Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

May 30, 2006

Flashy USB Accessories

Filed under: Interesting Sites,Tech Related — Suramya @ 3:20 PM

Found an Interesting set of USB Accessories while browsing through the Wired Site… My personal favorite is this one:

USB Bra Clasp
USB Bra Clasp

It would be interesting to watch a wearer try to use this… 😉 Any volunteers for a demo 😉 😀

Source: Wired 14.06: PLAY

– Suramya

May 29, 2006

Got an uninvited visitor after my Ooty Trip

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 11:24 PM

Had an uninvited vistor after my Ooty Trip last week. Two days after the trip I woke up with a high fever, nausea and a severely upset stomach. When I went to the doctor he diagnosed it with a stomach infection and gave me this mile long list of medicines to take…

Now the fun part was that I couldn’t eat anything without throwing up and the anti-biotics were making me feel buzzed. So all I could do was sleep and watch movies when I was awake. I watched ‘The Pink Panther’ which is an awesome movie. I laughed and laughed and laughed. Also saw ‘Darna Zaroori Hai’ Which was really pathetic. I mean it felt like they decided to release a half made movie in which none of the stories were scary or even interesting (Well… one or two of the stories were mildly interesting).

The stomach infection was why I havn’t been posting anything on the blog. Its hard to think coherently when you feel like you have taken one too many shots..

Now thankfully my stomach is better. Can actually eat normal food once again and not hospital food (Boiled stuff)…

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

Cya,
Suramya

May 22, 2006

Gaurang’s Engagement and my trip to Ooty

Filed under: My Life,Travel/Trips — Suramya @ 5:25 AM

I spent the last week in Ooty, Well it was in Wellington and Pykara lake but both are near ooty. I had gone there to attend Gaurang and Kangan’s engagement. It was a really fun trip. It started off with me leaving home at ~4:15 am on the 17th to catch the 6:30am flight to Bangalore. This was after I had been working till about 3:30 am so I was a bit tired but nothing major. The flight was uneventful and I arrived in Banglore on time where Lloyd picked me up and drove me to the Bus Stop where I was supposed to catch the 10am bus to Ooty. This is where the fun started…

The bus was supposed to leave at 10am (There was another bus at 9:15am) while waiting for the bus I found out that the 9:15 am bus never showed up and the 10am bus is the last bus leaving in the morning, the next bus was at 8 pm. So we waited and waited and waited… The 10am bus finally showed up and while boarding we were told that the 9:15 am bus was on the way also and would be arriving shortly. We finally left Blore at 11:00am and about two hours later we stopped for lunch. At this time I realized that my phone battery was low but I had called Gaurang and told him that my ETA was ~6pm. Then I went off to sleep (Cause I had to work again at night) the bus took forever to get to Ooty. He stopped a lot and drove really really slow. I finally reached Ooty at ~9:45 pm. Both Gaurang and Kangan had come to pick me up and they were royally bored. Plus since my phone was low on battery life I didn’t get a regular signal so I couldn’t tell them where I was. The best part was that all the road signs were in Tamil which I don’t read so even when I got through to Gaurang I had no idea where I was so I couldn’t give them an ETA.

The engagement was fun, I had about 3 hours of sleep before the ceremony but I managed. Gaurang had to wear a Dhoti which was funny (See picture below). I recorded the entire thing on video plus took some still photos. The funniest part of the entire thing was that the pundit told us that if the girl and guy exchanged rings that meant they were married so Kunal (Kangan’s brother) put the ring on Guarang’s finger. 🙂 It was funny as hell, I got a video of Kunal saying “Don’t anybody dare take any photos” (Or something to that effect. I don’t remember the exact words). Will post it when I get a copy. Then we went for lunch where a lot of people showed up. Then Gaurang and Kangan went to get his car fixed and I went home to sleep. Below are some photos I took.

Gaurang in a Dhoti
Gaurang in a Dhoti

Gaurang, Kangan, Uncle and Aunty
Aunty, Kangan, Gurang and Uncle

Kangan and Gaurang
Kangan and Gaurang

I worked again at night then the next day we went to Pykara lake. That was the best part of the trip. This is a series of 7 interconnected lakes which is restriced access for defence personal only. There are four rooms over there so Gurunathan uncle had booked them all for a 3 day stay. We went paddle boating, canoeing, on a row boat and this one boat that looked like a round bath-tub. (Don’t remember what its called.) Maitreyi, Kunal, Kangan, Gaurang and me went on the different boats in various combinations. The bath-tub and canoeing was the most fun and the paddle boat the most boring. At night we played Pictonary and dumbcharads where my team won 🙂

Next day me, gaurang and Kangan went to drop Kunal at the bus-stop and the rest of the group went to pick up Mini and then went for a walk. The second day was also spent enjoying the lake. We went for a ride on the motor-boat where we spotted a bison. Then in the evening it started raining and we watched the clouds move in over the lake which was really nice.

The next day (Sunday) I left at 6am to catch the 8:30 bus and arrived in Bangalore at about 6:10 pm and went straight to the airport where I found my flight was delayed till 9:30pm. The flight back was uneventful and I slept most of the way. Mom and dad picked me from the airport and I went to sleep after a long talk with them.

This was a brief summary of my trip to Ooty. Will post more later.

Cya,
Suramya

May 12, 2006

Tamiflu (Flu medicine) is now open source…

Filed under: My Thoughts,News/Articles,Tech Related — Suramya @ 10:40 AM

Lets hear it for the open source movement. Tamiflu one of the medicines used for treating pandemic flu has been made open source… meaning the process to create the drug has been opened to the public.

The biggest advantage is that anyone can now synthesize the drug if required so the production bottleneck has been removed. However, the question that comes to my mind is that how willing will people be to trust a medicine that their next door neighbor made in his garage? Are you really willing to risk trying that medicine? Prob yeah, if you don’t have any other option but what if you do? I think most people (including me) would rather take a medicine prepared by a qualified/reputed lab than some homegrown varity…

But still its a step in the right direction. How you may ask? Well, now all the labs have the process without having to spend R&D to reinvent the wheel. So if the need arises everyone can pitch in to make the drug.

Original Article: MAKE: Blog: HOW TO – Make Tamiflu

Thanks to Adam Fields (weblog) for the link.

Thanks,
Suramya

May 11, 2006

Book Search in Delhi

Filed under: Tech Related — Suramya @ 10:51 AM

Book Search: Delhi Style

Thanks to Google Blogoscoped for the link.

– Suramya

May 10, 2006

Delhi’s weather forecast for the next 5 days

Filed under: My Life,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 3:49 PM

And people ask me why I complain about the heat…

Forcast_Delhi.jpg
In Deg Celcius

Forcast_Delhi_F.jpg
In Fahrenheit

– Suramya

MS Live Messenger paradox

Filed under: Computer Related,Funny News — Suramya @ 2:37 PM

This is just hillarious. Basically the new MS Live Beta installer wants you to close the MSN installer so that the MSN installer can continue installing(See the pic below). I havn’t tried installing it on my system because I don’t like MSN and don’t want it to mess with my system.

MSN Paradox
MSN Paradox…

Source: Reg reader traumatised by MS Live Messenger paradox

Thanks for the laugh guys.

– Suramya

Making Bootable Movies with eMoviX

Filed under: Computer Software,Linux/Unix Related,Tech Related — Suramya @ 1:57 PM

Now this is a really cool software/system that allows you to create a CD/DVD with video/audio etc on it that any system can boot off and play the video. So you no longer have to worry about sending someone the codecs to view a movie/video you created. No more worrying that you might have forgotten to include the codec’s on the CD you gave to the president with your brain wave etc. All they have to do is pop the disk in the drive and reboot the system (while you pray that the system is set to allow booting from the CD-ROM)

I havn’t tried it out yet but it looks good and easy to create.

From the Website:

If you are like me and do all your video recording in Linux, you may wonder how you can share the TV shows, personal videos, and other multimedia content with friends and family who don’t use Linux. How can you get the video from your hard disk to the people you care about in a way that you know they can play it?

Well, instead of just hoping they have a way to play your favorite video format, why not give them your home movie with a player that you know can play it? In fact, why not give them the whole operating system with it so you know that your player will run?

Complete Article: Making Bootable Movies with eMoviX

Thanks,
Suramya

May 8, 2006

My weekend

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 11:51 PM

Can’t think of a better headline than this. I know you are supposed to make the title interesting and attention grabbing but thats something I have always sucked at. I find it easier to write the body and the summary and let the title fend for itself…

NEways thats not what this post is about (Though I might write about that in the near future) This weekend I metup with Aditya who was my classmate in 9th and 10th at Boys High School, Allahabad. He is the one who actually got me interested in computers so he’s to blame for all the messes/catastrophies I have caused using computers 🙂

We were meeting each other after a loong time (The last time was sometime in 2001 or so) so we had a lot to catchup on. It was fun. We had coffee in Cafe Coffee Day and then walked around Sec 18 in Noida. Then we had dinner at this place who’s tag line was “Come taste some bad food” which was really interesting and great marketing as the only reason the both us decided to eat here was to try out a place that asks you to try some bad food. Don’t remember the name of the place (Aditya do you remember what the place was called?) but the food was actually good and cheap. Then we talked a bit more over a long dinner (It was too hot outside so neither of us wanted to go back out). Once we were done with dinner we went for a drive around noida which was fun.

Came back and read Battlefield Earth by L Ron Hubbard again. The book is 1000 times better than the movie based of it. Then I crashed. Woke up late on Sunday, was initially planning to go meet some more friends but the temprature outside convinced me otherwise. So I spent the day reading and watching old Stargate episodes.

Thought about writing another article but it was Sunday and didnt’ feel like using my brain…. 😉

Well this is all about my weekend… Will post more later.

Cya,
Suramya

May 5, 2006

Face of Delhi MBBS Students Protest

Filed under: My Thoughts,News/Articles — Suramya @ 11:20 AM

Recently the MBBS Students in Delhi mounted a protest at India Gate against the Indian govt’s intention of increasing the reservations in the premier government educational institutions like the Indian Institute of Technologies (IITs) and Indian Institute of Managements and other institutions of higher learning to 49.5%.

These students were tear-gassed and sprayed with water cannons when they blocked traffic on Janpath, near Hotel Le Meridian crossing. Mild lathicharge was also resorted to in order to break the ‘rasta roko’, which lasted for more than one-and-a-half hours. Below is an awesome pic that someone took that can be termed as ‘Face of the Protest’. Whoever took the photo should be given an award.

MBBS Student Protest

More pics and writeup’s are available at Face of Delhi MBBS Students Protest

Increasing the quota is a sucidal move, do you really want to have a person who barely managed to pass his highschool exams to become a doctor because he is from a ‘backward’ class and operate on you. I certainly don’t, It would suck to find out half way into the operation that the ‘doctor’ had no clue what to do. Same thing for an engineer, do you want someone with no clue about structural integrity designing and building skyscapers? You do??? Then you must have a death wish, I certainly don’t.

If the gov’t wants to improve the lot of the backward classes it should make primary, secondary and highschool education free. Open more schools, give deserving students more scholarships. Teach the students to learn, make them work for it. Dont let them coast through school and then become a doctor without doing the hardwork during which they actually learn stuff.

So I think that this is not really a smart idea and it would be better to give financial aid to deserving students. Also instead of complaining about it I think we should do something about it. I take inspiration from people like Tarini (who sent me this) who also actually do stuff about the social situation instead of just complaining about it. So while I have been donating to charity organizations (Aryasamaj, Basera) that helps educate kids with potential, I haven’t been able to give time to actual volunteer work. However that is something which is going to change soon, (prob next year) as I will actually start volunteering in various organizations (not just national but international). Lets see how that works out.

What are your thoughts on reservation? Do you think its a good idea, or a really bad one that will come back and bite us in the backside in a couple of years? Let me know.

Thanks,
Suramya

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