idea of yours and get back to the good old life where everything is already laid out. You take the same path that your elders, seniors have taken and you end up as another brick in the wall. (Listen to the song “Another brick in the wall” by “Pink Floyd”)

But unless you take the risk and climb the fur, you’re never going to grow or see the wonders that lie around you.

Unless you keep trying out stuff, you never will be blessed with new ideas. And the new ideas you get this way are those ideas that take off and make you a millionaire! You might think if you’ve got it in you to have ideas like those. But that exactly is the point. There might be something out there that you’re having a hard time doing. And when you find an easy way around it, that is the idea that people like you never could figure out! And that is your ticket out into the world out there waiting for you.

So my friends, don’t go easy on an idea that comes into your mind however stupid that you think it might be. Sit on it. Dream on it. And most importantly, work on it. Even if that idea doesn’t come to realization, you’re going to get something new, a new path, from the one that you showed courage to forge in the first place.

Now let’s get going!

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Motivation.

A word that means so much and yet the word that people don’t even think about.

A gesture or just a word is all that you need to do it. And the beauty is that any of us can do it.

It sometimes may change the life of a person completely. But it seems people either don’t realize that or maybe they just don’t think about it. All the things that we think that are important in our life, all the things that we hold dear to us, we do not include this in any of it.

Of course, to get it, other people will have to put their minds to it. But to give? Do we need an excuse to give it? Not at all. The moment you see one of your friends or those younger than you trying hard to achieve something, is it really hard to go and tell him, “Good work lad!! Keep at it!”, without being sarcastic?

Well, maybe it is a bit hard. But that is not to be taken as an excuse.

A word from a teacher to a student who is trying hard to get a program right. A word to your friend who is trying to accomplish something that most people haven’t. A word to those younger than you when they are trying heads over heels to learn something that you already know. The list goes on and on…

But take my word for it. The difference that you make when you give motivation is not meager. It gives meaning and hope to and rekindles the spirit of the soul who is trying to make a difference. When he gets tired and is about to give up, your words will make the fire in his heart burn with more yearning to strive for what he believes needs to be done.

However, I do believe giving motivation requires some degree of self-respect. What you have done and accomplished in your life will make the tone of, “Good work!”, sound how it should. Otherwise definitely sarcasm will enter your voice. And that will create an adverse effect. Whatever spirit with which your friend was working will be shot dead and he will quit trying for sure.

Chances are limitless. Even if you have not thought about it till today, opportunities will come your way by the truckload tomorrow and the day after.

Just make sure you don’t fail to do your duty.

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When I learn to sit, I will sit to learn.

It just came to me one fine day morning while going to college.

It says a lot. The main problem that we face today, especially this generation, is the problem of distraction. Concentrating on one thing is quite alien to us. Mobile phones being the main villain, music, friends and lack of dedication are the other factors that ruin us bit by bit (or byte by byte, as one of my friends put it).

We don’t know how to sit on something. To ready our mind for understanding the matter at hand. Of course, the first criticism I’m going to get is, “Still we get good marks”. That is totally irrelevant and stupid. I’m not even getting into the matter of scoring marks because you can really know the difference between data stored in a RAM and ROM. Also, you feel the difference when just simply talking with a person who knows what he is talking about. Me and one of my friends lately talked about the three kinds of people that we see around us. They are:

  1. One who knows and knows that he knows. He is wise. Follow him.
  2. One who knows not and knows that he knows not. He is simple. Teach him.
  3. One who knows not and knows not that he knows not. He is a fool. Shun him.

Getting back to the point, instead of us telling others or the elders telling their young ones to “sit and learn”, they must first teach them to “learn to sit”. Because only if we are going to sit dedicatedly can we learn something the way it should be learned.

We do hear stories of great people who read through a book just once and answer any question asked from within. It is because they know how to sit with concentration on what they are doing. People like us, who don’t know how to sit, well, need I elaborate our case?

Meditation, throwing away distractions and telling those who interrupt you to get lost in a nice way are the only ways through which we’re going to learn how to sit. Its not like the life of many hang in balance if you keep your phone switched off for a while. And if it is so, you really need to reconsider your life as a student.

Hoping you and I learn to sit soon do I hope wise people will walk on the face of Earth again.

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The last night of a hosteler.

When finally the days are over…

When finally you have put behind all the tiring assignments, sessionals and all…

When finally you have become an engineer…

When finally the time has come for you to leave this life at college once and for all…

…

…

You don’t want to leave.

You want those times again. You want to just forget about tomorrow and sleep. Waking up the next day early to eat breakfast and leave for college. The packed up bag and the empty rails along with the silence reminds you that your dream is not going to happen…

You think of getting out of your room to go into your friends’ room. But you find no strength to do it. After all, none of them have come to yours. Some of your friends have already left. They’re probably at their homes by then.

“Why did they leave even without a single word?”, you think.

You think of going to one of your friends and telling him farewell… You understand why no one told you they were leaving…

You understand….

FRIENDS NEVER SAY GOODBYE.

There is nothing special. Just another night in your life that you have to sleep through. You close your eyes.

All of them come flying to you…

All the memories…

All those moments that you have shared together…

The friendships that were made, the love that was felt, the decisions that were made, the celebrations that were done….

Your breathe becomes heavier and you find that words don’t come when you try to raise your voice.

“Its just one night!”, you tell yourself. But its not like any of the nights that you have ever lived through in your whole life.

All the thoughts just become too much for you. And you take the only way out of the situation. You let your emotions out. You cry.

The silent tears flow. You don’t know why. You can’t think why. You think of anything and everything that comes into your mind. The tears just won’t stop…

Your room’s door slowly opens… You try to stop yourself… But you see him standing there.

Nothing in the world could stop you.

You jump and hug him.

You can’t find words to say nor can you think of anything…

The tears just keep flowing and all that you can do is to tighten your hug…

After a while, you leave the hug and don’t look at his face… And neither does he at yours… He walks away and you lock your door.

“Just one more day! Oh please God… Just one more day…”, so you pray wishing for the impossible.

All the times that you’ve pulled through living boldly and strong, nothing helps at the moment… You fall on your bed and burst into tears… The child within comes out… And you”re just a little kid who wants a bit attention…

“Just one more day….”, the last thought that comes to you…

You sleep your last night. You’re leaving never to return again.

God give me strength.

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The 7th of July.

Besides the day being one of my friend’s birthday (Oh boy, is he going to get it!!!), its a day that’s beginning to drive me crazy.

int count = 0;

Poor student: “Sir, when should we get our records binded?”

Greater teacher: “Submit it by Seventh. That’ll do”

count++;

Great HOD: “Seminars on the double!! Get your topics and submit them along with the abstract and references on 7th!!”

Poor student: “Yes ma’am!”

count++;

Again the great HOD: “Main project topics! Get on it my lads! Provide me with your abstracts when we begin our next semester. When is that? Oh 7th… He he…”

Poor student: “But ma’am… Alright ma’am.”

count++;

Poor student: “Ma’am, shouldn’t we be submitting our project report?”

Great teacher: “Oh don’t rush it. Take your time and do good job while preparing it. Submit it by the 7th of July”

Poor student thinks: “@#$*#”

Poor student says: “Right!”

count++;

But if it was to just reach the seventh of july uneventfully, it would have been fine. But no.

Poor student: “Sir!! Please postpone the exam on June 29th to some other date so we can go home!”

Greater teacher: “Of course my dear lads! Write one on 5th and the other on 6th. Have a nice vacation!”

Poor student: “You are too kind sir”

count++;

count++;

printf(“Number of works pending = %d”, count);

Number of works pending = 6.

He he… Are we going to give a few bumps to the birthday boy!!

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Mountain climbing.

Oh am I proud to be studying at NSS College of Engineering! A ten minutes walk from our hostel and there stand the mighty mountains in all their majestic splendor just waiting to be conquered by you. Not many have the experience of climbing a mountain for their evening walks. And I’m glad I’m one among those who have that gratifying moments of enjoying entire Palakkad standing on top of the world!

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The walk to the base of the mountains itself is glorious. Passing a tree cave made by the overlapping branches of the rubber trees from both sides of the way surely brings out the human in you. You feel your heart yearning for something that it has been missing. True beauty lifts its veil for a while so that those who look can see beholding what lies beneath all the lies that we believe to be true. It is the moment where we actually realize that there is more to all the things around you. It is the moment when you realize that these are not to be taken for granted.

A poem that one of my friends wrote during our first year comes to mind… I would like to quote it here:

Rubber trees abundant all around,

lush greenery soothing your troubled mind,

the lonely woody and windy paths,

bringing back your memories alive,

leading me to a world of nothingness, but just me.

Innocent people, innocent minds,

drawing me to a world of love and hope.

The pleasant breeze on my face.

The living river flowing like pearls,

the life around, exciting me beyond reasons!

How I would like to be there…

just even for one day,

to feel the nature again,

and me again, who is lost in this wild world…

~ Written by Afaf Banu.

It is the experience of a lifetime. No plans to be made, no trips to be organized, no money to be spent, no formalities to be kept… You just walk straight on and start climbing. Free nature all around. Oh how blind we all are!

Of course, you can’t go running up a mountain. No sir!! You have to climb it. Holding and placing your feet carefully. And you become tired too.

But with every small portion that you climb, something starts coming your way. And what is that you ask? One, the majestic sight!! No high resolution pictures that you can put in any wide, wide screen monitors will come close to what meets your eyes once you have climbed half way through. Photos don’t do justice to what you behold!

But that’s not all…

The wind! Oh my dear lord!!! The lovely wind that blows at you!! You can breathe and breathe and breathe and never exhale! Of course, that might be stupid, but hope you get the idea.

On top of the world!

All the tiredness that you feel while climbing just washes away in a singe moment once the wind greets your face. You feel like a bird soaring over the skies. You feel like spreading your arms and letting go of yourself. To leave everything to fate and finally fly away freely…

The nipple point still remains to be conquered. One more year left and our strength and spirits are only growing harder and stronger. We will do it.

But that’s not all. What do you do when you finally do something hard? The child within comes out and we shout “Hooray!!”, And that’s what we did in the end too!

We did jump on a mountain!

Man, my mom is going to kill me! 😀 😛

I love her. 🙂