I get a day off from college to do project work. I’m supposed to come up with an idea I’m interested in and then work on implementing that idea. Nice! Really. Of the 8 semesters that I’m expected to be in college I was hoping that this semester would be the most interesting.
Interesting ideas are not hard to come by. I can’t say the same about reasonable professors. I don’t mind if my ideas are shot down because they aren’t feasible or are completely insane but rejecting it because some senior did something similar last year or because it’s mostly a simulation or because it’s a term they’ve heard of and hence its not cutting edge enough? Seriously, WTF?!
The best recommendation they could give me was to go to a project centre. After spending a month trying to convince them that I could do a project on my own and failing miserably, I finally go to a project centre. These people hand you a booklet with projects that are nicely categorised under headings like IEEE, Embedded Systems, Networking, Communication, VLSI. How nice? Like vegetables arranged in your neighbourhood grocery they’ve got everything all nicely arranged for your picking. You listen to their rehearsed, almost retarded explanation of the project, pick a project that sucks the least and pay up. Ask them what you’re expected to do and their answer is (translating quote from Tamil to English) “cash apart, you’re expected to attend classes and not mess with the kit once it’s handed to you (smile)”. And to think the project costs 20,000 bucks. They’re fleecing us and I can’t do a damn thing about it. The only consolation is that I’m assured of my project being accepted and a ‘guarantee’ that it’ll work.
Anna University finally lets us do something creative and my college goes and screws it all up. Another sem wasted. I’m not sure what I feel right now. I’ve run out semesters to make my college education worthwhile but that would also mean I’m done with this whole load of crap. Oh well, one less day of college per week. I guess I should be glad.
Woah! I was looking through my PayPal account and I notice that over the past year I’ve spent $126 on stuff other than hosting. Now, hosting is a cost that I’m conscious of and willing to pay but 126 dollars on other stuff? Ridiculous. I don’t buy much online! Or so I thought.
The only big purchase was a gift I bought my brother for his birthday since I figured it was better to buy something online and have it shipped to him in the US rather than buy the same here and ship it myself. Another small portion was a few donations I gave out. Apart from those every other purchase was $10 or less.
Seeing that I don’t get much in the first place I’d better start managing what little I have better. I’ve never thought of myself a spendthrift. I’m way better handling physical cash and real bank accounts than online money. I think the problem lies with me subconsciously thinking of online cash as play money. (Reminds me, I used to be pretty good at Monopoly, Mayfair was always mine)
In other news, I’ve got a verified PayPal account. So now even the sending limits can’t stop me from spending.
For some reason a lot of my bus mates decided not to come to college today. I couldn’t go to sleep, hardly had anyone to talk to and forgot to bring a novel. A deplorable state to be in when you’ve got another 1.5 hours to reach college. The only thing I could do was look out the window, which I did.
While looking out the window, at all the newly constructed buildings with their fancy glass windows it was easy to pick out these old seedy looking buildings that looked like payment offices for the electricity board. What I was surprised to see was the sheer number of them all along my bus route. I was sure to see an old broken-down shack every 100 metres sandwiched between fancy looking buildings. Makes me wonder why they’re still there. All the places I saw were commercial areas that were adjacent to the main road. I just can’t get it.
It didn’t help that the writing on a rusted board on one such dilapidated building said “Propoganda Unit”. I’ll take a photo next time.
I’m done with the last of the exams today. Finally, the whole mundane process of trying to memorise stuff until 6 in the evening, being partly successful after that, actually achieving it past midnight, writing all that crap for 3 hours, coming home late for lunch and dozing away the rest of the afternoon.
Thats not my idea of life but unfortunately its something that can’t be helped. So now that the exams are over maybe I’ll have some time to do some stuff.
Oh btw, I’m going to Tirupathi tomorrow. No, I won’t be shaving my head irrespective of what a certain libellous status message might suggest.
Recommend a book that I can read during the trip.
I’ve got bleddy exams now and its around this time that I’m at my most annoyed and bitter mood. To refrain from making savage four letter descriptions about exams, anna university and the loon that heads it, I’ll try to concentrate on telling you people that I won’t be updating much during this time. I hardly feel like doing anything online when I’ve got exams. Its this horrible feeling deep inside, something like the guy in ‘A Clockwork Orange’. Maybe worse.
Ok people, go on now, enjoy yourselves.
I thought I’d add in a forum thats integrated in to wordpress but that would be too easy, functional and effective. After due consideration I’ve decided to add in two forms to contact me, one when I’m offline and the other when I’m online, which can be accessed on the contact me page. It is to be noted that both are routed to my online dustbin.
To provide effective support to my hosting service I’ve decided that the most comprehensive method would be to install a shoutbox. That should be somewhere on the right. I hope you appreciate my concern for your problems.
I’ve been on a collecting spree over the last two weeks searching for anything Indian, Rock and in English. Before that I never realised the quality of rock music in India. My previous encounters with Indian rock music was at IIT Saarang and the Unwind Center. I remember spending 100 bucks every week (or 75 bucks if you get the early bird tickets) to get my ears deafened at the Unwind Center every Friday. Except for this year, I’ve religiously gone to previous IIT Saarang rock shows. I’ve missed countless other shows that I’ve always meant to go to but just haven’t. I hate my college timings.
A good source of Indian rock music is RSJ Online. They’ve got decent content but while their present interface isn’t as retarded as before its still a pain finding songs for each band. Musictantra has a decent compilation of YouTube music videos of Indian Rock bands. One of the websites mentioned on RadioVeRVe is Green Ozone where you can download the Awake and Arise album. This particular album has pretty high rotation on RadioVeRVe.
An awesome source of info about Indian Bands and their albums is Gigpad. They’ve got useful content, nice reviews of albums and a functional interface. And unlike RSJ or Unwind Center, Gigpad actually does update their site. Their gigs list actually has information thats upto date. The Unwind Center website is offering tickets for gigs that were on June 2006! Thats nearly a bleddy year ago. I vaguely remember that they still claim the Unwind Center in Chennai is still in Nungambakkam.
I was randomly searching for wordpress themes and this was the first one I found. I didn’t like it when I saw the preview picture but I thought I’d check out the demo anyway. Was I blown away or what?! This thing looked awesome, it supports loads of plugins and its a snap to use. I got it up working in a few minutes unlike other plugin ready themes. I don’t think I’ll change anything except the header.
There were a few themes that Marc showed me, that were on xendx.com, that were pretty nice looking. I’ve shelved those for now. Maybe I’ll use them when I get bored enough or break this theme.
Only thing I noticed it takes forever to load but that could be because of my host. I’ve also got lots of plugins to install. Got any plugins to recommend? Comment…
So after a few years of using free hosts I decided I’d give paid hosting a shot. One of the reasons was that I know a couple of fellows that, while using free hosting, have created blogs with decent content thats worth more than a free host. There are some pretty good free hosts out there like IGB but since this was the first time I had the means and inclination to do so I thought why not, lets get us some paid hosting. I went ahead and bought the cheapest hosting plan I could find. Its been rather bothersome to setup all the stuff and submit support tickets but now thats done I hope there’s some smooth sailing ahead.
The funny thing is at one point of time I was emailing more than 8 people about their packages and if they’re willing to give out a low bandwidth package for cheaper and I got a negative answer on almost all of them. For some reason within the last month I’ve managed to buy two hosting packages that seem like killer deals. Now to verify if they’re killer deals.
The images were released to celebrate the arrival on Monday of Emma Tallulah, the couple's third daughter.
Bye.
