October 11, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Camera, Fun, Life, Temple

A walk to remember

This incident or series of incidents happened in the night of October 9, 2008. Time – 11:30PM. I was sitting in front of my PC thinking of thinking something which is not video caching because Kapil has cursed me enough for thinking about video caching 24×7. Pankaj buzzed ans asked for a BC session at coffee shop. Replied positively without any doubts in mind. After a few minutes me, Pankaj, Sachin and Sambhav left for the coffee shop. On the way Sachin said that he is hungry. I was not hungry but the way he said made me feel hungry. When we were in front of NBH mess gate, it just clicked me that coffee shop is closed due to Dushehra. Everyone of us hopeless as nobody had the backup of any eatables 🙁 We walked down to main building where Ajay joined the company and he was also hungry. Sachin proposed that we’ll go to Indira Nagar or High Tech. looking for something to eat. All of us agreed. As we crossed main gate, Sambhav headed back to hostel as he has to prepare for GRE.

We four walked up to the bust stop and eventually an empty bus arrived. All of us shocked. An empty bus!!! WTF!!! We got into the bus.

We asked for a ticket upto Indira Nagar. The conductor gave the ticket but driver didn’t stop in Indira Nagar. We landed in Gachibowli where we thought that its better to go to Hi Tech. We waited for sometime at the cross road but taxi appeared. We started walking towards Indira Nagar. Somani knew an eating point somewhere on the way from IIIT to Indira Nagar.

This place is on the street to Kendriya Vihar. But the entrance of the street was totally flooded with water obviously with no place left to walk across. But we somehow managed to cross the water body by holding the wall.

And we discovered that the place called KKD (Kadalivachina Kanaka Durga, Nobel prize to me for remembering the name correctly 😛 ). It was almost closed. But ice cream and soft drinks were still available. We had butter scotch (somani took vanilla). Ice cream was awesome. It might have tasted awesome because we were dying of hunger.

We headed back to IIIT. But everybody felt the urge to visit this temple on the way to IIIT. We walked upto the temple and sat there for 10-15 minutes. It was around 12:30AM. We took few shots as well.

After that we headed back to IIIT. Had juice at canteen. And that was it.

October 9, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Camera, Google, Graphics, GSOC, Hardware, Photography, Sony

My new Sony Cybershot DSC W110 Digital Camera

Finally after a long wait, I bought this Sony Cybershot DSC W110 Digicam from Hyderabad Central yesterday. Actually Deepak came to my room and said there is huge offers on Digicams in Hyderabad Central. I didn’t think twice and me, Pankaj, Bansi and Deepak headed to Central. But we found that there were no offers on Sony. But I had already decided to buy this model. So who cares for the offer. After a few minutes of bargaining ( i suck at bargaining ), I bought it for Rs. 9600 ($210).BTW I bought it from Third I Digital shop.

Features : 7.2 Megapixels, 4x Optical Zoom, High Sensitivity ISO3200, 2.5″ LCD Display, Face Detection, Smile Shutter, Full HD.

Accessories : Camera + 1GB Memory Card + Battery Charger + Battery + USB, Audio/Video Cable.

Gift : The shop keeper offered a scratch card with the camera. And I won three days and two nights holiday anywhere in India 😀 Nice.. aint it 🙂

We clicked some shots in Central. Here are few.

Left to right : Kulbir Saini, Nitin Bansal

Deepak Vig

Pankaj Saini

Then We headed to my favorite destination in Hyderabad, City Center. We had burgers as usual. Pankaj did some shopping while we “ogled” at few “good looking” girls. We moved to crossword (a boook shop in City Center). We decided to leave for home. As we came out of Crossword, there were some dandia performance by some group. We captured some shots there as well.

Left to right : Nitin Bansal (Welcome to Sajjanpur wala Bansi :P), Kulbir Saini, Deepak Vig

Few more shots and we headed back to the divine place .. IIIT Hyderabad 🙂

We forced Pankaj to go for Dandia but unfortunately he couldn’t find a funti as only couples were allowed 😛

A big thanks to all the people who provided their views and helped me to by this cam 🙂

PS : Thanks to Google for all the dollars.

October 8, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Fun, Internet, LAN, Life

Internet != Anonymous

Learning of the Day : If you choose to use Internet that in itself implies that you are sacrificing your anonymity. Over the past few years, I tried to invent ways in which you can try to be anonymous, but every one of them had inherited flaws because after all everything has to flow on a wire which is not something you control.

Advice of the Day : Don’t post something as anonymous which you won’t if you were exposing your identity because it gets embarrassing afterwards. And I have personally felt the heat several times.

October 6, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Fun, Life

The mobile blah

I came back to OBH after having dinner at Yuktahaar. Entered my room, started Punjabi music at full volume. Suddenly phone started vibrating. Unknown number. I received the call and to my surprise some lady speaks up ..

Lady : Am I talking to Kulbir Saini?
Me : Yes. You are.
** Totally surprised.
Lady : Is it a good time to talk to you?
Me : Yeah. Just go ahead.
** Koi kaam to hai nahin hamein .. ( we are jobless people.)
Lady : I am from <some> company in Delhi. We have contacts with a fortune 500 multinational and they are looking for people in analytics research.
** If this is research, why the heck are you calling me 🙂
Me : Wait … wait… Where did you get my number?
** I was like wtf … I banned Vodafone and now these companies…
Lady : It was a search effort. I was doing it since last week or so.
Me : Are you sure?
Lady : Yeah. I swear it was a search effort. Nobody referred your name or number.
Me : Yeah. Go ahead.
** Oh… I am popular 😛
Lady : Can we proceed further with your academic qualifications?
Me : Sure.
Lady : So, what are your qualifications?
** I opened this. My resume in text format 😛
Me : I am doing my B.Tech.
Lady : Are you sure?
** Lady was like WTF!!! Totally embarrassed.
Me : Yeah. Because its me who is doing it.
Lady : I thought you are doing PHD.
Me : What?? Thats why I asked you “Who gave you my number?”.
** PHD??? Isn’t it a too much of popularity 😛
Lady : Anyway best of luck with your further studies/academics/life.
Me : Thanks a lot. Use Google next time.
Lady : Thanks for the tip.

Anyway it was fun …

October 5, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Fun, Life

Bread Talk / CCD / Cafe Late / Dominoz

Following Zenwalker’s suggestion, today I broke my first resolution of not going out of campus. Since a few days, Sachin was saying this place named “Bread talk” is kinda nice (as suggested by his guardians) and we should visit that sometime. While we were doing some random BC at Coffee Shop, we all decided to go out today (thanks to the awesome weather). We didn’t have any idea of place and what is served there but all of us were sure that it’ll be something related to breads.

We left for Bread Talk at around 7PM with the idea of having dinner at the place. But when we reached the place, we discovered that it was a small corner in some shopping mall near brand factory on the way from Hi-Tech to Panjagutta. And the place is supposed to be visited when you wanna have something light before dinner. Everybody was like WTF!!! Anyway its a nice place and the items with alien names were worth the price. All of us had good time at the place except Mr. Kapil ‘Sophisticated’ Agarwal.

Then we decided to go to CCD near the check post on the same road. While we were in auto on the way, Mr. Pankaj Explorer (the one who explore places, and not the Internet) Saini was guiding the auto wallah. He took us to some CCD besides this Benz showroom. But we didn’t get in as it was only “take away”.

Then we boarded a bus to visit another CCD on the same road. Unfortunately, the bus was a Metro one. Pankaj asked for the minimum ticket because as usual he was not sure where CCD was. The conductor asked for Rs. 12 (for 6 of us). But suddenly he started asking Rs. 30. Now here comes the ego problem. Nobody cares for that much money but we won’t pay that just for the heck of it. The conductor threw us out of bus at some place 500 meters from the previous CCD.

Then we started walking and we discovered this place called “Cafe Late”. But we didn’t get in as this place didn’t have much to offer. We were a bit hungry.

From there we took another auto to the next CCD. While we were on the way, Mr. Pankaj ‘Explorer’ Saini discovered that the CCD has disappeared from the place he visited several times. We finally ended up in Dominoz. Nitin Bansal was ordering pizzas. At the same time, there appeared two girls (above average looks). One of them ordered something. Nitin Bansal, Pankaj and Ajay ‘Google’ Somani was also at counter at that time. After the girl left the counter, all of them successfully reproduced the mobile number that the girl spoke while ordering the pizza. They did so independently without any communication among each other. Guessing the level of frustration??

After having pizzas as Dominoz, we returned to IIIT. The godly place 🙂

October 1, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Computers, Fun, Internet, Tips n Tricks

Resolutions for October

Will avoid going out of campus as the traffic is really frustrating and it can spoil all the fun.
Will not overwork myself just for the sake of moral responsibilities.
Will try to stay away from computers at least for one day in a week.
Will avoid commitments which may be hazardous. Will think before I say yes.
Will buy a digicam and start clicking nature to add some liveliness to life. Currently my life is all about few tabs in Gnome terminal and Firefox.
Will try my level best to renovate IIIT LUG as its almost (?. completely) DEAD.
Will try to do assignments as I have missed almost all the assignments till now in this sem.
Will start thinking about aptitude tests for placement.
Will try to implement caching for Google videos.
Will try to work on the above resolutions.

September 30, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Computers, Fun, Hacking, Internet, LAN, Life

Post and Comment of the century

I was trying to sleep and somebody woke me up. I tried controlling myself, but almost shouted at him. Was retrying to sleep since last one hour, but failed miserably as usual. Woke up. Started browsing the regular sites and happened to check comments on my life blog. And saw a back link. Visited and read this awesome post by Sanrag Sood. I never read such stuff in my life. I am sure the guy is crazy/mad/whatever. Its a must read thing. For me its a post of century kinda thing.

Also, I was browsing comments on IIIT Post the other day and read this awesome comment by a guy named “very”. This comment is also a must read kinda stuff for IIITians. For me its a comment of the century.

September 25, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Internet, Life, Linux, Mail Servers

Condition for a getting a degree

So far the day has been really frustrating for me. I WONDER how people really manage to get a graduate/postgraduate degree when they don’t even know how to use a browser or how to look up ip address of a domain name or how to write an email ??? The institute should consider putting up a course in the final sem in which they’ll check the following

The student knows how to use a browser.
He/she knows how to bypass the proxy server for an IP range or domain names.
He/she knows how to find out the IP address of a domain name.
He/she knows what is https.
He/she knows that if ssh is blocked it means if he/she tries to access the server via ssh access will be denied. And server can only display text and it will not cry/shout “Access denied”.
He/she can find out the IP address of his/her own machine.

This post was written after all the frustration caused by the reason you know. Never mind 😐

September 24, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Fun, Internet, Life

Never ever screw your friend list

I have been using Kopete instant messenger since almost 2.5 years now. Never faced a problem with anything and it support all IM servers like yahoo, gtalk, irc etc. But one fine day (when, I don’t know. Probably a few months ago), I mistakenly put Hemant Verma‘s (a student at IIIT Allahabad) name in Vishnu Fafat‘s (a student at IIIT Hyderabad) contact address in my friend list as shown in the image below.

Since then I was talking to Hemant Verma as if I was talking to Vishnu Fafat. Hemant (or Vishnu 😛 ) used to put links in his status message like “Checkout http://profile.iiita.ac.in ” and related things to IIIT Allahabad. I was totally confused about his status messages.

One day (in the beginning of this semester), I asked this

I was shocked. Rawat sir will not allow proxies and attendance is compulsory at IIIT Hyderabad. I thought Vishnu Fafat has gone crazy and will end up screwing his course 😐

The other day, he asked me this

I said somani knows all this stuff as if I would have said to Vishnu Fafat because he’ll know somani. Hemant got a bit confused but he happened to know Ajay Somani because he also takes part in programming contests.

I remember another incident when he asked me for suggestions about the site http://profile.iiita.ac.in/ . I thought this guy Vishnu has gone mad. Why the heck he would ask for suggestions about a IIIT Allahabad site provided he is a IIIT Hyderabad student? But I didn’t care.

And the final incident happened today as shown

Vishnu said he developed that site from scratch. I was almost mad because of two reasons

Why Vishnu will design a IIIT Allahabad website?
Why IIIT Allahabad will ever give complete access to a IIIT Hyderabad student to their main website?

I was totally mad at this. But I couldn’t say anything to Vishnu (or Hemant). Accidentally I checked his name in the friend list and in the pop up kinda thing, I saw Hemant Verma (refer to the first picture in the post) and I was like WTF!!!!

While writing this post, I thought I’ll search my Gmail Chat History and I found that I was talking to Hemant Verma as Vishnu Fafat since 26th February, 2008. See below.

I am already not able to remember people’s name/face relationships and then incidents like this totally blow my mind 🙁

September 22, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on Blogroll, Fun, Hacking, Life, Linux, Success, Tips n Tricks

My blog is famous now

Its a stark truth that everyone in this blogosphere lives just for the hits, comments and money if applicable he/she receives. And if you are blogger and you are not able to fetch any of these, then I would say you are not doing your work properly. I have seen people doing all kinds of tricks from poking their friends to visit their blog to registering their blogs on random publishing sites to get some traffic. People die to get traffic and I am not an exception. As recently my linux blog has been receiving a lot of traffic which may be because of the following reasons

From Google (people looking for howtos).
From planet fedora as my blog is listed there.
Because of the improvements in page rank.
Because of my recent plugin development for squid, i.e. youtube_cache and intelligentmirror.
Because people are dying to use linux 😛
Because of the aging factor.

Anyway I thought I’ll publish some results.

I have been receiving 800 Pageviews daily on an average. Alexa says my blog’s rank in 3 lakh.

1. Google Analytics stats for the last week

Click for a clear view.

2. Alexa traffic stats for the last week , also available here in detail.

3. I recently activated the who is online plugin on Linux blog which shows how many users are currently online. Normally 5-15 users are online but I was surprised when it reached 38 users.

Click for a clear view.

4. This site says that my blog is worth US$4300.

PS : I think a blogger would know more SEO techniquest than a IE student 😛