k^infinity to http://kpowerinfinity.spaces.live.com/ & http://kpowerinfinity.wordpress.com

Pushing the limits ... to infinity! This blog has now been split into two. My personal blog is now located at Live Spaces and my more technical blog is located at Wordpress

Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Dreamy Eyes and Sleepy Bodies

Thankfully, my Probability and Statistics exam went off fairly well... This is one subject that I have begun to get terrified of after the debacle in the mid-semester examinations where I scored 11/30. I just don't know what struck my on the day of the mid-sems. There were some problems I did not know how to solve, fair enough, but the ones I knew I made so many silly mistakes !!! To add to the misfortune, the teacher did not give any marks for the process... all marks were on the basis of the answer, even if u had copied it [In fact this did happen]. Hopefully, I will not have made so many silly mistakes in the end semester examinations and would pass with decent scores...

Computer Org and Architecture also went off well. The paper was pretty interesting though not easy. We had to provide the design for a 16 bit CPU... and that one question was worth 50 marks out of a total of 100. But what I feel good about is that I discovered a new way to do conditional jumping, which I had not thought of earlier... and decided to take the risk and write that new method. Hope the professor understands it [Amen]... However, in the end due to lack of time, I did a stupid mistake that would cost me good amount of marks. However, this doesnot matter, coz completing the CPU is tantamount to what we call saat khoon maaf in Hindi, that is, I will be spared even if i commit seven murders. The laboratory component is very high and so I do expect a good grade.

Tomorrow is Formal Language and Automata Theory, a very boring subject at times... and I am still preparing for it...

Heard chuddies, angrez and gora are now recognized english words... Way to go Indian English!!!

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Computers are the DNA of the new world and I am GOD !!!

Sunday, April 25, 2004

For the UnInitiated [read Cupid]

Finally, I have been successful in initiating my good friend and jhandaoing partner Aayush Shrivastava, aka Cupid, into the highly evolved art of blogging. His first blog seems more like an attempt at creative writing, and as he says, it speaks more of me, his mentor in this great and divine technique, than himself... nevertheless, it is fun reading his first blog... and I expect more from him in future... check out his blog here...

bbye
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Computers are the DNA of the new world and I am GOD !!!

Marketing in the NUU economy

As you can possibly guess, today I had my marketing management examination. Went well, coz after all you only bhaat in such exams. But it was fun answering the paper, out of a total of 50 marks 20 were on a Case study and another 10 on comprehending and relating a newspaper report with the marketing domain. All said and done, the examination was much better than the classes we've had. The classes were boring to say the least... The professor is dull and repetitive, and delivers lectures on a subject like marketing... aarrgh... Somebody teach him a thing or two about management education... Isn't it supposed to be interactive, with lots of case studies and real-world analysis. Some professors can make even highly interesting subjects like marketing unstimulating...

Ah yes, and tomorrow I have the 800 pound Gorilla to contend with. Don't get me wrong because this is my Computer Organization and Architecture examination. This is one examination which can make or break my SGPA [Semester Grade Point Average]. It is all of 8 credits, and the course which includes the formidable CPU design laboratory, which I have talked much about earlier. The subject is cool, but the professor isn't and tries to teach us outdated concepts as I had earlier pointed out...

I better start studying, coz I really haven't done enough, and so...

ciao
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Computers are the DNA of the new world and I am GOD !!!

Confessions of a Not-so-Dangerous Mind

Last few days I have been working on anonymous mailing scripts, the kind using which you can send mails to any email ID [so what's great in that!!!] from any email ID. The recipient will view the message as if it came from the email ID you specified. Kewl, isn't it. Just imagine getting mails from the President of India or George Bush. Then, you can also impersonate others and send mails from their names.

About impersonating, I had lots of fun doing that. We have a Yahoo! Group for our batch in our department, and I had lots of fun sending mails in everyone's name. I send a mail from a person claiming that he is an idiot, and also included a song to accompany that... And then from another person apologizing for sending such mails... hehe... And nobody can find out that the mail is from me :))

There is a give-away though... Some body who really knows about emails, would know that he can check the full headers of the message. Headers usually contain information about the communications between the various email servers and identify the email properties. And if the person looks more closely at the headers he will be able to identify that even though the email seems to have come from somebody else, the email server is based in Kharagpur, and will be able to figure out that the mail was sent by an anonymous mailer.

Well, the novelty is now finished... and I don't think I will be making any other use of this new script... at least not in the near future. And in any case, I am not the kind of guy to use this to do any real harm to anybody using this. It's just to play around... have fun... check out some vulnerabilities... play some pranks... and forget about it.



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Computers are the DNA of the new world and I am GOD !!!

Saturday, April 24, 2004

A Midsummer's Nights Mare

Well, well.... Exams finally... what the hell... isn't there any other way of testing our knowledge. I think the CPU design experiment was much better. At least we were getting some positive results in the experiment. Here I seem to be studying aimlessly.

To top it all, our professor seems so well entrenched in the technology of the 1960s and 1970s, that we have been taught with examples from machines of the bygone era, viz. PDP-11, Intel 8085, Burroughs, DEC etc. And believe me it all is very frustrating to read about technology that is so obsolete, that Windows 3.1 seems cutting edge. Hah, we possibly know more about PDP-11 now than anybody else in the world, coz nobody else is interested. I had been pretty excited by this computer architecture course, because I like this and want to know more about this area of computing technology. Theory has never fascinated me, and I was enamored by the way the ingenius engineers came up with solutions to formidable problems. And the solutions seem so very simple, and seem to mirror our real world.

I will illustrate with an example. Earlier, when computers asked for some input from the keyboard, the CPU would wait till it got the necessary data. However, engineers realized that the CPU was much much faster than the typing speed of the user, and could do loads of work in the meantime. But the problem was that how would the CPU would know that a key has been pressed, as it was doing something else now. Very simple, the keyboard would inform the CPU, decided the engineers. And they invented a method called interrupt processing. The term seems pretty geekish but in effect is the the means to do exactly what I have described above.

I always like such feet-on-the-ground-imagination-flying-away thinking and would like to do something that gives me a chance think like this. One think I have noticed that the toughest problems in the technology world have very simple, straightforward solutions taken directly from basic human philosophy. And the greatest inventors are those who are able to put themselves in the shoes of the machines and think of a practical and easy way to do things.

And thankfully, it does not involve thinking like theoretical computer sciencists, they try to look for ways and means to prove that a problem has no practical solution. On the other hand, engineers look for practical solutions, and if they cannot find any, they look for good approximations to those solutions or even possibly look at the problem from a different angle and try to find a feasible approximation of the solution.

Yes, as I was saying, I am always fascinated by the way computer technology has been developed and the way it is changing the world around us. And I am intersted in these engineering aspects. The courses we do in our college give us no inkling about how such practical problems are solved and never, never talk about emerging technologies, try to kindle the interests of the students. That is perhaps why so many of us opt for non-technical careers, after being hailed as the best technical brains in the country.

Well, well, it's been a long blog now and I will refill and delve back to the great mysteries of PDP-11 and Intel 8085 and make some sense of the great work our forefathers [of the computing community] have done.

So long,

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The World Reads in awe as I write !!!

Friday, April 23, 2004

It's been awhile

It's been some time since I posted, and that is because of the amount of time I had been giving to the CPU without any regard to the closing end-semester examinations ready to pounce on me. Anyways, I don't think a lot of water has flowed to the Ganges in this time and will recount some things.

First Things First... My CPU is working!!! I cannot write how much joy this gives me... Mine is one of the three batches who were able to complete it. And last year only two batches were able to do it, and none the year before. When I went to click some photos of the CPU, I was exhilerated...

But I think the best thing I liked about it was that it came with a sense of deja vu. It was almost like working for Illumination again. Illumination is the annual contest held at IIT Kharagpur, where halls have to make figures out of diyas, hung on a chatai vertically. The chatais are truly huge, some are almost 30ft by 30 ft... You work for a whole month on them, whole nights, unabated... And the watch the fruit of your labour burn out in 10 minutes... But those 10 mins are like an eternity.... They linger forever in your memory... But I think more important than the final lighting, the time we put in on working on it, which is the most important... You really get to know your hallmates, and learn to work in a team, and as a second year, also learn to follow orders...

The CPU design was much like it... Working incessantly or over a month and a half... with almost 20 hrs of lab per week in the last few weeks, and you have a memory that you will cherish forever... When I was able to run all the 10 instructions my CPU can handle, I just could not believe my eyes... Watching the dance of the LEDs to my tune, I grew ecstatic... and well, I just can not write about my feelings here... I just seem to get the words...

Besides the CPU I also spent some time studying this week. I really needed to due to the close proximity of the end semester examinations... Went through probability and statistics.... It is a strange subject, the same problem can be solved using various formulas, and I just cannot figure out which one to use....

Chalo then,,, feeling the urge of nature now.... will write more later

Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
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The World Reads in awe as I write !!!

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

See Pee You

Finally. yesterday a part of my CPU started working... It was able to add, complement, increment, load and store.... but was not yet jumping, calling, returning, especially in the face of zeroes and minuses... whatever, desiging this took a lot of strength [in the eye... imagine working with over a thousand wires]... and a lot of will -> most of my friends left it halfway because they found it too tough... However, at the same time, the cPU has been taking its toll over me... esp the studies... I am just not prepared for any of the exams...

Will write later... bye


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The World Reads in awe as I write !!!

Monday, April 19, 2004

Of Treats and Truants

Ok I am back again just after writing that nothing more will be written now...

And I'm gonna discuss about the treats I have had and the ones I am gonna miss...

Last week went completely having treats... All I had at night were treats and the ones where there were no treats I played truant with the mess... let's recount


  • Monday was the Panjabi Society Farewell Dinner... Some time went in discussing Nishith Karwa's alleged suicuide... but the food was good and that kind of evens out all things

  • Tuesday was Final Year Treat Dinner... the food again was great... the final years are really considerate when it comes to treats... I have had a good share this year... The one thing about the final years of RK this year is their sheer tempo to work for the hall... Bhupi, Amresh... these are guys who will give anything for their hall... perhaps no other batch of any hall will go so far... and these are qualities worth emulating. And it is only due to the sheer enthu of the final years this year that RK is getting the sports GC... whenever, I went to watch any game where RK was playing... final years would outnumber second and third years combined by 2 to 1... maan, working next year without such guys is gonna be a tough ask ...

  • Wednesday was our hall elections and so at night we went to Eggies, the late night food joint at Kgp... Our wing has three new G.Secs and this sure is a thing to celebrate... So we have some nice late night snacks and thus came

  • Thursday was my new wing treat... This is a kind of a tradition in RK and the best thing is that in the same wing all years stay togethter and this is what I think binds the hall together. We went to Punjabi Dhaba, had some funduuuu aloo parathe.... and bucket fulls of cold drinks... the food was especially good and so was the GPL [more about GPL some other time] of Ramu, who is my dept senior, wing mate and the G.Sec Mess of our hall.... and he promises that the whole of next year will be a treat in the mess... lets see... whether he gets compliments or GPLs... lolz

  • With so many treats, Friday was a dampener... I didnto have anything almost the whole day.... :((

  • Saturday was the Final Year Farewell... some clarification here... Final year treat is given by the final years to their juniors and the farewell dinner is by the juniors to the final years.,.. But sadly, as I have already discussed about my stomach's condition earlier.... I just could not eat anything...



Whoa what a week... man this is the kind of life one would wish for.... mmmmuuuaaaaaa

One interesting thing about the upset stomach: After 12 visits, I put up the status message 'twelve and counting' on my Yahoo Messenger... sample some replies I got:

  • even after twelve ice creams, u want more ... have some shame and take care of ur rubber tyre (around my stomach)

  • u've had 12 pegs... u must be out by now... really out

  • so twelve days to go home

  • twelve days left for exams to get over ???



And obviously, nobody could guess the actual reason... Cool stuff... just imagine... how the human mind just takes off...

more later

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The World Reads in awe as I write !!!

An Afternoon at the Software Lab in A.C.

It was another tiring day... had loads of work... Got up in the morning and after the regular ablutions, went in search of the elusive AV Cell officials. As usual it was closed, I should have expected it... Went in search in the whole institute building looking for AV Cell ppl whom I could talk to... Today we have the department farewell, and I did not want to makhao this... I am hopeful of getting a place in the CSE Department Society, and this would make the prof incharge worried as far as future functioning of the department society is concerned... whatever be the case... it wasn't entirely my mistake... yesterday was the JEE screening test... and tomorrow is the General Election First Phase... and our department farewell seems to be sandwiched between the two... All AV Cell ppl were busy coz the get duties for these... However, after a lot of running around (sadly not around trees)... I was able to get hold of Prof GL Datta, who is incharge of the place... and ultimately resolved the crisis...

This is one thing I have learnt being a Kshitij member... when you work at the Students Gymkhana at KGP one thing you surely learn is to procrastinate till the last moment until everything seems to be going wrong and there seems to be no solution for the crisis and them somehow emerge as the great hero and solve all problems... somehow,,, someway... And also how not to let the people blame you for all the problems and the last minute chaos but praise you for redeeming a really difficult situation... hehehe

Apart from that I had planned to continue work on my CPU which I will do after the lab... thankfully there is no Sensors class today...

And for the cache, the problem is still unresolved... coming back to procrastination... I am supposed to be working on this for over 7 months now... Earlier I was supposed to be working on XML based application, then that got changed and i was then working on the cache. I was actually given this work in February and this weekend was the first time I opened the file... Kgp does teach you a thing or two about doing work...

Lots has been written, and lots more will be written... but not now [remember Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings III: The Return of the King]...

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The World Reads in awe as I write !!!

Sunday, April 18, 2004

i'd always prefer cash to cache

So u don't know what a cache is... a cache is a high speed memory lying between the CPU and the RAM which is used to speed up the execution of the processor... and I was trying to figure out how to use a computer simulation program to find out the optimum cache parameters...

Basically there is a software called simplescalar see here, which is used by most research groups to simulate computer architechture... but the problem with it is that it simulates the whole program for every small change in parameters... i was trying to comprehend its source code to find out a means of removing this problem... and make the cpu execute only the instructions that are of interest to me... in terms of the CPU module i want to examine... whatever be the case, it s a tough ask from anyone... the source code is over 20 different files... and i went mad just trying to figure out which file contains which function...

then apart from that the day was pretty peaceful... nothing much to do... went to have dinner at Billoos... a thing worth noticing is that whenever there is a super special in out mess... food one day before and one day after is really bullshit   they king of average out the food quality... anyways, since i was already suffering from loose motions... and was really hungry, i decided to have some dal and rice at billoos... just to satisfy my hunger....

nothing much to write... i finally figured out what DMA is...

and tommorow i again start the great battle with the 4-bit CPU i am designing... for some of its characteristics read Gaurav Sahni's blog... he's explained it pretty well and so i will not waste time on trying to do the same...

whatever be the case... last 2 weeks have been completely taken up by the CPU and i really wish that we finish it...

bbye and good night

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The World Reads in awe as I write !!!
Yesterday was pretty eventful... on last cound I had been 12 times to shit... and till now no respite...

Anyway, we also had our final year farewell yesterday... But due to the unexpected and inexplicable murder of Nishith Karwa... a lot of CIDs are roaming in the campus... and the DoSA (Dean of Students Affairs) did not give permission for Miss RK as well as the daaru treat... he was actually reluctant to give permission even for the farewell dinner... in any case, the farewell was a non-starter... the GC treats and the hall days.. had been far more enjoyable....

I even saw 2 films yesterday,... Masti and Sindbad: LEgend of the 7 seas... sindbad is a great movie... it is a disney's animated movie... and I really enjoy such movies... they are sooooo innocent... so simple and the actors (the images) seem to act without pretences... i feel that i am transported back to my childhood... during normal movies, many a times i begin to feel that the actors are actually acting... not in these animated ones,... but i dont like 3D animation like Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc... they somehow don't give the same feeling of innocence as these disney onees....

neways.... nuf sermonizing on movies... its the time for business [studies]... and i just cannot generate enough tempo to get started....

will try anyway and will write more later
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The World Reads in awe as I write !!!

Saturday, April 17, 2004

Addicted

Ok... I think i am addicted with the blogging business... this is my third blog of the day... and I really want to record my thoughts...

I have just completed watching amovie... MASTI... along with a few trips to the bathroom (read my 2nd blog and u would know :(( )... neways... the movie is pretty funny... actually it is a sex comedy without the sex... though with lots of lewd jokes... its about 3 friends really dissatisfied with their wives who give them everything but sex... and who decide to venture out looking for biryani because the ghar ki dal does not entice them any more.... and the kind of troubles they land up in while doing so... the direction is good but floppy at times... and some sequences seem out of the blue... anyways, this is what gives the movie its unique feel...

apart from that... nothing much to write about... i have been trying to read I/O organization in computers all this while... and direct memory access (DMA) is still left...

i guess i'll just pop a medicine now and go off to sleep coz i don want any more sojourns to the toilet... so ahoy... goodbye... and catchya ltr

bbye


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The World Reads in awe as I write !!!

Mugging

This is my second blog of the day... coz i wanted a change... I have been trying to mug all this time... I/O organization in modern CPU's but nothing seems to be going in my head...

anyways... another problem is the condition of my stomach... have been to the shitpot almost 8 times since the morning... and am dreading nature's call now....

ha... what the hell... here am i trying to mug and something or the other props up so that i will not be able to mug...

chalo then will write again later

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The World Reads in awe as I write !!!

Me, Myself and the World

To start off, I am a student of the department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Kharagpur... and presently I am in my 4th sem (out of a total of 8)... and rocking!!!

I am originally from Kolkata, India... where my family stays... its a great place.. slow, untiring... and with lots of holidays ;)... besides, it has all my friends from school and many from college...

regarding friends... one advantage of studying in a place like IIT is that u make friends from all parts of the country and so u save a lot in hotel and food costs .. hehehe

neways, rite now i am jhandaoing... which means basically doing nothing...

will keep the blog updated... bye guys
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The World Reads in awe as I write !!!