Life

by Kulbir Saini on BC, Fun, Life

NERDVANA

Well, the task was to get a railway ticket preponed. Somehow me and Bansi got pushed for the job. After spending half an hour searching for a bike/scooty/activa, we finally got Harsh’s kinetic. As Bansi doesn’t know how to drive, he handed over the key to me (yes, i know how to drive 😛 ). Me and Bansi standing near the kinetic in front of OBH and me thinking “How on earth we start a kinetic ???” I tried pressing some random buttons on the dashboard(i hope thats what it is called), but it didn’t help.

I know how to drive, but I never drove a kinetic or a two wheeler like that. Totally clueless about the procedure to start it, a scene from Matrix(when the guy or the girl learns to fly the helicopter) hit me. I wish we had some technology like that to learn things. Anyways, I followed almost similar steps. Called up Baba and asked him to teach me the lesson on starting a god damn kinetic 😐 Finally, with Baba’s efforts, I was able to start the machine.

 
by Kulbir Saini on Life, Movies

When you are sick?

When you watch 40 episodes of a third class Indian family comedy show called “YES BOSS” back to back and actually laugh while watching it, you know you are sick!!!

Before watching that I watched a movie “Amal” in which nobody from director, producer, writer to actor(ess) knew what they were doing or rather trying to do. I just remember one dialog by Nassiru Din Shah, “The poorest of men on earth can be the richest”. And since then, I somehow can’t get this out of my mind, “Did he try to point out Bill Gates?”.

Reason for watching all that : “The lack of mental power to read those unreadable and hard to sync english subtitles for the HD movies :(“.

PS1 : A lot of pending working.

PS2 : Try to proxy for someone and failed miserably. Sounds like wasting four years. What did I really learn??? :((

 
by Kulbir Saini on BC, Fun, Life

Volley Ball – The New Time Pass

Whenever I see a new unread item in Google Reader, I try to capture few keywords from the summary. Today I was reading a summary which contained “yuktahaar food”, “food pretty much sucks“, and I eventually got interested to read the entire post. Couldn’t really figure out what was going in the post as I don’t really watch FRIENDS (I don’t understand why they write in all caps), but this line “Well this exercise just goes to show how much free time we have on our hands these days” inspired me to write this post.

Well, since last three days we are regularly playing volley ball for almost 2 hours after coffee shop (around 4PM) and we are looking forward to continue this 🙂 I still remember the time when we used to play volley ball at 5AM (after night out) in summer vacations of second year and it was amazing experience. Volley is one of the outdoor games which I love the most. I don’t know why but it has something to do with my childhood. My father used to play volley ball a lot. So I got attracted to this sport.

Vellapanthi is really forcing us to try the things which we never did and thats really messing up with social life! Hope we’ll come with sane ideas to conquer this vellapanthi 🙂

Keeping this post a bit short because I have to take an exam at 9:30 in the morning. It’ll be better if I learn something before its too late.

Don’t argue about the title. time pass OR pass time!

 
by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Fun, Hacking, Internet, Life, Linux, Success

Busy with videocache

VideoCache project has come a long way since I started it in June last year as youtube_cache. I have released 18 version in last 8 months of time. Complete log of versions is available in the videocache code repository. Currently it supports audio and video (including HD) caching from 14 websites. It has been an exciting journey with videocache. Adding features/websites to videocache on user requests following a typical agile open source development model is more than just fun. The driving factor for the project has been my interest in web delivery optimization,  people writing blogs about videocache, forums discussing videocache, the increasing downloads of videocache and above all Python 🙂

Below are few stats for the videocache project and the website.

January 2009

VideoCache Downloads
Archive downloads – 507
Binary downloads – 318
Total downloads – 825
Downloads per day – 26

Cachevideos.com Stats (Excluding bots)
Unique Visitors – 5714
Total Visits – 10009
Page Views – 34458
Hits – 284585

December 2008

VideoCache Downloads
Archive downloads – 396
Binary downloads – 346
Total downloads – 742
Downloads per day – 23

Cachevideos.com Stats (Excluding bots)
Unique Visitors – 4413
Total Visits – 7924
Page Views – 25739
Hits – 199120

PS : Will blog more frequently this month 🙂

 
by Kulbir Saini on BC, Computers, Fun, Google, Internet, Life

My Googling Stats

Thanks Tifosi for tagging me for this.

Google Search Stats

Google Search Stats

Observations

  1. Top queries suggests that I care a lot about my name in Google search!
  2. Top queries also suggests that I tend to care a lot about the visibility of the work I do.
  3. Top sites stats are awesome! I visit my own sites more than orkut and any other website.
  4. November has to be my lucky month!!
  5. Sunday is a jackpot and Monday goes in hangover!
  6. It seems I am most productive after returning from Coffee Shop at around 11PM as the mid-night stats outperform every other hour! It suggests that I should visit Coffee Shop more often!

I tag ZenWalker!

PS1 : Cleaned my room after 7 months!!

PS2 : Song of the B.Tech. : “Rumors” by “Lindsay Lohan”.

PS3 : Felicity is not coming. We are going there!!!

PS4 : Posting after 20 days 🙁

 
by Kulbir Saini on Fun, Internet, Life, Placements, Success, Tips n Tricks, Wireless

Air Nirvana ( Got the job :P )

After countless written tests and two interviews I finally got the job offer from Airvana ( A mobile broadband company). This was the second written test which I cleared. The interview was very simple and straight forward. You can obviously outperform when somebody asks you something from your areas of interest. Main focus during interview was IntelligentMirror and VideoCache, you can guess the rest 😀

Before The Interview

**FUNNY PART**

Checklist before going for interview

  1. Company’s website’s page rank
    • Airvana.com (6 years) has a page rank (Google) of 5. Well thats good. Equals to my website Fedora.co.in (less than 1 year).
  2. Company’s website’s Alexa rank
  3. Domain Availability
    • Checked for Airvana keyword and airvana.in and airvana.co.in was available. Mouth watering. Isn’t it 😀 But somehow convinced myself not to spend another couple of dollars.

**STRANGE PART**

Both Saini(s) of my batch ( Me and Pankaj Saini) are placed together 😀 WTF!!!

Well, finally I am not a jobless anymore!!!

PS : Congratulations to Pankaj and Yogesh 🙂

 
by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Fun, Hacking, Life, Servers

To be or not to be Marcus Cocoza

The feeling that B.Tech. is almost over forces me to feel a bit nervous. I spend (I am not sure whether to call it wastage) a lot of time socializing (at coffee shop and in BC with friends) and rest of the time I am sitting in front of my computer screen trying to develop or explore something. My life at IIIT has been influenced by a lot of factors from Dr. Kamal‘s use of a tablet pc and wifi to connect to the projector for a lecture or Dr. Sangal‘s outstanding way of teaching or the limited bandwidth forcing me to think of alternatives or Nirnimesh‘s inclination towards Linux or Ranta‘s entrepreneurial skills or Sandeep Saini‘s dedication towards downloading. You have so many people around you with exceptional skills in their fields. All these have forced me rethink about myself in one or the other way.

Today there was a mail on squid development mailing list with a link to this page. I was pissed off by the C++ code on the page. At one time I was very good at C/C++ but python killed the interest and knowledge over time. I was strongly inclined towards OOP back then. When I saw the above page today, I felt an inclination towards C++ yet another time. Well, thats me. Just think about something and start doing it without thinking what would be the result. I picked up “The C++ Programming Language” by “Bjarne Stroustrup” from the cupboard and started turning pages. While doing that the page after the Introduction caught my attention. There was a long quote. I generally don’t read stuff like this but I felt some urge to read it. It was

… and you, Marcus, have given me many things; now I shall give you this good advice. Be many people. Give up the game of being always Marcus Cocoza. You have worried too much about Marcus Cocoza, so that you have been really his slave and prisoner. You have not done anything without first considering how it would affect Marcus Cocoza’s happiness and prestige. You were always much afraid that Marcus might do a stupid thing, or be bored. What would it really have mattered? All over the world people are doing stupid things… I should like you to be easy, your little heart to be light again. You must from now, be more than one, many people, as many as you can think of…

— Karen Blixen (writing under the pseudonym “Isak Dinesin”),
from “The Dreamers”, from “Seven Gothic Tales”.

It was a wonderful reading. Inspiring enough to force me to blog about it. Looking forward for reading a bit about C++ also and becoming a squid developer from a squid plugin developer 🙂

 
by Kulbir Saini on Fun, Life, Tips n Tricks

Innovation and Invention

A few days ago, I attended a PPT (PrePlacement Talk). Frankly speaking, it was the only talk that turned out to be of some use of all the talks I attended till date. The speaker was a Vice President of the company. While delivering the talk, he reached a point where he started explaining the different between Innovation and Invention. And the explanation was mind blowing. I thought I will share it with everyone 🙂

Invention

Invention is something which creates the need. For example,

  • Edison invented the electric bulb. And suddenly everyone felt that they needed the bulb for light. Before the invention everyone was happy with candles, oil lamps and whatever else. So, the invention of bulb created the need.
  • Graham Bell invented telephone and everyone was dying to get a telephone connection. So, it again created the need of a telephone connection.

Innovation

Innovation is something which is created by the need. For example,

  • Within few years of invention of bulb, people felt that the light from the bulb hurts their eyes. And they started feeling the need of something which will not affect their eyes and will also serve as a source of light. So, somebody came up with a fluorescent lamp. The need forced people to innovate.
  • With increasing popularity of phone, people felt the need of phone on the move. So somebody came up with cordless and then mobile. Again forced innovation.

All that is fine but then what is research???

In case you have further insights, please share 🙂

 
by Kulbir Saini on BC, Fun, Life, Success, Tips n Tricks

The Mobile Blah – 2 ( Job Offer )

THIS IS MY 101ST POST

I wrote about a mobile blah almost two months ago and something similar happened today. Previously they were looking for a PhD but this time scenario was totally different 😀

Me, Deepak Vig, Dharmeet Hora were having lunch in our favorite mess “Yuktahaar”. Deepak’s phone rang. He started talking to someone and started looking at me. I thought it was Randeep, who has called and asked Deepak not to say anything about me. But he passed on the phone to me. Though I didn’t want to talk, I had to.

But I was totally surprised on listening a lady’s voice. (WTF!!!) Why Deepak would pass on his girl friend’s call to me 😛

  • Lady : The one who called.
  • K : Me 🙂

Note : Every single line is true to my knowledge. Confirm with Deepak or Dharmeet if you don’t believe me.

Lady : (Awesomely politely) Hello!

K : Hello. (Surprised!!!!)

Lady : Is this Ravi?

K : (WTF!!! Now who is this Ravi??) Yeah. (Turning to polite mode.) I am Ravi.

Lady : I am calling from SOME consultancy services? (Sorry guyz, couldn’t hear the first word clearly due to some disturbance.)

K : (Having no clue of whats going on.. continuing the talk) Ok.

Lady : Are you looking for a call center job?

K : (Feeling damn happy about it. Finally somebody is offering a “JOB“. Raising the voice with confidence.) YEAH!! I would love to hear about it.

Lady : (Feeling that she finally caught someone 😀 ) We are conducting an interview tomorrow at 10AM.

K : (Whenever you feel like conducting it 😛 ) Ok.

Lady : Please bring your resume and two passport size photographs.

K : Yeah. Sure.

Lady : We are offering Rs. 10000/- per month for the job.

K : Thats nice. Do you offer benefits other than the compensation? (Few MNCs offer pencils and caps as “Other Benefits” 😛 )

Lady : (Never expected something like this from a guy looking for a call center job 😛 ) Pardon please?

K : (Repeating in a much clearer voice) Do you offer any benefits other than compensation? Like insurance 😉

Lady : (Feeling sorry about it) No.

K : Ok. Anyways thats a nice package.

Lady : Do you know our address?

K : Yeah. (As if I visit their office every other day, looking for a job 😛 )

Lady : Ok. Be there at 10 AM with your resume and two passport size photographs.

K : Thank you very much for calling.

Lady : Thank you. Have a nice day.

K : You too.

Well, finally got a job offer 😛 Later, Deepak told that the lady was looking for some ‘Ravi Kiran’.

PS : Forgot to ask her name 😉

 
by Kulbir Saini on BC, Computers, Fun, Internet, Life, Servers

The best new year gift

We just received a mail from IIIT-H help desk stating

New year special proxy server has been created for all users as gift from
IIIT Server Room staff. There are no moderations done on that proxy so all
websites are accessible. Even better there is no connection limit per IP
or per user on the new proxy.

Proxy is accessible at IP _SNIP_ on port _SNIP_. Please feel free to
download as much as you want from this new proxy server.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Regards,
IIIT Systems Help Desk

Probably the best gift I have ever received.