Gmail is not working!!

It’s been long since my blog saw a post! Well, my life is going great after I joined as RA in SSN. I get to meet my friend Arun and few of my class mates. Apart from that I am loving my work and facilities – I get access to internet all the time. The only disadvantage is that I am behind a proxy server with stupid rules. You can’t download from even yahoo; and most of the times, a website won’t open up, because the proxy will not simply allow you to browse multiple sites a time.

Now, I wanted to sign in google chat today and tried doing it. For a long time, even after I was authenticated, my contacts didn’t load. I suspected that it was due to the proxy and didn’t ponder much. After coming home, I wanted to sign in but again the problem popped up. This time I thought that the problem was with Google itself. Yet again, I was proved wrong: my friends are able to chat in Google.

I am terribly upset now! Why is it that only my account is not accessible. Anyone with this problem?

I got into SSN :-) (Part I – The Exam)

A Google search on SSN would be misleading. You would end up in ‘Social Security Number’. I am talking about SSN College of Engineering, one among few colleges in chennai that concentrates on education rather than following marketing strategies to lure parents. Now that I have completed my course, I can’t help but miss my college life so much. Despite all the bulbs(a word from student’s argot) I got, my life at SSN is so memorable that I want to blog it. Before that, I want to digress and mention a few of the marketing strategies that many engineering schools in chennai follow and it is also the answer to the question “what SSN is not?”.

• Say that boys aren’t allowed to talk to girls; go to the extent of saying virginity guaranteed with a degree!!! — you got a bunch of happy parents lined up in a big ‘Q’.
• Say that students are treated strictly and discipline(staying away from the opposite sex and not wearing jeans are on top of the list) will be injected into them.
• Advertise that you have a spy team at all recreation zones to apprehend people who enjoy!(once a gang of my college students were inquired if they were from an X college, say Jey-pee-yaar.
• Say that we do everything for the students and we can guarantee a job placement(we use the money from you to bribe HR).
• Although it is not a part of the strategy, never talk about quality of faculty(phd purchased at the doomed university itself) and infrastructure beyond buildings, cafeteria, canteen, hostel, et cetera.
• Beautiful girls (for guys; not a serious one.. but some schools are better than the other :-)).

These are what I have heard and there are a lot which I don’t know. This is how engineering is marketed! SSN doesn’t do any of these. Although it screws you a bit, you will definitely be allowed to study and enjoy your life. Back to the story of how I got into SSN.

I enjoyed my twelfth standard to the core! Although, I was forced to attend maths tuition classes, I had a lot of time to roam around in my new bike, explore the computer(bought for educational purposes :P) and hang out with friends. Classes were fun filled with MSK debating with teachers on what they teach. I usually join the debate.

Only after model exams, I got really serious and if it hadn’t been for David, Kavin, Vijay and Satish(ASK), I would not have scored what I did. After my parents, it was David who kept me motivated all the time and sent annoying messages during the night to keep me awake. One such message, which I got on the morning of chemistry exam(3:00 A.M), was about decoding a cipher which would say something similar to “I am jobless”. Kavin was the one who tested me on chemistry over phone on the exam day morning without which I would have never known that I had forgotten all the organic chemistry equations and that I needed to revise. Vijay helped me learn (taught) the last chapter of chemistry. Satish, the one on the flat over my head, was constantly helping me after my abysmally low marks in X. Of course, my physics and maths teachers encouraged me a lot despite my low marks at school!

After doing the exams reasonably well, I was ready to prepare for Tamil Nadu Professional Entrance Exam. I had joined IIPE, a premier institute(although self proclaimed, it was good to study there) for entrance coaching. I thoroughly enjoyed all the classes and every night there was a discussion on what happened at IIPE at Kavin’s place.

This post is dedicated to all those who helped me in my XII(the most hyped examination of TN, after JEE). The rest in next!

A Google search on SSN would be misleading. You would end up in ‘Social Security Number’. I am talking about SSN College of Engineering, one among few colleges in chennai that concentrates on education rather than following marketing strategies to lure parents. Now that I have completed my course, I can’t help but miss my college life so much. Despite all the bulbs(a word from student’s argot) I got, my life at SSN is so memorable that I want to blog it. Before that, I want to digress and mention a few of the marketing strategies that many engineering schools in chennai follow and it is also the answer to the question “what SSN is not?”.

-> Say that boys aren’t allowed to talk to girls; go to the extent of saying virginity guaranteed with a degree!!! — you got a bunch of happy parents lined up in a big ‘Q’.

-> Say that students are treated strictly and discipline(staying away from the opposite sex and not wearing jeans are on top of the list) will be injected into them.

-> Advertise that you have a spy team at all recreation zones to apprehend people who enjoy!(once a gang of my college students were inquired if they were from an X college, say Jey-pee-yaar.

-> Say that we do everything for the students and we can guarantee a job placement(we use the money from you to bribe HR).

-> Although it is not a part of the strategy, never talk about quality of faculty(phd purchased at the doomed university itself) and infrastructure beyond buildings, cafeteria, canteen, hostel, et cetera.

-> Beautiful girls (for guys; not a serious one.. but some schools are better than the other :-)).

-> Promise undeserving high internals.

These are what I have heard and there are a lot which I don’t know. This is how engineering is marketed! SSN doesn’t do any of these. Although it screws you a bit, you will definitely be allowed to study and enjoy your life. Back to the story of how I got into SSN.

I enjoyed my twelfth standard to the core! Although, I was forced to attend maths tuition classes, I had a lot of time to roam around in my new bike, explore the computer(bought for educational purposes :P) and hang out with friends. Classes were fun filled with MSK debating with teachers on what they teach. I usually join the debate.

Only after model exams, I got really serious and if it hadn’t been for David, Kavin, Vijay and Satish(ASK), I would not have scored what I did. After my parents, it was David who kept me motivated all the time and sent annoying messages during the night to keep me awake. One such message, which I got on the morning of chemistry exam(3:00 A.M), was about decoding a cipher which would say something similar to “I am jobless”. Kavin was the one who tested me on chemistry over phone on the exam day morning without which I would have never known that I had forgotten all the organic chemistry equations and that I needed to revise. Vijay helped me learn (taught) the last chapter of chemistry. Satish, the one on the flat over my head, was constantly helping me after my abysmally low marks in X. Of course, my physics and maths teachers encouraged me a lot despite my low marks at school!

After doing the exams reasonably well, I was ready to prepare for Tamil Nadu Professional Entrance Exam. I had joined IIPE, a premier institute(although self proclaimed, it was good to study there) for entrance coaching. I thoroughly enjoyed all the classes and every night there was a discussion on what happened at IIPE at Kavin’s place.

This post is dedicated to all those who helped me in my XII(the most hyped examination of TN, after JEE). The rest in next!

Party up tonight!! :-))

Although it’s an old video, I luv it and just thought I would put it on my blog..

prolly, the video of the month.

Overfeeding

I have been a wordpresser for quite some time but only recently I figured out that I am not stopping people reading published contents even if I delete them in my blog. Once published, they are broadcast.

Incident 1: I tried to post a tutorial on JavaScript; posting it in WordPress was messy. When I published it, it didn’t look good and I thought I would delete it and put it somewhere else. I must have previewed before publishing: – (.

Incident 2: I woke up early morning and in half-sleep thought I would make a post. I published the post and after I did, I was fully awake. I re read the post and thought I’d better have it personal and made it private.

Recently, I began using Google reader for reading feeds. I also subscribed to my posts and I found out that all my deleted content are also being published : – (. I have seen some blog entries in my feeds but don’t find them on their respective blogs. So, if you blog sensitive content be sure before you publish it.

Papyrus clubs

This article was written for Campus Diary, an online magazine of my college for  Papyrus clubs.

Operating Systems – Which One to Use?

If you are in an engineering college, you would know of the debates that students arguing over operating systems available. This is a small comparison on what those have for the users. The two most prominent operating systems that widely differ in flavour are Windows and Linux. They were created with different intentions and it’s important to understand that what one OS can provide cannot be provided by the other.

Windows is a gift to gamers. This doesn’t imply Linux doesn’t support games or incapable of rendering stunning graphics; but, games on Linux are not as popular as games that run on windows. You won’t be finding the latest games in the market that runs on Linux; at least, not as easily as you would, if you are looking for windows games.

A good thing about Windows (XP, certainly not vista) is the user interface. Some of its user interface features are better than Linux; I am not talking about the looks, but the usability. It’s more usable when is freshly installed. It doesn’t come without a price. The system gets inefficient as you install more software, especially those which don’t come from a good source. If you had cracked a few games, you are bound to face problems.

Another reason many find compelling to use Windows is that every company, that makes hardware for PCs, tailor it to windows rather than any other operating system. You will find it easy to install drivers, and connect your mobile phones to PCs. Nonetheless, there were many problems reported by Vista users regarding compatibility with hardware.

On the other hand, Windows is very heavy and cumbersome in other aspects. There is nothing in Vista that would warrant a need for 2 GB ram space to ensure full performance. It has forced many to buy resources which are wasted to run just the OS. Many attribute it to the supposedly high graphics that Vista offers. But that’s just a fallacy. It doesn’t need so much to render that level of graphics. One can run a 3d desktop in Linux with 1 GB ram. Although it creates a market, it’s just wasting resources for nothing.

Windows also has a clumsy file system with multiple file system roots (C:\, D:\ …), which among other reasons, forces a compromise in security. Linux has a simple yet powerful file system and offers greater security. You needn’t be alarmed when you stick in a pen drive into your computer; needn’t worry about paying for the best virus protection tool that probably offers higher resistance to newly written viruses and worms; needn’t worry about numerous registry cleaning softwares. The list goes on.

Linux has a better equipped Command Line Interface and as a programmer you would find many of its features attractive. Linux is more robust in many ways. For example, you could take the infamous “segmentation fault”. If you read an illegal memory space, Linux reports a segmentation fault. On the other hand your VC++ compiler would hang. This is just an example among a multitude of conspicuous problems that annoy windows programmers.

As an engineer you would be handicapped without a UNIX like system. Windows is just for the home PCs. It’s not as scalable as Linux is. You could run Linux in a huge server machine as well as in very low configuration hardware. The entire gamut of embedded systems that use Linux talks about its scalability. Linux also is more powerful in terms of efficiency and thwarting intrusions. It’s the reason why most servers on the web run on Linux.

Furthermore, most academic research is done using Linux. If you know to use Linux well, you would have greater chances of getting research assistantships. You get a chance to modify Linux to make it suit your project better. You will have better control over the entire system.

All these comparisons don’t make one operating system better than the other. There are a several other operating systems including MAC, Solaris, UNIX, etc. They were developed for the different purposes they serve. A normal home user, inured to virus and worms, may compromise to settle down with a cheap (price) commercial operating system like windows; a corporation might purchase a tremendously costly UNIX box, or opt for an enterprise Linux box. The important thing is that if you are going to work in an engineering field, it’s mandatory to get accustomed to all different Operating Systems that are prevalent in your field. It’s fortunate that SSN provides such an opportunity to work on most of the popular environments available to the society.

I like him too ..

It was tuesday morning(13th feb 07),and my mom woke me up as usual. I had a severe ache in my limbs and that was one fine reason for me to bunk college.
After which we decided to go for a movie!
My mommy, cousin and I finally started and made our way for the 11.30 show.
We first went to Udhayam, but we din get tickets for the movie we wanted to watch. So the next option was Kasi. We reached the theatre around 11.10, however managed to get the tickets, for Deepavali.As we stood,waiting for the show,we happened to meet a lady in yellow, with yellow flowers and a yello, turmeric eatenup skin. She gave a friendly smile and started to converse. We din mind giving company, so we stood liz’ning. She carried a bag full of eatables, enough for three people and it was too late when we discovered she had come alone. She also admitted that she had come the previous week for the same movie but din get the tickets and hence she’d come early (at 10:00),that day and successfully managed to get the ticket.
She said she was a gr8 fan of Jeyyam Ravi cos this guy was too smart.After a big talk, she stood silent for a while. By then i started taking with my cousin about “thamirabarani”.This female heard me and said that she was Vishal’s fan too.”I like him a lot! His fights are gr8!!”. Fine with that. I immediately changed my topic and she overheard me wen i uttered the word “Pokkiri”. Good heavens!She broke in again!
“I’m a fan of Vijay too! And Pokkiri was too gud!”. I was like “whom on earth u don like!” and my cousin sed “probably her purushan!”
I could’n control myself, I broke into laughter!!  lolz! And now it was time for the show and we walked in!

Advanced B’day Wishes..

I was just browsing my blog and saw this:
Feb 25, 2007 at 12:56 am this was typed.. but it wasn’t posted.. I don’t know the reason.. Just thought I would publish it :D

Glad to be back blogging, on my birthday.. :) . The first thing I am doing today is blogging :D

I guess I stopped cutting cakes on birthdays and celebrating it since when I was in sixth. After that all my birthdays had nothing special to remember. Anyway this one was different and will be fresh in my memory. My lab mate and friend Arvind also has his birthday in this month(24,Feb). I was on cloud nine after the surprise cake cutting (hitting) in our college canteen during lunch hour on Friday. The big chocolate cake read “Happy birthday to Arvind and Arun “. Since I didn’t know about it I hadn’t invited anyone. My friends had informed my classmates and some couldn’t turn up due to lab and some didn’t get the information :( . Missed some of my friends whom I wanted to have there with us. Anyway many of my friends turned up and it was great..I even forgot that I have finished not even one program in Visual C++ lab that was to follow. Thanks to all my friends who came there and made it memorable .. :) May be there is a reason why most people miss their college life and badly want to do it all again.

Thanks to my class guys for organizing it; thank you Jayashree & Jenifer for turning up. That day was great!!!

Gmail bug :D

This is a small bug in Gmail. I don’t know if it’s included in the documentation. I like the way search in Google works. It’s far better than yahoo. I like Gmail’s label too. I wanted to create a label by the name “important”. Shocking! I wasn’t able to create!!! I clicked a mail and then said add new label. I entered important and the label disappeared. I tried this many times, and by mistake I typed importanta. This time the label appeared. I was wondering what was wrong. Then I moved to “edit labels” and added a label. When I gave the name as important it displayed “not valid”.. Funny thing: ) )

Happy New Year

I was musing over this topic – Why is this day important – may be because it will stay in your memory. I still remember the night when we cut a cake and watched the movie “Bala”. What a movie. I still believe it as the reason for all the problems I got that year. I got a smile when I wrote this.

New Years used to be different when I was in Todhunter Nagar. It’s a different place where you would find things that doesn’t happen elsewhere in Chennai. If you are wondering what Todhunter is, it’s the name of a British collector. It’s for government officials and these guys live in houses built for workers of the British Raj. In those houses you would find an open tank used to store water. My friend’s mom said it was originally meant for the horses. I lived in the newer apartments. There were around 144 houses in my street alone. You could imagine the number of friends I must have got to play with. It was a wonderful time.

Festivals were special. During the Tamil month of Margazhi (around the month of December), all girls (almost) would come out daily to draw the kolam. There were 24 flats in my building and 48 in the opposite. At least one family per bay(that’s a division of building in our jargon) would be out painting the kolam. Guys don’t involve themselves I kolvam. We had to just stroll and compare which one was the best. This continues through Margazhi, through Christmas, till Pongal. Those were half-yearly holidays, and that gave us the reason why not to remain stay put. New Year was special with more participants for drawing the kolam. I wanna get back those days.

New year eve will also be marked by building an Iyyappan temple, out of banana stem (pseudostem) in front of our Pillaiyar temple. That looks spectacular and it will always be crowded with a festive air. All of our friends would hang out after the midnight prayer. Hanging out meant just roaming around on our streets: D. It’s not usual to see most of your friends on road at midnight, is it?

After my life at Todhunter Nagar, New Years have been hanging out with my friends at some public place. But this year there wasn’t any hanging out though : (.

Anyways, Happy New Year readers : )(heard this is going to patented. Refer Kavin’s blog)
I also have a question -why do many people wish happy New Year in the oldest day of the year? :D

Pay Per Post

The title may be misleading. I am not advertising. Since the genesis of blogging, the number of bloggers have soared. There are a plethora of blog types – Personal Online Diary. Corporate Blogs, Picture Blogs, Video Blogs, Podcasts. Blogs equip us to do things which will not be possible without it – It allows people to voice out their opinions, especially of politics SAFELY; it allows people to talk about their experiences; serves a travelogue and lot more… One aspect of it makes it suitable for online advertising, advertising in its highest form (like Test Cricket) – bloggers write about their experiences using a product. Why is it so interesting?

You will get paid if you blog – something that you were doing it in your leisure time.

Many people have scruples about getting paid for blogging, especially the guys who have lot of anonymous followers – Why should I commercialize my blog? (What’s wrong in doing?), Why should I advocate something which I don’t use? (What’s wrong in advertising?), I don’t say it’s advertising (oh… I can mention I am advertising).

These have made many people to start a new ‘Paper Post’ (pay per post) blog.

Visit http://www.payperpost.com for more info. You don’t own a ‘paper post’ blog and if you are an interested blogger don’t forget to visit the website. The more your pagerank the more you get paid. If you have good writing skills and can make your blog interesting enough to gain anonymous readers you are sure to get a good pay.

Many in my college earn through pay per post. It can make you good pocket money. Nevertheless, none of the blogs on my blog rolls is a Paper post – all are digital ;)