Browsing Anomalies

It is not everyday you face these sort of browsing anomalies.

This was an anomaly of true kind, The incident took place when I was in Kuwait and using dial up connection to download some stuff. The speed just shot up to 12KBps and just remained like that, look at the average speed for that Torrent. On a dial up modem with maximum of 32Kbps i.e. 4KBps, I can't explain how I got 12KBps...

This is not exactly an anomaly, but I got around 200KBps in BSNL Broadband. They have promised a minimum of 256 Kbps (upto 2 Mbps). This was the first time I saw this sort of speed in my home :-).

A Tribute...

This post is a tribute for a lady, she was a very influential and inspiring person whom I have come across my life. It is not everyday I look up to a person and borrow their qualities to embed in my life...

The person I am talking about is Gayathri Radhakrishnan, she was the principal of my former school - "Arya Central School", it was only yesterday that I realized this lady had passed away, through a conversation of with an old friend that I met yesterday accidentally. It was pretty strange that even the closest of my friends who studied with me back in Arya actually forgot to tell me about this, I do not blame them my lifestyle in Chennai has ridden me of TV and Newspapers so I have kind of lost touch with what is happening in the world. Before I went to Chennai I knew she was bed ridden because of an injured disc in her spine, the last time I saw her was before I joined college, never got to see her after that.

So I dedicate this post to her as a token of respect and farewell from my side.

I still remember the speeches she used to give before the Board exams, giving us the morale boost and will power to face the inevitable harsh examinations, reminds me of motivational speeches given to the soldiers before the war that prepares them mentally for combat.

When I joined Arya Central School back in 1999, it was one of the harshest environments faced in my life, I had to battle against great odds to finally make out of the school, it was one of the rare cases when I fought for a "lost cause" and the cause was once again founded and in the end I won the battle. Indirectly our principal did play a part in this battle, she used to be real strict in the rules she made, there were no bending or breaking of those rules and everyone came under the rules she made there were no special exceptions under the rules everyone was treated in the same way.

In a way it was the strict rules that if you don't get 80% in your boards you are not admitted to +2, this in way kind of forced me to do a make or break study pattern that boosted me from 69% in 9th to 84% in the 10th board. I finally made it to +2 in Arya. But that was not the original plan though, me being a computer enthusiast wanted to take computers in +2 but unfortunately Arya didn't have computers at that time and my marks weren't good enough to get me computers in other school, so I finally opted for biology (this is one of the things that I never regret doing even now).

I borrowed this concept of following rules of the game from her. I continue to follow this even today whenever possible. Obviously it has its consequences like kicking me from Projects because I tried to do things only the right way...But I am happy about it.

The second thing that inspired me the most was her scientific point of view of things, she used to be very methodical and logical. Even though she was scientific she was a theist, but I used be pretty spiritual, eventually I became an atheist, but this methodical approach for each and everything eventually laid down the platform for me in the field of computer science.

The influence of the Scientific mentality was so great the only thing we used to have in school was an annual science exhibition named Arya Expo. Of course many of our school days are filled with various cultural activities and sports event, our school had none of that (or it was very minimal.) Yes I know most of might disagree with the way she conducted the school. I would not stop you from thinking like that but again I just loved this kind of schooling (pure focus on the science stream nothing else.)

Another draw back was a bit of conservativeness, even though we had a mixed school, girls and boys were put in separate classes which is pretty conservative. Ours was the last batch to have this kind of treatment, eventually she did realize that it is better to allow a system to go to higher entropy rather than prevent it :-). Hence we even had called the school "Arya Central Jail" at times :-)).

I would say that it was under her administration our school began appearing the spot light, our +2 teachers were the best she had to offer, with unforgettable classes in Mathematics, Biology and Chemistry. Physics was pretty much forgettable, but we had the moments in that too. She also had a very good memory ability to remember each and every student's name once she has met them.

The last time I visited my school our teachers said the school is very different from what used to be when our batch was there, a lot of commercialization has taken place and the administration has changed hands to the daughters of the former principal. A lot of cultural and sports events were going on and Arya Expo is no longer being conducted regularly (that was pretty sad of course.) Also Arya also started having "School Annual Days" which was never seen by our batch.

One of my juniors back in the school said that she never gave up the hope to live even during the final days of life. She had written a letter which was read out loud in the morning assembly saying that she will be returning as the principal of the school from 2007 new year. But unfortunately things didn't go according to her will and she passed away 2 weeks later.

The only thing I regret to say is that she never got to see our school stand first in the "Metals & Materials" Quiz conducted every year at Kalpakkam in Chennai. It was an honor for me to represent my school at this prestigious event, but I blame myself for this unfortunate event of not getting first place. It was I who actually regretted to answer that final question which could have got us that elusive first prize in the Quiz, I will never forgive myself for that...

With these words I bid farewell to the former principal of "Arya Central School"

Booze Party (The Booze Saga - Part I)

A picture is worth thousand words they say, I guess the above picture does the same too when it comes to this particular entry...

It was on the 30th Of December that I had my first official peg of Whiskey, I used to go to Stryker's house on weekends when I was staying in Saidapet. And he was the first one to try out drinking and said it was good. He had tried out beer, vodka and whiskey by this time. I was kind of a noob in this, so they decided to introduce me to this in the presence of pros.

Also being new year's eve Shocky had come from Mumbai, we were also joined by Pooran from Trivandrum, my two new friends from Cognizant (JaKe and DarkPrince) also joined the party. The rest of the crowd included persons from Styker's college mates. I reached there by afternoon and Stryker was in two minds whether to go for work for which he had been called for during the weekends...Anyways he decided to bunk, we spent chatting with old friends all afternoon and in between playing games in Stryker's B.F.R, in the evening we set out to buy my Playstation Portable. I was accompanied by Stryker, Shocky, JaKe and DarkPrince. The whole buying ordeal lasted for about an hour after which I had spent around 13K for the PSP + Accessories + Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops.

On our way back Shocky was consulting about which drink to buy and what buy to eat with his friends over the phone. After reaching back to Stryker's room. I saw the things being setup, be being the noob over here, many had various suggestions on what I was to be given first. Finally all went into Whiskey and I also decided to jump in. They poured a little of Whiskey and put in some Pepsi and gave it to me, after the tradition of taking cheers we all began taking our first sip.

My very first though, I was expecting something new, but the thing tasted like Waterbury's Compound (which is a medicine used to get relieve from coughs especially due to bronchitis), everybody was in a happy mood cheering and rejoicing, JaKe and Pooran did a bottoms up I think both veterans loved to gulp it down. Stryker desperately tried for a bottoms up, but was in vain. Meanwhile I was sipping away slowly, I kind of enjoyed the slow drinking method. I kind of gives time to think between sips :-).

Traditionally people start off with beer then go on to stronger drinks, but I kind of started off with Whiskey. I have tried beer, but I never like it, not the flavor, the flavor is good and it is not repulsive. It is just that I love the taste of Whiskey compared to beer. After about 2 pegs of Whiskey, I began feeling a little light around my head area. My thinking process with my alter egos also started to increase. Most others were in a very happy and party mood and were all singing and dancing to the music coming from the speakers of BFR.

My phone started ringing, the message showed it was from my home (Oops, I don't want to let them know that I was drinking.) I went out to the balcony and attended the call, I was still able to keep my concentration. After answering the regular questions I kept the phone and went back in. You could say by this time I was "kicked" as in the traditional sense of the term, but the fact is I just can't enjoy it. May be because of the fact that I like to stay away from groups and kind of embrace loneliness.

Of course before taking in the alcohol there were many definitions of "kick". But none of them fitted into what I was experiencing through. Actually as per the normal definition I was not kicked at all. There was no happiness or joy that I could feel since I had my drink, as far as I was concerned the only difference was a feeling of light-headedness. Well what else can I say, I was still very much aware of what was going on in my surroundings, I was very much aware of my worries also and I was on earth. Everybody was still in a party mood.

Pooran had to puke, after which we went off to sleep. After this we all went to Marina Beach and got some sea breeze. Stryker believed he was still in a lot of control of himself, I don't know how much of that was true. And we all sat and talked for sometime. And about an hour later we all left for back to Stryker's Home, where I had a good night sleep.

The Playstation Portable Experience

Finally this New Year Eve I managed to own on a Playstation Portable, Ever since I read about PSP I just wanted to own and after saving around 14K from the previous 4 Month's Salary I had just enough money to get myself a PSP around the end of December.

So on 30th December evening along with my friends I paid a visit to Ritchie Street (the hub of all tech stuff in Chennai) to buy a PSP and after some poking around we went to a shop called "Game Flash" where I brought the PSP. Initially the shop keeper was a bit hesitant as he wasn't sure that whether I wanted to buy one or just see one. So he made it sure that I was there to buy the thing and not just see it. Then he brought me the PSP contents in a package. The base cost was Rs 10,900.

Unfortunately the PSP wasn't bundled with any games which is a sad thing, so I had to shell out another Rs 1,800 for a copy of Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, and another Rs 2,000 for a Carry Case + Screen Protector + Front Case Plastic Protector + USB Cable. My greatest fear was that I would get a PSP with a non downgradable Firmware which can make running home brew stuff on PSP pretty hard. I never got to confirm the version number from the shop. In the meanwhile some of friends were enjoying a demo on the XBox 360, after all the transactions were complete we left the shop.

Back at my friends place we unpacked the PSP and took a photo of the contents

The Contents of the PSP Box	The Ear phones and Connector

The Box Consisted of the following things

1. PlayStation Portable
   
2. An Adapter and Connection Wire
   
3. Earphones and An Extension Remote for it
   
4. A wrist Strap
   
5. A Quick Start Guide and a user Manual

The First thing that I did as soon as I got the PSP was to check the factory firmware version. And to my happiness it was 2.60 from which it is possible to downgrade to 1.50 so that you can run home brew stuff. Now the PSP runs original games from a kind of optical Disc called UMD (Universal Media Disc) a properitory technology owned by Sony. As of now its not possible to replicate or create UMDs since UMD writers are not available in the general market and only in hands of those companies who are developing games for PSP.

Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops	The UMD

A Closer look at the UMD

The PSP Comes with a demo UMD that you will have to ask for at the shop. The demo disc contains some videos, music and game demos and demonstrates the capabilities of the PSP. Since it has no playable games I decided to buy "Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops" since I have been a great fan of the Metal Gear Series.

The UMD goes in a tray at the back of the PSP. Once you insert an UMD it shows up in the corresponding menu based upon the contents present in it i.e. Movies, Music or Games

XMB Menu System	UMD Content

Playing the trailer

I decided to put a shot of the Trailer of "Spider-Man 2" Trailer that was present in the Demo UMD. I was disappointed when I put the MGS: Portable Ops game UMD though, it required a v2.81 Firmware update to run, doing so will risk the fact that I cannot downgrade to v1.5 Firmware to play Home brew stuff.

Of course UMD is not the only way of playing stuff on your PSP, you can also put contents through a Memory Stick, a slot for this is present at the left Hand corner of the PSP. I loaded some MP3s into the Memory Stick Via PC and put it in the PSP and it was detected and played the files. The sound quality was good and better than my discman which recently went dead. The latest firmware do support playing WMA and Flash Content too!!!

Then came the bad news, after about 2 hours of charging the stock battery refused to charge up and went dead as soon as power was cut. So I had no way to test the battery life and absolutely no portability :-(. I had to wait for one whole day since the very next day was a Sunday and the shops were closed, so finally on January 1, I went back to the shop where I brought the PSP and told them the issue. They didn't show any hesitation and changed the battery then and there. In the meanwhile I asked the shopkeeper on how to run Home Brew stuff and he said that it had to be downgraded to v1.5 and they will charge another Rs 1,200 for that to be done on my PSP :-(. When asked how to downgrade the shopkeeper said that it was the person's livelihood and he could not risk telling it outside. Yeah Right!!!

Back to my friend's house and after about 2.5 hours of charging the PSP was up and running on the Li-Ion Battery. If you intend to play songs with the display off you get a play time of 8 hrs, but when you are off playing with UMD and Display on you get a little under 4.5 hrs as there is a mechanical motor in action.

I had to wait another week before I could actually play MGS though. I had no idea on how to downgrade the PSP and I wasn't willing to spent another Rs 1,200 for downgrading it. So after discussing with some friends and some through Research in a forum called "The Afterdawn" I got a fair sense on how to downgrade to v1.5 from v2.60 firmware. And a fellow named "Dark_Alex" seemed to be pioneering the Home Brew revolution in PSP as it was his patched firmwares made it possible to downgrade the PSP.

This was the basic path followed for downgrading my PSP

1. Upgrade from 2.60 to 2.71 (Not more than 2.71)
   
2. Run the downgrader for 2.71 to downgrade to 1.50 Firmware
   
3. Install the 3.02 OE - A from Dark_Alex to enable running

After this I booted the MGS UMD and it worked smoothly :-). Finally hacked a PSP and now I am planning to write some Home Brew Stuff for the PSP or may be even run Linux on PSP ;-).

The Homecoming...

It has been 6 months, 6 long months...

I left my hometown to join Cognizant 6 months back, I knew this is not how my life should go, but then some people just don't get the choice.

It was a pleasant surprise for my family when I came here, far earlier than the expected the schedule, they were expecting me to come by the today's train, I decided to the air route via Air Deccan cost be around 1,500 Bucks and I was able to join my family in just 1 hour.

But I have been experiencing more of sadness than happiness, when people do come home after a long time. To start off 2 of my graphics cards nVidia Geforce 4 MX 440 and nVidia Geforce 6600GT both got damaged due to prolonged non usage. This was a pretty big blow, I blog from my system running on onboard graphics, the jump was like from a castle to a hut, but at least I got a place to live in...

The second happened about 7:00 P.M today, lately my sis have been experiencing black outs and sudden loss of balance due an infection in the mastoid region behind the ear, she is under going medication for it and my mother being a very religious person wanted to go to the temple with all the family together, of course me being an atheist I kind of want to avoid it, but then I dont want my mom to be unhappy so I just accompany her, she also has kind of stopped forcing me to pray to god, must be a kind of mutual understanding :-).

It was the incident here that kind of shook me, just after the bells began to ring after the main pooja, my sis just lost consciousness and fell to the ground, I kind of froze there for a second, but then quickly went over there with my father got a hold of my sis, she was still wobbling on her feet trying to get back her balance, I asked her to put her left hand over my shoulder, the other was supported by my Dad and we both took her over to the car, I had mixed feelings there a bit of sadness to see my sis in that state and it also kind of struck me, that I had a Sister...

Coming back to my life during the past 6 months, it has again been mixed, I really do enjoy the life in Chennai with friends, occasional frag fests organized by the Infy guys are a real great stress reliever. Then the hangout areas like beaches or gaming arenas like Zap is real great.

After going Chennai, I got to try a lot of things, got drunk (never got kicked though, vodaka is my favorite), lived in a hostel. living with friends in a rented house, got a puff of cigarette (WOW!!! That was real burning hot sensation...), got to ride on the back seat of fast bikes (I am not much of a fast rider though), got myself a PSP, got to experience the chennai heat, made some custom made instant noodles, drank a lot of office coffee and finally got introduced to a girl named Divya, whom I knew only through blogs (got to see her finally)...Oh and by the way I stopped drinking (that is another long story), kind of looking of an experience into "the stuff"...
Didn't get to find a girl friend though...Hmm

Meanwhile office life has been very different, things over there were going in an opposite direction all together, being kicked from one project to another, it is like they are playing football with me, but then does the ball care? I was fired from my first project due to insubordination to superiors, great way to start of your career. Got to experience the bench in Cognizant, they call it the "Resource Pool" over there all the same. Then put up in a support project where I am still realizing the harsh realities of the fucking IT industry...It is not the program, it is all in the money, there is no respect for the code we write...I sometimes ask myself whether I have taken the right path in my life.

During the bench days I was enhancing certain bits of my project and completely gave a new look to my project web site. Do visit here http://sicvm.sourceforge.net , also got to rock and stir up some issues in the official Cognizant blogs I am still wondering why they haven't kicked me out of it and Many people thought I was dead, because I was no longer active in Orkut, then one day the office firewall went down and at least some people were relieved to see me back in Orkut, those who were rejoicing the fact that I was dead, were no longer celebrating...

Life style in Chennai reminded me of a real life GTA style minus the shooting and killing stuff. I am not summing up things and gonna leave the blog, I will explain my experiences through various forth coming posts in this week, so watch out for GTA: Chennai City Stories...

QcK

Getting the mouse was the easy part, then came the Pad. I had to choose between a hard surface pad like Ratpadz or a cloth surface like QcK, but since my game play style is more of the clam and the sensitivity was in the low area I though I will settle for a Cloth pad. Another reason for choosing this is that there is less wear and tear on the MX518's pads.

The box

The Pad

MX 518 resting on it