Ankit Bahuguna (@codekee)

Simple Executions

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 15 May 2016 14:17:00 +0000

How simple is it to execute an idea into a product? A thought provoking idea can ideally simulate a person to think and navigate in the depths of his mind to come up with ways to execute it. But question is how easy or simple is it to shape to the form that you originally intended? The answer is not straightforward as one might think.

Ideas are very fragile and if not taken care, they can vaporize even before their formation. They are key to innovation and making a change in existing scheme of things. One can claim that imagination is the breeding ground of ideas. In that fantasy world one can defy all laws of physics known to man, be-killed and reborn, have a god-like state where literally anything is possible. But, when the light is lit and the bubble of fantasy is blown away, the mirror of reality is upon us. When we imagine, we seek the un-achievable, the ever so impossible in our wildest dreams, but in reality we refrain ourselves, thinking that reality is different from fantasy. Sometimes, its logic and defying logic is considered craziness. When you look into the historical facts, how many times a "crazy" idea became a game changer. There are no numbers to back this, but some of the most successful companies in the world started in the atmosphere of craziness. So being crazy, in the current context can be a blessing in disguise.

So, you have a crazy idea, what are the next steps. In my opinion its delivering a simple execution, without over-thought. Over thinking kills creativity. Often the best ideas have simple executions. If its not simple to execute (not accounting the complexity behind the process governing execution) i.e. understanding in oneself if its possible to get 'X' thing done for goal 'Y' using 'Z' resources, even if there are hardships along the way. Having a clarity of thought to go the distance, is essential for simple executions.

Its not about ideas alone, what matters is making them happen and simple executions is the way ahead, hardships are just a consequence and the price all need to pay for success.

tl;dr Best Ideas have Simple Executions.

Falling Walls Conference - Berlin 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 21 Nov 2014 19:43:00 +0000

Which are the next walls to fall?

November 9th 2014, marked 25 years of the falling of the Berlin Wall. The actual day in 1989 was a epic day in the history of the world. It was not just about taking down the physical wall, but it was shattering the barriers which existed between human beings at large.

Falling Walls Labs Berlin 2014

To commemorate this event, Berlin hosts the famous Falling Walls Labs and Conference every year since its inception and brings the world's leading researchers whose work impacts the area of science, technology and society to share the same to the world. This year, I got accepted and participated in the Falling walls labs as one of the 100 participants from around 40 countries. I received the A.T. Kearney scholarship, which took care of most of the expenses and I am thankful to them for that.

Presenting my talk at Falling Walls Labs 2014

I presented my talk on the topic "Breaking the wall of Building Effective Communities" , sharing my experience volunteering with Mozilla at India and Germany. The format was simple 3 minutes per speaker with a maximum of two slides each. It was really a difference experience to jot down the most essential points in the two slides and explaining them to the audience in just three minutes. The jury too consisted of distinguished scientists and leaders in various fields in science, engineering and technology. It was thus a great experience to talk to so many talented individuals, listening to their work in areas from Automotive engineering to Chemistry to Biology and sharing Mozilla's mission with them all. As the event was live streamed with massive response on twitter (#fallingwalls), it was personally a great event for me as it helped me grow as an individual. The platform allowed me to promote Mozilla's mission to a global audience of intellectuals and sharing my experience of building and working for various communities was spread far across various countries.

All participants of the Falling Walls Labs 2014

Here are my slides:

And last but not the least, I had some time to explore Berlin and celebrated the 25 years of the historic event with the locals. Here are some pictures:

Some Random Landscape of Berlin

River Spree

Berlin Academy of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (Falling Walls Labs Venue)

Neue Nationalgalerie (Falling Walls Conference Reception)

Radial System V (Venue for the Falling Walls Conference)

Ducks at River Spree

River Spree, Berlin

Me enjoying at the Conference Venue

Balloons formed a mock-up wall at the same place, where Berlin wall once exited.
Later in the evening, the balloons were freed in the night sky.

The tags associated with the each Balloons commemorating 25 years of the event.

Pail Framework - Thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 21 Jun 2014 16:34:00 +0000

In the book Big Data (MEAP), Nathan Marz describes a framework called Pail (dfs-datastores) [1] which is a data storage solution on top of hadoop. It supports schema, merging small files into a large chunk for better hdfs performance etc.

Some points to note about Pail:

Pail is a thin abstraction over files and folders from the dfs-datastores library.
Pail makes it significantly easier to manage a collection of records in a batch processing context.
The Pail abstraction frees us from having to think about file formats and greatly reduces the complexity of the storage code.
It enables you to vertically partition a data-set and it provides a dead-simple API for common operations like appends, compression, and consolidation.
Pail is just a Java library and underneath it uses the standard file APIs provided by Hadoop.
Pail makes it easy to satisfy all of the requirements we have for storage on the batch layer.
We treat a pail like an un-ordered collection of records.
Internally, those records are stored across files that can be nested into arbitrarily deep sub-directories

When using Pail, our system will be treated as HDFS and hence we can use Hadoop tools to access these files. Pail files are named using globally unique names, a pail can be written to concurrently by multiple writers without conflicts. Additionally, a reader can read from a pail while it’s being written to without having to worry about half-written files.

Typed Pails

We don’t have to work with binary records when using Pail. Pail lets us work with real objects rather than binary records. At the file level, data is stored as a sequence of bytes. To work with real objects, we provide Pail with information about what type our records will be and how to serialize and deserialize objects of that type to and from binary data.

Ex: To create an integer pail:

Pail<integer> intpail = Pail.create(“/tmp/intpail”, new IntegerPailStructure());

When writing records to the pail, we can give it integer objects directly and the Pail will handle the

serialization. This is shown in the following code:

TypedRecordOutputStream int_os = intpail.openWrite();

int_os.writeObject(1);

int_os.writeObject(2);

int_os.writeObject(3);

int_os.close();

Likewise, when we read from the pail, the pail will deserialize records for us. Here’s how we can iterate through all the objects in the integer pail we just write to:

for(Integer record: intpail) {

System.out.println(record);

}

Pail - Appends

Using the append operation, we can add all the records from

one pail into another pail. Here’s an example of appending a pail called “source” into a pail called “target”:

Pail source = new Pail(“/tmp/source”);

Pail target = new Pail(“/tmp/target”);

target.copyAppend(source);

The append operation is smart. It checks the pails to make sure it’s valid to append the pails together. So for example, it won’t let us append a pail that stores strings into a pail that stores integers.

There are three types of supported Append operations:

copyAppend
moveAppend
absorb

Pail -- Consolidate

Sometimes records end up being spread across lots of small files. This has a major performance cost associated with it when we want to process that data in a MapReduce job since MapReduce will need to launch a lot more tasks.

The solution is to combine those small files into larger files so that more data can be processed in a single task. Pail supports this directly by exposing a consolidate method. This method launches a MapReduce job that combines files into larger files in a scalable way.

To consolidate a pail we do: pail.consolidate();

Summary

PROS:

It’s important to be able to think about and manipulate data at the record level and not at the file level. By abstracting away file formats and directory structure into the Pail abstraction, we’re able to do exactly that. The Pail abstraction frees us from having to think about the details of the data storage while making it easy to do robust, enforced vertical partitioning as well as common operations like appends and consolidation. Without the Pail abstraction, these basic tasks are manual and difficult. Vertical partitioning happens automatically, and tasks like

appends and consolidation are just one-liners. This means we can focus on how we want to process our records

rather than the details of how to store those records

CONS:

- Lack of Active Developer Support

- Not many developers working or committing to the official GIT.

- Not may open source projects using it.

- Lack of Documentation.

Additional References:

[1] https://github.com/nathanmarz/dfs-datastores

[2] http://misaxionsoftware.wordpress.com/2012/07/10/step-to-big-data-hello-pail/#more-190

Yes! I Am Alive - Reporting from Munich, Germany

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:09:00 +0000

It's been 2 years, 2 months and 13 days since my last post on this blog. That's quite a long time of inactivity and quite a long time to catch up in one post, so i will slowly try to bring out my experiences over time. For now, I just want to state that i am active again and this time reporting from Munich, Germany. It's such an amazing place. I currently live at a student wohnheim at Oberschleißheim.

Meine Student Wohnheim

I am now a Master's student at Technical University, Munich and to make it easier for people to catch up, i have re-updated the About Me Page, which has all the current details of my work. I make a special effort to keep my LinkedIn Profile updated, so that too can be a good starting point as well.

An important distinction about my university is the amazing slide situated at my faculty (Mathematik - Informatik). Below is one picture, I took just before Christmas holidays in 2013.

Slides and Christmas Tree at TU Muenchen.

I see, that my last post was the one, where i shared my class valedictorian speech delivered in 2012. Well, a lot happened between that day and today. In short: Got a research publication in a top tier conference in NLP, met amazing people at IIT Bombay and TU Munich, traveled to Germany, US and Austria, started learning German [Ja, Ich spreche bisschen Deutsche. :)] and started cooking on my own. Really, I am not joking take a look:

Arhar and Malka Dal with Rice, Cucumber Raita and Salad

I will be more active, with more techy and nerdy posts, as I have got new and fresh energy this time to drive me through. I will focus towards sharing a lot of experiences, gained working in domain of Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning and Distributed Systems. So stay tuned for more stuff!

Danke! Tschüss.

Farewell - Top Guns - 2012 - Vote of Thanks!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 03:37:00 +0000

A very good evening to all of you! Respected Anurag sir, Akhil sir and respective Head of Departments and other faculty members, my dear friends and my lovely juniors. I Ankit Bahuguna is standing here to talk about what defines our batch and how this journey means personally to me.

Truth be told, I was least expecting to be invited here to give Vote of thanks representing our batch this farewell. But, I am very happy and I feel honored to be here with you tonight!

To be honest, the journey didn't begin too well... Coming here, I was shy, dejected and had a lot of pain in my heart that i had no one to share with. And it happens when you loose everything you ever loved in life! By that i mean both tangible and Intangible things. But i always believed that i could make things different. I had faith and all i needed was some strong results. In due time i realized how different my life was and today after spending almost one and a half years at IIT Mumbai and having a world wide recognition in 8 different organizations and contribution in both research and development. I know that its just the beginning. Everything i have been through so far is just a glimpse of the future to come.. as if each event screams to me to get ready... the next one will be even bigger!

I might sound a bit episodic tonight ... but, i will take this opportunity to answer some questions, left unanswered in the past. I will certainly like to mention a few events i was associated closely in college, be it presenting research papers, winning debate competitions and Technika Naitus, to inauguration of LinCom and Anant - first technical Initiative of this kind in Rajasthan, To the Induction of spoken tutorial based workshops. I really want to thank the college management: Anurag Sir, Akhil Sir, Rahul Sir , Yogi Sir, Ajay Saini Sir, Vivek sir, Satyabrata sir, Abhinav sir, Rajesh Sir, Mohit Sir, Shalini Ma'am, Sarveen Ma'am, Abhilasha Ma'am, Nimit Sir, Vivek Vyas Sir, Gurmangat Sir and Vishal Sir, who helped me greatly in making me realize my dreams. Akhil sir... I still remember the famous heated up one-on-one discussion at CL 1 on life, academics and goals... I hope i didn't disappoint you much..even if i did... I hope to cover it up with all the good work in the future :) I will also take some time to thank all my mentors: Dr. Leena Vachhani, Dr. Kannan Moudgalya, Dr. Santosh Nornha, Dr. Pushpak Bhattacharya (IIT Bombay), Dr. Hanumanta Rao (Yahoo India), Chris Mills (W3C), Vineel Reddy (Mozilla India), Anna Brandt (Opera) , Dr. Nagarjuna (TIFR) who really helped me with their useful inputs whenever I felt troubled. Thanks a lot!!!

College life is incomplete if i do not recall my friends and all the fun i had with them. Special thanks to Suresh, Dhiraj, Smiti, Himanshu, Bhashker, Kriti, Shubham, Vikram, Abhishek, my seniors Komal and Sanjay Sir for helping me in various stages of my life! Hardwork pays divident ... but great friends give you life.... Suresh literally help me get my life back which i had forgotten how to live long back. And Dhiraj.. oops DK -- If i was the genesis behind a lot of great things, then the real force/ the support/ the person who stayed up for me when i wanted him among all the adversities.. it was this one man... named Dhiraj Kumar Sharma.. Thanks a lot my buddy and my dear roomie :) There are several others in the list and don't feel offended, your contribution was equally important... and i know that from the core of my heart! I Love you all and thank you!!!

The discussion will be deemed incomplete if i do not mention all the girls of my batch. Which to be honest are looking glamorously beautiful tonight.. seriously, a site i missed dearly in the IIT Mumbai campus (not that i complain too much about Mumbai) :P

I want to thank and congratulate the entire LinCom Team superseded by efforts of Dhiraj Sharma to one put up a great event like Exergie 2012. I really found it worthy and one among the highest level!

A special mention to all my very special juniors - Hitesh, Jagdish, Maruti, Ayush, Aditya, Sudeep, Neeraj, Anjili, Archana, Ramanpreet, Shashank, Anil, Gourav who helped me in executing a lot of key events in the college. Their dedication is simply astounding! And i wish all my juniors my very best... As always i will be there for you in case you need any help... just drop me an email... :)

I stayed in the college hostel for 3 years and though i was never a great fan of our mess food, i still want to appreciate the efforts of the entire mess team and a special mention to Mahaveer for keeping me alive, while i was away from home... :)

I wasn't here regularly for the last 3 semesters and i perhaps i might be the most ideally suited person among all to face the consequences of a farewell. All this time I missed you all and I missed everything... And now we are towards the very end! But yet i think the feeling is sinking in deep... slowly and may be by the end of the night it will be at its peek! I did leave this place but in my heart it was my college, a college i found great friends, learned a lot about life and relationships, a place where my hunger to succeed aroused and i developed the strength to do the right thing no matter what the circumstances be!

Late Steve Jobs, who was an exceptional visionary and creative thinker of the modern era is one of the few people i am inspired a lot just by his sheer work ethics. So, as a farewell message I want to share a few lines delivered by Steve on life and faith:

Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.

Before, i really say Sayonara... I want to put up my signature adieu to all: Be well, stay happy, do good work and keep in touch. And yes... No Goodbyes … Just say “see ya soon”.....Thank you very much! Keep Smiling :) :) :)

Welcome 2012 :)

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 09:10:00 +0000

Another year flies away... and now its 2012. And no matter whosoever is my reader, i wish him a very happy and prosperous new year and hope that you have a great year ahead.

Sometimes, i wonder what difference does a new year really make in our day to day lives?Some may put up a point that we will now be writing a whole new year in our date column. But, frankly looking closely what does a new year really signify?

To bring my perspective into light, i may say that a new year's day is just an extension to all the other days (here i mean 31st December) that we have in our lives. So what's the real fuss all about? And to be honest, if we self introspect we can find the answers pretty easily... Looking towards a new year is looking ahead in life. It shows the positive side of a person, who always wants to look ahead in life and make things better than what he has. And with a new year, he looks to either get a fresh beginning or continue in a better way than the way he is proceeding. A new year is nothing but a new hope towards life, that things will be better than the previous year. We tend to move forward with this positive energy and make our lives better.

On the other side, there is this one year gone out of our lives. Talking about myself, i have certainly grown to new level since last year. The year 2011 was special to me for more than one reason. As i discussed in my previous post, i experienced a mixed bag of extreme sorrow and bliss in one single year. I realize now how much my life has changed and what all is in store for me is really unthinkable at times. I wont think too much about the future right now but i certainly believe in one fact that there is a force beyond self that drives me everyday and is associated in all the aspects of my life and that will always amaze me, no matter where i am and what i end up doing. 2012 will be another crucial year in my life, something that will shape a large part of my future life. It would also be an year when i finally will be an Engineer. As, with any other individual, i too would like things to be balanced. By that i mean, a mixed bag of sorrow and bliss is fine until the balance is tilted towards bliss more. Yet, I think the last year was a great learning experience for me. And going by that all i wish is to take forward the same perspective into next year as well. I have few key hurdles that i need to cross this year and certainly would like to do so as perfectly and smoothly as possible. I am now coming to terms with the fact that towards the bottom of everything, a person has to find an answer, a result, or an output. I know process is the key, but getting to the end of it with a finite output is also important.

I hope for the best and i wish the same for everyone around me or who is directly or indirectly associated with me. Wishing u again a great new year 2012. Have Fun <3

Feeling a rush of energy in my veins...

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 19:45:00 +0000

Its been a long time since i updated my blog and not surprisingly i was really really busy. Currently, i am pursuing my third consecutive internship at IIT Bombay and is working on my final year project involving Distributed Computing using Hadoop MapReduce and Natural Language Processing. But before that i was involved in my 7th semester exams and prior to that i was busy with placements.

And for the record.. Yeah i did get place in TCS (Tata Consultancy Services). Sadly, the placement procedure lacked any feeling of excitement so i am not in a mood to describe that.. perhaps that can be done some other day. Apart from all the college stuff i was left with a minor setback... umm.. setback might not be the right word but it delayed some of 'good work' in progress. Cutting the story short, i was to appear for my GRE on 16th December but i was stupid enough not to inquire about a passport, which ironically i didn't have and it was the sole requirement to my entry into GRE examination center. Anyway, i reschedule it with some time in my hand and to carry on with all the stuff that i have planned i will be giving the same on March 13th. I too will be appearing for GATE on 12th Feb and currently it largely remains one of my supreme priorities. Meanwhile, i joined here in Mumbai at a very good time this time, unlike the previous occasion where my entire 2 month stay was marred by the infamous Mumbai Rains.

I was fortunate to attend Mood Indigo the annual cultural festival of IIT Bombay. The most hall marking was the live performances at OAT by Agnee Band and The Raghu Dixit Project on The Indie Fusion Night and the performance by KK on popular nite. There were international performances by Akcent and Karnivool - A progressive rock band from Australia. The most phenomenal for me among all was the perfomance by Ragu Dixit with his ultimate tracks like Ambar, Har sans me har dhadkan, Mysore se aayi etc.

Raghu Dixit Live in Concert at Mood Indigo 2011, IIT Bombay

Raghu Dixit

It was a truly mesmerizing performance indeed. I really had loads of fun dancing my way all along on the awesome tracks and enthralling music which touched souls.

The Taj mahal Hotel and the Gateway of India

Sunset at Mandwa Beach

Moving on the fun i had on MoodI, i also visited Alibagh and Madwa beaches by taking a ferry from Colaba (Gateway of India). And it happened on Christmas day, which made one of the best outings since some time.

Alibagh Beach

Both the Mandwa and Alibagh beaches are beautiful full of natural scenic beauty. The Alibah beach also had the Kolaba Fort across the sea shores and it was primarily used as a Naval base by the Armies of Shivaji.

Cannon at Kolaba Fort

It was a really nice experience at the beach and the nearby fort, not to forget the 1 hour journey across the Arabian Sea on a ferry, where we spotted a number of sea vessels which we usually do not confront in our day to day lives.

Kolaba Fort, Alibagh

All in all i had a wonderful time lately after all the hard work that was put up early during the year, i look forward to closing this year on a high. I am back at work, and by that i mean supreme work. I can sense that a new energy is flowing through my veins and i am excited about all the prospects i see for my self in the near future. I am glad that year 2011 turned the way it did. It begun with the most memorable incident, which was a life changing one and also constituted 2 of the most heart breaking incidents of my life so far. I shall take this year as an important year of my life and look forward to 2012 as another very important year of my life.

But, the biggest point to mention here is that there is a positive energy which is flowing which tells me that things can be done right, no matter what... its more important to put my ideas into execution than just to have them. Today the demand is to execute ideas fast and successfully and not to worry about the quality too much and somehow my methods are merging on those lines. I can see what is next step and I am already on it.. the only thing that is on my mind is not to waste too much of time and work hard.. Success or Failure.. doesn't matter to me anymore. What matters now, is that i am at my best and i give more than a 100% as i always do :)

Onto the Opera Campus Crew!!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 17:23:00 +0000

Well, i formally announce that i have been chosen as the Campus Representative for the Opera Campus Crew. The confirmation email from Anna at Opera came last morning and i was really happy to be a part of such wonderful community consisting of such creative and logical minded people.

Now part of the Opera Campus Crew :)

As an Opera Campus crew member, i will be having the following responsibilities:

To spread the word of Opera and its Web Standards in the Campus and associated regions.
Conduct workshops and make students aware about the role of Opera in shaping up today's world of Internet Standards.
Make students familiar with the latest updates in the world of browser technologies and enhancements provided by Opera to make experience on internet faster and safer.

I hope to abide by these responsibilities. I am really happy to be a part of Opera Campus Crew and will contribute towards its initiative.

Thanks Opera :)

Unexpected, Shocking and Unfair and a new Goal!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 20:27:00 +0000

Again after quite long layoff i am blogging again.. Well by now everyone here knows how much infrequent i am with me updating my blog. Anyway that's not what i will be discussing about here this time around. What i am here to describe is a generalization of some of the recent happenings that have left me shocked and reminded of the loneliness i have in my life.

Because of some key reasons and the gravity of the matter at hand i will not be out-stating a lot of details but basically i would like to ink it down here to whats been bothering me and whats really on my mind!!! To begin with, it has been quite a time that i will remember in my life. The IIT fiasco was a grand success and i received great accolades for my work here but i always knew my life wasn't just confined to the realms of the academics. Coming back to college i had a stern test to pass (this has nothing to do with academics) .. one that i always feared and it happened exactly the way i had projected it. I had always feared this day would come one day and even the course of events were quite descriptive to what would eventually happen. And serially each event unfolded with utmost accuracy to my perception and then the day arrived.. The end day and believe it or not again.. i just walked away accepting yet another fate that life had presented to me... I accepted it and was gearing again to move on..... I have issues explaining things to people that happen in my life and again i kept this very most important event of my life within the proximity of my heart so that nobody can ever guess to what really happened! I don't complain about it.. I know it nobody's mistake, perhaps not even mine. This is my life.. Good or Bad.. I have to deal with it.

Moving on. I was in the middle of my exam season. i would rather call it an "Exam-athon". Yup you heard it pretty right... some 18 exams in 25 days... And it took the hell out of me. But unlike the last time i was better equipped dealing with my life (I must say Mumbai did help). I put my chin up high and made through this busy schedule to give out my best in my examination. During the fag end of this season, life hit back again.... I was sick and could barely move a step... I had to cancel my glorious journey scheduled to IIT Mumbai two days prior to the day of boarding my train and instead had to make an emergency exit to Delhi wherein i wasn't sure of where i was with all my energies drained and my health affecting my decisions. I still dont know what happened to me, but yet again i faced a stern test from life that i never expected to happen at this juncture.. I was thankful that somehow it didn't affect my exams too much, but frankly i don't remember much about it... I just wish everything was fine.... That's all i can wish for!!!

Somehow, i reached Delhi thanking that i had finally made it to my relatives place in one piece. I don't remember much about the day that i had landed in Delhi but i had a sigh of relief that i can have a few days off and certainly i needed a break and regain my health back to refocus on my creative spree and re-continue at IITB. But again the winds took a turn..worst was still to come. It was barely three days since i had landed in Delhi... Calamity struck and caused Mayhem which i still cant forecast could be how much more damaging that what it has already been in my life!

I cant disclose the details (I apologise to my readers), but this one was the big one..... Giant Killer and you know how it originated.... right in the center of my life! I had never expected it.. I had worked hard enough to avoid exactly this.. And i had always prayed that please.. everything with my life but not this... but it happened!!! For the first time i was handed a distinction i swayed away from my entire life.. Which i had accepted only once before which believe it of not had changed my life on its head. But this time it was forced upon me.. I couldn't have accepted it.. I did nothing wrong, I was the right person.. I took the fight on and fought bravely till i ran out of those who can help me and some of the closest members that i wished could have laid a help for a little longer. But in the end it was a quiet acceptance.. It wasnt just about the fact that i had accepted something that blots something so scintillating but the real point with me was that it was again what was right at the given time.. I again did the right thing.. It was unfair to me but what i did was fair and important to be done because i had a responsibility towards those who loved me. After a few days the air settled again and everything went back to normal, but again only one heart was crying and it was mine and nobody knew about it!

Its quite strange this life of mine has been ... I am gifted and i do know that.... I can perceive the world in the most fairest nature and can look upto it at its best potential but the fact remains why did this come up with a price tag that compensates with my luck and my happiness? This was unfair and shocking! I have learned to face these situations now thats why nobody comes to know about it but am i keeping myself.. my real self away from people. I fear this way i will never be able to share with anyone what i really want or who i really am. Is being too careful too dangerous.. Is my love toxic for my own life ? and the biggest question which shivers me from top to bottom - Is my own life against me..? as i can see that only thing that brings me down is me.... I am not loosing hope but i would rather be prepared for something more serious than just this. So far i have tried to sway these things just to my ownself what if it trickle over to those who are close to me and love.... I must do something about it..and i also know that i am pretty much capable of achieving to what i aim and work for! But again the fact remains, is this what my life wants me to do.... I know i am here for something very special and i am being trained for something so big that has yet not arrived. At 21 i have had plentiful experiences in life and as the days are going by i am getting tougher and life is getting harder.. but i am finding some ways now to be happy and have found ways to stay alive among the worst nightmares of my life happening in front of me as reality.

I also have to raise the bar.. and i know it.. And it begins today after a week of madness and recovery of my health it seems good to go.. This post was not just to remind me what i was going through and how i should move in a positive direction as there are no choices other than that.. I never have them... But this was also about the fact that i wanted the world to know something that yes i accept that my world is different than this and i know they dont like it.. but no matter what i have always belied in what i have done.. partially or fully i have always given it more than 100% and i will continue doing so.. My goals are bigger and the course of life is full of stones... I have fallen down before and each time when that happened i have set myself even bigger goals and achieved them even if they meant that i had to take myself close to death and take out every bit of strength present in my soul to achieve what i aimed at.... I know for sure something doesn't like me but i have hope that one day will definitely come when things will be the way it should have been for me.. I just wish it does come soon and i could life my life even after it!!!

From right now the bar has been raised higher.. I have to refocus and more importantly restart!!! Life again will never be the same.. Huh! Quite Ironical Indeed!!

Axe on the head but still singing glory songs :)

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 18:06:00 +0000

Hie!

Well.. we all know what deadlines mean.... and its a sort of a pain in your life one after the other..it seems the work never seems to end. Since the past two weeks we have been forced (in an unconventional way) into Hackathons.... days and nights seem equivalent. It doesn't really matter what time of the day it actually is, when your are glued to writing the codes in front of your computer screens and we work round the clock (Don't be mistaken i am talking about the 24 hr one...). But its damn fun to say the least.... Anyway, the project on which i was working i.e. the Single Board Heater System Virtual Lab is up and running... We have made some awesome changes and also automated a lot of processes, which were conventionally designed for a manual intervention.... So, kudos on that ... well done to the entire SBHS team :D. The next part is the "Documentation" of this work... And here is what the painstaking work begins. I have been busy writing the server deployment guide, the architecture of the system and the SRS to be in place. There also has been some talks about the optimization issues to be looked into the whole communication process which is purely based on the weird remote invocation method used in JavaSE's network communication (Thanks a lot Victor for that.. Huff!!) . But its quite resolved now ..... we have been quite a force lately.... \w/ !!!

As per the research work...umm have been studying the research papers in CS 620 course... been busy analyzing various aspects of Xen and KVM Hypervisor technologies. I m getting more inclined towards building up with the Eucalyptus (preferably a Xen Based) module for my project although there are a few specific versions which i will try out in parallel one being the xen cloud version. I recently have also been involved in learning to develop on the ANDROID platform..... I must say thanks to Vivek Khurana!

Work has put me at stretch considering m also managing my semester studies on my own, as for some reason, i want to study just about everything during this time... certainly my concentration levels are high.... allowing me to stick to the seat for that long :P. Although the serious deadlines have me under a lot of hammer ... and each day i am just trying to get an escape from that with the help of Music Therapy ( They say na.. when music hits you... you don't feel the pain! True for me i guess all my life)... Each day the galore goes from Indian Ocean's Kandisa to the Chords of Eric Clapton.... and somedays my bro records a song for me which is a real onus to listen to... something different from the league guess... Amateur Fun!!! On a more serious note... i must say that my brother has certainly picked up guitar very quickly..and each day he is getting better...picking up the musical way makes him way too better than me!!! And i want to wish him all the very best as well.....

PS. Cricket world cup fever is on..... but so far its not been able to get a hold of me... perhaps these are the signs that might just put India finally across the line.... All the best to the 'Men in Blue' (one i.e. sponsored by Nike) :P.

Welcome to the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay :)

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 05:52:00 +0000

IIT Bombay, Main Building

Again..... after a very long layoff i blog again but this time its a different feeling and a different mindset all together. I am now blogging as a Junior Research Fellow @ Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. And yes i must say that probably this has been the most memorable time of my life in terms of academic learning experience.

Automation Lab (CDEEP)

Its been barely a month now, as i joined on the 31th of January 2011, I have been stationed at the Automation Lab (CDEEP Department). I am working on the Virtual Lab Project a sponsored project by MHRD Government of India as a part of my research work. As a junior research fellow i will spend in about approximately less than 3 months here at IIT Bombay and i am hoping to enjoy every bit of my stay here in this temple of excellence.

Powai Lake Side View (Powai City)

Again like any other new place adjusting to conditions is what remained a tough act to conquer.... Coming to IIT Bombay, i faced a new problem... 'Commutation'. I stay at Tansa House - titled as the "King of Campus" and the Automation Lab is roughly 1.5 km away from it. So, everyday i have to take that route 4 times and hence about 5km of daily walks are there in the schedule.... Its a huge shift to any of my previous accommodation as it was barely a few hundred meters that you traveled to reach your destination. Although it must be said that the campus of IIT Bombay is simply beautiful.... Henceforth, that tiredness and weariness to travel that far goes away. The campus is a peaceful place away from the otherwise highly crowded Mumbai City, which many people compare to hell at times (it is to be noted that this is what usually all metros are referred now a days) and is a nice setup for the students to learn and make outstanding careers.

Victor Menezes Convention Centre

Coming to the learning experience.... In a months time, i have attended 3 international seminars and 2 workshops. The talks are given by the people who are pioneer in their fields and their work has been of immense value to the world. Some prominent talks, that i was fortunate enough to attend was of Dr. F C. Kohli, Dr. Tom Leighton, Dr. John Hopcroft, Mr. Ajit Balaksrishnan etc...I also attended the Annual Symposium of the IITB-Monash Research Academy, which made me aware about the recent research and development activities happening in and around IIT Bombay and Monash Univerity, Australia @ Victor Menezes Convention Centre. The Centre itself is a world class, with state of the art facilities making it an amazing time to even attend otherwise so called boring talks and seminars :P

Infinite Corridor

As we walk down the 'Infinite Corridor' we can find the rich blend of academic blocks along with nature with many trees in between the Infinite corridor connects almost each and every major academic block on the campus with all the departments connecting to either side of it. It is an amazing site as you might end up waking with someone who could be the next candidate for the Nobel Prize :)

Although, there is still something that teases me everyday when i walk along the mighty path of 4-5 km everyday.. the IIT Buses. Well, not on their part but on my part... as everyday i think of making a bus pass for myself to end this rigorous journey, but soon i realize that these are the moments i want to cherish ... and perhaps more time on foot also gives me that much extra time to feel the pleasure of being an IITian. :)

IIT Bombay Busses

Winds of Change!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 16:58:00 +0000

Hey, Aloha....

To begin with, i would pay my apology to be so inconsistent with maintaining my blog and also making it radically annoying to all the readers to go through the same "My return Post" post again and again....

In the last 6 months, i had so many events occurring in my life that i virtually was off my mind to even think of putting those things on the blogosphere....

Honestly speaking...i have been in the top form of my life....

Today, i proudly call myself to be a Red Hat Certified Engineer, an author of 4 research papers published nationally and one Internationally acclaimed research paper that means a total of five research papers, an Engineering student still maintaining an aggregate of 80% after the end of third semester, a proud student who started Anant and LinCom in my college and a student who was selected by Indian Army for their SSB Selection Test..... best of all... m in 5th Semester.

I was happy to be a part of 2 national conferences presenting 3 papers of mine @ LIET, Alwar and ACEIT, Jaipur. and one International Conference @ Nirma University, Gujrat. I also participated in a National Level Project Competition and won 1s rank in my branch and was awarded 2nd Rank overall.....

Coming back to Anant and LinCom, well that is a dream come true.... Anant or the Centre for Advanced Computing and Research is a Research Lab started to incur students towards research at Arya College of Engineering and IT. and LinCom is a Community developed with the hardworking vision of RHCE certified students in order to promote Open Source and Linux as an operating system.

It was great fun to learn about working with systems real time and setting up advanced servers to make it really a grand success as it was inaugurated on 9th November 2010.

As i had so much of work on my hands all this time, i was henceforth away from a lot of things which also included missing trip to home... On the other hand i do not regret not going, as i am pretty excited towards the coming semester and will look forward to a similar and exciting journey lying in front of me....

Hey.... gtg, have to study nw :( ... have exams beginning 29th Dec...Bye.. tc :)

My Return Post!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 12:54:00 +0000

Alrite friends its been about 2 months since i last posted something on my blog..perhaps the tstament of the fact that i was really busy with my schedule. Humm.. Well i keep getting involved in a lot of stuff so no point discussing that here. Folks! One.. now i have also added JAVA in my armory, a completely OOP language which has great scope even in the development of the applications for www. Moreover now i am also a Trained Red Hat Linux Engineer (would soon give my certification to be crowned as a Red Hat Certified Engineer) and same is thought for the Sun Java Certification, but it sometime from now.

I am into my research work as well. Recently i submitted my paper for the IEEE International Conference on Parallel Data and Grid Computing PGDC-2010 @ Jaypee University, Solan, Himachal Pradesh. It was titled "Energy Efficient Computing using Cloud".

Now the next step is what really excites me... I am trying to take private Cloud Computing to a whole new Level. By integrating the concept of Cluster and Grids on a Cloud Platform with Linux as a back-end operating system (Primarily i have started with Red hat Linux), we can get access to a whole new unexplored dimension of cloud computing which can be really useful for the local systems which cannot get access to publicly owned clouds and help build own clouds which shares the common resources of the network at a far more superior performance which is never experienced before.

Semester Exams are too approaching. Today my preparatory leave for the semester exams would begin. As i gave my last midterm examination today i realised that i have a lot to study for the semester exams if i do not want to face a situation where my position in the college is compromised. So, i am determined not to give up things easily.

A minor hiccup occurred a few days ago..which could have turned into a grave problem.. Thankfully the problems seems to be resolved now. Hopefully i can work with my purest and soulful interest without worrying too much. Although the problem had a silver lining... m glad it happened cause i can now stay relaxed as i learned and got the best out of what the situation had to offer.I am happy for one fact now i know as to how exactly i should lead my life further...

Exciting days lie ahead.... Wish me Luck!!!

Thanks for being a patient reader.... bye for now.... Cheers!!!

I Won Inter College Thesis Writing Competition!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 12:50:00 +0000

Hey all you lovely readers, there is a good news from my side. I have been judged the Winner of the Inter College "Thesis Writing Competition" at Sarvatra - 2010 held at UDML College of Engineering here in Jaipur.

I presented my thesis on Cloud Computing and it was chosen to be the best among the top seven entries chosen after the preliminary round which originally had a total of 15 entries.

I received a cash prize of Rs.500 and gift vouchers worth Rs 32,000 as the winner of the Event. Just like to say thanks a lot to every one who prayed for my well being and my success... Thanks a Lot!!!

Cryptography - MD5

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 12:24:00 +0000

For the first Part of this - hopefully ongoing - series, I decided to look at the MD5 hash algorithm. It’s one of the most commonly used cryptographic algorithms out there and I would claim that nearly everyone has a password somewhere that is stored with an MD5 or similar hash.

MD5 stands for Message-Digest Algorithm 5, and is - as already mentioned and you probably already knew - a hash algorithm.

The MD5 hash algorithm is in simple terms a deterministic function (or blackbox) that will calculate a 128-Bit hash value from a given string of well-nigh any length … yeah, I had to read this sentence over a few times, and it’s just rubbish. If I wanted to write something like that, I could’ve gone Wikipedia. So let’s crack this one open.

You feed the MD5-Box a string of any length you want. This “string” doesn’t have to be alphanumeric of course, any stream of bits and bytes is just fine, like the bitstream of a file, for instance. The output string has always a length of 128 bits and is usually noted as a string of 32 octets, like this one: “B5A8AD3A9CDD6A6953FCBE6975FDE734″ (try guessing what I typed in though).

One of the most important things about hashes is, that they are so-called one-way-functions, meaning, they only encrypt stuff, and can’t - and must not - be decrypted. So hashes are often used for storing passwords in a databases. The same plaintext will always be hashed to the same cipher text with MD5, so all you have to do to check if your password and the stored (hashed) password are identical is to compute the hash of the given password and compare it with the stored one.

There are several demands a good hash-function has to meet in order not to get cracked in the first two hours of its lifetime.

The first one is, that a minor change in the plaintext (like “ghacks” and “gHacks”) should have a big impact on the computed hash (”D1B81FBDEB51C3A850E37177A5A22498″ and “DB3E20DC88EF0B6CA6A8FD5DA448D323″). If the difference would be only minor, and I know the plaintext and hash of “ghacks” (which I do, of course), and have the hash of “gHacks” without the knowledge of its plaintext, I could easily guess it.

The second very important demand is that a hash-function produces a much smaller memory imprint than the original stream. If you hash an 11MB installer to verify its integrity and have to download another 10MB of hash file as well, it’s pretty useless. There are lots of other points to keep an eye on, but these will (and have to) suffice.

As I mentioned already, hash-functions such as MD5 are most commonly used to store passwords without actually storing them in plaintext, and to verify the integrity of files. When you put a file online, just compute the hash and publish it together (but separate) with the file. Ever user would be able to determine if the downloaded file has been tampered with by simply comparing the hash of the downloaded file with the one published on the website.

Now I’d like to say something about security and known (and partly successful) attacks against hashes and MD5 in particular.

Due to the reduction (a 2MB file gets reduced to a 32-octet hash), information gets lost. This gets perfectly clear, if you take a look at the numbers. There are only 2^128 possible hash values, but infinite possible plaintexts. So in a best-case-scenario, after hashing plaintext numbers (2^128)+1 you have at least two plaintexts getting mapped on one and the same hash value.

So the first attack tries to make use of this very fact. When the same hash value is calculated from two different plaintexts, it is called a collision. Depending on the scenario of the attack using collisions, the birthday paradox comes in handy as well, increasing the attackers chance of success.

That would mean that you do not attempt to break the encryption or guess the user’s password when trying to crack a password, but just try to create another password that leads to the very same hash value, granting you access to the account. Of course, knowledge of the hashed password is required, but without that information, most attacks on modern ciphers are more than just tricky.

Edit: please take a look at comments for more clarification on the types of attacks mentioned above.

The second attack is based on a brute-force attack, which is basically “try all possible keys/passwords”. Depending on the numbers this could take some time. Let’s say you’ve already acquired the target hash value and your machine is able to try 100 keys per ms. That would make 100.000 keys per second, and 6.000.000 keys per minute. 2^128 hash values. That’s 3.4E38. We’re talking “age of the universe in seconds”-numbers here.

But there’s more to it than meets the eye. There are several options to reduce the available possibilities. Can you reduce the amount of possible plaintexts maybe? Maybe the password only allows to be 8 alphanumeric letters long? Can you have a look at the used algorithm and find something that may help you further? Do you know part of the plaintext? Maybe a name of son/wife/pet? Then you could combine it with a dictionary-attack. Every bit of information helps reducing the number of possibilities further, which in the end leads to a situation like this:

The following is a description of an attack to crack the user passwords of windows accounts (up to XP), and implemented in a near-perfect way by ophcrack. If interested, do make sure to check this tutorial, it’s quite fascinating and yet unbelievably scary.

Windows saves hash values of the user passwords, but if a password is longer than 7 signs, it gets broken up into chunks of length <= 7. Then the chunks get converted to uppercase only. Microsoft used DES for creating the hashes, but there’s no difference regarding this kind of attack.

So the attacker knows pretty much about the plaintext and can reduce its possibilities by a great deal. Now a computer starts calculating all possible hash values for this particular range of plaintexts (up to 7 digits, uppercase, numbers and some special characters only) and stores them in a database. Once finished, the database is from about 0.7 to 4 GB in size and can be easily transported using a thumb drive or a DVD.

Now all the attacker needs is a few minutes alone with the target computer and it’s done. Again, check the tutorial mentioned above, it kinda blew my mind. 1.7 minutes was the average time in this experiment for cracking a password to your windows account. Ouch.

Since I read and heard all of the above some time ago, I started wondering about the benefits and risks of using MD5. Most security experts discourage the use of MD5 nowadays for its known vulnerability to collision attacks. It should be replaced by something like the SHA-1 or since it is kind of outdated as well the even newer SHA-512. But that doesn’t help against the attack last mentioned, apart from increasing the possible hash values to even greater dimensions.

After some time, I found this very helpful article about spicing up your hashs to be more secure. I have to say though, these tips are NOT increasing the security of your hash function in a mathematical way. Luckily, the real world’s not all about math, so I think they are an easy way to get some extra security.

Edit: Please keep in mind that the tutorial posted here is not a perfect implementation of salts. It’s - as always - a source for ideas, not a perfect solution. But I always like it more if it’s explained like that, easy and understandable and in a rather digestible way. Please correct me if I’m mistaken.

If you want to screw around with MD5 a bit, here’s a link to an applet where you can do just that (SHA-1 as well). Switch to MD5, enter some text and press “Text digest”. Try guessing my hash from above (reaaaal easy), if you like and post the answer in the comments. First to score gets a cookie.

MD5 Decryptor: How to Decrypt MD5 Hash and MD5 Passwords

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 12:18:00 +0000

MD5 decrypter to decrypt MD5 password hash. In this article, I have covered basics of MD5 encryption and decryption and how one can decrypt MD5 hash and MD5 password.

Decrypt MD5 hash, MD5 password:

MD5 is one of most secure password encryption method available today. Actually, MD5 is not encryption, but a hash. Normally, encryption is two-way process ie you can decrypt encrypted password. But, MD5 generates hash and not encryption. And you cannot decrypt hash since hash generation is one-way process and it is not possible to decrypt hash.

How is MD5 password cracked???

MD5 hash cannot be decrypted. But, still we are able to crack MD5 password hash. The method used to decrypt MD5 hash is to match the generated hash with already available database of hashes.

Generally, large number of MD5 hashes corresponding to various words and passwords are stored in databases. While cracking MD5 hashes, the given hash is checked and matched against all available hashes in database. If a match is found, then the word (actually password) corresponding to this hash is returned as cracked password.

But, the problem occurs when password is not regular.
For example, if you are using password say - techotips which is very rare word.

To encrypt this password using MD5 go to: http://www.crypo.com/eng_md5.php
You will get MD5 hash: 856ac1cf9328e0a35288600bdf85021b

Now, go to any MD5 online decrypter (list given at the end) and enter this MD5 hash. I have tried to crack hash for techotips with most online MD5 decrypters I know and found they were not able to crack this hash. Why??? Because they don't have hash for "techotips" in their database and hence they didn't have any match. So, they were not able to crack this hash.

In contrast to above situation, consider the following MD5 hash:
63a9f0ea7bb98050796b649e85481845

This hash is cracked by most available online MD5 Decrypter services. This is because the password is commonly used word- root.

Thus, we conclude that MD5 decryption is possible only if password is commonly used word.

Some of the websites for online MD5 decryption:

- http://www.md5crack.com/
- http://md5.rednoize.com/
- http://www.md5decryption.com/
- http://www.md5decrypter.com/
- http://www.md5decrypter.co.uk/

So friends, I hope you will now get all basics on how to decrypt MD5 hash and MD5 password using MD5 decrypter services. If you have any problem in using this MD5 decrypter services to decrypt MD5 hash and MD5 password, please mention it in comments.

Enjoy MD5 decrypter to decrypt MD5 password hashes...

How Password Encryption and Decryption is done?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 12:12:00 +0000

Well, this is my first article on Cryptography and password encryption-decryption. I have decided to use password encryption for noob protection. Hence, you will have to read this tutorial on password encryption and cryptography to decrypt passwords.

Previously, I have posted many FUD keyloggers and crypters. But, many of them are now not FUD, mainly UD. I guess this is due to newbies who are not knowing the value of FUD keyloggers and crypters. So, to allow FUD softwares to remain FUD for a long time, I will now henceforth use password encryption i.e. I will encrypt passwords of zip file and you will have to decrypt them to get the FUD trojans. Sorry for the inconvenience friends, but this is necessary step for FUDing trojans.

Cryptography and Password Encryption:

Cryptography is very simple method in which password string is converted to various forms to prevent any unwanted access to file.

How password encryption is done???

Password encryption can be done is various ways. Below, I am explaining simplest most password encryption that I have used to encrypt the file password.

Lets take an example say the password is - techotips
To encrypt password, I am using two password encryption techniques:
a. String Reversal
b. String to Hex conversion

And say I have to encrypt password in following way:
String to Hex-Reverse-String to Hex

1. From above expression, I have to first use String to Hex .
So, go to: http://www.string-functions.com/string-hex.aspx
and enter our password- techotips in text box provided. Hit on Convert and you will see encrypted hex value in second text box.

2. Now, secondly, I have to use Reversal method.
So go to : http://www.string-functions.com/reverse.aspx
and enter encrypted hex value from step 1 in text box and hit on Reverse to get reversed encrypted value in second text box.

3. I have to use again String to Hex method.
So, again go to: http://www.string-functions.com/string-hex.aspx
Enter the encypted value obtained from Step 2 and hit on Convert to get final encrypted value.

Thus, our final encrypted value for our password- techotips is :
333730373936343766363836333635363437

So, password- techotips is encrypted to 333730373936343766363836333635363437.

Update:
For Base 64 encryption go to: http://www.crypo.com/eng_base64e.php

and For TRIPO-5 encryption go to: http://www.crypo.com/eng_tripo5e.php

How to decrypt given encrypted password:

So, lets decrypt our above encrypted password value.
I have used: String to Hex-Reverse-String to Hex as encryption method.
Now, to decrypt we have to use following decryption:
Hex to String-Reverse-Hex to String (Use exact opposite method as used for encryption).

I. Go to: http://www.string-functions.com/hex-string.aspx
Enter the encrypted password string obtained in step 3 and hit on Convert to get a value.

II. Now, to reverse the value in step I,
Go to: http://www.string-functions.com/reverse.aspx
Enter value obtained in step I and hit on Reverse to get reversed value.

III. Again, we have to use Hex to String method.
Go to: http://www.string-functions.com/hex-string.aspx
Enter value obtained in Step II and hit on Convert. You get the actual password: techotips.

So, we have decrypted the encrypted password-
333730373936343766363836333635363437 to actual password- techotips

Update:
For Base 64 decryption, go to: http://www.crypo.com/eng_base64d.php

For TRIPO-5 decryption, go to: http://www.crypo.com/eng_tripo5d.php

So friends, now I guess you all will be able to do password encryption and decryption with the help of above article. There are many other password encryption methods. I have explained the simplest method, I know. You can even make complex encryption by using using repeated reversal and hexing methods. If you have any problem in using this cryptographic method for password encryption, please mention it in comments.

Enjoy Cryptography for password encryption and decryption...

True Love Knows No Fear

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 04:39:00 +0000

The power of love is so overwhelming that even its skewed form, lust, impels two incompatible people to come together in the name of love. Genuine love essentially commits itself to first giving or offering the best from the heart with an attitude of pleasing the recipient and where high expectations of returns are practically never there in one’s list of priorities.

Lust bears the indelible stamp of taking from another, because pride condemns the very act or thought of giving as a defilement of one’s self-respect; demand levels are so unreasonably high that one may even go to the extent of turning violent if what one receives falls short of irrational expectations. Lust feeds on feverish praise, recognition and dominance, whereas love maintains detachment from selfish gain, being willing to sacrifice everything for the welfare of the beloved.

Here’s an analogy: Both gold and iron sell in the market as metals; but, a few grams of the lustrous, soft rarer metal costs more than a tonne of its hard and dull counterpart that is available in an incomparably larger quantity. Just as quantity does not assure quality, similarly, selfless love does not lose its unprecedented value just because it is rarely experienced.

Pretentious words and vain promises are favourite disguises of lust. Love, on the other hand, wears the garb of simplicity, speaks the language of purity, walks the path of humility, adopts the code of tolerance and commits itself to the religion of respecting every being, both moveable and immoveable, as the precious creation of God. No one is more exalted than the other.

Gentle love is invincible whereas brutal lust stifles by the impetus of its own inflammable nature that burns to ashes all traces of reason, compassion and empathy. When one’s lustful advances are spurned, and the lusting is frustrated, all the illusory sheen of false attraction and attachment instantaneously turns into contempt and retaliation in the form of abuse, defamation and destruction. There is no trace of love, here.

Until and unless one is able to discriminate between true love and deceptive lust, one is unable to genuinely appreciate the unfathomable treasures of wisdom lying concealed in Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s ‘Shikshastakam’, wherein the ardent lover of God manifests such a degree of resignation that he is fully prepared to undergo any kind of adversity – birth after birth – to attain to the Lord’s lotus feet. If, in spite of all this surrender, he never ever gets a glimpse or is shunned by his beloved Lord, still his faith would not diminish even an iota; rather, his inexhaustible affection would increase a million-fold without a trace of misgiving.

This simple but true story says so much. Once, Krishna had a splitting headache. No doctor could cure Him. Finally, Krishna revealed that only the dust of the lotus feet of His unalloyed devotees could give Him relief. The moment the gopis heard of this, they offered all the dust from their feet. When admonished for even thinking of allowing the dust of their feet to be put on the head of their venerable Lord – an offence that would send them to hell – they joyfully replied, “We don’t care about going to hell! We would willingly suffer in hell, for all eternity, if it gave a moment of relief to our beloved Krishna!”

Everything is going Great....Is it...?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 04:07:00 +0000

Well! Long time... since i last wrote a blog post, but the reason was genuine enough. This period was another and epic routine of my life. Meanwhile i am happy to tell u that now i am in my fourth semester, after i slogged out days and nights under extreme conditions (by them i mean.. a lot of course to complete, empty room, working in silent loneliness and no one there to understand your problems and help u get out of them). I am also pleased to inform all that i have secured 80% in my second semester RTU results, and was the second in the class unlike last time when i topped.

Moreover, i participated in the RISC (Recent Innovations in Software and Computers) and my research paper on cloud computing was selected for publishing in the Institution of Engineer's Souvenir Journal, making it my first research paper to be published in my life. My presentation was also an awesome example of my skills in public oration and my technical knowledge, regarding my subject. The public opinion said that my presentation was the second best after the presentation given by Dr. Pragya Jain who was the Chief Guest for the event from IIT Delhi. She presented on Grid Computing and its Application , whereas i presented on Cloud Computing and its Application.

Among all the laurels, i have earned during this period, i also had some huge disappointments along the way. I have surely underperformed as per my result of second semester is concerned. I am facing a certain resistance in each and every part of my life. I didn't perform up to the mark in two of my exams i.e. DE and EDC in my third Semester and giving the rest of the exams didn’t give me the same sort of happiness that usually exists apart from Linux and Maths Exam. For the first time in some years i must say, i cracked mathematics the way it should, but this time i was hardly worrying.

The subjects i knew which could have caused problems for me and may be a bit harder to keep in good touch than others, even after my best of efforts didn’t went according to my expectation and my preparation. The days prior to examinations i.e. preparatory leaves too left me among the books severely but still devoid of a lot of happiness. I am unable to understand from where this reversal in the flow of my life has actually begun to take place. I now know that certainly my life is not the same as it was before i suffered swine flu and i perhaps i have to restart again in certain key areas. My body’s resistance has certainly been tested and it has failed, but most worrying factor was the digestive system which is not even accepting the home cooked food; i was at my minimalistic diet at home, which is a huge concern.

So, apart from my studies in this semester, i certainly now need to look upon my diet carefully as i am starting to get feeble and weaker physically. I would be opting for a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Certification Course for this semester from my college and also would be preparing for JAVA Core from private coaching. I would like to complete my IBM Project as my Fourth Semester project for Software Engineering. This would also give me a time to prepare for my courses apart from my studies for the fourth semester.

I surely need to fix soon whatever is wrong in my life. The worst part is that there is no one to share what exactly wrong is happening in my life. Perhaps, i need some break from my otherwise a highly workaholic life!

Let’s hope for a better tomorrow... i surely would work towards it, cause i know there are no free gifts to offer in my life.

Pray for my friend...Its a humble request!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:09:00 +0000

Events in my life never seem to cease....

With events i here mean those instances that directly affect me either mentally or physically...well this post is not about any philosophical tragic story but it is about seeking a support from all my blogger buddies to pray for a friend who is fighting for his life in ICU aftermath of a severe bike accident. I don't ask for any favours from anyone but certainly when the life and death of a friend as good a person as he is... i really request humbly... to pray for him being well soon...!!!

Help my friend to get through this tough stage in his life.....
PLEASE!!!

A night under the sun....

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:54:00 +0000

Sun and the nights seem an unmatched combination, yet there are times in life when one experiences such strange but true situations. A holistic approach to life will result in more clarity. There are enough instances that are making me realize the trouncing effects life can have on a person both physically and mentally..

Well won't like to scare the hell off anyone, but right now what i am facing is not far away from what i described recently.... i am experiencing nights in the sun.

Tough luck ..but something which is quite common to me...Although there are a few positives even in such a strange passage which constitutes beefed loneliness and placid environmental conditions. the positives are innovative mindset, thoughtful approach to life, caring about close and dear friends and making amends to several other factors defining the state of my career. Although i am quite convinced about my capability to resurrect myself under the most dangerous of situations yet its important for me to take more preventive steps rather than curing for a given problem which i suspect with a high probability of its occurrence.

Its quite surprising but true when you listen to such claims as future prediction but as per my intuition goes i am pretty much sure what can happen and it has proven time and again that lets me to give away the thought of laying my precious time to validate this claim of mine..

Right now i am giving myself a silent period to enhance my skills away from some friends of mine so that i can help them to face some problems in a better manner....

Still waiting for the miracle in my life which is spell bounded to my wish.... and not natural which usually grafts my life. A life full of miracles resulted into what i am today... what will happen in the future i don't know exactly but the haze and lightening sometimes scares me.....

Please somehow .....Save me from Myself!!!

Archived to Loneliness in Third Semester!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 09:41:00 +0000

Loneliness is one part of my life i dare can't afford to loose. People might say it a paradox but the reality is that i have had quite some experience with the merits and demerits of being lonely and in the end both seem subtenant. Sometimes you complain meeting so many people that you don't even have enough time for your ownself that you cannot concentrate even on the job at hand. for a person who doesn't have a second option at most times loneliness can be big boon, but for me who strikes the equilibrium between the most sternest repulsive factors and lives among one of the most destructive environments its something strange, yet edible.

Certain recent events have caused my life to be lonely for reasons unexplained. There are times you think about what you have done wrong and at times you think that life is not kind enough towards you, but in my case, as always none of them fits the puzzle. I would like to get back to you on the fact that you might think, that i have had a horrible break-up, but that's not the case.One reason of mentioning this very fact is that one i have no one in my life to break up with and neither it wouldn't be as tragic as what is really happening in my life. It can be better explained as a minimization optimization problem which is subject to a lot of unknown boundary conditions.

Currently i am living alone in the hostel with both my roommates out of the room residing places far away from this room which will probably continue for the rest of the year till August, adding to it a close friend of mine is not allowed to meet me for being indiscipline and worst my IBM project is not complete enough for submission.

Although the IBM project, since the very beginning was a mere first shot towards a larger target and it laid the foundations for my years coming in this college. I knew that it would never be complete considering my current level of expertise and the support that i got from my teammates plus the faculty coordinator for the project, but nevertheless it was an experience that allows me to complete the project and submit it as a part of my minor project in the beginning of third year. I was applauded for my efforts and i am hence satisfied too.... more so for the fact that my semesters are nearing and i gotta really gear up hard to achieve my next frontier in college "Conquering myself in 3rd Semester".

This rejuvenation is certainly needed currently that now i don't have many people close enough with me. But, on the hind side i have also realized the virtues of friendship as new relationships evolve amidst the dearths of pain and reason. I have had a roller coaster ride in third semester which had almost everything in store for me...From the Sem. 1 result to Winning Confero, to making "new" and "close" friends in campus, interacting with seniors and juniors directing them towards a larger dream,to Swine flu which almost brought my life to a standstill, but brightly declaring out how many people cared for me especially my family's love for me and their sacrifice to achieve my life again.

And finally it was me....survived yet another semester among the most adverse conditions with a lot of mental conditioning exercises posed up by life to me, from experiences to eventualities life comes down as a one full circle which meant only one bare fact....

Don't expect too much, but dare not to stop expecting either. Trust yourself and your luck and follow the road to within.... Admit to yourself that you cannot be normal and so be it.After all, you know ALL IS WELL!!!

The New Year Post!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 18:07:00 +0000

Hi! I wish all my blogger friends a very happy and prosperous new Year 2010!

Certainly 2009, was an amazing year for me..although the last two months brought up a grave but a very important experience for me.... First i would like to thank all my well wishers who had prayed for me when i was ill... and then my family members who were there with me at perhaps the most critical periods of my life. I would also like to tell my life.....Thank You!

The Last few days have been really exciting... nevertheless i am rediscovering myself even further. My quest for finding out the answer to the ultimate question of my life i.e. Who am I? is really been answered in several different ways...just as its said that the solution to a mathematical problem can be given by various methodologies, in the same way i have followed the events of my life so closely that every time i am close to saying that "I am Done!" An event occurs that changes my life so dynamically!

Also would like to mention that i have seen two of the most brilliantly directed movies of my life so far...2012 and 3 Idiots. Both bring out a message to the Audience and perhaps the Concerned viewer that somethings are going wrong out there in this present world and we have everything in our hands to conquer these problems for a better tomorrow. Although 3 Idiots remains to be my best pic so far....the direction, acting, screenplay, storyline, cinematography ..... and countless other factors make the movie an instant Hit! no wonder it's an all time Hit in the Bollywood. It has perhaps everything that is loved and cherished by an Indian Audience....My next endeavor is to have a crack at Avatar in 3d perhaps the IMAX version....lets hope that my dream is realised.....

So Folks would sign off with a 'Free Advice' : Go and watch 3 Idiots its awesome...... After all the movie brings the new mantra for this New Year...

ALL IZZZ WELLL !

Sayonara!

Sorry and Thank you!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:19:00 +0000

I am sorry for what happened and thank everyone who cared and prayed for me! Just like to tell u that i am still alive!!

Fresher's 2009: Welcoming our Juniors!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 14:22:00 +0000

Yes, its the time for Freshers party and we the "Seniors" are ready to give a grand welcome to all our juniors. And yes the most important part that i need to tell all of you that I am coordinating the Anchoring Department.

The Freshers is due on the 13th evening and we are preparing full stretch to make it a successful event!!