Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

June 12, 2007

Being connected rules! :)

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 12:44 PM

Now that I have a new cell phone that actually receives calls when I am at home I have actually started having a social life again. 🙂 On Sat night I got a call at 9:45 pm from Ruth asking if I would be able to make it for a surprise Birthday party for Rebecca. So me and Axu (My cousin) left for it by 10:15 pm. This wouldn’t have been possible with my old cell connection.

I have been receiving replies to my mails that basically go “Thank god. now we can actually contact you when we need to”…

Been really busy thats why no posts for so long and thats why this post is going to be cut short as well..

– Suramya

June 6, 2007

Got a new cell number

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 3:44 PM

As some of you know I have been having issues with my old cell provider (BSNL). Basically I would never get any phone signal at home and at times even when I got signal it would not allow calls to come through. As you can probably guess that sucked a lot. The funny part was that I was getting a full signal at DhanaChuli which is in the middle of nowhere but at home I barely get a single bar. That too if I was lucky.

So today I finally got an Airtel SIM card and now I am getting a full signal no matter where I go in the house. Obviously that means that my cell # changed. So I will be sending out an SMS and email to all my friends/family to give them the new number.

If you need my cell # email me and I will mail it to you. Or you can check my profile on Orkut if you are in my friends list ’cause there is no way I am posting it over here.

Well this is all for now. Here’s to a better connected me 🙂

– Suramya

June 5, 2007

The DRM is Like…

Filed under: Computer Related,Humor — Suramya @ 11:39 AM

Can’t figure out what the big deal is about DRM? Check out the following site, it will give you a visual representation of what DRM is and how it would affect everyday objects/tasks.

Flickr: The DRM is Like… Pool

Thanks to Open… for the link.

– Suramya

June 4, 2007

This weekend

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 10:58 AM

This weekend sucked big time. I was hoping to use it to relax and catch up with some work, but unfortunately it didn’t go as planned.

First I had a sinusitis attack which made it hard to think much less work. Then something happened to my ear, It feels like I have cotton stuffed in it. Have put medicine in it hopefully it will work, so far it doesn’t look like it is. If not then I will have to goto a ENT (Ear Nose Throat) specialist and get it looked at. This ear is making it hard for me to work/listen to music as I can barely hear from one ear.

Then my net connection died for most of the weekend. It wasn’t fun. My UPS decided it was time to quit working so I don’t have any battery backup. If the power goes I get knocked off the net. I do have inverter but I am scared to connect my computer equipment to it because I don’t trust it (See this post for reasons).

Now my vonage line has decided to stop working. Wonder when it will start again.

Oh to top it all off I decided to backup my data (I use rsync to backup data) over the weekend so I ran the command to back up my data. Unfortunately I accidentally ran the command that synced the data from the server to the laptop instead of the other way round so I lost a couple of days of changes. Mostly on code that I was working on. Some of it was on my other laptop and some of the code I had open in editors so I managed to save a little but most of it I will have to redo. 🙁

Note to Self/advise to others: Don’t attempt to backup when you are half asleep.

Ah well. Now I am tired, sick, have to redo my code changes. Here’s to a glorious new day!

– Suramya

May 31, 2007

reCAPTCHA: Stop Spam, Read Books

Filed under: Computer Software,Interesting Sites,Tech Related — Suramya @ 9:50 AM

I am sure that you have heard of Captcha by now, if you haven’t then I guess you are not in the technology field. Captcha’s are those annoying images with text that you have to enter before registering for most forums and posting comments in some blogs.

Captcha’s work because they can’t be read by computers so a human is required. Here’s a website thats using this necessary evil [1] and putting it to a good use. Basically what it does is uses captcha’s to convert scanned books to text.

Why do we need to do that, Can’t we just use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to convert the books to text you may ask? Well its like this, OCR is not perfect and it has a lot of trouble with certain kinds of words e.g. clot might get read as dot etc. So what reCAPTCHA does is that it uses sending words that cannot be read by computers in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher and then saves the converted text. So with a lot of usage books that were previously inaccessible would slowly become accessible.

If I used captcha’s I would definitely use this as it is a good cause but I don’t use Captcha’s as they don’t work with text browsers. After I had to spend 20 mins trying to download a file that was protected with a captcha on a server to which I only had ssh access (I got around it by saving the image file to the computer, copying it to my local system, viewing it and then entering the code… ) I decided that I will not use it on any of my systems/sites.

Anyways, Check out reCAPTCHA and if you have to use Captcha’s use this one instead.

– Suramya

My vacation

Filed under: My Life,Travel/Trips — Suramya @ 7:39 AM

Got back from a five day vacation in the hills and it was an amazing experience. Its so pretty and peaceful over there that its unbelievable. We left from Noida at 5 am to pick up Deepa Aunty from her place and then drove to DhanaChuli which is near Nanital. It was a great drive and we talk about everything and anything with discussions ranging from; politics to religion to philosophy to current affairs. It took us almost 10 hours to reach there because of traffic and some detours.

Once we got there we stayed at a cottage in the hills that overlooked our land. Spent the day relaxing and talking with people. There were 9 of us over there so there were some interesting discussions. It had rained earlier in the day so the place looked clean and washed. Went to bed early because I had had only ~2 hours of sleep in the past 24 hours but we got up early the next day, had a nice breakfast sitting outside in the sun (I almost got sunburnt) and I played with the dogs (There were 3 of them: Annie, Nancy and Goldie)

The next day was the same; relaxed and enjoyed the sun. I flew my RC plane but I think the batteries I was using in the remote were weak so the plane didn’t fly that well, it was nose diving after flying for a little distance, so we decided to adjust the flaps but we did it the wrong way so the plane was nose diving almost immediately after the adjustment. Realized the mistake after a couple of hours (We had packed up the plane after a couple of crashes. ) but didn’t get a chance to try it again.

We walked around the property and I took a lot of pics. Will post them up shortly. We also drove to a few places which were really nice but I can’t recall their names or spell them correctly so I won’t try…

We left from there on Wednesday morning at 9:30 am and got back in Delhi at 7 pm. Its really hot over here compared to there. On Tuesday we actually had a hailstorm over there which was nice (I wasn’t driving, so I could enjoy the view) and the entire time we were there we had to wear jackets as it was cold.

Well this is all for now. Will post pics later. Now its back to the rat race for me..

– Suramya

May 25, 2007

Waking up early…

Filed under: Humor — Suramya @ 2:43 PM

ch860327.gif

– Suramya

May 21, 2007

Harry Potter Psychic Serpent Series

Filed under: Books Related / Reviews — Suramya @ 5:14 PM

The new Harry potter book is going to come out shortly (I think. Not sure of the exact release date but am too lazy to look it up) and I guess a lot of people are eagerly waiting for it as its the final book in the series. But I am not. I don’t like the series that much. Oh the books are decent enough to read once but they are not worth buying and keeping. Now I know Surabhi is going to get mad at me for saying that but thats what I feel.

I was surfing the web and found a link that pointed to Harry Potter Books 5-7 and I decided to check it out. Its a good thing I did because otherwise I would have missed finding this great series.

The Harry Potter Psychic Serpent Series is actually fan fiction but I loved it. Its a three book series each of which is over 400 pages long. This is what the Harry Potter series could have been like if it wasn’t written for kids. The books are a fun read with a good story line and have an interesting way of looking at the characters, but they are not for kids so don’t read it if you are under 17 or are easily offended by hints of sexual encounters.

The series starts off with Harry entering his 5th year at Hogwarts in Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent where he gets a snake with the Sight. Hermione’s torn between Ron and Harry, who’s torn between her and Ginny, who’s torn between him and Draco Malfoy, who’s torn between her and loyalty to his father. Plus: a Prophecy, Animagus training, a Dueling Club, Snape’s Penseive, kilts, giants, house elf liberation and more!

In the second book “Harry Potter and the Time of Good Intentions” Harry is in his 6th year and he gets a chance to make one change in history and he uses it to prevent his mother from being killed and ends up creating a whole new world in which he has a sister and two brothers, Malfoy is his best friend and they both are in Slytherin. Now he has to decide if he wants to change it back or not. Can’t tell more without spoilers so…

In the third and final book of the Trilogy “Harry Potter and the Triangle Prophecy” its Harry’s 7th and final year of school. In a time of uncertainty, the Muggle world has found a source of comfort and stability. Only Harry suspects that it isn’t safe. Wizards are more concerned about themselves than Muggles since Voldemort’s return, but are only Muggles at risk? Will anyone listen to Harry? He must decide whether to make a sacrifice that will change him–and the wizarding world– forever.

The Author has written some other books also in the same universe but I haven’t gotten the timer to read them yet. They are on my “to read” list.

Check it out if you are bored and want something interesting to read.

– Suramya

May 18, 2007

Bird Watching

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 1:53 PM

Yes I am talking about actual birds. The feathered ones… Sheesh..
Used to be an avid Bird watcher. Remember one summer when I was in 8th where I got up every day at ~5 am to go take photos of nests. Unfortunately the roll of film I was using was messed up so none of the pics I took got developed but the experience was fun. Me, Surabhi, Aditya and Soumya would spend hours trying to find nests and then taking pics. Infact I have pics of a peacock’s nest that we found when I was in 9th. Its a great shot. Will share it if I get the time to scan it and if I feel others are interested in it.

A couple of days ago I had mentioned that I have a nest in my bathroom window and I promised that I would take some pics. I did take the pics and I must say that the eggs look a lot prettier than the chicks. This one looks like a roasted chicken. I guess he/she is not more than 4-5 days old, a week tops. If you look closely at the pic you will see the two unhatched eggs in the front.

nest.jpg
Nest in my Window

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

– Suramya

PS: Let me know if you want me to share more pics.

May 16, 2007

Scariest thing about drafts

Filed under: Humor — Suramya @ 3:36 PM

So true…

20021121.jpg

– Suramya

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress