The three idiots(2)

There were three friends from IIT Madras and three from Anna University, Chennai. They were stranded at the Pune Railway station and were on their way back to Chennai.

So the first part of the journey was from Pune to Bangalore by train. The Anna people bought three tickets. The IITM people bought only one ticket. When the Ticket Checker came by, the IITM people all went inside a toilet and put the ticket out. So they got away.

They all got off at Bangalore. The Anna people were a little pissed after the incident. This time, they bought only one ticket. The IITM people didn't buy any. When the Anna people went and hid inside a toilet, one of the IITM people knocked on the door. Out came the hand and the IITM people took away the ticket and headed for the opposite toilet.

They all got off at Chennai Central. The Anna guys barely managed to make it there. They were now very pissed. The last part of the journey was from Chennai Central to Guindy station by suburban rail. This time, the Anna people decided not to buy tickets at all. The IITM people bought three tickets.

Unfortunately, there are no toilets in Chennai suburban trains!

The Three Idiots

Once upon a time in a forest called IIT Madras lived three close friends. Like everyone else around, they had gone through the rigorous training that one undergoes in IITM: mess food, shortage of chicks etc.. They say that if you can live through your B.Tech here, you can live through anything. So they had finished their respective courses; the Elec guy had decided to study further and was moving abroad for the same; the Comp Sci guy got a nice paying job in some obscure Bangalore company. the Aero guy was still looking for one..

So to celebrate the time they had at college, they decided to call some arbit freshie..lets call him Golguppa and “interacted” with him through the night. The next day on their way to Gurunath, they were kidnapped by the GCU. They had committed the unforgivable crime of ragging a freshie. They were soon tried by the Disco and sentenced to death by the electric chair.

So one by one, they were taken to the execution room. The Comp Sci guy went first. He was asked if he had any last words to speak. He said, “I believe in god. God will save me.”. They tried to electrocute him. But nothing happened to him. So they said, “God is truly great.” and let him free. The Aero guy went next. They asked him if he had any last words too. He said, “I believe in science. Science shall save me.”. They tried to electrocute him too. But nothing happened to him too. So they said, “Science is great” and they let him free. The Elec guy was the last one to enter. They asked him for any last words. The Elec guy replied, “If you dumbasses don’t plug in the mains of the Electric Chair, there is no way it is going to work!”.

And they lived happily ever after

This is IIT, where there are a total of ten people on campus, five of whom do weed, eight are usually too drunk to attend classes, and every other person has either attempted suicide or made out with his professor’s daughter. Not to forget the perpetual muggu, who covers his window panes with black paper, so as to protect himself from the gaze  of 7 pointers. This is where people risk their lives, doing stunts even Batman would be proud of to get their hands on a question paper. Yes. This is IIT. Five Point Someone is probably the most factually incorrect book ever written; this guy actually praises MS Word(Open Office anyone??).

Chetan Bhagat should have been a Bollywood script writer; His books are a perfect recipe for success. There is a hero. There are his sidekicks. There is a chick. There is her evil father.There is action. There is tragedy. There is comedy(the farce that comes from IITians). And at the end, everyone lives happily ever after.

The other day I read his latest book; the one called “Two States”. All he has done is pitched Punjabis against Tam Brahms and poked fun at eccentric ways that supposedly exist among them. I read this book with no expectations whatsoever, and it turned out be a fascinating read, just to notice the amount of exaggeration in the it. What makes it popular amongst people is that there are not too many people who know about the lives and the ways of an average Punjabi as well as a Tam. They usually end up laughing at the other(you may want to read this later if you like this).

Now for some clarifications. There are 4000 people on campus. I do not do weed; hardly anyone does it here. I do not go drunk to classes. I have not tried to commit suicide since I joined. I have not made out with my Professor’s daughter yet. I do not have black paper on my window panes; I will probably end up getting close to an 8 pointer anyway. I have not tried dropping ropes from the roof in order to get into my Prof’s office at night; all their rooms are on the ground floor. MS Office sucks. And I am an IITian.

Lost in Translation

I have heard of Andhra Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh, but this one really left me wondering. Yet another awesome board @IITM

The Shaastra that was…

Never in my life had I felt before that I couldn’t carry on working like this for much longer. 3 hours of sleep a day for a week and a half straight can take a toll on you. But then, it was the week before Shaastra and I had my plate full. I had volunteered for a project to build a control system for planes, had to write a few software for the Puzzle Championships, and had already been selected for the final round for the robotics event. Apart from all this, there were classes to attend, which left no time to do anything else. I have always laughed at management gurus talking of the importance of multitasking and time management. All I shall say now is that I have learnt my lesson.

This edition of Shaastra was like any other big college Tech Fest. From what I hear, it was not as big as last one; I was slightly disappointed, perhaps I expected it to be like what I heard from others of the last Shaastra. Only looking back with an unbiased mind makes you realise how good it was. The LASER show, and the fireworks were ordinary, the Air Show was brilliant, the Event organisers had put in a lot of effort for sure; but being a completely student managed fest, their inexperience showed at times, when the media player wouldn’t work during the closing ceremony for one. Overall, it was a job well done putting it up together in the way it was.

For me, it was a real mixed experience. The control system could not be demonstrated in flight because the engine was not powerful enough to take the load;Our robots were sure contenders for a top spot, but ended up failing miserably due to a minor design flaw. I had not been so frustrated for ages, but then, looking back at the whole thing, I can only be happy with the progress we had made from the last time we had tried to build a robot. I have decided to leave the sample arena we had designed for the robot in my room .intact. The Puzzle Championship went smoothly, and I was thoroughly satisfied with my work. Adding all this to meeting old friends, and free food vouchers, it was a Shaastra to remember.

Grammatically challenged II

You can find this on the door of our hostel common room. Credits to SS for the pic.

Grammatically Challenged

How can the IIT Madras management even compile such notices?

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