The Perfect Ten

Ok, I have never till date written a blog post about any semester result. But then something happened on the 23rd of May 2009, which doesn't happen that often. I understood what one means by the term "The Perfect Ten". As always I wont divulge any personal details on the blog, but those who should know, will understand what this post is about.

I owe a huge debt to some of the best seniors in the world, who I have always bugged with mostly unnecessary doubts and queries, but who have always patiently answered all of them. So thank you guys.

A very big thank you to Akash and Mrunal, my B Tech project partners. And above all a huge thank you to the Almighty, the Lord of all GPAs ;)

And now that I am officially an Engineer, I am free to post about any past experience, so do expect some insane stories from my engineering days :)

Engineering Story - SE Lectures

This happened in TY. The college had been renovated to a great extent, especially the seminar halls and large rooms like Room No. 6. Anyways we used to have Software Engg (SE) lectures in Room 6 and it was a joint, Comp+IT lecture. It was scheduled for 5.30 and somehow I always used to be hungry at that time, so i had made it a bit of a ritual to give some cash to any friend and ask him to get the following from the BC while I crossed over to Room No. 6 -

1. Appy
2. Samosa
3. Lays or any other snacks

This carried on for many weeks. It was nice fun, to have Prof. Kelkar [or some similar name] yap in IIT-Powai while I had my fill. The room was nice and comfy, I had setting with "the dude, who snooped around to catch people talk". Interestingly a guy from my class was once thrown out of the lecture for falling from his chair after he fell asleep :D
So now you know I wasn't the only one screwing around with the system during the lecture. There were such Draconian laws in place for that lecture, like, the only Textbooks you could open and read had to be SE books, or else you were shunted out. And not that getting thrown out of the lecture was such a big deal, it was the resultant loss of attendance which bound us to our chairs in that god-forsaken lecture. That Prof also used to crack some lame jokes, e.g. if he was explaining something and he had to give us an example, invariably he would take an example of "buying a saree for ur gf or wife" and his voice had some sinusoidal pattern where in his voice frequency [pitch] would rise and fall. It was hilarious at times!

Anyways back to the main story, so I had my routine set, I would walk in, sit with my friends and have my evening treat. Many times, the guy sitting next to me would be Bhushan. Now that day Bhushan and I were sitting as usual. Only I had a really large treat in store, I had the Appy, Samosa, Lays and a Sandwich. Only, that day Bhushan too brought some "chana" along for his eating pleasure. Now, A. P. Maam was in charge and she's not very nice, to say the least! I skillfully avoided her gaze and had my snack. Then she comes and settles down on the last row of the class. Bhushan has a hunger attack and starts nibbling on his chana. I notice A.P Maam looking on and give Bhushan the warning with my elbow. Too late. She caught him, red-handed with his mouth full of chana :D
He couldn't believe his luck, he was sitting next to a guy who had just eaten half the canteen's menu, while he got caught eating his first fistful of chana!!! That's what you call irony.
That was a fun time, the SE lectures. The tests out there in room 6 were a revelation. I got an EX in SE, one thing I am proud of, even if u wake me up at 4am and ask me to describe the blackbox and whitebox method of testing or the waterfall model, I will be able to tell you :P
Anyways, that didnt deter me or Bhushan from many more "in-lecture treats"!

Dont bathe with your mobile

"Dont bathe with your mobile"

Firstly no offense to the guy who sent a mail to student@coep; obviously he has great concern for mobile users all over COEP. But this was too funny to ignore. The whole mail is filled with tips as shown under, but the weirdest tip given below is the one which says - "Dont bathe with your mobile".

I mean, seriously, who in the name of Sony Ericsson "bathes with a mobile"!

Anyways, I'll now blog more often about some gems sent on our COEP Mail, it's too irresistible. And please remember kids, as the wise man said - Dont bathe with your mobile!
Also remember, don't try and make phone calls with your soap! :D

Gold

I am 21 years old, in the past I've participated in a lot of contests, competitions, events etc. On many occasions I've won stuff like certificates, shirts, pen drives, cash awards [i love cash] and even a digi cam. But until the 27th of March 2009, I had never, ever won a Gold medal. On 26th and 27th at TRDDC, TCS' R&D wing, we had a project competition. My project came under the Systems Research Laboratory and was scheduled for demo on the 27th. The demo was complete days ago, and the PPT too was done by the 25th. But it was only on the 26th when I actually found out that there was a Gold-freaking-medal at stake, that i became serious about giving it a shot.

My friends Anshul and Poorva had already got Gold Medals on 26th for their amazing work and Shrirang, Andy and Bagga also got Bronze Medals. Their good wishes really did help my project group, so here's me thanking you all!

So there we were on the 27th, D-Day at TRDDC, on Gudi Padva. And from 1030 am till 1:15 pm we literally were giving our demo and ppt to different groups of people one after the other non-stop. It was a test of stamina, but is on such days that my ability of yapping non-stop comes to the fore.

Teachers from my school days who threatened me with the stick for talking in class, take that ;)

Anyways after the main show in front of the judges was over, which went off very well; we continued to give demos and the ppt for other groups as well. Finally at 4:30 pm we decided to pack up, since the official time was till 4 pm and we were all really exhausted.

After some TP [time pass] with other project groups and friends at TRDDC we were told to head off to the Auditorium for the Prize Distribution ceremony. Now let me tell you all one thing, no matter how well or badly one has performed in a competition, at the time of the Prize Distribution, everyone in their heart of hearts hopes that somehow they win something. It's a fact, everyone has that fantasy of their name being miraculously announced and the applause that follows.

Anyways, I loved the way the ceremony was conducted; it was a great mix of informal fun and the necessary "serious" element it should have. The medals were the really amazing bit. I was actually very impressed with the whole affair.

Once the 3rd and 2nd place awards were given, everyone was kind of tense, no COEP groups had won so far in the Systems Research category. I was also tense, though I didn't show it. I seriously wanted that Gold medal. Then came the final announcement. Our group had one the 1st prize. Mrunal and Akash were all smiles and I was laughing, laughing all the way to the podium. Even when I was given the medal I was laughing. I laughed out of various reasons, firstly coz I was really happy, secondly because my record of winning technical competitions of a serious nature remained intact, thirdly because I finally got a Gold medal and lastly I remembered all that had transpired since Third Year when groups were formed. Every single memory flashed through my mind and I laughed. I remembered those 3 nights in the last two months when i stayed up coding my brains out! I also remembered doing TP at the "katta" near TRDDC with my best friend. I remembered irritating the hell out of employees near my desk at TRDDC by talking and laughing all day with Akash and Mrunal. So many things happened at TRDDC in the past few months, the Gold Medal just went on to make them even more special memories.

I am glad things turned out the way they did. It's been an amazing experience.
The celebrations are still on, I owe quite a few people treats.

7 things I will remember about TRDDC

7 - The first night I coded like mad
6 - Watching Sachin Tendulkar bat while eating at the canteen
5 - The phone number incident
4 - The video Akash and I shot in the lawn
3 - The conversations at the katta
2 - The contest day
1 - The Gold medal

Now I'll conclude this retrospective post about my B Tech project at TRDDC. There's a lot more enjoyment left in these last few weeks of college life and this Gold medal thingy has just given me more reason to celebrate!

Thanks a lot everyone at TRDDC!

The Java Class aka The Laughing Incident

Ok, this post is a long awaited one, about the famed "Java Class" which was mostly attended by The Losers and from Comp it was just Ketan, Jai The Great and me. It was Akash's long overdue Orkut testimonial for me that triggered these fond memories. The Java class began at the end of our TY 2nd sem. It was mostly a defense mechanism for most of us, who thought ki yaar placement se pehle we gotta do some course at least. Thus began The Java Class. Now what I
remember of the Java class was most certainly the infamous LAUGHING INCIDENT; but I'll add a few details about the class for posterity.
There was this kind soul of a teacher from what i initially believed to be "Sun Java Education", but later found out she was a teacher from some STAR Classes or something. But then it wasnt that big a deal, the books we got were from Sun Java Education, so no harm done.

Now here's how the classes went about, Core Java started bang in the middle of the sem, so it couldn't be held for more than a few weeks. After that we had a break till the end of the sem. During the Core Java lectures, we [by that i mean Hasan, Sameer and Akash] used to be attentive and stuff for a fair amount of time, but once the sem ended we lost all our concentration powers.
In the holidays we were supposed to have the class, all day in our college lab. The maam used to land up at like 8 am or something, expecting our efficient college support staff to be prepared with the labs open and ready [hahaha]. She'd wait there, department locked and all. We students would walk in an hour or so late and chill. The halat was so bad that after some time, she even had to borrow laptops for connecting to the lab projector, one day the class didn't start
until someone with a laptop arrived :D
I was certain that by the end of the "Java Class", that maam would be seriously depressed!

Anyways, the classes suddenly changed hue from being a learning course to being an entertainment centre. Akash and i became good friends during the course of those days. I also met Abba [Abhinit] during the class, we soon realized we had a lot in common, a sense of humor and lukkhagiri instincts to be more precise ;)

Coming back to the point, The Losers and I would sit around, Jai couldn't stand Advanced Java for too long and left the course in true Jai style! Once the class started, for the first 20 mins we would all pretend to be attentive. Then Akash/Hasan and I would make eye contact and we'd suddenly start talking about something or the other which was always funny. Soon the class would go on and we'd keep laughing and talking.

------------------------------

THE LAUGHING INCIDENT

This happened one day, towards to latter half of Advanced Java. In the afternoon, Hasan, I, Akash and Sameer [in seating order] sat in the front row and maam was teaching something about classes in advanced java. Now her slides had some really silly names for the classes, one slide had names like

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
and so on.

The next slide had names like

January
February
March...

Somehow all 4 of us found this really stupid and funny. It started with me and Akash, both masters of the "silent laugh trick". I was blessed with the ability to hide myself under the cover of the monitor kept in front me by sitting low on my chair. We laughed for 5 straight minutes, it was contagious, soon Hasan and Sameer were laughing as well. Maam was oblivious to all this energetic laughter going on right in front of her. Then we all looked at each other and gave ourselves the "ab bas kar yaar" look and we all controlled our laughter. We all now realize that January February and Monday Tuesday arent exactly the funniest things on Earth, but that day they were.

Then maam changes the slide and the next slide had the dumbest set of Java class names ever

Dog
Cat
Monkey

That was it, we all lost control and started laughing, still we managed the silent laugh; but then, Hasan, let out that shrill laugh for a brief second, the one which manages to slip out. That pushed us all over the edge, we all started laughing hysterically, full volume. The rest of the class, sitting behind us started laughing too, just for the heck of it. Akash actually got off his chair and hid under the comp table ahead of us. No one knew why we were laughing, maam was stunned. She had no clue about what just happened.

She says - "Why are u all laughing?"
"Maam, the classes are named Dog, Cat and Monkey" - was what i would've said, but i was laughing too hard to say anything.

The best moment was when we shut up for a minute, then said a brief "sorry"; then one of us again burst out laughing. Maam was so helpless that she offered us a 5 minute break - "Maam we need at least 10 mins" was our reply.

That was one of the most unforgettable days of The Java Class. We still don't know why we laughed so much that day, but it was legendary. Ever mention The Java Class and that day is the first thing our minds go to.

---------------------------------------------------------

The Aftermath -

Hasan, Sameer and Ketan left for their respective summer Internships for a few weeks. That was when Akash and I abandoned the front rows and settled down at the far end of the lab, we just sat through laughing our heads off, joined on occasion by Abba. That was a really great way to spend the end sem holidays, and a great stress buster for the, then, upcoming Placement Week!

------------------------------

Related stories -

We once used the projector to watch the Aus/SA unforgettable final. Really gr8 use of our college lab :D

Anshul, Poorva and maybe a few more people were the only ones who actually learnt anything during the Advanced Java days. One day Anshul sat next to me; Abba and Akash were there too. I wasn't aware that Anshul thought of me as a "Sajjan". So there we were, suddenly i came up with a funny non-veg joke. After the laughter settled down, Anshul said to me "Yaar, mujhe pata nahi thaa ki tu yeh sab baatein bhi karta hai". Well, Anshul learnt a lot about me then onwards and since then we have become friends too. So i ended up having a great time during those days, Akash and I literally used to come just to chill and crack jokes all day. In the end we got some Advanced Java books as well, which we may use in the future; a certificate which we got after giving a really random test, for which no one prepared and still got like 17/20 minimum. I made quite a few new and gr8 friends in the process and well I do know Advanced Java to a certain extent thanks to my BE project, so no harm done there! A great investment of time.


It was one of the most laughter filled months in our COEP life and it was truly unforgettable! Special thanks to Akash, Jai and Hasan, because of whom I joined The Java Class.


THE END

The College Mail

Our college mail is officially -

a> A spam exhibition centre

Seriously... people come up with such lame crap, that even after 2 years of having seen our college mail, one can still get surprised. People are stupid enough to sign up with Bharat Matrimony using student@coep as their email id, but they use their full name for signing up, resulting in mails being sent to student@coep saying "Dear, Shilpa XYZkar, thank you for signing up with blah blah blah"

Then we also have the endless set of links sent in mails by various people about sites and events which nobody on earth is interested in.

b> A lost and found announcement tool

This is a slightly new method of tormenting the average user of the college mail, we had people at one time saying stuff like "Lost!!! Lost!!! Lost!!! 2 GB pen drive" etc on the college domain. Now we have the other half of the irritating spectrum with people saying "I found a red colour sweat shirt" etc. It was fine upto a certain extent, but now we have at least 10 such mails per week. I'm now waiting for the circle of insanity to get completed by having mails sent saying - "Thank you, i had lost my pen drive, but i now have got it back", we may then have people sending a reply to that saying - "Dosti mein no sorry, no thank you" and then a reply to that saying "Yes you are right"... sorry, kinda lost control there. But you get the point. It's kinda crazy at times.

c> The central location where people vent their frustration against the college -

Every once in a while we get mails, mostly from anonymous senders like "coepstudentforfreedom@gmail" and then it starts off saying what all stuff sucks in COEP and how we must all "get together" to improve it. That itself is stupid enough, but then it's followed by a barrage of other people, non-anonymous, thankfully who start castigating the anonymous sender with fundas about morality and other philosophical crap. This third thing is actually kinda amusing, so I for one don't mind it as much as the other two things.

Amazon Texhibit - 2nd Prize

First check this out - Amazon Texhibit Results

This has by far been my best kept academic secret. I didn't tell anyone about this although the contest began in November and ended just yesterday. Hardly 3-4 people knew about it. I didn't even tell my best friends. Why? Don't know exactly... it was just that I had a hunch I'd do well in it and sort of wanted to surprise people. Now that I did win something, I'm glad. In final year, the entire focus was on Placements and clearing 1st Sem. But I wanted some good achievement to add to my resume, and thank God, I got something.

I still remember writing a 250 word abstract in 30 mins, just a day before a CC test [I was majorly screwed in CC at one time, so my primary aim was to prepare for that]. And a couple of weeks later, I had almost forgotten about the paper, when suddenly I got a call from Amazon saying that I was shortlisted in the final 8. Well, 3 prizes, just 8 people. I backed my chances.

Then came the freaking End Sem exams. Bang in the middle of the exams I make a 43 slide presentation. It took me 2 nights and a cumulative sleep period of 5 hours to study for end sem, do my usual mid-exam-time-pass and develop a technical paper from scratch. I had fun. At that time the only guy I showed the paper to was Shantanu. He approved and I sent it.

Then on 26th December Amazon calls and says, "You're in the last 5, now a couple of telephonic interviews", I was like "Ok, cool". Now, I had never, till then had telephonic interviews [unless you count the one where a chic was asking me questions about my relationship status on the phone ;) ].

It certainly was my first technical telephonic interview. The first one was like a thunderbolt. What freaking questions!!! Stuff I hadn't ever thought about, but I did fine. Then on 31st Dec I had my 2nd interview. That was kick ass. Another killer set of questions but I was prepared this time. Weirdest part was coding on the phone. I won't ever forget that. The Amazon guys taking the interviews were damn cool.

Then came the long wait for the results, I got busy with my project, birthday and stuff and the results have been a nice belated birthday gift - A digi cam and an Amazon shirt [which I will use as often as I can to show off :P ], that's awesome!

I may describe my telephonic interviews in detail later on, but for now, that's all. I had fun doing this entire thing on my own, kinda secretly, dropping subtle hints to a few close friends who kept asking me what I was upto. But then, I did win something and more importantly developed a paper from scratch on my own and learnt a lot during the telephonic interviews. Glad to add this one to my resume!

And thanks to the few who knew and wished me luck!

The Passing The Parcel Incident

This is a true story. The main protagonists in the story are Me, Amit Julka and there's a cameo by Yasho.

Here we go -

This happened way into the beginning of the 7th semester. It was the CL practical, we had to make a lex & yacc program for recognizing parts of speech, given any sentence. Now we're talking about the B3 batch, so you must assume extreme laziness, ignorance of basic subject knowledge and a total disregard to sincerity. As usual, a bunch of us sat down in a corner of the lab, we all were huddled onto a computer in the corner [under a fan, thus guaranteeing a cool 2 hours where we could pass time without feeling the heat] and I started my search for an existing program which i would read and then pass off as an original B3 program ;)

I found a program made unfortunately by the B2 batch. I say unfortunately, because it was technically so advanced that it was literally impossible to decipher. Now again, the assignment was to make a program in lex, but whoever made that program decided to show off and made it using lex & yacc, which none of us knew back then. [and some of us may still not know]

Anyways i started reading the program and was just about done with the Lex file, when all of a sudden in walks our Ma'am, not the M Tech, the real Ma'am. And as luck would have it, even she wanted to cool off under the fan, or so it seemed coz she came straight at us. Everyone had a panic attack, for me it was worse, since I was the one sitting in front of the only PC which had a program on the screen.

Maam: Have u all finished the program?
10 seconds of silence, everybody looking at each other and finally at me
Me: Almost maam...

Maam: Show me?
My mind: I'm so fucked
Me: Yes maam

I run through the code, line by line, my brain started compiling, interpreting and most importantly guessing what each line meant.
So i'm done with the lex file and feel proud of myself, when...

Maam: Now show me the YACC file
My mind: Is there a rope somewhere? Coz there is a fan above me, i'm one rope away from suicide and an easy escape.
Me: Yes maam

Now, for a guy, who has never seen a YACC file before, who doesnt know the syntactic rules and who quite frankly has no idea what the freaking program is about; to have to face a demand from his Prof to EXPLAIN a yacc file of a program he has no idea about is a horrifying prospect.

Anyways I read the code, and started explaining it when suddenly the worst happened. She had a doubt.

Maam: Why are you using a linked list to store the words?
My mind: What??? Linked list??? Where???
Me: Well maam....

I run through the program using page down and finally find a piece of code which looks like a linked list.

Me: As you can see here, this linked list is storing the words of the sentence
My mind: I give up dude, this is just too much... i give up

Suddenly I realise, there are 8 freaking people right next to me, who haven't explained a word so far.

Theorem - Whenever a guy is in trouble and there is lots of public around, the only one he chooses to take his place and face the bullet, is his friend.

Me: Maam, I think Julka will explain this part

Julka, who till then was enjoying the show suddenly looked stunned, but to his credit he handled it well.

Julka then takes over the mouse and starts scrolling up and down.

Julka: Well.... so let's see here.... so basically... what we are doing here is... using... a linked list... which is storing the words.... and.... Maam, i think Harsh will explain this part better!

My mind: Saala $#&@$%!!!

While Julka was stalling for time, i was reading that piece of code and understood what was happening, so i explained it.

Maam: Ok, so wouldn't it be better to ... [she said some stuff about improving the code]
My mind: Keep nodding... don't laugh
Me: Yes maam

Maam: Ok, now carry on...
My mind: Is raat ki subah nahi
Me: Yes maam

I then carry on, she keeps stabbing away with her doubts and suggestions and then finally my mind again revolts and once again i choose my man Amit Julka

Me: Maam now Julka will take over
Julka's mind: Saala $#&@$%!!!

Julka then did something i didnt think was possible -

*************************************************

He moves the cursor to the middle of a line of code and says
Julka: This code will run
Then he inserts some random character in the middle of the code and compiles it. Obviously there are errors.
Julka: Now this code will not run.
He goes back to the character and deletes it and says
Julka: Now it should run
He then compiles it and runs it.
My brain: WTF? WTF? WTF?

*************************************************


To the credit of my brain, it recovered from what happened in a matter of seconds and then I took over the rest of the program and explained it.

Maam looked a little bewildered and a bit irritated. She then went on to give us a lecture on how this program should be improved and then when none of us reacted she looks at me and says

Maam: Is this your logic or the group's logic?
Me: Maam, I can assure you it is definitely NOT my logic.
My brain: Sachai ka phal meetha hota hai

Maam: Then whose logic is this?
Me: Actually maam, we just saw this logic somewhere and used it.
Maam: So you've taken this program from the internet?
Me: Maam we have definitely not taken it from the internet.
Maam: So from where did you get this program?
My mind: Ab tu gaya
Me: Ummmm...
My mind: Should I say "Now Julka will explain it" again?

All of a sudden from nowhere we hear a voice say

Voice: Maam this program is from O'Reily

We all turn back and see Yasho! Yasho was the Voice.

Yasho then went on a detailed explanation of how the program is from O'Reily and Maam totally agreed with the whole idea.

Finally Maam gives us a bhashan of how she wants to see our creativity and not just code copied from O'Reily. We all nodd our heads vigorously. Then she leaves. We wait for her to leave and then all i could hear was - HAAAHAAAHAAA HAAHAA!!!

To be quite honest i think we were at our creative best that day ;)
Such an incident has never happened again since then and i dont think these things happen that often. But it was an awesome incident which we call "The Passing The Parcel Incident".


PS: For other B3 batch exploits - Read The New Text Document Incident starring Sanjeev, Kalpesh and once again... Me!

Engineering Quotes

Engineering is a weird thing, engineering in COEP is even weirder.

Life can throw many pleasant surprises at you, engineering can only throw unpleasant ones.

Never laugh during your viva... never!

When sleeping pills fail, open up an engineering text book... snores are guaranteed.

Occasionally I stare outside my window while I'm studying and I see all the happy faces playing on the ground; then I get back to my books and read lame foreign author jokes!

The Pen Drive is the greatest invention known to any computer engineer.

Sometimes I look at the number of students in the queues each year and I wonder how come people are so eager to get into engineering and end all chances of a normal, happy easy going life.

How come, there aren't any hot female celebs who are engineers?

The happiest day of an engineer's life is his convocation, because he knows it's finally over!!!

The "New Text Document.txt" Incident

This happened last week during the IS [Information Security] practical. I think it's best to write this down now, while the memory is still fresh and the story isn't embellished at all.

The place - IS Lab, the 1st computer near the door.
The heroes - Sanjeev, Kalpesh and me.

Once again, as I had earlier mentioned on another blog, the B3 batch is THE BATCH from the great class of COEP Comp 2009. This incident couldn't have happened in any other batch.

So here's what happened:

It was the 1st IS prac post Mid-Sem and as usual no one had done the assignment on Steganography [which by the way had been given almost 2 weeks prior to Mid-Sem]. Anyways so here we are, the 3 musketeers sitting on one comp, whiling away time. Sanjeev and I almost had an arm wrestling match. I spent time researching on a female called Lena Soderberg who was a model whose photo was used as a test photo for all image processing work. Anyways I liked the photo and downloaded it to use as the image to be processed for our program which was thus far non-existent. We also downloaded a program which had like 28 header files and was a VC++ program. It had a demo which had shit like password protection and all to go with the steganography, one look at the damn thing and we knew it was so good that it was unusable. The Java program I had of Pranav didn't run, so again it was useless. So here we were an hour and a half into the prac with no concrete program. We did however for fun use Lena's photo with that 28 header program, which worked. So there we were with a desktop which had various icons including one with "New Text Document.txt" written on it and no program of ours. Things were going along fine until the M Tech sir showed up.

He comes along and asks us - Have you finished the program?
Now this question is a very plain and simple question. But somehow Sanjeev and I thought it was funny. We were both laughing, but we didn't laugh explicitly and we avoided looking at each other, because that would have made us lose control. Then Kalpesh was on his own, explaining to sir how our program was "almost complete". Some lines exchanged during the conversation were -

Kalpesh: We are still researching... the problem is that the transformation of the text is not happening... the program is not complete.

Finally after stalling for 10 minutes the M Tech finally said - Show me the program

Kalpesh - Sir, it's not complete

M Tech - Even then, whatever is done, show it to me

Kalpesh - But sir, it's not working fully

M Tech - You must have done some coding

Kalpesh - Of course [Sanjeev and I laughing really hard, in silent mode]

M Tech - Then show me whatever you have done

Kalpesh But it's not done fully

M Tech - Just show me you code

Kalpesh - Yes sir

Then he grabs the mouse. Sanjeev and I wonder what he will do. The mouse moves around icons on the desktop. M Tech - Where's your program. Kalpesh - Here. He double clicks on "New Text Document. txt". What opens up is this - our supposed program





Sanjeev and I burst out laughing, we were shamelessly loud in our laughing. Kalpesh too broke down and started laughing. Five minutes of continuous laughing from the 3 musketeers and then the M Tech starts laughing. After we got control he "warned" us about the assignment and how we must show it in the next practical. We all agreed. As soon as he went to the next comp, we all burst out laughing again. We laughed so hard, it was painful. Kalpesh even had tears rolling down his cheeks.

That was an amazing thing, which comes close to the "Passing the parcel incident" which took place between me and Amit Julka in the CL practical months back. Which I'll write about in another post.

Anonymous mails and Trash

Here's an original quote:

"A fool needs no advertising"

A testament to this fact is our college mail, with people coming up with more and more mindless trash everyday. Apart from the usual BS like "Lost my pen drive", "Lost!!! Lost!!! Lost!!! - OS File" and that kind of crap, we also have people now taking out their frustrations on the college mail through Fake ID's! Genius!

The fun part is how they like to write the mail in a way so that people remain confused about who actually wrote that mail. Get a life people! Or as The Joker would say - What happened? Did'ya balls drop off? 

If sending an anonymous mail isn't dumb enough, we also have the extra scared people who send an anonymous mail and then write - Please forward it to the director! WTF? 

Anyways as I have just realized, exams are indeed the best time to blog, the brain will do everything but study! This is my 3rd blog post in less than 16 hours.

Testing 1...2...3...4

Until an hour back I knew I had 2 tests on Monday [DAA and ACA] , bad ass... but some hope for getting some marks. Then I get a phone call, "Dude we have IS and CC on Tuesday!"
So that makes it 4 tests in 2 days with just 1 day left to prepare. Someone once told me that Final Year was the best year there is in Engg! Yeah right, if you're a masochist, then sure... it is the best!

Sunrise to Sunrise

I was talking to Bhushan a few hours ago and he mentioned [jubilantly] that he had been awake all night and then till 7 am sometime last weekend. Now that made me feel insecure about my position of being the Supreme Nocturnal of "the great class of COEP Comp" [yeah Sameer, i said it again ;) ]
So here I am blogging in between episodes of House MD. I wonder who next will challenge my spot at Supreme Nocturnal? Nice try though, by Bhushan!
For the record i'll be awake till 7:30 am!

Browser Devtaa Ki Jai Ho!

Carrying on with my latest tradition of Hinglish / Englindi post titles, here is another post for the IE junta [Intellectually Elite].

Firefox 3 is finally here, and frankly it's just as great as you'd expect! IE8 [Internet Explorer] better be careful, in the past 3 years I may have used IE just about 8 times. Can't imagine life without tabbed browsing and FLV downloads!

BTW i just read this awesome wikipedia page about Bruce Lee and then saw this video YouTube - One inch punch by Bruce Lee
Pretty Impressive!
Besides that, I was busy getting bored reading some crap that I should know but dont know even though I am in final year of engineering. For example, what is the output of the following:

printf("%d");

Now, wait a minute; why in the name of Yashvant Kanetkar would anyone type just "printf("%d");" unless of course he was a retard or he wanted to show off how well he has mugged up Test Your C Skills!
Now you know what kind of crap I am reading ;)

Then ofcourse in between I have my usual duels on Tribal Wars with neighboring villages. Phone call frequency has generally increased, especially with fellow Airtel users calling up regularly.

Now for the title of the post, the fact is that most of the things I do on the comp nowadays is online; so i thought I'd praise the Browser Gods a little; especially with the latest version of Firefox out, I think it is an auspicious occasion to say

Browser Devtaa Ki Jai Ho!

Placements

It's that time of an engineer's life when everything that he has worked for can turn into reality. The dream company, the dream package; comes at least within sight [read as the aptitude test paper]!

Aptitude test's have been a weird anomaly for most people, dumb people clearing some apti's which scholars don't. But it's all part and parcel of life.

Placements also result in doubts, confusion, anxiety, pressure at times or excitement, joy, happiness once you are successful. But one things for sure, no matter what an engineers life surely does change after placement week is over.

I'm hoping that COEP lives upto its top billing as the college with the best placements! Recession, go away man.. I ain't screwed myself in Engg for 3 years for nothin ;)

The Paper Presentaion Conquest

This has been a long awaited post. It narrates the story of how two people Hasan Poonawala and Harshvardhan Pande, participated and won 3 paper presentation contests, on a relatively unknown topic called Swarm Intelligence. What will be told here are bare facts, no exaggeration whatsoever!

A bit of a background on this one. Hasan Poonawala and Harshvardhan Pande are ex-Vincentians. And currently COEPians. Once in 2nd year, Harsh just randomly asked Hasan to write a paper with him. They dropped the idea due to lack of time and a topic.

Then suddenly in 3rd year somewhere in January, a senior told them about a Paper Contest being held at PVG. Suddenly these two guys got a 'keeda' to do a paper.
They had not much with them, just an old collection of notes on Ant Systems, they expanded the idea to include Swarm intelligence the 'baap' of Ant Systems.

Now, 3 days before the deadline for submitting the paper, Hasan and Harsh suddenly realized that they had to write the paper in IEEE format. Something that they hadn't ever done or seen in their lives. Then a very nice gesture by a senior helped. She gave them, her own paper, to see the format. [The 2 HP's thank her for that]

Now came the turning point, both of them were Vincentians, brainy but very lazy. For the next 2 and a half days they did nothing. Then Hasan came over to Harsh's place to start and finish the paper. At about 4pm Hasan reached Harsh's house. Instead of work on the paper, they were busy watching funny videos like this one Sarah Silverman - I'm f***ing Matt Damon

It was about 8pm when they finally started to do some work. By 10 pm they had finished just the 1 page Abstract. Then Hasan went home.
While on the Internet they searched for more info, more videos, more pictures. Eventually changing the paper content by at least 25%.
By about 1 am, the paper was done. But the PPT, wasn't yet born. It took them about an hour and still only 4 slides were done. Then Hasan fell asleep.
The event timing was actually 11 am, but apparently the two HP's were under the impression that their timing was 2 pm.

When Hasan woke up, miraculously the PPT had 32 slides ;)

Then at about 1 pm Harsh went to Hasan's house, they spoke to the organizers and somehow got the time "shifted" to 2pm. Apparently they had a class test :D

It was 1:30 when they realized that 32 slides would never fit inside 10 minutes of stipulated time. So they canceled some slides and reduced it to 27. They then left at about 1:45 and reached PVG at 2:10.

At PVG they realized that they hadn't decided who would speak for how long. It was decided that Harsh would talk for 4 minutes and Hasan would use the rest including the change-over time.

The following events then took place:

Harsh started off, explaining each slide with a lot of 'impromptu' talk added. Things were going well when Hasan suddenly checked the clock, 7 minutes were already over of the 10 minutes they had. A panick stricken Hasan changed slides at the rate of knots. He had just about 2 and a half minutes to finish 14 slides. Eventually he did it in just under 4 minutes. When the PPT finished Harsh thought they were doomed. But then started the questionnaire round. Hasan and Harshvardhan then "kicked ass". Answering each and every question.

Important incident -
Some other competitor was sitting in the audience and was purposely asking questions that he thought the two HP's wouldn't know. One of them was "You have explained the theoretical parts of Swarm Intelligence... but it s not been applied anywhere..." he said it with a tone that said - " this technology is not useful"

A furious Harsh then cut short the question and said "In Belgium a network called Ant Net uses Swarm Intelligence. You may not have heard of it since we only hear of most thing in US, and not much about technological breakthroughs in Europe. If you go to Belgium you can actually use Ant Net. OK!" with a tone that said "fuck off loser"

Now obviously the guy had never heard of Ant Net, neither was he going to Belgium in the near future, but what it did was give the judges a confirmation of the fact that the 2 HP's knew their stuff well. Lesson learnt, dont try to fuck with the 2 HP's!

A judge then asked us about algo's based on swarms other than ants and bees [the 2 they had focussed on] Hasan then came up with algos based on Bats, actually used in the movie Batman. Lesson learnt watching Hollywood flicks helps in various unexpected places like a Paper Contest.
I remember Hasan saying "Dude, thank god we were from Vincent's." Because good communication skills were an asset at that contest, the first ever of our lives. We had never ever seen a Paper Presentation... never ever!
After that round was over Hasan and Harsh were confident that they'd get something good from this. Turned out that they had won 1st prize.

A prize distribution followed where the Chief Guest was Chandu Borde, the guy cracked some funny jokes in his speech. Hasan and Harsh made a cool Rs. 4,000 from that event. They split the money. Harsh gave a treat to his friends with that money.

Then they had a Paper contest later at SIT where they came 3rd. The previous day during the elimination round the 2 HP's reached SIT 1 hour late and registered for the elims minutes before the last PPT was done! They gave their most hurried and under prepared performance and yet qualified for the finals.
The next day they gave the PPT, with Harsh sitting on top of the table meant to keep the laptop on. The questionaire session was also good. The judges took a really long time to give the results. Apparently the 2 HP's were tied for 2nd place with two females from Cummins. But they were declared 3rd in place, because a tie was not allowed. The only reason they came 3rd was because they didn't make any working application on Swarm. The one's who stood 1st and 2nd were final year students who had made PPT's on their B.E. Projects! Harsh that day swore he'd win another 1st prize and not rest until then and Hasan agreed.

Then after a really long time just before the End Sem exams, they decided to give it one more shot. Now Harsh that week had been very ill. Miraculously the day of the contest, his fever dipped below 102 and came to 100 degrees. the lure of a 1st prize was too much. He forced some medicines down his throat and left for MIT.
The previous night, the 2 HP's decided to make a Java application to add to their PPT. Bhushan Jain was told the entire logic at 11:30 pm and in an hour using NetBeans he made the application for DTSP and mailed it to Harsh. [Harsh is yet to give a treat for the MIT Paper Contest]

The next day again at around 1:00 pm they met at Hasan's place and revamped the slides. Hasan added stuff on Web Graphs and also slides from his Text Classifier. Harsh said, "If we don't win after this, I'll kill someone" Luckily Harsh didn't kill anyone that day!

They went to MIT, once again just on time. They gave a good performance, and then the questionnaire round started. What followed was a slew of question by a very intelligent and knowledgeable judge, he was literally screwing the 2 HP's, but they stuck through and gave a few great answers and 'fekofied' the rest! Once the round was over they were literally convinced that they had no chance. They waited an hour for the results nevertheless. Hasan walked to Harsh after seeing the results and said 'Dude, 1st'
Harsh said 'Don't joke man'
Hasan: 'No dude, seriously we won'
Harsh: 'Check again'
Hasan: 'I swear'
Harsh: 'What the fuck! Awesome'

They won another 2,000. But most importantly they won their 3rd paper contest, something that's not very common. Each time they had different slides, different concepts, different approaches. the last was by far the most professional. The contests helped them to such an extent that making a PPT later for class seminars and such stuff was seriously easy. Public speaking was never a problem for them but the victories made it all the more easier. Harsh and Hasan have ever since, never practiced before a PPT.

The Paper Presentation contests and their conquests were a brilliant experience, something they will never forget. The amount of time pass they did and yet managed to win, proved that they had some skill in them. Let's see if the 2 HP's sweep the Paper Contests next year, it'll certainly be a new topic, it'll certainly be last minute, and it'll certainly be prize winning!



Epilogue ... Harsh - Harsh had his Computer Networks Viva in May. All day the students ahead of him in roll number order were getting screwed. There were horror stories after each batch of 3 students came out of the viva. Harsh was waiting in the adjacent lab since 12 pm for his viva. He finally walked into the viva lab at 7:30 pm. The external taking the viva was the same man who took the case of the 2 HP's at MIT. Harsh felt a shiver run through his spine.

Harsh sat down on the chair, hoping the man wouldn't recognize him. The external said - "If I am not mistaken, you were at MIT for a Paper Contest?"
Harsh: Yes, sir.
External: Did you win?
Harsh: Yes sir, first prize.
External: You should thank me.
Harsh: Thank You sir!

The external the gave hell to Harsh and the other 2 batch mates. After a barrage of question, all of which he attempted, the following occurred...

External: Last question for you [looking straight at Harsh]
[Harsh made a silent prayer to God]
External: If I have to connect 802.1 and 802.3, what should I use.
Harsh: Bridge
External: Sure? [With an evil grin]
Harsh: Yes.
External: Ok, I will tell you, I am giving you a router or a bridge which will you use?
Harsh: Bridge
External: You can go! [No expression on his face]

Harsh left, showing no signs of tension, but internally he was thinking "I'm fucked!"
Turns out Harsh got the highest marks in the class for CN viva. So the Paper Contests, turned out to be the best thing that happened to him in 3rd Year!


Epilogue... Hasan -
Hasan gave an interview for an IBM Internship after clearing the aptitude test in which he spent 20 minutes explaining 'Swarm Intelligence', he got the Internship easily! ;)