Tayzwi

status check:

Academics:
Getting screwed in Linear Programming/Algebra.
Lagging behind in my Web-Search seminar. Will be really badly screwed for this. Maybe my worst procrastinating session ever.
Haven't understood basic probability and am supposed to know all about distributions. No clue on this.
Have to decide on my formal verifications term paper, haven't even searched the net for it yet. Imagine.
Am lagging behing badly in my web-search results clustering. Have 3 days to wind up the project, submit report, demonstrate it in front of a dis-interested class/sadistic TAs.
Procrastinating, lazing, lack of energy, sleep, lack of focus....all happening at the same time.....

Good stuff: I am finding formal verifications really interesting...... I am considering changing my primary focus here from Data Mining to Verifications. Dont know for sure. But its on the cards.....depends on how my verifications term paper goes vs. my data mining seminar. Am having a good time reading up on Linear Algebra, Algorithms, and some other basic stuff.

Other stuff:

Bad: Am wearing my last clean shirt. Don't have any shirt for tomorrow; Might go out and buy some clothes. The hostel washing machine is under repair, and my room is full of dirty clothes, and its getting worse. I have tons of mouth ulcers and my toe-thumbs, both of them are screwed with "ugur-suttus"s.

Good: I am feeling great........ain't that great? Done with some crappy Communications Skills exam today. Just one more month of first semester left. One way or the other, it will get over. Discovered a great new coffee place inside the campus. My Rs 700/- electric kettle is now being wasted here on my lab desk ;-)))....laff all you want..........
Still reading Lolita, and savoring every sentence, and am figuring out slowly that there is some other plot going on that is beyond me. Have to buy the "Annotated Lolita" which has notes for each page for the fan, and for the clueless; both of which I am right now.....

What else..... Nothing much.....keep posting.......

That was such an unlikely post by Kumaranna. I sense that those walks with Sumanth are not doing any good to our own Raajkumar.....

(Yawn)

Me too; looking forward to the SLV katte. Bored of North Indian food, and desperately looking forward to Vidyarthi, SLV, BCB, UD-coffee, Ashoka-Pillar, Anand-Juice, Dwarka and of course, Benne Gulkhan :P

Sudeepan room miss aagatte....Need Kathe, on some KaTTe.....

Seeyu
-Dadiya

Finally I know what "Granite Business" means. Had been to an all night canteen here, and its run by some Manohar dude from Tumkur and he used to be in this business before. I heard stories of Puneet Raaj. The Dr Raaj-Veerappan episode, some illegal money laundering, Karnataka politicians and their "keeps," and had a good session of verbal Hi Bangalore.....

In Bombay, Hi Bangalore seems to be a good thing.....

I am trying to read up on Infinite Automata, and there seems to be a wealth of theory on it, written in the same vein as U&H. If I make some progress, will put up some more stuff here, its really cooL.....that ends my technical escapades of sometime now....

Listening to some good ol' Kannada songs.......

speaking of songs, try Coolie #1's Husn Hai Suhana for some extreme filmi dingchak ......and Company's Pyar Pyar Pyar Mein for some superb Bollywood music parody by Sandeep Chowta...... :)))))

I have been spending more time on Orkut than all other sites combinted these days....whats happening????..........

Btw, take a look at my updated website now, I have put up some more stuff.....www.it.iitb.ac.in/~tejaswi.

An interesting thought......

I don't seem to be having fun anymore. Fun as in, like how it used to be in college, frolic, mirth, abandon, having fun drinking juice, hanging out at Sudeep's place discussing management and porn. The hanging-out type fun seems to be a distant memory.....These days fun seems to be very restricted to certain aspects of life.....a very good book or movie, a very interesting person you've just met, a very beautiful girl you have just seen......or something of this sort......has our concept of fun changed? or have we changed?

or is this too person-to-person dependent type?

I was just wondering about how I have changed over the last so many years.....

allo makLa....report maaDi.....what happened yesterday? Did Richie live upto his promise? Eat? Eye? Wink?

I am eye-down in stinking stuff.....

will update more after your updates.......

Its 4am. Two of my lab-mates are sleeping on the floor. Two more are watching Home-Alone #4. I am typing this. I can see my bag, my toothbrush and toothpaste, my kettle, mug, waterbottle, headphones, stray change on the table. I am not particularly sleepy, but have no josh to study, inspite of having a study plan. I have an algorithms class at 930 tomorrow. So, I know that I have to sleep somewhat early if I dont want to miss the class. I am also thinking of watching some pourne. My pourne identity needs to be revived.

Navratri is here, or so they tell me. The first gharba/dandiya was held today, and we folks went in a little late, and could just catch the public as they were coming out. The feel of a college fest is on. The institute seems to be geared up towards one thing, and one thing only...the college fest. With a fresher-college-fest-orientation conducted in the biggest hall in the institute, one can imagine....

Zeedy, the casino robbing theme is old. I mean, its older than the woods. Think of some other plot idea. I have an idea: Sudeep is a compulsive obsessive something. Could be anything. And to overcome this, he starts attending therapy sessions with psychoanalyst. There is no deep reason behind his situation, he is a normal person with a normal problem, and is attracted to the shrink. The shrink senses this, and has a moral conflict of sorts.....whether to send him to someone else (her husband is a shrink too), or treat him inspite of his obvious attraction towards her.....all this is shown through some wonderful direction and very well thought out dialogues. She chooses the second option.....and we see her trying to help him out.....and along the way, the audience starts suspecting that she is not being professional, and contrary to her earlier promise, is now guiding her unsuspecting patient into a quasi-intellectual-sexual relationship with her; all as a part of her treatment.

At this point, we can either make Sudeep diabolical, ie. he can see that she is falling for him, and so, he goes for it all out....or we can make him a good patient who just happened to have a testosterone shot before starting therapy. The therapist's husbands angle, and his being a shrink, I havent yet explored......And no clue about the ending and further twists as well....But this idea could dwell on some awesome dialogue......not like the shrink-talk you see in Ally McBeal, some real cool mind-play and meta(anticipatory)-thinking, some really tense erotic moments, drama, maybe suspense, and with tons of scope for a mindblowing ending.....

What say?

got myself an electric kettle, a box of Lipton Yellow Label teabags, and lo! I can brew my own tea in the lab, anytime I want......

Sudeep's writing continues to be amusing....he is talking about bows and arrows now.......I wish he knew about them when he himself was target practice during his last days as a part of FYI.........I so wish I could've been in Bangalore this Sunday; didn't want to miss this one big event. Makla, do go there and make sure you at least eat some of mine and GD's quota of food.

Futile efforts at studying have been going on. I seem to be doing this the exact same way as I used to work: wait till deadlines mount....and then, give an average performance under pressure. I have to work on this trait of mine.......NOW! ......That bit of self-analysis aside, life has been good. Attended a Scrabble workshop yesterday, conducted by an alumnus, who has won international level tournaments. Spoke about bingos, board tracking, challenges, word play, anagramming, and other strategies......I couldn't stay for the games that began after the strategy session......will play with some Scrabble Club folks soon....

I was talking to a few ex-colleagues today, and they tell me the Unreal Tournament has been called off at office. And now, people are expected to be at their desks by 11. Stand in line for lunch, take coffee breaks during coffee breaks, give sado-masochistic control to one's manager.....etc etc..... Whats happening ?!?!?!?

Ok, I want to make this my last post on movies. Here is a list of all the good movies I have watched after coming here, and also a list of all the bad ones.....

( in order)

- Before Sunset
- Kill Bill(s)
- LA Confidential
- The fabulous destiny of Amelie Poulain
- Memento
- Usual Suspects
- Pulp Fiction
- Gandhi
- Pyaasa (Gurudutt)
- Roman Holiday
- A Beautiful Mind.
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
- Eyes Wide Shut
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- North by Northwest
- Collateral
- Bowling for Columbine
- Farenheit 911

The could-have-been-avoided movies...

- Face/Off
- 10 things I hate about you
- Girl next door
- How to lose a guy in 10 days
- Sweet November
- Bruce Almighty

The still-to-watch movies...

- The Insider
- Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
- Snatch
- Reservoir Dogs
- Raqueim for a Dream
- Schindler's List
- The Shining
- Taxi Driver
- Dr Strangelove
- Full Metal Jacket
- Goodfellas
- more....

Gentlemen of the jury, thats it about movies for now.......for sometime to come......

I might have rambled to you folks about this, but lemme do it again.....

I had been to visit Akshay in Mysore during 4th or 5th semester, and had seen this movie called Before Sunrise on TV there. The movie has stayed with me all these years, cuz of the way romance is depicted in it. Its a movie about two young people (do they all have to be young? well, here it really makes sense that they are young, I will get to that) who meet on a train. The young American needs to spend a day in Vienna before he catches a plane back home. He invites over the beautiful Parisian to spend a day with him in Vienna, and then continue her journey back to Paris. The movie that starts from this point is just about dialogue, and viewpoints of two different people, and a subtle attraction that everyone feels to a strange attractive person. Its a very sweet movie, and it had been around my mind......

Now, its sequel has come out, Before Sunset. With the same theme, set in Paris, and now, they are both 10 years older.....and whoa, it shows, not on their faces.....but in their thoughts, and how they feel that they have matured since their last conversation in Vienna, and how it all makes sense at a different level now......how they have seen more of life, and how it has affected them......This movie left a superb impression on me (watched the sequel yesterday) and I could somewhat relate to the characters cuz I was with them when they were younger, and when I was younger........and now that I am somewhat older, and they are too, and now their talks about their youth rings a very clear bell in my ears.....as I relate to what they might be feeling.......

Watch both the movies, it might take a romantic like me to rave about them this much, but its still worth it......The best way to watch these two movies is to catch Before Sunrise now, and Before Sunset after a couple of years........

Labels: movies

This can be true.

Lemme explain. We have seen Dr Raj and his awesome agent 000 movies. They are full of incredible plots, "im-plausible" assumptions, seductive vamps, sacrificing friends, moles in the police department who have sold out to the bad guys for just money, bad guys who want to control the whole city, lot of gun fights, agents trailing bad men, and bad men trailing agents, jealousy etc etc.......and we also thought that these movies were extremely silly......

Welcome to LA Confidential.

You throw in some good actors, some realistic fight-shootout sequences, and last, but not the least, a tight script; voila, you have the critically highly acclaimed LA Confidential. So, whats the difference between our Dr Raj flicks and awesome non-special effects movies made in Hollywood? Its just the script. Its the non-chalance of the actors, its the direction....and mostly, its the seriousness.....they dont dilute serious movies with mindless humor, they dont have item numbers, they dont have all the "elements". They just stick to one idea, follow the script, keep it as tight as possible, and deliver the punch. The audience reels back, and applauds. They also curse the Kannada thrillers cuz of Narsimharaju, who has no place in these movies (with all due respects to the great comedian). As for the tight script: after having watched movies like Minchina Ota, I think that its highly possible that there are some great screenwriters amidst us (no pun). But these cool screenwriters just are succumbing to whats "conventionally" expected out of them, and keep doing the conventioan stuff, instead of what they truly feel for (write cool scripts). Now, that statement applies at so many levels......what say Paapu?

Anyways, Watch LA Confidential, its a good movie....just enough double crossing to make you feel bad, but not enough to make you hate the movie for fooling you just for the heck of it (like Sixth Sense).

Now for some boring stuff.....

If you are in a mood, try to see the NP-completeness proof of Hamiltonian Circuit. Creativity is being taken to new heights. Crazy concoctions leading to sublime proofs......I am bowled.

Btw, I have chosen my lab project. The idea is to make search engine results browsing an easier experience, by grouping them under categories. These categories are extracted automatically by looking at the top 200 results for the queries and clustering them based on the search results' snippets that come along with the results. We are planning to use the Google API to invoke the search and get the results page. Construct a Suffix Tree out of the words in the snippets, and then, cluster these suffix trees based on some heuristic that has been proven good. Its a standard text classifciation method. Which we are going to implement. Also involves some "course-conformant" front end PHP work, some CGI scripting to invoke the search etc. But more importantly, has the quasi research angle of the clustering bit.........adhu adhu.....

Labels: movies

Watch it, Sudeepa, you, watch it again.....its a very sweet movie experience, and you start to believe in quasi-platonic love once again.......and it makes you feel that the moron inside us has a few rights that we keep denying him....... what say all??

If you want to watch a figure-it-out movie, watch Usual Suspects, it will leave you with enough doubts.....and an anger against this genre of movie making........that the anger is a tribute to the quality of the film.....

If you are looking for a very slick conspiracy theory based page-turner......read da Vinci Code. Its slick alright, its fast, its got all the Robert Ludlum/Sidney Sheldon elements, I had almost forgotten how it feels to read a thriller......tons of details......worth one read......

I was wondering about how its so easy to read something like da Vinci Code.....I sat with the book for around 6 hours on a trot and finished it......never had I dont such a thing since 5th sem, when I had finished As the crow flies, before some internals.........or practical exams, I am not sure.....but the point being, a thriller, you can finish, it keeps you hooked......but a classic like Lolita, being infinitely superior in terms of grace, prose, language, description and everything else that make great fiction........takes ages to read.....I have barely read 60 pages in the last one month.......is it like how we like Vengaboys when we hear them for the first time, and it takes us ages to appreciate Mozart.........or something on those lines? I mean, Bappi Lahri's music strikes an instant dingchak chord......while it takes ages to appreciate Bhimsen Joshi.....you get my drift?

So, thats how I have been spending time here......

And of course, one movie that deserves a very quick mention, American Beauty.......Papanna's dire warning that we need to keep Lester Burnam out of our lives.....echoed in my mind, as I saw him float high up in the air......splendid movie making.....and very very interesting times that we lead our lives in........

ps: on an afterthought I feel awesome that I remember about reading As the crow flies before some exam......but dont really remember which exam, and neither do I care about it.......hahaha........wonder whats really (been) important to us.....

One needs to find his own zone, in life, in all its facets.....academic/professional, love, family, sport, community, hobbies, politics, people......one needs to figure out where one fits....and then, life has to be awesome.....

This thought was inspired by my Algorithms professor today; we were discussing the class feedback which people had given him (its a institute wide post-mid-sem activity). Reacting to a feedback that he wastes some time in class, he quipped that his friends tell him that he wastes a lot of time in life.....and he gave a remarkable, and almost enlightened smile after that......trying to tell us how insignificant these things are......he has found his zone in life.....he is physically thinner than anyone I have met, has the best sense of humor I have seen, has dived deep into algorithms and is pretty good at underwater swimming, has this serene all-knowing calm smile on this face all the time.......he is a good guy......one of the reasons why IIT rocks.....

maja bartaide.....

other than that, things are going on.....tests, seminars, project proposals, projects, assignments, reading papers, browsing the net, movies here and there, the usual......

The one thing I can say with almost certainty is that life has changed in a positive way.....and if someone is reading this and there is a background thread running that their life is getting wasted, they need to do something different.........take up academics in the field you like......be it animation, screen-writing, management, bartending.....anything.......

Labels: life

(sigh!)

Time is indeed a strange phenomenon. And so is life, and so is love.

(raises a glass of Prasad Juice Shops unique grape juice)
Heres to the concept of friendship!

Labels: friends