37.5% Engineer?

I have been thinking a lot lately. Am just writing something of what I have felt/thought/thinking right now…

-Am really looking forward to go home. (Now thats not surprising really, is it?)

-I just love my laptop.

-Its starting to get really cold here. And I don’t like it one tiny bit.

-My Comprehensive (endsem) exams are virtually over-there is only this “Rep Wri” remaining ( thats Technical Report Writing for you)

-I guarantee that no one can tell which stream of engineering I am pursuing if they have a look at my bookshelf. Its just impossible. Here is the list:

Organic Chemistry, Unix fundamentals, Programming in ANSI C, , Inorganic Chemistry, How to Solve it by a Computer, Introduction to Material Science and Engineering, Material science and Engineering-a First course, Signals and Systems, Programming in C, Basic Electrical Engineering, Technical report Writing, The C programming Language, Essentials of Management, The Intel Microprocessor, Measurement techniques -I (Biology,Chemistry and Physics) , Measurement Techniques -II, Differential Equations with Applications, Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering, An Introduction to the Mechanics of Solids.

Whew!

-Do I feel like I am already 37.5% of an engineer? Not really. In fact-not one bit! But then I think it willl all come after doing the core courses. This is something in the way BITS conducts its courses. They have a common course structure for all the engineering degrees for almost TWO years rather than the usual one year. So it is like after 2 years of doing engineering, one doesn’t know anything much about the subject he/she is supposed to study. Sometimes its really frustrating while sometimes I really think that it was for good. I made a list for myself of all the courses that I did upto now:

Sem-I

Thermodynamics, Maths-I (Advanced Calculus), Chemistry -I(Physical), Physics-I (Mechanics) , Biology (yes you read it right), Workshop Practice.

Sem-II

Maths-II (Linear Algebra and Complex Variables), Probability and Statistics, Engineering Graphics with Autocad, Chemistry-II(Organic), Physics -II(Electrodynamics), Computer Programming-I.

Sem-III

Maths-III(Differential Equations), Mechanics Of solids, Computer Programming-II, Electrical Sciences-I, Measurement techniques-!, Technical Report Writing.

So it is like I am “Jack of all Master of none”. Is it? Or will it give me an edge over the other engineers?  Whatever said and done, I am really glad that I got to study Biology. Seriously. I mean it.

-During these one and a half years, I am slowly but definitely arriving at the conclusion that  the location of BITS is a distinct Disadvantage rather than an Advantage as claimed by many. I so wish that it was near a city. ( Let the city be Mumbai 🙂 )

-FRIENDS is the greatest series ever produced. Period.

BITS,Pilani has NOT accepted Reservations!

I know, most of you would have read Times of India, with front page headlines, “Deemed Varsities Say Yes to Quota”. For those who didn’t, here is an excerpt of the same:

“In a major setback to the anti-quota campaign, private unaided institutes like BITS Pilani, Manipal and Symbiosis on Thursday

unanimously

agreed to implement the 27% reservations for OBC’s.

The Vice chancellors of the eight deemed universities across the country met the union HRD minister Arjun Singh here and decided in favour of the governments proposal. The meeting was also attended by the chief ministers of most states. The vice chancellors said the quota implementation would be in a phased manner..They also agreed on the variable fees structure and reducing fees.”

The statements in italics above are false!!The decision was not unanimous, as no representative of BITS was present at the meeting!!
                Truth is , BITS Pilani has NOT accepted reservations at all !!
       Here is a mail that each and every bitsian received within hours of the false news coming out.This was sent to us by the institute itself:
A group of deemed universities including some prestigious ones today backed HRD Minister Arjun Singh’s move for reservation in unaided institutes but BITS, Pilani, strongly opposed it. “BITS, Pilani was invited but could not attend the meeting.In fact the institute has already submitted a note to the ministry expressing its views on reservation of seats in admissions for the weaker sections,” said M K Kashiramka, BITS, Pilani Chief Public Relations Officer. According to BITS, merit must be the only criteria for admissions, he said adding so as to ensure homogenous input into the higher education system.External link about this

         Shortly after we received this mail.BITS Pilani has put a notice regarding the same on their official website, the link being here

A paragraph about it goes like this:
       “NDTV and certain other news channels have put a news item in which it is claimed that certain unaided deemed universities have promised to implement reservation for SC/ST & OBC in which BITS, Pilani’s name is also mentioned. BITS, Pilani could not attend the said meetingconvened by the Hon’ble Minister of HRD on 26th October, 2006. In fact BITS, Pilani had already submitted a Note to the Ministry expressing its views on reservation of seats in admissions for the weaker sections. According to BITS, merit must be the only criteria for admissions so as to ensure homogenous input into the higher education system. Provision has to be made in the schools to give special coaching so that candidates of weaker sections can compete with other students.

This was just an informative post..no personal views on the whole thing as of yet..though I must say that BITS is fighting pretty hard. Somewhat like David vs Goliath.Lone standing rock against a rising tide.Keep it up BITS Pilani!!

Mind Blowing

That quite simply describes the professional shows. At least the prof shows did not disappoint after the earlier fiasco. “Mrigya”  from Delhi was the band that played instead of Jal, and it managed to impress the sceptical audience(having never heard of it before). By the end of their performance, the audience were literally screaming thir voices out with ‘encore’.The band was damn pleased I tell you.Their violin player was God. Period. Junta was bowing and acknowledging a divine presence amongst them last night.

Indian Ocean too dished out a good performance entertain the now enthu crowd. ‘Bandeh’ , ‘Hill  le le’ and ‘Kandisa’ were clearly their best. ‘Jhini” was good too.  A small hitch was that their drummer was just out of hospital the day before and was not quite upto the mark. But then that can be excused I guess. Indian Ocean was playing for their 5th time in Bits, Pilani.

The last band on stage was Moksha. I really can’t say much about it. Sat through the first few songs and left. Though I think they were nice too. Hard rock doen’t quite appeal to me. Especially after what they did to Rocktaves(refer last post).

Won’t add much here, though a lot more things did happen. Razmatazz deserves a special mention. The dances were brilliant and the on the spot and prop round were a treat to watch.

Spare bit of info: Parikrama was the Rocktaves winner sometime during the 90’s.

Shame

I was thinking how the hell can Jankaar and Arbits come up with something so good-I mean JAL?Seriously,wow!!But then I guess some people have a name to live upto.They just can’t do something right.I was a huge dissappointment to the crowd when they came to know that the JAL performance had been canceled,the reason being visa extension problem(mind you-they never officially announced it) and Jhankaar had to bear the brunt of angry junta demanding their money back.They had to give it back,obviously.And the few brave ones who didn’t return their tickets to the professional shows in the hope that Indianocean and Moksha might be still good had some compensation to hear that the ticket rates had been reduced from 325 to 250.We could rather have Jal.But this is not the end of it -the worse is yet to come….

Just now Iwould not be writing this post but rather be watching the finals of Rocktaves.(For those who don’t know,Rocktaves has been a cult level  amateur rock competetion with  the Oritus winning last year.)So then the question arises-why am I not doing this?For the reason that the rocktaves finals have been Canceled.Yeah,you read it right-canceled.This is the reason according to rumour(and rumours are usually right on campus) was that the judges were not available.Apparently they were high on dope(they were the members of the band Moksha) and the finalists refused to be judged by anyone else.So it was the money was split between the finalists.What a shame!

The only thing I enjoyed yesterday was the DJ and the dance.The DJ was some guy from radio mirchi and he was kind enough to play the full song ’sutta’ twice without any part censored,including the end part-all this at full volume in front of the insti building.The crowd just needed something like this to vent out their anger I think.

Hopefully today will be much better-Indianocean will be there,and razzmatazz (dance) never fails to impress.

Oasis inaug

A tad bit disappointing,I must admit.As my first Oasis I had expected better.It were not the performances that were the let down.No,rather they were “scintillating”,the theme of this Oasis.They always are.But the long waits which we had to endure between two performances to see a few glimpses of the show through the tops of a hundred heads….it made me wonder whether it was worth it .Especially after a sleepless night.:P (refer last post).

The chief guest for the inaug was Mani Shankar,noted film maker and advertiser(director of  the movie “16 December”).His speech was pretty nostalgic and he described BITS in an amusing way.Starting in a reverse way,

“S” he claimed was Stamina.Stamina which you build during the exams,on seeing your abysmally low marks and in general being kicked about by profs….

“T” was not Technology but rather technique.BITS teaches you how to have the technique to solve problems,and the realization that the solution is often in the problem itself…

“I” was not intelligence as the audience expected,but intution.BITS gave an intuition to all Bitsians,an intuition that will permeate all our life.Every decision that we make will be ultimately based on this developed intuition…

“B” acccording to him was literally….umm…uhh…Balls!Seriously,he said that in front of a jam packed auditorium.But he explained it very well.He said that BITS gives you the courage to face life,it gives you the balls to carve out a new path and defy norms…

All in all it was an inspiring speech,but being an advertiser after all,he didn’t forget his bottomline.During an especially long wait between two performances,he grabbed his opportunity to promote two of his movies-rudraksh(everyone knew it was a big flop) and his forthcoming film-Mukhbir.

Today evening there are these music competetions-Tarang and Fusion.Don’t know whether I will be there or in my room,sleeping.

Update:I was sleeping.

Movies

I watched 5 movies back to back from last night:

Antony kaun hai?:bakwaas,

Atlantis the lost empire:very good,

Shawshank redemption:the best,(I was crying by the end of it)

Pink panther:good,

Pirates of the carriean:pretty good.

I know what my gharwale will be thinking while reading this (ha mulga dive laavnaar aahe) but believe me,OASIS ke time ‘time’ ka koi thikanaa nahi hota!sab log sab time pe sab karte rehte hai…the inaug of OASIS is going to start just in some time now.I am ready 🙂

OASIS 2K6

Everywhere on the campus there is a flurry of activity going on.And why not-after all its OASIS time!This time OASIS is gonna be a blast.With Jal,Indianocean and Moksha playing as the professional bands,I can certainly claim this much at least :P.And what with coverage from MTV and ,its icing on the cake!You can visit the OASIS site through BITS homepage.I am unable to publish links here.So I am sorry that I can’t give you the link direstly.BTW ticket for the professional shows will blow a 350 bucks size hole in your pocket.

 Bring on the band,roll the drums,its gala time-yipeee!!!

 Update:Blogspot ban has been lifted :)maybe the got smarter after all!

PS:I must have posted and deleted this post at least 5 times trying to incorporate some newly learnt HTML in this but wordpress simply refuses to recognise it as HTML.Will have to learn how to make it do that.yeah and how to upload photos too!

Revolutionary changes

Well I have coined this few words:

Inky pinky ponky,

“someone” is a donkey,

Orkut blocked,Blogspot blocked,

Inky pinky ponky!!

Yeah,its True!!Orkut,Meebo(All time favorites) and Blogspot(why??) has been blocked by the authorities of BITS.They claim that about 70% bandwidth (its supposed to be data  rate you know) is occupied by these sites.And another revolutionary change that they introduced was to block all downloads greater than 10 Mb at a time.And I must admit that the speed has improved drastically.the other day,I downloaded songs at 250 kbps.Now imagine that!!Who needs MTNL??Huh.

And about Orkut,students find ways….after all what are proxy servers for??Its a continuous cat and mouse game between the authorities.Each day a new proxy site is used and each day that one is blocked.But then there are endless proxies…even at 1 per day,we just need 60 more to last through the sem :P.About blogspot,I have an idea about why blogspot is banned.Not many people know this,but 3 BITS,Pilani-Dubai students were suspended for blogging.Obviously the blog was about BITS Dubai.I wont say no more,lest I be in trouble..By the way,we still go around and access blogs through pkblogs:PAnd meebo-who needs it when Yahoo and MSN have started working fine??

Life’s good :))

Gates & Windows

I have been hearing a lot of stuff recently on open source software.How good it is,how it is for the benefit of the society,etc etc.Some people have gone as far as to say that using any software that they like should be made their birthright.I disagree.I know that software is needed by all people nowadays and that it is not possible for all to buy every software that you need.That is why I support open source softwares.Software whose source code is open to the public.So that they can modify it as to their liking and use it.But what i don’t agree is about the following:

    I have seen that most perpetrators of the open source philosophy have a common thing in them-they all have something against Microsoft.And Bill Gates.How often have you heard Windows is better than Linux?How many times have you heard that Gates must be punished for his monopolist attitude?His inestimable wealth?That no single person has a right to own so much money?His collective earnings are much more than the GDPs of many smaller countries.But they fail to do is look at the complete picture.What right do they have really to curse Windows?Ask them what what OS did they use before switching to Linux.Windows.Why?Because is is user friendly.And it is this user friendliness that makes it so popular.I do not know of a single person who started directly by using Linux.You will all agree that the first exposure that you had to a computer was through Windows.The commmon man does not need technical mumbo jumbo.Linux might be better than Windows,but the public likes Windows.Windows made it possible to bring the computer within the reach of the common man.It is what has made”PC” synonymous with “Computer”.What was a computer before Windows?Some programming crap that was of no use to the commoner.

And about Gates,give the guy a break.Whatever he is now,he must be credited with being one of the best bussinessman and marketing God the world has ever seen.And about being monopolist,everybody is a monopolist.Mittal is a monopolist.His takeover of Arcelor has just proved it.But no one has any complains here.He is ‘Indian’ after all.Given a chance,who would not like their product to enjoy a monopoly in the market?They are just jealous.Plain jealous.

Movies & Softwares

       I have just completed seeing “Pirates of the Carribean-The curse of the blackpearl” and “Troy”,and I must admit that both are one of the most awesome movies that I have ever seen.Movie making surely must be a tough art.Really tough.

      I sometimes truly feel how wicked we are.I look around me and I see my friends.Every friend has a computer.And every computer has software.Pirated.I know softwares are riduculously priced,but all are not.Just listing things on my comp makes me feel guilty.The net price of the sofwares on my laptop is more than the laptop itself.Dear God,forgive me for sinning.But I really have no other option.I don’t have the option of buying them(even if I had,I probably wouldn’t),nor do I have the option of not using them.I am really helpless.Forgive me.Amen.

    Actually the movies which I saw were also not er…u know 😛

Currently watching:Loot jayenge video