Memoirs of a Lazy Scheduler

Era

2011-08-19T02:35:00.000+05:30

My emotions are lazy like me. I know about something inevitable and I know they're gonna show up. But they don't bother warming up a bit in advance. There alarm goes off at the moment of the 'inevitable' and that's when they start working up.
Melodramatically, it is an end of an era.
Nothing is going to change, but not everything will be the same.

2011-06-05T23:55:00.000+05:30

A tank full of petrol
A bottle full of scotch
A beach full of sand
A leg palm full of wounds
A syringe full of anti-tetanus serum
And
A handful of friends

A weekend full of fun.

End of love stories?

2011-05-31T22:27:00.000+05:30

First they hated love stories. Then they ended it. And to top it all they even did a postmortem.
PKP is clearly better than LKTE (haa, reminds one of a notorious terrorist outfit, clever). Most importantly because PKP is at-least original and not another "bollywood" version of some englis filam. Another reason may be LKTE is essentially a chick-flick (in my defense, I watched it because tickets were sponsored by someone else, and who says no to free movies) and PKP is a hunk-flick (though two of the male character are major pussies).
Though better than LKTE, PKP is not a great movie. Directory "Luv" Ranjan (talk of ironies) goes a bit too far pushing his agenda. Yes, we know some girls are heartless bitches. Everyone knows a few of them. But that does not mean you portray the "fairer" sex as shrewd, selfish, egoistic, manipulative (did I say heartless?), heartless bitches. If some hypothetical guy who has never been in contact with women (nice ones of them) watches the movie, he'd be so afraid of them he'd devote his life perfecting mitosis for humans. It actually makes one think that if women did not have boobs and tears (in that order), men would have strangled each one of them while they slept.And the men. One wants to kick them in the nuts just to remind them that they still had them.
Anyway, the cast played well. The high, medium, low manliness requirement demanded three male characters who all delivered. High man (i don't remember names) really look hunk, medium has delivered the epic frustrated boyfriend dialogue (the one doing rounds on facebook walls) flawlessly, and the low (liquid) is the best of them.
Three guys, three bitches. They played their part (looking smoking hot) extremely well. And did other things as well.
So, if you are a guy, call up your bros and go and enjoy this flick. If you are a girl, and unless you want some lessons in bitchiness, you can skip this one.

Article vs Comic blogs

2011-05-30T16:55:00.000+05:30

Article vs Comic blog

Reviews - A bunch of them

2011-05-24T03:07:00.000+05:30

I guess I'm just feeling critical tonight.

Spoilers ahead!!!

Dum maro dum

I don't know if it was a really shitty movie or was it because of the enormously annoying dude sitting on the next seat. This dude was the most easily entertained person in the world. You could make him laugh by flipping a coin. He had to laugh (violently) at all jokes, one-liners, MCs, BCs, KLPDs, coin flips. I was dying to get out of the movie hall.
Movie part wasn't helping as well. Story was bad, worsened by story telling. Pratiek Babbar, for whom I have great respect, disappointed. Abhishek, for whom I have no respect, did not and sucked. Deepika's item number is the worst this year. Only good things were a few good one-liners, Rana and "Tum gaye kyun".

Source code

At first, I was not sure why I did not like this movie. Story was compelling, acting was good, effects (though few) were satisfying. Then I realized, that the movie had a great hero but a very poor villain. I need a strong, terrifying villain to make the hero's adventures legendary. Maybe Heath Ledger has spoiled me. Maybe not. Great movies always have a strong negative character. Source code's villain had very dark character no doubt. He wants to demolish a city with a nuclear bomb for no apparent reason. But his presence did not portray his villainy. It remained hidden and hence failed to terrify.

Love ka the end

Despite reading negative reviews, I went for this movie, and maybe because I had low expectations, was not disappointed. There were some unbearable moments, but they were really few. A timepass film, made as a timepass film. Shraddha Kapoor looked good. And her side-kicks played well as well. The little sister was hilarious.

iWoz (Book - Steve Wozniak's biography)

Though plainly written it offers a an exciting and compelling read. All because of the amazing story that has been Stever Wozniak's life. He's the gandalf of computer nerds and he makes you believe that. In fact, I found him too proud on more than a few occasions. His tells are amazing but sometimes great stuff looks even better when presented modestly. Feynman's biography is an excellent example. Also Mr. Wozniak has keenly left out the juicy stuff, i.e. details about his tiff with Mr. Jobs. Still a must read for computer geeks for the sole reason of the impact Steve Wozniak has had on the industry.

Fanboys - The first encounter

2011-03-10T11:57:00.000+05:30

We recently had a CS tournament in our office and a colleague manager, who has mac, asked me if it runs on mac. I didn't know the answer and hence decided to find out.
This is how I reached here.

I've read rants about fanboys a lot. But never encountered one with such ignorance and fervor before. May be because I never went on mac forums before.

August 4th, 2003, 04:19 AM

hulkaros

The Incredible...

Join Date: Jun 2002

Location: MacLand

Posts: 1,986

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Straight away with Mac, 100% nope!

Maybe with VirtualPC on a >=Dual G4/1GHz or with RealPC if it will be released ever!?

What about other "better" games like SOF2, Q3, MOH, UT2K3, etc? There are Mac versions of them out there and they are great too!

CS is SOOOOOO old

__________________
I find your lack of faith... Disturbing!

Windows is a 32-bit extension to a 16-bit graphical shell for an 8-bit operating system originally coded for a 4-bit microprocessor by a 2-bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition

...not the sharpest knife in the drawer...

Besides must-close-each-sentence-with-smiley and "SOOOOO old" thing (I'm not even mentioning the signature text), look at the date of this post. This was in 2003 and this is 2011. CS 1.6 (1.6 and not source) is one out of nine games to be played in WCG 2011. His so called "better" games are nowhere to be seen today.

While others are busy bashing Sierra for not porting HL/CS to mac (HL2 and hence CS:Source are btw are now available natively on mac), which is at-least sensible, this dude continues bashing CS while simultaneously displaying his complete unfamiliarity with PC gaming.

August 4th, 2003, 11:03 AM

hulkaros

The Incredible...

Join Date: Jun 2002

Location: MacLand

Posts: 1,986

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CS simply sucks compared to most nowadays network or single playerd 3rd person shooters... It was good 2 years ago... Now? Nah! Most people play that old 3rd person shooter because they cannot afford to upgrade their systems (or even worst buy new ones) in order to play smoothly the current crop of 3rd person shooters!

HL and/or CS are SOOOOO old and Half Life 2 is around the corner and I hope that it will be released for Macs too!

Give me Quake 4, Doom 3, Half Life 2, etc. with my 5.1 Sound System and Dual G5/2GHz and you people can enjoy as much as you think you enjoy your CS

"3rd person shooter"! WTF! KMN!
Of course now comes the time to show off I-can-buy-mac-I-have-loads-of-money-which-you-non-apple-people-dont-have. He ends up putting Q4, Doom3, HL2 and CS in one bin and while finishing the sentence realizes that he forgot to end the previous sentence with a smiley and now must compensate with one extra. So nice of him. I bet he would have bought a shiny silvery smiley if apple ever sold one.

1 movie maaf

2011-03-02T01:21:00.001+05:30

I'm not sure why I did not like this movie. Was it the screenplay; or the mild headache I had from before the movie; or the bad mood I was in (the reason I went for a movie in the first place); or the freakishly annoying child that kept crying every 5 minutes till the point that its parent's finally had their stroke of common sense and decided to go home and leave the hall in peace; or the horrible horrible make-up. Seriously who, rather what, looks like the way old PC looks in this movie.
This movie is like one of the golmaal 3 type comedy movies which have few enjoyable moments. The only difference is the former show all such moments in their trailers while VB at least kept them for the movie.

Sinhagadh conquered!

2011-01-24T23:03:00.000+05:30

I've been to sinhagadh a million times, but never before yesterday I felt like I've conquered it.

(I know it's shitty picture, but believe me, I was not in a position)

I originally had planned to start on Saturday morning. But I couldn't put off Friday the gaming night, so Saturday morning was washed off. I managed to put off Saturday pool night, but still could not get up before 11 am on Sunday. So as usual I said to myself, fuck it, had a small lunch and started at 2.30 in the afternoon.

Till khadakwasla it was literally no sweat, and I was wondering if I had grossly underestimated my cycling potential and if I was actually the next Lance Armstrong who had till now not discovered himself. But pretty soon I did discover myself and my true potential, right at the start of the incline i.e. the toll naka.

Before this sudden incline there's pretty much smooth ride, so I came cruising in the higher gears. But as soon I hit the incline, my otherwise ultra light weight cycle felt like a 500 cc machismo. I actually had to get down, as I just could not push the pedals down. I couldn't even pedal to get into a lower combination. So I got down, lifted the rear wheel and pedalled so that the chain would get into the lower combination.

Then, I started the slow and steady incline. I found out that the the lowest possible combination on my bike had actual purpose other than making the bike this expensice. But then the twists and turns started, the gradient became steeper and steeper. I had to stand on the pedals to climb those twists. I was breathless and drenched in sweat. With every push I was fighting for not giving up.

I reached the first dhaba (it's actually named, sinhagadhcha pahila dhaba), and decided to take a break. I drank some water, and had some limbu sharbat. After 10 minutes of rest, I decided to get going and started again.

Haa, after 200 metres, I could not believe how had I climbed so far. I just could not push down those pedals. I waited for a few minutes and tried again to fail again. So I decided to walk a few turns and get to a bit forgiving gradient.

So after a series of walking and pedalling and around 5 breaks and thousands of glances, finally I reached the top at around 5.45 pm. I could not stay there for long as the sun was setting fast and I wanted to get down the ghat in daylight. So I had another sharbat and water and this picture, and started the downward journey.

I thought it would be awesome journey winding down the slopes, but I could not have been more wrong. The decline was, if not worse then at least as bad as the ascent! The road is so bad, my palms felt like getting drilled and my fingers ached clenching the breaks so hard.

Still I reached the bottom in just about 25 minutes, and stopped for a while to let my fingers get their share of blood again.

It was pretty smooth again till home besides the fact that I was very very hungry and I was getting phone calls every 5 minutes.

I reached my building and the usual 4 floor climb with cycle in hand did not seem half as tough as usual. I already felt like I had lost 5 kgs. May be because I could not feel my ass, or my legs, or my palms, or my balls. But it felt awesome.

Thanks Vinay for being an inspiration. I hope to be able to pedal all the way to the top one day.

Trees, branches, leaves, pipes...

2011-01-15T00:22:00.000+05:30

Recently a friend of mine sent me this forward. Another thread from Infosys' funny-thread-generation machine. I replied her that I'm physically pretty well co-ordinated and have not faced any such incident. My mind unfortunately is not so co-ordinated and as a result at least once on seeing a tree (real physical one), I've pondered for a second - why does this things seem to be inverted! She probably did not appreciate endeavors of my poorly co-ordinated mind, and deleted me from her contact list. But that's not the point.
The point is, as my friend mohsin says, CS has ruined English for CS people. Pipes, threads, lists, queues, stacks, pointers, the list is unending. Even the names of programming languages are copied, java, python. (A friend's mother thought her daughter is taking advanced sewing classes when she saw multi-threading books). I fail to think of one nomenclature that has been invented by CS people. Ofcourse company/program names do not count. I need a fundamental concept of CS which has a truly original name.
It's not like CS is the only field of word-thieves. We have pumps and valves in our bodies, couples in our machines, charge in our circuits. But biology invents long unspeakable (literally) words (diseases mostly) everyday. We have so many sons, mesons, bosons, in physics.
Why the pioneers of computer science have shown such a disturbing lack of creativity? Was it because of their love for metaphors? Was it because Computer "Science" was hardly developed as an exact science? It's a heap (there goes another one) of hacks patched up by hairy, fat geeks in basements and garages and library corners of universities. As I always say, every problem in computer can be solved by an added layer of abstraction. All software is layer over layers of same stuff. These "pioneers" were social losers and did not have high level of formal education. But isn't that true with all the pioneers?
May be CS is too new a field and new words will be invented when ideas too complicated to be expressed with current words are invented.

tic toc

2010-10-07T23:47:00.000+05:30

I'm high right now. Yes, I'm :P

Smoked some...okay just let's say smoked something, today. For the first time. So I just wanted to share the experience because it's just awesome.

During the first joint, I felt nothing special. I was wondering if we did not get good stuff. But one of my friends already started up and down. But it slowely started after 10 minutes and peaked after 20 minutes. I was feeling slight dizzy in the beginning and then I could not do two things at the same time. And thats when I thought this is awesome. I could sense everything, hear everything, but things, apart from what I was doing, just did not register. It was like my brain became single threaded. I mean, I could not think about something and flip channels at the same time. When I started to think about some thing and my fingers just stopped hitting the plus minus buttons on the remote. My thought chain completed and I asked myself, why the hell I am watching etv bangla. It was a state of total focus on any one thing at the time. And this is why its awesome. Single threadedness rocks!

But I can imagine people doing some stupid stuff, like writing about it on their blog, in this state.

Anyway I was not seing any flying pigs so I got one more, but the effects did not increase. I dont know how many I have to smoke before I see any flying cats..or was it pigs..It's been an hour now. I just realized that the song "tic toc" has been looping since I started to write this post. I remember this because the title is name "tic toc" which I took from the song from winamp because I could not think of any thing else.

I don't think I can remain up to see how long the state lasts. So that remains for some other experiment :p

2010-09-20T02:22:00.002+05:30

The wait will be over today when himym airs s06e01...tbbt s04e01 is scheduled for sep 23..yay!

I the mean time i'm starting with southpark season 5 and futurama season 2.

My name in Pi

2010-04-27T13:43:00.000+05:30

7665767384 - that's my name. Each pair of digits is decimal ASCII value of each letter. I wonder where would I find this sequence in Pi...need to find out...check this space for results :D

Whiteout - should be blacked out

2010-03-02T11:04:00.000+05:30

(In the director's office, after shooting of the movie is completed. Current length of movie is 99 minutes)
Director : Damn this movie is bad!!!
(Assistant getting uncomfortable)
Director : I dont know how the editor sat through all this crap. We are screwed. Studio is never going to put this up.
Assistant (clears his throat) : Sir, may I suggest something.
Director : Go on.
Assistant : Lets take a shot of Kate Beckinsale's super hot bottom and put it in after a few minutes into the movie. The audience (coughs) __unfortunates__ watching will surely sit merely due to the hope of another sight like that.
Director : Brilliant!! Assistant, you are a genius!!!

Length of the movie increased to 101 minutes. Movie sits for months on studio's shelves and is finally released.

Cast:
Woman with super hot ass : Kate Beckinsale
Unfortunate : Lalit Mishra
Others : Don't matter

Karthik Calling Karthik - A Beautiful Movie

2010-03-02T00:27:00.000+05:30

WARNING : Contains spoilers!

Awesome movie. The ending does not surprise you as much as Fight club, but pretty good. May be because I've had watched Fight club was thinking this should not be like that. Deepika looks gorgeous. Humour is witty. Background score is good. Performances are good. No need to say much about the songs. BTW, important point to make. Movie seems to give a misguiding message to the ladies; that there are only two types of guys out there - Jerks or psychos! Ladies, not true! Also, can a hindi movie not have tragic ending. IMO, karthik's death would have been a better ending.

2010-02-20T01:39:00.000+05:30

"cellar door". the concept of a word's beauty from it's sound is tangential for me..still if i had to pick a word it would be..damn it.."cellar door" has prejudiced my mind..
arghh...too difficult to think about a word without thinking about it's meaning..
okay..it's "zeppelin"! (awesome music has no influence over me on this)

Movie review - Ishquiya

2010-02-02T22:36:00.000+05:30

Thanks to Vodafone tuesdays caught Ishquiya[imdb.com] at half the rate. Great story but imo

Omkara > Kaminey > Ishquiya.

Kaminey was super fast and ishquiya failed to keep me intrigued the whole time. The three main characters and the villain have performed well. The peripheral actors seemed a bit unnatural. One time watch though.

Jar, jameen aur joru; teeno jhagde ke chhoru. Will be interesting to see if he manages to capture jameen factor some time.

First day riding

2010-02-02T09:45:00.000+05:30

Rode to office on my brand new sparkling awesome bike. Surprisingly took less time than it takes when I drive (~35 minutes). May be because of less traffic.

Anyway few things I want to note down -

You only appreciate slopes when you are riding a bi-cycle.
Traffic signals make awesome rest breaks.
People do respect cyclists, they don't mind waiting an extra second if they have to wait for me to pass by.
I hate being over-taken. Will see who overtakes me when I get my next set of wheels ;)
I need a seat cushion.
I tend to forget to shift gears down when stopping, improvement necessary.

Anyway bike is really good. If there were no slopes I can pedal anywhere. It's so easy to ride. Front brakes seem to be a bit shaky, but it no problem since I apply both brakes at the same time. Still will get this fixed on my next visit to the store. I hope I will be able to survive through the day (it's tuesday - fast day).

2010-02-02T00:34:00.000+05:30

Yes guys...it's true! This is Lalit Mishra's blog. Finally! And all went according to the "plan".

I got inspired by this and decided to activate my new year resolutions from February 1st.

Perform activity towards better health (passed - bought cycle and rode for 15 kms - yay!!!)
Spend an hour learning something new (failed)
Start a blog (yay!!)

Check out my new ride

Gotta sleep now. Gotta catch low traffic time tomorrow.