Future : Open Source

Todays seminar on open source was a good one. I got clear of many of my misconceptions regarding OPEN SOURCE after attending this seminar :) Well initially i too thought that open source == LINUX... well basically everyone thinks the same until you are enlightened by the fact that open source means that the code of the software is made public and you get a license too regardless of the software and it need not be LINUX alone... Well after thinking from open source's side its really good to use open source softwares and share our findings with others rather than slaughtering people with softwares that cost a million bucks!... Hail OPEN SOURCE... :)

USP : Light flys like arrow!!!

After some SIT UPs and STAND DOWNs  (It was to make us understand that SIT DOWN and STAND UP are like functions in our brain... and we know what to do when we hear them... and if we jumbled them up we may be confused ;) blah blaah!!)  and a long session of dissecting the abbreviation of Unix System Programming which is  "USP", in the most horrendous manners (a pathologist would have fainted during this autopsy session!!)...

Our sir wrote "LIGHT FLYS LIKE ARROW" on the black board.

Well this sentence boggled me... it was neither grammatically correct nor had any meaning! "Light flys like arrow"?? hmmm...even after delimiting the grammatical side, this sentence didn't mean anything! how can light fly like an arrow? well an arrow 'can' fly at the speed at which the light propagates, but the inverse?? hard to imagine...

Everyone was staring at the sir as if they had been struck by lightening! Who on the earth except our sir knew that light flew like an arrow? ;) ... The discussion went on and on... Our sir was gleaming and very convinced with his "sentence" that made a lot of things uneasy for the students and I was not an exception!...

Knowing that his students were going to be seated like the mannequins in a garment shop, which give cold stares to the buyers... he started acting out in front of us, making some signs with his hands which resembled like an arrow or may be a fly... he stressed again and again on his favorite sentence "LIGHT FLYS LIKE ARROW"!!!... even split it like "LIGHT ..... FLYS LIKE ARROW".... "LIGHT FLYS ..... LIKE ARROW" .... but every one was still staring at him!

The back benchers thought that this man was an alien-magician in disguise!... who was casting some weird spell on them!

Everyone was watching their wrist watches.... In five minutes the class would get over!...  ;). Finally surrendering to the silence of the mannequins he said that "light flys"  are the the flies that emit light from their tail and they resemble an ARROW!!! and he wanted to show us the way people differ in the way they percieve something... Now saying this our sir took the attendance and went off....

In the class we mannequins came to life and started debating that those "flies" (and not flys!) are called as FIRE FLIES rather than LIGHT FLIES :) and the statement would have been clear if our sir had written 

"FIRE FLIES LIKE ARROW" or "FIRE FLY RESEMBLES AN ARROW"... :)

But our sir is the only person in our depatment who can 

link MYTHOLOGY to COMPUTERS and still teach you the respective subject with ease! ;) whether you understand or no is solely dependent on you... He really  made a good attempt to tickle our brains! :)

CHAWLS : unity in diversity...

                                                                         A typical chawl in Mumbai......

Hi again!

Hmmm, I think when you see the picture most of the people of my parent's age or the ones living in mumbai will come to know that its a "chawl". For starters a wikipedia defines a CHAWL as "A chawl is a name for a type of building found in India. They are often 4 to 5 stories with about 10 to 20 tenements, referred to as kholis, literally meaning 'the room' on each floor. Many chawls can be found in Mumbai where they were constructed in abundance to house the people migrating to Mumbai because of its booming cotton mills and overall strong economy."!!

You can see a typical chawl in mumbai here -  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Chawl_-_Mumbai_2006.jpg

Hmmm but the chawl that i saw was in a small town of Karnataka. For someone like me who lives in a remote house finds it fascinating that how people live in chawls, sharing each other's happiness and sorrows! Its so good to have many neighbours :) but it has some pros and cons too... neighbours can be vicious too!! always everyone isn't helpful!! it depends on us how we deal with people...

CIRCUS : the fading charm!

Yesterday (23 Jan 2009),  5pm , "tink tink" I got a message from my friend which read "Hey, Lets go to the CIRCUS"...Unfortunately it was the most unluckiest day in my life!!... why?? because i was expecting this friend to accompany me somewhere for "time pass" and I had a headache!!!

Realising that the chances of me going to the circus are less, I replied back saying "Cant make it ... got a splitting headache!" , but you know how friends are he replied again to me saying take rest for an hour and I'll come in the evening to pick you up from your home!

Hm mm this the magic of friendship ;) By gods grace (or due to my excitement to visit a circus) i was  quite fine by evening. In the midst of this hoo-lah i had to teach my aunt how to download and install Yahoo messenger! ;)

Evening 6.30pm, "Beep-Beep" was the sound of my friend's motor bike. "Yes!" i thought to myself i will finally be able to make it up to the circus in time!!( the reason is IST  is more popular among my friends IST = Scheduled time + half an hour!) 

Cool.. He had a new haircut! Once a john abrahamish mane had come down to near ghajini look! not bad... We 4 guys riding on two bikes dodging through the traffic made it to the circus in time. the clock displayed 6.55pm and the show was scheduled at 7pm. Parking the vehicles we made it up to the entrance..

Ah i said to myself "This looks much different from what i saw in my childhood days". The entrance read "Great Bombay Circus" and welcomed its viewers with a hoarding of smiling artists and performers, hiding their problems and ready to entertain the viewers. We rushed into the tent through the entrance, Heading ahead we were given the "premium row" seats, which are at the front end and nearer to the ring. By searching and sorting!! we seated ourselves on the gloomy looking blue chairs.

7.10pm, Me being a bit of perfectionist was feeling irritated as the show hadn't started yet. "mic check 1,2,3"...."All viewers are asked to be seated the show will begin in 5 minutes"... "Photography and videography is prohibited" aah ha those last sentence made me click a picture (the one on the top) !! because rules are to be broken na??? ha ha..

Web cams and Hard disks anything and everything was going on in our discussions and we being the cuckoos and not the pigeons hopefully didn't disturb our neighbouring viewers.

Drum beats, Music, action! at last the show started... Russians, North Indians and Indians , wearing glittering dresses and beautiful smiles on their face were marching towards the ring holding colourful flags to welcome everyone.

Some tapori guys were whistling at the Russian performers too ;) (its expected na?) . I was thinking if they want to whistle at women then why do the want the circus ,out of all the other available choices?? Breaking my line of thought my friend said "did you observe one thing?.. There used to be a search light kind of thing on the top of the tent which would be used to signal the people that circus is in their town..kind of advertising mechanism" hmmm "good observation" i hadn't thought about it till that instant... Actually now they use more developed methods such as TV, newspaper etc.

First show was acrobatics, the people jumped in high air from one point to another doing some great movements. Such a breath taking sight! i wanted to capture it in my camera ... but my brother reminded it of the prohibition :( well the next was some kind of jumping and swinging thing...

the thing which i liked the most was a kind of ballet dance done by a couple on a rope swinging here and there acting out some steps same as acrobatic... it was wonderful! Others in the show were jokers, dogs, horses camels parrots etc... the usual stuff that you would find in a circus. Animals such as tigers and lions are prohibited from being used in a circus as they are at the brink of extinction and it is cruelty to animals.

When the ring master hits the horse with a whip everyone feels so bad, i too felt the same way... at the instance a thought came into my mind "Software engineers are similar to the horses - recession  is the whip ;) " correct na?? Actually everyone is stuck in this recession thing, hope everything clears up fast and comes back to normal!

9.15pm, we were kind of getting bored with the similar performances, decided to leave the show and go home. "this is the last performance of the day" was the announcement, so as expected we sat through the performance, clapping and giggling at a middle aged man clicking pictures of a skimpily clad Russian artist... with the end of the performance we left the tent feeling high and happy that it was worth the pains that we had taken to come there.

Back on the bikes, on the road ... back to our homes... JET, SET, GO!