Side-Middle Berth!!!

Population is increasing. There's no space for more lines, we can't introduce new trains. So what do we do? Increase packing density :)

My first 0

I got my first ever 0 in AI mid sem exams. Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharyya had a wry smile on as he distributed the answerbooks, as if to say "Welcome to IIT". I managed a BB in the subject :-)

A do-anything firefox toolbar

We have a course called "Software Lab" at IITB. The agenda of this course is - one programming language every week, with a side effect - you fall in love with linux and everything that is free and open source. As a part of the course, we have to contribute something to the open source community. So, I, along with Sumair and Sree developed "Run-a-prog", a do-anything toolbar for firefox. Screenshot

Run-a-prog allows you to run ANY program on the text selected on a webpage. For example, if you have a text2speech program, you can add it to the toolbar and make it read out the text you selected on the page at the click of a button. You can write your own programs using any programming language of your choice and add it to the toolbar, and run it on selected text. All your program has to do is take a file name as a command line argument. Besides this, there are a few other useful features as well ;)



Run-a-prog has been tested on Fedora Core, Ubuntu and Windows XP and works fine with Firefox 2.0 and 3.0. To install Run-a-prog, download our cross platform installer and open it with firefox. Comments and suggestions are welcome :)

I have published the project on Mozdev.org, and can be accessed at http://runaprog.mozdev.org

Here is a presentation which gives an overview of the functionality and design. The source code and the documentation is available here.

26/11 and onwards

It was my last exam that day, and I was happy that it had gone well. After the exam, I went to the lab and started off on my mini-project for Service Oriented Computing. Dhaval and I had to do it, start to finish, in 36 hours, and we were coding frantically. At about 11PM, Vishal told us that there were blasts in a few hotels in Mumbai. We didn't give it much of a thought and just carried on with our work. At 2.30AM the same night, when I went back to the hostel, I saw the TV room was pretty crowded, and a whole lot of guys silently staring at the TV. I went in, saw the disturbing visuals for a while and went to bed, couldn't sleep for quite a while....

I woke up early the next day (because parents called early that morning to tell me to stay indoors) and grabbed a copy of the Times, the first page read - "WAR ON MUMBAI". The news didn't make a pleasant read. I went to the lab after breakfast and continued work on the mini-project, all the time hooked to the rediff homepage.

28th November was a busy day, I had my project demo. We did the final parts of the documentation, had a decent demo. I came back to the hostel TV room after that, and witnessed a very moving interview of Sabina Sehgal's husband on CNN-IBN, I simply couldn't stand the pain and went back to my room, lied down on my bed, frustrated, angry.

More thinking....and I thought of making a resolution to kill atleast one terrorist before I die...my heart said "yes", my mind kept on asking "Is it logical? Can you do it? What about your family?". I still don't know. The movie "A Wednesday" show's that even a "stupid common-man" can make a difference, but it's only a movie. My questions are still unanswered.

Janmashtami

Janmashtami

For the first time, I saw Janmashtami being celebrated the "Marathi" way. It was awesome fun watching :-) My friend Sree Shankar, one of the guys in the photo above(click to view more), has described the entire experience really well in his blog. Here is an extract (reproduced here with permission)

It was decided that 8 people will form the base, 4 on top of them and then a 3rd guy on top of us to break the matki. As all of were discussing of how to go about it, suddenly a bucket of water fell on us...."abee saale bhen**** teri maa ki..." shouts came out from the group...For me this water business was unexpected and I was totally drenched...

I was at the base (fat people are not allowed to climb others shoulders and break others hands :D). There were 8 of us. The water kept falling on us from the 2nd and 3rd floor....and the swearings kept coming out...The 2nd layer started forming. Everyone was shouting "Alareeeeee govindaaaaaaa"...The moment a guy got on to my shoulders I was like "O man this guy weighs a ton"...but the spirit of alare govinda kept all of us going....in between the guys on the top floor started pouring hot water...the swearing too got hotter....the water was soo hot that the cry of "alare govinda" was replaced by "aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh $#&#@#%$"...we could even see smoke rising from the ground once the water touched the floor...

But we still kept on going...The 2nd layer was formed. (the guy above me seemed to have a special ability to increase his weight every second)...The last guy started climbing...by this time the "pyramid" already started shaking :D...suddenly..."dim dim dim...." before I knew what happened my shoulder suddenly felt light...then only I saw it...the 2nd layer and 3rd layers were now on the "ground floor"...one on top of the other...one guys head was inside the pile on the ground and his 2 legs jutting out...everyone started laughing out soo much...the ground had turned so much muddy with water that we were all covered in mud...

This went on like this for some 4-5 times,climbing and falling, before we successfully broke the pot. Cries of joy exploded out and it was all round celebrations. People were kicking mud on each other..photos taken...as for me it was such a good time...never in the recent past could I remember myself to be covered in so much mud and still enjoying...This was followed by tug of war. All in all it was such a gr8 day..one of my most memorable.

Life at IIT Bombay

Yes guys, it's been a long time since I blogged. I mainly attribute it to the deluge of assignments that I've been given.

Lots of you have been asking me - "How's life at IITB?", hence this post.

Before I came to IITB, I had imagined that it'd have green-carpet lawns, neatly pruned hedges and aesthetic looking trees etc. It's not so. IITB is wild. It has huge trees, with climbers covering the trunks, going all the way up to the branches, and then hanging down like ropes. It has money plants with leaves as big as banana leaves (I'm not exaggerating), parrots, mynas, pigeons, cranes, sea gulls and many other kinds of birds that I don't recognize.

IITB is flanked on the left by a green hill, and on the right by a lake. Near the hill is a national park (from which a panther had wandered into the campus a few years ago).

Moving from the wildlife to the hostels, most of the hostels look as if they may crumble any moment. But looks can be deceiving ;) The hostels are built to stand the Mumbai rains. Even during heavy rains that we saw in the last month, none of the rooms got even a drop of water inside, and no water logging anywhere. Every hostel consists of about six 3-storeyed buildings, and one can go from any building to any other building without getting wet. The rooms are good and comfy, bathrooms are beautiful too ;) We get hot water even at midnight! There are washing machines to do the laundry, a billiards table, TT table, carroms and a gym (all this within the hostel). We also get a dozen different newspapers everyday. Food is great most of the time(yeah, honest!)

I'll talk about the lessons some other day. That's it for now :)

Mumbai

This is my first time in Mumbai, and there's definitely lots that I can blog about :) Everything about Mumbai looks ancient-the roads, autos, taxis buildings etc, it's only the local trains that look modern

Buses

The conductor doesn't use a whistle. There is a bell near the driver (see pic), to which a rope is connected. This rope extends till the back door, and is supported by pulleys at equal distances. To stop the bus, the conductor pulls the rope which makes the bell ring :)

Autos

The meter shows at 1.00 at first and increments in steps of 0.10. I traveled from Andheri(East) to Powai(about 6 km) in an auto and the fare came to 4.70! But my joy was shortlived, the driver enlightened me with this piece of information.
Actual fare = Meter fare * constant

The current value of the constant is 9. Whenever fuel prices are revised, they just change the value of the constant. So, no recaliberation of meters required.


Taxis

If you are a fan of vintage cars, you'll find plenty. Most taxis are old premier padminis. Warning: Travel in a taxi only if you have plenty of money to spare.














Local trains

There are 2 kinds of local trains-Fast and Slow. Fast trains stop at fewer stations than Slow trains. Since the trains stop very often, they seem to be equipped with a nitro-boost kind of mechanism which allows 0 to 60 in 10 seconds. Inside some trains, there is an LCD scroll which displays the next station, and a voice announces the station in 3 languages. Local trains - fast, cost-effective and convenient, but crowded.

Next blog, all about IIT Bombay! So long for now :)

15th July, 2008

After months of day dreaming, weeks of planning and days of packing, the day that I've been looking forward to with a mixture of excitement and dread has finally arrived. I leave to Mumbai today. The days ahead promise plenty of freedom, learning and realization.....a whole new experience......

Cisco, the best place to work

Work culture

Cisco needs only a reason to party. On the last day of every month, we have a monthly birthday bash, with all the people whose birthdays fall in that month cutting a big cake. Once a project is completed, the entire team goes out for a party, sponsored by Cisco, of course. The last such party happened on July 1 at Barbecue Nation, and had plenty of food, booze and fun. People leaving Cisco get a farewell party as well!

The people

The people here are as crazy as they are sweet.

This happened to me on my second day at Cisco. I walked into the men's room, and at that moment, all the three urinals were occupied, and so I had to wait. My mentor, Hafeez, was one of the occupants. He saw me walk in, turned back and said "Come, lets share"!

My manager Dharmendra's boss, Shanthi Iyer was in India one day, and visited our office. As soon as she entered, the team gathered around her for her pep talk. Dharmendra was still in his room supervising a P1. Shanthi noticed his absence, and shouted across the hall - "Dharmendra, mere bhai!"

On my last day at Cisco, my manager Dharmendra took me out for lunch. On the previous day, the Engineers there had arranged a small farewell party for me, and I got to cut a cake with "Good bye Prashant" written on it. And here are some sweet emails that I got from the people at Cisco on my last day.

Workplace resources

The office looks more like a resort than an office. Here are some pics.

Paycheck

Timely and fat.


Work

Now, where have I heard that word before?????

FAQs

1) Why Mint?
Refer answer to Q2.

2) What are you going to blog about?
I'll be blogging about
(a) Myself
(b) My Inner thoughts
(c) News and views
(d) Tech
So, Mint :)

3) How often can I expect a post?
I plan to post approximately once in 2 weeks.