How I keep myself updated with my mail, twitter, and the blogs I follow when I am not able to access the Internet

I shall be joining IIT Madras in some time now. Rules there don’t allow LAN and Internet access for the first four months(No idea why; they say you need to experience IIT life, as once you get your computers, you get hooked to LAN/Internet gaming, and you will hardly enjoy the campus; This is true for a lot of people, from what I have seen from my last year at NITK). So I felt the necessity to keep myself updated. So, with a little help from Google, and a bit of tweaking, I figured out how to get regular updates by SMS(this works only in India, though you could use some alternate services to work it elsewhere; this does not cost anything, and is way better than using GPRS/3G).

So here is how it works. Gmail and Twitter have authenticated RSS feeds. This means that feed readers trying to read these will prompt the user for Username and Password. Hence authenticated feeds are not supported by most readers. Moreover, to view these feeds, there needs to be an interaction between the user and the reader, and hence an internet connection is needed.

So we use something called a Feed-Proxy. These are sites, that automatically supply the login details when asked, and export the feeds to thier own RSS feed. In simpler words, they convert authenticated feeds to unauthenticated fields.

Google Labs India has a feature called SMS channels, from which one can subscribe to Channels created by other users. You can create your own channel, and RSS feed updates can be sent. So we use these SMS channels to send the updates to your mobile as the unauthenticated feed supplied by the Feed Proxy(Most blogs have their unauthenticated feeds, and can be accessed in a similar way).

I shall post some useful links here:

Gmail Feed(Authenticated):

Twitter Feed(Authenticated): http://twitter.com/<username>/with_friends

Feed-Proxy: FreeMyFeed-Enter the authenticated feed address, username and password. The RSS feed link is to be used later;Copy it somewhere.

Google SMS Channels: You need to login using your Google account.If you have not already done so before, you need to verify your phone number. Click on the create channel link, select RSS feed, and paste the feed address appropriately. Fill the rest of the details and you are done.

Edit: Use tinyurl to convert your feed proxy feeds from relative URLs to absolute URLs as relative URLs may fail on SMS Channels.

SMS Channels takes some time to activate, so be patient

Books are meant to be read

After mustering enough courage, I made my mind up to watch the latest Harry Potter movie. I couldn’t get a constant opinion from anyone; a lot of people said that the movie was good. So I thought it would be better than the last few and watched it. And yet again, it was a disaster(opinions may differ). The storyline was changed, there was hardly any content,  the storyline was loosely bound, and there were more lovey-dovey scenes than anything else. I found some of the special effects good, but that was about it. This adds to the huge number of movies, adapted from books that according to me were just not good enough.

I had finished the Bourne series of books over summer, and when I told one of my friends over chat that “I just finished Bourne Supremacy”, he was like “Yeah. It was a great movie”. That was when I first heard that movies had been made out of the Bourne books too. So, I downloaded them, burning precious midnight oil(Literally;I have unlimited internet only at night. I do most of my big downloads then). I saw the first two, and they were most unlike the books. They were according to me Good movies, but Bad Bourne movies.

When I had joined NITK, this was precisely the topic for my group discussion at a mock placement event. There have been some great movies, that have been adapted from greater books(If you haven’t done it already, read the Godfather and watch the movie). But the majority of such flicks turn out bad. They also screw up your imagination at times. You look at it from the Director’s eyes, not yours. Also very often, these books are too big to be made into a 2 hour entertainer. It seems that the Harry Potter guys have learnt a lesson..The last movie will come out in two parts.

What Filmmakers should probably realise is that if they want to deviate from the book, they must not associate it heavily with the book itself(James Bond movies are probably the most watched movies of all time, and we all know the response Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci code got). Hopefully, they do follow up, and save many book fans from those hours of torture(sleep sometimes :)).

Craziness on campus. What you should (not) do at NITK

My one year at NITK was perhaps the most memorable of my life. It was a completely different experience altogether for me. Among other things, there were a number of crazy things that I did at college, which make me roll on the floor with laughter whenever I think of them. Here are some of these moments of madness.

• Prank calls: “Hello, I am calling from Vodafone. You have won a gift voucher worth 100 bucks. Please collect it off the Coop Society”(There was a lot more talking actually done). This was a nice way of getting to know more people, as those who got pranked often asked me to prank their friends and so on. I felt really guilty though, when one of the persons actually tried to go to the Coop(which is about a kilometre from the hostels) and it started to rain.
• The Yellow Merc: When you tell out jokes, a crowd gathers. And when you try to tell a never ending joke, more and more people start flocking. The Yellow Merc are a dreaded couple of words among many of my friends now. I shall not tell the joke here. I will probably break the world record for the World’s Longest Web Page!
• Home made Flamethrower: I think this happened in the second semester. We took a nearly empty bottle of deo and a long wooden pole, at the end of which a match was stuck. We lit the match, and sprayed the deo. This was awesome! Flames nearly 2 metres in length lit up the dull hostel corridor. One of the best sights I have seen. P.S. Don't Try this at home
• Of Fire in the hole and FACK!: LAN gaming was the in-thing at college, and counter strike is one of the all time favourites( lots of people play DOTA too.. A few like me also play AOE and FIFA). Every now and then, you would hear cries of “Fire in the Hole” and “Go Go Go!”. What was worse was that a CS addict two rooms away would swear whenever he lost, and his fucks sounded a lot like “FACK”. Me and my roomies got so irritated that we started bellowing “FACK” whenever we heard him, and sometimes invited people over to our room to join us. Imagine 20 people in a room shouting “FACK” !
• Corridor Cricket: We preferred playing cricket in the hostel lobby over the ground because 1. We didn't need to run a lot. 2. The ground was too far away. 3. We could play at any time we wanted. With some inspiration from Ajanta Mendis, I somehow discovered a unique ball that stalls or even spins backwards. It was a real joy to watch Sovi trying to have a swipe at it, and he could hardly touch it. When he did, he probably got out. I probably got him out more times than all the other people put together(Sovi has a big build, and you can imagine a big guy trying to have a swipe at a tennis ball with a small bat in a small area, and missing :)).
• How not to give presentations and speeches: For my professional communication course, I was required to deliver a speech to the class. My topic was Google, and I started by shouting out “Are You Evil” to the crowd. Not once but thrice(Don’t be evil is Google’s motto). The instructor and others were mildly frightened i think :). In the end, he praised me for being “dramatic”, and gave me a good grade too. For a presentation for the Ethics course(I had corruption), I repeatedly called one of my classmates(Sovi again) “fat”. It might not have been acceptable in too many classes, but I think it worked out well.
• Kannada Classes: Half the people at college did not know Kannada, and they were glad to learn the basics. Unfortunately, some of them ended up asking the wrong people for help. We told them that “Naanu”(meaning I) actually meant You, and “Neenu(meaning You) meant I. And like most other languages, one of the first things that you learn while learning a new language are the abuses. It was hilarious watching the people shout “Naanu <abusive word>” at each other. Our laughing only encouraged them to carry on. I had the whole thing recorded. I will try to retrieve it and post a link :).
• Farter Virus: With a little bit of dumb coding, I managed to write a code, which changed your Windows sounds to Fart sounds. So every time you double clicked something, the computer farted, every time you plugged in some hardware, the computer farted. It farted for each and every thing you did. It was really funny to watch some of my friends get frustrated. But then, I eventually set the things right. Not too many people trust me with their laptops now :)
• Operation Power Cut: In the beginning of the year, I was one of the few people to have a computer at hostel. That meant that almost anyone and everyone would be on the computer all the time. It got rather frustrating at times, so I formed a group of friends who could help me out on these. I would just sms them, and they would cut the power to the hostels momentarily, and then restore it back(It wasn't difficult to find the mains switch; We dubbed it Operation Power Cut(OPC when other people were around)). As I didn't have a UPS, the computer would shut down, and people would leave before the power was back
• For the IEEE virtual bounty(I am not a member of IEEE myself, but I in with some ideas), we set the theme was super-villains, one needed to answer the questions posed by each super-villain to go to the next round. But there was a twist in the plot. We set the final villain as one of our good third year friends(now final year), and made good use of a photograph that we had snapped at a quiz on the day before the treasure hunt. The question itself was based on a 1940's movie that he always talked about(Most Quiz club members and a few others probably know about this). We made sure that this person played the treasure hunt, dropped clues aptly, so that he progressed to the final round. In fact he was wearing the same shirt as he wore in his photograph when he finished. The look on his face was really funny :D.
  
• There was so much more that I did in the year. It was truly an amazing experience, spending this one year at NITK.

Traffic rules in India

• There are three traffic signals: Red-Stop only if the person ahead of you has stopped. Amber- What is that? Green- Go!
• It is a crime to have less than three people on a two wheeler.
• The last lane of the road is always meant for parking ( rule applies for single lane roads also).
• One must normally drive on the left of the road. Driving on the right side is allowed as long as you use the horn.
• The first lane is reserved for fat people on low powered scooters. They are not expected to leave the lane, no matter how much you honk.
• You are expected to know of the “No Parking” zones, even if there are no signs to show them. Any two wheeler parked in a No Parking zone is expected to be picked up by the traffic cops in less than 5 minutes( Mine got taken away 3 times already). Four wheelers are normally spared as it is difficult to haul them into the Vehicle pound.
• Local Buses stop in the middle of the road only. Also, speed limit restrictions are not applicable to these buses.
• 1 stud on a fast bike+ 1 moderately good looking chick on a slow scooty=Recipe for a traffic disaster!
• Auto drivers reserve the right to cut across at 90degrees on a busy road if they see a pedestrian sticking their hand out
• What is the easiest way to make 10,000 rupees in one day?? Become a traffic policeman and set up shop outside a college
• Provision 12842817452 of the constitution states that cows have the liberty to sit, sleep or crap on roads, and you cannot do anything about it.
  
• There are many more rules left for me to be discovered. Watch this space for more :)